The Red Barn Murder

The case

On 19 April 1828 Thomas Marten, a molecatcher in the Suffolk village of Polstead, took a spade to a barn on the hill above his cottage and began digging in one of its grain bays. His wife had been telling him for weeks that she dreamed of his daughter Maria lying buried there. Within a short time he struck a sack. Inside were the remains of Maria, who had walked out of the cottage almost a year before to elope with the son of the biggest farm in the parish.

Maria Marten was 25 when she disappeared. She had two children by earlier relationships, one of whom had died, and in 1826 she began a secret affair with William Corder, a farmer's son two years younger who had a local name for petty fraud: he had sold his father's pigs behind his back and passed a forged cheque. In 1827 Maria had his child, which died within weeks. She wanted marriage, and Corder seemed to agree.

In May 1827 Corder told the Martens that the parish constable had a warrant to prosecute Maria for bearing children out of wedlock, and that they must go to Ipswich at once to marry. After two postponements he arrived at the cottage on Friday 18 May and urged her to leave that day, dressed in a man's clothes so as not to be noticed, while he carried her things to the Red Barn, a local landmark named for its tiled roof, where she could change. She set out across the fields to meet him and was never seen alive again.

Corder came back alone. For months he explained Maria's absence with stories: she was in Ipswich, then on the Isle of Wight, then unwell or unable to write because of an injured hand. He left the district, and his letters to her family said they were married and happy. Then Ann Marten, Maria's stepmother and barely a year older than her, began to speak of her dreams, and her husband went to the barn.

The body was identified at an inquest at the Cock Inn by Maria's sister, who recognised her hair and clothing and a missing tooth. Corder's green handkerchief was found around the neck. The Polstead constable, Ayres, traced him with the help of a London officer, James Lea, to a boarding house for ladies in Brentford that he ran with his new wife, Mary Moore, whom he had met through a newspaper advertisement for a bride. Lea found him at breakfast, timing eggs with his watch. Corder denied knowing Maria. In the house were a pair of pistols and a passport.

The trial at the Shire Hall in Bury St Edmunds opened on 7 August 1828 before the Chief Baron of the Exchequer, William Alexander, with admission by ticket. The cause of death could not be fixed with certainty, so the indictment covered shooting, stabbing and strangling. Maria's young brother George told the court he had seen Corder with a loaded pistol and later walking away from the barn with a pickaxe. Corder said they had quarrelled and that Maria had shot herself with one of his pistols after he left. The jury convicted him in about 35 minutes. Before he was hanged on 11 August he confessed that he had shot her, though he denied stabbing her.