[narrator] Every 90 seconds, someone is reported missing.
Many return to their families,
but for others, something has gone seriously wrong.
A 22-year-old woman has gone missing after a Christmas party.
It's a nightmare that you've lived with.
The phone call in the early hours.
The family of Lorraine Benson received a call
that she hadn't arrived.
[narrator] What happens in the police investigation that follows…
Uniformed officers had a gut instinct
that something was wrong.
There were other cases of similar women that had been attacked.
[narrator] what happens to the family at its heart…
You can't believe you're living through the anxiety.
Just wasn't happening.
[narrator reading]
[Lorraine] God, he's a handsome devil, isn't he, Daddy?
Not as good-looking as my mummy, though.
Smile at me, Mummy.
No, at me.
-At you? -At me.
[Lyn] I'm looking at you.
[Lorraine] Well, in that case, look at the lens.
-That's it, yes! -Ah!
-Hello. -I'm on film. [laughs]
You are on camera.
-The red light's on, is it? -Yeah.
-The red light's on. -You'll hear that
throughout the whole video,
'cause everyone's been saying, "Is the red light on?"
-Oh, goodness me. -Is the red light on?
[Lyn] And…
cut.
[laughs]
Obscene.
Are we still on?
-Ooh, yes. -Yeah, really?
[Lorraine] John, thank you for coming down for my 21st.
That's all right, Lorraine.
[Michael Benson] Well, she was our third, our youngest.
Lorraine was very independent.
She was our daughter and that was it.
[Lorraine laughs]
[Lyn] Loved her friends, loved going out.
Parties.
Loved kids.
Animals.
Especially her tortoise.
[Mick] She seemed to have time for everybody.
[smacks lips] Uh…
Loved her sisters.
She loved everybody, really.
[gentle music playing]
Through school…
didn't know quite what she wanted to do.
But, you know, you knew she'd find her level sooner or later,
which she did.
Then she suddenly found photography.
And, uh, [exhales] got herself a good camera.
Took a lot of pictures, got herself a job.
And she was in her element, really,
just taking pictures all day.
Living her life, she had it about right.
Uh, it's a cliché, but she was fun-loving.
[Lyn] In the morning, she said, "I'm off to work."
A party later on.
She loved Christmas.
[narrator] Five days before celebrating Christmas with her family,
Lorraine Benson is off to her work's Christmas party.
All right, have a good time.
And she always rang whenever she was out
-to let us know… -[chuckles]
where she was.
[dramatic music playing]
[Mick] About half past 8:00 that night, we were sitting in the front room there
-and the phone went. -[phone rings]
I picked the phone up, it was Lorraine.
She said, "Hello, Dad."
She says, uh…
She said, "I won't be home tonight. I'm going to Lotta's."
Lotta was the mother of one her friends, Peter.
"Peter's off to Australia on a gap year."
And she said, "I'm going," and I'll just cheer him off.
And she said, "Don't worry about me, I've got work in the morning."
So it was like, kiss kiss down the phone and that was that.
[dramatic music playing]
Uh…
We went to bed and it was 20 past 1:00, the phone went.
[phone ringing]
As any parent would say, you know, just a…
It's a nightmare that you've lived with.
The phone call in the early hours.
I woke up and it was Lotta.
Uh, she said, "Is Lorraine with you?"
I said, "Don't be silly, she's coming to you."
She said, "She's not here."
She said, "Well, when she got to Raynes Park she did ring me.
Peter was supposed to meet her at Raynes Park,
but he got caught up with a couple of mates
and they were having a drink 'cause obviously he was going away."
And as he wasn't there, Lotta said,
"Don't worry, I'll get the car and come and get you."
And then Lorraine said,
"Don't worry, I can walk. It's only about a mile."
Along Coombe Road, even late at night, it's bright and open.
She began walking down Coombe Road to get to Holland Avenue.
It's… I don't know what the mileage, one mile, whatever it is.
-[birds chirping] -[traffic humming]
The family of Lorraine Benson received a call
from her friend's house who she was going to visit that night,
that she hadn't arrived.
They were obviously concerned and called the police.
[gentle music playing]
It's 30 years in December since I've been here.
And things have changed considerably.
It brings back all kinds of memories.
