Original subtitles

[logo swooshing]

[suspenseful music]

- What had initially started out

as an admission of accidental killing

by Sebastian Bendou had now turned

into a complex murder inquiry

involving more than one person.

There was no doubt this was a murder,

it was horrendous injuries

and one person couldn't have done this on their own.

[suspenseful music]

I found it harrowing trying to picture

what Christophe must have thought,

trying to understand and comprehend what's happening to him.

We need to get justice for Christophe and his family.

Wagner and Kocher had likely been involved,

so there was clearly a lot of pressure on us

to bring them in for questioning so we could start to secure evidence.

[intense music]

What we'd established is that Kocher, Bendou and Wagner,

they had all left the courts where they'd been living,

so we had a lot of trouble trying to find out

where they were living, what they'd been doing

and what had happened in the intervening time

since they left the court.

- We specifically wanted to talk

to Manuel Wagner and Dominik Kocher.

In talking to neighbors and acquaintances of the trio,

it became apparent that we weren't the only ones

who had been searching for them since they left.

Kocher had borrowed a significant amount of money

from local residents and members of the football team

that he ran.

- Dominik told us he was going to move to Warrington,

not far from here.

So he said to me, "Look, I'm a bit short of money

to pay towards my deposit."

He said, "Can you borrow me some money?"

I said, "Yeah, yeah, how much do you need?"

And then he said, "I need two grand."

And I thought, "Yeah, no problem.

You're my friend, I'll give it to you."

So I gave him two grand like that, no paperwork,

because I thought, you know what?

I trust him, we're close.

I'll give it to him.

We played football on Monday,

then on the Tuesday, he was gone.

[suspenseful music]

Thinking, oh, something strange,

has he died or something, you know,

we're like is he dead, we don't know.

Couldn't get hold of no one, even Sebastian, Manny.

[brooding music]

- Manny and Seb moved away with Dom and his family.

There was no warning, there was no goodbyes, farewells.

It was just in the middle of the night, they were gone,

but we wasn't sure why.

We were starting to assume that it was over debt chasers.

[brooding music]

- I knew where his house was.

I went to his house and he wasn't there.

So no one there and it was just an empty house

and I thought, "Oh gosh, my money's took as well."

[suspenseful music]

- And then we all received letters.

Me and Joe received one,

I think most people in the football team received one.

- A letter sent through to Ellesmere Port.

Friends of Kocher.

He said his father-in-law was ill in France

and his phone wouldn't be working

and they were going over to France

so you wouldn't be able to get ahold of him,

but in truth, they didn't go to France.

Kocher, Wagner and Bendou were in rent arrears

and they just upped and left.

[suspenseful music]

- It transpired that the three of them

were keeping one step ahead of the bailiffs

in that they moved out of Ellesmere Port

and ended up in Scotland.

- They all moved up in mass to start new lives up there,

where again, Kocher was the dominant force

who controlled them, their wages

and really how they lived their lives.

- They were getting jobs in local hotels and the like

and Bendou did land a job.

He was working as a pot wash at a local Dumfries restaurant.

Then one day, Bendou left the rental property up in Scotland

and went off the face of the Earth.

[brooding music]

And this is in the May of 2013.

And in effect, he's making his way back to Cheshire.

[brooding music]

And this is when he informs the cops

that he is responsible for a murder back in 2009

in the Ellesmere Port area.

He pretty much walked from Scotland, you know?

[suspenseful music]

Two teams were deployed to Scotland.

Wagner was arrested at the rental property

where Dominik Kocher was in a waiting room

in a local hospital where he was going for treatment.

There was all sorts of rumors about his health,

whether he did have cancer, whether he didn't.

I don't know what his appointment was for,

but he didn't have cancer.

The arrests ran smoothly.

There was no drama.

They were arrested and they were brought back

to custody in Cheshire.

- I became involved when all three of the defendants

were in custody awaiting charge,

and it was quite clear that Kocher was in fact the leader,

if I can put it that way.

The others followed his lead.

The difficulty at that stage

was there was not enough evidence

to charge them with murder.

If we just released them, the chances were

that they'd leave the country

and so I charged them with preventing

the lawful burial of a corpse and assisting an offender

on the basis that Bendou was charged with murder.

