List of unsolved murders in the United Kingdom (1970s)

Main article: List of unsolved murders in the United Kingdom
Year Name of victim(s) Location body found Notes
24 January 1970 Allan Graham Ponteland, Northumberland Eleven-year-old schoolboy Allan Graham went missing during a trip to the shop while he was staying with his older brother and his wife in Gerald Street, Benwell, Newcastle. His body was found in a ditch near Ponteland – about seven miles northwest of Newcastle – the following day. He had been strangled. No one has ever been arrested in connection with Graham's death.
1970 Jacqueline Ansell-Lamb, Barbara Mayo Mere, Cheshire and Ault Hucknall, Derbyshire Jacqueline Ansell-Lamb was an 18-year-old hitchhiking from London to Manchester on 8 March 1970 when she was last seen alive. Her body was discovered six days later by a farmer in Square Wood, Mere, near Knutsford. She had been sexually assaulted and strangled to death with an electrical cord.

On 12 October of the same year another woman, 24-year-old teacher Barbara Mayo, set off from her London home to hitchhike north. Six days later her body was found in woodland near Hardwick Hall, close to the northbound carriageway of the M1. She had been raped and then strangled.

In 1990, detectives from Cheshire Police and Derbyshire Constabulary revealed on Crimewatch that they suspected the murders of Ansell-Lamb and Mayo were committed by the same person. It is often erroneously reported that the murders were proven to be linked by DNA in 1990; a DNA profile has only ever been extracted in the Mayo case, and this did not happen until 1997.

March 1970 Susan Long Aylsham, Norfolk The Norwich Union worker went to the Gala Ballroom in Norwich and caught the last bus home to Aylsham on 10 March 1970. The bus arrived at Market Place in the town at around 11.10 pm, but Long never made it to her parents' home, which was a seven-minute walk away. Her body was found in a lovers' lane the following morning. On the fiftieth anniversary of Long's murder, police confirmed they had DNA from the crime that could uncover the identity of the man who strangled the 18-year-old.
March 1970 Philip Green Shirehampton, Bristol Eleven-year-old Philip Green left his home in Sea Mills on 31 March 1970 to collect lost golf balls on the nearby Shirehampton golf course. The following day his battered body was found in a wooded area of the course. The case remains unsolved despite one of the biggest police inquiries in the Bristol area, which was assisted by Scotland Yard. In 2010, on the fortieth anniversary of Green's murder, Avon & Somerset Constabulary announced that there was to be a new forensic investigation of the case that would use DNA profiling.
May 1970 Helen Kane Edinburgh The 25-year-old mother-of-four was hit over the head with something that cracked her skull (probably a rock, a paving slab or a large stone) after she had left her husband and friends one Saturday night to make her way home. Police quizzed Angus Sinclair about the murder because he lived in Edinburgh and had been locked up for six years for killing a young girl, but were unable to charge him because evidence linking him to Kane was lacking and someone had vouched for an alibi he had given.
November 1970 Andre Mizelas Hyde Park, London The 48-year-old royal hairdresser was found shot dead in his car on Monday, 9 November. A motive is not known, but a private detective who spoke to him over the telephone three days earlier said Mizelas told him he wanted him to keep tabs on two men whose names he would divulge at a meeting scheduled for Tuesday, 10 November.
December 1970 Margaret Connolly Skipton, North Yorkshire 23-year-old Margaret Connolly lived in Burnside Crescent and was strangled about five days before Christmas Day. A man from the same town and also aged 23 was charged with her murder but acquitted by a jury in March 1971 at the direction of the presiding judge.
January 1971 James Keltie Blairgowrie, Perth and Kinross James Keltie, 52, was murdered on 11 January 1971 at the hotel which he ran. He was bound, gagged and beaten in the Muirton House Hotel before being dragged out to a garage in the hotel grounds. Keltie was still alive when found, but he died of his injuries on the way to hospital. The phone lines to the hotel had been cut and there was speculation that the attack had been a robbery gone wrong.
March 1971 "Fred the Head" Burton on Trent, Staffordshire An off-duty special constable stumbled upon the upper half of a skull alongside the River Trent at Burton on 27 March 1971. Further excavating at the site revealed the skull belonged to a man who had been buried in a kneeling position with his hands tied and wearing socks that were mostly pinkish beige in colour but mustard yellow at the heels and toes. The only personal possession on him was his wedding ring. After months of investigation, including the co-operation of Interpol, the authorities had come nowhere near to discovering the man's identity.

In 2017, analysis of dental records led police to believe that Fred the Head could have been John Henry Jones from Trevor, near Wrexham in North Wales, who had gone missing in 1970. This proved to be incorrect, and neither case has been solved. After an autopsy and expert opinion, no cause of death was recorded and the police filed the case as a suspicious death.

April 1971 Dorothy Leyden Collyhurst, Manchester 17-year-old Dorothy Leyden went to a Jimmy Ruffin concert at the Golden Garter nightclub in Wythenshawe on Saturday 24 April before getting a taxi into central Manchester with friends. She got out of the taxi at Piccadilly Gardens bus station at about 2.30 am, and it is believed she was planning to catch a bus home but decided to walk instead to save money.

Leyden's body was found the following day on wasteland behind Rochdale Road's now-demolished Spread Eagle pub. She had been raped and beaten to death with a brick. It was later thought that the offender might have been serial killer Trevor Hardy, but DNA eliminated him as a suspect in 2008.

