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Murder victim: Alan Holmes |
Cold case forensics could finally crack horrific murder
New technology applied to 12-year-old investigation“
COLD CASE” forensic science could help solve one of the borough’s longest-running and grimmest murder inquiries if new witnesses come forward, the New Journal has learnt.
Twelve years ago this Christmas, robbers bound 53-year-old Alan Holmes to his bed in a Camden Town flat – and left him to die.
For 10 days over the holiday period, the mechanic – who worked on the vehicle fleet at Kentish Town police station – remained tied up and without food and water, as his cries for help echoed unanswered round the empty block of flats in Parkway.
When colleagues grew alarmed at his absence, police forced their way in to the flat and found him tied face down and fully dressed on January 4 1996.
He had been there since Boxing Day.
Detectives pieced together his ordeal from the brief account he gave them at University College Hospital, before he collapsed and died on January 5 from the effects of dehydration and blood clots caused by his bonds.
His bank accounts had been raided for more than £1,000 by whoever stole his bankcards and tortured him to reveal his PIN.
But the perpetrators have eluded detectives ever since, and this year the Met has increased the reward for information that solves the case to £20,000.
Murder squad detective inspector Anthony McKeown said on Friday that advances in forensic science meant that evidence obtained in 1996 was being subjected to new tests.
DI McKeown said: “The main lines of inquiry are forensic lines of inquiry.
“We have been talking to the scientists and there are one or two things that haven’t been done because the science did not exist at the time.
“It’s meant that we’ve been able to use techniques that we haven’t used before.”
A trickle of information from the public continues to flow on a case that has never been allowed to drop, partly because of its horror, he added.
It has also had a lasting impact on colleagues of Mr Holmes at Kentish Town police station, where a room has been named in his honour.
Detectives have long believed that answers lie among the homeless population of Camden Town in the mid-1990s, to whom appeals have been directed in the past.
But DI McKeown said on Friday that Mr Holmes’ killer or killers were unlikely to be ‘transient’ and probably had a Camden Town connection.
“Most likely is people who knew the area at least a bit and knew how to get into Alan’s address at the very least,” he said, adding there was no evidence that Mr Holmes knew his murderer, except possibly by sight.
Five men were arrested in 1996, but no one was charged.
Anyone with information about the case is asked to call detectives on 020 8785 8244, or Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111. |
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