seat.”
He then started the car and drove a
little way. Honey regained consciousness
and told him she was going to have him
locked up for hitting her.
Yarrow drove on a little way, then
turned round and shot her. He couldn’t
remember where he put the gun, and,
indeed, we never recovered the murder
weapon.
He couldn’t remember either at what
point he put the wire around her neck.
But he did recall stopping the car, lifting
out the body and throwing it over the
bridge into the stream. When he got
home that night he burned the car
because of the bloodstains on it.
Yarrow denied raping Honey although
the evidence clearly indicated that he
had done so. But we had no need to
proceed on that charge because we had
more than enough in our view to send
him to the electric chair.
The coroner’s jury at the inquest
on Honey Sarlo agreed with us. They
returned a verdict that she met her
death by strangulation and bullet
wounds inflicted by George Yarrow, and
recommended an early trial.
Yarrow did not come to trial in fact
for another two months, and during that
time he repudiated his entire confession,
claiming that another man had
murdered Honey. He now said, “I met a
stranger on Broad Street, Woodbury. He
told me he was in South Jersey to deliver
some ‘stuff.’ I don’t know whether he
meant liquor or dope. He asked me to
get a couple of girls for a party and I
promised to meet him that Saturday
night in Woodbury at ten o’clock.
“I did meet him and we picked up
Rose Sarlo, but no other girl. This
fellow – I only knew him as ‘Slim’ – was
caressing and bothering Rose and made
me stop the car and leave it. When I
walked some distance from the car I
heard screams and when I got back to it
Rose was on the ground.
“Slim pulled out a gun and made me
help him put the girl back in the car. He
shot her and, with his gun pointing at
me, made me help him throw the body
out. I drove Slim to the ferry of the
Reading Railway in Camden and he left
me there. He said he would kill me if I
squealed on him.”
We didn’t believe a word of this,
of course, but we had to question
him about the mythical Slim. Yarrow
now told us that Slim wasn’t entirely
a stranger – they had once met in
a poolroom near Vine Street, in
Philadelphia.
We got in touch with Philadelphia
police and they combed the
neighbourhood of the poolroom,
arresting one habitué of the area who
was known as Slim.
This Slim was interrogated and
photographed. We showed the photo to
Yarrow, who declared that it was not the
Slim of his story.
Philadelphia police, however, were
able to tell us plenty about George
Yarrow. They had him among theirSaturday night and he was released.
That left Yarrow and his burned-out
car.
We took some of the fragments of
glass from the car’s shattered windows
for pathology examination and they
were found to have blood spots on
them. Then we took the tyre which we
had removed from the vehicle along to
East Red Bank Avenue, where Honey’s
lost shoe had been found.
We made a minute search of the grass
and the beaten-down weeds and the
ditch alongside the little-used road, and
at last our efforts were rewarded. There
was a well-defined tyre print at the edge
of the ditch and it fitted perfectly the
tyre we had taken from Yarrow’s car.
With Trooper Kelly, I got Yarrow
out of his cell for interrogation at
the courthouse. He was absolutely
obdurate. Hour after hour he told us
he had nothing to do with the murder,
while hour after hour we repeated the
evidence we had stacked up against
him.
We pointed out that bloodstains were
found in his car, and we demonstrated
that the car could not have been ignited
by a back-fire, as he had said, for the
blaze had originated inside the car.
We showed him that we had
established that he was the author of the
notes to Honey Sarlo, and how Blanche
Sweeten had seen his car, seen HoneySarlo get into it, and taken its number.
And we told him that a tyre from
his car exactly fitted the marks made
by a parked car at East Red Bank
Avenue. We told him we didn’t need
his confession, we had a cast-iron case
against him. But he still insisted that he
had last seen Honey Sarlo three months
before she was killed, and he even got
angry about our persistence.
Then, as so often happens in such
cases, he suddenly broke. “OK, I’ll
talk,” he said.
Yarrow sat most of the time with his
head in his hands. He hardly looked up
once.
On that fatal Saturday night, he said,
he came home after work and had his
supper. He went off to Woodbury at
about seven o’clock in the evening to
visit friends.
Later he met Honey Sarlo and invited
her for a ride in his car. He stopped the
car some way from the road bridge.
“We had some kind of argument,” he
said. “I don’t know how it started. We
had both got out of the car. I hit her in
the face with my hand. She fell down
unconscious and I put her on the backbus,” Mrs. Verfaillie said, “we heard
cries of agony. We thought the cries
came from a parked car we could see
up the road. We were close enough to
see a man in the car. He wasn’t wearing
a hat or coat, and his shirt was open at
the neck. His hair and clothing seemed
dishevelled.
“We were frightened. As we walked
past, the man started the car and drove
about fifty yards, then stopped again.
We could see there was someone else in
the car. It must have been poor Rose,
and the screams we heard must have
been hers.”
Arriving home, Mrs. Verfaillie told her
husband what had happened. He went
to the scene, but the car was gone.
Then the two youths who were
talking to Honey Sarlo outside the
Woodbury post office on the night of
the murder came forward. They said
that while they were talking to Honey
they saw a car of the type used as a
local bus drive past. It was then about
10.30.
As it passed, the driver sounded his
horn, leaned out of the window and
called, “Hello, Rose.”
The two youths thought the car must
have been driven around the block,
for five minutes later it passed again
- going in the same direction. A few
minutes later they saw it parked outside
the post office.
One of the youths, Antone Letzgus,
corroborated Blanche Sweeten’s story
of having seen Honey get into the Essex
coach with a man. But he could not
identify the driver.
T
he events leading up to the murder
were now clearly established.
Honey Sarlo had left her home with the
intention of doing her Saturday night
shopping, seeing a movie and returning
home afterwards. She had stopped to
chat on the street with the two youths
and it seemed that the meeting with the
driver of the car could not have been
prearranged. From his greeting it was
clear that he knew her.
The killer, then, had probably
watched – either from his parked car in
front of the post office or from some
other vantage spot – while Honey
walked away from the two youths to a
spot on the slope near the cemetery,
where Blanche Sweeten had seen her
talking with an unidentified man.
The evidence from East Red Bank
Avenue indicated that she had been
beaten and raped – and probably
shot – there, although no one could be
found who had heard gunshots. What
had happened between the time of that
assault and the finding of the body
beneath Mantua Creek Bridge remained
a mystery.
Next we got hold of an Essex coach
and did a re-run of the events of that
night, just to make sure that all the
witnesses’ stories fitted. They did.
We were also by this time completely
satisfied with young Carmen Matteo’s
explanation of his movements on that“We had some kind of
argument. I don’t know
how it started. We had
both got out of the car. I
hit her in the face with
my hand. She fell down
unconscious”