Original subtitles

I was at home

on the day that I got the call, it was 7 in the morning.

The on-call super-intendant was trying to get a hold of me because there was

a new investigation that I was gonna have to take.

It was a case of get yourself down to Twickenham with your team

a girl has been murdered by being battered on the head.

It's a stranger attack

and we don't know an awful lot else at the moment.

Was it someone

who could be a serial attacker

who could go on to strike again?

As it turned out, yes.

This is someone

with a real propensity of horrific violence to young women.

The more I've seen

of horrible things that happen in the world

and some of these things can happen to anyone.

This was a high-profile job

and he was under serious pressure here

when he made a decision, he stuck with his guns.

It's always absolutely crucial

you think about what you're doing in the first stages

of an investigation

by 9 o'clock that morning I was down at Twickenham police station

Colin Sutton was a detective chief inspector

and senior investigating officer

in the Metropolitan police.

He led the investigations

into some of the most complex and high-profile cases ever

bringing dangerous criminals to justice.

In this series

he will take you inside those cases

and show you how he caught these crimina using nothing but pure detective work

this is the Real Manhunter.

Twickenham Green on a summer's day

like we've seen, is normally a hive of activity people enjoying themselves

a oasis of green in suburban London.

But, when I came here on a summer's day in 2004

it was because there'd been a murder

and when I arrived here

the whole green was cordoned off

taped off preventing people using it at all.

Twickenham Green's sort of a big triangular

shape piece of land with a path running through the middle of it and

roads on all three sides.

It's a cricket pitch with a cricket club and a pavilion and it's where

families take their children and walk their dogs.

It's in a very safe, pleasant, quiet corner of London

we were certainly not used to conducting murder investigations there.

Arriving to take over that investigation

the first thing that struck me was the scale

of the open space, the scale of the cordon.

There was a woman had been murdered

the was a scenes of crime tent over ther protecting where she'd been found

but we didn't know who she was, where she'd come from how she got here

and that meant that this entire

swathe of green was potentially my crime scene.

Trying to make a forensic examination a fingertip search of that sort of area

takes a huge number of resources.

It's always absolutely crucial what you' doing in the first stages of an investig

because decisions that are made

then can have a profound effect

on how the investigation goes and you ne to make sure really that you

you don't miss any chances to preserve evidence

that you might want to come across later you might want to go back to later.

Colin very quickly identified the fact that...

how important that this evidence is going to be.

If you make mistakes in the beginning you're almost done.

The first thing that I did was to

get the scene widened so that we taped o the pavement as well

so that passers-by had to walk on the other side of the roads

which meant they weren't able to put debris into the crime scene.

It was really a question of getting officers from search team

to do a fine fingertip search around

the immediate location of where the body was found to see if

there was anything that would give us a as to who'd done it and what had happene

The body was discovered around about qua 10 in the evening when it was obviously

here by a man who lived locally

he just went out for a quick walk round the green to get some air.

He saw what he thought at first was a bin bag or a bag of rags

it was only when he went over and looked more closely that he realised

it was the body of a woman, dressed in white with a carrier bag nearby to her.

He found that she was still alive she was still breathing

and he went away to get help to raise the alarm.

The police and ambulance service turned very quickly afterwards

and she was taken to the Kingston Hospit

what the medical staff told us at the hospital was that the severity

of her injury was such

that she couldn't have been lying there very long

and she survived minutes rather than hours.

What we need to do is to try and find ou more about your victim

and find out the journey she had to get she was here where she lived, where she

That morning we didn't know any of that and it literally was

a dead body in the middle of Twickenham Green

let's go an investigate it.

Only as that day unfolded

that we started to know more about the victim

and more about what happened

that night in August 2004

that we were able to prioritize our work

and really start making some progress in the investigation.

Nearby was her carrier bag and it had some clothing some shopping in it.

But also in that bag was a till receipt and it had

some phone numbers written on it, with some names.

One of those names was 'Olivier'.

It turned out he was the boyfriend of the victim and he was able to tell them.

'Yes her name is Amelie, Amelie Delagran

she lives just near Twickenham Green'

and that she worked as a waitress in a patisserie in Richmond.

I don't think I got home until

past 2 o'clock the following morning

so it's been a long day as well and it's a long day where I'm thinking

double thinking everything that I'm doing because

it's so important to get things right at the early stage.

By the Saturday morning we went back to Twickenham Police Station

and we had a...

what we like to refer to as a 'Scrum-dow basically a team meeting/briefing and it

this is where the works done.

So, I've got information coming in from my intelligence officers

my inquiry officers, some, in that case from the borough as well.

They were all feeling in and word was getting around that this was a...

a young girl that had been just brutally murdered by a stranger.

There was a palpable fear in the communi

but there was also a sense that they wanted to do something to help.

I was part of the investigation into Amelie Delagrange's murder

from the beginning.

My role was known as 'receiver'.

The idea is you identify lines of inquir the priorities

very quickly.

Lots of people would try to give informa about what they thought might help.

Our first crucial task that day was to try to plot the movements

that Amelie had made on the evening that she was murdered.

As is often the case.

CCTV came to our assistance.

It's very important to get CCTV recovery rolling

eally straight away because if you lose the footage it's gone forever.

The scene being in the middle of a green

per se would not be covered by CCTV.

But you can't get there without almost certainly being caught on CCTV

and Colin very quickly identified the fact that...

how important this evidence was going to be.

Amelie had been at work at the French Patisserie in Richmond.

After work she came here to Twickenham to meet some friends

in a wine bar called 'Cristal's', over there.

She had three or four glasses of wine an while she was there she phoned her boyfr

but he was busy and couldn't meet up her

So, it got to half past nine and she thought 'Well, I'll call it a day'

and she came across the road here and caught a bus back to Twickenham Green.

It was on that bus that she missed her stop

and that was her fateful mistake, becaus

if she had gotten off at the correct sto

she would have had a short walk to home she would never have encountered her kil

The bus she got on goes towards the bus garage at Fullwell where it terminates.

That means it takes the southern road the bottom road along Twickenham Green.

So, what she had to do was get off at the stop

at Twickenham Green

walk across the green

until her house which was in Gould Road was a couple of streets north of the gre

She had not gotten off at Twickenham Gre

and she was still on the bus

when it got to the terminus at Fullwell bus garage.

That's the bus stop that she should have gotten off

it's a short walk across the green and up to where she lived.

For whatever reason, we don't know she missed her stop

and instead, she's carried on for around a mile

down Hampton Road until the bus garage at Fullwell.

When she gets there the bus terminates a asks the driver when the next bus back u

to the green would be and he said, 'about 10 minutes'.

It was a nice summer's evening, you can imagine Amelie thought.

'I've got a decision, do I wait 10 minutes for the bus

or shall I just walk the mile back.

Fatefully for her, she decided to walk.

She's walked all the way back up Hampton Road

she'd have to go across Twickenham Green to get to her home.

All those buses at Fullwell bus garage at that time had just been fitted

with CCTV cameras

and they had either six or eight cameras that were facing inside and outside

and it recorded onto a hard drive, it wa timed with the atomic clock it was prett

as good as you could get for CCTV in those days.

So, we've got CCTV pictures of Amelie getting on the bus.

CCTV pictures of Amelie talking to the b driver and getting off the bus at Fullwe

So, it then became a question of going back up her walk up Hampton road

and seeing what opportunities for CCTV there might be there.

There were three or four static CCTV cameras one at the Loch Fyne Restaurant

there was an accountants that had CCTV as well and

indeed, a police car a traffic police ca one of the Provida cameras running at th

But also, of course there were buses, other buses

going up and down this road all the time and they had the CCTV running

so by the time you actually got all the buses CCTV

we were able to get a dozen or so

points where we could fix 'this is where was at that time' and we could plot her

all the way back up to Twickenham Green

and it was only as she went onto the gre

that there was no more CCTV and she was found in the middle of the green.

We had everything apart the last 70 or 80 yards of her journey.

What it showed us was that about 5 past that evening

she came though this side

of the pavilion, she'd have to walk across here

around the Cricket wicket and she would be over towards where she lived.

But we also know she was intercepted.

