IT WAS one of the most baffling cases police in Oxford had faced.

Warren Wheeler, 83, and his wife, Elizabeth, 79, were found battered to death in the living room of their home, the tumbledown Yatscombe Cottage at Boars Hill, 40 years ago in October 1973.

Both had been attacked with some kind of weapon. Mr Wheeler was lying on his back, his face covered in blood from a gash across his forehead. His wife was lying nearby.

Det Chief Supt Cyril Jones, head of Thames Valley CID, said at the time: “I have never seen a more savage attack. It was the worst I have come across in 27 years in the force. There were many blows.”

It appeared that Mr Wheeler had been attacked first and that his wife died about 12 hours later, having witnessed her husband’s death.

Bizarrely, after much painstaking work by police, a man confessed to the murders and was put on trial at Oxford Crown Court in July 1974.

But 34-year-old chef Kenneth Nairn was cleared after six days of evidence on the direction of the judge, Mr Justice Michael Davies, who described him as “an habitual liar, an habitual romancer and false confessor”.

Nairn, who had been arrested in Carmarthen in January that year, left the court with his mother, brother and nine-year-old son.

The judge said: “There is no doubt the defendant is an attention seeker. We know that this isn’t the first time he has confessed to committing a murder he didn’t in reality commit.”

Mr Wheeler spent 27 years in the Royal Navy as a stoker and was later launch engineer with Salter’s Steamers at Folly Bridge, Oxford. In later life, he became postman at Boars Hill.

He and his wife had lived at Yatscombe College for 35 years, but their home was rundown and had been condemned. It had no running water, no sink, no bathroom, no electricity and an outside lavatory.

The alarm was raised by neighbour Lily Berry, who noticed milk bottles and a newspaper had not been taken in as she went shopping. She told people in the shop. They went to investigate and called police when they got no reply.

Police used tracker dogs in their hunt for the murder weapon and other clues, staged a 14-hour road block questioning motorists, issued photofit pictures of suspects and took fingerprints from 10,000 men in the Boars Hill, Wootton and Sunningwell areas.

But the trail went cold and no-one has ever been brought to justice for the brutal murder of Mr and Mrs Wheeler.