Murder of Vera Page
Vera Page | |
|---|---|
Vera Page, pictured in April 1931 | |
| Born | 13 April 1921 Hammersmith, London, England, UK |
| Died | 14 December 1931 (aged 10) Kensington, London, England, UK |
| Cause of death | Manual strangulation |
| Body discovered | 89 Addison Road, Kensington, 16 December 1931 |
| Resting place | Gunnersbury Cemetery, Hounslow, London, England 51°29′41″N 0°17′05″W / 51.4946°N 0.2848°W (approximate) |
| Nationality | English |
| Occupation | Student |
| Known for | Unsolved murder victim |
| Parent(s) | Charles and Isabel Page |
The murder of Vera Page is an unsolved British child murder case from the early 1930s. On 14 December 1931, 10-year-old Vera Page was reported missing after she failed to return to her home in Notting Hill, London, from a visit to a nearby relative. The child's body was found two days later in undergrowth in nearby Addison Road. Vera had been raped, then manually strangled to death in a murder described by one detective as "the most terrible in which I had to deal with during my career".
Strong physical and circumstantial evidence existed attesting to the guilt of a 41-year-old labourer named Percy Orlando Rush, whose parents lived in the same house as Vera. However, at a coroner's inquest held on 10 February 1932, a jury determined that insufficient real evidence existed to formally charge Rush with her murder. Officially, the case remains unsolved.