Janice Weston

[Abby Normal]

What a mystery.

So options seem to be:

Husband has her killed

Friend/lover killed her

Stranger

To me has all the hallmarks of an oppotrtunistic serial/killer. Overkill, weapon at scene used, dumped where killed.

I think she may have been going to the other home to meet her lover, but had car problems at the wrong time and place.

The weird thing with tires and reg numbers might only be known to the killer, for his own strange reasons, if they are actually significant.

As police, i would place ads and have press making statements about the tire and numbers to try and draw him out as they seem to have significance to him, i would also check and see if any other reports of abductions, attempted abductions, attacks on the road in that area.

[Spitfire]

Apologies for the length of this post.

Graham

Hello Graham,

No need to apologise for a very interesting post.

I have now had an opportunity to read the extensive contemporary newspaper coverage of this murder.

The Crimewatch programme, which I would prefer over and above anything written by the papers as the police detective leading the investigation does seem to have had some editorial input into the 'reconstruction', says that Janice was in her Lincolns Inn offices at 4.45 pm when she took a phone call from a client of another partner in the firm.

It is about a 30 minute drive from Lincolns Inn to Addison Avenue and once there Janice must have taken some time over her Weight-Watchers meal. The police seem convinced that she ate alone as only one used wine glass was found when access to the flat was gained.

Janice seems to have taken the remnants of the wine bottle and half a loaf. My impression is that she intended to drink the wine that evening at Clopton Manor and have the bread for breakfast the following morning. I believe that it is more likely than not, that when she started her meal she did not intend to do any more driving that day. So someone must have caused her to change her mind and that someone is most likely Janice's murderer.

The police seem to have convinced themselves that Janice knew her murderer and that it was more than likely that he (or she!!) had been in the car for some, if not all, of the journey to the lay-by.

The possible scenario is that Janice gets an unexpected call from someone she knows with a request that she pick him up from wherever that someone is, for example, Heathrow Airport and that she drives them (down/up) towards Clopton.

We have reported sightings of the Alfa in the lay-by at about 11.30pm to 0.45am on 11/12 September 1983 and the Crimewatch video says that Janice could have been on the Huntingdon stretch of the A1 by 9pm on Saturday. Yet, if on that section of the A1 at 9pm, what was she still doing on it at 11.30 pm and even 0.45 am?

The police seem to be convinced that the number plate purchase did occur on the Sunday morning and that the number was Janice's Alfa number KMR769X.
If, as the police also believe, the number plate purchaser was also the murderer then this means the murderer spent a good part of the Sunday morning in the vicinity of the murder scene before returning to dump the car in Redhill Street near Regents Park.

I can think of many reasons why someone having to drive the murdered woman's car would want to change the number plates on it, but can think of no reason why he would want to replace them with new plates with the same registration number.

The podcast which I linked to above did say that the police were convinced that the person seen abandoning the car in Redhill Street was the same person who purchased the number plates. My researches indicate that the police discounted the evidence of the witness who described the the 'car-abandoner'. It was believed that that witness did not see the car being abandoned, therefore we only have the description of the 'number plate purchaser'.

[OneRound]

Hi folks,

Confusing, huh.

A few random thoughts.

1. Contrary to some speculation, I very much doubt that Janice Weston was going to meet a lover.
If, as seems likely, she was heading to the manor house, wouldn't that have been too much a case of on her own other doorstep? She was a wealthy lady and could easily have afforded a nice hotel room at some other and different location.
If going to see a lover, surely she would want her handbag containing lippy and other such female stuff. Back me up here, Caz!
Following on from Spitfire's post, leftover bread and wine is far more likely intended to be consumed by oneself rather than with another before or after a night of passion.

