David Williams on his new book
Poison Farm: A Murderer Unmasked After 60 years  

Author David Williams was just a child when his father's boss died from poisoning in a beautiful English village. Sixty years later he set out to research the case, and in doing so he was able, for first time, to name the murderer. This is the story behind his new book POISON FARM: A MURDERER UNMASKED.   “Those many American airmen who used to come to our English village during World War II were captivated by its beauty, its ancient church with a rare round tower and, in particular, its two pubs. It's like something on a picture postcard, they would say, without knowing that behind that gentle facade of timbered houses and thatched roofs lay a dark secret that the villagers did not want to talk to visitors about.   “Risby, wartime population 300, was, and still is, my village, just a mile or so from the historic town of Bury St. Edmunds in the county of Suffolk , on the eastern side of England . It was the wartime center of activity of the Flying Fortresses of the USAAF 8th Bomber Group. And it was here that my father's boss, farmer Bill Murfitt, met his death by poisoning in the May of 1938, the year before the war began.

 “I shall always remember the day he died. My father, who was his foreman, came home unexpectedly that morning and said to my mother, ‘The boss is dead . . . it looks suspicious.' Those are words a six-year-old boy does not forget.   “The doctor who arrived to tend the dying farmer noticed the smell of bitter almonds coming from his body and recognized it as the fatal scent of cyanide. He called the police and from questioning Murfitt's family they found out he had collapsed on to the farmhouse floor just seconds after taking his daily dose of fizzy health salts. Further investigation found that the tin containing the salts had been laced with the poison in the hours just beforehand.

 “The local police, more used to dealing with minor cases of rural crime, were ill-equipped to deal with a murder such as this: they had only two detectives, and one was away on a training course. The county's Chief Constable decided to call in the assistance of Scotland Yard and two of their top detectives traveled to our village to try to find the poisoner.   “As the investigation went on, throughout that last full summer of peace before the war, the detectives discovered there was no shortage of suspects. Bill Murfitt, 240 pounds in weight and prone to wearing top hats at social events, was a man in love with life, and with several women at the same time.

 “His wife Gertrude, who knew he had cheated on her with her best friend, was the prime suspect. She had confronted Bill and her friend about their affair, they admitted it and she had forgiven them. But she was still angry. The best friend was also a suspect because the detectives were told Murfitt had threatened to blackmail her. Then there was the best friend's husband, who would have had an obvious motive of jealousy.

“In the village there was a gamekeeper Bill Murfitt had been trying to get dismissed from his job, a shepherd whom Murfitt was about to throw out of his house, and a neighboring farmer's elegant but strange housekeeper who, while accompanying Murfitt to a horseracing meeting, had become involved in trouble with the law and had good reasons to want the burly farmer out of the way.

“News of the investigation also brought to Risby the pack of crime reporters from the national newspapers who always followed in the wake of the men from Scotland Yard. The lurid headlines and the scandal they reported put the shame of our previously quiet, closed community on all the front pages. Inevitably, the case was likened to a plot from one of Agatha Christie's crime novels.

“The detective leading the case, Chief Inspector Leonard Burt, was no fool and went on in later years to become Britain 's top spycatcher. His assistant, Sergeant Reg Spooner, was to go on to head London 's famed Flying Squad. But despite all their skill and experience they were unable to bring any charges and at a hearing by the local coroner a verdict of murder by person or persons unknown was returned.

“There the mystery remained. A few months later people put it to the backs of their minds as war was declared and Britain fought for survival against the Nazis. My father, a veteran of trench warfare in France in the 1914-18 war, held open house for servicemen stationed in our area, which from 1942 included airmen from the USAAF bases surrounding us. He sometimes mentioned the Murfitt murder, but in a joking way, and I doubt if they believed him.When I left school I trained as a journalist with my local newspaper and went on to a near 50-year career in journalism. I returned to Risby when I retired in the late 1990s and for the first time had time to research the story that had been with me all my life.

“I had all the cuttings reporting the murder, all the anecdotes passed on to me by my father and other people in the village, but the identity of the murderer still escaped me . . . until I telephoned Scotland Yard. Yes, they said, there was a file on the Murfitt murder, it had kept secret for more than 50 years but, because all the main suspects were now dead, the file had recently been passed to the Public Record Office in London and was open to public inspection.

“At the Record Office I found I was the first member of the public to access the file. And as I read through Inspector Burt's report, which he had written immediately on leaving our village, I knew I had the answer to the 60-year-old mystery.   “Why wasn't the poisoner accused in court at the time? Burt's detailed and perceptive 140-page report weighed up the evidence he had collected against each suspect in turn. Gradually he eliminated them all except one, and that was the person he knew was the poisoner of my father's boss. There was however, one vital piece of evidence he needed before he could put the case before a criminal court jury, and that evidence was missing.   “Burt's assistant, Reg Spooner, referred to it later as Poisoner's Luck and it was because of that luck that a murderer went free.”