Revealed: The incredible way forensic experts used INSECT COLONIES to identify the decomposed body of a murdered 17-year-old British girl
Revealed: The incredible way forensic experts used INSECT COLONIES to identify the decomposed body of a murdered 17-year-old British girl
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Forensic experts have revealed how they identified the body of a missing teenager using insect colonies. Shafilea Ahmed, from Warrington, was 17 when she was murdered by her parents in 2003 when Farzana and Ifthikar Ahmed shoved a plastic bag in her mouth and killed her in a honour killing.
![[Shafilea (pictured) was brutally murdered by her parents by shoving a plastic bag in her mouth and suffocating her]](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2025/01/27/17/94567401-14330049-image-a-67_1737998290019.jpg)
Shafilea's parents were sentenced to life in prison in 2013 after being convicted of murder after disapproving of her 'Western' fashion, including a short-sleeved T-shirt she wore on the day of her death. Talking in ITV's True Crime Presents: A Murder Without Honour, Geraint Jones, which airs tonight, first on the scene Senior Investigating Officer at Cheshire Police recalled the moment he heard of the body being discovered in Sedgwick.
![[Geraint Jones (pictured), first on the scene Senior Investigating Officer at Cheshire Police recalled the moment he heard of the body being discovered in Sedgwick]](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2025/01/27/17/94567403-14330049-image-m-76_1737998717594.jpg)
'I heard on the news that the police in Cumbria had found the body. We'd been looking for an Asian girl for about five months.'. Shafilea had keen killed in September but her body wasn't found until February. As the area had experienced heavy flooding the body was hard to identify.
![[Pictured: Shafilea's parents, Iftikhar Ahmed and his wife Farzana at trial at Chester Crown Court]](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2025/01/27/17/94567415-14330049-image-a-69_1737998350580.jpg)
Geraint recalled the sense of urgency he felt because he was 'losing evidence by the minute' due to the wet weather. At the same time, Entomologist Dr Amoret Whitaker, made her way to the crime scene from London. She said: 'I'm sitting at my desk at the Natural History Museum, and I get a telephone call, they want me to go up to Cumbria straight away.'.
