UK UK - Norfolk, Headless woman, 23-35, pink nightdress, Aug'74

Ellmau

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Police have reopened the cold case of the headless body of a woman, aged 23-35, found wearing a pink nightdress (from M&S) in August 1974. While checking out possible matches, they have cleared several hundred missing persons reports from the period (either found live and well, or deceased).

she may be a woman known as The Duchess, who lived in Great Yarmouth and may have worked as an escort.
The woman, who disappeared in the mid-1970s, is thought to have come from Denmark, which fits in with a DNA profile of the body suggesting the woman came from and had lived in that part of Europe.

Photo of the dress and some unusual rope (possibly agricultural) found with the body at the link.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-norfolk-35350440

More info from when the case was looked at in 2007, when the body was exhumed for a new PM: http://www.lynnnews.co.uk/news/loca...ley-cley-police-exhume-headless-body-1-520094
 
More info here: the victim had given birth at some point in her life, ate a lot of fish and had lived in Scotland.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-34737343

The article also looks at unidentified bodies in the UK generally and is an interesting read.

I've just watched the TV programme mentioned at the bottom of that article. This is the link for those who can access it:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b06yr617/inside-out-east-25012016

The piece about the unidentified dead starts at 10.35 and the bit about Swaffham Doe specifically at 16.00.

What they do say in the programme is that isotope testing showed she originated from "central Europe", in a band from Denmark to Italy, and that she had arrived in the UK during the last 6 months of her life.

She was also a "second stage protein eater", hence the mention of fish in her diet, but this could apply to someone from Italy as much as from Denmark or northern Germany.
 
As this case is back on police radar at present, I thought it would be useful to give some background to facilitate any future discussions here and to give a context to any future developments. Although I did not live in Norfolk at the time this body was found, I lived in Norwich (Norfolk's county town and administrative centre) from the mid 1980s for most of the following decade, and 1980s Norfolk was virtually unchanged from 1970s Norfolk.

A glance at Google maps reveals one very obvious fact: Norfolk sticks out of the eastern side of England and is bounded on two sides, the north and east, by the North Sea. In terms of UK geography, therefore, it is a region one deliberately goes to, not through on the way to somewhere else. Furthermore, it is bounded on the west by The Fens, a low lying area of meandering rivers and meres which was waterlogged until the late 17[SUP]th[/SUP] century when Dutch engineers were brought in to drain the marshes. (Today it is a major area for sugar beet, potato and vegetable growing.) So until 300 or 350 years ago Norfolk was virtually cut off on a third side as well. Historically, therefore, trade and transport were largely done by water (river or coastal). In short, it is geographically isolated and until recently its native population was insular and suspicious of “incomers”. We “incomers” had a joke amongst ourselves: “Happisburgh, Norfolk. Twinned with Innsmouth, Massachusetts.” It was that sort of place.

At the time of this murder there were three main groups of “incomers” in the county:



  1. Tourists Norfolk has had a tourist industry since the late 19[SUP]th[/SUP] century Originally this was focussed on traditional seaside resorts such as Sheringham and Great Yarmouth and later supplemented by holiday parks such as Butlins and Pontins and boating holidays on the Norfolk Broads (flooded mediaeval peat diggings).
  2. Students The University of East Anglia (UEA) was established in Norwich in the mid 1960s. It's a standard concrete-and-glass 1960s university and was the first in the UK to offer Bachelors degrees in Environmental Science. There is also a well-regarded art college in the city.
  3. Military personnel The RAF has had many bases in the area which were originally established during WWII. Today some of these are leased to the USAF, eg Lakenheath.


There were also two smaller groups of outsiders in the area:




  1. Gypsies and travellers who provided seasonal and itinerant labour for farms across Norfolk and The Fens. These groups have traditionally been suspicious of, indeed hostile to, outsiders, especially the authorities. They therefore tend to sort out internal disputes or issues themselves, often violently.
  2. New Age and hippy types Because of its isolation, there were many large, country properties in Norfolk which could at that time be bought or leased very cheaply and a number large houses and small estates became communes, healing centres and similar. WWOOF had also been founded in the UK in 1971, giving volunteers a chance to live and work on small organic farms in return for board and lodging. Volunteers tended to move around, following agricultural need and chasing different experiences. By definition, these communities tended to be idealistic, perhaps naïve, drifters who usually hitchhiked and were therefore vulnerable.

