Herbert Wilkinson was fifty-four years old, and up until 1966 had worked as a solicitor in the Cheshire village of Middlewich in England. However, he had been removed from his law practice for reasons which have since been lost to time.
On June 2nd, 1967, he left a note for his housekeeper and went out on some unknown errand. He subsequently vanished without a trace.
Months later, in October of the same year, two men were hunting foxes near the Trent and Mersey Canal when they discovered a shallow grave that contained the body of a man that authorities presumed to be that of Herbert Wilkinson. The remains were so degraded that the victim could only be identified by his clothing and a distinctive pair of shoes found near the corpse. An autopsy was unable to determine how the man had died, though investigators hypothesized that he had likely been either bludgeoned or strangled.
The ensuing manhunt for the killer was one of the largest the UK had ever seen up to that point, lasting more than six months and encompassing thousands of interviews and witness statements. In fact, the inquiry was helmed by no less a luminary than Chief Superintendent Arthur Benfield, who had been in charge of the notorious Moors Murders case in 1965.
Despite the tireless efforts of the authorities and the prominence of the investigators involved, however, neither suspect nor motive was ever uncovered, and no arrests were ever made. The only fact established with any certainty was that whoever had killed Herbert Wilkinson had probably brought the body to the grave site by boat, as the area was too remote for the perpetrator to have carried the remains there by car.
The case remains open as of this writing.
Crime Immemorial 