1966: The Thames Torso

This is a Ramsgate town pub located in the Wapping district of east London. At the rear of this 16th century building is a set of stone steps known as the Huge Ancient Stairs which lead down to the north bank of the River Thames at around 4:30pm. On Sunday 20 February

1966

, fifteen-year-old Diane Hamilton was in the kitchen of the Ramsgate Town Tavern, her father Harry Hamilton the proprietor, as she washed her hands in the sink and looked out the window at the Thames that distracted her. A thin man opened the door to the steps and she watched him as she descended towards the river which was now at low tide.

He was dressed in a shabby light gray suit and stood on the shore expectantly. Diane Hamilton was surprised to see a stranger here. at 4:30 p.m. One Sunday she knew all the regular boatmen in the area, but she did not recognize this person. However, she thought no more of Robin and went about her business just over an hour later, a boatman on the Thames found a fleshy mass resting in the water. Soggy ground near the bottom of the steps upon closer inspection he recognized it as the upper section of a female

torso

the head, including the shoulders, had been cleanly severed the immediate theory was that the woman had been involved in a boating accident and was cut into pieces by the boat's propeller after this was finally ruled out, London police realized that this could be Jack the Stripper's seventh victim.

If you are familiar with my channel you may remember that in June 2018 I covered the Hammersmith Newton Murders Case six known victims were claimed between 1964 and 1965 by a murderer who was never apprehended. The last known victim, Bridget O'Hara, was found in February 1965. The condition of the body in this case did not match that of the nude murders. but Chief Superintendent John D Rose, who had led the investigation into the Newton murders, surmised that it could have been the same killer and that the act of cutting off the head with the arms may have been to delay or prevent identification of the body.

Wednesday 23 February

1966

John De Rose joined Detective Superintendent Jack Manning at an autopsy which took place at Poplar Mortar II in east London. The ten inch section of the breast belonged to a woman said to be between 30 and 40 years old with dark hair and 42 42 inches. her bust and a waist of 34 inches, she was estimated to be five or six years old and had given birth to at least one child. This section was cut from the base of the neck to just above the navel with a very sharp blade and surgical precision according to the pathologist the woman did not die of natural causes before dismemberment she had certainly been murdered no clothing was found the body part had had been in the water for no more than four hours and death had occurred within 48 hours of being found because the head and arms had been expertly cut off Scotland Yard was almost certainly looking for someone with knowledge of precision cutting such as a surgeon or a tomboy.

It was ultimately decided that it was unlikely that the victim was the seventh victim of a conversation with a stripper. A gentleman, ultimately, there was nothing that linked her. For the other victims, apart from the fact that she was found in the Thames, the Mo... were too different. John Duros had a little more to do with the investigation and Detective Superintendent James Grany was left with the unenviable task of identifying a body section with no means of identification and capturing a murderer with no current clues, it was also impossible to say whether the

torso

had been thrown into the river at the point where it was found or had been discarded elsewhere upstream on Monday, February 21.

The investigation became public when the story hit the newspapers. BBC radio broadcast details of the fine that night and appealed to the public for help an hour after broadcast. Five women were reported missing to Scotland Yard. These women haven't been seen in a long time. days, but no concerns for her safety were raised until the broadcast was made, five others were reported missing in the following 24 hours and the February 24 edition of the Police Gazette requested information on any women across the country who had disappeared in the last few weeks because, of course, there was no guarantee that the victim was a Londoner.

At dawn on February 22, 300 police and frogmen swept both sides of the Thames from Westminster Bridge to the estuary and then extended their search westwards to Teddington in the hope of finding more body parts on the same day. that the section of the torso was taken to the London hospital for further examination by pathologists dr. Hugh Johnson and Dr. Eric Cameron found a vague impression of letters printed on the skin. It is now thought that the piece may have been left to rest on a cardboard box or wrapped in newspaper before being discarded. Faint impressions of the letters Y and E were distinguished.

