Original subtitles

When a murder is left unsolved...

No weapons, no eyewitnesses, no forensic evidence at all.

There was nothing.

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

These people are still out there. Who's going to 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. You haven't.

..Until justice is finally done.

We all leave a trace.

We finally identified that golden nugget.

Bingo, we've them.

Thursday, October 1st, 2009, the quiet market town

of fakenham, north Norfolk.

Valerie tuck was visiting her son, Steven Murphy, and discovered

a scene that is every mother's worst nightmare.

Her son lay dead in his hallway.

With his shirt covered in blood, Valerie could see Steven

had been violently killed.

Shocked and distraught, she called 999.

Emergency, which service?

Detective chief inspector jes fry was part of Norfolk and Suffolk's

major investigation team.

On his way back from a police conference,

he was alerted straight away to this potential murder.

I had a phone call to tell me that Steven's body

had been discovered in fakenham,

and so I diverted to come straight to the scene.

Jes was an hour's drive away.

While he raced to fakenham, he sent local officers to secure the scene.

Steven's neighbour, Todd gilbey, couldn't believe what was happening

right on his doorstep.

I lived just around the corner from Steven Murphy.

I used to see him all the time.

He seemed a very sort of calm, quiet, reserved guy.

I remember coming home from uni and there were crime scene vans

literally parked up in a row over the entrance here,

and I remember them checking these two drains for murder weapons.

It just looked like something out of, you know, out of a TV show.

I'd never seen anything like it before.

Steven's mother, Valerie, was distraught.

Her sister, Steven's aunt Jane, rushed to her side.

I went down and we all just sat there staring at each other,

just saying, "this can't be true."

And she's telling me how she found him.

And she pushed the door open and Steven's body

was behind it in a pool of blood.

I can't imagine that.

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

I have that image that I didn't even see it.

Steven's family couldn't comprehend how someone so easy-going had met

such a violent end.

Steven was fun, and he was smiley and friendly, and people

just liked him when they met him because he just had this nice

way with him.

When jes fry arrived, crime scene officers had already begun building

a picture of what had happened inside Steven's home.

Jes had the unenviable task of speaking to the person

who had discovered Steven's body.

After I'd visited to the scene

and then spoken to some of the local officers,

I went to visit Steven's mother at her home.

She was a lovely lady, really engaging, and I felt a real

connection with her.

It put pressure on me later on, but I sort of made a promise

to her that I was going to find Steven's killer, and I was going

to get a result for her, if you like.

I didn't want to let her down.

I think I've investigated over 50 murders, and I don't think I've ever

made a promise to anyone quite in that way.

I really felt as if I needed to do something for her.

We believed him.

I believed him and she believed him.

I really did think they'd find out who'd killed Steven.

The news of Steven's brutal death quickly spread through

the local community.

To have something like that happen, especially

in a small place like fakenham,

it's the last place you expect to find a murder.

So obviously it's headline news.

We heard that it was the mother who discovered that her son

had been murdered when she'd just called it the address, having not

heard from him, which is very unusual because they were

in daily contact.

And of course, she arrived there to find this terrible scene

of her son lying there, stabbed to death.

It was incredible.

You know, nothing ever happens in fakenham.

It's a very, very quiet, safe place to live.

Jes and his team of detectives began looking into Steven's life,

hunting for clues to anyone who had a motive for killing him.

Most often, a murder is committed by someone known to the victim,

and so it's really important to know as much as you can about the victim

in order to make those links.

With help from his family,

jes quickly built up a profile of Steven.

Steven was a 45-year-old man

who'd moved to the fakenham area fairly recently from southampton

to be closer to his family.

His mum, his uncle, who lived in the area.

Steven came from a lovely family

and he'd had an accident early in his life that seemed

to change his nature.

And following that, he had become involved in drugs and his family

were trying to give him a new start and bring him out of the situation

that he was in in southampton

and to be close to them for their support.

Steven's move to fakenham seemed to have had a positive effect,

and he had become close to his uncle, Ken.

