Alan Wood was a 50 year old man who lived a completely normal life in the sleepy English village of Lound. He worked in Sainsbury’s and ran a gardening business in summer and spring to supplement his income.
He was well known and well liked in his village and was described as “kind and gentle” and that he enjoyed the simple things in life. He had an interest in biking and photography.
He had been married in 1992 to his wife Joanne but they later separated after eleven years of marriage. Having no children of his own he enjoyed spending time with his nieces and nephews.
He had many friends and had an active social life however due to the size of the small village he lived in his social life centred completely around the local pub ‘The Willoughby Arms ‘ in little Bytham where he regularly enjoyed a few pints with friends.
Alan was officially last seen at the Willoughby arms on the 21st of October 2009 by some friends. On the 24th of October a friend and work colleague stopped by to check on Alan as he had not turned up for his shift but was confused to see both Alans back and front door wide open. He tried calling out Alans name but the was no response from the home. Finding the entire situation odd he called Alans landlord and when he arrived at the property the two went inside and found an awful scene.
Alans hands had been bound with sellotape and he was lying of the floor in a pool of his own blood. His body had stab wounds all over his body especially to his face and head. His throat had been slit which caused his death and most horrifically a deep wound at the back of his neck suggested that a decapitation had been attempted but abandoned.The only thing missing from Alans house were his bank cards which were determined later to be the reason for his death.
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– [Donal] Lound, Lincolnshire. A quiet rural hamlet and close-knit community, which would become the setting of one of Britain’s most disturbing murder cases. – You have an ordinary guy who is subjected to unprecedented levels of violence. – It’s the most shocking murder that I can remember covering.
– [Donal] A local gardener, liked by all who knew him, left a nearby pub on the night of October 21st, 2009, and went home alone. What followed was a gruesome three-day nightmare of entrapment, torture and murder. – A man living a quiet, unremarkable life, is murdered in this way.
I’ve likened it to a bomb going off in that village. The effect could not be underestimated. People just couldn’t believe it. – We were all kind of terrified. We started locking our doors. People wouldn’t go home on their own. – The first 48 hours of any murder investigation
Is crucial to the understanding of what took place. Within this narrow framework, the police are often able to identify a suspect and a motive very quickly. But what happens when the trail goes cold? I’m criminologist Donal MacIntyre, and in this series I’ve brought together an unrivaled team of specialist investigators.
We work with the original detectives to re-examine and to bring to light new information, and hopefully to find some closure for the friends and families of the victims of some of the most shocking and impenetrable cold cases. – It was absolute devastation because in the beginning we just thought he’d died.
We did not know that he’d been murdered. We did not know the extent of how he’d been murdered. – In this program, the grizzly murder of Alan Wood, whose killer has managed to evade capture for over six years. We retrace his last hours on the fateful night of his death.
We talk to people who knew him. And our team reviews the old evidence and some new theories, in an attempt to discover who killed Alan Wood. 50-year-old Alan Wood was killed in October 2009. His killer has never been caught, and there’s been no real movement in what is an horrific and disturbing case. Like many crimes of this nature, a small breakthrough can be integral to bringing an investigation back on course. A fresh pair of eyes
May be just what this investigation needs. Clive Driscoll is a former detective chief inspector with Scotland Yard. He has led many noted investigations over the course of his 35 year career. He has seen many cases like this one, and understand its complexity. In addition, we’ve also enlisted the help
Of noted crime journalist Nicola Tallant. Nicola has written on many high profile cases in the course of her work, and has a detailed knowledge of this investigation. This has all the hallmarks of a practiced perpetrator. Somebody who’s committed crime before. – It’s someone who has mood swings,
Which does point towards drug misuse, in my opinion. – Whoever attacked him, whoever killed him, thought that he had more money than he actually had. – By reexamining the evidence gathered by the police over the last six years, and with some new lines of inquiry and research,
Our team of experts hope to bring a fresh perspective to this troubling case. Lound is a small rural village in south Lincolnshire, located close to the bigger towns of Stamford and Bourne. It’s a quiet place. People know each other. It’s a place where Alan Wood was well known and popular.
