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00:00The following programme contains distressing scenes.
00:15In 1994, tapings were taken on almost every item.
00:22I was looking for extraneous fibres on the clothing.
00:27We recovered hairs which didn't match the victims.
00:33DNA was still a fairly new concept.
00:39I didn't realise that some 30 years later,
00:43these tapings would lead to the apprehension
00:46of the person who'd murdered Ricky Neve.
01:06So, in 1994, the Welland Estate was a high-crime area.
01:15There, unfortunately, was lots of deprivation here.
01:19Low-level criminality in terms of burglary and vehicle crime.
01:24There was drug dealing.
01:27And there was significant truancy.
01:30Children would be truant on a regular basis.
01:33And everybody knew everybody in the community.
01:38By the nature of the estate, the way it's set out,
01:41in terms of alleyways and cul-de-sacs and cut-throughs,
01:45there was limited police presence,
01:48which, unfortunately, attracted the opportunity
01:50for people to do things that were breaking the law.
01:56In 1994, one of the boys growing up on the Welland Estate
02:01was Ricky Neve.
02:08So, Ricky was a really well-known six-year-old boy.
02:11He was very much older than his biological years,
02:15in terms of his mannerisms
02:17and in terms of how he interacted with people.
02:22He was a little boy who was clearly a handful.
02:28He was a cheeky chappy, as his mum used to call him.
02:34He was cheeky.
02:35He was naughty.
02:37He had a big personality.
02:41And, sadly, there was a lot of unhappiness.
02:45His mum, a single mum with a young baby,
02:48left him to run around safely on the estate.
02:52But, sadly, it wasn't safe.
03:01And the alarm went off at quarter to eight.
03:05I shouted, Ricky, no answer.
03:08I kept saying, Ricky, Ricky.
03:11I said, Ricky, what are you doing?
03:13I don't want to go to school.
03:15He said, look, Ricky, we've had this over and over again.
03:18You've got to go to school.
03:21He says, I want some breakfast.
03:23I said, well, get yourself some breakfast, then,
03:25which was Weetaflakes or Weetabix.
03:28And he sat at the table.
03:31And he looked so handsome, he did.
03:35All in his white shirt, his trousers.
03:40His lovely haircut.
03:44He says, come on, boys, ready to go to school.
03:49Around about 9.30 in the morning,
03:52he leaves the house and walks himself to school,
03:55which may sound quite peculiar.
03:57But where they lived in Red Mile Walk in Peterborough,
04:01the alleyway ran all the way direct into the school.
04:04That's something he did all the time.
04:08And then, you know, I slipped off back to sleep.
04:12I suddenly woke up and it was about a quarter to 11,
04:14and it'd gone like.
04:19Ruth was struggling in terms of trying to support
04:23and manage her children.
04:26Ruth had had literally next to no sleep.
04:29And in some ways, was very grateful for Ricky
04:31getting himself ready, eating his breakfast
04:34and going to school, really.
04:35So it was quite a chaotic lifestyle at that particular time.
04:40Ricky left the house wearing his school uniform,
04:44including his blue coat.
04:47I do remember Ruth assumed that he'd been to school that Monday.
04:52She'd assumed that he'd perhaps gone home with a friend
04:54for a glass of squash that he often did, or a biscuit,
04:58popped into someone else's house.
05:02By 6pm, Ricky was nowhere to be seen,
05:05and his mother, Ruth, dialed 999.
05:09Emergency?
05:10I said I'm a part of my son missing.
05:11He hasn't been back from school.
05:13OK, what's your name, please?
05:14Ruth's name.
05:16What's your son's name, please?
05:17Ricky.
05:18R-I-K-K-I.
05:19How old is your son?
05:22What time was the last time you saw him?
05:24Oh, he went to school.
05:25What was he wearing?
05:27He's wearing a little blue coat, didn't he?
05:30Yeah.
05:30He's got his different one.
05:35Where was six-year-old Ricky Neve?
05:43At 6pm on the 28th of November 1994, the police arrived quite quickly.
