Detectives question offenders over discovery of female head in bag

Published on Saturday 3 January 2009 19:21

POLICE investigating the discovery of a woman's head in a bag are to question known offenders in the area, it emerged last night.

The dismembered head was initially thought to have been decades old, but police yesterday announced that new tests showed the woman may have died as recently as six months ago.

Officers also confirmed yesterday that she may have been as young as 14 years old, according to tests carried out on her teeth, but they believe she was probably older.

The eyeless head was discovered alongside a number of bones from the woman's upper torso in a blue IKEA bag on a public footpath in Newhaven, Edinburgh, close to a former bail hostel which housed serious offenders.

The hostel, Nichollfield, closed in 2006, and police say the woman could have died at any time from six months ago to 20 years ago.

The head was initially thought to have been mummified and possibly dug up from a grave, but it has now emerged that it is simply badly decomposed, a revelation that has focused detectives' minds on the possibility she met her death recently.

A woman walking along the path in the Hawthornvale area of Leith on Wednesday morning spotted the bag in the undergrowth.

Officers believe the head, which had long hair, may have been left near the path a day or two before it was discovered.

Lothian and Borders Police are now looking into those in the area with criminal convictions, as well as carrying out door-to-door enquiries, checking CCTV footage and checking missing person cases.

The discovery is being treated as a suspicious death. Police have ruled out the possibility that the victim was missing from the area and are checking potential matches from the national missing persons database.

However, detectives are still keeping an open mind about where the head came from and are still investigating the possibility it may have been stolen from a graveyard.

Detective Superintendent Allan Jones, who is leading the inquiry, said

"We've done DNA analysis on the skull and now have it confirmed as being that of an adult female. We don't know anything about the ethnicity. We need to do more pathological tests to give us the exact age.

"Right now, we are looking at the likelihood that the skull belongs to a female adult, aged 14 years or older, according to dental works.

"I would guess, however, that it belongs to someone older although we can't be sure. It has got the appearance of mummification, but it's just badly decomposed. We don't know if it's been buried or it's been kept in a building. At this moment in time we have nothing to go on as to how it was dismembered, if indeed it has been dismembered.

"We will be looking at people in the area with previous convictions."

DNA tests have already confirmed the grisly find is not the body of Edinburgh woman Louise Tiffney, who went missing from her home in the Dean Village in 2002, aged 43.

A Lothian and Borders Police spokesman said: "This is a public area used regularly by dog walkers and we are asking anyone who may have seen someone with a big blue IKEA bag to come forward.

"At this stage we cannot confirm when the bag was dumped but we believe it would have been relatively recently.