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| Isabella (Ella) Fairweather Kennedy [CFT #7168] Born: 1887 Died: 1974-Feb |
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| d Chelsea, London Isabella Kennedy, known as Ella, was the second wife of Walter Spencer Anderson Griffith, whose first wife Mary Ann Kinder died in 1915. Walter and Isabella bore no children. What follows is the tragic demise of a lonely and elderly lady. Following the death of her husband in 1946, Ella continued to live at 19 Cheyne Walk, Chelsea in London. From time to time, she would also visit their second home Brae (Holly) Cottage, Grayswood in Haslemere, Surrey. She had once also owned a property in Scotland, which is from where her family originated. Once widowed, Ella became increasingly more reclusive and starting locking doors to the majority of the rooms in her large London home. She chose to live on the ground floor with her cats and lived a simple and frugal life. Usually dressed in a tweed coat with a headscarf and carrying a basket, she would regularly shop locally for tins of cat food and groceries and then return home. It was on one of these occasions in February 1974 that she was followed home by a man who attempted to befriend her and carry her basket, so gaining access to her house … (so the police later deduced). (However, online sites today state he broke in through the front door but this is contrary to what the police told the family at the time). A day or so later, a neighbour phoned the police to report they had concerns that something had happened to Mrs Griffith. The cats were meowing outside her house and appeared hungry. A constable turned up and looked through the windows. Seeing nothing suspicious, he left. Following a further telephone call days later, a constable called again at the house and this time, he broke in. He found the body of Ella lying fully clothed in the ground floor kitchen allegedly covered in a velvet curtain. She had been strangled and then stabbed in the chest. Miss Jean Beadle, housekeeper to merchant banker Sir Cyril Kleinwort who lived next door, said: “She was an active old lady who got about to the shops quite a bit – mostly to get food for her three cats. She dressed like an old tramp although she must have had a lot of money to live alone in a house of that kind. Police were called ten days ago when newspapers and milk piled up outside, but they found nothing.” (Daily Mail 28.02.1974.) As no Will could be found, the police decided to focus their investigation on the next of kin, believing the cause of Isabella’s death could have been financially motivated. Scotland Yard detectives twice visited Anthony Chevallier Griffith, the eldest of her step grandchildren at his home in West Sussex. About three weeks after her death the Will was located amidst the rather chaotic interior of her home. She had left her fortune to a children’s home and a home for rescue cats. Almost exactly a year later, in a flat in Lowndes Square, Knightsbridge, the police found the strangled body of Adele Price, another elderly widow. The case was so similar to that of Ella that police felt the same killer might have been responsible. They were desperate to find the killer before he struck again. In a sleepy village near Gravesend in Essex, a Father Anthony Crean had a run-in with somebody whom he had befriended and helped. This was Patrick Mackay who he had met whilst out walking. On 21st March 1975, just eleven days after the finding of Adele Price’s body, Father Crean was found brutally murdered in his bath. There were many clues implicating Patrick MacKay and he was arrested two days later, convicted and sentenced to life. He confessed to the killing of the priest. It is believed he murdered between three and eleven people. In the early days of Ella’s marriage to Walter, they learned that they would be unable to have children. This was especially hard for the childless Ella, but Walter too had suffered with the death of one son aged two and another being killed in 1917. The remaining son from Walter’s first marriage, Harold had married in 1914 and he and Helena bore six children. Tensions developed for Walter and his new wife, with his remaining son and his growing family. Harold and Helena decided to leave London hoping that the constant reminder of family life, which was clearly upsetting his father and stepmother, would lessen if they moved. They relocated to the West Country. This proved to have consequences that nobody anticipated in that Harold and Helena’s children grew up never really knowing Ella and only very rarely meeting up with her. The last time Anthony Griffith met with her was when he visited her cottage in Grayswood in the early autumn of 1972, some 18 months before she was murdered. Vanessa Griffith and Anthony Cobbold August 2013. |
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