Hilda Murrell

Hilda Murrell (1906 - March 21, 1984) was a rose grower, naturalist, diarist and campaigner against nuclear energy.

She was murdered in March 1984 near her home in Shropshire, and the murder was not solved for 21 years.

Life

A pupil at Shrewsbury High School, she later studied at Newnham College, Cambridge, where she received a degree in French history.

She was a founding member of the Shropshire Conservation Trust (later Shropshire Wildlife Trust) and of the Shropshire branch of the Council for the Protection of Rural England. She had a successful rose-growing business for many years.

She was opposed to nuclear energy and weapons, identifying disposal of nuclear waste as a serious area for concern.

Murder

Murrell was scheduled to present her paper "An Ordinary Citizen's View of Radioactive Waste Management" at the Sizewell Inquiry, regarding the creation of a Nuclear power plant. On 21 March, 1984, her Shrewsbury home was apparently broken into and a small amount of cash was taken. She was abducted in her own vehicle, which witnesses reported seeing being driven erratically. The vehicle was found abandoned just outside Shrewsbury. Her mutilated body was found three days later. She had been stabbed multiple times, but did not die from the stab wounds, instead succumbing to hypothermia. Her autopsy was performed by Dr. P R Acland who together with a detective wrote about this and other cases in a "Murder Casebook"

She was the aunt of Commander Robert Green, a naval intelligence officer who was wrongly said to have passed the order for the sinking of the Argentine ship the Belgrano during the 1982 Falklands War; this led to conspiracy theories about her death. Other conspiracy theories centred around her anti-nuclear campaign.

She was cremated and her ashes scattered at Maengwynedd, in Wales. A commemorative stone was unveiled in Tanybryn in 2004.

The case was re-opened in 2002. Labourer Andrew George, who was 16 when Miss Murrell died, was arrested in June 2003 after a review of the murder uncovered DNA evidence linking him with the crime.

In May 2005 George was found guilty of kidnapping, sexually assauting, and murdering the then 78 year old Murrell. He was sentenced to life imprisonment. The Daily Telegraph quoted the investigating officer as saying "I told you so" but Tam Dalyell as saying it stretched the imagination to breaking point to suppose that the body, dumped on the Wednesday, could have lain undiscovered until the following Saturday despite a search of the copse on the Thursday by a farmer and his dog: "The two would have had no problem finding a dead rabbit, let alone the body of Hilda Murrell". And Robert Green was quoted as saying "There are many unanswered questions. I believe that the conviction may be unsafe." [The Daily Telegraph, May 7, 2005]

In June 2006 the Court of Appeal upheld the murder conviction, saying there was nothing unsafe about the verdict returned against George. [Birmingham Post, June 10, 2006]

In 1984, famed rose hybridizer David Austin named a rose in her memory.

Her murder was the subject of a song, "The Rose Grower" by the English group Attacco Decente. It can be found on their album "The Baby Within Us Marches On". Grace (1989), which was the novel of Maggie Gee, implicates the British secret state in its fictional parallel to the murder of Hilda Murrell.

References

Bibliography

* "Nature Diaries" Hilda Murrell, edited by Charles Sinker Pub: Collins 1987 ISBN 0-00-412186-4
* "Unlawful Killing: Murder of Hilda Murrell" Judith Cook, Pub: Bloomsbury, 1994 ISBN 0-7475-1822-X
* "Death of a Rose Grower: Who Killed Hilda Murrell?" Graham Smith, Pub: Cecil Woolf 1985 ISBN 0-900821-76-0

External links

* [http://www.hildamurrell.org Hilda Murrell]
* [http://website.lineone.net/~grandlaf/Wkhm.htm Wkhm] "Who killed Hilda Murrell?"
* [http://newsrss.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/shropshire/4513565.stm BBC] "Life for killing peace campaigner"
* [http://www.guardian.co.uk/crime/article/0,2763,1478524,00.html The Guardian] "Labourer gets life for Murrell murder"