Original subtitles

He was by all accounts an ordinary, nice, sensible

young lad of 18, growing up ready to make his way into the world.

Chris had been working at the shop at Tolworth and his brother and a friend

met him there and they were just walking home, in high spirits, they were singing

and talking to each other, they weren't drunk,

they were just walking home together.

And then for some reason, nobody knows exactly why,

an incident sparks where a group attacked them.

When I opened the door instead of Chris and Phil, there was 2 policemen,

'Chris had been involved in a fight, he's seriously injured,

we need to get you to Epsom hospital straight away'.

I remember thinking 'this is not happening to us,

it's somebody else, they've got the wrong one, it's not Chris'.

What we needed to do was identify who was responsible.

Colin Sutton was a detective chief inspector

and senior investigating officer at the metropolitan police.

He led the investigations into some of the most complex, high profile cases ever,

bringing dagerous criminals to justice.

In this series, he will take you inside those cases,

and show you how he caught these criminals,

using nothing but pure detective work.

This is "The Real Manhunter".

I found out about the case the morning after it had happened,

weekend in May and I actually had the following week booked off for leave

and I was meant to be going on holiday for a week, but you know,

needs must, and they didn't have anybody else who could run the investigation.

I was asked by the assistant chief constable to be the SIO

for this murder and he told me that an 18-year-old lad had been murdered on the.

Ewell bypass on the previous night and that at first the incident room was at.

Epsom Police Station so could I go along there and meet the people

who would be on my team and of course in Surrey at that time,

there wasn't a permanent murder squad, if you like.

My name is Jay Regan, I was a Detective Sergeant with Surrey Police.

I first met Colin Sutton as a result of this investigation.

Colin had recently transferred from west Yorkshire to Surrey Police.

What happened was that you were appointed SIO and then you were given

sufficient staff that were kind of selected from various divisions, so I

didn't know, but I hadn't been there very long, so I didn't really know anybody.

On the Saturday, I was up in the north east on a family do

and I was contacted and asked if I would travel back and assist

and manage the investigation into his murder.

I turned up in Epsom and found that the acting DI, the DS who was going to be my

number two, and it was a fellow called Jack Regan, I'd never met him before but

he was one of these people I just instantly took to really and he was a very

different character to me, probably a bit more sparky and a bit more expressive.

And then obviously on the Sunday morning I met with Colin and I was updated on

the investigation and what had happened up until that point and from then on, I was.

Colin's deputy running the day to day management of the investigation for him.

This was the first occasion that I had met and worked with Colin and to be honest

I found him very open to ideas and new ideas and to suggestions both from myself

and from others on the team who were working this investigation.

I think it was one of those situations where we had two people

whose qualities complement each other, and together,

we made a good team, and it was great working with him.

Chris Donovan was an 18-year-old lad unknown to the system;

The police had no knowledge of him previously.

Chris came from a family who, his mother and father, Ray and Vi,

were very committed Christians and regular church goers,

and they had a daughter as well as two boys and it was quite a close family.

There was something about Chris that was special, he was, out of the

four children we had, there was something

different about him right from the start, he was very

loving, very kind to people, very loyal to his friends.

Christopher had been a model son really and he had this ambition

after he got a little bit older, he was going to join

the police force, he was interested in becoming a policeman.

He wanted to join the army, I took him to Black Heath barracks,

he'd signed all the papers and they found he had terrible asthma,

in fact they advised him to join the police, would you believe?

They said join the police, do a few years in the police and when your asthma goes,

we will take you on. And he was looking forward to that,

he was really thinking about joining the police.

He was by all accounts an ordinary, nice, sensible

young lad of 18, growing up, ready to make his way in the world.

Sometimes murder is like a lottery and there is a chain of circumstances where

each individual circumstances by themselves won't particularly lead to any

damage or harm but when they all add up, those millions to one,

the coincidence, chance, they can result in the most horrific events

which destroy lives and destroy the lives of those who love the victims.

The night of the murder was one of those situations where

you reflect on it and you think 'this was so senseless'.

At that stage he was working for a pizza company and had been delivering pizzas

and was managing a shop and to all intents and purposes, he was a genuine nice guy.

He was a hard worker as well, he worked 14 hours a day, he worked for a local

pizza company and one day he went in and found out there was a record for

the most deliveries in the day and he went 'I'm going to break that' and he broke it.

