Shortly after two-thirty p.m. on April 19th, 2001, ninety-two-year-old pensioner Mary Hancock was walking along Leyland Road in Southport, Merseyside, England. Suddenly, a white saloon car pulled up alongside her, driven by an unidentified man. The passenger of the car, a woman, got out and snatched Mary’s handbag, throwing Mary to the ground in the process. The perpetrators then sped off, leaving the old woman wounded and bleeding on the pavement.
The victim suffered a broken hip and a number of other injuries. She was rushed to the hospital, where she lingered for nearly a month, but she eventually passed away on May 18th, escalating the incident to homicide.
The handbag the killers stole was believed to have only contained £10.
The case was featured on Crimewatch in June of 2001, and though police received many encouraging leads, none of them panned out. The shocking murder of the kindly elderly woman is still unsolved.
Crime Immemorial 