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Copyright

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Contents

Author's Note

Introduction

Witchcraft in Warwickshire? - The Strange Murder of Charles Walton

Death Line - The Closed-Carriage Train Murder Mystery

The Newcastle Halloween Murder

Spring-Heeled Jack - The Victorian Demon of London

The Manchester Canal Pusher

Identification by Severed Head - The Tattingstone Suitcase Murder

The Baffling Murder of Jill Dando

The Queen of Slaughtering Places

The Ghoulish Body Snatchers

The Thames Torso Murders

Karen Matthews - The Mother Who Abducted Her Own Daughter

London's Most Notorious Cannibal

The Case of the Diamond Patterned Whip

References

AUTHOR'S NOTE

A list of references used in the research for this book can be found at the conclusion of the final entry. Though there is plenty of dark material in this book I have strived to be sensitive and tactful in writing about the various strange cases we will encounter. I have written crime books before and hope that my experience in such matters makes this an interesting and balanced read.

INTRODUCTION

The history of true crime in Britain is a long and, as we shall see, often stranger than fiction tale. The book that follows offers an eclectic stew of strange and perplexing British true crime cases. These cases are all disconcertingly odd and in many instances downright bizarre. We have the case of an elderly farmer brutally murdered with a pitchfork. The police officers who investigated this case soon stumbled into whispers of witchcraft as a possible motive. Then there is a shocking train murder which took place in a closed carriage in broad daylight during an afternoon commuter run to London. We also have the baffling case of a retired spinster who was gruesomely killed for no apparent reason in her own home on Halloween night.

Rest assured, there's still plenty more to come. We shall also be examining the legend of the alleged maniac said to randomly push his victims into Manchester's murky canals.

Then we'll take a look at the Victorian terror known as Spring-Heeled Jack. We shall stop too to consider the unsolved murder of a young man in Sussex who was found dissected inside two abandoned suitcases. Could Reggie Kray have been responsible for this grisly murder? He was but one of several suspects. We shall also explore the high profile killing of Jill Dando - a case which surely ranks as one of the most shocking and most baffling celebrity deaths ever to occur in Britain.

As if that wasn't enough we also have grave robbers, cannibals, a woman who staged the hoax abduction of her own daughter, the Brighton trunk murders, a gruesome killer who operated at the same time as Jack the Ripper and had the macabre signature of leaving torsos and body parts scattered around London, and a suave post-war con artist who in reality was a depraved sexual serial killer. Hopefully I have done justice to these fascinatingly bizarre cases and there will plenty of details that even the most hardened true crime buff may not have been familiar with before.

As far as weird true crime in Britain goes, there are no shortage of bewildering and baffling cases. I hope to explore more of these cases in the future but for now I hope you enjoy this initial volume. So, draw the curtains, turn off the lights, make sure the doors are locked, and settle down to explore some of the strangest true crime cases Blighty has to offer...

WITCHCRAFT IN WARWICKSHIRE? - THE STRANGE MURDER OF CHARLES WALTON

On the 14th of February 1945, a 74 year-old farm worker named Charles Walton was found dead in a field called Hillground at Firs Farm on the slopes of Meon Hill, Lower Quinton in Warwickshire. Walton had been out cutting some hedges when he was murdered. He had arthritis and used a walking stick. Walton would not have been capable of putting up much of a fight so this murder seemed to be thoroughly wicked and perplexingly senseless at first glance. The fact that someone had murdered an elderly and harmless farm worker was baffling enough but the absolutely brutal and gruesome nature of the murder added even more mystery to the case. Something very strange and unfathomable had happened in that field and you could only feel sympathy for the poor police officers who had to somehow make any sense out of this this weird and shocking mystery.

Walton had been killed with his own pitchfork and billhook (a billhook or bill hook is a sharp tool used widely in agriculture and forestry for cutting woody material such as shrubs, small trees and branches). This was the sort of barbarous blood drenched murder that Jason Vorhees or Michael Myers would carry out in a schlocky horror movie. Why all the vicious violence against an old man who worked on a farm? It's not as if Walton would have put up much of a struggle when he was killed. And what exactly had Charles Walton done to deserve this anyway? Walton had been pinned to the floor by the pitchfork and his own farming hook was lodged in his throat.

