Thirty-two-year-old Jean Chalinder of Roath, Cardiff, Wales, was the daughter of the couple who owned the newsagents’ shop in Llanishen. Just three months prior to the tragic end of her life, she had gotten married, to local grocer Tony Chalinder.
On September 15th, 1956, Jean put on her red raincoat and hopped on her bicycle, heading for Llwyn-y-Grant Farm, a popular spot for picking blueberries. She rode the bike about twenty yards into the field, then leaned it against a hedge and padlocked it before walking a further one hundred fifty yards into the next field. Shortly after this, she was set upon by an unknown individual.
When the young woman hadn’t returned by midnight, her husband reported her missing. Police searched diligently, but at first found nothing. On September 20th, though, five days after Jean disappeared, another blueberry picker, a twenty-three-year-old woman named Susan Summers, happened across the body and contacted authorities.
From the look of the remains, it appeared as though whoever had killed Jean had either surprised her from behind, or perhaps was someone she knew, as there was no sign of a struggle. Jean’s face was so badly beaten that she was unrecognizable, and was only identified by her husband from her clothing. Strangely, Jean had not been robbed or sexually assaulted, and there were no injuries to the rest of the body. Investigators were baffled as to what the motive for the horrific crime could have been.
After interviewing thousands of people, detectives honed in on one particular suspect: a blond man in his late twenties who had reportedly been seen riding a bicycle away from the area where Jean was killed at the time of the murder. The man also fitted the description of a suspect who had been harassing women in Cardiff.
Another lead authorities pursued was a possible connection to a later crime, in which an eighteen-year-old woman in Cardiff had been struck on the head from behind as she walked home from a dance one night in November. She managed to escape her attacker, who was never caught, but detectives wondered if the same man was responsible for killing Jean Chalinder.
Though the case remains open, there have been no new developments in the investigation for decades, and the identity of the man who committed the motiveless attack is still a mystery.
Crime Immemorial 