Original subtitles

(Richard Shepherd) When a murder's committed,

it's always a race against time to find the truth,

to separate fact from fiction, to catch the killer,

and to make sure that justice is served.

But what happens when the truth vanishes with the victim?

I'm Dr. Richard Shepherd, and I've spent

my entire career as a forensic pathologist,

performing nearly 23,000 autopsies.

I've learned that the dead don't hide the truth,

and they never lie.

Through me, you'll be hearing directly from the victim.

With the aid of a state of the art laboratory,

using ground-breaking technology,

I'll be investigating a series of intriguing crimes

where, from the victims' bodies, I'll reveal to you

the truth behind these murders.

(camera shutter clicking)

Little Venice in London is famous for the houseboats

that make their way along the Grand Union Canal.

But in May 2015, this picture postcard location

became a crime scene when a member of the public

made a shocking discovery.

(beeping)

In the little Venice area of West London near to Paddington Railway

Station, it's an area where quite a lot of people

live on barges as their place of residence.

And two people were in a canal boat and heard a noise against the side

of their boat, which caused them to look outside,

and they saw a suitcase in the canal.

(Henry Vaughan) The two friends on that houseboat

looked down into the water

and saw distinctive red hair flowing out of it.

(phone beeping)

They became very concerned and decided to call the police.

(Steve Tonks) A police officer needs to essentially find out

what's happened, so being able to recover the suitcase

from the canal, which is in itself potentially

a quite challenging task because it's in the water.

So police have got to make a decision as to whether

they enter the water or not.

If they're able to actually reach and remove the item

without entering the water, that is obviously safer,

so they've got to consider that.

Then also the actual weight of the suitcase because at that point,

they don't know what's in the suitcase

and it's in a body of water, so may well be full of water,

which will add to the weight.

(Richard) Having retrieved the suitcase,

police and forensic teams were shocked at what it contained.

(camera shutter clicks)

(Steve) What was found in the suitcase

was a body that had been placed essentially

in the foetal position.

The body was wrapped in bin bags, and also a curtain

was placed in the suitcase.

(Jane Monckton-Smith) When a body's found in a suitcase

in a canal, that's a homicide.

That's a suspicious death.

(Richard) The police immediately

launched a murder investigation.

(Jane) The first thing that they will need to do

is identify who that person is in the suitcase

because it'd be very difficult for the police to find out

who killed them without knowing who they are.

(Richard) So the police looked to the body for answers.

The body that was found in the canal

was folded inside a suitcase.

It was in the foetal position and wrapped in curtains and bin bags.

There was no ID, no purse, no other obvious identification,

but it's still possible for this body

to reveal a lot of information.

Even if the body is reduced to simply a skeleton, if you know how

to read bones, you can get a lot of information

from that - the age at death, the height,

and from the shape of the pelvis, the sex of the individual.

Some decomposition had set in, but the organs, tissues, and skin

were still largely intact thanks to the cooler water

temperature of the canal, which slowed down

the rate of decomposition.

So a body like this where there is still soft tissue

has many more secrets it can reveal to a forensic pathologist.

In the mortuary, the body can be measured and weighed,

and the teeth can help determine the age too

since they erupt throughout life.

For instance, the wisdom teeth appear in your 20s.

In this case, the body had its wisdom teeth,

and the shape of the pelvic bone indicated it was female.

From all this, it could be determined with some certainty

that she was a white woman, approximately 5 foot 2,

weighing 8 stone, and it was clear that

she was young, in her early 20s.

But there was no missing persons report for anyone like that.

So who was she?

With little to go on, even forensic evidence proved limited.

Ultimately, when somebody's body's in water,

it's likely to remove things like DNA,

opportunities to recover evidence.

For me, the most important thing is to make an appeal via the media,

via all forms of media, asking for witnesses to come forward,

asking for people to report in anybody that they're

concerned about, to try and work through opportunities

to identify who the person is.

Because once that's established, it opens up

a vast array of other opportunities to identify if there are

any other scenes that need to be cordoned

and searched and examined because, for example, where she was

actually placed into the water, if it was different to where

the suitcase was found.

(Richard) Then detectives got a breakthrough.

A man called Tomasz Kocik contacted police

to report his girlfriend missing.

Kocik later identified the body as that of Marta Ligman.

