Hi, and welcome back to The Unseen Podcast, a podcast dedicated to missing
people, unresolved cases, and UK true crime. Today, we're going to
be exploring the mysterious and tragic murder of mum of two Jacqueline Palmer Radford at
her home in Eversleigh in Hampshire in nineteen ninety two. There were some very
odd elements to Jacqueline's murder that add mystery to it and cause people to wonder
why such an unlikely victim was targeted. This episode contains descriptions that some listeners
may find distressing. Soul listener discretion is advised. The village of Eversleigh is
a small village located around eleven miles away from the larger town of Basingstoke.
It is a generally rural village with a small population. The residents were friendly
with each other and it was a place where new or different things were noticed,
purely due to the village's size. Eversley is where Jacqueline Palmer Radford lived
with her two sons in nineteen ninety two. Jacqueline had separated from her husband
around eighteen months prior. The couple had been together for eighteen years and so
this split caused some huge changes in her life. Jacqueline lived at a home
called Riversdale House in the village with her children, her eldest son, who
was sixteen, and her youngest who was six. Jacqueline had been building up
a new life for herself as a newly single woman of forty, and by
all accounts, was becoming interested in many new hobbies and widening her social circle.
She had started an open university course and had taken up number of sports,
which she was enjoying. Through these new activities, Jacqueline was meeting new
people and slowly getting over such a huge upheaval in her and her children's lives.
Everything seemed to be working out great for her, and she seemed to
be enjoying her life and getting on with looking after her children. Jacqueline cared
deeply about her two sons and was very involved in their lives, but this
reason Wednesday, the first of April nineteen ninety two stuck out in the minds
of the staff at Jacqueline's youngest son's primary school, which he attended. Nobody
had come to pick him up from school that day, and he was still
waiting for his mom. At four o'clock. This was certainly unusual and struck
everyone that knew Jacqueline in any capacity as strange. She was always there for
her sons and would have let someone know if she was running late or something
had happened. This event would sadly foreshadow the events of that awful afternoon.
Jacqueline's eldest son returned home to Riversdale House around five thirty that evening after being
at college. His statement to the inquest was later reported by the Redding Evening
Post, and he explained that when he got home, he found he was
locked out. He found his spare key and eventually entered the home. A
horrendos sight greeted him as he found his mother dead in the kitchen. Her
death was clearly not an accident, as her son would later say, as
reported by the Redding Evening Post, I saw my mother lying on her back
in the kitchen. She was naked from the waist down. Her face had
turned blue and it was obvious that she was dead. I called nine,
nine, nine, and at some point I started pushing her chest. There
appeared to be sick in her mouth. The headmistress from Jacqueline's younger son's school,
had traveled back home with him at this point to see what had happened,
and was walking down the street when his brother came running out of the
house. She later said that he ran out and threw his arms around her
and begged her to help him. This is just a heartbreaking image, and
I can't imagine how hard this must have been for Jacqueline's children. This awful
scene soon became a crime scene, with police swarming to try and figure out
what had happened to this mother of two. Police began to analyze the information
that they had. Jacqueline had been found in the kitchen in her home,
and when Jacqueline's body was assessed by a home office pathologist, doctor Peter Long,
it was found that she had been asphyxiated and had also been subjected to
a sexual assault. The scene was a little strange in the way that there
didn't appear to have been a break in, and there also didn't seem to
be anything missing to suggest that robbery had been the motive. Police were quite
baffled by the scene and by the motive of the perpetrator. While there was
a sexual assault. The theory began to grow from early on that this was
perhaps someone Jacqueline knew, or someone who she was at least acquainted with.
This was due to the fact that there was no break in and there didn't
appear to have been a struggle prior to Jacqueline's death. The fact that she
had also been suffocated and hadn't been killed in a more violent manner suggested to
police that this may be someone known to her and not a stranger attack.
Detective Constable Mike Scott from Hampshire Police told the Reading Evening Post two weeks after
her death, if she had suffered a violent death, we would think that
we were looking for a stranger, but on this occasion we have someone who
doesn't appear to have struggled to get onto the premises and she was then suffocated.
Who did this and why is a complete mystery. The fact that police
believe that Jacqueline perhaps knew her killer led them, perhaps inevitably, to Jacqueline's
ex husband, Werner. The couple had separated, and its common knowledge that
most victims are murdered by someone that they know, particularly women. Therefore,
it's unsurprising that he was spoken to very soon after Jacqueline's murder. Newspapers reported
at the time that he was interviewed that he was released without any charge,
implying that there wasn't anything of interest discovered or found at that time that could
prove anything. Police were very interested in trying to find out as much as
they could about Jacqueline's private life and about her usual movements or anything out of
the ordinary about them. In the days leading up to her death. Less
than two weeks after her murders, Valley Police issued a poster with two recent
photographs of Jacqueline on in the hope that seeing her picture would jug someone's memory.
