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Britain's Most Evil Killers S02E08 Steve Grieveson
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00:01In February 1994, a badly burned body of a teenager
00:05was found on an allotment in Sunderland.
00:08It was the third similar death in just three months.
00:12Pathology reports gave the police no reason
00:15to treat the deaths as suspicious,
00:17but they were dealing with a sadistic serial killer.
00:21He knew that he got sexual excitement from killing them.
00:24He knew that he wanted to destroy evidence
00:27of the strangling by setting fire to them.
00:30The murderer was a 23-year-old man
00:33named Steven Grieveson.
00:35The papers had begun to call him the Sunderland Strangler.
00:39He's making a decision to take someone's life
00:42time and time again.
00:43He's somebody who's chosen to do evil things,
00:46and in that way, he is a classic psychopathic serial killer.
00:51It would take the efforts of one detective,
00:54supported by the stoic family members of Grieveson's victims,
00:58to finally bring the killer to justice.
01:02Steven Grieveson is the most evil man I've heard of.
01:06Horrible.
01:07I just can't understand how someone could be like that.
01:10Stephen Grieveson, the Sunderland Strangler,
01:13had been revealed as one of Britain's most evil killers.
01:18It was a case that almost went unsolved.
01:29For three months in the early 1990s,
01:33there was a serial killer on the loose in Sunderland
01:49in the northeast of England.
01:51The deaths of three teenagers,
01:54Thomas Kelly, David Hansen, and David Grief,
02:00were all initially believed to be mysterious but not suspicious.
02:06Pathologists had ruled out murder.
02:09It would take a new detective to finally uncover the truth
02:14and bring justice upon a 25-year-old local man
02:18named Steven Grieveson.
02:22As the guilty verdicts were read out,
02:23there were loud cheers from the public gallery,
02:26handing down three life sentences.
02:27The judge described Grieveson as evil and dangerous.
02:31When the body of 18-year-old Thomas Kelly
02:34was found in a fire on November the 26th, 1993,
02:39the police came to the conclusion
02:41that the death was solvent-related.
02:44Local journalist Nigel Green covered the case.
02:48I don't recall there being any great fuss after the first death.
02:53And it obviously makes you think, what would have happened
02:55if Grieveson had just killed the first lad?
02:58Presumably, he would have got away with it.
03:00And it would have just been dismissed as some poor lad
03:03who died glue-sniffing.
03:06It wasn't until a year later, in November 1994,
03:11that Grieveson was finally apprehended.
03:14Nicknamed the Sunderland Strangler,
03:17he was eventually found guilty of a fourth murder
03:20at a second trial in October 2013.
03:25I still remember this case as if it was yesterday.
03:28It's still fresh in my mind, even 20-odd years on.
03:31And I would imagine it's still similar
03:34for the other people of Sunderland.
03:37This killer's story begins over 45 years ago.
03:41Stephen Grieveson was born in Sunderland
03:44on the 14th of December, 1970.
03:47He grew up in a large family,
03:49and his parents were reportedly violent towards one another.
03:53You are molded by the environment you live in.
03:56It's a fact. Everybody knows this.
03:58So if you grow up with violence,
04:01you tend to be more violent than people that don't.
04:06Grieveson appears to show
04:07some psychopathic traits in childhood.
04:09Some of his old school reports are looked at
04:11by a psychologist at his trial.
04:14And within these reports,
04:15they talk of his lack of empathy,
04:17about his callousness,
04:18about his real lack of emotion towards other people.
04:22I think there are a few red flags
04:24in Stephen Grieveson's childhood,
04:27but they're not necessarily red flags that say to me,
04:29this person's going to turn into a murderer.
04:32They're red flags that say,
04:33this is somebody who perhaps needs some help,
04:36needs some support, you know,
04:38later on in childhood and in their teenage years.
04:42Growing up, Grieveson was often in trouble,
04:45and in 1982, he was arrested for shoplifting.
04:49He opened up a packet of nails inside a shop.
04:53He didn't take the whole pack.
04:54He took one nail, and he got caught.
04:56Um, and obviously, the owner of the shop
04:59didn't like that very much,
05:00and he actually went to court for stealing one nail.
05:03One nail, not a pack of nails, but one nail.
05:05But he was only 11 years old.
05:07Extraordinarily, he was taken in front of the magistrate.
05:12Now, for most 11-year-old boys,
05:14that would be the most terrifying experience imaginable.
05:17And they would certainly not dream of doing it again,
05:20even though it was, in many ways,
05:22absolutely irrelevant, tiny crime,
05:24certainly not punishable by anything significant.
