How a millionaire murder suspect escaped to Malta

In September 1989, British entrepreneur John Gaul collapsed and died of a massive heart attack. According to some sources, Gaul died on a plane carrying him from London to Malta.

In the early 1960s, Gaul was granted a long lease of Comino, and the Comino Developed Company Ltd, owned by Gaul, built a hotel and bungalows on the island. Eventually, the man contracted to run the hotel in Gaul’s absence was jailed for fraud and the Comino development was put on hold.

The Comino Hotel

Gaul had a luxury penthouse apartment in Chelsea, London, farmhouses in Sussex and Norfolk, a villa in Spain, and property in Italy. It was also said that he became friendly with the high-profile Maltese who dominated the Soho business in London in the 1950s and 1960s.

In 1959, 48-year-old Gaul met 18-year-old Barbara, a country girl from Norfolk who became a glamour model. When Gaul married Barbara in 1971 he bought her an old farmhouse at Northrepps, near Cromer, in Norfolk. Three years later the couple separated and they were in the process of going through a divorce.

Former partner is shot

On January 12, 1976, Barbara was brutally shot in the car park of the Black Lion Pub in Patcham, near Brighton, and she died just over two months later. Barbara was heading to the Black Lion Hotel at Patcham, just outside the Sussex seaside town. The woman had booked a single room at the pub for one night as she planned to spend the next day with her child, Samantha, in Brighton.

The 33-year-old woman was shot at about 8.20pm when she stepped out of her car and turned to lock the door. As she did so she caught sight of a man moving towards her across the darkened car park, and a few moments later two gunshots, one quickly followed by another, were heard by the regulars at the bar of the hotel. When Barbara slumped to the ground the gunman raced away across the car park.

There, another man sat revving the engine of a green and white Ford Cortina estate, and after the gunman jumped in, the car sped away.

Barbara had been badly wounded. Her left arm had taken the full force of the first shot from a sawn-off shotgun, almost severing it at the elbow. The second shot, fired from a very short distance, had opened a massive wound in her lower chest, lead pellets shredding her left lung, stomach, liver and other organs. Although Barbara was making a steady recovery, she succumbed on March 26 to complications brought on by infections in her wounds.

Within hours of the shooting, Superintendent De’Ath and his deputy, Inspector Peter Graysmark, traced the shooters through the double-barrelled 12-bore shotgun which had been dumped in a hurry during the getaway. Moreover, a witness managed to get the registration number of the getaway car. It was immediately apparent that this was an attempted murder, not a robbery.

John Gaul and Angela Pilch in Malta

A few hours after the crime, the police arrested two Eastender brothers, 49-year-old Roy Albert Edgeler and 34-year-old Keith Henry Edgeler. Keith was known to the police as a regular law-breaker with a long prison record. It was alleged that the Edgelers had been brought into the plot via a middleman, one Charles Kray, but the brothers said nothing.

During the police interrogation, the Edgelers confessed to the shooting and Roy Edgeler described how he had accepted an offer of £5,000 to shoot Barbara Gaul, insisting that he fired only to maim and not to kill her. However, Roy defiantly refused to name the man who had hired him for the hit.

Meanwhile, Superintendent De’Ath contacted Scotland Yard so that his men and a team of police officers from London check every breaker’s yard in the East End before the getaway car was destroyed.

The car was found in a scrapyard in Old Ford Road. Moreover, a motorist had discovered a man’s jacket, stained with blood, and a pair of gloves lying on a verge, several miles from the scene of the crime. Tests showed that the blood was identical to that of Barbara Gaul. The jacket, which belonged to Roy Edgeler, had been spattered with the victim’s blood when the shots were fired.

Police experts examining the scene of the crime.

At the same time that the Edgeler brothers were being questioned in Brighton, more police officers went to John Gaul’s house in London. Gaul was woken in the middle of the night, told to dress and taken to Cannon Road police station for questioning.

Lack of evidence

However, Gaul could prove he had been nowhere near Brighton at the time of the shooting and emphatically denied knowing anything about the attack of his estranged wife. Gaul was released for lack of evidence, and three days after the shooting he flew to Italy after purchasing a return ticket. After several days in Italy, Gaul went to Rio de Janeiro in Brazil.

When the Edgeler brothers went on trial on June 9, 1976, the prosecution said that both accused had refused to name the person behind the murder. Both men were found guilty and sentenced to life in jail.

A month after the trial it was revealed that 22-year-old Angela Pilch, the nanny who had been hired to look after John and Barbara Gaul’s daughter, had secretly left her Norfolk home and was in Brazil with her former employer. For this reason, the British Police wanted to interview Gaul again but he refused to return to England.

Then, in January 1978, Gaul wrote an eight-page letter to the British Sunday Times explaining why he would not return to England to face further questions.

He claimed that the police had a vendetta against him, and that publicity surrounding the trial of the Edgeler brothers had made it impossible for him to have a fair trial if he was eventually charged.

Barbara Gaul

Gaul alleged that before Barbara was fatally wounded, he too had received a death threat in a telephone call. However, the Sussex Police countered by saying that Gaul’s letter was nothing but a pack of lies.

Gaul comes to Malta

In April 1978, Gaul came to Malta where his luxury yacht Lotus Eater was moored. When the Brighton police received information that Gaul had slipped into Malta, the British Foreign Office sent an urgent despatch to the British High Commission in Malta asking for Gaul to be detained as arrangements were being made to extradite him to Britain to face trial. Meanwhile, Gaul suffered a heart attack which sent him to St Luke’s Hospital Intensive Therapy Unit.

In October 1989, Keith Edgeler for the first time said that Gaul was the man who hired him to kill [his estranged wife] Barbara

At that time Malta and the United Kingdom shared an extradition agreement in terms of the Extradition Commonwealth Countries Act of 1970. This matter had to be decided by the Maltese Courts, and on July 16, 1981, Magistrate Lino Agius turned down the request for the extradition and ordered the release of Gaul from police custody.

The Court held that the prosecution in England sought to incriminate Gaul on the evidence of Rory Mark Keegan, the son of an ex-business associate of the defendant. However, the court said that it was not satisfied that the evidence tendered was sufficient to bring Gaul to trial for the alleged offence if it had been committed in Malta.

A tit-for-tat?

It has also to be said that when the previous December the Maltese Foreign Office had asked for the extradition of 29-year-old Rose Marie Delia, the British Home Secretary had turned down the request.

Delia, who was living in London, was facing a passport forgery charge in Malta. As expected, the Maltese authorities were angered with the Home Secretary’s decision, and a section of the British Press later alleged Gaul’s extradition refusal was in retaliation to Delia’s case.

Two months after Gaul’s extradition refusal he married Angela Pilch, and in late 1979, Angela, his fifth wife, gave birth to a son, Xavier. In March 1981, Gaul suffered two heart attacks and his health continued to deteriorate.

In 1984, now aged 74, Gaul made a request to the Sussex Police and the Home Office to return to London for heart treatment. Initially, the Sussex Police informed him that he would be arrested immediately he set foot in Britain. But a month later it was announced that the Brighton magistrates had withdrawn their murder warrant.

It was also revealed that a spokesman for the British Director of Public Prosecutions had said that the evidence available against Gaul did not justify criminal proceedings. In September 1984 Gaul returned to the United Kingdom for treatment in a London private clinic.

Although during his trial Keith Edgeler had said that he had a £5,000 contract to disable Barbara and that John Gaul did not set up the shooting, in October 1989 Edgeler for the first time said that Gaul was the man who hired him to kill Barbara. From his prison cell, Edgeler also alleged that Gaul wanted to kill Barbara because he feared she was about to expose him about his shady dealings.