Rotherham Technical College lecturer Bernard Walden, 33, fell head over heels in love with pretty, golden-haired Joyce Moran, a clerk at the college, who lived at Far Lane, East Dene. But Joyce laughed at his marriage proposal, because she fancied ex-student Neil Saxton, 20, of Handcross Crescent, Sheffield.

Shortly after 7.30 p.m. on April 7th, 1959, Walden was walking down a college corridor when he saw Joyce talking to Neil. There was no argument, no scene. Walden simply went to his locker, took out a revolver, returned to the place where the young couple were still talking, and shot them both dead.

He then left the college, drove off down Howard Street in his Ford Prefect car, and for the next 24 days eluded a nationwide manhunt, despite his pronounced limp caused by contracting polio as a teenager. Finally he was found by a policeman lying on a bench in Forbury Gardens, Reading.

Walden’s life had gone sadly wrong since he won a place at Wadham College, Oxford, from a grammar school, in 1945. Polio caused him to miss vital lectures, so that he graduated with a third-class degree in physics. He took various teaching jobs, but became increasingly embittered.

During his trial for the double-murder he announced that since he was a cripple he had a right to carry a gun “to put me on equal terms.” A psychiatrist said that Walden was suffering from chronic paranoiac development and was “grossly abnormal.”

Other medical experts, however, disagreed, and argued that this was a simple case of jealousy and unrequited love. The jury took that view too, and on AUGUST 14th, 1959, Walden was hanged at Armley Prison.