05:27But it's interesting that Grieveson didn't take
05:32that experience as any kind of lesson.
05:36He simply brushed it off, water off a duck's back.
05:39He simply went on and did what he wanted to do.
05:41At the age of 13, social services made the decision
05:47to remove Grieveson from the family home.
05:50DR. Well, when he was an adolescent,
05:52he was taken into the residential care system,
05:55and he ends up at a children's home in Carlisle.
05:59Grieveson's troubles continued through his adolescence.
06:03DR. He's had a real sense of shame instilled in himself
06:07at this point in his life.
06:09This is the point where many people are realizing things
06:12about their sexuality, experimenting with their sexuality.
06:15And at the same time when people should have the freedom
06:18to do that, he's been experiencing abuse and violence
06:22and neglect, and all of this is fueling a sense of shame.
06:26Grieveson struggled with his homosexuality
06:29in an environment designed to quash it.
06:32DR. I think the context of the 1970s, 1980s Northeast
06:36is another factor in the Stephen Grieveson story.
06:40This is an area of tough working-class masculinity,
06:44of mining, of shipbuilding, of those kind of jobs
06:46that make men masculine men.
06:49So there will be very much a culture of what a man should look
06:52like, how a man should behave.
06:54And for Stephen Grieveson, for somebody who realizes that he's gay,
06:58this is another way in which he's not going to fit in.
07:01He's not going to be accepted.
07:02DR. People that grew up in an environment
07:05where it's a macho environment, it's like,
07:07oh, no, you have to be a man.
07:08If you were born a man, you have to be a man.
07:10You have to play football. You have to do this.
07:11You have to go out and drink with the lads.
07:13Suddenly, you start having all these, you know, affection
07:16or feelings for another male.
07:18It's a very common thing for people to be a little bit ashamed
07:22and go, what's going on? This cannot be.
07:24And they will lie to themselves.
07:25And that's, I'm pretty sure that's exactly what happened with Grieveson.
07:28Grieveson didn't fit into the world around him,
07:33and by the age of 19, he'd become a social outcast.
07:38DR. By 1990, Stephen Grieveson had been convicted
07:42of around about 38 different offenses.
07:45So he was in and out of prison,
07:47and it's this very typical revolving door that we see
07:50with kind of low-level crime, property crime.
07:53It's a way of life for some people.
07:56In May of the same year, 1990,
07:59Sunderland was rocked by the murder of a 14-year-old boy
08:03called Simon Martin.
08:05He'd been found semi-naked and bludgeoned to death
08:08in a derelict building after running away from home
08:12just days before.
08:14I remember the Simon Martin murder very well.
08:16We had five murders in less than a week in Sunderland.
08:21And in hindsight, looking back,
08:24whether that was putting extra pressure on the police,
08:28with a given murder inquiry involving 40, 50 police officers,
08:33a hell of a lot of police resources,
08:35and whether that would have put strain
08:37on the Simon Martin murder at the time.
08:40The police initially thought they had quickly solved the crime
08:45after arresting a local teenager.
08:49He was 16. He lived nearby.
08:51Um, he was a respectable lad from a good family, from memory,
08:55and he'd been playing in that building, uh, with others,
08:58and they found his fingerprints in the building.
09:00And there was blood in the building as well,
09:02and they found his fingerprint in blood,
09:05which was just coincidence.
09:08All charges against the 16-year-old boy
09:11were eventually dropped.
09:13The murder of Simon Martin would remain unsolved for 23 years.
09:19But during the original investigation in May 1990,
09:24police had also spoken to a local 19-year-old man
09:28named Stephen Grieveson.
09:31He's somebody who had a reputation in the local area
09:34for hanging around with people younger than him.
09:37And I think when you've got somebody
09:38who's trying to-to get a sense of control,
09:40get a sense of power,
09:41you often feel that they hang around with people
09:43who they see as slightly inferior to them.
09:46Grieveson was questioned by the police
09:49in the wake of Simon Martin's body being discovered.
09:53And Grieveson said,
09:54yes, I-certainly I saw him,
09:55but he was fine when I left him.
09:57Grieveson was released without charge.
10:00Three years later,
10:01the discovery of the body of 18-year-old Thomas Kelly
10:05would trigger a series of similar deaths
10:08that would spread fear across the whole of Sunderland.
10:11By the winter of 1993,
10:2722-year-old Stephen Grieveson had built up a reputation
10:31as a troublemaker across Sunderland in the northeast of England.
