Original subtitles

A fatal fall into a stream

in a remote British countryside.

The police said

there had been some sort of an accident involving Natalie.

A young woman's life cut short in an instant.

Was it just a tragic accident?

Andrew Pearson gave an account,

he'd gone for a walk with Natalie,

and she'd fallen and slipped into a stream.

Or murder?

All the police have at this point

is suspicions.

They've got questions.

But that is not enough to provide evidence of guilt.

Natalie Harker was born in North Yorkshire.

She lived with her mom and dad, John and Deborah,

and her brother Alistair.

Natalie was a loving, caring sister.

When we were younger we were inseparable.

My uncle used to call us the "gruesome twosome."

One day, me and Natalie were out playing in the fields

and the farm that we lived on.

And my sister dared me to sit on an ant hive.

So I did.

And then evidently got my ass bit.

This was typical of what me and Natalie would get up to.

We were like cats and dogs.

We were always scrapping, but we were always close.

A loving brother and sister.

Natalie was described as kind, hardworking,

loved by all of her friends and the community

that she lived in.

She was really popular.

She could talk to anyone about anything.

Everybody described her as a bright, happy, bubbly character

who would help anybody out.

In early 2018, Natalie

was living at home with her mom and dad

when she began dating an older man named

Andrew Pearson, who she'd met when they both worked

at a local supermarket.

And a few months after Andrew had quit his job,

he came back in the store and asked her to be his girlfriend,

and Natalie said yes.

Despite the 15 year age gap, it was

what would seem like a fairy tale relationship.

Natalie would talk in length about Andrew, that he was so

kind and how amazing he was.

By October 2019, 30-year-old Natalie

had left her job at the supermarket

and was working as a cleaner.

Natalie was a really hard-working person.

She worked two separate cleaning

jobs, one in the morning and one in the afternoon.

Natalie often worked on sociable hours,

but she always was really reliable

and would turn up on time every day for her shift.

On October 9, 2019, Natalie left her

parents' house at 4:30 AM to cycle to her

first cleaning job of the day.

Natalie told her parents that she had a medical appointment

at 10:00 AM after she finished work, and she said that

she would be home after that.

But by 1:00 PM, there was no sign of Natalie.

Natalie's parents were becoming increasingly

concerned at this point.

They went out into the back garden,

they could see that her bicycle wasn't there

and they called her mobile phone,

it went straight to voicemail.

John and Deborah were worried that maybe Natalie

had got into some kind of accident,

and they went to where she was meant

to have had her appointment that day,

but Natalie had never shown.

At about 2:30 that day, I got a phone call from my dad

saying Natalie had gone missing,

didn't know where she'd gone.

And said, "you need to come home."

By this point, they thought something was seriously wrong.

They called 999 and within 10 minutes,

officers were at the house.

Detective Inspector Steve Menzies

of North Yorkshire Police was on duty that day.

So the first responders

arrived at Natalie's home.

Those officers did a risk assessment

to find out what Natalie's routines were,

who were her friends and family were,

and to find out whether she was suffering any issues.

Natalie would normally finish her work about o'clock AM

in the morning.

She would then cycle back home and

rest before her second shift.

It was established that Natalie hadn't arrived at work

and she certainly hadn't arrived home.

The police launched

an urgent missing persons inquiry,

and they asked the family to share

some recent pictures of Natalie, which they

then shared on social media.

To help with their search, the police

really needed to piece together what Natalie

had done in the hours before her disappearance,

particularly the route that she had taken to work.

Natalie would normally use the main road.

However, a few months before, she'd fallen off her bike

and injured her ankle and she was really scared

that she might fall into the road

where there might be passing traffic.

So she chose to use a cycle route close by, which

bypassed much of the road.

The cycle path is quite narrow, and on an October morning

it was really, really dark.

It was unlit, it was cold.

It was wet and it was shrouded by trees and bushes.

As detectives began to build a picture

of Natalie's movements earlier that morning, at 4:43 PM,

over 3 hours since Natalie's parents had reported her

missing, North Yorkshire Police received a distressing

999 call from Andrew Pearson.

