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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.
00:43The murder of Anuj Bidva in December 2011 was one of Manchester's most challenging cases.
00:49I'm going to be meeting the senior investigating officer on the case
00:52to reveal what really happened.
00:54The pressures, the setbacks and the methods used to bring the killer to justice.
01:01My name is Mary Doyle.
01:03In 2011, I was a detective chief superintendent in Greater Manchester Police.
01:07I was head of public protection, which was a new division for Greater Manchester,
01:12set up really in response to the Rochdale child sexual exploitation investigations
01:18and some of the issues around that.
01:22The Anuj Bidva case was particularly challenging for me,
01:26as there was no clear weapon, motive or suspect.
01:37Hi, Mary. Lovely to meet you.
01:39And you.
01:42Mary, I spent a large part of my career investigating murders.
01:46I can't think of too many where this kind of incident has taken place,
01:51where someone completely randomly, for no reason at all, has been murdered.
01:56I'd never come across a similar one either.
01:59I'd never investigated one.
02:00So, you've just had Christmas.
02:02Yeah.
02:03This is Boxing Day.
02:04Yeah.
02:04You were chief superintendent.
02:07Yeah.
02:08At about 10.30, I think, I was in my kitchen.
02:10I wasn't supposed to be on duty that day.
02:13And my phone rang.
02:15I was literally told there was a male victim who had been shot dead in Salford.
02:21It happened in a street.
02:22It was Trafford Road in Ortsall in Greater Manchester.
02:27That area of Salford is a heavily populated area.
02:30It was on the periphery of a housing estate.
02:33When I first got in to work that morning,
02:36I was briefed by the detective chief superintendent and his deputy.
02:43And I was basically told that the victim and his group of friends
02:48had left their hotel a short distance away
02:50and were walking towards the Boxing Day sales.
02:55They'd come across two males on their way,
02:58one of whom had crossed the road over to the group,
03:01had asked, does anybody have the time?
03:05One of the group has answered, yes, it's 1.30am,
03:09at which point that male has lifted his hand,
03:12got a handgun in his hand,
03:14and he shoots the victim straight through the head.
03:20I mean, I don't want to, like, overstate it when I say this.
03:23It's almost like the one nightmares are made of,
03:26because it's a complete stranger.
03:28You had quite a few witnesses at the shooting.
03:33What kind of description were they giving you of the shooter?
03:35It was a fairly generic description, if we're honest, understandably,
03:40from the level of trauma, the speed of the incident happening.
03:43So, young, white male, somewhere between, I don't know,
03:47maybe 18, 17, 18, 25, 26.
03:51A vague description of clothing, very generic.
03:54It would be similar to an awful lot of young people
03:57walking around that area at that time.
04:02The victim was a young Indian student
04:06who was studying at Lancaster University called Anuj Bidwey.
04:11I'm Nazir Afzal, and I was the chief crown post creator
04:14for north-western England in 2011 to 2015.
04:19I was responsible for probably 2,000 homicide cases during my career,
04:24which lasted about 25 years.
04:26Anuj was the only male member of his family.
04:31His family had raised £30,000
04:33for him to be able to study at university here.
04:37He'd only started in September.
04:40Anuj was staying in Salford over Christmas with some friends.
04:47So, in this case, Anuj's family were in India.
04:52That adds a layer of complication
04:54in terms of what we would normally do in those circumstances.
04:58It was a major difficulty.
05:00In these days of social media in particular,
05:02the information gets out there much quicker
05:04than you would want it to.
05:05You can't control it.
05:07So we like to be able to deliver the message to the family,
05:12the news to the family personally, not even over the phone.
05:16They'd found out via social media
05:18that something had happened to their son
05:21and were trying to contact the police in Manchester.
05:24The family liaison officer had been deployed.
05:26The message was delivered, albeit over the phone.
05:29You've got a very, very dangerous individual
05:32still out there with a gun
05:35who, for no apparent reason whatsoever, has murdered someone.
05:39And there's nothing to say that it's not going to happen again.
05:50Very quickly, we started to feel the political pressure
05:53from the government, our own government, the Foreign Office
05:56and certain MPs, but also the Indian government.
06:00A homicide where the victim has been shot
06:03presents a number of challenges.
06:05The scene will be locked down.
06:06Residential roads will present challenges
06:08because, obviously, people want to seek access
06:10to and from their houses.
06:12However, we will shut roads.
06:13We will put police tape around a cordon
06:16a certain distance.
06:17The other issue is it's an outdoor scene.
06:19So, December, potentially inclement weather.
06:22We have to protect the scene from rain, for instance, or snow
06:26and forensic it as quickly as possible.
06:29How this incident happened.
06:32A stranger, the suspect, the victim and the location
06:37had no real previous interaction.
