An Almanac of Infamy

Content Note: This case involves the murder of a young child. On this day in 1948, three-year-old June Anne Devaney was kidnapped from her bed at Queen’s Park Hospital in Blackburn, England. She had been admitted to the hospital on May 5 due to a mild bout of pneumonia. At 1:20 am, on the morning of May 15, nurse Gwendolyn Humphreys noticed that a door was open at the end of the children's ward. As she went to close the door she saw that June Anne Devaney was no longer in her bed. She also saw what appeared to be adult-sized footprints on the hospital's well-waxed floor. The drop side of June Anne's bed was still in place, meaning that someone lifted her out of her bed. After searching for the girl for thirty minutes, Humphreys called the police. Upon arriving at the hospital, they launched an extensive search of the hospital grounds and found the body of June Anne Devaney at 3:55 am. She was laying face down in the grass near a boundary wall on the hospital grounds. Her