The Arrest

Following the Fivers

It wasn’t long before various people were looking for Stanley Setty, including his sister and brother-in-law who reported him missing. The papers printed stories with headings such as ‘Dealer With 200 Fivers Vanishes’ inferring that Setty had been killed because of the £1000 he had on him.

Setty’s car was fingerprinted, but Hume felt confident that with so many questions relating to the dead man’s background and lifestyle the police would be on a wild goose chase for a long time.

On the 8 October 1949, the papers revealed that Scotland Yard had issued the numbers of Setty’s £5 notes that he had received from the bank on the morning of his death. Some of this money had been deposited by Hume into his own bank account and also paid taxi cabs while travelling from London to Elstree Air Field. Hume now became worried that his blind greed, all for a miserly £100 could now lead a trail to him.

The police also recovered a notebook belonging to Setty which detailed all of his business associates. Then Hume’s nightmare came true when the torso finally turned up on the Essex mudflats on Friday, 21 October 1949. The first witness to come forward was a taxi driver who had been given a £5 with the published serial numbers. He explained that he had taken a customer from Southend Airport to Finchley Road.

After further investigations which involved all airfields in the area it did not take long before the police discovered that Hume had hired a plane and was also an associate of Setty. They knocked on Hume’s door at 7.30 am on Thursday 27 October 1949.

Detectives were posted at both the front and back of the flat. Chief Inspector Jamieson and Superintendent MacDougall interrogated Hume at the Albany Street Police Station, although he kept up a convincing plea that he had nothing to do with the murder. He denied that he owned a car which appeared futile when he was then asked about the ‘parcels’ he took on board the hired plane.

Realising that petty lies were not going to get him off the hook, Hume concocted an elaborate story about how he had been offered £150 by three shady smugglers who he only knew as Mac, Greeny and The Boy. The men asked him to drop off the parcels by plane into the sea. Hume made out that he was desperate for the money and only later realised that the situation was very suspect. Despite his convincing act the officers did not believe him. After forensics had swept his Finchley Road flat they discovered bloodstains under the floorboards.