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00:10The grisly discovery was made by builders who'd been renovating the house.
00:14What was believed to have been a body had been found in a garden.
00:19You could see that it looked like it was human remains.
00:22They must have opened the carpet and realized there was something suspicious inside.
00:27That's when they called the police.
00:30That set the wheels in motion.
00:32We had to start from scratch.
00:34Because somebody has obviously taken time to bury it so that it should never be found,
00:38then of course at this time we have to treat it very seriously indeed.
00:41We all knew we were dealing with a murder from what we'd been able to find out up until that
00:45point.
01:01Cardiff is quite different now to how it used to be.
01:09These days it's a very vibrant, cosmopolitan city.
01:15There are some lovely parts of the city and there are some not so lovely parts of the city, as
01:19with most places.
01:21There was a lot of poverty.
01:23A lot of poverty.
01:24The most iconic building in Cardiff, probably in Wales, at that time is the National Stadium.
01:33Pittsburgh Embankment was situated directly opposite on the other side of the River Taft from the National Rugby Stadium.
01:39Very big houses, predominantly houses of multiple occupation, many of which had basements and they were in various different stages
01:52of repair or disrepair.
01:56During the late 80s there were no CCTV cameras, there were no mobile phones, so consequently a lot more to
02:05police.
02:06At that time the majority of the crimes in our area were, I guess what you call acquisitive crimes, so
02:12burglaries, thefts of and from vehicles.
02:16Mainly minor type crimes.
02:36The call that we had in the CID office was that what was believed to have been a body had
02:43been found in a garden in Fitzsammany Embankment.
02:49When we arrived, we were shown to the rear of the property.
02:54One of the workmen mentioned that they'd been digging to lay some drainage pipes.
02:59The house was under renovation, so there was nobody living there at that time.
03:04And we could see where the digging had gone on.
03:09They dug down three feet and at that point they found a carpet.
03:15They must have opened the carpet and realised there was something very suspicious and worrying inside, and that's when they
03:22called the police.
03:24My office was probably only a quarter of a mile away from Fitzsammany Embankment, so we would have had a
03:30call or a press release saying that remains had been found.
03:33And very quickly, you would have quite a collection of journalists outside the house, but obviously outside the police cordon.
03:42By then the scene had been secured, so there was police tape around the building and around the garden itself.
03:52There were lots of footings, it appeared, had been dug, but it was apparent that what the workmen had done
03:58was once they had found this, what looked like, a rolled up piece of carpet,
04:04they moved it, they moved it from where it was, and it brought it to the surface.
04:11I think we all knew we were dealing with a murder from what we'd been able to find out up
04:15until that point.
04:22That set the wheels in motion, it just went on from there.
04:29I've been involved in several murder inquiries, a lot of domestic murders, but more far-eastern ones as well with
04:36Category A murders where we hadn't known or had any idea of the culprit.
04:42On first impressions going to that address, the circumstances around it wrapped in a carpet, it was highly suspicious, to
04:49say the least.
04:51As a result of the find, we then had a set of a major incident room where a large number
04:57of officers were involved.
04:59We had a briefing of the discovery and then decided then to prioritise what needed to be done.
05:09As a reporter, the people you need to speak to are the people on the scene.
05:15We would have got to speak to neighbours outside the police cordon, and then after the cordon was taken down,
05:21we would have been able to get a little bit closer to anybody who might have seen any comings and
05:25goings.
05:25The body was discovered at this house on the Fitzhammon embankment near the city centre.
05:31Skeletal remains were found wrapped in a carpet under about 18 inches of soil.
05:35The grisly discovery was made by builders who'd been renovating the house.
05:39We'd come across a carpet which we pulled up, and jokingly we said,
05:44oh, there may be a body in there, we'd better unwrap that and see what's in there.
05:47And we found the body there.
05:49What was your reaction when you saw it?
05:50Well, it was a bit gory. I phoned the police straight away.
05:53As you look closer, you could start to make out some of the bone structures.
05:58You could see that it looked like it was human remains.
