Original subtitles

[bright music]

[ominous music]

[traffic whooshing]

[ominous music]

[traffic whooshing]

[dramatic ominous music]

- I was a police inspector based at Chester in Northwest England.

I was working a late shift,

working through 'til about midnight.

[ominous music]

That particular evening, there wasn't that much happening.

My radio came into life,

and it didn't go into a lot of detail.

They just said, "Can you contact us and report to CID?"

[dramatic ominous music]

A French national who spoke very poor English

had rang the police talking about a murder

that he'd been involved in a few years earlier.

He'd been brought into the police station

to get to the bottom of this story.

[ominous music]

And because they knew I was a fluent French speaker,

they needed my help in clarifying exactly what he was talking about.

[tense music]

This is not something I'd ever experienced before in my career.

What am I walking into?

What's gonna be disclosed to me?

That was the first time I met Sebastian Bendou.

[tense dramatic music]

And I just asked him, "So what is this all about?"

And he then briefly explained that back in 2009,

he'd been involved in a fight

with somebody he was living with at the time.

This gentleman had died as a result of the incident.

This was an accidental death.

He hadn't intended it.

He then covered up the killing,

and he buried him in a concrete tomb

in the shed in the back of the garden.

[dramatic ominous music]

It doesn't get more serious

than somebody saying they've killed somebody.

[ominous music]

As we started to learn more about his past,

it became clear that there was a lot more to this

than we'd been led to believe by him initially.

I had a sense that this was something serious,

but I had no idea what it would lead to.

In my professional career before and since,

I've never seen anything like it.

[tense ominous music]

[graphics whooshing] [static crackling]

[dramatic music]

[light music]

[fly buzzing]

[light ominous music]

[static crackling]

[light ominous music]

[clock ticking] [sinister music]

[light ominous music]

[gentle music]

[birds chirping]

- Cheshire's a very broad county.

It's known for being an idyllic rural place,

a lot of footballers, footballers' wives.

That's the image of Cheshire for some people, I think.

A lot of farmland, a lot of beautiful countryside.

- Affluent areas, so Wilmslow, Alderley Edge,

moving across to some of the bigger urban areas,

such as Widnes, Warrington, Chester.

[light music]

I was a police officer with Cheshire Police for 32 years.

I've gotta admit I wasn't 100% sure

that's what I wanted to do, but from the moment I joined,

I realized that this was the vocation that suited me best,

and that's where I worked since December, 1992.

[gentle music]

I say to people who ask me how safe is Cheshire,

"It is a safe place."

A lot of the crime is what you'd expect,

burglaries, domestic violence,

casualties on the roads.

Murders are a big event in Cheshire.

They don't happen all the time,

and when they do, it's big news.

[gentle music]

[light mysterious music]

By the time of this incident,

I was just getting to grips

with the new role of an inspector

working on a very busy area,

covering a lot of different responsibilities.

And when I met Sebastian Bendou,

that's where the story started for me.

His English was very rudimentary,

and the people on duty were aware

that I could speak to him in French,

so that we could start to build up a picture

of what he was alleging that he'd done.

Sebastian Bendou was dishevelled, was frightened,

disorientated, had a bit of a vacant look about him.

[tense music]

He'd had quite an ordeal in getting to Cheshire.

He traveled down from Scotland,

traveling by bus, hitchhiking

to end up in Ellesmere Port

to hand himself into the police.

[ominous music]

He said, "I'm responsible for killing someone."

He'd covered up the killing

and he buried him in the shed in the back of the garden.

[light gentle music]

After he was booked into custody,

he'd been seen by a psychiatrist,

and they diagnosed that there was a mental health illness

that he was suffering from at the time he'd been arrested,

paranoid schizophrenia.

You question if there was any truth

in what this individual was saying,

'cos we get people walking in all the time

making claims and accusations.

[light mysterious music]

In these cases, CID come in and they take over quite rapidly,

preserving evidence, making sure that we start to gather

as much information as possible,

because ultimately, what we do in these first 48 hours

can often mean the difference between a successful

and an unsuccessful prosecution

many months, or sometimes even years later.

[tense music]

- My initial role would incorporate the potential murder scene.

Sebastian had turned up and given this information

off the top of his head.

He thought that a murder had happened in 2009

in an address in Ellesmere Port.

- So the location where Bendou was living at the time

was a housing estate at the back of the town center.

