Dec 17 – Margaret Fleming, 18, who had learning difficulties, was last seen at her home in Seacroft, near Inverkip, Scotland. In June 2019 her carers Edward Cairney, 77, and Avril Jones, 59, were convicted of her murder and jailed for life. Jones was also found guilty of fraudulently claiming £182,000 in benefits by pretending that Ms Fleming was alive. Jones’ brother Richard saw her on 17 December 1999. She did not join the rest of the family for Christmas dinner the following week. On 5 January 2000 Jones told her mother that Margaret had run off with travellers. The authorities only became suspicious in October 2016 when concerns were raised about a benefits claim made by Jones on Ms Fleming’s behalf. A huge police search operation has failed to find any trace of Ms Fleming. When questioned Cairney said Ms Fleming had become a “gangmaster” and was also “buying and selling” drugs.Cairney later told the trial he had met Margaret in London two years ago. Cairney and Jones were detained on 25 October 2017 at Glasgow Central Station as they attempted to board a train to London while carrying £3,500 in cash.

October 3 – Samantha Barker was shot at her home in Brimington, Chesterfield, Derbyshire by her ex-boyfriend Lee Richardson, 30, who then shot himself dead.

June 21 – Todd and Stacie Bagley, from Iowa, were abducted and robbed after attending a Sunday church service in Killeen, Texas. Brandon Bernard, 18, was sentenced to death and was executed in Dec 2020. Christopher Vialva, 19, was also sentenced to death and was executed in Sep 2020. Vialva had shot the couple, who were then put in the trunk of their car. Bernard doused the car with lighter fluid and set it on fire. It was one of a series of federal executions ordered by President Trump during the lame duck period after the Nov 2020 election.

Feb 2 – Jeanette Kempton, 32, vanished from her home in Brixton, south London. Her partially decomposed body was found in a ditch next to the B1518 road at Wangford in Suffolk. She had been strangled. She lived with her ex-husband and their two teenage sons. She was last seen drinking in her local pub, The Loughborough Hotel, with a man “who was known to her”. The case is unsolved.

Dec 31 – Kirsty Bentley, vanished while walking her family dog near her home in Ashburton, New Zealand. Her body was found several weeks later in dense scrub. Her murder remains unsolved.

Nov 1 – Paul Edmonds, an east London gangster, was shot outside The Sultan pub in Plaistow, NE London. Tony Argent, 31, from West Ham, was jailed for life in June 1999. Edmonds’ friend, Mickey Kelt, had got into a row with Argent during a christening party. Edmonds was an associate of notorious east London gangster Davey Hunt.

Halloween – Karl Jackson, 21, a computer programmer, was shot dead after he confronted a gang in South Bronx, New York who threw eggs at his car. Curtis Sterling, 17, was jailed for life. He remains in jail. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/27/nyregion/27about.html?_r=0

Oct 12 – Steven Tynan and Damian Eyre, police constables, shot dead in Walsh Street, South Yarra, Melbourne, Australia, after being lured there to check an abandoned car. They were picked at random and killed in revenge after gangster Graeme Jensen was shot dead by the police. An associate of the infamous Pettingill crime clan, Jensen was best mates with “Flemington Crew” armed robbery gang leader Victor George Peirce. Also implicated was violent career criminal Jedd Houghton, later shot by members of the Special Operations Group while trying to avoid arrest, and a car thief named Gary Abdullah, also shot dead by police. Peirce, a nasty crook and sixth child to crime matriarch Kath Pettingill, was charged with the murders of Tynan and Eyre alongside half-brother Trevor Pettingill and associates Anthony Farrell and Peter McEvoy – himself a notorious stick-up man.

Peirce, Pettingill, Farrell and McEvoy were all eventually acquitted.

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/law-order/gangland-witness-jason-ryan-tells-why-he-put-his-life-on-the-line-to-dob-in-the-walsh-st-police-killers/story-fni0ffnk-1226745448263

June 16 – Leonard Harris, 73, was beaten to death during a robbery at his flat in East Finchley, north London. His wife Gertrude survived. Five weeks later Rose Seferian, 83, was killed during another burglary in Kensington. Michael Weir was convicted of Harris’s murder in 1999 but his conviction was quashed on appeal. Connections between the two deaths were not made at the time, after police failed to match Weir’s palm print to one recovered from Mr Harris’s flat in East Finchley, north London. In 2019 Michael Weir, by then 53, was retried under the so-called double jeopardy law when new forensic evidence came to light. He was jailed for life (30 years). Prosecutors believe Weir is “the first convicted man to be convicted twice”.

May 23 – Carmel Fenech, 16, went missing after a court hearing at Camberwell magistrates court in London with a man. Carmel, who was also known as Carmel Pendry, was a crack cocaine addict who had been living in Broadfield, Crawley, West Sussex. She had grown up in Peckham but her family moved to Crawley to try and get her away from drugs. She was reported missing five weeks after she was last seen but police did not open a murder investigation until 2002. She was half-Maltese.

March 19 – Phillip Lee, 55, a gay married barman, was stabbed at Otterspool Promenade, a notorious cottaging spot in south Liverpool. The case remained unsolved until 1999 when Roy Kristensen, 43, admitted to killing Lee while being questioned about a robbery. He refused to repeat the confession on tape but forensic fibre evidence – linking the victim to Kristensen’s car – led to his conviction in 2004. Kristensen was jailed for life (22 years).

Jan 30 – Qi Yuande was stabbed to death with daggers and cleavers in Xiangcheng city,  Henan Province, China. His wife Li Guiying survived. Their neighbour Qi Xueshan and his murderous gang fled the town the same day. They had attacked the couple because they feared Li – a low-level government official – would report them to the Chinese government. Li managed to track down one of the gang’s mobile numbers in 2011. In 2015 Qi and the others were finally jailed for life. http://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/latest-news/477625/Chinese-wife-witnesses-husband-murder-killers-jailed

Jan 1 – Ben Smart, 21, and Olivia Hope, 17, had been celebrating New Year at Furneaux Lodge in Marlborough Sounds, New Zealand. After the party they accepted an offer from a stranger to stay on board “his yacht”. They were last seen around 4am. They were reported missing the following day. Their remains have never been found. Scott Watson, then aged 26, was charged with murder, jailed for life (17 years). He maintains his innocence.

Dec 25 – Joanne Tulip, 29, was raped and stabbed 60 times at her home in Stamfordham, Northumberland. Steven Ling, a farm worker who was in his 20s at the time, was jailed for life (20 years) in Dec 1998 after admitting murder. A charge of rape was left on file. The tariff was later cut to 18 years. In 2022 the then justice secretary Dominic Raab rejected a request to transfer Ling to a lower security open prison, overruling a recommendation made by the Parole Board. Ling was due to have a public parole hearing in 2023.

Nov 4 – Stephen Savva, from Halewood, was shot dead in the Kebab House Greek Restaurant and Taverna in Liverpool. Bobby Chambi, 41, from Huyton, was jailed for life in June 1998. Chambi has been to the police that morning and told them he was going to shoot Mr Savva. Chambi had borrowed £20,000 and was hiding it from HMRC to avoid paying tax and VAT.

July 28 – Bulent Giritli, 24, a heroin dealer, was shot at a gaming club in Lordship Lane, Tottenham, north London. Mustafa Sungur, 34, was jailed for life in March 1998. Hidar Aksakal and Aleksakar Darman were both acquitted. The trial heard he was shot because he owed £54,000 to the Turkish mafia He was lured to a cafe in Lordship Lane where he was shot twice in the head at close range in a yard at the back of the premises. The reported drug dealer had failed to meet a deadline payment of £54,000 for three kilos of heroin in a deal which was in partnership with criminals based in Glasgow. Giritli, who was based in London, had been working with Mustafa Sungur and two other Turkish men through his partner in Scotland. There was already previous ‘bad blood’ after a previous deal had gone wrong after Giritli had received drugs but had not paid.Bulent Giritli was summoned to Glasgow and undertook to pay the £54,000. The trial heard Scottish gangster Paul Ferris, months before the murder, was paid by another Glasgow villain named Eric the Greek to come to London to recover £40,000 from Giritli for the previous debt. But Ferris was not able to recover the money for Eric the Greek because he could not track Giritli down. Sungur and his co-defendants gave a final deadline to Giritli when he was summoned to the Tottenham cafe, killing him when he was unable to pay. Sungur disposed of the Browning firearm, another pistol and a silence in the River Lea in Hackney Marshes, east London. Ferris, who was serving time for arms dealing by the time of trial, was forced to attend the proceedings after being called by the defendant’s barrister.

