All language subtitles for Special.Ops.To.Catch.a.Criminal.S01E01.1080p.WEB.h264-CODSWALLOP[EZTVx.to]_[English] (SUBRIP)

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PHONE RINGING

Police emergency.

This story really goes back to 2021.
It was just a friendship.

And that friendship initially was
described as platonic.

And then it slowly developed into
something more.

So on the coffee table in the house,
there was a note.

And on that note was his plan for
the year.

One of those plans on there was to
get together with Keith's partner

before Valentine's Day.

Relationships are tricky to navigate
at the best of times,

but not everybody turns their
passion into a deadly obsession.

He was absolutely obsessed with her
and I strongly believe that he'd

gone out that night with the
intention of drinking, which he did.

Building up the courage to do
something and had armed himself with

a knife and was intent on killing
Keith to remove him from

the equation.

Love can make you blind and
sometimes turn a mind to murder.

The offence happened about

15 minutes before Valentine's Day.

It was quarter to midnight.

This was mid-February.

It was dark, cold, wet.

They actually laid in wait for him
and then they brutally attacked him

using a severe degree of force
with knives.

No doubt, a frenzied attack and they
just left him for dead.

Keith had no chance whatsoever.

Keith Green, the victim, was a
resident of Banbury,

located by the River Cherwell on the
edge of the Cotswolds.

Banbury is a market town in
north Oxfordshire.

It's got about 50,000 people
living there.

It's still one of those places
where lots of people know

everybody else.

I'm Tom Seaward.

I was a court reporter at the Oxford
Mail at the time.

Banbury, like anywhere really, in
the UK,

has a problem with knife crime,
often drug-related knife crime.

But certainly you don't get a murder
every other day.

It's not that sort of town. This was
an unusual crime for Banbury.

My name is John Capps.

I'm a detective superintendent with
Thames Valley Police Major

Crime Unit.

Major Crime, we investigate murders,
homicides, unexplained deaths.

It's always really challenging.

No two days are ever the same.

And nothing surprises me any more in
this job.

But nevertheless, this was an
unusual case.

PHONE RINGING

Police emergency.

Police received 999 calls reporting
someone has been attacked close to

the town centre.

Detective Superintendent John Capps
and team are on call that night.

With any murder investigation in
that stage, there is a lot going on

and you've got to try and get some
order from the chaos and set some

priorities to get the appropriate
people where they need to go very,

very quickly.

Detective Constable Chris Hatton is
assigned as case officer.

I'd never been to Banbury for an
offence like this before.

I'd been working in the major crime
department for about five years.

When we found out the murder had
come in,

instantly, you had to
drop everything.

I had to go and deploy up
to Banbury.

Before I set off, I'd already found
out that I was going to be a case

officer for it, so I already knew
roughly what to expect before

I arrived.

And then turned up, met everyone
else who was up there and prepared

for a briefing.

With a potential murder on
their doorstep,

Thames Valley Major Crime Unit
launch Operation Inuit.

At the scene, victim Keith Green is
found dead.

So we had Keith Green, who'd been
stabbed to death in his back garden

outside a shed or an outbuilding.

Keith Green was a family man.

He was 40 years old.

By trade, he was a carpenter.

He also loved tinkering around in
his garage.

He had two children with the partner
who he lived with at that house.

The community was shocked and quite
quickly people were paying tribute.

We were
initially told

that his partner
had gone down

there and called
the ambulance

and that he was
deceased at

the scene.

Because of the time of night and
the location, being at a private

residence, there obviously wasn't
many eyewitnesses.

The whole area was cordoned off and
we had forensic teams in.

With the crime scene and house under
forensic lockdown,

officers take a witness account from
the victim's distraught partner,

Louise Green.

It's a delicate process.

There was quite a lot happening at
the scene.

There was a lot of people living
within it.

It was quite a tightly-packed
family home.

We also had the dynamic of the other
people in the address.

There were eight children in total
who had to be moved out into a hotel

and who'd been present at the
address when this had taken place.

Are any of those children witnesses?

And straight away, you know there's
going to be significant partnership

involvement from social care.

And that just adds another dynamic
to what you've got to consider.

Thames Valley officers Stephanie
Chase and Alice Walker are the next

to join the investigative team in
the sensitive role of FLO.

The FLO is a family liaison officer
and the role is to provide a link

between the investigation team and
the family.

