It was March 27th, 1971, and off-duty special constable David Nathan was taking a stroll on an island in the River Trent in Staffordshire when he spotted something that appeared to be part of a bag of cement poking out of the soil. Curious, he retrieved a spade and began digging. Unfortunately, what Nathan found beneath the earth were the remains of a long-dead human being.
The male victim was discovered in a kneeling position, with his hands bound behind his back. He was completely naked, save for a pair of pinkish-beige socks and a ladies‘ nine-carat gold wedding ring.
Though it was clear he had been murdered, the corpse was far too decomposed to determine the exact cause of death. Authorities estimated that the victim could have been dead for perhaps nine months to a year.
Despite a thorough investigation, police had no luck giving a name to the man who eventually came to be dubbed “Pink Socks” or “Fred the Head.” As the years went on and forensic science improved, however, more details were able to be filled in concerning who the man might have been. It was determined that the victim had been between twenty-three and thirty-nine years old when he died, that he had stood about five-foot-eight with a thin build, and that he’d had straight, reddish-brown hair which was cut quite short.
Further, the man had a very prominent lower jaw, upper dentures, and extensive dental work on his bottom teeth. He’d also suffered from an unusual condition called torticollis, which probably indicated that his head had listed to one side. In spite of these unique features, however, it still seemed as though no one recognized him, even after a detailed facial reconstruction image was broadcast to the public.
In his 2008 book Fred the Head: And Other Unsolved Crimes, author Michael Posner hypothesized that the unidentified man could be a milkman named Michael Edge, who vanished from Watford at around the same time as Pink Socks was thought to have been killed. This assertion has since been dismissed, although Michael Edge has never been found.
In 2017, authorities finally thought they had a solid lead when the family of a man named John Henry Jones, who had disappeared from his home in north Wales in November of 1970, came forward to identify the unknown victim. Indeed, it did initially appear that the dental records of John Henry Jones and those of Fred the Head were very similar, but a later DNA comparison demonstrated that the victim was not Jones, much to the disappointment of relatives and police.
Because the area where the body was found was rather remote in 1971, most investigators believe that the murder was committed by one or more individuals local to the immediate area, but no probable suspects have thus far been established. The case remains open.
Crime Immemorial 