Seventy-one-year-old Ralph McIntosh was a native of Edinburgh, Scotland; he was a veteran of World War II, and an avid golfer who could have gone pro had the war not intervened. As it was, he’d been successful in his post-war career as a secretary of the British Investment Trust.
After he retired, he and his wife Rita moved to the small town of Gullane, though Rita sadly died not long after the move. Ralph carried on with his life, visiting friends and playing golf. Around town, he was known as a friendly, well-dressed man who was always pleasant to interact with.
On January 25th, 1982, Ralph had been out at his local golf club with friends, and got home at about quarter past seven that evening. It’s not clear what happened after that point; all that’s known for certain is that Ralph would not survive to see the morning.
The next day, a friend dropped by to see him and found Ralph dead on the floor in a pool of blood. His skull had been smashed in.
Authorities immediately suspected a robbery gone wrong, but there was no sign of forced entry, and nothing appeared to be missing from the residence except for an inexpensive glass decanter, which for all anyone knew could have broken at some earlier time and been thrown away. Investigators toyed with the idea that the decanter had been the murder weapon, but decided this was extremely unlikely; no glass shards were found around the body, for one thing; and what’s more, the coroner believed that Ralph’s fatal head wounds were probably caused by a weapon more akin to a crowbar or a hammer.
The only other major clue discovered at the scene was a pair of gloves with Ralph’s blood on them, stuffed in a bucket near the back door. But again, it couldn’t be determined whether the killer had worn the gloves to kill Ralph, or whether Ralph had gotten blood on them himself at some point in the past, perhaps while he was gardening.
Witnesses gave a vague description of two men seen in a garden near Ralph’s house, but these men were never identified or connected with the crime in any way.
The case went cold only a month after it occurred, and to this day, more than forty years later, the person or persons who murdered Ralph McIntosh for seemingly no reason at all remain unknown.
Crime Immemorial 