Original subtitles

When a murder is 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,

including on some of the most high profile cases of recent times.

I've learnt that the dead don't hide the truth and they never lie.

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

From a state of the art laboratory with ground-breaking technology

that uses digitally scanned sample bodies,

I'll be investigating a series of intriguing murders

where, from the victim's bodies,

I'll be revealing to you the truth behind those horrific crimes.

(camera shutter clicks)

'The small historic fishing village of Mumbles

sits on the outskirts of Swansea in South Wales.'

'Its idyllic seaside setting is popular with tourists

and is the gateway to the beautiful Gower peninsula.'

Lesley and Derek Potter, happily married

and expecting their next grandchild,

were at the heart of that close-knit community.

Yet on the 7th of April 2018 Derek found Lesley dead.

She'd apparently hung herself from a beam in their home.

But had Lesley committed suicide

or had something more sinister occurred?

'And could her body help reveal the truth?'

'Lesley and Derek Potter lived together on a quiet street

rising up behind the seafront.'

Mumbles is definitely an aspirational place to live,

the house prices here are quite sky high,

lots of people have second homes here.

It's quite quiet, idyllic.

(Sheppard) 'On the evening of Friday 6th of April 2018,

the Potter family were all out enjoying a meal

at The George pub in Mumbles.'

Lesley and Derek liked visiting different pubs in Mumbles

that were quite close to their home.

They visited The George pub with their children and grandchildren,

had a family meal together.

According to staff, everything seemed normal.

'But the next morning, this happy family was torn apart.'

'Derek got up earlier and made Lesley a cup of tea

before heading out to run some errands.'

'When he returned his wife was not in bed,

so he searched the house and found her in the back bedroom,

hanging, in an apparent suicide.'

Derek said that morning he went out

to go and collect some money that he was owed from a roofing job

and was stuck in traffic in Mumbles for around 20 minutes,

and came back to find his wife hanging naked in the back room,

which he referred to as his workshop.

(phone rings)

He called his daughter Nicole at 11.22am,

two minutes later she called for an ambulance.

(siren wails)

After Derek hung up on his daughter, he called the emergency services

and when they asked him if he needed an ambulance,

he said, "No, the person is dead."

Only about half of the people who commit suicide

actually leave a suicide note.

Probably a way of revealing their inner turmoil

and their desire to make the ultimate decision.

In Lesley's case, no note was found.

And when the police examined the scene,

they found no suspicious circumstances

and nothing to contradict Derek's story.

So Lesley's body was taken to the local mortuary

for a routine post-mortem examination.

When she was examined, a noose was found on the body

and that would explain the marks that were found

which I can show you on this sample body,

which was described as a five millimetre deep furrow

to the front of the neck.

But which also extended up the sides of the neck,

up behind the ears on both sides,

and these are typical of the marks caused by a ligature in hanging.

Hanging causes death in a very particular way,

it causes death by resulting in pressure to the nerves in the neck,

particularly a nerve called the vagus nerve,

which travels down and affects the heart.

And stimulation of the vagus nerve by pressure causes the heart to stop

and so death can occur very quickly indeed in hanging.

The pathologist who examined Lesley

found no evidence to contradict Derek's account

and so her body was released to the funeral directors for cremation.

'Lesley's suicide stunned the family,

who to the outside world had seemed to be so regular.'

Lesley and Derek Potter married in 1992

and had been together for 26 years.

They had three children, five grandchildren and one on the way.

This was their second marriage.

I think Lesley came originally from Bristol, the West Country,

but we don't really know much about her background

or about his background, to be honest.

They had run a cafe together in Mumbles

and then in their later years together

Derek became a carpenter/tradesman,

doing odd jobs and roofing and things like that.

'Their daughter Nicole, who was four months pregnant,

had recently become friends with a woman who lived locally.'

I met Nicole in the pub, she started chatting to me first

and I make friends with everyone, I started talking to her

and ever since we became friends, quite good friends.

We went out together a lot, we went partying, you know,

we went to a friend's house, having parties there.

