The Murders of Julie Pacey & Sharon Harper 1994

Here are two tragic cases of women who lost their lives to murder, both were mother's, both were well-liked and well-loved. Their lives were cut off far too soon by the evil that is murder, but these cases sadly have so far never been solved. . .

Working through each item of evidence as supplied there are many questions in both the case of Sharon Harper who lived at Sycamore Court and worked at the Market Cross pub in Westgate, murdered between 1st and 3^rd of July 1994, her body was found in shrubbery in the Shepherd construction site on Earlsfield Lane, Grantham on 3rd July 1994  and that of Julie Pacey, murdered on 26^th September 1994, her body was found by her 14-year-old daughter Helen in the family bathroom at Longcliffe Road, Grantham soon after she was killed.

Police have so far always refused to link the two cases, despite post-mortems revealing similarities. The individual OICs, officers in charge of the cases think the MO, modus operandi in each case is too different but I disagree. Let's be realistic, there has to be some reason why the police have drawn that conclusion and I feel there is something that truly does not add up. Let's look at some facts. . .

Sharon Harper had apparently had sexual intercourse quite recently before death and although her clothes were in place and no evidence of a struggle at the time of her body being discovered, nonetheless sexual intercourse had taken place. There is, of course, no physical evidence to confirm whether she was killed in the same place that her body was found.

The forensic report does not give any possible time indication of how long the sex had taken place prior to death

Considering that Sharon had been at work until after midnight on 1^st July this makes it clear that the sexual activity had more than likely taken place between the time she left work and her murder during the small hours of 2^nd July 1994, probably soon after 0100, either that or she had sex during her time working in a busy pub on a Friday night, which seems extremely unlikely and can almost certainly be dismissed.

Sharon was then beaten, strangled and her body dumped, partially concealed by shrubs.

Julie Pacey was, according to forensic reports violently sexually assaulted before her death and it would seem extremely likely that it was part of the murderous act. She was found with underwear and tights around her knees, face down in the bathroom of her family home.

My opinion is that it is perfectly possible that Sharon and Julie's killer could have been the same person.

The description of the suspects are a little different as it is suggested that the man seen with Sharon had long hair and was guessed to be around 30 years old, whilst the suspect in Julie Pacey's case was said to be around 40 years old, wearing blue overalls, to have had red cheeks with a ruddy complexion. Unfortunately the rest of the description in Sharon's case is a little sketchy.

We must bear in mind that the man seen with Sharon was seen late at night by people in the dark, at very best lit by car headlights or a street lamp. Although somewhat likely, there is no firm evidence to suggest that the man she was seen with was her killer, particularly as he was on foot although the man concerned has never come forward to be eliminated from enquiries, so this does cast some suspicion over him. It is my belief that the killer in Sharon's case would have taken her by car. Sharon was seen with a man of a similar description before her murder, a point I will cover later.

I would be very keen to know if anyone saw a dark-coloured BMW in the area between 1st and 3rd July 1994, particularly during the hours close to  when Sharon was last seen alive

In the case of the suspect in Julie Pacey's murder, it was daylight and he was seen on multiple occasions, so again I feel this could have been the same man.

There has been much reference to the so titled “serial killer” Christopher Halliwell as being the suspect in Sharon's murder as some parts of his MO Modus Operandi are similar, but I don't feel it is very likely. The problem is there are people out there that just see “ah here is a man suspected of being a serial killer and already convicted of two murders, so we can make him a scapegoat for lots of others, get a good clear up done”, but this just muddies the waters and clouds judgement, thus closing people's eyes to the real killer's identity.

[The issue will be dealt with in a separate blog article but, it is fair to say that disgraced police detective Steve Fulcher said that he believed Halliwell was responsible for many more murders, there has to be a point where we can't simply suggest that every woman murdered over a 25 year period from the early 1980s to 2016 was necessarily a victim of Halliwell or worthy of an investigation involving him.]

Ask yourself this; What are the chances of two women being strangled and 'possibly' sexually assaulted in a smallish market town where the population was around 43,000 at that time within just 86 days of one another.?

