Original subtitles

Anyone who is on the bus would

have experienced some level of trauma.

Was there an attack on the bus? Was it a member of the public?

There were very few details.

Anyone looking at that from the outside,

not knowing the true facts,

it's almost inconceivable that only hours before,

together, they've taken part in the most heinous crime

and then taken part in the most heinous attempt

to cover that crime up.

I feel for the detectives in this particular case

because, can have all logic in the world, but you need that evidence.

And many times it's just not there.

It comes down to where else was this child at?

And again, it seems that the only place this child was at

was in the family residence.

In all of these incidents,

what ends up happening is the mom blames the dad.

Dad blames the mom.

No one's going to make it out of this trial

without an emotional scar.

This crime and these two people's actions

have done so much damage to a lot of people.

More people than they know.

London's a very sprawling metropolis.

We've got a very diverse community.

And we've got a certainly a very diverse range of crimes,

far, far more than the rest of the country,

in my experience.

Violent crime, sadly, is more prevalent in London.

Stratford's in the borough of Newham,

which is one of the biggest and fastest growing

boroughs in London.

And it's got a very, very diverse population.

Compared to the rest of London,

it's got levels of quite high deprivation.

So with that I guess comes some crime, petty crime,

theft, robbery, stuff like that.

There are significant pockets of crime within Stratford,

such as violent crime, drug dealing, robbery and things of that nature.

Rosalin Baker was known to social services for many years.

She kind of presented first, I think, because she was homeless,

like living in between families and friends,

but also known to have a chaotic background.

She lived very much kind of, on the fringe,

and that she didn't engage in any kind of regular work,

education, that type of thing.

She was an addict,

and she was with Jeffrey Wiltshire who was 23 years her senior.

He had been a rapper, he'd fathered many children,

23 children from 18 women.

And he was also an addict, he took heroin and cocaine daily.

Rosalin Baker was 25, and Jeffrey Wiltshire was 52.

Because of the age gap

there must have been some kind of power imbalance

between the two of them.

Imani was born really prematurely, aged 28 weeks.

And so she spent her first 65 days in an incubator

under kind of intense supervision.

When Amani was in the incubator,

her mother didn't visit as much as you would normally expect.

Jeffrey didn't visit once.

And Rosalin wouldn't tell social services what his name was.

So he was very much not in the picture.

When she was discharged,

she went with her mother to stay with her grandmother

in Colchester, in Essex.

And they stayed there until about nine days before the bus incident.

And then Rosalin left her mother's house.

She told people she'd been kicked out,

and travelled to Newham to stay with Wiltshire

in his bedsit in the Manor Park area.

When Rosalin and Imani came to live with Wiltshire,

neighbours didn't really see much of them.

They maybe saw them coming and going once or twice,

but it was very much they were in the flat

and it was a very secret, private existence.

I don't think Rosalin would have had any interaction

with friends or potentially other women

who could help her deal with a newborn baby.

It would have been a very isolated existence for both her and the baby.

On the day that Rosalin took Imani on the 25 bus,

she was seen with Wiltshire,

they went into a newsagents...

...and then she boarded the bus.

She had Imani in a newborn sling on her chest

and she was pushing a pram.

Wiltshire gave her a kiss goodbye.

And then as she got on the bus, he gave her a thumbs up.

So that was the initial starting point

of how this whole thing began.

Rosalin sat there for about 20 minutes,

texting quite a lot on her phone,

and then she suddenly raised the alarm,

telling other passengers that there was something wrong

with her baby and that she wasn't moving.

The call was made to 999.

And what happens when you might call out to 999,

you're explaining that you've got a problem,

there's a baby that's become ill potentially on the bus,

and the operator talks them through a procedure.

The other passengers all stepped in,

and several of them tried to resuscitate Imani.

All the while, Rosalin was quite impassive,

again, looking on her phone, not saying anything

to the extent that another passenger thought that one of the passers by

was actually the mother because she was so distressed.

And they tried and tried to resuscitate her

until an ambulance was called.

The people on the bus are just going about their ordinary day

and all of a sudden there's this emergency with a baby

who might be dying.

The scene was quite chaotic.

