Fit to Murder – Forensics: Catching the Killer – British Murder Documentary
contains themes of sexual [Music] abuse whenever there’s a murder it’s the job of detectives to find out who the Killer is and how they killed and often it’s forensic evidence which provides the clues the finding of his DNA wasn’t just on the murder weapon it was on our most important part of the murder weapon this is evidence was the Breakthrough that we needed the forensic evidence in this case was crucial in this series we shine a light on how Cutting Edge forensic techniques and the power of science brought the most dangerous Killers to Justice a truly horrific criminal a monster it’s a hammer blow you don’t know how you’re going to carry on we’ll hear how some of the most disturbing crimes were solved thanks to the tiniest fragments of evidence he basically said to me she’s in the house go and find her the amount of blood that was there indicated that there was a frenzied attack there was no reasonable explanation for them that’s why he changed his plate and how even the most forensically aware of killers couldn’t beat the experts and hide their crimes the key thing about having a DNA profile is you’ve got probably the sharpest tool in the Box I was so elated beforehand we didn’t have the evidence and all of a sudden we cracked it in this episode a tragic scene found by a dog walker he went into the woods to see what his dogs was looking at and sadly found this discovery of a young female lying lifeless in the woods the news no parent wants to hear I did not want to believe them I was not prepared to believe them a killer who who thought he could outsmart detectives but who was given away by his own mobile phone if you’re not allowing us access to it you’ve got something to hide it has this wonderful little Habit in the background like all modern smartphones do of backing up to the cloud this this nebulous collection of data this is forensics catching the Killer [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so I can remember quite vividly the morning that I got the call that a body had been found um um I was actually at headquarters dealing with another incident and just handing it over and briefing another police force when I received a text message from the duty senior investigating officer saying please ring urgent so I gave them a call to be told that the body of a young female been found here in the woods at the sports center at [Applause] Southampton in 2018 detective superintendent Paul Barton was the head of the Hampshire conab major crime unit at 7:45 that morning a local dog walker was walking through the sports center and that his dog had become distracted uh in the undergrowth just behind me so he called his dog a few times trying to get his attention and you know the dog was just not having any of it so he went into the woods to just explore to see what his dog was looking at and sadly found this discovery of a young female lying lifeless it is not a natural death so I need to start thinking about what resources do I need to try and manage this investigation is it a homicide investigation or not well experience would tell me that I think we we would treat it as a homicide until we can prove otherwise it was clear this was going to be a large investigation it’s a public place it’s a young female things like this just don’t happen normally the scene was one of extreme brutality despite the picturesque surrounding a young girl lying face down with blood in the leaves around her that there was a bottle that was nearby to her now was that her own bottle or did the offender bring that in with them or perhaps it was there anyway and that might be a potential witness that we could identify by some forensic examinations she was fully clothed so for me that was suggest that there was no sexual motivation in this but I think what was most striking is there was no weapon and so the fact that we couldn’t find a weapon for me suggested that you know homicide um was very likely and that uh this young female had been killed and not taking her own [Applause] life within hours news of the harrowing Discovery in the woods had already started to [Applause] spread we were told by a member of the public um who rang into our offices that uh police had set up a uh Cordon around an area of the Southampton Sports Center which is to the north of the city James Robinson was a reporter for the Southampton Echo at the time there was a fairly heavy police presence at the scene of course whenever anything happens like this you never necessarily assume the worst and you you never know what’s happened it could be anything that from a the find of drugs to um something more serious I an assault of some type but detectives knew already that they were probably looking at a murder site and that theory was confirmed when they moved the young girl’s body and the source of her wounds became apparent it was some sort of knife uh it had been mainly used against the neck which isn’t very deep there were occasional uh Cuts elsewhere there was a cut on a wrist a cut on a forearm uh something around the back of the shoulder things like that which were not very distinctive this is probably not just an argument that’s got out of hand This was um likely to be a a frenzied attack and probably a planned attack as well um the fact that um the female appeared to have been lured into the the wooded area um which was secluded from the normal kind of pedestrian traffic that you would expect within the sports center um and so quite quickly we came to the assessment that this was you know this was premeditated and this was a planned attack against that individual I think when the call came in uh one of the first concerns I had was that you know this happened in a very public place um this is the beginning of the school holidays the weather was fantastic and so people were going to be out and about and at that particular time we didn’t have a name suspect and so the fear that’s running through my mind at that particular time is you know who has done this and more importantly will they strike [Applause] again in July 2018 a dog walker on the outskirts of Southampton had made a terrible Discovery the body of a young girl lying face down in a woodland she had suffered multiple stab wounds and a level of brutality that left even hardened police officers shocked I think what was really troubling for me was you know who who could do this to a 13-year-old girl in such a public place um she suffered some horrific injuries and she wouldn’t have died from the first Stab Wound you know she was attacked you know in a frenzied attack I would say where she had multiple um injuries including defensive wounds and so you know it really troubles me to think what she was going through at that particular time the fear that she would have faced but who was the young girl only the night before her body had been found one local mom Stacy White had reported her daughter Lucy as missing on the morning that Lucy went missing I saw her first thing in the morning I was rushing to get to work so I briefly said hello and good morning to her and that I would see her when I got back by lunchtime I had a phone call from my partner saying Lis he hadn’t to come back for lunch that that didn’t concern me it wasn’t unusual she had keys to my parents house so she would often go up there she was closer to their house than ours she would just pop in there for lunch or she would simply have lunch with her friend she didn’t have to be home until 8:00 she’ said which friend she’d gone to she was just out it was the summer holiday she was having fun however when 8:00 came and she still wasn’t back concern started to to to creep in she was renowned for being late so we left it another 30 minutes just in case she was late she still didn’t come back I then made phone calls and different family members and friends and parents of Lucy’s friends then started looking at the local parks they started messaging each other to see if Lucy was with them we put posts up on social media when we then got to the last Park