IT was likened to the Judas kiss of betrayal. One moment he was embracing her, the next he was fatally knifing her.

“Oh my God, I have killed her – the only girl I ever loved,” Maxwell Pugsley told police on arrest.

It was almost 50 years ago that the labourer stood trial at Hampshire Assizes over the alleged murder of mother-of-four Pearl Steel at her parents’ home.

It was yet another version of the eternal triangle.

Steel had left her husband and set up home with Pugsley with whom she worked at a chicken factory. But when they could not find accomodation, she and three of her children went to live at her parents home.

However, she could not stand the situation and resolved to return to her husband who she confessed she did not love, for the sake of her family.

Pugsley accepted the situation and was leaving the house when Steel grabbed hold of his arm, pulled him back and kissed him. Moments later as they stood by the back door, he produced a flick-knife.

“With it, he stabbed Mrs. Steel in the arm, in the face and unfortunately in the heart,” prosecutor T G Kelloch told jurors. “She collapsed and Pugsley went out of the house. A few minutes later, he saw a police officer to whom he gave the knife, saying he had killed the only girl he loved.”

He submitted Pugsley had intended to kill Steel at her parents’ home in Aldershot because of his attitude that if he could not have her, no-one else should.

Pugsley, 22, told the court he was heartbroken when she told him she was returning to her husband and begged her to stay.

“The next thing I realised she was screaming and falling and I had stabbed her. I had no intention of causing her any harm.”

Pugsley pleaded not guilty to the murder that was alleged to have happened on December 13, 1965, but admitted manslaughter.

Putting forward a defence of provocation, George Poulson QC said the parting kiss should be taken in context, referring to the Judas kiss of betrayal which had put his mind into a blur but he was overruled by the judge, Mr Justice Streatfield who ruled such a finding was not possible.

Following a three-day hearing the following March, jurors found Pugsley not guilty of murder but guilty of manslaughter.

Sentencing him to 12 years’ imprisonment, the judge commented they had taken what might be thought “the merciful course” in their verdict.

“This was nonetheless a dreadful and serious crime. You killed that girl albeit in a frenzy with that dangerous, horrible weapon – that flick knife. It was a very dreadful, cruel and selfish thing to do.”