How “Pink Teeth” Caught A Killer: Bodies Found In A Carpet

My name is Jackie Molton. I was a detective with the Metropolitan Police for over 25 years. My real life experiences on the front line as a woman investigating crime became the inspiration for the TV drama Prime Suspect.

“Oh, good morning, Pete.”

My name’s Jackie Morrison. Once a detective, always a detective. It never leaves. And now I’m going back on the road, on the job, and I’m looking at some of the worst crimes ever committed in the UK and the USA. In a series of exclusive interviews, I’ll be talking one-to-one to detectives and experts to find out how they brought the killer to justice. This is the story of what it takes to find the real prime suspect.

The case I’m revisiting now has always fascinated me because it brought together old-fashioned police work with cutting-edge science in a totally unique way. The victim in this case was a young girl called Karen Prior. She was only 15 years of age. She was vulnerable, product of the care system, continually running away from home. On the day that she was murdered, went to the home of Alan Charles with Idris Alley. She was offered to take part in some form of pornographic film, which she declined. And as a result of that, she was murdered. She was held for some time in that flat and subsequently wrapped up in offshoots of a carpet and buried in the back garden of a house in Cardiff.

Jeff Norman was the young detective that was told to go to the scene. He’s essential for me to talk to.

“Hello, Jeff Norman.”

“Hi, Jeff, my name is Jackie Molson. I’m looking at the case of Karen Price, and I understand you were the detective at the time that was called when her skeleton was found.”

“Yes, that’s right. I was, fascinating, absolutely fascinating case.”

“Well, you’re very important to me, Jeff, and I wondered if I could come and talk to you and for you to explain to me on camera your involvement in the case.”

“Yes, I’ll be happy to, Jackie.”

This is the murder of Karen Price, whose body was found wrapped in a carpet in the rear garden of a house in Cardiff. I’m off to meet the detective involved in the case.

Jeff Norman was fascinating. He was a young detective when he was called that day to the house where Karen Price’s skeletal remains and her skull were found, you know, wrapped in a carpet in the back garden. And from that day onwards, for the next 5 years, he stayed on that case. That’s quite unusual, to be honest.

“Jeff, you were a detective on the 7th of December 1989 when you were called to 29 Fitz Hammond embankment in Cardiff, as a report of bones being found in near the basement of a garden by construction workers. Tell me about that job.”

“Yeah, the call came in. We often used to get calls of that nature, bones having been found uncovered in a garden. This appeared to be a little more sinister, which is why the CID were informed. I took the call, I informed the DI and we went to the scene together to see what had been found.”

The construction workers had uncovered a rolled-up carpet. Inside was a perfectly preserved skeleton.

“Can you describe the crime scene to us? Can you paint a picture of what it looked like when you arrived?”

“It was a very busy scene, as you can imagine, lots of police officers around, forensic scientists and scenes of crime officers around and a little group of workmen who had actually carried out the excavations that had uncovered the piece of carpet.”

“A skull was found, I understand.”

“Yeah, and there was a collection of black bags and other carrier bags, electrical flex, which all made you think, ‘Well, this isn’t just any old bag of bones.’ This appeared to have been more than that. And at that point, you know, don’t you as a detective, this is going to be a really protracted inquiry.”

“Got that impression right from the start. We realized very quickly this wasn’t a job that just the police could to detect. We needed to get specialists in to give us the evidence that we so desperately had to get if we were going to identify her and then subsequently find out what had happened to her.”

What made this case groundbreaking was the use of experts drawn from several different fields. They would provide vital clues to finding out who the victim was. The first expert the investigating team turned to was leading entomologist Dr. Zachariah Ersin Claregloo. He offered an insight into insects and their relationship with humans and their environment.

“How did that entomology help the investigation?”

“Dr. Kazak was able to tell us about some of the insect remains that had been found within that rolled-up piece of carpet and in and amongst the skeleton itself. And, for instance, was able to tell that some insects would not have attacked a body for a number of years. So straight away, we were able to say, ‘Well, from what Dr. Zach is telling us, this body must have been in the ground for at least 5 years.’ He was able to tell us because of other evidence that he found that the body must have lain unburied for a day or two before being buried, which was unbelievable, really.”

