The headless body murder haunting police 50 years on

In 1974, the body of an unidentified woman was found on farmland in Norfolk. Despite efforts to solve the case, the killer was never found. Barney Davis hears the theories

- Barney Davis

It is a gruesome mystery that has remained unsolved for half a century. In 1974, a woman’s body was found decapitated on Norfolk farmland, wrapped in plastic and wearing only a Marks & Spencer nighty.

The victim has never been identified and the killer has never been found. On the 50th anniversary of the grim discovery, a cold case detective has shared his theories about what may have happened. Found in the undergrowth at a lover’s lane opposite RAF Marham’s shooting range, the woman’s hands and legs were bound to her body. She was wrapped in a sheet embossed with “National Cash Registers”, a brand of till.

Her badly decomposed body had lain in the middle of an area of dense bracken and willow herb, at Cockley Cley, near Swaffham, for about three weeks. It was impossible to say whether the body and abdomen had sustained slashing injuries or determine her cause of death.

An expert told police the composition of the rare four-strand rope she was bound with “suggests it was made for use with agricultural machinery”. Police traced the place of manufacture of the rope to Dundee in Scotland but the firms that made that type of rope had ceased trading.

Chris Clark, a retired Norfolk police officer and now a true crime author, accused Peter Sutcliffe of the murder, claiming the Yorkshire Ripper could have beheaded the woman as he was driving through East Anglia on his way to his honeymoon in Paris in August 1974.