Sunday 14 July 2013

The Murder of Barbara Gaul

This was one of those cases you remember as one of the headline grabbing at the time, and featured on the national news programmes.  Barbara Gaul was the wife of a shady property developer named John Gaul, and they were proceeding to go through a divorce.  On January 12th 1976, Mrs Gaul was brutally shot in the carpark of the Black Lion Pub in Patcham, near Brighton.  Mrs Gaul died just over two months later.  She had been cut down with a shotgun, which the assassins had dropped during the getaway.  Police quickly traced the the shooters through the gun, and arrested two eastender brothers, Roy Albert Edgeler and Keith Henry Edgeler.  They were convicted and sent down for life.  It was alleged that the Edgelers had been brought into the plot via a middleman, one Charles Kray, but the brothers said nothing.

    Naturally, the husband was taken in for questioning but was released due to lack of evidence and he immediately sped off abroad.  He went to Rio and later settled in Malta, fighting extradition attempts some years later.  By 1984, the Police interest dropped in Gaul and the passage of time could affect witnesses memories.  Gaul died in 1989, and it was only after his death that Keith Edgeler spoke out frim prison, saying that the contract had been issued by Gaul, as he believed Barbara was going to speak out about his business dealings.  Gaul had surfaced in two of the nations` great sex scandals, the Profumo and Lambton affairs.  He was said to have been, basically, a high class pimp, a`la Stephen Ward.  Some people have commented on some local forums remembering seeing a white chalk line on the carpark, where she lay. 

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