No justice for family in real life ‘Midsomer Murder’
THE family of a woman killed in a “real life Midsomer Murder” said the unsolved killing was not like television “where it gets solved in six episodes”.
Four years ago today, Valerie Graves was found bludgeoned to death in her bed in the ground-floor bedroom of a £1.6million seafront house in Bosham, West Sussex.
Fifteen years earlier, in 1998, an episode of Midsomer Murders – Written
in Blood was filmed in the village. Roy Wood, the 55-year-old artist’s ex-partner and father to her children, Tim Wood and Jemima Harrison, said: “It gets to be a funny time of year for the family.
“They hear from the police from time to time, but there’s no news.
“We all live in this era of watching something on television where it gets solved in six episodes – we have that expectation. It doesn’t happen like that in real life.”
Ms Graves’s children have previously described Christmas as being on hold while the killer remained at large. Mr Wood said: “We are just waiting and hoping that one day we will know what happened. None of us feel a thirst for revenge. We would want [the killer] to be caught so they cannot do it again.”
Ms Graves had moved from Scotland to Bracklesham Bay and died just days after her birthday while housesitting at the Smuggler’s Lane mansion for family friends who were away on holiday. She was last seen alive at around 10pm the night before.
There were no signs of a struggle but a post-mortem found she had severe head injuries after being hit with a claw hammer, probably at around midnight.
Sussex Police launched one of the biggest investigations in its history, initially saying it was confident the killer would be caught.
But the case remained unsolved, despite exhaustive forensics work and mass voluntary DNA screening among villagers.
Det Supt Jason Taylor said: “It is an ongoing process.”