We think that her attacker came onto the green

from this side of the Cricket Pavilion and followed her

and it was just when she was just beyond the Cricket wicket

that he attacked her, hitting her across back of the head with something quite he

and causing a fatal injury.

One of the first things that needs to be done in a murder investigation

is to make sure the next of kin are informed

it's more difficult when the next of kin are abroad as they were in this case.

Amelie's parents lived in a little villa called 'Hanvoile' in 'Picardy' in France

We had a couple of French speaking offic seconded to the team.

They phoned our French colleagues and

explained the situation to them.

Essentially, first they said 'well, we'l phone number for you, you can phone them

and we said 'no that's not how we do it we'll send someone round there'

and they said 'well no, that's not how we do it'.

When Colin found out that this was how

they were going to be informed

he asked them not to phone and arranged for somebody to go round in person

to speak to them because he felt that was a kinder

more humane way of informing somebody that their daughter had been

killed, and in such an appalling way.

Eventually, I kind of...

it was almost a veiled threat really

I said 'I'm not going to have them phone up and told about it

if we need to send somebody

then I'll get somebody from the British in Paris and see if they will go round a

and I think that the prospect of me involving

the diplomats in it might have had some effect on the French police.

I said, 'Ok then, I'll go round', sort of begrudgingly.

I later found out when speaking to Amelie's parents

that what indeed they'd done was they had gone round there

there was two detectives in a car parked on the drive.

Amelie's father came home from work and they got out of the car

and said 'are you Mr Delagrange?' and he said 'yes'

they said 'ok can you ring this number y daughter has been murdered in England'

and they got in the car and drove off.

They didn't even go in the house they never even entered the house.

The first time the police officers went the Delagrange's house about Amelie's mu

was when I went over there to the funera

So, it's just an example of how

priorities are different in different co and things are done in different ways I

Even at that point there was an awarenes amongst all of us that this might not be

the only one of these

that there had been other attacks where women

had been hit over the back of the head by a stranger.

I suppose the first feeling was that thi was going to be one of those cases where

you had this element of pressure

to succeed quickly

to try and protect other people.

And I think we all realised that pretty early on

so that probably added to the sombre attitude that there was.

A little while into the investigation

I was made aware of another case as...

Kate Sheedy, in May 2004.

Kate had been walking home and had just got off a bus in Isleworth

but, she had seen this vehicle

that she thought was laying in wait for her.

Kate was 18 years old;

She had been to Twickenham town centre with some school friends to celebrate

the last day of lessons before they were all dispersed and took their A levels.

She got the bus back from Twickenham to home

getting off at that bus stop down there.

She then had a short, 200-yard walk, to her home.

The suspect's vehicle

a white people carrier

had followed the bus.

Kate was concerned about this particular vehicle

concerned enough to cross the road try and get out the way.

She started walking along the pavement

and she saw ahead of her

a white people carrier.

It had blacked out windows

and she thought it was odd because the engine was running but the lights were o

She was intelligent enough

to sense something might be wrong and she'd heard stories

of girls being dragged into cars

and abducted and so forth.

To be on the safe side

she thought 'I'll cross the road'.

So, she crossed onto the pavement on this side

and walked on this side

until she got to this point here.

When she was here

the people carrier suddenly lurched forward at speed

turned right and knocked her down.

She fell to the ground

the front wheel of the people carrier wh over her body and stopped

then it went backwards, reversed over her again

into the main road, and drove away.

His whole intent was truly horrendous

to do that to that young person

probably because she's a person way out of his reach.

Kate suffered terrible injuries

every one of her ribs was broken her liver was split in two

but she remained conscious throughout.

She managed to crawl a few yards

recovering her mobile phone which she'd dropped during the incident.

She dialled her mother and told her mother 'I'm here

I've been knocked over, I need help'

and then dialed 999 to get the police and the ambulance to come

showing the courage that she showed throughout this ordeal she suffered.

You can hear in her phone call how desperate

that person is, at that point.

If you replace being hit over the head with being run over by

a people carrier

then actually the profile of the victim the location, the sort of blitz attack

everything was sort of similar So, I kept a real

open and undecided mind on whether that

might have been one of our cases as well

When I started on this investigation

I was aware of the Marsha McDonnell murd

I knew that Marsha had been murdered in Hampton

not too far away, more than a year

18 months previously.

I also knew that it was investigated by another murder team one from Hendon

and that they had what they considered t be a very good suspect who was arrested.

Marsha had been at the cinema in Kingsto

with her friends. And She'd got the 111-bus home

here to Percy Road.

It was about 20 past midnight when she arrived here at this bus stop.

Marsha McDonnell got off the bus

walked down the road, turned right towar her home address

the suspect followed her, drove around the bus

and pulled into the road behind her.

We think he propositioned her

then he got out of the car and struck her in the head with a heavy object

she sadly died from that injury. This wa now the 3rd case we were investigating

which involved a victim who had just been on a bus

and was accosted near a bus stop.

Marsha's murder was another

big story for the media

and a very worrying story, I think for the population.

There is no apparent explanation for

why this would have happened other than it possibly being a serial attacker

or someone that is striking at random.

We know from other victims who had been hit over the head

with a hammer from behind that there was no interaction

he just went up behind them and hit them over the head with a hammer.

Marsha's mother, having seen a picture for Amelie

the day after her murder

was very struck by the similarity in their appearances

as well as the similarity in the modus operandi

the method of their deaths.

At that point, the investigation started to merge

and the police began to focus on the fact that there was possibly here

a serial attacker.

The Metropolitan Police said they were not linking it to Marsha's murder

the reason for that was that they were looking at this other suspect

who they felt murdered Marsha.

On the night that Marsha was murdered, but before she was murdered

there was another young lady, a 16-year-old girl

who reported being followed by a strange young man.

But when you looked at all the detail

the only thing he had actually been iden for was for following this other girl

there was no real connection between him and Marsha McDonnell.

At the moment

they're two separate offenses and we're after Amelie and we're concentrating on

You have to go with

the most recent job because you have the best chances of getting the best evidenc

and then look at the others.

I was then told that there were other non-fatal attacks nearby.

Because of the way that it works, whereb

if you get attacked and you survive

your case is investigated by a couple of DC's

if you get attacked badly and you die

it's investigated by a murder team of 30 odd.

So, the non-fatal attacks in the area ha been left with the borough to deal with

and we were completely unaware of them on the murder team.

One of the first cases

we think was linked to this series was

of Anna Maria Rennie

who was attacked in Hospital Bridge Road in Whitton in october 2001

this was an abduction or attempted abduction.

A vehicle pulls up after.

Anna Maria is walking away from a bus st

and the suspect grabs a hold of her and tries to drag her to the rear of the car

Anna Maria screams, struggles

and gets away and fortunately for her effectively the end of that particular a

Edel Harbison had been

walking in.

April I think it was, in 2004

walking from a restaurant on the north side of Twickenham Green to go home

and been hit over the head

dropping all of her shopping

falling flat on her face, smashing her face

needing reconstructive surgery.

We didn't know a lady called 'Dawn Brunton' had been

attacked in the same way

up towards Hatton Cross, towards Heathrow Airport

on the 5th of November 2003

sustaining head injuries

to the back of her head where she was hi and facial injuries where she fell over.

Irma Dragoshi who was attacked in Longford Village in December 2003.

Irma was an Albanian woman

who had lived in Hounslow with her husband.

She was standing at a bus stop

on her way home from work

at about 10 o'clock at night

when she was attacked randomly by a stranger

who hit her over the head with a blunt instrument

and then Irma woke up in hospital

with a huge injury to her head.

She suffered, I think, very bad neck pai and back pain, very bad headaches

and I know she suffered a lot for quite a long time.

There was another where.

'Jesse Wilson' was found with a wound on the back of her head

and facial injuries and was thought that she had fallen over in the snow

it wasn't even dealt with as a crime.

The common thing with all these

victims that survived is that they recall nothing at all of the attack

that's quite common, that you lose a portion of your recent memory.

