70-year-old man jailed over murder of retired postmistress

A 70-year-old man has been jailed for life with a minimum term of 21 years for the 2013 murder of retired postmistress Una Crown after DNA which matched his profile was found on her nail clippings.

Mrs Crown, an 86-year-old widow, was found with her throat cut, stab wounds to her chest and her clothing burnt in her bungalow in Wisbech, Cambridgeshire, on January 13 2013.

Former kitchen installer David Newton, of Magazine Close in Wisbech, which is close to Mrs Crown’s address in Magazine Lane, had been interviewed as a suspect and later arrested on suspicion of murder 12 years ago.

But police had not initially considered Mrs Crown’s death suspicious and there was a two-day delay in preserving the scene because of what prosecutor John Price KC described as a “grave error of judgment by police officers who went to the house”.

Newton was told, in July 2013, that he would not be charged on the evidence that was then available.

He was charged last year after scientists made a DNA breakthrough, having tested nail clippings from Mrs Crown’s dominant right hand using techniques that were not available in 2013.

Detective Superintendent Iain Moor of Cambridgeshire Police said, after Newton was found guilty of murder, that the force had apologised to Mrs Crown’s family for “mistakes… made during the initial investigation in 2013”.

Jurors found Newton guilty by a majority of 10 jurors to two following a month-long trial at Cambridge Crown Court and 29 hours and 13 minutes of deliberations.

He was sentenced at the same court on Friday.

The judge, Mr Justice Neil Garnham, told Newton: “This was a ferocious and sustained knife attack on a defenceless old lady in her own home.”

He said Mrs Crown was just 4ft 10ins in height and “advanced in years” but was described by family as “feisty, not afraid to speak her mind”.

The judge found as a fact that Newton “had a copy of her back door key made” for himself when helping her with her lock months earlier.

“Quite why you decided to enter Mrs Crown’s house that night is far from clear,” he said.

He said he accepted Newton “did not enter (the house) in order to kill her” or to steal.

But he found Newton took £80 from her purse after he killed her in a theft he described as “opportunistic”.

“You had a history of going into other people’s property uninvited simply in search of conversation and company,” the judge said.

He said Mrs Crown “must have been utterly terrified when you came into her house that evening”.

He said there was a “confrontation” and Mrs Crown’s phone hanging off its cradle suggested she had tried to call for help.

“I accept you hadn’t brought a knife with you into the property but faced with Mrs Crown’s anger and resistance I find you took a knife from the kitchen and attacked her with it,” the judge said.

He said Newton then “tried to disguise the evidence of it by setting fire to Mrs Crown and to her home”.

“In her desperate struggle with the man who was stabbing her to death (Mrs Crown) picked up under her fingernails some of his DNA”, said the judge, with this evidence forming a key part of the prosecution case.

The judge sentenced Newton to life in prison with a minimum term of 21 years, meaning he must serve this time before he can be considered for release.

There was an intake of breath and whispers of “yes” from the public gallery as the sentence was passed, and the defendant appeared to raise an eyebrow before quickly being led to the cells.

Mrs Crown’s body was found in her hallway on January 13 by John Payne, the husband of her niece Judith Payne, who had driven to collect her to take her for Sunday lunch at their house.

Prosecutor Mr Price said she had been killed the day before.

He told jurors when opening the case that “male DNA, the profile of which matches that of David Newton”, was discovered by scientists in 2023.

He said this was “on nail clippings, which had been taken from the fingers and thumb of the unburnt right hand of Una Crown”.

He said the clippings had been taken at a post-mortem examination in 2013.

Henry Grunwald KC, mitigating, said Newton was “in very poor health” and “may very well end up dying in prison”.

Mr Grunwald said there was “no evidence of any activities amounting to torture”, and that Newton’s “last appearance before any court was in 2014”.

In a statement read outside court by Detective Sergeant Dan Harper, the family of Mrs Crown said they could now “carry on with our lives knowing justice has been done”.