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A murder case that scandalised and baffled Liverpool remains unsolved 80 years on.

The death of Julia Wallace remains unsolved - despite her husband originally being convicted and sentenced to hang.

But after he was allowed to walk free on appeal, nobody has ever been brought to justice - and Julia's death remains one of the most complex riddles in our city's criminal history.

ECHO reporter Emilia Bona looked back at the case in 2018 - and later caught up with the current residents of the Wallaces' home to find out what it's like living there today.

She explored a difficult and troubling case which continues to resonate so many decades on.

The Wallaces were an unusual couple.

In 1931, William Herbert Wallace his wife Julia lived in Anfield.

William, a 52-year-old insurance salesman, was a sickly man who was always ill with kidney problems.

His 60-year-old wife Julia was a difficult woman who was fiercely suspicious of strangers and led a sheltered life.

One former friend described their marriage as loveless and strained.

On a dark, winter night in 1931, William returned home to find his wife brutally bludgeoned to death inside a locked house.

There was no sign of a murder weapon and no clues left behind as to who killed her.

What unfolded was a murder case so gruesome and unusual it inspired crime novels, TV dramas and a whole host of theories from amateur sleuths.

More than 80 years later, the "impossible murder" that baffled detectives remains unsolved - and the cold case remains one of Liverpool's greatest mysteries.

A mysterious caller tells Wallace to meet him at a fake address

On the night of January 19, 1931, William Herbert Wallace attended the Liverpool Central Chess Club at The City Cafe on North John Street.

He was a member at the city centre club, but not a particularly reliable one. This trip to the club in January was his first in months.

The club's schedule had him down for a game that night, but this didn't mean very much. Wallace had missed games in the past and the schedule offered no guarantee he would actually turn up.

Shortly before Wallace arrived at the club, the captain Samuel Beattie took a call from a man calling himself R. M. Qualtrough.

The caller told Beattie he wanted to meet Wallace to discuss insurance business and told him to meet at 25 Menlove Gardens East the following night at 7.30pm.

Beattie noted down the message and passed it on to Wallace. Despite a somewhat patchy attendance record at the club, the caller seemed convinced Wallace would be there that night and would get his message.

After the murder, a switchboard worker at the Liverpool telephone exchange would help police trace the call to a phone box just 400 yards away from Wallace's house - next to the stop where he caught the tram to chess club that night.

Wallace is spotted behaving strangely by witnesses

Curiosity got the better of Wallace, who decided to set out in search of the mysterious Mr Qualtrough, as instructed.

The following night, on January 20, 1931, he caught the five tram at 7.06pm from Anfield to Menlove Gardens .

Wallace's strange behaviour that night would make sure his movements were remembered by no fewer than a dozen witnesses who saw him on his wild goose chase around South Liverpool.

On the tram, he repeatedly struck up conversation with the conductor and the ticket inspector, asking them to tell him where he needed to get off.

He made a point of telling them he was 'a total stranger' in that part of the city, repeating his unusual story about R. M. Qualtrough and stating the time they were meant to meet.

His odd behaviour didn't stop when he got off the tram at Menlove Gardens.

Wallace stopped residents, went into newsagents and even asked a policeman for their help in finding the location of his appointment.

As the night went on and the meeting time of 7.30pm started passing him by, it became clear there was no Menlove Gardens East.

There are couple of Menlove Gardens in the area, with streets baring North, South and West. But there was never any East.

Sensing he had spent a cold, winter night chasing a fool's errand, Wallace turned home.

As well as the numerous witnesses who saw Wallace on his journey around Menlove Gardens, he was spotted on his way back through Anfield by a 20-year-old typist.

Lillian Hall said she saw Wallace at around 8.35pm talking to another man on Richmond Road, close to his home on Wolverton Street.

A battered body is found inside a locked house

At around 8.45pm, John and Florence Johnston spotted their neighbour William Herbert Wallace stuck outside his home at 29 Wolverton Street.

He looked out of sorts and when the couple stopped to see what was going on he told them the front and back doors of the house wouldn't open.

Claiming the locks on the house wouldn't budge, a confused and concerned Wallace asked his neighbours "Have you heard anything unusual tonight?"

The Johnstons walked round to the backyard of Wallace's home, where the locked door opened without a problem.

