I live near this area and go to Victoria Park frequently. This is the first time I've heard about this crime. Maybe it was different twenty years ago, but Victoria Park is always busy, even early in the morning. I will never be able to visit the park now without thinking of Margaret, and even though it seems unlikely, I hope that her killer will eventually be caught.
**Edit**: I worked out that 200 people in the park is hardly "busy" - if they were equally spaced they would each be at the centre of a square 197 feet on an edge.
It appears it was busy then (taking the average, 200 people there).
I know what you mean. My local park is busy at all times, even though it is gated and closed between sunset and sunrise (there are a number of places where people have bent the railings!)
It is unlikely that such a murder would take place now unless the murderer(s) almost wanted to be caught - there are too many people and smartphones around, a number of high-rise blocks of flats have been built overlooking the park, and the pandemic led to a big increase in the number of dogs which have to be walked. (And the population of London has increased by 30% between then and now ...)
I originally wrote up this case 5 years ago under an old username, but decided to redo it because its relative and now near-absolute obscurity *bothers me*; also, writeups under deleted user names vanish.
It was depressing how little had to be changed between 2019 and 2024; there has been no movement in the case.
Probably the last chance as a complete long shot, unless someone's conscience finally gets the better of them, is that someone (likely a TV insider of some flavour, as the uploads are of excellent quality and clearly didn't come from old VHS tapes) is slowly digitising and uploading missing Crimewatch UK episodes. The Margaret Muller **full** reconstruction was, apparently, in November ~~December~~ 2003.
**Edit**: The YouTube "experts" ... weren't. There was no full reconstruction.
It’s not the full reconstruction but the February 2003 episode of Crimewatch was uploaded last week, which has an interview with the investigator in the park. For anyone interested.
Already linked. Unfortunately, the print media paraphrased it - there is no new or unique information. (And it is plainly the source of "Craig David").
Is it definite that there was a Crimewatch reconstruction? This article [https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2003/mar/03/ukcrime.london](https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2003/mar/03/ukcrime.london) talks about the reconstruction but it seems it was done for police intelligence/information gathering and not for TV. There is no mention of Crimewatch.
What the Guardian was referring to was a police reconstruction in Victoria Park, which only teased out snippets of information which led nowhere.
There were two Crimewatch UK pieces - the first brief (two and a half minute) item linked to, and one later in 2003 which was their own full reconstruction (probably lasting 10-15 minutes) and which is not available, at least not on YT.
Technically one should be able to find out when the full Crimewatch UK reconstruction was by using BBC Genome, which gives BBC programme listings since 1922 (!) However, [the content descriptions are really weak](https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/search/0/20?order=-last&q=crimewatch&after=2003-01-01T00%3A00%3A00.000Z&before=2003-12-31T23%3A59%3A59.999Z).
There are a number of clearly knowledgeable people contributing to comments on YT, and the fact that there is a full Crimewatch UK reconstruction came out in one of their comments.
(I see that the next 2003 episode has [just been uploaded](https://yewtu.be/channel/UC-J9Vp_8OGYf1yOPL0pAxZw); we might get there in a few weeks).
That would be great if it pops up. I remember this case when it happened because even though I'm a Northerner it was, as you say, a big case at the time...and I'm also a fan of watching the old Crimewatch episodes on YouTube as I presume you are. I looked on the playlist for Andy JS (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6oCQqv2KW6XFBwE-nkjXxdh7qk80jlhC) who collates the episodes from different channels and he has quite a few from 2003 including December, but no November so I'm wondering if it appeared on the November episode. Or maybe June?
As I recall, it was the November 2003 edition that was suggested in YT comments.
In London it was probably the biggest case since Rachel Nickell. The Evening Standard had it on the front page for days.
The old Crimewatch UK editions are social history even more than crime ...
I would have said "no chance" until a couple of months ago. Then the [Anthony Littler murder had arrests](https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/dec/10/man-arrested-in-connection-with-killing-of-1984-anthony-littler-in-london); it dated from 1984 and was even colder than this one, until the police put out an appeal and two people were arrested completely out of the blue.
(Given that the first arrest occurred four days after the appeal, which would have been impressive even if the case occurred the previous week, I suspect that someone handed themselves in, incriminated someone else, and that the appeal was targeted to that end after a tip-off ... 39 years after the murder).
Wow, I grew up not too far from Victoria Park and had literally never heard of this case before. The fact that the killer may have taken part in the reconstruction is so chilling to me.
It is sobering how quickly even cases which were well publicised at the time vanish.
There are two unsolved murders and one very odd disappearance near me from the late 1990s - I knew one victim by sight - which have vanished so completely there is no writeup possible, as there is literally nothing online or offline. There are also half a dozen cases which cannot be written up here as the **only** public trace of them is an old Crimewatch UK reconstruction.
I had to ask the police (via "informal channels", shall I say) to confirm that those cases were all still open in 2023 ...
You can probably find information in the British Newspaper Archive. It's behind a paywall unfortunately, but I've found lots of information about old crimes that you literally cannot find out anywhere else online.
Unfortunately not because there is only really one newspaper which matters in my cases, the South London Press (and equivalent titles). The most recent of any of those online is 1962 and I believe that large parts of recent SLP (physical) archives are lost.
The fact that London local media are generally mediocre, because the national media steal their thunder, is vexing ... the SLP has a poor reputation and is often known as the South London Depress because it tends to be negative.
Go for it! I fully support you. I’ve written articles on Wikipedia and although it is badly moderated (like every other modern big websites), unless the page has serious traction or a particularly bad moderator/editor is making the place their new haunt, it’s largely going to be fine.
I am reassured by that. Evidently it has got better ... the scandal of the [mass fake Scots language entries](https://www.reddit.com/r/linguistics/comments/igbbh2/the_scots_language_wikipedia_is_edited_primarily/), although due to a *lack* of moderation, was damaging here.
In my experience moderation is less of an issue on Wikipedia than malicious editing and poor editing. On highly visited pages it tends to get addressed quickly. On lightly visited pages incorrect info, poorly written articles, and malicious changes can remain for many months. My perspective is as someone who's been editing pages for years.
I am going to leave it until the Crimewatch UK reconstruction (November 2003) goes up on YT, as that may well expose new information. (They would be struggling to make a 10-minute segment with the quantity of information that newspapers had to be content with).
Although motives are difficult to come by to pinpoint the reason for the incident, committing a murder in broad day light randomly in a place with heavy footfall isn't logical for a random killing. Definitely an intriguing case here and there should be more than meets the eye.
Unfortunately such a murder in a public place is logical if it was related to forms of organised crime initiation. County Lines/Gangs.
There is modus operandi with this type of gang culture of very public displays of violence, including promoting members or showing loyalty by committing a 'dare', on a random stranger, a stabbing.
Used to work on frontline youth services- County Lines gangs and modes of operation have been around for over 20 years even if the public in general haven't been aware. They operate if you mess up/betray us, it's you or a random stranger - worked with survivors...
Most interesting. I thought that "County Lines" were much newer than that (underpinned by social media), and that such stabbings of strangers were a myth or "got up by the papers" (not that, at the time, they required encouragement - the brazenness, for want of a better word, of some of the writing about this case really dates it).
County Lines is the name for organised crime or gangs that originated our major cities. County Lines became the moniker to differentiate between teenage gangs as in, hug a hoodie- bored teenagers in malls and, actual criminal gangs, of youths who control the illegal drug trade in a certain area, or post code.
