28

Pets and Palynology

3 February

This week's episode is about Leanne Tiernan, whose disappearance was very thoroughly investigated by the West Yorkshire Police. The murderer was a local "Pet Man" named John Taylor. Joe explains the pollen evidence, and Sandra questions the validity of lifting fingerprints in films.

Joe got his information from:

• BBC News article, from 2002
• Wikipedia, this is also where the photo of Leanne Tiernan can be found.
• High Court of Justice transcript
• Hair as a source of forensic evidence in murder investigations, by Patricia E. J. Wiltshire
• Plastic bag striations

Sandra got her information from:

• Wikipedia
• Article on BBC News, from 2001
• Article on BBC News, from 2000
• Article on BBC News, from 2002. This is where the photo of John Taylor can be found.
• Blog post on Crime and investigation
• Article in Yorkshire Evening Post, by David Bruce
• Article in The Guardian, by Martin Wainwright
• BBC Crimewatch

Audio transcript

Midweek Murders contains graphic and explicit content, listener discretion is advised.

I have a mildly amusing too.

Oh yeah? Tell me.

I was watching Not Going Out, it's the sitcom with Lee Mack in it, and this episode was all about a pub quiz. And one of the questions on the pub quiz was: "pi, the mathematical number, is 3.14. But what is the next number in the sequence?". And one of the characters was like: "what kind of insufferable know-it-all knows anything more than 3.14?", and I was like: "3.1416". Me, I'm that kind of insufferable know-it-all.

I am a bit surprised, but I'm also not surprised. Well, I shouldn't be surprised.

I'm a little bit insulted. [Laughter]

Well it is funny, because you make fun of know-it-alls sometimes. Or, you do it sarcastically, but I know deep inside you do want to actually correct me.

Nooooo.

You do that unsarcastically sometimes as well.

It's not deep inside at all, it's just brimming beneath the surface. [Laughter]

Fair enough, fair enough.

[Music]

Should we start maybe? Okay.

Okay. Let's kick this in the dick! Good evening cocksuckers! [Laughter]

I might keep that in. Maybe I shouldn't, but I don't care anymore. It's Wednesday, which means that it's time to talk about crime. I'm your host... No! You're listening to Midweek... Fucking shit. Kick it in the dick! [Laughter]

You have one job.

I have all the jobs! [Laughter]

That's the joke dot jpeg.

You're listening to Midweek Murders, and I'm your host Sandra.

And I'm your host Joe.

Ba bam!

Kaplow.

I got my information from wikipedia, four separate BBC articles which will be on the blog. On the website. Midweek... Midweek Murders.

Midweek Murders! [Mimics Swedish chef]

Midweekmurders.netlify.app. A blog post on crime and investigation, an article in Yorkshire Evening Post... Yorkshire?

"Yorkshire".

An article in Yorkshire Evening Post by David Bruce, and an article in The Guardian by Martin Wainwright.

Also one of my sources is the BBC News article, also the wiki wiki wah. The national archives which documents her majesty's courts records, a journal article titled "hair as a source of forensic evidence in murder investigations". And what when how dot com, that reminded me all that I'd forgotten about plastic bag striations.

So this week we're going to talk about the murder of Leanne Tiernan. And Leanne Tiernan was a happy, chocolate loving 16 year old, which one of those apply to you.

You're right. I am a 16 year old. [Laughter]

I was thinking about chocolate loving.

I know, that was the joke.

And Leanne Tiernan was christmas shopping in Leeds city center with her best friend Sarah on the 26th of November in the year 2000. "In the year 2000". That was a Conan O'Brien sketch, you're welcome.

And that is why there was no canned laughter afterwards.

They had taken a bus back to the suburb of Bramley, where they lived, at approximately 4.30 p.m. Leanne and Sarah had begun to walk home together, but parted ways at Houghley Lane where Sarah watched her friend walk towards the wooded area of Houghley Gill. When Sarah had returned home she phoned Leanne's house on the landline, and was told that Leanne wasn't home yet. You remember when we had landlines?