06:03The fact that they found the body inside a carpet would have told the police that the body had been
06:09concealed,
06:10and therefore there was foul play.
06:31I think back in those days, there weren't that many murders committed in Cardiff.
06:37I'd seen quite a few dead bodies, but I'd never seen skeletal remains before.
06:45So it did come as quite a shock.
06:53The circumstances surrounding these remains leaves much to be desired.
06:58Because the body was wrapped in a carpet, because somebody has obviously taken time to bury it
07:03so that it should never be found, then of course at this time we have to treat it very seriously
07:07indeed.
07:10The main focus at that time for the officers at the scene was to preserve it,
07:14so that the forensic science seemed to crime people,
07:17and also the pathologist could get there and do their work.
07:23We went back to the police station and waited for further instructions as to what it was we were going
07:29to do next.
07:31The starting point would have been a very difficult one, identifying the person.
07:37Officers who deal in these types of cases are highly trained officers.
07:41The reason why that's important is because when you get to trial,
07:45what those lawyers who defend will do is look at the process of how evidence was obtained.
07:52How reliable is a particular piece of evidence?
07:56How credible is a witness?
08:02In an ideal situation, we'd like full control of the scene,
08:06with no builders having disturbed the body, so that we can recover all the forensic evidence.
08:12This is obviously a very historic case,
08:14and therefore any potential trace evidence on that body is going to be really limited.
08:20Post-mortem examination in this case would have been absolutely vital
08:24in helping the police to find out who the person was in that rolled-up carpet.
08:31Interestingly, he could tell from the configuration of the bones
08:34and from the length of the bones that we were looking at a young female.
08:38There was electrical flex that had been used to tie the person at the wrists,
08:45and a plastic bag had been put over the body's head.
08:51There was house-to-house inquiries done in that particular area,
08:54but we didn't know about the period of time we were talking about.
08:57We had no real reference points that we could help people with,
09:01so it was always going to be a really big ask
09:03to get any useful information through house-to-house.
09:08As far as the identification is concerned,
09:10all we had was the female clothing situated with the body
09:13and skeletal remains wrapped in the carpet.
09:16So it was so difficult to, you know, to work out exactly who that person was,
09:21so we had to start from scratch.
09:24So far as the identification of the body was concerned,
09:27there were a few avenues that we were keen to explore.
09:32In cases such as this, the teeth can often prove very revealing.
09:37Dr Whittaker was the odontologist concerned,
09:39and he was able to give us a good deal of very useful information.
09:44The sort of things that I look for initially are,
09:48can I help with confirming a sex determination?
09:52So I was pulling out a chromosome information
09:57from inside this person's teeth,
09:59and that would enable me to confirm she was female.
10:04So now my next thing is, well, how old was she when she died?
10:10You can see the crown of the tooth here.
10:13And as you can see, it doesn't have any root on it yet to support it in the jaw.
10:19But this tooth is only half grown,
10:22and it's going to grow out of the bone up here,
10:26and will eventually develop on here a root like this one has.
10:32We know that at what age you would expect to find a tooth
10:37in somebody's jaw at that stage of development.
10:41And so that was the first way in which I age this person as being about 15 and a half
10:51years.
10:59Whilst all the other parts of the investigation were ongoing through the forensic work,
11:04we were also trying to find out through missing person reports whether there was anybody else standing.
11:09We trolled the entire country.
11:11It seemed remarkable to us that we turned up absolutely nothing.
11:16It's incredible to think that a girl of that age, 15, can go missing.
11:22And nobody noticed. Nobody cared.
11:26She wasn't listed as a missing person.
11:28Nobody knew she'd gone missing. Nobody knew where she was.
11:31It's just tragic to think of.
11:35All missing persons records were checked.
11:38It was quite obvious that the record keeping system wasn't perfect.
11:43And of course nothing was computerised.
11:46So lots of the missing persons reports that were in being that we could check were incomplete.
11:53There was nothing that we found that could help us in identifying who this person was
11:58through missing persons records at this point.
