‘Jigsaw murders’: The gruesome case of a jealous GP

Who said Googling yourself wasn’t productive? It was during a fairly self-interested search for “Ruxton” that I stumbled across the most famous one of them all - Buck.

It was a late September day in 1935 when walkers in Moffat, Scotland, peered into a ravine and spotted a parcel with a human leg protruding from it.

On police inspection, a series of body parts were discovered wrapped in bundles of newspaper and concealed from the view of a footbridge above. More than one corpse had been mutilated and divided into separate packages.

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The house and former doctor’s practice of Buck Ruxton as it looks today (centre) - number 2 Dalton Square, Lancaster, UK. Photograph: Google Street View

Forensic scientists set about putting the pieces together. Despite having had their identifying features removed, Prof John Glaister and anatomist James Couper Brash, among other experts assigned to the case, were able to determine that the body parts belonged to two different women.

The parts, they would set out to prove, belonged to Isabella Ruxton and her housemaid, a 20-year-old woman named Mary Rogerson. At the time of the grizzly discovery on September 29th, they had been missing from the house of Dr Buck Ruxton in Dalton Square in Lancaster for two weeks.

Buck, born Buktyar Rustomji Ratanji Hakim in India in 1899, was a husband, father, "learned man", well-respected GP and in the 1935 became the centre of a murder mystery that gripped the public and press in the UK and Ireland.

The doctor, reportedly liked among his patients, changed his name to Ruxton by deed poll around 1930 and at that time set up a GP practice in Lancaster. He lived there with his common-law wife Isabella Ruxton, née Kerr.

In October 1935, he was arrested and charged with the murder of Isabella and Mary. He denied the charges.

In a time before DNA analysis, proving who the women were was difficult; not least because any identifying body parts had been removed. Yet, it was the surgical precision shown in the shocking dismemberment of the bodies which first pointed to a culprit skilled in that area.

"Every identification mark had been skilfully removed," said JC Jackson for the prosecution as the murder trial opened on March 2nd, 1936, according to an Irish Times report from the next day.

“I suggest that both women had died a very violent death, and that the dismemberment had been done by someone who had medical knowledge and surgical skill.”

Motive

Dubbed “The Jigsaw Murders” in newspapers, the case built against Dr Buck Ruxton relied on an ambitious use of forensic evidence, as well as 209 other exhibits and some 115 witnesses.

Before getting to the physical evidence, Jackson provided a motive.

“I suggest,” Mr Jackson said, “that if ever a motive was shown and indicated in a case of murder, it is quite apparent and clear in this case that it followed on his great jealousy, foolish jealousy, of this woman.”

The doctor, it emerged, was an incredibly possessive husband and would routinely accuse Isabella of being unfaithful. Throughout the trial, the jury heard from witnesses who recalled instances of violence and aggression against Mrs Ruxton in the “unhappy home”.

According to an Irish Times court report, Ruxton was convinced Isabella was having an affair with a man identified as Mr Edmundson - a 25-year-old solicitor working in Lancaster.

Two weeks before she disappeared, Isabella visited Edinburgh. She had walked with a group of people that included Mr Edmundson over the very bridge where her remains would be found.

The doctor tailed the group in his car, placing paper over his car’s windscreen to hide his identity. He became convinced that Isabella spent that night with Edmundson.

That was not the only evidence of Ruxton’s “foolishly jealous” disposition. In April 1934, following a domestic call from police, he was reported as saying to officers: “My wife has been unfaithful, I will kill her if it continues.” The trial heard other examples of his aggression, including a report of a house worker discovering a revolver under his pillow.

The most chilling account came from Isabella’s sister, Jean Kerr Nelson. She recalled speaking with Buck after he revealed Isabella had tried to take her own life.

“My sister asked me to take her home, and the doctor said that if she attempted to take the children away, he would cut the throats of all of them. After that, he calmed down and became very nice.”

The character evidence against Ruxton was damning, a crucial blow to his profession of innocence came from physical evidence reminiscent of the detailed exhibits found in most familiar, modern-day crime scene investigation shows.

A model of Ruxton’s house, blood spatter details including a report of eighty spots of human blood in the bath, various items of clothing found at the scene and dental records were used to identify the victims and put their place of death on the landing in Ruxton’s home. Other pieces of the puzzle, including the presence of a Sunday Lancaster paper in the wrappings around the dismembered limbs, pointed to Ruxton.

Most notably, the prosecution relied on innovation from Prof Glaister to secure a guilty verdict. The professor took a skull found in the ravine and photographed it. He then superimposed an existing studio photograph of Isabella over the image of the skull. The contours of the face, matching jawline and size similarities helped convince the jury that Dr Ruxton’s claims of innocence were false.

Verdict

The conclusion was reached that, on the night of September 14th 1935, Buck attacked Isabella over alleged unfaithfulness and likely strangled her. Mary Rogerson, on witnessing the murder, inadvertently became the doctor’s second victim.

He killed them on the landing. He drained their blood and dismembered the bodies in the bath, paying careful attention to removing identifiers. He parcelled the body parts and drove them some 170km to Moffat, where he discarded the evidence in a ravine.

He was found guilty following an eleven-day trial. During his time in the witness box, his demeanour had been erratic and emotional; at his sentencing hearing, however, he was calm, save for one final peculiar gesture.

The judge finished handing down the death sentence, prompting a "curious" action from Ruxton, according to another Irish Times report.

“When the judge’s voice had ceased, and the chaplain’s ‘Amen’ had echoed away, Ruxton raised his right arm from the elbow in what appeared to be a Roman form of salute.”

Ruxton was hanged at Strangeways Prison in Manchester on May 12th, 1936, having reportedly confessed to the crime before his execution.

The details of the murder and the story of the case were so well known that they apparently inspired the following ditty, to the tune of Red Sails at Sunset:

“Red stains on the carpet/ Red stains on the knife

Oh Dr Buck Ruxton/ You murdered your wife

Then Mary she saw you/ You thought she would tell

So Dr Buck Ruxton/ You killed her as well”

This story is part of the Lost Leads series - a re-visiting of lesser-known stories that have made the pages of The Irish Times since 1859. What can you find? Let us know @irishtimes. For more information on subscribing to the archive, visit www.irishtimes.com/archive