A CRIMINAL CASE ANALYSIS
By Rose H. Schmollek
It’s 1888. Mysterious events keep Great Wyrley, a village in Staffordshire (West Midlands of England), in suspense. Threatening and anonymous letters, weird adverts in the local newspapers, and mutilated, killed animals bring fear and dread to the parish. The vicar’s son, George Ernest Thompson Edalji, is at the centre of these unusual activities, which is reason enough for the Staffordshire police to consider him a suspect.
But why should an educated young man, a lawyer in Birmingham, do something this crazy? Why should anyone terrorise a parish with anonymous letters, false announcements, and faked advertisements for decades?
In 1903, when George Edalji is sentenced to seven years of penal servitude, many people, including celebrities such as the author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, stand up for the convict. Does the chief constable, Captain Hon. George Augustus Anson, suspect George Edalji only for racist motives because his father, the vicar Shapurji Edalji (a Parsee), once came from Bombay to England?
This story has been retold like this since 1907. The fact that there are still a lot of unanswered questions and contradictions is deliberately ignored.