This is an incomplete list of unsolved murders in the United Kingdom that were committed between 1970 and 1979. The list excludes any murders in Northern Ireland related to The Troubles, or that are related to IRA bombings which occurred in England.
Victims believed to have been killed by the same perpetrator(s) are grouped together below.
Year Victim(s) Location of body or bodies NotesJanuary 1970Allan GrahamPonteland, Northumberland11-year-old Graham went missing during a trip to the shop while he was staying with his older brother and his wife in Gerald Street, Benwell, Newcastle, on 24 January 1970. His body was found in a ditch near Ponteland – about seven miles northwest of Newcastle – the following day. He had been strangled. No one has ever been arrested in connection with Graham's death.January 1970Ann SmithEpsom, Surrey20-year-old Smith, a prostitute from Tooting in south London, was last seen on 27 January 1970. Her partly clothed body was discovered the day after in a ditch on Epsom Downs. She had been beaten and strangled, with the latter being the cause of her death. Detectives came to rule out any links to the Hammersmith nude murders or to "Yorkshire Ripper" Peter Sutcliffe.February 1970Albert CoxPimlico, London69-year-old Cox was found dead at his bedsit in Moreton Place, Pimlico, on 28 February 1970. He had been bound and gagged, dying from suffocation as a result of the gagging, and the money that had been in the property was all missing. In 1975, police linked Cox's murder to five others, including the then-recent slaying of Thomas Bradford Wilson (also described in this list), but two of these were later solved.March 1970Jacqueline Ansell-LambMere, Cheshire18-year-old Ansell-Lamb was hitchhiking from London to Manchester on 8 March 1970 the last time she was seen. A 10-year-old boy discovered her body six days later in Square Wood, Mere, near Knutsford. She had been strangled with an electrical cord and sexually assaulted.
Detectives from the Cheshire and Derbyshire constabularies appeared together on Crimewatch in 1991 to appeal for information about Ansell-Lamb's murder and that in October 1970 of a woman named Barbara Mayo. Reconstructions of some of the victims' last movements featured in the episode as well, with the narrator remarking on the "striking similarities" the two cases had to each other.
It is often erroneously reported that Ansell-Lamb and Mayo's murders were proven to be linked by DNA in 1990; a DNA profile has only ever been extracted in the Mayo case, and this did not happen until 1997.March 1970Susan LongAylsham, NorfolkLong, 18, went to the Gala Ballroom in Norwich and caught a night bus home to Aylsham on 10 March 1970. The bus arrived at Market Place in the town at around 11:10 p.m., but Long never made it to her parents' home, which was a seven-minute walk away. Her body was found in a lovers' lane the following morning. Police confirmed on the 50th anniversary of the Norwich Union clerk's murder that they had DNA from the crime scene that could uncover the identity of the man who sexually assaulted and strangled her.March 1970Philip GreenShirehampton, Bristol11-year-old Green left his home in Sea Mills on 31 March 1970 to collect lost golf balls on the nearby Shirehampton golf course. His battered body was found the following day in a wooded area of the course. Green's case remains unsolved despite a massive police inquiry, which was assisted by Scotland Yard. A detective from Avon & Somerset Constabulary made a fresh appeal for information on the 40th anniversary of the murder.May 1970Helen KaneEdinburghThe body of Kane, 25, was left on a building site in Dumbiedykes after she had been hit over the head with a rock, paving slab or large stone following a night out in May 1970. Police quizzed Angus Sinclair about the mother-of-four's murder because he lived in Edinburgh and had been locked up for six years for killing a young girl, but as evidence linking him to Kane was lacking and someone had vouched for an alibi he had given, he was not charged.October 1970Barbara MayoAult Hucknall, DerbyshireOn 12 October 1970, 24-year-old Mayo, a trainee teacher, set off from her London home to hitchhike north. Six days later her body was discovered in woodland near Hardwick Hall, close to the northbound carriageway of the M1. She had been raped and strangled. A police officer said in 1997 that he believed that DNA recovered from one of Mayo's garments would lead to the culprit's identity becoming known.November 1970Andre MizelasHyde Park, LondonThe 48-year-old royal hairdresser was found shot dead in his car on 9 November 1970. A motive is not known, but a private detective who spoke to him over the telephone three days earlier said Mizelas told him he wanted him to keep tabs on two men whose names he would disclose at a meeting scheduled for 10 November.January 1971James KeltieBlairgowrie, PerthshireKeltie, 52, was murdered on 11 January 1971 at Blairgowrie's Muirton House Hotel, which he ran. He was bound, gagged and beaten in the hotel before being dragged out to a garage in the grounds. Keltie was still alive when found, but he died of his injuries on the way to hospital. The phone lines to the hotel had been cut and there was speculation that the attack had been a robbery gone wrong.April 1971Lena FarrStotfold, BedfordshireFarr, 77, was found dead in a chair in the sitting room of her home on Brook Street, Stotfold, on 12 April 1971. Her face, skull and left hand had cuts and bruises on them, but it was strangulation that caused the widow's death.April 1971Dorothy LeydenManchester17-year-old Leyden went to a Jimmy Ruffin concert at the Golden Garter nightclub in Wythenshawe, Manchester, on Saturday 24 April 1971 before getting a taxi into central Manchester with friends. She got out of the taxi at Piccadilly Gardens bus station at about 2:30 a.m. on 25 April, and it is believed she was planning to catch a bus home but decided to walk instead to save money.
