Donald Hume
Citv.com.au
Profile
When the torso of wealthy businessman Stanley Setty
appeared in the Essex marshes outside London in 1949, police had a
difficult case to crack. They eventually arrested Donald Hume, a
business associate of Setty, but all they could prove was that Hume had
dumped the body - they couldn't prove he had committed the murder. Hume
was sentenced to twelve years imprisonment for being an accessory to
murder. On his release in 1958 Hume admitted that he had killed Setty
during an argument at his apartment, but now he was free to commit
further evil - he was soon back in prison after killing a taxi driver in
Switzerland.
In his book ‘Hume: Portrait of a Double Murderer’
author John Williams described Hume’s pathological mind as manifested
through his angry facial expressions.
‘His eyes in moments of rage, stare out with a frozen,
unblinking malevolence. If expression means anything, the eyes of Donald
Hume are in truth the eyes of a killer’.
Donald Hume’s early life had been fraught with
emotional tension and trauma. His experiences led him, by his own
admittance in his book ‘Confession’ written while he was serving behind
bars, to become a one-man vendetta against the world.
“I was born with a chip on my shoulder” he confessed
and this chip had grown from the moment he was abandoned at an orphanage
by his mother. According to Hume his bugbear with society grew from
being illegitimate, deprived of a home and a mother’s love, denied not
only by her but also by other members of his family.
Hume was the illegitimate son of a school mistress,
born in Swanage in December, 1919. He was shortly abandoned by his
mother to the West Country orphanage, which he loathed, particularly the
three old ladies who ran it.
The place was bleak and forbidding, but worse it was
also lacking in any compassion for the children who at that particular
time were looked upon as the product of sin and treated accordingly. The
proprietors even kept a parrot that shouted out the word ‘bastard’ just
to remind the young residents of their lowly position in life.
Life in the orphanage was tough and devoid of the
usual comforts expected in a family home. Often eight children would
sleep in an iron bed and food was sparse. Punishments included being
locked in a filthy, dank cellar for hours on end but more disturbing was
the creation by the proprietors of an eerie character known as the ‘old
green gypsy’.
A member of staff would dress up in green garb and
appear as a visitation to scare the children. The ‘green gypsy’ also
carried a green walking stick that rattled as the amateur actor in drag
performed their macabre act to scare the wits out of the young residents.
One day after been locked in the cellar with a young
girl for a misdemeanour, the two youngsters became terrified when they
believed they were about to be visited by the Green Gypsy. But Hume
recognised the feet under the Green Gypsy’s dress as belonging to a
member of staff and in a fit of anger at being conned by a cruel myth,
chased the member of staff with an axe. He was then only seven years old.
Finally, Hume experienced some youthful happiness
when he was adopted by his grandmother and taken away from the home. But
any sense of security was short-lived as he was soon sent to live with
his mother’s sister, Aunt Doodie who was headmistress of a small
Hampshire village school.
Far from being loving, Aunt Doodie turned out to be
as cold and unforgiving as the proprietors of the orphanage. Doodie also
had two daughters, Peggy and Betty and while the girls offered
opportunities for Hume to play and feel involved in some kind of family
life for the most part he was excluded from social occasions. The
situation began to reflect a ‘Cinderella’ scenario with Doodie, her
husband and the girls going off on holiday while leaving the young Hume
at home to look after the house and chickens. On one occasion Donald was
so miffed at being left out of a holiday excursion that he took the
house shotgun and blasted Doodie’s favourite cockerel, before throwing
it into the cesspool. When Aunt Doodie returned the boy made out that
the poor creature had simply drowned.
Hume’s eventual distrust of human nature and descent
into becoming a fully paid up member of the misanthrope society,
occurred when he discovered from the mouth of the family maid, that
Doodie was in fact his real mother and not his Aunt.
This revelation, according to Hume himself, was the
catalyst to make him bear a grudge against society even more. His
feelings of rejection and being betrayed were exacerbated by this
disturbing truth. Together with the fact that Aunt Doodie prevented Hume
from attending Grammar school, sending him instead to work in a kitchen,
increased his hatred for her and desire to escape. Aunt Doodie, who
taught religion and saw herself as a good Christian, kept up the
pretence that she was still his Aunt.
Originally Hume planned to get a job on the cruise
liners, but abandoned this idea when, after hitching a lift to
Hammersmith, he was befriended by a lorry driver who helped him find
accommodation and a manual job. But first Hume made his way to Somerset
House where he was determined to find out the truth about his parentage.
The brutal truth was recorded for him to see with his own eyes on his
birth certificate. Aunt Doodie was indeed his mother but there was only
a blank where the father’s name should have been written.
