Fred Dinenage: Murder Casebook - Season 1, Episode 3 - Brides in the Bath | Forensic Files

George Joseph Smith was a charmer and of course a conman and a killer women were
his murderous habit and he would kill time after time after time drowning in a bath is a very unpleasant way to die the
crimes of George Joseph Smith shocked Britain in the early 20th century he was a bigamist
but his obsession wasn't with love it was money and murder I'm Fred Danish as the official biographer for the Kray
twins I've learnt that when it comes to crime there's always more to the story than meets the eye
so I'm reeling historic murders like the three committed by George Joseph Smith and to see what impact they had at the
time and they still have now so how did he become known as the bride's in the bath murderer
[Music] [Music] in 1915 a trial took place at the Old Bailey in London the man in the dock was
George Joseph Smith a serial bigamist but the charge against Smith wasn't infidelity the charge in fact was murder
three of his wives had died while taking a bath leaving him a wealthy widower at
the time Edwardian England was a country in which roles between men and women were slowly changing the suffragette
movement was growing for most women though marriage was still an important part of life and enabled them to gain
respect in society on august 26 1910 in a small registry office in Weymouth 33 year old Bessie Mundy was about to marry
the man of her dreams George Joseph Smith had whisked her off her feet and after a short romance he proposed he
suggested they Wed immediately she had no idea he was already married but to four other women
how did he manage to persuade a woman to marry him after just a few days while someone who studied Smith's powers of
persuasion is the author Jane Robbins well he was on a mission he wanted to get the job done as quickly as possible
and he was very good at courting in the old-fashioned sense behind george smith's enigmatic facade layer cruel and
unscrupulous character he'd grown up committing a series of petty crimes but it was at the age of 26 that he decided
to target women and exploit them for his own means he was a very charming man he
presented himself fairly well he looked smart when he wanted to he would wear a very fancy frock coat and a silk hat and
gold chains and so in many ways he was very plausible he persuaded each woman that she was the love of his life and in
each case they fell for it and very often he was married within a few weeks and these women were conned out of all
their their money very very quickly so what were the motives that drove Smith to be a bigamist and a killer I'm hoping
that preeminent criminologist professor David Wilson will help me further in my investigation this is a man who doesn't
love women he simply uses them for his own ends so even before the murders this is somebody
who flits in and out of his partner's life this isn't somebody who's kind this isn't someone who can show love in the
real meaning of the word this is simply who simply uses the marriage certificates from the time indicate just
how George Smith married his victims using a variety of names it was as Henry Williams he captured the heart of Bessie
Mundy Bessie was a very sweet young lady not terribly bright but people liked her a
great deal she was also slightly gullible her brother Howard used to say that she was
very easily led tell me about the sort of women that would have attracted Smith that would be ideal for his particular
purpose well by and large we can use that old-fashioned phrase that these were women on the shelf we're talking
about women who were in their 30s their late 30s woman who felt that they were never going to get a husband for one
reason or another and therefore were flattered that somebody who claimed to be an artist and antique dealer was
going to take an interest in them Smith's had conned his previous victims out of their life savings that usually
amounted to a couple of hundred pounds however with Bessie Mundy the bigamist thought he'd hit the jackpot Bessie had
a trust under her father's will and the capital amount was two thousand five hundred pounds and George clearly wanted
to get his hands on that money so he persuaded Bessie to write to her uncle Herbert and ask for it uncle Herbert
smelt a rat and he didn't want to let it go unable to get the thousands Smith sweet-talk Bessie into giving him 140
pounds then as with his previous wives he wrote her a heartless letter and vanished he takes her immediate savings
and her clothings but then disappears claiming later that he had contracted a sexually transmitted disease
Bessie knowing all of this to be untrue was absolutely distraught she took to her bed a doctor had to lift her
up the stairs to take her to bed she wouldn't get out of bed if s he was forced to rebuild her whole life on her
own bigamy is defined as the state of having two illegal spouses simultaneously Smith had eight so how
did he get away without being caught I want to find out more about marriage laws in the early 20th century and I'm
hoping that lowest biddings can help me she's a senior lecturer in law at Bristol University would you have had to
