Crime Immemorial

The dance was a lively affair, a brief escape from the post-war austerity still lingering in 1960s Britain. But as the evening wound down around one a.m., tensions simmered. One account describes an awkward incident where a man dropped a door key down her dress, irritating her enough to storm out in a huff. Another suggests a minor argument with friends prompted her abrupt departure. Whatever the spark, Lilian set off on foot toward her home in Parkstone, a solitary walk along dimly lit roads in the dead of night.

Fate intervened around one thirty a.m. on what was now Sunday, January 17th. Lilian was struck down on Wallisdown Road by a dark green Morris 1000 saloon car, registration VRU 968. The car had been stolen earlier that evening from Talbot Avenue in nearby Bournemouth, between ten p.m. and two thirty a.m.

Eyewitnesses later described seeing Lilian injured but alive after the impact. The driver and possible accomplice didn’t flee the scene immediately. Instead, they bundled her into the stolen vehicle, her outer garments—coat, stole, and shoes—tossed aside in a haphazard pile on Wallisdown Road, where they were soon found by a passerby. As the car lurched onward, more of her clothing was discarded about a mile away on Waterworks Road: her dress and undergarments scattered on the pavement like grim breadcrumbs.

The perpetrators drove to Wheelers Lane, a secluded spot on the outskirts of Poole known locally as “Lovers Lane” for its romantic seclusion under the cover of night. There, in the hedgerow, Lilian was stripped completely naked, sexually assaulted, and savagely beaten about the head and face until she lay unconscious. Pathologists later confirmed she was run over by the car, her injuries—while severe—were survivable with prompt medical care. But shock, exposure to the biting cold, and the relentless assault sealed her fate. She was dumped face down in the frozen mud and snow, about nine feet from the abandoned Morris, which had veered into a ditch.

At seven thirty a.m. on the snowy morning of January 17th, a passerby stumbled upon the horrific scene: Lilian’s naked, battered body half-buried in the snow, her scattered possessions a testament to the violence that had unfolded hours earlier. The stolen car sat nearby, its presence immediately raising alarms. Police arrived swiftly, cordoning off the area as word spread through the tight-knit community. Lilian’s husband, alerted to her absence, faced the unimaginable when her identity was confirmed.

The coroner’s inquest would later rule her death by multiple injuries, hastened by being stripped and left exposed on that frigid night, with the sexual assault occurring post-impact. It was a case that screamed of calculated cruelty, yet laced with panic—the car’s ditch-bound state suggesting the killers fled on foot into the dawn.

Dorset Police launched a massive investigation, enlisting Scotland Yard detectives for their expertise. Over a week later, they erected midnight-to-two-thirty a.m. roadblocks on routes leading to the scene, grilling drivers and passengers on their alibis for the previous Saturday. Army barracks within a twenty-mile radius were scoured, as the Territorial Army connection loomed large. Appeals flooded local papers and radio, urging landladies to report young lodgers who returned late—or not at all—that night.

Two men emerged as persons of interest. The first was a thirty-seven-year-old GPO telephone engineer from Wolseley Road, Parkstone, known to Lilian and her husband for eight years. Described as forty to fifty years old, five foot eight inches tall, big build, with a round face, ruddy complexion, brown suit, and camel hair coat, he had danced with Lilian that night. He claimed to have left at one thirty a.m. with two friends, assuming she was in good company, and provided a statement that cleared him—for the time being.

The second was a shadowy younger figure: seventeen to twenty years old, five foot nine inches tall, slight build, in a light-colored Italian-style three-quarter length fawn raincoat, no hat. Spotted walking on Ringwood Road toward Poole at two twenty-eight a.m.—just eighteen minutes from the murder site—he never responded to police appeals. Detectives speculated he might have been the driver or an accomplice, now in his eighties if alive.

Rumors swirled of a protected witness who came forward with tantalizing leads, but nothing panned out. Investigators pieced together a grim narrative: Lilian, perhaps spooked after the dance, refused a lift from the stolen car’s occupants. They chased her down, the car clipping her in the pursuit. Semi-conscious, she may have been coaxed into the vehicle for “help,” only to be driven to isolation for the assault.

More than six decades later, Lilian Tharme’s murder remains one of Dorset’s most perplexing unsolved crimes.