Soldier hanged for wartime rape of Rugeley pensioner

Aniceto Martinez, a prisoner-of-war being held at Flaxley Green, near Rugeley, was found guilty after a court martial and hanged by the country's chief executioner Tom Pierrepoint, assisted by his nephew Albert Pierrepoint, who became Britain's most prolific hangman.

The 22-year-old had denied the charge but the evidence against him at his trial was overwhelming and he was convicted.

The court heard that 75-year-old Agnes Cope was raped in her home on August 6, 1944, after Martinez broke into the small cottage in Sandy Lane, not far from The Crown Hotel pub, where the soldier had been drinking that night.

Mrs Cope, a widower, told the court she awoke to find Martinez in her bedroom at 3.15am and asked him: "Oh master, what ever do you want? If it is money you want, I do not have any."

Martinez replied: "It is not money. I want a woman." As she struggled, he hit her, and he continued to strike her every time she cried out.

Afterwards, Mrs Cope sat on the edge of her bed until she heard her daughter, who had come to visit, moving about downstairs. The two women went to Rugeley Police Station where the victim made a statement.

Inspector Horace Brookes checked the scene and discovered both back doors had been forced. He went to Flaxley Green camp in Stilecop Field at 3pm that day to report the crime.

Martinez was the only soldier absent at bed call. He denied the rape when questioned but his clothing was sent away for analysis to the Midland Forensic Laboratory in Gooch Street North, Birmingham.

A thorn found in his cap matched the hedge at the back of Mrs Cope's house. Blue fibres from her quilt were also found in the cap and white threads from her nightdress were discovered on his trouser buttons.

Martinez admitted: "I did commit misconduct with a woman but she was not forced." He claimed he did not break in.

A police surgeon at Rugeley noted bruises to Mrs Cope's neck and face, including a black eye, and she had a sprained thumb.

The soldier who carried out the midnight bed check at Flaxley Green camp travelled from France to give evidence at the trial. Martinez alleged he was asleep in the latrine at the time.

At his court martial in Lichfield on February 25, 1945, Martinez said he had been drinking at The Crown but was not drunk when he set off to look for a 'house of ill repute'.

But his defence claimed the attack was carried out 'under the influence of intoxicants'. It was also said he was poorly educated.

During the course of the day-long trial, the attack was referred to as 'heinous', 'bestial' and 'sub-human', made worse by the age of the victim. Rape was a capital crime under U.S. military law, although not in Britain.

Martinez, from New Mexico, was hanged on June 15 that year, shortly after 1am, at at HMP Shepton Mallet, Somerset, which during the Second World War was used as an American prison. A brick extension was especially built for executions, with a gallows on the first floor.

Afterwards he was buried at a cemetery in Surrey but later exhumed and reburied at Oise-Aisne American Cemetery in France in a plot reserved for those who had died a 'dishonourable death'.

Albert Pierrepoint ended the lives of 400 men and women - including Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be hanged in Britain, Derek Bentley, whose conviction was later quashed, the wartime traitor Lord Haw-Haw and John George Haigh, the acid bath murderer.

He also hanged large numbers of Nazi war criminals convicted at the Nuremberg trials, including Josef Kramer, the Beast of Belsen, and Irma Grese, considered the cruellest woman concentration camp guard of them all.

The death sentence was abolished in Britain in 1964.