prove his identity before he could get married at that time well identity wasn't as easily provable
in those days and actually people change their names and their identity far more
than them now and so it would largely be a case of turning up and sort of giving notice for
a civil wedding and that notice sort of appearing so that anyone could contest it if you moved around the country as he
did would that make it even easier to get married as it were several times and even less chance of being detected
absolutely moving around would obviously make it much easier not to be detected and changing your name would help as
well but I don't think that would even be necessary at that stage be very unlikely to be detected this is a period
in which if a woman married a man her legal personality is subsumed by the legal personality of her husband women
didn't really have the ability to economically buy their way into society and therefore that's what Smith
capitalizes upon he capitalizes upon the need for women to make a relationship with a man because that would allow them
to survive as an economic unit of course Smith exploit that to his own advantage
something happened in Smith's career around 1908 to 1910 until that point had been marrying young girls persuading
them to give him all their money and then just leaving them without any explanation and
taking everything they owned disappearing but at about that time he decided that actually this business and
I think he thought he was running a business could be a whole lot more profitable if his wives were to die and
to leave him everything Smith never usually returned to the women he defrauded but Bessie Mundy had something
that he loved and wanted to get his hands on money Smith was reunited with Bessie Mundy two
years after walking out on her and this time he'd do whatever it took to steal his wife's fortune it seems quite
astonishing they that she took him back he was a great charmer and he made very effusive lavish promises to her about
starting over and being a good husband and I think she just wanted to believe him so much that she she went along with
it now on the same day as he was making all these promises to her he took her into a solicitor's office to have the
solicitor write to her relations telling them that he was a good sort of a chap and also persuading Bessie to
hand over a hundred and fifty pounds more of her money to him so alarm bells should have been ringing so loudly
Smith persuaded Monday to travel 200 miles to the seaside town of heard Bay in Kent they were to begin their new
life together it was a thriving holiday resort and one where they were completely unknown when they arrived at
their destination Bessie apparently fell ill George took Bessie to the doctor doctor a frank
French in hanbei because as George put it she'd had a fit the doctor listened to George rather
than Bessie Bessie just sat there silently but George explained that Bessie was unwell
and the doctor prescribed some medicine for her after the doctor's visit Smith suggested
she write a letter to her family in it she wrote I do not like to worry you with this but my husband has strictly
advised me too that all my relatives know and tell them of my breakdown I've made up my will and have left all I have
to my husband that is only natural as I love my husband and to the outside world
it appeared that Smith loved her but apparently his demonstrations of caring devotion covered up more sinister
motives on the evening of Saturday the 13th of July 1912 George Smith filled a small tin bath so his wife could enjoy a
rare luxury nobody knows just what happened after she stepped into the water but an hour
later Smith called for help the doctor who treated Bessie days earlier arrived to find his patient with her head under
the water and her legs hanging over the end of the bath Bessie Mundy was dead apparently drowned and there were no
marks on her to suggest anything sinister dr. French helped remove Betsy's body from the bath
it was dr. French who decided there should be no post-mortem and that Bessie had died accidentally in the bath he
thought following a fit of some sort the obstacle between George Smith and Bessey's two-and-a-half thousand pounds
had been removed Smith's had transformed from bigamist lothario into a wife killer but no one
suspected a thing I'm Fred dye niche and I'm investigating the brides in the bath
murders committed by the bigamist fraudster George Joseph Smith I want to discover how this killer managed to
drown three of his wives in Edwardian England without raising any suspicion the year was 1912 and Bessie Mundy had
been Smith's fifth wife she was found dead in a bath at their new lodgings in Hearne
in Kent her death certificate stated she drowned after suffering a fit no one realized her death meant Smith would
inherit a large sum from her recently created will equating to one hundred and forty thousand pounds in today's money
I think Smith is motivated entirely by greed I think he's somebody who cons because he wants to gain access to money
in the course of gaining access to money which he has done throughout his entire
life he's behaved fraudulently in criminal logically and I think he learns to play the part of somebody who knows