And when the ambulance service arrived,

what you were greeted with was a lot of trauma

in members of the public,

are the only person hat didn't seem to be in trauma

or any kind of upset, was Rosalin Baker.

Rosalin, obviously would have,

at the very least known she had a sick child.

She should have been frantic

when she's realising this child is not responding,

seems to be in distress.

She herself should have been calling 999.

When emergency responders arrive,

they're faced with a lot of people on a bus,

and time is of the essence.

They don't know if this baby is going to survive.

First responders would attend a scene.

And it was at that point when medical attention was brought,

that obviously the temperature of the baby

was the first indicator that that baby had not just died.

An ambulance was called,

and they reported that the baby was cold,

and they tried and tried to resuscitate her.

My suspicion in this case is that any health professional

who encountered this baby around the time that she was found

on the bus

would immediately realise that the baby had been dead

for some time.

You always start from the first shred of information,

evidence that you have.

In this case, what we were faced with

was Rosalin Baker on the bus with that baby.

The baby, on the face of it, according to her,

becoming ill and then the intervention

of the London Ambulance Service and the first responders.

The child being on the bus creates problems for investigators

because you don't have a crime scene.

In this case, different people were trying to render aid to the child,

trying to help her.

So the crime scene is completely disrupted.

And also it's questionable whether the life saving attempts

caused some of the injuries,

or whether the injuries were there already.

Investigators are going to talk to the mother.

They're going to talk to the father.

They're going to talk to anyone who is directly involved

with these two.

Any relatives.

Her mother was involved, nurses for the child,

doctors for the child.

They're going to want to know everything they can

about this child.

And have there been earlier reports

of this child being abused in any way.

When the baby is brought to the hospital,

it appears to have been cold for some time.

And also to have injuries that are well beyond

what might have happened with anybody trying to do CPR

on this child.

Babies don't just die. There's a reason why they die.

On a postmortem examination is a quest to establish

what that reason is

and the sort of things you can find

are injuries or pathology that's in the body,

organs that aren't working properly,

bleeding and so on and so forth.

What the postmortem in this case encountered was

a whole series of serious injuries.

I don't think you need to be a pathologist to realise

that a baby that has 40 rib fractures,

a fractured skull, a subarachnoid haemorrhage,

and an injury to the brain stem - these are not accidental injuries.

These are injuries that have been inflicted by someone,

and they've been inflicted over a period of time.

It's almost hard to imagine that anybody would inflict

these kind of injuries against 16 week old baby,

and the injuries that we found that had been inflicted

was 40 fractured ribs

that had been caused through gripping that baby.

When they get the results,

what they see is signs of chronic child abuse.

This is not something that happened just last night.

Because are indications of injuries that have healed

or in the process of healing,

which means they took place a significant time

before the child's death.

Once they determine that the child did not die

simply of natural causes,

that there was a physical means...

...now the cops are looking at homicide.

So now it's what happened? Where is it most likely to happen?

This is a child.

It's most likely to have happened at the child's residence

or at some other caregiver's.

Who had control over the child?

There any families or a babysitter or whatever?

They're all going to be looking at that.

It seems that the only place this child was at

was in the family residence.

So now we're lucky in one sense, we only have two suspects.

The mom and the dad.

If Rosalin doesn't look as if she's really deeply affected

by this baby's death and there are other injuries

on this child that can't be explained

by whatever happened on the bus,

that would raise certainly questions that maybe something has happened.

She's already begun to distance herself from the child

because she knew the child had died before she even got on the bus,

or was at least about to die.

And so something happened. And she knows what it is.

That's the problem with all child abuse deaths

is trying to figure out who exactly caused the injuries

and caused the injuries that actually killed them.

I feel for the detectives in this particular case

because you can have all the logic in the world,

but you need that evidence to prove who exactly did it.

And many times it's just not there.

We know that the child was in hospital

for a extended period of time. OK.

Well, how many times was the child visited?

I mean, it is normal.

You know, I've seen this in the past, where you have preemies,

it's almost like you can't drag the mother out of the hospital.

Poor Imani,

who was only 16 weeks old at the time of her death,

had been for the first 64 days of her life,

so effectively half her life,

had been hospitalised in a high dependency unit

since birth.

And the reason for that is that she'd been born prematurely.

