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Elaine Doyle was a bubbly teenager with her whole life in front of her.

The 16-year-old had spent the evening enjoying her first ever adult disco with friends at Greenock 's Celtic Supporters' Club.

But her life was cut short when she was brutally murdered as she walked home in 1986.

Three decades on her killer, John Docherty , was finally caught after new DNA evidence came to light.

It was a murder that shocked the Inverclyde town, and the entire country, and one of Police Scotland 's longest unsolved murder cases .

Now the hunt to catch her killer will be shown in a new documentary , narrated by award-winning actress Katherine Kelly, and will air at the end of October on the Crime and Investigation UK channel.

The story will be told in documentary Murdertown and will feature interviews from family members, police, friends and journalists who reported on the murder.

(Image: PA)

The killing

It all began in the early hours of Monday June 2, 1986 when Elaine was strangled from behind just 40 yards from her home on Ardgowan Street.

At 7.30am on the Monday, a local resident, who is now dead, went to pick up his car from the lane behind a hut used by the Air Training Corps 49F (Greenock) Squadron.

To his horror, he discovered Elaine’s body. Elaine was found lying on her side and naked, with the exception of a bra that was still attached to her arm.

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There was an obvious mark around her neck. Detectives also noted signs of a struggle and swiftly concluded the crime was sexually motivated.

Tufts of hair and a broken bracelet were found at the scene.

Bizarrely, the teenager’s clothes were undamaged and left folded neatly beside her.

A cordon was placed around the lane as residents woke up to the chilling news. A post-mortem later concluded the cause of death was “asphyxia due to strangulation by ligature”.

The ligature, which is believed to have been a rope, was never found.

The police investigation

A police investigation into her death saw the manhunt to catch the killer become one of the biggest ever seen in Scotland.

Hundreds of people were interviewed but as time passed the investigation ground to a halt as detectives struggled to piece the case together.

Detectives checked out a number of local men but had no firm leads. An artist’s impression of a ginger-haired man also failed to secure a breakthrough.

Officers took almost 4500 statements and completed more than 2300 house-to-house forms but to no avail.

As the days, months and years carried on, Elaine's family were no closer to any answers on their beloved daughter's death.

The case reopens

The case was eventually re-opened by police in 2012 after a sample of DNA taken from Elaine's chest and face matched that of former soldier Docherty.

Cold case detectives reviewed thousands of statements and discovered Docherty had not been questioned after the murder despite a friend naming him in a statement at the time of Elaine's death.

He was one of 722 potential suspects and was charged after providing a DNA sample to police.

The court case

Docherty, of Dunoon, Argyll, protested his innocence and went on trial but forensic evidence showed that the chances of DNA found on Elaine's body not being his were a billion to one.

His lawyer Donald Findlay QC claimed the crime scene had been contaminated and the DNA evidence was not reliable.

But he was convicted by a majority verdict at the High Court in Edinburgh and jailed for a minimum of 21 years in 2014.