Forty-five-year-old Albert Welch worked as a railway electrician and lived with his wife and son in a house on Cranborne Crescent in Potters Bar, Hertfordshire, England.
On November 17th, 1947, Albert left a note for his wife reading, “I have gone for a walk. Shan’t be home for tea.” Oddly, he had taken his ID and his ration book with him when he left the house.
According to later reports, Albert was spotted getting on a train bound for Hadley Wood at around eleven p.m., but prior to that, his wife stated that she thought she heard him returning to the house at about ten-fifteen p.m. She never saw him, but when she got up the next morning, tea had been made.
After these ambiguous sightings, however, Albert Welch was never seen alive again.
For six months, Albert’s whereabouts were a complete mystery. His wife told police that he had wanted to leave town, but she had no idea where he would have gone and why he left so abruptly.
Then, in May of 1948, a boy who recovered golf balls at Potters Bar Golf Course made a grisly discovery in Tiddlers Pond: a man’s severed and decomposed hand.
Authorities drained the pond and soon discovered several other dismembered body parts, including a head that had been partially burned. They also found a hacksaw, which had presumably been used to cut the body into pieces.
After a thorough examination, the remains were found to be those of Albert Welch, and his cause of death was believed to be a severe blow to the forehead. Investigators expanded their search from the golf course to the gardens of the surrounding houses, as they suspected that Albert may have been killed at one of the residences ringing the golf course before being dismembered and dumped in the pond.
Diligent police work turned up nothing of note, though, and the gruesome case soon went cold. More than seventy years later, the individual who murdered Albert Welch is certainly dead, and evidently took his motives to the grave.
Files about the murder will not be made public until 2045, and until then, it’s likely the crime will remain unsolved.
Crime Immemorial 