July 26 – Yusef Goksel, 48, a factory manager from Barkingside, was shot as he tried to stop an armed robbery (wages snatch) at KFA clothing factory in Hackney, east London. A thin black man with a goatie beard got away with £20,000. Unsolved.

July 23 – Eddie Robinson, 46, an antiques dealer, was stabbed at the Old England pub and staggered to a neighbour’s house in Clayton-le-Moors, near Accrington, Lancashire. His nephew Simon Robinson, 22, was charged with murder.

July 21 – Marc Lane-Martin, 30, a researcher for the UCW trade union, was stabbed in the heart by a mugger as he left a fish and chip shop in Du Cane Road, White City, west London. Delroy Snuggs, 19, was jailed for 12 years for manslaughter in May 1998. The trial heard that Lane-Martin gave a passer-by a description of his attacker before collapsing.

July 21 – Raj Posleay, 28, from Wolverhampton, died of head injuries during an attack on a fun day and was dumped in a boating lake at Walsall Arboretum in West Midlands. Mark Jackson, 26, his wife Deborah, 29, Mohammed Khan, 27, and Kulwarn Chagger, 24, went on trial at Stafford CC in Jan 1999. There were hung juries. Their trial at Oxford CC collapsed and all went free.

July 18 – Jodine Brown, 17, was drugged, beaten and strangled in her bedroom in West Heath, Birmingham. Her decomposing body was found covered in a duvet on her bedroom floor. Her mother Eileen made the grisly discovery when she returned home from a four-day break. Unsolved.

June 28 – A woman’s headless torso was found in Lakeview, Long Island, New York, near to Hempstead Lake State Park.The rest of the body has never been found.The woman had a heart-shaped peach tattoo with a bite taken out of it and two drips falling from the core on her left breast, which resulted in her nickname – the girl with the peach tattoo. She was never identified and no-one was ever charged with her murder.

April 3 – Jo Jung-pil, 22, a (male) college student, was stabbed to death in the toilet of a McDonald’s restaurant in Itaewon, an entertainment district in Seoul, South Korea.  Arthur John Patterson, 17, the son of an American military contractor, was arrested and his Korean-American friend, Edward Lee, was initially indicted on a murder charge, while they treated Patterson as an accomplice and indicted him on lesser charges, including destruction of evidence. Prosecutors did not offer a motive for the killing except to say the two friends were challenging each other to kill a man with a pocketknife. In the subsequent trial Patterson was sentenced to 18 months in prison. He was released in 1998 in an annual government amnesty. Lee was sentenced to 20 years in prison. But in 1998, in a retrial ordered by the Supreme Court,  Lee was acquitted for lack of evidence. In 1999, while prosecutors were reinvestigating the case, Patterson, by then the prime suspect, left South Korea because the government had failed to renew his travel ban. The case public memory of the case was reawakened in 2009 after the release of a popular movie based on the killing, as well as local television programs that exposed the bungling of the investigation. Patterson was finally extradited in 2011 and went on trial in 2015.

March 5 – Michel Mathieu was shot dead in Deauville, Quebec, Canada. A week later Sylvain Reed was killed in Sherbrooke. On Aug 12, 2001 Robert Leger was killed in Sainte-Catherine-de-Hatley. Five Hells Angels – Sylvain Vachon and his brother François; Yvon Vallières Tanguay; Claude Berger and Christian Ménard – were arrested in 2009 and charged with murder as part of Operation SharQc. But the case against them was dismissed in 2015 after Quebec Superior Court Justice James Brunton  criticised the time it had taken to disclose evidence. All five were freed.

Nov – Woman, 20, was killed in a house in Newsome, Huddersfield. Her two-year-old daughter was found alive and well in the house. The woman was killed by her former boyfriend Paul Peart, 25, who had been released from prison two days earlier. He immediately committed suicide.

Oct 6 – Paul Smith, 38, died in a fire at his flat in Croydon, south London. In October 2017 his flatmate Richard Curtin, then 50, walked into a police station and confessed to starting the fire. In March 2018 he was jailed for 10 years for manslaughter.

Aug – Gillian Bayne, 18, was killed and dumped in a well near Sterling, St Phillip, Barbados. The prime suspect, Cheris “Neil” Ince was arrested but released. He was arrested again in 2015 in connection with the murders of Marcelle Smith, 75, and Pearlene Hall.

Aug 25 – Caroline Glachan, 14, from Bonhill, was killed and dumped in the river Leven near Dumbarton, Scotland. In 2021 three people were charged with murder. They are Robert O’Brien, 44, Andrew Kelly and Donna Brand, both 43, who were teenagers at the time of the murder. Prosecutors claim O’Brien assaulted Caroline by punching, slapping her face and by placing his hands around her neck and compressing her throat several times between June and August 1996. It is claimed the three accused, “whilst acting together”, arranged to meet Caroline at a nearby bridge assaulted, shouted and swore at her and repeatedly punched and kicked her in the head and body. Prosecutors claim the trio threw bricks or “similar instruments” causing blunt force injuries to be inflicted to her head and body. Caroline was a pupil at Our Lady and St Patrick’s High School in Dumbarton and her friend Joanne Menzies was one of the last people to see Caroline at shops near her home at 23:54 on 24 August. She was last seen at about 00:15 when she walked down Dillichip Loan towards Dillichip Bridge, known locally as the Black Bridge – which no longer exists – and then on to the river tow path.

June 6– Devon Routier, six, and his brother Damon, five, were stabbed as they slept on the ground floor of the family’s home in Rowlett, a suburb east of Dallas. Devon was stabbed twice in the chest with such force that the knife almost went all the way through his body; Damon was stabbed half a dozen or more times in the back. Their mother Darlie Routier, who was 26, was convicted of first degree murder and sentenced to death. In Dec 2020 she was still on Death Row and protesting her innocence. Darlee, who was also sleeping downstairs, had two slice wounds in her right forearm and one in her left shoulder, and her throat had been cut. Doctors said she survived only because the knife stopped two millimeters short of her carotid artery. She claimed she was awakened by Damon’s cries of “Mommy! Mommy!” Darlie’s husband, Darin, who was sleeping upstairs with their infant son, Drake, came downstairs after hearing his wife’s screams and began administering CPR to Devon. By then, she said, the assailant had disappeared.

May 23 – Marcus Mitchell, 44, a British businessman from Surrey, was shot in the head in the town of De Haan in northern Belgium. Hilde Van Acker, who was 33 at the time, and her French boyfriend Jean-Claude Lacote fled to South Africa. Lacote became an editor on a reality TV crime show called Duty Calls, which was aired from 2000-2003. He was arrested in 2007 on suspicion of defrauding an Irish businessman but escaped from jail in Johannesburg in mysterious circumstances while awaiting trial. Van Acker was reportedly involved in the jailbreak. The pair then fled South Africa and vanished. They were eventually were arrested in December 2019 in the Ivory Coast and extradited back to Belgium. They had changed their names to Stephane Lacote and Marlene Lacote Vacker in order to avoid detection. They had been convicted in absentia of the murder and jailed for life. At their trial in 2011 prosecutors said Mitchell had borrowed money in the hope of making a lucrative business deal with Lacote and was murdered when he realised he had been cheated. The trial heard the couple had taken a ferry to the UK the day after the murder and that identity documents belonging to Mitchell were found on a beach at Lymington in Hampshire two days later.

