All language subtitles for T.T.A.M.M.S02E08.1080p.WEB.DL.H264.BTN_track3_[eng]

(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

are revealed to you the truth
behind these murders.

(police sirens wailing)

(phone beeping)

(Dispatcher) Emergency service.

(Richard)
At the beginning of December 2012,

police in Newcastle
received a tip-off

telling them that there was
a body in a flat

in the west end of the city.

(beeping)

Neighbours had also been complaining
about a terrible smell.

(siren wails)

And when officers got there,

they found something
that was truly shocking.

(Brian Hook) Officers are
dispatched to that address.

They go to a block of flats,
to a flat on the eighth floor.

(elevator bell rings)

As the responding officers are
actually going up in the lift,

it's obvious that
something is not right.

There is an odour, a smell.

And it's one of those things
as a police officer,

once you've smelt that smell,
you will never forget it.

As they approach the address,
they smell decomposition.

The eighth-floor flat was the home
of someone called Joe Collins.

Collins opened the door.

He pointed to the bedroom
and said, "He's in there."

(Brian) In the bedroom,
there is a chest freezer.

They know that the next thing
they've got to do

is open up that chest freezer.

(Sophie) And when they open it up,
there's a body inside.

(Richard) The tenant of the flat,
Joe Collins, was arrested

and taken away for questioning.

The officers now have to

go into crime scene
preservation mode.

The most important time
of any forensic evidence

is when it's first found.

You're working for the victim.
You are the victim's voice.

If you don't get the best
forensic retrieval possible,

you're losing evidence.

You lose evidence, potentially,
you lose the case.

(Sophie) This would've been a really
unusual crime scene for police.

Here, you have a body
inside a freezer,

up in a high tower-block flat.

But they somehow have to
get the body out for examination.

To get that chest freezer

into that apartment
would have been an operation.

But to get that freezer out of
that apartment many floors up,

with critical evidence
contained within it,

must have been
an extremely difficult operation.

(Brian)
You're on the eighth floor.

It's got to go in the lift.

So it's going to have
to go on one end.

And the danger there is even
though the contents are frozen,

there may be some leakage.

It needs to be taken as quickly
as possible to the mortuary

so that you are in a controlled,
sterile environment

when eventually
you remove the victim.

The perpetrator's
actually helped you.

They have actually frozen
your forensic evidence for you.

Any blood, any DNA, any fibres,

all there, still and frozen.

(Richard) Once the body's
been brought to the mortuary,

the pathologist's
real work can begin.

This means finding out who it was
and how they died.

This body had been tightly
wrapped in a blanket

and crammed into a freezer.

And of course, it was frozen solid.

(Kenny) The challenge is,
for the pathologist in this case,

was the fact that the body's
decomposition was such that

there was fluids frozen
to the bottom of the freezer.

It was very hard for them
to pinpoint exactly when he died.

(Richard) It took a long time
for the body to thaw out

and reveal a white middle-aged man
in his 60s.

But how had he died?

Sometimes the cause of death
is immediately obvious,

but not in this case.

When I'm working
on a case like this,

I always work methodically,
starting at the head

and moving slowly down the body,
looking everywhere

for any marks or injuries
that might help me

understand the cause of death

and also if a crime
had been committed.

There are a number of injuries
to the head

and there was bruising
to the central chest

and extensive bruising to
the muscles of the back.

The question here is
were they caused by an assault

or by some kind of fall?

One thing is certain, though,

is that no single injury was enough
to cause death.

And that's quite intriguing.

The grim hunt for clues about
the cause of death continued.

But in the meantime,
detectives had identified the body.

It was local pensioner,
Peter McMahon.

(Brian) The victim was a
68-year-old retired civil servant.

He retired from the Civil Service
when he was 50.

(Sophie) He was a man who had
done quite well for himself

in his working life.

He had two pensions from his jobs,
so he was comfortably off.

(Kenny) Peter McMahon was
just a lovely guy.

Anybody who knew him
said the same thing:

that he always had time
for people.

He was very generous.

(Sophie)
He would give money to charity.

