Forty-seven-year-old mother of four and grandmother of one Susan McDonald lived in a house on Cookes Drive in Broughton Astley, Leicester, England with her fiancé Rod Harris. The couple was scheduled to be married in just a few weeks. Susan was also suffering from cancer.
Shortly before one a.m. on December 1st, 2002, the fire brigade was called to the residence to extinguish a blaze that had begun at the front of the house. Rod Harris managed to escape by jumping out of a window, breaking his ankle in the process, but Susan was not so lucky: she was found dead of smoke inhalation on the floor of the master bedroom.
Investigators discovered that the fire had been deliberately set, started in a large garbage bin that had been rolled in front of the door and spreading to engulf the entire house and everything within it. The death of Susan McDonald was thus recognized as a homicide.
Rod Harris told police that he and Susan had been trapped upstairs by the fire. When he had gone to jump out the window, he thought that Susan was right behind him. Once he was outside and realized that Susan was still in the house, he frantically tried to get back in through the front door, but the flames prevented his entry.
Rod also stated that he’d looked out the bedroom window and seen a man running away from the house shortly after he and Susan were awakened by the smoke, but he hadn’t got a good look at him.
Although Susan’s family claimed she had no enemies, it later came to light that she had been receiving hate mail and threatening phone calls for several weeks before the murder. The content of these messages usually involved telling Susan that her fiancé was having an affair, or making overt threats such as, “If the cancer doesn’t kill you, I will.” The harassment had gotten so bad that Susan had recently changed her phone number.
The identity of the person phoning and writing to Susan was never discovered. While five teenagers were subsequently arrested for the crime, none was charged, and as of this writing in November 2024, the arson-based slaying of Susan McDonald is still unsolved.
Crime Immemorial 