Reflecting on the Unsolved Mystery

Hello there, and welcome to Murder Most British. I'm Zach Hey, welcome wanderers, I'm Fauna Hey, you're not the same person. Oh wait. I've taken over We have a special guest this week. We have FarnablayQuill from the Echos from the Lone podcast Welcome Thank you so much for having me back. I'm excited to be here. Well, this is definitely the perfect episode for for your expertise to be expended ono This one is just wild. Absolutely. Well Let's not bore him. Let's get to it the nitty gritty of you. Yeah Before we begin, a small request from Uwell, M Over over hers as well. If you enjoy listening to our true crime stories Give us a like and a follow and a five star rating Also follow us on Instagram and TikTok at Myrnamost British and on Facebook at MMB podcast And you can find me on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok at Echoes from the Loam And if you'd like to support this show directly And unlock at free episodes, bonus episodes, early access, Q and A's, and more You can join us at our Patreon community. Jump over to patreon. com forward slash Murderbost British podcast We'd love to have you there Your support helps Archive grow and ensures that no story is ever forgotten Just a little trigger warning, this episode contains discussion of a violent death including distressing crime scene details. It also includes references to folklore, superstition and alleged witchcraft connected to the case. So some listeners may find this content upsetting. Listener discretion is strongly advised Now Lets get to the story. So me on Hill. rises above the Warwickshire County sideide any other stretch of ground But for centuries, people tied darker stories to it Omens, Phantom hounds, things said to move there after dark And then on Valentine's Day, nineteen forty five A seventy four year old farm laborer went out to work beneath that very hill by evening. He was dead No one saw what happened. And in the silence that followed, The old stories came back. Our story begins with Charles Walton A seventy four year old man who had lived his entire life in the Warwickshire village of Lower Quentin He was an agricultural laboreor taking whatever casual farmwork he could find And by the end of his life, he was no longer a strong man Ruatism and Sciatica. badly affected his movement And he relied on two walking sticks to get about One bot The other made from a rough branch cut from the hedge Even so, He was still part of the local farming world moving between fields and odd jobs as his strength would allow He lived at fifteen Lower Quins A rented cottage opposite the village church And he had been there since the First World War Walton was a widowower. His wife had died in nineteen twenty seven, and by nineteen forty five, he was living with his niece, Edith Walton She had come to the house as a small child after her own mother died She was around thirty three by then and kept house for him He paid Edith a pound a week for housekeeping covered the cottage rent of three shillings a week and brought their coal and meat. alongside whatever he earned from casual labour He also received an old age pension of ten shillings a week todayod's money wish these rents were the same. A pound a week for housekeeping. I'll take it. Yeah, todayoday there'd be fifty six a week. Yeah, basically on the rant. Yeah. And then like the ten shillings for the old aange pension was about twenty eight pounds a week in todayays so Geez, crazy Charles Walton was known locally as a quiet solitary man, steady inoffensive and self contained. He did not mix widely, but neither was he thought quarrelsome or difficult And Lower Quentin was the kind of place where quiet did not mean invisible It was a small farming village of only a few hundred people. And people noticed who passed along the lanes Who crossed the churchyard and who failed to come home when expected. In parts of rural England, older beliefs had not vanished as neatly as people sometimes imagine Witchcraft was no longer something openly accused in the old way. But in some agricultural communities, it still survived as an inherited way of explaining misfortune Illness, failed crops, animal deaths and other explained troubles could still be read through loocal superstition especially in places where folklore remained rooted in the landscape and in the memory And that background wasn't abstract in South Worshire. In eighteen seventy five in the nearby village of Long Compton An elderly woman named Anne Tennon was killed by a man who believed she was a witch. He attacked her with a pitchfork and claimed she had bewitched him He was later found insane course, but the case showed that belief in witchcraft However distorted or unstable has survived in the region well into the modern period as something still capable of shaping real violence So in this place Those beliefs were not just relics in old books They were in the roots. place itself. And La Quintin had its own stories too South of the village, the ground rises towards me on Hill. Beneath it lay a patchwork of hedged fields and narrow paths And one of those fields, hill ground, stood on its lower slopes But meeon Hill was never just high ground in the local imagination It had long been associated with folklore Stories of the devil, phhantom hounds, omens, and older supernatural beliefs attached to the countryside One legend held that the devil held a great stone or in another version, a clod of Earth towards nearby Eve Shamabbey O for prayer to divert its course and other stories place Phantom hounds on the hill at night The old devil's throwing rocks. Yeah. That's weird. That's