However, when we looked into the history of the parents,

we found that Rosalin Baker only visited 16 days out of that 64.

So imagine that, that if that's your newborn baby,

knowing that baby is very ill or very weak, may not survive,

and you only visit her 16 days out of 64,

that was a level of concern.

And the next level of concern was that there was a reluctance

to name the father, who was Jeffrey Wiltshire.

Wiltshire, by the way, had never visited Imani in hospital

for all her 64 days.

So here, from the very, very inception of this inquiry,

we could already identify that both parents seemed

very, very distant from that child and her welfare.

Although a forensic pathologist can establish

what these injuries are, how serious they are,

and whether they're potentially fatal.

It's very difficult for them to establish

who actually inflicted the injuries.

And if there are two people in the household,

in theory, it could be either one of them.

And you're relying on other investigative factors.

It may even be that friends or neighbours or relatives

can shed some light,

because they've seen an individual treating the baby

in a particular way.

So that's something the police would try to get to the bottom of.

They were suspects simply because the circumstances of Imani's death

and the initial account given by Baker just didn't tally.

There was no way that she could have dressed that baby,

put that baby on a harness and not know that she was dead.

And obviously we later found out with the injuries

they were very, very severe.

And then we needed to identify who had access to Imani

within the timeframe of her death, to definitively rule anybody else.

And Jeffrey Wiltshire was arrested.

Well the approach was obviously to get a first account from them.

And in the case of both of them, they were very cold,

very emotionless.

Bearing in mind, you put that into context,

you've just lost your 16 week old baby.

You say, in terrible circumstances, that were nothing to do with you.

You're suggesting that baby's become ill.

That is your defence at that time.

In Baker's case,

she gave a prepared statement simply saying that Imani

had an accident a little while before,

had falling over, but had not sustained any serious injuries?

And when we arrested Jeffrey Wiltshire,

he claimed to not even be Imani's father

and later he retracted that statement

and actually claimed that the reason he told us that

was because he was concerned that he had mental health problems

and drug abuse issues that would be a concern to the authorities.

Once you determine that the time of death was

at least one day prior to the discovery,

to me, and then I go back and say,

well, what was the mother's behaviour?

What did she do?

Well, she hit all the CCTV points going in and going out.

She's establishing an alibi, because what they have to do,

she has to cover what exactly happened

and how normal this trip on the bus was going to be.

How normal?

Rosalin Baker went out with Imani,

she was fully dressed

and was in a baby harness positioned with her face,

and I believe there's a reason for that,

because there was an injury to the eye,

facing Rosalin's chest,

again, covered up, but they went out in public.

So they've gone out in public on the streets of London,

deliberately putting themselves in a position

where they know they're going to be subject to CCTV surveillance

with the baby apparently well.

Then getting on the bus,

London busses are very, very well catered for

in terms of closed circuit television.

And once again it's very high quality.

So in this particular case, what Baker and Wiltshire did,

they walked together almost projecting the persona

that they were a happy family with young innocent children.

And when you look at it,

if you didn't know what had really happened,

you'd think this is quite a loving family.

I say that because Wiltshire gives Rosalin a kiss.

He'd been a gentleman, helps her with the buggy onto the bus,

then gives her a thumbs up as the doors close.

So anyone looking at that from the outside,

not knowing the true facts,

you'd think it's almost inconceivable

that only hours before,

together, they've taken part in the most heinous crime

and then taken part in the most heinous attempt

to cover that crime up.

They see her walking with her partner, the father of the baby.

And at that point, the baby is very likely dead.

And they know they're carrying around a dead child.

So it begins to appear that they've made a plan

to have this child appeared to have gone into distress in a public place

where other people would be touching it, handling it,

maybe inflicting the injuries on it,

and, witnessing her being in distress over it

before, quote, unquote, it dies.

They're in this together.

They both know that this child is dead

and they have to do something about it

because people are aware that they have this child.

So they were planning how they were going to make this look.

I think it was very well thought out.

They wanted to have the child out of the house,

so there's no reason for the police to come back to the house

to search it and see if there's anything there.

When I studied that CCTV on the bus,

Baker's actively looking at different members of the public

getting on that bus.

And now what know is going through her mind for that 28 minutes was,

who am I going to pick?

