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00:01The perfect murder, the unsolvable crime, does it really exist?
00:07In the TV first, we reveal the cutting-edge technology now used by British police to join the dots
00:15and reveal new evidence in all homicide investigations.
00:19I'm Tim Tate. I've been an investigative journalist for almost 50 years.
00:26I'm Sam Robbins, and I'm a criminal intelligence analyst.
00:30For over 20 years, I've worked alongside detectives on major murder investigations.
00:34Together, in this new series, we are going to discover the fatal mistakes
00:39which prevented the perfect murder from ever being committed.
01:21Criminologists have long recognised that the best way to get away with a perfect murder
01:28is to kill someone whom nobody will miss or even report as missing.
01:35And if that seems unlikely, there's one group of people who fit this profile exactly.
01:44The homeless.
01:46On any given day, there are around 350,000 men and women homeless in Britain.
01:57On average, 65% of homeless men and women have suffered violence, assaults, attacks, and even murders.
02:11The fatal attack on 51-year-old Thomas Downey in the centre of Bath shortly before Christmas 2014
02:20is a textbook example of how the murder of a homeless man could have been a perfect murder.
02:34Any given year, this country, 500-and-something homicides on average.
02:41Yes.
02:41The most difficult homicides to investigate?
02:45They are investigations where there is seemingly no motive
02:50and investigations where there is seemingly no relationship between two individuals.
02:57In order to move towards a suspect, you have to retrace the steps
03:02and get to the critical point in time where the murder and the victim came together.
03:07And unless you can establish that relationship, you can't carry on with an investigation.
03:12So, essentially, what the investigating officers are looking for
03:18is the sort of thing that you do when you create an associations chart.
03:22Yes. Yes, very much so.
03:24So, in investigations where you're unsure or you don't know the relationship,
03:30the best thing to do is to try and establish all of the associates that that person had.
03:36You may have witnesses who give you information and a description about somebody,
03:42but they don't necessarily know the name that goes for that person.
03:46You're searching all the other information coming into the inquiry
03:48to see if you can match up the description to a named individual.
03:53If you can put person A with place B with circumstance C.
03:58Yes. So, it's a building.
03:59It's a layering of that information until you can adequately identify
04:03an individual or a potential suspect.
04:07What did you discover about how and when the case started?
04:10The case started, as a large majority of cases do,
04:16with the discovery of a dead body.
04:24I got a telephone call on Christmas morning to say there's a job in, a boss.
04:30And, in effect, there was a case in Bath,
04:34which was local to where I was living at the time.
04:38And, basically, somebody had been discovered there the day before,
04:41and they were dead.
04:44The victim had been discovered in a railway arch, a disused railway arch,
04:48at about lunchtime on Christmas Eve.
04:51The body was discovered as a result of somebody
04:55who said they were walking past the railway arch
04:58and had noticed that the person lying down in there,
05:02the victim, hadn't moved for several days.
05:04Police were called.
05:05They gained access into the railway arch.
05:07There was nobody there.
05:09A lot of debris on the floor, mud floor.
05:13And the victim lying there covered by a blanket.
05:18They arrive on the scene.
05:20There's no-one else around, just the body.
05:23What's the automatic initial assumption?
05:27Depending on the weather, you know, was it bitterly cold?
05:31Have they died from some form of exposure?
05:34Or, also, is it in relation to some kind of alcohol
05:39or drugs-related incident?
05:42So, could it potentially be an overdose?
05:50The assumption was that he had died as a result of either natural causes.
05:55It was very cold.
05:56He may have had a medical condition
05:58or he'd suffered some form of overdose,
06:00which isn't unusual necessarily in that community.
06:04And that dictated the initial response as well by police.
06:08It was clear that they went in looking at it through that lens.
06:13In any investigation where somebody dies,
06:16you should always keep an open mind.
06:18So, there's a potential here that, actually,
06:22there's some bias already creeping into this investigation
06:25and that it's been assumed that because
06:29it's a member of the homeless community
06:30that it could potentially be an overdose.
06:35It was not unusual for somebody from the homeless community
06:38to be either dying from an overdose
06:42or, tragically, from some sort of violence.
06:46It's not unusual for homeless people to have an unlawful killing,
06:51I think is probably the best way to say it,
06:53but not always in the way that you might have a gang-related killing.
06:56So, it's not always from a stabbing, but often from some sort of violence.
07:00So, he was from the homeless community.
07:03It was later identified that he was alcohol-dependent
07:07and he misused other substances.
