George Edward Heath was a 34-year-old unlicensed taxi driver who had been medically discharged from the British Army after being wounded during the evacuation of Dunkirk. On the night of 3–7 October 1944, Heath was murdered at Knowle Green near Staines, Middlesex, by Karl Hultén and Elizabeth Jones. His body was found in a ditch on Saturday 7 October 1944 and reported to the Metropolitan Police, which then had jurisdiction over Staines.
Elizabeth Jones, born in Neath, Wales, in 1926, had a history of running away from home and being sent to an approved school as a teenager. Karl Hultén, born in Sweden in 1922, had enlisted in the U.S. Army after the attack on Pearl Harbor and was, at the time of the murder, absent without leave (AWOL) and falsely presenting himself as an officer and a Chicago gangster. Jones and Hultén met in a tea shop on 3 October 1944; their relationship and crime spree lasted only six days. During this period, they struck a nurse cycling along a country lane and robbed her, and separately picked up a hitchhiker, knocked her unconscious, robbed her, and threw her into a river, though she survived.
The spree culminated in the murder of Heath, whom Jones and Hultén robbed of £8, which they spent at dog races the following day. Hultén had initially stolen an army truck, which he abandoned, but he retained Heath's car after the murder. After spending the stolen money, Jones expressed a wish for a fur coat; Hultén then attempted to snatch a coat from a woman in the street, prompting a police response from which he narrowly escaped in the stolen car. He was ultimately identified and caught because the car remained in his possession; he initially attempted to pass himself off to American investigators under an alias, but his true identity was established. Jones separately went to a police station in Hammersmith and admitted to the crimes before being taken to Staines to be charged with murder.
Because Jones fell outside American military jurisdiction, the U.S. authorities waived the Visiting Forces Act so that Hultén could be tried alongside her in a British court. At trial, each implicated the other, with Jones alleging she feared violence from Hultén if she did not comply with his instructions. Both were found guilty of murdering Heath, and Mr Justice Charles sentenced them to death by hanging. Hultén was executed at Pentonville Prison on 8 March 1945. Jones was reprieved following a recommendation of mercy from the jury and was released from prison in May 1954; her subsequent fate is not definitively documented, although one television account reports her death as occurring in 1980. Jones's reprieve generated public controversy at the time, including graffiti reading "SHE SHOULD HANG" in her home town, reflecting wartime sentiment that the crimes were cowardly.
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