Anne Noblett

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On New Years Day 1958 newspapers across the UK featured stories of the ongoing search for three missing teenage girls. In Lanarkshire, Scotland, police were looking for 17 year old Isabelle Cooke who had disappeared on the 28th December 1957 on the way to catch a bus to a dance in the east of Glasgow. Across that great city another intensive search was underway to find 14 year old school girl Wilhelmina Robertson who had been missing since New Years Eve. In Hertfordshire, England, police and volunteers were desperately trying to find 17 year old Anne Noblett, who had vanished in the early evening of the 30th December after attending a dance class. Only one of these searches would result in a happy ending.

Wilhelmenia was found safe and well. The 14 year old had been staying at a relative’s house and was completely unaware of the attention that had been surrounding her. Her family's relief was palpable and their joy at having their daughter back contrasted starkly with the sense of dread experienced by the  families of Isabelle and Anne. Over the next week the press continued to run parallel stories about the two girls and documented the efforts of search teams as they dredged rivers and combed fields, woods and outhouses.

On the 13th January a man was arrested in Scotland after he was found to be using bank notes that had been stolen from a house in Uddingston, a town to the south east of Glasgow city centre. The three members of the family who lived at the house had all been murdered. They had been shot in the head as they slept in their beds. Peter and Doris Smart together with their 11 year old son Michael were brutally slain on New Years Day. The killer then stayed at the house for the next week, even feeding the family cat. The man police arested over the stolen bank notes was Peter Manuel, and while in custody he confessed to the slaughter of the Smart family and to the rape and mudrer of Isabelle Cooke, eventually taking detectives to the place he had buried her, in a field close to where she was last seen. Peter Manuel confessed to more murders and was eventually charged for 8. He was found guilty for 7 as one case was dropped for lack of evidence. He was hanged in Barlinnie prison in July 1958. Peter Manuel is suspected of more crimes. 

Anne Noblett’s family continued to hope for a good outcome but towards the end of January 1958, after four weeks of a rigorous metre by metre scouring of fields and woodland, the search was called off. Police stated that they had exhausted all local leads and they were content that Anne was not in the near vicinity. Only days later the case would be blown wide open and the search for Anne would turn into a hunt for a killer. A groundbreaking investigation followed which utilised state of the art forensic techniques and saw thousands of people interviewed and several other murders potentially being connected. Police forces across the South of England collaborated and arrests were made, but ultimately it was the work of a female Private Investigator that shed the most light on what continues to be a dark mystery.

Persons Unknown is a true crime podcast dedicated to unsolved murders and disappearances. The podcast is based in Wales, UK and covers cases from Wales, the rest of the UK and the wider world. New episodes are released every other Monday. You can follow us on Facebook and Instagram at Persons Unknown Podcast. For a list of sources please see the episode notes on your app. If you enjoy the podcast please give us a review and you can help others get to hear about Persons Unknown by sharing and recommending on social media. Thank you so much for listening. Now back to this week’s case.

Anne Therese Noblett was born on 2nd  April 1940. Anne came from a well-off family. Her mother was called Ira and her father, Thomas John, was the managing director of Helmets Ltd which specialised in making motorcycle crash helmets. The family also owned a large poultry farm, they lived at Heath Cottages, Marshalls Heath, Wheathampstead near St Albans - an affluent town in the county of Hertfordshire. This is around 80km north of the centre of London. At age 17 Anne was a student at Watford Technical College where she was studying domestic science. She had aspirations of going on to be a children’s nurse. Her life was not like many of her teenage contemporaries, Anne had spent the previous four years living at a boarding school in Montreux, Switzerland. She had  returned to live with her parents in July 1957 to prepare for the new academic year that began in September. Anne is described as a quiet, shy and home loving girl, although after living in another country away from her family for so long she was also independent. 

