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Short filmTranscript
00:00my journey to orkney began on the return flight from bangladesh where the gentleman
00:11i was sitting next to he offered a job with his brother's restaurant i thought why not
00:17never been to an island let's go i was around about 20 21 when my brother asked me to join him
00:27in the orkney aisles and he was like a experience of a lifetime and then chamel joined us in the
00:36restaurant he was always smiling he had like a little giggle constantly he was full of life
00:45we all called him handsome because of his dress sense all the customers used to call him handsome
00:53as well and he liked it he was a friendly type of a fella yeah it wasn't dangerous to anybody
01:10what we're seeing here is a live ram being fired at point blank range which is what happened with
01:15chum shooting so his perpetrator literally went up as close as he possibly could it was like a
01:21a scene out in american gangster movie doesn't sweat doesn't hesitate calm cool no sweat which is
01:35what you need to be to walk into a restaurant and kill somebody at point blank range asking your son if
01:42you killed a man
01:46is
01:48friend this ballistic evidence should have led detective straight to 15 year old ross but his father seen
01:54here was a police officer involved in the inquiry and he covered up evidence to protect him
02:04michael ross is a racist murderer the punishment 25 years in prison michael was not
02:11just like any other 15 year old he had access to guns
02:20how could this have been a 15 year old boy it is not the kind of crime that is committed by a 15
02:25year old boy in orkney well i believe this to be the gunman and that's not make a loss
02:31although it seems like odd behavior there is a convincing explanation
02:40but then michael does something with his balacalava which is harder to explain
02:49somebody came out with the toilet it was a young boy
02:53he had to go in his hand and i knew who he was i was terrified
03:04this call is from a scottish prison it will be logged and recorded and may be monitored
03:09yeah i can't be any queerer i never murdered samson if not michael who did kill sean
03:20a man with a mask on came in and thought he was in to shoot everyone
03:39this is my first time to the orkney isles ever since i've been a journalist i've learned about a
04:04murder which happened here and it's always really fascinated me
04:10colleagues in the newsroom would talk about it as one of the strangest cases they'd ever reported on
04:16it's a story so wild full of twists and turns
04:22so i've come to orkney to investigate what happened
04:25the island of orkney is more isolated than almost anywhere in britain 45 minutes by ferry from john
04:55groats off the northern tip of scotland it's not the sort of place you'd expect to see a major crime
04:59and when one happened there this summer it was a crime that would have been extraordinary anywhere
05:04this is where bangladeshi waiter shamsuddin mamood was murdered more than 13 years ago
05:22he was known to everyone as shamal and he was shot while serving diners in the indian restaurant there
05:28when it was called limiters 14 years later a young man called michael ross was found guilty of murdering
05:37him it means that michael would have been just 15 when he killed shallow
05:46to this day michael ross denies it after all there was no forensic evidence there was no murder weapon
05:50found and he had no connection to shamal many in orkney believe that this was a major miscarriage of
05:56justice others that justice was finally done i want to really dig into what happened all those
06:05years ago but before doing so i want to understand the official version of events
06:26it was a beautiful june day it was sun was out tourists were wandering about not a care in the
06:40world they had cruise ships coming in they had visitors coming in
06:45okay i was showing two customers to the table when the door opened behind me and i turned around to see
07:02who it was man with a mask on came in then i saw the gun in his hand as he went past me
07:10he went up to the table where shimmel was serving the customers when the gunman came in it looked like a fancy dress
07:26when the gun went off and i realized it wasn't
07:28it was a horrible thought to have your children there and not be able to do anything about it
07:40i thought he was in to shoot everyone and he had the door open behind me and he came out and
07:46went down the other lane and the last i saw him was going down the narrow lane at the back of the restaurant
07:58in horrific cases like this it's always important to remember the victim
08:12shamal was a 26 year old who was the victim of a shocking murder
08:22why would someone do that
08:23shamal had arrived from bangladesh to britain in may 1991 wanting to work here and send the money back
08:33home he was friendly and he was popular so it's hard to imagine a reason why anyone would want to kill him
08:43it was an absolutely horrific scene
