Original subtitles

When a murder is left unsolved...

No weapons, no eye witnesses, no forensic evidence at all.

There was nothing.

..And a killer is on the loose...

These people are still out there. Who's gonna be next?

..Britain's cold case detectives will never give up...

The best way to solve a cold case is to keep it warm.

..No matter how long it takes.

This case dominated my life.

They'll investigate every angle and follow every hunch...

Searching through thousands of people.

They think they've got away with it, they haven't.

..Until justice is finally done.

We all leave a trace.

We'd finally identified that golden nugget.

Bingo, we've got them.

Islington, north London.

In June 1995, 32-year-old mother of two, Jane Harrison,

vanished into thin air.

Her disappearance was so unexplained,

it immediately raised suspicions of foul play.

Detective inspector bill Davies of holloway cid

was swiftly given the case.

I got a report,

I think it was from a uniformed sergeant at highbury police station,

to say that, uh, she was concerned about a missing person

that had been reported to her.

Her concern was that this was a mother with children,

a loving family and that she's literally just

disappeared off the face of the earth.

Jane was part of an incredibly close-knit family,

and her two sisters, Claire and Maxine,

would prove crucial to the investigation.

The police questioned all close family members

to get a, you know, a profile of Jane's life and relationships.

It didn't take long for bill's team to know that something wasn't right.

Me and my sister, Jane, were very, very close.

We done everything together.

We went everywhere together.

She used to phone my house phone at least 20-30 times a day.

When I never heard from her,

from all them hours on that previous day of her missing,

I just knew it wasn't like Jane.

The 32-year-old was a doting mother to 14-year-old son, Ryan,

and Taylor, a one-year-old baby she'd had with her current partner,

Kevin Doherty.

Pretty quickly they realised and established from Jane's neighbours,

family, friends, she'd never like run off and leave her children.

They're a passionate, loving family,

and they were adamant that Jane would in no way,

walk away from her family

unless something had happened to her.

As a result of my, sort of, assessment of them as a family,

I wasn't over happy with it being treated as a missing person.

To prove his hunch,

bill had to first exhaust all the usual procedures.

Dermot carroll was a young detective constable in 1995.

In a missing person enquiry,

you would search the missing person's home or room

to see if there are any clues, anything like a diary

that is leading up to that person deciding they want to leave.

Jane's house was searched,

but absolutely nothing was found there,

nothing of evidential value was taken from the flat.

With foul play looking more and more likely,

bill made sure no stone was unturned in his bid to locate Jane.

The first thing for me is I've got to satisfy myself

that a crime has been committed here.

I got some of my officers to do some checks, like local hospitals,

central index at Scotland yard at the time,

the missing person's index, to see if her name had cropped up.

But as far as I'm concerned, at that moment in time,

in the first, sort of, 24 hours,

she just disappeared into, uh, into space.

The last time she was seen was three o'clock on the 12th of June,

when she was dropped off by her boyfriend.

As the last person to see her,

Jane's boyfriend, Kevin Doherty, was a priority to talk to.

I spoke to Doherty.

It was a case of he thought that she might have gone off

with another man.

And he'd mentioned that on several occasions.

So, that was another line of inquiry.

Bill wasted no time going back to Jane's family

to try and piece together her last known movements.

On the day that Jane went missing,

she'd phoned my house phone and she spoke to my son.

She said, "mum, Jane's just rang.

"She said to tell you she's in wood green, she's shopping.

"She's going Florida, and she'll ring you later."

I thought no more of it, no more of it,

until, as time went on, I never got that call from Jane.

Kevin had promised Jane a dream holiday to Florida,

leaving in just a few days' time.

Bill now had a confirmed location for the pair.

Detectives immediately scoured cctv of wood green's shops

and eventually spotted the couple.

Bill released the footage to the media

in a desperate call for information.

I remember the, sort of, haunting grainy images

of this woman walking around,

and then the fact that she had suddenly disappeared.

And that added a very striking effect on everybody.

TV: Four days since the mother of two failed to return

to her flat in highbury,

there's still been no sign of her.

32-year-old Jane Harrison had gone on a shopping trip

but never came back.

Now I know the cctv footage is not the world's clearest,

but it proved invaluable for me, just to get those pictures,

moving pictures, moving images, out there with the public,

and who knows? Someone could have said,

"yes, I saw them at such and such a place."

"Yes, I saw them get into a car."

