All language subtitles for Britains.Most.Evil.Killers.S02E09.WEBRip.en

-On the 7th of April, 2016,

police were called to a flat
in South London

after neighbors had complained
about a putrid smell.

-He opened up the letter box,
and he said,

"Can you smell that now?"

And I said to him, "Do you know
what it smells like?

It smells like a dead body."

-Two police officers
knocked on the door,

and the occupant, 49-year-old
Stefano Brizzi, answered.

-He said, "I've killed
a police officer.

Satan told me to do it.

I promised Satan that I would
kill at the first opportunity."

-Inside the flat was a scene
of unimaginable horror.

-They go into the bathroom,

and the bath is full
of globules of fat,

and they find remnants
of the body.

-Stefano Brizzi had killed
a police officer

in a drug-fueled
sexual encounter.

He then went on to dispose
of the body

in the most horrifying way

and became one of the world's
most evil killers.

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

On the 7th of April, 2016,

when two police officers
arrived at the Peabody Estate

on Southwark Street
in South London,

they made a gruesome discovery
inside one of the flats.

They found the remains
of 59-year-old police officer

Gordon Semple,

who'd been missing for six days.

Neighbors had alerted the police
after they noticed a bad smell.

The tenant, 49-year-old
Italian national Stefano Brizzi,

had been trying to dispose
of Gordon Semple's body

after killing him
the previous week.

Tess De La Mare
reported on the case.

-We got a phone call
from the neighbor saying,

"Something has been found.

I believe it's
the police officer."

Initially, we had
very little information.

We know that he had been found
on the Peabody Estate.

When I and a colleague
went down, it was cordoned off.

At that point, we didn't know
exactly what had gone on.

I think in hindsight,
it was a lot more

chilling than it actually --
it felt at the time.

At the time, it just felt like

a relatively
straightforward murder.

-On the the 1st of April, 2016,

a week before
the shocking discovery,

Stefano Brizzi had used
the online dating app Grindr

to meet men.

-And it was at that point
that he contacted,

again,
through the dating app,

a policeman called
Gordon Semple.

-They were essentially both
looking for somebody

to hook up with
and have sex with.

And this is the one thing that
really amazes me about this app

is that it enables people to see
who's geographically proximate

and interested
in the same thing that you are,

and the speed at which
this happens,

with which they meet
and with which Gordon Semple

loses his life
really is quite incredible.

-This killer's story
begins over 50 years ago.

Stefano Brizzi was born
into a devout Catholic family

in San Marcello Pistoiese
in the Italian region of Tuscany

on the 26th of June, 1966.

He was aware of his sexuality
from an early age.

-He knew he was a homosexual,

but Brizzi also knew
he was a Catholic,

and that not only
is against his religion,

but it would really upset
his parents

if they were that religious,

so he was in
that kind of turmoil.

-I think his homosexuality
haunted him.

He felt that somehow it wasn't

what his family
would have approved of.

He felt that he was
out of step with his family.

-Brizzi went to
the University of Florence,

which is a very reputable
university in Italy,

not very far from where he
was born and where he lived.

From the university,
he graduated,

and he got a very good job

as a computer programmer
in Italy, as well.

-In 2008, age 42,

Brizzi was diagnosed with
hepatitis C and as HIV-positive.

-I think he would have felt
quite a sense of shame.

He would have felt
some sense of responsibility

for the situation
that he found himself in,

and I think he would have
really felt that guilt,

and then it seems
almost stereotypical

to talk about Catholic guilt,

but I think that's certainly
what was going on with him.

-In 2012, age 46,
Brizzi decided to move to London

for a better income
and a different lifestyle.

-I think when Brizzi
first arrived in London,

he would have felt
quite liberated.

He's moved away from Florence
and his family

and that quite rigid
Catholic set of values

that were so instrumental
in his upbringing.

He's come to live
in this diverse, exciting city,

where I think,
for the first time in his life,

he can be himself,

and I think this is quite
a positive time for him.

