Police are investigating the brutal murder of a Bermudian woman in America — 19 years after she was killed.

Mother-of-two Audrey Palmer, 26, went missing in 1990 and until last week her family on the Island had retained hope she was still alive. However, detectives have now identified Ms Palmer as a woman beaten, stabbed and strangled to death before her body was dumped in a parking lot in Washington, D.C.

For nearly two decades, fingerprint tests had failed to reveal the identity of the victim, while no missing person's report was ever filed on Ms Palmer.

According to American news channel My Fox, she was born in Bermuda and had a child and family on the Island. She had another child in New York and lived in Brooklyn. Metro Washington DC Police Department detective Jeff Williams, who broke the news to Ms Palmer's family, told My Fox: "They had that sense of slight hope that maybe after 19 years she was somewhere alive.

"When we told her that the reason that we were there was to notify her of her loved one being murdered, she just broke down in tears."

The detective said he now hopes someone will remember Ms Palmer and who she was with in her last hours and help catch her killer.

My Fox reported that Ms Palmer's body was found on Sunday, August 12, 1990. She had no identification. Investigators compared the victim's fingerprints with those on databanks in the Washington area and nationally, but produced no matches.

The case then grew cold. Late last year, Police reopened the case by taking autopsy photographs to a forensic artist, who made a computer generated picture showing the victim's distinctive teeth.

They sent the fingerprints back to the databank, which had modernised its search methods, and this time found a match for Ms Palmer, who had been arrested in Brooklyn in 1989 and whose fingerprints were on file.

Last night Police in Bermuda said they were not aware of Ms Palmer.

• Did you know Ms Palmer? Contact news@royalgazette.bm.