Just after midnight on 1 May 1984, Anthony Littler stepped off a train at East Finchley station and set off down a dark alleyway towards home. Two minutes later, the 45-year-old lay dying on the ground, struck twice over the head. Nothing was stolen. No eyewitnesses, no forensics, no clear motive. For 42 years, nobody was brought to justice.
On Friday, that changed at the Old Bailey. Michael Stewart, 57, and his brother Anthony Stewart, 60, were sentenced to life imprisonment with minimum terms of 10 and 15 years respectively for Littler's murder. At the time of the attack, Michael was 15 and Anthony was 18.
“Brothers jailed for 1984 murder of civil servant Anthony Littler, solved by undercover sting with bugged cars and covert officers.”
Littler, a civil servant who lived alone, was described as a "gentle giant" by friends. He stood 6ft 4ins, loved real ale, and on his final evening had crossed London to attend a meeting of the Society for the Preservation of Beers from the Wood in Carshalton. He shared five or six pints of bitter before heading home via the narrow footpath beside the railway line – a shortcut he had taken many times.
The brothers, part of a group that had been on a violent spree attacking men they thought were gay, had been lying in wait, the court heard. Although there was no evidence Littler was gay, Mrs Justice Cutts noted the Stewarts had targeted gay men to rob. "1984 was a different time and in many respects a different place," she said. In a televised sentencing, she told the defendants: "I am quite sure your group was lying in wait for a victim. You targeted that decent, honest individual and took his life."
Cold cases are often cracked by science – DNA, fingerprints, new techniques on old exhibits. This one was different. Detectives turned to a daring undercover operation: bugging Michael Stewart's home and car, placing listening devices on his brother's car, and sending two covert officers into Michael's life. They were waiting for him to do what he had repeatedly done over the years: talk.
The operation worked. For the first time in more than four decades, Anthony Littler's killers faced justice. His last surviving close relative, Patricia McLure, remembered him: "He was a bit like a big brother."
