A MURDER which took place in West Somerset 55 years ago is being reinvestigated by a family member of the victim.

Teenager Susan Date, known as Susie, was found murdered in Helwell Bay, Watchet, in November, 1968.

Susie, who was 15, had been reported missing two days earlier on Remembrance Day.

She had been strangled.

Officers from Scotland Yard - now the Metropolitan Police - were sent to Watchet to investigate the crime, as was the convention for serious crimes in the 1960s.

Their inquiries led to the arrest of a Watchet man, Alfred John Talbot, who was charged with Susie’s murder.

However, Mr Talbot was deemed unfit to appear in court to enter a plea to the charge and he was detained in a mental health establishment.

He died nearly 18 years later on March 31, 1986.

Now, Susie’s niece Kim Lennon is hoping to persuade police to take a fresh look at the case because she did not believe Mr Talbot was the killer.

Ms Lennon said: “Alfie was the local simpleton, which we would call learning difficulties today.

“It seems like an easy option for the police.

“Susie used to hang around with him. 

“But my mum said there was no threat in him at all.”

Former prison officer turned writer Ms Lennon, who lives in Eastbourne, Sussex, has been returning to Watchet recently after the death of her mother, and last month laid flowers on the clifftop overlooking the spot where Susie was found dead.

During one of her stays in the town she met a Watchet man who told her of possibly new evidence in the case which he had passed to the police 10 years ago.

Ms Lennon said: “He said his mother gave him some information before she died and said there was no way it was Alfie Talbot.

“She said Susie was seeing a married soldier at the time and she had threatened to tell his wife.

“After that, she was murdered, and he went missing.”

Ms Lennon said she had also been contacted via social media by a Watchet woman who related how she had been seriously sexually assaulted about a year before the murder when she was aged five or six years, and feared it may have been the same person who killed Susie.

However, Ms Lennon said she was not convinced the assault and the murder were connected.

Ms Lennon said there were a number of other stories from the time which had been circulating and which suggested somebody else may have committed the murder.

She said: “I know it is a long time ago.

“I ask myself sometimes why am I so bothered about this.

“But I have been over the years, and I have asked questions of family and locals over the years.

“I was only about a year old when Susie was murdered and I lived in married quarters because my dad was a soldier.

“That afternoon, I had been playing with Susie and mum told her it was time to go home for tea. Obviously, she did not go home, because she was murdered.

“She is there like a ghost. I just do not feel like things are right.

“Anybody in Watchet will tell you Alfie Talbot did not do it.”

Ms Lennon said she was driven by the thought that if Mr Talbot was innocent, the perpetrator could still be alive.

She also did not feel it was closure for Mr Talbot’s family after he had been tainted by the murder allegation.

Anybody who may have information about Susie’s death which has not already been given to the police is being asked to call 101 to report it.

A Metropolitan Police spokeswoman told the Free Press that officers would be happy to speak with any of Susan’s family who had questions or concerns.