Christmas Past 

I come from a land where the wind is permanently busy. Summer holidays were often spent dying of exposure behind a sand dune while eating boiled eggs, or - on the few days of sun - lying gormless among the li-los thirty yards out to sea, and slowly drifting towards France.
In deep December we went to school in the dark and we came home in the dark - and all I remember is the elements going sideways at fifty miles an hour and leaning into them to stay upright. The forecast on the radio was the same everyday for five months; ''Sunny periods with sleet spreading from the east,'' or ''Sun glimpsed in Scotland. Police baffled…'' Breakfast was hot porridge and golden syrup, and by November our dreams were only of Christmas.
We were polite kids, northern, and spirited. We were always cheeky and over-excited. Trouble was not a stranger. Every Christmas Eve, we went carol singing. We never rang the bell at a house. We'd just stand, wrapped from head to foot in scarves and balaclavas, and sing our thing. The carols always sounded muffled, as though they were being sung from underneath a blanket - which, in a sense, they were.
After three verses of ''Silent Night,'' our teeth would be chattering so much that we sounded like Muppets with frostbite - and then suddenly we'd all be hammering on the door for money, warmth, anything to get us out of that Artic blast.
By the time someone finally opened the door we'd all be crying. It was pathetic.
One year, we played a soccer match in a snowstorm on the last day of term. It was like midnight at the South Pole. You couldn't see your own feet, and we never found the goal. We never even found the ball. There was only the sound of ghostly voices, lost and searching…''Over here!'' ''Here!'' and ''I want my mum…''The referee's whistle blew from somewhere far away and then silence. It was eerie. Shapes would loom out of the storm and then disappear like drunken yetis. Occasionally they crashed into each other. The ground was frozen solid and there was a dull thud followed by a low moan whenever bodies landed on it. It was ludicrous. And it was real.
On Christmas Eve 1972, I was in the cellar of a hotel in Kabul, Afghanistan, when a bomb landed in the garden. The door crashed open and the fat Afghan hotel manager was yelling, ''Goo d'etat! Goo d'etat! You must be leaving!!'' Through an organic fog of herbal fragrance, an American drawled, ''We ain't goin' nowhere man.''
How true. On Christmas morning we emerged and stood around admiring the massive crater on the lawn. There hadn't, in fact, been a ''Goo d'etat.'' The carnange had been the work of one very unhappy and extremely drunk Afghan pilot. Having found the airport, he had then found the only jet that worked, and roared off to bomb the palace. He had missed his target by a quarter of a mile. The American said it was outstanding.
At dawn on Christmas morning 1982, I walked along the edge of the Pacific Ocean in Northeast Australia on an endless, deserted beach. The sea was all power and show that morning - vast, crystal blue, clean as a tear. I had the universe to myself and applauded the director.
That afternoon I drove inland to an invitation; Christmas lunch on an outback commune. It was 47 degrees. I drove through a small town called WHY, and then further up the road, another hamlet called WHY NOT. There was a sign outside the only garage:
"CHRISTMAS CHOOK. HALF-DEAD. $ 1.50."
So I bought it.
At the commune, it was given to the working dogs as a present. Later on, a hippy came up with a bit of feather dangling off his lip and told me it was delicious.
On Christmas night in 1987, I was at some outdoor rave in Freemantle, Western Australia. The whole crowd was three sheets to the wind and swayed in all directions - to the music, to the drink, and for the hell of it. Wobbling off home on my bicycle felt like riding on two rubber bands. When the motorbike crashed into me, everything was airborne - but on landing we were both too drunk to be badly hurt. The biker thought it was hilarious and kept laughing. So I sat on him.
And waited for the police.
When they arrived, they arrested me for trying to squash him. I couldn't argue with that. At the police station an hour later, the duty sergeant pressed ten bucks into my hand and said, ''Take this and drink it. Walk home and Happy Christmas."
"Why zank you osshifer…an' Happy Christmas to you too.

