Speaking About Fishy Things and Librarians

The book about Andrew Fitzherbert's alleged crime

I have only ever been for one psychic reading where I paid money for it ... well that's not really correct,because it was a palm reading, and according to my acquaintance and palm reader, 

Andrew Fitzherbert, it was actually a science.
In fact he had written a few books about it (which I haven't read) and one was even called, "Career Success and Self-fulfillment: How Scientific Hand Analysis Can Change Your Life".

Another more recent one, which is still available for sale is called, Hand Psychology.

Andrew's Palm Reading  Book

Now, I knew Andrew for a few years prior to the hand reading, as he was a librarian for a library run by the Theosophical Society in Brisbane and sometimes he would give lectures for them on Friday nights.
Not that I attended them, I would have liked to, but Fridays weren't convenient for me, so I would borrow audio tapes of them from the library and listen to them at home.
I was never a member of the Theosophical Society, but I was a member of the library, which the public could join, and then borrow books.
I must say though, that I did admire their motto and philosophy ... and still do to this day ... the Society just never seemed quite right for me, so I was happy to just borrow their books.

Where Andrew and I first met. He was a librarian there.

How true?

I'd heard Andrew talking about palm reading, and I knew that he did private readings for $25 at his own private residence, and I was curious to see how good he was, so I booked a session and went to his house for a reading.
I only knew Andrew as a librarian mainly, and I saw him give a talk once at the Spiritualist Church, that he was a member of, but I didn't know him all that well.

I remember walking into his house, and thought that it was nothing like I had expected it to be.

He had nearly a whole bookcase of murder mystery novels, which soon as I saw them, put the thought into my head that I was a fool for going there without telling anyone where I was going.

'What if this guy was a murderer?', I thought.

He did the reading, and taped it onto an audio cassette, and then gave it to me after he had finished, approximately an hour later.
I didn't give him much information about me during the reading, and I was fairly impressed with what he had to say.
We shook hands and I left with the cassette tape and $25 less, thinking what a nice (although maybe just a bit eccentric) man.

And here I was all the time there thinking, what if this guy tries to kill me?

I never really saw him much from that time on.
As we drifted our separate ways on the river of time.

But I will always remember the cold feeling that ran through me on the morning that I picked the local paper off the front lawn and looked at the headlines, seeing the photo below, and the story about the arrest of Andrew Fitzherbert for murdering Kathleen Marshall, who was president of the Cat Protection Society.

And that she was stabbed more than 50 times in the surgery beneath her home at Wilston, in Brisbane's inner north.
DNA Case Questioned

Andrew and the murder victim, Kathleen Marshall

I remember for years telling people how I had a reading at his house, and the creepy feeling I had about possibly being murdered in there myself. 
But I could just never believe Andrew could do something like that ... and I do mean ... I could NOT believe it, no matter how hard I tried to think of him as the murderer.
It just never added up in my head, mentally.

Then years later a book called Five Drops of Blood was written by a well known Brisbane criminologist named  Paul Wilson. 
In it he details how the DNA evidence was botched, and how an innocent man was sent to jail. 

I've read the book, and after reading it, it became quite clear to me who the real killer was.

And I can tell you it wasn't Andrew.

I urge anyone to read this book and come away feeling good about sending someone to jail on DNA evidence alone.

It's a fascinating story of a botched murder conviction and sending the wrong person away to jail on DNA evidence alone.

Well at least the police could never say that they caught the palm reader red (read) handed;-)

Don't worry, I think Andrew would laugh at that joke, knowing him.

I just can't imagine how hard it would be going to jail for a crime that he in all probability, did not commit.

My Lao-Tse (or tiny sage) charm in my palm.

 Life can be full of unnecessary suffering, but I for one, believe Andrew is innocent, and that justice was far from served here.