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00:00SALLY MCGRATH
00:08In March 1980, in rural Cambridgeshire,
00:11the body of Sally McGrath was discovered,
00:15a young woman who'd vanished eight months earlier.
00:21Her body had been discovered naked but for a pair of boots.
00:26Investigations quickly led to Paul Taylor,
00:29a local man with a string of allegations against him.
00:34He was brutal and he was dominant and he was willing to kill.
00:40With just a circumstantial case,
00:43the police were unable to bring charges.
00:46And for decades, Taylor lived his life deceiving those around him.
00:52I never thought he was capable of murdering anybody, never.
00:56Never.
00:58But in 2009, a determined cold case team took on Sally McGrath's murder,
01:04winning justice not just for Sally,
01:06but for all the women he'd brutalised.
01:09Those women that secured those verdicts,
01:12they must have felt at last that somebody believed them.
01:20Justice was 33 years in the making,
01:23but Paul Taylor had finally been exposed
01:26as one of Britain's most evil killers.
01:30When Kareem Khalil KC presented the Crown's case against Paul Taylor,
01:45at Chelmsford Crown Court in 2012,
01:59he was all too aware he was inviting them to enter a different world.
02:04One goes back in time, back to 1979, 1980,
02:10just features of how investigations were carried out,
02:14what people accepted as normal,
02:16which you then have to try and transport into a modern setting
02:20and explain to jurors that this is how it was.
02:23Part of the challenge was getting jurors to understand
02:27how Sally McGrath and Taylor's other victims
02:31had found themselves alone in his company.
02:37I think Peterborough in 1979 was very different to how it is today.
02:42Having grown up in the 70s,
02:43I also know that there was an element of trust that people had
02:47that we don't necessarily have now.
02:49The prosecution team also faced the challenge of explaining
02:58why so little had been done to stop Taylor in the 1970s and 80s.
03:05Other women had made complaints about Paul Taylor.
03:08We have to try and understand what the attitudes were
03:11and the social mores of the time.
03:14Disbelieved, dissuaded, or shamed into silence,
03:20some of Taylor's victims kept their counsel for decades.
03:24But with the investigation into Sally McGrath's murder,
03:28finally came justice.
03:33This killer story begins in the city of Peterborough in Cambridgeshire.
03:38Born on the 9th of March 1952,
03:44little is known about Paul Taylor's early years.
03:49What's clear is by the time he was a teenager,
03:51he was beginning to go off the rails.
03:53He got his first conviction for dishonesty at the age of 16.
03:57And it just went on from there.
03:59Perhaps in search of structure or discipline,
04:02Taylor spent a couple of years in the army as a young man.
04:08In 1974, Taylor got married and started a family
04:13living on the outskirts of Peterborough.
04:18With a population of around 100,000 people at the time,
04:22the Cambridgeshire city sometimes felt more like a town.
04:27It was a much smaller community.
04:29There was very few places for people to go to,
04:31so a lot of people knew each other really well
04:34or there was always a connection.
04:36Paul Taylor was working as a local builder,
04:40had a works van and access to other quite nice-looking cars.
04:47We have a river that runs through the centre of Peterborough
04:49called the Means, so Taylor had his own boat at the time
04:51and he would go out and about, you know, in the summer on his boat.
04:59Taylor's flashy vehicles were a tool he used for picking up women.
05:04Locally, he was regarded as a bit of a Jack the Lad figure,
05:09strongly built, quite a handsome man and very charming.
05:16He had a couple of children and seemed to be living a married life
05:21on the one hand but also frequently womanising on the other.
05:25Taylor was described as a womaniser.
05:28Now, we use that term almost to say lovable rogue.
05:34Womaniser actually means manipulative predator and that's what he was.
05:40Somebody like Taylor uses his charm to get what he wants.
05:44He's not a charming person.
05:46This is an act to get him what he wants.
05:51Taylor sought out casual sex with women and girls he met.
05:57In August 1974, one claimed that while alone with Taylor,
06:02he had turned nasty.
06:05She was 17 years old, had gone out for drinks with him
06:08and he had drove her to an isolated location, became very abusive towards her,
06:14started calling her horrific names, started slapping her
06:18and then went on to rape her.
