It's around 7.15am on the morning of 27th August, 1974. 19 year old Andrew Head was already going about his working day. It was while passing this farm track, which heads up to Break Hill Farm, that the 19 year old spotted something unusual.
Something like a plastic sheet, stuffed into the long grass verge. He investigated further, and discovered the remains of a human body. Wrapped in a dust sheet and bound with cord, a headless corpse had been dumped into the undergrowth, and had apparently lay there for several weeks, judging from the extensive decomposition that had taken place.
The decapitated young woman wore a pretty pink nightdress, later discovered to have been purchased around 1969 at M&S, but had very little else by which to identify her.
The discovery would be reported to the police, but their task in identifying her or her killer would prove to harder than anyone imagined.
With no head and no personal effects they had few places to start in discovering who she may be; no links to associates could be made and no suspects to interview. The only clues came from perhaps the materials used to bind and hide her.
It would be discovered that the dust sheet was a relatively scarce find. Marked with the NCR logo, only six such sheets had been produced in the 1960s. NCR stood for 'National Cash Register'. The National Cash Register company, as you may expect, manufactured cash registers. Originating in the US during the Victorian period, they had opened factories in Dundee, Scotland in 1946 and were still a major local employer in the 1960s and 70s. Although, of course, their product was distrubuted widely, could the killer have had links to this Scottish factory? This may have been a tenuous link had it not also been discovered that the rope used to bind her had also been manufactured by a different company in the Dundee area. A coincidence?
With no identification of the victim the case went cold. She could not be matched to any reported missing person cases, and after thousands of interviews, the police were no further forward. She wasn't forgotten though.
Developments in forensics prompted her exhumation in 2008, from which a few more details were determined, as well as a DNA profile which could help to identify her in the future.
Following further studies, police now believe she was around 23 years old and may have had a child during her lifetime. If this is correct, and assuming that child survives, it could one day be possible to trace her via familial DNA.
Isotopic analysis and other tests not available in 1974 revealed that she had potentially also visited Scotland, but that she could have also lived in Central Europe during her life. She had also had a diet heavy on fish and shellfish. These details have been used to support the proposal that she could have been a woman who went missing from Great Yarmouth in 1973/74. This missing person was a Danish sex worker, thought to have disappeared in the six months before this young woman was found. Whilst there are ways you could compare details from each case, I think it also adds in too many new questions.
That this young woman was found in a nightdress makes me feel this was entirely more domestic. Possibly killed at home by a partner or spouse. Perhaps the reason none of the missing persons cases could be matched to her was because her killer did not report her missing, and was her only witness to her disappearance. He could have quietly got rid of her belongings and made excuses for her leaving. Who knows.
Her head has never been found, and perhaps if it had been a further clue into her identity could have been found also. It's been fifty years with no answers and I feel like it's time for this young woman to get some sort of justice.
Of course, this is an ongoing case and the police have only released a certain amount of information to the public. If you have any information which may be of use in identifying the victim or killer, all the contact information is available on the Nofolk Constabulary website HERE.
There is much speculation online and very many versions on this story regurgitated in the UK press, but the facts as released by the police are included in the link above.
She is buried in an unmarked grave in Swaffham cemetery. Let's hope one day she gets a headstone and her identity back. It's possible her killer is already beyond the reach of the law, but we hope that her story is at least someday a completed one.
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From what I've pieced together from online reports, her body was discovered somewhere around w3w
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