Inquest to be resumed into 1994 death

THE full inquest into the death of a 64-year-old woman who died at her home on Anglesey 28 years ago before it was set on fire is expected to take two weeks, a pre-inquest hearing has heard.

The body of Doreen Morris (pictured), from Holyhead, was found badly burnt at her home in 1994.

The pre-inquest hearing held last week in Caernarfon, heard how Mrs Morris’s home on Mill Lane had been burgled and then set on fire on March 25. At the time the precise cause of death could not be ascertained.

Speaking during the pre-inquest hearing acting senior coroner Kate Sutherland said that, while Mrs Morris’s body was badly disfigured due to the blaze, it was determined that she “died before the flames engulfed her”. There was also a fork found beneath her body with blood on the tines.

The inquest at the time delivered a narrative verdict. Following the verdict, her daughter Audrey Fraser, who attended the pre-inquest hearing, spent years battling to have her mum’s death recorded on the official death register as an “unlawful killing”.

Her mother’s murder has remained unsolved for more than two decades.

In 2010, then coroner Dewi Pritchard Jones ruled that it was not “necessary or desirable in the interests of justice” for a fresh inquest to be held more than 16 years after Mrs Morris died. Last year, Ms Fraser made a fresh application for the inquest to be resumed and, on August 30, 2021, the Senior Coroner for North West Wales granted her application, on the basis that there has not been a proper fact-finding exercise into the question of how Mrs Morris died.