But it’s an area of Britain where the demographics have changed dramatically in recent years. How significant is it that this crime has taken place in Lincolnshire? – Well Lincolnshire has quite a large population from people who’ve joined us from overseas, and I’m never really too sure that we know
Much about the history of the people that are coming here. So I think that has to be a significant factor that you have to build into the investigation. – [Donal] Alan Wood was known in his community as a hardworking, friendly man. He was popular and had many friends in the locality.
Sue Foster and Ella Jenkins were two people who knew Alan well. They remember him as a decent and kind friend. – Alan, in one sentence. A kind, big, cuddly teddy bear. I had never, ever heard him say a bad word about anybody. That’s how kind he was. – A true gentlemen.
He’d do anything for anyone. Wouldn’t hurt a fly. And had no enemies. He was just a really nice, ordinary bloke. – [Donal] Alan owned and operated his own garden maintenance company, Gardens TLC. He also worked as a gardener in a local prison. But before that, he’d worked at Barnsdale Gardens
Where Nick Hamilton was his boss. – I advertised for a gardener actually for the gardens here, and Alan was one of the interviewees for that. I always look for keenness. Keenness to do well, keenness to learn, and we’ll teach anybody anything then. And Alan certainly had that
And he was looking to a different career, different job. Something that satisfied him more, as a lot of people do, and they turn to gardening, which is a fantastic job for satisfying those demands. He was, always seemed very, very happy in what he was doing. And very contented.
Seemed to have found his new career. – [Donal] In 2006, Alan took up employment in his local Sainsbury’s to supplement his income during the winter months. Alan and his wife Joanne had separated in 2003, but remained close. Alan would often look after her garden and the pair maintained a strong friendship.
– It was a very sad split. Alan was devastated. He really wanted to stay together, but Jo moved on. And then eventually she moved to Peterborough. – [Donal] The only son of Maureen Wood, he was close with his two sisters and their children. His family, like everyone else,
Regarded him as a gentle, carefree man. – Oh, he adored his nieces. He really loved them. And they were very close to him. He was the perfect uncle. – [Donal] The other love in Alan’s life was his car. – He had a Jag, which we all knew was 12-years-old,
But he kept it pristine and it was his pride and joy and it looked an expensive car – [Donal] A regular in the Willoughby Arms, the pub was the core of his social life. It was here that he would catch up with friends, take in some live music,
And even lending a hand behind the bar on occasion. – His whole social life more or less revolved around the pub and the locals in the pub. He went to work, he came home, he went to the pub and that was it. – Well that’s how I came to know him,
From just working behind the bar. And he also worked behind the bar. And when we had music festivals and beer festivals he would work on the beer as well. – And Alan used to perch himself right on the corner, with his pint of lager and his honey roast nuts,
And just chat along with everyone. Got on with everyone. Everyone liked Alan. – This is why this case is such a mystery. A normal guy with a relatively normal life, and at first glance, my cold case team agree with this basic analysis. Clive, is there anything, at first look, in Alan Wood’s life,
That paints him as a potential victim of murder? – He led a fairly normal life. Someone that maybe you’d walk past, speak to every day. There was nothing that you could actually see that would put him in the position he eventually found himself.
– I think people said he hardly had an enemy in the world. – Yeah, he certainly seemed to have been well-liked. Lived a very basic kind of a lifestyle really. He went to his local pub, held down his job and then liked to sit at home and watch television.
There’s not much there that you could really say he was targeted for this reason. – If you look at the architecture of his life and then look at the risks, you’ve got the supermarket and you’ve got his personal life. You’ve got his old work as a gardener and a very quiet home life.