He was someone that
people genuinely did like,

and I think with good reason.

(Kenny) He was a very friendly,
Geordie guy

who liked nothing more than
a visit to the pub

and some banter with his mates.

He was just one of
those likeable guys

that nobody had
a bad word to say about.

(Brian)
Peter had previously been married.

He had two grown-up sons who
didn't live in the local area.

They lived some distance away.

(Sophie) One had moved to London,
and one had moved to New Zealand,

so he lived alone in Newcastle.

He didn't have any family around.

He didn't really
have anyone to rely on,

anyone looking out for him.

So he was quite a solitary figure.

So he started to become a regular
at the Metropolitan Bar

in the West End of the city.

And he'd very much became
one of the locals there.

The people in the pub pretty much
became like family to him.

(Richard)
It's here detectives discovered

that Peter met
44-year-old Sharon Swinhoe.

(Sophie)
He was attracted to her.

She was a woman
much younger than he was,

and she very quickly seemed to
get some kind of hold over Peter.

He was... he was very much
drawn to her.

(Kenny) They met one evening,

and he was completely
entranced by her.

They got on.
They got on well.

And before long,
they started seeing each other.

(Kevin Browne)
Peter was 20 years her senior.

Now, that gap in a relationship

is usually associated
not just with intimacy

but with a sense of paternal care,

that she expected him to provide
like a father would...

to provide money and to
have no limits to that,

to provide her with good times
and good clothes, jewellery.

And that expectation
led to a symbiotic relationship.

He liked to furnish her
with good things

and she appreciated it.

In the beginning,
it was just a friendship.

And it became more intimate
the more he spent money on her.

(Sophie) A lot of Peter's friends

were concerned about
this relationship.

They didn't think that what
Peter believed it to be

was what it actually was.

But really,
he wanted a future with her,

and he wanted to make
this relationship work.

(Kenny) Peter loved Swinhoe.

He bought her an engagement ring,
a very expensive engagement ring.

And he really did sort of,
you know, dance to her tune.

He would do anything for her.

(Richard) Meanwhile,
detectives were making inquiries

about Joe Collins,

the man who'd stored
Peter's frozen body in his flat.

They made a surprising discovery.

(Sophie) Joe Collins has been
infatuated with Swinhoe

for ten years.

He was besotted with her.

He wanted a relationship with her,

and he would do
whatever she asked.

(Richard) In December 2012,

the frozen corpse
of pensioner Peter McMahon

was found in a flat in Newcastle.

He had extensive bruising
and injuries to his head

but no confirmed cause of death.

Could his body reveal
any more truths

about what had happened to him?

We need to determine
whether the injuries

were the result of an accident or
if they were caused by an attack.

And to answer that question,

we need to look more closely
at the body.

And it's the injuries to the face
that are most revealing.

In this case, all of the muscles
underlying the skin

of the deep soft tissues
are damaged by blunt-force trauma,

and there's extensive bruising
all over the face,

but it's most prominent
to the left-hand side.

But more importantly,
as we look deeper

into the structure of the face,
when we look at the bones,

we begin to see the areas
that were fractured,

indicating severe force.

Not only is the nose broken,
but if you look here,

you can see the fracture
of the jaw.

And in the orbital bone
around the left eye,

there's another fracture.

So what we have here is
a number of blows,

each with sufficient force
to break bone.

This was no accident.

Peter suffered multiple injuries
to his face,

most likely punches and kicks.

But these injuries are clearly
very serious ones.

But even so, they're not enough
to explain the death of this man.

So we still haven't
answered the question...

what was it that did kill him?

The extent of Peter's injuries
confirmed this was foul play.

(Kenny) The scale of the injuries
to Peter were really severe.

He was black and blue,
he'd been kicked in his testes,

and his body was in a terrible,
terrible state.

(Richard) With the cause of death
still a mystery,

police made a breakthrough
in the investigation.

They discovered Joe Collins,
the tenant of the flat,

knew Peter's girlfriend,
Sharon Swinhoe.

(Brian) He's known her
and had a relationship with her

for ten years.

