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Forensic Tales discusses topics that some listeners may find disturbing. The contents of this episode may not be suitable for everyone. Listener discretion is advised. It's late November. The year is 2000. Only six days after most Americans celebrate the Thanksgiving holiday. It's the day that 16-year-old Leanne Tiernan goes missing, vanishes into thin air.
After five grueling months of searching, the teenager's lifeless body was found, a discovery that left heartache felt across England. The murder of Leanne Tiernan became known as the first British murder investigation that used dog DNA profiling to catch a savage killer. How were police able to link dog hairs found on Leannan's body to her killer?
This is Forensic Tales, episode number nine, The Murder of Leanne Tiernan. ♪♪
Welcome to Forensic Tales. I'm your host, Courtney Fretwell.
Forensic Tales is a weekly true crime podcast covering real, bone-chilling stories with a forensic science twist. Some cases have been solved with forensic science, while others have turned cold. Every remarkable story sends us a chilling reminder that not all stories have happy endings. If you're interested in supporting the show,
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Now, let's jump right into this week's case. Leanne Tiernan was a beautiful 16-year-old teenager from Leeds, England, a place only about 170 miles north of central London. Leeds is a place known for having the most diverse economies across all of the United Kingdom. However, Leeds isn't a place without its troubles. The crime rate in Leeds is well above the national average.
Crimes from petty theft to assault to murder. On November 26, 2000, Leanne Tiernan went for a shopping trip in downtown Leeds with her 15-year-old friend, Sarah Whitehouse. The teenage girls were last seen together around 5.50 p.m. that afternoon. After finishing the shopping trip, Leanne and Sarah said their goodbyes at Hewley Lane.
Leanne parted from her friend and set off along a path into a wooded area of Hewley Gill. Leanne's friend Sarah arrives home and calls her friend, but was surprised to find out that her friend hadn't returned home yet, a realization that instantly caused Sarah's heart to drop into the pit of her stomach. Sarah wasn't the only one worried.
Leanne's mother began to worry once her daughter's friend called the house and informed her that Leanne should already be home by now. At approximately 5.20 p.m., Leanne's mother decided to call her daughter's cell phone and find out for herself why her daughter hadn't come home yet. Leanne is 16 years old. It wouldn't be entirely uncommon for her to not immediately come straight home after the shopping trip.
She may have seen another friend of hers on the way home. She may have gotten sidetracked. But Leanne's mother wasn't able to get through to her daughter. She called and called, but got no answer. Finally, after calling the cell phone several times, the call was cut off after only four rings, immediately sparking an intense fear in Leanne's mother's mind.
At 7 o'clock p.m. that evening, Leanne's mother decides that something just isn't right. She calls the local police department to report her young, beautiful daughter missing. Something is terribly wrong. Because Leanne was only 16 years old and the circumstances around her disappearance were alarming, the police began a missing person investigation. Leanne had never done something like this before.
Police officers started their search for Leanne around the streets where her and her friend Sarah were last seen. They arrived at Hewley Lane and saw absolutely no trace of Leanne anywhere. It appeared to police that the teenager simply vanished into thin air. During the investigation and the intense search for 16-year-old Leanne Tiernan,
Police knocked on more than 1,400 houses and 800 more along the route that they believed Leanne took on her way home. The police designated this route as Red Route, a half-mile radius of Hewley Gill. Police were confident that they were searching the same path and route that Leanne must have taken home that night.
Police also collected DNA samples from over 140 men in the area and executed 12 search warrants at various locations. The community, alongside the police, were determined to return Leanne home safe and sound. They were willing to do anything and everything they could to find her.
The police department's underwater search team searched a three-mile area of the Leeds and Liverpool Canal. The unit even searched 32 drain shafts in the area to find any sign of the missing teenager. But after each and every search, investigators were coming up empty-handed, and the hope of finding Leanne alive was starting to fade. On December 3, 2000, one week after Leanne was last seen by her friend,
Police stage a reconstruction of the two teenagers' last known whereabouts. The scene was reenacted by Sarah Whitehouse as well as Leanne's older sister, Michelle. Police set up the reenactment with hopes of jogging the memories of any potential witnesses who may have seen the girls that day. Police were desperate for any new leads. They were as willing to get as creative as possible to generate further information.
