Martin Silvester was a thirty-four-year-old divorced father of two who worked as a haulage contractor, running a business called Wednesbury Logistical Services in the West Midlands, England.
Shortly before midnight on August 21st, 2001, Martin was sitting in his BMW outside his business on Pikehelve Street when a man approached and pistol-whipped him before shooting him once in the heart.
Incredibly, Martin managed to drive his car a few hundred yards before crashing outside the nearby Miners Arms pub. He was pronounced dead at the scene.
The main suspect in the shooting was thirty-seven-year-old Vincent Michael Palmer, better known as Vinny, a notorious wanted criminal from Birmingham who had been a fugitive from justice since escaping from the Birmingham Crown Court in June of 1997. He had been serving a thirteen-year sentence for firearms possession and conspiracy to commit robbery.
Police made multiple pleas to the public for information on Palmer’s whereabouts, but he wasn’t tracked down until January of 2004, when police arrested him during a raid of his associate’s house in Shenstone, near Lichfield, Staffordshire.
Authorities were keen to question Vincent Palmer about the murder of Martin Silvester, as well as the March 2002 shooting of another man in Tamworth.
However, Palmer decided to keep silent permanently, as he hanged himself in his cell at Woodhill Prison after only sixteen days in custody.
The Martin Silvester case, then, still stands as officially unsolved.
Crime Immemorial 