When Lorraine went missing it was just before Christmas.
She had, in fact, been to a Christmas party that night.
[dramatic music playing]
In December of 1988,
I was the sole female detective constable
working at Wimbledon Police Station in South London.
And I was appointed to be the Family Liaison Officer
when there was a report of a missing young lady.
My natural reaction was, "Why?
Why do you require CID now?"
That is so unusual.
If an adult is reported missing,
then normally 24 hours would be left
before a formal investigation would be launched.
Normally, the last you'd hear of somebody in those circumstances
was when they've gone to a party or something like that.
More often than not, especially at that time of year,
they would have gone to a friend's house,
be too worse for wear.
It would not be escalated as a serious case for 24 hours
unless there was some unusual information.
The uniformed officers had a gut instinct that something was wrong.
She'd made that phone call to say,
"I'm at the train station, my friend hasn't come to meet me,
I've got a short walk to go."
And it was just one road, one long main road to walk.
It would have taken ten minutes
for a fit person to walk the distance to her friend's house.
All the circumstances, the phone call a short time before
to say, "I'm just up the road, I'll be there," and not turning up.
Uh, the fact that the friend hadn't met her
when was supposed to,
that she was walking alone, quite late at night,
I think it was early in the morning.
It was that gut instinct where the DI,
Detective Inspector actually, then urged me to spend time
and try and find out as much as possible,
and to get my initial reaction,
"Did I think that this actually warranted more investigation or not?"
[narrator] Officers at Wimbledon Police Station
had a very good reason to be concerned about Lorraine's disappearance.
There were other cases of similar women
that had been attacked very close by.
[dramatic music playing]
And that would have been in the back of his mind.
In Kingston, the police had started a major inquiry
with a team of detectives looking into a series of rapes,
uh, which is…
Just the border of which is just around the corner from where we are now.
It was stressed to me that they felt that there was more to this
and that we should start investigations early.
[dramatic music playing]
[Gary Shorricks] Inspector Wayne Henry was the duty officer that night
and he deployed his team to carry out an area search
to look for Lorraine.
They would carry out as many inquiries as they could in the darkness
to either establish what had happened or to find Lorraine.
[narrator] The police's only source of information
are Mick and Lyn Benson, and Peter's mother, Lotta.
The demeanor of the parents and the mother of the friend
where Lorraine was supposed to arrive,
those things were all very early indicators
that this was beyond the normal.
When Lotta told me what was going on, I went over there.
Strangely, when I walked in
there were two police constables already in there.
And then really it was down to me as the liaison officer
to sit down with them and try to actually evidence in writing
what was at that time, a gut instinct,
to try and glean as much information from them
and put pen to paper to convince more senior officers
that this truly was a serious case.
And I said to the officer then, I said, "I've always been pro police,
but there's not even a crime to be seen yet
and you're on the case."
And he turned round and said, "These last few months
there have been so many sexual assaults.
The first sign or talk of one," he said, "We're out."
[narrator] With little to go on,
officers keep an open mind about what may have happened to Lorraine.
In any case where a young girl goes missing,
the father is normally questioned quite closely.
The police officer said, "We go out and look for her."
We ended up in the car, went back to Raynes Park.
It turns out that the father is usually the main suspect.
So in retrospect, they just stand back.
I've been involved in interviewing parents
and loved ones before, where, in fact, at the back of your mind
you know that possibly they are the culprit.
It was when you start looking for her,
you're aware that you're in front.
They're not leading you, but they're waiting for you
to go somewhere you shouldn't go, and then go, "Ooh, look what I've found."
[narrator] It's the early hours of December the 20th, 1988.
Police are searching for Lorraine Benson,
who hasn't arrived at her friend's house after a work Christmas party.
This has been made a high-risk missing person's case
because of recent attacks in the local area.
Everyone close to Lorraine is thoroughly investigated.
In any case where a young girl goes missing,
the father is normally questioned quite closely.
At the back of your mind, you know that possibly they are the culprit.
But he was eliminated quite early on
because he was in a different part of London when Lorraine was missing.
[narrator] The police's attention turns to the man
Lorraine was supposed to be meeting.
Lorraine's friend, Peter, that was supposed to meet her at the station
was also arrested.
