At one-thirty on the afternoon of August 27th, 1959, eleven-year-old Miles Vallint told his mother that he was going to Croydon to look at bicycles. His birthday was coming up on September 17th, and his parents had promised to buy him a bike. The family lived in South Norwood, in southeast London, England. After agreeing to be back home by four-thirty, the boy set out to catch his bus.
Hours went by, and Miles didn’t return. As he was usually very conscientious, his mother began to panic right away. At nine p.m., she contacted the police, and the following morning, she started frantically searching the area for him, going to the bicycle shop herself to see if anyone knew where he was.
In the course of the investigation, it came to light that one witness claimed they saw him at around two-thirty asking for leaflets about bicycles, and a Croydon shopkeeper stated that Miles had come into the store at around four p.m. to buy some plastic clothesline. After that, however, it seemed the boy had vanished into thin air.
The following day, sadly, the body of the eleven-year-old was discovered lying beneath a chestnut tree behind a demolished vicarage on Tavistock Road in Croydon, about a mile and a half from his home. He had been strangled with a length of rope.
Although Miles was reportedly not sexually assaulted, authorities believed the crime was sexually motivated nonetheless. They theorized that he may have been lured into a car after leaving the bicycle shop. It was uncertain whether the child had been killed where he was found, or killed elsewhere and thrown over the fence to where his body was ultimately discovered.
The proprietor of the store where Miles had bought the clothesline told police that she had seen a suspicious-looking man whom she described as “down and out” in the doorway of her shop, and that perhaps this individual may have had some connection with the crime. The suspect appeared to be between thirty-five and forty years old, thin and pale, and clad in a dirty, fawn-colored raincoat. Investigators were never able to locate this man or establish any link between him and Miles’s murder.
No arrests have ever been made, and the shocking crime remains unsolved.
Crime Immemorial 
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