On Monday 30th December 1957 Anne had taken a driving lesson after lunch. She was hoping to take her test soon, as the ability to drive would  give her more freedom and she would not be so dependent on the rural public transport system to get around. Later that afternoon Anne and a friend went to a Rock ‘n’ Roll dance lesson, which was a weekly event at Lourdes Hall, in nearby Harpenden. Harpenden is just a ten minute drive from Marshalls Heath. The class was due to be an hour and start at 4.30pm but the pair arrived early, and as it was raining they went in straight away and piggybacked on to an earlier class. They ended up leaving the hall at around 5.30pm. It is believed she then caught the 391 Green Line Bus at Church Green, Harpenden as she had missed the bus at her usual stop on Station Road. She had walked with her friend and two other members of the dance class to Church Green where they then left her. They never saw her actually cross the road to the bus stop but another eyewitness came forward to say she had seen Anne at the bus stop. Anne is said to have been carrying a letter she had received from a friend of hers who lived in Leicester and a bag of mushrooms that she had bought for the family dinner.

At 6.03pm Anne was seen by a 21 year old woman named Shirley who worked at the Noblett’s poultry farm. Shirley was travelling on a moped up the Marshall Heath lane from the Noblett’s cottage and saw Anne near a bus stop on Cherry Tree Corner. It looked like she had recently gotten off a bus and was about to turn down the lane and walk the 1/2km back to her home.   Shirley said that they both greeted each other with hello as they passed. At this time in winter the lane would have been pitch black and there was no street lighting along the route. This was the last sighting of Anne. When her father got back from work at 6.40pm and his wife, Ira, informed him that Anne wasn't yet home, he was immediately worried. At 9.00pm he telephoned a friend to get advice and shortly afterwards he called the police to report Anne missing.

Anne had literally vanished into thin air and clues that could point to what had happened to her were few and far between. Within a day or so everyone in the local area was aware of the story and looked out for the teenager. Anne had brown wavy hair, usually worn a little higher than shoulder length and weighed 73kg. She also wore glasses. In the first few days the search focused on woods and fields nearby Blackmore End and Bowerheath and was later extended to an area of rugged heathland known as “No Man’s Land”. Over 60 police officers with tracker dogs were involved as well as local volunteers from the Rotary Club and the Hertfordshire fox hunt. Door to door enquiries were also carried out and the investigation even branched out into Europe; Interpol were involved in following up lines of enquiry at the Chatelard school she had attended in Montreux, Switzerland. Police were keen to discover all they could about Anne in the hope some information would be forthcoming that would shed light on her whereabouts.

By the 3rd of January Superintendent Leonard Elwell from Hertfordshire CID who was directing the search said to the press that they now feared something had happened to Anne, and the likelihood of finding her alive was lessening by the hour. An ex-navy man who was now a police officer co-ordinated a search of a 3.5 km stretch of the River Lea and local flooded gravel pits were drained. Despite these grim developments and the bleak statement made by Superintendent Elwell, Anne's mother, Ira said she refused to give up hope.

One piece of information that did find its way to investigators was brought forward by  the keeper of a railway crossing. The 55 year old  woman said that as she was going to bed on Monday 30th December she heard a car drive incredibly fast up to the crossing. She then said it stopped, paused for a brief moment and then reversed and drove off just as quickly in the direction from which it had come. The woman said it was most peculiar and she had never seen the car before, she didn't think it was from the local area.

With this in mind police began working on the assumption that Anne had gotten into a car whilst walking the 0.5 km stretch between Cherry Tree Corner and her house. They surmised that she may have gotten in thinking she recognised the car.  Perhaps more chillingly she had accepted a lift because she knew the person or persons in the car. The alternative was that she had been forced into the car, though there were no reports of anything suspicious being seen or heard by local residents between 6.30-7pm. 

A report came in from a docks worker in Tilbury, Essex, on the other side of London,who said he believed he saw Anne in a lorry that arrived in the port from Stoke-on-Trent on Wednesday evening. The registration of the truck was passed to police, but hopes were raised only for it to prove a dead end. Another sighting came in from Dover, but again it led nowhere.