which was about quarted to 10 by this point and she still wasn’t home I rang Hampshire conaby and reported her missing when Diaz Paul Barton and his team became aware of this missing person’s report it led to a terrible realization of who the victim in the woods might be at that particular time our records showed that there was only one person that had been reported missing the last 24 hours and that was Lucy who was 13 from the local area Lucy’s mom Stacy was now dealing with every parents worst nightmare the police had come to the house to speak to me I naively thought that they were going to tell me that they had just they found Lucy and that she was okay they told me that they were 99% sure that it was Lucy at the Sports Center I just went into shock I I did not want to believe them I was not prepared to believe them until I’d seen with my own eyes that they were telling me the truth these were people that didn’t know my daughter how could they be [Music] correct as Lucy’s family began to take in the news that she would never be coming back home office pathologist basil Purdue began his investigation into what had happened to her she had 11 stab wounds to the right side of her neck three of which had gone through the biggest artery in the neck the uh the right common koted artery the big one supplying blood from the heart to the Head she had a number of other injuries which were sharp injuries from cutting to a neck lower face and upper limbs eventually and after the pathologist’s work was complete Stacy was able to see her daughter’s body one last [Music] time I could simply only whisper words to Lucy words that I won’t repeat but one thing I will say is I promised her that I would get her justice and we would find who did this in order to find out who would have done this to a 13-year-old girl and why detectives first had to understand everything they could about Lucy Lucy was a very cheerful energetic young lady she set her Ambitions very high she was an overachiever she was very good academically she was setting her sight to become a lawyer she always had a lot of friends she was full of smiles she was she was just just she lit up a room and she went went into it but there were things that detectives began to discover about Lucy which even her family didn’t know and any homicide investigation um one of the first lines of inquiry that I will ask to be carried out is what’s called a victimology and that’s really going through the background and history of who you believe to be your victim to find out anything that we can that might help us identify who may have done this and so part of the victimology would be to search um the room of the victim and find out what information we can and it’s It’s Not Unusual within a victimology to find out things that perhaps the family don’t even know about and with Lucy one of the first things we found um was her diary which was extremely interesting and rang some alarm Bells it was these diary entries of Lucy’s which would give Paul and his team the first Clues as to what might have happened to the 13-year-old and why so when we looked into Lucy’s diary there were a number of entries in there that gone back over the last 12 months bear in mind she was 13 years old at the time um 12 months prior to that she would have been 12 and she was uh inferring that she’d been in a sexual relationship with an Associate of the family who had been staying at the family home that recently moved out and that she believed that she was in a relationship with this individual and also she planned to have a future with this individual these private notes were equally shocking to Lucy’s mom Stacy the diary entries were were chilling to read I just felt sick I I physically wanted to throw up my eyes were streaming I was struggling to read them but I needed to read them and as much as I didn’t want to read what was on them I felt I had to read what was on them because I wanted to see what it was that they had found and what Lucy had said she said I didn’t know I didn’t know what was happening and if I found out I would have killed [Music] him she said in these diary entries she had not told anybody I believe that that is the truth that she had not ever told anybody initially when I was told about the contents of the diary and I keep an open mind and think well it could all be made up but then when I started being told about some of the graphic detail that was in within that diary um for me it was quite clear that actually this was reality and so I was extremely concerned that um not only Lucy being murdered but um she was also the victim of of sexual abuse over the last 12 months and maybe even longer the person that uh Lucy um had described that she was in love with was a a male called Steven Nicholson who was Steven Nicholson he was someone it transpired who was known to Lucy’s family as an acquaintance and who had taken advantage of their trust and kindness when I first met that individual it was under very different circumstances he had needed to move out of the premises that he was in he knew and had been friends with my partner as a child although they had have been out of contact for several years he had just turned up at our door after being at his sister’s birthday party um intoxicated and he he just stumbled through you know can I just stay the night at stupid o00 at night and he’d been directed to just sleep on the sofa rather than on the streets this inevitably was a person who had no fixed address he just sers surfed but he picked who he safeer served at very well it would [Applause] seem after that initial night Nicholson often stayed at the family home claiming to have nowhere else to go through Lucy’s diary entries police began to discover darker motives and a sad story of coercion and abuse within the diary there were things like Lucy had been practicing um you know her new signature as if she was going to get married to this individual so it was it was extremely concerning quite clearly he was grooming her once we knew of Steven Nicholson’s involvement with Lucy um he became a person of interest very very quickly uh to the investigation at that point we were unsure as to why he would want to kill her but we certainly had evidence that would suggest that he was in a sexual relationship with her and the fact that this had been going on from the age of 12 it was statutory rape and therefore he became a suspect certainly for rap with a key suspect in their sights the priority now for Paul and his team was to track down [Applause] Nicholson in 20 2018 police in Southampton investigating the killing of a 13-year-old girl had Unearthed a terrible secret detailed in the child’s diary it revealed that Lucy had been abused for a year prior to her death by a man known to her family Steven Nicholson now detectives were on the hunt for a suspected pedophile and possibly a murderer and the pressure to find that killer was mounting as a senior investigating officer for any murder investigation I I describe it as a privilege to be able to investigate somebody’s murder and and bring someone to justice for that person who sadly can’t give um evidence themselves and speak for themselves but with that becomes an awful lot of pressure on you as well to to get it right and get that person um you know these these types of crimes attract a lot of media attention but within hours police had located their suspect Steven Nicholson and he wasn’t far away so officers were dispatched and within 24 hours he was located at um nearby milbrook railway station U by police officers and arrested without any further [Music] incident with Nicholson now in custody Paul Barton’s team began the task of interviewing him so when a person is brought into custody they are offered free legal advice it’s not unsurprising that the advice they are given by their sister at that particular time is to go no comment but much to my my surprise when Nicholson was interviewed he started talking and began to give an account as to his movements that [Music] [Applause] day detective Chief Inspector David story over saw the first