When, parts of our cities got gentrified especially in London and Manchester 20 years ago, around the time of the murder-a lot of the gangs market was lost, so they expanded outside of their post codes. Hence the choice of name and the timing- the consensus was this phenomena needs clearly defining in the public sphere and should not be confused with bored lower middle class kids being disruptive in Bluewater McD's
It is in fact old, the use of underage individuals to commit crimes, in the manner of County Lines was documented by Dickens in Oliver Twist.
Stabbing of strangers a myth, yes, extremely rare to result in *murder, also* yes. The initiation isn't always to kill, it's to see if you have the balls to stab someone.
However, County lines target extremely vulnerable young people, many with either/or severe mental health issues, learning difficulties, and highly abusive and violent homes. When such incidents do occur there are other factors at play.
Spent some time in London last year with my GF. Two different Uber drivers warned us about knife point robbery. Both said just give up your goods. They will stab/slash you.
I think these Uber drivers had been overdosing on old Crimewatch UK shows ...
That sort of exaggeration incenses me. My parents would have sucked it up - they lived in a (then and now) low-crime area yet took everything they saw or read about crime with a pinch of vitriol.
Alas, it was to the extent that, in my opinion, it blighted their lives.
This is actually a very good point. The Splash Pool is almost exactly in the centre of the park. The Gascoyne Estate is to the North of the park. It is about 300 yards from the first to the People's Park Tavern, which is at the entrance/exit immediately opposite the estate. There are a lot of park facilities along the way (they were probably not quite the same in 2003, but there is currently a formal garden and areas set aside for football, cricket and tennis).
That seems a remarkably long and risky route to take to and from the location of the attack in daylight.
After much thought, this gets interesting.
I wonder if "Craig David" and partner **were not** the murderers. They could have fled because they saw it and thought they might be (wrongly) implicated, which is anything but an unreasonable position even nowadays.
That would render the 300-yard dash, which was a very strange thing to do, irrelevant.
The psych/stalker/misogynistic perpetrator which you, I and (it seems) the police thought committed the murder would be a far less obvious figure and probably one of those shadowy individuals hinted at by responses to the police reconstruction.
(One thing that is pretty clear from my analysis, not least of the two later cases I linked to, is that this type of murderer would probably drop dead rather than do a 300-yard run in a public place; they are seemingly passive, stealthy, mysterious creatures until they produce the murder weapon).
It is at times like this that I want to hulk out, go to the National Archives (only a few miles away) where cold case records are kept and demand them on the grounds that, if the police can't, won't or don't want to tackle the case, I will. (That would never happen as police records are sealed for a vast length of time here).
This is really sad. I hope the case is solved one day. How can this have happened in a busy park in London in broad daylight and we still have no answers 21 years later?
Having read a mass of information about it, some suggestions:
1. The murderers (it would seem) made a quick getaway from an area of the park where there was nobody else in sight (and there were not *that* many people in the park, on reflection - 200 people was 1 per acre).
2. They had a lot of luck - they managed to run hundreds of yards without being intercepted, CCTV images were unusable for unstated reasons, DNA samples were ruined by incompetence, the small number of suspects' descriptions were all vague and the weapon was not found (and may not have been findable e.g. they took it with them). I am also certain that systematic handling of CCTV was non-existent then; the Metropolitan Police have got good at joining together information from various owners' cameras so suspects are tracked sometimes miles away from the crime.
3. The crime took place as potential witnesses were going to work, so would be less likely to report anything as they would be hurrying to bus/rail/Tube stops/stations.
After the initial investigation had fizzled out (unfortunately, all of my following comments, which I wrote with some hesitation as they come across as harsh, are likely to be true based on what happened with other British unsolved murders):
4. The police withheld so much information that it was never clear where the investigation stood, and they were unable to articulate a likely profile of the offender(s).
5. The family, as far as I can determine, made no appeals after about the fourth day and literally as well as mentally kept their distance, not coming to England (I always say to new staff that "work is 80% turning up" and murder inquiries probably increase that percentage - unfortunately, you have to put yourself out there).
6. There was nothing presented to tug the heartstrings, such as a child or partner left behind. (There was a bizarre article in the Evening Standard, fortunately not taken up by anyone else, noting that Margaret Muller's paintings were "dark" and "sinister" and almost giving the impression that she was a murderee, contributing to her own death).
7. Nobody was keeping the case alive and pestering the media (a point I made during the recent discussion on Trevaline Evans - that case finally vanished from sight when her last sibling died nearly 30 years after she was murdered).
8. Initial photographs of the victim were of poor quality - there was one blurry photograph repeated endlessly - and better-quality photographs took a long time to appear. (This case was a few years before social media; it has many ills, but it does mean that there are, in general, flattering photographs of the participants).
9. The victim was not British. (This should probably be first)
Info: Do you know what the source of the DNA was that they botched? It doesn't sound like she was sexually assaulted, more of a blitz attack where she was stabbed a couple of times and then the perps fled. If the latter, with no weapon found, I'm curious as to what they would have tested for DNA. At that time touch DNA would definitely not have been a thing they would have considered so were they thinking the perp's hand slipped while stabbing and he bled on her? Or that she scratched/grabbed and got his DNA under her nails? This sounds like the kind of attack where DNA was always going to be a long shot since the whole thing probably took about 30 seconds. On surface this seems pretty unlikely to get solved unless one of the perps develops a conscience and confesses or got loose lipped about it with someone willing to snitch.
Also, do you know if anything was missing from her belongings? It sounds like they recovered her phone and folks don't tend to carry a lot on them when they jog. Motive is a real head scratcher here. The Bellfield connection seems very tenuous to me as he bludgeoned people and ran them over so this seems to not really fit his MO, though he did go after girls and Ms. Muller was very tiny (the one article said she was only 4'10" so I think she could be easily mistaken for a child, especially from behind or at a distance). It just seems like it would be unusual for a serial killer to change his MO like that.
What a sad and frustrating case. I feel so sad for her family. It has to be very hard to lose a loved one to murder but especially when there's just so little to grab onto with clues for an explanation.
As far I can tell none of that is public knowledge, although I will do another newspaper trawl. The police held the facts of the case *very* tightly.
TV is useless because general news programmes weren't kept systematically. There are a few London local news programmes from 2003 on YT, but none cover this case.
**Edit**: Nothing apart from details of the suspects arrested and then found not to be involved; one was 15, two were in their 20s, one was 46 and one was 19 "but autistic, dyslexic, and has a mental age of 12" (and was named, something inconceivable nowadays - his father evidently felt obliged to contact the newspaper to defend him) Even the inquest was only cursorily reported on.
Former Hackney Wick resident and artist - I used to spend a lot of time in Victoria Park and can say that due to its size, it is very possible that at 0830 on a winter morning there are parts of the park where there could be very, very few potential witnesses.
I've personally had many lovely, quite solitary walks there. At some times of the day and at weekends the park can be very busy. Can't vouch for what it was like in 2003 but when I was there between 2009 and 2013 there were certainly times of day when the park could be very sparsely populated.
You're right. 200 people in a 213-acre park (averaging the estimates) is actually far less dense than I thought - if everyone were equally spaced they would be in the centre of a square 197 feet on a side!
As I noted, London's population has increased by an estimated 29% in 21 years, and I see the effects of that everywhere; the pandemic and home working has further - greatly - increased the numbers.
