Oldest Cold Case Murder in The Thames Valley

 Unsolved Murder at RAF Halton 1967

!9-year-old Rita Ellis murdered on 11th November 1967

Rita Ellis was serving in the Women's Royal Air Force based at RAF Halton, between the towns of Tring and Wendover in Buckinghamshire, England when she was found dead by a dog walker early on Sunday morning 12th November 1967. 

She joined the RAF in April 1967 and completed her initial training at RAF Spittlegate in Grantham, Lincolnshire before being stationed at Halton in June 1967. 

Her body, naked from the waist down, was found covered by leaves at Rawbourgh Copse, part of the military installation. She had been sexually assaulted, suffered a great deal of bruising to her body and face and strangled with her own underwear, which of course makes the killing sexually motivated.

Buckinghamshire police took up the initial investigation but, it was soon taken control of by New Scotland Yard. 

There had been two big functions on the base on the night of November 11th 1967, one was a bingo night and the other was a disco, so hundreds of people were on the premises. The Raf had 2,000 recruits plus 670 civilians that used the site plus external traffic so this meant that finding a killer would prove to be a mammoth task, one it seems that even New Scotland yard could not handle.

The first thing that strikes me as curious and that is that Rita was due to babysit for an officer, Wing Commander Royaston Watson on the evening of November 11th 1967 and was due to be collected at 8pm but was never picked up. 

Now, this is what I find odd and do not really accept the somewhat sketchy explanation which is; "There was some confusion either with the pick-up point or the timing of the collection and she never went to the babysitting job.

Rita appears relaxed and so happy in this picture

According to a friend of Rita's, Pauline Badger claimed that she had waved Rita off in a car that she assumed had come to collect Rita for babysitting, she was unable to say what make or colour the car was because it was dark. 

Rita had been told that she would be collected by a white car and according to a statement from Royston Watson he arrived at 7.40pm, waited until 7.55pm, drove round to collect his wife and went back to the arranged rendezvous point, but Rita was still nowhere to be seen.

The Wing Commander's wife left the car and entered the building to look for Rita but returned at approximately 8.10pm to tell her husband that she had not been able to locate their babysitter.

Angered by being let down, Watson told his wife that Rita would be placed on a report on Monday morning.

The 19-year-old's body was found in a disused coal yard on the RAF base. Close by was Rita's handbag filled with things that she may need when spending a night at another person's home, her towel and her nightdress so from that my first thought is that she was killed around the same time that she was expecting to be collected for the babysitting job, so this again suggests a connection.

According to the head of the Major Crime Review Team, Peter Beirne said that the original police investigation focused on serving men at RAF Halton and local residents that had access to the camp, but they failed to identify the perpetrator.

I just have to say at this point that I find it quite disturbing that when the police come up against a major crime such as murder, they are off looking for males! 

Without wanting to state the obvious;

Rita was serving in the Royal Air Force, she was trained in the same way as her fellow members would have been and more than capable of violence and ultimately murder. 

Were the women ever even interviewed? I can't help but wonder. Was someone jealous? Was Rita seeing someone that others wanted? All questions that are very relevant in such a situation

She was sexually assaulted yes but not necessarily by a male, lets remember both are capable and whilst I realise that the perpetrator was most likely a male, I do feel that all personnel based at RAF Halton should have been interviewed and their whereabouts verified, particularly as the case was not solved.

News article from 1967 covering Rita's murder

From a statement made by Pauline Badger, Rita had come to her in a distressed state on the previous Tuesday night, November 7th 1967, saying that she felt someone was going to attack her. Pauline had calmed Rita down and after a friendly chat nothing more was said on the matter. Was the person that Rita feared actually her killer? 

The inquest determined that the killer was between 20 - 30 years old with a persistent psychosis and that it was likely that another attack was imminent.

The hunt went cold with very little by way of evidence and for a while, there were no further attacks, that is until December 28th 1967 when a student nurse was grabbed from behind and dragged into a field. She was raped, beaten with a blunt object and left for dead but somehow she managed to survive and was able to describe her attacker to the police.

The woman told police that the male that had harmed her was approximately 25-30 years old, with a long thin face and unusually red and puffy eyes. Once again in January 1968, a 15-year-old girl was grabbed and viciously assaulted, she gave the same description. 

Curiously all three females had been wearing some sort of uniform, RAF, Nurse and school clothes.  

There were several rumours that the attacks were carried out by a visiting American airman. The base held quite a number of Americans at any given time and they usually stayed in the UK for three to four months, this could possibly explain why the attacks stopped after the one in January 1968.

A DNA sample was recovered from Rita's body at the time but as there was no technology to process any such samples it was just stored until the 40th-anniversary case review in 2007 when it was ordered that it be examined. By the 50th anniversary in 2017, it was reported that some 200 suspects had been eliminated to date but still no perpetrator for Rita's murder or indeed the other vicious assaults has been identified.

The police still hope that someone may come forward with a name, but time is running out. If the suspect identified by the other victims was even 25-years-old at the time he would be aged 79 now, even if he is still alive.

I do really hope that this case can still be resolved, but once again it seems there has been a lot of errors in the investigations for the murder that have ultimately lead to the case being left cold and unsolved

I will leave it there for this one and be back with a new case when I will discuss a possible wrongful conviction that has potentially left a murder unsolved and a man in prison for a crime he did not commit.

Updates: 21 May 2021

Since publishing this article a couple of points of interest have been brought to our attention, which does seriously indicate that despite the passing of time, this case is still very much worthy of review.

Firstly, there is evidence to say that a woman was attacked by an unknown male at around the same date as Rita was murdered. She was attacked in a small village called Little Tring, which is quite close to where Rita Ellis was murdered.

I am pleased to report that the victim was not killed but the male attempted to strangle her. I understand that some TV sleuths are planning to cover this case in a new crime series, so I hope that helps to raise the profile of Rita's and the other more fortunate victims cases.

Secondly, it seems that a girl who was just 15 in 1967 was sexually assaulted by a well-spoken male who claimed he was delivering medical supplies. This assault happened just a few days after Rita was killed. 

Whether either of these incidents were connected we do not yet know but we hope to learn more as we go along.

Keep in touch and let's see where things go. If you would like to discuss this case or any other true crime matter with me or indeed engage my professional services I am always happy to hear from you.

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