May 1971 Rose Lifely Bournemouth, Dorset Rose Lifely was 73 years old when she was stabbed to death in her Northcote Road home between 15 and 17 May 1971 – the victim of a "maniacal attack", according to police. Police believed the killer lived in the local area, broke into her home to steal and repeatedly stabbed her when she confronted him. On 25 May, the Evening Times reported that police were hunting for a "cuddly" buxom 18-year-old blonde and two youths, who had gone to second-hand shops in Bournemouth attempting to sell jewellery similar to pieces missing from Lifely's home.
May 1971 P Walsh Holloway, London P Walsh's body was discovered in his van on 22 May. He had been stabbed, and, according to detectives of the time, probably by a fellow motorist with whom he had become embroiled in an argument.
June 1971 Gloria Booth Ruislip, Middlesex On the morning of Sunday 13 June, the naked body of Gloria Booth was discovered on a recreation ground off Nairn Road, approximately half a mile from South Ruislip Underground Station and a mile from the scene of the murder of Jean Townsend 17 years earlier. Like Townsend, Booth – a 29-year-old housewife from Ealing – had died from strangulation, and it appeared that, as in the Townsend killing, a scarf had been used.
October 1971 Susan Turner Hartlepool, County Durham Two schoolboys came across the 19-year-old newlywed's body on Friday, 22 October whilst playing in a derelict house during their lunchbreak. She had been strangled. Her widower was accused of the murder at a trial that took place the following February, but the paucity of evidence against him (forensic scientists had found no trace in his house of dust from the derelict building) prompted the judge to order the jury to return a verdict of not guilty.
January 1972 Lillian Richards Paddington, London Found strangled to death in a room of the Great Western Royal Hotel on 13 January 1972. In October of that year, a 52-year-old man from Swindon in Wiltshire was cleared of causing the death of 65-year-old Richards but sent to jail for a lesser offence.
January 1972 Stan James Gowerton, near Swansea James's body was found on 30 January at his home on Sterry Road. He had been bound, gagged and beaten during a burglary at the property the night before. Two men charged in 1979 with the murder of the 79-year-old retired greengrocer were later cleared.
February 1972 Harry Barham Stratford, London The fatal Valentine's Day shooting of Harry Barham, a 52-year-old bookmaker, in his car on Windmill Lane was followed by the theft of around £40,000 from the vehicle. He had made the money by buying and reselling cheap jewellery to help pay off debt he owed.
April 1972 Isaac Hughes and Arthur Waite Blaenavon, Torfaen 70-year-old Isaac Hughes and 50-year-old Arthur Waite, a friend of his, were killed in Hughes's cottage in the small Welsh mining town. Hughes was hit on the head once with a blunt object and Wait was struck numerous times with the same object, and they were found dead there two days after Easter Monday – a day they had spent much of at the local pub. Because there was no evidence that anyone had been in the cottage without permission that Monday or the following day, the police believed that the victims had known their killer.
April 1972 Harold Fisher Cardiff 54-year-old Harold Fisher was fatally stabbed outside the Avana bakery on Pendyris Street during a robbery on Friday 14 April.
April 1972 Maxwell Confait Catford, London Two youths locked up in November 1972 for the killing of Maxwell Confait (a 26-year-old transgender sex worker also known as Michelle) and arson at her residence, plus a third youth sentenced to serve four years at the Royal Philanthropic School in Redhill (Surrey) for burglary and arson, were acquitted in October 1975. Strangulation was the cause of the victim's death.

In 1980, a prisoner became a suspect in Confait's murder when an incriminating conversation between him and a fellow inmate was overheard, but because he and the person he claimed to have been with at the time of the offence each maintained that it was the other who committed it, neither of them could be charged with it.

The case led to changes in police procedures.