What person is going to become the third part of this conspiracy

to stage this cover up?

Because of the very conclusive postmortem results

which showed that Imani had been dead for up to 24 hours

before the bus, it was very clear that this wasn't an accident.

So police knew early on that this was serious crime.

What we've managed to determine was that Rosalin Baker

moved from her mother's house in Colchester in Essex,

into the Stratford area where Wiltshire had small flat.

And they were there for the week leading up to the death of Imani.

We knew then with this timeline from the postmortem,

that Imani had died 24 hours or so prior to the discovery of the body

on the bus. So we knew that she'd been there for the week.

So what was a very, very important to determine was

all that catalogue of injuries,

could we determine when they had occurred?

So to determine this we actually use some of the United Kingdom's

foremost bone injury experts

that could actually tell us, through the postmortem examination

and the findings

that these injuries had occurred at three different stages

that could be timed within that last week.

That was within the week that we knew Imani was in

the so-called care of both parents, Jeffrey Wiltshire and Rosalin Baker.

They charged Rosalin and Jeffrey very early on.

When it came out that they'd been charged on murder charges,

there was a sense of real horror

because there were so few details that emerged.

But what we were told was really shocking,

that a three month old baby had died of head injuries on a bus.

So without any more context, you start to think

was there an attack on the bus? Was it a member of the public?

Was it- You know, there were very few details,

but what we did know, it was horrible.

I can tell you, as a detective,

and I've investigated child deaths before,

these are some of the most, difficult cases to work.

Particularly if you have kids of your own at the house,

because this is an absolutely innocent person

who cannot possibly defend themselves.

So you really have to take a deep breath,

because you can't allow all these emotions that you're feeling

to interfere with your investigation.

Whenever you investigate the murder of a child,

and I've investigated several,

it's a very different kind of case

to investigating the murder of an adult in quite a number of ways.

Firstly, on a personal level, we're all humans.

We all have emotions and so do my team.

It's quite a harrowing thing to investigate

when you're uncovering detail of most unimaginable cruelty

and unspeakable acts that you don't think any human being could

ever, ever perpetrate, but these two did.

So there's that element.

But you put aside any personal feelings,

and then you look at how you investigate it.

Well, in a homicide of an adult, they've got a background.

And normally you're looking for the motive

as to why that murder has taking place.

In a case of a 16 week old baby, that baby has had very little life.

And half the life that she had

was obviously in a high dependency unit in hospital.

So there's no background in terms of that baby

in any contact with anybody else.

As soon as the trial started

and as soon as the prosecution delivered their opening statements,

it was just immediately clear that there was so much more to this case

than was initially thought.

The trial, I thought, was a very interesting trial

because bearing in mind the engagement we'd had

with Baker and Wiltshire,

what we'd seen from them was that they were very cold,

very much in denial of any wrongdoing.

And so it's going to be interesting to see, firstly,

what they gave evidence in their defence,

and if so, how would they come across.

What were they going to say?

They don't have to prove anything.

It's for the prosecution to prove their guilt

beyond a reasonable doubt.

So they, as defendants,

they could have sat in the defence box,

deciding not to give evidence

and to let the prosecution prove or try to prove their guilt.

Interestingly enough, what both of them decided to do

because they were charged with the same crime,

sitting in the dock together,

they decided to engage in

what is known in English law as a cut throat defence.

So they both blamed each other.

I think that's a calculated gamble as far as they were concerned.

And thought the evidence is clear that Amani has been murdered

and we were her parents and we were together with the baby.

Baker decided to go to the witness box.

Her evidence essentially was that she had woken up

on the 28th of September

and Jeffrey Wiltshire had said to her I've killed the baby.

Now, this is what you're going to do.

And she painted Wiltshire as a coercive domestic offender

that had abused her over period of time.

And she said that she went along with it because she was in fear.

Wiltshire, apparently, according to her, had dressed Imani

and then Baker then put Imani in the harness

and put Imani around herself,

knowing her own daughter was dead,

and then went along with this facade, this charade,

in the street.

But here's the thing.

If that were actually true,

and it was imminent fear of danger or harm to herself

that she really feared,

the moment she got on that bus, knowing that she could give evidence

against Wiltshire and involve the police,

why didn't she do that?

