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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.
00:30Welcome to Secrets of a Murder Detective.
00:40The murder of Nathaniel Shani in September 2023
00:44was one of Manchester's most challenging cases.
00:47I'm going to be meeting the senior investigating officer on the case
00:50to reveal what really happened, the pressures, the setbacks
00:54and the methods in the investigation that brought the killers to justice.
00:57My name is Gina Brennand.
00:59At the time of Nathaniel Shani's murder,
01:01I had been a DCI in a homicide team in Greater Manchester for two years.
01:08It was a particularly challenging case for me
01:10because of the number of child witnesses
01:13and children impacted by what they saw.
01:16And that necessitated a long-term, way beyond the end of the criminal proceedings,
01:22a long-term pastoral care and safeguard and response
01:27to ensure the mental health of all of those children who were present
01:31or knew Nathaniel.
01:32Hi, Gina. Lovely to meet you.
01:33Hi, Steve. Good to meet you, too.
01:37Gina, the incident we're going to talk about today is from September 2023.
01:42What were you doing back then?
01:43I was SAO on the major incident team
01:45and I was on duty that day on earlies, however.
01:49So the case we're going to talk about,
01:52I picked up the following day on the Saturday morning.
01:58So about 7pm on Friday the 15th of September 2023,
02:04call handlers received two 999 calls from Tavistock Square in Harper Hay,
02:12reporting that a teenage boy had been stabbed
02:16and was very seriously wounded and asking for police and ambulance.
02:23I'm not sure if I heard the word stabbing.
02:26Hello? You're supposed to go to Manchester Police.
02:28What's going on?
02:29My friend got stabbed over here.
02:31His friend got stabbed?
02:32Where, where, where that happened?
02:33Where, where is it?
02:35It's quite happening in like an old room.
02:37In Manchester, Manchester.
02:38In the background, you could hear the turmoil,
02:41children crying, shouting and, um, and utter distress
02:46from, from the callers who, who contacted the emergency services.
02:50In response to that 999 call, what happened?
02:53Who attended the scene?
02:55And what did they do when they got there?
02:56Very quickly, police arrived at the scene.
02:58What's his name?
02:59Nathaniel, Nathaniel, Nathaniel Jason Slyanian.
03:01Captain Nathaniel Jason Slyanian.
03:03Come on.
03:04Come on, mate.
03:05Keep your eyes off.
03:05Fire rest.
03:06There we are.
03:10It was a, a chaotic scene.
03:12Lots of children crying.
03:15Nathaniel, come on.
03:17Nathaniel, it's the police.
03:23Our victim lying on the floor.
03:30Frontline officers went to render life-saving efforts,
03:35but the wound was too serious to be able to help.
03:42My name is Amanda Mariani, mother to Nathaniel Jason Slyanian.
03:49We were a blessed family, loving, full of hope and excitement with life.
04:01Nathaniel was a light in our lives.
04:05He was very warm, loving and thoughtful.
04:10He cherished his family both here and in Malawi.
04:15He loved life.
04:18He loved his friends.
04:20He loved his family.
04:22He was always happy.
04:27He was such a very lovely, nice, charming boy.
04:31He was laughing all the time.
04:34He just liked to be happy and everyone be happy.
04:38And that's how it was.
04:43So you came in on Saturday morning and at that point you were aware that something had happened the night
04:49before.
04:50What were you told at that point?
04:52That a 14-year-old boy had been stabbed in the neck by another child of similar age.
05:00And that our victim had died very quickly.
05:05And that it had taken place in an environment where children gather.
05:09So lots of child witnesses, which was a huge concern from the start.
05:14That one young man, one boy was outstanding.
05:19One in custody, yet to be interviewed.
05:22And then the whole of the crime scene itself needed to be focused on and processed during the course of
05:31that day as well.
05:36When you're in a chaotic crime scene like that, it can be really difficult to sort of prioritise what needs
05:41to be done, especially for those first responders.
05:45You can't underestimate the impact of seeing somebody die, especially a child.
05:50And that can have a very long-lasting impact on officers.
05:53Was the victim taken to hospital?
05:56Yes, he was.
05:57So with paramedics, he was taken to hospital.