10:35In November of the same year, Thomas Kelly,
10:38an 18-year-old student,
10:40had gone missing from the family home
10:42he shared with his parents and his sister, Lindsay.
10:47My brother Thomas was just a normal boy for the time,
10:51just kind, helpful.
10:54He would do anything for anybody.
10:57Loved life.
10:59We wouldn't go to bed on a night time
11:01without seeing we loved each other.
11:02They used to call me Pins instead of Lynes,
11:05which was a bit strange,
11:08but that was the way we went on.
11:11We argued quite a bit, as brother and sister do,
11:15but never went to bed without making up.
11:18We were very close as brother and sister.
11:21We were close as a family.
11:23We didn't have loads of money or nothing like that,
11:25but we went out and done things together.
11:29Silly things like willy-picking and, you know, we're just...
11:35A very close family, I'd say.
11:39Lindsay vividly remembers the day
11:41her older brother disappeared.
11:45I went to school.
11:46My mom went to work, and then Thomas had left for college,
11:49and that was the last time we'd seen.
11:53I'd seen him.
11:56It was actually a bit strange that morning
11:58because we were very close as brother and sister,
12:02but that morning, he was standing by the fireplace
12:05in my mama's house, and, um, as we said bye,
12:11he walked forward and grabbed me hand
12:14and squeezed me hand.
12:16On November the 26th, 1993,
12:19the emergency services were called to a burning shift.
12:23The fire was shed on an allotment
12:25near Monk Wearmouth Hospital in Sunderland.
12:30The fire attracts attention inevitably,
12:35and the body of Thomas Kelly is found.
12:39It's hard to imagine what it must have been like
12:44for whoever arrived on that allotment
12:48to confront the sight of a burning body
12:51in a burning building.
12:54It is gruesome.
12:58When I came on the news, I wasn't listening to the news,
13:00and I was sitting in the house,
13:01and I'd seen my dad cover his face,
13:04and I went, what's wrong?
13:05And he went, there's a body being found.
13:08They say parents get a feeling.
13:09I don't know where they go feeling at that point.
13:13Thomas' badly burnt body had seemingly destroyed
13:17any possible evidence,
13:19and senior detectives at Northumbria Police
13:22were not convinced that he had been murdered.
13:25They were treating it as, um, mysterious,
13:29but not suspicious.
13:30They didn't quite know what had went on with Thomas.
13:33We had told them that everything was out of the ordinary.
13:37Thomas wouldn't be an allotment like that
13:40or a place like that normally,
13:43unless he'd went with somebody.
13:49Drug and solvent abuse were prevalent
13:52in working-class areas at the time,
13:55and detectives were keeping an open mind.
13:59It's very hard for the police at that point
14:02to know quite what had been going on.
14:04A solvent was found in the area,
14:06but they weren't certain.
14:09I think there was a real stigmatization of young men
14:12in this area during the 1980s, the 1990s.
14:16It was a period of industrial decline.
14:18There were a lot of social problems, often,
14:20in some of the deprived communities in this part of the UK.
14:23So it was very easy to attach a particular story
14:28to a situation.
14:31Initial pathology reports on Thomas' body
14:34were also inconclusive.
14:37The question is whether the death's suspicious or not.
14:40In the era when solvent abuse was common,
14:43young lads found dead in an allotment,
14:46evidence of fire.
14:50If you're not thinking dirty,
14:52you're not seeing what it may be.
14:54It's the initial assessment,
14:56and if that misses what it's likely to be,
15:00then the whole investigation goes down the wrong route.
15:03And that's exactly what happened.
15:06Because of a lack of pathological evidence,
15:09the police had ruled out murder, but they were wrong.
15:12Thomas Kelly had been strangled to death with his own bandana
15:16after bumping into a local 22-year-old man named Stephen Grieveson.
15:23I think they probably knew each other,
15:25or at least met, perhaps at football.
15:28Grieveson reportedly revealed his homosexuality to Thomas Kelly,
15:33and it is assumed that he killed the 18-year-old
15:36to cover his secret.
15:37He then decides to burn Kelly's body
15:46in an effort to disguise what has gone on.
15:49It is merciless.
15:51It is without possible explanation.
15:56Why would you set fire to the body of a boy
15:59unless within you there is some kind of lack of conscience?
16:05It is a monstrous act. There's no two ways about it.
16:08Detectives had questioned known troublemaker Grieveson
16:12about Thomas Kelly's death,
16:14but they had no reason to arrest him.
16:17It was a grave mistake.
16:20Thomas Kelly was killed at the end of November.
16:23By early February, just literally a few weeks later,
16:28he'd abducted or persuaded another young man called David Hanson
16:34to go with him to a derelict building.
