Identity of body in wrong grave to be revealed

Police and council officers began the grim task of exhuming remains from a plot in Hull’s Northern Cemetery last night as part of a criminal investigation into how the wrong body was released to the family of black former paratrooper Christopher Alder in November 2000, who died in police custody.

Mr Alder’s corpse was found in a mortuary last November when relatives of Grace Kamara, a 77-year-old Nigerian woman, arrived to collect her body for burial.

Mrs Kamara, who died of natural causes at her home in Hull in 1999, could not be found and it is thought she may have been buried in Mr Alder’s grave.

Mr Alder was finally laid to rest after a private ceremony on February 9, and the ashes of his niece Laura, 25, which had been scattered over the original grave in 2006, were due to be removed before the exhumation began.

Tests are due to be carried out in Sheffield today to identify the remains in the grave and results are expected this evening.

Det Supt Richard Fewkes, who is leading the South Yorkshire Police inquiry, said: “The exhumation is a key milestone in terms of trying to determine what’s happened and key to that will be the identification process.”

More than 100 witnesses have been interviewed by a team of up to 20 officers so far, but Mr Fewkes said it was still too early to say when the investigation might be concluded.

“We are reviewing in great detail events that span 13-and-a -half years and given that is the case, and given that we don’t want to leave any stone unturned in trying to establish what’s happened, it’s important that the inquiry does remain as focused and detailed as it has done to date.

“It’s important to understand that the families and friends of Grace Kamara and Christopher Alder deserve to understand and find out exactly what has happened and the only way to do that is to undertake a very detailed investigation.”

If the remains are Mrs Kamara’s her family would like them re-interred in the same plot, which is owned by Mr Alder’s sister Janet, who said she agrees. Hull Council would, however, need a new licence from the Ministry of Justice, after originally applying for permission to re-inter the remains in Hull’s Eastern Cemetery.