Alfred Rouse Alfred Arthur Rouse ( 6 April 1894 – 10 March 1931 ) was a British murderer . It was theorised , though never proved , that Rouse , seeking to fabricate his own death , picked up a hitch - hiker , knocked him out , and then burnt his car with the man inside . His case is unusual in legal history because the identity of the victim was never known and therefore Rouse was convicted of the murder of an unknown man . Early life . The son of Walter Edward Rouse , a hosier from Milkwood Road in Herne Hill , Rouse was born in London . His mother was Irish and reported to be an actress . In 1900 , his parents ' marriage broke up , apparently because his mother deserted , and Rouse and two other children of the marriage were taken to be brought up by his aunt on his father ' s side . He went to a council school where he was bright ( but not exceptionally so ) and athletic . On leaving school Rouse learned carpentry and also went to evening classes where he learned to sing and to play musical instruments ( the piano , mandolin , and violin ) . He had quite considerable musical ability and his voice developed into a good baritone . He worked first as an office boy for an estate agent , and then in 1909 used his carpentry experience to join a West End furniture manufacturer . A member of the Church of England , Rouse was a sacristan at St Saviour ' s Church in Stoke Newington . Wartime service . When war broke out in Europe , Rouse enlist ed ( 8 August 1914 ) , being assigned to the 24th London Regiment as a Private and assigned the number 2011 . While training in England before his departure for France , Rouse married Lily May Watkins at St Saviour ' s Church , St Albans on 29 November . Rouse arrived in France on 15 March 1915 , and was stationed in Paris for some weeks before his unit was sent into battle . During this time , Rouse is known to have fathered a child . His unit was then committed to the Battle of Festubert , near Bethune , which began on 15 May . In a bayonet attack , Rouse came face to face with a German soldier and lunged at him but missed ; the memory of waiting just for an instant for the enemy reply stayed with him . Also at this battle was Herbert John Hodgson , who was later to print the first subscriber ' s edition of Seven Pillars of Wisdom by T . E . Lawrence . Rouse and Hodgson are in a group of soldiers captured on a photograph that must have been taken in the weeks before the battle . On the last day of the battle , a high explosive shell exploded close to Rouse ' s , severely injuring his head and thigh . Recuperation . An operation was performed on Rouse ' s left temporal region to remove shrapnel . His leg injuries left him unable to bend his knee , and his leg suffered from an œdema ; he could walk , but only with difficulty . He was repatriated and sent to recuperate at a series of Army hospitals . An Invaliding Medical Board hearing on 9 December 1915 found that his capacity had been " reduced 3 / 4 " . Rouse was formally discharged from the Army on 11 February 1916 , and awarded a pension of twenty shillings per week . His medical records show he was still severely disabled . In July 1916 his doctor noted that Rouse ' s memory was defective and he was unable to wear a hat of any kind because his scar was irritable , although his speech and writing were unaffected and he " sleeps well unless excited in any way " . His pension was raised to twenty - five shillings per week the next month . At the end of January 1917 , the doctor found progress , and believed that the injury to his leg could " by degrees be overcome by the man ' s own endeavour " . A year later , Rouse reported some dizziness but the doctor noted how he was talkative and " laughs immoderately at times " . In September 1918 Rouse complained of defective memory and bad sleeping . Return to work . On 30 July 1919 , Rouse was examined again by an unsympathetic doctor who observed that he was now in no disability from his head wound , and that while Rouse wouldn ' t allow his knee to be flexed by more than 30 % , there was no physical reason for the limitation and the doctor ascribed it to neurosis . His pension , which since September 1918 had been twenty - seven shillings and sixpence per week , was decreased to twelve shillings per week on 17 September 1919 . In August 1920 a final examination found his head injury healed , and his knee injury only slightly affecting movement . Rouse ' s pension stopped on 14 September 1920 with payment of a lump sum of £41 5s . in final settlement of all claims . In fact Rouse had already found work . He became a salesman , and would prove to