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00:00:00She's woke up in the morning, she wasn't there.
00:00:02And did she go missing before, or is this out of character?
00:00:04She hasn't gone missing before, but she's got a bit of a weird life, let's put it that way.
00:00:09Have you got any idea where she might be?
00:00:12No, I don't.
00:00:14I'm fine with her, yeah.
00:00:30It's Friday night, it's about 10 o'clock I think, and I thought I'll go to bed, just check my phone, and found the post.
00:00:48So I kind of recognised the picture on the post as a familiar one of the kids from the village.
00:00:58And the post said, can anybody help?
00:01:02My mum's gone missing.
00:01:04My heart just went out.
00:01:06Immediately, I felt very uneasy about it, and very almost compelled, obsessively compelled to follow it.
00:01:16There were a lot of comments going, oh, she'll be home, it's all right mate, don't worry.
00:01:21And I thought, no, I am worried, I am worried.
00:01:24And it just played in my mind, and I thought, we've got to do something.
00:01:27So I put a shout out saying, there's a member of our community missing.
00:01:33If anybody's got time, we are going to be going out and have a look for her.
00:01:38It's a very close community.
00:01:41Most of us take great pride in the village, and we look after each other.
00:01:46I saw Sharon's post, and I felt like I had to go.
00:01:52Sarah was about the same sort of age as me.
00:01:55She was a mum, and I just felt that if that was me that was missing, then I would like to think somebody would come out and help my children.
00:02:03I tried to call her, and I had no answer.
00:02:07I spoke to my nan, who tried as well, couldn't get hold of her.
00:02:11My mum always used to have her phone on her.
00:02:14You'd always be able to get hold of her.
00:02:16It was definitely out of character.
00:02:17Me and my brother Jack were living down in Portsmouth at the time.
00:02:20There wasn't a lot that we could do.
00:02:23I turned to social media.
00:02:25We tried contacting friends, anybody close to her.
00:02:28We just wanted to know where she was.
00:02:30My name is Carla.
00:02:33I'm Sarah Wellgreen's friend for 20 years.
00:02:40When I first got the message that she hadn't been seen, I thought it was rather strange, because Sarah wouldn't have left the children for a long period of time.
00:02:50She wouldn't go off and not tell anyone where.
00:02:53She would have told someone where she was going.
00:02:55We were all worried.
00:02:59Nobody had seen her or spoken to her in about 24 hours.
00:03:04Ben and my mum were split up at the time, but they were both living in the ash green, co-parenting my three siblings.
00:03:13So when I called Ben, it was early afternoon, and I'd woke him up, and I asked him if he'd seen my mum.
00:03:22He said no, he hadn't seen her.
00:03:24If none of us had heard from her within, like, another 24 hours, then that he would phone the police.
00:03:31It kind of all became a little bit more real and a little bit more serious.
00:03:36And I want to report a missing person. She's the mother of my children.
00:03:41You live with this person?
00:03:42Yeah, she lives with me, yeah.
00:03:44So he's your partner, is it?
00:03:45No, she's the mother of my friends. We're not together. We live together.
00:03:49You said that she went to bed Tuesday night when you woke up Wednesday morning and she wasn't there?
00:04:01Yes, exactly.
00:04:02Yeah? You haven't heard from her since?
00:04:04No, I texted her yesterday morning just to see if she was all right and stuff, but I haven't been replying.
00:04:11On Thursday, the 11th of October, Kent Police received a call from Ben Lacombe.
00:04:17People are reported missing, sadly, quite often.
00:04:21More often than not, that person would be found or come home very quickly.
00:04:26We need to have a look at what's going on, but the risk isn't really high at this stage.
00:04:30When are you going to be at home and we need to attend your address, Ben?
00:04:34I've got my kids there. I'm a bit concerned. It's my son's birthday today.
00:04:38I don't want them getting worried, so they're already a bit confused as it is.
00:04:43So a police officer was deployed to search the home address
00:04:47to see if there was any initial clues that might help locate
00:04:52or understand what might have happened.
00:04:54Looking through the address, Sarah's keys and her handbag were still there.
00:05:02Sarah's car was still outside.
00:05:04If Sarah was going to go out for any reason, surely she'd have taken those items with her.
00:05:09And that was something that just didn't sit right.
00:05:13And what was really interesting was that the day that we went was their son's birthday.
00:05:19And there was plans that Sarah had made for when he'd got home from school.
00:05:25So once you missed one of my youngest brother's birthdays,
00:05:28it was completely out of character for her and something that she'd never do.
00:05:36Where's she gone?
00:05:37Because she would never miss any of the kids' birthdays.
00:05:41Never, never ever miss one of the kids' birthdays.
00:05:44That was the thing that pushed my thinking over the edge.
00:05:49That was the thing that said to me,
00:05:52Sarah's not missing of her own free will.
00:05:57We had to reassess the risk level of Sarah being missing as high.
00:06:05We raised an appeal in the local media and in the local press.
00:06:08The thought process at that point is, has Sarah left the address on foot?
00:06:15Had she gone for a walk or a run and had an accident?
00:06:23So we began the search in the new ash green and surrounding area.
00:06:27I called the police and I said, would it help if I got a few people together and we had a look around?
00:06:37And they went, no, that would be great.
00:06:39Let us know where and when.
00:06:41I thought maybe nobody had come.
00:06:47And we ended up with a room with about 40 people in.
00:06:51And we had people there that maybe had known her, but 90% of the people had never met Sarah.
00:06:58Yet they were there and saying we're ready.
00:07:00With the advice of the police, we were all out looking for a potential runner who had had an accident, had a fall.
00:07:10So we were checking all the roads and several metres either side.
00:07:16And we covered every road, every path, looking for this down and injured lady.
00:07:23We had specially trained police officers searching with police dogs.
00:07:30But we also had the community that stood up and they helped us.
00:07:34In those first few hours really, there was nothing that was giving any sort of indication that she had left that house of her own free will.
00:07:44And that was something that right from the start was playing in the back of my mind.
