Thirty-four-year-old Cheryl Shackleton had once run a jewelry shop and later a stained glass business with her husband in Colne, Lancashire, England. The couple had a son together.
But in 1991, Cheryl divorced and sold her house in Nelson, taking a substantial sum of cash with her when she left. It was reported that she may have been suffering from mental health issues, as she lived a somewhat itinerant lifestyle afterward, traveling around the country with no clear destination. It was believed that she constantly carried a suitcase that had all of her belongings in it, and often had large amounts of cash on her person.
Cheryl was seen in late January or early February of 1991 in a liquor store in New Cross, London, but this was to be the last time she was seen alive.
On February 3rd, Cheryl’s partially clothed body was found at five-thirty a.m. by a dog walker in Telegraph Hill Park, Brockley, South-East London. She had been sexually assaulted and left posed in a grotesquely suggestive manner. Her cause of death was found to be a combination of hemorrhaging, a ruptured liver, shock, and exposure to the elements, suggesting she had been badly beaten, strangled, and then left for dead.
Police could not identify the victim at first, but following a television appeal, she was identified a month later as Cheryl Shackleton. The suitcase and purse she always carried were never found.
Authorities were unable to determine what Cheryl had been doing in Brockley at the time of her death, as she seemed to have no ties to the place and as far as anyone could determine had never been there before.
The case went cold not long after it occurred, though a new inquiry was launched in 2006, and Cheryl’s son Sean, then twenty-four years old, appeared on Crimewatch to ask for help in finding his mother’s killer. The program elicited some promising leads, but sadly, none bore fruit in the end, and the grisly murder of Cheryl Shackleton remains unsolved.
Crime Immemorial 