We are placed within the family to
build that relationship with them,

build trust with them, but our main
role remains that of

an investigator.

And families often have lots
of information

that's imperative to
an investigation,

whether that be a victim's routine
or information about

their associates.

So it's to gather that kind of
information and process that, as

well, as giving them the information
about the investigation and what's

happening and then supporting them
through that.

So I'd come to work as normal that
morning and I knew very quickly that

there had been a murder on the area
that we cover in the early hours and

I was asked to pick up the role of
family liaison officer.

Alice was the second FLO on
this case.

This was actually my first
deployment as a FLO,

so I was a bit apprehensive, but I
was told that Steph Chase was going

to be the other FLO on it.

There was already somebody in place
who'd had that initial contact with

the family.

We didn't know a lot at that point.

It had only been a few hours since
the incident.

It's busy, you know, there's a lot
going on.

So in those first moments, we're
sort of just briefed and it's

working out who the family are, the
family dynamic and what can we share

with them in those initial stages?

Back at the crime scene, the
investigation picks up pace.

So officers who attended the scene
were wearing body-worn cameras

and one of the things that was
caught on body-worn is a witness

coming up to one of the officers and
providing a name.

He'd seen him entering.

He provided the name Mark Widows.

This was corrected by Keith's
partner and she told the officers

that the correct name was
Mark Meadows.

What he told the officers at the
time was that he'd seen Mark

Meadows' van parked out the front of
the property,

so he hadn't seen Mark Meadows
himself, but he'd seen his vehicle.

So, initially I went out to see the
victim's partner and the family.

She and the children had been
relocated to a nearby hotel.

She was obviously very upset.

She was trying to deal with looking
after the children and trying to

work out what was going on.

It was a sort of fast-moving and
emotional situation.

Louise, the partner, provides a
crucial early breakthrough.

She had been at the Pepper Pot Pub,
the previous evening to play bingo

and two people she knew were there,
Mark Meadows and Travis Gorton.

She was quite drunk that evening

and when she came to leave the pub,
Mark gave her a lift home.

And when she got home a short
time later,

she became aware of something in the
garden and someone telling her to

phone an ambulance and then came to
find Keith on the floor in the

garden and performed CPR.

Now police have names, they need to
act fast.

For a murder investigation, it
really is a race against time.

That first hour after it's been
reported to us is often referred to

as the golden hour. It's
really important.

The sooner you get suspects into
custody, the better, because you

maximise the evidence you're going
to get from them.

You reduce any likelihood they're
going to dispose of property or they

may be on the run.

Mark and his brother Travis were
nominated as suspects for murder.

We had reason to believe both of
them were in possession of knives

and had used those knives, so that
immediately make them dangerous and

poses a risk to others.

Within an hour, John and the Special
Ops arrest team are on the move.

So an arming authority was given to
our armed response crews.

The addresses surrounding
it, contained.

And effectively, they were called
out of the address and arrested

at gunpoint.

A Thames Valley Police Armed
Response Unit has been tasked

to apprehend two dangerous
murder suspects.

Officers had got to them so quickly
that one of them was barely out of

the shower.

Thames Valley Police have made two
arrests for the murder of

40-year-old Keith Green.

The custody process is always
really challenging.

They'll set a strategy around how
they're going to approach

those interviews.

Mark, I think, was interviewed
probably seven or eight times

over the course of the time he was
in custody with us.

And that was a no-comment interview
throughout and this may be over

simplistic, but if you haven't
done it,

I think you'd be shouting from the
rooftops that you hadn't done it.

And Travis gave this account where
he said he'd got back into the van

after being at the pub and pretty
much fallen asleep straight away.

He doesn't remember going to
Keith's house.

He states he was asleep and when he
woke up, he arrived at Mark's house.

Which is utter nonsense.

But we've got to disprove that.

When you have people in custody
for murder,

there's a lot of pressure to make
sure they don't walk out of the door

because if they do, then that
creates all sorts of further issues.

With the two potential perps in
custody for up to 24 hours...

..police are going through their
homes and belongings.

We'll have the licensed search
officers in very early and they'll

do their big search.

They get the information that
they've got at the time, and know

roughly what they're looking for.

So for example, they'll have
been looking for knives.

But as the investigation develops,
they get fed more information,

just as we learn more, they
learn it.

Having reviewed it, will go in and
look for just those extra things

that might not have been found.