A divorcee. Is there anything there that stands out as a potential threat? – In his previous life as a gardener he was working in a prison. Is there a possibility that he fell out with anybody there or that anybody that was in the prison
May have just decided to take a dislike to him? – Was there more to Alan Wood than initially I was able to discover? The murder remains a mystery, and all the more so because of the viciousness of the attack upon him. So what is behind the murder of a mild-mannered, popular man
With no known enemies? Did he have a dark side no one knew about, or did his work in the prison bring him into conflict with some criminal elements? Coming up. The events and the days and nights leading up to Alan’s murder. The attack was vicious, torturous and sustained.
What could possibly have motivated someone to kill a mild, unassuming man like Alan Wood? 50-year-old Alan Wood was brutally murdered at his home in Lincolnshire in October, 2009. His killer or killers have never been identified. With the help of our expert team, I’m hoping to unearth new information
Which could prove crucial in the investigation of Alan Wood’s death. I’ve already heard that Alan had no enemies anyone knew of, and that he lived a quiet and unassuming existence. The real mystery is what happened to make him fall foul of his ruthless killers. Alan’s social life revolved around his local pub,
The Willoughby Arms in Lound. By all accounts, Alan was there most evenings, and Wednesday October 21st was no different. Before going for a drink at the Willoughby Arms that evening, Alan was spotted here at his local Morrisons in Stamford. Beyond these small details, little else is known about his movements on that day.
At the Willoughby Arms, Alan mingled with regulars that evening and had a couple of pints as usual. – It was a busy night at the pub. Alan was sat in his usual position at the end of the bar, chatting away to everyone. I had a very deep and meaningful conversation with him
About “X-Factor”, which he denied watching, but he seemed to know an awful lot about it, which drove my partner Paul outside to have a fag. – After a few drinks, Alan said goodbye to his friends and left through this door here, got into his beloved Jag and headed home.
It was the last time he was ever seen alive. – Alan decided he was going home, got up and said goodbye to everyone and left, and Paul was the last person to see him alive. He was finishing his fag out on the doorstep. He said goodbye.
And Alan was supposed to be coming to us for Sunday dinner. Never made it. – My cold case team appear to concur with the general view that Alan’s day was perfectly normal. Clive, is there anything about his movements that day that raised alarm bells with you?
– It strikes me as, from speaking to and reading about the witnesses, that was a fairly ordinary day for Alan. He popped in the pub on his way home, he had a drink and he made his way home. So there was nothing there that you could think,
There’s no sightings of him with other people. There doesn’t appear to be any telephone evidence. It just looks like a normal day for Alan, to be fair. – His movements that day just seem very banal. Anything that strikes you? – Not really, he went into the Morrisons supermarket
And did a bit of shopping and then had a pint on his way home, which he tended to do. Was in the house from about seven o’clock that evening, a fairly, fairly ordinary day. – There was no sighting of Alan the following day. This is because he was either attacked
On the way home from the pub, or the following day at his own house. What is clear though is that he was the subject of a frenzied attack. One of the worst I’ve come across. The intruders barged violently through the front door and attacked Alan repeatedly. What’s believed to be two men dragged him to a room in the house and bound him with tape. Over the next couple of days, he would be subjected to horrific torture, enduring multiple stab wounds to the head and face.
He was also stabbed in the eye. The perpetrators took Alan’s bank cards. They attacked him repeatedly. They tortured him and eventually left him to die. On the 24th of October, the Saturday, his body was found in his home by a neighbor who alerted the police. – A work colleague and friend went on the Saturday to check on Alan. She went first to the front door. She noticed the front door was open. She went to the side door.
The side door was also open. She went back to the front door, but she was uneasy. She didn’t go in. So she went next door and sought the assistance of Alan’s landlord. Together they went into the property and in the lounge they found Alan’s body. Police were called. It became apparent very quickly
That Alan’s death wasn’t natural. It became apparent it was a homicide. It became apparent it was a very brutal one. It was a very dramatic scene, and very quickly became a very dramatic investigation. There was a great deal of blood in the property, and one of the striking things was that
Alan was bound at the wrist with sellotape. – 11 meters of sellotape. He was repeatedly stabbed in the head, tortured in effect. – You wouldn’t expect that sort of violence or the restraints. Alan Wood doesn’t sound like the person who would have fought back. – He had his throat slit and he bled to death in his own home. – The brutality of what had happened is something we’ve never heard before in our area. It’s the most shocking murder that I can remember covering. – The scene the officers were faced with
Was Alan in the lounge of his house. He was in his dressing gown, which has to be significant. He would have been maybe resting or sleeping for his night shift. It was clear he’d been subject to a brutal attack. There was a great deal of blood in the property.
