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I'm Nancy Grace, and this is "Bloodline Detectives."
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Every parent's worst nightmare is this--
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the police broadcasting the name of their daughter
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on a loudspeaker.
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"Is anyone missing a girl named Melanie?"
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Only days earlier, 17-year-old Melanie Road,
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ecstatic about her family's new home in the magnificent city
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of Bath in Southern England.
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Bath's beauty is in its age and distinct honey-colored stone
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buildings.
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But on a summer day almost four decades ago,
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Bath's rich history is cracked with a murder
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that makes national news.
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There are no witnesses and few leads.
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When it's over, this will become an iconic case
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for the bloodline detectives.
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NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): June 8, 1984, a young woman's body
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is discovered on a small road close
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to her home in Bath, England.
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The attack was horrendous, horrific, frenzied.
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Stabbed 26 times.
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NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): Straight away, police
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cordoned off the area and began an intensive search
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to find the person that committed the brutal murder.
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It's about trying to interpret what
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the crime scene can tell you.
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It's really a picture, and we have to try and fit
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all the pieces in together.
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They actually find 86 spots of blood.
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And it was, I reckon, probably somewhere
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in the region of a quarter mile, the full trail.
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NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): The murder
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shocks the picturesque city of Bath to the core.
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It's a case that shocked the city.
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It hung over the city like a cloud, that uncertainty,
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that unease, that discomfort.
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This kind of thing didn't happen in big industrial cities
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in 1984, let alone genteel Bath.
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NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): After a year of intense investigation,
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police are no wiser as to who the killer was.
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The case goes cold.
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The case was filed with no further reasonable lines
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of inquiry.
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The resourcing on it had been intense.
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And if we feel that we've done all that we can,
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then that's the point usually when
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you probably say we think we need to put this to one side
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now.
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NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): This is the story of Melanie Road
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and how police never give up hope
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and with the help of familial DNA
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are able to track down a savage killer,
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bringing an end to another case for the bloodline detectives.
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A man has been arrested.
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How had they done it?
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My jaw hit the floor, actually.
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I didn't think they would ever do it.
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It was phenomenal, the amount of work that went into it.
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At no point did I give up on the investigation.
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I always felt if the work's put in,
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we have a good chance of getting a conviction.
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It's got to give some people pause for thought that they
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could be caught, not just because of something
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that they've done in the past, but be
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something that somebody else in their family
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has done in the past.
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[THEME MUSIC]
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NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): Bath, Southern England.
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It's 5:30 in the morning, and local milk man Tony
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Noonan and his 11-year-old son Ian
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are doing the daily milk run.
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It starts out like every other day,
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but quickly turns into something shocking.
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NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): Police quickly arrive at the scene
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and cordon off the area.
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Forensics are also called in to carry
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out a detailed investigation.
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When you have the report of a murder,
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instantly lots of people are called out
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to control the scene.
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And they will then also decide to call out forensic scientists
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and so forth.
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So a whole team would have verged onto the location.
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The crime scene always starts off as an outside scene.
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As this was, you have a tent put over the body to protect it.
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You don't know what the elements are going to be.
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It was a bright, sunny day in June.
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Of course, that could change.
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And also to protect the dignity of her
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from people who were living nearby.
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At the scene, then and now, the pathologist still comes,
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and they examine the body where it lies.
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And from that, they can make some interpretations.
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They would just interpret the injuries, how she's
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lying, what it looks like, and then take
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her away for the post-mortem.
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They'd even called out a forensic scientist,
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and the forensic scientist drew a really detailed sketch plan,
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drawing the body in position and all the blood spots,
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and a little area where there was a pool of blood.
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They also did a video, took loads of photographs.
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And they take photographs of the body in situ.
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And then slowly, as they gather evidence and swab areas
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of the body, swab the floor, they take
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photographs of each little bit.
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And it's at that point that found on the wall
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is a key ring.
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And the key ring is a wooden key ring with the name "Melanie"
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carved into it.
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NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): Desperate
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to identify the victim, police drive around the area,
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calling out the name "Melanie" in the hope
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that her family will hear them.
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Today, we tend to identify people
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through either identification of the body.
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So driving licenses, passports, mobile phones.
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Really, really good and easy.
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And of course through social media.
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Then they didn't have those luxuries.
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So they knew that she was probably
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going to be called Melanie.
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So they drove around the streets in a police car
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with a loud hailer on the back saying
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"does anybody know a girl called Melanie?"
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"Is anyone missing a girl called Melanie?"
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As they zigzagged up and down the streets in Lansdowne,
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they eventually went round into St. Stephen's Close, which
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was where she'd actually lived.
