Jonathan Goodman - The Killing of Julia Wallace

The Wallace case is unbeatable; it will always be unbeatable. RAYMOND CHANDLER

This murder, I should imagine, must be almost unexampled in the annals of crime.

LORD WRIGHT OF DURLEY

Either the murderer was Wallace or it wasnt. If it wasnt, then here at last is the perfect murder, JAMES AGATE

The Wallace case has provoked more conjecture, more argument, than any other murder case in living memory. There are people who believe that William Herbert Wallace was guilty of his wifes murder, and there are others who believe no such thing, who say that he was as much a victim of the crime as his wife. The nonbelievers are vastly outnumbered.

Many words have been spoken about the case; many words have been written about it. The odd thing, though, is that hardly any of the literary theorists have bothered to do the slightest bit of research before putting their hair-raising (and often hare-brained) theories to paper. Not one of them has obtained the official transcript of the trial; they have all of them, every single one, relied upon an abridged version that was published two years afterwards. This, it seems to me, is rather like setting oneself up as an expert on Shakespeare after reading Charles and Mary Lamb.

The literary theorists have made a great many mistakes, have drawn any number of false conclusions. To point out all their errors would take up far too much space. What I have done, therefore, is thiswithin the narrative I have drawn attention to a few of the errors in one of the books, Two Studies in Crime, by Yseult Bridges. I have chosen this particular work, not because it contains more errors than the rest, but, on the contrary, because it is by far the most accurate and valuable.

After more than three years of research I am convinced that Wallace did not murder his wife. Although the main purpose of this book is to try to persuade others of his innocence, I believe that I have given a fair picture of the evidence presented by the prosecution. In writing about the people involved in the case I have tried to resist the temptation to draw conclusions from the facts, and have attempted to let the facts speak for themselves. I realize that I have not always succeeded, but I make no apologies for this; I believe the few conclusions that I have drawn to be irrefutable.

Unless otherwise stated, all conversations in this book are either taken from records or based on the recollections of the principals questioned by myself.

I should like to make it clear that my criticisms of the Liverpool City Police Force at the time of the Wallace case do not apply to the present-day force, which is one of the most efficient and enlightened in the country. If it is true that the public gets the police it deserves, then the people of Liverpool must be far more deserving now than they were back in 1931.

J. G.