'Cold case' reopened

Detectives in a 'cold case' squad - similar to that in TV's Waking The Dead programme - will dust off files containing details on the gruesome murder of Maria Requena in January 1991.

The Manchester woman's body was found by anglers after it had been hacked to pieces with power tools and stuffed inside five bin bags - one containing her severed head - at the Slag Lane end of the Leigh beauty spot.

It is hoped that advanced DNA profiling techniques could one day help to solve the killing and more than 70 others - up to 50 years old - being probed by the Cold Case Review Unit, which operates from Castle Street Police Station at Bolton.

Det Insp Jeff Arnold, who heads the unit, said: "It was a horrendous case and it demands to be looked at again.

"Because of what she did she was very vulnerable and often women in her position become targets for the most masochistic members of society.

"Forensics have come a long way and this is a file we will be turning to throughout the course of our investigations."

Det Insp Arnold and a team of detectives are also investigating the death of Liverpool prostitute Linda Donaldson whose body was found a little over two miles from the Flash murder scene.

Linda's mutilated body was discovered behind a hedge by an elderly couple who had parked their car in a layby alongside Winwick Lane, Lowton, 14 months before the discovery of Maria's body.

Police investigating the two murders in the 1990s said the same man may have been responsible for both.

Insp Arnold added: "Forensically, there is no link and we will be looking at the two deaths in isolation until anything suggests we should do otherwise."

Police have also never caught the killer of schoolgirl Lisa Hession in Leigh in December 1984 but began looking new information last year after a Crimewatch appeal on the 20th anniversary of her death.

THE horrific murder of a prostitute whose dismembered body was discovered in bin bags dumped at Pennington Flash will be re-examined, detectives have pledged on the 15th anniversary of her death.

Detectives in a 'cold case' squad - similar to that in TV's Waking The Dead programme - will dust off files containing details on the gruesome murder of Maria Requena in January 1991.

The Manchester woman's body was found by anglers after it had been hacked to pieces with power tools and stuffed inside five bin bags - one containing her severed head - at the Slag Lane end of the Leigh beauty spot.

It is hoped that advanced DNA profiling techniques could one day help to solve the killing and more than 70 others - up to 50 years old - being probed by the Cold Case Review Unit, which operates from Castle Street Police Station at Bolton.

Det Insp Jeff Arnold, who heads the unit, said: "It was a horrendous case and it demands to be looked at again.

"Because of what she did she was very vulnerable and often women in her position become targets for the most masochistic members of society.

"Forensics have come a long way and this is a file we will be turning to throughout the course of our investigations."

Det Insp Arnold and a team of detectives are also investigating the death of Liverpool prostitute Linda Donaldson whose body was found a little over two miles from the Flash murder scene.

Linda's mutilated body was discovered behind a hedge by an elderly couple who had parked their car in a layby alongside Winwick Lane, Lowton, 14 months before the discovery of Maria's body.

Police investigating the two murders in the 1990s said the same man may have been responsible for both.

Insp Arnold added: "Forensically, there is no link and we will be looking at the two deaths in isolation until anything suggests we should do otherwise."

Police have also never caught the killer of schoolgirl Lisa Hession in Leigh in December 1984 but began looking new information last year after a Crimewatch appeal on the 20th anniversary of her death.