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00:008am, 5th of February 2011, Newport, Wales. Firefighters arrive at a flat in the Lisswary
00:13part of the town. They find a body. It's horrific. It's probably the worst crime
00:19scene I've ever had to attend. The memory still lives with me at that moment when I
00:23walked in. Investigators are immediately suspicious
00:26of what they find. We need to look at this in a bit more detail. It's not as straightforward
00:31as it might seem. We were just absolutely devastated. It wiped me out. It wiped me out. It was just
00:36unbelievable. She was due to have a baby, which they'd already named as Kelsey May.
00:42As the murder hunt gets underway, detectives take forensics material from the crime scene.
00:47Everyone liked Nikita. She was loved by a lot of people, you know. She was a really nice
00:51girl. She didn't have any enemies. Is this really happening to us? Are we really
00:56living this nightmare? This is the story of how police painstakingly tracked down the
01:01murderer of Nikita Grenda, how they finally got their man, and how the power of modern
01:06forensics led them to the killer. He just goes to show how cold, how calculated,
01:11how evil, if you think, that individual is. To do what he's done, just is beyond comprehension.
01:17So,
01:17so,
01:18so,
01:19so,
01:19so,
01:21so,
01:22so,
01:22So,
01:23so,
01:55Sarah Boise was awoken by a constant yet faint beeping sound at around 5.30am on Saturday the 5th of February 2011.
02:03The smoke alarm had been going off for quite some time before the neighbour phoned the fire brigade because she'd heard a sort of faint beeping and had gone back to sleep not really realising what was going on so it was some time later that she actually made the call.
02:16She went to put a baby's nappy outside the back door and could smell smoke then her flat downstairs started to get hotter and then the alarm was raised.
02:29People rushed out of their houses to see 51 Broadmeet Park completely on fire flames coming out of it. It was a scene like no other.
02:38Within minutes the fire brigade were on the scene.
02:41There was a scene investigating officer on call for that weekend and it was around about 8 o'clock on the Saturday morning that I got a call to say that there'd been a fire at a house in Newport.
02:50I attended at the scene. I met with my colleagues who were there at the time so when it was safe to do so I entered the premises with my colleagues and the fire service.
02:59Went to the bedroom where the scene of the fire was and obviously saw the body of a young woman who clearly was heavily pregnant at the time.
03:07Backup investigators were soon on the scene including fire and forensics.
03:13Well first thing you need to do obviously is to preserve the scene and to secure as much evidence as possible.
03:19So the fire service investigation team came out and they were very very quickly able to say because of the nature of the fire where it had started.
03:27The fact that the fire was contained to one room, the bedroom door had been closed prior to the fire brigade attending.
03:35So it was started on the bed and the fire was contained only to the bedroom.
03:40The very very dark black areas are in the centre of the bed where the mattress was and around that the furniture was still intact.
03:49So what they were able to say was it was a very slow burn so it wouldn't appear that any accelerants were used.
03:54If we think about the smoke alarm going off at 5.30 and then the fire brigade being called at around about quarter to eight in the morning so we're talking about two and a half hours.
04:04So the fire service were able to tell us very quickly it was a slow burning fire.
04:08A senior fire officer investigating the blaze said there's something wrong here, this looks suspicious.
04:15And immediately he thought it was strange that she was lying on her back.
04:18And he said when people die in house fires they tend to be in the fetal position because they tend to be trying to sort of shield themselves against the flames.
04:26What he couldn't understand was a heavily pregnant woman who was obviously probably a bit restless anyway and a dog in the house, a dog who would have obviously been barking and trying to tell the air that hadn't stirred her, that hadn't woken her.
04:41And that immediately made him think we need to look at this in a bit more detail, it's not as straightforward as it might seem.
04:47Even though there were alarm bells ringing about the scene and what had happened, we didn't know because of the state of the body at that particular time whether we were dealing with a murder or whether we were dealing with a tragic accident.
04:59Neighbours were able to tell the police that the flat belonged to Nikita Grenda and her boyfriend Ryan Mays.
05:06Nikita Grenda was a young woman from Newport, she was just 19 years old.
05:12She was pregnant, she was expecting her first child in just a couple of weeks.
05:18Friends in the area rang Nikita's parents to alert them to the situation.
05:22I remember running, it was like a bad dream.
05:26When you're running, you dream, you're just not getting anywhere, you can't, it's taking forever.
05:31I come through the alleyway, looking towards the flat, the windows were black, the white PVC on the outside was black and just smoke was the night.
05:41Well, all I knew that the flat was on fire, nobody was saying whether there was anybody in there.
05:45I was screaming and asking was there anybody in there, you know, was my daughter in there and I wasn't being told anything.
05:51It was, it was quite panicky, you know, it was, it was a lot going on.
05:55I've just stood that in on them, just trying to take it in.
06:00I just, you know, this isn't real, this isn't real.
06:04What the hell is going on?
