This is a list of all the unsolved murders that have happened in Bucks or involved people from Bucks.
Helen Davidson
Age: 54
Address: North Road, Amersham
Location of death: Hodgemoor Wood, Chalfont St Giles
On the afternoon of November 9, 1966, GP Dr Helen Davidson of Amersham set out for Hodgemoor Wood with her six-year-old terrier and a set of binoculars for a spot of birdwatching.
The following day her body was discovered with severe head injuries, her dog lying protectively across her legs, after a 12-hour search in which police were joined by more than 100 army troops.
With no known enemies, Detective Chief Superintendent Jack Williams of New Scotland Yard surmised that she “has spied illicit lovers, was spotted, and one or both of them killed her.”
Painted as a woman beloved by her community it was reported to be a random killing, with papers including the Bucks Free Press writing at the time of a “local killer” who was “behind someone’s door” and so there was great unrest in Amersham.
A book on Dr Davidson’s death was written by amateur sleuth Monica Weller. Read more here.
Rita Ellis
Age: 19
Address: RAF Halton
Location of death: Rowborough Copse, Halton
Rita Ellis, an aircraftswoman, was murdered at RAF Halton on November 11, 1967, just months after she was drafted there.
The body had been covered by leaves and foliage.
Police said Rita, who was stationed at the camp, had been sexually assaulted and strangled.
At the time of the murder, Thames Valley Police did not exist – the local police force was the Buckinghamshire Constabulary – but it was New Scotland Yard that led the investigation.
Police said Rita was due to babysit for a wing commander and his wife on the night of her murder and was due to be picked up from her living quarters at around 7.30pm, but there was allegedly some confusion about the agreed pick-up time.
The wing commander is believed to have arrived at Rita’s accommodation at around 7.40pm and waited for her for around 15 minutes before leaving.
Around 10 minutes later he returned to the accommodation with his wife as she would have been allowed to enter her living quarters, but Rita was not there.
Glenis Carruthers
Age: 20
Address: Little Chalfont
Location of death: Clifton, Bristol
A student at Bedford College of Physical education, Miss Carruthers had travelled to a friend's house in Bristol for a 21st birthday party on January 19, 1974.
At around 10.20pm she left the party, possibly to get some fresh air or to make a call from a telephone box nearby.
Just after 11pm there was a sighting of her on the Clifton Downs, where a witness thought he saw a courting couple on the grass.
A short time after her body was discovered and she had been strangled to death.
Molly Willmore
Age: 74
Address: Boundary Road, Taplow
Location of death: At home
Mary ‘Molly’ Willmore was reportedly beaten to death with a blunt instrument on Easter Monday, April 4, 1983, by burglars who broke into her home.
True Crime Library says Ms Willmore was a “semi-recluse” who only lived with her cats.
Shani Warren
Age: 26
Address: Stoke Poges
Location of death: Taplow
Millionaire's daughter Shani Warren disappeared on Good Friday, April 17, 1987. She had been mowing the lawn at her home in Stoke Poges and had set off in her car to dispose of the grass cuttings at the compost heap at her parents’ home in Gerrards Cross. She never returned.
The next day, she was found dead in Taplow Lake. Before her body was found, a lorry driver saw her car parked in a lay-by nearby on the A4, where he was planning to park up for the night.
Her car was still there on Sunday. At 6.30pm that day, a woman walking her dog discovered Shani’s body floating face down in the lake. She had been bound and gagged.
Her cause of death was drowning. Shani had been sexually assaulted and there is a suggestion that her attacker could have been serial rapist Clive Barwell who was given eight life sentences in 1999 for a string of offences including multiple accounts of rape, attempted murder, kidnapping and assault.
Penny Bell
Age: 42
Address: Bakers Wood, Denham
Location of death: Greenford, London
Mrs Bell was found stabbed to death in her car at a busy swimming pool car park in Greenford, West London, on June 6, 1991. She had been stabbed 50 times as she sat behind the wheel of her blue Jaguar.
Penny was a partner in Coverstaff Ltd., a Kilburn-based employment agency.
On the morning of her death at 9.40am she left the family home and told builders, who were renovating the house, that she was running late for an appointment at 9:50am. No one anything about the appointment, as Penny never told anyone who it was with, and there was no mention of it in her diary.
Eyewitnesses spoke of seeing her car driving slowly – around 10mph - with the hazard lights on. She appeared to be struggling with an unknown male, who was in the passenger seat.
