Photo credit: The UK times.
The Case
On 23 November afternoon in the summer of 1983, a 15-year-old schoolgirl, Lynda Mann, went missing on her way home from babysitting. She was found raped and murdered the following day on the grounds of Carlton Hayes psychiatric hospital in Narborough, Leicestershire, known locally as the Black Pad. Forensic examination of the semen sample showed the culprit of type A blood, which constitutes only 10% of men. However, the police failed to locate and identify a suspect.
Three years later, on Thursday evening, on 31 July 1986, another 15-year-old schoolgirl, Dawn Ashworth, set off from a friend’s house in the village of Narborough, Leicestershire, to walk home. It was a few minutes from her home in the nearby village of Enderby. While walking home, she took a shortcut along a footpath and vanished. Two days later, her dead body was found in twigs, branches, and torn-up nettles in a wooded area near a footpath known locally as Ten Pound Lane. She was similarly also assaulted savagely, raped, and strangled. The pathologist established that she had struggled considerably before being raped and strangled. The semen samples collected also revealed the same blood type.
Given the similitudes of the attack and location, police realized they were looking for a serial killer and believed the killer could be a local man who knew the area and victims. However, not enough leads or evidence connected anybody to the murder, and the police did not find a suspect.
The Initial Suspect
Richard Buckland, a local 17-year-old with learning difficulties working at Carlton Hayes psychiatric hospital who knew Dawn, had been spotted near Dawn Ashworth’s murder scene and knew unreleased details about the body.
In 1986, Under questioning, he would repeatedly admit the crime and withdraw the admission for Dawn’s murder. However, Buckland was adamant that he was not guilty and refused to confess to the murder of Lynda. But, the police were convinced he was lying since, in their certainty, the same person had taken both girls’ lives. So, on 10 August, he was charged with Dawn’s murder.
The Exoneration
Meanwhile, on 10 September 1984, five miles northwest of Narborough, at the University of Leicester, geneticist Alec Jeffreys made a remarkable – and entirely accidental – discovery during a failed experiment to study how inherited illnesses pass through families.
He had extracted DNADNA, or Deoxyribonucleic Acid, is the genetic material found in cells, composed of a double helix structure. It serves as the genetic blueprint for all living organisms. from cells and attached it to photographic film, which was then left in a developing photographic tank. Next, radioactive probes – identifying the repeated DNA sections – were added. Everything was then placed in a developing photographic tank. Removing the film from its tank, he found an odd array of blobs and lines, each representing different numbers of DNA repeats in the various individuals and animals in the experiment. Jeffreys quickly realized that every individual whose cells had been used in the experiment could be identified with great precision. Furthermore, the technique could be used to determine kinship.
Jeffreys and his team published a paper about DNA fingerprinting in Journal Nature in March 1985, triggering several newspaper reports. It grabbed National Attention.
Thus, not long after, on request from the investigators of the double-murder case, Sir Alec Jeffreys using his newly discovered technique, compared the DNA samples from the murder cases with a blood sample from Richard Buckland. This proved that the same man murdered both girls; however, this man was not Richard Buckland.
Buckland, clearly innocent, was set free – after more than three months in custody. He was the first person to be exonerated in history through DNA ProfilingDNA profiling, also known as DNA fingerprinting, is a significant technique in forensic science that identifies individual's unique DNA patterns for various purposes such as establishing familial relationships or tracing genealogical roots. The technique, which involves.... The police were back at square one in their hunt for a highly-dangerous double killer.
The Beginning of the Manhunt:
The following month, the detectives decided that the technology that exonerated Buckland could be used to catch the killer. Thus in January 1987, began the first-ever mass DNA screen. The police and forensic scientists screened blood and saliva samples from men aged between 17 and 34 living in Enderby, Narborough, and nearby Littlethorpe villages, who did not have an alibi for the murders.
The Conviction
Four thousand had provided samples (turnout rate was 98%) without success by September – until a chance remark transformed the investigation.
In August that year, more than a year after the killing of Dawn, a woman overheard a colleague, Ian Kelly, who was having a pint with a few friends in a pub in Leicester and admitted to his mates he had provided blood on behalf of a friend, Colin Pitchfork. The man was arrested and questioned.
Pitchfork had persuaded Kelly to take the test, claiming he had already given a sample to a friend with previous convictions for indecent exposure. In addition, Pitchfork had doctored his passport, inserting Kelly’s photograph.
The police arrested Colin Pitchfork on 19 September 1987, and scientists found that his DNA profile matched that of the murderer; he admitted to raping and killing the two girls. On 23 January 1988, Colin Pitchfork was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murders and was told he had to serve a minimum of 30 years.
