50 years on, headless 'duchess' found tied up in a ditch wearing only a nightdress continues to baffle cops

No one knew who she was. She was found in a ditch with her head removed and with her hands and feet tied to her body.

She wore only a short, pink nightdress. A massive police investigation spread to other countries and thousands of people were interviewed.

The FBI and Interpol were asked to assist.

But today, almost 50 years later, the mystery of how and why she died is no nearer to being solved. And still no one knows who she is.

More importantly, no one has the slightest idea who her killer was or whether they disposed of other bodies.

The badly decomposed torso of the petite Jane Doe, wrapped in a plastic dust sheet, was discovered early on the morning of August 27, 1974, by a young farm worker out walking in the village of Cockley Cley, near Swaffham, Norfolk.

The victim was thought to be aged around 23 to 30 and just over 5ft tall.

It was later learned her nightdress had been produced by Marks & Spencer five years earlier.

There was nothing else to indicate who she was. The only thing anyone knew for certain was that she was not an immediate local, perhaps not even English.

As the hunt to find her murderer was stepped up, evidence began to emerge, perhaps linking her, or her killer, to Dundee.

Pathologists believed she was probably killed two or three weeks before the gruesome discovery of her body.

Police officers flooded the area and the initial inquiry lasted a year before being scaled back.

In that time, some 15,000 people were interviewed and 7,000 statements taken.

Almost as many householders completed questionnaires. But it all led nowhere.

Detectives probed the cases of more than 500 women across the country who had been reported missing in a search for possible matches.

That also drew a blank, though it helped to find many of them alive and well, and confirmed that at least 50 others were dead.

Apart from the pink nightdress, the only other clue police initially had to work on was the dustsheet used to wrap the body.

The sheet was embossed with the logo of NCR, a major company based in Dundee, which at its height employed 6,000 people and manufactured thousands of payroll machines for export around the world.

Further investigations revealed the exact type of machine it had been made for – and the fact that only six of those particular dustsheets had ever been made, between 1962 and 1968.

Despite this seemingly helpful information, it produced no useful leads.

Another revelation, however, dramatically supported the links of the case to Dundee.

Experts examining the rope used to bind the body established that it was of an unusual four-strand design, made of jute and produced for agricultural use.

More significantly, they discovered it had also been made by a company in Dundee.

Renewed hopes of a breakthrough were dashed when inquiries revealed the firm was no longer in existence.

Although the case remained open, the investigation gradually petered out and, in the absence of someone with information coming forward, it seemed probable that no other useful clues would be found.

That changed in 2008 – 34 years after the discovery of the corpse – when Norfolk Police decided to exhume the body for further examination in the hope of securing a DNA profile, a science unheard of in 1974. It produced unexpected results.

As anticipated, a full DNA identity was obtained. But the new post-mortem investigation also ascertained that the nameless young woman had given birth to at least one child.

It also revealed that she was right-handed.

More unusually, the isotopic analysis of her toenails, hair and thigh bone showed that the dead woman had spent time in central Europe, taking in Denmark, Germany, Austria and Northern Italy.

In addition, it was learned she had eaten a diet heavy in seafood.

Perhaps of even greater significance, it was found that she had also consumed water containing isotopes found in Scotland.

Police heading the long-running murder hunt had always believed that if they could identity the victim, they would catch her killer.

The securing of a DNA profile, a major advance in the investigation, seemed like the lead they had been waiting for and databases were immediately scoured.

That, too, came to nothing. The new information, however, did lead to renewed speculation about who the woman might be.

The most plausible theory came from a former police officer.

He had watched a review of the case on a Crimewatch reconstruction not long after the findings of the exhumation had been made public.

He suggested the victim may have been a woman known as ‘The Duchess’, a sex worker who lived for a few months at Great Yarmouth docks and who had disappeared in 1974, leaving her possessions behind.

Although no one knew her real name, she had apparently arrived in England from Esbjerg in Denmark and her clients were often lorry drivers using the Yarmouth ferries.

It was also believed she sometimes accompanied drivers operating between Yarmouth and various destinations around the UK.

Adding weight to the theory was the fact that The Duchess was thought to be in her late 20s or early 30s and that the remote spot where the torso was found was 50 miles from Yarmouth.

It was understood the Danish woman might have spent time in custody, but the destruction of contemporary records meant there was no way of proving this or finding her proper name.

Although these pointers seemed promising, those leading the murder hunt were quick to admit that beyond the ‘pieces appearing to fit’ there was nothing at all to confirm that the unidentified victim was indeed The Duchess.

