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00:01A 27-year-old sex worker goes missing from the streets of Glasgow.
00:06There have been six murders of sex workers within the Glasgow area in the preceding years.
00:13This is a very, very dangerous trade because you don't know who you're going to meet,
00:17you don't know the individual and you don't know what may happen.
00:20When her body turns up in a remote part of Scotland, a major investigation gets underway.
00:26They took about 8,000 statements and hundreds of DNA samples.
00:31It was probably at that point the biggest murder investigation in the history of Strathclyde Police.
00:36The decision was made to conduct 24-hour surveillance.
00:41This surveillance is massively expensive and is a very complicated and complex procedure.
00:48You have to be very sure that you're on the right track, that these are the people involved.
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01:22You must be very sure to be capable of putting up a site.
01:33Limefield Woods, located near Biggar, South Lanarkshire in Scotland, is a peaceful woodland, known for its picturesque walking trails.
01:44Limefield Woods is a huge rural location. It's about an hour's drive away from Glasgow, about 43 miles, close to
01:52the villages of Roberton and the town of Biggar.
02:00You can go in there at daylight and the light can just disappear, because of the size of the trees
02:05and the denseness of the forest.
02:09The only people that will go there are people who live in the area, or are walkers, or go there
02:14for a specific reason.
02:15It's not somewhere you'll find just by chance by driving past, this is somewhere you would go to, to have
02:20a look at the wonderful area that it is.
02:24It is a place that contrasts between day and night. During the day it's peaceful, there's a feeling of serenity,
02:32it's tranquil, it's popular with dog walkers, it's beautiful scenery.
02:36At night, however, it's completely different. It becomes somewhere that's isolated and remote, and quite frightening. It's pitch black, and
02:47it's eerily silent.
02:5130 miles away in the city of Glasgow, parents of a local woman become concerned, when they are unable to
02:57reach their daughter, in April 2005.
03:03Emma Caldwell was the daughter of Willie and Margaret Caldwell.
03:09Emma comes from a family of two girls. Emma, her sister, and her parents were very close, and would stay
03:15in regular contact.
03:17Emma had a really tragic thing happen to her when she was young, and that was that her older sister
03:23got cancer and sadly died.
03:25And it had a huge impact on Emma for the rest of her life.
03:31Life had been fine up until then, whether that's through education or family life, everything was great.
03:36Everything was what we would say, I suppose, that awful word, normal, but it was.
03:40But losing her older sister really did change her.
03:45Clearly, Emma found this such a traumatic time in her life that she turned to drugs, and subsequently she had
03:52a drug habit to fund.
03:56Now, if you're not working, in the sense of having a regular salary, you've got to have this ready cash
04:02available.
04:03And that's going to be done really a number of couple of ways.
04:06One, it's either through crime, or two, in the case of many, many unfortunate women, they turn to prostitution.
04:17For young women doing sex work on the street, it's extremely dangerous.
04:22They are extremely vulnerable. They leave themselves open to physical attack, to rape, even murder.
04:30They are targeted, and they are abused.
04:35The majority of the time, these women will have something that has happened to them in their past,
04:42whether it's their childhood or, you know, in their teenage years.
04:46Quite often, if you actually go to an area where there are on-street sex workers, you will see a
04:51pimp in the background.
04:52You might not realise that's who he is, but there will be a pimp in the background somewhere.
04:55And they're working them, and they're taking the money from them.
04:58They're giving them enough so they can fund their drug habit.
05:02But then they're sending them back out on the streets again to fund their next hit of drugs.
05:07And it's a brutal, hard, cruel life.
05:14The fact that a prostitute works on the street, the fact that it's illegal means it's undercover.
05:20The fact is that they don't have the protection that other countries offer, then this is a very, very dangerous
05:26trade.
05:27Because you don't know who you're going to meet, you don't know the individual, and you don't know what may
05:31happen.
05:34Struggling with drug addiction and wanting to protect her parents from its impact,
05:3927-year-old Emma Caldwell left her family home and had been living in a women's hostel in central Glasgow.
05:48On Monday, the 4th of April 2005, Emma Caldwell leaves the hostel that she was living in on Inglefield Street
05:57to go to the streets to do her job as a sex worker.
06:08This is the last time she is seen alive.
06:14The first people to really think there's something amiss within Emma's life were her parents.
06:20About two days after she was last seen, her mother was phoning her and there was no response,
06:24which was unusual because they would speak on the phone every day.
06:28Even though Emma had left home and Emma was working as a prostitute, she was still in regular contact with
06:34her parents.
