Double murder to be featured on BBC crime documentary
A BBC documentary airing this week will focus one of its episodes on the brutal rapes and murders of two Leicestershire teenagers in the 1980s.
Lynda Mann, from Narborough, and Dawn Ashworth, from Enderby, were both 15 when they were attacked and killed under similar circumstances.
Now, the new true crime documentary, Catching Britain’s Killers: The Crimes That Changed Us, will tell the story of the case and how the killer was eventually caught.
The three-part series follows the stories of three murder cases which changes the way investigations are conducted.
The first part will focus on the Leicestershire case, which was solved after an extraordinary forensic breakthrough.
Lynda was found raped and strangled in November 1983, near the Black Pad footpath, in Narborough.
In July 1986, Dawn’s life was taken in an identical fashion, with her body being left in Ten Pound Lane, Narborough.
Colin Pitchfork was arrested and jailed in 1988 for the murders, a revolutionary case because he was the first criminal in the world to be trapped by DNA profiling.
He was one of thousands of local men who gave blood samples for testing against material found on the girls’ bodies.
The profiling technology had first been pioneered by Sir Alec Jeffreys at the University of Leicester and, since Pitchfork’s conviction, changed how police investigations were carried out.
Pitchfork was jailed for a minimum of 30 years.
In April this year Pitchfork became eligible for parole, and will have to go before a board which will rule on whether it would be safe to release him.
If released, he would remain on licence for the rest of his life and would have restrictions on his movements.
This would include a stipulation that he would not be allowed anywhere in Leicestershire or to knowingly approach any of the girls’ relatives.
The other two episodes focus on two other cases, which have yet to be revealed.
However, the BBC said: “It meets the mother whose fight for justice after the murder of her daughter led her to take on the legal establishment and challenge an 800-year-old law.
“And it reveals how a shocking miscarriage of justice in the 1970s exposed the dark secrets of police interrogation, leading to a radical overhaul of police powers and a brand new method of investigation.”
■ Catching Britain’s Killers: The Crimes That Changed Us starts on BBC Two on Wednesday, October 9 at 9pm.