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00:03I'm Steve Keogh, a former Scotland Yard murder detective inspector.
00:08I'm going to take you deep inside murder investigations,
00:13opening my contacts book for the first time
00:17to reveal the secrets of what it really takes to be a murder detective,
00:21on the front line, exposing how we solve the most heinous of crimes.
00:31Welcome to Secrets of a Murder Detective.
00:41The murder of Mohammed Arshad in July 2009
00:44was one of West Mercy's most challenging cases.
00:48I'm going to be meeting the senior investigating officer on the case
00:50to reveal what really happened, the pressures, the setbacks
00:53and the methods in the investigation that brought the killer to justice.
00:57My name is Sheila Thorns. I'm a retired police officer.
01:01I was a detective superintendent senior investigating officer
01:05with West Mercy Police.
01:07This case particularly was one of the ones that stand out and can react
01:11because of the emotions involved with the family.
01:15Hi, Sheila. Lovely to meet you.
01:16Hi.
01:21Sheila, the case we're going to talk about today is from July 2009.
01:25What were you doing back then?
01:26Mainly homicides, but there were other things like serious armed robberies
01:30and that type of thing.
01:33Serious and organised crime to some extent.
01:35So, a call came in, in July,
01:39and when was the first time that you would have heard it?
01:42I got a call at about quarter to one in the morning
01:45to tell me there'd been an incident,
01:47but that West Midlands at that time were handling it.
01:50I was informed about a man who'd been stabbed.
01:52It was a man called Mohamed Arshad.
01:58A 36-year-old taxi driver from Selly Oak.
02:03What we established was that a phone call was made
02:06from a phone box in Money Hall Hall Road
02:10by a man calling himself Peter,
02:13asking to be picked up at Broadmeadow School,
02:17and Arshad was the one that took that fare,
02:20and that was his last fare.
02:24The man's body was actually found in Wasthills Lane,
02:27which is just over the border in West Mercia's area.
02:29What sort of things were going through your mind
02:31at that very, very early stage?
02:34It became apparent that a lot of the investigation
02:36was going to be done in West Midlands Police area,
02:40and I'm not that familiar with West Midlands Police area,
02:43so I had to learn very quickly where we were looking at
02:45and get to the scenes,
02:46so I could understand the relationship between the scenes.
02:51So it was that apprehension about a little bit
02:54of unknown territory, if you want.
02:56I didn't know the territory I was going into.
02:59Now, you're an experienced murder investigator,
03:02senior investigating officer.
03:03You cannot replicate actually going there, can you?
03:06Exactly.
03:07And you cannot do anything but photographs.
03:11You can't lead an investigation if you don't know what you're dealing with.
03:16If there's one thing that I learned as a murder investigator,
03:19it's the importance of you going to a crime scene,
03:25entering it to see through your own eyes what it says.
03:29You almost live it, you breathe it, you smell it.
03:33Now, you can look at photographs, you can look at a video,
03:36but it is never, ever going to replicate you going there,
03:39standing in a crime scene and just taking in what you see,
03:44reading the scene, trying to see if you yourself can interpret
03:48what happened, how the victim died.
03:53Later that day, I went to the scene.
03:56Well, it was a country lane and it was a summer's day.
03:59The car, where the car had been abandoned,
04:02was about a mile down the road.
04:04That was on a residential estate
04:06and it had been reported as a 999 call
04:10by a passing motorist who reported a suspicious incident,
04:14a vehicle being driven erratically,
04:16and he thought it was fly-tipping.
04:18He saw the vehicle driving erratically in the road
04:23and what he described as a male driver,
04:26but he was unsure of the ethnicity of the driver.
04:29But he said he looked angry and that he had gritted teeth
04:35and just eventually turned round and drove off.
04:38But when he looked at the side of the road,
04:40he saw the body and,
04:42or saw a man in the side of the road badly injured,
04:45called 999, police and ambulance attended,
04:49and the scene then became, um, well, the car,
04:55the taxi that the victim was driving
04:58was found abandoned about a mile away
05:00and in the locked position.
05:03So the main priority was to tend to the victim,
05:07get him to hospital.
05:09But, unfortunately, he died later during the night.
05:17You went to the scene where the man's body had been found.
05:22Describe that to us.
05:23It's a country lane.
05:24Um, it's overgrown.
05:26There's no...
05:26The nearest house is quite a way away.
05:29Um, it's quite an isolated lane.
05:31I'm assuming no CCTV cameras there?
05:33No, there's none of that sort of evidence,
05:36but there was evidence at the scene
05:37that was found, um, fairly quickly.
05:41What was that evidence?
05:42Um, part of the knife that had been used.
05:45Um, basically the victim himself.
