Age: 40
Sex: female
Date: 20 Oct 1946
Place: Cumberland Street, Deansgate, Manchester
Olive Balchin was beaten to death with a hammer at a bomb site in Manchester around midnight on 29 October 1946 and a man, Walter Rowland, was convicted for her murder and executed.
However, the case was controversial because a man, David Ware, confessed to her murder shortly after Walter Rowland was convicted, but before he was executed, and his confession was ignored by the courts and the Home Secretary after they concluded that it was false, and Walter Rowland was executed, but then, after some years, in 1951, David Ware went on to attack a woman in an almost identical manner saying that he was addicted to hitting women over the head.
see www.scribd.com
see Murderpedia
see Belfast News-Letter - Friday 07 December 1951
see Newcastle Journal - Saturday 17 November 1951
see Aberdeen Evening Express - Thursday 15 April 1954
see Dundee Evening Telegraph - Wednesday 26 February 1947
see National Archives - MEPO 3/2990, ASSI 86/9, MEPO 3/664, ASSI 52/589, ASSI 52/440, HO 45/25467, PCOM 9/731, HO 45/25466
see Unsolved 1946