06:00Was sadly pronounced dead a short time later.
06:07When I arrived at hospital and seeing Nathaniel lying on the hospital bed, I was numb.
06:16I was in shock.
06:21I lost it.
06:22I didn't know what was happening.
06:27It's just awful that I would not think of anyone to go through what I went through on the 15th
06:35of September.
06:37You're there.
06:39Your heart has sunk down.
06:41Your brain is numb.
06:43You just don't know what to do.
06:46And there we were in there and they couldn't let us be close to our son's body.
06:53I don't think it's something that one would wish it for anybody else.
06:58I don't think so.
07:00So you came in on duty and you've got your team of detectives.
07:04Mm.
07:04Talk me through your mindset when you came on duty that day.
07:07Yeah, well, with all major crime investigation, there are tried and tested strategies that you deploy because you know that
07:17they work and they yield information.
07:20And nominating and having the expertise for phone officer is absolutely critical now to major crime investigation.
07:27Having really adept CCTV staff who recover, view it, provide a summary of it, edit it, prepare it for court.
07:36Again, really important steps in your investigation.
07:39But there will also be staff in the office to keep things moving so that we can task people on
07:48information that's coming in.
07:50My name is Paul Rees.
07:52I'm a retired detective sergeant after serving 30 years continuous service.
07:57So the very unit in Greater Manchester Police was the visual evidence retrieval and analysis unit.
08:02And our primary function was to be deployed on serious and organised crime.
08:07And that was looking at CCTV, not only at the scene of a murder, but obviously then the movements of
08:15those individuals involved, also the victim, and then expanding that search area.
08:21CCTV, if it's there, if it's there at the scene, is a crucial part of any investigation.
08:26Certainly in those first few hours, it can really benefit where that investigation actually goes, what is relevant and what's
08:34not relevant, which is crucial.
08:36It just gives that focus to the investigation.
08:42One of the first priorities of attending frontline officers when a serious crime has happened is to preserve the scene.
08:49I always go to the scene. It's part of the role of the scene investigating officer.
08:54When I arrived, there was people coming to lay flowers for the victim close to the scene in Tavistock Square.
09:02There were residents concerned about what had happened and the safety of their own area.
09:09How can you direct your staff around where to go and what to do if you haven't actually walked through
09:14the footsteps of your crime scene and evaluated it?
09:19Worked out how you get in and out and what the layout is and get a feel for the community
09:24as well.
09:29Can you describe the detail as you walk through there, what you saw?
09:34So where the murder took place was in an alleyway just off Tavistock Square.
09:39It was quite narrow, really, with pedestrian barriers at either end.
09:44There was large amounts of blood distributed.
09:48So there was a progression of a blood trail from Natty, our victim.
09:54And there was a screwdriver that was dropped that was on the floor near to one of these railings.
10:02Where Natty had fallen was some distance, maybe 20 metres from where he was stabbed.
10:10So as well as the blood there, what you saw as you were walking through was a screwdriver.
10:14Explain the relevance of that to me and how that was processed at the crime scene.
10:20I didn't know what the relevance of that was at the time.
10:22I knew that my victim, that Natty, had been stabbed with a knife.
10:27It was definitely a knife injury.
10:28The purpose or the use of that screwdriver wasn't known at the time.
10:33I didn't know who had handled it.
10:36That's why you recover it, to understand its purpose and significance.
10:43So that would be the job of the crime scene investigators to forensically recover that
10:48so that it could be then later submitted for examinations.
10:51Yes, and that's where some of your team members, like your exhibits officer, are so important.
10:57They will document the continuity of that screwdriver from the moment that it comes into police possession
11:03to the end of a criminal investigation and beyond.
11:07Because when you're looking for DNA evidence, you want to know that it hasn't been contaminated by somebody else.
11:13So that's why we have recovery in a certain way with protective clothing.
11:18That's why things are packaged in a specific way to prevent rubbing off of evidence
11:24and to make sure they get to the lab in as pristine condition as they can.
11:28Any murder will have an impact on the local community, even more so when the victim is a child.
11:36And that can create pressure from the local community looking for a fast resolution.
