In November 1884, 68-year-old Emma Ann Whitehead Keyse was brutally murdered in her home in Babbacombe, Devon. As investigators pieced together the crime, suspicion fell on a household member, leading to a trial that gripped the public. But the story didn’t end in the courtroom, as the fate of the accused would take an extraordinary turn that made headlines across Victorian England.


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Sources:
Ancestry.co.uk
Home Office Records, HO 144/148//A38492: Criminal Cases: Lee, John
Exeter and Plymouth Gazette Daily Telegrams - Monday 19 September 1881
Express and Echo - Monday 17 November 1884
Wigan Observer and District Advertiser - Friday 21 November 1884
Herald of Wales - Saturday 06 December 1884
North London News - Saturday 07 February 1885
North Devon Journal - Thursday 28 January 1909
Rope, Knife and Chair by Guy Logan, 1928
The Man They Could Not Hang: The True Story of John Lee by Michael Holgate, 2005