16:39On February the 4th, 1994,
16:42Grieveson strangled the life from 15-year-old David Hanson
16:46before setting his body alight.
16:48Once again, he was questioned about the death,
16:51but released without charge.
16:53So now Grieveson is starting to be calculating.
16:57He starts to realize that he can actually get away with things
17:02by getting rid of the evidence.
17:04By burning the victim,
17:05he'll get rid of all the circumstantial evidence
17:08and all the evidence that he could have left on the body.
17:12With another inconclusive report from a different pathologist,
17:17detectives ruled that David Hanson had not been murdered,
17:21despite the similarities between his and Thomas Kelly's death
17:25six weeks earlier.
17:28I remember speaking to one police contact on the case,
17:31telling me that it didn't add up that it was murder,
17:35and it didn't add up that it was solvents.
17:38Um, I didn't get into the precise details of why that was,
17:42but I remember him telling me that, as I say,
17:44the first one was just deemed to be a tragedy.
17:46The second one was deemed to be a coincidence,
17:48and officers said to each other at the time,
17:51as long as we don't get a third one,
17:53and they did get a third one.
17:56Just a few weeks later,
17:59the end of February, 94,
18:01Grieveson persuades another boy,
18:05David Grief, also 15,
18:08to go to another allotment.
18:11Grieveson kills him, strangles him,
18:13and does set fire to him again.
18:15Grieveson has now killed three young men
18:20in the space of literally three months.
18:22Stephen Grieveson is escalating his offending,
18:26and for somebody with psychopathic traits,
18:28it's not unusual for them to get bald easily,
18:31and that applies to their offending
18:33as it does to their life in general.
18:35They've got a need for stimulation,
18:36they've got a need to up the ante
18:38and experience that kind of thrill again and again.
18:42I don't know, I look back on it,
18:45and I sometimes wonder if Grieveson
18:47had some kind of almost desire to see
18:50how far he could push it without being caught.
18:53It's hard to say it's speculation,
18:56but it seems, strange use of words,
19:00almost reckless from a killer's point of view,
19:02to repeat a similar murder in a similar area
19:05for a third time.
19:07The police spoke to Stephen Grieveson
19:10for a third time, and for a third time,
19:13they let him go without charge,
19:15much to the frustration of the families
19:18of the three deceased teenagers.
19:22Stephen Grieveson was interviewed.
19:24We didn't know this at the time,
19:26because the police were saying that it was drug abuse,
19:29and it was afterwards that we realized
19:31that he was arrested and interviewed at the police station,
19:35only later to be let out and murdered again.
19:38Well, I think Stephen Grieveson felt absolutely invincible.
19:43He was picked up by the police, you know,
19:45after each of these boys' deaths,
19:48but they didn't connect him to the actual murders
19:51until much later.
19:53So it really did kind of shore up a sense
19:56in which he felt, I can do this again,
19:59because the police have talked to me.
20:01They clearly haven't joined up the dots.
20:03I'm getting away with this.
20:04So he feels absolutely invincible.
20:06But less than a month after the death of David Grief,
20:11Grieveson was finally in police custody.
20:14He was arrested and charged with robbery
20:17after forcing staff at a local fish and chip shop
20:20to empty the till.
20:22Although sentenced to 18 months in prison,
20:25investigators still weren't considering charging Grieveson
20:28with murder because three reports
20:31from three different pathologists
20:33had failed to link the deaths.
20:35All of them were being treated as solvent-related.
20:40We didn't understand where the idea of drugs came from.
20:43There was no evidence on any of the boys
20:46to say that they'd taken anything.
20:48No matter what the families were saying
20:50and telling the police what these boys were like,
20:53it felt like no one was listening.
20:55People were grabbing hold of a story that wasn't true.
20:58And I think to drag three boys' names down,
21:02it was awful.
21:05It was just...
21:06They didn't deserve it.
21:08They didn't deserve it.
21:09And they only had us to defend them,
21:11that they weren't here to defend themselves.
21:13Even at the time, you could look back and think,
21:17the police should have looked on that
21:19as being suspicious that there were apparently hallucinants
21:22and the fires.
21:23They should have realized from day one
21:24there was something not right.
21:26But time was running out for Grieveson.
21:30A new detective was about to take over the case
21:33and re-examine all three deaths.
21:36His conclusions would send shockwaves across Sunderland.
21:48In March 1994, 23-year-old Stephen Grieveson
21:53was behind bars for robbery.