Leyden's body was found after dawn that day on wasteland behind the Spread Eagle pub on Rochdale Road, Collyhurst. She had been raped and beaten to death with a brick. It was later thought that the offender might have been serial killer Trevor Hardy, but DNA eliminated him as a suspect in 2008.May 1971Rose LifelyBournemouth, DorsetLifely, 73, was stabbed to death in her home on Northcote Road, Bournemouth, between 15 and 17 May 1971. She suffered a "maniacal attack", according to police, who believed that the assailant lived in the local area, broke into the residence to steal and repeatedly stabbed her when confronted by her. On 25 May, the Evening Times reported that investigators were hunting for a "cuddly" buxom 18-year-old blonde and two youths, who had gone to second-hand shops in Bournemouth attempting to sell jewellery similar to pieces missing from Lifely's home.May 1971Patrick WalshHolloway, London26-year-old Walsh's body was discovered in his van on 22 May 1971. He had been stabbed, and, according to detectives of the time, probably by a fellow motorist with whom he had become embroiled in an argument.June 1971Gloria BoothRuislip, MiddlesexBooth's naked body was discovered on the morning of Sunday 13 June 1971 on a recreation ground off Nairn Road, approximately half a mile from South Ruislip Underground station and a mile from the scene of the murder of Jean Townsend 17 years earlier. Like Townsend, Booth – a 29-year-old housewife from Ealing – had died from strangulation, and it appeared that, as in the Townsend killing, a scarf had been used.August 1971John Augustus Roden OrdeColney Heath, HertfordshireOn 26 August 1971, 45-year-old Orde was shot on his farm at Colney Heath during a run-in with a group of people trying to steal the rear number plate of his car. A man said by his sister to have admitted killing him was acquitted.October 1971Susan TurnerHartlepool, County DurhamThe 19-year-old newlywed's strangled corpse was discovered in a derelict house by two schoolboys playing there during their lunchbreak on 22 October 1971. Her widower was accused of murder at a trial that took place the following February, but the paucity of evidence against him (forensic scientists had found no trace of dust from the abandoned building in the property where he resided) prompted the judge to order the jury to deliver a verdict of not guilty.January 1972Stan JamesGowerton, near SwanseaJames's body was found in the living room of his house on Sterry Road on 30 January 1972. He had been bound, gagged and beaten during a burglary at the property the night before. Two men were charged with the 79-year-old retired greengrocer's murder in 1979 and later cleared.February 1972Harry BarhamStratford, LondonThe fatal Valentine's Day shooting of Barham, a 53-year-old bookmaker, in his car on Windmill Lane in Stratford was followed by the theft of between £20,000 and £40,000 from the vehicle. He had made the money by buying and reselling cheap jewellery to help pay off debt he owed.April 1972Isaac Hughes and Arthur WaiteBlaenavon, Torfaen70-year-old Hughes and 50-year-old Waite, a friend of his, were killed in Hughes's cottage in the small Welsh mining town. Hughes was hit on the head once with a blunt object and Waite was hit numerous times with the same object, and they were found dead there two days after Easter Monday – a day they had spent much of at the local pub. Because there was no evidence that anyone had been in the cottage without permission that Monday or on the day that followed, police believed that the victims had known their killer.April 1972Harold FisherCardiff54-year-old Fisher was fatally stabbed outside the Avana bakery on Pendyris Street in Cardiff during a robbery on 14 April 1972.April 1972Maxwell ConfaitCatford, LondonTwo youths locked up in November 1972 for the killing of Maxwell Confait (a 26-year-old transgender sex worker also known as Michelle) and arson at her residence, plus a third youth sentenced to serve four years at the Royal Philanthropic School in Redhill (Surrey) for burglary and arson, were acquitted in October 1975. Strangulation was the cause of the victim's death.
In 1980, a prisoner became a suspect in Confait's murder when an incriminating conversation between him and a fellow inmate was overheard, but because he and the person he claimed to have been with at the time of the offence each maintained that it was the other who committed it, neither of them could be charged with it.