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00:00This is BBC Radio Wales.
00:05Monday the 6th of April, this is Good Morning Wales with Beth Andres Roberts and Oliver Hines.
00:23A lorry driver had pulled off the M4 and parked under an overpass
00:29and he looked at the abankment and he saw this black suitcase.
00:35At which he thought at the time had fallen off a roof rack of a car
00:39passing on the M4 westbound above the bridge.
00:43Curiosity got the better of him and he went to have a look at it.
00:49He unzipped the top of the suitcase a few inches to look inside.
00:56He thought it might be a mannequin.
01:00He opened the suitcase a little bit more.
01:05And immediately saw a white hand and hair that was matted in blood.
01:12And it was obviously that the body then was that of a young lady.
01:22When a murder's committed, it's always a race against time to find the truth,
01:28to separate fact from fiction, to catch the killer and to make sure that justice is served.
01:36But what if the truth disappears when the victim dies?
01:41I'm Dr. Richard Shepard and I've spent my whole career as a forensic pathologist,
01:46performing over 23,000 autopsies.
01:50I've learned that the dead don't hide the truth and they never lie.
01:56With the aid of a state-of-the-art laboratory and using ground-breaking technology,
02:01I'll be investigating a series of appalling crimes
02:05and examining the trail of evidence left behind on the victim's bodies
02:09to reveal the truth behind their murder.
02:14My mother and her son of a friend were looking to find the truth behind her.
02:43the whole of south wales at about eight o'clock on monday morning i was starting the week with
02:49a with a briefing reviewing what we'd done on the weekend setting our plan for the week
02:54the lorry driver who discovered the suitcase had called 999 a colleague stopped me in my tracks
03:01and said that a bodybuilding girl had been found at the side of the m4 motorway the location was
03:0820 miles away halfway between cardiff and swansea so we stopped everything we were doing at the
03:16time and immediately attended at the location the immediate consideration then is to preserve
03:24that scene so that we can extract as much evidence as we possibly can my name is penny roberts
03:34i was working as the chief news reporter at bbc wells when the call came in and i really remember
03:40the buzz in the newsroom a body possibly that of a young woman had been found in a suitcase just
03:47off
03:47the m4 it was so shocking it hardly seemed to be true at the scene forensic officers examined the
03:56suitcases contents it was horrific we discovered um two black bags bin liners inside the suitcase one had
04:07been placed over the body's head and the other over her feet and she'd also been wrapped in a pink
04:13suit
04:14carrier the embankment was declared a major crime scene one so serious the entire area was locked down
04:29and i made a decision to close the m4 westbound police have found a body the grim discovery was
04:36made this morning just off the m4 near portcourt officers closed two lanes of this motorway just
04:42after nine to carry out their investigations after a forensic sweep the unknown woman's body was released
04:48for urgent post-mortem investigation the hunt to track down who had done this was on
04:59the post-mortem well the post-mortem is critical because ultimately the post-mortem provides evidence
05:04an opportunity to gather evidence which links the killer with the body so it's an absolute essential
05:12component of of any murder investigation when the body is brought to the mortary no matter what the
05:22circumstances of the death at this stage our job is always the same to find or verify who the deceased
05:30is and to look for evidence of how they died police urgently needed to identify the young woman in the
05:38suitcase but a tightly wrapped body left decaying outside created extra challenges the suitcase was
05:47medium-sized the sort that's just a little too big to be used as hand luggage the body inside it
05:53was
05:53very slight five foot one weighing six stones and doubled up to fit inside the suitcase it was not
06:01immediately obvious how long she'd been there but it appeared she'd been there for about six days
06:08the woman found in the suitcase had undergone a terrible beating which you could see on the skin but
06:14also in the muscles deep in the face around the eyes on the forehead and around the mouth suggesting
06:20severe trauma inflicted by a heavy instrument or by punching and kicking the body seemed to have been
06:29cleaned and when it was removed by the mortary staff it was found to be in a pink garment bag
06:37the sort of
06:38bag that's used for a dress or a suit so the question remained who was she and what led to
06:47her being
06:47callously discarded beside a busy motorway
07:01several days before the body was found senior investigating officer dorian lloyd had been brought
07:07to cockett police station to work on a missing person case police in swansea had growing concerns
07:13for the safety of a young woman who had not been seen for three days local detectives from swansea had
07:20been working diligently on the case throughout the course of the week an awful lot of work had been
07:26done witnesses had been spoken to statements were being taken some research had been undertaken as well
07:33the missing person was 24 year old kirstie wilkinson last seen leaving a swansea nightclub