Chris had been working at the shop at Tolworth and his brother and a friend

had met him there and they were walking home in high spirits, they were singing

and talking to each other, they weren't drunk,

they were just walking home together.

I asked him what happened, Philip,

and he said, 'We were walking along singing songs,

two boys stopped us and told us 'you're singing the song wrong'

we had a laugh and a joke he said, and they walked on, we walked on...'

And then for some reason, no one knows exactly what,

an incident sparks where a group attacks them.

And there's a hill, coming the opposite way on this hill were 14 boys and girls,

they were drunk and everything else and they opened up, he said,

to let us through, Phil walked through first and the youngest one wanted

to get respect from his friends, punched him

so hard in the face, his nose ended up in his cheek.

This murder really was all about two groups of young people. You had one group

who came from a party above the shops in this parade here,

they crossed the road and started to walk down that side of the road.

The other group which included Chris Donovan, his brother and their friend

was walking down the road this way and it was when they were just about

on that hill going up the road there that they met and as they met,

there was some sort of argument, some sort of argument broke out,

it might have been about singing the words to a song wrong,

something as simple as that. But of course, what you had was

the group that had come from the party had all been taking drugs,

taking amphetamines, they'd been drinking.

Sadly, events intervened in the form of this gang of hooligans really, thugs,

who were looking for trouble, there was no reason to do what they did.

Whether there was a remark made, but it resulted in what appears to be an

assault on Chris and the other two, Chris obviously tried to defend himself,

he was knocked to the ground and the witnesses describe seeing him lying on

the ground being kicked in a foetal position in the road on the Ewell bypass.

And you've got this fight going on, its midnight-ish on a Friday night,

and it goes on for so long that people in their houses hear it

and they come to their bedroom windows and they're looking out.

That was very helpful for us as the investigation went on. All they see is

this group of young people milling about fighting each other. During that fight.

Chris Donovan gets knocked unconscious, he falls on the ground

and while he was on the ground, someone kicks him in the head hard.

At that stage it would appear that the traffic lights that are approximately

200 yards down the road were red so there is no traffic travelling,

they obviously changed, went through the phase to green and then

vehicles moved up the road, the group dispersed that had attacked them,

leaving Christopher unable to defend himself and in the road,

and sadly he was then struck by a passing vehicle.

He's unconscious at the roadway and there's a poor woman at the traffic lights

and she pulls away, she drives up that hill and she sees what she thinks is

a binbag or a bundle of rags in the road and because there's another

vehicle close to her, she tries to straddle it with her wheels and she

drives over it and it's Chris Donovan. Part of his clothing gets caught

on part the car and she drags him along the road for 70-80 feet before

she realises and stops and of course that caused him terrible injuries

in addition to the injuries he suffered from the assault.

The impact on the female driver was huge.

20 to one in the morning our doorbell rings and I'm thinking 'how can two

boys forget their door keys' and when I opened the door I was going to

give them a right mouthful as you can imagine

opened the door and instead of Chris and Phil,

and instead of Chris and Phil, there's two policemen,

they asked if I was Chris and Phil's dad and I said yes,

they said 'we need to speak to you and your wife urgently'

and I said what's it about and they wouldn't tell us.

Vi got out of bed and they said that Chris had been

involved in a fight, he is seriously injured,

and we need to get to Epsom hospital straight away.

I remember thinking 'this is not happening to us,

it's someone else, they've got the wrong one, this is not Chris'.

We live about 13 miles from the hospital. When we got there Philip and his

friend Richard were in forensic clothing, Philip's face was all blooded,

as I'm talking to Phil, another policeman came up

and said, 'you can't see Chris, we're operating on him'.

We just sat in that room, with Philip, holding him and he was just crying and

shivering and shaking and it was like your whole world has crashed in around you.

Then at 20 to 4 in the morning, we'd seen the doctors, the police,

the hospital chaplain, they didn't have to tell us, their face told us,

Christopher died that morning,

because one 15 year old coward wanted respect from his friends.

I ran out the door and I ran down the corridor and I remember a huge

policeman coming towards me and holding his arms out and he hugged me,

and he looked down and at me and said 'we're going to get them'

and I remember thinking 'no you're not'.

We all felt that we needed to do the best job we could for Chris,

his family and his parents, Ray and Vi who had obviously

suffered immensely as a result of what had happened.