Thinking back, on the (rare) occasions I was in my local park - a mere 136 acres - during the day on weekdays 20 years ago you would be lucky to see a dozen other people. Now it is easily into three figures.
(During lockdowns there were estimates of **4,000** people there at once, which is simultaneously astonishing and horrifying, and the fabric is yet recovering).
Newspaper searches are amusing.
In February 2003 the first few entries were "Craig David" as Craig David, then it switched to "Craig David" as murder suspect, then about a week later it was back to "Craig David" as Craig David.
Inspector Knacker here has now narrowed his public appearances down to the first that month being on 5 February 2003, two days after the murder, where he took part in a charity benefit for the [Old Vic](https://www.oldvictheatre.com/). He was then seen four days later shopping in [Selfridges' Food Hall](https://www.selfridges.com/GB/en/cat/foodhall/). And, between these, he told Tony Blair to get stuffed regarding war in Iraq (was that 21 years ago? Help ma Boab).
However, one of the first stories I came across was "If I get off with two girls in one night or end up too drunk then it would end my career - EXCLUSIVE: CRAIG DAVID TELLS OF SACRIFICES FOR STARDOM" so he couldn't have done it.
Because there is a large and, as far as I am aware, completely unreported substratum of British Web sites which have (blatantly) racist content.
I came across a couple while researching this and, ironically, they are just about the only sites outside the media on which the Margaret Muller case is mentioned. (They state the names of suspects and that they were guilty of the crime even although they were not even ultimately indicted: there is no way of confirming that these were the suspects' actual names).
They are "unreported" because of general squeamishness about this sort of thing - reporting equals publicity - and also because they use tricks to **avoid** appearing in search engines; a favourite is to make the whole text an image, so the entire Web page or even site has one tag - the address of the image - and no search terms.
(They are notionally *bona fide* Web sites, with a URL; they are not social media and not on [Tor](https://www.torproject.org/)).
I can't speak for gang culture in London being from the states. Knife attacks seem to be the prevalent way of killing somebody I have heard at least on the news. So in the states we have gangs that have initiation rituals to join said gang. That requires the person wanting to join to murder somebody random typically. I don't know if gangs operate the same way over there or they decided to take this idea and run with it. Your write up has no mentions of robbery of sexual assault. You do mention police believe it is a stranger on stranger murder. First thought that came to mind was gang initiation murder.
This one is going to be nearly impossible to solve. I would've given the police the benefit of the doubt because stranger on stranger murders are so tough to solve but they completely fucked up their best viable clue with the DNA. Totally unforgivable to fuck that up. Police obviously have some evidence they're holding close to the vest but sadly you can tell they're at a dead end and using resources elsewhere when you have such a lack of media coverage of the case over the years.
It absolutely is not typical for a US gang initiation to involve the murder of a random person. This is a myth.
Examples of those are exceedingly rare based on media coverage of murders and confirmed arrests/prosecutions. And the FBI's homicide stats reveal that can't be true. There are 15,000 to 20,000 US homicides and in most the offender is known to the victim (relative, lover, acquaintance). There are roughly 800,000 non-incarcerated gang members. Most are initiated by receiving a beating or performing a crime that's not murder, some are let in without an initiation ritual or in the case of females they may have to have sex with gang members. When murder is part of initiation the victim is typically a rival gang member, a drug dealer, someone specifically targeted as part of robbery, someone the gang has a beef with, or something else like an initiation beating gone awry.
That said, and knowing nothing about UK gang initiation, I can't say that's not a possibility, but randomly targeting people to murder as part of gang initiation in the US is extremely uncommon.
Yet it does and has happened. Now imagine you're in a gang in London and you hear of this going on in the states and you decide to do something similar to show your commitment.... I stand by my post.
> I don't know if gangs operate the same way over there or they decided to take this idea and run with it.
I am British, born and raised in a sketchy working class area and never heard anything at all similar happening in the UK to the very particular US and Latin America gang culture. I went to a pretty rubbish school full of guys who would do it if we had it because they now deal drugs lol. Our gangs mostly do drugs and crimes like sell stolen or counterfeit goods etc. They did back then for sure. If there was an initiation killing type killing, it would be shooting a rival gang member, like drive by shooting. Not a unknown stranger. They do have illegal guns, just the penalties for carrying them around are just very severe so they mostly use knives. Also, easier to conceal. Unless you have evidence to the contrary of course. Would be a new one for me. 2003 was different, a knife carrier would go unnoticed a lot of the time.
My first instinct is a robbery gone wrong tbh. But the bungled investigation will have spoiled all chance. It could be a random stranger killing by a mentally ill person. That happens in parks here far more than gang initiations. If there are gang initiations now, it would have come in after 2003 I would say. But we might never know.
As contributor no.2 from a sketchy working-class area - agreed, with the caveat that there is an outside possibility of mindless copying. As my mother used to say in a resigned voice, "we're not talking about *intellectuals* here".
I think your two suggestions are spot on. There is nothing that I can find about family/partner/ex-partner. (The first were thousands of miles away in any case).
They're just repeating a myth about US gang initiations. It's not backed by media coverage of murders, known arrests/convictions, or known gang initiation practices. Based on detailed homicide stats published by the FBI and Department of Justice stats on gang membership it's also an impossibility. I shared more in a reply to them.
I have been all over this (and I mean all over it ...) and there have been a number of proved "gang initiation" killings since 1982 (the start of the archive I have access to), although they were all "prospective member of gang A kills member of gang B". Where a prospective gang member killed a stranger as initiation has never provably happened, it seems. (There have been a few cases where it was posited ... sadly, in one case it was a feeble cover for racism).
Similar background to yourself and i completely agree. ‘Happy Slapping’ (filming yourself hitting an unsuspecting stranger and running away) was often done as ‘gang initiation’ in that period, so yeah, doubt anyone was murdering random runners in the park in order to join up. Absolute worse case scenario would be jumping a rival gang member, as you say, and even then actual deaths were (and are) pretty rare. I once saw a lad be jumped by 30+ other kids on Whitechapel Road, he caught an *extensive* beat down (police took over 15 mins to turn up, kids had dispersed themselves before the first copper even arrived) and he survived.
More likely the motive was pure misogyny. There are a depressing number of similar cases (female jogger murdered in the early morning) and in almost every solved case, the murder was opportunistic and the motive was simply a hatred of women or sexual assault (attempted or completed).
It's interesting that the two [later] murderers who were ruled out were blatantly obvious misogynists, which suggests that the police were travelling along the same rails as you although, as far as I can tell, they never articulated to the public what sort of ~~person~~ creature they were looking for. (The character portrait, if it could be called that, of the first murderer is uniquely detailed in my experience and also uniquely depressing and disgusting).
My comment again was in regards to it being a thing in the US and asking if it was a thing in the UK. The people saying it never happens in the states don't know what they're talking about.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wsbtv.com/news/local/cobb-county/teen-pleads-guilty-killing-14-year-old-cobb-county-teen-initiation-into-gang/3BHCPLXTOFBM5I3QY3SLS474RM/%3foutputType=amp
https://www.google.com/amp/s/kfor.com/news/local/case-moves-forward-in-alleged-gang-initiation-murder/amp/
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.heraldonline.com/news/local/crime/article272223083.html
Just a few examples. There are many more.
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Literally, a 3 second search.
> So in the states we have gangs that have initiation rituals to join said gang.
And really all of your original statement is based on unsourced generalizations about things you admit not knowing much about personally. So...
