On January 29th, 1990, thirty-three-year-old financial adviser Surinder Gill dropped his daughter and his brother’s children off at school in the morning as he usually did, and then drove to his West London office in his distinctive maroon Mercedes. At around lunchtime, he was spotted buying a sandwich from a shop in South Road, and it’s believed that he was then headed to an appointment with the Indian Workers’ Association. He never made it to his scheduled meeting.
At approximately two p.m., Surinder was apparently forced into the back seat of his car by at least two and possibly three men, one of whom was thought to be wearing a crash helmet. At the time he was attacked, he was on the phone with a client, who heard part of the struggle and later reported hearing a voice saying, “Disconnect, disconnect, take me to Greenford now, disconnect.” The line then went dead.
About ten minutes later, witnesses asserted they saw the Mercedes heading down Greenford Road, driven by a man in a helmet. The car was later seen parked at the Beavers Open Space in Hounslow, where it remained for thirty minutes, until three p.m.
Surinder’s family became concerned when he didn’t pick up his daughter from school and failed to answer numerous phone calls. Weirdly, though, Surinder was seen in various places over the course of the afternoon and evening. For example, he went into an electronics store on Syon Lane at around six-forty-five p.m., and asked the clerk if they could look into a problem he was having with his phone. The clerk told him he’d need to come back in three days’ time, at which point Surinder said he was in a hurry to meet someone. The clerk later told authorities that Surinder had been acting normally, was not in any distress, and did not mention anything about having been kidnapped.
Witnesses also claimed they spotted his car in Southall at seven-thirty p.m. and again at nine-thirty, and Surinder Gill appeared to be in the vehicle. However, this was the last time he was seen alive.
The following morning, a man riding his horse near Beavers Open Space saw the maroon Mercedes, and upon closer inspection discovered the body of Surinder Gill, slumped down in the driver’s seat. The victim had been stabbed multiple times, and authorities later stated that there had clearly been more than one assailant. In fact, the murder was described as an “execution” and even as ritualistic, with Detective Superintendent Stewart Hill telling the media that the crime had been intended to “punish him and tell others what happened if you do what he did—whatever that was.”
As is obvious from this statement, police were baffled as to the motive behind the bizarre homicide. Initially, they theorized that Surinder had perhaps been murdered by members of a gang known as the Holy Smokes, but this hypothesis seems to have gone nowhere.
Investigators then looked into the possibility that one of Surinder’s extra-marital affairs might have been behind the killing, but again, this avenue quickly hit a dead end.
The most likely scenario, according to detectives, is that the slaying was motivated by Surinder’s work as a successful financial adviser; perhaps, authorities surmise, he had been asked to participate in some illegal scheme, such as laundering money, and either refused outright or double-crossed the people who asked him, leading to them taking revenge.
Whatever the motive behind the mysterious abduction and murder of Surinder Gill, the case has gone cold, and as of this writing in December of 2023, there have been no new developments.
Crime Immemorial 