A YOUTH “of angelic appearance but of cunning that would deceive anyone”.

The damning words of Mr Justice Finnermore echoed around the panelled court room at Stafford Assizes as he read from a report describing baby-faced killer Trevor Aubrey Passey.

The 17-year-old had been convicted of the manslaughter of pretty teenager Rosemary Gough.

She had been strangled with her own scarf and her body dumped in a water-filled culvert.

Until then, the reasons how the “happy and cheerful” factory worker – “the girl who everyone loved” – had ended up cruelly killed baffled the close-knit community in Walsall.

The body of Rosemary was found half-hidden and pushed headfirst into the stagnant water of a flood culvert of a piece of waste land near to the Joseph Leckie council school on Monday April 20, 1953.

The grim discovery was made by Margaret Woodhams, a member of the school meals staff at Fullbrook central kitchens, which adjoined the school.

She told the Birmingham Gazette: “I was wiping steam from the kitchen window when I saw the body.

“Her head and shoulders were in the water of the culvert. She was dressed in a purple coat and a red shoe and a black skirt were nearby. It looked to me as though she had been carried to the spot.”

Miss Gough had been strangled.

A pink woollen scarf she had been wearing was tied so tightly around her neck with a reef knot that it could not be undone and had to be cut away.

“So tightly was it drawn that the pattern of the knitting was imprinted on to her neck,” Home Office pathologist J M Webster was to later say.

The discovery of Miss Gough’s body gripped the community and youngsters who left the nearby school at midday found the patch of land, known locally as The Spinney, guarded by police officers.

Firefighters were later drafted in to pump water from the culvert to help police in the hunt for clues. Miss Gough had been reported missing from her home, in Goscote Lodge Crescent, the night before by her worried family.

The focus of the police investigation instantly fell on the people who had last seen her.

One of those was Trevor Passey.

After walking out on a ten-year enlistment with the RAF, the 17-year-old, of Weston Street, Walsall, had landed a job as a dispatch clerk at the same factory where Miss Gough was employed as a clothes presser.

It was reported at the time that they had been going out for about a week before the tragedy.

On the fateful day, Miss Gough and a girl friend had tea at a relative’s house and had walked into the centre of Walsall, where they met Passey.

The friend later caught the bus home, leaving the couple together.

Passey had gone to work the following day. Hours after Miss Gough’s body had been discovered he was seen by Insp Charles Martin in a Walsall cinema.

Told that police were making inquiries into the death, he replied: “ My girlfriend has not turned up and she answers to the description of the girl in the papers.”

That night he was charged with Miss Gough’s murder.

The quick breakthrough gripped the town and the following day scores of women with shopping bags waited outside the magistrates’ court for a glimpse of the youth.