Twenty-one-year-old Sharon Harper had a five-month-old daughter and worked as a barmaid at the Market Cross pub in Grantham, Lincolnshire, England.
Shortly after midnight on Saturday, July 2nd, 1994, Sharon got off work and began walking toward her babysitter’s home, as she usually did. On this particular night, however, she never made it there.
On Sunday, July 3rd, a group of children found Sharon’s lifeless body lying in the shrubbery in the Shepherd Construction parking lot on Earlesfield Lane. She had been beaten and strangled, and a later examination revealed she had had sex just before her death, suggesting she’d been raped as well.
Authorities looked into a handful of leads in the case following the discovery of Sharon’s remains. For example, witnesses claimed they saw a strange car parked at Shepherd Construction at around three-thirty on the morning of July 3rd. Another witness stated they thought they had seen Sharon arguing with a man in his thirties near a service station on Harlaxton Road earlier in the night. Though several arrests were made, no one was ever charged.
Months later, in September of 1994, the case got a slight boost in the media when Crimewatch mentioned it during their coverage of the murder of Julie Pacey, who was likewise raped and strangled in the same area. In spite of the similarities between the crimes, however, police did not believe they were linked.
In 1999, a couple in Hove were arrested in connection with the killing of Sharon Harper after investigators received an anonymous tip, but the pair were eventually released without charge.
Since then, there have been no significant developments, and the murder of Sharon Harper is still unsolved, three decades later.
Crime Immemorial 