Cold case arrest over 1987 double murders
DETECTIVES have made an arrest in one of Britain’s longest unsolved double murder investigations.
Caroline Pierce and Wendy Knell were beaten and strangled just months apart in 1987, in what became known as the Bedsit Murders.
Wendy, 25, was found in her flat in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, five months before Caroline Pierce, 20, was discovered in a field on Romney Marsh in Kent. Police believe Caroline was snatched outside her bedsit a mile from Wendy’s.
Both women were naked, had been sexually assaulted and their keys were missing.
But despite a huge investigation at the time their killer has evaded
justice for more than three decades.
Cold case detectives, using a full DNA profile available for the first time in 2012, have now arrested a 66- year- old man on suspicion of the murders of both women.
He was held in Heathfield, East Sussex, yesterday. Wendy’s mum Pam Knell, 83, said: “This new arrest is such a shock.
“Wendy was murdered such a long time ago that I came to live with the idea I would die not knowing who did it.
“But I thought the police had a lead before so I am trying not to get my hopes up too much just yet.”
Wendy’s father Bill died in 2018 still haunted by the unsolved crime. Speaking in 2015 he said: “It’s always on my mind. We need to know why he did it.”