The Wembley Point Mystery | Hacker News Reader

The Wembley Point Mystery

theguardian.com

49 pointstoomany8 comments

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The painting that the woman left behind seems to be what has attracted people to this case.

I look at paintings on a daily basis, and am very used to 'reading' them. Here I what I get from it...

- The artist did not go to art school, or receive any other formal training.

- I belive that it was painted by a woman.

- Most of the figures in the painting seem to be women.

- The two figures on the left were painted using photographs as reference, probably the same photograph.

- The painting has a strong african feel to it, and its colors feel a bit Ugandan.

- The left/right chaos/structure construction of the painting is very strong. Many paintings feature such structure, but rarely as overt as this. This is a feature of paintings by people who have not received much in the way of a formal traing.

- I believe that this painting was made by a woman as a response to a crisis, probably of sexual/social origin.

- I belive it is also a self portrait.

Edit... I should say that I am using as reference the BBC's photo of the painting, as reffernced by user rwmj.

The jewelry looked hand-made to me; it's chunky for what it is and quite rustic. Suggests the person is in/around some kind of craft art scene in general, but not necessarily an artist or professionally involved.

Vaguely amazing to me that in 2004 it would be possible to have a building that tall with windows that open fully in a public area that someone could jump out of. That strikes me as unusual, it's amazing they weren't able to figure out her connection to the building back then.

Also surprising is the dearth of contemporary news articles about this incident. I can't find anything in any major news paper from 2004.

LOCATE international work with the podcast The Missing. They covered this case in episode 27, should you be intrigued by the article. I find the podcast very touching.

https://www.themissingpodcast.org/episodes

The BBC article has photographs of her jewellery and a larger one of the painting: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-63445805

I was surprised they have photographs from the morgue here. Only of the face, they are protected by a click through -

https://missingpersons.police.uk/cy-gb/case/04-011369#

The police also have the shell wrong on the ring it's a cowrie shell not a conch shell.

Not sure, but that seems more African than Caribbean as she's sometimes described.

To me the art work looks like it's from 90s TV, that style, maybe it's the low 2004 resolution of the picture fooling my brain.

Reminiscent of the case of "Peter Bergmann", a still unidentified man who went to Donegal, Ireland to die [1] about which an excellent short documentary was made [2].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Bergmann_case [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVOZ7YPOakI

Although she died in different circumstances, this sad story immediately put me in mind of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joyce_Vincent, about whom a film was made - "Dreams of a Life", referenced in the Wikipedia article, well worth a watch.

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