12:17When I was looking at other aspects of the teeth,
12:20I noticed that some of the front teeth were slightly pinkish in colour.
12:27And it often means that the person who has died has died a violent death.
12:36Under these pressure systems that occur in some death,
12:41the little blood vessels, the capillaries inside your teeth burst.
12:46And they send the blood into these little canals inside the roots and the crowns.
12:54And they become coloured.
12:57And there are other reasons as well.
12:59But nevertheless, I felt able to say to the police and the coroners
13:03that I thought of their chance that there had been a violent death.
13:11The odontologist was able to produce a chart
13:15to show us what this person's teeth looked like.
13:18And we had officers that visited every dentist within the locality
13:22to see if they might have recognised some of the work that had been done
13:26that was identified in that chart.
13:29So it was a real shot in the dark.
13:31But it was done nonetheless, but without success.
13:35Despite all our efforts, we just couldn't trace the victim.
13:38So we were left with sort of a period of what we were going to do.
13:53We were made aware of a medical artist
13:56who was doing some work on reconstructing faces from skulls.
14:01We thought if we could produce a face,
14:04an image of what this person would have looked like before they died,
14:08then we might be able to identify her.
14:11The police would have been very progressive really at that time
14:15to reach out to Richard Neve and request a facial reconstruction.
14:19You know, this wasn't something that was being done already.
14:23It was pretty groundbreaking really for the police to consider this alternative option.
14:30When I was studying facial reconstruction and the techniques available,
14:34invariably Richard Neve's Manchester Method was being taught.
14:37So that's a technique that we continue to apply to this day,
14:41and it's used internationally.
14:43I got a phone call to say that this body had been found.
14:47It was a young woman, about 15 or 16 years old,
14:52and all investigations as to who she might be had not produced any results.
14:59I remember making the features fairly kind of subdued.
15:02It was a very, very simple kind of girl's face.
15:07What he would have likely done is taken a cast of the skull,
15:11and to start building up the face,
15:13he would first work with what we call tissue depth data,
15:16so measurements taken of the soft tissue
15:20across various set landmarks around the skull.
15:23After setting those, he would have gone about reconstructing the muscles
15:28of facial expression.
15:30He would have worked with clay over the cast,
15:34and sculpted muscle by muscle.
15:37This would have all been performed blind,
15:39without knowing the original appearance of the individual.
15:43I do know that we put him under an awful lot of pressure,
15:46and we wanted something as soon as we possibly could.
15:49And it was done within three to four weeks, if it wasn't sooner than that.
15:56It was absolutely pouring with rain.
15:58The police rang and sort of said,
16:00well, look, we're on the outskirts of Manchester,
16:02and they came thundering up and hammered on the door
16:05just as I was sort of finishing off these little bits of the hair.
16:09When I saw the image, my initial feelings were dubious
16:13as to whether anybody would be able to recognise an individual
16:16from the image that he created.
16:18For me, it didn't really look like a person at all.
16:21So I wasn't hopeful that it would be of an enormous use to us.
16:29Buried behind number 29 Fitzalmon Embankment
16:32in Cardiff's Riverside district
16:34were the sad remains of a teenage girl.
16:36Did you know a girl with features like this?
16:39She would have been aged about 15 and a half.
16:41That image was used by the investigating team
16:44through a release to the media,
16:46literally posting the image on notice boards,
16:50at police stations, circulating it around the country.
16:53I know it went out in lots of newspapers.
16:57It did seem a little bit like a long shot at the time,
17:00but every avenue was being explored
17:02with a focus on getting a name,
17:05getting the identity of this person.
17:06Because once we got a name,
17:08then we could really start to move this investigation forward.
17:15The timeline was also really important.
17:19The scenes of crime officers and the forensic scientists
17:22had taken samples from where the body had been found,
17:25and we thought they might be able to tell us
17:28how long that body had been in the ground.
17:32Forensic entomology is a study of insects
17:34in relation to forensic investigations.
17:38So quite quickly after death,
17:40and sometimes even before death,
17:42different types of flies will lay eggs on a deceased body.
