Tragic case of girl found in shallow grave in Wales… but no one realized she was missing
A group of workers made a horrifying discovery when they dug up the body of a girl in a shallow grave in 1989.
The remains of 15-year-old Karen Price were found wrapped in a rug outside a house in Cardiff.
The teenager had disappeared in 1981 after fleeing attention several times, but tragically no record of her disappearance was ever made, and no one had been looking for her in the eight years that had passed.
Detectives conceded that they may never have realized she was missing, or later found out she was murdered, if her body had not been recovered by chance.
The BBC series The Dark Land, in which experts review historical murder cases, has now turned its focus to the shocking case in Wales.
The body of 15-year-old Karen Price was discovered wrapped in a rug after eight years; no one had reported her missing.
Karen’s body was found by a group of bricklayers while doing work on a house in Cardiff in 1989.
The show’s team found that the police investigation into the 15-year-old’s death pioneered how murder cases are handled around the world.
Detective Superintendent Jeff Norman, now retired, was one of the first officers to arrive on the scene after the builders made their grim discovery.
He told the show that the house where Karen’s body was found was combined with another property, with several different floors and rooms being used, making it a busy area where people came and went all the time.
He said: ‘When I think about that night, I think about the impact it has had not only on my career, but also on research breakthroughs that were used in investigations nationally and internationally.
‘The techniques that were used, the different ‘ologists that were involved, some of whom I had never heard of, but all of whom were used to help us in our investigations.’
It took police two months to identify Karen’s remains, using an unprecedented method of facial reconstruction.
Facial reconstruction expert Richard Neave was able to create a clay replica of Karen’s face based on her skull using a technique that had been used in archaeological finds but never before tried in a criminal investigation.
Using the model, police were able to piece together Karen’s forgotten identity with an appeal to the public, eventually discovering that she had been living in care for much of her short life.
Police used an archaeological facial reconstruction technique for the first time in a criminal case to create a bust of Karen based on her skull.
Members of the public contacted officers after an appeal, helping them gather crucial information about Karen’s murder.
The body of the 15-year-old girl had been hidden for eight years in the garden of the Cardiff house.
A worker at the children’s center from which she had disappeared contacted police after viewing the reconstruction on Crimewatch and confirmed that social services never filed a missing person form.
Idris Ali, who was around 15 or 16 years old at the time of Karen’s death, also contacted the police to say that he had been a friend of hers and that the police questioned him.
Through Ali, the police discovered that a man named Alan Charlton was living in the basement of the house when Karen died.
Charlton was described as “a man with a fearsome reputation” on the show and had been working as a bouncer at the time.
Ali told the police that he was the one who had invited Karen to a party at Charlton’s flat.
DS Norman said: ‘We know that Idris Ali admired Charlton, saw him as someone he aspired to be.
‘Alan Charlton was having a party and he wanted some girls to come. Idris Ali was very interested in being a people pleaser and he brought two girls to the flat.
The second girl, who was 13 at the time and a friend of Karen’s, became a key witness in the case for police, known only as Witness D.
Paul Bethall, a retired Chief Inspector of Detectives, said Karen and the 13-year-old boy were completely disconnected when they went to the party.
He told DS Norman: “Nobody knows they’re there, nobody knows apart from Ali and Charlton, nobody knows those two girls are in that apartment.”
DS Norman said: ‘No, and that’s the problem: they’re so vulnerable because no one is looking after them. The only people who are taking care of them are themselves.
The police investigation led them to Alan Charlton, a man with a “fearsome reputation” who had lived in the basement of the house where Karen was found.
Idris Ali contacted the police when he saw Karen’s reconstructed face, revealing that he had invited her to a party at Charlton’s flat along with another girl.
The police discovered that Charlton had demanded that the two girls pose for nude photographs for him.
When Karen refused and resisted, Charlton punched her and she fell to the ground.
DS Norman said Karen “never moved once she hit the ground.”
He added that it was “clearly a pretty terrifying blow that Charlton had dealt a rain on.”
Her body was wrapped in a rug and carried outside, where she was buried, and remained undiscovered for the next eight years.
The evidence gathered by the police was enough to charge Charlton and Ali with Karen’s murder, and both were later convicted.
Charlton was jailed for life in 1991 and is still serving his sentence for Karen’s murder.
Ali later reduced his sentence to manslaughter and was released in 1994 after experts told a court that he had intelligence in the bottom 5 percent of the population, bordering on mental disability.
The police were surprised that no one had noticed that Karen had disappeared in the years after her death.
DS Norman told The Dark Land: ‘It was shocking that no one had missed her. Why had no one missed her?
‘Why wasn’t a call registered somewhere, even in the following years? There was nothing.’