Continuing with our story of watches, clocks, and homicide, we arrive at some more modern examples of horology intermixing with crime solving. In the last article we spoke of mechanical timepieces, going as far back as the 19th century, being used to help solve crime in relatively simple ways. This time around, they’ll be a bit more influence from the technological side of watches…
The first case keeps us local, in Canada, but it is an old and relatively well-known occurrence. Albert Johnson Walker was a Canadian financier who hailed from Paris, Ontario and set up his own financial advisory firm with multiple branches in the province. However, while his clients thought he was earning them money, he was in reality defrauding them, fleeing to Europe with $3.2 million in 1990 and passing himself off as a wealthy American entrepreneur.
Walker is said to have settled in London for some time, meeting Elaine Boyes and her boyfriend Ronald Platt, with whom he starting a business relationship – having them work for him. A few years after his initial departure from Canada, he was charged with several counts of fraud. During this time, he had grown closer to Ronald as he and Elaine had helped Walker with several business deals. When Ronald went off to Canada for work, Walker stayed behind and stole his identity, living as Ronald Platt in Essex. After years on the run, Walker decided to murder his once-friend Ronald, rather than have him discover that he had stolen his identity, when Ronald decided to move back from Canada. Walker invited Ronald out boating one day, and once they were far enough away hit him over the head and tied him down to the anchor, throwing him overboard! Where does horology come into play? Well, the body of Ronald Platt was found weeks after his murder in 1996 and was beyond identification after washing up, police decided to use his Rolex Oyster Perpetual to identify the body, as the unique serial number could be traced back to the owner. Thus, after contacting Rolex and getting more information, Ronald Platt was identified as the dead man. Moreover, police were also able to use the Rolex to estimate Platt’s time of death, all of this pointing them in the direction of Albert Johnson Walker. Walker was therefore convicted in 1998 and sentenced to life in prison.
Apple Watch
While that case does not really involve any novel technology, two more recent ones do. The first is in 2018 and takes us to Australia, where an Apple Watch was able to prove a woman murdered her own mother-in-law!
After Caroline Nilsson alleged that a group of men broke into her home and murdered her mother-in-law, investigators in Adelaide, Australia used data tracking Myrna Nilsson’s heart rate from her Apple Watch to see that her time of death was actually hours before Caroline alleged it was in her story! Caroline, who was 26 at the time, emerged from her house just after 10 pm, bound and had the neighbours alert authorities. Instead, her mother-in-law was found to be dead based on her Apple Watch data, 15 minutes or so before 7 pm, leaving a gap that put Caroline in the hot seat!
Mark ‘Iceman’ Fellows / Credit: Runner’s World
Our last case, takes us to the Liverpool in the United Kingdom where Mark ‘Iceman’ Fellows was handed a life sentence for murder in 2019¹⁵. Fellows, a gangland hitman, was suspected in the murders of Paul ‘Mr. Big’ Massey and John Kinsella but there was no hard evidence against him. That is until investigators noticed his Garmin watch and started to look back at his GPS data, finding that he was in fact in the area of the two victims in what were deemed reconnaissance missions, with this GPS data connected him to both murders as well. The evidence from Fellows’ watch, the Garmin he wore during running and cycling which were also his hobbies, was used to give him a life sentence, which he is serving out today.
And so, it seems we’ve come up with yet another way in which wristwatches help make the world a better place – even giving some credit to smartwatches. Over a century of stories of horological intervention in homicide investigations. From pocket watches to using GPS data from smartwatches…Watches fight crime. Perhaps the slogan of the next great political campaign?
By: Andres Ibarguen
Read more:
“Albert Johnson Walker.” Murderpedia.org, https://murderpedia.org/male.W/w/walker-albert-johnson.htm.
“Albert Johnson Walker.” Crime and Investigation, https://www.crimeandinvestigation.co.uk/crime-files/albert-johnson-walker#Timeline.
McMullan, Thomas. “How an Apple Watch Could Decide a Murder Case.” Medium, https://medium.com/s/story/how-an-apple-watch-could-decide-a-murder-case-94314c8d95a2.
Caron, Emily. “Hitman Runner Convicted of Mob Boss Murders on GPS Watch Tracking Data.” Sports Illustrated, January 17th, 2019, https://www.si.com/track-and-field/2019/01/18/british-hitman-runner-mark-fellows-convicted-mob-murders-gps-watch-tracking.
Missel, Riley. “This Runner Is a Hitman. His GPS Watch Tied Him to a Mob Boss Murder.” Runner’s World, January 17th, 2019, https://www.runnersworld.com/news/a25924256/mark-fellows-runner-hitman-murder/.