The searches seem to strike gold.

I took a phone call from the crime
scene manager to say that we've

recovered a knife.

Just outside the property
next to his van,

next to the passenger door was a
knife in a grate in a storm drain.

So that was quite visible.

And then when they moved into
the house,

they found a knife in a speaker.

So we say that Mark had taken the
speaker apart,

unscrewed it and then hidden a
knife, his trainers, which had blood

on them and then effectively put
the speaker back together again.

There was evidence that they'd both
taken a shower.

Again, we would say to get rid of
the blood on them and their clothing

and some evidence that the washing
machine had been on pretty recently.

There was a towel with blood on.

There was lots of clothing that
they'd obviously worn that evening.

They were described as having blood
on them.

Obviously we couldn't prove at that
point it was Keith's,

but finding a knife with blood on
and trainers with blood on,

it makes you think you've definitely
got the right people at that point.

We did think it could be
a breakthrough.

While suspicious, all the items need
to be checked by

forensic specialists.

If linked to Meadows, it could make
or break the case.

Keith's body also has a surprise
for investigators.

When the ambulance crews were
dealing with the deceased male,

they moved him and they found a
mobile phone underneath him,

which we identified by sending it
off to our digital forensic unit and

they did a download of the phone.

We were able to say that the phone
next to Keith was Mark's,

which was a big step.

It transpired that in whatever had
taken place, that the fight, the

assault, Mark Meadows had dropped
his phone.

So his phone was there,
underneath Keith's body,

which was really important evidence
to place him there.

And it also gave a lot of his
contact with various people.

We were able to look through that
and see if there was any planning.

While the items discovered
are forensicated,

the pathology report drops onto John
Capp's desk.

The cause of death was a stab wound
to the heart, which had pierced

Keith's heart.

The degree of force used was severe.

The fatal injury also broke a rib,

but there were in total eight stab
wounds to his body.

The pathology report that comes
through has information on the

knife wounds.

From the nature of a knife wound,

the way it cuts, it's actually quite
difficult for them to get 100%

that a knife has caused a
specific injury.

But what they were able to do is
they were able to test the knives

and see if they would actually fit
within those stab wounds.

And they were able to say on our
report that one of the knives

would have been able to make all
of the stab wounds, but the other

knife would have only been able to
make a few of the stab wounds.

A picture of what seems to have
happened the night before

Valentine's begins to emerge.

It's no love match.

What we understood to have happened
was that Mark and Travis

had gained entry to the property,
gone to the bottom of the garden

and effectively laid in wait for
Keith, knowing full well that he

would walk down to the bottom of
the garden.

And this was mid-February.

It was dark, cold, wet.

Keith would have no idea whatsoever
that they were down there

and then they brutally attacked him
with knives and left him for dead.

After three days in custody, police
feel they have enough initial

evidence to charge the two suspects.

They were in custody in the very
early hours of Monday the 14th and

we charged them both on Thursday
the 17th.

It's then officers can get to work

and with the phones
finally unlocked,

begin to wade through reams of data
in the hopes of finding enough

evidence to connect the crime to the
two men.

It takes weeks to unravel.

Phones are increasingly important in
murder investigations.

They continually provide more and
more information as time goes on.

I'm Portia Whiffin and I'm an
intelligence analyst in Major Crime

at Thames Valley Police.

Phones are essentially like a
computer now.

They hold everyone's information,
so therefore they hold a wealth of

information, sometimes directly
relating to an offence,

be that the planning or in the
aftermath of an offence,

but also it gives a good picture as
to the lifestyle of the individuals

whose phone that is.

So an intelligence analyst will look
at things like cell site data,

information from a handset of a
phone and pull that all together,

alongside things like the CCTV, to
try and understand a timeline of

what has happened.

Because we had two suspects in
custody already,

my priority was looking at where
they were at the time of the murder.

So initially, we started with
identifying phone numbers for those

individuals and looking at some cell
site analysis.

One set of messages were
a revelation.

They involved the dead man's
partner, Louise.

We weren't expecting that and it was
quite clear that they were in some

sort of relationship.

And those messages went back quite
a significant period of time,

until at least the summer before the
murder had taken place,

which was quite surprising and that
was just what I could see, kind of,

immediately without delving too deep
into the phone download.

So it was quite clear there was a
relationship going on and we had to

consider whether she actually needed
to be treated as a suspect in this

investigation, rather than
a witness.