Then they'd assisted an offender

and then it was all stops out for the police

to carry out their investigations.

[brooding music]

- Kocher stuck to the line that he'd told police initially

that Christophe had moved abroad.

Wagner told police that he believed Christophe was in China,

because Kocher had told him that he'd spoken

to the victim's brother

and he'd confirmed that was the case.

- Christophe's brother, Noel, had received an email,

which purported to be from Christophe to his brother,

saying, effectively, don't worry

and that he'd met this girl

and that this is the first time

he'd had access to the internet.

- But we knew that when this email was sent to Noel,

that these were sent after Christophe's death,

so he's not sending the emails.

One of the experts that we approached

to forensically analyse this email

was a linguistics expert.

He looked at structure in sentences and languages

that Christophe would use in writing and his style,

but he also looked at the way that Kocher wrote,

spoke and different dialects of language

and deduced that Kocher sent that email.

[suspenseful music]

[gentle music]

- As a link between the family and the investigation team,

what was particularly difficult for me

was to communicate to the family

that this email that Noel had received back in 2009,

saying he'd left the area

and had moved to China, was a complete lie.

It wasn't Christophe that had sent it.

[somber music]

There was an accumulation of information that made me feel

that there was something not quite right about the story.

It was...

...hard.

[somber music]

When something like that happens,

there are days when you believe the story about him going to China.

We held onto whatever we could.

I didn’t expect him to just call us.

I was just expecting him to show up at the door one day.

[somber music]

- Manuel Wagner told police that he'd come home one day

and found Bendou moving a tarpaulin-shaped package

and that Bendou had asked for his help to move it

and him unaware of what was in the package,

thinking that perhaps it was rubbish or some items,

had helped move the tarpaulin into the shed.

He expressed shock and horror

at the fact that a body had been found

in the property where he used to live.

- But another little piece of information

came from a neighbour who lived opposite number 19,

and she told us that she was upstairs one day

and she was looking across towards 19

and she saw Kocher in the garden of 19 doing manual labor

and she'd never seen Dominik Kocher do any form of labor before.

- I can remember Dominik coming out of the house one day

with a big rolled up carpet or a bag or something or other,

heavy, struggling with it,

and the other one that was living there was helping him

and they put it into the shed.

For the life of me, I did not know

there was a body in it, you know?

[somber music]

- Something so small would start to back up

the lies that Kocher was telling

and this elderly neighbour remembered it.

[suspenseful music]

- When we moved in,

we were led to believe Dom was the landlord.

When we inquired about the shed,

he said that the landlord has things in the shed,

so we were unable to use it.

We just assumed that it was part

of maybe his tenancy agreement on the property

that there were private things in there.

[suspenseful music]

Joe had a push bike so he could go to work

and my grandma had suggested,

"Why don't you put the bike in the shed?

It'll get rusty or stolen."

And we tried to do that on one occasion.

You could see our back garden Dom's place

and Dom came flying from his property across to ours,

shouting and swearing in a mixture of English,

French and German and said that we, under no circumstances

were allowed to go near the shed.

[suspenseful music]

I couldn't think of anything that would make you react that way

unless it was illegal or shameful,

but his warning definitely stayed with us

and we never tried to get in that shed again.

[suspenseful music]

- During the course of the interviews of Kocher and Wagner,

they were answering the questions that the officers were asking them.

Wagner had this undertone of arrogance,

but they were two very, very different characters.

[suspenseful music]

There was a multitude of evidence

that implicated Kocher massively.

The purchase of the bricks, the purchase of the cement,

his financial history,

the monies going through his accounts from the other two.

For me, it was the knives that done him.

[brooding music]

As a result of the investigation

and the interviews with Wagner, Bendou and Kocher

and all the further stuff we are finding out,

we present to the CPS.

The Crown decided to charge Dominik Kocher

in connection with the murder of Christophe Borgye.

[suspenseful music]

- But we didn't have enough evidence to charge Wagner with murder.

[suspenseful music]

- Wagner was charged with assisting an offender

and preventing a lawful burial.

They thought that was the more fitting charge for Wagner.

- But Bendou was being treated for his mental health issues

having been sectioned in the Mental Health Act.

- We charged Bendou with murder,

even though he said it was self-defense.