Not only that, but from the DNA found in Julie's case no one was identified. It is not clear whether any DNA swabs were taken in Sharon's case or indeed were available by the time the UK national DNA database came into it's own a year or so later in 1995. More importantly what are the chances of no one being found responsible for either killing, particularly if it were two different assailants. It is fair to say that if any samples at all were taken from Sharon then almost certainly they would have been matched with Haliwell had he been connected as would also be the case with Julie.

United Kingdom National Database

Officially known as The UK national criminal intelligence DNA Database, set up in 1995 using the Second Generation Multiplex (SGM)DNA profiling system and by 2016 held no less than 5.8 million DNA records. 
These records are obtained from crime scenes and police suspects, although its is fair to say that samples taken from suspects that are not charged are apparently destroyed.

Back to the story. . .

It has been suggested that Sharon could possibly have been working as some sort of sex worker as she only had a part-time job. She was struggling to bring up a small baby and maintain her life in a flat, however, she was also in a long term relationship and was engaged to be married, so this is something which doesn't seem to have had much scrutiny, whether or not it is relevant we may never know but worthy of a mention.

Moving on to Julie Pacey; This case is messy and is a lot more difficult to grasp or make sense of, but we must unravel things as best we can, let's see what we understand thus far. . .

Julie was quite a bit older than Sharon, she was 38, married to Andrew with a family, a 14-year-old daughter Helen and 11-year-old son Matthew. She lived in a suburbia kind of property in an affluent area of Grantham. Presumably, they would have been quite comfortable financially, a presumption which is reinforced by the fact Julie 'Chose' not to work when the children were young and was only working just a few hours a day when she met her demise.

According to evidence that we are presented with it seems that we are expected to believe a man just “walked in” off the street, went upstairs presumably unheard by Julie, to say nothing of being totally unseen by neighbours and passers-by. He went on to viciously sexually assault her and murder her. There was no motive, no robbery and no struggle, really? He even took the ligature with him and took it away again!!

Look at it this way; Next time you walk upstairs in a house where the stairs are made of wood listen out see how many creaks and noises there are as you walk. Would she not have been alerted to his approach? How many household front doors open and close that quietly not to be heard by a lone woman in a quiet family house? Try it for yourself.

Julie's daughter Helen, aged 14 at the time said that she arrived home and entered through the front door but, she did not recall whether or not she had to use her key to unlock the door or whether it was unlocked.

This statement may not seem like much but, it is actually suggestive that the door was quite often locked, this presumption is again secured by the fact otherwise the daughter would have said something like “The door was unlocked as always”. 

So, why was the main front door to a house unlocked, thus making it easy for a murderer to enter without knocking or anything if it was often locked? The children had a key so they must have needed one, why would they need one if the door was normally unlocked?

In my experience this is where things become very cloudy and unlikely.

I have researched many tragic cases, but never one that at first glance seems so simple yet when examined in detail is very complex indeed.

Lets delve a little deeper. . .

Before we do, I just have to pick up on a statement made to the press by Detective chief inspector Graham White of Lincolnshire police who lead the hunt for Julie's killer in 1994 in regard to the killer's motive “The motive was not one of burglary or theft. The only motive was to go to the house sexually assault and kill Julie”, that makes little or no sense

Anyway my apologies, I digress. . .

Apparently Julie looked after the neighbour's daughter after school every day, except for Mondays so this “opportunist murderer” struck very lucky in finding the front door of the house unlocked, his victim alone in her house, upstairs in her bathroom blissfully unaware that her killer was in her home on just the one day in a one hour window of time when she would be alone. Bear in mind also that Julie's husband was a plumber and therefore would probably have had a very varied routine of the times that he was at home.

The man knew where to find Julie, there was no sign of a struggle, yet her tights and underwear were below her knees which to be fair is perfectly reasonable as she was in the bathroom but, she had been violently sexually assaulted and strangled. Julie was apparently still wearing a roll neck jumper which covered her neck so that no one realised she had been strangled until the paramedic ambulance staff lowered it. Hmmm, something really does not add up here. . .

Look; This stranger not only got into the house unseen and unnoticed, violently sexually assaulted Julie all without any sounds being heard outside but 'moved' the jumper, rather than remove it to attach a ligature, strangled her until she was dead then removed the ligature and covered the wounds? Really? Why? What difference would it make as to when the strangulation marks were seen? If the clothing was removed, ripped or damaged? 