21:55But the police in Sunderland had no idea
21:58that he had killed three teenage boys
22:01prior to his incarceration.
22:03Investigators believed the deaths were suspicious,
22:07but so far, no-one had been charged with murder.
22:10The families of the victims were far from satisfied.
22:14I think before the three families had met up and got together,
22:17we were all fighting from separate corners.
22:20We wouldn't let anything lie.
22:21We were trying to get information from everywhere.
22:23And I think when the families did come together,
22:26the police knew that we were a stronger force
22:29and we weren't going to back down.
22:31It didn't matter what, we knew that these boys were murdered.
22:34By the time of the third death,
22:36the families were starting to kick up a fuss
22:39and the media were quite rightly paying attention.
22:42One of my colleagues, Paul Watson,
22:44went down to see the families
22:46and I remember him coming back quite vociferous
22:49that there was something in what they were saying.
22:51Because obviously there could be a cynical approach
22:54that the families of glue sniffers are going to try and make it look
22:57like their sons hadn't got involved in that kind of thing
23:00and that there was something more to it.
23:02But he came back very convinced.
23:03I also went out to see the families
23:05and I remember coming away thinking,
23:07yes, what they say, there is something definitely in what they say.
23:10Way too much coincidence, way too many things that were wrong.
23:13Months passed as the families and local press
23:17continue to pressure the police to change course.
23:21You've got to look at the sheer weight
23:24and the pressure that the families brought,
23:27the campaigning that they did,
23:30that they were convinced from day one
23:32there was something not right about it.
23:34All the families of the victims were really close.
23:38We needed each other.
23:40We stuck together and that's what we needed.
23:44We were no one alone but to have those people
23:48who understood what you were going through
23:50around you made a difference.
23:55Finally, the families got their wish.
23:58A new detective, Dave Wilson, had taken over the case.
24:04He wanted to re-examine the evidence gathered
24:07by three separate pathologists.
24:10Some causes of death are simply more difficult to identify
24:13than others, particularly if there's been post-mortem changes
24:16in the bodies.
24:17Pathologists are human.
24:19People make mistakes.
24:21What you need is a new person, a new way of thinking,
24:25like the officer David Wilson in this case,
24:28who comes in and says,
24:30what about thinking about it differently?
24:32What about these factors?
24:34Let's look at it again.
24:35And that's the sort of thing that can often just kick-start an investigation
24:40into the right frame of mind.
24:43Dave Wilson was a different person altogether,
24:46a different detective.
24:47He wanted to find out what happened.
24:49He thought, could there be a sexual motive,
24:53which it would have been locked in straight away
24:55if there were girls who had been murdered.
24:57And he went down that route and it really helped.
25:00We felt like someone was listening to us
25:03and someone was fighting with us rather than against us.
25:07You could see David Wilson, he was hungry
25:10to get this person off the streets and get this person convicted.
25:15He wasn't going to just lie back and leave it.
25:19He was looking into everything, everything again.
25:22He looked into the boys, he looked into all the evidence,
25:25and he wasn't going to give up until he got his man.
25:28Detective Wilson was certain that all three deaths were linked.
25:32Not only were the crime scenes extremely similar,
25:35all three boys had attended the same school,
25:38Monk Wearmouth Comprehensive.
25:42In August 1994, Wilson asked for a second post-mortem
25:47to be carried out on all the bodies by a senior pathologist.
25:52You don't just call our friends and say,
25:54can you re-examine the body?
25:55No, you have to get, you know,
25:57court orders and judges and everybody involved.
26:01And this detective was relentless.
26:03He went after it and he got the court order that was needed.
26:06This is a detective that he knew that something was wrong.
26:09You know, when you read a case and you just,
26:11maybe it's a good feeling or there's something there,
26:13you go, okay, this cannot be like this.
26:16On closer inspection, all three teenagers
26:19appeared to have died in the same way.
26:22So, in Greaveson's case, the most important factor was that
26:28the ligature marks are then identified.
26:31We're now moving from three similar but apparently discrete incidents,
26:37albeit involving three young boys from the same school,
26:41to three potential homicides from the same school the same way.
26:47Now you're almost looking towards a serial killer.
26:50I think that the fact that Steven Greaveson killed his victims
26:54via strangulation is very significant
26:56because it's one of the most personal forms of killing.
26:59You are watching the life drain out of them.
27:02He's probably feeling more in control at the time he's killing his victims
27:06than he's ever felt at any point in his life before.
27:08So I think it's a very deliberate choice of method.
27:11I think they were groomed, encouraged, cajoled,
27:17or perhaps even threatened by Greaveson.