The man who had befriended Hume later wrote a letter
to Aunt Doodie to inform her where Donald was and if she required him to
go back home. She replied that she did not. Shortly afterwards Hume
wrote her a letter detailing without restraint what he thought about her.
‘I was vomiting the vindictiveness of my soul in
words’ he later recalled in ‘Confession’. This was to be the last time
Hume ever contacted his mother again.
From that moment on Donald Hume, at barely fifteen,
vowed to make life dance his tune. Over the next twenty years he would
become involved in everything from joining the Communist party to taking
up joy riding, petty theft and eventually graduating to fraud and
criminal activity that would bring about quick riches in any way he
could.
Strangely, his involvement with anti fascist
organisations and in particular attending rallies to fight Oswald Mosley
in the streets in 1936, was perhaps motivated by a strong desire to get
involved in physical scraps and attack the police, rather than because
he held socialist ideals and principles.
At the outbreak of the Second World War he joined the
army, not out of loyalty to his country, which he felt had given him
nothing , but out of the prospect of excitement that he believed the war
would bring him. His criminal activities involved counterfeit booze
making to supply to nightclubs and bars in London which suffered from a
shortage of liquor. Hume sold ‘Finlinson’s Old English Gin’ which was
basically surgical spirits laced with a small amount of gin. He even
bought an RAF uniform and passed himself off as pilot officer Dan Hume,
DFM.
Having peddled bootleg gin, he was now selling a
bogus personality, passing off forged cheques at RAF stations until he
was finally rumbled. His con trick activities often meant he socialised
in West End and Soho bars where he would make deals. It was in the
Hollywood bar that he first encountered the physically imposing Stanley
Setty with his flash suits and flamboyant ties. The forty-six year old
car dealer had previously done business with Hume when the latter bought
a van from him.
By this time Hume, having actually set up a
legitimate electrician’s business on Finchley Rd, in Golders Green,
north London, was now married with a child on the way. He was desperate
to move on to bigger things, make money and also have adventure. Both
men realised that they could be useful to each other.
Hume was intrigued by Setty’s blatant appearance of
wealth and prosperity. He could see that the shady car dealer had
already arrived at the coveted goal of unlimited easy money; something
that himself was striving to reach.
Both men sized each other up and Setty realised that
Hume could be useful in his operations.
Thus, Hume began to lead a double life. On one side
he had the legitimate electrician’s business and on the other he was
working for Setty, basically as his dogsbody, undertaking the role of
stealing suitable cars to match log-books that Setty possessed from
wrecked cars. The substituted cars would then be re-sprayed and touched
up.
Hume’s ability to fly a plane was also useful for
aerial smuggling – anything from contraband to illegal aliens. There was
a flourishing black market and Hume became known as the ‘Flying Smuggler’.
This sideline and his role stealing cars and forging petrol coupons for
Setty was his main means of making money. He was indifferent to the idea
of earning a living honestly. His electrician’s trade it appeared was
merely a temporary blip in his continuing fight against society.
The Crime
In the summer of 1949, Hume was happier than he’d
ever been. Cynthia, his wife gave birth to a little girl and, along with
a respectable image and apartment, he had a legitimate business. His ego
on the other hand was inflated by a deluded belief that he was part of
the ‘gangster’ world - a world concocted from the many gangster movies
he had gorged himself on week after week in the cinema.
Setty, himself a former jailbird imprisoned under
Debtors and Bankruptcy charges, was desperate to get back into business,
despite the authorities impeding his attempts. Hume had never liked
Setty, but felt compelled to work for him in order to enhance his own
wealth prospects. Why Hume disliked Setty so much is not known.
Whatever the reason, the worse thing Setty could have
done was strike out at the one thing that Hume had unconditional love
for…….his dog Tony!
Hume’s terrier accidentally ruined a re-spray job on
one of Setty’s stolen cars which prompted Setty to kick the dog in a fit
of rage. For Hume, that one act of aggression towards his darling pet
caused the brittle veneer of his friendliness towards Setty to disappear.
His suppressed resentments gave way to hatred for something that most
sane men would have forgotten in minutes. By the time he met up with
Setty again in his Finchley Rd flat he was ready to strike out at the
slightest provocation.
On Tuesday, 4th October, 1949, Stanley Setty was
carrying out his usual business transactions at Warren St in central
London. He sold a new Wolseley Twelve saloon to a dealer for £1000. The
buyer gave Setty a cheque which later that day was cashed at a bank for
two hundred £5 notes.