05:52They are there within about 15 to 20 minutes, and they turn up at her address,
05:57get initial inquiry around what's happened, when did he go to school,
06:01who was he last seen, what was he wearing?
06:03The whole community, the whole country, was shocked.
06:08This had been an estate where youngsters were able to go out and play,
06:13and suddenly, after these events, children were kept in,
06:18and there was a very almost eerie quietness around the estate.
06:27They did initial inquiries with the school.
06:31What they also did is they undertook a search of the house initially and just said,
06:35we'll just check the bedrooms and just make sure that everything's OK.
06:39They then start searching for Ricky Neve on the Welling estate.
06:43At the time, it was cold, it was dark, it was wet, it wasn't very nice weather for anybody.
06:52So, very, very quickly, the police call in additional resources, and over the next hour or so,
06:57there's a heavy police presence on the Welling estate trying to search for Ricky Neve.
07:05Whilst people were looking to be really, really helpful,
07:08later on, as the missing-from-home inquiry had progressed,
07:11it actually became quite distracting, because actually, people thought they had seen things,
07:16but they may have seen somebody, but that may not have necessarily been Ricky Neve,
07:21which caused the inquiry quite a lot of work.
07:32They called in those police officers, probably about a dozen people that they would have called in,
07:37from around the county to try and look for this six-year-old boy.
07:41But there was also some volunteers, there was residents there, there were people trying to help.
07:46They would then organise what they called PULSA, which are police search teams,
07:50and that would have been around a dozen people who would have arrived earlier the next day,
07:55who would have then looked at it and systematically searched particular parts of the estate
08:01and worked through around how they were going to try and look for Ricky Neve.
08:08And the hope was that he was going to turn up.
08:25In 1994, police had been searching for missing six-year-old Ricky Neve for less than 24 hours,
08:33and were now scouring the woodland opposite his home.
08:37They went through the wooded area and around about five minutes after 12 on that particular day,
08:45a search officer sees the legs of what appears to be a small child in a distance.
08:55This officer continues walking forward and it becomes obvious that it's the body of a young boy,
09:02who's naked and is laid out in a star-shaped pose.
09:10He left his home in Red Mile Walk alone on Monday morning, but never made it to school.
09:15Because the little boy often stayed out at night with friends, he wasn't reported missing until six o'clock that
09:20evening.
09:20A huge police search started and today, Ricky's body was found in undergrowth 500 yards from his home.
09:27The attack seems senseless at the moment.
09:29We can find, albeit early stages in this investigation, no motive whatever for the killing of a six-year-old
09:37boy.
09:38He was found naked.
09:39The post-mortem will be held later this evening in an attempt to determine precisely what caused his death.
09:45And that will obviously have to look at the possibility of some form of sexual interference.
09:51The news was devastating.
09:54Ricky's family was shattered.
09:56His mother, Ruth, left utterly bereft.
10:00I just remember his cheeky little face, just saying he loves me.
10:03I love you, Mummy, with lots of lots of cherry on top of us.
10:09He was the best boy in the world.
10:11I loved him.
10:14Anybody that knew Ricky, he was full of life.
10:18And now he's been taken away from us.
10:32So this is the wooded area just off of Eye Road in Peterborough.
10:37This is the location, the deposition site where Ricky and Eve was murdered.
10:44Back in November 1994, it would have been dark.
10:50It would have been cold.
10:52It would have been wet.
10:54The foliage would be nowhere near to what it is today.
10:58It's an area where children would have played and frequented.
11:03Unfortunately, it's the tragic location where young six-year-old Ricky and Eve was brutally murdered.
11:20With the crime scene secured, the forensic consultants were called in.
11:24Among them, Dr Peter Lamb.
11:28Ricky's body was examined by Dr Nat Carey at Hinchinbrook Hospital Mortuary.
11:36I was sent some images of Ricky's neck, which showed a repeat linear pattern on the neck.
11:45And Dr Carey had suggested that Ricky had died from strangulation.
