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00:00Police are saying tonight that they're increasingly concerned about the
00:05whereabouts of April Jones, a five-year-old girl from McKinlay.
00:09When I get the first call from the police, it always raises the heart rate a little,
00:15thinking about what they're going to be dealing with. I always feel pleased to know that someone
00:20wants to call on my expertise, but at the same time it's a challenge and I want to be able to
00:25respond to that effectively. On that initial call, I'm looking to find out as much information as I
00:31can about the circumstances, about the victim or the person who we're dealing with, what actions
00:37the police have taken already, and then thinking about what are the next steps and how we move
00:41forward. When someone goes missing, the first few hours are absolutely critical. We talk about the
00:48golden hour. It's not actually a defined hour, but it is the early time when we need to make sure we
00:53we are following leads quickly. If they're calling me, this is going to be serious.
01:18The town is a beautiful town. It's your typical Welsh town.
01:22It was always a warm welcome. You went in the shops, people kind of got to know you. It was just
01:32one of those nice, friendly places.
01:34Well, Huntleth is a small, close-knit community, population in the region of 2,000 people, and the
01:44community spirit during the course of the investigation, particularly initially, was overwhelming. Not just those who
01:50live within the community, but then those who, you know, came from afar, really, to assist with the search, which was a significant and a main line of investigation for us.
02:00That investigation began on the 1st of October 2012, when a vulnerable little girl went missing from close to her home.
02:13We didn't really know anything about April's family before she went missing. People who knew them said they were a normal family.
02:23They didn't have anything out of the ordinary going on in their lives. They would take the children to school, come home, just that typical family.
02:33April was five years old, someone who attended a local school in McHuntleth. You know, she was a child who suffered from mild cerebral palsy.
02:43Her mum and dad had been to a parent's evening. She was doing exceptionally well in school. And she went for a swimming lesson. Her sister picked her up during the course of the early evening.
02:55This was all captured on CCTV footage that was obtained by Dovid Powers Police.
03:01April comes home. Her mum then is asked by April if she can go and play with some friends on her bicycle.
03:09In the area that they were living in, I think it's fair to say that, you know, the majority of parents felt comfortable and confident in leaving their children play within the grounds, if you like.
03:20And because she'd done particularly well in school, her mum allowed her to spend a little bit more time out than maybe she would have ordinarily.
03:29The brother of April, who at the time was about nine years old, was asked by mum to go and find April, bring her home.
03:43But what mum was then faced with was her son coming into the house and basically saying that he'd been told by one of April's friends that she'd gone into the vehicle and been taken.
03:58A call came in from the mother into the Force Communication Centre, as would normally be the case on a three-nines call.
04:04In the course of the call, the mum has informed police officers that she's been in the car.
04:07She's gone off in the car with somebody, somebody's picked up in the car or something.
04:10What's the name of the child that's gone missing?
04:25April Jones.
04:26April, how old is she?
04:28Five.
04:29During the course of the call, the mum has informed police officers that her five-year-old daughter has been kidnapped and that it was a big grey vehicle or car and that there was a man driving.
04:41Initially, with regards to a call such as that, it has to be what we would refer to in policing as an overt response in the first instance.
04:51It is a crime in action. It's about getting as many resources to the area concerned because, obviously, there is a life at risk at that particular time.
05:02The first actions, if you like, are to make sure that we can send officers to the scene to try and identify where this has occurred,
05:10to try and trace any potential witnesses to the incident and, obviously, to speak to family and friends in order to try and establish the circumstances surrounding this particular case.
05:21It's a very fast-moving investigation at that particular point in time.
05:25To help with that investigation, police called on the expertise of Charlie Hedges, the manager for Missing, Abducted and Kidnapped Children at the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre.
05:40When I got the phone call at 8 o'clock in the evening, shortly after April had gone missing, it was from a detective chief inspector who was involved with the case.
05:48And he wanted to know whether the force should be using child rescue alert as a way of releasing information at high speed to the media to try and encourage calls from the public.
06:01And it also then filters through to a dedicated line so the information goes directly to the police.
06:06And also, she was explaining about the circumstances so we could consider various options for the start of the investigation as well.
