Welcome back to the Deep Dive. I want to start
today by asking you to just reset your mental
calendar for a minute. Forget the headlines you
saw this morning. I want you to imagine a world
where if a crime happens and, you know, there
isn't an eyewitness and there isn't a perfect
clean fingerprint left on a smooth surface. Well,
that's it. It's over. It's over. The case goes
cold. It's actually, it's pretty hard for us
to picture that now, isn't it? it's a completely
different universe it really is we just take
this this kind of forensic omniscience for granted
now total we just assume that if you leave any
kind of biological trace you're caught end of
story yeah a hair a drop of sweat anything but
for the vast vast majority of human history i
mean right up until a very specific moment in
the mid -1980s biology was silent it uh it just
Couldn't talk to the police. And that is exactly
what we are digging into today. We aren't just
looking at another true crime case. We are looking
at the case. The one that started it all. The
big bang of modern forensics. The absolute pivot
point for the entire world, really, from, you
know, he said, she said, and circumstantial evidence,
too. Absolute scientific certainty. We are talking
about the Colin Pitchfork case. And it's massive.
It's not an exaggeration to say that if you've
ever watched a police procedural like CSI. Any
of them. Any of them. Or if you followed a high
profile trial in the last, what, 30 years. You
are looking at the ripple effects of what happened
in two tiny little villages in Leicestershire,
England. But here's the thing, and this really
surprised me when I was going through this stack
of research for this deep dive. I knew the name
Colin Pitchfork. Sure. It's famous in these circles.
Right. And I knew first DNA conviction. I sort
of thought that was the whole story. Yeah. A
neat little package. Science wins. Exactly. Science
wins. Bad guy cut. Roll credits. Okay. But the
actual timeline is so much messier and frankly,
so much more terrifying. Oh, it's incredibly
messy. It's not just a science story. It's this
story about a master manipulator, a community
living in just absolute terror and a justice
system that almost, almost let the killer walk
away after the science had already been invented.
That's the absolute key to this whole thing.
The science was the tool, and it was a perfect
tool, but the application of it was flawed. How
so? Because it relied on people. And, you know,
people lie. People are afraid. People make huge
mistakes. And it's also worth pointing out, this
isn't some piece of ancient history. I know we're
talking about the 80s, but the final chapters
of this whole saga. I mean, the legal battles
over Pitchfork's freedom were happening just
a few months ago. That's right. We are recording
this in February 2026. And the parole board was
making decisions on this guy in October of 2025.
It's a 40 year saga. It's just incredible. It
really is. So, OK, let's get into it. Let's go
all the way back to the beginning, because before
we can even get to the murders, before we get
to the labs and the DNA, we have to look at the
man himself. The man at the center of it all.
Because on paper, if you looked him up in the
early 1980s. Colin Pitchfork doesn't look like
a monster. He looks like, well, he looks like
a baker. And that's the banality of evil, isn't
it? He looked completely normal. Colin Pitchfork
was born in March 1960. He grew up in a place
called Newbold, Verdon. Okay. And if you were
to pull his file from that time, I mean, it just
screams model citizen. He was so deeply embedded
in the scouting movement. And not just like...
A casual memory. Oh, no, not at all. I don't
mean he went camping once or twice. He was serious
about it. He gained the Chief Scouts Award in
1976. Which is a huge deal, right? It's a very
big deal. It takes years of dedication. And get
this. He was one of only four scouts in the entire
county of Leicestershire chosen to attend the
World Scout Jamboree in Norway. Wow. Four out
of the whole county. The whole county. That's
an honor. That's, you know, it's reserved for
the most reliable, the most upstanding kids,
the absolute cream of the crop. And his family
was involved, too, wasn't it? deeply. His mother,
Molly, was a group scout leader. So the entire
family identity was built around this idea of
community service, discipline, wholesomeness,
all of it. So you have this golden boy image.
He seems to be on the right track. He then gets
married in 1981. To a social worker, no less.
Which again, that signals caring. profession,
right? A stable, community -minded life. It really
does. And they settle down in Little Thorpe,
which is this quiet, picturesque English village.
The kind of place where nothing bad is supposed
to happen. Exactly. They have two kids, and he
works at Hampshire's Bakery, a steady job. And
we should say he wasn't just... you know, an
average worker there. No, and the details here
are so telling. The reports all detail that he
was a highly skilled sculptor of cake decorations.
A sculptor. That's the word they use. That's
the word. Piping these intricate little icing
flowers, making delicate figures. It implies
this high level of manual dexterity, of patience.
