77 | Murder at Edencroft Hostel: The Tragic True Crime Story of Stephanie Baird

Just days before Christmas 1959, the Edencroft Hostel in Birmingham became the scene of a shocking murder. Stephanie Baird, 29, was brutally killed by 27-year-old Patrick Byrne, a man hiding a history of stalking and violent sexual fantasies. The case revealed the terrifying progression from secret obsession to murder, leaving investigators to confront one of Britain’s most disturbing true crimes.

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Sources:

Ancestry
Belfast News-Letter - Thursday 25 February 1960
Birmingham Daily Post - Thursday 11 February 1960
Birmingham Evening Mail Wed, 23 Mar 1960
Birmingham Daily Post - Thursday 24 March 1960
Daily Mirror - Thursday 24 March 1960
Daily News (London) - Friday 25 March 1960
Newcastle Journal - Friday 25 March 1960
Sunday Express - Sunday 27 December 1959
Birmingham Weekly Mercury - Sunday 05 December 1999
Birmingham Murder Hunt, British Pathe

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
John Hobson, q C had prosecuted many violent offenders in
his career, but when he opened his case in Birmingham
on twenty fourth of March nineteen sixty, he gave the
jury a rare warning about the shocking nature of what
lay ahead. The story you will hear is one of

(00:20):
horror and bestiality, such as one would ever hope, not
even to dream about in one's worst nightmares, he said. Nevertheless,
you must approach it in a spirit of detachment and
logic before you arrive at your verdict. The man on
trial was Patrick Joseph Byrne in nineteen fifty nine. Burne

(00:48):
was a twenty seven year old from a large, happy family.
Originally from Dublin, Ireland, he had been an average student
and left school at fourteen, moving with his family to
the West Midlands of England, where he worked as a
builder's laborer. He was fond of his mother and was
described as pleasant by those who knew him, and although

(01:11):
his childhood had been largely uneventful, he was seduced by
an older woman when he was a teenager, an experience
which he later said had frightened him. He briefly dated
a local girl named Jane Grant, who said that Burne
was shy and always wanted to walk her home because
he was worried someone might attack her. What none of

(01:37):
Burne's family and friends realized was that from a young
age he had been tormented by thoughts about hurting women,
sometimes women he knew, or at other times women he
saw in the street. He developed a habit of following
girls who caught his eye and peering into their windows
to watch them undress, occasionally stealing underwe from their washing lines.

(02:04):
His habit escalated from watching through windows the climbing inside
the apartments of female students living near Birmingham University. Once
two girls caught him on the stairs, and another time
he sat on a student's bed and tried to talk
to her. He left quietly when she asked him to,

(02:26):
and she was relieved, but had no idea that she
had just had an incredibly lucky escape. Privately, he fantasized
about using a circular sword to cut up a woman's body,
and when he was later examined by Dr James O'Reilly,
a hospital medical superintendent and lecturer in psychology, he admitted

(02:48):
that these fantasies excited him In December nineteen fifty nine,
Berne was working on a building site in Hagley Road
and living at Islington Row, not far from Birmingham University
and about half a mile from the local YWCA hostel.

(03:10):
The hostel, known as Edencroft, was run by the Young
Women's Christian Association, the female equivalent of the y MCA.
Edencroft was on Wheeley's Road in a suburb of Edgbaston
and was a sizeable, single story Victorian house, originally built

(03:30):
in eighteen fifty for the charitable Barrow Cadbury family, who
gifted it to the YWCA in nineteen twenty nine. The
YWCA provided support, community and safe accommodation for around fifty
women living away from home for work, training or study.

(03:52):
But tragically it seemed that no one within several miles
of Patrick Joseph Byrne could consider themselves safe, and the
hostel that offered a reassuring roof to so many young
women over the years would be unable to protect its
inhabitants from a man who felt compelled to kill. On Wednesday,

(04:16):
twenty third of December, Burne was walking home from work
when he noticed a young woman going into the YWCA building,
he decided to treat himself to a peep through the windows,
something he had done several times before. There were no
gates or security guards to stop him walking boldly down

(04:37):
the driveway towards the building, only a warden who could
be called out in emergencies using a telephone in the hallway.
At six thirty pm, Margaret catterbur was in her flat
at the rear of the Queen's Wing of the YWCA
when she heard a piercing scream. She ignored it, assuming