He desperately wants
that relationship

to be a sexual relationship,
but Swinhoe doesn't allow that.

(Kenny) She always led him on.

She always let him think
there might have been a chance.

He had learning difficulties.
She exploited those.

(Sophie) He was known to sometimes
be on the phone to her

for hours on end.

He would do anything she asked,
and he was under her control.

(Brian)
Once he is under her control...

there's no letting go.

You can only imagine that

Joe Collins wouldn't have liked
Swinhoe having Peter in her life.

He would have been jealous.

This was essentially
a love rival to him.

(Richard) But it was Peter McMahon
Swinhoe had more interest in.

(Sophie) In some ways,
Swinhoe probably

saw Peter as a sugar daddy.

He was someone
much older than her.

He had a reasonable amount
of money in the bank,

and someone that
she could easily manipulate

to maybe get her hands
on that money.

(Kenny)
As the relationship progressed,

a few cracks began to develop.

And Peter was spending
lots of money on Swinhoe

to the point that
he had very little money left.

He spoke to a bank clerk
and told the clerk that

his girlfriend was
bleeding him dry, you know.

He could see it happening,
but he somehow couldn't stop it.

(Brian) All was not sweetness
and light in this relationship.

It had periods where
it was quite volatile.

They would argue
and it was an on-off relationship.

They would split up, and then
they'd get back together again.

(Sophie) Peter was totally blind
to Swinhoe's real intentions.

He was in love with her.

(Brian) The relationship
would be become violent.

Peter told friends of his
that at one point,

she actually came at him
with a knife.

But Peter went back to her
even after that,

and things started to escalate.

(Sophie) Swinhoe actually made an
allegation of rape against Peter,

and he was interviewed by police
about this.

We can only imagine that
Peter would have been devastated

and mortified by this.

He was a kind, generous,
law-abiding man.

You have to wonder
why Swinhoe would

make such a serious allegation
against Peter.

Was this a way to get rid of him?
Did she no longer want him around?

Or was this just another way
to exert control over him?

(Richard) No charges were
ever brought against Peter.

But the accusation left its mark.

(Kevin) Peter was devastated.

And he attempted even
to commit suicide

as a result of this allegation,
which really was the first sign

that she had another side to her
that saw him negatively.

(Sophie)
Even after Swinhoe had

made this serious allegation
of rape against Peter,

he still wanted
to get back with her.

Again, his friends warned him off,
warned him not to stay with her.

One of them actually went as far
as to say that,

"If you stay with her,
you'll end up in a box."

But Peter still
wanted to be with her.

(Richard) Police still
didn't know how Peter died,

but there was a clue
to when he died.

One of the items of evidence

that police recovered from
Peter's body was his wristwatch.

Peter's wristwatch was still set
to British Summer Time.

This means that Peter was dead

before the end
of the British Summer Time period,

the end of October.

(clock ticking)

(Richard) This tied in with
the last-known sighting of Peter

that detectives could trace.

(Brian) On the 18th of October,

Peter takes a taxi
from his home address.

He's dressed up to the nines.

He's on his way to meet Swinhoe.

(Kevin) After a short separation,
he was invited to her house,

which he must have been
really excited and pleased about,

thinking that it was his chance
for reconciliation.

(Sophie)
He even told the taxi driver

that he was going
to get back together

with his much younger girlfriend.

He was clearly excited about this.

But after he was dropped off,
he was never seen again.

(Richard) So what happened to Peter
after he reached Swinhoe's address?

Could his frozen body,
found in Collins's apartment,

yield more clues about where
and when he died?

The body was surrounded
by frozen liquid in the freezer,

which would suggest that
decomposition had taken place

some days or weeks before.

And this could have suggested that
Peter was killed somewhere else

and then taken to the flat and
put into the freezer after death.

CCTV around Collins's flat,

filmed in the month
after Peter's disappearance,

was to give police
the breakthrough they needed.

(Sophie)
CCTV shows Swinhoe, Collins,

and a third man arriving
at the flat with a large suitcase.