-He was intelligent.
IT expert, well-trained,

and coming away
from his native Italy

meant that he could perhaps
escape some of the family ties.

He could reinvent himself,
if you like.

-In 2012, Brizzi found work
with a merchant bank

as an IT consultant
and a web developer

earning £70,000 a year.

-He seems to be working
in an industry

that is quite kind of hedonistic
in terms of culture.

It's quite kind of fond
of instant gratification,

and you don't really have
very much

in the way of brakes
on your behavior.

You're encouraged to basically
work hard and play hard,

and I think that's where
the problems begin.

-I think the guilt

he'd found himself
suffering in Italy

was not completely dissipated
by changing countries.

-In 2013, Brizzi started
experimenting with drugs,

including GHB and poppers.

He soon became immersed
in a world of substance abuse

and eventually became addicted
to crystal meth.

-Now, in itself, one can only
feel sorry for him

because
it's a dreadful addiction.

It's very, very hard to attack
and to overcome,

but to some extent, he tried.

-Brizzi joined a support group
to help overcome his addiction.

-Brizzi does seem to be
quite a dramatic

and quite
an elaborate individual,

and some of his behavior around
his crystal meth addiction

really does highlight that.

He reached a point where he was
going to a support group

and he wanted to leave
his addiction behind.

-He conducted a funeral service
for his crystal meth addiction.

I think at one point, he even
constructed a coffin for it

and said he was
burying his addiction.

-He was basically saying,
"This is it. This is over.

I'm burying this part of me,
and I'm moving on,"

and you can see those roots
of his upbringing there,

that idea of the Catholic faith
and of ceremony and of ritual.

He's drawing on those
traditional values,

those traditional beliefs
in this new lifestyle.

So, I think here
we've got somebody

who's incredibly conflicted.

He's somebody who feels like he
should be a good Catholic boy.

He knows that his behavior
isn't going to come up

to the expectations
of his family and his community,

and he's really struggling.

-Brizzi wrestled to overcome
his addiction,

and in 2015,
he eventually lost his job.

His life was beginning
to fall apart.

-It would be fair to say
that Brizzi was disintegrating.

He became more and more
introverted, almost nocturnal.

He completely covered
the windows of his flat

so that no light came in.

He didn't go out very much
during the day at all.

He became addicted to
an American television show

called "Breaking Bad"

in which at one point,

two of the main characters

try to dissolve the body of
a drug dealer in a bath of acid,

which, for one reason
or another,

struck a chord in Brizzi.

-Brizzi fell into a dark world
of his own creation,

a blurred reality
between fiction and fantasy.

-I think he really did adopt
this "Breaking Bad" narrative.

He went along to
his support group

wearing a
"Breaking Bad" T-shirt.

Now, what that says to me is
that this is somebody who's not

thinking through the social
acceptability of their actions,

and this is somebody
who needs help,

and I think at this point,

there were quite
a few red flags.

-So, you have a man
who is literally falling apart,

has descended into a kind of
madness of his own creation,

fueled by crystal meth,
fascinated by sex,

desperately clinging to have
what he called chemsex parties.

-Chemsex is pretty much a party
or a get-together where --

It's exactly
what it says on the thing.

It's a party that's fueled by
chemicals, and it's a sex party.

The two biggest chemicals
that are used in the community

for sex parties

are ketamine and crystal meth.

Two big reasons --

ketamine is
a horse tranquilizer.

It kills your gagging effect.

And crystal meth
because you don't sleep on it.

The second reason why
crystal meth is very used --

it's known as
a huge aphrodisiac.

Once you take it,
your libido just goes crazy,

and you just --
you don't stop.

-Brizzi would use
the online gay dating app Grindr

to regularly meet men
for chemsex parties.

-It's an escapism
from the real life.

You know, it's like nothing
they've ever seen before,

and a lot of people,

when they do something
completely different,

they go,
"Wow, I love this."

