Murder of June Anne Devaney
The murder of June Anne Devaney is a British child murder which occurred on 15 May 1948 when a girl aged 3 years 11 months was abducted from her cot while an inpatient at Queen's Park Hospital in Blackburn, Lancashire. The child was removed to the grounds of the hospital, where she was raped, before suffering extensive blunt force trauma to her skull when her head was repeatedly swung into a sandstone wall. The assault caused extensive internal injuries and multiple skull fractures, causing the child to develop a fatal state of shock. Her murderer, 22-year-old Peter Griffiths, was arrested three months after the crime and was subsequently tried and convicted of June Anne's murder. He was hanged on 19 November 1948.