Apr 14 – Mustafa Zarif, 32, from Kyrenia, northern Cyprus – garrotted and left in a shallow grave in Nineacres Wood in Essendon, Hertfordshire. Arkin Izzigil, 25, and Tan Onabasi, 21, were charged with murder and went on trial in July 1997. The trial heard Zarif had arrived in the UK in April 1995 and where he became well known in north London’s Turkish community. Police believed that he was introduced to his three killers after becoming involved in the heroin trade with a fourth man, Dervish Sehitoglu. Together Zarif, and his accused killers Mustafa Kuni, Arkin Izzigil and Tan Onbasi, resided on the Sandlings Estate in Wood Green, north London.In the run up to Zarif’s body being unearthed Sehitoglu was found in control of 40 kilos of heroin and arrested by police officers. He was sentenced to 15 years in prison, however, upon appeal, Sehitoglu’s sentence was reduced to eight years. In what is a rare occurrence amongst Turkish organised criminals, he also began talking to detectives. He told them Mustafa Kuni was “very big” in the heroin trade, conducting much of his business from a coffee shop in Philip Lane, Tottenham, north London. He went on to tell detectives that he had regularly handled as much as 250 kilos of heroin at a time with Kuni and that he was present when Zarif was murdered and his body dumped.

Sehitoglu became the chief prosecution witness in the murder trial, and maintained that while he was present at the murder, he was completely unaware the defendants had homicide on their minds. Without his evidence Kuni, Izzigil and Onbasi might never have been brought to trial. He placed the murder date at December 15, 1995, four months before the body was exhumed. Zarif was picked up in a car that evening on the pretence that they were going out for a meal. Instead, with Izzigil at the wheel and Zarif in the front passenger seat, they drove north when Kuni was seen to put some sort of wire around Zarif’s neck. Onbasi produced a gun as Izzigil stopped the car and Zarif was forced out and strangled until he was motionless. The shallow grave was already prepared. Putting forward a motive, Sehitoglu told the court that Zarif had made threats against Kuni and planned to rob him. Sehitoglu denied making the allegations to get his sentence further reduced.

Kuni moved to Northern Cyprus, beyond jurisdiction – the United Kingdom had no extradition treaty with Northern Cyprus. Meanwhile, Arkin Izzigil and Tan Onbasi were cleared of murder. Juries twice failed to reach a verdict following two expensive trials at the Old Bailey which required jurors to be given round the clock police protection. On the third occasion the Crown offered no evidence.

Dec 5 – Maureen Comfort, 43, killed at her home in Lincoln Green in Leeds city centre but her body was only discovered – in a cupboard – by her niece Senga Bailey on 8 January 1996. Her killers Christopher Moody and William Kerr were both jailed for life (14 years) in 1998. They had both lodged with her. Kerr was released to a halfway house in Hull in January 2015 but absconded in March. He was recaptured in April.

Sep 8 – Sallyann John, 23, a prostitute, vanished in Swindon, Wiltshire. She was treated as a missing persons inquiry until 2014. Three men, aged 50 and 52, were arrested in September 2015. Specialist officers conducted a three-day search of Ms John’s last-known address in Kimmeridge Close, in the Nythe area of Swindon. Her body has never been found.

July – Megumi Aoki, an 11 year old girl, who was having a bath, died in a fire in the Higashi-Sumiyoshi ward of Osaka, Japan. Her mother Keiko Aoki, 31, and her husband Tatsuhiro Boku, 29, were jailed for life. They were found guilty of setting their house on fire in a bid to kill the girl and collect on the life insurance. Aoki and Boku reportedly confessed to the crimes during their interrogations, but they both pleaded not guilty at their trial. They were released from Oita prison in 2015.

Dec 3 – John Sheppard, 66, manager of John Horwood bookmakers’ in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, was stabbed to death at around 5pm after all the other staff had left for the day and John was alone in the premises. The motive was robbery. John was repeatedly stabbed, believed to be with a knife, and was hit on the head, believed to be with a hammer. His body was discovered at 6.30pm. A £20,000 reward was offered in 2014 after it was revealed that fresh forensic evidence had been found. Another appeal was made in 2019. Unsolved.

Nov 16 –  Walter Hinton, a gay man, was killed at his house in Jacksonville, Florida. A 40-pound concrete block was dropped on his victim’s head while he slept, fracturing his face and jaw. A rag was then put in his mouth and he was smothered to death. Gary Bowles also killed John Roberts, 59, and Albert Morris, 38, in similar fashion in March and May 1994. Bowles told investigators he targeted the men because they were gay. He said that he had used his body since he was a teenager to get food, shelter and money and began “hustling gays,” although he hated having sex with them. Bowles pleaded guilty and was sentenced to death in 1996 and was executed by lethal injection, aged 57, in August 2019.  The authorities believe Bowles also killed Milton Bradley, 72, in Savannah, Georgia, Alverson Carter Jr, 47, in Atlanta and David Jarman, 38 in Maryland in 1994 in much the same manner as the Florida murders.

September 25 – Derek Sheerin, 24, was strangled with a belt and dumped on waste ground near the Celtic Social Club in London Road, Glasgow. Philip Morrison, 40, from Northern Ireland, went on trial in 2017 but was acquitted on the judge’s directions. Morrison’s DNA was found on the belt but the trial heard this could have occurred through secondary transfer, as the two men were staying in the same house and sharing clothes.

Sep 1 – Melonie Biddersingh, 17, was starved and abused for years, beaten, put in a suitcase and set on fire. The suitcase was left in an industrial area north of Toronto, Canada. Her father Everton Biddersingh has been charged with first-degree murder and went on trial in Nov 2015. Her stepmother Elaine Biddersingh will go on trial in April 2016. Melonie is thought to have weighed only about 50 pounds when she died. Melonie came to Canada from Jamaica in 1991 to live with her father and stepmother, but was never sent to school and was “treated like a slave.” Everton’s trial heard Melonie was subjected to abuse that included being kept in a closet, having her head placed in a toilet that was flushed, being chained to the furniture at times, being kicked and punched and being deprived of food.

March 6 – Omar Carrasco, 20, a soldier in the Argentine army, was beaten to death in military barracks of the city of Zapala in Neuquén province. Carrasco was the target of jokes and bullying and suffered a savage beating at the hands of three soldiers: Víctor Salazar, Cristian Suárez and Ignacio Canevaro. On his first leave, the family had decided to visit him and the officers told him that Omar was not there because he was a “deserter”. However, the relatives mistrusted that version and filed a complaint for his disappearance. Eventually in January 1996, the Federal Oral Court of Neuquén sentenced Second Lieutenant Ignacio Canevaro to 15 years in prison, while soldiers Cristian Suárez and Víctor Salazar were sentenced to 10 years in prison and Sergeant Carlos Sánchez received three years in prison for the crime of concealment.

Jan 26 – Tami Renee Jackson, 17, was stabbed 130 times, bound and run over by a car. Her remains were on an isolated area of Hutchinson Island in Savannah, Georgia. She was an 11th grader, who loved dance, music and played the trumpet at Calvary Baptist Day School in Savannah. Unsolved.

Nov 23 – Glenn Ford, 35, from Coventry, was killed in a former steel storage yard in Saltley, Birmingham. Police believe he was lured to the deserted factory before being shot several times at close range in the head and chest. Despite extensive inquiries, the investigation closed later that year without a breakthrough. The case was re-opened in October 2009 by a cold case murder review unit. Alex Neilson, 40, from Tile Hill in Coventry, Conrad Jones, 44, from Wyken, Coventry, Gurmit Singh Birring, 52, from Hartlepool, and Martin Singh Mattu, 41, were accused of murdering Ford but the charges against them were dropped.

September – Dawn Wisdom, 30, was strangled at her flat in east London. Her boyfriend Anthony Ayres, 27, was jailed for life. He was later released and in November 2015 was charged with strangling another girlfriend Kelly Pearce, 36, at her flat in Canvey Island, Essex.

Aug 31 – Tanja Groen, 18, a first year health sciences student, vanished on her way home from a party at the Circumflex student society in the Maastricht, Netherlands. She left the party around midnight to cycle home to her lodgings in Gronsveld but was not seen again. Her body has never been found. Crime reporter Peter de Vries helped generate a million euros in crowdfunding to investigate the case. He was shot dead in July 2021 moments after talking about the case at a TV studio in Amsterdam.