06:08Nikita's boyfriend and father of her unborn child arrives at the scene of the fire not long after the fire brigade discover her body.
06:15As I was running around, all I could see was Ryan and I'm like, oh, where's Nikita, where's Nikita and where have you been?
06:24And he just looked at me with this look, as if they say, you know, really confused, don't know, what's going on.
06:32And I punched him in the face because I was so angry, like thinking, well, you three are together, where's my daughter?
06:38And that's when he told me then that they've only just come home, they've been out.
06:44Police had to inform Nikita's parents of the terrible tragedy and asked if they had any idea of what could have started the fire.
06:52He was sat down and told that Nikita was in the, was in the flat, you know, which was absolutely devastating for us.
07:00We couldn't believe it. We just, is this really happening to us?
07:04Are we really living this nightmare? Is this our life at the moment or are we watching it, you know, through the TV?
07:14It just don't happen to you.
07:17Right, fire, you know, what's happened, it's obviously an accident that, you know, Nikita was, her phone was stuck to her hand.
07:24It was, it was like glue, you know, and she used to charge her for another, we, her master just thought that maybe she'd slept with a charger on or something,
07:33you know, a phone and it's caused a fire or something else had happened.
07:36Asking us different things, you know, did Nikita smoke?
07:39Um, was there smoking allowed in the flat? Nikita didn't like smoking, dead against it.
07:44We had bought her straighteners for Christmas.
07:46I thought that maybe it was a dodgy pair of straighteners because Nikita was always constantly straightening her hair, curling her hair.
07:53Maybe she'd left them on, maybe, you know, the wires had shortened, maybe she'd lit a candle in the bedroom, you know, maybe she'd knocked the candle over and that's how the fire had started.
08:02Trying to make excuses, I think, you know.
08:04Detective Steve Mock soon received confirmation that the fire was more than an accident.
08:11Later that day, I think it was around 8.30 actually that evening, I had a phone call from the pathologist, Dr Ledby, to say that we were dealing with a murder.
08:21The first thing that the pathologist noticed was it was no trace of carbon monoxide in her bloodstream, so it was unlikely she had died as a result of the fire.
08:31So that sort of suggested that she was already dead by the time that the fire was started and that the fire potentially could have been started to cover up what had happened.
08:42Nikita had been stabbed twice, once through the abdomen, which had also killed the baby, and also once through the neck.
08:50So if the fire was not an accident, what had happened? And why would anybody want to kill Nikita Grenda?
08:56The facts that are before you are known, and it was my job to find out the unknown facts, i.e. what had happened, how it had happened, who was responsible.
09:05By mid-morning on Saturday 5th February 2011, police in Newport, South Wales, had begun a murder hunt after the discovery of the body of Nikita Grenda in the charred remains of her flat in the northeast of the city.
09:23The death was a double murder. Nikita was 38 weeks pregnant with a baby girl.
09:28Nikita was 19 years of age. She was in a very happy relationship with her boyfriend, Ryan.
09:35She was due to have a baby, which they'd already named as Kelsey May.
09:39So really somebody that was very loving, very homely, and very caring.
09:43I definitely felt like Kelsey May had an identity, even though she hadn't actually been born.
09:48You know, she was definitely a person, she was definitely part of the family.
09:51That child, Kelsey May, was well prepared until about the age of two. I think we had half the boots in our, well, in Kitita's flat.
10:02Yeah, lots of nappies, wet wipes, talc. You name it, she had it. Clothes coming out of her ears.
10:09Already dealing with unspeakable grief, Paul and Marcia had to hear that the deaths were not an accident.
10:16It's one of the worst things you can do as a police officer, is to go and tell somebody that their daughter and their granddaughter has been taken away from them.
10:24Not in an accident, but through somebody else's hands. And that's a hard thing to do.
10:30We were told to sit down because they had some news, which wasn't good news. It wasn't an accident. She was murdered. Somebody had killed her.
10:41I couldn't comprehend it. I was like, what? You're serious?
10:48Everything in my body was like, all of my bones and my muscles had just disintegrated. I remember just falling in a heap on the floor.
10:59I couldn't breathe, couldn't catch my breath. I was like, trying to cry, trying to breathe, trying to talk. I couldn't do anything.
11:07You know, give us time, obviously, to fill out the register in our heads.
11:12And then asked us, was there anybody that disliked her? Would she have any enemies?
11:21You know, trying to get some information out of us.
11:25Or some, you know, something that would help them.
11:28Just couldn't think.
11:30Everyone liked Nikita. She was lived by a lot of people, you know.
11:33She was a really nice girl. She didn't have any enemies.
11:35Of course, Nikita didn't have any enemies. Of course, she didn't.
11:39She'd maybe, like, as all people, all teenagers do, she'd maybe had the odd row with a friend and then made it up.
11:46But there was none, neither of them had any enemies that, you know, would, would, or they thought would be motivated to do something as unthinkable as this.
11:56That, uh, we were just absolutely devastated because for the last few days we'd had in our head that it was an accident.
12:05And then to be told that, it just wiped me out. It wiped me out. It wiped me out. It was just unbelievable. Unreal.
12:13I'm just thinking that this, it's not real.
12:18It's just going to be something completely different, you know.
12:23Which was never to be.
12:24My first thought at the time was, well, if this has happened, as it's been stated, and we've got a horrific murder of a nine-month pregnant young woman, what's going to happen next?
12:43So, clearly, my concern was if somebody is carrying out what they think is a fantasy for them and they've committed that crime, what's to stop them doing something else?
12:52So, the priority was to identify the offender as quickly as possible.
12:56There is always a possibility that they could go on and commit further offences.
13:00I've been a reporter for about 15 years and this is one of the worst cases that I've ever had to deal with.
13:07Newport is described as Wales' third city, a former industrial city on the banks of the River Usk.
13:14It's, like many sort of Welsh towns and cities, gone through at difficult times, sort of decline of industry, unemployment, but it has like a really strong working class culture.
13:24And for a night out, it's kind of described as kind of a bit of a lively place to go.
13:28It was an abhorrent crime. It shocked the community. This doesn't happen, not very often, and certainly not here.
13:36So, the type of area for this type of offence to take place, it was devastating.
13:39The Brunachs had lived in Newport since Nikita was a little girl.
13:45As a little girl, she was absolutely fantastic.
13:48We did begin to clash as she got older, becoming a teenager, having arguments.
13:53It didn't matter if we argued.
13:55We always gave each other a kiss and a gutch at the end of each day and, you know, love you.
14:00And, yeah, it's all forgotten about.
14:03She was just a beautiful girl.
14:07As she got older, she liked going out.
14:10She'd rather be out then, obviously, with her friends, rather than being with us, as any other normal teenager.
14:17Fun, loving, never, ever asked for anything.
14:20I think she was very fashionable.
14:22She was really into clothes. She was really into make-up.
14:25She was a big Spice Girls fan, according to Marcia, when she was younger.
14:31One time, they painted the garage out.
14:34There was an old single bed in there, which they'd done up as a couch.
14:39Took Nikita's karaoke machine in the garage, and they all thought that they were pop stars.
14:44It sounded hideous in the house.
14:48She said to me, Dad, you know I love you.
14:51And, you know, it just used to have out my head.
14:56We used to have dance-off competitions, Nikita and I.
14:59She'd beat me every time, obviously.
15:02It's crazy to think that someone so special could be taken away, you know?
15:09Nikita had found stability with her boyfriend, Ryan Mays,
15:13and the two were looking forward to the birth of their child.
15:15The flat in Broadmead Park was a happy one.
15:18When she'd come home and told me, her and Ryan, that she was pregnant,
15:24I went best-pleased.
15:27Scared for her and Ryan because they were young.
15:30You know, they were just starting out, you know, both put in for a flat.
15:34Me and Marcia and Ryan had helped, you know, decorate the flat.
15:38Ryan was absolutely useless when I came to decorate him,
15:41but I showed him my way a little bit.
15:43They were very much in love.
15:45They were both really, really looking forward to becoming parents.
15:49Despite Ryan being 17 at the time,
15:52he was, you know, going along to antenatal classes with her.
15:55As the Brunachs began to come to terms with the tragic situation they were facing,
16:01detectives at Newport began intensifying their inquiries.
16:05With any inquiry, we always start with immediate family and we work out
16:09to try and ascertain, one, there has to be a motive for that murder.
16:14Who has the motive?
16:15Who has the time?
16:16And then from that, we identify, if we can, through house to house,
16:21door-to-door inquiry, CCTV.
16:23We conducted that in Broadmeet Park.
16:26We had some people identifying people who were out early hours of the morning,
16:30but very quickly we identified them and we were able to alibi them out.
16:34So we had no witnesses, we had no descriptions of an offender,
16:37nothing at all at that stage.
16:39Inevitably, attention turned to Ryan Mays.
16:42In cases like this, the boyfriend is always the number one first suspect.
16:48So the police immediately looked at Ryan.
16:51Did he have an alibi?
16:52Where was he on the night in question?
16:55Well, he was distraught, clearly.
16:57But he'd just lost his girlfriend, he'd lost his daughter.
17:01And he must have been going through hell at that particular time.
17:05Ryan had last seen Nikita at around tea time the previous afternoon.
17:10It was a big weekend in Wales.
17:12The Wales v England rugby game was on.
17:14Nikita had gone out to Newport.
17:16She'd gone shopping with her parents to buy some of the last things for her daughter.
17:21Ryan had been working with his cousin in the Cumbrian area,
17:24about eight miles north of Newport, for most of the day.
17:28Then the plan was for Ryan to go and watch the rugby game with Carl.
