The burning car murders

On the 27th of November 1929, the German police were called to a car accident at Regensburg, where a green Opal car had crashed and caught fire. The unfortunate single occupant of the car, identified as Erich Tetzner, a 26-year-old businessman from Leipzig, had been almost entirely incinerated. The remains of the man’s body were removed from the vehicle and, as the police saw nothing more sinister than a tragic accident, the body was released for burial.

However, the Nordstern Insurance Company discovered that the recently taken out insurance on the life of Erich Tetzner was one of three such policies with a total value of 145,000 German marks, a very large amount. The insurance agent asked Richard Kockel of the Institute of Forensic Medicine at the University of Leipzig to take a look at the body. The examination proved that the body was of a very slightly built male. Tetzner was heavily built and aged about 26 years old, while the body in the car was younger. It further proved that the body had not died as a result of fire, but probably as a result of violence not associated with the quite gentle car crash.

The dead man was never identified, but was thought to have been a hitchhiker, whom Tetzner had killed in order to substitute for himself in the car, in order to claim the insurance money. It was a clever plan and would have worked, except for the three high insurance claims arousing suspicion. Consequently, Tetzner was traced through telephone calls he made to his wife and arrested, so the claims were never paid out.

If Alfred Arthur Rouse had read of the Tetzner Case, he may well have seen that the weak point of Tetzner’s plan was the large amount claimed in insurance, and so determined to avoid that aspect in his own very similar plan. In reality, it is not known if Rouse knew of the Tetzner case (although the dates do suggest it) or whether his plan was his own original idea. Whichever it was, Rouse’s plan was a very good one. We could be forgiven for having a sneaky admiration for a man who could plan something that was so simple yet so deadly complex. His plan should have worked flawlessly, but you know what Robbie Burns said about “the well laid plans of mice and men.”

On the night of the 5th of November 1930, the whole of England was, for want of a better word, celebrating the anniversary of the execution by burning of Guy Fawkes, with the traditional fireworks and bonfires. In the early hours of the following morning, around 2am, a Morris Minor, car registration MU 1468, was found burning fiercely in Hardingstone Lane, leading to the village of Hardingstone in Northamptonshire.

The burning car was first discovered by William Bailey and Alfred Thomas Brown, two cousins returning from a bonfire-night dance. The police were called out and the ferocious fire was eventually subdued with buckets of water, at which time a human body could be made out inside the vehicle. By half past four in the morning, the fire was sufficiently out for the body to be removed from the vehicle and taken to a garage at the local Crown Inn. Later, it was taken to Northampton General Hospital for an autopsy to be performed.

The police at the scene, thinking, as in the Tetzner case, that it was nothing more than a tragic motor accident, took no photographs, and neither did they make any notes of the position of the body until much later. The man’s body had been found lying in a most unusual position, with the body on the passenger’s seat and the head in the driver’s seat face down. The right arm was over the passenger seat, but burnt off at the elbow. The left leg was bent up underneath the body, with the right leg stretched out of the car’s door and burnt off at the knee. The car, which was obstructing the lane, was moved onto the grass verge to allow the morning workers’ bus to get by.

The police, still thinking in terms of a motor accident and foreseeing that there would be a coroner’s inquest, began taking statements, first of all from the two young men who had first discovered the car on fire. At that point, things started to go very wrong for the well-laid plan of Alfred Arthur Rouse. Bailey and Brown started their statement with a worrying recollection for the police that started them thinking beyond a simple tragic accident.

The cousins stated that just as they were entering Hardingstone Lane, around 2am on the 6th of November from the main London to Northampton Road, they met a man climbing out of the ditch. Some random things they remembered about this strangest of encounters with the man was that he was not wearing a hat but was carrying a briefcase. He climbed out of the ditch and got onto the road then crossed behind them. At that exact moment, Brown noticed the glow of the fire further down the lane and said to his cousin, “What’s the blaze?” To his surprise, the strange man answered in a rather breathless voice, “It looks like someone has had a bonfire.”

The two young men thought this encounter so strange that they watched the lone figure as he approached the main road. At first he took a few steps north towards Northampton, seemed to hesitate, as if unsure which way to go, then turned towards London. However, as they turned their attention towards the fire further down the lane, Rouse, for it was he, stood still in the middle of the road watching them, seemingly unsure what to do next, now that his ‘perfect murder’ had hit the one obstacle he had never thought possible at that time of the morning: witnesses.

Alfred Arthur Rouse had been a quite normal conscientious young man until, during the First World War, in France in 1915, he was wounded in the head, leg and thigh by a shell burst. He had married before going off to war and had been a faithful husband, but after he recovered from his head wound he was a changed man.

Rouse as a young soldier in the First World War, before he was wounded.

He travelled the country as a commercial traveller and took every opportunity to have affairs and seduce young girls. One, Helen Campbell, was only 14 years old when Rouse got her pregnant. He had several maintenance orders against him for children he had fathered, and he had actually bigamously married one of his mistresses. By the date of the car fire he had one mistress, Nellie Tucker, who was in the City of London Maternity Hospital having just given birth to the second of her illegitimate children by Rouse. He also had Ivy Jenkins in Wales who had told her parents she was married to Rouse and expecting his child. She was also at that time quite seriously ill in bed. There were other women and other children and a number of bastardy orders outstanding on Rouse.

Little wonder then, that Rouse had decided to conveniently ‘die’ in a car accident by substituting another man’s body for his, which would allow him to slip away and start life afresh somewhere else. So, standing on the Northampton to London road, looking back at the car fire and the retreating figures of the two cousins, he was in a serious quandary.