Five days after Anne failed to return home the police announced that they were questioning someone in connection with her disappearance. The man was said to have a bandaged arm. This suspect was brought to the attention of police by an anonymous telephone call made to Anne's aunt, Peggy Noblett. The caller said he had seen the man loitering around the Wheathampstead station at 8.00pm, after which he got on a bus heading towards Luton. The caller gave this man's name and address.  The anonymous caller continued to make calls over the next few months. but it turned out to be a cruel hoax. The identity of the caller was discovered to be a 25 year old man named Walter Nunn. During the calls to police he had actually given his own name and address to be looked into in connection with the murder. He was the man with the bandage and had just wanted to interfere with the investigation for his own sick enjoyment. In all he made over 30 calls to the police, members of the Noblett family and other people connected with the investigation. During some of these calls he even made threats, including one to Anne’s mother. In April 1958  he was jailed for 6 months for wasting police time. He admitted he had done it out of pure spite.

While some of the investigating team were wasting their time checking out the mysterious phone calls, the search of the surrounding countryside stepped up, with over 500 people including police, territorial army and local residents engaging in a metre by metre combing of woods and fields. Areas were searched then searched again. 120 square km of ploughed land was painstakingly gone over looking for any disturbances in the soil. A rubbish dump in Luton, twenty minutes away from Wheathampstead, was searched after some refuse was left there without permission. These efforts produced little fruit. 

A white handkerchief and lipstick were found, but Anne’s parents were unable to identify them as belonging to their daughter.  A bag of mushrooms was found in the Grove Road area in Harpenden but it was never conclusively proved that they were the ones Anne had been carrying. Coincidentally a woman's body was found by one of the search parties, lying on a railway line. This was entirely unrelated  and deemed not to have been a suspicious death, nor anything to do with Anne’s disappearance. As a side note, I have been unable to find out if the identity of this woman was ever discovered.

Early in the morning of Monday 6th January a farm worker based in Boxted, near Colchester in Essex, was just beginning his day's work, when he came across the body of a young woman. It was 19 year old Mary Kriek. She had been brutally murdered with a hatchet and dumped faced down in a ditch. Her handbag had also been stolen and she had injuries to indicate she had fought back against her attacker. Mary was from The Netherlands and was currently employed as a domestic worker for a British family  in order to improve her English. She had only arrived in the country on the 7th December. Mary had spent the Sunday in London with a German friend. The last part of the journey home was by bus. The friend said Mary got off the bus at 10.45pm and only had a 100 m walk to BullBanks Farm where she was staying. Her friend saw Mary wave from the bus stop as the bus carried on its journey. That was the last time she was seen alive.

Immediately the similarities between Mary and Anne's cases were recognised, and police from Hertfordshire and Essex began to liaise. The press also connected the two girls and wondered if there was, in their words, a “maniac” on the loose. They dubbed him the “bus stop killer” and wondered whether the fact that there had been a full moon on the night of the 5th January had anything to do with the attack. Within a matter of days reports from an eyewitness came in which placed Mary in the company of a serviceman. There were several British army and RAF barracks in the area, as well as American military bases. The suspicion was that Mary may well have known her attacker. 

Rather suddenly, on the 22nd January, the police announced that the search for Anne was being  called off.  The mobile centre of operations which had been set up in a caravan near to Anne's home was taken back to Hertfordshire police headquarters in Hatfield. No trace had been found of her, in what police claimed were eight searches of the surrounding area. Investigators made sure to point out that the hunt for Anne was not over but a different tactic was needed. 

Instead of combing large areas of ploughland, fields and  woods they would focus the search on small teams going house to house. The plan was for every property within a 16km radius, including gardens and outhouses, to be searched. Particular attention was to be focused on houses with a single male occupant or homes where a man was known to be alone on the night of the 30th December. Emphasis was also put on Anne's watch. It was very expensive and police thought if something had happened to Anne the person responsible may well have found the temptation to steal it too overwhelming. Pawnbrokers and second hand jewellers were given a description of the watch and asked to keep a lookout for it.

On the 1st February a RAF fighter pilot, 25 year old Hugh Symonds, who was currently enjoying some leave from the air force, set out for a walk with his young brother Brian and his dog named Rip. They were walking down a rough country lane that ran between the tiny villages of Bendish and Whitell, which was about 20km from Marshalls Heath and Anne’s home. As they made their way along the track, Rip suddenly ran off into a wood a little distance away. The area is known as Rose Grove, or sometimes Youngs Wood, by locals. It is a secluded place and about 1km from the nearest road. Hugh followed after the dog and after walking about 100m into the wood came upon the body of a woman. 