2. The order for identical number plates is especially baffling. If the murderer was the person who made the order, then I can only think he was in a state of panicky confusion or generally not the full shilling. Perhaps more likely, he was not the murderer but had agreed - as a result of a bribe, threat, favour, who knows - to get the plates but misunderstood the instruction ''get replacement plates for KMR769X''. Such an instruction could be interpreted as get new plates for that vehicle with a different number (as surely intended) or that this was the new number plate to be used. The latter obviously wasn't the intention although just possibly that's what happened; more likely, if the guy who placed the order had then to find and move the car and the only reason he was given the true number was so he could spot it.

3. The way in which the money left under Janice Weson's will was bequeathed to her husband was odd. Not in a lump sum payment but as a regular income. Possibly there were tax reasons for this - through her work, she would have had knowledge or, at least, access to specialists in this area. However, does it suggest she had doubts as to how wisely he would use the inheritance and maybe come unstuck?

4. Strange that no pointers to the murderer came from forensic analysis of the murder weapon or, particularly, the car. That reminds me of another case ....

Best regards,
OneRound

[Graham]

In my previous post I wrote:

As she left her London flat at around 5.00 pm (although this time is questionable)

I meant to write 'office' instead of 'flat'. Slip of the fingers.

One question: do we know if the loaf of bread and the part-bottle of wine, along with her draft for her book, were in the car when it was found back in London? I've never seen any reference to this.

Spitfire, when you mentioned Heathrow Airport, were you perhaps implying that she may well have gone there to collect someone she knew, for example her husband? I don't think there is any question at all that he genuinely was in France at the time of her death. And if he somehow set up a double to impersonate him in Paris, which I think is extremely unlikely, then he would have had to travel back to London using a false name and a false passport. Passports were not stamped for journeys between EU countries back then, but you had to present them at airports and ferry terminals, same as now.

Personally, I am pretty well-convinced that she knew her murderer, and that he wasn't Tony Weston.

Graham

[OneRound]

I’ve tracked down an ITV Playhouse production from 1969 which has some uncanny parallels with the Jane Weston case. It’s called ‘Suspicion’ and if my link does not work it is easily available on Youtube under Armchair Cinema 2 Suspicion.

A wealthy woman living in a country house from the Home Counties, with a slightly unreliable husband who never appears on screen, starts to suspect he is connected with the disappearance of a schoolgirl who went missing the very Thursday he went off on a business trip to Stockholm. She by chance discovers he is probably in London and has been lying to her.

The police show an interest in her expensive estate car, similar to one seen near where the girl disappeared, and in which she found a girl’s shoe. After the girl’s body is discovered, the police confirm the wife had, on the Thursday, picked their car up from a garage where her husband left it to be serviced. However a day after collecting it, the car had developed a puncture and she discovered the spare tyre had been removed.

I’ll stop there so as not to put in any spoilers. The spare tyre does turn out to have significance however. The quality of acting and overall production are very impressive, as indeed is the final twist to the storyline. Highly recommended.

https://youtu.be/_gbP7u_6XHA

Hi Cobalt - many thanks for sharing. I echo all your comments above.

Best regards,

OneRound

[cobalt]

If we assume that Janice Weston was heading for Clopton Manor, in what was a change of her plan for the evening, then I can only think she would go in the company of her husband or an associate closely involved with the renovation. Given that it was apparently a pretty murky evening, it does not sound like a time to be doing much in the way of renovation. I think we can rule out her picking up a hitch-hiker, although I would be interested to know who supplied this nugget of information about Janice Weston being prone to doing so.

A verbal misunderstanding is probably as good as explanation for the puzzle of the registration plates as we are likely to come up with. The problem is that this requires an accomplice, albeit after the act. Not many people would want to be an accomplice to such a crime and be able to keep their own counsel about what they knew.

I’m not as convinced by Graham about Tony Weston’s alibi. I drove from Edinburgh to Turin about five years ago, having booked tickets for the Newcastle-Amsterdam cross channel ferry, and was never asked to show my passport once throughout the entire journey. Back in the mid 1980s my passport, valid for a year I think, did contain a photo but was printed on paper card and was nothing like the documents which are meticulously scanned at airports today.

