'Abnormal personality'
After his appearance in court, Gwynne Evans was remanded in custody at Durham prison, where he was seen by the senior medical officer, P J Waddington.
There was no evidence of medical disorder, he wrote. Evans was "correctly orientated". In other words, "He knew where he was and he was fully aware of the reasons for his arrest and his committal to prison."
Waddington described Evans as being "of spare physique", just over 5ft 9in tall, with no physical ailments except flat feet and some small cuts on his face, possibly from picking pimples.
In another report the following month, he noted that from a very young age Evans had experienced psychological problems. As a boy he'd been referred to a child guidance clinic (elsewhere identified as Dovenby mental hospital) because he was "untrustworthy, lacked moral sense, was untruthful, and inclined to steal".
Evans confused truth with fantasy. "Evans believes that he was born in Innsbruck and his reasons for doing so are quite absurd…" the doctor wrote.
He said he was married to a German girl, and had two children - which also seemed entirely invented.
Evans claimed too that he'd been employed by Securicor for a year, and there become an expert in judo. In fact he'd only worked there for a week; he left as soon as his references had been checked, presumably because they were unsatisfactory.
He lied constantly. The doctor said these were for the most part "prestige lies" to enhance his standing.
On four occasions he joined the services, only to be medically discharged.
Evans had enlisted at 17 in the Border Regiment, where his fabrications led to him being sent for a psychiatric assessment. "This soldier was sent to me by his training wing officer," wrote one doctor, "on account of his frequent telling of big lies which he apparently believed himself." His first expulsion followed four months later.
In less than a year, he signed up for another regiment, the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers - but here too, his lies brought about his downfall. Within three months he was before a medical board which recommended discharge on the grounds of "personality inadequacy".
His commanding officer remarked: "He is a failure. He cannot make friends because of feeling superior and telling complete fairy tales all the time."
The following year he joined the Royal Air Force, but was quickly discharged on the grounds of "nervous instability". In 1963, he signed up for the Army again, under the name of Evans, but was soon found out, and discharged for the final time.
Waddington, the medical officer at Durham Prison, acknowledged Evans's "abnormal personality" and thought most doctors would consider him an individual with a "psychopathic personality, using this term in the broadest sense".
But he didn't believe this amounted to an "abnormality of mind" that would substantially impair his "mental responsibility for his acts and omissions" - the legal definition of diminished responsibility under the 1957 Homicide Act.
Evans's own lawyers commissioned Dr G F Duggan Keen, an experienced consultant psychiatrist, to examine him. He noted that Evans had been employed in 32 jobs, by his own account, from the age of 15, excluding the spells in the Army and RAF. Many had just lasted a few weeks, due he thought, to Evans's problems forming relationships, and excessive drinking.
After four meetings with Evans, he said there was "absolutely no doubt in my mind that this man is a psychopathic personality". But he could not identify a condition or disease. He said Evans was not "subnormal", nor schizophrenic, nor epileptic. He too concluded that Evans's mental responsibility was not "substantially impaired".
Neither Waddington nor Duggan Keen explained why they came to that conclusion, and this surprises Dr Tim McInerney, a consultant forensic psychiatrist at the Bethlem Royal hospital in South London, who often gives expert assessments in murder cases.
"If, as an expert now, giving advice to the courts or to a jury as to why I don't support diminished [responsibility] I would have to explain very clearly why I reached that position," he says.
The psychiatric reports are cursory by modern standards, running to just a few pages. Though McInerny says that was the style at the time, John Cooper QC, an experienced defence barrister and professor of law, says their brevity strikes him as a cause for concern.
"For those reports to be relied upon without them being tested, without further questions being asked of them, without further experts being used, as far as I'm concerned, is quite startling. And I would say quite startling not just to the modern eye but also at the time."
But these psychiatric judgements would play an important role in the events that led to Gwynne Evans's conviction - and his hanging.
