Eve, who was born in Germany, was discovered in her bedroom on March 18 1975, tied up with a scarf and with stockings tied around her legs. It was also believed that she had been raped.

Detectives at the time said there was no sign of forced entry to her Leyton flat, leading them to believe the model had invited the killer in and may have known them.

Police believe the provocative magazine cover may have aroused her killer’s interest in her – but they have never established his identity.

American businessman Hugh Hefner opened the first Playboy Club in Chicago in 1960.

The London equivalent, at a swanky Park Lane address, launched in July 1966, with the likes of Sean Connery, Roger Moore, Peter Sellers and Omar Sharif visiting the club, which helped boost its notoriety.

Eve started working there in November 1973. She was one of the Playboy Club’s trainee cocktail Bunnies, earning £1.50 an hour for an average 35-hour week, plus around £15 in tips.

Many of the women who worked there aspired to be singers, actresses or models.

Debbie Harry, most famously known as Blondie in her singing days, was also a Playboy Bunny in the New York club between 1968 and 1973.

Sheen Doran, a singer and former bunny, now 75, was one of Eve’s closest friends.

“It was very good money, but very hard work. You are a glorified waitress,” she told the BBC in 2025.

“You had to stand for ten hours in heels. But we felt safe on the job. We had room managers, and no one was allowed to touch us.

“We even had families there in the daytime. I used to sit with the children and draw. We were a lovely bunch of girls, we stuck by each other, and we all got on.”

Eve wanted to be a model, says Sheen, and when she was knocked back by Playboy magazine, she turned to the publication’s main British rival, Mayfair.

Eve starred as their ‘Girl of the Month’, for which she was paid £200. The article included 18 photographs and a full-frontal centre page nude spread.

The interview – which Eve told Sheen was made up – was full of salacious, sexual content.

Comments included that Eve liked to be “dominated sexually but not whipped or tied up” and that she got “very bored with straight sex”.

When the magazine came out in March 1975, Eve was given two months’ suspension from the Playboy Club.

 

 

BUNNY GIRL MURDER

She was killed on March 18, 1975. On the day of her death, Eve was last seen walking home from the nearby Leytonstone Tube station at about 3.30pm after a meeting with her agent.

At 4.30pm, neighbours heard a male and female voice and then a loud thud.

At 5.20pm her boyfriend returned home and found her body.

Sheen was on Oxford Street, less than a mile from the club, when she found out that Eve had been murdered.

“I was with another bunny friend when we saw the Evening Standard poster saying ‘Bunny Girl Dead’. We ran straight from Oxford Circus to the Playboy Club and into the bunny mother’s office,” she said.

A reconstruction was staged the week after Eve was killed, and police quizzed 500 men, including businessmen, actors and photographers.

Nobody was ever charged, and all suspects led to a dead end in the case.

COLD CASE LINK

Then, six months later, a 16-year-old schoolgirl called Lynne Weedon was raped and murdered in an alleyway near her home in Hounslow, West London.

Her case was linked to Eva’s in 2006 after DNA evidence on both of their bodies was found to match. They did not know each other.

But, despite fresh enquiries and appeals, police still have not found the perpetrator.

 

 

Police confirmed to the BBC that Eve and Lynne’s murders are still live investigations.

In 2015, Lynne’s mother, Margaret Weedon, made an impassioned plea for information. She said: “It has been 40 years since our beautiful young daughter Lynne was violently taken from us.

“We are well aware that whoever murdered Lynne also murdered Eve Stratford. That young lady also had her life snubbed out. Her family have died now. Another true life sentence.”

Barbara Haigh, who worked at the Playboy Club with Eve, told ITV show The Playboy Bunny Murder in 2023: “[I felt] rather sick. Really quite sick, that somebody could be so cruel as to murder a kid like that for no reason.

She added: “She would never have done anything to provoke that sort of murder. She’s only a kid, and there’s nobody left to defend her.

“Her parents are dead, her whole bloody family’s dead. There’s no one but us old boilers who were around in 1975 who can protect her.”

Sheen, who still remembers her friend 50 years after her death, revealed she quit working at the Playboy club shortly after.

She said it was “too much” for her and that “It still is.”

The Playboy Club closed down in 1981 and has since become a hotel, but it reopened its doors just down the road in 2011.

There is a £40,000 reward for information that brings their killer to justice.

Detective Chief Inspector Alison Foxwell, of the Met’s Specialist Crime Command, is leading the investigation.

She said “it would be inappropriate to provide a running commentary”, and the Metropolitan Police “does not identify any person who may, or may not be, subject to an investigation”.

There is no evidence to link the two murders to any other historic case.