Crime show Murdertown to recount Staffordshire strangler case
The story of a murder victim who disappeared while out shopping will be recounted in a television crime show.
Lichfield housewife Wendy Upton, 40, was reported missing in October 1998. After months of police appeals her remains were discovered in dense undergrowth the following summer and she was identified from her dental records.
Her tragic story and the murder investigation carried out by Staffordshire Police detectives will be revisited in the new series of Murdertown, fronted by new presenter Anita Rani on Crime & Investigation Network on Sky and Virgin Media.
At the time her disappearance sparked a major campaign including a police reconstruction of her movements on the day she disappeared, an Express & Star poster campaign and a feature on BBC Crimewatch.
One particularly helpful person who took part in the reconstruction and appeared in a press conference urging Wendy to get in touch was Steven Salisbury. However, Salisbury was also under suspicion and when Wendy's body was found on July 22, 1999, he was quickly arrested and questioned.
It emerged Salisbury met Mrs Upton, a registered amphetamine addict, on wasteland behind the Tesco store where he worked, in Church Street. In his version of events he claimed that she became "hysterical" afterwards after he told her he would be unable to get her groceries that night.
When she threatened to tell her husband, Peter, and Salisbury's wife that he had raped her, the security guard strangled her. He left the body overnight, but returned the following day and moved it to nearby undergrowth, covered it in leaves and then went to work.
Following a trial in Stafford in 2000 Salisbury, of Mesnes Green, Lichfield, was found guilty of the murder of Mrs Upton and was jailed for life. In 2008 following a review it was ruled that Salisbury must serve a minimum jail "tariff" of 14 years before he can apply for parole.
The episode is due to be aired on November 22 at 9pm and on catch up streams.