As the case remained cold, a local businessman from Leeds put up a reward of £10,000 for any information leading to her safe return. A local supermarket chain even featured the missing teenager's face on milk cartons that were sold nationwide. All attempts at locating Leanne Tiernan came up short, and police kept asking themselves, where is Leanne?
Could she even still be alive? As the search for missing 16-year-old Leanne intensified, the police received several tips and unconfirmed sightings. The information came in as far as from the towns of Doncaster and Blackpool. All tips and reported sightings led them no closer to her discovery. By this point, nine long months go by without any promising leads in the case.
Leanne's family and friends, including boyfriend Wayne Keeley, plead to the public for her safe return and for her to get in touch with them. Even after nine months of searching, Leanne's family, friends, and boyfriend held out hope that she would return.
On December 4, 2000, police released an e-fit facial composition of a man who was seen walking a dog in the area where Leanne was last seen. An e-fit is a computer-based method of producing facial compositions solely based on witness descriptions. The man in the e-fit was described as being 5 feet 8 inches tall and a stocky build.
He had a reddish face that may possibly be scarred. The man was wearing a black hat, a three-quarter length waterproof jacket, and dirty jeans. It was merely a man without a name. Months and months go by in the investigation without any sign of Leanne. Her family, friends, and the public remained hopeful until one terrible morning in August 2001.
That's when everything would come crashing down and all hopes would be shattered. On August 20th, 2001, months after Leanne Tiernan disappeared from her shopping trip, Mark Bison was walking his two dogs in Lindley Woods. On the walk, he came across the body of a young teenage girl. The coroners arrived on the scene and the body was transported to the medical examiner's office for an autopsy.
The teenager body was identified by her fingerprints as 16-year-old Leanne Tiernan, confirming everyone's worst nightmares. Shortly after the autopsy, police announced that Leanne's body had been wrapped inside of nine green plastic bags sealed with twine. A black bag was secured around her head with a leather dog collar to keep it shut.
Then she was placed inside a floral pattern duvet cover. It was an absolutely horrible and terrifying end to Leanne's short life. It's almost unimaginable how someone so evil, so awful, could do something like this to someone who had their entire life ahead of them. Police now had to shift their investigation from a missing persons case to a murder investigation.
When Leanne was last seen alive with her friend Sarah, she was wearing a popular British brand coat and black boots. However, when police examined Leanne's body, the coat and boots were missing, nowhere to be found. Instead, police found plastic cable ties around her wrist, which appeared to be used as a binding mechanism. A dark colored scarf was also found tied around her neck.
There was no sign of sexual assault, but the police were suspicious about the whereabouts of her coat and boots, possibly indicating to police that there was still a sexual motive behind her murder. The state of decomposition of Leanne's body is an essential part of the story.
When police arrived at the scene where her body was dumped, forensic experts believed that her body was kept in a cold storage or freezer for weeks, possibly months after her death. A cryobiologist was called in to examine the microstructure of Leanne's cardiac tissue. This told the police that her body was kept in a freezer for, quote, quite some time.
This meant that whoever killed Leanne kept her body in a freezer, possibly for months, before he dumped her body in the wooded area, a chilling realization that sent chills down investigators' spines. A piece of evidence that was extremely interesting to police was that leather dog collar found around Leanne's neck, as well as the black bag over her head.
Police believed that the dog collar must belong to whoever was responsible for killing her. Police started to search for the company or manufacturer of that particular leather dog collar. The collar they were looking for was manufactured by a company that sold that specific collar to 220 separate wholesalers. Now, you might think this is a needle in a haystack type search for investigators. Still, no.
Detective Constable Wilson, who was assigned to Leanne's case, contacted every one of the wholesalers and began asking for their sales records. The 112th company that Detective Wilson contacted was a Liverpool-based mail order company called Pets Pajamas.
Once Detective Wilson contacted the company, he discovered that there had been three sales in the Leeds area for that particular dog collar. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. What are some of your self-care non-negotiables? Maybe you never skip leg day or therapy day.
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That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash tails. The company worker immediately sent over the sales records to Detective Wilson, and one of the names of the customers that purchased that dog collar was John Taylor. John Taylor was a parcel delivery man who lived in the same housing estate as Leanne.