Aug 23 – William Bryan, 71, and his sister Anne Castle, 74, were tied up and beaten during a break-in at their flat in Bethnal Green, east London. She suffered a heart attack and he went into cardiac arrest. The case remained unsolved for almost 30 years. In November 2022 Danville Neil, by then 65, was jailed for life (32 years) for murdering Mr Bryan and the manslaughter of Ms Castle. The trial heard Neil pulled two wedding rings and two diamond rings from Mrs Castle’s fingers but failed to find £4,000 in cash, which had been hidden in old socks. At his trial Neil had accepted his DNA was found at the scene of the killings, but denied he had been there or knew the victims. He claimed an innocent explanation for the forensic link was that he had sold Mr Bryan binoculars at a car boot sale and it was the strap which was used to bind him.Neil had a string of convictions for some 15 burglaries between 1973 and 1998. In 1984, he carried out two home invasions in three months in which the occupants were physically assaulted. In that case the couple were beaten at their home in Penge. Jurors heard the victims had lived together in a flat in Bethnal Green since Mr Bryan was invalided out of the Army in 1945, with Mrs Castle being widowed in 1987.

August – Ann Castle, 74, and her brother William Bryan, 71, were found dead at a house in Bethnal Green, east London. A post-mortem examination held at Poplar Mortuary in 1993 gave Mrs Castle’s cause of death as ischaemic heart disease and said Mr Bryan died from asphyxia and ischaemic heart disease. But in 2022 Danville Neil, 63, was charged with both murders. He was also charged with burglary. He awaits trial at the Old Bailey.

July 25 – Greg Nicholson, 34, a drug dealer, his girlfriend Lori Ann Duncan, 31, and her two daughters Kandace Duncan, 10, and Amber Duncan, six, were all shot dead. Nicholson had cut a deal with the feds and agreed to turn state’s evidence. In November Terry DeGeus, 32, another drug dealer, was shot dead in northern Iowa. In November another drug dealer Dustin Honken, 25, a meth dealer, and his girlfriend Angela Johnson (ex-girlfriend of DeGeus) were later convicted of the murders. Honken was executed in 2020. It emerged at the trial that Johnson and Honken had made a video of Nicholson denying his previous police statements, but then bound and gagged the adults, forced the children to pack bags and walked them at gunpoint to their car. Johnson and Honken drove the four to a wooded area north of Mason City where Honken first took Duncan and Nicholson to an already dug grave and shot them execution-style. He then came back for the children and shot them, too. Honken was only arrested in 1996 when his co-conspirator Tim Cutkomp, turned state’s witness. In jail, Johnson made friends with Robert “Bobby” Gene McNeese, a career criminal doing a life sentence who was a prolific snitch. Saying he knew a “lifer” who might take the rap for her and Honken, McNeese convinced her to tell him details about the crime only a participant would know and to draw him maps to the bodies. Johnson was originally sentenced to death for her part in the crime but had her sentence reduced to life in prison.

May 3 – Ten people died in a fire in an apartment complex in Westlake, Los Angeles. Two of the dead were pregnant women. In 2017 three people were charged with 12 counts of capital murder. Johanna Lopez, 51, Ramiro “Greedy” Valerio, 43, and Joseph Monge, 41, were allegedly behind the arson attack. Lopez was a crack dealer and she hired the men, from the 18^th Street Gang, to get back at the apartment complex manager. Valerio was a “shot caller” with the Columbia Lil Cycos in the 1990s, a violent sect of the 18th Street Gang. The victims were mostly Mexican immigrants. Seven of them were children.

March – Barry Bradford was attacked in the grounds of Highwood Hospital in Brentwood, Essex. Lawrence Mullin stabbed him several times in the throat and chest, stripped him from the waist down and stamped on his head. He then threw mud over Mr. Bradford’s face and, in a sinister ritual, placed a single daffodil on either side of the dead man’s head. When police arrested Mullin they learned he had also attacked a 16-year-old girl in a similar random attack. Mullin was jailed for life and spent 21 years in prison. When he was released he returned to his native Barbados. On March 19, 2018 he allegedly murdered Laura Springer, 56, whose body was found at her home in the small town of Christ Church. https://sputniknews.com/europe/201804091063360179-convicted-murderer-charged-barbados/

Feb – Bulic Forsythe, a senior manager in Lambeth Council’s housing department was murdered in south London. In 2016 his death was reinvestigated by Scotland Yard. Those who knew Forsythe say he was worried about things he had discovered – and was considering going public. But nobody has ever been able to establish what he had discovered or whether this provoked his murder. Witnesses told the police they saw three men walking away from Forsythe’s flat, carrying bags of documents and files – shortly before his home was set alight. Forsythe’s body was inside – his skull had been fractured. He was reportedly about to blow the whistle on a paedophile ring. 

http://www.voice-online.co.uk/article/was-bulic-forsythe-killed-part-sex-abuse-cover

Feb – Eric Morro, 19, was shot and killed in Chicago. Thaddeus “TJ” Jimenez, 13, was convicted of murder and jailed for 45 years but his conviction was later quashed and he was paid $25m in compensation. Another teen admitted to being with the shooter at the time of the killing, but insisted that Jimenez was not the gunman. The teen said the actual killer was Juan Torres, initials JT, who subsequently confessed on tape. But in 2015 Chicago police claimed he was using the money to recruit for a notorious gang, the Simon City Royals. They were formed in the 1950s and get their name from Simons Park in the Humboldt Park district.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/09/01/from-wrongful-conviction-to-gang-kingpin.html?source=socialflow&via=twitter_page&account=thedailybeast&medium=twitter

Jan 14 – David Watkins, 30, a cannabis dealer from Reading, was lured to Searles Farm Lane, Pingewood, Berkshire, made to kneel down and shot in the back of the head. Andrew Everson, 54, from Weymouth, denied murdering Watkins and was cleared of murder in 1994. But after the double jeopardy law was scrapped he was free to be tried again. The court heard tests revealed a “close match” between fibres on Mr Watkins’ clothing and fibres used in the upholstery of a Peugeot 309 belonging to Mr Everson, from Weymouth. Watkins had run out of his supply and had believed he was going to purchase a large amount of the drug on the day his death. He left home with £6,000 in cash to buy drugs from a man known as Drew.

Dec 28 – Steven Clark, 23, vanished near his home in Marske, near Redcar on Teesside. He was last seen using the public toilets near Saltburn Pier after a family walk. In 1999 a handwritten letter was received by Cleveland Police. The writer of the letter came forward in 2020. Det Chief Inspector Shaun Page said finding its writer had been a “significant moment in the investigation”. In September 2020 Cleveland Police said a witness had seen Mr Clark later on Dec 28 near his home.

June 3 – The body of a female, dubbed “the woman with the flower tattoo”, was found against a grate in a river in Antwerp, with evidence showing she had been murdered. She remained unidentified until 2023, despite having a tattoo on her left forearm of a black flower with green leaves and with “R’Nick” written underneath. Belgian, Dutch and German police launched a joint appeal with Interpol in May 2023, Operation Identify Me, attempting to identify 22 women who are believed to have been murdered. It eventually identified her as Rita Roberts, 31, from Cardiff. She moved to Antwerp from Cardiff in February 1992 and last had contact with her relatives via a postcard sent in May that year.

Oct 12 – Bruce Bryan, the driver of Charlie Kray (brother of twins Ronnie and Reggie), was stabbed to death inside a club on the King’s Road in Chelsea, west London. Ronnie O’Sullivan senior, 37, who ran a string of sex shops in Soho, was jailed for life for murder and was released 18 years later. O’Sullivan had been on a drinking binge with a friend when he went “looking for trouble” at the club. He set upon Mr Bryan and his brother Kelvin, allegedly hurling racist abuse at the pair, who were black. But his son has always denied the attack was racially motivated and said: “He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time and it certainly wasn’t premeditated murder.” O’Sullivan’s son, Ronnie junior, became a snooker star.

