A headless and legless body was found inside. It was removed from the suitcase and taken to the morgue. The amputation of the head and legs appeared to have been done cleanly by probably a sharp knife or razor and a saw.
A book was found in the coat pocket belonging to Edwin Norman Armstrong. Edwin's wife, Mary and their two sons Douglas, aged 20 and William aged 19 confirmed that Edwin was last seen by them at 8:30am on Friday the 6th of May as they left for their work in the city. The Armstrong family lived in Hataitai, Wellington.
The body was moved to Wellington City morgue due to poor lighting conditions at the morgue in Picton and on the 14th of May the body was identified as 55 year old Edwin Norman Armstrong. The clothing was identified by Edwin’s youngest son, William, and the body was identified by Edwin’s doctor who had been seeing him for some years.
Edwin’s body was further examined and three stab wounds were found in the chest along with a wound on the right arm and cuts on the fingers which the examiner said appeared to have been caused by Edwin either fending off his murderer or grasping the blade of a knife. They could also see that Edwin's body had not been in the water for long. No more than 12 hours. Due to the short time between when Edwin was last seen alive and the finding of the body made it certain that Edwin travelled down from Wellington to Picton, dead or alive, on another ship, the Tamahine, which had left Wellington at 2:45pm on the Friday afternoon of May 6th
Police investigations had already begun in Picton and Wellington, which included an extensive search for the missing body parts (Edwin’s head and legs) and interviewing everyone who had been on the Tamahine to see if they could recollect having seen anyone on board with the suitcase that Edwin was found in.
It was revealed that a ticket had been purchased between 1 and 2pm for the Tamahine for a Mr Armstrong. It was still unclear if Edwin had travelled alive or if the purchaser of the ticket was actually Edwin's murderer. Police were trying to establish what had happened to Edwin between 8:30am when his family last saw him alive and 2:45pm which is when the Tamahine left Wellington for Picton.
Almost a week after his body was found, Edwin’s head and legs were found at the outer end of Picton wharf under 40 feet of water. They were found in another suitcase almost identical to the first one. The remains were taken away to the morgue to be examined.
The post mortem examiner, Dr Lynch, could see that the sawn ends of the bones from the amputated legs matched the sawn bones from the body. The head was also examined where multiple wounds were found. There was a very deep wound above his right eye and another cut which exposed the skull. There was also extensive bruising which the examiner believed to have been caused by a blunt club-like weapon but the cause of death was due to internal haemorrhage and collapse of the long from multiple stab wounds to the chest.
With the location of the remaining body parts found the investigators believed that it was most likely that the person who disposed of the packages would have thrown them over, after disembarking from the Tamahine on the Friday afternoon/evening of May 6th
Sometime around the time when the head and legs were found a taxi driver nicknamed Shorty, came forward with his story. On May 6th he took on a job just after 1pm for someone a few houses down the road from the Armstrong residence. Shorty searched for the address but could not find it, however a man further up the street started waving his arms and beckoned Shorty over. The man had a suitcase and a sack and asked Shorty if he could put it in the boot of his taxi. The man told Shorty that he had been hunting and had some venison. Shorty then drove the man and his luggage to the ferry wharf so the man could catch the Tamahine. Shorty said that the man appeared to be very excited. As he unloaded the man's luggage from the boot of his taxi he exclaimed to the man “I’ll say it’s meat all right. Look at the mess my car is in” referring to the blood in the boot of his taxi. The police were able to secure the mat from Shorty’s taxi which showed the bloodstains.
