A PENSIONER has been arrested over the Lady in the Lake murder after a woman was gagged and dumped in the water 34 years ago.

Shani Warren, 26, was discovered submerged in a lake in Taplow, Buckinghamshire, in April 1987.

The case was one of the Thames Valley Police's most obscure unsolved murders and today detectives revealed they have arrested a 65-year-old man on suspicion of Shani's murder.

"Officers have arrested a man in connection with a murder that occurred in 1987," a spokesman for the force said in a statement.

"The 65-year-old man was arrested this morning and is currently in police custody.

"He was arrested on suspicion of the murder of Shani Warren, whose body was found in a lake at Taplow in April 1987."

No further details of the suspect have been given.

Shani disappeared from her house in Stoke Poges on April 17, 1987, which she shared with two housemates and had been bought for by her parents.

After mowing the lawn, she set off in her car to dispose of the grass cuttings at the compost heap at her parents' home in Gerrards Cross, but she never returned.

Her body was found the next day at 6.30pm in the Taplow lake by Marjorie Arnold who was out walking her dog.

The German Shepherd showed an unusual interest in something in the lake and when Arnold investigated, she stumbled across Shani's bound and gagged body lying face-down in the water.

Shani had been sexually assaulted, gagged and bound, and died from drowning, investigators found.

Before her body was discovered, a lorry driver saw her car parked in a lay-by on the nearby A4, where he planned to park up for the night.

The car had been left unlocked, with one door slightly open, and some of Shani's personal belongings were found in the undergrowth near the vehicle, according to a reconstruction on BBC TV series Crimewatch.

Despite the airtime on Crimewatch, no one was ever apprehended for her murder and the coroner at the time recorded an open verdict.

For the first three days after Shani's body was found, cops treated her death as a suicide.

A murder probe was only launched after a full-scale post-mortem examination – wasting three valuable days of investigation.

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