SKULL found buried in Sir David Attenborough’s garden belonged to the victim of a gruesome murder

SKULL found buried in Sir David Attenborough’s garden belonged to the victim of a gruesome murder, a coroner ruled yesterday.

It was dug up in October when the broadcaster, 85, was having an old pub excavated at his home in Richmond, South West London.

Julia Martha Thomas was killed aged 55 in 1879 by her maid. Kate Webster pushed her down stairs, strangled her then chopped her up.

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She then boiled the remains, dumped the flesh in the Thames and gave the dripping to children to eat.

Webster stole Mrs Thomas’s identity – and false teeth – and fled to Ireland. She was later arrested and hanged.

West London coroner Alison Thompson said: “There is clear evidence this is Julia Martha Thomas.”

She recorded the cause of death as ­strangulation and from a head injury.

Now the skull will finally be given a proper burial.

Verdict: unlawful killing.

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A man has been arrested following the seizure of cocaine with an estimated street value of €250,000.

A man has been arrested following the seizure of cocaine with an estimated street value of €250,000 in Dublin.
The man, who is aged in his 20s, was arrested following the search of a van on the North Circular Road last night.
The man is currently being detained under Section 2 of the Drug Trafficking Act at Store Street Garda Station.

 

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178 Indonesian nationals are facing the death penalty in Malasyia, with the trials of 167 underway.

“Most were involved in drugs cases. The rest were charged with murder and firearm possession,” Mulya Wirana, the Indonesian Embassy’s deputy ambassador said in Kuala Lumpur yesterday.


Mulya said the embassy would defend all Indonesian citizens in Malaysia. The embassy is currently seeking clemency for 11 Indonesians who have been sentenced to death by hanging. “The embassy is still updating the status of the 11 nationals,” he said, declining to identify them by name.


Pressure to protect Indonesian migrant workers has increased following the recent beheading of Indonesian national Ruyati binti Satubi in Saudi Arabia.


In response, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono formed the Indonesian Migrant Workers Task Force to handle cases of Indonesian migrant workers facing the death sentence abroad.


Former Nahdlatul Ulama chairman, Hasyim Muzadi, urged Yudhoyono to manage the cases first hand and lamented the establishment of the task force. “Migrant worker protection is a sensitive matter, even more than political and economic affairs. When it concerns the lives of our citizens overseas, that is about honor,” he said.

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Murder accused killed himself in prison

man waiting to go to trial for murdering his wife used a sheet and twine to hang himself in the shower of his prison cell, an inquest has heard.

Neil Heyward had been in custody for about 18 months, after being charged in December 2007 with the murder of his de facto wife Glenys Heyward, when he took his own life at the Port Augusta jail in June 2009.

The pair's son Matthew and a farmhand on the family property, Jeremy Minter, were also charged with her murder and later jailed after a long trial.


In her prepared opening of an inquest at Port Augusta on Tuesday, counsel assisting Amanda Taylor said Heyward had taken the twine from the prison laundry where he worked.

He had tied it to one end of a bed sheet and managed to slide the other end of the sheet in between a bench top in his cell and the shower wall.

The sheet was then hung over the shower wall attached to the twine which had been fashioned into a noose.

Heyward also placed his belongings in his bed to make it look like he was asleep.

Ms Taylor asked SA coroner Mark Johns to note that another man, Brian Keith Dewson, took his own life in similar circumstances at Port Augusta in 2000.

In his case, Dewson slid a strip of bed sheet under a utility shelf, tying it to a steel support bar.

At the time a coroner recommended the safe cell principles be adopted in prisons throughout South Australia as a matter of urgency to prevent such deaths.

"The case is relevant to this matter as the equipment used to facilitate the suicide, being the utility shelf or bench top ... are identical but for size," Ms Taylor said in her opening statement.

She said the two deaths came nine years apart, "in the face of repeated coronial recommendations".

Earlier this year an appeal court judge described the murder of Ms Heyward as planned and callous. He rejected a bid by Minter to have his 23-year jail sentence reduced.

Ms Heyward, 53, was bludgeoned to death in an empty house on a property near Mt Gambier in SA's south-east.

Neil Heyward inflicted the fatal blows on his estranged wife to prevent the break-up of the family's $6 million farming and property assets.

The woman's body was buried on a property in western Victoria and went undiscovered for several months after she went missing.

The inquest was continuing.

 

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