Tony Weston certainly had a solid alibi for the Friday, and the following Tuesday when he was contacted in France about his wife’s death by police. His hotel booking has been reported as being for three days, yet he apparently stayed in France longer than that and did not, so far as we know, seem concerned by total lack of phone contact with his wife for a couple of days.

[Graham]

I think we can rule out her picking up a hitch-hiker, although I would be interested to know who supplied this nugget of information about Janice Weston being prone to doing so.

Twas I who supplied that nugget of information, gleaned from a source which, just for now, I'd like to keep to myself. Could be that someone else will come across that source - if so, no worries.

A verbal misunderstanding is probably as good as explanation for the puzzle of the registration plates as we are likely to come up with.

Come on, Cobalt!

Well, re: your jaunt across Europe without being asked to show your passport, you must have been very, very lucky...or very, very invisible. I travelled the world from about 1976 to when I retired in 2011, and I can tell you that even travelling between EU countries, your passport was nearly always asked for at airports and ferry terminals. But not normally when travelling by road.

In fact, one time in about 2002, I met a colleague at Stansted and we were en route for Germany. Unfortunately, at passport control, my colleague's passport was seen to be about a week out of date, and that was his trip to Germany down the drain, even though he would have been travelling within the EU. In years gone by - which I can remember - there was passport control between European countries on land routes. If you want to see what this was like, watch Day Of The Jackal where The Jackal is crossing from Italy into France. Very realistic.

Re: Tony Weston's being in France at the critical time, the police seemingly never had a problem (eventually) with this, and neither do I. He was in France.

We - meaning you, I, and certainly everyone else contributing to this thread - know really very little about Janice and Tony Weston, only what has been published in the press and on the net. No professional investigator has so far produced a book on the case. And the surviving families and associates of both Janice and Tony have been remarkably silent over the years - at least as far as I can tell. Purely to illustrate my point, we know far more about James Hanratty than either of the Westons.

Graham

[Spitfire]

Twas I who supplied that nugget of information, gleaned from a source which, just for now, I'd like to keep to myself. Could be that someone else will come across that source - if so, no worries.

One of her friends was reported as saying she might be prone to picking up hitch-hikers. Elsewhere it was reported that she desisted this practice on the insistence of her husband.

[Graham]

Interesting, Spitfire. That wasn't my source!

Graham

[Spitfire]

In my previous post I wrote:

I meant to write 'office' instead of 'flat'. Slip of the fingers.

One question: do we know if the loaf of bread and the part-bottle of wine, along with her draft for her book, were in the car when it was found back in London? I've never seen any reference to this.

Spitfire, when you mentioned Heathrow Airport, were you perhaps implying that she may well have gone there to collect someone she knew, for example her husband? I don't think there is any question at all that he genuinely was in France at the time of her death. And if he somehow set up a double to impersonate him in Paris, which I think is extremely unlikely, then he would have had to travel back to London using a false name and a false passport. Passports were not stamped for journeys between EU countries back then, but you had to present them at airports and ferry terminals, same as now.

Personally, I am pretty well-convinced that she knew her murderer, and that he wasn't Tony Weston.

Graham

Hi Graham,

It was reported that the police made over 5,000 interviews in investigating this case, generating over 12,000 pages of reports, so we only know a fraction of what the police discovered. The police did not find a suspect and ended up in December 1983 arresting Mr Weston and detaining him for over 50 hours during which he was questioned for over 5 hours. Mr Weston applied for and was refused a writ of habeas corpus but was eventually released on police bail. The matter was referred to the DPP who decided to take no further action.

The police clearly had their suspicions but I am inclined to agree that these were probably ill founded, the police assumption being that no other suspect had been found, therefore the culprit was the usual suspect, to wit the spouse.