June 1972 Judith Roberts Wigginton, near Tamworth, Staffordshire The 14-year-old girl was battered to death not far from her family home in a village just north of Tamworth. A young soldier stationed at Whittington Barracks confessed to the murder and served 25 years in jail; however, he later claimed that his confession was a result of psychological problems he was experiencing at the time. With there being no other evidence against him, his conviction was overturned by the Court of Appeal. The real killer remains unknown.
July 1972 Pauline Riolo Liverpool Pauline Riolo, aged 29 and married with three children, had at least three stab wounds when she was found dying in Mulgrave Street, in the Toxteth area of the city, on Saturday 29 July. Police wanted to trace someone she was seen with (a man who was driving a blue Ford Capri and appeared to be in his late 30s) 10–15 minutes prior to receiving the injuries.
September 1972 Emmy Werner Bayswater, London The 68-year-old was strangled while staying at the Queens Hotel – apparently by someone who went into her room to steal and killed her when she awoke. A boy aged 16 was charged with murdering her, but a jury acquitted him in 1973. Almost 45 years after that acquittal, the Metropolitan Police reappealed for information that might help them identify who was responsible for Werner's death. Up to £20,000 could be given as reward money to a person whose contact with the force led to a prosecution over it.
November 1972 Amala Ruth De Vere Whelan Maida Vale, London On 12 November 1972, a 22-year-old woman was found dead at her home in Randolph Avenue, Maida Vale, west London. She had been beaten, raped, and strangled, but the subsequent investigation failed to link anyone to the crime. In January 2017, police made a fresh appeal for information.
December 1972 Nora Wilfred Cardiff Nora Wilfred, 33, was found dead on 4 December 1972, her body having been dumped on wasteland off Pugsley Lane, Herbert Street, in Butetown, Cardiff. A prostitute at the time of her death, Wilfred had been stabbed multiple times and some of her clothing, along with her handbag, was missing.
December 1972 Helen Will Longtown, Cumbria 54-year-old Helen Will was strangled. She was from the Scottish city of Aberdeen but her body was just over the border in England when it was discovered in a wood on the weekend of 23–24 December. A lorry driver's conviction for her murder was overturned in 1981 after the forensic evidence that was used to help convict him failed to stand up to closer scrutiny.
January 1973 Martha Graham Swinton, Manchester 65-year-old Martha Graham was killed at her home on 16 January by being battered around the head with a rolling pin and a bottle. In March of the following year, her husband was acquitted of murder at the close of a trial at Manchester Crown Court.
March 1973 James Cockerell Leeds James Cockerell was a widower aged 66 when he was fatally stabbed at his Hyde Park flat on 2 March 1973. A jury at Leeds Crown Court found a 39-year-old labourer not guilty of the offence the following autumn.
March 1973 Mary Armstrong Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire 31-year-old Mary Armstrong, a prostitute, was found stabbed to death in a Hanley car park on 24 March. Four trials for her murder were held, with a 33-year-old man being acquitted of it at the end of the last one. The number of days covered by the trials (63 in total) caused the case to make legal history in Britain.
March 1973 Ann Law Body not found 34-year-old Ann Law, a mother of two, went missing from her home on Copperas Lane, West Denton, Newcastle, on 24 March 1973. She was in the process of divorcing her husband, Gilbert Law, but the couple still lived together. Gilbert Law was questioned about his wife's disappearance two years after her death but not charged. In 1982 he allegedly confessed to his son, his son-in-law and a friend that he had buried Ann on the bank of the River Tyne near Bywell. After his arrest, Gilbert allegedly told police that Ann had drunk herself to death and, later, that he had strangled her. He then denied making any confession. He stood trial in 1983 but this was halted due to his mental state. At his next trial in June 1984 the judge ordered the jury to acquit him of murder. No one else has ever been charged in connection with Ann's disappearance or murder and her body has never been found despite extensive excavations of the riverbank in 1982.
April 1973 Velma Beulah Murray Coventry, West Midlands Velma Beulah Murray, a 15-year-old Jamaican girl, was killed early on Saturday 28 April when paraffin and a propane gas cylinder were used to create an explosion at 143 Rotherham Road, the house where she was staying with a friend of her mother's.
May 1973 Christine Markham Body not found Just after boarding a bus without her to take them to a different school, nine-year-old Christine Markham's two sisters looked out of a window and saw that she had doubled back on herself instead of continuing to walk in the direction of her own school. That evening, when she had not come home, a hunt for her began that led to around 5,000 residences being searched in the Lincolnshire town of Scunthorpe (where the girls and their parents lived), but no trace of her was found. Robert Black, a serial killer known to have murdered at least four young girls, is suspected of being responsible for Markham's disappearance.
June 1973 Mary Anne Mackey Newcastle Mary Anne Mackey was found with stab wounds to the head in a lane at the rear of her house. She was aged 80 and died from the wounds in hospital.
July 1973 Heidi Mnilk London German au pair Heidi Mnilk, 17, was stabbed and thrown from a train as it travelled between the railway stations at London Bridge and New Cross on Monday 9 July. Serial killer Patrick Mackay claimed responsibility for her death but later withdrew his confession.
July 1973 Bridgid Hynds Kentish Town, London Bridgid Hynds, a 79-year-old spinster who lived on Kentish Town's Willes Road and was also known as Mary Hynes, was found battered to death at her home on Saturday 21 July. In a statement to the police that contained accurate information about the residence, serial killer Patrick Mackay said he was sure that he was the offender. Later, however, he told them that the murder was not one of his, and Hynds's case was left to lie on file at his trial. Official documents indicate that Mackay was in custody at a remand centre in Surrey when Hynds was killed, but it has been observed that the staff situation there in July 1973 might have made it possible for an inmate to abscond and return without anyone noticing.
September 1973 Iris Thompson and Caroline Woodcock Brentwood, Essex 53-year-old Iris Thompson and her mother, 79-year-old Caroline Woodcock, were murdered on 11 September by being bludgeoned and stabbed at the Shenfield address they shared with Iris's husband (who had left to go to work a short time before the killings). No sign of forced entry into their home was discovered.
September 1973 Wendy Sewell Attacked in Bakewell, died in hospital in Chesterfield (both in Derbyshire) The 32-year-old legal secretary was savagely beaten in a churchyard on 12 September, and later died of her wounds. Church groundskeeper Stephen Downing was convicted of the murder, but the verdict was overturned on appeal when he had served 27 years. The case was re-investigated by police, but no further arrests were made.
October 1973 Jackie Seston Peterborough, Cambridgeshire Jackie Seston, 15, was raped and stabbed to death on 2 October 1973 in her home on Mountsteven Avenue. In April 1974, her sister's boyfriend was convicted of her murder, but his conviction was overturned in March 1979. He was cleared at the appeal hearing because although it was asserted at his first trial that the clock he said he heard ticking at Peterborough Railway Station at 1.15 pm on the day of the crime was always silent, it later turned out that, whilst the clock was indeed silent for the most part, a fault meant that 1.15 pm was a time when it was not.
October 1973 Bridget Findlay Bargeddie, North Lanarkshire Bridget Findlay was murdered and sexually assaulted before being discovered, on Sunday 7 October, in a country lane off the A8 road. The 19-year-old was from the nearby town of Airdrie.
