- I could see Alicia's bed with her in it with the blankets up over her, and so I thought, 'OK, she's just sleeping.' I grabbed her arm, and her arm was stiff, and I dropped it. - On the morning of August 16 in 1980, 6-year-old Alicia O'Reilly was found dead in her bed. - She looked so ugly. I couldn't believe that this was my beautiful little girl lying on the bed. - What happened that night happens throughout New Zealand every day of the week ` parents put their kids to bed and wake up in the morning. It was just... beyond comprehension. - And he said, 'Mrs O'Reilly, I have to tell you that your daughter has been brutally murdered 'and severely sexually assaulted.' - It's a horrific crime. The rape and a murder of a little girl in her own bed in her own home. You know, that's where you tend to think you're safe. - For more than 40 years, police have been trying to solve the case. - I guess I've always wondered what the offender actually looks like. - But the questions remain. - Why did you pick our house? Had you been watching the two little girls? - I still don't understand... why. - For detectives who worked on the case, it's never left them. - This is a case that you can never give up on. - Now, after more than 40 years, there's renewed hope that police will find Alicia's killer. - We've been presented with a number of opportunities. This case is really in our minds truly solvable now. - Cold Case is bringing the investigation team together to review the unsolved rape and murder of Alicia O'Reilly. - It's a duty we owe to the victims of crimes like this that they're not forgotten. - I think all you have to do is stop and think, you know, what if it was my child? How would my parents feel 40 years later? - All I want is for him to be identified. Captions by Julie Taylor. Captions were made with the support of NZ On Air. www.able.co.nz Copyright Able 2021 - In 1980, I'd been four years in police, and so I was just in my detective constable training. Well, the Saturday morning, we were the weekend shift, and when Alicia's body had been found in the bedroom at Canal Rd, we came straight over. In those days, we used to go through and categorise everything in the house. It took days and days and days. I just found it beyond belief. Parents put their kids to bed,... - Goodnight, girls. - ...and go to sleep in their own bedroom. And to wake up in the morning and find your daughter's been raped and murdered in her bed is just` it was beyond my life experience. - When Alicia was born, she came into the world screaming. Literally. And it never really stopped. She was just one of those children, just a full-on child. If Alicia was awake, everyone in the house was awake. It was like she was trying to fit her whole life into six and a half years. I found out after she died that the Chinese meal that I'd made that night, she'd chucked it out the lounge room window. Apparently, the police found it outside the lounge room window. The night before Alicia was murdered, it was just an ordinary day. I had my boyfriend coming for dinner, and the girl that lived with me, her boyfriend was coming as well. And it was just a normal Friday night in the lounge room, watching Dukes of Hazzard. The girls had got into their jammies, into bed, and it was just an ordinary night apart from the fact that the weather had turned really, really bad. It was absolutely thunderous. - In the morning, Alicia's sister 8-year-old Juliet was the first one to get up and make herself breakfast. - I got up. I went down the hallway to go to the toilet. Juliet was in the dining room, and she had the heater on, and she was playing with her toys. And I thought it was really odd that Alicia wasn't up, because Alicia was up before everyone. And I remember saying to Juliet, 'Where's your sister?' And she said, 'Oh, she's sleeping.' And I went, 'Oh, thank God for that.' You know? (CHUCKLES) It was one of those, 'Oh, I'm gonna get a little bit more peace and quiet.' From where I was lying in the bed, I could see straight through to the girls' room, and I could see Alicia's bed with her in it with the blankets up over her. And so I thought, OK, she's just sleeping until a friend knocked on the door, and he had left his tobacco the night before. I actually said to him, you know, 'Can you please check Alicia for me?' And I remember him lifting the blanket back and then him turning quickly. And the look on his face was enough to... Yeah. I just knew that something really bad had happened. I think one of the... one of the hardest things for... a parent is to stand there, looking at your child and knowing that they've gone and that there's absolutely nothing that you can do to bring them back. Thank God for shock, because... this` my brain became like marshmallow. - It was the first constable who arrived at the house who found blood in the bed. - Well, the post-mortem showed that Alicia had been raped and murdered, and the cause of death was found to be suffocation. There was a hair found in Alicia's groin, which we believe may have been a pubic hair. And there was also semen samples that were recovered. - Alicia's father, Barry O'Reilly, was living in Perth. Police brought him into the station to tell him what had happened. - This guy's sittin' there, and in front of me, and he's just shaking. And I said, 'Are you OK? Are you OK? 