Timeline of horrific murders and killer’s bids for freedom
■■November 21, 1983: Lynda Mann, 15, is found raped and murdered near the Black Pad footpath, Narborough.
■■February 2, 1984: Lynda is buried at All Saint’s Church, Narborough.
■■Summer 1984: The murder investigation team is scaled down.
■■September 1984: Alec Jeffreys, of the University of Leicester, discovers genetic fingerprinting.
■■July 31, 1986: Dawn Ashworth is raped and murdered in Ten Pound Lane, Narborough.
■■August 1986: A 17-year-old is arrested in his Narborough home.
■■September 1986: Dawn Ashworth is buried at St John the Baptist in her home village of Enderby.
■■September 1986: Prof Jeffreys analyses DNA samples that prove the arrested teenager could not have been the killer.
■■January 1987: Police take blood or saliva samples from more than 4,000 men with links to the villages. A worried Pitchfork gets a gullible colleague at Hampshire’s Bakery to take the test on his behalf.
■■August 1987: The man who took Pitchfork’s test reveals his part in
the conspiracy during a casual chat with friends in a pub.
■■September 20, 1987: By now a bakery colleague has told the police and Pitchfork is arrested at his home in Haybarn Close.
■■January 22, 1988: Pitchfork is given two life sentences at Leicester Crown Court.
■■December 2008: He is given leave to appeal against his minimum term sentence of 30 years.
■■May 2009: A senior judge reduced the minimum term he must serve before being considered for release – leaving him free to apply for parole in 2016.
■■September 2021: He is granted parole despite opposition from the government, the victims’ families, the area’s MP and the public.
■■November 2021: Pitchfork is recalled to prison after violating his release conditions.