Original subtitles

I tried to imagine what my sister would be like now.

What she’d look like,

where would she be in life now,

how many more kids would she have.

I think about it sometimes.

I do.

But I’ll always remember her as that smiling 18 year old little sister.

(dramatic music)

I think you could pretty much go up to anybody in Coventry and say,

“Nicola Payne” and they’ll tell you what happened that day.

MAN: It’s one of the greatest unsolved crimes in this country.

REPORTER: Nicola Payne had left her boyfriend and baby son

to go to her parents.

She simply vanished into the mist.

It’s just hitting home that summut serious has happened to my sister.

REPORTER: A team of police officers today began a yard by yard search

of the waste ground where Nicola was last seen.

MALCOLM ROSS: It was the biggest search

that West Midlands Police had ever encountered.

Every effort, it seems, is being made to find Nicola Payne.

If anybody is holding Nicola, just take her somewhere,

or to just phone anybody.

I kept thinking, where’s my Nicola gone? Where’s me Nicola?

MAN: What happened to Nicola could happen to any woman.

How can an 18 year old disappear and just never be seen again?

It’s just a never ending real life horror story.

The truth. That’s all we want is the truth.

If it was your sister, when would you give up?

NIGEL PAYNE: It just got more and more difficult as the years went on.

MARILYN PAYNE: Every morning when you wake, it’s there before you.

Every night when you say a prayer, you think about her.

And how things were and might have been.

It was just talk to any journalist. Keep it in the papers.

Keep it going.

That is what we want, to have her found,

even if it’s only a body, so we could lay her to rest.

Every year there would be an appeal around Christmas.

It would be my auntie, it would be my uncle,

begging, pleading for someone to just say something.

MARILYN PAYNE: People say time heals,

but I’m sorry, I feel that, in fact I feel worse now

than what I did on the first Christmas that she went.

I’m sorry.

I still get people coming up saying,

“Oh, how are things, John?

We remember that day," like, you know.

They all know about it.

In an appeal for information last December,

Nicola’s parents spoke of the toll of her disappearance.

You get bad days. you’re alright like, you know.

But it’s just slowly got worse.

You don’t get any better, you just slowly, more and more thinking about it

and where did we go wrong? Like what happened? And...

...could we have done any more?

NIGEL PAYNE: I remember somebody saying,

“My God, why are you still going on about this?

Come on, this has happened years ago, can’t we just move on?

Every year we’re hearing about it.”

We wanted answers.

For years we was frustrated.

We were always, oh the case’ll never be closed.

Yeah, it’ll also never be open.

It wasn’t the case was never closed,

there was nobody from the police actively on that case,

until Martin Slevin come along.

(clock ticking)

My name’s Martin Slevin.

I’m a retired Detective Chief Inspector.

When Nicola Payne went missing in December of 1991,

I was working in Coventry as a police officer.

In 2012, I was Detective Inspector

in charge of one of the major investigation teams in Coventry.

I first became involved in investigation into Nicola’s disappearance

when my Chief Inspector at the time asked me to review intelligence

that had come to the police’s attention first in 2007 or 8

from a potential witness.

And the intelligence surrounded his father and brother.

He had told the police that Nicola was buried in an area called Purcell Fields.

It’s an area of open wasteland and moorland,

which is about a mile away from where Nicola went missing.

He told us that his father had helped dispose of Nicola’s body

because his brother had accidentally knocked Nicola over in his car.

The son who allegedly had knocked Nicola over

had committed suicide some weeks after Nicola had gone missing

and also drove a dark coloured Ford Capri,

which was a vehicle of interest to the enquiry.

So we’re now in Purcell Fields and this is an area that was searched in 2012.

The land that as we see now was a lot less overgrown

and we were able to access the trees quite easily.

REPORTER: A tip off to detectives in Coventry has led to teams of officers,

supported by Home Office scientists,

starting a forensic search of parkland in the Bell Green area of the city.

MARTIN SLEVIN: Once the media knew that we were searching

and knew that the search was related to Nicola’s disappearance,

the story went into overdrive very, very quickly.