So yeah, we went out quite a lot together.

'Shortly after meeting Nicole, Natalia met her parents.'

Lesley was a really happy person.

She was kind, um, genuine person.

I mean she took me one day home and drove me all the way home,

and she was really nice, we had a lovely chat.

She was looking forward to having another grandkid.

I met Derek first time in Nicole's house.

I was sitting on the sofa chatting to Nicole,

um, just playing with Nicole's son,

and then Derek walks in through the door

and Derek sits down, has a cup of tea, has a cigarette.

Um...

Let's just say he, Derek, seemed interested in me

if you know what I mean?

He seemed nice but he was always, at that point,

staring at me and looking at me.

So I was a bit awkward at that time,

and I was really quite wary about him.

You know, just was interested in another younger woman

if you know what I mean?

'When her mother was found dead, Nicole called Natalia.'

Nicole was the first person that told me

that Lesley committed suicide.

Nicole, Lesley's daughter, received that phone call from Derek.

She must have been in a complete state of shock.

Nicole was crying on the phone

and all I could say to her,

anything at all, I'll be there for her.

How devastating it must have been for her

to find out that her mother's died from suicide

and she was four months pregnant at the time. Terrible.

For Nicole it was devastating,

you know, Nicole was, she was really, really sad.

'Their shock was compounded by the fact there was no suicide note

left by Lesley, explaining why she would take her own life.'

When the emergency services arrived,

Derek claimed that he'd tried to revive her

but Lesley was found dead, naked,

lying on a cabinet with the noose still round her neck.

'Police were there and questioned Derek initially.'

(police officer)

When police got there they found Derek Potter, upset,

although it was noted perhaps not as upset as you might expect.

He wasn't crying.

Paramedics straight away noted something odd,

Lesley Potter was found naked laying on a table in the workshop,

and the paramedic who first responded said,

he'd been sadly to many hangings over the years

and he'd never seen a naked person hang themselves.

The scene was photographed,

his account was taken and then the body was taken away.

There were no suspicious circumstances.

It just shows you never really know what's going on behind closed doors.

On the 7th of April 2018

Lesley Potter was found hanged at home in Mumbles, South Wales.

She was found by her husband Derek

and her death seemed to come out of the blue.

'Derek appeared quite calm when speaking with police officers.'

(police officer) How long were you married to Lesley for?

Twenty years.

25 years, 26 years.

But the authorities had no reason to suspect that anything was amiss.

'However Lesley's body would have its own story to tell.'

'Derek Potter had a troubled past.'

'He had previous convictions, including violent offences.'

People who were friends with Derek, have reported in local press

that after a few drinks

that he became quite erratic and confrontational.

In the years leading up to Lesley's death

Derek had actually given up drink

and had tried to control that behaviour.

But just before Lesley's death, according to her friends,

he had started drinking again

and was often seen frequenting The George pub with Lesley.

'But by all accounts, Lesley seemed to be enjoying life.'

Lesley was in a really good place, she was a really happy woman,

and she was over the moon that she was going to have another grandkid.

Everything was normal with the family, as far as I know.

Nicole never ever said that, you know,

she argued with her family or anything like that.

'Lesley did have some physical health issues.'

She wasn't very well, she had massive arthritis on her fingers,

she couldn't move her fingers really well.

I think she had problems with her legs.

'But three days before her death she was out shopping

and moving around without too much difficulty.'

'The morning Lesley was found dead

Derek said she had come home from the shops upset.'

He said that she had been to a pharmacy to get her pain medication

but had been denied the usual strong medication

and was quite upset about this.

'The pharmacy had no recollection of this

and Derek's accounts of his movements that morning

appeared to have some holes in it.'

Derek had said that on that morning

he had been collecting money from a job

and that he'd been stuck in traffic for 20 minutes in Mumbles.

The CCTV from the area showed free moving traffic,

he was not stuck in traffic. No way.

'Was there more to this death than suicide?'

'Only Lesley's body could give any clues.'

