A True Nightmare: The Murder of Alice Gross | New Scotland Yard Files | TCC

When New Scotland Yard detective Carl Mehta was assigned to investigate a missing sixteen year old girl, he freely admits he feared the worse.

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Time dedication and a forensic attention to detail this is New Scotland Yard files Thank you a teenage girl disappears a vicious Predator slips through the net the biggest search since the 77 bombings New Scotland Yard uncover the terrifying truth On the 28th of August 2014 at one o’clock in the afternoon Alice Gross left her family home she used to like to go for power walks by the water and told her parents she’d be back by 6 pm but Alice never returned home at 7 pm her worried parents reported her

Missing and a police search soon began the senior detective assigned to the case was New Scotland yards Carl Metta it was my first day back at work after three weeks holiday and I was the on-call detective superintendent from the beginning I feared the worst about a hundred thousand children every

Year go missing most come home very very quickly the inquiries that have been conducted by the local police hadn’t identified where Alice was outside her school here in hanwell and across much of West London there are posters urging Alice Ross to come home or just simply to get in touch

Missing children are a policeman’s worst nightmare you have to get answers Alice was last cited on CCTV along the Grand Union Canal at 4 26 p.m on the 28th of August at trumpers way she texted her dad to say she was coming home and never arrived I had four hypotheses she’s

Simply gone missing she’s been abducted and held somewhere she had committed suicide or indeed someone had caused her home the fact that she had been missing for so many days she was a potentially vulnerable young girl 14 years of age I started to get concerned because experience tells me the longer that a

Person particularly young and vulnerable people are missing the more likely it is that they are going to be coming to somehow so it was vitally important to act as quickly as possible Alice’s disappearance was completely out of character there was nothing out of the ordinary in terms of Alice and her

Life I mean she was a perfectly normal girl she had a good Social Circle of Friends her life principally revolved around her school friendship groups and her family she was very close to her family she had an older sister who doted on her as did her both her father and mother

It’s like there’s a great big hole for her and we’re worried about whatever it is that she might be feeling and we just want her to be safe and we just want her to come home it’s hard because I miss her and I just really hope that she knows that

We really really love and we really need her back because she’s just love her sorry that very first interview with the family I remember how Brave they were I mean inside you can imagine they were absolutely falling apart they were desperately worried about Alice but at

The same time knew they needed to get this appeal going they painted Ealing completely with yellow ribbons and Alice’s poster everyone wanted to get involved if you saw a yellow ribbon at that time you knew what it meant it meant find Alice bring Alex home

I decided to take a big step to escalate this into a major inquiry from a local inquiry the homicide and major crime command will take over the responsibility for that investigation the different lines of inquiry that needed to take place required a response on a massive scale

Police procedure at this point is to sweep everything meticulous this wasn’t one line of inquiry that everyone focuses in on these are a multitude of lines of Investigation because you cannot exclude you cannot go down one line to the exclusion of others because you’re going to miss a trick

600 officers dogs and divers swooped across ceiling to scour track and search nine square miles of Woodland and nearly three and a half square miles of waterways police really were pushing everything into finding Alice it was an incredible search they were searching the canals they were searching the woods there were

Fingertip searches there were dogs the helicopters were involved this was the biggest search since 77 bombings they were leaving nothing to chance searching like this takes a lot of time and a lot of money leave no stone unturned we know from what her parents told us that she

Regularly went down to the river Brent so the starting point for any searches was that area and that is a very heavily wooded area with the river and the river itself there is very celted as soon as you start moving in it the silt is being disturbed and visibility is almost

Non-existent the searches that were being undertaken by the dive teams were largely by touch finding evidence in muddy water is hard you can’t see more than a centimeter in front of your face a weekend neither the woods nor the water searches were bearing fruit the family made another plea for information

We miss you we love you we’re desperate to know that you’re safe and we really want you to come home and if anyone else knows anything about your whereabouts please can they get in touch with the police Alice was a missing person but there were reasons that weren’t in the public

Domain why she may have gone missing the police were aware that Alice had had problems with depression and with anorexia there was a concern um from the Family itself that she was suffering a level of depression which they were seeking help for suicide was a real possibility when the yards

Detectives and search teams were presented with such a large search area including over three and a half square miles of waterways there was the very real fear that Alice could have jumped in when it comes to drowning yourself it can be quite easy depending on some different factors if we’re talking about

Somebody who chooses to drown themselves by jumping into some water for example the depth of the water will make it easier to drown um and the temperature of the water because it can cause the body to go into shock they stiffen up and that makes conscious movement really difficult

