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The deadly shots that still ring through the decades

 

The following article appeared in the Nottingham Evening Post on 2 November 2010:

THE killer of Samuel Fell Wilson was cold-blooded, brutal and heartless... and a deadly shot.

Standing by the roadside with a shotgun, he blasted the 40-year-old as he drove by, forcing him to swerve off the road.

Coolly, the killer then walked up to the stalled car and shot his victim again, in the face. Two deadly wounds – but what the police could not understand was why he also attacked the stricken man with a hammer, breaking three of his ribs.

Did he want to make sure his victim was dead, to finish him off? Once his grisly task was over, the killer robbed Wilson of around £20 and disappeared into the night.

All this happened 80 years ago, in the north Notts village of Market Warsop. And to this day, no one knows who pulled the trigger that sent Wilson, a married man with a young daughter, to his death.

The story of this vicious crime has been revived by local author Stephen Lomax [NB: My name is not Stephen], in his new book Unsolved Murders In And Around Derbyshire.

He looks back on a police operation that began with great optimism that the killer would be caught quickly.

But, as no firm leads could be found, it ran out of steam until the file was put to one side.

Top Scotland Yard detectives, led by the flamboyant Detective Chief Inspector James Berrett, were sent to Nottinghamshire to lead the manhunt after Wilson's body was discovered in his Morris Cowley car in the early hours of September 23, 1930.

Wilson had been shot in the shoulder, a disabling wound that forced him to crash his car on the verge, and once through the left cheek, penetrating his skull. It was a callous execution.

The motive was believed to be robbery. Mr Wilson was a grocer and insurance collector, known to drive between calls with a considerable amount of cash.

As the village church overflowed with mourners at his funeral, DCI Berrett's team began hauling in suspects: poachers, gun-owners, any ne'er-do-well they could find.

Although fingerprinting was still in its infancy, there was great hope that prints lifted from the car could help pin the crime on the guilty man, but to no avail.

Nor could police find the gun, although they did turn up a bloodstained hammer in a nearby hedge which probably caused Mr Wilson's broken ribs.

The police kept the curious, concerned, public at bay with repeated promises that the killer would soon be caught, at one point announcing that they had a prime suspect, but as September moved into October there was little sign that a breakthrough was imminent.

The manhunt briefly switched to Nottingham when a woman handed over two bloodstained banknotes in a city pub but she was never identified. In the middle of October, DCI Berrett and his team returned to London. They had given up the chase.

A year later, a mysterious letter was received from a Mr L Westney, who claimed he had employed an unnamed man who had made what sounded like a confession. Local police chief Detective Inspector Harris dismissed the link as "the fabrication of a man's fertile mind" and that effectively ended the investigation.

Wilson's daughter Filisa, who was only 17 months old when her father was killed, said: "My mother was devastated and never really recovered."

They lived for a time with Filisa's grandparents before having to make a new life in the village, Samuel's widow opening a grocery store in Clumber Street.

But in later years the strain told on Mrs Wilson and her daughter was forced to give up her dream of becoming a doctor to care for her. Mrs Wilson died in 1950. She was 59.

Filista said: "I married a boy from Carlton, and we moved south. Life goes on. I bear no grudge or wish for retribution but, dear God, after all these years, [I want] only to know why my father had to die; whose hand pulled the trigger?"

Author Scott Lomax said: "Eighty years on from this awful murder, the residents of Warsop still want justice for Samuel Fell Wilson."

Scott claims to have heard from a number of people who have given possible names of the killer.

 
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