Australian authorities have announced new developments in the cold case investigation into former AC/DC manager Crispin Dye’s 1993 murder.
The developments come as officials assisting the new inquiry by New South Wales Police have admitted that several key pieces of evidence were not analysed for decades, The Guardian reports.
Forty-one-year-old Dye died on Christmas Day 1993 after he was brutally attacked in the city of Darlinghurst.
Despite suspicions that the attack was prompted by anti-gay sentiments, detectives investigated the killing as a robbery at the time due to the area where it unfolded. Authorities reopened the investigation in 1995 and offered a $100,000 reward in 2014 for information that led to an arrest — but the case became cold.
Meg O’Brien, the counsel assisting the inquiry, has since revealed that police missed pieces of paper in Dye’s shirt pocket and that his blood-stained clothes were not tested for DNA until the case was reopened earlier this year.
DNA found in Dye’s jeans and shirt matched the profile of a male who was linked to the crime scene of a robbery in 2002.
The development then led investigators to identify a person of interest in connection to Dye’s death — however, the individual died in late 2002.
“The existence of [the male’s] DNA within a blood stain on Mr Dye’s jeans is consistent with his having made physical contact with Mr Dye on the night he was assaulted,” Ms O’Brien, said. “It is regrettable that, in Mr Dye’s case, this step was not taken at any time after December 1993 until the inquiry did so in 2023, by which time his death and the loss or destruction of relevant records have made it significantly more difficult to pursue this lead.”
The unnamed person of interest had a long criminal history and had previously been convicted of assault, the BBC reports. It is unclear what role he played in Dye’s killing, according to the inquiry.
The revamped investigation into Dye’s death came to be as part of efforts to reopen potential anti-gay crimes after research by the Australian Institute of Criminology found that 80 gay men were killed by gangs between 1976 and 2000.
On the night of his death, Dye had been celebrating the release of his first solo album under the stage name Cris Kemp.
Dye managed AC/DC for seven years before he started his solo career and won a gold record for his role in the production of Fly On The Wall, according to The Daily Telegraph.
