The image to the left is the building at number 45 Park Lane in London’s Mayfair district shortly
before it became the famous Playboy Club in 1965. To the right is Lampton School in Hounslow, west
London. What the two buildings represent is worlds apart, but 44 years ago they became connected in
horrifying circumstances. This the harrowing tale of Eve Stratford and Lynne Weedon, two
people from very different walks of life, who’s stories would collide in the cold spring of 1975.
Eve Stratford was born in Dortmund, Germany in 1953, where her father served in the British
Army as a medic. Her family returned to England in 1969, settling in Aldershot,
Hampshire. When her father left the military in 1973, her parents retired to Warrington,
in Cheshire. But the 19-year-old Eve, along wither her boyfriend Tony moved to London. The couple
rented a flat at 61 Lyndhurst Drive in Leyton, east London. It was a small and modest maisonette
flat with a mattress on the floor for a bed. Eve Stratford first took work as a secretary,
before working for the German Tourist Office and then a boutique. But attracted by the bright
lights of the city centre, it wasn’t long before Eve began work at the Playboy Club in Park Lane,
Mayfair. The Playboy Club in its 1970s heyday was a magnet for wealthy businessmen, and the
biggest stars of the time. She became known as Bunny Ava, she excelled at her new position,
and was soon one of the club’s highest earners. She longed for a career as a fashion model,
but was modest in her self perception, at least publicly. She would tell people:
"My only ambition is to stay as happy as I am now". On the morning of March 18th, 1975 Eve’s
boyfriend, Tony Priest, left their first floor home in Lyndhurst Drive at 7:30am. Later that
morning, Eve met with her modelling agent Annie Walker in Camden Town. From there they left for a
meeting in Bayswater to discuss a publishing deal. Annie Walker described Eve as perfectly happy as
she left the meeting, adding that she was excited about the prospect of a photo shoot
later that year. It was snowing that March day as Eve travelled from Bayswater back to
Leyton. She was seen leaving Leytonstone Tube station at 3:45pm, then again by a
neighbour at 4pm as she arrived home. A mere hour and twenty minutes after
Eve reached her home, her boyfriend and another house mate arrived from work to find Eve lying
facedown on the bedroom floor. She was wearing a dressing gown, her hands were tied behind
her back with a stocking and the belt of her gown, and her throat had been slashed deeply.
When the police were called to the scene, they found no sign of a struggle or break-in and no
murder weapon. Her throat had been cut 8 to 12 times. Some reports at the time said there were
physical signs that a rape had taken place, but other later reports said that although
the signs were consistent with rape, they could not rule out the possibility that the sex had
been consensual. There were also traces of semen found on at the scene. The cause of death was
due to her horrific injuries, but signs of asphyxiation were also found, said to have
probably been caused by a hand covering her mouth. The neighbour who had seen her arriving home
at 4 o’clock said that she’d heard Eve calmly conversing with a male before hearing a loud thud,
and then footsteps as someone left the building. By March 21st, three days after the murder,
it was reported that the police had received 20 calls, some of which included promising leads,
but they eventually all went cold. Among them were three confessions from separate men,
all from the London area. They all claimed to have had been murderer, but it was proved that they
were all lying, with one of them saying that he’d strangled Eve, which was not the cause of death.
Eve had spent Christmas of 1974 in Warrington with her parents. She stayed there until new year,
and in January of ’75 she accompanied her father, Albert Stratford, to London. At the
time, he was working for the George Wimpey construction company in Zaire (now known as
the Democratic Republic of Congo), and was catching a plane to Kinshasa from Heathrow.
They travelled together as far as Euston station. There they said their goodbyes,
unbeknownst to them, for the last time. From there, Eve headed back to her home in Leyton.
Albert Stratford quickly returned to England when he was told that his daughter had been hurt in an
accident. He arrived at Heathrow airport where he was met by a taxi, sent to pick him up by the
George Wimpey company. In the back of the taxi was a copy of the Sun newspaper. On it was a
picture of his daughter, with the headline 'Who murdered Bunny Eva?'. This was sadly how Albert
found out the horrible truth of what had happened to Eve. It has since been reported that the Wimpey
company had arranged for the newspaper to be left in the backseat, because no one in the company
could bring themselves to tell him what had really happened. It has also been said in other reports,
that it was actually the Playboy club who sent the taxi to collect Eve’s father.