06:14We knew that April had got into a van and had been driven off.
06:20It feasibly could have been that there was an innocent explanation behind it.
06:24But at the same time, we had to be alert to more serious consequences.
06:28When we've got a child that's missing, it's important to understand the individual and their behaviour and habits.
06:36Understand the circumstances of their going missing.
06:39Is there anywhere else that we can find out information about what's gone on, any witnesses, any CCTV or anything else that will help us to understand what's going on and think about how we're best going to deploy resources to try and find where she's gone.
06:55Advising remotely is always a challenge because you're not connected directly with the case and seeing how things are unfolding.
07:03However, it was the way we had to operate.
07:05My decision was to stay on the phone and stay in contact and then take it from there.
07:12On the ground in Machanslef, word was starting to spread about April's abduction.
07:18Mum was someone who used Facebook like many people do.
07:22Information was put onto Facebook that April had been taken.
07:26And that prompted, you know, certainly lots of people within the community who were active on social media to come across that information.
07:34Took it upon themselves then to come to the area where April had been taken from and to try and start searching for April.
07:43Certainly the first officers who attended were faced with a fairly challenging and chaotic situation in that you've got, you know, quite a significant number of members of the public from within the community, rightly so, wanting to assist in trying to search for April.
08:00Very early on people were going out and searching on their own and then all of a sudden the police and the Mountain Rescue and all the organisations decided we need to have a better coordination of what's going on because people were going up on the hills without any kind of coordination or knowing what they were doing really.
08:22So very quickly they brought everybody together and we played a part in that as a radio station because we were telling people, let's not all go out there now, let's come to the leisure centre, let's get into groups, then we can all go out and search in the areas that the police wanted us to search in and where the Mountain Rescue wanted us to search in.
08:41This is the scene at the local community centre where hundreds of people are still waiting for news. Many of them have been involved in searches throughout the day.
08:50After the first few hours it was well organized and it became one of the biggest search operations ever in the UK to find April Jones.
08:59October 2012 and in the small Welsh town of Machynlleth vulnerable five-year-old April Jones had been missing for two and a half hours.
09:20Of the resources available, the media is obviously a main line of inquiry for us in terms of being able to publicize what April looked like, the brief circumstances of her disappearance in order to seek support really and assistance from the general public and anyone else who may be able to give us information as to her whereabouts.
09:42So on that basis, it was important that we got a photo of April and information to the media as soon as practicable in order to get hopefully a response from the public.
09:56Given that the incident happened at 7.30 in the evening, we were aware that, you know, 10 o'clock news is very popular for many, many of its audiences, so we took the opportunity to try and share information and provide a briefing to the media in readiness that they could be circulated at that point in time.
10:15Police are saying tonight that they're increasingly concerned about the whereabouts of a five-year-old girl from Machynlleth.
10:22April Jones, they say, was last seen playing with her friend on their bikes near to garages in the town at around 7.30 this evening.
10:31The police were able to provide the media with plenty of information during that briefing because, crucially, the abduction had been witnessed.
10:40April, at the time that she was taken, was with a seven-year-old friend who was present at the scene.
10:49You've got to consider the vulnerability of a seven-year-old, the time of day, what that seven-year-old had actually observed and experienced.
10:57Obviously, the awareness of all these people around the area, what's going on.
11:01So we had to put into context what we were being told in terms of what that seven-year-old witness had observed at the time.
11:08It was a crucial bit of evidence, but we've got to look for other lines of inquiry, other intelligence information,
11:14which hopefully can corroborate what the seven-year-old was telling us to assist us in terms of trying to identify, firstly, where April may be,
11:23and, you know, as importantly, who would take in April.
11:30So this is Brynna Gorg. This is a quiet residential estate. This is where April would have been spending her time playing with her friends.
11:40It was a fairly relaxed area where her parents were comfortable for her to spend time with others, playing on their bicycles and just enjoying as children of that age would do, really.
11:54When the incident occurred on the night of the 1st of October 2012, things changed dramatically in this area.
12:04April was taken from this area here.
12:12This is also the area where, facing outwards, a vehicle described by her friend as being big at the rear and smaller at the front. It was parked.
