Murder Mile UK True-Crime Podcast - #255: The 'Other' Ronald True (Gertrude Yates & Ronald True)22/5/2024 
Nominated BEST BRITISH TRUE-CRIME PODCAST, 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation Channel's Top 20 True-Crime Podcasts, also seen on BBC Radio, Sky News, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week.
13A Finborough Road (basement) (C) GoogleMaps Oct 2023
Welcome to the Murder Mile UK True-Crime Podcast and audio guided walk of London's most infamous and often forgotten murder cases, all set within and beyond the West End.
EPISODE TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY-FIVE: The basement flat of 13A Finborugh Road in Fulham was the home of 25-year-old Gertrude Yates, a high-class call-girl who was smart, well-liked and polite. But on the morning of Monday 6th March 1922, Gertrude was found beaten, gagged and strangled by her latest client – an Army Major who was called Ronald True. But who had really murdered her? Was it Ronald True, or was it the ‘other’ Ronald True?
THE LOCATION:
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SOURCES: This case was researched using some of the sources below.
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE: Welcome to Murder Mile. Today I’m standing on Finborough Road in Fulham, SW10; three streets south-west of the beating of Gunther Podola, a tube stop south John George Haigh’s bubbling drum, two doors down from the woman in red, and one street east of the lynching of the last fighter - coming soon to Murder Mile. Opposite Brompton Cemetery sits 13 Finborough Road, one of ten five-storey Victorian terraces in a block, with fake doric columns around the door and its stucco painted white, as if the house was hand-chiselled from marble like a Greek god’s buttocks flexing majestically to lure the inhabitants of Lesbos. The last time I stood here, a man living in the flat where the woman in red’s body was smashed on the steps, glared at me, as I told his grinning neighbour about the murder in his flat. And although, a hint of one-upmanship permeated her lips, today – sorry missus – but your house is equally as bloody. The basement flat was the home of 25-year-old Gertrude Yates, a high-class call-girl who was smart, well-liked and polite. Her preferred clients were titled men or men of rank who could treat her to the finer things in life she felt she deserved. But on the morning of Monday 6th March 1922, Gertrude was found beaten, gagged and strangled by her latest client – an Army Major who was called Ronald True. But who had really murdered her? Was it Ronald True, or was it the ‘other’ Ronald True? My name is Michael, I am your tour guide, and this is Murder Mile. Episode 255: The ‘Other’ Ronald True. Gertrude’s life was as typical as many woman in that era. Born in August 1896, Gertrude Yates was the daughter of Lillian & Lionel Yates, a working-class family who struggled, as with their father being a commercial traveller, he’d schlep from door-to-door selling pots, pans and bog brushes to the masses for the sake of a few pennies so his ragged family could eat. In 1904, aged 8, her father died, so being the sole breadwinner, against her wishes, Gertrude was sent to The Royal Commercial Traveler’s School in Pinner for the next 8 years. Away from her mother and her brother, she was taught the ‘useful skills’ for a young lady, like sewing, cleaning and cooking. In 1912, aged 16, Gertrude came to London to find work. Being a girl who had nothing but dreamed of better life full of life’s finest, she knew her only chance of success was by hope, luck and hard work. Rising from invisible rank of floor sweeper to the slightly loftier heights of an apprentice draper and a seamstress, it was in the fashionable workshop of Bradley & Coy in Westbourne Grove that Gertrude learned her trade, but also developed an expensive taste for silk, laces and the latest fine fashions. As a lone girl with a basic education, she was doing well, but as the First World War had confiscated every material for the fight, her career was finished, and all she was left with was her looks. Gertrude wasn’t a prostitute, as such. If anything, as a call-girl, she was more of a ‘paid companion’ to a host of moneyed men with titles and ranks who would treat her to meal at Claridge’s, a show at the Palladium, a gift from Harrods, a hamper from Fortnum’s and being whizzed back to her bijoux pied-de-terre at 13A Finborough Road in a chauffeured car, she would satisfy the desires of her handsome young man in return for an agreed price, a weekly allowance, and another ‘date’ popped in the diary. Gertrude (who with four convictions for soliciting was known to the West End police as Olive Young) wasn’t a snob, but she didn’t hobnob with the riffraff, as having come from nothing, she knew that her only way of escaping the life that she had no intention of returning to was through the wealthy. All her clients were