You’d have to call the murder a cold case; it was committed 169 years ago. The crime scene was in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, a wealthy city with a corner on exporting coal from northeast England. Fortunes were being made there, but not by John Millie. In 1838, Millie was 55, a poor widower with four children to support.

Anne’s great-grandmother, at 12, did her best to maintain their shabby quarters just off Croft Stairs. She cleaned and cooked, kept the younger children in line, and welcomed her dad home each day from his clerk’s job at Newcastle Savings Bank. But on Dec. 6, 1838, he did not come home. He had fallen victim, according to the local newspaper, to "one of the most brutal and inhuman murders that ever disgraced a civilized community."

The bank had ground-floor offices in the Royal Arcade, not far from the riverfront. John Millie, working into the evening there, was battered to death in the bank’s main work room, the attack so savage that, in the newspaper’s florid language, "blood, brains and hair bespattered the wainscoting and walls." The skull, it added solemnly, "was literally smashed to a jelly."

The murder was not discovered until after one and the next morning, when a family living upstairs in the Royal Arcade woke to dense smoke. They fled the building and sounded the alarm. It was firemen who discovered that the blaze was centered in the bank; and they, who breaking in, stumbled over John Millie’s body. By lantern light they recoiled in horror from its condition. But then they found a second body at the far side of the room.

It was Archibald Bolam, the bank’s actuary. He was alive "though in a state of insensibility, and saturated with blood, preceeding [sic] from a wound on the left side of his neck." Soon the constables arrived, and Bolam, having been revived and treated, gave his statement.

Archibald Bolam said he had had been living in fear for days. Notes threatening bodily harm had been sent to his home, and yesterday one had been slipped under the bank’s door. He had no idea who was behind the threats. "In consequence, though I generally get my tea at the bank, I went home, the other clerk, Millie, having previously gone to his tea. I returned about half-past 7 o’clock. When I got into the bank I saw Millie lying on the rug, and I thought he had fallen asleep."

But, said Bolam, as he approached his own desk, he was struck violently from behind. He whirled to face a man, his face blackened with charcoal, who said "if I ... made the least noise, he would serve me as he had served the other man." The assailant then knocked him down, said Bolam, and took a knife to his throat. Bolam claimed to remember no more until he came to himself as the cut on the side of his neck was being bandaged.

What follows in the newspaper, fascinatingly, outlines the work of an 1838 Crime Scene Investigation team. Absent photography, they first give a minute description of the corpse, down to the color of the cravat it was wearing. Then comes an equally close description of the crime scene. You must imagine a television CSI team, but minus its high-tech equipment:

"On examining the room minutely, we discerned fearful traces of the murderous deed in blood stains upon the door and walls, also inside the fender and near the fireplace. The deceased, we are led to conjecture, on seeing an attempt made upon his life, had rushed to the door in the corner leading from the large room ... and had been struck a severe blow, most probably on the left side of the head, as there is a dreadful wound there.

"The door is at that height besmeared with blood, as is also the wall ... From that point the course of the deceased is in blood on the wainscot, towards the fireplace, gradually getting lower; and in parts of the blood are clearly traceable the mark of hair downward, as if he were in the act of falling."

This forensic team deduced that, between the door and the fireplace, John Millie had been battered repeatedly. To judge by blood and hair inside the fireplace, he had fallen with his head inside the fender. Then their final chilling deduction: "We are led to think that he was lifted off the edge of the fender upon the hearth rug, where, while lying on his face, and even after life must have been extinct, the inhuman monster sought to gratify his sanguinary propensity by braying his head with the poker ..." They add, "On Millie’s head we counted no less than 20 wounds."

The team theorized that poor great-great-grandfather Millie, in his last moments, had struggled toward the fireplace, "seeking something to defend himself with; and the position in which the tongs were found would [suggest] that he had succeeded in laying hold of them, though in too weak a state to wield them effectually."

You can imagine my Anne, wide-eyed, reading this dreadful account from faded pages of the 1838 "Newcastle Journal." But, reach back. Imagine her great-grandmother, a girl of 12 already thrust into an adult’s role.

Her charges were asleep, but she had likely sat up all night in the cold room, perhaps half dozing in a chair, worried for her missing father.

Who, I wonder, told her the horror that had happened?

Read Jim Atwell’s new book, "From Fly Creek _ Celebrating Life in Leatherstocking Country" at JimAtwell.com.