Bodies Under the Bridge: Dr. Buck Ruxton Part I

 

Buck Ruxton (born Bukhtyar Chompa Rustomji Ratanji Hakim; 21 March 1899 – 12 May 1936) was an Indian-born physician convicted and subsequently hanged for the September 1935 murders of his common-law wife, Isabella Ruxton (née Kerr), and the family housemaid, Mary Jane Rogerson, at his home in Lancaster, England. These murders are informally known as the Bodies Under the Bridge and the Jigsaw Murders, while Ruxton himself became known as The Savage Surgeon.

The case became known as the "Bodies Under the Bridge" due to the location, near the Dumfriesshire town of Moffat in the Southern Uplands of Scotland, where the bodies were found. The case was also called the "Jigsaw Murders" because of the painstaking efforts to re-assemble and identify the victims and then determine the place of their murder. Ruxton earned the title of "The Savage Surgeon" due to his occupation and the extensive mutilation he inflicted upon his victims' bodies.

The prosecution of Ruxton's murders would prove to be one of the United Kingdom's most publicized legal cases of the 1930s. The case itself is primarily remembered for the innovative forensic techniques employed to identify the victims and prove that their murders had been committed within the Ruxton household.

Early life

Childhood and youth

Buck Ruxton was born in Bombay, British India, on 21 March 1899 into a wealthy middle-class Parsi family of Indian-French origin.

Ruxton received a respectable upbringing, and despite being a sensitive youth with few friends, he was highly intelligent and received a thorough education. By his teenage years, he had resolved to seek a career in medicine. With the financial support of his parents, Ruxton studied at the University of Bombay, where he qualified as a Bachelor of Medicine in 1922. The following year, he qualified as a Bachelor of Surgery at the same institute. Shortly after completing his studies, Ruxton obtained employment at a Bombay hospital, where he specialized in medicine, midwifery, and gynaecology.

On 29 October 1923, Ruxton was commissioned into the Indian Medical Service as a medical officer; he served in postings at Basra and, later, Baghdad, before relinquishing his commission in October 1926.

In May 1925, Ruxton married a Parsi woman named Motibai Jehangirji Ghadiali. The marriage was an arranged one, which ultimately turned out to be short-lived. When Ruxton relocated to Britain the following year, he concealed all evidence of this marriage, although in 1928, he did contact his father-in-law, Jehangirji, requesting he immediately send him the sum of £200 via telegraphic transfer.

Relocation to Britain

With financial assistance from his family and the Bombay Medical Service, Ruxton relocated to Britain in 1926. He attended medical courses at London's University College Hospital under the name Gabriel Hakim, before moving to Edinburgh in 1927 to begin studies towards obtaining a Fellowship of the Royal Colleges of Surgeons. Although Ruxton failed his entrance examination, the General Medical Council authorized his practising medicine in the United Kingdom on the strength of the qualifications he had earlier obtained in Bombay. Shortly thereafter, he legally changed his name via deed poll to "Buck Ruxton".

While studying to become a Fellow of the Royal Colleges of Surgeons in Edinburgh, Ruxton became acquainted with a 26-year-old woman named Isabella Van Ess, who managed a café in the city. At the time of their acquaintance, Isabella was still legally married to a Dutchman whom she had wed in 1919, but this marriage had only lasted a matter of weeks, and she had resumed using her maiden name of Kerr. The two began courting, and Isabella was with Ruxton when he relocated to England in 1928. He worked as a locum to a London doctor, a fellow Parsi named Manek Motofram, and later as an assistant to a Stepney-based doctor named. B. R. Rygate. The following year, Isabella gave birth to the couple's first child, a daughter they named Elizabeth.

Establishment of medical practice

In 1930 the Ruxtons relocated from London to Lancaster, Lancashire, where he established a medical practice at his family home at 2 Dalton Square. Ruxton had made great efforts to assimilate himself into British society, and he quickly acquired a reputation among his patients as a diligent and compassionate general physician who was well respected and popular within the community. He is known to have waived his treatment fees on several occasions when he felt his patients could not afford to pay them. The following year, a second daughter, Diane, was born. Two years later, in 1933, Isabella gave birth to a son named William. The same year, the Ruxtons employed a young maid and live-in housekeeper named Mary Jane Rogerson, primarily to care for their children.

Jealousy and domestic violence

Despite his esteemed reputation within the Lancaster community, the relationship between Buck and Isabella Ruxton was fraught, and he became increasingly suspicious of Isabella's alleged infidelity, reportedly exploding into fits of rage or bouts of tearful hysteria and self-pity behind closed doors. On several occasions, these arguments would prompt Isabella to pack her belongings and return to Edinburgh with her children, although inevitable phone calls from Ruxton in which he would tearfully plead with Isabella to return to Lancaster would prompt her to return to him, and he would later state to investigators that on the frequent occasions Isabella would return to Dalton Square, she would almost invariably say to him: "I wonder how I could ever pick up an argument with you".

