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Killer is still at large

 

The following article appeared in the Derbyshire Times on 21 October 2010:

By Ellie Hunter

IT was 40 years ago this month that a pretty young schoolteacher left her Hammersmith home and journeyed north, hitch hiking as she had done many times before.

Barbara Mayo was 24 when she set off on the 200-mile trip heading to Catterick on the morning of Monday, October 12, after offering to collect her boyfriend’s car and drive it back to London.

It was the last journey she would ever make, as she was brutally raped and murdered and her body dumped, barely concealed under a layer of autumn leaves in Ault Hucknall wood, near Glapwell.

She was found six days later by the Chomiuk family who had travelled from Mansfield to pick chestnuts. When police reached the scene they found her corpse already starting to decompose lying face down in the undergrowth.

Ted Chomiuk was 21 when he made the gruesome discovery with his 18 year old bride, Yvonne.

“It was very traumatic, but I was more concerned for my wife with her being so young.” said Ted who now lives with Yvonne in Leicestershire.

“It was scary because we started to think people were watching us after they didn’t find her killer. There was talk about a few people who might have done it but still there was no one found guilty.”

The chilling tale gripped Derbyshire and what followed was the biggest murder investigation that the county had ever seen. But her killer has never been found

Barbara’s tragic story made national news, and Scotland Yard joined the investigation.

Det Ch Supt Charles Palmer was assigned to head the operation, and eight days after her disappearance he spoke to the press for the first time informing them that Barbara have been battered about the head and strangled to death.

On November 13 1970, he told the Derbyshire Times: “I feel that no young lady, in particular hitchhikers, will be safe when this person is at large.”

Despite the frenzy of media attention and the thorough police manhunt, by late 1971 no information had been found to secure an arrest.

Scott Lomax, author of crime books including Unsolved Murders in and Around Derbyshire has written about the elusive killer. He said: “It was a horrific rape and murder of a young London woman who innocently hitched a lift. She was a woman who lived in a time of innocence where the potential dangers for hitchhikers were not appreciated.”

The Yorkshire Ripper, Peter Sutcliffe, was formerly questioned over Barbara’s murder but was eliminated in 1997 when the case was revisited after DNA evidence taken from Barbara’s clothes was used to test thousands of possible suspects. When no breakthrough was made, the enquiry was shelved for a second time in 2000.

A police spokeswoman said: “The investigation into the death of Barbara Mayo will remain open until her murderer is brought to justice. Unsolved murder cases are never closed and any new evidence brought the attention of the police is always investigated.

“At the moment there are no active lines of enquiry.”


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