Green Bicycle Case
The Green Bicycle Case was a British murder investigation and subsequent trial pertaining to the fatal shooting of Bella Wright near the village of Little Stretton, Leicestershire, England, on 5 July 1919. Wright was killed by a single bullet wound to the face. The case takes its name from the fact that on the evening of her death, Wright had been seen cycling in the company of a man riding a green bicycle.
Ronald Light, a 33-year-old mathematics teacher, was the prime suspect in Wright's alleged murder. Light did not respond to an extensive media appeal to trace a man matching his description seen on the green bicycle, and concealed his bicycle and revolver holster in a canal following Wright's death. Upon his arrest, Light initially denied, then admitted to being in the company of Wright shortly before her death, although he consistently denied killing her. He was defended in court by Sir Edward Marshall Hall KC, who largely based his defence on the lack of a motive for Wright's death. Marshall Hall obtained Light's acquittal.
The case would prove to be one of the UK's most celebrated and controversial murder cases of the 20th century, with opinions varying among authors as to Light's guilt, the actual motive behind any crime, and the possibility of misadventure. The case has been described by one author as, "The most fascinating murder mystery of the century."
Bella Wright
Annie Bella Wright was born on 14 July 1897 in Somerby, Leicestershire. She was the eldest of seven children born to an illiterate agricultural labourer and his wife. From around 1895 the family lived in a thatched cottage in the village of Stoughton, four miles outside Leicester.Wright had attended school until the age of 12 before beginning work as a domestic servant, subsequently obtaining a job as a rubber hand at Bates & Co.'s St Mary's Mills, a rubber factory in Leicester, approximately five miles from her home. She regularly travelled to work on her bicycle. At the time of her death, she was working the late shift at the factory and was known to cycle between the villages and hamlets around Little Stretton to perform errands or visit acquaintances in the late afternoon.
At the time of her death, Wright—described as a girl with good looks and of good character—was 21 years old and engaged to be married to a Royal Navy stoker named Archie Ward, who served on HMS Diadem, a training ship in Portsmouth. She is known to have had at least one other suitor, and to have told her mother of an officer who had fallen in love with her. This may have been Ronald Light, although he denied this supposition in court.
Ronald Light
Ronald Vivian Light was born on 19 October 1885, the son of a wealthy civil engineer who managed a Coalville colliery and reportedly also invented plumbing devices.According to a prosecution brief from the murder trial, Light was expelled from Oakham School in 1902, at the age of 17, for "lifting a little girl's clothes over her head". Light was a graduate of the University of Birmingham, where he graduated as a civil engineer before gaining employment as a draughtsman at the Derby Works of the Midland Railway in November 1906. He would be fired from this firm in August 1914, suspected of setting a fire in a cupboard and of drawing indecent graffiti in a lavatory. Light was later dismissed from employment at a farm, accused of setting fire to haystacks.
In May 1910, Light purchased a folding bicycle, manufactured by the Birmingham Small Arms Company, from Orton Bros. in Derby. This bicycle was a distinctive green colour, with an uncommon coaster brake. At approximately the same time, Light became a member of a Buxton-based Territorial company of the Royal Engineers.
Following the outbreak of the First World War, Light underwent training at Chatham, Newark and Ripon. He was commissioned as a second lieutenant in February 1915, before being deployed to the Western Front. Light relinquished his commission in the Royal Engineers on 1 July 1916 on the suggestion of his commanding officer. He returned to the ranks as a gunner in the Honourable Artillery Company. He was court-martialled in 1917 for forging move orders. After three years of active service, Light was classified as suffering from severe shell-shock and partial deafness, and was sent back to England to undergo psychiatric treatment. Following recuperation at several army hospitals in England, Light returned to live with his mother in Highfield Street, Leicester. He was demobilised in January 1919 and would later claim to have been "sent home a broken man."
On 21 September 1916, Light's father died in an apparent accident, although it has been posited that the death was a suicide caused by concern for his son's safety on the Western Front.
