27th September 1935
Mrs Johnstone, from Lenzie, often came on holiday to Moffat. In 1935 she arrived on a Friday evening with her 24-year-old daughter Susie (Susan Haines Johnstone) and her 18-year-old son Alfred. They took up their usual residence at the Buccleuch Arms where the proprietors, Bailie and Mrs Fingland, were their friends.
29th September
At about 11 o’clock Mrs. Johnstone set off on a walk with Susie. They walked along the Edinburgh Road and after a couple of miles they paused for a rest at Gardenholm Bridge. Susie glanced over the parapet of the bridge and her attention was attracted by some articles scattered in the bed of the shallow stream. They returned to the Buccleuch and during lunch the matter came up in conversation. Mrs. Fingland suggested that Alfred Johnstone should go back to the bridge to make sure that there was nothing of importance. After lunch Alfred and Bert Paterson, a friend who lived at Braeside in Moffat, drove to the spot and looked into the ravine. They descended the steep banks and found, to their horror, that several body parts were scattered in the stream. There was also a large sheet which appeared to have been knotted together. Alfred and Bert returned to Moffat where Mrs. Fingland immediately informed the police. Sergeant Robert Sloan returned with Alfred and Bert to the scene where he found several bundles containing human remains. Having carefully recorded the location of the body parts he gathered them together and took them to the mortuary at Moffat Cemetery. Sgt. Sloan then made contact with police headquarters in Dumfries and a force of men under the supervision of Superintendent Walter Hogarth, the Deputy Chief Constable, and Inspector Strath from Lockerbie was soon on the scene.
The remains found on that day comprised two mutilated heads, two feet, a forearm, a hand, fingers which were severed at the first joint, four pieces of flesh, and four or five large bones. The heads were wrapped in white cotton sheeting while other parts were wrapped in a blouse and what appeared to be a pair of child’s rompers. Portions of newspapers were found in the bundles, and these were from the Daily Herald, the Sunday Chronicle, and the Sunday Graphic. There were no bloodstains on the pieces of newspaper, and it was thought that the victims had been dead for some time before being cut up.
Bertie Hammond, the head of the Glasgow Police Fingerprint Bureau, was invited to the mortuary and he described the remains, which were laid out on a small trestle table, as “flesh decomposed, a black mass seething with maggots, and stench overpowering”. Jim Nelson, the cemetery keeper, lived in the rooms above the mortuary with his wife and children, including a new-born baby. That night the stench from the body parts was such that Jim lit several paraffin lamps in an attempt to disguise the smell. Next day the family were provided with alternative accommodation in Moffat.
30th September
The police carried out a further search of the ravine and more human remains were found. Shortly after nine o’clock in the morning Charles Hunter, a roadman who lived at Bellevue on the Edinburgh Road, found an arm, severed at the elbow, under a bush on the bank between Gardenholm Bridge and the stream. Inspector Strath, Sergeant Sloan and Constable Wilson from Beattock then searched the dense undergrowth on both banks of the stream using sticks and wearing rubber gloves. During the morning, they found several body parts, including a left thigh, which they placed in an improvised sack made from a white sheet.
The contents of the sack were taken to the mortuary where they were added to the collection of body parts. A postmortem examination was carried out by Dr. David Huskie of Hamilton House and Dr Pringle of Greenbank. The doctors worked late into the afternoon assembling the body parts and the results of their examination suggested that the remains were of a woman in her early thirties and a man aged between 45 and 50. Both bodies had been mutilated and the skin of both faces had been carefully removed. No cause of death could be established. Some parts of the remains were in an advanced state of putrefaction, while others were comparatively fresh. The victims were of average height and sections of the woman’s body were noticeably less decayed than those of the man.
Records of missing persons were closely examined by all Scottish police districts, but these searches were hampered by the lack of adequate descriptions of the victims. There were no grounds for believing that the crime originated in the Moffat area, but the police believed that the attempt to dispose of the remains must have been made by someone familiar with the area. The police also believed that the murders had been committed somewhere to the north of Moffat, perhaps in the Edinburgh or Glasgow districts, and their inquiries were concentrated in those areas. This belief was based on the fact that the remains had been thrown over the bridge on the east side of the road. Had the motor car, in which presumably the remains were carried, come from the south then those responsible would have had to cross the road carrying their burden or else run their car up on the wrong side of the road.
1st October
Several body parts were still missing, and the police resumed their search. The one part to be found that day was a hand-sized piece of flesh, and this was discovered by two men making an unofficial search at a point lower down the stream and about five minutes‟ walk from the bridge. The important missing parts at this stage were part of the man’s torso, his legs, and his fingers. The woman’s body had almost all been found and showed her, as far as could be judged, to be a remarkably fine-looking woman. Her teeth were in almost perfect condition with only two missing from the upper set. The police believed that there must have been more than one man involved because the greater part of the bodies was wrapped in one sheet, and it would have been almost an impossibility for one man to have heaved it into the ravine. It was now quite certain that the bodies had been thrown over the bridge at some time over the weekend because a local gamekeeper had walked up the ravine of Gardenholm Linn on Friday 27th September and he had seen nothing of the remains.
Drs. Huskie and Pringle were joined by Professor John Glaister, the Chair of Forensic Medicine at Glasgow University, and Dr. Gilbert Millar, Lecturer in Pathology at Edinburgh University. A further examination of the remains concluded that the male body was that of a man aged about 60 and about 5 feet 8 inches or 9 inches in height. The woman was apparently aged 30 to 40, about 5 feet 2 inches, with brown hair and of stocky build. It was also concluded that the mutilation of the bodies had taken place shortly after death and that the work had been carried out by someone with anatomical knowledge. Because none of the packages had any blood on them, the body parts had been drained of blood. The remains simply labelled “Body No. 1” and “Body No. 2” were put in two rough coffin-like boxes made by Martin Taylor, an apprentice joiner at Taylor and Smiths Mill in Moffat. The remains were now taken to Edinburgh to be examined in more detail than was possible in Moffat.
