Silent Witnesses

by Nigel McCrery

  On November 17, 1983, the incident room received a letter bragging about the murder. It revealed things that only the killer could have known, and the writer taunted the police, saying that they were never going to catch him. The letter was thoroughly examined and a fingerprint was discovered on it. Unfortunately, any hopes the police might have had of this finally leading them to the killer were soon quashed; there was no match for it in their database.

  And so, despite a lengthy inquiry involving hundreds of police officers, the culprit remained at large. There is always a strong feeling of gloom and failure within a team when, in spite of everyone’s best efforts, a culprit eludes them. It was no different with the Colette Aram murder squad. There was a sense of anger and frustration at not having found the criminal. Gradually the investigation was shut down—it remained on file with the odd piece of information being followed up on from time to time, but for all intents and purposes the case seemed to be dead in the water. The years rolled by. The case was featured yet again on Crimewatch for their twentieth anniversary show in 2004, but despite this once again prompting a flurry of phone calls, no useful new leads came out of it. The memory of Colette and the feeling of failure attached to the case lingered with me personally for the next twenty-five years. I’ve often thought how much worse it must have been for the senior investigating officers, not to mention her family as well. So that was it: just another unsolved murder.

  But science had not been idle all those years, and twenty-five years after Colette’s death, forensic technology had exceeded even the most optimistic police officer’s wildest dreams. DNA had burst upon the scene when Alec Jeffreys from the University of Leicester, along with Peter Gill and Dave Werrett of the Forensic Science Service, developed DNA profiling or genetic fingerprinting. We have already seen how this work came into its own during the infamous Black Pad murders. I would later work with Peter Gill in connection with a major historic mystery (more on that in a bit), and he explained his own part in the development of the technology as follows: “I was responsible for developing all of the DNA extraction techniques and demonstrating that it was possible after all to obtain DNA profiles from old stains. The biggest achievement was developing the preferential extraction method to separate sperm from vaginal cells—without this method it would have been difficult to use DNA in rape cases.” These techniques were, of course, highly applicable in the case of Colette Aram.

  In fact, in 1997 Colette’s murder was reviewed and an attempt was made to establish a DNA profile of the killer. Dr. Tim Clayton managed to reconstruct Colette’s DNA from samples kept after her postmortem. However, his attempts to provide a DNA profile of the killer from the samples of semen found in the car and on Colette’s clothes were only partially successful. Unfortunately, to get a full profile, he needed twenty markers, ten from the father and ten from the mother; he was only able to establish three. (DNA markers are sections of DNA that are unique to an individual and so can be used to identify them. They are found at particular locations on the DNA molecule.) Clayton certainly did not have enough to recognize the killer, though it did help to eliminate a number of other people of interest from the inquiry. Still, the 1997 review was finally wound down, with the case being not much further along than it had been in 1983.

  In 2004 Detective Superintendent Kevin Flint, who had only been a detective constable at the time of Colette’s murder, became head of the Nottinghamshire homicide unit. Like the rest of the team who had worked on the case in 1983, he was disappointed that the killer had still not been brought to justice, and Flint was determined to put this right—which is perhaps unsurprising considering his reputation for dogged persistence.

  Once again the evidence was reviewed, and once again Tim Clayton was asked to examine the evidence. This time, however, advances in DNA techniques allowed Clayton to work on the paper towel found in the pub bathroom. Developments in “low copy” DNA, in particular, now enabled scientists to build a full DNA profile from a very small number of DNA markers. Clayton thought it was a long shot, since they had no idea who the man in the pub had been, never mind whether he was involved in Colette’s murder. But when he examined the towel he discovered that it contained DNA from two separate people, one male and one female. He immediately compared the female sample with the known DNA profile of Colette Aram. It matched. This was enormously important: it almost certainly meant that the man who had been in the pub that night was Colette’s killer. And just as significantly, Clayton was next able to extract a full sample of this man’s DNA. This matched the three markers he had managed to obtain back in 1997. The team now had a full DNA profile of their killer.

