now that's working. >> she's doing so great today. -- captions by vitac -- www.vitac.com [ scream ] on a deserted foot path early on the morning of november 22nd, 1983, a hospital worker witnessed a terrible sight. it would be the first case in the world where dna evidence helped find the killer. ♪ england, a quiet little village of about 6,000 residents where a violent crime is almost

unheard of. >> it is something you expect to happen in a city, not in a small village community. >> 15-year-old lynda mann was a typical teenager, quiet but popular. she enjoyed school and being with friends. on a cold november evening, she left her home to walk the mile or so to her friend's house. when lynda doesn't come home by midnight, her frantic parents called the police. early the next morning, her semi nude body was found along a foot path. known locally as the black pad. detective david baker was called to the scene. >> her clothing was array, her jeans removed and her underclothes were strewn about. it was a cold night and she had a scarf around her neck and the scarf had, used to strangle her. >> she was very brutally

attacked, sexually assaulted. >> word of lynda's murder traveled quickly in the otherwise quiet village. >> people were horrified, particularly those with young girls. >> a search of the crime scene turned up little substance but the autopsy turned up important clues of lynda mann's last moments alive. >> the absence of injury to her private parts, generally on her body there was very little injury to her which suggests it was not a violent attack and which she may have died very quickly. >> the conclusion was that she was strangled and then raped. is a semen sample taken from lynda's body turned out to be a very important piece of evidence. it came from an evidence with type a blood. but this matched 10% of the adult male population in england. since lynda mann's body was

found only a few hundred yards from a local psychiatric hospital, some speculated that the killer may have been a patient. others weren't too sure. >> the thing i was very anxious to establish is that it was unlikely to have been a psychiatric patient from the hospital. it was much more likely to be a man leading a normal life, perhaps with a family, certainly one who had friends, relatives and contacts who thought of him as a normal individual. >> lynda mann was in the wrong place at the wrong time. >> former cop turned author joseph turned a best selling book entitled "the blooding." it chronicles the event of lynda mann's murder. >> it was very unusual for a complete stranger to ambush and murder someone on a foot path. it was so unheard of.

>> police questioned thousands of people about lynda mann's whereabouts on the night he was killed. >> they put more into a murder investigation over there, which they called an inquiry, than we do because they have so few murders compared to us. >> lynda mann was buried in a church yard not far from where she was murdered. on the day of her funeral police set up surveillance and videotaped the crowd for anything or anyone unusual. >> often one finds that criminals will revisit the scene of the crime or some other activity associated with the crime. >> but it was of little help. the investigation dragged on for months. then a year. with no eyewitnesses, few strong leads and several false trails, the murder hunt hit a dead end. >> it's always frustrating when you've not got an answer to ooh problem. and you're forever looking over

your shoulder a, to see what you missed and then trying to guess what happened in the future. >> and the search for lynda mann's killer continued for the next three years. ♪ mmm mmm mmm mm mmm mm mmmmmm here we go, here we go, here we go. ♪ fifty omaha set hut ♪ losing feeling in my toes ♪ ♪ nothing beats that new car smell ♪ ♪ chicken parm you taste so good ♪ ♪ nationwide is on your side ♪ mmm mmm mmm mm mmm mm mmmmmm

three years had passed since the murder of lynda mann and life in the small village was beginning to return the normal, until the afternoon of july 31st, 1986. another 15-year-old schoolgirl, dawn ash worth was walking home from her part-time job at a newsstand. instead of taking the main road, she took a shortcut down a thickly overgrown foot path called ten pound lane. [ scream ] when dawn didn't return home by 9:30 that night, her parents called the police. another teenage girl was missing. >> dawn ashworth went missing last night. >> we all prayed that was not a

repeat of the mann case, yes. >> two days later police discovered dawn ashworth's nude body under heavy brush and hay. she was discovered less than a mile from where lynda mann was murdered three years earlier. like lynda mann, dawn ashworth had been strangled and sexually assaulted. >> dawn had marked injuries to her genital area which would indicate was a very violent attack. and injuries elsewhere on the body would indicate she suffered violent injury therefore she had been attacked violently which would indicate that he had put