I was really pleased that he did come up here and he was ever nearby.

He was very pleased to be near to his mum and his stepdad.

We spent some time socialising.

I introduced him to some people and he found some nice friends here.

He liked talking about football. He liked music.

He was good friends to people, I think.

And he was, you know, good fun, really,

most of the time, I would say.

As the investigation continued, jes received some strange news

from the forensics team.

Steven lay in a foetal position on the floor.

There was blood around his body and blood on the wall next to him.

Despite the blood around him, it was strangely sterile in that

obviously, something very violent had happened at the end of

the corridor, but there was nothing leading up to him,

nothing leading away from him.

A brutal murder with barely any forensic evidence was practically

unheard of.

When a victim receives stab wounds

there is quite a potential there for a lot of forensic evidence, so

the offender has been really close to the victim physically.

They have interacted with them. They have touched their body.

They may have their blood on them.

So to actually leave no evidence

is something that's quite difficult to do.

The most shocking thing was that there was no fingerprints,

no DNA, nothing that you would normally associate with a bloodied

crime scene, which only added to the mystery of it all.

There was only one clue left at the scene.

Officers discovered a mysterious Mark just outside the house.

There was nothing from him all the way down the hallway

until there was a footprint in blood under the porch,

just outside the front door.

It was so unusual, it was almost unexplainable at the time

because if someone had something on their foot, they would have

tracked it down the hallway.

And so, how did they suddenly have blood on them outside?

With no murder weapon, no suspect, and no forensic evidence,

the promise jes made to Steven's mum looked far from being fulfilled.

In October 2009, Steven Murphy was stabbed to death at his home

in the quiet market town of fakenham in Norfolk.

Newsreader: Norfolk police are still looking for the murder weapon.

They haven't made any arrests.

They want members of the public to tell them anything

they may have heard about Steven Murphy.

With almost no forensic evidence at the crime scene

detective chief inspector jes fry and his team had to rely

on more traditional investigation methods.

A key line of inquiry is house-to-house enquiries -

to go around all the neighbours,

everyone within that close, to identify potential witnesses who

may have seen something significant.

House-to-house enquiries identified some neighbours just across the road

who had just finished watching EastEnders and came out and saw two

figures just outside Steven's front door.

That gave us a time where two people were at the address

that we could focus on.

This witness account helped jes focus the investigation

on a specific time.

He put together a specialist team of police search advisers known

as polsa to hunt for any clues in the immediate area.

It's always possible that the weapon may still be at the scene.

It's possible that it could be discarded when someone is running

away from the scene, or leaving the scene.

We had a polsa search team do a search leading from the house

and then around the close and down to the main road.

And then we gradually extended that perimeter.

The neighbourhood was still reeling from the shock waves

of Steven's murder.

I remember feeling, is this really as safe a community as we thought

it was, you know,

and it was a case of being a lot more aware

of my surroundings when I left the house because we didn't know

if this was as random - a random killing - you know,

or is there somebody going around killing people randomly?

Even more shocking were the chilling details of how Steven was killed

revealed by the pathologist's report.

During the postmortem,

it was established that Steven had been stabbed 16 times.

Attacks with a knife are not uncommon, but generally speaking,

it would be one stab wound.

But this did seem a particularly violent attack, with further

injuries that were cause clearly after he was on the floor

because they were around his body, in his buttocks,

in his back, and the assault went on longer than it really needed to.

This is a particularly violent murder, a rare instance of such

severe violence inflicted.

Many of us would simply find it insurmountably difficult

to inflict that much pain, both physically and emotionally

on somebody else.

So it's a rare instance to find this severity of violence.

When we look at a case where there are 16 stab wounds,

there is a tendency to use terms like frenzied or out of control.

But actually, what's going on here is that the offender

is very much in control.

This is a performance.

This is a way of communicating something about the killing.

It's a way of communicating something about the killer.

Look at me. Look at how much violence I'm capable of.