Further question arises here as statements say "No sign of a struggle" so how did a killer get the jumper out of the way, get the ligature on to successfully strangle Julie without her fighting back? It is human instinct to fight back, so surely her hands would be marked? 

After all it's the Fight or flight response, the body naturally responds to danger, acute stress and attack. The body's sympathetic nervous system is activated due to a sudden release of hormones when faced with something frightening, the heartbeat is quickened, the person begins to breathe faster, the body becomes tense in immediate readiness to take action

The assailant would be gone before anyone found Julie and going to all the extra trouble to take care of details made the time spent in the house by the murderer longer, thus increasing the risk of being sprung!! Let's bear in mind that the assailant would have had the absolute maximum of one hour to carry out his dreadful activities and be gone before the return of the daughter from school, presumably he / she would have been aware of the time frame.

One possibility is that the assailant was already in the house with Julie's knowledge and was known to her or maybe he hadn't left the scene but was hiding somewhere but the authorities were quickly summoned and thus in the latter case he/she would have been discovered. These are just suggestions and may bear no relevance to the case at this stage.

Now let's step back just a little to Friday 23^rd September 1994; Julie told her friend's child that a strange man had knocked on the door just before the child arrived. He had knocked on the door and as Julie was vacuuming and assumed the person knocking was the expected child she had called out for the man to come in. Apparently, he had entered the house and asked for directions to a road some distance away and left.

Once again not what would really be termed “normal” behaviour, surely an average person walking along a street looking for directions would ask a passer-by or go to a nearby shop. Why would he turn into someone's driveway, walk to a door, knock then ask? What if there had been no one home? It could be argued that Julie's car was on the drive but she could have been out on foot or with her husband in his car.

Interestingly the neighbour's daughter had seen the man leaving Julie's house on the Friday, I can't help but raise the question; “Would Julie have mentioned him and his visit at all had the child not seen him”, I don't think so.

The other question raised here is, did the child “see” the man because Julie told her about him and drew her attention to his visit? In other words, if Julie hadn't mentioned the man would the child have even recalled it to mention him to the police three days later?

Looking again at the day of Julie's murder; She apparently left the nursery where she worked part-time at 2pm, drove 2 miles to her parent's house to visit them yet she was back in Grantham town centre, having parked the car and was window shopping at 2.30pm.

She was seen at 2.45pm in her car turning into her driveway so didn't shop for long and was then seen again driving at 3.10pm also appearing to be coming from town, busy lady for sure.

So this opportunist that “may” have been watching the house for a few days has a window of one hour to get in, unseen, brutally sexually assault and murder a woman in her bathroom, undo her watch from her wrist and leave also unobserved. Once again all seems very sketchy, very circumstantial and very 'shot in the dark'. 

No evidence of the robbery, no ransacking of the house, even the car left peacefully parked on the drive, so what was the reason for the murder? Why Julie Pacey? Why not the woman next door? Why pick on one house in the middle of a street and one woman of all the women in Grantham? Those are the questions that need to be answered to come close to solving this case.

Don't get me wrong I understand that the minds of killers are not logical and they do not necessarily have the time to consider their actions but in most cases, there will ultimately be a reason for murder.

Lets look at the possibility of the assailant having watched the house apparently unnoticed by neighbours and passers-by over a few days. This theory seems pretty unlikely as most of Longcliffe Road, Grantham is a built-up area and a fairly straight road. Once again, why? If a killer is going to go to all the trouble of targeting a person to the point of undertaking surveillance on a family home, there has to be a serious reason surely.

I mean we have established that just on the one day in question Julie Pacey went out to work, drove to her parents, drove to town, drove out again to an unknown location and returned. In order for a killer to have sufficient knowledge of his victim's movements to be able to pounce with such a small window of time, he would need to expect these movements. For example, it seems Julie went out again sometime between 2.45pm and 3.10pm, were these outings expected by the assailant? If not then why did he not pounce when she came home at 2.45pm?

This is again a very important point in the case; Look at the detail carefully. . .

