Real Crime: The Almost Perfect Murder

Real Crime: The Almost Perfect Murder

Could you imagine going to your fishing job, throwing out the net for an hour, pulling the net in, and finding a dead body? Yikes. On July 28, 1996 men on a fishing boat in England did just that. The male dead body had nothing in his pockets. He had an unidentifiable tattoo on the back of his hand and a Rolex watch on his wrist. The man had several injuries that included a deep gash on the back of his head. The police thought that it could have happened from when the man was pulled out of the water. The Rolex was a big help to find out who the man was. It was traced to a man named Ronald Joseph Platt. The police had assumed that the man had fallen overboard and had drowned (Real Crime).

The case was almost closed until the police could not get ahold of David Davis who had initially helped identify Ron Platt. The police then sent an officer to David’s house. The officer had gone to the wrong house by mistake and found out that David was posing as his friend Ron. David then

became questionable and the officer had gone back to the neighbor’s house to get more information on him. The officer was told that David had a boat but he did not get the name (Real Crime).
The fisherman of the boat that found Ron had told the police that there was an anchor in the net but it was no longer in his possession. The police tracked down the anchor and luckily found the piece of evidence. Ron’s ex, Elaine Boyce, helped the police with more of Ron’s history and David’s connection. David first met Elaine and offered her a job and then met Ron. David made Elaine and Ron directors in his new business because he did not want his name on any of the paperwork. She did her job and never questioned David because she had believed him and trusted him (Real Crime).
David had everyone fooled by how friendly and caring he was. He bought Elaine and Ron two tickets to Canada. David told them to make rubber stamps of their signature so that he could sign business documents while they were in Canada. Elaine and Ron were struggling in Canada and so they decided to come back. David was not happy. He tried to persuade them to go back. David then left and called himself Ron (Real Crime).
David was in contact with Elaine and had failed to mention Ron’s death.

Elaine contacted the police and the police then worked on arresting David. They sat in front of his house and then followed him when he entered a taxi. The taxi was pulled over. When he was searched at the jail he had two IDs. One of the IDs was David Davis and the other Ronald Platt. It turns out David was an international criminal on the most wanted list. The police went to arrest his “wife”, she packed a bag for their baby which turned out to have two bars of gold on the bottom. The house was searched and the police gathered anything that was suspicious or could be helpful. They found a picture of the boat “Lady Jane”. They then found the boat and took it to their lab. They found Ron’s blood. The anchor that was found was unfit for the boat. They then linked the anchor to the injuries on Ron’s body and that the anchor was attached to his belt and then he was thrown over (Real

Crime).
The police found out that David Davis real name was Albert Johnson Walker. Albert was kicked out of his house, forcefully tried to break in and then went to jail. After he was released, he disappeared from Canada with 3.2 million dollars (stolen from his investment clients) and his daughter. They moved around England and posed as husband and wife and had two kids. Albert went on trial in 1998. During the case the watch had given a window of time of death because it was waterproof and it would stop after around 48 hours of no motion. The boat computer also gave coordinates of where the boat had been. During the trial Albert’s daughter did confirm that he was on the boat. Albert was found guilty for Ron’s death. He was then sentenced to a life in prison (Real Crime).
Crime Case Analysis
While I was watching the videos I was thinking how crazy it was that the police was just going to assume that Ronald Pratt had just gone overboard and drowned. My criminal justice class has taught me that one should never just go in assuming what happened. What you see is not always just the case. One must think outside of the box (Hamas, 2015). It was also shocking to me that not all of the evidence was collected. The police had not found out about the anchor until later on in the investigation. The anchor was in the same net as the man’s dead body and so how was it missed? If the officer had not gone to the wrong house, Albert may have never been caught. It goes to show you just how important it is to go into a scene open minded and to be very, very thorough when collecting evidence.