Age: 14
Sex: female
Date: 7 Jun 1972
Place: Tamworth, Staffordshire
Judith Roberts was murdered in the early evening of 7 June 1972 in or near a field north of Tamworth.
She had left home to ride her bicycle around the nearby lanes.
Her body was discovered 3 days later under a pile of hedge clippings and plastic fertiliser bags close to the hedge inside a field. Her bicycle lay in the hedge close to her body. When found, she was lying face downwards and the bottom half of her body was unclothed. There were no signs of sexual penetration.
She had 19 seperate wounds on her head including one major blow on the back of her head which fractured her skull and caused brain injury from which she died. The medical evidence indicated that that was the first blow, probably struck when she was standing upright, and it would have rendered her unconscious immediately.
A man was convicted of her murder and spent 25 years in jail but later had his conviction quashed.
