All language subtitles for Donald Merrett; The Murderous Buccaneer ¦ Great Crimes and Trials of the Twentieth Century (480p_25fps_H264-128kbit_AAC)

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in the 1950s

The year 1926 saw a general strike which brought much of Britain to a virtual standstill.

Violence was threatened as volunteers tried to keep public services operating.

Despite these political problems, it was still for many a time of prosperity and carefree living after the horrors of the First World War.

On the 17th of March, the police were called to a house in a respectable area of Edinburgh, where a suicide attempt had been reported.

The year they found 17-year-old Donald Merritt, who told him that he had been reading in the sitting room while his mother had been writing letters at her desk.

Suddenly he had heard a shot and she had slumped forward with a pistol in her hand.

Mrs Merritt was still alive, but with a bullet wound by her right ear.

When she was taken to hospital, Donald described how he had dashed down to fetch the maid and she confirmed they had got back just in time to see the pistol fall from Mrs Merritt's hand.

In the sitting room, the police found a surprisingly relaxed and chatty letter which Mrs Merritt had been writing.

Also on the desk were two letters from the Clydesdale back, warning that her account was overdraw.

Donald seemed convinced that money worries had driven his mother to suicide.

The police agreed, and since suicide was then a criminal offence in Scotland, Mrs Merritt was moved into a secure ward.

Relatives came to look after Donald while he continued his studies at Edinburgh University.

His mother seemed confused by what had happened, and not at all suicidal.

All she could remember was writing a letter when there was a loud bang, then she woke up in hospital.

She denied ever owning a pistol.

When questioned, Donald admitted that he had bought it for rabbit shooting.

His mother had confiscated it.

Later in the interview, Donald seemed to contradict himself by suggesting that his mother had not known about the pistol.

Unfortunately, the one person who might have been able to clarify this was no longer available.

For Mrs Merritt, after nine days of bemused lucidity, had become delirious and died on the 1st of April.

To get over his grief, Donald persuaded his relatives to give him some cash for a trip to London.

He spent a highly enjoyable week there with a friend and two girls.

Then came an unexpected change in his university plans.

For his relatives were shocked to hear that Edinburgh no longer wanted him.

It was decided that he should go south to cram for the Oxford entrance exams.

Meanwhile, staff at the Clydesdale Bank had been surprised to receive several checks.

Apparently, signed by the dead woman while she had been in a coma.

They began looking more closely at her account and contacted the police.

The police were now interested enough to get a sample of Donald Merritt's writing.

They also began to look more closely at the recent background of this apparently excellent student

who had nevertheless failed to satisfy the university that he should continue his studies there.

The merits had not been in Scotland for long.

In fact, Donald had been born in New Zealand on 17 August 1908.

His mother, Bertha, had loved travel.

The daughter of a prosperous wine merchant, she was able to indulge this passion by taking long cruises.

During one of these to Egypt, she met an electrical engineer named John Merritt, who was on his way to New Zealand.

His shipboard romance led to Bertha going to New Zealand, where the couple married and had a son.

Shortly after Donald was born, his father accepted a job in St. Petersburg, the capital of Tsarist Russia.

Bertha Merritt became increasingly concerned that the effect of the harsh Russian winters on her son and took him to Switzerland.

During one of their stays, the First World War broke out, and they remained there for several years.

Bertha helped to care for wounded British soldiers after they had been released from German prisoner of war camps.

During the turmoil of the collapse of Tsarist rule, Bertha lost touch with her husband.

She went back to New Zealand after the war, hoping to get news of him, but they never met up again.

She began telling people that he had died during the Russian Revolution.

In 1924, Mrs Merritt decided that her strapping, 16-year-old son, he was already over 6-foot tall, needed an English public school education.

She took a cottage near Reading and sent him to Mollvon College, but he was soon expelled after some trouble with the local girls.

It was the roaring 20s, with ample opportunity for wild youth to have a good time.

Mrs Merritt decided that Oxford or Cambridge might present too many temptations for her son, and that this date style of Edinburgh University would be more suitable.

Donald had no trouble in getting a place to read English, and mother and son arrived in early January 1926.

Donald seemed to settle in well, going after his lectures every morning.

His mother's only concern was that he seemed to look increasingly exhausted by his studies.

In fact, as the police now discovered, the university never saw him, where he had developed a passion for the dance halls,

and their attractive instructors who charged fifteen shillings for an afternoon.

His allowance of tensionings a week was woefully inadequate, so Donald had to find other ways of improving his cash flow.

It was now realized that many of Bertha Merritt's checks were crude forgeries.

The police also looked more closely at the gun, which had never been properly examined forensichting, and at the doctor's report of the wound by Mrs Merritt's ear.

If fired close to it, the gun should have left scorch marks, but the wound was described as having been small and clean.

At the end of November, the police arrested Donald Merritt and charged him with forgery and the murder of his mother.

Merritt's trial opened in the High Court of Justiceery in Edinburgh's Parliament Square on the 1st of February, 1927.

Donald Merritt arrived looking studious and wearing heavy horn-rimmed glasses.

Nevertheless, the authorities were taking no chances.

The presiding judge was Lord Onus, Scotland's Lord Justice.

It soon became obvious to everyone that the prosecution case was hampered by inadequate police work.

The gun had not been fingerprinted, and Mrs Merritt's wound had not been forensichly examined.

The evidence of forgery was difficult to dispute, but the defense was able to produce two eminent expert witnesses to cast doubt on what little forensic evidence about the gunshot that the police were able to produce.

The jury were assured by London Gunsmith Robert Churchill that women flinch when firing a weapon, and that this could account for there being no close-range scorch marks on Mrs Merritt.

Churchill was backed up by Sir Bernard Spillsbury, normally the Home Office's leading pathologist for the prosecution, who seemed convinced that the curious angle at which the gun must have been held could be a case of a murder.

The judge was accounted for by Mrs Merritt having considerable shoulder movement due to her way of doing up her hair.

In his summing up, Lord Onus referred to the murder charge as an afterthought. He emphasized that the 15-man jury must give the defendant the benefit of every doubt.

They took the hint, and on the murder charge returned the Scottish verdict of not proven.

On the forgery charge Merritt was found guilty and sentenced to 12 months in prison. He emerged at the end of 1927 and went to stay with a family friend, Mrs Bonner.

She had a pretty 17-year-old daughter, Vera, with whom Merritt soon eloped to Scotland. There they got married as Mr. and Mrs. Ronald Chesney, and went on an extended honeymoon financed by a series of dud checks.

Finally caught in Newcastle, Merritt was sentenced to six months for fraud.

He was released again shortly before his 21st birthday, when he inherited the substantial fortune of £50,000.

Vera was swiftly forgiven by her mother when her new husband settled £8,400 on her, with a single proviso that it should revert to him in the event of her death.

The young couple now moved south and settled down to enjoin themselves amid the bright lights of London.

They were soon joined by Vera's mother. She was now calling herself Lady Menges, having married and swiftly left an eccentric Scott, who had the dubious title of Baron Menges.

Chesney, as Merritt was now known, soon found that his inheritance was not enough to support wife, mother-in-law, and an increasing number of girlfriends.

In the manner to which he was becoming accustomed. He also craved adventure and decided that smuggling would be a good way of solving both problems.

So he bought a Bristol pilot cutter, the Gladys May.

Finally, in 1935, now sporting a big black beard, Chesney sold up in England and set off to sail to the Mediterranean.

On board the Gladys May, he took with him his wife, two adopted children, and his mother-in-law as cook.

They based themselves in Malta, where their wealth and lavish parties soon made them very welcome in society.

Chesney now indulged himself freely in his love of women, while his wife took increasingly to drink, and his mother-in-law got on his nerves.

They also threw himself into a variety of dubious business ventures. The main ones at first were running guns from North African ports to Spain, where all sides were arming in preparation for a civil war which seemed bound to come.

And taking cigarettes and liquor into Italy.

