Richard Miles had just turned twenty-nine on March 4th, 1993. He worked as an auto body mechanic in a car repair shop called Pollards in Frampton on Severn, Gloucestershire, England.
On March 10th, Richard went home for lunch at around one in the afternoon but never returned to work. Two and a half hours later, his mother Freda, who was a nurse at nearby Standish Hospital, came home and found him dead in the garden of the family residence. He had been stabbed once in the heart; the kitchen knife was still planted in his chest.
Richard was something of a loner, called quiet and unassuming by friends and colleagues, but seemingly with no enemies whatsoever. No one could fathom why anyone would want to kill him in such a cold-blooded fashion.
A massive investigation ensued, with police questioning hundreds of people who had passed through the area at the time of the murder and recreating the scenario of Richard’s mysterious slaying on the BBC’s Crimewatch TV program. Richard’s family also offered a £10,000 reward for information leading to the capture and conviction of his killer.
Despite all their efforts, however, the case stalled almost immediately and remained cold for two decades. Then, in November 2013, a man phoned the police and confessed to the crime, stating that two other men were involved. Two of the individuals—a fifty-three-year-old from Quedgeley and a forty-four-year-old from Longford—were arrested and interrogated about the murder, while a third man, a sixty-six-year-old from Stonehouse, was accused of perverting the course of justice. Ultimately authorities found no evidence linking them to the murder, and they were released two months later.
The strange and seemingly random killing of Richard Miles remains unsolved as of August 2024.
Crime Immemorial 