Angel of the Meadow

The body was discovered on 25 January 2010 at the site of a former car park located between Angel Street, Dantzic Street and Miller Street in Manchester, England.[2] The area is known as Angel Meadow and was the location of a notorious Victorian slum which Friedrich Engels notably referred to as "hell upon earth".[2] At the time of the discovery, the site was being prepared for redevelopment into the new head offices for the Co-operative Group.[2] A workman noticed a skull,[2] which led to the discovery of a human skeleton concealed underneath sections of blue carpet.[3][4] The police were called to the scene at 15:50.[2]

The victim had suffered a fractured neck, clavicle and jaw.[3] The police initially believed that the woman was aged 18–35 when she died.[3][5] The date of her death was identified as the 1970s or 80s.[5][6] Police believe the woman was born between 1950 and 1954.[5] In life the victim was a size 12[5] and her height was between 5 ft 1in and 5 ft 7in.[1] She was probably European but possibly from India or the Middle East.[5] The victim had a number of fillings and her first upper right premolar was missing, which would have been apparent in life when she smiled.[5]

The victim was wearing a blue jumper, blue brassiere, a green pinafore dress[3] and black stiletto court shoes (of which only one was found).[5][6] The pinafore dress was distinctive in that it had large buttons and a unique 1970s-style pattern.[3]

A number of items were found with or near the body: a plastic Guinness measuring chart from the late 1960s,[6] an orange patterned carpet, dark blue and blue carpets,[5] tights and a handbag.[1][4] One of the carpet pieces which covered the body was thought by police to have been removed from a Ford Cortina and featured a hole cut for a gear stick.[1]

The death was initially treated as non-suspicious until the postmortem revealed that the woman had suffered a violent death, the details of which were not released to the public.[2] The investigation commenced with a search of missing person records and an appeal to the public in a hope that someone would recognise the items recovered with the body.[7]

In May 2011, police revealed a facial reconstruction of the woman.[5] On 24 May 2011 the reconstruction featured on an episode of the BBC Crimewatch programme.[5] At this time, police confirmed that the victim's dentistry did not match the dental records of three women known to have gone missing from the Greater Manchester area: Helen Sage (missing 1997), Zoe Simpson (missing 1996) and Helen McCourt (murdered 1988).[5] DNA analysis done in 2011 to try to establish whether the woman was a victim of either Peter Tobin or Ronald Castree, who were killers known to be active at the time, showed that there was no connection.[5]

In November 2012, the police announced they had compiled a list that comprised 18 potential identities for the victim which increased to 21–22 following input from the public.[8] The police stated that the strongest candidate for the potential identity of the victim was an individual from Tanzania who had been brought to their attention after a Tanzanian family had made contact.[8][9] Additional leads were investigated from Ireland, Texas and the Netherlands.[10]

In March 2015, the remains of the victim were buried in an unmarked grave in Southern Cemetery, Manchester, in a ceremony attended only by the two police detectives who were working on the case.[1] In March 2015, police confirmed that they had a DNA profile of the victim and there were undertaking a familial DNA search as part of the investigation.[10]

In 2018, investigative journalists Chris Clark and Tim Hicks suggested that the Angel of the Meadow case could be connected to convicted killer Christopher Halliwell.[11]

• Pinafore dress
• Pattern on dress
• Sections of carpet used to cover the victim
• Guinness measuring chart

53.4873441°N 2.2368292°W / 53.4873441; -2.2368292