Original subtitles

My job was to stay awake and guard Peta.

She's tied up, no clothes on.

I don't wanna be a part of this, but I have no choice.

What were my choices?

A snitch, to my dad, was the worst possible thing you could be.

It's worse than murder in his mind, you know.

If you did that, you were pretty much signing your death warrant.

He's gonna come after you.

You snitch, you die.

Awful, dreadful, black despair.

I went to the doctor, I said,

"I can't sleep. Could I have sleeping pills?"

And I remember the doctor saying, "There is no medication for grief."

It was the front page, and it was them...

...just smiling out of the newspaper.

And I just was rooted to the spot.

"That's not true. It's not them."

Anything, anything, other than it had happened and it was them.

They were dead and nothing was gonna bring them back.

I'd listened to Chris' tapes, just to hear his voice.

Hello, everyone, and happy birthday, Pen.

I hope you like your birthday present.

There's loads of different ways of tying a sarong,

but if you can't work it, maybe you could go to the library

and get a book on design and see how they do it.

Happy birthday again. Bye now.

There was just a huge question mark.

What had happened at sea,

and why had it happened to my brother and Peta?

The finding of the bodies was on the 8th of July,

which of course is only eight days...

...after they were last known to be alive at Hunting Caye, on the 29th.

The bodies were only visible because they were too near the surface.

The ropes attaching them to the weights were too long.

That made it clear that they had been put in the sea from a boat.

The only boat we knew they were ever on was the Justin B.

Peta and Chris had been with us for about two weeks, I think.

The party had finished on Hunting Caye, and we were back on the water.

Dad is still in the partying mood.

We're making him these Justin Bs and he's drinking them one after the other.

It was Jamaican rum,

cane sugar, honey, limes, coconut juice.

He's, "Another Justin B, goddamn it!"

At first, he was a party guy, happy-go-lucky, everything was great.

But after drinking a few more drinks,

he would, kind of, he would eventually hit a brick wall with his mood.

He starts yelling at my brother, Russ, "Make me some fucking rice, Russ!"

Over and over.

And Russ was trying to keep him happy, but it just...

There's no satisfying him when he's like that.

Nothing was ever good enough for him.

He tells Russ to go up on topside and pull the anchor.

And Dad ambushes him.

Just starts pummelling him, for who knows what reason.

Chris and Peta say, "Stop, enough, leave him alone."

Dad says, "Don't you fucking tell me how to raise my kids."

Takes a swing at Chris.

Chris ducks out of the way,

Dad falls overboard.

Dad's in the water.

He's just glaring in silence, looking at Chris and Peta.

I think Chris said something like, "Maybe that'll cool you off."

Chris bends over, offers him a hand and says, "Come on, back on board."

You could tell he was very angry.

I think that a line had been crossed.

It's okay for him to humiliate us kids, but not for him to be humiliated.

He says to us...

"We need to get rid of these people."

I remember saying, "Oh, shit, now what's gonna happen?'"

The next day, he tells them that he's gonna drop 'em off

in a little fishing village called Livingston, in Guatemala.

We make our way, not all the way into the port,

but we drop anchor quite a ways out.

And Dad says,

"Okay, we don't have the proper visas for Guatemala.

We have to wait until sunset,

then we'll pull in closer, and you guys can get off the boat."

They seemed relieved that their part

of the Justin B journey was going to be over.

After a while, Dad tells Chris,

"Go to the front and pull up anchor.

We're gonna pull in now, it's dark enough."

Dad walks up behind him.

He has a black billy club.

He hits him over and over and over.

He's bleeding, and Chris is screaming, "What's your game? What's your game?"

Dad just continues beating him, until Chris just drops down on the deck.

He hit him so hard he broke his skull.

I could hear the bones cracking,

and eventually he hit him so hard that he broke the billy club.

I was thinking, "What can I do? Can I intervene?"

But I'm just a skinny, scrawny kid.

And then he pulls out a filet knife.

Stabs him in the chest.

Peta pops her head up from the galley,

and he threatens to shoot her with the spear gun

if she doesn't stay down below deck.

He grabs a rope and ties Chris up.

