A local businessman, Ethelbert Frampton, had opened the kennels two years earlier and there were normally between forty and fifty dogs housed there while being trained to become gun dogs. On that Thursday morning, kennel manager Ted Welham asked eighteen-year-old Deamen to locate Peter, a blind spaniel, who had wandered into a kale field across the road from the kennels. As Deamen searched for the dog, he heard the sound of a gunshot but, knowing that his boss often took pot shots at the pigeons or jackdaws that flew near his office, Deamen paid little attention to the noise. Having finally located Peter, Deamen walked back to the kennels with the dog, noticing as he approached that the door to the corrugated iron hut used as Welham’s office was slightly ajar, exactly as it had been when he had left it. However, when Deamen went into the office, things were far from normal. To his horror, the young kennel assistant found his boss sprawled unconscious on the floor of the hut with gunshot wounds to his head.
