Little Pat: The Riddlesworth Evacuee Murder

＂This book offers a compelling analysis of a landmark murder trial in England, where a death sentence of a serving army soldier was one of the first to be commuted to imprisonment on mental health grounds by Winston Churchill’s Home Secretary. It also tells the heart-warming story of a local man’s determination eighty years on to honour the memory of the victim, a little girl named Pat, leading to her previously unmarked grave finally being adorned with a headstone.＂ - Nathan James

1940s rural East Anglia.

An evacuee walking through parkland to school. A soldier working in a nearby forest. War brought them together. Yet, so violent was the encounter, the evacuee stood no chance and New Scotland Yard were called in to investigate her murder.

The attacker, a troubled soul, who grew up bullying little girls, should have been inside borstal at the time of the attack. Yet, war offered an opportunity for his early release and the chance encounter with the evacuee. His subsequent trial at the Old Bailey reached into the upper echelons of Winston Churchill’s government, with the Home Secretary getting dragged in.

This book tells the true story of the Riddlesworth evacuee murder of 1942. It takes a balanced look at those involved; in the hope the reader brings their own conclusion as to whether the ultimate punishment was just. Newspapers across the nation updated their readers about the case, from investigation, to confession, to trial sentencing. Yet today, this story is largely forgotten, as is the victim.