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00:19It was a lovely evening, absolutely beautiful, just a little bit of a breeze.
00:27Forestry workers happened upon this secluded place, which is not that far from Newport.
00:36They had noticed that there was a fire that had been built that wasn't there the previous
00:41day and when they had a look at it...
00:44It became apparent that there were bones there.
00:50They found what appeared to be part of a skull.
01:01When a murder is committed, it's always a race against time to find the truth, to separate
01:08fact from fiction, to catch the killer and to make sure that justice is served.
01:15But what if the truth disappears when the victim dies?
01:20I'm Dr Richard Sheppard and I've spent my whole career as a forensic pathologist performing
01:26over 23,000 autopsies.
01:29I've learned that the dead don't hide the truth and they never lie.
01:35With the aid of a state-of-the-art laboratory and using groundbreaking technology, I'll be
01:41investigating a series of appalling crimes and examining the trail of evidence left behind
01:47on the victims' bodies to reveal the truth behind their murder.
02:15It was nearing the end of a busy shift for Detective Sergeant Chris Parry when his phone started ringing.
02:23I received a call from Gwent Police headquarters that a number of bones had been found in a
02:29fire at Wentwood Forest near Newport and there were suspicious circumstances and they asked me to attend.
02:41Wentwood, 353 hectares of ancient woodland, 50 miles north of Newport, popular with campers and rich with wildlife.
02:50It wasn't unusual to find remains of illicit campfires and animal bones.
02:58I made my way up into the forest and eventually come upon the area.
03:06It was quite small really, it's an area of two and a half metres square with a few logs piled
03:14on top.
03:17At the front of it was what appeared to be half a skull, well burnt.
03:25These charred bones didn't look like animal remains, but there was no reason to suspect they were human.
03:35We had no reports of any vulnerable missing persons that we suspected it could be.
03:42We had absolutely no idea.
03:46Examining it in the dark was a definite no-no.
03:52Now dealing with a potential crime scene, police sealed off the area and organised for a full examination at first
04:00light.
04:16I got there between seven and eight o'clock in the morning to secure and preserve the evidence.
04:23In daylight it still wasn't clear if a crime had been committed,
04:27but it was essential to make sure evidence wasn't disturbed or contaminated.
04:32We erected a scene tent over the area to protect everything and that was my priority.
04:41And the most urgent question was, were these fragments of skull and bones human?
04:48The police surgeon said that in her opinion it was a human skull, which was quite incredible.
04:57The small forest fire had become a crime scene.
05:02Knowing they were dealing with human remains, forensics identified and collected every fragment of bone they could find in the
05:09ashes.
05:11The one obvious thing was, there wasn't a whole body there.
05:19To see that sort of thing is unusual.
05:22There were an awful lot of pieces missing and that's where the police work comes in.
05:31So what we decided was that we would grid off the scene tent into 50 centimetre squares.
05:40To have any chance of piecing together what had happened, they needed to painstakingly search every millimetre of every grid.
05:48They knew they didn't have a whole body, so they couldn't risk missing the tiniest fragment of what was left.
05:55Parts from the head would be in one place, parts from the feet would be in a different area.
06:01So you get a consistency to see a bit of the picture of how the body had been lying when
06:07it was burnt.
06:11There were a number of teeth in amongst all the bones.
06:15In total, we found 343 fragments of bone.
06:21We had no idea who the person is.
06:26We didn't even know whether it was male or female.
06:30And that's where pathology was crucial.
06:33Police needed to urgently identify the remains.
06:36If this was murder, the person responsible was on the loose.
06:41The teeth were sent to a forensic odontologist.
06:44A process that can only come up with a match if the person is registered with a dentist.
06:50But the bone fragments could be looked at immediately in the mortuary.
07:00When we're working with these bodies to establish the cause of death and how a crime has been committed,
07:07we always, always treat them with utmost care and respect.
07:13The small, smouldering fire and its gruesome contents raised a multitude of questions.
07:20Was it one person? Were they male or female?
07:23Was this a murder or could it have been a tragic accident?