It was now down to Albert Stratford to identify her body alone, as her mother couldn’t handle the
magnitude of the job. To make things even worse for the family, a letter from Eve,
which was addressed to her father in Zaire, eventually made its way to his London office
a few days later. The letter told of how excited she was about her new career move,
and it included a heart-breaking note which read: “so remember, our thoughts are with you,
no matter how far, or how wide, forever you’ll be my dearest and only daddy”.
A bunch of flowers was found in the hallway of Eve’s home when the police arrived. Although
it’s now accepted that Eve had bought these flowers on her final journey home, at the time
much was made of it in the press, because when the police spoke to all florists in the area,
there was no recollection of anyone having sold the flowers to someone matching Eve’s description.
The flowers were described in papers as the killers calling
card and it was considered strong lead in the hunt, especially as they were
similar to flowers which appeared in Eve’s recent photo-shoot for Mayfair Magazine.
18 pictures of Eve – under the name Eva Von Bork - were printed along with an interview
for the March ’75 issue in which she featured as Miss March. It was thought that the pictures and
interview printed in the article may have been the catalyst for a perverted killer,
because in the interview Eve spoke candidly of her sex life and expressed her desire for being
dominated during sex. Eve had previously posed in a shoot intended for Playboy magazine, but she was
offended when advised to lose weight. That’s when she turned to Mayfair, Playboy’s leading rival.
After the magazine’s release Eve was said to have been disappointed with the article’s contents,
saying that they weren’t her words. Eve’s father came to her defence saying:
“this made her look like a girl of easy virtue which she definitely was not”.
But a woman by the name of Yvonne Fisk, who was the publisher for the magazine at the time,
explained in 1975 that the interviews are always shown to the girls before
publishing, and that Eve had signed a document agreeing to its release.
The police found a diary in Eve’s flat which contained the numbers of various men,
mostly business associates. One of those men was David Brenner, the editor of Mayfair magazine.
Scotland Yard were keen to speak to him because they had difficulty believing he had never met
Eve despite her appearing in the recent issue which had gone on sale in late February.
Brenner insisted that the interview was conducted entirely over the phone and that they had never
met in person. Another man on the police radar was Ed Alexander, the photographer who
took the pictures. Alexander told police that David Brenner had misquoted Eve, and that he
blamed Brenner for the subsequent attention she got, which he felt led to her murder.
Brenner himself told journalist David James Smith in 2009 that Ed Alexander would have
ripped his head off if he’d been allowed, but then went on to say “Let’s not forget he had
been in a much more intimate situation with her than I was, and maybe he felt
some of that responsibility himself and was transferring that anger onto me”. In 1975,
Brenner said that Eve couldn’t have been unhappy with the interview,
because she had agreed to make a strip tease film for the company after it had been published.
Just before the release of the March issue of Mayfair,
Eve had planned a two-month period of leave from the Playboy Club, which wasn’t unusual,
and allowed for the girls to pursue other career paths. Eve had planned to take this time to follow
her modelling career, and the photo shoot for Mayfair was meant to be part of this plan,
even though the actual shoot took place before her leave officially began.
If Eve’s involvement with the rival company came to light while she was on leave, it would
have been accepted, as there would have been no contractual obligation to Playboy during that
time. But Eve had misjudged the sale date of the magazine, so before she had a chance to leave the
Playboy Club on friendly terms, the March issue of Mayfair arrived at the door of the Playboy Club.
Eve was confronted about the article and suspended from the club with immediate effect. Although the
suspension began a few days before her death, on March 20th, two days after her murder, the Playboy
Club offered a £1000 reward for any information which led to the killer being brought to justice.