06:39There was very little in terms of forensic opportunity
06:43on the victim themselves, in terms of DNA.
06:46There would be some forensic opportunity around the firearm
06:49and the type of firearm that was used.
06:52And unless you found the suspects fairly quickly,
06:55they would have disposed of or washed off any potential forensic evidence.
07:02The main evidence recovered from the scene was the bullet itself.
07:07It had gone through the victim's head and out the other side
07:12and was stuck in the hoardings along the side of the road.
07:15That was recovered, allowed a ballistics expert
07:19to identify probably what sort of gun had been used.
07:23And in this case, it was a self-loading pistol,
07:26possibly a Luger-type weapon.
07:30The majority of murders that the police deal with
07:34are murders that the victim is known to the perpetrator.
07:38My name is Dr Kerry Nixon and I am a consultant forensic psychologist.
07:42In policing, I worked a lot on domestic abuse and also stalking.
07:47I've got a broad specialism, but one of my particular areas of expertise
07:52is violent crime.
07:54It is rare for there to be a stranger murder
07:58and even rarer for there to be apparently no motive whatsoever.
08:11This case gives us a rare glimpse into how detectives investigate a random murder.
08:19And even when there's not, there's usually some kind of obvious motive,
08:24be it robbery or confrontation or some sexual element.
08:28But with no suspects, no motives and that growing pressure
08:34from the international media,
08:36detectives in this case had to rely on methodical police work.
08:43In modern-day murder investigations, CCTV will play a part in every case,
08:49sometimes to a larger extent, sometimes to a lesser extent.
08:52But you had a potentially huge task
08:56because you're looking for a suspect and you don't know where they've gone
08:59in a residential area that could be like a spiderweb feeding out
09:04and it could create an enormous amount of work.
09:08Yes, absolutely. Resources are finite.
09:10You have to prioritise.
09:12And there's an element of acceptance that you may end up losing.
09:16Some evidence that you don't know yet is there
09:18because of the need to prioritise.
09:21We had a dedicated CCTV team, both in terms of retrieval and viewing.
09:29I'd been informed that there'd been a shooting,
09:31so I went into work and attended the briefing that morning.
09:36My name's Karen Ryan.
09:38Back in 2011, I was working for Greater Manchester Police.
09:42And my role at the time was a detective sergeant
09:45in the visual evidence retrieval and analysis unit.
09:49So we would retrieve footage because of the skill set that we had.
09:54We need to know the full story of what happened
09:56because we need to be able to set the parameters
09:57of where we're going to troll the CCTV from.
10:00So I would need to know the movements of the victim
10:03before the actual incident occurred.
10:05So we could see who was with the victim,
10:08or was anybody following the victim.
10:11And then I would also have to know everything
10:12about where the offenders came from
10:14so we could retrace the offenders' steps
10:17and try and find where the offenders had came from as well.
10:22This incident happened on Boxing Day.
10:25Anything that happens on a period of public holiday
10:27brings with it significant issues with regards to resources.
10:32People are on holiday, people have plans,
10:34people are unable to change those plans at short notice,
10:37they have issues around childcare.
10:40So this investigation from the start
10:42struggled to resource a high-profile response
10:47for 24 hours a day, which was the response that was required.
10:52As murder investigators, I don't want to speak for you,
10:55but I know for me one of the biggest motivations
10:57was getting justice for the victim's family.
11:01The family are a lovely family.
11:03They were very, very supportive.
11:05And I hesitate to say we're grateful of police action.
11:08And they didn't need to be.
11:10You lose the confidence of your family.
11:12You've pretty much lost the investigation, if we're honest.
11:15But we were able to maintain that confidence.
11:17In fact, in the end, we sent the media frenzy over there
11:20was such that we sent a senior officer
11:23and family liaison officers over to the family in India
11:26to help the Indian authorities manage that frenzy
11:30and to keep the family safe and informed.
11:32The impact was massive.
11:34Politicians, I think the primaries at the time, David Cameron,
11:38rang Anush's family to offer his condolences.
11:42Anush had come over in September 2011
11:46to start his postgraduate degree at Lancaster.
11:49He had no other family in the UK.
11:52He had no previous interactions with the police service.
11:57He had never been in trouble.
11:58He was a lovely, lovely lad, had lots of friends,
12:02and was generally happy to be studying in the UK.
12:07We had no idea why Anush had been shot dead.
12:19When talking to Mary, what became quite clear to me
12:22was the pressure she would have been under
12:24in those early initial stages of the investigation.
12:28Pressure from her bosses, her bosses' bosses,
12:31from the MP, from the media, from the public.
12:34The longer this case went unsolved,
12:38the more pressure was building on her.
12:49In the first 24 hours of this investigation,
12:52consideration was obviously given as to whether or not
12:55this attack may be racially motivated.