classic So that's why the hills there. The devil threw this big rock and that's where it ended up. Yeah, because of all the things he was just gonna pick on this little abbey in the middle of nowhere. Yeah Well In some versions, those hounds belong to Eron Lord of departed Spirits who was said to ride a pale horse and hunt with white hounds marked with red ears. Me and Hill already carried a reputation or this case ever happened It was a place burdened with warnings, presences, and old stories that never really gone away. Charles had been working for several days in Hill Ground itself Trimming hedges for Alfred Potter on Furr's Farm who had employed him casually for around nine months. But Charles rarely worked a full week in winter Charles himself would later be drawn into that atmosphere as well Some later accounts claimed that people locally thought he had knowledge of folk magic, that he could curse livestock or crops. or even that he carried the so called evil eye Whether those stories reflected anything real, or simply the kind of talk that gathers around a solitary countryman ' much harder to say But they matter because they resemble the older idea of a village witch notot necessarily someone openly accused but someone regarded a little uneasily Someone's solitary close to animals and the land and half understood by the community around them Yeah, kind of think of like The village elder You know, the old wise women, that type of thing, who know who knew the the old ways and healing techniques and stuff Well, this is exactly what, you know, paganism was Paganism is, you know, it's knowing the land and feeding off the land. it's knowing What herbs do what? You know? what time of year is suited for what? And yeah, you know, pagans or Wise women or cunning folk as we were known You're too cunning, you need to you're a witch Basically He's like, no, I'm old and I know a lot of shit. What are you talking about? Yeah, now you're just now you're thought of as knowledgeable and expertise then you were just thought of as In practical terms, though Wallen kept to a settled routine On working days, he generally left home at around eight thirty in the morning. He did not carry his hedging tools back and forth each day They were usually left in whichever field he was working in Ready for him to pick up where he had stopped He was usually back home Around four o'lock for dinner You couldn't do that these days to. Leave your tools in the field ready for when you come back in the morning and the w't be.ome asshole would be out there stealing them. Yeah, absolutely So when Wednesday the fourteenth of february, nineteen forty five began It began like any other working day Walton came downstairs dressed for outdoor labour in the clothes he normally used for hedging A tweed jacket matching waistcoat Heather Mixture Cardigan a flannel body belt. Two shirts, one flannel, one short sleeved cotton boots and knitted socks against the cold. Damy was kittded out. He was kitted out to say the least and attached to a chain fastened to his waistcoat was the white metal pocket watch which he carried with him He didn't usually carry papers, and though sometimes He took a purse with a few shillings in it On that particular morning, he left it at home Edith was getting ready for work herself. She was employed as a printer's assembler at the Royal Society of Arts which had relocated to Lower Quintenton during the war And before she left, she made him the breakfast he always had toast and coffee and wrapped up a piece of fruit cake in a blue sugar bag for him to take out into the fields. Then, when he was ready He left the cottage and set off for Hillground A a bit of fruit cake for lunch G Gross. Yeah, I'm not a fruit cake fan either. I can't lie, especially one that's been in my in the heats while you're W in a way Well that morning, Wolton left him. pass through the churchyard opposite the cottage, heading towards the lower slopes of Mean Hill and the field where he had been working By around midday, he was still believed to be out there on the hedging job And nothing about the day appears to have caused any alarm Well, when Edith returned home It's around six PM Her uncle should have already been back She called for him and checked the house There was no sign of him The place was empty She seems to have understood immediately that this was not normal Walton was elderly, bent with rheumatism And not a man who stayed out after dark without explanation There was no point checking the colloege Ams pub He was not the sort of man expected to be sitting there late So Edith went next door to Harry Beasley's house Beasley had known Walton all his life and had lived beside him for twenty three years He'd last seen him at around five o'clock the previous day. when Walton had been working in his garden and called him over to help put a piece of wood on a saw horse BasC agreed with Edith that the absence was unusual So Beasley took a coat and a torch and the two of them crossed the road. passed through the churchyard and went out into the fields Walton had entered that morning They called his name and searched the nearby ground Looking through ditches and along the fields As the light faded They found nothing and with each passing minute Edith became more certain that something had happened When the search led nowhere, they made their way to Furr's Farm It was roughly six fifteen and when Alfred Potter got up from his dinner table to answer the knock at the door That'd be scary like you know the schedules. You know, hey, he comes back every day Well, this is a thing. you know, a man in his sevventies. who isn't known to frequent