Although passports would have to be shown when entering the UK there would not be a record of entry other than the ticketing of the carrier airline or shipping line. There was also some problem with the records of Mr Weston's French hotel, in that he was shown as being resident there on the Friday 9th Sept and Sunday 11th but not the night of the murder namely Saturday 10th. Mr Weston put this down to a clerical error on the hotel's part, the police might have thought otherwise.

As to the benefit to Tony Weston under Janice's will, it should also be mentioned that all joint assets would pass by survivorship to Mr Weston. So if the flat in Addison Avenue and the Clopton Manor property had been in joint names then these would pass with any joint bank account and jointly held investments to Mr Weston.

[Graham]

Hi Spitfire,

It was reported that the police made over 5,000 interviews in investigating this case, generating over 12,000 pages of reports, so we only know a fraction of what the police discovered. The police did not find a suspect and ended up in December 1983 arresting Mr Weston and detaining him for over 50 hours during which he was questioned for over 5 hours. Mr Weston applied for and was refused a writ of habeas corpus but was eventually released on police bail. The matter was referred to the DPP who decided to take no further action.

Fairly standard police practise, Spitfire. 5000 interviews sounds a lot, but in fact isn't. Other cases have generated far more, sometimes with a result; sometimes not.

The police clearly had their suspicions but I am inclined to agree that these were probably ill founded, the police assumption being that no other suspect had been found, therefore the culprit was the usual suspect, to wit the spouse.

That's the Old Bill for you, Spitfire. When in doubt, go closest to home.

Although passports would have to be shown when entering the UK there would not be a record of entry other than the ticketing of the carrier airline or shipping line. There was also some problem with the records of Mr Weston's French hotel, in that he was shown as being resident there on the Friday 9th Sept and Sunday 11th but not the night of the murder namely Saturday 10th. Mr Weston put this down to a clerical error on the hotel's part, the police might have thought otherwise.

The ticketing of the carrier would be the police's first port of call, pardon the pun. Under French law, which I think may have been changed since 1983, anyone checking into a hotel within French territory has to fill in a form which is then sent to the local gendarmerie. The forms were collected every night, and returned to the hotel when that particular guest had checked out. Typical French bureaucracy. Assuming that Tony Weston's form were sent to the local flic, then they would have been available for inspection by the UK police.

As to the benefit to Tony Weston under Janice's will, it should also be mentioned that all joint assets would pass by survivorship to Mr Weston. So if the flat in Addison Avenue and the Clopton Manor property had been in joint names then these would pass with any joint bank account and jointly held investments to Mr Weston.

Yes, but that doesn't apply to monies held by the deceased, the disposition of which is at the discretion of the person making the will. It would seem that Janice and Tony held individual bank-accounts.

Graham

[Abby Normal]

Any chance the killer wanted new plates with different numbers so he could use the car for a while?

[Graham]

Any chance the killer wanted new plates with different numbers so he could use the car for a while?

Yes, could be - but I spotted his deliberate mistake! He bought new plates with the same number as Janice's car! So that's either 'Whoops!' or something was going on that we don't know about, 35 years later.

Graham

[Spitfire]

Yes, could be - but I spotted his deliberate mistake! He bought new plates with the same number as Janice's car! So that's either 'Whoops!' or something was going on that we don't know about, 35 years later.

Graham

I assume that there was no possibility that the number plate seller had made a mistake either of recollection or of record keeping, if not then this is the most baffling piece of the puzzle.

[Graham]

I assume that there was no possibility that the number plate seller had made a mistake either of recollection or of record keeping, if not then this is the most baffling piece of the puzzle.

I wouldn't have thought the seller made a mistake, as he contacted the police on realising that the number of Janice's car was the same as the plates he'd made and sold. I would assume that a record of plates made would be kept, maybe as a legal requirement? Don't think the police would have bothered with this puzzle had they found that the seller had made a mistake.

Graham