(True Crime) The Witchcraft Murder of Charles Walton pt. 1

The Witchcraft Murder of Charles Walton — Part One

On Valentine’s Day, 1945, 74-year-old farmworker Charles Walton left his cottage in the English village of Lower Quinton for a day’s work beneath Meon Hill. He never returned home.

His brutal murder would draw Scotland Yard into a mystery that became entangled with whispers of witchcraft, ancient superstitions, and the unsettling folklore of the English countryside.

In part one of this two-part From the Void investigation, we enter the world Charles Walton knew, retrace the circumstances surrounding his death, and explore how an unsolved killing became one of Britain’s most chilling mysteries. Where does the evidence end—and the legend begin?

🎃 Our Halloween journey is just getting started. More eerie encounters, unsettling mysteries, and Halloween episodes are coming throughout the spooky season. Subscribe so you don’t miss what’s next.

Visit our website: www.fromthevoidpod.com

Sources & Further Reading

The witchcraft connection remains a theory within the case’s enduring folklore, rather than an established motive.

Content note: Discussion of murder and disturbing crime-scene details.

Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/from-the-void-podcast1430/exclusive-content

00:02 --> 00:07 [SPEAKER_00]: from the darkest reaches of space to the deepest corners of your mind.
00:07 --> 00:08 [SPEAKER_00]: Your mind.
00:09 --> 00:11 [SPEAKER_00]: Welcome to From the Void.
00:17 --> 00:22 [SPEAKER_01]: For centuries, the English countryside has been home to stories of things that should not exist.
00:23 --> 00:25 [SPEAKER_01]: Which is, curses.
00:26 --> 00:29 [SPEAKER_01]: A mysterious black dog said to appear before someone dies.
00:30 --> 00:38 [SPEAKER_01]: In the hills of Warwickshire, one such legend tells of a young farm worker who encountered a strange black dog on his journey home.
00:40 --> 00:47 [SPEAKER_01]: The animal appeared night after night, and then, on its final appearance, it was accompanied by something even more disturbing.
00:48 --> 00:50 [SPEAKER_01]: The apparition of a headless woman.
00:51 --> 00:54 [SPEAKER_01]: According to the legend, Death soon followed.
00:56 --> 00:58 [SPEAKER_01]: The young man's name was Charles Walton.
00:59 --> 01:09 [SPEAKER_01]: At decades later, on Valentine's Day 1945, a 74-year-old farm worker bearing that same name was discovered murdered beneath me on Hill.
01:10 --> 01:12 [SPEAKER_01]: His body had been savagely attacked.
01:13 --> 01:18 [SPEAKER_01]: The farming tools he carried had been turned against him and the killer had vanished.
01:20 --> 01:29 [SPEAKER_01]: was the connection to the old legend nothing more than coincidence, or was something far stranger taking place in the countryside around Lower Quentin.
01:31 --> 01:39 [SPEAKER_01]: Tonight, we begin the story of one of Britain's most disturbing unsolved murders, a case that would draw the attention of Scotland Yard.
01:40 --> 01:46 [SPEAKER_01]: And eventually, became known as the witchcraft murder of Charles Walton.
01:57 --> 02:01 [SPEAKER_01]: There are places in England where the past never seems entirely buried.
02:01 --> 02:16 [SPEAKER_01]: Places were ancient hills, rise above small villages, where narrow country lanes wind between fields and hedgeros, and where stories of witches, curses, and strange creatures have been passed from one generation to the next.
02:17 --> 02:23 [SPEAKER_01]: In the English Midlands, not far from Stratford upon Avon, there is a small village called
02:28 --> 02:34 [SPEAKER_01]: And for centuries, the surrounding countryside has been associated with local legends and folklore.
02:34 --> 02:42 [SPEAKER_01]: Stories of supernatural encounters, mysterious animals, and witchcraft have become part of the region's identity.
02:43 --> 02:51 [SPEAKER_01]: But in February of 1945, something happened beneath that hill that was neither legend nor ghost story.
02:57 --> 03:03 [SPEAKER_01]: would eventually give rise to one of the strangest unsolved mysteries in British criminal history.
03:03 --> 03:05 [SPEAKER_01]: His name was Charles Walton.
03:06 --> 03:08 [SPEAKER_01]: He was 74 years old.
03:09 --> 03:14 [SPEAKER_01]: And on Valentine's Day, 1945, he went to work in the fields outside his village.
03:15 --> 03:17 [SPEAKER_01]: He would never return home alive.
03:19 --> 03:22 [SPEAKER_01]: The second World War was entering its final months in Europe.
03:23 --> 03:28 [SPEAKER_01]: Across Britain, the effects of nearly six years of conflict were still felt in everyday life.
03:29 --> 03:35 [SPEAKER_01]: Food rationing, wartime restrictions, and uncertainty had become familiar parts of the national experience.
03:36 --> 03:42 [SPEAKER_01]: But in small agricultural communities like Lower Quentin, the daily routines of farming continued.
03:43 --> 03:48 [SPEAKER_01]: Charles Walton was an elderly farmer labor who spent his days working on the land surrounding the village.
03:49 --> 03:58 [SPEAKER_01]: On Wednesday, February 14th, he went out to work near me on Hill, carrying out a task that would have been entirely ordinary for someone in his position.
03:59 --> 04:00 [SPEAKER_01]: He was cutting back hedges.
04:01 --> 04:07 [SPEAKER_01]: It was difficult physical work, particularly for a man in his 70s, but it was familiar work.
04:08 --> 04:12 [SPEAKER_01]: By the end of the day, however, Walton had failed to return home.
04:13 --> 04:18 [SPEAKER_01]: His absence prompted concern, and a search was made of the area where he had been working.
04:20 --> 04:22 [SPEAKER_01]: What was discovered was horrifying.
04:23 --> 04:28 [SPEAKER_01]: Charles Walden's body was found near a hedge in the countryside beneath me on Hill.
04:29 --> 04:30 [SPEAKER_01]: He had suffered severe injuries.
04:31 --> 04:35 [SPEAKER_01]: The implements associated with his work had been used against him.
04:36 --> 04:45 [SPEAKER_01]: Accounts of the investigation described injuries inflicted with a billhook, a traditional agricultural cutting tool, and his own pitchfork.
04:51 --> 04:55 [SPEAKER_01]: There was no suggestion that Walden had simply suffered an accident while working.
04:56 --> 04:59 [SPEAKER_01]: This was a deliberate and exceptionally violent killing.
