Thirty-two-year-old Julie Jones was originally from Abergele, Wales, and had been a good student growing up: smart, athletic, and well-liked. After her parents separated when she was a teenager, she moved with her mother to Bury, Manchester, England. She eventually gave birth to two sons, Dale in 1985 and Josh in 1995.
Unfortunately, in her mid to late twenties, Julie fell in with a bad crowd, getting into drugs and engaging in sex work to pay for her habit. Her mother Theresa desperately tried to help her get her life together, but sadly, this would never come to pass.
On June 25th or 26th of 1998, Julie’s roommate became concerned when Julie didn’t come home, and phoned the police to report her missing. However, her fate would be undiscovered for nearly a week.
Then, on July 3rd, a dog walker found Julie’s nude, lifeless body stashed under some bushes at the old Smithfield Market in Manchester’s city center. She had been beaten and kicked so severely that authorities likened her injuries to those sustained by people who had been hit by a car or fallen from a great height, as her ribs and internal organs were crushed.
Detectives also surmised that Julie had likely been killed elsewhere and then dumped where she was discovered. The area where her body lay was, in 1998, desolate and mostly abandoned, meaning that the killer could have operated largely undetected.
The investigation was frustrating from the start, and though a handful of suspects were arrested in connection with the crime, none were charged except for one man who was eventually convicted of an unrelated rape.
Julie’s mother Theresa has stated that she thinks she knows who might have killed her daughter, but hasn’t named the individual since she doesn’t have any solid proof.
In 2018, there was a renewed media push about the case, and at that time, a reward of £50,000 was offered for information leading to the conviction of the killer. But as of August 2024, the murder of Julie Jones remains unsolved.
Crime Immemorial 