Hilda Murrell

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Hilda Murrell (born February 3, 1906 in Eaton Cottage near Shrewsbury , † approx. March 21/23, 1984 in Shrewsbury) was a British rose breeder , writer and environmental and anti-nuclear activist . Hilda Murrell was abducted on March 21, 1984 and found dead three days later ten kilometers from her home in Shrewsbury. The murder inquiries lasted 19 years and were the subject of several conspiracy theories .

life and work

Hilda Murrell was born on February 3, 1906 at Eaton Cottage near Shrewsbury. She was the eldest of two daughters of the gardener Owen Murrell. Her grandfather Edwin Murrell founded the Portland Nurseries and ran the business until he died in 1908.

Hilda Murrell attended Shrewsbury Girls High School. She received a scholarship to Newnham College in Cambridge , where she studied English and French literature as well as modern and medieval languages from 1924 . After graduating in 1928, although she would have preferred an academic career, she returned to Shrewsbury. She worked in her father 's nursery and flower shop, Murell's Nurseries , which was run by her father and uncle Edwin Foley Murrell. In 1937 she took over the management of the nursery. She established herself as an internationally respected rose breeder with a focus on breeding miniature roses and old rose varieties . Every year she published an esteemed rose and horticultural catalog. During the Second World War , she volunteered for the accommodation and integration of Jewish refugee children. She organized charity concerts with well-known musicians, such as pianist Myra Hess and violinist Jelly d'Arányi , to raise funds for the refugees.

Rosa 'Kiftsgate' in the Rosarium Baden near Vienna

She has won numerous prizes and medals for her rose varieties, including at the Chelsea Flower Show and Southport Flower Show. She maintained business relationships with the English royal family and the Churchill family . She advised Vita Sackville-West on the design of the garden in Sissinghurst , was involved in the creation of the white and rose garden in Sissinghurst and donated numerous rose bushes. One of her most successful market launches is the white climbing rose 'Kiftsgate', which Hilda Murrell discovered in Kiftsgate Court Garden and launched in 1954. In 1970 she retired from business life. She sold her company to television gardener Percy Thrower, who converted Murrell's rose nursery into a garden center.

After her retirement, Hilda Murrell was actively involved in environmental and nature conservation . She was a longtime member of the Shropshire Botanical Society and a founding member and board member of the Shropshire Trust for Nature , the Soil Association and the Shropshire Association of the Council for the Protection of Rural England . She has been involved in the anti-nuclear and anti-nuclear weapons movement since the 1970s .

In 1978 she wrote the essay What Price Nuclear Power? In which she critically examined the economic aspects of the civilian nuclear industry and warned of the consequences of the use of nuclear energy. In 1984 she was invited to a hearing on radioactive waste management from the Sizewell B nuclear reactor in Suffolk .

Hilda Murrell was a critical and very energetic woman with many interests. She was considered an expert on megaliths and landscape history in Great Britain. She also collected antiques and practiced various handicraft techniques such as weaving , spinning and tailoring .

Death and Investigations

At around noon on Wednesday March 21, 1984, Hilda Murrell was ambushed , sexually abused, and abducted in her own car in Shrewsbury after returning from shopping at her home at 52 Sutton Road . Between noon and 12.50 p.m. that day, at least twelve witnesses saw her slump in the passenger seat of her car at various locations in Shrewsbury. The driver has been described as 25 to 40 years old. In the early afternoon, the abandoned car was seen in a ditch six miles east of Shrewsbury by a farmer who called the police in the early evening. The police officers who were summoned first found the owner of the vehicle, which was damaged but not reported as stolen. The vehicle keys were removed and there was nothing to indicate an accident with injuries. After a brief search in the area, the police broke off their investigation.

The following Saturday morning, the half-clothed, lifeless body of Hilda Murrell was found in a wood not far from the abandoned car. The police found items of clothing, identification papers and a kitchen knife scattered around the area. An autopsy found that Hilda Murrell had been mistreated and stabbed multiple times. The pathologist Peter R. Acland came to believe that Hilda Murrell about 5 to 10 hours after the knife attack on hypothermia had died.

