Violet Milsom 1985 Murder Unsolved Mystery death of a kindly pensioner TWENTY years ago, a man broke into Violet Milsom's Ashley Road flat, sexually assaulted her, strangled her, and then mutilated her with a five-inch long knife. He has never been caught. A year later, the 80-strong team of detectives who had been working on the case were even unsure of the killer's motive. The 62-year-old grandmother had drawn out her £37 pension from the Lower Ashley Road post office the day before her body was found by a friend who had called in to do some gardening. Despite all the cash being missing - except for a little money found in a purse - police still think that the man's motive may have been sexual, with robbery as an afterthought. But Detective Sergeant Malcolm Hughes, who led the murder inquiry, told reporters: 'We may be looking for a man who is a thief as well as a sexual pervert. What he did to Mrs Milsom was done deliberately, and not in the heat of the moment.' Her 35-year-old son, Roger, who was called in to identify the body, said that his mother had been divorced from her husband James since 1971 and had, at one time, been employed in a chicken bar. But she had not worked for several years before her death, he revealed, and had lived alone in her one-bedroom flat in a basement in St Paul's for some three years. Det Sgt Hughes told an Bristol Evening Post reporter: 'Someone in the area must have heard something. I cannot believe that no one knows anything. 'The whole family is shattered by this. The person who did it must be really sick. 'She was well liked by everyone in the neighbourhood' he added. 'She would always welcome anyone who called at her door and was always giving money to tramps and people who were hard up.' There was no sign of a break-in. Violet always took a sleeping pill at 7pm and would not then answer the door. It fact, she used to put a sign up in her window saying:'No answer after 6-o-clock to anyone. Thank you.' But the night she died that note went missing. She had last been seen alive some time after 4pm on the day she died, when she had gone out to do some shopping. The owner of the grocer's store across the road, near the Shady Grove cafe, said, 'She was a nice old lady She came in here every morning and every evening to buy papers.' Neighbours told officers that she had talked to them about an attempted burglary at her home within the last eight weeks. She had apparently been at home resting when she heard the sound of smashing glass in the front door and had then seen three youths running away The incident was reported to the police. Detectives had few other clues to go on. The weapon, thought to be a Stanley knife, which was used to mutilate partially clothed Violet, was never found but a pink nylon belt used to tie her wrists together was recovered and put on show in the hope that someone would be able to identify it. Police said that they had reason to believe that it belonged to the murderer rather than the victim. A further puzzle was provided by an old Christmas card found in the flat. Sent in 1976 or 1977, it spelt the victim's name as Vilet, with the 'o' missing. Sent by a man named Steve, who was never traced, it read: 'For my sweetheart at Christmas'. In a final but ultimately unsuccessful appeal to the public, the last few days of Violet Milsom's life were reconstructed on TV's Crimewatch. Who, the programme asked, was the young man that she had been seen with the previous Friday outside the Trading Post second hand furniture shop in Stokes Croft? And who were the three youths, two black and one white, seen outside her flat on the night of the murder? Who was the mysterious, slim, white man seen coming out of a gate - which could have been hers -just before midnight the same night? He was identified as wearing light denims and a light blue woollen jumper with collar-length, unkempt light brown hair. And who was the upset young man seen hitting his head against a nearby garden wall and crying ' Oh no,' who then collapsed into a crouching position and began to cry? None of these men ever came forward and the murder remains as much a mystery today as on the morning Violet Milsom's body was found.