up a fair struggle before she died. >> semen samples taken revealed that the attacker had the same blood type as the man who attacked lynda mann. >> both girls were teenagers. both girls were walking alone. >> both women were strangled, both severely sexually assaulted. >> all school girls were advised to travel in groups and not to walk anywhere alone. dawn ashworth's father had given his daughter the same advice. >> i warned her and warned her about the dangers of going down there on the road. >> we've got to find the one who did this to my daughter, to our daughter. and stop it from happening again. >> police launched an extensive investigation into the murder of dawn ashworth and within a week police got a break. witnesses saw a young man in the vicinity of ten pound lane on if afternoon of dawn ashworth's death. he was 17-year-old richard buckland, a kitchen worker at the psychiatric hospital located just a few hundred yards from where both lynda mann and dawn ashworth had been murdered. police brought him in for questioning and he quickly

became their prime suspect. for one thing he knew details of the murder which weren't in the newspapers. >> in addition to that, when we questioned him, he couldn't really account for his movements on that particular afternoon. >> finally after 15 grueling hours of questioning, he confessed to the murder of dawn ashworth. police finally had their man. given the similarities of the two murders, police were convinced that he rape and killed lynda mann a few years early. he denied it. was he telling the truth? the answer lies just a few miles away in a university laboratory. if aunder a microscope, put we can see all the bacteria that still exists. polident's unique micro clean formula works in just 3 minutes, killing 99.99% of odor causing bacteria. for a cleaner, fresher,

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♪ your ticket to a better night's sleep ♪ richard buckland confessed to killing dawn ashworth, but insisted he had nothing to do with the murder of lynda mann three years earlier. police were convinced he was lying and set out to find the truth here at the university of lester, ironically less than ten miles away from where both teenagers were murdered. dr. alec jeffries, a gentleman net cyst, had within researching hereditary diseases when he accidentally discovered an

amazing technique called dna or genetic profiling. >> it was a case of eureka. you could solve paternity disputes. >> david baker said, look, let's cement the case against this young man. let's go to this geneticist at lester university, dr. alec jeffries and take the semen samples from both murders and cement the case with his new thing called genetic firing making and prove that he did both of them because we knew he did both of them. >> dr. jeffries didn't know where he could do it or not. this sort of analysis had never been done before. the breakthrough technique is called restriction technique polymorphism. rflp. it can identify an individual just on a small amount of dna,

dna that can come from semen, blood, hair roots and other elements. dna is present in all living cells. it's a little like a computer program containing coded instructions on how to make a human being. no two individuals have the same dna pattern except for identical twins. dr. jeffries' task was to take the semen recovered from lynda mann and dawn ashworth and compare it to the blood sample from richard buckland to see if it was a match. first, white blood cells from richard buckland's satchel was treated with a chemical reaction that allows the dna to float free. next the dna is cut into smaller pieces using special proteins called restriction enzymes.

the dna fragments must then be sorted out but a process called electrophoresis. it's marked with an radioactive dye and placed in separate lanes with a gel. then it's subjected to an electric field. under ultraviolet light you can see how the electrical current draws the negatively charged fragments through the gel to the positive end of the tray. the separated fragments are then visualized on x-ray film which resembles a bar code showing an individual's unique genetic makeup. dr. jeffries first used this technique to resolve an immigration case and after that a paternity dispute. but this would be first time it was ever attempted in a criminal case to reveal the identity of a double murderer. >> let's start with lynda mann. that is her dna profile from her hair. the next is a mix of semen and vaginal fluid from the victim, plus a single man semen dna

profile. next victim, dawn ashworth. this is her dna profile her, a band here and at one off to the left. trace amounts of semen recovered from that victim both revealed two faint bands whose position on the radio graph is similar to the semen profile seen from lynda mann. first conclusion, both girls had been raped and presumably murdered by the same man. what about richard buckland? this is his dna profile here and here. completely different from the semen profile. conclusion, both girls had been raped and presumed to have been murdered by the same man and that man was not the prime suspect richard buckland. >> the result shocked the police. >> it was a blow to us. >> they basically didn't believe a word we were saying.

