Leanne Tiernan Case Study

The murder of Leanne Tiernan

It was the evening of November 26, 2000 when Leanne Tiernan, age 16 disappeared on her way home from Christmas shopping with a friend. John Taylor was waiting for a victim to pass through the woods and that victim happened to be Leanne. John grabbed Leanne’s arms from behind her, blind folded her, put his hand around her mouth and led her to his house. It was there that he tied her hands behind her back, strangled her with a scarf and began to sexually assault her.

Detective Superintendent Chris Gregg of West Yorkshire Police led the missing persons’ investigation on Leanne Tiernan. The police department knew the investigation was going to be difficult because they were working with an extremely large terrain,

After being tested the dye that was on the carpet fibre had also been on Leanne’s body. Forensic scientists were looking to match fibres on Leanne’s clothes with the fibres on Johns carpet but unfortunately that couldn’t be done because John Taylor had set fire to his carpet and there was too much damage to trace a fibre. Although John had burned the carpet forensic investigators found a piece of carpet fibre that was left on a nail from the floor board that matched perfectly with the fibres on Leanne’s Clothes. Not only did the fibre from the nail match up to the fibre on Leanne’s clothes, but after investigators lifted the floor boards there was bloodstains found. After being analysed and tested by forensic chemists the DNA in the blood stains matched Leanne Tiernan. It was pretty clear to investigators who the killer had been after many different evidence was found within John Taylors house but to be 100% sure before convicting anyone there was about 400 items collected and sent for more DNA testing to compare the samples from family, friends and other residents where Leanne had lived. A few items that were collected for example were, magazines, pop cans, papers