Hester Mottershead

Hester Mottershead died from a brain haemorrhage following a distraction burglary at her home, Saxonfields in Tettenhall.

Four men posing as water board officials dressed in blue boiler suits entered her home and whilst one of them pretended to inspect her taps, the other three spent half an hour going through her drawers and cupboards after which they left with her valuables in what was thought to be two cars. 

The police later said that they thought that the burglars had driven up to 100 miles in order to carry out the burglary before tracing then to two travellers sites.

Hester Mottershead dial the police after they left but then suffered a stroke and was found collapsed at her home and died the following morning.

Four men were later charged with her manslaughter but were only tried for burglary. The men were said to have been a gang of gypsies who lived on caravan sites in Warwickshire and Leicestershire. The men were however convicted for conspiracy to commit burglary and given sentences ranging between two to five years on 16 December 2013. The men were aged 20, 20, 22 and 23 in 2013. It was also heard that the four men had been part of a gang of eight men that had carried out a string of raids across the Midlands on the same day that Hester Mottershead was targeted.

The police traced the men after they connected twelve separate incidents to a distinctive Audi car

It was said that the manslaughter charges were dropped due to a lack of medical evidence, with the Crown Prosecution Service saying that they didn't believe that it could be proven beyond doubt that the men were responsible for her death, saying that that, 'was because, in the view of the CPS, our medical evidence wasn't strong enough for a causal link to be established'.

At her inquest it was heard that although cerebral haemorrhage, from which she died, could have been triggered by an acute stress response, the scientific evidence could not exclude the possibility that that was coincidental. The Coroner said, 'On the balance of probability I would suggest it has been a contributing factor'. 

Medical specialists said that the stroke was extremely likely to have been brought on as a result of increased stress levels and blood pressure caused by the raid.

Hester Mottershead had been a former headmistress a Bilston Girls’ High School and principle at Wolverhampton Girls High schools before retiring from teaching in 1983 and had lived alone in a detached house.

In her will she left £50,000 to Oxford University and £20,000 to New Cross Hospital in Wolverhampton as well as large sums to local schools and charities including the RNLI and the Dogs' Trust.