06:34Emma made a point of seeing her parents at least twice a week.
06:40But she would have spoken to her mother, Margaret, two or three times every single day.
06:45On Wednesday, the 6th of April, Emma's father attempted to phone her, but she did not pick up.
06:54And he made a remark to his wife, Margaret, that maybe Emma was unwell.
07:00The mother was so concerned regarding this that she attended the following Saturday the hostel where she lived.
07:09She made enquiries there, she knocked on the door, but she wasn't there.
07:13The next day, the Sunday, they made the decision to contact the police and report Emma as a missing person.
07:26Of course, we've now got the situation that one, Emma is an adult, two, she is a prostitute.
07:31Now, even in those days, many police forces around the whole of the UK may not take that seriously
07:39because of what they would say at the time was, well that's the life she's chosen, I'm sure she'll turn
07:45up.
07:45So a lot of the time, these reports would be taken or taken down and be shown as reported,
07:52but there won't be too much that the police would have been doing at that stage.
07:56One of the things that the police would be particularly interested in,
08:01and again, it would set alarm bells and elevate this investigation, is that she didn't collect her methadone.
08:07A lot of drug addicts, particularly heroin addicts, will have methadone, which is a substitute,
08:14which is when they're trying to wean them off drugs or when they're trying to, you know,
08:18themselves realise they have an issue and they want to be weaned off drugs.
08:21And part of that is that they have a methadone prescription.
08:26To get that methadone prescription they have to go to a chemist and it's a specific chemist.
08:31They have a certain time of day they have to turn up for this methadone.
08:34They have to take the methadone there and then in front of the chemist.
08:38And if somebody doesn't turn up for their methadone, something's not right.
08:43Emma's family, friends and the police become increasingly concerned for her welfare.
08:49There was a lot of things that weren't adding up.
08:52Emma's routine was different because she hadn't been out in the streets.
08:57None of her colleagues had seen her.
08:59Obviously her family had never heard anything from her in those days.
09:02No phone calls, no meetings, nothing.
09:04So everything had stopped her.
09:06Her life just seemed to have stopped completely.
09:10So police were suspicious that she had come to some harm.
09:22As time went on, days turned into weeks of Emma being missing.
09:29The police really then started to become more and more concerned.
09:33So much so that they warned her parents that they might have to prepare themselves for the worst.
09:40Five weeks after her disappearance, Emma's parents' worst fears come true.
09:46On Sunday the 8th of May, a dog walker in Limefield Woods discovered the body of Emma Caldwell.
09:57The police found Emma's body in a shallow ditch within Limefield Woods as she was naked.
10:09And, of course, we've now got the situation.
10:11She's 43 miles from Glasgow, last spotted on CCTV, going to work.
10:16There is absolutely no reason for her to be there.
10:19Why was she there in the first place?
10:21Was her body taken there or was she led there?
10:25In which case she must have been driven there by somebody who knows the area quite well.
10:30The investigation into Emma Caldwell's murder quickly becomes a high-profile case for the police.
10:36There had been six murders of sex workers within the Glasgow area in the preceding years.
10:42So it was probably at that point the biggest murder investigation in the history of Strathclyde police.
10:50What investigators didn't know at the time was that disagreements over suspects and internal politics within the Strathclyde task force
10:57would significantly complicate the search for the killer.
11:21Five weeks after 27-year-old Emma Caldwell disappeared in Glasgow, her naked body is discovered.
11:27On May 8, 2005, in Limefield Woods, a woodland area 30 miles south of Glasgow, near Big Arse, Scotland.
11:38Police were now faced with a difficult task of informing her next of kin.
11:45As a police officer, whether in uniform or as a detective, to give a death message is probably the hardest
11:51thing you'll ever have to do.
11:53And in many cases, just by turning up when it's a missing person case, you turn up at the door
11:57and you knock on it.
11:58The minute they see you, they know it's bad news.
12:03Emma's parents had the unfortunate task of identifying Emma's body in the mortuary.
12:09They were devastated because they had already lost one daughter.
12:12And now they were losing their other daughter in such a cruel way.
12:19The natural landscape of where Emma's body was found poses difficulties for crime scene investigators.
12:26It is a forest. It's full of trees. It's not going to be the easiest place to search.
12:31There are a number of steps that you need to go through.
12:35Firstly, you obviously have to forensically examine, as best you can under the circumstances, the body whilst it's in situ.
12:44You would obviously conduct a search of the surrounding areas.
12:49And this is specialist police search teams on their hands and knees, shoulder to shoulder,
12:55and literally fingertips searching until they find anything unusual.