Colleagues who spoke to Peter
told me that obviously his reactions were, of course,
just devastated to start with,
confusion as to why he'd been arrested,
moving on to understanding why he would be a suspect,
back to anger.
Why was he the suspect?
Why weren't they actually finding the real suspect?
And the concentration of police activity around his house,
knowing that Lorraine was out there somewhere,
and yet his house was being searched from top to toe for clues
by police officers in front of all the neighbors.
Peter was eventually eliminated from the inquiry.
He was exonerated very early on in the inquiry, fortunately for him.
And he turned to actually be a sterling person
that supported the family throughout.
The number one priority is to find Lorraine.
Whether, at that point,
Mick or any of the family were the suspects,
or whether it was somebody else who was a suspect,
the key priority always is to focus on where is Lorraine.
I sat down with Mick with a map of Wimbledon
and we actually chatted through the route Lorraine would have taken.
I then took that map through to Detective Inspector Benham
and explained to him this is where I think the search should start,
and he agreed with me.
DI Benham then briefed a uniform team,
who specialized in searching,
and they slowly traced back along the main road first,
from A to B, the most direct route
and then down the side roads.
[Shorricks] Officers on the night established this scene.
It was a torchlight search by the officers in the vicinity
that they knew Lorraine would be walking.
Um, and that's when they found her property.
In that first initial walk through of the main road of Coombe Lane,
an item of jewelry was found.
A police officer, "Has she got a hooped earring?
-A leather hooped earring?" -[sighs softly]
I showed it to Mick to ask him whether he recognized it
and initially he didn't.
He phoned Lyn at home, his wife.
No, I said to Lyn,
"Has Lorraine got a leather hooped earring?"
So she said, "No."
Initially, relief, it's not hers.
And I could see the relief on Mick's face. "No, it's okay, it's not hers."
And almost you could see he was convincing himself
that actually, "No, that's fine, discard that, phew.
Let's move on."
And then the phone call back.
She said, "I think she's borrowed mine, Mick."
[sniffles]
"No. I did lend her a pair of my earrings."
She realized, in fact, it was a pair of her own earrings
that she'd lent Lorraine.
And that changed to one of complete despair,
and that reinforcement of worry
and complete helplessness.
[Mick] The police officer said, "I think you better come over."
We were taken straight to this car port.
And he shone his torch down.
Nothing there looked like Lorraine.
And then he moved the torch a little bit on the earring.
Um…
Yeah, Lyn said, "I think that's my earring."
So the police officer said, "Well, we better move away,
you know, you're gonna start treading on it, evidence."
The earring was actually emotionally a very difficult time
for both Mick and Lyn.
[Lyn] Please let her be found and she's alive, she's okay.
Just couldn't believe it was happening.
[suspenseful music playing]
[Jenny Wood] That was the first clue that we were on the right path
of the direction that Lorraine had gone in.
And the next items that were found were a bag with a change of clothes.
It was a key driver for then going back out,
geeing on the search teams, say,
"We're getting there, guys."
When Lorraine's items had been found,
the scene has to be kept sterile.
So an officer would be placed to keep anybody else from going in
to contaminate the scene.
The officer in charge would have requested
the forensic teams to be called from Scotland Yard,
and then, in the day, the local forensic officers,
in those days they were termed SOCOs, Scenes of Crimes Officers,
then they would have come along to assist at the scene as well.
They went back and it was an even finer, more detailed search.
[Shorricks] Forensics teams turned up.
On the car that was parked at the end of the alleyway behind me,
there were some disturbance marks
where, it had been there for some time,
the dust had all congregated on the door,
and that had been disturbed.
But also, more crucially found very close to the car
was a discarded handkerchief.
The handkerchief had blood.
There was also saliva and mucus debris.
Items that are seized are put into forensic bags and sealed
so that there can be no cross contamination.
[Julie Allard] A forensic scientist always needs to have an open mind,
particularly in the investigative stages of a case.
Is there something else on the item or in the evidence
that may be worth looking at?
With this case, it was allocated to me
because I was already dealing with a series of rapes
which had occurred in the Kingston area,
and it was thought that the cases may be linked.
We had bags and bags and bags and bags of pieces.
At that stage, we never knew
what we'd found that would be of any benefit anywhere.
