Thursday 29 May 2014

The Unsolved Murder of Melanie Road

It is hoped that a mass DNA screening of local men, or men that lived in the area at the time, will finally lead Police to the savage killer of 17 year old student Melanie Road, who was brutally attacked on her way home from a night out.  It was June 1984 and Melanie had been to the Beau Nash Nightclub in Kingston Parade, Bath, with her boyfriend and other friends.  She left the club at 1.30am and decided to walk home which not take her very long.  It became a fateful decision.  She was never to make it home.  At 5.30 that morning, milkman Tony Noonan was out delivering with his 10 year old son, Ian.

    This young boy spotted the body of Melanie lying in a pool of blood, in a cul-de-sac that led to Melanie`s home in St. Stephens Close.  She had been stabbed multiple times.  Police launched an intensive manhunt that saw 90 people be arrested over a period of time but nobody was ever charged.  They believed that the killer would have been covered in her blood, leading to the assumption that the attack was frenzied.  They also believed that he injured himself during the attack, implying that he probably cut himself.  Police stated that there had been no sexual assault.  Despite the best efforts of the Police, the case ran cold, then in 2009, somebody rang Police and spoke about the murder.  Appeals were made for this person to come forward but there has been no response.

    Recently, Police launched a DNA screening of men, convinced that this will lead them to the killer.  This is reminiscent of the first DNA screening in the later 80`s that caught double schoolgirl killer Colin Pitchfork, in Leicester.  If the killer is still about, he will be avoiding doing anything that will get him arrested because swabs are now routine, and it will flag up on the national database.  Let us hope it does.

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