Real Crime

Cracking the Killers' Code (2x8)

Air date: Jul 29, 2002

The story of how double-murderer Colin Pitchfork became the first criminal to be snared by DNA fingerprinting. In the mid-1980s, Pitchfork raped and killed two Leicestershire schoolgirls, but despite exhaustive investigations evaded capture, largely due to a false confession and a bogus blood test which threw police off his scent until a chance remark in a pub redirected them to the true perpetrator of the crimes. The proof of Pitchfork's guilt lay in a then revolutionary genetic technique and a great leap of faith on the part of the local constabulary.