Derek told police he'd found Lesley hanging

and he'd cut her down and laid her on the cabinet.

He also said he'd performed CPR.

When injuries from CPR are present, they're pretty obvious

and you find them in the muscles on the front of the chest,

but also when CPR has been performed with some force

you can find fractures of the breast bone and of the ribs,

but it's all in the front of the chest.

But sometimes no injuries are present at all,

even though we know resuscitation has been performed.

To see if any further injuries were present

a more detailed examination would have been necessary.

But the routine examination raised no issues.

They'd established a cause of death,

asphyxiation by hanging.

And so no further questions were asked.

'Still in a state of shock Nicole and the family

started preparing for the funeral.'

'Nicole's friend Natalia was a huge support.'

After Lesley died Natalia offered her condolences

to the family and offered to help in any way that she could.

So she started doing some cleaning for the family

and eventually she helped Derek.

I was going to clean Derek's house, so I offered to clean.

I said to Derek, I don't want money, because of...

because of your daughter Nicole,

I will just do anything I can to help.

Derek started showing me around the house

and he took me to the room

and he literally said, "This is where she hanged herself."

I went out of the room because I felt,

I didn't want to stay in the room

where a, you know, woman, Lesley, committed suicide.

I got a bit freaked out about it.

So I just left the room, I said I'm going.

There was something not right with Derek,

but I didn't know what it was.

'Natalia also helped Derek with some roofing work

in the days leading up to the funeral.'

I worked with Derek on the roof because Nicole said to me,

"Can you please help my father to do a couple of jobs?"

and I wasn't scared to work on the roof

because I've done roofing before.

So I said, "Yes, I'll help out."

'Eighteen days after Lesley's body was found

they started the roofing work together.'

We were on top of the roof

and Derek was already making kind of weird...

weird sayings to me,

like, I told Derek I broke up with my boyfriend

and he was like using a hammer and a nail

and saying, "Oh, you should do this to your boyfriend."

You know, I was a bit...

I was a bit scared then, but I didn't think a lot of it.

'After work Derek invited Natalia for a drink.'

Derek said, "Oh, you know, normal workers we'll go to the pub

and we'll have, you know, one or two pints."

I said, "OK, no problem."

So... and he wasn't supposed to be drinking,

I didn't know he was an alcoholic.

He bought the first round, we drank it, I went to the bathroom,

came back and he'd already got me another one.

Several witnesses reported him and her in the pub.

And bear in mind this was a few days after his wife

had committed suicide.

And he was seen with a woman laughing and joking,

an attractive young woman, perhaps there's an element of flirting,

he was trying to impress in some way.

In the middle of the pub,

amongst people who knew him and had known his wife.

'And this is where the evening took a dark turn.'

We were just sitting drinking our drinks,

Derek looked in my eyes and said to me, "I need to tell you something."

Over two weeks had passed since Derek Potter's wife

had allegedly committed suicide at home.

The post-mortem hadn't raised any issues,

but had the right questions been asked of Lesley's body?

The funeral was a week away

and Derek was out having a drink with a work colleague, Natalia,

when they had a conversation that she would never forget.

(Natalia) We were sitting together, me and Derek.

Derek looked in my eyes and said to me, "I need to tell you something."

I said, "What is it?" He says, "I strangled my wife."

After a few pints, two or three pints,

not a huge amount, you would think,

he confessed to murdering his wife.

He just said, "I love my wife,"

but she was, as he said, "Doing my head in and I strangled her."

And I think initially she thought,

he's joking, he's had a pint or two, he's joking.

He was calm, he was... he just looked straight in the eyes to me

and Derek was really calm, he was.

It's like he thought that he didn't do nothing wrong,

it's fine, you know?

'Derek also asked Natalia not to mention anything to Nicole.'

To me it's clear that Derek Potter suffers from, not just one,

not even just two, but in fact three distinct personality disorders.

I see signs of borderline personality,

anti-social personality and narcissistic personality here.