I mean, you could call it a close,

but they were all called courts

and they were all named accordingly.

[ominous music]

- The court was at a small close at a terraced street

in a working-class area of Ellesmere Port,

a tight-knit community.

- I was out at the area where he said he was living.

Had a look around.

There was just nothing that was standing out

as this to be a place where a body could be hidden.

We made the decision to bring Sebastian down to the scene

to see if Sebastian could help us further

in identifying where the victim had been put.

[tense music]

And he goes straight into number 19.

[tense music]

- Each of the properties in the court had a backyard,

and within that backyard was a shed

where tenants would store extra items, garden implements.

[tense ominous music]

- It only became apparent when I walked into that shed

that this has actually got legs.

There was something wrong

about this brick construction

at the bottom of the shed.

It clearly wasn't professionally built.

It was like it had been stuck together in a hurry.

[light ominous music]

[graphics whooshing] [static crackling]

- Sebastian Bendou gave the name of the gentleman

that he was admitting killing in 2009,

Christophe Borgye, 36-year-old French national.

I then started checking through

what information we held on Christophe.

I established that Christophe had been living

at an address at the court,

the same location that Bendou had indicated,

and that he'd been reported missing to the police back in 2009.

[tense ominous music]

There'd been no trace of him.

He was still an outstanding missing person.

[graphics ticking] [gentle pensive music]

[people chattering]

- Christophe was working for a budget airline

based at John Lennon Airport in Liverpool.

He was very outgoing, very personable,

especially as an air steward,

someone who's compassionate and kind,

and looks after your needs.

He loved travelling, loved meeting people.

- He was just a hardworking lad,

and like a lot of young people,

and wanna travel around, wanna see a bit of the world,

and he was supporting himself to do that.

[somber music]

- At the time of his disappearance,

he was living with Sebastian Bendou

and another individual called Manuel Wagner.

Wagner and Bendou were connected to another individual

who lived across the way from them called Dominik Kocher,

who was living there with his wife and his children.

Christophe had no connection with them

prior to him moving to the UK.

He'd grown up in the Lille area of northern France,

and it was through contacts at work,

I understand, that he was introduced

to Kocher, Wagner, and Bendou.

[light music]

- [Steve] They had a room for rent.

So Christophe moves in with

Wagner and Bendou in 2007.

Kocher was directly across the road with his wife

and family at number 10,

and number 19 was actually being rented by Dominik Kocher.

- [Anton] Kocher was effectively subletting it

to Christophe, Wagner, and Bendou.

- He's got the money coming in from the room rent,

and the lads were living there.

[light music]

[graphics whooshing] [static crackling]

[light music]

- [Neighbor] Christophe was a nice, friendly guy,

nice, friendly guy.

Yeah, he was always smiling and happy,

and he'd get in his little car,

and jog off to Liverpool to go into his job.

And if he was going out,

toot and he'd wave his hand out the window to me, you know?

[graphics whooshing] [static crackling]

- Christophe's landlord, Dominik Kocher,

was another French national who had come to England,

I believe, in the 2000s

with his wife and his children.

[light music]

- Dominik was always a really nice guy,

very, very friendly.

Seemed to get on really well with everyone.

Manny worked at the chip shop and the local shops.

- Kocher and Wagner were cousins.

Sebastian Bendou was a childhood friend.

- Sebastian seemed a nice enough, friendly guy,

harmless enough guy.

He didn't seem like he'd ever harm anyone.

[light apprehensive music]

[graphics whooshing] [static crackling]

- [Steve] The police had actually been notified

of Mr. Borgye's disappearance

four years before Bendou's first confession.

[graphics ticking] [tense dramatic music]

- In May, 2009, the colleague at work basically reports

his disappearance to the authorities.

- He didn't turn up for work

for a flight that he was supposed to be on,

and then he never turned up for a further two weeks.

People were starting to get worried,

'cause it just didn't fit with who Christophe was.

- They contacted the police

and basically said he'd vanished off the face of the earth.

On the 27th of May, 2009,

an officer attended at the home address

and spoke to the occupant,

which happened to be Sebastian Bendou.

Bendou'd explained in very poor, broken English

that Christophe had gone,

and he had no idea where he'd got to.

He indicated actually

that Dominik Kocher would have more information

and Kocher's English was far better.

- And they go to speak to Kocher,

who tells them the story that he's gone traveling

because that's been the nature of his life and his work.