07:09And, in particular, other substances that were misused at that time
07:13were spice, which was a relatively new drug
07:15that we genuinely didn't know much about.
07:19The reality was very different, wasn't it?
07:22It was different, and that was only discovered
07:25once the body had gone for a post-mortem,
07:29when it had been clear that, actually,
07:32that person had received a fairly severe beating
07:35and that it was likely to be an instrument
07:39that was long and thin and heavy,
07:41so, maybe a metal bar of some kind.
07:45The traditional blunt instrument?
07:46The traditional blunt instrument.
07:48Hammers and metal bars, yeah.
07:53All we could ever ascertain was that there was an argument
07:56about something insignificant.
08:01When we first managed to get an examination of him done,
08:05and it became more apparent during the course of the post-mortem,
08:08he had injuries to his head
08:11that were significant, like a weapon
08:13had been used to hit those blunt force trauma.
08:16He had defence injuries on his arm,
08:20so he'd obviously put up his arm to protect himself,
08:22broken bones there,
08:23and he also had injuries across his shoulder
08:27that was broken, again,
08:29where he'd been hit by something really, really hard.
08:34The hypothesis was that there had been a fight or an argument
08:37or something had gone on
08:38and that during the course of that,
08:41that person had then violently assaulted him.
08:44And, I mean, it was excessive.
08:45You didn't need to hit him that many times.
08:52The crime certainly impacted the homeless community
08:57because whilst their lives can often involve violence
09:01between themselves and that's just sporadic or knee-jerk reactions,
09:06they still don't expect each other to be the victim of homicide.
09:12That's unusual.
09:14It is a really close-knit community, the homeless community,
09:17and they know each other well,
09:19and particularly in that city like Bath,
09:21which is a relatively small city,
09:23everybody tends to hang around in the same places
09:26or sleep in the same places,
09:28visit the same locations to get help and support.
09:31So they were shocked,
09:33and it was impactive because it was at Christmas as well.
09:39Why does the fact this is the homeless community,
09:43why does that make it more difficult?
09:45There's several issues,
09:46one of which is being that they're an incredibly transient community,
09:50so they may be in one place for a few days, a few weeks,
09:56and then they may choose to move to an entirely different section of the UK.
10:01And that community has its own set of rules that you all abide by,
10:06and relationships and relationships are based on a variety of factors
10:12that sometimes to people outside of that community might not be entirely clear,
10:17but they work within the community itself
10:21and how they police and self-regulate themselves.
10:26The homeless community can be challenging when engaging in investigations
10:30because they don't trust the police,
10:32often because of their own criminality and their lifestyle.
10:36And the other challenges we had was because it was in the depths of winter
10:39and everybody was obviously very cold,
10:42if we wanted to seize anything,
10:44we had to make sure we replaced it for them.
10:46So we had to look after them.
10:49Very few people really are concerned about the murder of a homeless person,
10:54and that's because we just see these people really,
10:57that they've kind of somehow failed or they're worthless.
11:01Had he been, you know, the son of a doctor
11:05or somebody, an airline pilot,
11:08we would probably see much more media attention,
11:11we would see much more police attention.
11:13You know, all of those lives are equally valuable,
11:16but for some reason we don't necessarily see this as something
11:19that's worthy of the attention
11:21and worthy of the resources to investigate that murder.
11:27Sadly, on Christmas Eve, when he was first discovered,
11:31nobody knew who he was.
11:33We weren't sure who he was.
11:35And it took a little while because he was living a long way from where his family came from
11:41to actually get him identified.
11:45Who is this man?
11:47Homeless people don't carry much in the way of identification.
11:49No, and that is always a significant problem, identifying people,
11:54and quite often this community will operate on nicknames,
11:59and those nicknames are interchangeable,
12:00and the people that you think are known by one nickname might be somebody else.
12:05Luckily, officers had a very good relationship with the homeless community,
12:10and they could talk to them and communicate with them.
12:15For me, as an investigating officer,
12:17I was really lucky that the local community team based in Bath
12:22knew everybody in that community,
12:25spoke to them on a daily basis,
12:27and already had those links.
12:29Rather than sending in detectives or people that didn't know them
12:34asking difficult questions,
12:36what we did was we agreed the questions set to ask the homeless community
12:40and then got the people that they knew to do that for us,
12:43and that worked really, really well.
12:47And they established fairly early on that the victim in this case
12:51was 51-year-old Thomas Downey.
12:53In that community, he was known as Manchester Tommy.
