Towpath murder

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The victims of the 1953 towpath murder case were 16-year-old Barbara Songhurst and 18-year-old Christine Reed. The girls had been on a bicycle trip on Sunday 31 May 1953, and were seen cycling along a towpath beside the Thames in Teddington about 11am. They failed to return home, and their bodies were later found, beaten, stabbed and raped.

Alfred Charles Whiteway, separated from his wife and was living with his parents in Teddington, was arrested after two later attacks on women in Surrey. At first, he denied any involvement. Later, an axe was found hidden in his car. It was lost, and found at the house of a police constable, who was using it to chop wood. Forensic tests linked traces of blood on the axe, and on Whiteway's shoes, to the murders, and he confessed.

He was tried at the Old Bailey in October 1953 before Mr Justice Hilbery. He was defended by solicitor Arthur Prothero, who instructed Peter Rawlinson, then a relatively junior barrister. Rawlinson cross-examined murder squad detective Bert Hannam at length, opening large holes in his evidence of the confession, which Whiteway claimed was a work of fiction. Press reports complained at the implication that the police were lying. In any event, Whiteway was found guilty and hanged at Wandsworth Prison on 22 December 1953.