07:26And could the bones be identified?
07:32Large parts of the body were missing, the torso, for example.
07:37Even though these fragments represented only 5 to 10% of a full body,
07:41it was still thought they'd come from only one individual,
07:45particularly as they were found all together in a single area.
07:51DNA profiling was in the very early stages of development back in 1996.
07:57So that couldn't be used to find an identity.
08:00But what pathology could see was that most of the bone fragments found in the fire amazingly came from just
08:07one bone in the body,
08:09the femur or thigh bone.
08:12So why were there so many pieces?
08:15It could have been repeated blunt force trauma, someone or something literally smashing the bones apart.
08:23But that would have produced telltale impact points and specific patterning.
08:28Now this fracturing looked as though it was due to expansion, due to heat.
08:33A heat intense enough to fracture the densest bone in the body shows that an accelerant must have been used.
08:40But what hadn't been destroyed offered a complex opportunity to find answers.
08:48The femur, though splintered, could be put back together again.
08:53And I know from personal experience that this is a long and painstaking process that takes many, many hours.
09:04The fact was that these fragments of femur were found in a small remote fire with no signs of the
09:10rest of the body.
09:12With the femur now intact, we can estimate the height of the person.
09:17Because the femur is around 25.7% of the height of a man and 25.4% of the
09:23height of a woman.
09:25Pathology could confirm that the bones found in the fire belong to a man or a woman between 5 foot
09:3211 and 6 foot 1.
09:36For the police, it was minimal, but it was their first lead.
09:40They started searching for their needle in a haystack, checking missing persons for anyone of that height.
09:48My name is Mark Sutton, Detective Sergeant at Newport.
09:53The incident room was set up on the Sunday, and there were around about 50 officers working on the case
10:04at that time.
10:06We didn't have any idea who this person was, so we were just making inquiries on foot around the area.
10:16Back at the forest clearing, forensics were still poring over the crime scene.
10:20Despite the use of petrol on the fire, it hadn't burnt long enough to destroy everything.
10:27One of the significant finds was a little Robinson's marmalade badge.
10:34Quite an unusual thing.
10:35There were also a set of keys and some of the little bits and pieces, a watch strap, a watch
10:43face.
10:44On the keys, there was a legend saying, my body's my own, but I'm prepared to share it, which was
10:53quite interesting and quite unique.
10:57As police gathered this evidence, forensics found something that would change the nature of the whole investigation.
11:03We found an actual bullet head that was in very good condition, 9mm, about 3 metres from the main fire
11:15scene.
11:16And it wasn't the only one. Another spent bullet was also found in the ashes.
11:21As this evidence was sent to a specialist ballistics lab, police turned to the media for help.
11:31My name is Penny Roberts and I was chief reporter at BBC Wales for many years.
11:36I remember this case really clearly because it was so unusual, but we followed it very, very closely.
11:47Today at a press conference, detectives revealed that some personal items were recovered from the fire.
11:53This body is so badly charred that some of the smaller bones of the body, the scene of crime people
12:01yesterday at the scene, had a terribly difficult job in picking them up before they disintegrated.
12:10And about 12 o'clock lunchtime, the phone started ringing.
12:15We had two phone calls in particular from two individuals who both said that they thought it belonged to their
12:22boyfriend named Tyrone France.
12:28They hadn't seen him for a few days.
12:31A short while after the phone call from the two ladies, a third call came in from a gentleman who
12:40again identified the badge as belonging to Tyrone France.
12:44And he said he was one of the last people to have seen Tyrone France.
12:53The next action that was done was that the keys that were found in the ashes of the fire were
13:01taken to the last known address of Tyrone France.
13:14So we were more or less clear at that time, yep, that this is Tyrone France.
13:23Finally, the police had a name and it was a name they knew.
13:29Tyrone was quite a well-known character within Newport.
13:33He was a local minor drug dealer and, you know, was well-liked.
13:40Even though Tyrone had been in trouble with the police in the past, this was on a different level.