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And her mom was there, and she heard the car outside.
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And of course her daughter Melanie had been out the night
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before, but it wasn't unusual for her not to necessarily come
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home.
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She would often go and stay with a friend
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and then ring in the morning on the old fashioned landline
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telephone.
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So she went out into the street, and she'll describe how she was
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almost chasing the police car down the street banging
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on the back saying, "we've got a daughter called Melanie,
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and she didn't come home last night."
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And that's how they found out that it was their daughter
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and that she'd been killed.
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I don't criticize them for doing that.
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Certainly I can imagine the effect
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it must have had on the family.
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But the officers wanted to identify as soon
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as possible who their victim was,
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because that's when an investigation
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can often really start.
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Bearing in mind a lot of murders are committed by people known
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to the victim, so they wanted to know who
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the victim was straight away.
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NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): With Melanie's family now informed
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of her murder, the police in Bath
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need to recruit experienced homicide
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detectives from other areas to carry
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out an intensive investigation.
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In those days, it was a case of, there was no dedicated
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murder team.
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It was a case of they would bring in everybody
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from that local division.
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So all those CID officers who were placed in Bath were on it.
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Would then bring people in from the surrounding areas.
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So those from Bristol would come in, and Somerset.
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And people that were working on the crime squads or the drug
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squad, they would be drafted in and seconded
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to come and help as well.
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And all these detectives were divided up into action teams
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and then sent out.
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They run out of senior crime officers,
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so a detective who was originally going to be part
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of the house-to-house team, in fact two,
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they were both asked to help out the scene-of-the-crime work.
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So they had to look and see if they could follow the trail
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and identify any potential blood spots.
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And as soon as they knew it was blood,
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they would draw a yellow circle around it, give it a number,
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and move on.
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Now, they actually find 86 spots of blood.
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And it was, I reckon, probably somewhere
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in the region of a quarter mile, the full trail.
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That enabled the forensic scientists
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and the scene-of-the-crime officers to then go
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and swab each of those spots.
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Today, we know that we swap with cotton wool sticks.
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They get like cotton wool buds.
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In those days, it was like a cocktail
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stick with a little bit of cotton on the end.
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And it seems really ancient and antiquated, but it works.
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And they took those meticulously not just over one day,
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over several days.
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You also have an incident room set up.
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Now, an incident room then is nothing like a modern day
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incident room.
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No computers.
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So what you actually had was statements coming in,
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in paper form.
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It was all run on an old fashioned card system.
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So every single thing is meticulously indexed,
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and the names of everybody that's spoken to,
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anything that's relevant.
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And it's run by the senior investigating officer.
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He's also called out specialist search teams.
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And I've seen photographs and videos of them
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with scythes, scything through long grass in order
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that they can then search the ground,
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looking for a murder weapon.
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They already knew right from the first moment
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there were stab wounds.
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So they knew some form of weapon capable of causing
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a stab wound.
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So you're talking a knife, a screwdriver,
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something like that.
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The searches that they did along Camden Crescent, when
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you drop down this what is now completely overgrown area,
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and would have been at the time in 1984,
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but they've gone through, they've cut it all back.
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They've absolutely stripped out all the vegetation,
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to see if the weapon had been discarded just over the fence
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there.
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But definitely that one was never found.
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And to this day, we have no idea what happened to it.
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NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): News of Melanie's murder
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spreads quickly throughout the picturesque city
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and shakes local residents to their very core.
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It struck fear into Bath.
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It didn't just make local or regional news.
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This was national news, because this kind of thing
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doesn't happen in Bath.
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This was such a savage attack on such an innocent victim.
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And it looked straight away like a stranger attack,
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as if it wasn't someone who had known Melanie.
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The police were very concerned that the young people,
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particularly women, were doing the right--
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what they perceived to be the right thing,
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and were doing everything they can to make themselves safe
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and to get home safe and certainly
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not to be out and about on their own at night.
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Pictures of Melanie went out in a hope
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that people saw her walking home,
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so that we would know exactly which route she took home.
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They even put out messages at cinemas.
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So whilst you're watching your film,
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back then halfway through there would be some sort of adverts,
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and up would come a story about Melanie asking the public
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if they've got any information.
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NANCY GRACE: British detectives are
00:12:56
using the scientific forensics available at the time.
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But in 1984, those techniques are crude by today's standards.
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It will take time and the landmark use of a new science
00:13:08
to discover who murdered Melanie Road.
00:13:11
Next on "Bloodline Detectives".
00:13:23
NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): Bath, Southern England.
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On the morning of June 8, 1984, teen girl Melanie Road
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is murdered a short distance from her own home.