Attention to detail. Tremendous attention to
detail. He wasn't just mailing it in. He actually
had dreams of starting his own business one day.
So to his neighbors, to his wife's colleagues.
to the community at large. He's this hardworking
dad who makes beautiful cakes and probably knows
how to tie, I don't know, a thousand different
knots. The perfect neighbor, the guy you'd trust
with your house keys. But, and there's always
a but in these stories, that facade, that whole
perfect image was actually extremely thin if
you were paying attention. Very, very thin. Because
while he's at work making these delicate, beautiful
cakes, his behavior at the bakery was... Well,
it was raising some red flags. His supervisor
is quoted as calling him a good worker, but also
moody. Moody. Okay. And specifically, he had
a reputation for pestering the female employees.
Pestering is such a mild word for what it probably
was. It is. The source material says, and this
is a direct quote, he couldn't leave women employees
alone. He was constantly pushing boundaries.
And this is where we really have to stop looking
at the family man image and just look at the
clinical reality. Because before he was even
married, these cracks were already showing. Big
ones. Oh, yeah. This wasn't a sudden snap. In
1977, when he was just 17 years old, he was fined
for indecent exposure. He exposed himself to
a schoolgirl. A schoolgirl. And then it happened
again in 1980, this time to a group of teenage
girls in a town called Earl Shulton. He was actually
referred for therapy at Carlton Hayes Hospital
for this. Okay, I want to pause here because
I think, you know, we often dismiss indecent
exposure. We hear that and we think of it as,
I don't know. A nuisance crime. Right. A creepy
guy in a trench coat who's maybe. Harmless, but
just gross. Exactly. But when I read the transcripts
of his later confessions, the sheer scale of
this behavior just blew my mind. He didn't just
do this a couple of times. No, he wasn't just
experimenting. He admitted, in his own words,
exposing himself to more than 1 ,000 women. A
thousand. I mean, that's not even believable.
A thousand. Starting when he was a teenager.
Just stop and think about the logistics of that.
The time commitment. The planning. It was a compulsion.
It was a second life. It was a predatory campaign.
A thousand. and victims is not a prank. It's
not a phase. That is a pathology. And yet he's
still functioning in his other life. He's winning
scout awards while he's doing this. He's getting
married while he's doing this. It's this terrifying
ability to just compartmentalize his life into
these two separate boxes. It's the absolute hallmark
of his psychology. He could perfectly separate
the baker from Little Thorpe from the predator.
Yeah. But the problem with that kind of compulsion,
especially with sexual deviancy, is that It rarely
stays static. The thrill of just exposure, it
wears off. The shock value isn't enough anymore.
It's not enough. You need more power. You need
more control. And that is what always leads to
escalation. And that escalation takes us to November
21st, 1983. And this is where the story shifts
from, you know, creepy local guy to a tragedy
that absolutely breaks a community. We need to
talk about Linda Mann. Linda was just 15 years
old, a normal, happy teenager living in the village
of Narborough. Right next to Little Fork, where
Pitchfork lived. Exactly. It was November, so
it gets dark really early in England. She had
been babysitting. Which is just the most relatable
teenage thing in the world. Earning a bit of
pocket money. It is. She's walking home. And
she decides to take a shortcut. Now, local geography
is really important here to understand this.
She took a path that was known locally as the
Black Pad. Even the name just sounds ominous,
doesn't it? It really does. It's a deserted footpath
that cuts through the area. You know the kind
of place, it's convenient during the day, but
completely isolated and unlit at night. And she
never made it home. She never made it home. Her
body was found the next day. The details of the
attack are, they're brutal. And I don't want
to be gratuitous here. Yeah. But we have to understand
what happened to understand the investigation
that followed. You do. She was raped and she
was strangled. So the police arrive, they secure
the scene, they do all the things they're supposed
to do, they collect evidence, but this is 1983.
So what did forensic evidence even look like
back then? It was, compared to today, incredibly
primitive. They did find a semen sample on her
body. Okay, so in 2026, that's game over. Instantly.
You run it through a database, you get a name.
Done. But in 1983? In 1983, the best they could
do was serology, basically, blood typing. They
analyzed the sample and they found it came from
a man with type A blood and a specific enzyme
profile. PGM1 plus UMNO for the experts out there.
Okay, so help me understand that. How specific
is that profile? Is that like a fingerprint?
Not even close. Think of it like describing a
car. The police could say, okay, we are looking
for a man who drives a red Ford Fiesta. Right.
