Patsy Morris

Patricia Morris (10 January 1966 – 16 June 1980) was a blonde 14-year-old schoolgirl born to George Morris, a retired army chief, and Marjorie Morris.

She had moved with her family from Birmingham to Isleworth, South West London, in 1979.

She attended Feltham Comprehensive School with her sister and two brothers.

On 16 June 1980, Patricia "Patsy" Morris, a 14-year-old schoolgirl from Feltham, London, was murdered by strangulation.

She disappeared after leaving her school during her lunch break, and was found dead in undergrowth on Hounslow Heath near her home two days later.

Despite repeated appeals for information by police, her murder remains unsolved.

On 16 June 1980, Morris disappeared, having been seen leaving her school during her lunch break.

It was believed Morris left school because she had forgotten her raincoat that morning, choosing to return home to change into dry clothes.

This is reportedly what she told her friends she was going to do, and a family friend and neighbour confirmed that she had not taken her coat to school and had gotten soaked as a result.

The neighbour stated that Morris had probably tried to come home without realising that she had left her key at home, and that when she realised she would be unable to get in had probably tried to walk over the heath to Calvary Barracks, where her parents worked, so she could get a key from them.

One source instead states that she had a double history lesson scheduled for that afternoon which she often avoided attending, and so played truant for the rest of the school day, although it is not clear what evidence there is for this claim.

A witness recalled seeing Morris soon after noon near her home.

Another witness recalled seeing a girl who may have been Morris crouching at a bus stop on the Hounslow Heath side of Staines Road, just west of the Hussar public house between 12:20 p.m. and 12:40 p.m. These were the last sightings of her alive.

After she was reported missing a large search operation was launched to find her, involving hundreds of police officers, helicopters and members of the public who had volunteered to help.

Two days later, on the evening of 18 June, Morris's body was found by a police dog handler on Hounslow Heath.

She was discovered face down in a copse beside a path on the edge of the Heath, at a location a quarter of a mile from her home in Cygnet Avenue.

The place she was found was just a five minute walk from her home, and was on the route between her home and her father's workplace at Calvary Barracks.

She was found fully-clothed.

She had been found ten yards from a path through one of the small woods.

She had been strangled with a ligature.

For an unknown reason, police found that she had been wearing two pairs of knickers that day.

There were no signs of sexual assault.

Police released a public statement after the death, warning parents in west London not to let their children cross Hounslow Heath alone.

Morris' mother said that she had no reason to be on Hounslow Heath, stating to the press: "We can't understand what she was doing on the heath. She was always told not to go there and never disobeyed our orders."

Attacks on women and even deaths were not unknown in the area, but previous attacks had invariably involved the full rape of the victim.

The police questioned Morris's classmates in an attempt to find out what her final movements had been.

On 22 June, 4 days after she was found dead, a detective on the investigative team told the press that they felt another youngster playing truant could hold key information on the murder.

Soon after Morris was found dead, her father received a phoned death threat from an unidentified teenage boy.

The call was from a local caller with a local sounding voice.

In December 1980, the police appealed for a mysterious driver of a blue van with a radio telephone to come forward.

The man was seen using a telephone handset in his van near the home of Morris around the time of her murder, and detectives said that he could have seen something that would help the investigation.

By this point police had only managed to trace 9 out of 22 people who played golf on the course next to where Morris was found, and detectives also appealed for their help to trace a 5 ft 10 in man who had dark greying hair and who was wearing a dark suit.

Police investigations at the time drew a blank and the murderer was not apprehended.

The man, who was arrested at Hounslow bus depot, was then 33 years old, meaning he would have been 17 at the time of the murder in 1980.

He was released on bail but was re-interviewed in August.

In October the man was released from police custody again on bail, and it was reported that police had applied for permission to charge the suspect from the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS).

In 1996 the case was re-opened and police arrested a man from Hounslow.

The police were acting on new information on the murder and raided the suspect's house at dawn on 8 July of that year.

The murder was brought to public attention again in 2008, when it was discovered that she had been a childhood girlfriend of west London serial killer Levi Bellfield, known for being the murderer of Surrey teenager Milly Dowler in 2002.

Police investigated links between her murder and Bellfield, but he was never formally charged over her death.