Original subtitles

When a murder is left unsolved...

No weapons, no eyewitnesses,

no forensic evidence at all.

There was nothing.

..And a killer is on the loose...

These people are still out there.

Who's going to be next?

..Britain's cold case detectives will never give up.

The best way to solve a cold case is to keep it warm.

No matter how long it takes...

This case dominated my life.

..They'll investigate every angle

and follow every hunch...

Searching through thousands of people.

They think they got away with it. They haven't.

..Until justice is finally done.

We all leave a trace.

We'd finally identified that golden nugget.

Bingo. We've got 'em.

It was the early hours of the 25th of February 1994

when 21-year-old Jason comerford

was stabbed in the neck after a night out in Manchester city centre.

A very distressed female called the emergency services

she could see a man lying down in the road.

He was bleeding heavily and she thought he was going to die.

By the time the ambulance arrived,

he was dead.

Detective chief inspector Martin bottomley

knew this was no ordinary incident.

In 1994, murder was a rare occurrence

and a stranger murder was exceptionally rare.

The types of crimes that would've been committed

on a lively evening in Manchester in '94

would have been domestic assaults,

the odd fight outside a pub or a club,

just angry young men or men who had too much to drink at the time

getting into trouble.

Kevin Moore was a detective constable

on greater Manchester's force at the time of the attack.

Jason comerford was a young man who was single.

He lived alone in his own flats

in the back end of ancoats,

and on the night of being killed,

he'd gone out into Manchester city centre

to meet up with colleagues from his works at discotheque royale.

He worked for a textile firm.

He was also an amateur artist.

He was the fourth child of five,

and he was... Ordinary kid just out socialising.

He asked his brother if he wanted to go with him.

His brother didn't really want to go out that night, but Jason did.

He was a very sociable man.

So, he went to a number of bars and clubs

and ended up going to the chip shop afterwards,

buying some chips and walking along great ancoats street.

And at one point, he went into the alleyway on George Leigh street,

which is where the fatal attack took place.

When officers reached the scene,

they made a gruesome discovery.

We were left with a series of spots and pools of blood,

which showed where Jason had staggered from the point where he was stabbed

across a major road junction to collapse in the road.

Following the trail of blood,

police pinpointed where the attack had started.

A search of the scene close to where Jason had been stabbed was made

and officers soon found a knife.

It was bloodstained.

A ten-inch knife was recovered by detectives.

It looked like police had their murder weapon.

That knife was very distinctive.

It had the words "the hunter" on it.

It was locked knife that had been folded back,

so the blade had been put back inside the handle,

and it had just been dropped on the ground.

The knife was photographed

and immediately sent for forensic examination

as investigators pieced together Jason's final moments.

The officers at the scene immediately got the sense

that this was a random, unmotivated attack by a stranger on a stranger.

There was no reason for this attack to have taken place.

It was senseless.

Most acts of violence of this severe nature

take place between a known offender and a victim,

but random killings of this type do occur.

It may be that somebody bumps into somebody else

and has an altercation,

and it escalates into very serious violence as a result.

The pathologists' report did not suggest a fight

that had got out of hand.

It was much more chilling.

The home office registered pathologist

conducted a postmortem examination

and established that Jason had died

from a single stab wound to the neck.

But there was a crucial witness.

Before the fatal encounter,

Jason had met someone on his way home.

The female witness who'd dialled 999

had been spotted with the victim.

She was very distressed, she was shocked

and she was in a confused state,

and what she was telling the police at that time

probably made it a bit more difficult to establish

exactly what had happened.

She spoke to the police officers at the scene,

where she gave the account that she'd met him, the victim, Jason,

so they treated her as a vulnerable witness.

Despite her muddled state,

this female witness was able to offer the police something valuable.

What the witness did do, though, was give us a description of the killer.

The distinguishing features of the killer

was that he was a white male, slim build.

He was in his late 40s or early 50s,

had long grey hair,

he was carrying a bag.

The other witnesses on great ancoats street were a taxi driver and a lorry driver,

and they were also able to give a description of the killer,

or the man they'd seen running away from Jason,

who was now lying fatally wounded.

They described him as about five foot nine,

and also, crucially, carrying a black holdall over his shoulder.

They said he was a scruffy appearance and wearing a dark overcoat as well.

Armed with eyewitness descriptions,

police immediately scoured the area.

Within hours, they had a breakthrough.

Police found a suspect,

and he was sleeping rough nearby,

and his description matched that given by the female witness

and the two male witnesses who had seen Jason dying in the road.