After several remands the case against Edwin’s son, Douglas, for the murder of his father, was finally begun in the magistrates court on the 30th of June 1938
Edwin’s younger son, William, was a witness. He said that he left home at roughly 8:15am William thought that his father was up and about when he left. His day continued as normal and he arrived home about 9:30pm. His mother (Edwin’s wife) was already home but no one else was. He said that his brother Douglas was interested in deer-hunting so he did possess several knives which he normally stored in his bedroom or under the house. He said that Douglas also possessed a rifle which William was able to identify in court when it was produced. It was usually kept in Douglas’s bedroom. William identified some of Douglas’s clothing that he said Douglas was wearing when he left home on May 6th for work around 7am
As William was questioned in the box a few things about Edwin came to light. Edwin had been to Australia for about six months and had only been back for about six weeks before his death. Both brothers had visited Edwin together in Australia. After the visit to Australia Douglas had removed the bolt from his rifle (the bolt is a crucial part of the rifle, responsible for loading, firing and unloading cartridges) Apparently this was done because he feared Edwin might use the rifle on family members, who were in fear of him up until the time of his death.
The next witness to speak was Edwin’s wife, Mary. A friend sat behind her I’m guessing to give her moral support. Mary spoke in a quiet, well spoken manner, and without any hesitation. She was a teacher and had been married to Edwin for 22 years. She last saw him as she left for work at 8:30am on Friday May 6th She returned home at 3pm. It was the last day of the school term. No one was home when she returned and she did not notice anything unusual about the state of the house except the carpet runner in the hall was wet but she decided to leave it until the next day, when she put it out on the line to dry. She also found a note and although she couldn’t remember the exact wording of it, she said it said something along the lines of ‘Good news. Gone to Auckland with Dad for work’ She could tell from the style of handwriting that it had been written by her son Douglas. So she then crumpled up the note and put it in the waste-paper basket. She didn’t hear from Douglas again until Monday the 9th when she received a letter from him asking her to meet him that day at 11am at the railway station which she did. She stayed with him until after 1pm She also said that Edwin was very “sore” on Douglas (sore meaning annoyed, irritated or offended towards that person) She said Douglas always resented this treatment and that Edwin and Douglas were not on good speaking terms. They had been like this with each other for a year or two. Douglas had wished that Edwin would go away so that they could be left in peace.
Edwin had also been out of work for several years. He was a qualified accountant but left his last job in roughly 1929 and had only done a few days' work since. Mary was the main earner in the house. She had been the one to ask Edwin to go to Australia for six months. She provided him with money to get there and agreed to pay him 10 pounds a month for his keep. She told him to go because she could not stand the strain any longer. She said he was difficult to live with because of his mental outlook. She did not know that he was returning until he had already arrived back at their house. She said conditions were much worse after his return. He did not converse with the family in ordinary conversation and there was no pleasant life in the home. She claimed to have no fear for her own safety, but she was concerned for her sons. She had heard him threatening both of them and had seen him act violently towards them. She said generally speaking her husband's apparent mental outlook was such that she expected any time that his brain would snap and the boys would be murdered.
It was at this stage Douglas’s lawyer stepped forward with a letter that Douglas had written for Mary on the 8th of May. This is the full letter -
“Dearest Mum, In this house, the darkest in my young life, I must pen these few lines to you, perhaps the last ever. You must excuse any emotional abruptness of these lines, but, believe me, they are outpourings of a terrible stress which seems to consume my whole body with ague, for I have killed my father. To you alone can I turn for sympathy for you, my mother, have guided me too long along the path of life to desert me now. I must trust you implicitly. Be brave, Mum, for my sake as well as yours. Accept this terrible news with fortitude. God knows I did it for you. He has brought tragedy alone into our lives, brooded over us like a pall, stealing all our happiness, retarding our being respected, and our social advancement. He had lost every vestige of manhood. Like a leech he sucked our vital reserves and made our home a morgue. Life was impossible.
To me it did not matter. I could have gone away and left you all and lived happily. I am young, clever and with the whole world before me. Yet I loved you so much in my queer rigid way that the manhood which is so wholly my character forbade me to desert you. You were too tragic a figure, so helpless in the hand of fate, had given too much of your life and I know all the love which you could not give to him you lavished on me. Life has not treated you rightly. I had thought when we gave him all the money to go away that he would stop away and leave us to our own destiny. I had plans to compensate you for all you’ve suffered, all you have endured for Bill (meaning William) and I, for those long, bitter years of our childhood, when that skunk dragged you round the world, gave you no home, brought only misery and broken friendship into your life, and finally, having failed, dragged us in that bitter mire of despondency and poverty from which your heroic efforts alone rescued us, and through-out sponged upon you in that detestable manner which has wrung your heart time and time again in frightful agony and yearning for the happiness that should have been your heritage.
