All Terrain Thinking

A Compendium of things I think are Important

Wonderful strange stories from around the world

Tragedy at the farm

A classic love triangle ended in death - and two trials

THE RURAL calm of Farleigh Court Farm near Warlingham in Surrey, England was rudely shattered by two gunshots just after 12.30am on 14 June 1967. A police pathologist was summoned to the scene, where he saw the body of Mr. James Ian Gray (aged 46), lying at the foot of the stairs. He had died from a gunshot wound fired from a double-barreled 12-gauge shotgun, and the weapon was lying in the hallway. The wound was in the right side of the chest, three inches below the nipple, and it had taken an upward and outward direction, fracturing the victim's right lung. The pathologist deduced that the 12-gauge round had been fired from the left of the body in front and from a lower position on the stairway.

This was not a case calling for a massive police investigation, for the man who had caused the death was already in the custody of Surrey Police. He was 49-year-old George William Barr, a neighbor and at one time a close friend of the victim. The story which slowly unfolded told of a tragic sequence of events which had begun on Guy Fawkes Night (5 November) two years previously.

Mr. Barr was a manufacturer of women's blouses and Mr. Gray was a farmer who lived at Farleigh Court Farm nearby with his wife and family. The two families became friendly and after a night of fireworks at the Guy Fawkes party in 1965 there began a liaison between Gray and 34-year-old Mrs. Ethel Barr. In 1966 Mr. Gray made a sudden decision to immigrate to Australia and gave Mrs. Barr 240 pounds sterling so that she could join him there. She did not do so, and he returned to England in October of that year. The affair continued with the knowledge of both Mr. Barr and Mrs. Gray.

In the spring of 1967, Mr. Gray and Mrs. Barr spent a romantic weekend together in Scotland. When they returned to Surrey, Mrs. Barr did not go home to her husband but went to stay with her mother in nearby Croydon. Mrs. Audrey Gray had already left home and taken her children with her to another house which her husband had provided. He also entered into a deed of maintenance for her and the children. All these events took place a few days before the night of the shooting.

On the evening of 13 June 1967 Mr. and Mrs. Barr went out to a local country club for a candlelit dinner. They had a long and detailed discussion about their troubled relationship and, according to Mr. Barr, had resolved their differences and his wife had agreed to return home and live with him. They walked home, hand in hand like newlyweds, after Mrs. Barr had said that she no longer loved Mr. Gray.

Although the married couple were reunited, there was no happy ending to this tragic tale. Later Barr told police that he had seen his wife into their house and then gone to make up the boiler, and afterwards to the toilet. He assumed that his wife had gone upstairs to bed, but was unable to find her after searching everywhere. Thinking that she must have gone back to her former lover, James Gray, he got into his car and drove, first towards Croydon (and her mother's house), and then to Farleigh Court Farm. He drove through the gates but then changed his mind, turned his vehicle around and drove back to his own home. He asked his cousin, who was staying at the house, if she had seen his wife, and she replied that she had not.

Weeping in anger and despair, George Barr then went to the gun locker and took out his shotgun. His alarmed cousin shouted to him, "You don't need that!" Barr ignored her and pocketed a handful of cartridges after loading both barrels. He then walked out with the loaded weapon and drove back to Farleigh Farm. There he got out of the car, leaving the engine running.

The front door was open and at the head of the stairs he saw James Gray, who said politely, "Come in, George." Barr asked if his wife was there and was told that she was not. He replied, "I want to see for myself", and began to mount the stairs, holding the gun across his chest, the barrels pointing to the ceiling. He tried to get into the bedroom where he expected to find his wife, but Gray stood in his way, shouting. "Put that bloody gun down and get out!" The two men joined on the stairs and there was a struggle. Two shots were then fired. The first blew a hole in the ceiling. The second mortally wounded James Gray.

Mrs. Barr was not in the bedroom; and was not even in the farmhouse. When the police arrived they mounted a search party that found her lying in the woods nearby, unconscious from an overdose of sleeping tablets that she had taken in an attempt at suicide. She was rushed to Croydon General Hospital and recovered the next day.