Now, that helps. It rules out all the guys driving
blue trucks or silver motorcycles. But do you
have any idea how many red Ford Fiestas are on
the road? Thousands. Tens of thousands. Exactly.
In this case, the blood type and that specific
enzyme profile matched about 10 % of the entire
British male population. 10%. 10%. So in a cluster
of villages with a few thousand men, you're still
talking about... hundreds, maybe even a thousand
potential suspects. It wasn't an identifier.
It was just a category. So they have this Red
Ford Fiesta description, but they have no idea
how to find the specific driver. None. They interviewed
people. They checked alibis, but they had nothing
solid to go on. And the case. It just stops.
It goes cold. Ice cold. For three years. I just
want to linger on that gap for a second because
when we read these summaries, it just says 1983
Linda Mann died, 1986 Dawn Ashworth died. Like
it's just a data point on a timeline. Right,
just a sentence. But in reality, that is three
full years. That's a thousand days of parents
in Narborough locking their doors tighter. Three
years of teenagers being told never, ever to
walk alone. And three years of Colin Pitchfork
walking among them. Living his life, baking his
cakes, raising his own kids, going to the pub.
But he wasn't dormant. And this is the part of
the timeline that often gets skipped over, but
it's absolutely vital for understanding his psychology.
He didn't just stop and then start again. He
was testing the waters. He was active. Right,
the interim attacks. In October 1985, so that's
two years after killing Linda, he attacked another
16 -year -old girl. This time he used a screwdriver
and a knife. And she survived. She survived.
He assaulted her, but she survived. But the incident
that really truly reveals the twisted nature
of his mind happened in June of 1986. The victim
was a woman named Liz Knight. I have to be honest,
reading the police report on the Liz Knight incident,
it made me feel physically sick. And it wasn't
even the violence of it. It was the psychological
torture. It was pure calculated sadism. He picks
her up in his car. She accepted a lift, which
people did back then. Sure. He then drives around
for 40 minutes. She starts to realize something
is terribly wrong. He's not going where he said
he would. She's in trouble. In a moment of panic,
she grabs the steering wheel to try and crash
the car or just force him to stop. And his reaction
is just. Not what you'd expect. Not at all. His
entire demeanor changes. He doesn't hit her.
He doesn't scream at her. He becomes calm. He
puts his hand on her knee. He puts his hand on
her knee and says so calmly, it's terrifying.
I haven't hurt you yet. It's so manipulative.
The yet is doing all the work there. It's pure
control. He's saying, I have the power of life
and death over you right now, and I am choosing
to let you live for now. It's a game to him.
And then he drives her home. He eventually drives
her home. But then, after all this, he has the
audacity to ask for a goodnight kiss. No. After
kidnapping and terrorizing her. Yes. And when
she, obviously terrified, refuses, he says to
her, I bet you would never accept a lift from
a stranger again. He's teaching her a lesson.
He's teaching her a lesson. He was getting off
on the fear he could instill. He was playing
God with her safety. It shows that he wasn't
just acting on some, you know, uncontrollable
animal impulse. He was enjoying the game. He
was savoring it. But the game turned deadly again
just one month later, July 31st, 1986. Dawn Ashworth.
And the parallels to the first murder were just
horrifying. Dawn was 15, just like Linda. Both
students at the same school, Brockington High
School. Both taking a shortcut. This time it
was near a place called Ten Pound Lane. Another
one of those isolated footpaths. Exactly. And
the attack was savage. Raped, brutally beaten,
and strangled. When the police arrived at the
scene, the modus operandi, the method of the
kill, was identical to the Linda Mann case three
years prior. And the forensics. Tell me the forensics
matched. They did. The semen sample came back
from the lab. Type A blood, same PGM1 plus enzyme
profile. The Redford Fiesta. The Redford Fiesta
was back. The police knew instantly the monster
is back. Or, more accurately, he never left.
You have to imagine the atmosphere in that community.
Two dead girls, same age, same school, killed
in the same way, on footpaths within a few miles
of each other. The panic must have been absolute.
It was fever pitch. You had parents refusing
to let their kids out of their sight. You had
this vigilante feeling bubbling up under the
surface. And you had immense corporate pressure
on the police. Right, because Dawn's mother worked
at Nexplike, the big closing retailer. She did.
And the chief executive, a man named George Davies,
put up a 10 ,000 pound reward for information.
