A harrowing discovery in a rural beauty spot left a local community reeling. Six years on, an inquest has revealed that police are still no closer to finding answers
Studded with sweeping trees and surrounded by chocolate box cottages, England’s ‘most picturesque’ river was the last place anyone expected to find evidence of a brutal murder.
The River Stour, a rural waterway that meanders along the Sussex/Essex border, is a popular spot for swimmers, kayakers and paddeboarders. But a dark stain on the stunning landscape came on August 27, 2020, when a dog walker spotted two bin bags looming in the water.
Two boys helped the woman recover the bags, which were suspiciously weighed down with bricks. Tragically, body parts were found inside, sparking a major murder inquiry.
Two days later, police divers found skull fragments, facial bones and two loose teeth in a thin blue plastic bag 150 metres further along the river when they swooped in on the rural beauty spot.
Six years on, after multiple appeals and a long-running criminal investigation, the police are no closer to finding out the identity of the victim – or who is responsible for the murder.
But today, a coroner concluded at a heavily delayed inquest that the mystery man was was unlawfully killed. Suffolk’s senior coroner Nigel Parsley recorded that the man died as the result of a “violent assault”.
We look at how the tragic mystery unfolded – and the questions that remain unanswered…
The initial discovery
Dog walker Julie Dunn-Beechin said in a statement read at today’s Ipswich inquest that she saw two black bin bags in the water on a stretch of the River Stour near Meadow Gate and Croft Bridge. She said her attention was drawn to them when her dogs started sniffing in the area and it “didn’t seem right to me”.
Park ranger Samuel Morgan, who she called, said: “She said she didn’t know if she had been watching too many Midsomer Murders and had a concern about what could be in the bags.”
Mr Morgan said he saw through a small hole in the bag what, “I thought looked like mummified skin and bone” and what appeared to be the ball joint of an arm, and he called the police.
The bags of human remains were also stuffed with carrier bags, decorative glass stones and commercial air freshener blocks. A post-mortem carried out at the time was not able to determine a cause of death or any form of identification.
Det Supt Mike Brown, of Suffolk Police, told today’s inquest that it his team estimate the bags were deposited between August 13 and August 19, 2020. He said a volunteer litter picker, who regularly uses a canoe in the area, reported the site was clear on August 13. There was a first sighting of the bin bags on August 19 but this was not reported to police at the time.
Days after the partial remains were found, officers from the Suffolk Police Major Investigation Team encouraged two boys and a swimmer to help with their inquiries.
Brown said at the time: “We would like to speak to two boys who assisted the witness who found the bags in the water on Thursday 27 August, and tried to help recover them. Secondly, we would like to speak to a man who was seen swimming in the area of the river known locally as the ‘Victorian bathing pool’ on Thursday 20 August.”
Officers were also keen to hear from anyone who used the route regularly, but despite more than 1,000 reports being taken, they hit a dead end.
Forensic breakthrough
In 2021, a year on from the discovery, Suffolk Police confirmed through forensic testing that the victim was a man and was likely to have been in his late 50s to early 60s.
The tests also revealed the victim was likely white, of north European descent, about 5ft 6in (1.67m) to 5ft 9in (1.75m) with blond hair when he was born that may have darkened with age, and blue or green eyes. They also suggested that he was of an “athletic or muscular” build.
Radiocarbon dating, a method used to determine the age of materials like bone, placed his date of death between 2008 and 2012.
The investigation team combed through hundreds missing people records and looked at DNA databases in the UK and abroad, but were still left with no leads on a full ID.
Suffolk Police’s Assistant Chief Constable Eamonn Bridger said at the time: “We said this would be a long and methodical process and it has proven to be just so, especially due to the type of specialist forensic testing that has been – and continues to be – taking place. Many of the results that have come back then need to be subject to further tests and so we still have a distance to go.”
That same year, a 26-year-old man from Sudbury was arrested in connection with the investigation but was released with no further action. The police then released a new image in 2022 of a couple walking two dogs and pulling a shopping trolley bag on Melford Road. They believed the pair could have been witnesses – not suspects in the case.
Chilling new details released
In 2023, investigators shared harrowing new information in a bid to move the murder inquiry forward. They revealed that the man’s hands – which were missing – had been cut off and his skull had 27 deep lacerations. This led them to explore the possibility that the man was a victim of organised crime.
Officers uncovered part of the man’s skull and jaw; the right and left arm bones and partial wrist bones and the complete lower right and left legs, including the feet.
The legs, arms and feet were partially mummified and one of the wrist bones had a healed fracture. The bones had been dismembered cleanly at the joints, police said, suggesting a level of “expertise”.
“The most likely and preferred hypothesis is that there’s a criminal element,” Brown told today’s inquest, adding that the injuries inflicted on the skull supported this. He said the manner of dismemberment of the body could suggest someone with “skill in butchery”.
The man’s arms were found bent into the first bag and his legs in the second, with the feet pushed towards the shins. The third bag, found by dive teams in the river, contained more bone fragments such as the man’s nose and a jaw with only two teeth, ITV News reports.
James Clery, a senior forensic scientist with nearly 30 years of courtroom experience in both criminal and civil cases, tells the Mirror: “It’s certainly common in organised crime cases to find bodies with the fingers and teeth removed, and that in itself would be a marker for this being that type of case. It would take someone with a strong stomach to dismember a person, pull their teeth and cut their fingers off, and stuff them into bags.”
