How a Black Country MP tipped to be Prime Minister faked his own death and disappeared - Part 1: Golden Boy
The Express & Star tells the full story of a Black Country MP who faked his death and disappeared. In Part 1, we're introduced to John Stonehouse, a political golden boy tipped to be a future Prime Minister - but all is not well behind the scenes.
Jean Markham smelled a rat right from the beginning.
A young, recently widowed mother of five boys, Mrs Markham was at her home in Brownhills, near Walsall, when, unannounced, her local MP turned up on her doorstep and started asking ‘funny questions’.
The MP was a pillar of the establishment, a former cabinet minister and apparently successful businessman.
Exactly the type of person one would expect to place great trust in.
Even so, his behaviour aroused enough suspicion for Mrs Markham to send him away with a flea in his ear.
But the young widow could never in her wildest dreams imagine what the man intended to do with the little information he had managed to glean from her.
Because John Stonehouse was plotting a crime which would rock the British establishment to its core.
