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EP336: STRANGE LAST DAYS: Wednesday 10th of April 1940 at 10.15am, Alfred Scott, a surveyor for Bates & Co, an estate agents in Kilburn entered 21 Brondesbury Villas, to check that the premises was empty. Inside, he found that the first floor flat had been ransacked, two bags (a Gladstone and an attache case) had been searched for a specific item, and the tenant, 60-year-old Karoline Jones had been murdered. But what were they looking for?
SOURCES: a selection sourced from various archives:
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: Did the killer of Karoline Jones leave a clue to their identity by her body? Find out on Murder Mile. Today, I’m standing on Brondesbury Villas in Kilburn, NW6; three roads south of Jemma Mitchell and the grisly suitcase of death, four roads north-west of Michael Dowdall the sadistic little drummer boy, four streets west of the ill-fated first assassination of the so-called professional terrorist ‘Carlos the Jackal’, and two street east of the fat dog who ate all the diamonds - coming soon to Murder Mile. Just off the busy Kilburn High Road sits 21 Brondesbury Villas, a white flat-fronted semi-detached late Victorian townhouse on a quiet residential street dotted with an occasional tree, but no signs of life. Unlike the other houses, its door isn’t bedecked with pretentious doric columns, but all built identical, every floor is slightly off; as with a set of steps taking you up to the ground floor, the bottom floor isn’t below the earth but half-way up, giving its occupants a brief hint of light once a day, a stunning view of dog plops on the pavement, but mostly the right to call their grotty basement flat ‘lower ground’ rather than the dungeon, the hell hole, the damp bit, the closet, or where dad stashed his jazz mags. Back in 1940, this house was subdivided into four flats; a couple in the basement, a family above them, a lodger on the top floor, and in the first floor maisonette, a woman whose life (as a refugee, a widow, a mother, a loner, a recently released prisoner and a career criminal) was as mysterious as her death. Little is known about the motive for her murder, but with her last days alive well-recorded and a crime scene littered with evidence, the question we must ask is ‘did her killer leave a clue to his identity’? My name is Michael, I am your tour guide, and this is Murder Mile. Episode 336: Strange Last Days. The date was Wednesday 10th of April 1940, seven months after the start of World War Two and five months before the dreaded Blitz bombings which decimated the city causing two mass evacuations. As the Nazi hoards crept ever closer to our borders, with trepidation, life in the city moved on for now. The time was 10.15am, when Alfred Scott, a surveyor for Bates & Co, an estate agents in Kilburn, rang the bell to the communal door at 21 Brondesbury Villas, but no-one was in, as everyone was at work. On behalf of the landlord, three flats had been rented out; James & Saskia Gouldsborough lived in the basement, his father Henry, mother Jane and sister Jane Jnr on the ground, and with a maisonette on the first and second, the attic had been sublet to Dutch national John van Geersdaele, but he had moved out a month prior, and with 60-year-old German widow Karoline Jones believed to have left with £20 rent owing, about £1500 today, as was her habit, Alfred was here to check that she had gone. Unlocking the communal door, he rose up the stairs, and on the first floor, he unlocked the maisonette door. There were four keys; one which John van Geersdaele had returned to the estate agent when he left, the spare key which Alfred was using, and two still held by Karoline and her son, Frederick. Upon entry, nothing aroused his suspicion, as all except for the fan-light above the door, every window was fastened, but there was clear evidence that she hadn’t been there for a while, but she hadn’t left. The flat had four rooms; a lavatory which was empty, a kitchenette which had a slice of stale bread on the side and a stack of dirty dishes as the mains water had been off for a month, and two bedrooms. The front bedroom was empty; the bedsheets were messy but it hadn’t been slept in for months; in the wardrobe was a man’s Fedora hat, an ash walking stick and a broken tennis racket, later confirmed to belong to Frederick, Karoline’s son whose room this was, and on the dressing table, a wireless radio, a penknife and a set of keys which fitted the maisonette’s Yale lock, as previously owned by Frederick. At that point, Alfred, the surveyor for Bates & Co had just one thought on his mind, how to evict them, as with no hint of foul play, yes the flat was messy, but what did he expect from a tenant like Karoline? It was then, with a shiver down his spine, that he stopped just shy of her bedroom door. It was open. Having inspected the premises before, he knew it was never open, as being a cautious and paranoid woman given her past, a key had