One has every sympathy for Ms Bowman's family. Her murder is, of course, a tragedy.
However, the DNA database would not have been necessary to show that Lewis Sproston did not kill her. That only would have required comparing his DNA with the murderer's, found at the crime scene.
Genewatch presents the facts about the Bowman/Dixie case in its report "Would 114 murderers have walked away if innocent people’s records were removed from the National DNA Database?"
Genewatch wrote:
Sally Ann Bowman’s killer Mark Dixie was not on the DNA Database, however he did have previous convictions which took place before the Database was established. The case was solved when his DNA was taken following a fight in a bar, nearly nine months after the murder. The police officer who headed the investigation, Detective Superintendent Stuart Cundy, announced that the murder would have been solved much faster had there been a universal DNA database including everyone in Britain. However, this neglected to discuss how Wright’s DNA might have been included in this database. Adding adult volunteers onto the database would cost a lot of money and police time and be unlikely to catch any serious offenders, because they would simply not turn up to give their DNA. If DNA was taken at birth, in ten years’ time there would be a DNA database of every child under ten who had been born in Britain – but this would not have helped to catch any murderers or rapists. The children on the database would be vulnerable to identification and abuse by anyone who could infiltrate the system.
