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[MUSIC PLAYING]
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NANCY GRACE: Valentine's night, 1988, Butetown,
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Cardiff, a young woman, Lynette White, is reported missing.
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She hasn't been seen for days.
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It was unusual not to have seen Lynette for so long.
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I mean, certainly her friends grew
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concerned about her, which is why, eventually,
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they went to the police.
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NANCY GRACE: Within hours, police discover
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Lynette's mutilated body.
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She was virtually ripped to pieces
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by somebody with a large knife.
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MARTIN SHIPTON: A total of 69 stab
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wounds on her body, so it had been a very frenzied attack.
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NANCY GRACE: An investigation with many false leads
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results in three men wrongfully convicted.
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Their DNA had been done.
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And it eliminated them all, all of them.
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Nobody would believe this was even credible.
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However, it happened in real life.
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NANCY GRACE: But 25 years after her murder,
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the use of groundbreaking DNA technique
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leads investigators to the real killer.
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Forensic science is all about patterns.
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And so we wanted to get as much of an idea as possible
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about what had happened in this flat in Cardiff at the time.
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I'm in the office.
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And the phone call comes through.
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You got your match.
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NANCY GRACE: This is the story of the senseless
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and brutal killing of a young woman, a decade's long police
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investigation that includes one of the worst miscarriages
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of justice in UK history, and how
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the evolution of a new DNA method
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leads to a landmark resolution.
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I'm Nancy Grace.
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And this is "Bloodline Detectives."
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[THEME MUSIC]
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February 14 1988, Leanne Vilday walks into the Butetown police
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station in Cardiff to report her friend, Lynette White,
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is missing.
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Lynette White was a prostitute who had been
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functioning as that since--
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at the age of 14.
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Leanne Vilday was also a prostitute.
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She was a friend of Lynette's.
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And she was concerned because she had lent her room
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to Lynette for use as a place to have encounters with men who
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were paying for sex with her.
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But she hadn't been seen for a few days.
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Certainly her friends thought it was strange
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that she disappeared and increasingly grew
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concerned about her, which is why, eventually, they went
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to the police.
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NANCY GRACE: But police are already
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familiar with Lynette White.
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MARTIN SHIPTON: She was due to appear as a witness
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in a couple of court cases relating to lowlife
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activity in-- uh, in the Cardiff docks area, uh,
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and she disappeared.
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NANCY GRACE: They accompany Leanne Vilday to the apartment
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on James Street.
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When they got there, they couldn't
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gain entry into the flat, and the police were called.
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Um, so they forced entry.
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And on forcing entry, that's when they found Lynette White.
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MARTIN SHIPTON: Well, it was absolute devastation.
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They found her body on the floor.
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She had had her throat cut right the way across the throat.
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And, uh, in fact, there were like a total of 69 stab wounds
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on her body, so it had been a very frenzied attack.
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She was virtually ripped to pieces
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by somebody with a large knife, stabbing her 40, 50 times,
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mostly in the breast area.
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MARTIN SHIPTON: The blood was all over the flat, really.
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It was in the walls.
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It was on the floor.
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And, uh, whoever it was who attacked her had clearly used
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an enormous amount of force.
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NANCY GRACE: Detectives and investigators soon arrive
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to assess the crime scene.
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DAVID BARCLAY: The room she's working from is an upstairs
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flat above a bookie's.
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So at the left hand side of the bookie's, there's
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a door which is locked.
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And you go up a stair, and then there's an interior door which
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was also locked in those days.
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So you need two sets of keys to get into the flat.
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Lynette would have to let somebody in through two
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separate locked doors.
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BRENT PARRY: Lynette was in the room
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that faced out onto the street.
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There was a divan on the left hand side.
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And she was there, dead on the floor.
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Her watch was found.
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And it had stopped at 1:45 AM.
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And that led police to the conclusion
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that was probably the time when, uh, she was attacked and died.
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DAVID BARCLAY: She'd been stabbed
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repeatedly near the bed with her head
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between the wall and the bed.
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And you could see by the arterial sprays
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all over the wall in that area, that that's
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where the initial crime and the initial attack had happened.
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However, at some point after that,
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her body had been dragged over more towards the window,
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away from the bed.
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NANCY GRACE: A detailed sweep of the room
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was undertaken to gather as much forensic evidence as possible.
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BRENT PARRY: When you talk about 1988,
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their main focus was fingerprints.
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There was a box of condoms on the windowsill,
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used condoms on the windowsill.
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There was an unopened packet and-- and an unused condom
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on the bed.