It was a horrendous crime scene. – The investigation into Alan’s murder moved very quickly. It was made all the more complex because of the intensity of violence involved. If the motive was simply robbery then why torture him to death? The ferocity, Nicola, of the violence involved in this crime.
Would it suggest that that person had committed similar crimes before? – For sure, and it would also maybe suggest it was personal or there was an overuse of, it was an overkill really wasn’t it. I mean, absolutely. And the stabbing makes it very personal.
A very unusual way for somebody to kill an individual in a robbery. There’s easier ways of doing that or threatening somebody. I mean all they got was a couple of hundred quid. – [Donal] By Sunday, word of Alan’s death was beginning to make its way around Lound.
– I’ll never forget that day in my life. I was out in my front garden, early Sunday morning, doing some gardening, thinking if I don’t get this done soon Alan will be shouting at me. And Kip the landlord came round and said “Come on Ella, I need to take you inside.
I need to have a word.” And I said, “Oh what about?” And he just kept walking and he just kept saying “come in the house, come in the house.” And we went into my kitchen and Paul stood next to me and he just said the words,
“Ella, I’ve got some really bad news for you, Alan’s dead.” And that was it. Whole world caved in. – [Donal] But for Alan’s friends, the news that his death was in fact a murder was simply unbelievable. – In the beginning, we just thought he’d died. We did not know that he’d been murdered.
We did not know the extent of how he’d been murdered. And it was just, when we finally found out it was just awful. Absolutely awful. You sort of feel there’s so many bad people out there, why did it happen to Alan? He didn’t deserve it whatsoever. – As we’ve heard,
Alan suffered repeated knife wounds to the head. He also had his throat cut. But most horrifically, his attackers attempted to decapitate him. – Taking someone’s head is meant to send a warning to people. People would talk about a beheading, a decapitation. People would say how disgusted they were. This is something which is utterly barbaric. And therefore it also serves the point of not only destroying Alan’s individuality, but sending a message to other people
Who might have behaved, as the perpetrator saw it, as Alan had done. It’s a warning not to behave like that again in the future, to others who might be tempted to do so. – Decapitation, in this instance, is a really bizarre, bizarre sign, a signal at the crime.
– Looking at the injuries as I did, this seemed a very personal and violent attack towards Alan. So almost someone inflicting humiliation, if you like, and indeed pain. – I’ve only ever known of two cases involving decapitation, one of which was a, the perpetrator was so high on drugs,
And there was that over violence, and you can see that a lot. Sometimes people mix drugs and they have this particular reaction to it and they become completely psychotic. Now that is a possibility. And the other case was actually to move the body. – Coming up.
Did the investigation suffer because it began too late? On the night of October 21st, 2009, Alan Wood drove home from his local pub alone. Days later, his mutilated body would be found in his house. He had endured hours of torture before his death, and in a number of frenzied attacks,
His murderers stabbed and mutilated him. They even had gone some way towards decapitating the 50-year-old gardener. – In this case, we find a man living a very quiet life. Working at his local supermarket. Running a small gardening business. No criminal associates. No enemies. And no particular dramas in his life
– But was there something in his life away from all this normality, this routine, even banality, which might’ve exposed Alan to danger? My cold case team and I have been investigating the circumstances around the murder of Alan Wood. Now we’re hoping that some new information may be found
That can move this stalled investigation forward. – Often what one’s looking for is what I would describe as a door marked private. It’s a part of someone’s life, it’s an area that may not be well-known, may not be known at all to other people, but could be a cause for the murder.