05:00 --> 05:08 [SPEAKER_01]: Someone had attacked an elderly man as he worked alone in a quiet English field, and whoever had done it was nowhere to be found.
05:10 --> 05:13 [SPEAKER_01]: At first glance, this was a murder investigation.
05:14 --> 05:18 [SPEAKER_01]: A terrible crime certainly but one that should have been approached to the ordinary questions
05:21 --> 05:27 [SPEAKER_01]: who had last seen Charles Walton alive, who knew where he would be working, had he argued with anyone.
05:28 --> 05:33 [SPEAKER_01]: Was there a financial motive, a personal grievance, or some other explanation for the violence?
05:34 --> 05:39 [SPEAKER_01]: But as the investigation progressed, another narrative would begin to emerge.
05:40 --> 05:46 [SPEAKER_01]: One that reached far beyond the events of February 14th, because Mian Hill was not simply
05:49 --> 06:02 [SPEAKER_01]: It was also a place around which stories had accumulated for generations, stories of witches, stories of curses, and stories of strange black dogs whose appearance was said to foretell death.
06:04 --> 06:12 [SPEAKER_01]: And the years that followed, some writers would suggest that Charles Walton had not been the victim of an ordinary murder at all.
06:13 --> 06:17 [SPEAKER_01]: They would claim that his death was connected to ancient beliefs, a cult practices.
06:18 --> 06:20 [SPEAKER_01]: and perhaps even a ritual killing.
06:22 --> 06:24 [SPEAKER_01]: But there was a problem with that explanation.
06:25 --> 06:29 [SPEAKER_01]: The evidence for it was far less substantial than the legend suggested.
06:30 --> 06:39 [SPEAKER_01]: And to understand how an unsolved murder became a supposed witchcraft sacrifice, we first need to understand the man at the center of the story.
06:40 --> 06:47 [SPEAKER_01]: Charles Walton, a 74-year-old farm worker who left home one February morning and never came
06:50 --> 06:54 [SPEAKER_01]: To understand the murder of Charles Walton, we have to begin with a simple question.
06:55 --> 06:55 [SPEAKER_01]: Who was he?
06:56 --> 07:02 [SPEAKER_01]: Because in the decades following his death, Walton would become something of a character in his own story.
07:03 --> 07:09 [SPEAKER_01]: A man supposedly associated with witchcraft, a man rumored to possess unusual abilities.
07:10 --> 07:16 [SPEAKER_01]: And, according to some accounts, a man whose death was connected to dark supernatural forces
07:20 --> 07:26 [SPEAKER_01]: But before any of those stories, Charles Walton was simply a man who lived and worked in a small English village.
07:27 --> 07:33 [SPEAKER_01]: And the truth of his life is considerably less mysterious than the legend that would eventually surround it.
07:35 --> 07:40 [SPEAKER_01]: Charles Walton was born in 1870, during the reign of Queen Victoria.
07:41 --> 07:45 [SPEAKER_01]: He spent much of his life and the agricultural communities of Warwickshire.
07:46 --> 07:53 [SPEAKER_01]: A region in Central England known for its rolling countryside, historic villages, and deep connections to English folklore.
07:54 --> 07:58 [SPEAKER_01]: By 1945, Walton was 74 years old.
07:59 --> 08:05 [SPEAKER_01]: He lived in Lower Quentin, a small village situated beneath the slopes of Mian Hill, approximately
08:09 --> 08:18 [SPEAKER_01]: It was a close-knit rural community, where families often knew one another for generations, and where agricultural work remained central to everyday life.
08:19 --> 08:22 [SPEAKER_01]: Walton had spent much of his life as a farm laborer.
08:23 --> 08:34 [SPEAKER_01]: At an age where many people might have retired, he continued to earn a living through physical work, hedge cutting, clearing brush, maintaining the boundaries between fields.
08:35 --> 08:41 [SPEAKER_01]: The kind of ordinary, repetitive labor that was essential to keeping the surrounding farms operating.
08:42 --> 08:54 [SPEAKER_01]: And while his murder would eventually become the subject of extraordinary speculation, contemporary descriptions of Walton offer little indication that he was regarded as an especially unusual figure.
08:55 --> 08:56 [SPEAKER_01]: He was elderly.
08:57 --> 09:01 [SPEAKER_01]: He was familiar to the people around him, and he was known for working the land.
09:02 --> 09:05 [SPEAKER_01]: By the time of his death, Walton was a widower.
09:06 --> 09:08 [SPEAKER_01]: He shared his home with his niece, Edith Walton.
09:09 --> 09:11 [SPEAKER_01]: The two lived together at Lower Quentin.
09:12 --> 09:16 [SPEAKER_01]: An Edith would become an important figure in the events surrounding his disappearance.
09:17 --> 09:23 [SPEAKER_01]: On the morning of February 14th, 1945, Charles left home to work in the fields near Mian Hill.
09:25 --> 09:28 [SPEAKER_01]: He was employed to cut back a hedge on land associated with a local farm.
09:29 --> 09:35 [SPEAKER_01]: His work took him to an area known as Hillground, a field situated on the lower slopes of the hill.
09:36 --> 09:38 [SPEAKER_01]: It was not an unfamiliar location.
09:39 --> 09:47 [SPEAKER_01]: Walton had worked in the surrounding countryside for years, and there was nothing particularly unusual about his assignment that day.
09:48 --> 09:52 [SPEAKER_01]: He carried the tools required for the job, including a billhook,
09:53 --> 09:57 [SPEAKER_01]: a curved cutting blade commonly used for trimming hedges and clearing vegetation.
09:58 --> 09:59 [SPEAKER_01]: He also had a pitch fork.
10:00 --> 10:06 [SPEAKER_01]: These were ordinary agricultural implements, tools that had been used by generations of farm workers.
10:07 --> 10:13 [SPEAKER_01]: But before the day was over, both would become central to a murder investigation.
10:14 --> 10:18 [SPEAKER_01]: As the afternoon passed, Walton failed to return home.
10:22 --> 10:25 [SPEAKER_01]: Eventually, she saw assistance from others in the village.
10:26 --> 10:32 [SPEAKER_01]: Among those who helped search for Walton were Harry Beesley a neighbor and Alfred Potter a local farm manager.
10:33 --> 10:36 [SPEAKER_01]: The search led them toward the fields beneath me on Hill.
10:37 --> 10:43 [SPEAKER_01]: And there, near the hedge where Walton had been working, they discovered his body.
