At around lunchtime on Saturday, September 24th, 1955, eleven-year-old schoolboy Peter Williams left his home in Birkenhead, Wirral, Merseyside, England, and walked to a nearby estate with his friends to pick blueberries.
On the north side of the estate was a concrete pillbox from World War II, and a curious Peter peeked inside. At first, he thought someone had abandoned a store mannequin inside the pillbox, but he soon realized with horror that he was looking at a dead woman with clothes piled on top of her face. She had been strangled and had obscene words carved into her torso.
The victim was initially unidentified, but police decided to publish a photograph of her face in the newspaper. At that point, several locals came forward and informed authorities that her name was Alice Barton, she was forty-nine years old, and she was living in St. Winifred’s Hotel in Bootle. She had been making her living as a sex worker for about twelve years, since leaving her husband in 1943. This estranged husband, John Barton, would ultimately be the one to identify her body.
During the investigation, police discovered that Alice often took her regular clients to the pillbox and that a couple of days before the murder, a groundskeeper saw a couple—one of whom may have been Alice—sitting together in the area; he overheard the woman say to the man, “I am much older than you are.”
Another witness told detectives that the morning after the murder, he’d seen a distinct trail of footprints in the wet grass leading away from the pillbox.
Despite thousands of leads, the inquiry into Alice’s slaying went nowhere, and the case went cold for many years. Then, in 2010, police got a lead in the form of a woman from Wirral named Aimee Buckley, who suspected that her paternal grandfather might have been responsible for killing Alice Barton. According to Aimee, her grandfather had reportedly come home one night in 1955 with his clothes covered in blood and had demanded that his wife burn them. A couple of days later, reports of Alice’s murder appeared in the paper. The suspect was known to frequent a pub very close to the crime scene.
Authorities followed up on this lead, but since the suspect had long since passed away, their options were somewhat limited. The case, however, remains open, and police are still asking the public to come forward with any relevant information.
Crime Immemorial 