– I’ve discovered through discussion with some of his friends, that Alan used prostitutes from time to time. Something which may have unwittingly led him into a more dangerous world. So there’s a possibility that if he had used a prostitute, or if there was somebody, a woman he was interested in,
That she could have come to his house and then opened the door, and then in came through the perpetrator. – We did have quite a serious problem in parts of London where prostitutes were used to facilitate robbery. And some of those robberies were extremely violent.
So it is a possibility that either someone that he knew had come to see him, or in fact he’d invited a prostitute that allowed access. – Perhaps someone harbored a grudge against Alan Wood. If so, it’s most likely they were local to the area.
Maybe they knew him from the work he did in the community, or perhaps it was here in the Willoughby Arms that he first attracted their attention. Given he was single, given the sense that he may have liked some Eastern European women, maybe prostitutes,
Is there a sense that this is the area of life where we should look at, to see a reason for his murder? – I think very much so. I mean, he was using prostitutes, now he wasn’t hiding that from his friends or anything like that. It seemed to be very open.
But was Alan maybe inappropriate to somebody? Did he cross the line somewhere and did he offend a female who had a male with her that was obviously going to take retribution from him? I mean I think that is highly likely. – Clive, the ferociousness of the attack suggests a certain volatility.
Is there a sense that this was the partner of some woman, even some prostitute, that Alan had inadvertently offended or crossed the line with? – I think what intrigues me is Alan was quite a large man, he was obviously a fit man, he’d done gardening, he’d done different bits and pieces,
Yet there’s absolutely no sign of a struggle in his flat at all. And he was bound. So it suggested to me there was either a weapon involved, which incapacitated him almost immediately for fear, or there might’ve been other people. And it could well have been that entrapment, that could have been a motive.
So you’d have to keep your mind open to that, most certainly. – It could have been as a consequence of Alan Wood falling out with someone, giving offense inappropriately, or behaving inappropriately, and inadvertently, to somebody whom he met through the sex workers, and that led to his eventual demise. – Alan’s private life,
The details of which are pretty sketchy, doesn’t get us very far. But the fact that his attackers were so brazen to take out his ATM card, get out some cash in full view of the CCTV cameras, that is significant. Following his death, these images were captured from CCTV cameras at ATMs locally.
Timestamps of the footage correspond with the time that withdrawals were made from Alan’s account. – It started on a Thursday evening and it went through to the Sunday. The first use was around 9:00 PM in a town called Bourne, just a few miles away from where the victim lived.
There was repeated use of the cards then. And then on the Friday in a market town called Stamford, also not too far away. And on the Saturday and on the Sunday. – [Donal] The man pictured is believed to be Alan’s killer. – That’s what we call the iconic image of ATM man.
The man with the baseball cap and the scarf. We’ve not traced that man to this day. – So with all this information and detailed CCTV, what sort of person do my experts think was behind this callous murder? Who are we talking about? – I think that it’s someone who has mood swings,
Which does point towards drug misuse, in my opinion, because it’s someone who can inflict almost a hammer horror type attack on someone, and then calmly go, if it is the same suspect, because there could always be a different suspect, but go and then calmly withdraw from a bank in the local town.
So great opportunity, ’cause we have CCTV, but if you can imagine inflicting that level of mayhem and then just calmly going to withdraw money, it shows somebody that has quite significant mood swings, in my opinion. – So, in this instance, is there a sense that this
Foraging for cash with the cash card over a number of days, and that ferocity of violence, would that raise the prospect of drug use, heavy drug use, in this instance? – Absolutely. Absolutely. It was one of the first things, when I started looking at this, that I thought of.
Heavy drug use, people are desperate, but they can have these psychotic episodes and they can become extremely strong. When they’re taking certain drugs. Can almost like have a steroid type effect on them. – So who came to Alan Wood’s house that night? Who knocked on his door?