Another venture was running gold and diamonds into England. The Gladys May would take the merchandise from Tangier to ports in the south of France.

Then Chesney would drive it North to be flown to England.

Police and customs suspected what was going on, but Chesney was never caught.

Nevertheless, none of these activities could keep up with Chesney's financial demands.

In the winter of 1938, he bought a luxury yacht and equipped her as a floating casino.

There are activist hosters, and Lady Meng is added a touch of dubious class.

But still, the debts mounted and the family tensions increased.

It was perhaps with relief that as war loomed, Chesney sold up in the Mediterranean and took his family back to London.

He then volunteered to join the Royal Navy.

No checks were made on his past, since with his sea-going experience, the big buccaneer seemed a natural recruit.

After training, he was commissioned Lieutenant, and in 1940, sent back to the Mediterranean to take command of this motor gum boat.

The Royal Navy was now fighting desperately against Italian and German forces to keep the sea routes from Gibraltar to Malta and the Suez Canal open.

Chesney's somewhat erratic seamanship soon earned him the nickname, Crasher Chesney.

He also became notorious throughout the Navy for his unrelenting pursuit of attractive members of the women's royal naval service, the Rens.

The chance to indulge some of his other skills came in 1941, when he was given command of a schooner and ordered to run supplies into Tobruk, which was under siege.

The docks on Alexandria provided a ready source of drink or cigarettes which could be sold privately, and it was always a ready market for captured Axis equipment, or other material which had gone missing on its way to the front.

So, as Rommel's Africa Corps fought to drive the British Eighth Army back into Egypt and to break the garrison of Tobruk, Lieutenant Chesney was living dangerously, both from Axis fire and from the military police who tried to crack down on the rackets.

Chesney led a charmed life, avoiding the Axis air attacks, but his luck finally ran out when he was caught into Brook Harbor when the Axis forces over ran the garrison.

Chesney became a prisoner of war, but feigned serious illness and was repatriated in an exchange of sick and wounded officers.

Now, regarded as a genuine war hero, Chesney was promoted to Lieutenant Commander and spent the rest of the war at various shore posts.

He had plenty of time to indulge in his favorite pursuits, gambling, pretty rins, and quarrelling with his wife and mother-in-law.

At the end of the war, Lieutenant Commander Chesney became one of the occupation force at German naval headquarters in Wilhelm's Haven.

Amid the chaotic collapse of Nazi Germany, there was ample opportunity for energetic and unscrupulous men to make a fortune.

Chesney took full advantage.

He was soon involved in a wide variety of smuggling and black market rackets, and once again managed to keep his activity secret from the military police.

He also took a striking 18-year-old, Gerda Schaller, as his mistress.

Demobilized in May 1946, Chesney stayed on in Germany.

That summer, he stole a staff car which had belonged to Grand Admiral Dernitz, and was now the property of the Royal Navy, filled it with black market goods and drove to Paris with Gerda.

There they rented a house and lived the good life.

Chesney began to look into the possibility of building a building that was built in the city of Germany.

The city was now the property of the Royal Navy, filled it with black market goods and drove to Paris with Gerda.

There they rented a house and lived the good life.

Chesney began to look into the possibility of basing himself in the south of France and going back to smuggling again.

But in September, the military police caught up with him. He was sentenced to four months in prison.

Released in 1947, Chesney stayed in Germany with his faithful Gerda.

He never seemed to be without a smart car. And these were used to smuggle diamonds, drugs or illegal currency between Antwerp, Brussels, Amsterdam and Cologne, or across the channel to Britain.

At times, Chesney was flush with cash, but gambling and other extravagancies always blew away any big coos.

His international activity has also brought problems with the law.

Arrests, deportations and prison sentences, four months in France and twelve in Britain.

Finally, Gerda got tired of this dangerous living and left him.

But Chesney, although by now a huge, untidy figure, soon managed to charm one of her friends, blonde, 24-year-old Sonia Vinica, and move in with her.