It was only when Marsha was murdered

reasonably close by, 4 weeks later

that Jesse's case was looked at again

and the pathologist who had done the post-mortem examination on Marsha McDonn

looked at the photographs of the injurie that Jesse Wilson had

and said 'I think this is the same person that did this'

Because of the lack of detail and.

CCTV recovery and lack of potential evidence

her case sat as a 'probable'

rather than a 'definite' because we were unable to prove it.

My strategy very much was

let's stick with Amelie for the moment.

But the reason I said that was because

it was the most recent offense

it hadn't ever been investigated by anybody else.

If and when we find a suspect

then we can try and work backwards

and sort of retrofit him to those other offenses in the past.

The next big

piece of information we had to consider was

the service provider for Amelie's mobile phone.

They had been able to tell us that her phone

was last on their network

at 23 minutes past 10

and that was in the vicinity of Walton Bridge.

Walton Bridge is 6-8 miles away

we knew that she had been found by the passer by

getting on for quarter past 10.

More interesting perhaps is the handshak

in simple terms it's a phone saying, 'I'm here

have you got any calls for me?'

and the network says 'no, it's alright, thank you but we know where you are now'

What happened with Amelie's

was that her phone was in the area of Walton on Thames Bridge

then it just suddenly disappeared.

And that means one of 3 things.

Either that the phone has been

put into a place where there is no signa and stayed there

that the phone has been deliberately broken

or had the battery removed

to stop it functioning straight away

or it could been that it was thrown into water

of course we're talking about Walton Bridge

so there is a lot of water there because it's the river Thames.

When we came down here

I wanted to try to find Amelie's phone

and her other belongings from her handba

So, I had the police divers come exactly to this spot

doing a dive every 15 to 20 minutes

then resting and going back down again.

It was remarkable, it was just the secon dive they made

a diver surfaces

and shows us a keyring and a Sony Discma

the Sony Discman was something we knew Amelie had in her handbag

but the keys were better because the key

had a fob on them which contained a photograph of Amelie

at a theme park on a log flume.

So, we instantly knew

that this set of keys must have been her

That really then confirmed

the information that we had from the mobile phone company

saying that whoever killed Amelie

had brought her handbag and her belongin to this spot.

The bridge here at Walton on Thames and this sort of public area aside

it is an important location for a number of reasons.

First, we had the cell sighting information from Amelie's

mobile phone company which told us that the phone

was last seen on the network, it was switched off or thrown into water

somewhere in this area. That had the effect of

dictating to me the CCTV parameters

every possible route

from Twickenham Green to Walton Bridge

that could be done by car, that was the CCTV area.

The mobile phone were never found and of course things are so variable with curre

and sort of different surfaces and boats going past

it's not really surprising, we searched there for a good while

for I think over two or three days

but couldn't find it in the stretch of area but

didn't really need to, we had her keys we had the mobile phone signal

we knew that's where things had gone straight after the murder.

Normally in an investigation

in most murder investigations we did, we'd have one

sometimes two officers looking at CCTV.

Such was the volume on this case that we had seven

and we'd gave them a dedicated room, we got all the equipment that we could.

One morning I went past there

and one of them said 'governor, you need to come and see this...'

One of the most crucial parts of the CCTV was

a bus camera that picked up a white van parked alongside the green.

At almost exactly the time

that Amelie must have been being murdere

there was a little white van parked just over there

the other side of the cricket pavilion. Was only there for less than eight minut

By going back to other CCTV earlier in the evening and slightly afterwards

they were able to reconstruct what that van had been doing.

It had been driving around and around Twickenham Green

for 40 minutes.

It looked like somebody was hunting.

This van first appeared in the Twickenham Green area

just after 20 to 10 I then plotted it and had seen it on

I think it was 14 different occasions

at various points around the green over the next three quarters of an hour.

The CCTV team

then spent hours trawling through the footage

identifying the white van from different angles

side views, back views, whatever they ca get from whatever footage they've got.

It did not include detail of the registration number but it did gi

quite specific detail about the type.

Luck was on our side to a degree because it had a headlight that wasn't working,

it had a wheel trim missing from the front nearside wheel

and it had some sort of defects at the back

which made it easily identifiable on CCT

Looking at the movements of the van and Amelie's movements together

we can be certain

that at some point in Hampton Road

the van had passed her.

Not only that, but her pace slowed down as if she may have been stopped for a wh

And that's why we think that what happen

was that the driver of the van

had seen her walking, had stopped and engaged her in conversation

and than presumably when the proposition was declined

the van carried on in front of her

parked up there

and the driver laid in wait

and when he saw Amelie, very visible eve dark green because she had all white clo

He came up behind her, stalked her aroun the cricket wicket and then attacked her

The thing about Colin Sutton

is he thinks outside the box.

There was one window of opportunity and that was around a camera on the bus

that had picked up the Ford courier van

around Twickenham Green at that precise time.

A brilliant job by his team

in terms of going through all the CCTV from the area

a painstaking job.

We needed to find out who was in that va Even if it wasn't the murderer

and I had a good suspicion that it probably was the murderer but

even if it weren't the murderer, it woul be a potential witness some people above

thought I should be

putting my time not on CCTV and vans

but on rounding up local sex offenders

and the usual suspects.

There is kind of a difference between

theoretical investigation

and what academia might say.

There was no obvious physical sexual dimension to these attacks.

A sociopath or psychopath is someone wit no feelings about anyone whatsoever.

He just went up behind them and hit them over the head with a hammer.

To say that we should be looking at sex offenders

to the exclusion of somebody

who was there at the time

didn't make any sense to me.

My immediate boss didn't agree with me

some of my team may not have agreed with me.

But, that was my decision, that's what I got paid to do to make these decisions t

strategize on the investigations.

I went to the Ford Motor Company

and they were able to tell me from looki at the pictures and various features of

that there were approximately 25 thousan registered in the UK.

We needed to be able to find

the white Ford Courier vans that were being used

in the Twickenham area.

Nowadays that would be easy because there's

really reliable number plate recognition camera software.

We didn't have that, so the only other way of doing it

was by human observation.

The resources that were put in to trying finding

that included evenings and night times in and around Twickenham and me personal

along with others, stood on a footbridge

across the A316 in the Twickenham/Whitton area

looking for incoming vehicles

coming backwards and forwards on the A31

had we seen any, we would have made

contact with local officers and they wou have stopped the vehicles there and then

I'd read a book about the Yorkshire Ripp

The investigation, and the

the investigation there had 50 thousand they had to try and eliminate on tyre tr

And they started it and they had far wor

facilities and equipment than we had, because we had computers and things

they had sheets of paper and people

literally ruling cars out on their hands and knees on the floor with

with magic marker pens.

They gave up

they found that they couldn't manage it and they went on

to pursue other lines of inquiry about halfway through and if they carried on.

Peter Sutcliffe's Ford Corsair was in that group.

We've got to have learned in the last 25 years that

if you embark upon this sort of exercise then you have to see it through.

I remember at the time

thinking 'this really is a needle in a haystack'.

You make your own luck, and Colin once described himself as being

either a good detective or a lucky one

and you might argue; You make your own luck.

A number of us, myself included

was spending a couple of hours after work each day

in Twickenham, around Twickenham Green a just driving around or sitting parked up

hoping to spot this white van.

I had no illusions that it was going to extremely time consuming

and I think if it had failed, somebody e would have taken this investigation off

The point was made by Colin that

he would put resources, whatever it took to find that vehicle.

As it happened

it was us in the incident room, or me in incident room that identified the right

Because of the nature of Amelie's death the fact that such a

terrible crime is so rare in that area

we'd had all sorts of help from the local community.

Jo Collins gave information about her ex-partner.

She said his name was Levi, she'd come across certain things

blonde women being photographs that were stabbed out.

'He was violent towards me

he's a misogynist, he hates blonde women particularly.

He also would work doors

in nightclubs and things like that.

That made him this supposed

character who could endear himself to young girls

because he could encourage young girls to get into night clubs.

So, they would look at him... but most of these girls were vulnerable

and very often

those young girls would soon be abused and damaged by him.

He currently works as a wheel clamper an he uses a white van'.

This is an illegal car clamper

who puts signs up after people have park

and waits for vulnerable women to come back

to their vehicle before confronting them

with torrents of abuse

saying how much this person has to pay to get the clamp off.