00:07:49Sarah could be in danger and we need to find her as soon as possible.
00:07:53This morning police headed to a new location to continue their search into the disappearance of the mother of five, Sarah Wellgreen.
00:08:12But at the weekend, a really strong turnout from the volunteer operation.
00:08:15More than 300 people coming to search.
00:08:17And not just people around the Newmash Green and Bayser Shore area and around that five mile radius which police have put in, but from around the county as well.
00:08:24It would take a lot of resources to cover that ground and we were trying to work very quickly.
00:08:33We worked with police search teams.
00:08:36We had experts to do confined space searching, waterborne searching and underwater searching.
00:08:43And we hadn't found her.
00:08:46We were getting more concerned at what might have happened to Sarah, where might she have gone.
00:08:52While the searches were going on, we're also carrying out other inquiries.
00:08:58When somebody goes missing, it's really important to find out as much as we can about their life to understand what might have happened to cause them to go missing and where they might be.
00:09:05We spoke to lots of Sarah's family. We spoke to lots of her friends. She was a very social person. She had quite a wide network of friends.
00:09:20My mum met Ben when I was around eight years old. They met on a dating site.
00:09:25When I first knew about Ben, we were heading to Spain, me and Sarah, for a girly holiday.
00:09:34He lived out in Palma. It was the honeymoon stage, I think, for Ben and Sarah.
00:09:39It was constant phone calls.
00:09:42I think he painted such a big picture of sun, sea and sunsets that you couldn't refuse.
00:09:51So my mum moved me and my brother Jack over to Mallorca.
00:09:58They built a life together there. They had a son.
00:10:02But after a couple of years, it started to get financially troubling for them, and they came back to the UK.
00:10:09They had two more children together, and life seemed to be normal for them.
00:10:15Sarah as a friend was very funny, great to be around.
00:10:24Our kids grew up together, and we both bounced off each other's parenting.
00:10:29It was always just a fun time.
00:10:31When Sarah came round and said that she's pregnant and she's having a girl,
00:10:35well, we just stood there screaming because she liked her makeup, she liked looking nice,
00:10:41and being a beautician, having that little girl to dress up was just amazing,
00:10:48and we had all these things planned.
00:10:52I know she loved Kent. She loved the house.
00:10:55But down the line, I could hear that she wasn't happy.
00:10:59I think their relationship kind of fizzled out, just kind of stopped getting along with each other.
00:11:06So my mum and Ben were living in the Ash Green with my three siblings.
00:11:12They'd have their own separate lives. They'd both go off to, like, their work and things like that,
00:11:16and I think she fell trapped because financially it was our only option.
00:11:19Sarah said, he's got his own room, I've got my room, the children have got their room.
00:11:25For her kids' sake, she'd do anything that she could to make those kids happy.
00:11:38My mum was great. She was a really, really good mum.
00:11:42There's five of us in total.
00:11:44I was, like, older, so, like, I could have more of a laugh and a joke with her,
00:11:50adult conversations, I could have a drink with her.
00:11:54She was always there when I needed her.
00:11:58The children were her life.
00:12:00She was just a brilliant mum.
00:12:05I had this horrible, sickly feeling because she's not contacted anyone.
00:12:11I'm building up a picture of Sarah and her life.
00:12:21She's got a house.
00:12:23She's got lots of friends and family around her.
00:12:26And I'm looking at her thinking,
00:12:28you're not the type of person that voluntarily goes missing.
00:12:30That initial call, reporting Sarah Wellgreen as missing, was fairly typical.
00:12:39Ben Lacombe provided quite a lot of information that he felt was important that we knew about Sarah.
00:12:44So you live together with your children, but you're not partners with your friends now, yeah?
00:12:49Yeah, yeah, we're sort of co-parenting, sort of living in the same house, I think.
00:12:54She's got her boyfriend and all that sort of stuff.
00:12:56What's his name, please?
00:12:58His name is Neil James.
00:12:59What we learned about Sarah is that she lived with Ben Lacombe.
00:13:08They were separated.
00:13:10We also learned of another relationship in Sarah's life, and that was with a chap called Neil James.
00:13:15Somebody we understood she'd recently got engaged to, that had had an on-off relationship for a few years.
00:13:20He lived away from Kent in Surrey, but she was contacting him regularly and seeing him regularly, too.
00:13:28Can I show his boyfriend's number and address?
00:13:32I do know his number, because he texted me last night.
00:13:35What did he text you saying? Does he know that she's missing?
00:13:37Yeah, he said,
00:13:38Hi, Ben. Have you heard know where Sarah is?
00:13:40Her mum, Lewis, Jack, haven't heard from her all day and no messages delivering in any media.
00:13:46We're all worried.
00:13:47And so if you can let us know if you've seen her or me and her mum are going to have to start a police search as it's been 24 hours.
00:13:55Thanks, Neil.
00:13:57Obviously, I need to consider everyone's status within an investigation.
00:14:01And yes, part of that is building suspicions around people.
00:14:08Neil James was someone that I needed to understand more about.
00:14:12He was the person that perhaps she is closest to at that point in her life.
00:14:22My mum had split with Ben.
00:14:23A few years later, she met Neil.
00:14:25It was definitely nice to see my mum meet someone new.
00:14:27Got on well with him.
00:14:28And the way she was with Neil, it was good.
00:14:31Happy birthday to you.
00:14:34But my mum and Ben were living together because her relationship with Neil was a bit on and off.
00:14:39It was very rocky at that moment.
00:14:43Had things been going on between them, was there a reason why he would have travelled to Kent the night that Sarah disappeared?
00:14:52Is there any ongoing bullying or harassment or anything like that at all?
00:14:55I would say, yeah, the main...
00:14:57When you say, like, bullying and stuff, I'd say, like, really, he's her boyfriend, really.
00:15:02I'm really paranoid about her, like, where she doesn't trust her and that.
00:15:07She's got quite a complicated life and it's just a bit messy, really.
