Early September of 2000 in northwest England saw a grisly murder take place, of a troubled young woman whose mental health had tragically deteriorated over the previous decade. And in a particularly ghastly touch, her brother would later be savagely slain as well, in a completely unrelated incident.
Susan Kelly was thirty-eight years old in 2000, and suffered from paranoid schizophrenia. Up until the age of twenty-four, according to her mother Cathy, Susan had been a happy and ambitious young woman, completing her college degree and going on to work two jobs, in both a nursing home and as a bartender. Her ultimate goal was to work with the disabled. In 1982, she had given birth to a son with her then-boyfriend, and everything appeared to be going well in her life.
But not long after her child was born, things began to slide dramatically downhill. Her boyfriend was arrested and jailed for various drug offenses, leaving Susan to fend for herself with her young son. Worse still, former associates of her boyfriend, thinking he was hiding money and drugs from them, began harassing Susan, even breaking into her home and attacking her on one occasion.
This assault seemed to be the catalyst for Susan’s disintegrating mental health. Though she did receive help, and was formally diagnosed with schizophrenia, her life began to spiral out of control. She went through a series of relationships with abusive partners, and would sometimes go missing for long stretches of time. Eventually she became addicted to drugs, and began working as a prostitute to feed this addiction. Her son was removed from her care by social services, and according to family members, Susan was so ill that she had difficulty remembering who and where she was. In mid-August, in fact, her mother reported that Susan had come to visit her, and had told her that she had seen a vision of Jesus; Susan insisted that Jesus had told her that she would die before she turned forty. It was the last time Susan’s mother would see her alive.
This parade of tragedy would end violently on September 4th, 2000, when the partially-nude body of Susan Kelly was discovered in an alley off Blessington Road in Anfield, near the Liverpool FC stadium. She had been appallingly beaten, and had sustained numerous broken bones, including her nose, her jaw, and six ribs. In addition, she had also been stabbed and strangled, and her throat had been slashed with what authorities believed was a broken fragment of a porcelain vase.
Police worked the case diligently, and it seemed their efforts had paid off when, a year after the murder, a promising suspect was arrested: Robert Brendan Collins, a man in his early thirties. According to investigators, a search of Collins’s flat had turned up a small piece of broken pottery that resembled the one thought to have been used to slash Susan’s throat. Not only that, but some jewelry and coins seized from his home were very similar to items discovered at the crime scene.
Collins was eventually charged and brought to trial, but the case against him was dismissed in 2003, as it could not be determined with any certainty if the pottery fragments found at his home were from the same source as the fragment used to kill Susan. In addition, Collins’s feet were too large to have made the bloody footprints found in the alley near Susan’s body.
Over the years, two other men were arrested for the crime—one in May of 2010 and another in May of 2012—but both were released due to lack of evidence. Further, a man who witnesses claim had attacked Susan earlier on the day of her slaying was later imprisoned for robbing and assaulting several sex workers during the months before the murder. Though he had an alibi for the time of Susan Kelly’s death, he remains a person of interest.
Some investigators have also speculated that Susan may have been killed by the same man responsible for the murder of Julie Finley in Rainhill in 1994. Despite all the theories and activity surrounding the case, however, the murder is still unsolved.
In a shocking and terrible twist, Susan’s brother Michael would also be ruthlessly murdered only a little more than two years after Susan. In October of 2002, Michael Kelly, thirty-five years old at the time of his death and a known drug dealer, was axed to death by his roommate Gerald Evans, who then cut up the body with a saw and dumped the pieces in the woods near Bidford-on-Avon. Evans and his accomplice, Ashley Shearon, then attempted to burn down the flat.
Gerald Evans was given life in prison for his part in the murder of Michael Kelly, while Ashley Shearon received five years for helping to dispose of the remains. The family of Susan Kelly hope that one day, justice will be served in her death as well.
Crime Immemorial 