James asked me the other day if I ever call Munich on the land line. I was like: "James, what's a landline?". [Laughter] I quite like the idea of a landline, but I know that if I installed one it would only ever be telemarketers. Or my mum, who would just call me on my mobile if I ignored the landline anyway.

That's moms for you. Leanne's mother tried calling her cell phone at 5.20 pm, but nobody answered. She tried calling again, but this time the call dropped after just four rings. At 7pm Leanne's mother called the police to report her daughter missing. The search for Leanne started immediately, but the area of Houghley Gill consisted of extremely varied terrain, which made the search very difficult. The police inquest headed by detective superintendent Cris Gregg, not the Gregg pasties person...

Nah that was weak, move on.

Yeah it was, it was. I don't even know where I was supposed to be going with that, but all right. Calculated her probable route with the help of Sarah, who was the last person to have seen Leanne on the 26th. They went door-to-door along this route, searching 955 houses and countless other buildings, for any clue as where Leanne could be.

I've got some actual numbers on the "countless other things", just to put into context the size of this search.

Okay, yeah.

1400 houses were questioned.

Oh god.

800 sheds or garages were searched. 150 commercial properties were searched, so shops and stuff like that. 12 search warrants were issued, and I don't know if you know, but a search warrant needs to be authorized by a judge. Which means that the police officers need an evidence base to be able to get a search warrant approved. So they take time, and they take money, and they take effort, and they got 12 of them. Usually it's hard enough to get one. 140 male DNA samples were taken. A three mile section of a canal was searched, including two of those three miles where the canal was drained to one meter of water. So the search was absolutely massive.

I also wrote down that they searched 32 drain shafts.

Yeah, and they got help from lots of different organizations to locate hidden drains, and old drains that aren't in service anymore. They really did quite a thorough job.

Yeah. On the 4th of December, police released a facial composite of a man that had been spotted walking his dog in the Houghley Gill area at the time of leanne's disappearance. And I actually looked up the composite, and it is quite similar to the man that was responsible for Leanne's disappearance and death. I looked into this a little bit more, and he was actually spotted in the area like an hour before Leanne went missing. I'm a bit surprised that somebody saw him, and I'm also a bit surprised that they could remember, kind of, what the face looked like. It was quite interesting actually, and also goes to show that they did talk to so many people that they were like: "this man, an hour before Leanne went missing, might be a person of interest". But I also remembered like, you know... Do you remember the dodgy dog walker episode?

No. [Laughter]

We talked about like, this one guy who... Police interest peaked about him, because he was out walking his dog, but he had nothing to do with the actual case. But this time it actually did have something to do with the case.

I always find it suspicious that it's a dog walker that finds someone, or a cadaver, at six o'clock in the morning. What kind of maniac goes out at six o'clock in the morning to walk their dog? Obviously a murderer. [Laughter]

Ollie would like that, but that's not the case for you.

He wouldn't. He complains if I have to take him out too early.

Aww, that's why he's so perfect for you, because he's so old.

Yeah. Screw getting a puppy. Ugh, could you imagine? [Laughter]

No, I couldn't imagine, because puppies are a lot of work.

I mean it's bad enough anyway, I have to take him out four times a day. But when he gets the shits and it's at three o'clock in the morning?

Yeah.

I ain't invested in that life. This dog-owning business has just reaffirmed for me the fact that I do not want children.

Well, you chose to have a dog.

I know, and he's great company for about 10 minutes every day and then he slinks off and does his own thing, which is great. But a baby won't slink off and do their own thing, you have to pay attention to them all the time. I'm like: "why aren't you grown up and have left the house already?".

To all the listeners out there, if this makes it into the cut, I don't think you've been invested in anything as you're invested in your dog. So don't be worried, the dog lives a great life.

He is my only reason for existence.

Oh yeah. Nine months after Leanne was last seen, another dog walker, this is the one you were talking about...

Surprise surprise.