On the front of the body, when the body part was taken to a Cardiff laboratory for closer examination using infrared light, the letters K E and y were recognized. They were found to have come from The Observer newspaper of 13 February and had been part of the separation headline in Mother may make monkey neurotic Police visited all the houses in Wapping where the Observer was handed over, but no suspects were found on Friday March 4, two weeks after the grim discovery in Wapping, another torso section was seen floating in the Thames. at Green High, near the Nautical College, it is worth mentioning that other reports say it was found at North Fleet, which is two miles east of Green House.

Either way, the body was discovered by workers on the shore who noticed it floating between two barges. This section had been cut and sawn in the same manner as in the previous session and ran from the navel to the upper thigh. Its location was approximately 20 miles downstream from where the first section was later found at the London Hospital. In Whitechapel, pathologists confirmed that the two sections came from the same body, a hundred more police officers and ten dogs were recruited to search the huge area where the original section of the house was found. Inquiries were also made about the house within a four-mile radius and all empty and abandoned buildings were searched.

The former London bomb sites and The Waste Lands were also investigated without success. Scotland Yard believed at this point that the killer was keeping the body sections and discarding the pieces at a time. One hundred more police made a further search on the shore where the second discovery was made, but no clues were found. On Monday, March 7, at a dock in Raynham, their workers stumbled upon a section of þÿÿÿ about ten inches long. Pathologists who examined the first two finds again concluded that they belonged to the same person the next day, Moss the eighth, the river revealed.

A small cut of human flesh was found eight miles southeast of Raynham in Gray, but this was just a preview of what the River Grace region hid four days later, on Saturday, March 12, when police of Kent and Essex joined forces with Detective Superintendent James Grain, and received a call from a worker who had been working on a construction site at the same time in Gray's. The anonymous man had found another body part. This was an hour. A section of the torso that included part of the neck. and shoulders James Grauny went to the scene and arranged for it to be transported by car to the London hospital for analysis, where it was again confirmed that it belonged to the same woman.

Police presence in north Forshaw on the east side of the Thames was decreasing in March. Number 17 approached, if they had stayed a little longer they might have been the ones to find the putrid water-soaked human leg floating around a dock in Dagenham, but again it was the dock workers who made the grim discovery at first due to the amount of time it had taken. Being in the water it was difficult to distinguish whether it was human or part of an animal, but inspection found that it not only belonged to a human but to the human itself.

The only mass that was made public was on Friday March 18 when Wapping Police received an anonymous tip about Brenda Harris, 31, Mrs. Harris left her home near Redding after a family argument that occurred three weeks before the first discovery. Her mother also showed police a letter postmarked from Blackheath London that she said her family had received from Brenda in late February, saying she was safe and well, but her younger brother, Jeffery, was sure the letter was not written by Brenda. He said that he knew her handwriting well and that it did not match the letter. He clearly he was worried.

Brenda's family concluded that she was the woman in question. Her brother said I think so. she could be my sister. I have a horrible feeling. The response of Brenda's husband, Allen, depended on which newspaper was read. The New Castle Evening Chronicle was among those who quoted him and simply said: I can't believe my wife is dead, but the Evening Express came clean. any confusion in quoting it correctly is saying I don't believe my wife is dead. I'm sure she will contact her mother before Sunday. She was referring to Mother's Day, which was March 20; However, there were a couple of glaring differences between Brenda Harris. and the unidentified woman, Brenda, was of short stature, while police described the torso session as belonging to a stocky, well-built woman who was thought to be much taller than the lady.

Harris second mrs. Harris had undergone three cesarean births at the time, the family thought this was important, but the police made no mention of the mystery woman having signs of such scarring before April 12; however, Mrs. Brenda Harris was reported to have returned home safely. A student who approached police in Riverside told them he had seen a man about seven feet tall get out of his car and throw a large package into the Thames on Victoria Embankment, prompting a frogmen search in the area. , but no further leads were found after receiving an anonymous call on March 7. Scotland Yard headed to Epping Forest.

