Fifty-three-year-old Jean Kidby had been married to her husband for thirty-four years. The couple had six children together and lived on Manwood Road in Brockley, South East London.
On the morning of April 2nd, 1985, Jean’s husband left for work as usual, kissing his wife goodbye before he went. Half an hour later, the couple’s thirteen-year-old daughter went into her mother’s bedroom and found Jean dead in bed. The Kidbys’ twenty-three-year-old son, who suffered from severe epilepsy and still lived in the family home, phoned for an ambulance.
Upon arrival, emergency personnel discovered that Jean had been strangled to death. Because there was no sign of forced entry into the home, authorities suspected that Jean’s husband had been responsible, and he was ultimately arrested and placed on trial for her murder.
During the proceedings, his defense argued that the couple’s epileptic son might have strangled his mother unintentionally during a fit without remembering having done it. The son studied karate and was physically very strong, but he denied having a seizure that day, claiming that he had only awakened when his sister came into his room in a panic saying their mother was dead. He did concede, however, that it was theoretically possible he could have done it and not had any recall.
This possibility, along with the lack of any other clear evidence, was enough to get Jean’s husband acquitted of her murder. Since then, there have been no further updates in the case, and the slaying of Jean Kidby is still unsolved, nearly forty years later.
Crime Immemorial 