...named Mark Bisson was out for a walk with his puppers in Lindley woods North Yorkshire, 16 miles from Leanne's home. He came across Leanne's body only 100 yards away from where another murder victim, a woman named Yvonne Fitt, had been found in 1992. So 100 yards is?

I'm going to guess 108 meters.

91.4 meters.

Ah! I wen't the wrong way.

Yeah. So almost there, almost. Leanne's body was identified by her fingerprints. And now I wrote: "autopsy and things found with the body". Maybe that's your... [Laughter] What was found with Leanne's body?

A lot, forensically. So we can start with the fingerprints. So they identified her body by fingerprints, but obviously she... I say obviously. Most likely, she wasn't on the fingerprint database. So they would have taken comparison prints of objects in her house that she likely would have touched.

Okay. I have a question about that.

Si.

I think I saw Captain Marvel recently, again.

Oh here we go, I'm expecting this to be highly reliable.

And Nick Fury lifted a fingerprint with a piece of tape from his, like, ID card. Because somebody else touched it. But I've always been believing, because of movies again, that you have to like warm it up or something?

So it depends on what surface the fingerprint is on, which will determine which technique that you need to use. But most of the time if it's a solid surface; a desk, a pen, an ID card... Anything that's not like a carrier bag or something, you need to use a different technique for a carrier bag. But anything that's a non-malleable surface, all you need to do to recover the fingerprint is dust it with a specific powder, and then literally lift it with a bit of clear tape.

Okay, so you have to dust it first?

Yes. You won't be able to recover a fingerprint unless the fingerprint is left in dust already. So unless your fingerprint is on a surface that you can visually see the fingerprint. So for example, one of the best case scenarios for a scene of crime officer is a carjacking where the car is a manual transmission and has a chrome, or metallic, gearbox. Because you'll have extra sweat, because of the adrenaline, and the metal is non-absorbent. So you can get perfect fingerprints from a metal gear box, just from the sweat. I think that they would dust it anyway, but you can visually see that fingerprint already, so you know it's there.

So you can't actually lift the fingerprint with tape unless you can already see it?

Yes.

Okay.

So that's why a lot of things like CSI Miami, or any kind of tv show that feature forensic science, they're always running around with like a little tiny feather duster. And that's essentially what they use to administer the fingerprint dust onto surfaces. So you dust down the surface and then that will show up the fingerprint, and then you just lay a bit of tape over it carefully, peel that off and then lay it down on some clear acetone.

He also folded his tape with the fingerprint on it, and then went to use it again. I'm like: "that wouldn't work", right?

If you close the tape over the fingerprint and then reopen to use the tape again, you won't be able to use that fingerprint.

No. That's what I thought as well. I was like: "this doesn't make sense".

So yeah, that would be the fingerprint, we've covered that, we can tick that. Lovely. Good job. They also got a cryo biological expert, I don't know what the full word is, I just wrote cryobio because it's fun. Might be cryobiology, might be biological whatever.

I don't actually know what that is.

I'm talking about it! If you'd give me a minute! [Laughter]

Fine, fine.

I mean to be fair, I would expect you to know what this is because it has greek stems. Let's do the easy ones: what's "ology"?

I did this in Swedish, so fuck you. But..

Okay. So what's "ology"? [Mimics Swedish chef]

It's the "study of". I was going to say the "learning of", but that's incorrect.

Well yeah, that's the same thing innit. Then "bio".

Bio is life.

Yeah, living things innit. So, so far we've got "the study of living things". And then "cryo".

No. Wait.

You'll kick yourself, because I know it's in there.

Yeah. Yeah well, I wasn't expecting a pop quiz okay?!

Well, we need to mix these up a bit. Murder, murder, murder. That's all you talk about. [Laughter] Cryo is freezing, or frozen.

Yeah, of course... Fucking hell. I was going to say that!

See, I knew it was in there, I knew it!

And then I was like: "no that's silly, you're thinking of Star Wars".

