Murder of Karen Price

Karen Price (known posthumously as Little Miss Nobody) was a 15-year-old Welsh murder victim who disappeared in 1981. After the discovery of her body in 1989, her physical appearance was reconstructed from her skull by British facial reconstruction artist Richard Neave. The facial reconstruction and the matching of Karen's DNA to that of her parents eventually allowed her body to be identified. The case was cited as one of the first instances where DNA technology was used in this way. Discovery and identification: In 1989, in Cardiff, Wales, two construction workers unearthed a rolled carpet while installing a garden behind a house. When the carpet was unrolled, the skeletal remains of a young female were revealed. Entomologists studied the insect eggs around the discovery site and learned that the girl had been dead for approximately 10 years. When early efforts to identify the body failed, Richard Neave of Manchester University created a clay facial reconstruction of the skull. This reconstruction, along with a comparison of DNA samples from both the victim and her parents, made the identification of Karen Price possible. It was alleged that Karen Price ran away from home and had turned to prostitution. In 1991, Idris Ali and Alan Charlton, who were alleged to have been managing the soliciting of Karen Price, were charged with her murder. Ali's charge was eventually reduced to manslaughter, and he was released in 1994. 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. That 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. In all, a total of six men were wrongfully convicted in those two cases, where the investigative techniques may have "contributed to the quashing of the convictions." 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."