The Meon Hill Murder, 1945

Unsolved Crime in Witch Country

M J Trow, M. J. Trow

• Publisher: Pen & Sword True Crime
• eBook ISBN:
  9781399066624
• Year: 2023

In the closing months of the Second World War, an old hedger was found bludgeoned and hacked to death in a Warwickshire field. His name was Charles Walton and the place was the little village of Lower Quinton, under the shadow of Meon Hill. They called in the local CID; they called in Scotland Yard; they interviewed hundreds of people; they asked thousands of questions. But somebody wasn't talking. The whole village was silent, as if someone had drawn down a blind. After the case was scaled down, the rumors remained. Was Meon Hill the center of a witches' coven? And was old Charlie Walton, with his ability to talk to birds and toads and his magic watch, a witch himself? For eighty years, the supernatural has hovered over the murder of Charles Walton, with vague, haunted memories of secret rites and black dogs. Even the dead man's grave has vanished. Rumor has been piled on innuendo, adding to the excesses of writers determined to make a supernatural mystery out of a very local tragedy, until the dead man himself has disappeared into a morass of hocus pocus. This is the first book to get past the nonsense, accessing original police files that say precisely nothing about witchcraft. Analyzing the facts from the time and removing the ever-more ludicrous layers of fiction, it gets as near to solving the mystery as we are ever likely to.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction Q: Where Am I? A: In the Village.
• Chapter 1 Caveat Lector! (Reader, beware!)
• Chapter 2 Valentine’s Day
• Chapter 3 There Was a War On
• Chapter 4 ‘The Work of a Maniac’
• Chapter 5 Calling in the Yard
• Chapter 6 ‘Murder by Person or Persons Unknown’
• Chapter 7 The Enemy Within
• Chapter 8 The Prime Suspect
• Chapter 9 Secrets of the Stones
• Chapter 10 Enter the Devil
• Chapter 11 Murder by Witchcraft
• Chapter 12 Séance on a Snowy Evening
• Chapter 13 The Crime That Dare Not Speak Its Name
• Bibliography
• Plates Section