It is unknown just when Ruxton began to accuse Isabella of adultery and assault her, although loud quarrels between the couple had resulted in police interventions on several occasions. The disputes between the couple occasionally had to be settled at the Lancaster police station, where police would observe Ruxton talking erratically before bursting into tears. Furthermore, Isabella is known to have attempted suicide by inert gas asphyxiation in 1932, and this suicide attempt had resulted in her suffering a miscarriage.

On one occasion in 1933, Isabella complained to police that her husband had begun beating her; when police visited Ruxton's practice to investigate her claims, Ruxton denied he had assaulted his wife, alleging that Isabella had been unfaithful to him. Nonetheless, within twenty-four hours of this incident, Isabella had returned to her partner. On another occasion in April 1934 a Lancaster policeman had been called to the Ruxton household following another quarrel. Upon his arrival, the officer was informed by Ruxton: "Sergeant, I feel like murdering two persons ... my wife is going out to meet a man".

In early September 1935 Isabella Ruxton travelled to Edinburgh to visit one of her sisters. In her company were a prominent Lancaster family named Edmondson, with whom the Ruxtons were closely acquainted. To tend to the needs of his practice, Ruxton himself did not accompany his common-law wife on this trip, and thus remained in Lancaster. He would later confess to investigators that he had been convinced that as Isabella had been known to occasionally keep social company with a young man named Robert Edmondson]—an assistant editor in the local Town Hall—she had been conducting an affair with him, and thus had used this trip as a means for the pair to continue their supposed affair. Hotel records would later confirm each adult had booked into separate rooms while they had stayed in Edinburgh.

Murders

Commission

On the evening of 14 September 1935 Isabella Ruxton left the family home to view the Blackpool Illuminations and visit two of her sisters (who both lived near Blackpool). She left Blackpool to return home at approximately 11:30 pm. Upon her return to Dalton Square in the early hours of Sunday, 15 September, Ruxton's jealousy and paranoia apparently overwhelmed him, and he most likely strangled Isabella into submissiveness, unconsciousness, or death with his bare hands, before beating and stabbing her body. Either to prevent their housemaid from discovering his crime or because she had actually witnessed the act, Ruxton extensively bludgeoned and either strangled or asphyxiated Mary Jane Rogerson; he probably also stabbed her body either before or after death. The amount of blood subsequently discovered on the stairs, walls, and carpeting of the Ruxton household indicates excessive blood flow prior to the bodies' mutilation, leading to the conclusion that Ruxton had stabbed either or both of the victims extensively shortly before or after death, or during the actual act of murder.

On the day prior to the murders, Ruxton informed one of the two charwomen he and Isabella employed not to come to his premises until Monday 16 September; within hours of the murders he had visited the home of the other charwoman he employed and likewise told her not to clean his premises until 16 September, explaining that Isabella and Mary Jane had travelled to Edinburgh. After he had driven his children to the home of a Morecambe dentist with whom he and Isabella had formed a close friendship and asked the couple to look after his children for the day, he returned to his home and proceeded to extensively dismember and mutilate both bodies in the bathroom of his home in an effort to hide their identities. Several hours later, at approximately 4.30 pm, Ruxton visited the home of one of his patients, a Mrs Hampshire, and asked both her and, shortly thereafter, her husband to return to Dalton Square with him to help him "prepare for the decorators", who were expected to arrive the following morning to perform work he claimed had been arranged several months previously.

 

When Mrs Hampshire arrived at Dalton Square, she found the house in a state of disarray. As she would later testify at Ruxton's trial, all the carpeting had been removed from the stairs, and several sections of the flooring were littered with straw, which also protruded from beneath a locked bedroom door. Moreover, in the waiting-room of the property, Mrs. Hampshire discovered several rolled-up sections of carpeting, stair-pads, and a stained suit. In the garden of the property, she also discovered two further sections of carpeting, and several burned towels. Before the Hampshires left Dalton Square, they were given several sections of stained stair carpeting and Ruxton's stained suit to keep, upon the condition they thoroughly cleaned them.

Discovery

On the morning of 29 September 1935 a young woman named Susan Haines Johnson glanced over the parapet of an old stone bridge located 2 miles (3 km) north of the Dumfriesshire town of Moffat. Upon the banks of the stream—named Gardenholme Linn—which ran beneath the bridge, Johnson noted a bundle wrapped in fabric that had lodged against a boulder, with a partially decomposed human arm protruding from the package.

