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The original was posted on /r/unresolvedmysteries by /u/ur_sine_nomine on 2024-01-14 07:17:13+00:00.
For some time the Margaret Muller case was as prominent as that of Suzy Lamplugh - every month or two there was a new angle publicised somewhere. However, interest faded and, after a £20,000 reward was offered by the police in 2011 for information, with no takers, the case continued to slip out of view and is now almost stone cold.
Although there have been almost 500 UK newspaper articles on it, there have been less than a dozen since 2011, no podcast mentions that I can find and the case does not even have a Wikipedia entry; unfortunately, although there was a brief piece on the case (0:49) in February 2003 there was a full Crimewatch UK reconstruction in late 2003 which fell in a fallow period (2001-6), where very few editions survived to be digitised and put up on YouTube, so may be lost.
Hence this post.
Margaret Muller was an American citizen born in Falls Church, Virginia. She was an artist who began her studies at George Mason University, obtained an Irish passport and completed a two-year masters' degree at the Slade School of Fine Art in Central London. She then moved to Hackney and joined a collective studio there.
At 0830 on Monday 3 February 2003 she was stabbed to death while out for a run in Victoria Park, East London. The park is big for London (213 acres) with a famous drinking fountain and no fewer than nineteen entrances and exits. It is hemmed in by dense housing, two canals, two railway lines and an urban motorway (plus the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park and HS1 route, neither of which existed in 2003), with the London Underground District Line, and Mile End the nearest Tube station, not far away; although the park grounds have been extensively altered since then, largely for situational crime prevention, as far as I can tell the murder took place near the current Splash Pool.
There were people around - as a runner, with my girlfriend, in another London park I can state pretty definitively that there would have been many people in the park even at that time on a weekday in winter as it was dry and cloudy with average temperature for early February (PDF) - but it appears that only three people initially came forward to state that they saw or heard anything. Two people "of Mediterranean appearance" in their early 20s were seen running from the scene by a witness; one was considered to look like Craig David. The investigation was hampered because Ms Muller lived alone and nobody reported her missing; she was identified by the contents of her mobile phone.
And that, essentially, was it.
House-to-house inquiries were conducted, especially to the NW of the park; the Gascoyne Estate was an area of particular interest because the individuals previously mentioned as being seen running from the scene may have gone there. The murder weapon was never found despite ponds being dragged and drains cleared and, curiously, there is very little that I can find about Ms Muller's injuries except that they were probably caused by a blade "three or four inches" in length. For me the most vexing part of the case is that, thanks to scientific errors, there is no DNA evidence; the Government forensic science service - since disbanded (PDF) - was using a new test, more sensitive than those previously available, in an unsound way. There were CCTV images (of what is not stated), but they were of such poor quality even enhancements were useless.
The police had already aired their suspicions a couple of days into the investigation, but after a few weeks they were certain that Ms Muller was randomly killed for the sake of killing. A reconstruction was staged in early March with 100 (some sources say 300) people known to be in the park at the time of the murder retracing their movements; five people were arrested during 2003 on suspicion of involvement in the murder, but all were ultimately released. One newspaper report states that a major suspect was an individual on a bicycle who promised someone at the murder scene that he would raise help, but cycled away and did not do so; others state that someone in an orange and yellow top was seen running with Ms Muller at the time of the murder; another notes that the police believed (on what basis is not stated) that the killer took part in the reconstruction. None of these leads came to anything.
There was no progress, although other murderers were interviewed about the case, until 2009 when a man was arrested on suspicion of murder and another was arrested on suspicion of being an accessory. However, those arrests also came to nothing (I note that this case is a favourite of racist Web sites, which state outright that those arrested were guilty of murder) and, by the time the 2011 reward was offered, nine people had been arrested and released concerning the case. It appears that nobody else has even come close to arrest since then.
Yet another unexplained loose end is that, in 2011, the police were particularly interested in someone who walked past a pub (The Victoria Park Inn, now the People's Park Tavern) about an hour and a quarter before the murder. There was no indication why. Since then there has been no appeal other than one in 2023, on the 20th anniversary of the murder, which repeated what was said in 2011 and was picked up by few media outlets.
The murder is considered, by the police, to be a one-off. Some similarities were noted with the murder of Egeli Rasta in 2006. However, the murderer was ruled out of involvement in this murder and is considered only to have killed once. The murderer of Cheryl Moss was also ruled out.
Questions
- Was it indeed a motiveless, pointless murder?
- Was the police assertion that the murderer took part in the reconstruction plausible?
- Levi Bellfield had not yet been captured. Could he have been responsible? (One of his murders took place less than two weeks after this one).