Murder of Karen Price

Comparison with the clay reconstruction with photograph of Karen Price.

Karen Price (known as Little Miss Nobody before she was identified) was a fifteen-year-old Welsh murder victim who disappeared in 1981. After the discovery of her body in 1989, her appearance was reconstructed from her skull by Richard Neave, an English facial reconstruction artist. Facial reconstruction and matching her DNA to her parents' — the first time DNA was used in this way — allowed her body to be identified.

Discovery and identification

In Cardiff, Wales, two construction workers unearthed a rolled carpet while constructing a garden behind a house. When the carpet was unraveled, the skeletal remains of a young female were found. Entomologists studied the insect eggs around the site of the discovery to show that the girl had been dead for approximately ten years. After failed attempts to identify the body, Richard Neave of Manchester University created a clay facial reconstruction of the skull. The reconstruction, along with a comparison of DNA samples taken from the bones to the DNA of her parents, identified the remains as those of Karen Price.

It was believed that the girl ran away from home and turned to prostitution. In 1991, Idris Ali and Alan Charlton, who were thought to be in charge of Karen's soliciting, were charged with her murder. However, Ali's charge was reduced to manslaughter, and he was released in 1994, while Charlton is still serving a life sentence.

Criminal Cases Review Commission

In February 2014, the Criminal Cases Review Commission — the public body with statutory responsibility for investigating alleged miscarriages of justice in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland — referred Charlton's conviction to the Court of Appeal, stating that there was a "real possibility" that the conviction could be quashed. In March 2015 the commission also referred Ali's conviction to the appeal court. The commission stated: "There is a real possibility the Court of Appeal will conclude that the conviction is unsafe because of the risk of the prosecution amounting to an abuse of process." It was disclosed that a number of officers from South Wales Police, who were involved in the investigation of Price's murder, also worked on the Lynette White murder inquiry and the Philip Saunders murder inquiry, which had resulted in six men being wrongfully convicted and involved investigative techniques "which contributed to the quashing of the convictions in those cases." Other issues which raised concern included breaches by police officers of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 (PACE) and the PACE Code of Practice covering the detention, treatment and questioning of persons by police officers; the credibility of the prosecution witnesses; "oppressive handling by the police of key witnesses"; and the "veracity of Mr. Ali's guilty plea."