Twenty-one-year-old Lesley McMurray was a third-year biology student at Southampton University in England. On June 2nd, 1969, she said goodbye to her boyfriend Charles Gore, then began walking along the Itchen Navigation Canal toward her student accommodations at Montefiore House. At some point along her journey, she disappeared.
Friends and family could find no trace of her for nine agonizing months, but then, in March of 1970, her badly decomposed remains were discovered in a shallow grave in Fair Oak. Exact cause of death was unclear, though because the body had been deliberately concealed, authorities were certain she had been murdered.
The case went nowhere for decades, but then, in 1999, a man in his early fifties named Malcolm Fletcher was arrested for the crime. Fletcher had been convicted of the 1973 murder of his six-year-old niece and had been committed to Rampton Psychiatric Hospital. He was also later convicted of other sex offenses, given a lifelong jail sentence, and placed on the sex offenders’ registry for life.
However, in late November of 2000, investigators announced that Fletcher’s trial would not be going forward due to insufficient evidence, and further stated that the murder of Lesley McMurray was considered closed.
It does not appear that any further action will be taken in the investigation.
Crime Immemorial 