10:44 --> 10:46 [SPEAKER_01]: The violence was unmistakable.
10:51 --> 10:52 [SPEAKER_01]: his injuries were severe.
10:53 --> 10:57 [SPEAKER_01]: In the tools he had carried into the field with him, had been turned against him.
10:59 --> 11:02 [SPEAKER_01]: The scene offered no immediate explanation for what had happened.
11:03 --> 11:05 [SPEAKER_01]: There was no eyewitness to the attack.
11:06 --> 11:08 [SPEAKER_01]: No one had come forward to identify the killer.
11:09 --> 11:14 [SPEAKER_01]: In the victim himself, could no longer explain why someone might have wanted him dead.
11:15 --> 11:16 [SPEAKER_01]: But one thing was clear.
11:17 --> 11:24 [SPEAKER_01]: Whoever had killed Charles Walton, had either encountered him in that field, or had known where to find him.
11:25 --> 11:32 [SPEAKER_01]: And that question would be coming increasingly important as investigators began reconstructing the final hours of his life.
11:34 --> 11:39 [SPEAKER_01]: In the aftermath of the murder, police began speaking with residents of Lower Quinton.
11:40 --> 11:45 [SPEAKER_01]: They wanted to know whether Walton had enemies, whether he had been involved in any disputes.
11:46 --> 11:53 [SPEAKER_01]: whether anyone had threatened him, and whether there was anything about his personal life that might explain such a brutal attack.
11:55 --> 12:01 [SPEAKER_01]: As with many unsolved crimes, later accounts would introduce conflicting descriptions of Walton's character.
12:02 --> 12:04 [SPEAKER_01]: Some portrayed him as quiet and unremarkable.
12:05 --> 12:08 [SPEAKER_01]: Others suggested that he had a reputation for being different.
12:09 --> 12:16 [SPEAKER_01]: There were even claims that he possessed unusual knowledge, or abilities associated with local folk traditions.
12:17 --> 12:20 [SPEAKER_01]: But those stories present a serious historical problem.
12:21 --> 12:28 [SPEAKER_01]: Much of what is now repeated about Walton's supposed connection to witchcraft comes from accounts written after his death.
12:29 --> 12:41 [SPEAKER_01]: And as the years passed, the distinction between what villagers actually believed in 1945 and what later writers claimed they believed became increasingly difficult to establish.
12:42 --> 12:48 [SPEAKER_01]: That distinction matters, because of Walton really had been regarded as a witch, or as
12:51 --> 12:54 [SPEAKER_01]: It might tell us something about the social tensions surrounding him.
12:55 --> 13:01 [SPEAKER_01]: But if those stories were exaggerated or invented after the murder, they tell us something very different.
13:02 --> 13:09 [SPEAKER_01]: They reveal how an unexplained act of violence can become the foundation for an enduring legend.
13:10 --> 13:15 [SPEAKER_01]: There was, however, one element of the case that would later become particularly significant.
13:16 --> 13:18 [SPEAKER_01]: The location, Mian Hill.
13:19 --> 13:25 [SPEAKER_01]: Rising above Lower Quinton, the Hill had long been associated with stories from the surrounding countryside.
13:26 --> 13:31 [SPEAKER_01]: And later accounts of the murder, it would become almost a character in its own right.
13:32 --> 13:42 [SPEAKER_01]: A place where supernatural forces were said to linger, where witches supposedly gathered, and where strange black dogs appeared before moments of tragedy.
13:43 --> 13:47 [SPEAKER_01]: Some of those stories could be traced to folklore recorded before Walton's death.
13:48 --> 14:02 [SPEAKER_01]: Others are much more difficult to verify, and one particular story involving a black dog and a man named Charles Walton would eventually become one of the most frequently repeated details in the entire mystery.
14:03 --> 14:08 [SPEAKER_01]: But whether that story actually can certain the murder victim is a question we will return to later.
14:09 --> 14:09 [SPEAKER_01]: For now,
14:10 --> 14:19 [SPEAKER_01]: It's enough to understand that the countryside's surrounding Lower Quinton possessed a folklore tradition that would prove irresistible to later writers.
14:20 --> 14:25 [SPEAKER_01]: A real murder had occurred in a place already associated with supernatural stories.
14:26 --> 14:33 [SPEAKER_01]: And once those two elements became connected, separating them would prove extraordinarily difficult.
14:34 --> 14:36 [SPEAKER_01]: For the residents of Lower Quinton, however,
14:40 --> 14:45 [SPEAKER_01]: It was the fact that someone had murdered a 74-year-old man in broad daylight.
14:47 --> 14:50 [SPEAKER_01]: The attack had taken place in an agricultural field.
14:51 --> 14:57 [SPEAKER_01]: The victim had been engaged in ordinary work, and the killer had apparently escaped without being seen.
14:59 --> 15:06 [SPEAKER_01]: Local police began their investigation, but the seriousness of the crime soon attracted attention from beyond war-workshire.
15:10 --> 15:17 [SPEAKER_01]: and the man sent to help investigate would later become one of the most recognizable figures associated with the case.
15:18 --> 15:28 [SPEAKER_01]: His name was Robert Fabian, an experienced detective whose subsequent accounts would play an important role in shaping the public's understanding of the murder.
15:29 --> 15:31 [SPEAKER_01]: Fabian would examine the physical evidence.
15:32 --> 15:33 [SPEAKER_01]: He would question witnesses.
15:34 --> 15:34 [SPEAKER_01]: He would consider
15:36 --> 15:42 [SPEAKER_01]: and he would eventually become associated with some of the strangest supernatural claims surrounding Charles Walton's death.
15:44 --> 15:47 [SPEAKER_01]: But when he arrived in Warwickshire, his task was straightforward.
15:48 --> 15:53 [SPEAKER_01]: Find out who killed Charles Walton and bring that person to justice.
15:55 --> 15:59 [SPEAKER_01]: What followed was an investigation filled with unanswered questions.
15:59 --> 16:01 [SPEAKER_01]: Questions about the murder weapons.
16:02 --> 16:05 [SPEAKER_01]: Questions about the people who had access to the field,
16:06 --> 16:11 [SPEAKER_01]: and questions about a man whose name would appear repeatedly in the police investigation.
16:12 --> 16:17 [SPEAKER_01]: Alfred Potter, the farm manager who had helped discover Walton's body.
16:18 --> 16:23 [SPEAKER_01]: A man who would soon find himself at the center of Scotland Yard's attention.
