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00:00in 1989 a carpet was found buried in a garden within that was what appeared to
00:13be human bones why was it that they hadn't been missed but the time of the
00:19burial an identity of the bones was a mystery without a name things don't move
00:27forward unearthing critical evidence revolutionized forensic science that was
00:36the most amazing breakthrough in terms of the world of forensic science and
00:41genetics but the body in the back garden posed an intractable riddle we were
00:49determined that we were going to find out who this person was pure and simple how
00:55do you find the killer when all that is left of the victim is the skeleton
01:15when there's a murder with no suspect no leads perhaps not even a body that's when
01:22investigators face their toughest test the evidence must be gathered the evidence must
01:29be analyzed but the evidence is worthless if you can't pin it to a suspect
01:37the only way to crack the hardest cases of all the only way to prove what actually happened the
01:55difference between success and failure critical evidence
02:00the seventh of December 1989 Cardiff Wales is bustling capital city
02:28close to the city center on the banks of the river taff at Fitzhammon embankment workmen were digging in a back garden
02:38they hit an obstruction a roll of carpet tied with electrical flex
02:47they peered inside and immediately called the police
02:54at the time Jeff Norman was a young detective constable with the South Wales police
02:59he was one of the first investigators on this scene
03:02what we saw at that time was exactly what the workmen had had seen which was the carpet a little bit unrolled
03:16it was around six feet long rotten in places but relatively well preserved
03:23and within that together with vegetation and all kinds of other matter what appeared to be human bones
03:42something that seemed to have the shape of a head was covered in a black bag
03:47there were decaying clothes and the bones appear to be clean of flesh
03:53this wasn't a recent burial
03:59the pathologist confirmed the bones were human
04:10the main function and focus at that initial stage of the investigation was to find out who this person was
04:17because clearly they had been in the ground for some time
04:21why was it that they hadn't been missed?
04:28the circumstances couldn't be more suspicious
04:32but at this point in the investigation police are dealing with just that
04:36a suspicious death
04:38they have no evidence to prove this is a murder
04:41no critical evidence at all
04:44other than a carpet, its contents and one other crucial factor
04:48the site where this gruesome burial took place
04:51the carpet was buried so close to the basement flat rear door
05:05it seemed to us at that stage that it was very unlikely
05:08that whoever had lived in that basement flat
05:11hadn't had some knowledge of its existence
05:18the building
05:23Fitzhammon Embankment was the heart of Cardo's bedsit land
05:27houses cheaply subdivided
05:31and rented to tenants looking for the most inexpensive
05:34and anonymous accommodation the city had to offer
05:37Unfortunately, it was frequented by people disposed to take in drugs.
05:49It was frequented by prostitutes and their pimps.
05:53The prostitutes and pimps may have moved on now,
05:58but back in the 1980s, Number 29 was no exception.
06:02It was multi-occupancy.
06:05We knew that the population of that part of the city is very transient.
06:14They could be there for a day, they could be there for a week,
06:17they could be there for a month.
06:24But detectives suspected that someone who lived at 29 Fitzhallen Embankment
06:28would know something.
06:30It was crucial to us that we identified people that had lived, especially at that premises.
06:39But finding them would be extremely difficult, especially if they did not want to be found.
06:45With a transient population, it's quite unusual for people to leave a trail that you can follow.
06:54But we knew that in tracking down those people, they may be able to shed some light on the events that had led to that death.
07:04The only tangible evidence detectives had was the carpet, some rags and human bones.
07:20There were none broken.
07:24They all appeared to be present.
07:26There was no sign of any trauma that he could see.
07:29The pathologist couldn't tell detectives how the person died, but the bones offered up more critical evidence.
07:38He was able to say it was a female.
07:44He was able to say it was likely Caucasian.
07:48And he was even able to give us an idea of the age of that person.
07:53Which, given what he had to work on, was quite remarkable.
08:02The pathologist estimated the age between 15 and 20 years old.
08:06But who was this young woman?
08:09How did she come to be buried in a back garden?
08:12And how did she die?
08:17At this stage, all detectives had were questions.
08:22But they were sure 29 Fitzhammond Embankment was the place to find the answers.
08:30It was crucial to us that we identified people that had lived in the basement flat.
08:35It was vitally important to us that we did that quickly, and that we spoke to people as quickly as we could.
08:54On the 7th of December, 1989, a carpet full of bones was found buried in the garden of a house in the heart of Cardiff's bedsit land.
09:03The pathologists identified them as those of a young woman aged between 15 and 20 years old.
09:13There was no flesh, but he did find strands of hair, which he could tell us were fair, which in itself could be very useful to us in identifying the person.