17:45It's possible to determine the length of time someone's been dead
17:50due to the insect activity on that deceased person.
17:55They did that after finding blowfly larva in the carpet.
18:00That was able to give them an idea of how long the carpet had been there,
18:05how long the body had been wrapped up in that carpet.
18:07And they were also able to find out
18:09that the murder had happened between the months of April and October,
18:13because that's when blowfly larva is laid.
18:18Flies don't lay eggs on buried remains.
18:21So finding maggot activity and pupae on the deceased remains
18:25indicated that the body had been exposed prior to burial.
18:31The forensic entomologist at the time was able to determine
18:35that the body had been in situ for at least five years.
18:38Being able to narrow it down to that 1982 to 1984 bracket
18:45was a major breakthrough for us.
18:58Once we were able to narrow down the dates
19:02that we were particularly interested in,
19:04when the body was likely buried,
19:05we were able to find out the precise details
19:08of who was living in which flat
19:11during those two years that we were so interested in.
19:15The location of the remains was particularly important
19:18because the remains were very near to the basement flat
19:23of that particular property.
19:25It appeared to us that it would be very unusual
19:28for somebody who lived in that basement flat
19:30at the time when that body was put in the garden
19:34and wouldn't have known something about it.
19:37People didn't stick around for long in Riverside.
19:40They might be there for three, six months,
19:42maybe a year or so before they would move on.
19:46The police would start to build up a picture
19:48of who had lived there in recent times.
19:52Maybe that would only take them back a year or two.
19:56Fortunately, as far as the investigation was concerned,
19:59we were able to get the rent book from the caretaker
20:02who gave us a list of occupants
20:05from all the relevant flats at 27 and 29
20:09Fitzhammon embankment.
20:12One of the residents we were able to trace
20:14was a former occupant of the basement flat.
20:16She was able to tell us that she had chosen a new carpet.
20:21She even had photographs taken in the basement flat at the time.
20:25So we were able to see what kind of carpet it was.
20:30The carpet in the photograph looked like a cheap,
20:33communal garden patterned carpet.
20:37But we were able to speak to the owner of the building,
20:40who could remember a lot of new carpets
20:43having to be laid at that time,
20:46at the beginning of the 1980s, end of the 1970s,
20:49following flooding in Cardiff.
20:52We were able to establish where that was purchased from
20:55and eventually reveal the receipt of that particular carpet
21:00at a date I understand was 1980.
21:04From that invoice, we got identified as having been fitted
21:07in that basement flat.
21:09And that piece of carpet that we found the body wrapped in
21:13was identical.
21:17It corroborated the strong possibility
21:19that that carpet from that basement flat
21:21was the one that was wrapped around the victim.
21:25And that in turn made the former residents
21:28of that basement flat of even greater interest to us.
21:35So far as the timeline was concerned,
21:37when the body was found, there were a number of items of clothing
21:41that had survived made of man-made materials
21:44and were still on the skeleton together with some jewellery.
21:49We made extensive inquiries to establish
21:52when these items might have been manufactured
21:54so that we could focus people's minds as to when it was
21:59that we were interested in hearing about.
22:02We had officers then find out exactly where they had been manufactured,
22:07going to the retailers, etc.
22:08We managed to track down the designer.
22:12He was in the Midlands area.
22:15And we found, at his garage,
22:18and we actually found the identical pair of jeans
22:20that were so significant in the inquiry.
22:25What we found out from the inquiries into the various items of clothing
22:29was that none of them had been manufactured after 1982.
22:35So we were starting to build up a picture as to when whatever happened
22:39had actually happened.
22:49If you have any information, ring Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111.
22:55The appeal from that press conference,
22:57when we revealed the image that had been created by the medical illustrator,
23:02did produce a number of different names
23:04from people who thought they might be able to identify
23:07who the person was from that image.
23:10The sculpture definitely made all the difference
23:12to really boost public attention
23:14and, as well, support the process of recognition.
23:19We had a very good response, 50 or 60 calls.