13:02And of course, in this instance, one thing that was discovered around her neck was a piece of wire,
13:07which becomes very crucial in the investigation.
13:10The post-mortem revealed that Emma had been the victim of strangulation.
13:15And there were markings on her neck consistent with the length of cable that had been found underneath her neck.
13:27With the murder investigation underway, Strathclyde police assemble a task force.
13:34Each investigation in the UK is given an operation name.
13:38In this instance, Emma's murder, the investigation into it was known as Operation Grail.
13:44And that consisted of about 50 officers.
13:47They took about 8,000 statements and hundreds of DNA samples.
13:51So this was a huge inquiry.
13:55The nature of Emma's work makes lines of inquiry difficult to establish.
14:01They come in contact with very, very many people that don't really want to be identified.
14:08And so even the sex worker themselves probably doesn't know these people,
14:14doesn't know their names, doesn't know where they live.
14:17And that's why it becomes really problematic.
14:21Police begin their search for the people closest to Emma.
14:25Well, first of all, the police obviously spoke to Emma's family.
14:27They tried to get as much information from her family as possible,
14:31what kind of person Emma was, and basically her whole backstory as a human being.
14:35They then spoke to people in the hostel who knew Emma.
14:39And then they obviously made their way to speaking to other sex workers
14:43on the streets of Glasgow's red light district who would have knew Emma
14:47and would have knew her habits, her movements and things like that.
14:51So they were basically casting as big a net out as possible
14:55to speak to as many people as possible, to get as much information about Emma
14:59and her movements to try and find out who killed her.
15:03The senior investigating officer, Willie Johnston, makes a number of public appeals
15:09for information on Emma's murder.
15:12They were appealing to the public.
15:14They were appealing to punters who may well have remembered Emma,
15:18who may well have, you know, been with Emma.
15:20They wanted as many people to come forward
15:23and give as much of a detailed description about Emma and her life as possible.
15:30They also had billboards with Emma Caldwell's face on it
15:33saying that they were looking for any information.
15:36This was really because a lot of people would have seen Emma as a sex worker
15:41and that's all they would have seen.
15:43They wouldn't have seen beyond that.
15:44They wouldn't have seen that she was somebody's daughter.
15:47She had a sister who died of cancer.
15:49You know, she was a human being.
15:51And this was trying to make and help people to see her as a human being
15:56and not just a sex worker.
16:02Through speaking with Emma's colleagues, police get their first significant lead.
16:10The police had a very interesting conversation with a sex worker who knew Emma quite well.
16:17This woman told police that there was one particular client who, in her words, was obsessed with Emma.
16:24This client would hide out behind some billboards
16:27and if another client tried to talk to Emma or engage with Emma,
16:32he would drive his van at full speed past them to try and intimidate them,
16:37to try and scare them off.
16:38Almost that he was the only one that was allowed to engage with Emma.
16:43And not only that, she had told the other ladies that he'd raped her.
16:50So investigators now started to build up potentially a suspect here,
16:54someone who's fixating on Emma, has used violence, sexual violence against her.
16:59And he's described as driving a van that's been seen in that area.
17:03So police now had somebody they could start to focus in on.
17:08Investigators quickly locate the distinct vehicle described by the sex workers.
17:13Detectives were able to identify a van that was likely to be being used by this man.
17:18And it had some writing down the side that said,
17:20Alpha Beta Sign Services.
17:23The police were suspicious of this individual.
17:27One of the reasons why was because one of the detectives on the case
17:30used to work as a repairman for neon signs.
17:34He noticed that the cable that was found under Emma's neck,
17:38the one end of it was damaged, almost as if it had been burnt.
17:42And from his experiences, he thought that's the kind of thing that could have happened
17:45through repairing a sign.
17:47And he thought, could there be a connection between the cable and this man
17:51on his land of work?
17:53So suddenly, you got an awful lot of information, not evidence at this stage,
17:58but a lot of good information saying, well, this individual,
18:01whoever drives her, whoever owns that van, definitely worth questioning.
18:05On the 22nd of June 2005, police identified that the man they were looking for
18:09was Ian Packer.
18:14So a decision would need to be made.
18:16How do we speak to this person?
18:17Do we speak to them as a witness or speak to them as a suspect?
18:20If they're spoken to as a suspect, they would need to be cautioned
18:23and they would need to be done under certain circumstances.
18:26The police decided they would speak to him as a witness.
18:29They go to this man's house the next morning at 7.30 in the morning.