That suspect was a man who had come to Manchester from liverpool that night.

He was seen around the streets of Manchester

in the same area as Jason,

visiting some of the same clubs and pubs as Jason,

and had eventually got drunk and fallen asleep in a doorway

near piccadilly train station,

where he was found about two hours after Jason was actually stabbed

and ultimately arrested.

Had investigators caught a lucky break and found Jason's killer?

Manchester, February 1994.

Witnesses to the fatal stabbing of Jason comerford

had quickly led police to a suspect.

He fitted the description broadly

of the offender that had been seen running away,

and he was thoroughly interviewed, he was put on identification parade

so that the people who had seen the offender run away,

to see if they could identify him as that man.

But none of the witnesses could confirm

that he was the man they'd seen leaving the crime scene.

He was later released without charge when he was eliminated.

The police's best lead had come to nothing,

and other potential suspects proved equally frustrating.

The suspects had alibis and didn't match the description.

They were quickly eliminated

and the team came to a dead end.

Now, back at square one,

greater Manchester police comb through Jason's last known movements,

hoping for a clue.

Investigators did a cctv trawl

to try to establish where Jason had been

in the hours before his murder.

Of course, in 1994,

Manchester city centre didn't have many cctv cameras as it does now.

The images that were obtained were low-quality and grainy

and didn't exactly show as much as we might have wanted.

All we had was a view of Jason entering the original nightclub

he'd gone into that night.

It showed what he was wearing, what he looked like

and how he walked in.

And that was just as he went past the doorman

as part of a group of people in a line going in.

And images from the streets outside were even less conclusive.

The investigation team looked at all possible cctv in the area,

but came up with nothing that covered where the offence actually occurred

or the likely routes that the offender had taken to the scene

or away from the scene.

Cctv proved another dead end in the search for Jason's killer,

so detectives turned their attention

to the only physical evidence they had.

The knife was examined and processed

using conventional blood grouping tests

and also slp, or single locus probe,

DNA profiling tests,

which showed that the blood on the blade matched Jason comerford.

Everything that was done with that knife

confirmed it as the murder weapon.

But we got nowhere as regards to trying to find fingerprints,

dismantling the knife to see if we could see fingerprints

or other evidence within the handle construction of it.

Apart from the blood on the knife,

no other evidential material was recovered at that time.

They may have had the murder weapon,

but forensic scientists could not find any trace

of who had used the knife to stab Jason,

so it was forensically archived.

The investigation had hit a brick wall.

Everybody involved in this case was incredibly frustrated and disappointed,

and of course, there was still the threat of a stranger on the loose

going around Manchester, attacking people randomly,

and that was the greatest threat at that time.

When Jason comerford was killed in such a fashion,

it shocked the city centre and beyond, really,

because of the nature of the way in which he died.

It was motiveless, it was a stranger,

it was just chilling, really.

By may 1994,

three months on from Jason's murder,

all leads had dried up,

so greater Manchester police put out an appeal on the BBC's crimewatch,

hoping it would be the push needed for a witness to come forward.

Jason comerford was 21 when he was killed this year in Manchester.

He lived alone and worked locally at a textile company.

At around 2.45am on Friday the 25th of February,

Jason was stabbed near the corner of George Leigh street

and great ancoats street.

A short time earlier, he was seen talking to a man near the daily express building.

If that was you, please come forward.

The knife used in the attack is distinctive.

It has a black teflon coated blade

with the words "the hunter" printed on the handle.

We'd like to talk to anyone in the Manchester area who recognises it.

Hopes were raised by one caller who responded.

The crimewatch appeal did apparently trigger a phone call to police

with a name of someone who was regarded as either a prime suspect

or their name was given as the killer.

But as the name given was very common,

investigators could not identify who the caller was talking about.

We tried to get back to that caller and trace them,

but we could never do it.

Despite the media appeals,

the lack of forensic evidence turned the case stone cold.

Unfortunately, at that time,

there were no real suspects who could be attributed

to being Jason's murderer.

For nearly 16 years after Jason was brutally killed,

nothing moved on the case...

..Until 2010, when Martin bottomley,

now head of greater Manchester police's cold case unit,

decided to reopen the files.

We will always try our very best

to bring justice to the victim and the family.

So, we wanted to take a fresh look at it

and there were some new forensic techniques available.

Forensic techniques had advanced since 1994,

but re-examining the archive materials

taken from Jason's murder scene was not straightforward.

