Oaltes Murder (Continued )
when news of Sir Harry's murder reached de
Marigny that morning, the count had remarked,
"It's about time somebody killed the old ."
The Miami men decided that, in setting fire to
Sir Harry's bed, the murderer himself almost cer
tainly suffered slight burns. Harold Christie had
already been examined with this in mind and given
a clean bill. Questioning de Marigny and being told
that, during the murder period (between 2: 30 and
5 a.m.) the count had been asleep in his cottage five
miles from Westbourne, the American detectives
examined him and found the hair singed on his
hands, arms, and the VanDyke beard he affected.
De Marigny claimed that his hair might have been
seared when he burned the feathers off some chick- '
ens a week before. In the face of this explanation,
the count's lack of an alibi, and one of his finger
prints allegedly lifted off the Chinese screen the
day after the murder with some transparent tape,
the Nassau police arrested de Marigny.
Convinced that her husband was innocent, Nancy
Oakes de Marigny engaged Raymond C. Schindler,
the famous American private detective, to help free
de Marigny. Schindler took the case and soon satis
fied himself that the count was guiltless.
He dug up an alibi for de Marigny. It was pro
vided by the count's friend, the Marquis de Visde-lou-Guimbeau,
who had spent most of the murder
night in de Marigny's company, and that of two
Bahamian ladies, under circumstances a gentleman
was loath to discuss. Schindler felt that the scant
half-hour the marquis could not account for his
friend's movements was far too little to have allowed
de Marigny to drive the five miles to Westbourne,
commit the complicated crime, and return.
The fingerprint on the Chinese screen could have
been deposited there, de Marigny explained to
Schindler, while he wandered about Westbourne
before his arrest, waiting to be questioned. It was
de Marigny's opinion, however, that his print had
been deliberately faked by authorities.
Astonishingly, this theory was confirmed by
Schindler and two of America's outstanding finger
print experts called in fbr the defense. They con
cluded by comparing the Crown's photograph of the
Chinese screen-de Marigny fingerprint with photo
graphs they themselves took of the screen, that the
backgrounds were quite different; their pictures of
the screen showed a smooth surface, whereas the
Crown's picture placed the print against a back
ground of circles, as from a water glass.
The police had never advanced even a theory as
to precisely what kind of bludgeon had caused
the queer triangle-shaped wounds on the dead
man's head. Schindler prowled about the tool shed
of a more modest house Oakes owned in Nassau,
procured an inventory of the tools kept there, and
discovered that one was missing a prospector's,
pick. A prospector's pick has a triangular point Just
such a weapon could have inflicted the wounds. But
with it gone, Schindler could prove nothing.
Dogged by hostile police tailing him, Ray Schind
ler turned up more and more leads to the possible
murderer of Sir Harry Oakes. None of these had
apparently been followed up by the local authori
ties. Harold Christie, presumably the last person
besides the murderer to have seen Sir Harry alive
and the only known occupant of the mansion on the
night of the crime, had been dropped as a suspect
as soon as he passed the hair-singeing test
Schindler's office turned up some interesting in
formation about Christie's background in the States,
before he settled in Nassau. A man named Phillips,
The Duke and Duchess of Windsor figured in the case
because he was Governor of the Bahamas at the time.
an ex-investigator for the U.S. Treasury Depart
ment, claimed that Christie had run rum in the early
'20s, had hadCapone mob connections, and had been
in trouble with Federal authorities in Boston. An
examination of the Federal records there revealed
that the index number relating to Christie's
"trouble" had disappeared from the files. The miss
ing number led to a document alleging an infraction,
by Christie of a Federal statute, and included a
"body attachment" a sort of warrant, which had -neyer
been served.
A photostat of the warrant bearing Christie's
name was mailed from New York to Ray Schindler
in Nassau, just before de Marigny's trial. With
Harold Christie an all-important witness for the
Crown, the defense felt that the placement of this
document in evidence might tend to discredit his
character and, therefore, his testimony.
But the envelope containing the document did
not reach Schindler in time for the trial. It never
reached him. To this day, the mystery of its failure
to be delivered has never been explained.,
Count de marigny was acquitted, and there the
case has rested. Although Nancy subsequently
divorced him and remarried, she recently told
London reporters that she has "information of value"
and is eager to testify if the case is reopened. Wit
nesses now scattered in a dozen countries have
agreed to return to Nassau if officially asked. De
Marigny himself, now living in Cuba, has stated in
a biography that Oakes was shot not beaten to
death, and charged the Bahamian authorities with
ignoring "inconsistencies" in the Crown testimony.
In 1950 a woman reporter and lawyer from Wash
ington, D.C., Betty Renner, was found dead at the
bottom of a Bahamian well. Her friends said that
she had been warned to stop asking questions about
the Oakes case. A routine inquiry expired quietly.
Informed opinion in Nassau holds that Oakes'
killing was engineered by a trusted associate whom
Sir Harry discovered dabbling in something illegal
he could not or would not stomach. Sir Harry is sup
posed to have been collecting evidence in secret
against this person. This person found it out and
hired a powerful islander to commit the murder
and make it look like native voodoo revenge.
This writer himself, many years ago, had pointed
out to him a Bahamian woman, gatekeeper of an
estate on a remote cay of New Providence Island,
who allegedly was the widow of the accomplice; she
had been given the gatekeeping sinecure, he was
told, to keep her mouth shut
Is the Bahamian government afraid of this alleged
mastermind? Or is he too important or dangerous
to touch without an airtight case? Into what lofty
realms does the Oakes case reach?
Many people think they can answer all these
questions.
But the Bahamas House of Assembly has recessed
without seeing Cyril Stevenson's resolution imple
mented. Sixteen years after Sir Harry Oakes' grisly
murder, inaction, frustration, and shadowy mystery
continue to characterize the case.
Family Weekly. November 1, 1959
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