• Julie was alive and driving her car at 3.10pm
• Julie had gone into the house, made a cup of tea, carried it upstairs and drunk some of it
• Julie had also eaten some of a chocolate bar and got her make up kit out onto the bed
• This would all have taken a few minutes, particularly for the tea to be cool enough to drink
• If the killer was 'overalls man' as suggested then he had to have been out of Longcliffe Road by 4.10pm to avoid meeting Julie's daughter Helen on her way home, as she knew what he looked like and would almost certainly have spotted him.

So it looks like the killer literally had to have either still been on the property somewhere when Helen arrived home or have got in around 3.20pm, got upstairs, violently sexually assaulted and murdered Julie and been out pf the house and gone in a maximum of 45 minutes, I guess not impossible but quite a tall order, combined with the added risk that Andrew, Julie's husband could have come home at any moment. 

It is quite disturbing to think that such a heinous crime was so finely planned, how could a man know Julie's movements that well, yet he wasn't spotted hanging around the area prior to the incident, he wasn't seen following Julie or the children. The police were able to quickly rule the husband out as a suspect due to him having been on a plumbing job on the other side of town that day. It seems the killer knew that would be the case so he would not be disturbed during his meticulously planned killing, that's scary stuff.

To be fair it is said that the land close to Julie's house on the same side of the road was vacant at the time of the murder, but again this presents several issues for a person watching the house including:

• only having a side view through a thick hedge and fence.
• due to the land being empty a person standing there or walking around on it would have been noticed.
• This is fair to say as several witnesses came forward from the local area that knew Julie Pacey and they had noticed things such as the times that Julie came and went from her home and the other vehicle which I will turn to next.

Did this killer really just carefully plan to murder Julie Pacey on that fateful Monday or would he just as happily kill whoever was within the house, without a second thought?

So we come to the dark blue BMW 5 series, an expensive motor car which had reportedly been driven on more than one occasion by Julie and on at least one occasion was parked next to her own car, an Audi on the driveway of her house. I can accept that eye-witnesses can be wrong but, separate witnesses mentioned in statements to police and media that they recalled seeing Julie actually driving the car.

If the fact that the car was actually seen parked with the Audi had not been mentioned, then I would have dismissed it on the lines of a possible mistake and the car that Julie had been seen in was actually her Audi, but that is not the case. So who did the BMW belong to? Where is the BMW? Why was Julie driving the car when she had her own car which was at her house at the time?

Why did someone more directly involved with Julie not see her in the car or with its owner? I mean, her mother and father lived just 2 miles away and her husband Andrew was a local plumber so could have popped home for tools or completed a job early and come home so if there was something untoward then Julie must have taken some risks in driving around so openly

The car could have been hired or loaned to Julie, but why? She had her own car and there are no records of the Audi being off the road for repairs and a temporary replacement courtesy car being provided.

I personally feel this is another very important missing link that should have been further investigated. Once more it is quite concerning that no one has ever come forward to claim the BMW.

Key factors that come to mind in respect of reports involving the BMW are:

• The reports are uncorroborated as the car has never been found
• There are, as far as I am aware no reports of anyone else driving the car
• There are also no reports of anyone else being seen driving Julie's Audi, so we have to assume that was at home whilst Julie drove the BMW, which is very hard to understand or explain.

Could the reports of the car be a ruse? But if so then why? Particularly when the reports were made to BBC Crimewatch UK and ultimately to police investigating a very serious crime. I don't feel the theory of a ruse holds much water as there were independent statements from more than one witness.

There are several hypotheses but none quite fit together for me. . .

Could this lady have been having an affair? I don't think it's likely but here is a suggestion: Maybe Julie was seen at 2.30pm and again at 3.10pm because she had been out trying to see or locate someone, a lover may be to try to resolve an argument? If that were the case then maybe she was either turned away or found the person not where she had expected and returned home? 

Did a “lover” turn up at the house, maybe very angry, force her to have sex and then finished off by murdering her? Again a possibility but it really doesn't seem likely, I mean he must have had ill intent from the outset if that were the case as he brought a ligature with him, obviously with intent to kill. 