11:41But murder investigations have to be methodical and they can be a lengthy process
11:47and they can't be rushed, even with the added outside pressure.
11:58As a murder detective, you do get used to the sights that you see.
12:03You attend crime scenes, post-mortems, and you learn to build up a resilience that allows you to be professional.
12:11You want to get justice for the victim and you can't do that if you're caught up in your own
12:17emotions.
12:18But I know for me and many of my colleagues, there was a type of murder that we never got
12:23used to.
12:24And that's where it involves children, particularly those of us that have children ourselves.
12:29And I know for me, it was a sight I could never get used to.
12:38On the night of the 15th of September, Nathaniel had finished school.
12:42He'd gone home, he was ironing his uniform, ready to go to cadets, polishing his shoes.
12:48Part of a normal, everyday routine.
12:51That routine was interrupted by information on Snapchat, on his phone,
12:56that a friend had been the victim of a street robbery.
13:00And the names of those responsible was conveyed to Nathaniel.
13:05Having received that information, things started to change, the direction that even started to change.
13:12And Nathaniel made the decision to go to Tavistock Square.
13:19In terms of the digital evidence, the phones I'm talking about in particular,
13:27what did that show and what evidence were you able to obtain?
13:31So the only phone that we had, and it was Natty's own phone.
13:36Hi, my name is Adele Coulter, a detective constable in Greater Manchester Police.
13:41I was based in the major incident team.
13:43One of my main roles was as a phones officer, where I would look at a phone,
13:50whether it had been from a victim, a witness, or an offender suspect,
13:55and produce a report on my findings of anything evidential which would help our murder cases.
14:03The phone holds a lot of data, contacts, call data, all the different types of messages, images, location data, web
14:11history, videos, audio.
14:13First of all, you're going to be looking at the day of murder.
14:16You're going to be looking at all messages to see if there's any evidence of chat and build up to
14:21why this has happened.
14:23The main one for Nathaniel Sharni's phone was in Snapchat, which Snapchat is quite difficult because a lot of the
14:30time Snapchat doesn't save to people's phones.
14:34But on this occasion, I don't know why, maybe a setting that Nathaniel had on his phone, but it saved
14:40all the chats from that day.
14:46The Snapchat showed that cannabis had been stolen from a friend of Natty's.
14:51The Snapchat also showed that just six days before his murder, Natty had been asked to sell drugs by somebody,
15:01and he's been criminally exploited by an adult to sell drugs.
15:08So the onus on Natty to get the drugs back and pay this person who was exploiting him was quite
15:17unbearable, I imagine.
15:20The Snapchat showed Natty being concerned about reputation, saying they'd look wet if they didn't go and get the drugs
15:27back.
15:28If you've got an adult forcing you to sell drugs, and those drugs go missing, you have to answer to
15:35that person, don't you?
15:36Yeah, and what you can see is something that is happening, sadly, far too frequently, where adults involved in the
15:44supply of drugs use children as runners to sell them,
15:48taking advantage of their immaturity, their lack of life skills.
15:53They are not the criminals, the children, they are being criminally exploited.
15:58And you see this regularly, but can you imagine how scared Natty must have been, thinking, I need to pay
16:04this person back?
16:06An awful position.
16:07An awful position.
16:08And this only started, we know from his phone, six days before his murder.
16:18So on a Friday, the day Nathaniel died, I asked him to come home straight.
16:23On a Friday, they used to finish school half past two.
16:26So Nathaniel came home straight away.
16:31We sat together in the dining table.
16:35We ate.
16:37But the only thing that I noticed, Nathaniel, he had left his phone upstairs.
16:43Then every maybe two minutes, he would go upstairs.
16:47But I didn't realize that he was going upstairs to talk on the phone.
16:52He asked me to go out.
16:56At first I said no.
16:58Then he came again.
17:02He told me, Mom, I have ironed, I've done my boots.
17:06I just want to have like an ice cream at McDonald's with my friends.
17:10So I remember giving him five pounds.
17:14He went out, said, Mommy, I will not be long.
17:16I said, okay, I'll be waiting for you.
17:18And I'm not going to call you because I know you're coming.
17:21I have half past five, so we'll be going to cadets.