05:47Yeah.
05:48Obviously he had gone, he'd been sent to hospital.
05:54So when the post-mortem was conducted,
05:57what did it tell?
05:58Well, he'd been stabbed multiple times.
06:01Um, there would have been some defensive injuries
06:04because he'd been stabbed around his body and his head.
06:07So there were at least 14 stab wounds in his body,
06:10but the fatal one, uh, went through the soft part of his skull
06:14and into his head.
06:15Horrendous.
06:16There was 14 stab wounds from behind.
06:19I mean, I've investigated a lot of those.
06:2214 stab wounds is a lot.
06:25Because that goes beyond what you would need to injure someone.
06:29It goes beyond what you would need to kill someone.
06:31The taxi driver community, um, got very much involved, I think,
06:37and the victim was known because it was his car,
06:41it was his own taxi,
06:42so he was identified very, very early on.
06:46When it comes to murder investigation,
06:50one of the most important aspects of that is victimology.
06:53It's building up a picture of a victim's life
06:56so that you can try and understand if there's anyone or anything within it
06:59that would give an indication of why someone would bring harm to them.
07:02Well, the victim was Muhammad Arshad.
07:05He came over to the UK in 1991 and he was married.
07:09They had three children at that time, very young children.
07:13His wife, she was a very nice lady.
07:16They were a lovely family. They were a close family.
07:19And he didn't seem to have any enemies.
07:22He was well thought of within the community.
07:24And in fact, soon before he was murdered,
07:28he'd gone home to feed his boys and took them into bed
07:32before going back out again to do his shift at work.
07:35So what you're describing there is a hard-working family man,
07:39nothing that would potentially lead,
07:41there's an obvious reason why someone would hurt him.
07:45Absolutely nothing.
07:47Arshad's religion meant it was important they had a funeral within 24 hours.
07:51It was important to them that the funeral was held as soon as possible.
07:55So we fast-tracked the post-mortem and got that done
07:59and then approached the coroner about releasing the body.
08:03And I think the funeral was actually held within two days of his murder.
08:07We didn't know if it was a racial attack, if it was a robbery,
08:11if he'd got into a dispute with anybody.
08:14We didn't know all that at that time.
08:26Arshad was stabbed 14 times.
08:29Injuries that seemed far in excess what would be needed,
08:32for instance, if this was a robbery.
08:35What would lead a person to carry out this essentially overkill?
08:40In my experience, it tends to stem from one of three reasons.
08:44The first of those centres around where the killer is in a real emotional state,
08:49causing them to carry out this excessive amount of injuries.
08:55Secondly would be if the killer is under the influence of drugs.
09:00And finally, if the killer is suffering from severe mental illness.
09:10The next thing I'd like to us to talk about is Arshad's taxi.
09:16That was stolen, it looks like, at the time he was attacked.
09:21Well, it was actually found by the taxi-driving community.
09:26They'd heard that Arshad had been attacked and was in hospital and his car was missing.
09:33So they actually found it in Shannon Road, which is about a mile away from where the murder took place.
09:41So you went to Shannon Road to where the taxi was.
09:44Describe that for us.
09:45Well, the taxi was locked.
09:47So whoever had killed Arshad had locked the taxi and left it there.
09:52There was a couple of pound coins that were found nearby,
09:55which we presumed had come from Arshad's taxi on the footpath.
10:00There were a couple of pound coins found in the street,
10:04heading back towards Birmingham, back towards the West Midlands area,
10:09within a few feet of the car.
10:11So that gave us an indication that if a person had grabbed some coins,
10:15then he would have been travelling that direction.
10:20More importantly, the taxi drivers were still there,
10:23almost guarding the vehicle, if you like.
10:26And they were stood around.
10:27But we were a bit concerned we couldn't get in it.
10:30They couldn't get in it.
10:32So there was clearly going to be forensic evidence in and on the taxi.
10:37But what was clearly notable was a blood-stained palm print on the taxi door,
10:45on the outside, and that had to be preserved very quickly.
10:50What crime scenes had been identified?
10:53Well, there were three crime scenes at that time.
10:56There was the crime scene in Wastel's Lane where a body had been found.
11:03There was a scene where the vehicle, the taxi driver was using,
11:10was found further away.
11:12And then we identified the crime scene at the telephone kiosk
11:16where the call was made to book the taxi.
11:21The area that the body had been found in described to me
11:26the work that went on at the crime scene there.
11:28Get a search team out, search in the lane itself,
11:31both sides to the ditches,
11:33see if anything else had been dumped or disposed of.
11:39We found the knife handle in the scene
11:42where the attack happens in Wastel's Lane.
11:44And I think the blade was recovered from within the taxi.
