OAP charged with murder... 34 years after woman’s body was found in lake
A PENSIONER was charged yesterday with killing a millionaire’s daughter whose bound body was found in a lake 34 years ago.
Shani Warren, 26, disappeared on Good Friday in 1987 when she set off to dispose of grass cuttings after mowing the lawn at her home in the Buckinghamshire village of Stoke Poges.
A dog walker found her body the following day, lying face down in about three feet of water in nearby Taplow Lake. Miss Warren had been gagged with a blue scarf, with her hands tied behind her back with jump leads and her legs bound by a tow rope. Despite this, police treated the case as a suicide before later launching a murder investigation. Mechanics subsequently discovered a fault in her car’s gearbox, suggesting that she could have been attacked after the vehicle broke down.
A lorry driver also later recalled seeing her car parked in a lay-by near the lake.
Donald Robertson, 66, had been due to appear in court yesterday to face charges of murder, false imprisonment and the indecent assault of Miss Warren. He was also charged with the false imprisonment and rape of a 16year-old girl from Slough in July 1981.
But a judge was told Robertson, from Slough, was unable to attend as he was in isolation because of a Covid outbreak in the prison where he is being held.
No pleas were entered during the brief hearing at High Wycombe Magistrates’ Court, where District Judge Arvind Sharma remanded Robertson in custody to appear at Reading Crown Court on Monday.
Personal assistant Miss Warren, who became known as the Lady in the Lake, had intended to dump the grass cuttings on a compost heap in her parents’ garden in Gerrard’s Cross, Buckinghamshire – but she never got there.
The murder devastated Miss Warren’s wealthy father Joseph and his wife Elsie. Both died during the Covid pandemic before the latest development in the case.
When Robertson was arrested in June this year, Miss Warren’s aunt Mavis Caney said: ‘My sister and her husband died this year. I think for her [my sister’s] two sons, when you keep getting things re-surfacing it’s very difficult. There were a lot of issues at the time about how the police handled the case and they did apologise.
‘Initially, Shani wasn’t classified as being murdered, the discredited specialist who said she could have tied the rope knots herself... all of those issues are being brought back up with the arrest.’
‘Gagged with a blue scarf’