Later during the day Setty stopped off at Hume’s flat
to talk business. He usually let himself in. By the time Hume arrived
home and saw Setty’s car parked outside he was already building up anger.
It is not known exactly what words were exchanged
between the two men, only that a heated argument developed into a
physical fight. According to Hume’s later confession he picked up one of
his wartime souvenirs, a German SS dagger and aimed it at Setty in
defence.
Setty called Hume’s bluff and swiped at him. During a
violent grapple Setty fell to the floor where Hume slashed repeatedly at
his chest. As Setty fought back by trying to break Hume’s neck, he was
stabbed in the chest and legs. Hume then lay back and observed Setty
dying.
“I watched the life run from him like water down a
drain” he recalled in his newspaper memoirs. “I had to hurt him. This
man who had kicked my dog”
Shortly afterwards, Hume dragged Setty’s thirteen
stone body through the flat to the end kitchen where he hid it in the
coal cupboard. He then started to clean up the apartment trying to
remove bloodstains, which had seeped into the carpet and into the
floorboards. At one point, realising that he had to dispose of Setty’s
car, Hume had to retrieve car keys from the dead man’s jacket. He then
drove Setty’s car down Finchley Rd past Swiss Cottage and eventually to
Setty’s own lock up at Cambridge Terrace Mews. He was back home at
around 10.45pm where he pondered on whether he should go to the police.
It dawned on him that he might have got away with the perfect murder.
Hume thought hard about how he could get the large
body out of the flat and dispose of it without been seen. He finally
came up with the idea of dismembering the corpse, parcelling body parts
and dropping them in the sea by plane.
The next day on the 5th October, Hume began work on
his macabre plan in the early hours. He first took the stained carpet to
the next-door dry-cleaners and instructed them to dye it dark green.
While Cynthia and the baby were having breakfast, Hume touched up bare
patches on the floor with varnish. There were still stains on the sofa
that troubled Hume but his main worry was to get the body dismembered
and out of the flat while Cynthia was away.
Hume had a bank appointment that morning at 10am and,
having pocketed some of the money he found on Setty’s body, he decided
to deposit it in order to pay off an overdraft. Most of the £1000 was
bloodstained but Hume was able to retrieve £100 of undamaged notes for
himself.
When Cynthia left the flat with the baby for an
appointment at Gt Ormond Street Hospital, Hume had only ninety minutes
in which to dismember the body in the flat before the cleaning lady
arrived.
The grisly operation was easier than Hume had
imagined.
“I felt no squeamishness or horror at what I was
about to do” he recalled as he began dismembering the body using a
linoleum knife to cut to the bone and then a hacksaw.
He dismembered the legs first and packaged them up
into a parcel using carpet felt. It was only Setty’s staring eyes that
upset Hume, which he then covered as he continued to cut up the body. It
took several strokes to remove the head which he placed in a box that
contained baked beans. He also added pieces of brick and rubble to make
the parcels heavy. The torso was the most problematic and after an
abortive attempt to put it in a cabin trunk he pushed it back into the
coal cupboard. The one thing that broke his heart was having to burn the
damaged £900.
At 2.30pm Hume left the flat with two packages, the
legs under one arm and the box with the head in it. He got into a hired
car along with Tony his loyal dog, and sped towards Elstree Air field
where a light blue Austin aircraft was waiting.
It was 3pm by the time he put the gruesome parcels in
the plane and set off for Southend, despite his real destination being
the English Channel.
Ninety minutes later he could see the French coast.
He first threw out the SS dagger and tools before dumping the parcels
which sank out of sight. Later he arrived at Southend airfield and made
sure he was seen by as many people he could. It was 8.30pm by the time
he got back to his London flat.
The torso however deeply troubled him. All the time
while chatting with Cynthia and trying to keep up the pretence of
everyday life, the grisly reminder of the murder lay only a few feet
away hidden from view.
The following morning Hume arranged for a decorator
to come to the flat. The unsuspecting man also helped Hume carry the
torso, which was heavily packed with lead weights, out of the flat and
into Hume’s car. It had even gurgled while the two men carried it to the
vehicle, but Hume made a convincing excuse for its strange sounds.
Amazingly, while Hume went back to the flat to clean the coal cupboard
he left the torso in the car for an hour.
When Hume arrived at the Elstree airport a friendly
engineer helped him carry the torso onto the plane. Together with his
trusty canine companion, Hume set off again for the English Channel.
Only this time the quest to dump the evidence wasn’t so easy. At first
the torso, which rested in the back seat, wouldn’t budge when he tried
to push it out through the door.