00:15:11It's just a bit messy, really.
00:15:14I'm Andy Robinson and in 2018 I was a reporter at Kent Live.
00:15:22This mess-in-persons case felt different almost from the off.
00:15:26And you just felt this was something more than someone who had ran off and would return home of their own accord.
00:15:33I put Sarah's name into Facebook and I could see that the Search for Sarah Wellgreen group had already started to develop and was posting appeals trying to find her.
00:15:43Every day more people came.
00:15:46We realised, because there's so many exits to the village on foot, running tracks through the woods, that we needed to get a copy of the Ordnance Survey Map.
00:15:55It wasn't always just about the routes on the map itself, it was local knowledge, people offering information that only locals know.
00:16:08When we started up to have a Facebook group, we were sort of aware that somebody called Neil was posting,
00:16:14Sarah, where are you? I'm looking for you or I miss you.
00:16:17But we'd never seen him on the search, so that was obviously really strange for us.
00:16:22If my loved one went missing, I'd want to be out there looking.
00:16:27All we were reading about was how heartbroken he was and how much he loved her, which is great, absolutely beautiful.
00:16:35But we're out there looking for her. Where are you?
00:16:43I'm piecing together a timeline of Sarah's last movements before she went missing.
00:16:49We got hold of neighbouring CCTV that showed us the comings and goings and Sarah Wellgreen.
00:17:01And we know from looking at the CCTV on the 9th of October, she took the children to school in the morning as normal.
00:17:10She returns, she doesn't go back into the address, she goes straight to her car to go about her day's work appointments.
00:17:18She works like one or two days a week at the salon, and she's a beauty therapist, so she does private clients as well.
00:17:25And she does private clients all over in Cairn, in Farnham, in Portsmouth.
00:17:29She was a travelling beauty therapist and she would see clients at their home addresses and she carried out a number of those appointments through the day.
00:17:39We spoke to some of Sarah's clients who she'd visited on the 9th of October.
00:17:43They told us that Sarah was chatty, seemed happy, was positive, seemed her bouncy self.
00:17:52There was nothing that any of her clients told us that day, gave calls for concern.
00:17:57Sarah came home just before 8pm and she parked in a normal parking space.
00:18:02We saw from the CCTV that she got out of the car, she was on her own and she walked into her home address.
00:18:11We asked Ben, had there been any conversation that evening, had there been any argument, any dispute?
00:18:18How were things between the two of them that evening?
00:18:21He told us that she was fine, that she'd come in, they'd just had a conversation about the children.
00:18:27She'd read her younger children's story and that she'd gone up to her room.
00:18:31He said nothing untoward had happened.
00:18:34He said that he'd heard that she was talking to her friends because he could hear through from the other room.
00:18:40But it was a normal evening as far as Ben was concerned.
00:18:52Phone records are absolutely key in any investigation.
00:18:56They're an insight into someone's world and their private life.
00:18:59Sarah had a couple of handsets.
00:19:02There was one handset identified that we weren't able to locate.
00:19:07We didn't have Sarah's personal mobile phone, but we knew Sarah's phone number.
00:19:13And from that we were able to gather some data from her phone records.
00:19:16I can see that in that hour after it's apparent that she's gone to bed, so between 9 o'clock and 10 o'clock at night, there is a flurry of text messages between Sarah and Neil James.
00:19:28But what I don't know at that stage is what that conversation is about.
00:19:34We carry out proof of life inquiries on everything that we know about Sarah.
00:19:39So phone records, financial, any other social media.
00:19:43There's no interaction with hospitals, with her doctor's surgery at all, or any other NHS service.
00:19:50One of the last people that Sarah had been in contact with that evening was her boyfriend, Neil James.
00:19:59I need to go and see him and understand what was taking place in those text messages and what he can tell me about Sarah.
00:20:08And more importantly, where was he on the night that Sarah went missing?
00:20:14Empty switchboard.
00:20:16My name's Neil James.
00:20:18And who are you in connection with this call?
00:20:20I'm her partner.
00:20:22And what's her name, please?
00:20:23Sarah Wellgreen.
00:20:24Can I ask a later on your call?
00:20:27Well, I have information. I can't.
00:20:30Maybe a whereabouts. I don't know.
00:20:49Neil James told us that he was home alone on the night of Sarah's disappearance.
00:20:53So at that stage, I need to look for other means to corroborate what Neil James is telling us.
00:21:00I'm dispatching officers to Neil James' home address to check out the CCTV, see if there's anything that can help us identify his movements.
00:21:09I'm doing the checks in relation to his car, the ANPR.
00:21:13We're also at that stage looking at his phone. I don't know the context of those text messages. And the only person at that point that can give me that content and what the relevance is, is Neil James.
00:21:27I need to understand quickly this picture, because ultimately, we need to find Sarah.
00:21:32We need to find Sarah.
00:21:41I'm Neil James. I am prime suspect number one.
00:21:46I met Sarah over the internet. We kicked it off straight away. And it was perfect, because I had two kids. And Sarah's children were roughly about the same age. So it all just, it all just fitted in.
00:22:05How they got on. That relationship to me was like heaven. She was just the perfect mother.
00:22:16One night, she said to me, how would you feel if we got married? I said, I'd be delighted.
00:22:22We envisions growing old together. Every night, we'd obviously speak on the phone. It'd be like, night darling, love you. And every morning, whoever was up first is, morning, love you.
00:22:41By religion, we would do it every single day.
00:22:43Every single day.
00:22:51I messaged her that evening. And we basically said, good night.
00:22:57And then the next morning, I messaged her to say, morning darling, how are you? Love you.
00:23:05And the message didn't deliver, which I thought, well, that's a bit strange.
00:23:10And Sarah's phone was always on.
00:23:15I text Sarah a couple of messages.
00:23:22None of them got to do it.
00:23:25I even left a voicemail saying, where are you, honey? We're missing you.
00:23:31What the hell is going on here? There's something not quite right.
00:23:35So I raised the alarm.
00:23:38I spoke to Sarah's mum and dad.