16:25 --> 16:35 [SPEAKER_01]: The murderer of Charles Walton had shaken the quiet village of Lower Quentin, a 74-year-old man had been killed while working alone in a field beneath me on Hill.
16:35 --> 16:38 [SPEAKER_01]: His body had been discovered by people who knew him.
16:38 --> 16:47 [SPEAKER_01]: The weapons used in the attack were ordinary farming implements, and somewhere in the surrounding countryside, a killer remained unidentified.
16:53 --> 16:56 [SPEAKER_01]: It was who had committed it, and why?
16:58 --> 17:01 [SPEAKER_01]: In February of 1945, Britain was still at war.
17:02 --> 17:09 [SPEAKER_01]: Police resources were stretched, and even ordinary criminal investigations could present considerable challenges.
17:10 --> 17:12 [SPEAKER_01]: But this was no ordinary crime.
17:13 --> 17:21 [SPEAKER_01]: The brutality of Walton's death, combined with the absence of an obvious explanation, attracted the attention of Scotland Yard.
17:22 --> 17:27 [SPEAKER_01]: And soon, one of its detectives would arrive in Warwickshire to assist the investigation.
17:28 --> 17:29 [SPEAKER_01]: His name was Robert Fabian.
17:31 --> 17:35 [SPEAKER_01]: Chief Inspector Robert Fabian was an experienced Scotland-yard detective.
17:35 --> 17:46 [SPEAKER_01]: He would later become a recognizable public figure through his writing and the television series, Fabian of the Yard, which drew upon his experiences investigating crime.
17:47 --> 18:01 [SPEAKER_01]: but in February 1945, he was dealing with a real murder, one without an obvious suspect, one without a clear motive, and one in which the available evidence would prove frustratingly difficult to interpret.
18:03 --> 18:09 [SPEAKER_01]: Fabian's job was to reconstruct what had happened in the hours between Walton leaving home and the discovery of his body.
18:10 --> 18:18 [SPEAKER_01]: That meant examining the scene, interviewing witnesses, and establishing the movements of the people who had been near a hill ground that day.
18:19 --> 18:22 [SPEAKER_01]: And the first place to begin was with the victim himself.
18:23 --> 18:26 [SPEAKER_01]: Charles Walton had gone to work on the morning of February 14.
18:27 --> 18:32 [SPEAKER_01]: His assignment was to cut back a hedge in a field on the slopes of Mian Hill.
18:33 --> 18:35 [SPEAKER_01]: It was familiar work in familiar surroundings.
18:36 --> 18:39 [SPEAKER_01]: Yet sometime during that working day, someone had approached him.
18:40 --> 18:46 [SPEAKER_01]: an encounter had taken place, and Walton had been subjected to a violent attack.
18:47 --> 18:58 [SPEAKER_01]: The investigation needed to establish when that encounter occurred, who had access to the area, and whether the attack had been planned or had arisen from a confrontation.
18:59 --> 19:04 [SPEAKER_01]: There was another possibility too, that the killer had known Walton personally.
19:05 --> 19:13 [SPEAKER_01]: In a small village, where people were accustomed to recognizing their neighbors and the routines, that possibility could not be ignored.
19:15 --> 19:19 [SPEAKER_01]: The physical evidence presented investigators with a disturbing picture.
19:19 --> 19:23 [SPEAKER_01]: Walton's injuries included wounds caused by a sharp agricultural implement.
19:24 --> 19:30 [SPEAKER_01]: His billhook was associated with the attack, and a pit fork had been driven into his body.
19:31 --> 19:37 [SPEAKER_01]: The use of these implements would later become one of the most frequently discussed aspects of the case.
19:38 --> 19:48 [SPEAKER_01]: In particular, the pit fork would feature prominently, in theory suggesting that Walton's death was not simply a murder, but some form of ritual killing.
19:49 --> 19:55 [SPEAKER_01]: Yet, there is an important distinction between the physical evidence and the meaning subsequently assigned to it.
20:02 --> 20:04 [SPEAKER_01]: It is not by itself evidence of witchcraft.
20:05 --> 20:09 [SPEAKER_01]: Nor does the use of a farming implement establish a ritual motive.
20:10 --> 20:12 [SPEAKER_01]: Those interpretations require additional evidence.
20:13 --> 20:16 [SPEAKER_01]: That evidence would prove difficult to find.
20:17 --> 20:22 [SPEAKER_01]: What investigators could establish was that Walden had been attacked in the area where he was working.
20:23 --> 20:27 [SPEAKER_01]: The implements used in the assault were readily associated with agricultural labor.
20:32 --> 20:38 [SPEAKER_01]: There were no modern surveillance cameras, no DNA profiling, no comprehensive network of forensic databases.
20:39 --> 20:50 [SPEAKER_01]: Investigators in 1945, relied heavily upon witness testimony, physical traces, medical examination, and the careful reconstruction of events.
20:51 --> 20:55 [SPEAKER_01]: Every inconsistency mattered, every unexplained movement mattered.
20:56 --> 20:58 [SPEAKER_01]: And every person who had been in the vicinity
21:02 --> 21:04 [SPEAKER_01]: One of those people was Elford Potter.
21:06 --> 21:11 [SPEAKER_01]: Elford Potter was the farm manager associated with the land on which Charles Walton had been working.
21:12 --> 21:13 [SPEAKER_01]: He knew the area.
21:14 --> 21:16 [SPEAKER_01]: He was familiar with the agricultural routines of the farm.
21:18 --> 21:22 [SPEAKER_01]: And he was among those involved in the search that ended with the discovery of Walton's body.
21:24 --> 21:28 [SPEAKER_01]: These circumstances placed him within the investigation from its earliest stages.
21:29 --> 21:39 [SPEAKER_01]: Potter would eventually attract particular scrutiny from police, but before considering the suspicions surrounding him, it's important to recognize a basic principle.
21:40 --> 21:43 [SPEAKER_01]: Being investigated does not establish guilt.
21:44 --> 21:50 [SPEAKER_01]: Nor does a person's involvement in discovering a body necessarily make them responsible for the death.
21:51 --> 21:52 [SPEAKER_01]: The police needed evidence.
21:53 --> 21:57 [SPEAKER_01]: They needed to determine whether Potter had an opportunity to commit the murder,
21:58 --> 22:05 [SPEAKER_01]: whether as a count of the day could be independently verified, and whether there was any credible motive connecting him to the attack.
22:06 --> 22:11 [SPEAKER_01]: And later accounts, Potter became one of the central figures in the mystery.