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Clothing would have been recovered off the body.
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It even ended up with, what they were called,
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ninhydrin put on the walls, et cetera,
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to try and gain fingerprints off--
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off the wallpaper, et cetera.
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NANCY GRACE: By studying blood patterns at the scene,
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police determine there are two different blood
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samples in the room.
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DAVID BARCLAY: There was castoff blood
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under the window near the body, which was clearly
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not arterial spray from her.
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It was castoff blood from the offender.
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It's very common for somebody who stabbed somebody repeatedly
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to cut themselves on the knife.
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Sometime during the attack, his hand had slipped down
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on the knife because the knife handle
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had got slippery with blood, and he had cut his own hand.
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BRENT PARRY: Everything that was there was sort of taken away,
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and-- and-- and kept with the foresight of--
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of what might come in the future, I suppose.
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NANCY GRACE: Detectives now need to learn more about Lynette
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White, the 20-year-old woman is a familiar face in Butetown,
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but she has a very difficult existence.
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This is somebody who was, uh, a very vulnerable individual,
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who came from a-- a very disadvantaged background.
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She dropped out of school when she was very young.
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And from the age of 14, she drifted into prostitution.
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She was controlled by a gang who took her over to Bristol.
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And then she managed to escape from them
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and came back, but was still involved in prostitution.
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And obviously was a-- a vulnerable young person
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who was exploited by those people who wanted
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to make money out of her.
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She was a prostitute.
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But there's a lot more to it than that.
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That's how she was categorized.
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That was what she did to get money.
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But also, she was popular.
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She was well liked.
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The community were hard hit when she died.
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NANCY GRACE: Lynette White was also
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exploited by her boyfriend, Stephen Miller.
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He had a cocaine habit.
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And he used to get Lynette to pass her earnings onto him, uh,
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so he could buy the cocaine that he needed.
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And, uh, essentially, you know, he was
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the man who controlled things.
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NANCY GRACE: The autopsy provides more
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information for detectives.
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DAVID BARCLAY: And it was immediately obvious to all
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of us who looked at that crime that this was
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a sexually motivated homicide.
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One of the reasons for that is that she's
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wearing a thick puffer jacket so her body
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can't actually be seen.
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You can see the wounds on her face.
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There are a few wounds on her face.
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But when she's at post-mortem, there are 39 or 40 wounds just
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in the breast area here.
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So her breasts have been targeted by the offender.
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The original hypothesis was, by the laboratory
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and by the police, that this was a lone male, a client.
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There were good reasons for.
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That there was some money in her shoe,
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which is the normal place she would put money from a client.
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There was an unused condom on the bed.
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Again, that would be the sort of thing you'd expect of a client.
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And the whole motivation, the-- the sexually motivated aspect
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of her being stabbed like that, looks like a typical argument
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with a client who's lost it, and has then stabbed her and left.
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NANCY GRACE: Investigators are facing a real dilemma.
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They are sure that Lynette White brought the person to the flat.
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But is the killer someone close to her or an anonymous client?
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That's next on "Bloodline Detectives."
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[MUSIC PLAYING]
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Valentine's 1988, the discovery of the mutilated body
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of a well-known woman, 20-year-old Lynette White,
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launches a widespread investigation
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in the community of Butetown, a suburb of the Welsh capital,
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Cardiff, in the UK.
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Lynette White's heavily involved in prostitution
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and the drug scene.
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There were a number of issues going on,
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as there would be in people's lives, who sort
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of live that type of lifestyle.
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And there was always gaps in movements,
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et cetera, clothing, places that she would frequent.
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NANCY GRACE: A prime suspect is Lynette White's pimp,
00:11:00
her boyfriend, Stephen Miller.
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But in meeting with the prime suspect,
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one thing becomes apparent to investigators.
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He was wearing the same clothes that he was wearing
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on the night of the murder.
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It wasn't bloodstained.
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NANCY GRACE: Miller also gives an alibi that places him away
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from the scene of the crime.
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He was able to show that he was in a very well-known
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nightclub at the time of the murder, called the Casablanca,
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where he was playing pool.
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And people had identified him there.
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NANCY GRACE: A forensic analysis is carried out
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on Miller's belongings, and compared
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to the samples of the foreign blood group found at the scene.
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MARTIN SHIPTON: Lynette's sock, one of her socks
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which had a blood stain on it, they tested the blood.
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They discovered that it was not her blood group.
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It was a rare blood group, AB.
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So clearly, um, that would lead one to the conclusion
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that maybe the killer would have had
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that particular blood group.
