Probe ordered into murder of 8-year-old girl more than 43 years after her death

A fresh probe into the unsolved murder of an eight-year-old girl has been ordered by High Court judges more than 43 years later.

Helen Bailey, known as "Little Girl Blue" after she disappeared wearing blue clothing, was found dead in woodland near her Birmingham home in August 1975.

A jury at an inquest in March the following year returned an open verdict after hearing evidence she may have died as a result of an "accident or practical joke gone wrong".

But the original verdict was quashed and a fresh inquest ordered by judges sitting in London on Wednesday.

Lord Justice Hickinbottom, sitting with Mrs Justice Whipple, said there was new evidence which justified another inquest.

The judge said: "In all of the circumstances of this case, I am persuaded that the interests of justice do make a further inquest desirable.

"In my view, the emergence of this new evidence may well lead to the conclusion that the truth of how Helen met her death was not revealed at the first inquest."

The judge told the court Helen was last seen leaving her home, in the Perry Barr area of Birmingham, to play outside at about 3.30pm on Sunday August 10 1975.

When she did not return, her mother alerted police and her body was found the following morning in an area of dense woodland in the Booth Farm area.

She had a cut to her throat, which a post-mortem examination at the time identified as the cause of her death.

But the pathologist who carried it out found that there were no signs of a struggle and the circumstances of Helen's death "lacked the essential hallmarks of a homicidal attack".

He concluded her death may have been the result of an "accident or practical joke gone wrong".

However, the investigation into her death was reopened in 2014 and a pathologist who reviewed the case concluded Helen had been strangled before her throat was cut in a "clear case of homicide".

The judge said police investigated a "confession" made by one suspect in 1979, which was "consistent" with the findings of the pathologist in 2014, but the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) decided not to prosecute him.

West Midlands Police then asked the Coroner for Birmingham and Solihull Louise Hunt to seek permission from the High Court to overturn the 1976 inquest verdict.