Serial killer jailed for 25-year-old murder of kindly pensioner he tried to rob

Samuel Dunwoody, 52, was searching for money at her house in North Belfast and killed the widow to ensure there was no witness, a court in the city 
heard. He has been ordered to serve life imprisonment and it 
will be almost two decades 
before he can be considered for release.

The murderer was caught after police revisited the case and found his DNA under the fingernails of victim Margaret “Peggy” Telford, 68. He had a string of convictions for violence against women.

Judge Corinne Philpott QC said: “You killed someone who did you no harm and offered you kindness and you thought you got away with it.”

Mrs Telford was discovered strangled to death with a ligature at her home in Twaddell Avenue, North Belfast, on February 4, 1988, by a shopkeeper. A pulled-out telephone wire was lying nearby.

She also received injuries to her face and head.

A police reinvestigation was launched recently following forensic advances. Testing of DNA samples from the victim found a match with Dunwoody, from High Tower, Birmingham, in the West Midlands.

Mrs Telford’s son Peter said her family was now able to start a new life after a long wait for justice.

“It is like taking a breath of fresh air after holding your breath under water for a long time, you can breathe out,” he said.

He paid tribute to her as a nice person, quiet, good fun and generous.

The killer has a string of violent convictions for assault causing actual bodily harm and battery, including attacking the same woman three times between 1982 and 2009. He had a “dysfunctional” background and spent time in a borstal, a home for problem children, his lawyer said. Widowed Mrs Telford knew her killer through her work – aiding him and his family and donating clothes.

The judge told the defendant: “She had shown kindness, as indeed she seems to have done with everyone who came into contact with her.”