I didn’t know that anybody could provide that kind of evidence from a grave. Where is the next place that that body is taken to?

“Because the body had been found within a rolled-up piece of carpet that, in effect, had become its own crime scene. So, whereas the grave was a crime scene, the carpet and what had been found within the carpet then became its own crime scene. So, that was removed to the mortuary at Cardiff Royal Infirmary so that Professor Knights could carry out an examination the following morning.”

Despite the information provided by Dr. Zach, the investigating team was still totally in the dark about who the body was, a male or a female, and how old. So this mini crime scene was taken to Professor Bernard Knight, one of the most distinguished forensic pathologists in the country.

“Hi, Professor Knight, this is Jackie Molson, ex-detective from the Metropolitan Police. I’m revisiting the case of the body in the carpet, that’s Karen Price, and I’d love to speak to you to find out how you set about trying to identify the body. Would you be happy to speak with me?”

“Of course, Jackie. This was such an unusual case that I’d be happy to speak to you about it.”

“Bernard, in your very long and fascinating career as a pathologist where you’ve done over 25,000 post-mortems, where does the case of Karen Price sit in terms of interest?”

“Well, Karen Price is at ‘Top of the Pops’ really for actual quality. In all those post-mortems, this one—well, certainly the criminal cases—this one had more teamwork and varied opinions from different specialists than any other case I’ve done.”

“Do you kind of lay the skeleton out?”

“Yes, it goes on an ordinary post-mortem table.”

“What condition did you find the body in? Was it in good condition, so to speak?”

“The bones were in good condition, yes. I mean, they were as good as new.”

“Was she kind of complete in terms of bones? Was anything missing?”

“Only a few very small bones, and that’s very common, because finger bones and toe bones often disappear. Bit of a mystery, really, where they go to, but they do.”

“And what are you specifically looking for?”

“The first thing is, ‘Are they human?’ And this obviously was. The second thing is, ‘Male or female?’ And just a quick glance, the pelvis and the skull, so I could see that was a female. So I could see that the bones were not totally fused at the junctions of things like knees and elbows and whatever, which means it’s a young person. And the next thing is hair; there’s some hair there which is fair, so it’s a girl probably in her late teens and with fair hair.”

“So what’s your next step? Because obviously you can’t find the cause of death, can you?”

“No, I mean, if she’d been shot through the head, or head beaten in, or stabbed through a bone, one could possibly tell. We could tell. But as there was nothing except bones, some people make a lot of fuss about the hyoid bone in the neck, which can get broken in strangulation, but she was 15 and it doesn’t break, it just bends, and it wasn’t there anyway. It disappeared after all that time, so I was stumped.”

In my experience during investigations where the body is so badly decomposed and there’s no obvious sign of trauma, there’s only so much a pathologist can tell you. Other experts were needed to build on the picture that was emerging. An examination by forensic dentist Professor David Whitaker brought crucial new information.

“Hi, Professor Whitaker, my name is Jackie Molton. I’m reinvestigating the case of Karen Price. She was the body in the carpet. I understand you were able to shed light on the age of the victim and the probable cause of death. Would you be happy to talk to me about the case?”

“Yes, I did. In this case, her teeth revealed a lot about her, so do come and see me.”

“Professor David Whitaker, for me, it’s a real privilege to meet you. You’re an expert in dentistry, so could you tell me what your role was in this case, please?”

“In this case, within a day or two of the body being found, I would get a phone call from Professor Knight saying, ‘Would you like to have a look at the skull?’ I would make a note of each individual tooth, and I also did what other dentists would do, I took X-rays, radiographs, because that would tell me, for instance, that this person had some buried teeth, unerupted teeth, and they were in the process of developing.”

“And from that, you were able to decipher how old she was?”

“Yeah, I came up with—I think it was about 15 and a half years. 15 and a quarter, I think was, you know, 15 years 3 months, something like that.”

“And from examination of the skull or the teeth, was there any indication that violence had occurred?”