I was a lot of money in 1986. A huge amount of
money. The police were under unimaginable pressure
to catch this guy before he killed a third time.
And usually when the police are under that kind
of intense pressure, they find a suspect. They
need a suspect. They do. Enter Richard Buckland.
Richard Buckland was unfortunately the perfect
scapegoat. He really was. He was a local 17 year
old kid. He had some learning difficulties. He
was already known to the police for, you know,
minor things. And crucially. During questioning,
he revealed details about Dawn Ashworth's body.
He did. He knew where she was found. He knew
about some of her injuries. Details that the
police had not released to the public. And that's
usually the smoking gun, isn't the thing they
say in court? Yeah. Only the killer would know
this. Usually, yes. But with someone like Richard
Buckland, who is suggestible, eager to please
authority figures, it's complicated. He might
have seen something or maybe he just overheard
rumors and repeated them as fact. We don't know.
But the police drilled him. For days. And eventually
he broke. He confessed. He admitted to killing
Don Ashworth. He did. He signed the confession.
But, and this is the snag that bothered the detectives,
he vehemently denied killing Linda Mann. Which
didn't make any sense to the police, right? Because
their Red Ford Fiesta. evidence the blood type
the enzyme said it had to be the same guy exactly
the police were convinced buckland did both their
theory was okay he's admitting to the recent
one because he's cornered but he's blocking out
the memory of the one from three years ago so
they needed a way to scientifically link him
to that first murder yeah they needed something
better than just blood types they needed a miracle
And that brings us to the University of Leicester.
Just a few miles away from where all this horror
was unfolding, there's a guy in a lab coat who
has absolutely no idea he's about to change the
world forever. Alec Jeffries. Dr. Alec Jeffries.
He was a geneticist, and he was studying inherited
variations in DNA. He wasn't looking for a crime
-fighting tool at all. So what was he doing?
He was trying to track genetic markers for things
like paternity tests or solving immigration disputes,
you know, proving family relationships. Okay,
so a totally different field. What was the eureka
moment then? It was actually pretty mundane,
which is how great science so often works. It
was September 10, 1984. He was in a dark room
looking at an X -ray film of some DNA experiments
he'd been running. Right. And he noticed that
there were these patterns in the DNA, regions
of DNA that repeated over and over. They're technically
called variable number tandem repeats or VNTRs.
Okay. Let's keep it simple. Let's. Think of it
like a barcode. You know, the kind you see on
a can of soup at the supermarket? Sure. Every
single person on the planet has a unique barcode
in their DNA inherited from their parents. Jeffries
looked at this X -ray film and had this setting
realization. Wait a minute. I can distinguish
one individual from another just by looking at
this pattern. It wasn't just a category like
blood type. It was absolute one of a kind identification.
So the police hear about this newfangled DNA
fingerprinting and they think, great, this is
our miracle. Let's use this to nail Richard Buckland
for the Linda Mann murder. That was the plan.
They approached Jeffries. They gave him the semen
samples from both crime scenes and they gave
him a vial of blood from Richard Buckland. They
were expecting Jeffries to come back and say,
yes, the barcodes match. Buckland killed both
girls. Case closed. And what did he say? He ran
the test. He developed the film. He looked at
the barcodes and he gave the police the absolute
shock of their lives. OK. He said the semen samples
from the two girls have identical DNA. So, yes,
one man killed both of them. OK, so that part's
confirmed. But he said that man is not Richard
Buckland. Wait, pause. The guy who confessed?
The guy who confessed. The guy who knew details
about the body. The guy who was sitting in a
police cell ready to be charged with two murders
was innocent. The DNA proved it definitively.
This is such a pivotal moment. I mean, the first
ever use of DNA in a murder investigation wasn't
to catch a bad guy. It was to save an innocent
one. It's incredible. Without Alec Jeffries and
that x -ray film, Richard Buckland goes to prison
for life. He would have been branded a monster.
He likely would have died in prison. The science
saved him. It proved beyond any doubt that his
confession was false, a product of pressure and
confusion and his own vulnerability. So on one
hand, this is a massive triumph for justice.
An innocent man walks free. But on the other
hand, the Leicestershire police are back to square
one. Actually, they are worse than square one.
Now they have no suspect at all, and they know
for a fact that their killer is still out there
walking around. And they now know their only
lead, the Redford Fiesta profile, it's basically
useless. They were desperate. They knew the killer
had to be a local man. The geography of the crimes,
the footpaths, it all screamed local knowledge.
