Evening Mail : Gay Murder : 23 May 1964
1964
Saturday, May 23, 1964
Evening Mail and Despatch
Front page
Headline: Murder Police in city hotel swoop, fifty men in identity parade
Staff reporter
Murder Squad detectives in Birmingham today were sifting through new evidence in the search for the murderer of 20 year old Mr David Palmer.
In a night of intense police activity detectives retraced the footsteps of the dead man during his last evening alive exactly a week before. Teams of policemen visited hotels, licensed houses, dancehalls and clubs throughout the city asking customers whether they had seen Mr.Palmer that evening.
About 50 men accompanied detectives to the Birmingham police headquarters where an identification parade was held last night. Four men who are believed to have been attacked in the city during the past year were called into the parade. The four men are among those who have come forward in response to an appeal by Detective Chief Superintendent G. Baumer, the head of Birmingham C.I.D., for any man who has been attacked and not reported the incident to give confidential information to the police.
Tracing Movements
Mr. Palmer, a printing apprentice, was in lodgings at Walford Road, Sparkbrook, and was found stabbed to death in Cofton Park, Rednal early last Saturday morning. Detectives piecing together the jigsaw of his last night alive are still anxious to trace his late night movements. They know he went to the Imperial Hotel, Temple Street and the Temple Bar, Lower Temple Street and the Albany Hotel, Smallbrook Ringway. He was last seen alive at about 10:15pm in the New Street Station area.
In Cofton Park police officers kept watch all night. People passing by late were asked whether they had seen anything unusual and early today people at the bus stops and people taking short cuts through the park were also questioned
Contributed by: Evening Mail