27:20And they paid the price with their lives.
27:29I remember the day very well, I was on the sun,
27:32when Northumbria police revealed that they were treating the deaths as murder.
27:38And tragic as it was, the family would have seen that as a victory,
27:43that finally something was happening.
27:46Detectives had found fingerprints and a footprint belonging to Greaveson
27:51in the derelict house where David Hansen was murdered.
27:55They were from a burglary Greaveson had committed months before,
27:59but proved he had access to the property.
28:02And by September 1994, Wilson had retrieved some conclusive evidence.
28:08Semen found in the stomach of the third victim,
28:1115-year-old David Greaveson, was a DNA match for Stephen Greaveson.
28:17If you burn the outside of the body,
28:21then you can lose injuries.
28:24If you lose the skin and the soft tissues beneath it,
28:27there's going to be less and less that you can see.
28:30But it can be surprising what you can still identify,
28:34particularly if the area is protected from the fire.
28:37You can still see maybe stab wounds.
28:40You can see all sorts of things that many people
28:44who try to dispose of a body by fire think will be gone.
28:48Greaveson was already in prison for robbery
28:51after holding up a fish and chip shop.
28:54Stephen Greaveson was a bully.
28:57He wasn't nice.
28:59He used to go around picking on lads and taking stuff off them.
29:02He picked on the teenage boys, old women,
29:07anybody that was smaller than him, I think.
29:10He was a troublemaker.
29:12Someone to keep away from.
29:14When Greaveson was arrested for the murder,
29:17we weren't shocked at all,
29:18because it was what we were fighting for, for months.
29:21We knew it was him.
29:23We knew that those boys had done nothing wrong.
29:27We knew that someone had done that to them.
29:30Greaveson's trial was set for January 1996.
29:35He was going to plead not guilty to the murders
29:38of Thomas Kelly, David Hanson, and David Grief.
29:42I think Stephen Greaveson maintained his innocence
29:45for quite a while initially,
29:47because he thought that he was going to get away with it,
29:50because he'd come onto the police radar several times
29:53and had gone off it again.
29:55And now he finds himself charged with these murders.
29:57I think he's just chancing it.
29:59I think he's just pleading not guilty
30:01and saying, I'm not responsible,
30:03because he thinks there is actually a chance
30:04that he's going to get away with this.
30:06He is a man who wishes to conceal the darkness in his soul
30:11and will go to any lengths to do so.
30:14He absolutely refuses to accept
30:17that he could have played any part
30:20in the deaths of these three innocent young men
30:23and fronts that lie
30:26without any possible flicker of doubt
30:30throughout his six-week trial.
30:32The parents of the three murdered teenagers
30:35arriving at court, where today they listen to details
30:38of how, according to the prosecution,
30:41their sons were killed.
30:44During the trial at Leeds Crown Court,
30:46Griefson showed complete contempt
30:49for the families of his victims.
30:52I was 17, I think, at the time,
30:54and it was a hard thing to take in,
30:57not just for me, for all the families.
31:00None of us were used to being in a court surroundings
31:03or anything like that.
31:05We didn't know what normally went on in court.
31:08What made it worse was Griefson sat in the duck,
31:14sticking his fingers up at us, just goading us,
31:17pulling faces, laughing at us.
31:19It wasn't nice.
31:20The evidence against Griefson was compelling.
31:25He had left prints at the house where David Hanson was murdered
31:30and his DNA on the body of David Grief.
31:33The jury took just four hours to find him guilty.
31:37When Stephen Griefson got convicted, we all erupted.
31:41The public gallery, the family,
31:44everyone had jumped up off the sea.
31:46We didn't think that we were going to get him
31:48because of the lack of evidence on some of the boys.
31:52And when he got convicted of Thomas first,
31:55we knew that he would get convicted of the other two.
32:00On February the 28th, 1996,
32:03Judge Mr. Justice Holland described Griefson as pure evil,
32:08as he handed out three life sentences to the 25-year-old.
32:13He was sent to full Sutton Prison in Yorkshire.
32:17I mean, nothing is going to bring these poor lads back,
32:20and the pain is going to be with the families forever,
32:23but at least in finding out what happened to the sons
32:26and finding out that they weren't just glue sniffers
32:29who died in a burning building,
32:31that they were innocent victims of a serial killer,
32:34and the truth finally coming out would hopefully alleviate
32:37some of the pain for the families.
32:39In December 1997, Northumbria police apologized
32:44to the families of the three boys
32:46for the distress caused to them during the initial investigation.
