Todays story is a real life murder mystery, that’s currently a cold case.
It’s the story is of a british mum of 3, called Ann Heron.
On the 3rd of august 1990 Ann Heron was sunbathing outside her home in Darlington, county Durham. When Ann’s husband came home he found that Ann had been murdered. somebody had slit her throat.
The case was heavily featured in British media as well as on the BBC programme Crimewatch in October 1990, but her murder remains unsolved.
I’d like to say at this point, If there is enough written information, especially official documents, I try not to watch programmes in order to try and keep any documentary biases out of my videos. I want to investigate the information and try the best I can to get to the original source of information rather than just plagiarise some documentary writer.
Disclaimer
The usual disclaimer does out here, this is a true real life cold case. Therefore it is very much a sensitive matter. I’m doing it for information purposes only. And as far as I see it, when we talk about unsolved cases it does; or at least it should, in an ideal world, help raise awareness for the case and could even eventually lead to more evidence.
About Ann Heron
Ann and peter first met in 1984, while peter was away on a golfing trip in the Ilse of Bute in Scotland, which happened to be where Ann lived.
At that time Peter was 49 and Ann was 44. Peter was already married of 20 years and had 3 children back at home in Darlington.
Ann was also married, she’d been married to a police officer called ralph Cockburn for 15 years. She also had 3 children.
Peter and Ann hit it off pretty much straight away and they would come to find out, that they had a mutual friend back in Darlington.
With an obvious mutual attraction between the two, they stayed in touch after the peters trip.
Not long after Peters trip, Ann went to Darlington to visit her friend, and of course while she was there she was in touch with Peter. An affair started at some point which eventually lead them getting divorces and then marrying each other in 1986. This was only, roughly 2 years after they’d first met. And the wedding took place in Darlington.
Skipping forward 4 yers to 1990. Peter and Ann are now Living together on the outskirts of Darlington, county Durham. Peter was still working as a company director of an haulage firm down the road and Ann had a part-time job helping out as a care assistant at a local care home.
However, Ann was said to unhappy living in Darlington and often missed her children from her 3 children from her previous marriage, who had remained in Scotland.
Their house had been described as conspicuous. It was free-standing and clearly viable from the busy A road that it was next to.
When we say it was a busy A road, the road was actually the main route from Teesside airport to Darlington. So it was a heavily used road.
Ann was know to have felt frightened of the houses isolation and was said to have felt uneasy of being alone in the property.
The Day Ann Heron Was Murdered
On the morning of 3 August 1990, the UK was undergoing it’s hottest day on record. Now in early 2021 it was the 3rd hottest.. but I digress.
That night Ann was supposed to be attending an 18th birthday party. So Ann went shopping in Darlington with a friend, gift hunting, before returning home at lunchtime.
Working just down the road Peter often came home for lunch and this day was no different.
Ann told Peter that she was going to spend the afternoon sunbathing in her bikini in the garden.
Peter left to go back to work at 2:00pm.
At 2:30pm a friend rang and spoke to Ann, according to that friend Ann sounded ‘happy and cheerful’.
As we look at the house you can see it was surrounded in fields and at some point a nearby tractor had been going about its business. By doing so it was been blowing grass and dust towards Ann’s back garden. So in order to continue sunbathing Ann simply moved to the front of the house, nearer the road,
At 3:30pm a friend on a passing bus saw Ann sunbathing in her bikini in front of the house.
This was the last known sighting of Ann Heron alive.
When Peter Heron arrived home from work at 18:00, her radio was found still on, her a half full glass and cigarettes were by the lounger.
The family dog was also outside.
As peter approached the house he noticed the front door was open.
Peter calling out to Ann and receiving no response peter went into the house and found Ann’s body in the living room of the house.
Ann was lying on the floor face down in a pool of blood with a stab wound in her neck. Her bikini top were still in place. However, bikini bottoms had been removed.
Peter did his best to check Ann’s vital signs and then phoned the police.
When the police arrived they investigated, looking around both in the house and around the property for any evidence.
Nothing seems to have been stolen and the house were still very tidy, showing no signs of a disturbance or breaking and entry.
Although her drinking glass and cigarettes were still by the sun lounger Ann’s sandals and book were found 15 meters away from the sun lounger under a tree.
The post-mortem report concluded the estimated time of death was around 5pm and the cause of death was shock and blood loss from the throat wound.
The pathologist concluded the slit to Ann’s throat was caused by an instrument that could have been a cut throat razor or sharp work tool like a Stanley Knife. However again there was no murder weapon found at the scene.