[narrator] With the forensics team hard at work,
their investigating colleagues are hunting for more clues and witnesses.
The inquiry continued with house to house inquiries
to establish what people had seen.
And witnesses on Coombe Lane behind me had heard noises,
screams that they thought was just a drunken fight.
She had a very distinctive long white mac she'd just bought herself.
As they pieced it together,
there was a bus driver who remembered Lorraine.
He said he was driving down, he said there was a young lady
in a long white coat walking very purposefully.
Another witness had seen her being supported by a man
by the roundabout further along Coombe.
But one person come out the door when she heard two people arguing.
He heard this argument between boy and girl,
thought they were a courting couple.
Could very well have been Lorraine.
So that was a sighting that the police were working on.
It would appear that Lorraine got to within about 40 yards
of Lotta's front door when she was attacked.
And we know that Lorraine never reached her destination
and forensics have confirmed struggles along the way.
It would appear he went off in front of her,
then got to where Lorraine was going
and jumped out of this alleyway that he was in, a little car port.
Uh, stunned Lorraine with a blow to the head.
Then he's half dragged, half carried her up the street.
People saw this going on,
but it was Christmas,
they thought it was boyfriend and girlfriend
and she'd had too much to drink.
Looked like she was being helped.
Maybe struggling a bit, but nobody actually reported that.
They didn't think it was anything out of ordinary.
It's the 19th of December, a lot of merriment going on,
and nobody should feel guilty
about not actually taking second heed of what they saw.
Crucial pieces of evidence were found in that fine fingertip search,
which included the earring.
That confirmed she was definitely walking that route back.
The handkerchief that was discarded nearby,
that handkerchief had evidence on it.
The theory was that the handkerchief may have been the offender's.
And also, were there any stains on it
to link it to Lorraine Benson?
When I first became a forensic scientist,
um, the only way you could type stains
was to carry out a blood grouping test.
And they didn't provide a lot of discrimination,
and you needed a large amount of sample to get a result.
We've always been able to type blood,
but DNA had not long been used as an investigative tool.
DNA profiling really only became routinely used
in criminal cases in 1988,
when it was used on the most serious cases,
so murders, sexual assaults, and for testing blood,
semen stains and, occasionally, saliva.
The next stage, finding the vehicle,
confirmed a struggle had taken place.
We've got evidence of a young woman going missing,
matched the profile of other ladies
that had been attacked in the area,
and that there clearly had been a struggle.
We're not saying they're definitely linked,
but it was justification to actually revisit all the information,
all the evidence that Kingston Police had on the linked sexual attacks,
but also to refocus the forensic laboratory on samples they'd taken,
evidence they had forensically from the other cases in Kingston,
and see if there was a link, whether it be fiber, saliva, DNA, blood
between the cases in Kingston
and the evidence they'd found in Lorraine's case.
[narrator] This possible connection with a local serial sex attacker
is the police's best line of inquiry.
[Wood] It gave more of a profile of who we were looking for,
more of a description. We had a very vague description
from house to house inquiries,
but nothing much to go on, a shadow of a man.
[narrator] Day breaks,
and Family Liaison Officer Jenny has sensitive questions for Mick and Lyn.
[Wood] So I had to ask about Lorraine's personal life.
Was she a promiscuous young lady?
A very difficult question to ask in such trying times.
What was her normal pattern of behavior?
When the police put it together, she did everything right.
When she left the party, she came with two other girls.
They got on the train together through to Raynes Park.
She did everything right.
She had company, she did this,
when she was walking, she was walking towards the traffic.
I was saying to myself, I can remember,
"My God, I hope she's all right.
Please let her be all right."
[sighs]
I didn't realize, emotionally, how intense it would be
to take on board the distress of the parents.
Well, you can't… Can't believe you're living through the anxiety…
of maybe not seeing her again.
There was something terribly wrong here
and although I was really hopeful that we would find her injured
or confused somewhere,
in the back of my mind I knew, as Mick did,
that perhaps the worst of the worst things could have happened to her,
and trying to not show that fear.
This is not a particularly well-advertised pathway,
and somebody who knew their way around
would know about this place.
I don't think it's somewhere you would stumble across
being at the end of a road.
[Wood] There was an alleyway that leads on to playing fields.