Then he goes down in the galley with Peta,

and the top hatch is covered.

He's down there for quite a while.

For over an hour, I think.

When he's finished...

he comes back up,

he hands me a Coleman Lantern.

He says, "Your job is to go down in the galley and keep an eye on Peta."

She's tied up, no clothes on.

He had taken her clothes off.

She was seething mad, which she should have been.

She must have had fear, but she wasn't showing it.

She is telling me,

"You're gonna burn in hell."

And I'm thinking, "Maybe she's right."

My mind is racing.

I don't wanna be a part of this, but I have no choice.

What were my choices? To try to overpower my dad?

I wouldn't be sitting here talking to you if that would've happened.

I was just praying for the night to be over,

that we could let them go in the morning, like Dad said he was gonna do.

The next morning, all around us there's dark water.

Chris is still alive,

tied up at the front of the boat, hogtied.

Peta's at the aft of the boat.

He has them tied like this, their hands, their wrists together,

their ankles, their feet together,

and then another connecting length of rope,

so they can't lift up.

And Dad was telling them,

"I'm going to let you off,

tie you to a tree, and then we're gonna sail away."

And that's what I thought was going to happen.

Dad says, "I'm gonna put a plastic bag over your head.

You'll still be able to breathe,

but I don't want you to see exactly where we are."

Couldn't see their faces,

but I can imagine the terror.

Dad goes below deck,

grabs one of the large gears that was used for ballast.

Looks like a giant cog made of iron.

And he doesn't just drop it,

he eases it down behind Chris, onto the deck.

And then he walks back and does the same thing with Peta.

He starts tying this connecting rope from their ankles and wrists

onto this gear, this piece of machinery.

You hope that he's not doing what it... what you think he's gonna do.

But at that point he is unstoppable.

He says, "Okay, I'm gonna let you go now. We're right next to the shore."

Which is not true, we're in the middle of the ocean.

He tells them, "Everything's fine, we're here."

Takes the weight, throws that over.

And I'm thinking, "This can't be happening,"

and my knees are just shaking, and Russ as well.

He picks Chris and rolls him off.

I see Chris being yanked down very quickly,

and then he just disappears into inky blackness,

and you see bubbles rising up.

Peta's screaming, "What's going on? What's going on? Chris, are you okay?"

There was no answer.

Dad takes her weight, throws that over...

and then rolls her off the side.

And then she just disappeared into the depths.

He looked at his watch.

A couple of minutes later he says, "They're dead now."

To watch you own father,

someone that you trust, that's supposed to be protecting you,

murdering two innocent people in front of your own eyes...

I'm thinking, "Maybe we're next."

And he looked at us and said, "You snitch, you die."

And I knew he meant it.

No one talked for a while.

And we just kept sailing.

After their bodies were found,

we were just living with the fact that Chris had been tortured, murdered,

but we didn't know why.

Dad could only think that Boston was the culprit.

Who else could it have been?

But there was no evidence to prove that.

I already knew from the enquiries

that Boston was not the ordinary law-abiding citizen.

Quite the contrary, in fact.

His wife disappeared in 1968

under strange circumstances.

There was no evidence that she was still alive.

And he was suspected of being involved in her disappearance.

So, that raised suspicions even more.

I was convinced that Boston had murdered them.

We go back to Sacramento, Roseville, where my grandma lived.

Having a hard time sleeping, having a lot of nightmares.

I would be swimming

and something would grab me on the ankles and start pulling me down.

I'm waking up in a cold sweat

and just reliving that over and over and over.

My grandma asked me, "What's wrong? I know there's something wrong, tell me."

And I trusted her, so I told her exactly what happened,

the people that he murdered in front of my brother and I, and she was horrified.

And she's like...

"Do not talk about things like that.

"If they find out that your dad did it,

"you'll never see him again, you'll be an orphan."

She never reported him or turned him in.

She knew that he was killing people.

And she already knew about my mom.

She told us.

She told us when we were, like, little kids.

It was during Christmas time,

she's like, "You know, I don't wanna lie to you kids.

"There is no Santa Claus.

"I'm the one buying these presents.

