The Silver Bullet Murder

Fashion designer Aristos Constantinou was shot dead at his home in Hampstead on 1 January 1985.

The 40 year-old tycoon was attacked shortly after he returned home from a New Year’s Eve party with his wife Elena.

He was shot six times at close range with an Italian-made Fiocchi gun using nickel-jacketed bullets – leading to the case becoming known as The Silver Bullet Murder.

Police were called to the Health Lodge mansion in The Bishop’s Avenue at around 1.45am after Elena flagged down a member of the public.

Officers found Aristos slumped near an alcove with two bullet wounds to the head and four to the torso. A wall safe was open and a glass pane in the kitchen door had been smashed. The gun has never been recovered.

Elena later told police that they were confronted by burglars when they returned home and that she was locked in the upstairs bathroom before managing to escape out of a window and down a drainpipe.

During the inquest in 1986 she identified one of the burglars.

Following a reinvestigation in 1998 the Crown Prosecution Service decided there was not enough evidence to put a suspect on trial.

A further cold case investigation in 2017 identified the same suspect and a senior prosecutor who reviewed the case agreed there was enough evidence to prosecute for murder. However the CPS head of special crime decided there was no realistic prospect of conviction and described the evidence as “wholly inconclusive”.

Detectives appealed the decision but an internal review by the CPS upheld the refusal to prosecute.

Aristos’ younger brother Achilleas told The Times in October 2022: “We now have closure because the police have identified who they believe murdered my brother.”

The case remains unsolved.