Bloodstained knife may help solve old murder

The discovery of a bloodstained knife locked in the basement of a police station could help solve a 35-year-old murder mystery.

The kitchen knife was used to kill 12-year-old Keith Lyon, whose body was found on a bridle path in Happy Valley near Brighton in May 1967. But until this week, when workmen at Brighton police station found the weapon and several boxes of evidence in a locked room, the clues appeared to have been lost and forgotten.

The knife was still stained with the boy's blood, and that of another person, possibly his killer. The weapon is being examined and detectives hope the blood sample will match one of the murder suspects, at least one of whom is dead. The knife was originally picked up days after the stabbing in school grounds a mile away.

Among other evidence was a cigarette end believed to have been left by the killer on the Sussex Downs between Ovingdean and Woodingdean.

On the day of the killing, the boy had been walking to his local shop while his mother and her youngest son, Peter, then aged six, stayed at home. Witnesses said they saw a group of youths scuffling at the spot where the body was discovered.

Keith's father, Ken, a musician, is dead. His mother, Valda, and brother Peter, 42, who still live in the Brighton area, have long pressed for the killer to be brought to justice.

Mrs Lyon said: "I am hopeful now. I know Ken was terribly sad, knowing he would die before police could find who killed Keith. I am coming up to 85 now and I am hoping this murderer can be found before I go."

She added: "Keith's murder has ruined our lives and there is not a day that goes by when we don't think of him, what happened to him and what he might be doing if he was alive."

Although the case was reviewed in March 2000 as part of a routine re-examination of unsolved murders, the police seemed to be getting no closer to convicting the killer.

Then three days ago, while builders were installing a sprinkler system in the basement of the station, they discovered a locked room. They prised it open and found the exhibits. Advances in forensic techniques have allowed specialists to obtain DNA samples from stains previously too small or incomplete to be used. And there may be a saliva sample on the cigarette end.

Detective Inspector Bill Warner, who is heading the inquiry, said: "There is no doubt this is a significant breakthrough ... The knife has two types of blood on it which could provide a crucial breakthrough with the help of techniques not available 35 years ago."

He added: "The most disturbing fact was we mislaid the exhibits. The case was reviewed several years after the initial inquiry and again in the mid-Seventies.

"The significance of the find is that we have got the evidence now, and second, we have got the chance of forensic retrieval to identify the offender. There are a whole host of what-ifs. He could be dead but provided we have his DNA, we can find out who did it."

During the initial investigation, 80,000 home visits were made and the fingerprints of 6,000 schoolboys taken.