"Also, you're never gonna see your mom again."

And we're like, "Why?"

She's like, "Well, let me tell you.

"You know, your dad killed your mom, he shot her."

She said that he murdered my mom

when she wanted to take us away and divorce him.

My grandma had helped cover it up, and years later here it is again.

She's protecting him again.

Would she have ever told on her son?

Never, ever.

Everyone knew about it, but no one would do anything against my dad.

The man that's supposed to protect you is also your worst enemy.

He killed your mother, and he's gotten away with it.

And he lets you know over and over that you're worthless,

and if you snitch on him that he would easily end your life.

It's not a big deal to him.

Coming to that realisation as a child, it is a pretty scary thing,

and you realise that you don't have anyone that loves you,

and you can't trust anyone, especially your own parent.

And that's the reality of it.

I wanted Boston.

I would've just loved to put my hand on his shoulder.

But that couldn't be, of course.

He had disappeared.

All throughout 1980, there was nothing.

Absolute nothing. Boston couldn't be found.

He just went on the run.

Next thing we heard was in February, 1981.

Boston had come back onto the radar in California.

He was arrested for the abduction of one of his children,

a four-year-old that wasn't on the boat.

It was great. We really felt confident that the case was moving forward.

My name is Jim Kelly, I was a detective sergeant

with the San Rafael, California, Police Department.

My specific caseload was crimes against children.

Dealing with kids, dealing with parents, dealing with schools.

I received a message from Interpol.

Boston was a suspect in a double homicide

and that the Greater Manchester Police in England were investigating this.

This is more than I could ever have anticipated or expected.

It was during the questioning about the child abduction

that Sergeant Jim Kelly questioned him about Chris and Peta.

I had a very thick binder, and the binder was labelled, you know, "homicides,"

and it had the names of the two victims.

And he took one look at the binder and his entire composure changed.

He sat back and he looked at me and he said,

"Oh, now I know why you guys have made such a big deal out of this."

I have to get as much information out of him as I can

for the Greater Manchester Police and the family of the victims.

So, I started up basically saying that, "Tell me about this trip.

"Tell me about these people on your boat. Tell me where you went."

He said he first met them in a hotel in Belize.

He agreed to take them on his boat, but he told me they were deadbeats.

He claims that during the voyage

Peta Frampton was consuming what he described as a lot of alcohol,

and that Chris Farmer was injecting

some type of drugs into his arm with a needle.

I knew that Boston had made these allegations before.

There was no evidence that Chris and Peta were ever involved in the drug trade.

This is Silas Boston throwing me a cookie that he thinks I'm gonna go chase.

And he said that a boat came along with what he described as two natives.

He didn't explain why,

but he said that the victims got on this boat with the natives.

That was his story.

He was very elusive, evasive about any specific dates, times.

But when it came to his arrival in Livingston, Guatemala,

he all of a sudden knew the exact date, July 16th, 1978.

He said, "I think I saw them when I was there."

I don't think he knew at this point that the bodies had been found.

Peta Frampton's parents had received a letter

that was postmarked in Livingston, July 18th.

Chris and Peta's bodies were found on July 8th.

They couldn't have posted the letter.

So, who did?

I leaned across the table, and I looked at him,

and I said, "Did you kill Chris Farmer and Peta Frampton?"

Instead of saying no, he looked at me with his head cocked,

and he has the darkest, beadiest little eyes that I've ever seen,

and he said, "I told you, the last time I thought I saw them

"was in Livingston on July 16th."

That told me right there, this guy did it.

He was responsible for these two homicides.

He just wouldn't admit it.

I knew he was guilty, but I had no hold on Silas Duane Boston,

I had no legal right to detain him.

I couldn't do anything about the homicides.

I sent a full report to Interpol,

asking them to forward it to the Greater Manchester Police.

So, Silas Duane Boston was at that point a free man with no charges pending.

We were just left questioning what the hell was going on, really.

How could he just be released?

My parents were adamant that attempts should be made to talk to the two boys.

Interviewing Russell and Vincent was key.

They would've been the only witnesses to the homicides.