09:31Further than that, the bones and hair offered up little more evidence.
09:40The skull and jaw were passed on to a forensic dentist.
09:46He was able to give police a more precise age.
09:54When she died, the young woman was just 15 and a half years old.
09:58I hadn't long become a father myself, and most people working on the investigation were mums and dads themselves.
10:15So, with what we had, there was no motivation required.
10:22Everybody was extremely keen to do what they would want done if it had been their son or daughter.
10:29The forensic dentist also discovered that blood deposits had been forced into a tooth cavity.
10:43is the kind of deposits that you find in violent deaths, such as strangulation.
10:51So, not only was this a young female that we were dealing with, but this was indeed a young female who had met a violent death.
10:58The forensic dentist had given them critical evidence.
11:08Detectives were now positive they were dealing with a murder.
11:15They still had no idea why she was buried in a back garden, or how she got there.
11:21But they believed the conditions of her burial would give them more evidence.
11:29Forensic entomologist Dr John Manlove studies the effects of insects on dead bodies above and below ground.
11:40We are estimating how long somebody could have been dead for by the age of the insects,
11:47and therefore the length of the time that the infestation has been present on the body.
11:50The girl was bound, partially covered in plastic bags, and wrapped in a carpet, creating a gruesome, yet unique set of entomological circumstances.
12:04If her body's wrapped in a carpet, it's almost self-contained in its own mini-chrome scene.
12:11So I'd be looking for an insect either live or remains of, so empty puperia cases or whichever they might be.
12:18When the skeleton was examined in 1989, puperia cases of forehead fly maggots were found, which could have taken over a year to strip the bones of flesh.
12:31And a colony of wood lice, living on the bones, seems to have been established for two years or more.
12:42The entomologist estimated the body had been buried for at least five years.
12:47It was critical evidence. Detectives now knew the girl couldn't have been murdered after 1984.
13:00But how early could she have been killed?
13:06The clothes found with the skeleton could possibly provide a date.
13:09There was a bra, there was a label, there were the remains of a pair of jeans.
13:21We had a button, we had a zip.
13:27They could also give detectives more critical evidence about who this girl was.
13:31Were they expensive items of clothing for instance? Were they not expensive items of clothing? Were they generally available? Where were they generally available?
13:48Many of the items could be bought in the city centre's bargain basements.
13:54The indications were that this was probably not the highest social economic group.
13:59that we were dealing with.
14:04So the clothes were telling them the chances were this girl came from a poor background.
14:12Jeff had a hunch that the girls bra could give them more valuable information.
14:19It had a label attached which had Mrs. Knickers written on it.
14:25Jeff tracked the label to a small company operating in England in the early 1980s and spoke to the owner.
14:36He was able to tell us without any doubt in his mind that he was doing his work attaching Mrs. Knickers labels to bras between 1979 and 1983.
14:49And with the evidence that we were able to recover from the other items of clothing we were able to say without any doubt that there was nothing manufactured before January 1981.
15:02This was a major breakthrough.
15:08Immediately that focuses the investigation.
15:13Clothing evidence had given them the earliest possible time of death, 1981.
15:19This, together with the latest possible time of death from the entomologist, gave detectives a three-year timeframe for the killing of this anonymous girl.
15:35She was buried in the garden between 1981 and 1984.
15:46And in an investigation of this complexity, when you're starting with virtually nothing, that kind of evidence is like gold dust.
15:54But they still had no evidence to tell them why she was killed or where she came from.
16:09Until the entomologist found disturbing evidence, signalling the treatment of the body immediately after death.
16:15He was able to tell us that the body must have been somewhere else for one or two days. It wasn't immediately buried.
16:26A number of blowfly pupil cases were found with the body.
16:32Blowflies will lay eggs directly onto their food source.
16:37So if a body has a blowfly infestation on it and is found buried, it's common sense to assume that the body has been exposed for a period of time with access to blowflies before being buried.
16:57This was another shocking twist in the mystery of this tragic girl.
17:01She was killed and left at least a few days before being buried.
17:12But where was this girl kept above ground after her murder?
17:16Detectives suspect there's a strong link to the basement flat of 29-foot salmon embankment.
17:22It's just four feet from the grave after all.
17:25If the girl was there, her killer or killers would have been there too.
17:29The problem was that literally hundreds of tenants had passed through the flat between 1981 and 1984.
17:45Detectives needed a breakthrough.
17:48And during a door-to-door investigation, they got it.
17:51There was a person resident at one of the flats in Fitzalmon Embankment, and she had in fact been something of a caretaker.
18:02And she had kept a rent book.
18:08The rent book contained critical evidence.
18:11She was able to give us names and dates.
18:22For the first time, the anonymous residents of Fitzalmon Embankment shifted into focus.
18:27We weren't to know what evidence they might or might not have until we tracked them down and spoke to them.
18:36Detectives were particularly interested in people who had lived in the basement flat.
18:42And what they could tell them about the last piece of evidence from the burial?
18:49The carpet.
18:50So that carpet was photographed, and that photograph was shown to residents that had previously lived within the building.
19:04Detectives tracked one former resident to a pub in Cardiff's Tiger Bay, where he worked as a bouncer.
19:11His name was Alan Charlton.
19:20He provided an account of what had gone on while he lived there, which on the face of it appeared unremarkable.
19:29He had lived in the basement flat from June 1981 to February 1982, a period of only eight months.
19:37We looked into his background, and it was quite apparent to us that he was a person of interest due to some of his previous convictions.
19:52But detectives needed far more evidence before they could arrest anybody.
19:56They spoke to another resident of the basement, and she not only recognised the carpet, she chose it.
20:10She could tell us that that carpet was the same design as the one that she chose to have put down in her basement flat.
20:19All of a sudden, the carpet's taken us into that basement flat.
20:27Detectives now had strong evidence to suspect that the carpet in the grave was an off-cut from a carpet that used to lie in the basement flat.
20:35If this theory was right, then could the girl have been murdered in that flat?
20:43To answer this question, detectives need to find this investigation's most critical piece of evidence.
20:50The girl's name.
20:51We needed to identify these remains, and if we could put a face to it, then that was going to help us in making an identification.
21:06In an unprecedented move for a British police investigation, they attempted to rebuild the girl's face.
21:12The reconstruction was seen as the last hope.
21:32A skeleton was found in a Cardiff back garden on the 7th of December 1989.
21:37Four weeks later, investigators established it was that of a 15-and-a-half-year-old girl.
21:49They suspected the carpet she was buried in was an off-cut from a carpet in the basement flat.
21:56But that carpet had been thrown out years before,
22:00and the lady who chose it couldn't remember where she bought it.
22:02So how on earth can detectives prove the girl was buried in an off-cut from a carpet that doesn't exist anymore?
22:11They'd have to rely on good old-fashioned police work.
22:17The lady was able to tell us the date that she was resident at the basement flat.
22:23She had lived in the flat from 1980 to 1981.
22:29So from that we had an idea of when the carpet would have been ordered and fitted.
22:38Detectives visited every carpet shop in Cardiff.
22:42We were able to trace it to a retailer in Clifton Street in Cardiff.
22:52But they still needed tangible evidence that the carpet came from that shop.
22:58Luckily, the owner kept all his invoices.
23:02There were literally hundreds if not thousands of boxes, cardboard boxes, with invoices.
23:13We didn't know the date we were looking at exactly,
23:17so to be sure you had to go through box after box after box.
23:22Jeff Norman searched, almost non-stop, for three days.
23:27I eventually found an invoice which appeared to be the order for the carpet that the lady described.
23:38The invoice was dated September the 6th, 1980.
23:45I imagine it must be like the moment you think you might have won the lottery, perhaps.
23:50It was an incredible moment to think that I actually got the invoice which could lead us on to...
23:57...that piece of carpet in which the young girl had been found.
24:04It was brilliant detective work.
24:10We knew that that body had been wrapped in a carpet.
24:14We now knew that that carpet had been laid in the basement flat.
24:20But to prove beyond doubt that the girl was buried in an offcut from that carpet,
24:24Jeff still needed more evidence.
24:27He needed to find the man who fitted the carpet.
24:31Meanwhile, the final stage of the forensic investigation took Jeff to Manchester,
24:37where he made the groundbreaking decision to bring in a forensic artist.
24:41We knew that the forensic artist could potentially put a face to the skeletal remains that we had.
24:53And given that the identification of this person was key, it was an area we were keen to explore.
25:00Five weeks after the body is discovered, investigators have exhausted every other forensic opportunity.
25:10But facial reconstruction was a long shot.
25:14No British force had ever used this technique to identify human remains.
25:19I had the dubious honour of transporting the skull to Richard Neve at the University of Manchester.
25:34In 1990, Richard Neve was pioneering new techniques in forensic facial reconstruction used nowhere else in the world.
25:44Every single expert that they could find, every ologist that was around, had been brought into the game.
25:58Forensic reconstruction really wasn't fully established in the UK at that time.
26:04So, yes, the reconstruction was seen as the last hope.
26:15In the first week of January 1990, Neve made a cast of the skull and set about building the girl's face.