John Taylor was known locally as the Pet Man because he had several dogs and ferrets and even sold pet food on the side. John Taylor was a divorced man with only one previous criminal conviction, a petty theft case for stealing a suit when he was 15. Once police investigators found out that John Taylor was the one of the few people who purchased that particular leather dog collar,
he immediately rose to the top of the suspect list. But just because John Taylor purchased that same dog collar, police knew that that wasn't going to be enough. It wasn't going to be enough physical or forensic evidence linking him to the murder. They needed more. Police investigators began searching for any additional forensic evidence that could tie John Taylor to Leanne's murder.
After a little digging, the police discovered there was no short of forensic evidence here. Now, remember, when Leanne's body was found, police recovered a dark colored scarf that had been tied around her neck. When investigators removed the scarf from her neck, they could see a tiny bit of hair knotted up in the scarf. After being tested, the hair did not belong to Leanne.
Once they knew that the hair was not Leanne's, scientists at the Forensic Science Service were able to test the knotted hair for possible DNA. And they did this by using mitochondrial DNA testing within the shaft of the hair. It was a long shot, but in forensic science, we always believe in the long shot. And in this case, we hit a home run.
The mitochondrial DNA testing of the knotted hair found in the scarf came back as an exact 100% match to John Taylor, the same suspect who purchased the leather dog collar. At this point, John Taylor just keeps looking better and better in the eyes of the police. Could it be that they finally had what they needed to arrest him for murder?
Police knew they had their suspect, and his name was John Taylor. But, like any adequate investigator, they wanted more. They wanted more physical, and they wanted more forensic evidence that could link him to the murder. Now, if you think things are looking bad for John Taylor now, well, let me be the one to tell you, it gets a lot worse for him.
Besides the leather dog collar purchase and John Taylor's hair on the scarf, the Forensic Science Service also examined the twine used to seal the green plastic bags. Examiners determined that the twine came from a very unique manufacturer made by one single company from Devon, England. This unique twine was typically reserved for use in the Ministry of Defense, but the
It just so happens that there was a one-off batch of the twine sold in a store that made nets to catch rabbits. Armed with this new information, police could obtain a search warrant for John Taylor's home. And inside his home, what did they find? Well, they found the exact same twine used in the murder inside of Taylor's home.
This batch was the only one-off batch ever sold to the public. During the search of Taylor's home, police investigators found several more pieces of forensic and physical evidence linking him to Leanne's murder. The search confirmed that the yellow cable ties recovered from Leanne's body where she was dumped once again was an exact match to the ties found inside of his home.
Which, just like the twine, the cable ties were a very unique style and brand from a company that was a subsidiary for Taylor's employer. I want to mention that investigators noticed that Taylor had recently ripped up and replaced all of the carpet inside of his home. Even if this is your first day on the job as a crime scene investigator or detective,
If a murder suspect decides to replace all the carpet in his home, that is absolutely a red flag. Although the carpet had been replaced, investigators could still link the pink carpet fiber found on Leanne's clothing to carpet fiber retrieved from the floorboard of Taylor's home. Without a doubt, Leanne Tiernan was physically inside John Taylor's house before her death.
Okay, let's get to my favorite part of the investigation and what makes this story the first British murder investigation ever to use dog DNA profiling. When police recovered Leanne's body from the dump site, they collected several pieces of what appeared to be dog hair from both her body and from her clothing. The dog hair samples were shipped to a crime lab across the world in Texas.
Forensic experts in the States tested the dog hair with the hopes of being able to create a partial DNA profile of the dog. To everyone's surprise, including scientists, they were able to recover a full dog DNA profile. Unfortunately,
By the time scientists in Texas were able to create this doggy DNA profile that would prove that John Taylor's dog was around Leanne Tiernan before her murder, Taylor's dog passed away. So although investigators couldn't use the doggy DNA profile and match it to Taylor's dog, they were certain that John Taylor was their guy.
And this case will forever be known as the country's first homicide investigation to use dog DNA profiling. The overwhelming amount of physical and forensic evidence led to John Taylor's arrest for the murder of Leanne Tiernan on October 16, 2001, nearly one year after the murder.
After his arrest, police went back to Taylor's house to perform an even bigger search of the property. And during this extensive search, police found three large chest freezers on his property, which tells me and tells the police that these were the same freezers used to store Leanne's body for months before her body was dumped.
