The Hunted Man

Donald Hume first captured the attention of the crime-loving British public in 1949 when he took off in a rented airplane and dropped three packages into the Thames estuary. The packages contained, respectively, the head, legs and torso of a used-car dealer named Stanley Setty, who had quarreled with Hume. A present-day Mack the Knife, Hume was true to his Threepenny Opera code: "If you have an enemy, get rid of him." He had stabbed Setty to death and dismembered him.

Arrested, Hume survived three juries at the Old Bailey--the first was dismissed when the judge fell ill, the second could not agree, the third found him not guilty. Finally, for the crime of illegally disposing of Setty's body, Hume pleaded guilty to being an accessory after the fact to murder, and in 1950 was sentenced to twelve years in prison.

Hefty Barmaid. Freed last spring for good behavior, Hume took bold advantage of the fact that he could not be tried again for the same crime. To the tabloid Sunday Pictorial he brazenly sold for about $10,000 his account of how he murdered Setty (TIME, June 16). He became a freehanded spender in the shadier bars of London's West End, and as before, women proved susceptible to his curly black hair and his blue-eyed, open countenance. A hefty Mayfair barmaid lost her $800 savings to Hume but still loves him; a pretty air hostess at London Airport still gets misty-eyed in remembrance.

For anonymity's sake, Hume changed his name legally to Brown, thus entitling him to obtain a bona fide passport in that name. But one of anything is scarcely enough for a man like Hume: he soon had a second passport made out to "John Stephen Bird, company director, Liverpool." Thus equipped, Hume began appearing under various aliases in Montreal, Zurich, New York, Frankfort, Los Angeles, without ever being recognized. He spent most of the time in Switzerland, combining petty thievery with his courtship of auburn-haired Divorcee Trudi Sommer, 28, a Zurich beauty-shop owner. To lonely-hearted Trudi, Hume was Johnny Bird, a Canadian test pilot. At intervals, he would vanish mysteriously on "business trips."

One trip last August was to London in pursuance of a simple but ingenious scheme for raising money: Hume planned to rob a bank close to the international airport and then return to the Continent on a commercial plane for which he had made a reservation. Hume chose a branch of the Midland Bank in a quiet side street in Brentford, outside London. He shot down a bank clerk, scooped up some $3,000, and was in an airplane and winging his way over the Channel before Scotland Yard had a physical description of the robber. Three months later he duplicated the crime, seriously wounded a British bank manager, but got away with only $560. One of the employees picked out Hume's picture at Scotland Yard, and Hume became Scotland Yard's most wanted criminal.

Locked Safe. Hume's money did not last long in Zurich, though he often stayed in Trudi's cozy apartment above her beauty shop. Looking around for another nice little bank to be taken, Hume chose the Gewerbebank on a busy downtown street. Fortnight ago, he walked into it, barked an order to Bank Teller Walter Schenkel, who pretended not to understand English. Wasting no time, Hume shot him in the abdomen, coolly vaulted the counter and rushed to the safe. It was locked. Schenkel's assistant entered at that moment and threw a wastebasket at the intruder. Snatching a meager $50 from the till, Hume fled to the street with the assistant racing after him, shouting in Swiss German: "Hebeden!" (Stop him!).

Down the sloping Raemistrasse raced Hume, right into the arms of a stocky cab driver. They grappled, but Hume shot the man dead and continued his dash through the narrow, winding streets leading to the famed Limmatquai waterfront. A crowd was in hot pursuit. Out in front was a slight, 25-year-old pastry cook named Gustav Angstmann. Near exhaustion, Hume turned, aimed his pistol at Angstmann and pulled the trigger. The gun failed to fire, and fearless Angstmann rushed at Hume, grabbed him around the neck, gripped his head in a half nelson. The howling crowd surged up. Blows were rained on Hume; a woman pulled his hair, screaming: "Lynch him!"

Swiss Love-Talk. To police, Hume identified himself as a U.S. civilian with a Polish name who worked at the U.S. Air Force base at Wiesbaden. Inside a dirty bandage on his foot police found razor blades and in his clothes poison pills that he said he intended to use "to end it all." When they took his fingerprints, they discovered Hume's true identity.

British reporters descended on stolid Zurich like inflamed paratroopers. They dried Trudi Sommer's tears with bids for the story of her life with Hume, and she finally signed an "exclusive" $3,000 contract with London's Daily Express (sample: "He was so handsome and so fond of me that it wasn't difficult for us to make love-talk even though he knew not a word of German and my English wasn't very good"). The staid Swiss were outraged at the British reportorial tactics (sniffed the respected Neue Zuercher Zeitung: "Hardly gentlemanlike") but could not resist a little curiosity themselves about their prize catch.

Hume went through the appearances of an emotional breakdown. At first, all questions were met with blank stares or a silly smile. Then he cried and expressed regret for his crimes, blubbering: "I killed a man. go ahead and hang me. Put me in the electric chair." Given a cigarette, he promptly ate it. Said Chief Investigator Hans Stotz: "I think he is a very good actor." Since there is no capital punishment in Switzerland, Hume can at most be sentenced to life imprisonment for murder, which usually brings release in 15 to 20 years. But Scotland Yard, humbugged by Hume these past nine years, will be waiting when he emerges from prison.

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