AAP General News (Australia)
04-06-2000
NSW: Wee Waa s mass DNA test based on famous British case.
By John Kidman, Crime Reporter
SYDNEY, April 6 AAP - Mass DNA testing - of the type planned for Wee Waa this weekend
- has its origins in one of the most protracted manhunts in British criminal history.
The case, which heralded two forensic landmarks - the first suspect eliminated by genetic
fingerprinting and the first murderer caught by it - began with the 1983 slaying of 15-year-old
Lynda Mann.
Semen traces showed the teenager's killer belonged to a genetically identified group
of men which included 10 per cent of national population.
However initial inquiries focused on a mental institution near the murder scene in
the English village of Narborough, near Leicester.
Detectives were convinced the culprit was a local, according to British crime historian
Colin Evans.
But with little else to go on, their investigation eventually petered out.
It wasn't until 26-year-old bakery worker Colin Pitchfork struck again that police
got their first real lead.
The shockingly mutilated body of 15-year-old Dawn Ashworth was discovered less than
2km from where Lynda Mann was found.
This time, the semen tests at least confirmed investigators were looking for a dual killer.
Their attention again swung to the nearby Carlton Hayes Hospital and a handicapped
kitchen porter who appeared to have inside knowledge about the Ashworth case.
At the behest of the accused youth's father police then made the decision which would
later revolutionise forensic science.
They sought the advice of Dr Alec Jeffreys, a researcher at Leicester University who
claimed to have perfected a DNA identification system.
Comparing the porter's blood with the semen samples already collected, he was immediately
able to eliminate him as the prime suspect.
But it wasn't enough for the detectives, who then asked Jeffreys to consider the mass
testing of the entire local community.
Like those probing the rape of Wee Waa's 93-year-old matriarch, they didn't expect
the offender to come forward but hoped to flush him out.
Persistence paid off when in August 1987 a group of Pitchfork's workmates began discussing
his sexual exploits in a pub.
The penny dropped when one of the four confessed that Pitchfork had bullied him into
taking a swab test on his behalf, according to Evans.
The admission then prompted a second of the drinkers to divulge that Pitchfork also
had approached him, with a concerns that prior convictions for indecent exposure might
cause police to give him a hard time.
Colin Pitchfork was the 4,583rd male to be tested in the sweep and the last.
On January 22, 1998, almost four years after Lynda Mann's murder, he was sentenced
to two life prison terms.
The mass DNA testing of Wee Waa's 600 strong male population this weekend is designed
to narrow the list of suspects in the rape and bashing of an elderly woman in 1998.
AAP jk/sb/ah/bwl
KEYWORD: DNA (BACKGROUNDER)
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