12:57The victim was Indian,
12:58the suspects had been described as white,
13:01and therefore the obvious conclusions
13:03were starting to be drawn by certain members of the community.
13:07When it comes to CCTV,
13:09essentially you've got two different sort of methods of getting it.
13:13You've got the longer term,
13:14where you would sit down and work out the parameters
13:16and where we're going to look for,
13:18what times we're going to look for.
13:20And then you've got the,
13:21what we call the quick time inquiries,
13:25where you're looking for a quick win.
13:26You're sending your officers out to the most likely place
13:29where the suspect may have been.
13:31When you carried out that process,
13:33did you get anything coming back?
13:35I think it was early afternoon on the first day,
13:38so on Boxing Day,
13:39my CCTV team identified some footage
13:42that existed from a petrol station
13:43on the junction of Regent Road and Ortsal Lane
13:47that showed a group of young white males together.
13:52There was a meeting of some description
13:55from the garage forecourt.
13:57You could see the offender and other males,
14:00and then the group split,
14:02two walked off crucial footage
14:04because that showed the offenders walking down Ortsal Lane
14:08where they would meet the victims.
14:09So it narrows that down slightly.
14:12So then I could direct the resources down Ortsal Lane
14:15rather than going in a different direction.
14:18So the victim and friends,
14:20we knew that they'd left a hotel nearby.
14:23We got footage from the premises of the hotel,
14:26and then we tracked them all the way down Ortsal Lane
14:29with different bits of footage.
14:34Police don't solve murders on their own.
14:36They need the help of the public.
14:39And that's why media appeals,
14:42be it in television, newspapers, radio, social media,
14:46are so important to modern-day murder investigations.
14:52Greater Manchester Police have put out a lot of information
14:55to the public appealing for information.
14:58Yeah.
14:58Any of it helpful?
14:59We had a call come into our force control room
15:02that named an individual as being responsible for the murder.
15:06Did some really quick-time research around that name,
15:10and it seemed that it was a likely individual,
15:13that it could have been that person.
15:15They would have been similar to the description
15:17that we'd got already.
15:19Even without a full intelligence package,
15:21I would raise that person as suspect
15:23and that they would now be wanted for Anerj's murder.
15:26Who is he, and what did you know about him?
15:28He's an individual by the name of Kieran Stapleton.
15:31He's a local lad.
15:32He's, I think, 21 years old.
15:35He's a resident of the estate
15:38next to where it had happened.
15:39As are a lot of his family.
15:41He has a general criminal background,
15:44general criminal history,
15:46and a history...
15:47He's had quite a troubled upbringing, it would seem.
15:49It could be very likely that he would be responsible
15:52or the sort of person that could be responsible.
15:55The witnesses had said that the suspect
15:57had approached the group,
16:00had literally just asked the time,
16:02then shot Anuj and ran away laughing.
16:06They described him as laughing as he left the scene.
16:12So what did you do to try and locate and arrest him?
16:17Obviously identified addresses starting with home address.
16:20We'd made the decision early on that any warrant would be executed
16:24with a full firearms team.
16:26And you've made the decision to raise Stapleton to a suspect
16:30on a single-strand piece of intelligence
16:34that's coming through the control room
16:36and his history and a general description
16:40that's come from the witnesses.
16:42So that information isn't strong.
16:46If you don't mind me saying, Mary,
16:47that's a brave decision to make.
16:49When police officers go into addresses,
16:52sometimes people get shot.
16:53Right, absolutely, and we've seen it happen, haven't we?
16:57And ultimately turn out to be innocent people.
17:00There's a level of risk attached to it, certainly.
17:03As soon as we could possibly do it,
17:06we entered that address with a firearms team
17:08in the early hours of the morning to try and locate him.
17:11Was he there? Yeah.
17:14The local neighbourhood policing teams looked at the footage
17:17that Karen and her team had retrieved
17:19and identified the second male as Ryan Holden.
17:22So there was no CCTV covering the actual scene of the murder.
17:27When we were doing the CCTV trawl,
17:30there was probably over 200 exhibits
17:32where we've recovered CCTV from different premises,
17:35different shops, public houses, you know, different locations.
17:41Kieran Stapleton and Ryan Holden,
17:44who'd been on the petrol station forecourt,
17:47they had been buying things from the kiosk on the forecourt,
17:50identified from the CCTV footage,
17:53and that we'd recovered from the petrol station forecourt.
18:03We put a neighbourhood officer who knew Kieran Stapleton...
18:08Yeah. ..knew all the local ne'er-do-wells...
18:10Yeah. ..to view that footage...
18:13Yeah. ..in control conditions...
18:14Yeah. ..and he said,
18:16that's Kieran Stapleton, that's Ryan Holden,
18:19the two that ran up.