October 1973 Warren and Elizabeth Wheeler Boars Hill, Oxfordshire Warren Wheeler, 83, and his wife, Elizabeth, 79, were found battered to death at their home, Yatscombe Cottage, in the Oxfordshire hamlet of Boars Hill, on 9 October 1973. A man stood trial in 1974 after confessing to the murders, but the judge directed that he be cleared, stating that he was an attention seeker who had previously confessed to murders which he had not committed.
January 1974 Stephanie Britton and Christopher Martin Barnet, London The bodies of 57-year-old Stephanie Britton and four-year-old Christopher Martin, Stephanie's grandson, were found in a house on Hadley Green Road on Saturday 12 January. They had been stabbed. Serial killer Patrick Mackay claimed responsibility for their deaths but later withdrew his confession.
January 1974 Glenis Carruthers Clifton, Bristol The 20-year-old woman from Amersham in Buckinghamshire was found strangled on Clifton Down after she had left a friend's 21st birthday party on Friday 18 January at 10 pm.
February 1974 Neil McCann Edinburgh 37-year-old Neil McCann was beaten and stabbed in Craigmillar on 20 February 1974 after getting off a bus. In 2008, a man told a newspaper that he believed that he and not McCann was the intended target and that gangster Arthur Thompson helped to arrange the attack.
February 1974 Rosina Hilliard Leicester Rosina Hilliard's body was discovered on a building site in Leicester on 22 February. She had been working as a prostitute in the city. The postmortem uncovered both evidence of compression to the neck and injuries consistent with her having been hit by a car, but precisely which injury it was that had ended the life of the 24-year-old could not be ascertained.
March 1974 Kay O'Connor Colchester, Essex Someone smashed the glass of the back door of 37-year-old O'Connor's house on Wickham Road to gain entry to the building before beating, strangling and stabbing her in the kitchen on Friday 1 March. A woman came forward in 2018 to say that 44 years previously, one of her then co-workers told her in private that he was that person.
April 1974 Caroline Allen Near Old Dalby, Leicestershire 17-year-old Caroline Allen vanished whilst on her way from Bramcote, Nottinghamshire to her home in Kinoulton on 10 April 1974. Her skeleton was found in rural Leicestershire in December 1975. The pathologist who examined it was unable to say definitively how she had died, but thought she might have suffered a beating to the head.
April 1974 Lena Farr Leighton Buzzard, Bedfordshire Lena Farr, 77, was found dead at her home, Vine Cottage, on Brook Street, on 12 April 1974, and the cause of her death was asphyxiation. There have not been any arrests over the widow's murder.
May 1974 Barbara Forrest Birmingham The body of Barbara Forrest, 20, was left in Pype Hayes Park after she had been raped and strangled following a night out on 27 May 1974. It was found there eight days later, on 4 June. A man who had been a colleague of Forrest's stood trial for her murder but was acquitted.
June 1974 Frank Goodman Finsbury Park, London 62-year-old Frank Goodman was bludgeoned to death in mid-June at his confectionery on Rock Street. Serial killer Patrick Mackay claimed responsibility for his death but later withdrew his confession, and Goodman's case was left to lie on file at Mackay's trial.
August 1974 Gary Shields Tynemouth, Tyne & Wear Six-year-old Gary Shields was suffocated to death when he went out to play football close to his home on 4 August 1974. His body was found in reeds on the bank of the River Tyne just two hundred yards from where he lived in Knotts Flats. A man confessed to Gary's killing and then retracted his statement; his mental state was described as unstable. He was found guilty of manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility but his conviction was quashed in 1976 after a second man confessed. The second confession was made in 1975 by Kenneth Woodhouse, who was already serving time in jail for offences against children. Despite this, no charges were ever brought against Woodhouse.
August 1974 Norfolk headless body Cockley Cley, Norfolk Concealed in weeds off a road in Cockley Cley, near Swaffham, the badly decomposed and headless body of a woman was found by a farm worker in August 1974. The woman was believed to have been aged between 23 and 35 and was wearing a frilled pink Marks & Spencer nightdress. Another clue was the brown plastic sheet in which she was wrapped, bearing the letters NCR (National Cash Register). Only six such sheets were made by a Scottish company between 1962 and 1968, but police have never identified the woman, let alone her killer. Today, there is no grave or headstone for her, just an unmarked spot in a Swaffham churchyard. Police have suggested that the woman could have been a prostitute based in Great Yarmouth known as 'The Duchess', who disappeared in mid-1974. In 2016, it was announced that a full DNA profile had been obtained from her remains, so possible family members could be traced in a bid to determine her identity.
September 1974 Tom Hewitt Attacked in Bury, died in hospital in Salford (both in Greater Manchester) 30-year-old Hewitt was hit across the head with an iron bar on 7 September 1974 at the garage workshop he owned on Bright Street, Bury. A police officer whose father had lost a court case to Hewitt over a minor collision between their vehicles was investigated by colleagues as a suspect in the murder, but he did not become aware of this until years after retiring.
September 1974 Billy Moseley Essex The gangster went missing on 26 September 1974 and his torso was washed up from the River Thames nine days later. In June 1977, at the end of a trial during which the prosecution asserted that he was killed for having an affair with the wife of a friend of one of them, two men were convicted of both his murder and that of Micky Cornwall (killed in the summer of 1975). Moseley's frozen head was found wrapped up on the seat of a public toilet in the London district of Islington about six weeks after they were incarcerated. Continuing to protest their innocence, one of the men imprisoned for the killings was released in 1997 and the other in 2000, but their murder convictions stood until the Court of Appeal overturned them in 2002.
October 1974 Josephine Backshall Near Bishop's Stortford, Hertfordshire 39-year-old Josephine Backshall went missing after travelling to Witham in Essex on 29 October to meet a man regarding some work he had promised her – a man who apparently had given his name as Peter. Three days later, her body was discovered in countryside approximately 35 miles from her Maldon (also in Essex) home, and it was found during the autopsy that she had been choked but not sexually assaulted.
December 1974 Sarah Rodmell Hackney, London Head injuries had killed 92-year-old Sarah Rodmell when she was found murdered in the porch of her flat on Ash Grove on Monday 23 December. Serial killer Patrick Mackay claimed responsibility for her death but later withdrew his confession.
February 1975 Ivy Davies Westcliff-on-Sea, Essex A steel bar was used to batter 48-year-old Ivy Davies to death in her house. In 2005, following a tip-off, police recovered from someone's loft a bloodstained carpet thought to possibly have some connection to the crime and arrested that person (a 68-year-old onetime neighbour of Davies's) over it, but insufficient evidence meant they could not actually charge him with it. Another suspect is a man said to have visited Davies's café in late 1974 or early 1975 – a man purporting to be a doctor but in reality an escapee from a psychiatric hospital, according to a woman who worked at the café when Davies was its owner.
March 1975 Elsie Clayden Linslade, Bedfordshire Elsie Clayden, a 76-year-old widow living on Church Road, was stabbed and battered at her home on 17 March 1975. Despite not finding any evidence that anything had been stolen, detectives were convinced nonetheless that she had been slain because she had interrupted an intruder with theft as their motive for breaking in. Dry-cleaners based in the area were asked by police to keep an eye out for clothing that looked as if it might be stained with blood.
1975 Eve Stratford, Lynne Weedon London Eve Stratford was killed on 18 March 1975. The 21-year-old Bunny Girl, who worked at the Playboy Club in Park Lane, had her throat cut between eight and 12 times. She also had been tied up and was found by her boyfriend in the bedroom of their flat in Lyndhurst Drive, Leyton, London.