REPORTER: Using the latest advances in technology,

police try to solve a mystery that’s remained unanswered for so many years.

SENIOR OFFICER: We’re here today as a direct result of new information

and that’s leading us to investigate the piece of land that’s behind me.

REPORTER: Specialist ground radar equipment is being used,

as well as a dog trained to find human remains.

PETER WILSON: At the time, when all of this is unfolding,

we’re talking to the family.

Their expectation, their hopes are rising.

You get this excitement that maybe a breakthrough is about to occur.

They started bringing teams of police in to fan out and go through everything.

We always held out for finding Nicola,

but then the dread comes in.

PETER WILSON: After years of seeming inertia,

momentum in the search for Nicola Payne.

MARTIN SLEVIN: I made the decision at the end of the first day

to put the father into suspect status

and therefore he was arrested and interviewed.

And I ordered the excavation of his garden.

The source of the information was also arrested,

because the intelligence began to grow and grow.

More and more witnesses were coming forward.

Largely people that had either been girlfriends or partners.

From early this morning police activity switched to this address,

just a few hundred yards from the main search location.

Door to door enquiries are being carried out

and there’s also a search team in the back garden.

MARTIN SLEVIN: As the search had progressed

and more and more people were telling us the same story

all emanating from one person,

it became apparent that the intelligence was becoming too far-fetched.

Despite searching our suspect’s garden and house,

we didn’t find anything of interest.

There was no evidence to support the proposition

that he’d been involved in Nicola’s disappearance.

In the end, neither the father or the son were charged with any offence.

My assessment was that the source of all of the information

was a complete Walter Mitty character.

He told this story to so many people in order to impress them.

But it was only largely to bolster his own credibility and ego.

When you were told the search had found nothing,

what was your reaction at that time?

Disappointment, but I think all day yesterday,

the longer it went on,

the more we began to realise that there was nothing gonna come out of this.

And we just felt really down last night.

And...

just felt really low, you know.

And, oh, well, we’re back to where we was.

NIGEL PAYNE: At the end of it, it’s just another dead end.

Yeah, you’ve gotta be realistic,

but you always wanna try and hold that little bit of hope out.

There’s something about this one.

It just felt different.

It felt like, well, this could be it.

You know, this could be the closure for all of us.

SCOTT PAYNE: Just still had that hope that she would suddenly turn up one day.

And then, over time,

you do sort of like think, well, she ain’t coming back.

She ain’t coming back.

It was never just one specific moment,

it just ground me down,

like slowly arrived, reluctantly, to that conclusion.

MARTIN SLEVIN: Once the search had been completed,

I sat down with John and Marilyn for quite a period of time

and we had quite a heart to heart.

I’d only had permission to look at that discreet line of enquiry

that we’d exhausted.

But John and Marilyn clearly had had, at that point,

20 plus years to think about what had happened to Nicola.

They’d lived and breathed the investigation.

There were lots of searches, there was lots of intelligence

and potential sightings of Nicola.

It sparked my investigative curiosity.

It would be a mammoth task to start from scratch to review the case,

but I persuaded my boss to let me look at it,

really in my own time without any other resource.

JOHN PAYNE: When I first spoke to Martin Slevin,

talked on the phone for about an hour.

I put the phone down, and I says to Marilyn, I said,

“That guy’s thinking right.

He’s thinking how I’m thinking, how we’re thinking.

I think he’s gonna do summut here.”

PETER WILSON: The feeling I had, once Martin Slevin took over,

was that it was a completely fresh set of eyes,

because it did feel as though a scientific mind,

proper investigator was saying,

“Okay, well, let’s open the boxes. Let’s go back to the beginning.”

MARTIN SLEVIN: When I recalled the material from offsite storage,

there were 36 large cardboard boxes full of hardcopy paperwork.

And I would sort of spend five or six hours sat in the office,

just reading through these papers to try and understand

what its senior investigating officers had done before,

what intelligence existed.