06:20The teenager went to the police.
06:23It went to court but he was acquitted and part of that was around
06:27whether it was possible to commit a rape in an MG sports car.
06:31He later went on to brag that it actually was possible to commit a rape
06:35in a sports car and that he'd just got away with it.
06:40For Paul Taylor, a pattern of behaviour had been set.
06:45Personally, I think because he'd got away with it in court,
06:48it gave him a greater belief that he could go on and commit crime
06:52and he was beyond reproach in his world.
06:57A stone's throw from the centre of Peterborough
07:00lived a young woman called Sally Anne McGrath.
07:05In 1979, she was 22 years old and living with her parents.
07:11She lived in the Woodson area of the city.
07:13I think they were quite a close-knit family.
07:16Sally was at that point in life where she didn't have any ties as such.
07:21She did have a wide circle of friends.
07:23Some of those had described her as, you know, like the life and soul of the party.
07:27Someone who you'd probably want to have on a night out, you know, good company.
07:32She used to travel with other girlfriends in a bus that went up to the local RAF base
07:38for the US Air Forcemen, partied there and was known pretty widely and much liked.
07:44But on Wednesday, the 11th of July, 1979, Sally McGrath seemingly vanished into thin air.
07:56Sally didn't return home that evening and I think her mum, Christine, initially was concerned.
08:01It wasn't unusual for Sally to go out and perhaps have a late night, but she'd always come back.
08:06Sally's mum started asking around to see whether any of her friends knew where she was
08:13and then eventually reported Sally missing to the police.
08:16In the first few days after Sally vanished, her parents searched local cafes, nightclubs
08:23and football grounds for her, as well as walking the streets showing her photograph to strangers.
08:29On Saturday, the 14th of July, Peterborough police took over the search,
08:40building a picture of Sally's last known movements.
08:44Initially, an officer attended, took all of the details.
08:47She went out on the 11th of July, 1979,
08:50with the intention of signing on to the local DSS office.
08:54As well as signing on, what we now know is she'd also gone into town to go for a drink.
08:58With who she said were friends at the Bull Hotel in Peterborough,
09:01which still exists to this day.
09:03A friend who'd seen Sally that day told police that Sally had plans
09:08to meet a boyfriend later that evening at another pub, the Golden Fleece.
09:14She'd never shown up for the rendezvous.
09:17The missing from home inquiry became quite large
09:20and there was a lot of effort put into trying to locate Sally.
09:24But after a number of months, in essence, the trail went cold.
09:29When somebody went missing back in 1979,
09:33it's a very, very different landscape to now.
09:36There was no such thing as mobile phones.
09:39CCTV was not as proliferated as it is now.
09:44Unless you really have got witnesses to say,
09:47oh, I saw Sally at this time, at this place.
09:51It's really difficult to put that jigsaw together.
09:54There was initial thoughts from part of the investigation team
09:59that she'd perhaps gone to a dance, gone off with a GI,
10:04and some people even said that, you know, potentially she'd moved abroad.
10:09But I think those who knew Sally knew that that wasn't the case.
10:14Sally's parents feared the worst,
10:16but they never stopped hoping for her safe return.
10:20On the 1st of March 1980,
10:23eight months after Sally's sudden disappearance,
10:26their worst fears were realized.
10:29There was a gamekeeper preparing for an organized shoot.
10:33It was walking through a very remote area called Castor Hanglands,
10:37which is a rural area on the west side of Peterborough.
10:41He was just going through the undergrowth in Castor Hanglands.
10:44He came across a boot
10:45and obviously wasn't perhaps sure at first what he'd found.
10:50When he looked closer,
10:52the gamekeeper discovered it was not just a pair of women's boots in the dirt.
10:57He realized with horror they were attached
11:00to a human body.
11:13On the 1st of March 1980,
11:15eight months after the disappearance of 22-year-old Sally McGrath,
11:20the body of a woman was discovered in a remote Cambridgeshire woodland.
11:30The orange tape leads to the spot where the body was found
11:33and police say it could well have lain hidden for 100 years
11:36had it not been for a passing gamekeeper who was out shooting rabbits
11:39when he found the body covered in branches.