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Melanie is a straight A student, about to take
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college entrance exams.
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She has a bright future ahead of her.
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She had everything to look forward to.
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She had a pick of universities.
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She was going to do well in her exams.
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She had a holiday booked.
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She had a really close and strong group of friends.
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Her family had just moved to Bath recently.
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They'd been living all around the UK
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with her dad working for the Ministry of Defense.
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Melanie adored Bath straight away.
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Her parents didn't know it so well,
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and Melanie would always say to her mom,
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please come into the city center.
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It's the most amazing city.
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And Jean Road always found that later hard to take,
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because it was Bath, in a way, that did this to Melanie.
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I know her mother was deeply, as you'd expect,
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traumatized by what happened, and is a very,
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was a very private person.
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Didn't really court any media attention,
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didn't really want any media attention,
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but obviously wanted the case solved,
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and wanted that closure, and wanted
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a body that she could bury.
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NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): Early on, police
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were able to piece together Melanie's movements the day
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before the murder.
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Melanie's mom drove her into the city center.
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She dropped her off at a very nice hotel.
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And they had an event up.
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Melanie got out of the car.
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She opened the door, and she looked across,
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and she saw there was a big welcome.
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She said to her mom, look, they laid out a red carpet.
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What a way to go.
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And that sentence was the last Jean Road
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ever had from her daughter.
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After that, Melanie went out to play tennis,
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I believe, with friends.
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And then she carried on out for the rest of the evening
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and went to a nightclub.
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On the Friday night, Melanie had been--
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she'd been out to a bar.
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She'd been out with her boyfriend
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and some other friends.
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His brother had come home.
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They'd been to a few pubs and clubs.
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He'd left the club and they'd partied in the center of Bath.
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So her friend and boyfriend had gone one way,
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and she was just going to take the walk
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home that she normally did, which was up Lansdown Hill.
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Walking home half past 1:00, 2:00 in the morning
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on a Friday, Saturday night was not unusual for her
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or anybody else.
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Bath was considered to be a really safe place.
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And she'd done it many times before.
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And why was tonight any different?
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But of course, on that particular night,
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it was drastically different for her.
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NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): At the time of the murder,
00:16:06
Bath is a busy tourist destination
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for many national and international visitors.
00:16:13
Bath is and always has been a busy, busy place.
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Bath Festival was on.
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But also it's a place for tourists,
00:16:22
American tourists, tourists from the Far East, all over Europe.
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They come to this magnificent city.
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So that must have been really difficult for police officers
00:16:32
to try and work out who had even been in the city
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in the first instance.
00:16:38
Anything out of the ordinary you
00:16:41
would want to know, for example, the festival.
00:16:45
If you could get--
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if you knew of any parties, knew of any festivals,
00:16:49
then you would approach the organizers
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and see if they had names of everyone that attended.
00:16:55
It's a starting point.
00:16:56
Yes, it gives you a great, long list
00:16:58
of people you need to speak to, but you have actually
00:17:01
got people to speak to.
00:17:03
It only takes one person to say the person
00:17:05
I was in that hotel with that night went out and came
00:17:09
back with a cut to the hand.
00:17:11
That can lead you to the offender.
00:17:13
So you couldn't ignore these lines of inquiry.
00:17:15
But it obviously makes the investigation take longer.
00:17:18
There was a college that was not
00:17:20
far from where she was killed, which hosted
00:17:24
air traffic control people.
00:17:27
And a lot of those were from Saudi Arabia or Arab countries.
00:17:32
And there was a theory going round
00:17:33
in Bath, that it was the Arabs that were responsible.
00:17:36
And it must be one of those just because it was close by.
00:17:39
And there was a lot of work put into that.
00:17:41
And of course some of those had left the following day.
00:17:43
So that then heightened suspicions.
00:17:45
"Well, it must have been them because they've gone home."
00:17:48
But it takes a lot of time and effort to do that.
00:17:50
International inquiries are challenging today.
00:17:52
They were even more challenging back then.
00:17:54
So trying to understand that.
00:17:55
But it didn't stop it happening.
00:17:57
The amount of detail that everything
00:17:59
went into with every single person was incredible.
00:18:08
NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): Melanie's autopsy reveals
00:18:10
answers as to what may have happened
00:18:12
the fatal morning of June 8.
00:18:15
So we know there were 26 stab wounds.
00:18:17
But when I say 26, some of them were
00:18:21
little, gentle stab wounds, particularly those in the back.
