Glenda Potter was born and raised in the town of Chatham, Kent, England. By 1991, at the age of thirty-two, she was a troubled mother of four, navigating the treacherous undercurrents of addiction and survival. Described by those who knew her as a “loner,” Potter lived in the transient “bedsit land” of Chatham: a cluster of run-down flats where the vulnerable often sought refuge. Her days were shadowed by a heroin habit that fueled petty thefts to sustain it, and she worked as a prostitute in Rochester and Chatham’s dimly lit streets.
On Friday, May 10th, 1991, she was spotted in The Kings Arms pub in Rochester after nine forty-five p.m., laughing and chatting. An older man in his sixties with grey balding hair, standing about six feet tall, dressed in a suit with a collared shirt and tie, and wearing a wedding ring, paid her particular attention. The pair left together around that time, witnesses later told police. The next evening, Saturday, May 11th, Glenda was seen soliciting in her usual haunts, including Rochester High Street near St. Bartholomew’s Chapel around nine forty-five p.m.
She was last confirmed alive around ten a.m. on Sunday, May 12th, leaving a local shop. Neighbors reported hearing her television blaring continuously over the weekend from her flat, but she never answered the door; a sign, police later surmised, that she hadn’t returned home after venturing out Friday night. By Sunday night, investigators believe, Glenda was already dead.
Her body was found shortly after midday on Tuesday, May 14th, by a female churchgoer who had arrived at the Vines United Reformed Church on Crow Lane in Rochester for a routine visit. Earlier that morning, schoolboys had lingered in the grounds until about eight thirty a.m., seeing nothing suspicious, and a gardener had passed through around nine thirty a.m. without noticing anything amiss. Forensics pointed to the body being dumped in broad daylight sometime that morning, covered haphazardly with a blanket after her lower clothing had been removed.
Glenda had been sexually assaulted before being manually strangled. There were no signs of a struggle in the immediate area, leading detectives to conclude the murder likely occurred elsewhere, possibly in a vehicle or a private space.
Two eerie pre-discovery sightings added layers of intrigue. Early that morning, a young boy playing in the grounds glimpsed what he thought was a leg protruding from bushes, clad in a white training shoe with a black pattern and a white sock with a colored band. Spooked, he fled without investigating further. Hours later, a passerby spotted a couple in a car parked nearby: a woman with short dark hair (possibly resembling Glenda Potter) and a man with sandy-colored hair. Police sought to identify them but ruled out the boy’s sighting, as Glenda was wearing white socks and black ankle boots at the time of death.
A taxi driver provided another tantalizing lead: he recalled seeing Glenda climb into a car outside Rochester railway station late Friday or Saturday night. The vehicle and driver matched the description of the older man from the pub; the vehicle was possibly a red estate car, like a Volvo.
Kent Police launched an investigation, flooding the streets with appeals and canvassing Rochester’s nightlife. Over 1,000 public tips poured in, but the era’s lack of CCTV and the reluctance of Glenda’s peers to come forward hampered progress. Three men were arrested in connection with the case, but none faced murder charges. One, sixteen-year-old Malcolm Shipley, was briefly suspected of helping dispose of the body and endured two decades of stigma before DNA evidence conclusively cleared him in January 2011.
The case saw a brief resurgence in May 2010 when Kent Police’s cold case unit reopened it, hoping fresh eyes and advancing forensics might yield breakthroughs. DNA profiles were re-examined, but no matches emerged from national databases. Former detective commander Ken Tappenden, who joined the force just weeks after the murder, speculated the motive might tie more to Potter’s thieving habits than her sex work: perhaps a confrontation gone fatally wrong over drugs or stolen goods. Yet, without new leads, the file gathered dust once more.
Today, the investigation remains active under Kent Police’s cold case team, periodically reviewed with modern scientific tools, but as of this writing in November 2025, Glenda Potter’s murder is still unsolved.
Crime Immemorial 