Bloodline Detectives - Episode 12 - Carnage in Cardiff | Forensic Files

[MUSIC PLAYING] NANCY GRACE: Valentine's night, 1988, Butetown, Cardiff, a young woman, Lynette White, is reported missing.
She hasn't been seen for days. It was unusual not to have seen Lynette for so long.
I mean, certainly her friends grew concerned about her, which is why, eventually,
they went to the police. NANCY GRACE: Within hours, police discover Lynette's mutilated body.
She was virtually ripped to pieces by somebody with a large knife. MARTIN SHIPTON: A total of 69 stab
wounds on her body, so it had been a very frenzied attack. NANCY GRACE: An investigation with many false leads
results in three men wrongfully convicted. Their DNA had been done. And it eliminated them all, all of them.
Nobody would believe this was even credible. However, it happened in real life. NANCY GRACE: But 25 years after her murder,
the use of groundbreaking DNA technique leads investigators to the real killer. Forensic science is all about patterns.
And so we wanted to get as much of an idea as possible about what had happened in this flat in Cardiff at the time.
I'm in the office. And the phone call comes through. You got your match. NANCY GRACE: This is the story of the senseless
and brutal killing of a young woman, a decade's long police investigation that includes one of the worst miscarriages
of justice in UK history, and how the evolution of a new DNA method leads to a landmark resolution.
I'm Nancy Grace. And this is "Bloodline Detectives." [THEME MUSIC] February 14 1988, Leanne Vilday walks into the Butetown police
station in Cardiff to report her friend, Lynette White, is missing. Lynette White was a prostitute who had been
functioning as that since-- at the age of 14. Leanne Vilday was also a prostitute.
She was a friend of Lynette's. And she was concerned because she had lent her room
to Lynette for use as a place to have encounters with men who were paying for sex with her.
But she hadn't been seen for a few days. Certainly her friends thought it was strange
that she disappeared and increasingly grew concerned about her, which is why, eventually, they went
to the police. NANCY GRACE: But police are already familiar with Lynette White. MARTIN SHIPTON: She was due to appear as a witness
in a couple of court cases relating to lowlife activity in-- uh, in the Cardiff docks area, uh,
and she disappeared. NANCY GRACE: They accompany Leanne Vilday to the apartment on James Street.
When they got there, they couldn't gain entry into the flat, and the police were called.
Um, so they forced entry. And on forcing entry, that's when they found Lynette White.
MARTIN SHIPTON: Well, it was absolute devastation. They found her body on the floor.
She had had her throat cut right the way across the throat. And, uh, in fact, there were like a total of 69 stab wounds
on her body, so it had been a very frenzied attack. She was virtually ripped to pieces
by somebody with a large knife, stabbing her 40, 50 times, mostly in the breast area.
MARTIN SHIPTON: The blood was all over the flat, really. It was in the walls. It was on the floor.
And, uh, whoever it was who attacked her had clearly used an enormous amount of force.
NANCY GRACE: Detectives and investigators soon arrive to assess the crime scene.
DAVID BARCLAY: The room she's working from is an upstairs flat above a bookie's.
So at the left hand side of the bookie's, there's a door which is locked. And you go up a stair, and then there's an interior door which
was also locked in those days. So you need two sets of keys to get into the flat.
Lynette would have to let somebody in through two separate locked doors. BRENT PARRY: Lynette was in the room
that faced out onto the street. There was a divan on the left hand side. And she was there, dead on the floor.
Her watch was found. And it had stopped at 1:45 AM. And that led police to the conclusion
that was probably the time when, uh, she was attacked and died. DAVID BARCLAY: She'd been stabbed
repeatedly near the bed with her head between the wall and the bed. And you could see by the arterial sprays
all over the wall in that area, that that's where the initial crime and the initial attack had happened.
However, at some point after that, her body had been dragged over more towards the window,
away from the bed. NANCY GRACE: A detailed sweep of the room was undertaken to gather as much forensic evidence as possible.
BRENT PARRY: When you talk about 1988, their main focus was fingerprints. There was a box of condoms on the windowsill,
used condoms on the windowsill. There was an unopened packet and-- and an unused condom
on the bed. Clothing would have been recovered off the body. It even ended up with, what they were called,
ninhydrin put on the walls, et cetera, to try and gain fingerprints off-- off the wallpaper, et cetera.
