February of 1942 was terrifying for the residents of England, as they underwent blackout conditions in order to avoid German air raids. However, an entirely different kind of horror was terrorizing the streets of London, and many women were left feeling unseen, and unsafe.
You can read Part 1 here and Part 2 here.
The murders of Evelyn Margaret Hamilton, Evelyn Oatley, Margaret Florence Lowe, Doris Jouannet, and the attacks on Catherine Mulcahy, and Margaret Heywood made for a disturbing pattern that police were very keen to bring to a close. At the time, newsprint was under wartime restriction, meaning that the murders and the attacks had seen very minimal press coverage.
Despite this, sex workers in the area could talk of nothing else. They were growing more and more reluctant to offer their services to strangers, and devised a system to keep tabs on each other. They were nervous about being attacked.
When the bodies of Margaret Florence Lowe and Doris Jouannet were discovered mere hours apart, media outlets could no longer ignore what was happening on the streets of London during blackout conditions. Soon, all of the attacks were linked together, and the press began referring to the murderer as the Blackout Killer. From London, the Blackout Killer’s notoriety soon made national, and international, headlines.
Following the attack on Margaret Heywood, West End Central Police were given a gas mask and haversack that were found at the scene of the attack. Margaret identified the items during her witness statement, and informed police that the items belonged to her attacker.
Detective Sergeant Thomas Shepherd inspected the items, and noticed that a Royal Air Force Regimental number – 525987 – was printed on the inside of the haversack. Shepherd then contacted the Royal Air Force Police, who then contacted a regiment in Regent Park. There, a staff sergeant identified the gas mask and the haversack as having been issued to Gordon Frederick Cummins.
On February 13th, 1942, Shepherd received this information from the Regent Park regiment’s staff sergeant, who also informed Shepherd that Cummins was currently not at his billet. The time was 11:30 PM. Fearing another attack, West End Police went in search of Gordon Frederick Cummins.
The following morning, on February 14th, 1942, Cummins was located and brought in for questioning. He protested, loudly, that he was innocent. He claimed to have been drinking the night before, and claimed that, due to the drink, he had a ‘hazy recollection’ of having had a conversation with a woman. As he walked through the streets with her, he claimed that he noticed he’d been out past curfew, and decided to return to his base.
He claimed to have no memory of attacking Margaret Heywood, but offered to pay her compensation as an apology. When questioned as to why he had wounds on the backs of his knuckles, Cummins had an answer for that, too. He claimed that he’d cut his hands while doing maintenance on an aircraft.
Cummins provided a written statement of his account of the previous evening, believing that he would be let go immediately. However, he was arrested and charged with the crime of causing grievous bodily harm.
On February 15th, 1942, investigators took a look at the pass-book for Cummins’ regiment. They noticed that while he had apparently reported back to the billet on the evenings of many of the attacks and murders, the entries were written in pencil, making them easy to manipulate. They also noticed that most of his entries for the month of February, to date, were incomplete. He would sign out then appear to forget to sign back in.
In questioning the airmen who worked with Cummins, they discovered that the men had been in the habit of vouching for each other as they would return to base. Further questioning uncovered the fact that Cummins, and another airman by the name of Felix Sampson, had left the billet via the fire escape on the dates of each and every murder and attack in question.
When police, with the supervision of Detective Chief Inspector Edward Greeno, searched Cummins’ belongings, they found items – souvenirs – that Cummins had taken from the murder victims. Along with the items, they also found a shirt with traces of blood hidden among Cummins’ possessions.
Following these discoveries, Detective Chief Superintendent Frederick Cherrill looked at many items and sets of fingerprints. He found that the fingerprint from Cummins’ left little finger and thumb matched prints found at the scene of Evelyn Oatley’s murder. He was also able to determine that Cummins’ fingerprints were present at two other crime scenes.
As Cherrill was matching fingerprints, Margaret Heywood and Catherine Mulcahy were asked to come in and identify their attacker in a lineup. Catherine was unable to positively identify her attacker, while Margaret unhesitatingly identified Gordon Cummins. Furthermore, Greeno was able to determine that two of the then £1 banknotes had been brand new. In inspecting the serial numbers, they were able to determine that the two notes had been issued to Cummins on February 12th.
Despite the mounting evidence, Cummins continued to protest his innocence. He even went so far as to claim that another airman was framing him, having switched their gas masks and haversacks. The police did not buy this story for a single second.
On February 16th, 1942, Greeno gave Cummins one more chance to recount his movements between the dates of February 9th to the 13th, hoping he would finally come clean. Cummins insisted that he was completely innocent, and that he had never encountered any of the murdered or attacked women. He even claimed that the items found in his possession that belonged to the women had been planted in an effort to frame him.
