The Metropolitan Police have been running a piece in the paper locally about the first aniversary of one of the better-known of their many unsolved local crimes. Interestingly this is in the local paper rather than the website which the tax-payers have so expensively been funding, and on which there has been no 'news' of their crime-busting successes posted since May.
Anyway, for what it is worth, the police are claiming they are still trying to solve the murder of Melita Jo.
Readers of this blog will note that there has been a deafening silence regarding this case for some time. Melita was murdered while sleeping in a graveyard. Depending on who is praying or talking about it (or justifying their inactions) her vulnerable circumstances seemed to highlight a peculiar level of tolerance/acquiessence or indifference to her mental well-being and welfare within the local community. Those who should have done something more about helping her when she was alive rallied round after her death and agreed with the vicar that her death was a scar on the community. On the whole, though, they did this while nodding sagely to each other that there was nothing more that could have been done.
They may possibly still think this, but her killer (or killers) are still at large and there are plenty of homeless people in the borough who are just as vulnerable as Melita Jo.
[Update 5 October 2009:
A service in memory of Melita Jo, was be held at St Mary's at on 4 October 2009, with money also being raised going to a number of homeless charities. A plaque wll be dedicated on a bench in the churchyard. ]
Apparently she had refused several offers of help and accommodation, feeling safer in the churchyard.
You're dead right about the other homeless; now that the Branches night shelter has been given money to upgrade its facilities, and moved to new premises, the result is that there are no longer DAY facilities in the Borough for the homeless! A couple of weeks ago I responded to an appeal on Freecycle from a newly set up day shelter in Staffa Rd for a washing machine, which by coincidence was on offer on freecycle the same day. An African church has taken over a former industrial building on the estate, and made over a large section for homeless people: when I spoke to the excellent and somewhat overtaxed young man running it, it became clear that these were not people from the existing night shelter, but another forty or so who would be sleeping rough that night, but needed somewhere to eat, wash and just flop during the day. They're looking out for food, toiletries, clothing and bedding in particular.