The police immediately began an extensive investigation, which was made more difficult by the fact that finger and tire prints had been obliterated by the heavy rain of the previous days. The criminal investigation then focused on the house of Hilda Murrell. The evaluation of fingerprints initially did not result in a breakthrough in the search for the perpetrator. However, it was possible to reconstruct the course of the crime: Hilda Murrell surprised a burglar at noon on March 21, 1984, who overpowered and abused the old lady. She fell, broke a banister and injured her shoulder in the process. The police found traces of semen on textiles, an imprint of a sneaker, a beer can and an incomplete handprint on the toilet. According to the police, the inexperienced and unprofessional burglar then forced the injured woman into her own car and drove her to the Shrewsbury area, where he presumably lost control of the vehicle and stuck the car in the sodden hard shoulder. He forced the woman into the nearby wood, where he stabbed her several times.

The criminal case achieved great national and international fame. Several documentaries and television programs, such as Crime watch UK , covered the murder of Hilda Murrell. Although over 100 police officers were involved in the murder investigation and 12,000 people and more than 1,800 possible suspects were questioned, no perpetrator could be identified. The forensic methods available in 1984 did not succeed in determining the perpetrator's blood group from the samples seized.

Since 1984 to this day, conspiracy theories about the circumstances surrounding the death of Hilda Murrell have been published in numerous documentaries and books. One of the theories is that Hilda Murrell was murdered by the secret service in her home . The Labor -Abgeordnete Tam Dalyell claimed in December 1984, she was killed by men of the British secret that over the sinking of the Argentine ship after documents General Belgrano had sought. The background to this theory was the involvement of Hilda Murrell's nephew, Navy intelligence officer Robert Green, in an intelligence operation during the Falklands War that led to the sinking of the Argentine cruiser on May 2, 1982. The proponents of this theory assumed that the British secret service had looked in Hilda Murrell's house for papers deposited there by her nephew. Another conspiracy theory relates to their involvement in the anti-nuclear movement. Proponents of this theory suggested that Hilda Murrell was killed in order not to testify at the Sizewell B nuclear reactor hearing. The police followed up these theories for several years, but could not substantiate the suspicions.

In March 1990, double killer David McKenzie also confessed to the murder of Hilda Murrell. Seven months later, the prosecutor in charge said there was not enough evidence to bring charges against him. In the following years, the evidence was unsuccessfully examined using new forensic procedures in order to determine the blood group of the murderer and to analyze his DNA . The breakthrough in the murder case came in 2003 by a special police unit that had been working on the Cold Case case since 1996. The DNA that was found at the time of the murder was determined by the Birmingham Testing Center from a sperm sample on Hilda Murrell's underwear 16-year-old student Andrew George was assigned. Andrew George was living in a children's home not far from Murrell's home at the time. He was arrested in Shrewsbury in June 2003 and sentenced to life in prison in May 2005 . George claimed to have broken into the house but denied the murder.

Despite the final conviction, the conspiracy theorists still have doubts about the sole involvement of Andrew George. These doubts are fed, among other things, by the fact that the description of the young person, who at the time could not yet drive a car, does not match the testimony, and DNA under Hilda Murrell's fingernails should, according to the skeptics, rule out Andrew George as the sole perpetrator. After examining the arguments, the police see no reason to re-investigate the case.

Hilda Murrell's nephew Robert Green published the documentary A Thorn in Their Side: the Hilda Murrell Murder in 2011 , which raised doubts about the police investigation.

Honor and reception

Rosa 'Hilda Murrell'

A few weeks before her death, Hilda Murrell gave the British rose breeder David CH Austin the consent to name a dark pink English rose after her.

Hilda Murrell's ashes were scattered on the property of her cottage in Llanymynech, Welsh, near Oswestry . Today a stone pyramid commemorates them there. In 2015, in her hometown of Shrewsbury, a street was named after the rose grower and environmental activist on the site of her former nursery.

Three years after her death, her close friend Charles Sinker published her illustrated garden diaries from 1961 to 1983 under the title Hilda Murrell's Nature Diaries .

The murder of Hilda Murrell has been the subject of a number of music and theater plays, documentaries and books. The song The Rose Grower by the English group Attacco Decente and Resist the Atomic Menace by Oi Polloi as well as the novel GB84 by David Peace and Ian Rankin's novel The Impossible Death all relate to Hilda Murrell and the circumstances of her death.

