Seventy-three-year-old Lady Brenda Cross had been born Brenda Megan Powell in 1917. She married Sir Kenneth Cross, a decorated Air Chief Marshal who had risen through the ranks during World War II, commanding RAF Germany in the post-war years. The couple, childless but deeply devoted, settled into a comfortable retirement in Chelsea, London, England, where Lady Cross channeled her passion for history and craftsmanship into part-time work at Anno Domini, a quaint antiques emporium at 66 Pimlico Road.
Opened in 1976 by Frederick Bartman—a retired actor best remembered as the suave Dr. Simon Forrester in the 1960s ITV soap Emergency Ward 10—and his business partner David Cohen, the shop specialized in Victorian curios and Georgian silver. By 1991, however, Anno Domini was faltering under the weight of economic pressures. Back rent had ballooned to over £40,000, and negotiations for a new lease dragged on amid slumping sales. Lady Cross, who had been a fixture there for a decade, was more than an employee; she was a friend to Bartman, their bond stretching back twelve years. Described by those who knew her as “a much loved woman with no known enemies,” she embodied the shop’s charm: elegant, knowledgeable, and ever gracious to browsing patrons.
Wednesday, September 4th, 1991, began unremarkably. Lady Cross arrived at Anno Domini around midday for her shift, as she often did. The shop, tucked into a row of upscale facades near Sloane Square, buzzed with the faint traffic of afternoon browsers. But in the dimly lit basement—stocked with heavy oak furniture and an array of antique fire irons—horror unfolded.
Sometime between one and three p.m., an unseen assailant turned on Lady Cross with unimaginable fury. She was knocked or pushed to the ground, then pummeled with fists, feet, and at least one of the shop’s brass fire irons. Pathologists later counted between thirty and forty blows, including three devastating skull fractures that rendered her unconscious amid pools of her own blood. Remarkably, she may have briefly regained consciousness, only to suffer a second onslaught. The attack was intimate and frenzied; furniture was upended, and signs of a desperate struggle scarred the room. Yet, crucially, there were no fingerprints from outsiders, no shattered locks, no missing valuables. This was no random burglary or stranger’s impulse; it reeked of personal rage.
It was Sir Kenneth who discovered the carnage. Arriving to escort his wife home around three thirty p.m., he descended the stairs to find her barely breathing, her silver hair matted with gore. “She’s dead, isn’t she?” he would later murmur in shock. Ambulance crews fought valiantly, but Lady Cross succumbed to a heart attack en route to hospital, her body broken beyond repair.
Scotland Yard descended on Pimlico Road swiftly, cordoning off the scene as forensic teams sifted through the debris. The absence of external evidence pointed inward: to the shop itself, and those who knew its rhythms. Bartman, sixty-seven years old and living nearby in Chelsea, emerged as the prime suspect. He claimed to have spent the morning at home, nursing a headache, but witnesses placed him and his distinctive car lurking outside Anno Domini around the time of the attack.
Prosecutors painted a portrait of mounting pressures. Lady Cross had confided plans to retire from the shop, though she pledged to stay until a successor was hired. Bartman, they alleged, was unraveling: irked by her impending departure, he had yet to fill the vacancy. Compounding this was Anno Domini’s dire straits; the £40,000 rent payoff had strained his finances, and lease talks soured the mood further. On the day of the murder, colleagues recalled him in a “bad mood,” snapping at minor irritants. An argument, the Crown suggested, had erupted in the basement, escalating into lethal violence with the nearest weapon at hand: those ornate fire irons.
Yet, even as fingers pointed, the case cracked under scrutiny. No forensic link tied Bartman to the bloodied basement; there was no DNA (long before its routine use), no fibers, no other physical evidence. His arrival at the scene, pale and trembling, struck some as genuine horror rather than feigned guilt. And crucially, the prosecution conceded a gaping void: no concrete motive.
The drama climaxed at the Old Bailey in February 1993, nearly eighteen months after the slaying. Bartman pleaded not guilty before a packed courtroom. The trial lasted mere days, but its end was abrupt. After the Crown rested its case, Judge Brian Smedley QC intervened decisively. Addressing the jury, he declared the evidence “inherently improbable” that Bartman was the killer—a rare “directed acquittal” that halted proceedings and freed the defendant without defense testimony. Bartman walked out a free man.
The verdict left Lady Cross’s family, as well as the public, reeling. Sir Kenneth, widowed and heartbroken, retreated from the spotlight. No other suspects materialized; leads dried up amid the era’s forensic limitations. Anno Domini shuttered soon after.
As of this writing, the case stands as officially unsolved.
Crime Immemorial 