What that did was trigger somebody else's memory

who said 'hang on, when we were looking at the locally registered couriers

a garage said they'd sold one to a wheel clamper'

So I'm wondering if that could be the same one.

My brother, Dave

had been in the police a little bit longer than me and he had a number

of connections through policing

and personal life in and around sort of Kingston Richmond, Twickenham

where we grew up.

Predominantly, my first role

was in relation to the tracing of the white van.

It didn't have a registration number

just had a white van which was quite distinctive

but not specifically distinctive because it was quite a blurred image.

So, each officer had actions to go out and trace white vans.

Joanne Collins information came back int the incident room

I reviewed that, in particular the information about the wheel clamper

then made me review this particular dock

about this particular vehicle.

The vehicle was the right type

but more importantly, it was sold by a dealer that both my brother.

Dave Leach, and I, knew.

Guy called John Wren who worked for Warren Motors.

It was a man that I knew well

I had a relationship with John from way back.

This is just relations built on normal policing

when you drop in for a tea and you get a bit of knowledge

it was that kind of relationship if you're in the van business

you're dealing with some quite serious characters

and these characters who bought the van

a guy called Aaron Smith

who was a traveller, bought 2 vans from John

and one of them

this particular van was being driven by Levi Bellfield.

I knew that there was a car clamping business

and I knew about a white van

that had tickets against it

speeding tickets, parking tickets that type of thing

that had come in from the DVLC.

I stressed right away to my brother.

'I think we've got this guy called Levi'

The dealer had seen the vehicle recently

and what he had seen was that the back of the vehicle has changed.

He said, 'there is something distinctive about this white van, Dave'.

On the back of the van

low down on both doors

are welded two metal plates.

My memory of watching the CCTV

was that there was something on the back of the van

that stood out, you couldn't recognise i

as metal plates initially, unless you kn you wouldn't

actually say it was metal plates.

But there was something distinctive about it that glared in the camera.

Then the other thing he noticed, he said glass panels on the back had been painte

This made that vehicle in particular, unique.

More importantly now matched exactly wha was on the CCTV.

So, to my mind at that stage then, I kne that we were dealing with Levi Bellfield

The van matched the description absolute bang on.

The research that goes into that vehicle straight away is enormous

everywhere it's been

every camera it's done

speeding offenses on the M25

bus lanes in Twickenham.

\We do an intelligence che

on Levi Bellfield then, to see what was known about him.

He had relatively few

previous convictions, quite a lot of intelligence

because getting into scrapes and always getting stopped by police and doing thes

one of those scrapes was that in May 200

he was arrested for abducting a pub landlord

and no charges reported, he was never co of anything or indeed charged with it.

But the important thing was

that it said that he was arrested for abducting this man

in a Toyota Previa.

I gave the registration number that was in this report to Tracy

one of our researchers and said 'can you on the computer to see what color this v

Because if it's white, I think it could be something to do with Kate Sheedy.

And she came back

two minutes later and said 'governor I think we've hit the jackpot'.

What we've then got is Levi Bellfield involved with a white Ford Courier van

of exactly the type

that we know was 70 yards away from wher Amelie died while she was being murdered

And we know that Levi Bellfield had a white Toyota Previa

at exactly the time that such a vehicle run over Kate Sheedy.

From that moment onwards, we had our suspect.

It's the 11th of November 2004.

I'm looking through my Levi Bellfield intelligence print-out

and I see that in March 2002

he's shown on that as living at Collingwood Place in Walton on Thames.

But I think if he's got connections in Walton on Thames

that's probably why he fled there after he murdered Amelie.

Let's have a look at where this place he used to live is.

So, I'm expecting this place to be close river close to where the phone was switc

Instead, I find that it's the other side of town it's right by the railway statio

Of course, I knew

'hang on, that's exactly where Millie Dowler was abducted in 2002'.

There was a certain amount of interest from both the media

but also from local people in Walton

as to whether or not there was any connection between what we was doing

and Millie Dowler.

We had no reason to think that it was connected because

abducting and murdering a 13-year-old gi

is a very different crime

to randomly attacking

adult women by hitting them on the back of the head.

Millie was on her way home from school on the train

and instead of getting off at Hersham

she stayed an extra stop

to go and get some chips here at Walton on Thames, with her friends.

When she had her chips

she crossed over and was walking on this pavement.

A friend of hers was at the bus stop behind me

and she saw Milly walk past the bus stop

but Milly couldn't get on the bus, she d any money so she was going to have to wa

At that time

there was a building across the road wit CCTV cameras on its corners

and they would have captured Millie if she had walked past the building

however they didn't.

So, what we know is somewhere between that bus stop

and this spot here, Millie Dowler was abducted.

It wasn't until September 2002 that.

Millie's body was found by two people going to pick mushrooms

in the woods near Yately, in Hampshire.

Surrey Police had been combing their county

for six months almost to the day

and not found Millie Dowler.

It was here in Yately Heath Woods in Ham some 25 miles from where she was abducte

that she was eventually found.

There wasn't much to be told from Millie's body

and the post-mortem examination

she'd been in the open for six months an there had been certain animal activity.

She was in the undergrowth, she hadn't b she had just been sort of lightly concea

This was an area with which Bellfield was very familiar

just down the road there's an arena wher he accompanied his former partner.

Joanna Collins on many occasions when she bought her horses here to show-jump.

We still don't know to this day how she met her death.

The only thing of which the pathologists could be certain

was that she hadn't suffered a severe bl to the head

in the manner of his other victims.

Millie didn't die from being battered with a hammer

the most likely explanation is, I think that she was strangled

but there was a difference between

being murdered in that fashion

and young women who...

early twenties, Amelie was 22, Marsha was 19.

At that point, really

the investigation was no closer to

finding out who did it, than they were s previously the day after she went missin

Any murder case

no matter who it is, no matter where, th background you will work hard to get to

We just get on with it, do what we're meant to do as thoroughly as we can.

If we do that and we do that right

99 times out of 100, we will solve it.

I realised that Levi Bellfield was

far more of a complex character

than just somebody

who hit women on the back of the head.

Bellfield was also a paedophile

who sexually assaulted and abused young girls.

The more we got to know about Levi Bellfield

the more appalling his lifestyle appeare

Bellfield had a 16-year-old girlfriend

in addition to his partner, Emma Mills.

He had a flat in Hanworth which was know as the raping room

where he and

a group of vile individuals

some of whom worked with him on his wheel-clamping business

would take young girls.

But he was also into supplying and selling drugs

he beats everybody

he's ever lived with, every relationship he's had.

People who he could easily intimidate

pay a pittance and exploit.

One of these guys, Peter Rodriguez, work with him Bellfield exploits to such a de

he not only stores drugs at the man's mothers flat while she was in hospital

but he gets his 16-year-old girlfriend

to groom a 14-year-old

who he then takes to that flat, gives drugs to her

and she's raped by him and his friends.

Rodriguez obviously put up an objection one day to Bellfield's conduct.

Bellfield didn't like it

and as Rodriguez left the flat.

Bellfield carried out a hammer attack.

Rodriguez, I think died three times on the operating table

he spent a long time in hospital recovering from his injuries.

When he finally came round, Rodriguez sa

'the last thing I remember before the lights went out

was Levi Bellfield was coming towards me with a mallet in his hand'.

Bellfield had been arrested for that attack

but bailed because there wasn't sufficient evidence.

This was six weeks before Amelie died.

I was also mindful that

we now knew who he was and if he murdere somebody else

we needed to be in the position to say

that we've done what we could to keep the public of South-West London safe.

I genuinely believed that he was such a danger to the public

that the odds were that he was going to attack again and it was going to be soon

I really wanted to lock him up the day after we identified him

I'd have been happy to arrest him then.

I was persuaded otherwise from some very senior

officers in the Met, who thought that we could put surveillance behind him.

After, kind of myself

and my brother Dave joined the dots, if you like between vehicle and suspect.

We went into a surveillance stage

where we were

you know, looking for further evidence against him.

