Six-year-old Gary Shields was a charming little boy who lived with his mother Violet, his father Kevin, and his brothers Lawrence and Alan in a flat in Tynemouth, Tyne and Wear, England. On August 4th, 1974, the child was playing soccer near his house as he often did, but as the evening closed in and Gary didn’t come home for dinner, his worried parents called the police, who immediately began an extensive search.
The boy was not found until later that night, when an anonymous caller who gave a fake name and address told authorities that he had just seen a body lying in the shrubbery only about two hundred yards from the Shields family home. Officers were dispatched to the scene, but also to the phone box where the call had been made from. The caller, however, was no longer in evidence.
Sadly, though, the body of Gary Shields was found exactly where the caller had indicated. The child was found nude, and had been raped and suffocated. His clothing was never recovered.
It later came to light that the child may have tried to get back into his house that afternoon, but was too short to reach the latch on the door. His brother and aunt were inside the flat, but apparently did not hear him because the TV was on too loud. Gary then allegedly wandered back off to play, and presumably met his killer.
Only days after the murder, a twenty-five-year-old coal yard worker named Paul Hails confessed to the crime, but later recanted his confession. Hails, who was found to be mentally unstable, was convicted of manslaughter in February 1975, due to diminished responsibility.
But then, in May of 1976, Hails was acquitted on appeal after an inmate named Kenneth Woodhouse, who was serving time in Durham Prison for sexual offenses against children, also confessed to killing Gary Shields. According to investigators, he seemed to know some details about the case that only the perpetrator would likely know.
Like Hails, Woodhouse also later retracted his confession, and though he seemed a solid suspect, he was never formally charged with the crime, meaning that the rape and murder of Gary Shields remains an open investigation. Though authorities release details about the crime to the media every few years to keep the murder in the public consciousness, there have been no updates for decades.
Crime Immemorial 