the pub just doesn't come home one day. automatically ring with me that something awful has happened. Oh yeah. o yeah Potter came out at once when Edith and Beasley reached F Farm Edith did not waste time on pleasantries She asked what hedge her uncle had been working on and told Potter that he had not returned home Hotter replied straight away that there must be something wrong He said he had seen Walton earlier that day still working in hill ground and Potter Join the sege I'd just like to point out that the connection between Potter and Beasley, which is so similar to Weasley. You're a wizard. It's got to be a little bit tickled So the three of them headed back out into the fields beneath me and Hill Potle at the way Beasley walked beside him with a torch and Edith followed behind As they crossed the farmyard and moved back into the field, Potter said that on Wednesdays, he had to do the milking and that he had come to the field at twelve o'clock to cut some hay and had seen Walton still working. They called Walton's name and searched the ground as they went The near the point where one hedge met another ten yards from where Potter said he had seen Walton alive They found him Charles was laying on the ground beside the hedgeerow only a short distance from where he had been working It was obvious at once that he was dead. There was no sign that the body had been moved at all Whatever had happened had happened there. in the field itself Beasley tried to stop Edith from coming any closer. and move to shield her from the full sight of the body But it was already too late She saw enough to understand. began to scream. God bless him And at that same moment A local farm laborerer named Harry Peache was passing on the far side of the hedge lookingooking back up in the direction of neighbouring Upperquuintces He had gone up the hill to inspect a field of beans. planted months earlier and had noticed nothing unusual on his way out Potter called out to him and told him to go at once to Mr. Vallander's. and telephone the police And while Peetachie went for help Beasley led Edith away ot to stay beside Waltmon's body The violence done to Waldon was severe Unmistakable He hadd been attacked there in the field, beaten and cught with the implements he had been using to work and left in a position that was deeply shocking to look at The most striking of all pitchfork had been driven into him and wedged beneath the hedge, pinning him to the ground Detail in particular pitchfork pinning him there beneath the hedge. ome one of the central reasons the murder later acquired a reputation for ritual or witchcraft because it proved any such thing. but because it was so violent, so unusual and so visually shocking. And later, writers linked it to older beliefs that a suspected witch or cunning person Pin to the earth to stop their spirit escaping or wandering And those ideas usually involve iron pins or other sharp implements And I in itself was often treated in folk belief as a force that could repel or control the supernatural Yeah, I think some people they they want to be able to understand of it of someone just being brutally killed like that this is the thing and, you know, One thing is for certain when you look back over history You know, and especially as you guys know, looking at all the, you know, murder cases that you look at Sometimes there just isn't an answer for it a mad man or mad woman that just went crazy or their own motivations. It wasn't anything supernatural or anything like that, you know, just. But I do find it really interesting that the connection that this C pooor old man been pinned to the ground with a pitch fork. very much like and tenon in the next village over the hundred years prior in the exact same way. Yeah She's like,m, wonder if people remember that story and they were using it to their advantage. Absolutely orr was he Maybe the person who did it, a descendant of the person who did it all those years before. Oh yeah. seecret societies and This is the Iuminot The witchfinders, Witchfinder general Well, the same was true of the throat wound as well Charles's throat had been cut And in later folkloric readings, that detail would also take a symbolic meaning Some writers treated the spilling of blood as if it pointed towards sacrifice or towards some attempt to release or destroy supposed magical power may simply reflect the ferocity of the attack rather than ritual intent Peache carried Potter's message down to Allan Raymond, Vallander who telephoned Workshire pololice at six fifty PM Police Cstable Michael Lemazny. received the call and reached the area at around seven hundred five PM The message passed to PC L Maznne. was confused enough that he first understood On that there was a girl at the foot of me and Hill and that something was badly wrong with Valandar and Pache He crossed the fields until Potter called out to them from the darkness And when PC. L Masny first saw the body in the failing light He briefly thought it might be that of an airman Looking more closely, he realized that it was in fact Charles Walton PC Lemazne would later remember something else about Potter that night as well He thought Potter seemed more shaken than a man like him might have been expected to be Potter complained of feeling cold And before the Stratford police had even you know, arrived there He was already saying he was going home None of that proved anything But looking back The Mas need Potter had seemed less stunned than worried It's interesting as that his first thought that it was an airman I mean like it was a common occurrence Yeah. I mean, they they do like it' nearby, they've got