17:25That was the last words with me and Nathaniel.
17:35The injury inflicted on Nathaniel was a single stab wound to the neck,
17:41which caused a catastrophic injury,
17:44resulting in severe blood loss and the loss of his life.
17:48Despite everybody trying to save him, it just wasn't possible.
17:52It wasn't an injury you could recover from.
17:55The main objective at the scene of a murder like that in Tavistock Square
17:59was to really focus in on the actual scene itself
18:02and to secure all available footage that was relevant
18:07to that actual incident.
18:13The CCTV in this case was fantastic in that it captured the
18:18the events leading up to Nathaniel's murder.
18:22We could see exactly who then went into the alleyway,
18:26the physical actions of the suspects and Natty,
18:31and the actual fatal blow was captured as well on CCTV.
18:39From the CCTV at the scene, I know that there were 23 children in Tavistock Square
18:43that saw what happened, if not all of it in its entirety, then parts of it.
18:48And from those eight children, we're able to come forward as witnesses
18:53and take part in the later proceedings.
18:55Because you've got a lot of children there.
18:58You need to get information from them.
18:59You need to understand what they've seen.
19:02But they've just witnessed
19:06someone their own age being murdered right in front of their eyes.
19:09So they themselves are going to be traumatised.
19:12Yeah, I mean, this was an evidentially rich investigation
19:18when it came to CCTV coverage.
19:20But the complexities of dealing with large numbers of child witnesses
19:24was what made this quite challenging.
19:26We can't interview children without parental or carer
19:30or appropriate adult consent.
19:31They've just seen a friend die in front of their eyes.
19:37They need to feel safe and able to speak
19:40before we could even consider dealing with them as witnesses.
19:44We need to get the timing right.
19:47It's a one-shot thing so that we don't re-traumatise that child too much.
19:53We're asking a child to make a decision that they think is right,
19:57but they're in an entirely alien environment
20:00in a setting that they've hopefully never experienced before nor again.
20:06So their judgement, you know, may not be sound.
20:09I'm desperate for evidence, information,
20:13so I know what my investigation is.
20:16But you've got to pace it at a point
20:19where people feel they can come forward and feel safe and feel protected.
20:24So this witness strategy had to include
20:28a multi-agency approach to getting child witnesses on board,
20:33whether that was through group leaders that they trusted,
20:36whether it was through the school.
20:38They needed this scaffolding around them
20:40so they could feel safe in their decision
20:42whether that was to assist or not.
20:47Imagine witnessing a murder.
20:51Imagine witnessing the murder of your friend.
20:54How would you feel about then having to sit down and tell the police about what you saw,
21:00especially in those initial hours just after it happened?
21:04That's hard enough for anybody.
21:06But for children, it's doubly hard.
21:09So for Gina and her team, they would have had to have put a lot of consideration into,
21:15well, when do we go and speak to them?
21:18Too soon, and they're going to be upset.
21:21Too long, and they're going to start to forget things.
21:24This is the type of consideration Gina and her team had to go through.
21:29But overall, their priority would have been the welfare of these children
21:35who've witnessed something that is just horrific
21:37and will probably live with them for the rest of their lives.
21:48How have we reached the stage where children see murder as the answer to petty squabbles?
21:55You can sometimes feel old when you talk about how we used to settle disputes, fists.
22:00But it was true.
22:02So why does such a large section of our youth feel that knives are the answer?
22:07Well, as with any societal issue, there is no one simple explanation.
22:13A big issue is the emphasis that is placed on respect and reputation.
22:19Something that we see here in Natty's murder.
22:27For the last six years of my career, I was the force lead for sudden and unexpected death in children.
22:32Sadly, this wasn't my first experience of a murdered child.
22:37We see so many young people losing their lives to knife crime.
22:40But for the people who witness it in that community, it's so deeply shocking.
22:51In a case such as this where you've got lots of information coming in,
22:54a useful way of ordering that information is to put it onto a timeline.
22:59Oh, yeah, absolutely.
23:00So your sequence of events is your complete story.
23:05They come from witnesses, that come from CCTV, that comes from phone work.
23:09And put it all together in a very, very detailed sequence of events.