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SATISH SEKAR: It should have been
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a forensic scientist's dream in terms of investigation.
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Because once you actually find the person,
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you can compare that person's uh,
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you know, fingerprints saliva, blood, et cetera, footprints,
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to those found in the flat.
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MARTIN SHIPTON: They took his clothes.
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They took his car.
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They took forensic tests.
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Um, they were actually unable to find any link at all.
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NANCY GRACE: Stephen Miller's alibi, plus forensic analysis
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at the crime scene, makes it impossible
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for him to be responsible for Lynette's murder.
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Forensic science is clearly saying, this did not happen.
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NANCY GRACE: With no major developments within Lynette's
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circle of friends, police conduct
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door-to-door questioning and takeover 3,500 statements.
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From the statements, they're able to look
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for another suspect, a man who was seen in the James Street
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area in bloodstained clothes.
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There were people who were saying
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that they had seen a dodgy looking
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white man lurking around.
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There were obviously initially convinced
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that this was somebody they wanted to speak to very much.
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And they had suspicions that this
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may well have been the killer.
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NANCY GRACE: A photo mock-up is released
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on the "Crime Watch" TV show.
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A man bearing a striking resemblance to the individual
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is detained, February, 25.
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But once again, a strong alibi plus forensics
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clear him as a suspect.
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Now detectives begin canvassing known clients and sex workers,
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plus people involved in previous criminal activity in the area.
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They weren't so much suspects.
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They were more persons of interest.
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There were some that they were taking more
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seriously than others, and they were looking
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at very sort of intensely.
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One of the people they honed in on was somebody who lived
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not too far away, who was, in fact, a paedophile,
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someone who had mental illness, and who
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was regarded as a-- as a-- as a potentially dangerous figure.
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NANCY GRACE: The suspect becomes known as Mr. X.
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And when results of a blood test come back,
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detectives become even more suspicious of him.
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Mr. X has five of the relevant blood groups.
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One the result is different.
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But it's quite significantly different.
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So you would-- you should eliminate him on that alone.
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But if you look at his character,
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you can see why they viewed him very seriously.
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NANCY GRACE: When interviewed by police,
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he admits he had paid Lynette White for sex.
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And he's also unable to account for his movements
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or give an alibi for the time period around the murder.
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When they're looking at this guy,
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they're looking at him very, very seriously.
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This is clearly their prime suspect.
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NANCY GRACE: For seven months of the investigation,
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all focus is on Mr. X. But when more detailed DNA results come
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back from the lab in November, it puts
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detectives at another dead end.
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He is eliminated on the basis of DNA and fingerprinting.
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It wasn't him.
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However, it's very, very clear the police
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believe they had got their man.
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NANCY GRACE: Nine months after the murder of Lynette White,
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frustrated detectives are back to square one.
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This is when the case begins to take on an even darker turn.
00:15:52
That's next on "Bloodline Detectives."
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[MUSIC PLAYING]
00:16:04
December, 1988, UK police in Cardiff, Wales,
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investigating the murder of Lynette White,
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exhaust a number of leads and decide
00:16:14
to re-interview friend, Leanne Vilday, also Leanne's roommate,
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Angela Psaila.
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They still believe, nine months
00:16:25
later, that these individuals knew more about the case than--
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than what they were saying.
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SATISH SEKAR: Basically threatened with prosecution
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for perjury and conspiracy to pervert the course of justice
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if she doesn't say what the police want her to say.
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NANCY GRACE: Under pressure, the women's
00:16:45
account of the night of the murder drastically changes.
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BRENT PARRY: Psaila and Vilday said they were in their flat
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when they heard screaming coming from James Street.
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So they left there and went to the scene.
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And when they got to the scene, that's when they saw
00:17:10
the-- the murder taking place.
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NANCY GRACE: They claim five men, already known to police,
00:17:16
are responsible for the murder.
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But there's one problem.
00:17:20
The people who were suspected of being in the room,
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according to the police story, all those people, their DNA
00:17:28
had been done and compared to the blood in the room.
00:17:33
And it eliminated them all, all of them.
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NANCY GRACE: But then, an unrelated event
00:17:39
changes the investigation and the lives of all those
00:17:43
under investigation again.
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In December, 1988, Angela Psaila was
00:17:52
badly assaulted by a client.
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And her blood group was sent into the lab.
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That turned out to have exactly the same blood
00:18:00
groups as the unknown blood from Lynette White's flat.
00:18:06
Clearly the fact that she had the same rare blood group
00:18:10
as the person that they'd come to conclusion
00:18:13
was the, uh, killer, gave them leverage over her.
