“The killer must have gone berserk,” said a police chief, after the bodies of Mrs. Caroline Woodcock, 79, and her daughter Mrs. Iris Thompson, 53, were found battered and stabbed to death at their home in Coombe Rise, Shenfield, Essex, on Tuesday, September 11th, 1973.

The two women were murdered shortly after Iris Thompson’s husband, Kenneth, left for work that morning. There was no break-in and no apparent motive.