NANCY GRACE: By studying blood patterns at the scene, police determine there are two different blood
samples in the room. DAVID BARCLAY: There was castoff blood under the window near the body, which was clearly
not arterial spray from her. It was castoff blood from the offender. It's very common for somebody who stabbed somebody repeatedly
to cut themselves on the knife. Sometime during the attack, his hand had slipped down
on the knife because the knife handle had got slippery with blood, and he had cut his own hand.
BRENT PARRY: Everything that was there was sort of taken away, and-- and-- and kept with the foresight of--
of what might come in the future, I suppose. NANCY GRACE: Detectives now need to learn more about Lynette
White, the 20-year-old woman is a familiar face in Butetown, but she has a very difficult existence.
This is somebody who was, uh, a very vulnerable individual, who came from a-- a very disadvantaged background.
She dropped out of school when she was very young. And from the age of 14, she drifted into prostitution.
She was controlled by a gang who took her over to Bristol. And then she managed to escape from them
and came back, but was still involved in prostitution. And obviously was a-- a vulnerable young person
who was exploited by those people who wanted to make money out of her. She was a prostitute.
But there's a lot more to it than that. That's how she was categorized. That was what she did to get money.
But also, she was popular. She was well liked. The community were hard hit when she died.
NANCY GRACE: Lynette White was also exploited by her boyfriend, Stephen Miller. He had a cocaine habit.
And he used to get Lynette to pass her earnings onto him, uh, so he could buy the cocaine that he needed.
And, uh, essentially, you know, he was the man who controlled things. NANCY GRACE: The autopsy provides more
information for detectives. DAVID BARCLAY: And it was immediately obvious to all
of us who looked at that crime that this was a sexually motivated homicide. One of the reasons for that is that she's
wearing a thick puffer jacket so her body can't actually be seen. You can see the wounds on her face.
There are a few wounds on her face. But when she's at post-mortem, there are 39 or 40 wounds just
in the breast area here. So her breasts have been targeted by the offender. The original hypothesis was, by the laboratory
and by the police, that this was a lone male, a client. There were good reasons for.
That there was some money in her shoe, which is the normal place she would put money from a client.
There was an unused condom on the bed. Again, that would be the sort of thing you'd expect of a client.
And the whole motivation, the-- the sexually motivated aspect of her being stabbed like that, looks like a typical argument
with a client who's lost it, and has then stabbed her and left. NANCY GRACE: Investigators are facing a real dilemma.
They are sure that Lynette White brought the person to the flat. But is the killer someone close to her or an anonymous client?
That's next on "Bloodline Detectives." [MUSIC PLAYING] Valentine's 1988, the discovery of the mutilated body
of a well-known woman, 20-year-old Lynette White, launches a widespread investigation
in the community of Butetown, a suburb of the Welsh capital, Cardiff, in the UK.
Lynette White's heavily involved in prostitution and the drug scene. There were a number of issues going on,
as there would be in people's lives, who sort of live that type of lifestyle. And there was always gaps in movements,
et cetera, clothing, places that she would frequent. NANCY GRACE: A prime suspect is Lynette White's pimp,
her boyfriend, Stephen Miller. But in meeting with the prime suspect, one thing becomes apparent to investigators.
He was wearing the same clothes that he was wearing on the night of the murder. It wasn't bloodstained.
NANCY GRACE: Miller also gives an alibi that places him away from the scene of the crime.
He was able to show that he was in a very well-known nightclub at the time of the murder, called the Casablanca,
where he was playing pool. And people had identified him there. NANCY GRACE: A forensic analysis is carried out
on Miller's belongings, and compared to the samples of the foreign blood group found at the scene.
MARTIN SHIPTON: Lynette's sock, one of her socks which had a blood stain on it, they tested the blood.
They discovered that it was not her blood group. It was a rare blood group, AB. So clearly, um, that would lead one to the conclusion
that maybe the killer would have had that particular blood group. SATISH SEKAR: It should have been
a forensic scientist's dream in terms of investigation. Because once you actually find the person,
you can compare that person's uh, you know, fingerprints saliva, blood, et cetera, footprints,