You've always got to be aware

that there may be something more sensitive coming in the future,

whether it be DNA techniques or examination techniques,

so you've not to use all that retained material

because, in a lot of cases, once that material has been used,

we can't then go back and re-examine it.

16 years on,

the DNA forensic breakthrough Martin was hoping for

was still just out of reach.

What sue said in 2010 was that, "if you'd wait two or three years,

"with the advances that I can see are coming on stream,

"we can probably get a good result for you on that occasion."

So, her advice was don't do too much with these swabs now.

"Let's leave it a bit. Let's try again in a couple of years."

The risk of destroying crucial forensic evidence

before science caught up was too great.

All Martin's team could do was to sit tight.

We had to put the case on the back burner.

Cold case work is very slow, very methodical and takes a lot of time,

and it's very detailed.

But we just had to wait.

Sadly, for some of Jason comerford's family,

it proved too long a wait.

Many members of his family died.

Jason's relatives, including his mum, dad, brother,

didn't get to see the outcome.

Not learning why Jason was killed

or by whom

compounded the suffering for the comerford family.

It may have prevented them from going through

the conventional stages of grief

and it's likely to have significant negative consequences

for a long time.

Martin was determined to get Jason's remaining family some closure,

but without anything substantial enough to revive the case,

the hunt for Jason's killer hit another brick wall.

Five more years passed with the case still unsolved...

..Until forensic scientist sue cherry's earlier prediction

finally came good.

In 2015, a new DNA technique became available

which we refer to as DNA 17,

which looks at further areas of DNA,

but also has the added advantage that the technique itself

is more sensitive than previous DNA techniques.

DNA 17 meant accurate DNA profiling

could be carried out on microscopic samples

collected from the crime scene for the very first time,

including the archived samples from the most crucial piece of evidence -

the murder weapon.

Part of the forensics team since 1994,

sue cherry returned to help crack the case.

In 2016, the decision was made to revisit the material

that had been retained at the forensic archive

in relation to the knife.

Small pieces of fabric which had been used in 1994

to sample blood staining and cellular material

from the knife blade and from inside the handle of the knife,

and to attempt DNA profiling on some very small samples.

The minute size of these forensic samples

was no longer an obstacle for sue and her team.

The techniques available enabled us to yield DNA profiles

from very small amounts of material.

So we could obtain DNA still from blood, saliva,

and also very small amounts of cellular material

that might have been transferred,

in this case we presume from the handler of the knife.

This fresh analysis of the carefully preserved samples

opened up a whole new Avenue for the detectives.

We obtained a mixture of DNA of a major profile,

which matched the deceased.

I was also able to resolve the profile of a second,

lower level contributor of DNA.

It wasn't a complete profile, but what it did allow us

to do under DNA 17 was to load the profile onto the DNA database,

and that came up with a list of 19 potential persons

who could be associated to having handled the knife.

Martin bottomley and the cold case review team could then apply

other search criteria, such as location and age,

to sift that information and decide if any particular person

of interest could be identified.

19 potential matches was a daunting starting point for Martin.

But one name quickly drew his attention.

Only two people lived in the area near where Jason was stabbed.

And of those two, one person in particular stood out

like a sore thumb because of the number of his convictions

related to knife crime and offensive weapons.

So he was a prime candidate for us to look at really closely.

That person was Geoffrey strike.

After more than 20 years of disappointing dead ends,

Martin finally had a prime suspect.

Investigators now did a full background check on Geoffrey strike.

Geoffrey strike fit the description of the offender,

so we had to look at his criminal history, what we knew about him.

Did he live near the area of the offence? Did they know each other?

The more police looked into strike,

the more disturbing the picture became.

Geoffrey strike had a long history of criminal offences.

He had 16 convictions for possession of offensive weapons, mainly knives,

but on one occasion he had attacked police officers

with a samurai sword.

He didn't injure them, fortunately,

but he damaged the police car they were in.

Quite chillingly, in October 1996,

when he was arrested for one of his offences of possession

of a blade, he threatened a police officer and said,

"f you, you little b, or I'll cut your throat."

There were a large number of convictions between 1994 and 1997.

And in particular five offences in 1994

within half a mile radius of the murder scene.

Geoffrey strike's dangerous convictions placed him

in central Manchester in the '90s.

But police didn't stop there.

We were able to establish that he lived within approximately 400 yards

to the scene of the murder.

He lived in the direction that the offender had walked away from

after stabbing Jason and dropped the knife.

The address he kept on giving the police was Victoria square

in Manchester, one of the flats there.