I was always concerned with her.

She was treated as a witness
initially and that was the right

thing to do because we had no
evidence to say she was involved.

But the dynamic had always been
there between this love triangle

and that was something that she
eventually told us,

was that she was having a
relationship with Mark

and that Keith was aware of that and
there was tension between them.

It's weeks of painstaking work,
piecing it all together.

What we then found from other
people's phones was the evidence

that Mark had been making plans to
effectively get rid of Keith.

They just wanted rid and he hadn't
taken any hints about leaving.

Also a priority when we were
looking at that phone

was to look at any messaging
between Mark and Travis.

We were able to identify some
messages with Travis, where they

appeared to be planning a fight with
Keith Green.

On the afternoon of the offence,
prior to the offence taking place,

there was some messaging where Mark
had said if Keith wouldn't leave,

he could make it so that he wouldn't
come back.

And following those messages, he
then messaged his brother,

a few minutes later, saying, "I'm in
the mood to fight today."

And then there was a conversation
between him and his brother

around the fact that Travis was also
up for a fight.

But was it going to be a fight or
an ambush?

So what we know has happened is a
build-up of tension between Mark and

Keith, culminating in this kind of
crescendo of incidents or feelings

from Mark Meadows, who was
absolutely obsessed with her.

I strongly believe that he'd gone
out that night with the intention

of drinking, which he did, building
up the courage to do something

and had armed himself with a knife
and was intent on killing Keith to

remove him from the equation.

Just over a month after the murder
of Keith Green,

Thames Valley Major Crime Unit
arrest his partner, Louise Grieve.

Murder investigations can change in
scale quite rapidly.

And this one did.

It was a bit unusual that Keith's
partner had become a suspect.

I'd never seen it happen like that.

She started off as the reporting
party and she was being supported

by family liaison officers as
a witness.

Suddenly, she's turned around and
she's one of the suspects of

the investigation.

The fact that she was in a
relationship with Keith and in a

relationship with Mark wasn't
a surprise,

because she'd actually told us at
the scene.

But the actual extent of the
relationship was quite a surprise

when you looked at the phones.

It seemed clear she'd been playing
Keith and Mark off against

each other.

So those messages led to
her identification

as playing a central role in all of
this, in her manipulation of others.

You've spent time building up trust
with them, building up those lines

of communication and for them to be
then a suspect,

that whole dynamic changes because
they can no longer be approached in

the same way.

The victim's partner was arrested
about a month after the incident

and it was then that the family were
told that she'd been arrested on

suspicion of Keith's murder.

It's hard. It's a difficult
conversation to have.

They weren't surprised that she
was involved.

They were angry and they were, sort
of, confused by the situation,

but I don't think they
were surprised.

For us, we found that interesting
in itself.

They'd been hearing these rumours,
so I think they were shocked that

their worst fears had probably
come true.

In this case, social media is an
absolute nightmare.

It was actually one of our
biggest challenges.

As quick as we were getting
the information,

it was getting out there and people
were reporting back to the family

before we were able, in minutes,
everybody seemed to know everybody.

And so it was constantly this game
of cat and mouse,

trying to be the first to deliver
that information.

After weeks of investigation, police
still need to understand

the bigger picture to present a
coherent case to the CPS for court.

In this case, there was clearly some
sort of premeditation and planning

that had gone into it and
understanding the relationship

between Mark and Keith's partner
and how it had developed over time

was really crucial.

Therefore, the timeline that I
produced for this investigation

actually went back quite a long way,

to look at the times that they had
been together

and previously broken up and got
back together.

The dynamic of their relationship
and how it developed,

because that was crucial to

her involvement and why he might

have committed the murder.

And there was other evidence found
during the searches that added a

chill to the proceedings.

So on the coffee table in Mark
Meadows' house, there was a note.

And on that note, it was his plan
for the year.

One of those plans on there was to
get together with Keith's partner

before Valentine's Day.

And this murder took place just
before midnight on the 13th.

So a few minutes before
Valentine's Day.

Silence in the custody suite is
never helpful.

So Louise's role was more difficult
to identify because a lot of that

was based on phone evidence and
deletion of phone evidence as well.

So that one took a little bit more
work to put together.

The phone work makes it look
increasingly likely

the love triangle between Green,
his partner Grieve.

and her boyfriend Meadows has played
a part.

