Fifty-nine-year-old grandmother Winnie Deighton lived in Bridlington, East Yorkshire, England. She was a much-beloved figure in the neighborhood and had the charming if eccentric habit of visiting friends and neighbors later at night to make them tea, which she brewed with tea bags she brought with her.
It appears she was involved with just such an undertaking at a little past midnight on June 10th, 1997, when she was spotted walking along Thornton Road. Later she would be found to have a quantity of tea bags in her pockets. However, on this particular night, something monstrous befell her before she could arrive at her destination.
At approximately six a.m., Winnie was discovered, barely conscious but still alive, lying on waste ground near the intersection of Thornton Road and Bessingby Road. She had been raped and brutally beaten.
The victim was taken to the hospital, but her injuries were too severe, and she died eleven days later, having never regained consciousness.
Two years afterward, in 1999, a thirty-six-year-old man was tried for the murder after he allegedly confessed to four other inmates he was incarcerated with at the time. The inmates’ accounts, though, were inconsistent with one another and were deemed unreliable by the court. The suspect was therefore found not guilty.
The investigation was reopened in 2013, with authorities confirming that they now had DNA evidence in the case. But more than a decade has passed since then, and the savage rape and murder of Winnie Deighton is still unsolved.
Crime Immemorial 