And I yearn, oh how I yearn for all this life that they will perhaps take from me. I am a man, a man who has lived his youth for a purpose and an ideal which drove me always. Only the lovely things in life did I desire, the sordid and harshness of life I lived only to contrast the future to give me the experience that would make me a man of the world. I relied fully on my thoughts which I always kept beautiful whenever I felt the utter futility of life. I depended on my character to keep me above the mob, to prevent my soul being bogged in the mire of mediocrity. Women, I revered, I loved every beautiful one I saw, placed them on a pedestal and yearned for them as something attainable only when I had proved myself. To gain their respect I gradually developed my character and in me I feel sure there are unplumbed depths of chivalry.
In that lovely dream place of my inner mind I had planned your future. I had meant to let you work a while longer until I got a good job somewhere. Then you could have gone home to England, to the only place in the world where you must have been really happy in your youth, and there to enable you to buy some nice little cottage in the south of England modelled on that oft-quoted, oft-painted, blissful solitaire and quiet serene that is Cornwall, Essex and Devon. There you could have pottered and lived your old age away from this tragic farce, perhaps with Mrs Butcher for a companion. There would have been our home. Both Bill and I could have had a haven from our wandering. It was all a dream, a lovely, simple dream, that I could have accomplished. Fate, all supreme, more powerful than us puny mortals, has ruled otherwise. Perhaps, who knows, it may all turn out right in the end.
Alas poor mortal clay you aim too high, soon shall your dreams lie broken, upon the sacrificial stone, of that base goddess fate, when so soon to life’s fulfilment, you would have woken, forgive the apology for poetry. It is just a chip off a riven heart.
So now I stand with the ruins of my life at my feet. Worse still, I have brought down upon your head an awful calamity, the gravity and extent of which I am afraid to dwell upon. Yet now do I need you more than ever before. Steel that heart of yours, and fight for me. Grant me your love and your defence, your sympathy and your pleading for my life, a life which folly has brought so close to disaster, a life with a soul of true steel into which are tempered all that is goodness in man. Lovingness, kindness and understanding, chivalry and steadfastness, which the quick rush of youth has somewhat muddled and produced a Jekyll.
Compose yourself, Mum, show Bill this letter. It is your duty to do so. That I shall be caught is inevitable, but while I am free I want to see you just to comfort you and to derive comfort from you. Perhaps the terrible tragedy of the case will outweigh the horror of the thing and some day the even tenor of your life may be resumed. So keep your spirits up, Mum, do not try and hide your love, nothing can kill it. Tomorrow I shall wait at the main door of the station at 11 o’clock in the morning. If you do not come then I shall wait there at 4 o’clock. I shan’t be at the hotel. Although I am yours in distress, I am also yours lovingly. Douglas.
The letter which included a confession to killing his father, Edwin, also showed a son expressing great love to his mother, Mary. Mary had already told the court that she had met Douglas at the train station at 11am on Monday the 9th and she left him just after 1pm I’m not sure what passed between the two of them but the very next morning was when Douglas was arrested in Auckland.
A witness who was the clerk at the passenger counter for the ferry Tamahine, confirmed a ticket had been purchased in the name of Armstrong and he also identified Douglas in a line up at the police station.
A detective was also called on. This detective had been part of the team who searched the house where the Armstrongs lived. He said that on the wall door and over the frame around the door he found numerous stains which appeared to be blood. He also found what appeared to be bloodstains on the wall of the sitting room and on the carpet runner in the hall. There were also two or three spots of what appeared to be blood on the wall in the kitchen. All of these stains were pointed out to the pathologist Dr Lynch.