'Are you all right?' And then he told me, and I just... (IMITATES WHOOSHING) And then that night, I was on the plane back to New Zealand and walked into the cyclone, which it was. I mean, you couldn't escape it. - The only memory that I have of Alicia's funeral is the white casket with the beautiful... the beautiful spring flowers. The day before, it was the end of the school term, and she'd asked me if she could take some freesias and daffodils to school for her teacher. And you know what the smell of freesias are like, so I have this lasting memory, and I love freesias even to this day. - Alicia's funeral was 10 days after her murder. By this stage, there were around 70 staff working on the homicide inquiry. - It was always difficult to understand why a person would pick on that house. And so the area canvass was a massive undertaking. Avondale was the main industrial area at the time. There was the Astley tannery, there was the Crown Lynn pottery, there was a lot of 24-hour shift workers, and public transport was in its infancy, so people used to finish their shift and walk home. So we had staff out there 2, 3 o'clock in the morning, stopping people, stopping cars, visiting factories. - There was forensic evidence gathered from Alicia's post-mortem, but in 1980, there was no such thing as DNA testing. - Where you had body fluids, the best we could hope for was to get a blood grouping. As a result of the blood grouping, we were able to eliminate an awful lot of people. - The pubic hair found on Alicia's groin offered more hope. Australian scientists had developed a process called neutron activation analysis. - That was a emerging scientific process, which would highlight the chemical composition of the hair. - The findings suggested the offender might work in either the paint or ceramics industry. But there were so many factories in Avondale, it was hard to narrow down. Scientists also suggested the hair could've come from someone with a Melanesian background. - Any person that was going through the area and saw a Maori or Polynesian about early 20s, a male. - Would you describe this person as your prime suspect? - Yes, I would. - Reasonably early in the investigation, there was a local person of interest. That person was subject to a lot of police attention and was unable to be eliminated at that time as a person of interest. We just worked horrendous hours. It just consumed your life. It was a shared determination that we wanted to ensure that this rape and murder of a 6-year-old was solved. - Eventually, the team of 70 detectives was scaled back. But for some, the work continued. - Alicia's case has never left me. Often I found myself, I'd wake in the middle of the night and think of something that perhaps we could do. - It wasn't until the late '90s that DNA could be used to solve historic crimes. - I then went looking, knowing what evidence we had at the time, and was confronted by documents that showed there were no exhibits that had been retained. - All I remember feeling was absolute rage... that the police had allowed this to happen. I think all hope was lost then. - Stuart Allsopp-Smith never stopped trying to push the case forward. Finally in 2019, just as he was about to retire, there was a breakthrough. - Some hair samples were found on a scientific file. - The hair samples had been returned from the nuclear facility in Australia, but they hadn't been archived in the usual place. - Yeah, I was... stunned, but I was... also thrilled that it provided an opportunity to get some answers. - The hair was sent to a DNA laboratory in Pennsylvania. Remarkably, they were able to extract a partial profile. - I'm thinking, oh, they've got a partial DNA ` well, that's something. - Could the partial profile lead to Alicia's killer? - It's unfinished business and has been for the whole of my career. This case is now imminently solvable, and with the public's help, we can actually solve it. - On the morning of August 16 in 1980, Alicia O'Reilly was found raped and murdered in her own home. The entire country was horrified. But the case has remained unsolved for more than 40 years. Now hair samples which were thought to be lost have been uncovered, and a full review is underway. Ngahiraka Latimer is the senior detective sergeant leading that review. - It is the murder and rape of a 6-year-old child, who was in her own bed, sleeping next to her sister, with her mother across the hallway. It was a terrible event. - Detective Amanda Reed knew immediately that she wanted to be involved in the review. - I was given a little bit of a rundown of what it was about, and I was like, yep, I'm there. That's why I joined the CIB. This is what I do. - Police intelligence analyst Devlyn-Jae White's skills are vital to the team. - As we've gone to learn about just how special Alicia was, it just makes you wanna work that extra bit harder, I think. - And recently retired Stuart Allsopp-Smith brings his 40 years of experience with this case to the table. - It's all about the victims. And Nancye and Barry have lost their daughter. Alicia can't be brought back, but they can have their questions answered. - The Cold Case review into the rape and murder of Alicia O'Reilly is about to get underway. - The scene is 70 Canal Rd, Avondale. The attack on Alicia occurred between late night 15th of August through to when she was discovered the following morning. Dev, you