Skip to main content

Southampton: 30-year-old mistake solved by digging up wrongly convicted man - Murdertown Podcast

31:05

Full Episode

In August 2009, the body of David Lace was exhumed from Kingston Cemetery in Portsmouth more than twenty years after he had died. Residents peered out from behind curtains as police stood guard. A blue and white tent covered the empty grave, and hessian sacks hid the names of nearby headstones. There were rumours that Hampshire police were about to solve a case that had long haunted the nearby city of Southampton. Detective Chief Inspector Phil McTavish had begun the re-investigation of a murder in Southampton thirty years earlier. With the progress made in forensic science over those decades, McTavish and his team were after one thing — DNA. But Lace wasn't the murder victim, nor was he the man convicted.So who was he?