HENRY Seymour went to the gallows for the murder of Oxford widow Annie Kempson. But was he guilty?

The jury at Oxfordshire Assizes in October 1931 had no doubt that he was responsible for killing 58-year-old Mrs Seymour in her home in St Clement’s two months earlier.

But a new book, The Oxford Murder, suggests there could have been a grave miscarriage of justice.

Oxford-born author Michael Tanner has unearthed a mountain of evidence which many readers may consider casts doubt on the jury’s verdict.

Mrs Seymour was found bludgeoned to death in her semi-detached home called The Boundary.

An intruder had hit her on the head, knocking her unconscious, and then plunged a sharp weapon through her throat before escaping with a few pounds.

The murder of the defenceless widow gripped the nation, with reports appearing in all the national newspapers.

Oxford’s Chief Constable, Charles Fox, called in Scotland Yard to help in the hunt for the killer and once detectives heard that career criminal Seymour was in the area at the material time, he was arrested.

No-one else was considered a suspect.

Yet, as Mr Tanner argues, the murder weapon was never found, the precise time of the murder was never established (despite the testimony of renowned pathologist Sir Bernard Spilsbury) and no-one could confirm they saw Seymour at the scene.

Did Seymour’s reputation as a fraudster and compulsive liar seal his fate?

Oxford magistrates took just “a minute or two” to commit Seymour for trial, despite a plea by his solicitor, Mr RB ‘Bunny’ Cole, that the prosecution had offered only “a chain of circumstantial evidence of the very flimsiest character”.

Seymour, a 39-year-old commercial traveller, continued to maintain his innocence at his trial before Mr Justice Swift after being brought through the underground passage from Oxford Prison to the court at County Hall in New Road.

Numerous defence witnesses said on oath that they had seen Mrs Kempson alive after Seymour had allegedly killed her and had left the city, but were all disregarded.

After what some considered a biased summing-up by the judge, the jury took just 38 minutes at the end of a five-day trial to return a guilty verdict. Seymour’s appeal failed and he was hanged in Oxford Prison at 8am on December 10.

It was, as Mr Tanner points out, a truly Oxford murder, the crime, trial and execution all happening in the city.

It had all the ingredients of any investigated by fictional Oxford detectives Morse and Lewis, except that we will probably never know whether Seymour was the real killer.

* The Oxford Murder is published by Authorhouse and is available at Blackwell’s, other bookshops and online.