Free Barbaric Murders - Child victims, lady-killers and bodies in boxes (Infamous Murderers) by Rodney Castleden

already ruled Montes out of any serious sexual assaults in London.
    The one positive result from this sad story is that John Dickinson’s campaign to press the French police into higher levels of activity has led to the routine use of DNA testing in France. John Dickinson is using the successful conviction of his daughter’s killer as the basis for a new campaign for the creation of a global database of DNA to prevent other families suffering the same fate. Interpol is aiming to simplify the process of DNA identification by using a numerical process that will enable rapid preliminary matching; this is then followed up with further laboratory testing to make sure the match is exact. But, as in all such collaborative ventures, ‘We are reliant on the contributions of each member state. While some, such as Britain, are advanced, others are slowing down.’

PART TWO: THE LADY-KILLERS

William Corder
    ‘and the Murder at the Red Barn’

     
     
     
    The infamous Murder at the Red Barn was probably the murder that most caught the public imagination in the nineteenth century. It was a dramatic news story, a story of love turned sour, and it soon became one of the stock Victorian melodramas.
    The victim of the crime was Maria Marten. She was born in 1801, the daughter of a humble mole-catcher at Polstead in Suffolk. She was given a good education, rather better than was normal for a girl of her station. She was also a very good-looking young woman with a fine figure and a pretty face. Not surprisingly she was surrounded by admirers, and not very surprisingly she gave way to temptation, not once or twice but several times. She became pregnant by ‘a gentleman of fortune’ who lived in a house nearby, and at the time of her death the child was three years old. She formed a new liaison in 1826, this time with William Corder.
    Corder was the son of a rich farmer at Polstead. He was a smartly and fashionably dressed young man of twenty-four, with a florid complexion. He was naturally attracted to the good-looking Maria, a relationship developed and she had another child – Corder’s child. The infant died shortly after it was born and Corder took the body away at night and disposed of it in haste, by means that he would never discuss. Naturally people wondered whether the child had been deliberately murdered by Corder and disposed of to destroy the evidence. Maria used the scandal that was circulating as a lever on her father to make him agree to a marriage.
    On 18 May, 1827 William Corder called at old Mr Marten’s house to tell Marten that he was willing to marry Maria. He added that no time should be lost, and in order to get the marriage through as quickly as possible it should be as private as possible and by licence rather than by banns. He and Marten agreed on the following day as the day of the wedding. Corder persuaded Maria, who was very unhappy at this way of doing things, to dress in a suit of his own clothes and go with him in disguise to a barn on his farm. It was called the Red Barn.
    At the Red Barn, she could change into her own clothes and from there he would take her in a gig to a church in Ipswich – where they would be married. Maria reluctantly agreed to this strange set of arrangements and Corder went home. Maria followed soon after, carrying an outfit that she could wear for the wedding. Corder had meanwhile managed to persuade Mrs Marten, Maria’s stepmother, that he was determined to make Maria his lawful wife, and that they had to rush the marriage through immediately as he knew there was a warrant out against Maria for her bastard children.
    A few minutes after Corder had left Maria, he was seen by Maria’s brother walking towards the Red Barn with a pickaxe over his shoulder. From that moment on, nothing more was heard of Maria, except Corder’s lies. It was expected that Maria would return from Ipswich within a day or two, but her earlier visits to Corder had been of varying lengths