And I would say actually it became an obsession.

And ultimately the force agreed that I could reopen the investigation.

(clock ticking)

When I assessed previous reviews of the investigation,

one in particular in 2007,

it had highlighted all of the persons of interest to the enquiry at that stage.

And I used that to set out, had we actually eliminated all of these people

using modern day policing technology,

using modern day elimination techniques?

And that really left me with two distinct persons of interest.

Nigel Barwell and Thomas O’Reilly.

They were the central figures in the investigation

when Nicola first went missing.

One of the key documents that pushed the investigation along

was the pocket notebook entry from one of the first detectives

that had worked on the enquiry.

It indicated that there were three or four witnesses

that had seen Nigel Barwell outside his home address

on the Saturday at around 11.30,

one hour before Nicola went missing.

Now, that was significant

because Nigel Barwell’s alibi

was that he’d actually broken down in Rugby

on the Friday night with Thomas O’Reilly.

And that they hadn’t returned to Coventry

until the early hours of the Sunday morning.

And so I made a decision to try and trace the witnesses.

And subsequently, I obtained two statements

from key witnesses that had initially refused to do so back in 1991.

That was the first...that sort of spark, if you like,

that ignited the investigation.

From that point on I had something tangible to work with.

SCOTT PAYNE: Martin totally restored faith.

He suddenly looked at all this and went,

"How could we have not, as the police, looked into it further? "

It’s like it wasn’t part of his job. It was like a little crusade for him.

He really wanted to get this sorted.

He kept the family very well informed

on how the investigation was going.

But he gave you that confidence,

he knew what he had to do and you trusted him.

Martin didn’t need undisputed evidence.

Martin looked at all the small things and pieced them together.

One of the areas that I reviewed,

and was of particular interest to me,

was after Nigel Barwell and Thomas O’Reilly had been bailed

to return to face an identification parade,

they actually fled the country.

We found out subsequently

that they’d been seen leaving a house with a bag and they’d fled to France,

leaving on Christmas Eve

and coming back on New Year’s Eve into Coventry.

And I believe to Coombe Abbey Country Park.

Coombe Abbey Country Park is on the east side of Coventry.

About four miles from Coventry city centre.

We learnt from interview, in fact from Nigel Barwell and his wife Mary Barwell,

that they used to come to this area and they used to camp

in an area behind me at the top end of the lake.

So there were some direct links to the area.

Also, whilst Nigel Barwell and Thomas O’Reilly were on the run,

there was another significant piece of information

that linked Coombe Abbey Country Park.

And that was an attack on a taxi driver in January of 1992.

A taxi driver was called to a location about a mile from here.

Two men got into the taxi in the early hours of the morning.

And they asked to be taken to Leamington.

The taxi driver described them as dishevelled,

he described them as looked like they’d been sleeping rough. They smelt.

When the taxi driver was about to turn the cab around,

they actually told him to come past the entrance to Coombe Abbey Fisheries.

One of the men held a knife to him,

threatened him and made him pull into a car park,

and said, “Don’t try anything.

We’re the bastards that did Barbara Finn and Nicola Payne.”

Barbara Finn was a young girl that had gone missing

very shortly before Nicola went missing.

So, the man clearly indicating that they were involved in both murders.

Then the two men threw him into the icy lake

and essentially left him for dead.

He literally swam 200 metres across the lake to the far side

and was able to raise the alarm at some properties

that are on the far bank of the lake.

The only link to Barwell and O’Reilly

was the fact that we knew that Nigel Barwell had spent time in this park

and was familiar with its surroundings.

So there was a geographical link,

but we could never prove that Nigel Barwell was involved,

or Thomas O’Reilly, was involved in that offence.

But in over 90 percent of occasions

where a killer disposes of a body,

it will be somewhere they know.

Somewhere where they’re used to, they’ve been before.

So this was the first area that we felt was appropriate to search.

(clock ticking)

REPORTER: 22 years on,

yet still this investigation seems to have a degree of momentum.

Would it be fair to say that?

