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[Applause] [Music] on a deserted footpath early on the morning of November 22nd 1983 a hospital worker witnessed a
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terrible sight it would be the first case in the world where DNA evidence help find the
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Killer [Music] [Music] narborough England a quiet little village of about 6,000 residents where
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violent crime is almost unheard of it is something you expect to happen in a city
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not in a small village community 15-year-old Linda man was a typical teenager quiet but popular she
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liked school and enjoyed being with friends on a cold November evening Linda left her home in nbor to walk the mile
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or so to her friend's house when Linda didn't return home by midnight her
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frantic parents called the [Music] police early the next morning her semi-nude body was discovered along a
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secluded footpath known locally as the black pad detective David Baker was called to the
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scene her clothing was in the St of dis array her jeans removed uh and her underclothes were
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stwn about it was a cold night and she'd got a a scarf around her neck and and
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and the scarf had been used uh to strangle her she was very brutally uh attacked sexually assaulted word of
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Linda's murder traveled quickly in the otherwise quiet Village the people were
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horrified horrified I'm very worried particularly those with the young girls young
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daughters a search of the crime scene turned up little of substance but the autopsy provided some important clues
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about Linda Man's last moments alive five the absence of injury to her private parts and also generally on her
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body there was very little injury to her would suggest that it was not a violent
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attack and that she may have died very quickly the conclusion was that um she was strangled and then raped a Sean
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sample taken from Linda's body turned out to be an extremely important piece
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of evidence it came from an individual with type A blood and a pgm1 plus profile but this matched 10% of the
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adult male population in England since Linda man's body was found only a few
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hundred yards from a local Psychiatric Hospital some speculated that the killer may have been a patient others weren't
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so sure the thing that I was very anxious to establish is that it was unlikely to have been a psychiatric
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patient from the hospital it was much more likely to be a man leading a normal life perhaps with a a family uh
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certainly one who had friends relatives and contacts who thought of him as a normal individual Linda man was in the
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wrong place at the wrong time former cop turned author Joseph wau wrote a best-selling book intitled The blooding
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it Chronicles the events surrounding the murder of Linda man and the history-making investigation which would
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follow it's very unusual and still is in a village like narb in Britain for a
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complete stranger to Ambush and murder someone uh on a foot path I mean it was so unheard
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of police questioned thousands of people about Linda man's whereabouts on the
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night she was killed they put more into a murder investigation over there which they call an inquiry uh than we do here
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because they have so few murders compared to us Linda man was buried in a churchyard
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not far from where she was murdered on the day of her funeral police set up a surveillance and videotaped the crowd
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for anything or anyone unusual often one finds that um criminals will revisit the
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scene of the crime or some other uh activity associated with the crime and it was just a precaution today police
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issued a new poster to try to jog people's memories but it was of little help the investigation dragged on for
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months then a year with no eyewitnesses few strong leads and several false Trails the
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murder hunt hit a dead end well really in any police investigation after a week or two uh the trail is usually cold it's
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quite difficult we suffer all the time yes please come forward what all along Linda's parents held out hope that the
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killer of their daughter would be caught the only thing that they could possibly
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get now was Justice for their daughter and that seemed to be going away from them it's always frustrating when uh you
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know you've not got an answer to a problem and I mean you're forever looking over your shoulder a to see what
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you've missed and then trying to guess what might happen in the future and the
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search for Linda man's killer continued for the next 3 years 3 years had passed since the
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murder of Linda man and life in the small village of narbar was beginning to return to normal until the afternoon of
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July 31st 1986 another 15-year-old school girl Dawn Ashworth was walking home from her
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part-time job at a new stand instead of taking the main road she took a shortcut
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down a thickly overgrown foot path called 10 lb Lane when Dawn didn't return home by 9:30
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that night her parents called the police another teenage girl was missing Dawn Ashworth went missing last night we all
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hoped and prayed that this was not a repeat of the Linda Manas yes 2 Days Later police discovered Dawn ashworth's
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nude body under some heavy brush and hay she was discovered less than a mile from where Linda man was murdered 3
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years early earlier like Linda man Dawn Ashworth had been strangled and sexually assaulted
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Dawn had quite marked injuries to uh gendel area which would indicate was a very violent attack uh and her injuries
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elsewhere in the body would also indicate that she had um suffered violent injury therefore she had been
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attacked violently which would indicate that she had put up a fair struggle before she died Seaman samples taken
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during 's autopsy revealed that the attacker had the same blood type as Linda man's murderer there were other
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similarities as well there were signature elements in the crime certainly uh both murders took place on
