Dorset Tales of Mystery & Murder

It is hard to believe that behind Dorset's idyllic exterior of rolling hills, quiet country lanes and pretty villages, there lies a history of murders and unexplained happenings.

Local author Roger Evans re-tells some of these gripping and ghostly stories, beginning with Martha Brown, who took an axe to her philandering and drunken husband John, Her public execution was witnessed by Thomas Hardy, the famous Dorset author who could never get the sight out of his head of her swinging back and forth in misty rain.

Other stories include the famous Rattenbury murder at 5 Manor Road in the East Cliff area of Bournemouth, a catalogue of murders perpetrated by Neville Heath whose last victim was found along Branksome Chine, the hair-fetish murders of Danilo Restivo and the case of arsenic poisoning in a cup of Oxo in Over Compton.

Altogether there are 20 tales ranging from the Bronze Age warrior dressed in furs and riding bareback who haunts Cranborne Chase to the discovery of a mass grave of mutilated bodies near the Dorchester to Weymouth relief road in 2007.

A5 softcover (96 pages)

Author: Roger Evans

ISBN 9781846742972