A Killer Breakthrough

In November 1983, 15-year-old Lynda Mann was raped and strangled beside the Black Pad footpath in Narborough, Leicestershire. In July 1986, 15-year-old Dawn Ashworth, who attended the same school, was killed the same way on a footpath in the neighboring village of Enderby. Detectives believed one man had killed both girls.

A 17-year-old named Richard Buckland confessed to Dawn’s murder. Police asked Alec Jeffreys, a geneticist at the University of Leicester, to test the evidence with the DNA profiling method he had just developed. His results showed that one man had killed both girls and that the man was not Buckland. Police then asked thousands of local men to give blood samples. Colin Pitchfork, a baker, talked a coworker, Ian Kelly, into giving a sample in his name, using a passport doctored with Kelly’s photo. In August 1987 a woman reported hearing Kelly talk about the swap, and Pitchfork was arrested on September 19, 1987.

His DNA matched the crime scene evidence. He pleaded guilty on January 22, 1988, and was sentenced to life with a minimum term of 30 years, later cut to 28 on appeal. He was the first murderer caught with DNA profiling. Released on parole in September 2021, he was sent back to prison that November for approaching a lone woman. The Parole Board refused to release him in December 2023 and again in October 2025.