Travelling on a train, an 18-year-old French au pair who heard a woman screaming in another compartment instinctively froze. I thought it was a woman being raped but I was in fear of my life, she said at the inquest on the victim, Deborah Linsley, 26.
The French girl was severely criticised by the coroner, Dr. Paul Knapman. You could at least have pulled the emergency cord, he told her.
She told the inquest that she saw a man who appeared nervous leave the Orpington commuter train at Victoria station. He was white, aged about 40, and had untidy red hair.
Deborah Linsley, a trainee hotel manager, who lived in Petts Wood, Kent, suffered multiple laceration wounds that showed she fought hard for her life. Her attacker cut her throat and stabbed her repeatedly in the breasts, leaving her dead in the single sealed compartment when the train arrived at Victoria in the afternoon of Wednesday, MARCH 23rd, 1988.
Despite the case being re-opened and police developing a DNA profile of the killer, Deborahs murder remains unsolved.