LEYTON: Killer of elderly woman jailed after 14 years

4:32pm Thursday 3rd July 2008

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AN intruder who beat an 83-year old Leyton woman to death in her bed has been jailed for life.

Pensioner Elizabeth Helen Mercer, known as Helen, sustained severe head injuries after being repeatedly beaten over the head at her home in Lea Bridge Road in June 1994.

Unemployed Edward Ross, 40, was found guilty of murdering the ticket collector and today - on his birthday - has been jailed for a crime he committed when he was 26 years old.

Ross, a former care assistant, of West India Dock Road, Poplar, cheated justice for more than a decade but was caught in April 2007 when he was arrested for smashing a restaurant window in a row over the price of a pizza. He gave a routine palm print to police that matched a bloody mark above the murdered pensioner's bed.

He was found guilty at the The Old Bailey and will serve a minimum of 15 years.

In court, Ross denied that the palm print was his. A motive is unclear but it is believed he may have got inside the victim's home while high on drugs to try to burgle her. It is not known whether he stole anything.

A cold case review was launched in 2005 and enquiries by the Homicide and Serious Crime Command led to the killer's arrest. Advances in technology meant officers could search databases looking for a match to the blood stain.

Det Insp Simon Moring, from the Homicide and Serious Crime Command, said: "We are very pleased with today's conviction. The message here is that we don't give up and we are always committed to solving serious crimes of this nature. By working with our colleagues from the Met's Murder Review Group, we were able to solve a 14-year-old crime.

"We review our unsolved murders to identity any new leads we can follow up and advances in technology have helped us greatly."

Police were called at 11.15am on on June 10, 1994 by a member of public who had found Ms Mercer, covered in blood, lying in her hallway with the front door open.

London Ambulance Service were called and she was taken to Whipps Cross Hospital where she died on November 25 the same year. A post mortem gave the cause of death as bronchial pneumonia and severe head injury.