23:22Obviously, we started highlighting which is which and who was who.
23:27And, yeah, it was highly significant as far as the inquiries were concerned.
23:31They had two phone calls from two different women,
23:35both of them social workers in Pont-Deprive.
23:39Both of them gave the same name.
23:41They gave us the name Karen Price.
23:55Although the identification of Karen has been hailed as a breakthrough,
23:59detectives admit they're no closer to discovering how she died.
24:04Up until that point, we'd have no idea who this person was,
24:07and nobody had come forward with any kind of information as to who it might have been.
24:12The name Karen Price was the only name that was provided to us twice,
24:16and from independent sources too.
24:18When comparing the reconstruction performed by Richard Neve against the existing photograph of Karen Price,
24:26there is an exceptional likeness that's been achieved.
24:30The general kind of profile and shape of the face is demonstrating a consistency.
24:36Of course, the position orientation features are all reliably replicated.
24:42So there's enough there to really facilitate recognition.
24:47I think you'd have to know Karen Price.
24:51The two people who identified her, they knew her.
24:54They saw her every day when she was at the children's home.
24:58Just looking at the photograph of her and comparing it with the reconstruction,
25:04you wouldn't be able to say that's the same person.
25:06But if you knew it, if you saw her every day, if you were familiar with that face,
25:11and you saw that reconstruction, you'd be able to put them together.
25:15The picture was emerging, and we knew that we'd have a great deal more information to work on.
25:28The picture that began to emerge of Karen Price was of a quite sad background.
25:35She wasn't brought up in a stable environment.
25:40Parents had split up, and there'd been custody issues.
25:45In the end, she went into care.
25:47She went into a home in Pont-de-Prince.
25:49She was 10 at the time.
25:52At the age of 11, she started to abscond from the children's home where she was resident.
26:00And ultimately, she ran away and didn't come back.
26:05As far as Karen was concerned, and her friends, there was going to Cardiff town centre
26:10and associate with sort of undesirable people in that area.
26:14There was a cafe, the Assis Cafe, where a lot of youngsters used to congregate.
26:19So they used to hang about there.
26:21Life was difficult for runaways like Karen because of all the temptations and all the undesirables to live in and
26:28operate in that area.
26:30She got moved into that situation, unfortunately, as a direct result of that sort of environment.
26:36This was the early 80s.
26:40Her body was found in 89.
26:42So there's a huge gap there between those years of when she was running away quite frequently from the care
26:50home and from when her body was found.
26:52Why wasn't anybody looking for a young lady who was in the care of the local authority who'd gone missing,
26:59who'd run away?
27:00One of the problems we found at the time, when dealing with missing persons from the kind of assessment centre
27:07where Karen Price was residing,
27:10was that the number of times these individuals often went missing.
27:14And there seemed to be a reluctance for people to report the episode because they nearly always turned up very
27:21soon afterwards.
27:22So it was clear that some of the working practices at that time were far from ideal.
27:32Now that we had the name, we knew that if it were to be used in any kind of evidential
27:39setting,
27:40we would need that identification to be 100%.
27:45Nowadays, DNA is probably one of the most used types of forensic evidence to be able to prove or disprove
27:52a crime.
27:54DNA really wasn't used that much by police forces in the late 80s,
27:57so the fact that it was used on this case is quite revolutionary.
28:03The Forensic Science Service advised us that there was work going on
28:07where scientists were working on the extraction of DNA from human bones,
28:14which was something that had never been done before.
28:17So the matching of the DNA from Karen Price's bones, matching that of the DNA from one of her relatives,
28:23confirmed that the deceased remains were Karen Price.
28:31Once Karen Price had been formally identified, we were able to track down the person who had done the dental
28:38work.
28:39We then checked virtually every dentist in Cardiff and the surrounding area,
28:44and we tracked down a dentist in the north road of Cardiff area.
28:50Well, I actually remember going to that particular dentist and getting Karen Price's dental records.
28:57When we finally did find dental records, I was able to compare that record with the sort of engineered record
29:08that I'd produced
29:09from my microscope pictures and my x-rays, and they matched.