-Brizzi became immersed in
a world fueled by drugs and sex

and would often go on
chemsex binges for days.

-I think that Brizzi really
wanted to participate

in a culture in which he felt
that he belonged,

in which he felt accepted,

so I think he really did want to
embrace it all part and parcel.

-I think it started off
being quite fun, quite exciting,

and then it became, like,
a full-blown addiction

that he just couldn't manage.

-Stefano Brizzi's
chaotic lifestyle

was quickly spiraling
out of control.

He was unemployed
and living alone

in his flat
in Southwark, London.

He'd become immersed in the
world of drug and sex addiction.

-The people who are around him

don't necessarily have
his best interests at heart,

and there's nobody
to really step back and say,

"Hang on a minute," you know,

"You might want
to be careful here."

In terms of his lifestyle,

there are lots
of enabling factors

but very little in the way
of constraining factors.

-He was living a very sort of
hermit-like existence.

He was only really
going out at night.

He wasn't working.

He was not interacting
with many people socially.

He was using the Grindr app
an awful lot,

but he wasn't having
sort of normal,

everyday social interactions
such as, like,

going to the pub
or things like that.

-On the afternoon
of the 1st of April, 2016,

Stefano Brizzi exchanged
messages with a man on Grindr

and invited him round
to his flat for sex.

The man in question
was 59-year-old policeman

Gordon Semple.

Emily Pennink is a correspondent
at the Old Bailey.

-Gordon Semple was from
Inverness originally,

in Scotland,

and he worked for the Bank
of Scotland in Inverness

and then moved down to London

where he became a police officer
30 years ago.

He was working at
the city hall in Westminster

as part of
an antisocial behavior team.

He was very popular
with his friends.

His brother described him

as a Dixon of Dock Green
kind of character,

the kind of beats bobby
who would solve crimes

with common sense
in the community.

So, he was a friendly guy,
and he was very much well-liked.

-At approximately 3:00 P.M.,

Gordon Semple got off a tube
train at Blackfriars Station

and made his way to Brizzi's
flat on the Peabody Estate.

-Gordon Semple
and Stefano Brizzi

didn't know each other.
They'd never met.

They had arranged to meet
for casual sex.

It was the middle of the day.
It was a working day.

We know that Gordon Semple
was on duty.

-According to Brizzi,

the two men
spent the afternoon having sex

and contacted other men
via gay-fetish apps.

-There were other people
who were --

had kind of indicated
they were interested

in coming to this sort of --
this rendezvous.

-At around 7:00 P.M.
that evening,

another man responded
to the messages

and arrived at Brizzi's flat.

-Another of the men
that Brizzi invited to take part

in the said chemsex party

rang the doorbell.

-And after a while,
Brizzi answers and says,

"Actually, somebody
has fallen ill.

It's okay," that
they're getting treatment.

The party is over.

-But Brizzi was lying.

At some point after
arriving at his flat,

Stefano Brizzi had murdered
PC Gordon Semple

behind closed doors.

-The night before
they actually met,

Brizzi had been irritated,

and he'd had virtually no sleep,

and he'd been let down
by another man

that he'd been
talking to on Grindr.

He'd taken it quite personally,
so even before they met,

Brizzi was irritated
and fractious and tired,

and I think he took it out
on Gordon Semple.

-It is unclear exactly what
happened at Brizzi's flat,

but according to Brizzi,

the two men engaged
in sadomasochistic sex acts

that involved a collar,
a mask, and a dog lead.

-At some point during
the course of events,

Gordon had lost his life.

He'd agreed to some bondage
activity with Brizzi,

and it's believed
that Gordon was strangled,

and that's how he died.

-So, precisely why reduced
oxygen supply to the brain

enhances orgasm
and sexual pleasure,

it's not something that's
tremendously well-understood,

but it is very well-recognized,

and for forensic pathologists,

finding autoerotic accidents
is not uncommon.