Journalist Henry Vaughan remembers the case well.

(Henry) I first heard about the case of Marta Ligman

when her body was discovered

in a suitcase in the Grand Union Canal.

I was working as a court reporter at the time.

It's a very unusual set of circumstances,

so that is something that sticks in the mind.

(Steve) Marta Ligman came to the UK in 2012,

and she worked in a delicatessen in Harlesden in northwest London.

Very highly thought of by her boss.

Described as a very pleasant girl with aspirations

to get married, to have a family, to settle in the UK.

The very, very pleasant demeanour.

Very helpful and outgoing.

(Jane) She'd come over from Poland to the United Kingdom

to live and work and make a life for herself,

a very brave thing for her to have done actually.

(Henry) Was very popular, had lots of friends,

and well liked by everyone who knew her.

(Richard) In London, Marta moved in

with her Polish boyfriend, Tomasz Kocik,

who she'd first met back in Poland.

(Henry) Marta met Kocik on an internet chat room.

Both Polish nationals, so they formed a friendship,

formed a relationship.

(Henry) Tomasz Kocik was quite a bit older than Marta,

around 38 at the time.

He was also from Poland and lived in London working

as a forklift truck driver.

He'd also spent some time in Ireland before moving to the UK.

(Steve) That relationship then developed

into what seemingly was a very, very affectionate and loving

relationship to the extent that Marta took the decision

to move from her home in Poland to London, a big step for her,

to set up home really with Tomasz Kocik.

She probably went into that relationship feeling so happy,

so excited, and she may even have fallen for him

before they physically met.

She may have fallen for him whilst they're still,

you know, maybe talking online.

(Henry) At the start, they seem

to have a very good relationship, and she was very happy.

Their neighbours said they seemed like

a perfect couple and also that Kocik

seemed quite protective of Marta.

Kocik was around 15 years older than Marta.

He was a builder by trade and came into this country

purely for work purposes.

He was a very caring person towards Marta.

He was always concerned about her wellbeing

and he wanted to look after her, so they had a very happy

and settled relationship.

Marta wanted to get married.

She wanted to have children.

(Jane) And she thought when she met Kocik,

that that was his dream as well.

This is what I want, too.

I want a wife. I want a family. I want children.

I'm very traditional.

So that would have played into everything that she wanted.

To people from the outside, seemingly very happy.

(Richard) So how did this young woman's

life end so tragically?

Things can change literally overnight.

In 2015, police launched a murder investigation after the body

of 23-year-old Polish delicatessen worker

Marta Ligman was found folded into a suitcase

and dumped in a London canal.

(Henry) When her body was found

in a suitcase in the Grand Union Canal,

it's a very unusual set of circumstances,

so it was an immediately a high profile case.

(Steve) It's important to recognise that the location

where Marta's body was found in the canal is not necessarily

the same as the deposition site,

ie where the suitcase entered the canal.

And also, there may be other locations where events have

taken place that would inform the investigation about the events

that led to Marta's death.

(Devi Kharran) There were witnesses who had seen the suitcase

in the canal and dismissed it without causing any suspicion

in their minds about the suitcase, but it had travelled a significant

distance to the point of Little Venice

where Marta's body was discovered.

(Steve) However, what may well be preserved because of the fact

that Marta is enclosed within the suitcase

is evidence of injuries or evidence that would be...

later inform the investigation as to how she died.

The postmortem showed she'd been in the canal

for between 7 and 10 days.

We can estimate this because the water in the canal where Marta's

body was found would have been colder than the air temperature

and therefore slowed down the decomposition of her body,

making it easier to determine the exact time of death.

We know that she was folded up very tightly in a small space

with her knees up to her chest.

This position would have limited movement of the ribcage

and stopped air being drawn into her lungs.

It would have been almost impossible to get

her folded into that tight space unless she was immobile.

But what we don't know is whether she was dead

when she was put into the suitcase or just unconscious.

And the terrible truth is that Marta

might still have been alive when she was thrown into the canal.

(Devi) The most distressing detail that the pathologist could

not rule out that Marta was not alive or dead

when she was placed into the suitcase.

(Richard) In their hunt for the killer,

police needed to eliminate the most obvious

suspect from their inquiries, the man

who'd first reported her missing.