The painstaking searches made by the polsa team also came

up empty handed.

With no weapon, forensic evidence,

motive or suspects,

police had to broaden the investigation.

A media appeal was made, led by Steven's uncle.

Somebody may have seen something in the area at the time.

They may have seen something unusual, and they have not

yet come forward, for whatever reason.

Someone might know who's responsible for this.

Please contact the Norfolk police now.

Ken was the public face in the press and on the TV, and he volunteered

to do that to protect the rest of us.

And that was very hard for him and it was very difficult.

Although the investigation had so far drawn a blank,

Steven's family never lost faith in jes fry.

I mean, jes just comes across as somebody that's very capable

and very strong, and he knows what he's doing, and he's got a big

team of people working for him.

So I had absolute complete confidence in that man.

And all of them, really.

The appeal for information did raise hopes of a breakthrough.

Someone informed us that they had seen a car driving

out of fakenham, and seen something thrown from the car.

It was always a possibility that it could be the murder

weapon being discarded.

And so we sealed that area and did a fingertip search

and we did what we would call anniversary checks.

People are very habitual in what they do.

We've got a time to focus on where these two people

are outside the front door.

And so, who else might be in that area at that time?

And could they have seen something?

Had they seen a car that was unusual?

Had they seen someone running away out of the close?

But hopes were quickly dashed.

It turned out that nothing was found where something was discarded

from the car.

Undeterred, jes refocused the investigation

back inside Steven's house.

With an attack this violent, there had to be some forensic

clue he'd overlooked.

Forensic evidence is key to every investigation.

It's very strong evidence, because if there's DNA,

then you're looking at a one in a billion chance of it being

someone else and it's really strong, and you hope that you'll find it.

The most puzzling thing was how there could be nothing

evidential between the footprint outside the front door and Steven's

body at the other end of the hallway.

All the evidence was sent off for examination.

We look at, sort of, luminol to identify blood or some other

substance that will identify blood that is not obvious

to the naked eye.

Fingerprinting and other, sort of, chemical techniques used to try

and bring evidence forward to try and identify any DNA

that may have been left.

Fibres, hair, sort of, anything like that.

Within days, the results came back and confirmed jes's fears.

At the end of the examination,

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

It looked like every Avenue jes tried was hitting a brick wall.

It's really important to keep an open mind and think of other

avenues to secure and harvest evidence that will assist

a successful prosecution.

Unable to rely on science,

jes had to hope his police experience and instincts

would be enough to catch Steven's killer.

We spend a lot of time today talking about forensic techniques, talking

about technological advances, DNA, cell site analysis,

that kind of thing.

But most murders, what's at the core of those getting solved is good,

old-fashioned police work.

It's door to door enquiries.

It's asking questions.

It's believing nobody.

It's checking everything.

Those kind of skills are what will solve many of these crimes.

Yes, the technology and the science can assist in an investigation.

But if you don't have that good philosophy at the heart of it,

it's not going to get very far.

As jes and his team continued to uncover more about Steven's life

in fakenham, one particular piece of information stood out.

The investigation into Steven's movements in fakenham identified

a feud that had begun between Steven Murphy and a man

called James Cameron.

It would appear that there was an argument between them over a lady

in the town.

Possibly James Cameron had been in a relationship previously.

Steven became friendly with her.

There had been a confrontation and, in fact, Steven had been arrested

for an assault on Cameron, where mr Cameron received a cut

to his hand from a knife, for which he was charged and later

tagged, as well as other tit-for-tat incidents

from Cameron towards Steven.

Finally, jes had a suspect who could have a motive

for killing Steven.

Although the injuries from the previous fight

were relatively minor, they had an altercation

over a relationship.

And it might be that there were feelings of anger, frustration,

annoyance and a clash.

He may have experienced feelings of rejection, shame, humiliation,

and this might have sparked anger.

James Cameron was a long shot.

Although he lived in Scotland,

he often visited family in fakenham.

James Cameron came to fakenham for a family reunion

for his brother's birthday.