11:50So as a senior investigating officer,
11:52you essentially have a lot of officers
11:55that would be under your control, a team of officers.
11:58How many officers would that be?
12:01The actual team that were permanently
12:03within the major investigation unit
12:05was probably about 20 people in total.
12:09But with a major investigation of that scale,
12:12where you're obviously going to be using more resources than you've got.
12:16You're bringing resources from other departments
12:18and other divisions and areas.
12:25When you arrive at a crime scene,
12:28you have to evaluate what's actually required
12:30to be done at that crime scene.
12:32And one of the main things within forensic science
12:35is something called Lockhart's principle.
12:37And Lockhart's principle is that every action,
12:40there is an exchange of material from one body to the other.
12:44Tristram Elmhurst was the Director of Forensic Services
12:47for West Mercia Constabulary.
12:49Forensic science is a great weapon in crime investigations.
12:53It's a great weapon because it will tend to try to identify
12:57who has been there.
12:59That could be through fingerprints being found at the scene.
13:02It could be DNA that's being found at the scene.
13:04It might be fibres from a woolly coat or a jacket or something like that.
13:08With the attack that occurred on Mohamed Arshad,
13:11we would expect to find wherever the assault took place
13:14for there to have been lots of his blood.
13:17Mohamed Arshad's vehicle was discovered in a place called Shannon Road.
13:22Now, that vehicle was locked.
13:24When the police arrived, there were a number of his colleagues
13:27who'd heard about this incident
13:29surrounding the vehicle.
13:31It was bad news because we couldn't get inside the vehicle.
13:35So it took us about a day
13:37before we could actually get a duplicate key to open inside it.
13:41But actually, that became very important
13:43because that meant that the people who found the vehicle originally
13:47couldn't go inside where there was a lot of blood
13:50and then contaminate inside the scene.
13:53So that actually worked very much in our favour.
13:56Investigators want to forensically examine inside a car.
13:59What will happen generally is it will get lifted on the back of a lorry
14:03and taken off to a premises where it can be forensically examined.
14:08Yes.
14:08Is that what happened with Arshad's car?
14:10Yes, we took it to the forensic garage.
14:14The ideal place to examine it, where we can do things at our own pace,
14:18with proper lighting, without the general public being around us, etc.
14:22And we identified blood splashes down the offside by the driver's door.
14:26We also found a large palm mark in blood on the rear near side.
14:34There was a box of pound coins somewhere on the passenger side,
14:39which is where the pound coins that we found in the street, we're presuming, came from.
14:44There were some footmarks on the mat at the back of the car behind Arshad.
14:50But the main thing was to observe that bloodstained palm print.
14:54And, of course, because the taxi drivers had gathered round the vehicle,
15:00and clearly they would have tried to get in it,
15:04we couldn't tell at that stage whether the palm print was left by the attacker
15:11or whether there was blood on the car and one of the drivers had leant on it to have a
15:17look in.
15:17We did find a fingerprint on the rear door,
15:20and we did get an identification of that fingerprint.
15:23So that became a very important issue.
15:26We had to speak to that person.
15:30There's no doubt that for murder detectives,
15:33finding a fingerprint at your crime scene can be crucial in solving a case.
15:38But they can have limitations.
15:40And that's because you can't always time a fingerprint.
15:44Just because you find one there, how do you know when it got there?
15:48But there's one type of fingerprint,
15:51one type of evidence at a crime scene,
15:53which is almost like the Holy Grail.
15:56And that's a fingerprint in blood.
15:58Because when you find that, you know it could only have got there
16:02at some time shortly after the victim bled.
16:05So you've now got a person come into your inquiry whose fingerprint is on Arshad's car.
16:13What was that showing you?
16:15He'd got a criminal record for violence, and so that was really important.
16:19So he was brought in to be questioned, I assume?
16:23Yes.
16:23His girlfriend had called the taxi earlier that day.
16:26And he'd walked his girlfriend out the car and opened the door for a proper gentleman, really.
16:33Right.
16:34And that was all verified through our eight cars.
16:38They were able to confirm that they'd had a call to an address earlier in the day,
16:44which matched what he said.
16:46So for you, as the SIO and your team,
16:48it's actually disappointing that he's not the person you're looking for.
16:51Yeah, absolutely.
16:53It's something, you know, first bit of evidence we've got with something concrete,
16:57we've got a fingerprint on the car,
16:58and then it turns out it's eliminated.
17:03The phone box where the phone call was made by this person who identified himself as Pete
17:08was examined for fingerprints and DNA.
17:10Unfortunately, very, very little was found.
17:13So lots of people would have used the mouthpiece.
17:15It would have lots of combinations of DNA,
17:17and pulling out one person's almost impossible.