07:42kirstie had been reported missing by her husband paul grabham on monday the 30th of march
07:50he hadn't seen kirstie since the previous friday so local police officers attended at the home address
07:59made a cursory search of the flatten and found nothing untoward and a missing person inquiry then
08:06was launched to try and find kirstie
08:10someone else with growing concerns for kirstie was her mother kathy
08:15she hadn't heard from her daughter since the day she went missing a little girl little cursed princess
08:27kirstie went out on the friday night with her friends she hung around with this group there was
08:34just a big group of friends and um she she was going out with them on this friday night
08:44and she felt sorry for paul and phoned him up and says would you like to join us
08:52and she took him into town as well bought him some new clothes to go to nightclub with her
09:02and every day she got in touch with me whether by text or a phone call
09:08and when i didn't hear from her on the saturday i thought she's had a good night she may be
09:14a bit
09:15hungover that's why she's not phone
09:21clearly the police were concerned because in many cases of missing persons they wait a little bit longer
09:27before beginning an investigation but they started an investigation here almost immediately
09:34the inquiry was put into a high gear police officers began working around the clock
09:41throughout the course of that week a number of officers with different specialisms from different
09:46departments uh became involved in that in kirstie's missing person inquiry
09:51and because of the concern around her safety and her welfare and the fact that she hadn't been seen
09:56i had real concerns about kirstie's safety
10:02we invited her husband paul grabham in because at that point he hadn't given a formal statement
10:10the two of them had been drinking quite heavily in swansea city center and paul grabham said he was
10:15very drunk and that he'd gone home and that was the last time he'd seen kirstie because he'd fallen asleep
10:22later on he said he realized that she wasn't there and she'd taken things from the flat things that
10:29she would need if she'd left him handbag money clothes that sort of thing
10:37kirstie had last been spotted in the early hours of saturday the 28th of march
10:45on the wednesday after she went missing there was money withdrawn from kirstie's account
10:53i was praying to god it was kirstie i was praying it was kirstie it took it out
11:00she's still alive she's using a card but as the clock ticked fears mounted and then police received
11:08the 999 call from the lorry driver police searching for a missing woman from swansea have discovered a
11:28body in the abridge end
11:28the investigation team suspected this was kirstie but other factors suggested it might not be her
11:35including rumors of another woman who had disappeared a woman of the same description as kirstie had gone
11:42missing around the same time it seems so incredible the fact that the body had been found 20 miles from
11:50kirstie's home also added doubts we were unsure how that could be kirstie because it's very rare for a
11:57body to be moved that distance um after a murder rare but not impossible pathology revealed that the
12:07body's build age and hair color matched that of kirstie but there was only one way to prove it was
12:14her
12:16when identity is uncertain loved ones relatives friends even are called in to identify the body
12:24it's a harrowing thing to ask a family to do to identify the body of a loved one
12:30but particularly when it's under such circumstances and particularly uh when it's as a result of um of a
12:37murder
12:40and in this case the awful job fell to kirstie's mum you can only imagine how horrific that would have
12:47been for her
12:51kirstie blonde hair angel that's my kirstie
13:00i was just praying it wasn't her but i didn't want it to be anybody else's daughter
13:05you know it was so hard she looked like something out of a horror movie
13:15broken nose broken jaw
13:19they'd washed her hair but there was still blood in it on the left hand side and
13:27it just didn't look like my little girl and i went that's not cursed
13:32i said that's not kirstie it didn't look like kirstie all the features had changed dramatically
13:40it didn't look like her
13:44so it was only her eyebrows that i was able to recognize the shape of them that's all
13:55i couldn't even cry i was in so much shock i didn't scream i didn't cry i went to kiss
14:02and they went
14:03she's a piece of evidence don't do that i meant no she's not evidence she's my baby
14:14a body found in woodland yesterday was this afternoon formally identified as the 24 year old
14:19who disappeared 10 days ago a missing person inquiry now changed to a murder inquiry pathology revealed
14:28her to be the victim of a brutal assault and the perpetrator was still out there it was evident
14:36to the police that a killing had taken place but they had to find out the cause of death
14:43pinpointing the cause of death can be vital in revealing clues that lead you to who's responsible
14:50in this case because kirstie had been dead for some time and because the sheer extent of her injuries
14:57it was difficult to identify a single cause of death but from the distribution of the injuries and the
15:05extent of the bruising we can tell this was a violent vicious and prolonged attack