22:12 --> 22:14 [SPEAKER_01]: Questions were raised about his movements and statements.
22:15 --> 22:20 [SPEAKER_01]: Investigators considered whether there might have been tensions connected to Walton's employment.
22:21 --> 22:30 [SPEAKER_01]: in the possibility of an ordinary personal or workplace dispute, offered a very different explanation from the supernatural theories that would later dominate the case.
22:31 --> 22:34 [SPEAKER_01]: But suspicion and proof are not the same thing.
22:36 --> 22:41 [SPEAKER_01]: Whatever doubts investigators may have entertained, the evidence did not result in a prosecution.
22:42 --> 22:48 [SPEAKER_01]: Potter was not convicted of Walton's murder, and the identity of the killer remained
22:51 --> 23:00 [SPEAKER_01]: There is something particularly unsettling about an unsolved murder and a small community, and a large city and unknown attacker might disappear into a crowd.
23:01 --> 23:04 [SPEAKER_01]: The lower Quinton was a village, people knew one another.
23:05 --> 23:07 [SPEAKER_01]: They recognized familiar faces.
23:08 --> 23:10 [SPEAKER_01]: They understood the rhythms of agricultural life.
23:11 --> 23:16 [SPEAKER_01]: And the murder had taken place in an area where Walton was carrying out ordinary work.
23:16 --> 23:25 [SPEAKER_01]: If the killer had been local, it was possible that the person responsible, continued living among the very people, who were trying to understand what had happened.
23:27 --> 23:30 [SPEAKER_01]: That possibility must have weighed heavily on the investigation.
23:31 --> 23:36 [SPEAKER_01]: Police interviewed witnesses and sought to establish whether anyone had seen or heard something unusual.
23:37 --> 23:42 [SPEAKER_01]: But no decisive account emerged that publicly established the identity of Walton's attacker.
23:43 --> 23:47 [SPEAKER_01]: The investigation faced a familiar and deeply frustrating problem.
23:48 --> 23:51 [SPEAKER_01]: There was a body, there was evidence of violence.
23:52 --> 23:55 [SPEAKER_01]: There were people whose movements could be examined.
23:56 --> 24:01 [SPEAKER_01]: But there was no sufficiently supported explanation that would bring the case to a conclusion.
24:02 --> 24:08 [SPEAKER_01]: and the longer the investigation continued without an arrest, the more room there was for speculation.
24:11 --> 24:13 [SPEAKER_01]: So why would someone kill Charles Walton?
24:14 --> 24:17 [SPEAKER_01]: That was the question at the center of the investigation.
24:18 --> 24:19 [SPEAKER_01]: He was an elderly farm worker.
24:20 --> 24:23 [SPEAKER_01]: He had gone to work carrying the tools of his trade.
24:24 --> 24:26 [SPEAKER_01]: And he had been attacked with extraordinary violence.
24:27 --> 24:41 [SPEAKER_01]: was the murder of the result of a personal grievance, had a confrontation escalated into an act of rage, was there a dispute involving work or money, or was there some other motive that investigators never uncovered?
24:42 --> 24:53 [SPEAKER_01]: These possibilities were far less sensational than the idea of a witchcraft killing, but they were also the kinds of explanations that a murder investigation had to consider.
24:55 --> 24:57 [SPEAKER_01]: The violence itself could not answer the question.
24:58 --> 25:06 [SPEAKER_01]: A brutal murder is not necessarily a ritual murder, and an unexplained motive is not evidence of a supernatural one.
25:07 --> 25:14 [SPEAKER_01]: Nevertheless the absence of a clear explanation would eventually become one of the features that allowed the witchcraft narrative to flourish.
25:15 --> 25:21 [SPEAKER_01]: When a crime remains unsolved, people often search for meaning and the circumstance is surrounding it.
25:22 --> 25:27 [SPEAKER_01]: The location, the date, the weapons, the victims' reputation.
25:28 --> 25:35 [SPEAKER_01]: Details then might otherwise be regarded as incidental, can begin to take on extraordinary significance.
25:36 --> 25:43 [SPEAKER_01]: And in the case of Charles Walton, there was no shortage of material from which a supernatural story could be constructed.
25:45 --> 25:49 [SPEAKER_01]: Despite the involvement of Scotland Yard, the murder remained unsolved.
25:50 --> 26:00 [SPEAKER_01]: No one was brought to trial for killing Charles Walton, and the investigation ultimately failed to produce a publicly established account of who had attacked him in that field.
26:02 --> 26:10 [SPEAKER_01]: For Robert Fabian, the case would remain memorable, but the story did not end with the failure to identify the killer.
26:11 --> 26:16 [SPEAKER_01]: In the years that followed, Fabian would revisit the murder and accounts of his career.
26:17 --> 26:24 [SPEAKER_01]: And those later descriptions would contribute to the growing association between Walton's death and the supernatural.
26:25 --> 26:36 [SPEAKER_01]: It's here that the history of the investigation and the history of the legend begin to diverge, because the story that would eventually become famous was not simply then an elderly farm worker had been murdered.
26:37 --> 26:42 [SPEAKER_01]: It was that he had been murdered beneath a hill associated with witchcraft.
26:43 --> 26:47 [SPEAKER_01]: That his death had occurred on a date some writers would later regard as significant.
26:48 --> 27:00 [SPEAKER_01]: That the weapons used against him supposedly suggested a ritual, and that the surrounding countryside was home to stories of witches, curses, and mysterious black dogs.
27:01 --> 27:05 [SPEAKER_01]: But how much of that was actually connected to the crime, and how much had been added
27:08 --> 27:12 [SPEAKER_01]: To answer those questions, we have to leave the police investigation behind for a moment.
27:13 --> 27:28 [SPEAKER_01]: We have to travel further back into the history of Mian Hill, into the folklore of rural warwickshire, and into a world where the boundary between ordinary life and the supernatural was not always clearly defined.
27:30 --> 27:37 [SPEAKER_01]: Because long before Charles Walton was murdered, people had been telling strange stories about the countryside around a lower Quinton.
27:38 --> 27:46 [SPEAKER_01]: And one of those stories involved a mysterious black dog, a creature whose appearance was said to be an omen of death.
27:47 --> 27:52 [SPEAKER_01]: Most unsettling of all, the story was connected to a man, named Charles Walton.
27:53 --> 27:55 [SPEAKER_01]: But whether that man was the same Charles Walton
28:02 --> 28:07 [SPEAKER_01]: There's something about the English countryside that seems particularly well-suited to go stories.
