Crucial clue could finally solve brutal murder of girl, 16, found naked near power station over 50 years ago, say family
A CRUCIAL clue could solve the brutal murder of a 16-year-old girl found naked near a power station over 50 years ago.
Jacqueline Johns’ body was found close to Battersea Power Station in southwest London in 1973 – but her killer has never been caught.
Friendship bracelets found by cops may prove vital in the cold case.
Insurance clerk Jacqueline had attended her work colleague Susan Baynes’ wedding party on the Essex Riviera – and after thanking the bride for a “lovely time” she headed for home in Thornton Heath, south London.
But the teen – later dubbed the Girl in the Yellow Dress – never made it.
Her body was stripped of the bright lemon-coloured dress and sheepskin coat she’d been wearing and was dumped in a railway siding.
The grim discovery at Spicers Wharf – on October 1 1973 – was made by workmen just across the Thames from Victoria Station, where she was last seen alive by witnesses.
Jacqueline was raped and strangled. Apart from her yellow and blue shoes, her clothes were never recovered.
The last public police appeal for information was made just months later – and the killer remains a mystery.
However, Jacqueline’s loved ones fear she may have been a victim of notorious serial killer Robert Black.
Her sister Susan Church says her and her siblings have had no contact with cops for more than 30 years.
She told the MailOnline: “It is almost as if her case has been wiped from the face of the earth.”
Jacqueline, a devout Christian, died on the evening of September 29 1973.
She’d missed the last train home from Victoria just before midnight.
A woman she was seen talking to on the platform has never been traced.
At the time, police suggested she walked across Chelsea Bridge, possibly trying to hitchhike home.
Some experts have poured cold water on the Black theory as his victims were usually much younger.
He died in prison, aged 68, in Northern Ireland in 2016.
He was serving 35 years for the kidnap, rape and murder of four girls aged between five and 11 from 1981 to 1986.
Black was, however, living in London when Jacqueline was killed.
The Met confirmed to criminologist Robert Giles last year that the case “remains unsolved” after he submitted a Freedom of Information request.
Giles – the co-author of The Face of Evil: The True Story of Serial Killer Robert Black – said Black had discussed his desire to rape women with a fellow sex offender while in borstal in the late 1960s.
In 1974, police said due to the location of Jacqueline’s body she may have been abducted by two men.
Susan, who lives in Heysham, Lancashire, said police did tell the family in the early 1990s that Black may have been involved – but have not been in touch since.
She said: “The police contacted us about Robert Black after they found some friendship bracelets.
“But I don’t think my mother knew if they were hers or not.”
Susan added that Black’s was the only name cops ever gave to them.
She doesn’t believe Jacqueline would have got into a van, which is thought to have been the serial killer’s transport at the time.
However, instead she may have got into a car thinking it was a taxi, Susan said.
Her mum’s last wish before she died was to have the murder solved.
Susan added she is “shocked” the case is even still considered active by the force as they have been in the dark for so long.
Black kept a bracelet in his flat which may have been a souvenir, a police source told the Mail.
Jacqueline’s sister Annette Belcher, 64, said detectives had previously shown her a bracelet with coloured beads but she couldn’t be sure it was her late sibling’s.
Who was Robert Black?
Robert Black, from Falkirk in Scotland, was in 1994 given 12 life sentences for murdering four girls aged between five and 11 in the 1980s.
He died aged 68 at Maghaberry prison in County Antrim in January 2016.
During the 1970s and 1980s he worked as a delivery driver, during which time he abducted and killed his victims.
He was eventually caught by police in 1990 with a barely alive six-year-old girl in the back of his van in Stow, Scotland.
Remarkably, she was found by her policeman dad.
Black was convicted of the murders of 11-year-old Susan Maxwell, from the Scottish Borders, five-year-old Caroline Hogg, from Edinburgh, and Sarah Harper, 10, from Morley, near Leeds, as well as a failed abduction bid in Nottingham in 1988.
In 2011, he was found guilty of the 1981 murder of nine-year-old Jennifer Cardy, from Ballinderry, County Antrim.