Research sheds light on GI’s murder of seven-year-old girl in Northern Ireland in 1944 | Northern Ireland
On the afternoon of September 25, 1944, William Harrison, a US soldier serving in Northern Ireland, visited the Wylie family cottage in Killycolpy, County Tyrone, and offered to buy treats for the children.
He had visited before and was at least known to the family, if not a friend. Mary Wylie allowed her to take her seven-year-old daughter Patricia, better known as Patsy, from the fields to the stores.
What happened next was sickening even for an age accustomed to war. Harrison raped, beat, and strangled Patsy. He left his body behind the haystack and went to the bar. He later confessed and was tried, convicted and executed.
The crime entered Northern Irish popular memory and US military records as a footnote to the second world war; It was a sad case, but at least it was a closed case.
But more than eighty years later, new research has shed new light on the story, revealing that it doesn’t end when the executioner pulls the lever. Patsy’s niece, Annie Kalotschke, gathered testimony, researched family information and scoured archives, including 660 pages of trial transcripts, to piece together a tragedy that reverberated on both sides of the Atlantic.
“I have been investigating this case on and off for 31 years,” Kalotschke said this week from his home in New York. “I decided early on that this terrible story had to be written so that the truth would be known to everyone. The worst part for our family, which was the primary cause of intergenerational trauma, was the myths that still exist today.”
The result is an unpublished book titled Never Speak of Rope and a new understanding of murder and its consequences.
An abusive and dysfunctional family in Ohio—Harrison’s mother was a drinker and fought with his cranky father—produced a “sad little man” with alcohol addiction.
After enlisting in the US army he was disciplined for drunkenness and treated for memory loss, but rather than being discharged he was sent to a combat reserve unit at Cluntoe airfield in Ardboe, County Tyrone, one of more than 2 million US personnel based in the UK during the war.
In the summer of 1944, farmer Patrick Wylie met the 22-year-old soldier in a bar. Noticing his loneliness, he invited her to the family home for a cup of tea. Harrison stayed for two days; Leaving the base without permission resulted in a three-month detention sentence.
On September 25, 1944, Harrison drank heavily before driving to Wylie’s house and leaving with Patsy, ostensibly to buy minerals and sugar. The two met Patsy’s nine-year-old sister Sadie, who was running an errand, and she declined an invitation to join them.
Harrison later said he killed Patsy because she threatened to tell his mother about the sexual assault, driving him “hot crazy”.
Northern Irish historian Alan Freeburn said the brutality was extremely rare, being one in four murder rapes in the UK attributed to US personnel. “Private William Harrison was one of three Americans convicted of child murder and hanged for child rape in the European Theater of Operations in World War II.”
Kalotschke discovered that Harrison’s parents had petitioned the White House in vain to save their son, and that executioner Thomas Pierrepoint had botched the job. On April 7, 1945, those in Shepton Mallet prison in Somerset watched for 20 minutes as the rope strangled Harrison, rather than a severed spinal cord and quick death. Pierrepoint was close to retirement and perhaps ill, but Kalotschke suspects revenge. “Was it because he knew what Harrison was guilty of?”
Kalotschke said rumors were spreading in Northern Ireland that the murderer was spared and sent to fight in France or was seen on a ship heading to the United States.
Some residents blamed the Wylies for what happened. “There was such a stigma around crime. The guys on the bus said to my grandmother: ‘It’s a shame for that little girl, but that’s what happens when you’re a Yankee lover.’ “It is extremely devastating.”
Depression consumed Mary until her murdered daughter appeared in a dream, forcing her to move on with her life for the sake of her other four children.
But Sadie, overcome with survival guilt, could not bear to walk through the field where her sister died. He emigrated to New York and rarely talked about crime, but the trauma affected him and his own children; Kalotschke also attributed this “shadow” to her decision to become a mental health therapist.
Last month Kalotschke gave a speech. Shepton Knocker and entered the execution chamber with his relatives. He said they felt victorious. “I help my clients find closure in the midst of trauma. OK, I can tell you we feel closure. We gave Patsy justice and her voice back. She’s not just a name on a tombstone anymore.”