11:41Hardly anyone comes to these woods apart from a pheasant shoot once a year.
11:45Police say the murderer may well have known that fact
11:47and that's why he chose this spot, to dump the body.
11:53The body was found in a shallowly dug grave.
11:56There were few identifying features to the body.
12:00Given the passage of time, it would have been decomposed.
12:04She was naked bar the boots that she was wearing on her feet.
12:09With the area declared a crime scene,
12:11the first priority was to identify the remains.
12:15And very quickly, 22-year-old Sally McGrath's name
12:19was on the lips of investigating officers.
12:21She'd gone missing the previous July.
12:26They would have had files of missing people
12:28and would have been able to quickly identify from her boots, for example,
12:33that it was probably going to be the remains of Sally.
12:36She was identified as a result of her possessions,
12:38her jewellery and dental records as well.
12:40Hours after Sally's heartbroken parents had been informed,
12:46a post-mortem was carried out which pointed to a violent death.
12:52Sally had some facial injuries, her nose was broken,
12:55and she had two blunt force traumas to her skull.
12:58So the assessment was that she met her death
13:00as a consequence of being violently assaulted to her head.
13:03The discovery spelled horror not only for Sally's family,
13:09but also for the community of this small city.
13:13When Sally's body was found and she was nearly naked,
13:18clear signs that this was possibly sexual offending
13:23and possibly an abduction.
13:25It would have been incredibly shocking, terrifying to realize
13:30that nightmare was there in that community.
13:34And, of course, with everybody realizing
13:37that that person was still at large.
13:43What was initiated was the biggest murder investigation
13:47that Cambridgeshire Police had ever engaged in at that stage.
13:51There's no question that police dedicated an enormous amount of effort,
13:55I think 3,000 interviews.
14:00Detectives' first move was to return to the records
14:03of the inquiries made when Sally had vanished eight months earlier.
14:08There had been 17 sightings of Sally that day,
14:11the last a little after lunchtime.
14:15She was seen by a lady, a female witness,
14:17at 2.40 outside the Bull Public House.
14:20And she was seen with a male.
14:25She'd also been seen earlier by witnesses inside the pub
14:29with the same young man.
14:31They could see that they appeared to be close
14:34in terms of how they were talking.
14:36Quite a good-looking, striking young man who, again,
14:39not someone who, you know, blended into the background,
14:41someone who you kind of would notice.
14:44The people who had seen them together in the Bull
14:46were able to get an artist's impression drawn of him.
14:50The drawing had a striking resemblance to another well-known local,
14:55Paul Taylor.
14:56The 27-year-old had recently been sentenced to three years in prison
15:02for a series of burglaries and assaulting a 16-year-old girl.
15:08Friends of Taylor's confirmed he'd been in the Bull that afternoon,
15:12and witnesses saw Sally and Taylor together.
15:15As the last person seen with Sally,
15:18police tried to track Taylor's movements for the rest of that day.
15:23On the day of Sally McGrath's disappearance,
15:26Paul Taylor was due to sign on because he was on bail for matters.
15:31And he'd been signing on absolutely properly for a period of time.
15:36But this proved to be the one day in his bail period
15:40which he failed to sign on at all.
15:43Because he'd failed to sign on, on time,
15:46and because he was on curfew,
15:48they sent police officers around to his address
15:51at 10.30 that evening to do a curfew check,
15:55and he wasn't there.
15:56His vehicle wasn't there.
15:58And his wife answered the door and said he wasn't there.
16:03In addition to that,
16:04on the night that Sally went missing,
16:06a witness also reported a van which fitted the description
16:09of a van that Taylor had in the vicinity of Castainglands as well.
16:13Going back through their records,
16:20detectives began to suspect that Sally's murder
16:23was something the jobbing builder could well be capable of.
16:28The police were aware of a number of allegations of rape
16:31and attempted rape by Taylor on other women.
16:34But in each case, there was insufficient evidence, um,
16:37to prosecute Taylor for those offenses.
16:40Some of those complaints were really rather powerful.
16:42Some of them were taken seriously,
16:45but then in the absence of what they called corroboration evidence,
16:50it couldn't be pursued to trial.