- He was arguing that he didn't have the capacity

or the intent to kill.

It was as a result of his mental illness.

- When somebody is unwell,

in this case mentally unwell,

there can be a capacity assessment by a psychiatrist

to determine are they well enough to stand trial?

Meaning will they be able to take in the information,

will they be able to understand it?

Will they be able to give their own testimony?

- Those acting for Bendou made an application

to have their client not tried at that time,

and the judge granted that.

So we proceeded against Kocher and Wagner

and we went to trial.

[suspenseful music]

- All the evidence was presented,

from the purchases to the pathology,

to what we'd been told, the interviews,

the presentation of the injuries in court

have to be dealt with in a much more delicate manner.

The injury to the side of Christophe's head, it was massive,

so it wasn't one blow.

- Because of where they lived,

family couldn't be at the court certainly

for the duration of those trials.

Every day I would speak to Yves

and I would go through the events of the day.

The evidence backwards and forwards, the arguments.

It was horrific. It was savagery.

They were barbarians.

Killing someone with a hammer, stabbing him? Honestly?

It’s awful.

- I've had a few sleepless nights thinking,

especially when I gave evidence against Dom in court,

you know, having dreams of him coming

and doing the same to me.

Kind of put myself in Christophe's position,

but it was me they were doing it to.

[suspenseful music]

- The financial side of stuff was a strong part

in the case against Dominik Kocher.

Its financial gain and the main control

and feature throughout all of the financial

is Dominik Kocher.

[brooding music]

- If you look at the way that Kocher,

in the wake of Christophe's murder,

went on to sell all of his possessions, his DVDs,

his CDs, his clothes, his car

and the way that he continued to spend

using Christophe's bank details and his bank card,

it shows that money was the main motive for Kocher.

- He was just self-serving.

He was off the charts with his lies

and the bull that was coming out of him.

He'd borrowed money off people and run off.

He used to make up various stories about illness.

He couldn't lie straight in bed.

You just couldn't trust the man.

- Over the course of nine weeks in that first trial,

there were some days where my confidence

was a bit shaken sometimes,

that we were gonna get the result

that we so desperately wanted,

because at the end of the day, we present the evidence,

the jury make that decision.

[suspenseful music]

But at the end of this trial of Kocher and Wagner,

jury were out for some time deliberating.

I was personally quite stressed about it,

because I was so desperate for the family

to get the justice that they deserved.

[brooding music]

- They convicted Kocher of murder,

but acquitted Wagner of the other two offences,

because we just did not have enough evidence to link him.

Once the jury had acquitted, that's it, basically.

[gentle music]

- Kocher was jailed for life

with a minimum of 23 years in prison.

Kocher was described in court as dangerous beyond measure

and the court heard that this ferocious killing

had been a cold and calculated execution.

The judge also referred to the cruel way

that Kocher deliberately sent a false email

to the victim's family,

giving them false hope that he was okay.

- Yves is a retired police officer

with over 30 years of service, so he was quite stoic.

Aurelie and Noel I think were deeply traumatized

by what they'd learned over the course of nine weeks

about what had happened to their brother.

The cruelty, the deceit, the lies,

the lengthy period of time where they'd had no idea.

[somber music]

I personally asked my father not to tell me everything,

to protect myself, in a way, from anger.

And I have no answer to what I felt.

[somber music]

Even though I’m not a violent person, it’s incredible how a human being

can think, why did they do this? They deserve the same treatment

So, I tried to see and learn as little as possible to manage my anger.

But it was… I just couldn’t believe it.

- I think there was some measure

of justice delivered to the family

and I think they at least knew what had happened.

[suspenseful music]

- [Neil] Bendou stood trial, charged with murder in May, 2014.

- He was arguing that he had diminished responsibility

because of paranoid schizophrenia

and we very much as a team felt no, he committed this murder

as knowingly as Kocher had.

- We had psychiatric evidence

to show that he was perfectly fit for trial.

- Two psychiatrists told the court

that there was no evidence he was in fact suffering

from delusions at the time of Christophe's death.

- Retrospectively, we are looking

at whether they were actively psychotic

at the time of the offense

and what you can look at, witness testimony,

text messages, whether they were in work,

what was happening in their life,

and if all of those things they were able to do

and they were appearing stable,

then it suggests that they may not be being truthful

about the delusions they were having

in relation to the offence.

