Seven-year-old June Sheasby and her five-year-old brother Royston lived with their parents on Brockworth Crescent in Stapleton, Bristol, England. On Thursday, June 20th, 1957, the children walked off hand in hand to a nearby field to look at some horses. Sadly, they never returned.
Their mother Barbara noticed their absence at around seven p.m. and became alarmed, immediately calling the police. A massive search was undertaken, but for two long weeks, no trace of the children was found.
In the interim, the Bristol Evening Post received a letter claiming that the children were alive and demanding a £200 ransom. The letter also stated that the writer’s brother would pick up the money, but that if his brother was “detained,” the writer would kill the children. This letter appears to have been a cruel hoax.
Then, on the night of July 1st, an officer saw a small hand poking out of the underbrush near a river at Snuff Mills Park. The hand belonged to five-year-old Royston Sheasby. The body of his older sister June was found beneath him. Both children had head injuries consistent with being bludgeoned to death.
Police focused on a number of suspects following the discovery of the children’s remains. The first was the so-called “man in the blue suit,” an individual between forty-five and fifty years old with fair, graying hair who had reportedly spoken to an off-duty firefighter on the day of the Sheasbys’ disappearance. The firefighter claimed there had been two children who resembled June and Royston playing by the river while he spoke to the man.
Authorities also investigated the patients at Stoke Park Hospital, a nearby mental institution. One of the patients was a man dubbed The Storyteller, who was known to sit by the river and tell local children stories. This man, it was eventually determined, was harmless, however.
Another letter, this one sent to Bristol police and written on pale blue paper, claimed to have “vital information” about the murder, but none of this information was useful. Police also found a blue suit in the possession of one of the patients at Bristol Mental Hospital; this patient was questioned extensively, but no charges were ever brought.
The case stagnated for several years until 1964, when it was reported by Home Office psychiatrist Dr. Hyatt William that a man in jail for some minor infraction had confessed to killing two children, a boy and a girl. This man was likewise never charged, and died before further investigation could take place.
Since that time, the double murder has gone cold, and the individual who killed June and Royston Sheasby remains unidentified.
Crime Immemorial 