28:07 --> 28:21 [SPEAKER_01]: Perhaps it's the age of the landscape, the ancient footpaths, the villages that have stood for centuries, or the rolling hills that seem to conceal the remnants of a world that existed long before the people who now inhabit it.
28:22 --> 28:28 [SPEAKER_01]: Across Britain, stories of witches, ghosts, and supernatural creatures have survived for generations.
28:29 --> 28:30 [SPEAKER_01]: Some were told to explain strange events.
28:31 --> 28:32 [SPEAKER_01]: others served his warnings.
28:34 --> 28:40 [SPEAKER_01]: And so others reflected the fears and beliefs of communities whose understanding of the world was very different from our own.
28:41 --> 28:47 [SPEAKER_01]: In Warwickshire, one particular hill would become associated with some of the darkest of these traditions.
28:48 --> 28:49 [SPEAKER_01]: Mian Hill.
28:50 --> 28:56 [SPEAKER_01]: Rising above the village of Lower Quentin, it was a familiar landmark to the people who lived and worked beneath it.
28:57 --> 29:00 [SPEAKER_01]: To Charles Walton, it was part of the countryside where
29:02 --> 29:06 [SPEAKER_01]: But in the folklore of the region, the hill was something else entirely.
29:07 --> 29:10 [SPEAKER_01]: A place where the ordinary world and the supernatural were said to meet.
29:11 --> 29:16 [SPEAKER_01]: And according to one legend, the hill itself had been created by the devil.
29:19 --> 29:26 [SPEAKER_01]: According to a local legend, the devil once became enraged by the presence of a religious community and the surrounding countryside.
29:27 --> 29:34 [SPEAKER_01]: Determined to destroy it, he gathered an enormous mass of Earth and prepared to hurl it towards his intended target.
29:35 --> 29:35 [SPEAKER_01]: But the attempt failed.
29:36 --> 29:40 [SPEAKER_01]: The Earth fell short, and where it landed, a hill was formed.
29:41 --> 29:42 [SPEAKER_01]: Me on Hill.
29:43 --> 29:51 [SPEAKER_01]: It's the kind of story found throughout Britain where unusual formations in the landscape were sometimes explained through tales of supernatural invention.
29:52 --> 30:00 [SPEAKER_01]: Hills, stones, and ancient monuments became associated with giants, saints, witches, and the devil himself.
30:01 --> 30:04 [SPEAKER_01]: These stories were not geological explanations in any modern sense.
30:05 --> 30:06 [SPEAKER_01]: They were folklore.
30:07 --> 30:11 [SPEAKER_01]: Ways of giving familiar landscapes a sense of meaning, danger, and mystery.
30:12 --> 30:16 [SPEAKER_01]: And Mian Hill was certainly not alone in possessing such traditions.
30:17 --> 30:24 [SPEAKER_01]: But the Hill's later association with the murder of Charles Walton would give these old stories a new and far more sinister significance.
30:25 --> 30:34 [SPEAKER_01]: Because in the decades after his death, writers would begin to connect Walton's murder to the supposedly supernatural history of the place where he had been killed.
30:35 --> 30:42 [SPEAKER_01]: And among those stories was won involving a creature that appears repeatedly in British folklore, a black dog.
30:44 --> 30:47 [SPEAKER_01]: Throughout the British Isles, there are stories of mysterious black dogs.
30:48 --> 30:51 [SPEAKER_01]: Sometimes they appear along deserted roads.
30:54 --> 31:00 [SPEAKER_01]: and sometimes on lonely stretches of countryside, where travelers are worn not to venture after dark.
31:01 --> 31:03 [SPEAKER_01]: Their names vary from region to region.
31:04 --> 31:08 [SPEAKER_01]: In parts of East Anglia, one such creature is known as black shock.
31:08 --> 31:17 [SPEAKER_01]: elsewhere, stories describe phantom hounds, spectral guardians, our ominous animals whose appearances believe to foretell misfortune.
31:18 --> 31:21 [SPEAKER_01]: Not every black dog and folklore is considered evil.
31:21 --> 31:22 [SPEAKER_01]: Some are protectors.
31:23 --> 31:25 [SPEAKER_01]: Others are simply mysterious.
31:26 --> 31:33 [SPEAKER_01]: But in many traditions, an encounter with a spectral black dog is understood as an omin of death.
31:34 --> 31:38 [SPEAKER_01]: And there is a particularly unsettling story connected to me on Hill.
31:39 --> 31:42 [SPEAKER_01]: A story recorded years before Charles Walton was murdered.
31:43 --> 31:54 [SPEAKER_01]: In 1929, the Reverend James Harvey Bloom published a collection of regional traditions, entitled folklore, old customs and superstitions, and Shakespeare land.
31:55 --> 32:00 [SPEAKER_01]: Among the stories he recorded was an account said to have taken place in 1885.
32:01 --> 32:08 [SPEAKER_01]: It concerned a young agricultural worker, a plowboy, and his name was Charles Walton.
32:09 --> 32:15 [SPEAKER_01]: According to the story, the boy was returning home from work when he encountered a mysterious black dog.
32:16 --> 32:19 [SPEAKER_01]: The encounter was not an isolated one.
32:20 --> 32:24 [SPEAKER_01]: Over a succession of evenings, the animal supposedly appeared again and again.
32:25 --> 32:29 [SPEAKER_01]: And then, on the final occasion, something even stranger happened.
32:30 --> 32:35 [SPEAKER_01]: The black dog was accompanied by the apparition of a woman, a woman, without a head.
32:39 --> 32:44 [SPEAKER_01]: And according to the account, the young man subsequently learned that his sister had died.
32:46 --> 32:51 [SPEAKER_01]: The implication was unmistakable, the black dog had appeared as warning, an omen of death.
32:53 --> 32:55 [SPEAKER_01]: Now consider the coincidence.
32:56 --> 33:03 [SPEAKER_01]: A story published in 1929 describes a young man named Charles Walton in countering a supernatural creature, Nirmian Hill.
33:05 --> 33:11 [SPEAKER_01]: 16 years later, an elderly farm worker named Charles Walton is murdered in the same general area.
33:12 --> 33:14 [SPEAKER_01]: It's an extraordinary connection.
33:14 --> 33:19 [SPEAKER_01]: And one that would prove almost irresistible to those attempting to explain the murder.
33:20 --> 33:22 [SPEAKER_01]: But there is a problem.
33:23 --> 33:30 [SPEAKER_01]: We cannot confidently establish that the Charles Walton described in Bloom's folklore collection was the same man who was murdered in 1945.