(05:01):
it was one of the other girls messing around. Most
had already gone home for Christmas, but there were around
ten left, many of them in high spirits ahead of
the holiday season. Around forty five minutes later, twenty one
year old Margaret Brown, also a resident of Queen's Wing,

(05:22):
went into the ironing room to prepare her clothes for
the journey to Scotland the next day to visit her
family and fiancee. She heard the door of the adjacent
laundry room open and close, then the light next door
suddenly went out. Her own room remained lit, but when
she looked through the adjoining glass door into the darkness beyond,

(05:46):
she could just make out a figure standing on the
other side. She opened the door and the figure swung
a heavy object at her head. Margaret reeled from the blow,
and her sudden scream stoup artled the attacker, who fled
without a sound. She staggered into the nearby kitchen, where

(06:07):
a member of staff was working, and gestured for help.
Margaret was taken to hospital, but was later able to
describe the glimpse she had had of her attacker as
he had stepped towards her into the light of the
ironing room. She remembered he was a stocky man of
about five foot seven in his mid twenties, with dark hair,

(06:29):
a reddish complexion, and a brown jacket. The police arrived
at the hostel at seven thirty pm and searched the grounds,
finding a heavy stone wrapped in a brass stolen from
the laundry room, which the assailant had used as an
improvised bludgeon. Outside, officers found muddy footprints and an open

(06:51):
window with prints leading inside to room number six. They
opened the door with apprehension, acting to find the attacker
hiding there and hoping they could make a swift arrest,
but the room was empty. They continued their search, unaware

(07:12):
that a far more terrible crime scene would soon be uncovered.
They tried the next room, number four, but it was
bolted shut from the inside. The police called out for
the inhabitant to open the door, but there was no response.
One officer went outside and through a gap in the

(07:33):
curtains he saw the shape of human legs on the floor.
They broke open the door and walked into a scene
that defied description. The naked, severely mutilated body of a
woman was on the floor. There were multiple lacerations to
the torso inflicted by a knife, the handle of which

(07:57):
had broken off and lay near the body, the blade
itself resting on the bed. Worst of all, one of
the woman's breasts and her head had been detached and
placed on the bed next to the knife. A note
scribbled on an envelope in ballpoint pen had been left

(08:18):
on top of a chest of drawers, which read this
was the thing I thought would never happen, with the
word thought spelt incorrectly that the victim was identified as
twenty nine year old Sidney Stephanie Baird, who went by
her middle name Stephanie born on second of August nineteen

(08:42):
thirty in Neath, South Wales. She had moved with her
parents and sister Barbara to Bishop's Cleaving, Gloucestershire at the
age of ten. She had been a good student and
was well liked in the village and known as a
quiet girl. She left school seventeen and worked as a
shorthand typist, but spent time receiving hospital treatment for her

(09:06):
mental health. When she was twenty five, her father died
and her mother remarried. Some time later. In November nineteen
fifty eight, Stephanie moved to Birmingham and found a new
typing job, but was made redundant after five months, which
triggered a relapse of her depression. The following summer, she

(09:29):
attempted suicide and was admitted to hospital, where she made
friends with another patient there named Margaret Cullingford. After being
discharged in August nineteen fifty nine, Stephanie went to live
at the YWCA Edencroft hostel while she looked for work,
though she had no immediate financial concerns as her father

(09:52):
had left her some money. On the afternoon of her death,
she had been at the hairdressers until around five forty
five pm, and had then returned to the hostel, planning
to travel to Bishop's Cleve the next day to spend
Christmas with her family. Everyone the police interviewed about Stephanie's

(10:13):
background described her as a very respectable young woman with
no known male associates, and it seemed unlikely that anyone
in her life could have been responsible for her brutal death.
Her mother and stepfather traveled by train from Gloucestershire to
undergo the unimaginable ordeal of identifying the body. Chief Superintendent

(10:39):
Jim Horton, head of Birmingham Clunal Investigations Department, led the
murder inquiry and placed guards outside every women's hostel in
the city in case the killer struck again. A reward
of two and a half thousand pounds was offered to
the public for information leading to an arrest, but it
was a difficult time of year to conductor murder investigation.