“Yeah, there’s a peculiar thing that happens to teeth in some cases. Now, if you subject somebody to a really violent death like strangulation, the blood pressure is pushed up because the person is struggling against trying to breathe, trying to survive, and that can burst some of the tiny little blood vessels in various parts of the body. Of course, it’s well-known sometimes behind the—you know, in the eyes you can get bleeding there, but you can get it inside the teeth. So this person had what I would refer to as ‘pink teeth,’ which would indicate that’s a suggestion that there’s been probably a violent death. It’s not 100% certain, but it’s likely.”

The police now knew they had the body of a teenage girl, but missing person’s records drew a blank. So how could they put a face to the body? They came up with an unexpected solution. I’m on my way to meet Richard Neve. He was artist in medical and life science at Manchester University and a pioneer in facial reconstruction.

“Hi, Richard, this is Jackie Molton here. I understand you were given the task of trying to reconstruct the face of the victim later known as Karen Price. I’d love to meet with you to find out how you achieved that.”

“Hi, Jackie, the idea was that hopefully someone would recognize her face. At the time, I’d done something similar which had led to a criminal conviction. I look forward to meeting you.”

“Richard Neve, when South Wales police contacted you, what was their request?”

“Their request was to reconstruct the face of the individual over the skull, and we will come with it tomorrow because we need it in a rush.”

“Sense of urgency there was, um, yes, a great sense of urgency. That means you drop everything and you’re working from sort of half 8 in the morning until probably half 6, 7 at night. Well, how does the process work?”

“I would make a mold and make a plaster copy of the skull itself, and then I would drill holes at specific anatomical points all over the skull and insert pegs, and these indicated the average thickness of soft tissue over that particular part of the skull.”

“So I started by building up the main features of the face, the basic sort of anatomy of the eye, and then the cartilaginous structures of the nose, and then the anatomical muscular structures of the mouth. So the main features of that face were established right at the beginning. Then it’s just a matter of doing the difficult bit. Because you see, the easy part is doing the eyes and doing the mouth and doing the anatomy. What’s the hard bit? The tricky bit is actually putting that final final layer on, which is the bit that you and I see in a living person.”

“Why is that hard?”

“Because there is no information, and I always think it’s the point between where science and art cross over.”

“Did the South Wales police pester you?”

“They rang up from time to time to say, ‘How’s it going?’ And I said, ‘Um, it’s, you know, it’s nearly there.’ And then on the Friday about 3:00, I had a phone call and they said, ‘We’re coming to collect it. We’ll be with you in an hour.'”

After a week of working around the clock, a face in the clay was revealed. Richard Neve’s reconstruction was featured on TV appeals and in the press. She became known as ‘Little Miss Nobody.’ Jeff Norman’s boss, John Williams, took the press conference.

“The circumstances under which the body was secreted under the ground certainly lead us to view it very suspiciously indeed.”

It’s fascinating to me now looking back at this footage how all investigations were run by white middle-aged men, but the news coverage caught the nation’s interest and within days there was a massive breakthrough. Two independent social workers called in to identify the reconstruction as 15-year-old runaway Karen Price.

“I remember this case when I was a detective, and I remember seeing this face on this magazine actually, dear, and just remembering. It’s quite startling, and this is Karen.”

“That’s Karen.”

“Brings it so much to home, brings her alive, yes.”

“I find it just remarkable what experts like you can do from a skull, and that creativity to help in a murder investigation is phenomenal.”

“Yes, mixture of art and science and care and thought, and it comes to that allows somebody who’s gone to be found again, really. That’s important, very important.”

And when the police discovered the skeleton and a skull in a rolled-up carpet 5 weeks previously, I don’t think South Wales police would have thought for one minute in this short period of time the work of Richard Neve would have brought Karen Price alive, but it did. But cutting-edge science took the case one step further. A pioneering process being developed at Cambridge University was able to match DNA extracted from Karen’s bones to DNA from her father. It proved categorically that the body was indeed Karen Price. Using this method in a criminal case was a world first.

Following her positive identification, the police discovered that Karen had last been seen in July 1981 when she had run away from a children’s home following an argument. Little is known about what happened to her after that.

“In the 1980s, you know, the police were investigating kids that would go missing. ‘Prolific missing from home’ is what we would call it, prolific mispers, and they would—you return them back, especially kids in the care system, and then they’d go again, and they’d go again, and they’d go again. And it was a lot of police resources, and I kind of think that ‘mispers’—nothing to be proud of—often fell between a rock and a hard place. It fall between the crack of the uniform and the CID. It was one of my big things as a detective, when I was a detective chief, was to make sure that I checked that misper register, you know, every day.”