15:12the blood in her hair was a sign of a scalp injury and a possible fractured skull
15:19the skull can be as thick as 10 millimeters in places so any fracture requires considerable force
15:27when the specialist examination of the brain was performed it was found that there was a mild degree
15:33injury of traumatic axonal injury this occurs when the brain is shaken inside the skull
15:40and the nerves are twisted and stretched and that could have happened when cursed his head was hit
15:47against the surface or it could have happened if you had struck a blow by a heavy implement whatever the
15:54implement used the injuries it caused probably wouldn't have killed kirstie so we must start to look for
16:02another possible cause of death and around the neck there are multiple small fingertip bruises
16:10typical of forceful compression and strangulation inside the throat damage to the larynx showed evidence
16:20of extreme external pressure on cursed his neck but there was no evidence of a fracture
16:29but a small bone sitting at the base of the tongue at the top of the larynx the adam's apple
16:34had a story to tell
16:37it's called the hyoid and it's an extremely important little bone providing attachments for the muscles
16:44of swallowing and speaking in fact of all tongue movements so in cases of extreme pressure to the neck
16:52this delicate little bone can be fractured and that's exactly what was found in cursed his case
17:01so what was the cause of death it was twofold severe blunt force injury to the head and strangulation
17:15how kirstie died was really important to the police and to the people who were going to present the case
17:22if it came to trial she'd been battered and then she'd been strangled it was a real explosion of violence
17:31armed with the cause of death police now needed to speak to friends and family to build up a picture
17:37of who kirstie was this could help them find out who had had the motive and the opportunity to harm
17:45her
17:50she was um four pound eight ounces she should have been five pound three ounces for me to take her
17:59home
18:00but they actually let me take her home i said i feel like i won the lottery she's gorgeous
18:08yes i just couldn't stop kissing her and hugging her so such a happy mom
18:19she always loved pink always loved pink
18:26this is a little bonnet that kirstie wore when she was discharged from hospital after i gave birth
18:34that's what she wore yeah i'm a little pink princess
18:42she had two sisters hayley who was just 16 months older and sonia who was eight years older
18:56you'd never seen such close sisters in all your life
19:04kirstie could be a handful i would never deny that but there again she was like me she was soft
19:12-hearted and
19:14tried to be a people pleaser
19:23by the time kirstie was 24 she was working as a glamour model and one day she surprised kathy with
19:32a shock announcement
19:38kirstie was in a relationship with a lad called jonathan
19:42and she sent me a message and says mom i'm marrying this guy i went what you're getting married to
19:49jonathan
19:50she said no paul i said who's this paul
20:05once we recovered the body and identified it as as as being kirstie uh we then presented that evidence
20:12um to paul grabham there was no reaction whatsoever from him quite simply he answered
20:19no comment to all questions he just just refused to speak to us paul's reaction might have been down
20:27to shock but his lack of emotion was concerning and suspicious to police little over a year earlier
20:35they had been planning their wedding
20:39oh she was over the moon we met her in swansea she was trying all these dresses on and
20:46she eventually got one it was um a bridesmaid dress actually to fit a 10 year old that she wore
20:55and she was over the moon she was like oh like i'm so happy i'm getting married
21:05to hang it up in the wardrobe she bought um do you know those covers you get to keep your
21:13suits and that clean with the zips she bought one of those in pink to put a dress in
21:21kirstie and paul became husband and wife in february 2008 but months into their marriage kathy
21:28noticed subtle changes in her once vibrant daughter she came up to see me to give me some chocolates and
21:36flowers she um she didn't look herself she looked completely different
21:46she had no makeup on her hair was tied back no tracksuit and
21:53just thinking to myself what's happening to her and when she was going poor grabber came outside the
22:04house punked the horn on kirstie's car for her to go out and she was up like a scared rabbit
22:14she basically
22:15ran you know had to stop her in the driveway to give her a cuddle and a kiss and told
22:22her that i loved her very much
22:26and she was a nervous wreck we didn't like him
22:33we discovered kirstie absolutely adored paul
22:39they were obviously very much in love although there is evidence to suggest she was fearful of him
22:46as well uh and fearful of of his temper deeper investigations had recovered letters between
22:53kirstie and paul they opened a window into a turbulent relationship what the hell is going on with us baby
23:02we're meant to be happy we love each other to death well i know i love you anyway and i
23:08think the feeling is mutual
23:13forensic psychologist dr catherine williams has studied the evidence police gathered about this volatile
23:19marriage so in this relationship we're seeing some evidence of coercive controlling behavior so this