Wallace walked into the house, which was blanketed in total darkness on the winter night. After lighting a lamp and entering his home, Wallace came back out and said: "Oh come and see, she's been killed".

When the couple entered the Wallace home, they found Julie sprawled out in the sitting room in front of the gas fire.

She had been violently beaten to death.

The room was a scene of utter horror, with Julia's lifeless body lying in a pool of her own blood, and splatters from the attack sprayed across the walls.

Her dress was partially burnt and a coat was laid out underneath her which was also badly burnt from the gas fire.

Staring at his wife's battered and beaten body, Wallace turned to his neighbours and said: "They've finished her, look at her brains".

A burglary gone badly wrong or a targeted attack?

On first appearance, Julia's death looked like the result of a burglary that had gone terribly wrong.

The locked kitchen cupboard where Wallace kept his insurance money had been forced open and the cash inside was gone.

However, nothing else in the house had been taken - including Julia's handbag which was left inside totally undisturbed.

Other than the bedroom, which looked like it was rifled through, the rest of the house was in order.

At the time of Julia's murder, a serial burglar nicknamed the Anfield Housebreaker was at large in the area - but this attack didn't seem to fit with the rest of his crimes.

John Johnston called Merseyside Police who soon arrived at the Wallace home, and fingers were soon pointed at the obvious suspect - Julia's own husband.

A cast iron alibi and a bungled investigation

Merseyside Police arrived at the Wallace home shortly after Julia's body was discovered - but their handling of the case was a far cry from their intelligent forensics work and crime scene analysis we have come to recognise today.

A major strike in 1919 had left the force seriously weakened, and with a significant number of staff dismissed, those left behind were charged with filling roles they weren't properly qualified for.

After police arrived at the scene, a journalist from the Liverpool Daily Post was called out to act as the police photographer.

His haunting images of the crime scene and Julia's body remain a chilling reminder of the gruesome nature of her murder.

A forensics expert from Liverpool University called John Edward Whitly MacFall was also called out to determine the cause and time of death.

Rigor mortis is a stiffness of the limbs which starts to set in as early as four hours after death. Before intelligent forensics techniques were developed, this stiffness could be used to determine an approximate time of death.

Looking at the state of Julia's body, MacFall stated she must have died at around 8pm - crucially, this time of death was nearly an hour before Wallace arrived home.

Spouses and partners are always obvious suspects when someone is murdered - but in the case of Julia Wallace, her husband appeared to have the perfect alibi.

Both the tram conductor and ticket inspector could place him on the tram at precisely 7.06pm. A number of witnesses saw him around Menlove Gardens around the time his wife was being murdered.

In Anfield, more witnesses came forward to claim they remembered seeing Julia alive at around 6.30pm or 6.45pm.

If Wallace had murdered his wife, he would have only had around 15 minutes to carry out the killing, change his clothes, wash off the blood and make it to his tram for 7.06pm.

Police examination of the drains around the house showed they hadn't even been used that night - so the murderer had to have escaped the scene covered in Julia's blood, after carefully locking all the doors.

Wallace is arrested and sentenced to death - but the case remains unsolved

Despite having a watertight alibi, Wallace was charged with his wife's murder and found guilty after a brief trial in April 1931.

The jury deliberated for a short time before unanimously deciding Wallace was guilty of murder.

He was sentenced to death by hanging, with an execution date set for the following month.

However, an appeal to the Court of Criminal Appeal in London determined there was not enough certainty to support the jury's guilty verdict, and he walked away a free man.

After losing his wife and being subjected to a gruelling trial, Wallace sought out a quiet life and moved away to a new home in the Wirral.

However, just a few months later he fell ill with his recurring kidney problems and died in 1933.

Since Wallace's death, the case of Julia's murder has never been solved.

The mystery has attracted countless theorists and armchair detectives to put forward their own suggestions for who was behind the crime.

Julia's murder even inspired a number of murder mysteries - including P.D. James' 1982 crime novel The Skull Beneath the Skin.

Despite the morbid fascination and intrigue surrounding the case , Julia's murder remains one of the greatest mysteries in Liverpool's criminal history.

A 1936 article by crime writer Dorothy L. Sayers summed the bizarre case up by saying: "The Wallace murder had no key-move and ended, in fact, in stalemate."