Mysticism or coincidence: stories of two identical murders committed with a difference of 157 years
'19.07.2020'
Source: Yandex Zen
What do we know about coincidences? In principle, anything can coincide: events, names, dates ... And sometimes it is very difficult to believe that this is just an accident. One of these coincidences is associated with two murders that took place in Erdington, a suburb of Birmingham (England), says the author of the blog "Horrors of the world from Irina Shlionskaya" on Yandex Zen.
May 27, 1817, 20-year-old Mary Ashford went with her friend Hannah Cox to dance. There she met 25-year-old Abraham Thornton. The young people liked each other and left together. Early in the morning they were seen outside Hannah Cox's house, where Mary had left her clothes. And just a couple of hours later, a factory worker named George Jackson, returning through the park from a night shift, saw blood on the grass and scattered women's clothes. Blood traces led him deeper into the park, where Mary Ashford's lifeless body lay in a ditch.
The investigation revealed that Mary was raped, and then beaten to death with her fists. Suspicion immediately fell on Abraham Thornton, because the last time they were seen together with Mary. During interrogations, the guy showed that they were petting in the bushes, but then each went their own way.
Thornton was released for lack of evidence. But since the locals accused him of killing the girl, he had to leave the city. He moved to New York, where, as is known from sources, he died in 1860.
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The murder of Mary Ashford remained unsolved. But 157 years later, it was repeated. In any case, the details of the crime coincided to the smallest detail.
On May 27, 1974, 20-year-old Barbara Forrest, a nurse, went dancing. Her boyfriend Michael Thornton was with her. Subsequently, the young man assured that at the end of the dance he accompanied Barbara to the bus stop near her house. At about one in the morning, passers-by saw the girl getting off the bus. But she didn't make it home.
Only on June 4, Barbara's body was found in the same park, in a ditch with dirty water. The girl was raped, beaten and strangled.
Michael Thornton was at first above suspicion, as he supposedly had an alibi. But then he found traces of blood on his trousers, and it turned out that at the time of the murder of Barbara the guy was not at home - his mother lied to the investigation. Michael was arrested. However, as in the case of Mary Ashford, he was soon released for lack of evidence. At that time, they still could not determine who exactly owned the blood.
In 2012, relatives of Barbara Forrest demanded that the blood traces on Thornton's trousers be analyzed for DNA. But, although blood samples from his clothes were to be kept by the police as physical evidence, they mysteriously disappeared somewhere.
There are a lot of details in these two crimes. Both victims were 20 years old. Both were killed on May 27, only in different years, and in practically the same way. Both were raped and in both cases the bodies were thrown into a ditch. Finally, both times, men named Thornton were the main suspects, and both were found not guilty.
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But that is not all! Both girls, as it turned out, were born on the same day. And each of them a week before the death told her friends that she had some kind of bad feeling about it ...
If much less time had elapsed between the two killings, it would be easiest to assume that a sex maniac is operating here. But no maniac would have lived for more than a century and a half!
Of course, it could also be a copycat. After all, the murder of Mary Ashford was covered in the press. What if someone read about her, found a girl with similar data and killed her? Maybe it was Michael Thornton, who knows?
Weren't these murders some kind of sacrifice? Erdington is considered a very ancient place, a settlement here has existed since the XNUMXth century. What if some magic cult was practiced in this area? Although the cult may have existed not from such ancient times ...
One way or another, neither the first nor the second murder was solved, despite all the efforts of the authorities. Which indirectly proves: these are not simple crimes and they cannot be solved in the usual way.
Original column published on the blog. "The horrors of the world from Irina Shlionskaya" on Yandex Zen.
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