12:21We know from the evidence provided by the friend that April got into the left-hand side, driver's side of the vehicle.
12:30Initially, that took some further sort of understanding in terms of trying to work out how that would have actually happened in reality.
12:39Because I think, you know, certainly from my perspective, may have expected that April would have got into one of the other doors of the vehicle with the offender.
12:48The fact that she got into a vehicle with someone else, did she get into it willingly? Was it someone just giving her a lift? Or was it something more serious? And we need to understand exactly what was happening.
13:03As the search for both April and her abductor continued, it became clear that finding this vehicle and its owner could hold the key to both their whereabouts.
13:16It's always crucial to gather information as quickly as possible because people have, witnesses have that information fresh in their minds, evidence is undisturbed.
13:27But also people can move further away from where they were so the search areas get larger.
13:32And obviously the longer, more time elapses, the greater the concern for the safety and welfare of April was growing.
13:40And we wanted to be able to try and find her and look after her as quickly as we possibly could.
13:45I turned on the television and at that time there was information on Sky News telling us about the disappearance of a girl in Wales.
13:54Police are asking for anyone with any information to call them. They're giving the number out as 101, the number to call if they do have any information about a five-year-old girl from Machinle.
14:06It quickly led to a huge influx of calls from across the country with people wanting to help and assist.
14:14One of the basic talents of child rescue alert is to alert people and encourage them to call in.
14:20But the problem we had, the calls were going all over the place, so we decided to use it as a mechanism for,
14:25A, making sure that the right information was being shared, and secondly that people knew which number to contact to pass that information on.
14:35This case was different from many we'd dealt with before because of the amount of social media that was used during the case,
14:53and the widespread of information and the number of people who were responding to the case.
15:00As well as leaning on social media to help with the search, April's mum, Coral, bravely went before the cameras to ask for the public's help.
15:09April is only five years old. Please, please, help find her.
15:18In the hills, fields and forests surrounding April's home, there has been an increasingly desperate search,
15:28with police and public joining forces.
15:31We found out from the start, really, from social media, that something was going on when people started to use Twitter just to say,
15:38a little girl has gone missing.
15:41Suddenly, people were tweeting.
15:44It played a good part in terms of telling people what was going on.
15:50It brought people to the area to help with the search operation.
15:53The hashtags were there, people sending support for the family.
15:59How has the community responded generally, would you say?
16:01Well, I'm not from this community. I'm from the Lampeter area.
16:04You've actually driven across from Manchester, yeah?
16:06Yeah, it's a three-hour journey this morning.
16:08Sir, can I ask what brings you out here and being so determined to search?
16:11Yeah, they're friends of ours.
16:14It's a vast area with a limited population.
16:16At the same time, you get those working for the media on the ground, if you like, in Machynlleth,
16:21speaking to, you know, people within the community, people who were involved,
16:24all the volunteers who were involved with some of the searching, you know,
16:28and effectively knocking doors, trying to find out more information with regards to April and her family.
16:35It wasn't just the media and the people of Machynlleth driving the search for April.
16:42The police had also turned to specialists in the hope of locating her.
16:48Machynlleth itself is a town, obviously, in rural mid Wales,
16:52and in terms of the geography of the area, that presented some real challenges.
16:58From just moving outside the town centre where we are,
17:01you'll see that there's a lot more mountainous area, forestry,
17:05and all of that needed the support of a significant number of agencies
17:09with various skills and experience to be able to come and assist the police with the investigation,
17:15and particularly the main line of inquiry, which was the search for April.
17:21We're very fortunate to have a lot of volunteer people who want to give their time to searching
17:27for those who are lost, missing, and put their lives at risk doing it sometimes.
17:33There's mountain rescue, lowland rescue, then there are specialists with dogs,
17:37people who go searching on bicycles and a whole range of different things,
17:41and then there's others who specialise at searching in caves
17:43and other difficult environments like that.
17:45So they will always step forward when there's a case and want to be involved.
17:49And so it's then for the local police and the police search adviser
17:53to coordinate that activity and deploy it in the most effective way possible.