The detective continued to give evidence as to what some of the other detectives discovered. The wallpaper in the sitting room appeared to have been wiped clean but there were still some stains which appeared to be blood. Some of these stains reached as high as seven feet from the floor. Under the house they found a bundle of clothing, two hats and two knives. One of the hats had blood stains on it. They also found a saw which had a meaty substance on it and after inspecting the drainage they found congealed blood in it. Everything was emptied and given to Dr Lynch. The bolt of the rifle was also found in a box in the washhouse (laundry)
Dr Lynch was brought forward to speak in court. His was a lengthy statement about what he had examined and conclusions he made from his examinations. He started with the examination of Edwin's remains confirming that Edwin had multiple injuries but the fatal injury was due to internal hemorrhage and collapse of the lung from multiple stab wounds to the left side of the chest. He believed death would have quickly followed these injuries but it was possible Edwin may have been alive for 15 to 30 minutes before succumbing to his death.
The knives that Dr Lynch had examind which had been found under the house, he believed could have caused the stab wounds in Edwin’s chest. He confirmed that the stains found in the house and on the mats from the taxi were in fact blood. Although no bullet wounds were found on Edwin’s body, Dr Lynch said that the rifle’s stock (a part of a rifle where it can rest on the shooters shoulder) presented a flat, smoother surface and could have been used as a club which caused the injuries to Edwin’s face and head.
Next up was a detective from Auckland who had taken a statement from Douglas after he was arrested. Douglas’s statement is as follows.
I am a single man. I am 20 years and 11 months of age. Usually I live with my parents at *address in Hataitai, Wellington* I have been advised by Detective T that anything I may say in the following may later be used as evidence, but I wish to make certain explanations over something which has been causing me some worry.
I am within two months of finishing my apprenticeship at the Hutt workshops. I have been learning the trade of fitter and turner there. I had intended on completing my apprenticeship to leave New Zealand and endeavour to get a job in Australia. I had this idea in view as I believe that I would have better prospects in that country and apart from that I wanted to see something of that part of the world. I had made mention of these intentions to my mother and as a matter of fact had intended leaving about September of this year.
When I had thought about leaving home in this was I had also then thought of other matters at home. I mean by that, that things in so far as feelings in the home in respect to my father’s presence were at times not too pleasant. As a matter of fact, my father has only been back from Australia about two months after having been over there for some seven or eight months. He went to Australia following my mother giving him about £130 in cash, on the understanding that he would stay away for ever. This was brought about following a period of unhappiness in the home for as long as I can remember. He has always been most inconsiderate of my mother and my brother and myself. If we ever had visitors or callers at the house he was always moody and growled and would probably insult them before they left.
When he was away in Australia we were a very happy family. On his return from Australia we expected that he would only stop a short time and then get out. He knew that he was not wanted. I knew that my mother had given him practically all her savings when she had given him the £130 to leave this country and further than that, since we have been living in Wellington after coming from Dunedin had given him sums of money to start business on his own account, but he only wasted them. I know that in one instance my mother gave him £100 and this was wasted just as the rest had been. Every one of us detested him. His manners were crude and his language lurid. We never talked to him and he never spoke to us but that he growled. I know that he also had a good few opportunities to get jobs, but he would never take them. When he was about the place my mother’s friends were afraid to come near, while when he had been away everything went great.
I had thought things over and realised that if I went away from New Zealand my mother was getting old and probably not in a position to retain her position as a teacher indefinitely and was more or less dependent on my brother Bill and I. I could not imagine what would have happened with Bill away from the house, myself away altogether, and my mother left at home with him alone. In every way he retarded our progress socially and otherwise. On several occasions since his return from Australia I had been involved in disturbances or quarrels with him, not done for my own sake, but for mother’s. Always these scenes would end by me telling him to get out of the place. He often ramped and raved at me during these scenes and I think his brain was a little gone. Usually my mother has gone to work by 8:30am in the morning. I am usually gone myself by 7am as I start at 7:30 each morning. For the last few months I have been working at the workshops branch of the car-making department at Thorndon. I could never bring friends home due to the atmosphere created by my father, and practically the same thing applied to my brother Bill. This was in direct contrast to when only mother was home and it was really like home.
