Notorious Dundee killer ‘acquitted’ 130 years after being hanged

One of Dundee’s most notorious killers has been “acquitted” 130 years after he was hanged for the murder of his wife.

At a retrial in the same court room in which William Bury’s original trial took place, jurors found him not guilty of strangling and mutiliating Ellen Elliot.

Students from Dundee and Aberdeen universities took up the roles of prosecution and defence respectively for the special event.

In the original trial the Crown alleged that Mr Bury strangled his wife Ellen with a piece of rope he had bought, then cut her abdomen open, disembowelling her, possibly whilst she was still alive or very shortly thereafter.

He then crammed her mutilated body into a wooden trunk, breaking both the bones in her leg in the process. The defence alleged that it was suicide and that she self-strangulated and that the cuts to her body were made after her death.

Professor Dame Sue Black, who organised the retrial, said: “The verdict was incredible.

“When, 130 years ago, the original jury found Bury guilty, they also asked the judge for mercy, which suggested that they had had doubt.

“Clearly our jury also had doubt.

“If you are going to condemn a man to death, then you need to have certainty and jurors then and now did not have that. As to the question of whether Bury really did kill his wife, the truth is that he probably did.”