(11:02):
Many people were away visiting relatives for Christmas, while others
were traveling into the area from elsewhere, and initially it
was unknown whether police were searching for a local or
a transient home. Office pathologist doctor Frederick Griffiths performed the
post mortem and found that the cause of death was

(11:24):
asphyxiated due to manual strangulation, and there were numerous lacerations
and puncture wounds on her body. Griffiths observed that the
perpetrator had likely taken no more than thirty minutes to
carry out the decapitation. Police presence blanketed Birmingham, a wave

(11:47):
of blue uniforms rolling through every street as officers visited
twenty thousand houses and took fifty thousand statements from members
of the public, including Butcher's doctors and known criminals. At
police headquarters, an influx of tips, letters and force confessions
were received, which, as in most high profile cases, were

(12:11):
more of a hindrance than a help. Hopes were raised
when one witness reported seeing a man with blood soaked
hands and clothing on the Number eight bus at seven
thirty pm on the night of the murder just yards
from the hostel. Police found a bloodstained seat on the
upper deck of the bus, but later learned this was

(12:34):
an unrelated incident involving a fight between two men, though
coincidentally it had taken place in Islington Row, where Burne's
lodgings were situated. Eventually, in February nineteen sixty, the police
knocked on the door of his lodging house as part
of their routine inquiry. The manager told them that one

(12:57):
of the tenants, twenty seven year old Patrick Byrne, had
left just before Christmas and had not been seen since.
He was added to the list of the three thousand
men who for some reason or another had not returned
to their home or workplace in the new year, and
each one had to be located and checked. Burne was

(13:19):
traced to his mother's house, approximately eighty miles away in Warrington,
but he was out when detectives called, so they left
a note asking him to report to the nearest police station.
He presented himself that afternoon and willingly completed a questionnaire
detailing his name, address and his movements on twenty third

(13:40):
of December. His cheery smile gave little away, and he
willingly offered his fingerprints, but Detective Sergeant George Welburn sent
something in the man's demeanor that bothered him. Just as
he was leaving Wellborn Art, searchingly, is there anything else
well she would like to say about your stay in Birmingham.

(14:04):
Burne turned around and blurted out, yes, there is I
want to tell you about the YWCA. I had something
to do with that. He then revealed the entire story
in such full horrifying detail that the police were left
in no doubt that he was indeed the killer of
Stephanie Baird. He confessed that he had peered through the

(14:28):
curtains from the outside and seen the light on in
room four and decided to enter the hostel for a
better look. He stood on a chair outside the room
to spile on Stephanie through the glass panel at the
top of the door, and saw her inside, wearing a
skirt and a red jumper. She was brushing her hair,
and he hoped she would remove her clothes, recalling that

(14:51):
he felt angry when she didn't. He was about to
leave when she opened the door and asked him what
he was doing there. He told her he was looking
for some one, and Stephanie offered to fetch the warden,
but he stopped her, demanding that she kiss him. She
said no and tried to push him away, so he

(15:13):
shoved her backwards into the room, wrapping his hands around
her neck and pushing her to the floor. While kissing her.
I heard a couple of noises from her throat, but
kept on kissing her, he told police. Once she had
stopped breathing, he locked the door, removed her clothing as
well as his own, then began mutilating the body with

(15:35):
the kitchen knife. His final act was to remove her head,
and he described how he had held it up to
the mirror to inspect it more closely. His statement was
already horrifying, but he stunned police further when he said, calmly,
it surprised me how easily the head came off. Before

(16:01):
leaving the room, he left the note on the dressing table,
explaining that he wanted people to know why he had
done it. He admitted during questioning that he had been
very excited and decided that I ought to terrorize all women.
I wanted to get my own back for causing me
nervous tension through sex. I felt I only wanted to

(16:23):
kill beautiful women. His lust not fully sated even after
the horrendous brutalization of Stephanie's body, He climbed out through
the window, leaving the door bolted from the inside. He
picked up a large rock from the garden and entered
the laundry room, where he found a bra to wrap

(16:45):
around it and spotted Margaret Brown ironing in the next room.
Had her unexpected scream but prompted him to flee. Patrick
Byrne might have committed a second act of extreme violence
after incapacitating her with the rock. After running from the hostel,