he needs to kill because through those deaths he gains access to money with no suspicion falling upon the widower Smith
swiftly claimed his 2500 pounds and left her BAE he came here to Bristol where he
kept a third wife Edith Pegler she was very different to the others Edith was a domestic servant she wasn't
very pretty she she looked quite sturdy and Stern when George met her he very quickly persuaded her to marry him and
what was different about Edith was that he never conned her out of all her goods
he went back to her again and again often taking to her garments that he stolen from his know dead wives are an
explaining that he's been abroad he's been in Canada he's been in the United States but surely Edith's pegler would
have been suspicious of him well but remember it's a time when most people would have read regional or local
newspapers rather national newspapers so of course Edith wouldn't have been suspicious if she had a plausible
husband who was explaining his absences by saying he was abroad dealing in art or dealing in antiques my research has
revealed that bigamy is still a crime that's active in the UK today in the past 10 years there have been over 600
50 reported cases in England and Wales the laws regarding bigamy are covered by the act of Parliament that was passed in
1861 the penalty remains a maximum sentence of seven years imprisonment in 1914 Smith continued to show complete
disregard for the law he aspired to leave behind the impoverished upbringing he'd suffered the money he made from
murdering Bessie Mundy gave him the opportunity to be accepted as a respected businessman I don't think he
aspired to be really top of the heap what he wanted to do was to cut a - and to be a figure in the society in which
he was living so after the death of Bessie for instance he spent 1,300 pounds on an annuity he also had some
business ventures and he was a really poor businessman he bought a number of houses in Bristol and within months sold
the lot at a great loss so he was always in a way living from hand to mouth with
Bessey's fortunate his disposal Smith really shouldn't have had to return to a life of crime but he wasn't the astute
businessman he liked to think he was the resources soon ran out it was time for the bigamous entrepreneur to leave
Bristol again in search of another wife Alice Burnham was a church-going lady from Buckinghamshire although one of the
younger of Smith's victims she'd lost hope of marriage she had what was considered a shameful disease Alice was
25 and she was fairly pretty a little bit plump but really quite attractive and she did seem to have prospects but
we do think that Alice had gonorrhea which was really common at that time that could well have affected her
confidence about finding a husband and made her a lot more susceptible to the charms of George Smith
Smith realized there were few women with large inheritances such as his previous
wife Bessie so he set about ensuring his new Brides would yield a sort of payout
that would make marriage worth his while but if she didn't have a lot of money what would have been the reason for him
to marry her Alice had worked very hard for a number of years and she had saved money and she'd sent 40 pounds home to
be looked after by her father in total her father was looking after a hundred pounds for her which was worth a lot
then and that money would have been worth a great deal to to George Smith but more particularly he persuaded Alice
to take out a life insurance policy that would pay up five hundred pounds if she
were to die George married Alice in November 1913 and took her on honeymoon to Blackpool the guesthouse wasn't
particularly plush however it did have a bath settled into their bed-and-breakfast new bride Alice
Burnham sat down and penned a letter to her family in it she said I have the best husband in the world it was the
last they were ever to hear from their daughter on the evening of the 12th of December 1913 George Smith began running
a bath for his new wife and remember baths at this time aren't common not every house will have a bath
indoors so this is almost like a treat this is almost like something special that he's organised for his newly
betrothed wife Alice thought she was about to begin a new stage of her life one that she was going to share with her
caring husband George instead she would meet the same end a Smith's previous ill-fated wife while
she was having her bath the landlady's family the cross-list were downstairs in the kitchen which was directly below the
bathroom they saw that there was a bit of water running down the side of the wall and thought that she'd run the bath
too full they debated amongst themselves whether to go up but they decided that they didn't want to upset their lodgers
so nobody intervened so had they gone upstairs they could perhaps could they have prevented a murder if they've gone
upstairs it's possible that Alice would have lived after just one month of marriage Alice Burnham had been murdered
no post mortem was carried out the police weren't requested as the doctor believed there were no suspicious
circumstances the death certificate stated that she died through drowning but not everybody thought Smith was
