This strange story moves over both time and place. It begins on an evening in April 1950 when two rival gangs met outside the West Kilburn Baptist Chapel in Canterbury Road. An argument broke out, and suddenly there was a fusillade of five shots. The crowd scattered, leaving Patrick Twomey of Malvern Road lying on the ground. He was hit by several bullets, and one had severed an artery in his leg. He was rushed to St Mary’s Hospital where he needed a blood transfusion. A newspaper pointed out this was the area where scenes from the film ‘The Blue Lamp’ starring Jack Warner and Dirk Bogarde, had recently been filmed.
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A few hours later the police arrested Teddy Boy Kenneth Fromant, an 18-year old labourer, at his home 179 Saltram Crescent in South Kilburn.
Luckily, Patrick survived and gave evidence in court. His clothes were produced to show the bullet holes and his ration card had a hole through the middle. He was carrying it in a pocket with a metal cigarette case and this had deflected the bullet and saved his life. He identified Ken Fromant who had fired the shots from about eight feet away. One of the gang members, Patrick Benney of Herries Street West Kilburn, said that Ken Fromant, nicknamed ‘Mongy’, had shown him the automatic pistol a few weeks earlier. The police did not find the gun. But Fromant was found guilty of attempted murder and sentenced to five years imprisonment.
After he was released, he married Audrey Jean Gavin. By 1957 they were living in No.1 Exeter House, a block of flats which had been built on the Hallfield Estate in Paddington in the early 1950s.Their daughter Linda was born here in 1962. The following year the family moved to 22 Hilary Drive in Wokingham Berkshire.
Portsmouth
We now have a gap until 5 November 1971 when the body of Peter Stanswood was found in the car park of the Purbrook Cricket Club near Portsmouth. He was slumped over the driving wheel with a knife sticking out of his chest, he had been stabbed multiple times. He was 34, married to Heather, with two young children. Peter ran a small central heating business from his home at Ninian Park Road Portsmouth. In the 50s he was a leading member of the Portsmouth Jazz club. The press learned that Stanswood had affairs with 66 women and quickly called him the ‘Casanova’ lover.
In their lengthy enquiry Chief Superintendent Cyril Holdaway and Superintendent Harry Pilbeam led a 150-strong murder team. By the summer of 1972, an astonishing 18,000 people had made statements, many by women who talked about their extramarital affairs, under the promise from Pilbeam that the records would be destroyed later. This was the time when the whole country was undergoing conversion to North Sea gas in a ten-year project, and 100 gas fitters who were paid £100 a week (today worth about £1,500), had been working in Portsmouth for 18 months.
Heather Stanswood admitted to the police that she had affairs with 14 men. She and her friend Lizzie Thompson worked at a local parachute factory and many of women went to a Mecca dance hall where the gas fitters with large amounts of money were very popular. From their enquiries, the detectives learned the most successful of the ‘lover-boy’ gas fitters were Ken Fromant, his brother-in-law Arthur Gavin and Ian Dance. In fact, Ken was having sexual relations with both Heather and Lizzie.
The police found Fromant’s criminal record in London, including the 1950 shooting of Patrick Twomey. When questioned, he said he was home in Wokingham on the night of the murder. Later a major break in the enquiry came when Isobel Morgan, a workmate from the parachute factory, said that on 4 November Ian Dance had stayed the night while her sailor husband was at sea. Significantly, she also said that Ken Fromant had travelled to Portsmouth with Ian Dance from Berkshire. He had taken Ian’s car and gone to see Lizzie Thompson. With his alibi broken, Fromant was called in again and asked to give a blood sample, which was of a rare type.
Two types of blood had been found at the murder scene, one belonged to Peter Stanswood and the second was now found to match Fromant’s. Heather was also a suspect as she had received £6,400 from an insurance policy and £13,500 from the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board. In May 1974 Heather and Ken Fromant were charged with the murder. Two months later, Heather made a new statement and said that Lizzie and Ken had murdered her husband. She had been at the cinema with her children that night, and the charges against her were dropped when she agreed to be witness for the prosecution.
Ken and Lizzie appeared at Winchester Crown Court on 4 November 1975, exactly four years after the murder. To add to the jigsaw puzzle, Lizzie had a previous affair with Peter Stanswood, but had come to hate him because she thought he was responsible for the breakup of her marriage. On the witness stand Ken and Lizzie each accused the other of the murder – in a so called ‘cut-throat defence’. Lizzie had phoned Peter Stanswood and asked him to meet her in the car park where both she and Ken had stabbed him. Ken had cut his hand during the attack and Lizzie later stitched the wound with a needle and thread. Heather was the star witness, and the jury believed her detailed story, including their meeting in a pub when Lizzie and Ken had agreed to kill Peter. After considering the case for seven hours, the jury reached a unanimous verdict of guilty against Lizzie Thompson and a 10:2 majority verdict against Ken Fromant. The judge sentenced them both to life imprisonment.
This complex story ends when after serving his sentence, Ken died in Woking in August 2014. We do not know what happened to Lizzie Thompson.
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