00:18:24
But the little stab wounds in the back, we think
00:18:28
are just as likely to be forcing her to move from where he
00:18:32
originally came in contact with her to make her go to whatever
00:18:35
location he wanted, jabbing her gently in the back,
00:18:39
causing minor punctures.
00:18:41
But we also know that some of the more
00:18:43
significant stab wounds were concentrated around the breast.
00:18:47
That is typical of a sexual motive.
00:18:52
The word "frenzied" doesn't even begin to cover
00:18:55
it, what happened to Melanie.
00:18:58
And the most horrific thing is that as she lay dying,
00:19:02
she was raped twice.
00:19:04
And so the responsibility of the pathologist is to take
00:19:07
those swaps and to ensure that we can-- in those days,
00:19:10
it was just to take swabs to identify
00:19:12
there was semen present.
00:19:13
And from that, the only way that they
00:19:15
could interpret who it may belong to
00:19:17
was through blood grouping.
00:19:18
So our pathologist, having taken those swabs and samples,
00:19:22
they get stored then.
00:19:23
Depending on the different sample, specific ways
00:19:25
that we store them, they get sent to the forensic science
00:19:27
service.
00:19:28
They have responsibilities around keeping it.
00:19:30
And we, the police, we have the clothing and those other items
00:19:34
that come from them, we keep those ourselves
00:19:36
and keep those in storage.
00:19:42
NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): Days into the investigation,
00:19:44
police have yet to find any witnesses to the brutal murder.
00:19:49
Look at that area of Bath.
00:19:50
It's a reasonably expensive part of the city.
00:19:53
It's leafy.
00:19:54
It would have been very quiet at that time of night.
00:19:57
Most people would have been fast asleep.
00:19:59
And you know, in that case, yes, you do think, well,
00:20:02
proximity to other properties should have raised an alarm.
00:20:08
There were possible sightings of her.
00:20:10
There were a couple people phoned
00:20:12
in saying they thought they saw her walk across Lansdown Road.
00:20:17
Which is the route we think that she probably took.
00:20:20
But they could never be 100% definite.
00:20:24
It is bizarre that nobody saw him at the time.
00:20:28
But what happened when he got home and who was living with?
00:20:32
And yeah, why?
00:20:34
Why did he manage to get away with it at that point?
00:20:36
You look at the media appeals, they talk about has someone
00:20:39
been talking about it more?
00:20:41
Have they been talking about it less?
00:20:43
It makes me smile when I look on the TV
00:20:45
and then see the SIO saying you know,
00:20:48
if I'd done something bad, my wife would know about it.
00:20:51
If I were worried about something, my wife would know.
00:20:53
I couldn't keep it from her.
00:20:55
And this chap now has had four days to live with this.
00:20:58
Somebody close to him will realize that something is up.
00:21:00
He's got to be a very hard man indeed to be
00:21:03
able to keep it to himself.
00:21:05
NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): During the intense investigation,
00:21:07
police focus on blood spots leading away from the scene.
00:21:13
As Melanie was being attacked, she put up a fight.
00:21:16
And the knifeman was himself cut.
00:21:19
So as she lay dying, he fled.
00:21:24
As he ran away, he ran down the road and down some stone steps
00:21:28
and onto Camden Crescent.
00:21:31
He left a trail of blood.
00:21:33
Our general interpretation is her blood spots
00:21:37
are potentially her being carried or walking injured
00:21:41
to where her body was found.
00:21:42
The blood spots that were identified
00:21:44
as his are likely after the attack,
00:21:47
as he is making his departure.
00:21:51
That blood was preserved at the time.
00:21:54
It was analyzed.
00:21:55
Of course, these were the days before DNA.
00:21:57
All they could do was take a blood type.
00:21:59
Melanie had blood group A. Her killer also had blood group A.
00:22:05
But he had a really rare protein makeup within his blood.
00:22:11
Only 3% of the male population have this protein makeup.
00:22:17
So that meant that when men were being tested,
00:22:21
they could eliminate people quite quickly.
00:22:23
They couldn't tell who the killer actually was,
00:22:25
but they could rule people out straight away.
00:22:29
The days before there was DNA?
00:22:31
That seems like the stone age in crime fighting.
00:22:34
But as we'll see next, the next 30
00:22:37
years and the birth of the bloodline detectives
00:22:40
will change it all.
00:22:50
The savage murder of Melanie Road close to her home in Bath
00:22:54
England in June 1984 has become a perplexing
00:22:58
problem for police.
00:23:00
Investigators have numerous leads,
00:23:02
and receive over 1,000 calls from the public,
00:23:06
leading to lots of arrests and hundreds of man hours
00:23:10
in questioning.
00:23:11
When we're doing murder investigations,
00:23:13
we tend to break it down into categories.