trustworthy [Music] alice's family were very suspicious of george they really thought something was
wrong they rushed to Blackpool when George wrote them saying Alice was very ill in fact she was dead by then and
confronted George but they didn't think that her death was suspicious I think that was just beyond imagination for
them they knew he was a nasty piece of work but they didn't realize that he was a murderer an early post-mortem might
have led to Smith's arrest as it was he was free to lead his life I've come to this lab to meet dr. Stuart Hamilton as
a home office pathologist he knows what might have happened if there'd been a post-mortem autopsies are only really
performed if a cause of death can't be determined or if the cause of death is likely to be unnatural but he did this
in different places and the coroner's system then was not well joined up so one coroner may not know what
occurred at another coroner's jurisdiction previously and therefore we may simply have been looking at a series
of individual deaths it's only when you look at the sequence of the deaths that it becomes suspicious so if he'd stopped
at one we may never have known that he was a murderer drowning in a bath is an unusual occurrence Stuart's arranged an
experiment to demonstrate what would have happened to Smith's brides when they were drowned what we've got here is
some lungs trachea and the heart from a sheep fairly similar to a human beings pretty much the same in all mammals
really and these lungs will expand as you breathe in no contract as you breathe out and keeping the oxygen
traveling around your body keeping keeping you alive but if water gets in there show us what happens then as we
put the water in we squeeze it you can see those lungs inflating with the water actually filling them out and just as an
example when you do resuscitation on somebody who's partially drowned what you're trying to do is compress the
chest so that water comes out it leaves more room for the air to get in and to allow you to breathe but once
the waters going in there's no way that you can breathe no and that water rushing in it's going to hit the lungs
it's going to be painful just think of what happens if you just accidentally inhale a little bit of a drink or
something like that you get that burning sensation in your chest this spongy sort
of area is all tiny little spaces that should be getting air into them and they'll all be full of water and they'll
be absolutely useless a very unpleasant way to die you will be fighting for breath you'll be fighting for air you
will actually be doing the movements of breathing as your body tries to pull in the air and you'll just be pulling in
more water it would be a very unpleasant death is drowning especially forcible drowning easy to
prove remarkably drowning is not an easy diagnosis to make there's nothing you can see in a human body specifically
which tells you a person must have drowned and what you've got to look at is the findings in the lungs the finding
elsewhere in the body and the circumstances in which somebody's found with no post-mortem on the body of Alice
Burnham no suspicion fell upon Smith within days of his wife's death he collected the 500 pounds life-insurance
policy placed on her and returned to Bristol he's now killed twice and would soon strike again
I'm Fred Danish and I'm investigating the bride's in the bath murders committed by mercurial charmer george
joseph smith he murdered his wives by drowning them such was his cunning nobody suspected a thing
by 1914 George Joseph Smith was at his most dangerous he'd already killed two of his wives and claimed thousands of
pounds for their deaths Smith took it as the perfect opportunity to continue his
reign of bigamy and murder as millions of men were called up to fight in World War one driven by greed he set out
looking for a new victim would it become easier after the first one absolutely most serial killers are not very skilled
at murder when they first kill but of course if they then perfect how they murder
that means they gain in confidence about how they're going to behave and crucially in Smith's case and with many
serial killers you see the gap between murders becoming narrower and narrower and narrower because then they feel so
powerful that they think they are never going to be caught that they are invincible that their omnipotent and so
if we look at the gap between the murders of Bessie Mundy the first victim we're talking about there being some two
years between her murder and the murder of Alice Burnham but we're only talking a matter of a few months between the
murder of Alice Burnham and Margaret lofty Smith quickly squandered the money he'd gained from Alice's death on more
bad business deals so with his six bigamist wife dead it was time to look for number seven Margaret lofty fitted
the profile 34 years old quiet and living with her sister and elderly mother a prime target for the bigamist
charms they were married just over a month after meeting as with his previous brides Smith quickly put a life
insurance policy into place it would pay him 700 pounds should Margaret die the man she married
she knew was John Lloyd he took her along to get her life insured before they were married the day