Police from the Dumfriesshire Constabulary were called to the scene. Discovering the remains within the package were human, officers searched the stream, surrounding ravines, and the nearby Annan River, discovering two human heads, and four further bundles, each containing extensively mutilated human remains including thigh bones, legs, sections of flesh, and a human torso and pelvis. These human remains were in an advanced state of decomposition, and had been wrapped in bedsheets, a pillow-case, children's clothing, and several newspapers (two editions of the Daily Herald dated 6 and 31 August 1935, an edition of the Sunday Graphic dated 15 September 1935, and undated portions of the Sunday Chronicle).

"Of the four bundles recovered during the initial search, the first was wrapped in a blouse and contained two upper arms and four pieces of flesh; the second bundle comprised two thigh bones, two legs from which most flesh had been stripped, and nine pieces of flesh, all wrapped in a pillow-case; the third was a piece of cotton sheeting containing seventeen portions of flesh; the fourth parcel, also wrapped in cotton sheeting, consisted of a human trunk, two legs with the feet tied with the hem of a cotton sheet and some wisps of straw and cotton wool. In addition, other packages opened to reveal two heads, one of which was wrapped in a child's rompers; a quantity of cotton wool and sections from the Daily Herald of 6 August 1935; two forearms with hands attached but minus the top joints of the fingers and thumbs; and several pieces of skin and flesh. One part was wrapped in the Sunday Graphic dated 15 September."

On 1 October the remains were examined at Moffat mortuary by the forensic scientist John Glaister Jr., and a doctor named Gilbert Millar. Both men determined the 70 separate sections of human remains thus far discovered were those of two females of notably different heights and ages, and that the mutilation conducted upon the remains had been committed by an individual with extensive anatomical knowledge in an obvious effort to complicate the identification of the remains. In addition to the extensive mutilation across both victims' entire bodies, which both Professor Glaister and Dr. Millar deduced had been entirely committed with a surgical knife as opposed to either a saw or an axe, the murderer had removed the eyes, ears, skin, lips, soft tissue, and several teeth from both heads to make identification via dental records or composite drawings impossible, with additional attention being devoted to areas of the body where possible distinguishing features such as operational scars or vaccinations may have been visible. The perpetrator had also removed the fingertips from the sole set of hands initially discovered, and had completely pared all flesh from the legs of one victim, and from the thighs of the other.

Glaister also noted in his autopsy reports that had the perpetrator actually thrown the remains into the nearby Annan River as opposed to the tributary river Linn (which had been swollen with heavy rains at the time), the bundles would likely have flowed into the Solway Firth, thus delaying or permanently preventing their discovery.

Given the proximity of the Gardenholme Linn stream to such a major arterial road, detectives from Glasgow CID—who had already established the remains were unlikely to be those of local individuals—began to consider the possibility the perpetrator had traveled to the Southern Uplands to dispose of the remains, and may have been unfamiliar with the area.

Investigation

Autopsies

The two bodies were transported to the Anatomy Department of the University of Edinburgh, where they were first treated with ether to prevent further decomposition and destroy all maggot infestation, then preserved in a formalin solution before being reconstructed prior to Professors Glaister, James Couper Brash, and Sydney Smith conducting their formal autopsies. A further bundle containing human remains was discovered shortly after the two bodies had been transported to the University of Edinburgh; this bundle contained two human forearms, with hands attached. The fingerprints had not been completely obliterated from the sole pair of hands found with the remains, and as such, investigators were able to obtain a complete set of fingerprints.

To approximate the time of death of the victims, Dumfriesshire police requested the assistance of a Glasgow-based entomologist named Alexander Mearns, who, using the then-fledgling techniques of forensic entomology to identify the age of the maggots found upon the remains, studied the life cycle of the pupae found upon the bodies in order to approximate a time of death of both victims. From his examination of the pupae found upon both sets of remains, Mearns conclusively determined the pupae had originated from a particular breed of blowfly known as Calliphora vicina, and that the maggots discovered on the remains had been laid in the immediate vicinity where they were discovered. Mearns deduced the remains could not have lain where they were discovered for less than 12 to 14 days. This conclusion suggested the victims' bodies could not have been disposed of in the location they were found after 17 September.

From the skull sutures on both bodies, Glaister and Smith were able to determine that one of the bodies was that of a woman aged about 30 to 55, probably between 35 and 45, and that the second body was that of a woman aged between 18 and 25, probably aged between 20 and 21 at the time of her murder. In reference to the cause of death, the older woman had five stab wounds to the chest, several broken bones, and numerous bruises. In addition, her lungs were remarkably congested, and her hyoid bone had been broken, indicating she had been strangled before the other injuries had been inflicted. The limbs and head of the second victim bore signs of excessive blunt force trauma, indicating she had been extensively bludgeoned with an unknown instrument. Professors Glaister, Brash, and Smith further concluded the mutilation of the two bodies would have taken approximately eight hours to complete, and that the two bodies had been drained of both blood and viscera at the time of their dismemberment.

