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

and on a handkerchief tied round her neck. There was also a visible wound in the throat, which had been inflicted by a sharp instrument. There was another wound in the orbit of the right eye; something had been thrust in which had broken the bones and penetrated the brain. When the body was found, it was partly inside a sack and dressed only in a shift, petticoat, stays, stockings and shoes.
    Everyone’s thoughts turned to William Corder as the murderer. The local constable, Ayres, went off to brief a London policeman, Constable James Lea, in an attempt to find Corder. Lea was given little to go on except a single London address where Corder had been, in the Gray’s Inn Road area, but traced Corder’s movements from address to address, eventually finding him towards the end of April at Grove House in Ealing Lane near Brentford. He was there with his wife of three weeks, and he was – almost incredibly – running a boarding-house for young ladies. Lea had some difficulty in gaining access to Grove House, but Lea pretended to have a daughter he might wish to place at the boarding house, and was shown into a parlour. There he found William Corder sitting at breakfast in his dressing-gown with four ladies. He was holding his watch, timing the boiling of some eggs.
    Constable Lea called Corder to one side to tell him discreetly that he had a serious charge against him. Corder was alarmed and asked if they could discuss it in the drawing room. Did he know a person named Maria Marten at Polstead? No, he knew no-one of that name. Lea handcuffed him and set about searching the house. Amongst other things he found a passport to France dated December 1827 and some threatening letters from a man called Gardener, suggesting that some other offence had been committed that Corder needed to cover up. In the course of the search he found a pair of pistols, a powder-flask and some balls in a velvet bag. The pistols had been bought immediately before the murder from Harcourts in Ipswich. Later, when Mrs Marten saw the velvet bag she recognized it as the bag Maria was carrying when she left their house for the last time. Lea also found a sharp-pointed dagger. This was later identified by a cutler named Offord as being the one he had sharpened for Corder a few days before the murder.
    Corder was taken before magistrate Matthew Wyatt at the Lambeth Street police station and charged with the murder. After that, he was taken straight to Polstead to be questioned by the coroner. Corder’s behaviour seems to have varied between extremes, rather like his complexion, which was seen to change colour from minute to minute during the trial. In London he had been frightened. On the roof of the coach from London to Colchester he was in high spirits, cracking distasteful jokes. At the trial he was overwhelmed by the gravity of what he had done and seemed unconscious of what was going on.
    On arrival at Colchester, Corder and the policemen stayed at the George Inn for the night; Corder was secured by one hand to the bed-post all night.
    Crowds gathered to get a look at Corder when he arrived. He was already an infamous celebrity. Confronted by the coroner, he seems to have realised that it was all lost; he became very agitated. The coroner concluded that Maria Marten, aged 26, had been wilfully murdered by William Corder. Meanwhile, Corder’s unfortunate wife, who knew nothing at all about Maria Marten or the murder in the Red Barn, was still under the impression that Corder was arrested on a charge of bigamy; no-one had the heart to tell her the truth.
    His trial opened on 7 August, 1828 in the shire hall at Bury St Edmunds. Everyone in the neighbourhood wanted to be there. Hundreds of people gathered round both entrances to the shire hall, some arriving as early as five in the morning. The rain fell in torrents, but many stood in the rain for four hours waiting for the doors to open. At 9 o’clock so many people poured into the shire hall that the