Babes in the Wood murders (Epping Forest)

The Babes in the Wood murders is a name which has been used in the media to refer to a child murder case in which two bodies were found concealed in woodland.

The bodies of Susan Blatchford (aged 11), and Gary Hanlon (aged 12), were discovered in a thicket of trees on Lippitts Hill, Epping Forest, south-east England, after they went missing from their homes in Enfield, north London, on 31 March 1970. The case remained unsolved for 30 years until 61-year-old Ronald Jebson, already serving a life sentence for the 1974 murder of eight-year-old Rosemary Papper, confessed to their sexual assault and murder on 9 May 2000.[1]

Jebson, who was never paroled from his sentence and spent more than 40 years in prison, died in secrecy at University Hospital North Durham on 17 April 2015, reportedly from kidney failure. Accounts of his death began to circulate in the UK media on 27 April 2015.[2] This case is not to be confused with the Wild Park Babes in the Wood murders of two nine-year-old girls, Nicola Fellows and Karen Hadaway, in Brighton, East Sussex 16 years later.