Hume even had to hold the joystick between his legs
as he wrestled with the body part. After this failed he tilted the small
plane at an angle in order to try and get the torso to slide and smash
through the door. Finally, after a great deal of drama that nearly
involved the dog falling out of the plane, the torso released itself
from its position and fell from the aircraft. Moments later Hume was
shocked to see the weights and blanket that had covered the body had got
caught on a hook in the cabin. Realising that the torso had fallen out
just covered in carpet felt, he knew it was unlikely to sink. He
eventually managed to break the weights free leaving them and the carpet
to drop into the sea.
Hume was now faced with the worse case scenario, a
body that would float. He could see the torso bobbing in the water and
realised he had no choice but to return back to land and hope somehow
that it wouldn’t turn up on the coastline. The small speck he could
still see bobbing in the water was evidence that could hang him.
The Arrest
It wasn’t long before various people were looking for
Stanley Setty, including his sister and brother-in-law who reported him
missing. The papers printed stories with headings such as ‘Dealer With
200 Fivers Vanishes’ inferring that Setty had been killed because of the
£1000 he had on him.
Setty’s car was fingerprinted, but Hume felt
confident that with so many questions relating to the dead man’s
background and lifestyle the police would be on a wild goose chase for a
long time.
On the 8th October, the papers revealed that Scotland
Yard had issued the numbers of Setty’s £5 notes that he had received
from the bank on the morning of his death. Some of this money had been
deposited by Hume into his own bank account and also paid taxi cabs
while travelling from London to Elstree Air Field. Hume now became
worried that his blind greed, all for a miserly £100 could now lead a
trail to him.
The police also recovered a notebook belonging to
Setty which detailed all of his business associates. Then Hume’s
nightmare came true when the torso finally turned up on the Essex
mudflats on Friday, 21st October. The first witness to come forward was
a taxi driver who had been given a £5 with the published serial numbers.
He explained that he had taken a customer from Southend Airport to
Finchley Rd.
After further investigations which involved all
airfields in the area it didn’t take long before the police discovered
that Hume had hired a plane and was also an associate of Setty. They
knocked on Hume’s door at 7.30am on Thursday, 27th October.
Detectives were posted at both the front and back of
the flat. Chief Inspector Jamieson and Superintendent MacDougall
interrogated Hume at the Albany St Police Station although he kept up a
convincing plea that he had nothing to do with the murder. He denied
that he owned a car which appeared futile when he was then asked about
the ‘parcels’ he took on board the hired plane.
Realising that petty lies were not going to get him
off the hook Hume concocted an elaborate story about how he had been
offered £150 by three shady smugglers who he only knew as Mac, Greeny
and The Boy. The men asked him to drop off the parcels by plane into the
sea. Hume made out that he was desperate for the money and only later
realised that the situation was very suspect. Despite his convincing act
the officers did not believe him. After forensics had swept his Finchley
Rd flat they discovered bloodstains under the floorboards.
The Trial
Hume’s trial took place on the 18th January 1950 at
the Old Bailey. Hume stuck to his story that he had not seen Setty on
the day of his murder. He also maintained that the bloodstains had come
about because of the parcels having been in his flat. It was left to the
jury to make up its own mind on this and the story Hume stuck to that he
had carried out an errand for three smugglers.
The defence managed to find a witness who admitted
that had worked in Paris with a gang of car smugglers. His description
of the men and some of the names seemed to correlate to Hume’s story.
The jury were left to ponder whether the gang really existed and that
Hume had been an unwilling accomplice.
The Judge, Mr Justice Sellers addressed the jury and
laid out the various facts and assumptions they had to make. Could
Hume’s story about the three men delivering parcels containing Setty’s
body parts be true, especially when the men had no idea when Hume’s wife
and child would be at home? Hume also claimed that one of the men
pointed a gun at him, but why asked the judge would these men trust
someone they had only met a few days before? Finally, he reminded the
jury that if there was any doubt in the jurors’ minds about what
happened then they were compelled to return a verdict of not guilty.
On the 20th January, 1950, the jury retired at noon
after the judge’s last words. It took less than three hours for an
astonishing verdict to be announced; that they all failed to agree. Hume
himself was baffled and elated that he had not heard the word ‘Guilty’
for he knew he was now not to hang.
After twelve more jury members were sworn in, the one
indictment that Hume was found guilty of was of being an accessory after
the fact to murder. When Hume was asked if pleaded ‘Guilty’ or ‘Not
Guilty’ to this charge the canny murderer replied in the affirmative.
Hume was sentenced to just twelve years in prison.
