August Sangret

Formal committal hearings were held in Guildford between 12 and 20 January 1943, and saw 21 members of the Canadian Army testify as eyewitnesses to Sangret's relationship with Wolfe; his conflicting and indifferent accounts as to her whereabouts following her disappearance; his being in possession of the knife alleged to have been used in her murder; and his movements on critical dates. In addition, Doctors Simpson, Gardner and Lynch each testified as to their collective forensic findings upon Wolfe's body and Sangret's clothing and army blanket. Also to testify at these committal hearings was Inspector Greeno, who read in full Sangret's voluminous statements to the court before testifying as to Sangret's admission prior to his initial release from custody that he had deduced these official matters were in motion due to her body being found.

The trial of August Sangret for the murder of Joan Pearl Wolfe began at the Surrey County Hall on 24 February 1943. He was tried before Mr Justice Macnaghten and a jury. The clerk of assize opened proceedings on this date by asking Sangret to stand to hear a formal recitation of the charge, and to state his plea. Sangret formally stated his plea of not guilty to the charge against him; the Clerk then informed the jury: "It is for you to say whether he is guilty or not guilty, and to hearken to the evidence."

August Sangret was held in the condemned cell at Wandsworth Prison, to await execution. He was hanged by Albert Pierrepoint at 9 a.m. on 29 April 1943. The official cause of death upon Sangret's death certificate reads: "Injury to brain and spinal cord consequent upon judicial hanging."

On each occasion Edith wrote to or spoke with her daughter, she would argue with Joan as to her irresponsible and promiscuous lifestyle. By 1942, the relationship between mother and daughter had deteriorated and, in May, Edith wrote a final letter to her daughter, informing her she was "finished with you. I have been more than fair to you; forgiven you for things no other mother would have done ... You said something about repaying me for all I have done for you ... Joan, I shall be paid in full the day you come and truthfully say, 'Mum, I'm going to be a good girl'. Joan, that will be the happiest day of my life."

Sangret's regiment was deployed to Britain on 24 March 1942. He was initially stationed in Fleet, Hampshire, before being posted to Aldershot and, on 13 July, to Jasper Camp. This final posting was in the market town of Godalming, and Sangret became one of an estimated 100,000 soldiers stationed in the vicinity of Witley and Thursley in 1942. At Jasper Camp, Sangret enrolled in a newly formed 12-week educational course for soldiers lacking in elementary education. While stationed in Godalming, Sangret became acquainted with Joan Pearl Wolfe.

On 17 July 1942, the day after Hearn left for Canada, Joan Wolfe and August Sangret met for the first time in a pub in Godalming. According to Sangret, he had first noted Wolfe when she walked toward a bar and ordered a lemonade, to which he had asked her when she subsequently sat near him whether she was able to purchase "anything stronger", and Wolfe—whom he described as being "rather scruffy" and downcast in spirit—had simply replied that she "didn't drink anything stronger". He and Wolfe had then begun to talk, and later walked through a local park, before engaging in intercourse in a field close to the River Wey. The two then parted company, having arranged to meet again. As would often subsequently occur, Wolfe did not keep her next date, but Sangret and a fellow soldier named Hartnell did by chance encounter her outside a Godalming fish and chip shop on 21 July. Wolfe had apparently agreed to date Hartnell on this evening, but became notably upset when Hartnell suggested tossing a coin to determine whether he or Sangret should "have her" that evening. In response, Hartnell simply left Wolfe and Sangret, and the pair were briefly detained by police, before being released. Sangret took Wolfe to the undergrowth close to Witley Camp that evening, and on this date, upon being informed by Wolfe she had "nowhere to stay", constructed the first wigwam for he and Wolfe to meet. Sangret described this first temporary shelter as being "a little shack with limbs and stuff." He spent the night with Wolfe in this device, returning to barracks at 6 a.m., having given Joan his photograph, address, and arranging to meet her in Godalming that evening. He later furnished this spartan pine structure with army blankets.

Wolfe subsequently moved into an abandoned cricket pavilion in Thursley on or about 3 September, with Sangret providing her with an army-issue blanket and water-bottle stolen from his barracks on this date. In this pavilion, Wolfe would spend extended periods of time, often composing romantic poetry and letters (several of which were smattered with religious overtones), and making childlike drawings of the home into which she evidently envisioned herself and Sangret moving following their marriage. One of these drawings was made on the wall of the cricket pavilion, with a caption reading "Our little Grey home in the West." Beneath this caption, an inscription read: 'J. Wolfe now Mrs. Sangret. England. September 9, 1942'.