26:22I insert pegs at specific anatomical points on the skull, which give the average thickness of soft tissue to be found at any one particular point on the face.
26:40The question is always asked, how much of this is science, how much of it is just guesswork?
26:49And the answer to that is that it's a mixture of the two.
26:55The skull determines the shape and the proportions.
26:59So the whole thing is a logical process of developing soft tissues over the skull.
27:10Sculpting with clay, a full facial reconstruction could take up to three weeks.
27:17Neve was asked to do it in five days.
27:20The pressure came from the police down in South Wales, who would ring up and say, how far have you got, you know, how soon will it be finished?
27:41Back in Cardiff, Geoff Norman was able to turn his attention to the off-cut carpet.
27:45We were able to track down the carpet fitter from the initials on the invoice.
27:52It came as no surprise to us that he couldn't remember fitting that particular carpet.
27:57So we asked him if he would help us with a reconstruction.
28:03On the floor of a police garage, Geoff marked out the exact dimensions of the basement flat in chalk.
28:09We knew the size of carpet that was supplied, so we asked him to fit that carpet within the mapped out area.
28:22And he told us where he would expect to find some wastage, where he would have to make certain cuts to the carpet.
28:31After he'd finished fitting, there was a large off-cut.
28:34His dimensions were six feet by five feet.
28:40The actual dimensions we'd recovered from the grave was six foot two by four foot eight.
28:45Geoff Norman now had critical evidence to prove the girl was buried in an off-cut of the carpet from the basement flat.
29:01And it linked the victim to the occupier of that flat.
29:04But who was that person?
29:08And crucially, who was the girl?
29:10In Manchester, after four days' work on the skull, Niamh had built up to the final layer of skin.
29:27The really tricky area is the very final layer, the final layer of skin that goes over the top.
29:40If you're dealing with, as we were in this instance, a young person,
29:45there are chances are that there won't be much in the way of facial creases and, you know,
29:50life won't have actually trodden on that face very much.
29:53After five days, he was almost finished.
29:58But I do remember that on the Friday, the police had rung me and they'd rung in the morning and they said,
30:09where have you got to?
30:12And I said, the face and the head's basically done, but I just want to...
30:16Right, they said, we're on our way.
30:17In an hour, he was finished and the anonymous skeleton found in a garden six weeks before now had a face.
30:29The moment we came face to face with the person, it really brought home to you just how real this was.
30:47It's one thing to be dealing with a bag of bones, but when you put a face to that, it really does make you very keen to do the best you possibly can to identify this person and to find the truth.
31:03On the 7th of January, 1990, South Wales police went to press.
31:10What was remarkable about it, I think, was the speed with which the whole thing was completed.
31:19Two days after Richard Knee's facial reconstruction was unveiled, he was recognised by two social workers.
31:28One of them was living in Yorkshire, the other one was still in Cardiff and they had given a name and that they had both given the same name.
31:40And that name was Karen Price.
32:03Investigators quickly traced Karen Price's parents.
32:05Neither had seen their daughter for a decade, but they also confirmed the resemblance.
32:15What was striking was the accuracy of the image that Richard Knee had produced.
32:21When you compared it to the photograph of Karen Price that one of the social workers was able to produce,
32:27you knew that they hadn't made a mistake in their identification.
32:30It would have been easy at that stage for the senior management to refer the case to the coroner.
32:36We had identified the victim and it could have been left there.
32:42But there was a pervading sense of needing to find out what had happened to her.
32:48The job was only half done.
32:50To finish this job, Jeff and his colleagues were determined to find Karen's killer.
33:02But to convict that killer, they needed a better form of identification than a close resemblance to a forensic reconstruction.
33:12They still needed critical evidence.
33:20Once again, we were assisted by the provision of experts who might be able to help in that regard.
33:28The police asked forensics if it was possible to extract DNA from Karen's bones to obtain a positive DNA match to her parents.
33:44But this is 1990.
33:47DNA profiling had only been in existence for four years and no one had ever attempted this before.
33:53Professor Sue Black is one of today's leading experts on human DNA identification.
34:07It's really difficult to get DNA from bone.
34:11It's really challenging because it breaks down so quickly.
34:14You need to find a sufficient volume.
34:16And the longer something has been buried, the more challenging it becomes.
34:21But the forensics team believed there may be enough material left in Karen's femur for an experiment that would revolutionize DNA science.
34:37That was the most amazing breakthrough in terms of the world of forensic science and genetics.
34:46And this breakthrough led them to a witness who'd led them to a killer.
34:51He told us that he'd known Karen Price.
