Ronald Jebson, originally named Ronald Harper, was born in August 1938 in England. He was conceived out of wedlock and adopted shortly after birth, taking on the surname of his adoptive parents. Raised in Hatfield, Hertfordshire, Jebson had a troubled upbringing and was known to be a loner from a young age. By 15, he had already been convicted of indecent exposure and had begun targeting children. He spiraled further into criminal behavior and addiction, becoming both an alcoholic and an amphetamine user by his twenties.

Despite a brief attempt to stabilize his life by enlisting in the British Army in 1960, he was discharged for going AWOL. Jebson's adult life was marked by a string of offenses including theft, sexual assault, and child molestation. He had a close connection with other known paedophiles, including notorious predator Sidney Cooke. In December 1968, he was convicted of sexually assaulting a six-year-old girl and was released from prison on 2 March 1970. Less than a month later, he would murder two children in one of the UK's most haunting unsolved cases at the time.

Just eleven days after that double murder, Jebson was arrested again for molesting another young boy and sentenced to five years in prison. Upon his release in 1973, he stayed briefly with a family friend, Robert Papper, concealing his criminal past. His odd behavior around children, especially the Pappers' young daughter Rosemary, eventually got him kicked out. In 1974, he murdered that very child in a brutal crime that finally led to his lifetime imprisonment.

On 31 March 1970, 11-year-old Susan Blatchford and 12-year-old Gary Hanlon disappeared from Enfield, North London. They were last seen walking hand-in-hand through a field near their homes. Despite a massive search involving 600 police officers, divers, dogs, and nationwide alerts, their bodies would not be found until 17 June 1970—78 days later—inside a remote bird-watching hide in a wooded area of Sewardstone, near Epping Forest.

The state of their bodies, covered with leaves and stripped of clothing, suggested foul play, but the coroner could not officially rule the deaths as murders due to decomposition. A verdict of "open cause" was issued, and tragically, the case was left unsolved for nearly 30 years.

Behind the scenes, retired Chief Superintendent Leonard Read had long believed the children were abducted, raped, and murdered. But without a confession or solid forensic evidence, the case grew cold. That changed in 1996 when Ronald Jebson—already serving a life sentence for the 1974 rape and murder of 8-year-old Rosemary Papper—contacted Scotland Yard. At first, he falsely blamed the Pappers for the children's murders. But in 1998, he confessed outright.

Jebson admitted to picking up Blatchford and Hanlon as he returned from a job interview. He offered them alcohol and cannabis, drove them to a secluded part of Epping Forest, and lured them into a hand-built hideout. There, he raped and strangled both children—first Susan, then Gary, who tried to fight him. He redressed them afterward and placed their bodies side by side. He had been previously questioned in 1970 but evaded suspicion due to a lack of evidence and alibi fragments that checked out.

Jebson’s confession led to the exhumation of Susan Blatchford’s body, which provided new physical evidence supporting his claims. In 2000, he was formally charged with and pleaded guilty to both murders. The judge at the Old Bailey called him “wicked and perverted” and sentenced him to two additional life terms. This brought long-awaited justice to the devastated families, who had campaigned for decades to keep the case alive.

In total, Ronald Jebson killed at least three children: Susan Blatchford, Gary Hanlon, and Rosemary Papper. He spent over four decades in prison and died of kidney failure in 2015 at the age of 76, alone and without a single visitor or known contact to notify of his death.