Her nephew Robert Green published the book A Thorn in Their Side: the Hilda Murrell Murder in October 2011 . He claims there is ample new evidence known to both prosecutors and the defense but not presented to the jury or the appellate judges. In August 2013 the British new edition was published with a new foreword by Michael Mansfield and a supplementary chapter.

On November 6, 2016, the DNA of a murder of the British television series Robbie Coltrane 's Critical Evidence was used to document the search for the perpetrator. It was first broadcast in Germany on November 1, 2018 on Kabel Eins Doku .

Literature on Hilda Murrell

  • Judith Cook: Who Killed Hilda Murrell? (1985)
  • Graham Smith: Death of a Rose Grower: Who Killed Hilda Murrell? (1985)
  • Charles Sinker: Hilda Murrell's Nature Diaries (1987)
  • Judith Cook: Unlawful Killing of Hilda Murrell: Murder of Hilda Murrell (1994)
  • Robert Green, Kate Dewes: A Thorn in Their Side: the Hilda Murrell Murder (2011)

Movies

  • Fatal Einbruch (DNA of a murder) from The decisive evidence - with Robbie Coltrane , season 1, episode 5 (2016)

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Notes on the history, landmarks and people of the Portland Nurseries area of ​​Shrewsbury. Retrieved January 4, 2020 .
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g Hilda Murrell: A rose of England . November 11, 2009 ( bbc.co.uk [accessed January 4, 2020]).
  3. ↑ Tony Lord: Sissinghurst: the most beautiful garden in England . 2nd Edition. DuMont, Cologne 2002, ISBN 3-7701-8620-6 , p. 135 .
  4. ↑ Tony Lord: Sissinghurst: the most beautiful garden in England . 2nd Edition. DuMont, Cologne 2002, ISBN 3-7701-8620-6 , p. 47 .
  5. ↑ Rosehips for romance in the garden. Retrieved January 4, 2020 .
  6. ↑ a b c Northumbria Police report of the investigation into West Mercia Police handling of their investigation into the abduction and murder of Hilda Murrell. Northumbria Police, 1985, accessed January 4, 2010 .
  7. ↑ a b c After 20 years, man jailed for peace activist's murder. May 7, 2005, accessed January 4, 2020 .
  8. ^ Karl-Heinz Wocker: The ingratitude of the fatherland . In: The time . April 12, 1985, ISSN  0044-2070 ( zeit.de [accessed January 4, 2020]).
  9. ↑ a b c Michael Mansfield: Who really killed Hilda Murrell? In: The Guardian . March 20, 2012, ISSN  0261-3077 ( theguardian.com [accessed January 4, 2020]).
  10. ↑ DNA puts end to conspiracy theory . May 7, 2005 ( bbc.co.uk [accessed January 4, 2020]).
  11. ^ Conspiracy theories still surround murder of anti-nuclear campaigner Hilda Murrell. Retrieved February 3, 2020 .
  12. ↑ Murder Mystery. In: Shropshire Weekly. March 23, 2018, accessed January 4, 2020 (UK English).
  13. ↑ David Austin: English Roses - Tradition and Beauty . 4th edition. DuMont, Cologne 1996, ISBN 3-7701-3267-X , p. 112 .
  14. ↑ Hopes for clues on Hilda Murrell death. Retrieved January 4, 2020 .
  15. ↑ Street sign in memory of murdered Shrewsbury woman Hilda Murrell spelt wrong. Retrieved January 4, 2020 .
  16. ↑ Fresh claims over Murrell death . March 24, 2012 ( bbc.com [accessed January 4, 2020]).
  17. ^ DNA of a Murder. Retrieved January 4, 2020 .
  18. ↑ The Ultimate Evidence - Featuring Robbie Coltrane Season 1, Episode 5: Fatal Burglary. In: fernsehserien.de. Retrieved January 4, 2020 .

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Murrell, Hilda
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British rose grower, environmental activist
DATE OF BIRTH February 3, 1906
PLACE OF BIRTH at Shrewsbury
DATE OF DEATH at March 21, 1984 or at March 23, 1984
Place of death at Shrewsbury