And it was an acquaintance's flat. So he was, in essence, sofa surfing.

Detectives were desperate to track down strike.

They first tried the lady who'd owned the flat back in 1994.

Unfortunately, she had passed away.

So we couldn't go to her.

We went on to do house to house enquiries in that location

to see if there was any residents who went back that far in time

and could remember him or remember the people

that lived there at that time.

They had aged. So that became unsuccessful, as such.

Geoffrey strike seemed to have vanished,

and police were running out of leads

until cold case officers made a startling discovery.

Geoffrey strike was in a psychiatric unit

within a Manchester hospital

and had been for two decades.

24 years after the brutal murder of young Jason comerford

in central Manchester, huge advancements in DNA profiling

had finally given cold case detectives a prime suspect.

Now 73 years old, Geoffrey strike was a man with an extensive history

of mental health issues and criminal convictions.

After attacking a police officer with a samurai sword

and damaging the police vehicle, he was sentenced for six months.

While he was serving that sentence,

he was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia

and he was transferred to a mental health unit in greater Manchester.

There are various forms of schizophrenia.

So, those who suffer may experience delusions, hallucinations,

they may hear voices, they may have paranoid beliefs,

and they may suffer from a general mismatch

between their mind-set and reality.

In rare instances, this may escalate into very serious violence.

Strike's last known address and history of knife crime

made him a prime suspect as Jason's killer.

But the evidence was circumstantial.

Martin needed hard proof.

Whilst Geoffrey strike was on the list of 19 persons identified

from the DNA database, that in itself did not tell us

precisely that his profile matched the killer's profile.

The only referenced profile available from Geoffrey strike

only examined six areas of DNA,

whereas the DNA test that I had performed looked at 17 areas of DNA.

So I requested a further reference sample from mr strike

so that I could compare a complete reference DNA profile from him

to the DNA results that i'd obtained previously.

With permission from strike's psychiatrist,

Martin's team paid him a visit at the mental health unit.

Strike's new DNA sample was submitted for analysis.

It gave us the answer we were looking for.

It was a match.

This forensic match showed decisively strike had handled

the knife used to murder Jason.

Martin's cold case had been revived.

In June 2018, Martin's team conducted an official interview

with Geoffrey strike in the presence of a lawyer and welfare support.

He made no comment to most questions put to him during his interview.

Probing for any detail,

detectives questioned strike about the ten inch knife.

Even when confronted with the key evidence,

strike's reaction remained the same.

He denied ever seeing or possessing or touching the knife.

Not simply saying he couldn't remember, he denied it.

Since a person diagnosed with schizophrenia is likely to be

suffering a mismatch between their mind and reality,

things that they say have to be approached with caution

and they may be unreliable.

But the scientific evidence was indisputable.

He denied all knowledge of the murder at that point.

Strike also made his feelings clear about the cold case

investigation being brought to his door.

The evidence that strike had handled the murder weapon was solid,

but DNA data alone would not be enough.

Martin needed more to build a watertight case

if he wanted to get strike convicted.

We had the match, but there's still a heck of a lot of work to do

so that we'd eventually be able to present a case file

to the cps to allow them to authorise a charge

against Geoffrey strike for Jason's murder.

And we still had a long way to go.

Now an investigation officer in the major incident unit,

Kevin Moore assisted Martin's team with preparing their case.

We had to review the initial murder investigation

from then 24 years earlier, put a case together,

and also at the same time investigate Geoffrey strike.

You needed that type of corroboration to support

the contention that he was the offender and take it forward.

Detectives' first task was to prove any other suspects

who'd come up in 1994 had been successfully discounted.

I had to highlight and explain how other suspects had been eliminated

from that initial investigation.

Some of that was people who were on the run, who'd escaped from prison.

They'd been in the area.

Others were people giving us the name of the offender

who actually was in prison at the time of the offence.

That then showed the investigation had been done properly

and thoroughly, and it took away any argument from a defence

point of view that we'd got the wrong man.

This process meant detectives had to revisit their very first suspect,

the one they'd arrested on the night of Jason's murder.

We had to go back to interview him and get evidence off him

about what he'd done on that night.

To say, "I didn't do this and I was looked at by the police wrongly.

"I was just on a night out and became the worse for wear

"from alcohol and ended up falling asleep

"on the streets of Manchester."

We went back to him and explained that the man who had actually

killed Jason had now been identified and was being prosecuted.

The sense of relief that this man showed was incredible.