17:33Carl was able to confirm that Ryan was with him for all of the night
17:36and into the early hours of Saturday the 5th.
17:39But they'd left work early that afternoon because they wanted to watch the rugby match.
17:44They watched the first half of it at Ryan's mum's house.
17:49They went to a pub in Maindy in Newport to watch the second half with friends
17:53and they started drinking.
17:55After the rugby, they stayed in the pub.
17:58They carried on drinking.
17:59They wanted to make a night of it.
18:01And they would occasionally go out to Carl Wan's car that was in the car park
18:05and they would take cocaine as well as drinking.
18:10Ryan and Carl's night continues.
18:12It's a normal Saturday night.
18:14It's a big party atmosphere.
18:15Worlds are playing England.
18:16They end up at a club and around about midnight,
18:20there's CCTV footage of the pair in and about the venue.
18:24And then they decided to go to a house party at about two o'clock in the morning.
18:31Carl gets in the car, despite clearly being under the influence of drinking drugs,
18:35and drives them a fairly short distance to this house party.
18:39There had been some...
18:40Two girls had been at the house party who could vouch that he had been there the whole night
18:44and he hadn't left.
18:46He was away at the party.
18:47He hadn't left.
18:48Lots of people had seen him there.
18:50They could vector him there.
18:51So they're able to get Ryan away from their inquiries,
18:56immediately dismiss him as a suspect.
19:01Nikita's parents went to say goodbye to their daughter and granddaughter.
19:05I was thinking the only hospital we should be going to is the Royal Gwent
19:09to go and see Nikita in a healthy mate.
19:14You know, but it wasn't.
19:16It was to go and say either goodbyes, I suppose.
19:20I went over and I stroked Nikita's head.
19:24I really wanted to pull back the cover and see my daughter.
19:30But I was warned that I wouldn't be seeing my daughter.
19:33It wasn't, you know, it wasn't something that I wanted to see, I was told.
19:43Not only has he taken Nikita and Kelsey me,
19:46but he set her on fire so she couldn't even be recognised to hide what he had done.
19:55He had taken every right away from us.
19:58We couldn't even say a proper goodbye.
20:05Just in front of Nikita near her head, the Moses basket, where Kelsey me was.
20:14I remember looking at her, she looked like a little doll.
20:16She was beautiful, perfect.
20:18Nothing wrong with her, nothing.
20:19She had this horrible, woolen bonnet on.
20:24I wanted to take it off and I was told I couldn't remove it.
20:27Personally now, thinking back, I think that was where he had stabbed Nikita in the stomach
20:36and the knife had gone into Kelsey me's head.
20:39And that's why we couldn't take that bonnet off her head.
20:44But I held her and she looked absolutely gorgeous.
20:49She was beautiful.
20:49She looked like she was asleep to me, you know.
20:54She was just sleeping.
20:56I remember telling Nikita that, you know, she was absolutely perfect.
21:01She was beautiful.
21:06And feeling guilty that we were the first ones to hold her.
21:10And Nikita could never do that.
21:13The first time over with my granddaughter, it was supposed to be a proud moment.
21:19And in the background was my daughter lying there.
21:23And I couldn't see her.
21:24And the last time I seen her, she was so happy.
21:27And, uh, crazy.
21:32With no witnesses to the crime or obvious suspects,
21:35detectives were hoping that forensics would help them move the case forward.
21:40Who'd done it?
21:41Who was behind it?
21:42What was going to happen next?
21:44Would this person be caught?
21:45In February 2011, detectives in Newport, South Wales,
21:51were investigating the horrific death of 19-year-old Nikita Grenda,
21:55whose body had been found following a fire at her flat in the Lisswary part of the city.
22:00In a tragic addition to the murder,
22:03she'd been 38 weeks pregnant with a child who had also perished in the incident.
22:08Police now knew that she'd been stabbed prior to being set on fire.
22:11I just couldn't comprehend anything, anything, normality.
22:19How can the world still be turning?
22:20And everyone getting on with it every day-to-day life.
22:25And we were stuck in February the 5th.
22:29We were stuck there, no matter what the day was, no matter what the date was.
22:33It was still 7.48 in my head, and we were still stuck in that moment in time.
22:39And I thought that everybody and the whole world would stand still, too.
22:44Well, our world would stand still.
22:46It's very rare to have a murder of this type committed by somebody that's not known to the victim.
22:52So, very quickly, for us, we were happy it was somebody that was local.
22:55I was convinced of that.
22:58Investigators received more details as to how Nikita had actually died from the autopsy.
23:03So, from the post-mortem, the pathologist was able to give us a type and a description of the type of knife that would have been used.
23:11It was a long-bladed weapon, nothing with a serrated edge, so something with a clean, very sharp pointed instrument, probably between 6 and 8 inches long.
23:22So, main line of inquiry was to identify where that weapon was.
23:25We basically emptied every drain within a certain radius of the house.
23:30We must have recovered about 50 or 60 knives.