(elevator bell rings)

(Brian)
Swinhoe, for some reason,

has actually tried to
disguise herself by wearing a wig.

But it is so obviously her.

(Sophie)
They get in the lift,

and they go up to
where Collins lived.

Collins holds the door open
for them.

There's no question at all that
these three are working together.

(Richard) Detectives identified
the third figure in the footage

as 77-year-old Ronald Douglas,

another man
romantically linked with Swinhoe.

(Kenny) Their relationship was
built around a sexual relationship

that had happened
a couple of times previously.

And Douglas still wanted
something to happen.

He wasn't ready to give it up,

and Swinhoe wasn't
remotely interested

in picking that up again.

But just like Collins,
she kept Douglas hanging around,

somebody else to
build into her web.

So he was just another pawn
in her game.

(Kevin)
What we do know about Sharon

is she was very skilled
at manipulating men,

at getting men to do what
she wanted them to do.

Now, that manipulativeness
is a characteristic

that some personality disorders
have.

(Sophie)
You can see on the CCTV

that Douglas is dragging
the suitcase behind him,

and it clearly contains
something heavy.

Peter's blood and DNA were
later found on the suitcase,

which obviously proved that
that's how his body got there.

(Richard) In the light
of this new evidence,

police reconsidered the tip-off
that had led them to Peter's body.

It came from none other
than Sharon Swinhoe.

(three dial tones beep)

(Dispatcher) Emergency service.

(Brian) On the 1st of December,
the police receive a 999 call.

Nothing is said during the call.

It's silent.

And then, the receiver, whoever
is making the call, is put down.

(Sophie) It's normal practise
in these situations

where police get a call
where no-one speaks

for officers to try
and trace the address,

find out where the call
is coming from,

and go to check that there's
not someone in danger there.

(Brian)
That call was made by Swinhoe.

When police arrive
and speak to Swinhoe,

she tells them that
she has information

as to where they could
find Peter's body.

(Sophie) She tells police
that she believes

Peter is in a flat
in the West End.

But then she says she hasn't seen
or heard from him for two months.

(Brian) She also tells them

that the person that lives there
has been harassing her.

(Kenny) She was, there and then,

putting in the groundwork
to deflect the blame to Collins,

somebody that she had manipulated
for almost a decade

and somebody that
I think she thought

might also take the blame
for this.

(Brian) What she's actually
saying to the police

as part of that deflection is,
"I'm a victim here.

I'm not a suspect."

It would be fair to describe
Swinhoe as a female Svengali.

She had this ability to recognise

what the men's vulnerabilities
were and to actually exploit them.

She had them
eating out of her hand.

(Richard)
Following the CCTV find,

Swinhoe and Douglas
were also arrested

and a search started immediately
at Swinhoe's home.

Nothing could prepare police
for what they would uncover.

(Brian) You think that
you've seen everything.

And then something comes along
and you just wonder

about man's inhumanity
to their fellow man.

It just beggars belief.

(Richard)
In Newcastle, 2012,

Peter McMahon's body revealed
injuries to his head and face.

Now his remains were
about to give up

more gruesome secrets
about his death.

We know that Peter's body
was found in the freezer

and there were extensive injuries
all over his torso and his face,

but that none of these injuries
were severe enough

to cause his death.

But we also know something else

about what happened
in Peter's last hours

because someone had attempted
to gouge out his eyes.

Now, what we see of the eyes
when we look at someone

is really only a very
small part of it.

In fact, the eyeball itself

is about the size
of a ping-pong ball,

and it's surrounded by six muscles

that control the movements
and the actions of the eye.

And then, the whole thing
is encased in a bony cavity

called the eye socket that provides
structure and support to the eye,

as you can see here.

And then, of course,
the whole of the outside of this

is then covered
by the skin of the face,

with the eyelids providing
that ultimate outer protection.

So removing an eyeball
is difficult.

It takes a lot of effort,
and it must be a deliberate act.

What this tells us
is that Peter was

subject to a long
and sustained attack,

and the truth revealed
by his broken body

is that he was tortured.