Her boyfriend, Tomasz Kocik.

We know that the most likely person to kill any woman

is their partner or ex-partner.

So intimate partner homicide - that's where

a man kills his partner or ex-partner -

is actually the biggest category of homicide for women.

So as soon as Marta is identified, Kocik is at the top

of the list straight away.

(Steve) Kocik was 15 years older than Marta Ligman.

And I think it's quite important just to consider that when they

met online, Marta was a teenager.

That is a bit of a red flag because statistically,

somebody much older than a...

than a woman especially is going to be targeting them

because they are more malleable.

They are more vulnerable.

They're less experienced in life.

So I think in terms of power imbalance

and the dynamic within the relationship,

he was likely to be more sort of influential in the way that things

were within the relationship, which, again, could have

affected the way that they lived their lives

together and subsequent events.

There are extra risks, I think,

to meeting somebody online.

It's very easy to present yourself as something other

than you actually are online, and it's very, very

difficult to question any of that.

And if you do those first few meetings online,

by the time you are face-to-face with that person,

you think you already know a lot about them.

And so your instincts in that first face-to-face meeting

will be very much dampened.

(Steve) Marta had lived in the UK for about three years,

and friends had noticed that Marta's behaviour

had started to change, so she'd become quieter, more reserved.

And some concerns generally were being noted by people that

knew her, or they felt that something was not quite

right within the relationship.

(Jane) The changes in her

started to happen quite quickly.

She started to withdraw.

She started to lose weight.

She started being less happy, seeing less of her friends,

and that concerned them.

(Henry) Kocik became very controlling,

and her friends said she wasn't the sort of happy-go-lucky person

she used to be.

(Richard) Within three years,

Kocik had also become obsessively jealous about Marta.

As time developed during their relationship,

things began to take a turn for the worse.

His behaviour became more controlling,

more coercive, and even obsessive about Marta's movements

and her whereabouts.

And he was very intense about it.

Every single thing she did, he was there.

He was following her.

He was tracking her.

He was isolating her.

(Steve) And asking a lot of very searching questions,

and generally exhibiting an area of suspicion

about the way that Marta was behaving without any grounds

that are known of.

But just a very controlling kind of approach

taken by Kocik at that time.

He would turn up at her work.

Every day, he'd pick her up from her work

because he didn't trust her.

There's even one occasion where he demanded

that the boss of the deli she worked in

show him the CCTV to prove that she'd been working there.

And that was quite concerning to her boss.

(Jane) The first control that always comes in

is what we call jealousy code.

So he would have been saying things like,

don't like it when you talk to other men.

Makes me feel really, really jealous. Don't do it.

And she probably thought, oh, fair enough.

I won't do that. I'm not going to wind him up.

But there would have come a point where she did something

to break that rule, not on purpose,

and he would have punished her for it.

And that punishment will set the tone for everything

that happens going forward.

(Steve) One of her friends recalled an occasion

where Marta wore some very thick rimmed spectacles in what

the friend thought was to try to hide the fact

that she had some facial bruising.

This made everyone very concerned about Marta's wellbeing.

The behaviour progressed to essentially

monitoring Marta's behaviour, moving more towards what can

generally be described as a controlling

or coercive type relationship.

People who are controlling and who use coercive control

are actually trying to trap you into a relationship with them.

So that means that you can't get out of this relationship.

You've committed to me.

You can never leave.

(Richard) To build the case against Kocik being the killer,

police needed to know if Marta's body revealed

signs of a controlling and abusive relationship.

So what could Marta's body tell us about the final tragic hours

of her life?

When Marta's body was removed from the suitcase,

it was evident she'd suffered a severe beating.

She had numerous injuries to her face

and her body that must have been inflicted in the hours

before she was thrown into the canal.

But she also had other injuries that were older.

Bruises can be aged because they change colour over time,

going from purple and blue to yellow and green

and finally to brown.

Marta's body was covered in old and fresh bruises,

but it's the fractures that are most revealing.

A recent fracture looks like this, and here you can see

the clear separation in the bones.

But these broken ends will knit back together

over a period of weeks and months.

And Marta also had several healed fractures.

So what her body revealed was that she

had been subjected to a prolonged and savage attack

immediately before her death.