In 2007, police revealed that a link had been found between Stratford's murder and that of 16-year-old Lynne Weedon. Weedon had been taking a shortcut home through an alleyway in Hounslow six months after Stratford's death when she was hit on the head with a blunt object before being thrown over a fence into the grounds of an electricity substation and raped. She died in hospital a week later.

Both murders featured on the BBC programme Crimewatch in September 2007, where it was said that they were sexually motivated and, thanks to new DNA techniques, were now known to have been committed by the same person.

June 1975 John Wortley Sheffield, South Yorkshire On Thursday 5 June, 66-year-old John Wortley was battered to death with a fire extinguisher and £50–70 stolen from the kiosk at the car park where he worked as an attendant. Police have never managed to trace a man he was seen talking to five minutes before his body was discovered.
June 1975 David Williams Stout Point, South Wales The body of Williams, a 49-year-old civil service executive officer from Swansea, was found on 30 June 1975 at the bottom of cliffs near the town of Llantwit Major.
July 1975 Renee McGowan Bradford, West Yorkshire Renee McGowan, 55, was strangled in her flat on the top floor of a tower block on 22 or 23 July. Although drawers and cupboards in the flat were open when her fiancé discovered her body, nothing appeared to have been stolen from the property. Police came to suspect that the killer might belong to the Bradford Phoenix Society, a club to help divorced and separated people find new partners and to which McGowan herself had belonged, and so decided to compare with the fingerprints of its members some unidentified fingerprints that had been found in the flat. No match was made, however.
August 1975 Helen Bailey Great Barr, Birmingham Eight-year-old schoolgirl Helen Bailey was last seen when she left her home in Great Barr to play outside at 3.30 pm on 10 August. Her body was found the following morning in woodland at Booths Farm, close to her home. Bailey had cuts to her throat and the inquest found that her death could have been the result of an "accident or practical joke gone wrong". Her death was re-examined in 2014, with a pathologist stating that it was a "clear case of homicide". The verdict of the original inquest was overturned in 2018 and a new inquest was held in 2019, which found that Bailey had been unlawfully killed. An imprisoned man reportedly confessed to Bailey's murder in 1979 and is still considered to be the main suspect. He remains in prison and the Crown Prosecution Service is yet to make a decision about prosecuting him for her murder.
August/September 1975 Micky Cornwall Hatfield, Hertfordshire Bank robber Micky Cornwall, who had been friends with Billy Moseley (murdered a year earlier), disappeared towards the end of August 1975 and was found shot dead in a shallow grave in woodland near the outskirts of Hatfield on 7 September. At the trial of two men accused of murdering them, it was alleged that the decision to kill Cornwall had been taken because he was keen to find out who had killed Moseley so he could avenge him. The jury found the defendants guilty of both murders, but in 2002 their convictions were quashed. Moseley and Cornwall's deaths now seem unlikely to be connected.
November 1975 Margaret Lightfoot Epping Forest, Essex Margaret Lightfoot's naked body was found in Epping Forest the day after she failed to return home from taking her dog for a walk. She lived nearby, and her death was due to strangulation.
November 1975 Kathleen Cock Effingham, Surrey The 78-year-old widow was murdered in her own home by having her head pounded, most likely with a hammer. A neighbour found her body there on 27 November 1975. Apart from wedding and engagement rings, none of Cock's possessions were taken away following the attack, which whoever was behind is believed to have struck again in March 1976 by murdering Khantoon Teja in New Malden.
December 1975 Hugh Watson Llanrwst, Conwy Hugh Watson, 77, was attacked on 9 December 1975 after spending the evening at the Pen-y-Bryn Hotel. The recluse lived in a cowshed off Station Road, and his body was found in a hay barn close to his home after the barn was set alight. Watson died from asphyxia and was stabbed with a weapon similar to a pitchfork.
January 1976 Esther Soper Plymouth, Devon Widowed Esther Soper, a 51-year-old grandmother, was found dead in her home on Trematon Terrace, Mutley, Plymouth on New Year's Day 1976. Her body had been wrapped in her curtains after she had been bludgeoned with a cider bottle and strangled. Soper had been trying to sell her home and a mysterious 'estate agent' had called round in the days before her death. The case was reviewed in 1997 using DNA testing, but only Soper's DNA was found from the scene.
February 1976 Helen Hooper Body not found 31 years old and living in the Hertfordshire village of Standon, Helen Hooper disappeared on 13 February after informing her husband that she was moving out because she did not want to be with him anymore. (She was already seeing another man.) He was subsequently arrested and charged with her murder, but the case was thrown out at the magistrates' court, despite small amounts of blood having been found on a knife and on shoes in the house they had shared.
February 1976 Maureen Mulcahy Port Talbot, South Wales Maureen Mulcahy, 22, was last seen alive at the Green Meadow pub in Aberavon on the night of 23 February 1976. A dog walker found her body the following morning on waste ground close by; she had been strangled. There is speculation that Mulcahy may have been murdered by the 'Saturday Night Strangler', a serial killer who was posthumously identified as Joe Kappen in 2002. DNA evidence revealed that Kappen had murdered three teenagers in the area in 1973: Sandra Newton, Geraldine Hughes and Pauline Floyd. Detectives believe Mulcahy could have been a fourth victim, but no conclusive evidence has been found.
February 1976 Robert Jones Liverpool Robert Jones, a 73-year-old artist, was one of three victims (all adult males) of a man who went on a knife rampage on 27 February 1976, but the only one who was injured by him fatally. Also the oldest of the three, Jones was stabbed near his home in Huskisson Street.
March 1976 Jack Wood Pangbourne, Berkshire Bookmaker Jack Wood, 73, was murdered during a robbery at his betting shop and home on 3 March 1976. He was bound, gagged, then bludgeoned.
March 1976 William "Tank" McGuinness Glasgow William McGuinness, a 46-year-old career criminal, was repeatedly kicked in the head on 12 March 1976 and died of his injuries on 25 March. John Winning, who was later himself murdered, was acquitted on 24 August after the court heard that bloodstains on McGuinness's clothing were not examined scientifically. McGuinness was suspected of being involved in the 1969 murder of a woman from Ayr.
April 1976 Lawrence Mann The A2 road in Kent Lawrence Mann, 27, was murdered and robbed on the A2 on 26 April 1976. A trial the following spring saw two men found not guilty of the killing but one of them sentenced to 12 years in prison for being the getaway driver.
May 1976 Powlo Bublyczenko Rochdale, Greater Manchester Bublyczenko, a 60-year-old grocer originally from Ukraine, was found battered to death behind his Oldham Road store on 17 May 1976. No evidence of forced entry, a struggle or theft was found at the property, however.
July 1976 Joan Mashek Nottingham 48-year-old Joan Mashek was beaten to death in her bedsit on Douglas Road, probably with her own guitar. Investigators were never able to put a name to anyone who they thought would have wished her harm, but they did manage to narrow the list of possible culprits down to two untraced and unidentified individuals in whose company she was seen in the weeks before she was killed – one of them a scruffy young man who shared her interest in classical music and ballet, the other a young man she was spotted with near County Hall in West Bridgford. There was an arrest over Mashek's murder in 1990.
August 1976 Susan Donoghue Bristol The 44-year-old night nurse was battered with a truncheon and sexually assaulted in her ground-floor flat in the Sneyd Park area. Signs of ransacking were apparent in the flat, although whether anything was actually taken from there by the killer has not been disclosed to the public. The killer left items at the scene of the crime, including a tobacco tin, a pair of gloves and the murder weapon. Forensic examinations of them did not point towards a suspect. Nevertheless, because the killer's semen was also recovered from the scene, advances in technology meant that people working on the case had a full DNA profile of him by the 40th anniversary of the murder.
September 1976 Francis Jegou Maidstone, Kent Special constable Francis Jegou was fatally knifed in a Maidstone park on 12 September 1976. Michael Stone, convicted in 1998 of murdering two members of a family and attempting to murder a third as they walked along a country lane in Kent in July 1996, has been suspected by police of being the culprit in Jegou's murder, too.
October 1976 Jane Bigwood Deptford, London Jane Bigwood, an art student aged 20, was knifed to death at her flat on 21 October. A man was convicted of her murder, but the conviction was overturned in December 1983 after further analysis of hairs found in her hand revealed that they were not his. The cleared man, a squatter in the same block of flats at the time of the slaying, was the owner of the murder weapon when the crime was committed but claimed that fellow squatters had access to it as well.
October 1976 Raymond Wharton Birmingham Doorman Raymond Wharton, 47, was shot at the New Gary Owen Club in the early hours of Sunday 24 October 1976 by a hooded man who seemed to be firing indiscriminately. The club was on Wordsworth Road in Small Heath, and it was speculated that the gunman was someone with a grudge against the establishment. Three men were acquitted in August 1977.
January 1977 Annie Walsh Hulme, Manchester Annie Walsh, 51, was discovered beaten to death with a lampstand in her sixth-floor flat on 31 January 1977. A young man was convicted of the offence later in the year and he remained in prison for it until 2002, when, because it had been divulged that police officers had extracted a confession from him by assaulting and severely interrogating him, the Court of Appeal found his conviction to be unsafe.
March 1977 Barbara Ann Young Doncaster, South Yorkshire The 29-year-old prostitute and mother of two was severely beaten in an alleyway on 22 March and died some hours later of a brain haemorrhage caused by the beating.
April 1977 Debra Schlesinger Leeds Debra Schlesinger, 18, was stabbed in the heart outside her home after a night out with friends. In 2002, West Yorkshire Police announced that they were ready to bring charges against "Yorkshire Ripper" Peter Sutcliffe, but as he was subsequently issued with a whole-life tariff for his convictions from 1981, no further action was taken.
June 1977 Joy Sweatman Coulsdon, London Joy Sweatman, a 25-year-old mother of two young children, died at her suburban home when someone beat her with a hammer. Her body was discovered early in the afternoon. Sweatman's two-year-old daughter was also attacked but survived, despite being unconscious in hospital for four days. A witness saw a man outside the house wipe a hammer on his coat before leaving in a white Austin Maxi saloon. He was never traced. The apparent lack of forced entry caused police to deduce that Sweatman probably knew her killer.
August 1977 Rachel Levine Salford, Greater Manchester Levine, 70, was discovered trussed up and lifeless at her Moor Street home following her death sometime after 10 am the previous day (4 August). Money had been taken from a safe and a strongbox of hers despite the keys to them being two of nearly a thousand in the property.
September 1977 Elizabeth Parravincina Isleworth, London 27-year-old Elizabeth Parravincina was only yards from her parents' house when a still-unidentified person killed her by hitting her head with a hard object. The route taken by her to get to the house that day was said to have been uncharacteristic of her.

