Scotland Yard detectives investigating the racist murder of Stephen Lawrence 15 years ago believe they have uncovered enough new evidence to charge the key suspects with his murder for a second time.

Senior officers are saying for the first time they are confident that new DNA and other forensic evidence, missed in the original investigation in 1993, will enable the five original suspects to be tried for Lawrence’s murder.

It was disclosed in November that police had found fibres linking the suspects to the murder scene. Now the scientists have disclosed they are focusing on a fresh analysis of samples of paint, fibres and DNA – in blood and saliva – recovered from the murder scene and suspects’ homes.

It has been conducted by the team whose groundbreaking work on DNA samples helped prosecutors to press new charges over the murder of Rachel Nickell in Wimbledon in 1992 and the killing of Damilola Taylor in Peckham, south London, in 2000. “We’ve opened it right up,” a source close to the investigation said.

A senior Scotland Yard figure said: “There are going to be developments soon and they are confident there will be a prosecution and a trial.”

Lawrence, 18, an A-level student, was stabbed to death at a bus stop in Eltham, southeast London, in April 1993. His parents attempted but failed to bring a successful private prosecution against the five suspects.

A retrial is permitted because the government repealed the so-called “double jeopardy” law in 2005, which had prevented a person from being tried twice for the same crime. A senior team of scientists at LGC Forensics, a firm in southwest London, has been working on the Lawrence case for more than a year.

Last November it emerged that fibres and possible DNA samples contained in clothing belonging to some of the suspects were being reexamined by the Met. Further evidence including DNA and granules of paint, missed in earlier police investigations, is now being examined.

Helen Newman, a spokesman for LGC Forensics, said: “It is true that things have been missed in the past. [Now] we are using different strategies. Previous investigations went down a slightly different route. I can tell you we are looking at DNA and fibres but we are also looking at other evidence such as chemistry and paint.”

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