11:52This six-year-old little boy, he didn't have any defence injuries on his arms or any parts of his
11:59body.
12:00He had no idea what was about to happen.
12:02The police undertook their forensic analysis.
12:07They looked at everything and the only things that were here was a button.
12:14There was nothing else here.
12:18Ricky's clothes were nowhere to be seen, prompting a meticulous sweep of the surrounding area by police search teams.
12:29Police today displayed a set of Ricky's school clothes, identical to the ones found in a dustbin,
12:35only 150 yards from where the six-year-old's body was found.
12:40The bundle also included underwear, socks and shoes.
12:45We're satisfied from the post-mortem that he had not been sexually interfered with,
12:48but we have been searching high and low for his clothing.
12:51We are very pleased we've now found that.
12:55Whenever a case came into the laboratory where two people had potentially been in contact,
13:03then we would take tapings to recover extraneous hairs and fibres.
13:10These would provide compelling evidence of contact between two people.
13:15In 1994, the process of collecting fibres using tapings was very similar to what it is today.
13:26We had an acetate sheet which would hold the tapings that we produced,
13:31and we used a material that was very much like ordinary sellotape.
13:38In 1994, during the investigation, fibres were found on Ricky's clothes that couldn't be accounted for.
13:47So I was invited to go to Ricky's home to see if I could find the types and colours of
13:55fibres,
13:56which were still outstanding.
13:59No comparisons were found, so the fibres were sealed and stored.
14:05But it was Ricky's coat that gave investigators their first real insight into how he was killed.
14:12One of the things that the police wanted to know was, was there an instrument involved in the strangulation or
14:21was it manual?
14:22And on the blue jacket, there was a coarse zip of the jacket.
14:29And there was also half of a coarse zip, which appeared to be there so that you could zip on
14:37a hood to the jacket.
14:39The hood was missing.
14:41I made detailed photographs, drawings and impressions from the zip,
14:48because if you put tension on the zip, then the spaces can open up.
14:54The teeth of the zip can become distorted.
14:57They can present different surfaces and faces, which might make different marks.
15:03So I went to meet Dr. Carey at the mortuary.
15:08And along with some photographs taken of the injuries and some clear acetate sheets with the marks on the acetate.
15:18And we overlaid those onto the marks and compared the original photographs.
15:24And we couldn't find any discrepancies.
15:28And therefore, it could have been that the jacket was being worn whilst he was being strangled.
15:39Pathologist Dr. Carey concluded that Ricky had been strangled from behind using a twisting grip on his clothing.
15:48Further forensic analysis of his stomach contents would also prove vital to the investigation.
15:56Ricky Neve was a young boy of habit.
15:59He always ate his breakfast.
16:01He liked his Weetabix.
16:02And then on this particular day, he'd eaten his Weetabix and it transpired during the post-mortem.
16:08The stomach contents.
16:09He had consumed his last meal around about one to two hours before he was murdered.
16:14The new scientific evidence contradicted multiple claims of seeing Ricky on the evening he was killed.
16:24Ricky's murder was national news.
16:26The pressure on police to get answers was mounting and fear was spreading through the community.
16:34It's hit me hard.
16:35I've got a five-year-old.
16:37She'll be sick soon.
16:39And all I can think is it could have been her.
16:42It really is frightening and upsetting.
16:44And I just hope to God it isn't children yet again copying the James Bolger episode.
16:49This information started coming through around Ruth Neve.
16:53People had seen or heard Ruth shouting her children.
16:57She'd been heard to shout at her kids.
16:59She'd been heard to smack her kids.
17:01She'd been heard to say, I'll kill you.
17:05The evidence they were relying on was evidence of cruelty and neglect.
17:15Ruth was rejected by her own parents because they were unable to cope.
17:20Even when she had children of her own and proudly took them home to show her mum and dad,
17:28they didn't want to know.
17:30I remember Ruth telling me that her own parents had died in a suicide pact.
