Suzanne Capper: Langworthy Road | True Crime Case Histories

Q: When and where did the Suzanne Capper case take place?

December 7–14, 1992, in Langworthy Road, Moston, and Werneth Low near Romiley, Greater Manchester, England.

Case at a glance

When

December 7–14, 1992

Where

Langworthy Road, Moston, and Werneth Low near Romiley, Greater Manchester, England

Perpetrator

Jean Powell, Glyn Powell, Bernadette McNeilly and Anthony Dudson (murder); Clifford Pook and Jeffrey Leigh (lesser offenses)

Victim

Suzanne Capper

Outcome

Four convicted of murder in 1993 and given life terms; all released on licence between 2013 and 2023

The case

Suzanne Capper was 16 and living in Manchester, England, in 1992. She often spent time at Jean Powell’s house on Langworthy Road in Moston, where a loose group of adults and teenagers gathered. By December that year, Powell and her circle had turned on Suzanne over petty grievances, among them a missing coat and a claim that she had passed on pubic lice.

From December 7, 1992, Suzanne was held for a week and tortured by Jean Powell, Glyn Powell, Bernadette McNeilly, 16-year-old Anthony Dudson and others. In the early hours of December 14 she was driven to Werneth Low, a hill near Romiley, doused with gasoline and set on fire. Passing men found her on Compstall Road shortly after 6 a.m. Before she died in hospital on December 18, she gave police the names of the people responsible.

In 1993 a jury at Manchester Crown Court convicted Jean Powell, Glyn Powell, McNeilly and Dudson of murder. The three adults received life sentences, and Dudson, a juvenile, was ordered detained indefinitely. Clifford Pook and Jeffrey Leigh received fixed prison terms for their parts, including false imprisonment. Every one of them has since been released: Dudson in 2013, McNeilly in 2015 and Jean Powell in 2017. The Parole Board directed Glyn Powell’s release in 2023.

Why this case

“The part I keep coming back to is how small the grievances were. A coat, a rumor, a household squabble. None of it explains a week of cruelty by several adults, any one of whom could have ended it. Suzanne, burned and dying, still made sure the police had every name. That took extraordinary courage.”

— Jason Neal, author of True Crime Case Histories