Did the murderer take the watch either as a memory of her or possibly because he believed it was his money that Julie used on holiday to buy it.? Nope don't feel that is right either, but somehow, someway there has to be a reason, a motive for a middle-aged wife and mother to have been murdered in her own home.

It is fair and possible to assume that the watch was taken purely as a trophy and because of it's rare and unusual qualities it has never been able to return to the UK market, thus the assailant may still have the watch, it may have been dumped or sold abroad.

I guess this is why I see the question of the BMW to be so important to the case, yet it seems little effort has been made to find it or it's owner but why?. I mean to be fair, surely even if the owner of the car was found and eliminated from enquiries, it would have made a huge difference. Maybe we could understand why a murder victim was driving it just a few days before her untimely demise. After all, there must have been a visitor at the Pacey home just a few days before Julie's death as the BMW was on the drive next to Julie's Audi, with no driver in it.

To be fair if Julie was involved with someone that no one else was aware of, whether romantically or in some other way, which seems likely, it would explain where the car fits in.

It is likely that Julie was insured through her own car insurance to drive the BMW of course, but if there were anything untoward then why risk being seen driving when her own car was available? In fairness her husband Andrew was a local plumber and therefore could have seen Julie driving a different car and asked questions.

who was the Grantham strangler

So, let's turn our attention to the only suspect, in this case, a man in his mid-forties, stocky build, wearing a checked shirt and blue overalls, with a 'ruddy complexion', in particular very red cheeks.

At first consideration this man could have simply been someone working on the building sites on the estate bordering Longcliffe Road, where a lot of work had been going on at the time. Seemingly enquiries were made to the sites and no one matching the man's description was identified. This in itself seems quite odd to me.

Why would a man that apparently had only one purpose in Grantham, in this case to get into a house, sexually assault and murder a middle-age woman wear such identifying clothes? The thought of an old saying “Stood out like a sore thumb” comes to mind

Why if this man murdered someone and it was all over the news locally and nationally would he risk being seen in Grantham town centre even dressed in the same clothes the very next day? I understand that some killers are absolutely brazen, I mean after all Ian Huntley, the Soham killer even offered to help family and police search for his victims but, from my criminology research it is far more likely that the killer would have "made himself scarce" for at least a few days after the incident knowing that many people including the police were looking for a murderer.

As I have previously mentioned; the neighbour's daughter and in fact Julie's children recalled Julie telling them of an unusual visitor to the Pacey house at just before 3.30pm on Friday 23^rd September who matched the suspect's description very well, including the red cheeks. 

I have asked a question linked to this earlier but, I feel this point is worthy of very careful consideration. Why? I will explain. . .

Okay so this 'unidentified man' apparently called at the house on the Friday prior to Julie's murder and asked for directions, which is a very unusual and unlikely act but nonetheless we cannot prove otherwise.

Julie then told the neighbour's daughter upon her arrival and again relayed the story to Helen and Matthew when they arrived home from school sometime later. 

Now this is the bit I find a little unusual, not impossible but in my opinion at least a little strange. Why make a point of relaying the story to children who were not there and unlikely to be affected by it?

The children were out at school at the time of the man's visit and as it was not likely to happen again [if we are to believe the suggestion that he was simply seeking directions], therefore surely it could frighten or worry them unnecessarily, not the actions of a parent, surely?

Would you not protect your children from things that they didn't particularly need to know? Maybe I am overthinking some points but this one has made me curious.

Sharon Harper

So lets return to the case of Sharon Harper and just carefully go over a few points in that case. It may seem like I am jumping from one case to another and back, but I will do my best to make my reasoning apparent later. . .

Now as we know Sharon was just 21 when her life came to a tragic and abrupt end. Her boyfriend and her were planning their wedding and they had their 4-month-old child, they both had jobs and were happy by all accounts yet clearly something wasn't right.

Sharon was reportedly seen with a man about a month before her murder in Grantham town centre, this chap has never been identified. He was described as in his 30s, with long dark hair

Something wasn't right about the meeting as a friend of Sharon's said that as she was walking towards Woolworth's store she saw Sharon talking to a man on the corner of an alleyway to the rear of Morrisons. According to the friend's statement “Sharon appeared to be talking to the man earnestly”. Now I don't know exactly what 'talking earnestly' means in the witness opinion but the dictionary says “Full seriousness, as of intention or purpose” so it to me suggests speaking very firmly and maybe a little irate, determined to make a point.