Still desperate for clues, bill also recreated the shopping trip

using Jane's sister, Maxine, as a double.

TV: Police have made enquiries as far afield as Ireland and wales

in their hunt for Jane, but have so far drawn a blank.

I'd done the reconstruction for Jane in wood green,

which was very harrowing for me,

knowing that I'm doing... Walking in my sister's footsteps.

Jane came from a loving, big family who was very, very close.

We welcomed any media intrusion we could get,

because we just wanted to find my sister.

We had a lot of admiration for that family,

and to do something like that, to step in the shoes of your sister,

knowing full well there's a strong possibility

that she's not gonna see them again,

that takes great fortitude, great, um, spirit.

The police was doing what they could,

and so me and my sister, Claire, done what we could.

We got hundreds of photos done of Jane,

and we put them out all over the area.

We went to friends, neighbours,

we knocked on doors to see if anyone had seen her,

any sightings of her.

When I contacted the hospitals, I explained to them, you know,

my sister's been missing,

if you've got her there, can you contact the police

cos everybody's looking for her.

Bill knew the longer Jane stayed missing,

the less likely it was they'd find her alive.

A week after Jane disappeared, bill publicly voiced his fears.

She's just disappeared off the face of the earth,

nobody has seen her, nobody's heard from her,

so I can only fear the worst under the circumstances.

I think that she's probably been abducted, and she's probably dead.

Normally, the police line in those circumstances was,

"we're keeping an open mind and we're pursuing lines of inquiry."

Well, yes, that's true, but I believed that

she was never gonna be seen again.

And I made the decision that this is no longer

a missing person's enquiry, this is a murder investigation.

And that's when our world fell apart,

because we all knew Jane wasn't missing,

something sinister had happened to her.

In June 1995, Jane Harrison, a 32-year-old mother of two,

appeared to have vanished into thin air.

I find it inconceivable to think that an adult woman

can just completely disappear off the face of the planet.

All the police had to go on was cctv footage

of her and partner Kevin Doherty hours before she went missing.

But within a week of Jane's disappearance,

di bill Davies had elevated the case

from a missing person's enquiry to a murder investigation.

As the last person to see her,

Jane's boyfriend, Kevin Doherty, was brought in for questioning.

He was incredibly frustrating to speak to.

Even when confronted with absolute 100% stonewall facts,

he would just deny it.

It was incredible, really.

So, it was just a question of trying to get

as much information, not just out of him but the family

and other friends and neighbours, that we came across as well,

to try and disprove what he was saying.

Detectives went through every point of Kevin's account in minute detail.

So it was basically trying to establish what unusual has happened

that raises doubts in their minds.

That something untoward has happened to her.

The last known sighting of Jane and Kevin

were together at wood green shopping centre.

After that, the investigating team started piecing together,

in detail, what happened.

So, Kevin says that he dropped Jane off

around the corner from their mum's house.

When detectives checked with Jane's sister, Claire,

she couldn't understand why.

My mum's in Ireland,

my mum's getting over a breast operation,

and he didn't know that.

So, no-one was at the house, Jane had no keys.

There was no reason for her to go there.

Although it cast doubt on Kevin's version of events,

it didn't mean he was guilty.

But then more evidence came to light from Jane's teenage son, Ryan,

relating to the time immediately after his mum disappeared.

Ryan sees Kevin as being very agitated

and acting in a very agitated manner,

sweating, uh, being very nervous, walking from room to room.

Now, both Ryan and the baby-sitter also state

that whilst they were present,

there was a phone call into the flat, apparently from Jane.

And then he explains that to Ryan,

that she's out and about with friends.

Kevin Doherty told police he then went out looking for Jane

around the pubs in hoxton but couldn't find her.

He did tell Maxine about the call, though.

He phoned me to tell me that he had spoken to Jane,

and she was on that she was in a pub with her mate,

and she'd be home soon.

I told Kevin straight away that he was lying.

There's no way Jane was in a pub with her mate

because if she was in a pub, she'd have been with me,

cos Jane had no mates.

All our mates was our cousins,

so I knew he was lying.

Whilst detectives looked into the phone calls,

bill needed proof that Kevin wasn't telling the truth.

He had his team look more closely at the description Kevin gave

when he reported Jane missing.

He described Jane as pale skinned and blued eyed,

where she was clearly, uh, olive skinned and green eyed.

So, by giving a false description would have delayed

any police enquiries, crucially, by hours,

which time... The clock is ticking, and you need those hours.