  That profile was then searched for against the police database. Hopes were high, since a man capable of murder in 1983 might well have committed further offences in the years since. But the results were another disappointment: there were no matches. Still not admitting defeat, Clayton suggested the idea of doing a familial DNA search. Such a search highlights anyone whose DNA bears similarities to the sample in question and who therefore might be related in some way to the person from whom the sample comes. The results were daunting, to say the least: initially the system turned up thousands of possibilities. With some work, however, this was eventually cut down to approximately 300 people of interest. This was obviously an improvement, but even this smaller number would take many months to examine.

  A further eighteen months went by, and after a great deal of footwork all 300 or so suspects were eliminated from the inquiry. It seemed that in spite of all the apparent progress the team had made, the inquiry would once again have to be wound down as it had been in 1983 and 1997. This was a bitter pill to have to swallow. In a last-ditch effort, Clayton suggested that they run through the DNA database one more time to see if any of the new profiles that had been added over the last eighteen months while they were concentrating on their inquiries were a match. It felt a bit like clutching at straws, but they had nothing to lose.

  To Clayton’s amazement, when he ran a familial DNA search again, a match suddenly appeared at the top of the list. It was a man called Hutchinson, who had been arrested on a driving offence in 2008 and had given a sample of DNA. Although it was similar to the sample from the killer, it was not identical; besides, he was only twenty years old, so it was impossible that he could have committed the murder. Still, Clayton was certain that he had found a close relative of the man they were hunting.

  Kevin Flint and his team began to investigate the Hutchinson family. The man whose DNA they had matched was the son of a man called Paul Hutchinson. He was in his fifties at the time of the renewed investigation and was one of four brothers (one of whom had recently died), who had all lived near the stables at Holme Pierrepont. Paul had moved to Keyworth in early 1983. The decision was made to arrest all three of the surviving brothers, and on April 7, 2009, they were taken into custody.

  Although his two surviving brothers cooperated fully with the police, Paul decided to remain silent when questioned. DNA samples and fingerprints were taken from each of the men and, when tested, Paul’s profile was a positive match with that of the killer. His fingerprint likewise matched that found on the goading letter sent to the police years before. Hutchinson at first denied everything and tried to blame his dead brother for the murder. However, the team managed to obtain a DNA sample from this brother from the hospital where he had died, and they were thereby able to definitively disprove Hutchinson’s story. Faced with the mounting evidence against him, he finally admitted his guilt. He was sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum of twenty-five years to be served. When sentencing him Mr. Justice Flaux described the attack on Colette as “truly horrendous,” saying that “the terror and degradation that this poor girl must have suffered at the hands of a stranger in her last few moments are unimaginable.”

  The Association of Chief Police Officers later said that the case demonstrated the importance of the controversial national DNA database, which has been criticized by civ
il liberty campaigners. A spokesperson for the association commented that “DNA continues to help resolve a substantial number of crimes by either detecting those responsible or eliminating people from police inquiries. This case is yet another example of the value of DNA evidence.” Whatever your feelings on the existence of a database like this, it’s hard to argue against its effectiveness in criminal detection. Modern advances allow even very old genetic material to provide viable DNA samples, which is an incredible step forward in forensics and ensured that a guilty man was caught twenty-five years after his crime. There are doubtless other people out there now who, like Hutchinson, thought they had escaped punishment for their crimes. Now, thanks to this technology, they can no longer feel so secure (see Plate 14).

  The story has one more bizarre turn to take. On October 11, 2011, Hutchinson was discovered unconscious in his cell at Nottingham Prison. He died shortly afterward in the ambulance on his way to the hospital. The cause of death has never really been established; some say it was a heart attack, others suicide. Whatever the case may be, there can have been few who mourned his passing.

  The DNA of an individual may be separated out using gel electrophoresis, as shown here, and analyzed for DNA markers. Twenty of these markers can positively establish the identity of an individual.