17:36And it just seems that for Ruth's whole life,
17:41it was beset with tragedy after tragedy.
17:50And she wanted to do the very, very best for her children.
17:54But where she struggled was in terms of guardians and role models and moral compass.
18:01What do you say to those people who say you could be your little boy's killer?
18:06Oh, yeah, of course I am.
18:07That's why I'm sitting here crying my bloody eyes out.
18:10Ain't I?
18:10I've got nothing to hide.
18:12Nothing at all.
18:14I want no perfect mother, but who is?
18:18She didn't give the answer that society particularly wanted to hear.
18:23She wasn't able to because she probably didn't have the educational vocabulary to put into words eloquently her feelings.
18:41So all this evidence pieced together to paint a picture of Ruth as having a potential motive for murdering her
18:51son alongside the stuff they'd found at her address when they did the search.
18:56So some true crime books and some occult books and they used this as part of their hypothesis is that
19:03Ruth Neve had killed Ricky Neve at home in a fit of rage that she'd then called the police.
19:11When the police had left, she'd wheeled his body out to the deposition site, she'd stripped him naked as some
19:17sort of ritual sacrifice.
19:20While investigators became focused on Ruth being the killer, there was forensic evidence that would contradict the hypothesis in the
19:29form of Ricky's muddy shoes.
19:32The purpose of looking at his school shoes was to understand if there was any evidence of where he might
19:40have been.
19:41When a person goes missing and then found dead, you have to retrace their steps.
19:47And the best way to do that is through their shoes.
19:51On most soles of shoes, if you turn them over, you'll have a series of ridges that are essentially there
19:59to stop you slipping.
20:00We have positive ridges and negative ridges.
20:03The negative ridges are the gaps in between that you can sometimes put your finger in between.
20:08And the positive ridges are the bits that stick out to basically stop you from slipping.
20:14If somebody has walked in mud and then walked home, the mud will have rubbed off naturally.
20:22And you can see that if you stand in a puddle and get mud on it, it will just fall
20:26off naturally.
20:27But in this case, the mud was so caked on and associated with both positive and negative ridges that it
20:34was clear evidence that Ricky hadn't stepped out of the woods, that he'd only stepped in.
20:46Despite forensic findings showing Ricky had entered the woods on his own, undermining the theory that Ruth transported his body
20:55there, police still arrested his mother for murder in February 1995.
21:10This interview has been conducted in an interview room at the Thorpewood Police Station in Peterborough. What's your full name,
21:15please?
21:16Mrs Royce and me.
21:18How would you view the way that you deal with your children? How you bring them up?
21:26When went to my best ability?
21:29The first of October 1994, you were visited by detectives at your home address.
21:36This officer tells us, when I went up to a child's room, the door was tied up.
21:43Someone had taken the time to tie the handle firmly.
21:47So how was the child able to get out of the room?
21:51I wasn't able to get out of the room.
21:53So she was a prisoner in her own bedroom?
21:55No, she wasn't a prisoner in her own room.
21:57They had to put a bit of string round the bannister.
22:00If she didn't settle down at night, she'd be running around.
22:03This is 11 o'clock in the morning. The child is stuck in her room.
22:11Do you recollect an incident just before Christmas, 1991,
22:15where uniformed police officers came to see you?
22:18What, on a bet when Ricky was on the doorstep?
22:20What is Ricky doing on the doorstep?
22:22Because he kept messing about and messing about.
22:25He wasn't even on the doorstep for more than five minutes.
22:28You're putting a three-and-a-half-year-old child out in the middle of winter?
22:32Not in the middle of winter at all.
22:34What, December?
22:37And what was he dressed in?
22:40Charms.
22:41And that's your idea, a reasonable chastisement?
22:43Well, it's better than beating him, innit?
22:47There was never any evidence at all
22:50that Ruth had directly been seen
22:54or responsible for the death of her son.
22:57There was no forensic evidence.
23:00In court, the forensic evidence of mud on the shoes.
23:04which challenged the police's original theory,
23:07was never presented.