In the meantime, Jane's family continued the media campaign.

My mum wouldn't leave me and my brother like that.

She loves us, she wouldn't do that.

And I think that someone's holding her.

Despite the family's hopes, as more evidence came in,

bill felt certain Doherty had something to hide.

On the morning that Jane was last seen,

a neighbour had seen Jane having an argument with Kevin

outside the house.

She had seen Kevin strike Jane.

As bill delved even deeper, the alarm bells rang louder.

All of them were adamant that although Jane, on most occasions,

didn't report cases of assault by Doherty,

that he was violent towards her.

Jane went to great lengths to try and hide injuries on some occasions.

To get more proof,

bill needed a complete picture of Jane and Kevin's relationship.

I told them straight away that I never trusted him.

Jane had met Kevin Doherty three years before she disappeared.

I was there the night that she met Kevin.

It was in Charlie chambers night club.

I didn't mind him at first,

and then until I started seeing the change in my sister.

She wasn't the happy-go-lucky person that she was.

It didn't take long to find out why Jane had changed.

She said, "Max, he's just punched me in the face,"

and I used to say to her, "for god's sake, Jane, leave him."

But Jane wanted to make this relationship work

because she'd wanted a family.

To understand why a woman stays with a domestic abuse perpetrator,

we need to look at it in its entirety.

If on day one of meeting there was abuse,

the majority of women would walk away.

It doesn't happen on day one.

It happens over time,

and because of that, in that period of time,

often their self-esteem has been reduced,

they've been controlled, they've also fallen in love.

Despite the abuse, Doherty and Jane had a son together.

So I said to her,

"why are you having a baby? Yous are not getting on."

But obviously my Jane thought she'd have a baby,

and it would make... They'd make it work.

In my opinion, it got worse.

I think he thought he's got his control over her now,

cos I think he obviously realised that she...

..She wanted to keep a family unit.

What we know from research is that domestic abuse

will often start or become much worse when a victim is pregnant.

Some perpetrators that are driven by jealousy

actually become jealous of the baby,

because they're no longer centre of attention.

And as time went on,

Jane's home life became of increasing concern to her sisters.

One day, I went downstairs, and my Jane was brushing her hair,

and as she went like that, I saw all the hair in the hairbrush.

And she said, "oh, no, no, it's all right, it's all right.

And I went, "come here," and I felt her head,

and she had a big, massive bump there,

and he'd obviously pulled lumps out of her hair.

The more bill's team discovered, the darker it became,

as Kevin moved from physical to mental abuse.

It became clear that Kevin was quite a manipulator of Jane.

There were reports of him playing mind games with her,

not only being abusive towards her,

but he'd do things like hide shopping,

hide toy, the baby's toys, and then they'd reappear days later.

And so he had these mind games going on, quite controlling of Jane.

Gaslighting is really devious,

manipulative behaviour,

where the victim actually starts to doubt her own sanity.

Starts to think that their version of reality,

their version of the world, is skewed.

And that makes gaslighting, in my opinion,

one of the most dangerous forms of emotional abuse and domestic abuse.

The domestic abuse and inconsistencies

in Kevin's story were useful,

but bill had to get more proof that Doherty

had planned Jane's disappearance.

We discovered that there was tickets for a Florida holiday.

And one of the reasons why Doherty and Jane

went to wood green shopping centre

was to buy some bits and pieces for the holiday,

which I think was gonna take place in three days' time.

When I questioned the family about this,

they said that Jane was very excited about it.

And we eventually managed to find the details of this holiday,

the tickets, but we checked up on them,

and they hadn't been paid for.

So it begs the question,

why tell Jane that they're going on holiday

when he hasn't even paid for the tickets?

And there was no realistic prospect of him, of the two of them,

going at that stage.

Convinced Doherty knew Jane would never be going on that holiday,

and with all the other evidence, bill decided to arrest him.

But with no body or proof of murder,

he was brought in on suspicion of abduction.

We was over the moon.

But I did say to the police,

"you will never get him, you won't get him,

"cos he's cold and he's calculating. You will not get him."

And they said, "we will."

Bill wasted no time in questioning Kevin.

When I interviewed him, he was giving vague answers.

He answered the questions, and at no stage,

no stage, did he say, "no reply."

He did answer the questions,

but some of them were just nonsensical.

You know, "what time of day is it now?"

And he'll say a different time.