to those found in the flat. MARTIN SHIPTON: They took his clothes. They took his car.
They took forensic tests. Um, they were actually unable to find any link at all.
NANCY GRACE: Stephen Miller's alibi, plus forensic analysis at the crime scene, makes it impossible
for him to be responsible for Lynette's murder. Forensic science is clearly saying, this did not happen.
NANCY GRACE: With no major developments within Lynette's circle of friends, police conduct
door-to-door questioning and takeover 3,500 statements. From the statements, they're able to look
for another suspect, a man who was seen in the James Street area in bloodstained clothes.
There were people who were saying that they had seen a dodgy looking white man lurking around.
There were obviously initially convinced that this was somebody they wanted to speak to very much.
And they had suspicions that this may well have been the killer. NANCY GRACE: A photo mock-up is released
on the "Crime Watch" TV show. A man bearing a striking resemblance to the individual
is detained, February, 25. But once again, a strong alibi plus forensics clear him as a suspect.
Now detectives begin canvassing known clients and sex workers, plus people involved in previous criminal activity in the area.
They weren't so much suspects. They were more persons of interest. There were some that they were taking more
seriously than others, and they were looking at very sort of intensely. One of the people they honed in on was somebody who lived
not too far away, who was, in fact, a paedophile, someone who had mental illness, and who
was regarded as a-- as a-- as a potentially dangerous figure. NANCY GRACE: The suspect becomes known as Mr. X.
And when results of a blood test come back, detectives become even more suspicious of him.
Mr. X has five of the relevant blood groups. One the result is different. But it's quite significantly different.
So you would-- you should eliminate him on that alone. But if you look at his character,
you can see why they viewed him very seriously. NANCY GRACE: When interviewed by police,
he admits he had paid Lynette White for sex. And he's also unable to account for his movements
or give an alibi for the time period around the murder. When they're looking at this guy,
they're looking at him very, very seriously. This is clearly their prime suspect.
NANCY GRACE: For seven months of the investigation, all focus is on Mr. X. But when more detailed DNA results come
back from the lab in November, it puts detectives at another dead end. He is eliminated on the basis of DNA and fingerprinting.
It wasn't him. However, it's very, very clear the police believe they had got their man.
NANCY GRACE: Nine months after the murder of Lynette White, frustrated detectives are back to square one.
This is when the case begins to take on an even darker turn. That's next on "Bloodline Detectives."
[MUSIC PLAYING] December, 1988, UK police in Cardiff, Wales, investigating the murder of Lynette White,
exhaust a number of leads and decide to re-interview friend, Leanne Vilday, also Leanne's roommate,
Angela Psaila. They still believe, nine months later, that these individuals knew more about the case than--
than what they were saying. SATISH SEKAR: Basically threatened with prosecution for perjury and conspiracy to pervert the course of justice
if she doesn't say what the police want her to say. NANCY GRACE: Under pressure, the women's
account of the night of the murder drastically changes. BRENT PARRY: Psaila and Vilday said they were in their flat
when they heard screaming coming from James Street. So they left there and went to the scene.
And when they got to the scene, that's when they saw the-- the murder taking place.
NANCY GRACE: They claim five men, already known to police, are responsible for the murder.
But there's one problem. The people who were suspected of being in the room, according to the police story, all those people, their DNA
had been done and compared to the blood in the room. And it eliminated them all, all of them.
NANCY GRACE: But then, an unrelated event changes the investigation and the lives of all those
under investigation again. In December, 1988, Angela Psaila was badly assaulted by a client.
And her blood group was sent into the lab. That turned out to have exactly the same blood
groups as the unknown blood from Lynette White's flat. Clearly the fact that she had the same rare blood group
as the person that they'd come to conclusion was the, uh, killer, gave them leverage over her.
So they frightened her into believing that she was potentially going to face a murder charge.
And then realizing what they wanted to hear, she then named these individuals as being present at the scene
and participating in the murder. So armed with that "evidence, with inverted commas around it,