18:20Ryan Holden was arrested on the 27th of December
18:25at his home address in the early hours of the morning.
18:28So how did the interview go?
18:30To begin with, it was no comment.
18:32The suspects have a right in English law to make no comment,
18:36and that's what he did to begin with.
18:39Ryan Holden was, as you would expect,
18:41spent a considerable amount of time in custody,
18:42being interviewed at length and in detail
18:45by specialist interviewing officers around his movements,
18:50his knowledge of the offence,
18:51his association with Kieran Stapleton,
18:53and indeed where Kieran Stapleton may or may not be.
18:56But he carried on in that initial stage
18:59of no comment to all the questions that were put to him.
19:02Yes, and it's important evidentially
19:03to be able to demonstrate
19:04that they've been given the opportunity to answer.
19:07When they're saying they're innocent,
19:08well, why have you not told us that?
19:11You've been given that opportunity.
19:13You need to arrest someone.
19:15You go to where they live and they're not there.
19:18You're still out there somewhere with this gun,
19:20but you've now shown your hand.
19:21Yeah.
19:22He now knows that you're looking for him.
19:24Yeah.
19:24So do his family and associates.
19:27Criminal networks are very good at hiding people.
19:30They go dark, they go to ground,
19:32they turn off all of their digital devices.
19:35But the other worry is that we've pushed him into now
19:38some maybe more desperate action
19:41in terms of what he's going to do next to avoid capture.
19:45He is someone that is shown
19:49he's not worried about using this deadly violence.
19:53Also as well, you don't know his mental state.
19:55It's apparent looking at the descriptions
19:58of Kieran Stapleton's behaviour
20:01that he had a lot of anger, a lot of impulsivity,
20:05a lot of built-up rage
20:08that was always waiting to erupt.
20:12We can see the history of criminality.
20:14We can see the rage and the aggression.
20:18There was a background of road rage, for example.
20:20to shoot a complete stranger
20:23that he had no association with.
20:27He was laughing, he didn't care,
20:29showed no remorse that he'd taken somebody's life.
20:45What would motivate somebody to kill another person
20:49completely randomly, with no apparent motive?
20:53Well, for me, that would usually stem from
20:56an inner need from the killer to feel power,
21:00to feel control.
21:02And when we look at Stapleton's behaviour around this case,
21:07I think that's what we see.
21:15So whilst Ryan Holden was in custody
21:17and was continuing to be interviewed,
21:19obviously the investigation hasn't stopped
21:21into trying to locate Kieran Stapleton.
21:23One of the best pieces of old-fashioned detective work
21:26I've seen in a long time
21:27has located a piece of intelligence
21:30that linked Kieran Stapleton
21:32to an individual address in Lee,
21:34which is just down the road, really, from Salford.
21:37So you went to this new address that had been found by this DC,
21:41again, firearms operation,
21:43armed police going in there to find Stapleton, yeah?
21:46I went with them.
21:47I was playing intelligence manager that night
21:49because I didn't have anyone else to do it.
21:51If he was going to be arrested, I wanted to be there.
21:53It was as simple as that.
21:54So the firearms officers have gone in,
21:56and it's a tense moment, isn't it?
21:58It is.
21:58You hear all the shouting.
22:00Yeah.
22:00The door goes in.
22:02Sometimes you hear screaming from inside.
22:04Yeah.
22:04You don't know what's going on,
22:05and you're sat there waiting for that radio call.
22:09Yeah.
22:09And the radio comes in.
22:11Ma'am?
22:11Safety in custody.
22:13Safety in custody.
22:14What a feeling.
22:15Yeah, great.
22:16Absolutely.
22:17Upon arresting him, we still didn't have the gun,
22:20so we didn't have any forensics from that perspective.
22:23There was some information that came in
22:25that the weapon had been discarded
22:27into the Manchester Ship Canal.
22:28We actually searched the Manchester Ship Canal
22:31for that weapon.
22:32It was never found.
22:33But importantly,
22:35no-one else is going to get harmed by this man.
22:38That's correct.
22:40He was arrested in the early hours of the morning.
22:44Once he was safely in custody
22:46and back at the police station, I would have gone home.
22:49Came back in the next morning,
22:51where the feeling of elation dissipated
22:53somewhat when one of my officers came in
22:56to announce that Kieran Stapleton in custody
22:59had a teardrop tattoo on his face
23:00and our suspect hadn't had a teardrop tattoo.
23:03So when you say your suspect didn't have a teardrop tattoo,
23:06meaning your witnesses didn't notice it?
23:09Correct.
23:10Now, on the face of it, that might be nothing
23:12because witnesses make mistakes.
23:16But it's little things like that
23:18that when you get to court,
23:20defence will make a huge thing of, won't they?
23:22Absolutely.