17:20And fingerprints were...
17:21Everybody handles the phone in the same way.
17:24So you just get three or four fingerprints on top of each other,
17:26and invariably, you can't then pull out a single person's fingerprint.
17:33Sheila, you had an absolutely fantastic career.
17:36What was your journey to that, and how did you end up there?
17:41I think it was being committed and wanting to get into the investigative field.
17:50And PC, then I was a DC, then I was a sergeant, uniform sergeant,
17:54and then a job came up at Hereford.
17:58They were looking for a detective sergeant.
18:01From there, it's just as I went through the ranks,
18:03I got promoted to inspector,
18:06and then moved across to detective inspector.
18:10I think even now, and probably more so in the past,
18:13the world of murder investigation is quite a male-dominated world.
18:17How did you feel as a female SIO in that world?
18:22I think because you wade through it,
18:24you just feel no different, really.
18:27I don't think it's any different to being a male SIO to being a female SIO.
18:31We all do the same sort of training,
18:33we all get the same sort of experience.
18:36And I've always been lucky to work with great teams of people.
18:41So I felt no different, really.
18:43Now, I know that you used Arshad's family
18:47for that almost emotive appeal to potential witnesses,
18:52but sometimes you can also use rewards
18:55as a different motivation to try and get people to come forward.
18:59Is that something you did here?
19:00Yes, we did.
19:01We offered a £10,000 reward
19:05for anybody giving information
19:08that led to the arrest and conviction of the suspect.
19:12The longer a case goes unsolved,
19:16different strategies will be used in terms of media appeals.
19:19So, for instance, at that very early stage
19:21when a crime has just happened,
19:23very little will be released.
19:25It might just be the fact something has happened and where.
19:29But as they go on,
19:31the police will start to drip more and more information.
19:35It might pull on the heartstrings.
19:37For others, it might be a different type of motivation.
19:40So rewards might get offered.
19:42But careful thought goes into the tactics,
19:47the strategies used to try and get people to come forward
19:50and give the police that information they need to solve a case.
19:58So Mr Arshad had been stabbed.
20:00It was a frenzied, frenetic attack.
20:04It was so brutal that the knife actually snapped.
20:08This level of brutality is extremely rare.
20:11And the sense in the community and from the police
20:14was that they need to find this man,
20:16this person, this highly dangerous attacker,
20:19as quickly as possible.
20:20My name is Lida Reynolds.
20:22I started off on weekly papers,
20:24working at the Sully Hall Times,
20:26and then I progressed to the Birmingham Mail,
20:29which is the main paper,
20:31first as an editor, as a page editor,
20:33and then as a reporter covering crime.
20:38So the killing of Mr Arshad had a massive ripple effect.
20:43There was a sense of fear across the city,
20:45not knowing who was out there.
20:47There was reluctance to pick up fares.
20:49The taxi community started calling for more safety measures.
20:53They wanted protection from the police.
20:56They wanted improved patrols.
20:58Grills were installed in taxis,
21:01and there was CCTV as well.
21:03It helped, but they still didn't know who was out there.
21:06They still didn't know who'd killed their friend.
21:09The fear still lingered over the city.
21:14A bit early, you talked about some pound coins on the floor.
21:19Did that give you any indication, potentially,
21:21of where the suspect may have headed in the direction?
21:23Yeah, it was a good indicator of direction of travel.
21:27He hadn't gone back towards the crime scene.
21:29He'd gone forwards, and presumably towards where we lived.
21:33The other thing is to do a CCTV troll around that area as well.
21:37Cast their minds back to 2009.
21:40The ring doorbells didn't exist.
21:42They didn't exist.
21:43The CCTV systems were more expensive, so...
21:46They were few and far between.
21:47They were few and far between.
21:48So we looked for all CCTV in that area,
21:51and we only found one CCTV.
21:55It's further down the road at Broadmeadow School,
21:59which gave a view through the school gates,
22:03and we did capture from that CCTV
22:06a man who we believe was that Peter.
22:10Mohamed Arshad, his taxi was seen going past,
22:14which would be when he picked him up.
22:16Because he'd been asked to be picked up at Broadmeadow School,
22:20and within three minutes,
22:21this man is walking past those school gates,
22:25and we didn't see anybody else walk past those school gates.
22:28It was a very, very poor image.
22:31We had a man in dark clothing, dark hair.
22:35We couldn't even tell his ethnicity.
22:38Because although the CCTV images we had at that time
22:41outside the school gates
22:43weren't very clear you could identify anybody from,
22:47but you could actually work out roughly that age group.
22:51It wasn't a very old man, and it wasn't a very young kid.
