It is sad to lose your loved one. It is worse if it is a murder. What is worst is not knowing who did it and why. And 50 years is a very long time for a question to go unanswered. I can very well understand why Elsie's younger brother Colin and elder sister Ann wrote to BBC Radio 4 requesting them to help find the murderer. It was 9th October, 1965 when 14-year old Elsie was brutally stabbed in the back and head and left to die. The police did take into custody a man called Ian Spencer but he was ruled not guilty and the case got kind of closed after that as there were no more leads. Elsie's parents died without knowing who killed their daughter and why. But Colin and Ann are determined to find answers before their time is up. Most of the case files are sealed till 20-30 years from now. But BBC Radio 4 did a story which is available in the form of 10 podcasts. And now the police are investigating this crime once more. So now this is an ongoing investigation.
When I started listening to these podcasts I tried to form my own theories as to why she must have been killed. One, it could be a love affair gone bad. Two, it could be a case of a mistaken identity. Three, she might have heard or seen or known something that was harmful to someone and so she was killed to silence her. And last, it was a senseless act of violence and that she simply happened to be in a wrong place at a wrong time. Let's see what, if any, the investigation turns up.
Two things from the podcasts will forever remain etched in my memory. Elsie's friend Janice was supposed to accompany her on her visit to the Youth Club and back home that day. But her mother was not well so she had to go to the market and also look after her younger brother so she neither could make it nor could inform Elsie so. But when the detectives turned up at her doorstep she did wonder if Elsie would have been alive had she gone along with her. Of course, as the detectives told her, that could also have led to them investigating her death along with that of Elsie. But she told Radio 4 that she never stopped thinking that way, especially on every 9th October. She wrote to her dead friend, once when she was 16 and then again when she was 40, telling her how her life has been, wishing that she were here and apologizing for not being there for her that day.
The other incident was Colin visiting, for the first time, the place where his sister had met her violent end. You can hear a catch in his voice when he says that it is a lonely place to die. It is heart-breaking when he says that he needed to be here and feel this to be able to get it out of his system. As his voice fades away you can distinctly hear birds chirping along happily in that lonely place where a young life was cut short a half a century ago.
Maybe the police will find the person who did it, maybe they won't. But nobody can take away the satisfaction from her siblings that they did whatever they could to get her justice.
When I started listening to these podcasts I tried to form my own theories as to why she must have been killed. One, it could be a love affair gone bad. Two, it could be a case of a mistaken identity. Three, she might have heard or seen or known something that was harmful to someone and so she was killed to silence her. And last, it was a senseless act of violence and that she simply happened to be in a wrong place at a wrong time. Let's see what, if any, the investigation turns up.
Two things from the podcasts will forever remain etched in my memory. Elsie's friend Janice was supposed to accompany her on her visit to the Youth Club and back home that day. But her mother was not well so she had to go to the market and also look after her younger brother so she neither could make it nor could inform Elsie so. But when the detectives turned up at her doorstep she did wonder if Elsie would have been alive had she gone along with her. Of course, as the detectives told her, that could also have led to them investigating her death along with that of Elsie. But she told Radio 4 that she never stopped thinking that way, especially on every 9th October. She wrote to her dead friend, once when she was 16 and then again when she was 40, telling her how her life has been, wishing that she were here and apologizing for not being there for her that day.
The other incident was Colin visiting, for the first time, the place where his sister had met her violent end. You can hear a catch in his voice when he says that it is a lonely place to die. It is heart-breaking when he says that he needed to be here and feel this to be able to get it out of his system. As his voice fades away you can distinctly hear birds chirping along happily in that lonely place where a young life was cut short a half a century ago.
Maybe the police will find the person who did it, maybe they won't. But nobody can take away the satisfaction from her siblings that they did whatever they could to get her justice.
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