Although he had been missing since October
the previous year, it was not until the morning of 10th January 1929, that the
body of fifty seven year old Vivian Messiter was found in a badly decomposed
state at the Southampton depot of the Wolf's Head Oil Company. Messiter,
the firm's local agent and a recently appointed director, appeared to have been
shot through the head; in fact, it was not for some time that it was realised
that the victim had been bludgeoned to death with a hammer which had pierced the
skull giving the appearance of a bullet entry wound. Messiter had been
robbed, but his business records had been left to provide the clue that
eventually led to his killer.
Among the papers a receipt book was found from which the first nine pages had
been torn leaving it blank, however, on the tenth page, a blind impression was
clearly visible of the writing on the previous receipt - 28th October 1928.
Received from Wolf's Head Oil Company commission on Cromer and Bartlett, 5 gals
at 6d =2/6d W.F. Thomas.' Routine investigation showed that the firm
against which the receipt had been issued was non-existent and the inevitable
conclusion was that somebody was claiming commission on bogus sales. The
signature on the receipt, 'W.F.Thomas', was compared with a letter signed
'William F. Thomas' found at Vivian Messiter's lodgings; it was an application
for a job at Wolf's Head. 'Thomas' predictably, had long since moved from
the address on the letter and had been responsible for a further embezzlement in
the Southampton area before transferring his attention to London where he was
later arrested; one piece of information was forthcoming - Mr William Thomas was
in reality Mr William Henry Podmore, a crook from Manchester in which city he
was wanted for a number of car and motorcycle frauds.
While police in Southampton are were hard at work establishing Podmore's link
with the Messiter murder, their Midlands colleagues obligingly kept him safely
under lock and key for the Manchester jobs. On his release from Wandsworth
Prison on 17th December 1929, he was immediately rearrested and charged with
murder; later the same month William Podmore appeared at the Winchester Assizes.
Despite a spirited insistence on his own innocence the case against Podmore was
by now watertight - the fact of his dishonesty in charging Messiter commission
on sales that he had not made was demonstrated to the court by means of
photographs taken at the angle to the light which revealed the writing in the
receipt book. On top of this, two of Podmore's fellow prisoners in
Wandsworth gave evidence that he had confessed the murder to them.
William Podmore was convicted by the jury and sentenced to death; he was hanged
on 22nd April 1930, aged twenty-nine.
