#patsy morris murder

Schoolgirl murder remains unsolved

Fourteen-year-old Patricia ‘Patsy’ Morris disappeared after leaving Feltham Comprehensive School in London on Monday, June 16th, 1980, and was found dead in some undergrowth on Hounslow Heath two days later. Patsy had been strangled using a pair of tights.

Patsy was born in Birmingham and grew up there until she moved to London with her family in 1979. She joined Feltham Comprehensive School with her two brothers and a sister.

According to her friends, Patsy had forgotten her raincoat on the morning of her disappearance and decided to pop home during lunch and change into dry clothes, sadly she was never seen alive again.

A neighbour said that Patsy had probably tried to go home to change without realising that she had left her key at home in her coat and that when she realised she would be unable to get in had probably tried to walk across Hounslow Heath to Calvary Barracks, where her parents worked to get a key.

It seems Patsy had a double-period lesson in History scheduled for that afternoon and she often played truant from school to avoid lessons she didn’t like. When she failed to arrive home after school her parents reported Patsy missing and a large-scale search began. Friends and neighbours offered to join officers from the Metropolitan Police in searching for the missing teenager.

The Metropolitan Police issued a warning to all parents, after Patsy’s body was discovered, warning them not to allow their children to be on Hounslow Heath alone. Patsy Morris’s mother made a statement saying that she could not understand what her daughter was doing on the heath as she had no reason to be there. She told the media: “We can’t understand what she was doing on the heath. She was always told not to go there and never disobeyed our orders.”

There had been other attacks on the heath including rapes and murder in the past and although Patsy had not been attacked sexually it does seem there was a certain amount of sexual behaviour involved in her murder as she was strangled with ladies’ tights.

As part of their enquiries, the police questioned other school pupils and on June 22nd 1980, just four days after Patsy vanished they discovered another child had been paying truant on the day in question, they hoped this would lead to more evidence being uncovered but, it was not to be.

Something which I feel is very relevant in this matter is that soon after Patsy’s murder her father received a death threat in a telephone call. He said that the caller sounded like a younger male with a local accent. Was this male Patsy’s killer? Why would he threaten her father? Did the caller believe that maybe Mr Morris would somehow expose him?

The murder of fourteen-year-old Patsy Morris went unsolved and the investigation went cold until July 8th, 1996 when a house was raided at dawn and a man arrested in the local bus station. The suspect was thirty-three years old at the time of his arrest which would have put him at age seventeen at the time of Patsy’s murder. He was bailed until August and interviewed again followed by a third interview in October 1996.

The police applied to the Crown Prosecution Service to charge the suspect but they were refused with the CPS saying they had insufficient evidence to charge him with murder.

Suspects

There have been several suspects suggested over the years, two in particular being serial killer Peter Tobin and bus stop killer, Levi Belfield.

Peter Tobin

A police operation named Operation Anagram reviewed several cases, including Patsy’s but the Morris family were not contacted any more and the operation was wound down in 2011 as no solid evidence had been found to indicate Tobin’s involvement in any other murders.

I don’t believe that Tobin was not connected to the murder of Patsy Morris and am mindful that several theories have been banded about that along with Yorkshire Ripper Tobin was responsible for a whole catalogue of murders, for which there is no evidence.

The other possible suspect is Bus Stop Killer, Levi Belfield who went to the same school as Patsy and he may have been Patsy’s boyfriend. I won’t say any more on Levi as I have a guest writer/criminologist who is working on an in-depth study of Belfield and will be bringing us information connected to the Patsy Morris murder in the coming days.

Links to other murders

It has been noted that Patsy was the third female to have been murdered in the area within a five-year window. The murders of sixteen-year-old schoolgirl Lynne Weedon on September 3rd 1975, Elizabeth Parravincina just a mile away on September 9th 1977 and Eve Stratford on 18th March 1975.

According to a book written by Chris Clark, it was suggested that Patsy Morris was tied up in a very similar way to Eve Stratford, with one leg of a pair of tights also being used to tie her hands behind her back and one of the legs being similarly tied around her ankle but this is far from proven evidence, as I have not been able to find a record of there being anything attached Patsy’s ankle.

In all honesty, the murders were different in many ways and the Modus Operandi very different, but that is for another blog on another day.

If you have anything you would like to discuss in relation to the Patsy Morris case please get in touch.