46 Australian Geographic
W
HEN PIA NAVIDA, a 37-year-old
Filipino woman, was found
brutally slaughtered in Sydney’s
Royal National Park in 1992,
the subsequent investigation
failed to identify her killer. The case found its way
onto the sad catalogue of unsolved murders on the
books of the NSW police, where it remained for the
next 23 years. If that terrible crime had happened
today, it would never have become a cold case.
By all accounts, it was a clumsy murder that should
have been easy to solve – Pia’s clothes were
left strewn around a nearby walking trail, and the
assailant hadn’t made much of an attempt to hide
her body or the murder weapon, which was a blood-
stained rock. But although all the physical evidence
was there – including blood under Pia’s fingernails- police had no way of linking it to a suspect. So, for
more than a decade, her body was stored in a NSW
Police freezer, and the trail went cold.
However, in that time, scientists sequenced the
human genome – the total sum of our DNA – and
the technology became reliable enough to enable
police to identify individuals through unique sections
of their genes. DNA is now routinely used to place
suspects at a crime scene, identify victims’ remains,
and even point police to potential suspects by com-
paring DNA left at the scene with that of known
criminals on the national database.
In the hopes that this breakthrough science might
finally give police a lead, Pia’s remains were retrieved,
and, in mid-2014, a man named Steve Isac Matthews
was finally convicted of her murder.
Although DNA evidence has been used regularly
in murder cases since the early 2000s, Pia’s was one
of the first cold cases in NSW to secure a murder
conviction using this new technology. Sharon
Neville, the assistant deputy director of the NSW
Health Pathology’s Forensic and Analytical Science
Service (FASS), remembers the entire investigationNICK CUBBIN is a Sydney-based freelance photographer
whose work has appeared frequently in the journal. His last
assignment for us was Grub’s Up (AG 124), about the potential
for insects to feed the planet’s burgeoning population.FIONA MACDONALD is an award-winning science writer
in Sydney. Her last story for the journal was Unseen Sydney
(AG 125), about the unusual images that can now be photo-
graphed using remote-piloted aircraft.Fine details. Clint Cochrane, at
left, and Rebecca Douglas use a
chemical test and LED ‘Crime-Lite’
to locate biological matter on
crime scene exhibits.
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