00:23:43Then I spoke to Lewis.
00:23:47Then I messaged Ben to say whether he'd seen her.
00:23:53Didn't hear anything back from him.
00:23:56I was speaking to all and sundry.
00:24:01I was desperate to try and find where Sarah was and what was happening because this was so unlikely.
00:24:07I just couldn't get it out of my head what was going on.
00:24:12It's truly a living nightmare.
00:24:14The police phoned me and said, whereabouts are you?
00:24:29I didn't know how to feel. I was worried as hell.
00:24:33Thinking they could just arrest me under suspicion of murder.
00:24:36Even after nothing.
00:24:40They wanted to search the house. They wanted to ask me questions.
00:24:46Do they really think this is me?
00:24:47The reason why I didn't join the search.
00:25:00Now, I lived an hour and a half away.
00:25:03My daughter was three at the time.
00:25:08And what if I did find her?
00:25:10I wouldn't want to be that person that found her.
00:25:12I'd be distraught.
00:25:13No.
00:25:23We knew where he was when he was on his phone.
00:25:26He lives in another county.
00:25:28The routes between the two were checked in his car.
00:25:32He was not flagged up on any ANPR or any cameras.
00:25:36There was everything to show he was where he says he was.
00:25:39He was nowhere near New Ash Green that evening.
00:25:43Neil James isn't a suspect.
00:25:45And was able to give us an insight into Sarah's life that other people weren't.
00:25:53There was a sense of relief that I can't have been cleared of any sort of suspicion.
00:25:59Because the most important thing was finding out where she was.
00:26:02The missing person search continued over the next few days.
00:26:14Unsuccessfully, lots of police officer activity, lots of community support trying to find where Sarah was.
00:26:21Family liaison officers who had been appointed to work with the family had gone out to see Ben to take a formal statement from him.
00:26:28He was saying that Sarah's life was in a downward spiral of on and off depression.
00:26:36And possibly even considering self-harm.
00:26:40So our search strategy changed.
00:26:41The police said, could you ask your searchers to look up?
00:26:51Look up.
00:26:53Which indicated she might well have taken a life.
00:26:58I found that really difficult standing in front of people, having to even make that suggestion.
00:27:07We then retraced the steps, thinking, OK, so if that is a possibility, we need to go further out from the roads.
00:27:18I really wasn't prepared for that.
00:27:21Where you go from looking for a lady that's injured to looking for somebody's body.
00:27:29We were so immersed in it.
00:27:32We so wanted to find her.
00:27:34And all I could remember was Lewis's post that night.
00:27:37And I think it was the same for everybody else.
00:27:47Sarah Wellgreen's last proof of life is 10pm.
00:27:52That's when the last text message was sent on her phone.
00:27:55We know her phone is on the network until 4am.
00:28:00So our critical time window was from 10 o'clock in the evening on the 9th through to 4 o'clock in the morning on the 10th.
00:28:09What has happened to Sarah during that time window?
00:28:14I already know that there's CCTV coverage immediately around the address.
00:28:18But from the search of Basie Shaw, I knew that the CCTV where Sarah and Ben were living was absolutely critical.
00:28:29It was CCTV that could give us the answers to all of our questions.
00:28:36I've got CCTV on my house as well.
00:28:40Yeah?
00:28:42And when I looked on that, it was off.
00:28:44Like the switch had been turned off.
00:28:45So I can't check on that.
00:28:47And, uh, Lewis has texted me today to say, uh...
00:28:51He said, Nanny asked if you can check your CCTV to see if she got into another car.
00:28:56But the thing is, it was turned off at the plug.
00:29:00I saw that.
00:29:01But the thing is, my CCTV doesn't record.
00:29:04Like, the hard disk doesn't work anymore.
00:29:07That answer concerns me.
00:29:09That's a really convenient set of circumstances,
00:29:12is what I'm being told by Ben LaComba a lie.
00:29:21Ben LaComba is now the main focus.
00:29:27Tracing Ben LaComba's movements the night leading up to Sarah's disappearance.
00:29:32The vehicles that are known to us are Ben LaComba's red Vauxhall Zafira.
00:29:39Ben was a taxi driver.
00:29:41He used his own vehicle for taxiing.
00:29:45He had a last pickup, a last job, just before 5pm on the 9th.
00:29:51Following that, he booked off, and he arrives back at the home address just after 5pm.
00:29:55And usually on that day, when Ben came home just after 5pm, he didn't park in the communal car park right next to his home.
00:30:06He chose to park in a different car park, which was a bit further away from his home, very secluded and dark, in contrast to what he would normally do.
00:30:16We knew he returned home, could see him on the CCTV, but we couldn't see his car.
00:30:23And that was something that was a bit strange.
00:30:33Suspicions around Ben are growing.
00:30:35Our officers went to speak to Ben LaComba on the 14th of October, and they asked for him to provide his phone for a voluntary download.
00:30:46So we're not seizing that phone from him, using any police powers, and initially he appeared happy to do so.
00:30:56The officers noted that he seemed to be deleting things as they were talking to him.
00:31:00And he makes a comment about, why would I want you to look at deleted material?
00:31:07I've deleted it for a reason.
00:31:09He said, I'm going to keep my phone. I'm going to go to bed. I'm tired. I will bring my phone to you tomorrow.
00:31:16That's an alarm bell. Why doesn't he want us to look at his phone?
00:31:19The morning of the 15th of October, comes and goes, no Ben LaComba, no mobile phone.
00:31:32He doesn't turn up at the police station, doesn't make any contact with us at all.
00:31:37Ben LaComba had become very suspicious to me in his behavior.
00:31:42So I sent officers to Ben LaComba's home, but he wasn't there. But his mother was.
00:31:49She said that after officers had left, having asked him for his phone the night before, he went out.
00:31:58He was away for a few hours.
00:32:03We believe in that time that he's disposed of his phone, and who knows what else.
00:32:08Can't please control room. How can I help?