This was a girl who seemed to have vanished without Trace in this part of the river with its cold flowing water there was a chance that Alice had drowned from either a jump a fall or a push it was two whole days on the ground before the homicide team uncovered their first lead

Along the footpath by the river Brent we found Alice’s rucksack That was really a big moment the bag provided us with a focus for the search the rucksack that Alice had been carrying when she went missing a week ago found just alongside this book path it gives them some certainty at least that she was here or somewhere near here

When she went missing a week after The Disappearance of Alice Gross the biggest surge undertaken by New Scotland Yard since the 7-7 bombings is underway a 600 strong crime Squad swarms cross-ealing to try and find Alice the only trace of her is a rucksack found on the banks of the river Brent

We knew that it was Alice’s bag because her parents had told us and also found her trainers as well as some of her personal positions that’s a breakthrough that’s filled with emotion for the family you can imagine it fills you full of hope you think that will

Lead to Alice but at the same time it fills you with Dread because you know this is a bag she went nowhere without what was very disappointing was that we didn’t find Alice’s mobile phone and that was absolutely key for us to try and find Alice’s phone had given the

Investigation one thing she texted her dad on the day of her disappearance to say that she was on her way home self-site analysis put her by this stretch of water so the detective in charge Carl Metta issued the order to search the river Brent once again only this time they weren’t looking for

Alice’s body they were going to search for three miles to try and find her phone The story that underlies Alice’s disappearance is still unknown we don’t know if we’re dealing with a suicide we don’t know if we’re dealing with her simply going missing with friends it could be an abduction or it could be a murder Family were absolutely beside themselves with worry but also the public were on tentacles this is a story that was on the front pages every single day batalis’s community did not give up hope of her return and as the days passed with no body suicide seemed less likely

So once a body goes into the water it will sink straight after death the body will start to decompose that provides a large amount of bacteria which causes gas to be formed within the body this then inflates the body so the body after about five days will tend to box of water litigation

The police had drawn a blank if Alice had fallen in or been pushed or had harmed herself then surely by now the police would have found something the general public and for Alice’s family nobody meant there was hope that Alice was still alive when a vulnerable young girl goes

Missing in central London in broad daylight the police feel an incredible sense of responsibility 10 days in having made so little progress despite intensive efforts the police would be starting to feel incredibly frustrated and incredibly desperate the family have played their role they’ve gone through that agonizing interview and appeal to

Find Alice the public have played their role they’d help to put up posters they’d gone looking for clues for the bag for the phone what the detectives role in all this was was to find Alice and ten days afterwards she hadn’t been found and the public start to lose faith

And I think the media then plays its role by asking the questions why haven’t you done what you are supposed to do big pressure on us was from the media in policing we say is is that you get your first 10 days for free from the media and then thereafter there’s criticism to

Get answers for the family that was absolutely key as well as pressure from the media detectives know that if Alice has been murdered and her body was in the water as each day passes evidence gets harder to find there’s two things that can possibly happen here one is certain forensic

Evidence may be lost the sheer action of the water crossing the body will wash away certain forensic evidence including DNA material and secondly evidence may be added from the water onto the body the longer the body is in the water potentially the more detrimental effect it will have on the forensic science and

Make that job of finding significant evidence that much harder a week and a half after Alice disappears police make an arrest New Scotland Yard had had a tip-off from the public someone close to where Alice was found had equipment in his car that could have handled a body they found a shovel some

Rope and some sacks in the back of his vehicle where they implements for burying a body or concealing a body the Spade would potentially be of interest particularly if it’s got soil on it the provenance of that soil could be established to decide if or not she

Is buried somewhere the Rope may be of interest in that it could possibly have been used to say Tire Alice Gross up keep a prisoner somewhere the sacks will they’re possibly of Interest they may have held or items of Alice Gross clothing or whatever it’s just a combination of the three that would

Cause a bit of interest at least cause some examinations to be performed the suspects would not cooperate with New Scotland Yard he wouldn’t confirm what the tools in his car were for he was very evasive and officers suspicions and respect of his potential involvement analysis disappearance grew to the extent that he

Was arrested the investigation took a new twist over the weekend with the arrest on suspicion of murder but the police are still stressing at the moment this remains a missing person’s inquiry there is something terrible has been done the one thing everyone wants to know is that Justice will be served and

This arrest gave everyone that feeling that okay we are moving forward with this investigation and someone is going to be held to account but no action was to be taken against the suspect police had in custody it was time to go back to the drawing board as