But I think with Derek Potter,

it's the way that his destructive components

of his personality

magnify each other and feed into each other.

So the lack of emotional regulation

feeds into the sense of superiority

and feeds into the disregard for other people.

It was a shock for me, literally, I didn't know what to do.

I didn't know whether to run, whether to sit there.

I didn't believe it at first, I really didn't believe it.

But he also, Derek also say to me,

I done it, I done this for, for you.

As to say I done this for you so you can move in,

because I want to help you with everything.

That's what Derek's words were.

(Donna) The only thing that drives him, the base that he operates from,

is what is in his best interests in that moment.

Goodness knows what must have been going through Natalia's mind.

Because on one hand he's just confessed to murder,

and the next minute he's asking her to move in with him.

At that point I thought that he wasn't lying.

I said to Derek, "I've got my own place, I don't need help."

So I was... I was stressed out, I didn't know what to think.

And I thought if I was a stupid girl and I went and lived with him,

what would happen to me?

(Donna) He completely misjudged the situation with Natalia,

he thought, from his narcissistic perspective,

that she would understand why he had to do what he did,

that she would understand that and be on his side.

Completely misreading the situation.

At the time that Derek and Natalia were at the pub,

Lesley's body was at a chapel of rest.

This confession to Natalia came at a really poignant time,

it was the week before Lesley's funeral.

So Natalia had a really big dilemma on her hands.

If the family went ahead with the cremation

all possible evidence would be completely destroyed.

I say to Derek, "Look, I've got to go home."

So I went home, I sat there for a while,

didn't know what to do, whether to report it to the police.

'Natalia was in a state of panic.'

I think two days, 48 hours, I didn't sleep, my mind was going...

Oh, I was... I was lost. I was.

So I contacted my best friend, who's a lawyer, and she said to me,

"Natalia, it's best you report it."

So it was something like four o'clock in the morning

and I phoned the police then and obviously they came,

they took me and they interviewed me.

'Five days after Derek confessed to Natalia,

police arrested him for the murder of his wife, Lesley Potter.'

So once the allegations had been put to the police,

about Potter's confession,

he was arrested and straight away he began to... to change his story.

Even in the police car on the way to the police station,

he made comments about how he'd helped his wife,

how he'd tied knots in the rope and helped her to end her own life.

'The arresting officers pulled the car over

and made a note of his remarks, which Potter signed three times.'

I was relieved when Derek was arrested,

because to be honest, if he did what Derek told me,

it's not fair for a woman like Lesley to go and get cremated

and then he's living a normal life

knowing that he can do it to someone else.

I think he will have been surprised

that Natalia reported his confession to her in the pub.

He will have been shocked.

Because for him, he thought he was entitled to do what he was doing

and he was just explaining that to a woman that he was interested in

and that he assumed, from his narcissistic perspective,

was interested in him.

It wouldn't have occurred to him

that she would tell what he'd confessed to her.

'But Natalia's actions did

ultimately mean the end of her friendship

with Lesley's daughter, Nicole.'

At first, when I told Nicole

I had to report her father to the police, she, Nicole, was not happy.

But I think Nicole and the family didn't want to think it was Derek,

you know, they didn't look that way,

maybe because Derek was so convincing.

But I said to myself the family is going to have to cope

because if it's the truth, they have to know who Derek was.

You know, and it's just justice for Lesley as well.

'The police now had a murder investigation on their hands.'

On the 1st of May, which was only three days before

Lesley's funeral was due to take place,

the police intervened

and her body was taken for a second post-mortem,

a more detailed post-mortem in Cardiff.

Derek claimed that when he'd found Lesley she was already dead,

she'd hanged herself.

But given what he's just told Natalia

which story would be supported by the second post-mortem examination?

Hanging leaves a particular mark across the skin of the neck,

and ligature strangulation

leaves a horizontal band on the skin and then the muscles underneath.

But manual strangulation can produce bruising

all over the muscles of the neck and even deeper.