Despite her bikini bottoms being removed, there was no other signs of sexual assault and there was also no signs of her being beaten nor even any signs of a struggle.
So there’s this situation. Ann has been found indoors, away from her sun lounger, she’s got a slit throat, but no other signs of injury, assault or struggle. To make this even harder for the police, there also wasn’t any obvious motive, neither burglary or sexual.
Police Investigation
In the police investigation, the police spoke to over 7,000 people and had taken over 4,000 witness statements.
Soon after the incident, the police talked to almost everyone that knew Ann, all of which echoed the same things about ann. She was attractive, well liked, popular, and well loved In the community.
She had no enemies, feuds, fallouts or anyone that would wish her harm and she wasn’t involved in anything dodgy, there wasn’t anything untoward going on in Ann’s life.
Further on from that people said the same things about Ann and Peter as a couple, they were both well liked and comfortable together.
Peter made a tearful public appeal offering £5,000 for anyone that had any information about the identity of the killer.
At first everyone sympathised and felt sorry for Peter… however eventually Peter would become the prime suspect.
Initial Suspects
This leads us on to talk about suspects and Peter is the first on the list.
When the police first investigated the murder, they saw no signs of a struggle either inside or outside of the house, this suggested to the police Ann may have known her killer.
Some people think this is supported by the fact the dog was outside when Peter returned home and there had been no barking. Dogs usually bark at an intruder… but this got me thinking, so I looked at the houses secluded location again … and as I previously said the house is pretty much on it’s own, who is to say the dog did bark but nobody heard it?
Being Ann’s husband, the person that found Ann and the person that reported it to the police. The police were obviously very interested to know more about Peter. Was there anything going on in his life? And more importantly where was he throughout that day and what was he doing?
So… by Peters account he left home after lunch, at 2pm. He went to his office and stayed there until 3pm. From his office, he went to Cleveland Bridge to meet a client, he stayed there till 4:30pm, at which time he went back to his office, and then went home.
The meeting was at Cleveland Bridge and Peter said he drove back to his office through the village of Croft-on-Tees and Middleton St. George.
Detectives questioned this route because going via Croft was not the most direct or logical route from Cleveland Bridge (which is only 400m from their House).
Police felt that Peter had a missing or unaccounted for amount of time. He could not account for the time between 4pm and 5.50pm (the time period in which the murder occurred).
Despite the polices suspicion he wasn’t arrested, he wasn’t a suspect and was released without charge.
Others pushed this speculation with statistics. In 1988 62% of those murdered in England and Wales were murdered by someone they knew, and 37% of women murdered in the UK are killed by their husband, boyfriend or lover.
One week after the murder, it was discovered that 55-year-old Peter was having an affair at the time with a 32-year-old barmaid at the local spa club.
This obviously lead some to suspect that he may have had a motive to kill Ann, but this could also be used to explain the time gap in Peter’s alibi and why he took an alternative route that day. But Peter knew this would make him look suspicious and that’s why he was hesitant to explain his otherwise explainable route.
Peter did also state that the affair was coming to an end at the time of Ann’s murder.
Peter was heavily suspected of being guilty by the public. He had been called murder to his face by passers by on the streets. And his daughters ended up being in a fight in a local nightclub when someone was making accusations against him.
However this isn’t where the story ends. As the story has unfolded it looked pretty damning towards Peter.
We’ve only followed one avenue of the investigation. There is the previously mention witness statements to take into account.
I want you to bare in mind as I go on through these next statements, that Peter’s daughter has said in an interview that Peter didn’t own a blue car at the time.
A witness came forward to say they saw a blue car, possibly a Vauxhall Astra, parked outside the house around 16:45. This is only 15 minutes before the pathologists thought the murder had taken place.
Witnesses also reported seeing a blue Leyland Sherpa van parked at the end of the drive, some time after this. The van had a trident logo on the side, and three men were seen inside it.
At around 17:05, roughly the time the murder had take place, a taxi driver and two women in different car who were passing the property, saw a blue car speeding down the driveway, away from the house. It was travelling so fast that the taxi driver did not know whether it would stop and pull out in front of him.
The car pulled out immediately behind him but accelerated and overtook the taxi before racing across the nearby roundabout and driving down Yarm Road into Darlington.
Several other people also reported seeing the car parked at the house and speeding down the drive. Investigators believed that it was the same vehicle.
Several of the witnesses gave similar descriptions of the male driver, He aged between 35 and 45 with a suntanned complexion and short dark hair, which was longer on the sides than on the top.
Regrettably, no-one managed to take note of the registration.
When Ann Heron’s murder was reconstructed on Crimewatch in October 1990, the multiple sightings of the blue car were described as “obviously the most interesting of the sightings”.