(Sophie) The attack on Peter
was absolutely brutal

and, no doubt, would have
been absolutely terrifying.

(Brian)
It shows a level of callousness

where there's no understanding

of what this person
might be suffering

or the pain that
they may be suffering.

(Sophie)
This wasn't just an attack where

someone was trying
to kill someone.

It was degrading.
It was humiliating.

(Brian) The sort of person
that would premeditate,

plan that, and do that

would be someone
with a personality disorder,

probably of an anti-social kind,
antagonistic kind,

where you actually will enjoy
sadism or harm or pain of others.

(Richard) Police were still
questioning Peter's girlfriend,

Sharon Swinhoe, about the killing.

(Brian) To go as far as to try
and gouge his eyes out

is particularly callous.

If it was Sharon, the basis of
her intimacy with him was money.

And I think possibly,
there was some underlying cause

that related to her
hating him seeing her naked.

And she found this distasteful

and therefore, one part of
the body that she wanted to attack

was that part of the body
that saw her.

(Richard) But to build
a case against Swinhoe

and her henchmen,
Joe Collins and Ronald Douglas,

detectives needed to
find the murder scene.

(Sophie) It quickly became
clear to police that

Joe Collins's flat was not where
Peter was attacked

and not where he died.

(Richard)
So scenes of crime officers

directed their search to the place
Peter was last seen alive:

going into Sharon Swinhoe's house
in the east of the city.

(Brian) They look for things like
blood splashes,

very minute details
to give them clues

of what might have gone on.

(Richard) The search drew
investigators to the bathroom.

The curtain rail was damaged,

and there were blood spatters
in the bathtub itself.

(Richard) DNA analysis revealed
the blood belonged to Peter,

proving this was where he died.

And there was more.

(Kenny)
There was a catalogue of clues

that led to police suspecting
that Swinhoe and Collins

had been guilty of this.

Collins had been in the house
at the time.

And after the sustained attack,

Collins and Swinhoe
then worked together

to decide what to do
with Peter's body.

(birds singing)

This was Newcastle, and the ground
was particularly hard.

It had been quite cold,
quite frosty.

There was some talk that they were
trying to dig a grave for him

in the back garden
but they couldn't

because it was just
too difficult to break the ground.

So they put Peter's body in
a dog kennel in the backyard.

They covered it in blankets

and they put air fresheners
around the body.

(Brian) His body was
just discarded there.

Never mind the fact that
he'd been murdered anyway.

They treated him with
total disrespect and disregard.

(Sophie) Peter's body stayed there
for more than a month.

(Brian)
Because of the passage of time,

decomposition has set in.

And with that, as well
as the changes of the body,

comes an odour.

(Kenny) A neighbour's dog was
scratching the fence

next to the kennel
for days and days

because all it could smell was the
odours coming from that kennel.

And Peter McMahon lay
in that dog kennel

for goodness knows how long.

(Brian)
They now have a problem.

They have a dead body
on their hands.

And somehow, they have
to get rid of that body.

(Sophie) At this point, they made
the decision to move the body,

and it was stored in a suitcase

and taken over
to the West End of the city.

(Richard) A taxi driver
told police he picked up Swinhoe

at her home a month
after Peter's disappearance

with an unusually heavy suitcase.

She was dropped off
to meet Ronald Douglas.

(Kenny) She told him that Peter's
body was inside that suitcase,

and she needed Douglas to drive
her across town to Collins' flat.

(Brian) In actually taking
Peter's body to that flat,

all they've actually done is
given themselves more problems.

Neighbours start to complain
about the smell.

It's explained by blocked drains
and toilets.

But of course,
there is also infestation

with flies and maggots that are
also happening at this point.

Their solution is to go
and buy a chest freezer.

(Sophie) Collins bought a freezer
second-hand for around £80.

He asked for it to be delivered
to his home, but unusually,

once the heavy item had got there,

he didn't allow it to
be taken into his flat.

He asked for it to be left
in the corridor outside.

(Brian)
They even moved it in themselves.

The freezer is then
put into the bedroom, plugged in,

and Peter's body
is put in the freezer.

