Murder of June Anne Devaney

The murder of June Anne Devaney is a British child murder which occurred on 15 May 1948 when a girl aged 3 years 11 months was abducted from her cot while an inpatient at Queen's Park Hospital in Blackburn, Lancashire. The child was removed to the grounds of the hospital, where she was raped, before suffering extensive blunt force trauma to her skull when her head was repeatedly swung into a sandstone wall. This assault caused extensive internal injuries and multiple skull fractures, causing the child to develop a fatal state of shock. Her murderer, 22-year-old Peter Griffiths, was arrested three months after the crime and was subsequently tried and convicted of June Anne's murder. He was hanged on 19 November 1948.

June Anne Devaney had been admitted to the Queen's Park Hospital in Blackburn, Lancashire on 5 May 1948, to recover from a mild bout of pneumonia. She was placed in Ward CH3 of the premises, being under the supervision of nurse Gwendolyn Humphreys at night. By 14 May, Devaney's condition had improved, and she was due to be discharged from Queen's Park Hospital the following morning.

To both substantiate Griffiths' confession, and to garner further evidence, investigators went to his house to conduct a thorough search. During this search, a ticket was found from a local pawnbroker, dated 31 May 1948, for a suit belonging to Griffiths. Police collected this suit, only for the police forensics laboratory to discover that it bore bloodstains in several locations on both the jacket and trousers. These bloodstains were found to be the same blood type of June Anne Devaney—type A. Furthermore, fibres from this suit proved to be a perfect match to fibres found upon the child's body, clothing, and the window ledge where her murderer had entered the hospital, thus proving this to have been the suit Griffiths had been wearing on the night of the crime. Fibres from a pair of red and blue socks belonging to Griffiths were also discovered to be a perfect match for those retrieved from the footprints upon the waxed floor of Ward CH3.

The trial of Peter Griffiths began on 15 October 1948. He was tried before Mr. Justice Oliver at the assize court of Lancaster, and chose to enter a formal plea of not guilty to the charge of murder on this date.

Peter Griffiths did not lodge an appeal against his conviction. He was hanged at HM Prison Liverpool on the morning of 19 November 1948. His body was later buried within the confines of the prison. His executioner was Albert Pierrepoint.

Beside Devaney's cot, a glass 1946 Winchester bottle, partially filled with sterile water, was found alongside further footprints—measuring ten-and-a-half inches—which were clearly visible on the highly polished hospital floor; furthermore, the pattern of these stockinged feet impressions evident throughout the ward revealed that June Anne's abductor and murderer had evidently removed his shoes after entering the premises before prowling throughout the ward to view each cot and bed before selecting June Anne's cot as the one from which he chose to abduct his victim. The bottle itself had inexplicably been removed from its customary place (a trolley at the end of the ward) and placed beside the child's cot. This bottle itself was examined for fingerprints, being found to contain several sets.