  One slight problem with the ceaseless march of science is that it can be very difficult for the courts and judiciary to keep up with the speed of forensic advances. Even the most learned of judges and the most attentive of juries can be left confused and overwhelmed by the science involved, struggling to interpret its complexities.

  DNA fingerprinting was first offered in evidence in the United States in 1988 during the trial of the rapist Tommy Lee Andrews. Andrews lived in Orlando, Florida, and worked at a pharmaceutical warehouse. His vicious attacks began in May 1986, when he raped twenty-seven-year-old Nancy Hodge, a computer operator at Walt Disney World in Florida. He attacked her from behind while she was in her bathroom at home, threatening her with a knife and covering her face during the assault to prevent her from identifying him later. He violated her three times before leaving the apartment, taking her bag with him. This was a pattern that he would stick to over the course of his other attacks: he always covered his victim’s face and he always took a personal item from them. He continued to assault and rape women with alarming frequency, so that by December 1986 he had struck an appalling twenty-three times. He was careful and covered his tracks well, meaning that for a long time there seemed little hope of catching him. That is until February 1987, when he attacked Karen Munroe in her own home in Orlando. On this occasion Andrews left two fingerprints behind. The police stepped up their surveillance operations, and in March 1987 they got lucky. A woman in the local area reported seeing a prowler, and the police, reacting quickly, arrived just in time to see a blue 1979 Ford racing away from the scene. They pursued the car for several miles before the driver eventually lost control and crashed. That driver was, of course, Tommy Lee Andrews. Police soon determined that his fingerprints matched those discovered at the scene of the latest crime, and he was immediately charged with rape. However, although the police were pleased to have him in custody, they wanted to be able to link him to the numerous assaults they were certain he had committed, not just one. Of all of his victims, only one recognized him, and even she could not say that it was him with absolute certainty, since she had only glimpsed her attacker. Andrews’s blood type matched that of the man whose semen had been recovered from victims, but the same was true of 30 percent of the male population. A good defense lawyer would tear such evidence to shreds. The police needed more in order to successfully charge Andrews with serial rape.

  The inquiry team had heard about the British success with DNA fingerprinting, especially in the case of the Black Pad murders (see Introduction). With this in mind, they contacted Lifecodes, a DNA testing laboratory based in New York. Samples of blood and semen were forwarded there, and one of their scientists, Dr. Alan Giusti, got to work. The results were returned a few months later. The genetic fingerprint of Andrews’s blood sample, taken while he was in custody, and the genetic fingerprint of the semen samples taken from the victims were identical. They came from the same man.

  At his trial for the rape of Nancy Hodge, Andrews pleaded not guilty, stating that he was at home at the time of the attack. His story was backed up by his girlfriend and his sister. The DNA evidence—which had been allowed by the court—was then presented. The prosecution pointed out that the chances of a false match—of the DNA from the scene not coming from Andrews—were ten billion to one. One might think that, given this, securing a conviction was all but certain. However, this was a new kind of evidence, one that nobody was used to dealing with. The defense very shrewdly countered the prosecution by asking them to prove that what they were saying was true. They were caught completely flatfooted, without any data on hand to back their assertions. As a result the jury was split and a mistrial declared.

  Two weeks later, Andrews stood trial for another rape, that of Karen Munroe. This time, though, the prosecution lawyers were ready—on top of DNA evidence, they also had fingerprints from the scene. Andrews was found guilty and sentenced to twenty-two years’ imprisonment. The retrial for the Nancy Hodge case followed soon after. Andrews stuck to his story, and his sister and girlfriend continued to support him. In the end it all came down, once again, to the DNA evidence. With great care, keeping the explanation as simple as possible, the prosecution explained how the process of DNA profiling worked, why the samples taken from Andrews and from the rape victims matched, and why that meant that Andrews had to be the culprit. The defense once again tried to discredit this evidence with pseudoscience, but this time they failed. Andrews was found guilty again, this time of serial rape. After his sentence was extended, his total jail time stood at 115 years. DNA had at last proved itself as an admissible and valuable form of evidence in the United States, as it had already done in Britain. It is now widely used, and while it may occasionally be challenged in court on the grounds of contamination or technical ineptitude, the science itself is beyond question.