08:55my name's angus alexander chisholm i was detective inspector based in inverness
09:02but with the responsibility for serious crime throughout the whole force area
09:14we could see blood on the floor the deceased had been obviously taken away from the restaurant at that
09:19time we could see that there was a hole in the wall where apparently a bullet had lodged
09:26in the plasterboard in the wall and lots of blood on the floor of the restaurant
09:34shamal mahmoud was the victim of the first murder on orkney in 25 years
09:39why would that happen in orkney of all places
09:46it was like a scene out in american gangster movie
09:53my name is david mateer i'm a retired detective sergeant and i was based in kirkwell orkney from 1992
10:01for six years there was a a strange atmosphere if you want to call it that
10:09whole location had been taped off and officers were guarding the location until forensic officers
10:18arrived and carried out an examination of the restaurant i had been involved in several murders
10:24before i went to orkney it was it was part of the job most if not all the officers that were based in
10:31orkney that team had never worked with a murder he walked into the restaurant and straight up to
10:38shamrool and shot him from point blank range the bullet went into his eye exited behind his ear and
10:46red lodged itself in the wall in the plasterboard behind him
10:48my name's eddie ross or edmund ross i was the team leader for the what was called the firearms team in those days up here
11:04i got down on the floor and had a look at the base of the case took a note of what i could see
11:09and i looked at the case as it was lying there without touching it i could see just by a glance there
11:18was a nine millimeter parambillum room and it belonged to the kirkie arsenal in india
11:31i was coming into work in the kirkville police station at 8am when eddie spoke to me and he said oh
11:44by the way i have a box of kirkie nine millimeter bullets to which i said pardon where did you get
11:53them was my next question some years before i got in a box of ammunition and realized the same make
12:04of the ammunition from the same company the kirkie arsenal in india they've been there for ages
12:12i forgot that they were in the box
12:23so one of the local pc's eddie ross has the same type of nine millimeter bullets as the one that
12:35killed shammel you can see why the finger of blame starts to point toward the ross family
12:42but then in these woods there are reports of something else which increased these suspicions
12:47police hear about a sighting of a man in a mask in these woods a fortnight before shammel was murdered
13:05he was in combat gear and he was acting furtively in the woods going back and forwards between trees
13:13hiding between trees had their face covered the balaclava was quite distinctive it was one that
13:21was covered the full face but had three holes really tied in with the murder we eventually homed
13:27it down to be michael who was the son of eddie ross constable eddie ross this was a very important lead
13:34and now we knew that it was it was michael i was feeling very good
13:48you'd think it was a slam dunk case wouldn't you because you've got possession of
13:56rear bullets check you've got michael ross acting suspiciously in a balaclava check you can see why
14:06the police thought they had enough evidence to prosecute michael ross but with no forensic link
14:13with no motive there isn't enough evidence to charge michael ross and the case against him is closed
14:19the police were left with a high profile unsolved murder case
14:30but for michael ross life carried on this one here is of michael when he
14:38probably one of his last days in the cadet force because he went off to army after that
14:42it's a good photograph because he looks smart as he should be
14:46this photograph is of michael when he was in there in the black works regiment probably within the
14:51first year there's no date on that one but that's what it would have been anyway this one is his
14:56son in iraq this will be a that's him lying in a sniper position and he's holding a l-96 7.62 sniper rifle
15:09an orkney soldier has been recognized for his bravery during his tour or duty in iraq
15:14corporal michael ross who served with a black watch for nine years was singled out for shown bravery
15:19after he held people wounded by an explosion in bassra
15:30over a decade after the murder an extraordinary event would throw the ross family back into the
15:35spotlight 12 years later a new eyewitness comes forward out of nowhere a man says that
15:43he saw michael ross in the toilets which one stood behind me with a gun and a balaclava this is
15:49just around the corner from where shallow was shot
15:51i was in the toilet when i had somebody rossed in a bag in one of the cubiters
16:10somebody came out of the toilet
16:25it was a young boy he had a gun in his hand and i knew who he was
16:31i knew who was making his face i knew who was making the toilet i was also terrified
16:42i was very i was i was very scared yeah
