Cardiff murder of Karen Price in 1980s saw teen ‘forgotten about’

Karen Price was just 15 years old when she disappeared in 1981, and her body would never have been found if two builders had not found it by chance. Because no one was looking for him.

Karen, nicknamed “Little Miss Nobody”, had not been seen for eight years when her skeletal remains were discovered wrapped in carpet by two unsuspecting builders in Cardiff city center on December 7, 1989.

His body, found in a shallow grave outside a basement on Fitzhamon Embankment, was so badly decomposed that it was “impossible” to determine the cause of death.

Now, more than 40 years after his killer was freed, a new documentary has examined how police put together the puzzle to solve the murder of a teenager “no one knew” and how it involved “groundbreaking” methods to bring the two men to justice.

Tom Bedford, a crime reporter who worked during the investigation, said: “It’s incredible to think that a girl that age, 15, could go missing and no one noticed, no one cared.”

“I’ve told many stories over 40 years, but I’ll never forget these.”

He told Channel 5’s documentary Buried Secrets: The Corpse on the Carpet: “It’s very sad that he was allowed to escape from the nursery and there was no recourse against him, no investigation.

“He wasn’t listed as missing, no one knew he was missing, no one knew who he was.”

• This story contains details that some may find upsetting

Karen’s parents were divorced and she had a tumultuous upbringing, with custody issues causing her to fall into foster care when she was 10 years old.

He escaped from the children’s home where he lived from the age of 11, before escaping from the Maes-Yr-Eglwys Assessment Center at Church Village in Rhondda Cynon Taf in July 1981 and never returning.

It was difficult to recover traces of his life from then until his death.

Then, in the winter of 1989, builders working on a renovation in the shadow of what would become the Principality Stadium had descended about a meter into the Earth when they discovered a rolled-up piece of carpet.

In an interview after the discovery, footage shows one of the builders, Paul Bodenham, saying they had initially joked “oh, there might be a body in there”.

When they saw the horror inside, they immediately called the police.

Karen’s body was bound at the wrists with an electrical cord and there was still a plastic bag over her head.

The investigation was dependent on forensic science as little was known about his whereabouts before his death and no CCTV cameras were available at the time.

Maggots found in the carpet would be the biggest indicator of when Karen died and how long her body had been there.

Flies do not lay eggs on buried remains; maggot activity therefore confirmed that the murder had occurred between July 1981 and March 1982, before Karen was placed in the shallow grave.

This allowed detectives to uncover a list of people living in the basement at the time.

Forensic dentist Prof David Whittaker was able to reveal the sex and age of the body by looking at the chromosomes and development of the teeth.

The pink cavities—the tooth’s capillaries that send blood to the teeth—confirm officers’ suspicion that Karen’s death was caused by violence.

Her death was considered “unusual” for the city at the time, according to former South Wales Police detective Jeff Norman, who recalled working mostly on minor crimes before this major case.

“There haven’t been many murders in Cardiff,” he said.

“I’ve never seen a skeleton before, so I was quite shocked.”

With no reports of missing persons matching the remains, investigating officers had to piece together a puzzle using largely untested methods.

In what may be considered a “landmark” in forensic science, Richard Neave, a well-known facial reconstruction artist, used Karen’s skull to envision and create a model of her physical appearance; This turned out to be uncannily true.

What was considered a “long shot” turned out to be groundbreaking and caught the public’s attention.

Crimewatch’s call on 15 February 1990 featured Mr Neave’s reconstruction and led two social workers from Pontypridd, a town 10 miles north of Cardiff, to recognize Karen and come forward on her behalf.

But it was pioneering technology involving the extraction of DNA from human bones that eventually matched Karen to her parents and completed the picture, revealing her identity for the first time.

Not only did Crimewatch help identify the mysterious body, but it also led to someone coming forward and confessing their involvement in Karen’s murder.

Idris Ali had been watching the program and, at the urging of a friend, came forward to tell police that he had been prostituted to young girls living away from care homes with a man called Alan Charlton, from Somerset.

Charlton lived in the basement of 29 Fitzhamon Embankment between June 1981 and February 1982 and according to court documentsKaren’s body was “found within feet of her back door.”

Ali told detectives he saw Charlton order Karen and another 13-year-old girl to undress so he could take nude photos of them.

When the other girl refused, Ali said Charlton attacked her, prompting Karen to intervene to protect the teenager, but Charlton turned his brutality on her.

Charlton, described by prosecutors as a “psychopath”, slapped and punched Karen and when Ali tried to stop him, Ali said he hit her too.

The Court of Appeal said that “under threat of violence” AIi held Karen’s hands “for a very short period of time” while Charlton continued to punch and slap Karen.

When Charlton stopped “there was blood coming out of Karen’s mouth and she didn’t respond”.

Speaking after the convictions in 1991 Images from BBC documentary It showed Karen’s father, Leonard, telling Michael Price that Karen had gotten married, thought she might have a family of her own, and that he didn’t think any more about her whereabouts until the case came to light.

“It was sad for the family, but at least he is comfortable and at peace and they got what they deserved,” he said.

According to a South Wales Echo report in 1990, Mr Price last saw his daughter at a court meeting regarding her welfare in February 1981.

In one of her only interviews about her daughter’s murder, Anita Edward told crime reporter Mike Arnold that she expected Karen to come home one day with her husband and children.

He said he tried to “stick with” Karen as she boarded the bus after an argument over her stealing a tape recorder in 1981, but failed to stop her.

He never saw his daughter again.

Miss Edward said Karen was “always on their minds” and claimed she wrote to social services asking about her in 1984 but received no response.

The South Wales Echo reported that Mrs Edward died of acute alcohol poisoning on December 26, 1992, aged 54, after collapsing on Christmas Day.

There are still questions about why no one is looking for a young girl who disappeared while in the custody of a local authority.

Although the murder of Karen, who would have turned 60 in September, was brutal and devastating, forensic experts said her memory lives on “to this day” because of the role she played in forensic tests.

“I have covered thousands of stories and this is one of the saddest stories I have ever worked on,” Mr. Bedford said.

“The fact that a young girl died like this, her life ending at the age of 15, is too sad to be expressed in words.”