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foot paths both girls were uh teenagers um both girls were walking alone both manually
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strangled both um severely sexually assaulted all school girls were advised to travel in groups and not to walk
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anywhere alone Dawn ashworth's father had given his daughter the same advice I war and wander about the
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dangers of going down there on a road we've got to find the fiend really that did this to
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my daughter to our daughter and um stop it from happening again police launched an extensive investigation into
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the murder of dawn Ashworth and within a week police got a break Witnesses saw a
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young man in the vicinity of 10 lb Lane on the afternoon of dawn ashworth's death he was 17-year-old Richard
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Buckland a kitchen worker at the psychiatric hospital located just a few hundred yards from where both Linda man
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and Dawn Ashworth had been murdered police brought him in for questioning and he quickly became their Prime
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Suspect for one thing he knew details of the murder which weren't in the newspapers in addition to that when we'
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questioned Mr bookland uh he couldn't really account for his movements on uh
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that particular afternoon if I were working on the case I probably would have become very
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suspicious uh given the things he told the police given his background given his reputation around the village for uh
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liking to scare girls they're walking home from school things like that finally after 15 grueling hours of
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interrogation Richard buckin confessed to the rape and murder of dawn Ashworth police finally had their man
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given the similarities between the two murders police were convinced that Buckland also raped and murdered Linda
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Man 3 years earlier buckin denied it was he telling the truth the answer lay just
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a few miles away in a university Laboratory Richard Buckland confessed to killing
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Dawn Ashworth but insisted he had nothing to do with the murder of Linda Man 3 years earlier police were
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convinced he was lying and set out to find the truth here at the University of Leicester ironically less than 10 miles
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away from where both teenagers were murdered Dr Alec Jeff a geneticist had been researching her hereditary diseases
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when he accidentally discovered an amazing technique called DNA or genetic profiling there was a case of Eureka you
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could see individual identification you could see parentage analysis paternity disput sorting out immigration cases
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David Baker said well look let's cement the case against this young man let's go
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to this geneticist at leester University this Dr Alec Jeff and take the SE samples from both murders and cement our
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case with this new thing called genetic fingerprinting whatever it is and let's
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just prove that he did both of them because we know he must have done both of them Dr jeffri wasn't sure that he
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could do what Baker wanted because this sort of analysis had never been done before Dr jeffy's breakthrough technique
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for analyzing DNA is called restriction fragment length polymorphism or rflp it can identify an individual based
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on just a small amount of their DNA DNA that can come from semen blood hair roots and other cells DNA is a complex
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chemical which is present in all living cells it's a little like a computer program containing coded instructions on
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how to make a human being no two individuals have the same DNA pattern except for identical twins Dr jeffy's
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task was to take the seen recovered from Linda man and Dawn Ashworth and compare
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it to the blood sample from Richard Buckland to see if it was a match first white blood cells from Richard
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buckland's blood sample were treated with a special chemical solution that allows the DNA a sticky white substance
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to float free next the DNA is cut into smaller pieces using special proteins called
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restriction enzymes which act like chemical scissors the DNA fragments must then be sorted out by a process called
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electroforesis the DNA is marked with the radioactive die and placed in separate Lanes on an electrooptic gel
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then it's subjected to an electric field under ultraviolet light you can see how the electrical current draws the
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negatively charged fragments through the gel to the positive end of the tray the separated fragments are then
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visualized on x-ray film called an auto radiogram which resembles a barcode showing an individual's unique genetic
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makeup Dr Jeff first used this technique to resolve an immigration case and after
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that a paternity dispute but this would be the first time that was ever attempted in a criminal case to reveal
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the identity of a double Murderer let's start with uh Linda man this is her DNA
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profile taken from my hair next track is a mixture of seen and vaginal fluid from
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that victim showing her DNA profile as expected plus a single man Sean DNA profile next victim daor Ashworth this
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is her blood DNA profile a band here and another one off to the uh left Trace Amounts of seamen recovered
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from that victim both revealed two faint bands whose position on the auto radiograph is very similar to the Sean
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profile seen from Linda man so first conclusion both girls have been raped and therefore presumably murdered by the
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same man what about the prime suspect Richard Buckland this is his blood DNA profile here and here completely
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different from the Sean profile conclusion both girls have been raped and therefore presumably murdered by the
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same man and that man was not the prime suspect Richard Buckland the result shock the police
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it was it was a blow to us they didn't basically didn't believe a word that we
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were saying and that was quite right healthy skepticism of of an entirely new technology and indeed I didn't believe
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the results myself so we did retesting the testing was done again independently by home office friendsit scientists all