16:45i was very scared
16:5614 years after the murder of shamsuddin mahmud william grant's new testimony was enough to put michael ross
17:02on trial
17:09the arcadian covered every day of the evidence of the trial of michael ross in 2008 day after day
17:16witness after witness
17:20full pages upon full pages of coverage of what was said in the high court in glasgow
17:25my name's ethan flett i've worked at the arcadian for over three and a half years now and in that
17:34time became the person that uh most often covers the michael ross case and the murder of shamsuddin
17:40mahmud for 14 years michael ross pursued a career in the army but today he was convicted of one of
17:46scotland's longest-running unsolved murders the first in the island community of orkney for 25 years
17:55the first in the island community of the city of the city of the city of the city of the city of
18:05that's what you might call the accepted narrative of events it ends with michael ross being sent to
18:11prison for life and he's still there 17 years later it's a bizarre story with loads of twists and
18:19turns but what i find even more extraordinary is what michael's guilt would mean
18:25and that is that a 15 year old boy school boy walks into a restaurant and kills a man he doesn't
18:36know shoots him for no apparent reason
18:42i can't find many other cases where a boy that young would murder somebody with a gun in britain
18:50let alone on an island with 20 000 people it's one reason why many locals still believe that this
18:57could be a miscarriage of justice
19:05i have followed miscarriages of justice my whole life there was the birmingham six there was the
19:10guildford four um things like that always really bothered me my name's karen i've been involved in
19:16michael's campaign for the last uh 12 13 years i think the police investigation was flawed um from
19:24the outset when the murder was being investigated i always felt that there was something not right
19:30about it it was like pieces were being hammered together i knew that there were things that just
19:36didn't quite fit so that that is what makes me believe it's a miscarriage of justice obviously the
19:44case has come up a lot in the press even all these years later and i got quite randomly curious it's
19:51two months into the investigation when eddie ross says that he's found a box of these bullets if
19:56they're trying to hinder the investigation why would they volunteer the evidence they're supposed to be
20:02trying to hide so that got my curiosity and it made me think well maybe there is something more to
20:07this than meets the eye we've been given unique access to over a thousand unreleased documents reports
20:18and witness statements we've also spoken to dozens of people involved in the case many of whom have
20:24spoken for the first time given it's such a complex case perhaps the best place to start is with what
20:32the witnesses saw 14 witnesses give statements to the police after the murder who were inside the
20:41restaurant and i have them there are details a lot of details which are so different
20:58as to what people report that they saw
21:11well i was driving along junction road heading towards superior and i was about to turn into
21:16the albert street car park when i noticed this chap just outside the door of the toilets on my left
21:22he was wearing a hooded top and i noticed he was wearing a balaclava underneath that we're driving down
21:27junction road at about quarter past seven and as we turned into the car park i saw a guy out of the window
21:35on my left he had on dark clothes and had mossy brown hair most of the folk inside the restaurant
21:45described the killer as being calm and average height so being between five eight and five nine
21:53so three people have said that the killer looked hunched and then one person has said stooped and hunched
22:04some of the witnesses also described the killer as well built so does any of this bear any resemblance to michael ross
22:14this photo was taken the year after shamel was killed not long after michael ross turned 16
22:24he's five foot seven so on the bottom end of the height range that the witnesses described
22:30he's not stooped or hunched but he is well built for a 16 year old so it's conceivable then that he could
22:36match some of the witness descriptions this article talks about a witness who came forward after the
22:46murder and they report to have seen a man rounded or hunched shoulders acting suspiciously at the side door
22:59of the moment as restaurant two hours before shamel was killed
23:13well i came with the very fish shop here and i was carrying some empty boxes when i saw this
23:19total chart what i'm doing here
23:20and he went down the lane in front of me here and he went to the door to the restaurant
23:40and he held on to the handle but one feet up in here swearing off at me and he thought that i was going to make a
23:48delivery to the restaurant and he was waiting until i get by and as soon as i went past him he went in and
