Wallace: The Final Verdict (Who Killed Julia)

When Roger Wilkes decided to reopen the file on the fifty-year-old Wallace murder case to make a radio documentary, he knew he was taking on one of the most celebrated unsolved mysteries in the history of British crime. Ever since the night in January, 1931 when the body of Julia Wallace was found on the floor of her Liverpool sitting-room, her head crushed by a series of violent blows, police, criminologists, journalists, even novelists, have been trying to agree on the identity of her killer. Was it her husband, who was tried, found guilty and sentenced to hang for murder, only to be acquitted on the grounds of insufficient evidence? Wilkes knew there had initially been another major suspect in the case, a young man who had a curious relationship with both Wallace and his wife. Why had the police let possible charges against him quietly drop? How could Wilkes get some new answers. His approach was novel: as News Editor of Radio City, Liverpool's independent radio station, Wilkes had access over the air to anyone who might have been involved in the case, still be alive, and willing to talk. In making a carefully researched programme to mark the fiftieth anniversary of Julia Wallace's death, he appealed for information. He could not foresee the tremendous response he would get - or how astonishing and significant one particular revelation would be. This book is the story of the making of that programme, and a subsequent one, taking some startling new evidence from the public into account. It has all the ingredients of a classic whodunnit - an intricate piece of detection vividly described; a mysterious other woman still unwilling to talk, a crucial witness overlooked by the police, a wronged man and a ruined life, a villain allowed to go free, a possible cover-up - all the more compelling for being real. Most significant of all, Roger Wilkes names the man he feels really did kill Julia Wallace, and describes how, and why, he did it.