A hedgerow on a hill. A winter field. And a 74-year-old man who doesn’t come home.

On 14 February 1945, in the quiet Warwickshire village of Lower Quinton, Charles Walton set out to cut hedges on The Firs farm. By dusk, he was dead — brutally beaten, slashed, and pinned to the ground with his own pitchfork.

Within hours, rumours spread that this was no ordinary murder.

Some called it ritual.Others called it witchcraft.The newspapers called it Britain’s strangest killing.

In this episode, we unpack one of the UK’s most unsettling unsolved crimes — the case that inspired The Wicker Man and became Chief Inspector Robert Fabian’s final investigation.

Charles Walton’s murder remains Warwickshire’s oldest unsolved homicide.

There is no grand memorial.Only a headstone in All Saints churchyard:“Killed on Meon Hill.”

Sources

• Darryl Howe, The Cotswold Murder Files: The Killing of Charles Walton

• Robert Fabian, Fabian of the Yard

• Vice News – “The Unsolved ‘Witchcraft’ Murder That Shocked Britain”

• Our Warwickshire – Local history archives

• Warwickshire Constabulary archival material

• Gerald Gardner, The Meaning of Witchcraft

• James Morton, The Who’s Who of Unsolved Murders

• BBC archival reporting