THE prisoner accepted a double shot of whisky after walking calmly to the scaffold.

The noose was placed around his neck, executioner Albert Pierrepoint pulled the lever, and the man dropped to his death.

So ended the life of Neville George Clevely Heath, a man described as "the most dangerous criminal modern Britain has known".

It has been 70 years since Heath's crimes, but many will still recall his name and details of the horror he brought to Bournemouth.

Born to a housewife and a barber in 1917, he had shown cruel behaviour from a young age.

He left school at 17 and soon afterwards joined the Territorial Army, meeting with prostitutes and turning to forgery to pay for his lifestyle.

A spell in Borstal followed, and Heath was released in October 1939, drafted into the army and posted to Cairo.

He was eventually forced out of the service for forgery and fled to South Africa, where he joined the air force and was made a captain.

While there, he met Elizabeth Pitt-Rivers, then 18, and the two eloped.

In 1944, keen to see action, he transferred to the RAF and joined a bomber squadron in liberated Belgium.

During a bombing raid over Holland in October of that year, his plane was hit by flak.

Heath ordered his men to bail out, but stayed behind to free the navigator, who had become trapped.

He was later dismissed from the RAF after beginning to drink heavily, and returned to South Africa, where Elizabeth announced that she wanted a divorce.

In February 1946, at the age of 29, he returned to the Britain.

Months later, his application for a civil pilot's licence was rejected as a result of his dismissal from the RAF.

It was then that Heath met Margery Gardner, a mother-of-one estranged from her alcoholic husband.

In June 1946, her body was discovered in a hotel room they had shared.

She had been bound, gagged and whipped.

Although police launched a manhunt for Heath, editors at newspapers up and down the country were instructed not to print his photograph over fears that an eventual trial may be prejudiced.

Wren Doreen Marshall, recuperating from measles at Bournemouth's Norfolk Hotel, had read the newspaper reports about the murder but did not recognise the captivating RAF officer who called himself Group Captain Rupert Brooke and invited her out for dinner.

While there were many alleged sightings of the murderer, Heath was staying in room 71 at the Tollard Royal Hotel and befriending holidaymakers.

On the night of July 3 and 4, Doreen, just 19, went missing and within hours, Heath was pawning her diamond ring at a shop in the Triangle.

He then visited the police station in Madeira Road, concocting a story to explain reports that he had been seen with Doreen, but was arrested when an officer noticed his resemblance to Heath's photograph, which had been circulated to police forces across Britain.

In his hotel room, police discovered a cloakroom ticket for Bournemouth station.

Inside the locker at the station was a suitcase containing a blood-stained whip.

Then, on July 7, a dog-walker saw a swarm of flies in the woods at Branksome Dene Chine.

Her father returned with her and discovered the body of Doreen Marshall.

She had been savagely murdered.

Once charged, Heath said he wished to admit both murders, but was persuaded to change his plea.

He told his barrister: "All right, put me down as 'not guilty', old boy."

The trial itself lasted three days, and it took jurors just an hour to find him guilty.

Old Bailey’s Crown Court 1 supervisor, William Bixley, had seen the trials of Crippen, Lord Haw-Haw, Haigh and Christie.

Yet he described the Heath trial as his most upsetting.

He wrote: “Heath seemed ostensibly so normal, and one had deep forebodings that only by a hair’s breadth did other seemingly decent and pleasant young men escape from the awful sexual sadism which, at times, makes man lower than any animal that walks or crawls on the face of the earth.”

Heath was sentenced to hang, and was executed at 9am on Wednesday, October 16.

According to author Sean O'Connor, before his death, Heath wrote to his solicitor: "I don’t know what time they open where I’m going, but I hope the beer is better than it is here."