00:23:15
The first category is the people that Melanie
00:23:17
was out with on the night.
00:23:18
So you start with those.
00:23:20
You then look at the others who she might
00:23:21
be associated with in the club.
00:23:23
So did she talk to anybody else?
00:23:26
Were there any men that were interested in her?
00:23:27
Did they follow her from the club?
00:23:51
The next thing then, is of course,
00:23:52
is then you look at your suspects.
00:23:53
So how do people become suspects?
00:23:55
So in 1984, quite frankly if you didn't look the right way,
00:24:00
you couldn't have an alibi, you had a conviction for life crime
00:24:04
or sexual assaults, there was a good chance
00:24:07
you were going to be arrested and brought
00:24:08
into custody for it.
00:24:10
As for suspects, I suppose if you think when you dealt
00:24:14
with a murder inquiry, anyone who was remotely put forward
00:24:17
as a suspect were arrested.
00:24:19
So you arrested 90 to 100 people.
00:24:22
That wouldn't happen now.
00:24:23
You've got to-- nowadays you have to justify
00:24:26
being able to arrest someone.
00:24:27
But back then, you were allowed to,
00:24:29
and you tended to arrest lots of people.
00:24:31
So those people would have been looked at closely.
00:24:34
It was difficult, wasn't it?
00:24:36
Because the nature of where she was killed
00:24:38
suggests that it should be somebody local.
00:24:40
Because although it was in Lansdown in Bath, it was in,
00:24:45
I wouldn't call it a back street, but an area
00:24:46
that the general public wouldn't walk through.
00:24:49
So that's the first thing, that yes, you
00:24:51
think that it's going to be somebody local,
00:24:53
but you couldn't exclude that.
00:24:55
Everything was open.
00:24:56
We knew the offender was injured because of the blood.
00:25:01
And that blood had been identified
00:25:04
as being the same blood group as semen found on the body.
00:25:07
So anyone who became of interest in the inquiry,
00:25:10
they had samples taken from them to see if they
00:25:13
were the right blood group.
00:25:14
Most people they were able to eliminate,
00:25:17
but there were some that were the right blood group.
00:25:20
And those that were the right blood group,
00:25:23
they then went on to ask for alibis.
00:25:26
NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): Despite a huge investigation,
00:25:28
police are nowhere near to finding Melanie Road's killer.
00:25:32
And slowly the case goes cold.
00:25:35
When you haven't been successful in identifying
00:25:37
an offender, especially in a homicide case,
00:25:39
there's no set rules about stop investigating after 6 months,
00:25:43
12 months, 2 years, 5 years.
00:25:45
Every single one's taken on its merits.
00:25:47
And in fact, really the direction generally
00:25:49
comes from, have we exhausted every available inquiry
00:25:52
available to us?
00:25:53
In the case of Melanie, it was after 12 months
00:25:56
that they felt that they'd done everything that they could.
00:25:59
They've got all the leads they could possibly have.
00:26:01
They've done matrixes and likelihood matrixes.
00:26:05
Who else can they get to try and solve this problem?
00:26:09
If they've done this after 30 years,
00:26:12
surely there was nowhere else to go.
00:26:20
NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): For 10 years,
00:26:21
the case sits in a state of limbo, officers
00:26:24
occasionally adding new information to it.
00:26:27
But it's not until the introduction of DNA technology
00:26:31
that the case starts to build momentum once again.
00:26:36
In 1995, it was really very basic.
00:26:39
So we talk about--
00:26:40
when you talk about DNA alleles, if you imagine a bar chart,
00:26:44
an allele is just one of the bars on a bar chart.
00:26:47
And then it was just eight alleles.
00:26:49
So eight bars.
00:26:50
So that was all you would ever compare in 1995.
00:26:53
Unfortunately on this particular case,
00:26:56
albeit they did get DNA, and they got DNA
00:26:58
that they could load onto the DNA database,
00:27:00
it didn't match anyone.
00:27:02
But what it did for the team then who were reviewing it,
00:27:05
they could then look at those people that
00:27:06
are the right blood group, those people that were
00:27:09
deemed persons of interest.
00:27:12
They could look to go back to them, take a swab
00:27:16
and eliminate them on DNA.
00:27:19
And that's the process they went through.
00:27:20
So they identified a large number of persons of interest,
00:27:23
and went back and swabbed all of them.
00:27:25
Some had died, and some they weren't
00:27:28
able to locate at that point.
00:27:40
NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): In 2011, British detectives
00:27:42
investigating the brutal 1984 rape and murder of 17-year-old
00:27:48
Melanie Road in the town of Bath,
00:27:51
Southwest England are looking for a new forensic advancements
00:27:55
to help identify her killer.