Chris became what is known as 'property of the coroner'.

He's not a crime scene, he's our son, but we couldn't touch him,

and I remember the policeman saying, 'I don't know how to ask you this

but is this your son?' I know a lot of young people disrespect the police

but that man hugged me like a father that night and cuddled and cared for me,

there is a human being behind that uniform that we had to show people that

the police are not animals, I have the utmost respect for them from that day on.

Two hours later, in walks another policeman, his name is Colin Sutton,

as he walked in the room, the atmosphere changed, I know that's hard to believe

but the atmosphere changed, and he just sits down on the chair, he didn't ask us

to sit down, he just sits down, looked me in the eyes, didn't call me.

Mr Donovan, he went, 'Ray, I will never lie to you' and the minute

he said that he got my respect. He then said 'I've put up an accident sign'.

I said 'why did you put up accident when it's murder?'

And he said 'If I put up murder, no one will come forward, trust me'.

And from that day to this, I trust that man. So, do you, don't you?

Absolutely. Something about him, his personality,

he's caring, permeates

a room when he walks in and it was the only thing that we had

that was strong, we all felt so out of control

at that time, everything was taken away,

everything you know and hold dear is gone,

but this one person comes in and they are strong and that is so amazing.

Being able to talk to Chris's brother and friend, what became clear was that

these two groups didn't know each other, there was nothing pre-arranged,

there was no history between the groups, it was something that happened

on the spur of the moment as they bumped into each other on the street.

As soon as I was updated on what had happened and the descriptions that had

been given by various members of the public who looked out of their,

mainly bedroom, windows, because it was late at night, to see what was happening.

It was clear that we had a group of assailants, some of whom were

responsible for the assault on Chris and others who were merely standing by.

The fight happened and the place where it happened was bordered on

both sides of the road, it was a dual carriageway but there were houses

on both sides of the road and because the fight went on for some minutes and

there was shouting and noises, quite a few local residents were alerted by it.

What we needed to do was identify who was responsible.

Quite unusually, I suppose we had a number of eyewitnesses, people who could

tell us exactly what was happening, what they'd seen and who was doing what

and that would become very helpful for us as the investigation went on.

Another witness that we had was a very unfortunate lady who'd been

driving her car. She was driving her BMW from Epsom towards Tolworth

and she left the traffic lights close to where the murder happened

and by this time Chris Donovan was unconscious and lying in the roadway.

This lady didn't realise it was a person, she thought it was a binbag or

some rags or something, and because there was a vehicle on her outside,

she decided she would straddle it with her wheels and drove over it.

And of course this inflicted horrible injuries on him and this poor woman

was distraught, and it completely wasn't her fault it could have happened

to anybody but that was another factor we had, we had this lady who we were

treating as a witness of course rather than any sort of suspect.

It's a really unusual incident for that part of the world. You don't get murders

in Ewell really, and people in the community wanted to help

and it didn't take long for people in the Watersedge Estate to be phoning in and

giving us the names of the youths that were in this assailant gang.

We had a range of youths from 15 to early 20s, it was one of those situations

where the names were repeated, different people phoning in had given us

the same names so we were confronted with the fact that

the overnight team had gone out and arrested them.

We had some people who had been arrested on that Saturday morning as a result

of information coming into the police, but what we didn't have was clear

descriptions of the clothing that the offenders were wearing

and without having that clothing it would be virtually impossible to prove

who was responsible for the assault on Chris. We had varying descriptions

of tops, trouser bottoms, we had baseball caps and we had descriptions

of at least one of them kicking Christopher as if he were taking

a penalty whilst he was on the ground.

We had all these people there, we could interview them and try and get an

account from them, if they so desired and if were going to talk to us,

but ultimately they'd have to be released on bail and we were going to have to

have to carry on the investigation until we found

proper evidence to justify their arrest again.

One of the difficulties as a result of Chris being struck by the vehicle was that

it was important to identify to the court what killed Chris,

was it the actions of the people who assaulted him

or was it as a result of being struck by the motor vehicle?

As a result, it meant that unfortunately, further inquiries and research had to

be made into Chris' brain to ascertain the seriousness of the injury inflicted.