Hume's Release and further crimes
Donald Hume was released from Dartmoor Prison on
1st February, 1958. As he had earned maximum remission for good
behavior he had only served eight years. Despite having been
incarcerated and separated from his wife, child and adored dog, Hume
still had a grievance against society. Prison life had not vanquished
the 'chip' on his shoulder and as soon as he came out newspaper
editors vied for his 'story'.
The Sunday Pictorial offered to pay Hume handsomely
for his confession on condition that they would give him ten days to
leave the country. Together with a photographer they re-enacted the
crime. Hume changed his name to Donald Brown when he met up with a
reporter for the paper and confessed his life-story.
As a result Hume became paranoid about being
recognized and began to disguise himself. He eventually took on
another alias, John Stephen Bird, someone with the same age as him
whom he had come across in the files at Somerset House.
In May 1958, with a bogus passport and £2000 he
received from the paper, he boarded a plane for Zurich to start a new
life.
It was while he was in the affluent Swiss city that
Hume reckoned that banks were a push over. He had decided on a plan to
enrich himself further and begin a new life in Canada and breed
huskies.
It was during a torrid affair with a girl called
Trudi who lived in Zurich that Hume realized he would need money in
order to continue to impress her with his elaborate lies. He treated
Trudi to expensive gifts, took her out to restaurants and eventually
told her that he wanted to marry her. In reality he only had £150 left.
He needed money fast and as he had also indulged
Trudi with tales that he was a spy for the Americans, he felt pressure
to come up with quick rich schemes in order to keep up the charade.
His solution was to rob a bank in London. Back in
England and under the guise of Donald Brown, he made plans to raid the
Midland bank on Boston Manor Rd on 1st August, 1958. Walking straight
up to cashier Frank Lewis, he shot the bank employee in the stomach
before making off with £2000. He escaped to Kew Bridge station and
within twenty-six hours was back with an unsuspecting Trudi in Zurich.
Luckily, Frank Lewis survived his ordeal. But for
Hume his was only beginning, as the police were starting to realize
that he and Donald Brown were the same man. Also Trudi, who had
already questioned Hume when she noticed his passport picture was
unrecognizable, had greater cause to be concerned when she trod on a
bullet.
Hume, ever the actor put on a convincing display as
he burst into tears and told Trudi that he was in fact not a spy for
the Americans, but the Russians and could she forgive him?
Desperate to make big bucks, Hume decided to raid
more banks but this time in Zurich. The bank he chose was the Gewerbe
Bank, one he was already familiar with. In January, 1958, carrying a
cardboard box with a gun hidden in it, Hume entered the bank at
11:30am and marched straight up to one of the counters.
He aimed the gun at cashier Walter Schenkel and
fired, before jumping over the counter and rifling the tills.
But Schenkel, mercifully was only wounded and
managed to set off the alarm bells prompting Hume to run out pursued
by passers by. As he ran down a series of alleys he finally reached
the embankment, turned round and fired at the encroaching crowd.
Arthur Maag, a fifty-year-old taxi driver tried to stop him. Hume shot
and mortally wounded the brave man. Shortly afterwards Hume was
overpowered, snarling like a dog at his captors. Maag's death was the
one crime he was not going to escape from.
With the masquerade finally over Hume was committed
to Zurich's District prison, the Regensdorf Jail, where he stood trial
for eight months. During that time he was visited by the faithful
Trudi who admitted to still loving him.
Hume was unique among criminals for facing trial
twice for two different murders in two different countries. Throughout
the trial he still tried to dominate proceedings and displayed both
egomania and a pathological lack of understanding of the magnitude of
his crimes. As there was no capital punishment in Switzerland Hume was
sentenced to hard labor for life.
In 1976 the Swiss authorities sent Hume back to
Britain where he was assessed by psychiatrists and incarcerated in
Broadmoor for fifteen years.
Timeline
1948: Hume marries Cynthia who later has a baby daughter.
October 4, 1948: Hume kills Stanley Setty in Finchley Rd flat.
October 5, 1948: Hume dismembers Setty's body and disposes parts in
English Channel.
October 6, 1948: Hume disposes of last body part, the torso.
October 8, 1949: Police issue £5 note serial numbers.
October 27, 1949: Police arrest Hume at his Finchley Rd flat.
January 18 1950: Trial at Old Bailey.
January 20, 1950: Jury delivers 'Guilty' verdict for 'accessory to
murder'.
January 2, 1958: Hume released from Dartmoor prison.
May 1958: Hume leaves for Zurich with £2000.
August 1, 1958: Hume robs Midland Bank in London.
Jan 1958: Hume robs Gwerbe bank in Zurich and kills taxi driver.
Hume is arrested.
1976: Hume sent back to Britain and to Broadmoor.
Richard Bevan
