When police found the body, lying beside it was a magazine, coincidentally open at a page with an article on fingerprints. That didnt help the investigators, though, because the killer of Mrs. Violet McGrath, 64, has never been found.
The attack, on Sunday May 9th, 1954, began at the front door of her flat in Onslow Square, Kensington, suggesting that she was seeing someone out. A neighbour remembered a series of loud thuds at lunchtime which supported the evidence that Mrs. McGrath was hit from behind with a blunt instrument. She was then strangled with one of her stockings, ripped from her leg.
A few days before her death she withdrew a large sum of cash which was never traced, and which suggested that the motive was robbery, probably by one of her drinking friends at the local pub.