Thirteen-year-old Colin Maxwell was born in Glasgow, Scotland. His father left the family not long after his birth in 1970, and thereafter, Colin’s mother Colinda moved back and forth from Glasgow to London a number of times, often leaving Colin with relatives in Rutherglen, just outside Glasgow. In 1983, though, Colin moved to London with his mother for good.
On February 19th, 1984, Colinda sent Colin to a shop in Streatham for groceries, but he never returned home from the errand. Police searched high and low for him, but found no sign.
While the teenager was still missing, authorities interviewed a man named Albert Newman, who was dating Colinda at the time of her son’s disappearance. He had been staying with Colinda the night before Colin vanished, and the witnesses he produced to account for his whereabouts at the time of the disappearance were deemed unreliable. Investigators were suspicious, but there was little evidence to make an arrest.
More than two years later, though, in June of 1986, a set of skeletal remains was unearthed from behind a residence in Streatham Common North. The bones were found to belong to Colin Maxwell.
Though the cause of death was difficult to pinpoint, a knotted tartan scarf found near the skull suggested that the boy had likely been strangled.
The case went fallow for many years until 2002, when a new team of detectives decided to interview Albert Newman again. Because of some alleged comments he made about the crime to a prison officer, Newman was eventually arrested for the murder in May of 2003.
However, in early 2004, the Crown announced at the pre-trial hearing that they would not be going ahead with the prosecution, citing new evidence that seemed to point to different perpetrator. Albert Newman, who had remarried in 1996, ultimately went free.
The murder of thirteen-year-old Colin Maxwell, then, is still unsolved, and there have been no meaningful developments for two decades.
Crime Immemorial 