UK UK- Eve Stratford, 21, Bunny @ Playboy Club, posed for mag. cover, later her mutilated & grotesquely staged body found @ home, London 18/03/75 *DNA*

[dotr]

Man recalls unsolved killing

Police statements taken from a man stopped by a hitch-hiker 32 years ago, yards from where Hounslow teenager Lynne Weedon was murdered are being…

www.richmondandtwickenhamtimes.co.uk

2007 By Colleen McDonnell rbbm
''Bernard Andrews, a retired BBC producer, now aged 74, was driving home to Wraysbury from London along the Great West Road at about 1am on the night Miss Weedon was murdered in September 1975.
A hitch-hiker flagged him down at the Sutton Lane junction with the Great West Road, Hounslow''.

Recalling what happened on the night of September 3 1975, Mr Andrews said: "A man waved me down and I rolled the window down to ask him where he was going. He said he was going to the west country, but he was very agitated. I had an instinctive sense I was to get away from him.
"I thought I have got to get out of here, so I drove off and left him there.''

"The next day I saw on the TV that a young girl was raped and murdered and I said I've got to tell the police what I saw the night before."

''Lynne Weedon, 16, was said to have been attacked between 11pm and 11.45pm on a footpath just 400 yards away from the spot where the hitch-hiker flagged Mr Andrews down.

He described the hitch-hiker as aged about 26 with longish hair, wearing a brown jacket and carrying a black executive briefcase.''

 

[tes1984]

There was a double murder, similar to Eve/Lynne in Essex in 1977.

Victim one in April 1977, was 16 year old schoolgirl Coral Vidler, who was walking home from a disco when she was bludgeoned to death with an axe and dragged into a garden, yards from her home in Hornchurch.

Victim two in July 1977, was 36 year old mother Joan Smith, who had also been to a disco in Basildon and was offered a lift home. Instead she was taken to a field in Stanford-Le-Hope, where her throat was cut and she was raped as she lay dying.

The killer turned out to be 19 year old store detective Gary Kemp, from Hornchurch. He was a known car thief and was caught when Joan's handbag was found in a stolen car. He had been questioned for Coral's murder, and his girlfriend was a friend of Coral's.

There are a lot of similarities with Eve/Lynne in terms of different victimology, MO and geographical locations.

Kemp was in custody when Elizabeth Parravicini and Lynda Farrow were murdered, but I'm not sure where he was in 1975 when Eve and Lynne were murdered. He had an accomplice for his car thefts.

 

[sportstergirl]

That's extremely disturbing a young man of 19 committed such savage crimes. He would be 17ish when Eve and Lynne were murdered.
Wouldn't do any harm to check the whereabouts of this wrongun against any other unsolved crimes.

 

[tes1984]

That's extremely disturbing a young man of 19 committed such savage crimes. He would be 17ish when Eve and Lynne were murdered.
Wouldn't do any harm to check the whereabouts of this wrongun against any other unsolved crimes.

Agreed, but I can't find any London links so far.

Looks to me like Coral Vidler was probably Kemp's first murder. Low mobility crime, close to home, and a friend of his girlfriend. Second murder and he becomes more mobile, dumps the body miles away etc which is 'classic' progression. JMO though.

The Eve/Lynne killer seems to do things the wrong way round... Eve is the more 'complex' murder IMO as a home invasion, and then he 'regresses' with Lynne?

 

[tes1984]

Who knows, but I don't think Lynne was the sort of 16 year old who went to a lot of pubs. She was a keen student and didn't usually go out in the evenings.

I think I might have been wrong about this. I think she did go out to music venues etc.

 

[tes1984]

i am baffled sutton thinks there is a link with stratford/weedon cases.

I think you mean Stratford/Farrow, and let's wait and see. Colin Sutton usually knows what he's on about!

 

[sportstergirl]

Gary Kemp specialised in stealing Ford Corsairs, a very distinctive looking English Ford with a Thunderbird style front end. Only made between 1964 and 70 it wasnt a big seller.

 

[TheRockingRev]

I think I might have been wrong about this. I think she did go out to music venues etc.

Had the chance to re-watch the ITV doc on the cases of Eve and Lynne over the Christmas break. In it the friend of Lynne's mentions that they regularly went out to pubs in the evening. They would sit with other friends, males, and have a drink that would last them all night.
Could it be that the killer was someone who had seen Lynne in the pub and either knew her route home (presumably on her own such as the night of her attack) and then struck, or did it on the off-chance that night? If that's the case then it could be a local.