The curious case of Walter Rowland.
The curious case of Walter Rowland. Walter Graham Rowland had been convicted on the 16th of December 1946 of battering to death 40 year old Olive Balchin on a bomb site in Cumberland Street, Manchester on the 20th of October 1946, where her body was found by two schoolboys who reported it to the police. As officers searched the crime scene, they discovered Olive’s wartime identity card together with a blood stained hammer of the type used in the leather trade. Olive was a prostitute and Rowland was one of her known clients. Several witnesses described seeing a man fitting his description in the area with a woman on that Sunday night. One was Edith Copley, a waitress at the Queen's Café who remembered seeing Olive in the cafe between 10.30 and 11 p.m. on the night of the murder. Olive was in the company of a man carrying an oblong brown paper parcel. Edward MacDonald who ran a hardware shop reported that he had sold a hammer to a man wearing a dark suit and...