On Friday, May 6, 1938, I did not go to work as usual. I stopped behind because I intended to have a final talk with my father to persuade him to leave, and also intended to offer him financial assistance. I did not want to have a talk of this kind with my mother present as her nerves are bad and it has happened before and the strain has been too great for her. At times she had nervous breakdowns, but during his absence in Australia her health improved greatly. In addition to these facts her holidays were commencing from May 6 1938 when the school broke up for a fortnight and if possible I wanted him out of the home before that. Actually she had a breakdown just after he came back from Australia showing her health was bad. I think it was Easter 1938. These combined facts determined me to stop at home on the morning of May 6, 1938, Friday, and do my best to make sure that he went off out of the place altogether.
I left the house at the usual time as if going to work but came home about 9am In the meantime I had gone into town and just walked round and came back. When I came home about 9am I went straight to him in the kitchen and spoke to him. I asked him when he thought he was going to get out and he told me to ‘Go to hell and mind my own business’ and that he would get out when he felt like it. I then told him that he definitely had to get out and that we had, had enough of him and he then ranted and raved at me and called me everything under the sun. He then started to threaten me, saying he would kill me if I did not get out. He had a boot black brush in his hand and raised it over his head in a threatening way. I started into him with my fists and think that I went berserk. That’s about all I want to say about that part, but afterwards I realised the necessity of cleaning the body up as I did not want Mum to see it. I was frantic by that time, and thought that I would leave it all, but then thought I had better not, and I knew I could not take the body out whole. I cut the body up with a skinning knife I usually went out deer-stalking with and also an ordinary tenon saw which I got from under the house. I removed the head and legs by using these instruments.
I then got two suitcases which were in the house. I divided the remainder of the body into those two suitcases. I put the trunk (body) with the decapitation of the head in one suitcase and the head and the legs in the other. I was too upset to do anything to the clothing. I did not wrap the remains in anything before placing them in the suitcases. I had to tie the suitcase with some light rope I had about the house as the lid was almost hanging from one suitcase. I had to clean up the mess mainly in the kitchen but there had also been some struggling in the passage. I used the knife and the saw on the body in the bathroom which adjoins the kitchen. I think it would have been about 12 noon when I left home with the two suitcases. I thought my mother may have come home about that time and did not want her there then. I went across the street to a garage which I rent for my car. I placed the two suitcases in there and then went and phoned for a taxi. It picked me up at the garage and I directed the driver to go to the Union Steam Ship Company. I got out there and left the suitcases in the taxi and went in and purchased a ticket on the boat for Picton. I knew that the boat left that day at 2:45 in the afternoon for Picton. After that I came back to the taxi and instructed the driver to drive round to the Wellington Post Office bank. I had taken my bank book from home with me and withdrew the whole lot deposited there. It was only £5 I then went back to the taxi and went straight down to the boat. This was the Tamahine. I went straight on board the boat and stopped there until sailing time. I put the suitcase under the seat and stopped there myself, as I was feeling pretty sick on it.
On arrival at Picton it was raining heavily and very dark as well. I got off the boat with my suitcases and went down towards the stern of the ship after walking towards the end of the wharf. I heaved the suitcases into the water on the same side of the wharf as the ship. I would not have been more than several paces from the end of the ship. I think that I walked round a van drawn up on the wharf and there was also a shed close to that. I then returned to the place where the railway carriages are pulled up on the wharf. I bought a first class ticket on the train and went to Blenheim. I booked in at the Masonic Hotel in my own name. I went to the Union Steam Ship office in Blenheim on the following morning (this would’ve been Saturday the 7th of May 1938) and booked a passage for return to Wellington that day by Union Airways. I left Blenheim by plane at about 1pm in the afternoon. About twenty minutes to half an hour later I landed at Rongotai.
