Seventy-five-year-old Sidney Leeson was a reserved, unassuming sort of man, well-liked in his neighborhood, and generous to a fault. He lived alone in a terraced house on Sweetbriar Road in Leicester, England, which he’d previously shared with his wife. After his wife died, Sidney was known to take in couples who were down on their luck, giving them a place to stay until they got back on their feet.
In September of 1965, though, Sidney was again on his own in the house, his most recent lodgers having left three weeks previously. September 12th, a Sunday, was a quiet day; Sidney had just eaten a meal, cleared the dishes away, and sat at his table reading the paper. He was looking forward to spending the following day with his son on a day trip to Skegness; Sidney had set aside £23 in a locked drawer in the front hallway to fund the excursion.
But sometime that afternoon, it seems, someone came knocking on Sidney’s front door. Although family and friends would later claim that Sidney was very security-conscious and wouldn’t have let someone he didn’t know inside the house, whoever showed up on the doorstep was able to talk or muscle their way in somehow.
On Monday, Sidney’s son became concerned when his father didn’t meet him at the Leicester train station as planned, and caught a bus to Sidney’s house to see what was the matter. Upon entering the residence, the son found his father’s lifeless body in the hallway, bruised and bloody, his hands raised as if defending himself from blows. He had been battered to death with a vase, shards of which were still haloed around his head. The killer had also used a screwdriver to pry open the drawer where Sidney’s money was stashed and had stolen the lot.
A neighbor told police they’d heard a commotion, as though someone was hammering, coming from Sidney’s house, and another neighbor claimed they’d heard the voices of a woman and a young boy coming through the walls as well.
Perhaps the most promising clue came from yet another neighbor, who stated that a man in his thirties wearing a duffel coat had come to his door asking to borrow a ladder shortly before the murder occurred. Investigators attempted to trace this individual and eventually found him, but he was released without charge. Former lodgers of Sidney’s were also tracked down and questioned, but no substantial leads could be found there either.
Some friends of Sidney’s said they’d seen him on the Saturday before he was murdered, and that he hadn’t seemed himself, but again, this line of inquiry ended up going nowhere.
The violent slaying of the kindly pensioner remains unsolved, more than half a century later.
Crime Immemorial 