Police investigating the murder of Mellory Manning in December 2008 have made a fresh call for any clients or sexual partners of the murdered woman to come forward.
The officer in charge of the case, Detective Inspector Greg Williams, says Police have a full DNA profile from a semen sample recovered from Manning, which has not yet been matched.
"This sample may be from an unknown client or someone the victim was seeing that we do not know about. If this was the case then it is critical that this person comes forward," he says.
Detective Inspector Williams says a semen sample was able to be recovered from the victim, and ESR scientists obtained a full profile from it. "We have had this information from within a few days of the investigation beginning but have not released it until now, while we have worked through the process of matching against known persons.
"During the 1000 days of the investigation to date we have gathered a large number of samples from people and also compared this profile against the national data base, but as yet have not identified who this person is.
"The recovery of this sample indicates that this male had some form of sexual contact with the victim either at the time of her death of within very close proximity to it.
"We know that this sample is not from either of the two clients that the victim was with on the night of her death, nor from her partner.
"The forensic work that has been done certainly suggests some form of sexual attack on the victim at the time she was attacked but I still do not rule out that this could have been an unknown client or someone the victim was seeing that we do not know about.
"If this was the case then it is critical that this person comes forward."
Detective Inspector Williams says Police now have a clear picture of what took place on the night of 18 December 2008, after the victim left Manchester Street at about 10.40 pm.
"I am satisfied that evidence exists that indicates that she was taken to a section occupied at that time by the Aotearoa Mongrel Mob at 25 Galbraith Avenue where it appears that she was attacked.
"She has then been dumped into the Avon River not far from the pad around 11 pm.
"Of course we have focused our attention on members of this gang but are not ruling out the involvement of other people.
"I hope that the release of this information today might result in members of the public nominating people they think might be involved or the person themselves coming forward."
Detective Inspector Williams says members of the victim's family were informed at the appropriate time about the existence of this semen sample and have been advised that this information was to be released today.
ENDS