Gone But Not Forgotten

“Events surrounding this trial suggest there may be times when the power of the criminal underworld defeats the ends of justice,” declares a note in a criminal manual in a chapter relating to the killing of Selwyn Keith Cooney on Sunday, February 7th, 1960. Cooney, 31, owner of the Pen Club, Stepney, was the victim

Who killed Irish prostitute Peggy Flynn? “I did,” said an Irishman serving in the British Army’s Parachute Regiment and currently a patient at the Royal Victoria Hospital at Netley, Southampton. “Well,” said detectives when they had listened at his bedside to his confession, “we don’t think it was you.” Peggy Flynn, 49, was found dead

Under cover of a dark and bitterly cold night of Friday January 20th, 1961, a man parked his car in a lane in Polstead Heath, Suffolk, carried the body of a little girl across a field for about 20 yards and laid her down beside a ditch and a hawthorn hedge. Before he went back

Artists and artisans jostled together in Chelsea’s popular Cross Keys pub and as much as for the beer they were there to chat up the landlady Harriet Buxton. Separated from her husband, Harriet wore her flashy clothes and her jewels with an air. The pub was a big money-spinner, and owed a lot to the

A nurse, like her famous kinswoman whose name she bore, Florence Nightingale Shore was attacked in a London to Hastings train on Monday, January 12th, 1920, while on her way to stay with friends at St. Leonards. She had a fractured skull and an injury to the brain that could have been caused by the

A murder that made no sense at all happened on Sunday evening, January 20th, 1919, when John Bianchi, 18, was accompanying his cousin to her work at a nearby hospital in the Biggs Main area of Newcastle. Suddenly, as they walked along Water Gate, a shot rang out. John Bianchi was hit in the stomach

The man who killed pregnant mother of two Linda Farrow on Sunday, January 19th, 1975, did it horrifically. He stabbed her repeatedly, then knelt on her back to severe her head with a deliberate sawing action using a razor-sharp freezer knife. Whatever the motive, it wasn’t sexual. And the man may have known her, for

The butt of a hand-rolled cigarette was found lying on the dead body of nine-year-old Pamela Coventry, dumped in a ditch near Hornchurch, Essex. Experts quickly identified the tobacco and the cigarette paper. Was it a clue? The police thought so. They charged Leonard Richardson, who rolled his own cigarettes with that paper and that

“I represent an electrical wiring company,” the caller said. “I wonder if you have thought about having an expert examine the wiring in your house?” It was a come-on line, and not many in the Radford area of Coventry fell for it. Some of the women who answered the doorbell said the man made sexual

Seeing three or four men breaking into a shop in Great Eastern Road (now Tollcross Road) Glasgow, on the night of Saturday, January 18th, 1919, PC James Campbell did not hesitate. He immediately grabbed the man nearest to him but could do nothing to prevent the others escaping. At that moment his prisoner broke free,