ould go for a day's
shooting at Gill's Hill, and that Probert would put them up for the
night. Weare went home, collected a few things in a bag, and took a
hackney coach to a given spot, where Thurtell met him with a gig. The
two men drove out of London together. The date was 24th October 1823. On
the high-road they met and passed Probert and a companion named Joseph
Hunt, who had even been instructed by Thurtell to bring a sack with
him--this was actually used to carry away the body--and must therefore
have been privy to the intended murder. By the time the second gig
containing Probert and Hunt arrived near Probert's cottage, Thurtell met
it in the roadway, according to their accounts, and told the two men
that he had done the deed; that he had killed Weare first by
ineffectively shooting him, then by dashing out his brains with his
pistol, and finally by cutting his throat. Thurtell further told his
friends, if their evidence was to be trusted, that he had left the body
behind a hedge. In the night the three men placed the body in a sack and
carried it to a pond near Probert's house and threw it in. The next
night they fished it out and threw it into another pond some distance
away.

Thurtell meanwhile had divided the spoil--some L20, which he said was
all that he had obtained from Weare's body--with his companions. Hunt,
it may be mentioned, afterwards declared his conviction that Thurtell,
when he first committed the murder, had removed his victim's principal
treasure, notes to the value of three or four hundred pounds. Suspicion
was aroused, and the hue and cry raised through the finding by a
labourer of the pistol in the hedge, and the discovery of a pool of
blood on the roadway. Probert promptly turned informer; Hunt also tried
to save himself by a rambling confession, and it was he who revealed
where the body was concealed, accompanying the officers to the pond and
pointing out the exact spot where the corpse would be found. When
recovered the body was taken to the Artichoke Inn at Elstree, and here
the coroner's inquest was held. Meanwhile Thurtell had been arrested in
London, and taken down to Elstree to be present at the inquest. A
verdict of guilty against all three miscreants was given by the
coroner's jury, and Weare's body was buried in Elstree Churchyard.[73]

In January 1824 John Thurtell was brought to trial at Hertford Assizes,
and Hunt also. But first of all there were some interesting proceedings