22:54It was somebody within that general age.
23:01The police were very keen to get Mr. Arshad's attacker as quickly as possible.
23:06So the police released CCTV footage from Broadmeadow Junior School,
23:14and it showed a man, quite a tall man, with a particular gait.
23:18The way he walked was a bit unusual.
23:19But it only captured a small amount of his movements literally walking past.
23:27And the police released that.
23:30They were desperate to get some information about who he was.
23:34The police were very keen to get the general public on board.
23:38There were appeals in the national press, the local press, radio, TV.
23:43Was anyone in that area?
23:46Had anyone seen a vehicle travelling at those specific times?
23:50Had anyone noticed someone covered in blood?
23:53They were very adamant that whoever had done this attack
23:56would have been heavily bloodstained.
23:59The police were appealing for anyone with CCTV,
24:04anyone on buses in the area, people driving past, anyone at all.
24:09They were desperate for clues.
24:11So when you do your media strategy, it basically covers three areas.
24:15You need to inform the public about what's happened.
24:20You need to reassure them that we're doing all we can to catch this person.
24:26And it's to appeal for information that can help you with your inquiry.
24:32The media strategy was aimed at really trying to get information
24:36and witnesses to come forward.
24:38But also, as you say, to reassure the public that we are investigating the matter,
24:45taking it very seriously.
24:46And we did a number of press releases throughout the investigation
24:49and reconstructions for Crimewatch.
24:54And that was all done with the family,
24:56fully aware of what we were doing beforehand.
24:59So you went to Crimewatch, the BBC show that was running at the time?
25:02Oh, yes, yes, absolutely.
25:04If we're really honest, those first images we got that we put to Crimewatch
25:08were really very difficult to identify anybody from that.
25:16Did you get any important calls coming in as a result of that?
25:19We got one call from a man, all we can say with a strong Birmingham accent,
25:26confessing to the murder, said he'd done it.
25:28And he said, and he did goad a little bit about,
25:31you're not going to catch me, you'll never catch me.
25:33You can't ignore it.
25:35So you have to then try and find out where the call was made from,
25:39investigate that, and try and identify who the caller was,
25:43because he could have been the killer, we don't know.
25:45So the phone call came from a phone box near Spar's supermarket,
25:50which was very near the school.
25:52So the police looked into it, they traced the phone,
25:55and they found the man.
25:56The man was subsequently identified and arrested in connection with the murder,
26:00and it was then that we established that he hadn't done it.
26:03He was eliminated, but he was actually charged and prosecuted
26:07for intent to prefer the course of justice.
26:16For murder investigators, there is nothing more frustrating than red herrings.
26:22When that piece of information comes in that you think is going to solve the case,
26:27but in actual fact it just takes you off in the wrong direction.
26:31And that happened twice in Sheila's investigation.
26:33The fingerprint on the door handle, the 999 call,
26:39both lines of inquiry that took resources to bottom out,
26:45but in actual fact all they did was take them away from where they should have been looking.
26:53The palm print on the car is clearly going to be an important aspect of this investigation.
27:00We're still left with the palm print, we've eliminated all the taxi drivers,
27:04and the next stage is to put it on the National Fingerprint Database
27:07to see if we can match it.
27:09Within the United Kingdom, there are two main national databases that are held.
27:14One's the fingerprint database, and the other is the DNA database.
27:20Now the fingerprints have been taken from people for being arrested for crimes
27:25ever since about 1901.
27:27Those were computerised in the early 1990s,
27:30so they'd been put on the computer system.
27:33And then in 2006, not only were we taking fingerprints,
27:36we were also taking palm prints as well.
27:39The verosity of the attack was such that it's a big jump for somebody
27:45you would expect them to be on that database.
27:48The search proved negative, no match at all on that palm print.
27:52Probably the best forensic evidence you're going to get at a crime scene
27:56is a finger mark in blood.
27:58So if you're sure your killer has left their own mark
28:03at the crime scene in blood,
28:05it's quite an exciting time as an investigator
28:09because you think, we're going to get them.
28:12So for Sheila, when she uploaded that mark onto the National Database,
28:18it must have been crushing for it to come back as no result.
28:27So you've got a palm print in blood,
28:29which is one of the best bits of forensic evidence you're going to get
28:34because that almost times it.
28:35That means that that palm print was made in that blood
28:40or at the time when the victim was bleeding.
28:43Mm-hmm.
28:45That palm print is almost certainly the killer's.
28:50I mean, that must have been a massively frustrating moment
28:54for you as the SIO and your team.
28:56Is it somebody who's come into the country recently
29:00and not been arrested in this country
29:02and may have already fled?
29:04So you start to...
29:06It's concerning.