Detective Constable Mike Scott continued to speak to the media about the investigation and
told the Reading Evening Post, we have been interviewing friends and relatives all week.
At the moment, we're trying to find out as much as we can
about the deceased and her relationships with family and friends. We are still working
flat out to try and find out all we can about it from people that
knew her. This became a main line of inquiry and officers were trying to
track down anything they could that could provide that crucial piece of information. Officers
spoke with Jacqueline's family and friends and also with her neighbors in the area,
who it was hoped would possibly have seen something. When speaking to residents,
police discovered that they were all shocked and horrified by what had happened to Jacqueline,
and they were surprised that it could happen in their friendly village. They
also didn't have much to add about Jacqueline or the family, as neighbors reported
to the Reading Evening Post that they didn't really know them very well, despite
the family living there for eight years. Several neighbors of the family stated that
it seemed as though they didn't want to get to know anyone in the community
and acted quite secretively. One stated they didn't want to know anyone. They
thought of their house as their castle. They were a very secretive family.
Another said we were a very friendly village, but for some reason, this
family didn't want to make friends with anyone. You can't make friends with people
who don't want to be friends. After many attempts, we left them alone.
It's hard to judge these comments given that the family appear to have been
set against the expectations of others in the village, and it's natural that some
people pol may want more privacy than others, whether Jacqueline wanted to be left
alone or not. The information is interesting as it's clear that the neighbors knew
little about them and therefore would not have been privy to their usual routine.
Despite the fact that few people actually knew Jacqueline or the family that well in
the village, due to the close knit nature and the size of the village,
residents did notice anything out of the ordinary or unusual. This was very
important for the police, who could at least narrow down some aspects of it,
not just Jacqueline's movements, but other people in Eversley. This timeline was
later broken down on a Crime Watch segment about the murder on National TV.
Police were able to establish that on Tuesday, the thirty first of March nineteen
ninety two, the day before the murder, Jacqueline had had a relatively normal
day. She had dropped her youngest son off at school in crow Thorn,
around four miles away from the village. One of the other parents, however,
had noticed something unusual that day. Outside of the school. They noticed
a brown Voxhall Chevette Hatchback parked across the road, which appeared to be lingering
The witness said that the man in the driver's seat didn't appear to be looking
at the school or anything in particular. However, he did look quite tense
and serious, and this struck the witness. The next morning, residence in
the village itself had spotted something else that seemed off. Around half a on
the morning that Jacqueline was murdered, a beige Perjo two oh five car was
spotted a few hundred yards away from Jacqueline's home a small office block. The
beige car pulled into the car park and a woman was driving it. She
wasn't an employee at the office, and so her car and her presence stood
out to the staff. She was also wearing a green scarf on her head,
as though she were hiding herself. The woman was very pale, with
red or ginger short hair. The witness got the impression that she was very
thin, although she didn't see the rest of her body. The presence of
a stranger in the village was odd, particularly as she stayed in the car
and didn't seem to have any business there. The car stayed in the car
park until at least later that morning, when employees saw it outside. The
woman had took her head scarf off at that point, which is when they
could clearly see her hair. She left in the mid morning. Again,
this was not directly linked to Jacqueline. However, it stood out as important
to the residents. As it was close to Riversdale House, it was thought
it could be important something that was directly linked to Jacqueline or at least her
home. Were two other sightings in the time that Jacqueline had left the home
and was on her way to take her son to school. A witness was
driving past Riversdale House when a car in front began to indicate to turn into
a driveway. It was around nine ten am, and the witness remembered as
he had to stop and wait behind it for it to turn in. He
noted that the car was turning into Jacqueline's driveway and spotted the sign for Riversdale
House. The significance of this, of course, is that it's now known
that Jacqueline may not have been at home at this time, and so who
was this person and why were they parking on her driveway. There was something
else significant about this sighting. The witness described the car as brown and gave
a very similar description to that of the car scene outside Jacqueline's sons school the
previous day. Whether these were the same car, however, hasn't been established.
It is known that Jacqueline must have returned pretty much straight away after this,
as she was home by nine to fifteen am. We know as she
spoke to her mom on the phone, and it was reported that she was
her usual self. Strangely, that day, a man was also seen on
the property around midday. This man was described as smartly dressed and stood on
the driveway to the house looking up at it. Police would later say that
this man could have been an estate agent or a surveyor, As while Riversdale
House was not on the market yet, Jacqueline was considering selling it and had
had meetings with the state agents to put it on the market soon, it
was likely that this man was probably connected to selling the home. However,
it is important that he too was ruled out as having anything to do with
Jacqueline's death. As we have already discussed, Jacqueline failed to pick up her
son when he finished school that day, so it's likely that she'd already been
murdered by that point. All of these things combined to create a picture,
however, didn't actually explain what Jacqueline did with the rest of her day,
who she saw, or where she went. It was possible that none of
these sightings had anything to do with her murder at all. However, police
needed more information to establish this. In June nineteen ninety two, two months
after her murder, the case was featured on BBC's Crime Watch, and it
was hoped by presenting all of this information something could be discovered. Other information
was also presented on the program. A photo fit of the man that was
seen in the brown car outside Jacqueline's son's school was shown. The man was
believed to be in his forties, with sandy hair which was scruffy on the
top, and he had a pale complexion so pale that he looked ill.