She may have had no connection at all to the case.

Extensive appeals were made for anyone knowing the Danish woman to come forward, with the promise of confidentiality for anyone who may have used her services.

But despite more heightened hopes that the calls for public assistance would provide the elusive breakthrough, nothing came of all the widely promoted appeals.

The main purpose of them had been to, at long last, put a face to the headless corpse.

But also of importance was that someone might provide concrete evidence that it was not her, at least allowing her to be eliminated from the inquiry.

Police did not get that confirmation either, perhaps not surprisingly considering the Duchess’s nomadic lifestyle.

Further major appeals have been launched over the years. In 2011 a number of other missing women were identified, with many of them ultimately being located, and others being eliminated thanks to non-matches with the now available DNA profile.

Five years later, the baffling case featured prominently on TV yet again. That only produced more dead-ends.

Inevitably, the possibility that a known killer could have been responsible was considered.

Prominent among the candidates was Scots serial killer Peter Tobin, but that connection also failed examination.

Things took a fresh twist in 2015 when Norfolk and Suffolk’s major investigation team appealed directly to Dundonians for help.

They cited the NCR dustsheet and the unique Dundee-made rope, as well as the fact that the victim had consumed water which could be found in the city, as demonstrating strong links with Tayside.

Detective Chief Inspector Andy Guy, who headed the inquiry, even recruited the help of students at Dundee’s Abertay University, inviting them to try to identify local women who had gone missing around the crucial period.

The young sleuths delved into missing person newspaper reports from files at Dundee Central Library and produced one or two initially hopeful leads.

Like all the others, however, they hit the now familiar brick wall. Although the clear, but inconclusive, links with Dundee point to some kind of connection with the city, no one has ever been able to establish just how strong they might be.

Did the mystery woman belong to the Tayside city, or did the killer? Perhaps both... or maybe it was neither?

Was it more probable that the man who cut the head off a young woman then dumped her in a ditch had been a lorry driver who had simply visited Dundee to uplift an NCR machine for delivery elsewhere in the UK?

That could explain the use of the rare NCR dustsheet to wrap the body and the presence of the distinctive rope.

What of the water? The now widespread use of bottled water was not a practice then, so it is probably unlikely that the killer transported some from Scotland before giving it to the young woman he would go on to brutally murder.

In that case, wasn’t it more probable that she came from Scotland? Or, perhaps more likely, that she had simply visited, say as a travelling companion of the killer?

That would fit with the proposition that she was indeed The Duchess, who was said to sometimes accompany drivers on their work journeys.

There are other factors that might provide clues in the perplexing case.

The decapitation of the young woman was unusual in that it was the only part of the body to be dismembered, suggesting that it was not done to make disposal of the remains easier, but almost certainly to prevent identification.

In that case, it indicated that the killer very probably had known and established links to his victim.

Then there was the frilly pink nightdress. Its wearer would seem to have been murdered indoors and probably by someone with whom she was comfortably familiar, perhaps even enjoying some kind of established relationship.

So, had the seemingly unfathomable case simply started out as a domestic dispute which had escalated out of control?

All that wouldn’t necessarily exclude The Duchess, but it would indicate the killer wasn’t a casual client unknown to her.

If he was, there would hardly have been any need to go to extreme lengths to conceal her identity by removing her head, which was never found.

Other, more vital, questions are prompted by the known facts, however. The examination of the exhumed remains showed that the young woman had given birth to at least one child.

That would mean any children would still have been relatively, perhaps even very, young at the time of their mother’s untimely end.

What happened to them? Had they shared a home with her? If they did, and given the distinct possibility that the killing took place in the woman’s abode, they may even have witnessed what occurred.

The likelihood was also that they would know, or at least be able to identify, the killer.

That leads to the unavoidable conclusion they too might have been murdered. Are there other remains, long since covered over with vegetation, awaiting discovery in another obscure ditch?

The death of any child could explain why, since the securing of her DNA 16 years ago, there has been no progress in finding a familial match with her registered profile.

That could yet come, perhaps by chance, if a son or daughter – now aged 50-plus – is alive and has their DNA put on a database for any number of reasons.

In the meantime, their mother lies, seemingly unmissed and unlamented, in an unmarked grave in Swaffham Cemetery.

There is no headstone, and never will be until someone can solve the riddle of who she is.

Her killer, an old man now if he is alive, and perhaps living in Dundee, has got away with murder for half a century.

And only he knows if she was his solitary victim.

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