DNA evidence trapped nanny killer after 45 years
Published 18 Jun 2012 17:05
A CHILD killer accused of murdering a 17-year-old au pair was caught by police using DNA evidence discovered nearly 50 years after her naked body was found in a ditch, a court heard.
David Burgess, 64, denies the murder of Yolande Waddington, whose body was found near a barn popular with courting couples in Clay Lane, Beenham, in October 1966.
John Price, QC, prosecuting, told a Reading Crown Court jury on Monday that Burgess was convicted of the murder of two nine-year-old girls in July 1967 in Beenham, with the evidence pointing to "a sexual motivation".
The girls were Jeanette Wigmore and Jacqueline Williams, whose bodies were found in a gravel pit.
He alleged that while in jail Burgess twice told prison officers he had killed Yolande. The second time, he said, was in December 1969 when "he confessed that he had killed her, acting alone spontaneously and in anger when a consensual sexual encounter between them had gone wrong".
Mr Price said last year scientists re-investigated items found at the barn where Yolande's blood stained clothes were discovered.
DNA on a blood stain on a polythene ICI fertiliser sack matched Burgess, who at the time was 19 and living with his parents in nearby Stonyfields while working at a local gravel pit.
Mr Price said quoted a scientist's report which said the chances of the blood stain on the polythene sack not coming from David Burgess were "smaller than one in a billion".
Mr Price said Yolande left the Jagger family's Oakwood Farm home, where she was living as an au pair, to post a letter at around 10pm on October 28, the night she died. She was last seen buying cigarettes in the Six Bells pub and left shortly before Burgess.
The court heard Yolande died from strangulation and suffered two shallow knife wounds to her chest and back consistent with a small blade such as a penknife.
The trial continues.
This article appeared in Local Berkshire 18 Jun 12
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