Olive Balchin (c. 1906 – 20 October 1946) was a British murder victim whose body was found near a bomb site in Manchester, England. The murder weapon, a bloodstained hammer, was found nearby. After a lengthy investigation, police were given a description of a man who purchased a hammer from a local shopkeeper, which was similar to the description that eyewitnesses provided of a man last seen in the company of Balchin on the night of her murder. [1] Based on this information, police questioned Walter Graham Rowland, a man who had been convicted in 1934 of murdering his two-year-old child. [1] [2] His death sentence for that crime had been commuted after serving eight years, due to the onset of World War II and the need for able-bodied men. [1]
A forensic examination of Rowland's clothes showed a bloodstain as well as dust particles and plant debris traced to the bomb site. [3] Police arrested Rowland for Balchin's murder. Upon being arrested he allegedly remarked "You don't want me for killing that woman, do you?", although he denied this. [4] He was convicted and held at Strangeways Prison. [5]
While Rowland was in prison awaiting execution, a prisoner at Walton Jail in Liverpool, David J. Ware, made unprompted three confessions to the crime – first in writing to the governor of the prison, then to police, and finally to Rowland's lawyer. [3] The confession was quickly followed by a retraction wherein Ware admitted to confessing because he wanted to appear "swank," and said that he had obtained details of the murder from newspapers he read in prison. [3] [6] There were also questions as to Ware's mental state, as he had been discharged from the British Army in 1943 after a diagnosis of manic depressive psychosis. [3] Additionally, unlike Rowland, there was no forensic evidence found that tied Ware to the murder scene. [3]
Despite the retraction, Rowland's lawyer argued for his conviction to be overturned on appeal because of Ware's confession. Several witnesses also claimed to have seen a man resembling Rowland drinking at a pub in Stockport on the night of the murder. [4] The motion failed and Rowland was hanged on 27 February 1947. [7] A Home Office inquiry determined that Ware had made a false confession, and therefore found no impropriety with regards to the conviction. [1]
In 1951, Ware attacked a woman with a hammer, and was found guilty of attempted murder. [8] He was deemed not criminally responsible due to insanity and was committed to Broadmoor Hospital. [9] [10] This attack, coupled with his prior confession to the Balchin murder, led some in Britain to believe that Rowland had been falsely convicted and was the victim of a miscarriage of justice. [1] [6] The matter is still occasionally raised in debates about the death penalty and wrongful convictions in Britain. [6] [8]
References
- ^ a b c d e Hostettler, John (12 January 2009). A History of Criminal Justice in England and Wales. Waterside Press. ISBN 9781906534790.
- ^ Fraser, Frank; Morton, James (31 December 2012). Mad Frank's Britain. Random House. ISBN 9780753546260.
- ^ a b c d e Sly, Nicola; Kiste, John Van der (29 February 2012). Lancashire Murders. The History Press. ISBN 9780752484211.
- ^ a b Moffitt, Dominic (17 October 2021). "Walter Rowland: The strange case of the Stockport pubgoer sentenced to death twice after a murder at Deansgate". Manchester Evening News.
- ^ Encyclopedia of murder pp. 471–2, By Patricia Pitman
- ^ a b c Seal, Lizzie (5 March 2014). Capital Punishment in Twentieth-Century Britain: Audience, Justice, Memory. Routledge. ISBN 9781136250729.
- ^ The Deseret News – 27 Feb 1947
- ^ a b Ambler, Eric (11 December 2012). The Ability to Kill. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. ISBN 9780307950116.
- ^ Koestler, Arthur. Reflections on Hanging. New York: Macmillan, 1957. pp. 115–128.
- ^ Hanged—and innocent? By Reginald Thomas Paget (Baron Paget), Samuel Sydney Silverman