29:16As far as we were concerned, it was conclusive evidence confirming that it was Karen.
29:22The wheels were in motion, obviously.
29:26Pretty much as soon as the police had a name, that was passed out onto the press,
29:31because it was important for them to say,
29:34now we know who this girl is, we want information about her.
29:37So the name was crucial.
29:39We were able to report that she'd had a troubled background, she'd been in care,
29:44and people read those sort of stories, and it touches them, and they want to come forward and help.
29:52The emphasis of the investigation certainly changed once we'd formally identified her.
29:58Whereas all efforts up until that point had been about finding out who this individual was,
30:03it quickly moved to finding out what had happened to her, and how she had come to end up in
30:10that grave.
30:12The media is hugely important in all investigations.
30:17Crime watch is particularly popular.
30:19So we are a huge audience, if you like, of potential detectives.
30:26Any big criminal investigation that the police across the country were involved in,
30:33at some point they were struggling for help, struggling for information, they would go to crime watch.
30:39We made an appeal for any information from anybody who knew anything about Karen Price.
30:45We asked for associates of hers to get in touch, anybody who knew anything about her lifestyle.
30:51Back in Cardiff, we had a team of officers ready to receive any telephone calls,
30:56should any useful pieces of information result from that appeal.
31:01In this case, people were ringing in, giving information about Karen, about her background, about her horns.
31:10One of those responses came from an individual called Idris Ali.
31:15He had been watching the programme with friends, and heard the officer making the appeal saying,
31:22if you've been a friend of Karen's then, be a friend to Karen now, and call the incident room.
31:30He made known to his friends that he'd known Karen, and one of his friends insisted that he should contact
31:36the police.
31:38He was reluctant, but then the witness said, well, I'm going to inform crime watch anyway, so he more or
31:45less said, OK, I'll call.
31:48So Idris Ali did phone in, and made it known to officers that he'd known Karen Price in those years.
31:58Two officers were dispatched to speak to Idris Ali, and they brought him to the police station to find out
32:05what it was that he had to say.
32:12Idris Ali, during his police interviews, ultimately revealed that he was very busy on the scene within Cardiff City Centre.
32:20He went on to explain how he'd known Karen during the time that we were interested in, and he used
32:27to pimp some of the young girls who were often missing from care homes.
32:34One of the persons he said he knew at that time was a man called Alan Charlton, who worked on
32:41various doors of various nightclubs within Cardiff City Centre, and was very well known by lots of individuals.
32:47Idris Ali went on to say that he used to provide Alan Charlton with young girls.
32:55Alan Charlton had come to our attention as a former resident of the basement flat, and he had been spoken
33:01to some time before we identified who Karen actually was.
33:06He was of interest to us at that time, as were a number of other individuals.
33:12He had previous convictions, he'd been known to the police for some time.
33:15He received a prison sentence for indecently assaulting an old lady in West Wales, and had been sentenced to imprisonment
33:24in Cardiff Prison.
33:26During the interviews with Idris Ali, it got to the point where he actually admitted to the police that were
33:34interviewing him that he'd been in the basement flat with Karen Price, and a friend of Karen's, when Alan Charlton
33:42murdered Karen Price.
33:45The information he revealed led to him being arrested.
33:50The other girl that had been present was tracked down.
33:54She was very reluctant to speak to the police.
33:57She was also able to provide us with evidence about what happened in the flat that night, and to a
34:04large degree corroborated the accounts of Idris Ali.
34:08Her evidence in the case was absolutely crucial.
34:12That was sufficient then to justify the arrest of Alan Charlton on suspicion of murder.
34:19He agreed to accompany us back to the police station, where he provided a statement, saying he lived there, conferred
34:25he lived there, and had nothing to do with any of the remains left outside his flat.
34:31Many police officers will have a gut feeling about who they believe was involved in or responsible.
34:37But it is important to just wait.
34:40Wait until you have enough evidence to question.
34:43Because the moment you arrest them and you interview them, they're alive to the investigation.