a prisoner war camp. so they thought because they've got Italians there So maybe they thought one of the airmen over there were for some in the field Yeah, maybe, maybe Lemasnney initially considered whether it might be suicide. Although I'm not sure how But once he'd examined the position of the body and the way that the pitchfork had been driven and wedged beneath the hedge He concluded that there had indeed been foul play What lay before him was a dead old man in a winter field beneath me and Hill and no clear sign of why it had been done Oh yeah I made a note on this one because It reminds me of a case. There was a case in Philadelphia where a woman named Ellen Greenberg twenty stab wounds. and which included ten to her back and neck But they said it was a suicide I don't know how they make these determinations. L to physically have the strength to drive a pitchfall through you into the ground and pin you in place and into the hedge as well. When you're in your seventies and have sciatica and rheumatism is yeah Minds baffling He just got some adrenaline hulk strength and just did it to himself like what are you talking about? Oh and hit himself in the back of the head while he was there with with his stick. you know It's so weird, but I think it was just like he was shocked as well probably and was like, oh my God, what did he do to himself Oh wait, no, this is actually murder Yeah, absolutely. Well, one of the first things investigator noticed was the missing pocket watch Charles had left home wearing a white metal watch on a chain. But when PC Lemazne seearch the body. Only a piece of silver chain remained in the waistcoat point it at least tentatively toward theft Though it did not explain the sheer violence of the attack and police circulation notices The watch was described in detail plain white metal gentleman's pocket watch with a snap case back White enamel face English numerals a second hand and the name Edgar Jones Stratford on Avon on the dial It had been valued about ten years earlier at twenty five shillings twentyenty five shillings. That's roughly what seventy pound in today's money And from the beginning The official response moved quite quickly Stratford upon Avon CID arrived that same evening Professor James M. Webster of the West Midlands Forensic Lab reached the scene at about eleven thirty PM and the body was removed in the early hours of the following morning. Before that first night was over Detective Inspector Toomes had already begun taking statements, including Alfred Potter's first account of the dayay I'vead some epic names in this so far. Tombs. Inspector toombs Working for like CID, that's very cool Well, Potter mattered immediately because he was not only Charles's employer He was also the man who said he had last seen him alive. in that first statement Potter said he had been at the college arms with Joseph Stanley until noon. then went across to a small adjoining field and saw Charles still working in hillground Five or six hundred yards away distance Yeah That's I guess if you just know that yeah, I know that's Charles out there Could you be certain? Yeah Beyond all reasonable doubt? Well, he said Charles had only six to ten yards of hedge left cut and later remarked that about four additional yards seemed to have been done by the time the body was found In his view, about half an hour's work. He also said it was Charles's usual habit to stop for lunch at around eleven And that account mattered Even more once the Postmorton began narrowing that time of death Webster found blows to the head from Charles' own walking stick wounds to the neck from the bill hook also known as a slash hook or a trouncing hook broken ribs, bruising to the chest and defensive injuries to the hands and arms The trachea had been cut. The injury showed both a cutting weapon and a stabbing weapon have been used And he also noted that Charles's shirt had been opened hisis trousers were unfastened at the top and his fly was undone Weird incredibly. Professor Webster placed the time of death between about one and two in the afternoon That made the early afternoon critical Potter said he had seen Walton still working shortly afternoon which placed him among the last people to have seen him alive Postmortem also matters for Another reason because one of the most persistent later claims was that a cross had been carved into Charles's chest That detail became central to the case's later reputation as a supposed witchcraft murder. But it does not appear in Webster's official postmortem evidence And that leaves it standing on much shakier ground then later retellings often suggest And that matters too. Because once a detail like that enters a case like this It arrives already carrying meaning In folklore, the sign of the cross could be read as protective something used to ward off harm or control a force thought dangerous It belongs to the same apotropaic tradition as witchmarks and hexfils, signs cut into buildings for protection So even if the claim itself remains unproven It helps explain why the murder so quickly attracted a darker interpretation The investigation itself started in more ordinary directions The missing watch was circulated to jewelers and pawn brokers Dives considered whether the killer might have been a stranger Lower Quintin could be crossed on foot prisoner of warar camp at Long Marston lay only a short distance away One early police message even suggested The murder might have been the work of either a madman or of one of the Italian prisoners from the nearby camp became one of the first major lines of inquiry. Lower Quinton could be crossed on foot. And Long