There's also messages on there
where you're talking to Mark,

saying you wish to finish with Keith
and you wish him to move out.

This story really goes back to 2021,

which is when Mark Meadows met Keith
Green's partner

and that friendship initially was
described as platonic.

It was just a friendship and then it
slowly developed into

something more.

And by the summer of 2021, they were
well and truly in the throes of

an affair.

And by September, the relationship
between Keith Green and his partner

was really dysfunctional.

There was a moment that September
where he comes back to the house

and discovers Mark Meadows in there
and they have what can only

really be described as a bust up.

You did not wish to pursue a formal
complaint and the matter was filed.

Alongside investigating the past
through revealing text messages,

murder squad detectives focus on
contemporaneous recordings by some

of the officers at the scene.

We have the benefit of watching the
body-worn video.

It's interesting to look at because
it's people's unfiltered reactions

and whilst it's not for me or
anybody else to judge

how anybody reacts to grief or
trauma, there was always concern

about her reaction to what
had happened.

My opinion was she was somebody who
could turn emotions on and off.

At one stage, she was breaking down
in tears with the paramedics.

And then others, she seemed to be
laughing and joking.

I think at one point she was
captured humming or singing the

EastEnders theme tune out
the window.

You kind of got the impression quite
quickly that she enjoyed being the

centre of attention.

Such evasive behaviour
triggers suspicion

but is very hard to use in court.

So the police continue their trawl
of each location visited

by the suspects, for traces on CCTV.

As I'm building the sequence
of events,

the CCTV team will provide me with a
viewing log.

So we had CCTV from a number of
different locations.

We had CCTV from the Pepper Pot Pub.

And from about 7pm that night, the
13th of February, Mark Travis and

others had been at the pub drinking.

Louise and Mark had basically been
carrying on their

relationship there.

They were seen cuddling, kissing at
various different times.

And all of this is while Keith is
still back home with the kids and

none the wiser about what's
going on.

So I would put the images from that
into my sequence and fit them around

the messaging that was happening at
the time.

At certain points you can see
Keith's partner,

for example, outside on a phone.

Marry that up to see if there was
any usage on the phone at the time.

And they left the pub just after 11
in Mark's van.

The van tells detectives
another story.

Mark's van helpfully had a tracker
in it,

so we were able to get that
tracker data.

So I was able to look at the
telematics and map it,

so we could see exactly where the
vehicle for the suspect had been at

any point in that evening.

We tracked Mark's van back to
Keith's home address.

We were able to marry up the
telematics from the van with that

CCTV, to show that that was the only
van travelling down the road at

the time.

There's CCTV on the street.

It showed the vehicle pulling up.

It was quite dark at that point,

so you could only really make out
the vehicle clearly.

Everything else was quite difficult
to make out.

And we were able to show the time
that the engine was off and then

back on again.

It was a time of roughly 20 minutes
and then the route that Mark takes

back to his home address is
also shown.

While the route the suspects take is
being mapped out,

the CCTV picture is
frustratingly incomplete.

There should have been CCTV at the
murder scene.

However, it appears that they
unplugged the CCTV system.

You'd need to have a knowledge of
the location of the site to be able

to turn it off.

Need to know where the box is for
a start,

need to know where the power supply
goes into the box.

Whoever had unplugged the CCTV had
left behind a partial clue.

So in the shed, the CCTV was located
quite high up.

On the floor was a bucket, which
contained oil, and on top of the

bucket was a footprint.

And it appears that someone had
stood on that bucket to turn off the

CCTV system and the footprint on
there was linked back to Mark

Meadows and it was linked back to a
trainer that someone had hidden in a

speaker, with a blood-covered knife
and had blood on the actual trainer

itself, from Keith.

By now, some of the specialist
departments had reported back

in full.

So in terms of forensic evidence, on
the knife there was found to be

blood that came from Keith and on
the handles of the knife.

There was also DNA, which looks like
it came from both Travis and Mark.

Finding the knife with Keith's blood
on and the DNA was on the handle is

quite incriminating.

But it wasn't just events on the
evening itself the investigation was

interested in.

A witness came forward and notified
us that Keith's partner and Mark

had actually done a trip up
to Leeds.

Almost six months prior to
the murder,

they'd attended a shop that sold
knives up there.

So some of our officers were
deployed up there and in that shop

they identified that a knife had
been purchased.

