On September 7, 1956, a shocking discovery was made by three young boys in the bushes on Green Lane in Leverstock Green. It was the dead body of a woman, later identified as 36-year-old Diana Suttey.
She had been strangled with a pink and white scarf and it was thought that she had been dumped where she was found by someone in a motor car.
Police at the time suggested that Diana Suttey had been murdered by a man that she had met secretly multiple times in Hemel Hempstead and that he may have decided to kill her after a quarrel, possibly over another lover.
The suspect car was seen by a number of people and was described as being a medium to light-blue ten horse power saloon car which was within three years old and with the registration number SUU 138.
The police reported that they had checked thousands of registration numbers similar to SUU 138 in the hunt for the murderer, but without success.
The car was seen in Green Lane at about 3pm on Friday, September 7, 1956 and it was thought that Diana had struggled somewhere along the three-mile lane before her body was dumped in the bushes and discovered by three young boys in an event which would scar them forever.
Detective Superintendent Albert Griffin recorded at the time: “She had plainly been strangled. I could see the fold marks of a tightened scarf around the front of her neck, and her face was suffused and shot with tiny asphyxial haemorrhages.’”
Diana Suttey’s inquest concluded on Tuesday, February 12 1957 at Hemel Hempstead with a verdict of murder by a person or persons unknown.
The murder was later compared to that of Jean Townsend, who was killed in Ruislip in September 1954. Similarities in the two murders were highlighted, with both women having been dumped in a lane near Hemel Hempstead.
Despite eyewitness accounts and a massive police hunt across the area, Diana’s killer was never found and remains an unsolved murder to this day. It seemed that everything was known about him except his identity, making him one of the luckiest killers ever to get away with murder.
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