23:26might be um having control of their movements and isolating them and controlling what friends that
23:34they see perpetrators will monitor their partners so where they're going who they're talking to how
23:40long they're there you know and and this is another form of then controlling those movements it can get to
23:47the point in coercive controlling relationships where actually the partner is controlling every aspect of their life
23:58they strangled her one night at a party they grabbed kirstie picked her up off the floor had his hands
24:07around her neck
24:08and she said she could see stars she really thought she was going to die
24:15it's like all these arguments we have are meant to happen to test us and see how much we can
24:20put up with
24:21all this shit tonight was uncalled for don't know why you went so mad there's a real contradiction in their
24:30relationship you know there were lots of loving texts between the two of them and yet on the other
24:37hand paul grabham was very aggressive he was very violent he was very jealous i mean these aren't the
24:46reactions of someone who really loves their wife kirstie has a lot of hope in that relationship
24:55actually and really loves him so after every violent outburst there tends to be a honeymoon period a
25:01cooling down period that can be lots of apologizing lots of gifts lots of holidays and dates and fun
25:08things and then you usually hit a part of the cycle where the tension starts to build again and
25:13things start to become a problem again and then boom we're at the violent outburst but then the
25:19cycle starts again you may talk to people who say but he's not always like this um or but sometimes
25:25it's lovely and those moments of sometimes it's lovely um is enough sometimes for people to stay
25:32and to hope and to love the person that's that's hurting them
25:40detectives had evidence of a dysfunctional and dangerous relationship they knew paul grabham was
25:46physically and mentally abusive towards kirstie but that alone didn't make him a killer to identify
25:53who killed kirstie police had to conclusively prove where and when she was murdered
26:10paul grabham's story didn't change throughout he said he was drunk that he'd come back to the flat in
26:17mount pleasant that they shared and crashed out on the sofa he said he didn't even hear kirstie come
26:23home because he was asleep but he left out some really crucial points about that night
26:31we know that at about 10 o'clock that night paul and kirstie went to the lataska bar in wine
26:38street
26:38and we found a witness there who remember serving her with a glass of sangria
26:43and in the sangria there was red and green apples and she drank that then they left and they went
26:48to
26:48the play nightclub but shortly after entering the club there was an argument between the two
26:57which was witnessed by many people and that resulted in paul leaving the club on it on his own and
27:02catching a taxi home to roseville terrace what we now know is that um kirstie stayed on in the club
27:10with her friends and at 3 21 am she called a taxi from york street in swansea over to a
27:17friend's
27:17house in port tenant and they begged her to stay with them
27:24only minutes later she caught another taxi back home because i think she probably felt guilty and
27:32she wanted to go home to be with paul and one of those friends even asked kirstie to send her
27:39a text
27:39to say she was safe and she did and that was the last time anyone heard from kirstie wilkinson
27:56police now turned to pathology to pinpoint a precise time of death because that could be the key to
28:04working out where she had died and crucially who had killed her a friend of kirstie's said she'd eaten
28:12an apple or part of an apple about 10 o'clock the previous evening when she'd had a drink
28:17when the pathologist performed the examination they found portions of apple about halfway through the
28:24small bowel in the jejunum and that fits very well indeed with kirstie dying between three and four
28:31o'clock the following morning this time of death matched precisely with the hour after the taxi
28:39dropped kirstie at the flat which suggested this was the murder site with only grabberman kirstie inside
28:47police had no eyewitnesses but others had heard something the police went to talk to neighbors they
28:55lived in the flat below them and they described how they heard someone screaming but they said it
29:01sounded like someone screaming with a hand across their mouth and then that was followed by some
29:11banging sounds some thud sounds and then it became even more concerning in that what they then went on to
29:18describe uh hearing was a heavy object being dragged across the path from paul and kirstie's flat
29:26but was there any evidence on kirstie's body to corroborate the neighbor's account and shed light
29:34on what they had heard looking at kirstie's torso there was a long thin incised wound across her lower back
29:44there was something quite interesting about this incision its position its relative lack of depth
29:51and its lack of bleeding all pointed to the fact that it had been caused after death and in my
29:58opinion
29:59this injury is typical of a failed attempt at dismemberment this might well have been accounted
30:06for by the fact that kirstie was placed into the bath where the attempted dismemberment took place
30:12the injury caused was such a fine line suggesting a thin edge blade like a kitchen knife