Sep 28 – Andrew Bedford, 27, vanished in Ramsey, Cambridgeshire, vanished after eating some takeaway food. Detectives believe he was killed that evening with a shotgun at a nearby garage called Mongrel Cars, which no longer exists. In Jan 2016 eight men were arrested in connection with the murder. They were a 70-year-old man from Glatton, near Peterborough, a 52-year-old man from the Raunds area in Northamptonshire, a 47-year-old man from Sheerness, Kent, a 50-year-old man from the Ramsey area, a 43-year-old woman from the Peterborough area and a 62-year-old man from Ramsey on suspicion of assisting an offender and conspiracy to prevent lawful burial. A 45-year-old man from Letchworth, Hertfordshire, was arrested on suspicion of perverting the course of justice, and a 56-year-old man from Southampton was arrested on suspicion of murder and conspiracy to prevent lawful burial. They were later bailed.

Sep 8 – Maria Soledad Morales, 17, a student, was sexually abused and murdered in Catamarca, Argentina. Her boyfriend Luis “El Flaco” Tula, 29, was accused of her handing her over to Guillermo Luque, son of national deputy Angel Luque, who took her to a party in which Diego Jalil, Arnoldito Saadi and Miguel Ferreyra drugged her with cocaine and sexually abused her. In 1998 Tula was jailed for nine years for rape. Guillermo Luque was jailed for 21 years for murder.

Aug 3 – Ann Heron, 44, was last seen sunbathing in the garden of her home in Darlington, north-east England. Her throat was cut. Her husband Peter – who had discovered the body at 6pm – was charged with her murder in 2005 but the charges were later dropped. In 2020 investigator Jen Jarvie said she had identified Michael Benson, who died in 2011, as a “viable suspect”. Benson was an escaped prisoner with a propensity for violence including assault with a shotgun, robbery with a carving knife, and burglary. He also had a blue car and a blue car was seen outside the house at 4.45pm.

Jan 22 – Surinder Gill, an insurance broker, was hijacked as she drove in Lambeth, south London. He was stabbed 39 times and dumped in Hounslow, west London. He is believed to have been killed by the Holy Smokes gang. Unsolved.

Dec 22 – Terry Gooderham, 39, a pub stock taker and auditor, and his girlfriend Maxine Arnold, 32, an insurance clerk, were shot dead with a 12-bore shotgun in a Mercedes car parked in Lodge Lane, Epping Forest. The case is unsolved but there are several conspiracy theories surrounding it. One is that they were killed by the Adams family because Terry cooked some books or stole some money. The other is that the contract killing was carried out by Canning Town gangsters David Hunt and Jimmy Holmes.

https://theupsetterstrikes.substack.com/p/the-lovers-lane-murders?s=r

Aug 18 – Luis Carlos Galan, a journalist and Liberal presidential candidate, 45, was assassinated at a political rally in Soacha, Colombia. Ten other people were injured. General Miguel Maza Marquez, a retired police general, went on trial in 2015 for his role in the killing. Prosecutors claim he conspired with Pablo Escobar’s Medellin drug cartel. Escobar feared Galan would introduce an extradition law with the US. Galan was the favourite to win the election and was running on an anti-corruption ticket. Escobar’s top hit man John Jairo Velasquez, also known as Popeye, has claimed Maza and Escobar were enemies and would not have colluded.

March 22 – Ann Harrison, 15, was abducted on her driveway in Kansas City, Missouri while waiting for a school bus. She was raped and stabbed to death by two men in a stolen car. Her body was found in the trunk of the abandoned car three days later. Michael Taylor and Roderick Nunley were both sentenced to death. Taylor was executed in 2014 and Nunley in 2015. They had both been high on cocaine at the time of the murder.

Jan 4 – Junko Furuta, 17, high school student, was abducted, raped, tortured over 44 days and eventually murdered in Misato, near Tokyo, Japan. She was abducted in Nov 1988 and her body was found in a concrete-filled 55 gallon drum in March 1989. Her killers were Hiroshi Miyano, 18, Jō Ogura, 17, Shinji Minato, 16, and Yasushi Watanabe, 17. In 1990 Miyano – whose family had links with the Yakuza – was jailed for 17 years. He appealed but was then given an extra three years in jail. The other three were each sentenced to between three and nine years in jail. Several books and films have been made about the case, the details of which are horrific. http://www.strangetruenews.com/2013/05/japanese-horror-story-torture-of-junko.html

Jan 1 – Christiane Remacle, 19, raped and strangled as she headed home from a New Year’s Eve party in Belgium. e then strangled her with one of her own stockings. Frank Van Den Bleeken was arrested but was later deemed insane and therefore not criminally responsible. In 2015 he hit the headlines when he was cleared for euthanasia while in prison. But the euthanasia plan was turned down. He remains alive in prison.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/frank-van-den-bleeken-rapist-4922780

Feb 9 – Helen McCourt, 22, an insurance clerk, vanished after getting off a bus from work in Liverpool in her home village of Billinge, Merseyside. Ian Simms, a local publican, was jailed for life (16 years). In 2019, aged 63, he was released on parole despite never having given up the location of her body.

Dec 23 – Alice Rowley, 87, and her sister Edna, 77, were killed at their home at 98 Greswolde Road, a former corner shop building in Sparkhill, Birmingham. Alice had been strangled in the living room. Edna had been smothered, was discovered in her bedroom. The killer stole two boxes of chocolates, a bottle of Tia Maria and a radio cassette player. Case unsolved.

Oct 12 – Phillip Saunders, a newsagent, was robbed and beaten to death with a garden spade in an attack as he walked back to his home in Cardiff. Michael O’Brien, his brother-in-law Ellis Sherwood and a third man, Darren Hall, were jailed for life for murder. The trio were convicted solely on the basis of Hall’s false confession. They spent 11 years in jailed before being cleared by the Court of Appeal. The case became known as the Cardiff Newsagent Three, to differentiate it from another miscarriage of justice in the same city (the murder of Lynette White in Feb 1988), which became known as the Cardiff Three. Saunders’ murder remains unsolved.

August 21 – Lynda Hunter, 30, a social worker, vanished while walking her dog Shep near Carnoustie, Scotland. Her Vauxhall Cavalier Antibes car had been found parked in the centre of Manchester. Her husband Andrew was jailed for life for her murder. He had been having sex with a man and with other women and decided to kill his pregnant wife. He died of a heart attack on July 19 1993 in Perth Prison.

Dec 17 – Jimmy Allen was murdered at a flat in Romford, east London. His son Billy Allen, a Canning Town based businessman, was suspected in the underworld of being involved but was never charged and always denied any involvement. Unsolved.

Nov 1 – Ronda Morrison, 18, a clerk, was bludgeoned, strangled and shot at a dry cleaners in Monroeville, Alabama. The shop had been robbed of $35. Several months later police arrested Ralph Myers, 30, a career criminal, on suspicion of murdering a woman in nearby Escambia County. During his interrogation, police said that they had witnesses who would testify that he had committed the Morrison murder along with Walter McMillian, a 46-year old black man who was notorious in the community because he had a white girlfriend. Eventually Myers gave a taped confession in which he said that he drove McMillian to the scene of the crime and McMillian went into the building alone. Myers said he heard “popping sounds,” and when he entered the building he found McMillian, with a gun, standing over the dead body of Morrison and robbing her. McMillian was convicted and sentenced to death but his conviction was quashed in 1993 and he was freed. McMillian died in 2013.

Aug 13 – Christine Morton was beaten to death in the bedroom of her home in  Williamson County, near Austin, Texas. The night before she celebrated her husband Michael’s birthday at a restaurant with their three-year-old son, who had a congenital heart defect. The next morning, Morton left a note on the bathroom vanity expressing disappointment that his wife had not had sex with him but ended the note with the words “I love you.” He then left for work at about 5.30am. Later that morning her body was found in their bed. She had been bludgeoned to death with what appeared to have been a weapon made of wood. The sheets upon which she lay were stained with what was later determined to be semen. On 17 February 1987, Michael Morton was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison. The Innocence Project took up the case and demands DNA tests on the semen. The original prosecutor, Ken Anderson, refused but in 2011 DNA tests finally proved the killer was Mark Norwood, who had been convicted for the January 1988 murder of Debra Masters Baker in her Austin home. After spending nearly 25 years in prison for the murder of his wife, Michael Morton was released on October 4, 2011, and officially exonerated in December 2011. After his release, Michael Morton moved in with his parents in Liberty City, Texas, and later started renting a house in nearby Kilgore. In March 2013, he married Cynthia May Chessman, a member of the church he has attended since his exoneration. In 2013 Anderson was convicted of contempt to court (for concealing evidence) and was jailed for 10 days.