Dr AR McWhinny, a local doctor, made the following notes on the horrendous injuries to the murdered Walton - 'The body was lying on its left side with the knees and hips in a bent position. There was a gash on the right side of the neck involving the main structures of the neck, and the cut ends of main vessels and the lacerated windpipe could be seen. The tip of a billhook [was] buried at least four inches in the tissue at the front of the neck. In addition the face was impaled by a pitchfork, one prong entered on either side of the face just below and in front of the angle of the jaw. The handle of the fork had been pressed backwards and the end of the handle was wedged under the cross member of the hedge behind the head, thus anchoring the head to the ground.'

Walton had also been beaten with his own walking stick (that DEFINITELY felt like overkill given that the poor man had already been cut to ribbons with various farming implements!) and had numerous bruises all over his body. His head was nearly severed and he had some broken ribs. The killer had not been content with merely murdering Charles Walton. He had also battered and beaten the body with what you can only describe as crazed and savage aggression and anger. The police were now faced with an obvious question. Was the killer was a random lunatic who had stumbled across Walton in that field by accident or did he know Charles Walton? Was the murder premeditated? If the latter was the case then what would be the motive to kill a 74 year-old arthritic farm worker in such bloodthirsty fashion?

Charles Walton had lived with his niece in a cottage on the land owned by the farm. Though he was said to be a man who kept himself to himself and didn't mix much (you wouldn't really expect an elderly farm worker to be much of a man about town), Walton was respected for his work ethic on the farm and said to be liked by those who had any contact with him. Well, not quite everyone. As we shall see, there were those in the area who felt there was something of the night about Charles Walton. On the surface though, Walton was seemingly not the sort of man to have enemies or attract any attention whatsoever. His murder was completely baffling. One minute he was happily trimming some hedges and the next minute he'd been attacked by a maniac with a pitchfork.

Charles Walton had been found by his niece Edith and a farm worker named Harry Beasley. Walton had failed to come home for his tea so Edith had got worried and enlisted Harry to come out to the fields with her to look for her uncle - whereupon they were eventually met with this most grisly and shocking discovery. The ground around Walton was covered in blood and it was a sight that poor Edith would never be able to forget. One wouldn't be surprised if the gruesome image of her dead uncle in that lonely field gave her nightmares for years to come. It wasn't the sort of thing you expect to happen on a quiet and peaceful farm. In fact, it wasn't the sort of thing you expect to happen anywhere.

The Deputy Chief Constable of Warwickshire, understandably perplexed by this strange murder, decided to ask Scotland Yard for help in investigating the case. In no time at all the murder of Charles Walton became a knotty mystery from which various outlandish subplots began to spiral. One early theory by the local police was that the murderer could have been an Italian POW being held in the area. World War 2, though in its final months in Europe (Italy had been knocked out of the war and the Nazis were almost finished), was still somehow rumbling on and large numbers of former Italian soldiers were still held in Britain. The Allied forces had taken hundreds of thousands of Italian prisoners in North Africa alone when the Axis position there collapsed earlier in the war.

The Italian prisoners of war in Warwickshire had a surprising amount of freedom and were apparently allowed to take walks and even go to the cinema. They didn't really seem to be prisoners at all in the traditional sense. Given that the Italians could more or less come and go as they pleased, the police decided that they had to at least probe the theory that one of these Italians had wandered onto the farm and murdered Charles Walton. The Italian POW theory seemed to be a blind alley in the end though. Scotland Yard, through the use of interpretors, questioned a large number of Italian POWs but never arrested anyone. There was never any evidence which linked any of the Axis POWs in the area to Walton's murder. This obviously meant that the killer was much more likely to be a local man (the brute force of the murder indicated that a woman could not have done this) native to the area.

