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Raymond Leslie MorrisEnglish murderer and rapist
Date of Birth: 13.08.1929
Country:  Great Britain |
Content:
Biography of Raymond Leslie Morris
Raymond Leslie Morris, also known as the 'A34 Murderer', was an English killer and rapist who gained unprecedented public interest. He was convicted of the murder of Christine Ann Darby after one of the largest investigations in British history. Morris is also considered the prime suspect in the murders of Margaret Reynolds and Diana Joy Tift.
Early Life
Raymond Leslie Morris was born on August 13, 1929, in Walsall, Staffordshire. He lived in this city his entire life. Morris was an intelligent man, reportedly having a high IQ of 120. He had various jobs before settling as an engineer-builder at a precision instrument factory in Oldbury, West Midlands, in 1967. In 1951, he married a neighbor who was two years younger than him. She gave birth to two boys. After eight years of marriage, Morris kicked his wife out of the house and later divorced her due to her infidelity and pregnancy from another man. His first wife later described Morris as someone who needed to exert his sexual dominance. At the age of 35, Morris remarried a 21-year-old woman named Carol. During the time of the 'A34 Murder', he and Carol lived on Green Lane in Walsall, directly opposite the police station.
The A34 Murder
On January 12, 1966, the bodies of 6-year-old Margaret Reynolds and 5-year-old Diana Joy Tift were found in a ditch in Cannock Chase, Staffordshire. Reynolds had gone missing on her way to school in Aston on September 8, 1965, while Tift disappeared a few minutes' walk from her grandmother's house in Bloxwich on December 30 of the same year. Thousands of people spent several hours searching for Reynolds after her disappearance.
On August 22, 1967, a soldier who was part of a search team discovered the naked body of 7-year-old Christine Ann Darby under a bush, a mile away from where the bodies of Reynolds and Tift were found. According to reports, on August 19, 1967, Christine got into a car with a stranger near her home on Camden Street in Caldmore. One witness claimed to have seen a man speaking in the local dialect in a gray car, while two others specified that the car was an Austin A55 or A60. The three murders had similarities in that each victim was lured into a car near their homes and then raped and killed. Darby, Reynolds, and Tift lived within a 17-mile radius of each other and near the A34 road, which passed through Cannock Chase.
Before the arrest of the suspect, 150 detectives visited around 39,000 homes, interviewed 80,000 people, and checked the documentation of over a million cars. Gathering information on 25,000 Austin A55 and A60 from 1,375,000 files in the Midlands, investigators examined each car. The hunt for the Cannock Chase murderer was led by Sir Stanley Bailey, the Assistant Chief Constable of Staffordshire at the time.
Arrest and Conviction
On November 4, 1968, 10-year-old Margaret Aulton managed to escape from a man who tried to make her get into his green and white Ford Corsair. The 18-year-old housewife remembered the car's license plates, which led the police straight to Morris. He was arrested for attempted kidnapping. The police knew that Morris owned a gray Austin A55 similar to the one used in the abductions. He became a suspect in Darby's murder, but his wife provided him with an alibi, claiming that they were shopping together on the day the schoolgirl went missing. However, a search of Morris's apartment revealed pornographic photographs of a young girl who turned out to be Carol Morris's 5-year-old niece. Raymond Morris was arrested by Scotland Yard detectives for Darby's murder on November 16, 1968. He was also charged with two counts of indecent assault on his niece and one count of attempted abduction of Aulton.
In the end, Morris's wife became the key prosecution witness and recanted her story about shopping on the day of Darby's murder. Morris was found guilty of the murder and rape of 7-year-old Christine Ann Darby and sentenced to life imprisonment. As of August 2001, he was incarcerated at Wymott Prison and planned to appeal his sentence. Although Raymond was only convicted for Darby's murder, he is considered the prime suspect in the deaths of Reynolds and Tift. Reynolds' relatives are convinced that Morris was her killer. Furthermore, 10-year-old Jane Taylor went missing in the Cannock area on August 14, 1966, and Morris was also named as a possible suspect in connection with her disappearance. Spending over 40 years behind bars, he became one of the inmates serving the longest sentences in England and Wales.
In November 2010, Morris succeeded in having his case reviewed in an attempt to challenge his guilt. The hearing took place in December 2010 in Leeds. Morris's defense team made a statement: "The application for a judicial review is the first step in an attempt to have the case referred back to the Court of Appeal after 42 years in prison. If Morris's convictions are quashed, it will be the longest-running miscarriage of justice in British history. It could also potentially mean that a child killer remained at large while Morris spent 40 years behind bars."