well-off… …and that included Ronald True. Sort of. As a born liar, the life of Ronald True was a fanciful as any story. Born on the 16th of June 1891 in Chorlton-on-Medlock in Manchester, Ronald also came from nothing being the illegitimate son of Annabelle Angus, the 16-year-old daughter of a Scottish innkeeper. Her life was a struggle having recently got divorced, until their lives were changed by a fairy tale romance. In 1902, when Ronald was 11, his mother married Arthur Reginald French, the 5th Baron de Freyne. As an aristocrat who lived in a grand terrace at 1 Green Street in Mayfair by The Ritz, their marriage made her Lady Annabel de Freyne, and with him being childless, Ronald was raised by the Baron as his own son. It may sound like the kind of lie that Ronald might spew, but I assure you, it was true. In Ronald’s eyes, his stepfather was his hero and rightfully so, having lived his earlier years as an officer in the North-West Mounted Police, a private in the 8th Infantry Regiment at Slocum in Texas and later as a Captain of the 3rd Battalion of the South Wales Borderers, but as a man of expensive tastes which often outstripped his means, he wasn’t averse to theft or fraud to shore up his dwindling coffers. So in awe was Ronald, that he’d claim his stepfather’s exploits were his own. In truth, Ronald wasn’t a well boy, with many even suggesting that his mental illness may have stemmed from before his birth. At school, his attendance was poor, his behaviour was bad, and lacking any love, when told his mother was dying, he callously replied "oh well, if she dies, all her property will be mine”. He rarely worked, he was promiscuous, and growing addicted to morphine in Shanghai, his mind was always unstable. In August 1915, with the First World War having soaked the fields of France with the blood of millions of men, being the epitome of an aviator - 6-foot 2, slim, swept back hair, a natty moustache and a cut-glass accent which purred “I say old bean, what-what?” – using his stepfather’s career, Ronald enlisted in the Royal Flying Corp. Being the son of a Baron, they didn’t check his history, as having taken it on “a gentleman’s word”, on 10th of October 1916 he was given a commission as a Flying Officer. Trained at Gosport in Hampshire, being the early days of aviation, it wasn’t uncommon for a trainer – an Airco DH6 or a Bristol Box kite - to crash owing to pilot error or malfunction. And although Ronald was assigned to 40 & 45 Squadron, he never had a dogfight, being listed as “a substandard pilot”. In February 1916, he said that during his first solo flight, he crashed in Farnborough. Pulled from the wreckage, he suffered a severe concussion and was unconscious for two days. The next month, having crashed at Gosport, escaping with just cuts and bruises, a medical board certified him as ‘unfit to fly’. Hospitalised for ten months, he’d later claim, “I relinquished my commission as a Major owing to my crash injuries”. Only little of what he said was even true; the limp to his right leg he’d had before the crash, the ‘brain contusion’ was said by doctors to have been caused by Gonorrhoea and Syphilis, the Flying Corp would declare “he was never a Major, just a 2nd Lieutenant”, and of his heroics having seen active service overseas, these were entirely a figment of his imagination, just like his accidents… …as his military record states, there was “no record of any crashes”. In 1917, bafflingly hired as a test pilot at Westland on a gentleman’s word, but having actually crashed and shattered his teeth, after two months he was sacked owing to his mood and poor performance. No-one would hire Ronald, as the diseases he’d contracted and had spread in many Shanghai brothels had left him physically lame and mentally unwell suffering bouts of depression, mania, psychosis and dementia, all of which he was prescribed with a single dose-a-day of morphine, only he was taking 30. Having abandoned his wife and child, with a lethal mix of STDs and morphine increasing his paranoia, at an addiction centre in Southsea, Ronald was diagnosed with a dissociative identity disorder. This is also where he met the ‘other’ Ronald True. The ‘other’ Ronald True was his doppelgänger, a slim, tall man with a hawkish nose and beady little eyes, who stalked his thoughts and whispered into his ears. Seeing this sinister clone (who no one could see but him) as his mortal enemy, the ‘other’ Ronald True was a drug addict, a sex fiend, and a habitual conman who survived on theft and forged cheques. And although Ronald would often be blamed for his look-alike’s crimes, he was insistent “I am innocent”. In December 1921, while at Fleming’s Hotel on Half Moon Street in Piccadilly, again, the ‘other’ Ronald True racked up debts and fled without paying, as his ‘armed and dangerous’ duplicate shadowed him across Soho and Mayfair. So terrified was Ronald of his stalker, that for protection, he bought