THE manhunt started quickly following the discovery of a woman’s body in the potting shed at the rear of her home in Birmingham.

A climate of fear gripped the area – children were kept indoors, normally busy streets were empty – as news spread of ‘The Halloween Murder’.

All the main roads around the city were blocked and police with tracker dogs were searching an ever expanding area around the murder scene in Queslett Road, Great Barr.

In one of the biggest manhunts since the war, officers were looking for Joseph Birch who had gone missing from St Margaret’s Mental Hospital, Great Barr.

They wanted to question him over the horrific murder of Cynthia Stride, described by neighbours as a “very quiet lady, well respected in the area”.

The 41-year-old was found slumped on the ground after her 13-year-old daughter Veronica had come home from school on October 31, 1956, and reported her missing.

She had suffered massive head injuries and in a basket a few inches from her head police found a bloodstained hatchet.

Police said they found signs of a struggle.

Birch was described as a “certified mental defective” and a “lone wolf” who had never tried to make friends with anyone at the mental hospital, which looked after 1,200 patients.

Originally from Wednesbury, he had been a patient at psychiatric hospitals for varying periods over the previous ten years.

For the previous week he had been allowed out on day release to work on gardens in the Great Barr area, carrying out chores for neighbours of Mrs Stride.

There was nothing unusual about the arrangement and for the previous six years, she had employed another patient from the hospital as a resident houseman and gardener.

When he left, Birch took over his duties leaving the hospital each morning for work – his principal duties were to mow the lawn and chop firewood – before returning at the end of the day.

On the day of the murder, he had been helping carry out work in the garden of Mrs Stride who ran a business as a chrysanthemum grower in her spare time.

Neighbour William Butler heard a woman wailing and screaming for about 90 seconds – “possibly the last agonising screams of the woman being murdered”, a court later heard.

As officers scoured the murder scene they found a small sum of money missing from a cash tin.

When he failed to return to the hospital, police quickly drew the connection with the murder of Mrs Stride and Birch’s details were flashed to police across the Midlands.

Hundreds of officers were drafted in from across the force and bobbies from neighbouring constabularies of Staffordshire and Warwickshire helped question road users.