Masts, prisoner of warar camp, lay only a short distance away So on the sixteenth of February, the inquiry widened sharply and Chief inspector Robert Fabian. and Detective Sergeant Albert Webb arrived from Scotland Yard and Detective Sergeant Saunders of Special Branch also came to assist useful in particular because he spoke fluent, Italian But they were bringing in the big guns T you right tell you right now Because Fabian was one of the most prominent detectives in all of Britain His arrival marked a clear escalation. So he was like top dick of the metet police. Absolutely, head onon show. Like he like reading up on him, he was like a household name He was famous Come The Mythical Sherlock Holmes. Yes. It was that name that everybody knew. Yeah, he could crack shit then nobody else could crack The prisoners from Long Marsten were questioned picture was never especially clear They appear to have a fair amount of freedom to move about the surrounding area. and no complete record was kept of all of those movements Some had gone to Stratford That afternoon to see a play while others had gone to the cinema att one stage Suspicion briefly fell on a prisoner said to have blood on his clothing Is it just me or does it seem like a really u ointless idea to call them Like Prisoners of war and then just let them strut off to the cinema to go and see a movie. It's not that I'm guessing that because I think of prisoners of war, they were like Um at the time, like the Japanese pres, you know went art people were getting, you know, they were getting fucked up by ' them Absolute horrible conditions that, you know, you get prisoner from, you know, the Nazi. they they Trcha and shit Now we're over here. Hey, man, you won't go to the cinema It just doesn't make a lot of sense, does it? And to not even keep records of like who's coming and going either I think it just shows that difference of like how we treated and how they treated and how better they were here The definition of English gentlemen. Yeah yeah and that forensic testing. showed that it was animal blood not human which is weird enough in itself. Yeah, where did you get this a om of blood? Yeah. No evidence emerged linking any of the prisoners to Charles's death And that line of inquiry very quickly went nowhere Fabian though, approached the case as a murder investigation not as a proven ritual killing What interested him were the things that police could actually test Tings, statements, movements and physical evidence By then, local officers were already uneasy about Potter PC Lemzny who knew Potter and his wife Lillian was asked to stay close to them in case either of them let something slip. He was the man who said he was, you know, last seen him The man who had gone back to the field with Edith and Harry. and the man whose account lay closest to the newly established window of death Suspicion gathered not only around what Potter had said but around how Potter behaved local constable later reported that Potter had gone back to hill ground soon after the first light on the fifteenth of February and had to be worned away from the actual site He exchanged a few remarks about the cold handed over a player's cigarette and left On its own, that proved nothing But once investigators began testing the rest of his accounts It became one more detail that just sat badly. Yeah, just this weird are you Are you up there? Then there's a big thing isn't there about certain killers like to return to the scenes of their crimes? Oh yeah, that's. It seems quite plausible Well under questioning, Potter's timings began to shift He variously placed his sightings of Charles at around twelve ten twelve fifteen and then about. twelve, twenty and later described having seen someone standing stationary in the field at around twelve thirty That's a big gap. I mean, that's a pretty A pretty big gap, isn't it But I guess you're not always just sitting there Well, I saw him checked my watch was he okay I search just saw him twelve. I guess you're just kind of guessing You know Possibly And then you also you have to take into account that he was leaving the pub. Yeahah, he had a couple of beers. So, you know, was his statement the most reliable? and you know, could he have actually been paying enough attention to know Yeah, true Well, he also said Charles had been working in his shirt sleeves a detail that sat awkwardly with the clothing later found on the body Fabian regarded those changes as important because they suggested Potter's recollection was unstable, even on points That should have been simple And once that happens Every movement in the critical period starts to matter Potter said in one version that after leaving the college arms He went across to a field known as Says to see some sheep and feed some calves and then saw Charles around twelve twenty working in shirt sleeves. He said he would have gotone over to speak to him but had to deal with a heifer in a ditch nearby. Later, he said that after returning home He read the paper briefly then went to help Charles Henry Happy Bachelor P. Mangolds Yeah, he went to help Charles Henry happppy Bachelor Pope Mangolds they were pulping him. So his name is Charles Henry Charles Henry, happy Bachelor. Yeah.. I told you You're not making a sentence. I told you we've got some epic names in this. This is amazing Happy was his nickname. I'm guessing he was a happy guy. What a man goats H'm not I thought it was like att first I was like, those are mangoes, no mangoldes And I my brain wentn't marigold What're they doing with flowers? Yeah Well, Mrs. Potter and Bachelor broadly supported that account Joseph Stanley meanwhile confirmed