(17:06):
he had returned to his lodgings in Islington Row, then
washed himself and changed his clothes before going out for
a drink and a meal with his cousin as if
nothing had happened. In the morning, he left for his
mother's house in Warrington, where he had remained ever since.
Burne explained that he had decided to come clean because

(17:29):
the murder was weighing on his mind and causing insomnia.
He said, when I got home, I stood in front
of the mirror, talking to myself and searching my face
for signs of a madman, but I could see none.
He also claimed he had considered suicide, but didn't go

(17:50):
through with it to avoid causing distress to his family.
Burne was taken back to Birmingham, where he repeated it
confession to Chief Superintendent Jim Horton, offering a detailed description
of Stephanie's room, and rewriting the contents of the note
in identical handwriting, using almost the same words for memory,

(18:13):
including the misspelling of the word thought. He was remanded
in custody and a defense barrister was appointed through legal aid.
The trial opened in March nineteen sixty, prefaced by John
Hobbson QC's warning to the jury about the horring nature
of the case they would hear. Patrick Byrne pleaded not

(18:37):
guilty on the grounds of diminished responsibility, and none of
the facts of the case were challenged, with the defense
focusing solely on burn state of mind at the time
of the murder. Two psychiatrists testified that the defendant was
partly insane and that he had violent desires which were

(18:58):
almost impossible to control. They also told the court that
Berne had admitted to taking pleasure in his fantasies about
killing women with a circular sore, and that he had
suffered a delusion that room number four had been full
of police officers during the commission of the crime. However,
if he truly believed they were already in the room,

(19:20):
the question remained, why did he lock the door? Doctor
Percy Coates the senior medical officer at Birmingham Prison, concluded
that Burne was a sexual psychopath and said, I think
he knew what he was doing and what he was
doing was wrong. His sexual emotions took complete control of

(19:41):
him at that time. After forty five minutes of deliberation,
the jury found Patrick Byrne guilty of the murder of
Sidney Stephanie Baird, and he was sentenced to life imprisonment.
Had the crime taken place just a few years early,
he may have been sentenced to hang. But the Homicide

(20:04):
Act of nineteen fifty seven differentiated types of murder, with
only specific crimes punishable by execution. These included murders committed
during theft or robbery or while resisting arrest or escaping
from custody, murders of police or prison officers, deaths caused
by shooting or explosion, or a second murder committed by

(20:27):
the same person. Burn's defense team launched an appeal and
on fourth of July nineteen sixty the murder conviction was
overturned and replaced with the verdict of manslaughter on the
grounds of diminished responsibility. In theory, this should have had

(20:48):
little effect on the outcome as a term of life
imprisonment still applied as he was considered a significant danger
to his society. However, in nineteen ninety three, after thirty
three years in jail, he was released on license. Authorities
were concerned by his behavior in society and they revoked

(21:09):
his license, returning him to prison. In nineteen ninety nine,
after the conviction, Detective Sergeant George Welburn assisted Burne's mother
and siblings to relocate back to Dublin. Margaret Cullingford, the
young woman who had befended Stephanie when they were both
receiving treatment at the same hospital, grew more depressed after

(21:33):
the murder and ultimately took her own life. Whether the
death of her friend had contributed to this is unknown.
In nineteen sixty eight, the historic YWCA building was demolished
and replaced with apartments, though they still bear the name Edencroft.

(21:55):
While the murder of Stephanie Baird should never be forgotten,
it is perhaps for the bearest that there's little remaining
evidence of the building that once stood there where such
a savage murder was committed. Two days before Christmas nineteen
fifty nine, Thank you for listening to Prassua's murder map.

(22:18):
If you'd long to support my work, please leave me
a thumbs up, comment or review. As an interesting side note,
Stephanie Baird was born in the industrial town of Neath
in South Wales and lived just a mile away from
Betty Moore Jones, who would later be convicted for the
murder of a taxi driver in nineteen forty four, along
with American soldier Carl Holton. My book about the case,

(22:42):
Wartime London's Bonnie and Clyde, The Crime Spray of Betty
Jones and Carl Holton, will be released in January twenty
twenty six and reveals new information about this case. If
you'd like to keep up with my latest work, you
can sign up for the free newsletter on my website.
I'll put the link in the show notes. Thank you

(23:03):
for your support, and I'll see you again next time
for another true crime episode.