Jonathan Goodman writes the interview slightly differently in his book, using the term “sexually odd”, here it appears Parry was suggesting bondage. This may be of possible interest, as Wallace stated a dog whip had been missing for a year, and a British politician reported that while in Malaya, Amy Wallace indulged in bondage by “whipping black boys” (found in Colin Wilson’s book). Joseph Wallace stayed in Malaya while Amy stayed in Liverpool, England.
First writeup, translated from handwritten notes:
Opening remark (before we had spoken): Is it something to do with the election?
After explanation that we were trying to trace everyone connected with, or with knowledge of, W(allace) Case:
A difficult job – most people who could help are dead. mentioned Crew, Close, Edwin (Dr) Wallace [How did he know of Edwin Wallace’s death: he mention in L’pool Press: only in Barrow in Furness paper]
Said that he joined Army soon after W case: Asked Directly, after working for Standard Life; replied that it was not directly after. Mentioned Tanks – Tank Corps?
Said that he was at present in government service: was going on duty later. Said that he was well-off: owned house and other property.
Said that he hoped that daughter would go to university.
Refused to give information, said reason was father’s health.
Said that ‘somebody had called on father and found his address under false pretences [UNTRUE]
Said that trouble over W Case had ‘definitely shortened mother’s life’, and that father, terribly upset, had telephoned him, saying: Gordon, you shouldn’t tell them anything: he had assured father that he would not say anything: What if they offer two or three thousand pouds father asked. Not even for 2 or 3 thousand, he replied.
Mentioned that author’s agent had approached him several years before with cash offer: implied that he had then been let down. Agreed that author was John Rowland. [I can check this] Said that after father’s death, he might change his mind, and that there were certain facts which only he knew about W and case.
Said that Joseph Crewe knew certain things which could have condemned W: Said, too, that Crewe was convinced of W’s guilt [UNTRUE]. He had no doubt that W was guilty: implied, when asked W’s motive (?), that he was sadist, pervert, but refused to give details.
Said that he told Hubert Moore certain things after case which convinced Mooreof W’s guilt. Said that he knew Julia well – ‘a sweet and charming woman’. He had often had tea with her and had often been in parlour with her, he singing, she accompanying on piano [Wallace DID Not know this]
Referred to criminal background as youthful pranks of a ‘young tearaway’. Said that case in which he was bound over for stealing car was post-party prank. Car belonged to Army officer.
Said that his criminal background (^_ to W case) was blown up: When told that his criminal record showed offences after case, he shut up.
Asked about MISS LLOYD, refused to give her Christian ___(name?).
R W-E said she was in B’ham a few years ago, and he said she was now in Llandudno – He was still in touch with her. Blamed trouble over W case for causing rife between them.
Told that Miss L had retracted alibi statement afterwards, said he did not deny this (?), in any case, he was also at birthday party that night.
[BIRTHDAY – Tie in with Q’s daughter’s birthday? Own birthday week before WAS MISS L’S BIRTHDAY NEAR?]
[Birthday party alibi; father’s reference to charging battery in Breck Road (P couldn’t remember this) and Miss Lloyd – an embarassment of alibis?]
Said that he had no objection to facts about himself and his connection with W case appearing in book, as long as his name was not mentioned.
Impression:
Very plausible, blank: had control allw ay through interview – except for one moment when remark by R W-E caused clenching of fist. Smiling all the time.
Piercing grey-blue eyes
slight downward cast
tall, moustache, military bearing
perfect car salesman type
Large hands – clammy handshake
N Wales last known to police – check with own information
6_ C Z record
Me___ Kelly’s – Sommerset House
Get No 2 script to R W E
told __
Typed interview, possibly a draft for the book:
(I have included crossed out writing).
30th March, 1966.
Jonathan Goodman and Richard Whittington-Egan met Richard Gordon Parry who is now living in the ground-floor flat at Number 39 Grove Hill Road, London, S.W.5, (Telephone: BRIxton 7240) of a small Victorianterracehouse in an upper working class district which is divided into two flats.