We were also then later able to
obtain the receipt for a blue

ghost knife.

And that knife was actually used to
kill Keith.

The evidence is slowly mounting and
there's a feeling of quiet

confidence in the team.

But then, from nowhere, the whole
investigation feels like it's

been derailed.

The court trial coincided with the
barrister strikes,

which was a logistical nightmare.

For any case like this, you can only
hold people in custody for six

months generally, which is called a
custody time limit.

Once that custody time limit
runs out,

essentially, we don't have the
power to keep anyone in custody.

So the trial was unable to start
and there was no prospect of it

starting in September.

One of the options was the judge
may release all of them on bail

and it's just not a position you
want to be in as an SIO,

facing a real nightmare scenario

of murder defendants being out
and about.

And that's what happened in
this case.

This is a big news story for a local

paper like the Oxford Mail.

In a shock decision, the court
orders the release of the defendants

for the murder of Keith Green.

So it's really unusual
for defendants

in a murder case to be out on bail.

It's almost unheard of.

This was such a violent,
horrific crime.

You know, he was brutally stabbed in
his own home.

And then we're saying to the family
that those people are just out there

living normal lives.

I mean, I never want to have to tell
a family that again, because it was

very hard to deal with
and devastating.

Really difficult conversations, but
necessary conversations.

You've got the risk they pose
to others.

These are people who have been
charged with murder by use of

a knife.

A number of the witnesses contacted
us in fear initially.

You worry that witnesses will not
turn up because they've lost faith.

And the team did some brilliant work
around finding witnesses

and give them confidence to
give evidence.

So we had to put stuff in place to
protect them and belie their fears

and their worries about it.

You can easily envisage a scenario
where the whole thing just collapses

because if you don't have witnesses,
then you're left with nothing.

A month late, the trial begins for
the Valentine's Eve murder of

Keith Green.

And there's chaos in the courthouse.

every day, a struggle.

Usually you have defendants being
brought to court from prison in a

prison van.

You see them in the dock and that's
the limit of your contact with them.

It was just different because there
was the suspects on the concourse

with us, and we had to be very
careful with where they sat and what

we were saying, because they often
sat outside the door of our rooms.

We had to manage all of that in the
public arena at court,

with the family dynamic on top
of that.

That's testament to what a brilliant
job the team did, day in, day out.

Keeping the trial on track is a
full-time job for the officers and

not without risk.

We then had to manage the family,
attending court

and seeing the suspects coming to
court themselves, freely,

walking around the
courtroom building.

It was very challenging for me and
Steph to navigate and make sure

that the family were kept away from
that and not have to face them.

They didn't feel safe knowing that
the people that had murdered their

loved one is right there.

It's fair to say there wasn't much
sleep during that period.

As the trial plays out, there are
more surprises in store.

There was this, like, strange
frisson during the trial.

I remember the first time I saw the
two brothers and I was kind of taken

aback because they couldn't have
looked much more differently

to how they were when I'd last
seen them,

six or so months earlier at the
Magistrates' Court.

Mark Meadows had shaved his head.

And for a man who was known as
Jesus, the man with the beard,

he'd got rid of it. Jesus had shaved
his beard.

Throughout the trial, it didn't
appear that they were taking it

seriously really.

They were very relaxed.

No remorse by any of
them whatsoever.

And seeing their behaviour, which
the jury didn't see,

but we did outside of court,
laughing and joking.

We got reports from other witnesses
that Mark and Louise were on the

train together and actually they
were kissing on the train, which

unfortunately, was against their
bail conditions.

So they weren't very careful of
other people around them.

Just going about their normal lives,
it appeared,

which was difficult for the family
to see.

I vividly remember speaking to Keith
Green's daughter

just before sentencing and talking
to her about her recollections of

the trial, and for her, she saw a
very, very different side to

those defendants.

She certainly felt they were
laughing when the knives were being

passed around and she saw not a hint
of remorse.

And then, perhaps one of the
strangest moments ever

during a British criminal
murder trial.

During the actual trial itself, in
the dock,

Mark has gone up to Keith's partner
and asked her to marry him.

I've never come across a proposal in
a dock in a Crown Court before.

I don't quite know how to describe
that, to be honest.

It's just staggering. They thought
they were going to get away with it.

They were going to get found not
guilty and they were making plans

for their new life.

Alongside the romantic interlude,

the jury listens to a lot
of evidence,

but there's only one
significant cross-examination.