[tense music]

- Kocher told the officer

he'd spoken to Christophe's brother

and that the brother wasn't worried,

Christophe has done this before,

and that there was nothing to worry about.

- The initial inquiries with the family were

that he was quite old-fashioned in how he'd maintained contact.

He preferred letters, postcards.

He didn't use emails.

So it wasn't an unreasonable stretch to think that he had gone off.

[tense music]

- But his car was there,

and I said to Dominik, "Where is he?"

He said, "He's gone to see his parents."

I said, "Oh, lovely."

I thought he'd gone home.

[light mysterious music]

[gentle ominous music] [graphics ticking]

- At this stage, we had a suspicious brick box

with a Frenchman, Sebastian Bendou,

with clear mental health issues

telling us there was a body inside it,

but we didn't know what we had.

So a decision was made

where we'd use forensic archaeologists.

- We were housemates with Sebastian and Manuel at the time.

[gentle ominous music]

We assumed that there was never a housemate prior to us,

because no other person had ever been mentioned.

- I think I'd walked to the shop,

and then after I come back, 10 minutes later,

there was about four police officers

at the back of our door.

They kind of just asked me if I had anywhere else to go

as the house was being seized.

[gentle ominous music]

- Forensic police just suddenly turned up out of the blue

at the back of their house,

and they put up a canopy.

There was obviously a gathering of people around.

Everyone was speculating, but nobody knew what was going on.

- [Neighbor] Oh, it was the talk of the court.

Every time you saw somebody, "Have you heard what's going on?"

"Yeah, can't believe it."

[light ominous music]

[graphics whooshing] [static crackling]

[tense music]

- When we're inside the shed,

we have to forensically preserve

what is ever inside of this tomb.

I mean, it was slow, it was painstaking,

and the archeologists were going down

the different levels of the structure.

You could see the blue tarpaulin bound together

in a tight little bundle.

We didn't know what was inside the tarpaulin,

but we knew it was a body shape,

and sadly, it smelled of death.

[graphics whooshing] [static crackling]

- We did think this could be Christophe Borgye

who'd been reported missing at the time.

The last thing we wanted was family members

after all this time finding out through the news

or finding out on the internet

that their loved one had been found.

[light ominous music]

I'm not a trained family liaison officer,

but nobody else was available who spoke French

to a good enough degree to fulfill that role.

[tense music]

I'd never been involved in anything like this

using my language skills,

informing the family that we've got this dreadful news.

It has to be broken to them.

There's no easy way of telling them,

but they needed to know, and that was my priority.

[tense music]

Using the information that we had recorded at the time

that Christophe went missing,

we tried those contact numbers,

but they weren't working anymore.

We had addresses,

but the family of Christophe Borgye clearly moved on

in those, you know, four years.

I contacted the French police there,

and they said, "We'll make some inquiries."

The press were clamoring for more information,

and the biggest concern the investigation team had was that

we were gonna have to release details on what we were dealing with.

- When we turn up en our masse

and rumour control starts to fly around Ellesmere Port,

we do attract attention from the media.

- The majority of times when the media are alerted

to a murder investigation, it's by local residents

and people who've spotted what's going on.

The media interest in a murder is always going to be huge.

- I was getting concerned that the longer it was taking me

to track the family down, the harder it was gonna be

for them to deal with this news,

particularly if they found out through the media.

[light music]

I remember being called into a briefing room

with the chief superintendent who wanted an update

when my phone rang.

The voice on the other end said,

"I'm Yves Borgye," in French.

"I believe you're trying to get hold of me.

"Is this about my son Christophe?"

[somber music]

The first time the police called me

they asked me to contact the English police.

So right away, we thought of Christophe.

- I had to make that difficult decision there and then.

I had to inform him that we were investigating a case

and it appeared that we had found Christophe deceased.

I didn’t think for a second that they were mistaken because

I already suspected something. But we weren’t expecting that.

It was difficult.

[somber music]

- I said that somebody had admitted killing Christophe,

and that we had then discovered a body,

and we believed it to be his missing son.

I was told that they have found Christophe's body

I had to inform the whole family afterwards. It was hard.

[somber music]

When my father called me to announce the news, I couldn’t believe it.

I just broke down in tears.

I thought this isn’t possible. This kind of thing only happens in movies.

[gentle somber music]

You never expect that one day

someone will knock on your door and tell you that you’ve

lost a brother

That is such an horrific scenario

[gentle music]

Christophe is my adoptive son, whom I adopted following his

mother’s death in 1990, but who had been living with me since 1983.