00:27:58
And that's when they learn about familial DNA.
00:28:02
Now, what a familial run is all about is asking the DNA
00:28:06
database, is there anyone on there
00:28:08
with similar-ish DNA that might be related to your offender?
00:28:14
Now, we know the person who's on the DNA database
00:28:16
is not the offender, but we're looking for people
00:28:19
with similar-ish DNA.
00:28:20
The DNA database then come back with lists.
00:28:24
Two lists of hundreds of names.
00:28:28
And they've got a name.
00:28:31
They've got a few numbers, which is barcode numbers
00:28:33
and this sort of thing.
00:28:34
And then they've got what they call a likelihood ratio, which
00:28:38
at the top of the list is the one whose DNA is
00:28:40
genetically most similar.
00:28:42
It's what is described in our business as a screamer.
00:28:46
Because the second one down on the list, the likelihood ratio
00:28:51
figure they provided was so much lower that it's like saying
00:28:56
that the person on the top of the list is screaming at you,
00:28:59
you must eliminate that person's father.
00:29:01
Because it was a parent-child familial
00:29:03
list as opposed to a sibling familial list.
00:29:07
So we went out and we swabbed that person's father,
00:29:11
expecting it to be a success.
00:29:14
And he was eliminated.
00:29:16
So that was in 2011.
00:29:19
What happened in 2000--
00:29:21
late 2014 coming into '15, Judy made a decision that we ought
00:29:26
to try another familiar run.
00:29:29
Because every year loads and loads of new DNA profiles
00:29:34
are being loaded into the national database.
00:29:37
We knew our offender hadn't been loaded on there,
00:29:39
but it was possible that a relative
00:29:42
of our offender in those interim years
00:29:45
had been added to the database.
00:29:47
The thing about familial work is
00:29:49
that it's only as good as the date that you did that run.
00:29:53
And our date had been in 2009, '10.
00:29:56
So by the time we go on to 2013, I was asking to have
00:30:00
a rerun of the familiar work.
00:30:02
But because it had been so expensive,
00:30:04
there was a lot of reluctance to do that.
00:30:07
Of course when we went back to the lab,
00:30:08
the cost has come down dramatically.
00:30:10
It's only about five grand now, because things
00:30:12
have moved on so much.
00:30:13
And you think, gosh, why didn't we do this earlier?
00:30:16
And away we went.
00:30:17
We got the authority to do a new run.
00:30:20
And then they sent it back to us in May, June time it was.
00:30:24
And the top of the list, the screamer that we'd had before
00:30:28
was now number two on the list.
00:30:30
So we knew straight away that we've got a new screamer.
00:30:32
And if it's above the one that was there already,
00:30:35
then that's obviously our first port of call.
00:30:37
And of course, when we look into her,
00:30:40
she was just a girl who'd had a domestic incident
00:30:43
with her boyfriend.
00:30:44
It was relatively minor.
00:30:46
Things had just got a little bit out of hand.
00:30:48
But because of the policies that we have around domestic abuse,
00:30:51
it doesn't matter whether you're a male or a female perpetrator,
00:30:54
we always do positive intention.
00:30:56
And in this case, it was to arrest her.
00:30:59
And as soon as she gets arrested,
00:31:00
she automatically gets a DNA mouth swab done.
00:31:02
So that's how she'd ended up on the system.
00:31:05
So we rang her up and explained that she's
00:31:07
on the top of our list.
00:31:08
You know, who's her dad?
00:31:10
Because of her age, it was going to be a father or an uncle,
00:31:13
or even potentially a grandfather.
00:31:15
So we want to understand about her family tree.
00:31:17
And of course she'd come from Bath,
00:31:19
and then she told us about who her dad was,
00:31:21
Christopher Hampton.
00:31:23
Yes, he'd lived in Bath, but now he lived in Bristol,
00:31:26
and where we might find him.
00:31:28
And so it was down to Gary.
00:31:29
He made all these phone calls.
00:31:30
He did all this legwork.
00:31:31
He'd already spoke to lots of people.
00:31:33
And he rang up Christopher Hampton.
00:31:37
I told him I was the cold case team,
00:31:39
and that I was investigating the murder of Melanie Road
00:31:42
back in 1984 in Bath.
00:31:44
And the reason I'm speaking to him
00:31:46
is his daughter's DNA, because we have DNA of the offender,
00:31:50
his daughter's DNA is similar.
00:31:53
So we now want to eliminate him.