This is where it gets a little more strange; When Sharon's friend came back on the same route from Woolworth's between 10 and 15 minutes later she saw Sharon was still talking with the man in the same way. The lady concerned decided to sit on a low wall there and smoke a cigarette. When she sat down Sharon walked away from the man and toward her friend. She apparently seemed quite pleased and relieved to see the friend, like something was maybe troubling her or she needed a way to get away from the man.

The man reportedly initially followed Sharon but when she stopped to speak to her friend he continued to walk on past. The friend turned to watch the man walk away and Sharon told her not to do that

The friend asked who the man was but Sharon said it didn't matter and even said she did not want to tell her friend who the guy was. Why would she do that? Could she not have simply said, “He's just a friend” or “It was someone from work”, something like that? Why out and out refuse to say who he was? This arouses suspicion particularly as the man concerned has never put himself forward for elimination, which of course suggests a possible connection.

The point of concern here that I am confused about, this 'friend' said that she had been very concerned about Sharon and the mysterious man but she did nothing and informed no one until of course it was too late and Sharon was dead. Why did the friend not maybe contact Sharon's boyfriend or maybe other mutual friends? Maybe she felt as Sharon had been bluntly clear that she did not want the identity of the man known that she should keep out of it, shame really as maybe a bit of forethought could have saved Sharon from a violent and untimely end.  

In the BBC Crimewatch reconstruction the man in the market was shown with long brown hair, wearing blue jeans, a jumper and a small canvas rucksack on his shoulder. 

Moving on to Sharon's last few hours, she went to work as usual at The Market Cross public house in Grantham, she dropped her baby daughter off at the babysitter's flat then went to work. A fairly uneventful, normal Friday night 1st July 1994. Sharon was reported to have been in a good mood and had been planning a night out on the coming Sunday night with other staff from the pub. 

Staff usually stayed behind for a short while and had a drink together after the bar closed so it was around 0015 - 0020 when Sharon set off home. Sharon was one of the last people to leave the pub that night, as was quite normal and as far as everyone knew she was on her way to collect her baby from the sitter. She would have walked along Westgate, Harlaxton Road and Trent Road. 

Sharon was reportedly seen arguing with a man with long hair in his mid-30s outside The Archways service station on Harlaxton Road a little while after she had left the pub, but this is not confirmed. The report was made by an anonymous caller on July 4th 1994. The caller said that he saw the man arguing with Sharon and stopped to enquire if everything was OK, Sharon said everything was just fine, so the person drove off.

Sharon Harper was next seen on Wharf Road, near to the roundabout around 0045 where she appeared to be trying to go into a telephone box, but a man appeared to be trying to stop her and was pulling her away. If this report is true then it would seem that for some reason Sharon had gone back toward The Market Cross Pub to the phone box. 

The second report was from a man who claimed to be a taxi driver, he again did not give any details about himself, but again chose to remain anonymous. He described the man that Sharon was with as wearing a white tee-shirt and jeans and having shoulder-length hair. Could this be our man that was seen with Sharon a month earlier near Morrisons? According to Lincolnshire police the same witnesses also indicated that they had seen Sharon with the same man before if that is so then clearly Sharon's boyfriend did not seem to know of him, so who was he and what part did he play in a young mother's life?

I am not one for accepting what I term 'half a tale'. These witnesses came forward almost as soon as the story of Sharon's murder broke, in fact, the calls were received on 4th July 1994.

The police say that they thought the callers were genuine and wanted to hear from them again because there may be so much more to discover but, they felt there were three possibilities when it comes to the callers. . .

1. The calls were purely hoaxes
2. That it was the killer trying to lay false leads
3. That they were legitimate witnesses

I personally feel it was most likely number two from the list as I don't really believe they were hoaxers. My reasoning is surely for the story to be so similar on both occasions, the calls would need to be the same person. Now whether the calls were recorded back then I cannot be certain but I imagine they would have been and certainly call handlers would have given descriptions of voices, dialects, accents and so on.

