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Woman raped and murdered before Indian takeaway dumped over body
Sally Shepherd was walking through Peckham when she was dragged into a builder's yard
Holly Evans
14 AUG 2022
rbbm. Lengthy article.
''One such case was that of Sally Shepherd, a young woman who was stripped, raped and brutally beaten to death with a blunt instrument in south London. She was only 24 years old when she was attacked in Peckham in December 2019, with her body found in a builder’s yard behind the police station.''
''At the time of her grizzly murder, Sally was working as a restaurant manager at the Young Vic theatre, and was living near the bus depot in Peckham. On November 30, she spent an evening visiting friends in Essex, before collecting an Indian takeaway and boarding her bus at New Cross.
During the early hours of December 1, it stopped at Clayton Road, its final destination for passengers, she disembarked and began the walk back to her home on Staffordshire Street. It is unclear what happened to Sally from then onwards, but at some point she met her attacker who brutally dragged her through a wire fence with such force that her leather boots were left behind.
She was then stripped naked, raped and beaten to death in a builder’s yard, which ironically was located behind the local police station. She suffered multiple broken ribs and a damaged spine, with detectives at the time stating that they believed she had been stamped on during the course of the attack.
Her body was discovered the following day by a worker, with her Indian takeaway strewn across her clothing and bloodstained bricks nearby. A murder investigation was launched, with the killer quickly dubbed ‘the Beast of Peckham’, but he was never captured nor brought to justice.
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A bus conductress who was interviewed told police that she recalled seeing a white Ford Cortina with a dark patch of primer on one wing parked in the High Street nearby, and saw a man running from Staffordshire Street. In September 1991, a 55-year-old man was arrested and questioned in connection with the killing, but was soon released on bail without any charges being brought.
Connection to the Ripper?
In 2013, retired police officer Chris Clark claimed that the Yorkshire Ripper could have been responsible for her murder. Peter Sutcliffe was convicted in 1981 for the murders of 13 women and the attempted murders of another seven, and died in prison in 2020.Following his death, Clark, who had formerly worked in intelligence, called for a new national probe into the unsolved murder of Sally. He said: “The National Crime Agency should be looking into these cases as a UK-wide force. As opposed to separate forces. Sally is not a stand-alone case – there’s another six cases in London which as far as I’m concerned he committed. All of the hallmarks of the Yorkshire Ripper are in Sally’s case.”
Sutcliffe was a lorry driver who often travelled the country, and it was confirmed that he had been in London on a delivery at the time of her killing. His first wife had also completed a teacher training course in nearby Deptford, therefore he had “good knowledge” of the Peckham area. Clark also noted that the Ripper’s method of killing his victims by using ligatures and weapons and then dragging their bodies was also replicated in Sally’s murder.
Despite this evidence, Sutcliffe was never formally charged or investigated for her murder. The depraved killer has also been associated to another 16 unsolved murders across the country.
A new DNA appeal
In 2016, the Met Police said that with advances in forensic science, they were once again re-examining Sally’s case. Three strands of hair which were believed to belong to her killer had been recovered from the crime scene in 1979 and had been kept as evidence.However, the three strands were rootless, which made it difficult to determine ethnicity which would have helped narrow down the field of potential suspects. Without the root, scientists told the BBC that they were “very cautious” about examining hairs as there was a risk they’d use up the sample as it underwent testing.''