00:32:23Hello. My daughter was reporting missing, and I'm really concerned. The person that called her in,
00:32:29the situation is he's an ex-partner.
00:32:35They're sharing the house.
00:32:37But for the last five years, they've been backwards and forwards to court, arguing about the children.
00:32:43Things have been really vicious and acrimonious.
00:32:46We learned that there was a lot of family court activity.
00:32:51There was a lot of custody battles with the children.
00:32:54There was a lot of animosity between the couple.
00:32:57I think he was trying to paint her as a bad person at that time.
00:33:02So she was working harder to prove she could provide the mortgage payments and look after the children properly.
00:33:12He was nasty towards her, spiteful, horrible.
00:33:16He took a toll on her. She just wanted her kids back.
00:33:18By 2018, Sarah had prime custody of their three children, and she was looking to buy Ben out of the house.
00:33:31In the few days leading up to her going missing, Sarah had a job interview for a new job, understood that she was successful in that job, and therefore had a future that she was building.
00:33:45It was definitely a new opportunity for her. It was like a salary job, company car, so it had its perks.
00:33:52By the night of Sarah's disappearance, we were able to find through messaging that Ben was aware that Sarah had a mortgage offer and was going to be able to buy him out of the property.
00:34:05Sarah mentioned that she had told Ben about a new job earning way more money than what he was earning.
00:34:16Financially, she'd be secure for her and the children, which, effectively, was going to make Ben homeless.
00:34:24And I think he hated that fact.
00:34:30So there was a very strong motive, I felt, for Ben to have Sarah disappear.
00:34:42We tracked Ben Lacombe down at the family courts on the 16th.
00:34:47The mother of his children is missing.
00:34:49There's a big police investigation going on, and he's trying to obtain a custody order for the children.
00:34:59What was the urgency? Why was he doing that, potentially knowing that Sarah was not going to come back?
00:35:10There's several things that concern us about the circumstances of her disappearance.
00:35:16So this has moved from a missing persons investigation to potentially a murder investigation.
00:35:29Ben Lacombe was arrested on suspicion of murder.
00:35:35Following extensive investigations and inquiries and also searching,
00:35:39we're now treating this as a potential homicide investigation.
00:35:43First time it being called a murder investigation becomes sort of surreal.
00:35:47And you kind of get the feeling that she's, she's not coming back anymore.
00:35:52I know something was wrong.
00:35:57But to hear it, to be told it, it's totally different.
00:36:02And I don't think I'd, I still don't believe it.
00:36:05Someone so beautiful doesn't deserve that.
00:36:08It was so difficult because we'd all so wanted to find her alive.
00:36:11I just felt awful for the family because I could see what they were going through.
00:36:17And I just wanted to help them. I just wanted to protect them.
00:36:20It was just a natural mother's instinct, I guess.
00:36:21Officers have been in Dartford today.
00:36:22They've extended their search as far as Dartford town centre.
00:36:23Searching even bins in the town centre area in a bed to find any loose clues that could potentially lead to her whereabouts.
00:36:27And eyewitnesses said that they saw rescue teams, police dogs, two fire engines, and a forensic van all out the scene.
00:36:30And I just felt awful for the family because I could see what they were going through.
00:36:32And I just wanted to help them. I just wanted to protect them.
00:36:35It was just a natural mother's instinct, I guess.
00:36:38Officers have been in Dartford today.
00:36:40They've extended their search as far as Dartford town centre.
00:36:43Searching even bins in the town centre area in a bed to find any loose clues that could potentially lead to her whereabouts.
00:36:50And eyewitnesses said that they saw rescue teams, police dogs, two fire engines, and a forensic van all out the scene.
00:36:57So, clearly, police pulling out all stocks here to find Sarah.
00:37:07With Ben Lacombe in custody, we've got a limited time period in which to gather enough information to charge with the murder of Sarah Welby.
00:37:16We now carried out forensic examinations both in his car that he used as a taxi and at the home address
00:37:24to see if we could find any trace and help us understand of what might have happened to Sarah.
00:37:31The strongest hypothesis I had was that Sarah had been harmed in the home address,
00:37:36and that she'd been taken somewhere and her body concealed somewhere.
00:37:40So that changed the dynamics of the search.
00:37:42We very, very quickly found out a little bit about Ben.
00:37:49He was predominantly a taxi driver, cab driver, and so therefore he had a really, really good knowledge of New Ash Green and the surrounding areas.
00:38:00We then had to bring the search back in and go again, but moving out to 25 metres either side of a road.
00:38:14The weather had been really dry and hot all summer. Everything was parched.
00:38:22It made it really easy for searching.
00:38:24We were saying, look for a recent pile, recently dug soil, because there was just one goal, and that was finding Sarah.
00:38:33You are under arrest today on suspicion of the murder of your ex-partner, and I understand the current term, you still live in the same address, that's Sarah Wellgreen.
00:38:56We believe she may be dead, and that may be at your hand.
00:39:03So, did you kill her?
00:39:09Ben Comber was with us for three days.
00:39:13He was interviewed extensively over that time and didn't say a word to us.
00:39:18So, I'm not clear at the moment, Ben, whether you're just trying to think of an answer,
00:39:23or whether you've decided not to answer the question.
00:39:30That was another flag for me, because somebody that is innocent, somebody that may be concerned about the disappearance of the mother of their children,
00:39:42I'd have thought that they might want to give us something to try and help.
00:39:46I was convinced that Sarah was dead, and I was convinced that Ben LaComber was the person responsible for that.
00:39:55Everything we had was circumstantial evidence.
00:39:59We didn't have any forensic evidence.
00:40:02We didn't have Sarah.
00:40:04We didn't have that smoking gun.
00:40:07And so, on the 19th of October, he was bailed from the police station.
00:40:13It's a difficult pill to swallow.
00:40:16We're confused because, did it mean that they thought we didn't do it?
00:40:28He's seen going about the village. He is carrying on. He is still working.
00:40:33He's the person we think has done it. He knows something about where Sarah is.