13:47Police now believe that he was a victim of murder.
13:50But they still had no positive ID from the human remains, no motive for a murder and no suspects.
14:00They turned to his family and friends to build a full picture of who Tyrone was.
14:13There's Tyrone and me in one of our school photos.
14:20I'm Tanya Holmes and my brother is Tyrone France.
14:29He was like a little cuddly baby bear.
14:35He was just like a little baby bear.
14:43Tyrone grew up on the Isle of Wight.
14:45His mum was English and his dad was from St Vincent in the Caribbean.
14:50Well, we lived in a caravan in Yarmouth Seafront Car Park.
14:55Well, there was really nothing on the island, really.
14:58And we used to go in there and play on the fruit machines and...
15:01And that's where we all used to hang out.
15:10He was very cheeky.
15:13But when he was cheeky, they all loved him for his cheekiness.
15:17That's his little cheeky smile he's got there.
15:20That's a little cheeky smile with his little cat.
15:24But growing up in 1980s Britain, in an area where he was the only black teenager, wasn't easy.
15:32He got a hell of a lot of stick.
15:35Struggling with the prejudice he faced, he started to get into trouble with the police.
15:42Well, there was like a little fun fair and he used to work there.
15:47And just all of a sudden one night he got burnt down.
15:51So they thought they'd blame him.
15:54Because he was an easy target.
15:57Tyrone left the Isle of Wight when he was 21.
16:00First he went to Southampton, then Birmingham, before arriving in Newport in 1992.
16:07And now five years later, police suspected they'd found his remains.
16:14But without a complete body and the teeth results still not back,
16:18police still didn't have 100% proof that the body in the fire was Tyrone.
16:24Their next best lead was the caller who claimed he was the last person to see Tyrone before he disappeared.
16:31A man called Jason Preece.
16:42Myself and another officer were tasked to interview Preece as a witness.
16:47And Preece gave us a story of the fact that he was friendly with Tyrone.
16:55On the night in question, he'd been to Tyrone's house.
16:58He'd left with Tyrone at about 10pm to look for some drugs.
17:06And then gone home and that's the last time he saw him.
17:14But police had also interviewed Preece's girlfriend, who gave a different version of events.
17:20When they presented that to Preece, he made a shocking revelation involving two other men.
17:27Simon Spring and Dylan Watkins.
17:43Jason Preece told the police that he told Tyrone that they were going to pick up Spring and Watkins
17:49and they were all going to do a drug steal.
17:52He said Watkins drove the four of them to Wendorf Forest.
18:03Simon Spring had ordered Tyrone France to get out of the car.
18:08They had some sort of verbal confrontation.
18:12And then Spring drew his weapon and shot him.
18:19Then Simon Spring went over and put a second shot into him in an execution manner.
18:30Preece tried to distance himself from the fact that he didn't know this was going to happen.
18:35He thought that he was just going to, you know, work him over a little bit.
18:39In his words, not mine.
18:41It was almost a gangland killing.
18:45Preece's account of the night did sound like something from a gangster film.
18:49Watkins the driver, Spring the executioner, Preece the innocent bystander.
18:58But if there was any truth in it at all, it meant two very dangerous men were out there.
19:04It was vital police find Simon Spring and Dylan Watkins.
19:09But they didn't show up on any police file.
19:13We knew very little about them.
19:16Neither of them had any convictions.
19:19The biggest piece of information we had was that Simon Spring was a firearm certificate holder.
19:29So it was decided that we would arrest Simon Spring and Dylan Watkins.
19:42Knowing that Spring potentially had a weapon and was now their chief murder suspect, the police assembled a firearms team
19:51and prepared to raid his house.
19:55We went to Simon's house and arrested Simon and other officers who recovered three firearms from his cabinet.
20:04And one of the weapons he had was a 9mm pistol.
20:10Obviously having found 9mm shells at the scene, that was of great interest.
20:17This was potentially a huge breakthrough.
20:20Spring had a pistol that was the same bore as what was found in the fire.
20:26But that didn't mean they were fired from that gun.