From my perspective, I don't think it ch anything it didn't lead to any extra evi

While we've got Bellfield under surveillance 24/7

team behind him, watching his every move

It's a Sunday afternoon, he's in Uxbridg in West London with a friend.

There were two girls, and they

were waiting at a bus stop.

Bellfield drives past, sees them, gets out and engages in conversation with the

and the surveillance team was watching this

and they're so close to intervening

with this because they don't like what's happening with these two young teenage g

And then a bus comes, the bus comes alon and the girls get on it

and Bellfield waves them off with a chee sort of abusive, calls them something.

And they go away on the bus and he drives off.

So, the surveillance team do absolutely the right thing, the peel off one car

that follows the bus, the rest of them stay with Bellfield.

And when these two girls got off the bus the police officers introduced themselve

and they said that he got out and asked how old they were, they told him they we

he said 'you're nice and young then I like them young' and

made suggestions to them of that nature.

So, we've got here

a man who preys on

women who have just been on buses or at bus stops.

Amelie Delagrange, Kate Sheedy, Marsha McDonnell

all just got off a bus and here he is, at a bus stop

chatting up two 14-year-old girls and not chatting them up nicely

but they are 14 year-old-girls and he is making suggestive sexual comments to.

Apart from the bus stop incident with the girls

somebody else came forward to us as well and said 'my nanny

was attacked near Twickenham Green a few years ago'.

We were able to trace that incident and verify it

from the triage records at the local hospital which said

'the woman called Sonia Salvatierra who was

a Peruvian national had gone in there reporting

discomfort and a bit of a sore head from

being knocked over and having her phone stolen.

And we made contact in Peru with Sonia a she said 'yeah I remember the man'

she described this man with a round face

a fat man and no neck and all the things that sounded very much like Bellfield

so to me, this was going to be our kind charge I thought that would work, if we

we could get Sonia back over here

from Peru

put Bellfield on an ID parade, she picks him out

we charge him with that

serious assault he's remanded in custody and that takes the pressure off.

So, that was the plan we were going to a we were gonna arrest him for Amelie's mu

attempting to murder Kate

and for an assault and robbery on Sonia Salvatierra.

That was when we had the bombshell

that the News of the World had found out

that we had a man on surveillance

and they were going to run with the stor

two days before we had this

huge plan in place to arrest him.

Bellfield would have wind of us

the best we could do was try to negotiat

with the News of the World and we negotiated

that they would be able to send a report and a photographer along

on the day of the arrest with the provis

that they never printed it and never published

the story until after the trial.

I've never actually found out who

leaked the story of the surveillance

to them but the two things I've been ass of is one, that it wasn't anybody from m

and two, there was nothing to do with an phone hacking

and the steer that I've had is that I sh looking at the higher floors at Scotland

Once the decision is made to arrest

we would divide into two teams.

The arrest team that went to Bellfield's address in West Drayton

would have entered the house quickly

and effected a search of the property

and the surrounding sort of gardens etc.

Initially they couldn't find him, he was nowhere to be seen.

And then was an identification

for his partner Emma, that he was in the loft.

It took them quite some time

to find him hiding in his loft, as he wa

stark naked and eventually brought him out.

Colin then rang me at home

I remember the phone call, he said, 'I want you to do

the following interviews with him over the next few days.

So, my reply to him was, 'Boss

I'm not sure that's a great idea

with the greatest respect, I'm sure some else could do it'. But he was quite adam

as much as he was a nice guy and very laid back

when he made a decision, he meant it.

He was very firm about it and said

'no, I want you to do it, I want you to interview and Dave, don't worry about it

At first he was

talking to us and making denials

but he was represented by a solicitor that he knew

that he asked for.

The difficulty came that when

we started to investigate him also for

rape and abuse of his former partners

this solicitor had represented one of th partners in domestic violence proceeding

So, they had a conflict of interest and had to withdraw

the duty solicitor then took over

and the duty solicitor advised him to make no comment.

So, for most of the

hours of interviews we did with Bellfield thereafter

he would say 'no comment'.

To be honest

I'd seen that type of interview many tim

and in those days, we got a lot of 'no comment' interviews.

We still have to cover a lot of question

If they don't say something in the interview that they later rely on in cou

then it becomes relevant, or could becom relevant for the jury.

If you've hit something he was really uncomfortable with and he knew he was

then he couldn't face it, he couldn't fa and he couldn't face what was coming at

The only time where he would really enga with us we noticed, was if we showed him

photographs or maps or some sort of document

then we could kind of elicit a response from him.

I remember images being put in front of him

in one session

and him looking away, turning around

looking away from the interviewing team he turned the photographs over

but when the second and third interviews put in and the images were put there aga

and he tried the same tact

the interviewing officer had put them on the back

so as he turns the image over, the image is still there.

It's not about playing tricks, it's abou

'face up to what you've done, this is what you've done'

and he obviously

he's not somebody who could do that.

But he had this rather curious way of doing it where he would talk to us

just every now and then and then realize he was meant to not be saying

anything and say...

Sonia Salvatierra, the Peruvian nanny

was flown over from Lima

and she was taken to do an ID procedure

and despite her confidently saying 'yes recognize him again', she didn't pick hi

That was a major blow to me at the time

because my confidence was high that she would pick him out of the ID parade

charge him with that assault

and that would be our holding charge to make sure he was in custody.

We had the very real prospect of

having to release him on bail

such was the fear of him within the Metropolitan Police

that there was arrangements in place, if

he had been bailed

he would have been followed by 24/7 surveillance.

Until there was some reason to take him back into custody again.

While Bellfield was at Heathrow police station

I had two of my officers who were traine liaison officers talking to his partner,

It was clear that she had endured

10 years of a desperately oppressive

coercive and violent relationship with this man

but she was so frightened of him

that she wouldn't do anything about it 'If he locks me in the house

he won't let me go out, so

I can't have my own money, I can't have own phone other than with his number in

And then she talks about how often she h been assaulted and sexually assaulted by

and then told us.

'I'm not the only one, because there wer other women who he's lived with in the p

and they will tell you that he did the same to them'.

If he was going to go to prison

for a long time or forever

then this was her chance to escape.

We had an awful lot of support

from his ex-partners

in particular, Emma and Jo.

Jo gave us a really strong statement abo

some of the abuse she'd suffered at his hands

and that gave us a real strength of evidence to

charge Bellfield with a variety of offenses but in particular

serious offenses that would keep him in custody.

And that provided us nine charges, serious charges

that eventually were the holding charges against Levi Bellfield.

Those nine offenses on that indictment

have never been tried before a court, never will be now.

It's the mark of the man and his

kind of level of offending, that something...

an indictment that would be very serious in any other circumstances

has just been left on file

because in the context of what else he's done

it's kind of not as important.

There is no doubt that Levi Bellfield wa

an intelligent man, not an educated man but he was street smart.

Where he made a mistake in

the Amelie Delagrange case was at Twickenham Green.

He didn't know that just weeks before he had attacked Amelie

the bus garage at Fullwell had fitted CC to all of its buses

which recorded onto hard drives rather than tape

the time stamp on the footage

was from the atomic clock

each bus had either six or eight cameras facing inside and outside.

Both of the roads, either side of Twickenham Green

had bus routes on them.

So in plotting what he was doing

cruising around, hunting in his van

and plotting how Amelie had walked back from the bus garage to Twickenham Green

and putting the two together

and working out for certain that Bellfie

had passed her and probably stopped to speak to her

all of this CCTV was invaluable.

We were then able to

spend real time and real resources

bringing together the other offenses that we think he is involved in.

The first one was Kate Sheedy.

It doesn't look quite right

because it's slightly out of the area an the weapon is a car.

So, initially we were working out

'well is it or isn't it potentially one of ours?'

Kate was able to explain that the vehicl that hit her

was some kind of people carrier and that it was white.

Levi Bellfield, who at the time, provabl

was driving a white.

Toyota Previa people carrier with blacked out windows.

So, the vehicle fitted exactly

the description Kate Sheedy had given

of the vehicle that ran her over.

We went and retrieved that so we could examine it forensically

it had been professionally steam cleaned, valeted

top and bottom, inside and out.

So, there was no forensic material on th at all to associate it with Kate Sheedy.

