Most interesting unsolved non-serial killer cases

[sdreid]

The Gatton Mystery was a case where three young adult siblings were found murdered near Gatton, Australia in 1898. Micheal, Norah and Ellen Murphy were on their way home from a canceled dance when they were attacked by some person or persons unknown. The women had been raped. Micheal was beaten and shot while Norah was beaten, slashed and strangled. Ellen was beaten to death. The first I read of this was in Ripperana although I don't remember which issue.

[sdreid]

Shirley Collins was a teenage girl who was found naked and beaten to death outside of Melbourne, Australia in 1953. The weapons appeared to be beer bottles and slabs of concrete that were used to crush her skull. She'd boarded a train the evening before to go to a party. There's some indication that she accidentally got off at the wrong station and met up with the wrong party. Her actual date was seen at her intended destination waiting around for her but she never showed. I first read about this case in Colin Wilson's TEN STRANGEST UNSOLVED MURDERS IN HISTORY in The Book of Lists #2.

[sdreid]

Evelyn Hartley was a 15-year-old girl who vanished while babysitting at the home of family friends the week before Halloween 1953 in La Crosse, Wisconsin. A basement window was found ajar and a trail of blood ran into the yard of the residence. Some bloody clothing was later found but her body was never located. Her charge, a baby, was not harmed. Ed Gein has been mentioned as a possible suspect for this crime but it really doesn't look like his style to me. There is a chapter on this case in the book Getting Away With Murder.

[Tom_Wescott]

Hi Stan, thanks for that. Of course, I didn't mean for you to go over ALL the selections, just the more obscure ones, as you rightly guessed. Turns out I have read about the Shirley Collins case, although the others didn't ring a bell. What makes them so intriguing to you?

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[sdreid]

I guess I'm intrigued by the aspect of ordinary people unwillingly thrust into the extraordinary. Also, that the cases were not solved when it seems like they should have been - the injustice - the puzzle of who.

BTW - I believe that should have been Michael Murphy. My fingers went dyslexic for some reason there.

[sdreid]

Well, it's been about 8 weeks since the search of Lewis' residence with regard to the Tylenol case. Where's the beef?

[sdreid]

Does anyone know anything about the unsolved murder of 65-year-old Gertrude O'Leary on June 30 of 1939? Apparently she was beaten to death somewhere in the UK.

[mostfoul]

sdreid, found this:

Gertrude O'Leary 1949 Murder Unsolved

It is a sad fact of life that some murders go unsolved and that sometimes killers get away. However, nowadays new scientific techniques such as genetic finger printing offer a way of tracing the killers.

In the summer of 1949 the vicious murder of a well-liked, 66-year-old local licencee - Gertrude O'Leary - shocked the residents of Stokes Croft to the core. Her killer was never found.

Fred Dibble wasn't a happy . man. At the close of what had been a warmday he had called at his local off-licence in Thomas Street to buy a quenching bottle of beer only to find the Stokes Croft premises closed. But his initial annoyance turned to apprehension when he found that the door leading to the kitchen of the tiny shop was open. He looked inside, called out: 'Are you open Gert - it's well-past seven', but received no reply As time went on he became more perturbed and eventually decided to call the police.

Despite the mess they soon established that a gold wristwatch and a hand-worked gold pendant set with amethysts and pearls were missing. Theft, they soon decided, seemed to have been the killer's motive. Bristol CID - believing that the killer could strike again - decided to call in Scotland Yard, who sent newly-promoted DS Frank Long down on the afternoon train.

He soon had a profile of the victim, described by neighbours as a 'well-liked, friendly soul'. A devout Roman Catholic who attended mass at St Mary on the Quay, she was known for playing the piano at church social events. Until her sister, Kathleen's death in 1940, the two had run The Bell pub together in Hillgrove Street, but by 1949 unmarried Gertrude had established her own business at 13 Thomas Street, where the animal-lover was said to have lived a quiet life together with her cats. George's Brewery, who owned the off-licence, described her as 'a very popular tenant'.

The killer, police decided, had entered by a side door that afternoon and slipped upstairs in search of valuables while Gertrude was busy in the shop. As he came downstairs he must have been Busy: Officers on the case surprised by the licencee, panicked, and hit her with a beer flagon. He had then strangled her. About mid-afternoon a neighbour, Elizabeth Sealey, had heard a stifled scream and shortly afterwards seen a man wearing a trilby hat leave from the rear entrance of the off-licence and walk away across-some nearby wasteland. She was puzzled, she told police, by the fact that the back entrance, which Gertrude usually kept locked, was open.