He was just so relieved, explaining he'd lived with this,

this fear, for 24 years that the police would still come back

to him cos he knew how strongly he was suspected

at the time as the killer.

As well as initial suspects,

the original witnesses from 1994 also had to be tracked down.

The key witnesses in this case were a taxi driver who was passing

the scene at the time of Jason staggering out into the street,

two men in a truck on the way to work,

and a lady who had been with Jason.

We interviewed this lady, who'd made the original 999 call,

who'd met up with Jason.

And there were many other witnesses

we had to trace and interview, as well.

Without the evidence they provided,

we wouldn't have had that supporting evidence to take the case forward.

Their eye witness accounts were key to this prosecution.

The corroborating evidence against strike was stacking up,

but Martin and Kevin knew which piece should deliver a conviction.

The key piece of evidence in this case was always the knife.

Having the murder weapon found at the scene,

it's like manna from heaven.

You don't get it in many cases.

And to then have that murder weapon fully identifiable

as the weapon used to kill Jason,

with his blood and DNA on it,

the offender's blood and DNA within that knife

to show that he'd handled it, was just key evidence.

It was evident from the very start that forensics would be the key

to opening this investigation, taking it forward,

and leading it to a conclusion. It was absolutely critical.

Martin and Kevin's teams diligently built

a comprehensive case against strike.

We had the DNA evidence,

we had the previous convictions which were highly convincing

in terms of strike's ability to carry out this type of crime,

we had the contextual information in terms of the witnesses at the scene

describing strike and his backpack.

I was convinced that this case was extremely strong

and would proceed very smoothly through the cps to the court

in a short space of time.

In November 2018, my unit submitted the prosecution file

to the cps for a charging decision.

A few months later,

the crown prosecution service gave their verdict on the submission.

That was rejected in February of 2019,

saying there was no case to proceed with on legal grounds.

Unbelievably, the cps in the north west said,

"no, not enough evidence."

So, as is their right, greater Manchester police appealed.

Again, that appeal was turned down.

We went higher.

It went through the hierarchy of greater Manchester police,

going to the highest level that the police could appeal the decision.

We took it to an assistant chief constable,

who also appealed the cps decision.

That appeal was also turned down.

It was a series of devastating blows for Martin and Kevin.

The cps even questioned their key exhibit.

I was convinced we had more than enough evidence to take this

case to court, but the cps were concerned that a knife is a moveable

object and someone else other than the killer could have touched it.

I appreciate the cps think about these things in a different way

to investigators, but it was incredibly frustrating

and I could not understand the approach

they were taking at that time.

I felt quite incensed by that decision.

Because...

..You just don't get the kind of evidence we had in this case.

When you think it was an innocent man, 21 years old,

going home, attacked by a stranger for no reason

in the street in the middle of the night, a horrendous act of violence,

and to not be willing to give a chance of prosecution

of that case I found just a really, really bad and wrong decision.

25 years on from Jason's murder...

..Martin and Kevin were so close to a conviction.

I knew the police had exhausted all the options,

but I also knew about the victim's right to review.

The right to review scheme allows victims and families

to request a review where a decision not to proceed

with a criminal case has been made.

So we spoke to Jason's brother and asked him

if he would like to appeal that decision, as well.

It helped that Darren comerford was a qualified lawyer.

He knew the circumstances of the case,

he knew the strength of the evidence,

he has a legal mind himself, so he knew where this should go.

Darren comerford, as the family representative,

submitted that appeal, and that was the final appeal process.

Decades of investigation and the pursuit of justice

now depended on this one last review.

The case was transferred to an independent qc in London,

and in very short order the decision came back.

A quarter of a century after Jason comerford was murdered,

detectives' attempts to charge his alleged killer,

Geoffrey strike, had been repeatedly knocked back.

The fate of the case now hung on a last ditch appeal

made by Jason's brother, Darren.

Chief inspector Martin bottomley anxiously awaited the decision.

When Darren appealed to the cps, the decision came back

that Geoffrey strike should be charged with murder.

That decision was critical, it was crucial,

and it was the right decision.

I think there was surprise...

..And shock, really,

in Manchester that finally there'd been a breakthrough.

I felt impressed by what the police had achieved.

I felt pleased for the family.

Because when we broke the story saying that Geoffrey strike,

who was 75 at the time, had been charged,

there was quite a reaction online,

including members of Jason's family,

who were expressing their relief that finally they might see justice.

After formally charging Geoffrey strike with murder,

detectives were granted full access to his medical records

to help prepare the case for trial.