23:55slammed the door and i knew he wasn't just another pedestrian
24:00you know the next day i got a phone call saying with the murdering character and this guy
24:09came right back
24:17so the witness goes to the police and says he saw a man who fits the description of the murderer behaving oddly
24:25at the restaurant two hours before shamel is killed the police then draw up an e-fit of the man in the lane
24:35this is the e-fit that robert smith helped the police draw up and this was done a couple of weeks
24:42after the murder so you think it would be pretty helpful to circulate this
24:48to help catch the killer yet the police do something strange
24:55the police don't actually release this until three months later
25:00in my mind i didn't consider it too important
25:03with all inquiries like that you're going to get red herrings if you like i mean i don't think he was
25:08doing anything particularly troublesome at the side door and i'm not even sure why
25:13mr smith considered it to be relevant
25:18they had no idea who was i didn't think this was michael i didn't think that was michael at the
25:22side door of a restaurant that day well i believe this to be the good man
25:30i'm very pleased with that photograph that's the guy
25:35and that's not michael ross
25:36why did the police ignore robert smith at first it didn't make sense to me but now it might
25:45it seems by the time robert smith gave his statement on the 17th of june 1994
25:52police may have already started focusing on michael as a suspect
25:55we had no idea who was i didn't think this was michael i didn't think that was michael at the
26:03side door of the restaurant that day and why might the police already be so focused on michael
26:10the answer is that sighting of him behaving oddly in the woods
26:24when you hear the words popdale woods you think of well a deep dark wood but really this is just a
26:30smattering of trees now just to get our bearings
26:33over there is michael's high school and less than a mile up the road is the mumitaz restaurant
26:40two weeks before the murder there are two sightings of a male acting suspiciously right here
26:51what's key about this is that the person is wearing a three-hole balacalava like this
26:58i've actually never worn one of these before oh what do you think it's pretty intimidating isn't it
27:12and it was the exact same kind as shamel's murderer was using
27:19that person wearing it in the woods turned out to be michael ross
27:24what was he doing and why
27:30michael ross has never spoken publicly to explain what he was doing in the woods
27:35or about anything else concerning his case he didn't give evidence in court he's been in prison
27:40ever since but i have got hold of recordings of him answering questions about his case
27:46which have never been heard before
27:48these questions weren't put to him by a journalist and he wasn't challenged on them but they do give
27:56some explanation about some of his behaviors like what on earth he was doing running around pap
28:02del woods with a balacalava on
28:10i was in fab del woods because i was going to confront a boy and fight with him
28:16he was going out with going out with one of my ex-girlfriends
28:19and i was stalking her but i found out that he'd been beating her up and i kind of had it
28:27i didn't like the best fact that he was beating her up so i went to sort him out and give him a
28:32scare to try and stop him from hurting her
28:34well i thought good and michael for trying to protect that girl and um
28:45well i'll say sort this guy out that was abusing her i found a balaclava in his school bag
28:56didn't i didn't really think too much about it
29:01you tell me about it i must have
29:05i was wearing a balaclava not not to hide myself from the police but more so that people wouldn't
29:10tell my dad that that was me in the woods and i was more scared of getting a right ball in from my dad
29:19the infamous balaclava the police are fascinated with this balaclava
29:25and michael in a balaclava because it's the only thing that links michael with the murderer
29:34so what the police actually got then well michael ross's statement at the time is consistent with
29:39what he says today so then we cut to a statement from that cadet boy and
29:48he confirms that i would say that about once a fortnight i had an argument with
29:55x sometimes these arguments resulted in me hitting her
30:01most of the times we had an argument i would hit her
30:06which is horrible um but what i think it does for michael is that it actually
30:12makes what he's saying and the reason that he's given i think more credible now
30:23so although it seems like odd behavior there is an explanation
30:28but then michael does something with his balaclava which is harder to explain
30:32i had taken it into school and to show a friend and you know i i i got a ball up in for dad so
30:42i thought i'd just get rid of it so i thought i'll just take the balaclava throw a couple of stones
30:49in it and throw it into the sea i know now like peacefully thinking that that's me getting rid of