23:33We had to send all of them off for screening initially.
23:37None of those weapons that we recovered gave us any indication it was used in the crime against Nikita.
23:42Because of the nature of the stab wounds, whoever had killed Nikita would have had blood on them.
23:48So, the second line of inquiry then, clearly, was to obtain as much clothing as possible from those that had been in contact with Nikita in the previous 24 hours.
23:59Investigators' attention turned back to the people around Ryan and Nikita, and they focused on Carl Wont.
24:05It was only when we started taking subsequent statements to tie the timeline down further, which is quite normal in an inquiry of this stage,
24:13that we became aware that Carl was the only one that had left the party at around 5 o'clock in the morning.
24:20And that, for us, raised some concerns at that stage.
24:24With Carl, it was more difficult because he didn't have an alibi.
24:29Carl also said in his defence that he'd left the house party early that morning.
24:34So, he says he's going to go back to his nan's house, which is only about eight minutes' drive away,
24:39to pick up some cigarettes from her Ryan office to go with Carl.
24:43But Carl says, no, I'll go. It's a short distance. I won't be long.
24:47But he hadn't been able to wake her up to get in to get the cigarettes.
24:51He doesn't come back to that house for another two hours.
24:54Even though he had been drinking, and I think possibly also taking cocaine,
24:58he drove away from the property in a Ford Focus.
25:01They had to trace CCTV to find out where that Ford Focus had gone.
25:07CCTV evidence now began to come into the picture.
25:11So, physically, you have to go around knocking on people's doors,
25:15asking, have you got CCTV? And if you have, can we have it, please?
25:18It takes time. It's very time-intensive, but it's critical in this day and age.
25:22It's a silver Ford Focus. There must be thousands of them out there.
25:25But we did have to identify how many silver Ford Focuses were owned in Newport,
25:30how many silver Ford Focuses of a particular year were owned in Newport,
25:35and then we started to narrow the field down.
25:37His Ford Focus was spotted on CCTV,
25:41but what started to trouble the police was the fact that it hadn't been driving
25:46in the direction of his nan's house.
25:48But when we started to examine literally hundreds and hundreds of hours of CCTV,
25:54we identified what we thought was the car, the Ford Focus,
25:58but it was driving in the opposite direction towards where Nikita was living.
26:03And at that stage, we started to really think that we had a possible suspect.
26:09Detectives now knew they were getting closer to someone
26:12who might know more than he was owning up to.
26:16Carl becomes the number one suspect for the police.
26:20Things that he's telling them just don't add up.
26:22We know from witness evidence then that the smoke alarm in Nikita's flat
26:26was heard at around 5.30 that morning.
26:30So when we started piecing together the pieces of the jigsaw,
26:33Carl Wont was the only person at that stage who didn't have an alibi.
26:38The detectives then decided to take a closer look at the car.
26:42So after looking and piecing this CCTV footage together,
26:47the vehicle recognition expert is able to very confidently say
26:50that this was Carl Wont's car.
26:53And from that, we identified there was a taillight that was faulty,
26:56but also the positioning of stickers in the front window of the car
27:00and where the tax disc was placed at the time,
27:02they were able to say that it was definitely the car that was involved.
27:05They seized his car and a forensic team found three little droplets of blood
27:10on the underside of the carpet.
27:13So that obviously was troubling.
27:16But that could have been from anything.
27:18That could have been from a cut.
27:19That could have been, you know, they needed to get more evidence.
27:25Carl worked with Ryan and by all accounts was a huge influence on him.
27:29Ryan idolised Carl, his cousin.
27:34He looked up to him.
27:35He saw him like an older brother or a father figure.
27:38He was quite a bit older than Ryan and I think that's why he looked up to him
27:41because he was a bit older and, you know, he would take him out drinking
27:44and they would do things together.
27:46I think he sort of almost hero worshipped him.
27:49It just seemed like he wasn't interested in his girlfriend or his children.
27:52He wanted to go out all of the time.
27:54He was an individual that, first of all, was very much into cocaine.
28:00Drunk heavily as well.
28:01And in addition to that, he saw himself as a bit of a man's man, if you like.
28:05He was into bodybuilding.
28:07But again, one of those lonely type people.
28:11If you think Carl was 27 at the time, Nikita, Ryan were all in their late teens.
28:16His age group was 10 years older.
28:18Yet he didn't have any friends or associates in that age group.
28:21I know that Nikita didn't like his cousin, Carl.
28:25She said she felt uneasy in his presence.
28:28And I think that was something that troubled her, the fact that they were so close.
28:32And I think he used to spend a lot of time round at their house.
28:35She sometimes, I think, felt that he wasn't giving her and Ryan space,
28:39like as a young couple, that they would want.
28:42She was quite suspicious of Carl.
28:44She thought that Carl was a bad influence on Ryan.
28:48And whenever she was alone in a room with him, she didn't want to be there.
28:52She didn't want to talk to him.