At 10:20 a.m. on 7 October 1942, two Royal Marines named William Moore and Geoffrey Cooke, patrolling a section of Hankley Common known as Houndown Wood on a routine military exercise, passed a high mound of earth which had been purposely bulldozed to simulate training upon rough terrain for tank crews. Protruding through the soil of a freshly dug patch of earth on a slope, Moore observed what appeared to be an exposed human arm. Looking closer at the hand of this exposed limb, he further noted that the flesh upon two of the fingers and the thumb had been gnawed away by rats or other vermin, and that a foot also protruded from the earth.

On 27 November 1942, a distinctive knife with a hooked point resembling a parrot's beak was discovered by a Private Albert Brown, hidden in a waste pipe within the wash-house at Witley barracks. Brown had discovered this instrument when tasked with clearing a blocked drain; he and a colleague immediately handed this knife to Harold Wade, who in turn forwarded the weapon to the Surrey Police. (Subsequent eyewitness testimony would indicate Sangret had excused himself to wash his hands in this wash-room on 12 October, immediately prior to his initial, informal questioning by Inspector Greeno. He had been alone in the wash-room for between three and four minutes, although the water had been cut off at the time.)

In his opening statement on behalf of the Crown, Eric Neve outlined the prosecution's intention to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Sangret had murdered Wolfe—whom he referred to as the Wigwam Girl—on or about 14 September 1942. Neve then defined for the jury the very definition of the crime of murder, before outlining the relationship between the decedent and the accused; quoting from letters exchanged between the two and harking to the two wigwams Sangret had constructed on Hankley Common and in which he had lived with the decedent in the weeks prior to her murder. Neve further outlined the prosecution's contention that Sangret had constructed these wigwams with the same distinctive knife he had subsequently used in her murder, before displaying Exhibits 3 and 4: the birch bough used to inflict the substantial fracture to the rear of her skull, and the distinctive black-handled knife with a hooked point, which he had attempted to conceal at Witley barracks.

One of the final witnesses to testify on the second day of the trial was Private Joseph Arsenault, who had been stationed at Witley Camp between July and October 1942, and had become acquainted with Sangret. Arsenault testified as to his observing Sangret, alone, cleaning his trousers in the camp wash-room in an effort to remove dark stains he (Arsenault) had seen on the garment. In response to cross-examination by Linton Thorp, Arsenault conceded he could not pinpoint the precise date he had seen Sangret washing his trousers in the wash-room, and that the date in question could have been anytime he had been stationed at Witley Camp.

After one month, Wolfe left this employment, but did not inform her mother of this fact. It is at this stage in her life in which Wolfe's behaviour is believed to have become increasingly irresponsible and promiscuous, and she is known to have subsequently engaged in casual affairs with several soldiers between 1940 and 1942, most of whom served with the Canadian Army. Wolfe's behaviour from 1940 onward attests to her being gullible, extremely naïve, prone to flights of fancy, yet apparently yearning for stability. Her naïvety may have been compounded by her heavily chaperoned convent upbringing. These facts are evidenced not only in her behaviour, but in the content of the numerous letters she is known to have written to her final lover, who would ultimately prove to be her murderer. Moreover, until her death, she neither drank, smoked or used any profane language in her vocabulary.

Despite her wayward lifestyle, Joan did maintain sporadic written correspondence with her mother between 1940 and 1942, and she is known to have infrequently returned home to Tunbridge Wells for brief periods—twice in the company of Canadian soldiers she was dating—to visit her family, before opting to return to Godalming or Guildford. She is known to have held several menial forms of employment from 1940 onward; alternately residing in cheap lodgings or sleeping rough. Wolfe is also known to have formed a close friendship with an elderly lady named Kate Hayter in the village of Thursley while she lived and worked in Godalming. According to Wolfe, Hayter allowed her sleep at her bungalow, and to both wash and change her clothes, when she was unemployed.

