Age: 41
Sex: female
Date: 28 Dec 1991
Place: White Marsh Court, Cromwell Road, Whitstable, Kent
Brenda Long was found dead in her bath at her flat in White Marsh Court, Cromwell Road, Whitstable.
Her body was found by her ex-boyfriend at about 9pm on Saturday 28 December 1991.
She was initially thought to have committed suicide, but the autopsy showed that she had been knocked out with diethyl ether and then drowned.
She died about eight months after her lover Alan Leppard was shot dead at their home in Monkton on 1 April 1991.
Brenda Long and her lover Alan Leppard had moved to Monkton in Kent around December 1990 and were planning to get married. They had been in bed together when someone knocked at the door and when Alan Leppard went to answer it, he was shot dead.
They had met at P and B Metal Components in Whitstable where he was a quality manager and she was an accounts manager. She said that they just fell in love, saying, 'It just seemed so right and it just happened. There was nothing that either of us could do to stop it'.
They had both been into bodybuilding and had competed in competitions.
After his murder, Brenda Long moved to the flat in White Marsh Court, Cromwell Road, Whitstable, also in Kent.
It was said that her death had initially looked like suicide, but that when they carried out her post-mortem they determined that she had diethyl ether in her bloodstream and marks around her face and mouth that suggested that she had been knocked out first and then drowned. The pathologist said she had suffered 'a deliberate violent assault'.
Brenda Long was last seen alive by her sister on Christmas Day 25 December 1991. Her sister said that she next spoke to Brenda Long the following day but noted that she sounded zombielike and that she had been concerned.
Brenda Long's ex-boyfriend said that following Alan Leppard's murder that he had tried to rekindle his relationship with her and had seen her the day before her murder. He said that Brenda Long had been very depressed and that he had taken her back to her flat but that he had slept on the sofa and left the following day but that when he returned later he had got no answer at the door and had then climbed in through a window and found her dead.
It was noted that her ex-boyfriend, who Brenda Long had left to start her relationship with Alan Leppard, had been 28 miles away at in a gym in Sittingbourne at the time that Alan Leppard was shot.
When she was found, the police found a suicide note and an empty packet of pills floating in the bath water and a gin and tonic glass by the tub. They said that there were no signs of violence and nothing to suggest that anyone else was involved.
The police said that they could not look at the murder of Brenda Long without looking at the murder of her partner Alan Leppard earlier on, noting that Brenda Long had been a key witness in Alan Leppard's murder.
However, they said that they had found no motive for either murder.
It was said that their murders might have been contract killings, but that there was no suggestion that either of them had been involved in any criminality.
When the coroner returned a verdict of unlawful killing at Brenda Long's inquest, he said that her death was 'one of the strangest and most disturbing cases I have dealt with for some time'.
No suspects for her murder, or Alan Leppard's murder were ever identified.