With pressure on the neck,
there is only about ten seconds

before somebody
loses consciousness

if the pressure is too high.

That means that if you don't
have some sort of fail-safe

in an autoerotic event,

you can die very quickly

because you lose consciousness,

and you can't save yourself.

-Now, Brizzi, at one point,
tried to suggest

that he'd been using the lead

to heighten the level
of sexual excitement,

a familiar enough thing

in both heterosexual
and homosexual relationships.

Cutting off the oxygen supply
is said to heighten the orgasm.

-The interplay between
pressure on the neck

and sexual activity

can be very, very difficult
to work out

when it stops being

an inexperienced person
in an accident

and when it becomes
deliberate homicide.

-In the days leading up
to Gordon Semple's death,

Stefano Brizzi had
been abusing drugs,

including crystal meth,
for several days.

-Something like methamphetamine
is a stimulant,

very similar effect
to something like cocaine.

They get you high.

You're more active, more agile.

Sometimes core body
temperature goes up.

They're getting you agitated
rather than calmed.

Stimulant drugs like
methamphetamine can have

significant psychological
and psychiatric effects,

make people unstable,
make them unpredictable.

They can have all sorts
of very damaging consequences.

-He lived in an extraordinary
fantasy world

of nocturnal oblivion,

and so he just decided
to kill him.

I think it probably
just came over him,

"I'm going to kill him,"
and it duly did.

He did not know that
Semple was a police officer.

He was not aware that

anyone would particularly miss
Gordon Semple.

-I think that the circumstances
around Gordon Semple's death

were incredibly chaotic,

and I think at this point,
he really was starting to panic.

I think that drug-induced haze
was perhaps starting to pass,

and he realizes
what he's done.

He realizes that somebody
has died in his flat,

and he really does need to work
out what he's going to do next.

-Brizzi was addicted
to crystal meth

and had reportedly been
abusing the drug

the night of the murder.

-Crystal meth is a known drug
for the escalation of it.

You start slow,
and it's amazing.

You feel completely
out of your body,

and you feel powerful
and everything,

but then you start
taking more and more

because you need more and more
because the effect is so strong,

and they go into
the paranoia phase.

They will have hallucinations.
They will have paranoia.

They will have schizophrenia.

They will see people
that are not there.

They will see
things that are not there.

It's a whole thing once you get
to the third phase,

and Brizzi was on that phase.

-As Gordon Semple lay dead
in Brizzi's flat,

his long-term partner
was expecting to meet him

later that evening.

-On the day that
PC Semple disappeared,

he discussed with his partner

what they were going to do
that evening.

They'd arranged to meet
at a local pub

near where they were
living in Dartford,

and they'd talked about having
shepherd's pie for dinner.

It was already in the fridge,
ready and waiting for them,

and they talked about
recording a reality TV show

they both liked so that
they could watch it later.

-Unaware that Gordon had
arranged to meet Brizzi,

his concern grew.

-Gordon Semple's partner
had become frantic with worry

after he couldn't
get hold of him

on the night
of his disappearance.

He'd phoned him 18 times

over the course
of an hour and a half

and been unable to get through

with leaving messages
on his answerphone.

The next morning, he reported
him missing to the police.

-On Monday, the 4th of April,
three days after the murder,

the caretaker of the
Peabody Estate started to notice

a strange smell
coming from Brizzi's flat.

-The caretaker didn't have
any idea what happened.

He knew it was a very bad smell.

They had different theories
about drains,

and they initially thought

that the occupier of the flat
might have died.

-Steve Harris lives in the flat
above Brizzi's

on the Peabody Estate.

-I walked in through
the fraction,

and the porter come up to me
and said to me,

"Excuse me.
There's been a complaint,"

and I thought
he was talking about me.

Then he went on a complaint
about a smell in the block,

but where I live at the top,

I didn't realize
what was going on.

So, we both walked up
into the block.

