Orrible British True Crime Volume 1: 15 Strange and Shocking True Crime Stories by Ben Oakley

Author:Ben Oakley [Oakley, Ben]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Twelvetrees Camden
Published: 2022-02-21T00:00:00+00:00

Nude in the Nettles

A strange phone call leads to the discovery of a woman’s body on the North York Moors, but for over 40 years, her identity and death remain a mystery, and one of England’s oddest unsolved cold cases.

North Yorkshire, in England, is home to the North York Moors National Park, with rolling green landscapes and windy fields. Nestled in the Hambleton District of the North York Moors is Sutton Bank, a hill with extensive views over the Vale of York and the Vale of Mowbray.

Close by is Roulston Scar, an Iron Age hill fort built in the 5th Century, a place of historical interest where the Battle of Old Byland took place, in which the Scots mounted an attack and defeated the forces of King Edward II.

Fifteen Centuries later, on the morning of 28th August 1981, Constable John Jeffries of Ripon Police had arrived at the station to start his shift. Shortly after, he received a phone call from a well-spoken man with a trace of a local Yorkshire accent.

He said, ‘near Scawton Moor House, you will find a decomposed body among the willow herbs.’ Unsure what to make of it, Jeffries asked for the man’s name and address. To which the reply was, ‘I cannot divulge this information for reasons of national security’, before hanging up.

Before the man had hung up, he had provided detailed instructions on where they could find the body. When Jeffries took it to his superiors, they suggested the onus was on him to find it. He walked up to Sutton Bank, and there among the willow herbs, he found human bones.

Remains

The search hadn’t been easy, Jeffries had scoured the area for an hour before discovering the remains, packed tightly into the sprawling bushes around the area. Detective Chief Superintendent Strickland Carter was called to the scene with his CID squad, who mounted a large operation.

They spent almost half a day removing the willow herbs and shrubbery from around the bones and used a team to scour Sutton Bank in search for further remains. Then, near to the top of the hill, close to Scawton Moor House, beside a country road, they found a decomposed body.

With the Yorkshire Ripper, Peter Sutcliffe, having been arrested seven months earlier, murder was fresh on Carter’s mind. Though Sutcliffe had been active in Yorkshire, he was not known to have ventured to the area around Sutton Bank.

An investigation discovered the body was that of a female and that she would have been nude at the time of her death, suggesting foul play. But there seemed to be no knife marks on the bones nor had her skull been crushed by a blunt object. There were no clothes nearby, she had no jewellery, and no identifying piece of evidence.

Due to the decomposition of the body, and the rate the willow herbs had grown up around it, it was suggested she had died at least one year earlier. This was confirmed when they removed the body and found a yogurt pot underneath her, with a sell-by-date of 1979.

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