Murder book sheds fresh light on Shropshire murder of Janine Downes

Dec 13 2009 by Adam Aspinall, Sunday Mercury

IT remains one of the Midlands’ biggest murder mysteries – who killed vice girl Janine Downes.

The 22 year-old working girl was brutally murdered 18 years ago and her body was dumped in a Shropshire lay-by.

No-one has ever been tried for the young mum’s horrific murder.

But now crimewriter Vanessa Howard, author of a book titled Britain’s Ten Most Wanted, puts two notorious serial killers in the frame for her death.

Howard has painstakingly researched every aspect of Janine’s tragic life, and the huge investigation which followed her death.

She believes that either monster Philip ‘Bigfoot’ Smith, or serial killer Alun Kyte, bludgeoned her to death in the early hours of Saturday, February 2, 1991.

Both are currently behind bars for a string of terrifying murders in the Midlands.

Janine Downes’ body was found half-naked hidden behind a hedge in a lay-by near Lambert’s Restaurant on the A464 Shifnal to Wolverhampton road.

Originally from Wolverhampton, she was from a broken home and had lived in and out of care homes across the region throughout her short life.

She turned to prostitution out of desperation, and was reportedly a favourite with sick punters because of her child-like frame.

The frail victim was just 5ft tall and weighed less than 8st. She would have had little chance of fighting off a determined attacker.

Police discovered she had been strangled and sexually assaulted, and had suffered extensive head wounds caused by a jagged-edged weapon.

The wounds to her face were so horrific that the police could not be sure it was Janine until they confirmed with her pimps that she was missing.

It emerged that she had been kept as a virtual sex slave in a seedy Wolverhampton flat, so her disappearance was noted.

When she was found, all she was wearing was a paisley pattern blouse, a bra and blue ankle socks.

Her other clothes – white trainers, jeans, and a black shell-suit top with a yellow stripe bearing the words Nike International – have never been found.

Marks on the frosty ground indicated where Janine had been dragged, and a pathologist estimated that her body had been dumped at some point between midnight and 4am.

No motive has ever been established for her murder, although one theory was that she was killed by one of her pimps, who bizarrely killed himself just a few weeks after Janine’s death.

But this has been dismissed by investigators, who have been more interested in the idea that Janine may have had information about the murder of another prostitute, 23 year-old Gail Whitehouse, the previous year.

Theory

The theory is almost impossible to prove and author Howard believes it is more likely she was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time – and may have fallen victim to one of two vicious predators who stalked the Midlands in the 1990s.

The first is Philip Smith, 44, who is currently serving a life sentence after he bludgeoned three women to death in Birmingham in the space of just four days in November 2000.

The unexplained killing spree started on November 9 when two patrolling police officers found the smouldering body of recovering butane gas addict Jodie Hyde.

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