He was trying to avoid giving the correct,

the truthful answers.

And you can't, you can't force someone to tell the truth.

With Doherty not cooperating,

police knew that to crack the case they'd need to find a body.

Bill's team concentrated on some properties Doherty had access to.

We managed to find some lock-up.

He had a garage obviously in, uh,

where he lived in woodford.

That was searched, and one or two other ones were searched,

but we couldn't find anything, nothing whatsoever.

And they were... They were searched very, very thoroughly.

Unable to find Jane's body,

bill decided to study the calls Jane had allegedly made to Doherty.

Particularly as he was one of the few people in 1995

to own a mobile phone.

It was around about '92,

mobile phones were first commercially available.

They were crude, the billing was crude,

not like it is now.

Suspecting Kevin Doherty had used his mobile phone

to ring the landline and pretend it was Jane,

bill looked at the phone records.

All we could get out of it was from phone billing,

that his phone had called the apartment at a particular time.

So, what you have to do then is to try and pinpoint

exactly the time when he was in the flat,

exactly the time that he'd spoke to Ryan,

and then you could tie it in with his mobile phone billing.

It was another dead-end.

Technology in 1995 wasn't advanced enough to prove bill's hunch.

He hoped he had enough to charge Doherty with Jane's murder.

Being arrested and being charged are quite different things.

The police can arrest somebody,

but when it comes to charging a suspect,

they need to convince the crown prosecution service of this.

And the crown prosecution service

will want to see some quite compelling evidence.

A body is a scene of crime.

It can tell you so much and give you so much information

that would either confirm or deny anything that Doherty's saying,

or anything, or confirm or deny anything that the police know.

So in the absence of a body, obviously,

they took the view that

it wasn't safe to proceed with the prosecution.

Bill and his team were left with no alternative

other than to release their one and only suspect.

And this was a blow because they were clear in their minds

that this man was responsible.

There is nothing more frustrating than having

to let somebody go who you're convinced is guilty.

Jane Harrison's disappearance in June of 1995

had quickly become a murder investigation.

Her abusive boyfriend, Kevin Doherty,

had been arrested and questioned.

But without a body, detective bill Davies could not convince the cps

to charge Kevin with murder,

and he'd been released.

The case had hit a brick wall,

and there was nowhere left for bill and his team to go.

So, the only evidence, last sighting of Jane, was on cctv.

Other than that, we didn't know anything at all

other than the account given by Kevin Doherty.

There were no other detailed accounts,

no other witnesses that could explain what happened

after they left wood green shopping centre.

We was getting our hopes up to think this is it,

we're gonna get him,

but it went cold.

It was like running a knife in your heart,

and we was just left in limbo.

And it wasn't just Jane's family who were frustrated.

It's very, very difficult because I had a lot of respect for the family,

and I had some sort of affinity with them.

It's very difficult to let people down.

I find it very, very frustrating.

Once Doherty was released,

he abandoned Jane's son, Ryan, and his own baby boy, Taylor.

He walked out on that boy's life, and he's never seen him again.

He's meant to love that child.

He was 15 months old, and I never heard from him.

He never once asked how the children was.

Jane's mum, Phyllis, took on the responsibility

of raising the two boys.

Ryan went through hell.

His mum was his life.

He just adored his mum.

All he ever had was his mum,

you know, but thank god he had my mum.

Claire and Maxine made sure Jane wasn't forgotten

and continued to campaign for information

and justice for their sister.

Claire and Maxine played an absolutely crucial part

in keeping the fight for justice going.

Even when the leads had gone cold,

they kept on fighting, kept on appealing,

which, of course, was newsworthy.

At the evening standard,

this was a story that was really at the heart of the newspaper.

Here was the epitome of human interest.

As well as newspaper stories

the sisters took part in television programmes.

I mean I've done reconstructions, I've done appeals.

Obviously this is the last thing that I can do.

And I just hope something comes out of it.

They also kept up pressure on police to reopen the investigation.

Maxine and Claire were the driving force in keeping this case alive.

They tried to keep everything in the public eye.

They kept badgering with Scotland yard cold case

to see if there's anything more that could be done.

They kept the media appeals going.

They were determined to catch Jane's killer,

who most people were convinced was Kevin Doherty.

Over the years, the case was periodically reviewed.

With so little to go on, though,

Scotland yard weren't able to find anything new to move the case on.

But Jane's sisters kept on fighting.

Jane was always in the back of our mind,

Jane's in our mind 24 hours a day.

