Abducted and killed after a Christmas night out: 30 years since the notorious murder of Geraldine Palk

• Watch the video report by ITV Wales Correspondent Richard Morgan

Geraldine Palk was described as 'friendly, lively and outgoing'.

But at just 26, the shipping clerk from Cardiff was brutally murdered.

Thirty years ago tonight, Geraldine was returning to her home in Fairwater following aChristmas night out in the city.

She shared a taxi with three other people, and she was dropped just yards from her home.

But she never made it to the front door.

Along the way, police believe, she was abducted and dragged onto a nearby playing field.

There, she was subject to a degrading attack - raped, stabbed 81 times, and left with devastating head injuries after being struck with a blunt object – thought by officers to have been a brick.

Her semi-naked body was then dumped in a nearby stream, to be discovered the next morning.

It was a scene that shocked even hardened detectives. Wynne Phillips was the senior investigating officer at the time, and went on to become Head of CID for South Wales Police.

"When you go to a scene like that, you realise how terrible these incidents are", he said.

“To be found in a stream semi-naked having just gone out for the night never to return home, those memories live with you forever."

Shocked by the brutality of the crime, police launched a huge manhunt.

They carried out extensive door-to-door inquiries, and took DNA samples from 5,000 local men.

But despite their efforts, officers were unable to identify a suspect.

When the breakthrough eventually came, it was more than ten years later thanks to advances in forensic technology.

A forensics expert, Dr Jonathan Whitaker, was able to extract enough DNA from a cotton swab obtained in the original investigation to get a match with the new national DNA database.

The match pointed to a man serving a sentence for a separate offence in Dartmoor Prison - Mark Hampson, a carpet fitter from Taff’s Well.

For Detective Chief Inspector Paul Kemp, it was a key breakthrough.

He said, "What had happened was that two years earlier, Mark Hampson had been arrested in connection with another matter.

“His DNA had been taken and put onto the DNA database. So that's where the match came."

Hampson was arrested and charged with Geraldine's murder.

In police interviews, he admitted that he had met the victim and claimed that they had consensual sexual contact.

But his account was rejected by the jury.

"To say that somebody had come along just minutes later and murdered her was not accepted”, says Wynne Phillips.

“The evidence against him was very, very strong. Undoubtedly in my mind, the right person was charged and convicted of the murder of Geraldine Palk."

Mark Hampson was sentenced to life in prison in 2001. The judge described him as “a vicious and violent man who’d shown not one hint of remorse.”

An appeal against his conviction was rejected in 2004. Hampson died in prison in 2007.

Sadly, the parents of Geraldine Palk never lived to see her killer brought to justice.

Now retired, Wynne Phillips is left to reflect on how the murder had more than one victim.

"It makes you wonder if Geraldine had been alive today would her parents have been alive as well?

“And that is the consequences of these horrible, horrible murders. It doesn't just take one life away, it takes a family away.

“They'll never forget it and they have to learn to live with it unfortunately. It’s a life sentence for them."