In contemporary accounts of this case it is sometimes reported that a cross had been carved into Walton's chest by the murderer. However, the police reports of the time make no blatant mention of this cross, or indeed any mention at all, so this detail must remain open to question. It could be that they kept this detail secret but no firm evidence for a bloodied carved cross on the dead body was ever verified or established as fact (as opposed to embellishment - much has doubtless been embellished in this case). Even without the grisly and sinister flourish of the cross carved into flesh though there was still plenty of strangeness about this murder. It was certainly not short of mystery or bewilderingly spooky trappings.

Detective Chief Inspector Robert Fabian, who was a pretty big cheese in police circles at the time, arrived in the area to investigate the case but soon found (much to his frustration you'd imagine) that the locals were strangely reluctant to talk to him about the murder of Charles Walton. They talked cryptically about bad crops and a ghostly black dog that was often seen on the land but they rather skirted around the central issue of Charles Walton being killed with a pitchfork. Fabian must have felt like he was in a folk horror movie like The Wicker Man at times as he tried to make sense of this bizarre murder. He was like that doctor who walks into the isolated rural pub in An American Werewolf in London - whereupon every goes quiet.

It was through what you might describe as occult research though that Fabian finally began to develop a few theories of his own that might potentially explain this mystery. These theories were outlandish and weird but that's where the evidence was leading Fabian so he had no choice but to accommodate these lines of inquiry - as bizarre as they might be or seem on the surface. Fabian began to read about the local folklore and learned that an ancient rural custom (if you can call it a custom) was that a witch must be killed by a pitchfork to banish the curse and ensure that the witch in question can't dispense any more evil.

As he pondered all of this occult folklore, Fabian began to seriously wonder if Walton had been killed in some weird ritualistic pagan murder. There were even veiled whispers that Walton had 'special' powers and dabbled in the occult. Was the murdered man the subject of local innuendo and legend which revolved around witchcraft and black magic? Was Charles Walton considered to be a wicca - a male witch? As for the evidence concerning an occult motive for this murder, Walton's garden was found to be festooned with natterjack toads and these toads have long been associated with witchcraft.

There were stories too that Walton could talk to animals and a mysterious pocket watch said to be symbolic of his connection to the occult was missing when he was found dead. The more that Fabian investigated this case the stranger it seemed to become. He wasn't quite sure what to make of what he had found so far but it was certainly all very bizarre. Perhaps the oddest discovery by Fabian was that a similar murder had occurred in Warwickshire 75 years before and about thirteen miles away from the spot where Walton was killed. All those years ago, a 79 year-old woman named Anne Tennant was murdered in Warwickshire by a farm worker with a pitchfork because he believed she was a witch.

The police at the time found that half the village where Tennant was killed believed in witchcraft. Fabian read of this murder in a book called Folklore, Old Customs and Superstitions in Shakespeare Land. Here was the REALLY spooky thing thing about the book though. It mentioned a local young plough boy who reported seeing ghosts on the land after Anne Tennant was killed. The name of the plough boy? Charles Walton. The book further claimed that a man named Charles Walton had died in 1885. This has led to theories that the Charles Walton in this 1945 murder case was a ghost!

It is believed that if people at the time suspected that a witch had put a curse on them the only way to banish the curse was to kill the witch. Fabian had to consider the possibility that something similar had happened in the case of Charles Walton. It was obviously all very outlandish though. Walton had apparently been very good at taming dogs and could get birds to flock to his hand to feed. He was an old country gentleman so none of these feats were what you would call supernatural or out of the ordinary. The locals though seemed to have taken Walton's skill with animals and somehow interpreted it as witchcraft.

Fabian begin to detect that some of the locals believed Walton had hexed the land and crops with his alleged dabblings in witchcraft. However outlandish this explanation might be it did at least provide one possible motive for why he might have been murdered. The area was dotted with ancient stones said to have once been the site of cult rituals and perhaps even sacrifices. Fabian heard many tales of mysterious spectral black dogs in the area and even alleged he saw one himself during his investigation. There was a local legend that the phantom hounds of the Celtic king Arawyn hunted the hill at night - which would explain why people in the area were so obsessed with sightings of strange dogs.

