On the afternoon of May 14, 1893, William Knoll returned from teaching Sunday school at the Wesleyan chapel in St. Lawrence to his home at 9 Adelphi Terrace on Grange Road in Ramsgate, Kent. When he arrived shortly before four o’clock, he found the front door locked. He rang the bell.

No one answered. He tried the kitchen door at the back of the house, but it was bolted from the inside. As he rattled the handle, his large black retriever, Nip, began to bark. Knoll told some Sunday school girls passing by that his wife Sarah must have gone for a walk, and asked them to tell her he was locked out.

He went for a stroll, returned a short while later, and found the door still closed. Fetching a ladder, he peered through a sash window and saw his wife lying on the floor. He ran to his neighbor, Mr. Harmon, and said his wife had fainted, asking for help.

Harmon sent him to fetch a police officer. Along the way, Knoll met a friend, Matthew Sanders, who accompanied him back to the house. With Sanders present, Knoll climbed through the window and opened the door. He found his wife lying in a pool of blood, clearly dead.

The dog Nip sat sorrowfully beside her. Dr. Fox arrived within minutes and entered the property at 4:27. He examined the body and found no rigor mortis yet, but the face had yellowed, and the hands, nose, and ears were very cold.

A large quantity of blood had clotted heavily around her. He estimated she had been dead for at least two hours. Dr. Cotton was summoned and agreed, placing the time of death between two and two-thirty that afternoon.

A post-mortem examination confirmed that Sarah Knoll had died from a gunshot wound to the right side of her head, fired from three or four feet behind her on a downward path, likely by a large-caliber weapon such as a . 45 revolver. Death had been instantaneous. The bullet entered about an inch behind the right ear and exited through the left side of the left eye, then ricocheted off the kitchen wall into the hallway.

Sarah Knoll stood only four feet nine inches tall, so it was reasoned that her attacker was likely a short man using his right hand. Sarah was born Sarah Dinah Sanders in Southsea in 1839. After a few romantic disappointments, at thirty-nine she married William Knoll, a twenty-eight-year-old trained butcher. With her financial help, he opened his own butcher shop in Ramsgate, keeping livestock in the stable yard behind the house where he slaughtered animals himself.

After an uncertain period financed by a loan of one hundred fifty pounds from his father-in-law, the business prospered. He employed two assistants and a boy and built an excellent clientele. The couple were respected in the town, and William strengthened his reputation through strict adherence to Wesleyan Methodist principles, diligently running Sunday school classes and serving as a pillar of his congregation. They had no children, the one flaw in an otherwise model Victorian middle-class life of hard work, prayer, and temperance.

The murder shocked the small town of about twelve thousand. Inspector Ross of the Ramsgate police took charge of the investigation, assisted by four constables, all of them novices in murder cases. No request appears to have been made to Scotland Yard, and Chief Inspector Boss decided his men would handle the case alone. This may have been a mistake.

A search of the house revealed clothing scattered about, a wooden desk broken open with a fireplace poker left beside it, and a cash box smashed and forced open. Between seven and ten pounds in cash had gone missing, along with Mrs. Knoll’s purse, which Mr. Knoll said had been kept inside the cash box, together with a post office savings book and a check worth three pounds.

This strongly suggested robbery as the motive. Yet strangely, Mrs. Knoll’s five rings, her watch chain, and a brooch she wore were not taken. Nor was anything stolen from the front sitting room, where the morning’s church donations lay plainly visible in a china bowl, alongside the shop’s cash register.

Ross immediately suspected robbery was not the true motive. Several witnesses reported hearing what they believed was the door being slammed shut that afternoon. A servant named Alice King, in the house next door, said the sound occurred at 2:05, and that she saw Knoll leave his home at about 2:15. Another neighbor heard noise at 2:45, and a third at 3:00.

Later, police conducted an experiment, firing a blank shot inside the house on a Sunday shortly before one o’clock. Only Alice King heard it, saying it was the same sound she had heard on the day of the murder. Inquiries failed to produce anyone who had seen a stranger in the area at the time of the crime, even though Grange Road was a popular promenade. The weapon was never found, and no satisfactory explanation was offered for any purchase of a large-caliber gun or ammunition.

