Awh c'mon, Steve.. the case is cryptic enough! Warm in what way? To what? I know you think a priest did it. I do intend to contact you, re the offer on your books so I can maybe see where you're coming from, exactly.... I just wish you'd put your theory out there already! In detail, so it can be debated, discussed... It's what we do.
I'm rather hoping your research contains a few details we haven't seen before, lack of information makes these old cases so much harder to examine. I think we're lucky to have as much as we do, in this particular one.
Just a thought -- a while back, in light of some of McNeill's behaviour, I posited that the event where he made a bold gallop to save a child in a runaway carriage just reeked of the same kind of 'heroics' he showed during the Murphy case, and may have been caused by McNeill himself.. so he got to look a hero. Now, this might seem spurious at first glance, but consider this:
-- McNeill's acting the hero was so overdone in Gatton that it not only irritated the hell out of the police, it made some police and some family members suspect him.
-- McNeill of the apparent acute social conscience had little regard for his wife, making her attend the races though she was ill, shoving her on a train alone (to avoid her testifying) and in grief, when she was poorly and her family were in deep mourning..
-- McNeill burned down his boarding-house.. no mention of anyone IN it at the time, or whether he played the hero and rescued them... But all the same, the tenant's livelihood was destroyed, and everything she owned. He probably also burned down his own family business for profit.
-- I used to listen to my Nan talking about the days when all the country people had buggies, and it's pretty clear to me that buggy horses were generally bomb-proof animals not inclined to bolt. It'd be like having a car with faulty brakes - you wouldn't put your family in it, let alone leave a small child *alone* in a buggy with a horse of uncertain temperament. It's just unthinkable. Now, even given that *some* buggy horses throughout history did indeed bolt after a terrific fright because horses are horses and sometimes it happens -- what's the *chances* that McNeill would happen along at the precise moment when:
-- A family apparently happens to have a skittish horse drawing the family buggy
-- They leave their small child alone in the street in said buggy, despite the horse being apparently skittish. Maybe they didn't know? Unlikely.
-- And then something that bothered
no other horses in the street scares the bejeezus out of THIS family horse,which bolts
-- Enter McNeill, saviour of the universe. Just in time, how terribly fortunate.
It just doesn't sit well with me. Like the fire in the shop didn't.... and now we have a second one! I reckon if we dug up some more on McNeill, we'd see him playing hero a few more times..
I think there was something truly wrong with him.