[tense music]

- At his trial, Bendou changed his story completely

from the account that he'd initially given police

that he'd acted alone and that it was in self-defense.

Bendou said that he was effectively indoctrinated by Kocher

to carry out the killing.

- Kocher had invented this fantastical story

that Christophe Borgye was a clear and present danger

to Kocher and his family and his children,

and that they needed to get rid of Christophe

and that was the only option.

- Kocher was very inventive with the stories

that he'd spin to the other two.

Bendou relayed saying that Kocher had told him

that Christophe was actually a spy for the Americans.

Where that come from, I've got no idea.

He told them that Christophe was planning

to assault Kocher's daughter, which is total nonsense.

- He was drip-feeding information

to make them mistrust Christophe

and therefore do what he wanted them to do.

He filled them with reasons why this man deserved to die.

- Bendou clearly implicated all three of them

in being responsible for Christophe's death.

- [Neil] And it had been him, Kocher and Wagner

who had carried out the murder together.

[suspenseful music]

- I don't know how long the jury were out,

but they came back with a verdict of guilty.

[suspenseful music]

- He was jailed for life

with a minimum of 14 years in prison.

His defence of diminished responsibility

was rejected by the jury.

It was accepted that he had played a lesser role

in these events than Kocher

and that Kocher was no doubt the ringleader

and that he was under his influence.

[suspenseful music]

- When we got to the end of the trial with Bendou

and Aurelie and her father were there,

it was clear that the evidence pointed

to three people being involved in this murder.

[suspenseful music]

The look on Aurelie's face

as I'm translating the judge's comments,

commenting on this three and three people being involved

and she looked at me and then she said to me in French,

"So Wagner gets away with it."

I thought, “That’s not right. Something needs to be done.”

Because there were three. Two were convicted

but not him. Why?

If he had committed an unforgivable crime,

he couldn’t just walk away.

[suspenseful music]

- Wagner was responsible as well,

but had ultimately walked away scot-free

and was out on the street.

[suspenseful music]

- The judge who was summing up even said

in his closing speech

that there was three knives, three sets of overshoes,

clearly three people involved,

and I was raging to tell you the truth.

I was stunned.

- All the officers on the teams went on to other cases,

but we had put our all into this.

It kind of left a gap of, you know, unfinished business.

What could we do about it?

Is there any possible way we could get to Wagner?

And everybody said, "No, he's had his day in court,

walk away, move on."

- [Steve] But I just couldn't let it go.

[tense music]

- Wagner had likely been involved in this murder,

so we then started to try and gather evidence

to support that theory.

We started to look at Manuel Wagner's background.

- Wagner had had a difficult childhood.

His mother had left him.

He'd gone to live with Kocher's mother at one point,

which led to them referring to each other as brothers.

He was a lot younger than the other men

and it seemed very much he was under the control of Kocher,

who was someone he looked up to and was eager to please.

- Manny took a liking to me,

which made things a little bit awkward.

Manny would knock on the door

when he knew that Joe wasn't there

and try and show me his new sound equipment

or something he'd made on the computer

and he tried to lock me in on one of the days,

but I managed to run out and lock myself in my room

and then wait 'til Joe got home.

I was too scared to even go to the bathroom.

[suspenseful music]

It was scary.

It was really scary.

[suspenseful music]

- [Joe] I think since that day,

we kind of just avoided each other, didn't we?

- Yeah.

[suspenseful music]

After that, Manny would start playing music really loud,

obnoxiously slamming doors and just yelling to himself

and there was no one there.

[suspenseful music]

- There was times where he definitely seemed

the most unbalanced out of all

and he was going wayward more and more wayward.

[tense music]

Every year we'd have a bonfire night on the field

and he would be there enjoying the fireworks,

but the last year before they moved away,

we had the children 'round the bonfire

and he was thrown all sorts of gas canisters

and anything what was just exploding on the fire.

Manny's reckless behavior that night,

we felt it was putting the kids in danger.

That was the last night we ever had a bonfire.

[suspenseful music]

- To all intents and purposes,

it appeared that this case was over

with the conclusion of the trials in 2014.