put together the timeline. - I guess one of the memorable things was that all occupants of the house watched Dukes of Hazzard at about 7.30 that night until about 8.30. - Alicia and Juliet have gone to bed, and then the flatmate has observed them still awake and switched off the light. - Yes. I believe Alicia had gone to sleep a little bit earlier than Juliet. Juliet actually continued to listen to her transistor radio and read a book. - The light was turned out in the girls' room at 9 o'clock. The next time the team can be certain of is 6.30 the next morning, when the flatmate's boyfriend woke up. - An alarm had set off and woken him up, and he went to grab a drink from the kitchen dining room area. In that area was where Juliet was hanging out herself. She had fetched herself breakfast and was, I think, reading again. - That was unusual. Juliet was a heavy sleeper, and it was always Alicia who would wake early. - REED: The reason why she woke up was because she was cold and had noticed that the window was open. So she called out to her sister, thinking that she'd possibly opened it up in the middle of the night. There was no response, so she just got up and closed the window and had also noticed that this curtain was askewed, and she realised that's not normal either but, again, didn't sort of think much of it. - These weren't the only changes in the room. - She went to turn on the light and realised that there was no light bulb. - The bedroom door was also shut. The door was always left open because the handle was missing, so they used a fork as a makeshift handle. - When she decided to get out of bed, realised the door was shut, kind of look for the fork, which would normally be in the door ` that wasn't there. - The scene leaves us with lots of questions ` where the offender entered, why the offender removed the light bulb, how the offender has pulled the curtain wire off the hook. So when they did the scene examination back in the 1980s, they found this eye on the floor that looks as though this eye has come out of where the curtain should be hanging. - Why's the curtain like this? Is it because somebody's climbed in? That person climbing through a window is taking a big risk, because there is a table in front of the window that's on unstable ground. You're gonna make a hell of a lot of noise. - Mm. - Is it somebody who's known to the address? Is it somebody who has either visited the house and knows the layout? Is it a total unknown? And if it's a total unknown, you know... - It's pretty brazen, isn't it? - It is brazen. Do you know the address well enough to kind of avoid certain areas where these people would be sleeping? So, therefore, do you know the layout? If you know the layout, then you're not really gonna be going in through a window where there's a rickety table. - The reconstruction from the 1980s documents is that the person has entered Alicia and Juliet's room, has closed the door,... - Mm. - ...has, for some reason, removed the light bulb and then perhaps thrown it from the window. And that action of trying to remove the light bulb and throw it, the curtain has come off, and they've re-secured it on an angle. - So you've got someone who doesn't want to be disturbed potentially in the room so that the door was shut and the fork isn't in the door. And the taking out of the light bulb certainly indicated to us at the time that the person, if they were disturbed potentially, wanted to be able to get away. - That's a big risk to sort of do all this while you've got two sleeping girls. Juliet's bed was literally underneath where that bulb was, and` cos it was quite high off the ground. You couldn't just stand there and reach up; you're actually probably gonna have to get up on to something higher. So would it be standing on Juliet's bed? Well, then, if he did that, well, then you're gonna wake her up. - How did the offender go undetected not only in the house where four adults were sleeping but also in the bedroom that Alicia shared with her 8-year-old sister Juliet? - When we look at Juliet and Alicia's bedroom, we see Juliet's bed is closer to the door and Alicia's is against the wall. Now, an offender moving through the house has entered this room and has gone past Juliet's bed to Alicia's. - And if you are a total stranger and it's dark, you'd be stubbing your toe on the edge of a bed, you'll be creaking on uneasy flooring. Why didn't Juliet wake up? - How it was that the offender has walked straight past Juliet and attacked Alicia in such a manner that if she was conscious at the time, she would've cried out. And for Juliet to sleep through, I think for... Juliet's sake, it is actually a good thing. So based on what we know, have we identified where the point of entrance is? - No, I don't think so. There are too many unanswered... questions to really pin it down. The possibilities of was it someone known, was it a total stranger, was it somebody who was vaguely familiar with the house? - We felt at the time there was some connection that the offender had with the scene ` whether they had lived there, visited there. It just was hard to comprehend that it was just a random person walking past and rape and murder a 6-year-old in her bed. It didn't sit with us. - Yeah. - Yeah. And that's the same feeling that we have. It doesn't sit with us either. - Yeah. - Police are prepared to reveal an