In this case, Karen Price came to the attention of a man called Idris Alley, who was known to the police as a pimp. I’ve come to see forensic psychologist Professor Mike Bry to try to build a picture of the kind of life Karen was living.

“Karen was the perfect victim in the in a perfect storm. She was a product of the care system in the kind of 70s, 80s. She was only 15 and a half years. She hadn’t seen her parents for 10 for 10 years. That kind of world that she lived in with no boundaries, sometimes morals don’t exist and sex is just seemed to be to some men freely available with young vulnerable girls who are running away you know from home, and it all becomes part and parcel of everyday life.”

I’ve always find that quite really sad when there is no boundary within the young girl herself or indeed these perpetrators and it just like sex becomes like having a cup of tea.

“Yes, and but she is vulnerable because she’s a classic, she’s a runaway, and she she she’s reasonably attractive, reasonably sexually orientated, but because she’s vulnerable she’s got to be hidden by the very people that makes her more vulnerable. She’s trying to hide from the police, she’s trying to hide from social workers or anybody who’s tracking her down and therefore somebody gives her some kind of protection, then that makes her vulnerable, but also in their hands, and then they manipulate her, which they obviously did because she’s so vulnerable she goes along with that because she doesn’t know anything else, doesn’t know what alternatives available for her because she’s got the threat of the social workers coming and dragging her back off to the home which clearly she didn’t want to be attached to.”

She was referred to by the press as a ‘skeleton in the carpet,’ almost dehumanized if you like. That’s the sadness about this case, I think.

“Little Miss Nobody, yes, it was a good line to sell papers, but it totally ignored her as a person. She was just seen as a body that was found in the back of the garden and not a real person. But the ripple effect wasn’t as big in most murders, it’s a family affected and then the neighbors and everything else. That wouldn’t happen, there’d be no ripple effect on her death. Nobody cared enough even to find her when she’d been missing for eight, nine, 10 years whatever. Nobody could care enough about her to find, and that I find is very sad. It’s a very sad thing that nobody cares that you die.”

But I want to know what’s happened to Karen after leaving the children’s home to the point where her life ended so violently. Karen Price was a young 15-year-old girl that had gone missing from a children’s home in 1981. It’s now 1989, so she’d been missing for 8 years. The job of the police, therefore, was to try and link the skeleton—Karen Price as we now know her—wrapped in a carpet, to 29 Fitz Hammond embankment.

“What kind of area was Fitz Hammond embankment in 1989?”

I’m going to see the place where Karen’s body was found for myself, and Jeff Norman has agreed to join me, 30 years after he was first called to the scene.

“So, is this it then, Jeff?”

“Bit different to when I was here on that night, I have to say, but yeah, this is 27 here, and this is 29.”

“Was it all one garden like this?”

“Yeah, it was, yeah, one garden, and you had the basement flat on the left-hand side, and it was lower than this. It was a lower level than this, and this has obviously been built up since, and clearly they’ve done work since on it, too. But it’s… no, this is the spot.”

“You’ve got four-story buildings here, haven’t you? And so it had to be kind of under the kind of eye line of the roof because the further that you come out, the more exposed you are to all these properties.”

“Yeah, it made sense that you know they dug the grave close to the building itself.”

“The feeling right from that first evening that I attended the scene was that the grave was actually around 6 ft away from the rear door of the basement flat, so it was a natural thought that whoever was living in that basement flat at the time that carpet was buried in the garden must have known something about it.”

Sometimes victims’ bodies are buried in remote, secluded locations, but the opposite is true here. What’s evident to me is how overlooked this spot is, and that the killer took a huge risk burying Karen here.

“Were most of the flats in here bedsits?”

“Yes, they were, yeah. There were about 12 or 15 as I seem to recall. Um, and apart from only one or two residents, most of them were simply moving on. Yeah, it was like a halfway house for a lot of people. Some people stayed here for weeks, some for months, very very few stayed for much longer than that.”