18:33He's getting up, getting ready to go to work.
18:35He is the director of a signs company.
18:40And they ask him, you know, have you ever used prostitutes?
18:44Have you ever been in the red light district?
18:46Things of that nature.
18:47He denies using sex workers.
18:50He denies being a regular in the red light district.
18:52And he is very much given the impression that this has nothing to do with him,
18:58that he is just an ordinary guy.
19:01Fortunately, the detective at the time did take a picture of him.
19:04In most cases, if you deal with somebody as a suspect,
19:08you take fingerprints, you take DNA.
19:11That wasn't the case. He's been dealt with as a witness.
19:13So this detective had the thought,
19:16I'll take the picture and just to find out.
19:18And of course, then they had a picture they could take back
19:20to some of the witnesses who worked with Emma to say,
19:23is this the individual that you've told us about?
19:25So they showed 12 photographs of men, two ladies of girls,
19:30and asked them whether the person who they described as fixated with Emma
19:34is amongst them.
19:36And he was.
19:37They identified Ian Packer as being that man.
19:42A background check on Packer revealed more incriminating information.
19:48During this investigation, a number of women who were also sex workers
19:52came forward to say that they knew Ian Packer.
19:55And they described him as someone that was quite scary.
19:57They described him as someone who could get very aggressive, very angry.
20:01Someone that was reluctant to use protection.
20:05Someone that would force them to strip off all of their clothing.
20:09And if they didn't do that, he would get very angry.
20:13And he would do things like stomp his feet and raise his voice.
20:16And just not a nice guy.
20:18To the point that they actually had come up with a book called the Beware Book.
20:23And within that, they had the names of clients that they were warning other working girls to stay away from.
20:29And Ian Packer's name was put in that book quite a few times, as well as an alias he had
20:36used called Peter.
20:38You've got so much evidence now coming from these wonderful witnesses who said,
20:42this is the man who is sexually violent towards us.
20:45And we believe he is responsible for the death of Emma.
20:49We know he's actually goes to certain areas.
20:52We know what he's like.
20:53So there's so much evidence being put together that these detectives think they've got the right guy.
20:59They've got the guy that's been driving the van.
21:02They've got the guy that has actually possibly been involved with some sort of cable involved with neon lights.
21:08And they've got these witnesses saying he has previous for being violent towards women on the street.
21:13Obviously, the investigation team would be quite excited by this.
21:17And they would take the next logical step, and that is to arrest and take him into custody.
21:25This would obviously have to be approved by the SIO.
21:28And in this particular case, the SIO decided that that was not the course of action that they were going
21:35to take.
21:36They were instructed by the SIO not to treat this individual as a suspect.
21:42And of course, as a junior officer, you respect the decision of a SIO.
21:50But it makes you wonder why.
21:52What they don't know is behind the scenes, there is a separate inquiry into the murder.
21:57And four suspects have been identified.
22:13Strathclyde police are investigating the murder of Emma Caldwell, whose body was discovered in the remote Limefield woods near Biggar,
22:21Scotland, on the 8th of May 2005.
22:25Authorities have identified a strong suspect, Ian Packer, a man known for his violent behavior towards sex workers, and is
22:33reported to have been obsessed with Caldwell.
22:36However, detectives are unaware that there is a parallel covert murder investigation underway.
22:43Some detectives working in Operation Greil went to interview people.
22:48And when they went to interview them as witnesses, they were told, we've already been spoken to you.
22:54And the detectives were a bit perplexed at this and goes, really?
22:58He goes, oh yeah, we've had someone just, you know, been here recently and spoken to me.
23:03And the detectives would ring back to the police station and inquire and be told, oh no, they haven't been
23:07spoken to you.
23:08But the witnesses were absolutely insistent they have been spoken to you.
23:12It then transpires that alongside Operation Greil, there is a secret unit working on the Emma Caldwell investigation called Operation
23:20Guard.
23:21There was a whole different strand to the investigation that they weren't being told about.
23:24For me, it's unprecedented in the sense that I've not known that.
23:28If you've got one operation running, that's that operation, even if it might coincide or conflict with another one.
23:37But you're both aware of both operations.
23:40You don't keep an operation within an operation secret from police officers,
23:44because you're going to get the conflict of interest and the conflict of evidence.
23:49You can't do it that way.
23:52DCI Colin Field holds a briefing in the morning with DS Willie Johnson and all the detectives from Operation Greil
24:00and Operation Guard.
24:01And he tells all the detectives what they've been doing, what they've been working on.