they then pulled in these guys. And one of them, Stephen Miller, who was, uh, the boyfriend and pimp of Lynette,
was interviewed for a very long time. He was interviewed for 12 hours and 42 minutes,
almost 13 hours, over the five day period. And the questioning was relentless. The pressure was gradually building up.
He was denying having had anything to do with the killing. He was denying knowing anything about it.
The police officers did not believe him. They kept on and on and on, telling him not
to use a lawyer, telling him how low he was in terms of morality, and how he had been using Lynette White.
Then the interviews continued. And then in interviews 18 and 19, he makes incriminating admissions
after leading interviews. Where, in actual fact, the place kind of suggests that perhaps he had murdered his girlfriend,
and because he was high on drugs, he couldn't remember it. And he is beginning to accept that particular scenario.
He began to think maybe he had been there. And that was the beginning of his breakdown.
Because now, he had placed himself, possibly, in the flat at the time that Lynette was murdered.
And also, I suppose, he was being fed with the information that the witnesses said he was there.
So therefore, amazingly enough, you get someone admitting to being present during that murder,
when-- that-- that he wasn't. But he's not the only one who said they were there, is he?
You know, you've got all these witnesses saying it as well. NANCY GRACE: The group of men eventually,
who eventually become known as the Cardiff Five, are charged with the murder of Lynette White.
SATISH SEKAR: There is no evidence whatsoever that five men were in that flat, committing this murder,
with or without the two women, Angela Psaila and Leanne Vilday as well. They basically say it's inconvenient,
we're not going to listen to what the crime scene and the evidence is telling us.
We know who did it. No, you didn't. You knew what you thought, and you inflicted that,
and caused one of the worst miscarriages of justice in British history. Nobody would believe this was even credible.
However, it happened in real life. NANCY GRACE: On October 5, 1989, what would become the longest murder trial in British history,
begins. There were five men on trial. Two of them, the Atkins cousins, were acquitted.
The three men who were convicted at this trial in November 1990 were Stephen Miller, Yusef Abdullahi, and Tony Paris.
And so they were all convicted of murder and given life sentences. But they had always maintained their innocence.
And very quickly, there was a big campaign that was launched to try to get their convictions overturned.
And eventually there was a momentum which grew. And there was a-- an appeal. And the appeal turned out to be successful.
NANCY GRACE: In December 1992, all three men had their convictions declared unsafe and unsatisfactory.
The men are released. But underlying everything was the fact that there was still
a killer out there, and clearly someone who was potentially dangerous and needed to be tracked down.
NANCY GRACE: Police are once again back to square one. But next, we'll see how science and the bloodline detectives
dramatically change the investigation surrounding the death of Lynette White. [MUSIC PLAYING]
By the end of the 1990s, UK police are still hunting the killer of 20-year-old Lynette White,
savagely stabbed dead in Cardiff, Wales, February, 1988. Her case has become controversial
as a result of false convictions of three men. With the men now released, police are back to square one.
In 1999, 11 years after the murder, the case is reopened. We had to set a team up.
And whatever we did, as far as this investigation was concerned, there had to be no involvement with
the previous investigation led. We knew how much it meant for South Wales Police.
South Wales Police needed to get their reputation back of being a force that is capable of investigating
the most difficult offenses. It had to be very clinical. ANGELA GALLOP: DNA profiling was just coming in at the time
of the original investigation. And during the years after that and before we were
asked to help, there had been a number of advances in DNA profiling. And this case was so important, um,
to the police and the local community that every time there was a new technique developed,
they would go back to samples. And they took a sample after sample, trying these new techniques.
And for one reason or another, all of these tests had been unsuccessful. However, by 1999, 2000, it was much easier to get DNA.
NANCY GRACE: The focus now is to take a fresh look at the old crime scene evidence for any new DNA samples that
could be linked to the suspect. It was very important that we got enough of it, and in enough different places to form the kind of picture
