Cold-case mystery body to be exhumed next week

By collecting DNA material from her thighbone and teeth, forensic experts hope they will be able to name the woman, whose naked body was discovered at a roadside near Sutton Bank in 1981.

Her remains, which are buried at Malton Cemetery, will be disinterred in the early hours of Tuesday, January 24.

The cemetery is to be closed from Monday morning and will probably remain out of bounds for more than two days while police carry out the sensitive operation.

Officers will put up a barrier and forensic tent in the cemetery to protect the scene before the exhumation begins at midnight.

The grave will be dug manually in a process expected to last seven hours. The woman’s remains will then be taken away so DNA samples can be obtained before being reinterred on the Wednesday morning.

A minister will perform a short service as the skeleton is returned to the grave. North Yorkshire Police will lay a wreath at the ceremony.

The force, which has already informed families whose relatives are buried near the woman’s grave, is to distribute 500 leaflets to Malton residents and businesses to explain the process.

The Yorkshire Post exclusively revealed last week that a coroner had given police permission to carry out the exhumation.

It is the most significant development yet in a major cold case review, aimed at identifying eight bodies that were found in North Yorkshire between 1981 and 2008.

Since the Sutton Bank mystery was featured in the Yorkshire Post’s Forgotten Victims last year, two families have approached police to say they could be related to the woman.

The case, which became known as the “Nude in the Nettles”, began on the morning of Friday, August 28, 1981. Police in Ripon received a call from a well-spoken man who refused to give his name for “national security” reasons but told them: “Near Scawton Moor House you will find a decomposed body.”

Officers found the remains to the side of an unclassified road leading from Sutton Bank to the villages of Scawton and Rievaulx.

The woman was 5ft 2in, aged between 35 and 40, and may have been a mother. Her body had been there for up to two years.

The case was officially recorded as an “unexplained incident” by the Home Office, but now detectives are understood to be investigating the possibility that the woman was murdered.