So cryo chambers are like the futuristic: "you freeze your body, and then thaw it in the future". Supposedly what happened to Walt Disney, not true. So yeah, a cryobiologist is the expert that looks at the study of frozen life, whether that be plant-based or animal based. So they brought one of these people in, and they looked at the decomposition of Leanne's body and the stage that she should have been in given that it was eight months, I think, between her disappearance and her body being found.

Yeah, nine months.

Okay. So you'd expect her to be in an advanced state of decay. What they found was, she was not.

I kind of guessed, because of the fingerprint.

Yeah. They likely wouldn't have been able to recover any soft tissue evidence over that amount of time.

Yeah.

They'd have to look at teeth, or hair, or something like that to be able to identify her. So what this told the investigators was that she had recently been placed in that shallow grave, and that she hadn't been there the whole time. Which is why, when they did that massive search of that massive area, nothing came up. Because she literally was not there. Her body was in, I think, nine bin bags. Might be a different number, but I feel like it's nine.

Oh god.

Not chopped up, for once. And also a floral patterned duvet, the floral pattern seems to be significant to a lot of the people that have written these reports. I can find no significance to it, but they all mentioned it, so I thought I'd let you know as well. She had a dog collar, a leather dog collar, that was closing one of the bags over her head.

Okay. So it was on top of the bag?

Yeah. So the bag was on her, and then the dog collar was sealing that bag around her neck. She was also bound, with her arms behind her back, with cable ties. One of the bags that was used to cover her body was a specific type of green plastic bag. I don't know if it was a bag, but it was definitely a green plastic. And she also had a scarf that was knotted around her neck.

Okay.

That's the summary of the condition that they found her body in.

Yeah. So after Leanne had been identified, the police made a public appeal asking for any information about people living in Bramley who had a connection to Lindley woods where the body had been found. After this appeal, two separate women reached out to police about a man named John Taylor. They were both former girlfriends of his, and told police that they had driven past Lindley woods with John, who had told them that he would go there regularly to poach. The police were also tracking another lead, they had contacted over 100 pet stores in an effort to identify the person who had purchased the dog collar that was around the plastic bag. This had been ultimately successful, as one company was able to supply the police with the name of a customer who had bought several of these dog collars, and who lived in Bramley.

Sorry, I just want to interject. Because I found particular aspects of the police work behind finding and linking the evidence really fascinating. Which is probably just a reflection of my sad, sad personality. But for the dog collar, they worked out that it was made by one specific company in Nottinghamshire.

Okay.

They then followed that, so they got in contact with that company and they said: "yep, we sent this particular brand of collar to 112 wholesalers". So they then got in contact with all of those 112 individual wholesalers and said: "has anybody, in this time frame, purchased one of these collars?". And so they got a list of people back with addresses, and whatever else data the police can seize. And one sale in Liverpool, they found that Taylor was the customer.

I think it was a mail order?

Yeah. So he bought it online, which probably made it easier to track him, because they had shipping addresses. So they would have said to the wholesalers: "okay, did you ship to anybody in this area during these dates?". And so they got the list and they cross referenced it. But I just find it so incredible, that from a random looking leather dog collar they can come up with a positive ID for someone who's already a suspect.

Yeah. And also, in Liverpool. Which, I'm guessing, is not North Yorkshire or whatever?

It's not, no. That's why it's called Liverpool. [Laughter] Yeah, I just thought it was a particularly interesting point.

Yeah. It is crazy. So John Taylor, a 44 year old dick bag and Parcelforce employee, lived less than a mile from Leanne. Known locally as the "pet man" which, a weird moniker but alrighty then. He owned several animals such as ferrets, ew, and dogs.

You're just thinking of Draco as a ferret.

Ferrets might be good pets, I don't know. Being a Parcelforce employee would have given him access to the cable ties found with Leanne's body, as these were more or less only supplied to Royal Mail, Parcelforce's parent company. Which is funny, because we mentioned Royal Mail in the last episode. We shit on them, but it's good that they exist.

They're back! [Laughter]

They're back. Okay. Maybe we should talk about the evidence that linked John Taylor to Leanne's body?