23:10Ruth was vilified as a mother.
23:14And the police announced very quickly,
23:18after the jury cleared her of murder,
23:21that they would not be looking for anyone else
23:23in connection with Ricky's death.
23:27That sent a clear message to everyone,
23:30that they thought she'd done it and got away with it.
23:35While she'd been found not guilty on the murder,
23:38she was going to be sentenced to seven years for the child cruelty.
23:44So, if Ruth Neve didn't kill her son, who did?
24:07gutes
24:12Yes, sir.
24:15Lord, if you would have died.
24:18If you would have died.
24:19all them lies which they have for 20 years because due to the police lying to people that's fine
24:28i didn't hear from ruth from when she was sentenced for child cruelty until she got in
24:35touch with me out of the blue to tell me that she had convinced her new husband gary
24:42that she was innocent and that he was going to try to prove her innocence
24:53in 2014 i'd made a decision we were going to review the case into ricky neve and then what
24:59become very clear once i'd looked at all the evidence is that we needed to reopen this investigation
25:10it's just traumatic it's just been unreal i just i've had to deal with it and i've had to stand
25:16up by myself it's um not a time for celebration um it's a it's in the right direction and i
25:25think
25:25this is long time coming and i've been fighting for this for the last 20 years and at last i've
25:31been
25:31believed in we launched a reinvestigation into the murder of ricky neve and we needed to look at this
25:40case in two two parts really firstly we needed to investigate the case as if it had happened yesterday
25:48using the latest forensic techniques and how we'd investigate homicide but we also need to look in
25:54detail at the first investigation to see if there'd been anything there that was of relevance for our
25:59investigation
26:03i had about 25 dedicated people working with me it was a really really comprehensive investigation
26:13unfortunately the exhibits the clothing and shirts and everything had been destroyed
26:18in a flood in a police station so that just caused us some issues
26:24but what we'd learn over the years when we do a cold case murders is that we go to the
26:29forensic archives
26:32back in the day forensic scene-to-crime experts they were taking sellotape tapings and things
26:38they'd effectively put them on their case papers
26:44police officers came to my home and brought my case file with them i was able to identify the fact
26:51that these tapings still existed and were in secure storage they were subsequently retrieved from
27:02storage and submitted to another forensic provider for modern dna extraction and interpretation
27:13at the time that these tapings were taken dna profiling was in its infancy
27:20we had no idea that it would progress to the stages which it has done now
27:27the dna that was present on the tapings was extracted
27:33cleaned and then a dna profile was derived from any dna that was present within the sample
27:44with a mixed dna profile they can be different amounts of dna from different individuals the presence of
27:55additional dna is quite obvious in most cases for example if the profile is being derived from
28:04a victim's clothing then we know that that victim's dna will be present
28:12that will then leave another one or maybe two profiles which can then be interpreted further
28:20based on individuals who you might want to either include within your inquiry or eliminate from the inquiry
28:32from the review it become really really clear that lines of inquiry were not properly followed up
28:39and that there'd been a real fixation on roof leave
28:45it become clear that there are probably around 20 to 30 people who needed to be looked at again in
28:51a bit more detail
28:51when a profile is of interest which doesn't match any of the suspects that you might have
29:02providing it meets certain criteria
29:06that profile can be loaded to the national dna database
29:12automatically that profile is then searched against
29:16all the other profiles on the database at the moment there are about six million
29:23it's all done by computer so it is relatively quick
29:28and then the police will receive a report
29:30that the profile has matched a certain individual
29:35and then the police can actually take that further then and investigate that individual
29:49we got a phone call and this was from a from a scientist who effectively said we've got a dna
29:54hit
29:55on the sellotape tapings which had been taken from the clothing of ricky neve
30:00and it's a guy called james watson
30:10now investigators faced a new question who is james watson james watson was 13 years of age
30:21at the time of the murder of ricky neve
30:27he was a troubled individual so we had this dna hit that effectively said that james watson's dna was
30:36on on ricky's clothes now james watson during the original investigation he'd been interviewed by the