Margaret Murray, a professor from University College in London, believed that Walton's murder was a blood sacrifice designed to 'replenish' the soil. Walton was killed on Valentine's Day but this date also had an occult significance because it coincided with the Celtic Midwinter festival of Imbolc. Based on a Celtic tradition, Imbolc marks the halfway point between winter solstice and the spring equinox in Neolithic Ireland and Scotland. The holiday is celebrated by Wiccans and other practitioners of neopagan or pagan-influenced religions. When one tallies up all of this background detail it appears that this wasn't a simple case of murder at all. Such was the puzzle facing Fabian. He had the balance the witchcraft theory with more prosaic explanations in order to decipher what the real truth might be. That turned out to be a surprisingly complex and confusing task.

One other bizarre mystery in this case is the resting place of Charles Walton. He was buried in a churchyard near his cottage (his farm cottage actually still exists to this day) but his gravestone was then removed and no one now knows where exactly he is buried. Legend has it that locals moved the body and gravestone to banish any remaining curse he might bring upon the village. Walton is sometimes cited as the last 'witch killing' in England but his murder officially remains a mystery. Nothing was proven one way or the other. A more contemporary explanation for the burial mystery is that relatives of Walton decided to move his grave to a secret spot because they got fed up with people visiting the grave on the anniversary of his death. I'm not quite sure how you would label these visitors. True crime or witchcraft tourists perhaps?

Fabian certainly seemed open to the witchcraft theory and in his memoirs suggested that black magic and witchcraft should be approached with caution because we don't understand it and if you do venture in this mysterious realm you might meet a ghastly end like poor old Charles Walton. "I advise anybody who is tempted at any time to venture into Black Magic, witchcraft, Shamanism — call it what you will — to remember Charles Walton and to think of his death, which was clearly the ghastly climax of a pagan rite. There is no stronger argument for keeping as far away as possible from the villains with their swords, incense and mumbo-jumbo. It is prudence on which your future peace of mind and even your life could depend." It has been alleged that in 1960 the watch of Charles Walton was found and it turned out to be scrying glass. A scrying glass is a mirror that is used as a focal point for scrying or to encourage clairvoyance. Whether this coda is true or urban myth though, like so much of this case, remains open to question.

As for more prosaic explanations pertaining to this murder, one suspect was Edith's boyfriend Charles - although plainly there was insufficient evidence to ever charge him with anything. He was certainly someone the police would have investigated in thorough fashion though. The theory was that maybe Charles had murdered the old man to get his hands on the farm cottage and any inheritance. This theory though clearly had no legs and didn't stand up to much scrutiny. It is doubtful that Charles Walton would have had much money so what would be the point of killing him? Besides, he was 74 years-old and wasn't going to live forever anyway.

Perhaps the most interesting suspect in this murder is 40 year-old Alfred Potter. Potter lived on the farm (he managed The Firs for L. L. Potter & Co) and had known Walton for five years. He even employed Walton from time to time. The police were said to be rather suspicious of Potter and had him put under observation by a local constable. What made Potter suspicious to the police was that when they spoke to him several times there were discrepancies between his stories and accounts of his movements. They also found out that Potter would occasionally engage Walton's services for some farm work and then Walton would tell Potter how many hours he had worked in order to settle his wages.

The police had to consider the theory then that Walton had lied about working more hours than he did to extract more money from Potter and that maybe Potter had found about this and got angry about it. It was obviously a bit of a stretch to think that Potter had killed Walton with a pitchfork because of a dispute over a few shillings but it was at least a theory. Another factor was that Edith reported seeing Potter the day Walton was murdered. It was difficult to know though if this was significant or not. Potter was often seen on the farm so it could have been coincidence. He was close enough though to have potentially been involved in the murder.