20:29That had to be determined by forensics.
20:33Following the seizure of the weapon from Spring's house, it was taken directly to the forensic science laboratory.
20:42With Spring's gun being examined by ballistics, police turned their attention to Watkins, the alleged driver.
20:51Under questioning, he made a startling admission.
20:55Less than 10% of the body was recovered from the fire in the forest.
20:59Now Watkins claimed he knew where the rest was, and he offered to take the police there.
21:06Dylan Watkins took officers over towards the River Usk, where he pointed out an area where he said the body
21:15was disposed.
21:18Well, we weren't expecting anything because of the tidal flow of the River Usk.
21:24You can have a 14.5m difference between high and low tide, which is an incredible amount of water.
21:33And for those reasons, it was, I think, only about a hundred to one chance of it still being there.
21:41When we got there, we saw what looked like a log of wood.
21:47And that transpired to be a torso. It had stayed exactly where it had been thrown in, which was quite
21:54incredible.
21:56The astonishing recovery of a torso seemed to verify Watkins' story and made him a potential accessory to murder.
22:06But only pathology could confirm, beyond doubt, that this was the missing part of the body in the woods.
22:16Fortunately, the neck and the lower jaw were still intact.
22:20There was also a small section of left hip, and in total the whole torso recovered weighed about 88 pounds,
22:28or 40 kilos.
22:30The bone of the reconstituted femur, of course, showed some residual fire damage.
22:36However, there was enough bone in the femur and the hip to be able to match them together.
22:43Everybody has two hips and two femurs, but the key thing is, each one is slightly unique.
22:49And the fact the two of them fitted together so well showed that the bones from the fire and the
22:56hip from the torso were from one and the same individual.
23:04There was now scientific proof that this was one body.
23:09Pathology had substantiated the witness account, and when the dental records finally came back, a positive ID was finally made.
23:19Tyrone, France.
23:22The Welsh Police.
23:24So they come round and just said, is...
23:28..is Mrs Holmes there? I went, yep.
23:31I said, well, you better come in then, ain't ya? They come in.
23:33I said, oh, we've got some news to tell you that Tyrone France has been murdered.
23:42And then it come on the telly.
23:45Murder Squad detectives have identified the man whose charred remains were discovered at a beauty spot in South Wales.
23:51Tyrone France was well known to police in Newport as a drugs user, but they say there's no clear motive
23:57yet for the killing.
24:00It was a shock.
24:03Shock. We didn't believe it.
24:08The mum was devastated because that was her baby, Roy.
24:26Police had identified their victim, but they had no motive.
24:31There was no clear picture of what had happened apart from one extraordinary account of that night.
24:38Now the police had all three suspects in custody.
24:42It was vital for investigators to get to the truth in order to press the right charges against the right
24:49person.
24:50Detective Sergeant Mark Sutton questioned Spring, the alleged shooter, first.
24:55He gave us some story about where he'd been on Friday night.
25:00But we do ask him the direct question, did you murder Tyrone France?
25:09Which he denied.
25:11With Spring refusing to say anything further, police began to question Dylan Watkins, the driver who helped dispose of the
25:20torso.
25:22Watkins said that he felt that Spring was going to assault Tyrone.
25:27He did not believe that he was going to kill him.
25:30He outlined the fact that he did kill him.
25:36He shot him.
25:40He said Spring then forced Watkins at gunpoint to make a bonfire.
25:45He went to the car, got some petrol.
25:49And Jason Priest poured it over the body and set light ahead.
25:56According to Watkins' statement, they dropped Preece at his flat, then returned to the bonfire.
26:09Back at the woods, they were confronted by the half-burned body of Tyrone.
26:14Despite it being a raging fire, the body wasn't going anywhere.
26:20And they decided that they would wrap the body in a wet carpet and take it to the river Ursk.
26:32Where Spring took the body out of the back of Watkins' car and threw it in the river Ursk.
26:39And then he drove off and went home.
26:44Police had now interviewed Jason Priest, Dylan Watkins and Simon Spring in connection with the murder of Tyrone France.
