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Out of Print
On 30th November, 1946, the body of a murdered man was found in a chalk pit near Woldingham, Surrey. This man was John Mudie, a barman from a hotel in Reigate. For this murder Ley and Smith were arrested and charged at the Old Bailey.
Thomas John Ley had been a Minister of Justice in the Government of New South Wales, and on coming to England had started company promoting, amongst his lesser activities being the conversion of a derelict house at 5 Beaufort Gardens, London, into a series of flats. Smith was a joiner who worked for him.
Ley had a mistress for whom he provided, and although she was sixty-six years of age he was insanely jealous of her and accused the terrified woman of adulterous relationships with her own son-in-law and the unfortunate Mudie, who had met her but once on the stairs of her house in Wimbledon.
Mudie was kidnapped and brought to Beaufort Gardens where he was strangled. Smith was paid large sums of money by Ley who thought there was nothing that money could not buy. Smith and Ley were ultimately reprieved, but the latter died shortly afterwards in Broadmoor Asylum.