They received word that a human head had been found in a Lloyd oh. They are after the frogmen searched the Lloyd oh no head. was found and the report was strongly believed to be false on Saturday, March 5 and an abandoned boat that appeared to have been forcibly trapped under a jetty just 20 meters from where the second torso piece was found was initially thought to be a credible clue. The blue and white boat, which was the type not usually seen in attempts, had a sunset motif on the back and was later found to have no link to the case.

There was also a report that on Sunday the 19th, the day before the First, we found a red mini car parked next to the Westminster embankment and its occupants were seen as a group of men throwing a tied heavy object into the river. This lead was of particular interest because nine men living alone were reported missing from their homes in the Wapping area during the investigation only one of them was found in question Don MRSA SiC was later released after it was decided he had no involvement in the case and had no information to give a curious case arose on Wednesday, March 2.

When an anonymous man from the north of England made a phone call to his local police station indicating that he knew the woman and could identify her, the man's name and exact location were withheld, but it was later discovered that a woman matched the woman. description of the The woman in the torso disappeared from Liverpool in February '66. This may seem like a tedious link as there are people missing all the time all over the country, but could the mystery man from the north of England have been referring to the woman from Liverpool? with certainty that she was the Thames woman and he was actually the murderer.

No further information was revealed. I'm afraid I tell my friends that this is where the Thames torso case goes cold. The last words I could find in the story were from editions of the Birmingham Post and Daily Mirror, both dated May 11, 1966, and tell of the investigation that took place at st. Pancras on 10 May at the inquest explained that of the 250 women James Grany had investigated, 17 were possible matches, but with no way to narrow the list further, coroner Ian Milne recorded an open verdict. It was also acknowledged that the dead woman may not have been reported missing in the first place, meaning that the remaining 17 women were completely speculative candidates anyway, the cause of death was not determined and notThere were more clues than the expert method used to dismember the body and the Inc newspaper found in the skin, but none of those things brought police closer to her killer.

The most likely candidate was the mysterious thin man in the shabby gray suit, witnessed by fifteen-year-old Diane Hamilton on the day she first discovered that she had left. day that was never heard from again James Grainy made his last plea to the public in May 1966, of course the victim may not have been reported missing, but someone somewhere must know her. We are asking anyone who knows of any missing women to report it to police. A human skull found in the Thames at High Green Fence on 23 July 1966 was initially thought to belong to the torso murder victim, especially as it was found so close to where the second part of the torso was found almost five months ago. before, but after examination it was discovered that it revealed that the skull had been there for at least three years.

I was unable to find any further information on the identity of the skull, although this particular story ends here, other similar incidents have occurred over the years, in fact the River Thames has a number of dark stories relating to the discovery. of the human torso 70 years before the 1966 case there were the famous Thames torso murders in which the torsos and other body parts of four victims were found floating or washed away. This case spanned from 1887 to 1889, only one victim was identified, the murderer or murderers were never brought to justice, the case was overshadowed by Jack the Ripper's murder spree and some even believed despite the clear differences in The method by which Jack the Ripper himself may have been responsible for the case is covered in detail by author MJ Trow in his 2011 book, The Thames Torso Murders On October 5, 1974, the torso of criminal Billie Mosley was dragged On the banks of the Thames other parts of his body were washed up over the next 10 days in what turned out to be a gangland murder, around the same time that Micky Cornwall's body was found in Woodland, near Hatfield, 30 miles north.

North of central London, the two murders were linked and four people were charged for their role in the murders. It was to be one of the most controversial miscarriages of justice ever seen in Britain. The case was covered in the 1992 Channel 4 documentary about the torso murders, but as the story continued well into the 1990s, it was only partly told. You may already be familiar with the story of Adam, the name given to the unknown African boy whose torso was found floating in the River Thames on September 21, 2001. It is generally believed that he had been the victim of a ritual sacrifice.

If you've never heard of him and want to know more, check out the Channel 4 documentary Torso in the Story of Thames Adams.