Wagner had been acquitted of his lesser role

of helping to dispose unlawfully of a body

and assisting an offender.

[brooding music]

- Reality was, the officers in the case were not content

to leave it at that.

- Wagner was never charged with murder.

He was only ever charged with preventing

the lawful burial of Christophe Borgye and he was acquitted.

- There was a lot of skepticism, I think,

that we would find sufficient evidence there

to persuade the CPS to consider a charge against Wagner.

This was about securing additional evidence,

finding more answers that we didn't have

and we conducted an exhaustive investigation

the first time 'round.

- We needed definite evidence that Wagner was involved

and the only way we could get that evidence

was from Sebastian.

[suspenseful music]

- The decision was made

that we would revisit Sebastian Bendou.

- We went back and over the course of four days,

we interviewed Bendou at length,

'cause we're only gonna get one chance to do this.

We've gotta get this right.

Bendou then started to give us key information

that we were unaware of from the first investigations.

- I'm sure that even Sebastian Bendou realized

that it wasn't right for Wagner to be on the outside

when the other two were on the in.

- [Anton] And all of the bits that we thought had happened

that we had no admissions for,

he confirmed one after the other

and all the pieces of that puzzle were falling into place.

- And that's where we found out about the kill room.

[suspenseful music]

The kitchen that was just a normal domestic kitchen

had been transformed into the kill room.

[tense music]

On the 23rd of April, 2009,

when the three of them attack

and brutally murder Christophe Borgye.

- Bendou described in detail how the murder took place

in terms of the polythene being laid out

to avoid blood everywhere.

- They had overshoes on, they had latex gloves.

All of that was clearly designed to minimize

the risk of evidence leaving any forensic trace.

[suspenseful music]

- All three of them under Kocher's instruction

were going to lure Christophe into the kitchen

on the pretense that they were doing a spring clean.

- They prepared the weapons they would use

and Christophe was then called down to the kitchen,

unknowing that he was being called down to his death.

- All three of them were armed with knives

and Wagner had a hammer.

[tense music]

- They attacked him as soon as he came down

and into the kitchen.

- So they all had a go at Christophe

with a knife when he was on the floor

until the hammer blows came in.

[suspenseful music]

- According to Bendou,

Wagner brought in the hammer with him.

That was not part of the original plan.

- Wagner had struck Christophe in the head with the hammer

and went on to hit him a further seven to eight times.

[suspenseful music]

- Christophe's skull was crushed in.

His head injuries were horrific.

[somber music]

- Manuel Wagner was the most willing participant of all.

It was he who brought the hammer to the scene.

He was the one who struck the first blow.

It was he who fractured Christophe's skull

and that blunt force trauma led to his death.

Bendou said that after the killing,

they covered up Christophe's body in the tarpaulin.

[ominous music]

They then disposed of the body

by carrying it into the outhouse in the backyard

and by building a small brick wall

and then covering it with three layers of cement.

[suspenseful music]

- It just looked like another step at the back.

You would never have guessed unless you knew.

[suspenseful music]

- One of the things we discovered

is that after they committed this murder

and buried the victim in the grave,

the three of them went for lunch.

[somber music]

- There was not enough evidence at that point

to charge Manuel Wagner with murder,

but Sebastian had told us an awful lot more

that we didn't know.

[somber music]

- Bendou disclosed to us that

when it's his turn with the hammer,

he's drawn it back and directed it

towards Christophe's head, but he's missed

and he has hit the kitchen work surfaces

with the claw end of the hammer.

- And as Bendou gets the hammer back out

in a jerking motion,

it's cracked Wagner on the side of the face.

- And we certainly didn't know about Wagner's facial injuries.

So when I go back into the kitchen,

lo and behold, there are two really small dents

in the kitchen work surface.

[somber music]

As you can imagine, in an investigation like this,

the amount of physical exhibits

to paperwork exhibits is colossal.

There was over 7,000 at one stage

and then that number just kept going up, up and up and up.

We had a lot of stuff from Facebook and pictures.

And what we're trying to do is find

if we've got anything in the timeframe

with Manny Wagner with an injury to his face.

It was a long shot, but lo and behold,

the DC who's looking at the photographs

finds a picture of Wagner with a bruise on his face,

which fits in in timeframe, location

and the nature and size of the bruises

to what Sebastian Bendou told us.