The police found Potter to be very shaken and even shivering when Walton's body was found. He seemed to be in great distress but it's hard to say if this was guilt or just shock at learning of the brutal murder of someone he knew. Though his evidence was not terribly consistent and the police found him a rather sullen character (he was also someone of great strength and would have been physically capable of killing Walton) the police simply could not find sufficient evidence to prove that Potter had anything to do with the death. At one point the police noted that Potter (rather suspiciously) visited the scene of the murder but this could simply have been curiosity rather than a murderer taking a trip back to the scene of the crime.

There are stories that Potter owed Walton money (which would certainly supply a motive for the murder) but these rumours were later found to be incorrect. The police investigated Alfred Potter thoroughly and found no violent incidents in his past that might point to him being capable of murder. Nonetheless, Fabian, in his memoirs, said it was still perfectly possible that Potter might have killed Walton. In the end though they simply couldn't find any evidence to prove it so never went very far down this particular line of enquiry. The mystery of Charles Walton's death therefore retains plenty of secrets and seems destined to fascinate true crime buffs for many more decades - and perhaps even centuries - to come. If you do ever find yourself in the part of Warwickshire where Charles Walton was murdered keep a close eye out for any mysterious and ghostly black dogs. You never know when one might be following you.

DEATH LINE - THE CLOSED-CARRIAGE TRAIN MURDER MYSTERY

On the afternoon of Wednesday the 23rd of March 1988, 26 year-old Debbie Linsley boarded a fairly busy train at Petts Wood station at 2-16 in the afternoon. Debbie's destination was Victoria station in London. There were about nine stops between Petts Wood and Victoria and so Debbie had packed some sandwiches for the journey. There is nothing more hum-drum and ordinary than taking a train journey in the afternoon. You don't expect anything strange or disturbing to happen and it rarely does. This case would - tragically - turn out to be different though. Debbie Linsley was about to experience one of the most disturbing train rides in true crime history.

In those days the trains in Britain could still be pretty grim and dirty. The rail system in 1988 was in desperate need of investment and new rolling stock. If you hopped on a train in the 1980s you could be forgiven for thinking you were in a third world country or the Soviet Union. If we were to take a detour into politics for a moment one might argue that the Tory government deliberately underfunded the train system to make the case for privatisation. Anyone who remembers using trains in the 1980s will have memories of sitting on some dusty and dirty old seat in a clapped-out smelly train that should have been been put out to pasture years ago.

Believe it or not trains were so antiquated in those days that they didn't even have automatic doors. You had to open and close the door yourself - which was incredibly dangerous. Before the train left the station some poor train guard had to walk up and down the platform to make sure all the doors were properly shut. Another weird thing about trains in those days is that they had some closed carriages. That is to say that some of the carriages had no doors where you could move through the rest of the train.

If you sat in one of these closed carriages you were stuck in that single carriage until such time as you got out at a station. Closed carriages also meant that no member of staff could come into your carriage. That was great for fare dodgers but not so great for women travelling alone. Looking back closed carriages were obviously something with many potential dangers. What if a lone woman found herself in a closed carriage with a dangerous man? Tragically, this was the fate which befell Debbie Linsley.

Though she was safety conscious and apparently carried a 'rape whistle', Debbie had chosen to get on a closed carriage because she was a smoker and the closed-carriage on this train was a designated smoking carriage. Though she couldn't have known it at the time, choosing the closed carriage that afternoon would come at the cost of her life. There is a plausible theory that when Debbie got on the carriage there were some other passengers in there, including women - which made her feel safe. However, by the time of the attack people had got off at various stations leaving just Debbie and the assailant in the enclosed carriage.

Debbie Linsley was from Bromley in Kent but worked in Scotland's capital city in a hotel. She was back down south to complete a three day course on hotel management. Debbie's brother was due to get married in two weeks so Debbie was also looking for a bridesmaid's dress while she was home. More than anything Debbie was enjoying the fact that she could spend a few days with her family. Because she worked so far away it was rare for them all to be together like this.