Following Andrew's 999 call to report

that Natalie had died after falling into a stream,

officers arrived at the scene.

They found Andrew Pearson.

He then directed them down the cycle path to a gate,

where he pointed across the field

and said that Natalie's body was in a tent

within the wooded area.

Meanwhile, Natalie's family

were still frantically searching

for their missing loved one.

I said to my mom and my dad, "I want to go out

and see if I can find her."

Mom came with me.

We drove around for about 10, 15

minutes, looking in all the places

we thought she maybe was.

And I said to mom we'll go and see

if she's fallen off the bike.

So we went down to the lane where

Natalie would sometimes go.

On the way back from work, then walked down the lane,

heard a load of sirens.

Thought the police are coming.

So we ran out to be greeted by Andrew Pearson and

two police officers.

The police said that Andrew had called

and said that there had been some sort of an accident

involving Natalie.

Andrew was jumping around hysterically saying,

"this is the family, this is the family."

The police said, "stand over there, please.

Andrew's found Natalie."

In that moment, we had no idea what was going on.

Both me and mom heard the air ambulance coming over

and thought she was being saved.

While Alistair and his mom Deborah

awaited news on Natalie, officers

followed Andrew's directions into the woodland

where he claimed he had been camping.

Officers came across a thicket

of wooded area, brambles, bushes, overhanging trees

and they scrambled down that towards a stream.

Officers managed to get across the stream but the other side,

and they came across Andrew Pearson's tent, which

was a highly camouflaged tent, which was underneath a tree

canopy, which made it really difficult to be

found in the first instance.

Inside the tent, Natalie's naked body was found

underneath the sleeping bag.

Officers could see straight away that she

had some severe bruising towards her upper torso and

her neck area.

When the police came back

from hunting around for Natalie,

they told us to sit in the back of a police car

and wait for my father to come down.

In that moment, we didn't know what was going on.

The police said nothing to us.

When my father arrived, a police person

came up and said, "we found a body

and we believe it's Natalie."

After North Yorkshire Police discovered the body

of 30-year-old Natalie Harker inside a tent on October 9,

2019, they proceeded to question Andrew Pearson,

who had called emergency services,

claiming his girlfriend's death had been

a tragic accident after she'd slipped

and fallen into a stream.

Andrew Pearson gave an account

they'd met on the cycle path.

He'd gone for a walk with Natalie, and during that walk,

she'd fallen and slipped into a stream.

He then stated that he'd pulled Natalie from the stream,

given a CPR, and then dragged her to a tent

that he'd pitched nearby in some woods.

Andrew told the officers whilst in the tent,

she was awfully cold and wet, so he took her clothes

off to try and get her warm.

Pearson says that he fell unconscious

from the pain of his back injury, and when he woke,

he found Natalie dead.

And he said that the only thing that woke him up

was a call from a friend in America.

This was some 12 hours after Natalie had

cycled to work that morning.

Her body was now found naked in a tent

with some severe injuries.

Natalie's brother Alistair and their parents

were waiting at the scene when detectives confirmed

they'd found Natalie.

Mom and dad both cried.

During this time, we're very, very angry.

I felt numb all day and every day for about a week after.

Nothing added up in our heads.

Why would Natalie have gone down

into the woods at 5:30 in the morning with it being dark?

I thought it was very, very strange behavior for Natalie.

It's, of course, going to be very unusual for a family to be

live at the scene itself.

The family stumbling across the death of a loved one

is going to be so distressing, so confusing,

and there's not going to be any answers

to the millions of questions that flood

their mind in that moment.

An investigation into Natalie's death

was immediately launched, led by Detective

Inspector Steve Menzies, who began

to scrutinize Andrew's story.

But Andrew Pearson claimed to have met Natalie down

this dark, dingy cycle path.

In actual fact, the route from her home address

went down the main road and there were several places where

Andrew Peterson could have met Natalie in a well-lit area,

but he chose to meet her down this cycle path.

As the investigation got underway,

it wasn't long before his team uncovered

a crucial piece of evidence.