However, what it did have was a defectiv drivers mirror

and that was something that she had noted on the vehicle that ran her over.

So, it was pretty likely, we thought, that it was Bellfield's vehicle

it fitted everything with Kate Sheedy So, I said 'Yes, ok, let's

we should take that on'

and that was when we realised that there was a bag of CCTV tape

from a nearby pub

that had never been looked at.

It was a simple error

human error from the original investigating team in Hounslow borough.

Although CCTV had been recovered by local police

they hadn't got the resources to view it

in as much detail as us.

Two lots of tapes had been seized

because the offense was just near midnig

and it was a bit confusing what days tap they needed

and somebody had viewed one but not realised there was a second bag.

When we opened that bag and put it in the machine

we could see the Toyota Previa

driving, stalking the bus on which Kate Sheedy was riding.

As the bus pulled in to let her off

the Previa overtakes it and parks in front of it.

What the CCTV does is tell him exactly what it is and it was a Toyota Previa.

A Toyota Previa that was white

had unique features about it.

We see the Previa

going in the other direction, back past the pub on the CCTV.

We can't get a number plate

it's dark and it's not particularly good footage

but what we can see is that there is a mark

an irregular shaped sort of stain

by the petrol filler as the Previa drives away

after the attack.

Then I look at the photographs

the good quality photographs we've taken of the Previa we've seized

and there's that stain visible.

It kind of corresponded so much that we could get expert

video analysis done to say

'yes, that's the same vehicle'.

I realised immediately that had that CCT been viewed immediately after Kate's ass

Levi Bellfield's name would have come ou of the official inquiries.

Just a few days before Kate was run over

he was arrested for a what he described as a prank

where he'd kidnapped a pub landlord it never went anywhere

but the intelligence report was there.

So, as soon as somebody saw that CCTV

somebody would've identified it as the Previa

very distinctive vehicle, then we'd go to the intelligence computer

and Levi Bellfield's name would've popped out.

One of the lines of inquiry that we went down

involved a mobile phone that was in the possession of.

Bellfield's 16-year-old girlfriend.

She and her 14-year-old-sister were in the flat that Bellfield

had sort of illegally sub-rented from somebody else

and they were taking lots and lots of clips of themselves doing things

while they were getting drunk, dancing and this sort of thing.

About 1 o'clock in the morning, Bellfiel comes into the flat

and the girls take a video of him.

He's wearing an outdoor coat/jacket

and what he does is he comes in and he finds a torch

and he picks it up and switches it on

and you see his face illuminate, he's ch see if it works switches it off again an

But the significance of this is that

just 40 minutes before.

Kate Sheedy had been run over by a Previ

What this very much looked like

was somebody coming in, getting a torch

because they wanted to go back out and check their vehicle

to see if there was any damage.

It certainly showed that Bellfield could he was in the flat at the time it happen

The problem we've got is that we know th the time stamp on the video is questiona

it depends on how the phone was set up and there was some

sound in the back ground and it sounded like it was music

somebody on the team said

'that's not a pop song, that's a theme song it's wheel of fortune'

so, what we were then able to do was go back to that broadcaster

and say, 'can you help us at all?'

and they were able to look at their records and give us a really accurate

to the second, time when they thought that clip had been recorded.

Now, we can't say for certain that he would have been charged

with trying to murder Kate

but obviously there is a strong possibility

that he wouldn't have been free to murde Amelie Delagrange.

I know that Colin

became quite close with.

Amelie Delagrange's parents.

He described them as being

very humble and they were very

respectful of the police and the investigation and

understood that everyone was doing their best

in awful circumstances for them.

The only thing I thought I could do

was to go and see.

Amelie's parents, and apologize on behalf of

my organization, my colleagues that had let them down.

And it was obviously going to be a very personal

and a kind of emotional conversation but nevertheless

one that I knew had to be done.

I explained all the situation about Kate the situation with the CCTV.

I said, 'look, you do understand what this means? We should have had him

in custody at some time before Amelie was murdered'

and they said, 'yes, of course we understand we know that

thank you for telling us

we thought that you had been honest with us all the way through this

and this proves to us that you are

what has happened has happened we cannot change the past.

It's sad, we'd like to change it, but we know we can't

now will you 3 come back to dinner with us tonight here?'.

And that was it, you know, it was just the most unexpectedly

generous but dignified and honorable

mature approach to what had happened.

The next case to look at really

was that of Marsha McDonnell.

There was one line of inquiry that wasn't resolved

then yes, again, it was CCTV

and the bus on which Marsha had gone hom

and which she had got off of a couple of minutes before she was attacked.

We looked at that and

from the outside camera we could see that coming towards her was a car

two seconds after Marsha had gone throug the doors to get off the bus.

Then, by using the

inside cameras on the top deck but looking out through the windows

we could see what that car did.

What it did was it stopped

slowed down and then stopped in the crossroads behind the bus.

Marsha is walking in that direction too

but the important thing about it was

that from the front view

we could almost see a number plate it was we could almost see a few characters

popping out a bit, but there was no doub that the car was a Vauxhall Corsa.

And one of his vehicles

one he actually bought on finance was a silver Vauxhall Corsa.

Trying to prove that

particular Corsa was his Vauxhall Corsa was very difficult.

The combination of numbers and letters on the number plate

of this vehicle that could be seen and what the experts told us they might be

initially gave us over 600 thousand possible combinations

a lot of those possible registrations weren't on Corsa's

they were on completely different vehicl write all them off.

I said as soon as we get it down to 200 or lower

we can go through them and start eliminating.

And that's what we did, it took us a lit time but eventually, we got those all el

Look at the index of that silver Vauxhall Corsa

apply that to the Marsha McDonnell case

and there he is.

So, you've now got three separate murderous attacks on young women

three vehicles involved

and each of those vehicles at the time i identical to one owned by Levi Bellfield

There is an old, much used phrase that Detectives don't like coincidences

and this certainly wasn't looking like coincidence.

I was in a position where

I thought we had a lot of circumstantial evidence pointing to Levi Bellfield

but that we could get more from his friends and acquaintances.

If first they thought he wasn't going to come and beat them up

in other words, if he was going to go to prison and not be able to

and secondly, if they understood

just how much evidence we really had.

I came up with the idea of using the vehicle of BBC Crimewatch.

I'd been on there

with other cases a few times

and I knew the guy that was the editor

and I was just honest with him. I phoned him up and said, 'look

I want to come on for an appeal about the murders in South-West London

asking for information about

two or three vehicles.

What I need is for the public to understand

that we know who was driving it, we've g vehicles and we know these vehicles were

because that will make them realize

that it's our man and come forward and give evidence'.

And so, we went on to Crimewatch

and we showed these pictures of the Prev and the Corsa and the white.

Courier van

and suddenly witnesses started to come forward

as a result of that.

There's a man called Richard Hughes he was more a friend of Levi's partner

than Levi himself.

He told us about him modifying the white van

so that they couldn't be seen through and then cutting a little spy hole

and he could sit in the back

and spy out.

He talks about a blood-stained shirt

that Bellfield had soon after the disappearance of Milly Dowler.

Bellfield said things

shortly after Marsha's murder, for examp

'you don't know what I've done' and things like this.

So, he was kind of a really important witness

that had been close to Bellfield and was to give us lots of little bits of inform

There was Joe Ryan, who

was another acquaintance of Bellfield's

he'd helped him out with wheel clamping.

He told us about Bellfield hitting a kerb with the front nearside wheel

and because the van at that time had alloy wheels on it it damaged it so much

that he had to put a steel

black wheel on and that was very visible in the CCTV.

He also told us about

the headlights and how the headlight bul

had gone out on the near side and Bellfield had

got some old headlights from a Ford Esco in his garden at the house.

When we searched Bellfield's house we found this.

Ford Escort headlight with the bulbs missing in the garden

so it corroborated Joe Ryan's story.

The other man that came forward that was really important as a result of this

was a guy called Simon Redstone.