23:23And a facial tattoo is hard to miss.
23:25People would see it.
23:26So Kieran Stapleton is now in police custody
23:29and, as with all murder suspects,
23:32he's going to be interviewed.
23:34He went no comment and invoked his right to silence
23:37and said nothing.
23:38You've killed someone without going to jail.
23:43Have you?
23:44No comment.
23:46As a matter of fact, I did kill someone with my hamster.
23:49Did you? Last week.
23:50The use of mobile phones help you prove the case
23:57against Stapleton as him being the shooter of Anuj?
24:02No.
24:02The best they could have done, as you know,
24:04they can put people in certain areas, vicinities.
24:08We already had that from the CCTV
24:10and from other information.
24:12So they couldn't say, they couldn't tell me
24:15from the phone data that Kieran Stapleton pulled that trigger.
24:18When somebody's in custody and they've been arrested,
24:22there comes a point where you have to assess
24:26where you're going with this.
24:27You can't hold them forever.
24:29Mm-hm.
24:29I was painfully aware.
24:31We were really, really short of any solid evidence
24:35that would allow us to take a file
24:37to the Crown Prosecution Service
24:39and we were rapidly running out of time.
24:41We could only hold them for 96 hours, as you know,
24:44and that was coming to an end.
24:52The family of Anuj Bidwe were brought over
24:57during the investigation.
24:59The Indian media were covering this extensively.
25:02There were, at that time, about 40,000 students
25:06in this country from India.
25:10To put that in some context, that's a billion-pound business.
25:15And immediately, Indian students
25:17were cancelling their courses and leaving.
25:19Additionally, it was having a reputational impact
25:22on the United Kingdom.
25:24People in India were looking at, not just India,
25:27but people across the world were looking at Britain
25:29and thinking, what? You can't be safe.
25:31You're safe there.
25:32You can be shot in the head just for walking to the shops.
25:37The pressure, as I'm sure you can imagine, was immense.
25:41It was really, really high-profile,
25:43both from a political perspective nationally,
25:46so within the United Kingdom, but also internationally.
25:49The Indian government were concerned
25:52about whether or not we were investigating
25:55thoroughly and appropriately
25:56and were asking questions through their own High Commission.
25:59So where did you go from here?
26:02We had a number of opportunities.
26:04We'd had a tattoo expert
26:08from the National Crime and Operations Faculty
26:10come in and have a look at Kieran's tattoo.
26:12He judged it to be between three and five days old.
26:16So it was a new tattoo.
26:18Wow. I mean, that's chilling.
26:20Yes.
26:20Tear tattoos in prison are an acknowledgement
26:24of any lives you may have taken,
26:26people you may have murdered.
26:27That's correct.
26:28As a result of that, we went and did the inquiries
26:31and found the tattooist that had done that.
26:34And he remembered it vividly, as you would,
26:37because teardrop tattoos on people's faces
26:39are not something he would be doing day in, day out.
26:42And he'd had the conversation around the implications,
26:45what it means, what other people would see.
26:48And Kieran Stapleton had said to him,
26:50yeah, I killed my goldfish.
26:52This to me is scary.
26:54It's horrible.
26:55It's horrible.
26:56It's just a measure of the lack of empathy demonstrated
27:01or the lack of responsibility for his actions
27:03that he showed.
27:06We had found some evidence that Stapleton had booked himself
27:11into the Campanile Hotel, which overlooks the scene
27:14of the murder, the day after, in effect.
27:18So we need to set a strategy to go around the Campanile Hotel
27:21and these are the parameters that we need footage for.
27:26So each snippet of information
27:29that we would get through the investigation team,
27:31I would always liaise with Mary.
27:33So we went to the Campanile Hotel to get the footage from there
27:38and this footage would show Kieran going
27:41and booking into the Campanile Hotel.
27:43He had a room that overlooked the scene
27:47and then we could see him going for breakfast
27:49and he would go and sit at the window watching
27:53and overlooking the scene as he was eating his breakfast.
27:55So he was strangely and bizarrely looking down on the murder scene
28:01whilst the police were checking and doing forensics.
28:06So that was odd and that was evidence.
28:10Whilst we were looking at that footage,
28:11it came to note that he'd actually had a tattoo on his face.
28:15We needed to get some really close-up footage
28:18to see whether or not that tattoo was present at the time
28:21that he was checking in to the hotel
28:23so we could pinpoint when he'd actually had that tattoo done on his face.
28:29When we were viewing the CCTV,
28:31we would look at clothing in quite intricate detail.
28:33And the fact that it had been burnt in the back garden of Stapleton's sister's address.
28:39We obviously executed a warrant at that address
28:42and found the remnants of the fire
28:45that had identifiable bits of clothing that Kieran had been wearing.
