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FACTFILE
6th June 1981, Marion Crofts aged 14, was beaten to death after being stopped as she cycled along Laffans Road, Aldershot, Hampshire, on her way to band practice at Wavell School
in Farnborough.
The body was discovered by a police dog handler later the same day, the body had been hidden in undergrowth near the quiet road. The teenager's clarinet case was found floating in the nearby Basingstoke Canal.
Despite a major police investigation by
Hampshire Constabulary who looked at 24,000 potential
suspects, Marion's killer was never found.
A microscope slide containing samples
collected by the Forensic Science Service (FSS) from
Marion's body after her murder lay deliberately
untouched for nearly 20 years. Scientists knew that they
risked losing the evidence for good unless they waited
until DNA profiling techniques became more advanced.
In 1999 the FSS developed a new DNA technique. Using
this technique, they were able to find a full DNA
profile of Marion’s suspected killer from some of her
clothing. The profile was then loaded onto the National
Database.
In August 2001, a match was found when Tony Jasinskyj
was arrested for another crime and his DNA sample was
routinely loaded onto the Database.
Jasinskyj had been arrested and charged with assault after beating his second wife in the months before he was arrested for Marion's murder. A mouth swab was taken as routine, he was then linked to DNA tests that had been taken from Marion's body.
May 2002, Jasinkyj was sentenced to life
imprisonment at Winchester Crown Court after a jury of
seven men and five women took three hours to reach their
verdicts.
Charges going back to 1982 were left to
lie on his file. They included rape, threats to kill,
assault, false imprisonment and procuring a woman to
have sex by threats.
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