The dog walker thought she had seen too many episodes of Midsomer Murders. But Julie Dunn-Bechin’s hunch was right: the black bin bags weighed down with rocks and bricks in the River Stour contained human remains – two mummified legs and feet, and two mummified arms without hands.
It was August 27, 2020, by the water meadows in Sudbury, Suffolk. Her dogs had shown unusual interest in the bags, which she said “didn’t seem right”. Park ranger Samuel Morgan, who she called, recalled her words: “She said she didn’t know if she had been watching too many Midsomer Murders and had a concern about what could be in the bags.”
“Unidentified 'Croft Man' died from violent assault, hands and face deliberately damaged to prevent identification.”
Through a small hole, Morgan saw what he thought was mummified skin and bone, and what looked like the ball joint of an arm. He alerted police, who two days later recovered skull fragments, facial bones and two loose teeth inside a thin blue plastic bag 150 metres further downstream.
The unidentified man – known throughout proceedings as the Croft Man, after the area where his remains were found – had been born before the early 1950s and died sometime between 2008 and 2012, radiocarbon dating showed. He was in his late 60s to 70s at death.
At an inquest in Ipswich on Tuesday, Suffolk’s senior coroner, Nigel Parsley, concluded the Croft Man died as a result of a “violent assault” and that it was “more likely than not” he was unlawfully killed. The removal of his hands and the injuries to his head and face, Parsley observed, “appear to have been an attempt to hamper his identification”.
Searches against national and international databases for missing persons and criminal activity have failed to identify him. “We must remember that the Croft Man was somebody’s son,” Parsley said. “He lived for 60 to 70 years. He may well have had family, he almost certainly had friends. It’s a tragedy we cannot identify him as there must be some loved ones somewhere wondering where their loved one is.”
Superintendent Mike Brown of Suffolk Police estimated the bags had been discarded between August 13 and 19, and referenced a volunteer litter picker who regularly canoes along that stretch. The identity of the Croft Man remains a mystery – a man whose hands were taken, whose face was injured, and who, for more than a decade, has been nobody’s son in the official record.