But it also showed that this was part of a long history

of physical abuse.

Older injuries would be consistent with what the friends

had described in terms of there being

a deterioration in the relationship and more

violence being used towards Marta.

Kocik used to play loud music in the flats,

which is believed to have covered up him beating her.

So I think she did something trivial

or something that he made up,

and he probably really, really hurt her.

But that's a warning for the future.

That's your punishment.

It's what we call the three Cs.

So it's control, challenge, consequence.

So the control is in place.

Rules of the relationship.

You will not make me jealous.

There's some kind of challenge to that.

Maybe she's caught speaking to somebody.

What are the consequences?

The third C, violence.

Now, the consequences reinstate the control.

She thinks, I'm never going to do that again.

I am never going to speak to another man,

or I'm just never going to do anything ever to upset this man

because I'm now scared of him.

She was literally trapped like a hostage

in this relationship with him.

(Richard) There was still no hard evidence linking Kocik

to the assaults or the murder, but Marta's phone

messages were raising further suspicions

among friends and colleagues.

(Steve) The boss of the delicatessen received a message

basically to say that Marta was not going to attend work

because her mum was sick in Poland and needed to leave,

which was described as being out of character for Marta,

that Marta would not have sent a message that way.

She would have gone into the shop and explained.

Also, messages were sent to Marta's friends

to explain that she'd left Kocik.

So there was quite an amount of communication

from Marta's Facebook account and from her device.

(Henry) On Facebook Messenger,

sending one of her friends over about 50 messages they exchanged

between them, the friend initially believed she was talking to Marta,

but she became suspicious when the messages began

to start suggesting a threesome.

(Devi) The level of conduct and the content

of the communication caused some alarm to Marta's friend,

as it also included activity about engaging

in sexual conduct together.

Marta's friend clearly thought this was uncharacteristic of Marta,

and it raised alarm bells in her head.

She went straight to her home address to see if she was OK,

but nobody was at home.

In London, in May 2015, the body of 23-year-old

Marta Ligman was found folded up in a suitcase

floating in London's grand canal.

The postmortem revealed bruises and fractures,

proving that she had been subjected to a long history

of physical abuse.

The prime suspect was her boyfriend, Tomasz Kocik.

Messages sent from Marta's phone and computer

before her body was found suggested she had left her boyfriend

and returned to Poland, but these didn't seem in character.

Friends and family feared she was missing.

It was quite common for Marta to speak

to her mum on a very regular basis, if not daily,

so obviously Marta wasn't doing that.

Her lack of contact with friends and family,

again against her demeanour, uncharacteristic of Marta

not to speak to her mother every day.

And Marta's mum made contact with Tomasz Kocik

to establish what had happened, and he explained that Marta had

left him, which also fitted with messages that were being sent,

purporting to be from Marta.

(Richard) But once Marta's body was found,

it became clear to police that she could

not have sent those messages.

She was already dead in the canal.

The only person with access to Marta's devices

to send messages was Kocik.

Kocik made contact using Marta's Facebook account.

He messaged one of her friends.

The messaging was uncharacteristic of Marta.

It alerted her friend immediately that potentially

there could be a problem.

(Steve) So there was a clear attempt by Kocik

to mislead a number of people that knew Marta

and were clearly going to ask questions about where she was.

He was just trying to make it all go away,

stop anyone reporting her missing, and maybe

give himself some time to think.

In creating this kind of web of lies,

trying to convince everybody maybe that Marta's still alive

so that he stops people coming to look for her because he knows

his name's going to be the top of the list

if she is found and identified.

Kocik didn't report Marta missing.

And despite her mother phoning him and asking him to look for her

and ask what he was doing to try and trace her,

he didn't report her missing until her body was found,

which was around 10 days later.

(Devi) This case attracted heavy media attention.

And as a result of that, Kocik was alerted to the fact

that Marta's body had been found, and that

was the point that he contacted the police to report her as missing.

In fact, members of her family had tried

to ask him to report her as missing previous to the date

of her body being discovered.

Kocik simply refused to do so.

(Steve) The fact that he hadn't reported her missing

until Marta's body was found in the canal clearly caused

suspicion and ultimately led to the arrest of Kocik

as a suspect for Marta's murder.

(Richard) But under police questioning,

Kocik denied murdering Marta.