So they decided to do something that had never,
ever been done in the history of policing. Oh,
blotting. That's what the press called it. The
police made an That's right. Just think about
the logistics of that for a second. This is early
1987. There are no laptops to check people in.
There are no digital databases. This is all being
done with index cards, clipboards and thousands
of vials of blood. It was a massive, massive
bureaucratic operation. They set up these temporary
testing centers in school halls and community
centers. They sent out letters to every household
and they relied on the electoral roll to make
lists of who should be showing up. But it was
voluntary, right? Yeah. I mean, legally, they
couldn't force you to give blood. Legally, no.
Technically, it was voluntary. You could say
no. But this is where the police played an absolute
masterstroke of sociology. Wait a minute. They
weaponized the community gossip mill. Huh. Think
about it. If you lived in Little Thorpe in 1987
and you were a 25 -year -old man and you didn't
go down to the village hall to give your blood
sample, everyone knew. Your neighbors would notice.
Your neighbors saw you weren't there. Your boss
at work asked why you hadn't gone yet. If you
refused, the police put you at the very, very
top of their suspect list. So they'd come knocking.
They would interview you. They'd scrutinize you.
They would check your alibis for the nights of
the murders with a fine -toothed comb. It was
a process of elimination by social ostracization.
You bleed or you're the killer. That was the
message, exactly. And by January 1987, thousands
of men were lining up. rolling up their sleeves
to prove their innocence. Now, put yourself in
Colin Pitchfork's shoes for a minute. You are
the killer. You are living in Little Thorpe.
You fit the age profile perfectly. You get that
letter through your door. It is the ultimate
nightmare scenario for him. He knows the science
works. He's read in the papers how it cleared
Richard Buckland. He knows that if he gives his
blood, the barcode will match, and he will go
to prison for the rest of his life. But he also
knows that if he refuses, the police will be
on his doorstep in a heartbeat. And remember,
he has a record for indecent exposure. He is
already the perfect kind of suspect they'd be
looking for. If they look at him closely, even
for a second, they'll get him. It's a total catch
-22. Yeah. Bleed and you get caught. Don't bleed
and you get caught. So he realized he couldn't
play by the rules. He had to cheat. He had to
find a way to make it look like he gave blood
without actually giving his own. And this is
where the whole criminal mastermind idea just
falls apart, isn't it? He doesn't hack a database.
He doesn't break into the lab and switch samples.
No. His grand, brilliant plan is to ask a buddy
at work for a favor. Ian Kelly. A guy he worked
with at Hampshire's Bakery. That's him. And Pitchfork
starts grooming him. He concocts this elaborate
sob story. What does he tell him? He tells Kelly,
look, I can't take this blood test. When I was
a kid, I got in some trouble for flashing. It
was stupid. I was young. Downplaying it. Massively
downplaying it. He says, if I go down there,
the police are going to drag all that up. They'll
harass me. They'll harass my wife. I'm a family
man now. I'm trying to move on from that. I just
want to avoid all the hassle. He plays the victim.
He plays the victim perfectly. And then he sweetens
the deal. He offers Ian Kelly 200 pounds. Which
is, what, about 600 or 700 pounds in today's
money? Roughly, yeah. For a bakery worker in
the 80s, that's a significant amount of cash.
It's enough to make you think, well, it's just
a blood test. It's a bit dodgy, but I'm helping
a mate avoid some unfair police harassment. That's
exactly the calculation Kelly made. So the plan
is hatched. Ian Kelly will go to the testing
center, but he will pretend to be Colin Pitchfork.
And unbelievably, it worked. On January 29th,
1987, Ian Kelly walked into the testing center.
Now you might be wondering, how did he prove
he was Pitchfork? Weren't there ID checks? Yeah,
that's what I was thinking. The ID checks were
incredibly lax. He used a passport that had been
manipulated. It had Pitchfork's details. But
the photo was either swapped or just not checked
closely enough by the person at the desk. So
he just sits down and says, I am Colin Pitchfork.
And they took his blood. No questions asked.
And obviously, Ian Kelly isn't the killer. So
his blood goes to the lab, the home office lab
tests it, and the DNA comes back clean. It doesn't
match the crime scene samples. And just like
that, Colin Pitchfork was officially eliminated
from the inquiry. The dragnet, the blooding,
this revolutionary science. It all missed him.
He had slipped right through the net. He had.
He beat the system. That is absolutely terrifying.
He beat the system. The science itself was perfect,
but the chain of custody, the basic human honesty
required to make the science work, it failed
completely. He could have gotten away with it.