been inserted into the padlock from the outside, but before it was turned, the door had been forced, the wood had splintered and the padlock scattered. As an ex-copper and coroner’s officer, Alfred knew to touch nothing, so he let his eyes scan the room before he ventured further. With the room made dark as the windows were covered in blackout paper, he could see that the drawers of the dressing table were open and empty, but around it, women’s clothes were scattered; a blue and white jumper, a blue nightdress and three cotton handkerchiefs. When the room was searched, not a note or coin was found, but given how broke Karoline said she was, it was uncertain how much she had. As for her jewellery - two 18 carat gold wedding bands, one with a diamond and one with a ruby, a gold watch, a four-pearl brooch and a gold slave bangle – all were missing but as she was living off benefits and sleeping in hostels, it’s uncertain if she’d sold them. Further in, it was clear that a certain someone who had broken in was looking for something specific. Perched on an armchair, her brown attaché case containing her bills, letters and court summons had been searched, but not finding what they sought, they had grabbed her black Gladstone bag. With it locked, they frantically cut away the clasps using a small penknife and desperate to find that one thing, they scattered its contents across the floor, sweeping everything aside which wasn’t that one thing. Inside was toiletries, calling cards, her diary (mostly lists of lodging houses, estate agents and rooms to let), and scraps of paper on which she had scrawled the names and addresses of those she had met, but they had left behind items of significant value; her passport, a national war savings certificate, her ration books and three savings books for the Post Office, Abbey Road Building Society and Lloyds Bank. Whatever they were looking for, it’s unlikely they found it, as Karoline had paid the ultimate price. The first thing that hit Alfred was the smell, a sulphurous stench of a body in active decay. Flies buzzed as the skin slipped and maggots squirmed among the soft dark flesh, as with the body having bloated and then ruptured, it leaked a vile dribble of foul fluids out of each orifice, off the bed and on the floor. And although her putrefied corpse was too horrific to look at, her death was cruel and unnatural. She was lying on her back, diagonally across the bed, her legs hanging limply over the side. Except for her flowerpot hat which lay by the door, her black leather shoes which had fallen off in the attack, and her gas mask case and string shopping bag which was still attached to her wrist having just come in, she was dressed in the clothes she was wearing 21 days before, yet her only injury was a bloody nose. With no defensive wounds and no sign of a struggle, to restrain her, her assailant had ripped up her table cloth into strips, her wrists and ankles had been bound to the iron frame of the bed, her mouth had been gagged with a red woollen scarf, and with her unconscious having been punched in the face, her overcoat and her skirt had been raised up to the height of her hips leaving her underwear exposed. But why? Examined at Kilburn mortuary, the Home Office pathologist Sir Bernard Spilsbury confirmed that she had no other injuries, that her cause of death was suffocation caused by the pillow found by her head, that this was a wilful murder, and although it looked as if she had been raped or molested, she hadn’t. So, who had murdered Karoline Jones, and why? Karoline Getta Jones was born Karoline Ledermann on the 4th of March 1880 in Kleinwallstadt, a small town in Bavaria, Germany. Little is known of her early life; except she first married aged 20 in 1900 to an unnamed German Jew, in 1908 they had a son called Frederick, separating in 1909, she bigamously married again but was widowed by 1918, and then marrying Corporal John Howell Jones of the Royal Army Ordnance Corps in 1920, by 1930, the same year she became a British Citizen, she was widowed. Her life could have been worse, as being a German Jew, by 1933 when the Nazi’s had come to power, she was living freely in London far from the horrors of the holocaust, but her life wouldn’t be without hardship, hence she was infamously known to be gruff, foul-mouthed, unpleasant, and a habitual liar. Across her final decade, she amassed five criminal convictions which sum up her life’s sad decline. In 1935, at Clerkenwell, with her flat being raided by the Police, she was fined £20 for running a brothel in Bloomsbury, and was described as “quarrelsome and disgusting”. By 1937, having been evicted by her landlady for living in a squalid filthy lodging in Stoke Newington, she was convicted twice in Soho and Marylebone for stealing a brooch, a tin of fruit and a box of face powder, and clearly struggling. By 1938, living in King’s Cross, she fled her lodging leaving £6 in back rent, which she often did, and it led to the landlord sending in