Parry, who now works for “the government” (telephone operator) and was about to go on night duty, is married to a plump woman who appears some years younger than himself (he is fifty-seven), and has a daughter who is just about to go to university.
We found him a bland, plausible man who was not made in any way uncomfortable by our questioning. He has gray hair, smoothed sleekly back, and a neat-clipped military style moustage. He is of medium height and is neither fat nor thin. He appears to be in very robust health, wiry and well-preserved for his age. He is of reasonably powerful build, has noticeably large hands, and a loose, damp and rather fleshy handshake. His eyes, which are of that bold blue which is traditionally associated with ‘sex maniacs’, are penetrating and alternately shifty and too-candid. He exhiits certain lack of affect. He engenders an air of spurious authority of the kind that one encounters in the knowing, self-possessed and self-satisfied kind of jailbird. It was an air of authority that made of think of the type of ex-army non-commissioned officer who became a commissionaire.
He also exudes a false trowel-layed-on charm, which can easily beguile, but is as bogus as the bonhomie of a car salesman. This manner masks, in our opinion, considerable firmness – even ruthlessness. He would be a nasty man to cross. Despite an obvious and quite attractive sense of humour, one suspects that just below the surface there lurks a considerable capacity for unpleasantness. We would sum him up as a tricky, position-shifting individual of the con man type. He is evasive, manipulative, sharp, on-the-ball and clever. He is quite well-spoken, and throughout the interview kept a self-satisfied and inappropriate smile on his face.
He hinted that, if he chose, he could reveal much about Wallace, whom he described as a “very strange man,” and implied that he was sexually odd. He further said that he knew why Wallace might have killed his wife, and added that he could think of no-one else who would have been likely to have done so. He emphasised that women clients from whom Wallace collected insurance payments were afraid of him and that they did not like to admit him to their houses. Again he explained that Wallace was a “very peculiar looking man – and insanely tall.”
Julia Wallace he descibed as a “very sweet, charming woman.”
Parry believes, he says, that Wallace murdered her.
Parry vigorously denied that Wallace named him as his prime suspect. He claims that all Wallace said was that he (Parry) was the person that Julia would be most likely to admit to the house.
Parry was not unpleasant, but he was adamant in his refusal to talk about his part in the Wallace Case. He displayed the same kind of implacability that one of us (R.W.H.) encountered in discussion with Mrs. Grace Duff of the Croydon Poisoning Case.
He was quite ready to admit that, as a young man, he was what he called a “tearaway.” But he makes little of the various criminal charges against him. Just youthful high spirits. No real harm done. “It was very awkward for me having my little misdemeanours dragged up at the time of the case,” he remarked.
We pointed out that it was not until after the trial that he had got into trouble with the police. He replied that there had been other little incidence. (This presumably refers to the fact that he embezzled £30 from the Prudential Insurance Society, which his father repaid to Parry’s superintendent, Mr. Crewe.)
Referring to the fact that he was given three months’ imprisonment for taking a car and driving it away without the owner’s consent, he says that it was only a little joke – that he had “borrowed it for fun” from an officer in the tanks.
Pressed about the other car, which he had also driven away without the owner’s consent on a previous occasion, and in respect of which offence he had been bound over, he blandly replied that that was only a little joke too.
He agreed that he had stolen various sums of money, and concurred immediately and wholeheartedly with the proposition which we put forward that he had simply been “a young man with tastes that exceeded his unaided financial capacity to indulge them.”
The police, he said, were in and out of his house in Liverpool by the minute for two days at the time of the investigation, but they finally seemed ^were satisfied as to his innocence of the Wallace murder when he was able to produce some people with whom he had spent the evening of the murder “arranging a birthday celebration.”
(This we considered interesting and perhaps significant in view of the fact that Mr. Qualtrough spoke on the telephone of being busy with his girl’s twenty-first birthday party. Remember Parry was an amateur actor, a member of the Merseyside dramatic society, and had he been impersonating Qualtrough on the telephone this bit about the birthday party would have been just the sort of haphazard embroidery that a talented actor might well add to his preference to lend atmosphere and verisimilitude. Also Parry’s acting ability might lend him the considence to believe that he could adequately disguise his voice on the telephone.)
