DNA tests on dead Abigail suspect

Mrs Witchalls was stabbed in front of her toddler son, Joseph

Police are testing the DNA of a man who has become a suspect in the Abigail Witchalls stabbing inquiry after he apparently committed suicide.

Richard Cazaly, 23, who lived 200 yards from where Mrs Witchalls was attacked, died in Scotland on 30 April.

He was found next to his car after apparently overdosing on painkillers and later died in hospital.

Mrs Witchalls, 26, remains paralysed after she was stabbed in the neck in Little Bookham, Surrey, on 20 April.

Surrey Police said Mr Cazaly, a landscape gardener, had been interviewed during house-to-house inquiries and at a random road check before going to Scotland.

A spokesman said he had been questioned more as a witness than as a potential suspect.

"The thing that brought him to our attention is the fact that he disappeared and the fact that he appears to have taken this overdose," the spokesman added.

Mrs Witchalls is in the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital

"That is the thing that brought him into the frame as a suspect."

Mr Cazaly's name had been passed to detectives by a neighbour on 26 April, the day after police believe he drove from Little Bookham to Scotland.

His home on Water Lane, which he shared with fellow garden centre employees at the Lower Road Nursery, has been searched.

Police said they were also examining what was thought to be a suicide note apparently written by Mr Cazaly before he took a suspected overdose.

They refused to reveal the contents of the note.

Neighbours in Little Bookham and at Mr Cazaly's teenage family home, in Fleet, Hampshire, have spoken of him having an Australian girlfriend who recently returned to the country after a break-up.

The thing that brought him to our attention is the fact that he disappeared and the fact that he appears to have taken this overdose Surrey Police spokesman

Mr Cazaly's DNA was taken from his body and from clothes seized when his house was searched.

It is due to be compared with samples taken from the scene of the attempted murder, including samples from the buggy Mrs Witchalls was pushing her son Joseph in when she was stabbed.

Surrey Police said that process could take several days.

A spokesman said that if the force's interest in Mr Cazaly continued, a photograph of him would be shown to Mrs Witchalls to see if she identified him as her attacker.

She told officers the man who stabbed her was driving a blue estate car and police are now examining Mr Cazaly's blue Volvo 440, which was recovered after his death.

Click to see aerial photograph with full details of Abigail's route Enlarge Image

He was admitted to Raigmore Hospital in Inverness after being found next to the car in the early hours of 28 April in the Wester Ross area of the Scottish Highlands.

He had apparently taken a paracetamol overdose and was transferred to the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary where he died two days later.

Police confirmed Mr Cazaly matched a description given by Mrs Witchalls in general terms, but there were some "significant and puzzling" differences.

They said his earrings were different from her description, he had a goatee beard while she said her attacker was clean-shaven, and he had short hair while Mrs Witchalls remembered the man having scruffy hair.

A report into Mr Cazaly's death has been handed to the procurator fiscal in Scotland, who will decide whether to hold a fatal accident investigation.

Grandmother died

Officers said they had been unable to speak to Mrs Witchalls since the death of her grandmother last weekend, which left her "devastated".

Her family and police were today said to be helping with the filming of a reconstruction of the attack.

It is due to be screened on 18 May on the BBC's Crimewatch programme.

A 25-year-old man was arrested in connection with the stabbing but was freed without charge, though police said he has not been ruled out of the investigation.