Killing of Julia Wallace

Overview

On the evening of 20 January 1931, William Herbert Wallace, a Prudential Assurance collections agent, returned to his home at 29 Wolverton Street in the Anfield district of Liverpool to find his wife, Julia Wallace, beaten to death in their sitting room. The killing followed a strange sequence of events: the previous night, while attending a chess club meeting, Wallace had been handed a telephone message from a man calling himself "R. M. Qualtrough," asking him to call at 25 Menlove Gardens East the following evening to discuss insurance business. When Wallace went to the address the next night, he discovered no such address existed, and after searching the area for around 45 minutes, returned home to find his wife dead.

Investigation and Trial

Police investigated the telephone box used to make the "Qualtrough" call, located about 400 yards from Wallace's home, and began to suspect Wallace himself had made the call, despite the person who took it being certain it was not Wallace's voice. Investigators theorised about timing — whether Wallace could have killed his wife and still made his tram — and examined forensic evidence, including a mackintosh found beneath Julia's body, which police theorised was used to shield the killer from blood spatter. No bloodstains were found on Wallace's suit, and examinations of the bath and drains found no trace of blood except a single, unexplained clot in the toilet.

Wallace was charged with murder and tried at Liverpool Assizes beginning 22 April 1931. Despite evidence against him being circumstantial, and testimony from a milk-boy who said he spoke with Julia after 6:30pm — narrowing the window in which Wallace could have committed the crime — the jury found him guilty after an hour's deliberation, and he was sentenced to death.

Appeal

In May 1931, the Court of Criminal Appeal quashed the conviction, ruling that the verdict "cannot be supported, having regard to the evidence." This marked the first instance in British legal history of an appeal being allowed after re-examination of the evidence itself, rather than on procedural grounds. Wallace was released, and no other person was ever charged with the murder, which remains officially unsolved.

Aftermath

After his release, Wallace faced continued public suspicion, harassment, and hate mail in the areas where he lived and worked. He moved to Bromborough and took a clerical position at Prudential's head office. He died on 26 February 1933 from uraemia and pyelonephritis, less than two years after his acquittal, and is buried alongside his wife in Anfield Cemetery.

Later Theories

Subsequent investigations, notably by crime writer Jonathan Goodman in the 1960s and radio journalist Roger Wilkes in 1981, focused on a former Prudential colleague, Richard Gordon Parry, as an alternative suspect, citing an alibi that may have been false and reports of a blood-soaked glove found in his car on the night of the murder. Author James Murphy's 2001 research introduced police statements suggesting Parry's alibi did not depend solely on the testimony Wilkes had identified. The case has generated extensive literature and remains widely discussed as an unsolved murder mystery.