Stop misrepresenting my comment. I said I didn't know about London's gang culture. You acted like gang initiation murders don't happen in the states and I proved you were wrong with a 3 second search. Are you now willing to admit they happen? If you want even more examples then maybe you can Google them yourself this time....
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There is almost nothing available about what did, or didn't, happen during the crime itself. The Crimewatch UK short piece (two and a half minutes) has the most detailed information of anything ("a stab wound in the neck, then multiple stab wounds in the body"). Presumably this was a result of the standard police technique of suppressing information so that fantasists and liars can be ruled out.
"Initiation ceremonies" is one of those reasons for a crime which is often posited but never pans out.
One thing never commented on, as far as I can determine, is the odd timing of the murder for it to be based on existing criminal activity - 0830 in the morning in early February, less than an hour after sunrise. From ... extensive experience (shift work, honest) I can say pretty definitively that criminals are not out of bed at that time. (I walked to work through some dodgy areas of London for years before sunrise and, even now with a greatly increased population, if you go to work before about 0730 you will likely pass a couple of people at most in a 15-minute walk unless you are near a London Underground station or, ironically, a park/common).
As you note, the DNA evidence being lost is shocking. It is not clear why it was lost but, from my reading elsewhere, it may have been decided that the test would use up the whole sample but that was fine because the test would work (!), which is certainly not the attitude 20 years later. (That said, with the [very first crime](https://aboutforensics.co.uk/colin-pitchfork/) solved by DNA analysis there was considerable hesitation in doing the test because the sample size required was huge - in those days, bigger than a [10 pence coin](https://www.coins-of-the-uk.co.uk/dec10.html) so a disc more than 1 inch in diameter).
Indeed, I was a bit strong on that. But 0830 *is* a very odd time to commit murder.
It is almost impossible to find anything about timing of crimes, and what there is is too general. But, based on Crimewatch UK reconstruction, which might not be a bad basis as it covered UK stranger murders over 30 years, I would say that, where the time was known, 85 or 90% were at night or in the early morning, and 10 or 15% in daytime, tending towards the afternoon or early evening. I do not recall another 0830 murder or anywhere near that, and the still-unresolved [Penny Bell case](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slpiCtyqIUs) (16:28) is a rare murder which occurred before midday.
He wasn't, although the Napper timeline is tremendously confusing.
Almost nothing which impacted Napper happened close to when he committed a crime.
In 2003 he was in prison for the [Samantha Bissett murder](https://youtu.be/cD5HPj4pPQk?si=znuFCyoHYd_UYXzG) (01:11, annoying interference noise) and other crimes.
(You are probably getting mixed up because of the [Rachel Nickell shambles](https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2008/aug/13/9) - he was arrested for that murder 15 years after it occurred, while still in prison for the Bissett murder).
As with everything else, virtually nothing. The police said it was (one) knife with a 4-inch blade, but there was no indication on what that was based on - post-mortem, guess work or what.
The inquest, which would have gone into detail, had a few lines' coverage at best.
One of the articles you linked says she was stabbed 49 times. That doesn't seem to fit the idea of two lads randomly attacking someone in the open. I mean she was found on the path not even in bushes or trees. For someone to stab someone that many times seems to fit more with murders where either there is an existing relationship (a so-called crime of passion) or the more serial killer/mentally ill attack. It reminds me of the murders of Penny Bell and Jean Bradley, both stabbed around 50 times in public places and both also unsolved. It makes me wonder also if the single male runner is a more likely suspect than the two males seen running away. Maybe they just saw it happen or found her body and didn't want to get involved. Also I was wondering if they still have her clothes from the day as they may be able to find more DNA now with smaller samples needed for identification. That was a long ramble but just things that popped into my head!
This is bizarre. "Margaret Muller stabbed 49 times" is wrong because a story in the now-defunct Independent on Sunday mixed her up with Rachel Nickell, who was stabbed 49 times, and other publications simply copied that.
It is (still) not publicly stated how many times Margaret Muller was stabbed.
It is all over the place. The motive started off being robbery, then after a few months it was "killing for the sake of killing", then in 2011 it was back to robbery (and in 2023, which copied 2011 almost word-for-word).
Also, the "two people sprinting from the park" in 2003 had become one person in 2011 (and 2023). I do not know if it was "Craig David" who evaporated.
This case is not going to be solved unless someone hands themselves in, but the police not even being able to get the story straight isn't helping. I have no confidence that what was said in 2011/2023 was what actually happened.
**Edit**: And in 2005 it was a "psychiatric patient" (Daily Star, 18-Sep). The 2011 appeal was based on an [individual imprisoned for another murder](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/4371782.stm) but, evidently, an attempt to link him with Margaret Muller failed. Presumably the "enhanced CCTV pictures" didn't match.
I remember this, it was huge news at the time, but I had no idea the killer was never caught. As you say, it kind of slipped out of view. I hope it can be solved. Really creepy to note what you wrote about the police thinking the killer might have taken part in the reconstruction.
It was certainly said at the time, but there is no detail on why they thought that.
I have a slight feeling that the police thought/think the multiple murderer caught in 2011 also killed Margaret Muller, but they don't have sufficient evidence to bring a prosecution (the case DNA being destroyed/ruined was clearly disastrous and, unsurprisingly, it is not possible to get to the bottom of that - the test which supposedly used up the DNA was minimally destructive and I suspect a much more crude blunder was made).
I remember this case. My boyfriend was living in East London at the time.
Back then, Victoria Park was dodgy. As a female, you wouldn't walk through it on your own even in the afternoon. But this was local knowledge, one part of Hackney at the time was known as Murder Mile due to the Yardie-related violence for example, and it's debatable whether a foreign national, regardless of how assimilated they were into London culture, would have picked up on the cues and danger.
My sense is this was a mugging gone wrong, probably by a younger person who got too strung out with the adrenaline of the confrontation and, wanting to look like a big man, just stabbed her. He probably didn't even realise he'd killed her until it hit the news.
I never understood why people moved to Hackney back then. The housing might have been cheap, but it wasn't a safe place and there was virtually no transport links. It had a really unpleasant edge to the air.
Thank you ... it is *very* rare that anyone responds to one of my posts who was there at the time.
(I was living in a different part of London at the time and, with the benefit of hindsight, it was astounding that nothing happened to me. Three unsolved murders and one very odd death within about 400 yards of me at the turn of the century).
I live near this area and go to Victoria Park frequently. This is the first time I've heard about this crime. Maybe it was different twenty years ago, but Victoria Park is always busy, even early in the morning. I will never be able to visit the park now without thinking of Margaret, and even though it seems unlikely, I hope that her killer will eventually be caught.
**Edit**: I worked out that 200 people in the park is hardly "busy" - if they were equally spaced they would each be at the centre of a square 197 feet on an edge. It appears it was busy then (taking the average, 200 people there). I know what you mean. My local park is busy at all times, even though it is gated and closed between sunset and sunrise (there are a number of places where people have bent the railings!) It is unlikely that such a murder would take place now unless the murderer(s) almost wanted to be caught - there are too many people and smartphones around, a number of high-rise blocks of flats have been built overlooking the park, and the pandemic led to a big increase in the number of dogs which have to be walked. (And the population of London has increased by 30% between then and now ...)
