The best friend of the murdered Bath teenager Melanie Road has joined the renewed appeals for help to the public to find her killer, thirty years on.
Susie Lecomber, now 47, is pictured with Melanie in Lansdown in 1983, a year before the 17-year-old was killed on 9th June 1984.
Yesterday, she spoke publicly for the first time about their friendship and described how Melanie’s death has affected her over the past 30 years.
She said that talking about her used to leave her “shaking and my teeth chattering.”
She urged anyone with information about Melanie’s death to come forward and contact the police.
She said: “It appears that we have got one big last chance to sort this out. Maybe this is the opportunity we have. We have the DNA there, we have this new witness who came forward – maybe this is the last push.
“I would desperately like to be able to stop thinking about her death and think more about when she was alive and friendship we had.”
The two girls met for the first time in 1982 when they both joined the Bath High School.
Mrs Lecomber, now a mother of two and works as an osteopath in Bath, said: “We were young, we were silly and foolish and we liked doing silly things like making up dance routines to Michael Jackson together. We laughed a lot and giggled a lot.”
She described how Melanie was popular, hardworking and was even made a prefect.
“She was one of those people who was kind, caring but had confidence.”
The pair were only friends for two years but in that time enjoyed the pleasures of any normal teenage friendship from trips to London to watch Top of the Pops to holidays to Salcombe.
The friendship ended in June 30 years ago after Melanie walked home alone from the Beau Nash nightclub to St Stephen’s Close after a night out.
Her body was found on the morning of June 9th close to a block of garages in nearby St Stephen’s Court. She had been sexually assaulted and stabbed repeatedly in the back and chest.
Anyone with information is urged to call the Operation Rhodium major crime investigation team on 101, call Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555111 or visit www.avonandsomerset.police.uk/tellus.
