Colin Pitchfork: The Cake Decorator Caught by the First DNA Dragnet

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Colin Pitchfork, born in 1960 and raised in Leicestershire, earned the Chief Scout's Award, represented the UK at the 1975 World Scout Jamboree in Norway, married a social worker and became a skilled wedding cake decorator. He also had convictions for indecent exposure from age 17. In November 1983 15-year-old Lynda Mann was raped and murdered, and the only lab result available, a blood type shared by about 10 percent of men, could not identify anyone. In July 1986 Dawn Ashworth, also 15, was killed in the same way, and police pressured 17-year-old Richard Buckland, who had learning difficulties, into a confession to her murder while he denied the first.

Doubting that confession, detectives turned to Alec Jeffreys at the University of Leicester and asked more than 5,000 local men to give blood or saliva. Pitchfork paid bakery colleague Ian Kelly 200 pounds to take the test in his name. The scheme collapsed when Kelly mentioned it at the Clarendon pub and coworker Jackie Foggin reported it. The episode then follows Pitchfork's life sentence and the decades of parole battles that followed.

The June 1986 night Pitchfork drove Liz Knight home and warned her never to accept a lift from a stranger
How DNA profiling first cleared an innocent suspect before it caught a guilty one
His wife's reaction as he confessed in their living room in September 1987
A 30-year minimum term cut to 28, braille music transcription and a sculpture pulled from the Royal Festival Hall in 2009
Release in September 2021, recall that November, a 2023 parole blocked by the Lord Chancellor and detective David Baker's warning

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