you would expect if this had come from the offender. NANCY GRACE: The forensic team reviews
every detail of the findings at the crime scene in 1988. The room itself was quite dark.
The only light in it, because there was no electricity in the flat, was from a streetlight
50 yards away. Now we've got the person who's committed this crime having to find their way out of the flat,
a flat that's strange to him. And he's having to do that by feeling his way out,
where the door is, where the handle of the door is. And he's got to do that with at least one
heavily bloodstained hand, because we know he's cut himself during the crime and he's bleeding.
[MUSIC PLAYING] We revisited the flat during the night, at the same time. So it was equally dark.
It was in December. It was dark. And we switched off all the lights so that I could pretend to be the offender in the dark,
blundering out of the flat. And in this case, we were helped partly by the scene photographs that had been taken by the police
at the time, which showed long shots and close ups of a lot of the blood staining,
but also because the police, through their interests and fingerprints, had taken all of these strips of wallpaper
off the walls in the bedroom where the attack happened, but also in the passageway outside.
And so we had all of these strips of wallpaper. And by re-erecting those on boards,
we could kind of recreate areas of the scene, which was incredibly helpful. So it brought the whole scene back to life.
NANCY GRACE: Every item preserved from the scene is closely examined in hopes of finding the offender's DNA.
ANGELA GALLOP: One of these items was a small bit of cellophane, which had originally formed
the end of one of those cellophane covers that you get on cigarette packets. And so it was just a very small bit of cellophane
that had been sort of probably stood on, and was completely out of shape. But there was one particular stain
on this piece of cellophane which really, uh, spiked our interest. And that was because it was a round stain, perfectly round.
So it had obviously arisen on this cellophane as some kind of interception of an airborne droplet of blood.
And that's exactly what you would expect to come off an offender, you know, as he was bleeding from the hand
or from wherever. And so we were very interested in this small, round stain. And we did some profiling on that.
And we got a nearly full profile, male profile, of foreign blood. We called it Cellophane Man.
And so that was the first time when we got something approaching a full profile that was different from the victim
at the crime scene. So we were very excited about Cellophane Man. NANCY GRACE: Now, the hunt is on to find a full DNA
profile for Cellophane Man. ANGELA GALLOP: Obviously we were trying to find more of it.
And we were trying to find it in areas that looked as if they were relevant to the crime.
We looked on a cardboard box, which had been near Lynette's head. And there were a few splashes of blood on that.
And again, by selecting very carefully, individual-- one or two individuals stains to look at,
we found some more of Cellophane Man. One of the key findings in the flat was-- we strongly suspected that the blood
on the wall underneath the window was castoff blood from the offender. And the best place to look for that
was where the blood had run down. There's a picture of the streak of blood going down and resting
on top of the skirting board. ANGELA GALLOP: The place had been repainted twice in the intervening years.
But we thought, well, why don't we have a look at the board and see if, underneath this paint,
there was any of this blood left. Because if we were really lucky, the person who painted over the skirting board first after the attack
may not have bothered to wipe down the surfaces first. And then we scraped away under a microscope
to remove the layers of paint that had been applied in the intervening time, being very careful
not to scrape too deeply, in which case we would lose any blood that was there, or not scrape too shallowly, in which case
we'd never expose it. So it was quite a tricky thing to do that. But in that way, um, we managed to find some blood
on the skirting board. And we found some blood that had gone down the back of the skirting board.
Obviously there was a little gap there. And by profiling that, we then got a full DNA profile which
matched Cellophane Man and matched some of this other blood we were getting. And so we were gradually building up a picture of blood
around Lynette's body. Um, and then we went on to have a look at our clothing, which
was really challenging because it was covered in her own blood, of course, because of all her injuries.
And we managed to find some offender blood on her jacket and on her sweatshirt. NANCY GRACE: The same DNA profile