24:06We understand that you were interested in Ian Packer, but this, this is where we're heading and this is why
24:10we're heading.
24:12The details of Operation Guard's line of inquiry was revealed to be in relation to a Turkish man that had
24:19called Emma's phone.
24:22The last phone call made to Emma's phone on the night of Monday the 4th of April 2005 was a
24:2972nd phone call from a man called Abu Bakr Anku.
24:35He was a Turkish man and he had rang Emma that night, the night of her murder.
24:40And of course, in many, many murder cases that you deal with, the last person that had contact with the
24:46victim tends to be the murderer.
24:49Further examination of cell phone data reveals that the night of Emma's disappearance, one of her last known locations, was
24:57near a Turkish cafe.
25:00So now, there's a lot of circumstantial evidence, not evidence pointing to a murderer or a suspect, but it's circumstantial
25:08evidence that the SIO's taken aboard to think,
25:10right, it's got to have something to do with that cafe, because we've got the phone, Emma's phone near the
25:16location,
25:17and we've got Anku that we've now got, we know he was the last person to make contact or try
25:22to make contact with Emma,
25:23and we've got the location. So let's now concentrate on looking at the cafe, because they know that that's also
25:30a cafe that's frequented by women and prostitutes.
25:34So that's where the line of inquiry then was strengthened.
25:41Anku was questioned by detectives, and he denied that he had seen Emma that night.
25:47He couldn't recall making the phone call. He couldn't recall what they had spoken about.
25:52But he denied any knowledge of her murder or the events that led up to her death.
25:57But he did concede that he had had a previous intimate encounter with Emma Colwell.
26:04Detectives on Operation Guard felt this was enough evidence to focus all their efforts on the Turkish man and his
26:10comrades.
26:10The decision was made to conduct 24 hour surveillance on the cafe, which would include visual surveillance and also audio
26:25surveillance.
26:27And this would entail putting listening devices, or bugs if you like, inside the premises so that they could listen
26:36to conversations.
26:36This surveillance is massively expensive. Not only is it time consuming, but finding people to follow people 24 hours a
26:46day, to fund the bugging of rooms, of people's phones.
26:51It is a huge undertaking cost wise, but also in terms of manpower, and is a very complicated and complex
27:02procedure.
27:04To get that type of clearance to start that kind of surveillance and investigation is a massive step.
27:11But you have to be very sure that you're on the right track. You have to be able to demonstrate
27:15that these are the people involved.
27:17We really believe strongly they're involved, and we want to gather more evidence.
27:21So you have to convince further up the line that this is why you're doing it, that there is a
27:27valid reason for doing it,
27:28and that you're confident that you will get some reward at the end to build a case against these people.
27:38Meanwhile, detectives on Operation Grail continued their investigation into Ian Packer.
27:45They speak to another of the sex workers who says that she's been taken to a remote area by one
27:54of her customers.
27:56They then decided to conduct another line up with this particular sex worker, and again, she picked out Ian Packer.
28:10And she said that Ian Packer was someone who would have picked her up on a Monday, Wednesday, and a
28:16Friday.
28:17And she said on one occasion he took her outside of Glasgow to a very remote location, at least an
28:24hour's drive away.
28:26And the police asked her, could she retrace that route?
28:30They were very interested in knowing exactly where Ian Packer took her.
28:34And when they were going on the route, she was telling the police things she remembered.
28:39And lo and behold, the more they went on the route, those things came to be true.
28:44She told him that she noticed a bus stop that she took note of because she said that Packer was
28:50taking her so far
28:51that she at one point was going to jump out of the bus stop to escape because he was getting
28:55very nervous,
28:56because he was going so far off the beaten track.
28:59She then noticed that at one stage they went over something
29:02that made, like, a doo-dum-doo-dum-dum type noise.
29:04Well that turned out to be a cattle grid.
29:11She eventually took them to the exact spot
29:14and she described seeing Christmas trees on either side of the road as she described them.
29:19And she said she remembers them going up to a silver gate.
29:23and she said this was the point that Packer stopped the van.
29:31Just to the left of that spot is where Emma Caldwell's body was found.
29:39So now we have another woman who, working as a prostitute,
29:44has been taken to this area by the person that she's named as Ian Packer
29:48and it just so happens that that's the same location as Emma.
29:52This cannot be a coincidence, it can't be a coincidence
29:55and yet it still wasn't acted on.
29:58They're directed from above to say,
30:01Ian Packer is not our man, Ian Packer will never be charged over this,
30:05this is not the direction we are heading in.