He said to me,
"Can you smell it now?"

"A little bit."

So, what he done,
he opened up the letter box,

and he said,
"Can you smell it now?"

And I said to him, "Yes.
Do you know what it smells like?

It smells like a dead body."

-The idea of a dead body
in the building

was hard to contemplate.

-Now, I've never smelled
a dead body in my entire life,

so he wanted to call the police.

I come back up here,
opened up the window,

had a fag, then all of a sudden,

when, like, people turns
their central heat on,

you got actual, like, flue.

So, I'm looking out the window
and I thought to myself,

"Well, hold on a minute, mate.
We just knocked at your door.

You didn't answer, so how comes
your central heating is on?"

I went downstairs on my own.
I looked through the letter box.

He walked straight past
and opened up the door.

I said, "Excuse me, mate."

I said, "There's been
a complaint

about a smell on the block."

So, he's gone to me,
"Well, I'm sorry about that.

I'm just cooking for a friend."

Fair enough.

I went back downstairs
to the porter,

and I said to him, "Don't bother
calling up the police. He's in."

-The smell of the dead body

was clearly
attracting attention,

and Brizzi had to
dispose of it quickly.

-Brizzi, after the killing,
he went to a DIY store

and bought various
different items,

including buckets,
rubber gloves,

cleaning products,

large perforated metal sheets,

which he used as part of
the dismemberment of the body.

-Brizzi tries to dispose
of Gordon's body in the same way

that the Walter White character
in "Breaking Bad"

tries to dispose of a corpse.

He buys acid.

He tries to dissolve
parts of Gordon's body.

He dismembers him.

-He bought a combination
of chemicals

from a local hardware store.

He didn't have exactly
what he needed.

I think he just thought he was
going to make a cocktail

and hope that it was going to
have the effect that he wanted,

but it only had
a partial effect.

-The truth is, it is very
difficult to reduce a body

to so little evidence
that nothing will be found

or nothing significant
will be found.

Yes, things like acids
will damage the body,

but very unlikely
to destroy it

to the point
where something can't be found.

To completely dissolve a body,
you're going to need

very, very powerful chemicals

much stronger than you'd
get over the counter,

and you're going to need
a long time

and somewhere to do it

that you're not going
to get discovered.

Practically speaking, outside
of the world of TV programs,

it's not a way
to get rid of a body.

-It really is
incredibly gruesome,

and this suggests to me

that this isn't somebody
who is disgusted.

This isn't somebody who is
abhorred by what is going on,

and I think by this point,

Brizzi has become so
kind of saturated with drugs,

he's become so detached
from reality,

that that line between
fiction and reality

really is completely crossed
and completely blurred.

-He also went on Grindr
and tried to cover his tracks

and lay a false trail

to put anyone off
from suspecting

that anything had happened
that was untoward.

He disposed of other body parts

by taking them and throwing them
into the river.

-And the disintegration
then takes over,

trapped in this tiny flat,

blackened windows,

with Gordon Semple's body.

It is almost impossible
to imagine

what that must have been like.

-On Sunday, the 3rd of April,
the Metropolitan Police,

unaware of the fate
of PC Gordon Semple,

launched an official
missing persons appeal

for their colleague.

He'd been missing for two days.

By now, the smell
coming from Brizzi's flat

was becoming unbearable.

On Thursday, the 7th of April,

Steve Harris and his brother

decided to
confront Brizzi again.

-We both walked up.

He approached the door.

He's got his little card
meant that he was a Sweeney.

He opened up the door
and the same sort of thing.

He's going, "I'm sorry, mate.
I'm cooking for my friend."

That was it.

-However, the brothers weren't
convinced and called 999.

An ambulance was dispatched
to Brizzi's flat.

-The ambulance turned up.

Whether or not they got
into his place or not,

I don't know, but they
must have smelled this smell.

When they come back down again,
I said to the woman,

"What's it smell of?"

