It began with a phone call to Ripon police station on Friday, 28 August 1981.
A man said he had found a body among the undergrowth on the road to Scawton.
North Yorkshire Police investigated – and discovered the badly decomposed remains of a woman in dense vegetation close to a minor road at Sutton Bank.
Police believed she’d been dumped at that location. The date on a yogurt pot lid found under the body of 6 September 1979 suggested she had been left there in that year.
Adam Harland, head of North Yorkshire Police’s Cold Case Review Team, is leading a review.
He told BBC Crimewatch Live yesterday (Wednesday):
The woods have grown up the vegetation has changed and it’s a pretty miserable place to have your body just dumped by the side of a road somewhere.
The circumstances of his lady’s death point towards it being an unnatural death. We don’t think she died in this location. But she’s been brought to this location after her death.
After more than 40 years, they still don’t know the woman’s identity or how she died. But they know she
- was about 5ft 2in tall
- was 35-45 years old
- had false teeth
- was a heavy smoker
- had given birth two or three times
- and had a malformed vertebrae which may mean she tilted her head or had stooped shoulders.
Body exhumed
Working with scientists Granada TV’s make-up department, the police reconstructed the woman’s head and face in an attempt to find out who she was. But this didn’t bring in any new leads.
Then in January 2012, officers exhumed the body from the grave in Malton where she had been buried, and managed to extract DNA.
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“All we really want at the moment is to know who this lady is. And that would help us move towards answering the other questions,” Mr Harland told Crimewatch Live.
“We know she’s somebody’s daughter, she’s probably somebody’s sister, and niece, an aunt. If her children were still alive today, she’s probably a grandmother and very possibly even a great grandmother.
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“And we’re looking for people to look at their family histories to see if there’s somebody missing either from their immediate family or perhaps from their wider family, who would fit with any of these details, so that we can go to that place in Malton cemetery and identify who that lady is.”
If you can help, you can call Crimewatch on 08000 468 999, text CRIME to 63399 or email [email protected].
You can watch the BBC Crimewatch Live report on iPlayer here.