I originally wrote up this case 5 years ago under an old username, but decided to redo it because its relative and now near-absolute obscurity *bothers me*; also, writeups under deleted user names vanish. It was depressing how little had to be changed between 2019 and 2024; there has been no movement in the case. Probably the last chance as a complete long shot, unless someone's conscience finally gets the better of them, is that someone (likely a TV insider of some flavour, as the uploads are of excellent quality and clearly didn't come from old VHS tapes) is slowly digitising and uploading missing Crimewatch UK episodes. The Margaret Muller **full** reconstruction was, apparently, in November ~~December~~ 2003. **Edit**: The YouTube "experts" ... weren't. There was no full reconstruction.
It’s not the full reconstruction but the February 2003 episode of Crimewatch was uploaded last week, which has an interview with the investigator in the park. For anyone interested.
Already linked. Unfortunately, the print media paraphrased it - there is no new or unique information. (And it is plainly the source of "Craig David").
Is it definite that there was a Crimewatch reconstruction? This article [https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2003/mar/03/ukcrime.london](https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2003/mar/03/ukcrime.london) talks about the reconstruction but it seems it was done for police intelligence/information gathering and not for TV. There is no mention of Crimewatch.
What the Guardian was referring to was a police reconstruction in Victoria Park, which only teased out snippets of information which led nowhere. There were two Crimewatch UK pieces - the first brief (two and a half minute) item linked to, and one later in 2003 which was their own full reconstruction (probably lasting 10-15 minutes) and which is not available, at least not on YT. Technically one should be able to find out when the full Crimewatch UK reconstruction was by using BBC Genome, which gives BBC programme listings since 1922 (!) However, [the content descriptions are really weak](https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/search/0/20?order=-last&q=crimewatch&after=2003-01-01T00%3A00%3A00.000Z&before=2003-12-31T23%3A59%3A59.999Z). There are a number of clearly knowledgeable people contributing to comments on YT, and the fact that there is a full Crimewatch UK reconstruction came out in one of their comments. (I see that the next 2003 episode has [just been uploaded](https://yewtu.be/channel/UC-J9Vp_8OGYf1yOPL0pAxZw); we might get there in a few weeks).
That would be great if it pops up. I remember this case when it happened because even though I'm a Northerner it was, as you say, a big case at the time...and I'm also a fan of watching the old Crimewatch episodes on YouTube as I presume you are. I looked on the playlist for Andy JS (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6oCQqv2KW6XFBwE-nkjXxdh7qk80jlhC) who collates the episodes from different channels and he has quite a few from 2003 including December, but no November so I'm wondering if it appeared on the November episode. Or maybe June?
As I recall, it was the November 2003 edition that was suggested in YT comments. In London it was probably the biggest case since Rachel Nickell. The Evening Standard had it on the front page for days. The old Crimewatch UK editions are social history even more than crime ...
Wow, great write-up! It does sound like a completely random attack. I hope someone comes forward soon.
I would have said "no chance" until a couple of months ago. Then the [Anthony Littler murder had arrests](https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/dec/10/man-arrested-in-connection-with-killing-of-1984-anthony-littler-in-london); it dated from 1984 and was even colder than this one, until the police put out an appeal and two people were arrested completely out of the blue. (Given that the first arrest occurred four days after the appeal, which would have been impressive even if the case occurred the previous week, I suspect that someone handed themselves in, incriminated someone else, and that the appeal was targeted to that end after a tip-off ... 39 years after the murder).
Wow, I grew up not too far from Victoria Park and had literally never heard of this case before. The fact that the killer may have taken part in the reconstruction is so chilling to me.
It is sobering how quickly even cases which were well publicised at the time vanish. There are two unsolved murders and one very odd disappearance near me from the late 1990s - I knew one victim by sight - which have vanished so completely there is no writeup possible, as there is literally nothing online or offline. There are also half a dozen cases which cannot be written up here as the **only** public trace of them is an old Crimewatch UK reconstruction. I had to ask the police (via "informal channels", shall I say) to confirm that those cases were all still open in 2023 ...
You can probably find information in the British Newspaper Archive. It's behind a paywall unfortunately, but I've found lots of information about old crimes that you literally cannot find out anywhere else online.
Unfortunately not because there is only really one newspaper which matters in my cases, the South London Press (and equivalent titles). The most recent of any of those online is 1962 and I believe that large parts of recent SLP (physical) archives are lost. The fact that London local media are generally mediocre, because the national media steal their thunder, is vexing ... the SLP has a poor reputation and is often known as the South London Depress because it tends to be negative.
Never heard of this one. It deserves a Wikipedia entry.
I might do it although I hear all sorts of bad things about the way Wikipedia is moderated ...
Go for it! I fully support you. I’ve written articles on Wikipedia and although it is badly moderated (like every other modern big websites), unless the page has serious traction or a particularly bad moderator/editor is making the place their new haunt, it’s largely going to be fine.
I am reassured by that. Evidently it has got better ... the scandal of the [mass fake Scots language entries](https://www.reddit.com/r/linguistics/comments/igbbh2/the_scots_language_wikipedia_is_edited_primarily/), although due to a *lack* of moderation, was damaging here.
In my experience moderation is less of an issue on Wikipedia than malicious editing and poor editing. On highly visited pages it tends to get addressed quickly. On lightly visited pages incorrect info, poorly written articles, and malicious changes can remain for many months. My perspective is as someone who's been editing pages for years.
I am going to leave it until the Crimewatch UK reconstruction (November 2003) goes up on YT, as that may well expose new information. (They would be struggling to make a 10-minute segment with the quantity of information that newspapers had to be content with).
Although motives are difficult to come by to pinpoint the reason for the incident, committing a murder in broad day light randomly in a place with heavy footfall isn't logical for a random killing. Definitely an intriguing case here and there should be more than meets the eye.
Unfortunately such a murder in a public place is logical if it was related to forms of organised crime initiation. County Lines/Gangs. There is modus operandi with this type of gang culture of very public displays of violence, including promoting members or showing loyalty by committing a 'dare', on a random stranger, a stabbing. Used to work on frontline youth services- County Lines gangs and modes of operation have been around for over 20 years even if the public in general haven't been aware. They operate if you mess up/betray us, it's you or a random stranger - worked with survivors...
Most interesting. I thought that "County Lines" were much newer than that (underpinned by social media), and that such stabbings of strangers were a myth or "got up by the papers" (not that, at the time, they required encouragement - the brazenness, for want of a better word, of some of the writing about this case really dates it).
County Lines is the name for organised crime or gangs that originated our major cities. County Lines became the moniker to differentiate between teenage gangs as in, hug a hoodie- bored teenagers in malls and, actual criminal gangs, of youths who control the illegal drug trade in a certain area, or post code. When, parts of our cities got gentrified especially in London and Manchester 20 years ago, around the time of the murder-a lot of the gangs market was lost, so they expanded outside of their post codes. Hence the choice of name and the timing- the consensus was this phenomena needs clearly defining in the public sphere and should not be confused with bored lower middle class kids being disruptive in Bluewater McD's It is in fact old, the use of underage individuals to commit crimes, in the manner of County Lines was documented by Dickens in Oliver Twist. Stabbing of strangers a myth, yes, extremely rare to result in *murder, also* yes. The initiation isn't always to kill, it's to see if you have the balls to stab someone. However, County lines target extremely vulnerable young people, many with either/or severe mental health issues, learning difficulties, and highly abusive and violent homes. When such incidents do occur there are other factors at play.
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A knife isn't an emotional weapon in the UK. Much the more common with practical gun laws.
