Peter Maine Stabbing
Today we are looking at the unexplained death of a solicitor from Durham, England on September 1st 2013.
Peter Thomas Maine was 56 years old when he was found suffering from multiple stab wounds on a path by the River Wear close to the Maiden Castle Sports Centre in Durham.
Mr. Maine had parked his Land Rover close by and was wearing his running clothes,namely a short-sleeved black running top, blue tracksuit bottoms and trainers when he was found by a cyclist at soon after 8am.
Peter Maine who was married with children lived in a £650,000 house in Wynyard near Stockton and was at the time of his demise under investigation by police and the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) regarding allegations of fraud.
Mr Maine was seen on CCTV from his former offices in the city centre jogging toward the river bank path where his body was later found.
He had three stab wounds, two of which were fatal as they had pierced his heart. The motive for killing is not clear as Peter was still wearing his Rolex watch and his wallet was in his pocket, this of course rules out robbery.
At the peak of the investigation over 30 officers from County Durham Police Constabulary were working on the investigation into Peter's death.
Detective Chief Inspector who was leading the investigation at the time said "Mr. Maine's death remains suspicious but we must keep an open mind as to how he came by his injuries".
I have to say there can be little doubt as to how Peter Maine came to have those injuries, obviously he was stabbed.
Mr Maine had been a solicitor since 1981 when he qualified and indeed was listed on the pages of the Law Society's 'Find a solictor' website as an expert in civil litigation, commercial property & residential property conveyancing. He also had experience in family law and personal injury claims.
Peter had been reffered to the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal (SDT) in relation to his work for a County Durham company, Hall & Co of Easington Colliery which had closed down in September 2011. We are currently trying to find out more about that company.
The allegation against him was a bit of a technical one in that he allegedly "acted as a solicitor in relation to transactions concerning a company which he ought to have known were dubious & thereby acted in a way that was likely to compromise or impair his independece and/or his integrity and/or his good repute or that of the solicitor's profession.
The allegations against Peter were that Hall & Co LLP was part of a long-running scam involving a 170 million pound "Sale & rent back scheme" scam involving two gateshead firms, North East Property Buyers and Newcastle Home Loans.
Two weeks after the death, police said that they had made a breakthrough, but now it seems that, ten years on they hadn't,
It was reported that police had been speaking to a witness in the investigation and that they were trying hard to identify exactly what happened on the morning in question.
Now we come to someone who may or may not be connected to the case, namely one Audrey Dixon who spent a number of years living in Spain, running various shady real estate/property businesses during which time she was convicted of fraud having taken a great deal of money from unsuspecting ex-pats who wanted to spend their life savings on properties on the Spanish coast.
Audrey has a lot of unanswered allegations of fraud to address in Spain to the tune of around two million Euros but, thus far attempts to extradite her back to Spain have been blocked by Durham authorities.
Was she involved with Hall & Co? Was she or one of her colleagues trying to silence Peter Maine? We certainly have her on our radar, that's for sure.
We do know that the coroner's court ruled the cause of death as an open verdict in the case of Peter Maine as it was ridiculously suggested that he could have 'stabbed himself and discarded the knives before he died'.
Obviously the person who suggested this had little or no medical knowledge as two of the stab wounds punctured the heart and Peter would have bled out very quickly. By the way the knives were never found. Clearly Peter Maine was murdered and the assailant got clean away.
Well it's never too late and we ask if you have any knowledge of this case please come forward and speak up. If you know anything at all that could solve this case please contact Durham Constabulary on 101.
If you'd like to discuss this case or any other unsolved investigation, we want to hear from you. Email us: [email protected]
We will be back with more true crime very soon, in the meantime if you would like to help us to bring more content or help fund our enquiries please hit the 'Buy me a coffee' button or take up membership to access more 'members only' stories,
See you soon