You've already done two of it, so my role here is reduced. They also found a dog hair on Leanne's person, I don't know where they found it exactly. Did you read that at all?

No, I thought it was a human hair?

They found a human hair, but they also found a dog hair.

Oh, okay.

So they sent this dog hair to a university in Texas. Yeah, long way to go. Which specialized in DNA profiling for pedigree dog research. So you could submit your dog's hair to them, and they'd be like: "nah, that's a mongrel, not a pedigree. Don't spend seven thousand dollars on it".

Didn't know that was a thing, but good to know.

So they managed to get a partial profile from the hair that was recovered, and they believe that it would have been a match to the dog that Taylor owned, which conveniently died of heart failure just as the police were starting to close in on Taylor.

Oh. I thought that he killed the dog.

That was why I said it laced with sarcasm. [Laughter]

Sorry.

Yeah. So a lot of people think that he killed the dog and burnt the body, so that he couldn't be linked back to Leanne's murder. Yeah, like you said, they also found a human hair. This was found on the scarf that was wrapped around her neck, and it was in the knot. So they were pretty sure that this was not a cross-contamination, that it had come from either Leanne or the main suspect.

Yeah.

They easily ruled out Leanne, because she still had her hair, easy cross reference. Done. They couldn't recover enough DNA to be able to use nuclear DNA. So nuclear DNA is all in the root of your hair. So if you pluck a hair out, the only way that it can be matched by nuclear DNA is if it's still got its root attached. There wasn't enough DNA on the hair to be able to use nuclear DNA, so they used a relatively newer technique which is mitochondrial DNA. So the important thing to remember about mitochondrial DNA is - it is not unique to each person like your nuclear DNA is. So because your nuclear DNA is a mix of both of your parents, and then a certain combination of that which makes it different to your siblings. Your siblings, if you have any, will have exactly the same mitochondrial DNA as you. So you can't use it to identify, uniquely, a person. But you can use it to identify someone of that maternal lineage. So if Taylor had a brother, you wouldn't have been able to tell which one of the two of them the hair belonged to, but you would be able to determine that it was one of those two.

Yeah.

Or a sister.

Yeah.

So there's a bit more evidence. So like we mentioned before, there was a green plastic that was found that was used to wrap the body. The sample that was recovered from the body was found to be a match to some green plastic that Taylor had in his home. He'd used some twine to tie up some of the bags, this was linked back to a specific brand of twine that was manufactured in Devon, that was usually only sold to the ministry of defense. Now that company said: "actually, we did make an individual batch, that was a one-off, that we gave to retailers to use in rabbit hunting", which is one of the things that a certain Mr Taylor was particularly fond of. They managed to link the twine that was found on the body to the twine that was found in his house, and link it back to that specific one manufacturer to be able to connect the dots. So pretty impressive stuff there as well.

Yeah crazy.

You think that it's crazy, but to be fair, both fiber ID, so the twine, and plastic ID can be done just by microscopy.

This is a weird question, maybe. But this can't be ruled as circumstantial, right?

No.

No.

It's a direct link between the body and a source material found in his home. Like if they hadn't found a batch of cable ties in his bedside drawer, that were the exact same manufacturer as the ones used by the Royal Mail, then the cable ties would have been circumstantial. Because the cable ties found at the body would have been linked back to the ones supplied by the Royal Mail, and he worked for the Royal Mail.

Yeah.

But because they were also found in his bedside table, that then moves beyond the realm of circumstantial to hard evidence. You've got a batch of these cable ties, they have been used on this body, must have been you.

And because it wasn't a cable tie readily available to the public?

To the general public, yeah.

Okay.