23:14The picture we were building was from the messages from Snapchat,
23:18was that sometime after school had finished,
23:21one of Nathaniel's friends had been robbed by two suspects of cannabis.
23:28Nathaniel was in quite a few different group chats,
23:31with information that was coming forth about what happened to his friend,
23:35who had done it, telling them the location of where these people were.
23:40We could piece together the timeline, the reason why,
23:45and it gave us the names of the suspects of who had done this,
23:49and the reason why Nathaniel had gone to confront them.
23:53Nathaniel learnt from Snapchat the names of the people of Trey and Kyle,
23:58who had robbed his friend.
24:02He therefore owed money to a man who was criminally exploiting him,
24:06and he needed to get that back to repay the man,
24:10but also to save face so that he didn't look wet,
24:14so some misguided opinion of reputation.
24:22Nathaniel left his home address.
24:24He was warned that Kyle had a knife.
24:28One of the last things his friends wrote on that Snapchat message was,
24:32don't go, don't get stabbed, bro, which was terribly prophetic around what came to pass.
24:39As well as all the outside inquiries that you've got running from the crime scene,
24:43witnesses, CCTV, etc., a very important part of your investigation is that you have somebody in custody.
24:49Somebody's been arrested for Natty's murder.
24:53So that was Kyle Dermody, a 14-year-old boy from the neighbourhood who had known and been friends with
25:00Natty for quite some time,
25:01but they'd had a falling out.
25:03So Kyle was named in the infancy of the investigation.
25:09And yes, he was in custody from the start.
25:12Within two hours of the murder, he was in custody, arrested at his home.
25:19For a suspect, you have to build a profile of them to understand who they are.
25:23When it comes to Kyle Dermody, what picture was that profile painting?
25:27Kyle Dermody had been Nathaniel's friend.
25:30They'd known each other a long time.
25:32They'd gone to the same school together at one point.
25:35They had a falling out maybe about six to ten months before Kyle murdered Nathaniel.
25:42Kyle Dermody had supportive parents, but had started to become a disruptive, violent,
25:52lots of unregulated behaviour, and it was down to cannabis use.
25:56On the 13th of September, he had smashed up his parents' house in a rage.
26:02And his dad described, never ever seen a rage like it.
26:06Then the following day on the 14th, so the day before the murder,
26:10Kyle was excluded from school.
26:13And then the actual afternoon of Nathaniel's murder,
26:17Kyle left his home armed with a screwdriver,
26:22armed with a knife, terrorising other children.
26:25What you saw was a pattern of this escalating, violent, uncontrolled behaviour
26:30by Kyle in the 48-hour period leading up to Nathaniel's murder.
26:41This boy, Kyle, was never known to us as a friend to Nathaniel.
26:48So they used to know each other in school.
26:51He was wanting to be friends, closer friends with my son.
26:58And so, but my son now, he decided not to be friends with him.
27:04We are told now this infuriated Kyle,
27:09to a point that Kyle started making fights with Nathaniel.
27:13So whatever Nathaniel would do, he would throw in a spanner
27:18to make sure it doesn't work.
27:20And Nathaniel didn't like it.
27:27When it comes to interviewing juveniles,
27:30it's done slightly differently to adults, isn't it?
27:33Yes, in that they will need an appropriate adult present.
27:36But in custody, you know, he's in for murder.
27:38So the suspect's strategy remains the same for recovery of clothes,
27:46swabbing of hands, photographing of injuries,
27:49which proved quite important in this case.
27:53So the initial disclosure would really be,
27:56there's been a fatal stabbing, you were named,
28:00we believe you're present, tell us about it.
28:02He was legally represented.
28:04And after the initial disclosure,
28:07he gave a prepared statement,
28:10admitting to being at the scene and describing himself,
28:14stating he was acting in self-defence,
28:16and then we made no comment throughout the interviews.
28:22The latter part of the interview phase would have been to show Kyle CCTV,
28:27what we call the challenge phase of the interview.
28:28And his stance was the same throughout.
28:31That of his prepared statement is self-defence.
28:35There was an outstanding suspect,
28:37someone who may have been part of Natty's murder.
28:40Who was that?
