ANOTHER Bournemouth resident has come forward with memories of the Rattenbury murder case of 80 years ago.

Vera Head, now 95, was an office girl with the solicitor who acted for George Stoner – the man initially sentenced to death for the notorious crime.

Architect Francis Rattenbury was found with mortal head wounds at his home, Villa Madeira, in Manor Road, Bournemouth, in 1935.

His younger wife, Alma, had been having an affair with 18-year-old handyman Stoner. Each privately confessed to the murder but both denied the charge at an Old Bailey trial.

Stoner was convicted, but was spared the death penalty after a public petition. He was released to serve in World War II and lived in Redhill until his death in 2000.

Alma Rattenbury was acquitted but killed herself by the River Stour in Christchurch days after the trial.

Mrs Head, who lives in a care home at Bear Cross, was 15 and working for solicitor Marshall Harvey in Fir Vale Road when the murder happened.

“We didn’t have so many murders as we do today. It was quite an event. Everybody in the country knew about it,” she said.

She was among those who petitioned to save Stoner from the gallows. “I got quite a lot of signatures,” she said.

“I used to knock on people’s doors.”

Another Echo reader, Edna Travis, 89, recently told the Daily Echo how she had encountered a distressed Stoner the morning after the murder. She spoke to him many years later, when he said he would take the truth about the murder to his grave.

Mrs Head said: “It made me laugh that he said he’d take the secret to his grave because we all knew it was him.”

Bournemouth historian John Walker received a letter in 2001 from John Rattenbury, the couple’s son, who was a child at the time of the murder.

He was later sent to join Alma’s son Christopher in Canada, where Francis Rattenbury had designed the Parliament building.

John Rattenbury wrote: “It’s amazing to me that there is still so much interest in my parents. A few years ago I was in Victoria, British Columbia, for the 100th anniversary of the Parliament buildings. I was pleased to find that my father is now recognised more for his work than for his untimely end.”