And so we took the opportunity of speaking to him and spoke to him

about his movements and the relationship

that he'd had with Steven Murphy and how it had become antagonistic

and what had been going on.

Cameron was cooperative.

He claimed that on the day of Steven's murder, he was hundreds

of miles away at home in Scotland.

Jes was suspicious and didn't want to let his only suspect go

without checking his alibi.

What we did do was we seized his mobile phone and issued him

with an alternative phone so that he still had access to one

but so that we could look at the data that we could get

from his phone to identify anything that may link him to the inquiry.

Mobile phone analysis is a key element of every investigation,

and at the time of this investigation, it was quite new.

We were able to obtain recent telephone calls made,

recent telephone calls received, text messages.

His phone would also prove where he was on the night

of the murder.

He was in Scotland when we looked at him closely.

And so he had a cast iron alibi and could not have been in fakenham

at the time of the murder.

The murder of Steven Murphy in the Norfolk town of fakenham

had left dci jes fry and his team completely baffled.

Virtually no forensic evidence had been found at the scene,

and extensive enquiries showed that their only suspect,

James Cameron, had a cast-iron alibi for the night of the murder.

So where we had started off with a broad ranging inquiry

and become very interested in James Cameron, we came to a point

where we had virtually eliminated him from the inquiry.

There was nothing on his phone that we'd found to that time.

Jes had no other avenues of inquiry.

All he had was Cameron's confiscated mobile phone.

He decided to have it further analysed for any deleted data,

a practice that at the time took months to process.

There were no other obvious people that could be possible, suspects

and things started to get really difficult

finding new evidence and new lines of inquiry to pursue.

With no new leads in fakenham,

jes also decided to look further into Steven's

past life down in southampton.

We sent a team of detectives to southampton.

They probably stayed down there four to six weeks interviewing associates

of Steven, friends, people that he had been associated

with by the police in southampton.

And so we looked at those people and where they were at the time,

and did they still have a grudge of any sort.

On a hunch, jes explored a theory that Steven's killer

could have driven from southampton to fakenham

on the day of the murder.

I thought one of the best ways to try and identify whether someone

had travelled from southampton to Norfolk was to look at automatic

number plate recognition data - anpr data - of vehicles that had left

southampton, travelled to Norfolk, and then travel back to southampton.

Anpr cameras register every vehicle on the road, creating vast

amounts of data.

By this time, we had a timeline around when we thought that Steven

had been murdered, and so we were able to put in parameters

for the anpr data, but it still contained thousands

and thousands of vehicles.

And so we needed to refine that down by introducing

the parameters and the vehicles that had to have travelled

out of southampton into Norfolk,

back the other way, then eliminate lorries and that sort of thing.

We came to around about 100 vehicles.

So those vehicles were then looked at individually until eventually

we eliminated everyone that could possibly have left southampton.

Jes had hoped for a breakthrough, but his southampton

enquiries led nowhere.

We were trying to think of different opportunities, but everything seemed

to be coming to a dead end.

The contacts that he had in southampton were eliminated.

Looking for other links to other people and expanding those

concentric circles around Steven to identify other people

that may have come into his life

was all proving negative, and it was getting difficult to find

somewhere new to go with the inquiry.

We did think initially that they would find out who'd done

it much quicker because, you know, you just think they must

have left some evidence and some clues, and somebody would be able

to work it out.

But then after a while,

they just kept drawing full stops,

at all the avenues

they were following up.

And yes, it did feel that there was

just this big black hole and somehow

whoever had killed him

had disappeared into it, and maybe

they had got away with it.

When it did seem as if it had come to a full stop,

a family member felt that it might be helpful to offer a reward

of £10,000 in case that was the tipping point for somebody

who knew something.

Someone else must have known what was happening.

Someone else must have suspected what was happening.

And so we concentrated our media campaign on the areas

that we could link Steven to.

Again, nobody came forward.

The inquiry had already generated three times the amount of actions

of a normal murder investigation.