00:18:18
So they frightened her into believing
00:18:21
that she was potentially going to face a murder charge.
00:18:24
And then realizing what they wanted to hear,
00:18:28
she then named these individuals as being present at the scene
00:18:33
and participating in the murder.
00:18:37
So armed with that "evidence, with inverted commas around it,
00:18:41
they then pulled in these guys.
00:18:43
And one of them, Stephen Miller, who was, uh,
00:18:48
the boyfriend and pimp of Lynette,
00:18:50
was interviewed for a very long time.
00:18:55
He was interviewed for 12 hours and 42 minutes,
00:18:59
almost 13 hours, over the five day period.
00:19:04
And the questioning was relentless.
00:19:06
The pressure was gradually building up.
00:19:09
He was denying having had anything
00:19:13
to do with the killing.
00:19:16
He was denying knowing anything about it.
00:19:19
The police officers did not believe him.
00:19:22
They kept on and on and on, telling him not
00:19:28
to use a lawyer, telling him how low he
00:19:32
was in terms of morality, and how he
00:19:35
had been using Lynette White.
00:20:03
Then the interviews continued.
00:20:06
And then in interviews 18 and 19,
00:20:11
he makes incriminating admissions
00:20:13
after leading interviews.
00:20:17
Where, in actual fact, the place kind of
00:20:19
suggests that perhaps he had murdered his girlfriend,
00:20:27
and because he was high on drugs, he couldn't remember it.
00:20:31
And he is beginning to accept that particular scenario.
00:20:51
He began to think maybe he had been there.
00:20:56
And that was the beginning of his breakdown.
00:20:59
Because now, he had placed himself,
00:21:02
possibly, in the flat at the time that Lynette was murdered.
00:21:08
And also, I suppose, he was being fed with the information
00:21:12
that the witnesses said he was there.
00:21:14
So therefore, amazingly enough, you
00:21:18
get someone admitting to being present during that murder,
00:21:24
when--
00:21:25
that-- that he wasn't.
00:21:28
But he's not the only one who said they were there, is he?
00:21:30
You know, you've got all these witnesses saying it as well.
00:21:33
NANCY GRACE: The group of men eventually,
00:21:35
who eventually become known as the Cardiff Five,
00:21:38
are charged with the murder of Lynette White.
00:21:42
SATISH SEKAR: There is no evidence whatsoever that five
00:21:46
men were in that flat, committing this murder,
00:21:50
with or without the two women, Angela Psaila and Leanne Vilday
00:21:55
as well.
00:21:56
They basically say it's inconvenient,
00:21:59
we're not going to listen to what the crime scene
00:22:01
and the evidence is telling us.
00:22:03
We know who did it.
00:22:05
No, you didn't.
00:22:07
You knew what you thought, and you inflicted that,
00:22:12
and caused one of the worst miscarriages of justice
00:22:15
in British history.
00:22:17
Nobody would believe this was even credible.
00:22:21
However, it happened in real life.
00:22:24
NANCY GRACE: On October 5, 1989, what
00:22:27
would become the longest murder trial in British history,
00:22:31
begins.
00:22:33
There were five men on trial.
00:22:35
Two of them, the Atkins cousins, were acquitted.
00:22:38
The three men who were convicted at this trial in November 1990
00:22:44
were Stephen Miller, Yusef Abdullahi, and Tony Paris.
00:22:50
And so they were all convicted of murder
00:22:53
and given life sentences.
00:22:55
But they had always maintained their innocence.
00:22:58
And very quickly, there was a big campaign
00:23:02
that was launched to try to get their convictions overturned.
00:23:07
And eventually there was a momentum which grew.
00:23:11
And there was a--
00:23:13
an appeal.
00:23:13
And the appeal turned out to be successful.
00:23:16
NANCY GRACE: In December 1992, all three men
00:23:20
had their convictions declared unsafe and unsatisfactory.
00:23:25
The men are released.
00:23:28
But underlying everything was the fact that there was still
00:23:32
a killer out there, and clearly someone
00:23:34
who was potentially dangerous and needed to be tracked down.
00:23:38
NANCY GRACE: Police are once again back to square one.
00:23:41
But next, we'll see how science and the bloodline detectives
00:23:45
dramatically change the investigation surrounding
00:23:49
the death of Lynette White.
00:23:51
[MUSIC PLAYING]
00:24:00
By the end of the 1990s, UK police
00:24:03
are still hunting the killer of 20-year-old Lynette White,
00:24:08
savagely stabbed dead in Cardiff, Wales, February, 1988.