We then heard a different side to Rosalin's story,

because at first when she gave a police statement,

she said, oh no, no,

my partner wouldn't do anything like that to her.

She didn't notice any injuries, just a small mark above her eye.

And then we start to hear of details that Wiltshire was abusive

and controlling or taking drugs every day.

So it's a much bigger kind of picture of neglect and depravity.

The interesting part for me, again with this,

was her demeanour this time around

where she'd been cold before and even on the bus CCTV,

you could see that she had no concern at any point.

And now she's presenting herself as is terrified victim

that's been coerced.

That was totally innocent. I had no choice.

All of a sudden,

Baker became confrontational, became a different person.

And so really,

once her bogus account was properly probed in the witness box,

it fell apart,

as did Baker, and her real character came out.

That was seen by all, including the jury.

Wiltshire's account,

was, again, a very, very interesting one,

the way that he decided to go about defending himself.

And he basically said it was nothing to do with me.

When he asked by his defence counsel, did you murder Imani,

he said, I'm a baby maker, not a life taker.

And the reason he said that,

apart from the obvious attempt to defend himself,

was that he claimed to be the father of 23 children by 18 women.

So he was basically just refusing any part, any knowledge in it,

says it's nothing to do with me.

Looking at the two defendants themselves,

there was lots of lying,

lots of going back on original statements,

lots of trying to put the blame on somebody else.

I feel that Rosalin's statements were the ones that

was kind of- She was tripping herself up the most.

And it was clear that they weren't in this together anymore.

They definitely, you know, diverged and were trying to blame each other.

With both co-defendants blaming the other,

it can cause so much confusion

that the jury is not able to decide definitively who did what.

And in that situation, they can't convict either one.

As more details of the abuse emerged and the kind of the deceit

around trying to cover i tup,

there was a real sense of disgust and a real hope that, you know,

justice was going to be served for this poor child.

We looked at everything,

but we were unable to definitively say which one inflicted

the fatal injury.

But what we could say, without a doubt,

was that all of those injuries, including the fatal injury

had occurred within that period of time

when that baby was in the care of Rosalin Baker,

Jeffrey Wiltshire, in Wiltshire's bedsit in east London.

The public perception would be

that it doesn't matter who inflicted the death.

Both of these people are responsible, and it's murder.

However, legally speaking,

without being able to prove an intent to kill the child

or a cause of death, you cannot prove murder.

And that fact in itself means the difference between

ten years in jail

or spending the rest of your life in jail.

And in this particular case,

knowing that the jury may struggle to reach a verdict on homicide,

because we just couldn't prove which person inflicted the fatal injury,

the judge decided that it was better to direct

about an alternative charge.

Some of the other passengers on the bus actually gave

really, really compelling evidence at the trial,

and they spoke of how they were trying really hard

to revive this little body, this little girl,

thinking that there might be a chance

that they could save her life.

And then when she went off the bus,

they thought that they'd failed

and that maybe, perhaps there was something else they could have done.

And so to learn that, actually, this baby had been dead the whole while

and that her mother was sitting there knowing this was happening,

that must have just been horrifying.

Some of them said that they actually had kind of effects of trauma,

were unable to sleep, had to take medication because of it.

It must have just been so distressing for everybody

on that bus.

The prosecutor told jurors

that Rosalin Baker enacted what's been described

as a nightmare charade,

claiming her baby had fallen ill.

Passengers tried to help.

They were panicking and distressed, compared to Baker,

who was noted to be calm and cold.

Many homicide cases I dealt with,

when a jury goes out, I was always nervous.

I was always confident in the evidence we presented,

but always nervous only because there's so much riding

on that particular case.

You know, you've got a victim murdered,

you've got a family wants justice.

Justice for the victim themselves.

And when you've worked hard to get all of the evidence

that you possibly can,

and it's sufficient to present that case to a jury,

you obviously want to get the right verdict.

So I was nervous but confident.

Very tense moments when a jury return.

And on this occasion, we got back and were told there was a verdict.

And then they're asked, do you find the defendant guilty or not guilty?

And in this case, it was guilty of causing or allowing the death

of Imani Baker.