00:31:57
When I arrive at the car park in Ashton, I got out the car,
00:32:00
shook his hand, produced my warrant card.
00:32:03
And then we sat in the police car,
00:32:04
and I explained to him yet again,
00:32:07
it's to do with the murder of Melanie Road.
00:32:08
We've got two consent forms.
00:32:11
One of them is for the police.
00:32:12
And I read it through with him.
00:32:14
He read it and signed it.
00:32:16
He then signed an identical consent, which comes
00:32:18
with a sealed swab package.
00:32:21
And after that, I simply ran through,
00:32:24
asked him to open his mouth, rubbed the swab
00:32:26
on the inside of his mouth, the same on the other side, put
00:32:30
both of the swabs in little tubes,
00:32:33
sealed them in a tamper-proof bag.
00:32:36
And I explained to him the results take about five weeks.
00:32:39
Did you want me to notify you when the result come through?
00:32:42
And he said, yes.
00:32:43
But he was no more nervous.
00:32:45
He behaved no differently from anyone else.
00:32:50
Within a short period of time, a number of swabs
00:32:53
were submitted to the forensic science service,
00:32:56
asking them to get DNA from the swabs
00:32:58
and compare it to Melanie's murder profile.
00:33:02
As we'll see next, a forensic technique unavailable in 1984
00:33:07
becomes a breakthrough weapon for the bloodline detectives.
00:33:21
NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): After 30 years, police in Bath,
00:33:24
England are using familial DNA to develop
00:33:27
a strong lead in the rape and murder
00:33:30
of teen girl Melanie Road.
00:33:34
A DNA sample taken from Christopher Hampton
00:33:37
is sent to the lab, and cold case officers are waiting
00:33:41
patiently for the results.
00:33:43
Would this be the answer they're waiting for?
00:33:46
Or would it be another false hope?
00:33:50
We'd been working with our scientist, Mike Wheelhouse,
00:33:52
on this case for years.
00:33:54
And I'm talking about 8, 9, 10 years he'd been involved in it.
00:33:57
And Mike had just sent an email through to Gary,
00:34:01
saying, "oh, I think I've got a hit on Operation Rhodium."
00:34:04
Oh my God.
00:34:05
This is the biggest news of this century.
00:34:06
What do you mean, you got a hit?
00:34:07
And he sent an email.
00:34:08
He hasn't picked up the phone.
00:34:09
And what's more, he didn't put the name in the email.
00:34:12
I can remember the first line of the email
00:34:15
was something like, "it looks like we may have
00:34:18
a result on Operation Rhodium."
00:34:23
We've got to double check it and triple check it,
00:34:25
but it looks good.
00:34:28
I tried to phone the lab immediately to say, who is it?
00:34:31
You know, who's the match that we've got?
00:34:34
But the scientist was in a meeting.
00:34:36
But he obviously spoke to Gary really quickly,
00:34:38
then we came back and we were told it's Christopher Hampton,
00:34:41
and Gary rang me.
00:34:42
And then of course, there's those decisions
00:34:44
about what do you do.
00:34:46
But the decision was to arrest him that day.
00:34:49
He was arrested as he came home from work.
00:34:51
And on his arrest, the only significant sort of thing he
00:34:54
said was, when his wife said "I'll see you later,"
00:34:57
he said "no, you won't."
00:35:00
So she said, "well, I'll see you tomorrow."
00:35:01
And he said "no, you won't."
00:35:03
And that sort of tells a tale.
00:35:06
And his behavior was, he was just calm.
00:35:08
It was almost as though he'd been waiting for it.
00:35:10
It was an acceptance, I would say.
00:35:13
He came in, and I know when he was interviewed,
00:35:17
he produced what they call a prepared statement.
00:35:20
So that's a statement that he prepares with his solicitor,
00:35:23
and it basically said, "I did not
00:35:25
rape or murder Melanie Road."
00:35:27
And that's the only thing it said.
00:35:31
NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): With a positive hit on Christopher
00:35:33
Hampton, police are now able to tell Melanie
00:35:36
Road's family the good news.
00:35:39
All through this, we still had contact with the family,
00:35:43
all the way through, throughout the whole 30 years.
00:35:47
But certainly in the recent years and whilst
00:35:49
I was involved in it, I definitely
00:35:51
had contact with the family.
00:35:53
You know, Jean in particular.
00:35:55
So we got to the night, and suddenly it
00:35:57
was the case solved.
00:35:58
Right, we need to get out and see the family.
00:36:01
And god, it makes me emotional now, even thinking about,
00:36:04
you know, just the joy for that family and the impact
00:36:07
on them after all that time is incredible.
00:36:11
Really incredible.