Then a curious development occurred. Knoll’s niece, who had come to stay at the house, opened a drawer containing linens and a purse fell out. Inside were five gold coins. She showed it to Knoll in the shop, in the presence of two other people, and told him it did not look stolen.

Knoll sent a note to Inspector Ross informing him of the discovery. Ross was baffled because he had personally supervised a constable emptying that same drawer on the afternoon of the murder and was certain no purse had been there at the time. What troubled Ross most was the dog. Nip was a known biter.

He had attacked a boy, chased a man who came to collect a chair, and had bitten the servant, Ellen Wilson. Yet he apparently stood by while someone entered the house, ransacked the rooms, and shot his mistress without barking once. When Ross raised this with Knoll, he said he believed he had locked the dog in the yard, so it was isolated and unable to defend her. But Ross pointed out the bullet had been found in the hallway, proving the door was open when Mrs.

Knoll was shot. Dr. Fox also gave his opinion that she had been shot from behind, from a distance of three to four feet, and would not have seen her attacker. Why, then, had she not turned to face him?

Ross concluded that the reason the victim showed no fear, and the reason the dog neither barked nor attacked, was that the killer was her husband, William Knoll. Yet no firearm was found on the property, and Knoll claimed he had never owned one. The investigation into the couple revealed they had never exchanged a harsh word. Sarah had written to her sister just days before her death, praising William’s devotion.

The servant and neighbors all agreed the couple were quiet and friendly. Knoll himself declared he had never given his wife cause for jealousy, nor she him, and that he had been completely faithful for fifteen years. Beneath the surface of devotion, however, police learned from locals that Knoll was widely regarded as a tireless womanizer. A pastor had seen him with different women at Red House Farm, picking flowers and offering one woman a bouquet, and putting his arm around another’s waist.

A constable spoke of hearing an argument between husband and wife about a woman as he passed the house. Two of Knoll’s butcher employees said they had seen him with a young married neighbor, Mrs. Thorncroft, in his horse and cart on many occasions. Elizabeth Cook, a customs officer’s wife then living in Limerick, Ireland, but formerly of Ramsgate, told police she had once visited the shop, found no one about, and looked through the office window to see William Knoll lying on the floor with his attractive bookkeeper, Miss Miller, in a compromising position.

Closer to home, it emerged that Knoll had been accused of improper conduct with a young girl. A former church member said he had received a complaint that Knoll had molested a girl in his church, a girl of eighteen so shocked she could not tell her mother but wrote the incident down instead. When the man confronted Knoll, he did not ask who made the complaint but angrily called it a damnable lie and left. The matter was dropped.

An inquest opened on the fifteenth of May before the coroner and a jury. It quickly became less an inquiry into the circumstances of Sarah Knoll’s death than a trial of William Knoll and his character. A large number of witnesses testified about the strange circumstances of the death and Knoll’s reputation. The implication running through the proceedings was that William Knoll was a sexual predator who had murdered his wife.

Few in Ramsgate did not hold this view, and the town’s courtroom was packed throughout. Knoll had one source of support: his Wesleyan chapel stood by him unreservedly, and church members crowded the public gallery so insistently that the proceedings became something like a tense spectator sport. Witnesses on both sides received anonymous letters, and letters were written to newspapers complaining of police persecution of Knoll. His defense attorney, William Hill, received angry correspondence for defending an obvious murderer.

The coroner’s summary pointed to the strange circumstances. The jury returned a verdict of murder by some person or persons unknown. The verdict did not name Knoll, though it was within their power to do so, but the implication was clear. As he left the coroner’s court, Inspector Ross arrested William Knoll and charged him with the murder of his wife.

A magistrates’ hearing was held in June 1893 at Ramsgate Town Hall. The proceedings were disorderly and tense. At one point the prosecution and defense lawyers nearly came to blows, and the defense counsel was ordered to sit with the press after a particularly loud exchange. The bench seemed powerless to control the lawyers, let alone the public, who freely expressed approval or disapproval of every point.

Applause rose from both sides, and mocking laughter followed any barb against the opposing party. Witnesses were heckled. A wheelchair maker named William Waller testified that Nip had prevented him from retrieving a chair left on the property, only to have a supporter of Knoll in the crowd jeer, “Well, here comes the old man who is afraid of a dog. ” Waller objected, and the chairman rebuked the man.