30:21with this gruesome evidence of a failed dismemberment from pathology police believed the killing had taken
30:28place in the flat but in custody paul grabham was saying nothing and local officers hadn't discovered
30:36any evidence of a crime on their first visit to the flat
30:40so police brought in a specialist to take a closer look my name is claire morse i'm a senior forensic
30:47scientist and i have been since 2001. the police had carried out a cursory search in the flat before
30:55i'd arrived so they're not necessarily going to be looking for those small areas of blood staining that
31:01that i'm going to be looking for when i entered that room i could see that there were a few
31:07small
31:08blood stains on the wall to the left we also use a strong white light to look for any stains
31:13that may
31:14be present i could see that they were on the floor i could trace them around the room effectively
31:21so i was able to search that wall quite quite easily and determine that there was an a pattern of
31:26blood
31:26staining on that wall which would indicate there'd been an impact into something that was wet with
31:30blood that was on the floor which could well be kirstie herself and i could see that there was a
31:36patch of what looked like newly painted ceiling
31:40you could see underneath that white paint that there were darker marks and we could then see that
31:45there was what looked like spots of blood underneath that paint we chemically tested those
31:52it confirmed to us that it was blood staining we also searched every other room of the flats we
31:58found blood in the hallway we found blood in the bathroom dilute blood certainly on the taps in the
32:02bathroom the dna profiling results that we had from the blood staining that we tested at the scene gave
32:08dna profiles matching that of kirstie so that indicates to us that her blood is present
32:15statements from neighbors placed an argument in the flat between three and four a.m these statements plus
32:22the vital new forensic evidence made police certain that kirstie was killed in the flat and the killer
32:29had tried to cover up the crime scene that killer they believed was paul grabham
32:38well the fact that we'd found a blood scene inside the flat was critical we could then prove that
32:45there'd been a sustained attack upon kirstie
32:55forensic scientists also found minute traces of kirstie's blood on paul grabham's clothes
33:03but to make a watertight case they had to prove grabham had moved kirstie's body 20 miles to the underpass
33:10at
33:10saan through analysis of paul grabham's personal mobile phone we were able to prove that at 10 30 a.m
33:20on tuesday the 31st of march his phone was in the lane where kirstie's body had been abandoned paul had
33:29received a text and sent the text from that location uh at that time so that was critical evidence
33:37paul grabham arrived at swansea magistrates court this morning after being charged with the murder of his wife kirstie
33:58at trial grabham continued to plead not guilty the atmosphere in court was really charged
34:07in this case because it was such a horrific murder grabham's behavior in court never changed he showed
34:18absolutely no emotion nothing flickered across his face but the case against grabham was compelling
34:26his story utterly unraveled thanks to the police investigation forensic evidence and crucially the
34:34pathology pathology pathology was able to show that true to previous form grabham had attempted to
34:43strangle kirstie using enough force to break her hyoid bone but that alone didn't kill her
34:50it was it was at some point during this fight that grabham who was six foot one to kirstie's slight
34:57five foot one and six stone frame delivered such devastating blows that caused the fatal head injury
35:06following this kirstie was dragged to the bath where grabham put that incised injury across her back
35:12before putting her in the pink garment bag and then into the suitcase
35:19on the fourth of february 2010 grabham was found guilty of cursed his murder and jailed for life
35:28i remember very clearly mr justice butterfield when grabham was in the dock and he was being sentenced
35:35by the judge he said you know i've looked at you throughout the trial and i've not seen a flicker
35:41of remorse cross your face he said you know only a year before grabham had promised to love and
35:48cherish kirstie but actually what he'd done was kill her in the most appalling terrible way
35:56and left her with no dignity at all
36:04one of the great tragedies of this case is that paul grabham wrapped thirsty's body in the actual carrier
36:11that her wedding dress had been kept in and had been preserved in which was a particularly uh
36:17uh agonizing um revelation
36:24it just shows me what psycho he actually was and how unstable and horrid
36:34it affects every member of your family especially your close family
36:41like your grandchildren your other children
36:48she had two sisters they really loved each other
36:53i mean hayley just couldn't she says to me i feel like a part of me has been ripped away
37:04mom she says i feel like half of me is missing i can't live without my little sister
37:11and she started drinking really heavily
37:16she died in my arms and was grave hospital in coventry
37:26two of them gone far too young
37:34so
37:47so
37:48so
38:17Transcription by CastingWords
38:20CastingWords
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