The first murder solved by DNA cleared an innocent man first

In 1984, geneticist Alec Jeffreys discovered at the University of Leicester that everyone’s DNA carries a unique pattern — ‘genetic fingerprinting.’ Two years later, the method was tested on a real case for the first time.

Two teenage girls had been murdered in neighbouring Leicestershire villages, Lynda Mann in 1983 and Dawn Ashworth in 1986. A local youth, Richard Buckland, had confessed to one killing. But DNA testing showed the same man committed both crimes — and that man was not Buckland, who became one of the first people in the world cleared by DNA evidence.

To find the real offender, police launched the world’s first DNA mass screening, a ‘genetic dragnet’ that collected blood and saliva from around 5,000 local men aged roughly 17 to 34. The killer, Colin Pitchfork, beat the net by persuading a colleague, Ian Kelly, to give a sample in his name.

The deception unravelled in a pub, where Kelly was overheard boasting that he’d stood in for Pitchfork. A woman who heard it reported it to police; Pitchfork was arrested, and DNA from his own sample matched both crime scenes. On 22 January 1988 he became the first person ever convicted of murder using DNA profiling.

Jeffreys’ technique went on to seed DNA databases and forensic labs worldwide. Pitchfork himself returned to the headlines decades later, paroled in 2021 and then recalled to prison within months.