Fading Trails: The Unsolved Murders of Alice & Edna
The investigation may have been scaled down, but the desire and determination to find who killed Alice & Edna remains as strong as ever within the force. The people of Birmingham need to know.
Transcript
00:00 The investigation may have been scaled down, but the desire and determination to find who
00:09 killed Alice and Edna remains as strong as ever within the force, and the people of Birmingham
00:17 need to know.
00:20 On the eve of Christmas, December 23rd 1987, police officers entered a corner shop in Spark
00:30 Hill and made a grisly discovery.
00:33 There, the elderly shop owners, Alice, aged 87, and Edna, aged 77, lay dead.
00:42 They'd been murdered, brutally murdered.
00:45 Alice had been strangled, what's thought with a towel or a scarf.
00:54 Edna had been smothered and lay on the bed.
00:57 What they discovered began a huge manhunt that to this day has never come to a conclusion.
01:05 It remains probably Birmingham's biggest murder mystery.
01:10 There are a number of senior investigating officers that dealt with similar crimes, but
01:19 I don't think any of them were faced with such challenges as what this particular case
01:25 presented.
01:28 What was thought to be a mere burglary that went wrong soon seemed to appear that it was
01:34 something else.
01:37 What do we know of the women?
01:39 Alice and Edna Rowley were well loved.
01:43 They were charitable, they were devoted to each other, yet they were killed in the most
01:47 brutal fashion.
01:49 They were also trusting and that may have been their downfall.
01:54 Did the ladies, or his victims, allow him inside because they knew him and trusted him?
02:01 Because these two ladies, again from what I remember, were very security conscious.
02:07 They dealt with suspicious people in the past, kicked them out of the shop and what have you.
02:14 So there were two, you know, infirm ladies who were incapable of looking after themselves.
02:22 Taken from that shop, a bottle of tea and maria, two boxes of chocolates and a radio
02:29 cassette player.
02:30 Now that does seem very odd.
02:33 What I can recall is that it was initially thought that the motive was theft because
02:38 there were one or two small items stolen or found to be missing from the shop where they
02:45 were murdered.
02:47 And that was, to myself, there was a danger of that being a red herring.
02:55 The reason I say that is the murders themselves were fairly frenzied.
02:59 I believe, I recall the cause was asphyxiation where they were both strangled.
03:05 I think one of them had been badly beaten about the face and head.
03:10 Now if that's the case, it seemed unlikely that an individual would go to all of that
03:19 horrific violence to steal one or two minor objects from a shop.
03:25 The till of that shop would have been overflowing with cash, it was not touched.
03:30 That was a puzzle for detectives on the case.
03:36 The crime scene had been scrubbed of forensics.
03:39 There's no blood stains, there's no footprints, the murder weapon was not there.
03:47 There was one scrap of forensics.
03:50 Detectives found an empty crisp packet on the stairs leading to the shop to the living
03:56 quarters above.
03:59 That crisp packet was not from a brand sold at the store and it is believed and still
04:03 believed that was dropped by the person responsible for their deaths.
04:09 Domestics seemed to come flying up at me as an individual.
04:14 In other words, the killer was known to the victim.
04:20 The reasons for that was because they couldn't find any ingress or egress.
04:26 There was no forced entry.
04:28 From what I could remember, the back door remained locked with, I believe, the key still
04:34 inside the door.
04:37 And the front door was secure.
04:39 When officers first went there, having received a call from local neighbors that they hadn't
04:45 seen the old ladies for a day or two, they had to force entry to get in.
04:53 So that was unusual.
04:55 How did he get in?
04:57 I believe they knew their killer.
05:00 They opened a door to a man while their meal was ready on the table.
05:05 There were no signs of a struggle.
05:08 The first thought was this was a break-in.
05:14 A youth, perhaps high on drugs, who had panicked and turned the cry into something more significant.
05:23 But as I've said, the scene didn't give weight to that theory.
05:30 Someone went to great pains to cover their tracks.
05:35 Police threw everything at this investigation.
05:39 They threw everything.
05:40 It was one of the biggest manhunts that the city has ever seen.
05:46 One hundred police officers were drafted in to find the killer.