Parravincina's death has been informally linked to Peter Sutcliffe. It is believed that he may have been staying in London, specifically Alperton, at the time.

October 1977 Brenda Evans Poulton, Cheshire Brenda Evans, 17, was murdered on 7 October 1977 while on her lunch break from Poulton post office and general stores. She had walked to her aunt and uncle's house to have lunch and failed to return to work. Evans's body was found down a manhole; she had been strangled with her own tights. Her fiancé, who had been working close by cutting hedges that day, was questioned and released on bail.
October 1977 Carol Wilkinson Bradford, West Yorkshire Carol Wilkinson, 20, was attacked on her way to her job at a bakery on Bradford's Ravenscliffe estate on 10 October 1977. She was battered with two heavy stones and her clothing was removed. She died three days later at Bradford Royal Infirmary. Anthony Steel spent 20 years in prison for Wilkinson's murder and had his conviction quashed at the Court of Appeal in February 2003.

The murder was initially investigated as a possible "Yorkshire Ripper" attack before Steel, who was mentally handicapped, confessed as detectives promised he could see a solicitor if he said he had committed it. Since his acquittal several investigators have suggested Ripper Peter Sutcliffe was indeed the real killer, pointing to the fact that Sutcliffe knew Wilkinson, had previously argued with her father over his advances towards her, and had mutilated one of his confirmed victims nearby earlier on the day of the attack.

January 1978 Marie Lister Kegworth, Leicestershire The 89-year-old's body was found in her living room on 11 January. Her skull had been fractured, and police believe that an axe that was beside her corpse at the time of its discovery was what had been used to kill her.
13 January 1978 Beryl Culverwell Bath, Somerset 52-year-old welfare worker Beryl Culverwell was found dead in the garage of her home in Widcombe Hill, Bath. She had been stabbed 21 times and then bludgeoned to death with a shotgun. Her body was tied with twine, although there were no signs of a violent struggle. The telephone wires in the house were cut. A motive for Culverwell's murder has never been clearly determined.
February 1978 Leslie Guntrip Winsford, Cheshire A bread delivery man found 72-year-old Leslie Guntrip battered to death at the victim's farmhouse near Winsford on 15 February 1978. A shotgun was missing from the farmhouse but nothing else.
March 1978 John Connors Neath, South Wales John Connors's home help discovered the 85-year-old retired dentist's battered body on 31 March in his house on Lewis Road. A suspect was spotted running from the house and then being driven away in a white car the day before the discovery. He was about 6 ft tall, had dark hair, and looked as though he was between the ages of 30 and 40.
May 1978 Bill Simpson Birmingham 45-year-old Bill Simpson was a mechanic and his body was found burning inside his locked garage in Small Heath on Friday, 12 May after he had been shot there. Bill had been fined earlier in 1978 for possession of three stolen blank MOT certificates following the smashing of a racket involving about 300 such certificates, but no proof was uncovered that his murder was connected to his part in that racket.
4 June 1978 Michael Page Orpington, Kent Eighteen-year-old Michael Page was stabbed to death as he walked home. Michael, a bank clerk at NatWest in the Elephant and Castle, had been at a party with friends in Crofton Hall, Orpington. A passing motorist spotted his body lying on the pavement just a few hundred yards from his home in Avalon Road at around 3.42 am.