On this same day the Rogerson family in Lancashire reported to their local police that their daughter, 20-year-old Mary Jane Rogerson, had been missing for some time and was last seen on 14th September.
2nd October
Further searches of the ravine were carried out by four firemen from Hamilton and by Thomas Renfrew, a police inspector based in Hamilton. At times the searchers had to stretch ropes across the stream to prevent themselves from being swept away by the water, which had been swollen by heavy rain. The search area was widened to the junction of Gardenholm Linn with the River Annan while fields and outhouses in the area were searched. George Lammie, farmer at Gardenholm Farm, was walking on his farm about 500 yards from the bridge when he found a piece of flesh in the burn. The piece was about one pound in weight and George handed it over to the police. The police asked all owners of garages and petrol-filling stations to let them know of any suspicious cars that had been seen during the past few days and particularly any car from which there may have been emanating an offensive smell. In the evening police received several telephone calls from a man in Glasgow who claimed to have been standing at Gardenholm Linn shortly after midnight on 28th September when another car drew up before a man emerged from the car and threw something over the bridge. The registration number of the car was provided to the police. The caller was later caught while making another telephone call and it was established that he was attempting to implicate a man who he suspected of having an affair with his wife. The hoaxer, 27-year-old Samuel Shaw Coburn, was later fined £20.
3rd October
The Crown authorities took the unprecedented step of calling a special conference of police chiefs, Crown officials and pathologists. The conference took place in Edinburgh ending at 11.00 p.m. and, as a result of a detailed examination of the human remains, definite lines of inquiry were agreed. The Dumfries Constabulary had already checked the movements of almost all of 83 the 900 motor vehicles in the county and they were now practically certain that the crime was not committed in Dumfriesshire. The date of the murders was thought to have been 18th or 19th September and, although pathologists had not been able to establish the cause of death in each case, it was probable that it was stabbing or strangulation the traces of which were hidden by the mutilation of the bodies. Further searches, without success, were carried out by members of the Lanarkshire Fire Brigade along the River Annan from Gardenholm Linn to Moffat.
7th October
Bloodhounds were used to search Gardenholm Linn and Holehouse Linn while a body diviner, armed with a chicken bone, arrived from Cumberland and volunteered to search for the missing body parts. The body diviner had no more success than the bloodhounds and no parts were found. Two developments now suggested the possibility that the murders were committed in England rather than in Scotland.
8th October
One of the newspapers in which part of the remains was wrapped was definitely identified as part of an edition intended for circulation only in the Lancaster and Morecambe area. This was the Sunday Graphic dated 15th September 1935. The Chief Constable of Dumfries then made his first communication with the Lancashire police and, by a curious coincidence, on the same day the attention of the Chief Constable was directed to an article in the Glasgow Daily Record in which an account was given of the disappearance of Mary Jane Rogerson, who was a nursemaid in the house of a Dr. Buck Ruxton from Lancaster. Dr. Ruxton had earlier reported to the Lancaster police that his wife had gone missing on 14th September and he complained to them that the press seemed to be linking him with the human remains found at Moffat. He provided the police with a description of his wife which would be circulated to other police offices. Forensic reports now indicated that both of the dismembered bodies were female, and the Chief Constable of Lancashire announced that Isobel Ruxton, the wife of Dr Buck Ruxton, and Mary Jane Rogerson were both missing.
13th October
Buck Ruxton was charged with the murder of Mary Jane Rogerson.
28th October
Robert Sharp, a roadman working for Dumfries County Council, found a human left foot wrapped in newspaper by the main road about six miles north of Lockerbie and just to the north of Dinwoodie Lodge Hotel. Robert delivered the foot to James Smith, a police constable stationed at Johnstonebridge.
4th November
Miss Jen Gwendoline Halliday, a maidservant from Church Street, was out walking with a friend when she saw a forearm and hand lying in the undergrowth at Adamsholm Wood, about 700 yards south of Gardenholm Bridge, on the left-hand side of the road going north. The right forearm and hand had been wrapped in newspaper, most of which had been destroyed by the weather. Miss Halliday reported her discovery to the police in Moffat and Constable James Fairweather returned with her to the scene where he retrieved the remains and delivered them to Sergeant Sloan. Inspector Strath arrived on the scene and immediately set off for Edinburgh with the body parts. No trace had yet been found of the trunk, right thigh, fingers, and one foot of “Body No. 2”.
5th November
Buck Ruxton was charged with the murder of his wife, Isabella Ruxton.
6th November
Dumfriesshire police used bloodhounds to search both sides of the road between Holehouse Linn and Moffat. The forearm and hand discovered by Miss Halliday had been examined by Professor Brash of the Chair of Anatomy at Edinburgh University and he found that the elbow joint fitted into the upper right arm of the younger woman. The fragments of newspaper which were attached to the forearm and hand were part of a newspaper published in England during September.
2nd March 1936
The trial of Dr Ruxton began at Manchester Assizes. George Aitken, who lived within ¾ mile of Gardenholm Linn, was among the large number of witnesses called. George gave evidence based on the readings from his rain gauge which showed heavy rainfall in the area on the dates at issue. Other Moffat residents who gave evidence were George Lammie from Gardenholm Farm, Jen Gwendoline Halliday from Church Street, Sergeant Robert Sloan and Constable James Fairweather.
Additional Detail
Susan Haines Johnstone, who first found the remains was, coincidentally, a medical student. She later married Charles Guy, owner of the Buchanan Arms Hotel in Drymen.
