Free The Cold Case Files by Barry Cummins Page B

this, but these cases are marathons and you have to dig in for
     the long haul.
    It was Raymond Murray’s colleague, Detective Inspector Tom McClure, who made the breakthrough in 2005 that has given this murder investigation an amazing impetus. The detective carried out
a review of the case, looking in particular at possible forensic opportunities. He knew that DNA had been found at the scene in Ballypatrick Forest in 1988, but back then
forensic science was nowhere near as advanced as it is today. One of the frustrating aspects of DNA sampling is that when you raise a DNA profile you
can effectively destroy the sample, so the sample raised in 1988, which could only give a one in 2,000 match, was quite possibly not going to be any use in trying to raise a new, more exact
profile. Tom McClure looked over the full crime scene and the list of all the materials, which had been kept safe over the previous seventeen years. He suggested that certain items should be
re-examined to see if further DNA could be sourced. The scientists later came back to inform him he had been right, they had now found a new DNA sample which could be analysed with the latest technologies. The new DNA profile was raised under a process known as Second Generation Matrix Plus ( SGM +), the standard that experts currently work to in Britain. The sample matched the original DNA found in 1988, which had been raised under the Single Locus
Point process, but the newly raised sample also now allowed for a one in a billion match with whoever had left their DNA where Inga-Maria’s body was found. “The
first thing we did in 2005 was race down the road and run the sample through our own DNA database, but there was no match,” Raymond Murray tells me. “At that
time the Northern Ireland and the UK databases were not one unified database, so we then ran it through their computers, but again there was no match. Everybody was
disappointed. We’ve also gone to Interpol and a number of countries with databases have checked it out but still there was no match.”
    At her home in eastern Munich, I meet Inga-Maria’s mother Almut. Now in her early seventies, she has been kept up to date by the PSNI with the recent and ongoing
developments in her daughter’s case. Detectives have written to Almut in German, outlining the work which has been going on. With the assistance of a translator, Nele Obermueller, Almut tells
me she is heartened to know that her daughter’s unsolved murder is being pursued. “It is good that police have this lead which they are working on. I cannot get my hopes up too much.
The crime was so long ago. It was and still is unbelievable.”
    Almut showed me around her apartment, pointing out all the paintings on the walls which Inga-Maria had done. She was a very talented artist, both with paint and pencil sketches. One painting is
of a girl walking through long grass on a summer’s day, she’s wearing a straw hat with a pretty bow. Another image is entirely different, it’s a black and white sketch which she
did in school depicting the subject of war. There are headstones in the centre of the image, with a dark sky above and distraught relatives in the foreground. “Inga-Maria was in her second
last year at Oskar Von Miller high school here in Munich,” says Almut. “She was in 12th grade when she decided to travel to Britain and Ireland. Inga-Maria was a kind, sociable,
conscientious young woman. When her friend said she couldn’t meet up as soon as they had originally planned, Inga-Maria decided to travel on anyway and do sightseeing. She wanted to see
Ireland, she had spoken about wanting to explore Ireland. She rang home every day at the start of her trip, and then the phone calls stopped.”
    As well as phoning home during her time in England and Scotland, Inga-Maria was a prolific writer and sent numerous postcards to her friends during her trip in early April 1988. Having grown up
in a large city, she was also