00:24:16
Her case has become controversial
00:24:19
as a result of false convictions of three men.
00:24:23
With the men now released, police are back to square one.
00:24:27
In 1999, 11 years after the murder, the case is reopened.
00:24:34
We had to set a team up.
00:24:36
And whatever we did, as far as this investigation
00:24:39
was concerned, there had to be no involvement with
00:24:43
the previous investigation led.
00:24:47
We knew how much it meant for South Wales Police.
00:24:49
South Wales Police needed to get their reputation back
00:24:52
of being a force that is capable of investigating
00:24:55
the most difficult offenses.
00:24:56
It had to be very clinical.
00:25:01
ANGELA GALLOP: DNA profiling was just coming in at the time
00:25:04
of the original investigation.
00:25:06
And during the years after that and before we were
00:25:09
asked to help, there had been a number
00:25:12
of advances in DNA profiling.
00:25:14
And this case was so important, um,
00:25:19
to the police and the local community
00:25:21
that every time there was a new technique developed,
00:25:24
they would go back to samples.
00:25:27
And they took a sample after sample,
00:25:30
trying these new techniques.
00:25:31
And for one reason or another, all of these tests
00:25:33
had been unsuccessful.
00:25:37
However, by 1999, 2000, it was much easier to get DNA.
00:25:45
NANCY GRACE: The focus now is to take a fresh look
00:25:48
at the old crime scene evidence for any new DNA samples that
00:25:52
could be linked to the suspect.
00:25:54
It was very important that we got enough of it,
00:25:57
and in enough different places to form the kind of picture
00:26:01
you would expect if this had come from the offender.
00:26:05
NANCY GRACE: The forensic team reviews
00:26:06
every detail of the findings at the crime scene in 1988.
00:26:12
The room itself was quite dark.
00:26:14
The only light in it, because there
00:26:16
was no electricity in the flat, was from a streetlight
00:26:18
50 yards away.
00:26:21
Now we've got the person who's committed this crime having
00:26:24
to find their way out of the flat,
00:26:25
a flat that's strange to him.
00:26:28
And he's having to do that by feeling his way out,
00:26:31
where the door is, where the handle of the door is.
00:26:33
And he's got to do that with at least one
00:26:36
heavily bloodstained hand, because we
00:26:38
know he's cut himself during the crime and he's bleeding.
00:26:42
[MUSIC PLAYING]
00:26:53
We revisited the flat during the night, at the same time.
00:26:56
So it was equally dark.
00:26:57
It was in December.
00:26:58
It was dark.
00:27:00
And we switched off all the lights
00:27:01
so that I could pretend to be the offender in the dark,
00:27:05
blundering out of the flat.
00:27:07
And in this case, we were helped partly
00:27:10
by the scene photographs that had been taken by the police
00:27:12
at the time, which showed long shots and close
00:27:15
ups of a lot of the blood staining,
00:27:16
but also because the police, through their interests
00:27:19
and fingerprints, had taken all of these strips of wallpaper
00:27:22
off the walls in the bedroom where the attack happened,
00:27:25
but also in the passageway outside.
00:27:27
And so we had all of these strips of wallpaper.
00:27:30
And by re-erecting those on boards,
00:27:33
we could kind of recreate areas of the scene,
00:27:35
which was incredibly helpful.
00:27:38
So it brought the whole scene back to life.
00:27:43
NANCY GRACE: Every item preserved from the scene
00:27:46
is closely examined in hopes of finding the offender's DNA.
00:27:51
ANGELA GALLOP: One of these items
00:27:52
was a small bit of cellophane, which had originally formed
00:27:56
the end of one of those cellophane
00:27:58
covers that you get on cigarette packets.
00:28:00
And so it was just a very small bit of cellophane
00:28:03
that had been sort of probably stood on,
00:28:06
and was completely out of shape.
00:28:07
But there was one particular stain
00:28:10
on this piece of cellophane which really, uh,
00:28:12
spiked our interest.
00:28:14
And that was because it was a round stain, perfectly round.
00:28:17
So it had obviously arisen on this cellophane
00:28:20
as some kind of interception of an airborne droplet of blood.
00:28:24
And that's exactly what you would expect to come off
00:28:26
an offender, you know, as he was bleeding from the hand
00:28:29
or from wherever.
00:28:32
And so we were very interested in this small, round stain.
00:28:35
And we did some profiling on that.
00:28:37
And we got a nearly full profile, male profile,
00:28:40
of foreign blood.