a gun. But how could he defend himself from a monster who only seemed to exist in his head? The relationship between Ronald and Gertrude was as fleeting as any other meet-up between a call girl and a punter. Six weeks earlier in an exclusive West End lounge, ‘Olive Young’ as she was known met Major Ronald True, a dashing war-hero, a test pilot and a Baron’s son who (he said) was invalided out of the prestigious Royal Flying Corps owing to his heroism having fought in dogfights with The Hun. On Saturday the 18th February 1922, having agreed to go on ‘a date’ with the Major, as was standard, he treated her to a meal, a show, and chauffeur driven back to 13A Finborough Road, he stayed over. The two chatted, they had sex, and then they slept. By the morning, the Major had fled, he had left without paying. But it was as she opened her handbag which she’d left by the bed, that she also spotted that £5 was missing. Gertude couldn’t prove it, but having she told her friend, Doris Dent “I want nothing to do with him”. the relationship was now over… … or at least, it should have been. (Cliffhanger) For many people in the 1920s, the loss of £5 (£400 today) would have had consequences on their daily life, but for Gertrude, being a professional woman who could make that money back in an evening, it was little more than a mild inconvenience, and having not told the police, she carried on with her life. To her, Major Ronald True was as forgotten as a piece of chewing gum stuck to the sole of her shoe, but with him being a disturbed man with odd obsessions, he loved her as much as he loved her money. Over the next two weeks, Gertrude received a series of unnerving phone calls from a ‘Mr Armstrong’, who pestered her for dates, only to then cancel. Telling her friend Doris Dent “I felt convinced it was Major True” as having broken his jaw in a crash “I recognised his voice”, she also stated she was afraid to meet him in her flat “as he had admired her rings and jewellery, and I was sure he’d steal them”. Of course, Major True would deny all of this, blaming it all on his alter ego - the ‘other’ Ronald True. It was also said to be that Ronald True who booked him into The Grand Hotel and charged champagne and caviar to a room he couldn’t afford as his mother had cut him off from the family inheritance. Seeing himself as too regal to ride around on a bus with the plebs, on Thursday 2nd of March 1922 - again on credit, and again “on a gentleman’s word” because it was believed “a gentleman would never lie” – he hired a Rolls Royce, with the chauffeur Luigi Mazzola to be at his beck-and-call, day or night. That night, claiming “I have a lot of business to attend to, drive me as fast as you can”, he was whizzed across the West End, picking up a Mr Armstrong (a man who had known Ronald for a month), only to then be sped to a junction off Finborough Road, at which True returned saying “there is nobody there”. The next day was the same, having raced from Piccadilly to Croydon to Maidenhead, and having been let out again at the corner of Finborough Road, once again with “no-one in”, he requested a quick stop at a nearby coffee shop, only to return to the same flat on the same street, and then return dejected. By the morning of Saturday 4th of March, looking red-eyed and stiff jawed, again he was driven from place to place with no real reason, as if he was seeking someone who wasn’t there, hunting a human who didn’t wish to be found, or biding his time until the object of his obsession was home. Again, at around midnight, off a familiar junction in Fulham, he told his driver “I have business to do but cannot find them in”. And yet, he’d confide to a couple, “I have money to get, even if it must be by murder”. Gertrude wasn’t in and for good reason, as knowing that he was seeking her, wisely she’d made herself scarce, even cancelling ‘dates’ with her usual clients in her regular haunts, as word had got around that he was in the area. And the last thing she wanted to see was his looming frame and glaring eyes. Sunday 5th of March 1922 began as an ordinary day for Gertrude Yates. At 9am, Emily Steel (her maid for the last two years) descended the stone steps and let herself into the basement flat at 13 Finborough Road with her own key. Entering the long hallway, as usual, she heard no sounds of sleeping or stirring, as by the door lay her mistress’s shoes. To the right were two doors. First was the sitting room, all empty and clean except for two glasses and the ash of stranger’s cigarette, although given Gertrude’s profession, every guest was a stranger. Second was the bedroom. With the curtains closed, through the frosted glass pane on the door, the room inside was black, silent and still. So not wanting to wake her, Emily crept by, unworried and calm. As she always did, in the back scullery, she popped on a fresh pot of tea, she slathered the toast with lashing of salted butter, she let the