Top cop says DNA technology could solve 20 year old murder
Could forensic science hold the key to solving the unsolved case of Caroline Glachan?
Caroline Glachan, 14, was attacked on the banks of the River Leven on the 24th of August 1996.
Although police insist they had done everything possible to catch her killer, twenty years have passed and there have been no arrests.
She was brutally murdered while taking a well-known shortcut from Bonhill to Renton to meet her boyfriend. Locals believe they know who was responsible but a ‘code of silence’ in the community remains, even now.
So Clyde News is asking, could forensic science hold the key to solving the case? We can reveal that police are now re-examining the case in a bid to uncover new evidence.
Detective Superintendent Jim Kerr, who is in charge of the Homicide Governance and Review Team at Police Scotland, believes it could be one strand.
He told our reporter Shiona McCallum;
“There are now ground-breaking advances in forensic science and we have already reaped the rewards of that in a number of unresolved cases.
“Forensic work is a major factor in getting that done. We are re-examining what the police seized twenty years ago.
“The evidence would have been examined to the capabilities the police and the forensic services had in 1996, but obviously there is a significant sea-change as far as examining these articles is concerned now.
“That would get us minuscule elements of identification we were unable to get twenty or even ten years ago.”
You can listen to his interview here: