Eighty-seven-year-old Edna Harvey was a frail woman with poor eyesight who nonetheless lived alone in a ground-floor flat on Finchley Road in Ipswich, Suffolk, England. She was described as reclusive by neighbors.
Shortly after midnight on August 28th, 1984, one of these neighbors noticed smoke billowing out of the front door of Edna’s residence and called the fire brigade. Upon arrival, firefighters discovered Edna’s body lying on her bed. A post-mortem determined that she had died due to asphyxiation and that her killer had then set her body on fire in order to obliterate evidence.
Although the flat appeared to have been ransacked, it wasn’t clear what, if anything, had been stolen. According to those who knew her, Edna hadn’t really owned anything of any great value.
A witness reported seeing two men running down Finchley Road toward the town center not long after the crime occurred, but these individuals were never identified.
A renewed appeal for information was made in 2014, thirty years after the murder, but as of this writing in November 2024, there have been no further developments, and the slaying of Edna Harvey is still unresolved.
Crime Immemorial 