Human skull found in David Attenborough's garden helped end a 131-year-old murder case

Sir David Attenborough's builders didn't expect the chilling discovery of a human skull when refurbishing his home - but the find helped solve a decades-old murder mystery.

The natural historian purchased his London home in 2009, and the eerie discovery was made in the back yard in October of the following year, when Attenborough started refurbishments on the property.

A police investigation revealed that the discovery had answered a Victorian murder mystery, with the skull determined to belong to a woman who was murdered in 1879.

Julia Martha Thomas was murdered by her housemaid over 130 years ago in what had been dubbed the 'Barnes mystery', and after her skull was found, the coroner recorded a verdict of unlawful killing, with the cause of death found to be asphyxiation and a head injury.

The chilling discovery was found in Sir David Attenborough's Richmond garden (Photo by John Phillips/Getty Images )

The murder of Julia Martha Thomas

Julia Martha Thomas, who had resided in the home, employed an Irish immigrant with a record of minor thefts as her domestic servant. Kate Webster had become known to her employer after filling in as a cleaner for a woman who lived nearby.

Thomas was probably oblivious to her new maid's criminal past, but within a few weeks, cracks started to appear.

Just under a month after Webster was hired, her employment was terminated on February 28.

Webster managed to persuade Thomas to give her three more days in her role, but it was this decision that sealed her fate. On March 2, Thomas challenged Webster over her poor work, beginning the events that led to her death.

Webster didn't deny killing her employer. She said: "She had a heavy fall, and I became agitated at what had occurred, lost all control of myself, and to prevent her screaming and getting me into trouble, I caught her by the throat. In the struggle, she was choked, and I threw her on the floor."

The skull was found in Richmond, London (Photo by Dutcher Aerials)

How did the skull end up in Attenborough's garden?

There have been allegations thrown around about what Webster did with the body. Some say that she gave the body fat to the local pub and neighbours, passing it off as lard.

She didn't admit to passing off the body fat, but she did cut the corpse up, boil it in the laundry copper and incinerate the bones in the fireplace.

It was thought that she had then dumped the rest of the remains, including the head, into the River Thames.

But 131 years later, the mystery was solved, and Thomas' skull was not in the river - it was in a British broadcaster's new landscaped garden.