Newspaper reports stated he had suffered six deep stab wounds. His plastic wallet containing his driving licence, a £50 cheque card and a railway season ticket was missing, along with less than £3 in change.

August 1978 Genette Tate Body not found Although Genette Tate's body has never been found, Devon and Cornwall Police are treating her disappearance as murder. 13-year-old Tate disappeared while delivering newspapers in Aylesbeare, Devon, on 19 August 1978. Serial killer Robert Black came to be considered the main suspect, but evidence to support his involvement in her murder was not strong enough to charge him with it before his death in prison in 2016.
September 1978 Georgi Markov London Assisted by the KGB, agents of the Bulgarian secret police, Darzhavna Sigurnost, had previously made two failed attempts to kill Markov before a third attempt succeeded. On 7 September 1978, Markov walked across Waterloo Bridge – a bridge spanning the River Thames – and was waiting at a bus stop on the other side when he was jabbed in the calf by a man holding an umbrella. The man apologized and walked away. Markov later told doctors that the man had spoken with a foreign accent. The event is known as the Umbrella Murder, with the assassin said to have been Francesco Gullino, code-named "Piccadilly".
September 1978 Carl Bridgewater Yew Tree Farm, Kinver, Staffordshire 13-year-old Carl Bridgewater was shot in the head at close range when he disturbed burglars while delivering a newspaper to a house on 19 September 1978. The Bridgewater Four were originally convicted in 1979, but were acquitted in 1997.
October 1978 Nimraj Bibi Oldham, Greater Manchester Bibi, 35, was struck once with a blunt instrument in her home on Waterloo Street on 4 October 1978. Her 21-month-old son was standing in a nearby cot when her body was discovered and is likely to have witnessed the attack.
October 1978 Margaret Frame Brighton, East Sussex The body of the 36-year-old mother of one was found in a shallow grave in Stanmer Park on 22 October 1978 – ten days after she disappeared. She had been hit over the head, stabbed in the back and raped. No one was charged with Frame's murder, but the father of Russell Bishop, a local man responsible for the nearby Babes in the Wood Murders in Brighton's Wild Park in 1986, was arrested in relation to it.
November 1978 Gary Wilson Deptford, London The body of 14-year-old Gary Wilson was found in the yard of a derelict shop in Deptford in November 1978. He had been stabbed and strangled. A man was jailed for his murder the following year but was released in 1995 after his conviction was found to be unsafe.
December 1978 Walter Taylor Scunthorpe, Lincolnshire Taylor, 17, was found dead shortly before Christmas on the Jubilee Playing Fields in Ashby. He had been attacked with a piece of wood.
January 1979 Lynda Farrow Woodford Green, London On 19 January 1979, pregnant mother of two Lynda Farrow, 29, was found murdered with her throat slashed in her home in Whitehall Road. Earlier that day, Farrow had been shopping with her mother, and had bought a new pair of shoes and a coat. She then went to her partner's fruit stall before returning home by car. It is believed that Farrow either ran into her home to answer her ringing phone, leaving the door open behind her, or knew her attacker and let him in willingly. Farrow's body was found by her two daughters.

In 2009, Farrow's killing was reconstructed on the BBC's Crimewatch. The appeal featured her partner, now remarried, and her two daughters. The only sighting of Farrow's killer was by her neighbour, who saw a man wearing a long black coat entering Farrow's home at around 2 pm. He had blond hair and blue eyes. The only other clues to the killer are a set of footprints in the snow outside Farrow's house and a white car seen leaving there at around 2.30 pm. So far, nobody has been convicted for her murder. Links have been suggested between Farrow's killing and that of Eve Stratford, but DNA shows that there is no link between the cases.

February 1979 Sultan Mahmood Bradford, West Yorkshire Sultan Mahmood was a 31-year-old taxi driver and it was believed by the police that he was killed by members of a van-smuggling gang so they could resell his van in Pakistan. In 1983, a man already in jail for a different crime was put on trial for Mahmood's murder, but the trial collapsed when it was revealed that the two fellow prisoners whom he supposedly admitted to being the killer to had good reason to believe they would benefit from testifying against him. (Ahead of the hearing, one of the two men was told his charges would be wiped if he did so, the other that he would be given bail.) The case was reopened when the police received fresh information about it in 1994, but no breakthrough came from this new lead.
February 1979 Joe Gallagher and Frieda Hunter Hyde, Greater Manchester Joe Gallagher and Frieda Hunter were a young couple bludgeoned to death in the bedroom of their home on Hallbottom Street. The pair were last seen alive on Saturday 24 February, when 30-year-old Gallagher picked 20-year-old Hunter up from her evening shift as a barmaid at a local pub (The Queens in Hyde town centre). This was four days before their bodies were found. Gallagher was known to both use cannabis (apparently for medicinal reasons, due to a minor facial disfigurement) and deal in the drug, and had told family members that he had received threats, though no definitive motive for them or for the killings has been established. The killer or killers had broken into the house through the kitchen window, and the bodies of the pair were found when Gallagher (a taxi driver) had failed to turn up for work. His pay-packet from work appeared to have been stolen, and the couple had been battered to death with a blunt instrument while in bed together, suggesting a late night or early morning break-in.
March 1979 Resham Kaur Dhillon Willenhall, West Midlands Resham Kaur Dhillon, 49, was found strangled in her bedroom at her home on Fisher Street, Willenhall on 5 March 1979. Although a motive for her murder was not clear, it was believed that cash and gold were stolen. Anonymous letters received after Dhillon's death suggested a lead, but the case remains unsolved.
March 1979 Carol Lannen Dundee Part-time prostitute Carol Lannen, 18, was seen getting into a man's red car near Dundee city centre sometime after nightfall on 20 March 1979. Her naked body was discovered in Templeton Woods the next day, and the cause of death was asphyxiation. Similarities between the cases have led to speculation that this murder is linked to that of Elizabeth McCabe in 1980.
March 1979 Henry Newman Ilford, London Park keeper Henry Newman, 56, a father-of-three, was beaten to death with a metal crutch in a hut in Valentines Park on Thursday, 22 March. Police disclosed soon after his murder came to their attention that his £53 wage packet was missing as well. A male was prosecuted for the murder and then found not guilty.
March 1979 Airey Neave Westminster, London A bomb attached to the underside of his car detonated and fatally injured the 63-year-old Shadow Secretary of State for Northern Ireland as the vehicle was about to exit the Houses of Parliament's car park on 30 March 1979. The Irish National Liberation Army acknowledged responsibility for the planting of the device.
17 April 1979 Gordon Snowden Attacked in Sutton Bridge, Lincolnshire; died in hospital in King's Lynn, Norfolk At around 2 am the day after Easter Monday, Gordon Snowden, 60, a petrol pump attendant at Sutton Bridge Motors, located on Bridge Road near Crosskeys Bridge, was found lying beside his kiosk with severe head injuries. A cash till had been stolen. Snowden later died in hospital from his injuries. Part of the investigation centred on trying to trace a Citroën 2CV seen on the garage forecourt shortly before the murder. The cold case remains one of Lincolnshire Police's few unsolved murders.