I believe those playing fields back onto a school.
Very dense undergrowth and thick brambles.
And by that time, police dogs were also part of the search party.
And police dogs are brilliant.
You give them a piece of clothing, they sniff it, they go off,
they find what they have to find.
And it was during the search of this particular alleyway
that Lorraine's body was found to my left, by the school.
And the search team were led
to where Lorraine's body was actually found,
hidden in brambles.
[birds chirping]
And she'd been covered by various bits of the foliage that were around.
[birds chirping]
In every investigation of a missing person,
when the body is found
and it turns into a murder investigation,
everything becomes a little more serious.
[narrator] It's around 12 hours since Lorraine Benson disappeared,
and police have found a body.
They now need to inform her parents.
[Wood] I was told that a body had been found.
And the description of the body, a young girl,
meets Lorraine's description
and the clothing she was actually wearing,
which wasn't much at that time.
I then volunteered to go and tell the family
that a body had been found and we suspect it to be Lorraine's.
And it was Inspector A.B. Benham and Jenny Wood.
I didn't know what to say.
But they knew.
When I opened the front door to 'em, I just had to look at her, I said,
-"You've found her, haven't you?" -[Lyn sighs]
And he said, "Yes," and I… "Come in."
I said to Lyn, "They've found her."
And, uh, Lyn said, "Oh, thank God."
And, uh, I said, "No, it's not good news."
One of the worst days of my career.
Many a time I've been asked to actually call their houses
and explain a loved one had died.
I knew so many intimate things about her and the family,
to then have to go and tell the family that actually we'd found a body,
it was awful for them. Um…
What could I do?
I didn't even say anything when I got there,
they just took one look at me and I gave Lyn a hug.
[softly] Yeah.
Yeah.
This wasn't happening.
I couldn't believe it.
[sighs]
Not Lorraine.
I just remember Lyn froze to the spot.
She… The tears just fell down her face
and she was shaking.
And Mick just started crying.
Um, "No, no, no, oh, Lyn, Lyn."
He was totally inconsolable, I mean, this was his baby girl.
And Lyn just stood there totally frozen to the spot and helpless.
I felt I was intruding.
I wanted to leave them to their own personal space.
And I tried to make my… I made my excuses and said,
"You really need time to be alone now."
And bless them. They've said, "No, you're part of this.
Don't leave us now, we need you."
That meant a lot to me,
personally as well as professionally.
Um, but I could see they still needed time, time out,
and I did what any good copper does, I went and made a cup of tea.
It was probably the worst cup of tea I've ever made in my life.
He said, "Are you prepared to do a identification?"
I said to Lyn, "I don't want you to see that,
so I'll go there on me own."
Uh, Mick Benson would have had to go to the hospital
or mortuary and identify his daughter.
Those of us who've never been in that situation can only imagine.
[Wood] There was still a slight glimmer of hope.
"Okay, there's a body. It still might not be Lorraine."
There's a window, 18 inches, 18 inches.
Uh… [sighs]
"When you're ready, tap here
and the man on the other side will pull the curtains."
Uh, of course he pulled the curtains and there's Lorraine.
But I said many times,
I looked at it and that wasn't my daughter.
And I don't care how mawkish it sounds,
that was just a shell, her soul had gone.
And this was such a feeling of relief in that respect,
but not the pain that was there and was to follow.
Uh…
I couldn't kiss her goodbye.
Couldn't touch her because of DNA.
And you could see she'd been in a fight.
She was one tough little cookie, she really was.
Without having gone through that as an individual,
we can only imagine what it's like for families.
I've seen the devastation that it's caused to the Benson family over the years.
I don't how they got through that day,
I don't know how they get through the week,
I don't know how they get through life,
knowing what they know, what's happened to lovely Lorraine.
[dramatic music]
I can't really explain how they felt.
I could only see how they were.
And I wanted to be able to take some of that hurt away,
and the only thing I could possibly do,
perhaps it made me feel better,
was to just say to them, "We won't give in, we'll find the bastard."
[Shorricks] When Lorraine is found,
the first thing is the preservation of the scene,
this complete alleyway would have been taped off at both ends,
no one would have been able to come into here.
When a police officer finds a body, they don't touch it.