that Potter had helped him castrate two calves that morning and had drunk two glasses of guuinness in the college arms between eleven forty five and noon A snack in it something? Yeah, that's fifth Eespecially for Ginnness. About fifteen minutes. I gotta get this down to me. I got shit to do K Noa Well, all of that sharpened the importance of the period of time roughly between noon and twelve forty the same stretch of time in which investigators believed Charles may have been attacked then more difficulties appeared. Potter said he had gone to attend to a heer in a ditch. But investigators learned the animal had already died the previous day. and wasn't removed until later on the fourteenth He later said he had touched the murder weapons when he found the body. suppupposedly easy to make sure that Charles was dead. But that explanation appeared only after Please mentioned that there might be fingerprints. Beasley disputed any such check had been necessary or that he had asked Potter to do it Wh why you grabing thatur weon b? Why lying about a heifer? Yeah, that too It seems like well could he could have possibly could have been where he's like, well, I was going to help them get out because it was had already died Bah, blah, blah. So there might have been I suppose Siman in technically with you know, murder weapon, if you potentially could have thought that you could help them or they were still alive, would you instinctively just reach out and grab it? Yeah. Unlikely pitchfk through the neck will do that From the accounts, he was. Clearly dead so there was probably no reason to ever grab it and do anything Reasonable doubt. Yeah Well when those fingerprints were mentioned Mrs. Potter reportedly reacted with obvious alarm saying police were bound to suspect her husband if his prints were on the weapons around the same time Conor suggested the killing was the work of a fascist from the camp And when word reached the farm, that an Italian prisoner had supposedly been detained Both he and his wife reacted with striking relief None of that proved Potter was the killer But it deepened that suspicion And his mo is during the likely time of the murder should not be fixed with certainty. The most reasonable explanation that Potter should have gone for. He hired him Technically, you know, there the equipmentments in my field. I've moved them that morning you know, given a more likely explanation than it was the fascist from over there. Yeah There them fascists in the camp Wow. Investigators also looked for motive and found very little they could use They considered robbery personal grievance and Potter's financial dealings but none of them gave a strong enough basis for a charge Robbery did not sit comfortably with the nature of the attack and inquiries into Charles's habits, finances and relationships and covered no obvious dispute that would explain such violence I mean You could have come up behind him and just whacked him in the head and grabbed his watch. but what you know, something that's worth twenty five shillings like he just Are you gonna go down for that? Well this is the thing. and Its it's the little details in this that make it so bizarre. You know, if it was just a robbery, you can clearly see he's an old man, he's a farmh. He's not the wealthiest of people. Why are his trousers unfastened? Yeah, that's really weird. Wow. Yeah, and then the watch is gone, all that, you know, with this flies open you know, with the pitchforkking in, it just seems all really bizarre, like you said, it we potentially side of a cross carved into his chest Yeah that we can't say for certain one way or the other ever existed. Yeah becausecause medical examiner never wrote that down. But it was quite common back in those times for people to skim over things like that because and nobody wants, you know You don't want to bring about the next reign of witch trials. Yeah, a moralizing of sorts Well, that absence is part of why the case later drifted so easily into darker retellings A murder this violent in a place like me and Hill With no secure motive and no clear explanation, leftft room for rumor to grow In later versions Charles became something more than a murdered laborerer He became a solitary countryman on to whom older ideas rejected. A man tied in retrospect to unease, superstition, and which slane Potter's finances drew attention as well On the seventeenth of February, he said he'd paid Charles eighteen pence an hour. usually at the end of each fortnight. though sometimes weekly plied, Charles was occasionally paid for hours he had not actually worked He said he last paid him for the Fortnight ending the tenth of February and gave him two pound fifteen shillings Fabian later concluded that Potter had in effect, been claiming more in wages for Chles than he actually paid him pocketing the difference Are you skimming off the wages? Oh no Which just is that old chest night, isn't it? Dipping into the dipping into the pot as a motive So he's got all this going on so suspicious and then he's this could point to Charles found out and confronted him about it. And then he's like, you ain't snitching on me, you know, and killed him I wouldn't mind but all of these things that were, you know a little bit odd or can't be explained, but there is nothing concrete Okay, so that really didn't establish a motive for murder well peopleeople have killed for less But it reinforced Fabian's view that Potter was not a straightforward witness. statements from two former employees William George died and George Pernell to that picture by indicating that Potter had at times struggled to pay wages Other inquiries widen