29:07It's concerning as to what we're going to do now about the investigation.
29:10And the plan was to look at the geographic of the area,
29:14looking within the residences of that geographic area.
29:19We set some parameters.
29:21So we devised a strategy that we would do a mass screening
29:24and take DNA and fingerprints of everybody between...
29:29Every male between 14 and 40
29:31who lived within those parameters
29:34of the points we've talked about,
29:37where the phone box is,
29:38where the body was abandoned
29:41and where the car was abandoned.
29:44Now, what you're just describing to me,
29:46you make it sound like it might be quite a simple process.
29:50Oh, no.
29:51It's not, is it?
29:52Absolutely not,
29:52because that is a very, very resource-intensive thing to undertake,
29:58especially in a residential area
30:00and commercial on the routes.
30:04And clearly, that would bring in a lot more resources
30:07into the investigation
30:09to run alongside the house-to-house inquiries.
30:15One of the good things that came out of it,
30:17providing community reassurance,
30:19knowing that with their uniform officers
30:20carried out most of the mass screening,
30:23so there was a lot,
30:24a very strong uniform presence in that area
30:27for weeks, weeks on end.
30:30And how did that go?
30:31Most people were fine and cooperated.
30:35We had one or two objected to it.
30:38The problem is people work different times.
30:40Some people work shifts.
30:41It was catching everybody in,
30:43so we had to split the team into shifts
30:45working weekends, working mornings, working afternoons.
30:48And we collected an awful lot of fingerprints
30:50and DNA samples along the way.
30:53And, of course, once you've collected them,
30:56you have to check them against the database.
30:59It was extremely unusual for the police
31:02to do mass DNA screening.
31:05I haven't personally covered a case
31:07where that has happened before
31:10in my 30 years as a crime reporter.
31:14So it was unprecedented,
31:17especially for the West Midlands.
31:18As part of the community,
31:20I was living 10 minutes from the murder scene
31:22at the time,
31:23and the sense was people wanted to help.
31:26They were very willing to do this
31:28because people were frightened, you know.
31:30They were going to work,
31:32their wives were going to work,
31:33girlfriends, sisters, daughters.
31:35People were very keen.
31:36And also to prove it wasn't them.
31:39There was suspicion.
31:41People were looking at people, you know.
31:43People were talking amongst themselves
31:45about who could it be.
31:49The biggest chunk of the inquiry, really,
31:52apart from the mass screen,
31:54two biggest chunks of resources
31:56and the investigation were focused
31:58on mass screen and CCTV.
32:02Today, when we look for CCTV
32:04and it's on a hard drive,
32:06it could last for a month.
32:09Yeah.
32:09When you're talking about a VHS cassette,
32:12quite often that would be like 24 hours.
32:14Yeah.
32:14And if you didn't get it,
32:16it's going to record over itself.
32:18There was a lot of time pressure to get it in.
32:20We managed to get in quickly
32:21was the images outside Broadmed of School.
32:24We had teams of people going round
32:26on foot looking for cameras
32:28and appealing to people
32:30when we were doing the house-to-house.
32:31Have you got any CCTV?
32:34But, I mean, the ring doorbell didn't exist then, did it?
32:37Or dash cam footage, of course.
32:39Yeah, so...
32:40So, eventually,
32:43once you've got broken the back of that collecting
32:46in the CCTV,
32:47you have to get officers to sit down
32:50and meticulously go through it,
32:52did that yield anything?
32:54Eventually, but it took a long time
32:56because we had to convert a lot of the systems
32:58that we were gathering in into DVD
33:01to make it into an easier-to-view format.
33:04And then, with the viewing,
33:06there was, again, another resource-intensive thing
33:08because we had hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of hours
33:11of CCTV that we needed to view.
33:14We prioritised the key points
33:18when...from where the car was abandoned.
33:21And eventually,
33:23we got down to the buses,
33:25the CCTV on buses,
33:27and we managed to get a view
33:31of a man on the bus,
33:34and this was within...
33:36..within half an hour of the murder.
33:39But it was a clear picture
33:42of a man who was clearly distressed on the bus.
33:46He was, um,
33:48head in his hands,
33:49he was wringing his hands.
33:52Um, he was clearly, um,
33:54in a bit of a state about something.
33:57What was the image like
33:58that you captured of him there,
34:00on the bus there?
34:01Better than the one we'd previously got there.
34:03In terms of, if you saw him and you know him,
34:06you'd recognise him?
34:07Yes, exactly.
34:08And he got off at Brandwood Park Road.
34:11So we now had a...a new location
34:15that we were looking at.
34:16The investigation had been going on
34:18for some three and a half months or more
34:21before we actually got those images,
34:22captured from within the number 35 bus.
