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Kenneth BARLOW
Classification: Murderer
Characteristics: Poisoner - Parricide
Number of victims: 1
Date of murder:
May 3,
1957
Date of birth: 1919
Victim profile: His second wife, Elizabeth Barlow, 30, pregnant
Method of murder: Poisoning(insulin)
- Drowning
Location: Bradford, West Yorkshire, England, United
Kingdom
Status: Sentenced to life in prison in 1958. Released in 1984
On 3 May 1957 Kenneth Barlow who was a 38 year old
male nurse called a doctor to his house in Bradford. When the doctor
arrived it was to find Mrs Barlow dead. He was told by Kenneth Barlow
that he had found his wife drowned in the bath. Mrs Barlow was two
months pregnant and had previously complained of feeling unwell, she had
vomited in bed and decided to take a bath to clean herself up.
Barlow said he had dozed off and when he awoke it was
to find his wife still in the bath but with her head under the water. He
had tried to revive her but to no avail.
The doctor could find no signs of violence and could
almost believe the story except for the fact that her eyes were dilated
which did not fit in with a drowning. The police were notified and after
listening to his account of what had happened were deeply suspicious
because both Barlow's pyjamas, and the bathroom, showed no signs of the
wetness that would have been expected if Barlow's story of trying to
rescusitate his wife were true.
When they searched the house they found hypodermic
syringes but these were not exactly odd in the house of a nurse. Still
it made them wonder. The dilated pupils suggested drugs and a post
mortem was ordered but no drugs were found. Still not convinced they
continued to search until two small puncture marks were found on one of
her buttocks.
Tests were taken at the puncture sites which
confirmed the doctors suspicions. She had been injected with Insulin.
Much of the evidence at the trial consisted of forensic evidence.
Kenneth Barlow was found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment. He
was released on licence in 1984 after serving 26 years. We shall never
know why he killed his wife but it was probably to get out of an unhappy
marriage.
Real-Crime.co.uk
Medicine: The Imperfect Crime
Time.com
Monday, Sep. 08, 1958
Kenneth Barlow, a male nurse who often gave injections (including
insulin) to patients in north of England hospitals, thought he had it
figured out. Colleagues quoted him as saying: ''You could commit a perfect murder with insulin. It cannot be traced." Last year Barlow, 38.
had his chance. His second wife. Elizabeth, was pregnant, and neither
wanted the baby. He started to give her injections of ergometrine to
induce an abortion. On a May night. Elizabeth Barlow, 30, was found
drowned in the bathtub.
As Barlow told it to the police, she had returned to
their Bradford home at lunch time from the laundry where she worked,
done some housework, and gone to bed right after tea. At 9:20 p.m.,
Barlow said, he found she had vomited in bed, so he changed the linen.
She took off her sweat-soaked pajamas and went to take a bath. He dozed.
At 11:20 he awoke, found her in the tub, drowned. He pulled the plug and,
said he, tried artificial respiration to no avail.
Death by Drowning.
When the pathologist arrived he found a little water
still standing in the crook of the dead woman's arm. That hardly tallied
with the story of vigorous efforts to restore respiration. And there was
no sign that Elizabeth Barlow had splashed or struggled. Death was due
to drowning, but she had let herself drown in a relaxed, apathetic if
not comatose state. Why?
It took a whole crew of doctors, pharmacists and
experts from the Home Office Forensic Science Laboratory, using 1,220
mice, 150 rats and 24 guinea pigs, to find out. After four puzzling days,
a sharp-eyed pathologist found four injection marks in Mrs. Barlow's
buttocks, two on each side. From each site he removed part of the
underlying tissue for analysis, suspecting insulin. Barlow's boast had
been half right: insulin is almost impossible to detect. But by
extraordinarily ingenious methods described in the British Medical
Journal, the drug sleuths found a way to prove that there had been 84
units of insulin in Mrs. Barlow's buttocks when she died, and 240 units
may have been injected. She was no diabetic, had no need for any insulin.
Murder by Insulin.
The damning sequence brought out in court: Barlow
must have switched from ergometrine injections to insulin. These made
his wife stuporous and complaisant. Then he gave her still more. She
sweated abundantly and vomited. Comatose in the tub. she made no effort
to save herself as she slid under the water, which soon filled her lungs.
The verdict: murder: It was Britain's —perhaps the
world's—first case of murder in which the aid of insulin was proved.
Said the bewigged Mr. Justice Diplock: "But for a high degree of
detective ability, [it] would not have been found out. Those responsible
for the scientific research ... are to be very highly congratulated for
[their] skill and patience." Barlow was sentenced to life imprisonment.
The medical researchers are churning out bushels of data to help
colleagues find the flaw in any such "perfect crime."
Kenneth Barlow
A doctor was called to the Barlow house in Thornbury Crescent, Bradford
on 3rd May 1957. Kenneth Barlow told him that he had found his wife,
thirty-year-old Elizabeth, drowned in the bath. She had previously
complained of feeling unwell - she was two months' pregnant, had vomited
in bed and decided to take a bath. Barlow said he had dozed off and
awoke to find his wife with her head under the water. He had tried to
revive her but to no avail. The doctor could find no marks of violence
on the corpse but noticed that Mrs Barlow's pupils were widely dilated.
A post-mortem could find nothing amiss but police were suspicious
because both Barlow's pyjamas, and the Barlow bathroom, showed no signs
of the wetness that would have been expected if Barlow's story of trying
to resuscitate his wife were true. Hypodermic syringes were found in the
house but these were explained away by Barlow's occupation as a nurse.
Four needle marks were eventually found on Mrs Barlow's buttocks. These,
along with the dilated pupils and Barlow's story of his wife vomiting
suggested insulin poisoning. Tissue samples were analysed and the
presence of insulin was confirmed. A witness told of Barlow boasting
that insulin could be used to commit the perfect murder and Barlow was
arrested and charged.
Mrs Barlow was pregnant but neither
of them wanted the baby. Barlow was trying to induce an abortion by
injecting his wife with ergometrine, but switched the injections, with
the substituted insulin making her drowsy and easy to drown.
There was a considerable amount of
forensic evidence presented at the trial and there was very little that
the defence could do to refute the charges. Barlow admitted injecting
his wife to procure an abortion but could not explain the presence of
the insulin as Mrs Barlow was not a diabetic. 38-year-old Barlow was
duly found guilty of non-capital murder and was sentenced to life
imprisonment. It was the first documented case of murder by insulin. He
was released in 1984, after serving twenty-six years, still maintaining
his innocence.