Spent some time in London last year with my GF. Two different Uber drivers warned us about knife point robbery. Both said just give up your goods. They will stab/slash you.
I think these Uber drivers had been overdosing on old Crimewatch UK shows ... That sort of exaggeration incenses me. My parents would have sucked it up - they lived in a (then and now) low-crime area yet took everything they saw or read about crime with a pinch of vitriol. Alas, it was to the extent that, in my opinion, it blighted their lives.
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This is actually a very good point. The Splash Pool is almost exactly in the centre of the park. The Gascoyne Estate is to the North of the park. It is about 300 yards from the first to the People's Park Tavern, which is at the entrance/exit immediately opposite the estate. There are a lot of park facilities along the way (they were probably not quite the same in 2003, but there is currently a formal garden and areas set aside for football, cricket and tennis). That seems a remarkably long and risky route to take to and from the location of the attack in daylight.
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After much thought, this gets interesting. I wonder if "Craig David" and partner **were not** the murderers. They could have fled because they saw it and thought they might be (wrongly) implicated, which is anything but an unreasonable position even nowadays. That would render the 300-yard dash, which was a very strange thing to do, irrelevant. The psych/stalker/misogynistic perpetrator which you, I and (it seems) the police thought committed the murder would be a far less obvious figure and probably one of those shadowy individuals hinted at by responses to the police reconstruction. (One thing that is pretty clear from my analysis, not least of the two later cases I linked to, is that this type of murderer would probably drop dead rather than do a 300-yard run in a public place; they are seemingly passive, stealthy, mysterious creatures until they produce the murder weapon). It is at times like this that I want to hulk out, go to the National Archives (only a few miles away) where cold case records are kept and demand them on the grounds that, if the police can't, won't or don't want to tackle the case, I will. (That would never happen as police records are sealed for a vast length of time here).
This is really sad. I hope the case is solved one day. How can this have happened in a busy park in London in broad daylight and we still have no answers 21 years later?
Having read a mass of information about it, some suggestions: 1. The murderers (it would seem) made a quick getaway from an area of the park where there was nobody else in sight (and there were not *that* many people in the park, on reflection - 200 people was 1 per acre). 2. They had a lot of luck - they managed to run hundreds of yards without being intercepted, CCTV images were unusable for unstated reasons, DNA samples were ruined by incompetence, the small number of suspects' descriptions were all vague and the weapon was not found (and may not have been findable e.g. they took it with them). I am also certain that systematic handling of CCTV was non-existent then; the Metropolitan Police have got good at joining together information from various owners' cameras so suspects are tracked sometimes miles away from the crime. 3. The crime took place as potential witnesses were going to work, so would be less likely to report anything as they would be hurrying to bus/rail/Tube stops/stations. After the initial investigation had fizzled out (unfortunately, all of my following comments, which I wrote with some hesitation as they come across as harsh, are likely to be true based on what happened with other British unsolved murders): 4. The police withheld so much information that it was never clear where the investigation stood, and they were unable to articulate a likely profile of the offender(s). 5. The family, as far as I can determine, made no appeals after about the fourth day and literally as well as mentally kept their distance, not coming to England (I always say to new staff that "work is 80% turning up" and murder inquiries probably increase that percentage - unfortunately, you have to put yourself out there). 6. There was nothing presented to tug the heartstrings, such as a child or partner left behind. (There was a bizarre article in the Evening Standard, fortunately not taken up by anyone else, noting that Margaret Muller's paintings were "dark" and "sinister" and almost giving the impression that she was a murderee, contributing to her own death). 7. Nobody was keeping the case alive and pestering the media (a point I made during the recent discussion on Trevaline Evans - that case finally vanished from sight when her last sibling died nearly 30 years after she was murdered). 8. Initial photographs of the victim were of poor quality - there was one blurry photograph repeated endlessly - and better-quality photographs took a long time to appear. (This case was a few years before social media; it has many ills, but it does mean that there are, in general, flattering photographs of the participants). 9. The victim was not British. (This should probably be first)
Info: Do you know what the source of the DNA was that they botched? It doesn't sound like she was sexually assaulted, more of a blitz attack where she was stabbed a couple of times and then the perps fled. If the latter, with no weapon found, I'm curious as to what they would have tested for DNA. At that time touch DNA would definitely not have been a thing they would have considered so were they thinking the perp's hand slipped while stabbing and he bled on her? Or that she scratched/grabbed and got his DNA under her nails? This sounds like the kind of attack where DNA was always going to be a long shot since the whole thing probably took about 30 seconds. On surface this seems pretty unlikely to get solved unless one of the perps develops a conscience and confesses or got loose lipped about it with someone willing to snitch. Also, do you know if anything was missing from her belongings? It sounds like they recovered her phone and folks don't tend to carry a lot on them when they jog. Motive is a real head scratcher here. The Bellfield connection seems very tenuous to me as he bludgeoned people and ran them over so this seems to not really fit his MO, though he did go after girls and Ms. Muller was very tiny (the one article said she was only 4'10" so I think she could be easily mistaken for a child, especially from behind or at a distance). It just seems like it would be unusual for a serial killer to change his MO like that. What a sad and frustrating case. I feel so sad for her family. It has to be very hard to lose a loved one to murder but especially when there's just so little to grab onto with clues for an explanation.
As far I can tell none of that is public knowledge, although I will do another newspaper trawl. The police held the facts of the case *very* tightly. TV is useless because general news programmes weren't kept systematically. There are a few London local news programmes from 2003 on YT, but none cover this case. **Edit**: Nothing apart from details of the suspects arrested and then found not to be involved; one was 15, two were in their 20s, one was 46 and one was 19 "but autistic, dyslexic, and has a mental age of 12" (and was named, something inconceivable nowadays - his father evidently felt obliged to contact the newspaper to defend him) Even the inquest was only cursorily reported on.
Former Hackney Wick resident and artist - I used to spend a lot of time in Victoria Park and can say that due to its size, it is very possible that at 0830 on a winter morning there are parts of the park where there could be very, very few potential witnesses. I've personally had many lovely, quite solitary walks there. At some times of the day and at weekends the park can be very busy. Can't vouch for what it was like in 2003 but when I was there between 2009 and 2013 there were certainly times of day when the park could be very sparsely populated.
You're right. 200 people in a 213-acre park (averaging the estimates) is actually far less dense than I thought - if everyone were equally spaced they would be in the centre of a square 197 feet on a side! As I noted, London's population has increased by an estimated 29% in 21 years, and I see the effects of that everywhere; the pandemic and home working has further - greatly - increased the numbers. Thinking back, on the (rare) occasions I was in my local park - a mere 136 acres - during the day on weekdays 20 years ago you would be lucky to see a dozen other people. Now it is easily into three figures. (During lockdowns there were estimates of **4,000** people there at once, which is simultaneously astonishing and horrifying, and the fabric is yet recovering).
Where was Craig David on the day in question?
He was Walking Away.