34:28You've got a good, clear facial view of him.
34:31So we decided to put that out
34:33and hope somebody would identify him.
34:36There was a Crime Watch programme coming up,
34:38so we managed to get it on there.
34:39The community was getting more and more worried.
34:43Who had committed this dreadful crime?
34:45So this now is going out nationally?
34:47Yeah.
34:48To hopefully people that would know him.
34:52How did that go?
34:54Quite honestly, a little bit of a letdown,
34:56cos the night of the programme,
34:59it went out, we got nothing.
35:01The Crime Watch programme went out on the Thursday night
35:04and it was the Saturday morning.
35:06I looked at the messages that had come in
35:09from the evening before
35:10and there was two callers, independent of each other,
35:15totally separately, named the same person.
35:18The name was given as an Andrew John Bailey.
35:24You must be hopeful at this point.
35:26It's been several months.
35:28I was a little bit excited, to say the least,
35:30and I wanted to get the intelligence team in
35:32to do the background on him.
35:34And basically get it sorted and get him in.
35:38There was nothing known on him on police systems.
35:41He'd never been arrested,
35:42never been in trouble with the police.
35:44But we managed to find where he was living
35:46was not far from the phone box where the call was made.
35:52And it would have been in our next phase of our mass screening.
35:57So I'd imagine you, probably on Tenta Books,
36:00this investigation has been going on for a number of months.
36:03You've sent officers down to Andrew Bayliss's house.
36:07They're in touch with you.
36:10Do they feed back straight away,
36:12yes, ma'am, we've got our man?
36:14Yes, they were confident that the person that they,
36:17Andrew Bayliss, did match the images we'd got from the CCTV.
36:22How did that feel for you?
36:24Relief, I think.
36:26I think it was more relief that we'd finally get in somewhere
36:31and the crux of it was going to be that palm print.
36:35That's what had to be the match.
36:46When I investigated a crime,
36:48and especially those that had been taken some time to solve,
36:52one of the most important stages was arresting them.
36:55And I always tried to be there for that.
36:58And I'd usually try and be the one delivering the words.
37:00I don't think you can replicate that situation
37:04where you're looking someone in the eye
37:06and you deliver those words,
37:08I'm arresting you for murder.
37:11Looking them right in the eye, how do they react?
37:15It is almost like a glimpse into their soul.
37:17If they're going to react in a certain way,
37:20are they going to look scared?
37:22Are they going to look nonplussed?
37:28If we do have someone who's been arrested,
37:31then we have something that's called the PACE Clock,
37:33which is the Police and Criminal Evidence Act,
37:35where people can only be held for so long
37:37before they have to be released.
37:39So in those cases, then we have big, big pressures
37:42to make sure that we can actually identify
37:44and get enough evidence to identify them
37:47as being a prime suspect,
37:49and so that we can either hold them for longer
37:51or go through a magistrate's warrant,
37:55or we can then charge them.
38:00Your priority is getting back to the police station,
38:03put ink over his hands,
38:05take his palm print,
38:07and as quickly as possible
38:09get that sent off for comparison with the car.
38:13Yeah.
38:14And when you did that, what was the result?
38:17It took a long time to get the results.
38:21We were waiting by the phone.
38:24We had to call out a fingerprint expert
38:26from West Midlands to go into the office,
38:29and then we had to fast-track.
38:30By then, it was late at night.
38:32Nobody would go home
38:33until we'd got a phone call
38:35from the fingerprint expert,
38:37and then he finally confirmed there was a match,
38:41that the palm print in blood
38:43was that of Andrew Bayliss.
38:47Did he speak in an interview?
38:49No.
38:50No, he went no comment through most of his interview.
38:53He was 29 years old.
38:54He was a youngish man.
38:56He had his life in front of him.
38:57The significant thing was he'd found under his bed,
39:00I believe, was a journal that he'd written,
39:03and it reads almost like a confession
39:06to doing something really, really bad.
39:10And he did actually say he was getting scared
39:14because the police were closing in on him.
39:16As we were moving up towards that area,
39:18he was aware that the mass screen
39:20had started in that general area.
39:27You had the evidence now
39:29that you could go to the Crown Prosecutor's Service.
39:31What was their response to that?
39:33Charge him, which we did.
39:36Put him before the court, remand in custody.
39:39Having been on this three-month journey
39:40with Arshad's family,
39:43that message can now be passed to them.
39:47I think I contacted them direct
39:49on the day we arrested him to let them know.
39:51How did they react to that?
39:53I think they were relieved
39:55that finally we'd identified the person
39:58who killed Arshad.
40:03But does anybody that deals with murders know
40:07that's not the end of it?
