Edna and Alice Rowley were stepsisters, aged seventy-seven and eighty-seven respectively, and had spent more than fifty years running a corner shop on Greswolde Road in Sparkhill, Birmingham, England. They lived in a flat adjoining the shop and were a beloved fixture in the neighborhood.
Two days before Christmas of 1987, a neighbor became concerned when she hadn’t seen the sisters all day, and phoned police to look in on them. When authorities arrived, sadly, they found both elderly women dead.
Alice had been strangled and was lying in the living room of the sisters’ flat. Edna was found in an upstairs bedroom; she had been suffocated.
There was no sign of forced entry, but robbery was clearly the motive, as several items had been stolen from the premises. These included a cassette player, a bottle of Tia Maria, a brown leather suitcase, and several boxes of chocolates. An empty Walkers Pizza package was found at the foot of the stairs and was thought to have been left by the killer, as the shop didn’t sell this particular product.
A witness later came forward and stated he’d seen a middle-aged man who looked like a vagrant knocking on the door of the shop at around seven-thirty p.m. on December 22nd. Another witness who also saw the same individual described him as scruffy, with greasy hair with gray streaks, and clad in a grayish-brown jacket and dark-colored pants.
The Rowley sisters’ shop had been burgled before, but no connection could be made between the earlier incidents and the murder.
The case went cold after all leads had been exhausted, and the investigation was wound down. However, in 2017, detectives made a renewed plea for information on the thirtieth anniversary of the crime. As of this writing in September of 2024, the slaying of Edna and Alice Rowley is still unsolved.
Crime Immemorial 