the net without really advancing the case Fabian looked into Charles's wider circle too including his best friend, George Higgins who had been working only a few hundred yards away in a barn on the day of the murder Higgins could not be ignored entirely But Fabian doubted that the elderly man had either the strength or the motive to carry out such an attack. Edith Walton's long relationship with Edgar Good was noted and checked Good was eliminated. And the physical evidence itself offered only limited help beyond showing how Charles had died walking stick, the bill hook and the pitchfork were all tools already present in the field belonged naturally to the place They weren't just brought from somewhere else No, but n't trace him to anyone. If he was working And Bon Only a few hundred yards away Could he have not seen something? Why was he not thought of earlier in the investigation. True But if you're in there working away and you're inside and you can't really see that far or notot really paying attention. you know, you're not really thinking, Hey I'm better keep a lookout because somebody might get murdered., but you might have heard something. True. Had you know, had Charles have screamed or but you know, like you said, Maybe his hearing wasn't that great. He was he was yet another elderly Yeah. farmwer Asa walked up, Hey, man, we you in this sp? oh gosh, you're older too. I don't think you're gonna be the guy that did this. Yeah, basically Well, Charles had resisted But there was no clear sign of a prolonged struggle beyond a media area near the hedge Potter's clothing also drew attention His Bedford cord trousers bore two marks on the front that Webster believed might be blood they had been cleaned too thoroughly for any positive analysis Yeah, no DNA back then N And then tras are alone gone. Yeah Well, Fabian and Webb widened the inquiry further More than five hundred statements were taken from residents of Lower Quintin and others who had been in or around the area that day, And that is a lot considering that like, you know, the era we're talking about. Oh, yeah He went They went around everywhere. Baby and need didn't fuck around. Absolutely The surrounding farmland was searched in detail royal engineers were brought in with mind detectors. Yeah to search for the missing watch or any other discarded object that might provide a lead But nothing useful was ever recovered The watch did not surface. No decisive item was found in the field and no statement broke the case wide open. No direct witness emerged. No one clearly placed a suspect beside Charles in Hillground that afternoon Well, that silence was one of the investigation's most striking features Sabing in Web. We're not dealing with a village in open panic But with one that seemed guarded the impression Fabian later gave was not of a place eager to help strangers from London But if one where eyes drop, Doors closed And whatever people suspected was not being said. Alloued But for all that unease The investigation itself never turned on supernatural explanations Police stayed with the things that they could actually test Even so, Fabian and Webb eventually returned to London without resolving the case while Worwshire Police continued their inquiries Oh after all of that. Royal engineers how detective out there All that shit and still couldn't solve it But somebody somewhere knew something. Oh yeah, you know, and it was so common among like smaller villages, like you said You know, avert your eyes, shut the doors, draw the curtains. I'm not I'm not getting involved. Yeah. I over no h know wh was Are you not getting involved because you know who did it? Or are you not getting involved because Sitchcroft and I don't get involved in, you know You just don't know Well the murder of Charles Walton was never solved No charge was ever brought. And as the years passed, the case began to change shape in public memory What had started as an unsolved village murder became something larger and stranger in the telling by the violence of the crime The setting between me on Hill The missing motive and the unanswered question Who killed Charles when a case leaves that much empty space People begin to feel it H fllw and Ritual offered a ready made shape thought the evidence couldn't explain One of the ways that happened was through later retellings of the murder scene itself The pitchfork, the throat wound, the position of the body beneath the hedge, and the story of a supposed cross carved into Charles' chest all became a part cases darker afterlife. But that last detail matters, especially Like we said There was no evidence of that cross being put into his chest No It belongs to the mythology that grew around the murder afterwards and often repeated enough urn an unsolved rural homicide into something remembered as a supposed witchcraft killing Plore entered the story more directly. through Jay Harvey Blooms, folklore, oldld customs and superstitions in Shakespeareand because that was later linked to the case Among its local tales was one about a young man named Charles Walton who supposedly encountered A black dog before his sister's death. Because the murder victims shared that name, later writers drew a connection between the two There is no firm evidence they were the same person But it was exactly the kind of coincidence that people remember And it helped pull the case deeper into the region's existing web Dogs, omens and the older supernatural atmosphere that surrounds me on Hill Dogs on the hill Dogs are notorious up and down the country. Like a nice black dog. In Yorkshire, they call him the bar guest. Goodness Well, Robert Fabian played