00:36:13
NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): Investigating officers
00:36:15
built an airtight legal case against Christopher Hampton.
00:36:20
They are confident as they head to what they think
00:36:23
will be a three-week trial.
00:36:26
It was highly charged in Bristol Crown Court.
00:36:28
He was there in the dock, a gray, average-looking man,
00:36:33
a forgettable man.
00:36:34
And when he was read the charge, just looked straight ahead
00:36:38
and just said one word, guilty.
00:36:41
And there was a sigh at that moment from her family.
00:36:45
And I know that the investigators who'd
00:36:47
been working on this team found at the moment of both relief
00:36:52
and the thought of "thank God.
00:36:53
We've done this for you now, Melanie."
00:36:55
When police officers hear sentences,
00:36:57
quite often they are not that satisfied with the sentence.
00:37:02
You know, they know that parole might kick in.
00:37:05
People might come out early.
00:37:07
Interestingly, the judge in this case,
00:37:09
albeit he gave him life and gave a recommended sentence,
00:37:14
did say "but it is quite likely you will die in prison."
00:37:21
And hearing a judge say that was in a sort of bizarre way
00:37:29
quite pleasing.
00:37:31
There had been a cloud over Bath
00:37:33
since Melanie Road was killed.
00:37:35
That's more than three decades that uncertainty, that unease,
00:37:39
that discomfort had hung over the city,
00:37:42
and you know, people who have lived there over that time.
00:37:45
And to have that crime solved to have somebody sent to jail
00:37:48
was just I think a massive sense of relief for the city.
00:38:18
NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): The full impact
00:38:20
that the murder has on Melanie's family
00:38:22
is heard during the last days of trial.
00:38:26
Watching Melanie's family deliver their victim
00:38:28
impact statements was the most highly charged hour
00:38:33
or so I've ever spent in court.
00:38:36
Jean, Melanie's mom, stood up in the public gallery.
00:38:41
She was in her early 80s at the time.
00:38:43
She used to walk with a stick.
00:38:44
She put her walking stick to one side.
00:38:46
She didn't want Hampton, her daughter's killer, to see this.
00:38:49
So she walked across unaided to the witness box.
00:38:53
And there she delivered the most powerful victim impact
00:38:58
statement I have ever heard.
00:39:01
I still to this day choke up if I were to read it.
00:39:05
When they read it out, everyone in the court,
00:39:10
including the prison officer, were fighting back tears.
00:39:15
The one person who seemed to show no emotion
00:39:17
was Christopher Hampton.
00:39:19
The tragedy is not just the loss of, in this case,
00:39:23
a daughter.
00:39:24
It's the loss of all the things that would
00:39:26
have followed in her life.
00:39:29
So every anniversary, every birthday that comes along,
00:39:33
it's what--
00:39:34
for the family members, it's what might have been.
00:39:38
It's not a one-off event.
00:39:39
And that's why in part family members will always say to you
00:39:43
it never goes away.
00:39:43
And neither should it go away.
00:39:45
Because they've lost so much through the actions of
00:39:51
some deranged, vile individual.
00:39:56
NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): The puzzling case
00:39:57
of Melanie Road's murder is finally over thanks
00:40:01
to the use of familial DNA.
00:40:04
It was phenomenal.
00:40:05
And the reason it was phenomenal was
00:40:07
because from day one, the amount of work that went into it.
00:40:11
And if all those brilliant detectives at the beginning
00:40:13
hadn't have done what they did, you
00:40:15
know, those of us that followed could
00:40:17
not have achieved what we did.
00:40:19
It's got to give some people pause for thought
00:40:21
that these techniques now exist, and that they could be caught
00:40:25
not just because of something that they've done in the past,
00:40:27
but because of something that somebody else in their family
00:40:30
has done in the past.
00:40:32
Melanie's mother, Jane Road, was
00:40:35
81-years-old when Chris Hampton was tried
00:40:38
for her daughter's murder.
00:40:40
But she lived to see her daughter's
00:40:42
killer brought to justice.
00:40:44
After the trial, Jane Road said what bothered her
00:40:47
the most was the striking resemblance
00:40:50
Christopher Hampton's wife and daughter had
00:40:53
to her own Melanie.
00:40:55
She thought only a monster could have
00:40:58
a family and live with the knowledge that
00:41:00
he destroyed another one's.
00:41:03
Jane Road may never fully live without the pain of Melanie's
00:41:08
loss, but thanks to the work of the bloodline detectives,
00:41:12
at least she knows that the spirit of Melanie Road
00:41:16
may finally rest in peace.
00:41:27
[THEME MUSIC]
