Case Summary
At about 5am on Saturday 22 January 2005, two council cleaners saw flames inside a public shelter on Eastbourne’s lower promenade. As they approached, they realised that a woman’s body was burning beneath a double child’s buggy loaded with possessions.
The fire had concentrated on the upper body, but it was not the only violence. A post-mortem examination found that the woman had been stabbed sixteen times in the chest and upper torso and subjected to a serious sexual assault. The ferocity suggested a sustained attack. Police launched Operation Kittiwake, yet neither the shelter nor the belongings in the buggy initially supplied a name for the victim or her killer.
She was petite, with shoulder-length brown hair, and wore an elephant-charm bracelet and a simple necklace. DNA and dental work finally identified her as 35-year-old Jennifer Kiely. Within days, the description of an anonymous “homeless woman” was replaced by the fuller story of a mother, daughter and former family partner whose mental health had altered the course of her life.
The woman behind the pram
Jennifer had once lived in Orpington with her partner and their children. After the birth of one of the younger children, her mental health deteriorated sharply. She left the family home around six years before her death and largely lost contact with the people who loved her. Her former partner appealed to the public not to reduce her to a “bag lady”, remembering a loving, attractive woman whose family had tried unsuccessfully to locate her.
Jennifer moved between Brighton, Canterbury and Eastbourne. She sold The Big Issue, stayed in supported accommodation and used hostels, friends’ homes and the street. Staff at a Canterbury charity remembered her as quiet, cooperative and exceptionally clean. In Eastbourne, the Salvation Army saw her most weekdays for food during the six weeks before her death, but she avoided questions about her past and said she was only passing through.
Locally, Jennifer was recognisable by the long grey coat she often wore and the double buggy she used to carry her belongings. She sometimes slept in the seafront shelters. Her mother later described her as sweet, ambitious and giving, and believed she had been close to a nervous breakdown rather than wilfully abandoning her family. Whatever her precise diagnosis, her transient life left few conventional records for detectives: no settled address, regular finances or mobile telephone trail.
“Jennifer was a gentle, funny and creative soul.”
Jennifer Kiely’s family
The missing hours
On Friday 21 January, Jennifer spent time with friends at an address in Upperton Gardens. She came and went during the day, bathed there in the evening and left at around midnight. The householder said she was alone and in good spirits. At about 1am, a friend recognised her pushing the buggy west along the seafront towards Beachy Head. After that, her movements are uncertain.
Police examined more than 1,800 hours of CCTV and appealed for a crowded list of possible witnesses. Two women with foreign accents, a cyclist, two men walking towards Holywell, a man asking a hotel manager for directions and another seen running along Grand Parade were among those sought. A motorist swerved to avoid a man in Compton Street at about 3am. Investigators also wanted to identify a red-haired man seen arguing with a woman resembling Jennifer earlier on Friday.
One individual has remained a particular focus. He was seen on CCTV and by witnesses on 21 January and was described as about 5ft 10in, slim to medium in build, with short light-blond hair, strong cheek and jaw lines and an eastern European accent. He wore a dark blue zipped jacket, grey jeans and white trainers. Police renewed their appeal for him as recently as 2023.
Two men were arrested during the first week—one detained in Dover and another at an Eastbourne flat. Both were released without charge. At the 2007 inquest, police said that one of two principal suspects remained under suspicion, but there was not enough evidence for a prosecution. No person has ever been publicly identified as that suspect.
Serial-killer theories and their limits
The murder’s sexual violence and apparent opportunism led to comparisons with known offenders. Peter Tobin was examined under Operation Anagram because he had lived in several parts of Britain, worked around vulnerable people and committed multiple murders and sexual assaults. Later research placed him in hospital in Scotland immediately before Jennifer’s death, making his involvement highly unlikely. Sussex Police has announced no evidence linking him to Eastbourne.
In 2017, the mother of murdered teenager Sally Anne Bowman suggested that Mark Dixie might have killed Jennifer. Both victims were alone at night, stabbed and sexually assaulted, and Dixie had attempted to burn a survivor of another offence. Police compared the cases and stated that no connection was known.
An attempted sexual assault in a nearby seafront shelter seven months after Jennifer’s death was also reviewed. Detectives said the two incidents shared only their sexual nature and did not regard them as linked. These comparisons are understandable, but similarity is not evidence. Repeatedly attaching famous offenders can obscure the unidentified people actually recorded around Eastbourne that night.
The DNA finally has a name
In December 2025 (after The Crime Portal’s video was published), Sussex Police announced that the investigation had reached a conclusion. Detectives identified Keith Dowbekin as the man they believe murdered Jennifer Kiely. Dowbekin, who also used the names Keith Black and Keith Broadbent, died in 2014 at the age of 60. His death means the evidence can never be tested at a criminal trial, but police described the forensic case against him as overwhelming.
The breakthrough began with a discarded cigarette butt recovered from the shelter. It contained a complete male DNA profile, parts of which also matched material found on Jennifer’s body, in her blood and elsewhere at the scene. The profile was not on the national database, so conventional searches produced no name.
In 2018, investigators began using familial DNA techniques to search for people who might be related to the unidentified man. Several possible relatives were traced and provided samples. A sample obtained from a man in northern England during the summer of 2024 supplied what the senior investigator called the final piece of the puzzle, allowing detectives to identify Dowbekin as their suspect. A direct comparison with DNA retained by Norfolk Police then matched the profile recovered from the murder scene.
The discovery also revealed how close Dowbekin had come to the original investigation. On 29 January 2005, one week after Jennifer’s murder, he was stopped at the Port of Dover while sleeping rough. Using the name Keith Black, he said he had recently been in Eastbourne and London and supplied an address in Eastbourne that proved to be false. However, he had no recorded financial connection to the town, no relevant convictions and no trace on Sussex Police systems. With detectives then concentrating on two other suspects, his DNA was not requested.
Only after Dowbekin was identified in 2024 did investigators discover that he had previously been arrested in connection with two rape allegations in Great Yarmouth in 2003 and 2004. He was released without charge in both cases. Norfolk Police had also taken his DNA for elimination purposes when he assisted as a witness in an unrelated murder investigation. That sample had not been placed on the national database because he was not a suspect, but it remained available for comparison two decades later.
Police established that Dowbekin was known to stay in Eastbourne and associated with members of the homeless community. They stated that, had he still been alive, they would have sought permission from the Crown Prosecution Service to prosecute him for Jennifer’s murder. Officers are not looking for anyone else in connection with her death, and Operation Kittiwake has now concluded.
For Jennifer’s family, the identification brought a measure of resolution but could not undo their loss. They asked that she be remembered not simply through the circumstances in which she was living, but as a gentle, funny and creative woman—a mother, daughter, sister and friend whose life mattered.
“The DNA evidence identifying Keith Dowbekin was described as overwhelming.”
Sussex Police investigation update