12:58This, then, was the victim of the attack just before Christmas 2014.
13:05Now, police had a problem.
13:08What to do?
13:10Next.
13:25The victim was known locally as Manchester Tommy,
13:28obviously because he had Mancunian accent,
13:30and that's where he'd originated from.
13:32But he'd been in Bath for some time.
13:35He was well-known in Bath as part of the homeless community,
13:37not necessarily for any high-level offending.
13:41Tommy had children.
13:43He was estranged from his wife.
13:45He'd lost his job.
13:47He'd started drinking.
13:49And really, it was just a sequence of events
13:52that had led to Tommy becoming homeless.
13:54As a consequence of being homeless,
13:56that had then led him to become more dependent on alcohol
13:59and also then engaging in taking drugs.
14:07In amongst his antecedents, of which, you know,
14:10he'd been on the street for 10 years,
14:12so he had 233 minor criminal offences.
14:16But the stand-up one and the one that he was most well-known for
14:20is in 2011, during the riots in Manchester.
14:24He took the opportunity to take a box of well-known doughnuts
14:30from a well-known doughnut shop,
14:31which gained him quite a reputation in that community.
14:34I mean, he literally stumbled out of the doughnut shop...
14:39He did.
14:39..into the arms of riot police.
14:41He did, yes.
14:42So his doughnut joy did not last a very long time,
14:46but it also lends itself to the sort of character
14:49that he probably was, and he was probably a lovable rogue.
14:55For his trouble, he got another 18 months in prison.
14:59When he emerged,
15:01he gradually made his way south,
15:04and he ended up in the Bath and Bristol areas.
15:08And here, he lived rough.
15:11He continued to abuse alcohol,
15:13and he also began taking illicit drugs, including spice.
15:19Now, spice was then a new phenomenon.
15:23It is a synthetic cannabinoid.
15:26It was originally designed to mimic the effects of marijuana,
15:30but its effects are far more devastating.
15:33Paranoia, heart and chest pains,
15:36and sometimes people who take it become immobile having taken this.
15:44The senior investigating officer now has a name.
15:47We know this is Thomas Downey...
15:50Yes.
15:50..reedly from Manchester.
15:51Yes, what an amazing SIO.
15:54The community itself, and also, as it turns out later on,
15:58the family thought that not much attention was going to be paid to this case,
16:04and that the police weren't going to do as thorough as a job
16:07as they normally would on other murder investigations.
16:11Thomas Downey's murder would be investigated,
16:14but maybe not with the full force of the major crime team behind it,
16:18but how wrong they were.
16:20She faces a dilemma at this point, doesn't she?
16:24It's Christmas Day.
16:25Yes.
16:28Had a really difficult decision to make on Christmas Day
16:31when we identified the victim of going to see his family
16:35and upsetting their Christmas Day forevermore.
16:37But it was clearly the right thing to do
16:39because it's not something you want to hide from somebody
16:42any longer than you needed to.
16:44And I was really fortunate to speak to the family of the victim
16:47when they came down a few days later
16:50to visit us down in the incident room.
16:53The victim's family are really important,
16:55and one of the reasons that the cases involving the homeless community
16:59don't often get any media coverage or feature on anything
17:03is because the victims aren't very well thought of.
17:08When that victim's family came to see me on the first day,
17:11the victim's family said to me,
17:13we didn't think anyone would be interested
17:16in the death of a homeless alcoholic.
17:19And it really struck a chord with me
17:21because I said to them,
17:23well, not only am I interested in it,
17:24we're going to absolutely find who's done it
17:26and bring them to justice.
17:28And as we were having that conversation,
17:31people were being arrested,
17:33people who were not subsequently charged,
17:34but people were being arrested.
17:36And I think and I hope that that gave them some confidence
17:39that what I said was going to happen was going to happen.
17:48So now we've got a dead body known to be Thomas Downey.
17:53Mm-hm.
17:54We've got a family who knew and cared about him.
17:57Yes.
17:58We've got a senior investigating officer
18:00who's fired up to get at the truth.
18:03What's the missing bit?
18:05So at this stage,
18:07you're at the most difficult part of the investigation
18:11because you are then going to have to establish
18:14the circumstances in which Tommy ended up
18:19underneath those rail arches, beaten to death.
18:22So at that point,
18:24you're left with a murder victim
18:26and no suspect and no weapon.
18:31So in a case like this,
18:33you've got to start to rely on the old adage
18:36of somebody knows something
18:40and put in the fact that that is a community
18:43and what do communities do?
