“Maniacal” was how police described the attack on George Stapleton, 66, as he crossed a field. Whoever killed the farm labourer must have come up behind him and hit him on the back of the head with a wooden fence post. The blow, and others delivered with the fence post, killed him.

Stapleton had his weekly wages in his pocket when he left his lodgings at the White Hart pub in the Bedfordshire village of Flitton on Friday, April 21st, 1939, the day he died. Most of the money was missing, and a bundle of unwanted clothes was found near the body.

Police reckoned the murder was the work of a tramp who lay in wait for the farm labourer knowing he had recently been paid.