32:51I think if the police had done a better job
32:54and looked into this properly,
32:57maybe listened more to the families
32:58about what kind of boys they were,
33:00they would have took them off the streets a lot earlier,
33:02and maybe could have saved a lot of lives.
33:05But the police weren't done with Stephen Griefson just yet.
33:09They were certain that he was guilty of killing a fourth victim,
33:14an unsolved crime dating back to May 1990,
33:18the murder of 14-year-old schoolboy Simon Martin.
33:23In the year 2000, 29-year-old Stephen Griefson
33:38was three years into serving a life sentence
33:41for the murder of three teenage boys in Sunderland.
33:45But Northumbria police were convinced
33:48that he was also responsible for a death
33:50that preceded all of his other victims,
33:53the murder of Simon Martin in May 1990.
33:57The body of the 14-year-old schoolboy
34:00had been found half-naked in a derelict house.
34:04Griefson clearly decided that he didn't want this little boy
34:12to tell anyone what had happened,
34:14and so he decided that he would silence him.
34:17And he hit Simon Martin with some of the rubble in the house
34:21persistently around the head.
34:23Later, he was to claim, I just flipped.
34:27No, Griefson didn't just flip.
34:31He decided that he didn't want anyone to know what had happened,
34:35and the easiest way of doing that was to kill the boy,
34:39because he couldn't tell anyone, therefore.
34:41This was a little boy who was being killed to keep him quiet.
34:46However, the murder didn't match Griefson's usual M.O.
34:51Simon Martin was not strangled by Griefson,
34:57nor was he set on fire.
34:59But at the time of Simon's killing in 1990,
35:04when Griefson was only 19 and a half,
35:09he hadn't yet refined the method that he wanted to use to kill.
35:16He was still working out in his own mind, I suspect,
35:22what gave him the most satisfaction.
35:24Martin was, if you like, a prototype.
35:27Kelly, Hanson, and Grief were the finished article.
35:32Simon's murder predated the others by three years.
35:36I think the thing that I'd say with this case
35:39is that we have quite a significant gap between 1990 and 1993.
35:45I'd be really interested to know what Stephen Griefson was doing
35:48during that time period, because often,
35:51when somebody commits a murder and enjoys committing a murder,
35:55they often don't wait years until they commit another one.
35:58So that gap is quite a problem for me.
36:00Just as before, Detective Dave Wilson had re-examined
36:06Simon's case and discovered some DNA belonging to Griefson
36:10at the scene of the murder.
36:13In November 2000, he was arrested in his cell
36:17at Full Sutton Prison and questioned by detectives.
36:21There's no doubt that he had attacked and killed Simon Martin.
36:27Griefson denies any knowledge of it,
36:30flatly refuses to say anything.
36:33Without a confession, the police decided
36:36they couldn't charge Griefson with Simon's murder.
36:40Serial killers keep secrets because it gives them power,
36:44and it also gives them power to torment
36:47the families of their victims.
36:50Simon Martin's father, who'd been in the army,
36:53launched a great appeal to find his missing son.
36:58These were real, ordinary, decent people
37:04whom Griefson took inordinate pleasure in tormenting.
37:10But over a decade later, out of the blue,
37:14Griefson finally confessed.
37:16In a series of interviews with detectives in February 2013,
37:22he admitted that he was responsible for Simon Martin's death,
37:27but he still denied murdering the 14-year-old schoolboy.
37:31When we found out that Griefson had admitted
37:35to killing Simon Martin,
37:37none of us were surprised.
37:40We always knew,
37:41and we always wanted justice for Simon,
37:45as well as ourselves.
37:48So Stephen Griefson said that he was haunted about Simon.
37:52This is something that had troubled him
37:54during his time in prison.
37:55And all of this, apparently, from a man with no conscience,
37:58with very little empathy for other people,
38:01somebody with significant psychopathic traits,
38:03I'd be quite cautious about this statement
38:06because it suggests to us, doesn't it,
38:08that he has some empathy, that he has some remorse,
38:11that he's feeling bad.
38:13But this is somebody who's been in prison
38:15for a significant amount of time.
38:17He's been learning about other people's emotions
38:19while he's been in prison.
38:20He's been learning what other people want to hear,
38:23what they need to hear, and also the kind of things
38:26that you need to say to make your own situation better.
38:30So I'd be cautious about attaching any real meaning to that.
38:35On the 14th of October, 2013, at Newcastle Crown Court,
38:41Griefson was back in the dock, charged with a fourth murder
38:45that had taken place 23 years beforehand.
38:52When the Simon Martin trial came up,
38:55we all went to court every day,
38:57the same as we did the first time.