By Roger Beaumont
  Available at Bookazine

The Barn Murder Case

An armed robbery that went wrong, led to three trials
By David Cocksedge

THE PROUD owner of the successful Barn Restaurant in Braintree, Essex, southeast England was Mr Robert Patience. In 1972 he was 54 years old. Balding and rotund, this man who had served on RAF Lancaster bombers during World War II was enjoying being the genial 'mine host' at his pub and restaurant. He had transformed the place from a small roadside café into a very popular rendezvous for London's East Enders. The low, white building had beamed ceilings, and the walls were studded with horse-brasses and the heads of stuffed animals, whilst oil-lamps hung above the tables. Then on Sunday, 5 November 1972, death came to his home.
At twenty minutes past two (2.20 am) on that morning, Mr Patience left the Barn, where the band was still playing to several patrons, and walked the fifty yards to his home, a modern three-bed roomed house named the Sun Lido. Everything seemed to be quite normal. Three days later his statement to local police included the following text: ' I let myself in. Then I noticed that the dining-room door was open, which is unusual because we don't allow the dog to go in there. I went in and was immediately confronted by a gunman - the actual fellow who did all the shooting. I was told to sit over the other side of the room, passing my wife and daughter, who were sitting on the settee being covered by another gunman. My wife was in a terrible state, and my daughter was trying to console her.
The gunman said, "I want the safe key." I told him that it was over at the Barn with the night's takings, and he just repeated his demand. I told him that I was prepared to go with him to the restaurant and get the key. I said he could have the money if he would let my wife and daughter go. Then he shot my wife in the head while I looked at them both. She collapsed. It was terrible. I said, "She's dying. You've killed her". All he said was, "She will be all right," and he let her fall off the settee onto the floor. He was a cold-blooded bastard.'
Bob Patience knew there was a safe key in the room but had been playing for time. Now he took the key from it's hiding place, opened the wall safe and threw the two men some bags of money that were inside. His statement continued: 'My wife was bleeding on the carpet and in a terrible state. I told the first gunman to get out with the money. He gave instructions to the other man to tie up both my daughter and myself. Then he shot my daughter through the back while she lay on the floor. I knew it was my turn next. There was a hell of a bang and I thought that was my lot. I felt blood running down me and I was sure that I was dying. The fair-haired man who did all the talking and shooting just held his gun a foot or so from the side of my head and pulled the trigger. Later the surgeons told me that the bullet had entered my ear and by some miracle had hit a bone and bounced out again. The gunman had used two cushions, firing twice through one of them and once through the other, to deaden the sound of the shots.'
The whole horrific scene had lasted one hour. When the robbers departed, only Bob Patience was conscious and managed to crawl to the telephone and alert the police. Revealing how amateurish they were, the robbers had not cut even the line on entering the house. Local police reported the incident to all stations in the area by radio and also
alerted Scotland Yard detectives in London. Once Bob Patience had recovered from his ordeal, he gave a description of the two men, and police artists made drawings of their faces. Three days later, Mrs Muriel Patience (aged 51) died from her wounds. The post-mortem revealed that she had suffered a gunshot wound of the head entering above the right eyebrow. Professor James Malcolm Cameron removed the .38 bullet, which was to be a vital clue in the case against her killer.
Beverley Patience (21), Bob's daughter, slowly recovered from her trauma under police guard in Braintree hospital. She had had a narrow escape, for the bullet had missed a main artery by a fraction. But she was young and progressed steadily, though the psychological damage she had suffered was severe.
Now the hunt was on for two killers, and during routine investigation the name of George Ince came to police attention. Newspaper reports stated that he was wanted for interrogation in the Barn Murder case, and Ince gave himself up to police in London on 27 November. Accompanied by his solicitor, Ince was driven to Braintree and appeared in an identification parade. He was picked out by both Bob and Beverley Patience as the gunman who had tried to carry out execution-style shootings on the entire family, but in fact only managed to kill one of the three.
George Ince pleaded not guilty at Chelmsford Assizes; the jury was unable to agree on a verdict, and a re-trial was ordered by the Crown Prosecution Service. In his first trial, Ince had refused to recognise the judge and dismissed his own counsel. When the jury was discharged, he said, "I would like to thank the members of the jury for giving me the chance of letting my case go forward in front of a truthful judge."