Debbie's specific train journey that day was because she wanted look around the Sherlock Holmes Hotel in Baker Street. Debbie had been offered a job there by a man she met on her hotel management course and wanted to take a look at the place for herself before making a decision on whether to take up the position or not. Sadly though, Debbie would never make it to the Baker Street Hotel. Somewhere between Petts Wood station and Victoria something horrific and shocking had happened in that closed carriage. In the constricted and blocked space of the carriage no one had been able to help Debbie. In fact, only one person even reported hearing her scream.

When the train Debbie was on pulled into Victoria Station just before three in the afternoon a member of staff (who was checking the carriages for left luggage) found Debbie dead in the closed off carriage. There was a huge amount of blood and she had been stabbed over ten times. The knife slashes were to her face, neck, and abdomen and her hands had clear evidence of defensive wounds. Debbie's throat had been cut and there were multiple stab wounds to her breasts. The fatal blows struck her heart. The poor luggage porter who found Debbie's body must have been terribly shaken and upset by his discovery. In no time at all the police were on the scene and detectives were examining the carriage.

Some of the blood in the carriage was felt to have belonged to the attacker - which suggested that Debbie had put up a brave and almighty struggle before she died. The murder weapon (which the police calculated was probably a high quality kitchen knife) was never found. There was no sign of sexual assault - though it could be that the attacker never got a chance to do anything on this front because of the tremendous struggle which ensued. Rape might well have been the initial motivation in the attack but it was not something that transpired in the end. There was still money in Debbie's purse when she was found and none of her jewellery was taken so robbery definitely didn't appear to be the motive.

There were around seventy people on the train at the time of the murder but the fact that Debbie was on a closed carriage obviously meant they were in no position to help. The weird thing is that hardly anyone seemed to hear any commotion. One person who did was an eighteen year-old French woman named Helene Jousseline who was on the train. Jousseline was in England working as an au pair. The French girl said she heard two minutes of terrifying screams shortly after the train left Brixton station. She said she followed a suspicious man when the train stopped at Victoria but then lost him. This man was never identified. We have no idea if he was Debbie's killer or just some innocent passenger who Jousseline latched onto because she didn't like the look of him.

At the inquest into Debbie's death the French girl was criticised for not pulling the communication cord available to passengers - which was designed to stop the train for an emergency. If she had done that the train would have stopped and it would have been very difficult for the murderer to flee without being seen by witnesses. In this scenario he would surely have been picked up by the police. The killer would surely have had some blood on his clothes so it would have been difficult to hide this if he was relatively isolated. Sadly though the killer was not isolated. He was able to blend into the endless throng of commuters who passed through this old station.

You might think that it would be rather difficult to murder someone on a train in broad daylight and then escape from one of the busiest train stations in the country without detection but - sadly - this is exactly what happened. The person responsible for Debbie's murder was never found. The police suspected that Debbie was murdered between Brixton and Victoria because the eight minutes between these stations was one of the longest on that line without a stop. Eight minutes would have given the killer enough time to kill Debbie and then clean himself up somewhat. He must have then sat in the carriage with the dead body as he nervously waited for the train to arrive at Victoria. One would imagine that the killer would have been off that train like shot once it arrived. We don't know if the killer headed for the underground or simply left the station to escape into the busy streets. The latter probably would have had more logic if one were in that situation.

It could be that Debbie was murdered in a tunnel. If the French girl is correct then the struggle between Debbie and the killer lasted for about two minutes. Today it would be impossible to do something like this because trains do not have closed carriages and they also have extensive CCTV systems. If you murder someone on a train today you WILL be caught on camera and you will not get away with the crime. In 1988 though that sadly wasn't the case. One should note again that the busy nature of Victoria station probably made it easier for the killer to get away. A quarter of a million people passed through the station each day in 1988 so it would have been relatively easy for the murderer to lose themselves in a crowd.

When the body of Debbie Linsey was discovered, the police temporarily ordered all trains on the Victoria line to be cancelled and stopped. They questioned thousands

Impressum

Verlag: BookRix GmbH & Co. KG

Tag der Veröffentlichung: 03.02.2022
ISBN: 978-3-7554-0685-3

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