So when the forensic examination took place

with the tent, it was found that Natalie's clothing was

folded neatly in a zipped storage

compartment within the tent.

However, I would have expected from Andrew Peterson's account

that had he taken Natalie's clothing off to get her warm,

that clothing would have been in a bundle,

not stored in a storage compartment neatly folded.

But that wasn't the only discovery

that set off alarm bells.

A number of items were found within Andrew Pearson's tent.

A lot of survival items, dried food, axes, knives.

But worryingly, what was found was some gaffer tape,

which was very suggestive of a gag

having been used on Natalie.

Officers immediately became very suspicious of the account

that Andrew had given.

Based upon that information, officers

determined that Andrew Pearson should be arrested

on suspicion of murder.

You're under arrest on suspicion of murder, OK?

You understand?

All right.

I'm just going to put some cuffs on you at the moment, OK?

He is using a higher pitched voice.

He is sort of trying to show off some body language

of being really quite timid.

And I have to question whether that is his natural reaction

or whether that's quite intentional.

Pearson looks very distressed.

He looks very shocked.

None of that naturally indicates guilt on its own.

What it could be is that he stumbled

across a really awful scene, and

he's distraught at the loss of Natalie.

Or it could be a tactic to try and garner some sympathy

from those arresting him

Following his arrest, Andrew was taken

to Harrogate Police Station.

I felt a lot of anger towards Andrew

when I'd found out he'd been arrested because I thought

he was a kind, decent person, and that he

wouldn't have hurt Natalie.

It's hard to describe, but it's sort

of a numb feeling in your head that you

just can't process anything.

The police now just had 24 hours

to either charge Andrew Pearson or to let him walk free.

They were desperately hoping he could expand on

that first 999 call he made.

I would have thought

that, given Andrew Pearson's original account that Natalie

had fallen to this stream and that this

was a complete accident leading to her death,

having then been arrested on suspicion of murder,

that he would have been very keen to give

an account interview.

However, in the police interview,

Andrew almost disengaged from the police officers

and refused to answer any questions.

That became really suspicious for me

as the senior investigating officer.

It's a real contrast from that first 999 call where

he is desperate for help to now somebody that looks really

disengaged with helping the police understand

what's just happened to somebody

who he claims that he loves.

It's relatively common that when someone has experienced

a significant trauma, that they go through a period of shock

and that can be an immediate shock, or it can be prolonged.

And that can lead to displays of various different behaviors,

including a kind of panic response

where actually they entirely withdraw.

You can also imagine if this is a case of someone innocent

who's been arrested and is being questioned as if they had

something to do with this death, that alone

would be really traumatizing.

It can make you, you know, totally withdraw into yourself.

It could really make you question how safe you are.

Whilst naturally you might think

that if someone's girlfriend has had an accident

and died in front of them, that they would be trying to provide

as much information and context as

possible to an investigation.

But you also have to remember that trauma can do really

unusual things to a person.

There's even conditions like selective mutism,

where people struggle to communicate at all verbally.

And so what Pearson is doing here,

whilst maybe looks unusual, is not

entirely unheard of and cannot be enough

to evidence their guilt.

While police struggled to get information

from Andrew, a forensic post-mortem was being

carried out on Natalie's body.

Natalie had suffered

some external/internal bruising to her upper torso

and to her neck, but Andrew Pearson's account

was that he had given CPR to Natalie

at the point of taking her from the stream and at the tent.

So that could partially account for some of the injuries

that Natalie had received.

Police would have to wait for the post-mortem report

to find out if it would provide further information about how

Natalie died and whether she had fallen into the stream,

as Andrew claimed, or if she had been pushed to her death.

All the police have at this point

is suspicions.

They've got questions, but that is not

enough to provide evidence of guilt.

And so they need a lot more information

before they can start truly answering

any of those questions.

They're going to be looking for alibis.

They're going to be looking at the timelines.

They're going to be looking at the crime scene.

Things like phone records, anything

that can indicate where Andrew was before and during the event

of Natalie's death.

