TERROR may have killed a frail young woman as she walked across a patch of waste land near her home, posited police as they probed the terrible murder of the newlywed.

But what devilish appearance could have proved so unhinging as to have struck down 25-year-old Lillian Collins that cold December night in 1954?

The police investigation would later find the motive to be far more mundane.

But the case gripped the Black Country community and ended with a man sentenced to hang.

Mrs Collins was known to friends and family as a quiet but popular woman, devoted to her new husband, who worked at as a machinist at the Rubery Owen factory, in Moxley, near Wednesbury.

She had married sweetheart Raymond Collins at Moxley Parish Church that August.

The pair had met in Southsea three years earlier and honeymooned in a caravan in Bridgnorth before he returned to his base in Rosyth, Scotland.

During the following months, she wrote long letters to him and was even knitting him a jumper.

That fateful night of December 1, 1954, Mrs Collins left work as normal for the walk home with her colleagues Elizabeth Freeman and Joyce Collett, who described her as “happy” that evening.

However, Mrs Collins did not make it home.

Three hours later and worried for her wellbeing, her brother, Jack Lloyd, and brother-in-law Stanley Worrell began to search the streets by torchlight.

At 10pm they made the shocking discovery.

Recounting the moment, Mr Worrell told reporters at the time: “We found her lying beneath a wall on waste ground, but she apparently was not injured.”

Immediately, her husband was allowed leave. Arriving home he said: “I feel too sick and too numb to speak about it.”

A relative added: “Lillian’s death has cut Raymond to pieces. They were so very much in love.”

Within hours of the discovery of Mrs Collins’ body, Staffordshire police were convinced she had been murdered and a howling wind that night had drowned her screams. “She died from fright, there is no doubt about that,” one detective said.

Chief Det Supt Tom Lockley, head of Staffordshire CID and veteran of many murder hunts was drafted in to head the inquiry.

A squad of police officers, led by Insp Phillip Plumbley, cordoned off the murder scene. Officers used rakes and gardening forks to turn over the long grass covering the half-acre grounds, known locally as The Patch that led to the family home in Arden Place.

More than 200 detectives were drafted in to the investigation. The murder was briefly linked with a terrifying attack on another woman in nearby Coseley who was throttled with a clothes line during a robbery two days after the murder.