What’s the most shocking thing to happen in your neighbourhood/home town.

[Choclabratwatowner88]

Had the police around earlier to fill in a quick questionnaire in regard to a serious incident that just happened locally. As we live on the main road they wanted to know if we saw anything, the usual. My mum then pipes up that’s she’s been through this years ago when they were investigating a murder in our home town (not our current hometown) I was shocked as I’m 37 and never heard of this murder in my whole life, granted I was 3 at the time but still… things like that usually spread for years. I then went down a rabbit hole, turns out the murder happened right across the street from our old estate. The woman murdered was called Penny bell. She was found stabbed more than 50 times in her car, they still haven’t caught the killer. I never knew this whole time and it kinda threw me.
what’s the most shocking thing to happen in your hometown?

The discovery of the baby that Constance Marten and Mark Gordon abandoned. It was at the end of my road and they were arrested about 50 yards from my house.
Grand Hotel bombing
Babes in the Wood murders

My lovely local park was the place where a teenager dumped the body of an 11 year old boy he'd murdered.

I live in Southport. I still can't quite believe it all happened here.

Two very close to where I live the Llandarcy murders, the killer was found many years later by DNA however by that time he was dead. Also the Clydach murders, Dai Morris was convicted but everyone local believes it was a miscarriage of justice, he died in jail, South Wales Police officers were involved and it was a total cover up, the killers still walk free

Two young sisters finding a woman’s head in a bag on the beach.

The men responsible had killed and dismembered the woman in a different town then travelled through on the bus to dump bags and a suitcase containing the parts of her in our harbour.

We’ve had a few horrible things in our town but this one will always stick with me.

Dunblane massacre.

It certainly was back when that happened in the 90s.

The bus driver died of a heart attack after he was assaulted, it wasn't murder, and the guilty party wasn't found guilty of murder.

But there really aren't that many murders around here that it's a run of the mill event.

A couple killed their lodger in a dispute over drugs. They chopped him up but being high they threw the body parts off the cliff and it hit someone on the promenade who called the police to complain about fly tipping. The police turned up and saw what was in the bag. Anyway, after arresting this couple the police bugged the van and they discussing it all the way to the nick and how they had no regrets. Our home town is not known for the cunning and intelligence of its criminals.

That’s true, the Alice gross one hit home tbh, because the route she took, was where me and my friends walked on the daily back in the day. I was just totally unaware of the penny bell murder. It’s got its own Wikipedia page.
my grandparents still live in near by gurnell and I went to visit them back in June and walked past where the leisure centre was. It was literally my childhood. Although the area has gone far more upmarket than it’s used to be… Ealing Broadway included… used to look a whole lot different.

My cousin lived next door to people connected to a terrorist bomb killing more than 25 people .

I grew up in a little Norfolk village. A girl a couple of years younger than me drowned whilst paddling on the beach - she would have been three or four. I didn't know her, but her sister was in the class above me and we walked past her grave on the way to Brownies.

👀👀

Lots of murders and sexual assaults here. Our regional paper is just mugshot after mugshot of grey men with PREDATOR/CHILD MOLESTER/RAPIST or similar stamped underneath, interspersed with the odd pub advert. Sick of it.

Operation Bullfinch

A 19 yr old from the next town was murdered by her boyfriend in our village in 2011, actually on our road. Stabbed multiple times in the neck and left to die on the roadside.
It was awful, they had to close the road for 2 days to gather evidence. My neighbour rang me before school run to tell me about it, police were knocking on the door to tell me it was an 'isolate incident' and had we seen anything, but not to worry. I just thought a bloke killing his girlfriend isn't really an isolated incident, it seems to happen so often. Poor woman. Her family were so devastated.
They made a TV show about it - Town and Country Murders or something. It felt so strange seeing my quiet, sleepy village on a TV show about something so awful.

Headmistress and her daughter shot by the husband and father at a public school quite close by.

Two boys murdered by their father in a house fire 11 years ago.

www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/claire-throssell-keir-starmer-murdered-

Their mother has campaigned tirelessly for years to get the law changed along with our MP. I was a governor at one of the boy's schools and I will never forget seeing Claire and her mother laying white flowers in the pouring rain under a tree during a remembrance service. That image will stay with me for evet.

Collection buckets were on all the tills in Tesco, and people donated gladly (the abusive ex hadn't insured the house).

brighton…. Tbh I saw them many times walking through Brighton town centre. Never when they had a baby though tbh.

Sophie Lancasters murder

I grew up in Bacup, it was my hometown. My school used to be in the park she was murdered in. I went to school with one of the murderers and kickboxing with one of the others

In the town I'm in now there has been a few, a woman was killed with her children in the house and someone left a baby in a dog walking area.

Edited to add, actually the worst would be the house fire attack that killed a mother and 3 or 4 of her children. The mum was in hospital for months and eventually died from her injuries. Horrific

Babes in the wood is very close to home. We used to live in Brighton and my mum met Russell Bishop a handful of times in passing as he lived down the road from her.

👋 you’re just along the road from me then 😂 , how people couldn't tell 🤦‍♀️

I lived in Hungerford in 1987 when Michael Ryan went on a shooting spree. Around 16 people were killed.

The town I grew up in- my sister was in the same class at school as a boy who strangled a girl on a railway station.
Helen McCourt was killed in the pub just round the corner from where we lived.

A small 'nice' village. We have the slowest police response time in the area and so plenty of armed robbery - of the garage and late night shops but also the bigger homes where the occupants are threatened and tied up.

We also seem to have a murder every few years. Unusual ones, premeditated Agatha Christie plots.

Other than that it's a very safe area, no minor crime or antisocial behaviour at all!

The murder of Alice Ruggles.