Yes, we constantly review information that comes into the incident room.

The investigation continues to move forward,

and we’re positive that at some time

we will get a successful conclusion.

We used a search team,

we used specialist advisors,

and we used specialist teams of divers

to cover all of the lake and also the sonar of the lake bed itself.

We covered a large area of ground

and there wasn’t any sign that Nicola had either been buried here

or any of her effects were buried in the park.

Which was incredibly disappointing,

but the biggest breakthrough for the enquiry

was clearly advances in DNA techniques over many, many, many years.

Back in 1991, the analysis of DNA was still fairly new.

And as the science around DNA progressed and advanced,

we were able to capture more strands of DNA within samples.

A tent had been recovered in the initial investigation.

And so I asked for the tent to be re-examined

to look at what hair was in there,

whether there were skin flakes, blood flakes.

What we found were a number of hairs including one hair with a root

that was capable of being examined for the presence of DNA.

We submitted that sample in the July, 2014.

And in early September,

we got the result that the probability that it was anyone other than Nicola

was one in a billion.

That turned the case, really.

My test then was to try and link that tent to Nigel Barwell and Thomas O’Reilly.

Out of the other 30 or 40 hairs that we’d recovered from the tent,

none of them had a root that was of sufficient condition

in which to extract DNA.

So, we resorted to sending a number of the hairs

to initially America and then Canada,

for testing under what’s called mitochondrial DNA technique.

Mitochondrial DNA is handed down through the female line of the family.

And I sent a batch of ten hairs,

and out of that batch, we were informed that we got a result

where the mitochondrial DNA matched either Mary or Thomas O’Reilly,

because they were brother and sister and had the same mitochondrial DNA.

Thomas’ sister, Mary, was actually married to Nigel Barwell.

So, for the investigation that linked the tent finally to Barwell and O’Reilly.

The DNA results gave us something independent

in terms of evidence, rather than just witness testimony

and hearsay evidence,

in order to build the case against Barwell and O’Reilly.

JOHN PAYNE: When Martin Slevin explained the case to me,

what they were doing,

I think we’ve got it here. It’s right.

Once we were told about the DNA,

we thought, that’s it we, we’ve got them. That’s it.

We’ve actually got the evidence that can prove

Nigel Barwell and O’Reilly was involved.

When I got this result,

we were confident enough to prepare a file of evidence

for the Crown Prosecution Service to consider.

And it wasn’t until January of 2015

that I received the authority to charge Nigel Barwell and Thomas O’Reilly

with Nicola’s murder.

It’s kind of a mixture of emotion, really,

because it was the end of one journey

and a degree of satisfaction,

but also a realisation that the hard work starts here.

And as soon as they were charged,

I went with the family liaison officers to the house,

and the family were gathered there.

A number of the boys were coming back from work, were rushing back.

It was quite emotional delivering the news to them.

There were lots of tears, lots of hugs,

lots of emotion in the room.

And clearly it was a big step for them, and I felt proud of them,

as a family, for persevering to fight for Nicola,

to get to this point.

And it was an emotional evening for everybody involved.

Including myself and my staff that were there.

(clock ticking)

Nigel Barwell and Thomas O’Reilly

appeared briefly here in court this morning,

confirming their names, addresses, and dates of birth.

They were told they’d both been charged jointly

with the murder of Nicola Payne 23 years ago.

Nicola’s parents and other members of her family

were in court to witness this latest development

in the case this morning.

Her aunt read a few words outside of court.

Although this is a significant step,

our ultimate aim has always been to find Nicola,

in order to bring some peace to our family.

GARRY PAYNE: I said to Martin, before we go ahead with this,

you’ve gotta be certain that you’re gonna get a conviction,

because it’d be hard enough for us lads, but for my mum and dad.

'Cause they‘d had so many ups and downs over the years.

Arrests, false alarms,

and it was just getting too much.

AMANDA EALES: There was no plan B.

This was everything.

So, I think there was huge expectations

that we were finally gonna get the answers that we’d always searched for.