Although it was said to have possibly been an Astra, it was also noted that the car could have been a Mazda, Toyota or a Vauxhall Cavalier.
Police tracked down the owners of 3,500 blue cars, but the car has never been found or identified.
Despite several witnesses saying they had seen the driver, a photofit was never produced of the man. Durham Constabulary later stated that “the descriptions of both the vehicle and the person driving the vehicle differ and lacked the detail required for a photofit”.
A witness also said they thought they saw Ann driving near her home with two unidentified persons in the car, around 16:15 that afternoon. But they were not certain it was Heron. It’s likely that the witness was mistaken, as Ann was found dead in the same bikini she was seen wearing at 3:30pm, indicating she had sunbathed for the whole afternoon.
I have heard that this whitness knew Ann and they said Ann waved at them… however I can’t confirm that, and it seems unlikely, that police would just dismiss it, if that was the official statement.
A woman reported seeing a a male jogger near the house near the time of the murder. The woman was surprised at how fast the man was running and that he was wearing long trousers to run on the hottest day on record. Despite appeals for this man to come forward he never did. Now I do want to point out the conflict of information here, because although it was said he was wearing long trousers the polices appeal asked for a man wearing a blue vest and black shorts or trousers.
By 1991, the case had gone cold, despite press conferences and a Crimewatch UK reconstruction.
in late 1992 or early 1993 somebody confessed to Ann’s murder, to a 64year old woman working in a shop called Card Market in Newton Aycliffe.
The manageress took the man to the back of the shop to talk about possible orders.
“They were gone about ten minutes and he came out first. He looked at me and smiled, although it was more a smirk than a smile.
“The manageress came behind and she was physically shaking. She was frightened. She said, ‘you’ll never believe what he told me.'”
He had told her that he had killed Ann Heron but he was never going to be caught because he was moving to Australia.
“I don’t know why he said it, although the manageress looked a lot like Ann Heron.
“She wouldn’t go to the police saying he was probably just ‘playing silly beggars.’ It was only years later that I read about the murder and it really shook me because the description was exactly the same as that of a man seen speeding off in a car from the house.
“Swarthy, dark, early 30s, it was exactly the same. I know it is just hearsay but I think the police should have at least interviewed me properly.”
In 1992 Peter Heron had re-married. He publicly defended himself after the press questioned why he had re-married so quickly. Two uniformed officers chose to attend the wedding.
Another 2 years on, In October 1994, the police, Peter Heron and a newspaper received a series of letters from someone claiming to be the killer.
The letter to the newspaper, the Northern Echo, began “Hello editor, it’s me…Ann Heron’s killer!” and the letter ended “Your readers will have plenty to talk about. Signed The Killer.”
Forensic tests were carried out on the letters in an attempt to establish who the author was, and handwriting samples were taken for comparison with suspects in the case.
Police were adamant that scientific advances could eventually lead to the identification of Ann’s killer, so Another 11 years down the line, in early 2005 Durham Police brought in one of the country’s foremost forensic scientists so a series of laboratory tests could be conducted.
Blood traces and fingerprints found on some of the 1,500 items originally taken from the crime scene were forensically examined.
Peters DNA was found on samples taken from his wife’s body at the time of the murder. Specifically, his semen was found on samples taken from the back of Heron’s throat.
This put the suspicion back on to peter and led to the arrest in November 2005, who was now living with his wife in Wishaw, Lanarkshire.
The Crown Prosecution Service agreed to charge him after he was interviewed a number of times, however, the case against him was subsequently dropped due to a lack of evidence.
The decision was made after additional expert opinion was obtained on the scientific evidence presented, leading to an eminent barrister advising the CPS that the case should be discontinued.
Durham Police insisted that Peter Heron’s release would “not preclude them from going back and re-interviewing him”
Investigators subsequently announced their plans to re-examine key evidence, and in 2007 fresh forensic tests were conducted on what police described as “the crucial samples” from the crime scene.
Investigators stated that advances in technology would allow some samples taken from the scene to be examined for the first time, using “super-sensitive” technology.
Jumping another 15 years, In 2020 a criminologist claimed that Michael Benson; who was an escaped prisoner on the run in Hampshire at the time, was a viable suspect. It should be noted here that Benson died in 2011, 9 years before this claim was made.
Jen Jarvie, the criminologist, who had contacted the daughter of Peter Heron over Facebook offering to help on the case in 2016, had watched the October 1990 edition of Crimewatch that featured Ann’s murder and then watched the following month’s edition, concluding that one of the criminals, Michael Benson, featured fitted her profile of Ann’s killer.