  Although it may seem remarkable that it was possible for the Hutchinson murder to be concluded through DNA evidence twenty-five years after the crime itself was committed, in fact the same forensic techniques can be used to establish identity even longer after the deaths of those concerned. This is the case, for example, with Russian Tsar Nicholas II and his family, who were killed at Yekaterinburg in 1918 (see Plate 15).

  By March 1917, Nicholas Romanov was no longer tsar, having abdicated in favor of his brother Grand Duke Michael. He and his immediate family were placed under house arrest at the Alexander Palace in Tsarskoe Selo while the provisional government, under the control of Alexander Kerensky, decided what should be done with them. Many of their other relations escaped Russia and fled into Europe, where their descendants live to this day. In August 1917, the Romanov family was moved to Tobolsk, the traditional capital of Siberia, supposedly to protect them from revolutionary violence. They were well looked after and lived in some comfort, occupying the former governor-general’s house. But when the Bolsheviks came to power in October 1917, the situation for the family became more serious, not to mention stricter. They were forced to dismiss most of their servants and were placed on soldiers’ rations, giving up the last of their luxuries such as chocolate and butter. Then, during the summer of 1918, the Bolsheviks moved the family to Yekaterinburg, where they were imprisoned in Ipatiev House (also known as the House of Special Purpose), located at 49 Voznesensky Prospekt.

  The civil war was still raging, and with the Czechoslovak Legion closing in on the city, the Bolsheviks decided it was necessary to murder the Romanov family in order to prevent the White Russians (those with tsarist sympathies) rallying around them. Yakov Sverdlov, a Bolshevik party leader and chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, signed the telegram ordering the execution of the family, though it is certain
that Lenin himself would have had the final word on such an important decision.

  Trotsky later referred to their deaths in his diary: “My next visit to Moscow took place after the fall of Yekaterinburg. Talking to Sverdlov I asked in passing, ‘Oh yes, and where is the Tsar?’ ‘It’s all over,’ he answered. ‘He has been shot.’ ‘And where is his family?’ ‘And the the family with him.’ ‘All of them?’ I asked, apparently with a touch of surprise. ‘All of them,’ replied Yakov Sverdlov. ‘What about it?’ He was waiting to see my reaction. I made no reply. ‘And who made the decision?’ I asked. ‘We decided it here. Ilyich [Lenin] believed that we shouldn’t leave the Whites a live banner to rally around, especially under the present difficult circumstances.’”

  From what we know, at around midnight Yakov Yurovsky, commander of the house guard, woke the Romanovs’ doctor Eugene Botkin and ordered him to instruct the family to dress and to assemble in a small basement room. He was to tell them that they were to be moved from the house for their own protection due to trouble in the town. When all the family were gathered, Yurovsky entered the room along with an execution squad and read out the order given him by the Ural Executive Committee—the order to kill the family. The squad then opened fire. Nicholas himself was shot in the head and fell to the ground, though several of the children were not killed in the opening fusillade since they had a considerable quantity of diamonds sewn into their clothes, which protected them to some extent. They had to be finished off with bayonets. In twenty minutes, it was all over.

  For years afterward the location of the bodies of the tsar and his family was a secret. Many thought that the bodies must have been thrown down a mineshaft or burned—perhaps both. Books and articles were published claiming that the family were alive and well and living in Siberia. Over the years the lack of bodies meant a great many people were able to come forward purporting to be Romanovs, mostly to try to claim the royal fortune, which was said to be hidden in banks across Europe. The most famous of these impostors was Anna Anderson, who claimed to be Anastasia, the youngest daughter in the family. Meanwhile plenty of other people who accepted that the Romanovs were dead were trying to find their last resting place. As you might imagine, under a communist government, this was a difficult, not to mention dangerous, endeavor.