Lawrence trial: clothes ‘contaminated’ says QC

A POLICE officer who went to Stephen Lawrence’s family home searched the house of a man suspected of his murder a week later, a court has heard.

Detective Constable Linda Holden had visited the murder victim’s relatives on 29 April, 1993 before being told to search Gary Dobson’s house in Phineas Pett Road, Eltham on 7 May.

Prosecutors claim that microscopic fibres found on clothes belonging to Dobson, 36, and David Norris, 35, prove that they took part in the gang attack that killed Mr Lawrence. But defence counsel for the pair claim that fibres, blood and hair were transferred on to the clothes by contamination.

Yesterday Ms Holden told a jury at the Old Bailey that she was certain she had not worn the same clothes to the Lawrence and Dobson homes.

Timothy Roberts QC, for Dobson, asked: “Didn’t you think to yourself, ‘just a minute, I’ve been to the Lawrence household just last week. It might not be a good idea for me to be at two different scenes’?”

She replied: “It was well over a week later and I didn’t think that I had any risk of contamination.”

Detective Chief Inspector Alison Funnell, who was then a police constable and used the surname Rickell, helped in the search of Dobson’s home and said she had only “basic training” in avoiding cross contamination of fibres.

The jury was told that after Dobson’s clothes had been sealed in police bags at Bromley police station, they were taken back to Eltham. There they were stored in the same disused cell where Mr Lawrence’s clothes had previously been kept.