16:53And so women were effectively told,
16:55look, I hear your complaint,
16:57but there's really not much we can do about it.
17:01But because of the allegations,
17:04there was real concern that Taylor was an active predatory rapist,
17:09and that might have been his motivation for ultimately killing Sally.
17:14It was enough to prompt officers to visit Taylor,
17:17who by now was serving time in prison.
17:21Paul Taylor was interviewed by the detectives on the murder inquiry
17:24as a key suspect, a person of interest.
17:26The default position of Taylor was a straight denial of almost everything,
17:33and he denied knowing Sally McGrath ever having met her.
17:37In a bizarre twist, an article about Taylor's latest conviction had appeared side-by-side
17:50with an article about Sally's murder five days after her body was found.
17:55Now, had that been engineered by the police, or was it simply coincidence?
18:01We simply don't know.
18:02What we do know is that the police were convinced for a very long time
18:06that Taylor was guilty of her murder.
18:10If the police hoped news articles like this
18:13would prompt new witnesses to come forward, they were disappointed.
18:17Paul Taylor remained the prime and only suspect in Sally's murder,
18:23but he was still not charged.
18:25The police put all the evidence together.
18:27That file was reviewed by counsel,
18:29and it was felt that whilst there was a lot of evidence
18:33that suggested Taylor was responsible,
18:35there just wasn't enough evidence for them to be sure
18:39that they would get a conviction at court.
18:41At the time, the evidence of the women who claimed Taylor had assaulted them
18:48couldn't form part of the prosecution for Sally's murder.
18:52Similar fact evidence wasn't admissible in the same way as it is now.
18:56So, ultimately, the case was filed as an undetected murder.
19:02With the case effectively cold, Sally's family were left with no answers,
19:07while Paul Taylor served out his sentence for theft and assault.
19:12When Taylor came out of jail, he decided he was going to relocate,
19:17and, in fact, he moved to Hampshire, to Fairham,
19:20and he got married again.
19:24Did he change his spots? Was he a different man?
19:32Almost three decades later, in December 2010,
19:3658-year-old Paul Taylor's second wife, Janet,
19:41was awoken at their home in Hampshire
19:43by an early morning knock at the door.
19:46It was the police.
19:49They said, is Paul Taylor here?
19:51And I said, upstairs.
19:53And they said, um, right, we're going to arrest him.
19:56I had no idea what was going on,
19:58because there was police everywhere, everywhere.
20:01They cordoned off the street, they were out the back of the house.
20:05They took me down the police station, they were asking me questions,
20:08but they weren't going to tell me exactly what they were charging him with.
20:12So they were asking me about him,
20:14and I just truthfully answered the questions,
20:17because he'd never been violent to me, ever.
20:21Janet knew little of the truth of her husband's past.
20:25In the late 1980s, after the couple first moved in together,
20:30they'd received some unsettling visits from local detectives.
20:35He moved in with me, and the police started knocking the door
20:40about local murders, local rapes, and stuff like that.
20:44By way of explanation, Taylor lied to Janet that he'd served time
20:49a few years earlier for GBH and assaulting a police officer.
20:54And so the police had it in for him.
20:57I remember him saying to me at the time,
20:59when I was in prison, they came to me to question me
21:03about a murder in there.
21:05But it was because the police were persecuting him.
21:10Taylor didn't mention the name Sally McGrath to his wife,
21:14and Janet had no reason to doubt her husband's version of events.
21:21The visits from the police stopped until December 2010.
21:26After several days of questioning, Taylor was bailed.
21:30For months, nothing happened.
21:32He wouldn't really talk about it.
21:34I said to him, you don't seem worried about it.
21:36I would be panicking if someone was accusing me
21:38of doing something I hadn't done.
21:40So he said, I haven't done it.
21:42They'll never pin it on me.
21:44Why have I got to worry?
21:47He didn't lose sleep.
21:49He didn't stop eating.
21:51And he would say, you do believe me, don't you?
21:5758-year-old Paul Taylor was confident his past
22:01could not catch up with him.
22:03He hadn't reckoned on the tenacity of the police
22:07and the voices of his many victims coming back to haunt him.
