Out on day release, first killer snared by DNA breakthrough
A NOTORIOUS double child killer is pictured walking the streets – almost 30 years after becoming the first murderer to be convicted by police using DNA evidence.
Colin Pitchfork, 56, spent six hours in a shopping centre, enjoying a pulled-pork sandwich and visiting three banks before he was escorted back to the open prison where he is being prepared for release.
It is the first time the former baker has been seen in public since being sentenced for the murders of 15-year-olds Lynda Mann and Dawn Ashworth in 1988.
Last night, the girls’ distraught mothers condemned the decision to give ‘psychopath’ Pitchfork day release.
Pitchfork raped and strangled Lynda on a footpath linking two villages in 1983, having left his baby asleep in his car. Two and a half years later he raped and killed Dawn on the same path.
He was denied parole in April 2016, but was moved to Leyhill open jail in Gloucestershire – a precursor to release.
The killer was pictured walking around a Bristol shopping centre, where he was seen giggling as he flicked through a Great British Bake Off book, and also visiting a Job Centre.
Speaking from her home in Leicester, Lynda’s mother, Kath Eastwood, said Pitchfork would always pose a danger to the public. The 69-year-old added: ‘To anyone that passes him on the street, he will just be another man, a normal person. But he couldn’t be further from that. I know what he’s capable of and I know he hasn’t changed inside.
‘People should keep his picture in their mind and know he is near their family. The next step is full freedom and that is something Lynda will never have. He should never be free. I’m not free and neither is my family.’
She said the families had been told that under the terms of any release, Pitchfork will not be allowed to enter Leicestershire, but she added: ‘If he is out unsupervised, who is there to stop him?’
Dawn Ashworth’s mother, Barbara, 71, added: ‘There’s no justice in the world.
‘I’ve lived with this for 30 years – Dawn’s life was taken before it had really began. A person like Pitchfork will never be safe.’
Dawn, from Enderby, south Leicestershire, was raped and strangled after taking a short cut along a footpath.
It was immediately linked to the murder of Lynda just a few hundred yards away. Police then made history with the first mass screening of 5,000 local men – using a new DNA profiling technique developed at the University of Leicester.
But the dragnet initially failed to catch Pitchfork because he had persuaded a colleague to submit a blood sample for him.
The killer was caught when a woman overheard the friend boasting about what he had done.
Pitchfork was handed a minimum 30-year tariff, which was cut to 28 years in 2009.