Crime Immemorial

Shortly after seven p.m., a man in an orange Mini drove up and solicited her services, and Rachel got in the car with him; her boyfriend thought he looked all right. He noted later that Rachel would usually only spend about half an hour with each client, but on this particular evening, she was gone until nine p.m., and when she got back, she was extremely drunk. She and her boyfriend had a blazing argument and Rachel tried to get in a cab, but her boyfriend yanked her out. According to the taxi driver, the pair then walked off in opposite directions. The boyfriend got back to their hotel at around eleven p.m., but Rachel never came home that night.

At twelve-thirty p.m. the following day, though, she called her father at his old age home and informed him she was staying with friends and didn’t live in the hotel anymore. Her father later reported that she hadn’t mentioned where she was staying or where she had called him from.

At approximately nine-thirty that same night, Rachel was spotted in a pub on Edgeware Road, accompanied by a man and a girl. According to witnesses, two other women in the pub had been making fun of Rachel’s clothes, which were out of style and clearly too big for her, and Rachel had started a fight. The conflict was broken up at around ten-thirty p.m., and at closing time, a very inebriated Rachel left the pub, carrying a white plastic bag. She was never seen alive again.

The next day, her remains were discovered in a locked garage on Sumner Place in Chelsea. She had been strangled to death, and her body had also been mutilated, possibly with a chainsaw.

Though Rachel’s boots were missing, the clothes she’d been seen in at the pub were still on her body. Oddly, though, it was later found that the clothing likely didn’t belong to her; her boyfriend didn’t recognize the items, and the labels bore writing on them in ink that read TK and P Swarez.

Police sought a man who had been spotted following Rachel out of the pub on the night she disappeared. He was described as aged in his mid-thirties to mid-forties, possibly Greek or Arab, with black hair peppered through with gray. He stood about five-foot-nine, wore a ski jacket and gold-rimmed glasses, and had a large ring on his left hand. This individual was never identified.

Authorities also speculated that Rachel’s murder might be linked to that of Marina Monte, another sex worker who was killed in the same area the day before Rachel was.

A handful of men were questioned about the crime, including a Mexican diplomat and a thirty-two-year-old South African man who had previously assaulted and robbed a sex worker in London and was suspected to be a pimp. Both these men, however, were released without charge.

As of this writing in September of 2024, the slaying of Rachel Applethwaite remains unsolved.