The woman was fully clothed and still had her glasses on, though they were slightly askew. She lay on her back with her arms neatly folded across her chest, it appeared she was asleep, though Hugh Symonds said he could tell she was dead.  There was no sign of a struggle; it looked as though she had been lowered gently from the sky into her position. No attempt had been made to hide the body by burial or by sticks or leaves being placed on it. Mr Symonds did not go closer than a few metres from the body, then turned and sprinted back to his brother. The pair then returned home and called the police. The body was confirmed to be that of Anne Noblett. She had been missing for 32 days.

The terrible news about Anne brought an eerie feeling of deja vu to the local inhabitants. Two year previously, on the 6th September 1956, three boys reported to police that they had seen a man taking a woman's body out of a car and hiding it on Greenway Lane, Leverstock Green, Hemel Hempstead. This is 17km from Wheathampstead. Police went to the scene to find the body of 36 year old Diana Suttey. Diana had been sexually assulted and strangled. The three boys described the man who they saw hiding the body as 50-55, medium height, thick set with  stern oval face. He had  a long thin mouth and appeared sunburnt. He had dark, greased hair that was grey on the temples. He wore horn rimmed glasses and white gloves. 

Police said they thought that Diana left a cafe and caught a lift part of the way home. She left this car and then got into a second car. The driver of the second car drove her to a lovers lane and killed her in the car. Two other boys came forward to say they thought they had witnessed the attack in the car. The man and his car were never traced. The obvious connections to Anne Noblett’s case were the use of a motor vehicle and the ability of the killer to persuade the young women to get into his car. Cars were still relatively rare in the UK at the time. A few years later, in 1961, 31% of households had access to a car. 

Anne’s murder was proving to be a compicted case. The body was so well preserved that there was initial speculation that Anne may have been held captive for some time before her death. Pathologist Dr Francis Camps undertook an autopsy and from the state of the digestion of the stomach contents it was asserted that Anne had died near the time she had disappeared. The contents of the stomach were consistent with the last known meal she had eaten at 2.30pm on the 30th December. Dr Camps estimated the time of death as no more than 12 hours after that, but probably a lot less. A local gameskeeper, Sam Todd, corroborated the idea that the body had recently been placed there, maybe only 12 hours before she was discovered. He explained it was very unlikely the body could have been there long, as he walked the woods often and his dog would have discovered it. The cause of death was strangulation and there were clear signs of sexual assualt.

It seemed more than just coincidence that days after the press announced that all houses and gardens in the vicinity would be searched, the body had been found. It appeared that this announcement had forced the killer or killers to act to avoid certain detection if the planned searches had been carried out. It was suspected that the body had been moved during a recent spell of foggy weather over the previous few days. The location is significant because it was in an area just outside the initial search radius. This suggests the killer had been paying close attention to the details of the search and could even mean he was a part of it himself. 

The remarkable state of the body and its low temperature was put down to it possibly being stored in a refrigerator or freezer before being taken to the woods. The body temperature was taken at the scene and it was found to be unusually low, even though the ambient temperature was relatively mild for a British winter. The fact that there was no attempt at concealment may indicate that whoever put the body there believed they were now in the clear. The “peaceful” way the body was left could also indicate remorse and that they had some kind of relationship with Anne. It was possible they were not strangers. 

Police believed Anne had been stripped of clothes before the murder and redressed afterwards. They thought a woman had helped to do the redressing. They also suspected that it would have taken a very strong and fit individual to carry Anne’s body to the location, as she was not small, weighing approximately 73kg. The alternative was that they had help from someone to carry the body the 1km over the fields to its final resting place. After a conversation with a farmer, police believed the likely route the killer took to carry the body started at the hamlet on Bendish. Detectives Elwell and Lewis paced the journey out themselves. The killer would have had to transport the body to Bendish by vehicle. Police thought this could have been a farm vehicle liek  tractor as it would not have arisen suspicion, though a suspicious black saloon car with cream trims had been spotted in the area. A car seat was also found abandoned in a fied near to the area. It was speculated whether this had been removed by the killer in order to put the body into the car.