00:40:38But he's carrying on.
00:40:39The aim is to establish what Ben LaComber did with Sarah Wellgreen's body.
00:40:51I've got to focus on CCTV.
00:40:56We were looking at Ben's movements on the 9th of October, the night Sarah went missing.
00:41:02We knew he'd been working, he's a taxi driver, and we had a capture of him on a CCTV camera locally.
00:41:11And his car was spotlessly clean.
00:41:14What we then noticed when the vehicle was being driven on the morning of the 10th,
00:41:20was that there appeared to be mud by the wheel arches and around the bumper area of the vehicle.
00:41:26By 10.30 that morning, we picked him up again on CCTV outside his workplace,
00:41:36and we could see that his car now, again, is spotlessly clean.
00:41:44We believe Ben's been out that night to dispose of Sarah.
00:41:49He's been somewhere where his car could go off-road.
00:41:53Where have that car been?
00:41:56We searched every exit route out of New Ash Green Village itself,
00:42:03to try and seize and view as much footage as we could find.
00:42:08It turned into the biggest CCTV operation that the forces had.
00:42:13There was over 22,000 hours' worth of footage that we recovered.
00:42:18Soon after we'd started the process of viewing all of the CCTV, we had a breakthrough.
00:42:26There were seven properties along a route that captured various different aspects and angles
00:42:37of a vehicle that we believed to be Ben Lecombe's vehicle.
00:42:42Now some of those were just headlights flashing by at the right time.
00:42:45But then maybe half a mile or a mile on, you then get a better shot.
00:42:51And it all came to a head with one property that gave us an absolutely perfect image of his car going past at approximately 2.20 in the morning.
00:43:02And because it's a taxi, it's got some quite distinctive marking on it.
00:43:06So we get it going past seven houses in one direction.
00:43:152.20 in the morning, we then lose the vehicle.
00:43:222 hours later, give or take a few seconds, the same vehicle is coming back along the same route,
00:43:31going back past the same cameras and back towards Baysay Shore.
00:43:34We knew that Ben Lecombe had parked his car in a different car park a bit further away from his house.
00:43:44Around 4.30 in the morning, we could see from the neighbor's rear CCTV that Ben Lecombe's car had been locked.
00:43:53The amber lights on his car flashed three times.
00:44:01He was insistent that he'd just been asleep in his home, that he'd gone to bed late on the 9th of October.
00:44:09We checked Ben Lecombe's taxi records.
00:44:12He wasn't at work during the night of the 9th into the 10th.
00:44:16Finally, we could show to a good standard of evidence that Ben Lecombe wasn't at home when he said he was.
00:44:26That vehicle had been somewhere where it got muddy.
00:44:31And it's at that same time that Sarah has gone missing.
00:44:35And that was the moment we thought, we've got him.
00:44:46It was time to re-arrest Ben Lecombe and ask him some more questions.
00:44:53Hey, there's movement here.
00:44:55Hello, Sir Police. Can you open the door, please?
00:45:07Morning.
00:45:08Morning.
00:45:12The time is 6 o'clock.
00:45:15You are further under arrest, suspicion of the murder of Sarah Wellgreen.
00:45:19This is a further arrest when the discovery of fresh air.
00:45:22This evidence provides the consistency of the state that you've provided.
00:45:26You reported her missing.
00:45:28Your arrest is necessary to know you to be questioned.
00:45:31Thanks, sir.
00:45:34Having been arrested for the murder of Sarah Wellgreen,
00:45:37Ben Lecombe didn't react in any way.
00:45:41He didn't ask any questions of the officer.
00:45:44He didn't seem surprised.
00:45:48When I first learned of Ben's arrest, I was angry.
00:45:52Real angry.
00:45:53He brought me up as a kid.
00:45:55I was suspicious of him to be in with.
00:45:57I don't know why I didn't try and piece a little bit more of it together.
00:46:00It was weird because he was being helpful.
00:46:09We knew we had to move. We had to find her.
00:46:14Because otherwise there's a chance he was going to get off.
00:46:20We started phoning people, pulling in favours.
00:46:23People were coming down from way, way up north with their dogs to do tracking work.
00:46:30We left no stone unturned.
00:46:33A lot of effort was going in to the searches, both police and community.
00:46:39They were doing a hell of a lot.
00:46:41It was reassuring and it was good to see the community come together to help out.
00:46:46It's difficult to explain, like, the feelings of it.
00:46:51You're no longer looking for your mum anymore.
00:46:55You're just looking for a body.
00:47:02He's been arrested but Sarah's still not been found.
00:47:05And you're so worried he's going to get off with it.
00:47:09You are desperate to find her.
00:47:11So the searches did continue.
00:47:12We were walking and in the distance I could see these white things.
00:47:19And the closer we were getting to it, the more it looked like bones.
00:47:28I was scared.
00:47:33The police had given us a measuring tool that we could use if we find any bones.
00:47:38We had to put it up and take the photographs.
00:47:40We've sent all the stuff across to the police and we're just waiting because the forensics wanted to come out.
00:47:49One part you're thinking, we finally found her.
00:47:53But the other part you're thinking, oh my God, this is the kid's mum.
00:47:57When there was a find on the searches, the whole room held its breath.
00:48:10Forensics checked and there were only more bones.
00:48:12I think I really took that one to heart.
00:48:17That's when I really realised we're looking for Sarah's remains.
00:48:21I'm not looking for Sarah anymore.
00:48:24We had assessed and graded over two and a half thousand search areas.
00:48:33We'd used resources from across the country.
00:48:36Numerous experts in scientific fields.
00:48:40But by the time we got to trial, September 2019, we still hadn't found Sarah's body.
00:48:45I'd been in Major Crime Department for ten years and I'd not dealt with and wasn't aware of another bodyless murder investigation that had been charged, let alone take to court and convicted.
00:48:59One of my biggest fears was that Ben Lacombe could walk free.
00:49:19A year after Sarah Welgreen initially went missing, there was finally a trial at the Willich Crown Court.
