Early in the morning of MAY 22nd, 1992, the caretaker of a school in Slough saw a large bundle lying on the pavement in nearby Waterbeach Road. Investigating, he found it contained a man’s headless body. The head was found shortly afterwards in the gutter of nearby Elliman Avenue.
The victim was identified as one of three brothers who ran a local supermarket. Marks on his body indicated that he had been beaten before he was decapitated, probably while kneeling. His wrists and ankles had been secured with lengths of clothesline, and he was naked apart from underpants.
During the previous evening his car had been seen outside the Slough home of a 64-year-old man and his 28-year-old son. When blood was found in their house and the victim’s clothes were discovered in the loft, they were arrested and charged with murder.
The pair were convicted at Reading Crown Court in September 1992 and sentenced to life imprisonment, but two retrials followed. At the third and last, at the Old Bailey in 1996, both defendants were again convicted and jailed for life.
The murder weapon was never found, and no motive was established, although the victim’s father thought the killers owed his son a large sum of money and were unable to settle the debt.