Vera Isobel Minnie Page (13 April 1921 - 14 December 1931) was a British schoolgirl and the victim of an unsolved child murder case from the early 1930s.
Page was reported missing after she failed to return to her home in Notting Hill, London, from a visit to a nearby relative on 14 December 1931; her body was found two days later in undergrowth in nearby Addison Road. She had been raped, then manually strangled to death in a murder described by one detective as "the most terrible in which I had to deal with during my career".
Strong circumstantial evidence existed attesting to the guilt of a local labourer named Percy Orlando Rush, whose parents lived in the same house as Vera and who was casually acquainted with the Page family. However, an investigative procedural flaw is believed to have enabled Rush to dispose of crucial physical evidence prior to a formal police search of his home. As such, at the subsequent coroner's inquest into Vera's death, the coroner's jury determined that insufficient real evidence existed to formally charge Rush with her murder.
No individual was ever brought to trial for Vera's murder. Officially, the case remains unsolved.
Early life Vera Isobel Minnie Page was born on 13 April 1921 in Hammersmith, London, the only child born to Charles William and Isabel (née Essex) Page. The Page family were working-class, and resided in Chapel Road, Notting Hill (now known as St. Marks Place) throughout much of Vera's childhood. At the time of Vera's birth, her father was employed as a gas fitter, but later became a painter with Great Western Railways; her mother was a housewife. Vera has been described as a popular and friendly, yet shy and well-behaved girl.
To supplement the family income, Charles and Isabel occasionally allowed lodgers to reside in their home, although these lodgers were always either family members or individuals known to the family. In January 1931, the family moved from Chapel Road to a three-storey house in nearby Blenheim Crescent. The family did not occupy the whole house, but rooms on both the ground floor and basement. Other occupants who resided on the upper floors of this property included a middle-aged couple named Arthur and Annie () Rush, who had lived within the property for approximately twenty years.
Disappearance On Monday 14 December 1931, Vera left her home at 22 Blenheim Crescent at 4:30 p.m. to walk approximately fifty yards to the home of her aunt, Minnie Essex, who lived at number 70 Blenheim Crescent. The purpose of this short journey was to collect two swimming certificates she had been awarded but had left with her aunt the previous day. Prior to leaving, Vera informed her mother she would soon return home as she was hungry and looking forward to her evening meal. She was wearing a distinctive red beret.
Vera's aunt would later inform investigators her niece had stayed at her home for "about ten minutes" before returning home, adding "the street lamps" had not yet illuminated.
Initial inquiries When Vera had not returned home by 5:30 p.m., her father paid a visit to her aunt, who informed him Vera had collected her swimming certificates and then left her home at approximately 4:45 p.m., intending to return home in time for her evening meal. Having first visited the homes of all of Vera's friends and relatives in the hope his daughter might be with an acquaintance, Charles Page visited Notting Hill police station to report Vera as missing at 10:25 p.m. Assisted by several friends and neighbours, Vera's parents continued their search for her throughout the evening and into the morning. The following day, the child's physical description was circulated among local police and by the evening of 15 December, local media had been notified of her disappearance, with several wireless stations broadcasting appeals for information as to her whereabouts and welfare.
Via extensive inquiries, investigators determined that minutes prior to 5 p.m. on 14 December, Vera had spoken with a school friend named Irene Steerman as she (Vera) had stood outside a chemist's located at the junction of Blenheim Crescent and Portobello Road, and that Vera had informed her friend of her intention to purchase soap dominoes on prominent display behind the window as a Christmas present for her parents. Steerman noted Vera had been carrying a large white envelope in her hand, which her aunt confirmed to investigators had contained her swimming certificates. Shortly after this brief conversation, Steerman left Vera standing in front of the chemist's window.
No other verifiable sightings of the child—alone or in the company of any other individual—could be established after this time. A subsequent autopsy would reveal Vera's murder occurred shortly after Steerman had last seen her alive, with investigators theorizing she had most likely encountered her murderer in the vicinity of the chemist's shop.
Discovery At approximately 9:31 on the morning of 16 December, a milkman named Joseph Smith discovered Vera's body lying in a patch of shrubbery in the front garden of 89 Addison Road, Kensington, close to Holland Park. The location was approximately one mile from her home.
The perpetrator had made no serious effort to conceal Vera's body, beyond making a brief and rudimentary effort to throw handfuls of earth and leaves upon her remains. This fact led investigators to speculate Vera had likely been murdered close to the location of the discovery of her body, and that the perpetrator either lived locally or held extensive geographical knowledge of the neighbourhood. Furthermore, a worn section of ammonia-stained finger bandage also composing of lint and bearing traces of coal dust was discovered to be lodged firmly against the inner elbow of her right arm; this evidence was only discovered when Vera's body was moved from the crime scene to the mortuary.
