Norfolk headless body
Unidentified female decedent
The Norfolk headless body case relates to a woman who was murdered around the first or second week of August 1974. Her decapitated body was found near Swaffham, Norfolk, England on 27 August 1974. Her head has never been found. Although the woman has never been identified, one theory being investigated is that she was a sex worker known as "The Duchess" who worked the Great Yarmouth docks under that pseudonym prior to her disappearance in mid-1974.
Death
The badly decomposed body of this woman was discovered on 27 August 1974 by a 19-year-old tractor driver named Andrew Head who had been out walking when he found the body on land belonging to Peter Roberts. Head later recalled: "I lifted one corner of the cover over the body and that was enough – I could see what it was. I went home and phoned the police." The body was discovered near a track leading to Brake Hill Farm, Brandon Road, within Cockley Cley. Combine harvesters were used to clear fields to allow them to be searched.
Police believe the woman died in either the first or second week of August 1974. She was estimated to be aged between 23 and 35 and 5 ft 0 in (1.52 m) to 5 ft 2 in (1.57 m) tall.
“Norfolk headless body” enters the record as unidentified female decedent. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Norfolk, headless and body can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Feb 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q23018616. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1974.
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This entry incorporates text from “Norfolk headless body” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.