the bailiffs to track her down to issue a county court writ against her. Three months later, she was sentenced to six months in prison for assault, a familiar trait for Karoline. With no friends and very little family as she persistently rubbed others up the wrong way, she lived by her wits on the bread line of poverty, and with very little to call her own, wherever she went, she hid her most precious items in specially sewn pockets she had stitched into her knickers and stockings. With her son, Frederick married but a Jew who was stuck in Nazi Germany, soaking her crumpled and worn clothes with a river of tears, she told anyone who would listen that she had £2600 (£168,000 today) to smuggle him out of the country, yet as a refugee, he arrived thanks to a charity in September. On the 10th of October 1938, at Bates & Co, the estate agents on Kilburn High Road, she rented a two-roomed maisonette at 21 Brondesbury Villas for herself and her son. It was cheap, squalid, as always she repeatedly reneged on her rent leaving a litany of excuses, and she was not liked by the tenants. In the basement, James & Saskia Gouldsborough said she was rude, abusive, stole their milk, letters and deliberately banged the doors at night keeping the children awake. Henry & Jane on the ground floor told Police that Karoline regularly fought with her son, he was seen with a black eye, she punched her sister and broke her brother-in-law’s nose as the two stayed with her before these refugees fled to Palestine. And John van Geersdaele, her lodger left, as he suspected that her flat was now a brothel. On the 14th of October 1939 at Marlborough Street Police Court, Karoline was sentenced to six months hard labour for stealing a hat from Selfridges department store on Oxford Street. Serving her time at HMP Holloway before being transferred to HMP Aylesbury, she was disliked by prisoners and officers alike; she was described as filthy, surly and obnoxious, she was repeatedly beaten up by fellow inmates and continually bragged about how she had a beautiful home in Kilburn, and was wealthy with £2600. And that’s what made her murder impossible to solve, as she lied, and she wasn’t liked. So, who had murdered her; a friend, a relative, a potential rapist, a spectre from her past, or a complete stranger? The strange last days of Karoline Jones began on Friday 15th of March 1940, 15 days before her death. 11 days before, she had spent her 60th birthday in prison, and by the time she was released, there was no-one there to greet her as her son had left having enlisted in the Auxiliary Military Pioneer Corps. That day, Karoline caught a train from Aylesbury to Baker Street, and unwilling or unable to return to her flat at Brondesbury Villas, she met an adjutant of the Salvation Army and she asked to be housed in a homeless hostel. She went home, she packed her bags, but for whatever reason, she never arrived. She did the same over the next two weeks; she pleaded for a free bed at the Salvation Army hostel, but failed to show up, she instead she paid 22 shillings (£40) to kip for a week at the YMCA; she claimed to be destitute and seeking a hand-out from the British Legion appearing “distressed, hysterical” and some said mentally “unbalanced”, but was she afraid of the streets, her flat, or someone she knew? With her lodger and son having moved out, she couldn’t afford her flat, not that it stopped her before. From her ripped open Gladstone bag, scattered across the floor beside her body, Police found business cards and scraps of paper bearing the names and addresses of places she had applied for jobs to; The School of Cookery in Maida Vale, Kosie-Knitwear in Soho and the Women's Voluntary Services for Civil Defence, and pleading that she was a refugee (which she wasn’t), a widow (which she was, thrice over) and homeless (which technically she wasn’t), many employers pitied her, and gave her a hot meal. In her possession, she had both sets of keys to the flat having refused to give them back, and with a bucket of hutzpah, even though she owed £20 back rent, on the 21st of March, 9 days before her death, she went to Bates & Co, the estate agents on Kilburn High Road and insisted they reconnect her water. But she wasn’t exactly broke. Three days prior, at Abbey Road Building Society, she claimed that while in prison someone had withdrawn £10, 7s and 3d from her account (which couldn’t be proven), that same day she made some small withdrawals totalling about £13, and at the Unemployment Assistance Board in Park Royal, her benefits were denied as she had “too much money”; she had 1s at the Co-op, £2 at Lloyds, £19 at the Post Office, £400 in National Savings Certificates, and with shares from her three dead husbands, she was sitting on a fortune of £2833 (£202,000) - more than she had lied about. She never wore her wealth and she never spent it, but some kind of plan was clearly brewing. Of the many names and diary entries found at the crime scene, one was to rent a room at 54 