CHAPTER 9

The Airman Eric Stanley Pocock 1946

Constable Ronald John George Haunton was having a quiet enough night on Sunday 1 September 1946, when his beat took him into Friar Street, Reading at 11.45pm. It was then that he was approached by an airman in uniform, who was missing his hat, collar and tie.

The airman identified himself as twenty-one-year-old Flight Sergeant Eric Pocock and said he was stationed at Lasham. He went on to say that he wished to give himself up as he had just strangled a woman inside a shop at number 54.

Pocock was taken into custody and Constable Haunton called in for assistance. Some thirty minutes after Pocock had handed himself in, Constable Leslie Frederick Sawyer approached the confectioners and tobacconist’s shop at 54 Friar Street to check out the report.