The Saywell Murder or perhaps Murders?
On the 22nd of April 1932 in Sydney Australia solicitor Victor Claude Saywell and his wife Adeline Rebecca were sleeping in bed in Fairfax Road, Bellevue Hill when someone entered their bedroom during the early hours and hit them both with a hammer, repeatedly. No noise was heard. Although items were strewn over the floor nothing of value appeared to have been stolen even though there were smudged bloodstained fingerprints on Mr Staywell’s wallet. The police believed this was staged to look like a robbery. There was no sign of forced entry — all doors and windows were locked leading to newspapers speculating it was an inside job. Though a key had been left under the backdoor for their son Jack who stayed out late at night. Tom the other teenage son had gone to bed. His bed was adjacent to his parents with a shared balcony. The maid Hilda Rose Champion had also gone to bed. Her room was adjacent to the parents’ room. This is an interpretation of the layout from the evidence.
On the evening of April 21st 1932 once again Jack Saywell had quarrelled with his parents about seeing the 17-year-old Catholic young woman Jean Comerford. He would visit her home in the evening and stay until the early hours. He claimed they sat outside her home on the verandah, though newspaper articles said they were in her bedroom. But Jean’s mother was seriously ill making the second option less likely. According to the inquest evidence of his brother Tom, the father Victor had frequently quarrelled with Jack. He wouldn’t let him have a car, he wanted him to study harder towards law qualifications and did not want him to stay out late with a Catholic teenager since he would never give permission for them to get married on religious grounds. Jack’s family were Protestants and Jean’s family were Roman Catholics.
In Jack’s evidence to the police about the murder he said he returned at 2 am from Jean’s home and on entering his family home he noticed that a wet towel was placed outside the door of his parents and his mother’s dressing gown was on the floor. He said their bedroom door was closed which was unusual. Jack said he picked up the wet towel and put it on a chair in his own room but left the dressing gown on the floor. In the morning, Jack was already in the kitchen reading a newspaper and drinking tea at 7 am when the maid Hilda Rose Champion entered the room. She took tea up to her employer’s room only to find them battered on the bed covered in blood. She then quickly shouted down to Jack that his parents were smothered in blood. He inspected the scene, phoned the doctor and told his brother to get up and put on a dressing gown without telling him what had happened. Jack had already phoned the doctor to come urgently but would not tell Tom why and then got into his father’s car and drove at high speed to the police station. It is strange that Tom didn’t make an attempt to go to his parent’s bedroom as he had done the night before. Jack also didn’t explain why he didn’t phone the police or how he located his father’s keys which you might assume were located in the blood-spattered room, perhaps even in his wallet. Though they may have had a special place for the car keys in the hallway. But there was no explanation at the inquest of him entering his parents’ room to check whether they were alive or dead. At 7.30 am they were both alive but severely injured. Jack didn’t phone for an ambulance. He should have had blood on his slippers if he had entered the parent's bedroom to check whether they were alive as blood was scattered everywhere. But the evidence showed he had no blood on his slippers. So he didn’t check whether they were alive. The maid also didn’t mention the dressing gown on the floor. As a maid, she would have naturally found that unusual as it would have been her job to keep the dirty laundry in a specific place in the house.
Both parents were taken to the hospital where Victor soon died. But Mrs Saywell battled on. It was expected she would die from her six serious head injuries. As his mother lay in hospital with serious head injuries, Jack went off to watch the racing. But slowly Mrs Saywell recovered enough for the surgeon to carry out brain surgery. Fortunately, she recovered enough to leave the hospital but had difficulty speaking and was partially paralysed with no memory of the attack. She permanently needed care. At first, it was said she couldn’t say the name, Jack.
At the inquest of Victor Saywell, Jean Comerford was questioned and she explained Jack Saywell left her home at 1 am. They had discussed getting married in about 18 months' time. Which was strange considering both their parents objected to them getting married. Jack in his evidence at the inquest said he was only a child to his mother and wouldn’t contemplate marriage. Jean and Jack getting married would have meant they would both be penniless as their families would not support them financially. When questioned about the 1 hour time difference in his evidence, Jack explained that when he entered the Comerford residence he had set the clocks back 1 hour, as a joke.
The police had found a discarded claw hammer on a plot of land or an allotment a short distance from the Saywell home. They said it was wet and blood-stained. The only other physical evidence of an intruder was two impressions of size 7 slippers — not shoes. There was no evidence of fingerprints apart from the bloody smudges on the wallet. Again it suggests the evidence was moved by a resident wearing their nightclothes and slippers. With the fingerprints wiped off the hammer with something wet, like a towel.