[gentle music]

We lost our mother when we were young and that was a difficult time.

I was seven years old, my brother was about six.

Christophe was already nine years older.

We always had a brotherly relationship.

He really fulfilled the role of a big brother

whether it was listening, helping, or supporting us.

He always managed to stay positive despite everything we had gone through.

He wasn’t always smiling on the inside

but he was always positive on the outside.

He was a perfectly happy young man.

A very calm, kind and patient character.

He was someone completely easy-going.

He always loved music,

...travelling, horses, nature, walking.

And when he became an adult

he quickly went off on adventures.

But he kept in touch with us regularly

sending us news from his travels with photos and postcards.

[gentle music]

My brother was someone who was a bit traditional in his outlook.

He would say, “Spoken words fly away, written words remain.”

So he would send a card, a photo, or a little note to prove that even if he

wasn’t present, he was thinking of us.

[gentle music]

[graphics whooshing] [static crackling]

[gentle music]

We knew he had roommates in England, but he didn't talk about them.

It seemed to be going well.

He moved around a lot with his work, so he was very busy.

But we never really knew his roommates.

[light ominous music]

- [Reporter] The police search has been concentrated

at the back of this house.

Earlier this afternoon,

what's believed to be human remains were removed from the scene.

- We were pretty dumbstruck, I think,

when we found out that they'd actually uncovered a body.

You don't expect to see that in your back garden ever.

- We didn't know who it was they'd found.

Then it suddenly started to come out in the press,

and on the TV, on the news channels.

- [Reporter] They've been looking for the body

of French man Christophe Borgye, missing since 2009,

and neighbors have been shocked by today's developments.

- Everyone was totally gobsmacked when we found out

it was actually Christophe.

[light ominous music]

[graphics whooshing] [static crackling]

- During the course of my investigation,

I started to learn more about who Sebastian Bendou was.

He was originally from the Strasbourg area of France.

His mother committed suicide,

which would have had a significant impact

on the children at the time.

It was horrendous.

I know his father had gone to great lengths

to provide opportunity for Sebastian to go to a good school,

to get education.

But then Sebastian's father died when he was quite young

of natural causes,

and then from that point,

Sebastian then looked after his brother

through their teenage years.

He'd ended up in a relationship.

That relationship quickly soured

to the point where she ended it because of his behavior,

and he then became quite aggressive,

threatened to disfigure her,

was harassing her to the point

where she was forced to go to the authorities,

which resulted in him being arrested by the police,

and prosecuted for threatening to kill his partner.

As we dug into his background

and started to learn more about his past,

it became clear that he was potentially capable of far worse

than being involved in an accident that had,

you know, gone tragically wrong.

When they said it was a self-defence case, I knew that wasn’t possible.

Christophe was not violent. He loved everyone and got along with everyone.

I knew Christophe. He wasn’t someone who would attack anyone

or do anything wrong. So, I knew that was a lie.

[tense music]

- I started to question, as did members of the team,

that this wasn't a case of self-defense,

but very likely was more than that,

and that it was an intentional act of murder.

[graphics whooshing] [static crackling]

[somber music]

- This tarpaulin is transported as one

to the Royal Liverpool Pathology Department,

where the pathologist took a X-ray

of the whole of the package, as we were calling it,

and it was chilling what was in there.

[tense music]

You could see there was a hammer.

You could see knife handles.

There was a quilt and sheets,

and then, obviously, the body of a young male.

He was in a football shirt and his slider flip-flops.

I remember that.

There was decomposition,

but you could still make out features

because he was in an airtight environment.

Obviously, he was identified through other means

during the course of the investigation,

but you could still see it was Christophe.

You could see the knife wounds

and the hammer blows.

The attack to Christophe's skull, the ferocity of the blows,

it was horrendous.

[somber music]

- And to think that that was the person

that I'd been learning all about from his family

was quite hard to reconcile.

It was horrific, absolutely horrific.

[somber music]

[graphics whooshing] [static crackling]

The last time the family had had contact

with Christophe had been in the January of 2009,

five months before Christophe went missing.

He came to visit the family

for about two weeks, I think.

And at the end when I told him that I was

getting married and he was overjoyed.

He told me word for word

that no matter what happened, he would do everything to be there that day.

It meant everything to him that his little brother was happy.