While were outside, the coroner went, 'I've got bad news' and I said,

'what could be worse than that?' she said 'because of the kicking and the car,

I had to prove what killed Chris. To do that, I had to remove his brain, wait for

an enzyme to come out, it takes 16 weeks, and you can't bury Chris for 16 weeks.'

The injuries that Christopher suffered were quite extensive and the pathologist

was a guy called Ashley Fagan-Earl, he was very helpful in the sense that

he was quite categorical about what he said. He looked at, examined every inch

of Christopher's body and he was able to say quite definitely that the injuries

he suffered from the neck upwards were from the assault and the injuries

from the neck down were from the abrasion of being dragged under the car.

Crucially, he said, it's these ones, the assault injuries that killed him.

This therefore put the whole case on a murder footing.

One of the things that came out of the post-mortem was that Chris had quite

short hair anyway, and they shave the head so that we can see more clearly

any injuries and on the top of his scalp, there was a quite a well-defined pattern

of bruising and it looked for the world as if it were a print from the sole

of the training shoe or some sort of ridged sole from some footwear.

So, it looked like something is stamped on his head and we were little bit

kind of confused by this because if you imagine because it was right on top

of his head the circumstance in where somebody could get to that

position to stamp on his head would be a bit difficult to envisage,

you know, if he was climbing out of a manhole then you could do it.

But in the fight that's gone on,

we weren't quite sure how that could have happened.

A lattice type of shape, or a shape, had been identified,

which the police initially thought,

on scientific advice, forensic advice,

was from the sole of a training shoe.

And when we got the clothing and training shoes from all the people

that have been arrested and started looking at them, there wasn't a pair of

shoes or pair of trainers that just by observing it

it looking at it matches this mark on Chris's head.

They arrested six suspects shortly after Christopher's murder and they took,

obviously, the clothing and shoes of the most paramount importance, but none

seemingly matched the imprint on Christopher's head from the fatal injury.

It troubled me for a few days because I thought well, it's obviously that mark

that bruising is obviously something to do with the assault, but it doesn't look like

we thought, the stamp and what I did was I went back with Jack Regan

two or three days after the post-mortem back to the mortuary, and asked

the mortuary attendant just to let us have another look at Chris's head, because

in my experience sometimes bruising can come out more

and be more distinctive after a few days have passed.

Then he lowered himself, so he was looking at Christopher sideways

almost face to face. Pretty horrible thing to do unless you are that detective

who is looking for an opportunity to find that person's killers.

In this instance, Colin got his moment of inspiration.

And it became obvious what this mark was. It wasn't from the sole of a trainer.

It was from the in step. It was the mark of where the laces have been inter-crossed

across the in step of the shoe. Of course, that tied in perfectly with one of

the witnesses who described seeing somebody kick Christopher quote

'like a penalty kick', like they were taking a penalty and of course,

it makes much more sense that if he's laying on the floor then a kick like that

would be easily land on the scalp on top of his head.

The difficulty with it was, was of course the way that your trainers are

laced up can vary each time and depends on whether there's a foot in there

or not or the thickness of the socks you're wearing.

It wasn't possible conclusively to compare the mark on.

Christopher's head with any one of the shoes we had.

It was then imperative that we identified the articles of clothing.

One of the features of this investigation was the sheer amount of

information we were getting from the public, the public around here on

the nearby estate, they wanted to help us. One of these snippets of information

was that 2 of the suspects had gone, before they went to the party, by train

to Clapham junction to score some drugs. So, we came here to.

Stoneleigh rail station, had a look through the CCTV and we had the two

of them going out towards Clapham Junction and then coming back later

just before the party. Crucially they were wearing the same clothes, same colour,

same design as described by thewitnesses of the scene.

So that CCTV was added to the material we was getting to try and

work out who was who.

So, by working back from the time we thought

the assailant group had gone to the party, we just kept going backwards

and backwards on the CCTV and eventually we find them,

all together in a group, walking towards the party.

One of the most important things was trying to work out who

did what, and we had all these eye witness accounts describing clothing and

sometimes hair colour and saying 'this person wearing these clothes and

with this colour hair punched somebody' or 'this person kicked somebody'

but of course none of the witnesses knew the identity of who that person was.

We trawled the local CCTV which gave us images both in black and white

and also in colour. In particular one of the assailants was wearing a hooped top

which the definition in black and white was different to

the picture you got in colour, so it clearly showed an additional line

on that polo shirt which the colour one didn't pick up so clearly.

