Hilda Murrell

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Hilda Murrell (1906 - March 21, 1984) was a rose grower, naturalist, diarist and campaigner against nuclear energy.

She was murdered in mysterious circumstances in March 1984.

1 Life
2 Murder
3 Bibliography
4 External links

[edit] Life

A pupil at Shrewsbury Girls High School, she later studied at Newnham College, Cambridge, where she received a degree in French history.

She was a founding member of the Shropshire Conservation Trust (later Shropshire Wildlife Trust) and of the Shropshire branch of the Council for the Protection of Rural England. She had a successful rose-growing business for many years.

She was opposed to nuclear energy and weapons, identifying disposal of nuclear waste as a serious area for concern.

[edit] Murder

Murrell was scheduled to present her paper An Ordinary Citizen's View of Radioactive Waste Management at the Sizewell Inquiry, regarding the creation of a Nuclear power plant. On 21 March, 1984, her Shrewsbury home was apparently broken into and a small amount of cash was taken. She was abducted in her own vehicle, which witnesses reported seeing being driven erratically. The vehicle was found abandoned just outside Shrewsbury. Her mutilated body was found three days later. She had been stabbed multiple times, but did not die from the stab wounds, instead succumbing to hypothermia.

She was the aunt of Commander Robert Green, a naval intelligence officer who was wrongly said to have passed the order for the sinking of the Argentine ship the Belgrano during the 1982 Falklands War; this led to conspiracy theories about her death. Other conspiracy theories centred around her anti-nuclear campaign.

She was cremated and her ashes scattered at Maengwynedd, in Wales. A commemorative stone was unveiled in Tanybryn in 2004.

The case was re-opened in 2002. Labourer Andrew George, who was 16 when Miss Murrell died, was arrested in June 2003 after a review of the murder uncovered DNA evidence linking him with the crime.

In May 2005 George was found guilty of kidnapping, sexually assauting, and murdering the then 78 year old Murrell. He was sentenced to life imprisonment.

In 1984, famed rose hybridizer David Austin named a rose in her memory.

Her murder was the subject of a song, "The Rose Grower" by the English group Attacco Decente. It can be found on their album The Baby Within Us Marches On.

[edit] Bibliography

Nature Diaries Hilda Murrell, edited by Charles Sinker Pub: Collins 1987 ISBN 0-00-412186-4
Unlawful Killing: Murder of Hilda Murrell Judith Cook, Pub: Bloomsbury, 1994 ISBN 0-7475-1822-X
Death of a Rose Grower: Who Killed Hilda Murrell? Graham Smith, Pub: Cecil Woolf 1985 ISBN 0-900821-76-0