He did not accept that he killed Marta and denied his involvement

in the murder of Marta.

The explanation that Kocik gave was that he had come home

from work and found Marta dead.

He thought that Marta had had a heart attack because

he and Marta have been taking amphetamines

in the preceding days.

(Devi) Kocik was fearful that he

would be in trouble with the police for providing

her with those drugs.

His version of events was that he panicked.

They've been involved in rough sex activity, as he described it,

and he felt that those things combined would cause him to be

blamed effectively for her death.

(Richard) But did Marta's body

support Kocik's version of events?

Kocik claimed that Marta had died from an amphetamine overdose

following days of drug-fuelled bondage sessions.

And although internal swabs were taken,

there was no evidence of recent sexual activity.

Amphetamines can be detected in the bloodstream for, on average,

48 hours after being consumed and on human hair

as long as 90 days afterwards.

Some amphetamine users take the drug through

what is called skin popping.

These are subcutaneous injections that go into the tissue rather

than the blood vessels, and what we would see then

is lots of ulcerated areas on the legs and forearms.

But there was no evidence of this on Marta's body.

If she was injecting, there would be track marks,

and there was no evidence of that either.

He said that he came home and found Marta dead on the sofa,

and she had problems, and she was taking drugs,

and she'd obviously overdosed.

And the most classic way to defend yourself against killing somebody

you're supposed to love is to denigrate them in some way

and make them responsible and make you the innocent

victim of their awful behaviour, and that's what...

that's what he did.

(Richard) Kocik did, however, admit

to disposing of Marta's body.

Eventually, as the evidence unfolded

and was presented to him and his legal team,

he changed his version of events.

He admitted that he did conceal her body in the suitcase.

He confessed to the police that what he then did

was place Marta into the suitcase.

He walked down a distance of about half a mile

and placed the suitcase in the Grand Union Canal

near to Scrubs Lane.

The suitcase then travelled in the direction

of Little Venice down the canal for a significant period of time.

(Steve) Scrubs Lane is about 2 1/2,

maybe 3 miles from the Little Venice site

where Marta's body was ultimately found.

As a result of Kocik's account, one of the things

that the police will do is check and try

and corroborate an account that's given.

That could include CCTV.

The CCTV revealed that Kocik had walked from the home address

to the Grand Union Canal, a distance of about half a mile.

He was seen wheeling the suitcase on his way

to the canal along a number of streets past commuters

towards the canal, carrying this heavy suitcase which was so heavy.

On CCTV, you could see that the wheels were buckling.

(splashing)

(water sloshing)

He'd also taken a stick with him in an attempt

to submerge the suitcase.

(Steve) And then shortly after that,

he was seen again walking back towards his home address,

this time without the suitcase.

But from the waist down, it was noticed on the CCTV he appeared

to be wet, which would be consistent with the fact

that he had been in the canal seeking to dispose of the suitcase

in the way that he described.

This man didn't have many resources.

He didn't appear to have a vehicle.

I think if he had a vehicle, he might not have chosen the canal.

Throwing a body into a canal is a high-risk strategy

because bodies tend to be found when they're in bodies

of water that are quite small.

(Richard) While CCTV footage

confirmed Kocik's story that he'd disposed of the body,

there was more to come.

(Steve) You know, with that extra understanding of what

the events were, confirmed now by the CCTV,

that enabled the police to search areas where they knew that Kocik

had travelled, and that led to the recovery of identity

documents belonging to Marta.

Of great significance was that en route to and from the canal,

Marta's identification card was found damaged and burnt.

Again, evidence of Kocik trying to conceal her identification

from the police.

And that confirmed and corroborated

and supported the understanding of what

had taken place in Marta's death.

(Richard) With evidence that Kocik

had tried to conceal Marta's identity,

police charged him with murder.

I've prosecuted a number of homicide cases over the years,

but this case particularly stands out

in my time on the homicide unit.

The court case was a particularly horrifying one.

The prosecutor warns the jury that they

were going to hear some horrendous details and particularly

the detail that she still may be alive

when she went into the water.

In May 2015, Tomasz Kocik was charged with the murder

of his girlfriend, Marta Ligman.

Her body had been found in the Grand Union Canal

earlier in the year after a boat owner

spotted human hair coming out of a suitcase floating in the water.