interview with Nicholson in custody he told us that on the morning that Lucy um left the addess he had taken a day off sick and uh was working uh doing some private work for an elderly gentleman whom he had been um caring for for a number of years uh and it so happened that that individual lived very close to the scene where Lucy was found Nicholson said that he arrived at this uh old man’s address at about 9:00 um he was sent off to the nearby Tesco Express um to go and get some cigarettes and some biscuits and we actually clearly find him on CCTV at Tesco Express at 2 minutes past 9 that morning he’s got a bag for life in his hand he goes back to to the the old man’s address and effectively stays there till about 11:00 um and then he then Cycles home and he gives us the route that he takes on his on his bike Detective now had an account of Nicholson’s movements but could CCTV reveal vital clues about Lucy’s whereabouts on the day she died Lucy um left her house at 9:00 on the Wednesday morning and she’ asked for a uh a watch from one of her brothers um because she didn’t have a mobile phone she’ broken her mobile phone we tried to track what Lucy had been doing uh that morning prior to her uh being found in Southampton Sports Center so we’ve we looked at various routes she could have taken and um scoped for CCTV and that subsequently showed Lucy marching from her home address up to the sports center and she was probably captured on CCTV about 10 occasions the last sighting of her was just um outside tesos uh near the sports center Lucy um left with her coat on um and she was carrying a a small Sports isotonic bottle uh what was quite significant about that was that you could just see um on the CCTV that the bottle was mostly full throughout the journey uh despite it being hot it remained full and also she took her jacket off which just was an indication of how hot it was when Lucy was found there was a bottle the same as identified within the CCTV which had the majority of the liquid still present so she wouldn’t have had much of an opportunity to have drunk that during the course of the day which would suggest that she’ be murdered quite quickly after her last sighting police turned to digital forensics to see if Nicholson’s Alibi rang true so Nicholson has a mobile phone um so we could check his mobile phone to see if that had moved but actually Nicholson had offered that up himself in an interview saying you you can check my phone it shows that I was there CU he obviously knows that we can do who tracking through sales site of his phone had been moving around and sure enough when we checked on the Sal site his phone showed that it been static at this address for for the time that he was saying but I think what he forgets uh is that actually all that is telling me is that his phone is there but he is not necessarily with that phone while his phone’s location might have been static a deep dive by digital forensic experts gave them an insight into Nicholson’s Behavior so looking at at Nicholson’s call records what was visible was a a pattern of activity particularly around text messages where it was obvious that he was the sort of person who would reply to a text message very quickly after it arrived but there was a period of time where that simply didn’t happen over several hours it was obvious that the phone wasn’t moving because text messages were coming com into it and they were all being received through the same Mast so it was probably just sitting in a single location but no replies were being sent and that didn’t fit with the normal pattern of activity that Nicholson had exhibited up to that point that allowed questions to be asked why hadn’t he been replying the way he normally would detectives realized that Nicholson’s phone might hold the answers they needed when um Nicholson was arrested um he did have a mobile phone with him but we quickly established it wasn’t the mobile phone he would have had a possession uh on the wedding day and he did tell us that he had disposed of his mobile phone uh because there was uh drug dealing activity on it and he didn’t want to be prosecuted for that um clearly we didn’t believe him we thought he disposed of the phm because it had something uh incriminating on it and so we said well okay we haven’t got your hands set but you know we can still log in to your data if you just give us your password for your Facebook account then we can have a look and see if there’s any conversations between you and Lucy and so he was asked for his password um and that was the first time that he then sort of showed some resistance in the interview and and declined to give us his password as a detective if someone’s refused new access to something uh I naturally will think that’s suspicious I mean clearly there are rights which I have to respect but in relation to this if you’ve been arrested for the murder of a 13-year old girl and we’re suggesting that there is Facebook contact between you and her on the morning that she disappears and is subsequently found murdered I think that if you’re not allowing us access to it you’ve got something to hide when something like a missing person’s inquiry or a murder inquiry we would want to look at both the victim and the suspect’s profiles if possible to find out obviously has there been contact between them if there was contact when was that contact what type of contact was it is there an indication that they were planning to meet up for some reason do we know where they were going to meet and if we find indications like that we’ll go beyond it we’ll start looking at other activity on the devices so for example has one of them been researching particular roots to a meeting point or particular meeting point and when we um established that uh Lucy Had access to other uh media devices within the family home um we obviously seize those items and started to examine them um and what we established was that the conversation that uh we believe had taken place between Nicholson and Lucy had been deleted so we didn’t have the the mobile phone but what was most important about um Nicholson was his contact with uh Lucy the night before and on the morning of her murder with no evidence to charge Nicholson with Lucy’s murder police will rapidly running out of time before having to either charge or release him to buy detectives more time they now turn to legislation normally used to detain terrorists under the regulation of investigatory Powers Act of 2000 or Ripper as it’s known in the police there’s a there’s a piece in there that talks about um when police are investigating a crime and they want to get access to somebody’s password then they can under this legislation effectively demand the password from the the suspect and if they don’t give that password then they technically commit a criminal offense and it’s normally used for things like counterterrorism but it’s also used for um pedophiles and indecent images of children it’s the first time that I’ve used this legislation in a in a murder investigation I think probably the first time in Hampshire and possibly nationally been used in a murder investigation Nicholson was then presented with the the um the request to give his um password and he again refused and so he was charged with that offense um and he was reminded in custody went up to court the following morning uh where effectively it’s an absolute defense you don’t really have a defense to say why you hadn’t given your password under those circumstances and so he had no option but to plead guilty there and then in front of the magistrate and um and he was given a 14-month prison sentence there and then the Ripper charge is a brilliant tactical holding charge to keep someone in custody so that they cannot interfere with any investigation that you’re going to subsequently undertake so he couldn’t interfere with any Witnesses he couldn’t uh dispose of any evidence we had him in a secure environment and we could undergo our investigation with the benefit of this extra time Paul’s team began investigating Nicholson’s movements through his