astonishing find that no one in the team could've anticipated. - All right, let's talk about when we first kicked off our investigation. And we sat down; we started to review the boxes. - I actually remember it. Um... I was sitting here. I was going through my box of goodies, and Dev was doing her box of goodies, and Nikki was over here, and she's kinda like, 'Well, this is weird.' - I open the box and find an envelope. I look inside the envelope, and then I call out to Dev and Amanda, and I say, 'Hey, come and have a look at this.' And it was a pretty cool moment for us. I open the envelope, and... we see swabs. And those swabs are labelled 'Alicia O'Reilly ` vaginal swabs'. We've got a DNA opportunity. - We've got a DNA opportunity of our offender. - Yeah. - There were high fives, I have to say. Just like, wow, this is... yeah, amazing. Awesome. - We then knew we had real hope, and we had... a real opportunity to solve it. (INDISTINCT CHATTER) (ELECTRONIC HUMMING) - Everyone talks about what the future will look like. (ETHEREAL MUSIC) We asked ourselves what it should feel like... (ELECTRONIC POP MUSIC) ...because what's the point of all this new technology unless it feels... amazing? - 40 years ago when Alicia O'Reilly was raped and murdered, there was no such thing as DNA evidence. Forensic evidence was gathered during her post-mortem but destroyed six months later. Now the team reviewing the file has made a huge, unexpected discovery. A vaginal swab has been discovered in an envelope at the bottom of a file box and may hold the key to identifying the offender. - I'll never forget the call I got from Nikki and said we've got vaginal swabs from Alicia O'Reilly. And I just... I was stunned. I said, 'But all the exhibit sheets show they were destroyed.' I actually thought you were having me on. - I do remember you asking me to repeat myself a couple of times just so that you heard me right when I said that we'd found the swabs. - Yeah. - After our high five moment, we realise, actually, there's a lot of testing that will need to be done. This swab that we found is 40 years old. The questions are ` will it still be viable for DNA testing? - We don't know maybe what environmental conditions that sample has come into contact with. You know, DNA can be affected by heat and moisture, and if it's not stored in the right way, it might have a detrimental effect on what we can do with it today. - Sadly, the results were not as conclusive as everyone was hoping for. - So, with the swab, we were able to get partial DNA profiling results. - But given the extraordinary find, the team decided to ask the mortuary if there was a chance they'd kept any evidence relating to the swab. - It took quite some time for him to come back to us. But eventually he did and confirmed that they had found the slides that were taken at the time of Alicia's post-mortem. - For ESR, it was an even bigger challenge trying to get DNA from a 40-year-old slide. - Ordinarily, if this was a case from today, we wouldn't do any DNA profiling on the slide; we would just use the slide to see was there sperm present, for instance. - When the slide was first created, no one could've anticipated that it would been to be deconstructed. The biological material would've been swiped on to the glass and a chemical adhesive added to keep the cover slip in place. - Entellan actually makes the cover slip stick hard. It's very difficult to take off, because the purpose is to make it not able to come off. In this particular case, it took four days. - But no one knew yet if the DNA had been damaged in the process. - The next part is wanting to actually get that DNA off the slide, and that's essentially scraping off the DNA into a tube. - Despite the challenges, this time, the results were excellent. - They had an improved offender's DNA profile and also the Y chromosome DNA profile for our offender as well. And that was a high five moment again for us. The main expectation is that we will find the offender, that we will be able to run it through our database, and we will get a hit. - So, in this instance, we haven't found a link to either the crime sample data bank or the DNA profile data bank. - When the DNA database search came back negative, it was a... a bit quiet in the office. - For Alicia's mum, Nancye, the development has also brought a clamour of emotions. Stuart Allsopp-Smith was the one to break the news. - Wow, my heart. We thought everything had been destroyed. And I said, 'Have you got a DNA from it?' He said, 'We've got a full DNA profile.' Oh! My heart lifted until he told me that nothing had pinged. So, you know, it's like this. You know? It's up, down, up down. - There are a lot of highs in an investigation like this and a lot of lows. Really, my role is to make sure that... to not lose momentum, to not lose motivation. So, we have an offender's profile ` standard DNA profile ` and we also have the Y-STR profile. - It didn't match to anybody, which can mean a couple of things. It could mean that they've never actually had their DNA taken, or perhaps they just haven't committed an offence to have that, or they have perhaps left the country. - Or they're no longer alive. - Correct, yep. - Yep. - Even if the offender is dead, the team still has a chance of identifying him. They have the offender's Y chromosome profile, and the Y chromosome is shared