Unravelling the mystery of the ‘Lady of the Hills’
Are police about to solve a 14-year-old cold case of a woman found by a group of walkers, asks Joe Shute
Last Sunday afternoon as a thick mist rolled over the hilltops surrounding the Yorkshire Dales village of Horton-inribblesdale, a small crowd gathered in the local church for an annual remembrance service. Led by priest Stephen Dawson, the congregation sang hymns and lit candles in the 12th-century chapel of St Oswald’s, in tribute to a body buried in the churchyard.
Her grave is marked by a slab of local limestone and the plaque bears no name, only the epitaph: “the lady of the hills”.
The unknown woman’s half-naked body was discovered by a group of walkers on a foul day on
Sept 20 2004, lying in a mountain stream near a track about a mile from the village. She was 4ft 11in and of south-east Asian descent; with no visible injuries, the original police investigation focused on whether she had simply become lost and died of hypothermia – paradoxically those about to succumb to the cold tend to strip off before they die.
Officers interviewed everybody in the village and combed the hills around the famous Yorkshire peak of Pen-y-ghent, near to where she was found. But aside from her top, which was retrieved from a nearby pothole, no further clues were discovered.
Now 14 years on from the gruesome discovery, new forensic evidence has emerged as a result of a cold case investigation that police believe could lead to the woman’s identity – and, it is hoped, her killer.
Among those who had come to the church on Sunday to light a candle in memory of the unknown woman was Malcolm Pearce, a 57-year-old retired oil refinery worker from Cleethorpes, who was part of the group that discovered the body.
They had planned to climb the Yorkshire three peaks above Hortonin-ribblesdale that day, but as a result of 60mph winds, decided to abandon the attempt and divert on to the Pennine Way. It was here they came across the body. She was lying face down in a stream, the top half of her clothes removed, and no shoes on her feet.
“It is a terrible way to end up,” Pearce says. “I don’t know who she was or why she ended up there but I still think of her.”
His friend Richard Hill, 51, was among the group of five walkers to make the grim discovery that day.
“When we discovered her it was just shock but the day after I was in pieces,” he recalls. “I just thought, ‘that is someone’s daughter lying up there’.”
In 2007 a coroner recorded an open verdict – and the lady of the hills was laid to rest by the people of Hortonin-ribblesdale that same year. One resident who had reserved a burial plot for himself chose to give it to the unnamed woman instead.
“It’s heartbreaking for so many of us,” says Audrey Daley, 86, who has lived in the village for 45 years. “There has never been anything like this in the village before. That is why we have all taken her into our hearts.”
The cold case unit is headed up by Adam Harland, a retired detective chief inspector who served with North Yorkshire Police for 30 years and worked on the review of the Claudia Lawrence investigation. Standing at the spot where the body was recovered near a pothole named Sell Gill, the 58-year-old outlines what has led them to their main line of inquiry: that the deceased could have been a mail order bride living in a rural community in north Lancashire or south Cumbria (not far from the Dales), who was eventually murdered by her partner. “I suspect the person she’s been living with is well established within that community and the sort of person it would be very difficult for their friends to think badly of,” Harland says. A post mortem examination suggested the woman had been dead for between one and three weeks before being discovered. According to a nationwide probabilities database compiled from previous murder inquiries, which is used by the police to assist with investigations, most bodies are carried no more than 164ft (50m) from a vehicle, and most drivers dumping a corpse travel no further than 50 to 80 miles. Sell Gill is off a bridleway only accessible by 4X4, suggesting the killer may live in a rural location.
There was no fluid in her lungs to indicate drowning and no signs of major trauma, and, while her bra strap was broken, there was also no evidence of sexual attack. The only visible injury to police was a small spiral fracture on one finger, which can commonly occur from punching somebody or from a fall. The body was recovered in the same year as the Morecambe Bay cockle-picking disaster when 23 Chinese immigrants drowned. Harland says they do not believe the woman was being similarly exploited for labour by gangmasters – for one, her hands were in good condition, and tellingly, she also still had a gold band on her wedding-ring finger.
The cold case unit has been able to trace the ring back to Thailand due to its unusually high purity of gold. Mick Silcock, another retired North Yorkshire Police detective working in unit, says they have also established the Marks and Spencer jeans she was wearing were on sale in the UK between 2000 and 2002. The green and white top retrieved nearby was sold in around 30-40 shops dotted around the North East. The most compelling new evidence, however, has been gleaned via the help of German professor Wolfram Meier-augenstein, an expert in so-called “stable isotopes”, which are essentially elements from our environment that remain inside our body and can provide a map of where a person has lived.
Samples taken from the teeth and femur of the deceased show she was likely to have grown up and lived in south-east Asia. Hair samples, however, retain far more recent elements from the past months of a person’s life.
According to Prof Meieraugenstein’s findings, there are only a few places in Britain where the isotopes found in the victim’s hair would be apparent; among them south Cumbria and the northern tip of Lancashire. This, police now believe, is where she spent her final months.
While narrowing the possible location of the murder down, the two counties still encompass a sprawling and sparsely populated area traditionally hostile to outsiders asking too many questions.
But Harland and his colleagues remain hopeful. Earlier this year the cold case unit secured the conviction of a rapist called Andrew Pennington, who attacked a woman on a night out in York in 1988 and believed he had escaped justice. The lady in the hills, they hope, could be the next crime solved.
“Someone lived next door to her,” says Harland. “She has lived in a small community. It shouldn’t be that difficult to find her. And once we do that, it all unravels.”
‘I don’t know who she was or why she ended up there but I still think of her’