Katherine Lillian Armstrong Never Made It To Choir Practice On Halloween Night.

Katherine Lillian Armstrong was often known by her middle name. Lillian was a very proud, very independent woman.

She never married and had lived alone for all her life in Doncaster House in New Castle.

In 1957 she retired from her job as headmistress at the city’s Denton Road Junior School.

She was a devout Methodist and would sing with the choir at the Central Methodist Church, on Newcastle’s Northumberland Road. She had regular choir practice at 7:30pm every Thursday night.

On Thursday, October 31st, 1963, Lillian was last seen by two children who saw her looking out of her window at around 6:30pm. She never made it to choir practice that evening.

The next morning at 10:30, Lillian’s cousin who lived nearby, Ada Ridley, went to visit Lillian. Ada became concerned when there was no answer to her repeated knocks. Lillian was a habitual early riser and should have answered the door by now. Also something that Ada found peculiar, all of the curtains were closed. Ada had a feeling something was wrong and decided to call the police.

When officers arrived, they had to force their way into Lillian's house. Once inside they found Lillian's body near the bottom of the stairs. She was fully clothed, wearing a dress and carpet slippers, and had a nylon stocking tied tightly around her neck. Her face and neck were also heavily bloodstained. Defensive wounds on her hands indicated that Lillian had fought back against her attacker and it was theorized that she might have fought so valiantly as to make her attacker bleed. Blood was found throughout the entire house. There was no sign of forced entry and appeared that there had been nothing taken from the house. There was no murder weapon found at the scene and no fingerprints or footprints either.

The autopsy revealed that Lillian had been stabbed no less than 28 times to her face and neck and that her death was due to the blood loss. 

The murder weapon was thought to have been a long-bladed instrument of some kind. Police worked on the theory that the killer would have discarded the after leaving the scene and scoured the area to no avail. Police had also went to over 5,000 houses questioning the occupants, but that turned up fruitless as well. By November 4th Scotland Yard was brought in.

Police were considering the possibility that more than one person could have been involved in Lillian’s murder. They were looking into local teens in the area as well as men with criminal records that had to do with violence against women.

Ada as well thought that there was more than one culprit of this dastardly deed. She believed her cousin had been killed by teenagers who had entered her home as a prank before being disturbed. Ada also said that she had been worried about Lillian living alone and had begged her to move closer to the rest of the family.

“My cousin’s home was big, dark and gloomy. It got no sun,” Ada said. “Time and time again I told her she should leave and take a flat near me. But she was very independent and said she was not at all afraid of living alone.”

By January 1964, 16,000 local people had been interviewed and the murderer of another local 70 year old woman was questioned. Nothing panned out and no clues were found. To this day Lillian's murder remains unsolved.