He had never imagined that he would be seen by anyone, so had never devised a plan to deal with such a situation. The two men had taken him completely by surprise as he had climbed out of the ditch, completely revealed and recognizable in the full moon light. He had been so completely taken by surprise that he had not thought to feign horror and panic and beg the two men to help him get his friend out of the burning car. Had he done so, he may well have got away without arousing the suspicions of the police to the fact that the fire was anything more than a tragic accident. But he had missed his chance and realised that his original plan was now not going to work, and he resorted to what can only be described as a blind panic.

He got a lift in a lorry and returned to his home in Buxted Road, Finchley, where he may have changed his clothes. His wife did hear him enter the house at what she thought was 1am, but was in fact nearer 6:30am. Her mistake in time led her to believe that the accident had actually occurred after Rouse had returned to Buxted Road, and was to be the cause of some confusion later.

When Rouse left the house, he boarded a bus to see his third ‘wife’, Ivy Jenkins, in Gelligaer Monmouthshire, Wales. However, the next day, the 7th, the national newspapers carried the story of the car fire and the fact that Mrs Rouse had been taken to Northampton to try to identify her husband.

The fact that Rouse had another wife could not be kept from the Jenkins family, and so Rouse left Gelligaer hurriedly and took a coach back to London. However, the Jenkins family and a newspaper man friend, realising something serious was afoot, informed the Metropolitan Police, who met Rouse off the coach and took him into custody at Hammersmith Police Station.

Rouse on his arrest.

Rouse was once again taken by surprise by his apprehension, but made a plausible statement which he must have spent the intervening hours concocting. Briefly, it was that he had been on his way to his employers in Leicester to collect some money owed him, when he picked up the unknown man on the Great North Road and gave him a lift. At the Hardingstone Lane turn-off he had pulled in to relieve himself and to put more petrol in the tank of his Morris Minor car from a can. As he walked down the lane, he asked the unknown passenger to fill the tank while he relieved himself. The man, according to Rouse, asked “How about a smoke?” and Rouse, a non-smoker, gave him a cigarette (or in some reports a cigar). The statement goes on to say that no sooner had Rouse got his trousers down then he saw the flames, ran back towards the car and saw the man inside. He tried to open the door but was driven back by the heat. He then claimed to have run towards the main road to get help but when he saw the two men, Bailey and Brown, he felt responsible for the accident and did not know what to do. When asked by a detective if he had managed to rescue the briefcase which he was seen carrying, he replied, quite cleverly, that he had kept the briefcase with him when he went to relieve himself as he didn’t trust the man not to steal from it.

This statement was quite a good story that may well have given Rouse a chance with the average jury, who would probably not believe that he had some ulterior, sinister motive for starting the fire himself. But Rouse, whose personality had changed since his wartime injuries, was now very vain and could not stop himself from boasting about his conquest of women, and then made an un-asked for statement at Nottingham Police Station, which was later read out in the Police Court proceedings, and which was published in every newspaper in Britain.

Rouse’s reported words were, in part, “My harem takes me several places and I am not at home a great deal, but my wife doesn’t ask questions now. I am friendly with several women but it is a very expensive game.” Rouse’s words were read by every prospective juror in Britain and his bragging may well have sealed his fate.

Rouse was tried for murder at Northampton assizes in January 1931 before Mr Justice Talbot, with Mr DL Finnemore defending and the prosecution led by Mr Norman Birkett QC MP.

There was a great deal of circumstantial evidence pointing to Rouse’s intention of substituting the unknown man’s body for his in the burnt out car, in order that he could slip away to avoid his many problems. However, there was one direct piece of evidence that weighed heavily against Rouse.

Evidence was given by Colonel Buckle, a motor and fire assessor, that the petrol union joint under the dashboard of Rouse’s car had been loosened by at least one full turn. This had allowed a continuous stream of petrol to not only enter the interior of the car, but to flow onto the trouser leg of the unfortunate man inside the vehicle, helping to speedily incinerate him.

The aluminium carburettor had melted, and fallen away from the engine block in the fire, estimated by Colonel Buckle to have reached around 2000°F, and he also reported that there had been a second seat of sustained fire at the carburettor, from very early on in the conflagration. Now this was unusual because, although the carburettor does hold a small amount of petrol, it is a sealed unit and could not have been on fire in the early stages, unless Rouse had taken the top off. Deliberately removing the top, which Colonel Buckle as an expert witness could not suggest because it could not be proven, would allow petrol to continuously flow into the carburettor bowl and then overflow and accelerate the fire tremendously.

Although Colonel Buckle could not suggest the top had been deliberately removed prior to the fire when he gave his expert evidence, Mr Norman Birkett, council for the prosecution, was able to put it directly to Rouse in cross-examination.

It was noticeable to all in court that as Rouse was handed the carburettor and the direct question put to him, he blanched and looked visibly shaken, but denied he had removed the top of the carburettor to increase the intensity of the fire. Ironically, some time later, after he had been hanged, his confession was published in the Daily Sketch newspaper and Rouse admitted to loosening the petrol union nut one turn and to removing the top of the carburettor.

All the direct and circumstantial evidence given in the court proved beyond doubt that Rouse had murdered the unfortunate man, who like Tetzner’s victim was never identified, and Rouse’s attitude towards him did not help. On the few times he did refer to him, he described him as “that scallywag”.

Rouse was found guilty of murder, and after an unsuccessful appeal was hanged at Bedford Jail on the 10th of March 1931. If Rouse had been influenced by Tetzner’s action in Germany, he should have followed the case through to its conclusion, because Tetzner too, ended on the gallows.