NIGEL PAYNE: Well, we had a pre-trial meeting at one of the police stations.

MARTIN SLEVIN: I wanted to see the family, to talk to them together

to prepare them for trial.

Because when we did DNA testing on Nicola’s hairs,

we also found a hair that matched Nicola forensically.

And that was a pubic hair.

NIGEL PAYNE: They were quite concerned about how they were gonna break it to us

about the DNA.

We were ready for just about anything and everything.

We’d been waiting for all these years.

But when he was saying, “It was pubic hair that we’ve found.”

Put two and two together then.

Was she raped? Was she assaulted before?

But to think about that she suffered,

yeah, that’s a different thing for us.

GARRY PAYNE: Then I started thinking about it.

Then I started thinking...

(exhales)...

what my sister went through, you know.

What my sister had gone through and...

Hold on...

It’s hard to take. Very hard. It was different, totally different.

It was...it was hard.

(clock ticking)

AMANDA EALES: First day of the trial was really nerve-racking.

Originally, I was going to the trial because everybody else in the family

were giving evidence.

My auntie had wanted someone to represent the family from the first minute, really.

But then I just ended up being there the whole time,

because I was just desperate to try and find out for my own sake,

what on earth had happened?

The prosecution alleged that the two defendants,

Nigel Barwell and Thomas O’Reilly,

abducted, murdered and then discarded the body of Nicola Payne.

MELANIE EALES: Marilyn found it very hard.

She did go to court on some days, but it was too much of a toll on her.

It, it was really...

She would be at the court, but perhaps not in the courtroom.

DALE PAYNE: It was strange looking at them so close.

They did look scared, they looked very nervous and scared,

which you would do. And I think they were fearful.

SCOTT PAYNE: Part of their defence

was the fact that Nicola wouldn’t have known Barwell.

And if she’d been approached by two people,

she would have caused a commotion.

He would not have been able to get close to Nicola.

She wouldn’t have got in the car with somebody she didn’t know.

It was a, a significant question

whether Nicola Payne knew Nigel Barwell in any way.

And our evidence was that there was some connection,

that they would’ve been in the same location/vicinity at the same time.

Nicola Payne’s brother, Scott, also took to the witness stand.

He was asked by Mr Smith if he had ever seen Mr Barwell and his sister

in the same place together.

“Yes,” he replied, “In a pub a couple of months before she went missing.”

He said Mr Barwell was with a man called Michael Cooke,

who was the older brother of Nicola’s boyfriend, Jason.

Mick Cooke hit on Nicola several times.

Jason was Mick Cooke had had a punch-up once over it.

And we were in our local pub, the Red Lion,

and Nicola came over to me and said, “Oh, Mick’s hitting on me again.”

And I went over and confronted him and Barwell.

That was establishing that Barwell knew Nicola.

MARTIN SLEVIN: The difficulty with Scott’s account

was that we couldn’t find anything to support it.

Nigel Barwell and Mick Cooke both denied that that incident had taken place.

They both denied being in each other’s company, certainly within the Red Lion.

Counsel for Nigel Barwell suggested Scott Payne made this up

purely to fit the circumstances.

And it was an act of spite or revenge.

PETER WILSON: The problem for the prosecution was

there was nobody who could clearly say,

these two men were seen in a car with Nicola Payne.

Nobody saw Nicola being seized by anyone.

And it was twenty-five years after the event itself.

In some cases, people had made statements at the time

which said one thing,

when presumably it was fresh in their memories,

then suddenly in court they were saying something slightly different.

Many of the witnesses had not performed

whilst giving testimony, to the same standard,

as when giving that evidence to us.

And inconsistencies were exposed in that evidence

by very skilful Queen’s Counsel for the defence.

PETER WILSON: So, the forensic evidence was always going to be absolutely crucial.

If you could prove that there was a connection between the man in the dock

and Nicola Payne,

that was going to be absolutely powerful evidence.

REPORTER: Police searches found a tent,

which the prosecution claim was used to wrap Nicola Payne’s body.

