Murder of Patsy Morris
On 16 June 1980, Patricia "Patsy" Morris, a fourteen-year old schoolgirl from Feltham, Middlesex, London, was murdered by strangulation. She disappeared after leaving her school during her lunch break, and was found dead in undergrowth on Hounslow Heath near her home two days later. Despite repeated appeals for information by police, her murder remains unsolved. The murder was brought to public attention again in 2008, when it was discovered that she had been a childhood girlfriend of west London serial killer Levi Bellfield. Police investigated links between her murder and Bellfield but he was never  formally charged over her death. Background. Patricia Morris (10 January 1966 – 16 June 1980) was a blonde 14-year-old schoolgirl born to George Morris, a retired army chief, and Marjorie Morris. She had moved with her family from Birmingham to Isleworth, South West London, in 1979. She attended Feltham Comprehensive School with her sister and two brothers. Disappearance. On 16 June 1980, Morris disappeared, having been seen leaving her school during her lunch break. Various explanations have been cited as the reason she left her school that lunch. According to some sources, she had forgotten her rain coat that  morning and told her friends that she was going to return home at lunchtime to change in to dry clothes, as she had got wet from the rain. Other sources state that she had a double history lesson scheduled for that afternoon which she often avoided attending, and so bunked off the rest of the school day. A witness recalled seeing her soon after noon near her home. Another witness recalled seeing a girl who may have been Morris crouching at a bus stop on the Hounslow Heath side of Staines Road, just west of the Hussar public house between  12:20 p.m. and 12:40 p.m. These were the last sightings of her alive. After she was reported missing a large search operation was launched to find her, involving hundreds of police officers, helicopters and members of the public who had volunteered to help. Discovery of body. Two days later, on the evening of 18 June, Morris's body was found by a police dog handler face down in a copse on nearby Hounslow Heath, close to her home. She was variously described as being fully-clothed or half-naked. She had been found ten yards from a path through one  of the small woods. She had been strangled with a ligature. For an unknown reason, police found that she had been wearing two pairs of knickers that day. Her knickers and her tights had been pulled down over her ankles. A second pair of tights with one leg missing was tied around her leg and wound upwards until it was knotted four times around her neck, as a form of ligature. An identical pair of one-legged tights was also wrapped three times around both her wrists in front of her body and then over her breasts. There was no  signs of sexual assault, but her knickers being pulled down and her clothing being organised in the way it was suggested a sexual motive to the killing. The evidence suggested the perpetrator had found sexual stimulation without penetration. Police investigations. Police released a public statement after the death, warning parents in west London not to let their children cross Hounslow Heath alone. Morris's mother said that she had no reason to be on Hounslow Heath, stating to the press: "We can't understand what she was doing on the heath. She was always told not to go there and  never disobeyed our orders". Attacks on women and even deaths were not unknown in the area, but previous attacks had invariably involved the full rape of the victim. Soon after Morris was found dead, her father received a phoned death threat from an unidentified teenage boy. The call was from a local caller with a local sounding voice. Police investigations at the time drew a blank and no suspects were identified. In 1996 police arrested a man from Hounslow, but he was released on bail and no further action was taken. Peter Tobin as a suspect. In 2007, Morris's  murder was one of a number of cases linked in the press to newly discovered Scottish serial killer Peter Tobin, who was found to have killed three women between 1991 and 2006. After hearing of the discovery of two women's bodies buried at Tobin's former Margate home, George Morris said that something inside him "clicked" and that he believed Tobin had also murdered his daughter. Her case was reviewed as part of an investigation into other potential victims of Tobin, named Operation Anagram, but Morris's family heard no more from the police and the investigation was wound  down in 2011, having found no evidence that conclusively linked Tobin to any other murders. Levi Bellfield as a suspect. In February 2008, police revealed they were investigating a possible confession to the murder made by Levi Bellfield, an Isleworth-born killer who lived nearby at the time and who had just been convicted of two murders and an attempted murder. The attacks had been committed between 2003 and 2004 in the vicinity of the Morris murder site. Bellfield was alleged to have made the confession to a cellmate while on remand. It was then revealed that Bellfield had attended  Feltham Comprehensive with Morris, and that he was her childhood boyfriend. Morris's family told the press that they had not known they had known each other, and her sister stated: "We did not know him. It was a shock when we found out they knew each other. Friends told us about it. It is horrendous." In 2011, Bellfield was further convicted of the murder of another schoolgirl, Milly Dowler, who he had abducted and raped in 2002. Bellfield would have been 12 years old at the time of Morris's murder, which occurred a year before he received his  first conviction, for burglary, aged 13. He was known to have repeatedly played truant while at school and was known to often frequent Hounslow Heath when he should have been at school. He was known to have not attended school the day of the murder. Former partners of Bellfield recounted that he had a hatred of blonde women and targeted them for attacks, and it was noted that Morris was herself blonde. Some claimed that Morris's death could have been the start of Bellfield's violent obsession with blondes. After it was revealed that Bellfield was being investigated by  police for his daughter's murder, George Morris stated that he was certain that the teenage boy who had given him a death threat in a call at the time was Bellfield, saying: "He's a local man, which is why it could be him. And it's terrifying to think that someone of twelve or thirteen could have done it". Subsequent events. With Bellfield having not been charged with Morris's murder, it was reported in 2012 that he may have been ruled out as a suspect. However, in 2016 it was reported that links between Bellfield and other  crimes had been reinvestigated after new information had been found, and that Morris's case could have been one of around 20 crimes believed to have been committed by Bellfield that police had questioned him on. Police subsequently announced that all lines of enquiry had been exhausted and no evidence had been found to link him to any other unsolved crime. Morris's murder remains unsolved. Both of her parents have since died. Alleged links to Peter Sutcliffe. In 2015, crime writers Chris Clark and Tim Tate published a book alleging links between a number of unsolved murders and the  infamous "Yorkshire Ripper" serial killer Peter Sutcliffe. In the book, the authors claimed that Morris could have been a victim of Sutcliffe, since he was known to have been house-sitting nearby in Alperton with his brother at the time, and both were regularly cruising and picking up women in their car for sex. Clark and Tate claimed that Morris was found half-naked and that her clothing had been arranged in a typical Yorkshire Ripper-like fashion, with her clothes pushed upwards over the top half of her body. Her body was allegedly also posed in the same fashion  as his known victims. Police have apparently never investigated links to Sutcliffe. In popular culture. Morris's murder has featured in a number of documentaries about Bellfield, such as the 2012 documentary "His name is Evil: Levi Bellfield" which was shown on Crime + Investigation as part of the "Evidence of Evil" series. Her murder is also discussed in the 2021 Channel 5 documentary "Levi Bellfield: Getting away with Murder?", featuring an interview with Jeff Edwards, the chief crime correspondent at the "Daily Mirror" at the time. In 2011, crime writer Geoffrey Wansell released a book on Bellfield that also  suggested possible links between him and Morris's murder, titled: "The Bus Stop Killer: Milly Dowler, Her Murder and the Full Story of the Sadistic Serial Killer Levi Bellfield". Wansell speculated that the murder could have been as a result of her rejecting Bellfield and him becoming infuriated as a result. Chris Clark and Tim Tate's book which suggested links between Peter Sutcliffe and Morris's death was published by John Blake publishing in 2015. ITV filmed a documentary based on the book titled "Yorkshire Ripper: The Secret Murders" which is to be shown in February 2022. Murder of