22:13In 2009, three decades after the event, the unsolved murder
22:29of 22-year-old Sally McGrath had landed on the desk
22:33of Cambridgeshire police detective Jeff Hill.
22:36One of my DI's brought the case to me and said, look, you know,
22:42I think they were really close.
22:43They probably identified the right guy.
22:45They just didn't have enough evidence.
22:47Much of the physical evidence from the 1980 investigation
22:51had been destroyed years earlier in a flood,
22:54but the reams of paper records made for eye-opening reading.
22:59Jobbing builder Paul Taylor had done little to put police off the scent.
23:05One of the lines of inquiry that the police at the time pursued
23:08was to interview other prisoners at Bedford Prison
23:11where Taylor had been sent following his conviction
23:14for the offences of burglary that he was on bail for
23:17when Sally went missing.
23:19Taylor couldn't resist boasting that he appeared to have got away
23:22with raping a girl in a car because the police didn't think
23:25it could have happened in such a small space
23:28and indicating that he had killed Sally,
23:31but good luck to the police trying to prove it.
23:34The files also held letters Taylor had written
23:37from prison to his first wife, urging her to burn his belongings.
23:43It was a number of letters he sent almost on consecutive days
23:47saying, have you collected the clothes yet?
23:49Have you got my tools? Make sure you destroy them.
23:54More certain than ever they were looking at the right man,
23:58Geoff Hill's first task was to visit Sally McGrath's parents,
24:02who still lived in the home Sally had never returned to 30 years earlier.
24:08I was shown into the parlour of this Victorian house.
24:13Sally's mum came out with a pot of tea on a tray
24:16and a cup and a saucer and her dad sat in an armchair,
24:19was elderly, was in his mid to late 80s.
24:22And I'll never forget this because I explained to Sally's mum
24:26that we were there because we were going to reinvestigate Sally's murder.
24:30And Sally's mum said to me that she was a very spiritual person.
24:35And for years after Sally's disappearance, she dreamt about Sally every single evening.
24:40And that she knew I was going to come today because Sally had told her in a dream the previous evening.
24:50Determined to find resolution for Sally's still grieving family, Geoff and his team set about following the evidence.
25:03We were completely 100% happy that the last person that Sally was seen with in the Bull Public House on the 11th of July was Paul Barry Taylor.
25:13And while Taylor had always denied ever knowing Sally, detectives discovered this was far from the truth.
25:21During the original investigation, a guy by the name of Paul, who was a young lad, 16 at the time, lived next door to Taylor.
25:30He was interviewed by the inquiry and he basically said that he had no information of any relevance whatsoever.
25:37He was employed by Taylor on a very casual basis as a builder's mate.
25:43There's no doubt in my mind that he was frightened of Taylor.
25:46And I think he was probably frightened of the police as well.
25:4830 years later, the scared 16-year-old boy was now a middle-aged man.
25:57And Taylor's former employee told the cold case team what he knew about Paul Taylor meeting Sally weeks before she disappeared.
26:08He recalled them driving along in the works van, Taylor seeing Sally sitting on a bench, stopping, engaging in conversation with her.
26:18I think numbers were swapped.
26:20The former apprentice had another story to tell, one that was far more disturbing.
26:26A few weeks before Sally McGrath vanished, a teenage girl was walking near a local river when Paul Taylor approached her and struck up conversation.
26:38He was with his young apprentice.
26:41Because there was two of them, she felt really safe, and the one lad was very similar age to her.
26:47So she said she felt very comfortable, they were very charming, and she went for a little boat ride.
26:53A short time later, she saw them again, and they said, do you want to come out on a boat ride again?
26:58I think the line he used was that he needed to get a part for his boat or something, so he's going out to somewhere in the country where he could get a part for his boat.
27:05And he drove in his van to Castor.
27:08This particular girl, because she was a girl at the time, was then taken to Wild Boar Spinney.
27:15Wild Boar Spinney was in the same area of Castor Hanglands where Sally McGrath's body would be found.
27:23When they got there, Paul Taylor opened the glove box and there were some condoms within the glove box.
27:30His young apprentice was told to take the van for a drive.
27:35And was told, in no uncertain terms, to get lost.