18:45They talk to each other and they know what's going on.
18:48And somebody did know something, didn't they?
18:50They did.
18:50Not an entire identity.
18:53No, exactly that.
18:56People knew who he was within the community,
18:59but they didn't really know his name.
19:02They weren't sure who he was.
19:03But as soon as we got the first name of Daryl,
19:06that's where our community policing team came in.
19:11And they were able to say,
19:13well, the only person we know is Daryl,
19:15who's been in this area recently is Daryl Richards.
19:19Then we started looking for CCTV.
19:22And once we get an image of him,
19:23then we could start to confirm that.
19:26Daryl Richards was somebody who'd been on the streets
19:28for a number of years.
19:29He misused substances,
19:32which included alcohol and controlled drugs.
19:35He did have a criminal history in the same way
19:40that a number of people do who live on the streets,
19:43which usually centred on property theft,
19:46so shoplifting and lower-level offending,
19:50which is usually in line with stealing alcohol
19:52or stealing food
19:53or maybe stealing something to sell
19:56in order to source those other things.
19:58So not somebody who was necessarily particularly violent.
20:01He did have a violence in his background,
20:04but was not known on a regular basis
20:06for someone who was violent.
20:10So it appears that there was some intelligence
20:12that he had been responsible for Tommy's murder,
20:17and people around that kind of homeless community
20:20started to suspect that he had done that.
20:22There's possibly some previous incidents
20:25where he has threatened people,
20:27he's used violence and intimidation in the past.
20:29And certainly he would have used that fear and intimidation
20:34to exploit those people.
20:35These are people who are, you know, living day to day.
20:38They're looking after themselves to survive.
20:41So they would not have wanted to find themselves,
20:43even though they wanted to help their friend Tommy
20:46and to have tried to solve the murder.
20:48At the same time, they need to look after themselves.
20:51And had the police not been able to secure a conviction,
20:54they would have left themselves vulnerable in that situation.
20:59So the relationship between the victim and killer
21:01was just that they were two homeless people
21:03who resided in the same area at the same time.
21:06And in that particular railway arch,
21:09they have both been staying there.
21:12The homeless community, so whilst you say they are homeless,
21:16they're actually quite territorial about where they do sleep
21:19and who they do share that space with.
21:22So that's when conflict can arise.
21:24So if somebody is imposing on somebody else's area,
21:28then that can lead to upset.
21:30I think in this case, the victim and offender,
21:34whilst they were both sharing that same railway arch,
21:37there was a little bit of conflict around who should be there
21:40or how big the fire should be
21:43or what noise was going on.
21:45So it's not dissimilar to being in a home environment.
21:48It's just they're on the street.
21:52So Tommy was homeless.
21:54He was somebody who was on the fringes of society.
21:56He had very few connections,
21:59very few kind of people looking out for him, if any.
22:02So he's very, very vulnerable.
22:04And he would have seen this,
22:06Darrell Richards would have seen this as an opportunity, really,
22:08to commit this crime,
22:10that no one was going to really be looking.
22:12No one was going to be really miss him.
22:14And even if they did find his body,
22:16it was unlikely that police were going to extend great resources
22:19into trying to find the murder of another homeless person who's died.
22:24And such is the state, really, of some people
22:27where they find themselves in society
22:29is that they are really neglected in that situation.
22:32And he would have known that
22:34and he would have used that to his advantage
22:35and that's potentially why Tommy became a victim.
22:44So if we go to your association chart,
22:47we've now got Thomas Downey.
22:49We've now got Darrell Richards.
22:51Yes.
22:52Next problem.
22:53So the next problem is tracking where Darrell Richards is.
22:57Given that he also had antecedents,
23:00then there would have been visual images.
23:03So we've now got a name,
23:05we've now got an image of somebody.
23:07And the local bath area was scoured.
23:10The PCSOs once again did a sterling job
23:12along with the major inquiry team.
23:15And he was nowhere to be seen.
23:18Again, particular problem with the homeless community, isn't it?
23:22Yes.
23:22They are, as you say, transient.
23:25Police did identify a member of the homeless community called Timmy.
23:32And Timmy had said,
23:34yeah, he'd witnessed a dispute between Tommy,
23:40Manchester Tommy, who is our victim,
23:42and another male.
23:44He didn't really know what it was about,
23:46but he had witnessed his dispute.
23:47But he did know that the other male was called Darrell.
23:53Our victim, Tommy, was discovered on the 24th of December.