The jury was told that Nicola Payne must have been in that tent

and that a partial DNA profile also linked Thomas O’Reilly to the tent.

And the jury were also told that they could be satisfied

that that tent belonged to Nigel Barwell.

They nailed the whole case on that DNA.

That was it. That was the make or break.

'Cause everything else was circumstantial.

MARTIN SLEVIN: In relation to the forensic evidence,

we’d built a strong case against the two suspects.

Unfortunately, the defence were able to expose the continuity of that tent

and where that had been kept over the years,

and the conditions it had been kept in,

which ultimately led to the forensic evidence being significantly challenged.

HAZEL JOHNSON: Unfortunately, the tent wasn’t properly packaged.

Any item submitted for forensic examination has to be sealed,

because if it’s not sealed,

there’s potential for forensic evidence to be lost

and equally potential for evidence to actually be introduced to that item.

Although I’d been called by the prosecution,

forensic means on behalf of the court,

so, you have to be open and honest

when you’re asked questions by the defence.

So, I knew that I was going to be asked about

the poor packaging of the tent.

And I would have to be honest about what our feelings were at the time.

Remember her saying, she’s got the tent.

It was delivered to her and she’s saying,

“Well, what am I gonna do with this? The bag’s open.” It was open.

PETER WILSON: As it turned out,

you couldn’t say that this tent had been properly looked after.

That this tent had been sealed.

That this material hadn’t been contaminated.

AMANDA EALES: There was a huge, huge issue in court

about the lack of continuity with taking exhibits,

documenting them and storing them correctly.

And that’s where the defence could do their job, really,

because the police had left it wide open.

Knowing that there would be a challenge

around the continuity of the forensic evidence,

I spent a significant amount of money on scientists

to assess the probability of cross contamination.

The probability of that happening was very low.

But, of course, the defence argued that there was a probability,

and it was down to the jury to decide.

NIGEL PAYNE: I was just sat there with my mouth open.

You just look at the jury and you’re like, all of a sudden, that DNA is gone.

Your whole case has just gone.

After that day, that was it, finished.

I just wanted to get up out of court,

get back on the train, go back to Coventry and never come back to court again.

PETER WILSON: If they’re found not guilty,

if the jury decide that, what would be going through your minds?

Where does it leave you?

I would be heartbroken.

I really would be heartbroken.

My heart’s tore out enough,

and I won’t go in the room when they’re gonna say.

I’m gonna go and sit somewhere else.

I can’t sit and even listen to it, because it's all too much.

(clock ticking)

MARTIN SLEVIN: So, the jury went out on the Friday

and on the Monday morning I heard the tannoy

to call all parties back to the court

in respect of Barwell and O’Reilly’s case.

PETER WILSON: When you’re called back you have that natural adrenaline,

which is running through you. It’s almost contagious.

We were surprised they came back quite quickly,

so, we went down.

Marilyn didn’t want to be in the court, so she waited with the liaison officer.

NIGEL PAYNE: That morning, we were getting on the train,

we had plenty of time to get on the train, on it there,

but then all of a sudden there was some signals out

and so we couldn’t get there.

So then we were at the station and I’m on the phone listening to the verdict.

JOHN PAYNE: I was very anxious,

‘cause Nigel had got caught and hadn’t quite made it.

I was at work.

The jury are coming back out, so I raced home, back to the house.

I couldn’t get to the court.

SCOTT PAYNE: And then the jury come back.

I had my hands over my eyes.

I was sort of like this. I couldn’t bear it.

Not guilty.

I put my arm around my dad. He broke down.

Very disappointed. I just sat there and I couldn’t believe it but...

Me mum just collapsed.

Me dad just fell to bits.

They were just broken, absolutely broken.

I weren’t there to like catch them and hold them and things like that,

but it was just like, get a taxi, get a taxi here,

get us there as quickly as you can.

I got a phone call off me mum.

I could hardly make out what she was saying, she was that upset.

And I just heard her say, “Not guilty, not guilty.”