He remembers cycling home

at about 10 o'clock, quarter past 10 the night that Amelie was murdered

and his statement said

'he was overtaken by a little white van

being driven at crazy speed'

and he kind of tried to memorize the num although he hadn't got it completely cor

he'd got enough digits

accurately to show that it must have bee Bellfield's van that he was talking abou

Indeed, when we then went back to

static CCTV from the Loch Fyne restauran in Hampton Road

we saw Bellfield's van go past and then sort of two frames later

there is Simon Redstone on his bike so that corroborated that as well.

We were now able to

over-lay the path that we knew Amelie

had taken back from the bus garage to Twickenham Green

with the movements of Bellfield's white van.

What that showed

was that as Amelie was walking back up Hampton Road towards Twickenham Green.

Bellfield at first was behind her.

He came out of this side road, I think i Fourth Cross Road and turned left into H

and the footage from cameras on buses show Amelie walking along

and then the van being behind her.

Then right up near the green

virtually the last footage that we get

there is a change and the van is 62 seconds ahead of Amelie.

Amelie is on the pavement and the van ha past 62 seconds or a minute in front of

But then when we look at Amelie's pace

she seems to have slowed down at that point

and that is exactly the time when the va would have overtaken her.

What we deduced from that

is she didn't actually slow down her walking

she was stationary for some while.

And she was stationary because Levi Bellfield was also stationary at that po

propositioning her from the window of his van.

That fits in with what we think we know about why he committed these blitz attac

that he would proposition a woman

she would decline, and he would then be triggered by that and go out and assault

So, what we have not got is reliable evidence that Bellfield

had this white van, what we need then to do is to be able to prove

that it was him driving it on the night that Amelie was murdered.

One of the difficulties was that the sce

itself on Twickenham Green

we had not managed to get any forensic evidence no weapons been found

the vehicle hadn't been recovered.

Not for the only time in this investigation.

Bellfield's partner, Emma, came up trumps for us.

Emma Mills remembered

the night that Amelie Delagrange was murdered quite vividly.

The plan was that he was to pick her up

so she could go shopping in Tesco's

but he was late, and he didn't turn up at home

so she phoned for a minicab and came here in that.

When Bellfield got home and found that she wasn't there

he phoned her and asked her where she wa and she explained

he said, 'I'll come up and meet you'.

An important thing is that he came up to meet her

in a white ford courier van.

He drives to Hayes

goes and meets her in Tesco

he takes the two older children across the road to Toys'R'Us.

And there is a few phone calls

between Bellfield and Emma at the time.

That's important because it gives us a time stamp and it gives us the fact

that we know the number

which of his mobile phones that Bellfiel was using on that night.

Emma then told us they left here

in the white Ford Courier van

and went home to Little Benty arriving there just after 9 o'clock.

She said Bellfield had reversed up the drive, hadn't even gotten out of the van

he left her to unload all the shopping and the three children.

As soon as the shopping is out of the va

Bellfield drives off, Emma tells us that it's about 10 past 9 now.

A short time after he had driven off

she realised that she had forgotten some milk

and wanted to call him to see if he coul bring some in.

Looking at Bellfield's mobile phone usag

when he knows he is going to commit a crime he switches his phone off.

He made a mistake on this occasion

because that call from Emma

to him about the milk hit his phone.

It only rang once and went to voicemail.

But that one ring meant that the call had hit the mast where his phone was

and that mast was the one that served Twickenham Green.

So, that story from Emma gave us.

Bellfield in the white Courier van

with his own mobile phone in his hand

and in the area of Twickenham Green

it was to be a crucial piece of evidence

I can just imagine, he's sitting in a van, he hears the phone ringing

and he thinks 'I'll turn it off'

and he grabs it and pulls the battery or switches it off.

But that one ring was enough

to leave a trace on the local mast

we kind of proving that he was the one driving the white van.

The CPS asked us to just try and firm Emma's evidence up

she'd paid cash for her shopping

but what my officers did

and it was a fantastic and spontaneous piece of investigative work by them

they asked Emma to list what she bought.

They came here to Tesco, they asked the manager if they had copy till rolls

they found her receipt

and of course it had a date and time stamp on it

and it proved her story was correct.

So, that was a really

crucial part of the evidence in fact

it was the clinching part of the evidenc as far as the crown prosecution service

concerned and when we managed to prove all that to their satisfaction

that they authorized the murder charge in respect of Amelie.

It was back in November 2004 that...

when I first identified Levi Bellfield really that I saw

how close he lived to

where Milly Dowler was last seen before she was abducted.

In my phone I still had the mobile numbe for Brian Marjoram

he was the senior investigating officer for the Milly Dowler investigation

in Surrey.

I told him all that we knew about Levi Bellfield

and where he was living at the time.

I'll never forget his reply, it was

'the hairs on my neck are standing up, Colin'.

What I found surprising was that kind of... there was

a degree of inertia within Surrey police in taking up.

Levi Bellfield as their suspect

they didn't feel that they were in a position

to drop everything they were doing and look at this man instead.

And what they sort of said was, 'we'll put him on the backburner

and carry on with what we're doing and i does nothing we'll have a look at Bellfi

Eventually what happened was that

a new senior investigating officer took over in Surrey.

I went down there with Jo Brunt.

We had a meeting

at Surrey headquarters and we...

well Colin put to them that we think.

Levi Bellfield was a very good suspect

in the case of Milly Dowler.

We'd already muted it and

been stone walled about it, basically.

They showed me a still from the CCTV

it's of a red car that they thought was 2 Vauxhall Astra it was actually a Daewo

turning left out of the

road that led to where Bellfield's and Emma's flat was.

I kind of said, 'yeah that's Emma's car

that's the car he was driving that day

it was a Daewoo, it's the only red one registered in the whole of Surrey.

Not a very common car at all'.

They just wouldn't want to listen

they didn't want to listen and eventuall Colin said

'can I just ask, why don't you want to solve the case of Millie Dowler?'

at which point they erupted

and Colin walked out of the room.

With hindsight, obviously

going to be a red rag to a bull to any investigator.

I said, 'well, what I don't understand is why you don't want to solve this'

and the reaction I got was the reaction that comment deserved

which was indignation.

It was quite forceful indignation by the super-intendant.

We established that in March 2002.

Emma Mills, Levi Bellfield's long-term partner

was living in this ground floor flat her

She'd moved here because of all the domestic violence at home

she'd split up with him, but he'd persuaded her to take him back.

She wasn't at that time staying in the f was house sitting for a friend in West D

But when Bellfield came to that house on the evening that Milly was abducted.

Emma knew that he'd been to the flat in Walton.

Because he was wearing clothes he'd changed his clothes

and she knew the clothes he was wearing

were from the wardrobe of the Walton fla

He also had the keys

to this flat because he was driving Emma's red Daewoo car

and the keys to the flat were on the same keyring.

When Bellfield drove that car from here

drove away, was Milly inside it?

We don't know, we can't tell.

20 minutes after Milly Dowler was last seen

to when her remains were found six months later

we have no idea

of the timeline, we don't know what happened and in what order.

All we can say

is that Levi Bellfield was exactly here

on this spot at the time that she was abducted.

We don't know whether he abducted her by force

or whether he used charm or persuasion

to get her to come with him.

What we do know

is that while Emma was away house sitting for a friend.

Bellfield was using her flat

as a base for his depraved activities.

It's quite sad that there is this friction between

police services, police forces, the Met

I mean we should all be in it together a we should be working

for the same cause and sometimes I didn't find that it was

like that with other forces that we dealt with.

It was tragic obviously that they didn't find that

clip with the red Daewoo

and it took them quite a while to even acknowledge that.

I think the real mistake

was made when they visited.

Emma Mills's flat

during that week when Milly went missing

and there was no response from the flat

but it was a loose end that wasn't sewn up.

They were sending officers

to reported sightings all over the count

and yet didn't get the house to house inquiries completed nearby.

The results from the consequences of that were tragic

because from 2002, March 2002

the following year, Bellfield killed Marsha.

He left Kate Sheedy within

an inch of death

and then finally murdered Amelie Delagrange.

Later that evening I'm at home

and my wife then worked for Surrey Polic

she said, 'the super-intendant has asked for your phone number'

my mobile rings and he says

'you know, I've had a think about what y and I think you're right, we are on boar

He's our number 1 now.'

