UK UK - Deborah Linsley stabbed to death on a train to London Victoria, 23 March 1988

[Mrs Marple]

Had a quick search, couldn't find a thread for this.

Reward to solve 1988 train murder

'Ms Linsley, who lived and worked in Edinburgh, had been to visit her parents and brother Gordon in preparation for his wedding, due to be held a few weeks later.

She got on the 14:16 train from Orpington to London Victoria at Petts Wood and entered an old-fashioned compartment.

Her body was found surrounded by blood by British Rail staff at Victoria station at about 14:50.

A French passenger revealed she heard screaming onboard the train after it left Brixton in south London. Miss Linsley's attacker was injured during the incident and left samples of his blood at the scene.'

This would have been a old slam door train, presumably one without an interconnecting corridor. Bloody awful things, were still in use in the early 2000s until they were phased out for safety reasons.

 

[Mrs Marple]

Killer who stabbed Bromley woman 11 times still at large 30 years on

'Detectives have a full DNA profile of the suspect after Debbie fought off her killer , leaving traces of their blood at the scene, but have never been able to match it to anyone on their databases.'

'The senior investigating officer at the time, Superintendent Guy Mills described the attack "savage and brutal" and suggested it was therefore unlikely to have been the killer's first.'

'Approximately 70 people got on and off the train by the time it arrived but the only possible witness was a French au pair, who reported hearing loud screams soon after the train left Brixton.'

Brixton is the last stop before Victoria. Did the killer really strike then and calmly get off at Victoria? That is the end of the line, but surely he would have been covered in blood, and it's a busy station.

 

[bykerladi]

They should submit the DNA to one of those DNA companies like Ancestry.com

 

[meanmaryjean]

They should submit the DNA to one of those DNA companies like Ancestry.com

Perfect case for genealogical DNA tracing

 

[Mrs Marple]

I agree. It should be re-opened and tested every couple of years. You never know. Such a brutal crime in an unusual location though, l wonder if the killer has subsequently died.

 

[bykerladi]

Even if the killer is dead, at least the family can get some answers.

 

[AcbMurders]

Bumping for Deborah
Murder of woman, 26, on train still unsolved despite killer's blood at scene

 

[annpats]

Oh my. What an awful random killing.

The poor lady really was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Sounds like the perpetrator was someone who was mentally ill and/or under the influence of drugs.

Brixton certainly was a rough old place back in the late 1980s.

Very unusual how the DNA from the killer's blood has never come up in any other crime. Hard to believe he hasn't re-offended since then.

MOO.

 

[AcbMurders]

Oh my. What an awful random killing.

The poor lady really was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Sounds like the perpetrator was someone who was mentally ill and/or under the influence of drugs.

Brixton certainly was a rough old place back in the late 1980s.

Very unusual how the DNA from the killer's blood has never come up in any other crime. Hard to believe he hasn't re-offended since then.

MOO.

I lived in Brixton in 1988-1990, catching trains everyday, and it wasn’t bad at all in my experience. Never felt threatened or in danger as a young woman. She was so unlucky, poor soul. I’d be surprised if that was the perp’s only crime.

 

[Fede]

Here are some details on the train:
The carriage Deborah was in was a compartment coach with no corridor.
Passengers entered each compartment from a door onto the platform, and once the train was moving there was no way to leave or enter.
This would have made it more difficult for someone to investigate or find the body.

Source: The unsolved 1988 murder on a London train and the killer still on the loose

 

[dotr]

by Holly Evans 16 APR 2022 rbbm.

Murder of woman, 26, on train still unsolved despite killer's blood at scene

Deborah Linsley was stabbed 11 times while travelling between Petts Wood and London Victoria

www.mylondon.news

''Deborah Linsley, known as Debbie to her friends and family, had relocated from Bromley to Edinburgh in the years before her murder, where she worked as a hotel manager. She had travelled back to London during the week of her murder to attend a hotel management course, and to spend time helping with the preparation of her brother's wedding, at which she was due to be a bridesmaid.

On the afternoon of Wednesday, March 23, 1988 she was taken by her brother Gordon to Petts Wood train station at 2pm, where she boarded the Orpington to London Victoria service at 2:16pm. This was the last time she would ever be seen alive.''

....

''At some point during her journey, Debbie was viciously stabbed to death. She sustained 11 stab wounds to her face, neck and abdomen, five of which were to the area around her heart. She also had defensive wounds to her hands.


The Metropolitan Police had said it was possible the attack had started as an attempted rape, however there was no concrete evidence of sexual interference. She was eventually found at 2:50pm while the train was at Victoria's platform two after a British Rail porter walked through the train.

Both the carriage floor and seat were covered in blood, with some of this later discovered to be that of her killer, who had also been injured during the struggle. When her body was found, she was still in possession of her jewellery and a £5 note from her brother, ruling out the possibility that she had been the victim of a robbery gone wrong.

The weapon used was never recovered, although it is believed to have been five to seven-and-a-half inches long with a heavy blade. The police later described it as a good quality kitchen knife, and stated their belief the murder had been premeditated as it was likely the killer had left home and travelled with the weapon.''


''Over the course of the initial investigation, 650 individuals were questioned and ruled out. Certain individuals remained of interest to the police, specifically a "scruffy man with dirty blonde hair" who was seen leaving one of the compartments on the train at Penge East, and was believed to have then re-boarded, possibly into the same seating area as Debbie.