There's not a day goes... She chokes up

..we don't think of her.

Finally, 15 years after Jane Harrison vanished,

a metropolitan police cold case review decided

that forensic and technological advances

meant they could reopen the investigation.

And it landed on the desk of detective inspector dermot carroll.

This case was gonna fry up an awful lot of challenges for us.

There were no weapons, no forensic evidence at all,

one minute of cctv of the last sighting of Jane,

no eye witnesses to any abduction or murder,

and, crucially, no body, unfortunately.

So, this was gonna be a tough case to investigate.

Despite the difficulties,

dermot and his team were determined to crack the case.

It resonated with me, and it resonated with my team.

This was a north east crime,

from the area that we all lived in and worked in.

Obviously, I had to go out there and explain it to them,

"we've got a cold case."

But, yeah, somehow it resonated with us, and we really took to this case.

One of the first things dermot did

was call the original case detective, bill Davies.

I did receive a phone call from dermot at the time,

and we did discuss frustrations about the case

and how I felt at the time.

Bill shared his conviction that something wasn't right

about the phone calls Jane supposedly made to Doherty

after she went missing.

What dermot had in 2010 that bill didn't in 1995

was a huge leap forward in digital forensics.

We knew Kevin Doherty was one of very few people that had

a mobile phone back in 1995.

One of the things that we deal with on a day to day basis

on all the murders that we deal with is

the mobile telephone technology,

which is crucial and bread and butter to every murder enquiry.

It pinpoints telephones, where they are, who is calling who,

when they were used.

Dermot got a digital forensic specialist

to study Doherty's mobile records from 1995.

This was dermot's one and only chance

to prove Doherty was lying about the phone calls with Jane

and where he'd been just after her disappearance.

This expert was fantastic.

They looked at the topography of London,

they looked at what structures were in place now

that might not have been in place back then,

or what were in place then and no longer in place.

This was an awful lot of legwork that was involved.

If Doherty hadn't been lying,

the cold case investigation would collapse before it had begun.

After a few months, the phone analysis came back.

It clearly stated that Kevin had lied.

It was Kevin who'd made the two phone calls into the flat

using his mobile phone, and, crucially,

it proved that Kevin wasn't in the hoxton area

as he had maintained throughout this enquiry.

And this finally nailed down that he wasn't actually in hoxton,

he was in miles away in woodford,

where he had his lock-ups.

Finally, dermot had the proof he needed

that the phone calls from Jane were made by Doherty himself,

and he'd lied about where he'd been.

Although police didn't know exactly what had happened to Jane,

the implications were clear.

He was buying time.

When he said he was gonna go and look for Jane, he wasn't.

That gave him a window of opportunity

to, wherever Jane was, to go and dispose of her body

or arrange a disposal of Jane's body.

The new mobile evidence was the missing piece of the puzzle

that had eluded police all these years.

Cell site analysis is something that is quite important

in contemporary cases, cos it provides us with an insight

into the area in which a phone call is made from.

And I think this is something that Doherty would never

have anticipated at the time.

Science caught up with him.

So when that information came through,

I knew we'd got our man. I knew we had him.

I knew now I could convince the cps

that we could take this a step further

and arrest him for Jane's murder.

Tragically this news came too late for Jane's mum, Phyllis,

who had died shortly before.

But her sisters were informed straight away.

One of our family liaison officers, beverley,

she rang me up, and she said,

"we've just nicked Kevin. He's in the back of the car."

And I'll never forget.

I mean, I had every emotion going, I had...

..I was trembling, crying, it literally took my breath away.

I was broken because my mum didn't know.

My mum had died, she didn't know.

Doherty was questioned and was initially cooperative

until he was confronted with his mobile phone data.

What happened in interview was we introduced the new,

uh, phone evidence that said that Kevin wasn't where he was.

That blew a hole in his alibi, his whole story since 1995.

And the whole interview changed from that moment.

Kevin decided that he wasn't gonna talk any more

and went to a no comment interview.

Next, dermot and his team started building the case against Doherty,

beginning with his history of domestic abuse against Jane.

Back then, domestic violence was dealt with

in a totally different way than what it is now.

We knew we could use that,

if we could go to cps and use that as evidence,

which would be looked at entirely different

than what it is now from back then.

I told them straight, I saw her with bruises.

Other people saw him bullying her as well.

Had that been today, then none of this would have ever happened,

because the police would have been called, and that would have been it.

