There is a certain mysterious force that creates events that are strangely synchronized with other events, completely with the first, at first glance, unrelated.
One such example is a series of two murders, which are separated by almost two centuries, and are nevertheless somehow mystically connected with each other.
Both murders took place in a quiet and humble suburb of Birmingham, England, called Erdington. The history of this place dates back to the 9th century AD and it has great cultural significance, but mostly it is just a very peaceful and boring suburb where nothing happens most of the time.
But on May 27, 1817, the peace of this sleepy town was disrupted when 20-year-old Mary Ashford left her house to go to a dance night with her friend Hannah Cox at the Tyburn House Inn. While dancing, Mary met a 25-year-old local farmer, Abraham Thornton, and danced with him all evening.
At about midnight, passers-by saw Mary and Abraham leave the Tyburn House Inn, and at about 4 am they saw both walking to Hannah's house, where Mary left her outer garments. Nobody saw Mary alive again.
Just a couple of hours later, a local worker, George Jackson, was walking from the factory through Pype Hayes Park and saw that in one place the grass was heavily trampled on the lawn, and women’s clothes were lying nearby. As he got closer, he was shocked to find fresh blood splattered all over the grass. When George followed the trail of blood deeper into the park, they led him to a muddy pit of water in which Mary Ashford was lying.
When the authorities began to investigate the case, it turned out that before the murder, Mary was brutally raped. And they killed her with their fists.
Portrait of Mary Ashford.
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Considering that the latter and Mary saw Abraham Thornton, he was immediately detained and interrogated. However, the man looked shocked and shocked by Mary's death. He admitted that he and Mary really had "games and caresses" in the bushes that night, but then they each went to their homes.
Thornton was initially believed, but then he again became the main suspect when it turned out that the soles of his shoes fit very well with the prints that were found next to Mary's corpse in the park.
But since there was no more evidence against Thornton, he was soon released, despite the indignation of local residents who were confident of his guilt. Due to threats and psychological impossibility to be in this place, Thornton soon sailed on a ship to New York, where he lived a normal life and died in 1860.
On the surface, it may seem that this is just a tragic unsolved crime involving a young woman who was unlucky enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and there was nothing strange about it.
However, exactly 157 years later, another unsolved murder happened in the same area, and it, by some mystical oddity, very much resembled the murder of Mary Ashford. So many details coincided - from the date and age of the victim to the dance event, the location of the corpse and the name (!) Of the suspect - that it was hard to take it for a common coincidence.
On May 27, 1974, 20-year-old nurse Barbara Forrest from Birmingham went dancing with her boyfriend Michael Thornton, and after dancing he went to see her off and dropped her off the bus at the Colmore Circus stop. It was about one in the morning and then passers-by saw Barbara alive for the last time.
Newspaper article about the murder of Barbara Forrest.
Barbara did not return home that night and was considered missing until June 4, when her dead body was found all in the same Pype Hayes Park in Erdington. The corpse was lying in a depression filled with dirty water. The girl was raped, severely beaten and strangled.
The police interrogated the bus passengers, local residents, and then Michael Thornton. When blood was found on his pants and it was revealed that his mother had given him a false alibi, Thornton was arrested on suspicion of the murder of Barbara.
However, it soon turned out that there was no other evidence against him, and in those years they could not yet identify the victim by the traces of blood. Michael Thornton was released.
At the scene of the murder of Barbara Forrest.
In 2012, the family of murdered Barbara demanded a review of the case and a blood test for DNA. However, it turned out that the blood samples from Thornton's pants were missing somewhere. They were never found.
Between these two cases as much as 157 years, but there are so many similarities that goosebumps run down the skin. Both women were 20 years old and were killed on May 27, both were raped and killed in the same way and in the same park, the bodies were thrown into pits of dirty water, and the main suspect was a man with the same surname Thornton. And in both cases, he was found not guilty.
And if you want even more mystical fog in this matter, then we will tell you that both girls were also born on the same day. And also, as the researchers found out, both Mary and Barbara, a week before their death, told their friends about a strange bad feeling.