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Freda
Phyllis RUMBOLD
Classification: Murderer
Characteristics: Parricide
Number of victims: 1
Date of murder: August 25, 1956
Date of arrest: Same day
Date of birth: 1913
Victim profile: Alfred Frank Rumbold (her husband)
Method of murder: Shooting
Location: Bristol, South West, England, United Kingdom
Status: Sentenced to death on November 22, 1956. Commuted to life imprisonment
Freda Rumbold
The marriage between Freda and
her timber contractor husband, Alfred, was odd, to say the least.
As Albert's mother was to later testify, he was "a very odd
person, particularly at the time of the full moon." Freda spent
many nights sleeping in her daughter's bed, or on the landing of
their Bristol house, rather than share a bed with her husband
whom, apparently, had strange sexual habits.
Freda was not without her own
oddities. She spent a great deal of her time obtaining loans in
her husband's name and forging his signature on worthless cheques.
Alfred kept a 12-bore shotgun in the house and Freda asked friends
to obtain cartridges for her. On the night of 25th August 1956,
43-year-old Freda blew away the top of her husband's head as he
lay sleeping in bed.
Leaving the corpse where it
was, she stuffed a towel soaked in perfume under the bedroom door
and hung up a sign that read "Please do not enter." Relatives,
asking about Alfred, were not satisfied with Freda's answers and
asked the police to investigate. Officers were not deterred by the
sign hanging on the bedroom door and quickly discovered the body.
At her trial Freda maintained
that her husband had died as they struggled for the gun but
forensic evidence about the angle of entry of the wound disproved
this. She was found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment.
Murder-UK-com
Freda Phyllis Rumbold
Freda Phyllis Rumbold was
convicted of the murder of her husband Alfred Frank Rumbold and
sentenced to death but reprieved.
They had been married for 20
years but she had had a difficult time of it.
She purchased a gun and on 22
August 1956 and shot him twice while he was asleep.
She kept the body around for
several days before telling the police. She said that he had
threatened to kill her and her daughter and had wrestled the gun
off of him and it had accidently shot him in the struggle but the
gun only held 1 shot and so she would have had to have reloaded,
undermining her defence.
She blamed the moon and her
husbands excessive sexual demands.
