On a cold February evening in 1945 the body of 74-year-old Charles Walton was found in a field of the Firs farm, in which he had been working earlier that same day. He was considered a recluse, and no one who lived in the Warwickshire hamlet could understand who would want to kill him, much less mutilate him.
Charles Walton was known to be a quiet man and a loner, who shared a thatch-roofed cottage opposite the village church with his niece in the hamlet of Lower Quinton. Despite suffering from rheumatism and using two walking sticks, he worked on and off doing odd jobs and lived off his small pension. His reputation as an honest, hardworking farm laborer left the authorities puzzled as to who would want to kill him, especially in such a brutal manner.
