Body of murder suspect to be exhumed for tests

Detectives who investigated the murder of three teenage girls almost three decades ago are planning to exhume the body of their prime suspect to gather DNA samples, it was revealed yesterday.

Pauline Floyd and Geraldine Hughes, both 16, were found dead in woods in Llandarcy near Neath, south Wales, in 1973. The body of Sandra Newton, also 16, had been discovered in a culvert beneath a mountain roadway at Tonmawr, Neath, three months earlier.

New DNA evidence proved earlier this year that the three cases were linked.

Detective Chief Superintendent Wynne Phillips, head of the South Wales Police CID, said detectives were liaising with the Home Office to exhume the body of the chief suspect.

The suspect was a man in his 30s who had featured in the original investigation, Det Ch Supt Phillips said. The man had been married but became estranged from his wife before dying in 1990.

"We have spoken to the family of the victims," Det Ch Supt Phillips said. "We are also in touch with this man's surviving family and they are aware of the current situation."