sausages sizzle to a golden brown, and portioning it onto two plates (one for herself as her mistress allowed), on a tray she took Gertrude’s breakfast to the bedroom. (Knock) “Madam?” (no reply). “Madam, breakfast?” (no reply). (Opens the door) “Madam?”, and then she heard it, “ah morning Emily” as alone snuggled in her bed lay Gertrude. “Breakfast Madam?”, “fantastic” as the curtains were opened, and the radio popped on. The morning was as predictable as any other, during which she read a book, darned some socks, made some calls and prettied herself ready for the evening’s work, as Emily cleaned the flat. She could see Gertrude was tense, as with Major True having called to say that he planned to meet her here at 10pm, she had every intention to be elsewhere, far from his cold glaring eyes and his sticky little fingers. At 3:30pm, Emily left. At 5pm, Gertrude called Doris Dent, and stating “I don’t want to see him”, they made plans to meet in Piccadilly, where they chatted, ate, drank and she occupied her troubled mind. But she couldn’t stay there forever, so having parted at 10:30pm, she would arrive back by 11pm. After five stops on the Piccadilly Line to Earls Court and an 18-minute walk, on the corner of Redcliffe Place and Finborough Road, her heart sank and her throat gulped, as she spotted a Rolls Royce waiting. “Major True?”, “Yes, t’is I” said the looming presence on her stone steps. Said to be “a woman of sober habits, not quarrelsome but good tempered”, she wouldn’t have made a scene, she’d have been polite, she’d have apologised for being late, and having agreed to let him in, he told his driver, “I’m going to stay the night”, and with the chauffeur-driven car speeding away into the night, Gertrude was left alone in the empty flat with either Ronald True or the ‘other’ Ronald True. She locked the door using her key. She removed her shoes and placed them in the hall. In the sitting room, they had a drink. And wanting to make this as normal as possible, she took him to her bedroom. (we hear sex noises and then snoring). (A door opens). A little later than usual, Emily arrived. “I got there at 9:15am. I let myself in. I noticed a gentleman’s coat and a blue & red scarf in the sitting room”, which wasn’t unusual, so knowing that a guest was in the bedroom, “I went to cook breakfast”, with no intention of disturbing her mistress. It was then that the bedroom door opened, and as often happened, she saw a man. Emily said “oh, hello again”. Being smartly dressed, the Major greeted her, they chatted, she made him a tea, and having said “we were late last night, don’t wake her, she is in a deep sleep”, he gave her the 2s & 5d he owed her for a taxi, she helped him on with his coat, and at 9:35am, he left with a “toodle-pip”. With Madam’s breakfast on the warming plate, Emily spent half an hour sprucing up the sitting room, but knowing that her mistress had plans for the morning, she decided to wake her from her slumber. (Knock) “Madam?” (no reply). “Madam, breakfast?” (no reply). But noticing a crack in the frosted glass panel…. (door creaks)… “Madam? Breakfast?” (scream). The investigation was headed up by Detective Chief Inspector William Brown. The hallway, the sitting room, the scullery and the WC were all neat and clean, even before Emily had done her daily chores, with no signs of forced entry, ransacking, wanton destruction or obvious theft. The cracked glass pane was the first clue that something was wrong. Inside the bedroom, cupboards were opened, drawers rummaged and its contents strewn, as someone was looking for something. Missing was a silver cigarette case, a ladies’ watch, a pearl & diamond brooch and two diamond rings, as well as a red jewel case, and £8 from her purse. In total, £200 worth was missing, £9400 today. The evidence told an odd little story. At roughly 8:30am, Gertude’s guest had left to purchase a copy of the Daily Mirror, returned, made a pot of tea, popped it on a tray with a selection of biscuits and two cups, and entered the bedroom. Lying silently, the mistress was resting when he came in… unaware that he had hidden inside his overcoat a half-kilo rolling pin from the scullery. Attacked before she could sense any danger, five times he bludgeoned her over her head, rendering her barely conscious but far from dead. With her skull badly bleeding but not fractured, seeing her limbs move, he wrapped her own girdle around her neck, and with the elastic straps tied tight in a half-loop knot, he strangled her until she went limp. In the bed, the form of a body remained, all silent and still, but as the detectives pulled back the blood-stained sheets, the woman was missing. In her place, her killer had laid two pillows, only a red sticky trail from the bed to the bathroom told a darker tale. Dragged eleven feet, with the naked woman still clinging to life, the last thing she would have seen was as he forced a towel so far down her throat