18 months after Amelie Delagrange was murdered

in March 2006 we were finally able

to charge Levi Bellfield with her murder

I read the charges out to him

he was charged that he had murdered Amelie Delagrange

that he had attempted to murder Kate Sheedy

and that he had abducted Anna Maria Renn

and that he had attempted to murder Irma Dragoshi.

In May 2006, he was charged with murderi Marsha McDonnell.

I was looking directly into his eyes

they were just cold black he had no emotion

but I could tell

that he hated me at that moment and

I quite enjoyed being hated.

Because he knew that if he got convicted that he wouldn't see the light of day ag

But we knew at that point, there is still a long way to go.

You know in major crime

that charging and getting someone in custody is almost step one

from that point on, proving it

we had a lot of work to do to pull the offenses together

join away cases up and get enough of a case to make sure

he would get found guilty.

The trial

started on the 1st of October

but the first two weeks virtually was spent up

choosing a jury

where you don't have forensic evidence, where you haven't got a DNA profile

or fingerprints or something like that

there is always the chance that

the jury will say, 'you haven't proved this'.

I'm somebody who has spent quite a lot of my life

around courts and

to be honest I quite enjoy the theater and the drama of a court trial

but this time

the stakes were really high. This was something

I'd put a lot of time and effort into, all my team

had put an awful lot of time and effort in to.

Amelie Delagrange's parents were there for the entire trial

other families were here as and when it was relevant to them

and also we had the victims whose cases

we couldn't charge because there wasn't any evidence but nevertheless

they came along, they wanted to see justice done.

I guess the victims and the victims families the thing that I would say

overall to describe them

is just the dignified way in which they conducted themselves throughout.

And that was in stark contrast to

the sneering

and damn right offensive way

that Bellfield sometimes conducted himse during that trial.

He came across as

a sort of an arrogant man who swaggered his way into the dock.

Bellfield had little respect for anybody involved he was not a likable character.

He called Amelie Delagrange parents 'scum'.

How dare somebody like him having done what he has done

call these dignified

wonderful people whose daughter he had slain

how can he call them 'scum'?

He really still genuinely believed at that point

that he would be able to talk his way out of this one

like he had virtually everything throughout his life.

We knew that if this man

were allowed back out onto the streets he would offend again.

The turning point came when Bellfield was under cross examination

and he got a little bit unsettled by thi and eventually said

'look you've got to understand I'm fighting for my life here'

and using those very words

as soon as he used them I looked at the judge I looked at the jury

and realised they were thinking the same as me

that 'you're saying you're fighting for your life Bellfield

but you never gave that chance to Amelie Delagrange

you never gave that chance to Marsha McDonnell

why should we care that you are fighting for your life

when you've taken some?'.

Gradually, as he realised the

strength of the evidence and the relentlessness of the questioning and th

bringing up of these circumstances which showed him what he had done

you could virtually see in his face the realization

that it was going south, that it wasn't going well for him.

I have to say perhaps it's wrong of me b loved it I loved to watch him crumble li

The day of the verdict

the court room was absolutely packed to the brim with press

police and everyone who had anything to do with Bellfield

and it is so nerve wracking waiting for that sentence

because you're thinking

'this could go either way, it can always go either way

depending on the jury'.

The first verdict that came

was on the Marsha McDonnell case

and the foreman said

That by a majority verdict that he was guilty

and I remember saying to Jo

'that was actually our weakest case

and if they've convicted him of that

he's going to be convicted of the next two'.

And we sat there

and we heard

from the foreman the words we'd wanted f so many months

that everything that we had done was worthwhile

and Bellfield was guilty and we knew at that point that the only thing

that gonna be happens to him was going to be a whole life tariff

he was going to be in prison forever.

That's what he deserved and what we had been working for.

This was it, this was game over for him His life was done.

When we got that conviction, I think

most of us burst into tears because it w

absolutely overwhelming, including Colin

Just absolutely overwhelming feeling.

I don't believe justice

being served gives closure.

I don't believe that families that have lost

a loved one to murder

ever have closure.

The beginning of this year

was the most difficult

going through all the motions of pain

backlashes

details and of course missing Marsha mor than ever

Over this time

it's been hard to watch someone who killed your daughter

but he was arrogant in court

and he acted like he was above the law.

All we've done for the families of the victims that have been murdered

is the very best we could.

And a very small part

of helping them to go on and adjust to live their life afterwards.

Of course, I will never be able to forge what happened to me

the scars on my body and the memories th have are something I will never be rid o

but hopefully I can move on.

Attending court and facing my attacker was very difficult

but something I felt was important.

The court process has been a long and ar one that has stirred up many unwelcome m

and a lot of evidence has been hard to listen to

but it is finally over

and the fact that Bellfield has been fou guilty means more to me than I can possi

The life sentence may provide

some closure for his victims families

but the file on Levi Bellfield is still open.

The people we've really helped

in Bellfield's case, by locking him away

are the people who he would have assault who would have become his victims in the

and they don't know it but they are the ones we've really helped.

Having been convicted of.

Amelie and Marsha's murders and the attempted murder of Kate Sheedy

post-trial, the media were allowed to ru a background on Levi Bellfield.

There were huge appeals to try and find the red Daewoo

which he had undoubtedly used to transpo Milly's body.

Another offence that was part of the series

was that of Rachel Cowles

who was subjected to a potential abducti

on the 21st of March 2002

as it happens was the day before Milly Dowler was abducted.

Rachel Cowles offense occurred in Shepperton she was aged 11

her mother reported it to the police not a great deal was done there was

the registration of the crime, but more importantly

three years later when there is an appea

regarding a red vehicle related to Levi Bellfield.

Rachel's mother made the connection

and contacted police again to

flag up the fact that the vehicle was almost certainly the same one used

in the offense against her daughter.

That being the case it made the incident

against Rachel become particularly relevant.

Because it showed that he was in that area.

He was living

in that block of flats where Milly was literally walking by

when she vanished.

Eventually, it ended up with Bellfield standing trial for Milly's murder.

We have some breaking news

concerning Levi Bellfield

he has been found guilty of the abductio and murder

of Milly Dowler.

Levi Bellfield

who is of course already convicted

of two other murders, is now convicted of the murder of Milly Dowler

which for many years was one of the most notorious unsolved murders.

He now officially, because he has been convicted of a third murder

now becomes officially at least a serial killer.

It was the most difficult

investigation I've ever done because it was so wide ranging and so complicated.

There's no doubt of all the people I've met in 30 years he

is the most dangerous

the most unpredictable and the most violent.

He is the person I am proudest of being able

to play a part in taking out of circulation.

Because I seriously think that's the mos

I can do for the community of London

was to put him away, more than any other criminal I've ever dealt with.

It wasn't an easy case, it was difficult to solve

and it had to be solved, as far as my career goes

it was undoubtedly a stand-out point, ye

Some people have described

the Bellfield case, the investigation as an old-fashioned detective case

we had no forensic evidence

there were no fingerprints, there was no DNA.

That's why we had to piece together this

circumstantial case and although the bedrock of that was CCTV

and phone data, an awful lot of time spent by my

very talented and dedicated officers

pacing around the streets, knocking on doors

taking statements, getting small pieces of information

that we were able to assemble to make the case.

Colin handled the case

brilliantly. This was a high-profile job and he was under some serious pressure.

I don't think, to be honest with you

that anyone else could have done a better job to be fair.

Personally, I think there is other offending

I think there is other things wrapped around Levi Bellfield that could

come to light, given the right set of circumstances.

I don't think it's a done deal.

If there is the opportunity and the resources and a set of circumstances exi

I think there could be further investigation work to carry on.

The victims should be the most important people involved

in the case, is my thought on it

so it's important that they are remember They were the innocent people who

very unfortunately and sadly for their families

were hurt by him.

During that inquiry which lasted

four years, I met a lot of people of who

family members, friends

some of them I'm still friends with toda

standing there at the Old Bailey at that conviction was the highlight of my caree

I've no doubt that at some point

if I'm fortunate enough to out live him will come and say, 'what are your commen

and I won't mourn Levi Bellfield and I think very few people will.