Twenty-eight-year-old Laverne Forbes and her partner, thirty-three-year-old Patrick Smith, lived with their seven-year-old daughter in a flat on Kessock Close in Tottenham, North London.
At around nine o’clock on the morning of May 25th, 1999, the family was having breakfast. Laverne went outside to put some garbage on the curb when she was confronted by two men who threatened her. She ran from them, but they chased her back into her flat, where they proceeded to shoot both her and Patrick Smith in the head, execution style.
After the killers fled, the couple’s terrified seven-year-old ran out of the apartment, screaming that her mother and father had been shot.
Both Laverne and Patrick initially survived the shooting and were airlifted to the hospital, but Patrick succumbed to his injuries hours later, and Laverne died the following day.
Because the killings had all the hallmarks of a professional hit, police suspected that Laverne may have witnessed a drug deal. There was also speculation that the double homicide may have been related to an earlier attack in west London in which two men were shot at nine times while they were in a car; one of the victims was killed.
The perpetrators of the attack on Laverne Forbes and Patrick Smith were described as black men between eighteen and twenty years old, both of them standing about five foot ten.
The shocking murder is still unresolved.
Crime Immemorial 