Thirty-five year old George Ince was three times identified as the Barn murderer and twice tried for the crime. The second trial was in May 1973 at Chelmsford Crown Court before Justice Everleigh. Ince was defended by Mr Victor Drummond, QC, and in this second trial he allowed his counsel to call his vital witness, something he had refused to do in his earlier trial.
She was Mrs Doris Gray (40), the wife of Charles Kray, elder brother of the notorious Kray twins, who was jailed in 1968 for his involvement in the murder of Jack "The Hat' McVitie in Whitechapel, East London in 1966. As Charlie Kray's wife she had always been known as 'Dolly Kray'.
Now Mrs Doris Gray, formerly Dolly Kray, gave evidence that she had spent the night of 4-5 November 1972 with George Ince, her lover, when he was alleged to have killed Mrs Patience and attempted to murder Bob and Beverley Patience. She said that she and George had been together all night at her flat in Poplar and Ince had never left her side.
The all-male jury took three hours and seven minutes to reach unanimous verdicts on all charges against Mr Ince. He was found not guilty on three counts of murder and attempted murder, and not guilty of robbing Mr Patience of 900 pounds sterling plus credit slips.
Loud cheering from the public gallery greeted the verdicts and Ince leapt from the dock, shouting to police, "You are one hundred percent corrupt! It is your turn now!" The Crown's carefully assembled case against George Ince had collapsed like a pack of cards.
So just who had murdered Mrs Muriel Patience? Vital evidence came to police attention a month later, when Essex police Chief Superintendent Leonard White took a call from Kendal in England's Lake District. He was told a petty crook named Peter Hanson held in custody there had information about the Barn restaurant murder. White travelled north that night and was met by local Cumbria police who took him to a guesthouse where an Italian Baretta .38 automatic pistol had been hidden in a mattress. Ballistics experts fired a full clip into sand, and then compared the expended rounds under a microscope with the bullet removed from the brain of Mrs Muriel Patience. The rifling grooves matched exactly. This Baretta was indeed the weapon used in Braintree on 5 November 1972.
Hanson told local police that he had been on the run when he had shared a room at the Salutation Hotel in the Lake District. The man he had roomed with was John Brook (31), who showed him the gun and boasted that it had been used in the famous Barn Murder. Brooks' accomplice in the robbery and murder in Braintree had been one Nicholas Richard James de Clare Johnson (30). In classic criminal parlance, Hanson had "grassed them up" in a deal with police to obtain lenient jail terms for his own offences.
Both men were charged with the murder of Mrs Muriel Patience and a third trial in the Barn Murder case began at Chelmsford Crown Court on 16 January 1974. As he had not been the killer, Johnson made a frank and full confession to the crimes. This, allied with the fact that the murder weapon had been stashed in a mattress where Brook had stayed for some weeks gave the prosecution a very strong case.
The blue cushions through which bullets had been fired on 5 November 1972 were located by diligent police officers who searched through an enormous five-acre rubbish dump near Braintree. Acting on information supplied by Johnson, they also found a few items stolen from the house. These had been buried in a field along with a briefcase that had been used to carry away the stolen cash.
In the third Barn Murder trial there was no question of identification and the witnesses who had formerly identified George Ince as the killer admitted that they had been mistaken. Whilst the jury deliberated on the last day of the trial Brook and Johnson came to blows in a cell below the courtroom. Court officers broke up the fight, and the two men went back into the dock to receive a guilty verdict. Brook was given life sentences for murdering Mrs Patience and attempting to murder her husband and daughter. Johnson was found not guilty of murder but guilty of manslaughter and sentenced to ten years. Both were found guilty of robbery and aggravated assault and sentenced to serve concurrent jail terms for those offences.
Fuelled by narcotics and alcohol, Brook and Johnson made an inept pair of armed robbers. When they were disturbed and could not get the safe keys, Brook shot Mrs Johnson in cold blood as the others watched. He then tried to execute the other witnesses, but failed even at point-blank range. With police and public attention focussed on George Ince, Brook surely thought he had got clean away with his crimes until he stupidly boasted about his savage deeds to Peter Hanson.
It was said at the third trial that on the night of the murder both robbers believed there was at least ten thousand pounds sterling in the house safe. That was the sum the criminals always believed was there for the taking from Bob Patience. It seems incredible that Brook was crazy and psychotic enough to try his best to murder three witnesses for the meagre total of ninety pounds which was all that was in the safe on that fateful night. Such a dangerous man should surely be shut away for society for most of his life.

(Research, 'Clues to Murder' by Tom Tullett, Grafton Books)

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