Fred the Head

The body was discovered at the site of the former flint mill at the west end of the footbridge, shown here on a 1944-1973 Ordnance Survey map. Fred the Head is the popular name of an unidentified young white adult male founddeceased, naked, and boundon the site of an abandoned flint mill in Burton upon Trent, England, in 1971. A number of investigations have failed to identify the body and it is now the oldest unsolved missing persons case in Staffordshire.

Discovery of body The body was discovered at 7:30 pm on 26 March 1971 by David Nathan. Nathan was a special constable and employee of Messrs Time Consortium, a jewellers. He was off duty at the time of the discovery which was made while he was walking to an area behind his workplace to carry out some shooting practice. This lay around from Newton Road on the site of a former flint mill which had been abandoned in the early 19th century. It was also found that the ring had been manufactured between 1967 and 1968 by Henry Showell in the Jewellery Quarter of Birmingham and was one of 5,000 made in that style. "Fred" had had extensive dentistry work carried out in the six months before his death and was found with a partial upper denture. He was also found to have suffered from torticollis which would have caused his head to lean to his right in life. Fingerprints were taken at the time of discovery but have yet to show a match. In 2006 the case featured on the BBC's Crimewatch programme for the first time. The wearing of a wedding ring on the right hand is also more common in some European countries including Norway, Denmark, Austria, Poland, Bulgaria, Russia, Portugal, Spain and Belgium, than it is in Britain where it is traditionally worn on the left hand. At one time it was linked to Michael Edge, a milkman from Watford who disappeared around the time the body was buried. DNA testing subsequently proved that the body was not that of Jones. In 2021, police investigated whether the body might be a victim of the serial killer Anthony Hardy who was born in nearby Winshill and would have been 20 at the time of its discovery. A podcast series on the killing began around the 50th anniversary of the discovery.