Further reasoning is that one of the callers said he knew Sharon and that he had slowed down and asked her if she was OK. He was also very specific about saying that the man seen with Sharon at Archways service station was wearing a Leeds United tee shirt, a point not mentioned by the caller that said he saw Sharon and the man near the telephone box. Not necessarily indicative of anything wrong but it does seem likely that any witness would have probably mentioned such a key point.

On the point of the Leeds United shirt, let's just analyse that a little further. Now this witness was driving a car which he said he 'slowed down', did not stop the car, but he was able to clearly establish the tee shirt to be showing the Leeds United motif, just remember it was dark and the roads would have only been lit by street lighting. Coupled with the fact it was a larger road and service station the light would have been Orange not white. Once again I'm not absolutely saying the story is fake but it seems unlikely to be a story filled with enough clarity to identify a potential suspect killer.

Sharon's boyfriend said that he had arranged to go shopping with her the next morning and when he arrived at her flat he knew something was strange as the kitchen light was on. But here I have a question. . . If Sharon left home and took the baby to the sitter's then went on to work, it surely would have been daylight when she left so no need for a light on in the kitchen. If Sharon had not returned home after dark why was the light on in the kitchen? 

I guess there is a possible explanation that she left a light on for when she got home, but as Sharon was a single parent struggling for money would it not be a bit of an expensive waste of electricity to leave a light on for maybe 6 or 7 hours, instead of simply flicking a switch when she got home? In my opinion, this is an important factor I would like cleared up.

Sharon Harper's daughter and her family are still seeking justice for her and to find out who was responsible for the tragic death well before time. Sadly Sharon's father, who brought his granddaughter up as his own after the tragedy lost his life to cancer and went to his grave without knowing who killed his precious daughter or indeed why.

Summary:

So we have two murders within just a few miles of each other in the same town in the space of 86 days, both females died of strangulation, both had recently had sex and one was beaten. 

Both cases are surrounded by a mysterious set of circumstances, maybe one more than the other, nonetheless two women died in dreadful circumstances that should not have happened.

Two families have had to grow up with a huge part missing from their lives. Both women were mums, daughters and partners in relationships, those people's lives have been destroyed too and someone is out there somewhere knowing who is responsible, almost 26 years on. 

The stories are very unusual and so interesting in many ways yet they seem to be left behind far too much. There are many, many questions that need to be answered, not least a killer or killers identified and convicted of heinous crimes. There are many things in both cases that don't quite add up in both cases, more so in the case of Julie Pacey, murdered on 26th September 1994 in my opinion. 

A very important point was raised in a newspaper article published in The Grantham Journal on 14th August 2015 in which Sara Fowler, daughter of the late Sharon Harper said that she was very disturbed by the fact that during a BBC Crimewatch reconstruction broadcast in July 2015 about the murder of Julie Pacey there was no mention of Sharon's murder, why was that I wonder. I mean as I have pointed out several times in this report both women were sexually assaulted and strangled in Grantham just a few weeks apart so why pursue one case and not the other?

Sara Fowler said that she only became aware of renewed interest in Julie Pacey's case through her family. Sara says "My other nan, my dad’s mum, told me that Julie was on the TV news, and she got quite annoyed because they didn’t actually mention my mum’s name, they just referred to her as ‘a barmaid"

https://www.granthamjournal.co.uk/news/daughter-s-plea-to-find-mum-sharon-harper-s-killer-in-another-grantham-murder-unsolved-for-21-years-1-6903935/

It would be great to make this story into a film and really get it out there, as sadly there are too many unsolved cases, many involving cover-ups and false leads that have gone cold held on police files and rarely even reviewed whilst the persons responsible remain at large, potentially endangering others lives every day that they are free

If you have read this blog then firstly thank you and I hope that you have enjoyed it, if so please do subscribe as there are more to come. More importantly, if you have read this and feel that you have any information that will help the police then do please contact:

Grantham Police: 01522 532222

Crimestoppers: 0800 555 111

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_t9wh-pjv4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKGQ_d_-KxM&t=252s


Disclaimer: Please note all information in the research of this case has been sourced from the internet and is not meant for evidence and accuracy cannot be guaranteed beyond doubt