In 1992, builders tearing down a house in Auckland’s Devonport came across a skeleton. It turned out that 60 years before, Scottish nurse Elspeth Kerr had run a private nursing home from the property. The local community at the time was shocked when the well-respected nurse was arrested for the attempted murder of her foster daughter, Betty, and rumours flew that she might have killed her husband, Charles, and at least one other patient. In this extract from a new book about Kerr by true-crime author Scott Bainbridge, suspicious detectives decide to exhume the body of Charles Kerr.
Inspector James Cummings was New Zealand’s top detective. In 1920, he solved the murder of Ponsonby postmaster Augustus Braithwaite by using fingerprint technology, thus securing the British Empire’s first ever capital conviction using fingerprint science and sending Dennis Gunn to the gallows.
Several months later, Cummings investigated the murder of farmer Sydney Eyre in Pukekawa, and determined the killer had ridden up on a horse and fired the fatal shot through a window. Cummings noticed one horseshoe had a distinctive characteristic, causing the horse to overstep. All horses in the vicinity were checked, and one with an unusual horseshoe was found. It was owned by a farmhand named Samuel Thorne, who had once worked on the victim’s farm. Thorne was convicted and sentenced to hang. Later in 1920, renowned author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle visited New Zealand and, when told of Cummings’ feats, proclaimed him the “real Sherlock Holmes”.
After several promotional transfers and appointments, Cummings arrived at Police National Headquarters in Wellington in January 1932 to oversee investigative work and political surveillance. Being desk-bound was cumbersome for a man who preferred to be out in the field on active investigations. He had taken a vested interest in the Elspeth Kerr case because he was curious about a crime without an apparent motive. He travelled to Auckland to assist the detectives.
With Elspeth Kerr in prison awaiting trial, police attempted to locate and interview her friends and any people who had assisted her or worked in any of her nursing homes. The purpose was to obtain a motive – by trying to establish more about the nurse’s relationship with [foster daughter] Betty, they hoped to discover whether any abuse behind closed doors had been witnessed.
One of the first people interviewed by the police was a young woman named Barbara Grieve, who lived locally and admitted to regularly consulting Nurse Kerr on medical matters. On January 4, 1932, Barbara visited Elspeth at 20 Queens Parade as she had bad toothache and did not want to go to the dentist. She asked Nurse Kerr for some interim pain relief. Nurse Kerr offered her one Veramon [a weaker compound of Veronal] tablet, stressing it would only relieve the pain and not fix the problem, and that she must see the dentist if the pain worsened.
Barbara was reluctant to take the pill as she had read that the Queen in Romania had almost died from taking it and that it was highly addictive. Elspeth dismissed her concerns, saying only prolonged use at a high dosage would cause addiction or death. She admitted she often took Medinal to sleep and Veronal to soothe her nerves. Miss Grieve took the pill and thought the nurse seemed “a bit drowsy”, as if she was under the influence of something, but at the time thought she might just be very tired.
This visit occurred one day prior to Elspeth collapsing and having to be admitted to Auckland Hospital. Detectives applied to check hospital records. Elspeth had been admitted in an unconscious state on January 5 and discharged three days later. No tests were conducted because she recovered quickly, and it was assumed she was just suffering from exhaustion, but it was now suggested Elspeth had taken a high dosage of Veronal herself.
The nurse was discharged on January 8. The following day, her husband fell unconscious and slipped into a coma from which he never recovered.
Charles Kerr was only 49 when he died suddenly. He was thought to be in reasonable physical shape but had deteriorated mentally. Described as a “war wreck”, there was a possibility he was taking drugs to alleviate his condition, but they were making him worse. The fact he lapsed into a coma after Elspeth returned home from hospital now gave rise to suspicion. The period between Charles falling unconscious until the time he died was approximately one full day. Mrs Sullivan and Mrs Miller were present during this time and while Elspeth seemed distraught, she did not consult a doctor until he died. Could she have deliberately administered her husband a fatal dose of Veronal?
Dr Wheeler, the elderly retired navy surgeon, carried out an examination on Charles Kerr and recorded his death as a cerebral haemorrhage. Wheeler told those at the house that Charles had suffered from a nervous attack and pernicious anaemia, having a slight stroke before he died, and that he had congestion on the brain. Charles was buried the next day, Monday, January 11, 1932, at O’Neill’s Point Cemetery with only a few people in attendance. Wheeler had been just as quick to diagnose Betty’s illness as appendicitis, which was completely wrong.