But no one knew where they were, and without them we had no evidence.

We couldn't understand why no one was doing anything.

Even David Sacks had been taken off the case.

Every day that went by, the case just went colder and colder.

The assistant chief constable in Manchester rang up

and said that he'd got a photograph of Boston, and would I like to see it.

I remember this guy saying to me,

"We know that this chap did it, but we can't pin it on him."

It was just like a bomb had exploded in our family

and we were left to pick up the pieces without any answers.

The most distressing thing I've ever heard my mother say

was the best part of her life was now over.

Obviously, it was very traumatic for her.

I don't think I'd entirely realised at the time.

I was quite involved in my own distress.

I used to write long letters to him...

...every birthday, every Christmas.

Just really telling him how I felt, how we missed him.

Although it was senseless really,

it was a, sort of, a continuation, as though he was still alive.

How long did you do that for?

Four years. Four years.

I never forgot what happened on the boat.

I just wanted to get away.

When I was 17, I joined the navy.

I felt a little bit of freedom,

away from the craziness of the Boston crime family.

I knew that Chris and Peta had loved ones somewhere in England.

The way I felt about my mom is

I would wanna know every detail what happened.

I figured that they would wanna know the same.

My brother and I were eyewitnesses to the murders.

I've got to do something. I've gotta try.

I took it upon myself to try to call

the police in Great Britain, called Scotland Yard.

I said that me and my brother

witnessed my dad murdering two people,

two British citizens, Chris Farmer and Peta Frampton.

But it was such an unusual coincidence

that, at that time, Peter Frampton

was one of the biggest stars in the world, the singer,

and she had the same name.

I thought they thought I was a kook.

Dad never ever spoke about Chris, really.

But...

Sorry.

But, you know, when I was getting married, he just said...

There's only just one little thing we're very sorry about,

and that is that Penny's brother Christopher couldn't be with us.

And that just completely set me off.

It would've been so nice to have had Chris there.

Life does move on, and you do paper over the cracks.

But it's always in the shadows.

It's never very far from the surface.

I left the navy and became an engineer.

I never stopped thinking about my mom.

I wanted to find where she was buried, you know, and bring her home.

But it seemed like every time I would reach out,

I was being ignored or pushed aside

and just, like, "How come these people aren't taking these murders seriously?"

But I refused to give up.

My brother Russell refused to give up as well.

In January of 1999, I received a telephone call,

and I was informed that Russell Boston had publicly revealed

that he did witness his father murder Chris Farmer and Peta Frampton.

"Yes! I got him. I got him."

I sent a letter to Interpol in Washington,

and I thought, "If I get the permission from the Greater Manchester Police

"to interview one or both of those boys,"

I would've run with that faster than the wind.

I never received any kind of a reply.

There was never really anyone that was in charge of the case fully,

both in America and over here.

When the Internet arrived in 2001,

Dad was writing emails to law enforcement agencies,

looking for Duane Boston and his two sons.

In 2012, I wanted to reach out again. I didn't wanna give up.

I got a hold of the Sacramento Police Department,

sent all the information that I could about the murder.

I hadn't talked to my dad for years and years.

He thought he was gonna get away with it,

and I wanted to make him accountable for his crimes.

Sacramento Police Department spent a lot of time

talking to FBI and Interpol and British authorities.

I felt that that was the first time I was being taken seriously.

But they just kept hitting a brick wall.

No one could find any record of Chris and Peta.

They told me, "Be patient," and I had very little patience.

It's like, "Why can't they find them?

"When... How long do we have to wait?"

Dad was haunted by Chris' death, because it was so inexplicable.

He died in 2013,

still not knowing what happened to his son.

Your parents you expect to lose, but not your kids.

And you never really get over that.

Birthdays and anniversaries came and went.

Mum reaching 90, and Chris was not there.

One day, Mum turns to me and says,

"I wonder what Chris would've looked like now.

"He would've been 62,

"but he's forever young in our eyes, isn't he?"

I stopped dead, and I literally ran home.

"Why have I not looked for these people on the Internet before?"

She found him, just like that.

It was quite extraordinary.