- It was really important for Noel

that his older brother was there to witness

and to take part in the ceremony.

This was vital,

and that was due to take place in the June in 2009.

I remember sending him the wedding invitation

including a photo, so he would have a record of it.

I never got a response.

[light foreboding music]

- At some point in the April of that year,

Christophe just drops off the face of the earth.

He doesn't turn up to the wedding.

There's absolutely nothing, you know?

And that really upset Noel.

[somber music]

He had no idea what had actually happened to Christophe,

but that was part of the reason they'd contacted Cheshire Police.

My brother was a man of his word, especially with us.

When he said something, you could count on it.

We tried to contact him, of course, by phone,

but there was nothing.

He had disappeared.

- Christophe Borgye lived his own life,

quite independent from the people

he was sharing the house with.

So Cheshire Police had nothing to go on really at the time

that would suggest anything sinister had happened.

For me, the story didn’t make sense.

As a former police officer, I knew that there wouldn’t

be a serious investigation into a disappearance

because if his neighbours reported that he had left voluntarily,

then there would be no investigation.

[ominous music]

- So back in 2009

when Christophe was initially reported missing

and the officer visited Bendou and Kocher,

Christophe's brother receives an email from Christophe.

It was a very strange email. Noël showed it to me

and we didn’t believe it was from him. It wasn’t his way of writing.

It wasn’t him.

[mysterious music] [keyboard keys clicking]

- [Anton] The email read, "Hi, Noel, I've just been able

"to read my emails for the first time in five weeks,

"and I see that both you and Aurelie

"and Dominik have been worried about me,"

and he went on to say, "Don't worry, I'm fine,

"and I've decided to travel a bit."

He then goes on to say, "I'm gonna visit

"and settle in China for two to three months,

"and I'll be together with this female,"

that he'd met on his travels apparently.

He then goes on to say, "You know that I've always wanted

"to go to China, and my cell phone's about to die on me."

[mysterious music]

He had mentioned wanting to visit China, but

he would never have sent an email to explain this to his family.

He would have waited until he was in person.

Noël was very worried. He told me,

“I’m going to call the police. Something isn’t right.”

[tense music]

I made multiple reports to the French police,

but they told me that an adult in France has the right to disappear.

[light ominous music]

- After that email, the family effectively didn't hear

any more news from Christophe.

We know at the time that it was sent

it couldn't have been Christophe,

because we suspected that by that point

Christophe was already dead.

[tense ominous music]

[graphics whooshing] [static crackling]

What we were led to believe initially with Bendou is that,

you know, this was an accidental death.

He hadn't intended it.

[hammer thudding]

We needed to get to the bottom of what had happened to Christophe.

That's when things started to unravel

and paint a far more disturbing picture about

what had happened to Christophe in his final hours.

- [Steve] So inside the tarpaulin, there was a claw hammer,

a number of knives, a number of pairs of overshoes.

- The post-mortem revealed severe trauma to his skull,

where he'd been hit more than once with the hammer.

The autopsy also revealed that there were a number

of knife injuries that had occurred to Christophe.

It didn't stack up with the story

that Christophe had been killed accidentally

in a fight with Bendou.

[tarpaulin rustling]

- It was just screaming out

that this poor young lad had not been killed by one person.

[light ominous music]

- Obviously, you needed to start looking at

who else was there at the time,

and given this is now years on from the murder,

we couldn't find a fingerprint.

We didn't have CCTV.

We didn't have that evidence that you would normally rely on.

So we had to go back and do old-fashioned detective work.

[somber music]

- We were keen to find out

what day Christophe was actually murdered.

We knew that he'd been to work

the 22nd of April, 2009.

[light apprehensive music]

We discovered that Christophe was booked onto a flight.

The flight was booked for the 24th of April, 2009.

Christophe didn't turn up for that flight.

So it made perfect sense to us

that the actual murder date would be the 23rd of April, 2009.

[light apprehensive music]

- In the tarpaulin with Christophe's body,

the police had found two knives and a broken knife handle.

- It was small little paring knives that you have in the kitchen.

Cheap as chips, they are.

I think they're about 50 pence each, under a quid.

We know what supermarket locally these knives have been bought at.

I was hoping that someone was dumb enough

to pay for this stuff on a card

that could be traced back to them,

and bearing in mind, we're four years down the line now,

I thought, "We're not gonna have any luck with this,

"but we'll give it a go."