that was quite right. healthy skepticism of an entirely new technology. we did retesting. it was done independently all pointing to the same conclusion, namely that buckland was not the guilty part party in the case. >> after four months in custody richard buckland was released open became the first person in the world to be exonerated of murder through the use of dna profiling. >> i had no doubt whatsoever he would have been found guilty had it not been for the dna evidence and jailed for life. that was a remarkable occurrence. >> but why did richard buckland confess to a crime he didn't commit? >> the pressure started getting really hard. >> he had to have discovered the body himself. in the terms of his discussion he was able to give a detailed description of her clothing, where the body was, in what position it lay, the ligature and so on, details that nobody

could know unless they had actually seen the body. >> with buckland now out of the picture, a double murderer was still loose. >> and of course the next stage was for david baker to make what i think was an incredibly courageous decision. >> a dna manhunt. police sent letters to all men between the ages of 13 and 33 living in the villages. the letter asked each man to volunteer for a blood and saliva test. >> i'm sure they expected that the real killer, if he was indeed a resident of the villages, would probably try to escape responsibility of giving a blood sample. >> dna testing would only be performed on those who had the same blood type as the killer, which was about 10%. >> i was really an attempt to try to flush out the guilty party. >> which is what it did. >> but not the way police had

hoped.

the trap was now set. a dna manhunt to flush out the culler of lynda mann and dawn ashworth. it was bold plan. more than 5,000 men voluntarily gave blood samples.

but one worker at this local baker did not. his name was colin pitchfork and was already known to police for early convictions of indecent exposure. he didn't want any further involvement with the police so he persuaded coworker ian kelly the take the blood test for him. kelly lived out of the area and wasn't asked to take the test him. he was the perfect foil. >> pitchfork spun a yarn that he had already given blood on

behalf of somebody else that couldn't go because he was wanted by the police, et cetera. and kelly swallowed it hook, line and zinger. >> since police required identification before giving a blood sample, kelly needed some photographic proof that he was colin pitchfork. they both went down to a photo booth and took a passport picture. they slipped the plastic casing with the razor blade and neatly inserted kelly's photo in its place. ian kelly took the blood test for colin pitchfork. of the 5,000 men who gave the blood and thus samples, none matched the profile. but no one could anticipate what would happen next. on a summer's evening one year after dawn ashworth was found raped and murdered, ian kelly joined fellow bakery workers at the local pub and the conversation turned to the dna manhunt. a young woman in the group overheard kelly bragging that he had taken the blood test for colin pitchfork. >> she thought to herself, there's something not right about this. this isn't something that someone normally does no matter how afraid he is of the police. so she put in a call to the murder inquiry team and that's what made them focus on colin

pitchfork. >> police located pitchfork to question him about the blood test and what he might know about the two murders. within a very short time he confessed to killing both lynda mann and dawn ashworth. >> pitchfork believed in dna fingerprinting right away and he knew it was as good as an ink fingerprint and he knew he was finished when they arrested him. so he confessed quite readily. >> without this break through the police would have never caught pitchfork. i think it's clear had he not been caught that he would have killed, and killed and killed again. >> colin pitchfork was 27 years old, married with two children. his wife had no idea she was married to a serial killer. >> i think he was able to deceive her perfectly well so that nobody in the whole world knew he was the guilty person.

>> same story, the wife, the brother, the mother, the friends of serial killers never suspect that they could be serial killers. >> on january 22nd, 1988, colin pitchfork became the first person ever to be convicted in a murder case solved by dna profiling and was sentenced to life in prison. for his part in the deception, ian kelly was convicted of conspiracy to pervert justice and sentenced to an 18 month prison sentence which was suspended. >> we've learned a lot from this death of these two girls. the scientific advancements that have been made with dna has spread itself throughout the world. >> it was this case of all cases where on which dna really cut its teeth in a forensic sense. >> the door has been opened to a whole new aspect of medical investigation. >> people will be talking about this case 100 years from now,

not because of my book but because of alec jeffries' discovery. for 18 years a mass murderer successfully eluded the fbi. ♪ >> he was wanted for the murder of his entire family. ♪ [ gunshot ] ♪ [ gunshots ] ♪ ♪