It's a crisp winter's day in 1949 and police are swarming around the edge of Haldon Forest. They are erecting roadblocks to catch an escaped convict from the notorious Dartmoor Prison about 20 miles away.
A driver sees the cordons and panics. He has a guilty conscience and thinks they are looking for him. He puts his foot down and smashes through.
A police motorcyclist takes up the chase and the motorist loses control of his vehicle. When police drag him out it’s clear he isn’t the man they are looking for.
Read more:
No-nonsense judge has passed away
The bloody robbery and murder in Devon's 'Wild West' village
Sidney Chamberlain isn’t an escaped convict in a stolen car but he is a murderer. Three months later he is hanging at the end of a rope after being convicted of killing 15-year-old Exeter girl Doreen Messenger.
His trial in Exeter has largely been forgotten. The main question for the jury was whether Chamberlain was some sort of insane psychopath or just a cruel killer.
He wasn't the last man hanged in Exeter - that happened six years before in 1943 - but he was probably the last person from the city to be executed. The deed itself took place in Winchester.
Chamberlain was 27 when he married in Plymouth. He and his wife moved to Exeter and lived in Ellis Place, Heavitree, now somewhere at the back of the Co-op. He worked as a lorry driver and sometimes as a rag and bone man.
Doreen went to Bradley Rowe School until the age of 14, and then worked in the book binding department of Exeter printers James Townsend and Sons Ltd. Somewhere along the way their paths crossed.
It's unclear how much of the affair her parents were aware of. Chamberlain was twice her age and in the 1940s, like today, such a dubious pairing would be strictly illegal. To keep a low profile he regularly drove her out to a secluded spot close to Haldon.
Today, Beggar’s Bush is little more than a road junction and a place to walk the dogs through the woods. For a long time the rural route on the Newton Abbot to Exeter road was a notoriously dangerous bend for traffic.
On Friday, February 19, Doreen left her home in Meadow Way, ostensibly to go to the cinema in Teignmouth. Instead the pair stopped off at Beggar's Bush.
The next day, Alfred Spear, a council road worker, found Doreen’s body in a copse. Chamberlain had strangled her.
The police chase that led to his capture happened the next day. The first thought of officers was that he was guilty only of a driving offence. But searching his car they found a triangle of torn material. Checks showed it had come from Doreen's clothing.
The trial took place at Exeter Assize Court between June 16-17, 1949, in front of Mr Justice Jones. It was clear that only Chamberlain himself really knew what happened between the pair. Motive and the defendant's mental state became the main topics.
Why did Chamberlain kill the girl with whom he was known to be so deeply in love? He claimed she had asked him to kill her and that they had a suicide pact because they were being forced to break off their affair. His defence submitted that he had a mental age of only 11 and that the jury should find him guilty, but insane.
But the prosecution said he had become tired of the strain of keeping their relationship a secret and deliberately murdered her.
The judge told the jury that a low mental age was not the same as being insane. The verdict of the jury was that he was guilty of Doreen’s murder. Chamberlain was hanged on July 28 by Albert Pierrepoint.
