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Britbox's Murder in the Village: Who Killed the Doctor's Wife? explores the brutal murder of Diane Jones, whose killing remains one of the oldest unsolved mysteries in the history of Essex-Suffolk. Despite the remarkable brutality of the murder and some tell-tale signs about the involvement of Robert Jones in the same, no one was ultimately arrested or charged.
This is the subject of Murder in the Village: Who Killed the Doctor's Wife?, which is now streaming on Britbox. The synopsis for the docu-series reads:
"After his wife Diane vanished in 1983, suspicion centred on her respected GP husband Robert Jones, but he was never charged by the police. Now, new evidence reveals Diane Jones's secrets."
Detectives continued looking into this case for years after the events but they never found a possible suspect besides Robert Jones. Before a concrete assumption could be made about Robert's involvement, he passed away in 2023.
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The case remains unsolved as of now.
What happened to Diane Jones?
Diane Jones was a seemingly ordinary 35-year-old woman leading a normal life in a private farmland on Colchester Road. She was married to Robert Jones and reportedly served as a social worker earlier. On July 23, 1983, she and her husband went to a local pub, Woolpack Inn in her hometown of Coggeshall, Essex. She never made it back home.
Robert Jones revealed to the police that they had come back before midnight but he left her waiting at the gate while he parked up and dealt with their dog. He allegedly could not find her following this.
However, in what can be considered Robert's most suspicious move in this whole incident, he waited for as many as nine days before alerting the authorities about Diane's disappearance.
Despite intense search attempts for Diane Jones, she was not found for three months. On October 22, 1983, her body was recovered from a deeply wooded area around 30 miles away in Brightwell near Suffolk.
Authorities soon determined that she was bludgeoned to death with something that resembled a slater’s hammer. Authorities also determined that she was killed in late July and she had as many as four skull fractures.
Who killed Diane Jones?
Authorities were wary of Robert Jones from the very start, especially because he took so long to report his wife missing. He was even arrested and questioned for the murder but without any physical evidence, eyewitnesses, or direct motive for the murder, he was let go.
This case grew cold over time and authorities continued to revisit Robert Jones as the primary suspect even when the case was reopened later. Rather interestingly, he was the only person of interest in the murder and it remains that way even now.
Much later, in the 2010s, a witness claimed that they had seen Diane and Robert at the bar that night and Diane was reportedly very drunk and afraid of her husband.
A cold case unit continued looking at the case, trying to piece together new pieces of evidence, but nothing materialized before the doctor passed away on March 7, 2023. He was 80 years old and was never charged with the murder of Diane Jones.
Murder in the Village: Who Killed the Doctor's Wife? explores this case in more detail.