33:33 --> 33:38 [SPEAKER_01]: The geography is suggestive, and the ages are at least plausible.
33:39 --> 33:43 [SPEAKER_01]: But those details do not prove that the two accounts concern the same person.
33:43 --> 33:50 [SPEAKER_01]: Nor does the existence of a published ghost story establish that the events it describes actually occurred.
33:51 --> 33:55 [SPEAKER_01]: What we can say is that the black dog story existed in print before the murder.
33:56 --> 34:00 [SPEAKER_01]: And after Walton's death, it became one of the most frequently repeated supernatural
34:04 --> 34:13 [SPEAKER_01]: That distinction is important because the Black Dog may tell us far more about the history of the legend than it does about the identity of Walton's killer.
34:15 --> 34:20 [SPEAKER_01]: But the Black Dog was not the only story that would become connected to the murder.
34:21 --> 34:26 [SPEAKER_01]: There was another incident in Warwickshire's history, one involving a real killing,
34:30 --> 34:38 [SPEAKER_01]: In 1875, roughly 70 years before Walton's death, an elderly woman named Anne Tenant was attacked in the village of Longcompton.
34:40 --> 34:50 [SPEAKER_01]: Her attacker was a man named James Haywood, H-E-Y-W-O-O-D, who's surname also appears as Haywood-H-A-Y-W-O-O-D in some accounts.
34:51 --> 34:53 [SPEAKER_01]: Haywood believed that Tenant was a witch.
35:00 --> 35:02 [SPEAKER_01]: he attacked her with a pitchfork.
35:03 --> 35:04 [SPEAKER_01]: Tenid died from her injuries.
35:05 --> 35:09 [SPEAKER_01]: Unlike the murder of Charles Walton, this was not an unsolved crime.
35:10 --> 35:17 [SPEAKER_01]: The attacker was identified, and the motive was tied directly to his belief that the victim had practiced witchcraft.
35:18 --> 35:26 [SPEAKER_01]: The killing provides a disturbing reminder that accusations of supernatural wrongdoing could have very real consequences.
35:27 --> 35:33 [SPEAKER_01]: long after the famous witch trials of earlier centuries, belief in witchcraft could still inspire violence.
35:34 --> 35:40 [SPEAKER_01]: But when the story of Antenid became connected to Charles Walton's murder, something interesting happened.
35:41 --> 35:47 [SPEAKER_01]: Later retelling sometimes described the two deaths, as though they had occurred in almost identical circumstances.
35:48 --> 35:52 [SPEAKER_01]: The same kind of weapons, the same supposed ritual
35:57 --> 36:02 [SPEAKER_01]: Yet, the historical evidence does not support the claim that the murderers were exact duplicates.
36:03 --> 36:05 [SPEAKER_01]: The details of Tenid's death were different.
36:06 --> 36:11 [SPEAKER_01]: And some of the similarities repeated later accounts appear to have been exaggerated.
36:12 --> 36:14 [SPEAKER_01]: What remained was a compelling narrative.
36:15 --> 36:18 [SPEAKER_01]: Two murders in the same region, both involving pitchforks.
36:19 --> 36:22 [SPEAKER_01]: One known to have been motivated by a belief in witchcraft.
36:23 --> 36:24 [SPEAKER_01]: The other, unexplained.
36:26 --> 36:32 [SPEAKER_01]: It was enough to encourage speculation, but it was not enough to establish a connection between the crimes.
36:34 --> 36:38 [SPEAKER_01]: As the story of Charles Walton's murder developed, another claim began to circulate.
36:39 --> 36:48 [SPEAKER_01]: That Walton himself had been regarded as a witch, or more precisely as someone believed to possess dangerous supernatural abilities.
36:49 --> 36:53 [SPEAKER_01]: In some versions of the story, he was said to have the power of the evil eye.
36:53 --> 37:02 [SPEAKER_01]: inability, according to traditional superstition, to bring misfortune upon another person through a glance or an act of ill will.
37:03 --> 37:05 [SPEAKER_01]: The evil eye is not unique to England.
37:06 --> 37:12 [SPEAKER_01]: Beliefs resembling it can be found across the Mediterranean, the Middle East, and many other parts of the world.
37:13 --> 37:19 [SPEAKER_01]: In rural communities, accusations of harmful magic could sometimes arise when crops failed,
37:24 --> 37:30 [SPEAKER_01]: And in later accounts of Walton's life, he was accused of precisely these kinds of activities.
37:30 --> 37:37 [SPEAKER_01]: Some stories claim that he kept toads, not merely as animals, but as creatures associated with witchcraft.
37:38 --> 37:44 [SPEAKER_01]: Others suggested that he could cause livestock to become ill or interfere with the success of a harvest.
37:45 --> 37:49 [SPEAKER_01]: There were even attempts to connect the poor agricultural conditions of the previous year
37:54 --> 37:55 [SPEAKER_01]: But, we need to be careful here.
37:56 --> 37:59 [SPEAKER_01]: These accusations are part of the folklore surrounding the murder.
38:00 --> 38:02 [SPEAKER_01]: They're not proof that Walton practiced witchcraft.
38:04 --> 38:11 [SPEAKER_01]: And the evidence that his neighbors genuinely regarded him as a dangerous supernatural figure before his death is far from conclusive.
38:13 --> 38:19 [SPEAKER_01]: It's entirely possible that some of these stories were exaggerated or became attached to him after he was killed.
38:20 --> 38:26 [SPEAKER_01]: What matters most is that over time, Walton was transformed in the popular imagination.
38:26 --> 38:31 [SPEAKER_01]: He was no longer simply an elderly agricultural worker who had been murdered.
38:32 --> 38:42 [SPEAKER_01]: He became a mysterious figure, a man supposedly feared by his neighbors, a man whose death might have been connected to the ancient superstitions of the countryside.
38:43 --> 38:50 [SPEAKER_01]: And once that idea took hold, the violence of the murder itself began to acquire a new interpretation.
38:51 --> 38:56 [SPEAKER_01]: Perhaps some suggested, Walton had been killed because someone believed he was a witch.
38:57 --> 39:05 [SPEAKER_01]: Or perhaps the murder had been intended as a ritual, a sacrifice, an attempt to restore fertility to the land.
39:06 --> 39:09 [SPEAKER_01]: But those explanations were speculation.
39:10 --> 39:15 [SPEAKER_01]: and the surviving evidence does not establish that Charles Walton was killed for any supernatural reason.