23:57And we thought he had died around the 21st of December.
24:02And through doing some CCTV work,
24:06we then identified the key witness, Timmy,
24:10who told us that Darrell was present.
24:13He, too, was alcohol-dependent.
24:18And whilst he gave some account,
24:20he was very frightened
24:21and didn't want to give the full account.
24:25Coupled with, he said he had gone to sleep in the arch
24:28and wasn't really aware of everything that had gone on.
24:33So the grounds for making the suspect, Darrell Richards,
24:37our key suspect and the person we wanted to find,
24:40was initially the account of the witness, Timmy,
24:43who was present there at the same time.
24:45He told the police that he remembered the date
24:50on which he had seen Tommy and Darrell Richards together.
24:54He said it was December the 21st.
24:57And he knew that, he said,
24:59because on that day, he'd gone to a local petrol station
25:04and stolen snacks from it.
25:08Timmy talked about going into the petrol station,
25:11buying some stuff, stealing some stuff,
25:14and CCTV corroborated that.
25:16Timmy had gone to the petrol station on that day.
25:22But that date didn't match the forensic evidence.
25:28The post-mortem had shown that Tommy had been killed
25:33several days before the 21st.
25:37So Timmy couldn't be right, could he?
25:40The police decided to go back through all the evidence
25:45they'd taken from underneath the arches.
25:49When we were revisiting the exhibits,
25:52and in this archway there was a lot of items that we recovered,
25:57there was a railway ticket that related to the 16th of December,
26:01and we hadn't been able to get a last sighting of Tommy alive,
26:05so we went back to that as our start point,
26:08managed to get him coming back to Bath from Bristol.
26:11On the 17th of December,
26:14the same sequence of events going to the petrol station,
26:16stealing things that Timmy had relayed to us,
26:19also took place.
26:21So in fact, the actual date of the murder
26:24was the 17th of December.
26:26It reinforced the belief
26:30that Daryl Richards had killed Tommy Downey.
26:36But there was a major hole in the police's case,
26:41and one which could cause problems
26:44should the case ever come to trial.
26:47That problem?
26:49There was no sign of the murder weapon.
27:05This is what we call a Category B murder.
27:07Category B is where the victim and the assailant
27:11weren't connected with each other,
27:13although they knew each other within the community,
27:15they were effectively,
27:16they weren't in a relationship or a household.
27:18We didn't know who the murderer was to start with,
27:21and we just had a really, really small team.
27:27We were not sure at the beginning
27:29what the murder weapon was
27:31because there was nothing present within the archway.
27:34There was one item that I thought was a great fit,
27:37and when I showed the pathologist,
27:39he's like, no, that's not it, it's not good enough.
27:43So having a look at the area,
27:44there was a river really nearby,
27:46and I asked the divers to go into the river.
27:50This was about 10 days after, I suppose,
27:53so maybe even 15 days after the actual murder itself.
28:00Any murder investigation,
28:02how crucial is it for a successful prosecution
28:07to find the murder weapon?
28:09It's critical to establish the item
28:13that caused those injuries,
28:15particularly from a point of view
28:17of putting it in the hands of your suspect.
28:19So you're looking for those solid forensic links
28:24that are going to really firm up your investigation.
28:28To bring this case to court,
28:30she knows she's got to find the murder weapon.
28:33Yes.
28:35This is December.
28:37Yes.
28:38This is Bath.
28:39Yes.
28:40This is the River Avon.
28:41Yes.
28:44It's very fast and very deep.
28:46And very cold.
28:48Would you have liked to have been the person
28:50speaking to the underwater team,
28:51asking them to go in the water in December
28:54to look for an item that might be a metal bar?
29:00Bearing in mind it's been thrown from a bridge
29:03where probably all sorts of things,
29:05be it shopping trolleys and various items,
29:09on drunk nights out,
29:10the conditions must have been horrendous
29:13for that underwater search team.
29:17There's an aspect to this that if I can't see it,
29:21then nobody else can
29:23and nobody would ever find it.
29:25So disposing of the weapon into a water body
29:28is very commonly encountered in crime investigation
29:31because it's one way to try and destroy and hide the evidence.
29:39Police divers are very specialist individuals
29:42who are trained to recover material from water bodies.
29:47And in this particular case,
29:50they would have methodically examined
29:53where they believed the murder weapon may have been discarded.
29:58Once they find it,
30:00there's a very clear set of processes
30:02that need to be followed
30:04in order to ensure that the material,
30:07the item, is recovered in a safe and secure way
30:10and that once it is removed from that water,
30:14that any material that is associated with it is protected.