were found on the front door, the exit route for the killer. In the end, we had this pattern
of-- quite extensive pattern-- of offender blood in and around the area where the attack happened on Lynette's body and on the exit
route out. NANCY GRACE: Investigators finally have the definitive forensic evidence that could
lead them to solve the case. Just as important, it's also proof of who is not responsible for the murder.
And that profile wasn't from any of the people who had been, uh, charged initially, nor from any
of the witnesses who claim to have been at the scene. It was the single, lone offender who everybody
had suspected way back in 1988. NANCY GRACE: When we return, the race is on for the bloodline detectives
to catch a killer, to discover who the DNA profile belongs to, the person who murdered Lynette White.
We need to find who that belongs to. [MUSIC PLAYING] NANCY GRACE: By the end of the 1990s,
UK police finally believe they're closer to discovering the identity of the killer of Lynette
White, a Cardiff sex worker murdered in Butetown, January, 1988. Police have a DNA profile of the killer.
But there's a hitch. Now we've got a full profile. And it's been uploaded onto the DNA database, but hasn't hit.
So the offender has not committed any crime for which he has had his DNA been taken.
NANCY GRACE: Investigators need to come up with a new plan. It was thought, at that time, that familial
DNA was a possibility, that crime runs in families. And it's possible that a relative, a son or a daughter
or a relative, a brother, of the offender might be on the database. And so we looked at our online profile.
And we selected that component, um, of it that was the rarest. And I think it occurred about one in 100 people or something
like that. And we then searched the database for people who had this particular component.
And we tried to narrow the search as much as possible so it was the Cardiff area, it was men.
And I think there was some sort of age range we put on it. NANCY GRACE: The initial search results
in 600 possible matches. The team whittles those matches down until they finally come across a sample
that catches their attention. We came up with a figure of the overall rarity of the association, um, with offender blood.
And one profile stood out head and shoulders above the other as being, um, a much-- a more powerful
link than any of the others. And so it was that family that we decided to investigate,
or investigate first anyway. NANCY GRACE: The match on the database is that of a 14-year-old boy who recently
committed a petty crime. Detectives go to speak with him. So when we went there, obviously
the boy's profile didn't match. But the mother said, well, look, I'm, um, separated from the father.
So we after the father. And it was very interesting because his DNA was very close to the profile we had, but didn't match.
So it wasn't him. But we were getting more confident we were within the right family.
We then discovered the father had a brother. So the police took a sample from him.
And we had a look at him. And again, like the father, he was very close to the-- um,
to the offender profile, but not a match. And then the police discovered that there was actually
another brother who nobody had seen much of in the last few years. And he said, we don't know where he lives.
He-- he-- he-- he's left the family. He hasn't bothered to speak to us for-- for years, et cetera.
NANCY GRACE: Now sure they're closer than ever to the target, investigators gather information on the estranged brother
and managed to track him down. So officers went to see him, told him why we were there,
that we wanted his DNA. And-- and when they went to see him, and told him what we were doing, he said,
well, I can tell you that I did have sex with that woman days before the murder.
So alarm bells start ringing, don't they? MARTIN SHIPTON: He was a man called Jeffrey Gafoor who
had worked as a security guard, lived about 20 miles north of Cardiff, and hadn't actually been named before at all,
or hadn't been, um, seen as a-- as a suspect. BRENT PARRY: At that point, we took his DNA.
We sent it to Forensic Alliance for them to look at. And lo and behold, the next day I'm in the office,
and the phone call comes through. You got your match. The DNA actually nailed him.
NANCY GRACE: Detectives quickly began looking into Gafoor's history. Of all the cases I dealt with--
I dealt with 40 murders from beginning to end-- he is more likely to be the most
insignificant individual I've ever come across. BRENT PARRY: Very much a loner, he took up
a job as night watchman. Um, so he wasn't-- never had no friends. We tried to do a lot of tracing around his movements,
et cetera, over the years. Because if he had committed a murder like this, then was another murder of a similar nature