Part of this investigation there were a huge number of people we were looking at as potential suspects for Alice’s disappearance within a stone’s throw of where Alice’s bag was found as Ealing Hospital and they had a sex offenders unit within that as well as a mental health unit

When you’re looking at a 14 year old girl you have to consider as a motivation for this as a sex offense the stereotypical view that these kinds of predators only seek their targets in the middle of the night is not accurate asexual Predator is always on the lookout for potential victims

There is something about Alice as a victim her vulnerability her fragility her youth she is the potential prey of a sexual predator foreign two weeks into the investigation Carl goes back over old ground in a case like this you have to be prepared to revisit early intelligence see if new evidence

Throws any light on it that old ground was the missing person list for the local area team discovered someone who had gone missing a few days after Alice a 41 year old man honest salkins was reported missing to the police by his partner on the 4th of September

2014. he had gone to work that morning but had not returned home a young 14 year old girl goes missing there’s a large-scale police investigation and suddenly his 41 year old goes missing honest elk hands disappeared a week after Alice was reported missing police were now able to Picture Match him to

Canal side footage he was on the Towpath the same day that Alice was last seen we identified CCTV of Alice Gross walking across a bridge at Brentford lock and 15 minutes behind her traveling in the same direction we identified honest salkins on a pedal cycle returning home from work

That was a significant moment given he was on his bicycle she was walking the chances are that they were going to encounter each other so the police now have another missing person’s case which may or may not be connected what is suspicious from a police perspective is that zalkans goes

Missing after 600 officers have been pounding the beat searching for any trace of Alice it appears that he may have encountered her that day and that is what the senior detective is thinking about his gut is telling him there must be a connection the camera which captured that CCTV

Footage is here at Brentford log it would only have taken a few minutes before the Builder caught up with the schoolgirl further down this topaz the police now had a missing teenage girl and a missing man with no obvious connection other than they were both on

The Towpath that day and he was likely to have passed up on his bike detectives had nothing more to go on until Arne salkans was identified on different CCTV footage from the same day he was leaving the Towpath but police noticed something odd about the time

He’d taken to cycle from when he was caught on camera at Brentford lock he was seen to emerge onto the Uxbridge Road from that footpath by the river Brent approximately 45 minutes later than we would have expected him to have emerged that was very suspicious different CCTV in a shop showed zalkans

Was rolled up trousers was this for cycling or could there be a more Sinister reason like avoiding water or mud at 9 30 PM that night zalkans was on CCTV again joining the Towpath from the Uxbridge Road when he re-emerges about an hour later he is wearing different clothing

To when he went in he returned the following morning on his way to work he is seen on CCTV to enter again the footpath and spent some time there senior detective Carl Metta sent a massive forensics team to search zalkan’s home in Ealing now a person of very great interest a

Very detailed and foreign Searchers commenced at his home address that included digging up his garden they were searching for a connection between him and Alice in the form of DNA or potentially her belongings police now appeal for information about Arnis zalkans a Latvian National who had

Been living in Ealing for the past seven years so on the 16th of September I named arnesses Elkins as a person of interest that we were seeking and looking for and I did a witness appeal seeking information about his whereabouts there’s nothing to suggest that either

Alice or artist knew each other but it is clear that the route taken by Arnis or the regular route taken by artists to and from work may have brought him uh into either contact or passing and he may therefore have Vital Information while the family and the community reached out again

On the 25th of September the family made an emotional plea an actress walks the same route that Alice would have taken the day she disappeared we were on the canal town when you saw Alice whether you’re walking on a bike perhaps on a barge please come forward and speak to the police now

The message is more urgent the longer Alice has been missing the more worried and concerned that we feel today is four weeks since Alice’s disappearance today we’re doing a a reconstruction in order to jog people’s memories visually jog people’s memories about what Alice looked like and how she

Was walking in that particular day we’re looking forward to being back as a family again and doing all the usual things that families do Alice is a very um she’s a very Lively funny girl she’s quirky you have all the little family jokes and family routines and we’re

Really looking forward to having those again every day without her causes us new heartache new anguish I empathize with their suffering when they were putting on the face of we’re coping underneath they were totally crushed subtle hole in the family and every day I passed the door a

Bedroom door and I expect her to be in there and she’s not there so you know Alice you really need to come home and whoever you’re with she needs to be home this is the place that she needs to be she needs to be looked after and that’s the right place for her

When we started to look into our Mrs Elkins through Interpol about his history in Latvia we established that he had been convicted of murdering his wife in Latvia Alice had been followed on the Towpath that day by a convicted killer this was a massive shock not just to the