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pointing to the same conclusion namely that buckin was not the guilty party in this case after four months in custody
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Richard Buckland was released and became the first person in the world to be exonerated of murder through the use of
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DNA profiling I have no doubt whatsoever that he would have been found guilty had
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it not been for the DNA evidence he would been jailed for life I mean that was that was a remarkable occurrence but
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why did Richard Buckland confess to a crime he didn't commit then the pressure
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started getting really hard just didn't have a chance he had to have discovered
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the body himself because in the terms of his confession he was able to give a very detailed description of her clo
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where the body was in what position it lay the ligature and so on details that nobody could possibly know unless they'd
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actually seen the body with Buckland now out of the picture a double murderer was
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still loose and of course the next stage was for David Baker then to make what I
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think was an incredibly courageous decision a DNA man hunt police sent letters to all men between the ages of
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13 and 33 living in The Villages of of narbar and Enderby the letter asked each man to volunteer for a blood and saliva
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test I'm sure they expected uh that the real killer if he was indeed a resident
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of The Villages would probably try to uh Escape responsibility of giving a blood sample
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DNA testing would only be performed on those who had the same blood type as the killer which was about 10% it was really
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an attempt to try and flush out uh the guilty party which is what it did but not the way police have
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hoped the Trap was Now set a DNA Manhunt to flush out the killer of Linda man and
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Dawn Ashworth it was a bold plan more than 5,000 men voluntarily gave blood and saliva samples but one worker at
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this local bakery didn't his name was Colin Pitchfork and was already known to
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police for earlier convictions for indecent exposure he didn't want any further
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involvement with the police so he persuaded coworker Ian Kelly to take the blood test for him Kelly lived outside
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the area and wasn't asked to take the test himself Kelly was the perfect foil
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Pitchfork spun him a yarn that um he'd already given blood on behalf of somebody else who uh couldn't go because
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he was wanted by the police etc etc and uh Kelly ostensibly swallowed that Hook Line and Sinker since police required
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identification before taking a blood sample Kelly needed some photographic proof he was Colin
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Pitchfork they both went down to a photo booth and took a passport-sized photo of
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Ian Kelly Pitchfork took his own passport slit the plastic casing with a razor blade and
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neatly inserted Kelly's photo in its place the police failed to observe that
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a photograph had been substituted for the original one and therefore they believed that this was Colin Pitchfork
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and there was his picture to prove it perfect Ian Kelly then took the blood test for Colin Pitchfork of the more
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than 5,000 men who voluntarily gave blood and saliva samples none matched the profile of the
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murderer but no one could anticipate what would happen next on a summer's evening one year
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after Dawn Ashworth was found brutally raped and murdered Ian Kelly joined fellow Bakery workers at this local
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pub and the conversation turned to the DNA Manhunt a young woman in the group overheard Kelly bragging that he had
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taken the blood test for Colin Pitchfork she sat there and listened to that and thought to herself there's
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something not right about this this isn't something that someone normally does no matter how afraid he is of the
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police and so she put in a call to the leerer uh murder inquiry team and that's
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what made them focus on Colin pitch for police quickly located Pitchfork to question him about the blood test and
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what he might know about the two murders within a very short time he confessed to
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killing both Linda man and Dawn Ashworth Pitchfork uh believed in DNA fingerprinting right away not that he
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knew any more about it than the rest of the world but he'd been following it in
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the newspapers and he believed in it and he knew that it was as good as an ink fingerprint and he knew he was finished
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when they arrested him so he confessed quite readily without this breakthrough the chances are the police NE would have
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never caught pitch for and I think it's fairly clear that had he not been caught
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then he would have killed and killed and killed again Colin Pitchfork was 27 years old married with two children his
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wife had no idea she was married to a serial killer I think he was able to deceive her perfectly well so that
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nobody in the whole world knew that he was the guilty person it's the same story uh the wife the brother the mother
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the friends of serial killers never suspect that they could be serial killers on January 22nd
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1988 Colin Pitchfork became the first person ever to be convicted in a murder case solved by DNA profiling and was
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sentenced to life in prison for his part in the deception Ian Kelly was convicted of conspiracy to
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pervert Justice and sentenced to an 18-month prison sentence which was suspended he served no time for his
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crime you did I was wrong for doing what I [Music] did I think we've learned a lot from the
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deaths of both of these two girls certainly the scientific advances that um have been made with um DNA has uh
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spread itself now throughout uh the world it was this case of all cases where on which DNA really cut its teeth
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in a forensic sense the door has been opened to a whole new aspect of medical investigation people will be talking
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about this case 100 years from now not because of my book but because of Alec Jeffrey's discovery
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[Music] a [Music]