Jan 22 – Dr Danuta Kaczmarska, 53, was gagged with a towel, struck seven times with an axe, then set on fire in her home in Coniston Close, Hall Green, Birmingham. She was torched while unconscious. Burglary was not a motive as nothing had been taken from the Polish doctor’s three-storey property. Despite 150 officers conducting more than 6,000 interviews, her killer was never found. In 2022 Detective Chief Inspector Alastair Orencas, head of the cold case review team, said: ”The murder of Dr Danuta Kaczmarska does remain unsolved.”

Nov 29 – Gerard Hoarau, 34, an exiled politician from the Seychelles, was shot dead with a Sterling sub-machine gun on the doorstep of his home in Greencourt Avenue, Edgware, north London. His assassination is believed to have been ordered by the President of the Seychelles, Albert Rene. Hoarau was leader of the Mouvement pour le Resistence (MPR) opposition. Hoarau’s body was specially preserved in a zinc casket so one day it can be repatriated to Seychelles. In 2016 the Metropolitan Police reviewed the case and in August 2018 they arrested Ian Withers, 77, in County Antrim, Northern Ireland. “There is no evidence that links me to it whatsoever. I have got no idea who murdered him,” said Withers, who was not charged. Case remains unsolved.

Nov 10 – The bodies of a young woman and a little girl were found stuffed into a barrel in Bear Brook State Park in New Hampshire. Both had died of blunt force trauma to the head, yet police failed to identify the killer or the names of either victim. In 2000, a detective reopened the cold case, surveying the wooded crime scene. Not far away, another barrel was found with the bodies of two more young girls. DNA testing concluded that the woman from 1985 was related to at least two of the three children. Bizarrely, all four victims remain unknown to this day. Case unsolved.  http://unsolvedmysteries.wikia.com/wiki/Bear_Brook_Remains

July 21 – Kristina Wesselman, 15, was raped and murdered in Glen Ellyn, Illinois, while walking back from a local store where she had bought candy for her mother. The case remained unsolved until 2015 when DNA finally linked Michael Jones, 62, to the scene. He was charged with two counts of murder and one of aggravated sexual assault. Jones has a lengthy criminal record, which included domestic violence and a six year jail term for raping and kidnapping a 27-year-old woman. He awaits trial.

June 20 – Silke Garben, 10, was sexually assaulted and dumped in a stream near Detmold, Germany. She had been on her way to the dentist. British serial killer Robert Black is known to have been in Germany that year.

Neil Anderson, 50, antique restorer, beaten to death and set on fire in his office in Bermondsey, SE London. Roger Pellicci, 40, an odd job man and friend, was convicted of manslaughter and jailed for 3 and a half years.

Dec 9 – Peter Miller, 24, was stabbed to death in the kitchen of the family home in Great Yarmouth. His brother Tony said the absence of the evidence made any forensic breakthroughs unlikely and had “stolen” justice from the family. His brother Tony, a 54-year-old plumber from Gorleston, was originally arrested over the death but released soon afterwards. Investigations then led to a number of other arrests, but no-one was ever charged. In 2014 Norfolk Police admitted it had destroyed or returned 170 items in 1991, limiting the chances of a new cold case review based on forensic evidence. Tony Miller is furious and has complained. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-norfolk-35012148

Dec 8 – Lisa Hession, 14, was sexually assaulted and strangled as she walked home from a party in Leigh, Greater Manchester. Unsolved.

Aug 28 – Edna Harvey, 87, strangled and her bed set on fire at her home in Ipswich. Little is known about her movements in the days before her death and it is thought it was a burglary which went wrong. Unsolved.

Jan 12 – Gary Grant, 7, was bludgeoned to death with a metal pipe two blocks from his home in Atlantic City, New Jersey. His father Gary, a police officer, was working a night shift at the time. In 2016 he released a chilling audiotape which he believed could yield clues into who kidnapped and murdered his son. Mr Grant, by then 66, said that in March 1986 someone called the police and said: “Is it possible for me to collect a reward on my own self for the murder of Gary Grant?” The man said the call was not a prank and then boasted, “You’re never going to catch me,” before hanging up. Three months later, another person contacted police and named a suspect who he claimed confessed to killing the boy “because of his father.”

Dec 5 – Christopher Ainscough, 50, was found dead in Shoot-Up Hill, Kilburn, north west London. He was bludgeoned with a marble ashtray after they met on a night out in London. Anthony Kemp, who was 21 at the time, confessed to police in July 2021 after becoming homeless, telling police “I’m not going to sleep on the streets.” In Oct 2021 he was jailed for life with a minimum term of 15 and a half years. The court previously heard Mr Ainscough had invited Kemp back to his home in Kilburn in the early hours of the morning and was on the sofa when he was attacked. His body was found after the head waiter failed to turn up for work at a restaurant in the City. Kemp retracted his confession three days later after being released on bail and blamed the murder on his accomplice from an aggravated burglary in 1988, who had killed himself in prison. However, police matched Kemp’s DNA to that left on a cigarette butt in Mr Ainscough’s sitting room. He eventually pleaded guilty.

October 9 – Cynthia Bolshaw, 50, was killed at her home in Heswall on the Wirral, Mersyside. She had been strangled on the bed and then put in the bath. The case became known as the “Beauty In The Bath” case. In 1999 John Taft, who was 32 at the time of the murder, was jailed for life. Taft, a married double glazing salesman, was Bolshaw’s lover. He admitted he was with her on the day she died but insisted he did not kill her. He was convicted largely on DNA evidence as well as the statement of his ex-wife Susan, who says she saw him burning clothes on the day of the murder.

Sep 29 – George ‘Dod’ Murdoch, 59, a taxi driver, was garrotted with a cheese wire on Pitfodels Station Road on the outskirts of Aberdeen, Scotland. He had told his control room he was heading to Culter. In 2023 the police said they had made a breakthrough and had a DNA clue and offered a £20,000 reward. Unsolved.

August – Edna Harvey, 87, was strangled and her body set on fire at her home in Finchley Road, Ipswich. Case unsolved.

July 23 – Diane Jones, 35, vanished from her home in Coggeshall, Essex. She was not reported missing until nine days later. Her body was found in a copse next to the A1093 at Martlesham, Suffolk. She was two months pregnant. Her husband Robert was a doctor. He said he last saw at the front gate of their house, when she got out of the car to let him park it when they came back from the local pub, The Woolpack, where they were seen arguing. Unsolved.

http://www.eadt.co.uk/news/martlesham_coggeshall_new_details_emerge_in_diane_jones_murder_case_30_years_after_her_death_1_2292861

June 22 – Emanuela Orlandi, 15, vanished from the streets of Rome, Italy. Her body was never found. Various theories have been put forward, linking her to the Cold War, the mafia, to terrorists or to the Vatican. In Jan 2023 a Vatican prosecutor agreed to reopen the case. Alessandro Diddi ordered the first official inquiry, following a Netflix documentary series on the case which suggested she had been sexually harassed by someone close to Pope John Paul II.

May 10 – Nancy Argentino, 23, died of brain injuries after being struck against a hard object. Her boyfriend, Jimmy “Superfly” Snuka, an iconic professional wrestler and member of the WWE Hall of Fame, was only charged with third-degree murder and involuntary manslaughter in 2015. Snuka, by now 72, told several versions of events over the years, including a claim that Argentino fell by the side of the road when they stopped to use the bathroom. However, the autopsy notes that other injuries on the body, such as “scalp, facial and bodily bruises and abrasions” are “not consistent with a single simple fall.” He awaits trial.