Family but even the investigating officers was stunned he was a man who had a very violent past he had a murder conviction he’d been allowed into the UK unchecked how on Earth did this happen without anyone knowing he was here and how in Heaven’s name was he allowed to slip through the net

Cell cans nowhere to be found and no opportunity to question him the police went to Latvia to where he may have fled we expanded the search for him both in the UK as well as across Europe including his home country of Latvia he had been reported missing on the 4th of

September he hadn’t been seen since then had he fled the country was he still hiding somewhere in the UK we simply didn’t know what had happened to him but new scotman yard wanted to hear what this man had to say why did he leave healing and what were the circumstances

Surrounding the murder of his wife he did this in quite a brutal fashion he lured her to some Woods near their home bludgeoned her over the head stabbed her and then put her body concealed her body in a shallow grave which he had earlier dug so this was clearly a premeditated murder

How can a human being do something like that to another person she says he was her first man her first love everything was the first my understanding of criminal law in Latvia is that the minimum sentence for murder is five years and the maximum sentence is 15 years which is incredibly

Short in this country it is a mandatory life sentence for murder He was sentenced with such short time for a planned murder everything was prepared already she says the prosecutor demanded 12 years he was sentenced to eight but he spent only six years in jail is that Justice is that Justice it’s not zalkans was not a remorseful man

At the time he showed police where he’d buried his wife and he told them that it’s drunk vodka while he did it when you look at the way in which he murdered his wife um the digging of the grave in advance is an eerie detail there is a detail

That really distinguishes that offense from most other spousal murders the events in Latvia Unleashed an uncontrolled Predator disdainful aggressive brutal component of his personality this is an absolutely pivotal turning point in arness’s story because from that point on this hidden part of his identity can no longer be denied

A troubling aspect of this case was the lack of an obvious motive even if zalkans had to become a monster why Alice physical resemblance between the two was a possibility zalkan’s ex-wife and Alice were both similar in appearance for senior detective Carl Metta zalkans was now the prime suspect because of his

Violent past and suspicious activity at the time of Alice’s disappearance I believe that Ernest selkins was making efforts to conceal Alice’s body Scotland Yard were now five weeks into the search for Alice divers had been doing slow detailed searches for a mobile phone and found something strange the officers

Came across a pile of logs buried within the silt of the river was a bicycle wheel attached to black bin liners when that was recovered we found Alice’s body tells of how Alice was concealed couldn’t be any worse she was wrapped in a bin bag that was attached to the wheel of a

Bicycle then that was weighed down with bricks embedded into the side of the river and then logs used to keep it in place I mean everything possible had been done to conceal that body the police have confirmed the body they found is that of 14 year old Alice Gross

A murder Hunter’s been launched a family and the community that supported them have been left devastated yeah the cause of death in this case was asphyxiation but we would call this mechanical asphyxiation so asphyxia really occurs when the brain is deprived of oxygen mechanical asphyxiation is anything that restricts the chest and

Stops a person being able to breathe a boa constrictor for example kills by mechanical asphyxiation the pathologist said is effective the heavy weight of some person laying on Alice’s body and bear in mind she was 40 kilograms for just over six stone in weight she was a slight individual Alice resembles

What we see thrown in the head of some of an attacker’s narrative is that they start to see all women as potential victims that they but they start to see them in a very objectified way zalkans was the Prime Suspect but police did not have enough evidence to convict

Him and they couldn’t even find him this is now a murder investigation and I need the Public’s help to find out whoever is responsible I would urge anyone who may know something to come forward even if you have not yet spoken out it is not too late to tell us what you know

Alice Gross had been found bound and buried at the bottom of the river Brent the police were now on a Manhunt for a cold-blooded killer who’d wrapped her in bin bags weighed her down with a bicycle wheel and covered her body in logs so that she sank into the silt

The prime suspect Arnis zalkans but he was nowhere to be found after being reported missing a month prior to the discovery of Alice’s body it’s clear that the cause of death was Suffocation from a heavy object on top of Alice now it’s possible that her death occurred during the

Sexual attack because Arness was completely oblivious to her his Focus was on the sexual attack and not on directly murdering her but no matter how compelling the investigation needed proof would a cunning killer like zalkans make the kind of mistakes that would secure a conviction to assume that we’re dealing with a

Super intelligent Psychopathic mentality here is not entirely accurate we’re dealing with somebody who was supremely arrogant who was Supreme egocentric who was used to succeeding in life he knows how to bury things he’s a builder he knows how to handle women he knows how to win at life in general he