26:54Spring had denied killing Tyrone, but Watkins and Priest both said that Spring had shot him.
27:05But Watkins had also admitted starting the fire under duress.
27:11And had claimed Priest was the one who put Tyrone's body on the fire.
27:17It was crucial that investigators looked into this group and their backgrounds
27:22to separate fact from fiction and work out who had killed Tyrone.
27:27Not surprisingly, the police were very wary of the stories being trotted out by Priest and by Watkins,
27:34because it was pretty clear that they were trying to point the finger at Spring so they would be absolved
27:41of blame.
27:44Parentic psychologist Dr. Catherine Williams has combed this case for insight into the way the men behaved that night.
27:52So I think we've got group dynamics here. They're all playing off each other.
27:57In some cases like this, we see behaviours that happen in groups that may not have happened if that person
28:05was alone.
28:06So what that might mean is that we start agreeing with other people's values, beliefs, or the way that they
28:12behave,
28:12or the way that they think, in order to keep harmony and stabilisation in the group.
28:16And this is what we call groupthink.
28:18So I think in this case, we see evidence of that, that the fact that they were in a group
28:24kind of grew the values and beliefs and behaviours
28:29to a point where things start to become louder and louder and louder until it can lead to something like
28:35murder.
28:37When police first looked into the backgrounds of all three men, they found nothing that would suggest they were capable
28:43of the gangland-style killing in Wentwood Forest.
28:47The police didn't have much on all three of them.
28:50Jason Priest was the only one with a criminal record.
28:53And he'd actually been a soldier in the past, but he'd been dishonourably discharged for insubordination and getting into lots
29:01of fights.
29:02But now was actually training to be a TV repairman.
29:07Now, Dylan Watkins was pretty average as well.
29:10He was an electrician. He fitted CCTV, lived with his mum and dad.
29:15He was in the year below Spring in school.
29:19Simon Spring was a very, very complex character.
29:23You know, someone who was described as a very ordinary kid in school.
29:27Now, on the face of it, he was a very devoted family man.
29:31He was living with his common-law wife and they had a young son together.
29:35He was just two years old.
29:37But as police dug deeper, a much darker side of Spring began to emerge.
29:42Spring had an obsession and that obsession was guns.
29:47Just two months before the murder, he gets a gun licence and borrows £2,000 and goes out and buys
29:55three guns.
29:56He also liked to pretend that he was an enforcer for a very shadowy gang called The Firm.
30:03Certainly, Simon Spring seemed to be quite paranoid.
30:07He thought that Tyrone France was stalking him.
30:10He said that he'd been shot at.
30:13There's no evidence for that, but that's exactly what he believed.
30:19Witness statements and the psychological insight were now all pointing the finger at Spring being the prime suspect.
30:27So, when it comes to Spring, we are seeing somebody who, on paper, kind of looks like this average guy.
30:34Then he kind of has this persona who he lives, almost lives a separate life.
30:41So, this is a hitman who is working for someone called The Firm.
30:45This doesn't necessarily mean psychosis.
30:48What this suggests is that he has his usual life and then he has this other version of self, which
30:55is maybe a little bit more powerful, a little bit more intimidating and perhaps a little bit more scary.
31:03But did Spring follow through with his hitman fantasies and kill Tyrone France?
31:09Police hoped pathology could confirm Watkins and Preece's claim that Tyrone had been shot dead.
31:17When the badly burnt torso was examined in the mortary, it told an amazing story.
31:23There were two small holes, typical of gunshot entry wounds, and each nine millimetres in diameter.
31:30But were they really bullet wounds?
31:34Internally, the pathologist was able to establish one partial and one complete wound track.
31:43One wound track is quite clear.
31:46The bullet enters the lower back, passes up through the spinal column and the spinal cord causing paralysis.
31:54Up through the chest, through the heart, damaging the ventricles and out through the chest wall.
31:58This shot hitting the spinal column would have downed Tyrone and paralysed him.