of Margaret's wedding she spent going to see a doctor because she had a headache
George went with her to the doctor and he took her off to Highgate in London once again looking for a boarding house
with a bath and it was the following day that she was found dead in the bath Smith had struck again
but as with Bessie and Alice he'd made sure that no suspicion fell upon him in each case he was very careful to
establish an alibi when his wife got into the bath he I think murdered her and then immediately went out to buy
something in the case of Bessie he went out to buy fish in the case of Alice he went out to buy eggs and in the case of
Margaret he went out to buy tomatoes so he was able to say that his wife had died whilst he was out at a local shop
Smith must have thought it would be just a matter of time before he'd received the 700-pound payment for Margaret's
death and be able to leave for Bristol however the death of a newlywed in such tragic circumstances caught the
attention of the news of the world the mistake he made was to murder Margaret in London because when the inquest was
held it went into the national papers it was a report in the news of the world and of course this is a national
newspaper around a local newspaper and many people in all parts of the country suddenly connected the story of Margaret
lofty drowning in her bath on our honeymoon with the stories of other women newly betrothed drowning on their
honeymoons in Buckinghamshire Alice's father Charles Burnham saw the report of a
death in a bath that sounded so similar to Alice's death that he contacted his local police force the son-in-law from
the guesthouse in Blackpool was also suspicious and the case even attracted attention from a celebrity with a
fascination in crime Arthur Conan Doyle picked up on this as well and alerted the police force that there was
something suspicious going on here that was worthy of their investigation Smith continued to wait in Highgate for his
late wife's life insurance policy to be paid to him little did he know for the first time the police were now involved
and the net was closing in the case was handed to a DI Neel of Kentish Town police station he worked quickly to stop
Smith receiving the 700 pounds whilst ensuring the suspect didn't discover that he was being investigated the
police by and large don't come out well in our crime stories you know they often
miss clues they fail to spot a particular pattern of events but di Neill really went the extra mile in
terms of his investigation to link up various cases in different parts of England going to solicitors officers
catching letters looking at postcards finding a pattern of evidence that he would be able to bring a case against
Smith di Neal's investigations took him to over 40 towns and statements were taken from a hundred and fifty witnesses
the investigation uncovered 21 bank accounts belonging to Smith Smith's various aliases began to be revealed as
were the wives and girlfriends who'd been conned by the bigamist but escaped with their lives On February the 1st
1915 he was arrested now according to the police statement Smith commented that you may think it's strange but it
was the irony of fate that my wife should died in the same way the plug had been
pulled on George Joseph Smith's murderous reign but they still didn't know how he'd done it this is where the
famous pathologists of Bernard Spilsbury enters the story Sir Bernard Spilsbury was really the first high-profile
forensic pathologist we in the modern era call ourselves Home Office pathologists it was a title that was
created for this man he was a very intelligent and a very good pathologist to start with but he was a great self
promoter he was very good as a lot of the great doctors are at putting over the idea that he knew more than you did
and if you disagreed with him well you must be wrong and if you can give that impression particularly in a courtroom
it often comes across very powerfully with a jury and he had that ability to just tell us that he was the expert in
the early 20th century forensic science is being called upon more frequently to solve serious crime new techniques like
fingerprinting were becoming commonplace to catch serious criminals Spilsbury was
always willing to push the boundaries of science to gain more knowledge on methods used to murder one of his more
controversial findings came after exhuming the body of Bessie Mundy well a really vital piece of scientific
evidence which was presented by Spilsbury was what he called the goose skin that he had found on
Bessie's thigh and it was in a pretty terrible state when Spilsbury examined it and yet he said that he'd found a
scrap of skin with what we would call goose bumps on it and that this little scrap of skin was the key to the case
because these goose bumps showed that she had died very suddenly this had a big effect because it seems like a
Sherlock Holmes coming up for this vital piece of information that was scientific and
heard great credibility Spilsbury now had to discover how Smith had killed his wives in the bath without anyone
becoming suspicious this would almost lead to the death of another one I'm Fred Danish and I'm reeling the