05:51 One thousand six hundred statements were made.
05:55 With a major... if I'd have took the rowies over, let's put it this way, I wouldn't have
06:01 had it so wide.
06:02 I'd have kept it tight.
06:05 The reason being is because the smaller an investigation is, whether it's a murder, a
06:10 robbery, a rape or whatever, the smaller it is, the easier it is to manage.
06:15 And you find that your management team can be more effective.
06:19 Five thousand lines of inquiry were followed.
06:23 Still no clear evidence, no clear lead came up.
06:28 They thought they had a breakthrough.
06:31 Door to door inquiries revealed that a man described as a vagrant had been seen knocking
06:40 on the door of the corner shop at around 7.30 on December the 22nd when they believed the
06:48 murder took place.
06:50 The man was described as shabbily dressed in a brown or grey coat with greasy black
06:59 grey streaked hair.
07:01 This was significant.
07:04 Investigators trawled hostels, they went to shelters, they combed areas where they
07:13 knew that down and outs for want of a better word congregated in Birgdom.
07:18 Still they didn't find the man.
07:22 Now my opinion, and it's only my opinion, is that that sighting, that individual, seen
07:31 banging frantically on the door of the shop was not as significant as police thought.
07:38 Let's be honest, it's not an uncommon sight in Birmingham city centre on any given day.
07:45 Yeah?
07:46 Yet they provided an identikit of the man to newspapers, his image was displayed on
07:53 posters, still they reached a dead end.
07:56 Now if we brought the Rowley scene up to today, then what we would see is forensic scientists
08:05 or scenes of crime officers actually searching for DNA from all kinds of human organics etc
08:13 etc.
08:15 Camera footage as it is, with all investigations, camera footage is examined minutely.
08:25 And I would, I strongly suspect that if it was investigated today, we would see a totally
08:33 different outcome.
08:36 So what do we have?
08:37 Who could have done this?
08:40 We know that Edna and Alice were brave, there were no signs of a struggle.
08:49 Meticulous attempts were made to clear the crime scene of any evidence.
08:56 The weapon has never been found.
09:01 Senior detectives called on who was responsible to come forward.
09:08 They played on his conscience, yet nothing happened.
09:13 In a comment at the time, Detective Superintendent Mick Foster said "This was a heinous and cowardly
09:20 crime, it certainly was".
09:23 He added "Alice and Edna were kindly old ladies who were loved in the community.
09:28 We owe it to the people of Birmingham to catch their killer".
09:33 That killer has never come forward and he may still walk these streets.
09:39 You couldn't fault the lack of enthusiasm and determination by those involved, certainly
09:45 from the senior investigative officer, who stayed with it a long time and before all
09:50 the avenues of inquiry were exhausted.
09:54 Now when something like this happens and remains undetected, there's nothing more frustrating
09:59 or disappointing to a detective than having that result.
10:03 Now albeit, it remains on the file, it's never actually closed, and that's true, it's not,
10:08 but it's reviewed from time to time and it's looked at historically in the future.
10:14 But that doesn't take away the initial disappointment.
10:19 From time to time, police continue to re-appeal over this terrible, terrible case.
10:27 They hope that someone will come forward, someone will finally own up, or someone will
10:33 say that they know who was responsible.
10:37 The case continues to baffle detectives.
10:43 Re-appeals are still made.
10:45 Only two months ago, Detective Inspector Jim Church from West Midland Police Homicide Review
10:51 Team stressed that the search for the killer is ongoing.
11:01 He said, "It is now 36 years since the brutal murder of Alice and Edna Rowley, with their
11:07 bodies being discovered on a day so near to Christmas in 1997.
11:12 There is a possibility that the person who committed the murders may still be alive.
11:18 They may feel that it is time to come forward and talk about what they did and why.
11:24 There was a very determined effort to catch those responsible.
11:28 That determination hasn't diminished.
11:31 Over the years, the cases have been reviewed many times.
11:35 Any new evidence from the public will be thoroughly investigated."
11:40 Someone knows who did this.
11:43 Someone shielded the killer.
11:45 It is time for them to step forward.
11:47 "
11:53 "