Killings of Eve Stratford and Lynne Weedon

Eve Stratford and Lynne Weedon, two young women from London, were killed in separate, sexually motivated attacks by the same unidentified individual during 1975. Stratford, a Playboy Club Bunny girl in Park Lane, was found dead on 18 March 1975 at her flat in Leyton, east London, by her partner. Her throat had been cut multiple times and her neck and face were extensively mutilated; she was found partially unclothed with a stocking tied around one ankle and her hands bound with a scarf. There was no sign of forced entry, and semen was found on vaginal swabs. Police believed her killer may have traced her address after she appeared on the cover of Mayfair magazine days before her death, and noted she had received a number of intrusive and silent phone calls in the days leading up to her murder.

Six months later, on 3 September 1975, 16-year-old Lynne Weedon was attacked in Hounslow, west London, after leaving a pub where she had been celebrating her O-level results with friends. Walking home alone through an alleyway known as Short Hedges, she was struck over the head with a heavy object, fracturing her skull, then dragged into the grounds of a power substation and raped. She was found alive the next morning by a school caretaker but died a week later in hospital without regaining consciousness. Witnesses reported seeing a white male in the vicinity around the time of the attack.

Weedon's case was reopened in 2004, and in 2007 new DNA technology established that the same person had murdered both Stratford and Weedon. Following this, Stratford's case was also reopened. Sixteen main suspects had their DNA taken, but none matched. Both cases were featured on the BBC's Crimewatch programme in September 2007, where a senior investigating officer stated the attacks were sexually motivated and premeditated, with the attacker bringing and removing the weapon on both occasions. In 2015, on the 40th anniversary of Stratford's murder, police issued a fresh appeal, and a new £40,000 reward for information was announced during a further Crimewatch appearance in April of that year. Investigators have described the perpetrator as a white male who would have been between 17 and 30 years old at the time of the killings.

The murders have been linked by police to the 1977 killing of Elizabeth Parravincina, which occurred roughly a mile from the site of Weedon's attack and in similar circumstances, though this case also remains unsolved. Media speculation in 2005 linking Stratford's murder to the 1979 killing of Lynda Farrow was later found, via DNA testing, not to be connected. As of the most recent reporting, no one has been charged in connection with either the Stratford or Weedon murders.