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The Green Bicycle Case

Who shot Bella Wright on a lonely lane in Leicestershire?
By David Cocksedge

THE COUNTRYSIDE around the city of Leicester is full of small villages connected by old Roman roads or lanes bordered by high hedges. To the north is the famous hunting centre of Melton Mowbray. Isabella Wright (21) from Stoughton was a pretty girl of what was then charmingly known as "good character", employed in a Leicester rubber factory and engaged to a stoker in the British Royal navy. She had just posted some letters in Evington village on 6 July 1919 when she cycled home and then back to Leicester to meet friends at around 6.30pm. Her mother never saw her alive again.

At 9.20pm that evening on Gartree Road a local farmer found Bella (as everyone knew her) lying dead in the lane, sprawled by her bicycle. At this time of year the roadside hedges were eight feet high, but just where her body lay was an opening in the hedge overlooking a grassy meadow beyond. She had been shot, with an entry bullet wound an inch below the left eye, and a larger exit wound by her right ear. The next day Constable Hall carefully examined the scene and found a .45 caliber bullet partly embedded in the road seventeen feet from where her body had lain. He made another strange discovery: the gate, which led into the field, had claw marks of blood on it, with tracks of bloody claws from the body to the gate and back. In the field constable Hall found a large dead bird with black plumage, which had obviously gorged on Bella's blood until it died. The police stated that the creature was a raven, but bird experts knew that there were no ravens in the area, and they had never been known to drink blood. The dead bird that had feasted on Ms Wright's blood-soaked face had to be a rook or carrion crow.

Now police began to trace Bella's movements between 6.30 and 9.20pm that summer evening, with daylight throughout the timeframe. At 7.30pm she had ridden to her uncle's cottage in Gaulby and talked to him (Mr. Measures) and his son in law, Mr Evans. With her had been a stranger, riding a green bicycle. The man waited whilst she spoke to her relative, exchanged some small talk with Mr. Evans, and then cycled away with her at around 8.40pm. This stranger was obviously the last person to see Bella alive, and may even have murdered her, motive unknown. She had not been robbed or sexually molested. From descriptions given by Measures and Evans, the police offered a reward for information about a man aged about thirty, 5'9" (1.75m) tall, with slightly graying hair and a high pitched voice. This man also rode a green bicycle. Many men in the Leicester area were questioned, but the mysterious stranger was not located.

Then in February 1920 came a breakthrough. A canal boatman passing through Leicester found his towrope snag on something in the water. Up came part of a bicycle, and when the boatman dragged the area later, he hauled up a bicycle frame, painted green. The police then fished out other parts of the bike, along with a revolver holster and twelve ball and seven blank cartridges in it. From the manufacturers in Birmingham via the serial number police traced the bicycle to a Mr. Ronald Vivian Light, a schoolteacher in Cheltenham. A former Rugby Schoolboy, he had served as an army officer in the Great (1914-18) War and during the summer of 1919 had been out of work and living in Leicester with his mother. Suddenly it all began to fit together.

When questioned by police, Mr. Light denied everything. He said that he had never owned a green bicycle, had never seen Bella Wright and had never been in the village of Gaulby - and certainly not on that crucial evening in July 1919. But he was positively identified by Measures and Evans, placed under arrest and charged with murder. Then two young girls, Muriel Nunney (14) and Valeria Green (12) said that they recognized Light as a man who had followed and frightened them at around 5.30pm on the day of the murder, and in the vicinity. Some of the bullets in the holster were also similar to the one found in the road. At the trial, the prosecution was able to prove that the green bicycle did indeed belong to Mr. Light, and that he had been with Bella Wright on the evening of 6 July 1919, and had lied about almost everything.

But defending Mr. Light was the formidable barrister Sir Edward Marshall Hall. He did not deny most of the crown's case, and admitted that Mr. Light had indeed lied about meeting Ms Wright and had dumped his bicycle. But when Sir Edward finished cross-examining the two girls, they emerged not as two little innocent angels of justice. No, they were two busy little brats who, feeding for months on sensational newspaper stories, found a reason to feature in the trial by suddenly remembering something that might have happened to them ten months before. In his summing up, the presiding judge told the jury not to trouble themselves with the tainted testimony of Misses Nunnery and Craven.

Light then stepped into the witness box and finally started to tell the truth. Yes, he had met Ms Wright, a stranger to him, on the road to Gaulby. He helped her straighten the front wheel of her bike, and they cycled along together. Bella then visited her uncle in Gaulby whilst Light waited outside, and talked to Evans. He then repaired a back wheel puncture on his machine before accompanying Bella again on her journey to Stoughton. They cycled along for ten minutes, and then parted company at a crossroads, from where he cycled back to Leicester. On the following Tuesday he learned of her death and became terrified when he realized that he was now a wanted man. Light's shattered nerves from his war experiences may explain his behavior. He broke up the bicycle, then threw it into the canal with the holster. In five hours of cross-examination, his story could not be contradicted or disproved in any detail by the prosecution team.

Sir Edward was also an expert on firearms and maintained that a heavy .45 caliber bullet, fired from seven feet away, as claimed, would have blown the back of the unfortunate girl's skull away. He suggested that the bullet found in the road might not be the fatal one at all. And there were no witnesses to place Light and the young girl together on the Gartree Road - the scene of the crime. The judge seemed to agree with the defense and the jury debated the case for three hours. A packed audience in the public gallery cheered the verdict of "Not Guilty!"

So who did kill Isabella Wright? After 83 years, we will never know. The most plausible theory is that this was no murder, but a tragic accident. A hunting party of farmers armed with shotguns and rifles was known to be in the area that day, culling the local crow population. It is certainly feasible that Bella was felled by a stray rifle bullet as she cycled innocently along Gartree Road that fateful evening. High velocity rifle rounds can travel two kilometers or more, and could blast right through a human skull, even at that range. And what of the mysterious crow, lying dead, gorged with Bella's blood in the adjoining field? On that strange and macabre aspect of the case, your guess is as good as mine.

(Research: 'The Green Bicycle Case' by Edmund Pearson)

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