But the case was running cold.

There was no murder weapon, no forensics, no suspects.

It really looked like it was just going to go nowhere,

the investigation, and as it dragged on, it looked even

less likely that there would be any arrest.

It was becoming very frustrating because we didn't seem

to be actually going anywhere.

What we were doing was eliminating a lot of things, but we needed

to find that golden nugget.

Months had gone by with no arrests made.

The people of fakenham were losing hope.

I remember talking to some neighbours about it at the time

and they were saying, you know,

"I think this is going to be a dead end."

You know, "I don't think the police are ever going to solve this."

You know, "this has been going on for such a long time now."

But jes and his team never gave up.

And Steven's family still had faith in him.

We had a brainstorming session to try to think of new ideas, new ways

of where we could find the great silver bullet.

I think there was another murder somewhere else

in the county, and you think,

well, they're going to focus on that now, aren't they?

Perhaps they'll just forget about Steven.

But then I thought, no, they won't. They won't.

And they didn't.

I mean, we never lost hope, and we always felt

that it was the good, old-fashioned police work of working

through things that eventually we'll come across something.

And then, after all the dead ends, at last, jes got the breakthrough

he'd been waiting for.

The data on James Cameron's phone finally came in.

There were several things about the activity on James Cameron's

phone that brought him straight back to the front of our minds.

So there were some texts that were sent, particularly

a deleted text on the evening of Steven's death that came back

saying, "good job."

But there was a flurry of telephone calls at certain times that seemed

key to the investigation.

And some of those numbers hadn't yet been identified

because they were from prepaid phones.

And so, there was a new impetus to try to find

who it was that he was having these phone calls with.

After so many dead ends in investigating Cameron's story,

this could be the slip-up he'd been hoping for.

Cameron handed his phone over to the police readily.

He just gave it to them

because he was convinced that he'd removed anything

incriminating from that device.

But actually, the only thing is that deleting is not

the same as removing.

When something is deleted, it's only deleted for as long as it takes

someone who knows what they're doing to recover it.

Police had given Cameron a replacement phone,

and the data on that was also damning.

So one of the first calls made by James Cameron when he left

the interview on the new phone, we'd issued him to was to a number

that appeared on his other phone.

But as soon as that call was made,

the other phone stopped being used completely, and so the inference

there is that James Cameron has told the other person they know

about this phone, you need to get rid of it.

They were able to pinpoint the exact location of

the phone Cameron called.

We were able to establish that the phone

connected to the telephone number that James Cameron

had been contacting had been in Blackpool,

was in fakenham on the night that Steven Murphy was murdered,

and remained in fakenham till about 9pm that night

before returning to Blackpool.

James Cameron went from person of interest to prime suspect.

The further inquiries into James Cameron identified

that he had actually had a son, Andrew Cameron,

who moved to the Blackpool area.

After months of frustrations,

finally, things were coming together.

And jes and his team quickly expanded their investigation

to include Cameron's son.

Having established the link between Andrew Cameron and the phone

and the fact that Andrew Cameron was in Blackpool,

inquiries started with Blackpool police,

to find out what they knew about Andrew Cameron.

They were able to link him to a gentleman called Alex Dewar.

Alex Dewar was currently on remand at Preston prison

for a very serious assault.

Andrew Cameron's friend, the 24-year-old Alex Dewar,

was not only a man capable of violence,

he had also studied criminology at university.

The study of criminology involves a vast array of different subjects,

including how and why offenders commit crime,

and how different elements of the criminal justice system operate.

It can also involve an element of forensic science

and how crime-scene investigation operates.

Dewar's knowledge of criminology could certainly explain

the total lack of forensic evidence at the crime scene.

Police looked more deeply into this third suspect.

Dewar had a vehicle.

The registration number was put into the anpr system and,

all of a sudden, we had Andrew Cameron's phone.

Alex Dewar's phone being used and identifying the telephone masts

on the route between Blackpool and fakenham.

