Twelve-year-old Linda Smith was a shy but friendly girl, the eldest child in her large family, which consisted of her parents Robert and Patricia, and five younger siblings. Linda lived with them in a house in Earls Colne, Essex, England.
On the afternoon of January 16th, 1961, Linda had come home from school and then visited her great-grandmother Emily for a short time. At around four-thirty p.m., she set out on her usual errand to the newsagent on the High Street, a task which usually took about fifteen minutes. She was carrying a ten shilling note and had been sent there to buy a magazine for her great-grandmother. Many locals were out and about in the area, and several of them later reported seeing the girl looking into the window of the newsagent shop, but then not going inside, and instead walking across the street to talk to the town cobbler. Shortly after this, she mysteriously vanished.
Four days later, her body was found by a retired farm laborer in a field in Polstead, Suffolk, more than eighteen miles from her home. She had been strangled with her own school scarf. Several shoe prints were noted around the remains, as well as a particular kind of mint sold in the local co-op stores.
No arrests were ever made in connection with the tragic crime. Though a book about the case was published in 2014, and authorities made one last plea to the public for information in 2021, they concede that the chances of solving the murder after more than sixty years are very remote.
Crime Immemorial 