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Back in 2009, British broadcaster and natural historian, Sir David Attenborough, bought a property in the leafy suburb of Richmond, in Southwest London. Upon renovating, on October 22, 2010, builders made a rather grim discovery when they found a human skull in the back garden.

Of course, a police inquiry ensued, which soon led to the theory that the skull likely belonged to Julia Martha Thomas - a widow who had been murdered by her maid in 1879. After the investigation, it was determined that this was, in fact, the case. But what's the story behind the killing?

On January 29, Julia Thomas hired an Irish immigrant, Kate Webster, who had a history of petty theft, as her maid. Webster became known to her future employer after she had stood in for a sick friend as a chairwoman for a Miss Loder in Richmond. Upon meeting Kate, Julia immediately engaged her services without questioning her past, suggesting she was likely unaware of her maid's criminal history.

Within weeks of being employed, the relationship between the two women began to deteriorate, with Julia dismissing Kate from her service on February 28. Following this, Kate managed to convince her mistress to keep her on for three more days, a decision that would prove fateful for the widow.

On March 2, Julia arrived at church seeming very "agitated" after a row with her maid, and later returned home, where she confronted Kate for her subpar service. Confessing to the murder of her employer, Kate described the altercation: "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, and in the struggle she was choked, and I threw her on the floor."

Following this, she disposed of the body by dismembering it, boiling it in the laundry copper and burning the bones in the hearth. She then threw the rest of the remains into the River Thames, and it was originally thought the missing head had been among those remains.

It has been claimed that Kate offered the fat from the body to the pub, neighbours and street children as dripping and lard. However, she never confessed to this, and it has never been proven.

For the two weeks following the murder, Kate posed as her late employer before fleeing back to Ireland when she was exposed and when body parts began washing up on the banks of the Thames. She was subsequently arrested after investigators traced her uncle's farm at Killanne, near Enniscorthy.

Kate's trial was rather high-profile in both England and Ireland, and even the Crown Prince of Sweden, the future King Gustaf V, attended a day of the proceedings. She ultimately confessed to the crimes, although she attempted to avoid the death penalty by claiming she was pregnant.

Kate was executed on July 29, to the cheers of the crowd that had gathered outside Wandsworth Prison. While the murder was solved within weeks, the mystery of what happened to Julia Martha Thomas's head would remain unanswered for 131 years.