Forensics said the initial stab wounds appear to have come from someone sitting in the passenger seat of her car.
Police ruled out the motive of robbery because Penny's handbag had been left in the car with seemingly nothing removed.
Three days before the attack Mrs Bell, a mother-of-two, withdrew £8,500 from her and her husband Alistair's joint bank account.
The reason for this has never been established and the money has never been found.
Janet Brown
Age: 51
Address: Sprigs Holly Lane, Radnage
Location of death: At home
Mother-of-three Janet Brown was found with multiple fatal head injuries at her home at Hall Farm in Sprigs Holly Lane, Radnage, on April 11, 1995, by a builder and his teenage son.
The 51-year-old, a research nurse with Oxford University’s Public Health and Primary Care department, is believed to have been attacked at some point between 8.15pm and 10.15pm the evening before when she was home alone.
Janet, who worked at Oxford University, had been alone in the family’s large house on the evening of her murder.
Her husband, Graham, was away in Switzerland working at the time, while two of her children no longer lived at the property and her youngest daughter, Roxanne, was at a friend’s house.
Three hundred potential suspects were eliminated from the investigation after having their DNA examined.
Carolyne Anne Jackson
Age: 50
Address: Burghers Hill, Wooburn Green
Location of death: At home
Antiques dealer Carolyne Anne Jackson was found strangled to death and manacled on the floor of her home, Apple Tree Cottage in Burghers Hill, Wooburn Green, on April 13, 1997.
Miss Jackson, who was disabled, had been hit about the head with a blunt instrument. The official cause of death was asphyxiation.
Detectives pursued a possible lead, which pointed to a stalker who had followed Miss Jackson for two months before her murder, but the murder remains unsolved.
He said when she had arrived home she telephoned a friend to say she had arrived safely but almost immediately after that, as she ferried items from her car into her secluded home, she was attacked.
The inquest heard that two months before her murder, Miss Jackson had telephoned a neighbour as she was driving home saying she thought she was being followed.
Viola Mead
Age: 85
Address: Dobbins Lane, Wendover
Location of death: Stoke Mandeville Hospital
Viola Mead, of Dobbins Lane in Wendover, died in Stoke Mandeville Hospital on May 13, 2003, two weeks after she was attacked by two men in her home.
Unmarried Miss Mead was found semi-conscious in her kitchen on April 28 by a family friend.
Before she died, Miss Mead gave police a description of one of the men. He was 5ft 10ins, slim with a narrow face with a dark complexion that was yellowish in colour as if he had jaundice.
She said he was wearing a black jumper with a yellow motif on the left.
Natasha Derby
Age: 23
Address: YMCA, Crest Road, High Wycombe
Location of death: Multi Racial Centre in St Mary's Street, High Wycombe
Natasha died from a gunshot wound whilst attending the Summer Jam event at the High Wycombe Multi-Cultural Centre in St Mary Street in the early hours of September 4, 2004.
Natasha had helped organise the event, spending most of the evening taking the £10 entrance fee from clubbers as they entered.
She was shot as she watched the DJ towards the end of the night. More than 100 people were thought to be in the club at the time.
She was taken to Wycombe Hospital with a bullet lodged in her brain.
A number of arrests were made in the years following her death and one man went on trial for manslaughter – but he was cleared. Another man was found not guilty of her murder in a trial in 2005.
Beata Bryl
Age: 23
Address: London
Location of death: Woodland off Hedsor Lane, Wooburn Green
Beata Bryl was brutally bludgeoned to death with a blunt object before her body was doused with accelerant and set alight in Wooburn Green.
She was last seen alive in Leytonstone underground station on July 28, 2006.
Her charred remains were discovered in woodland off Hedsor Lane the following day by a cyclist – sparking a massive police investigation to find her killer.
Police arrested and questioned more than 20 potential suspects during their investigation – but none of them were ever charged and put on trial.
Officers probed every angle, even down to where a pillowcase and a plastic bag used to cover Beata’s head were manufactured, in a bid to solve the case.
The investigation was featured on BBC’s Crimewatch in 2007, with Beata’s final movements painstakingly retraced and reconstructed.
An inquest heard how Beata – a former teen beauty pageant contest who came to England from Poland in 2003 with a boyfriend – had 21 lacerations on her scalp.
It took detectives a month to identify her body due to the extent of the burns.
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