(fan whirring)

(Kevin)
One of the most common ways

of disposing a body is
to put it in a freezer

and lock the freezer
so it's out of sight, out of mind.

And there is this notion that

the freezer will
keep the body cold

and that the decomposition
will be less and the smell less,

which, after time, is not true.

It would begin to leak through
the small spaces of the freezer

and begin to fill the room
with a decomposition smell.

(Sophie) Somehow, Swinhoe managed
to get such a hold over Collins

that he was willing to have
this body stored at his home.

(Brian)
I've seen a lot of strange things

and circumstances in my career.

But I've never come
across anybody that

knows that the end of the day,

they're going to go
into the bedroom to sleep

knowing that next to them
is a freezer that contains...

a dead body.

And I just...

I'm at a loss for words as to how

a human being can reconcile that.

(Richard)
The search at Swinhoe's home

revealed yet more about her deceit.

(Kenny) They found lots of cash
hidden around the house.

There were wads of cash
in drawers, £2,500 in drawers.

You know, that's cash that she had
drained from Peter's bank accounts

after he had died.

(Brian)
One of the functions of his death

was to access his money,
as we know,

and she was financially driven.

But of course,
you can only access his money

and take money from his
bank accounts without suspicion

if it appeared
as if he was still alive.

(Richard)
Police even found evidence that

Swinhoe had
broken into Peter's home.

(Kenny) Swinhoe needed
to cover her tracks.

She needed to explain
why Peter wasn't around.

So she packed a suitcase
full of his clothes

to make out that
he was about to leave town.

(Brian)
She even goes to the extent

getting one of her accomplices
to collect Peter's medication

so nobody's going to be alarmed,

nobody's going to worry, why is
he not collecting his medication?

(Kenny) They also found wigs

and other things
she used to disguise herself

as she went about her business
after she'd killed Peter.

(phone buzzing)

(Sophie)
When friends called Peter,

Swinhoe would answer the phone.

She would make up excuses
and tell lies.

But she told people
that he no longer

wanted contact
with his old friends.

But this wasn't the
Peter that they knew.

(Brian) And it's all
to continue that deception,

her scheming, evil deception
that Peter's still here

and nothing is wrong,
nothing has changed.

It's all just a facade.

(Richard) But Swinhoe's
worst deception was revealed

when detectives interviewed
one of Peter's sons.

(Sophie) Peter had been excited
about becoming a grandfather.

And when his son in New Zealand
rang to tell him

that the baby had been born,
Swinhoe answered the phone.

She said that Peter was asleep and
simply couldn't come to the phone.

(phone buzzing)

(Richard)
Peter's son continued phoning,

but his calls went unanswered.

(Sophie) Obviously by this point,
he was dead.

(Kevin) She was what people
would say cold-blooded.

Those are the characteristics of
callousness and deceitfulness.

And she showed those
after his death

in the way she manipulated his
bank accounts and accessed them.

And the way that she pretended
he was still alive

shows a level of just
not showing any empathy

or concern for this individual
at all.

And those four things,

hostility, callousness,
deceitfulness, and manipulation,

would strongly suggest she had an
anti-social personality disorder.

(Brian) And all of this so that
she can start withdrawing money

from his bank accounts,
so she can fleece him,

even though he's dead.

(Richard) With the weight
of evidence against them,

Sharon Swinhoe, Joseph Collins,
and Ronald Douglas

were all charged
with Peter's murder.

But his body would reveal the truth

when his killers
finally faced justice.

(Brian) It came as no surprise
to me that during the trial,

all three defendants
turned on each other.

(Richard) In Newcastle,

Sharon Swinhoe
and her two accomplices,

Joseph Collins
and Ronald Douglas,

had been charged with the murder
of pensioner Peter McMahon.

He'd clearly been tortured.

He had extensive bruising,
broken bones.

He'd even had his eyes gouged out.

That wasn't going to be enough
to get a conviction for murder.

For a murder charge to stick
against Swinhoe and Collins,

police needed a cause of death.