a role in that later afterlife too. I gu just couldn't help himself there In the original investigation, police stayed focused on the ordinary things that they could test But later in retrospective writing Fabin described the case in more suggestive and dramatic terms helping it. to fix it more firmly in leegend. evidence I give us some artistic license when you writing number books. but I'm wondering was that to You know, like you said, he was he was infamous, He was well known. He was a household name You know, was it written in a dramatic telling to me, you know help him be the hero of this, you know, to no avail Um Or did he know more than he was letting on Be he wrote he wrote his book Fabian of the Yard and that was turned into BBC series Oh amazing. Yeah, ye. So he was famous. Yeah. see he knew what he was doing even Charles's grave. became part of that uncertainty. with later accounts suggesting that the marker in the churchyard opposite his cottage been removed It was a small detail but one that deepened the sense the case had begun to slip out of record and into folklore By then, the murder of Charles Walton existed in two forms at once. On one side The unresolved homicide an elderly laboreorr killed in a field A missing watch statements taken Suspects examined and no charge ever brought. onn the other darker version grew around it. Me and Hill Village whispers, witch slaying dogs and old beliefs Whether every later detail was true mattered less than what it did. story Mean Hill still rises above the countryside south of Low AQuintance. The headedroows and the fields beneath it remain as much as they were when Charles walked there in february nineteen forty five Nothing in the landscape explains what happened in that field place keeps its silence And the murder remains where it stood for decades Unresolved. Half record and half Lgend Well, that was the story of the Manhill murder Charles Waldon. Oy . This it's an interesting case for sure And it just still astounds me There was just nothing. like especially because in my opinion Potter did it. Potter did it. Potter did it. But you know, having the having the hard evidence to prove it and it just it's, you know, it goes to show how much We rely now on that forensic testing. Yeah. I mean, Fabyian he like top cop and all that He had his suspicions He just didn't have that hard evidence to point to that person So even if Parter did do it couldn't find that one crucial piece that said He was there or a witness that said, yeep, I saw Potter up there with Charles Yeah, so you can't o any further, really No and it's just frustrating never knowing like whether certain aspects of the case are not are true. you know, Was there a cross carved into his chest Why were his trousers undone? For me, I find that particularly unsettling Why Well, he could have been going for a week I just thought about it. He could have been and then that's when they struck him But then why would you then go through the effort of pulling his trousers back up Well, I don't know. Well you well I don't pull them all the way down when I go Weiiping out the front true And it doesn't actually tell us how far down his trousers were, for example. so yeah ye Yeah, just a strange strange case Well, okay. So Would you like to take a minute and plug your show and whatever you do on the spooky side of the podcast space or anything else that you're getting into Absolutely. So if you've enjoyed hearing me on this episode, you can find me on toes from the lan. Over there I explore eerie folklore, strange tales, and the darker edges of legend in stories that are written by May They're all originals So if black dogs, haunted objects and old superstitions kind of your thing I'd love for you to pop over G out and join me there. You can also find me on It's Psychomanteum paradox. which is our paranormal investigation team Go up and down the UK investigating haunted locations, which' fantastic. Yeah. A you guys just still alive not too long ago, didnn't you? We did. ye. A place called The House that Time forgot, or the Lost in Time House And the house, although the house itself was actually built in the eighteen hundreds when the last lot of owners passed. daughter kind of went in, took out anything that was perishable and then just left everything exactly as it was So there is still a washcloth and soap beside the sink. There is still someone's pants and socks hanging on a line Um, you know, it's it's so eerie, so, so eerie but that will be turned into a episode for YouTube So you'll be able to find that on YouTube and check it out We are live again at the end of this month at another venue which I won't give too much away just yet. Excellent. Well, if that all interests you Please hop over and check it out Also You can jump over to our Patreon for more true crime episodes A free and twenty four hours early go to patreon. com for slash murder Most British podcast. And then you can follow us on Instagram and TikTok at Myrnermost British and on Facebook at MMB podcast You can find me on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok all under at Echoes from the L And if you haven't signed up to their Patreon There is some amazing stuff on there that you will not get access to without it And it is so worthwhile checking it out. Yeahr'z broad unsalved more unsolved stuff as well Until next week. Stay safe and stay curious Bye And Now we are gonna have a look at our Patreon Raven's cououncil we have Ruby Tucker, nineteen fifty six Clire Smith Extreme plunge. and whiskey forty five Thank you very much joining us Thank you much so much for your support I really appreciate it. Bye by