The jury deliberated for 14 or so hours,

but they couldn't agree that the evidence was kind of

beyond reasonable doubt,

that they were both guilty of murder or one of them.

So they those charges couldn't be upheld.

Ultimately, they're not able to prove murder.

And that has to be incredibly frustrating,

because they have committed such a heinous crime, multiple times.

Inflicted terrible abuse on this child,

yet, because they're not able to prove murder,

it doesn't seem like justice was served.

Because it was difficult to pinpoint

who actually had delivered the fatal blow,

they ended up with lesser charges and a lesser sentence of 11 years,

which is reduced to ten.

And that's not an adequate sentence for what happened to this child.

Their hands were tied.

Had they been convicted of the homicide,

the actual substantive murder,

they'd have probably gone to prison for 30 years.

The sentence they got was 11, later reduced to ten on appeal.

On the one hand, justice has been done,

that it's been proven Imani was unlawfully killed

at the hands of her parents.

But it was just a shame we couldn't have proved

which one had administered that fatal injury.

When we got the sentencing,

I definitely felt that this was miscarriage of justice

and it did not properly represent the horror

that this poor, innocent child had to endure.

They got 11 years, I think sentence was then reduced by a year.

And I don't think that is a adequate punishment.

This had to be a very difficult case for not just the investigators,

but also for the jury.

Because this is an emotional case.

No one's going to make it out of this trial

without an emotional scar.

Because this is a baby.

16 weeks old, vulnerable, small.

Completely helpless against the hands of her parents.

It can be very frustrating,

when you know that this particular person did that crime,

you know it.

But they're let off with a lesser offense than what they should have.

Sometimes what you have to do is you just got to suck it up

because there's nothing you can do about it.

That is the justice system.

Looking at the whole, staged plot itself,

it seemed that the reason they did it in such a busy, public bus was

because they wanted to bring as many people as possible

into their deceit.

But in doing so, they've actually affected so many people

and traumatised so many people.

Some of the people who are on the bus say they can now

no longer take buses because they feel so scared

about what happened that day.

And also, this was an incident where people of the community

really did step in to help, and it was all in vain.

And there's a sense that they might not do that again,

because they don't want to be used in someone else's horrible plot.

The person who I think it affected the most on that bus

was the lady that administered CPR.

And I spoke to that lady at length after she gave evidence

and she gave evidence and she was from Italy.

A lovely lady who was just on her way to work that day.

And that lady was totally innocent, minding her own business

wanted to do the best she could.

And when she discovered that this baby was cold as ice

as she described it,

and then saw the bruise under the eye,

you know, and still administered CPR,

even though she might well have known that she was dead.

But it was a terrific thing for her

and her everlasting thoughts after was that she could not get

on a bus again.

She did want to travel on public transport again.

If she saw a baby, you know, she'd be upset

because she was worried the same thing would happen again.

And that's the level of trauma

that Rosalin Baker subjected this lady to.

Despite the fact that they thought this was a means

by which they could cover up the crime...

...they had no understanding of how the pathology examination would work

and the fact that it would reveal overwhelming evidence

that this child had died due to abuse.

This case stands out to me for a number of reasons.

Firstly, the callous nature,

and the cruelty that somebody can hurt a child.

But let alone hurt a child, murder a child,

let alone a 16 week old child.

We can identify the warning signs.

And the warning signs were there in this case.

But unfortunately, many of these systems are overloaded

and they can't follow up on every single difficult case.

So lots of cases, you know,

just don't get the attention that they need.

I think had there been enough resources,

this baby probably would have been saved.

I see death all the time.

I don't like it, but I see it.

But here's someone going on a ride on a double decker bus.

All of a sudden they're confronted with a dead baby.

What's the worst thing in the world if you're a family person?

Is what a dead, innocent baby?

They're the ones that were really, traumatised by all this.

And I feel mostly for them.

Looking back at this case,

there's so many parts of it that kind of ignites

different emotions: anger, frustration,

but the overwhelming sense of this just pure sadness

and pain you feel for this little girl.

You know, she didn't have the love and support of her parents.

Definitely.

She didn't have wider protection from social services.

Probably the safest she had been was when she was in an incubator.

And that's just a really, really tragic start to any life.

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