We know that the injuries
Peter suffered,

although horrific, would not
obviously have killed him.

The postmortem
determined that Peter

had suffered a cardiac arrest.

But to convict the assailants
of murder,

the prosecution had to prove
that it was their actions

that had caused his heart to stop.

So can torture actually
cause a cardiac arrest?

The answer lies
in the autonomic nervous system,

a series of signals
that automatically control

the most basic functions
of the body.

Here's one part of that system,
the vagus nerve,

that runs directly from the brain
to the heart.

And it's electrical impulses
from that nerve

that help the heart beat correctly.

But if someone jumps out
and gives you a sudden fright,

it's also the autonomic system

that creates that sudden
surge of adrenaline

that makes your heart
beat instantly faster.

But with a sustained level
of pain and fear

that Peter was experiencing,

his body was already flooded
with adrenaline.

And so when the attempt was
made to gouge out his eyes,

the extra terror and fear were
too much for his heart to take.

And that's what killed him.

Finally, Peter's killers
were brought before a court.

(Kenny) This was a trial
that Newcastle Crown Court,

I don't think,
had seen in a number of years,

you know, such was the severity
of what had happened.

There was an awful lot of interest
in that courtroom.

(Richard)
Swinhoe, Collins, and Douglas

pleaded not guilty to murder.

(Kenny) They didn't flinch.
They looked forward.

They didn't look at anybody.
They didn't look at each other.

It was extremely interesting
to see the dynamic

because we'd heard stories
of this femme fatale

that had power
over these two guys,

and she was stood in the middle
of them in the dock.

There was a real tension.

(Richard) The prosecution outlined
their victim's final hours.

(Brian) The taxi drops Peter off
at Swinhoe's house.

Peter's happy.

He's under the impression
that this is a reconciliation.

He's going to get back together
again with his girlfriend.

And nothing could be
further from the truth.

(Richard) The real motive,
it seems, was to demand more money.

(Sophie) When Peter arrived
at Swinhoe's home,

Swinhoe wasn't alone.

Joe Collins was
waiting for him there.

(Kenny) And immediately,

Peter must have known
that something wasn't right.

(Richard) Peter, it's believed,
refused to stump up any more cash.

(Kenny) Swinhoe took him
to the upstairs bathroom

and launched a tirade
of punches and kicks.

She gouged his eyes to
the point that

his eyes were almost gouged out.

It was just
an unbelievable assault.

(Brian) He would have been tearful

and emotionally shocked
at what she was doing.

And that may have been
too much for Sharon

because she doesn't understand
the concept of showing emotion,

being personality-disordered,

and therefore would have reacted
in a violent way,

seeing it as a threat to her.

(Kenny)
The evidence in this trial

was probably some of the
most harrowing evidence

I've ever come up against,
I've ever had to report on.

(Sophie) When we heard the extent
of Peter's injuries,

it was just sickening.

It wasn't something that we'd
ever really come across before.

(Kenny) I don't think
I've been in a courtroom

before where journalists were
crying as they heard evidence.

And that's exactly what happened
in this case.

Peter's family were in
the courtroom every day,

listening to what
had happened to him.

And on one particular day

as the injuries were described
to the jury,

it was just too much for his son

and he collapsed in the courtroom
and he left.

(Richard)
But Peter's killer, Swinhoe,

kept trying to pull strings
from behind bars.

(Kenny) Collins' legal team
had said that in the prison van

leaving court the previous night,

Swinhoe had been having
conversations with Collins,

urging him to plead guilty
to manslaughter,

telling him to take the blame.

And I think at that point,

Collins knew that
this woman had never,

ever had any feelings for him,

that he was just a pawn
in her game.

And Collins was infuriated
by that.

(Richard)
The defendants turned on each other

when they took the stand.

(Kenny) Collins did give evidence
against Swinhoe

and very much tried
to tell the story that

he had played no part,
really, in this,

and that it was
Swinhoe's responsibility.

Swinhoe, for her part, did exactly
the same and blamed it on Collins.

It was dog-eat-dog.