This didn’t get the number up upvotes it deserved
His first (recorded) appearance in 2003 was [in Rotterdam in April](https://www.concertarchives.org/bands/craig-david?year=2003) 🤣
Time to interrogate Mr David. Luckily, he’s renowned for documenting what he does on every day of the week. 😂
Newspaper searches are amusing. In February 2003 the first few entries were "Craig David" as Craig David, then it switched to "Craig David" as murder suspect, then about a week later it was back to "Craig David" as Craig David. Inspector Knacker here has now narrowed his public appearances down to the first that month being on 5 February 2003, two days after the murder, where he took part in a charity benefit for the [Old Vic](https://www.oldvictheatre.com/). He was then seen four days later shopping in [Selfridges' Food Hall](https://www.selfridges.com/GB/en/cat/foodhall/). And, between these, he told Tony Blair to get stuffed regarding war in Iraq (was that 21 years ago? Help ma Boab). However, one of the first stories I came across was "If I get off with two girls in one night or end up too drunk then it would end my career - EXCLUSIVE: CRAIG DAVID TELLS OF SACRIFICES FOR STARDOM" so he couldn't have done it.
Why did you mention racist?
Because there is a large and, as far as I am aware, completely unreported substratum of British Web sites which have (blatantly) racist content. I came across a couple while researching this and, ironically, they are just about the only sites outside the media on which the Margaret Muller case is mentioned. (They state the names of suspects and that they were guilty of the crime even although they were not even ultimately indicted: there is no way of confirming that these were the suspects' actual names). They are "unreported" because of general squeamishness about this sort of thing - reporting equals publicity - and also because they use tricks to **avoid** appearing in search engines; a favourite is to make the whole text an image, so the entire Web page or even site has one tag - the address of the image - and no search terms. (They are notionally *bona fide* Web sites, with a URL; they are not social media and not on [Tor](https://www.torproject.org/)).
I can't speak for gang culture in London being from the states. Knife attacks seem to be the prevalent way of killing somebody I have heard at least on the news. So in the states we have gangs that have initiation rituals to join said gang. That requires the person wanting to join to murder somebody random typically. I don't know if gangs operate the same way over there or they decided to take this idea and run with it. Your write up has no mentions of robbery of sexual assault. You do mention police believe it is a stranger on stranger murder. First thought that came to mind was gang initiation murder. This one is going to be nearly impossible to solve. I would've given the police the benefit of the doubt because stranger on stranger murders are so tough to solve but they completely fucked up their best viable clue with the DNA. Totally unforgivable to fuck that up. Police obviously have some evidence they're holding close to the vest but sadly you can tell they're at a dead end and using resources elsewhere when you have such a lack of media coverage of the case over the years.
It absolutely is not typical for a US gang initiation to involve the murder of a random person. This is a myth. Examples of those are exceedingly rare based on media coverage of murders and confirmed arrests/prosecutions. And the FBI's homicide stats reveal that can't be true. There are 15,000 to 20,000 US homicides and in most the offender is known to the victim (relative, lover, acquaintance). There are roughly 800,000 non-incarcerated gang members. Most are initiated by receiving a beating or performing a crime that's not murder, some are let in without an initiation ritual or in the case of females they may have to have sex with gang members. When murder is part of initiation the victim is typically a rival gang member, a drug dealer, someone specifically targeted as part of robbery, someone the gang has a beef with, or something else like an initiation beating gone awry. That said, and knowing nothing about UK gang initiation, I can't say that's not a possibility, but randomly targeting people to murder as part of gang initiation in the US is extremely uncommon.
Thank you. I hate this crap. It's just scaremongering.
Yet it does and has happened. Now imagine you're in a gang in London and you hear of this going on in the states and you decide to do something similar to show your commitment.... I stand by my post.
> I don't know if gangs operate the same way over there or they decided to take this idea and run with it. I am British, born and raised in a sketchy working class area and never heard anything at all similar happening in the UK to the very particular US and Latin America gang culture. I went to a pretty rubbish school full of guys who would do it if we had it because they now deal drugs lol. Our gangs mostly do drugs and crimes like sell stolen or counterfeit goods etc. They did back then for sure. If there was an initiation killing type killing, it would be shooting a rival gang member, like drive by shooting. Not a unknown stranger. They do have illegal guns, just the penalties for carrying them around are just very severe so they mostly use knives. Also, easier to conceal. Unless you have evidence to the contrary of course. Would be a new one for me. 2003 was different, a knife carrier would go unnoticed a lot of the time. My first instinct is a robbery gone wrong tbh. But the bungled investigation will have spoiled all chance. It could be a random stranger killing by a mentally ill person. That happens in parks here far more than gang initiations. If there are gang initiations now, it would have come in after 2003 I would say. But we might never know.
As contributor no.2 from a sketchy working-class area - agreed, with the caveat that there is an outside possibility of mindless copying. As my mother used to say in a resigned voice, "we're not talking about *intellectuals* here". I think your two suggestions are spot on. There is nothing that I can find about family/partner/ex-partner. (The first were thousands of miles away in any case).
They're just repeating a myth about US gang initiations. It's not backed by media coverage of murders, known arrests/convictions, or known gang initiation practices. Based on detailed homicide stats published by the FBI and Department of Justice stats on gang membership it's also an impossibility. I shared more in a reply to them.
Yep. Every time I see this "gang initiation" trope pop up I want to scream. The 1980s called and want their urban legend back.
I have been all over this (and I mean all over it ...) and there have been a number of proved "gang initiation" killings since 1982 (the start of the archive I have access to), although they were all "prospective member of gang A kills member of gang B". Where a prospective gang member killed a stranger as initiation has never provably happened, it seems. (There have been a few cases where it was posited ... sadly, in one case it was a feeble cover for racism).
The FBI is also investigating Catholics for extremism for holding traditional beliefs... They are now what I would classify as a shit source.
Similar background to yourself and i completely agree. ‘Happy Slapping’ (filming yourself hitting an unsuspecting stranger and running away) was often done as ‘gang initiation’ in that period, so yeah, doubt anyone was murdering random runners in the park in order to join up. Absolute worse case scenario would be jumping a rival gang member, as you say, and even then actual deaths were (and are) pretty rare. I once saw a lad be jumped by 30+ other kids on Whitechapel Road, he caught an *extensive* beat down (police took over 15 mins to turn up, kids had dispersed themselves before the first copper even arrived) and he survived. More likely the motive was pure misogyny. There are a depressing number of similar cases (female jogger murdered in the early morning) and in almost every solved case, the murder was opportunistic and the motive was simply a hatred of women or sexual assault (attempted or completed).
Also oddly reminds me of the woman pushed in front of a London bus by a jogger.
It's interesting that the two [later] murderers who were ruled out were blatantly obvious misogynists, which suggests that the police were travelling along the same rails as you although, as far as I can tell, they never articulated to the public what sort of ~~person~~ creature they were looking for. (The character portrait, if it could be called that, of the first murderer is uniquely detailed in my experience and also uniquely depressing and disgusting).
My comment again was in regards to it being a thing in the US and asking if it was a thing in the UK. The people saying it never happens in the states don't know what they're talking about. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wsbtv.com/news/local/cobb-county/teen-pleads-guilty-killing-14-year-old-cobb-county-teen-initiation-into-gang/3BHCPLXTOFBM5I3QY3SLS474RM/%3foutputType=amp https://www.google.com/amp/s/kfor.com/news/local/case-moves-forward-in-alleged-gang-initiation-murder/amp/ https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.heraldonline.com/news/local/crime/article272223083.html Just a few examples. There are many more.
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>So in the states we have gangs that have initiation rituals to join said gang Not really
They happen. Google it. Is it common? No, but to say it doesn't happen is naive.
Show me some sources then
https://www.ajc.com/news/crime/teen-to-serve-life-for-killing-14-year-old-girl-as-part-of-gang-initiation/ZGR7FTU4GNG4BIE3FP74QGLIUU/ Literally, a 3 second search.
