Man on trial for murder 35 years after woman’s body found in lake

A MAN accused of murdering a young woman before dumping her body in a lake was arrested after DNA was identified on a mouth gag untested for more than 30 years after her death, a court heard yesterday.

Donald Robertson is accused of killing 26-year-old Shani Warren, whose body was found bound and gagged in Taplow Lake, Bucks, in April 1987.

Robertson, 66, who denies murder, indecent assault and false imprisonment of Warren, as well as the rape and kidnapping of a 16-year-old girl, refused to appear at Reading Crown Court on the opening day of his murder trial. The court was told Robertson had previously been convicted of two separate rapes of girls aged 14 and 17.

John Price QC, prosecuting, told the court that Warren’s body was found in the water by a passing dog walker. She was tied up with jump leads and a tow rope, with a gag inside her mouth.

He told jurors that he would suggest the pathologist at the time “was responsible for a significant and culpable omission. He did not take a mouth swab. Thirty-three years later, when the gag was to be re-examined, traces of semen were found upon it”.

Mr Price said there was a sample match with DNA collected after the rape of a 16-year-old girl in 1981, which was tested last year. It was calculated that there were two potential explanations – that the DNA is of three unknown people, or the evidence is of two unknown people and Robertson, but, according to the findings, it was approximately one billion times more likely to be the latter of the two explanations.

Mr Price said: “It is a match with the profile, not just of anyone, but with someone who has done in the past what has been proven to have been done by Donald Robertson.”

Robertson, of Slough, Berks, denies murder, indecent assault and false imprisonment of Warren in 1987, as well as the rape and kidnapping of a 16-yearold girl in Slough. The trial continues.