In the late 1990s, British serial contract killer John "Bruce" Childs from East London, convicted of six killings in the 1970s, confessed to five more murders from his jail cell, claiming that the fifth victim was Snowden. Childs said he killed Snowden with a cosh because he was afraid he would be recognised after dumping another murder victim's car in the nearby River Nene. Childs claimed that six months earlier, he and associate Henry (Harry) "Big H" Mackenney had called at the filling station after murdering Ronald Andrews and dumping his car in the River Nene. Fearing that Snowden would remember the two strangers after the car was recovered, Childs went back to secure his silence. He said: "I battered him to death with a cosh in his office and took the till to make it look like robbery. He was an old boy, and when I look back I'm sorry. But in those days I was ruthless about eliminating risks. It may sound silly, but I'm telling this now because I think that man might have relatives and I would like them to know the truth." However, Lincolnshire Police have confirmed that nobody has ever been charged or prosecuted in relation to the murder.

April 1979 Sean McGann Northampton 15-year-old Sean McGann visited his grandparents' home on 17 April and left between 5.30 and 6 pm to walk to a local funfair. He was found dead in an alleyway the day after, having been strangled, and investigators could not establish whether he had made it to the fair. A letter his family received in 1991 purported to contain important information about his killer but has not helped to progress the case.
April 1979 Robert Exon Liverpool 42-year-old Robert Exon died after he was found stabbed on the landing of the 11th floor of Entwistle Heights in Edge Hill on the night of 17–18 April.
April 1979 Michael Baker Leeds A trespasser at Michael Baker's place of employment killed the 28-year-old factory worker on 18 April 1979 by striking his head with a blunt instrument.
April 1979 Blair Peach Southall, London Special needs teacher Blair Peach, 33, was involved in a mass demonstration against a National Front meeting in Southall on 23 April 1979. When police charged at protestors, Peach was struck on the head and died from his injuries. A report made public in 2010 concluded that Peach was 'almost certainly' killed by a riot police officer; in the same year the Scotland Yard commissioner, Sir Paul Stephenson, apologised to Peach's family.
May 1979 John Daniel Birmingham A 45-year-old garage mechanic who had been trying to persuade friends to lend him money, Daniel was killed on the evening of 1 May 1979 before being found in his car on wasteland in Balsall Heath by a police officer on patrol. He had been shot in the head by an unknown offender after telling people he had an appointment to keep.
July 1979 Suzanne Lawrence Body not found 14-year-old Lawrence vanished from Harold Hill, London on 28 July 1979, and although her body has not been found her case has been investigated as a murder and in 1994 she was officially investigated by police as a possible victim of serial killer Robert Black. Black regularly travelled along the road near where she disappeared from while working as a delivery driver. Lawrence's case has also been speculatively linked to Peter Tobin.
July 1979 Eddie Cotogno Dumbarton 63-year-old "Wee Eddie" Cotogno was the victim of a fatal hammer attack in his flat on 30 July 1979. A policeman on duty had his attention drawn to the flat by a fire there – a fire presumed to have been started by the murderer in order to get rid of forensic evidence. Because Angus Sinclair, who would eventually be exposed as a serial killer, had recently fallen out with Cotogno and was known by the police to have killed a seven-year-old girl when he was 16, it was not long before detectives were questioning him about the murder of the pornographer. Backed up by his wife, Sinclair gave them an alibi that they found satisfactory, but years later she claimed that he had not been with her at the time of Cotogno's death after all.
August 1979 Wendy Jenkins Bristol The last time the 32-year-old prostitute was seen alive, she was talking to a smartly dressed man at the junction of Drummond Road and City Road at daybreak or thereabouts on 27 August (a Bank Holiday Monday). A labourer found her mutilated body on a building site about 27 hours after that sighting. The Yorkshire Ripper was officially a suspect in the early stages of the police investigation into Jenkins's murder.
September 1979 Alison Morris Ramsey, Essex The 25-year-old postgraduate of London's Royal Holloway College was stabbed repeatedly in the chest on the evening of 1 September 1979. Her body was found in a country lane by her father, who had gone out to search for her because she had not returned home after leaving to go for a walk in the woods.
October 1979 John (a.k.a. Jack) Armstrong Stalling Down, near Cowbridge, South Wales On 5 October 1979, 58-year-old John Armstrong set off in his taxi to pick up someone calling himself Williams and asking to be taken from Fairwater to Cowbridge. Armstrong's body was found three days later, 11 miles (18 km) from where the taxi had been found abandoned at 6 pm on the day of that journey. He had been beaten around the head.
October 1979 Bedgebury Forest Woman Bedgebury Forest, Kent On 23 October 1979, a mystery woman aged between 30 and 35 was found in Bedgebury Forest, having been beaten to death. The discovery led to a murder enquiry, but she was never identified. It was thought she had come from Eastern Europe and had had one child. She was white, about 5 ft 1 in tall, and of thin build, with brown eyes and dark brown shoulder-length straight hair. When found, she was wearing black shoes, a floral dress, and a black polo neck jumper. Police re-investigated the case in 1999, and in May 2000 a man from East Sussex stood trial for her murder but was acquitted after a four-week trial.
December 1979 Sally Shepherd Peckham, London The 24-year-old restaurant manager from Peckham was clubbed, stamped on and sexually assaulted shortly after stepping off a bus during the early hours of 1 December. Three rootless hairs from the scene of the crime are likely to be from the person who took her life, but forensic scientists will refrain from testing them until technology has advanced enough to make the chances of obtaining a full DNA profile from them more promising.

See also