mobile phone one of the problems in Nicholson’s case was that there was nothing actually available from the phone directly but being a relatively modern smartphone it has this wonderful little Habit in the background like all modern smartphones do of backing up to the cloud this this nebulous collection of data that exists on computer spread around the world we didn’t have the phone but one of my team came up with the uh very bright and very Innovative idea of cloning his phone because we had gained access to his uh Google account um we got a phone we cloned it same make Etc and then when we turned it on it downloaded all the data from his Google account that data was gold dust to us because it then provided locations as to where Steven Nicholson was data relating particularly to a Fitbit was recovered and Fitbit being an activity tracking device there was all sorts of interesting information there about timings and movements he had told us that he had taken the same route he usually took when he had left the address on 11:00 on the Wednesday morning so being diligent police officers we checked what he was saying married up with what we now had from his phone and we could see that on the journey back at about 1100 hours on the Wednesday morning he took a slight detour the majority of it was on the way back but he took 7-minute detour um which took him into an area called Tanners Brook a small secondary wooded area in between two Estates and that clearly um was of interest to us as investigators smart technology had highlighted discrepancies in Nicholson’s Journey but detectives still need did hard evidence to prove his involvement in Lucy’s murder Tanner Brook is an area of natural beauty within the heart of milbrook surrounded by Lush plants a stream running all the way through um and for me this area was really significant because what we also saw on our CCTV as we picked it up was that Nicholson was seen on his bike coming down in this area with his Tesco bag which seemed quite full up at the time and then when he re merges later on we find that his bag is less full up and therefore the inference being is that he’s deposited something here in Tanner Brook could the vital forensic Clues to link Nicholson to Lucy’s murder lie here hidden amongst the [Applause] undergrowth Southampton 2018 and police are trying to to solve the brutal murder of a 13-year-old girl they’ve got a suspect in custody but now they desperately need to find the forensic evidence that can link Steven Nicholson to the crime CCTV and digital forensics had placed him near an area of Tanner Brook on the day of the murder now detective superintendent Paul Barton authorized specialist police search teams who started combing the area for Clues I pushed the button and said right let’s go and search this area um and let’s see what we can find um and actually on day one we struck lucky the search team within a few hours found a Tesco bag for life that had some fire damage to it and with inside that was the jackpot as far as I was concerned we found a number of items um the first one was um some fire damaged box of shorts what was left was literally the waistband of these box of shorts um and the label that was inside and the label indicated that these were a pack of three Tesco boxer shorts and that is interesting because when we searched Nicholson’s um home address we found the other two pairs that would match that third pair but not only that within inside the um the bag we found some blue um rubber gloves um that had apparent blood on them in addition to those items we found a blue um sweatshirt hooded sweatshirt which had again apparent blood on there and some fire damage we didn’t know whether that was Nicholson’s or not but obviously we were seizing that to send that off to the lab for some forensic examination and we found some tracksuit bottoms which are sort of black and white with an unusual pattern on the side and again whilst we couldn’t say that was Nicholson’s um by doing some research on Nicholson and looking at his social media account we found an old photograph of him he was wearing identical tracksuit bottons to the ones that we’d found but could forensics prove Beyond doubt that these items did indeed belong to Nicholson and crucially also linked them to Lucy the priority was to send those off for forensic examination so that’s what we did and you know within 24 hours we were getting some very exciting phone calls from the scientists to say what they had found what the forensic scientists had found finally was DNA proof there was a blood stain um that went through DNA profiling and yielded a DNA profile that matched Lucy and there was also an additional six areas of blood staining that yielded mixed DNA profiles from more than one person parts of which match Luc and parts matched Nicholson and there was one area um that was found to to match um Lucy’s profile that the statistics involved were 210 million times more likely that it was Lucy’s profile than that of an unrelated female and one part um of a mix profile that matched Nicholson that was 93 times more likely that to match Nicholson than an unrelated male there was a pair of blue surgical gloves found at Tanners Brook which yielded um a full DNA profile matching Nicholson and then the jacket of Lucy’s that Lucy was wearing at the time when she was found had also been examined and that had blue fibers that then also came back to the russle athletic top uh that we found at Tannis Brook forensic and is of blood DNA and fibers now all linked Nicholson to Lucy it was a major breakthrough for investigators now I got those results uh when I was walking with dog and when I got the phone call on my hands just went in the air as if I’d scored a goal at Wembley I was so elated at uh what I was being told because it been so difficult beforehand that we didn’t have the evidence and all of a sudden we cracked it you know I I knew at that point that um Stephen Nicholson would be convicted of Lucy’s murder once we had all the forensic evidence back on Nicholson we spoke to the crown prosecution service and said look we think you know we got sufficient evidence and so he was produced from Winchester prison brought back into custody at Southampton Central and then we had the interview teams go in there and interview him again and so as part of our disclosure during the interview we then hit him with the evidence that we had which was we’ve searched hnis Brook we found these items these items have got your DNA on it and these items have got Lucy’s DNA on it what have you got to say about it and his face was just a picture you know his jaw just dropped um and at that point funny enough he went no comment finally Paul and the homicide team had enough evidence for Steven Nicholson to be tried for Lucy’s murder that trial started in June 2019 on the first day of the trial Nicholson seemed almost excited he seemed to enjoy the fact that there was some kind of attention on him of course we weren’t here for him we we were here for Lucy um but Nicholson seemed to Revel in the attention at first um but as the trial went on his demeanor changed completely but he remained arrogant and narcissistic right through the trial he would Swagger into the courtroom each day it was like he didn’t want to be there he just couldn’t care less what he was saying was that um she was just a silly girl who had a school girl crush on him and he found her quite annoying and yes he was quite nasty towards her towards the end because he just didn’t like the attention he was getting from her and found that she was effectively a pain Lucy’s mom Stacy went to the trial every day he his attitude was still exactly the same he still looked as though he felt he was going to get away with it whil I only briefly looked at him because I had no care to be looking at that person for any prolonged period of time he even had the audacity to stand in court whilst giving evidence and thank myself me and my partner for all the help that we’ given [Music] him which was just salt to the wound he wasn’t thankful because if he had been