I said earlier that one goes to rather than through Norfolk. Great Yarmouth has long been the county's main port but it has never had a ferry service to the continent. Freight came into the port and was unloaded there onto lorries to be hauled eastwards towards the Midlands, so there has never been a flow-through of road traffic to and from the continent. The nearest RORO and passenger ferry to the continent was and is at Felixstowe, near Ipswich.

There were three main roads in and out of the county.


  1. The A12 runs south from Great Yarmouth to Ipswich (Suffolk), Colchester and Chelmsford (Essex) before ending in London.
  2. The A11 runs south west to Cambridge, Newmarket (horse racing centre). Until the late 1980s this was single carriageway as far as the Newmarket Bypass. Dualling was completely by the early 1990s. It now joins the M11 and ends in London.
  3. The A47 runs west from Great Yarmouth, round Norwich, past Kings Lynn, across the Fens to Peterborough and Leicester before joining the M1 with access to all regions of the UK. The Norfolk section of this road was mostly single carriageway in the 1970s and 1980s but has been completely dualled since then. The A47 runs north of Swaffham, about 5 miles from where the body was found.

I'm going to try to pull together my thoughts about the body and how what has been made public about it might or might not link to the information above, and will post them separately.
 
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-tayside-central-36043593

An unsolved 1970s case of a headless woman's body found bound in jute and wrapped in a Dundee factory's plastic sheet is being investigated by students in the city...

The woman's hands were bound with string only manufactured in Dundee.

The students are scouring 1970s local reports of missing people for clues...
 
Oooh I know where this location is. It's VERY isolated and one can only imagine even more so 40 yrs ago.

My money would be on the escort and then the body being transported and dumped. :(

I can see agricultural migrant labour possibly being involved too but not sure how prevalent that was in the 1970s?

Sent from my SM-J500FN using Tapatalk
 
Marks_%26_Spencer_1969_pink_nightdress.jpg
Cockley_Cley%2C_Norfolk%2C_location.jpg



one theory that police are working on is that she was a prostitute known as "The Duchess" who worked the Great Yarmouth docks under that name and who disappeared in the summer of 1974.
...
remains were exhumed in 2008, samples of her toenails, hair and thigh bone were subjected to DNA and isotopic analysis. A full DNA profile was obtained
...
independent isotopic analyses indicated that she was probably from the central Europe area including Denmark, Germany, Austria and Northern Italy
...
second post-mortem examination of the woman indicated that she probably had at least one child
...
she was wearing only a pink 1969 Marks & Spencer nightdress
...
Norfolk police are examining a theory that the woman is "The Duchess", a prostitute who lived in Great Yarmouth docks and who disappeared in the summer of 1974 leaving all her possessions behind. "The Duchess" is believed to have arrived in the port town on the Esbjerg Ferry from Denmark. Her clients were lorry drivers who travelled between Esbjerg and Yarmouth using the ferry and she also sometimes accompanied drivers on deliveries in England. She was 23–35 years old and 5 feet 2 inches tall. In 1973–74 she lived for four or five months in the dockers' hut at the Ocean terminal. She also spent time in custody but the records relating to that time have been destroyed
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norfolk_headless_body


Her profile in UK national database

Circumstances
A headless female body was found bound and hidden in a patch of bracken near Swaffam on the Cockley Cley Road.

Clothing
Nightwear - Nightdress - Pink - Low cut st michael make, 34/36 bust, frilled halter neck, cream lining
http://www.missingpersons.police.uk/en/case/06-023865
 
Anyone know of m/p's in that era, especially the early 70's hailing from Denmark ? Especially known to frequent the Gt Yarmouth area ??
 
