Police retrace park murder victim's final journey

Jun 8 2008 By Russell Findlay And Norman Silvester

MURDER detectives are using CCTV footage to retrace tragic Moira Jones's last 15-minute car journey.

Every camera on the route the murdered sales executive took from her boyfriend's home to her own is being tracked down before vital evidence is erased.

Detectives believe the footage could provide a vital breakthrough in catching the sex killer who slaughtered Moira, 40, in a park near her home.

They are especially keen to establish if someone could have been following Moira from the point when she left boyfriend Paul Thompson's home in Cranstonhill, Glasgow.

The car journey to her home in Queens Drive on the south side of the city on May 28 would have taken about quarter of an hour.

Soon after parking her car, she was sexually assaulted and battered to death. Her body was found in Queen's Park the following morning.

Piecing together the journey will involve studying thousands of hours of CCTV footage, from cameras used in streets, businesses and shops.

CCTV co-ordinator Detective Chief Inspector Iain Cunningham said: "The people who committed this crime had to get themselves there and away and we are hoping they are on CCTV somewhere." "All available CCTV is recovered.

That in itself is a massive task.

"We have obtained public, commercial, retail and private systems.

"The area where the murder took place or routes which were travelled by the victim or maybe the killer have been divided into map grids.

"Officers walk the grids to identify premises with CCTV."

A key figure in the investigation is Lesley Bain, Strathclyde Police's principal intelligence analyst.

One area of her team's work is mapping around murder scenes to create the grids used in tracking down CCTV cameras which could provide significant clues.

Cunningham added: "Not every system is the same. Some record over after 24 hours while some record for seven days.It's a phenomenal amount of footage."

Ateam of 40 officers are dedicated to recovering tapes, discs and hard drives.

They raced against time to seize all available footage because some systems are wiped so quickly.

They spent hundreds of pounds replacing a CCTV hard-drive from a Pizza Hut near Moira's flat.

Deputy head of crime operations Detective Superintendent Elliot McKenzie said: "We left the Pizza Hut without CCTV so we purchased a new piece of equipment.

"Grabbing CCTV is time critical.

It was important we got to the footage before it was taped over.

"It will be prioritised and we have a small number of expert viewers who will look through all the footage.

"We also have technology to try to recover footage which has been taped over.

"With digital, we may be able to retrieve things from the shadows."