Eighteen-year-old Joanne Broome lived in Bellsmyre, Scotland. Her mother last saw her at approximately ten p.m. on December 13th, 2003, after which Joanne traveled three miles to a top-floor flat on Main Street in Renton. She was staying there temporarily to house-sit while the resident, alleged drug dealer Thomas Oswald, was on vacation in the Caribbean.
The following day, firefighters were summoned to the flat by reports of a blaze. The fire had burned out by the time they arrived, but Joanne was found dead inside. A post-mortem determined that she had been stabbed multiple times before the fire was deliberately set to conceal the crime.
Because the flat belonged to a purported drug dealer who was rumored to keep large sums of cash in the residence, authorities suspected this had been the motive for the murder. Two weeks after Joanne was found dead, police arrested a forty-six-year-old man named James Campbell on the testimony of an eighteen-year-old named James Murray.
However, before the case could go to trial, Murray retracted his statements and was subsequently arrested for lying to the police. The murder case against James Campbell was dropped due to lack of evidence.
Since that time, there have been no further developments, and the slaying of Joanne Broome is still unsolved as of December 2024.
Crime Immemorial 