34:47They will be aware that you may be coming back with more and be prepared since to be forewarned is
34:53to be forearmed.
34:54And police want to strike essentially with evidence and confront a suspect with evidence without giving them the opportunity to
35:02really think about their answers.
35:06Alan Charlton denied any knowledge of Idris Ali or of Karen Price or indeed of any involvement in any wrongdoing.
35:16We were fairly certain that we had the man, and that man was Alan Charlton.
35:36The two accused are named as 24-year-old Idris Ali, who lives in Birchgrove Road, Cardiff, and is unemployed,
35:43and 30-year-old Alan Charlton, a roofing worker from Bridgewater in Somerset.
35:47It's alleged the 15-year-old runaway was strangled to death sometime between July 1st 1981 and May 1st 1982.
35:57So in January 1991, Charlton and Ali both appeared at Cardiff Crown Court.
36:05It was nerve-wracking. You want justice to prevail.
36:09It was slightly important to get both of them off the streets.
36:13Both Idris Ali and Alan Charlton pleaded not guilty to Karen's murder.
36:25In any criminal trial, the duty to prove what took place lays with the prosecution,
36:31and the standard of proof is an extremely high one.
36:36In this case, either Ali or Charlton wouldn't have had to have proved anything.
36:42Hence Charlton's failure to keep evidence.
36:45He wasn't required to prove he's innocent, but he did put the prosecution to proof in respect of his guilt.
36:51If you can show in court that an account a suspect has provided is false, then it will create an
37:00impression for the jury, which is all important.
37:04Alan Charlton denied any connection with Ali, full stop, and we had to prove otherwise.
37:11From their investigation, the police were able to go to a number of different and quite independent witnesses who were
37:17all able to give clear evidence of a young girl who matched the description of Karen Price outside with Alan
37:24Charlton.
37:25And they provided witness statements and gave evidence at court, which proved that Alan Charlton was lying.
37:32So the cumulative effect of those disparate, independent pieces of evidence from those witnesses was able to build a case
37:40which clearly rebutted Alan Charlton's assertion that he knew none of these people.
37:46And I think that's the biggest mistake he made.
37:52From a forensic perspective, there was quite a lot of circumstantial evidence.
37:57So building up these small bits of evidence had created like a bigger picture around what had actually happened and
38:05how Karen Price met her death.
38:08We had to prove the fact that the body that we found was in fact Karen Price, which we were
38:14able to do through the DNA work that had been carried out.
38:18The Crown Prosecution Service were able to conclusively prove the DNA that was recovered from her bones and compared to
38:29the blood of her parents were a 99.9% match.
38:33It's pretty conclusive.
38:35As an expert witness, when you're in court, it is a frightening situation for everybody, including men.
38:43I have to convince a jury that I got this identity right and I am actually being cross-examined by
38:53people much cleverer than me.
38:56So at the end of it all, I was able to say in front of a judge and a jury
39:02that her name is Karen Price.
39:06Over the last five weeks, they've heard various versions of how 15-year-old Karen Price died sometime between July
39:131981 and March 1982.
39:19Juries are very impressed by first-hand accounts in a murder trial.
39:24So when Ali's account or his interviews to the police were then told to the court, that would have been
39:33evidence that carried an awful lot of weight.
39:35That coupled with the evidence of a 13-year-old girl, somebody who had no reason to make up any
39:41story.
39:43Both Idris Ali and Miss X gave fairly consistent accounts of what they say happened the day that Karen died.
39:52Karen and Miss X had been taken to Alan Charlton by Idris Ali for a sex party.
40:01Alan Charlton had asked both girls to get naked and get into bed so that he could take photographs of
40:09them.
40:11Miss X refused and Alan Charlton beat her and Karen Price tried to intervene.
40:20And upon doing so, was struck by Alan Charlton.
40:26At some point during the attack on Karen Price, Idris Ali tried to stop Alan Charlton.
40:33The prosecution case was that Idris Ali, albeit only 16 years old at the time himself, was a party to
40:42that killing.