30:19The river in winter is high, fast-flowing
30:24and not an area that you would usually search
30:27unless you had a really, really good, strong reason
30:29at that time of year.
30:31The divers brought out of the river four items.
30:35Three of them were covered in green slime
30:37and not quite barnacles because it's not the sea,
30:40but that sort of thing, layers of rubbish on them.
30:43The fourth article was a long barbell
30:45that you have the dumbbells screwed on either end
30:48and that was relatively new.
30:51When we took that out,
30:52I was talking to our forensic coordinator
30:57and I said to him,
30:57I don't know, I'm not sure that that's going to be the weapon
31:00and he said,
31:00well, I think it looks quite good,
31:03we'll send it off to get DNA.
31:05We know that the weapon would have been affiliated
31:10with blood staining from the victim,
31:13so that is a very rich source of DNA
31:16which can persist in very inhospitable conditions,
31:22including submersion in water.
31:25Our DNA techniques are so sensitive
31:28that they would still have a very good chance
31:31of recovering viable DNA from that type of weapon,
31:35even if it has been submerged for some time.
31:38And anyone who handles that implement
31:41will also be leaving their skin cells and DNA,
31:46which, again, can get caught
31:48in the nooks and crannies of a weapon.
31:50If there's a textured surface,
31:52it might persist there longer
31:54than, let's say, if it was a smooth surface.
31:57And we know very well
31:59that we can recover usable and viable DNA
32:02from items that have been submerged for decades.
32:07Having submitted our barbell,
32:09which we now believe to be our murder weapon,
32:11the forensic scientists managed to recover,
32:14from one end of it,
32:16a partial profile, DNA profile of the victim,
32:19and from the other end,
32:20a partial profile, DNA profile
32:23of the offender, Daryl Richards.
32:25And that was the first
32:27that any item that had been in water that long
32:29had had any form of DNA recovered for it
32:31in a murder trial.
32:34So, along with our witness testimony,
32:38our albeit partial profiles of DNA
32:40from the murder weapon,
32:42we then managed to identify some CCTV.
32:46And whilst it was from a distance,
32:48it showed the splash in the river
32:49when he was throwing the weapon into the river,
32:52and we could marry that up with some other CCTV,
32:55which showed him crossing the road almost moments before.
32:59We just didn't quite have him in sight throwing it over,
33:01but the amazing work that the team did around that
33:04helped to bring it all together.
33:06It's a bit of a jigsaw puzzle when you investigate murder.
33:10It was enough.
33:12The problem was finding him,
33:15because Daryl Richards was not in Bath
33:17and was nowhere to be found.
33:20Where and when, from what you laid out,
33:26did the police first lay hands on Daryl Richards?
33:30So, what they had to do,
33:32once they realised he wasn't in the Bath area
33:34and the likelihood is that he would have gotten,
33:37is to start to widen the search for him.
33:40Theoretically, he could have been anywhere in the UK.
33:43He could have gravitated to a homeless community
33:46in a seaside town.
33:47They widened the search.
33:50Starting in the local area, as you do,
33:52you tend to start small and then work out.
33:54And once again, through excellent communications,
33:56saying putting wanted people out,
34:00and he would have been down as wanted,
34:03a local beat officer from Bristol had seen him
34:06and he was in the Bristol area.
34:11Daryl was arrested,
34:12having been found in an underpass in Bristol,
34:15interestingly, by another beat officer.
34:17So, it just goes to show the importance
34:19of the community beat teams.
34:21And he was brought into custody,
34:22but very mild-mannered, didn't say anything,
34:25didn't give protestations about anything.
34:29Daryl was somebody who was used to being in police custody
34:32and he behaved in a very mild way.
34:38He gave a prepared statement
34:39and basically said that he wasn't responsible.
34:43He couldn't remember being there with Tommy
34:46and it was not to do with him.
34:51Were the police ever able to ascertain
34:57that middle word on our trinity
34:59of police investigative must-haves?
35:03We've got the means,
35:05we've got the opportunity,
35:06what's the motive?
35:08Yeah, they've never established a firm motive
35:12as to the reasons
35:15as to why Daryl Richards felt it was necessary
35:19to beat Tommy to death.
35:22When I presented this case,
35:24which had been challenging from the beginning
35:26to our barrister,
35:28who was not that enamoured at prosecuting,
35:32I portrayed it as a skeleton
35:34and the way I described it was
35:36that also was the victim
35:38and he was at the heart of it.
