UK UK - Janice Weston, 36, Murdered, A1 Layby, Brampton, Cambs. / London, 10 September 1983

[rvlvr]

Without identifying a crime scene it will remain non-existent. There was no evidence of a crime in the lay-by. Witness accounts of 'a car similar to Janice's' doesn't mean it was her car. How many of the witnesses came forward after seeing pictures of the actual car in the papers? The only physical evidence is her car parked in London with her blood on the inside of the windscreen and her body found dumped by a lay-by. Despite anniversary appeals, there doesn't appear to be any new forensic evidence in this case that we know of.

I think the purchase of the new tyre is crucial, as is the grease under her fingernails, the missing tyre, and the tyre iron murder weapon. They all suggest an auto garage to me as the most likely murder scene. Someone with control of such a facility, closed Saturday afternoon and Sunday, would have ample time to move the body, then move the car, and clean up the scene before opening on Monday.

Some very fair points here, definitely. Did police discourage people from coming forward with potential sightings if these sightings didn’t seem to fit? Someone who noticed something funny happening somewhere in London might not have thought it relevant to the discovery of a woman’s body in Northamptonshire, for instance. FWIW I do think police joined the dots correctly but perhaps reconstructing Janice’s movements in a very concrete way on Crimewatch was a mistake.

The issue for me if she wasn’t killed in a fit of rage in the lay-by is, why not kill her at the London flat? How does Janice get from there to a garage? Does someone call at the flat and abduct her? Maybe someone has a key? Or is she phoned by someone she trusts and asked to go to this secondary location? Surely there was a less convoluted way to have Janice bumped off - eg kill her at the flat then stage the scene to look like a burglary gone wrong?

 

[davidt]

Some very fair points here, definitely. Did police discourage people from coming forward with potential sightings if these sightings didn’t seem to fit? Someone who noticed something funny happening somewhere in London might not have thought it relevant to the discovery of a woman’s body in Northamptonshire, for instance. FWIW I do think police joined the dots correctly but perhaps reconstructing Janice’s movements in a very concrete way on Crimewatch was a mistake.

The issue for me if she wasn’t killed in a fit of rage in the lay-by is, why not kill her at the London flat? How does Janice get from there to a garage? Does someone call at the flat and abduct her? Maybe someone has a key? Or is she phoned by someone she trusts and asked to go to this secondary location? Surely there was a less convoluted way to have Janice bumped off - eg kill her at the flat then stage the scene to look like a burglary gone wrong?

I've been reading around to see if there's anything on record saying if either the police had anything specific to indicate where Janice was killed or if they considered any other possible scenarios. I can't really find anything at all tbh. There just seems to be an assumption that was the case in all the reports. One thing that foes occur to me is that I can't imagine anyone wanting to hang around in a layby any longer than necessary. Another car may pull in at any moment. Reports say Janice was struck 11 times. So it was a sustained and brutal attack.