She said, "It smelled like...
It smells like rotten flesh."

Well, me and my brother
looked at each other,

and it's to say, like,
"Well, something ain't right."

-The police arrived
after the paramedics,

and two officers knocked
on the door of Brizzi's flat.

-They weren't Murder Squad
detectives.

They were local police,

and they didn't really know
what to expect.

-Stefano Brizzi
answered the door

wearing a pair of pink Speedos
and aviator sunglasses.

-There was this horrendous smell
coming from the flat,

and he said,
"I've killed a police officer.

Satan told me to do it.

I promised Satan that I would
kill at the first opportunity,"

and these two police officers
were confronted

with a man who was possibly
very, very dangerous.

I think they initially thought
that he was insane,

and they decided
not to arrest him initially.

They just decided
to let him talk.

-This is a man who has
lost contact with the planet,

really,
and he says,

"Oh, yes. I've cut him up.

I've dismembered him."

I think the women police

was probably
completely confused by this.

"What on earth
are you talking about?"

"Well, yes. I killed him,"
and they go into the bathroom.

It's an extraordinary
descent into madness.

-The scene inside the flat
was of unimaginable horror.

Police discovered
the remains of dismembered

and dissolved body parts.

-When they looked around
the flat,

there were buckets
of dismembered body parts

including part of
PC Semple's head,

but they obviously
didn't know PC Semple,

so they wouldn't have known
that it was him at that stage.

-He has to explain his actions.

He's still very much
under the influence

of substances at this point.

He's been taking crystal meth
in quite large quantities

for quite a significant
period of time,

and I think that reality really
is a million miles away for him,

so he's basically saying
the most incredible things

like Satan is responsible
for the death of Gordon Semple.

-As the police secured
the crime scene,

they found a copy of
"The Satanic Bible"

on Brizzi's computer.

-He insisted,
"Satan had made me kill."

This was not the first time that
Brizzi had referred to Satan.

I'm not sure I believe
completely in possession,

although it is
a familiar enough explanation

which some murderers call upon,

but I would say
that in this case,

Brizzi almost certainly
believed it to be true.

He had convinced himself
that he was possessed

and that therefore he had
to fulfill Satan's desire.

-Here's somebody who really has
a lot of trouble

at this point in time

performing in a socially
acceptable way,

I think, because his values
and all of those types of things

that inform the way we behave
in front of other people

are completely off-kilter.

He's completely lost his compass
at this point in time.

-On the 7th of April, 2016,

Stefano Brizzi was arrested
on suspicion of murder

and taken
to Lewisham Police Station.

DNA tests and evidence
found at his flat

would eventually confirm
that the dismembered body

was in fact Gordon Semple's.

Brizzi would now have to reveal

what happened
on that fateful night.

The press quickly
got wind of the story.

-We got to the Estate.

There weren't loads
of press there.

There was a very tight cordon
around it.

We couldn't get very far in.

We had had a tip-off
of his image,

of a photograph
of Stefano Brizzi,

and we were trying to find out
anyone who knew him.

We didn't find anyone
because he was living

such an isolated life
by that point.

Police weren't willing to
give us much at all

because it was
just so distressing,

I think, particularly for
Gordon Semple's family

because it had gone from
being a missing person case

and not being massively unusual
to being a very grisly murder,

so the information
was metered out quite slowly.

-It wasn't until Brizzi
was interrogated by police

that the initial details
of the murder emerged.

-He was very forthcoming in his
interview about what happened.

The thing that always struck me
about him

was that he was a very educated
and articulate man.

He had an answer for everything.

-He wore sunglasses
in his police interviews,

and this is something that does
appear to be incredibly bizarre,

and I think
what he's doing here,

he's continuing to draw on that
character from "Breaking Bad,"

Walter White's alter ego
of Heisenberg,

who always wore sunglasses,

and I think this is a way
of basically

psychologically detaching
Stefano Brizzi

from the person who's carried
out this horrendous crime.

