On April 30, 1994, a most horrific murder took place in Woking.
It was a vicious vendetta, with its roots in the bloody and tangled politics of the Russian Caucasus, and resulted in 33-year-old Karen Reed being mistakenly shot dead instead of her sister at their home on Woking’s Barnsbury estate.
No one has ever been convicted of the murder. However, the story has been in the news once again as the charity Crimestoppers is currently offering up to £20,000 for new information, with the money being donated anonymously.
Karen worked as a geophysicist in Addlestone. Her sister, Alison Ponting, 31, worked for the BBC World Service as a producer for its Russian and Ukrainian sections.
The connection with the Russian underworld was with Alison’s husband, Gagic Ter-Ogrannsyan, an Armenian, who, at the time of Karen’s murder, was serving a life sentence in the UK for his involvement in the killing of the Outsiev brothers. They were high-ranking officials from the semi-automatous Russian enclave of Chechnya.
Gagic Ter-Ogrannsyan and his associate Mkritch Martirossian had been suspected of being KGB operatives, while the Outsiev brothers were allegedly trying to covertly acquire 2,000 Stinger missiles for use by the Muslim Azerbaijanis in their war against neighbouring Christian Armenia.
The brothers were shot dead in a luxury London penthouse suite in February 1993. This is the plausible explanation why later Alison Ponting is thought to have been the revenge killing target.
Researcher Mark Coxhead has looked at back copies of the News & Mail on microfilm at the Surrey History Centre that reveal how the newspaper reported the murder 30 years ago and other events leading up to it.
In its edition of April 21, 1994, it reported police officers had found a hand-gun abandoned in a car after a chase in Woking the previous Friday evening. The officers were on a routine patrol when they spotted the car in Egley Road at 9pm.
When pursued, the driver sped away towards Hawthorn Road, Kingfield, where he abandoned the still-moving car and ran into woods off Bonsey Lane.
In the car, a holdall was found containing a 9mm Hungarian automatic pistol fitted with a silencer, sophisticated ammunition, a large commando knife in a leather sheath, a rare blue tartan cap and a marked map of the Barnsbury estate.
Alison Ponting had been alerted by the police of this on Friday, April 15. A panic alarm with a dedicated link to the local police station had also been installed in her home.
In the News & Mail of April 28, 1994, under the headline “Women sue police over photos” it reported that Alison Ponting and her mother Iris were suing the police for compensation as the police had released “photos” to the press “to ensure sensational coverage” of the murder trial of Alison’s Pointing’s husband.
In a writ issued at the High Court in London, the women said their flat was searched by the police on March 2, 1993, and officers took three photographs, one of which was later released to national newspapers. The photo in question featured Alison Pointing on a beach in Malta with her husband, who was holding a pistol-shaped lighter, and his associate Mkritch Martirossian.
The News & Mail’s front page headline in its edition of 5 May 1994 was “Doorstep assassin in fatal blunder?”
Reporter Ken McCormack wrote: A hitman dodged police security measures to gun down a woman at the door of her home in Woking on Saturday evening in what police are calling a “cold-blooded, callous and professional” killing. Det Supt John Stewardson said Karen Reed was shot several times in the torso.
Next week: the News & Mail’s report of the murder, plus Karen Reed’s funeral in which the News & Mail’s photographer Bill Beminster was given exclusive access to take photographs from a distance.