Home Feed
Home
Search
Search
Add Review, Blurb, Quote
Add
Activity
Activity
Profile
Profile
The Wigwam Murder
The Wigwam Murder: A Forensic Investigation in WW2 Britain | M J Trow
1 post | 1 read
Nobody expected a corpse in the tranquil Surrey countryside near Godalming, even though there was a war on and tanks churned the soil on maneuvers. The body belonged to 19-year-old Joan Pearl Wolfe, a sweet, convent-educated girl who, according to her own mother, had gone bad. It was 1942 and England was swarming with British, Canadian and American troops building up to what would become D-Day two years later. The Surrey police, over-stretched as all forces were during the war, called in Scotland Yard, the experts, in the form of Superintendent Ted Greeno, one of the most famous and formidable detectives of his day. One of the Surrey detectives recognized the dead girls dress he had seen it on its owner weeks earlier and from that the bodys identity came to light. Joan was a camp follower with a string of men interested in her, but her latest beau was the Mtis Canadian August Sangret. He had slipped out to live with Joan in woods near to the camp and had built shacks wigwams as temporary homes. Charged with her murder, he gave the longest statement ever made to the police seventeen pages of it and Keith Simpson, the Home Office pathologist, became the first to produce a human skull in court. The distinctive wounds inflicted by Sangrets knife convinced the jury of his guilt and he was hanged by Albert Pierrepoint in Wandsworth gaol. An open and shut case? Far from it. For all the brilliance of forensic science and the dogged work of the police, the jury should still be out on August Sangret. As the judge said in his summing up, there is no blood on this man.
Amazon Indiebound Barnes and Noble WorldCat Goodreads LibraryThing
review
OutsmartYourShelf
post image
Mehso-so

England, 1942 & American & Canadian soldiers were billeted in the Surrey countryside awaiting details of their next posting. One soldier was Private August Sangret who struck up a relationship with local girl, Joan Wolfe, one that Joan thought would be leading to marriage. For weeks witnesses usually saw them together, including living in a hastily constructed 'wigwam' or tipi in the woods until one day Joan disappeared. (continued)

OutsmartYourShelf Sangret searched for her for a while but then seemed to be over it & he told anyone who asked that Joan had gone away on a course.

When Joan's body was found in a shallow grave, the lead detective honed in on Sangret. He was not the first or only soldier that Joan had been involved with, but he was executed by hanging for her murder. The forensic evidence was mainly inconclusive so was Sangret actually guilty,
3w
OutsmartYourShelf or was he a scapegoat due to his Métis (mixed European & indigenous Canadian ancestry) background?

This was an interesting read about a case I had never heard of before, but the timeline seemed a bit confusing to me. The narrative jumped around over lots of different background stories & it was difficult to work out what had happened when. The author argues that Sangret did not get a fair trial due to his skin colour & background.
3w
OutsmartYourShelf The investigation was certainly perfunctory in some respects as Sangret was by no means the first or only soldier to have a relationship with Joan, but none of the others seem to have been investigated. At present, I'm not 100% convinced that Sangret wasn't the killer but there is certainly enough evidence to suggest that other avenues should have been investigated more fully. Overall, an interesting if slightly confusing read. 3⭐
3w
See All 6 Comments
DieAReader 🎉Excellent! 3w
Andrew65 Well done 🎉🎉🎉 2w
29 likes6 comments