As well as the well preserved state of Anne's body, which could not be accounted for and the way it had been posed like she was asleep there was another factor about the crime scene that was odd.  Scattered around the body were silver and gold coins totaling 12 shillings, or £1.50 in today's money.  This money had come from Annes purse. There was a theory at the time, and one that has been repeated in modern accounts, that the money was placed there deliberately to make it obvious that the murder was not motivated by robbery. The law had changed in 1957, limiting the crimes that were punishable by death. Under the new legal guidelines the death penalty was still in place for various types of homicide, including murder accompanied by a robbery. For a murder that also inculded sexual assualt or rape the death penalty did not stand. The placement of the coins could well have been a cynical ploy by the killer or killers to ensure that if they were caught they would not be hanged for the crime.

One more additional note about the crime scene. The bag of mushrooms was not found by the body, leaving open the possibility that the bag that was previously found in Harpenden could well have belonged to Anne. I cannot find any information on whether the letter from Leicester that Anne had in her possession on the day she disappeared was ever recovered.    

A murder case with this many unusual features meant the Herfodshire police required some help, as was common at the time, Scotland Yard, with their expertise in murder hunts, were asked to assist. Detective Superintendent Richard Lewis, a Welsh man and son of a respected and highly decorated detective from Denbighshire, came to jointly lead the investigation with Detective Elwell. 

A refrigeration expert was called in to give their advice to see if the type of refrigerator used could be identified. As it was a rural area, large refrigeration units were fairly common amongst the local dairy and poultry farmers. There were approximately 150 nearby plants and farms with refrigerating machinery of one sort or another and they were all searched and the owners questioned. As well as agricultural freezers, basements under houses and farm buildings that were called “ice rooms” were also looked into. These rooms in many cases dated from the 17th century and when originally built were filled with ice and snow in the winter months to help preserve meat and other produce.

This case was a landmark for forensic investigation. The sheer number of scientists, including meteorologists and fibre experts, who worked with the police in this case was unprecendented.  The expertise of a botanist from the Government-run Rothampton Research station in nearby Harpenden was sought. Detectives wanted the leaves and shrubs under the body to be examined to see if they could confirm their theory that the body had not been in the woods for long, and to see if Dr Camp's freezer theory held up as plausible. A life size plaster of Paris model was made of Anne weighing exactly the same as her to gauge the effect of the growth of grass and shrubs under the model. 

Weeks into the investigation Elwell and Lewis believed they had narrowed the time frame of when Anne disappeared down to just five minutes. At 6.03 she was spotted by Cherry Tree Corner by Shirley who was riding past on her moped. At 6.08 two men got off another bus and walked down Marshalls Heath Lane, as Anne was believed to have done just before. The  men said they could see two red lights, which they presumed were a car's rear lights, about 200m up the lane. Police believed this was the car Anne had gotten into. Police doubled down on their efforts and re-interviewed everyone they had spoken to and who had made statements during the initial search for Anne. Through a system of checking and rechecking the police began to be able to dismiss some information as irrelevant and were keen to hone in on the following points. Whom did she meet in the lane? How long was the body in the woods and how did it get there? 

The investigating officers wanted to compile a picture of Anne and put together a complete life history including all her known family, friends and acquaintances. They knew Anne kept a diary but could not locate it, until a 15 year old boy came forward to say he knew that two school  girls had it. I am not sure anything useful was ever gleaned from the diary or even whether police ever actually managed to get their hands on it. What was said by all her family was that she did not have any boyfriends. Obviously it wouldn't be the first time parents were unaware of their 17 year old daughter's private life, but no boyfriends are ever mentioned.

Anne’s funeral was held on St Valentine's day 1958 at St Helen's Church in Wheathampstead. Undercover police officers mingled with the mourners and kept a watchful eye out for any suspicious behaviour. Their hunch was that the killer was local and that he could very well have been present at the service. They believed that the killer was being shielded by someone, most likely his wife who was lying for him and may have even helped to cover up the crime and move the body. It was at this time that a young man from the local area and his father were both questioned about Anne’s murder. Neither man was charged and their names were not released. It is unknown if they remained suspects.The young man was known to Anne.