But finally, the inquest was concluded with an open verdict. The coroner said in court that Jack Saywell could sleep soundly. He was not going to be arrested for the murder and attempted murder of his parents. As a consequence, it meant that Jack received a part of his inheritance from his father and was now wealthy enough to lead his own independent life. His brother Tom would have to wait 6 years until he was 21. Jack Saywell left the rented home in Bellevue Hill to live in the Mansion House Hotel in Darlinghurst. Perhaps his brother lived with a Bellevue relative continuing his education. The other assumed murdered woman Philomena Morgan was last seen at 3 Ross Street Darlinghurst. Had she too been battered in the head — as if with a hammer and then shot as she lay asleep in her nightclothes?
The probate for the estate of Victor Claude Saywell was delayed for 2 months as they searched for his second Will that was missing at Saywell & Saywell, his own solicitor’s firm. Perhaps the bedroom had been searched by the killer looking for his new Will so it could be destroyed. There was no evidence his second Will was found. Meaning there were no new conditions on Jack inheriting from his father like he couldn’t marry a Catholic girl or own a car. The first Will was recreated via a solicitor in New Zealand. It was dated 1933 for a Will remade for 1923. The original witnesses may have even been dead. Effectively, the original Will was a fantasy created by the Saywell family in New Zealand. Except there was no clause about marrying a Roman Catholic girl showing it lacked one key element that was present in all the Wills of the Saywell parents and brothers. There was also no signature by Victor Claude Saywell.
In November 1932, Jean Comerford’s mother Blanche died. It was said that it was expected as she had been ill for quite some time. But there was now no intention of the wealthy financially independent Jack Saywell to marry Jean Comerford. He renewed his focus on fast cars. After 1932 he was repeatedly stopped and arrested for driving dangerously. He was often stopped speeding through Sydney at 60 mph and received fines. On one occasion he had his driving licence suspended for one month. On another occasion, he challenged his pending lifetime suspension and won. He inferred that his history of speeding was in his adolescent past and he was now a sensible citizen. Even though as a married man he had purchased the fastest car in Australia. In 1936 he married Eileen Beavis Fay and later they had a child. they named John Saywell. For their honeymoon, they travelled to San Francisco and Hawaii. There is also evidence in newspapers that Jack took photos at car racing events.
Unfortunately, just days after receiving his inheritance in 1937, his brother Tom Saywell died in a car accident. It is never fully explained in the media the nature of that accident though one account details how he was with three car salesmen and two were thrown from the car when he stopped suddenly. Later he skidded across the road driving the one salesman home, crashed and Tom was killed. He was driving in a drunken state. Once again Jack Saywell inherited another $50,000. He was almost like a 1938 double millionaire benefiting from the death of his father and brother. He could also anticipate inheriting the remaining part of his mother’s estate which could have grown to be over $100,000. Jack bought the most expensive and fastest 8-cylinder car he could find from Italy, an Alfa Romeo. It was capable of 130 mph. He switched the focus of his life from being a law clerk to being a racing driver travelling to events to race his Alfa Romeo. He was a full-time playboy. If he had wanted to he could have bought the Mansion House hotel in Darlinghurst instead of being a paying guest.
But the outstanding question is whether he and his brother both murdered their parents with hammer blows. To attack two people and not be heard would require a detailed plan for a single person — such as drugging the victims. Tom had been sitting in their bedroom just before they went to sleep. Did he make sure they took sleeping tablets or used chloroform? Also, the damp towel under the door could be to muffle the sound of screams so the maid would not hear. This scenario would mean Tom would have to escape via the balcony and down to the ground in his size 7 slippers to dispose of the hammer. It might explain why he appeared in court in crutches as if he twisted his ankle jumping to the ground from the balcony. He could get back to his room via the back door with the key when his brother returned at 2 am. Tom’s reckless drunkenness, when he became 21, suggested a troubled mind.