thankful he would have stayed away from my daughter if he had been genuinely thankful he would not have done what he did he would not have been looking at a child in that way he would not have continued over the span of years that he did to have done what he done after all the evidence was heard the the jury retired and they came back relatively shortly um with a guilty verdict for murder um he was given a life sentence um with a minimum Tariff of 33 years finally Justice for Lucy but with Nicholson’s conviction for murder came even more Revelations about his past when we’re investigating uh Nicholson we go very much uh into his past and interviewed a lot of people whom he’d interacted with what we did find and he was substant charged with as well as we’d found out that um he had met a 14-year-old old girl a number of years earlier when he was 18 and he had actually had sex with her um in almost the same location as M Lucy had been murdered that was particularly chilling from my point of view um that this area this location meant something to him he’ actually had sex with a 14-year-old girl a number of years earlier but then he’d also chosen to lure Lucy to the same location and uh murder her in in that brutal fashion for me what was particularly sad about this investigation is that you know Lucy was a 13-year-old girl typical teenager and she had fallen in love with Nicholson who I would say had groomed her from the very beginning for his own sexual gratification but as far as she was concerned she was in a relationship with him and potentially was going to marry him him one day you know she was practicing her her new signature with him which I know children do but you know this kind of shows that the affection that she had for him um but when he realized that actually um you know I could be in trouble for this and I’m going to get found out and so I need to end the relationship with her and that’s when he started being nasty towards her and um effectively dismissing her and and you know breaking off the relationship with her and she was obviously heartbreak en by that and she wanted to continue contacting him and I think you know potentially sort of threatened him and said you know if you don’t continue to see me then I will tell my mom that you know we’ve been having a sexual relationship at some stage he obviously decided to respond to her messaging and said yeah okay I’ll meet you on that morning at 9:30 at the sports center and so I can only imagine that she was going to that Sports Center and she actually genely thought that she was going to see nson to patch things up and get things back on track again but little did she know that she was effectively walking to her death Hy was very Street wise but that didn’t it didn’t help this situation if people point fingers and say that they would know that something like this was happening to their own child they’re naive children of huran being secretive perpetrated is are very Savvy at telling your child what they want to hear making them keep it a secret and most of the time they will get to know the child enough to get enough information out of them to be able to then use something as a bargaining tool if you tell anyone I’m not going to do this anymore or I’m not going to give you money or I will hurt your family and to some of the worst ones I will kill you he took Lucy and none of us none of us are going to get for that you have to learn to live alongside her not being here while still wanting her here you have to be or at least appear happy and enthusiastic was her friends and and other children of similar ages are graduating and they having babies and they’re you know they’re in long-term relationships and as lovely as that is it is hard it is really hard because that’s what she should be doing and she’s not and one person’s decisions took all that away [Music] [Music] [Music] contains descriptions of real life violence that some viewers may find distressing [Music] whenever there’s a murder it’s the job of detectives to find out who the Killer is and how they killed and often it’s forensic evidence which provides the clues the finding of his DNA wasn’t just on the murder weapon it was on our most important part of the murder weapon this evidence was the Breakthrough that we needed the forensic evidence in this case was crucial in this series we shine a light on how cuttingedge forensic techniques and the power of science brought the most dangerous Killers to Justice a truly horrific criminal a monster it’s a hammer blow you don’t know how you’re going to carry on we’ll hear how some of the most disturbing crimes were solved thanks to the tiniest fragments of evidence he basically said to me she’s in the house go and find her the amount of blood that was there indicated that there was a frenzied attack there was no reason explanation for them that’s why he changed his plate and how even the most forensically aware of killers couldn’t beat the experts and hide their crimes the key thing about having a DNA profile is you’ve got probably the sharpest tool in the Box I was so elated beforehand we didn’t have the evidence and all of a sudden we cracked it in in this episode police attend the scene of what appears to be an accidental house fire miraculously a child survives firemen came and they asked me if it was a big or a small fire and I said it’s a big fire but tragically her mother does not survive and when forensic investigators examine the scene Clues emerge they not all is as it seemed the burning in the bed uh should have been mainly remained on the Sur top surface of the bed but I could see burning to the left hand side bottom of the bed we saw that that area of the neck had not been burnt I founded up the detective inspector at stevenage and I told him we have got a murder on our hands this is forensics catching the Killer [Music] Tuesday 4th of March [Applause] 1980 in the large hfer town of stevenage fire Crews received a call about a house fire in the suburbs the public reported the flames and a passing Milkman took the brave step of breaking his way in after hearing screams from inside someone was trapped [Music] upstairs there was a fire at the end of the bed and I was in the bed with my mom and I was just felt paralyzed and in shock and really wanted my mom to move and do something but she wasn’t [Music] moving I then don’t remember actually getting out of the bed but I found out that I did get out the bed because the Milkman rescued me on the stairs he saw smoke bellowing out of the bathroom window the upstairs bathroom window so he came near to the door when he heard my screams and crying and he knocked the door down and he came and rescued me Amanda Wright was just 4 years old at the time when she lived in the house with her mom 25-year-old Susan loen I just remember being on the stairs with him and him carrying me and I remember looking down at my feet and legs and they were all burnt and blistered there’s like a big bubble blister on my ankle he took me next door and the fireman came and they asked me if it was a big or a small fire and I said it’s a big [Applause] fire as fire Services tackled The Blaze Amanda was rushed to hospital for immediate treatment to the burns on her legs but once the Flames were extincted uish what emergency crews discovered in this quiet Suburban Street was more Sinister than just a [Music] fire at the time it was uh mainly sort of a council property is completely residential and uh it was not a bad area at all it was uh actually pretty much as you see it now Peter Harper was a young detective Constable at the time he was about to make a shocking Discovery what I found was uh the house had been not seriously damaged uh all internally but the bedroom the top floor rear bedroom was in actual facts pretty uh badly burnt and I found that there was a body of a woman uh actually lying in the bed obious dead as Peter began to make an initial assessment of the room some aspects of it didn’t make sense may have been caused by smoking in bed but there was a few issues that uh I didn’t particularly like which