Linda left the house where she was living at about 11.30pm on 8 December, to visit a friend in Sultan Road, Portsmouth. It must have only been a brief visit as she was reported as leaving that address at shortly after midnight on the 9th to make her way back South to Linda Gray’s house in Victoria Road North. Roughly twenty or so minutes’ walk along suburban and reasonably well-lit streets.

At some time between half past twelve and one o’clock in the morning, Linda Cook was viciously raped, strangled and stamped on. The ferocity of the attack is extremely distressing. Linda had been so violently stamped on that it crushed her larynx, broke her jaw and caused her spine to fracture. The perpetrator had used such force that he left the impression of his shoe on her skin, leading this to be dubbed by the sensationalist press of the time as, somewhat distastefully, The Cinderella Murder.