Published: 15 August, 2013
by ALICE HUTTON

THE headline read: “Murder Hunt”.

It was 1982 and the first killing since the Camden New Journal was launched less than six months earlier made the front page, along with a now-grainy photo of a smiling Yiannoulla Yianni.

The quiet 17-year-old from West Hampstead had been found by her parents George and Billi strangled and sexually assaulted in her bed in their maisonette in Belsize Road.

An hour and a half earlier the yellow shirt and plaid mini skirt-wearing schoolgirl had dropped off their lunch at the Greek-Cypriot family’s cobbler store, Nick’s Shoe Shop, in Belsize Circus, now Fairhazel Gardens in South Hampstead.

Neighbours reported hearing her parents’ screams and for days afterwards they were kept under heavy sedation.
Tuesday marked the 31st anniversary of the unsolved murder of the Quintin Kynaston student on August 13 and detectives at Scotland Yard are being urged to track down the killer by her school friend and Labour London Assembly member, Murad Qureshi.

Yiannoulla’s brutal death dominated the news throughout the summer of 1982. “Key clue” ran the headline, “Forty detectives follow inquiries” the sub-head.

As a killing of a beautiful, bright teenager at the height of the school holidays in a quiet, leafy area of London  it was a high-profile case and the police were, in public at least, confident they would find the killer.

Repeated continually was the description of their main, and only apparent suspect: a 5ft 6in, 20-something man with black, neatly combed hair, wearing a blue jacket.

Possibly from the Greek-Cypriot community, he had been seen talking to her outside her house an hour before she was found. Police worked on the assumption Yiannoulla knew her killer because there had been no forced entry into her home.

The reports make for hard reading with detectives “appealing for anyone who may have seen anything unusual or suspicious occur between 1.30pm and 3.30pm – particularly somebody running away, looking dishevelled or covered in blood – to come forward.” Thousands were interviewed.

Most of the residents in the road and the surrounding area received a knock on the door, as well as her colleagues at the Woolworths in Finchley Road, where she worked part-time.

A mobile police station was set up outside the family home to stop passers-by, and students from her Swiss Cottage school were lined up to be fingerprinted.

Another New Journal front page carried a photo of her grim-faced sister Maria, then 19, dressed in the exact same clothing, “reluctantly” recreating her last-known journey for police. But as the weeks slid by no one was arrested.

In October there was a new lead after a man of similar description in a bright blue jacket attempted to rape a 12-year-old girl in her bedroom after gaining access to her home in Dartmouth Park Hill.

But it went no further.

On the first anniversary of her murder Yiannoulla’s desperate father offered a £3,000 reward. That was the last mention of her for the whole year.

“This is a particularly brutal murder,” Detective Chief Superintendent Michael John, who was leading the hunt at the time, had told the New Journal six days after the murder. “The man we are looking for is dangerous and must be found.”

But he never was.

The last appeal made by Scotland Yard detectives was more than 10 years ago in 2001 and it remains one of the longest-running British police investigations.

Detectives based at the Serious Crime Group told the New Journal at the time that they had increased the reward to £10,000 and spoke of their hope that new forensic techniques could be used to find a match for the DNA profile left in her bedroom.

They tracked down more than 1,000 people questioned during the original 1982 enquiry, distributed leaflets throughout the area and abroad, as well as making appeals in the local Greek-Cypriot community.

Detective Constable Pam Smith said that it was possible the killer may be abroad or even dead. Yiannoulla’s family were “very positive and upbeat” but “want to see justice done”, she said.

Yiannoulla’s face may have faded from the newspaper pages but there are many who haven’t forgotten her – and for whom her unsolved death remains a scar.

Mr Qureshi was in the same year at Quintin Kynaston, one of the many young men fingerprinted and questioned by police.

Mr Qureshi, now 48, said her death became a “formative event” of his teens – one few of his contemporaries have forgotten.

“I can remember going to the funeral in the Greek Orthodox Church in Pratt Street,” he said. “Half the school was there. If you had seen the state of her father you could well have seen why a lot of us never recovered from it. He wailed in a way that I have never heard since. They had to drag him in and out the church. He was broken.”

He continued: “It was a weekend, I remember that distinctly. I was playing cricket or something. I heard about her and I was completely horrified.”

Almost immediately the police called Quintin Kynaston pupils in to be questioned.

“All the boys at QK were suspects and they took all our fingerprints. The reality is that they were trying to catch out anybody who avoided having them done. They tried to flush them out. The main suspects became the Greek community and people that she knew at school. They put a lot of heavy pressure on everyone who knew her.

“All I can say is it was horrific,” he continued. “A horrific killing and horrific time. I had a hunch that the killer was there at the funeral. I would like to see it solved and would welcome the Met to take a fresh look at her case. The Met has a good track record with solving historic murders and it would be good to finally get to the bottom of it.”

A Scotland Yard spokeswoman said: “The case is not cold: an officer is assigned to the case and it is ongoing.”