Seventy-two-year-old Harold Smith lived with his seventy-three-year-old wife Mary in Northfield, Birmingham, England. The couple’s forty-seven-year-old son Harold Smith Jr. also lived in the home; he had been paralyzed in a car crash twelve years prior and was confined to a wheelchair. The family was well-known and well-liked in the area, and had no enemies that anyone knew of.
On December 2nd, 1992, the couple’s daughter became alarmed when she realized she hadn’t been able to get hold of anyone in her family for several days. She phoned the police, who forced their way into the Smith residence on Overbury Close.
Inside, officers discovered a complete bloodbath. Harold Smith was found on the floor of the gore-spattered bedroom, his hands bound behind his back with a necktie. He had been stabbed nearly one hundred times.
Mary was discovered lying face-up in bed; she had also been stabbed multiple times in the chest, head, and neck, and had been beaten in the head. Harold Jr. was slumped lifeless in his wheelchair, a sock stuffed into his mouth, his hands tied behind his back with the belt of a robe. He had also been beaten and stabbed.
Forensic examination determined that the most likely murder weapons had been a five-inch kitchen knife and some type of wooden club.
Because nothing seemed to have been stolen from the home, authorities were baffled as to the motive for this shocking triple murder. A criminal psychiatrist was brought in to draft a profile of the likely killer or killers; this profile suggested that the perpetrator would be in his teens or early twenties, very familiar with the area, and very likely to strike again in a similar fashion, as he probably killed for the very thrill of it.
Despite a massive investigation, the guilty party remained unidentified, and the case eventually went cold. In 2017, on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the crime, the West Midlands Police made a renewed plea in the media for information, but as of May of 2024, the horrific and seemingly random triple homicide is still unsolved.
Crime Immemorial 