In 1938 Merseyside was thriving.
The population peaked at over 850,000, and King George graced the streets of Liverpool during a Royal visit. At Cammell Laird, The HMS Ark Royal was about to be launched and Everton were on the way to winning the football league.
However, the focus on Liverpool would shift during the summer months after the city became embroiled in a murder case that took the nation by storm. A case that started two hundred and sixty-five miles away.
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'Have you seen a Scottish murderer?'
In Glenrothes, Fife, John Welsh brutally bludgeoned his uncle, William Forester, to death with fireplace tongs leaving his lifeless body in a coal cellar. John who was 33 at the time had been living with his uncle and worked locally visiting farms and going door-to-door selling eggs to families.
Now firmly in the sights of the local constabulary and propped up as the prime suspect, John made a run for it.
'I need to understand why my ancestor would kill the other'
Stuart Russell, a producer, has painstakingly researched the details of the killing by tracing his family tree.
Hearing rumours about a possible murder in the family, Stuart has tried to get to the bottom of what happened and put together how his great grandfather's cousin, John, committed the terrible crime.
'He was trying to reach a port'
John was desperately trying to leave Fife and get as far away as he could from the crime. He began hitching rides from drivers and eventually travelled from Aberdeen to Liverpool. His escape did not go unnoticed, though, with the national press galvanising the story of a missing murderer.
Stuart said John was trying to reach a port in a frantic bid to leave the country. He said: "We've no idea what he was doing in Liverpool but we know he stopped at the port there, but he could not get on a boat. He was sleeping either rough or in a hostel."
The chase, Stuart said, lasted "over three or four months" and it is unknown how long John stayed in Liverpool. As well as national coverage the ECHO was one of the many publications to cover the crime drama.
Stuart added: "We're just surprised he managed to evade every police force in the UK."
'A man carrying a horoscope was found'
John's country-wide run took him to the other side of the country, to Southampton, another huge port. John, a huge fan of pulp fiction novels, saw Southampton as his gateway to America and opportunity.
Brandishing a copy of a horoscope, John's escape came to an end as he was caught trying to board a boat in May, 1938. A "bedraggled looking man" was seen trying to escape and officers suspected it was John. He was immediately hauled back to Fife, by train, to face justice.
Detained
In July, 1938, the gravity of John's crime set in as he faced up to criminal charges in Edinburgh. John claimed gangsters had broken into his shared home and killed his uncle.
This would have been a sign of the times in 1930s Britain, at a time when guns were being smuggled into Scotland by gang members. The court, however, deemed John unfit to plead, claiming he was not sane, and he was indefinitely detained.
John served some of his years at Perth Prison before he was taken to a mental health institution. Where he would die years later in 1975, aged 70.
Understanding John's crime
Retracing his relative's footsteps, Stuart said he found John had been diagnosed with dementia praecox. Nowadays, the condition could be understood as bearing similarities to schizophrenia.
Speaking about why the crime was silenced in the family, Stuart said: "I think a lot of it was to do with shame. Because it was one family member who had killed another and also the fact that he had mental health issues.
"We don't know if he was misdiagnosed, it could have also been multiple personality disorder. We know he had a lot of paranoia."
How the crime was felt at home
John's victim, William, had a small "almost secret" funeral, the documentary heard. It was almost as if their two lives were "erased" from history, although generations afterward felt the pain of it.
Stuart said: "At first I thought it was quite interesting and from the point of view of a producer, I thought it could be a good story. But when you read deeper into it you can't help thinking it's personal, because it's your own family.
"Then you start defending them, you do feel like you know them and you suddenly feel like there are other bits to the story."
Stuart's journey in finding out the truth has been captured in a BBC Radio 3 documentary, The Egg Dealer which was released in 2019.
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