On December 3, 1848 the body of elderly widow Grace Holman was found in her bed - she had been suffocated with great force. The 76-year-old lived alone in a cottage in Tedburn St Mary eight miles outside Exeter.
There was a box and a chair on the bed and the Mrs Holman’s dead body underneath. A chest of drawers was open and some cash and silver spoons were missing. Two sets of footprints were discovered in the orchard.
The murder of Mrs Holman shocked the quiet farming village. But it is the tale of how the crime was solved, the dogged detective work of a local policeman, that is the most remarkable feature of the historic case.
Read more:
The chilling murder of teenager in Devon woods
The bloody robbery and murder in Devon's 'Wild West' village
John Hele of Alphington attended the inquest, held at the Red Lion, a few days after the murder. He interviewed the murdered woman's neighbour, Grace Collings. She had woken on the morning to find that her front door had been fastened shut with a rope from the outside.
She called to a girl pulling turnips in a field to free her then noticed an apple tree prop leaning against the side of the widow's cottage. The local constable climbed the ladder and made the grim discovery of the widow's body.
The findings of the coroner was that death was due to pressure on the neck. A verdict of “wilful murder against some person or persons unknown” was made.
Hele was now on the case and decided to go undercover. His wrote about his involvement in his memoirs. His first step was to head to Exeter disguised as a horse trader. While in West Street he got drinking with a man named "Bath Jimmy". Soon after that another stranger "tapped me on the knee" and the pair went outside to chat. Hele lied and convinced the man he was really a thief. The man asked him whether he had heard anything about the "croaking job" in Tedburn.
Hele, still undercover, denied any knowledge. Later that night he went to search the man's lodgings in Exeter and found a set of hammers used by tinkers to mend kettles. He discovered the man's real name was James Landick, otherwise known as the Moreton Tinker and that he lived at the property with a friend called "Cockney Harry".
The detective obtained a warrant for the arrest of the two men who he suspected of killing the old woman. The hunt was on.
Cockney Harry was easy to find. Hele took a horse-drawn fly carriage to Crediton and had him arrested and charged with murder. The prisoner confessed to the robbery but denied the killing. He implicated James Landick, the Moreton Tinker, as the real murderer.
Landick was born in Tavistock to a respectable family but they "could not train him to anything that was good." He had lodgings in Moretonhampstead and, according to Cockney Harry, the plan to rob Mrs Holman was the idea of his partner May Ann Mills, a gypsy, who had once read fortunes in Tedburn and knew she lived alone.
Hele headed to Moretonhampstead with a warrant to arrest Landick. He had already fled but was soon captured at Ashburton while on his way to Cornwall.
The truth about what really happened at Mrs Holman's began to come out. There had actaully been three men involved in the burglary - Landick, Cockney Harry and Landick's brother-in-law, a man named James Mills.
Landick had used the ladder to climb into through the spare bedroom window. Once inside the men covered their faces with black soot and found their target sitting up in bed. Landick threw the covers over her face and Mills had sat on her neck and head. The gang ransacked the house before leaving.
Hele now started his search for Mills. He discovered that he had joined the army under another name and had already left the country for Ireland, awaiting passage to India.
The dogged sleuth took a train to Bangor before getting the steamer to Ireland. He then took a coach to Kilkenny but found the regiment had already moved on to Fermoy. It was here he tracked down Mills and arrested him, returning on the Holyhead steamer.
He had travelled 1,172 miles in four and a half days to get his man. Hele described Mills as going "quite faint" as he put him in shackles.
Cockney Harry could not be tried because he had turned Queen's evidence on his pals and was acquitted. Landick implicated himself by admitting he was at the scene but blamed the others for choking the elderly victim.
His trial in Exeter took two days and 37 witnesses were questioned. He was executed on April 9, 1849. The estimated crowd, probably exaggerated, was in the region of 40,000. Mills was found not guilty. Hele could only find two sets of footprints and there was said to be insufficient evidence he was at the scene.
Useful links:
