Original subtitles

A fatal fall from 80 feet

off a bridge into an ice cold river

in the middle of the night.

We could see scuff marks on the pipe,

as if someone had been trying to cling on for their life

before falling to their death.

A young student's life cut short.

You never expect a child to go early.

It's like torture.

Was it simply a bizarre accident--

What he witnessed was John almost doing

a backflip over the railings and

disappearing into the water.

- or murder?

Unless he was punched with the force of someone

like Popeye, then he could not go over accidentally.

Our son, John Chipp, was born on the 11th of March,

1986, in Castletown, which is an area in Sunderland.

He was a lovely baby.

He was bright.

He walked early at 10 months.

He was always fun.

He was very thoughtful, very loving,

very friendly with everybody.

And he just loved life.

MARK CHIPP - Mine and John's relationship was really good one.

We were very close.

Our John was the older one.

He was two years older than me.

He was always there for us.

He would always stick up for us.

He would always fight my corner,

and we had some great times together.

Like many young people in Sunderland,

John loved soccer.

Even before he could walk properly,

he was kicking the ball around.

He loved to follow

Sunderland Football Club.

He was a season ticket holder.

We used to go out and play football together,

and he was great at football.

So he just used to take the ball past me all the time.

John also shared his father's

love of racing pigeons.

He used to love coming down, sitting with the birds,

helping his dad basket the birds and train the birds.

It's the delightful John Chipp.

He's been in the sea.

We enjoyed our family holidays, and

we went to the Dominican Republic as a family.

The holiday was great.

We had a right laugh.

I was 15 at the time.

He would have been 17.

And we just bonded.

It was great.

I'd class him as a perfect brother.

I-- I don't think I could have asked much more from him.

He was very loving, very thoughtful.

Always tell you he loved you and put his arms around you.

We couldn't have asked for anything better.

Situated in the Northeast of England,

John's home city of Sunderland is famous for more

than its Football Club.

We've got a fabulous coastline,

lots of historic things, good shopping centers.

It's a really, really nice area to live.

It's a city that former Detective Superintendent

Ian Sharp policed for a decade during his 30 years of service.

The city of Sunderland is a typical busy city center built

around the River Wear, the deep gorge river,

ideal for shipbuilding, and one of the oldest

bridges crossing the river is the Queen Alexandra Bridge.

It's 330 feet long and 85 feet high.

By 2004, John Chipp had finished school

and was preparing for his next stage in life.

John was enrolled in college to do

a BTEC in public services.

I think he wanted to be either

a fireman or a police officer.

John turned 18 on March 11, 2004.

And a week later, on Thursday, March 18,

another friend was celebrating their big day.

When John finished work, he called in to see

his dad at the pigeon loft.

And he just says, dad, do you mind if I go out?

I said to them, don't get too much

to drink, make sure you stick together,

and make sure you come home together.

Went out with a big smile on his face

as he used excited to go and have a drink with his friends.

I didn't get home until after John had gone out.

We had our evening meal, settled down for the evening,

went to bed, and John wasn't in.

It wasn't until the following morning

that we both realized he hadn't come home,

and that's when alarm bells start to ring.

It was not like him at all.

He hadn't even phoned or left a message

to say he was all right.

I had to get to work that Friday morning.

But I think during the whole day, both of us

tried his mobile phone numerous times.

He didn't answer.

The day have passed, and we just

thought he might have been partying at a friend's

house or whatever.

When I came back from work on Friday evening,

that's when we reported him missing to the police.

They wanted a photograph of him.

John always played five a side football at Nissan Car Factory

Sports Club on a Friday.

We went there, and he wasn't there.

You get that feeling, you know there's something

wrong, desperately wrong.

Just a gut feeling that you know

it's going to turn out bad.

It was just like he disappeared off the Earth.

Meanwhile, police were

rapidly escalating their inquiries

into John's disappearance.

He was reported missing Friday,

the 19th of March to my colleague, Detective

Sergeant Chris Sobenga.

We get many reports of missing from homes.

This one was more unusual.

The family were distraught and frantic.

Chris Sobenga contacted the family immediately to seek

clues and help from them.

We began inquiries around the mobile phone

to see if there was any response from that.

And then began to review CCTV footage from the town center

to see if they could pick up John Chipp.

CCTV, in its early stages, was very grainy and bad quality.

But they were able to pick up John Chipp in the town

center at around 11:30.

He'd been out drinking, and was very drunk,

and had been spoken to by police officers

in the town center, who told him to behave and

get himself on his way home.

Further CCTV footage was reviewed,

and it was able to pick up John running home quite

fast from the city center along towards

the Queen Alexandra Bridge.

Another male was seen about two minutes ahead

of him going onto the bridge before John ran

onto the bridge.

The last movements of John entering the bridge

from the south side was just after midnight at about

quarter past midnight.

That takes us into the early hours

of Friday the 19th of March.

So we know that he went onto the Queen Alexandra Bridge

from the south side trying to get home on the north side.

But he never came over the other side of the bridge.

He wasn't seen again.

The worst case scenario was that

he'd fallen from the bridge somehow, an 80-foot drop.

A fall from the bridge of 80 foot onto the water

would certainly knock you out unconscious immediately.

It's similar to hitting concrete.

The weather at the time was rough

and a cold water temperature from the north sea.

The chances of survival from an 80-foot drop onto the river

are very slim indeed.

In the days after John Chipp went missing on

March 18, 2004, possibly having suffered

a fatal fall from the Queen Alexandra Bridge in Sunderland,

police and family grew increasingly

concerned for his safety.

You felt powerless.

You didn't know where to start looking.

You don't know what to do.

It's awful, absolutely awful.

While police pieced together

John's last known movements, John's father,

George, continued to do everything

he could to find his son.

I just couldn't sit back and just sit-in the house.

I just had to be out there, looking.

I'd went down to the river, because we used to walk

the dog down the river.

I searched the allotments where I've got the pigeons.

I never give up.

I went out looking every day.

I always had it in my head that he was going to show up.

He's somewhere.

He's-- he's just being an idiot.

Just come home, John.

Investigators, led at this point

by Detective Sergeant Chris Sobenga

were desperate for more information.

Chris Sobenga was in close contact with the family,

and he urged the family to make a press

appeal for further witnesses to come forward.

Sunderland Football Club, they

were very happy to put an appeal out at their home game

that weekend.

I was asked if I would do a local radio interview.

Probably one of the most traumatic ones

was doing the press conference where

people's cameras are clicking as you walk in a room.

There are a number

of reasons why the police might choose to hold

a missing person appeal.

The first one might be that they are looking out

for people who might be witnesses,

without even realizing that they witnessed anything.

There is the added benefit in a way

that doing this appeal is really highlighting

to the victim's family that they

are doing as much as they can.

A missing person's appeal can have the added bonus

of putting pressure on people who either know information or

is aware of someone else being involved,

because it can start to feel like those walls are

closing in.

So it can encourage people who know something to come forward.

Police investigations at this point

are centered around searching the riverbanks.

The Marine section of Northumbria police

were involved, underwater search

unit divers were involved.

But it is difficult because of the fast flowing

tide and the deep silt.

But almost two weeks since his disappearance,

there was still no sign of John.

The police are struggling

to find any clues or evidence.

The bridge has been searched and analyzed.

There are no signs of any struggle or assault or

any blood, so there is no typical crime scene

to start a murder inquiry.

Meanwhile, the local community rallied

to support John's family.

I had people knocking on our door

with flowers, some people I didn't even know.

I started to feel like we lived in a flower shop.

But you almost feel like your life's not your own

at that time, because you just go through motions

other than your grief and your frustration of not having any--

anything to do or any news.

You function, and that's all.

In late March 2004, two

weeks after John went missing from the Queen Alexandra

Bridge, police received a call, which was quickly

brought to the attention of Detective Superintendent

Ian sharp.

The phone call comes in from a member

of the public, who happens to be a family friend of a man

named Christopher Weldon.

The witness told us that he'd been

out drinking with Christopher Weldon and the wives.

There'd been a lot of alcohol consumed.

Weldon's wife took the car keys from Weldon

and told him he was not capable of driving.

Weldon objected to that.

There was an argument, and he stormed off in a huff,

stating he was going to go to the Queen Alexandra Bridge

and throw himself off.

The witness told us that he'd been talking

to Christopher Weldon, and-- and he said,

you'd never guess what's happened.

I went to the Queen Alexandra Bridge,

and as I was standing there, a young lad came running across,

and he's gone over the side of the bridge.

The witness urged Weldon to go to the police,

but Weldon refused.

So that witness came to the police

and gave us that information.

And at that point, myself and Steve Barron

became involved in a homicide inquiry.

The witness had quite a tale to tell,

and I think we were all very surprised when he came forward.

Weldon had said, this young lad come running towards us,

and he started to fight with us.

And during that fight, that young lad has

somehow gone over the bridge.

Weldon hadn't done anything.

He hadn't left the bridge and contacted

the emergency services.

In actual fact, he'd left the bridge, phoned a friend,

and got a lift home.

The witness was willing to give that evidence in court.

So now we have what we would refer to as a key and

significant witness.

And now we are very much leaning towards the fact

that what's happened on the bridge

is John has come across Christopher Weldon.

There's been some form of altercation.

And as a result of that, John's ended up in the river.

Investigators were grateful

that the witness had found the strength to come forward and

report one of his own friends.

He knows that if this turns out to be a murder

and his friends found guilty of it, that he's going

to go to jail for a long time.

I'm sure he thought long and hard about it,

but I'm also sure that he was hugely

influenced by those appeals from John's parents.

Armed with this new information,

Detective Superintendent Ian Sharp moved

quickly to detain his suspect.

Christopher Weldon was arrested and

placed in the cells overnight.

He was originally arrested for an assault case

because he'd already confessed to being

in a fight on the bridge with a younger man.

So the arrest for assault was appropriate because we

did not have a dead body.

With Christopher Weldon in detention

awaiting interview at Sunderland police station,

astonishing new information about their suspect

quickly came to light regarding an incident

that happened just 10 days before John Chipp disappeared.

We found out that Christopher Weldon had

been a passenger on a ferry.

That ferry traveled from Amsterdam to North Shields.

And what we knew was that Weldon was on that boat

with a number of friends.

We also knew that there was a 35-year-old German man called

Frank Conrad on the ferry.

We know on that ferry trip, there

had been an argument between Weldon and Frank Conrad.

And when the ferry docked in North shields,

Mr. Conrad was not on board.

Mr. Conrad, at some point during that journey,

had gone overboard and into the North Sea.

We know that Weldon was interviewed

by police about a week before John Chipp went missing.

So when Weldon was arrested in relation

to John's disappearance, he's already

a part of an investigation in relation

to Frank Conrad's missing episode from the ferry.

Frank Conrad's body was never found.

And although Weldon was never charged,

police were struck by the similarities between the cases.

We have two reports of men going into water

under circumstances that are not

understood and not explained.

And both investigations now involve Christopher Weldon.

It's important to note that Weldon

never had any criminal charge associated

with the ferry incident.

However, that incident will have

meant that Weldon was aware that someone went overboard,

was missing, and no criminal charges were brought.

And that does then pose the question

that, did that give Weldon a kind of sense

of self-assurance, a confidence that he then

felt he didn't need to go to the police

when he knew that John had gone over the bridge?

Because he knew that no information had

been found in relation to the ferry incident,

so why would this be any Different

For Detective Superintendent Ian Sharp,

this was a unique and challenging case.

As a Detective Superintendent and

senior investigating officer, I had investigated many murders,

which normally begin with a crime scene, a dead body,

forensic scientists, pathologists,

blood splash patterns, and lots of clues

to help you get started.

This was a unique case because we had none of that.

And we were pinning our hopes on an interview strategy

to see what clues we could pick up from Christopher Weldon.

So it was important to talk to him

and find out exactly what happened on the bridge.

With 18-year-old John Chipp still missing after

an altercation on Queen Alexandra Bridge in Sunderland,

police needed to establish whether he had

accidentally fallen into the river below

or if he had been pushed.

While their number one suspect was

in the cells awaiting interview,

police informed John Chipp's family

of Christopher Weldon's arrest.

We had a visit from the CID.

But the information, what we got,

we didn't really want to hear, because it was all bad.

It was pure shock.

We still didn't have John.

We still didn't know the true facts behind what had gone on.

You just want to know where he is and why.

As well as prompting

Christopher Weldon's arrest, the call

made by his friend also led Detective Superintendent Ian

Sharp to re-examine the scene of John Chipp's suspected

fatal fall.

When we got information that an altercation had taken place

between Weldon and John Chipp on the bridge,

we examined closely a pipe that ran

alongside the barrier of the bridge,

and we could see scuff marks on the pipe,

like finger marks being dragged down

the pipe as if someone was trying

to hold on before falling.

It was gut wrenching.

It was terrible to think that someone

had been trying to cling on for their life

before falling to their death.

Seeing those finger marks on that pipe

certainly tied in with Weldon's first confession to his friend,

that an altercation that took place,

and a boy had gone over the side of the bridge.

What we now had to try and understand

was, was that an accident or was he deliberately

thrown over the bridge?

Ian and his team knew

that interviewing Christopher Weldon

would be key to understanding what

really happened on the bridge.

Weldon's version of events is that he

is there because he is contemplating

taking his own life.

He says that he sees a young man running towards him,

and that that young man begins to assault him.

Weldon describes that he somehow stumbles

and his arms flail upwards.

And in doing so, he catches John somehow,

and John is propelled backwards over the railings

and into the water.

Video interviews now are very commonplace.

But back then, they weren't.

It was difficult to picture in your mind

exactly what you were seeing and to establish,

was this an accident or not.

I knew at that point the Crown Prosecution Service would think

there was reasonable doubt.

So I decided on a new tactic to go to the gymnasium

and set up a volleyball net at the same height of the bridge

barrier, and to get Weldon to reconstruct and tell

us exactly what had happened, only

this time video record it to see if what he was saying

was indeed possible.

We said it at the height of 4 feet

2 inches, which is exactly the same height

as the bridge barrier.

And we essentially said to Weldon,

can you show us what this looked like?

And what he described was being knocked back during this attack

and lost his balance.

His arm flew in the air, made contact with John.

And what he witnessed was John almost doing

a backflip over the railings and

disappearing into the water.

That's the version he was sticking to.

He was defending himself.

He was the victim, and this young boy

had somehow gone over headfirst over the side of the bridge

and had fallen to his death.

I'm thinking to myself from a common sense perspective,

I don't know if that's possible.

The difficulty now was convincing

the CPS to charge a murder charge given that we

did not have a dead body.

To help convince the Crown Prosecution Service

to charge Weldon with murder, they

decided to enlist the help of pathologist Jim Sunter

and explained to him the circumstances

of the altercation.

We said, if this young man has gone off

the bridge in these circumstances,

what's the likelihood of him surviving

an impact with the water?

And what that person said was, I'm

convinced that that young man would

not have survived that fall.

You simply haven't yet recovered his body.

The next thing we asked him about

was, what did he think about the account

that Christopher Weldon had provided?

He immediately said, no, that's impossible,

because your center of gravity is down where your hips are.

The barrier rail is set at 4 foot 2 shoulder

height for a safety reason.

And unless he was punched with the force of someone

like Popeye, then he could not go over accidentally.

We got a very early statement from the pathologist

at that point to support the theory

that John Chipp had been deliberately

pushed over the bridge.

And this was murder, not an accident.

Even without a body,

the evidence gathered by Ian and Steve

was enough to convince the Crown Prosecution Service.

On Thursday, April 1, 2004, they

authorized a charge of murder against Christopher Weldon,

and he was remanded in custody to appear

at Houghton Le spring Magistrates' Court

the following morning.

Meanwhile, Ian and Steve visited John's family

to tell them that Weldon was now being charged

with their son's murder.

I don't recall exactly what my reaction was,

because it's not happiness.

You never expect a child to go early.

It's like torture.

We still didn't have John.

All I wanted was to know where my--

my son was so I could lay him to rest.

Often, we talk about the significant impact on families

when a loved one is murdered, but

it can be worse when there is no body to grieve over.

Because there's this constant back of the mind thought of,

what if they're just missing?

What if they turn up?

Because there's no evidence physically

yet that that can't happen.

The underlying priority for the family and for us,

was to recover John Chipp's body

and give the family some peace of mind.

And we made a promise that we would

do everything humanly possible to recover John's body.

While police frogmen continued

to search the River Wear, investigators

made another breakthrough in the case.

A witness came forward, and she described

entering the bridge from the North side,

and she encountered a big man, who we now

know as Christopher Weldon.

She walked past the big man.

And as she walked towards the South side,

she saw what she says is a young boy

running under the bridge.

It is important that she places both of them

together on the bridge at quarter past midnight.

That was the last sighting of John Chipp.

As investigations continued,

so did the search for John Chipp's body.

It's important because that body will tell us a story.

For example, was John alive when he hit the water,

or was he killed on the bridge first and then thrown over?

John could have had a suicide note

on his body, which would indicate

that he had killed himself rather than

being thrown from the bridge.

The officers from the Northumbria Police Marine

Unit undertook hours and hours of searching

in the-- the river.

We are in the most arduous of circumstances.

We had a friend that had a small, small boat.

For a couple of days, we went up and down the river,

the same river as the police.

So they were on the south side.

We were on the north side, but we had no joy.

It was nigh on impossible, really.

On April 15, 2004, almost a month

after John Chipp had fallen from the Queen Alexandra

bridge, and two weeks after Christopher Weldon had

been charged with his murder, the search for John's body

came to an end.

A dog Walker at Hilton, a couple of miles up the river,

saw a body floating in the river and contacted the police.

The Marine section recovered the body from the river

and brought it back to the dock at Sunderland, where myself

and Steve Barron were waiting.

John's mobile phone, and as I recall, his wallet were--

were still in his pockets.

So that-- that indicated that it was John,

and you could see that it was-- it

was John, albeit he was formally identified

through DNA enquiries.

John's body was sent

to pathologist Jim Sunter for a post-mortem,

while Detective Superintendent Ian Sharp passed on the news

to John's family.

They just gave us that information

and made sure we were OK, but I think

they knew that we needed to be on our own,

and I think we just hugged and cried.

Part in sadness, but also relief

that at least we knew where he was,

and we could finally have some closure.

I was in school, actually.

I was in a lesson, and the two teachers come in

and took me out of the lesson.

I thought I was in trouble.

And they put us in the car, but they didn't say a word.

It was just silence.

And then they took us home.

And that's when I got--

got told that the body had been found.

And then when the teachers had gone, I just burst--

burst into tears, and I just jumped off the stairs

and just gave my mom and dad a big cuddle.

While John's family were left to process the news,

a post-mortem gave investigators

more information about what had happened to him the night

he fell from the bridge.

He had not been stabbed before going over

from the side of the bridge.

John had water in his lungs, which

means that when John entered the river,

he was still breathing.

Pathologists said he would have been knocked

unconscious immediately.

And when he went under the water,

he took a gulp of breath, and water entered his lungs.

The cause of death was given as drowning.

The property was still on the body,

so he wasn't robbed on the bridge, and nothing else

to give us any indication that something else had happened

on the bridge, other than an altercation and

being bundled over the side and into the river

whilst he was alive.

Trying to put together a motive for John's murder,

I think it's clear that Christopher Weldon's

standing on that bridge with serious troubles on his mind.

He'd just been interviewed about a ferry death.

He'd had an argument with his wife.

He was drunk.

He'd gone to the bridge, and he told people

he was going to kill himself.

He didn't kill himself and killed someone else instead.

After weeks of turmoil,

John Chipp's parents were finally able to begin

preparing for his funeral.

And his father, George, was determined

that John finished the journey he started the night he died.

I was told that there wouldn't be bringing them home,

but I demanded he come home.

I says he was on his way home.

He wanted to get home.

I want you to bring him home.

They brought in that house, and we--

we had John in the house overnight,

obviously, in his coffin.

That was such a relief.

I felt much, much better just having

him there for that night.

That was probably the best sleep I had had for weeks.

Finally, on May 12, 2004,

John Chipp was laid to rest.

The funeral was absolutely massive.

Couldn't get everyone in the church.

Outside the church, the street was just packed.

It was-- it's the biggest funeral I've ever--

I've ever seen.

It was unbelievable the amount that turnout for him.

The street was lined by hundreds of neighbors, friends.

It was very moving.

It was an amazing occasion, but a-- but a very sad one.

You can't believe that an--

an 18-year-old that still lived at home could have an effect

on so many people's lives.

On June 15, 2004, Christopher Weldon

appeared in court at a plea hearing

for pushing John Chipp to his death

from the Queen Alexandra bridge in Sunderland.

It was the first time John's parents

came face to face with the man accused of killing their son.

I remember thinking, bizarrely, he's not a monster.

I-- I don't know whether you think somebody is--

that does such a horrific thing to another human

being can look normal.

I just seen him as evil.

I couldn't see him as anything else.

After pleading not guilty,

Christopher Weldon was remanded until November 2004,

when he went on trial for the murder of John Chipp.

To disprove Weldon's version of events,

the prosecution wanted to show the jury

a visual interpretation of what must

have happened on the bridge.

In the run up to the trial, we

considered another new tactic of doing

a computer reconstruction.

The defense didn't like it because it was prejudicial

and because it wasn't admitted in evidence.

That caused the judge to instruct

the jury to attend the bridge.

It is very rare that a jury will physically go and

visit a crime scene location.

The whole court process is supposed

to be very secular, very kept within closed walls.

Now, it can be really helpful for the jury to help

contextualize the scene.

Specifically, in this case, they

need to understand the physicality,

the physical possibility of Weldon's claim

that John has just accidentally almost fallen

over the side of this bridge.

And so this visit to the bridge is

going to have had to be extremely well planned

and mapped out to be able to go ahead.

Over 20 years later,

former Detective Inspector Steve Barron

revisited the bridge to retrace the jury's steps.

We wanted the jury to see what this looked

like, a 4 foot 2 railing.

And to get over here, you're going to have to climb over,

or you're going to have to be manhandled and thrown over.

And we wanted the jury to understand what an 85-foot drop

looks like, because that's what we've got

from here under the river.

Coming here and seeing this footpath

made the jury think about the account that Weldon had given.

And ultimately, that just demonstrated

that Weldon's account was totally fanciful.

The defense claimed that John's death

was an accident, and that he had attacked Weldon.

Defense was making John out to be an unpleasant individual,

that John was looking for a fight,

and that's hard to listen to as a mother

whose son had been murdered.

In his defense, Weldon also came

up with an unexpected tactic.

Incredibly, as part of the defense strategy,

they introduced evidence about the ferry incident

the week before John going missing.

Where Frank Conrad had been reported missing,

presumed having gone overboard.

And the jury heard that Weldon had been on the ferry

when this had happened, that he'd been

interviewed by the police.

It seems extremely unusual that Weldon's defense attorney

would decide to bring up a case where Weldon's been questioned

in relation to a potential crime

in very similar circumstances to the one

that he's now on trial for.

There are a couple of reasons that they might have

decided to do this, though.

This is a relatively small local community.

People are going to have heard about Weldon being questioned

in relation to this prior case, so they maybe

thought it's better to officially

introduce it to record and control the narrative

in relation to it.

Additionally, they're trying to use this to paint Weldon

as this victim who's being falsely accused

and has had these run ins a couple of times now.

