Morphine and Murder

Quite a long time back, a very good friend lent me a very old paperback, as he thought I might find it interesting. It was thin and worn, published back in 1990, and entitled “Almeria to Aguilas” by a lady called Barbara Ambrose. The author was chronicling a trip she took, referred to in the title, describing, with a certain flair, some of her adventures in the places she visited along the way.

Cortijo Grande was one of those places, but it was a place she knew well before this particular trip, having visited our little paradise, over a good number of years prior to writing her book..

I was interested to see the book included a chapter, teasingly entitled “Cortijo Grande – Happy Valley – Its Myths and Legends“, so as I have a stake here, I was more than curious to see what she had to say. There were a number of things that particularly struck me, but two in particular are as follows.

The first was a paragraph. that I hope Barbara Ambrose will forgive me for including here, but in gratitude for her words, I’ll provide a little update on the situation in this text.

She wrote of the people here as follows,

 “No one who entered the valley was immune to the magic it evoked, but instead of leaving nature alone, they, in their different ways, attempted to instil their personal dreams and ambitions, or their egotistic cravings for power on this calm and peaceful place.”

Barbara then expands on these comments to provide some of the more unpleasant and lurid details of the valley’s past. It rather made me smile to read this, as the place really hasn’t changed that much, twenty five years on. We still have a very mixed bag of characters here, so petty politics, and oneupmanship, and all the other small community nonsenses that people like to inflict on each other, do tend to rear their ugly heads with tiresome regularity. It’s a people thing.

It still amazes me, that some people don’t quite get why having your head up your arse, may not necessarily be a good thing. But people are people, not always so bright, and we have to console ourselves regarding the negativity they spout, by acknowledging that everyone gets from life, pretty much exactly what they put into it. It’s a simple balance equation. Unfortunately, the self-obsessed aren’t quite attuned enough to see that.

The second thing from the book that made me take note was that the valley had been witness to a dreadful murder. Barbara detailed the grizzly tale of Dr. John Baksh, visitor to this valley and murderer in this valley, but Mr. Google and, in particular, Murderpaedia filled me in on the gruesome facts of the case.

He really wasn’t a very nice man. A successful doctor with a couple of practices in the UK, he reported his wife missing on the evening of the 4th January 1985.

The following day, a woman was found in undergrowth at a place called Keston Pond near Bromley in Kent. Her throat had been slashed. She was barely alive. She was rushed to hospital and identified as the missing wife of Mr. Baksh. The story of what had happened to her then came out. The doctor had poisoned her with morphine, not enough to kill her, but more than enough for her to be incapable of resisting him.  He then took her to Keston Pond where he dragged her from his car to the undergrowth where she was found, and cut her throat, leaving her to die.

Had it not been such a cold night she might well have fatally bled out and the Doctor would have probably escaped scot-free, but the intense cold that night, thickened the blood, slowing the flow and so enabled her to cling to life.

Dr. Baksh was charged with attempted murder, but during their investigation, the police became suspicious of events surrounding the death of the Doctor’s first wife, who had died of a heart attack, whilst holidaying here, in Cortijo Grande.

The death, which was very sudden, was handled by the Spanish authorities, without an autopsy, and her body, dealt with quickly, as is customary here in Spain, was interred in the local cemetery, behind a black marble tablet. As part of their investigation, the police exhumed the body and after tests, they found the body was pumped full of morphine.

A charge of murder of his first wife was now added to the charge for attempted murder of his second. The police also suspected that he’d murdered his own mother, but her body had been reduced to ash and so no additional charges could be brought, for lack of evidence.

The motive, in all three cases, was to collect insurance monies on the death of a loved one. His morphine was to simply hurry them on their way so he could pick up the big cash dividend on the policies he’d taken out on their lives. He very nearly got away with it.

It is an interesting story to me because it was a real murder, here in the valley, and done at a time when everyone tells me this place was a paradise.

It clearly wasn’t.

This man was a cold blooded psychopathic killer obsessed with money, and having found so much out about him, I’m rather concerned that he may well have been friendly and possibly even influential with some of our longer term neighbours here. It might explain a lot!

Does our valley have closet psycho-nutters that might put the rest of our community at risk? This true story suggests that we can’t just discount the possibility. A bit scary hunh?

It makes me rather glad to be a Johnny-come-Lately to this place. I think.

There were also some other interesting points made about our development here, as Barbara Ambrose talked about some of the problems then, that are still with us now. I intend to write about this in my Idling Man blog in due course. We are twenty five years on from the writing of this book, but the same problems here continue. This says a great deal about the will of our community when it comes to sorting things out and it really isn’t a very impressive record.

Things may change, but somehow, they always seem to stay the same. It was good to be reminded of this as I read through Barbara’s little tome. If we want to get things moving here, perhaps a little morphine around the place would help.