BLOODY VALENTINE
On 14 February 1945, Charles Walton was found pinned to the frozen slopes of Meon Hill by a pitchfork, his throat slashed. CATHI UNSWORTH re-opens the file on the unsolved Lower Quinton murder, whose echoes of witchcraft and ritual sacrifice still haunt t
On 14 February 1945, 74-year-old agricultural worker Charles Walton was found pinned to the frozen slopes of Meon Hill by a pitchfork, his throat slashed. CATHI UNSWORTH re-opens the file on the unsolved Lower Quinton murder, whose echoes of witchcraft and ritual sacrifice still haunt the area today.
Valentine’s Day 1945 is not a date that will be forgotten in Lower Quinton, Warwickshire. Not for any declarations of love made during the sixth long year of World War II in this ancient Cotswolds village – but for the murder of an elderly resident, in a manner so shocking that its echoes still reverberate. Charles Walton, 74, a hedger-and-ditcher who had lived his whole life within this small community, was found lying at the scene of his last job, slaughtered with the tools of his trade. His throat had been carved open with his fearsome-looking slash hook and his body pinned to the ground by his two-pronged pitchfork, which had been rammed around his neck with such force it would require the efforts of two constables to prise it from the frozen ground. He had also been hit on the back of the head with a walking stick he had carved himself to help ease his arthritic joints.
To make this scenario more disturbing, his body was discovered by his 33-year-old niece, Edith Isabel Walton, known as Edie. She had returned home from a day’s war work as a printer’s assembler to find the home she shared with her uncle, a thatched, halfbeamed cottage opposite the Norman church of St Swithins at 15 Lower Quinton, unaccountably empty. Despite, or maybe because of, the close-knit nature of this rural enclave, no one was ever prosecuted and the case remains the oldest unsolved murder on Warwickshire Police’s books.
ON MEON HILL
Charles Walton had been working for the previous nine months for Alfred Potter, who managed The Firs farm for his father, Levi. On the day of his death,
1
Walton was trimming the hedge in a field called the Hillground, on the lower slopes of Meon Hill, an Iron Age hill fort that looms above Lower Quinton.
2 It was his custom to leave the house at 9am and be home by 4pm – at that time of year, the best hours of daylight. When Edie returned at 6pm, she didn’t think her uncle might have stopped off at the local pub, The College Arms, to quench his thirst after a hard day’s graft. Walton, born 12 May 1870, was not really given to socialising.
Edie had lived with Charles and his late wife Isabella since she was three. Her father was Isabella’s brother, but although he was still alive, residing in nearby Stratford-upon-Avon, the couple brought their niece up as their own. For the past 18 years, it had been just the two of them, Isabella Walton having passed away on 9 December 1927. Charles paid the weekly 3 shilllings rent, bought all their coal and meat and gave Edith £1 a week for housekeeping. He received 10 shillings a week old-age pension.
3 Despite his age and failing health, retirement was not an option. Walton, who had worked on the land since he was a child himself, loved to be outside, preferring the company of animals and birds to humans.
Worried he might have had an accident, Edie went next door to their neighbour, Harry Beasley, another agricultural worker employed by The Firs. Torches in hand, together they set off up the hill from the village to the farm.
IN A LONELY PLACE
Alfred Potter, then 40, had lived at The Firs with his wife, Lillian Elizabeth, for the past five years. He told Edie that he had seen her uncle working on The Hillground at noon, as he passed on his way to milk
his cows. He led the way back across the fields to where this last sighting was made.
Charles had not made very much more progress: he had been felled where he worked. Upon seeing his body, Edie broke down. Harry Beasley did his best to console her and keep her from getting too close to the corpse. By chance, his task was made easier by the arrival of another Firs farmhand, Harry Peachey, who was walking past the hedge on the other side. Taking the initiative, Beasley called on Peachey to go and fetch the police so that he could take Edie home.