28:41That was Trey Stuart Gale, 13-year-old boy.
28:45Again, from the local area.
28:47He was a friend of Kyle's and he knew Natty as well.
28:51So finding him is so, you know,
28:54right up there in terms of priorities.
28:56Because every moment that goes by that you don't have a suspect,
29:00there's the opportunity to lose forensic evidence,
29:02clothing, a phone, a weapon.
29:04What steps were taken to arrest him?
29:07There had been arrest attempts all through the night.
29:09He wasn't at any addresses that we knew were connected to him.
29:14And in the end,
29:16he actually presented himself to the police station with a solicitor
29:19during the Saturday afternoon.
29:24There was a period of time had elapsed before Trey was prepared to hand himself in.
29:32Quite often what they'll do, they'll present themselves
29:35and they won't have their mobile phone with them
29:37because they know police are going to take it.
29:39Did that happen here?
29:41Well, it did.
29:42We're talking about a 13-year-old boy who had the presence of mind
29:45to change his clothes
29:48and turn up without any digital device on him.
29:51So someone's given some thought to that before they've come.
29:55So now you have two people in custody.
29:58Trey Stewart-Gowell's been arrested for Natty's murder.
30:01Then you go through the same process of being interviewed.
30:04How did that go?
30:04Trey gave another prepared statement,
30:08denying any involvement, admitting to being present,
30:12but denying any involvement in Natty's murder.
30:16When someone admits presence, you don't have to put him there at the location.
30:22What you need to do is drill down into his actions.
30:24Yeah, and this is where CCTV was such a crucial part of the evidential chain in Natty's murder,
30:32because it was sufficiently good to be able to ID people.
30:36But what the CCTV showed in this murder was that Trey was very close to Kyle the whole time.
30:46It looked physically like he was egging Kyle on.
30:51Nudging him along, pushing him towards him, really,
30:56and taking something out of Kyle's pocket, which was a screwdriver.
30:59So the first production of a weapon is committed by Trey, not Kyle.
31:05But it was the witness testimony where they could hear Trey saying,
31:10go on, do it, go on.
31:13That was really the evidence of the assist and encourage.
31:21We know Natty was killed by a single stab wound.
31:26And that person that stabbed him, undoubtedly, was part of the murder.
31:31But to be involved in the murder, you don't have to have actually laid hands on someone, do you?
31:36No, there's an offence of murder, which is murder with joint enterprise,
31:42whereby you have your primary offender,
31:44so the person who does the physical act of the killing,
31:47but then a secondary offender who assists or encourages the first.
31:54Trey took a screwdriver off Kyle and went to harm Nathaniel with it.
32:01Nathaniel managed to disarm Trey,
32:03and then Trey was shouting, go on, go on, to Kyle,
32:07and then Kyle went towards Nathaniel.
32:10Nathaniel punched out to protect himself,
32:13but Kyle aimed over the head with a stabbing motion
32:18two or three times at Nathaniel,
32:20and one of those connected with him and caused that catastrophic injury.
32:30They immediately saw the blood, and Trey and Kyle ran away, throwing...
32:39You can see the screwdriver bouncing off the floor as well.
32:42But they ran. They didn't stay to help him.
32:45And then you can see the shock on the other children's faces
32:48as this blood loss increases rapidly.
32:52The only point at which Nathaniel had a weapon
32:55was when Trey pointed the screwdriver at him in a stabbing motion,
32:59and Nathaniel took it off Trey, and he just threw it to the side.
33:03Nathaniel chose not to use a weapon, and again, he was unarmed
33:07and had no means of protecting himself from a knife attack.
33:13Why would somebody of a...
33:17..of a normal thinking carry a knife from home
33:21aimed at stabbing somebody?
33:24I've not come to terms with that.
33:27The whole knife went through somebody's neck, a small boy.
33:32What pain was he going through?
33:35Within those moments, he was losing his life.
33:41When I think of Nathaniel, that knife...
33:44I get scared.
33:47Because I'm thinking of...
33:49..of what pain did he go through.
33:54I wish I could carry that pain myself, not my son.
34:01Since 2013, the government have been recording
34:04detailed statistics around homicides.
