Tommy Was Becoming Too Possessive

Audree Wilson, 18, was a factory filings clerk, living in a semi in Devon Avenue, Slough. She was in love, but her love was tiring. Although Trooper Tommy Walton, of the Royal Horse Guards at Combermere Barracks, Windsor, was still madly in love with her, Audree figured he was becoming much too possessive.

Walton guessed at her feelings. And the agony and the despair mounted inexorably inside him. When on OCTOBER 12th, 1954, she finally told him it was all over, he succumbed to a paroxysm of rage, pulled a knife from his jacket and jumped on her.

Frantically he drove the blade into her left breast, stabbing her again and again until she crumpled lifeless at his feet.

In a trance, his romantic dream finally shattered, Trooper Walton walked to a phone box and dialled 999 for an ambulance. But it was all too late for Audree.

At Birmingham Assizes two months later he cut a woeful figure, pleading insanity. The jury, though, found him sane and guilty and he was sentenced to hang.

Only days before the execution the Home Secretary decided to commute the sentence to life imprisonment. Eight years later, on December 15th, 1963,Walton walked out of Wakefield Prison a free man.