Potter was left to stand guard over the body for 20 minutes, until the first officer, PC Michael James Lomasney, arrived at 7.05pm. He found the farmer in a state of agitation: shivering, continually looking over his shoulder and complaining about the cold, something that struck the young bobby as out of character for a man used to working in all weathers. Despite the seriousness of the crime, Potter kept asking if he could go home.
Meanwhile, a CID team led by Detective Superintendent Alec Spooner had been called from Stratford-upon-Avon. PC Lomansey managed to keep Potter with him until they arrived at 11pm, whereupon a statement was taken. Potter repeated what he had told Edie: that he had last seen Walton working on the hedge at noon, prior to which he had been in The College Arms with another local farmer, Joseph Stanley. He had estimated Walton had about another six-to-10 yards of hedge to cut, which he thought would have taken him half an hour; the body was lying four yards on from the spot where Potter had seen him. The farmer described his employee as an “inoffensive man, but one who would speak his mind if necessary.”
4
The Pathologist, Professor James M Webster of the West Midlands Forensic Laboratory, was the last to arrive at 11.30pm. No stranger to bizarre killings in lonely places, Prof Webster removed the body at 1.30am to make a full post mortem at his Birmingham lab.
BODIES OF EVIDENCE
Prof Webster’s report indicates that the old man hadn’t gone down easily. Walton had been attacked from behind with his walking stick – found three-and-a half yards away from the body, with blood and hair adhering to it – which had an oval dome at the end, something that would have fitted comfortably into his palm. It also made an excellent cudgel. Struck, Walton had dropped his hook and tried to cover his head – there were defensive wounds, lacerations and bruises, on his hands and forearms – while his assailant grabbed the abandoned implement and attacked. Overpowered, Walton fell onto his back, where his opponent straddled him – two ribs were broken in the struggle – and slashed
at the throat with the concave edge of the blade, severing the trachea. Clothing on the body was loosened – his shirt untucked and his fly undone – before Walton was pinioned with his pitchfork. The time of death was estimated at between 1 and 2pm.
5
Nearly two years previously, Prof Webster had been present at the scene of another disturbing and as yet unsolved wartime murder when, on 19 April 1943, he retrieved the remains of a woman from a tree in Hagley Woods, near Stourbridge in the West Midlands. The mystery of ‘Bella in the Wych Elm’ (see FT364:34-41) has since been linked to the death of Charles Walton in other ways besides the closeness in geography and the attendance of Prof Webster at both scenes – not the least in what his post mortems in both cases actually stated and what has gone on to become accepted fact.
By 15 February, Stratford CID needed outside help. The Deputy Chief Constable of Warwickshire sent the following request:
The Chief Constable has asked me to get Scotland Yard to assist in a brutal case of murder that took place yesterday. The deceased is a man named CHARLES WALTON, age 75, and he was killed with an instrument known as a slash hook. The murder was either committed by a madman or one of the Italian prisoners who are in a camp nearby… A metal watch is missing from the body. It is being circulated.
In response, the Metropolitan Police sent their finest: Fabian of the Yard.
AN INSPECTOR CALLS
Chief Inspector Robert Honey Fabian (1901-1974; see FT306:31) and his partner, Detective Sergeant Albert Webb, arrived in Lower Quinton on 16 February. Although he had yet to reach the heights of fame he would achieve in the 1950s, when he hosted a BBC television show based on his exploits and wrote two best-selling volumes of his memoirs, Fabian was professionally at the
6 top of his game. An Italian-speaking officer, Detective Sergeant Saunders, was also dispatched from Special Branch to make enquiries of Italian interns being held at the nearby Long Marston Prisoner of War (POW) Camp.
7 Chief among DS Spooner’s suspects was Alfred Potter. PC Lomansey had alerted him to what he regarded as the farmer’s suspicious behaviour on the night of the murder, and, as the local officer who knew him best, had been sent to keep a regular eye on goings-on at The Firs.
The watch referred to by the DCC was identified as missing from the deceased’s belongings by Edie Walton. Although described in the internal memo as “Gents plain white metal pocket watch, snap case at back, white enamel face, with ‘Edgar Jones, Stratford on Avon’ thereon. Second hand. English numerals. Valued at 25/- about 10 years ago”, this seemingly
8 unassuming object would take on a deep significance.
