August 21st, 2004 was the day before the twenty-eighth birthday of Tom Brown, a recent graduate from Southampton University who was working for the BBC as a librarian and archivist. He was described by family and colleagues as pleasant, caring, and popular, a man who could always be relied upon to do the right thing.
Tom had been out with friends all night, pub-hopping in Southgate, London. After the pubs closed, he went to a friend’s house on Mayfair Terrace, where it’s believed he stayed until three a.m. After that, he set out on the twenty-minute walk back to his residence. At some point during his journey, though, he was attacked by an unknown assailant.
A little more than an hour later, passersby found his body on Southgate High Street. He had been savagely stabbed to death. Police believed that he had been taken completely by surprise, as there were no defensive wounds suggesting he’d had time to fight back against his killer. Robbery was ruled out as a motive, as Tom’s full wallet and phone were untouched.
A handful of witnesses claimed to have seen a man and a woman in the area at around the time of the murder, and described the man as white, aged in his late twenties, with a thin face and build, short brown hair, and a scruffy appearance. He was wearing a light-colored tracksuit top with a hood, possibly beige or gray. The woman was around the same age, white but very tan, with black, curly hair that fell to her shoulders.
Another couple was spotted sitting on a wall about thirty feet from where Tom was killed, but it wasn’t clear if this was the same couple described by other witnesses, and authorities decided to treat them as two separate couples for the sake of the investigation. Whatever the case, none of these people was ever identified.
E-fits of two potential suspects were released in 2012, but no new leads were generated, and sadly, the seemingly random slaying of Tom Brown is still unsolved two decades after it occurred.
Crime Immemorial 