- We had a forensic expert look at that injury to confirm.

It was an injury consistent with bruising,

following a blow to the side of his face.

[suspenseful music]

- We were always pushing this rule of three,

the three knives, the three pair of overshoes,

them operating as a three,

and obviously Bendou being better and able to testify,

it put us in a much stronger position

in relation to Manny Wagner.

- We now had evidence that he'd committed murder

and therefore he could be charged.

- We locate him in a flat in Liverpool.

I arrest him for Christophe's murder.

He never ever thought that he would ever, ever get charged.

He had a particular arrogance about him,

bit of a know-it-all, always thought he was right.

- I suppose one of the highlights of my career

was ringing up the family

and telling them we have arrested,

charged and remanded Wagner for murder.

In the end, it was good to know that he would face justice,

because I think it would have been very difficult for us

to continue living our lives knowing that this person was still free.

I wasn’t satisfied until Wagner was convicted.

For me, all three of them needed to be punished.

[suspenseful music]

- Wagner appeared very cold and indifferent

when he gave evidence.

- Bendou was in effect, the star witness of that trial.

You're either gonna believe Sebastian Bendou or you're not.

It's that simple.

And that type of problematic witness comes

with a boatload of problems, as you can imagine.

- I remember there being good days

where the evidence was really strong

and then there were other days

where, you know, the evidence wasn't quite as strong

as we'd hoped and anticipated.

- Bendou gave evidence saying that Wagner

had been part of the plan to murder Christophe

and that they planned it together with Kocher.

- Christophe having worked his last shift,

coming home late that night,

they get up that morning, all three of them,

knowing they're going to murder him.

- He said that Kocher had called Christophe down

from his bedroom

and that it was Wagner who'd struck the first blow

with the hammer as Christophe shouted, "Stop, stop!"

[suspenseful music]

- This was the graphic detail

that Bendou sat there telling us

about how that happened step-by-step.

[suspenseful music]

As we're getting these key bits of evidence

and information out of Bendou,

we discovered an awful piece of the puzzle.

The original trial had centered

a lot around how the cement had been mixed

and it created a lot of debate and argument during the trial,

but here we were all these years on with Bendou confirming

that they'd ordered an electric cement mixer.

That information was fed back to the investigation team

and they went to the shop and found the receipt,

delivering that electric cement mixer

to the address that very morning of the murder.

- And the eerie thing about this, on the documentation,

it looks like Christophe had actually signed

for the cement mixer that was used to build his tomb.

- Christophe Borgye had gotten out of bed

and signed the receipt for that cement mixer,

which was ultimately used in his murder.

[brooding music]

The trial ran on for three weeks.

It's impossible not to have

some sense of emotion about this,

because you put yourself in the position

of the victim's family.

What would I expect?

What would I want?

[brooding music]

- When the jury were bringing back the verdict,

you could have heard a pin drop in that court,

'cause me and the team were on edge, as you can imagine.

- Whilst we knew everything inside and out,

it was about what the jury were listening to,

how they were gonna be convinced.

[tense music]

- And thankfully, the jury came back with guilty.

- That trial and the jury's verdict

came back faster than the other two

and he was convicted of murder.

- The jury saw through his lies

and he was jailed for life

with a minimum of 16 years in prison.

[somber music]

- We were elated when Wagner got convicted.

That was a bit of closure.

There was not one that got away for us as an inquiry team.

It was the right result.

- And at that point you could say,

"Yeah, now we've done our job."

- By the time it came to the final trial,

the trial of Manuel Wagner,

and it was eight years since the murder itself had taken place,

which really shows the painstaking levels of the police investigation

and all the twists and turns that this case took.

- This is down to the persistence of the police officers

who were not prepared to let this man get away with it.

On the one hand, it was a relief to know that at least

they were judged for what they did.

But on the other hand, it wasn’t enough for me.

It will never be enough compared to what they did.

I just hope those three people truly understand what they’ve done.

I don’t know what’s in their heads, unfortunately we’ll never know.

But I hope they realise the pain they’ve caused.

[somber music]

[suspenseful music]

- We looked at a number of reasons why these three

would jointly plan to kill Christophe,

and we always kept coming back to the financial side of it,

what Kocher was going to lose.

