FG Browne

Top criminal barristers Sasha Wass QC and Jeremy Dein QC re-examine a notorious murder of a policeman that led to the execution of two known criminals.

Essex, 1927. On a quiet country lane on a September morning, local policeman PC George William Gutteridge was found dead, having suffered multiple gunshot wounds. A police investigation was launched, which linked the murder to a stolen car found over 20 miles away in Brixton.

A bullet casing was found in the vehicle and pioneering forensic ballistics evidence connected the killing of PC Gutteridge to Clapham-based mechanic Frederick Guy Browne.

Browne’s birthname was Leo, and he was a man of two sides. To his family, he was a loving husband and caring father. Professionally, he was Frederick, a skilled mechanic and petty criminal.

Four months after the crime, Browne was arrested along with associate William Kennedy, and both men were charged with the murder of PC Gutteridge. Browne protested his innocence, but after a five-day trial was found guilty, and on 31 May 1928 at Pentonville Prison in London, he was hanged.

Today, over 90 years on, the great nieces of Frederick Guy Browne, Una and Barbara, are keen to explore the case against their great uncle. Sasha and Jeremy enlist the help of a psychologist, consider how a statement made by Kennedy to police could have prejudiced the jury, and re-examine the ballistics evidence that proved so damning.

Will they uncover any new material to convince Judge David Radford that Frederick Guy Browne was wrongly convicted?