The whole affair contributed to proceedings that were unseemly and offensive. Yet important points did emerge amid the chaos. The evidence largely repeated what had been heard at the coroner’s court, with few surprises. Various witnesses testified to the dog’s ferocity, though the defense tried to prove otherwise.

Witnesses gave accounts of hearing doors slammed during the afternoon, but only two were credible: Alice King and an elderly spinster, who heard sounds at 2:05 and 3:00 respectively. Alice was the only person to have responded to the blank shot fired by Inspector Ross as an experiment several days later. The defense counsel tried hard to confuse her, using words she did not understand—she thought “meek” meant “fierce”—but her testimony was coherent and credible. The spinster, walking back and forth along Grange Road that afternoon, was also confident in her account, believing the sound was like a door or a heavy piece of wood falling.

Another witness testified he had difficulty closing his own door around 3:00 and did so with his wife’s help, slamming it with great force, which accounted for what the spinster heard. Much effort went into establishing when Knoll left and returned home. Harmon, the neighbor, said he returned home with his barrow at 2:45 and saw or heard nothing unusual. At about 3:55 he saw Knoll outside his property talking to some girls, then trying the back kitchen door without success.

At 4:00, Knoll opened Harmon’s door in agitation and shouted that his wife was dead or something had happened and Harmon must come see for himself. Knoll brought some steps and placed them against the window, calling to his wife. Matthew Sanders testified he was walking along the road at about 4:20 when Knoll approached him and said he thought his wife was dead. They returned to the house, Knoll climbed the ladder, and Sanders told him to climb through the window and open the door.

Knoll did so. Sanders entered and saw Mrs. Knoll lying on her back, exclaiming, “My God, she has been shot. ” He picked up her spectacles, which lay broken about four feet from where she rested.

Knoll then took Sanders on a tour of the rooms, deliberately omitting the front sitting room. Sanders said he had not entered that room because Knoll guided him where to go. Much evidence was heard about the women Knoll had been seen with in suspicious circumstances. The prosecution counsel, Mr.

Emory, even said there were more instances of Knoll’s immoral conduct, but he had been instructed by the Treasury to stop providing further details. At the end of the hearing, the magistrates deliberated for twenty minutes and concluded there was a case to answer. Knoll was committed for trial at the Kent Assizes a few days later. The case reached the grand jury before Justice Grantham, who examined the evidence and told the jury directly: “There is not sufficient evidence in this case to beat a dog, much less to hang a man, and the case should never have been sent to trial.

” William Knoll was discharged, greeted outside the court by his many supporters. He was a free man, but few in Ramsgate considered him innocent. The facts are certain on several points. Knoll left the house at 2:15 and returned just before four.

Mrs. Knoll was killed between two and two-thirty. She was shot by someone she knew, as she allowed them entry and showed no fear of them. The dog did not attack the intruder and did not bark.

Knoll left the door open, but on his return it was locked, and the back door bolted. There was only one key to the house, and it was found inside a basket. Only Sanders or Knoll could have placed it there, and since Sanders had no connection to the crime except being drawn in by Knoll, only Knoll could have put it there. Only Knoll could have locked the door.

There was a small window, ten inches wide, near the bolted back door, but it would have required a long stick to move the bolt, and no intruder would have risked being caught by passersby on Grange Road. Knoll was the only person who could have left the house secured from the outside. The timeline is telling. Mrs.

Knoll was killed at the earliest at two o’clock and by two-thirty at the latest. William Knoll was present. An intruder would have had to enter, kill her, ransack the house, and escape within ten minutes at most, while somehow locking the door on the way out. But why lock it at all?

A locked door benefited only the husband, giving him a reason not to enter the house in the usual way. How did the killer approach from behind without alarming her? She was a woman who never went out alone, of a certain age, with few friends, isolated. Only someone she knew well could have stood behind her in the kitchen without arousing suspicion.

The only person with that degree of closeness was her husband. Why did the dog not bark? Why did the killer not shoot the dog? Any stranger would have feared an immediate attack.

But the killer showed no concern, because he was someone who controlled the dog, someone with no reason to fear it. Every circumstance pointed to William Knoll. Inspector Ross’s intuition was correct, but he failed to match it with evidence he could prove. He made countless errors: four police officers searched Knoll’s house while smoking pipes and drinking the owner’s beer, which was hardly professional.

