Thirty-three-year-old Yvonne Fitt wasn’t at a particularly good place in her life. She had been a sex worker for nearly a decade, plying her trade around Leeds and Bradford, West Yorkshire, and had also become addicted to crack cocaine. She was a mother to an eleven-year-old daughter, and lived a somewhat itinerant lifestyle, staying with friends for a few weeks at a time before moving on to another residence.
In December of 1991, the friend Yvonne was staying with in Chapeltown became concerned; Yvonne’s addiction appeared to be getting worse, and Yvonne also told her that she owed some bad people money. She claimed she was being followed and stated that the people watching her would kill her if she went back to Bradford. Yvonne left this friend’s house around Christmas, and her whereabouts for the next few months weren’t clear.
The next time anyone saw her, she was in the Duncan pub in the Leeds town center in May of 1992. An acquaintance who spotted her at around seven p.m. said she looked awful and told her should see a doctor right away. Yvonne apparently blew off this well-meant advice and vanished from the pub for a few hours. She came back at around ten p.m. and looked much better, laughing and sociable. According to her friend, Yvonne was talking to a gray-haired man with nice clothes; this same man would be seen with Yvonne again in July of 1992, though he has never been identified.
At some point before mid-September of 1992, Yvonne was again spotted, this time by a law enforcement officer who recognized her. Yvonne was walking down the sidewalk along Bertham Road, and the policewoman stated that Yvonne looked frightened, and moved as though she was trying not to be seen. This was the last known sighting of Yvonne Fitt alive.
On September 12th, 1992, a man out foraging for mushrooms in Warren Point, Norwood Edge, North Yorkshire came across Yvonne’s remains in a natural depression in the ground. She had been loosely covered with leaves and underbrush.
Yvonne’s body was badly decomposed, but it was clear she was bound and gagged, and an autopsy determined that the cause of death was multiple stab wounds to her back and chest.
After the discovery of the remains, authorities received an anonymous tip that Yvonne had been kidnapped from Bertham Road by three men driving a green van. Detectives followed up on this lead, but it went nowhere, and the anonymous caller gave no further information.
The case was featured on Crimewatch in November of 1992, and though someone did call in with a tip, this information also yielded nothing, and the crime is still unsolved. Some investigators have speculated that Yvonne Fitt may have been killed by a man named John Taylor, who raped and murdered sixteen-year-old Leanne Tiernan on November 26th, 2000, but the connection has not been proven.
Crime Immemorial 
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