Dec – Herbert Klein and Gabriele Humpert were shot dead on board a yacht, the Apollonia, as it sailed from the Canary Islands to the Caribbean, after a disagreement. Paul Termann, 43, a former soldier, was convicted of murder in his native Germany and jailed for life in 1982. But he was released in 2002 and in Nov 2019 the constitutional court in Karlsruhe ruled that he was entitled “to be forgotten”. He had sued after Der Spiegel and others carried online details of the murder case, which was a huge cause celebre in Germany in 1982. The media and search engines operating in Germany were ordered not to upload details of Termann’s crime. Totalcrime totally disagrees with granting anonymity to murderers and consequently will continue to publish his full name and details of the crime.

Nov 29 – Arnulfo Sanchez, his brothers Heliodoro and Ramon, and Ramon’s brother-in-law, Valente Galindo, illegal Mexican immigrants, were shot down as they walked down a stairwell at 2121 North Milwaukee Avenue, Chicago on Thanksgiving night. It was known as the Milwaukee Avenue massacre. Rogelio Medina, who had been wounded in the ambush, fled Chicago after the shootings. He was found slain in Mexico a month later. Rogelio Arroyo, 33, Isauro Sanchez, 31, Joaquin Varela 31, and Ignacio Varela, 50, were sentenced to death for murder but in 1990 their sentences were commuted to life by the governor, James Thompson. The trial was told there was a feud between the Sanchez and Varela families, who both came from Guerrero, Mexico. None of the defendants spoke English. Another survivor of the massacre, Leoncio Quezada, testified that the Varela group trapped the Sanchez family on the stairwell, pulled handguns and fired a barrage of at least 26 bullets.

Sep 14 – Constable John Proctor, 25, an officer in the RUC Reserve, was shot dead by the IRA as he arrived at the Mid Ulster Hospital in Magherafelt, County Londonderry where his wife was giving birth.  His family waited 30 years for an investigative breakthrough and it finally arrived when advances in forensics identified DNA on a cigarette butt recovered from the murder scene. In 2013 Seamus Kearney was convicted of murder and sentenced to life.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-65164519

Aug 13 – Carol Morgan, 36, was found dead at Morgan’s Store, a convenience store, in Linslade, Bedfordshire. A man and a woman, both in their 70s and from Brighton, East Sussex, were arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to murder in 2023.

June 6 – Nora Sheehan, 54, a psychiatric nurse, was last seen alive outside the South Infirmary Hospital, Cork, Republic of Ireland at 9:45pm. Her body wad found in Shippool woods, outside Innishannon, County Cork six days later. In July 2023 Noel Long, by then 74, was convicted of her murder at the Central Criminal Court in Dublin and jailed for life. He had a 1972 conviction for sexual offences. It was the oldest cold case conviction in Irish history.

May 20 – Lee Standifer, 23, a young woman with a mental handicap, was beaten and stabbed to death in Tennessee and his body was dumped in a wooded area near a pastor’s home. In 1982 David Earl Miller was sentenced to death and in Dec 2018, aged 61m he was electrocuted to death at a high security prison in Nashville. It was the second use of an electric chair in the US in just over a month, after it had not been used since 2013. Miller was physically and sexually abused as a child and living as a drifter in the early 1980s when a Tennessee pastor gave him shelter in exchange for sex. Described by a psychologist as a man consumed with rage, Miller exploded while on a date with Standifer. His time on death row was close to the 40 years endured by Gary Alvord, who died of natural causes in 2013 in Florida. Lee Standifer’s mother, Helen Standifer, told the newspaper The Tennessean that she would not be on hand to watch Miller die. “It’s taken so long, and I just want it to be finished,” she said.

June 6 – Anthony Bird, 41, a barman, was found dead at his flat in Kensington Square Gardens, south west London. He was naked and his wrists were bound. John Paul, 60, from Ladbroke Grave, was charged with murder in 2022 after he walked into a police station and confessed. He told an officer: “He approached me and just spoke to me and just talked me into having sex with him. He took me back to his place … I tied him with cord. I think the cord was black, I’m not sure. I tied him with a cord, his ankles, his hands, his arms, on the bed naked. There was a piece of wood … I used the piece of wood to batter him.” But he pleaded not guilty at trial. After being convicted of murder Bird was jailed for life (19 years).

Nov 5 – Ann Carryer, 39, and Elizabeth Blood, 39, were killed at a large detached house called the Boarded Barn in Scholar Green, near Congleton, Cheshire. Stephen Anderson, of Lockwood, Huddersfield, Paul “Spider” Hebel, from Almondbury, and Philip Jennings from Elland, eventually admitted murdering the two women and were sentenced to life (30 years) in prison. The case became known as The Boarded Barn Murders. The victims had gone to the house – the home of Mrs Blood’s mother – to clear it out but the three men had gone there to get £50,000 from the new owner.  Jennings raped Ms Carryer. Anderson was a national under 23 worldlifting champion and a known womaniser, nicknamed ‘Puss’ by the women he used to entertain.

May 20 – Helen Smith, 23, a British nurse, was found impaled on railings below the 6^th floor apartment of Dr Richard Arnot and his wife Penny in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Nearby was the body of a Dutch tugboat captain, Johannes Otten, whose body was also impaled on a spiked fence. Some of her injuries however, where not consistent with this hypothesis, as her father Ron Smith, a former police officer, found out from a second post-mortem he had to change UK law to get. He insisted the British police, the Saudi police and the staff at the British embassy lied and misdirected him to cover something up. Her body was finally cremated and scattered on Ilkley Moor in her native Yorkshire in 2009. Her father died in 2011. Her death remains a mystery.

June 29 – Bob Crane, an actor and director who was best known for his role as Robert E. Hogan in the hit TV showHogan’s Heroes, was found bludgeoned to death by a camera tripod in his apartment in Scottsdale, Arizona. The police could find no motive for the crime, there were no witnesses and no leads. Therefore, his death remains unsolved.

May 12 – Bill Simpson, 45, was shot dead at point blank range before being  set on fire in the tiny workshop he owned in Small Heath, Birmingham. Firefighters found him lying face down with his body partially tucked underneath a small van. He could only be identified using personal belongings found at the scene. An appeal was made to find three men, one white and two black who were seen in the garage two hours before Bill was found. Neither leads led to any arrests. Despite a huge manhunt, no one has ever been convicted.

May 4 –  Altab Ali, 24, a Bangladeshi textile worker, was stabbed as he walked home from work along Adler Street in Whitechapel, east London. The killers were three racist teenagers. Later at their trial they would say they attacked Ali because he was a “Paki”.

April 20 – Kennith Singh, 10, was stabbed to death on waste ground in Plaistow, east London. It is believed to have been a racist attack. Thought to be unsolved.

March 30 – John Connors, 85, a retired dentist, was bludgeoned to death at his home in  Lewis Road, Neath, south Wales. The prime suspect was seen running from the house and leaving in the back of a white car about 7.15pm. He became known as The Running Man. It is thought the killer was looking for money but Connors did not keep cash at home. Unsolved.

https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/murder-pensioner-john-connors-neath-25093869

Feb 22 – Alan Livesey, 14, tortured and stabbed to death at his home in Bamber Bridge, Lancashire. His mother Margaret Livesey, 43, was jailed for life for murder after she confessed to the crime. She recanted the confession a few days later. She was released from prison in 1989 and died of throat cancer in 2000, still maintaining her innocence. SEE MISCARRIAGES OF JUSTICE

Jan 20 – Lorraine Holt, three, was sexually assaulted and stabbed to death after wandering out of her garden in the snow in Sinfin Lane, Derby. Stephen Chafer, 17, who was related to her through marriage, had been out drinking during the afternoon and came across her sitting in the snow crying while he was walking to their house. He gave Lorraine some sweets and carried her to the grounds of the local vicarage, where he put his hand over her mouth and sexually assaulted her before stabbing her 39 times. He later pleaded guilty to murder and was jailed for life, before being released 23 years later in 2002. He was released in 2002, returned to prison in 2013 for arson – but then released again on licence in 2017. He changed his name to Stephen Leonard, and in 2018, aged 57, he was convicted of trying to kill a woman with dementia in Peterborough. emoved the fire alarms at his flat, part of a block of nine in Peterborough, and set it alight. He admitted arson with being reckless whether life would be endangered and was sentenced to 26 months in prison, but was released on licence on 9 August 2017. Then on 23 June 2018 he went to the home of Faye Mills, a 60-year-old woman with dementia whom he had known for about 15 years, in Peterborough. It was there that an argument over a garden rake “caused a flick of the switch in his head”, and he hit her over the head with the tool before grabbing a knife and stabbing her in a “frenzied” attack.He will be sentenced on Jan 4, 2019.