The postmortem revealed a history of domestic violence.

But whilst her boyfriend admitted disposing of her body,

he denied murder.

He claimed she had died of a drug overdose.

Pathology proved that was a lie.

Five months after his arrest, Kocik was brought

before the Old Bailey in London.

Representing the case for the Crown Prosecution Service

was Senior Prosecutor Devi Kharran.

(Devi) I had been working on this case for a long time

to prepare the case to present it at trial.

A homicide prosecution requires a lot of preparation.

We have to find as much evidence as possible

to prove every element of the offence of murder

beyond reasonable doubt to prove that Kocik

was the killer of Marta.

It was a very intense atmosphere in the courtroom.

There was a lot of press and media attention surrounding this case.

I attended court when he faced trial.

It was one I covered from start to finish.

The case of Marta was a very harrowing case, just the details

of the injuries she suffered.

The prosecutor warned the jury that they were going

to hear some horrendous details.

(Devi) It was very distressing for friends and family

to have to come to court and listen to the distressing details that

were presented about Marta's life.

(Richard) The prosecution outlined the case against Kocik.

We relied on the strength of the evidence

to present a clear and coherent case to the jury.

The evidence consisted of various strands including CCTV evidence

to prove his movements at the time of her killing,

evidence of her identity card that was found

burnt and damaged, and the pathological evidence

that gave the police the indication as to how

Marta's injuries were sustained.

He clearly ruled out natural causes as a result of her death.

(Richard) The court also heard

how the obsessive and violent Kocik behaved towards Marta.

(Devi) We used the evidence of her friends

and family who provided strong evidence

of a change of demeanour in Marta.

Her behaviour had changed.

She became withdrawn, sad.

She had visible facial injuries, which caused her friends and her

manager significant concern about Kocik's controlling

and coercive behaviour.

A man like Kocik is going to want somebody like Marta

to fall for him, so he's going to present himself,

you know, as the perfect boyfriend.

You've met the one.

And he would use all his manipulative skills in doing that.

Trouble with people like Kocik is they can do that for a while.

They can't keep it up.

So they have to get that commitment from somebody like Marta very,

very quickly because they know it's all going to fall apart.

They know that their true self is going

to come out very, very quickly.

Kocik is such an extreme example

of a fixated, obsessed, and very insecure man.

He was entitled.

I own you.

You're my property.

Don't you dare try and leave me because you will pay.

(Richard) Kocik himself decided not to take the stand,

but his legal team presented his version of events.

Kocik claims he returns home from work to find Marta already dead.

He said that he believed Marta had died of a heart attack

and thought he would get blamed.

(Jane) Anybody who's in court

is going to try and defend themselves.

They don't... they don't want to go to prison.

And this has got a life sentence on the end of it.

He had to have a story for Marta being dead,

so he picks another implausible story

that Marta was a drug addict, and she had been taking drugs.

Denigrating the victim and making them

the bad person and you the victim, that is incredibly common.

(Richard) The pathology had conclusively proved drugs

played no part in Marta's death.

Kocik's case was falling apart.

(Jane) So his whole defence at court,

that he just found her dead and for some reason decided

to put her into a suitcase instead of phone the paramedics, I mean,

it's all absolutely ridiculous.

And this was not a sophisticated defence.

He's in a position now where he's proven to be a liar.

Kocik, while in court, he didn't show any remorse at all.

He was very cocky.

And the lies he told were very distressing for Marta's family,

claiming that, you know, this had happened during rough sex

and, you know, that she'd been taking drugs with him.

And obviously distressing for her friends and family

to see Kocik in the dock.

In every homicide case that we prosecute,

we have the opportunity of meeting the victim's families.

Marta's mother did provide a victim impact statement,

which was very, very sad.

(Henry) She's very tearful as she told how she was

begging this man to help look for her when all along

he was the one who killed her.

(Richard) The texts Kocik sent to Marta's friends

were also read out in court.

(Henry) Kocik sent messages to Marta's friends

to suggest that she was still alive.

He wanted to make it look like she'd left him.

And when her mother was begging him to look for her,

but he pretended that she'd just run away

and didn't want to get in touch with him.

Initially, the evidence from the telephones

went against the prosecution case because the evidence showed

that Marta's telephone was used after the prosecution say

her body was placed in the canal.