27:38And he said, I was just frightened and I drove away crying, thinking that I should be doing something, but I just wasn't brave enough to do it.
27:44He said his fear was if he left to get help, he wouldn't be able to get his way back, because he wouldn't know where to find them.
27:52But he knew that what was going to happen wasn't going to be good.
27:56When the teenage boy returned to the clearing 20 minutes later, the girl was in obvious distress.
28:03Her T-shirt ripped from neck to waistband.
28:07Paul Taylor stood there with a condom still on, which he took off and flung.
28:15So they all got back in the van, and on the way back, Paul Taylor stopped for ice cream.
28:20Taylor dropped the girl off in the centre of town, giving her a couple of pounds to buy a new T-shirt,
28:28so that her parents wouldn't know what had happened.
28:31Just two weeks later, Sally McGrath vanished, her body eventually turning up in the same remote location the girl had been attacked by Paul Taylor.
28:44As the cold case detectives went back over the files, they saw a clear pattern emerging.
28:51When they then started looking at Paul Taylor and realized actually how many different victims had come forward,
28:59not just the rate that he was acquitted for.
29:03And I think they then thought, we need to go back and we need to re-interview these women.
29:11DC Haley Dias was one of the detectives tasked with tracking down the half a dozen women
29:17whose statements were in the files from 1979 and 1980.
29:23How did the victims react when you go and knock on the door?
29:2630 years later, I think it's fair to say they're shocked.
29:30But none of them were unwavering in their commitment to ensure that we got the case solved.
29:38By re-interviewing the victims, detectives plotted a timeline of violent sexual attacks
29:45with strikingly similar features in the months before Sally's murder.
29:50The first was the prolonged ordeal he put a 19-year-old woman through in March 1979.
30:00She'd been picked up from the Bull Public House in Peterborough.
30:03He drove her to an isolated spot.
30:05She was a virgin.
30:07She was pleading with him.
30:09He was becoming more and more aggressive and he was trying to force her to drink whiskey,
30:13which she didn't want to drink.
30:15Taylor raped the young woman in a particularly sustained and brutal attack.
30:20He took her to a local hotel and whilst at the hotel he repeatedly raped her during the course of the night.
30:28He went to sleep.
30:30She lay on bed all night, terrified.
30:33But in the morning he got up and he was a different person.
30:36And it was almost like, I'm your boyfriend, you're my girlfriend now.
30:39Very Jacqueline Hyde character.
30:42Back to being Mr. Nice Guy and everything.
30:45He ate bread first, she didn't.
30:47But he drove her home.
30:4930 years later, the police were able to corroborate much of the woman's account.
30:56Three weeks after the attack, Taylor struck again.
31:02In the April, he went to a family christening.
31:06And towards the end of that christening, a young woman wanted a lift home.
31:10He offered to take her as previously didn't take her to the required or desired destination.
31:17And he raped her in the motor car.
31:20The cold case detectives also managed to track down the teenage girl the young apprentice had witnessed being attacked at Castor Hanglands.
31:30She described how in June 1979, it had dawned on her what Paul Taylor's intentions were as he sent his teenage workmate away.
31:40She said, I'm so sorry if I've led you on in any way whatsoever, but I can't, you know, I can't have sex.
31:49I'm a virgin.
31:50My family are really strict.
31:52We're a strict Catholic family.
31:53I'm sorry if I've said anything or I've done anything that's made you think that I want to have sex, but I really don't.
32:00I just want to go home.
32:02He laughed and he grabbed her by the legs and he yanked her out of the van.
32:06So she struck her head on the way out of the van.
32:10The long term consequences for this particular victim were catastrophic.
32:22Her family insisted she should track him down and try and cause him to marry her, despite what he'd just done to her.
32:29The terrified Catholic teen did as she was told, only to discover her attacker was married with a family.
32:38She was actually kicked out of home at the age of 17 by her parents for bringing dishonor on the family.
32:48Another woman, Hayley Dias and the team re-interviewed in 2010, told of a savage attack that had taken place in August 1979, a month or so after Sally's murder, when the victim was just 16.
33:07It was an attempt rape in the back of the van, but it was an attempt rape that also amounted to GBH, where he'd hit her and beaten her.