A photofit was also released of a man the French au pair had noticed getting off the train in Victoria, who was described as being aged about 40, well built, muscular and with a moustache and wearing a light sweater and grey trousers.''

 

[CocktailQueen]

The case was featured on Crimewatch.

 

[dotr]

Clipping from The Observer - Newspapers.com

Clipping found in The Observer in London, Greater London, England on Mar 27, 1988.

theguardian.newspapers.com

2003

Gone but not forgotten

The faces of these murder victims may be fading into history, but an elite squad of detectives has been brought out of retirement to find their killers using DNA. Can science succeed where conventional methods have failed?

www.theguardian.com

''In the Linsley case, there was a small sample of blood at the scene that did not belong to the victim, but in 1988 there was no way of testing it. The first successful DNA match wouldn't take place for another year and even then it required a bucketful of blood for any hope of a result. Now they can get a DNA profile from something invisible to the eye, and last year they did so. Chamberlain says they know a lot about the killer from that drop. They just don't know the suspect's name. The DNA profile has been put on a database to be cross-checked against the 1.7 million that are already held there - from recent convictions, from serving prisoners - but there have been no matches.

In the meantime, they are following other routes. 'You need to take yourself back to the original scene,' Chamberlain says. 'We try to look at it and say what would we have done in this situation.' They have stood on the platform at Pett's Wood to get a sense of the landscape. They have taken the train, studied the timings. On the wall of the office is a diagram of the 1988 carriages. They believe around 70 people travelled on it. They know the identities of 55 of them and their names appear on the diagram, alongside information about when they got on and off, the banal detail of a March day lived by dozens of people nearly 15 years ago.

All the evidence points to the killing having taken place in the six-minute journey between Brixton and Victoria.''

rbbm

Gone but not forgotten

The faces of these murder victims may be fading into history, but an elite squad of detectives has been brought out of retirement to find their killers using DNA. Can science succeed where conventional methods have failed?

www.theguardian.com

''Arthur was an insurance broker before he retired. Marguerite, the more watchful of the two, was a DSS fraud investigator. Both know about police processes and systems, and what they didn't know they have taught themselves. They even developed a correspondence with a double murderer, who told them about a ruse used by prisoners to buck the sensitivity of DNA profiling. 'Prisoners spit into each others' mouths just before DNA swabs are taken,' Marguerite explains to me. 'It contaminates any samples.' This is the kind of expertise you develop when your daughter is murdered.''

 

[bat1963]

I don't see why genetic genealogy hasn't been done in this case as they have the killer's DNA. I think in the US this case would have been solved for several years by now.

 

[Westchester76]

Would a person on the platform be able to see that Deborah was in the carriage alone as the train pulled in?
If no, and as you couldn't access the carriage from inside the train, it was just a ridiculous case of bad luck for the poor woman. . He was obviously armed with a knife regardless, in the middle of the day. Has to be a serial offender / murderer surely.

 

[bat1963]

Would a person on the platform be able to see that Deborah was in the carriage alone as the train pulled in?
If no, and as you couldn't access the carriage from inside the train, it was just a ridiculous case of bad luck for the poor woman. . He was obviously armed with a knife regardless, in the middle of the day. Has to be a serial offender / murderer surely.

Hello, yes, you could see inside those compartments from the platform. Women were well advised to choose their compartment carefully, as everyone did!

 

[Westchester76]

Hello, yes, you could see inside those compartments from the platform. Women were well advised to choose their compartment carefully, as everyone did!

Has to be a serial offender, who is most likely in prison for another grisly murder. He would of arrived at the station, armed with a knife in the middle of the day. A level of premeditation in being armed, and was waiting for his opportunity. Hard to say how common it would of been for a lone female to be in one of the carriages, i.e did the culprit set out to look for this, or was it pure opportunism.

 

[TheRockingRev]

This is such a strange case. A lot I suppose is resting on the French Au Pair who reported the screaming. I have no doubt that there would've been screaming, but in case she mistook the stations it happened between. Also has it ever been stated the station she got on at? Whoever committed this offence was either incredibly lucky or incredibly well prepared.

 

[tes1984]

Has to be a serial offender, who is most likely in prison for another grisly murder. He would of arrived at the station, armed with a knife in the middle of the day. A level of premeditation in being armed, and was waiting for his opportunity. Hard to say how common it would of been for a lone female to be in one of the carriages, i.e did the culprit set out to look for this, or was it pure opportunism.

During the 80s there were thousands of severely ill mental outpatients travelling around London unsupervised.

Most serial killers avoid daytime attacks, busy locations etc as obviously they don't want to be witnessed and caught.

 

[TheRockingRev]

During the 80s there were thousands of severely ill mental outpatients travelling around London unsupervised.

Most serial killers avoid daytime attacks, busy locations etc as obviously they don't want to be witnessed and caught.

Sadly I think you could be right. The lack of another victim matching DNA makes me think that it could have been someone who could have committed this horrendous crime and then killed themselves. The sheer opportunistic nature of it certainly points to someone at the station with this horrible idea in mind and then seizing upon the opportunity. They could've been waiting hours for the right train to arrive.
The thing is in London, you rarely make eye contact. So seeing someone with blood on the, and it may have just been on their hands anyway, would have been easily disguised.