Member-only story
A Killer Caught By His Own Daughter: The Murder of Melanie Road
The case was cold for three decades, until evidence came from a very unexpected source.
When a teenager from Bath was brutally murdered in 1984, police hunted high and low for her killer and repeatedly urged someone to come forward with information to bring him to justice.
However, investigators — and Melanie Road’s family — could surely never have predicted that it would be his own flesh and blood who held the key to putting the culprit behind bars. This is Melanie’s story.
A night out turns to tragedy
It was the early hours of June 9th 1984, and 17-year-old Melanie Road had been out at the Beau Nash nightclub in Bath’s Kingston Parade with her boyfriend and some of her friends.
They wanted to let their hair down ahead of their A-Level exams, which were due to start the following week and wouldn’t leave much time for socialising and late nights.
The club had closed at 2:00 AM and the group of friends began to walk through the city to their respective homes. Melanie’s boyfriend offered to call her a taxi, but she insisted she’d be fine walking. The journey was one she had done plenty of times before, and Bath was regarded as a safe…