Parry claimed that John Rowland’s agent called to see him, circa 1958-59, when Rowland was writing his book on the Wallace case, and that he was promised money – but got nothing. Incidentally, he thought Rowland’s book poor.
Parry said that he used to sing as a young man, and would often go to tea to Wallace’s house, where Julia would accompany him singing on the piano or the violin INSERT: ( WALLACE KNEW NOTHING OF THIS.)
He REFUSED to talk about the Wallace case – “Not if you were to offer me £2,000,” – because, he said, he had promised his (73-year-old) father that he would not talk to anyone about it.
He REFUSED to divulge Lily Lloyd’s christian name – Who was his fiancé at the time of the trouble. He did, however, let it slip that he is still in touch with her and that she is now living in Llandudno. But he would not say where.
He DID NOT REMEMBER if he was in Breck Road (close to Wolverton Street, where the Wallaces lived) on the night of the murder having the batteries of his car recharched. (Although this information was given to J.G. by Parry’s father) when J.G. saw him in Liverpool on March 27th, 1966).
He said…that the worry of it all shortened his mother’s life.
… that the incident broke up his engagement to Miss Lloyd.
… that he “quite liked” Wallace.
… that Mr. Crew the Prudential superintendent (now conveniently dead) was utterly convinced of Wallace’s guilt. (This we know to be UNTRUE)
… that he was in the army after 1931.
We were surprised to find that he knew of the deaths of Crewe, Close (the milk boy) and Dr. Wallace, (that latter was Wallace’s nephew and his death was not at all widely reported. This suggests to us the probability that Parry watches everything that appears in connection with the 35-year-old mystery.)
Our initial impression was that Parry was the type of man who, manifestly, could have comitted the crime.
“I won’t discuss it at all,” he told us, and his manner made it plain that there was nothing that we could do to influence him. Without saying as such, he gave us the impression that he had fooled ‘better people’ than us. There was an air of slightly insolent, slightly amused and contemptuous superiority about him.
He claims that he is now quite well off – “I own property” – and is not in need of money.
He said that in his opinion it was writers who had ruined Christine Keeler’s marriage and chance of a happy life. (Still the old sex interest!), adding, “Anyway, that’s what I believe, and I’m the man in the street.” ( – Wolverton Street ? ! !!)
It was, then, impossible to budge him, but he did say that once his father is dead he might be prepared to talk, subject to financial arrangements being made.
He told us that he is not Welsh, despite his name, and that he has traced his family back for 600 years without finding a drop of Welsh blood.
In my view (R.W.E.) he exhibited definite psychopathic personality, and he tried constantly to put us in the position of being in the wrong, of having acted with less than honesty in endeavouring to trace him. He suggested that JG had upset his father and endangered his heart! But even this was done in an oblique sort of way, by saying that “someone had called on his father in Liverpool and upset him.” Parry affected, at first, not to know who we were. “Is it about the election you want to see me ?” he inquired blandly when we first appeared at the door. But he must have had a very good idea who we were, as his father had telephoned him on the previous Sunday night and told him of J.G.’s call and enquiry.
Finally, Parry said that he has no objection to the retelling of the facts in the book providing his anonymity is preserved. BUT if his name or whereabouts or disclosed he will take immediate action. We are both CERTAIN that he would NEVER confess to any guilty implication in the killing of Julia Wallace.
We then departed, resisting the temptation to say, “Good-night Mr. Qualtrough.”
I should add that on another occasion I telephoned him – resisting the temptation to say: ‘This is Mr Qualtrough speaking’. Parry was viciously angry that I had called, and – though I’m pretty broad-minded – I was astonished by the breadth of his vocabulary of foul language. Many of the obscenities were new to me. The odd thing, though, was that I had the feeling that he was enjoying his outburst. Perhaps a psychiatrist could eplain that. I can’t.
TYNYFFYNNON,
WATERLOO HILL,
LLANGERNEN, (NYW)
NW
7 miled from ____ Derbyshire.