17:59The search for April was exhaustive and, inevitably, in a small, tight-knit community,
18:06people started to speculate as to who might have taken her.
18:10So, in a story like this, obviously, emotions are high,
18:13so it's quite a complex case to cover from the radio station's point of view.
18:18A lot of our presenters knew the listeners, and they were ringing in saying,
18:23oh, well, we definitely know that it could be this person that's taken her,
18:28or it could be that she's gone missing up this area.
18:32And they were giving us this information, and we very early on decided
18:37we were just going to report the facts.
18:40We were not going to go with any kind of theories or speculation,
18:44and we didn't want to put out any false information that it maybe upset the family.
18:48We didn't want to put out any speculation that got anyone else in trouble,
18:53or that it could hinder the police's investigation.
18:57Some of the things we were feeding to the police,
18:59and then some of the things we were having to just say to people,
19:02listen, we hear what you're saying, but at the minute this has not been confirmed.
19:06So we're not going to report it, but thank you for letting us know about this.
19:13Controlling the spread of information was key,
19:16and as the second day of the investigation progressed,
19:19there was one piece regarding the vehicle that April had got into
19:23that the police took the decision to initially keep to themselves.
19:27When we established that the vehicle was a left-hand drive vehicle,
19:32we were able to gather information as to who owned that particular vehicle.
19:37The person who owned the vehicle was known as Mark Bridger.
19:41Police hunting for missing five-year-old April Jones now had a suspect.
19:57Local man, Mark Bridger.
20:00We conducted a number of background inquiries in order to establish as much information as we could
20:06in terms of, well, who is Mark Bridger?
20:08He was identified as a suspect, and we ensured then that I got a number of officers available,
20:15and resources available, so that we could attend a number of addresses that Mark Bridger was associated with.
20:22In order, firstly, to try and find April Jones, but secondly, to try and identify and locate Mark Bridger.
20:35Obviously, at the time, we didn't really know much about Mark Bridger.
20:39We know that he knew April's family and knew April because he had children at the same school,
20:46so they kind of knew each other.
20:48People say, and people do say this afterwards, but that he was a bit of a loner
20:53and always said there was something about him that didn't sit right with them.
21:01We identified potentially four addresses that he had access to.
21:06We simultaneously attended each of those addresses in an effort to try and locate April Jones
21:13and obviously arrest Mark Bridger.
21:16There was one address in particular which turned out to be the home address of Mark Bridger.
21:26Bridger's home was then placed under surveillance by the police.
21:30And when officers attended that address, entered the premises, Mark Bridger was nowhere to be seen.
21:40Obviously, we didn't locate April Jones either at that point in time.
21:44But what officers reported was that the premises were stifling hot, there was a roaring fire,
21:54and that there was a very clear distinctive smell of detergent and cleaning agents within the property.
22:01We were able to locate him at about 3.30 p.m. during the afternoon of the 2nd.
22:10At the time, he was walking between Cain Loos, which is where his home was located,
22:18some four miles out of Machantleith town centre.
22:20When Mark Bridger was detained at the roadside, an urgent interview was conducted by the officer.
22:27And Mark Bridger's initial account was that he had been involved in a low-speed collision
22:35with a bicycle with a child on at the location where the alleged abduction had taken place.
22:43And that, as a result of colliding with the bicycle and the child, the child suffered some injuries.
22:51He panicked, wanted to see if he could assist the child, considered CPR,
22:59but felt that it wasn't appropriate because of the extent of injuries.
23:03Placed the child in his vehicle, drove away from the scene,
23:08and then at some point during the course of the evening into the night,
23:14he has just lost his memory and is unable to assist us any further
23:20in terms of what happened to April Jones.
23:23Bridger was then detained at Aberystwyth Police Station
23:27and formally questioned, where he gave a near-identical account.
23:33I remember the dark-headed girl came behind the car
23:37I started the car up.
23:40As I went to pull away, the car, there wasn't a thud, I can't understand.
23:46The car rose up.
23:49As I opened the car, I walked around.
23:52And underneath the front of the car is now I know to be April.
23:59She was only little.
24:03So I picked her up and put her across my seat and put her in what is the offside seat, the passenger seat.