After studying the results from the autopsy further, pathologist Dr Camps changed his opinion slightly and said that Anne had died from asphyxia, or pressure on the neck, rather than strangulation. A subtle but important difference. Dr Camps said there were no marks on the neck or any signs on the rest of the body that a violent attack had occurred. Her death could be the result of asphyxia brought on by sudden and intense emotional or mental stress or excitement. He now said that Anne may have undressed herself prior to her death. This led the Daily Mirror to publish an article summarising the case so far. One of the thing they pondered was whether the murder had been premeditated. This new inforrmtion from Dr Camps meant there was the possibiity the murder had been unplanned. or even an accident.

Police were also having second thoughts about the timeline of the last hour before Anne disappeared. There was increasing doubt that the person seen at the Church Green bus stop in Harpenden was Anne. It was assumed she had got on the bus there at 5.50pm and alighted at 6.03pm when she was seen by Shirley. Increasingly, detectives were unsure of both these sightings. Something just didn't seem to add up. 

The idea that Anne’s body had been frozen or refrigerated was also said to have  now been disregarded by investigating officers. The cold temperature of the body could have been the result of it being stored in a cold but dry barn or outbuilding. The deep freeze theory does continue to be mentioned in the press and was brought up at the inquest in April as a possibiity. 

The case developed even more intrigue when two anonymous letters by two different authors were sent to police.  The author of one of the letters, sent on the 10th February, made himself known to police a month later. He was described as an elderly man who said he saw a man and girl in a car on the lane that led to Anne’s house around the time she went missing. He gave the police the car registration. As a result of this information a number of young men who were said to be friendly with Anne were re-questioned.

Police were especially keen to speak to the author of the other letter and public appeals were made for the person responsible to come forward. This letter was postmarked the 8th February in Tottenham, North London, and the author was said to have very valuable information pertinent to the case. Remarkably the woman who wrote the letter did come forward, and following conversations with detectives Elwell and Lewis, enquiries were made in the town of Southend in Essex. A  man was subsequently taken in for questioning, though he was released without charge.

No sooner had this happened than a dawn raid was carried out on a property in Westcliff on Sea near Southend. Two men were taken to the police station in separate cars, both shielding their faces from press photographers, one with a newspaper, the other a handkerchief. One man was described as around 40, stocky with thinning back hair. He was wearing a blue overcoat and grey shirt. The other man was 30-35, tall  and had a black moustache with dark brown hair. He wore a green sports suit. The pair were questioned for 11 hours and kept at the station for around 13 in total. They were quizzed about the murders of Anne Noblett and Mary Kriek. The newspapers were led to believe that an arrest was imminent but both men were released on the evening of the 3rd April. Police said the men were not able to significantly assist them with their enquiries but enigmatically added they were able to clear some puzzling things up.

The inquest into Anne’s death had begun in February and, after two months of evidence gathering, finally closed in April. The coroner and jury heard that over 2000 people had been interviewed and almost as many cars had been checked. The pathologist now officially framed the death as being due to compression of the neck. On being questioned he made it clear that this was not caused by an accident and could not have been self-inflicted. He also backed up his earlier findings that Anne had been sexualy assaulted. The preserved state of the body was not able to be explained and the question as to whether the body had been frozen before being found was never answered. A verdict was given of murder by a person or persons unknown. There was not enough evidence to even allege who was responsible. 

A day or so after the inquest was wrapped up it was leaked that the police had a shortlist of suspects. Decades before computer technology a complex card index system had been devised by Detective Sergeant Frederick Taylor. He had developed a system to cross check names, times and potential motives to narrow an original list of 2000 potential suspects down to just 4. They were never named and it was never confirmed whether the suspects were local or from further afield. Apparently police said they now knew where Anne had been killed but were not revealing this information. It is not known what made them so sure of this fact. It was quite possibly due to forensic tests on the soil or other microscopic debris found on Anne’s clothing, but this is pure speculation as it has never been revealed.