However, at trial, that evidence assisted the case

for the prosecution because it proved that,

in fact, her phone was being used by Kocik to create

a false trail for the officers.

(Richard) Kocik had proved to be

a calculated, controlling liar,

but it was Marta's body that would deliver the irrefutable evidence

of her final moments.

The autopsy revealed that some time between the evening

of the 29th of April and the 1st of May,

Kocik beat Marta unconscious in a sustained attack

that could have lasted minutes or hours or possibly even days.

When he thought she was dead, he wrapped her in curtains

and bin bags and stuffed her into a suitcase

with her head between her knees.

He then dragged the case half a mile to the canal

before dumping her in the water.

So how did Marta actually die?

The widespread heavy bruising tells us all about her last hours.

A bruise is just blood leaking from damaged blood vessels,

but it requires pressure in the bloodstream

for that leakage to occur.

Marta's body was just covered in bruises,

and it was quite clear that this could only have happened

if her heart was still beating.

Although she was alive when she received these injuries,

it was the repetitive blunt force trauma to her torso and legs

that killed her.

(Steve) It's not clear exactly at what point that took place,

but that could have taken place while she was in the suitcase,

either when Kocik was walking down towards the canal

or, indeed, after the suitcase had been placed in the canal,

which clearly raises the possibility that Marta was still

alive at either of those points.

(Henry) Some of the expert evidence

showed that some of the bruising on her body

could have been caused by her being hit by a boat

while she was still alive in that suitcase.

He warned the jury not to think of the possibilities around that.

Obviously, it's hard not to.

(Jane) Something happened for him

to think that she was dead.

I don't think that he thought by putting her in a suitcase,

that would kill her.

I think he put her in the suitcase because he thought she was dead.

He probably at that point wasn't thinking straight.

He just knew he needed to get rid of Marta's body.

The thing is with people like Kocik,

they use violence routinely.

They know how far to go.

They absolutely do know how far to go.

The idea that they take it too far one day and kill someone,

really, there's not a lot to support that.

They know when to stop.

I think whatever the challenge was that came from Marta,

it was enough that he took it far enough to kill her,

giving himself permission to kill her, in fact,

and thought that he had done exactly that.

(Richard) The jury saw through Kocik's lies.

The pathology was damning.

After deliberating for just over a day, they rejected his defence.

Tomasz Kocik was found guilty of Marta's murder.

He was convicted of murder, and he was sentenced

to 18 1/2 years as a minimum sentence recommendation

of his life sentence.

(Devi) Kocik was a very violent and dangerous man.

At trial, Kocik, from my recollection, showed no remorse.

He maintained a very cold demeanour

as he sat in the dock at the Old Bailey.

After the jury had delivered their verdict,

we were very satisfied that we had secured justice

for Marta, her family, and her friends,

and that is of paramount importance in any homicide case.

I think this case was

a classic intimate partner homicide.

Very quick.

Very intense.

In some ways, it was different

because Kocik was so extreme

in his control of Marta, and I think everybody

noticed the changes in her.

So you could... you could almost watch this

playing out from a distance.

(Henry) She'd obviously been in a very abusive relationship.

He was very controlling of her.

And instead of breaking up with her,

allowing her to go her own way,

he'd brutally beaten her and stuffed her into a suitcase

and dumped her into a canal.

Absolutely horrific.

I've prosecuted a number of homicide cases over the years,

but this case particularly stands out

in my time on the homicide unit.

Marta Ligman was a young, happy, very kind

and caring young lady who wanted to come

to London to start a new life.

The truth of what happened that night

was that Marta was subjected to a violent and brutal attack

by the man who she loved and cared for.

That particular point where Marta's body was discovered

is a part of the canal in Little Venice

that I visit frequently.

And every time I visit that point at the canal,

I always stop and think about Marta.

Tomasz Kocik had mentally and physically controlled Marta

throughout their relationship.

It ended with her murder.

He tried to claim that Marta had died of a drug overdose

and that he was innocent of her killing,

but the pathologist's report made sure the jury

saw through his lies.

Although she never spoke out in life, in death,

her body was able to reveal the truth about what had happened

and put Kocik behind bars.

Subtitles by accessibility@itv.com