Michael Henry Beaumont Eddowes (8 October 1903 – 28 December 1993)[ England & Wales, Civil Registration Death Index, 1916–2007][ England & Wales, National Probate Calendar (Index of Wills and Administrations), 1858–1995] was a British lawyer, author, and investigator, best known for his involvement in the Profumo affair and for his conspiracy theory involving Lee Harvey Oswald.
Early life
Eddowes was born in
Derby, Derbyshire, to solicitor Charles Randolph Beaumont Eddowes and Florence Greenfield Eddowes.
[ Derbyshire, England, Church of England Baptisms, 1813–1916] He came from a family of
barristers and built a large law practice specializing in
divorce.
Timothy Evans
Eddowes' first case to gain attention involved
Timothy Evans, who was
hanged in 1950 for the murder of his daughter. Eddowes wrote a book on this case called
The Man On Your Conscience in which he argued that the real culprit was John Christie, an English
serial killer. It was because of Eddowes' efforts and those of others, such as
Ludovic Kennedy and
Sydney Silverman, that the case was reinvestigated and Evans was issued a posthumous
pardon. The outcry over this case helped to lead to the abolition of the death penalty in the United Kingdom. Many years later, his son John published a book which argued against his father's claims that Evans had been innocent.
Profumo affair
Eddowes was connected with the
John Profumo scandal of 1963.
[Richard Davenport-Hines, An English Affair: sex, class and power in the Age of Profumo, HarperPress, 2013, p. 276] Eddowes was a confidante of
Stephen Ward, a society osteopath, who introduced him to
Christine Keeler in October 1962. According to Keeler, he was interested in her but too old for her tastes. In January 1963, Keeler approached Eddowes for legal advice following a domestic incident with her ex-boyfriend, who had fired shots at Ward's home. Eddowes grew suspicious upon discovering she was also involved with Soviet naval attaché Yevgeny Ivanov and reported what he learned to
Scotland Yard. In
The Trial of Christine Keeler, a 2019–20 BBC One miniseries, he is portrayed by
Anton Lesser
The Oswald File
In 1975, Eddowes authored
The Oswald File, in which he claimed that a
Soviet imposter took the place of Lee Harvey Oswald when Oswald was in the Soviet Union, came to the United States where he assassinated United States president John F. Kennedy, and was subsequently buried in Oswald's grave.
Eddowes asserted there were differences between Oswald and the
autopsy performed by Earl Rose.
He mentioned that Oswald was 5 ft 11 in (180 cm) in height according to his U.S. Marine Corps records, and that the
Dallas pathologists said the assassin they autopsied was 5 ft 9 in (175 cm). In his book, Eddowes cites several times after Oswald's return from the Soviet Union when he gave his height as 5 ft 11 in if asked but when he was actually measured he was a few inches shorter. The corpse also had a large scar on the wrist; Eddowes stated that Oswald had no such scar. Eddowes argued that, as a child, Oswald had a
mastoid operation that left him with a depression in the flesh behind one of his ears, as well as a dime sized hole in his skull, and that the corpse of the man
Jack Ruby killed had no such depression or hole in the skull. Eddowes sought action in
Texas courts and the body was exhumed in 1981.
The body, in an advanced state of decomposition, proved to be Oswald.
[ W. Tracy Parnell, "The Exhumation of Lee Harvey Oswald and the Norton Report", 2003] The exhumation was reported to have cost Eddowes between $8,000 and $15,000.
Death
Eddowes died, aged 90, of a burst
aneurysm on 28 December 1993 at his home in
Felpham, West Sussex.