35:40The right arm was our key witness
35:43and the left arm was effectively the perpetrator.
35:47The legs that it was built on
35:49were the CCTV evidence,
35:52the DNA evidence
35:53and just tying everything together.
35:56And then the bit on the top, the head,
35:59was the understanding of how it all linked in
36:01and how we could then present it to a court.
36:06Richard's maintained his innocence
36:08up until the last moment,
36:11but shortly before the case was due to go to trial,
36:15he told police he would plead guilty to manslaughter,
36:19not murder,
36:20but the lesser charge of manslaughter.
36:23In essence, he said,
36:26he lacked what lawyers call the mens rea,
36:30the intention to commit the crime.
36:33It had happened in the course of an argument.
36:40This crime was not a premeditated murder.
36:44This is something that arose
36:46out of a low-level argument
36:48whilst they were in that railway arch
36:51over the fire
36:53and who was going to do what.
36:55I think, and of course we'll never know
36:58because nobody's ever told us exactly what happened,
37:01but I think that Tommy was probably goading Darrell a little bit
37:06and then it was backwards and forwards
37:09and it's just escalated
37:11and very quickly
37:13to extreme violence.
37:20The law is clear.
37:21You don't have to meticulously plan out a killing to make it murder.
37:28Even something that happens in a short space of time,
37:31in the heat of an argument,
37:34can be classified as murder.
37:37And so police and prosecutors refused to accept
37:41Daryl Richards' lesser plea of manslaughter.
38:06We didn't accept his plea to manslaughter
38:09and we had a full trial.
38:13In the courtroom,
38:14Richards behaved in the very same way
38:16that he had in custody.
38:17He's still portrayed as somebody
38:19who was quite mild-mannered.
38:22He didn't speak at all during the course of his trial.
38:24He didn't give evidence
38:26and was just present in the dock looking on.
38:31The victim's family did come to court
38:33and they had their victim impact statements
38:36that were read out.
38:37And I go back to that point
38:39of people think because somebody's homeless,
38:41they're not worthy
38:42or they don't have a life
38:43or they don't matter to anybody.
38:45But their victim impact statement
38:46talked about how the fact that Tommy was a father,
38:50he was a brother,
38:51he had been a husband,
38:53he was a son
38:54and he was somebody
38:55who clearly really did matter to them.
38:58In December 2015,
39:01one year after he beat
39:03Manchester Tommy Downey to death
39:06with a metal bar,
39:08Daryl Richards was convicted of murder,
39:12sentenced to life imprisonment
39:13and given a minimum tariff
39:16of almost 11 years.
39:19This case hit the media locally
39:22because it always will.
39:24If ever there's a murder locally,
39:26then the local news are entrusted as they should be.
39:30It didn't go any wider than that.
39:32And when Daryl Richards was convicted,
39:35again, it was very local reporting in the media.
39:39I think people underestimate a case like this,
39:43the impact it has on the community,
39:46so the homeless community.
39:47The amount of work that still goes into investigating
39:50a homicide like that is significant
39:52and it is important
39:54that we learn from it
39:55and help to prevent it happening in the future.
39:58So whether he could be rehabilitated
40:01is really quite a difficult question to answer.
40:03There is obviously a long history
40:05of drug and alcohol abuse
40:07and he obviously found himself on the streets.
40:09So it's not to mitigate what he did in any way.
40:12And we must remember
40:13that he committed a very, very violent crime
40:16and murdered a very vulnerable, innocent person.
40:19So that goes at odds
40:21with whether we could safely release this person
40:24into the community again.
40:26I say sometimes in situations
40:28where there is a precipitating mental health problem
40:31or substance abuse,
40:33then there are some avenues there to address it.
40:35But certainly whether, you know,
40:37it's possible to then,
40:39you know, where would he go,
40:41what would he do,
40:42if he has any ability to find himself
40:44and build himself a new life,
40:46then potentially he does have a chance.
40:48But the fact that he was already on the streets
40:50and he was already struggling initially
40:54would go against him in some respects.
41:01When you look at the portrait,
41:04the pen portrait, if you like,
41:05that you've been able to put together
41:08of Daryl Richards,
41:11this doesn't strike me,
41:14or I suspect anyone else,
41:16as the picture of a calculating murderer,
41:20someone who set out
41:22to carry out the perfect murder.
41:25No.
41:26Was it the case
41:28that he tried to make it a perfect murder
41:33after the event?