30:08You just get the feeling that the SIO is thinking,
30:11no, I want to forget that guy
30:12because the more I've got the distraction of people talking about Ian Packer,
30:17I'm losing what I'm trying to gain on the individuals
30:21who I believe are responsible for it from the Turkish cafe.
30:25So he tells the officer straight away,
30:27go and speak to him as a witness and tell him that is it.
30:30We don't need him any longer, he's free to carry on his own business.
30:34But when detectives visit Packer to tell him he is eliminated as a suspect,
30:39he makes a shocking admission.
30:43Now he admits to everything.
30:44Yes, he does know Emma, he has met Emma,
30:47he does use prostitutes,
30:50but he didn't hurt her,
30:52he's non-violent and he sticks to that type of story.
30:55But now we go back and you think,
30:56these detectives must be sitting there thinking,
30:58well, hang on,
30:59you've gone from lying to us
31:02to driving that van,
31:04being possibly associated with the cable,
31:08we've got witnesses who've put you at the location,
31:11we've got witnesses who say you're a violent individual
31:14who's raped some of the prostitutes,
31:16and now you're admitting to knowing Emma
31:18and having been with her.
31:23Based on Packer's confession,
31:25detectives on Operation Grail make a tactical decision.
31:30Now they asked Packer
31:32to take them to the area where he takes the girls.
31:35and he took them to exactly the same area.
31:43He was within yards of where Emma's body was found.
31:47Now for those officers,
31:48it would have been almost a surreal moment.
31:50Here's somebody that we suspect as being the killer,
31:53and he's actually taken us
31:54to the site where the body was dumped.
32:00So these detectives now had a decision to make, essentially.
32:04In their minds,
32:05they already suspected that Packer was the killer.
32:08Now him taking them to the deposition site,
32:10that can only firm that up.
32:13How can it not be him?
32:15How can all this evidence pointed to him not be right?
32:18In their minds, they're thinking,
32:19are we missing something?
32:21Are we going crazy?
32:23We need to take this to the bosses.
32:24So that's what they did.
32:27Packer has taken us to the deposition site.
32:30A deposition site that we ourselves struggle to find.
32:34What came back was the same thing.
32:37No, leave him alone.
32:39It's not him.
32:39We've got the right people.
32:41It is not Packer.
32:43I can't even begin to imagine
32:44the frustrations of those officers.
32:46Good detectives, good experienced officers
32:49that in their minds
32:50would have been absolutely convinced at this point,
32:52but were being told by senior officers,
32:54no, you're wrong.
32:56The senior investigating officer
32:59orders the detectives pursuing Packer to stand down,
33:02asserting that they have damning evidence
33:04from translated audio recordings
33:06captured during the surveillance of the Turkish cafe.
33:09During these conversations,
33:12a casino was mentioned,
33:14and in fact, the casino was next door to the premises.
33:17They searched the casino,
33:20and in the casino,
33:21they found clothing that they believed to be Emma's.
33:24And they also found a little key ring with a horse on it,
33:28which was interesting because Emma had previously worked at the stables as a young girl.
33:35Police were convinced that these clothing and items did belong to Emma Caldwell.
33:49The police, when they were searching the Turkish community cafe,
33:52found some bed linen,
33:53and on that bed linen,
33:55they found two specks of blood.
33:57That blood was found to belong to Emma Caldwell.
34:00So there were a number of things that made the police very confident
34:04that these Turkish men were involved and ordered them to be arrested.
34:07One of the officers who strongly suspected Hacker as being Emma's killer
34:13was given the task of interviewing Onku,
34:17which essentially involved him playing the recordings from the cafe,
34:22recordings that he had been told had been translated by the best in the business.
34:27But when they played this recording to Onku,
34:31he started to laugh at them,
34:33saying that what you're telling me on there isn't true.
34:38Almost ridiculing the product,
34:40ridiculing the officer,
34:42putting him in a really awkward position.
34:44The problem was the quality of the audio recordings weren't great,
34:48and the detective himself had to concede
34:50that it sounded like a bunch of men sitting around a television chatting.
34:54There was just nothing really decipherable there.
34:58Basically he went out and told the SIO that,
35:00and told the superiors,
35:01I'm not convinced this is right,
35:03and they said, well, he's our man,
35:05go back in and charge him.
35:06So he did so.
35:09After four million pounds had been spent on the investigation
35:12into Emma Caldwell's murder,
35:14the most expensive murder inquiry ever in Scotland,
35:18the four Turkish men are charged with the crime.
35:21The pressure is on to secure a conviction,
35:24but some detectives are convinced the killer is still walking free.