34:54And it soon became clear that he was present within the basement flat when Karen was killed.
35:00Five weeks after the discovery of human remains in a Cardiff back garden, investigators had evidence of murder and forensic reconstruction had given them a name.
35:28Karen Price.
35:31Karen Price.
35:35A trail of evidence irrefutably linked the carpet Karen was buried in to the basement flat of 29 Fitzhammon Embankment.
35:43Now detectives need to know why she would have been there and who she would have been there with.
35:50To find and convict her killer, they needed to know the details of her life.
35:57We got her identified, we're looking at her associates, we're looking at antecedent history, we're looking to see why she hadn't come to the notice of the authorities.
36:10How can somebody disappear from the world without trace?
36:14Why wasn't somebody looking for her?
36:17The picture they built up was that of a neglected young girl.
36:25We quickly established that she'd had a troubled childhood, which had resulted in her residing at a children's home in Ponterpreet at the time that she went missing.
36:38She was somebody that had gone missing many times before.
36:41There was a missing persons form in existence, which we weren't able to recover, and it was a mystery to us why she had been allowed, as it were, to vanish off the face of the earth.
37:00Karen disappeared into the crowds in the centre of Cardiff, living off the radar just a quarter of a mile from Fitzhammon Embankment.
37:13We found out that she was often visiting the central square area of Cardiff,
37:26and was often befriended by some of the local characters, and she clearly was vulnerable, and it quickly became apparent that she was exploited by some of those individuals.
37:45Police had witness reports of Karen in sight of Fitzhammon Embankment, but they still needed to prove beyond a doubt that she was the body in the back garden.
37:54In the lab, the forensic team extracted what they hoped would be fragments of DNA from Karen's femur.
38:13So, you imagine that you found a bit of DNA, and it might not even be a whole bit of the DNA, it might just be a little fragment, and you think, if I want to be able to analyse that, I've got to replicate it.
38:30It's like saying, one piece of paper isn't enough, I've got to put that through the photocopier, and I've got to produce a thousand copies of it, because if I've got that weight of paper, then my instruments will be able to cope with it.
38:43This technique of copying sufficient DNA for analysis was used for the first time in the Karen Price case.
38:57And it worked.
39:02That was the most amazing breakthrough in terms of the world of forensic science and genetics.
39:08Police now had the critical evidence they needed to prove the body found in the back garden was Karen Price, enabling them to publish her name and photograph for the first time in the national media on February the 15th, 1990.
39:30That's produced a number of witnesses, and some of those witnesses were able to describe not only her lifestyle, but more importantly, the fact that she had, in fact, been a visitor to Fitzalmon Embankment.
39:47Karen was a visitor not just to Fitzalmon Embankment, but to the basement flat of number 29, which was rented by a man of great interest.
39:59And of great interest to police, Alan Charlton.
40:06It was clear to us from witnesses that we spoke to that Alan Charlton was a vindictive individual who preyed on some of the weaker members of the society, especially some of the residents that lived at Fitzalmon Embankment,
40:26and more particularly anybody that he felt he was.
40:29He delivered another shocking revelation.
40:33He told us that he'd known Karen Price, and it soon became clear that he was present within the basement flat when Karen was killed.
40:41He was initially dealt with as a witness, but as a result of the claims that he made, he was then arrested and further interviewed.
40:54Charged as an accomplice, the man told police Charlton wanted to take lewd photographs of Karen.
41:00When she said no, he flew into a rage.
41:05During the interview, he clearly implicated Alan Charlton as being the major role player in Karen's death.
41:15After Charlton killed Karen, the accomplice helped wrap her in an off-cut of carpet.
41:24She was subsequently buried by Charlton.
41:29He was tried and imprisoned for life for the murder of Karen Price on the 26th of February, 1991.
41:44The accomplice was also imprisoned.
41:50In just three months, brilliant detective work and revolutionary forensic science had given an identity to anonymous bones
42:05and built up the life story of a tragically neglected young girl that led to the conviction of her killer.
42:15The forensic evidence that enabled us to unequivocally identify Karen Price enabled us then to really get into her background
42:27that could then help us with identifying her way of life, the people that she frequented with, the places that she went,
42:37and crucially, her association with Alan Charlton.
42:42In this world, the boss and the crew, the police can replace her at her.
42:45The troops, the machine, its central audience, and the staff.
42:47To be on the train, the crew, the police, and the police, and the parents.
42:51This is a part of the mission.
42:52By the way, there is a 360-level industry who is working on her.
42:56It is a great day.
42:58It is a great day.
43:00It is a cool day.
43:02It is a great day.
43:04We're still here today.
43:07I have to come.
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