Father Gorman's murder is the central crime behind the investigation: initially presented through Zachariah Osborne's claim to be a helpful witness, it is ultimately revealed that Osborne himself followed and killed the priest. The contrast between his confident account and the facts established by Lejeune turns an apparent act of civic assistance into evidence of murder.

Background and Setting

On October 7, Father Gorman, a Roman Catholic parish priest in London, was killed in West Street, Paddington. The police sought people who had seen him that evening, especially during the period between 7:45 and 8:15. Osborne, then a chemist with a shop in the district, contacted them with a statement about seeing the priest pass at around eight o'clock and a man following him at a short distance.

Osborne presented his account as the observation of an unusually attentive shopkeeper. He described remembering customers and appearances as a habit that helped his business, and said that the unusual-looking follower had caught his attention. At the time, he claimed, he had thought nothing of what he saw.

The Account and Its Doubts

The description Osborne supplied was strikingly specific: the man was tall, very thin, with sloping shoulders, a pronounced Adam's apple, long hair beneath a Homburg, and a prominent nose. Osborne estimated his height at between five feet eleven inches and six feet, and his age at about fifty. The detail initially gave his testimony the appearance of an unusually reliable identification rather than an imagined portrait.

Lejeune nevertheless questioned whether Osborne could truly have seen so much. The observation was said to have been made across the street on a foggy night; an aquiline nose in profile might have been visible, but the Adam's apple seemed too precise. Osborne later explained that the fog came and went in patches and that the follower had lit a cigarette with a lighter, briefly making his profile clear. That account appeared to explain his certainty, but it rested on the false premise that he had watched from his shop doorway.

Exposure of the Murderer

Osborne's identification brought Mr Venables under suspicion. After seeing him in a wheelchair at a village fête, Osborne concluded that this wealthy local resident was the man he had seen following Father Gorman and contacted the police. Lejeune later confronted Mr Venables about whether he had been in London on the night of the murder. At the final confrontation, Lejeune explained that the recognition evidence, including Osborne's confident description, did not establish that Mr Venables had followed the priest.

Instead, Lejeune exposed the crucial lie: Osborne had not been standing outside his shop observing events across the street. He had himself followed Father Gorman until the priest turned into West Street, caught up with him, and killed him. Osborne's purported testimony was therefore not a mistaken identification but a fabrication that placed him in the role of witness while directing suspicion toward another man.

Significance in the Investigation

The murder sets the inquiry in motion, while Osborne's account supplies one of its most revealing reversals. His vivid description seems at first to distinguish him as a careful observer; examined against the fog, the distance, and the details he claims to have seen, it instead gives Lejeune grounds to scrutinize him. His confidence does not prove the identification—it becomes part of the evidence against him.

The episode also shows how the investigation separates observation from the story a witness builds around it. Osborne uses the language of helpfulness and professional attentiveness to make his claim credible, but the eventual reconstruction changes the meaning of every part of that claim: the supposed follower was the killer, and the supposed witness was concealing his own role in Father Gorman's death.