Irak
The cast of characters in one of the
most baffling mysteries to confront the
police were (from left to right): the
victim, Sir Harry Oakes; his son-in-law,
Count Alfred de Mqrigny; his daughter,
Nancy; friend and business associate,
Harold Christie; and Raymond Schin
dler, the famous American detective.
The unacted-on resolution of the Bahamian
assembly is only the latest in a series of tragicomic
events in one of the most grotesque murder cases
of the past half century.
In the cast of characters of this officially unsolved
bludgeon-blowtorch-mutilation murder are the
Duke of Windsor, ex-king of England, who as gov
ernor general of the Bahamas, in 1943, at first
believed that Sir Harry's murder was a suicide; the
Miami police captain he summoned to Nassau,
who neglected to bring along proper fingerprint
ing equipment; a world-famous American private
detective (retained by the chief suspect's wife
the murdered man's daughter, Nancy Oakes de
Marigny) who was impeded and harassed through
out his independent investigation.
Defendant de Marigny, Nancy Oakes then
husband and the only person ever to stand trial for
the murder, was a count who raised chickens. He
was acquitted in short order. '
Bahamian Cyril Stevenson is not the only one
who claims to be able to name the murderer of Sir
Harry Oakes. The name has been whispered about
the islands for 16 years. Yet its bearer has never
been arrested, detained, or even publicly accused
of the crime. (It will be noted that Mr. Stevenson
prudently did not name a man in either the House
of Assembly or his newspaper.)
The trusted friend and business ally, whom rumor
accuses of having brutally killed Sir Harry, to this
day goes about his business on New Providence
Island, carrying the burden of his alleged guilt as
lightly as any native woman balancing a basket of
eggs on her head.
Harry oakes was born a poor but honest down
East Yankee who saw no future in lobster pots
and, in 1896, at the age of 21, set out to make his
fortune. Gold was his object, and for 15 years he
sought the yellow stuff, from the Klondike to the
Philippines to West Africa to Australia; finally, by
sheer fluke, in 1911, he struck a bonanza in north
ern Ontario, Canada. It became the second-richest
gold mine in the world.
In 1923, a millionaire of 48, Oakes returned to
Australia to marry a girl 10 years his junior who
had been waiting for him for 20 years, a Sydney
jewelry-shop clerk named Eunice Maclntyre. By
1938, when he was 63, Oakes had acquired five chil
dren, six mansions, an income of $3 million a year,
British citizenship, and a baronetcy.
That was the year Sir Harry Oakes and a Baham
ian real-estate operator named Harold Christie
became friends. As a result, in 1939 the Oakes fam
ily took up official residence in Nassau, Bahamas,
where the income tax was negligible. It was from
Christie that Oakes purchased Westbourne, a regal
20-bedroom estate, for a reported $500,000; it was
with Christie that he engaged in numerous lucra
tive real-estate deals. At his death, Oakes was worth
some $200 million, and he and Christie were the
two most powerful men in the islands.
Oakes was no beloved tycoon. His photos show
a rough rimrock face with merciless eyes under
shaggy brows, a vult urine nose, a mouth set in
concrete, and a chin and jaw like the prow of a sub
marine. He made enemies as naturally as he made
millions. He manhandled his servants. He spat in
. the faces of shopkeepers who incurred his royal
displeasure. He had an eye, and more than an eye,
not only for attractive lady tourists but for their
shapely sisters in permanent Bahamian residence
as well; his conquests were reputed to include many
who had smoldering husbands.
A man born, some said, to be murdered.
And murdered he was during the night of July 7,
1943, in his many-roomed mansion in Nassau, all
alone except for his old friend and business crony,
Harold Christie.
Lady Oakes and-the Oakes children had gone
north some time before to escape Nassau's summer '
heat; they were far away that night, in the United
States. Oakes himself was planning to fly to the
mainland the next morning to join them; and that
night he had entertained a few guests at a small,
select farewell party. Among them was Christie.
All the guests but Christie departed about mid
night. While the native servants cleaned up, Sir
Harry .and the real-estate broker discussed some
business matters over a drink or two. Shortly after
ward, the servants left the house for their cabins,
and Sir Harry and his friend said good night and
retired Oakes to the master bedroom, Christie to
the so-called East Room, located 18 feet away.
During the night, Christie testified at de Marigny's
trial, he slept fitfully. Nevertheless, he said, he
heard nothing from his host's room; a tropical storm
raged half the night. A little before 7 a.m., Christie
tapped on his host's door. Getting no answer, he
entered to find the master bedroom filled with smoke
from a smoldering mattress and rug, and Sir Harry,
face up in his bed, bloody, burned, and dead.
Someone had inflicted four deep, triangle-shaped
bludgeon wounds behind the victim's left ear,
applied an intense flame to the eyes and other parts
of the body, and set fire to the bed. A pall of un
changed feathers from the mattress had some time
later been strewn over the corpse.
The bestial nature of the murder, plus the strewn
i feathers, at first suggested some barbaric revenge
rite. Professed Christians though native Bahamians
are, the remains of voodoo fires can still be found
in remote sections of the islands' palmetto brush.
But this thought was not pursued.
The savage murder at once turned into a tragi
comedy of errors and omissions. To this day, no one
knows, or will tell, who notified the police. When
the superintendent arrived with his constables, mat
ters worsened. By actual count, 13 persons were
allowed to enter the murder room before an RAF
photographer was asked to snap pictures of the
scene of the crime. By then a silk Chinese screen
standing beside the victim's bed had been moved
and hundreds of fingers had left prints on it al
though later the dead man's son-in-law was to go
on trial for his life because a single print among
the hundreds was alleged to be his.
Sir Harry had made no bones about his contempt
for Nancy's husband; he had considered de Marigny
a no-account fortune hunter, and at the time of the
murder the two men had not been on speaking terms
for months. As for the count's regard for his father-in-law,
one of the first things Miami policemen
heard on setting foot in Nassau was the rumor that,
(Continued on page 9)
Family Weekly, November 1, 19S9