32:06The damage this bullet track would have done to the heart would have resulted in immediate hemorrhage inside the chest.
32:12A fall in blood pressure, unconsciousness and death would have followed very quickly.
32:20In their statements, both Preece and Watkins described two shots.
32:24The first into Tyrone's back, and the second from point-blank range, fired when he was on the floor.
32:33Thanks to an extensive post-mortem examination, the evidence from the body almost perfectly matched the executions described by Preece
32:43and Watkins to the police.
32:46So a killing that seemed more like a fanciful description of a scene from a Hollywood movie turned out to
32:54be true.
32:58Now, the only outstanding question was who pulled the trigger.
33:04The forensic science laboratory did a comparison between the bullet that was recovered from the scene and the weapon,
33:13and they were able to categorically say that that bullet had been fired by Spring's weapon.
33:19Police charged Spring with murder, but the actions of Preece and Watkins also put them on a murder charge.
33:38I remember very clearly that there were boxes and boxes of evidence piled up on the benches in the courtroom,
33:46because, as you can imagine, there was loads of evidence in this case,
33:50a lot of forensic evidence, a lot of witness evidence.
33:54At the trial, all three men denied murder, but Spring did admit manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility,
34:02and the court heard his version of what happened that night.
34:19He said they had gone to Wentwood and gathered together the wood ready for a fire,
34:29which is preparation and premeditation, knowing that this is an out-of-the-way location,
34:36and that they're unlikely to be disturbed there.
34:43He said when they got to this very secluded spot, he got out a handgun, shot Tyrone France twice.
35:00And then Watkins took the petrol out of the back of his vehicle, poured it over the body in the
35:09wood,
35:10and Preece then ignited the petrol.
35:17The brutality of it.
35:19Not the sort of thing we expect to happen in peaceful Gwent.
35:24In court, Spring was described as having a depressive illness,
35:28and he himself claimed he was paranoid, but no clear motive for the killing was established.
35:35He was found guilty of murder, along with Preece. Both received a life sentence.
35:41Watkins was sentenced to seven years for manslaughter.
35:45The jurors had deliberated for ten hours over three days,
35:49and when the forewoman finally read out the guilty verdicts, the victim's family broke down.
35:54What would your reaction be for the jurors, son?
35:57Life should be life, not out in 18 to 20 years. It should be life.
36:01Sentencing Spring and Preece to life imprisonment,
36:04the judge, Mr Justice Curtis, said they'd committed a brutal and pitiless murder.
36:09Mr Justice Curtis, and I can remember this very clearly indeed,
36:14he turned to the three and said this was a very cold and calculated murder.
36:20And he said it exposed the dark underbelly, in his words,
36:24of the drugs and gangs culture that existed in Newport at that time.
36:28Actually, if you look carefully at the history of this crime
36:32and these men themselves, it's a lot more than that.
36:35These three men, and in particular Simon Spring,
36:39seemed to be just living out their fantasies as enforcers,
36:43as macho hard men who worked for shadowy organisations.
36:53This case was challenging and complex,
36:56and started with the chilling discovery of some fragments of bones
37:00found in a small fire in a forest.
37:06By painstakingly reconstructing the femur,
37:09with shards taken from the 343 separate bone fragments,
37:14pathology was able to give the first important description of the body.
37:18It gave their size.
37:21Also, the pathologist was able to match the tossed away torso
37:25to the other bones and teeth, which confirmed Tyrone's identity.
37:31Finally, pathology proved that the cause of death was a bullet wound to the heart.
37:37In fact, pathology proved that France was executed in exactly the way described by Spring's accomplices.
37:47Tragically, these fantasies they had, these images of themselves as being tough enforcers, led to the death.
37:57The execution, and it was an execution, of Tyrone France.
38:09It was horrific, but they never had any remorse in any of them.
38:22All the papers that we were interested in was that he was a drug dealer, a womaniser.
38:31He was charming, he was bubbly, he always had a smile on his face,
38:37and that's how he got his nickname Baby Bear.
39:06There is a Steph called a
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