The change of attitude to domestic violence

was going to be a crucial factor in getting Doherty charged.

But to get a murder conviction,

dermot needed to prove that Jane's killing had been premeditated.

And he hoped the booked but unpaid Florida holiday did just that.

He knew full well that they weren't gonna go to Florida,

there was no need for him to see the payments through.

So was he just trying to lull Jane into a sense of security?

Had he knew what he was gonna do that day?

From leaving wood green,

I believe some sort of altercation has taken place.

Kevin was volatile, manipulative, coercive,

and he's snapped and he's killed Jane.

Finally, in may 2012,

dermot felt he had enough to persuade the cps

to charge Doherty with Jane's murder.

And this was a huge breakthrough,

because even though we suspected that cold case had been going on,

there was no indication that they had found such,

uh, compelling new evidence in order to bring charges.

Police kept the new evidence to themselves,

but the fact remained they still didn't have a body.

In any murder case,

the body is a very significant piece of evidence.

That body may have on it DNA from a suspect,

there might be fibres from a suspect's clothing,

from their car, from their home.

It is a very important part of the case.

So, when you don't have a body, it's not impossible

to get a murder conviction, but it's a lot less likely.

Murder trials with no body are notoriously difficult to prove,

very, very difficult.

And in my 23 years at the old Bailey,

I can count on less than five fingers of one hand

how many cases have been actually brought to court

in these circumstances.

The problem being, of course, is that the prosecution has to prove

that the victim is actually dead.

And with no body to prove that,

the defence already has a head start.

In January 2013, 18 years after Jane Harrison's disappearance,

the murder trial of Kevin Doherty began at the old Bailey.

With no body, forensics or DNA,

police and the prosecution knew this wasn't going to be

a foregone conclusion.

I'm never confident of getting a result.

I have strong cases, I have not so strong cases.

So I was confident on this case that...

..Were we gonna get a result on it?

Um, I didn't know.

All Jane's surviving family were in court.

It was the first time they'd seen Doherty since 1995.

He just sat there as if he was gonna walk it.

He didn't care for us or anybody else,

all he was concentrating on was himself.

He had the right not to talk in court,

and he just sat there, looking over at us.

We had to sit and endure that.

We had to sit and look at him in that court.

My first views of Kevin Doherty as he came into court

was that he seemed bewildered,

which is not unusual for a defendant in a big trial at the old Bailey,

and clearly nervous,

particularly when the evidence was being revealed.

Illustrating Doherty's history of violence against Jane

was one area the prosecution had to get right.

Kevin Doherty decided not to give evidence.

We had good witnesses, good eyewitnesses come forward.

And one witness, for me,

the neighbour who witnessed the violence to Jane

in that morning come across so well.

She stuck to her guns, wouldn't be moved on it,

despite what the defence were trying to convince her of.

The pivotal moment, obviously, was the forensic evidence

around cell site analysis.

We'd been waiting for the blockbuster piece of evidence

that transformed this from a missing person,

uh, with no charges, to many years later,

a murder charge, and here it was,

which blew his alibi out of the water.

But as the weeks in court passed,

it became clear that all the evidence against Doherty,

whilst compelling, was circumstantial.

As the time went on, he seemed to grow more confident,

and I suspected that he was actually starting to believe

that he actually could get away with this.

After three weeks,

the jury retired to decide whether Doherty was guilty of murder.

The jury was deliberating for about four or five days.

And every day, we'd go back to the court,

from the morning to the evening, waiting for the verdict.

And it just didn't come until about the fourth day,

and, by then, we were all beginning to really panic.

Taking this long meant only one thing,

the jury was struggling to agree on a verdict.

On the 30th January 2013, they finally emerged.

It was circumstantial evidence, but I knew they had the right person.

And it was just hopefully that the jury would pick up on that as well.

We were sitting there, me, my sister, Claire,

and her youngest child, Taylor.

We was literally holding hands, and our knuckles was white

with the terrify...

..We was terrified that he was gonna walk away.

In January 2013,

18 years after Jane Harrison disappeared,

the murder trial of her abusive partner

was coming to an end at the old Bailey.

The jury had spent four days deliberating

if Kevin Doherty was guilty of a Jane's murder.

We went through all our evidence.

The jury had to decide on one,

was he guilty of murder, or two, if they couldn't agree on murder,

was he guilty of manslaughter?

Obviously, we're all in a terrible state.

