Crime files: minesweepers called in after Herefordshire shopkeeper murdered

The following story dates from 1952.

A MURDERER remained at large in Herefordshire after a village shopkeeper was brutally stabbed to death in her bungalow.

Maria Hill was found lying fully-dressed in the living-room behind her shop, the Bungalow Stores, in Clehonger on March 14, 1952.

The 74-year-old had been stabbed seven times in the head and had also been burnt in what was described as a 'vicious' attack in which she was also robbed of £60.

An examination revealed Mrs Hill had died some time after the killer left her bungalow, succumbing to her wounds and shock the day before she was found.

Her last known visitor was a 16-year-old girl, who had cycled to the shop at 7.30pm to buy sweets. Mrs Hill had unlocked her shop to serve the girl, who left at around 7.45pm, and reported that she believed Mrs Hill had been alone and that she had not seen anyone else on her journey home.

She was found at 2.10pm the next day by a neighbour, who had entered the bungalow after she was unable to raise a response on two earlier visits that day.

Police were called to the scene and an investigation immediately launched, with several hundred people in the area and at the nearby Madley RAF camp interviewed.

Her inquest heard Mrs Hill had moved to Clehonger from Kington some 20 years before her death, taking on the asbestos bungalow in which she was murdered and converting part of it into a shop from which she sold cigarettes, sweets, and other items.

She had been widowed some 30 years previously, having moved with her husband from Blaenavon to Herefordshire, and had one son, who lived in Malvern.

But the facts of her death were to mystify police, with a leading Scotland Yard detective, Superintendent Wilfred Tarr drafted in to lead the search for her murderer.

Mine-detecting equipment was brought in to search the area for the murder weapon, every man and woman within a five-mile radius interviewed, and the village pond drained in the search for clues.

Mine-searching equipment was brought in by police in a bid to find the murder weapon

Air Ministry records were scoured in a bid to trace every airman who had been stationed at Madley RAF camp during the war, many of whom would have known and used the shop, while blood-stained clothing handed in to a Birmingham dry-cleaner was examined for clues.

Hereford's Eign Street was also searched, after an anonymous caller claimed bloodstained clothing connected to her murder had been left there, and a woman's dream was also probed, after she claimed she had seen the murder in her sleep.

But despite all their inquiries, and despite Detective Inspector Reg Weaver, head of Hereford CID, saying in 1955 that police knew the identity of the murderer, no-one was ever charged with her brutal killing.

"Though we know who is responsible, we cannot get the evidence to arrest him," DI Weaver was reported to have revealed to reporters in August that year.