We were able to really work out exactly what everyone was wearing because

they are all different, people who had similar colour shirts on had different

colour trousers on or something like that so, they are all quite distinctive.

So, we then were in the position where once we got all this information together,

we were then able to execute further warrants on the people that we wanted

to arrest in relation to this and looking for specific items of clothing

and fortunately for us, those items of clothing had not been disposed of.

When we had the CCTV evidence, they were re-arrested and

they started talking to us to a degree but each of them were doing that,

'yes I was there, but I wasn't involved, I didn't throw any punches,

I didn't throw any kicks' and what we had was like a matrix, like a spreadsheet

of all the witnesses across the top and down this side, the clothing they'd seen

and what they saw that person wearing that clothing doing.

So, they'd say 'pink shirt punched somebody, blue hooped shirt

kicked somebody, plain blue shirt kicked and punched somebody'.

We also had the situation where we had some accounts being given in relation

to certainly one of the offenders wearing someone else's top, that it simply

could not have been the case because of the descriptions we got and subsequently

we also got blood from Chris' brother on a jacket which belonged to that assailant.

The problem that I foresaw was that trying to express that to a jury

in terms of giving them a spreadsheet with x's and ticks and things

was just going to be dry and it was going to be difficult to convince them.

We first had to be sure ourselves that we knew

who was wearing what and what they did.

The issues were that this had happened late at night under sodium street lighting

so therefore that in itself created some ambiguity in respect of light tops,

some people were describing a cream top, and some were describing a white top,

it was obviously dependant on where they

observed it from in relation to the street lighting.

And I was just sitting down with Jack and talking it over like you do sometimes,

just to how we'd do it, and Jack made this throwaway comment

where he said; 'what we try to do here is dress five tailors dummies'.

It became obvious that the best way to do this was to obtain some mannequins,

dress them in the clothing we had and take them back to all the various scenes

of the CCTV together with the scene on the night. I discussed this with Colin,

we looked at it and thought about it and Colin was in agreement that this was

the best way forward, it would give a good visual image that we could use

at court that could be shown to the defence and would clearly

discount some of the minor ambiguities we had in witnesses statements.

So, what we did is we went to a local well-known store in Epsom and they lent us

six of their best brand-new mannequins. We then got the clothing that

we'd seized from the suspects and we dressed each of the mannequins in

what we believed from the witnesses, that the suspects wearing that night.

We didn't want to take anything for granted so although it was in September

as against the incident that happened in May, we chose to make sure we

had the right weather, we had the same phase of the moon, we closed the.

Ewell bypass and used the hydraulic equipment the fire brigade had so we

were able to both video from the ground and from the air, and at the same time,

we then used video in the evidence from each of the witnesses windows

that they had viewed the scene from to show they had clear

uninterrupted view of what they describe they had seen.

This garage had, at the time,

a CCTV camera just above where the cash machine is,

over there, it may still be there or another one still be there.

But it pointed out directly across the forecourt and effectively

just across the road here. And what we've then got is the group that

ended up as the assailants are walking towards the party on that side of the road

in that direction there. So, we had that CCTV still, we brought the

mannequins with their clothes on, and we put the mannequins over there,

posed them in the same positions as the CCTV stills, had still photographs taken

and that gave us the two things for the jury to compare.

Likewise, up in the shops up near where the party was, there was a Threshers

off license and that's where the assailant group had gone in to buy their drink

before they went to the party. Again, there was good CCTV there because

it was indoors, it was well lit and it was in colour. Again, we went back there

with the mannequins and posed the mannequins in the exact same position.

We could literally have the still from the CCTV in one hand and the posed

the mannequins so they were in exactly the same position and doing it on

a night with similar lighting conditions, it came out as something

that could be compared quite easily.

What we did was have a police photographer take still photographs of the mannequins

with the clothing on before we started and we labelled them and said

'these are clothes taken from each of the defendants' and put their names in

but then after that, what we did was took further stills from the same CCTV camera.

So, we were trying to recreate the conditions best we could so that all the

photographs were all taken in exactly similar conditions, and it worked.

We didn't do this exercise with the mannequins before we sent the clothing

away to be examined because obviously it was more important to preserve

any fibres or blood or any other evidence that might be on these clothes.

