In 1920, a taxi driver was found by the side of a road near Andover in Hampshire with a bullet wound to the back of his head. His taxi was found 150 miles away in Wales.

Factual accounts of enduring true crime events of the twentieth century. Paul Stickler delivers a range of presentations relying on original archival material to provide an analysis of some of the most gruesome and complex murders.

Read more at [ Ссылка ]

Around 9pm on Saturday 24 April 1920, Salisbury taxi driver Sidney Spicer collected a fare of five people from the centre of the city and was asked to take them to nearby Bulford.

Fearing he was running low on fuel in his Darracq motor car, he stopped at Amesbury to check his tank level. While attending to his car, a man dressed in a RAF Sgt Major uniform, emerged from a hedgerow and asked to be given a lift to Andover. Spicer told the man that he would return for him once he had delivered his passengers to Bulford. Spicer dropped his fare outside the Rose and Crown at Bulford, secured some fuel from a nearby garage and headed off back to Amesbury to collect his new fare.

The next morning Spicer’s body was found in a hedgerow on a road midway between Amesbury and Andover.

He had been shot through the back of his head and it was apparent his valuables had been stolen. There was no sign of his car. A police investigation quickly identified a soldier by the name of Harry Fallows who told them that a fellow soldier called Percy Toplis had taken him for a drive in a Darracq car. They had driven through the night to Swansea where Toplis tried to sell the car.

He was now a wanted man and a nationwide hunt began. There were numerous sightings but he was eventually cornered by a beat bobby in the village of Plumpton, Cumberland. Toplis produced a gun and threatened to shoot. He escaped but an armed police team was despatched to track down the fugitive. On 6 June 1920, Toplis and armed police came face to face. Shots were fired and Toplis fell dead in the middle of the road. An inquest confirmed that Toplis had been shot dead by police in the execution of their duty, but he never stood trial for the original shooting of Sidney Spicer six weeks earlier.

Read more at [ Ссылка ]

свернуть