UK Uk- Bedgebury Forest, Kent, Woman, 30-35, 5'1'', brown hair & eyes, ectopic pregnancy, poss. sex worker, viciously murdered with wooden stake, Oct.'79

[branmuffin]

It doesn't seem that the dress is the style that would be worn by a sex worker.

I am in complete agreement with you. I think it is shortsighted to assume that because she hasn't been identified that she is a sex worker. There could be a few different circumstances that this woman came from. She could be from a psychiatric hospital, or a resident at a home for people with intellectual disabilities. Her pregnancies may be the result of sexual assaults that could happen in those types of situations. I know that it is sometimes difficult to get people with those types of disabilities to get dental care. Focusing on sex work is limiting the scope of who you are trying to reach.

 

[Lord Peter Flimsy]

Jean Brook was murdered at the other end of Bedgebury Forest less than 3 years later eating her lunch on a grass verge on a sunny June afternoon in 1982 whilst taking a break from her job of delivering vehicle parts.

The verge was on the junction of single track Park Lane (leading into Bedgebury) on the A229 Hawkhurst Road. According to her husband she had only found this spot to eat about a month earlier. Park Lane crosses through Bedgebury from Hawkhurst Road right through to Goudhurst Road the other side.

You would pass this verge if crossing the traffic lights at Flimwell from the Ticehurst direction to Goudhurst. Her final stop before having lunch was at a Fruit Shop in Goudhurst.

From what we know there are obvious similarities in both murders. Blunt force trauma to the head with no apparent sexual motive.

To murder someone in the middle of a summers day along a fairly busy A road takes some nerve and IMHO local knowledge.

As far as I know there has never been a cold case review of Jean Brook’s murder or any mention of DNA found in her case. Police have never linked the cases either. I find it not only sad but a little odd.

 

[Susikatze]

I doubt she was a sex worker, at least not originally planned. She looks very Eastern European (Russian, Polish, Ukrainian, Belarussian) to me and several articles mention she was an Eastern European hitchhiker.
She likely was an immigrant, possibly undocumented, fled the Iron Curtain somehow and then working odd jobs in Britain that were not prostitution but maybe maid in a hotel, cleaner, dishwasher, farmworker. She may have been forced into prostitution occasionally but i doubt she was a prostitute.

Her poor dental health reflects her inability to access NHS healthcare and many Eastern Europeans back in those days made their own clothing, especially if they were poor. Her style of clothing is very 1960s/70s instead of 1982, another indication she came from Eastern Europe that somehow used to lag behind a decade fashionwise.

I wonder how she managed to get to the UK from whereever she came from. It was absolutely not easy to flee the Iron Curtain back then but many succeeded.

 

[Melquiades]

I doubt she was a sex worker, at least not originally planned. She looks very Eastern European (Russian, Polish, Ukrainian, Belarussian) to me and several articles mention she was an Eastern European hitchhiker.
She likely was an immigrant, possibly undocumented, fled the Iron Curtain somehow and then working odd jobs in Britain that were not prostitution but maybe maid in a hotel, cleaner, dishwasher, farmworker. She may have been forced into prostitution occasionally but i doubt she was a prostitute.

Her poor dental health reflects her inability to access NHS healthcare and many Eastern Europeans back in those days made their own clothing, especially if they were poor. Her style of clothing is very 1960s/70s instead of 1982, another indication she came from Eastern Europe that somehow used to lag behind a decade fashionwise.

I wonder how she managed to get to the UK from whereever she came from. It was absolutely not easy to flee the Iron Curtain back then but many succeeded.

I agree sex worker seems unlikely but based on the clothes/dental care she could also be part of the Gypsy/Roma/Traveler community and of UK/Irish origin.

 

[Susikatze]

I agree sex worker seems unlikely but based on the clothes/dental care she could also be part of the Gypsy/Roma/Traveler community and of UK/Irish origin.

Also possible

 

[MelmothTheLost]

Would an organisation such as Locate International based in the UK use such a technique?

Yes, once the legal and regulatory barriers have been overcome.

While the DNA processing would be done by a specialist lab and the profile probably uploaded to GEDmatch and/or My Heritage by the police, the genealogy work would be done by skilled volunteers. Locate has specifically recruited a number of volunteers with extensive family history research experience with precisely this sort of work in mind. In the meantime, the catalogue of courses available to volunteers includes a number on the science behind the use of DNA for genetic genealogy and the genealogy volunteers are involved in other investigative work.