35:41On May 8th, 2005,
35:44the body of 27-year-old Emma Caldwell was discovered in a remote woodland,
35:4830 miles south of Glasgow,
35:50five weeks after she disappeared.
35:53Strathclyde police charged four Turkish men with her murder
35:56following a major surveillance operation at their cafe,
36:00making it Scotland's most expensive murder investigation.
36:05Police seek authority to charge the four men with Emma's murder,
36:08and that's granted.
36:10So they're now going to stand trial for Emma's murder.
36:15And the defence team would have to look at the evidence
36:17and essentially question it, test it.
36:21And the main part of the evidence
36:22were these recordings from the cafe.
36:25Worryingly, what transpired was the experts
36:29that the senior officers had used to transcribe the recordings
36:33were in fact Turkish-speaking officers
36:36whose grasp of Turkish actually wasn't fluent.
36:39One of the police officers, whilst he was of Turkish descent,
36:42he only had an O-level in the subject of the Turkish language.
36:47Another officer, again of Turkish descent,
36:50had to confess that his knowledge of the language
36:52was, at best, limited.
36:55So it was far from the best experts in the land.
37:00Independent translators are brought in
37:01to transcribe the recordings in preparation for the trial.
37:05The independent experts come in,
37:08they listen to the recordings, and they say,
37:12what is alleged to have been said here is not obvious.
37:15We can't say that this is what is being said.
37:19It's quite clear that none of this is being said.
37:21The other situation was that, yes, Emma Colwell's blood was found in the Turkish cafe,
37:27but you have to remember that police knew that sex workers had been taken there in the past.
37:33That does not necessarily prove that she was killed there.
37:37The other issue in regards to the clothing and key ring found at the casino,
37:43they were never 100% confirmed to belong to Emma Colwell.
37:46The police found them and put two and two together and thought,
37:49well, these have to be Emma's,
37:50but they were never independently verified as having belonged to Emma Colwell.
37:55At this point, obviously, that line of inquiry has completely collapsed,
37:59which is unusual because, generally speaking,
38:05all the evidence is checked and double-checked
38:09to make sure that we've got it right.
38:12This strand of the inquiry collapsed very, very quickly.
38:19You've now got the whole situation here,
38:21that you've got the money being spent,
38:24the £4 million that have been spent on this operation alone,
38:27not the original Operation Grail.
38:30So what do they do?
38:31We've got the wrong people, we've got no evidence,
38:33it's fallen through, what do we do?
38:35It's quite an embarrassment for that SIO.
38:40Hindsight is a wonderful thing.
38:41It's not like this was built on no foundations.
38:44This was built on some foundation.
38:46The problem was that it went further than what it should have.
38:50If the police had got the independent experts in at an earlier stage
38:54to make the translations and to transcribe the audio recordings,
38:58and if they had turned around and said,
39:00this is not going to get the court, we can't hear anything,
39:02this is not what is being said, this is inaccurate,
39:06it may not have went as far.
39:07The situation now was that the evidence they had against these four men
39:12was essentially rubbished,
39:16meaning that the case against them collapsed,
39:18they were now to be released.
39:19It is strange and questionable
39:21as to when the Turkish men are eliminated and exonerated as suspects,
39:28that they didn't return to the alternative
39:31and a very strong suspect in Ian Packer.
39:34That in itself is strange
39:37because there was so much pointing to Packer.
39:43Though suspicion remains towards Packer,
39:46nothing happens for almost 15 years.
39:50In 2019, Ian Packer approaches the BBC
39:55and he approaches a well-known journalist called Samantha Poling
39:58and he wants to tell his side of the story.
40:01He wants to clear his name
40:03and he feels her interviewing him
40:06is the best way to achieve that.
40:09In the production of this particular documentary,
40:12Ian Packer decides that he will voluntarily appear
40:16and openly admits that he knows Emma,
40:19openly admits that he uses prostitutes,
40:23but says he is never being violent towards them
40:26and he certainly has never raped any of them.
40:29If Ian Packer had been raised as a suspect
40:32by detectives originally,
40:36one of the processes that they would go through
40:38is to build up a picture of his life,
40:41trying to understand if there's a pattern of behaviour.
40:44That didn't take place because he wasn't raised as a suspect.
40:47But those making the documentary
40:50went through that process,
40:52trying to build up that picture of him.
