7 Sep 2002

Norfolk murder investigators' fingerprint campaign nearly finished

9:23 am on 7 September 2002

A mass fingerprinting campaign sparked by Norfolk Island's first murder in 150 years is drawing to an end..

Police say about three-quarters of the island's 16-hundred permanent residents aged between 15 and 70 have volunteered their fingerprints as part of the hunt for the killer of Janelle Patton from Sydney.

Ms Patton, who was 29, was stabbed to death before being dumped at the island's Cockpit Waterfall Reserve at the end of March.

The samples collected will now be sent back to a forensic laboratory in Canberra for analysis, which could take more than three months.

They will be compared with partial prints that were found on exhibits associated with the murder.