Student found dead in 1989 was murdered, family told
A CORONER has ruled that an art student found dead at Beachy Head was tied to a tree and murdered, following decades of campaigning by her family.
Jessie Earl’s remains were found in undergrowth at Beachy Head, near Eastbourne, East Sussex, in 1989 – nine years after she vanished from her nearby bedsit.
Her skeleton was found in an area of dense thicket with no belongings or clothes apart from her bra, which was tied in a knot.
A second inquest into the 22-yearold’s death, which began on Tuesday at Eastbourne Town Hall, heard that she was “probably” tied to a tree and “possibly” sexually assaulted before her suspected murder.
James Healy-pratt, East Sussex assistant coroner, ruled yesterday that her death was unlawful killing by murder.
The coroner went on to describe Sussex Police’s 1989 investigation and subsequent decision to dispose of key forensic evidence as “significantly flawed” and said her parents, John and Valerie Earl, now in their 90s, had been “victims of a substantial injustice”.
It comes decades after a 1989 inquest into Ms Earl’s death recorded an open verdict following the police inquiry.
In 2000, Sussex Police reopened the case under the name Operation Silk and concluded that Ms Earl was murdered, but no one has been arrested.
In December last year, the High Court ruled there should be an order quashing the original inquest and that a fresh one should be held.
Mr Healy-pratt told the inquest that the scientific cause of death is “unascertained” but that he will record the conclusion that Ms Earl was murdered. Mr Healy-pratt also said that a 1980 report by Sussex Police Detective Sergeant Dusty Miller, which ruled suicide as the most likely explanation in the original missing persons case, “had a chilling effect on police efforts to investigate her disappearance”.
The coroner said the evidence did not support this conclusion, and that Ms Earl’s journal was an “[account] of an intelligent, well-balanced young woman enjoying [her] life”.