George Barr was charged with murder, and in his first formal statement, he wrote: "I walked to the top of the stairs and we got together. I had the gun at the high-port (across the body with the barrels pointing upwards) and it went off into the ceiling. At the same time the gun broke in half at the narrow part of the stock. I fell down about six stairs still holding the gun barrels. The deceased ran towards me with his arm up and the gun went off again. I think that I was lying on the stairs. He walked past me holding his stomach wound and said, 'Get me a doctor, quick.' Then he got to the bottom of the stairs and fell over. I got to him and threw the gun up the passage. I knelt down beside and took hold of his head. I said, 'What have I done to you?' Then I dialed 999 and asked for the police."

Police firearms experts quickly discovered that the shotgun, (which by a strange irony Barr had bought from Gray some months before), had a defective safety catch, although Barr was unaware of this.

In September 1967 George William Barr was tried at London's Old Bailey for the murder of James Gray. On any murder charge it is open to the jury to bring in a verdict of not guilty to murder but guilty of manslaughter. In fact the jury acquitted Barr on all charges. They believed his defense plea that both shots had been fired accidentally.

But that was not the end of the litigation arising from the fatality of 14 June at Farleigh Court Farm. If one person kills another in circumstances which are at least a civil wrong, and there are a wife and children dependent upon the deceased, they have a right of action under what lawyers call the Fatal Accidents Act. And so the administrators of Gray's estate brought an action against Mr. Barr on behalf of the widow and children to recover damages equivalent to the dependency they would have enjoyed had Mr. Gray lived on. Like the famous OJ Simpson case of 1994, this fatality led to first a criminal trial and then a civil one.

The civil action was remarkable and it took place more than two years after the jury at the Old Bailey had acquitted Barr of the murder or manslaughter of his wife's lover. A High Court judge ruled that this was a case of manslaughter.

Because of that Barr was ordered to pay 6,112 pounds in damages to Mrs. Gray, plus the costs of the long court action to decide the circumstances in which farmer James Gray had died from a fatal gunshot wound. Mr. Justice Jeffrey Lane's "inescapable conclusion" (with regard to the jury's verdict) was that "this death was the outcome of an unlawful assault involving a threat of violence by Mr. Barr; a threat which he must have realized was likely to result in some injury to Mr. Gray. And in my view, that is manslaughter."

Barr claimed that the shooting occurred accidentally when he took a loaded shotgun to Gray's house with the intention of frightening him. So, his defense lawyers maintained, any damages he was liable for should be paid by the Prudential Assurance Company under an 'accidental injury to others' clause in a Hearth and Home policy.

The Prudential denied liability on the grounds that, despite the Old Bailey jury's verdict, Gray's death was not an 'accident' within the meaning of the policy, and Mr. Justice Lane ruled that it would be contrary to public policy to allow Mr. Barr to recover by insurance. In long-winded phrases much loved by English judges, he stated in summing up, "It was urged on Mr. Barr's behalf that public policy should be applied not on the grounds of principle but according to the view taken of the degree of culpability or wickedness of the claimant in a particular case. It was submitted, therefore, that Mr. Barr's actions, even assuming they were criminal, were understandable. But a husband who arms himself with a loaded shotgun, however outraged he may be, to search for his errant wife, is not easily forgiven."

Mr. Justice Lane held that as the death was the outcome of an unlawful assault involving a threat of violence, this amounted to manslaughter, and was a crime. It was, therefore, against public policy to enforce a contract for indemnity against the consequences of a crime, and the claim against the insurers failed. After making some necessary deductions, as the law required, he awarded the widow, Mrs. Audrey Gray, 6,000 pounds sterling. The case went to the Court of Appeal but Mr. Justice Lane's verdict was upheld.

As in the OJ Simpson case of 1995-97, the civil action had a completely different outcome to the criminal trial.

(Research: 'Croydon Advertiser' and Surrey Police Case Files, 1967).

Prior | Tell us what you think | Next

Add to Your Social Bookmarks: Del.icio.us Digg Furl Reddit Simpy Spurl Y! MyWeb - StumbleUpon