34:07In that first year, there were four murders
34:10of children under the age of 16.
34:13In the year Natty was murdered, there were 17,
34:17the highest on record.
34:19Over the last 10 years, the government have also been
34:22recording the number of knife crimes.
34:24In the year Natty was murdered,
34:26there had been a 50% increase since records began.
34:30In the UK, we have a problem with knife crime,
34:33and it's only getting worse.
34:36And should that trend continue,
34:38then more of our children will be murdered.
34:49A common tactic used by defence barristers at a murder trial
34:53is to try and discredit the victim.
34:57They do this in order to try and take any sympathy away from the jury,
35:03meaning their client has a better chance of getting a not-guilty verdict.
35:08As an investigator, this is so frustrating.
35:11And you just have so much sympathy for the family
35:14that they have to go through this ordeal.
35:22Kyle was charged within about 48 hours of his arrest,
35:26which brings some comfort to the family.
35:32So it was quite quickly processed.
35:35But then the work starts into,
35:38well, was it self-defence?
35:39And what do I need to do to prove or disprove the defence's case?
35:45Trey remained silent and or no comment throughout the period
35:49that he was in custody.
35:50And in fact, in those first couple of days of this investigation,
35:55there was not sufficient evidence to charge Trey.
35:59So he was bailed for a period of almost eight weeks.
36:02That gave me the breathing space
36:05to build up a picture of what his role was
36:09and ultimately led to his charge of murder through joint enterprise.
36:16Once someone's charged with an offence,
36:18you now have to build up a case against them
36:20that's going to be able to be put in front of a jury.
36:22So there's an awful lot of work will stem from this now, wouldn't there?
36:25Yeah, and I'm under a responsibility to explore all reasonable lines of inquiry.
36:31I also have to look at things that could undermine the prosecution case
36:34and assist the defence.
36:37Kyle is saying it's self-defence, so there's a lot to do to explore that.
36:41And I must explore that to understand whether self-defence was true or not.
36:47What I'd like to do is start to explore the evidence you had
36:51by the time you got to court.
36:54In terms of the digital evidence,
36:58what did that show and what evidence were you able to obtain?
37:03So the only phone that we had that was incredibly relevant was Natty's own phone.
37:09No phone for Trey.
37:11When Kyle was arrested, he didn't have his phone with him,
37:14but we were able to get that from somebody else that he'd disposed of it to.
37:19Kyle, his phone was seized, but he refused to give his PIN number.
37:23They will use a PIN decryption device to get into the phone.
37:27Sometimes we were lucky and we can get into a phone within an hour, within minutes.
37:32Sometimes it can take months or years.
37:35His phone was put on PIN decryption, but it wasn't until a day or two before the start of the
37:41trial
37:41when we finally got into his phone.
37:45I had to then make the difficult decision of not using information from that phone.
37:51If I were to then dedicate resources to looking at that, you could have delayed things for months on end.
37:56You've got child suspects in custody and you've got all these child witnesses waiting and now ready and prepped to
38:03come to court.
38:05So the only digital evidence I could rely on was that that was on Nathaniel's phone.
38:14Describe to me your feelings going into the trial.
38:17Put yourself there.
38:18How you were feeling on day one of the trial.
38:22Yeah, there's been a big build up to it because those 23 children filtered down to eight child witnesses that
38:29we needed to get to court.
38:32There's the imbalance of information where we've got all this, everything we know about Natty and very little about the
38:39two suspects.
38:40One of my big concerns was the lack of bad character evidence for both suspects, for Trey and Kyle.
38:47And whether the jury would really see that Trey was just as culpable, just as guilty of murder as Kyle.
38:56My other really big concern was children in a courtroom setting, reliving the trauma.
39:02And I was quite worried about whether we would get our child witnesses in the courtroom.
39:06And then really worried about, you know, how they're going to perform.
39:10There they are, you know, teenagers faced with the brilliant brains of our legal minds.
39:18Who will put them through, you know, put them through the mill to prove because we have to prove it
39:24beyond reasonable doubt.
39:25And their job is to defend it, you know, rigorously.
39:33So how did the trial go?
39:36Overwhelmingly difficult for Nathaniel's family and as each day went on.
