Thirty-nine-year-old Josephine Backshall lived in Witham, Essex, England, with her husband and three young children. She had been looking for part-time work in the area, and had placed an ad in the local newspaper, the Maldon and Burnham Standard, offering her services.
Much to her surprise, she got a response to her ad almost immediately: a man named Peter phoned, and asked if she’d be interested in doing some modeling for a cosmetics line. It wasn’t exactly what she’d had in mind—she’d been hoping for something more along the lines of baby-sitting or secretarial work—but her ad had stated she would be willing to consider anything, so she agreed to set up an appointment.
Peter was a no-show at the first appointment, but soon afterward, he called again and set up a second one, apologizing for his non-appearance. Strangely, though, he didn’t show up for the second appointment, either.
Josephine was starting to get annoyed, but she was desperate for work, and eventually the pair did manage to meet up for a couple of chats, one of which took place at Josephine’s own home. At this meeting, Peter took some photographs of Josephine out in her garden, ostensibly to see how she looked on camera.
On the evening of Tuesday, October 29th, 1974, Peter called Josephine’s house again and made her an offer. He’d set up a photo shoot in Cheltenham for that night, he said, but the model he’d booked had failed to show. Could Josephine come down right away and fill in? He offered to pay her one-hundred pounds for the inconvenience. Josephine agreed, and set out from her home at a little after six p.m. Thereafter, she mysteriously disappeared.
Three days later, on November 1st, her body was found face down in a pond in a village called Little Hadham, in East Hertfordshire. She was fully clothed, and her hands were bound in front of her. She had been strangled to death, though there was no indication of sexual assault. Because her watch had stopped at eight-ten p.m., authorities surmised that this was either the time when she was killed, or perhaps the time when her body had been dumped out of a vehicle.
The investigation soon focused on the elusive “Peter” who had contacted Josephine about the job. Peter was described as a tall, heavyset man in his early to mid-thirties who was a decent photographer and seemed to know a great deal about women’s cosmetics and perfumes. Police also discovered that three other women in the area who had placed ads searching for work had been contacted by the same man, though none of them had taken him up on his offers.
After the discovery of the murder, a few witnesses came forward and said they had seen a car matching the description of Josephine’s car—a red Ford Cortina—parked alongside Collingwood Road in Witham with its hood up, at around seven-fifteen p.m. Other witness accounts placed her and an unidentified man at the Fountain pub in Good Easter at approximately ten-thirty p.m. on the night she disappeared.
The individual known only as Peter has never been conclusively identified. In 2010, Hertfordshire police took a suspect into custody in conjunction with the cold case, but he was released on bail shortly after being questioned. The unnamed man, who was sixty-eight years old at the time of his arrest, lived in Maldon at the time Josephine Backshall was murdered, and was apparently brought to the attention of authorities through a new public appeal for tips.
Since then, however, there have been no new developments in the investigation.
Crime Immemorial 