The list of unexplained deaths and disappearances is distressingly long and stretches back to the 1960s. A spokeswoman for Avon and Somerset Police said: 'These unsolved murder cases will never be closed until the killers are convicted. All unsolved murder cases are regularly reviewed. We have made enormous strides during the past two decades, not only in scientific techniques but in interviewing techniques. But despite these advances, in all these cases we still need the help of the public. In every case there is someone who knows something, someone who may have doubts or suspicions or someone who is living a lie. We would urge anyone with any information to contact Crimestoppers.
Former Chippenham rugby player EVAN JONES, from Stokes Croft, was found beaten to death on March 13, 2002. He had been kicked and punched in an attack described by police as vicious and sustained. The 46-year-old father-of-two was attacked shortly after leaving his local pub, The Beaufort, in Montpelier.
In 1976, nurse SUSAN DONAGHUE lay sleeping in her Stoke Bishop basement flat, when an intruder broke in. He hit her seven times with a truncheon and sexually assaulted the 44-year-old divorcee, leaving behind the murder weapon, a pair of bloodstained gloves and a tobacco tin. Police believe the killer was local, in his early 20s, and 'sexually inadequate'.
SHELLEY MORGAN34, from Windmill Hill, took her children to the school bus on June 11, 1984, and was never seen alive again. Her naked body was found the following October in a shallow grave in a remote copse in Backwell, near Bristol.
The case of 11-year-old PHILIP GREEN is one of the oldest of Avon and Somerset's unsolved cases. Philip was killed as he collected lost golf balls at Shirehampton golf course on March 31, 1970. His body was found under trees on the course. He had been hit about the head several times and strangled. Nearby was the bloodstained piece of wood used to kill him.
Church-going railway steward KEITH BURGESS was supposed to be at work on the day of December 17, 1989. But when a neighbour went to feed his cat she found the 38-year-old lying in a pool of blood. He had been beaten to death with a hammer and stabbed. Mr Burgess, 38, who was gay, had earlier been to All Saints Church in Clifton, Bristol, where he was a server. A scruffy man in a bobble hat was seen hanging around Mr Burgess' flat in Duchess Road, Clifton, between 12.30pm and 12.40pm. Police believe Mr Burgess let the killer in as there were no signs of a forced entry. The man in the bobble hat, possibly a vagrant from the Swindon area, has never been traced.
Stockbroker's wife BERYL CULVERWELLwas found dead on January 13, 1978, in the garage of at her home in Widcombe Hill, Bath. The 52-year-old mother-of-three had been clubbed over the head with a shotgun and stabbed 20 times with a bread knife. The telephone wires of the home had been cut but nothing was stolen apart from a small amount of cash. Mr Culverwell, who died in June 1989, found his wife's body. Police believe she may have disturbed an intruder.
Bristol prostitute WENDY JENKINS was killed at the time that Yorkshire Ripper Peter Sutcliffe was stalking the North of England on the hunt for his victims. Miss Jenkins, aged 32, was found buried under a heap of sand in Backfields, St Paul's, Bristol, in August 1979. Her skull had been smashed in.
The disappearance of MARY BASTHOM in Gloucester in 1968 is still one of the West's greatest mysteries and could be linked to the region's most notorious serial killer. Miss Basthom, who was only 15, was last seen at a bus stop in the city's Bristol Road, on her way to her boyfriend's home. She never arrived. The circumstances of her disappearance sparked suggestions that she could have been one of Fred West's earliest victims and at Rosemary West's trial a witness claimed that Fred said Mary was one of 20 victims buried on farmland in the Gloucester area.
Somerset pensioner WINIFRED LOCKE, 80, was murdered at her home in North Petherton, Bridgwater, in October 1983. Whoever sexually assaulted and strangled her could have been local, because of his knowledge of the area.
VIOLET MILSOM, 62, who was found dead in her Bristol flat on October 1, 1985. Mrs Milsom, from Ashley Road, St Paul's, had been strangled with a piece of her clothing and her hands had been tied with a pink belt. Her body had been mutilated with a five-inch knife.
Prostitute LINDA GUEST, aged 35, worked in the St Paul's area of Bristol and was stabbed to death on April 21, 1985. Her body was dumped in a secluded llane in Frampton Cotterell, near Bristol. The mother-of-three, who was also known as Jackie Waines, was thought to have been sexually assaulted before she met her death.
GLENIS CARRUTHERS, from Buckinghamshire, left a party held for a 21-year-old friend on a freezing night in January 1974. The streets were pitch black as the country was in the depths of an energy crisis. Only the most essential street lighting was on. Somewhere in the darkness near Bristol Zoo, in Clifton, she met her killer. A witness saw what he believed was a 'courting couple' on grass near the zoo. But the man got up alone and later the body of the 20-year-old woman was found. She may have been grabbed from behind. Her death was the last major murder tackled by the old Bristol Constabulary. More than 16,000 people were interviewed.
If 17-year-old MELANIE ROAD had taken a taxi home on the night of June 8, 1984, it is likely that she would still be alive today. The A-level student from Bath left a citycentre nightclub that evening but, for some reason, decided to walk to her home in Lansdown. Somewhere along that route, she met an attacker who sexually assaulted her and stabbed her repeatedly in the pelvic area, leaving her to die in a pool of blood. More than 100 officers were drafted in, the area was combed and appeals for witnesses were issued - all to no avail.
DEREK GRAIN was beaten to death in November 1980. His body was found in quiet Brandon Lane, Clifton, after he had spent the evening at two nightclubs in nearby Park Street. The 39-year-old British Aerospace engineer may have been attacked by a gang who kicked him in the head as he lay dying.
HELEN FLEET, of Weston-super-Mare, was stabbed, beaten and strangled while walking her dog in Worlebury Woods in 1987. A male suspect, who would now be in his 30s, was seen running away from the spot where Mrs Fleet's body was found. A youth had been seen talking to her several times.
ANN MYRING,45, a mother-of-two from Stoke Gifford, disappeared in 1997 after leaving work colleagues at Hewlett Packard, in Filton, and her body has never been found. Her husband Brian, now aged 51, was charged with her murder but was cleared in December, 1999, by a jury at Bristol Crown Court. Her mother, 72-year-old mother Gwendoline Brace, told the Evening Post last year: 'Losing your child is every parent's worst nightmare. She is in my thoughts when I wake up and she is there when I go to bed. There can be no closure until Ann's body is found and we can give her a proper Christian burial. We know that Ann is dead. She wouldn't have left her two children or the rest of the family.' But Mrs Myring's sons Stephen Myring, aged 23, and his 17-year-old brother, David, still hold out hope that she is alive and in 2000, joined forces with the National Missing Persons Helpline in a bid to discover what happened to their mother.
Vagrant MICHAEL FAHEY was found dead on waste ground off Ashley Road, Bristol, just yards from a main road crowded with people going to work. The 33-year-old, who had been homeless for five years, was bludgeoned to death in January 1989.
Fears for railway worker MARK YENDELL grew when he failed to arrive at his Bristol home in October 1984. Later, it was discovered that he had been battered around the head with a blunt instrument and dumped in the city's docks. Police found the 32year-old's abandoned car at Welsh Back and traced droplets of blood from there to the water.
Two final cases that still remain open are those of GEORGE THURLEY, aged 46, who died from a ruptured intestine after being attacked in Bristol in 1989, and LOUISE JANE DUNNE, aged 74, from Easton, who was killed in June 1967.
