TV show puts spotlight on 1984 murder
The Murdertown TV series is returning to screens across the country and will take a new look at the historic murder of a Bath teenager and the impact it had on the community.
Investigation series Murdertown will focus on the impact the murder had on the local community and the people in it.
The aim of the series is to re-tell these tragic crime stories and show how lives and places are changed forever by such horrific and unforgettable events.
Season 3 is airing, with the murder of Melanie Road in Bath to be examined on the hit show this month.
Melanie Road was murdered at the age of 17 on her way home from a Bath nightclub in 1984, having been out with her boyfriend and friends.
Melanie was found the following day by a milkman having been sexually assaulted and brutally stabbed multiple times.
The police were unable to find her killer despite multiple lines of enquiry and arrests, along with large amounts of DNA evidence at the scene.
Over the next 30 years, police regularly reviewed the DNA evidence to see if a match had been added to the database, checking hundreds of potential suspects, but did not have any real breakthroughs in that time.
Finally, in 2014, the real breakthrough came when the DNA database showed a familial match, leading police to married father Christopher
Hampton. Hampton was found to have murdered Melanie Road in 1984, and was finally caught after a 30-year search.
He was sentenced in 2016 to life in prison, with a minimum term of 22 years.
TV and radio broadcaster Anita Rani is fronting the new series, which is airing exclusively on the Crime+investigation channel.
Murdertown is the channel’s highest-ever rated commission. The second series, which aired in September 2019, achieving ratings of 148.7k across the series.
Other locations featured in this series include: Milton Keynes, Wakefield, Wigan, Wishaw, Southampton, Oxford, Leicester, Lichfield and Whitby.
The episode featuring Melanie Road is airing on Monday 25th October at 9pm and will be available to stream on C+I Play the following day.