00:49:25Day one and very quickly gained a sense that this was a big trial, a big prosecution case.
00:49:33Sarah's family, volunteers from the search team, police, prosecutors all turned up.
00:49:40And for Ben, just his mum, which was quite telling.
00:49:44It's a weird feeling being in court.
00:49:46Everything just becomes sort of surreal.
00:49:49The man who's murdered your mum walks past you and you can't do anything about it.
00:49:53Like, nothing at all.
00:49:55The prosecution case was quite lengthy. Obviously, there was so much evidence to hear.
00:50:03Key piece of evidence was Ben Lacombe's own CCTV system on his house.
00:50:10I've got CCTV on my house as well.
00:50:13And when I looked on that, it was off.
00:50:16The switch had been turned off, so I can't check on that.
00:50:18But we discovered when we looked at night through the neighbor's CCTV that you could see the infrared light from Ben Lacombe's cameras going on and off at certain times.
00:50:32On the night that Sarah went missing, we could see those cameras were turned off just after midnight.
00:50:39The logs showed us that the system was powered down at the same time that we've seen the lights go off.
00:50:48That's Ben Lacombe preparing for the fact that he either just has or is about to kill Sarah and then needs to take her body from that house without anyone or anything seeing him do that.
00:51:03We then needed to find some other evidence to support that timeline.
00:51:13It was a difficult decision to make, but the decision was made that we needed to speak to the children.
00:51:24They played a video of one of my siblings doing their interview, which kind of broke me.
00:51:33I pulled my eyes out while Ben just looked like he sat there expressionless.
00:51:37They said they went to try and find daddy in the middle of the night. Daddy wasn't there, so they went downstairs and watched television in the conservatory.
00:51:51What we were able to capture on CCTV to corroborate the story from the neighbor's camera, you can just about see the conservatory light come on in the middle of the night.
00:52:02Later, we find that conservatory light is switched off at their home.
00:52:09Now that's Ben putting the children back to bed.
00:52:14Heartbreaking, honestly. That was awful.
00:52:23One of the people that had gone out and searched came back and said,
00:52:26we've searched over in the Baisley Shore area.
00:52:31Did you know how many cameras were up?
00:52:34And it was mind blowing.
00:52:36We're not a high crime risk area.
00:52:39Yet his whole house was surrounded by cameras.
00:52:44Is he either paranoid? Is he very controlling?
00:52:49We couldn't make our mind up what the need for all these cameras are.
00:52:54We had quite a few conversations about Ben and the way he is.
00:53:02It was very controlling.
00:53:05He needed to know where she was and what she was doing.
00:53:11He had screens in his room so he could watch the footage and he knew the coverage of the cameras.
00:53:16She would try not to talk to him. She said she would just go upstairs in her room.
00:53:23It was really sad because that living situation was horrendous for her. She hated it.
00:53:30A moment that stood out to me in the case was when the prosecution brought out this six-foot shovel.
00:53:42When we went back to research Baisley Shore, we were looking to see whether there was any evidence of where Sarah might have been harmed.
00:53:49But we didn't find anything significant.
00:53:53But there was one thing that did jump out.
00:53:56And that was a shovel that we found in the shed.
00:53:59Ben claimed he had got for his mum as a Christmas present because she wanted to dig a border around his front garden.
00:54:06We all just looked at each other and I thought, there is no way that lady could even lift it, let alone shovel with it.
00:54:15This was not a shovel that you would tend the front of a garden plough bed.
00:54:20This was a shovel that looked like something a grave digger would use.
00:54:24It felt like this was a huge moment where this lie had been exposed and the prosecutor described it as complete nonsense.
00:54:31Ben took the stand to give evidence which all of us as press were very surprised by, considering he'd had days of interview with police and not said anything.
00:54:42So now we were going to hear for the first time answers to some of those questions.
00:54:48The first thing he was asked by the prosecutor was, where is she? You know, where's Sarah? Where's the body? Did you kill her?
00:54:56It was a really intense grilling and he was a rabbit in headlights.
00:55:03One of the most interesting pieces of Ben's evidence was when the prosecutor questioned him about this phone.
00:55:11At the point of arrest, Ben Lacombe's phone is downloaded and we can identify a unique number that tells us it's a completely different device.
00:55:21We had the information from Ben's mother that on the Sunday evening he left the home. We saw that on CCTV.
00:55:31We then had to look wider outside of New Ash Green to see where he'd gone.
00:55:36Saw his car on a number of cameras and travelling out to the Green Hole area.
00:55:41We see him get out of the car and walk towards the river and a few minutes come back and drive off.
00:55:50To me, that's the actions of somebody who's trying to hide evidence.
00:55:57He claims that he had written nasty messages to Sarah and he believed that was going to make him look like he was a suspect.
00:56:05That was something I did not believe at all.
00:56:14The next day, we captured him on CCTV on the Monday afternoon, buying this new handset.
00:56:23Hello, erm, I want to report missing person.
00:56:32And did you go missing before or is this out of character?
00:56:35Erm, she hasn't gone missing before, but she's got a bit of a weird life, let's be that way.
00:56:41I'm sorry, it's just quite...
00:56:42No, that's all right, that's all right. I just want to let you talk to all the details.
00:56:44I'm just trying to be quite... She's got quite a complicated life, like.
00:56:49And, erm, it's just a bit messy, really, like.
00:56:53Even just his voice would just, like, annoy me.
00:56:57It's just infuriating. Erm, it just makes me really, really angry.
00:57:02Knowing what he'd done and for him to just sit there and try and, like, lie his way out of it.
00:57:06Ben Lacombe was pointing us in all different directions away from him.
00:57:12It paints a picture that we now know was very, er, untrue.
00:57:18It was certainly not what we know Sarah's life to have been.
00:57:25Sarah's life is very much on the up.
00:57:28She had a new job offer she was going to start.
00:57:31She had custody of her children.
00:57:32She was going to be financially stable.
00:57:34And she was going to be able to have a home with her and her children.