28:54She just wanted to get away.
28:56Ryan said to me that he seemed to have changed once he was, Ryan was with Nikita.
29:01You know, he used to go round to Ryan's and try and get him to go out when Nikita wanted him to stay in.
29:07I think Ryan felt like, you know, that he'd spent so much time with his cousin in the past
29:11that maybe, you know, now and again he needed to go out with him.
29:14You know, like, every man needs to go out now and again.
29:16You know, don't want to be stuck in the ice with your missus continuously.
29:18Police decided to pay a visit to Carl's home.
29:22When police went to Carl's house, they were able to seize the clothing that he'd been wearing on the night of the party.
29:31He had left it on the floor of his kitchen, asking his girlfriend to wash it for him, but she hadn't got round it.
29:38The clothing that Carl had worn was still there for the police to seize and they were able to examine that for evidence.
29:44They found traces of Nikita's DNA on some of those clothes.
29:50At that stage we had blood on Carl's clothing, we had blood in the car, and that was enough for us to arrest him on suspicion of Nikita's murder.
29:59But the case took a dramatic turn when police spoke to one's girlfriend, Rachel Bird.
30:05Rachel provided us with statements saying that he was out on the particular night in question.
30:09He said that when he came home he had scratch marks on his arms, nail marks, like he'd been in some kind of fight.
30:16And he said that he'd had a fight with an Asian man and had been scratched on the arm by a blonde lady.
30:22But his girlfriend didn't believe him.
30:25It was the way that he'd told the story, she just didn't think it was true.
30:28They tried to appeal for witnesses, they tried to trace this Asian man that he said he'd been in a fight with.
30:35Nobody came forward, no witnesses that had even appeared to have seen this fight came forward.
30:42There was no record anywhere that they could find of this fight with an Asian man.
30:46When we checked on CCTV, yes he was in there wearing the clothes that we'd recovered, but there was no altercation, there was no fight.
30:54He'd made it up. Well, where have these scratches come from?
30:57Was it Nikita fighting him off at the particular time?
30:59And knowing and having spoken to the family, Nikita would probably have done everything she could possibly have done to prevent any harm coming to her or her child.
31:08After Carl Wands was taken into custody, detectives received more crucial and damning evidence.
31:14The pathologist was able to tell us that he'd recovered semen from the body of Nikita.
31:18At first, they fully expected this to be Ryan's, her boyfriend's, but they were surprised to find out it wasn't.
31:26They realised that there were two contributors.
31:30One was Ryan, which makes sense, but the second was Carol Watt.
31:35That was a major turning point for the team, because now we knew that he'd not only committed murder, that he'd probably raped Nikita as well.
31:50And given how uneasy Nikita felt around him, given how much she seemed to dislike him, it didn't ring true that that would be a consensual encounter.
31:58Carl had been to the flat, you see, on many occasions, so finding his fingerprints or his DNA in the flat wouldn't have taken us any further.
32:06It was only when we had his DNA from the semen we recovered from Nikita's body and from the blood in his car and his clothing that was critical for us.
32:13When you put all that together, there was no way that it wasn't Carl Watt that committed that crime.
32:18Armed with this new forensic evidence, Carl Watt was arrested and brought in for questioning.
32:24The explanation he would give showed the depths of his depravity.
32:29For Carl Watt to be saying that she was the kind of person who would be involved in this kind of thing, so terrible for the parents to have to hear this.
32:38When they knew it just wasn't true.
32:40In February 2011, and after a fast-moving investigation, police felt they were getting closer to identifying the killer of 19-year-old Nikita Grenda,
32:53whose charred body had been discovered in her flat close to Newport, South Wales, early on a Saturday morning.
32:59Analysis of the crime scene and Nikita's remains showed she'd been sexually assaulted before being stabbed to death, ahead of her flat being set on fire.
33:08I think he was, er, he got jealous that Ryan wanted to spend so much time with Nikita and not as much time with him.
33:17Detectives arrested 26-year-old Carl Watt and were questioning him.
33:21I remember Carl Watt coming through from the cell and the only thing he was interested in was the football score for that day.
33:28And I still remember that.
33:30Um, that just goes to show the type of individual that he is.
33:33One of his statements that he provided to us at an early stage says that he had kissed Nikita before, but, um, but that was some time previously.
33:45But he'd never had sex with her, which we thought, why would you bring that up in a statement?
33:50And that was before he ever became a suspect.
33:52Carl Watt was claiming that he'd been invited to a consensual threesome with his cousin hours before Nikita was murdered.
33:59When police confronted him and said they had the evidence of his sperm, he changed his story.
34:07He said that they had had consensual sex.
34:10And in fact, that Ryan had been involved in saying, yes, go ahead, have sex with my girlfriend.
34:16None of that turned out to be true.
34:18He's trying to, if you like, uh, degrade Nikita further by suggesting she would have taken part in that.
