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Out of Print
The "Blazing Car" case demonstrated a new means of murder, which, curiously, had been employed in Germany some months before.
The crime was committed in the early morning of Thursday, 6th November, 1930, the victim, an unknown man, being burned to death in a motor car on a lonely road near the small village of Hardingstone in Northamptonshire.
The suggestion of the prosecution at the trial was that Rouse, who was in embarrassed circumstances, calculated by this means to obscure his identity, and that his plan only miscarried because he was seen on the road near the burning car by two young men.
Rouse maintained that the car had been accidentally set alight by the dead man while he (the accused) was out of it. After a six days' trial at the County Hall, Northampton, Rouse was found guilty.