Explaining that the bags don’t appear to have been in the water for long, Brown said in 2023: “It would appear the remains had been stored in dry, airless, conditions for a number of years before someone decided they needed to be disposed of.
“It could be that the people responsible for his death took the decision to move the remains, or that someone discovered them and not wanting to engage with the police, decided to simply dispose of them.”
Police also confirmed that the bags gave off a “strong, chemical smell” due to the air fresheners placed inside, the BBC reports. Smaller carrier bags stuffed inside the bin bags included a white ‘Thing-Me-Bobs’ bag – the style of which was produced between 2013 and 2015 – a Boots bag from around 2012 and generic blue carrier bags that are often used by market traders.
At today’s inquest, the coroner said that the removal of the man’s hands and the injuries to his head and face “appear to have been an attempt to hamper his identification”.
“We must remember that the Croft Man was somebody’s son,” he said. “He lived for 60 to 70 years. He may well have had family, he almost certainly had friends. It’s a tragedy we cannot identify him as there must be some loved ones somewhere wondering where their loved one is.”
Case goes cold
On the five year anniversary of the tragic discovery, police admitted that DNA profiling has so far drawn a blank, as they issued a fresh appeal for witnesses.
“Without a breakthrough on who the victim is, further inquiries linked to them and their associates is obviously not possible,” Det Supt Mike Brown said.
Marking the difficult milestone, the investigator said that Suffolk Police had undertaken “a vast number of inquiries”, including forensic, CCTV and house-to-house in Sudbury.
“The DNA profile of the victim has been compared on both UK and international databases but, despite this, the victim remains unidentified,” he added.
“We have also utilised the help of the National Crime Agency, regional partners and other specialists and experts from across the country.
Our leading hypothesis remains that we believe the deceased was likely to have been the victim of organised crime. I would continue to urge anyone who believes they have information that could assist us to please make contact without further delay.”
Cause of death update
Home Office pathologist Dr Ginni Fitzpatrick-Swallow told today’s inquest that the limbs in the black bags were mummified but there was no skin on the skull fragments in the blue bag found by police divers.
She said, referring to the skull pieces, that there were “at least 14 linear cuts” and these could have been caused by a “heavy weapon with a sharp edge” such as a meat cleaver, axe or machete. The expert said there had been “multiple blows to the head,” adding: “The appearance is consistent with repeated strikes in rapid succession due to their uniformity.”
She said it was not known if the skull injuries were inflicted in life as there was no soft tissue remaining. “To completely destroy a skull like that seems from a dismemberment point of view unnecessary,” she said.
Fitzpatrick-Swallow added that “to remove the hands and destroy the facial features” can be associated with disguising the identity of the deceased.
The pathologist said some of the remains “may have been frozen” and may have been wrapped in plastic for a period of time. She gave the medical cause of death as unascertained.
Why has the victim still not been identified?
Forensic expert Clery tells us: “With the issue of identification, DNA profiling can be helpful, but only so much, as it needs to be compared with a known profile, such as profiles on the National DNA Database (NDNAD). And this assumes a DNA profile is able to be generated in the first place.
“DNA is readily broken down by bacteria and depending on how well the DNA is preserved it is not uncommon to not be able to get a DNA profile from bodies found in water. The longer the immersion the worse the chance for obtaining a successful DNA result. Often the best chance of getting a good source of DNA is from bone marrow as it’s well protected within the long bones of the legs and arms.”
He adds: “Even with heavily decomposed remains, it is often possible to test for mitochondrial DNA, that is DNA passed only from the maternal (female) line. This type of testing is much more sensitive and able to detect much smaller amounts of DNA, and the DNA targeted is physically smaller, so less readily degraded.
“The downside of this type of testing is the way it can be compared, in that it is not able to be searched on the National DNA Database in the same way as normal DNA profiles. Instead a mtDNA profile can be searched on a database to see if it has been seen previously, or contain markers to indicate regions where they are most common. In this way, it is possible to get an idea if the individual was of a certain ethnicity, or from a certain geographic area. This type of testing is similar to Y-STR, male only, DNA profiling, which is again able to searched against a Y-STR database to determine how common a haplotype may be within a certain geographic area.
“Ultimately, whatever the type of DNA profile we have obtained, there needs to be a way to compare it with a known profile. Due to recent advances in familial searching, it is possible that a ‘near miss’ might be found, indicating a close family member. Sadly, again, this won’t work for mtDNA or Y-STR haplotypes.
“If a close family member was able to be tested then it would be able to compare DNA profiles, and this can work for any of the DNA testing systems. But it would not be practicable to test people en masse, much in the same way as with the first DNA case of Colin Pitchfork, in 1997 where 5,000 local men in Leicestershire were tested to compare with crime samples.”
Missed chance?
During his time working for the Chief Medical Examiner’s Office, Clery was tasked with establishing how flies can help in investigations involving decomposed bodies. And he believes that in cases like this, they can hold the key to a breakthrough.
“It is possible to get insect activity on bodies in water, where eggs are laid on exposed areas of a body when they float due to bloating,” he explains. “This is not so easy with bodies in bags, especially if weighed down like in this case. But, if the body was thought to be stored for some time prior to immersion, then it is possible that flies would have laid eggs on them.
“This would be especially the case where there is blood present, due to injury or fluid exudates resulting from the decomposing body. In this way, if the contents of a bag are examined carefully for entomological evidence it could be possible to determine the length of time prior to immersion, or burial, and the time of year, since the species of flies available for colonising a body will vary by season, and even the location, as flies found in a rural area will be different to ones found in an urban environment.”
