Murder In Ruislip of Fredrick Bush

It should be note that Ruislip Online does NOT own copyright to any of the words or pictures on this page and the information here is offered by way of local interest.

Ruislip is, statistically, a very place safe to live. However over the years there have been a handful of murders committed in the area and the known ones are set out below in date order. I am grateful to those that wrote the articles in the first place and all I have done is chronicled them together.

By a strange coincidence the murders of Jean Townsend (1954) and Osman Shidane (2018) occurred in more or less the exact same spot. (The latter was eventually deemed manslaughter.)

A fragment of the lens from a pair of broken spectacles can be as identifiable as a fingerprint, as Kevin O'Connor discovered to his cost.

A 27-year-old unemployed carpenter, he planned to rob Frederick Bush, a rent-collector neighbour in Southbourne Gardens, Ruislip, Middlesex.

On the 4th of November, 1971, Frederick Bush was at home checking the rents he had collected, when Kevin O'Connor entered quietly by the back door, carrying a pillow-case and a length of flex. Before putting on a stocking mask, he removed his glasses and put them in a pocket. He then knocked Mr. Bush unconscious, tied up his hands and feet with the flex, put the pillow-case over his head, and made off with his cash and cheques. However, on putting on his glasses Mr O'Connor found that one of the lenses was broken.

Mr. Bush's daughter returned home some half and hour later to find her father dead. An post mortem established that he had died from chronic bronchitis and heart failure precipitated by his severe head injuries as– his skull was abnormally thin.

His glasses were found lying intact on the floor beside him, together with fragments of another lens. The prescription for the broken lens was traced by the London Optical Company, and details were sent to all opticians in the area. Checking his records, one of them found that the lens had been prescribed for Kevin O'Connor, who was by then in Aberdeen and he was arrested.

He said he was unaware that he had hit Mr. Bush so hard until he read a newspaper report of his death but admitted the killing.

In December 1971 he was convicted of manslaughter and jailed for life.

On his release from prison Kevin O'Conner is said to have gone to live with his mother and whilst at her house fell down the stairs and died from his injuries.