Approximately forty hours had elapsed between the time Vera had last been seen alive and the discovery of her remains, yet her body was not rigid, and decomposition was relatively advanced, thus suggesting her body had been stored in a fairly warm environment between the time she had last been seen alive and the discovery of her body. Moreover, it had rained heavily from 3 p.m. to 9 p.m. the previous day, and the weather was still generally moist and misty, yet Vera's clothing had absorbed very little moisture, and solely in locations where her body had touched the soil at the location of her discovery, leading investigators to opine that the child's body could not have lain in the location where she was discovered for more than two hours. This opinion was corroborated by both an occupant of the house who informed investigators that had the body been in the patch of shrubbery before 7:50 a.m., she could not have failed to notice it, and the milkman who discovered the body and who had made his routine delivery to the home at 5:30 a.m., who was also adamant that the body was not lying in this location upon his first visit to the premises.
Autopsy Vera's body was examined by pathologist Sir Bernard Spilsbury, who concluded that she had been raped, then manually strangled to death, and that the child had been deceased for in excess of twenty-four hours prior to the discovery of her body. Her underwear had been torn, and deep impressions of one finger and one thumb—both slightly bloodied—were evident upon the child's neck. Her body also bore superficial bruising and a welt mark also located upon her neck had been inflicted via a ligature, although this injury had evidently occurred after death and may have been inflicted by her murderer while dragging her body to a place of concealment. The advanced state of decomposition given the time lapse between Vera's disappearance and discovery and the cold seasonal climate led Spilsbury to conclude her body had lain in a warm environment for most of the time her body had been undiscovered.
Spilsbury also discovered traces of soot and coal dust on Vera's face, plus spattered candle wax in two locations around her right shoulder and three locations on the shoulder of her coat. The candle wax itself was subsequently discovered to be of a different consistency to all candles within Vera's own home.
The consistency of the candle wax discovered on Vera's clothing, plus the evident coal dust, led Spilsbury to the conclusion that the girl's body had likely been hidden in either a coal shed or cellar prior to her body being discarded at Addison Road, and that this shed or cellar most likely had no electric light. Furthermore, Spilsbury concurred with the initial police conclusion that the section of ammonia-stained finger bandage found lodged against Vera's inner elbow had likely been dislodged from the left hand of her murderer as he had deposited her body at the crime scene.
Investigation The rape and murder of Vera Page caused extensive public indignation and police mounted an intensive operation to apprehend her murderer. The individual in charge of the investigation was Superintendent George Cornish.
Over 200 police officers and detectives were assigned to the manhunt to apprehend the perpetrator; these efforts saw extensive door-to-door public inquiries conducted throughout the vicinity of Vera's disappearance and discovery and exhaustive media appeals to the public for information. Over 1,000 people would be formally questioned in relation to the murder, and several thousand witness statements obtained by police throughout their inquiries.
As Vera was a friendly but shy and wary child, investigators theorized she had likely been abducted and murdered by an individual she had known and trusted, and that this individual had lured her either to a warm room or into a car where he had proceeded to rape and murder her before stowing her body in either a coal cellar or a garage—as indicated by the extensive coal dust upon her clothes. This individual had subsequently retrieved Vera's body from the location of her concealment at or shortly before dawn on 16 December and proceeded to transport her body to Addison Road via either a wheelbarrow or a perambulator, inadvertently dislodging the finger bandage from his left hand as he removed his hands from beneath the child's arms as he had lifted, then discarded her body from the wheelbarrow or perambulator in the garden of 89 Addison Road. This theory soon bore fruit as on 17 December, a Mrs. Margaret Key informed investigators that at approximately 6:40 a.m. on 16 December, she had observed an individual whose physical appearance fitted that of a local man named Percy Orlando Rush pushing a costermonger's barrow laden with a large bundle covered with a distinctive red table-cloth with a knitted fringe walking in the direction of Addison Road.
On 17 December, a woman living close to Addison Road named Kathleen Short brought a child's red beret to the Notting Hill police station, stating she had found the rain-soaked item at approximately 9:30 on the evening of 15 December at a location investigators noted was quite close to where Vera had last been seen alive. This beret was identified by Vera's parents as belonging to their daughter, and was noted to smell of paraffin (although this odour may have been caused by Short initially storing the beret beneath a sink in her scullery). Short also informed investigators that close to the scene of her discovery, she had also located several sections of torn paper which she had collected and discarded, and a section of candle which she had herself used and then also discarded. By 21 December, police inquiries had also produced an eyewitness who stated that on the morning of the discovery of Vera's body, the door to a coal shed close to Addison Road had been left unlocked and ajar, when on all other dates it would invariably have been closed and locked.