He really, really could have. By this point,
the police had tested over 5 ,000 men. They were
running out of leads and running out of money.
The trail was going cold again. If Pitchfork
just keeps his mouth shut, and if Ian Kelly keeps
his mouth shut, This case stays cold forever.
But secrets are hard to keep. Especially after
you've had a few pints at the pub. Especially
then. August 1st, 1987. It's a Saturday night.
We're at the Clarendon Pub in Leicester. Okay,
set the scene for me. It's just a casual workout.
Ian Kelly is there with a bunch of other staff
from the bakery. The drinks are flowing. And
maybe the guilt is eating at him a little, or
maybe he just wants to brag about the easiest
200 pounds he ever made. Right. But he starts
talking. He just casually mentions to the group
that he went and gave a blood sample for his
mate Colin. He just says it. Out loud. Oh, yeah.
By the way, I took the murder test for Pitchfork.
Pretty much just like that. Yeah. But sitting
at that table is a woman named Jackie Foggin.
She also works at the bakery. And she overhears
this. Now, this is another one of those moments
where human nature gets really complicated. If
I heard that, I'd like to think I would run to
the nearest phone box and call 999 immediately.
You'd like to think that. Everyone would. Hey,
someone cheated the murder test. But Jackie didn't
do that. She sat on that information. For how
long? Six weeks. The conversation in the pub
was on August 1st. She didn't go to the police
until September 18th. Why? Why would you wait
six weeks while a child killer is still walking
the streets? I think it's the bystander effect.
It's fear. Imagine her internal monologue. Did
he really mean that? Was he just joking? If I
report this, am I going to get a colleague in
serious trouble for nothing? Will the police
even believe me? You don't want to be the one
to get involved. It's a huge, huge step to deliberately
insert yourself into a double murder investigation.
But clearly it ate away at her. She couldn't
live with it. And finally she spoke up. She calls
the police. And that one phone call brings the
whole house of cards crashing down. Immediately.
The police grabbed Ian Kelly. He crumbled instantly
and admitted exactly what he did. He was later
sentenced for that, wasn't he? He was. He got
an 18 -month suspended sentence for perverting
the course of justice. And the very next day,
September 19, 1987, Detective Inspector Mick
Thomas drove to Hay Barn Close in Littlethorpe.
The door opens, and it's Colin Pitchfork. And
he must have known the second he saw the detective
standing there. He knew the game was over. There
was no running. There was no more lying. The
deception had completely unraveled. And the reality
of his double life just crashed right into his
living room. Did he try to deny it? No. In fact,
he confessed to his wife right there and then
with the police standing on his doorstep. Wait,
his wife was there for the arrest? She was. Can
you even imagine that moment? You've been married
to this man for six years. You have two children
with him. You've slept beside him every night.
You know him as this moody baker who likes making
icing flowers. And suddenly the police are at
the door and he turns to you and says, I killed
them. Oh, my God. How does she react? The reports
say she just attacked him. She physically went
for him. And you can understand it. It's the
betrayal, the horror, the sudden sickening realization
that the monster was in your house the whole
time. They take him to the station. And now,
armed with the DNA knowledge and the story about
the failed deception, they interrogate him. And
he sings. He confesses to everything. The flashing,
the assaults, the two murders. But even in his
confession, we see that manipulative personality
come out again. He tried to frame the murders
as, you know, accidental or protective. Protective.
Protective of who? Protective of himself. He
claimed he only strangled the girls to protect
his identity because they might recognize him
from the flashing or the initial assault. He's
trying to make it sound logical. Like a cold,
calculated business decision. Exactly. I didn't
want to kill them, but I had to kill them to
stop them from telling on me. But the detectives
weren't buying that for a second. Not at all.
They looked at the brutality of the injuries,
the savage nature of the attacks. They cited
perverted sadism. This wasn't about protecting
his identity. This was about the thrill of the
kill. It was about power and control. And he
lied during the interview, too, didn't he? He
did. He lied about the level of violence, minimizing
what he did until the forensic... Evidence forced
him to admit the full horrific truth. So January
1988, he stands trial at Leicester Crown Court.
He pleads guilty to all of it. Two murders, two
rapes, two other sexual assaults, and the conspiracy
to pervert the course of justice. And the judge,
the Lord Chief Justice, he didn't hold back at
all in his sentencing. Not one bit. He sentenced
him to life imprisonment. And he made a very
specific recommendation from the bench. He said,
and I'm quoting, Ever. Ever. He set a minimum
tariff of 30 years, which was later reduced to
28 on appeal in 2009. So 1988, he goes down,
the door slams shut, and usually... You know,
that is where the episode would end. Bad guy
is caught. The new science has proved right.