Adding few photos from her case as I see they timed out in previous posts

_87852153_87852152.jpg


Police were still continuing their investigation to identify the woman, who was found in a pink nightdress tied and wrapped up

_87852145_87852144.jpg


Unusual rope from Dundee was found with the body

_87852149_87852148.jpg


The woman was found wrapped up in a National Cash Registers embossed plastic sheet

Headless body hunt finds missing women

Case 06-023865

Gender: female
Age range: 20 - 30
Ethnicity: white european

Height: 157cm - 157cm
Date found: 27 August 1974
Estimated death: 13 August 1974
Body or remains: remains

Eye colour: Unknown
Clothing:
nightwear - nightdress - pink - unknown - low cut st michael make, 34/36 bust, frilled halter neck, cream lining

Circumstances

A headless female body was found bound and hidden in a patch of bracken near Swaffam on the Cockley Cley Road. She is believed to have died approximately two weeks earlier. Police suspect she is a murder victim

UK Missing Persons Unit
 
Don't know of any other m/ps from Denmark in that area but Pamela Exall vanished from Snettisham in the same month. Could there be a link?
 
I found the case of a missing German woman in Wick, Scotland, around the right time. Thankfully, she turned up safe, but it got me wondering how far this body had come. Its clearly been staged, so I wondered if it had been frozen. Could they tell that back in the '70s?
 
It would be possible to tell if she had been frozen even then. Chris Clark has Peter Sutcliffe as a person of interest. Sutcliffe travelled through East Anglia as he left Yorkshire each Friday to see Sonia in London.
 
Thank you for that input. It probably means the body has not travelled far. However, Sutcliffe makes no sense as the perpetrator to me. This body had very specific mutilations, & was posed with some strange clues - Israeli matches, for instance, - and doesn't appear to be Sutcliffe's typical modus operandi. (Hammer, rape & leave the body in situ). Still, if I had to link it to another murder it would be the Tattingstone Suitcase Murder of Bernard Oliver - another unsolved. In that case (Forgive the pun, not intended to give offense), Bernard was identified because the police took the unprecedented step of publishing a photograph of the deceased's head, which is, I believe, why this one was severed and disposed of, who knows how.
 
The dna testing indicating she was from central Europe might be be a red herring. A lot of native brits have ancestors from all over Europe. Her parents also could have come over from mainland Europe and she was brought up here.

The diet of fish, but particularly crab is interesting. I might be wrong, but apart from the tinned stuff, it’s not that easy to come by unless you live on the coast. She obviously lived close to the water and had easy access to seafood. I may be off the mark but most brits diets, back then, would have been meat based, with ‘fish on a friday’ being a common tradition, well in Scotland anyway. So she must have lived in a fishing community where a regular diet of fish was more common.

The Scottish connection comes up a couple of times, rope from dundee and that she had consumed water from Scotland. I don’t know if this means she drank it shortly before her death or for a longer period of time, as in over years. A lot of fishing villages in Scotland too, and dundee is on the coast. Perhaps worth checking missing persons from east coast of Scotland too.
 
Do we know how the ligatures were tied? How complicated were the knots and bindings?
 
The dna testing indicating she was from central Europe might be be a red herring. A lot of native brits have ancestors from all over Europe. Her parents also could have come over from mainland Europe and she was brought up here.

The diet of fish, but particularly crab is interesting. I might be wrong, but apart from the tinned stuff, it’s not that easy to come by unless you live on the coast. She obviously lived close to the water and had easy access to seafood. I may be off the mark but most brits diets, back then, would have been meat based, with ‘fish on a friday’ being a common tradition, well in Scotland anyway. So she must have lived in a fishing community where a regular diet of fish was more common.
Cockley Cley is about an hour's drive from Cromer which is / was famous for it's shellfish, especially crab. Even the coxswain of the lifeboat is nicknamed "Shrimp".
 
These are my latest thoughts on Our Lady @ Cockley Cley:- The East of England has always been absolutely rife with trafficking - drugs, people, you name it. From light aircraft landing in Kent, to all the shipping container ports on the east coast, this was and is organised crime territory. The Tattingstone murder was rumoured to be linked to the Krays, the often overlooked murder @ the Sutton Bridge filling station 25 miles away was claimed (Though he was never charged) by hitman John Childs, now serving a whole-life tariff. Just because this poor lady was naked might not mean this was a direct sex crime. I'm thinking it might have been a "clean-up" job from the notorious "parties" at the mansions in this area owned by one of the crime bosses active in the 1960s & 1970s. If it was a sexual predator though, the perpetrator wasn't Sutcliffe [See post #14] , and IMO it wasn't Tobin either. He liked to keep his victims close i.e. in the back yard. Not the Wests [ditto, plus too unsophisticated] and not Nilsen, who favoured young men. Anyone else?
 

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