His psychiatric medical notes dated back to the '60s.

That involved us reviewing over 80,000 pages of medical notes

and accounts, both physical paper

and I think it was something like 18,000 pages of digital records.

Investigating officer Kevin Moore was staggered by what they found.

We found in those records

three occasions that after he was interviewed for the murder in 2018

that he had actually spoken about the murder to three people

within the psychiatric profession.

In those conversations, he freely admitted his involvement

in the killing, claimed to have been acting in self-defence.

But crucially he admitted the incident had occurred.

And that he had actually killed the man.

That became further corroboration to our case.

So we obtained statements from those three medical staff.

Strike speaking out about his crime came as no surprise to Martin.

Everyone involved in the investigation

was satisfied at this point.

The case was going to move forward to crown court,

but with the overwhelming evidence, we always suspected that

Geoffrey strike would eventually admit his offence.

The deep dive into strike's medical records

also revealed more disturbing information.

Incredibly, Geoffrey strike was due to be released

from the mental health unit in November 2019,

as he was deemed no longer a threat to the public.

It was cold case officers' hard work that had quickly changed

that evaluation.

Geoffrey strike was deemed to pose a moderate risk of harm to self

or to others and he was housed at a medium security psychiatric unit,

but when he became a suspect in the murder investigation,

he was transferred to a high security psychiatric unit.

Strike's extensive medical records offered no clue why

he had killed Jason comerford, but they did give a Fuller picture

of Geoffrey's state of mind 25 years earlier.

Those mental health notes showed that he was suffering

from paranoid schizophrenia before 1994.

He'd come out of prison, and when he returned to prison in 1996,

he was still suffering from paranoid schizophrenia.

But there was no treatment, there was no medication

that had been provided to him within that time.

He'd not magically become well.

And therefore, in 1994, he'd clearly been a paranoid schizophrenic.

Geoffrey strike's murder trial was scheduled for December 2020.

In the months leading up,

a full review of his psychiatric history was undertaken.

That led to the correct view that in 1994,

when he committed this act of violence,

he was suffering from paranoid schizophrenia.

It was agreed by all professionals involved -

the crown prosecution service, the forensic psychiatrist,

the defence psychiatrist - that the most appropriate outcome to the

trial would be that Geoffrey strike should plead guilty to manslaughter.

Geoffrey strike was able to claim that it wasn't murder,

it was manslaughter due to diminished responsibility

due to his psychiatric illness,

and ultimately that's what he pleaded guilty to

in December of 2020 at Manchester crown court.

The manslaughter plea took strike's schizophrenia into account.

But the court still had to decide an appropriate sentence.

The ruling came almost 27 years after Geoffrey strike

took Jason comerford's life.

After a Manchester crown court hearing,

Geoffrey strike was sentenced to an indefinite hospital order

and the judge commented that he may never be released at all.

An indefinite hospital order is the equivalent

of a prison life sentence but in a secure unit setting.

Given his age, he's unlikely to ever be released.

The court finally delivered the justice

that Martin and Kevin's teams had fought so hard for

and Jason's surviving family deserved.

Darren has shouldered a lot of this for many years.

He's had the burden of missing his brother every single day.

He visits his grave regularly, where his mum and dad also lie at peace.

He actually missed the final words of the judge

when strike was sentenced.

He left the courtroom early to lay flowers at Jason's grave

before darkness set in.

But he now knows he's got justice for all his family.

It's one of the few times I think I've actually seen full closure

for the bereaved family members.

The brother, Darren, on the day of sentencing for this case,

in my view, there was true closure for him.

The police investigation and prosecution brought that closure.

This was the right result, but it took far too long for Jason

and his family to get justice.

Convicting a killer after nearly 30 years

didn't go unnoticed across the city of Manchester.

There was genuine surprise that after so long

the police had not given up and had got a result.

The fact that they were successful in this

gives hope to many families in greater Manchester

whose lives have been overshadowed by tragedy and unanswered questions.

And tells them that there still is a possibility

that that darkness might be lifted one day.

Jason comerford's murder case spanned almost three decades,

but detectives' perseverance paid off.

It's a case that Martin and Kevin will never forget.

This was a very unique case because of its age, the ups and downs,

but we got there in the end.

It's a job well done.

This case is an exceptional one, really,

because the perpetrator, Geoffrey strike,

killed Jason randomly. Completely unmotivated attack.

And it went unresolved for so long.

If somebody is brought to justice 20, 30, even 40 years later,

it's a fantastic feeling, and that's a great result.