-Brizzi stood trial on the 18th
of October at the Old Bailey.

He was beginning to crumble
under the pressure.

-He was incredibly distressed.

At the beginning,
he was sobbing loudly,

crying, hyperventilating.

There was this difference
between the man we saw on CCTV,

and the man we saw
in his police interviews

and the man
who was on trial.

He was, in the first few days,
very upset,

lots of crying,
lots of sobbing from the dock.

-One of the most incriminating

pieces of evidence
the prosecution had

was the confession Brizzi made

at the time of his arrest.

-Brizzi had abandoned
his confession

that he'd been told by Satan
to kill someone.

He gave a version in court
where they'd had consensual sex.

They'd had played
quite a long sex game.

They'd both been taking
crystal meth and other chems,

and he described
a sadomasochistic sex game

involving a collar
and a dog lead,

and the only thing
that we know for certain

is that that collar
and this dog lead were used

because they had
both men's DNA on them.

-Brizzi said in his evidence
that the leash just slipped,

and it was an accident,

but there were a lot of
other aspects to the case

that didn't quite tally
with his version of events.

First of all, he told a lot
of lies about what had happened.

He'd lied to the man
that came to his door

to join the sex party.

He then lied again,

leaving messages on
Gordon Semple's Grindr account,

and he lied to the police
after they came to his flat

and discovered the body.

-The jury also heard

that acts of cannibalism
might have taken place,

something that Brizzi
had denied.

-It was one of the most
gruesome aspects of the case.

They found evidence that
Brizzi's cooker

had been used to cook
parts of Gordon Semple's body.

They found various utensils
in the kitchen

had Gordon Semple's DNA on it

cleaning a pair of chopsticks,

and there were bite marks on
a body part that was recovered.

-Bite marks can be
very important

in homicide cases.

They can often associate
an offender with the deceased.

What's interesting to know
is have they occurred in life?

Are the associated
with things like bruising,

or are they postmortem injuries,

and at the worst end
of the scale,

if there is flesh tissue
missing,

is it suggesting cannibalism?

-CCTV footage was also played,

showing Brizzi
at the local DIY store

on Tuesday, the 5th of April,

four days after
he'd killed PC Gordon Semple.

He bought several supplies,

including pincers,
heavy-duty scissors,

a putty knife,
and large plastic buckets.

-In the CCTV footage,

it's very clear
he's looking at the thickness.

He's looking at the depth,
and at one point,

he put his head and shoulders
in one of the buckets

to measure if it was big enough
to take a human body,

and so I think
he was obviously wary that --

what he was about to do.

His defense was that
he was high on crystal meth,

but he was definitely lucid
enough at that point to know,

"This is what
I'm going to need,"

or, "I'm going to need
some heavy-duty gear here."

-I think you can only see Brizzi

as a man
who is destroying himself,

literally falling apart
in front of your eyes,

because Semple then becomes,
poor man,

part of the desperate,
extraordinary, bewildering land,

this mad world that Brizzi
has found himself in,

in which he thinks
it's perfectly all right

to dismember
Gordon Semple's body.

-Brizzi's neighbor,
Steve Harris,

was called to the witness stand.

-They showed me a photo
of gloves at the bench

because he went out,
and he was cutting him up,

and there was a fork found.

All around here was closed off.

They had [Indistinct]
in the drains.

He must have flushed bits
and pieces down the toilet

to get rid of the evidence.

-The prosecution told the court

that Brizzi was an evil
and calculating man,

while the defense argued
that Brizzi was not a monster

and that he had no recollection
because of heavy drug use.

-Brizzi was assessed
by a psychiatrist.

They didn't find that
he had a defense

of diminished responsibility
or any psychiatric condition

that would explain
what he'd done.

He was completely sane.

-The jury had to decide
whether to believe

Brizzi killed in a haze
of drugs, delusion,

and sleep deprivation

or the version
he told in court

that it was a sex game
that had gone wrong.

