Nineteen-year-old Sharon Hoare had grown up in Bristol, England, where she lived with her family in areas like Bedminster and later Yate. After leaving school, she completed a secretarial course and worked as a typist. Ambitious and drawn to the glamour of the fashion world, Sharon moved to London in pursuit of a modeling career. She initially lived with a friend in Fulham who was already involved in escort work.
Unbeknownst to her family back in Bristol, Sharon quickly entered the world of high-class prostitution. Using aliases such as “Nicky” or “Siobhan,” she worked through escort agencies, meeting clients in upscale West End hotels. These encounters could earn her up to £500 per session, a substantial sum in 1991. Reports suggest she may have made as much as £50,000 in just a few months, affording a lavish lifestyle in a flat renting for around £1,000 a month. Her family remained in the dark about her secret life until after her death.
In the early hours of August 10th, 1991, Sharon was turned away from a London hotel for reasons that remain unclear. A taxi driver then dropped her off alone at her Brompton Park Crescent flat around two a.m. This was the last confirmed sighting of her alive. Sometime between then and approximately three p.m., when her roommate returned and found her body, the killer struck.
Sharon Hoare was found naked on her bedroom floor. She had been brutally beaten, strangled, and bludgeoned with a blunt instrument. Defensive wounds on her hands and arms indicated she had fought desperately for her life. There were no signs of forced entry into the secure building, which featured entry phones and a patrolling security guard, and no evidence of sexual assault.
Police believed the perpetrator was likely a client or someone Sharon knew and trusted. Detective Sergeant Bob Fenton, leading the murder inquiry team, described her as a “high-class call girl” who did not work the streets but primarily through agencies and private clients. The team interviewed over 800 people, including clients, escorts, and others in the industry, and took blood samples from many suspects. Four people were arrested during the investigation, with five emerging as possible suspects, but no charges were ever filed.
Just six days later, on August 16th, another sex worker—a twenty-four-year-old named Lucy Christopher—was attacked in her Kensington home, about a mile from Sharon’s flat. She was struck on the head with a blunt instrument and left for dead but survived. Police strongly suspected the incidents were connected, describing the attacker as a pale-complexioned man in his early thirties with thick, dark brown fuzzy hair and a heavy beard and moustache. A photofit composite was released at the time.
Over the years, criminologists and documentaries have speculated on potential links to known killers. In a 2013 Channel 5 documentary series Killers: Behind Bars, Professor David Wilson, a criminologist and former prison governor, suggested the case should be re-examined in light of Anthony Hardy, the notorious “Camden Ripper.” Hardy, convicted in 2003 of murdering three women and dismembering their bodies, had a history of mental illness and violence toward sex workers. Wilson pointed to similarities in modus operandi, a forgotten 1990s photofit resembling Hardy, and revelations that Hardy worked as a minicab driver around the time of Sharon’s death. However, no concrete evidence has ever tied Hardy to the crime, and the Metropolitan Police have not officially linked him.
Despite extensive efforts, including appeals on programs like Crimewatch, Sharon Hoare’s murder remains unsolved more than three decades later.
Crime Immemorial 