The young man stumbled into the public house with mud on his coat, shaking and dripping blood.  He ordered a half pint of ale; drank some, spilt a lot.  He ordered another, swearing as he did so, claiming he had fallen from his bicycle.  An alarmed landlady refused to serve him and told him to 'clear off'.  He left, leaving blood on the floor.  Later that night the police brought his girl friend to the public house on a cart.  They laid her lifeless and disfigured body in the coach house.

At first light on Friday, 30 October 1908, the police had a clearer view of the body in the coach house of The Maid's Head Inn at Catton.  The young woman had been attractive, now she was frozen in death with glaring face and shoulder wounds, her clothing heavily bloodstained.  Policemen studied what had once been beautiful.  She was of medium height, prettily dressed in a dark green skirt and bodice with dainty white gloves, all bloodied, wearing black stockings and a hat of chipped straw decorated with artificial flowers.  Her delicate complexion, now marred by a vivid wound, was topped by black eyebrows and a mass of black hair gathered loosely over her forehead.  She appeared to have dressed in her best finery.  All who saw her were moved by the tragedy that lay before them.  Comment was made upon the touching sight of a little bunch of flowers pinned to her left breast.  Those who commented were not to know that she had not placed that buttonhole picture there.

Her wounds were vicious.  In the neck and shoulder a gaping puncture wound was large enough to admit a finger up to the knuckle, and her face had been slashed downwards and across the right cheek to the corner of the mouth.  Blood had spilled from these wounds down her clothes, still oozing as she lay in the coach house.  Her pockets revealed a handkerchief, small key, packet of chocolates and a purse containing a shilling and two coppers.  She lay on a wooden cart, beautiful and distorted, and anonymous.  The Eastern Daily Press of that morning described her as a 'painful and horrifying sight'.

A young woman dressed in her best, looking her best, meant the company of a male friend, the police thought.  She had probably known her killer, pleading with him, hurting and dying in terror and without comprehension.  Her early identification would be everything to the investigation.  So it proved.  The power of spreading bad news soon offered an identity, to be confirmed at nine twenty-five that morning by the man who had killed her.

Eleanor Elizabeth Howard, sometimes called Ellen, more frequently Nellie, was nineteen years of age and lived with her grandparents at Radford Hall Farm at Hainford where they were in service.  The eldest of six children she had lived with her grandparents since childhood, a seemingly unforced and acceptable arrangement to all concerned.  Her mother had been employed as a cook at Hainford Hall.

Nellie, as we shall call her - as she called herself, had been in service in Norwich until eight months before her death. Described as 'a good, steady girl' she had been courting a young Norwich man named Horace Larter for just over two years, but in the past few months, possibly influenced by her grandparents, they had been seeing less of each other. Nellie had told her grandfather that Larter had threatened to shoot her if she went with anyone else.

Horace Larter was also nineteen years of age, presentable but rough in his manner, given to swearing and drinking.  He lived with his parents at Ber Street Gates in the city and worked in his father's business as a fish dealer, keeping a shellfish stall outside the Agricultural Hall at Bank Plain.

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