The only thing that came up was there was a black jacket which

belonged to one man, but he leant it to another young man

who was wearing it at the time, and they admitted this.

There was a speck of blood on the sleeve. The lad who was wearing the jacket

admitted he punched someone, but he said he punched Phillip,

Chris' brother and during the melee...

he hadn't, he said, punched Christopher, the man who died.

He'd admitted to assaulting Chris' brother because he thought that would put him

away from the assault on Chris but clearly by doing that he showed he was

wearing the jacket which was described by numerous members of the public

and he was therefore at the scene and involved in the assault on Chris.

Then he said to us 'if I arrest everybody in the gang, we could lose the case,

let's just concentrate on

the three boys that killed Chris, and what the witnesses saw'.

We went to a conference with the QC that was going to be presenting the case

and he was of the view that the speck of blood on the sleeve of the jacket,

because it related to the brother and not the victim, that we shouldn't

proceed against that individual. Jack was a little bit exorcised and excited by this

and bubbled up and was making an impassioned plea to the lawyer

like 'no, we've got them' and it was all very dramatic in some ways.

Then Jack subsided and I took the more considered view and tried to take it

more logically to the lawyer and said 'we can prove he was there and we can

prove that the blood means he punched somebody,

it's a joint enterprise in the fight, he punches someone and he dies,

even if it's someone else, he's still a murderer' and as the best lawyers do,

he saw my argument right away and said

'yep ok, I'm with you Mr Sutton, we will leave him in'.

We went to court a year later. So, were there in witness protection,

Colin is there, liaison officers and Jack Regan is there, everyone is there

and again he's helping us through the situation. And as we walked in,

sitting with their parents in front of us were the boys who murdered Chris

in the foyer, sitting right opposite us. We had our friend from the church

and one of the policemen, one of the team holding us and they said, 'Don't move'.

Because he knew what we were thinking,

you just want to go up and smack them to be honest.

The eldest hadn't really come into much contact with the police, had a difficult

upbringing, he lived with his mother and siblings and his mother tried her best.

In relation to the 16 year old he was someone who had started recently come into

contact with the police, certainly he came from a good home, his parents cared

for him, they were concerned about him but it seemed at that time it was impossible

to divert him away from the group that he was getting himself involved with.

The story they had given was that they and gone to purchase some cannabis,

but in fact what had come out in the trial was that they had gone to.

Clapham Junction to purchase crack cocaine.

So certainly, both of them that night had taken crack cocaine and

had also drunk alcohol which is probably

a good reason as to how this situation arose.

It was a stupid fight weren't it? Well, it wasn't a fight,

it was an attack, as two people fight, this was an attack.

It shouldn't have even happened. It was just a...

- Senseless... - Senseless murder.

The trial at the Old Bailey and it was in March/April 2002,

so it was 10 months afterwards. The judge had applications from the youngest

of the suspects of the defendants saying that because he was so young,

can he be allowed to sit in well of the court rather than the dock

so he could have access to his lawyer at all times and understand

the nature of his proceedings and we thought this was probably a ruse

to try separate him from the older men in the dock.

The youngest, who was 15, he persisted throughout the interview saying

he wasn't wearing his jacket, which was the jacket that had

the forensic evidence on it, he insisted that he was wearing another

member of the group's jacket, that simply couldn't have been the case.

Throughout the trial, the youths, the defendants were kind of saying it was

nothing to do with them individually, and while they weren't exactly

pointing their fingers at their friends, that was in the background they were

kind of like 'I was there but I didn't do anything, it was other people'

it didn't matter ultimately, it was a joint enterprise.

None of them accepted responsibility in relation to this which is why we had a

full trial, each of them blamed each other and merely said they were present.

It was tough to sit and look at the boys who killed your son then lie for 6 weeks

and lie and lie and you have to sit there and take that and say nothing.

The jury couldn't make their mind up, the end of the case, it was a Friday,

we were all sent away for the weekend. We came back Monday and they still

couldn't make their mind up by lunchtime and the judge said...

well they mumble in court a lot, I think he said 'I give 2 out of 10 to two'

went outside and said 'want to go get a cup of tea Colin?' and he said

'no, they will be back in 10 minutes and it will be a guilty verdict'.

No-one was able to say who delivered the fatal kick, but there was a

cutthroat defence with people blaming each other and three of the suspects

were convicted of murder under grounds of joint enterprise

and went to prison for a very long time.

