Ten-year-old Elizabeth “Lizzie” Peers lived with her parents, Elizabeth and William, and her five brothers in Toxteth, Liverpool, England. On October 28th, 1905, Lizzie’s mother asked her to go to a nearby butcher shop to buy pork and potatoes; the shop was only a six-minute walk from the family’s residence. In spite of the proximity, however, the girl never returned from her errand.
Her parents, who were rumored to be alcoholics, were apparently not alarmed by their daughter’s disappearance, assuming she was simply spending the night with friends or family. They went to bed that night without contacting the police.
The next morning, though, Lizzie’s body was found a few minutes walk away from home, lying in an entryway on Cullen Street. She had been gagged, raped, and strangled.
One witness reported seeing a suspicious man who may have been the killer, running from the entryway where the body was found at one-thirty in the morning. The individual was described as being in his late thirties, tall, and with a dark mustache.
Authorities marshaled all of their investigative might to find the culprit, but despite their best efforts, the crime remained unsolved. And less than three years later, another very similar murder would occur that most experts attribute to the same perpetrator.
Seven-year-old Margaret “Madge” Kirby was playing with her three-year-old brother on Farnworth Street, a few blocks from her home in Kensington, Liverpool on January 6th, 1908. At around four in the afternoon, the children were approached by a man who offered Madge some candy. Evidently not seeing any reason to decline, Madge took his hand and allowed herself to be led away. Numerous witnesses saw the man walking with the child, but hardly anyone intervened, as they all assumed he was a relative of hers.
However, one witness did find the situation suspicious enough that he contacted Madge’s father, David, who subsequently alerted police. Tragically, David had recently lost his wife only weeks before their daughter was taken.
Thorough searches were conducted, some utilizing bloodhounds, but there was no trace of the little girl. In fact, her fate was unknown for seven long months; but on August 15th, 1908, the child’s decomposed body was found in an onion sack on Great Newton Street. Like Lizzie Peers, Madge Kirby had also been raped and strangled.
A few weeks after the discovery of the remains, police received an anonymous letter that they assumed was written by the killer. It read, “On the night of January 6 at 8:45, I took the girl through the front door and it was very dark. We had been over to World’s Fair before then. That is the way I treated her, and then I did away with her.” In the letter, he also said that he had been staying at a house on Great Newton Street years before, and investigators surmised that the killer had kept Madge’s body at a nearby empty house for a while before dumping it where it was ultimately discovered.
Witnesses described a suspicious individual who they had seen jumping the wall behind the empty Great Newton Street house on the day the onion sack was found. Just as in the Lizzie Peers case, the suspect was tall with a dark mustache, but in this instance, he was dressed in women’s clothing as he fled the scene.
Authorities believed the man they were seeking was named Thompson, as he fit the physical description of the suspected killer and had lodged on Great Newton Street in the past, but unfortunately, the man seemed to have vanished into thin air, as detectives were never able to track him down.
Sadly, Madge’s father David, having lost his wife and daughter in such a brief time, died only a month after Madge’s body was found, and some attributed his death to a broken heart.
Most researchers theorize that both girls were killed by the same man, but his identity has never been established. The horrific crimes remain unresolved, more than a hundred years on, and the case is sometimes referred to in the media as “The Lost Girls of Liverpool.”
Crime Immemorial 