Benson was described as a violent criminal with a strong criminal history of robbery, burglary and assault with a shotgun, and another with a carving knife. The prison sentence that he was on the run from was that of the burglary as assault with a shotgun.
Jen concluded that the killer must have been a prolific offender and burglar. She’d watched the next month’s episode and saw that Hampshire Police were searching for Leeds man Michael Benson, who had escaped from prison using his wife’s blue Ford Orion.
However, Durham Constabulary investigated the alleged links to Benson and found there was no evidence to place Benson in the area at the time of the murder, and also revealed that they were “all but certain” he was living abroad at the time of the attack.
Detectives also have DNA samples from Benson’s family members to compare to the crime scene evidence.[28] In May 2022 Durham Constabulary ruled out a connection to Benson, stating that he “is not and never has been a suspect”.
Durham Constabulary also voluntarily referred itself to the independent Office for Police Conduct in response to allegations against them.
The Benson theory is quite a rabbit hole, in 1990 he had left his wife taking a metallic blue Ford Orion,
Jarvie has suspected him of robbing two women on the street. He’d grabbed them from behind and threatened violence. That was just 25 miles away and just 2 weeks before. The unidentified thief got away with £35.
His description is 30yo, 5ft9 , stocky build with dark brown brushed back hair and a sun tanned complexion.
Jarvie also claims Benson could be responsible for 3 other murders in Yorkshire and Southampton between 1991 and 1998
He did have a history of violence. However his crimes usually revolved around burglary and theft, but in Ann Herons Case nothing was stolen… Maybe that was due to the dog? I don’t know. I also think the shop manageress pulls this theory a bit tighter, as her account and the other witness accounts match Bensons description.
Another suspect is Christopher Halliwell
Halliwell has currently got 2 murder changes.
In 2012, he was convicted of the murder of Sian O’Callaghan. Four years later, he was convicted of the murder of Becky Godden. There has been much speculation that Halliwell has other victims and a decade after his arrest, police are still trying to link him to unresolved murders and disappearances.
Halliwell first became known to police in the 1980s when he was convicted of burglary and sent to HMP Dartmoor. While incarcerated Halliwell said to his cellmate, that he’d had sex with a woman while strangling her and also asked how many women he would have to kill to be considered a serial killer.
Released from prison in 1987, Halliwell moved back to Swindon where he took up a job as a window cleaner. That’s where he married Lisa and had three children. He was a keen fisherman in his spare time and one of the places he likes to fish were just a few minutes down the road but no evidence that I could find point to him, it all seems to be speculation.
However the crime seems to fit his style of crime quite well and he was also known to be a good car thief.
A sexual motivation would also make sense as Ann’s bikini bottoms were removed. Showing no signs of abuse or struggle. Is it possible that someone intended to sexually assault Ann but were scared off by the dog?
He does also fit the description of the man leaving the house, he had dark hair and photographs show him tanned. He were 26-27 at the time of Ann’s murder, so not quite early 30s, but witnesses do get it wrong from time to time.
Although there were no forensic evidence found at the scene, Halliwell had a small collection of forensic books and so he was forensically aware and able to make sure he left no forensic evidence.
This theory does get deeper though. Halliwell had experience as a butcher, so he’d be quite capable of slitting someone’s throat. And maybe have knowledge on how to cause an air embolism, which is where the throat is slit in a correct way, making a slit wide and deep enough to get the jugular, especially if the victim is upright, air immediately fills the right atrium of the heart and circulation ceases, causing very little blood loss to what you would expect.
People claim this is why what they think is Halliwell wasn’t seen covered in blood when he was spotted leaving the house.
But I’d like to stress that is purely speculation, nothing directly links him to the murder and as far as I could find, he’s never been an official police suspect for this murder.
Also in 2020, Detective Inspector Andy Reynolds, from Durham’s Major Crime Team, said:
“We are actively pursuing forensic inquiries using advances in technology in the hope of identifying evidence to prove who is responsible.
“If somebody is reading this and knows who killed Ann Heron, then please do the right thing and come forward.
“Her family deserve closure and she deserves justice.”
In a 2022 Channel 5 documentary on the murder, Durham Constabulary revealed that Peter Heron was still a suspect in the case.
It’s almost been 32 years since Ann was murdered. To this day it remains the only unsolved murder by Durham Constabulary since 1952.
Ann’s family still presses forward looking for answers to this case.
It’s truly disturbing and heart-breaking. We can only hope that advancing technologies or by passing the word some other evidence comes to light to help this case get closed one and for all, allowing justice to be served.