Keith Green's partner was in the
witness box for four days,

I think, which is a very long time
to be cross-examined.

She certainly blamed other people
for what had happened.

She didn't really seem to take any
blame for herself.

Some of the evidence she gave showed
that she was quite manipulative.

She didn't do herself any favours,
giving the evidence that she did.

I remember her saying that she must
be a magician if she was playing all

of these men against each other.

It was like playing tennis against a
brick wall. Everything was hit back.

The judge later remarked that it
appeared that she actually enjoyed

the attention from leading-on
both men.

With Louise, Keith's partner,
attempting to persuade the jury of

her innocence, the other evidence
becomes ever more important.

During the trial, when Keith's
family were in attendance,

I think there were things that came
as a shock to them,

the extent of the planning of the
murder and the deceit.

When you hear it step by step, come
out in court, it's overwhelming

for families.

That realisation that actually
that happened.

We identified messages where Mark
implied they were ready to go

and this was going to be happening.
They had a plan.

Pulling that together and showing
all the phone calls around it

enabled us to show that this offence
was likely premeditated.

I think there was an overwhelming
amount of evidence that Mark Meadows

and his stepbrother were guilty
of murder,

but I think there is always
a possibility

that Keith Green's partner, the
woman who was playing, essentially,

two men off against each other,

couldn't be certain that it would
end with the death of one of them.

The jury is then sent out to
consider the evidence presented over

eight long weeks.

Most incriminating ultimately was
probably the forensics,

getting Mark's phone next to
Keith's body,

recovering both knives and the fact
that they had blood on both of them

is really important.

This links those two and it links
the addresses together, the clothing

and layered on top of that, you've
got the digital evidence,

the phone downloads and also the
CCTV movements.

All of us, every single one of the
investigation team wanted to convict

Louise because of the central role
that she played in it.

And the worry is that the jury will
think there's not enough evidence

or because she hasn't physically
played a part in it,

they won't understand the dynamic
around murder and manslaughter.

The team hope they've made the case
clear for the jurors.

You never know how long a jury are
going to be out deliberating.

I've had it where it's a couple
of hours.

I've had it where, in this case, it
was seven or eight days.

So that sensation, that electricity
that you get in a courtroom when

verdicts are read out, there's a
strange energy in the courtroom.

And this murder trial was just
like that.

So Mark Meadows, that was the first
verdict to be read out, guilty on

two counts.

Murder and possession of the knife
that killed Keith Green.

This case just kept on
giving, really.

So there was a very strange moment
that I've never really experienced,

certainly not in a murder trial,

where the foreman of the jury got
the verdict on Travis Gorton wrong.

So, Travis Gorton, is he guilty or
not guilty of murder? Not guilty.

And there was this sort of quiet
hubbub in the jury box.

There was a kind of physical
reaction of confusion.

And then they pronounced this guilty
verdict, so, guilty of murder.

I remember him crying at that point.
They were all stood up.

And I remember him crying in the
dock because I think for a second or

two, he thought he was getting away
with it.

It is brutal. It's
absolutely brutal.

And for me, there was a slight sense
of surprise with Louise's verdicts.

So, guilty of manslaughter.

A fourth defendant, who can't be
named for legal reasons,

but who assisted by opening
the gate,

is also found guilty
of manslaughter.

Then the sentences are handed down.

So Mark was life sentence, which you
always get for murder,

with a minimum term of 23 years.

Travis was, again, life term minimum
of 17 years.

Keith's partner got found guilty
of manslaughter

and she was sentenced to
eight years.

I'm pleased that the jury decided
that Louise was part of it,

because that was one of my worries
that they wouldn't think that

Keith's partner had been part of
the planning.

Getting the right result in court

means that the hard work has
paid off,

that the family have got justice for
their loved one.

I think for Louise Grieve, when she
heard that verdict,

guilty of manslaughter, there was
that final sinking in of what had

happened and just the sheer enormity
of what she'd done.

The Valentine's murder case won't be
forgotten in a hurry.

It does always stay with you.

It's my first murder case as an SIO.

And this one, for various reasons,
wasn't straightforward.

I can't ask anything more than
when the team are faced with that

kind of adversity and testing times
that they stand up to it,

they face it down and it's
all worthwhile.

I think we get that verdict and it's
case closed and we move on.

But for the families, they're still
living that every day.

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