10 Cold Cases Solved Years Later

10 Cold Cases Solved Years Later

Caitlin Johnson

Notes: Longer entries because no SBs, visuals only.

Welcome to WatchMojoUK, and in this unranked list, we’re looking at 10 of the oldest cold cases in the UK that have now been solved.

Andrea Bernard

The details of this chilling crime finally came out in 2022. A man named Desmond Bernard confessed to the police that he’d been keeping the secret of how his sister had really died for fifty years. Desmond had only been eight at the time; his sister Andrea was just five, and they lived under the tyranny of their stepmother, Janice Nix. Andrea had died of severe burns after being placed in a scalding hot bath by Nix, who’d also ordered Desmond to lie about it. The case was in the courts for over three years, but eventually, thanks to Desmond’s testimony about the abuse he and his sister suffered at Nix’s hands, she was convicted of manslaughter. It took almost half a century for the truth to be revealed, with the CPS thanking Desmond for his bravery in finally coming forward.

Janet Commins

In 1976, fifteen-year-old Janet Commins was attacked and killed in Flint, Wales, her body left to be found four days later. Rapidly, police settled on a suspect: Noel Jones. Jones was an illiterate traveller but confessed to the crime, going to prison for twelve years. But over forty years later, DNA evidence both found Commins’ true killer and exonerated Jones, who says that he was scapegoated and forced to confess by the police. Janet’s real attacker was Stephen Hough, who was identified after another assault on a teenage girl in 2016. The DNA taken for that crime was matched to samples from Janet’s death, and in 2017, Hough was sentenced to twelve years in prison for assault and manslaughter. This immense miscarriage of justice ruined Noel Jones’s life, but also led to more attacks when Hough was left free for four decades.

Milly Dowler

This high-profile crime was rarely out of the news cycle in 2002, when Dowler went missing. Her remains weren’t found for months, but her killer walked free for far longer. Despite an extensive police investigation at the time, it wasn’t until 2008 that a man named Levi Bellfield was linked to Dowler’s murder, and it would be another three years until he was brought to justice. Bellfield was, in fact, a serial killer, who’d killed at least three people, including Dowler. He was also a career criminal whose violent nature was well-known to the police and the people in his life. Despite all that, it took six years for him to be connected to Dowler. Chillingly, the fact he went uncaught for so long meant he hurt more people. One of his surviving victims, Kate Sheedy, gave evidence at his trial and helped secure his conviction.

Una Crown

This horrific crime was committed in Cambridgeshire in 2013, when eighty-six year-old widow Una Crown was murdered by home invaders. She was burgled and then killed in a knife attack, with the culprits trying to burn down her bungalow to cover it up. The fire didn’t catch, but despite all this evidence, the investigation was seriously botched by the police. The first officers on the scene thought that Crown had set herself on fire by mistake; it wasn’t until the post-mortem came in that they realised it was murder. Many more mistakes were made, which eventually led to the culprit going uncaught despite numerous “Crimewatch” appeals. Finally, ten years on, local man David Newton was connected to the murder through DNA evidence – there was even an eyewitness putting Newton near the scene at the time. He was convicted in 2025.

Jennifer Kiely

She was just thirty-five when she was found dead in Eastbourne in 2005, stabbed sixteen times and brutally burned. Despite the scene being covered in the culprit’s DNA, including on a used cigarette butt found nearby, police weren’t able to find the people responsible. It took twenty years for local police to finally name their prime suspect, Keith Dowbekin, after conducting DNA analysis for years to try and find either the killer or somebody related to him. Unfortunately for the people wanting justice for Jennifer, Dowbekin had already died in 2014, eleven years before the police traced him. Jennifer was homeless at the time and sleeping rough, as was Dowbekin, putting him in the same area she was when she died. Her surviving children want their mother’s death to “encourage compassion” for homeless people, and for her name to be remembered.

Mary McLaughlin

For thirty-five years, Mary McLaughlin’s killer walked free. McLaughlin was strangled in Glasgow in 1984, but her murderer wasn’t brought to justice until 2021 following yet another DNA breakthrough with a decades-old cigarette butt. The killer, Graham McGill, evaded attention at the time because he was already serving a prison sentence for sex offences, killing McLaughlin during a period of temporary release. He was back in his cell the day after the crime, but was free for good within weeks. Harrowingly, one of Mary’s children, her daughter Gina, spent many of those years thinking the killer may have been a member of the family. This wasn’t the case, thankfully. Other children and witnesses recounted that Mary seemed afraid in the lead-up to her death, and was being followed. McGill denied the charges, but was found guilty and sentenced to at least fourteen years in prison.

Anthony Littler

Also in 1984 was the murder of forty-five year-old civil servant Anthony Littler in London, and it took even longer for these killers to be caught. Police at the time largely drew a blank, since the attack seemed to be an unmotivated act of extreme violence, with Littler’s killers unknown to him. Nearly forty years later and the case was re-opened. Eventually, brothers Michael and Anthony Stewart were identified as suspects, after their younger brother Daniel – just ten at the time – spoke to the police about how they’d admitted to being involved in the attack. It turned out that the motive was that the Stewarts thought Littler was gay, and the crime was a homophobic “gay bashing”. Other people had also told the police that the Stewarts had admitted to the crime, but still, it took until the 2020s for them to be convicted.

Yolande Waddington

In 1966, seventeen-year-old nanny Yolande Waddington was murdered on her way back from a trip to the shop. She was found two days later, but her killer wasn’t caught until 2012. Again, we’re left shocked by the ineptitude of the contemporary police response. In 1967, two more young girls in the area were murdered; the killer was a man named David Burgess, who was sentenced to twenty-seven years in prison. However, despite having arrested and convicted Burgess for two subsequent killings, Burgess wasn’t connected to Waddington’s murder for decades, and not until the case was re-opened with the hope of acquiring DNA evidence. It’s shocking that nobody thought at the time to look into Burgess after he’d been arrested for two other crimes, and nobody analysed the blood sample the original investigation collected, but at least he wasn’t walking around free for decades.

The Babes in the Wood Murders

Brighton was collectively traumatised by the murders of schoolgirls Nicola Fellows and Karen Hadaway in 1986, and yet again a decades-long hunt for the murderer can be traced back to police incompetence. Shockingly, the perpetrator was a man named Russell Bishop, who was tried for the murders in 1987 but acquitted because the police didn’t properly preserve key evidence. Sussex Police continued to investigate hoping to find the girls’ real killer, but Bishop really WAS responsible. He committed more crimes in 1990, but despite authorities still believing he was guilty, it wasn’t until the law around double jeopardy changed in the 2000s that a new case was able to be built. DNA evidence was finally gathered, deemed substantial enough that Bishop could be tried again in 2018. This time, he was found guilty, and died of cancer four years later.

Louisa Dunne

The oldest solved cold case in British history was the 1967 murder of Louisa Dunne, seventy-five years old at the time of her death and living in Bristol. Twice-widowed Louisa was living alone, her body eventually discovered by her neighbour. The investigation hit a dead end almost immediately, the police drawing a blank on finding any possible suspects. That was, until 2024, when a ninety-two year-old man was arrested. Yet again, DNA evidence was responsible for his conviction, after fifty-seven years at large. The culprit was Ryland Headley, a career criminal who’d committed numerous burglaries and also assaulted at least two other elderly women. He was found guilty in 2025 and went to prison, where he’s expected to remain until his death. Other cold cases from the area involving attacks on elderly women have been re-opened, trying to link Headley to other murders.

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