Cold case killers finally caught

BRAGGING BLUNDER

It was 6pm and already dark out, but it was only a short walk. At least that’s what Claire Tiltman, 16, thought when she made her way to her friend’s house in January 1993.

But in an alleyway near her home in Greenhithe, Kent, Claire was stabbed nine times and left to die.

Her distraught parents, Cliff and Linda, hoped her killer would be caught quickly. But as time ticked on, police were no closer to finding the culprit. The case went cold and in March 2008, Linda, 56, died of throat cancer.

When Cliff, 62, fell ill he made a final appeal for information from his deathbed, before passing away in September 2012.

It wasn’t until February 2014 that a man was finally charged with Claire’s murder. Colin Ash-Smith, 46, had been a family friend of the Tiltmans, and he’d even gone to Claire’s funeral.

Soon after the murder, he’d been questioned by police, but his mother gave a false alibi, saying he was with her. So why had he been charged now, two decades on?

He was already serving a life sentence for attacks on two other women and according to police, Ash-Smith had bragged to one of his prison pals about killing a girl near a zebra crossing – Claire had been found just yards from one.

Chillingly, police believed the jacket he’d worn to her funeral had been the same one he’d worn to kill her. They’d also found his diaries, detailing twisted attacks on women.

In December 2014, Ash-Smith was found guilty of murder and jailed for a minimum of 21 years.

WIFE KILLER

Brenda Page was 32 when she was bludgeoned to death in her flat in Aberdeen in July 1978.

A geneticist at the University of Aberdeen, she was highly respected and loved by her family and friends. Quickly her ex-husband, research scientist Christopher Harrisson, became the only suspect, but at the time there was insufficient evidence to pursue the case and it went cold.

Then, in 2015, 37 years after the killing, police started to reinvestigate. Eventual