sort of uh triggered me a little [Music] bit the burning in the bed uh should have been mainly remained on the surf top surface of the bed but I could see burning to the left hand side bottom of the bed the neck curtain was down on the floor and the cold that was holding the curtain up was down by the side of the bed totally Untouched by the fire uh no burn or Scorch marks anywhere near it yet the main curtains were burnt and singed which led me to think well that was down before the fire started but not everyone involved agreed with the detective [Music] Constable they actually did call out a forensic scientist who did an examination of the fire and he didn’t agree with my interpretation but he’s the expert and so they went with that that the fire started on the top of the bed and not under the [Music] bed I’ve seen bodies where they have the died in chairs arm chairs where they had been smoking and the mere fact that they’ve had a cigarette in their hands they’ve fallen asleep the hands dropped the cigarettes gone into the the in in the bed and it’s called fire and they sometimes people don’t wake up to that incident and and die naturally in the [Music] fire back in 1980 we didn’t have combustion modified Furniture which is what we have today everybody sofa has a little label on it that says it’s cigarette and match resistant the reason we have these these labels is because back in the 1980s we were having significant problems where people were dropping matches and cigarettes on sofas or in rubbish bins and that sort of thing and they were catching their sofas a light since then we have combustion modified Furniture so it changes the way fires burn so back in 1980 fires would develop very quickly you could easily get to um flash over which is where the entire room is on fire you could get to that stage within a matter of a few minutes there are certainly tests that have been done with furniture from the 1980s that flashover happens in around 4 minutes away from the bedroom Peter’s search of the home continued to arouse [Music] suspicion I went downstairs into sort of the lounge area there was two cups and two plates um which obviously had been used prior to the fire and it struck me that it was two plates and cups that have been used by adults rather than a mother and child there wasn’t the right Crockery for a 4-year-old to be you know drinking or eating out that didn’t ring right to me so I preserved that scene um as a separate scene and preserve those items Peter’s inquiries now switched to the Mory where a forensic pathologist was called in to examine Susan’s [Music] body initially when when we thought about it could have been an intentional ploy to actually burn her on that part of the body to start with because one of the interesting things was when we moved her neck up away from the chest because because the head had contracted down to her chest we moved it up we saw that that area of the neck had not been burnt and it was within that area that we found signs of U [Music] strangulation I realized then obviously my suspicions were were correct I phoned up the detective inspector at stevenage and I told him we have got a murder on our hands [Applause] [Music] in March 1980 a house fire in stevenage almost claimed the life of 4-year-old Amanda Wright her mother was not so lucky 25-year-old Susan Len’s body had been found in the burnt up bedroom of her home but a postmortem examination revealed strangulation not fire as the cause of her death news of the murder quickly spread stevenage is divided into a number of different neighborhoods um and yeah people would be friendly within the neighborhood but you would never leave your door open in stevenage [Music] Brian Todd was a detective Sergeant at the [Applause] time it was a lot of youngsters in the town we had a a bit of a drugs problem like most towns there was a number of burglaries to deal with wherever you’ve got drug offenses you’ve got burglaries and thefts and shoplifting for people to finance their their drug addiction but um it was a normal town nothing out of the [Music] ordinary but mother and daughter lived in a peaceful area and had a contented home life before the night of the tragedy my Early Childhood was very happy I spent it with my mom mainly with my mom cuz it was me and her because my dad left when I was about 2 years old my mom was like free spirited young at heart we’d wear hats and put bags on and coats and mess around and we’d like dance and just have lots of fun and go to the park and yeah just a happy chill out secure time in my [Music] life of course Amanda was very young so Susan couldn’t work I believe she had uh Lodgers to pay the bills so that helped her to get by Katie whites was an author who would later go on to write a book about Amanda and her mother Susan she’d gone through a sad period she’d married David loen when she was pregnant with Amanda and unfortunately the relationship hadn’t worked out which was a source of sadness for her but she was very happy to be a mother and according to Amanda she was very devoted and very [Music] loving she used to take her out all the time to a place called the lakes in stevenage where they used to play in the playground and she was always you know very devoted she wouldn’t let amander out of her sight and she lived on her own so she was quite independent although she had her parents around the corner from her and she saw them off and apart from that she didn’t go out much she was a stay-at-home [Music] mom the Lakes was just on our doorstep literally so short walk we’d go to the park and my mom would push me on the swing which I absolutely loved and then we’d go to the big slide I’ve got lots of nice photos of us together um sometimes I be dressed up in like a ballerina outfit pink one and uh I’d be like doing little poses in the garden she loved music mot toown and she liked soul and she liked pop music David Bowie she liked horses she had a horse and she loved animals she wrote some beautiful poems that I ended up getting which were brilliant for me gave me a source of strength growing up and going through my teenage years the deadly events in their home that night including the fire would have far-reaching consequences for Amanda she had quite serious burns on her lower legs and back then in 1980 skin grafts were still a relatively new procedure and a specialist surgeon was brought in from London to complete the operations there were skin graphs taken from her thighs and they were put on her lower legs and she was in hospital for quite some time I’d be in excruciating pain when they were unraveling the bandages because the blood stick to the burns and the bandage and then when they pulled it apart it hurt so much and I remember just hating knowing that that was going to happen like if I was having a bath and the smell of it as well it had like a disinfectant smell really strong smell and uh I’d have to soak the bandages and I’d be like please just let me soak them for longer I always wanted longer and never wanted them to unravel them um but the nurses were really lovely and were like um understanding impatient with me uh but it wasn’t nice at all while Amanda was undergoing painful Medical Care in the Mory forensic Pathologists were discovering more clues as to how Susan had [Music] died the pathologist said that um there were bruises and cuts on all around Susan’s body there was a ligature Mark and sign of strangulation on the neck and clearly whoever did this was also um punching and hitting Susan consistent with the injuries over her chest and [Music] face Susan’s body was starting to reveal some truly harrowing in inuries but the attending pathologist Peter vzz had to find hard evidence of exactly what killed the young mother in a victim that dies from a fire we need to be first of all sure that that person had died a result of a fire or whether they had died whe they were dead before the fire occurred and to do this we have to look at uh the blood we have to look carefully internally at their air passages if for example they’ve they’ve inhaled smoke from the fire they