One other question was whether his brother Jack (assuming he did kill his parents) went on to kill other victims. We have the 1932 murder of Jean Morris and the 1934 murder of the Pyjama Girl, whom some say was Linda Agostini. The Pyjama girl was hit with a blunt object like a hammer on the left side of her head eight or ten times and then shot. In March 1933 a maid named Emily Smith was attacked with a hammer in Bellevue Hill again near the rented home of the Saywells. She was supposedly robbed for the change in her purse. But in 1932, Mr Govett’s 18-year-old son Philip Herbert was attacked at night with a hatchet with a razor blade embedded in it. The police said the boy must have been lying on the left side of his head when attacked with the hatchet. The police arrested his 81-year-old father because the maid Lily Pearson saw him emerging from the son’s bedroom. But the neighbour’s maid Emily Smith said she had seen the killer repeatedly lurking in the shadows. His neighbour Doctor Foy had also previously seen a prowler lurking in the bushes. As a result, he purchased a burglar alarm. The witnesses and the police would have known it was not the elderly Mr Govett. The police even stated the motive was about someone being envious of his inheritance. But they arrested Mr Govett and put him in a penitentiary under medical supervision and then into an asylum. The police didn’t seem to link the attack of Emily Smith in March 1933 with her being able to identify the killer of Philip Govett in 1932. Her picture had been put in a newspaper in 1932 making it easier for the killer to identify her. The police arresting Mr Govett meant they stopped looking for the night prowler who had leapt the fence and climbed the verandah into his home. You have to wonder why the police would arrest an 81-year-old who had doted on his son. They declared he had murdered his son while insane. You have to consider which wealthy person the police were protecting who lived in Bellevue. Perhaps someone who could watch the neighbourhood police patrols from his bedroom before carrying out an attack.
It is interesting that Betaface facial ID software determines that the murdered woman Jean Morris, the murdered woman Linda Agostini, Jack’s girlfriend Jean Comerford and his wife Eileen were near identical in their appearance. In the court case about the Pyjama Girl in 1944 Dr Palmer-Benbow said he had previously investigated one crime. But he didn’t explain which case it was. Had he used his facial ID system with all these women he might have found his killer. Perhaps a serial killer. Betaface software shows these women were all about 80% alike. Did the killer find women who looked alike, or perhaps like his mother?
There are also other pieces of evidence of the 1934 killer worth considering. He left the body in the culvert in the Pyjama Girl case, set it on fire, and then sped away at about 70 mph according to a witness in a powerful car. Dr Benbow in his evidence also said the body may have been carried there as if on top of a horse. The sort of car driven by Jack Saywell didn’t have space for luggage. You’d have to drape a body in a sack (perhaps a potato sack) over the bonnet with such a car — like a body on top of a horse.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f2/Alfa_romeo_p3.jpg
Also similar to the Saywell case there was a towel at the crime scene. A further clue was all the hammer blows to the head of Mr and Mrs Saywell were to the left side of their heads — the same as the Pyjama Girl. Years later Jack Saywell was also prosecuted for owning six illegal guns.
But as always with these mysteries, there is always another twist. Victor Saywell’s brother Thomas Stanley Saywell had been present in 1922 when a bank manager Frank Cecil Kemmis was hammered to death on a train. Again the murder weapon was discarded on empty ground. But is there a link to the murder of bank manager Kemmis or was it a copycat murder? At that time Thomas Saywell was living with Hardy Eustace and his wife. He had a child with her. Originally the child was probably named John Evan Eustace but was later named John Evan Saywell when he was adopted by Thomas Saywell.
The later Will of Victor Staywell was never found. The original 1923 Will made Thomas Stanley Saywell the sole beneficiary of Victor’s business interests and gave Victor’s wife only $1000 a year to live on but only if she remained a widow. The second Will filed with Saywell & Saywell could not be found by Thomas Stanley Saywell, a major beneficiary in the first Will. Thomas Stanley Saywell had a curious personal life fleeing to Reno to get married to Hardy Eustace’s wife and taking his child, John. He then had adoption papers created for John. The Australian courts said they would not recognise that marriage and ordered Thomas to pay the husband compensation and return the child to Australia. Also after the murder of the bank manager Kemmis, he fled to San Francisco. Did he realise he was the intended target? Furthermore, the evidence in the Kemmis case was similar to the Saywell case — prior to the attack on the train the home had been raided but nothing was taken apart from some cash. They also believe they had been drugged with chloroform. I doubt they checked for chloroform in the Saywell case. Was the wet towel under the door to keep the chloroform trapped in the room? But also that the blows were only to the left side of the head again suggesting a similar person carried them out. A person who didn’t want to see into the eyes of his victims.
In the inquest, it was said that Jack Saywell was like a hawk moving rapidly watching the proceedings, but his brother Tom kept his head down — avoiding eye contact with the people in the courtroom.