Shirland Road in Paddington. After much back-and-forth, on 22nd of March, Karoline agreed to move in, she paid 15 shillings deposit, then said it would only be used for storage and instead she slept at the hostel. Of the houses she looked at on Cleveland Gardens, Connaught Street, Sussex Gardens, Star Street and Princes Terrace, all had previously been brothels, all required a £2000 deposit to rent, and she even went as far as find a disreputable man to go into business with her, but that opportunity collapsed. It’s uncertain if this 60-year-old widow - described as filthy, uncouth and foul - was working as a sex worker as her lodger claimed, but although she had remained single since she was widowed, she often received two constant visitors to 21 Brondesbury Villas; one aged 40 to 45, 5 foot 10, slim and wearing a taxi driver's cap, and another, 30-ish, 5 foot 6, stout with greasy hair. But none were ever identified. And, as was typical of Karoline Jones, she also randomly assaulted strangers with no rhyme nor reason. On Saturday 23rd of March 1940, one week before her death, outside of 19 Brondesbury Villas next door, she asked a furniture removals man for his card and requested a quote, but she never called him. And across the next five days, nothing is known about where she went or what she did, until this. On Friday the 29th of March, the day before her death, she applied to be a maid at house in Kensington. Unable to stand for long or move quickly owing to a recent knee operation, she didn’t get the job, but claiming to be destitute, she made a big impression on the housekeeper who noticed her jewellery; two 18 carat gold bands with a diamond and a ruby, a gold watch, a pearl brooch and a gold bangle. Hearing of Karoline’s plight, the housekeeper suggested that maybe she should sell her jewellery, but Karoline said she couldn’t as they were “of great sentimental value”. Descriptions of every piece was circulated to every pawnbroker and jeweller across London, but not a single item was ever found… …which brings us to Saturday 30th of March 1940, her last day alive. There were only two sightings of her; at 1:30pm when she left 21 Brondesbury Villas carrying her black Gladstone bag and wearing the clothes she would die in, and at 5pm, when the housekeeper from the day before spotted her looking in a window of an antique dealers in Kensington. Where she went after that, who she met, what she did, and who she returned back to her flat with remains unknown. Alerted by Alfred Scott, the surveyor for Bates & Co, on Wednesday 10th of April 1940, officers arrived at 10:35am, and Police Surgeon Dr John Tweddle determined she had been dead for 21 days. On the bed, her body lay with no defensive wounds or struggle, just a single punch to the face and she was suffocated using a pillow. She had been restrained by her ankles and wrists using ripped strips of tablecloth so her legs and arms were splayed, and gagged with her scarf, she was silent and immobile, as her killer had pulled her skirt up to her hips, her knickers exposed, but there was no sexual assault. Clearly, the killer had a deep hatred for her, but what was his motive; a rape, a robbery, or a murder? With no witnesses to anyone entering or exiting the premises during the time of her death, detectives theorised she had either invited back someone she knew, or if she was still a sex worker, a customer. But given the fact that she had little family and almost no friends being abrasive and foul, we know it wasn’t her sister or brother-in-law as they were in Palestine, or her son as he was serving in France. There were four sets of keys to the flat; Karoline’s which was found in the padlock, her son Frederick’s on his dressing table, two with the estate agent, one of which was used by Alfred Scott, and no others. Every current tenant and prior resident of the house was questioned and with a recurring theme that nobody liked her, none of them disliked her enough to kill her and they all had a solid alibi to prove it. With no scuff marks, cuts or abrasions, she had willingly ascended the stairs with her killer, although what her intention was is unknown, as (desperate to move out) the flat was empty, except for a few clothes (which weren’t hers), a radio, a penknife, and some slices of stale bread. But it was as she bent over to unlock her bedroom door that they struck, splintering the door before the lock was removed. Based on the marks, she was dragged to the bed, likely punched in the face as she screamed, but the blood found on the sheets and underneath the restraints show she had lain unconscious as her killer ransacked her room. First was the drawers, but what was in it we don’t know, as having been in prison for six months, many of her few belongings were at the hostel, or in the Gladstone bag she carried in. The brown attaché case was only lightly searched and given up just as quick. Next was the Gladstone bag, whose contents (business cards, letters, bank books, a diary, and