Kenneth Stuart Dolden

Kenneth Stuart Dolden was shot in Epping Forest near Loughton whilst he was sitting in a stationary car with his fiancee on 9 November 1946.

His fiancee said, 'A man wearing a peaked cap and with the lower part of his face covered attempted to hit Dolden. When he had not succeeded, he fired three shots from a revolver'.

In a dying declaration that Kenneth Dolden made to a detective, Kenneth Dolden said, 'Man had a mask on. No idea who he was. He shot at me. He was wearing overcoat. I thought he was after the car. There was no other car anywhere when I drove under the trees'.

His fiancee was a 22-year-old art teacher who worked at Wanstead School and had known Kenneth Dolden, who had recently demobilised from the RAF, for several years. she said that after Kenneth Dolden was shot that she put him in the back of the car and then ran off until she saw another car with a man and a woman in it and explained what had happened and said that the man told her that he would telephone for the police, however, she said that after he went off she never saw him again.

The police said that they had not traced the gunman, nor the man that telephoned the police for assistance.

At his inquest on 13 November 1946 it was stated that when Kenneth Dolden had been shot that the gun had been pressed into his body, at point blank range. The Home Office pathologist said that his cause of death was shock from internal haemorrhage from firearm wounds in the chest and abdomen. His inquest, which concluded on 23 January 1947, returned a verdict of 'Wilful murder by a person or persons unknown'.

It was later suggested that his murder was a case of mistaken identity and that his murderer had thought that he was somebody else.