10 June 1930

June 10, 1930, is the date on which Lawrence John Wargrave, presiding as judge, sentenced Edward Seton to death for murder—a verdict that, though legally sound, was later widely believed to have been influenced by Wargrave's personal animus and that became the cornerstone of his secret identity as the mass murderer U. N. Owen.

The Trial of Edward Seton

On June 10, 1930, Edward Seton came before Mr. Justice Wargrave, charged with the murder of an elderly woman. The case was closely followed. Seton, a fair-haired, blue-eyed young man, made a strong impression on the jury with his straightforward demeanor. His defense counsel, Matthews, conducted a masterful cross-examination and delivered a first-class closing speech, making an acquittal seem likely. The prosecution, led by Llewellyn, was over-vehement and failed to remove the good impression the defense had created. Yet Wargrave, in his summing up, turned the jury decisively against the prisoner. The jury brought in a verdict of guilty, and Wargrave passed the death sentence. An appeal on grounds of misdirection was rejected, and Seton was duly executed.

Wargrave's Secret Satisfaction

Wargrave himself later acknowledged that he had "cooked Seton's goose all right." He remembered the case with pleasure, recalling exactly how he had felt sitting on the bench, listening, making notes, and tabulating every scrap of evidence that told against the prisoner. Dr. Armstrong, who had heard legal gossip at the time, recalled that Matthews had been confident of acquittal, and that afterward commentators said the judge had been "dead against him" and had turned the jury right around. Armstrong sensed that Wargrave had a private grudge against Seton, and when he asked the judge directly whether he had known Seton before the case, Wargrave denied it in a cold, clear voice—a denial Armstrong instantly recognized as a lie.

The Accusation and Its Aftermath

On the evening of August 8, 1935, during the dinner party on Indian Island, a gramophone record accused each guest of a specific murder. Wargrave was charged: "Lawrence John Wargrave, that upon the 10th day of June, 1930, you were guilty of the murder of Edward Seton." In the stunned silence that followed, Wargrave defended himself, stating that his conscience was perfectly clear, that he had merely done his duty and passed sentence on a rightly convicted murderer. But his denial did not convince everyone. Armstrong, remembering the trial gossip, remained suspicious. Later that night, alone in his room, Wargrave removed his false teeth, revealing a cruel, predatory mouth, and smiled to himself as he recalled how he had enjoyed the case.

The Confession and the Clue

In his posthumous confession, Wargrave admitted that Seton was in fact guilty of the brutal murder of an elderly woman who had trusted him—evidence later turned up that proved his guilt beyond a shadow of a doubt. But Wargrave also confessed that he had taken a sadistic delight in seeing the condemned man suffer, and that the trial had fed his lust to kill. He noted that the police, knowing Seton was guilty, would realize that one of the ten people on the island was not a murderer in any sense of the word, and that this person must logically be the murderer—a paradox pointing directly to Wargrave himself. The date June 10, 1930, thus became the first of three clues he deliberately left behind, a marker of the judicial murder that was the seed of his grand, fantastical crime.