We recently welcomed back to the school, Andrew (Dave) Barclay to Hymers College.  He was a student at the school from 1956 until 1962, and he returned to talk to our sixth-form students about his career in forensics.

From the age of 8 or 9, I always wanted to be ‘Sherlock Holmes’ – I loved the books and their puzzles.  Later on, I got my dream job with the Home Office as a forensic scientist and I just loved giving evidence in Courts!  I eventually ended up in charge of all forensic investigation at National Crime Faculty, the police support service for serious crimes of violence.

In 1972, Dave started his career as a Forensic scientist and worked his way to become Head of Physical Evidence at the National Crime and Operations Faculty (NCOF) in 1996.  He retired from the position in 2006.  Over that time, he worked on over 235 UK murder cases/series split between cold case reviews, miscarriages of justice (MoJ), and intractable live cases.  He helped in the detection of around 80% of those cases, examples of which included Omagh bombing, Sarah Paine, Soham Murders, World’s End murders, and MoJs like Lynette White (Cardiff three) and Mallard (Australia).

During his career, Dave has also been involved in many TV programmes and film documentaries as a forensic adviser, including Waking the Dead, The Hole, Timewatch, and 'The American Jack the Ripper'.  He has also found time to write a couple of crime novels.

During his presentation, Dave showed clips from his appearances on TV programmes about some of his cases including the Claremont killings and Andrew Mallard from Australia, and Yasser Arafat’s murder by polonium in 2012. The Australian murders of the three Claremont girls and Michelle Bright, have been solved in the last year, as has the UK murder of Caroline Glachan from 1996, which has seen three people convicted in December 2023, after 27 years. Like Michelle Bright, Carolines’s case had nothing to do with DNA either - just good policing.

Since retirement, he is now one of the three scientists in the Murder Mystery and Microscopes (MMM) team, which is currently engaged in a series of public lectures across the UK, designed to increase the public understanding of science.

Thank you, Dave, for taking the time to talk to our students.

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