34:25And there's absolutely no way, knowing Nikita's background, and even from speaking to Ryan and Paul and Marcia and the family, um, there is no way that that would have ever happened.
34:34We built up now, um, to try and get his movements.
34:39And of course, by the time we charged him, we had the blood that was on his clothing.
34:44We had the blood inside his jacket.
34:45We had the blood in his car underneath the driver's footwell.
34:48And obviously then we had his semen as well.
34:52Coupled with that, we had the video evidence, which we confirmed was his vehicle driving towards Nikita's premises at around five o'clock, five past five that morning.
35:00When you put all that together, and he doesn't give any explanation, um, but he accepts he was driving the car at that particular time, because he told us that in witness statements, um, it leaves you with absolutely no doubt this crime was committed by Carl Wont.
35:17I think he came across as almost being quite cocky at times as well, as if, you know, he hadn't done nothing, he had nothing to worry about.
35:24And I think that was part of his demeanour.
35:26After Carl Wont had been arrested, suddenly this willingness to engage with police and talk suddenly stopped.
35:33He suddenly became very cagey, very defensive.
35:3626 police interviews, um, never basically said anything of any value, never admitted anything.
35:43Wont's complete lack of remorse was displayed in his visit to Nikita's parents.
35:48When we were grieving, we had people come into the house, there was a knock on the door one, one evening, and it was him at the door with a bunch of flowers, the same as everybody else had come to us all with a bunch of flowers.
36:01You know, I took the flowers off him, he'd give me a hug.
36:04Marsha didn't like the guy at all, she had a feeling about him, it was weird.
36:08And he went, and I didn't think much of it.
36:12I resented him before I even met him properly, because I knew that he, he was trying to cause a rift between Nikita and Ryan.
36:22Even though he had a missus and kids of his own, he was still out and about doing his own thing, sniffing coke, getting drunk.
36:29And he wanted to take Ryan with him every single time.
36:33Ryan said no a few times, and once he didn't like that, he didn't like being told no.
36:39You know, after, when I was told that it was him, I just couldn't believe it.
36:43I mean, like, I heard him like I heard my family members that day.
36:47I mean, how can someone do that?
36:49How can someone do what he did in the first place, but then also come to the house, you know, to show that he's grieving with us, you know.
36:57And to give us flowers is unreal.
37:03It's almost as if he's turning up to try and find out what people are saying, what information have the police told them.
37:10That's what I think he went there for, to find out what they knew, to find out if we were onto him.
37:15I don't think he went there with any remorse.
37:17He didn't go there with any feelings for the family.
37:20I think it was very cold.
37:21It was a very calculated move by him.
37:22Once all the evidence and statements were collected, the events of the night became clear.
37:28I don't think he had much attention from the opposite sex.
37:33And I think that upset him.
37:35That really annoyed him.
37:36And I know on the night, now obviously from our inquiries, he was quite angry, actually, that other people were getting attention and he wasn't.
37:44And I think that probably added to the fuel, apart from the cocaine and the alcohol and his obsession.
37:51And it was an obsession that he had with Nikita.
37:54And I think that was the final thing that drove him to commit that crime that night.
37:59There didn't appear to be any forced entry to the premises at all.
38:02The front door, we were able to examine the door and we could not find any signs that force had been used on the lock or anywhere else for that matter.
38:08So our hypothesis was one of two things, really.
38:11Nikita had let him in, which I thought was unlikely because she didn't like Carl.
38:16The second one is the issue of keys.
38:19Just shortly before the night of the fire, Nikita and Ryan had lost a pair of the spare house keys for their flat.
38:26And they never really found out where those house keys went.
38:32So my hypothesis was that Carl, when we knew it was Carl, who obviously was the offender, that he at some stage had taken those keys, almost planning to try and identify an opportunity where he could go and, not saying murder initially, but certainly to have sex with Nikita.
38:50So he knew she was alone.
38:52He went to her flat and he went in and he forced her to have sex with him.
38:59He committed the act of rape.
39:01He knew that Nikita Grenda was going to report it.
39:06He knew she was going to say that he committed rape.
39:09So as far as he saw it, he only had one option and he killed her.
39:14And if you think of the timeline, he left the party around about quarter five, five o'clock in the morning.
39:19We know at five past five, he's driving along Chepstow Road in Newport, which is not far from the scene of the crime.
39:24If the smoke alarm went off at 5.30 in the morning, you're talking about a 10 to 15 minute gap or opportunity for him to commit that crime.
39:33That's get there, get into the premises, rape Nikita and then stab her twice and set a fire.
39:39He didn't get back to the flat until around 6.30.
39:42So what we think happened was that he'd set the fire and he sat outside in his car waiting and looking to see if the fire had taken hold.
39:50So around about 30 minutes to about an hour after he's committed this horrific crime, he then arrives back at the house party where he'd been, picks up Ryan.
40:02And then he decides to then go to his nan's house with Ryan, where they then pick up some cigarettes.