Ultimately, though, I think it backfires.

Because actually, it just goes to show

that this is the type of person who's at least been suspected

of being able to show this level of extreme violence

before and not even very long ago.

On Wednesday, December 1, 2004,

the jury returned their verdict.

The jury came back with a majority of 10 to 2

that Weldon was guilty of John's murder.

But you know what, we don't win.

We don't have our son back and never will do.

So yes, there is some happiness and elation on one part.

But equally, that sadness is still there.

Christopher Weldon was given a life

sentence with a recommendation of 15

years in prison minus the eight months

he'd already spent on remand.

In my opinion, it wasn't a fair--

it wasn't a fair sentence.

I pictured him as coming out at 42.

He's still got a lot of years to enjoy life,

and I just didn't think the sentence was long enough.

From a professional perspective,

sentencing and guidelines are there for judges

to understand and implement.

And on that basis, 15 years was entirely appropriate.

But had John been my boy and somebody had murdered him,

I would want them to go to jail for the rest of their life.

After the jury's guilty verdict,

the judge acknowledged Ian, Steve, and

Detective Sergeant Chris Sobenga's roles in what had

been a tragic and unique case.

The judge formally commended Ian,

and he commended Chris and myself for our efforts

in supporting Ian leading the investigation.

At the end of the trial, Ruth gave me a thank you

card and a bottle of whisky.

Getting a hug from Ruth was more important

than the commendation.

With Weldon serving time in Northumberland Prison,

John's family faced the challenge of life

without their beloved son and brother.

You just have to try and move on.

I don't think any of us wanted to celebrate

Christmas that year, did we?

We-- we actually felt guilty--

Enjoying ourselves.

for trying to enjoy ourselves.

At the time, I was very young

and I didn't realize how much losing my brother

had affected us.

I think it changed my life drastically for the worse,

really, because I grew up without a brother,

I'll never be able to be an uncle, stuff like that.

In the spring of 2019,

over 14 years after Christopher Weldon was

sentenced for the murder of John Chipp,

he became eligible for parole.

You are given the choice whether you

want to deliver an impact statement at that

the parole hearing, and we decided

that's what we wanted to do.

But Weldon refused to attend the family's

statement reading.

I thought it was just a coward.

He took our son away from us, and

he couldn't come and face us.

He didn't have the guts.

Despite not being able to talk directly

to Weldon, Ruth read the family's impact statement,

in which Ruth described how losing John

had affected the family.

"John was a much loved son,

brother, grandson, nephew, cousin, and friend.

The anguish that we all feel at his pointless death

is indescribable, and it is very hard to put it into words.

Our son, Mark, was only 15 years old

when John was murdered.

He often speaks of his brother affectionately

and becomes upset and angry that John is no longer with us.

My husband George and I are still haunted by John's death.

No parent should have to experience

the tragic death of a child, especially

in such awful circumstances."

John's parents requested the parole board keep

Weldon locked up, but having served

his sentence, Weldon's parole was granted,

and he was released under license in December 2019.

I wish he was still behind bars.

However, I won't allow it to eat me

up and niggle away in my head.

And I need to fill it with much nicer things

than thinking about him.

Over 20 years since John's death,

his memory lives on through his family and friends.

We go out for his memory.

We sometimes get together with the lads,

like all his close friends, at the time or all my--

like, some of them are my best friends now.

In memory of John, we decided to raise money for the guide

dogs for the blind.

We have managed to raise over 22,000 pounds.

We have named a dog after him.

We had a black Labrador called Chippy.

My older son, who was 13, he's

actually called John Chipp.

I named him after my brother in memory of him.

John's old comprehensive school,

we decided to set up a subject award in art in his memory.

We would like John to be remembered

as a young, ginger-headed young man who loved life,

loved his sport.

Loved his animals.

Mhm.

I'd like John to be remembered as a fun,

outgoing, very kind, polite, lovely-- lovely person.

That's exactly who he was.

He was a much loved child, and we

want his memory to continue.