They were all convicted duly of murder. I think the judge in sentencing them,

certainly the youngest of the defendants was given a recommendation of

only 6 years of his life sentence, I think the part he played, the minor role

was reflected in the amount of.. The recommendation given by the judge.

The sentence they got was, the 15-year-old who was 16 years in court old

got life imprisonment... 6 Years. The 16-year-old, 17 years old in court got

life imprisonment, 9 years and the 19 year-old got life imprisonment, 10 years.

No doubt that those thugs

probably never intended to take his life

but their errant actions,

thuggery and bullying really,

because there were more of them as well, ended up taking Christopher's life.

I think undoubtedly, on reflection, the combination of alcohol and drugs

was probably the reason for this as none of them had a history of violence

as such and had previously been involved in this type of incident.

It really underlined the tragedy of this case that it wasn't just one young life,

Christopher Donovan, who was killed, but three more young lives were touched

by having a conviction of murder and it was all

such a senseless tragedy that it happened in the first place.

When you reflect on it, nobody wins. We have a family who lost a son,

we have three young men who have blighted possibly the rest of their lives

and certainly spent a period of time in custody as a result of their actions.

A lot of other people who had been touched by this were members of the public

who woke up or looked out of the window to see what happened.

There was the poor lady who was driving the car that struck Chris.

In court, I said to Vi 'look at the families, take one look at them,

there's no winners, we have all lost a kid today. Ryan Seymour's dad came up

and we were crying, it was so emotional, we didn't cheer did we?

Like I said to Vi, no one won here, we all lost a kid, we were crying,

this man walked up and he said 'I'm sorry' and I just walked up

and we hugged each other. I think me and him had the first

restorative justice meeting in this country with murder and we talked

and I said don't worry no one is going to come up to your boy in prison,

he knew we did prison work, I said no one is going to come up to

your boy in prison. I got what I wanted today, justice, that's all I wanted.

And Colin said afterwards 'I've never seen so much compassion in my life

between two fathers'. Coming home that night in the car I turned to Vi

and said, 'you know what, we need to forgive the boys that did this'.

I didn't want to forgive them, I didn't want to. But what I did realise was

actually if you hold onto un-forgiveness, it will just destroy you

it won't destroy them because they won't care because they won't know.

So, I realised probably later on that it's about...

not about how you feel,

it's just about doing it, it's a choice and you just do it and even today

all these years later we're still doing that.

Christopher's family went on to use his death to try and improve

the lot of prisoners and try to make the world a better place, to try and make

something positive come out of a negative which is a remarkable thing to do.

The remarkable thing about the Donovan family, Ray and Vi Donovan,

is how they reacted to their son's death is that they are both committed Christians

and they have looked at the tragedy, looked at the terrible situation that

they are in and thought 'how can we make the best of this, how can we turn

this to a force for good?' and with the Christopher Donovan Trust,

that's what they've done. They go around to prisons, they go to schools

and talk about restorative justice, they talk to people, to young people

about their lives and how they shouldn't waste them

and I've met people, young men

that they have spoken to who have told me, 'if it weren't for.

Ray and Vi Donovan's work, I would either be in prison or I would be dead'.

They really have made a force for good out of

the tragedy that was the murder of their son.

The most important thing for us was that we felt we had done the best job

we could with the resources and information we had and that we were able,

as best we could, to show to Ray and Vi exactly what had happened

on that night and how Chris had died.

I think the fact that he allowed us to be kept in the loop on everything

as much as he could was really helpful to us, you don't really realise

but when you look back you realise how helpful that was that

we knew what was going on, that they were doing this, doing that

and it was so important to us, it was the one thing we had to hold on to,

knowing we would eventually get some justice for Chris.

Wherever we go around the country or around the world, wherever we go,

he's our story. If it weren't for him, we wouldn't have got justice, I know that.

To put your whole life and your trust in that one person is quite something when

everything is out of control, I can tell you, to know they have got your back.

He really cared. He wasn't a policeman 'this is my job', he was a man

who cares about the people he's working for, it's an unusual gift isn't it?

It's a wonderful gift isn't it? We don't know how grateful and lucky we really are

to have him, and goodness knows how many people he has treated like that.

He's just always there isn't he?

Absolutely, I think he will always be there, he's part of our life.