24:12Tried to take her pulse.
24:14And there was nothing.
24:16I put my mouth over her mouth and went low, put my hand back on the chest.
24:20And that's when I realised one side of her chest wasn't there.
24:25I'd obviously crushed...
24:29I'd obviously crushed her little body.
24:34So, I then drove out of Brynagorg.
24:37My intention was to get her medical help.
24:39And that's when I realised how long I'd gone out of her.
24:43My lips were purple.
24:45Paul and Coral are friends of mine.
24:49And I...
24:50I've killed her daughter.
24:59The next minute...
25:01And I'm in my house.
25:03And she's not there.
25:05But I can't remember what I've done.
25:08We can't disregard the initial account.
25:15But obviously we are, you know, not satisfied that that is the true circumstances of what has gone on.
25:21And, you know, we continue with a number of lines of inquiry.
25:25And speaking to as many witnesses, potential witnesses, to try and gain more information which can assist us in locating April.
25:34While officers conducted those inquiries, Andy John had to inform April's family of this significant development before the media did.
25:47It was extremely difficult for the family when they were informed that Mark Bridger was responsible for taking April.
25:55Given that they knew of Mark Bridger, you know, they actually knew who he was.
26:01She lived within the community, her children within the community.
26:04It was somebody who was known to them, who'd actually been, you know, a Facebook friend with the family.
26:10They probably found it a lot more difficult than had it been someone who was unknown to them.
26:17With Bridger in custody and April's family fully informed, the decision was made to brief the press.
26:24We have arrested a 46-year-old male from the Mychenllith area who has been detained at Aberystwyth Police Station.
26:35People had already told us that they thought it could be Mark Bridger because he was the only person that they knew drove a left-hand drive car.
26:46Also, people had started to say that Mark Bridger was a strange person and things like that.
26:53So, it didn't come as a surprise, but we had to obviously report sensitively.
26:58And there was real anger and we had to be careful how we reflected that on the radio.
27:04With a suspect detained, the police were able to widen the scope and nature of their search for April.
27:12I think we realised that the case was serious within a very short period of time.
27:17A five-year-old child wandering off. There can't be too many innocent explanations to that.
27:24Duffer-Prowse Police responded to it in an outstanding way. They threw everything they could at it.
27:31While the search for April escalated, so too did Bridger's questioning.
27:37So, from the account provided by Mark Bridger, it was important for us to establish whether there was any evidence on the vehicle to indicate that it had come into a collision.
27:54I spent two days examining the vehicle. I was looking for signs of blood, possibly fibres.
28:01What I was looking for in the panels of the vehicles, especially low down, is looking for fresh damage in the vehicle.
28:09This vehicle is a very, very old vehicle and the paintwork on it had been oxidised.
28:16So, if he'd collided with April's bike, or April herself, would have seen damage, fresh damage, which would have taken the oxide off.
28:26And you've seen fresh paint there. There wasn't any. There was no damage consistent with a collision happening.
28:33At this scene, I was asked to examine the roadway, especially the kerbside and all the way out to the centre line on the roadway.
28:43And there was nothing found consistent with a collision.
28:46Given the size of the car, it weighs two tonnes. If it hit April's bicycle, it would have seen the damage on the vehicle.
28:58But more so, it would have seen damage on the bicycle, which was a small bicycle and it would have sustained enough of a lot of damage.
29:07And there was absolutely no damage to it at all.
29:10The forensic examinations of Bridger's car and April's bike suggested his version of events was a complete lie.
29:21So, police now turned their attention to trying to find out what had actually happened to April.
29:27This is Cai Noos. This is where the offender lived. It's a quiet, small, secluded residential area, just a few miles out of Machantleth.
29:44So, this is the area where the offender's house once stood. And this, from an investigation perspective, is where the investigation took a turn.
30:00My team were first involved during the initial search for April's remains and the contents of his wood-burning stove were recovered from the living room of his property.
30:15The examiner examined the contents of the fire, so the ash and all the debris that was contained in there, not really expecting to find any human material in there.
30:27But he identified some small fragments that he wasn't sure whether they were bone or not.