To track down previous occupants of number 29 was a monumental task. These were the days before everything was computerized, so it would take good old-fashioned police work, knocking on doors and making calls. We’ve managed to track down Mr. Patel who was living here at the time to find out what he remembers.

“Mr. Patel, I understand you used to live in Fitz Hammond embankment when the skeleton was found in the carpet. Where did you live?”

“Next door.”

“Tell me what you saw.”

“Well, I saw a lot of policemen in the evening. I didn’t know what was going on, and then asked the policeman what was going on, and they said they found a body in the back garden, and we thought it was in our in our garden, but it’s next door. And then we weren’t allowed to go nowhere near it for a couple of days.”

“Did you personally know any of the occupants of number 29?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Tell me what kind of area this was when you lived here.”

“I know in those days it was a very dangerous area, people moving in and out all the time, like you know alcoholics, you know. Most of them were all drugs, most of them were drug people here because of prostitution. This area was well known for prostitution in these days.”

“No chance to get to know anyone?”

“No.”

“Did you follow the case?”

“No, no, I forgot about it. Just when the guy reminded me last week. We’ve cleaned the garden and my other said, ‘Oh I don’t want to go into the garden, just in case I find something.’ I said, ‘No, nothing is here now, don’t worry.'”

“She remembered that?”

“Oh yeah yeah, but still all these years later your wife did not?”

“She don’t want to know. She don’t like it.”

“Was she scared because of the what had been found in number 29?”

“Yeah, that’s right, yeah.”

After weeks of interviews, Jeff Norman and his team managed to track down a former landlady who was able to provide proof that the carpet Karen was wrapped in did in fact come from the basement flat. It was a crucial piece of evidence that led the police to interview one particular man who was living in the flat at the time of Karen’s disappearance, 31-year-old local man Alan Charlton. He was already known to the police, but when questioned, he denied any knowledge of Karen Price. But after a TV appeal, another man, Idris Ali, came forward. He later provided evidence that connected Alan Charlton to the flat. Further crucial evidence was also provided by a young girl known only as D, who had witnessed the murder. Idris Ali had got to know Alan Charlton, who was working as a doorman in the nightclub in Cardiff at that time.

“Alan Charlton was known for having parties at his property, and he asked Idris if he could provide some girls from time to time for these parties. Idris was a man about town as he fancied himself at the time, and he said that he could provide the girls, which he actually did, and on this particular night, the girls that he provided were D and Karen Price.”

“And when Alan Charlton suggested the girls come around for a party, what was his intention as far as Idris Ali was concerned?”

“It was just that, so he would have us believe.”

“But from evidence that we now have from Idris subsequently, and also from D, it was quite obvious that what Alan Charlton wanted to do was take photographs of the two girls, which is something they didn’t want to do. They didn’t want to have their photographs taken.”

“Were they pornographic photographs?”

“Yes, that was clearly the intention.”

“And Karen refused to have those photographs taken?”

“Yeah, both girls refused, and it was at that stage that we’re told that Alan Charlton lost the plot and struck out and literally punched Karen.”

“There was a suggestion then that Alan Charlton tried to pick Karen up, tried to persuade her—very forcibly—to have some photographs taken, and we believe she was strangled at that stage.”

“The entomologist indicated that the body wasn’t buried straight away. From your investigation, what happened to that body? Where was it?”

“All we know is what Idris Ali has told us, and we’ve no reason to doubt what he said, because it is confirmed by Dr. Zach the entomologist. The body was left where it was, uh, for as he described, a day or two, while they decided what to do—how to dispose of it—and it was only a day or two later that they actually together put Karen in this offcut of carpet and then went on to bury her in the garden.”

Two and a half months after the discovery of the bones in the carpet and a massive investigation by South Wales police, Alan Charlton and Idris Ali were both charged with the murder of Karen Price and convicted at Crown Court.

“When you got that guilty plea from the jury, what did you feel like, Jeff?”

“It was a strange feeling. I was obviously very delighted, but you never lose sight of the fact that with any murder conviction, there are victims, and you always tend to think of the victim at that time. But by the same token, you have to take great pride in a moment like that when you realize that all that hard work has paid off and perhaps justice has been done.”

“It’s a feeling of bittersweet, isn’t it?”

“It is, very much so. You know, you feel like celebrating, but then you feel that’s not quite the right thing to do, because there are still victims.”