40:43Idris Ali said that Alan Charlton then left the room and returned a short time later with what he thought
40:50was a rug.
40:51And he told Idris Ali to help him put Karen inside the rug, which he did.
40:57He had left the flat after the killing, but was told to come back later.
41:02And four days after the killing, they dug a shallow grave in the garden where she would have laid and
41:08would still be had it not been for those building works.
41:13Idris Ali said that the other girl was scared witless by what she had seen.
41:18And she took no part in what had happened and just wanted to leave.
41:22If you were a young person that's witnessed a crime or been part of some investigation,
41:29having to give evidence in court and be cross-questioned by the prosecution and the defense would be quite terrifying.
41:36You have the defendant standing there, you potentially have members of the public,
41:40and potentially you have members of the family of the deceased that's also there, so it can be quite intimidating.
41:48The witness, Mr. X, was obviously a victim, and to give her evidence against them both.
41:55I can't recall a witness being that brave in those circumstances to do such a thing. It was amazing.
42:05People like the jury can make up their own minds as to what has happened.
42:09In this case, the evidence against Charlton was overwhelming.
42:13He murdered Karen Price and he paid the price for it.
42:16The two defendants, Alan Charlton and Idris Ali, sat impassively in the dock as the jury foreman announced their unanimous
42:23verdicts of guilty.
42:24Both Idris Ali and Alan Charlton were convicted of the murder of Karen Price.
42:30Alan Charlton was sentenced to life imprisonment and Idris Ali was sentenced to be detained at Her Majesty's pleasure because
42:40of his age at the time.
42:41Sentencing them, the judge, Mr. Justice Rose, said you have been convicted of an appalling murder on overwhelming evidence.
42:48He said because it happened so long ago, the precise nature of the events leading up to Karen's death may
42:54never be known.
42:57Both men appealed their convictions. Alan Charlton's appeal was thrown out.
43:05Idris Ali was granted his appeal and a retrial was ordered.
43:10His conviction was quashed by the Court of Appeal on the basis that it was potentially unsafe.
43:17But at the beginning of his retrial, he pleaded guilty to manslaughter.
43:22He accepted that he was a party to the killing by holding Karen Price's hands while he, Alan Charlton, assaulted
43:31her.
43:32He received a six-year period of imprisonment for his party and her manslaughter.
43:37And that sentence was a low sentence, but it reflected the fact, of course, that he was about 16 years
43:43old at the time and he himself was a very vulnerable young man.
43:48Throughout this whole process from being interviewed following his arrest, at court, and even now whilst he's still in prison,
43:56Alan Charlton maintains his innocence.
44:12Right from the word go, all we had was the character remains. We didn't have social media, we didn't have
44:19all the things that you've got now, CCTV. We had nothing other than basic good piece work.
44:26It's quite remarkable looking back that things we take for granted now, such as DNA evidence, weren't really in being
44:34at the time of this investigation.
44:36And some of the techniques used were really cutting edge.
44:41The case of Karen Price really helped legitimize the field of facial reconstruction.
44:47Facial reconstruction has made a dramatic difference in this inquiry, as well as several others, where there's nothing else available.
44:58The loss of her life was devastating.
45:01But to this day, Karen Price's memory lives on.
45:05This case is one of those that will stay with me forever, because I learned so much from it.
45:12And the different techniques that can be used to investigate crime.
45:17Often you read a case where the facts of the case stick with you, and you think, well, that's incredibly
45:22sad.
45:23Or killings or murders are sad in their own way, but there are some which stick with you more than
45:28others, and this is one of those cases.
45:30I've covered thousands of stories, and it's one of the saddest stories I ever worked on.
45:38For a young girl to die in that way, her young life was snuffed out at the age of 15,
45:45and that's just too sad for words.
45:50I think if I had one thing to say to Karen now, it would be, I hope some good has
45:55come from the fact that the people that led to your ultimate demise have been convicted of what they did.
46:04And I'm proud of being a part of the investigation team that made that happen.
46:39I'm proud of being a part of the investigation.
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