On 19 June 1940, nine months after Canada had proclaimed her intention to join the war effort, Sangret chose to enlist as a full-time soldier in the Regina Rifle Regiment. Shortly thereafter, his regiment was transferred to Dundurn Camp. His career as a soldier is marred with several blemishes, and he was repeatedly punished for both minor and major infractions of military discipline, including several instances in which he was reported absent without leave (although no record exists of Sangret ever being returned to barracks against his will). Throughout his military service, he never advanced beyond the rank of private.

Joan's step-father, Leslie, was known locally as proficient chess player but was an eccentric figure who suffered from insomnia and was prone to sudden public outbursts of both paranoia and hostility. In August 1939, when Joan was 16 years old, she returned from school one day to find her step-father lying dead on the floor of their sealed kitchen: he had committed suicide by gassing himself. Her mother subsequently remarried for a second time in 1942; this time to a man named Charles Watts.

With her mother's approval, Wolfe became engaged to an affluent young man from Tunbridge Wells shortly before her 16th birthday in 1939. Reportedly, Joan's fiancé lavished his attention and affections on her, although later the same year, while still engaged, Wolfe first ran away from home. On this first occasion, her mother reported her daughter missing to police, and Joan was discovered approximately one month later in the town of Aldershot. She was driven back to Tunbridge Wells by her fiancé's mother, although shortly after the outbreak of World War II, Wolfe chose to call off her engagement and instead travel to London to train as a storekeeper in an aircraft factory.

The knife itself was not of Canadian issue, but British Army (although subsequent trial testimony would confirm such a model of knife had been issued to the Canadian Army until 1939). A Canadian soldier named Samuel Crowle had found this knife embedded in a tree close to one of the wigwams Sangret had earlier constructed in mid-August; he had intended to keep the knife due to its unique blade, but had been advised by a colleague to deliver it to a Corporal Thomas Harding, who had in turn handed the knife to Sangret on 26 August, suspecting the knife had belonged to him, given that Crowle had informed him he had found the knife near a wigwam "with some people talking inside".

At the age of 17, Sangret received the first of many diagnoses that he had contracted a venereal disease. On this first occasion, upon medical advice, he had unsuccessfully attempted to cure himself using a potassium permanganate solution, before admitting himself to a Battleford hospital to undergo extensive treatment for a bladder obstruction. This would prove to be the first of at least six occasions in which Sangret would receive treatment for a contracted venereal disease, attesting to his sexual promiscuity, although the remaining five instances would occur between 1938 and 1942.

Throughout the 1930s, Sangret accrued an extensive criminal record, which included six months served in gaol for a violent assault committed in 1932, a three-month sentence served in 1938 for threatening to shoot a woman, and numerous convictions for both vagrancy and theft. He was regularly unemployed, and enlisted to serve in the Battleford Light Infantry in 1935. This militia regiment trained for just two weeks each year, and Sangret served with this regiment until 1939.

In April 1930, Joan's father died at the age of 34. Her mother remarried a man named Leslie John Wood in January the following year; they had a daughter in December 1931. The family moved to live in Tunbridge Wells where Joan attended a Catholic convent school in nearby Mark Cross, her tuition fees reportedly paid by a wealthy aunt. She attended this convent school until aged 16, becoming fluent in the French language, and although outwardly pious and known to regularly wear a conspicuous crucifix about her neck, she apparently lacked any serious religious commitment.

Joan Pearl Wolfe was born in Tonbridge, Kent, on 11 March 1923, the youngest of three children born to Charles Frederick and Edith Mary (née Groombridge) Wolfe, who had married in 1920.

August Sangret (28 August 1913 – 29 April 1943) was a French-Canadian soldier, convicted and subsequently hanged for the September 1942 murder of 19-year-old Joan Pearl Wolfe in Surrey, England. This murder case is also known as the "Wigwam Murder".

August Sangret was born in Battleford, Saskatchewan, on 28 August 1913. He was of mixed race; being part French Canadian and part Cree Indian. Little is known of Sangret's early life, but his family was poor, his early years were blighted with illnesses, and at least one of his siblings died at an early age from tuberculosis. Sangret received no schooling in his childhood, and was unable to read, or to write beyond signing his own name. Nonetheless, he has been described as being modestly intelligent, and in possession of an excellent memory. In addition to English, Sangret spoke the Cree language fluently, and learned some of the traditional skills of his ancestors in his youth, some of which were honed throughout the years he worked as a farm labourer in the town of Maidstone in the 1920s. As a result of this outdoor work, Sangret developed a lithe, muscular physique.