And then the forensic teams would come in
and they would do what's necessary
to preserve all forensic evidence.
Then they're put into a body bag and taken to the mortuary
where the forensic examination continues.
The circumstances of her going missing
and the circumstances of her being found,
it was proved at the post mortem examination
that Lorraine had indeed been murdered.
[narrator] Injuries to Lorraine's body
reveal that she fended off her attacker without being raped,
before being strangled using a ligature.
A piece of rope was also found in the area
where Lorraine Benson's body was located.
And we investigated that type of rope.
Lorraine had some defensive bite marks on her left forearm.
The pathologist is the likely one
to find things like the bruises from the teeth marks.
There were bite marks found on Lorraine Benson's left arm
and her hand.
The inquiry, already intensive,
became even more intensive.
And, uh, we set about trying to find the person who'd done this.
There is someone out there who's committed a murder
and I think the worst case scenario is that another one would be committed.
So we are dedicated in trying to find this person
and get them off the streets.
[Wood] Early on in the investigation,
a couple of police officers had been tasked
with looking through previous arrests in the whole area.
Anybody that was either a rapist,
who'd been charged and convicted,
anybody who was a peeping Tom, a burglar,
and just look at their profiles and see if any of those would match.
And so, if you can imagine, hundreds and hundreds of names
came into the system.
It wasn't a computer system, it was a Rolodex system.
[narrator] The police need to work through each and every record
of potential perpetrators.
It's a laborious and methodical process.
But then something happens that changes the direction of the investigation.
There was a rape, or attempted rape, in the locality.
The suspect was actually arrested only a couple of streets away
from where Lorraine's body was found,
and only a couple of streets away from where her final destination was.
[narrator] The suspect is 19-year-old local man,
John Dunne.
[Shorricks] The officer in charge at Wimbledon
decided that there was some kind of link.
It was like a light had been switched on.
And it ticked enough boxes for him to be prioritized
and brought to the very top of the list
rather than just one of hundreds of people that may meet the profile.
[narrator] February 2, 1989,
police have arrested John Dunne on suspicion of killing Lorraine Benson.
They've got a long way to go
before they can charge him with her murder.
At the time that we arrested him, he was a suspect,
but the evidence in relation to the murder wasn't great.
There was enough to talk to him about his movements.
Initially, we didn't know, it was just another person
who was being arrested for a murder and for another offense.
There'd been another attempted rape
in the same area, Raynes Park.
And it turned out he'd broken into her house,
breaking the French windows, doors, to get in.
And he had a ligature.
Because he met the profile, it justified interviewing him
and if necessary, arresting him to get a DNA sample.
A blood sample was obtained from him
which was then submitted for DNA profiling.
[narrator] With John Dunne in custody for other crimes,
he's interviewed further by officers.
John Dunne initially never admitted
anything to do with Lorraine, no meetings.
[narrator] Fingerprints, clothing and DNA
are taken to forensically compare to evidence from previous crime scenes.
A blood sample was obtained from John Dunne
didn't match the rape series in the Kingston area
that was also under investigation at that time.
[narrator] Forensics turn their attention to other evidence.
The car was submitted to the laboratory.
There were actually marks on the external part, in the dust of the vehicle.
I initially looked at them to see if there was anything
that matched the fabric weave of Lorraine's coat,
but there was some zigzag lines in the dust
which at first were a bit of a mystery.
But eventually I realized that they could have been made
by the teeth on the zip of her coat,
and I carried out some trial experiments that confirmed that.
They identified the jacket that Lorraine was wearing
and also a jacket that was taken from John Dunne's home.
Large numbers of those particular zips would have been produced,
but it did corroborate
that there'd been a struggle by the side of the car.
It had already been proposed by the exhibits officer
to ask for him to provide a dental impression,
where you bite into some goo.
Same as if you go to a dentist to have a brace fitted or something.
That was submitted to the laboratory.
[Allard] There were bite marks found on Lorraine Benson's left arm
and her hand.
They were examined by a forensic odontologist
who confirmed that they were consistent with John Dunne's dental impressions.
[narrator] With some useful results out of forensic investigations,
officers couldn't have hoped for a better result
than the next development.
It was the very early days of DNA profiling for the Met Police.