And the second post-mortem showed marks, or bruising,

to the muscles of the neck,

it showed evidence of bruising to the base of the tongue

and it showed evidence of bruising around the carotid artery,

to the sides of the neck.

And even deeper than that, it was found that the larynx was fractured.

This pattern of injuries is not consistent

with ligature strangulation or hanging,

but it is consistent with manual pressure to the neck.

And so the second pathologist concluded

that Lesley had been manually strangled.

And then hanged.

Lesley's body had finally been given the opportunity to reveal the truth.

And going back over the reports of the crime scene with a critical eye,

some things were looking out of place.

Her body wasn't found directly below the noose,

it was found on the other side of the room on top of a cabinet,

and it was found that the noose was round her neck

but her hair was still tucked inside of the noose,

which really struck a chord with the pathologist.

'Natural instinct when putting anything around your neck,

like a necklace for instance, is to tuck it under your hair.'

'Also, Lesley had been found naked,

which is almost unheard of in suicide cases.'

'These are all significant red flags

and while none of them on its own is critical,

the three together strongly support the post-mortem findings.'

'But during police interviews

Derek stuck to his story, that Lesley had committed suicide.'

Derek was in fact interviewed 12 times by police after his arrest,

and many a story started being spun.

At first Derek talked about their sex life,

he said that him and Lesley were very much into sado-masochism

and that she had liked being strangled.

He claimed that he'd strangled her 15 times in their relationship,

some of them sexual and then some of them out of malice.

He tells the police that when he first sees her body hanging there

his first thought is, "You bitch."

We know that he talks about her body as being like a sack of spuds.

All of these give us just a glimpse into the depths of depravity

of this man's personality,

into the degree of damage that is deep within.

'But Derek Potter was adamant that his wife had committed suicide

and that he hadn't strangled her this time.'

Derek also claimed that Lesley had often talked about suicide.

He said that he'd offered buy her heroin

to make the process easier for her.

That she was often in so much pain that that's why she wanted to go.

It's this seething combination of personality dysfunctions

that produce somebody

for whom remorse and guilt,

and any kind of finer feelings, have almost been obliterated.

Derek was coming up with lots of excuses,

but none of this really added up.

When Lesley Potter was found hanged at home

her husband Derek initially claimed that she'd committed suicide.

Now he was charged with murder and a full forensic post-mortem

had allowed her body to tell the truth.

She had been brutally murdered by strangulation.

Everything he told the police was a lie,

and the lies just kept on coming.

(Jason) He initially told police that his wife had been depressed,

suffering with severe arthritis.

Was in pain and couldn't take any more,

had reached the end of her tether,

and straight away he began to change his story

and over the course of several interviews

just span story after story after story.

Claiming his wife had taken her own life

and then had died in some kind of autoerotic sex game.

Derek was coming up with lots of excuses

and lots of different stories

of where he was that day and how Lesley was feeling.

But something wasn't quite adding up.

All these stories didn't make sense.

It was clear that Lesley hadn't hanged herself as Derek had claimed,

and that something far more malicious had occurred.

In addition to the revelation

that Lesley had been manually strangled and then hanged,

other injuries showed

that a substantial struggle had also taken place.

The Home Office pathologist identified over 30 areas of bruising

and grazing externally,

on her arms and on her neck and on her legs and on her back.

He also found that there were 30 fractures of her ribs,

two of them to the back,

and some ribs had been fractured more than once,

and these injuries were not consistent

with simple resuscitation.

Furthermore, he found evidence of bruising

deep within the abdominal cavity,

and this type of bruising is consistent with severe force

being applied to the abdomen, such as stamps and kicks.

He described these injuries as extreme

and he said they were consistent

with having being caused at about the time of death.

It was concluded that there was no evidence

that Derek had ever attempted to resuscitate his wife,

instead he'd spent the time trying to stage the cover-up.

This was clearly a very violent death,

with widespread and severe injuries.

Injuries that were not of the sort

that could have been caused during a suicide attempt.

'On Monday the 22nd of October 2018

Derek appeared at Swansea Crown Court charged with murder.'

