Thanks to a clue overlooked by the police, the gruesome murder of a teenage girl over 50 years ago has finally been solved.
Jacqueline Johns' naked body was discovered near Battersea power station in southwest London in 1973 – but her killer was never caught.
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The 16-year-old's shoes were left at the crime scene and criminologist David Wilson believes modern forensics “could offer possibilities that were not available at the time.”
He told The Sun: “It would be interesting to know whether the family actually realized they were her shoes or not.”
He said the fact that the footwear was left behind but the rest of Jacqueline's clothing was taken “could be significant”.
“It could be instrumental, meaning they didn't have time to take her shoes off, or it could be psychological because the shoes were something that turned her on.”
“They enjoyed looking at the body after the girl was murdered with shoes.
He added: “It's an era without CCTV and DNA, but were her shoes preserved, could there be soil samples and so on?”
“I would have thought there were investigative options that would help this poor family get justice for Jacqueline.”
“She was found within 48 hours – this seems to me to be something much more opportunistic and spontaneous, unplanned – is there any forensic evidence on the body that was of use to the police?”
Jacqueline's sister Susan Church previously said she and her siblings had had no contact with police in more than 30 years.
Police's last public appeal for information came just months after her death – and the killer remains a mystery.
Mr Wilson said it was baffling that the Met Police had not reviewed the case more regularly.
“There didn’t seem to be that concerted effort,” he continued.
“Were there no posters of the woman who spoke to her? Was there no appeal?”
“Were her shoes preserved and may they have provided forensic capabilities that were not available at the time?”
He continued: “How was she strangled? From the back or from the front? Manually or with a ligature?”
“These are the questions we need to ask. These are important details.”
“An unsolved murder case should be reviewed regularly every two years. I would recommend her family contact the Met Police to see when they will review the case.”
The Met confirmed to fellow criminologist Robert Giles last year that the case “remains unsolved” following a Freedom of Information request.
DISAPPEAR
Insurance saleswoman Jacqueline had attended her work colleague Susan Baynes' wedding reception on the Essex Riviera on September 29, 1973 – and after thanking the bride for the “great time”, she headed home to Thornton Heath in south London.
But the teenager – later called “The Girl in the Yellow Dress” – never made it.
Her body was removed from the bright lemon-colored dress and sheepskin coat she had been wearing and thrown onto a railway siding.
The grim discovery at Spicers Wharf was made by workers on October 1, directly opposite Victoria Station, where she was last seen alive by witnesses.
Jacqueline was raped and strangled. Aside from her yellow and blue shoes, her clothing was never recovered.
She had missed the last train home from Victoria just before midnight and a woman she was chatting to on the platform was never traced.
At the time, police suspected she was walking across Chelsea Bridge and possibly trying to hitchhike home.
Her relatives fear she may have become a victim of the notorious serial killer Robert Black.
Susan, who lives in Heysham, Lancashire, previously said police told the family in the early 1990s that Black may have been involved – but had had no contact since then.
She said: “The police contacted us about Robert Black after finding some friendship bracelets.”
“But I don’t think my mother knew whether it was hers or not.”
Susan added that Black's was the only name the police ever gave them.
Black had a bracelet in his apartment that may have been a souvenir, a police source previously told the Daily Mail.
Jacqueline's other sister, Annette Belcher, said investigators had previously shown her a bracelet with colored beads, but she could not be sure if it was her late sister's bracelet.
Mr Giles – the co-author of “The Face of Evil: The True Story of Serial Killer Robert Black” – said Black had spoken to another sex offender in prison in the late 1960s about his desire to rape women.
Who was Robert Black?
Robert Black, from Falkirk, Scotland, was sentenced to 12 life sentences in 1994 for murdering four girls aged between five and 11 in the 1980s.
He died in Maghaberry Prison in County Antrim in January 2016, aged 68.
He worked as a delivery driver in the 1970s and 1980s, during which time he kidnapped and killed his victims.
Finally, in 1990, he was caught by police with a barely alive six-year-old girl in the back of his van in Stow, Scotland.
Remarkably, she was found by her police officer father.
Black was convicted of the murders of eleven-year-old Susan Maxwell from the Scottish Borders, five-year-old Caroline Hogg from Edinburgh and ten-year-old Sarah Harper from Morley, near Leeds, as well as a failed kidnapping attempt in Nottingham in 1988.
In 2011 he was found guilty of the murder of nine-year-old Jennifer Cardy from Ballinderry, County Antrim in 1981.
He died in prison in Northern Ireland in 2016 at the age of 68.
However, Mr Wilson said he was not so sure.
He explained: “In my opinion it was definitely not Robert Black. It just goes to show that there are probably a lot of people in our culture who have tried to kidnap young girls, but not all of them from Robert Balck.”
“16 was too old for him. He tended to go for prepubescent girls. He would choose eight, nine, ten and even younger.”
“Occasionally there was an older man who was 13 or 14 years old, but that was unusual for his punitive behavior.”
Mr Wilson continued: “He was living in London at the time but was a delivery driver and had a tendency to kidnap and kill girls outside of London.”
“I think Robert Black is a bogeyman in our culture and people want to say it could have been him.”
“All in all, it doesn’t seem to me like Robert Black would continue like this.”
TWO MURDERERS?
In 1974, based on the location of Jacqueline's body, police believed that she may have been kidnapped by two men.
On the possibility that two people were involved, Mr Wilson said: “That's not unusual.”
He continued: “The train rapists who later murdered worked as a pair, there is often something called Folieadeux, meaning 'a madness shared by two'.”
“There have been killer couples, that’s nothing unusual.
“It could well have been two people, but in the 1970s we're really talking about the general vulnerability of young women of that age.
“By the time they were 16, many young women were already going to bars, our culture was different and there are actually a number of unsolved cases from the 1970s.”
Read more on the Irish Sun
Regarding the solution to the cold case, he added: “There is hope here that this did not happen a century ago and the family is trying to draw attention to the case.”
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