October 10 – Carol Wilkinson, 20, a bakery worker, was killed as she walked to work in the Ravenscliffe area of Bradford. Anthony Steel, a council-employed gardener thought to have worked nearby, was arrested 18 months later over her murder. He was jailed for life and spent 20 years in jail protesting his innocence. Mr Steel’s confession was later found to contain many inaccuracies and evidence linking him to the crime scene was considered unreliable. Psychological evidence obtained while he was in prison showed that he was of low IQ, had learning difficulties and was easily led and suggestible. The Court of Appeal eventually quashed his conviction as “unsafe” in 2003. He was released but remained in poor health and died, of a heart attack, aged 52, in 2007. It has since been suggested the real killer may have been Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper.

June 18 – Gurdip Singh Chaggar, 16, was murdered in Southall by a gang of white racists. Nobody was convicted of his murder. A National Front activist, John Kingsley Read, was charged with incitement to racial hatred after he referred (erroneously) to the murder as “one n***** stabbing another n*****”. Read was acquitted. Chaggar’s death sparked the 1979 demonstrations against the NF in Southall which led to the death of New Zealand-born teacher and protester Blair Peach.

June 4 – Gurdip Singh Chaggar, 18, an engineering student, was stabbed to death by two white youths in a racist attack in Southall, west London.

Jan 30 – Karen Klaas, 32, was raped and strangled in Hermosa Beach, Los Angeles. She was the ex-wife of Righteous Brothers singer Bill Medley. In 2017 DNA was used to identify the killer. He was Kenneth Troyer, who was killed by police in 1982. Authorities ID suspect in 1976 murder of Righteous Brothers singer’s wife

October 30 – Martha Moxley, 15, was last seen alive at the home of the Skakel family, across the street from her home in Belle Haven, Greenwich, Connecticut. Michael Skakel, also 15 at the time, was convicted in 2002 of murdering Moxley and was sentenced to 20 years to life. Moxley was reportedly flirting with and kissing Thomas Skakel, Michael’s brother. Her body was found beneath a tree in her family’s backyard. Her trousers and underwear were pulled down, but she had not been sexually assaulted. Pieces of a broken six-iron golf club were found near the body. In 2013 Skakel was granted a new trial by a Connecticut judge who ruled that his counsel had been inadequate. In 2016 Connecticut Supreme Court reinstated Skakel’s conviction. It reversed that decision in 2018 and ordered a new trial but in 2020 dropped plans for a retrial. The case attracted worldwide publicity, as Skakel was a nephew of Robert F Kennedy’s widow.

Aug 4 – Gary Shields, 6, vanished after going out to play football near his home in Knotts Fields, Tynemouth, near Newcastle. His body wad found in reeds on the banks of the river Tyne. A man confessed to killing Gary and was convicted of manslaughter due to diminished responsibility. But his conviction was later quashed after Kenneth Woodhouse confessed in 1975. Woodhouse, a convicted paedophile, was never charged with Gary’s murder.

July – A woman’s body was found in the dunes a mile east of Race Point Beach in Provincetown, Massachusetts, not far from ape Cod. The victim’s hands were severed at the wrist and taken to thwart identification. She had long, reddish-brown hair, and seven expensive gold crowns. She was between 25 and 35, possibly older. She weighed 140 to 150 pounds, and stood 5 feet 6 to 5 feet 8 inches. She had been dead for up to two weeks. The victim was dubbed “The Lady of the Dunes” but was never formally identified. Case unsolved.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2014/07/22/the-mystery-provincetown-lady-dunes-years-later/Oh3b9yOIWgvRCnqPV1WeHP/story.html

May 27 – Barbara Forrest, 20, was raped and strangled before her body was hidden on the fringes of Pype Hayes Park, Birmingham. A work colleague was later charged with the killing, but acquitted at trial after a judge heard there was no evidence to link him with the murder. The spokeswoman for West Midlands Police said the case was still in 2012.

October – Bronwynne Richardson, 17, a beauty queen, was raped and murdered after being abducted outside a church in Albury, New South Wales, close to the Victoria border. In 2014 Colin Newey, 62, was charged with murder but the charges were dropped in 2015.

Oct 14 – Eileen Cotter, 22, was strangled by a block of garages behind Hamilton Park, Islington, north London. John Apelgreen, from Sydenham, was charged with murder in 2022. He was by then 79. He was also charged with indecently assaulting another woman two years before Ms Cotter’s death. He is due to go on trial on 6 June 2023.

June 19 – Tina Garrington, 8, was abducted as she walked home from the swimming baths in Stourbridge, West Midlands at around 6pm. Her parents raised the alarm at 10pm. Brian Smith, originally a factory worker, had been on pre-release leave from prison. He was jailed for life.

Oct 12 – Barbara Mayo, 24, a trainee teacher from London, vanished while hitch-hiking up the M1. Six days later her body was discovered in woodland near Ault Hucknall, Derbyshire. She had been bludgeoned over the back of the head and garotted. DNA evidence had been left at the scene. Unsolved. In 2015 authors Chris Clark and Tim Tate suggested the killer could have been Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper.

April 7 – Tosir Ali, 50, kitchen porter at Wimpy in central London, was stabbed to death by two white skinheads outside his home in St Leonards Street, Bow, east London. The victim was Bengali (later known as Bangladeshi). His killers are believed to have gone on trial but the outcome is not known.

March 31 – Philip Green, 11, vanished after leaving his home in Sea Mills to collect golf balls on the nearby Shirehampton golf course near Bristol. His battered body found the following day. There is DNA evidence. Unsolved.

March 10 – Susan Long, 18, a worker at Norwich Union insurance company, vanished around 11pm after catching the last bus home to Aylsham from Norwich, where she had been out dancing. Her body was found in a puddle in a lovers’ lane. She had been raped and strangled. Police have the DNA of the killer.

March 8 – Jacqueline Ansell-Lamb, 18, vanished while hitch-hiking from London to Manchester. Her body was found six days later by a farmer in Square Wood, near Knutsford, Cheshire. She had been raped and strangled with an electric cord. Unsolved.

Feb 17 – Colette MacDonald, who was pregnant, was stabbed 21 times and clubbed about the head at her home in Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Her 5-year-old daughter Kimberley and 2-year-old daughter Kristen were also brutally killed. Colette’s husband, Jeffrey MacDonald, a US Army doctor, was jailed for life in 1979. He has always denied murdering his family and a book, called Fatal Vision, was written about the case. MacDonald claimed intruders on “acid” had killed his family. On the headboard of the MacDonalds’ marital bed, the word “PIG” was written in eight inch capital letters. The blood used to write this word was later determined to belong to Colette. In 2021 MacDonald, by then 77, appealed to be freed on health grounds – he has chronic kidney disease, skin cancer and high blood pressure.

March – Jackie Ansell-Lamb, 18, vanished while hitch-hiking from London to Manchester. Her body was found in woods at Mere, near Knutsford, Cheshire. She had been sexually assaulted and strangled. Unsolved. There has been speculation linking her to serial killers Peter Tobin and Peter Sutcliffe.

Jan 6 – Bernard Oliver, 17, vanished from home in Muswell Hill, north London, where he lived with his father and five siblings. His dissected body was found in two suitcases in a field in Tattingstone, Suffolk on 16 January. Unsolved.

April – Fred Craven, a bookmaker, was bludgeoned from behind with a hammer in Bingley, West Yorkshire. Unsolved. There have been suggestions the killer could have been Peter Sutcliffe, later known as The Yorkshire Ripper. The attacker roughly fitted Sutcliffe’s description and wore a distinctive denim ‘Donovan cap’, as worn by the then famous Scottish pop singer. Sutcliffe’s 16-year-old brother Michael wore such a cap and was questioned for two days by police before being released.