Greeno was unconvinced. He gleefully informed Gordon Frederick Cummins then and there that he was being charged with the murders of Evelyn Oatley, Margaret Lowe, and Doris Jouannet. A few days later, on February 20th, Cummins was further charged with assaulting Margaret Heywood and Catherine Mulcahy. When Cummins appeared before a judge on March 27th, 1942, he was further charged with the murder of Evelyn Hamilton.
All in all, Gordon Frederick Cummins, the Blackout Ripper, faced four murder charges, and two assault charges. Throughout the entire ordeal, he maintained his innocence, and was staunchly supported by his wife.
On April 24th, 1942, Gordon Cummins went on trial for the murder of Evelyn Oatley. He entered a plea of not guilty.
On that first day of trial, the jury was excused due to a legal technicality – the wrong photo was shown to the jury. Instead of viewing a crime scene photo of Evelyn Oatley, the jury was shown a photo of Margaret Lowe. The trial picked up again a few days later, on April 27th.
Through the course of the trial, Cummins seemed uninterested, and unconcerned. He was often seen turning from the bar to smile at his wife, or chatting light-heartedly with his legal counsel. The only time he seemed lively was when he testified in his own defence.
To that point, the prosecution had laid out the case – from the discovery of Evelyn’s body, to the fingerprints found at the scene that matched those of Gordon Cummins, to Sir Bernard Spilsbury’s testimony of the autopsy performed.
When it came time to testify in his own defence, Cummins continue to protest the charges against, him, stating that he was innocent. He claimed, based on testimony stating he’d been in the company of sex workers, that he had, indeed, paid Evelyn for her services that evening, but he’d left her alive to find the company of another woman. As such, Cummins surmised, he could not have committed the murder of Evelyn Oatley.
On April 28th, 1942, the jury retired at 4:00 PM to deliberate over their verdict.
At 4:35 PM, 35 minutes later, the jury returned. Each and every jury member avoided eye contact with Cummins as they made their way back in. The jury had found Gordon Frederick Cummins guilty of murder.
Cummins himself did not react, though his wife burst into tears in the courtroom. When asked if there was any legal cause or reason for the court not to impose the death penalty, Cummins neatly replied: “I am completely innocent, sir.”
Gordon Frederick Cummins was sentenced to death by hanging.
Cummins lodged an appeal against his conviction, but it was denied in the early days of June, 1942.
On June 25th, 1942, Gordon Frederick Cummins, dubbed the Blackout Ripper, was executed by hanging.
To date, he is the only convicted murder, in British history, to have been executed whilst in the middle of an air raid.
Following his execution, the charges of murder against him for the murders of Margaret Evelyn Hamilton, Margaret Florence Lowe, and Doris Jouannet, as well as the two assaults on Catherine Mulcahy and Margaret Heywood, remained on file. In addition to these charges, investigators with Scotland Yard highly suspect that Cummins was responsible for the murders of two women in October, 1941, while he was stationed in Colerne.
19-year-old Maple Church was murdered on October 13th, 1941. She had been strangled with her own lingerie. The pathologist who examined her body suspected that the individual who’d committed the murder was left-handed. She had not been sexually assaulted.
At the time, her death did not match any other. No witnesses or suspects were identified, though police interviewed anyone and everyone who knew Maple. However, they kept hitting dead ends.
A few days later, on October 17th, 1942, 48-year-old Edith Eleanora Humphries was found in her home. She’d been beaten black and blue around her head and face before her murderer cut her throat, following a failed attempt to strangle her. When she was found, Edith was still alive. However, she succumbed to her injuries shortly after being admitted to hospital.
At the time, the two murders were not connected to each other, nor were any suspects or solid leads identified.
It wasn’t until the crimes of the Blackout Ripper came to light that the mystery seemed to “solve” itself.
Though never convicted of the October 1941 murders, they bear a striking resemblance to the February 1942 attacks with took the lives of four women, and left two horrifically traumatized.
Were the murders of Maple Church and Edith Eleanora Humphries the work of the Blackout Killer? Popular opinion says yes. However, these cases, as far as this writing goes, remain unsolved.
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Sources:
The Tale of the Blackout Ripper – Jacob Wilkins – Medium
Depraved London wartime serial killer who was ‘worse than Jack the Ripper’ – Dan Wiggins – MyLondon
The Blackout Ripper: A serial killer in wartime London – Cime & Investigation
The Dark Histories Podcast – S05Ep05 – Gordon Cummins: The Blackout Ripper
Gordon Cummins Wikipedia page
[…] You can find Part 3 here. […]