will have soit within their airways and their airways will appear black and also in the blood they would have inhaled the products of combustion in a fire which would be carbon monoxide but in addition to that we also look for small spots in the eyes and face in this case we couldn’t see anything in the face because it was burnt but in the eyes when we lifted up the eyelids underneath the whites of the eyes we could see uh the small areas around the whites the eyes small red spots these are known as patii and these are very common findings in strangulation all the evidence was pointing to Foul Play Rather than fire being the cause of Susan’s death once I looked at the neck area and once I was able to uh look into the eyes and also dissect the neck and see what was going on underneath in addition to that by not seeing any suot in the Airways at all um all the only thing that was left then was to make sure the carboxy were globing the carbon monoxide was very low and it was so he was confident that whoever did this not only tied a a ligature around the neck but also used his hands to try and kill Susan but with badly injured four-year-old Amanda and able to provide detectives with any clues would they ever be able to find the man who murdered her mother Susan [Applause] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] in March 1980 4-year-old Amanda Wright was miraculously rescued from a house fire in stevenage Amanda’s mother Susan had been found dead in the wreckage of the blaze but as investigators had discovered she had actually been strangled before the property was set a [Music] [Applause] light I believe this was quite a shocking occurrence in what was a small and friendly and tight-knit community and because the fire had concealed the fact that there had been a murder the police then tried to engage the local community to catch the killer they put out appeals in the local paper in the stevenage comet to ask and engage and ask the people if they’d seen anything if they had noticed anything unusual maybe they had sat next to the killer on the way to work maybe they’d seen somebody coming and going from the house there were General appeals for eyewitnesses as well as to try and find perpetrator a man had been seen Running Away by the Milkman um who was able to give a description and over the next 48 hours Amanda was able to tell us that she’d seen the man there um that he had been shouting at her and had run off young Amanda was now starting to claw back her memories of the horror in her home that morning and the first thing I remember was hearing the alarm going off it was a constant bell ringing alarm on the clock and then when I woke up I could see the the man was at the bottom of the bed and he was getting dressed he was sort of Hur really hurrying along seemed in a bit of a rush and my mom was next to me in the bed and then suddenly just out of nowhere he just s of came flying over towards my mom and grabbed her out off the bed and pulled her out and then he was attacking my mom and strangling her and she was near the wall and he was smacking her head against the wall and I was just in bit I was screaming crying my eyes out and asking him to stop and he said he won’t stop unless I stopped [Applause] crying I was so desperate to stop crying but I couldn’t so I was in turmoil I needed to stop crying but the at same time what I could see in front of me was the most horrific thing I’d ever seen and then after a while he then stopped attacking her but my mom was like this side of the room and then she they sort traveled over to this side of the room near to where I was on the bed and then he just grabbed me and got a pillow and pushed it over my face and I just remember feeling his hands on my neck and then I knew like I couldn’t breathe uh and then after a while I just wanted it all to be over with and then after that I came around and my mom was back in bed with me and there was a fire at the bottom of the bed and my mom wasn’t moving she wasn’t opening her eyes and that I must have lost Consciousness because it went blank and then it seemed so different when I came around to how it was like before so and and then with my mom back in the bed with me and the fire and yeah and she couldn’t move and I just wanted her to open her eyes and I was really tempted to get my fingers and pull her eyes open but at the same time I felt like I couldn’t move I couldn’t do anything and I was obious very [Applause] scared I can’t even begin to imagine the terror that she must have felt in that moment knowing that the person who had cared for and looked after and loved her her whole life was now gone and in fact in her 4-year-old mind I don’t think it really computed I think she felt that if she could just wake her mother up it would all be all [Music] right but the fire of course just got bigger and it was climbing higher and filling up the room and I think the next thing that she recalls is being taken out of the house by a man and taken round to her neighbor’s house where she was put on a sofa telling that man my mom is still inside my mom is still in the [Music] house in the days that followed forensic investigators at the crime scene were struggling to find any evidence that could identify Susan’s [Music] killer there wasn’t any blood as such not of from the uh suspect you you were very restricted in what you could find in those days and there was obviously you could find Fiber evidence and things like that but when it’s gone up in smoke and flames in that side of it goes out the window but there was one tiny shred of forensic evidence they did find and it was one of the oldest and most trusted Sciences in police forensics there is a procedure for getting fingerprints from items within fire scenes now everybody has seen the use of what we call a squirrel brush with powder on it in order to to expose fingerprints in fire scenes you can still use that same technique if it’s something that is away from the area of burning if it’s within the area of burning or if it’s within the room of origin and is smoke stained or Su there are other techniques that can be used and one of them is to use the suit on the ATM itself as a developing powder so you would brush the suit and the fingerprint self-developed with the suit could the pair of mugs originally spotted by Peter at the home hold the murderer Prince [Music] we’ve got our own little um search lab area and we got a drying cabinet so I thought well the firemen have been around been hosing and everything and it’s you know the it’s damp so you can’t fingerprint items when they’re damp so I I took them back to the police station put them in the drawing cabinet and I thought well I’m going to leave them there for 24 hours hoping that some fingerprint evidence had been preserved Peter’s patience paid off I’m almost certain that I got uh the victim’s fingerprints and then on the other cup I found a fingerprint Mark I think it was only just the one and uh that was sent to Police Headquarters fingerprint department they put it through the national system and it came back as the as the suspect that gave us the name to give to the investigating team and then they did the the work they went out there and found him and that name was John Dickinson John Dickinson was a local park keeper he was identified as the main suspect in the murder of Susan loen it came out that he had another conviction for arson in the’ 70s when he had set fire to his bedsit in Newcastle he’d been found guilty and convicted sentenced to a 3-year prison term for that crime so now we have an identification um on the coffee cup which probably meant that it was a recent visit by the offender Dickinson to the house plus the fact that when we looked at his uh previous convictions especially the one for an arson um he became the main suspect or the only suspect and very quickly I was assigned to arrest him and take him into [Applause] custody along with a detective Constable I went to the um address where he was living um arrested him for murder um he he was quite aggressive um as was his wife um but we took