Fabian wrote that his first impressions of Lower Quinton were of “thatched roofs golden among the Cotswold hills” and locals who “speak of witches with a wry grin… many people will not pass from Bidford down Hillborough-lane for fear of a headless horseman and a ghostly woman in white.” He would soon be learning
9 more about the local customs – and talk of witches would cease to seem so amusing.
THE ITALIAN JOB?
An incident room was set up at Stratford CID. Fabian’s first initiative was to arrange a thorough search of Meon Hill, calling in the assistance of Royal Engineers with mine detectors in the hope that finding the missing watch would yield vital evidence. He had an aircraft from nearby RAF
Thatched roofs and locals who “speak of witches with a wry grin”
Leamington Spa take aerial photographs to closely map his territory. While statements from the nearly 500 residents of Lower Quinton were taken, he turned his attentions to Spooner’s chief suspect.
On 17 February, DS Webb was sent to get a second interview from Albert Potter. This time, the farmer’s story altered. Firstly, he said it was 12.20 when he last saw Walton, working on the hedge in his shirtsleeves. He didn’t stop to pass the time of day, as he had been told that one of his heifers had got stuck in a ditch. He arrived home at 12.40, then went back out to attend to the animal, which had drowned.
10
As well as the difference in time from his original statement, Potter had not spoken of the heifer before, nor made mention of Walton having taken his jacket off to work; he must have put it back on before he was murdered, as his corpse was wearing it. Picking up on these discrepancies, Fabian sent PC Lomansey back to let Potter know that Scotland Yard detectives were hoping to lift fingerprints off the murder weapons. In fact, the hook and pitchfork yielded no clues, which is why the search for the watch was so intensive – but Fabian wanted to see what reaction this would provoke.
Potter’s first response was to tell Lomansey that he had touched the murder weapons – but only when, on discovering the corpse, Harry Beasley had insisted that he “make sure that he is gone”. Beasley would dispute this fresh claim, stating that Potter knew Walton was dead from the moment he saw the body. Mrs Potter didn’t like this turn of events either, angrily opining that the police were bound to suspect him if his dabs were on the murder weapons. But Potter retorted that the murder must have been the work of “a fascist from the camp”.
11
He was to receive back-up on his theory when a serviceman turned up at the farm during Lomansey’s visit to let them know that an Italian inmate from Long Marston had been detained by Military Police. Lomansey reported that, on hearing this, “Potter affected great glee and his wife became almost hysterical with delight.”
12 The POW had been found hiding in a ditch on Meon Hill with blood on his hands. It transpired that the man was a poacher who regularly managed to wander off from the camp to catch a few rabbits. He was returned without charge. As with the other inmates questioned by DS Saunders, the POW angle did not provide any fruitful leads. Most of those at Long Marston were not criminals, simply Italians interned due to their nationality at the start of the War. Neither did Fabian take the suggestion of a random foreign perpetrator seriously. Whoever had slain Walton with such vehemence, he reasoned, had issues that lay much closer to home.
HELLHOUND ON MY TRAIL
In order to help him learn more about his victim, DS Spooner provided Fabian with some local colour in the form of a book, Folklore, Old Customs and Superstitions in Shakespeare Land, written in 1929 by the Rector of Whitchurch, James Harvey Bloom. As well as alluding to such local legends as the ghost of Hillborough Lane and the Woman in White, this volume contained two stories that would weave a spell of witchery over Walton’s fate.
The first was of an account of an earlier, similarly grisly murder of an 80-year-old woman in the nearby village of Long Compton in 1875. Ann (or Anne) Tennant was attacked with a pitchfork by a man called James Heywood (or John Haywood in some accounts) who accused her of being a witch, part of a coven of 16 (see FT359:3843). Haywood’s confession was recorded in the 1906 book Warwickshire by Clive Holland:
It came out in evidence that this man for years had honestly believed that when cattle or other animals died, or any evil fortune befell his fellow-villagers, such things were the direct result of the ‘Evil Eye’ of some unfortunate old women he asserted were “proper old witches”… His mode of killing the unfortunate woman he attacked was evidently a survival of the ancient Anglo-Saxon custom of dealing with such persons by means of ‘stacung’, or sticking spikes into them; whilst at the same time wishing that the portion of the body so wounded might mortify or wither away.