If he knew them, he most likely would have invited them in. The absence of any evidence of a struggle at the doorstep suggests he may have known his killer. Clive, we’re talking about Lincolnshire here, and that whole demographic, a huge number of immigrants and they’re working the farm fields.
– It opens a door, ’cause I’m never that sure that we actually know who we have here. I’m never that sure that even if people have come through the system and they’re registered, that we would actually know what maybe their criminal history was back in their own country.
So the ferocity of the attack on Alan was quite severe. So someone who made that attack, we don’t know too much about them. We certainly don’t know much about a lot of the folk in this country, so. And it is, Lincolnshire relies very heavily on immigrant workforces
For the various industries that are up there. – There’s a distinct possibility that the killer wasn’t from the Lincolnshire area. Maybe not from anywhere in the country. But an overseas migrant worker. This is clearly a dangerous person. Someone who had no qualms about committing crime, no hesitation in torturing Alan Wood,
And ultimately killing him. Coming up, what caused Alan Wood to be killed with such severity? And, with his murderer still at large, how far do the investigators have to go to catch his killer? In the course of this review, I visited the Lound area of Lincolnshire. I’ve looked at all the evidence
And spoken to people who knew Alan, and others involved in the investigation. Now I’m hoping that my cold case team and I can stimulate new interest in the case and help take things forward. This murder has proved to be a very complex case. The police do have a strong clue
As to the identity of the persons, or person, involved in this terrible crime. The key to solving this crime though is to link the DNA found at the crime scene to one single individual. – There are fingerprints. There are fibers. Footwear marks, footprints, and DNA.
There was a great deal of blood around the property, and that had to be sampled. What we found was that some of that blood yielded DNA which didn’t belong to Alan. From the places we found it, I was convinced, and I’m still convinced, that DNA belongs to one of the people
Involved in Alan’s murder. – [Donal] Nicola, this was not a forensically aware perpetrator, or somebody who simply didn’t care. – I think probably, given the level of violence, it was difficult for the perpetrator not to leave something behind at the scene. What was found was a DNA profile, a footprint,
And there was a bus ticket. That might be seen as sloppy to drop something out of a pocket or, but again, given the level of violence, it would have been difficult to walk away from that crime scene without leaving behind some sort of a fingerprint.
– It seems to me that Alan Wood’s death may not have actually been something that his killers intended. And I’ve discovered something which may explain why he was tortured so cruelly. Perhaps it was a case of mistaken identity. The police certainly think that he was not the person the killers were looking for. – I think somebody thought Alan had got more money than he did have. Maybe they knew his car. And because the village he lived in, the hamlet’s only one street, if you find his car you found him.
I think he was targeted to be robbed or to be stolen from. And then for some reason things got out of hand, or it might be that his killer or killers always intended to end it that way. But it went from a theft, a robbery, to something as dramatic and brutal as this.
– I think he was pinpointed. I really do. For the severity of what happened to him, that wasn’t just a one-off thing. You know just think, oh let’s go and see if we can burgle this, we’ll get that. No way. That’s just what I think. It was too severe.
– [Donal] What might be the case is that this whole thing might simply come down to Alan Wood’s good nature, and his habit of helping people out when he could. As I’ve heard, Alan had a job stacking shelves at Sainsbury’s at night. – He always used to stay on a little bit
And help everyone break the boxes down and put them in the bins, which wasn’t his job but he helped out so everyone went home on time. And he always used to help the manager out by taking the keys and opening the doors of a morning to let the day staff in.
– [Donal] But uncannily, and perhaps tragically in this case, Alan bore a distinct resemblance to a fellow staff member. – He was a dead ringer for the manager. They were very similar looking. Same sort of build. Same coloring. Alan wore glasses, the manager didn’t. In fact when he was at the funeral,
He got up to give a eulogy for Alan. A lot of people did a double-take and a (gasps), ’cause he looked so like Alan. So anyone who was casing the joint out would, could’ve mistaken Alan for the manager. See him get in his Jag. See him drive to Lound.