Justice is served. But Colin Pitchfork didn't
just disappear into the prison system. His time
in prison becomes this whole new controversy.
And this is where it gets ethically really messy.
It does. In prison, Pitchfork was formally diagnosed
with a psychopathic personality disorder and
serious psychosexual pathology. That's a heavy
label. It's a very heavy label. It essentially
means his brain is wired for manipulation, for
a profound lack of empathy. It's not something
you can just cure with therapy. But he spent
the next 30 years trying to prove everyone wrong,
trying to prove he had changed. He was, by all
accounts, a model prisoner. He kept his head
down, caused no trouble, and he learned a new
skill. A very difficult one. He became an expert
at transcribing printed music into Braille for
the blind. Which is incredibly intricate, difficult
work. It is. It requires intense concentration,
intelligence, and a dedication to helping others,
ironically. He was, in a way, contributing to
society from inside his cell. And then in 2009,
he tried to branch out into art. Yes, the sculpture.
He created this sculpture called Bringing the
Music to Life. Yeah. It was made of paper, and
it depicted a choir and an orchestra. And the
Coastler Trust, which is a charity that champions
art by prisoners, they exhibited it. At the Royal
Festival Hall in London, a very prestigious venue.
And someone actually bought it. It sold for 600
pounds. And when the public and the media found
out who the artist was. Explosive outrage. The
headlines were furious. Child killer sells art
for 600 pounds. The victim groups protested,
understandably. They felt it was a complete slap
in the face that he was getting accolades and
money while Linda and Dawn were dead. The artwork
was removed from the exhibition pretty quickly.
It was. But it raises such a difficult question,
though. If prison is supposed to be about rehabilitation
and a prisoner learns a skill and makes something
beautiful, shouldn't that be allowed? Or does
the nature of his specific crime, the rape and
murder of children, mean he forfeits the right
to ever be seen as creative or redeemed in the
public eye? That's the core tension of his entire
time in prison is the Braille transcriber and
the artist, the real Colin Pitchfork. Has he
been cured or is that just another more sophisticated
mess? Is he just sculpting cakes again, looking
like a good citizen while the predator waits
underneath? Exactly. And that question isn't
just a theoretical debate. It became very, very.
real in the last 10 years as he became eligible
for parole. And this has been a legal ping pong
match that is honestly exhausting to try and
track. It really has. It started around 2016.
He applied for release. It was denied. But the
parole board did recommend moving him to an open
prison, HMP Layhill. Can you explain what open
prison means for those who don't know? An open
prison is the lowest security category. There
are no high walls, no locked cells for most of
the day. You often have a key to your own room.
It's a step towards reintegration. It's the final
step before freedom. You can go out on unsupervised
day release for work. to find housing it's designed
to test if you're ready for the outside world
and people saw him out and about right they did
In November 2017, he was photographed shopping
alone in Bristol. Just a guy in a coat looking
at sandwiches in a supermarket. Imagine being
another shopper standing next to him having no
idea you are brushing shoulders with the black
pad killer. So he's ticking all the boxes. He's
behaving himself in the open prison. And finally,
in June 2021, the decision comes down from the
parole board. They granted his release. So on
September 1st, 2021, Colin Pitchfork walks free.
He is 61 years old. He has served 33 years in
prison. He is out on license, which means very
strict rules, a GPS tag, a curfew that works.
But he is a free man. He is. And this is the
moment where the whole rehabilitation argument
gets put to the ultimate test. He claimed he
was a changed man. The experts and psychologists
said he was a low enough risk. And they were
wrong. Spectacularly wrong. He was out for just
over two months. 79 days, to be exact. On November
19th, 2021, he was recalled to prison. Police
showed up at his bail hostel, grabbed him, and
threw him back in a closed high security prison.
Why? What did he do? Did he attack someone? He
didn't attack anyone physically, no, but he breached
his license conditions in a very specific and,
frankly, chilling way. The official reason was
that he was approaching young women while he
was out on his state -sanctioned walks. Approaching
young women? He was walking up to them, trying
to engage them in conversation, testing their
boundaries. The reports also said he was showing
deceptive behavior with his probation supervisors,
lying about where he'd been and what he'd been
doing. So what does this all mean? To me, it
just screams that the compulsion never went away.