be an amazingly good one up until the last few months before his crime . In a period of vast unemployment , Rouse managed to make enough money for a house with his legal wife , as well as owning a car , a Morris Minor ( 1928 ) . The critical problem was his sexual urges . Because he was on the road so much Rouse had plenty of time to go out and meet and entertain various women , at least two of whom would get pregnant from the experience of knowing him . Rouse had already had a child support order imposed on him . He also knew of a second coming up . Also there was another woman expecting him to marry her ( they were " engaged " ) . He really was aware that he had to disappear in order to avoid the coming catastrophe . Murder . At just what point Rouse decided on his scheme is not settled , nor how he arrived at it . He may have read a plot about substituting a corpse in a burning car from a spy novel of that time , " The " W " Plan " . Also there had been some recent burning car murders in Germany . However , he did seem to have a fixed plan , setting the timing of the fire in the car to be on Guy Fawkes ' Night ( 5 – 6 November 1930 ) , the anniversary of the failure of The Gunpowder Plot . On that night , traditionally , many bonfires are set throughout England on which figures ( like scarecrows ) representing Guy Fawkes are burned . Rouse may have thought that one more pyre would not be noticed that night . In the early hours of 6 November 1930 , two young men returning from the town of Northampton to their home in the nearby village of Hardingstone saw a fire in the distance . A man approaching them from the direction of the fire observed that ' somebody must be lighting a bonfire ' . The two men went to investigate and discovered the fire was coming from a vehicle that was ablaze , containing a body charred beyond recognition . The number plate identified the car as belonging to an Alfred Arthur Rouse , a north - Londoner . Rouse had gone to Wales to one of his girlfriends , but returned to London a day later . He was arrested and confessed , saying that he had picked up the victim during a ride to Leicester . While Rouse went to defecate , the man lit a cigarette in the car . According to Rouse , there was a flash of light , and subsequently the car burst into flames . Alfred Rouse stood trial in Northampton in January 1931 , and was found guilty of murder and sentenced to death . Rouse ' s personality was the cause of his failure to win support for the counter - theory that the man in the car was responsible for the explosion that killed him . Rouse , after initially trying to run off , decided to hand himself over to the police . But while giving his statement of what he claimed happened ( an accident – but the other fellow was to blame ) he let slip a comment that got into the newspapers , referring to his career as a salesman and the women he knew . He referred to these ladies as his " harem " . That did not sit well with the public . His failure to explain why he picked up the unknown person ( supposedly just to give him a lift ) was dented when he made the callous comment that the unknown person was just somebody who nobody would miss . The final blow to the accident theory was delivered not by Sir Bernard Spilsbury ( who did give forensic evidence of the remains of the unknown person ) , but by an expert on cars who studied the remains of the Morris Minor , and found somebody had forcefully turned a nut and screw to allow petrol to flow into the motor ( making a fire all the easier to set ) . The chief prosecuting counsel at Rouse ' s trial was William Norman Birkett , 1st Baron Birkett and the chief defence counsel was Donald Finnemore . On Tuesday , 10 March 1931 , he was hanged in Bedford Gaol . He confessed to the crime shortly before the execution . In Alan Moore ' s novel " Voice of the Fire " , set in Northampton at various times throughout history , one chapter tells Rouse ' s story in first - person narrative , an evasive and self - serving musing to himself as he sits in the dock during his murder trial . The chapter ends with Rouse seemingly convinced of his ability to charm his jury into acquitting him , with his judgment in this matter proving as poor as it had been throughout the entire story . The case was dramatized on a 1951 episode of Orson Welles ' radio drama The Black Museum entitled " The Mallet " Identity of the victim . In May 2012 , it was reported that the family of Williams Briggs were seeking to determine if he was Rouse ' s victim . Briggs disappeared without a trace in 1930 after leaving his home in London for a doctor ' s appointment .