(Richard) Swinhoe also tried

using her powers of manipulation
on the jury.

(Kenny) Swinhoe alleged
that Peter had raped her,

and she said that that
is the type of abuse

that she had to contend with
in this relationship,

that this was an act, somehow,
of self-defence in a way,

that this was a woman
who'd been driven to it.

(Brian) What she was saying was,
"I'm the victim here.

I've got nothing to do with
what happened to Peter."

And nothing could be further
from the truth.

(Richard) The eye-gouging
that triggered Peter's death

was finally pinned on Swinhoe

thanks to evidence
from her fellow inmates.

(Brian) Swinhoe boasted in prison

about the blood that was
under her fingernails

after she'd gouged out
Peter's eyes.

She was the main player.
She was the catalyst, undoubtedly.

(Kevin) There are a number
of facts that suggest that

this was premeditated
and planned:

one, that she involved
two other men

and they, too, seemed to have

an affection for her
that she manipulated.

And their involvement means that
this was all a planned activity.

(Sophie) Swinhoe was someone
who had the ability

to control and manipulate
the people around her,

especially the men around her.

For some reason, she managed to
attract men, often much older men,

and control them,
got them to do things for her.

In fact, in court,
the judge described her

as being someone who could
attract men like magnets,

and then she was able to control
them once she had done so.

(Richard) At the end
of a gruelling six-week trial,

the jury delivered their verdict.

Sharon Swinhoe and
Joseph Collins were

found guilty of Peter's murder.

(Kenny)
When the verdicts came back,

there was a sense of relief
among the family of Peter

and among the journalists as well

that this had come
to some sort of conclusion

because we felt that justice
needed to be done in this case.

(Richard)
Swinhoe, the master manipulator,

was gaoled for a minimum
of 25 years...

her accomplice, Collins,
a minimum of 20 years.

(Kenny)
Swinhoe remained the same way

that she had been
throughout the trial.

She looked dead ahead.
She was expressionless.

She showed no reaction
and no remorse.

(Brian) Swinhoe and Collins
received life imprisonment.

The judge made comment
at the sentencing

that the murder was a brutal,
callous, sadistic murder.

(Kenny) The judge said to Swinhoe

she loved her rats
more than she loved Peter.

And that was probably
one of the most

powerful summing-up statements
I've ever heard,

and he nailed it, bang on.

(Richard) Ronald Douglas, though,
was cleared of Peter's killing.

(Brian) Douglas received
11 years' imprisonment

for preventing
the lawful burial of Peter.

The 11-year sentence was reduced
to four years due to his age.

He was 77 when he was convicted.

(Richard) But justice had at last
been served on Peter's killer.

(Sophie)
She obviously let him believe

that this might be a relationship.

She strung him along, and she'd
clearly seen a chance with Peter

to take advantage of him.

(Brian)
She was only interested in people

that could serve her ends.

How can this person
get me what I want?

That's what she was -
cunning, manipulative.

Nothing more, nothing less.

(Sophie)
From everyone we've spoken to,

Peter just seemed like
a lovely man.

He didn't deserve to die,

and he definitely didn't deserve
to die in this way.

And Swinhoe's never shown
any remorse for that at all.

(Richard) Swinhoe
didn't live out her sentence.

Eight years later in 2021,

she was struck down
by COVID in prison

and later died in hospital.

But her crimes left their mark
on the northeast of England.

(Sophie) Peter's murder
is probably one of the most

disturbing cases that
we've had in Newcastle,

just the sheer violence.

(Kenny) There's very little, I
think, shocks people in Newcastle.

This crime... this crime
shocked people in Newcastle.

It shocked them at the time.

It shocks them still to this day,

the brutality that happened
here in their city.

That this had happened
almost in broad daylight

in front of their eyes.

This just beggars belief.

(Richard) What Peter endured
in the final hours of his life

must have been truly horrific.

But his body revealed the truth of
what had really happened to him -

how the horrific
gouging of Peter's eyes

had pushed his heart
to breaking point

and led to his death.

And from that, prosecutors
were able to get justice

by securing a murder conviction.

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