It is a sad fact of life that some go unsolved and that sometimes killers get away. However, nowadays new scientific techniques such as genetic finger printing offer a way of tracing the killers.
THIRTY one years ago, a young woman left a happy, convivial 21st birthday party in Clifton. She stepped outside, probably for a breath of fresh air and a stroll, little realising that she was walking to her death.
The country, including Bristol, was in the middle of an energy crisis at the time and only the most essential street lighting was on. The roads were pitch-black. Somewhere near Bristol Zoo, she met her killer. '
But the murderer of student teacher Glenis Carruthers may not even have been aware that he had killed her.
A clumsy assault on a lonely girl; a call in the night from a passer-by; a dash to freedom and then a long drive home may have been his only memories of the incident. Glenis Carruthers was an innocent victim, someone unlucky enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
The cheerful 20-year-old student from Amersham, in Buckinghamshire, had driven down from Bedford on Friday, January 18,1974, with her friend Sandra Hardyman, a Bristol girl about to celebrate her 21st birthday Both were third-year students at Bedford College of Physical Education.
The party was at her friend's home in Worcester Crescent, Clifton. There were about 40 people present and everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves. But just why Glenis decided to leave the party at about 10pm still remains a mystery.
A guest at the party discounted the theory that she was a wallflower. 'It was not that sort of party,' said Jay Hunter, Sandra Hardyman's godmother. 'I do not think that everyone had a definitlve partner. Everyone seemed to be mixing well and chatting and laughing together.'
The 21st party apparently included people of all ages. 'There were parents and grandparents and Sandra's friends — including Glenis,' Jay added. 'Glenis had stayed at Sandra's home before, so she knew some of the people there.
She apparently didn't tell anyone when she left the party I didn't know anything about it until Sandra told me that she was worried because she couldn't find Glenis. 'I suggested that she might be in another room but Sandra had said that she had looked and could not find her.'
Detective Chief Superintendent Lewis, the head of Bristol CID at the time and the man called in to head the murder inquiry which followed, could only theorise. 'She may have been hot and needed a breath of fresh air,' he said at the time. 'She may have felt lonely because everyone seemed to have a partner.
There was even speculation that she wanted to telephone a religious group of which she was a member, but we could find no record of any such call.' Both Glenis and her friend Sandra were members of the Fisher Folk, a Christian group based near Slough.
But whatever her reason for leaving, Glenis walked half a mile through the pitch-black streets. At the time, Edward Heath's fight with the miners was at its height and the country was crippled by an energy crisis. For weeks, Bristol businesses and homes had been lit by emergency generators and candles during a rolling programme of power cuts. Street lighting had been reduced to a minimum.
Glenis' distraught father William, a consulting engineer, said after the inquest into his daughter's death: 'I am now convinced that but for the absence of street lighting Glenis would have been alive today.
The Government at the time of the last miners' strike allowed street lighting to be cut by half. In doing so they made police surveillance more difficult and this from a government which purported to stand for law and order.'
Glenis reached a grassy spot near a slip road between The Avenue and Northcote Road. There was a telephone kiosk nearby It was there that she met her killer.
A senior overseer of the big cats, reptiles and camels at the zoo,.50-year-old Alf Elliott, who lived nearby in Northcote Road, said that he had spotted someone who fitted Glenis's description while he was out exercising his dogs.
He passed what he thought was a courting couple but when he passed them again the man got up and walked away, leaving the woman in the grass. 'I shouted to him 'Hey, what's your game?'
He didn't reply and I repeated what I had just said.
He just stared and went on. his way,' the zoo keeper said. 'I called the police straight away. I could not see the man very well as it was quite dark and a mass of hair hid his face.' In the exhaustive inquiry that followed her death, 175 detectives and uniformed officers interviewed more than 16,000 people. Detective Chief Superintendent Lewis made regular appeals for witnesses and followed up every possible lead.
There was one clue — the shank of a pair of spectacles which might have belonged to Glenis's assailant was found near the scene of the crime. Every optician in the county was visited but no information was forthcoming about the wearer. The lack of serious injury to the dead girl surprised both the Ham Green hospital pathologist Derek Johnson and Mr Lewis.
He said, 'The lack of a struggle, lack of injury, lack of anything to go on hampered our inquiries.
One almost felt that it was a mistake thinking this was a murder case.' The pathologist could only find a small abrasion on the throat. It seemed like an indecent assault from behind with a hand to the throat.
The official cause of death was given as manual strangulation, there was no evidence of any sexual assault. Mr Lewis believed it possible that the killer didn't even realise he had murdered a girl that night.
He said: 'There are many people loose in the country who are liable to commit Indecent assaults and I don't think they themselves can remember how many or where. 'They act on the spur of the moment and disappear.
This man could have been from elsewhere. He could have been driving through Bristol, saw this lonely girl, decided to approach her, handled her, ran off and never realised what he'd done. 'What would he remember? An assault one dark night with perhaps the memory of a nearby telephone kiosk?'
Avon and Somerset Police still have the crime on their books.
A spokesman said: 'The file is still open and we bear the case very much in mind whenever similar crimes occur. We are not pursuing the matter as actively as before, but we do keep in close contact with other forces.' Glenis's father said at the time: 'I am sure the killer will never be able to forget what happened. He will not be able to live with his conscience.' But, after all these years, the Clifton murder remains a mystery.
See Link Below
www.avonandsomerset.police.uk/newsroom/special_appeals/gl...
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