I came into town by the company’s car. I do not wish to say how I spent the next few hours but at 0:30am on the following morning which would be Sunday, I booked in at the Waterloo Hotel in the name of J.Campbell. I stopped there all that day and slept there that night, leaving the hotel on Monday morning at 10am I do not wish to say what I did between the time of leaving the hotel and about 3pm the same afternoon when I left Wellington (this is the time he would have met with Mary, his mother) When I did leave Wellington I commenced to walk and got as far as Tawa Flat when I was asked by a man with a car if I wanted a ride. I accepted this and went as far as Paekakariki with him. I arrived there before 6pm, probably about 5:30pm on Monday night, the 9th of May, 1938. I had some tea at the station refreshment room and then went down the little township for a while and was back at the railway station about 8pm in the evening. I purchased a second class ticket from the Paekakariki railway ticket office. I purchased a ticket which would take me as far as Frankton Junction but on arrival there procured a further second class ticket from the railway platform office and continued the journey to Auckland.
Before making this statement I was informed by Detective T and was cautioned by him that I need not say anything about how my father came by his death, but in spite of that caution it was my wish to make this voluntary statement concerning the matter, which I have read over, and is true.
I would further like to add that at times I have been in fear of my own life, as he often threatened me. Physically I am sure that I was more than a match for him, but due to his frame of mind I had fears he may have done anything in an attempt to take my life.
This concluded the Magistrates court hearing. Douglas was then committed for a full trial at the next sitting of the Supreme Court in Wellington which was scheduled on the 19th of July 1938
They had Mary on the stand again and this time she broke down. She said that Edwin was never physically violent with her but the mental torment was awful. She also said that before coming to New Zealand her husband had suffered severe illnesses through malaria and sunstroke that he contracted in Africa.
Mary recalled an incident when she had been ill in bed but had to get up because Edwin was choking Douglas on the floor. She intervened to stop him. She also told about another time when Edwin had cut Douglas’s hand with a knife as Douglas reached across the table. The wound was very severe and had to be stitched by a doctor. She had also witnessed Edwin throwing all sorts of objects in the house when he was in a violent mood. She was frightened her husband’s brain would snap at any time after his return from Australia. She based that on his excessive violence and his obsessions - he imagined he was being followed about by detectives and he claimed he knew all about the atom before Lord Rutherford (also known as the father of nuclear physics). Mary went on to describe a few other awful sounding incidents including one where she had to stay outside until 3am because he was rambling and violent. This one had occurred the week before his death. She endeavoured to be the peacemaker. As Mary left the box she collapsed, fainting in front of the jury and was carried from the court by a police officer and a detective.
Reading the articles on Papers Past there were many people who came forward with stories about Edwin’s violence including a friend of Edwin’s who said that he would fly into an uncontrollable temper at the least possible thing.
The trial in the Supreme Court lasted two and a half days before finally concluding at 2:43pm on Friday the 22nd of July 1938 The verdict came back as Manslaughter and Douglas was sentenced to ten years of hard labour.
Unfortunately Mary would never get to see her son freed as she passed away on the 2nd of June 1943 and is buried in Karori Cemetery.
William became a teacher like his Mum and then joined the Navy. As far as I can see he never married and never had children. He passed away in 1995 and is buried in Howick Cemetery, Auckland.
Upon release from prison, Douglas traveled overseas and this is where I lost track of him. He would be dead now (or around 108 years old) and I’m not sure where he is buried. I can’t find any record of him. There are a few Douglas Armstrongs buried in the US and one in Canada but the birth dates are off by quite a few years. Who knows.
Edwin’s body and head was buried at Karori Cemetery (in a difficult place to get to, I might add!) His amputated leg bones were kept with the police to help with investigative training by detectives. From 1957 they were kept in storage along with other human remains when the police museum’s director believed it was unethical to keep the body parts any longer and it was arranged for the remains to be returned to ancestors (if known) Edwin’s leg bones were reunited with the rest of his body in 2015 and a plaque was laid.
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