With Andrew Pearson still in custody,

police decided to look into his cell phone, which

had been seized during his arrest,

to see if it could provide any clues as to how Natalie died.

Andrew Pearson was asked for his PIN number

to access that phone.

He refused to give that PIN number, even though he was told

it could be an offense and he could be prosecuted for not

providing the PIN number.

Again, that raised even more suspicion

as to why Andrew Pearson wasn't assisting the police.

I believed at that point that that phone could be really

key to our investigation.

It was really key that that phone forensically

examined as soon as possible to try and provide some evidence

to support the investigation.

While Andrew was still in custody,

the post-mortem results came in.

At this stage of the investigation,

the Crown Prosecution Service would have

asked for a cause of death.

Unfortunately, the forensic post-mortem

was inconclusive at that time.

The initial post-mortem examination

confirmed that Natalie had several broken ribs,

consistent with Andrews account,

that he administered CPR, but was not able to confirm

a definitive cause of death.

The forensic pathologist

needed some more investigations conducted,

which included histology, toxicology, and

also to check for isotopes that may

have been in Natalie's body.

Isotopes are unique to different bodies of water,

and obviously, if Natalie had been in the stream,

I would expect isotopes from the stream

to be Natalie's system.

The police were still no closer

to discovering if this had been a terrible accident,

and Natalie had fallen into the stream, as Andrew claimed,

or if she had been pushed.

I was left in a very difficult position.

Andrew Pearson's account was partly

supported by the forensic pathology report.

However, more investigation needed doing.

Those investigations were going to take

days, weeks, and months.

For myself and the investigation team,

it was really frustrating that we were not

in a position to charge Andrew Pearson with Natalie's murder.

We were now left in a position where

I had to bail him with safeguarding conditions

until those investigations could take place.

In October 2019, Andrew Pearson

was arrested for the suspected murder of his girlfriend,

Natalie Harker.

You're under arrest on suspicion of murder, OK?

You understand?

I'm just going to put some cuffs on you at the moment.

But when questioned, he wouldn't talk.

And with no clear cause of death,

police were forced to release him on bail.

Behind the scenes, detectives raced to uncover the truth.

Had Natalie slipped and fallen into the stream,

as Pearson claimed, or had Andrew pushed her to her death?

It was a really tense time for the investigation team

and for myself as a senior investigating officer.

We knew that we'd potentially had a really dangerous man

on bail, albeit with safeguarding conditions,

that we had to work really hard to get back into custody.

At this point, all the police had to go

on where their suspicions.

But of course, that is not enough.

They needed hard evidence and they

wanted to try and piece together a timeline, really,

from locations, phone records as a way of trying to establish

the facts of what happened.

We all felt a lot of anger when we found out

that the police had released him,

because we all had a feeling that he'd maybe done it.

We were all worried as to how or

what Andrew was going to do when he was

released from police custody.

While police awaited further postmortem tests and

the forensic results from Andrew's cell phone,

detectives began digging into Natalie

and Andrew's relationship.

What we discovered was that within a few weeks or

months of Andrew Pearson, Natalie Harker becoming

involved in a relationship, Andrew lost his job

and he spent most of his time gaming on games consoles,

and he became more and more dependent on Natalie.

While Natalie was securing the finances with two jobs,

she would pester him to try and get a job,

but he refused to do so and even

told a friend that he wouldn't be

told by Natalie to get a job.

Natalie got sick and tired of always

having to pay for the cinema, meals out, days out,

and things like that as he never had any money.

As police continue to question friends and

family about their relationship,

some concerning information came to light.

We found out that Andrew Pearson started

to separate Natalie from her friends and family,

and he became very controlling over Natalie.

He determined when she could see

people who she could see and really

controlled a lot of her life.

Natalie's friends definitely noticed a change in her.

They said that she changed her personality the way

that she dressed, and just became

a lot more disengaged from her social life, her church,

which she had been really heavily involved

with in the community.

During the course of the relationship,

Pearson becomes increasingly reliant on Natalie financially,

emotionally, and then on top of that,

he starts restricting her freedom of movement.

And you often see that in relationships

that involve coercive control, people

do this to isolate their partner

intentionally so they can have greater control over them.

Pearson is clearly insecure about the fact

that he's not bringing anything to this relationship.

And so by coercively controlling,

by manipulating her, he's able to feel some power when

he's actually probably feeling quite powerless

in the rest of his life.

18 months into her relationship

with Andrew, Natalie had turned to her family for advice.

Natalie had come to me, mom, and dad,

and spoken to us about she wasn't feeling

happy in the relationship, so the three of us and Natalie all

decided if she wasn't happy in her marriage to call it quits.

She text Pearson saying the relationship

was over, to not get in contact with her again,

and it had taken a lot for her to get to this point.

She was really optimistic, looking forward

to a fresh start in life.

At the start, we thought that Andrew had taken

the break up really well.

It was only afterwards we discovered that he hadn't.

Pearson bombarded Natalie's phone with text messages.

He refused to accept her decision

and he wasn't going to take no for an answer.

He would get friends and family to message her.

He would send her messages on social media

and actually bump into her to and from her workplace.

Natalie is understandably trying to fully

disengage at this point.

She's not responding to any of the messages,

and you can understand why this needs to sort

of be a cut and dry moment.

People normally go through high emotional stress periods,

and then it sort of just starts to fade out.

That's the normal way of a breakup.

But in the case of Andrew Pearson,

this does the opposite because this

isn't so much about the breakup or the loss of love.

For him, this is the loss of control.

And so now, not having even the ability to raise a response

from Natalie, that's going to be infuriating to someone

like Andrew Pearson.

When Andrew's tactics failed to win Natalie back,

he posted a message on social media.

In that message, he

portrayed Natalie to be the bad person, a person who

was stringing him along, using him,

and that he was a perfect gentleman in that relationship.

What he was trying to do, in my view,

was to soil Natalie's name so that if he couldn't have her,

nobody else would want her.

Andrew Pearson is clearly narcissistic.

He has these extreme senses of grandiosity,

and so someone like that being broken up with

shakes them to their core, because what

our internal feelings of inadequacy,

it brings them to the surface.

And anyone who exposes that inadequacy

is immediately an enemy to someone like Pearson.

What he's doing at this point is just

another way of him trying to assert control over her,

over the narrative of their relationship,

and positioning himself as the victim.

When Natalie didn't respond to the message,

Andrew's behavior took a turn for the worse.

Andrew Pearson's attitude towards Natalie

completely changed.

He now escalated to sending a really nasty text messages

to upset her and to blame her for the breakup

of the relationship.

Andrew was saying that he was going

to reveal that Natalie had been sleeping around

during their relationship.

I could not get my head around why

anybody, let alone somebody that claimed to love them,

would do that.

Made me really, really angry.

This resulted on the 18th of September,

Natalie sending Andrew Pearson a message saying that

the relationship was finished and pleading with him to leave

her alone, not to contact her, and

not to turn up at her at work.

In the aftermath of the breakup,

Natalie tried to move on with her life.

Friends of Natalie saw a real positive change

in her whole demeanor having ended the relationship

with Andrew Pearson.

She was wearing makeup.

She was doing more things socially.

She was going to church more, going to church events.

But Andrew continued to harass her.

She mentioned to a number of people, friends,

people from church, work colleagues,

that Andrew Pearson was concerning her

by turning up unexpectedly at her workplace

or bumping into her when she was going to or from work.

It was really apparent that his behavior

was escalating quite dangerously

to stalking behavior.

Natalie told her family and friends

that she thought when she cut off contact,

this would all just go away.

But Pearson was really relentless.

He would not leave Natalie alone

and she was getting frightened.

She told friends that she never knew what he was capable of

and that he had a really volatile personality.

After Natalie had finished with them,

she'd said to me, "what do I do if I see Andrew?"

And I said to her, "all you need to do is if you see him,

walk away, go to somewhere where there's lots of people,

and you'll be all right."