33:18Quite severely in his attempt at raping her.
33:23When she resisted, he struck her, but then used a metal petrol can to strike her around the head several times.
33:33It was an horrific attack. She was laid up for a long time.
33:38And that, again, was of interest to us, given the fact that we know that Sally had died as a consequence of blunt force trauma.
33:46Detectives were building up a picture of a man who used charm to pick up women, offering them a lift or a ride out in his car, van or boat, before turning aggressive and forcing sexual acts upon them.
34:02Taylor didn't want consent.
34:08That's not the turn on. They want you to fight.
34:11They want to look at your face and to know that you do not want what's happening to you.
34:18So he will do something to make sure that woman removes her consent.
34:25Maybe something like suddenly changing and becoming quite sinister and threatening and horrible and insulting.
34:33Maybe violent and aggressive. The woman gets frightened. She stops consenting. Now we're where he wanted to be.
34:43Having corroborated the details of so many violent attacks, by the autumn of 2011, cold case detectives were confident in their case.
34:58After getting away with a litany of violent attacks for three decades, Paul Taylor's days as a free man were numbered.
35:08By October 2011, investigators had enough not only to charge 59-year-old Paul Taylor for Sally McGrath's murder, but also with three counts of rape, a sexual assault, and an indecent assault.
35:33The news came as a terrible shock to Taylor's wife, Janet.
35:42I went with him while he was charged. I just had a bit of a panic attack and couldn't breathe. Everything just went blank. It was just really hard to listen to.
35:50I didn't want to hear that, but I knew he'd done it.
35:57Faced with what her husband was being accused of, misgivings from their relationship resurfaced for Janet.
36:04He didn't like women. If he ever spoke about a woman, he would always run them down, or he would be always very negative in what any of his friends' wives were like.
36:15He would always be, oh, she's fat, oh, she's ugly, or she's domineering.
36:21A friend told Janet of rumours about Taylor's predatory behaviour.
36:28He just cheated constantly through the whole marriage, and he was just obsessed with sex.
36:34Not with me. He wasn't like that for me.
36:39That was his safe space, I think.
36:41His safe space and his normal space.
36:44He could be at home and then disappear and be that monster that he is.
36:5160-year-old Paul Taylor's trial began at Chelmsford Crown Court in October 2012.
37:02Kareem Khalil Casey presented the prosecution's case.
37:07Our contention as to why Sally had been murdered was that this was a sexual assault primarily.
37:13The pattern of his behaviour was of sexual assault, and if there was resistance, physical assault,
37:20to get what he wanted.
37:22And so we surmised that he had taken Sally off, as he had others to a secluded spot,
37:28had insisted on sexually assaulting her, she must have resisted forcibly.
37:35It's quite possible that Sally put up more of a fight than he was used to.
37:43He knew when he changed the state of play, her screams wouldn't be heard.
37:49But she fought harder than he ever imagined.
37:54And I think that's why she got killed.
37:56We could actually demonstrate that he was not beyond striking a woman to the head and face
38:03to ensure that she became compliant to his needs.
38:07And then when we have the terrible skull injuries that were found on Sally McGrath's body,
38:12that really fitted the same sort of pattern.
38:21Each of the women who alleged assaults by Paul Taylor bravely took the stand to give evidence against him.
38:28Each of the women whose cases were prosecuted on the indictment wanted their allegations heard and determined.
38:38In court, it's not just reliving it, it's reliving it to somebody who's going to call you a liar,
38:45because that is what will happen.
38:47So that's awful. That's awful.
38:53They just wanted to be heard.
38:55And for people to say, yes, this is wrong.
38:58Their lives in many cases had changed dramatically as a consequence of what had happened.
39:03Some had kept it a secret from their, uh, partners.
39:08Some hadn't been able to form any kind of lasting relationships.
39:13It was really difficult.
39:15And those poor women were incredibly courageous, um, to revisit something,
39:22which I suspect in a lot of cases they'd packaged up and put into a lockbox in their minds.
39:28The woman whose allegations in 1974 had resulted in Paul Taylor being tried for rape
39:36also agreed to give evidence in 2012.