Just flew out the workshop and just...went straight home.

It was not a nice day.

First time I’d seen my dad upset and my brothers all upset at the same time.

It’s...yeah, not a nice day.

I looked across then to Barwell and that and they were all celebrating.

Nigel Barwell jumped up and I think he mouthed or shouted the words,

“Thank you," to the jury.

And the look on the Payne family,

that was just, again, torture for them.

They were distraught.

Their hopes had been raised and again it ended up with nothing.

Today, the two local men who’d been accused of murdering the teenager

walked free from the court, flanked by their families.

Brothers-in-law Nigel Barwell and Thomas O’Reilly,

seen on the left with a beard,

were cleared of any involvement in her disappearance.

We, as a family, are pleased this nightmare has now finally come to an end.

Our father and uncle have always maintained,

from the onset of this investigation,

that they have had no involvement in the disappearance of Nicola Payne.

Both our father, uncle and the whole family have suffered

for the past 24 years from suspicion and innuendo

hanging over our family’s head.

MARTIN SLEVIN: It was incredibly disappointing.

You are in the hands of judicial system

and you’re in the hands of the jury.

And, no matter what your views on what you feel the outcome should be,

you have to respect the court’s process.

NIGEL PAYNE: Our family are devastated and heavy-hearted with today’s verdict.

For nearly 24 years we have lived daily

in the anguish of not knowing what’s happened to our beloved Nicola.

And worse than that, to this day not even knowing where she is.

(clock ticking)

PETER WILSON: Today, the Payne family were together,

united and still determined.

Yesterday for them was heartbreak

as two men were cleared of murdering Nicola Payne after a five week trial.

Buckets of tears.

Got a bit cross. Did a bit of shouting,

which I’m sorry about. Let meself down, but...

I just couldn’t help it, you know.

I just feel the longer this goes on,

the longer we’re letting Nicola down. (cries) I’m sorry.

DALE PAYNE: This one took a lot of getting over.

Took quite a bit of getting over,

‘cause we honestly thought this was it. We did.

JOHN PAYNE: Yeah, really let down.

You know, afterwards you always sit and think about these things

and when you’re going over it,

you realise then that, where it all went wrong.

And there were some big mistakes made.

PETER WILSON: What was key at the end of the trial

was that the defence teams were able to paint a picture

that the police investigation, certainly the way that exhibits were kept,

had been both sloppy and shambolic.

And the judge actually returned to that in his summing up.

MARTIN SLEVIN: Was it a sloppy investigation? I don’t agree.

There were elements exposed at court of the exhibits handling,

which led to the forensic evidence being challenged.

But my view is, that the 1991 investigation,

in the most part, was professional.

And they identified the two suspects,

which ultimately I came back to and charged.

When I took over the investigation,

I had the passage of time on my side

and, of course, I had most significantly, the benefit of forensic advances.

Thomas O’Reilly and Nigel Barwell have stood trial.

They’ve been acquitted and been found not guilty.

The question is, are there any other viable suspects?

I think I’ve eliminated everybody else that came into the enquiry.

It still leaves a question mark against Barwell and O’Reilly.

Well, police say that this is very much a live investigation.

And they still believe that someone in Coventry knows something

which might help them.

We’ll take this opportunity to appeal for anybody who may have any knowledge

about the circumstances that led to Nicola's disappearance,

or indeed where her body is currently located.

MARTIN SLEVIN: In the coming days and weeks we sat down

and looked at where do we go now?

Very soon after the trial,

we had new information coming to the investigation,

about a sighting of two men

acting suspiciously on the day Nicola went missing.

I’m confident, from the information that witness has given us,

that Nicola was brought to that site on the day she vanished.

The investigation was not over.

We were never gonna stop searching for Nicola.

A significant event happened here on the day that Nicola disappeared.

The police have now begun searching a new location at Coombe Abbey Country Park,

after a witness came forward.

PETER WILSON: There was hope that something significant would be found.

Is this gonna be it?

You know, because surely at some point

things have to change and go in our favour.