[light apprehensive music]

The security manager does her magic,

and lo and behold, a couple of days

before Christophe was murdered,

Dominik Kocher is in this supermarket,

and buying three paring knives,

and he's used his debit card.

[light ominous music]

[graphics whooshing] [static crackling]

- [Anton] Kocher, we found out, got to know lots of people

within the Ellesmere Port area.

He was volunteering,

helping with training with a football team,

and he was well-liked by all accounts.

[somber music]

- Dominik came into our restaurant,

and that's how we got to know him.

Dominik said to us, "Oh, do you guys play football?"

We're like, "Yeah, we live for football.

"We play all the time."

So he said, "I'm looking to get a new team.

"I'm looking to get new players."

- The first time I met Dom,

he asked me what position I played,

and I was upfront, and then he asked me to play ever since.

[somber music]

He was very friendly.

He introduced me to the rest of the team,

and he just seemed really happy and bubbly.

- He's really kind. [Amin chuckling]

Sometimes, he will give some money to us,

like, "Guys, get yourself a drink," or whatever.

When we used to have football tournaments,

he'd be like, "Oh, I made some food."

"Oh, thanks, Dom," you know?

Like he was the top guy looking out for us.

- I was house sharing with a friend.

My friend moved out, which left me on my own.

So I explained the situation to Dominik,

'cause he was taking me to football that day.

He told me he had a spare room in this house.

- [Poppy] I've been staying with him at the original place,

and then we both moved in together on the same day.

- [Joe] When I was moving my stuff in,

that's when I realised there was other people in the house.

- I was quite surprised when we moved in

to be living with two adult men

that I didn't know anything about, I had no background on.

Sebastian, he didn't have the best English,

so we had a little bit of a language barrier,

but he didn't seem intimidating in any way.

He was fine.

He smiled. That was about it.

- Sebastian used to work in a restaurant

as a kitchen porter,

12-hour shifts a day, no days off.

Manny was a very odd, weird guy.

He spoke weirdly, and he used to work a lot.

He's a workaholic.

That was like, "Well, okay, we're hardworking, wow."

12-hour shifts seven days a week, not doing days off.

- Seb wasn't the most clean person ever.

He would leave stuff out.

He would leave dishes in the sink

and brush his teeth in with the water with the dishes.

One time, we came home,

and I don't think they had toilet paper,

so they had used one of our dressing gowns.

I think you could figure out the rest yourself.

- Yeah, it wasn't a number one.

[ominous music]

- The whole scenario involving Dominik Kocher,

Manny Wagner, and Sebastian Bendou was just weird.

Kocher didn't work.

The lads that were living at 19 were a source of income for him.

All of them had their salaries paid into Kocher's bank account,

and in return, he bought all the food,

supplied them with pocket money.

- Do the washing. - Do everything for them-

- Clean the bedrooms.

All that Manny and Seb ever did was go to work, come home,

sleep, wash, go back to work.

- If they needed clothes or they needed a new toothbrush,

Kocher was the one that would go out and buy it.

He maintained a vice-like grip on their lives,

and their finances, and controlled everything.

[light ominous music]

- They just worked, earned money, and repeat.

They never went on holiday.

Their lives never really moved along.

They never learned to drive.

They didn't find partners.

They didn't go out to restaurants, or shopping trips,

or just general, general activities that people do.

[light ominous music]

Dom, he had a car, and his house was nicer.

He had a family home,

flat screen TVs, like leather sofa,

kind of what you'd expect more for someone

who was working 12 hour shifts most days.

[light ominous music]

- It was apparent that Kocher was living a very nice

and fairly affluent lifestyle,

and it was clear that much of this was being funded

by not only Wagner and Bendou's wages,

Christophe Borgye was also paying his wages

into Kocher's accounts,

clearly in understanding

that Kocher was looking after his wages,

"I'll take care of everything for you."

But it became apparent that Christophe was unaware

that his wages were effectively funding the house

and lifestyle of Kocher.

[light ominous music]

- It was just something we as an inquiry team

and an investigation team just couldn't get my head around

why these young lads are working hard,

they're out doing proper jobs for minimum wage,

but the arrangement just only benefited one person,

and that was Dominik Kocher.

[tense ominous music]

- It became very apparent very quickly

that he was very manipulative.

He was actually very skilled at convincing people

of things that were clearly a lie.

[light apprehensive music]

- He did tell us at one point that he had cancer.