The Noblett family were not ready to give up and, feeling frustrated by the efforts of the police to bring in the culprit, they decided to hire a private investigator to continue the hunt. The firm was called Q-Men and the investigation into Anne’s murder was led by female detective Billy Williams and two former Scotland Yard officers. The small team spent two and half months compiling a dossier on the case. It was said that the team were unhindered by some of the red tape that had slowed down the police investigation, and the fact that the lead PI was a female meant that more women came forward to share information. In early September 1958 a report of the team's findings was presented to the Chief Constable of Hertfordshire police and in turn to the Director of Public Prosecutions. They had whittled down the list of suspects to just one name. The hope was that there was enough evidence within the dossier to justify an arrest and prosecution. Alas no action was forthcoming and the name of the suspect was never released. 

Three further murders occured in the region that were linked at one stage or another to the murder of Anne Noblett. 

In May, the body of yet another young woman was found in Hertfordshire  on a road between Letchworth and Stotfold near the entrance to a hospital. The woman was 25 year old nurse Veronica Ryan. She was originally from Cork in Ireland. She was found fully clothed but her dress had been rearranged. The bike she had been travelling on was dumped a short distance away. She was found face up and had been sexually assualted and strangled. A connection was looked into, but very early on police were sure this murder was not linked. By the end of the month local man Lyndon Nott had been charged with Veronica’s murder. He was later found guilty but was recognized as being mentally ill. He had been experiencing a schizophrenic episode when the attack had taken place. 

On the 4th December 1958 the unidentified body of a pregnant woman was found on the bank of the River Rey near Piddington Oxfordshire. The woman had been beaten to death. She was not believed to be a local. At the time the press made the connection with the death of Anne Noblett, Mary Kriek and Diana Suttey with headlines that read “The Beast Strikes Again”. As a note I can find very little information about this murder but I think it was solved as it does not appear in lists of unsolved murders from that period. 

A little over a year later, on the 23rd December 1959, a 24 year old woman, Stephanie Baird, was found murdered in her room at a YMCA hostel in Birmingham. A couple of weeks later the police received an anonymous call from a man who claimed responsibility for the murder and quote “the one in Wheathampstead”. This was taken to mean the murder of Anne Noblett. The call was traced to a phone box in Luton. Patrick Joseph Byrne who was was lodging at the YMCA at the time and moved out of the hostel shortly afterwards was found guilty of Stephanie’s murder. It is unclear if he was the person who made the anonymous confession call. 40.40  Patrick Joseph Byrne doesn't seem to have been seriously considered as the murere of Anne Noblett.

Whispers and rumours continued for years in Wheathampstead and in such a small rural community it was incredibly unsettling for people to think one of their neighbours could be a killer. Many of the details of the case point to someone with local knowledge and the police always suspected more than one person was involved, even if it was after the fact. It is said that Private Investigator Billy Williams and the other detectives from Q-men focused their queries in or near the town of Southend, suggesting their suspect came from that area. There was suspicion the person responsible may not not have lived locally to Wheatampstead but travelled there regularly for work, perhaps as a delivery driver, salesman or skilled labourer. I've come across one source that says one of the men who was arrested from near Southend worked in refrigeration. The police at one point had considered the possibility that the body had been stored in a mobile refrigeration unit like a truck for transporting meat. 

On the 60th anniversary of Anne’s murder, Hertforshire police made a fresh appeal for inormation. Hugh Noblett, Anne’s younger brother, spoke of his gentle, loving sister and how he still thinks about her every day. He asked for people to come forward so he could know what happened and experience some closure. After all this time six people contacted investigators to share things they thought would be helpful. Police have not announced any more developments.

There is no physical evidence remaining from this case so if it is going to be solved it's going to rely on someone coming forward. The police always suspected the murderer told at least one person about it, maybe his wife, or perhaps someone who helped carry the body across the fields. Police have admitted there is a reasonable chance the person responsible for Anne’s murder has passed away. Time is running out, but even now the possibility remains that someone out there knows something that could provide the answers needed to solve this cold case.

The murders of  Diana Suttey in September 1956 and Mary Kreig in January 1958 also remain unsolved. 

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