DNA that was found on Alesha MacPhail’s body matched the 16-year-old accused of her murder, a court has heard.
Forensic scientist Stuart Bailey told the jury that the odds of the intimate samples belonging to anyone else were more than a billion to one. The teenager still denies abducting, raping and murdering six-year-old Alesha.
Alesha’s body was found in a wooded area on the Isle of Bute on July 2nd 2018, the area was where a former Kyles Hydropathic Hotel on the island. The court heard how Alesha had suffered 117 injuries and died from significant pressure being applied to her face and neck. She was only days into the summer holidays when she was killed, she was staying at her grandparents’ house in Rothesay.
Stuart Bailey is the last prosecution witness to be called in the case by Iain MacSporran QC. Mr Bailey visited the crime scene, the flat on Ardbeg Road from where Alesha was abducted, and the home of the accused. He also examined clothing found on the shoreline. The court heard how DNA samples from the accused, his mother, Alesha’s grandparents, her father and his girlfriend were taken for comparative purposes. The jury was told DNA was taken from various samples from Alesha’s body. The accused’s DNA was found on the front of her neck, the odds of it being anyone else were more than one in a billion. Traces of DNA from the accused were also found on the back of her neck and her face, but those samples were not subject to a statistical forecast. A match for the accused’s DNA was also found on 14 parts of Alesha’s body, including bruising.
As there was a large quantity of samples on her body, Mr Bailey said it was “highly unlikely” they had got on to the child through anything other than direct contact. The court heard how some of the accused DNA was found on Alesha’s clothing which was left next to her body. Mr Bailey later told the jury that DNA matching the accused was recovered from a pair of jogging bottoms found on the shoreline, twisted with a pair of boxer shorts. The clothing had been hampered by their immersion in salt water but the DNA sample was recovered from inside the seam of the waistband of the jogging bottoms. Mr Bailey said no traces of Alesha’s DNA were found in the accused’s home.
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