Post by ttk on Apr 23, 2022 11:27:31 GMT
From the Times in 2016
The cold-case guru on killers’ trail
The summer of 1976 was one of the warmest on record, and Susan Donaghue, a 44-year-old nurse, was at home feeling unwell. She was dozing in her basement flat in Stoke Bishop, a suburb of Bristol, with her window open when detectives believe an opportunistic burglar broke in.
Mr Mason, 58, joined the force a year after the murder but it is only since his retirement after 31 years of service that he has become involved in the investigation. He joined the force’s major crime review unit, which includes investigating cold cases, a week after he officially retired as a detective sergeant in 2008.
His arrival coincided with a fresh appeal on the BBC’s Crimewatch programme for information in the case of Melanie Road, who was raped and murdered as she walked home from a nightclub in Bath in June 1984.
Christopher Hampton, the father of four who was convicted this week of Melanie’s killing, had stabbed her 26 times and left his blood and semen at the scene. However, he was not among the thousands of men interviewed during the investigation.
Mr Mason took the DNA swab that secured the conviction of Melanie Road’s killer
Mr Mason took the DNA swab that secured the conviction of Melanie Road’s killer
PA
It was only when his daughter was arrested for a minor offence in November 2014, and her DNA was found to be a near match for that of the killer, that her father became a suspect. Hampton, 64, admitted Melanie’s murder at Bristol crown court on Monday and was jailed for a minimum of 22 years.
Mr Mason had become the unit’s unchallenged expert on all aspects of the Melanie Road case. “If people wanted to find things they’d ask me because it’s much quicker than looking through thousands and thousands of documents. They were jokingly calling me the Guru,” he said.
“I’ve been doing this job so long, longer than anyone else, it was fitting as far as I was concerned that I was the one who tracked Hampton down, spoke to him on the phone, met with him and took the voluntary sample that led to him being identified.”
At the time of MrsDonaghue’s murder, genetic fingerprinting — the identification of an individual through their unique genetic make up — was not even a gleam in a forensic scientist’s eye. The technique was not developed until 1988 and it was another seven years before the UK’s national criminal database was set up.
Since then, everyone arrested for an offence has had to give a sample which can be compared against the 5.7 million profiles already online.
Like Hampton, Mrs Donaghue’s murderer is not on the database. However, new developments in familial tracing — identifying a criminal through the DNA of a relative — vastly increases the chance of finding a match, which is why cases are regularly reviewed.
Mr Mason’s first success was not through DNA at all, and came within hours of him joining the cold case team, when he asked for analysis of a fingerprint found at a shop where a woman was raped in Ashton, Bristol, in 1979.
“There was now a national fingerprint database so we uploaded it and later that day I had a call saying, ‘We’ve got a hit.’ ”
Nigel Palmer-Batt was arrested as he stepped off the cross-Channel ferry he had been working on at Portsmouth and was later jailed for eight years.
Avon and Somerset has 24 unsolved murders dating back to the 1940s. Mr Mason said that the technology gave the force a better chance than ever of finding the culprits. “One stranger rape was solved because the offender was displaying a forged tax disc on his car.” His DNA turned up a match after being uploaded to the national database.
It is the ones who have got away with it, or at least think they have, who keep Mr Mason going. He said: “If we don’t catch them we’ve let the victim down, that’s sometimes how it can feel. I’d jokingly said over the past few years that I can’t retire until the Melanie Road murder has been solved. Now that’s happened I’ve said I’m aware of this other case of Susan Donaghue. I did the review so I know the job pretty well and my next aim will be to s
The cold-case guru on killers’ trail
The summer of 1976 was one of the warmest on record, and Susan Donaghue, a 44-year-old nurse, was at home feeling unwell. She was dozing in her basement flat in Stoke Bishop, a suburb of Bristol, with her window open when detectives believe an opportunistic burglar broke in.
Mr Mason, 58, joined the force a year after the murder but it is only since his retirement after 31 years of service that he has become involved in the investigation. He joined the force’s major crime review unit, which includes investigating cold cases, a week after he officially retired as a detective sergeant in 2008.
His arrival coincided with a fresh appeal on the BBC’s Crimewatch programme for information in the case of Melanie Road, who was raped and murdered as she walked home from a nightclub in Bath in June 1984.
Christopher Hampton, the father of four who was convicted this week of Melanie’s killing, had stabbed her 26 times and left his blood and semen at the scene. However, he was not among the thousands of men interviewed during the investigation.
Mr Mason took the DNA swab that secured the conviction of Melanie Road’s killer
Mr Mason took the DNA swab that secured the conviction of Melanie Road’s killer
PA
It was only when his daughter was arrested for a minor offence in November 2014, and her DNA was found to be a near match for that of the killer, that her father became a suspect. Hampton, 64, admitted Melanie’s murder at Bristol crown court on Monday and was jailed for a minimum of 22 years.
Mr Mason had become the unit’s unchallenged expert on all aspects of the Melanie Road case. “If people wanted to find things they’d ask me because it’s much quicker than looking through thousands and thousands of documents. They were jokingly calling me the Guru,” he said.
“I’ve been doing this job so long, longer than anyone else, it was fitting as far as I was concerned that I was the one who tracked Hampton down, spoke to him on the phone, met with him and took the voluntary sample that led to him being identified.”
At the time of MrsDonaghue’s murder, genetic fingerprinting — the identification of an individual through their unique genetic make up — was not even a gleam in a forensic scientist’s eye. The technique was not developed until 1988 and it was another seven years before the UK’s national criminal database was set up.
Since then, everyone arrested for an offence has had to give a sample which can be compared against the 5.7 million profiles already online.
Like Hampton, Mrs Donaghue’s murderer is not on the database. However, new developments in familial tracing — identifying a criminal through the DNA of a relative — vastly increases the chance of finding a match, which is why cases are regularly reviewed.
Mr Mason’s first success was not through DNA at all, and came within hours of him joining the cold case team, when he asked for analysis of a fingerprint found at a shop where a woman was raped in Ashton, Bristol, in 1979.
“There was now a national fingerprint database so we uploaded it and later that day I had a call saying, ‘We’ve got a hit.’ ”
Nigel Palmer-Batt was arrested as he stepped off the cross-Channel ferry he had been working on at Portsmouth and was later jailed for eight years.
Avon and Somerset has 24 unsolved murders dating back to the 1940s. Mr Mason said that the technology gave the force a better chance than ever of finding the culprits. “One stranger rape was solved because the offender was displaying a forged tax disc on his car.” His DNA turned up a match after being uploaded to the national database.
It is the ones who have got away with it, or at least think they have, who keep Mr Mason going. He said: “If we don’t catch them we’ve let the victim down, that’s sometimes how it can feel. I’d jokingly said over the past few years that I can’t retire until the Melanie Road murder has been solved. Now that’s happened I’ve said I’m aware of this other case of Susan Donaghue. I did the review so I know the job pretty well and my next aim will be to s