by all immediate male relatives. - It allows us to get an elimination DNA sample from a son or a brother of a person of interest who may no longer be alive. And by having that sample, we're able to eliminate all of the males on that biological line. - Having the DNA of the man who raped and murdered Alicia means the 40-year-old case can be solved. However, now it's a process of elimination. For some, that's provided relief. - Back in the '80s, I remember there was a local family, and their son was put forward as a suspect. Has any work been done on that boy and his family? - We can say without doubt that that person was not involved and no one from that family were involved` was involved. Everybody in that family was relieved and very, very emotional. - They had this hanging over their family for 40 years. So to actually give them a clear answer that it's not that person, for them was very emotional. And it was emotional for our team as well. And so now we move on to actually the question is ` who is our offender? And in the file in the 1980s, they had over 650 persons of interest. - Mm-hm. - Where did those persons of interest come from? - This was made up of males who lived in the area, people that were known to Nancye and the house and the occupants, people who had offended and had come across police's radar previously. - But with us, we were keeping an open mind, so not just anybody of a Melanesian race. We were looking at everybody, so our pool had grown quite a lot. - It's basically doubled from the 650. We're looking at about 1200 potential persons of interest. We looked through every single file and job sheet and recording from the original investigation, and basically plucked out any other essentially male who possibly could've been the offender. - The huge area canvass phase carried out in 1980 has become even more valuable to the team today. - Sexual offenders, and offenders in general, do have a propensity to offend within a close location of their base. So, a base may be their residential location, an address of family members or close friends or their place of work. That familiarity likely adds a sense of confidence and ability to maybe be less easily detected. - Hundreds of names were added to the current persons of interest list from the area canvass alone. - If you're male and your name's in that 15 boxes, we're gonna come and talk to you. And if you're not there any more, we'll come and talk to maybe a brother or a child. - It's a mammoth task gathering DNA samples from more than 1200 people. But there have been further technical advances that could help the team hone in on the offender sooner. - So, back in the 1980s, the primary forensic focus was fingerprint lifts. And when they did the fingerprint lifts, they were all examined, but there were some that were unidentified. - Yes. We're getting our fingerprint technicians to relook at them. Now we can probably search on the partials. Back then, you wouldn't be able to use them. - Can the unidentified prints be linked to the offender? And can modern-day fingerprinting technology identify who he is? - More than 40 years after the rape and murder of Alicia O'Reilly, police have made a significant breakthrough. They have a full DNA profile of the offender. But without a positive match in the DNA database, the team now has to eliminate persons of interest one by one. Now they're hoping fingerprinting advances might help them narrow their search. - We were able to trace and locate all of the fingerprint lifts that were taken at the time. We gave them to our fingerprint technician. From that, he has been able to determine that we have a number of lifts suitable for suspect comparison that have not been identified. The lifts that we focus on are those unidentified from bedroom two, which is Alicia's room, in particular some of the items that may have been touched within that room. - In the past, partial prints were difficult to search and identify. But now the digital database can map the unique reference points of a partial print and search for possible matches. - A lot of people who perhaps were offenders back in early post-1980 would've had their fingerprints taken but not necessarily DNA. So if we're going to go and talk to somebody that doesn't have DNA, so we're going out there to get their DNA but they have their fingerprints on our system, we will nominate that person to our fingerprint technician to do a comparison against the unknowns. - If there is a match, then what that will tell us is that that person was in that room, and it gives us another opportunity to be able to go out and talk to that person and find out why. - There is one unidentified print in particular that the team is interested in. - Something that kind of piqued our interest on relooking at it was the fact that there were unidentified prints taken from the lampshade that the light bulb had been taken out of. And because of the height of the lampshade, it would've needed to have been held or steadied to remove it. And because of that, these could be the offender's fingerprints on there because of having to hold it and twist it. I think Nancye probably did change her light bulbs and things like that, but we've actually had, you know` we've obviously had her prints; they're not her prints. And because of the height, they would've had to have maybe stood on something. There's