Cheryll Maureen Grover was twenty-one years old, and was raising a daughter who was soon to turn one. She was still legally married to her husband Steven, but the pair had separated, and no longer shared the same residence. Cheryll lived in Newbury, Berkshire, in southeast England.
On the evening of May 12th, 2000, a Friday, Cheryll had a friend over at her home, who left at about ten-thirty p.m. Later on that night, she called up another friend at a little past two-thirty in the morning and chatted for a time; nothing, at that point, seemed to be amiss.
However, the following day, Cheryll’s estranged husband Steven attempted to get hold of her, and became concerned when she failed to answer multiple phone calls. He contacted Cheryll’s mother, and the two of them went to Cheryll’s home to see if she was all right. The house was locked and Steven did not have a key; he was obliged to shimmy up the drainpipe to the second-floor bedroom window to gain entry.
Once inside, Steven was horrified to discover that his wife was lying dead in her bed, strangled with the belt of her bathrobe. A police inquiry led authorities to suspect that Cheryll had perhaps been selling drugs from her home, and this may have contributed to her death; one unnamed man in his early thirties was arrested, but released shortly afterward for lack of evidence.
Oddly, the coroner at the inquest initially returned an open verdict in the death rather than a definitive finding of murder, which seemed unusual, considering the manner in which Cheryll was killed. Whatever the verdict, though, the case very quickly went cold, and though a cold case team in 2006 made the case a top priority for review, no further progress in the investigation has been made.
Crime Immemorial 