him to Steven police station we knew him locally to be a burglar um he had a previous for violence so we knew enough about him to think that this is our man [Music] [Applause] [Applause] [Music] in March 1980 forensic investigators had recovered a fingerprint at the scene of a murder 25-year-old Susan Len’s body had been left in her bedroom with her 4-year-old daughter Amanda still alive then the room had set a light but miraculously Amanda was rescued now police had a suspect whose print matched one found in the victim’s house this is the police station that John Dickinson was brought to in 1980 he would have been brought in to the cell block he was held there for several days of interviews the interview room where he was interviewed was upstairs on the other side of the upper Windows which was the C office and the interview rooms at the [Music] side he did four interviews the first one he denied he’d ever been to 13 Co Street close um and that he didn’t know other than a very brief meeting two years before he didn’t know Susan nelton the second one he admitted he was there and that they had here he was there for the purpose of trying to get lodgings that they got on well together according to him they had sexual intercourse and about 2:00 in the morning there was a knocking on the door and a man apparently arrived that he didn’t see but he didn’t want any aggravation when Susan went downstairs to let him in he escaped around the back door absolute lies this was just one version of events told by Dickinson but he changed his story several times including one where he claimed to be just a burglar who set fire to the house to hide evidence of his Breakin [Music] with his fingerprint placing him at Susan’s home and the clear forensic evidence of her being strangled Dickinson was charged by police he was brought to trial quite quickly in September 1980 in St orban’s Crown Court where he pled not guilty [Applause] there was a a trial of over two weeks and the jury only took 40 minutes to see through his lies and find him guilty of murder of Arsen with intent to endanger life and for which he received a life sentence a minimum of 18 years but who was John Dickinson and why had he murdered Susan on the night of the 4th of March 1980 John Dickinson had been living up in Newcastle until he was actually imprisoned for an Arsen up there John came to live in stevenage where his parents lived so as far as we know he was chucked out by his wife and needed to find a place for that night he turned up at Susan ‘s house Susan and Dickinson only met each other once previously which was 2 years prior to the offense when um Dickinson had been at a house when Susan visited someone else he may have waved at her in the street a couple of times when when he saw her but he became aware through other friends that Susan was looking for a lodger although Susan made it clear according to him on the evening that she only usually took ladies in not [Applause] men I think he had his suitcase with him my mom was like well we’ll have to organize that for a date but he sort of pushed his way in sort of was I really need to stay somewhere right now so my mom was all taken back she she didn’t really quite know what was happening she knew of him but she felt really unsettled by it so what she done was that she rang Carol the lady who used to live with us and said would to Carol on the phone back then you just had house phones she said would she come around uh because this guy’s turned up who needs lodgings you know I’m feeling a bit uncomfortable but Carol said unfortunately I’m going out tonight I’ll definitely come tomorrow so my mom s went oh okay then so that’s that’s how he gained entry into the house she had in fact let in a man with monstrous intentions he would not only take her life but also destroy everything which her daughter loved for Amanda life would never be the same again she’d lost her mother she’d lost her home and even though she was now going to live with her father it was not the same loving relationship that she’d enjoyed with her [Music] mother mom’s parents put the grave here my grandparents and they put my my mom with her Nan May so that she wasn’t alone and she really got on well with her Nan they had a close relationship so that’s why my grandparents wanted her here it feels like a good thing that I’ve got good memories of my mom and also I’ve got lots of photographs of me and her together so that that’s brilliant for me as well because I can see them I can look at them and know that we had good times they’re real I can hold them in my hand so I feel happy that there was lots of photographs taken of us together so I’ve got the photographs of my mom M I got the poems that my mom done so yeah that all means a lot to me it’s so precious to me I do often wonder what my mom would be like now um all through my childhood I often thought about her and I wondered what she would look like what clothes she would wear what job she would have what her interest would be yeah all of that stuff it’s just been erased it’s never it never happened and it never will happen so it’s just like a massive void of of of curiosity of wondering but never knowing the answers John Dickinson spent 34 years in prison for the murder of Amanda’s mother but after his release in 2014 other terrible crimes of historic abuse committed against his own stepchildren now adults came to light the Revelation came after one of them was inspired to get in touch with Amanda after hearing her speak out and I just couldn’t believe him and uh and it was nice to talk to her talk about our feelings and growing up feeling guilty and bad about ourselves and really we shouldn’t have had to feel like that and we talked about her getting like going to the police about it because he should be punished for for this disgusting crime that he’s put on them and it was just swept under the carpet she plucked up the courage and she made that phone call to the police and then from there there was investigation and he a court case and he was put back in prison which is amazing so we were really elated with that that he’s back and he can’t hurt anyone else he has been sentenced to another 17 years a truly horrific criminal a monster [Music] the truth had finally caught up with Dickinson and taken him back to prison once and for all and that judicial Journey all began with the findings of forensic evidence and the initial diligence of one detective at the scene of a house fire I think what what stands out for me in this particular case is the fact that um uh when you go to a scene where it might look like it’s fairly straightforward from the point of view of a house fire for example the police could easily have thought that she may have dropped a cigarette near the bed which then set a light um but all credits them we kept an open [Music] mind it was the fingerprint evidence that pointed the way to the the inquiry that took place afterwards and uh the successful conviction so yeah the forensic evidence was the fingerprint evidence it worked Dickenson is known to have hurt three children in different yet equally horrific ways all are survivors none more so than the little girl he left alone to die in the fire which he [Music] started I think the worst thing for me was the fact that it wasn’t actually the the murderer of the victim which is horrendous in itself but it was the fact that someone could lock a 4-year-old child in a bedroom and leave her there to burn to death that that is the thing that really um is horrendous I can’t even explain the feeling about it it’s just horrible the man who killed my mom left me a terrified child I was so scared of him I knew him has the bad man and for a very very long time I just feared him as this big monster that could hurt me even today I still have anxiety so it’s still it’s still with me today and the sadness I’m not having my mom and the longing to have my mom will never leave it never leaves that mother daughter relationship it’s it’s always there and if if I go through really tough times I always want my mom [Music] [Applause] [Music]