scraps of paper with the details of those she’d met) scattered far and wide, so was the killer searching for a something which identified them? If so, why risk being seen on the tube, in the street, or entering the house with her, when all day she was carrying the Gladstone bag. Why do it unless their motive was something more sinister? Coming to, it’s likely that she was then bound and gagged before she struggled and screamed, giving her assailant time to search the flat. It’s likely but unprovable that they took every note or coin found, and with her jewellery being too precious to sell, it was stripped from her. And although police found two sets of fingerprints inside the flat, they both belonged to Karoline and her son, and no-one else. It was clear that a certain someone who had broken in was looking for something specific. But what did they want from her? Her wealth? Unlikely, as her jewellery had more of a personal value than a monetary one. A hostel warden recalled she had £10 in cash in her purse, about £300 today. And with only £20 in her bank account, her fortune of £2833 (or £202,000) was in National Savings Certificates and shares, which could only be accessed with a will, a next of kin and a solicitor. But had they heard she had £2600 and assumed it was in cash? If not that, what did they want from her? Sex? She was a prostitute and brothel keeper. Detectives thought not. It had the hallmarks of a rape as she was physically assaulted, knocked cold, tied by her hands and feet to the bed, and with her coat and skirt rucked up around her hips, someone wanted to see around her genitals, but with no semen, no penetration, and her underwear having not been removed, there was only one possible thing they were looking for – something she valued most. Karoline Jones had lived through hardship, poverty, homelessness, abandonment and grief. Across her 60-years of life, she had fled wars and persecution, and every time she moved from place to place, she always carried with her everything she held dear; her jewellery on her fingers, her business affairs in an attaché case and her daily essentials in a Gladstone bag, but the most precious thing in her whole life, she had hid in a series of specially sewn pockets she had stitched inside her knickers and stockings. She told many about the £2600 she had, but being a filthy, foul and poorly dressed woman who lived off handouts and slept in homeless hostels, as a inveterate liar, it’s unlikely anyone believed her. But this was the thing she cherish so much that at all times she kept it close to her skin, this was her secret. So, did she tell someone, did they find out, and if so, who were they? (End) It wasn’t a friend or family member, it wasn’t a punter or prozzie in the sex trade, it wasn’t someone she had stiffed on a business deal or an opportunist thief who thought this frail lady was an easy mark. In fact, it was someone who had hated her since the day they met, and most likely, it wasn’t a man. On the 14th of October 1939, having stolen a hat from Selfridges, Karoline was sentenced to six months which she served at female-only prisons, HMP Holloway and then HMP Aylesbury. Inside, Karoline was hated by prisoners and staff alike, she was rude, obnoxious, surly, and on several occasions in the yard, she was attacked by a specific prisoner who truly hated her, a 27-year-old woman (her name redacted) with a rap-sheet for drunkenness, larceny and procuring an abortion, as well as violence and assault. Karoline was the target of her venom for months, and then it stopped, and she became Karoline’s pal. She later denied this, but other prisoners said she was. She denied knowing where Karoline lived, but the other women said they too had been invited to stay. She denied being told about the £2600 that Karoline often blabbed about to anyone who would listen, and others said many didn’t believe it. But what of her secret, the one thing, so precious that it was stitched into secret pockets in her knickers? She told no-one about that ever. But upon her reception at HMP Aylesbury, as was standard, she was stripped of her own clothes, given prison overalls, and her personal affects were searched and listed. Every pocket was checked for weapons and contraband, especially any covert pouches in her pants. She had no reason to tell anyone, but one of the wardens will have known, and they all hated her. When interviewed, the unnamed prisoner denied being in Kilburn, hating her or meeting Karoline after her release, and when she was told of her murder, detectives said “she seemed genuinely surprised”. With no evidence against her, she wasn’t charged or questioned further. But is this what happened? The Strange Last Days of Karoline Jones remains unsolved, but of the scattered clues in her room, did her killer find the one detail which may have convicted them, and was this robbery worth her murder? 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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