He was telling everyone he was ill and wasn't well.

- He said he's having chemo, stuff like that.

Some days, he could look ill.

So you're thinking, "Oh, yeah, he's having a rough day."

Some days, he'd be like, "Oh,

"yeah, you can come around to my house,

"but I'm not feeling well,

"but it'll come round, mate," you know,

where he'd help you, support you as friends do.

- He elicited a lot of sympathy.

Some people went to a great deal of trouble

to lend him significant amounts of money to assist him,

feeling sorry for him,

and a number of people we then went on to find out

loaned him considerable amounts of money

and were never repaid,

or he would provide them with cheques that would then bounce,

so he'd keep them ticking along.

- I think it's interesting that everybody says

that he was a nice guy,

he was a coach for the football teams.

he'd do anything for anyone.

However, there were people that saw through it.

There was a neighbor who said he was always on the take.

He never wanted to buy things himself.

- [Neighbor] Dominik was always knocking

and borrowing stuff off of any neighbour he could.

So I got used to him then,

and then if he wanted something, say, "No, sorry."

"Huh, well, where am I gonna get it?"

Say, "Try buying it."

- From a psychological perspective,

people often have a public persona

and the persona that only a few people get to see.

So she saw the real him

and only some people would see the real him,

that he was somebody that would manipulate and take,

and I think that's why he had this bizarre relationship

with Wagner and Bendou.

He was an individual that used people

to take what he wanted.

[tense music]

- There was a lot of evidence that was starting

to come forward which directly linked Kocher as a suspect.

- After Christophe was last seen,

a lot of his possessions were sold on by Dominik Kocher

using websites to sell his DVDs and CDs.

[light ominous music]

- A lovely elderly couple told us

that Kocher had told them that Christophe moved away

and he left Kocher with some bills or some financial problems

and he had to sell Christophe's car.

- He was only after a couple of hundred pound for it,

and said, yeah, it was his mate's,

and his mate had moved abroad.

I paid him the money and actually bought the car off of him.

- We thought, "Why would you sell someone's car

"just 'cause you haven't seen them for a couple of days?"

- [Mark] At the time, I didn't know it was Christophe's car.

It was identified to me was a friend's car.

It's sickening.

It's horrible.

- All the traces of Christophe's life

in Ellesmere Port were slowly being erased.

[graphics whooshing] [static crackling]

[light ominous music]

- Now, we were looking for evidence around Dominik Kocher

and his involvement in Christophe's death.

The stuff for this tomb has to come from somewhere,

and someone's gonna have to buy this stuff.

And with the result of the knives,

we pushed further down that route.

- Police started looking into financial transactions

of Dominik Kocher,

and he had been using his own accounts

to make purchases from a local builder's yard as well,

concrete, cement, mortar materials.

- The bricks that were used in the making of the tomb.

We established the date of the 23rd of April

as being the date that Christophe was murdered.

We were able to link that directly to purchases

Kocher made in the days leading up to the date of the murder.

- We also look at victims' bank accounts,

and Christophe's card was being actively used

after the time of his death.

[tense music]

Someone had bought Dominik Kocher's wife an anniversary card

using the deceased's debit card.

So when you put two and two together,

the only person that's gonna be buying an anniversary card

with wife on it is Dominik Kocher.

[tense music]

I mean, how sick is it to buy your wife an anniversary card

using the dead man's debit card?

That is clearly wrong.

[tense music]

- So we had established that

there were other persons of interest in this investigation,

namely Dominik Kocher, because of the dynamics,

and Manuel Wagner, who was living with Sebastian Bendou

and Christophe Borgye in the same house.

- We needed to find out who would be sending emails

to the deceased brother stating that,

"I'm fine and dandy,

"and I'm've met a new girl, and I moving to China."

Could it be the same person that's sold his car?

[tense music]

Could it be the same person

that's sold his music collection,

the same person that's been to the supermarket

to buy three knives,

who's been to the builder's merchant to buy bricks,

and bought cement and limestone

to complete the tomb?

[tense music]

It's damning evidence for Dominik Kocher.

[dramatic ominous music]

- We quickly needed to get them in,

so we could establish what involvement, if any,

they had played in the death of Christophe Borgye.

The problem was that they had all left the courts

where they'd been living over a year earlier.

- These people have to be arrested

and interviewed in connection with the murder

of Christophe Borgye.

[tense dramatic music]

[light ominous music]

[somber mysterious music]