The same as the twine. So if it were just a generic white string that he'd bought from Tesco for example, other retailers are available, it would have been circumstantial evidence. Because you can't link that twine to the twine that was used on the body. But because it was specifically made by one company that sold it to a specific batch of retailers, and then they looked at the microscopy and found that the twist direction was the same, the blend of fibers were the same, any dye or manufacturing defects were the same, it then moves beyond the realm of circumstantial to being hard evidence. Circumstantial evidence is enough to be able to give you a hint. You wouldn't be able to, as a jury member, say beyond reasonable doubt that this piece of evidence links this person to this crime. When you add them all together, which has been the case in previous cases, if you add a bunch of circumstantial evidence together then...

It's beyond reasonable doubt.

Yeah. Then that all accumulates to become beyond reasonable doubt. But if you've only got a couple of bits, then you can't really prosecute on it.

Yeah. Well they do, in America for example.

But we have a much better legal system than them. [Laughter]

I would hope so, yes. Okay!

Were you going to say something else? Because I was going to talk about the pollen, that's fucking amazing.

I'm excited about the pollen, actually.

Ah mate, the pollen! [Laughter] So I genuinely was so fascinated reading this paper, because I was not taught anything about pollen analysis during my course. So writing my notes I've done what you've done, and have blocked capital written notes, just like: "oh my god, this has blown my mind. What has happened?". So for the listeners who are not aware of the full details of the case, they brought in a pollen analyst to look over any pollen or biological detritus, such as leaves, twigs, etc, that were found on the body. And to be able to narrow down where Leanne had been previously. Whether she was kept in the forest the whole time, which they sort of knew she hadn't because of the cryobiology but just wanted to be sure.

I think that's probably why they were able to, and also did, all of the analysis of the body. Because she still had soft tissue.

It's much, much easier to get the approval, and financial backing, to be able to do all of these kind of wacky out there tests when you've got some kind of evidential basis to go by.

Yeah.

They probably wouldn't have even bothered looking at the pollen if she was in a nine-month state of decay that they would expect to see.

Yeah.

So they took samples from her hair, she had some charcoal-like deposits and other stuff in her hair. [Laughter]

"Other stuff", mhm.

They took swabs of her nasal cavity. And found some evidence on the bed covering, the aforementioned floral bed covering, that she was covered in.

The floral, ja.

So from these sample profiles they managed to determine a bunch of different plant varieties that were non-native to the environment that she was found in. So she was found in woodland, and they found pollen or physical samples of: a privet hedge, elder trees, bramble bushes, hawthorne trees, a cherry or plum or slow bush, and buckler fern. So those are all like plants or bushes. They also found pollen from beech and poplar trees. And the pollen profiles were dominated by nettle pollen and a thing called orachi or orach. If there's any plant people out there, I apologize for butchering the pronunciation of whatever that word is. The most interesting thing for me is that they looked at these pollen profiles that they'd got from the body and they came up with a scenario, or a place, that was almost an exact match for Taylor's back garden. So they were like: "judging by the amount of x, y, and z, it's probably in a garden that's got an overgrown privet hedge, that's got overgrown nettles so it's not going to be a well manicured garden. There will be fire pits, like you're just burning shit in your garden..."

Is that why they found the charcoal on her hair?

Yeah, because of the fire pit.

Oh.

Yeah. And the thing that blew my mind, that was in block capitals, the beach and poplar pollen from the trees...

Yeah.

... they managed to say that: "these two species of trees would just be visible where the body was".

Oh my god.

They were like: "we found some pollen from a beech tree, but it was only a little bit and so therefore a couple of gardens across somewhere will have a beach tree growing".

That is fucking crazy.

Fucking mental. So once all of the other evidence had linked Taylor to the crime they went to his house, obviously. Went into his back garden, and test to your memory, his garden was overrun by a privet hedge, had a shit ton of nettles, he had plum and damson trees, there was a poplar observable in the distance, and there was abundant buckler ferns.

That is fucking crazy.

They also found fungal remains, so a bit of mushrooms, and charcoal remnants that under microscopy were the same species... So the fungi were the same species that were recovered on the body as to the ones that were found in his garden. The charcoal was an exact match. So obviously wood, or coal, burns in a specific way. So if you've got a barbecue for instance, and you stick your hand in it, that charcoal will be unique to coming from that barbecue.

