William Henry Theodore Durrant (1871 – January 7, 1898), known as "The Demon of the Belfry", was hanged for two murders committed at San Francisco's Emmanuel Baptist Church, where he was assistant superintendent of the Sunday School.

One claimed that he occasionally visited brothels in San Francisco's Commercial Street, where allegedly he once brought with him, in a sack or a small crate, a pigeon or a chicken, and at a certain time during the evening's debauch he cut the bird's throat and let the blood trickle over his body".

Other people on the trolley stated that they were very close and that Durrant was whispering into Lamont's ear and tapping at her lightly with his leather gloves.

George King, the church choir director and organist, who was practicing hymns on the organ, testified that Durrant came downstairs at 5:00 p.m. looking pale and shaken.

Mrs. Noble later said that he did come by later with the book, having even suggested that Lamont might have been kidnapped, forced into prostitution, and/or that she may have run away to become a sex-worker of her own accord, thus "abandoning her religious virtues".

Strangely, the package was directed to George King (the church choir director); his name was written on wrapping paper, packed around Blanche's rings.

[citation needed] During this time, Durrant began refocusing his attentions on 21-year old Minnie Flora Williams (August 1873 – April 12, 1895), also an Emmanuel Baptist parishioner.

At 7:00 p.m. on April 12, 1895, which was Good Friday (nine days after Lamont disappeared), Williams told her friends at her boarding house that she was going to a church member meeting, at the home of a church elder named Vogel; it was Vogel's wife, Mary, who had seen Durrant walking with Blanche Lamont on the day she disappeared.

[citation needed] The defense challenged her testimony about Lamont's weight, which she stated was approximately 122 pounds, with their claim that she weighed 140 and that it would impossible for Durrant to carry her up to the belltower.

[6] His attorney defended him by citing lack of blood on him or his clothes and shifting blame to the church pastor, but Durrant was convicted and sentenced to be hanged by Judge Carroll Cook.

[9][10][3] Twenty years after his execution, Durrant's name was resurrected as circumstantial evidence in a libel suit filed by his sister, Maud Allan.

[11] An aviator, politician, and publisher of a right-wing political newsletter, Noel Pemberton Billing, responded to the theatrical event by publishing an allegation in his newsletter that the production was meant to sap British military and spiritual values by introducing indecent ideas (i.e., homosexuality) into the public from Wilde's writings.

[11] Allan sued for criminal libel; and as evidence of character, Billing resurrected the Durrant scandal, a move that was not effectively suppressed by the court.