Was wearing a white shirt and a gray pull over. Two other pieces of
evidence were described and shown. A pen had been recovered from Jacqueline's driveway.
It was a common design with the zigzag pattern along the side and retailed for
around thirty to thirty two pounds or around sixty five pounds today. On the
episode, the police speculated that it could have been dropped by the smartly dressed
man seen on the driveway. Another piece of evidence was found in the house.
An open university prospectus was found with the name Lawrence Gillham written on it,
along with the time of ten forty. Police were eager to find out
who Lawrence Gillham was or whether this was an appointment for that day or another
day. There was also a sighting of a man that witnesses thought was suspicious.
At around eleven am, a man was seen running not far from jack
home. He stood out because he was running wearing jogging bottoms, trainers and
a long plastic raincoat. He was carrying a Sainsbury's carrier bag along with a
bag that looked like an airline bag. He clearly stood out to witnesses and
police wanted to trace him. It was clear that some are none of these
things could be relevant to the investigation, but it was crucial that they were
ruled out of the investigation. The program brought in over a hundred tips and
police began to sift through them all. It was useful as they were able
to rule out at least two pieces of evidence they recovered. It was reported
by the Reading Evening Post that the pen was claimed by a friend of Jacquelin's,
and Lawrence Gillham came forward and explained the note on the prospectus he was
eliminated from the inquiry. DC Mike Scott said this was use full as it
cleared up a number of niggling points, but that they still hadn't solved the
murder. One thing that they weren't able to clear up was the identity of
the man in the brown car, and this was something they were eager to
find out. The investigation continued on through July nineteen ninety two, with a
squad of twenty detectives running down all the leads that came in. Unfortunately,
as happened sometimes with murder inquiries, the leads began to dry up unless information
came into police. This did begin to happen in Jacquelin's case, and as
a result, the squad working on it was slimmed down to just twelve detectives
by January nineteen ninety three, a year after Jacquelin's murder. In April nineteen
ninety three, police reported that they thought they knew who had killed her and
were presenting a file to the Crown Prosecution Service. A police spokesperson told the
reading evening Post. We expect we'll be sending the papers to the CPS towards
the end of the month. After it has been reviewed, the CPS will
decide if we have enough evidence to arrest our suspect. It's unclear who this
suspect was, however, or why they decided that they may have murdered Jacqueline.
As A year later, in April nineteen ninety four, it was reported
in the papers once again that they were close to submitting a file to the
CPS so that they could arrest one suspect for the murder. Police stated that
they believe that they have been following the right line of inquiry from the beginning
and that they believed they had the correct suspect. They said, there are
no other issues which we feel would point us in a different direction to the
one we have been following from the start. It would appear that this filing
with the CPS went no further. It was confirmed that by nineteen ninety four,
just three offs were working on Jacqueline's case. Since then, there has
been little published about her case, and it still remains unsolved to this day,
which is extremely sad. There is so little that is known about Jacqueline,
her life or what she did that morning. It's believed that she was
murdered at some point on the morning of the first of April, and police
have stated that they believe it was someone she knew, as there was no
struggle and no robbery. We do have to remember, though, that Jacqueline
was sexually assaulted, and so this could definitely have been the primary motive.
Was it someone she knew that friends and family and neighbors possibly didn't know about
or hadn't seen. Had she recently met someone who then killed her? Had
someone turned up at the house and Jacqueline had felt comfortable enough to let them
in. And why had Jacqueline been targeted? She was very private about her
life and far she may have had things she did not share with others,
and getting to the bottom of it may prove tricky. Were any of the
people cited that day involved. Certainly the man in the brown style chevek car
is still a crucial person of interest, and despite multiple appeals at the time,
he never came forward. Why did he pull into Jacqueline's driveway that day?
The police did at one point believe they had a main suspect who was
this and why did they not proceed with charges. There is so much we
don't know about Jacqueline's murder, but I cannot get the images of her son
discovering her body and her other son waiting for his mum to pick him up
from school. They did not deserve to grow up without their mother, and
the person responsible should have been brought to justice. Her family, in particularly
her children, should have the answers they need, and I really do hope
we see some more progress in this case. If you know anything about the
murder of Jacqueline Palmer Radford in nineteen ninety two, please contact police on one
oh one with what you know. Anything could help. Thank you for listening
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as always, I'm Caprice and this has been unseen