30:33They were less than a centimetre in size. They were white in colour, very fragile. Some of them resembled human bone to myself and my colleague,
30:46who were very experienced forensic anthropologists. Others required further testing.
30:53The results of those tests would take time, but the police were satisfied that in Bridger, they not only had the person responsible for April's disappearance,
31:02but also her murder.
31:09As the investigation proceeds, what we know changes. It becomes a murder investigation.
31:17But despite this, the objectives are still the same in terms we need to find the person who's gone missing.
31:24We need to secure evidence. We need to understand what's happened.
31:28The search and the investigation still has to continue, but we need to do that not only for the investigation, but also for the family to give them the answers they deserve and they've lost a loved one.
31:40Alongside the search for April, the police were looking to gather enough evidence to allow them to charge Bridger.
31:46And back at his home made another vital discovery.
31:51Some further examinations in front of the fire, the hearth, identified a pooling of blood, which was recovered from underneath the carpet.
32:02From my perspective, indicated that, you know, something significant had happened in front of the hearth to April.
32:09That blood sample was submitted for testing alongside more blood found in Bridger's bathroom.
32:16Its DNA profile was a match to April Jones.
32:20When these findings were put to Bridger, he desperately tried to explain them away.
32:25The only explanation I've got is obviously if I've got blood on my hands, if I haven't dried my hands, you flick your hands, I've gone for a week.
32:37So it's possibly a transfer of blood from having some sort of blood on my hands.
32:45Obviously, there was only a very minute amount of blood, which I've said from the beginning, I never ever recalled having blood from the injury or from April.
32:55And you made that on me.
32:56Yeah, I'm stopping it.
32:57Yes, sorry, yes.
33:07There is sufficient evidence to charge Mark Bridger with the murder of April Jones.
33:13When Mark Bridger got charged, the community really did change.
33:20It changed to anger towards this man.
33:27But because of the community spirit that they had, because of how everybody looked out for everybody else in that town,
33:34it just added to the weight of shock and anger for what this guy had done.
33:40And also the way that it was done as well.
33:43They were just so angry with what had gone on and so upset and heartbroken.
33:49When you get to the point of charge, in a sense, it's then that the work begins.
33:55Would the evidence that we presented the jury prove on their part beyond reasonable doubt that Mark Bridger had abducted and murdered April Jones?
34:06Whilst we were confident that we had a strong case, there was a concern that how would that case come across to the jury, given that we hadn't located April's body?
34:18Five days after April Jones went missing, Mark Bridger was charged with her murder.
34:33The police now set about building a case to take to court, with forensic science at the forefront.
34:39We didn't test the fragments themselves for DNA because we were certain that given the condition of the bone, the fact that it was calcined, there would be no DNA left.
34:54Three of the fragments had characteristics that looked very human.
35:00So straight away, I was fairly confident that we were looking at human bone.
35:09We also looked at some archeological skeletons and did some comparative analysis to give ourselves an age range of the deceased.
35:19And based on the appearance of the comparative fragments, the size and thickness of the skull, the appearance of the sutures, we signed an age range of between four and eight years.
35:33Bridger's defence team presented us with a list of animals that he said he'd put on the fire.
35:40There were 17 in total.
35:42We'd looked at the shape and the structure of the bone.
35:46We'd done scanning electron microscopy.
35:48We'd compared it to animal bones.
35:51But we still felt that we didn't have enough to say, with as much confidence as we would like, to meet the requirements of the court, that the bone was definitely human.
36:02So we wanted to do histological analysis of the bone.
36:06Histological analysis is the microscopic examination of tissues to study their structure.
36:13We had a friend and colleague who works at the Forensic Institute in Milan, Professor Christina Cattaneo, who is world renowned for using that technique to distinguish whether it remains a human or animal.
36:28And she found that there were no features in there that suggested that the bone was animal.
36:37The problem that Professor Cattaneo had was that she was looking at a very small field of vision.
36:43However, the osteons were consistent with human osteons and human bone structure.
36:50Osteons are the fundamental structural and functional units of compact bone.
36:56She assigned a very high level of confidence to it.
37:00We were very conscious of the small amount of bone that we had to work with.