It never did. The model prisoner mask was back
on, but the guy who needs to dominate and control
women was still driving the car. It completely
validated everything the original lead detective
David Baker had said for decades. Baker always
maintained that Pitchfork was a classic psychopath
who could mimic normal behavior perfectly, but
would never, ever actually be safe. He could
learn the words, but not the music. That's a
great way to put it. That recall in 2021 proved
that the biology might age, but the underlying
pathology remained exactly the same. But the
system is so stubborn. Even after that catastrophic
failure, they tried to release him again. It's
unbelievable, isn't it? In June of 2023, a different
parole board panel looked at his case and said,
OK, he's learned his lesson. Let's try again.
They approved his release for a second time.
Are you kidding me? After he'd just proven he
couldn't be trusted? No. But this time, there
was such a public and political outcry that the
government intervened. The Lord Chancellor at
the time, Alex Chalk, stepped in and used a new
power to block the release, saying it was not
in the interest of justice. Thank goodness. The
release was blocked. And then that brings us
right up to the present day, really. Late 2025.
In October of 2025, just a few months ago, the
parole board reviewed his case yet again. And
this time. They finally denied him completely.
They also refused his request to be moved back
to an open prison. So as we're talking, Colin
Pitchfork remains in a closed, secure cell. He
does. And the families of Linda Mann and Dawn
Ashworth can, for now, breathe a little easier.
It really feels like we dodged a bullet. Or rather,
the women of whatever city he'd be living in
dodged a bullet in 2023. We absolutely did. And
it highlights the fundamental flaw in relying
on data points like good behavior in prison to
assess risk for someone like him. A psychopath
is great at being a good prisoner. They're the
best at it. They know the rules. They know how
to manipulate staff and psychologists to get
what they want. It's what they do when the door
opens and nobody is watching. That's the only
test that matters. And he failed it. Before we
wrap this up, we have to talk about the legacy,
because this case is just horrific, but it also
changed the world in a profound way. It's the
Big Bang. There's no other way to describe it.
Without the investigation into the murders of
Linda Mann and Don Ashworth, we simply would
not have things like the National DNA Database.
And that database is solved? Oh, what? Thousands
of crimes? Tens of thousands. Murders, rapes,
cold cases. The Batman rapist, a serial predator
in Bath who evaded capture for years, was caught
because of a DNA link. The Benham murders, another
cold case. The Joseph Wambaugh book, The Blooding,
is a true crime classic. A brilliant book. And
the TV show Code of a Killer, if you haven't
seen it, you really should. John Sim plays Alec
Jeffries, and David Threlfall is just amazing
as Detective Baker. It really shows that tension
between the clean, pure science in the lab and
the gritty, messy police work on the ground.
It's the reference point for everything that
came after. Every time you see a headline today
about a killer being caught via genetic genealogy
on a family tree website, it traces its lineage
directly back to that moment. Alec Jeffries looked
at an X -ray film in a dark room and saw a barcode.
So, to summarize this whole 40 -year story, we
have a story of a baker who hid a monster inside
him. A scientist who accidentally found the key
to human identity. A village that was first terrorized
and then mobilized to help catch a killer. And
a justice system that, four decades later, is
still struggling to figure out what to do with
a man who is biologically human but psychologically
a predator. It's also a powerful reminder that
technology, no matter how advanced, is only as
good as the people who are running it. Absolutely,
the DNA would have caught him, yes, but only
because a woman in a pub, Jackie Foggin, finally
found the courage to make that phone call. And
in 2021, the science couldn't predict his behavior
on the outside. Only his own actions could reveal
his true nature. That is the ultimate takeaway
for me. We can map the entire human genome. We
can read the three billion letter code of life.
But we still can't fully map the complexities
of the human mind. We can't see the lie behind
the smile or the monster hiding behind the good
prisoner certificate. The map is not the territory.
Exactly. Here is a final thought for you to carry
with you today. The science of 1987 caught Colin
Pitchfork. But the bureaucratic parole system
of 2021 almost let him loose to offend again.
In an age where we have perfect forensic evidence,
AI profiling, and endless data, have we become
too reliant on the numbers? Have we forgotten
how to look at the behavior? Are we trusting
the spreadsheet more than the reality of the
human being standing right in front of us? It's
a question every parole board, and frankly, every
one of us who has to judge character, needs to
ask themselves. Thank you for listening to this
deep dive. Stay curious, stay vigilant, and we'll
catch you on the next one.