Lynda Farrow

Status:

Open

Jurisdiction:

metropolitan-police

Offense Location:

Woodford, Essex

Summary:

Lynda Farrow was 29 years old when she was stabbed to death in her home in Woodford, east London, on 19 January 1979. She was the mother of two daughters aged eleven and eight and was expecting her first child with her boyfriend. The case was never solved, despite a number of renewed attempts to investigate what happened – including by the BBC's Crimewatch in 2009.

Vital Statistics

Circumstances of Offense:

On the morning of January 19th, 1979, Lynda Farrow had been out on a shopping trip with her mother, then dropped by to visit her boyfriend for a brief time before driving back to her flat on Whitehall Road in Woodford, Essex, England. Reports suggest that when Lynda arrived home her phone was ringing and she rushed in to answer it, leaving the front door ajar. Her killer followed her inside. Two schoolgirls passing by heard a scream before the door was slammed shut. Twenty minutes later, Lynda's two daughters arrived home unexpectedly - a snowstorm had closed their school early and their return home is understood to have disturbed the attacker. She was found by her two young daughters, aged eight and 11 at the time, who had finished school early after being sent home due to a snow storm. When her two daughters came home from school later that afternoon, they found the body of Lynda Farrow lying face down in the hall, covered in blood. She had been raped, and her throat had been slashed with a long, serrated knife, which the killer left behind in the kitchen.

Additional Details:

When police processed the crime scene, they also discovered four bloody palm prints on a door frame, and shoe prints from size nine monkey boots, a style popular with mods and similar youth cultures of the time. A canvass of the neighborhood produced a witness who claimed they had seen a man with blond hair and blue eyes who was clad in a long black coat. This individual had allegedly entered Lynda Farrow's home at around two in the afternoon. Both her husband and her boyfriend were quickly eliminated from enquiries, and the hunt centred on witness descriptions of a well-built man in his 30s with an Afro hairstyle, wearing a donkey jacket, who was seen running from the scene. DCI Colin Sutton, the detective who led the investigation that sent serial killer Levi Bellfield to prison, led a review of the evidence in 2002. The physical evidence in Lynda's murder has never been checked for DNA, cutting off an important detection route. Sutton has expressed conviction the same man committed all three murders (Farrow, Eve Stratford, and Lynne Weedon), stating: 'Did he die, or move abroad? My gut feeling tells me he is still out there somewhere and still nervous about a knock on his door.' Though authorities in 2009 seemed to definitively confirm that Lynda Farrow was not killed by the same perpetrator as the other two victims, as there was no DNA link, some cold case investigators still believe there is a connection, especially considering how similar the murders were. In 2009, Lynda's elderly mother made an emotional appeal for witnesses to come forward to help solve the cold case, as the Met Police offered a £20,000 reward.

Case Last Updated:

Aug 30, 2026