40:54What Samantha Poling did was,
40:56Samantha Poling went and spoke to as many people
40:58as she could about Ian Packer
41:00and far from a man who denied being sexually violent
41:04or abusive to women,
41:05who had never raped a woman,
41:07who had never hurt a woman,
41:08she found a truckload of circumstantial evidence
41:11from people who had had experiences with Ian Packer,
41:15very negative experiences.
41:16One sex worker told her that Ian Packer
41:19had got her inside his van
41:21and had attempted to strangle her
41:22and she was only saved when a security guard
41:25banged on the van and she managed to escape.
41:27Another one told about being taken behind some shops.
41:32Ian Packer had tried to force her onto her knees
41:34and she managed to escape
41:36and when she was running down the street,
41:37Packer was running after her, shouting threats.
41:40She was building this picture of a very, very dangerous man,
41:44someone that was controlling,
41:46someone that was aggressive
41:47and someone that was violent.
41:53A woman called Magdalene Roberts
41:55is interviewed as part of the documentary.
41:57She knew Packer when she was a child.
42:00Ian Packer had become a friend to her family
42:03and she had a very disturbing experience
42:07with Ian Packer to tell.
42:09She said that Packer would sexually harass her
42:13and she's 14 years of age at this point.
42:15He would sexually harass her,
42:17he would intimidate her,
42:20she would wake up in the middle of the night
42:21to find him standing by her bed staring at her.
42:24That then escalates to him sexually assaulting Magdalene
42:28and eventually raping her in her own home.
42:33She told her family what had happened
42:36and they basically said to her,
42:39you know, you're making it up,
42:40but they didn't really believe her.
42:42But 10 months after the murder of Emma Caldwell,
42:46Magdalene Roberts reports her rape by Ian Packer
42:50to the police.
42:51And the police, unfortunately, do nothing with it.
42:57On camera, Samantha Poling confronts Ian Packer
43:00with her findings.
43:02His decision to participate in the documentary
43:04would be his downfall.
43:07Whilst he's happy to say,
43:08yes, I knew Emma, yes, I visit sex workers,
43:11what he's not expecting is the fact that,
43:13hang on a minute, we know you're violent,
43:15we know you're a rapist,
43:16we know that you've actually committed rape,
43:18we know that you actually raped a girl when she was 14.
43:22He is sitting there being hit with everything
43:24and that must have taken him by surprise.
43:27He was dumbfounded and really taken aback
43:31when she told him that she believed he was a dangerous man
43:34and that he was dangerous to women
43:36and that he had lied to her
43:38and that he had questions to answer
43:40regarding the death of Emma Caldwell.
43:42Shortly after the documentary is published,
43:4513 years after Emma's murder,
43:47an ex-partner of Packer comes forward
43:49and tells police that he had attacked her.
43:53He actually was jailed for attacking his former partner.
43:58He then subsequently, post that,
44:00is charged with the murder of Emma Caldwell
44:02and the interviews he give to Samantha Pauline
44:06form part of the evidence.
44:08Ian, can you describe your relationship to me
44:11with Emma Caldwell?
44:13Could you provide a description of Emma to me?
44:17Can you confirm where and when you first met?
44:21On the 28th of February, 2022,
44:25Ian Packer was convicted of Emma's murder
44:29and he was also convicted of 33 other counts
44:33relating to assaults, sexual assaults.
44:36And over his lifetime,
44:38he had targeted and attacked 22 women.
44:42Ian Packer was sentenced to life imprisonment
44:44with a minimum term of 36 years.
44:47It has turned out that he has
44:50become one of the most prolific rapists
44:52and sex offenders in modern Scottish history.
44:55He has put himself
45:00in the frame for a murder
45:03that he committed some many years ago.
45:06And I find it astonishing
45:09that he would do such a thing
45:12and unbelievable.
45:13When I look at Ian Packer,
45:15I see a sexual predator
45:17who was driven by his need
45:20for power and control
45:22over vulnerable women,
45:24sex workers, 14-year-old girl,
45:27people that he could easily prey on.
45:29And the fact that he was allowed
45:32to keep carrying on his crimes,
45:34he was almost emboldened.
45:36And I think that's the biggest tragedy here
45:38of how many victims
45:40that fell foul of him
45:43when they didn't need to.
45:45For the family,
45:46they would have undoubtedly
45:47mixed feelings about his conviction.
45:50They would be that satisfaction
45:52that eventually someone
45:54has faced justice for Emma's murder.
45:57But he was allowed to live
45:59for that interim period.
46:01He was allowed out and about
46:02to live his life,
46:03a life that Emma will never lead.
46:26To be continued...
46:27...
46:29...
46:36...
47:05Transcription by CastingWords
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