Thirty-one-year-old Helen Rosemary Hooper was a teacher and lived with her husband in Broken Green, Standon, Ware, Hertfordshire, England. In 1976, however, she had started seeing another teacher, and made plans to divorce her husband and move in with her lover.
Helen told her husband of her plans, there was a bitter argument, and shortly afterward—specifically on February 13th, 1976—she vanished. After failing to show up to meet her boyfriend, he reported her disappearance to police.
During a search of the Hooper household, detectives found small traces of blood on a knife and a pair of shoes, suggesting that something awful had befallen Helen. Her body, though, was never found.
Helen’s husband was naturally the obvious suspect, and according to the questioning officers, he even told them, “If I can’t have her, nobody else will.” He never directly confessed to killing his wife.
Because there was no body and not much physical evidence, the court decided to throw out the charges against Helen’s husband. Though it seems he is the most likely culprit, he has never been formally accused, and the crime therefore remains unsolved.
Crime Immemorial 