On appeal, Idris Ali’s conviction was reduced to manslaughter. Alan Charlton remains in prison to this day. The murder of Karen Price was a spontaneous event; it was not premeditated. And I think one of worrying aspects of this, that somebody was capable of murdering a young girl there and then on the spot, no thought about it, no premeditation, just—she didn’t do what she was asked to do and the result of that was to kill her.

I want to find out more about the mindset of someone capable of committing such a random and violent act. I’m meeting forensic psychologist Dr. Julian Boon.

“Alan Charlton, as a human being, what kind of person is he that targets young vulnerable young girls? What would his kind of psychology be?”

“I would imagine that he has a compulsion for young girls and wanting probably to take pornographic pictures of them, and that in itself shows a lack of maturity. And it also, as is so often the case, suggests that he really didn’t care about them and was taking highly vulnerable girls from a pimp and treating them extremely badly.”

“And is it the sense of entitlement, which is then kind of refuted, instigating the rage? Is that what happens?”

“Yes. ‘Who the hell are you to tell me you’re not going to show me your bits and pieces when I say so? What do you think you’re here for? How dare you?’ That sort of thing. And it is, again, very power-assertive. You don’t say no to someone who’s power-assertive, not unless you’re expecting consequences.”

“I’ve been to the site of the deposition site of where Karen Price’s body was found, which was just buried within yards of the basement flat where Alan Charlton lived. Do you think that is a kind of an indication of the disregard that he had for her, that she was actually buried yards from that flat?”

“Well, as a general rule, when a body is transported a significant distance, say 20 miles away to the center of a woodland or something like that, that tends to be associated with somebody who’s fairly organized in their offending. What happened here, I think, is that this was not planned; it just got out of hand. Hence, they’ve had to think about how they’re going to dispose of the body, and that’s why there was a gap of some days.”

“Alan Charlton, do you think may have thought that he had found the perfect victim in Karen Price because nobody would have missed her? Once it’s done, he might have congratulated himself on being pleased that she was a semi-vagrant in her character because it would be so difficult to miss her. And that would have been a continued bonus, and indeed for some nine years, she wasn’t found, and if they hadn’t done that building work, she’d probably still be there now.”

We’ve come to the end of the Karen Price case. Very fascinating case, and it really touched me about the story of this young 15-year-old girl that kind of lived quite a sad and chaotic life and was subsequently murdered. There’s something that I’d really like to ask Jeff Norman if he would accompany me to her grave site.

“Hello, Jeff Norman.”

“Hi, Jeff, it’s Jackie Molton again.”

“Hi, Jackie. Hello to you.”

“Um, regarding the Karen Price case, I have spoken to Karen’s sister, and one of the things that I felt quite moved about having spoken to you at length about it was this girl’s story, and I really would feel that I would like to go to her final resting place, and I wondered if you would join me.”

“Yeah, yeah, it’s something I’ve thought about over the years if I’m honest, Jackie, so yeah, that’s something I’d really like to do.”

“Well, this is Karen’s final resting point, and it’s down to the family who allowed us to be here today. And it must be very poignant for you, Jeff, to be standing here all these years later.”

“Yeah, I mean as you well know, that kind of investigation never leaves you. For quite a long period of time we didn’t even know who this person was. You know, not only did we identify her, we got the results that we always strive to get for victims of these kind of crimes. But for me personally, this is closure, almost. And it’s just good to see, as I say, a final resting place, a proper resting place, which is in stark contrast to the last time I saw her.”

“And would you be so kind, Jeff, to lay the flowers on Karen’s grave?”

“Yes, of course.”

“I’d like to think I’m doing that on behalf of everybody, you know, that worked so hard on that investigation, the police officers, the experts, all those people that made the prosecution happen, the people that made the conviction happen, and of course thinking of the family at a time like this as well. But it’s very poignant for me to be here at this time to find her laid at rest at long last after all this time.”

“I understand that, Jeff.”

She was a girl who lost her way. She was only very young, and so therefore, you are driven by getting justice for a girl who was callously murdered and just buried and forgotten about. But police always care. That’s the point. Detectives always care about the investigation that they’re conducting when it’s a murder, whoever the victim is.