28:51So the studs off the jeans were found in the fire remnants
28:58along with the buttons from the cardigan worn by Kieran Stapleton
29:03and the clasps from the man bag.
29:06Circumstantial evidence but fairly compelling as part of the picture.
29:11It's interesting that Kieran Stapleton returned to the crime scene basically.
29:17Either he wanted to see what police activity was happening
29:21or there was an element of enjoying what he had done.
29:26If it's the latter, then it adds to the evidence
29:30that this is somebody who's very psychopathic.
29:35After some time, and once Kieran Stapleton had been arrested,
29:40Ryan Holden's solicitor asked to speak to the police
29:44and said, Ryan now wishes to talk to you.
29:50So you send your interviewing officers into an interview room with him.
29:54He's still under caution. Yes.
29:56And they don't know what he's going to say. No.
30:00What did he tell them?
30:02He told us that he'd been with Kieran earlier in the evening.
30:07Kieran was a bit upset.
30:09There was some suggestion that Kieran's girlfriend
30:14and mother of his child, who was Ryan's sister,
30:17had perhaps not been entirely faithful and he was annoyed.
30:21But no more than that.
30:22And that was how Ryan described his state of mind.
30:26And they'd all met as a group at the petrol station.
30:30And Kieran had been a little bit angry
30:33and had stomped off, which is what we see on the CCTV.
30:37And Ryan had followed him.
30:39And he said he had no idea that he had a gun.
30:42Absolutely no idea he had a gun.
30:44And he had absolutely no idea what he was going to do with it.
30:47And you could see from his demeanour
30:50that he was massively traumatised by this.
30:53It had affected him really badly.
30:55So where we've got Stapleton lapping and joking with a tattooist,
31:00we've now got Ryan Holden, who's in bits.
31:02And I would imagine he'd had it explained to him the implications of what he was about to do
31:07from by his solicitor.
31:09He's effectively committing social suicide.
31:11He cannot stay in the area.
31:13He cannot retain his life as it currently is if he starts to talk.
31:18But he makes what I consider to be a very brave decision to assist police
31:23and to tell us what happened.
31:25And I don't think that was just to save his own skin.
31:27I think a lot of it was it was the right thing to do for him.
31:31He just couldn't live with what had happened.
31:34Ryan Holden, in interview, came across as a basically a honest and very scared individual.
31:40He was scared of Kieran Stapleton and his associates and what they may do
31:46because Ryan has now talked.
31:47He's committed the cardinal sin in Salford of being a grass.
31:50And he has told us everything.
31:53And the everything that he's told us underpins the entire case.
31:59Salford, at that time, was one where you were either part of a gang or you're not.
32:05For somebody like Ryan to break the code of silence,
32:10and there is undoubtedly a code of silence, you do not speak up about what's happening.
32:15I think what Ryan told the police was that if he did, he'd be dead within a week.
32:19And he wanted witness protection.
32:21Police can't do this of their own volition.
32:24Prosecutors have to make the judgment.
32:26Witness protection costs at least a million pounds a year.
32:29You have to ensure that the individual gets a new identity,
32:32that their close family are also relocated.
32:35And so, at the end of the day, that comes from police budgets.
32:39Ryan then was prepared to give evidence.
32:41He was then interviewed and gives a full disclosure as to what happened,
32:45completely and totally implicating Kieran Stapleton in the murder of Alish Bitway.
32:50And that was enough.
32:52And we support the suggestion that he be given witness protection.
32:58But now you have...
33:00You earlier on were talking about circumstantial evidence.
33:03This isn't circumstantial evidence.
33:05This is direct evidence.
33:07Absolutely.
33:08He needed to be turned into a witness.
33:10As I said, I was running out of time.
33:13Stapleton was going to walk out the door.
33:15If I wished to charge Kieran Stapleton with the murder of Alish,
33:19Ryan Holden as a witness was my best chance of being able to provide the CPS
33:24with a sufficient amount of evidence against Kieran Stapleton
33:29that would allow them to make a threshold decision to charge him
33:32within the 96 hours we're allowed to keep him in custody.
33:35So, as part of our strategy to obtain information, witness information,
33:40we had authorised and released a £50,000 reward for information
33:45leading to the arrest and conviction of the person who killed Alish.
33:50And, in fairness, he was paid.
33:52You know, come court, come a trial...
33:55Yeah.
33:56..any defence lawyer is going to be all over what you're about to try and do.
34:01Yeah.
34:01CPS lawyer looked at me and said,
34:04what you're doing, I can see no reason why it wouldn't be lawful.
34:09It's not usual.
34:12However, can I just be clear?
34:15It's your decision.
34:17If it had gone wrong, there's no doubt that the impact
34:20on the reputation of Greater Manchester Police
34:24would have been enormous, the confidence of the public,
34:27but also the impact on my reputation as an investigator,
34:29some of my perhaps more controversial decisions
34:34would certainly have been challenged and called into question.
