Age: 46
Sex: male
Date: 17 Dec 1993
Place: Wyre Street, Piccadilly Station, Manchester
Adnan Abdul Hameed Al-Sane was found decapitated in a railway arch near Piccadilly Station, in Manchester.
His head was later found on the M6 motorway at Cannock, Staffordshire.
Around the time that his body was found, a dark Ford Escort car was seen there at about 4am. The driver of the car was described as being between 20 and 40 years of age and with dark hair.
Adnan Al-Sane was a retired Kuwaiti banker who had moved to London in 1986 and had lived in an upmarket flat in Maida Vale, West London.
He was last seen dining with a business acquaintance at the Britannia Hotel in Grosvenor Square, London, on the evening of 16 December 1993.
His body, minus the head, was found under the railway lines at Piccadilly Station, Manchester in Wyre Street, a small road that went beneath the lines.
His body was naked other than his underpants and appeared to have been burnt.
His head was found six weeks later on 27 January 1994 in Cheslyn Hay, near Cannock, about 70 miles away alongside the M6 motorway by a man out walking his dog. It was later thought that his head had been thrown from a car that had been travelling along the motorway.
His face was unrecognisable due to injuries thought to have been caused by a machete or an Arab sword, but his face was reconstructed in clay and his dental work examined, which revealed that he had had bridge-work carried out that used a rare metal alloy and led to his identification.
The police said that during the attack on Adnan Al-Sane he had swallowed a tooth. They also said that he was dead before his head was decapitated.
However, after the head was found, it was linked to the body found in Manchester by DNA analysis. The fingerprints from the body were also later matched with fingerprints from his flat in Maida Vale.
The police later said that they thought that he had been abducted from his apartment after returning from his dinner on 16 December 1993.
Adnan Al-Sane was described as a Kuwaiti millionaire. However, he was said to have suffered substantial losses after the Kuwaiti stock market collapsed in the early 1980s.
It was also thought that he might have been involved in shadowy arms deals as well as a high-powered financial feud in Kuwait.
Adnan Al-Sane was also said to have had links with Kuwait royalty.
It was noted by the Kuwaiti community however, that, although beheading was a traditional form of Arabic punishment, the method of his murder, with the Arab sword, was not a normal method of retribution in their country.
The police described his murder as 'non-professional, but methodical'.
In 1994 the police said that they were looking in to possible links between his murder and a shooting at Paddington, London on 16 April 1994 in which a couple were shot. the man and woman were both 31-years-old. It was said that the man was hit four times and the woman once and that they were both taken to St Mary's Hospital, Paddington where they were described to have been in a serious but stable condition. It was said that the man had been a business associate of Adnan Al-Sane and that at the time of Adnan Al-Sane's murder, he had been being sued in the High Court by Adnan Al-Sane for £600,000.
The lawyer that had been representing Adnan Al-Sane said that he recognised the clay bust when he saw it on the television as that of his client Adnan Al-Sane.
The police said that after Adnan Al-Sane went missing, six box files from his flat also went missing.
When commenting on the murder of Adnan Al-Sane, a Detective Superintendent said, 'It is bizarre and mystifying. A financial motive is the only one I can think of at the moment, unless someone tells us something to the contrary'.
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