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COULD the last missing hours of murdered Bristol prostitute Carol Clark have been spent in Dursley? Did she spend the weekend in the town and was it in Dursley that she ate her last meal?

These are among questions this week facing Det Insp Wayne Murdock, who heads the hunt for Carol's killer, after a Dursley man thinks he saw her the weekend her half- naked body was found beside the canal at Sharpness Dock in March, 1993.

The man believes he saw Carol (32) with two foreign men, possibly Russians. outside The Fox and Hounds, now the Old Spot.

They are thought to have left in an old Volvo car parked in the bus station behind the public house.

An old Volvo car later seen at Sharpness Dock has never been traced. Det Insp Murdock is appealing for customers at the pub who may remember a woman answering Carol's description, together with two foreign men, on the weekend of March 26-28, 1993 to contact him.

What happened to Carol between her disappearance from her home in the Montpelier area of Bristol on Friday, March 26 and her body being found at the dock on Sunday afternoon, March 28 is a mystery.

Questions Det Insp Murdock is now asking are: If the woman was Carol, who else remembers seeing her in Dursley that weekend; if it was not, then who was the Carol look-alike; could the two foreign men she was seen with be local people, or were they seamen whose boat was docked at Sharpness?

The Dursley man's evidence could provide the vital lead Det Insp Murdock needs to solve the two year mystery of who murdered Carol and why.

Det Insp Murdock said the man had come forward following publicity in The Gazette in March, the second anniversary of Carol's death.

Carol's parents now face another

anxious wait to see if the new evidence helps to track down the killer.

For more than two years Peter and Phyllis Clark, who live in Yate, have been learning to deal with their grief - and live with the fact that Carol's murderer is still at large.

But, while Mr and Mrs Clark hope the new twist will unravel the riddle, it has bought the painful memories flooding back.

Mr Clark said: "What makes it hard is that the killer is still out there.

"I think about it every day but don't get as upset all the time as before. All the publicity in March after the second anniversary brought it all home again.

"Now, since this man has come forward, I'm finding it hard to sleep again.

"We can just hope that it helps find the killer and the case finally ends. At the moment I still get a voice in my head saying the killer is still out there."

Carol was a pupil at King Edmund School, Yate, until she was 16. She worked locally in Yate and travelled before moving into Bristol.

By ALLAN GUY and MARK PRISSELL

CAPTION: RIC AND ELLY SAINTY, of The Old Spot public house in May Lane, Dursley, formerly The Fox and Hounds. It was outside here a passing Dursley man believes he saw murdered Bristol prostitute Carol Clark in the company of two foreigners on March 27, 1993.

Reproduced courtesy of Dursley Gazette - May 1995.

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