Unhelpful conspiracy theories surrounding pensioner's brutal murder at hands of teenager
When the man who murdered Hilda Murrell was finally sentenced to life imprisonment, one investigating officer announced with a degree of smugness: “I won’t even say I told you so.”
The satisfaction was understandable. Hilda’s death spawned an avalanche of stories about secret service skullduggery. Today, the case would have ignited an internet firestorm of conspiracy theories, each lavish tale of Big Brother hit squads swallowed by many as truth.
She was silenced because of her vocal opposition to nuclear power and weapons, they say. She was silenced before delivering a withering condemnation of government policies regarding radioactive waste management, they say. She was under surveillance.
The reality appears more straight forward. The 78-year-old was sexually assaulted and stabbed during a bungled burglary at her Shrewsbury home.
Andrew George, just 16 and in care at the time of the crime, then bundled Hilda into her car and dumped the poor woman in woodland.
Her body was found three days later. Hilda had died from hypothermia.
The conviction of George some two decades after the 1984 crime that gripped a nation should have buried the tales of shadowy, sinister forces.
Only two questions should remain:
Firstly, why did it take so long to collar George, a man snared by DNA advances? He was identified as a suspect early on in the investigation. He was arrested on another matter within a week of the crime, but released after telling officers he had been in a local branch of Woolworth at the time of the abduction.
Secondly, did George act alone? He has always maintained he was present, but did not kill the householder. In 1990 double murderer David McKenzie confessed to killing Hilda – a claim dismissed by the Director of Public Prosecutions on grounds of insufficient evidence. The victim’s own nephew, former naval commander Rob Green, publicly stated George’s conviction “may be unsafe”.
Now the dust has settled, those appear the only pertinent puzzles – and they are very much of this world.
Yet still – and this year will mark the crime’s 40th anniversary – the case is embedded by claims of state collusion. There will be many who will read this and balk at my belief Hilda died as a result of a violent break-in. No government plot, no “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service” hitman. Just a known tearaway, perhaps more than one tearaway.
Hilda Murrell’s brutal death is a lesson in how urban myths become a reality when uttered by powerful voices, how dark folklore curdles into fact. And the voices were very powerful.
