Angel of the Meadow – a Manchester mystery

I first found out about the Angel of the Meadow when I was researching the history of Manchester’s old Angel Meadow area and though at the time I only read the story briefly I was intrigued enough to want to find out more about this modern-day mystery.

On January 25th 2010, while clearing the site of a former car park prior to the construction of the Co-operative Group’s new headquarters close to Angel Meadow park, excavation workers discovered the skeletal remains of a female wrapped in sections of blue carpet and squeezed into a gap between a fence and a wall. The police were called to the scene and the site was immediately cordoned off while they conducted their initial investigations and removed the remains.

Photo – Manchester Evening News

A postmortem concluded that the woman would probably have been Caucasian, 18-35 years old, between 5ft 1ins and 5ft 7ins tall and a size 12. She had a number of dental fillings and a missing upper right tooth which would have been obvious in life when she smiled. She had also suffered a fractured neck, collarbone, nose and jaw, pointing to having been beaten to death, with the date of her death being identified as sometime in the 1970s or early 1980s.

Found near the body were a pair of tights, a black stiletto court shoe, an empty handbag and a torn green pinafore dress with a distinctive 1970s pattern. She had been wearing a blue bra and a blue skinny-rib jumper, a style popular in the 1970s, but naked from the waist down she had probably been sexually assaulted; the absence of the other shoe and her underwear led investigators to conclude that her killer could have taken them as ‘trophies’. One of the carpet pieces which had covered the body featured a hole cut for a gear stick and was thought by police to have been taken from a Ford Cortina car.

Photo – Greater Manchester Police press office

Photo – Greater Manchester Police press office

A search of missing persons records and an initial appeal to the public in the hope that someone would recognise the items recovered with the body came to nothing, then in May 2011 a team of experts from Dundee University used facial mapping techniques to reconstruct the woman’s probable features, with the reconstruction featuring on an episode of BBC 1’s Crimewatch on the 24th of that month. She was given the name ‘Angel of the Meadow’ as it was in a part of the old Angel Meadow area where she was found. DNA analysis done that same year to try to establish whether the woman was a victim of either of two killers who were known to be active at the time showed that there was no connection.

Forensic facial reconstruction developed by a Dundee University team led by Dr. Caroline Wilkinson

In November 2012, following input from the public, the police announced they had compiled a list of 22 potential identities for the victim. Leads were investigated from Ireland and as far afield as the Netherlands, Texas and Africa but none of them produced any positive results though detectives did rule out over 400 missing women as being her. In March 2015 police confirmed that they had a DNA profile of the victim and were undertaking a familial DNA search as part of the investigation, now being conducted by the cold case unit. That same month, five years after her remains were discovered, she was laid to rest in an unmarked grave in Manchester’s Southern Cemetery, in a state-paid service attended only by two detectives who had spent four years working on the still unsolved murder case.

Photo – Manchester Evening News

Twelve years on from when she was first found this young woman’s identity remains a mystery which asks more questions than it answers, questions which detectives working on the case have no doubt asked themselves numerous times, and though her murder may still be unsolved her death hasn’t been in vain – through their investigations detectives managed to trace six women listed in the missing persons records and all were reunited with their families.

The original case hasn’t been closed though, nor has ‘Angel’ been forgotten. Othram, an American corporation specializing in forensic genealogy to resolve unsolved murders and cold cases, recently helped to fund a proper headstone to be installed on the grave in her memory.

The 2021 headstone – Photo credit, David Mittelman, CEO Othram Inc.

Somewhere out there, even after so many years, there may still be a family member or a friend who will know who this young lady was so it’s hoped that one day the headstone can be updated with her real name. Until then she will forever remain the Angel of the Meadow.