A DISCARDED cigarette butt secretly picked up by police has forced a man charged with the murder of a great-grandmother to change his plea to guilty.NSW Supreme Court judge Timothy Studdert yesterday ruled DNA collected from the hand-rolled cigarette Clarence White smoked while in police custody could be used in his trial for the murder of 81-year-old Phyllis O’Brien. Immediately on hearing Justice Studdert’s ruling, White, a 35-year-old father of 11, changed his plea from not guilty to guilty. The DNA of Mrs O’Brien’s likely killer had been collected by Katoomba police from under her fingernails.