34:37I can imagine at this point in your career
34:39you're feeling extremely lonely.
34:40There's a saying that women suffer imposter syndrome
34:44perhaps more often than men do,
34:46and I would say that is actually true.
34:48I did spend an awful lot of time waiting to be found out.
34:51And also, being credible as a female,
34:56even today, has its challenges.
34:59There's a lot of men inside the job and outside of the job
35:03in senior positions who question,
35:06and you can see it in their eyes even if they don't verbalise it.
35:09So you now have what you know
35:12is that direct piece of evidence you needed
35:16to bring all the other circumstantial evidence together
35:19and make it meaningful.
35:20You and your team put that file together,
35:22gave it to the CPS for a charging decision.
35:25What was their decision that they came back with?
35:27They came back with authority to charge with murder.
35:31So once a person's charged,
35:32they have to appear before a magistrate at the earliest opportunity.
35:37Ciaran Stapleton was asked to confirm his name under his address
35:39and he announced himself as Ciaran Psycho Stapleton.
35:44Ciaran Psycho Stapleton.
35:46This gives you a glimpse into the type of character he is,
35:50isn't it?
35:51Absolutely.
36:03Ciaran Psycho Stapleton's behaviour was chilling,
36:08from calling himself a psycho in court,
36:12getting a tear tattoo on his face to boast of the fact
36:18he'd taken somebody's life.
36:20This kind of unprovoked, attention-seeking killing,
36:26which is essentially a desire to feel powerful,
36:30is scary because of the lack of reasoning that you see in most murders.
36:37And I think that makes people even more concerned
36:42of the feeling that it could happen to them.
36:45Anuj did nothing to provoke this killing.
36:49He was just going about his everyday business.
36:52Wrong place, wrong time.
36:55And for me, most of all,
36:57that's what makes this case so, so chilling.
37:07Ciaran Stapleton never gave any explanation
37:10for what happened that night during the interviews.
37:14Ciaran Stapleton was charged
37:17on the 2nd of January 2012 with murder.
37:22He was pleading guilty to manslaughter
37:26on the basis of diminished responsibility.
37:31So the effect of his plea to diminish responsibility
37:35is accepting the act.
37:37Yeah. Yes, I shot Anuj.
37:39Yeah.
37:39But at the time of doing so,
37:41I was suffering from what legally they would class
37:44as a defect of the mind.
37:45Yeah, that's correct.
37:46Both sides had not only a forensic psychiatrist,
37:50but a forensic psychologist as well.
37:51The findings were that he understood,
37:56therefore, he wasn't insane.
37:59He had capacity.
38:01He understood the difference between right and wrong.
38:04However, he had a deficiency
38:06in understanding and feeling emotion.
38:10And therefore, he was diagnosed
38:13with antisocial personality disorder.
38:16He also scored highly on the sadistic personality
38:20and many of the traits of psychopathy.
38:24Sadistic personality is somebody that gets enjoyment
38:27from inflicting pain on another person.
38:30It's interesting when we look at how he enacted his crime.
38:35It was impulsive.
38:36It wasn't planned.
38:37He had somebody with him.
38:38It's what we call disorganized and impulsive.
38:43I think the reason why he was so impulsive in that moment
38:47is because we know that in the hours before the murder,
38:51he found out that his ex-girlfriend,
38:55who he had a child with, was with somebody else.
38:58And this enraged him, full of anger,
39:03wanting to harm somebody.
39:07He killed Anuj,
39:09but he wasn't responsible for his own actions.
39:11He couldn't be found accountable, culpable of murder.
39:15We, as a prosecution team, refused to accept that.
39:19So we went to trial for murder,
39:22which was obviously a trial to ascertain
39:26whether or not he was suffering from a mental illness or condition
39:33that would negate his responsibility as to what he had done.
39:37So now you're at the trial.
39:40It's a very...
39:41When it comes to these kinds of decisions,
39:46it becomes almost impossible to know which way it's going to go.
39:51Yeah. It's who the jury believe.
39:55And that's absolutely what it comes down to.
39:57But that's our system.
39:59Did Anuj's family come over for the trial?
40:02They came over and they sat through every day of the trial with me.
40:06They felt it was important to hear everything that had happened.
40:10It was a very difficult listen for them
40:13in terms of some of the information that was revealed.
40:15They were just dignified and had a serenity about them.
40:24We ensured there was an interpreter present to support them
40:28when the evidence was being received.
40:31His family sent him to the UK
40:34because they thought he was going to be safe.
40:37A decision that will live with them, I imagine, for the rest of their lives.
40:41Yeah. Absolutely.
40:42Were you there for the trial?