30:54evidence so it was me getting rid of something that i'd gotten a ball in for from my dad it was an
31:01unusual uh item so if it was innocent and didn't have anything to hide what was the reason for
31:08disposing of it being a detective for 19 years when somebody gets rid of something or try and hide
31:15something but it raises a bit of suspicion in me end of on the 24th of september 1994 police bring michael
31:28ross in for questioning after the interview police take photos of michael ross his rucksack and watch
31:52the reason that michael is such a strong suspect in this case isn't just because he was wearing
32:02a balaclava in pap dealwoods there's another reason that the police suspect him and to understand this
32:09we need to go back to the biggest plot twist in this entire case
32:22it's two months into the investigation when eddie ross says that he's found a box of these bullets
32:30in his collection and he volunteers this information to the police he says i found this and he gives and
32:36he has it arranged that they collect the bullets which they check and find out that the box is sealed
32:41all the bullets are in the box still
32:43i had a big ammunition box upstairs
32:56a big steel box quite large double locks which i kept all ammunition and realized some years before
33:04i had gotten a seal box or nine millimeter two said of the kirky arsenal and realized it was the same
33:13make of ammunition from the same company
33:19i thought just thinking that that would be of some help taking this dune and showing this of what i've got here
33:26it does seem extraordinary that michael's father eddie has a supply of the same brand and caliber of bullet
33:36that killed shabble but how much of a coincidence or not was this really how possible is it that anyone
33:45else aside from michael a killer could have access to these bullets
33:49the box was sealed in cellophane clearly nothing could have been out of it but i did
33:58slit open the box and check they were all there nothing was missing so the murder bullet could not
34:04have come from that box where did you get them was my next question this was the size of the bullet
34:11we were dealing with this nine nine millimeter
34:14my name is george thompson i was a police officer cop for 14 years i did my time as a detective recently
34:25retired from a long time in criminal defense work a criminal defense investigator is a person who
34:32assists a solicitor in the preparation of a defense case when we started off our investigation
34:40the idea was to try and trace some more of these he's only a little fella but he's good and there are
34:50thousands like him i soon learned that um the the bullets that had been used in that gun had been
35:00produced in india and sold in mass to the british government for the army
35:05we did learn that the kirky armory had manufactured over a 50 million of these some of them
35:16had been issued to the british army i have here in front of me a report commissioned by michael ross's
35:23defense team into the bullets by one of the uk's foremost experts in ammunition and this he says that
35:30there were some kirky bullets floating around the uk at the time he writes that kirky made nine
35:35millimeter ammunition appears for sale on occasion on the web so really these bullets weren't as rare
35:44as you might think so it's conceivable then that someone else aside from michael ross could have got
35:49hold of some and used them to kill shamal it begs the question though how did eddie get hold of them
36:02pc ross was asked about bullets given to him by this man james spence a few years before the shooting
36:10bullets of the same type as the one used to kill shamsuddin mahmoud
36:14james spence was in the royal marines until 1981 when he demobbed and with him he took some boxes
36:23of bullets stole them nine millimeter ammunition manufactured at the kirky arsenal in india and then
36:29gave these bullets to eddie ross when questioned by police eddie ross and james spence disagreed about
36:36how many boxes of nine millimeter kirky arsenal bullets had been given eddie claimed it was only one
36:43box and that it hadn't been opened james spence claimed there were two one of which had been
36:49opened so michael could have had access to that in the end police believed spence and eddie was charged
36:55with perversing the course of justice his trial would play out over the next three years
37:16an orkney policeman is beginning a four-year jail sentence tonight after being found guilty of
37:22concealing information in a murder hunt constable edmund ross whose teenage son became a suspect in
37:28the investigation was told by the judge that his crime struck at the heart of the criminal justice
37:33system ross was found guilty of trying to defeat the ends of justice by withholding information from
37:41senior officers when he discovered a box of bullets in his own home identical to the one used to kill
37:47the criminal kirkwall waiter shamsun mahmoud in 1994.