5 July 1919
By all accounts, Wright and Light met by chance on 5 July 1919 at around 6.45 p.m. as she rode her bicycle to the village of Gaulby, where her uncle, George Measures, resided. According to Light's testimony at his trial, as he rode his bicycle towards the cross-roads where Gaulby Lane crosses Houghton Lane, he observed a young woman bending over her bicycle, and she asked him if he had a spanner to tighten a loose freewheel. Light did not but did what he could to resolve the problem.Having learned that Wright was going to Gaulby, Light offered to accompany her, which she accepted. Light accompanied Wright to Measures' cottage before waiting for her outside the premises. En route, the two were observed by several independent witnesses. Measures later informed officers he liked neither the looks nor the mannerisms of Light, and that his niece had informed him she had only encountered this individual that evening, stating; "Oh him, I don't really know him at all. He's been riding alongside me for a few miles but he isn't bothering me at all. He's just chatting about the weather." Although Wright remarked to Measures that Light had behaved like a "perfect stranger" in her company, just before leaving his cottage, she jokingly informed him, "I hope he doesn't get too boring", before adding; "I shall try and give him the slip." When Wright exited the cottage and approached her bicycle, Light was overheard greeting her with the remark: "Bella, you have been a long time. I thought you had gone the other way."
The two rode away from Measures' cottage at approximately 8.50 p.m. According to Light's subsequent testimony, when the two approached a junction beyond King's Norton, Wright informed him she would have to "bid goodbye" at this stage as her intended route was to the left. He then claimed to have proceeded directly back to Leicester via Stoughton and Evington.
Discovery
Approximately thirty minutes after Wright and Light had ridden away from Measures' cottage, Wright's body was found on Gartree Road, part of the Via Devana Roman road, by a farmer named Joseph Cowell. Her body was discovered alongside her bicycle, and her face was extensively bloodied, with deep gouge marks visible on her cheeks and jaw. Surmising the girl may have been run off the road by a motorist, Cowell initially deduced she had fallen from her bicycle and fatally injured herself. He proceeded to nearby Great Glen to report his discovery to the constable, Alfred Hall, who phoned a Dr Williams in Billesdon. Dr Williams arrived at Hall's residence and the trio returned to Little Stretton, where the doctor gave instructions that the girl's body be moved to a nearby unoccupied house upon Cowell's trap.At the scene, Hall found what he later described as "smears of blood on the top bar of the field gate", although he discovered no human footprints on either side of the gate. Nonetheless, a dead carrion crow was discovered in a field close to this gate.
Dr Williams had also made a cursory candlelight examination of the scene before ordering Wright's body to be moved to the unoccupied house, having agreed with Cowell's initial assumption that she had died in a simple bicycle accident, dying from a combination of blood loss and a head injury. Not accepting this explanation, Hall returned to the murder scene at 6.00 a.m. the following morning to search for any signs of foul play. A careful search uncovered a.455-calibre bullet from where Wright's body had lain, slightly embedded in the ground by the imprint of a horse's hoof. Hall proceeded to the unoccupied house and washed the congealed blood off the face of Wright's corpse, finding a single entry wound beneath the left eye. Informed of Hall's discovery, Dr Williams and another doctor performed a full post-mortem upon the body, discovering the victim had been shot once beneath the left eye from a distance of six to seven feet, and that the bullet had exited the rear of her skull.
The dead girl was formally identified by relatives as Bella Wright. An inquest into her death returned a verdict of murder by person or persons unknown.
Investigation
Police inquiries revealed nobody except Wright and her riding companion had been in the vicinity of Gartree Road at the time of her death. As several people had seen the riding companion, investigators were able to obtain a detailed description of this individual, who was described as being 35 to 40 years of age, with a broad full face and between and in height. He had been wearing a grey suit, a grey cap, collar and tie, and black boots. The Chief Constable of Leicestershire Police issued appeals in both the local and national press, urging this man to come forward and assist them with their inquiries. Nonetheless, these appeals proved unsuccessful.Checks of premises where bicycles were bought, sold or repaired for the distinctive green bicycle also failed. However, on 10 July, a cycle repairman named Harry Cox informed police that the previous day, he had repaired a bicycle matching this description; Cox also informed police the man riding this bicycle had remarked to him of his intentions to go for "a ride in the country" on that very day.
Light would later claim not to have known about Wright's death until he had read a Leicester Mercury article on 8 July. According to his evidence, he realised the dire predicament he was now in, and worried over the matter for 'some time' before deciding to do nothing beyond removing his bicycle from where he normally stored it to the attic. Light claimed he had failed to come forward in response to the police and media appeals to avoid worrying his ailing mother. However, in October 1919, Light took his bicycle from the attic before proceeding to file off the serial numbers from the frame. He took the bicycle to the Upperton Road Bridge in Leicester, where he first detached the rear wheel to remove its distinctive coaster brake, then continued dismantling the bicycle. Each section—except the rear wheel with its coaster brake—was thrown into the River Soar; an act witnessed by a labourer named Samuel Holland, who had been walking to his night shift at a nearby mill.