Doesn’t have to worry about CCTV this is a man with an arrogance that the ordinary person I don’t think could even begin to understand the police had to hope and pray that if zalkans had murdered Alice he left the trail behind forensic evidence had been discovered on

Alice’s shoes and on a cigarette butt near the crime scene tests revealed it carried zalkan’s DNA DNA on the victim’s shoes from the suspect means that it’s likely he would have touched those shoes there are other reasons it could have been saliva or other body fluids but it’s likely to

Be touching of the shoes now this may have been where he took the shoes off the body before or after death I was DNA evidence on its own was not enough to secure a conviction only salkins was the Prime Suspect we know that he was following Alice along that

Toe Path and we know that he returned to the same spot at the canal the pieces of the jigsaw were finally starting to come together the investigation needed more it needed a direct unquestionable link between Alice and Arnis zalkans that suggested a fatal attack took place and then a breakthrough from forensics

Underneath the patio area in his back Garden a cover for Alice’s mobile phone was discovered so that provided a direct link and there’s only one explanation for how her mobile phone cover ended up in honest selkin’s address and that is he took it from her at the time he attacked her

It’s all about bringing this man to Justice Alice is dead he’s still missing this is the only thing that you can give the family as the community struggled to come to terms with Alice’s death the hunt continued for zalkans some five weeks after Alice went missing New Scotland Yard found him date

During the course of the wider searches in Boston Manor Park about four days after Alice’s body was found searches found in some wooded area on a celkins it would appear that he didn’t want to be found even dead because the location was a very secluded area with thick shrubs and bushes

Where his body was found hanging from a tree the discovery of zalkan’s body meant that the police the community and Alice’s devastated family were all denied that most important thing Justice when the crown prosecution decides to charge someone for a murder like this they have two tests first is

It in the public interest to prosecute and second is there enough evidence to prosecute in this case it was obviously in the interests of the public to go for the murder conviction but you can’t prosecute somebody who isn’t here you can’t prosecute a deaf man that’s the inquest it was established

That Arnis zalkans had committed suicide there’s a sense in which we see artists thinking of himself in some way or another as the victim of this this whole scenario as well the suicide is a classic indication of somebody who sees themself as partly the victim of what’s

Happened of an unfolding set of events and the suicide is the clearest indicator of all that that is how arneis saw what happened there were a number of pieces of evidence both circumstantial and direct evidence linking Arness Elkins to Alice’s murder we had that evidence analyzed by the CPS to establish whether

Given the evidence would they have authorized a charge of murder they already had evidence of association between him and the deceased you’d have the CCTV you’d have the forensic evidence together with evidence of his previous convictions and that cumulatively would have presented an overwhelming case had alness Elkins being alive

He would have been charged with murder we’ll never know why zalkan’s murdered Alice Gross but having committed one murder that of his wife he’d already broken the normal human barriers I think we’re dealing with somebody who became increasingly egocentric uh non-empathetic absorbed in his own unfolding storyline from the moment that Arness

Killed his wife he was a lethally dangerous man the horrific tragedy of Alice was one that was waiting to happen and had Arnis not committed suicide this narrative would have simply escalated further and we would have seen more victims I’m certain of that the wicked crime that was the murder of

Alice Gross should never have happened a free man seven years after killing his wife zalkan started a new life in Ealing West London on his way to work he had a chance encounter with Alice there by the river Brent he assaulted and suffocated her and over the next 30 hours returned to

The scene to bury her in the silt with the homicide squad on a highly publicized hunt for sale cans he realized there was no way out so we did the Cowardly thing and hung himself murder detectives had been looking for a man who was already dead

I think one of the tragedies of this particular case is that Alice’s family never saw Justice being delivered they never saw the man responsible for Alice’s murder face Justice appear in court answer for his crime and find out why they will never know that because he robbed them of that Justice

And that’s uh tragic if anything has come out of this that is positive it is the procedures for reviewing the background checks of people coming in and out of this country have now been reviewed and have been improved which is certainly something in the right direction and a positive step

Alice’s family Found the courage to voice their grief publicly it’s difficult to say it’s an enormous void it’s something that can’t be repaired I can’t see how it can never be healed really I don’t think that you ever really recover from an A bereavement like this but perhaps you learn to manage the feelings of Lost in slightly different ways they have this void which they probably still have to this day where and it will never ever be filled and they’ve got to

Live with that appalling detail of how Alice was killed you become more used to feeling so rubbish and so lost But still think about Alice every day On the 23rd of October three weeks after her body had been discovered Alice Gross was finally laid to rest it had been a harrowing crime for everyone but for her family it’ll be a tragedy that they will never forget thank you