Free The Cold Case Files by Barry Cummins Page A

medieval charter it received over 800 years ago. The city is dominated at the south end by Kilkenny Castle, while the western bank has become a hub for arts, crafts and design
which have all led to sizeable tourist numbers, even in the midst of a recession. The continued successes of Kilkenny’s hurlers also give a sense of excitement to the busy and compact
Kilkenny city.
    The house where Nancy Smyth was murdered is still there on Wolfe Tone Street. Less than half a kilometre away Nancy is laid to rest with her husband Dick. Gardaí investigating the murder
of Nancy Smyth need evidence, they need people to talk. Nancy Smyth’s final resting place is in Kilkenny, and the chilling possibility is that her killer may still walk these streets.

E ighteen-year-old Inga-Maria Hauser had hardly set foot on the island of Ireland when she was murdered and her body hidden in a forest in Co.
Antrim in April 1988. The teenager was on the trip of a lifetime to Britain and Ireland, having set off from her home in Germany at the end of March. A confident and self-sufficient young woman,
Inga-Maria had travelled alone, using an InterRail ticket to set off from Munich. From the south of Germany she travelled north, going to Holland where she got a ferry to England on 31 March. She
was due to meet up with a friend in Wales, but just before Inga-Maria had left Munich the friend told her she now couldn’t meet until 9 April. Inga-Maria wasn’t deterred from her plans
and decided to do a week of sightseeing on her own before meeting her friend in Cardiff. When she arrived in England she stayed in London for two days and then travelled by train to Bath, Oxford,
Cambridge, Liverpool and then to Scotland. She went from Inverness to Glasgow and then to Stranraer. Inga-Maria still had four days before she was due to meet her friend in Wales so she decided to
get the ferry from Scotland to Northern Ireland, travel by train from Belfast to Dublin and then get the ferry back to Wales in four days’ time. It was a whistle-stop tour for a young woman
who had developed a great love of British and Irish people and their cultures. Inga-Maria arrived in Northern Ireland on the late evening of 6 April 1988 but she never made it to Belfast. Instead,
she was taken by her killer or killers to Ballypatrick Forest in north-east Co. Antrim where she was sexually assaulted and beaten. During the attack her neck was broken and her body was left face
down in a remote part of the forest, just off a dirt-track.
    Cold-case detectives have a massive clue which they are actively pursuing as part of ongoing efforts to solve this most brutal murder. Police now have a full DNA profile
from a person they describe as a ‘crime scene donor’—it is male DNA found where Inga-Maria’s body was recovered, and advances in forensic science in
recent years mean that the DNA profile is a full profile. Back in 1988 the sample could only give a match of ‘one in 2,000’, meaning one in every 2,000 men would
have similar DNA to the ‘crime scene donor’. But now, advances in science have moved the mathematical certainties so far on that the DNA found at the crime scene can provide a one in a billion match. All the Police Service of Northern Ireland have to do now, and what they have been trying to do in recent years, is find that mystery
person. “Inga-Maria’s case is one that we carry with us all the time,” says the current senior investigating officer Detective Superintendent Raymond Murray.
    It is wonderful to now have a full DNA profile from the crime scene, but it is also frustrating at the same time, because we have not yet matched
     that profile to any individual. It is forensic science which is currently leading us in particular directions, and as more and more people are eliminated as the possible crime scene donor, the
     pool shrinks and you wonder how close you might be getting. We feel we are very close to an answer, I believe we are all around