00:28:44
We called it Cellophane Man.
00:28:46
And so that was the first time when we got something
00:28:50
approaching a full profile that was different from the victim
00:28:54
at the crime scene.
00:28:55
So we were very excited about Cellophane Man.
00:28:58
NANCY GRACE: Now, the hunt is on to find a full DNA
00:29:01
profile for Cellophane Man.
00:29:04
ANGELA GALLOP: Obviously we were trying to find more of it.
00:29:06
And we were trying to find it in areas that looked as if they
00:29:09
were relevant to the crime.
00:29:11
We looked on a cardboard box, which
00:29:13
had been near Lynette's head.
00:29:15
And there were a few splashes of blood on that.
00:29:17
And again, by selecting very carefully, individual-- one
00:29:20
or two individuals stains to look at,
00:29:21
we found some more of Cellophane Man.
00:29:24
One of the key findings in the flat was--
00:29:27
we strongly suspected that the blood
00:29:30
on the wall underneath the window
00:29:32
was castoff blood from the offender.
00:29:35
And the best place to look for that
00:29:37
was where the blood had run down.
00:29:38
There's a picture of the streak of blood going down and resting
00:29:42
on top of the skirting board.
00:29:45
ANGELA GALLOP: The place had been repainted
00:29:46
twice in the intervening years.
00:29:48
But we thought, well, why don't we have a look at the board
00:29:50
and see if, underneath this paint,
00:29:52
there was any of this blood left.
00:29:53
Because if we were really lucky, the person
00:29:55
who painted over the skirting board first after the attack
00:30:00
may not have bothered to wipe down the surfaces first.
00:30:03
And then we scraped away under a microscope
00:30:06
to remove the layers of paint that had been applied
00:30:09
in the intervening time, being very careful
00:30:11
not to scrape too deeply, in which case
00:30:13
we would lose any blood that was there,
00:30:15
or not scrape too shallowly, in which case
00:30:17
we'd never expose it.
00:30:18
So it was quite a tricky thing to do that.
00:30:20
But in that way, um, we managed to find some blood
00:30:24
on the skirting board.
00:30:25
And we found some blood that had gone down
00:30:26
the back of the skirting board.
00:30:28
Obviously there was a little gap there.
00:30:30
And by profiling that, we then got a full DNA profile which
00:30:33
matched Cellophane Man and matched
00:30:35
some of this other blood we were getting.
00:30:37
And so we were gradually building up a picture of blood
00:30:40
around Lynette's body.
00:30:42
Um, and then we went on to have a look at our clothing, which
00:30:45
was really challenging because it was
00:30:46
covered in her own blood, of course,
00:30:48
because of all her injuries.
00:30:51
And we managed to find some offender blood on her jacket
00:30:54
and on her sweatshirt.
00:30:57
NANCY GRACE: The same DNA profile
00:30:59
were found on the front door, the exit route for the killer.
00:31:03
In the end, we had this pattern
00:31:06
of-- quite extensive pattern--
00:31:08
of offender blood in and around the area
00:31:11
where the attack happened on Lynette's body and on the exit
00:31:14
route out.
00:31:15
NANCY GRACE: Investigators finally
00:31:16
have the definitive forensic evidence that could
00:31:19
lead them to solve the case.
00:31:21
Just as important, it's also proof of who is
00:31:25
not responsible for the murder.
00:31:28
And that profile wasn't from any of the people who
00:31:31
had been, uh, charged initially, nor from any
00:31:34
of the witnesses who claim to have been at the scene.
00:31:37
It was the single, lone offender who everybody
00:31:40
had suspected way back in 1988.
00:31:44
NANCY GRACE: When we return, the race
00:31:46
is on for the bloodline detectives
00:31:48
to catch a killer, to discover who the DNA profile belongs to,
00:31:55
the person who murdered Lynette White.
00:31:59
We need to find who that belongs to.
00:32:03
[MUSIC PLAYING]
00:32:12
NANCY GRACE: By the end of the 1990s,
00:32:14
UK police finally believe they're closer to discovering
00:32:18
the identity of the killer of Lynette
00:32:21
White, a Cardiff sex worker murdered
00:32:24
in Butetown, January, 1988.
00:32:28
Police have a DNA profile of the killer.
00:32:30
But there's a hitch.
00:32:33
Now we've got a full profile.
00:32:34
And it's been uploaded onto the DNA database, but hasn't hit.
00:32:38
So the offender has not committed any crime for which
00:32:41
he has had his DNA been taken.