37:55eddie takes four years for perverting the course of justice
37:58why did he tell me about that bullet i suppose in this situation if you find out
38:05or have an inclination that your 15 year old son has murdered somebody in your hometown
38:11are you going to protect your son i don't know
38:18do you ever wish that you'd thrown away bullets
38:20could have tossed them away somewhere
38:26i kept your mouth shut
38:29well i suppose so i thought i was doing the right bloody thing you know
38:34what was they wrong being mistake
38:51they decided that we should bring in michael in relation to the murder michael was still in school at
38:57that point i think i was in i was in PE they've explained it in front of the headmaster that
39:05right we're going to stay in here for six hours for further questioning
39:10personally i think it's atrocious and they go in the school in their school
39:14and among his school school pupils
39:19took him into the interview interviewed him under caution on tape
39:24remember saying to michael that if they're going to be entering you they'll get out of you
39:30whatever it is you know that they're they're looking for
39:33that's when i told him um i says you just tell the truth tell them what you were doing or whatever
39:41inside i was i was just stunned and i suppose scared as well because of the position i was in
39:47but i mean i suppose you could kind of relate it to this one looking calm and peaceful on the top but
39:54the legs are paddling away like mad underneath he answered every question looked me straight in
40:00the eye and answered every question without hesitation or nervousness if a 15 year old has committed a
40:06murder you would expect them to be a bit anxious upset nervous he showed none of these signs at all
40:16cool calm collected which is what you need to be to walk into a restaurant and kill somebody at point
40:22blank range the police continually seem to ask questions thinking i was holding back and
40:29not giving them the full information they were looking for i've probably incriminated myself several
40:34times just by saying that yes yes yes i've used guns and yes i've been shooting and yes as michael ross is
40:43questioned by detectives police decide to search the family home
40:49i would have never thought in my lifetime that i would ever be in a situation like that
40:54you know it's usually me that'd be on the other side i think i was at work and you phoned me to say
41:02eh you need to come you need to come home
41:05eh because the house is being searched when i got the child to go into the house my action
41:13was to go and interview moira ross i felt awkward almost felt an intruder in the house
41:18it must have been horrendous for her i was nervous as hell my leg was going 20 to the dozen
41:27during the search above michael's bed the officers seized a deactivated danish madsen
41:35submachine gun which i'd bought for him um as a present and it was deactivated his bedroom wall was
41:45covered in pictures of guns and tanks and all army stuff where of a kid that age i would expected
41:53nice looking girls or football teams or rugby teams whatever sport they supported but it was all just
41:58military stuff in his bedroom i've never seen anything like this the search revealed a house
42:11that seemed to be obsessed with guns i mean look at all this all these licensed guns were found
42:18which is like an arsenal from a hollywood film during their search police found five pistols two
42:26revolvers three rifles and a shotgun i don't know anyone with this sort of thing in their house
42:37michael ross won't be charged for another 12 years but what police find raises more questions
42:42about his relationship with guns i wonder what kind of impact this might have had on a teenage boy
42:52and crucially could it make them more likely to shoot someone dead at point blank range
43:05whoever committed that crime was
43:09beyond psychopathic i feel that michael wanted to know what it was like to kill someone for many people
43:17look like a professional hip two men arguing with shamsudan mahmoud very heated argument one of the
43:24witnesses claims he had heard i'll shoot you it's very rare to see somebody just completely out of the
43:32blue and the blue do something so so brazen and so public
43:44so
43:45so
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