The unmarried nurse found dead in the River Avon at Stratford had led a sheltered life until, suddenly in middle-age, she changed. She started smoking and drinking, taking endless pains with her make-up, drawing large sums of money from her Post Office bank account, and filling her address book with the names of men she was meeting.
On the night of her death, Saturday, April 24th, 1954, Olive May Bennett, 45, was seen drinking alone in the Red Horse Hotel in Bridge Street. Shortly before midnight she was seen again, standing outside the hotel as the streets around her emptied.
Next morning her body was found wedged against an obstruction on the banks of the river. She had been strangled with a long woollen scarf and her body was weighted with a 56 lb. tombstone wrenched from a riverside churchyard.
In 1962 two women told police that on the night of the murder they were in the churchyard with two men, one of whom threatened to push them in the river and weigh them down with a tombstone. The men have never been traced.