00:32:44
NANCY GRACE: Investigators need to come up with a new plan.
00:32:48
It was thought, at that time, that familial
00:32:50
DNA was a possibility, that crime runs in families.
00:32:55
And it's possible that a relative, a son or a daughter
00:32:59
or a relative, a brother, of the offender
00:33:03
might be on the database.
00:33:05
And so we looked at our online profile.
00:33:09
And we selected that component, um, of it that was the rarest.
00:33:14
And I think it occurred about one in 100 people or something
00:33:17
like that.
00:33:18
And we then searched the database for people who
00:33:21
had this particular component.
00:33:23
And we tried to narrow the search
00:33:24
as much as possible so it was the Cardiff area, it was men.
00:33:28
And I think there was some sort of age range we put on it.
00:33:31
NANCY GRACE: The initial search results
00:33:33
in 600 possible matches.
00:33:35
The team whittles those matches down
00:33:38
until they finally come across a sample
00:33:40
that catches their attention.
00:33:43
We came up with a figure of the overall rarity
00:33:47
of the association, um, with offender blood.
00:33:51
And one profile stood out head and shoulders
00:33:54
above the other as being, um, a much-- a more powerful
00:33:58
link than any of the others.
00:34:00
And so it was that family that we decided to investigate,
00:34:03
or investigate first anyway.
00:34:07
NANCY GRACE: The match on the database
00:34:08
is that of a 14-year-old boy who recently
00:34:12
committed a petty crime.
00:34:14
Detectives go to speak with him.
00:34:17
So when we went there, obviously
00:34:19
the boy's profile didn't match.
00:34:22
But the mother said, well, look, I'm,
00:34:26
um, separated from the father.
00:34:28
So we after the father.
00:34:31
And it was very interesting because his DNA
00:34:34
was very close to the profile we had, but didn't match.
00:34:37
So it wasn't him.
00:34:38
But we were getting more confident we
00:34:40
were within the right family.
00:34:42
We then discovered the father had a brother.
00:34:44
So the police took a sample from him.
00:34:46
And we had a look at him.
00:34:47
And again, like the father, he was very close to the-- um,
00:34:52
to the offender profile, but not a match.
00:34:54
And then the police discovered that there was actually
00:34:57
another brother who nobody had seen
00:34:59
much of in the last few years.
00:35:01
And he said, we don't know where he lives.
00:35:03
He-- he-- he-- he's left the family.
00:35:05
He hasn't bothered to speak to us for-- for years, et cetera.
00:35:08
NANCY GRACE: Now sure they're closer than ever to the target,
00:35:12
investigators gather information on the estranged brother
00:35:15
and managed to track him down.
00:35:18
So officers went to see him, told him why we were there,
00:35:21
that we wanted his DNA.
00:35:23
And-- and when they went to see him,
00:35:25
and told him what we were doing, he said,
00:35:27
well, I can tell you that I did have sex with that woman days
00:35:31
before the murder.
00:35:33
So alarm bells start ringing, don't they?
00:35:38
MARTIN SHIPTON: He was a man called Jeffrey Gafoor who
00:35:40
had worked as a security guard, lived about 20 miles north
00:35:44
of Cardiff, and hadn't actually been named before at all,
00:35:48
or hadn't been, um, seen as a--
00:35:53
as a suspect.
00:35:55
BRENT PARRY: At that point, we took his DNA.
00:35:58
We sent it to Forensic Alliance for them to look at.
00:36:02
And lo and behold, the next day I'm in the office,
00:36:07
and the phone call comes through.
00:36:09
You got your match.
00:36:13
The DNA actually nailed him.
00:36:18
NANCY GRACE: Detectives quickly began
00:36:19
looking into Gafoor's history.
00:36:22
Of all the cases I dealt with--
00:36:24
I dealt with 40 murders from beginning
00:36:26
to end-- he is more likely to be the most
00:36:28
insignificant individual I've ever come across.
00:36:34
BRENT PARRY: Very much a loner, he took up
00:36:37
a job as night watchman.
00:36:40
Um, so he wasn't--
00:36:42
never had no friends.
00:36:44
We tried to do a lot of tracing around his movements,
00:36:48
et cetera, over the years.
00:36:49
Because if he had committed a murder like this,
00:36:52
then was another murder of a similar nature
00:36:55
had been committed where he was or where
00:36:57
he was working at the time?
00:36:59
But, uh, nothing ever came of that.
00:37:04
NANCY GRACE: After 15 years searching
00:37:06
for the man responsible for murder,
00:37:09
the arrest of Jeffrey Gafoor must be carefully planned.