That's so crazy though!

It gets even crazier. They were like; there's quite significantly large portions of charcoal, or burnt fragments, that they recovered in her hair. From which they were able to determine almost the exact positioning of her body while he burnt shit in his garden.

What the fuck. I can theoretically understand this, but also, I'm like: "why isn't this always done".

I think it probably comes down to a dead end. This, in this situation, is circumstantial evidence. Because it's highly likely that the same ratio of plant matter would be found in his next-door neighbor's garden.

Yeah.

If they also left it to be overgrown. So unless there's actually a call for doing it, you're not gonna get any evidence out of it. So I understand the frustration with finding a case like this, and they've done absolutely everything you can think of, and it's come to a nice conclusion in that this guy's been found and sentenced. But if they didn't have any kind of link to him in the first place, they wouldn't have done the pollen analysis.

Yeah.

The twine analysis would have come back inconclusive, they'd been like: "yeah, this is just string". The plastic would have come back as: "this is plastic". It's only because they got the corroborating story from his ex-girlfriends, and then all of the other evidence linked itself together, that this became possible to ID him in such a way that they got the positive. It's the problem with a lot of cold cases, is that you can recover all of the material from the crime scene. So someone who's been sexually assaulted and then murdered, you can recover a DNA profile from any semen deposit, but if you haven't got anyone in the database that matches it, and that's all the evidence you've got, that's where the case stops.

Yeah.

Because there's nowhere to go from that, short of testing everybody in the local area. Which they did do in this case, and they've done it in a couple of historical cases as well - the first DNA case springs to mind. I don't think they can do it anymore.

Yeah. But also, I must commend the West Yorkshire Police.

Yeah. They did a really thorough job.

Yeah, it was incredible.

Which is refreshing given the amount of cases we've done where the police have been like: "herp derp, evidence, bler bler bler".

Yeah. It's been appalling in some cases, but yeah.

I've got one more bit. So there were also carpet fibers that were recovered from Leanne's body. Whether it was the body or her clothing, I'm not sure, doesn't really matter. They found some carpet. Taylor had actually tried to be clever and had ripped up all of the carpet in his house, which I think attributes the burn piles in his garden. It's either his carpet or his dog, probably both. What he wasn't smart enough to do was remove all of the carpet. So when the scenes of crimes officers popped into his house and looked into the corners of his living room, he'd actually missed some carpet on some of the nails that hold the carpet in place. So like: "pluck", popped that under a microscope, and what do you know? Perfect match. Kablammo.

Wait. Perfect match for what? For the blood?

No, the carpet. The carpet found on her body was the perfect match to the remnants of the carpet that was found in his house. So they were like: "she was in here brah".

Yeah.

Yeah. Just do a little mic drop, because now I've finished the evidence. I'm out, it's all you.

It was a lot of fucking evidence, it was crazy.

I know, right? I'm fucking parched.

I read some of it on the wikipedia page, but that doesn't really encompass all of the actual evidence that was there.

Nah, you need a bit of me.

Yeah.

"Yeeeaah". [Laughter]

No, I mean it. I mean it.

"Anyone can fucking google a microscope, can't they mate? You ain't that special". [Laughter]

So only one month after Leanne's body had been found, John Taylor was charged with her murder. He pleaded guilty, and at the trial the judge stated that John: "was a dangerous sexual sadist who should expect to spend the rest of his life in custody". When police added his DNA to their database he was linked to two rape cases in 1988 and 1989, one of which had occurred on the same footpath where Leanne had been abducted. Taylor was found guilty of these, and received two further life sentences because of these rapes. Okay. So thank you so much for listening to Midweek Murders. Special thanks to Jim and Jordan, we appreciate you. Thank you, thank you, okay, bye bye.

Ciao pow!

Topics

• Leanne Tiernan
• John Taylor
• pollen evidence
• animal DNA
• mitochondrial DNA testing
• palynology
• cryobiology
• forensic pollen analysis