Sixty-four-year-old Norah Smith, also known as Norah Benzie, lived in Falkirk, Scotland. On New Year’s Day of 1993, she was found dead in her home.
From forensic evidence, it appeared that the killer had attempted to throttle the victim manually before proceeding to strangle her to death with a ligature. She had also been bludgeoned, possibly with a hammer, but the pathologist maintained that these injuries had been administered after death.
A man named Andrew Kemp was subsequently arrested and tried for the murder, though he insisted upon his innocence. The jury returned a verdict of not proven, and Kemp walked free.
However, in 2012, Kemp was sentenced to twenty-two years in prison after being found guilty of stabbing his twenty-four-year-old former girlfriend to death in 2011. He’d also previously been convicted of rape in 1999, a crime for which he’d served nine years.
After the changing of Scotland’s double jeopardy laws, authorities reopened the Norah Smith case in 2013, possibly hoping to eventually re-try Andrew Kemp for the crime. As of this writing in November 2024, though, there have been no further updates, and the murder of the sixty-four-year-old grandmother remains unsolved.
Crime Immemorial 