41:34Yes.
41:35I mean, obviously,
41:37we don't know where that murder weapon came from,
41:40if it was just lying around at the arches,
41:42and it was this argument
41:44that escalated and exploded
41:46into extreme violence
41:48after a relatively minor incident.
41:51But through covering the body,
41:53disposing of the murder weapon,
41:55and then leaving the local area,
41:57he thought he was going to get away with it,
42:00because why would somebody care
42:02about a homeless person
42:04that's been found under the arches?
42:06And if that person
42:07had been subjected to an assault,
42:10was the full force
42:12of a major crime investigation team
42:13going to work as hard
42:15as they normally do?
42:16And he's transient,
42:18so get a better case
42:20of catch me if you can.
42:26I think Richards believed
42:28he had committed the perfect murder.
42:30I think he thought
42:31he'd committed the perfect murder
42:33because the time between the murder
42:35and when he was arrested,
42:38I think he thought
42:39that perfect murder
42:40was definitely
42:40because he'd got rid
42:41of the murder weapon in the river
42:43and didn't think we'd get it out,
42:46let alone get any forensic evidence of it.
42:49I think he thought
42:50he'd got away with it,
42:51and it was the perfect murder
42:53in his view,
42:54because it involved
42:55another homeless person,
42:57a homeless alcoholic,
42:58and the police wouldn't bother
43:00investigating it,
43:01as well as another type
43:03of murder.
43:05He was wrong
43:07on all counts,
43:09but he was also
43:11almost right.
43:15In my own career,
43:16this was really challenging
43:19because the time of year,
43:21so Christmas,
43:23we had a really small team
43:24investigating it.
43:26There was something like
43:2614 of us in total.
43:28If you think the average murder
43:29will attract 50 detectives,
43:32maybe 100,
43:33depending on the scale of it,
43:35and the challenges
43:37around recovering items,
43:40that barbell from the river,
43:41the dive team finding it,
43:43and the forensic scientists
43:44getting that DNA on it,
43:46you know,
43:46that was really,
43:47really important,
43:49as well as being able
43:50to match the actual weapon
43:52to the injuries
43:53that Tommy had suffered.
43:55It was layering it up.
43:57I think we learned a lot
43:59about how to engage
44:00with that community,
44:01and we had almost a year
44:03to the day,
44:04a similar incident
44:06where a homeless person
44:07was killed by another one
44:09and the response
44:10was much more positive
44:11and on the front foot
44:13and our homeless community
44:15were much more engaging.
44:18So that's why it endured
44:20because we learned a lot
44:21from the way we investigated it.
44:23We learned how important it was
44:24to engage with the community
44:26and we learned when the next one
44:28came along,
44:29which sadly it did,
44:30we were good at investigating it.
44:33One of the things
44:34that struck me
44:36was that this case
44:38was unusual
44:39for the rigour
44:40and the perseverance
44:42shown by those police officers.
44:45Yes, yeah,
44:46and also the excellent relationship
44:49that the beat officers had
44:53and the officers
44:54from the major crime
44:55investigation team.
44:56That community held the key
44:58to this murder.
44:59literally held the key
45:00to it in their hands
45:01and without their cooperation
45:03and a mutual respect
45:06to one of their community
45:08and also to the relationship
45:10that the police officers had,
45:12that was what got this case
45:14over the line.
45:16In another place,
45:18in another time,
45:19with another homeless community
45:22and a police force
45:23not quite as dedicated,
45:25that could have been
45:26a perfect murder,
45:27couldn't it?
45:28It could have been.
45:29If he'd have
45:31absconded to Scotland
45:33or another area,
45:35it might have been
45:36months and months and months
45:37he would have had to have been
45:38potentially arrested for something
45:40before he'd been caught
45:42for this particular crime.
45:43So, really excellent,
45:46excellent police work.
45:47An almost perfect murder.
45:50And an almost perfect murder.
45:54The murderers themselves
45:56underestimate the police.
45:58They underestimate
46:00the desire of the community
46:02to actually engage
46:04when there's a homicide.
46:05So, people who perhaps
46:06don't usually engage
46:07with the police
46:08generally always do
46:09when there's a murder.
46:10and I think
46:12they underestimate
46:13the impact that it has
46:15on the victim's family
46:17and that victim's family
46:19will always be a driver
46:20to say,
46:21we want justice
46:21and we want an outcome
46:23and we'll be pushing
46:24behind any investigation.
46:34We'll see you next time.
47:02We'll see you next time.
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