Brizzi denied murder
and manslaughter

but admitted obstruction
of a coroner

by unlawfully disposing
of the body.

-I didn't envy the jury.

I thought they had
a real tough job.

It was 30 hours of deliberation.

There was a majority verdict
of ten to two.

They obviously really struggled
to reach that verdict.

-On the 14th of November, 2016,

the jury found
Stefano Brizzi guilty

of murdering PC Gordon Semple.

In December,
Judge Mr. Nicholas Hilliard

sentenced Brizzi
to life in prison

with a minimum of 24 years

and an additional seven years
for obstructing a coroner.

He was sent to Belmarsh
High Security Prison in London.

-I think there are several
elements of Stefano Brizzi

and Gordon Semple's story
that are tragic,

and I think for me,
it was the missed opportunities

of other people
to intervene here,

and I think here was somebody
who was on his own,

essentially,
in a foreign country.

He didn't have a lot in the way
of close support networks,

and I think
he went off the rails,

and there was no one
to put him back on again.

-So, you have in Brizzi

a man overwhelmed with shame,

conscious of his own gayness,

desperate to try
and do the right thing

and yet finding it
extremely difficult.

Put together, they are a potent
mixture of ingredients

that could turn into a killer.

I believe that Brizzi,
in the end,

tipped over the edge.

It was literally one
of those moments

in which this extraordinary
concoction of problems exploded.

-The tragic death
of Gordon Semple

highlighted some concerns
about the use of dating apps

and their potential dangers.

-I think at the time, I was also
covering similar cases

involving Grindr
and involving predators

stalking social networks
and dating apps,

and this seemed to be part
of a trend of cases

coming through the Old Bailey.

There was the Brizzi case,

which coincided with
the Stephen Port case,

which I also covered,
which was a serial killer

who targeted gay men
on dating apps,

but it seemed like
a very alarming new trend.

-I think the bigger-picture
issue here for me

is the context of social media,
of dating apps, of this idea

that we are basically just
cutting out a lot of the process

that we used to have around
these activities,

and we are almost
consuming our partners.

We're picking people almost as
if they're objects,

as if they're products,

and I think we're doing so
in a way that's off the radar,

so we're not meeting people
in social situations

when our friends and our peers
and our colleagues are around.

We're doing it on our own,

and I think that makes us
quite vulnerable.

-On Sunday,
the 5th of February, 2017,

almost a year after
he killed PC Gordon Semple

at his flat in South London,

Stefano Brizzi committed suicide

and was found dead
in his prison cell.

He was 50 years old.

-I think that the reason that
Stefano Brizzi

ended his own life

was essentially because reality
was catching up with him.

He's now having to live with
the consequences

of this horrendous crime
that he's committed

and also the fact

that this crime not only
has broken the law,

but it's broken a lot of those
moral expectations

that were placed upon him

as a young Catholic boy
growing up in Italy.

-The thing that was so shocking
in this case

was the way
the body was treated.

That was sickening.

It was --

Necessarily, they had to go
into great detail about it,

and that was very,
very hard to listen to.

That was hugely unpleasant,
and I can't even imagine

how it must feel
for the victim's family.

-It is telling that none
of PC Gordon Semple's friends

or family attended the trial.

One can only imagine
how absolutely devastating

it would have been for them
to have learned

for the first time

the details of his death
and what happened afterwards.

He was essentially stripped
of his dignity.

-Stefano Brizzi's lust
for sex and drugs

led to the murder
of an innocent man.

Gordon Semple was simply in the
wrong place at the wrong time.

For six days, Brizzi,
spurred on by his dark thoughts,

tried to dispose of
the police officer's body

in the most horrendous manner.

Due to the drugs that polluted
his twisted mind,

we may never know exactly
what happened behind the door

of Brizzi's London home,

but there is no doubt
that his heinous crime

means he will forever
be remembered

as one of the world's
most evil killers.

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