A delve into the Birmingham Mail archives has unearthed an unsolved murder that shook the Midlands more than 50 years ago. Dorothy Mills was the queen of her local tennis club but she hid a secret from her adoptive parents – she was three months pregnant. Was it the reason she was murdered? Despite the brutal murder the killer was never found. Crime Files opens the file on the long-forgotten case.

IT WAS just after 6pm on a cold, wet January night in 1961 when 32-year-old Dorothy Mills left home, telling her adoptive parents she was going to the pictures, recounted the newspaper feature ‘Dossier of Death’ by Mike Posner.

But she was really on her way to an appointment that would end with her death just two streets from her West Bromwich home.

Less than 24 hours later, Miss Mills was found battered to death in the grounds of the tennis club where she had been a champion and star player for many years.

But the motive for murder – and the identity of her killer – has remained a mystery for more than half a century. And the dark secret held by her killer or killers may have already been taken to the grave.

Miss Mills, a local government filing clerk, was a churchgoer described by those that knew her as a little on the reserved side. A handful of regular friends who remembered her kindness.

Despite her seeming shyness, she was the queen of The Wesley Tennis Club where her abilities shone out and made her a popular player.

Why anyone would want to kill Miss Mills in such a brutal fashion baffled those that knew her.

However, the investigation into her death revealed that all was not what it seemed with the young woman.

A medical examination found that the unmarried woman was three months pregnant.

And police investigations discovered that she would use the name of a particular girlfriend as cover when she went out.

But who she was going to meet that night on Saturday, January 21, 1961, would never be found.

Miss Mills had died quickly from eight blows to the back of the head that shattered her skull into 13 pieces, suggesting that her killer may have crept up from behind to beat her to death.

Police were later to reveal that four of the blows had caused the most damage and the weapon was most likely to have been a carpenter’s hammer or boiler scaling hammer.

Her body was then dumped inside the gates of the Wesley Tennis Club, in Bratt Street.

It lay undiscovered until almost 6pm the following day when two constables found her partly covered by the broken section of one of the entrance gates.

Police had launched a search earlier that day after neighbours of Miss Mills’ adoptive parents had twice called West Bromwich police station with concerns of her whereabouts. Then at noon a man brought her handbag into the station.