We don't know which way this is gonna go.

We're crying.

I know I was crying cos I was so scared that he was gonna walk it.

My heart was pounding out of my chest, I was so scared.

The world was finally about to discover if Kevin Doherty

was guilty of Jane's murder... Or not.

They came back with inconclusive,

couldn't make their minds up on murder,

but they got him on manslaughter as a majority of 10-2.

Manslaughter meant that whilst the jury believed

Doherty had killed Jane,

they hadn't been persuaded it was premeditated.

I think that Doherty's lies,

and his cunning, his preplanning

showed that there was an intent in his...

..In his mind beyond just doing some sort of damage to Jane.

But juries have to be certain beyond reasonable doubt.

Claire and Maxine, the family, ,

obviously would have loved a conviction for murder,

but throughout this whole process,

I kept reminding them there's gonna be a lot of bumps,

we've got a lot to get through.

The fact that we got him arrested was a big step for us.

I had to remind them that we've got a conviction for manslaughter.

We got a conviction in this case against all the odds.

We was overjoyed because we know now we're gonna get justice for Jane.

And I had great pleasure of turning my head

to look at Kevin, as if to say,

"I've got you, we've got you."

It was a great feeling.

Later that day, Doherty was sentenced to 12 years

for the manslaughter of Jane Harrison.

At the time, I just thought any bit of recognition that she's dead,

you know, and even for the kids' sake,

to let them know your mum ain't left you.

To have it clarified that,

"no, girls, you're right, we do believe,

"you know, your sister's been killed."

Although convicted of killing Jane,

Doherty refused to tell police what he'd done with her body.

When you add the additional trauma of no body being found,

that is impossible for many families to get over,

because there's no closure.

Every family needs a funeral and also a trial.

And when those things happen,

they can try to begin to heal from the trauma.

When that's snatched away from them, there's nothing,

they've got nothing to...

..To heal from, they've got no closure at all.

As the years passed,

Claire and Maxine began to lose hope of ever finding Jane's remains.

Then in early 2017, the parole board got in touch.

We got a letter saying that the defendant, Kevin Doherty,

would be out on the 18th November 2018.

And I was disgusted, cos we have to live with this

and the memories, and the scars and the...

..The children for the rest of our lives.

To think, you know, you've been found guilty of manslaughter,

so in my eyes, you've been proven guilty of killing someone.

How the hell can you get out in six years?

There's no justice there.

Jane's family tried protesting

and had the full support of all the detectives

who had worked on the case.

I find it frustrating that there's a man who has been convicted of

killing Jane Harrison, and he hasn't had the decency

to allow the family, to notify the family or the police where Jane is,

what her final days consisted of,

so we could have got some closure for them.

And I do find that very frustrating.

I don't think it is right,

and I honestly don't think it's right that he should be let out

without letting them know what has happened,

what has happened to Jane's body.

Despite everyone's best efforts, in November 2018,

Doherty was released after serving half his sentence.

The law is a disgrace, and it needs to be really,

really delved into,

because this is not just our case,

this is other people as well, and it has to stop.

I haven't got over it.

And to think he's out walking the streets,

and we're still no nearer then we are now of finding our Jane,

and we're not gonna.

Doherty got 12 years and did six,

but Jane's family have to live with the consequences forever.

I've lost all my confidence.

I don't feel able to go work properly again,

cos I just have really down days,

and that's gonna be like that forever.

It's like this big, big, big, big cloud everywhere you go.

When you are happy, you feel sad for being happy.

But yet we know there's nothing else we can do.

Within law, there's nothing else we can do. We can't go any further.

The case was an example of extraordinary police work

against the odds to catch a killer who had defied them for so long.

I think the message is, and this case proves,

is that these cases are never closed.

The police will always go back and look at them until they're solved.

This one always sticks out in my mind.

Unique, no body, no forensics, good old-fashioned police work.

Detectives may have got their man in the end,

but how Jane was killed and where her body is remains a mystery.

I was in the police for 32 years,

30 years as a detective.

But this was one of the only cases that I'd ever dealt with

that, to my mind, remains unresolved.

I don't mean not solved, I mean unresolved

in as much as Jane has still not had a decent burial.

It is a sign of great frustration,

to me personally, and I do take it personally.

A mother discovers her murdered son...

I just can't imagine how she lived with that image.

..And a completely clean crime scene leaves police baffled.

There was no forensic evidence to link the victim to his attacker.