Police checked the couple’s personal documents. It was learned two industrial insurance policies with the Temperance & General Company had been taken out on the life of Charles Kerr. The first was payable at the age 60 or upon earlier death and was purchased by Elspeth Kerr on November 2, 1925 for £81 and bonuses taken out. This allowed for a weekly premium of 2s 6d payable to her upon Charles’s death. The second was payable at age 65, or upon earlier death, and was purchased by Elspeth Kerr on October 13, 1930 for £61 14s with bonuses.
In total, she was eligible to collect £146 11s 6d upon the death of Charles Kerr (amounting to approximately $21,000 today). Elspeth Kerr called into the offices of the insurance company on January 15, 1932, less than a week after his death, and was duly paid out four days later.
Inspector Cummings called in on an old friend. As soon as the case was referred to the Supreme Court, police briefed Vincent Meredith. Meredith was a brilliant lawyer and in 1921 was appointed first Crown Solicitor. Meredith read through the brief and told Cummings he was not optimistic he could secure a conviction, but he did not think it was a lost cause. In his biography, A Long Brief, Meredith recalled:
On going through the general papers before the Supreme Court trial, I noticed that there were statements about the deaths in coma. Enquiry about those had been made by the police and someone had told them that, as the bodies had been buried for some considerable time, no traces of Veronal (if any) could now be found. This did not seem right, so on enquiry from the analyst I learnt that Veronal would remain in the bodies for a very long period, even years.
Inspector Cummings contacted Commissioner Ward Wohlmann, who expressed his shock and readily agreed to make application for leave to the Minister of Health to have the body of Charles Steedman Kerr exhumed and removed for investigation. It was agreed this would be done with the utmost secrecy, but a staff member of the Ministry of Health sighted the memorandum and contacted the Truth. While there was no date revealed, the intrepid Auckland reporter hid out in bushes at O’Neill’s Point Cemetery every morning for a week until he struck it lucky at dawn on August 2, 1932. He wrote:
Shortly after 6am before the heavy mists of dawn had been dispelled by the rising sun, a Ford tourer drove through the gates of O’Neill’s Point Cemetery, and the occupants heavily muffled against the raw morning air, crossed a side track in the cemetery and stopped before an unnamed grave, one of the group of four or five.
The reporter went on to write of observing two men carrying shovels stepping out of the misty gloom of the breaking day and driving them into the heavy mound, as the pair who had arrived by car, identified as Detective O’Sullivan and Detective Brady, looked on. Another car soon arrived, carrying Dr Murray and Dr Walter Gilmour, pathologists at Auckland Hospital, and government analyst Kenneth Griffin, followed by a hearse. The coffin dripped with water as it was lifted out of the water-filled grave, then was carefully placed in the hearse and conveyed to the mortuary of Auckland Hospital.
When the coffin was prised open, it was noted to have been filled with water. The post-mortem took place at the mortuary of Auckland Hospital later that morning. Charles Kerr had been dead for 205 days.
One grain of Veronal was found in a sample of water taken from one gallon of coffin fluid. There was at least 20 gallons present. There were also traces of Veronal in a sample of fluid taken from the grave.
An examination of the remains of the organs of the deceased found no sign of disease of the heart or haemorrhage in the brain. Kerr did not suffer a stroke prior to death. Furthermore, there was no evidence of any organic disease that could have caused death; of that, Dr Gilmour was absolutely certain. Charles Kerr did not die from a cerebral haemorrhage as Dr Wheeler had concluded.
Dr Gilmour and Dr Murray carefully took eight samples of Kerr’s internal organs and found Veronal present in each. In total, 18 lots of five-eighth grains of Veronal were recovered from the internal organs. Both doctors estimated that Kerr must have ingested a massive dose of Veronal, which would have accounted for his unconscious state in the period leading up to his death. No other cause of death was found.
Kerr’s final dose of Veronal may have been fatal. There was no proof of the exact dose but based on what they knew of the drug, the quantity recovered after death was often much less than what it would have been at post-mortem. Dr Gilmour concurred with Griffin’s earlier notes: that based on the few overseas studies available, the average fatal dose of Veronal would be about 50 grains. He believed Charles Kerr must have taken a much larger dose.
Taking into account the facts that he had been unconscious for 28 hours, that the post-mortem examination had taken place 205 days later, and the quantity of Veronal found in his system, there was no doubt Kerr had died of Veronal poisoning. The small sample of organs examined proved that Veronal would have spread evenly throughout his body. The amount of Veronal in Charles Kerr’s body at the time of death was estimated as being an amount not less than 100 grains of Veronal.
The Trials of Nurse Kerr: The anatomy of a secret poisoner, by Scott Bainbridge (Bateman Books, $37.99) is out now.
