A BOOK chronicling the shocking murder of a well-to-do Jewish couple in Edgware was launched today, 60 years after it happened.

Murder Without Motive? profiles the deaths of Leopold and Esther Goodman and is written by Jeff Grout, the son of the original detective on the case, using his father Philip's original notes.

Just 88-days after the murder, Daniel Raven, the couple's son-in-law and father of their first grandchild who had been born days before, was hanged for the killings.

The story of the murder on October 10, 1949, was covered in detail for the Edgware Times by former reporter and current blogger Dennis Signy.

This morning Mr Grout, a renowned business writer and motivational speaker, told an audience assembled in a restaurant on the South Bank about how he had come to write the book.

“One day about eight years ago my wife and I had gone for tea with my parents, and my wife had asked my father to tell her about one of his cases,” he said.

“Now my father had worked on many interesting crimes over the years including the Great Train Robbery, the Profumo Affair and the Hanratty case, but he chose to tell her about this murder.

“Sadly a couple of years later he died, and while my brother and I were going through his personal effects we found one neat file he had kept from his time in the police, which was the Goodman murders.”

The file was stored away, before Mr Grout decided to open it again and, with the help of co-author Liz Fisher, dig into the background of the murders.

They set about finding people who remembered the crime and launched an appeal through the Edgware Times to get people to come forward.

He added: “One person who read that was a man called Ashleigh Brilliant, who was a 15-year-old living in Edgware at the time of the murders saw it online.

“He sent us his diaries for that period of 1949 and 1950 and they really helped to fill in the pieces.

“A lot of other people who knew the Ravens also came forward to tell us their story, so it really helped us piece together a fuller account of what happened.”

The book reveals Daniel Raven had a mental health issues and may have had a defence of insanity during the three-day trial, but it was never used.

One thing which troubled Mr Grout while writing the book was that the police were never able to fully establish a motive for the chilling attack.

He said: “I do think Danny Raven was guilty, but I think from looking at it he had a terrible temper and money problems. He had stolen from the Goodmans while working for them before.

“It's been kind of a tribute to my dad to work on this book, finishing something he started. I think he kept the file because it was his first big case as a detective so it was some memorabilia.”

The book is available now in hardback.