Forty-five-year-old John Welch was a father of two from Lincoln, England who worked as a catering manager for Ladbrokes, the British gambling company. In the course of his job, he often traveled to Newcastle, and on November 26th, 1980, he had done exactly that, checking into room 101 at the Swallow Hotel.
John was scheduled to meet with colleagues for dinner at eight-thirty p.m., but he didn’t show up, at which point his associates asked hotel staff to check on him. A porter discovered his body in the bathroom of room 101; he had been bludgeoned in the head.
Nothing had been stolen from the room, so police surmised that whoever had murdered John Welch was someone known to him, perhaps a business colleague. They formulated a theory that shortly after checking in, John had answered a knock from his killer, and that this person had possibly been invited to the hotel by John himself.
Oddly, although all ninety rooms in the hotel were occupied, none of the other guests reported seeing or hearing anything unusual.
Despite a thorough investigation, authorities could find no solid leads to follow, and discovered no potential motive for the slaying. The case then went cold for a decade, but in 1990, two men were picked up in connection with the case.
The suspects—Cheltenham mechanic Anthony Loveridge, and Welshman John Weldon—had been under police surveillance for some time prior to their arrest. Though the men admitted that they had been staying in the Swallow Hotel at the time of the murder, they denied having anything to do with the crime. Loveridge and Weldon were set to stand trial in spring of 1991, but only weeks before their court date, the charges were dropped, reportedly due to “flimsy” evidence.
The Swallow Hotel was torn down in 2016 to make way for a new hotel, shopping center, and student flats. Neither Loveridge nor Weldon were ever charged, and the strange murder of John Welch remains unsolved.
Crime Immemorial 