40:09This was clearly an attempt to try and cover his tracks.
40:12Because he had a fair amount of time in the two hours that he'd left to kind of have an idea or some kind of explanation why he'd been, why he'd been gone so long.
40:23You know, he never thought about CCTV.
40:25He never thought about anything really other than once he'd committed the crime, he thought, well, how am I going to get away with this?
40:31I'll set fire to it.
40:32I'll set fire to the flat.
40:34That'll burn any evidence that was there.
40:36So on the morning of the fire, Karl Wont actually turned up at the scene because he was dropping Ryan back to the flat that he shared with Nikita.
40:47So he knew what he was going to find, but he still went there.
40:52I think because of the forensic evidence, the lack of any explanation from Karl, or any credible explanation, I should say, there was no doubt.
40:59The trial commenced on the 18th of January, 2012, in Newport Crown Court.
41:06The pain, there's a pain that just stays with you.
41:13My throat was constantly, it was like a cry was stuck in my throat.
41:20The ache from my throat down to my chest.
41:27It killed, it hurt so much every day.
41:33I wanted to crumble when we were going to that court.
41:37I wouldn't because of him.
41:40I didn't want to give him that satisfaction.
41:42I didn't want him to see me at my weak point.
41:45You know, you're at a court case and you're sat there, and it just comes through that it's your daughter, you know, that's been murdered.
41:53You know, sometimes you think that, you know, you're in a position where it's not you, you're not there.
42:00It's crazy.
42:02It's seeing him every day.
42:06It was really unnerving to see how he responded, and as the more and more pieces of the evidence came about, how much in denial he was about what he'd done.
42:18During cross-examination, there was more and more holes in his story, which were becoming apparent.
42:25And I think at one stage he was asked, you know, how do you explain this?
42:29And he said, oh, think what you like.
42:30He was really, really snappy.
42:32The prosecution suggested that after he'd raped her, he slashed her throat, and he then slashed her stomach too, because she was pregnant with her daughter.
42:44She was about to give birth in two weeks.
42:47So Carl Want would have known that.
42:49It was obvious to anyone.
42:50But he still carried out this act, and the prosecution say that that was a deliberate act, that he caused the destruction of Nikita Grenda's unborn child.
43:02The day of the verdict, I was at Newport Crown Court, and it was quite a day.
43:09The jury had been deliberating for about five hours just over, and they came back with a verdict of guilty on all counts.
43:19Murder, rape, child destruction, and arson.
43:23And Carl Want was sentenced to life in prison with a minimum of 35 years.
43:30I mean, I want him to be there for the rest of his life.
43:34You know, he's taken two lives, and he's got a chance, you know, after 35 years of getting parole.
43:41That doesn't make sense to me.
43:45It's probably one of the longest sentences that I've come across, certainly during my service, a minimum of 35 years.
43:51That doesn't mean he's going to come out after 35 years.
43:53If he continues to deny what he's done, he'll never come out.
43:58The judge said that Carl Want was a very dangerous man.
44:02He was calculating, he was vain, he was devious.
44:06Not only had he committed murder and rape, but he'd aggravated it by killing Nikita Grenda's unborn child.
44:15Just giving him 35 years in prison, his face didn't change, he just laughed, he smirked.
44:21I mean, if I was the judge, I'd have given him another 35 years for smirking at me.
44:26If I remember rightly, it's the largest sentence given to anybody in Wales for a crime like this.
44:33To me, 34 years is a long time.
44:37But he's still breathing.
44:39He's still living.
44:41He's still eating.
44:42We've got 34 years and the rest of living with it, with what's happened, of our daughter and our granddaughter being taken.
44:55Me, Mash, and my whole family have got the whole rest of our lives as a sentence, and that's what you should have.
45:02Life, you take a life from someone, you should have your life taken away from you.
45:06Forensics were 100% necessary in this particular case.
45:13Yes, we might have been able to put together Carl's movements, but how did we tie him to the scene?
45:19And the only way we could do that was the transference of blood and semen and getting his profile.
45:24So forensic evidence, yeah, absolutely.
45:26Without that, I don't think we'd be where we are today with it.
45:29The 5th of February, 2011, will always stay with me.
45:36The sights, the images that I saw are still there, and I can never shake them off.
45:41He could ease the family's suffering by saying, you know, yes, I've done it, but he's never done that.
45:50And I think throughout, he just goes to show how cold, how calculated, and how evil, if you think, that individual is.
45:57To do what he's done, just is beyond comprehension.
45:59They watch TV in prison these days, they play PlayStation, they play pool.
46:05What right have you got to do that every single day?
46:09When my daughter should be playing with her daughter, bringing her up, educating her, living her life, having more children, being with us, her family, her mum, dad, brother.
46:18You know, her brother's just had a baby himself.
46:21We should all be a family growing together, enjoying it.
46:24Instead, we've got none of that.
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