DASTARDLY DADS FROM THE ARCHIVES (Northamptonshire, England - 1930)

Account is from Martin Fido and David Southwell, True Crime: The Infamous Villains of Modern History and their Hideous Crimes (2008).

Blazing Car Man Wanted to Escape Girlfriends (1930)

Thirty-seven-year-old ALFRED ARTHUR ROUSE has too many wives, girlfriends, and paternity orders out against him. He decided to end it all by "dying."

On Guy Fawkes' night two young men going home from a dance in Northamptonshire, England, saw a man emerge from a ditch. They asked him about a blaze visible further down the road, and the man said: "It looks as though some one is having a bonfire up there."

The young men hurried to the flames and found a fiercely blazing Morris car with a body in the front seat. The number-plates identified the car as Rouse's.

Presumably, Rouse intended to disappear quietly after the car was found, leaving it to be assumed he had died in the fire. Thus he would escape the problem of having 80 intimate women friends.

But as he was seen near the fire, his plan failed. Rouse made his way to Wales and stayed with one of his lady-loves, finally coming forward when newspapers reported that police wanted to interview him.

Rouse himself does not know who the victim was -just an old tramp he gave a life. He goes on trial for his murder next year.