Thirty-six-year-old double-glazing salesman David Short was living a somewhat tumultuous life, to put it mildly. He had separated from his wife nine months previously, after she accused him of numerous affairs and of running up debts of approximately £750,000. He had, furthermore, remortgaged the family home seven times without his wife’s knowledge.
She also suspected he had become acquainted with some unsavory characters, a suspicion that was confirmed when one day, prior to the couple’s breakup, an unidentified man burst into the house with a shotgun, looking for David, who was not home at the time. David had also been targeted with threatening phone calls, and on one occasion, someone had sent a funeral wreath to the house.
In the autumn of 1988, David was living on Ethel Road in Broadstairs, Kent, and had a new girlfriend. On September 22nd, there was a knock at the front door, and when David answered it, he was immediately sprayed in the face with CS gas, which incapacitated him. The attacker then bashed him twice in the skull, leaving him for dead, before also pouring acid on his car in the driveway.
David’s body was later found by his mother and his girlfriend on the pathway leading up to the house’s front door.
Authorities delved into David’s complicated past in order to determine who might have wanted to kill him but unfortunately came up empty. The only significant lead they received arrived years later, in 2001, when an anonymous letter with a Dorset postmark was mailed to the police station. The letter named the supposed killer, but despite a thorough inquiry, detectives could not confirm the information, and the case went cold once again.
As of this writing in October 2024, the murder of David Short is still unresolved.
Crime Immemorial 