30:41police as to somebody who may have been in the presence or been nearby ricky neve but he was
30:46discounted almost immediately but the more we looked at him the more concerns we had around him
30:54we'd set fire to a british transport police station and ended up in prison for a number of years
30:59he committed indecent assault against a five-year-old little boy shortly before ricky and eve was murdered
31:09and then when we started going into his history he'd been in and out of care we spoke to one
31:15of his
31:15partners and his partner would say that when they would have sex he would strangle her and that's
31:22how he would ejaculate
31:29we spoke to some of the care homes that he was in and they would give us information around him
31:36laying out dead animals um in the the room that he stayed and there'd be catalogues of children in the
31:43room
31:46when he gave his original statement at the age of 13 watson only mentioned a fleeting interaction with ricky
31:55almost a day or two after ricky neve had been murdered he turned up at his school with a newspaper
32:00and the front page of the newspaper was ricky and he'd asked his teachers if he could photocopy
32:07the the newspaper around 25 30 times they thought that was quite strange they reported that to the
32:14inquiry but he was still discounted so the more we looked at him the more concerned we were around him
32:22and we were able to discount other people as we were going along we're working very very closely
32:28with the crown prosecution service we were working with them throughout and we've made a decision that
32:32we were going to arrest james watson
32:52and we were going to arrest you for a suspicion of the murder of ricky neve in november 1994 you
32:58understand what i just said all right
33:04i wasn't surprised at the age of james watson i was shocked but i wasn't surprised i think everybody
33:13wants justice to be done they want the right person behind bars
33:37okay james tell us about your involvement in ricky neve's murder no comment
33:47are you responsible for the murder of ricky neve no comment
33:53monday the 28th of november tell us about that day this was the day that i met ricky
34:02okay
34:05the first thing you referred to in your statement is you walk to the well in the state i think
34:12it was just
34:12at the time that they were doing a lot of work in the area but they were working at the
34:17back of these
34:17two hours okay and it's right here that i remember meeting ricky right on this corner okay so tell us
34:23about that meeting with ricky yeah as i'm going past i think he said something like you know look at
34:27that
34:27big digger or a tractor and i corrected me just i said it's not tractor it's a thing because that's
34:32when
34:32they're you know they're going to go out and dig them i mean just looking through uh looking through
34:39the fence for a knothole they used to get like the little knotholes that you push through yeah
34:44picked them up and over the fence and watched the guys doing the work and then we left and walked
34:52off
34:54let's just go back a little bit then because i'm slightly confused as to what you just said
34:58you don't make any mention of the defense in your statement yeah
35:05in essence what he was trying to do was to basically justify why his forensic dna might
35:11be on ricky's clothing and at this time you know he wasn't fully aware of what we knew
35:17we tried to speak to the crown prosecution service because we were very much of the view that
35:22you know that they were sufficient to charge him with murder but they weren't of that view
35:26so he sadly was released on bail
35:30he went out on bail and he went to a remand hostel in northampton and almost in a few weeks
35:36he escaped
35:37from that uh hostel
35:42police brought in watson's former cellmate for questioning
35:49told me that he was being investigated for the murder of a six-year-old boy
35:54and he told me that the police found his dna before his project
36:00i had my six-year-old mother home and asked him and one day i would like that jane's coming
36:05out of
36:06the story when you're in a stab jacket he came in the police he gave him and he was wielding
36:11a knife
36:12and put it to my father's he was driving me out the country today from there i just felt
36:18fear we were so i drove into going boat we went with the ferry he got me to play with
36:24his lines
36:25and he was in there he forced me to drive him for three days to port home
36:37while he was in portugal he had then decided that he was going to announce himself to the media as
36:44the suspect in the case of the ricky neve murder and it was on the basis that he was innocent
36:50but
36:50the police were trying to charge him and that he was a suspect and he contacted media he ended up
36:55on
36:55the front page of some of the national newspapers he'd spoken to journalists and effectively was baiting
37:02the police around that you know i'm i'm the suspect but i'm not guilty and you're not going to get