extraordinary tale of bigamist George Joseph Smith he killed three of his 8 wives in his mind he believed he'd
committed the perfect crime but in 1915 Smith's trail of murder was uncovered by
Detective Inspector Neill and he was arrested di Neal now had to uncover how Smith had
drowned three of his wives in the bath for this he called upon a man who he believed would unlock the science of the
case pathologist Cibona Spilsbury spill Tory's legacy continues to today I think we look at television programs
featuring pathologists and how they can work everything out from the smallest piece of evidence in that show calms
kind of way it's all really coming from this man and his personality spills bridge experiments led him to believe
that Bessie had died suddenly in the bath he now had to prove the method how did Smith kill his wives without
arousing suspicion for that he needed a bath of water and a volunteer swimmer with the help of David Wilson we're
going to recreate Spilsbury the experiment but without the water this is a dangerous exercise please don't try
and copy this at home as you can see if I if I just showed demonstrating through
Annabelle it'd be very difficult to push ahead beneath the water also if I did so
then Annabelle could ride around she could shout she could cause people to come to her aid now that's the last
thing Smith wants so he develops a technique a technique that allows him to get these women his Brides under the
water without them struggling show me how he did it okay let me just change places for a second for it and so he
would reach under the water grab hold of the ankles and pull and as you can see straight underneath the water try and
get up on the rail trying to see how difficult it is even in an empty bar throwing able to get up I've pulled her
legs above the taps her heads below the water she can't struggle out of this position
and it's in this position that she drowns and it's this demonstration by Spilsbury
that's the beginning of the end for George Joseph Smith Spilsbury described his volunteer as a very fine lady
swimmer one used to diving plunging and swimming but nothing had prepared her for the sudden immersion she went under
the water with such force that she was rendered unconscious instantly the police had to spend some
time reviving her and Arthur Neil says that he was worried that actually she might have died the near death of his
volunteer was evidence enough for Spilsbury he was confident he discovered how Smith drowned his Brides so easily
so these days would you be able to carry out trials experiments as Spilsbury did to
prove the point it's simply not possible these days to put somebody under the water in a way that we theorize kills
people it's generally considered to be bad practice really they got somebody and they tried to reproduce the
circumstances and by all accounts she did lose consciousness very quickly so in some ways you could argue that that
supports the theory that he put forward on the 22nd of June 1915 George Joseph Smith stood trial for the murder of
Bessie Mundy at the Old Bailey in London well the papers went to town on him and
drew him as a great monster and a great charmer of women at the same time so by the time he came to court there was a
mystique around him and certainly the court was packed with women from all classes of society he becomes almost the
first public serial killer and saw the celebrity in serial killer I think get mixed up in Smith's story
and it's of that more than anything else that leads to this myth of them having a
magnetic personality eyes that are going to hypnotize women as the trial progressed all the evidence proved
Smith's bigamy but there was nothing to prove that he was a murderer I think initially Smith had a great defense
there wasn't really much evidence to convict him well the prosecution seemed to had very
little evidence they had circumstantial evidence in terms of bessie's death and also in relation to the other and two
instances all that really amounted to was was presence in the house and and coincidence of having suppose it was
dying in bath so very little in the early 20th century the majority of criminal trials wouldn't allow evidence
relating to other crimes to be presented an exception was made in relation to George Joseph Smith what the prosecution
did and what the judge eventually allowed and the appeal court approved was the idea that the other two cases
could be introduced not to prove the facts but to prove the idea of a system the idea that the the death of Bessie in
a bath wasn't an accident because it became too much of coincidence given two of his other suppose advice died in the
same manner so the prosecution had to bring the evidence from the other cases into the trial Smith of course abhorred
the idea that this kind of similar fact evidence was being introduced is it a fair way do you think it's a very
suspect way of establishing liability I think if it's dangerous and it's the way
in which I think sometimes miscarriages of justice is happen 112 witnesses were called to testify against Smith some of
the most damning testimony came from the prosecution's expert witness Sir Bernard
Spilsbury we know that he was a great showman a great self publicist and I'm sure that
