Catching Britain’s Killers: The Crimes that Changed Us TV - Crimeandinvestigation online -
A murderer who walked free, inspiring one mother to challenge an 800-year-old law. Her campaign would bring killers to justice who had until then been getting away with murder. Catching Britain’s Killers: The Crimes that Changed Us II, BBC 2019
In 1958 a shocking murder confession made headlines across the country: The Hume Confession: ‘I killed Setty’ … Donald Hume’s admission to the pictorial that started world controversy. ibid. newspaper article
When the torso of wealthy businessman Stanley Setty appeared in the Essex marshes outside London in 1949, police had a difficult case to crack. They eventually arrested Donald Hume, a business associate of Setty, but all they could prove was that Hume had dumped the body – they couldn’t prove he had committed the murder. Hume was sentenced to twelve years imprisonment for being an accessory to murder. On his release in 1958 Hume admitted that he had killed Setty during an argument at his apartment, but now he was free to commit further evil – he was soon back in prison after killing a taxi driver in Switzerland.
In his book ‘Hume: Portrait of a Double Murderer’ author John Williams described Hume’s pathological mind as manifested through his angry facial expressions. ‘His eyes in moments of rage, stare out with a frozen, unblinking malevolence.’ Crimeandinvestigation online article, ‘Donald Hume: The Setty Case’