Mamurras is not known for much, but when I have heard about it, it has often been in relation to murders or crime. Considering most of Albania is safe and crime-free unless you are a drug dealer or trafficker, you must have worked quite hard over the years to get this reputation, considering its small size and relative obscurity.
It came as no surprise to me then that my reason for visiting Mamurras was to track down the location of a century-old murder, long solved but still shrouded in mystery.
On 6 April 1924, two US businessmen, Robert Coleman and George De Long, were travelling from Tirana to Shkodra, accompanied by their driver, a Montenegrin chap called Luka. After passing Mamurras, five armed bandits stopped the rental Ford in its tracks and opened fire, killing the two tourists and injuring the driver. The incident caused a stir internationally, and the main defendant, Vesel Hidri, was hanged in the middle of Tirana.
One hundred years later and armed with an old, hand-drawn map full of landmarks that no longer exist and descriptors such as “thick forest “ and “sawmill “, we pulled into the sleepy, dusty town of Mamurras.
The town comprises a long main street flanked by sprouting arms with tired-looking communist-era blocks, municipal buildings, expensive-looking cafes and plenty of lavazhes. In a small square under the shade of old trees, like in every other city and village in Albania, sat even older men, soaked in rakia and cigarette smoke, playing dominoes and chess while bickering about the past and the future.
We stopped and called over a portly man who was standing minding his own business outside a half-empty cafe. With hesitance in his eyes, he shuffled over and looked at us with suspicion, addressing us in heavily accented English.
A conversation ensued with Perparim (son of a communist-era mayor of Mamurras, with family living in the UK), with us speaking in Albanian and him answering in a mixture of English, Albanian and sometimes French.
It appeared he was unsure exactly where the scene of the crime was, but sharing our hunger for adventure, he jumped in the car and joined the expedition. We lurched out of the city, following a winding road that led to the north, accompanied by the smell of sulfur, a small river, and fields lined with heady reeds and grasses.
I perused the hand-drawn map, comparing it to the modern, pixelated Google equivalent in my hands. We stopped at several cafes where tanned local men with shifty feet and cigarettes dangling from their lips looked at us with confusion and slight concern. No one seemed to know exactly where the scene of the crime was, but everyone knew what we were talking about.
Eventually, I got to a place on Google Maps which aligned with the hand-drawn map. While the forests and sawmill had long gone, I managed to pinpoint the location by following the curve of the river and counting the bridges (three) that crossed it.
Shouting “STOP” as we reached the place I was sure it was, I jumped out of the car with excitement as my compatriots remained rather confused. Pausing to talk to some local women with white headscarves and bemused smiles, I left them on the other side of the third bridge as I continued my detective activities.
Eventually, I found what I was confident was the exact place the car was stopped, and the fatal shots were fired. Springing forth from the earth at the side of the road were two lone, blood-red poppies.
Coincidence or confirmation of my sleuthing? We will never really know.
But the story took an even more curious twist, around one year later in the centre of Brussels. I was there to promote my first book, walking through the Grand Place in the centre of the city. A woman with brown wavy hair came up to me and cautiously asked me if my name was Alice. I replied yes and extended my hand to greet her. She explained that she was the daughter of Preparim, our guide in Mamurras, and he had happily told the whole family about his encounter with a British journalist on the trail of a century-old murder in his sleepy little town.