a chair that's positioned in between Alicia and Juliet's bed. Had that chair been moved, and is that how they've been able to hold on to it because they weren't standing on the edge of a bed? - Juliet in her interview says that she listened to her transistor radio before she went to sleep, and she placed that on the chair. The following morning, that transistor radio wasn't there, and police, when they did the search of the room, found it amongst Juliet's blankets. - There's certainly been a number of activities taking place in that bedroom that I'm sure they haven't just been done for no reason. We look at the removal of the light bulb. We look at the door handle and the fork is no longer in there. All these things to my mind indicate that this wasn't some quick, un-thought-through criminal act. - The way Alicia was discovered also raises significant questions about the offender's behaviour. - It does appear that the bedspread on top has been covering her face. And she's fully clothed in her pyjama trousers and her pyjama top and also wearing a dressing gown. - Is this to slow somebody down in noticing that she's deceased? Or is it more psychology behind it? - I think people don't realise that the man that murdered her redressed her. - I would be thinking what would be the purpose of that person doing that? Is it a result of guilt behaviour where somebody feels remorseful, and they're attempting to make the scene look more palatable for themselves? Or is it just something that's occurred out of necessity because of something else that's happening in the scene at the time? We also are interested in the victim choice and the fact that there was another child in the room at the time. So we would be thinking about the confidence of the offender, knowing that there was another person that could be woken in the room. - For everyone involved in this investigation, they struggle to understand what sort of person could rape and murder a 6-year-old girl. - What do we actually know about this offender? From 1980, we knew he was male, and we felt was likely to have some type of criminal offending in his background. - Is it somebody who's targeting children specifically or someone who's after rape? - And why Alicia and not Juliet? - HIRA: Alicia was younger. We might be thinking that potentially he has a preference for younger children. We may also be thinking that he may have chosen Alicia because he already knew of her or had seen her before. - For someone to commit a crime like this, they must have had some kind of precursor in offending to this, whether that be similar in nature in regards to the molestation of a child. - Peeping and peering into homes. - Peeping and peering. - Or even burglary, because... - Burglary. - ...cos you've got four adults in the house, so, you know, it is somebody who has been able to perhaps break into houses before without being detected. - Someone who's built up an unhealthy interest and fantasised perhaps about something like this. - Well, I mean, he could've been hanging around schools in the area. - Mm. This actually is the end result of something that's occurred and been building in someone, right? - And not necessarily known offences but just that kind of activity, that precursor activity that is just experienced by his close loved ones. - There are a number of risk barriers to overcome in a crime like this. Not only was there a sexual element to the crime with a child, but also there's the element of being an intruder and going into someone's home. So there's a lot of different variables that make that quite a risky crime to engage in. - When I think about the offender, I struggle to comprehend how he found himself going into that actual house and why that house. - Why did you pick our house? Had you been watching the two little girls? Had you been watching them from afar? And I think probably I will never, ever have the answer to this ` the did she suffer? I think that's every parents' nightmare. You don't wanna go there, really. Mm. - Police have uncovered an incredible opportunity to find the killer of Alicia O'Reilly. The man who raped and murdered the 6-year-old girl in her bed in 1980 left behind his DNA. Now police have recovered that DNA and have his full profile. - There's a part of me that's got one foot in 2021 and another foot in 1980. I don't think I like the feeling. It's like having to relive the nightmare all over again. And it's the waiting, waiting, waiting. - When I reflect on where we were in 1980 and how this could be resolved, we were really needing a confession. We did not have the luxury of being able to absolutely eliminate one person of interest against another. - As one of the team described it to me, we have the golden ticket. We just need` (CHUCKLES) We just need the information to lead us to who the actual person is. - The task of identifying the offender is now a labour-intensive one, with more than 1200 persons of interest to work through. - As the weeks went on, we saw that this list was getting bigger and bigger, and so we knew that we had to have some sort of method. We have DNA, which is our real gold standard, but we obviously need a sample to compare that with, so we wanted to add a little bit of a method to the madness of just door-knocking on 1200 people's doors. - So, the matrix is just a method that we can use to priorities suspects. - The