At this point, I felt very angry

towards Andrew, as I didn't know why he

wouldn't leave Natalie alone.

And now Natalie

has fully cut contact with Andrew,

he is now escalating his behavior even further

because this is just another step of his control

being challenged.

He's obsessing over the end of this relationship,

this loss of control.

And so this is his way of trying to strike fear into her.

And it's working.

We didn't know at the time that Andrew

was stalking Natalie and turning up at her workplace.

Natalie was a very independent person.

She didn't tell us about what was going on

as she felt that we were going to start not letting her go out

on a bike and taking her to places,

and that would have taken her independence away.

We now had a really good understanding

of Andrew Pearson's behavior towards Natalie,

and he developed a motive to harm Natalie.

Natalie was so concerned about Andrew Pearson's behavior

that she warned him that she would report him to the police

if he didn't leave her alone.

Unfortunately, she never did.

Despite the damning testimony

police had gathered about Andrew's controlling and

threatening behavior, it wasn't enough to prove

that he had murdered Natalie.

But then came a major breakthrough in the case.

The forensic examination managed to get

into Andrew Pearson's phone.

What we discovered were a series

of photographs that had been deleted,

but were managed to be recovered.

And that showed that Andrew Pearson

had been plotting some week or so before Natalie's death.

Evidence showed that he'd been photographing up the cycle

path, down the cycle path, which

gave alternate views of what he could see

and what Natalie could see as she was cycling down the path.

They photographed the gateway, the field, the barbed wire

fence, through the wooded area, over the stream,

and up to the area where Andrew Pearson would

eventually pitch his tent.

The discovery of the photographs

taken from Andrew Pearson's phone

was a key missing piece of the investigation.

These photos just go to show exactly how obsessive Pearson

was becoming, because this is now someone who is not just

mentally stewing on this breakup

and becoming internally frustrated.

This is someone who's now actively planning ways to scare

and potentially hurt their ex-partner.

These pictures are evidence that Pearson's initial account

of what occurred that he just had

a chance meeting with Natalie along the path

is total nonsense.

These pictures prove that this is premeditated,

this is planned, and Pearson can no longer be believed.

The phone data also provided critical information

about Andrew's whereabouts in the days

leading up to Natalie's death.

Further evidence gained from the phone

was cell site evidence.

We can show that the morning before Natalie was murdered,

he'd been in the field or at the gate,

watching when Natalie cycled past on her way to work,

so he knew exactly the time that she would pass.

Almost a dry run for the events that would take

place the following day.

This showed that, contrary to what Andrew Pearson had stated,

where he said that he'd been camping out in the days

before he met Natalie on that cycle path.

In actual fact, he hadn't.

The night before Natalie was murdered,

he was actually at home in bed.

We could also evidence from his phone

that Andrew Pearson had set his alarm that morning, so he could

get down to the scene and be there

in preparation when Natalie cycled down that cycle path.

This was not a chance meeting with Natalie.

This data shows that this is clearly

someone who has methodically mapped out exactly

what he intends to happen.

And it's really sinister.

It's really chilling.

It's very telling of his mental state at that moment.

This is someone out to attack, out to assert their control.

As police continue to build their case,

another key piece of evidence surfaced

from the morning Natalie died.

Further examination of Andrew Pearson's mobile

telephone showed that it was powered

down at 7:12 AM that morning.

Andrew Pearson claims that when he got back to the tent

and having taken Natalie's clothing off,

he collapsed his unconscious for a number

of hours due to severe back pain that he suffered.

Even though Andrew Pearson had powered down

his mobile telephone, another device in his possession

showed that he was actually moving

around the field at a point where

he claims to be unconscious.

This just demonstrated that Andrew Pearson's account

was completely untrue.

But what police would discover next would be

the most damning evidence yet.

The next inconsistency in Andrew Pearson's account

was that he claimed, having gone unconscious next

to Natalie, he woke up because he

received a call on his mobile telephone

from a friend in America.

However, the evidence showed that having powered up his

mobile telephone at 3:06 PM in the afternoon,

he actually tried to make a video

call to a friend in America.