00:57:38Ben Lacombe was the contrary.
00:57:41He was about to lose a lot.
00:57:43This was not a domestic incident that went wrong.
00:57:47This was a premeditated murder.
00:57:50You all definitely knew that he was guilty.
00:57:54But there's always one side of you that thinks,
00:57:58well, what if part of the jury doesn't believe it?
00:58:04I'm a senior investigating officer running this case.
00:58:09But I'm human.
00:58:11And you do feel pressure.
00:58:13And you do feel you really need to get this right result home, not just for justice, but for the family, because I will walk away and go on to my next case and my next job.
00:58:27This family have got this for the rest of their life.
00:58:28They found Ben Lacombe guilty of the murder of Sarah Wellgreen.
00:58:30I broke down.
00:58:31like,
00:58:33I broke down, like,
00:58:34I broke down, like,
00:58:36like,
00:58:37I was crying my absolute eyes out, but I was crying my absolute eyes out, but I was crying my absolute eyes out.
00:58:43They found Ben Lacombe guilty of the murder of Sarah Wellgreen.
00:58:58I broke down. Like, I was crying my absolute eyes out,
00:59:05but I was happy.
00:59:08Then found him guilty and that he'd actually go down for it.
00:59:12The relief, the joy, the pride,
00:59:19feeling that we'd achieved at least something for Sarah's family,
00:59:25you can't help but feel some of their pain and their distress.
00:59:37We hope he will never be released
00:59:39unless he admits his guilt and reveals the location of her grave.
00:59:43To date, he has shown no remorse or care for either Sarah or his own children.
00:59:51Even though Ben Lacombe has been convicted,
00:59:53we continued to search over 1,400 search areas physically.
01:00:00The search was such a vast area. This was such a rural area.
01:00:05Ben Lacombe had been out in his car for over two hours.
01:00:09You can get a long way and back in two hours, had he prepared a deposition site prior.
01:00:18We knew the family by this stage and we knew how desperately they need closure.
01:00:24And that's driven us all the way, really.
01:00:28That's just been the driving force.
01:00:34You've gone this far, you cannot now back out.
01:00:36You don't just wake up one day and say,
01:00:38do you know what, I can't do this anymore.
01:00:40Your day, you know, whatever you're doing, you're getting on with your work day,
01:00:43your family life and in the back of your mind is Sarah.
01:00:48And you can be carrying on and then you get a message come through
01:00:54and you will mobilise again.
01:01:00Psychics did get in touch quite a few.
01:01:03A lady contacted us from Ireland and she pinpointed the location
01:01:07and said to her, you need to go there.
01:01:09And as mad as it seems, you are frightened not to follow up on those things.
01:01:17We were in a field, speaking to a psychic.
01:01:22There was like a woodshed and we saw this freezer.
01:01:28And we had that sort of feeling,
01:01:30oh my God, is she going to be in the freezer?
01:01:35After much deliberation,
01:01:38Gaz took the short straw and went and opened it.
01:01:44And...
01:01:47It was the most frightening thing I think I've ever done.
01:01:59But he opened it, it was clear.
01:02:02We all sighed with relief, but then the disappointment set in because we still hadn't found her.
01:02:12She wasn't there.
01:02:14We did everything that we could through a long period of time, nearly two years to try and find Sarah.
01:02:21Until we got to a point where we were then into an element of a needle in a haystack.
01:02:27And unfortunately, the focus of the search then had to stop.
01:02:31There was nowhere left to search where our information and intelligence suggested it was possible that she might be.
01:02:39When the police slowed down the search, we felt for the family.
01:02:45I always remember the day that I stood in front of Lewis and said,
01:02:52we will find your mum.
01:02:54And I feel like I've hugely let him down.
01:02:58And I know the people with me at the time were feeling the same.
01:03:04Finally, we would like to say a massive thank you to the founding members of the Search for Sarah Wellgrim Facebook team.
01:03:12And all the volunteers who have continued to search for Sarah in all weather conditions.
01:03:17We are internally grateful to you all.
01:03:20My mother still hasn't been found today.
01:03:32It's difficult because she can't finish mourning until she's been laid to rest.
01:03:38After Ben Lacombe was convicted, Helen's Law was enacted, which is a piece of legislation which means that the parole board will have to take into account the fact that Ben Lacombe hasn't disclosed where Sarah's remains are before considering parole.
01:04:03I've tried to contact Ben a few times to see if I'll be able to get put on the visitations list.
01:04:12He said no, initially, that he doesn't want any contact at this time.
01:04:17So at least once a year, I'll try again. Once a year, every year.
01:04:21I'm now retired from my role, but Kent police officers will continue and keep this case open when fresh information comes alight to try and find Sarah.
01:04:38It's something that still saddens me now because it's something that I was never able to achieve for the family to find their daughter, their sister, their mum.
01:04:51It has been seven years now. You never forget about it because it will always be with you. But you have to move past it. And you've got to carry on with your life.
01:05:04I hope that she is found for family, for the children's sake. They're coming along great, you know. And she'd be proud. She'd be very proud.
01:05:27I think she'd be happy with Al. We've all turned up.
01:05:39What I've lost in Sarah is a companion that I thought I'd have for life.
01:05:47After seven years, then, when you're so close to somebody, there's nothing that really goes away.
01:05:58My mum was a loving, caring person. She was a really, really good mum. Always there for anything you needed.
01:06:07It's just kind of keeping the memory of her alive so that she can be remembered.
01:06:13For the person she was, not for what happened to her.
01:06:16For what happened to her.
01:06:17If you or someone you know has been affected by any of the issues raised in this programme, please go to channel5.com slash helplines for information and support.
01:06:33And series one and two of A Killer Makes a Call is ready to be viewed. Stream now on Vive.
01:06:39Next, my lover, my killer.
01:06:41подписчик.
01:06:51Thanks, fool.
01:06:52Speak with you.
01:06:54If you enjoyed walking with us, go out to the table.
01:07:05There's some hard khác.
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