We had Alex Dewar's car identified by anpr on the route

coming into Norfolk.

The pieces were falling into place,

and jes's promise to Steven's mum might not be broken, after all.

Well, there is a sense of euphoria, without a doubt,

when it all starts coming together.

We had been trying to resolve this case for months and,

all of a sudden, all the dominoes started to fall

and it got very exciting.

The next task was to locate James Cameron's son, Andrew.

We identified that Andrew Cameron had been in relation with a girl

in Blackpool, and they had moved to Canada together.

In a rare piece of luck, jes found out exactly

where Andrew Cameron was.

As we were looking into Andrew Cameron, we established that

he's actually on a flight back from Canada,

so I dispatched a team to meet the aeroplane and to arrest him.

He was brought back into Norfolk

and went to the first police station we could get to.

One of the key things about dealing with someone in custody

is to manage their custody time clock.

You have a limited amount of time to deal with someone

and to ask questions and try to build your, your case.

With the clock ticking, jes needed to get a result, and fast.

He denied any involvement in the murder of Steven Murphy.

He denied having come to fakenham.

Though his phone, by that time, could be located as being

in fakenham, he may not have been in possession of it,

and he said that he may have left it in Alex Dewar's car.

And, therefore, we couldn't directly link Andrew Cameron to the murder.

We consulted cps and we were told that we didn't have enough evidence

to charge at that point and he should be bailed.

So, Andrew Cameron returned to Blackpool,

and our inquiries continued.

After months of false leads and frustrations,

and without any forensic evidence, dci jes fry's investigation

into the murder of Steven Murphy had turned a corner.

James Cameron's phone had finally revealed its secrets.

Now, police had two more suspects -

Alex Dewar and James's son, Andrew.

Jes now focused his attention on them.

I sent a team of detectives to Blackpool to start looking

more deeply into Alex Dewar and Andrew Cameron.

And we identified several witnesses who said Alex Dewar

had bragged about being involved in a murder,

which they thought was just bravado.

They just thought that he was lying and just making things up.

Dewar was already on remand for a serious assault.

He was taken from Preston prison

and formally interviewed at a local police station.

Alex Dewar made no comment throughout the interview process,

no matter what information or evidence we put before him,

and he was returned to hmp Preston.

Not long after he returned, he asked to make a phone call.

It was significant that he had actually asked to use a phone

in an office rather than the normal phones that the prisoners use.

I think he felt that there was a good possibility that the office

phones weren't recorded the same as the phones that the prisoners

would normally use, but they were.

When Dewar called his friend, the police were listening.

So, during the conversation, he actually commented that

he thought that Andrew would drop him in it,

and he became really quite emotional and started crying.

He was clearly affected by the sudden interest

from the police, and realising that things may be coming to a head.

The net was closing in on Alex Dewar.

Jes now turned his attention to Andrew Cameron.

I made the decision that we should actually make a telephone call

to the girlfriend in Canada and,

so, my intelligence sergeant is also a trained negotiator.

There was an afternoon in the office where we cleared out,

and it was just two or three of us present when he made the phone call

to, to the girlfriend.

And she disclosed that Andrew Cameron

had told her that he had been involved in the murder

and had travelled to fakenham to murder Steven Murphy.

It was exactly the kind of evidence against Andrew Cameron

that jes and his team needed.

There's a bit of a tingle goes down your spine

when certain things happen.

Obviously, the situation was very controlled,

and so there's an excitement inside,

but you've got to remain very focused.

But, certainly, after the phone call,

we shared a little bit of a celebration.

Jes now needed to conclusively place Cameron and Dewar

in fakenham.

Further investigation into Alex Dewar identified bank accounts

that he used, and a transaction on his current account was linked

to a withdrawal at a cash point in fakenham town centre,

on the evening that Steven Murphy was murdered.

Cctv images left no doubt.

Andrew Cameron and Alex Dewar

had claimed they'd never been to fakenham,

but the cctv footage of them using the cash point

put them in the place they claim they'd never visited.