This video call was either rejected or not connected.

Andrew Pearson then sends a text to his friend in America

saying, "goodbye, I've killed Natalie.

I'm going to hand myself in."

Even though Andrew Pearson had deleted the iPhone message

in an effort to destroy the evidence,

the forensic examiners were able to recover the message.

The iPhone message led to his friend

in America phoning Andrew Pearson.

Then followed a long telephone conversation,

during which Andrew Pearson tells

him that Natalie had fallen into the stream and had died.

The friend tells Andrew Pearson to contact the police.

As the senior investigating officer for this investigation,

this was a massive breakthrough.

This suggested to me that this was

a pre-planned, premeditated kidnap

and murder of Natalie Harker.

Investigators were finally

able to piece together what happened

on the day Natalie died.

Had she fallen to her death, as Pearson suggested?

Or was she murdered?

Based now on all this new evidence,

I believe that Andrew Pearson had

waited down that cycle path.

And when she cycled towards him,

he jumped out, dragged Natalie off the bike,

and then forced her over the fence, across the field,

through the thicket to the stream.

I believe, at some point, Andrew Pearson

had tried to drown Natalie in the stream.

He's then taken to his tent where

he stripped of her clothing.

Once in his tent, I believe Andrew Pearson

has powered down his phone to try and hide his location.

From the point of the kidnap of Natalie at 4:45 AM to the 999

call is some 12 hours.

I believe that Andrew Pearson had

to remain in the tent with Natalie's body

because he was disturbed by some men working in the woods.

That meant he couldn't emerge from the tent

for fear of being seen.

With all of the evidence from the breakup of the relationship

between Andrew Pearson and Natalie,

from the evidence of Andrew Pearson stalking Natalie

to the mobile telephone, which showed

the movements of Andrew Pearson,

I felt it was a really strong position

to re-arrest Andrew Pearson for the offense of kidnap

and murder of Natalie Harker.

By late October 2019, Andrew Pearson was out on bail,

claiming that Natalie had died after slipping

and falling into a stream.

But behind the scenes, detectives

were building a case, one that pointed

not to a tragic accident, but to murder.

Police now had evidence which included the photographs

of the cycle path, messages which Pearson

had deleted from his friend in America,

and also evidence from his devices

which showed that he'd been on the move

when he claimed he'd been unconscious.

And the police also had the evidence of their breakup

as the motive.

So all the jigsaw pieces were there for them

to re-arrest and charge Pearson with the kidnapping

and murder of Natalie.

I deployed officers

early one morning to go to his family home

to make that arrest.

Those officers told me he'd made

no reaction to that arrest.

When I found out that Andrew had

been re-arrested on charges of murder,

I felt very, very happy.

I thought to myself, "they've got the--"

Andrew was taken to Harrogate Police Station

and interviewed by detectives who

presented the overwhelming evidence they had against him

that they believed proved Pearson had

pushed Natalie to her death.

He continued to be disengaged

from the interviewing officers, and failed to respond to any

of the questions posed to him.

Despite all this new evidence that was put to him,

this continued to demonstrate to me that Andrew Pearson

was guilty of this offense.

Following those final interviews with Andrew Pearson,

we approached the Crown Prosecution Service

asking for charges of kidnap and murder of Natalie Harker.

Those were authorized and Andrew Pearson was charged

and remanded into custody.

In the months that followed,

police continued to build their case

to try and prove that Andrew had kidnapped and

killed Natalie in cold blood.

But there was still no definitive cause of death

until the forensic pathologist's

full report finally came in.

The evidence showed that Natalie Harker

had died as a result of neck injuries, and the fact

that both her mouth and nose had been submerged under water.

Natalie's cause of death was a result

of strangulation and drowning.

To identify the location

where Natalie was murdered, an isotope analysis

of the water in her lungs had also

been carried out and examined.

The isotopes within Natalie's system matched

those from the stream close to where Andrew Pearson

had pitched his tent.

The pathology results concluded

there was no evidence of a brain injury,

despite Andrew's claim that she had fallen into the stream.