39:41And they saw, they saw footage, you know, they heard the pathology evidence.
39:46And they saw two young boys who killed the son denying it.
39:51And Nathaniel's character being decimated.
39:55So it was unbearably hard for the family.
39:57What I was sure of was that our CCTV witness and pathology evidence would undermine the self-defence claim by
40:06Kyle.
40:08There was a big concern around making sure that the jury understood exactly it was that Trey had done to
40:14show that he was guilty of murder too.
40:19When CCTV is articulated independently within CCTV can either prove or disprove that defence.
40:26If that person is claiming self-defence, but they've then arrived and if it can be proven that they've come
40:32armed with a weapon, instrument, whatever that might be, the CCTV might have captured that movement.
40:38So the officer would articulate that CCTV through a compilation, through moving footage that could have been animated, whether that's
40:47different coloured arrows, the footage could have been slowed down, zoomed in, move into the fine-grained detail of the
40:54actions of movements of individuals.
40:56So that's a really important part of how that CCTV is brought to life and how that's presented at court,
41:02because it has to be clear and concise.
41:05Kyle tried to explain when, on CCTV, when you see him trying to get Nathaniel into the alleyway, he was
41:13implying that he himself was intimidated and moving out of the way.
41:19But it just, that's not what the other evidence was.
41:23So the fact that he tried to rely on being scared just fell on deaf ears because his words in
41:29the court did not match his actions on that night where he remained in Tavistock Square.
41:41See them kids and, you know, dressed in suits as if they are innocent, smiling, you just feel dehumanised.
41:59When we heard their testimony, when they went to this stand, oh, it's disgusting.
42:10What they would say there, what, how they would act, and to see the, the way the defence side was,
42:19was blaming our son.
42:24They laid blame and blame and blame on our child.
42:29And yet they knew for sure that our son didn't do anything wrong to deserve to die.
42:39How long was the trial?
42:40The trial was three and a half weeks.
42:44And the jury deliberated for 20 hours.
42:50It wasn't there when the verdicts came in.
42:52The jury had gone out and deliberated for about 20 hours.
42:55And then they, they were asked if they had a verdict for one of the defendants, for, for Kyle.
43:02But then they also gave their verdict for, for Trey as well at the same time.
43:09That was a complete surprise.
43:11I thought they'd deliberate longer over Trey.
43:15Clearly the evidence was so impactful that they, um, were able to reach the decision for both of them at
43:21the same time.
43:21On the 17th of April, 2024, both suspects were convicted of the murder of Nathaniel Sharnie.
43:35To find out that they'd both been convicted of Nathaniel's murder showed the work that Gina and the team had
43:44done for the family, for Nathaniel's family, to get justice for, for Nathaniel.
43:49What sentence were they passed as children?
43:53Kyle got 13 years.
43:55Uh, he was 15 at the time of sentencing.
43:58So, that means he'll be 28.
44:00And for Trey, it was 10 years.
44:02He was 14 at the age of sentencing, so he'll be 24.
44:05You know, and that's the minimum that they have to serve.
44:16Having seen the type of death our son was, was subjected to, and it's, it's a life sentence for me.
44:24They will have a life, but for us it's a life sentence.
44:28After spending years of raising that child, and then within five seconds, he's gone.
44:36Who, who can absorb that and be able to live with it for luck?
44:51It's so important to Nati's family to talk about knife crime.
44:54They will forever campaign to take knives off the street so that no other family has to go through what
44:59they went through.
45:04Our house is very, very, very quiet without Nathaniel.
45:09We miss Nathaniel so much.
45:13Not a day goes without thinking of Nathaniel.
45:18It's just so hard to move on, to know that Nathaniel was here and someone took his life so early
45:29like that.
45:34I hope one day to find peace.
45:43When speaking to Gina, it reminded me of how such minor incidents can lead to murder and how youngsters nowadays
45:51seem so willing to pick up knives to sort out disputes.
45:57And the impact these murders can have on so many lives.
46:22And the impact these murders can have on so many lives.
46:26Who, how are they?
46:29Who, how do I what are you?
46:33I what are they?
46:35And the death of nature is only a six thousanddec contemporaries.
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