00:37:14
We didn't want to spoil the manner in which
00:37:17
the investigation has gone.
00:37:19
So the bottom line was, we put surveillance on Jeffrey Gafoor.
00:37:24
And we were putting in place an arrest
00:37:27
and an interview strategy, which was going
00:37:29
to take place on the Tuesday.
00:37:33
And this was a Friday evening.
00:37:36
The surveillance team was in place.
00:37:38
I got home.
00:37:39
And lo and behold, I'm having my tea,
00:37:41
and I get a phone call from the surveillance saying,
00:37:43
I don't want to worry you, however, he's
00:37:45
visited two shops.
00:37:47
He's bought toilet paper, a "TV Times,"
00:37:50
and also he's buying packets of paracetamol.
00:37:54
NANCY GRACE: After the purchase of so many painkillers,
00:37:58
it becomes evident what Gafoor is planning.
00:38:01
So I said either he's got a very bad headache,
00:38:03
or he's going to do something stupid here.
00:38:05
So I said, get the team in there.
00:38:07
They broke in there.
00:38:08
They got in.
00:38:09
He'd taken all the paracetamols.
00:38:11
And it's only then he made a disclosure, admitted
00:38:13
any sort of involvement.
00:38:16
He says he's taken the paracetamol tablets,
00:38:18
um, he deserves to die because he killed Lynette White,
00:38:22
and he knew this was coming.
00:38:24
Um, and we rushed him to hospital.
00:38:28
NANCY GRACE: Gafoor spends four nights in the hospital
00:38:30
and is interrogated upon release.
00:38:34
He then formally admits to the murder of Lynette White.
00:38:39
BRENT PARRY: I went there.
00:38:40
We argued after I'd given the money
00:38:42
because I didn't want to carry on with what I was doing.
00:38:47
I wanted my money back.
00:38:48
She refused.
00:38:49
And I-- I-- I killed her.
00:38:52
I just went berserk.
00:38:55
He was quite clear that he was the one that the police were
00:38:58
looking for, and was now prepared, at last,
00:39:01
to take his punishment.
00:39:02
NANCY GRACE: Gafoor goes to trial for the murder
00:39:04
of Lynette white, July 2003.
00:39:07
ANGELA GALLOP: I think those cases--
00:39:09
and this is a very good example of it--
00:39:11
where you are able to provide what turns out to be persuasive
00:39:14
evidence to a court to enable it to convict someone,
00:39:18
and you automatically and simultaneously exonerate people
00:39:22
who had been originally convicted of the crime
00:39:25
or had been charged with a crime or even suspected,
00:39:28
it always makes it doubly satisfying.
00:39:30
And I think we definitely felt that in this particular case,
00:39:34
and felt, um, very sad for the Cardiff Three, for all that
00:39:38
they had gone through, as I think, you know, anybody would.
00:39:42
NANCY GRACE: Jeffrey Gafoor is sentenced to life in prison.
00:39:47
MARTIN SHIPTON: Familial DNA is an amazing tool because it
00:39:50
enables crimes that once were thought to be insoluble,
00:39:54
incapable of being resolved, people
00:39:57
who have been responsible for murders in the past
00:40:01
which have not been resolved, and where they appear to have
00:40:05
got away with it, must constantly
00:40:07
live in fear of the knock at the door,
00:40:10
as happened, of course, to Jeffrey
00:40:12
Gafoor, um, the-- the killer-- or the real killer
00:40:15
of Lynette White.
00:40:17
NANCY GRACE: The Cellophane Man is finally unmasked.
00:40:22
Jeffrey Gafoor, a coward who attempted
00:40:25
to take his own life to evade justice is finally behind bars.
00:40:31
Thanks to Gafoor's family tree, the bloodline detectives
00:40:35
are able to identify him through familial DNA,
00:40:39
putting a name to Lynette White's killer.
00:40:43
But make no mistake.
00:40:45
The Cardiff's Three were wrongfully
00:40:48
sentenced for crimes they did not commit,
00:40:51
a traumatic and harrowing experience
00:40:54
for each one of them.
00:40:56
They spent two years in custody.
00:40:58
One of the man, Yusef Abdullahi, commits suicide.
00:41:03
In this case, the blood line detectives
00:41:06
determine once and for all who committed this heinous crime,
00:41:10
and just as important, who did not.
00:41:14
I'm Nancy Grace.
00:41:15
Thank you for joining me and the bloodline detectives.
00:41:27
[THEME MUSIC]