The first test on the handkerchief
provided a DNA result from the nasal mucus.
It was a really exciting result
because it was the first time we'd obtained a DNA profile
from nasal mucus.
We finally established Lorraine Benson's profile
on the 3rd of February,
and that showed that the blood was a match with her,
but the nasal mucus wasn't.
Further DNA tests were carried out
and they confirmed that Dunne matched the nasal mucus profile
and the figure for that was around one in one-and-a-half million
for the white Caucasian population.
[Wood] His DNA was confirmed as the DNA on the handkerchief
that also had Lorraine's blood on it.
The Forensic Science Service gave us such good evidence.
For the first time ever, nasal debris or mucus on the handkerchief
had been used to identify somebody.
That had never been done before anywhere.
[Allard] Today, it might be considered fairly routine,
but at the time this was a double first to get a DNA result from an unusual sample
to help solve the murder,
and it was the first murder that DNA profiling had helped to solve
in the Metropolitan Police Laboratory.
[Wood] So it was extraordinary.
And it showed how dedicated the whole team were,
which were the forensics as well as the police.
The whole inquiry, looking back on it,
is an amazing amount of teamwork by the various bodies that were involved,
from the inquiry team with which I was involved,
the Forensic Science Services,
but back to the first actions at the scene of the crime
initiated by Inspector Henry and his team.
If they hadn't done that,
we would never would have had those articles and evidence.
It's always referred to by us as the first steps of the scene of a crime,
and properly done, it helped to solve this case.
[narrator] The compelling evidence enabled the police
to put pressure on John Dunne to tell the truth.
He was still denying everything.
They had the evidence they had picked up,
he's still denying that.
Several times he was brought back to the police station
for further interviews to put further allegations to him
or further questions, further inconsistencies.
And when they were talking, suddenly he said,
"I do seem to remember a blonde girl."
[narrator] DC Gary Shorricks and his partner
have built a level of trust with Dunne which pays off.
During one of those interviews,
he handed the police officer a written confession
that he'd pre-prepared,
actually admitting that the handkerchief was his
and it was Lorraine's blood on there.
[narrator] With police keen to let Mick and Lyn know of any developments,
-an officer calls straight away. -[phone rings]
I got a phone call and it's Bernie Davis.
He said, "I think we got him, Mick."
And I said, "What?" He said, "I'm 110% sure we've got him."
I said, "That's good enough for me, Bernie."
There was never a doubt in my mind that they would get him.
So, he admitted actually being in contact with Lorraine.
And that later further led then to him actually admitting
and pleading guilty at court to her murder.
The Bensons were informed fully throughout of what was going on,
and we took the family to court
for the trial.
I was keeping an eye on Mick Benson
who was in the gallery upstairs.
And when he saw John Dunne,
he did what I think any father would have done.
He got out of his seat, I could see his fist was clenched.
If he could have got hold of him,
he would have liked to do some serious damage to that man.
It was explained at John Dunne's trial by the prosecutor,
that she had, in fact, been murdered by strangulation.
A ligature had been used.
A piece of rope was found near her body,
which matched some of the marks found on Lorraine,
but could never be proven to be the piece of rope
that had actually been used.
John Dunne had denied being involved in Lorraine's murder,
but the overwhelming nature of the DNA, I think, played a part
in him eventually pleading guilty at court.
I hope that the Benson family
felt that something had been done
to honor their daughter's memory,
that the person who'd done this to her was there before them
and admitting to it in a court of law.
And then the Judge did his part in sentencing him to life imprisonment.
I think John Dunne pleaded guilty as a result of the wealth of evidence,
not just in his confession
but the forensic evidence and the witness evidence
compiled by a fantastic team of police officers,
detectives and forensic teams.
Everybody played their part.
He wouldn't be where he is today if it wasn't for that kind of work.
Mick and Lyn Benson, you can imagine, it's not the end for them.
They've got the rest of their lives to live
knowing that this person has murdered their daughter
for no reason other than his own personal satisfaction.
If only Lorraine had been lazy,
"Oh, I'll wait here and get the car."
If only Peter had been there.
And if only, the big one there,
if only the scum wasn't out there.
You read these stories in the paper…
and you think, you know, "It'll never happen to us."
It did.
[cries]
[theme music playing]