Lancaster connection

Several of the pages of the Sunday Graphic in which the remains had been wrapped had been a souvenir edition of the newspaper which had been printed and circulated solely in the Morecambe and Lancaster area of England on 15 September, strongly suggesting the two victims and/or their murderer lived in North West England. As such, Inspector Jeremiah Lynch of Scotland Yard—who had been called in to assist the investigation at the request of the Chief Constable of Dumfriesshire—focused his efforts on recent missing persons reports filed within this section of England on or shortly after 15 September. In addition, the fact several sections of the victims' remains had been discovered several hundred yards downstream on the banks of the Gardenholme Linn and the Annan River suggested a date on or prior to 19 September as to when the remains had been thrown into the stream, as that had been the final date of heavy rainfall in the area and thus when the flow of water had been much greater than at the time of the victims' discovery. Furthermore, sections of the clothing in which the dismembered remains had been found were also distinctive, with unique factors such as repair patches beneath armpits upon a blouse, and knots used to tie a pair of distinctive child's rompers, suggesting either or both of the victims may have borne children.

Five days before the discovery of the human remains in Moffat, Ruxton had visited Lancaster police, claiming his wife had "once again" deserted him; he had earlier visited the Morecambe household of the parents of the family maid, Mary Jane Rogerson, claiming their daughter, having recently engaged in an affair with a local youth, had become pregnant and that his wife had agreed to discreetly take her away from their home to arrange an abortion. As abortions were at that time illegal in Britain, Ruxton had urged the Rogersons not to contact the police.

On 1 October the Rogersons visited Ruxton at his practice. On this occasion, he attempted to placate their fears for Mary Jane's safety by claiming both she and his wife had broken into his safe and stolen £30 before eloping from his household. Despite Ruxton's insistence on this occasion that his wife and Mary Jane would almost certainly return once they had spent the money, the fact Ruxton had now given the Rogersons contrary explanations as to why his wife and their daughter were missing from his household aroused their suspicions. As such, the following day, they filed a missing person’s report with Morecambe police. (Ruxton himself would not visit Lancaster police to formally report his wife and maid as missing until 4 October).

Identification

On 9 October Scottish police visited the Rogerson household and asked Mary Jane's parents if they were able to identify any sections of clothing in which the bodies had been wrapped: Mrs Rogerson immediately recognised a blouse with distinct patchwork repair beneath one armpit as having belonged to her daughter, whom they had last seen on Saturday 14 September. Mrs Rogerson was unable to identify the pair of child's rompers shown to her, but suggested the police should show the garment to a friend of hers named Edith Holme, who lived in Grange-over-Sands and with whom Isabella, Mary Jane, and the Ruxton children had briefly lodged earlier that year on a brief vacation to Morecambe Bay. When Mrs Holme saw the rompers, she immediately recognised them as a pair she had bought for one of the Ruxton children the previous summer.

Conversing with his Lancashire counterpart, the Chief Constable of Dumfriesshire discovered that Mary Jane's employer, Ruxton, had informally reported his wife missing the previous month, and that the final confirmed sightings of Isabella alive by anyone other than Ruxton himself had been on the evening of 14 September, when she had left her two sisters in Blackpool to return to her Lancaster home, having travelled to the seaside resort to view the Blackpool Illuminations.

The same day that police identified several items of the clothing used to wrap the dismembered remains, Ruxton again visited the Lancaster police station; on this occasion, he burst into tears, complaining that local rumors had begun to circulate regarding the discoveries of the human remains in Scotland as being those of his wife and maid, and that these rumors were proving to be detrimental to both his medical practice and his general reputation. He then requested they conduct discreet enquiries to locate his wife and maid, before demanding police search his house to quash these rumours. Although Ruxton was placated by officers before being driven home, at this point he was considered the prime suspect in the murders by all law enforcement personnel thus far involved in the investigation. Lancaster police had by this stage spoken to one of the Ruxtons' two charladies, Agnes Oxley, who confirmed to officers that on 15 September, Ruxton had arrived at her home and informed her that it was unnecessary for her to work at his premises until the following day, and that when she had arrived at 2 Dalton Square the following day, the house had been in a general state of shambles, with carpets removed, a pile of burned fabric-like material in the garden, and the bathtub extensively stained with a yellowish discoloration. Furthermore, Ruxton had specifically requested she clean the bathtub that day, before explaining to her that the reason his hand was bandaged was that he had jammed it in a door.

Conversing with the Ruxtons' neighbours, Lancaster police also discovered that Ruxton had asked Mrs Hampshire and her husband to extensively clean his house in preparation for redecoration, explaining that he was unable to do so himself as he had badly cut his hand opening a tin of fruit several days earlier. He had also given the Hampshires several stained carpets and a suit, saying they could keep them if they washed them.