Vera Page Case

The Vera Page case was an unsolved murder case from the early 1930s. Vera Page was born in 1921 in Notting Hill, London. On 14 December 1931, Miss Page was reported missing by her parents in London. Two days later, her raped and strangled body was found in the bushes by a house at Addison Road, about a mile from the victim's own house. The police thought she had been murdered somewhere else and then dragged into the growth alongside the road. The remains were examined by Sir Bernard Spilsbury. He discovered coal-dust and candle wax on the girl's body, as well as a piece of ammonia-stained finger bandage. Over a thousand people were questioned about the Vera Page case, and Percy Orlando Rush was the prime suspect. Rush was a forty year-old married man, who had often been seen lurking about the district on evenings. Furthermore, he had recently had a bandage applied to his finger and he worked with ammonia in nearby Whiteley's Laundry. Unremarked upon at the inquest was the fact that he had been previously found guilty of exposing himself to girls. He was never officially charged with murder. No one saw him with Vera on the day of her death, though his movements were never verified. He died in 1961.