40:43Every day.
40:48Stapleton's behaviour in the trial was horrific,
40:52and I can only imagine how painful it would have been
40:55for the victim's family, observing that.
40:58It was almost like it was performance to him.
41:01He jogged up to the stand.
41:03He took it all in.
41:04He smiled.
41:05He laughed.
41:07When asked about a sentence, a long sentence in prison,
41:10he said he wasn't bothered.
41:12He loved prison.
41:14He had a fat canteen.
41:15He could lie around.
41:17He had his TV, had everything he wanted.
41:20He really wasn't bothered about serving a long prison sentence.
41:28Stapleton still had this intention
41:32to plead guilty to manslaughter,
41:34so he was fidgeting quite a lot,
41:37staring, sometimes talking to himself,
41:41which gave the impression he wasn't a bad man,
41:43that he was in some way a mad man,
41:46i.e. he was somehow mentally challenged
41:48or there was a mental health issue here.
41:51And when he was asked why he selected Alouz Bidvey
41:55amongst the group of men and women
41:57who were going to the sales that day,
41:59he said that he selected Alouz Bidvey
42:01because Alouz had the biggest head.
42:05I mean, I just don't know how much what to say about that
42:09other than how contemptuous it is for him to do that.
42:13All of this was an act.
42:14He wanted to show the world that he was a gangster
42:18and this was some kind of initiation on his part.
42:23There were photos recovered from Stapleton's phone
42:26that showed him reclining on the bed in the hotel where he'd stayed.
42:31We quite clearly also didn't have a facial tattoo.
42:34Our tattoo expert had aged the tattoo on Kieran Stapleton's face
42:38when he came into custody.
42:40But we had CCTV recovered from that hotel checking out.
42:44He does have a facial tattoo.
42:47Key in terms of building that picture of his offending
42:52and the fact that he had done it.
42:54As well as what Ryan Holden had told us
42:56with regards to the incident on the night, the actual shooting,
43:00he also described in detail some of the clothing
43:03that himself and Kieran Stapleton had been wearing at the time.
43:08You can present all the evidence you like,
43:10but essentially it's that question of who the jury believes.
43:15Correct.
43:16And then you reach that point where all those arguments have been had.
43:20Mm-hm.
43:21The barristers give their closing speeches,
43:24the judge gives their summing up,
43:26and the jury will then go out for their deliberations.
43:30How are you feeling now?
43:32You're just on tenterhooks the whole time,
43:34waiting for the call, waiting for the jury's back.
43:37The clerk of the court will stand up
43:39and they will ask members of the jury,
43:41have you reached a decision on which you all agree?
43:44What did they say?
43:45Guilty.
43:46Guilty of murder?
43:47Guilty of murder.
43:49On the 27th of July, 2012,
43:54Kieran Stapleton was sentenced to life imprisonment
43:57with a minimum sentence of 30 years before he can be considered for parole,
44:02which is, yeah, it's pretty high for a murder,
44:05but, of course, murder with a gun in a sort of unprovoked way
44:10requires a long sentence of imprisonment.
44:13Did Stapleton show any remorse at any point for what he did to Anoush?
44:18No.
44:18And I think that's probably hardest for the family
44:20in terms of understanding why their son was killed,
44:24why he had to die.
44:26When considering is there a similarity
44:30between Kieran Stapleton acting alone
44:33and gang initiation,
44:36I do see similarities.
44:38I think he's searching for people to be scared of him
44:43and, therefore, he feels that that would be acceptance
44:47in his warped view of the world,
44:51that to be feared is to be accepted.
44:54It's a very disturbed, macho view of himself.
45:00We really had to put all our resources into this
45:03because we needed to deliver justice as fast as possible,
45:07and that's why the trial was able to begin within four months.
45:13To put that in perspective,
45:15today, if you are convicted or charged with murder,
45:18it could be 12 to 18 months before the trial takes place.
45:22In Anoush's case, the trial started four months
45:25after his murder and was completed within six months.
45:28It was a message that we were able to send
45:31to students and others here,
45:33but also internationally,
45:35that we will take these cases very seriously,
45:38that we will deliver justice.
45:41I feel really proud of the role that we played
45:43within that investigation.
45:45We all worked incredibly hard.
45:47We worked long hours.
45:49We worked as a team.
45:51It's just the cold-bloodedness of that investigation
45:54that stays with you
45:55and being able to then get a conviction
45:59to be able to get justice for that family
46:02and for those individuals that witnessed it.
46:06Mary, I would just like to say thank you for the work you did,
46:09the outstanding leadership you showed
46:11and the brave way in which you conducted this investigation.
46:15It was an honor to be able to do it
46:18and I genuinely mean that.
46:19...
46:25...
46:33...
46:35...
46:35...
46:37...
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