A crime and a six-decade cover-up: the death of a fashion designer in the cesspit of vice and violence that was 1950s London.In 1954, Jean Mary Townsend was strangled with her own scarf and stripped of her underwear but not sexually assaulted. The subsequent police investigation was bungled, leading to a six-decade cover-up, ensuring that this twenty-one-year-old fashion designer was effectively killed twice: first bodily, and then as her significance and her memory were erased. Fred Vermorel''s forensic, troubling (and trouble-making) investigation digs deep into Jean Townsend''s life and times, and her transgressive bohemian milieu. It disentangles the lies and bluffs that have obscured this puzzling case for over half a century and offers a compelling solution to her murder and the official secrecy surrounding it.
More than just a true crime story, Vermorel''s investigation deploys Townsend''s death as a wild card methodology for probing the 1950s: a cesspit of vice
