More than 30 years later, her death remains a complete mystery. No one has ever been charged or convicted for her brutal murder.
Channel 4’s In the Footsteps of Killers will explore the case in an episode on Tuesday 22 July at 10pm.
Janine Downes was a mother of three very young children, who had turned to sex work to feed and clothe them.
She had previously been living on the Yew Tree Estate in West Bromwich, in the West Midlands, with her children, but returned to Wolverhampton shortly before her death.
A week before she was killed, she had written a letter to her father John Downes, who lived in Low Hill, Wolverhampton. In it, she had apologised for not writing earlier and promised to stop the sex work.
Dr Graham Hill, Professor David Wilson and actress Emilia Fox will explore the case of Janine Downes in Channel 4 show In the Footsteps of Killers (Photo: Channel 4)Joyce Edge, a family friend, described Janine as “a lovely girl who would give you her last penny”. She said she “adored her children”.
But she never made it to the capital. Instead, her body was found, by a passing motorist, partially clothed in a layby on the A464 near Hatton, Shropshire, just outside of Shifnal, at 9.30am on 2 February, 1991.
She had been strangled, sexually assaulted and suffered extensive head wounds before her body was dragged a short distance and hidden in a hedge.
The pathologist estimated her body had been dumped in the hedgerow of the layby between midnight and 4am.
Why has Janine Downes’s murder remained unsolved?
Police believe someone is withholding a “nugget” of information which is key to the case.
He said: “To date, despite a continuous and full investigation and several arrests being made, nobody has been charged with her murder and I desperately want to change that.
“We do know that Janine was a sex worker working in the Wolverhampton area at around the time of her death and would appeal to anybody who was within this circle at the time or even now and may who have information to contact us.
“Somebody somewhere knows what happened. Janine’s family have lived without closure for far too long.”
Five months before his daugther’s death, her friend and fellow sex worker Gail Whitehouse was also murdered. The 23-year-old mother-of-two was strangled and her body dumped in bushes off Steelhouse Lane, Wolverhampton.
Her case has also remained unsolved.
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