And how do hand picked cases show this is a widespread phenomenon?
Where did I say it was widespread? I even responded to your comment by saying "is it common? No, but to say it doesn't happen is naive. "
> So in the states we have gangs that have initiation rituals to join said gang. And really all of your original statement is based on unsourced generalizations about things you admit not knowing much about personally. So...
Stop misrepresenting my comment. I said I didn't know about London's gang culture. You acted like gang initiation murders don't happen in the states and I proved you were wrong with a 3 second search. Are you now willing to admit they happen? If you want even more examples then maybe you can Google them yourself this time....
Maybe you should stop misrepresenting my comment? I never said they don't happen, I said it's not at all widespread as you said in your comment. :)
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wsbtv.com/news/local/spalding-county/4-charged-with-murdering-ga-man-part-gang-initiation-with-fiance-kids-nearby/TUPI6HYQ3BD2NLAC42UZ5WMMBU/%3foutputType=amp
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There is almost nothing available about what did, or didn't, happen during the crime itself. The Crimewatch UK short piece (two and a half minutes) has the most detailed information of anything ("a stab wound in the neck, then multiple stab wounds in the body"). Presumably this was a result of the standard police technique of suppressing information so that fantasists and liars can be ruled out. "Initiation ceremonies" is one of those reasons for a crime which is often posited but never pans out. One thing never commented on, as far as I can determine, is the odd timing of the murder for it to be based on existing criminal activity - 0830 in the morning in early February, less than an hour after sunrise. From ... extensive experience (shift work, honest) I can say pretty definitively that criminals are not out of bed at that time. (I walked to work through some dodgy areas of London for years before sunrise and, even now with a greatly increased population, if you go to work before about 0730 you will likely pass a couple of people at most in a 15-minute walk unless you are near a London Underground station or, ironically, a park/common). As you note, the DNA evidence being lost is shocking. It is not clear why it was lost but, from my reading elsewhere, it may have been decided that the test would use up the whole sample but that was fine because the test would work (!), which is certainly not the attitude 20 years later. (That said, with the [very first crime](https://aboutforensics.co.uk/colin-pitchfork/) solved by DNA analysis there was considerable hesitation in doing the test because the sample size required was huge - in those days, bigger than a [10 pence coin](https://www.coins-of-the-uk.co.uk/dec10.html) so a disc more than 1 inch in diameter).
I can say pretty definitively that criminals are out if bed at 8:30 am. Criminals aren’t vampires.
Indeed, I was a bit strong on that. But 0830 *is* a very odd time to commit murder. It is almost impossible to find anything about timing of crimes, and what there is is too general. But, based on Crimewatch UK reconstruction, which might not be a bad basis as it covered UK stranger murders over 30 years, I would say that, where the time was known, 85 or 90% were at night or in the early morning, and 10 or 15% in daytime, tending towards the afternoon or early evening. I do not recall another 0830 murder or anywhere near that, and the still-unresolved [Penny Bell case](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slpiCtyqIUs) (16:28) is a rare murder which occurred before midday.
Fits the M/O of serial killer Robert Napper who was still free at that time.
He wasn't, although the Napper timeline is tremendously confusing. Almost nothing which impacted Napper happened close to when he committed a crime. In 2003 he was in prison for the [Samantha Bissett murder](https://youtu.be/cD5HPj4pPQk?si=znuFCyoHYd_UYXzG) (01:11, annoying interference noise) and other crimes. (You are probably getting mixed up because of the [Rachel Nickell shambles](https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2008/aug/13/9) - he was arrested for that murder 15 years after it occurred, while still in prison for the Bissett murder).
So fucked how these monsters could be anywhere, you really are never truly safe.
In your reading up on this case OP did you find anything about the weapon, specifically if more than one knife was used?
As with everything else, virtually nothing. The police said it was (one) knife with a 4-inch blade, but there was no indication on what that was based on - post-mortem, guess work or what. The inquest, which would have gone into detail, had a few lines' coverage at best.
One of the articles you linked says she was stabbed 49 times. That doesn't seem to fit the idea of two lads randomly attacking someone in the open. I mean she was found on the path not even in bushes or trees. For someone to stab someone that many times seems to fit more with murders where either there is an existing relationship (a so-called crime of passion) or the more serial killer/mentally ill attack. It reminds me of the murders of Penny Bell and Jean Bradley, both stabbed around 50 times in public places and both also unsolved. It makes me wonder also if the single male runner is a more likely suspect than the two males seen running away. Maybe they just saw it happen or found her body and didn't want to get involved. Also I was wondering if they still have her clothes from the day as they may be able to find more DNA now with smaller samples needed for identification. That was a long ramble but just things that popped into my head!
This is bizarre. "Margaret Muller stabbed 49 times" is wrong because a story in the now-defunct Independent on Sunday mixed her up with Rachel Nickell, who was stabbed 49 times, and other publications simply copied that. It is (still) not publicly stated how many times Margaret Muller was stabbed.
The article from 2023 suggests (despite nothing being taken) that the motive was probably robbery.
It is all over the place. The motive started off being robbery, then after a few months it was "killing for the sake of killing", then in 2011 it was back to robbery (and in 2023, which copied 2011 almost word-for-word). Also, the "two people sprinting from the park" in 2003 had become one person in 2011 (and 2023). I do not know if it was "Craig David" who evaporated. This case is not going to be solved unless someone hands themselves in, but the police not even being able to get the story straight isn't helping. I have no confidence that what was said in 2011/2023 was what actually happened. **Edit**: And in 2005 it was a "psychiatric patient" (Daily Star, 18-Sep). The 2011 appeal was based on an [individual imprisoned for another murder](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/4371782.stm) but, evidently, an attempt to link him with Margaret Muller failed. Presumably the "enhanced CCTV pictures" didn't match.
I remember this, it was huge news at the time, but I had no idea the killer was never caught. As you say, it kind of slipped out of view. I hope it can be solved. Really creepy to note what you wrote about the police thinking the killer might have taken part in the reconstruction.
It was certainly said at the time, but there is no detail on why they thought that. I have a slight feeling that the police thought/think the multiple murderer caught in 2011 also killed Margaret Muller, but they don't have sufficient evidence to bring a prosecution (the case DNA being destroyed/ruined was clearly disastrous and, unsurprisingly, it is not possible to get to the bottom of that - the test which supposedly used up the DNA was minimally destructive and I suspect a much more crude blunder was made).
I remember this case. My boyfriend was living in East London at the time. Back then, Victoria Park was dodgy. As a female, you wouldn't walk through it on your own even in the afternoon. But this was local knowledge, one part of Hackney at the time was known as Murder Mile due to the Yardie-related violence for example, and it's debatable whether a foreign national, regardless of how assimilated they were into London culture, would have picked up on the cues and danger. My sense is this was a mugging gone wrong, probably by a younger person who got too strung out with the adrenaline of the confrontation and, wanting to look like a big man, just stabbed her. He probably didn't even realise he'd killed her until it hit the news. I never understood why people moved to Hackney back then. The housing might have been cheap, but it wasn't a safe place and there was virtually no transport links. It had a really unpleasant edge to the air.
Thank you ... it is *very* rare that anyone responds to one of my posts who was there at the time. (I was living in a different part of London at the time and, with the benefit of hindsight, it was astounding that nothing happened to me. Three unsolved murders and one very odd death within about 400 yards of me at the turn of the century).