Forty-year-old mother of two Jacqueline Palmer-Radford, described by neighbors as part of a somewhat secretive family, had separated amicably from her husband around 1990 after eighteen years of marriage. She continued living in the family home with her sons, aged seventeen and six, and was in the process of planning a move to a smaller property, though the house had not yet been listed for sale. The residence was called Riversdale House, and was a converted former post office on The Street, the main road through the village of Eversley in Hampshire, England.
The morning of Wednesday, April 1st, 1992, started routinely enough. Jacqueline dropped her younger son off at school in nearby Crowthorne, about four miles away. She was dressed smartly in a suit, suggesting she may have had plans for the day, perhaps a meeting or errands. She was expected to pick her son up after school, but when she failed to arrive, the six-year-old made his own way home. Between five fifteen and five thirty p.m., he discovered his mother’s body on the kitchen floor.
Jacqueline had been sexually assaulted and suffocated (some reports specify strangled). She was fully clothed, and there were no immediate signs of a forced entry or a prolonged struggle, though the exact details of the attack have varied slightly in accounts over the years.
In the lead-up to the murder, several unusual sightings were reported in the small, affluent village where strangers stood out. The day before, for example, another parent was picking up her son from school and noticed a man sitting in a brown hatchback car parked opposite the school.
Further, early on the morning of April 1st, staff at Astra House, a small office block just a few hundred yards from Riversdale House, saw an unfamiliar woman parked in their parking lot, wearing a green scarf.
Additionally, shortly after nine a.m. that day, a commuter passing Riversdale House spotted what may have been the same brown hatchback parked directly outside Jacqueline’s home. And later that morning, a motorist saw a brown hatchback pull into Jacqueline’s driveway.
At least one witness reported seeing a man holding a clipboard outside the house, and at approximately eleven a.m., a man was seen running down a nearby street, carrying two bags: one a Sainsbury’s shopping bag and the other an airline holdall. He was dressed in a raincoat, jogging bottoms, and trainers.
Not only that, but a distinctive expensive pen was found on the driveway of Riversdale House. It did not belong to Jacqueline or her family, and its owner was never traced.
These sightings suggested the killer may have been scouting the area or even attempting to gain entry in the days and hours prior.
Hampshire Constabulary launched a major inquiry. Jacqueline’s estranged husband was initially arrested as a suspect—a standard procedure in such cases—but he had a solid, corroborated alibi and was quickly ruled out.
The case was featured on BBC’s Crimewatch UK in June 1992, with a detailed reconstruction that highlighted the timeline and witness sightings. Despite generating leads, no arrests followed. The investigation reportedly faced challenges, including the case being passed between police departments, as noted by a cold case researcher years later.
No motive was firmly established. There were no signs of theft from the home, and the sexual assault element pointed toward an opportunistic or stranger attack, though the lack of forced entry raised questions about whether Jacqueline knew her killer or let them in voluntarily.
Over thirty years on, the murder of Jacqueline Palmer-Radford remains one of Hampshire’s enduring unsolved cases.
Crime Immemorial 