Peter Heron is Ann Heron’s husband. He is from Darlington and goes by the name Peter.

Ann Heron, his wife, was brutally killed by someone he didn’t know 30 years ago. Peter Heron, Anne’s husband, has one last wish before he dies: to find out who really killed Anne. ITV says that Peter and his family are keeping their fingers crossed that the documentary will help them find out what happened 32 years ago.

Ann Heron has been dead for more than a quarter of a century. Ann was killed by someone who didn’t know who they were while she was sunbathing in her backyard. Nobody has been able to figure out what happened in this case for the past 32 years.

What happened to Peter Heron Darlington?

Peter Heron is Ann Heron’s husband. He is from Darlington and goes by the name Peter.

A story in The Sun says that a disturbing letter from a murder mystery that happened 30 years ago could finally prove that Peter did not kill his wife. Peter, who was 87 years old at the time, only had one wish left for his life: to clear his name of the rumor that he was a murderer.

For the past 30 years, the rumor that he killed his wife Ann has been following him around like a persistent shadow. Peter supposedly told The Northern Echo that police officers had come to his house. They said that he had done bad things that ruined his life.

Peter, who is now 87 years old, has been angry ever since he was accused of killing Ann in November 2005. Even after he got over the death of his second wife, he still had a lot of problems. Because the police kept getting in his way, his personal life was turned upside down. The police looked into his financial history and found that everything on it happened more than 10 years ago.

Michael Benson was found guilty of killing his wife Ann Heron

In 1990, Ann Heron’s body was found in her house on the edge of Darlington.

Her killer has never been identified. On May 3, 2022, Channel 5 showed a documentary about a murder case that had been going on for 30 years. Debbie, Ann’s stepdaughter, says she hopes this will answer some of the questions that haven’t been answered before.

Ann’s family had high hopes that the documentary would show new things about what happened. Michael Benson, who could have been a part of the crime, is mentioned in the documentary. He was a bad guy who broke into people’s homes and stole things while holding knives and driving a blue car. He died in 2008, which was very sad.

Wikipedia and the case timeline for Peter Heron

When Peter Heron met Ann for the first time, he was already married and had three kids.

Even so, he started having an affair with Ann. In 1986, he got a divorce from his wife and married Ann. These two things happened in the same year. When the two were together, they lived in Aeolian House, which was on the edge of Darlington in County Durham. Peter Heron was in charge of a haulage company that was right down the street from the house.

Ann Heron worked part-time as a care assistant at a nearby nursing home. She did this work. Ann didn’t like living in Darlington, where she was at the time. She often thought about going to Scotland to see her children from her first marriage, who still lived there.

More than 30 years have passed since Ann was killed. At first, Peter was put in jail because he was suspected of killing Ann. On the other hand, Jen, the detective, had a strong feeling that Benson was the real killer in this case. The first investigation into the blue car that was seen speeding away from the scene didn’t turn up any useful clues.

Jen Jarvie, the detective on the murder case, talked to Peter about some of what she had found while he was talking. Peter was talking about how the terrible act had torn his family apart. Ann, a loving mother of three, was found dead in her remote home. She was lying in a pool of blood.

The police are looking into Peter because they think he might have killed someone. But Hen, the investigator, said she had found strong evidence that an escaped prisoner named Michael Benson may have been the one who did it.

Jen, a professor at a university, was given the Zena Scott Archer Investigator of the Year award because she did such a great job on the investigation. She thought that Benson’s blue Ford had sped away from Aleolian House on the day Ann died.

Background

Mary Ann O’Neill gave birth to Ann Heron on March 24, 1946, in Glasgow, Scotland. Ralph Cockburn was her first husband. When she started dating Peter Heron in the 1980s, she moved to England. Peter Heron was already married with three kids when he met Ann, but he started having an affair with her. In 1986, he divorced his wife and married Ann. The couple lived together in Aeolian House on the edge of Darlington, County Durham. Peter Heron was the CEO of a haulage company just down the street from the house. Ann Heron helped out at a local care home part-time as a care assistant. Ann didn’t like living in Darlington, and she often thought about her kids from her first marriage, who still lived in Scotland.

The freestanding Aeolian House was called a “notable” building because it was easy to spot from the busy main road that ran next to it.

It was on the busy A67 road, which was the main route from Teesside Airport to Darlington. Ann was said to have been scared of how alone the house made her feel and tired of being there by herself.

Murder

On August 3, 1990, Heron and a friend went shopping in Darlington in the morning and came back at lunchtime. Her husband always and on the day came home for lunch. Ann said she was going to sunbathe in her bikini in the garden all afternoon. It was the hottest day of the year on that day in 1990, in the middle of a heat wave. Peter left at 2:00 to go back to work.