had been committed where he was or where he was working at the time? But, uh, nothing ever came of that.
NANCY GRACE: After 15 years searching for the man responsible for murder, the arrest of Jeffrey Gafoor must be carefully planned.
We didn't want to spoil the manner in which the investigation has gone. So the bottom line was, we put surveillance on Jeffrey Gafoor.
And we were putting in place an arrest and an interview strategy, which was going
to take place on the Tuesday. And this was a Friday evening. The surveillance team was in place.
I got home. And lo and behold, I'm having my tea, and I get a phone call from the surveillance saying,
I don't want to worry you, however, he's visited two shops. He's bought toilet paper, a "TV Times,"
and also he's buying packets of paracetamol. NANCY GRACE: After the purchase of so many painkillers,
it becomes evident what Gafoor is planning. So I said either he's got a very bad headache,
or he's going to do something stupid here. So I said, get the team in there. They broke in there.
They got in. He'd taken all the paracetamols. And it's only then he made a disclosure, admitted
any sort of involvement. He says he's taken the paracetamol tablets, um, he deserves to die because he killed Lynette White,
and he knew this was coming. Um, and we rushed him to hospital. NANCY GRACE: Gafoor spends four nights in the hospital
and is interrogated upon release. He then formally admits to the murder of Lynette White.
BRENT PARRY: I went there. We argued after I'd given the money because I didn't want to carry on with what I was doing.
I wanted my money back. She refused. And I-- I-- I killed her. I just went berserk.
He was quite clear that he was the one that the police were looking for, and was now prepared, at last,
to take his punishment. NANCY GRACE: Gafoor goes to trial for the murder of Lynette white, July 2003.
ANGELA GALLOP: I think those cases-- and this is a very good example of it-- where you are able to provide what turns out to be persuasive
evidence to a court to enable it to convict someone, and you automatically and simultaneously exonerate people
who had been originally convicted of the crime or had been charged with a crime or even suspected,
it always makes it doubly satisfying. And I think we definitely felt that in this particular case,
and felt, um, very sad for the Cardiff Three, for all that they had gone through, as I think, you know, anybody would.
NANCY GRACE: Jeffrey Gafoor is sentenced to life in prison. MARTIN SHIPTON: Familial DNA is an amazing tool because it
enables crimes that once were thought to be insoluble, incapable of being resolved, people
who have been responsible for murders in the past which have not been resolved, and where they appear to have
got away with it, must constantly live in fear of the knock at the door, as happened, of course, to Jeffrey
Gafoor, um, the-- the killer-- or the real killer of Lynette White. NANCY GRACE: The Cellophane Man is finally unmasked.
Jeffrey Gafoor, a coward who attempted to take his own life to evade justice is finally behind bars.
Thanks to Gafoor's family tree, the bloodline detectives are able to identify him through familial DNA,
putting a name to Lynette White's killer. But make no mistake. The Cardiff's Three were wrongfully
sentenced for crimes they did not commit, a traumatic and harrowing experience for each one of them.
They spent two years in custody. One of the man, Yusef Abdullahi, commits suicide.
In this case, the blood line detectives determine once and for all who committed this heinous crime,
and just as important, who did not. I'm Nancy Grace. Thank you for joining me and the bloodline detectives.
[THEME MUSIC]

Brief Summary

Lynette White's murder led to wrongful convictions, but DNA evidence eventually identified Jeffrey Gafoor as the real killer.

Key points

The Discovery of Lynette White. Lynette White's mutilated body is discovered, shocking the community.
The Cardiff Five Conviction. Five men are wrongfully convicted of Lynette's murder, sparking a major miscarriage of justice.
Groundbreaking DNA Technique. 25 years later, DNA technology leads to the identification of the real killer.
Reopening the Case. In 1999, the case is reopened with advances in DNA profiling.
Cellophane Man Discovery. Forensic team finds a crucial DNA profile from a bloodstain on cellophane.
Gafoor's Confession. Jeffrey Gafoor admits to killing Lynette White after being apprehended.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

Nobody would believe this was even credible.

Nancy Grace reflects on the case's credibility.

1:12WatchApr 1, 2021

Tension

85/ 100High tension

More from True Crime Files

Solve the Crime

Read a real case one clue at a time, then see how your call held up against the investigators.