38:59Stuck together as the three families,
39:02or the four families, which it had become.
39:05It was just as hard as the first trial.
39:08We learned a lot of stuff about our boys
39:10that we got told wrongly at the beginning.
39:13There's lots of stuff that we didn't know came out,
39:16so it was just, it was very hard.
39:19It was difficult.
39:20The jury did not believe
39:23that Simon's death was an accident,
39:26and on October the 24th, 2013,
39:30Griefson was found guilty of murder.
39:33It was good news.
39:34It was good news for Sunderland.
39:35It was good news for the family
39:37that this unsolved murder, um,
39:39could finally be laid to rest,
39:41and that would ease some of the pain,
39:43not only for the family of Simon Martin,
39:46but also for the family of the boy
39:48who was wrongly arrested
39:49and wrongly charged with the killing.
39:51It was revealed during the second trial
39:54that Griefson had written to all three families
39:56of his initial victims asking for forgiveness.
40:00In extracts from a letter to the family of Thomas Kelly,
40:03he wrote,
40:04I know you think I am evil, horrible.
40:07I should never have done what I did.
40:10I never, ever intended to take Thomas away from you.
40:14I am sorry I destroyed your son's life, your family's life.
40:18I wish I could turn the clock back.
40:20I hope one day you will find it in both of your hearts
40:24to forgive me.
40:25Those letters meant nothing to me, nothing at all.
40:30And I think, I think he wrote them to wind us up.
40:34It was his way of getting the worst again.
40:37There are several levels of psychopath.
40:39The top level is when you have zero, zero emotions.
40:42There's other levels that you will have certain emotions,
40:46but not other emotions towards people.
40:49But in his case, one thing I have seen in other psychopaths,
40:53in people that have been to prison,
40:54is that they like the limelight.
40:56And once the limelight starts to die down,
40:58they'll find something else to bring the limelight.
41:00So it could have been that that's the reason
41:03why he wrote the letters.
41:05Irrespective of his motive for writing the letters of forgiveness,
41:09nothing will bring back the four boys
41:12who Grieveson heartlessly murdered.
41:17I think about Thomas every day, many times in that day.
41:20He's always on my mind and he's always there.
41:23It's probably the first thing I think about when I wake up
41:25and the last thing I think about when I go to sleep.
41:28It doesn't just go away. It doesn't. It's hard.
41:32The man who brought Grieveson to justice,
41:35Detective Superintendent Dave Wilson, passed away in 2012.
41:40He was 63 years old.
41:43The shadow of the Sunderland Strangler
41:45still looms over the city today,
41:48a man who killed young boys just to keep them quiet.
41:53Many people struggle with their sexuality,
41:56but very few of them are going to go on and harm other people,
41:59let alone kill them.
42:00I think in the case of Stephen Grieveson,
42:02what we've got is a unique, toxic combination of factors.
42:06We've got a disruptive childhood.
42:08We've got a lack of acceptance within a community.
42:11So we've got all of these things coming together
42:13to almost create the perfect storm.
42:15It's a horrible way of describing it,
42:17but that's what we have in this case.
42:19I look back on it now and I thank God
42:21that the families did do what they did
42:24and that the media and the journalists at the time
42:26did what they did and really pushed for the truth to come out.
42:30We will never forgive Stephen Grieveson.
42:33Never forgiven.
42:34He's hurt us too much.
42:36And to be honest, if I was to find out
42:41if he died in prison tomorrow,
42:43it wouldn't bother us one bit.
42:46Grieveson was a troubled man with a troubled childhood,
42:50but this can be no excuse for callously taking the life
42:53of four young boys.
42:55His capture was all down to the passion and hard work
42:59of a detective spurred on by the victims' families.
43:04Together, they finally brought about the downfall of Stephen Grieveson,
43:09one of Britain's most evil killers.
43:29So, how did you see all these castoffs andोs?
43:31We are all of the pastors and believers,
43:32to be here,
43:33who have been forced on by the victims' families.
43:34And we're all of the pastors and the families.
43:35When they came,
43:36They're all of the pastors and the families said to come,
43:37they are all of the pastors and the families
43:38to welcome the people of our leaders.
43:39And it was a tribute to their families.
43:41They'd like to come back in our church.
43:42And they all gave them more.
43:43And they're also done and they had to come up.
43:44So they were their parents in prison.
43:46And they're all the saints and the neighbors.
43:48And they had to come back to the family.
43:49And they were all even with their family.
43:50And they had to come down for a while.
43:54And they were all the families that you had to come.