There was no doubt, said neighbours, that in recent weeks she had become frightened by the behaviour of a man who had called at her premises several times over a short period of time. One of her customers. Pat Fowler, said that she had seen a short, shabbily-dressed man, with a swarthy complexion, being served in the shop. When he had gone Gertrude had told her that 'she did not like the look of him'. Detectives also questioned people about a man who had called at the shop some time previously whom she had, apparently, 'some difficulty getting rid of. It could very well have been the man, they thought, who had been going from door to door asking for lodgings in the area earlier that day.

Slowly a picture built up of a 'prowling stranger' that police were keen to interview. He was thin featured, aged about 45, five feet three inches tall, and was wearing a dirty mackintosh, down-at-heel shoes, and a dirty old trilby. He was well-spoken - but with an accent no one could place. Police believed that they would soon close in on the killer, when, after conducting a house-to-house inquiry, they found a pair of blood-stained trousers in a working men's boarding house nearby. But those inquires led nowhere. Then word came from Highbridge, near Burnham-on-Sea, about a foreign-looking man, who sitting drinking tea in a local cafe, had talked about the murder just eight hours after it had been committed. Customers said that he seemed to be well-informed about the incident, but had said that that was because he had been outside the shop when it took place. The man was never traced.

There was just one echo of this unsolved murder, when, seven months later, 46-year-old waiter, Allan McGough, was taken to Torquay police station for questioning by two Bristol detectives. He was held for 23 hours but finally released after police verified that he had been working in a Torquay hotel at the time of the murder. After solicitors had taken up his case Mr McGough was awarded £50 for wrongful arrest.

Interesting case.

[sdreid]

Thanks Mostfoul. A couple of limited sources I've seen say the crime occurred in 1939 but this account has a chronology that leads me to believe that it was 1949. This with the unsolved murders of Emily Armstrong in 1949 (or 1939?) and Margery Wren in 1930, have me wondering if there wasn't some "slow-motion" serial killer about who was targeting "elderly", single female business owners.

[mostfoul]

Interesting theory and certainly a legitimate one! Best thing to do would be for one of us to look up the Ancestry details for Gertrude O'Leary from the area stated in the article and then do the maths given her age and see if it is 39/49. In fact I will try and get onto that now

Cheers

[mostfoul]

Done a quick bit of research (apologies in advance though as I am new to all this) and found something rather interesting, found her address in directory records:

O'Leary Mrs. Gertrude, 13 Thomas St. Stokes Croft 2

Regarding her exact birth date on the records I found this:

Name: Gertrude Oleary
Parent or spouse names: Jeremiah, Catherine
Birthyear: About 1885
Birthplace: Bermondsey, London, England

This is from the 1901 census and the original records mention that Gertrude was 16 during this year.

This would suggest the 40's date is the date of the murder. Still, there's room for your theory to be a valid one! (About the serial killer)

A birth certificate I found recognises a Gertrude Dorathea O'Leary being born in 1884 in the Southwark St. Olave district, a year earlier to the predicted date in the census info above. The latter two bits of information coincide as my research tells me Bermondsey is located in the London Borough of Southwark.

If we look up the Emily Armstrong dates (wikipedia states she died in '49 also) your serial killer theory looks exciting!

Also, check this regarding the Margery Wren case you mentioned: http://thealbionchronicles.tripod.com/id43.html

Regards

[sdreid]

Yes, thanks for all that - good work! I got the 1939 date from a book called The Encyclopedia of Unsolved Crimes by Michael Newton which appears to be the source for the Wiki entry. Perhaps the 1939 date is just a misprint.

[mostfoul]

I think it's definitely worth us checking out some more details to see to what extent they could be linked.

Margery Wren - Died September 1939 (Beaten by firetongs, strangle attempts - died the next day from injuries) in Church Road, Ramsgate, Kent
Emily Armstrong - Died 14th April 1949 (Beaten by blunt object believed to be a clawhammer) in Westminster, London
Gertrude O'Leary - Died 30th June 1949 (Hit with beer flagon then strangled) in Stokes Croft, Bristol.

I think there's certainly some similarities. Perhaps they wager their own thread, sdreid?

[sdreid]

I shall see about putting something together in the next day or so, that is, if I'm not beaten to it.

[sdreid]

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