Asked if he had anything to say before he was sentenced to death for murder, John Rusdell gripped the dock rail at Ruthin Assizes and replied: “There is another murder you may be interested in. I killed Mrs. Evans down at Coedpoeth four years ago. I was only 14 then. Regarding the motive for this murder, it was sex.”

So saying, Rusdell suddenly hurled himself at a woman sitting close to the dock and then, overcome with hysteria, had to be dragged to the cells below, his screams echoing around the courtroom.

Ten minutes later, pale but now composed, he was returned to the dock and sentenced to be hanged for the murder of Dilys Scott, shot dead at her farmhouse in Marchwiel, Denbigh.

The question then was, was he really responsible for the unsolved murder of attractive, 38-year-old schoolteacher Caroline Evans – on Saturday, October 6th, 1945?

Most Saturday nights Caroline left her home in Coedpoeth and took a walk to stay with her widowed mother, who ran the City Arms pub a mile or so away. While her husband went to bed at about 10 p.m. she would pack her overnight bag and set off in the darkness. This Saturday night she never reached her destination.

Her body was found in a thicket beside her usual path in a spot known locally as Dark Hollow. A nearby resident said he heard a piercing scream shortly after 10 p.m. Caroline was raped and strangled. Her clothing was torn and she was badly bruised – indicating she had put up a fierce struggle.

An hour after the murder a witness thought he saw an airman in the bushes, but all RAF personnel in the vicinity were eliminated from the investigation.

As for John Rusdell, he was reprieved three days before he was due to hang and jailed for life. Not long after that he was judged insane and sent to Broadmoor, where he killed himself by ingesting paint containing arsenic.

Detectives re-examining the case of Caroline Evans decided after a thorough investigation that Rusdell could not have killed her.