behavioural science unit has been working with the team to come up with a series of markers, or characteristics, to look for. - Well, primarily, we'd be looking for markers of criminal behaviour in general as well as looking for markers of this particular crime. We also look at childhood history, employment history, relationship history. - So, the main indicator for us is, we've mentioned, is the geographical. So then if they lived in the immediate surrounding area, as we widen out, they would populate higher on their list. - Yeah, that's exactly right. It's just so that we can prioritise those that are physically closer to those that live in surrounding suburbs or even further out, yeah. - And then we look into their background, their history, if they've got some previous offending. - Yeah. - Obviously, previous offending of a particular nature that might interest us ` you know, something very similar to what has occurred here. - Could the offender have committed a similar crime? Or could it be his first offence of this type? - So, we may have someone who has an extensive criminal history who is very confident using violence, has experience using violence before. We also may have someone who may be quite socially withdrawn, who may be experimenting or fantasising, maybe doesn't have a lot of sexual outlets, so it's good for us to consider all the different pathways. - We don't always have records of that kind of behaviour, and it does mean really delving into anything that we do have available. The more red flags, or indicators, the higher they rank in the wider matrix. And that indicates to us that that's someone that we should go visit. - For moths, police have been approaching people on the high-priority list, asking for DNA samples. - It's more of 'we wanna tell you Alicia's story', not 'we're here because of the rape and murder of a 6-year-old.' That approach does not work, (CHUCKLES) but telling Alicia's story does. - The response has been overwhelmingly cooperative. More than 100 samples have been collected so far. None is a match. - Alicia would write on anything, as you can see. And she wasn't very good with her spelling. 'Mummy, I jot you a present.' But she did well. And this one I absolutely love. She had to do lines. 'I do not run inside.' And when she brought it home, I remember laughing, because that was Alicia. (LAUGHS) I hope that she was a happy child. She didn't have a lot, but she was a very loving child. You know, I'd walk into the lounge room, and she'd be standing up on the couch, and she'd throw herself into my arms. You know, you'd go backwards. 'I love you, Mummy.' You know? Oh, and that's her hand. She had stubby little fingers like mine. (CHUCKLES) Yeah. - Across the Tasman, Barry O'Reilly's mementos are also the drawings of a little girl. - 'Dear Dad, I love you very much. I have been going crazy to see you.' (CHUCKLES) - In a cruel twist, Nancye and Barry O'Reilly have lost both their daughters. Seven years after Alicia was murdered, Nancye and Juliet were travelling in a car when they were hit by a drunk driver. But for Nancye, the grief is different. - The man that... was in the car that killed Juliet did not go out with the intention that morning that he was going to kill Juliet Eve O'Reilly. The man that broke into our house in 70 Canal Rd, his intentions were to do something that was illegal, criminal, whatever. I can't quite get over that or around that. Do I have hope that maybe we might get the answers? Yeah, I've got a little bit of hope, not a whole lot of hope. I've gotta keep a lid on it. That's for my own emotional protection. - For the first time in this 40-year-old case, police have a chance to positively identify Alicia's killer, but they need the public's help more than ever. - I wanna make it quite clear that the nominated suspects in the 1980s are not the offenders. And we don't know who the suspect is. We do have a list that's been created of a number of` over 1200 people, but our offender may not be on that list. So we need information from the public to be able to help solve this case. - You know, perhaps family who live in the area may have had other family visiting who wouldn't have been captured in that area canvass. - Had your family member ` a husband, a son, a grandfather, an uncle ` been acting strangely at the time? Did you think when you heard the news about Alicia being murdered that it could've been him? What I'm urging you to do now is please, please get a family member to do a DNA sample, if for nothing else but to eliminate that person you had doubts about. And what I would like to say if the man is still alive ` we're coming for you. We're coming for you. - I have a photograph of Alicia on the wall, and every time I start work in the morning, I see Alicia's face. And when I leave in the evening, I see her face as well. So my thoughts are always about Alicia, and when I think about Alicia, I think about her family and her parents and being able to resolve this case for her. - It would be a highlight, an absolute highlight to have this case resolved, and I have no doubt that the team will do so. - I just want this waiting to stop. I just want this waiting to stop. If there's anyone out there that can help my waiting to stop, please come forward. (GENTLE MUSIC) Captions by Julie Taylor. Captions were made with the support of NZ On Air.