On the morning of December 7, 1989, workmen laying pipes at a house in Cardiff's Fitzhamon Embankment made a tragic discovery. They found a body wrapped in a carpet and buried in a shallow grave near the door to a basement flat at number 29.
At first who the person was and how they had died was a mystery but police using techniques that were just being trialled at the time they discovered the body was that of 15-year-old Karen Price. She was a teenager who had been in care from the age of 10 and who was named 'Little Miss Nobody' because her disappearance eight years before had not been recorded and no-one had gone looking for her.
And it was to be months after the body was found that police were able to establish her identity. Esteemed Home Office pathologist Bernard Knight was called to the scene and was able to confirm that the body was a teenage girl who had probably been killed about eight years before but that description did not match any missing people on record because the assessment home in Pontypridd where Karen had been living did not file a report.
At a loss to identify her officers turned to an artist who had done facial reconstructions in the field of archaeology. But no-one had used this technique to try to solve a crime before. Working from her actual skull and building an image of her face in clay he was able to create a likeness they hoped someone might recognise.
The case is being revisited as part of the BBC series The Dark Land where a team of experts use modern policing techniques to examine a series of disturbing murders that have happened in Wales over the years. The team learned that the murder of Karen Price led to a landmark police investigation which continues to affect how murder is investigated in the UK and around the world today. It was an unusual case because not only did officers have to identify the killer but they had to discover who the victim was too.
Retired detective superintendent Jeff Norman, who was one of the first officers on the scene in 1989, told the programme: "The body was found in a busy part of the city. It was very close to the city centre and there were people going back and forward all the time.
"It was a through route that used to attract all kinds of people. The place where the body was found was actually two houses that had been joined together and were managed as one big property. There were lots of separate bedsits within the property itself. It was a very, very busy house with lots of different people coming and going."
Going to the garden where Karen's body was found, just 5ft from the front door of the basement flat, former DS Norman said: "It is now very different to how it was on that evening. The construction workers were laying some sort of new waste pipe and it was the workmen who made the discovery. They hit an obstruction, went to see what it was, and that is when they decided it wasn't right and called the police."
Talking about the ensuing investigation he said: "I was the first on the scene with the detective inspector. By that point the carpet had been unfurled a little bit. Immediately you could see there were bones and it was highly suspicious. Little did we know at that point what we were dealing with.
"When I think back to that evening I think of the impact it has had not only on my career, but the advances the investigation went on to be used in investigations nationally and internationally. The techniques that were used, the different 'ologists who were involved, some of whom I had never heard of, but were all used to assist us in our investigations."
Faced with no clues as to the identity of the teenage victim the investigation team brought in British facial reconstruction artist Richard Neave who used the skull that had been found to create a model of her physical appearance. The reconstruction and the matching of DNA in the body to that of Karen's parents allowed her body to be identified in one of the first instances in which DNA technology was used in this way.
When the image of the model was shared during a national television appeal on Crimewatch people began to ring in and the body was finally identified as that of Karen. She had never been reported missing. One of the calls was from a person who had worked at the children's centre Karen went missing from. They confirmed that no missing person from was filled in by social services.
DS Norman said: "It was shocking that no-one had missed her. Why hadn't anyone missed her? Why hadn't a call been recorded somewhere – even in the subsequent years? There was nothing."
Among the callers to another Crimewatch appeal was a man who had been with her on the night she died. Finally the mystery of what happened to Karen began to unfold. Idris Ali rang to say he had once been a friend of Karen's and they used to hang around together. He was called into Riverside police station to speak to detectives.
He was interviewed by former DS Norman, who tells the programme that goes out on Tuesday: "We know from what Idris Ali told me was that she was first met by him at the Central Square. He was only 15 or 16 at the time and he was one of those who would hang around the bus station. It was an area that provided a focus for a lot of those children. He was looking to become somebody and he was looking to be the centre of attention so he couldn't help himself calling us."
Police discovered that the man living in the basement flat at the time of the murder was a local bouncer called Alan Charlton – a man with what was described in the programme as a "fearsome reputation". "He was a man for the ladies and people thought a lot of him and looked up to him," explained DS Norman. "He was the kind of character who commanded respect and we knew that Idris Ali looked up to him."
Police worked out that Charlton was having a party and Idris Ali brought Karen and another girl along. The other girl became a crucial witness who was able to reveal exactly how Karen had died that fateful night.
Known only as witness D, she was only 13 years old at the time but told police how Charlton had wanted to take nude photographs of Karen with other girls. Karen didn't want to take her clothes off, resisted, and Charlton struck her.
The witness told police that Karen never moved after hitting the floor and while not all the questions were answered about what really happened the evidence was enough to bring Ali and Charlton to trial. Ali's charge was eventually reduced to manslaughter and he was released in 1994. Charlton is still serving a life sentence.
The Dark Land team concluded that the case was a landmark case because of the forensic work at that was carried out in the case, the changes that have been made to the way missing people are recorded, and how the police worked with the media to bring a successful conviction. Former chief constable of Dyfed-Powys Police Jackie Roberts, who lead the team of experts in the programme, said: "It is a really sad case when you look at the detail behind it all and how her life played out in the short time she was with us."
Dark Land: Hunting the Killers is on BBC One Wales and iPlayer on Tuesday, February 28, at 10.40pm.
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