A mother told of her shock after the dismembered body of a man murdered in the Sixties was discovered by workmen building a kitchen extension at her £1million house.
Scotland Yard today released a 3D image of the smartly-dressed victim, who had been bludgeoned to death and dumped in a shallow grave just 1ft deep in Wimbledon. Builders found his remains in the rear garden of a four-bed Victorian terrace in Cowdrey Road.
The homeowner told the Standard workers alerted her to the discovery during renovations in September 2017, some 14 months after she moved in.
At first, they thought it was a model skeleton used by medical students. She said: “I said to them, ‘You must be kidding? I was in total shock.
“They had dug down a foot into clay. There was the skeleton and some clothes — a shirt, tie and trousers. We called the police and the forensics came, it was like we were in the middle of a crime drama. I didn’t tell my children as I did not want to scare them.”
The remains were forensically excavated and a post-mortem concluded the victim was dismembered after receiving a traumatic head wound.
Detective chief inspector Kate Kieran, leading the investigation, said: “There was a bash to the skull which our pathologist put down as the cause of death. That turns it into a murder. For a host of reasons, they’ve buried him in the back garden rather than calling anyone. Someone must know who the victim is. We’d like to put a name to him.”
Carbon dating indicates the man — wearing a shirt, red silk tie, trousers, shoes and socks — had been buried in the early 1960s. A clothing expert determined the remarkably preserved items were indicative of the era. A biological profile from anthropologists say he was likely of Asian ancestry, aged 35 to 55, about 5ft 7in and of muscular build.
Experts used skull measurements to reconstruct a craniofacial image of his face which Ms Kieran believes is “100 per cent accurate”, adding: “It was amazing work by the team.”
Missing persons, NHS and police forensic databases contain no records of him. The man had a sugar-free diet for most of his life because his teeth showed no evidence of dentistry.
Detectives have tracked down and eliminated all living past occupants of the property. Ms Kieran added: “Crucially, the DNA of the family that lived there in the 1960s does not match that of the person who is in their back garden. This is a 60-year-old mystery and information could help us solve it.”