13 Heywood was found not guilty on the grounds of insanity and committed to Broadmoor, where he died in 1890, at the age of 59. It is not just the pitchfork that
14 pierces both narratives, but the subsequent assertion that Ann Tennant was Charles Walton’s great-grandmother. This seems to have stemmed from a Daily Mirror article from 13 February 1954, the ninth anniversary of Walton’s murder, in which the cases were compared and the reporter suggested that police had found a further connection. Since then, Walton’s missing watch has morphed into an heirloom from his grandma that contained a small coloured lens or scrying mirror that allowed him to see into the future.
15
Further enhancing these supernatural
connections, the Rev Bloom’s book tells a story from 1885 concerning a young ploughboy who for nine nights in succession saw a phantom black dog on his way home from work on Meon Hill. On the last occasion, the hellhound was accompanied by a headless woman in rustling silks. Arriving home, the lad was told that his sister had just died. His name was Charles Walton.
Was this the same person as the murdered agricultural labourer, at the age of 15? It has never been definitively proved – but Fabian himself stoked the legend of the black dogs on Meon Hill. In his later account, he spent one evening walking on its slopes when, “a black dog came running down Meon Hill, and a moment later a farm lad followed.
‘Looking for that dog, son?’ I said.
He went pale. ‘Dog, mister?’
‘A black dog.’ But without further word he stumbled off in his heavy earth-clogged farm boots.”
16
At the time, Fabian’s investigation was more prosaic. Rather than looking for witches or demon dogs, he had a third go at Alfred Potter, conducting the next interview on 23 February himself.
Walton’s missing watch has since morphed into a scrying mirror
A CUNNING MAN
Part of Potter’s story was verified. Joseph Stanley of White Cross farm confirmed that Potter assisted him with the castration of two calves on the morning of 14 February. Afterwards, they visited the College Arms, where Potter drank two glasses of Guinness between 11.45 and noon. But the heifer that fell into the ditch drowned on 13 February and was removed from The Firs at 3.30pm the next day, almost three hours after Potter had claimed to have gone to find it.
17 Perhaps unsurprisingly, he had a different story to tell the Chief Inspector. This time, Potter walked from the pub on 14 February, passing the jacketless Walton at work before he reached home. There, he stopped to read the paper before going to help one of his workers, Charles Henry ‘Happy’ Batchelor, to pulp some mangolds for feed. When they finished, the church clock showed it was 1pm. This was confirmed by Mrs Potter, who said Potter went to help Batchelor at 12.40pm and returned at 1.05pm – keeping him with witnesses at the time of the murder. Batchelor later confirmed that Potter came to help him at 12.40pm.
Fabian was not convinced. “Potter is undoubtedly lying about his actions at this critical time but the reason for these lies can, for the present, only be a matter for conjecture,” he stated in his report.
18
He began to probe finances – Potter’s and Walton’s. Both seemed to be in straits. After his wife’s death, Walton deposited just over £227 in the Midland Bank, but by 1939 this had dwindled to just over £11. But his numerous withdrawals had never been for more than £10 at a time and Edie told Fabian she had never heard her uncle say he owed money, nor seen any IOUs. While it was ascertained that neither Potter nor his father’s company had outstanding debts, he was in fact charging more money than he paid out to employees to the farm’s accounts and then pocketing the difference. Two former employees, William George Dyde and George Purnell, told police that Potter had difficulties paying them.
19
But Fabian could not make anything stick to the farmer, whom he found to be – despite appearing “unkempt and on the surface dull-witted” – “an extremely cunning individual”. He didn’t have any other major suspects, although he did consider the possibility that Walton’s best