At 2:30, Ann was talking to a friend on the phone, and she sounded happy and upbeat. At 3:30 p.m., a friend on a bus driving by saw Ann sunbathing in front of the house in her bikini. She had to move to the front of the house, closer to the road, to get some sun because a nearby tractor was blowing grass into the back garden. This is the last time Ann was seen alive.

When Peter Heron got home from work at 6:00, she was still reading her book and smoking cigarettes. Her radio was still on. The front door was open, and the family dog was also outside. Heron’s dead body was found in the house’s living room. Heron was bleeding on the floor and had been stabbed in the neck. The fact that her bikini bottoms were taken off showed that she may have been killed for sexual reasons. It was something like a Stanley knife or a razor blade that was used. The murder weapon was not at the scene of the crime and has never been found.

Investigation

Several people saw a blue car pull up to Heron’s house, park there, and then speed down her driveway as she was being killed. Investigators said in the Crimewatch appeal about her murder in October 1990 that it might have been a blue Astra like the ones above.

When the police first looked into the crime, they noticed that there were no signs of a struggle inside or outside the house. This suggested that she may have known her killer. This was supported by the fact that the family dog, which was outside when Peter got home, hadn’t been heard barking at an intruder or a stranger.

Around 16:45, a person who came forward said they saw a blue car, possibly a Vauxhall Astra, parked in front of the house.

After this, witnesses said they saw a blue Leyland Sherpa van parked at the end of the driveway. On the side of the van was a trident, and three men were seen inside. [5] At about 17:05, a taxi driver and two women in another car drove by the house and saw a blue car speeding down the driveway away from the house. The car was going so fast that the taxi driver didn’t know if it would stop and pull out in front of him. The car pulled out right behind him, but it sped up and passed him. It then raced across the nearby roundabout and down Yarm Road into Darlington. [5] Investigators thought it was the same car because several other people said they saw it parked at the house and speeding down the drive. Several of the witnesses said that the male driver was between 35 and 45 years old, had a tanned skin tone, and had short, dark hair. In October 1990, when the murder of Heron was reconstructed on Crimewatch, the multiple sightings of the blue car were called “obviously the most interesting of the sightings.” It was said that the car might have been an Astra, but it could also have been a Mazda, Toyota, or Vauxhall Cavalier. Police found the owners of 3,500 blue cars, but the car has never been found or identified. Even though several witnesses said they had seen the driver, a photofit of the man was never made. Durham Constabulary said later that “the descriptions of both the vehicle and the person driving the vehicle were different and lacked the detail needed for a photofit.”

The police found no evidence of a robbery or a sexual assault. Around 17:00, police think Heron was killed. At 18:00, Peter Heron found her dead body.

At 16:15 that day, a witness thought they saw Heron driving near her home with two people they didn’t know. However, they weren’t sure it was Heron. But it’s likely that the witness was wrong, since Ann’s body was found in the same bikini she was wearing when she was seen at 3:30 p.m., which means she had been sunbathing all afternoon.

One week after the murder, it was found out that Peter, who was 55 at the time, was having an affair with a 32-year-old bartender at the local spa club. This led some people to think that he may have had a reason to kill Ann. Most murder victims know who killed them, according to statistics. In 1988, 62% of people killed in England and Wales were killed by someone they knew, and 37% of women killed in the UK are killed by their husband, boyfriend, or lover. Only 13% of women who were killed in England and Wales in 1988 were killed by strangers. The majority of women who were killed at this time were killed by people they knew. Peter Heron fit two of the most important criteria for a murder suspect: he was married to Ann and he found her body. Peter said he left a meeting at Cleveland Bridge at 4 p.m. and drove through the village of Croft-on-Tees and Middleton St. George on his way back to his office. Detectives questioned this route because going through Croft wasn’t the most direct or logical way to get from Cleveland Bridge (which is only 400m from Aeolian House). Police felt that Peter had a missing amount of time he could not account for between 4pm and 5.50pm (the time period in which the murder occurred) (the time period in which the murder occurred).

Even though there had been press conferences and a Crimewatch UK reconstruction, the case had gone cold by 1991. In December 1992, a woman told police that a man had come into the card shop where she worked in Darlington and bragged about killing Heron. In October 1994, Peter Heron, the police, and a newspaper all got letters from someone who said they were the killer. The letter to the Northern Echo newspaper began “”Hello, editor! I’m the person who killed Ann Heron!” The letter ended, “Your readers will have a lot to talk about. The Killer’s signature.” Forensic tests were done on the letters to try to figure out who wrote them, and handwriting samples were taken to compare with the writing of people who were suspected in the case.

Peter Heron got married again in 1992, two years after the murder. When the press asked him why he remarried so quickly, he spoke out in his own defense. Two officers in uniform chose to go to the wedding.