Overemphasizing Knoll’s womanizing damaged his character and provided a motive, but without a precise presentation of facts and substantial evidence, the police were left with a case fatally flawed. Ross never found a weapon. Knoll had an alibi—weak, but still an alibi. He was not alone in discovering the body.

No motive was proven beyond a presumed desire to dispose of an older wife. In many ways, the case mirrors that of William Herbert Wallace in Liverpool in 1931. As with Wallace, Knoll was married to an older woman. His married life seemed happy on the surface, but upon close examination, flaws appeared.

Like Wallace, he was absent from home for a few hours, during which a strong alibi was constructed. Like Wallace, he returned home and expressed surprise at being unable to enter. Like Wallace, he discovered his wife’s body in the presence of other witnesses. In both cases the same criminal modus operandi appears: a hidden motive, careful planning, an alibi featuring a witnessed departure—for Knoll, teaching Sunday school seen by many—and the weapon never found.

In Knoll’s case, the revolver was removed and disposed of somewhere on the road to church or during his walk after failing to enter the house at four o’clock. Knoll said he went to the promenade, but we have no idea where he actually went. It is highly probable that William Knoll killed his wife and escaped punishment. He was an ambitious, industrious butcher who married a much older woman for her money, which he needed to establish his own business.

She gave him the means; he gave her freedom from the stigma of spinsterhood. He repaid the loan from his father-in-law and prospered. But he was a lustful man, unable to restrain his desires toward women. His reputation in Ramsgate was that of a womanizer, caught with his bookkeeper, seen with married women in his cart, accused of molesting a young girl in church.

A man with his appetites, married to a childless older wife, could not divorce without losing his business, his wealth, and his social standing. The wife was an obstacle. The opportunity was perfect: the neighbors next door were away, the house across the street was empty, his workers were off, the servant was on Sunday afternoon leave. He had a window of time before leaving for church, where he would be seen for two hours.

The reconstruction of the murder is plausible. After lunch, the couple said prayers together. The servant went to feed the poultry. Mrs.

Knoll went to the back room. Knoll, who had gone upstairs, took the revolver, waited for the servant to leave, and called his wife on a pretext to the back room, where the sound would be less likely to carry to the street. He stood behind her. She had no suspicion.

He fired from three or four feet, killing her instantly, close enough not to miss but not close enough to be splattered with blood. He then ransacked the office, smashing the desk with a poker and the cash box with his foot, leaving the imprint of his nailed boot. He took the post office savings book, a check for three pounds, and his wife’s purse—all useless to a thief. He disturbed three rooms upstairs but left the front sitting room untouched, knowing its contents were safe.

He ignored the silver, the church donations, and the shop cash. It was a staged burglary. He left the house, pulled the key from inside, locked the door from outside, and slammed it as loudly as possible. Alice King heard it at about 2:08.

He walked to church with a determined cheerfulness, greeting people on the way. The two hours of Sunday school felt interminable. When it ended, he invited the students to walk with him, maintaining his alibi. He arrived home, made a scene of being locked out, talking to the passing girls, jiggling the handle.

He said his wife must have gone for a walk. He went for a walk himself, likely disposing of the revolver and hiding the purse during this time. When he returned, he fetched a ladder, looked through the window, and said he saw his wife lying as if in a faint. He did not attempt to open the window himself.

He went for a neighbor instead, then a policeman, careful not to be the one to discover the body alone. When Sanders urged him to climb through the window, he did so. He showed Sanders the ransacked rooms but not the untouched sitting room. He took the opportunity to place the key in the basket, confident no one would discover it was the only key to the house.

The purse reappearing in the linen drawer ten days later was a blunder. Knoll had to send word to Inspector Ross, but Ross was not deceived. He understood it was another piece of evidence that no robbery had ever occurred. It had all been a ruse to explain his wife’s murder.

William Knoll was never tried. Justice Grantham was correct that the evidence was insufficient to hang a man on. But the people of Ramsgate had no doubt. Knoll could not return to the town.

His business was destroyed. He sold his property and left, changing his name to William Williams, buying a butcher shop in Wimbledon, and marrying a woman named Winifred Gibbs two years later, in 1895. They had two children, neither of whom survived infancy.

William Williams, once William Knoll, died in Islington in February 1938 and was buried in a common grave on the eighteenth of February at the age of eighty-eight.