39:40Due to double jeopardy, unless we could come up with some new and compelling evidence,
39:46then we were unable to lay charges again.
39:49She very bravely attended court and she gave evidence, uh, by the way of bad character evidence,
39:56um, about what had happened to her.
40:01The man who'd been Taylor's teenage apprentice in 1979 also gave powerful testimony,
40:09not only about the attack he'd witnessed, but also telling the jury
40:13he'd seen Taylor burning clothes in the days after the attacks,
40:17and that Taylor had made the boy clean out his work van.
40:21The van featured again in another intriguing piece of police work.
40:26We trawled through the classified ads and found,
40:30the day after Sally went missing, he advertised his vehicle for sale.
40:34Why would you sell your livelihood if it wasn't to get rid of evidence
40:41of Sally's disappearance and murder?
40:44The defence argument, which was also Taylor's argument, consistently,
40:51was that all the sex I had in the 70s and early 80s was entirely consensual.
41:03Paul Taylor did not choose to take the stand.
41:06After an eight-week trial, the jury retired to consider a case
41:10that had presented no DNA evidence and could be seen as being entirely circumstantial.
41:17We believed we'd presented about as strong a case as we possibly could,
41:21and we didn't have to wait terribly long for the verdicts to be returned.
41:27And, indeed, they did come back exactly as we had hoped.
41:32Paul Taylor was convicted of Sally McGrath's murder,
41:36as well as five counts of rape and sexual assault.
41:41I cried because it means a lot.
41:44But it's fair to say there was a lot of screaming, crying,
41:48whooping with joy, you know, not being able to speak.
41:55We went across to the pub just opposite the Crown Court of Chelmsford.
41:59We had a drink with Sally's mum and her brother.
42:03But at the end of the drink, Sally's brother turned round to us and said,
42:08look, Geoff, you know, we can never repay you for what you've done.
42:11We'll always be incredibly grateful.
42:14But we never want to see you again now.
42:16And at the time I thought, wow.
42:18But very, very quickly and in the moment realised
42:21that's just the way in which they wanted to achieve some form of closure.
42:26I'm glad they did.
42:27For the women who faced their attacker in court after so much time,
42:40it was a watershed moment.
42:42For them, all of them, it has given them a closure.
42:46It's come at a cost.
42:47It's come with post-traumatic stress.
42:50But they see you, and these are their words, not ours, as their guardian angels,
42:55that you've come into their life, you've believed them.
42:59On the 5th of December, 2012,
43:02Paul Taylor was sentenced to life with a minimum tariff of 18 years,
43:07a sentence reflecting guidelines for the era when the crimes were committed.
43:13Although it might seem a somewhat lenient sentence by the standards of today's terms,
43:21he's over 60 years old, not eligible to be released until he's almost 80.
43:27For Taylor's wife, Janet, the conviction was a brutal confirmation of what she'd come to accept about the person she'd married.
43:40I learnt that he was a vile evil.
43:46He's not even a human being.
43:48He's just disgusting.
43:50What he did was just above and beyond horrendous.
43:55And not that many people would lie just to put him in prison.
44:00So it had to be true.
44:08With a number of more recent accusations against Taylor left to lie on file,
44:13it remains to be seen if he's ever considered safe for parole.
44:18In the meantime, Sally McGrath's family finally have answers,
44:23as do the many women he brutalised for his own twisted satisfaction.
44:29He got away with murder for more than 30 years.
44:33But Paul Taylor was finally unmasked as one of Britain's most evil killers.
44:53This has been a great day for everybody.
44:55I was ridiculous.
44:58He liked the fact that he worked to be carried out by his own way.
45:00But…
45:01He was so rich, the fact that he was amist.
45:03But he was so rich and very loved.
45:04And every month since I was so rich.
45:06He was so rich.
45:07Then if I could see him.
45:08He was a rich man of the very first time.
45:09He was so rich with the folklore.
45:10Also he was a rich man of the history.
45:11He was so rich, he was such a rich man of the day.
45:13I agree with myself.
45:14So he М will be how many people at this point.
45:16He was so rich and balanced.
45:17So he was so rich and every month.
45:18Every month since he realized to be an old man,
45:19the whole man was a rich man of the land.
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