Armed with a mountain of evidence, jes continued digging.

Whilst Alex Dewar was being investigated,

we carried out a search at his home address.

And during that search,

a pair of lonsdale trainers, size 12, were found -

the same size and make of trainer

that made the footprint outside the front door

at Steven Murphy's address on the night that he was murdered.

Jes now had enough evidence to re-arrest Andrew Cameron,

but he still needed to link the case to Andrew's father, James.

When we re-arrested Cameron,

we'd searched the flat that he used in Blackpool

and, in the address, we found a computer.

That was later analysed,

and we could show that Andrew Cameron had been searching

route finder maps for travel to Norfolk

at exactly the same time that he was talking to his father

on the telephone in Scotland.

This was the evidence jes needed.

He finally had enough to charge all three men with Steven's murder.

So, everything was really stacking up,

and we went back to cps,

who agreed to the charges that were laid for Andrew Cameron,

Alex Dewar and James Cameron,

linked by the telephone calls

and the computer activity.

After months of painstaking police work, in march 2010,

all three suspects were charged with conspiracy to commit

grievous bodily harm,

whilst Alex Dewar and Andrew Cameron were also charged with murder.

The news soon spread around fakenham's tight-knit community.

When I found out that arrests were made,

I was really relieved for not just his mother

but for all of his family,

that they were able to finally start to get closure

over what happened to Steven.

The key to solving this whole case had been the three conspirators'

trail of digital evidence.

So, there are two types of digital footprint that are left behind.

There's those from your own, personal devices -

from your phone, from your tablet -

and then there are those from other types of surveillance

that you aren't in control of.

So, cctv, anpr - automatic number plate recognition -

transactions in shops.

So, I think there is this arrogance on the part of some offenders.

They are quite savvy when it comes to physical evidence,

in terms of trace evidence left at a crime scene - DNA, blood, hair -

but when it comes to the digital evidence,

they really don't know what they're doing.

In November 2010, the trial of Andrew Cameron,

his father, James, and Alex Dewar

began at Norwich crown court.

In 25 years of covering court,

this case stands out in my mind

just because of all the twists and turns,

and how the dogged police work eventually paid off

to help catch killers.

On December 15th, 2010, after six weeks,

the jury came back with a guilty verdict for all three defendants

on all charges.

They thought they'd done the perfect murder.

So much so that they couldn't help bragging about it to friends,

girlfriends.

But, in the end, it caught them out.

It proved that they didn't do the perfect murder, after all.

It was vindication for dci jes fry.

I felt, actually, a little bit emotional in court when they gave

the verdict, because I'd finally made good on my promise

to Steven's mum.

But it was a huge relief because it had been a long,

hard inquiry with various ups and downs throughout it.

But it was a really positive feeling

and something that all of my team could celebrate

because they'd all contributed in various different ways

to a really difficult inquiry.

A few days later, all three men were sentenced.

Alex Dewar and Andrew Cameron were given life

with a minimum tariff of 25 years,

and Andrew's father, James, was given 15 years

for conspiracy to cause grievous bodily harm.

The verdicts were a bittersweet moment for Steven's family.

It was a twofold feeling because it's that feeling

absolutely sick and,

erm, a bit of elation, actually,

that perhaps this is all,

this horror is all going to come to an end.

Jes fry kept his promise to val because the killers were found

and they were brought to justice.

And they've got an awful long time to sit in prison

and think about what they did, and I hope they are.

And we will be forever grateful to jes fry and the Norfolk police

for doing that, for Steven and for us.

After 30 years investigating serious crimes,

jes is now retired.

But the case is not forgotten.

Different investigations stay with you for different reasons.

My connection with mum made this particularly special.

The fact that it was a difficult inquiry

and there were so many different aspects of it

makes it very memorable.

An innocent night out ends in tragedy...

He was an ordinary lad,

just out socialising.

..And starts a mystery that takes over 25 years

of dedicated police work to solve.

When we know we've got the man, that's a great result.