giving this veneer of scientific accuracy of he measured the bath and he he brings the bath into the courtroom to
show to the jury must have been a piece of theater really which again is part of
the overall impression he was trying to give of an expert of a scientist of a gentleman of somebody who just knew
things that you don't during the trial Spilsbury was allowed to demonstrate using the bath just how he thought
Bessie Mundy may have died he stated that accidental death was so improbable it almost amounted to an impossibility
and at the end of the day how crucial how important was his testimony I'm sure that his testimony was very important
probably less for the content of it but more for the authority which he brought to the case he brought the idea that
this was scientifically valid and I'm sure that that convinced the jury juries like a story to tell and he gave the
matter the trial lasted eight days the prosecution surmise that the murder was one of design and repetition Smith's
defense countered that his motive for murder did not convert suspicion into proof as the case drew to a close it was
left to the judge Mr Justice scrutton to sum up he asked the jury to consider the
thirteen coincidences between the three deaths did they point to a design death or an accidental one and even as the
judge was summing up the case Smith was shouting out from the gallery saying you're telling the jury I
murdered them you're telling the jury I murdered them it took the jury all of 22 minutes to
find Smith guilty of murder and he was sentenced to be hanged until dead Sir Bernard Spilsbury testimony led the way
for forensic experts to be regularly called to present evidence but nearly 100 years after Smith's trial
it appears that not all of spills buries theories were scientifically correct it's just complete nonsense that bodies
after death will sometimes get a bit of goose skin on them and it indicates pretty much nothing at all I mean it's
been claimed that were Spilsbury to provide this evidence today all this lack of evidence today it could have
resulted in an acquittal I think that's entirely correct the evidence that he is
bringing in is very very limited any competent defense barrister would stand up and they would say but this is theory
where is your evidence that this happened in Spilsbury stay there was nobody there who would challenge him in
that way and the defense mr. trick really Smith appealed against his verdict his defence stated that no firm
evidence had been produced to indicate their clients guilt the appeal court questioned the judge's summing up but
ultimately stuck with the original conviction that Smith was guilty as charged he did not want to believe that
he was guilty you know he had compartmentalized his life so clearly that he could no longer access those
parts of his lives to be able to see that he deserved punishment for what he had done
George Joseph Smith was executed no other woman would be exploited by the serial bigamist and killer ever again he
was hanged for the murder of his three Brides on evidence seen as dubious according to today's legal system so was
Smith guilty although I think's Pillsbury's views in many ways were not scientifically supported and went beyond
what these days we would be happy to give as evidence in a courtroom I think ultimately the outcome of the case was
correct I think all the circumstantial evidence is so powerful the similarity of the three cases is so compelling the
fact that this man who had all these different names was identified as being the same person he was definitely guilty
George Joseph Smith was a man addicted to crime his ability to exploit vulnerable women made it easy for him to
take their money and ultimately their lives what has fascinated me is the amount of
work that went into catching the murderer the pathologist's a Bernard Spilsbury testimony paved the way for expert
witnesses to be called in court cases he ensured that forensics became commonplace in crime investigations
without Sabine and Spilsbury the father of CSI George Joseph Smith could have got away with murder
[Music] [Music] [Music] you

Brief Summary

George Joseph Smith, a bigamist and murderer, killed three wives for money, evading suspicion until a thorough investigation uncovered his crimes.

Key points

Bessie Mundy's Tragic Fate. Bessie Mundy was found dead in a bath, leading to Smith's first murder conviction.
The Bride's in the Bath Murders. George Joseph Smith, a charming bigamist, drowned three wives to inherit their wealth.
Alice Burnham's Last Letter. Alice wrote to her family claiming to have the best husband, moments before her death.
The Rise of George Joseph Smith. George Joseph Smith, a bigamist, murdered multiple wives for insurance money.
The Investigation Unfolds. Detective Inspector Neill connects the dots in a series of suspicious deaths.
The Trial of the Century. Smith's trial captivated the public, with evidence linking him to multiple murders.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

Drowning in a bath is a very unpleasant way to die.

0:13WatchOct 4, 2019

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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