Another statement, allegedly made by Eve in the Mayfair interview,
was that she lived alone. In-fact she lived with four other people,
who were all members of a pop group named Vineyard, formerly known as The Onyx,
who originated from Cornwall. Her boyfriend, Tony Priest, was the lead singer.
Tony Priest and the other members of the recently disbanded group were taken in
by the police, but after several hours of questioning they were all released.
According to the September 27th 1975 edition of the Daily Mirror, three sets of fingerprints
were found in Eve’s flat that matched those of three men described as 'a jet-set of International
Playboys' from Sweden, Germany and Florida respectively. They were reported as being
ex-boyfriends, but seeing as Eve had moved into the flat with her long-term boyfriend Tony Priest,
the presence of these men would strongly suggest that Eve had been unfaithful. I have to say at
this point that I have only read about this in the Daily Mirror, which it has to be said,
is known for sensationalism, so I am a little dubious about this part of the story. Whatever
the case may be, it was written in the same article that after the investigation,
this lead failed to bring Scotland Yard any closer the the killer.
In December of 1974, 21-year-old model Marilyn Looms from Hinkley received death
threat over the phone after she appeared in the December ’74 issue of Mayfair.
She said she’d had a number of crank calls, but this one stood out after the person said he
knew where she lived and that he was going to kill her and her boyfriend. She didn’t report
the call to police until she heard the news of Eve’s murder, thinking it may be linked.
In April of ‘75 the investigation was moved up country to Liverpool after the landlord
of a bedsit in the city began to clean up after a former tenant had suddenly left.
On entering the abandoned room, the landlord found hundreds
of newspaper clippings and photographs of Eve. As the former tenant appeared to have
an unnatural obsession, police investigated the find. None of the clippings pre-dated Eve’s murder
and eventually the Liverpool investigation led to nothing. The police refused to name the suspect.
A man by the name of Peter Pugh-Cook, who was a photographer working with a crime fiction
company called Sphere books, photographed Eve for the front cover of an upcoming title. The image
created proved to be chillingly prophetic. It showed Eve in a fearful pose with a knife held to
her throat. Peter Pugh-Cook told the art director of Sphere books, Ken Simms, not use the image,
saying it was tasteless and disrespectful. But Simms didn’t listen and used it anyway,
saying that he was sure that no one would recognise her. Ken Simms’ number was also
found in Eve’s diary. He was held overnight by police, questioned and then released.
With all leads having dried up, Albert Stratford made his own line of enquiries.
He had a hunch that his daughter’s murder had ties to London’s underworld,
so he paid a visit to famed gangster Reggie Kray in prison. He admits that Reggie was a
helpful man, but no light was shed on the case through his visit.
Eve’s family were obviously faced with years of anguish,
but it especially affected her mother Liza, who even given up work in a dress
shop because she couldn’t bare to see young girls whom reminded her of Eve,
come into the shop. She had turned her home into a shrine, placing pictures of her late daughter
all around the house. According to her husband, Liza often pondered about Eve’s last thoughts.
She visited her gravesite in Warrington daily and would send pictures of her
daughter’s headstone to people she personally suspected or thought had exploited Eve. She was
angry at the adult entertainment and modelling industries, feeling that Eve
had been misguided and let down by people she trusted. In one letter to the police she wrote:
“she thought everybody was good and trustful. How very much she was deceived”.
As if her family’s torment was enough, her tombstone was vandalised no less than 13 times
between 1975 and 1983. The headstone was defaced, vases were smashed and flowers
were stolen. In 1977 Liza Stratford received a phone call from an unknown man telling her
that she was next. Naturally she believed this to be the murderer, or at least an accomplice,
but after contacting the police, nothing was ever found about the caller’s identity.
In 1986 Albert Stratford returned home from working abroad, and one day
on his return from a local shop, he found that his wife had died suddenly.
He burned all the photos of Eve that her mother had adorned the house with,
keeping only one in his wallet. Speaking on his daughter’s death in 2007, Eve’s father explained
that his wife’s death certificate, under cause of death, simply read ‘broken heart’. Like his wife,
Albert Stratford died without knowing who was responsible for his daughter’s death.