Scene: Lower Quinton in South Warwickshire, England. Population 493. A quiet village, settled in its ways, where everyone knows each other and strangers are not welcome—or so it seems.
On the morning of Saint Valentine’s Day 1945, Charles Walton a seventy-four-year-old farm laborer left his home at Lower Quinton to begin his day’s work. Walton was employed by Alfred Potter at Firs Farm. He was tasked with cutting down hedges at a field on the slope of Meon Hill. It was a cold morning. Mist slowly dispersed as the sun warmed the land. There had been a bad harvest in the previous year, it was hoped this summer would bring a better yield.
Potter later claimed he saw Walton working in his short sleeves at around lunchtime. He said Walton had an hour’s worth of hedge still to trim. He watched as Walton hacked away at the branches with his trouncing hook.
When Walton’s adopted niece Edith Walton returned from her work that night, she was surprised to find her uncle not yet home. Edith knew Walton did not like working late as he suffered from arthritis. She decided to go and look for her uncle. She enlisted the help of a neighbor, Harry Beasley, and the farmer Alfred Potter.
Climbing up Meon Hill, the three discovered Walton’s body. He had been brutally murdered. His trouncing hook was embedded in his neck. His blood soaked the ground. A pitchfork had been thrust through his head, puncturing eye and cheek. His trousers were undone. His shirt and jacket open. A large cross had been carved on his chest. It was later said natterjack toads were placed around his body. Walton’s death looked like a ritual sacrifice.
Charles Walton was a quiet man. He was feared by some and considered odd by others. It was said he could cast an evil eye which could blight crops and kill cattle. They said he could also talk to animals, tame wild dogs, and call birds from the sky into his hand. This led to the whispered accusation Walton was a witch.
Walton’s murder attracted the attention of the London press. The countryside was a remote, foreign land to those denizens of the city, who tended to view country folk as backward, filled with superstition, strange individuals who practiced pagan rituals and witchcraft.
The local constabulary were baffled by Walton’s murder. Scotland Yard was approached for assistance. On February 16th, Chief Inspector Robert Fabian, the Yard’s most successful detective, was dispatched to solve the crime.
Fabian decided to interview all of the inhabitants of Lower Quinton. However, he found the local residents taciturn and unwilling to cooperate with his investigation. He also discovered the only other murder to have previously taken place in the village had been in 1875 when a young woman Ann Tennant was similarly slaughtered with a pitchfork by a farm laborer James Heywood. Heywood claimed he had killed Tennant because she was a witch who had cast spells against him.
The ritualistic nature of Walton’s murder intrigued academic and Egyptolgist Margaret Murray. She traveled to the village to make her own inquiries. Murray was an expert on the occult and believed Walton’s death was a blood sacrifice carried out by a coven of witches.
Fabian believed he knew the perpetrator of Walton’s murder, but he had insufficient evidence to make an arrest. He returned to London. Walton’s murder remains unsolved to this day.
In 1970, Fabian wrote about Charles Walton’s murder in his memoir The Anatomy of Crime:
"I advise anybody who is tempted at any time to venture into Black Magic, witchcraft, Shamanism – call it what you will – to remember Charles Walton and to think of his death, which was clearly the ghastly climax of a pagan rite."So begins Rupert Russell‘s excellent documentary film The Last Sacrifice, which examines the events surrounding Charles Walton’s death. The film explains how this bloody murder in 1945 unleashed a new genre called folk horror leading to a slate of films like Plague of the Zombies, The Blood on Satan’s Claw, and most famously The Wicker Man.
By Paul Gallagher
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