All of the forensic evidence

and the evidence gained from the scene

didn't show that Natalie had fallen into the stream.

My belief is Andrew Pearson dragged Natalie to that stream

and tried to drown her.

Armed with evidence that Andrew

had pushed Natalie underwater and drowned her,

police received further devastating details

about Pearson's actions on the day Natalie died.

So the initial post-mortem report suggested

that there had been some sexual activity that had taken place.

Pearson raping Natalie

is just another way that he is yet again trying

to assert control over her because he

is physically, in that moment, dominating her.

And I think this is just another element where you're

seeing how insidious and how controlling this person

really is.

Pearson was in the tent with Natalie for hours.

And this was a person who he claimed to have loved.

At Teesside Crown Court in November 2020,

almost a year after his arrest, Andrew Pearson

stood trial for the murder of Natalie Harker.

We're in the courtroom.

We heard the 999 call that Andrew had made.

And I remember thinking to myself, "you little--

how dare you make yourself look like a victim?"

Despite all of this overwhelming evidence,

the fact of the mobile telephone,

the fact of the history, all of the forensic evidence,

Andrew Pearson continued to deny the fact that he kidnapped

and murdered Natalie Harker.

In court, he stuck by the story that they'd met together.

They'd walked across the field, they'd had sex in the field,

and then she'd fallen into the stream by accident,

following which he dragged her to the tent.

The jury to sit through and listen to all of the evidence,

first from the prosecution and then the defense.

It was harrowing evidence.

But not only the jury.

Natalie Harker's family had to sit through the evidence, too.

So it was really tough for them.

When we were in the courtroom listening

to all the evidence brought against Andrew,

I kept looking over at him and I

saw absolutely no emotion whatsoever,

no remorse, no anything, just a blank expression.

Going into the trial, I felt really confident

in the investigation that team had conducted.

The evidence was overwhelming.

However, it's a jury trial.

The jury have to listen to both the prosecution case and

the defense case, and then have to make up

their own minds based on the evidence

as to what they believe.

The jury heard evidence for over three weeks in this trial,

yet they took just three hours to return a verdict.

Andrew Pearson was found guilty

and sentenced to life in prison with a minimum

of 25 years for the kidnap and murder of Natalie Harker.

When the jury came back

with a guilty verdict, it was a massive relief

both to the investigation team and Natalie's family.

When we heard the verdict, I was at home

with my mother and my father rang me and said,

"they've got him."

And I jumped up and I said, "we've finally

got justice for Natalie.

They've got the little bastard."

Both my mom and dad were feeling very, very happy,

as was sad but we were all still

very numb and very hollow.

At no point through this whole process,

from Andrew Pearson being arrested

to the point he was sentenced by a judge,

did he show any remorse for the kidnap

and murder of Natalie Harker.

As a murder detective, I have investigated lots of murders.

However, this was quite striking in the fact

that Andrew Pearson sought revenge on Natalie.

Andrew Pearson controlled the relationship

with Natalie Harker.

However, once she got that control back,

he couldn't cope with that.

This was a matter of power, revenge against Natalie Harker.

This is just such a tragic and upsetting case.

You have this young woman that was trying

to leave this relationship with such an abusive man,

and you just hope that the verdict

gave her family a real sense of justice and closure.

In the years following

Natalie Harker's death, her memory

lives on through her friends and family.

We got a commemorative bench

in Natalie's favorite place, the church.

It's a lovely place to go and sit and

contemplate Natalie, just think about how

much of a lovely young lady she was, how happy and kind

she was, all the friends she's left behind,

and the family that she's left behind.

I'll go and visit the bench on Natalie's birthday

or the anniversary of when she was killed,

and think about how bright, beautiful,

and amazing of a sister she really was.

When me and my wife Amanda got married,

Natalie would have been a big part of this.

But with the life being so cruelly taken,

we decided that we'd have some photos taken by a memorial

bench so that it felt like she was part of the day

and part of our lives.

She was a kind, loving human being with so

much love and life to give.

And that's how I'd like my sister to be remembered.