Saturday 29 December 2012

Questions about Harry Oakes Death

The Murder of Sir Harry Oakes in 1943 was described by Perry Mason Creator - Erle Stanley Gardner  who reported on the murder trial as the Crime of the Century. It remains the most illusive Cold Case to date. Apparently new evidence has emerged to show that the Duke and Duchess of Windsor's fingerprints were identified at the crime scene. It is known that the Duke visited the Crime Scene to see oversee the investigation by the discredited Miami Policemen he invited to frame Oakes's playboy son-in-law. I have brought new evidence that Oakes was part of a pro-appeasement network in London and the US and contributed £10,000 to see British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain re-elected in 1938 in a cash for honours arrangement organised by transatlantic Art Dealer Baron Duveen and Sinister Spy Spin Doctor Sir Joseph Ball.
Marshall Houts, the author, FBI agent, forensic professor and co-creator of TV's Quincy ME suggested in his Kings X book that Mafia involvement was at the heart of the case, according to informers.
Remaining crime scene questions remain:
  • Where was the Revolver that Oakes kept by his bedside
  • Why did Harold Christie and the Duke of Windsor first report the death as Suicide or Shooting
  • What did Bahamian Police Chief Lindop-Erskine believe and why was he transferred to Trinidad to prevent his taking command of the case
  • Was Oakes subject to torture by burning while still alive 
  • The blood trail on Oakes face show he died face down with blood gushing from a head wound proving the heavy body had been moved by persons capable of lifting the corpulent baronet's corpse.
  • What happened to Oakes Fortune, the stories of illicit Gold smuggling and the role of Oakes Hotel on San Salvador.
  • Was the bizarre nature of the head wound the result of a clumsy attempt to disguise a shooting.
  • How was the Oakes Murder connected with subsequent murder of American Lawyer Betty Renner in 1950    , she supposedly contacted one of Oakes's friends who was a key witness in the trial (Harold Christie - perhaps?) and was found murdered 3 miles from Oakes Westbourne home.
  • What of the fate of the murdered witnesses who died from poisoned rum?
  • Why was Bahamas Governor Sir George Sandford who died in 1950 a supposed victim of the cover-up - did he pry and die another rumoured poison victim?
  • What was the role of Bahamian finance minister/businessman Sir Stafford Sands in the affair, who was friend to Oakes and Jury Foreman in the trial
  • Harold Christie remained for most Bahamians the No.1 Suspect in the Oakes Murder - was he the man who dreamt of marrying Lady Oakes by murdering her husband and was he involved in the murder of his personal secretary Dorothy Macksey in May 1962 . Why did our current monarch Queen Elizabeth II feel happy about Knighting such a contraversial figure as Harold Christie in 1964?
  • Why did Lord Beaverbrook take such an interest in the affair sponsoring two investigating books by Bocca in 1959 and Leasor in 1983.

Sunday 16 December 2012

Joseph Ball, MI5, Oxford and Balliol College

In 1916, MI5's Joseph Ball was based at Barnet House, Broad Street in Oxford. He wrote to Arthur Smith, Master of Balliol concerning arrangements for Albert Mansbridge to attend a conference at Balliol College on 27th October 1916. The Notes seem to indicate that Ball himself would chair the conference and the notes were written on notepaper of Senior Tutor of St John's College Oxford.
What was Ball's First World War activities in Oxford for MI5?
http://archives.balliol.ox.ac.uk/Modern%20Papers/ALSmith/alsmithletterb.asp


Wednesday 5 December 2012

Joseph Ball and Guy Burgess

One particular aspect of the sinister work of MI5's Joseph Ball has been hard to research. His dealings and involvement with the Cambridge Spies - especially Guy Burgess. Many Intelligence writers in their researching of Burgess, Maclean, Philby and then Blunt between 1951 and 1995 have said various things about Ball - suggesting that he was Homosexual, that he sponsored Burgess into MI5 and that he used him for various intelligence related activities  (Burgess's link to Daladier, his Radio work, spying on Heinlein) and that Ball was an active member of the Anglo-German Fellowship and part of a Pro-Nazi circle which included Henry Ford, Henri Deterding, and Basil Zaharoff.
Guy Burgess himself in 1956 told Tom Driberg about his activities with Ball and also named Ball in a list of mostly prominent homosexual aquaintances in reports to Moscow in declassified KGB files from the 1930's.
Ball strongly denied the Burgess allegations in 1956 and his lawyers made Driberg redact much of the material from his book. Because many of the Cambridge Spy writers got many of the biographical details about Ball wrong and wrongly believed Burgess that Ball was a member of the AGF when it was a namesake, I have largely discounted Burgess's claims and the rumours of Ball's homosexuality as Moscow propaganda aimed at discrediting a leading right wing spook. However revisiting Conspiracy of Silence by Penrose and Freeman (1987) I realised that MI5 officer TAR Robertson did corroborate in conversations with Freeman in 1985  in part Burgess's involvement in a clandestine intelligence link from Neville Chamberlain to Eduard Daladier in 1938 which use the St Ermin's Hotel and Burgess's claim to have slept with Daladier's Chef du Cabinet. I now feel that most of what Burgess claimed about Ball including his homosexuality (with the exception about the Anglo-German Fellowship, though Ball may have clandestine involvement) now is more likely to be fact than malicious invention. Given that, Homosexuality is the most likely explanation for Ball's rapid rise, his meeting Burgess and sponsorship of Howard and other homosexuals in MI5 and CRD and links to the pederast Maundy Gregory.


Monday 3 December 2012

HG Wells Inside Track

As reported earlier, when in June 1946 HG Wells read reports about Mussolini's secret funding of Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists in the 1930's he was so appauled that he wrote a stinging attack questioning whether the British Royal Family had been involved in this funding. His attack a month before his death was the most sensational attack on British monarchy ever made by a senior public figure and was reported around the world. It was quickly belittled as a the ramblings of a great man well past his prime and even saw the once interned traitor Mosley come to the defence of the Monarchy.


Yet what exactly triggered Well's allegations? - The statement in the House of Commons by Labour Home Secretary Chuter Ede outlined a secret bank account used by the BUF to receive funds. Wells may well have received information from his Russian lover Moura Budberg who was suspected by MI5 of being a triple agent  "Russian Mata Hari" and she may have secret information via the Cambridge Spies or her Moscow network. Well's suspicions may have been reinforced by his prior knowledge of the Duke of Windsor's fascist links when he was Prince of Wales and briefly King Edward VIII or the activities of Prince George Duke of Kent and those of Lord Mountbatten and his nefarious friends.
The true key was the activities of Sir Louis Greig (member of the Fascist front January Club) King George VI's key mentor and advisor who had been close to pro-fascist Maundy Gregory and his brother in law AC Scrimgeour who had financed the BUF to the tune of £11,000.
Well's parting shot might have been closer to the mark than many at the time realised.