Just could not believe that I am looking

at the person who we have always,

always felt held the key to their disappearance and murders.

It's just mind-blowing.

I look at his posts,

and I can see that he's referenced a news link...

...and it's presented as a miracle of God

that the occupant is able to escape drowning.

I'm thinking, "Well, is there a link there to Chris and Peta's drowning?"

I can see that.

he's friends with Russell, but not with Vince.

Why isn't he friends with his eldest son?

I put in "Vince Boston."

I can see posts about his mother, Mary Lou.

She disappeared back in 1968.

Vince made a reference to his mother being killed by a shotgun.

My eyes are out on stalks at this point.

Just could not believe that the very people

that we have been searching for for nearly four decades

are there in front of me on my computer screen.

I felt angry.

They have possibly watched my brother and his girlfriend be murdered,

and never told anybody.

We need to get in touch with them, urgently.

I message Vince and Russell from an anonymous Facebook account,

which I had created to just keep an eye on my three teenage kids.

"Were you on the Justin B back in 1978 with my brother and his girlfriend?

"Please reply. I want some information."

"I think you know what happened on that boat. I'm not gonna let this go."

He's my brother's killer, and he's out...

and he's free.

Penny called the cold case unit,

and I was the detective who picked up the phone.

It was just unbelievable.

She was convinced that she had found the suspect, Silas Duane Boston,

and his two sons who were on the boat.

She wanted us to go and arrest him right away.

But when I searched for the case on our records within GMP,

I found absolutely nothing.

No trace whatsoever.

We find that unbelievable.

Not a scrap of anything from the '70s or '80s,

just nothing in the archives.

Audrey Farmer remembered the name of the police officer

that had conducted the investigation back in the 1970s.

I rang him the same day.

Michaela explained to me that they couldn't find any documentation.

How that could conceivably happen was...

Well, it just defeated me.

I said, "Hang on a minute,

"I've got a complete copy of everything in my garden shed."

There in David's files we had court records, official documents,

naming the people on the boat.

We've got the autopsies, dental records,

Pete's last letter, all sorts of valuable evidence.

Now we can run with this.

Greater Manchester Police contacted Interpol and got a response immediately.

A police officer in the Sacramento Police Department

was looking at Silas Duane Boston.

She'd interviewed Vince in relation to the disappearance of his mother.

He's told her that he'd witnessed his dad murder a young couple on the boat.

We were called to Greater Manchester Police.

They had Vince and Russell's statements.

I couldn't get my head around it.

After four decades of silence, of not knowing,

we were finally going to find out the truth.

They wanted to spare us some of the more grisly details,

but it wouldn't have been complete without knowing, really.

The information we received that afternoon was horrendous.

We came out stunned and shellshocked.

You often wonder what their last words were,

but that's inevitable.

They were alive when they went into the water.

I just keep thinking, "What was she thinking?

"What was she thinking?"

He just completely destroyed them.

And the fact that those two boys had to witness that, it was horrendous.

For years we were told that the boys had been hiding from the police,

and that wasn't true, of course, at all.

Vince and Russell, particularly Vince, did try to do something.

But Greater Manchester Police closed the case down.

So, every time the phone call came in to this country from California,

it was like somebody was filing it in a bin.

Nobody was investigating Boston.

It's mind-blowing, really.

They said, "We'll never let the case close."

And of course, they did.

That's just what they did.

So wrong.

So terribly wrong.

Finally, things are progressing, and the wheels were turning.

I wanted justice for my mom, and Chris and Peta.

Here we were, opposite sides of the Atlantic,

both looking at the case.

There was no way that I was gonna let Boston slip away again.

We were told that the FBI have enough evidence against him,

and he was going to be arrested.

My dad committed these crimes, and he deserved to face judgement.

How could anybody do what he did to Chris and Peta?

We'll never rest until Boston's in prison.

I figured the sooner an arrest, the better.

Then all of a sudden...

my dad reached out to me on Facebook.

"Hey dude, what's up?"

I'm thinking, "What is going on? What is he thinking? Does he know?"

I can imagine him thinking,

"That little fucking snitch. Wait 'til I get my hands on him."