Murder of Colette Aram

Colette Aram, a 16-year-old trainee hairdresser from Keyworth, Nottinghamshire, was abducted, raped and strangled on 30 October 1983 while walking from her home to her boyfriend's house. She left home shortly after 8:00 p.m. and was last seen around 8:10 p.m. talking to a group of friends on Nicker Hill. Witnesses reported hearing a woman screaming followed by a car driving off at speed shortly afterward. When Aram failed to arrive at her boyfriend's house, family and friends began searching, and police were called at 10:30 p.m. Her naked body was found the following morning in a field about a mile and a half from where she was abducted. She had been raped and strangled.

The murder became the first case featured on the BBC television series Crimewatch, which launched on 7 June 1984 with a reconstruction of the crime aimed at generating public tips. The appeal generated more than 400 calls and allowed police to eliminate 1,500 suspects, but the killer was not identified at the time. The case was revisited on Crimewatch's 20th anniversary program in 2004, still unsolved.

In 2008, forensic advances allowed Nottinghamshire Police to develop a DNA profile of the killer. Officers appealed publicly for names of possible suspects who could be tested via mouth swab, a method that had previously helped identify the so-called M25 rapist. More than 100 calls came in response.

In June 2008, a 20-year-old man, Jean-Paul Hutchinson, was arrested on an unrelated motoring charge, and his routinely collected DNA swab proved a near identical match to the killer's profile. Since he had not been born at the time of the 1983 murder, this familial match pointed investigators to his father, Paul Stewart Hutchinson, then aged 50. Hutchinson was arrested and charged with the murder in April 2009. He initially attempted to attribute the crime to his late brother, who had died in January 2008 and been cremated, but DNA held from a hospital blood sample ruled the brother out as a match.

Hutchinson was held on remand, pleaded not guilty on 5 October 2009, then changed his plea to guilty at a pre-trial hearing on 21 December 2009. On 25 January 2010, he was sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum term of 25 years at Nottingham Crown Court. Aram's mother, Jacqui Kirkby, said the sentencing brought some relief but that the family still wanted to know why Colette was killed — a question Hutchinson refused to answer.

On 10 October 2010, roughly nine months after sentencing, Hutchinson was found unconscious in his cell at Nottingham Prison. He died later that morning in an ambulance en route to hospital. It was believed he had taken an overdose of medication, though a post-mortem examination was inconclusive. At the inquest, his daughter said he had asked his wife to visit him in prison the day before his death, but she had not attended.