'Natalia gave evidence against him.'

It was very nerve-wracking when Derek was there

because I had to obviously see him through the glass.

Um...

And I, the police did say to me,

do you want him to be, like, you know,

do you want a board in front of you so you don't have to see Derek?

And I said, "No, why shall I, why shall I hide myself from him?

Why shall I?"

But no, I-I just, I looked in his eyes, I did,

Every time I answered the question to the judge,

I just... just looked in Derek's eyes.

Derek was looking at me as well, as to probably say,

"Why did you do this to me?"

You know, I felt like he-he was angry, his face was very angry.

But I just kept on staring at him and answering the questions.

'Then it was Derek's turn to take the stand.'

He gave a very strange performance in the witness box,

throughout his three days of giving evidence.

He was boastful, he talked about his sexual prowess

and his crazy sex life.

Number of sexual partners, number of marriages he's had,

uh, how strong he was.

He seemed to want to-to... He seemed to enjoy being in the witness box.

One of Derek's claims of why Lesley had maybe killed herself,

was that it was a sex game gone wrong,

that they were both into strangulation

and she was trying to strangle herself and surprise him

when he came back from collecting money, but it had gone wrong.

He came out with some bizarre claims.

He claimed he had healing powers in his hands.

It was a strange performance in the box,

not what you'd typically see of somebody facing such a grave charge.

He seemed to want to take on the barristers and to prove himself,

I think he thought he was really clever,

and he wanted to take them on and beat them.

And that rarely ends well for a defendant.

The way Potter behaves in trial

is really quite hard to understand.

I mean, this apparently reasonably intelligent man

is spinning all sorts of implausible stories.

Part of the story, part of the stories, which Potter told,

involved a lodger that he and Lesley had had in their Mumbles home,

by the name of Paul.

And he claimed both he and Lesley had been in love with Paul

and had been involved in a three-way sexual relationship

involving role playing and all kinds of sexual games.

He claimed that his wife was depressed after the death of Paul

and that was part of the suicide.

We don't know anything about that, whether that's...

whether Paul even existed.

It's all... it could well just be another-another story span by him.

His own barrister called him a fantasist.

What we've got here is somebody who's really not a very good liar,

if you will,

which may be surprising,

but actually to be a good liar

you have to be aware of other people,

in order to present your story in an effective way.

You have to care what other people think. He didn't.

You can only imagine how hard it was for the family to have to...

to sit in court and to hear lies,

lie after lie after lie that Potter told.

Spinning these outrageous lies about her.

Um, some outlandish stories.

It must have been heart-breaking, heartbreak upon heartbreak.

'As well as insisting Lesley had committed suicide,

Derek Potter pointed the finger at other people as well.'

He also tried to blame Lesley's murder on his son-in-law,

on the Masons, and on drug dealers.

The stories were getting quite out of hand.

It's all sorts of bizarre conspiracy theories he's drawing in,

it reminds me of a child caught out lying.

And I think that if you understand that this is a man

who his entire life has never justified himself to anybody,

that's not his personality,

and now here he is suddenly finding himself

realising actually he is having to answer for his actions.

So we see him reacting, to my mind like a... like a young child,

with these unsophisticated, frankly ridiculous, lies.

'But Lesley's body had told the truth and revealed the facts.'

The trial turned on the forensic post-mortem evidence,

which was vital for the prosecution case,

because there was no witness evidence, no CCTV.

It all came down to the post-mortem,

the detailed forensic evidence from that, which was laid out to the jury

in great detail in the trial.

'No explanation of a motive was ever proven in court.'

We hear quite a bit of evidence in the trial

about Derek Potter's temper.

And we heard from a number of colleagues, former colleagues,

who testified to outbursts of temper,

and even in the witness box Potter himself talked about his temper.

He recounted one bizarre story

where he said he strangled a man on holiday,

who'd annoyed him, almost in a boastful way,

how he turned on this man and strangled him

because he said something,

or something had been done which annoyed him,

which for a man accused of a loss of temper

and strangling his wife was a strange thing to say.

