Killer still on run 20 years after the ‘death of an angel’
THE killer of a teenage girl who was brutally beaten, drugged and strangled in her home remains at large 20 years after a murder that shocked Birmingham.
The battered, decomposing body of 17-year-old Jodine Brown was found covered in a duvet on her bedroom floor in Sant Road, West Heath.
Her mother Eileen made the grisly discovery when she returned home from a four-day break on July 18, 1997.
The former Dame Elizabeth Cadbury School pupil had been drugged, struck over the head and strangled.
It was a savage attack on a teenager that horrified the community and sickened detectives tasked with tracing those responsible.
But two decades on, the killer of the Birmingham teen has yet to be brought to justice.
Friends told how the teenager, who lived with her mother and had an older sister Donna was a “complete angel”.
Ex-school friend Shelley Harris said at the time: “She never even got a detention at school.
“She was a complete angel who went through her school life without even a late mark against her name.”
A verdict of unlawful killing was reached at a 1999 inquest into the death of Jodine.
Former deputy Birmingham coroner Christopher Ball said that although two post-mortem examinations could not give a cause of death, he was satisfied on hearing evidence from pathologist Dr Ian West that she was killed.
“The injuries on her body were not self-inflicted or the result of an accident,” Mr Ball said.
Dr West told the inquest that a large, but not fatal, amount of drugs used for the treatment of colds was found in the teenager’s body.
But the drugs, combined with evidence of blows to the head, would have incapacitated Jodine, he said.
Ligature marks around the neck were caused by a chain or narrow cord, and bruising on her hands could have been caused by someone grasping her.
Dr West gave a cause of death as compression to the neck while the victim was intoxicated with drugs.
The brutal murder has dogged detectives for 20 years and in 2009 officers launched a review into the case.
A spokesman for West Midlands Police said: “The case was reviewed in 2009 to see if there were any new forensics opportunities.
“The review did not identify any new lines of enquiry. The case will remain on file pending any new information or evidence coming to light.”
Jodine’s horrific murder took place just a mile away from Overbury Close, Northfield, where a family of three had been found viciously stabbed to death almost five years earlier.
Like Jodine’s death, the murders of Harold Smith, wife Mary and their son, also Harold, remain unsolved.
Anyone with new information on the killing can contact police on 101.