Fifty-five-year-old Renee McGowan was a divorced woman who lived alone in a corner flat on the top floor of a fourteen-story building called Evans Towers in Ternhill Grove, Bradford, West Yorkshire, England. According to neighbors, she was always well-dressed, friendly, and pleasant, but was reserved and mostly kept to herself. She had told acquaintances she was from Halifax, and she had lived in the building for about two years.
On the evening of July 23rd, 1975, though, Renee McGowan was discovered dead in her flat by a friend who had stopped by. The victim was partially clothed and had been strangled.
The motive for the slaying was unclear, as it didn’t appear that anything had been stolen from the residence. There was also no sign of forced entry, leading some investigators to conclude that Renee may have known her killer, as she was quite diligent about screening her visitors, keeping her front door tightly bolted, and looking out through the spy hole in the door whenever anyone knocked. Perhaps significantly, there had been an attempted break-in at another flat in the building sometime before Renee’s murder, but it’s unknown whether there was any connection.
A massive investigation was launched, and police even managed to track down Renee’s former husband to question him about the crime, but all leads soon dried up, and the case ultimately went cold. The mysterious killing of Renee McGowan remains unsolved a half-century later.
Crime Immemorial 