THE detective who put sex-obsessed killer Colin Pitchfork behind bars has sadly died.
The retired Detective Chief Superintendent David Baker passed away last week aged 90.
David was the first to successfully track down a criminal using DNA techniques developed at the University of Leicester.
Leicestershire Police’s chief constable, David Sandall, said: “His legacy has and will continue for generations of police officers to come.”
Thanks to David’s hard work, Pitchfork was caged for life in 1988 for the rape and murder of teenage schoolgirls Lynda Mann and Dawn Ashworth in Leicestershire.
Lynda Mann’s body was found dumped on a local footpath in Narborough, Leics, on November 22, 1983, while Dawn Ashworth’s body was found in Enderby in similar circumstances in July 1986.
Both girls had been raped and strangled.
Pitchfork managed to evade arrest until 1987, when a bakery colleague boasted he got £200 for posing as him to give a blood and saliva sample.
He was sentenced to 30 years behind bars in 1988, which was reduced to 28 years in 2009.
He was denied parole twice in 2016 and 2018, but was eventually released from HMP Leyhill on September 1, 2021.
David previously slammed the Parole Board’s decision to free Pitchfork, claiming he remains “dangerous.”
He told The Mirror at the time: “I firmly believe he should remain in jail and never be released.
“There’s every possibility that he has pulled the wool over the eyes of the Parole Board.”
He added: “Pitchfork is a very dangerous man. He murdered one girl and then went on to live normally with his family before murdering again three years later.
“He was certainly a psychopath because he went from murder to being a family man. He lived a double life and it could be that he still is.”
In 2014, Pitchfork’s crimes were dramatised by ITV in Code of a Killer.
The two-part drama series is centered around Alec Jeffreys, the researcher who developed the techniques for genetic fingerprinting and DNA profiling that caught Pitchfork.
Jefferys is played by Life on Mars favourite John Simm.
David Threlfall, who played Frank Gallagher in Shameless, took on the role of a police detective David Baker and Pitchfork is played by ex-Doctors star Nathan Wright.