that it folded her tongue back on itself, obstructing her fractured trachea, and starving her of breath. And then, with death done, he casually tossed a pyjama jacket over her face, and having died minutes before Emily arrived, over the next half an hour, he sat quietly supping his tea and eating the biscuits. By 10am, the culprit had fled… …only it wasn’t hard to identify him; as his fingerprints were on the cup, and although Emily thought he was a Major, in the sitting room, he had also left a visiting card in the name of Ronald True. Like a callous coward, having brutally murdered a sleeping woman, he sold off her jewellery at a pawn brokers, took himself on a shopping trip in the West End and treated himself to all manner of finery; a haircut on Wardour Street, a suit and a bowler hat from Horne Brothers, a spot of lunch, a few drinks, and - having packaged-up his bloodstained trousers and left his stained shirt and tie in the barbers – he took himself and his pal (Mr Armstrong) to the Hammersmith Palace Of Varieties in the Rolls Royce. With a trail of receipts leading to directly to his seat, at 9:45pm that day, he was arrested. (End) An ID Parade, eyewitnesses and the evidence convicted Ronald True on the 5th of May 1922, during a trial at the Old Bailey. With his solicitors pleading ‘diminished responsibility’ owing to his various mental illnesses and a spiralling morphine addiction, with Ronald’s defence being that it wasn’t him who had murdered Gertrude Yates but his doppelgänger the ‘other’ Ronald True, insanity was proven. Being sentenced to death, an appeal was passed and it was recommended that he be imprisoned for life in a high-security psychiatric hospital. Sent to Broadmoor, he was weaned off drugs, he lived an ordinary life as an inmate, and on the 8th of January 1951, at the age of 59, he died of a heart attack. Unlike at many trials, his claim that a clone was stalking him and committing crimes on his behalf was not an alibi or an excuse to escape the death penalty, as he truly believed that the ‘other’ Ronald True was guilty. Even in his confession, he would state “I think it fair to state that a man, whose description is aged 31, 6 foot 2, dark suit, grey overcoat and bowler hat”, identical to himself, “was seen by myself with Miss Yates, I left, they were in the midst of a violent argument and blows. This statement is true”. And it was true. In his mind it was true that he was an innocent man wrongly convicted of a crime he didn’t commit, but with the culprit looking exactly like him, sounding precisely like him and their fingerprints indistinguishable, how could he prove different when everyone was certain it was him? In his mind, the ‘other’ Ronald True got away with murder… …only he would also claim that there wasn’t just one ‘other’ Ronald True, there were two. The Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast has been researched using the original declassified police investigation files, court records, press reports and as many authentic sources as possible, which are freely available in the public domain, including eye-witness testimony, confessions, autopsy reports, first-hand accounts and independent investigation, where possible. But these documents are only as accurate as those recounting them and recording them, and are always incomplete or full of opinion rather than fact, therefore mistakes and misrepresentations can be made. As stated at the beginning of each episode (and as is clear by the way it is presented) Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast is a 'dramatisation' of the events and not a documentary, therefore a certain amount of dramatic licence, selective characterisation and story-telling (within logical reason and based on extensive research) has been taken to create a fuller picture. It is not a full and complete representation of the case, the people or the investigation, and therefore should not be taken as such. It is also often (for the sake of clarity, speed and the drama) presented from a single person's perspective, usually (but not exclusively) the victim's, and therefore it will contain a certain level of bias and opinion to get across this single perspective, which may not be the overall opinion of those involved or associated. Murder Mile is just one possible retelling of each case. Murder Mile does not set out to cause any harm or distress to those involved, and those who listen to the podcast or read the transcripts provided should be aware that by accessing anything created by Murder Mile (or any source related to any each) that they may discover some details about a person, an incident or the police investigation itself, that they were unaware of.
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AuthorMichael J Buchanan-Dunne is a crime writer, podcaster of Murder Mile UK True Crime and creator of true-crime TV series. 
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