39:18 --> 39:26 [SPEAKER_01]: There was one more detail that would become central to the supposed ritual interpretation, the date, February 14th, Valentine's Day.
39:27 --> 39:30 [SPEAKER_01]: To most people, the date is associated with romance.
39:30 --> 39:36 [SPEAKER_01]: But some later writers pointed to its proximity to the ancient Roman festival of Lupercalia.
39:37 --> 39:40 [SPEAKER_01]: Lubricalia was traditionally observed on February 15th.
39:41 --> 39:46 [SPEAKER_01]: It was a Roman religious festival involving purification rights and the sacrifice of animals.
39:47 --> 39:54 [SPEAKER_01]: In some interpretations of the Walton murder, the date was treated as evidence that the killing had been connected to some ancient fertility ritual.
39:55 --> 39:56 [SPEAKER_01]: The theory was dramatic.
39:57 --> 40:00 [SPEAKER_01]: An elderly man murdered beneath a hill associated with witchcraft.
40:01 --> 40:03 [SPEAKER_01]: His blood spilled upon the earth.
40:07 --> 40:09 [SPEAKER_01]: and the crime committed near the date of an ancient festival.
40:10 --> 40:13 [SPEAKER_01]: But these details do not establish a ritual motive.
40:14 --> 40:17 [SPEAKER_01]: The murder occurred on February 14th, not February 15th.
40:18 --> 40:23 [SPEAKER_01]: There is no demonstrated connection between the killer and the observance of Lupercalia.
40:24 --> 40:30 [SPEAKER_01]: And the use of farming tools is unsurprising in a case involving a farm worker who is attacked while working in a field.
40:32 --> 40:36 [SPEAKER_01]: The supposed ritual significance of the date is an interpretation opposed upon the crime.
40:37 --> 40:41 [SPEAKER_01]: It is not evidence that the killer was attempting to perform an ancient ceremony.
40:42 --> 40:47 [SPEAKER_01]: Nevertheless, the association would become another powerful element in the legend.
40:48 --> 40:59 [SPEAKER_01]: In the idea that Charles Walton had been sacrificed as part of a pagan right, would eventually reach a remarkably influential audience, including the detective who had investigated
41:03 --> 41:09 [SPEAKER_01]: And later accounts of the investigation, Robert Fabian described an extraordinary experience of his own.
41:10 --> 41:16 [SPEAKER_01]: According to the story, he was walking in the countryside near Mian Hill, when a black dog appeared.
41:17 --> 41:18 [SPEAKER_01]: The animal ran past him.
41:19 --> 41:22 [SPEAKER_01]: Sometime afterward Fabian encountered a young boy.
41:23 --> 41:25 [SPEAKER_01]: He asked whether the boy was searching for a dog.
41:26 --> 41:28 [SPEAKER_01]: And when Fabian described the animal as black,
41:33 --> 41:36 [SPEAKER_01]: It was a scene that seemed almost perfectly designed for a ghost story.
41:38 --> 41:49 [SPEAKER_01]: A Scotland-yard detective investigating an unexplained murder, a countryside steeped in supernatural folklore, and a mysterious black dog whose appearance was said to foretell death.
41:50 --> 41:53 [SPEAKER_01]: But once again, the story presents a problem.
41:53 --> 41:55 [SPEAKER_01]: It's a retrospective account.
41:55 --> 41:59 [SPEAKER_01]: It's not independent proof that Fabian encountered anything supernatural.
42:00 --> 42:07 [SPEAKER_01]: Even if the incident happened exactly as he described it, the appearance of a black dog would not establish that the animal was a ghost.
42:08 --> 42:13 [SPEAKER_01]: Nor would the reaction of a frightened child prove the existence of a supernatural omen.
42:14 --> 42:19 [SPEAKER_01]: Yet as part of the growing legends surrounding Walton's death, the story was enormously effective.
42:20 --> 42:26 [SPEAKER_01]: The detective had apparently encountered the very creature associated with the murdered man's supposed past.
42:27 --> 42:31 [SPEAKER_01]: The old folklore and the modern investigation had come together.
42:32 --> 42:38 [SPEAKER_01]: And in the public imagination, the boundary between them became increasingly blurred.
42:40 --> 42:43 [SPEAKER_01]: There is a remarkable transformation taking place in this story.
42:44 --> 42:46 [SPEAKER_01]: A man is murdered, the police investigate.
42:47 --> 42:48 [SPEAKER_01]: No killer is identified.
42:49 --> 42:54 [SPEAKER_01]: And gradually, the unanswered questions surrounding the crime become filled with stories.
42:54 --> 42:59 [SPEAKER_01]: stories of black dogs, stories of witches, stories of ancient rituals.
43:00 --> 43:03 [SPEAKER_01]: Stories of a hill supposedly created by the devil himself.
43:04 --> 43:06 [SPEAKER_01]: Some of those traditions genuinely predate the murder.
43:07 --> 43:09 [SPEAKER_01]: Others appear in later accounts.
43:10 --> 43:13 [SPEAKER_01]: And still others may have changed as the story was repeated.
43:14 --> 43:20 [SPEAKER_01]: But once these elements were assembled into a single narrative, they created something more powerful than an ordinary
43:25 --> 43:27 [SPEAKER_01]: witchcraft murder of Charles Walton.
43:28 --> 43:35 [SPEAKER_01]: And perhaps the most unsettling aspect of that legend is not the possibility that supernatural forces were involved.
43:36 --> 43:44 [SPEAKER_01]: It's the possibility that the supernatural story became so compelling that it distracted from the much more ordinary question at the center
43:49 --> 43:54 [SPEAKER_01]: because somewhere beneath the ghost stories and accusations of witchcraft was a real person.
43:55 --> 44:01 [SPEAKER_01]: A 74-year-old man who went to work one February morning, a man who was violently attacked.
44:02 --> 44:05 [SPEAKER_01]: And a man whose killer was never brought to justice.
44:06 --> 44:12 [SPEAKER_01]: The folklore may explain why the case has remained famous, but it does not explain the murder.
44:13 --> 44:17 [SPEAKER_01]: And as we turn to the decades that followed, another question begins to emerge.
44:19 --> 44:27 [SPEAKER_01]: How did an investigation that failed to establish a ritual motive become one of Britain's most famous supposed examples of a cult murder?
44:28 --> 44:30 [SPEAKER_01]: That takes us back to Scotland, Yard.
44:31 --> 44:34 [SPEAKER_01]: Into the words of Robert Fabian himself.