Then, early in 1952, disaster struck again. British customs caught Chesney with his car stuffed with illegal currency.

In prison for another twelve months, he began to brood about his perpetual shortage of cash and his wife's settlement.

For he had never stopped writing to Vera, who was now running a retirement home in London, telling her that he still loved her.

But now he seems to have become convinced that she or her mother had betrayed him.

Chesney had always been a classic psychopath, self-obsessed, aggressive and irresponsible in his search for self-gratification.

Charming when everything was going well, he could be utterly ruthless, even murderous, if he felt thwarted in getting his own way.

Now, the logical solution to his financial problems seemed to be to speed up, getting back the money he had given his wife so many years before.

In early 1953, in a pub during one of his trips to London, Chesney noticed a man who looked very like him.

He found out his name and other details and applied for a passport as Leslie Chown.

Months later, on Wednesday, the 10th of February, 1954, Leslie Chown boarded the 630KLM flight from Amsterdam to London, Heathrow.

The next day, he returned, even though the morning flight was seriously affected by fog.

That same Thursday, Eileen Thorpe, the maid at Sunset House, a retirement home in Ealing, became concerned when her employers, Vera Chesney and her mother, Lady Menges, had not appeared by midday.

Vera was found drowned in her bath. The door had been locked from the outside.

The body of Lady Menges was found hidden under cushions in a little used room.

She had been knocked unconscious with a brass coffee pot and strangled with one of her own stockings.

The post-mortem showed that Vera Chesney had been severely drunk on gin before being put in the bath.

Her mother had fought back strongly, since her nails were blood-stained.

The dogs which were kept in the house must have known the attacker since they had not barked during the night.

In Vera's room, the police found hundreds of letters from her husband.

He was known to have visited her about two weeks previously.

Police also searched the grounds, but there was no sign of a forced entry, and no one had called during the evening.

When Detective Superintendent Wilfred Dawes heard the terms of Vera's settlement, he decided that her husband might be able to help.

Interpol was asked to help track down Donald Merritt, who might be calling himself Ronald Chesney or John Milner, another alias that Merritt sometimes used.

News of the killings and the international search made headlines in the weekend papers, and reporters were soon digging up the colorful background of the man who had already become notorious as both Merritt and his wife,

and Anne Chesney.

On Monday, the 15th of February, a solicitor in Hastings was astonished to receive a telephone call from Germany.

His client, whom he knew as John Milner, said that he had read with horror about the murder of his wife, the solicitor told him to return at once.

Merritt left the bar in Cologne, from which he had phoned and hailed a taxi.

The driver later reported that he drove him around the city for hours, stopping several times at the address where Sonia Vinica lived. She was not in.

Eventually Merritt got out at the main station.

The next morning, his body was found in a park about three miles from the station. He had shot himself in the mouth with a 45 revolver.

Merritt's solicitor received a letter denying that he had had anything to do with the killings, and hoping that the police would find out who was responsible.

This, they soon did. For passengers on the KLM flight, identified photographs of Merritt as Leslie Chow.

The real Mr. Chow revealed that he had not left the country for ten years.

Then, an Amsterdam hotel came up with a Mr. and Mrs. J.D. Milner, who had checked in on the day before Mr. Chow flew to England.

It was now obvious that Merritt had been able to get into the country and indeed into his wife's house undetected.

The long-suffering girder Shallow organized the funeral of the man she had known as Ronald Chesney.

She was the only mornin'.

What she probably did not know was that her lover was buried without his arms.

For Scotland Yard had asked the German police to send them blood and skin samples and photographs so that they could match the samples found on Lady Mengi's hands to scratches on her probable assailant.

Before releasing the body for burial, the Germans went one better, cutting off both arms and sending them instead.

Scotland Yard found that they matched perfectly and proved conclusively that after entering the house undetected, Donald Merritt had got Vera drunk and then drowned her in the bath.

At some point Lady Mengi's must have seen him, so she too had to die.

In the course of his back and ear in Korea, Donald Merritt had achieved the distinction of killing both his mother and his wife and mother-in-law.