(Donna) To the extent that there was a trigger, I think it was this,

Lesley was becoming increasingly arthritic and suffering and aging.

For Derek, he resented the way

that this impacted on him

and reflected on him in a bad light.

And I think to the extent that there was a trigger, that was it.

'The trial lasted two weeks

and throughout Derek Potter took no responsibility

for what had happened to Lesley.'

Potter maintained his innocence, right to the end.

Showed no remorse at all for what he'd done,

sought to blame others.

It was a shameless performance in the box,

and not a hint of remorse from him,

for the death of his wife of 26 years.

Remorse is not a big part of Derek Potter's personality.

He will have had moments of grief, for sure,

but this is a man who has for years

thought and felt in ways that are all about himself,

that are all about... That all about hatred,

that are all about disregard for other people.

So yes, there will have been moments,

but moments is all it will have been.

'On Tuesday the 6th of November the jury delivered their verdict.'

Throughout the trial Potter maintained his innocence.

To the end, he denied murdering his wife

and just put forward the series of lies

and told tales to try and cover his tracks.

I think the jury saw through it straight away

and the prosecution case was so strong,

particularly the post-mortem medical evidence,

that told a very different story.

So when it came to the jury's deliberations,

they unanimously decided that Derek was guilty in just over an hour,

in one hour seven minutes, to be precise.

The jury of eight men, four women,

all decided that he was guilty of murder.

'Two days later, the honourable Mr Justice Soole sentenced him.'

When passing his sentence,

the judge described the attack on Lesley Potter

as a ferocious attack

and said that what Potter did next,

with the lies he told, was a despicable and shameful charade,

and clearly caused the family even more distress.

'The judge stated that Potter had strangled his wife

without premeditation, in a sudden and furious burst of temper.'

I think the judge accepted, and it was argued in the case,

that it wasn't a planned murder.

It was a sort of spontaneous outburst of anger.

But while the murder wasn't planned, what happened next clearly was,

and he'd gone to the trouble of staging his wife's suicide.

He's not somebody who gives a great deal of thought to other people,

so he won't have given a great deal of thought

to whether or not he was going to get away with it,

he's just acting from his own immediate selfish impulses.

What he does is an instinctive product

of his disordered personality,

of his dysfunctional personality.

'Derek Potter was sentenced to life in prison

and will have to spend at least 17 years in jail.'

When they sentenced Derek, I was so chuffed,

I was so chuffed and I went out of the court

and just prayed for Lesley

and said, you know, "I done a good job, I done it for you."

'After the hearing the police family liaison officer

made a statement on behalf of the family.'

Not only have we have to come to terms with the fact

that he so cruelly killed our mother,

but we have to had to listen to him tarnishing her name

throughout the investigation and the court case.

The family, they didn't really want to speak publicly,

but I thought that was a really touching sentiment

and they felt their mother had gone

and her memory was now being tarnished

by what her husband of 26 years was now saying about her.

The lies he was saying about her.

I think two things really stood out for me from this case,

one was the strength of the medical evidence,

which told the true story of what happened that day,

not the lies which Potter told.

And also the pub confession,

without which there would have been no detailed post-mortem.

So together I think they made for an unusual case,

quite unlike any case I've covered before.

The only thing that I'm struck by is,

is the way that somehow

Lesley Potter managed

to be married to this man for 26 years,

without something like this happening before.

And I think that speaks of the patience,

resilience, adaptability and humbleness of this woman,

that she managed to manage somebody

as destructive and damaged as Derek Potter

through a 26 year marriage.

'With the trial over,

Lesley's family could finally grieve for their loss.'

If Natalia had not plucked up the courage

to report what Derek said to her in that pub that day,

this could so nearly have been

a story of a man who got away with murder.

But Lesley's body showed that she been subjected to a violent attack,

strangled to death and then hanged.

So it's a prime example of the fact

that the body always tells the truth.

But you do have to ask the right question.