Anne Steele

Anne Steele was found dead in her flat at 33 Aberfoyle Street in Glasgow on 11 January 1956.

Neighbours had heard screams and moans from her flat, which was in a block of tenement houses, and when they went to investigate they found her dying on her living room floor and a poker lying nearby. The police described her murder as a 'very brutal murder'.

Three witnesses said that they saw a young man climb 50 feet down a drainpipe from the bathroom of her flat and her kitchen window was found to be open. Each of the three witnesses had said that they had seen the man running away from her flat.

A youth was also seen shortly after the murder climbing some railings that surrounded a nearby children's playground.

The police said, 'We are anxious to interview a youth, aged between 17 and 20, who was seen climbing over railings into Irongray Street, just after the murder. We are specially interested in him'.

One of the witnesses that saw him said that she thought that she could pick the man out if she saw him again.

After Anne Steele's body was found the police took a large number of items away, including dining room chairs, a piece of linoleum, a bottle of milk, a door handle and a handbag, to the Glasgow police identification bureau.

On 25 January 1956 the police said that they had received two calls regarding the murder, one from a man and another from a woman, with what they described as being 'valuable' information. The callers had called Glasgow Eastern police station and it was said that the calls were connected to an anonymous letter that the police had received in reference to Anne Steele's murder.

The anonymous letter had stated that a woman had collapsed in Alexandra Parade on a later evening and that when she was attended to by a man that the man had told her that he had seen a man with bloodstained hands running along Alexandra Parade on the night of the murder.

Later in the year, on 17 December 1956, a 31-year-old woman said that she noticed a man skulking in Bengairn Street in Haghill, Glasgow the same street that she lived in, and not far from where Anne Steele was murdered and said that when the man noticed that she had seen him he said to her, 'So you have seen me, well you're marked. You're the next one'. The woman said that after the man said that that she ran terrified to a neighbours.

She said that the incident happened at about 8am on the Monday morning. She said that the man had been hiding in the shadows and that when he saw her that he ran towards her and then made the remark to her and then ran off.