37:07But we were very cognizant of the fact that this was all that the family had.
37:14We were just very conscious that we didn't want to do anything that was going to be unnecessary and anything that the family didn't want.
37:24The bone evidence was strong but not conclusive, so the police looked to digital forensics to further support their case.
37:33Myself and my team were focusing on Bridger's laptop.
37:39And we had to carry out our own analysis to verify the findings by both the police and the defence expert who'd already carried out their investigation.
37:52We identified images of murder, not specifically relating to April, but other murder cases involving children.
38:06There were also cartoon images of sexual abuse of sexual abuse of children and general images, inappropriate, indecent material involving children.
38:22The internet history clearly showed a build-up of activity prior to the disappearance of April, a lull in activity whilst the disappearance was happening.
38:40And then, post the event, files were being deleted.
38:49It was clear from the evidence found that Bridger had an interest in the local girls, potentially could be deemed as stalking them by downloading material from Facebook profiles.
39:04That, in itself, provided some real concerns in terms of what potentially could have happened beyond the point of taking April, had we not been able to arrest Mark Bridger for the offence.
39:19All the evidence on the laptop supported the prosecution case that Mark Bridger had abducted and murdered April Jones and that it was premeditated and sexually motivated.
39:35The police had built a robust case against Bridger.
39:38However, the search for April had been unsuccessful.
39:42Although Bridger had admitted he was probably responsible for April Jones's death, he had denied the charges of murder and abduction, so his trial commenced on the 29th of April, 2013, at Mould Crown Court.
40:02People were hopeful that Mark Bridger was going to get the sentence that he deserved.
40:13And there is no sentence that you could give to somebody like this, but they were hoping that he was going to go away for life and never come out, never be in a position to treat people or treat anyone in this way again.
40:26And I think the whole town wanted justice for April's family.
40:32And because it happened in this town, they had become known for what had gone on as well.
40:37So they wanted justice for themselves as well.
40:39We were confident that the evidence that we had proved our case in terms of April being abducted and murdered.
40:48But not having been able to locate April's body did present some concern, if you like, that, you know, how would the case come across to the jury.
41:05From my perspective, one of the critical moments at trial was when the evidence was presented by the seven-year-old witness via video link.
41:12The witness was exceptional in terms of how she was able to recall in a clear way what has occurred at the scene at the time that April was taken.
41:24And when cross-examined by defense, she maintained her account, came across as, you know, open and honest.
41:32And that, for me, was a key point at trial in terms of being able to provide real strong evidence to the jury that, you know, the subduction and murder had actually taken place.
41:43It must have been really hard for April's family to be seeing what was going on and to be at the trial.
41:52We respected them when they were going to court. Obviously, we didn't want to approach them and do interviews with them.
41:59But you could see that the strain was getting to them. Of course it would.
42:03After a month-long trial, the jury went out to consider its verdict.
42:10And after just four hours, it had reached its decision.
42:16When Bridger was found guilty by the jury, it was a moment in a sense of mixed emotions.
42:23On the basis that, from a criminal justice perspective, we'd secured a conviction.
42:29You know, that was tinged slightly by the fact that, obviously, we'd not located April for the family.
42:36We are relieved that Mark Bridger has today been found guilty of the murder of our beautiful daughter, April.
42:45April will be forever in our hearts, and we are so moved by the overwhelming support we have had from so many people from all over the world.
42:54For his crimes, Bridger was sentenced to a whole life order, meaning he will never be considered for parole and will spend the rest of his life behind bars.
43:07This is the toughest sentence he could have got. So there was the relief that justice had been done.
43:17But at the same time, there was that realization that the town will never be the same again.
43:26Following Bridger's conviction, the decision was made to permanently remove any evidence of his terrible crime from the Welsh landscape.
43:39However, the scars still remain.
43:43This area is an idyllic area. It's very quaint. It's secluded, very peaceful.
43:53And it's, you know, it's difficult to comprehend how something as horrendous, as horrific as what occurred on the 1st of October 2012 could have happened in such a beautiful location.
44:05It's very powerful to be back here in the area where a young five-year-old vulnerable child has had a life taken away from her in such tragic circumstances.
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