[suspenseful music]

- Christophe Borgye was planning to move abroad

and paying his wages into Kocher's account.

- He was the bread winner, was Christophe.

He was bringing in money.

[suspenseful music]

- I think Kocher thought that he could manipulate Christophe

in the same way that he manipulated Wagner

and Bendou by taking their money,

and when Kocher realized that Christophe wanted out,

that was the trigger point for him killing him.

- They had decided to turn the kitchen into a kill room.

Kocher was the orchestrator,

but they were all involved in it.

- What he said went, if he said,

"We'll kill him," they all had to kill him.

- But what we didn't know

is the main reason Sebastian Bendou came forward.

Council called the beating heart underneath the floorboards,

which I get.

I mean, he was living feet from his friend's body.

He was still living in the kitchen on a day-to-day basis,

and it was messing with his head.

And when they fled to Scotland,

Bendou's heard a conversation

where Wagner and Kocher are talking about him.

He's considered to be the weakest link

of that chain of three.

So that's the real reason why Bendou came forward.

He thought he was next in line for the same treatment,

because he was wobbling with his mental health

and his weakness.

[suspenseful music]

[bright music]

- We were allowed back in the property

to get the remainder of our items.

It was scary.

As soon as you find out that your housemates are murderers

and that you stayed with them

and that their victim was on the property the entire time.

[gentle music]

I think the entire experience

was eye-opening in the very worst way.

Are you okay, you're shaking?

[gentle music]

- We never went back to the house.

We never lived in there again after that.

We stayed well away from it.

[gentle music continues]

- Do you know, all of the inquiries and all of the background

and the history I delved into around Christophe,

there was never a bad word said about him.

There was, you know, he never harmed anybody.

He never mistrusted anybody.

- Such a nice lad, such a quiet, happy lad.

Then you think to yourself,

"What did that poor lad do deserve anything like that?"

He just wanted to be happy and just live a normal life.

[somber music]

- There was a service in Liverpool Cathedral for him.

So I went over.

There was ladies there that worked with him

and they said they couldn't believe what had happened to him.

[somber music]

And to think that his friends,

his so-called friends could have done it to him.

I was horrified, because everybody thought

he was such a nice, young man, and he was.

He was a nice young man.

[gentle music]

- It was difficult for the family,

because I suppose for them,

they'd always imagined that one day Christophe

would just reappear and you know,

they'd get to see him again.

There's that photograph that the family gave of him,

standing there with his glasses and the countryside behind

and all you can see is loss,

unfulfilled potential.

Who he would've gone on to be.

If things had gone as planned,

he would have traveled more. He had so many plans.

Maybe he would have married, had kids.

It would have been amazing

for him to meet his first nephew, Noël’s son, the firstborn.

And later, when I became a mother, knowing that he could have

been an uncle to my son too.

There were so many beautiful things he could have experienced.

I think there are so many things he missed,

but I think he would be proud of us today

and of what we’ve done without him.

- There's certain things that stick with you,

and Christophe's murder is one of them.

It was the brutal nature in which he was attacked,

how he was disposed of,

the arrogance of the attempted coverup.

- Christophe was just living his life

and unfortunately, due to chance and circumstance,

his life collided with those of Kocher, Bendou and Wagner.

I think they sold everything or destroyed it. They had to erase all trace

to make it seem like he had voluntarily disappeared.

We have nothing. No photo albums, no personal items.

Not even his glasses. We have nothing of Christophe.

But we remember him, and that’s what matters.

We should remember his fun, lively side

and keep the good memories he gave us.

The death of my brother wasn’t a normal death.

He was murdered and that has affected me deeply.

For me, those three people will always carry a label around their necks

for what they did, for the harm they caused,

the emptiness they left in our family.

Sometimes I see someone on the street, just a jacket, a colour,

or someone who looks like him.

I turn around thinking it’s him. But it’s not.

[somber music]

- There's no happy ending to this for anybody,

particularly the Borgye family.

The best that you can say for them

is that they've got some closure

and that three people are serving life sentences

for having committed the horrendous act.

So, you know, life moves on,

but it'll stay with us for the rest of our days,

and that's why it's important the story was told.

[somber music]

[tense music]