Raymond Leslie Morris

The Cannock Chase murders (also known as the A34 murders) were the murders of three young school girls that occurred in Staffordshire, England, during the late 1960s. In a trial reported to have received "unprecedented public interest", Raymond Leslie Morris of Walsall was convicted at Staffordshire Assizes of the murder of Christine Ann Darby after one of the largest manhunts in British history. Morris is also considered the chief suspect in the deaths of Margaret Reynolds and Diana Joy Tift. In November 2010, he was granted a judicial review of his case in a bid to overturn his conviction, which failed. He died in prison in March 2014, aged 84, after serving 45 years, by which time he was one of Britain's longest-serving prisoners.

Raymond Leslie Morris was born on 13 August 1929 in Walsall, Staffordshire. He lived in Walsall his entire life and was reported to have an IQ of 120. Morris went through a variety of jobs before landing a position as a foreman engineer at a precision instruments factory in Oldbury, West Midlands, in 1967. In 1951, he married 'the girl next door", who was two years younger than him, and fathered two boys. He kicked her out of the house after eight years of marriage, then divorced her on the grounds of adultery when she had another man's child. Morris's first wife would later describe him as a man with a need to express violent sexual dominance. At the age of 35, Morris was married again, this time to a 21-year-old woman named Carol. He had been suspected of taking indecent photographs of schoolgirls in October 1966, though he was not arrested as police failed to find any evidence. At the time the A34 murders were committed, Morris and his wife lived at Flat 20, Regent House, Green Lane, Walsall – a council-owned flat in Birchills, directly opposite the police station.

On 1 December 1964, 9-year-old Julia Taylor was lured into a car in Bloxwich by a man claiming to be a friend of her mother. The girl was sexually assaulted, strangled and left for dead, and was only saved from exposure after she was spotted by a passing cyclist.