The Trail Went Cold - Episode 453 - Katheine Lillian Armstrong and Derek Grain

The Trail Went Cold

Robin Warder

True Crime, Tv & Film

4.5 • 3.2K Ratings

🗓️ 15 October 2025

⏱️ 49 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

October 31, 1963. Newcastle, England. 70-year old Katherine Lillian Armstrong fails to show up for choir practice at her church. The following morning, Lillian’s body is discovered near the bottom of the staircase in her house and she has been stabbed 28 times and strangled with one of her nylon stockings. Since there are no signs of forced entry, police suspect that Lillian willingly let her killer inside, but even though a massive investigation is launched, no compelling suspects are found and the motive for the crime remains unknown. October 31, 1980. Bristol, England. 39-year old Derek Grain leaves his hotel and spends the night drinking at a pair of local nightclubs. After leaving one of the clubs during the early morning hours, Derek is later found dead in a pool of blood a quarter-mile away and it turns out he was kicked in the head and bludgeoned with a sand-filled traffic cone. Since money was stolen from Derek, it is theorized that he was the victim of a robbery gone wrong, but even though there are reported eyewitness sightings of someone being attacked by multiple people who fled the scene in a maroon Jaguar, the crime is never solved. On this week’s episode of “The Trail Went Cold”, we travel to the United Kingdom to explore a pair of unsolved murders which happened to take place on Halloween. Additional Reading: https://www.crimeandinvestigation.co.uk/articles/mystery-newcastles-unsolved-halloween-murder https://www.newspapers.com/image/876967689/ https://www.newspapers.com/image/876893608/ https://www.newspapers.com/image/804216277/ https://www.newspapers.com/image/804277720/ https://www.bristolpost.co.uk/news/bristol-news/derek-grains-unsolved-murder-true-4340 https://www.newspapers.com/image/908265262/ https://www.newspapers.com/image/876333334/ https://www.newspapers.com/image/877244013/ https://www.newspapers.com/image/876431763/ https://thetruecrimeenthusiast.co.uk/who-was-the-brandon-hill-park-murderer “The Trail Went Cold” is on Patreon. Visit www.patreon.com/thetrailwentcold to become a patron and gain access to our exclusive bonus content. The Trail Went Cold is produced and edited by Magill Foote. All music is composed by Vince Nitro.

Transcript

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0:00.0	October 31st, 1963. Newcastle, England. 70-year-old Catherine Lillian Armstrong fails to show up for
0:09.7	choir practice at her church. The following morning, Lillian's body is discovered near the bottom of the
0:15.3	staircase in her house, and she has been stabbed 28 times and strangled with one of her nylon stockings.
0:22.1	Since there are no signs of forced entry, police suspect that Lillian willingly let her
0:26.2	kill her inside, but even though a massive investigation is launched, no compelling
0:30.9	suspects are found, and the motive for the crime remains unknown. After that, the trail went cold. I'm not going to be. I'm going to be. Hello everyone and welcome to our latest episode of The Trail Went Cold.
1:19.0	I'm your host Robin Warder, and this week we're going to be traveling to the United Kingdom
1:23.7	to cover a pair of cold cases which happen to take place on Halloween.
1:29.9	The 1963 murder of Catherine Lillian Armstrong, and the 1980 murder of Derek Gray. So as you've probably guessed after
1:36.7	hearing the revised version of our Trail Went Cold intro music, we have now officially begun the
1:41.6	countdown to October the 31st, and per tradition, our podcast
1:46.0	will be spending the rest of the month covering unsolved mysteries which either took place on Halloween
1:51.1	or have some sort of creepy Halloween slant to them. This particular episode is going to cover
1:57.3	two murders which occurred on Halloween on opposite sides of the United Kingdom,
2:02.0	but even if you dismiss the whole Halloween angle, there's still a number of unusual aspects of
2:07.0	both these crimes. Catherine Lillian Armstrong was an unmarried 70-year-old retired school headmistress
2:13.8	who lived alone in a fancy house in Newcastle, but after she failed up to show up as scheduled
2:19.2	for a choir practice at her church on Halloween night, her body was discovered in her home the
2:24.3	following morning. She had been stabbed 28 times and strangled with one of her nylon stockings,
2:30.3	but there were no signs of any sexual assault or robbery. And while Lilligan was known for being a rather private woman,
2:36.7	she did not seem to have any known enemies,
2:39.2	so no one can figure out the motive for such a brutal crime.
	...

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