There was something about the immediate post-war period that made its most notorious murderers remain long in the public's memory. There was Christie at 10 Rillington Place, Haigh the acid-bath murderer and Neville Heath.
Heath had already murdered one woman in a London hotel when he arrived in Bournemouth. Lindsay Neal takes up the story:
A wanted suspect for the Margery Gardner killing, Heath fled London with the police on his heels and ended up in Bournemouth where, calling himself Brook after the World War I poet (but without the poet’s final ‘e’), he met ex-Wren Doreen Marshall, who was staying at the Norfolk Hotel on Richmond Hill as she recovered from ’flu.
He invited her to afternoon tea that day, Wednesday 3 July [1946], at the Pavilion and met her again that evening for dinner at his hotel, after which they left together, saying he was going to walk her back to the Norfolk.
On the Friday, the manager of the Norfolk reported her missing to the police and contacted his counterpart at the Tollard Royal, who advised his guest Group Captain Brook – Heath – that he should contact the police, which he did by phone on the Saturday.
He then walked into Bournemouth Police Station where, quite by chance, he met Doreen Marshall’s father and sister who had come to Bournemouth to find her and joked with them that he looked like the fugitive Heath.
Under questioning later that evening, he confessed to being Heath and was taken to London before Doreen’s body was found the next day.
I wondered whether the Tollard Royal still stood, but not enough to go hunting for it. Then I saw this sign and realised that it still stands. Not only that, it is next to the Highcliffe, which was the conference hotel.
The building has been altered several times in its history, but I think this may be the part of the hotel shown in the photo from 1946.
This is what was the front of the hotel today, and you can learn all about the latest alterations to the building in the edition of Grand Designs embedded below.
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