40:08Yes, because he subsequently put in a defence,
40:12which again re-sparked a new investigation.
40:16He eventually said it was him in the taxi.
40:19A friend picked him up on the way
40:21and they'd planned a robbery.
40:26But he was shocked that his friend
40:28had suddenly pulled out a knife
40:29and started stabbing the driver.
40:36Andrew Bayliss said that he'd actually met up
40:39with an old school friend called Craig Thomas
40:43and they were going to get together
40:46and commit this robbery.
40:49Interestingly, that he only brought up this individual
40:52nine months after being arrested.
40:56And he blamed the murder on his supposed friend, Craig Thomas.
41:01Police did extensive inquiries to find Mr. Thomas,
41:04but they found no trace of him whatsoever.
41:07You had clear evidence
41:10that there were not two people in that car.
41:12The witness that saw the car being manoeuvred
41:14in Wastel's Lane only saw one person driving it.
41:18One person in the car.
41:20He was a fictitious friend.
41:22He was just trying to vindicate himself
41:24and blame somebody else.
41:26Andrew Bayliss was not known to the police at all.
41:29There was nothing there.
41:30He'd never been arrested.
41:31He'd never been in trouble with the police.
41:33He'd been left an inheritance by his grandfather,
41:37which he'd squandered and wasted away.
41:45Now at the stage where Bayliss is going to stand trial,
41:51where and when was that trial?
41:54That was at Worcester Crown Court on the 24th of March 2011.
41:58It was a two-week trial
42:00and the opening case for the prosecution
42:02painted a picture of his life.
42:05He was heavily in debt.
42:06He'd got debts, £20,000 worth.
42:08It was a lot of money.
42:10This was a man in trouble.
42:12I was called to the stand
42:14and I was given a bit of a grilling by the defence,
42:17challenging the defence statement,
42:19what we'd done to trace this old friend
42:21who he'd known since he was 12 years old.
42:23The strongest piece of evidence
42:25against Andrew Bayliss for the murder of Mohamed Arshad
42:29was that bloody palm print on the outside window
42:33in Mohamed Arshad's blood.
42:36Very damning.
42:41The barristers perform their closing speeches.
42:46The judge does their summing up
42:49and the jury will go out to consider their verdict.
42:53How long were they out for?
42:56It was about four hours.
42:57Four hours?
42:58Yes.
42:59I mean, that's pretty quick for a murder child, isn't it?
43:01It is, yeah.
43:07What was that verdict?
43:15Guilty.
43:16When a judge passes sentence,
43:18well, they do have to look at the circumstances around the case.
43:21To stab someone 14 times from behind
43:24when they're not expecting it is just...
43:26I mean, it's awful.
43:28Was robbery taken as a consideration by the judge
43:31when they were considering the sentence?
43:33It was clearly the motive
43:34and the judge did make a narrative
43:36about it frittering away his inheritance
43:40and going out intent to rob,
43:43armed with a knife
43:44and he took that into consideration.
43:48What did the judge pass in the case of Bayliss?
43:5130 years.
43:59How did that feel for you, Sheila?
44:03It was like closure.
44:07Getting emotional now.
44:09It was just closure,
44:11not just for the family,
44:12but for the investigation
44:13because it had been a long, long investigation.
44:17I think we were tired
44:18and it was just the end.
44:21This sort of crime is incredibly violent
44:24and so it's very hard to understand
44:26why someone went to such extreme measures
44:29for so, so little profit.
44:33Unfortunately, Mr Arshad
44:34was just in the wrong place
44:36at the wrong time.
44:37It could have been any cab driver that evening
44:40and it happened to be Mr Arshad.
44:42I hope this long sentence
44:44does bring a sense of comfort
44:45and justice for the family.
44:48After the trial and conviction
44:50of Andrew John Bayliss,
44:52the two people who identified him
44:54following the Crime Watch programme
44:56were both given a share
44:58of the £10,000.
45:00It was divided between them.
45:01the CCTV and everything that you've done in this case
45:04created a huge amount of work
45:06and central to this
45:08is Arshad,
45:10a man that put his kids to bed,
45:13went to work
45:15and then those kids never saw their dad again.
45:19The work that you and your team did
45:23I think was outstanding.
45:25Can I just say on behalf of Arshad
45:27and his kids,
45:29thank you for the work you did.
45:31It was outstanding
45:32and you just deserve credit
45:35for the justice you got for him and them.
45:46Speaking to Sheila reminded me
45:48that the police can't solve murders on their own.
45:50They need the public's help.
45:53And it was in recognising this
45:54and Sheila's thinking outside the box
45:57in ways to appeal
45:58ultimately led to the information
46:00that got justice for Arshad and his family.
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