After his arrest, police sit down with Taylor, the man they are sure is responsible for Leanne's murder. It didn't take long for a confession, of sorts. Taylor admitted to the police that yes, he had kidnapped Leanne. He had walked past her, and just on impulse, just on a split-second decision, he grabbed her from behind, tied her hands behind her back with his dog's leash, and
Taylor then forced Leanne into his home when the two got into a struggle. According to Taylor, Leanne struck her head on the floor, causing him to use the scarf to pick her up. And this is when she died accidentally. He told police that he never intended on killing Leanne, that after she fell and hit her head, he panicked. He didn't know what to do with the body.
So he decided to hide her body in Lindley Woods. During this conversation with Taylor, police straight out ask him, why? Why Leanne? Why did he decide to take her that afternoon? And Taylor's response was as cold as ice. He said, I don't know.
John Taylor pled guilty to Leanne Tiernan's abduction in front of a judge in Leeds Crown Court on February 15, 2002. He was not required to enter a plea on the murder charge because the cases were pending a separate Newton hearing, which basically means that the two sides are offering evidence to the judge to support their position.
Several months later, on July 8, 2002, which was supposed to be the first day of trial in the murder case, John Taylor pled guilty. Taylor was sentenced the same day he pled guilty for the murder. And at the time of sentencing, the judge had quite a few words for him. At sentencing, the judge said, quote, After the death of this girl at your hands,
You wanted sexual deviancy with a girl of similar age. That not only demonstrates how dangerous you are, but demonstrates your lack of remorse. Not by chance were you in this area for this purpose. You were not acting on impulse. You chose a secluded place and a vulnerable young girl who suited your purposes. This was as cold and calculating as you can be imagined.
You are a dangerous sexual sadist. Your purpose in kidnapping this young girl was so that you could satisfy your perverted cravings. The sufferings you caused her and the suffering you continue to cause those that loved her simply cannot be measured. You must expect to spend the rest of your life in custody."
John Taylor was sentenced to the mandatory term of life imprisonment for Leanne's murder. But shortly after the original judge's sentence, Taylor's sentence was changed to a minimum of 20 years. While in prison, police start to wonder if this was really the only crime John Taylor has ever committed.
Although Taylor told police during his interview that his decision to abduct Leigh-Anne was made on impulse and was just random, police weren't too sure about that. Although his criminal record was squeaky clean, minus the petty theft incident as a young teenager, Taylor had absolutely no other criminal history. Since Taylor was locked up in prison and they had his DNA sample from the murder of Leigh-Anne,
investigators were actually able to link him to several other awful crimes. Police investigators linked John Taylor to two separate rapes in Leeds by his DNA sample. In addition to Leanne's murder, John Taylor was also responsible for the rape of a 32-year-old woman in October 1988 and the rape of a 21-year-old woman in March 1989.
and he later pled guilty to both rape charges on February 4, 2003. After John Taylor pled guilty to the two additional rape cases, Detective Superintendent Gregg announced to the public that, quote, we are still concerned that there are many other victims and families who have been affected by Taylor's actions, end quote.
Detective Gregg also told the public that a necklace was found in Taylor's car at the time of his 2001 arrest, which may belong to yet another victim. John Taylor is known to police to have traveled quite a bit across the country to meet different women he came in contact with. All of these stone cold facts point to the reality that
that John Taylor lied about his claims that he just snapped when he saw Leanne. Police believe that John Taylor is a serial sex attacker and murderer for the last 20 years. To this day, John Taylor has adamantly denied any involvement in any other attack in the Leeds area. But that statement is just another lie.
On October 26, 2008, Taylor was sentenced to a whole new life sentence for a series of other sexual assaults and rapes. Since Leanne Tiernan's abduction and murder, the police have opened up a total of 10 cold cases that they believe Taylor may be involved with. A mountain of forensic evidence and dog DNA profiling
was used to put a serial rapist and suspected serial killer behind bars. It's all thanks to forensic science that John Taylor is currently serving his sentence at a high-security male prison. And it's my hope that forensic science and man's best friend can continue to be used to link this monster to other crimes and murders.
and finally provide justice to these desperate families.
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