And then put two and two together and make eight. – Could this be the case? Could Alan have been mistaken for his boss at Sainsbury’s? A man who had access to the site and access to cash. As more and more theories have been eliminated, this seems all the more plausible.
In relation to this theory of mistaken identity, is it possible that somebody in the supermarket, a regular attendee at Sainsbury’s, would’ve simply mistaken him for the manager? Somebody who had access to the keys of the safe? – I think everything is possible if you don’t actually know
The motive, cause I’m not too sure that the police do. There is, money’s been taken, but it is a possibility, and I’m sure that it’s part of the investigation. But even if you took Sainsbury’s as the reason, the level of violence to obtain keys for what is not a mega store is it,
It’s a reasonably modest store, is still quite excessive I believe. – But even friends of his did say that he looked incredibly and uncannily similar to the manager. So if you have a friend saying that, obviously they were like possible doppelgangers. So it is possible that somebody mistook him.
– [Donal] Perhaps one of the reasons Alan’s killers have never been apprehended, is because they’re no longer in the country. Lincolnshire has a significant migrant population, and the police have made extensive inquiries amongst those communities. – We backed that up with visits, notably to Poland and to Lithuania, to do local media there,
To try and appeal to people for information and for witnesses. – [Donal] So are the killers people who might not have known anything about Alan, and might not have cared about what level of violence they might’ve used to get what they wanted? – Often when I’m dealing with crimes
That are committed by Eastern Europeans, I am dealing with crimes where the violence is over the top. It’s exaggerated. And often it will involve knives. – Clive, with your previous investigations, there’s always been a sense that Eastern Europeans are very comfortable using knives as weapons. Is this a factor in this case?
– Well, we certainly know that a bladed article’s been used, so yes, it certainly is. I think that for me, the suspect, I believe, was comfortable in Alan’s surroundings. So he was comfortable in that village. And the level of injury, it was very personal. A very personal attack. Certainly whoever did that attack
Would have been quite comfortable using a knife or a bladed article. – This was a frenzied attack, somebody out of control. And yet at the same time, they exhibited some degree of control and management by being able to go and get cash, over several days, from cash points in the area.
That shows a composed perpetrator. – Or one who doesn’t care. Sometimes if people are addicted to class A drugs and have long since lost what we all worry about, they don’t seem to, because of their addiction. But certainly it’s someone who wasn’t panicking over the fact they were using a card of someone
Who was probably dead. So yeah, for me, it is somebody who I believe knew the area. Who was comfortable in the area. And happy to know he could use that card without being caught. – With all that we know now from our careful reexamination of the case, are we any closer to knowing
Why Alan Wood was killed in 2009? – Where are we now? We have the DNA, full DNA profile, male profile, which I have always been satisfied belongs to one of the suspects. That obviously sits on the U.K. DNA database. It sits on some, but not by any means all,
Of the other databases around Europe and the world. The critical problem with that is we can check a DNA database on a given day, but if our suspect profile isn’t on there and the person is arrested tomorrow, there won’t be a hit. So we have to keep repeating the process.
The main place where we could get a development these days, unless somebody should call us and tell us who’s responsible, would be with that DNA profile. – I’m very much at one with the police in this case. Finding that elusive clue appears to be the very best hope
Of unlocking the secrets behind Alan Wood’s murder. But having looked at all the evidence and met the people who knew him, and those who worked on the investigation, what can I definitively say about this disturbing case? The violent intensity at the crime scene suggests a personal motive.
Was it revenge or perhaps a love interest gone awry? More likely though, it was a robbery. If so, was it connected with his work, previous work, at a nearby prison? Or, and this is my theory, was it a case of mistaken identity? Did the attackers believe him to be
A much more senior member of the Sainsbury’s staff than he was? Did they think he’d access to the overnight safes and access to the overnight keys to the store? Their potential rewards, when they realized their mistake, had gone from hundreds of thousands of pounds
To just a couple of hundred pounds from the cash card. Did this mistake fuel the frenzied attack on Alan Wood?