37:07me
37:07effectively with their prime suspect overseas police now had to find a way to bring him back to face more
37:32questions
37:33in 2016 james watson fled to portugal to avoid answering difficult questions about the murder of six-year-old
37:41ricky neve in 1994. even bringing him to court was beset with difficulties and it seemed to prolong the
37:57agony for everyone who wanted justice to be served
38:04we then ended up extraditing him back from portugal to the united kingdom but we couldn't extradite him
38:10for the murder we had to extradite him for breaching his bail we eventually got him back
38:15to the uk and he was remanded almost immediately it had taken almost five months to bring watson home
38:24but in that time there had been a breakthrough in the case
38:30james watson had given an account in his interview during the area where he said he'd lifted ricky neve
38:36up which to try and justify why there's dna and his clothes he had said there'd been a fence there
38:42to
38:42look over a digger and through some really good detective work one of our officers was able to
38:48find some media footage of that location and it become very very clear that that fence wasn't there
38:55that fence was never there this was a complete figment of james watson's imagination to try and justify
39:00why his forensic evidence was there even with this latest development the crime prosecution service
39:09stated that there still wasn't enough evidence to bring the case to court
39:16i took a telephone call from a senior and distinguished lawyer at the crown prosecution service
39:25appeals unit who was considering a victim's right to review in the case of ricky neve it had come about
39:36because the local area had decided there was insufficient evidence to prosecute
39:41the mother had invoked her right to have that decision reviewed
39:48the crown prosecution service reviewed the case and the new evidence
39:52in the case leading them to revise their earlier decision that there wasn't enough to proceed
39:58and in this particular case the appeals unit overturned the original decision and decided that there
40:05was sufficient evidence to charge james watson with the murder of ricky neve
40:16we eventually get him to trial at the old bailey and we aren't there for three to four months 151
40:25witnesses
40:26the biggest trial that the constabary's ever been involved in numerous statements media attention all the way
40:36through absolutely essential to the case against james watson was the new dna evidence
40:49and whether it could be demonstrated that the only plausible explanation for the presence of that
40:57that boy's dna on fibers taken from the clothing of this child were that that contact had occurred as part
41:07of the event in which the child had died
41:13but it wasn't just the evidence that would be compelling
41:16it was also james watson's statement of lifting ricky up to see over the fence james watson had told very
41:27significant lies about the events of the morning upon which the little boy went missing and once you put
41:35all of the pieces together i do believe it demonstrated that the only sensible explanation
41:43for any physical contact between james watson and the little boy ricky was that he killed him
41:58james watson now 41 but 13 at the time was convicted of murder historical murders are notoriously difficult
42:09to investigate and this came with significant challenges but we've used every tool available to overcome these obstacles
42:20there's only one sentence for murder life imprisonment
42:24but because he was a 13 year old boy at the time of the murder he could only be convicted
42:29and sentenced as a child
42:32so the maximum the judge could give him was 15 years imprisonment minus his remand time had
42:38he been an adult at the time he would have been on the way to 30 to 40 years so
42:43he actually got
42:44sentenced for 15 years which the family were really upset about but it was the law because he was a
42:49child
42:50he could only be sentenced as a child he appealed his appeal was quashed and he is now serving his
42:56life sentence
42:58for the murder of six-year-old ricky and eve this little boy who was loved and cherished by many
43:02many
43:02people by his family by his parents and by his community and hopefully we brought justice and closure for his
43:09family
43:13i know that from my numerous dealings with ruth over the years whilst justice might have been served
43:25it didn't bring her life back it didn't bring ricky back he was denied his teenage years his adult life
43:36and everything that she dreamt of for him and it hasn't repaired her relationship with her daughters
43:45although they now know that their mother didn't kill their brother the damage that has been done
43:59is unreconcilable and that's an immense tragedy for for human beings for those girls
44:10and for ruth
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