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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.
01:02A big problem with the businesses that have bene.
01:02We have no defense, you might be very afraid of them.
01:10We have a lot of fun that this region had recently been revealed to us.
01:11We have to be very soon on the right track, because of the fact that we are right off the
01:11hill.
01:11It is one of the main drivers who were able to be very careful.
01:21We have to be very careful of what's happening here.
01:22We have to be very careful of what's happening here, which is a very careful part of the issue.
01:33Limefield Woods, located near Biggar, South Lanarkshire in Scotland, is a peaceful woodland
01:39known for its picturesque walking trails.
01:44Limefield Woods is a huge rural location.
01:47It's about an hour's drive away from Glasgow, about 43 miles, close to the villages of Roberton
01:54and the town of Biggar.
02:00You can go in there at daylight and the light can just disappear, because of the size of
02:05the trees and the denseness of the forest.
02:09The only people that will go there, people who live in the area, or are walkers, or go
02:14there for a specific reason.
02:15It's not somewhere you'll find just by chance, by driving past.
02:18This is somewhere you would go to, to have a look at the wonderful area that it is.
02:24It is a place that contrasts between day and night.
02:29During the day, it's peaceful.
02:30There's a feeling of serenity.
02:32It's tranquil.
02:33It's popular with dog walkers.
02:34It's beautiful scenery.
02:36At night, however, it's completely different.
02:39It becomes somewhere that's isolated and remote and quite frightening.
02:44It's a place that's isolated.
02:46It's a place that's isolated.
02:5030 miles away in the city of Glasgow, parents of a local woman become concerned when they
02:56are unable to reach their daughter in April 2005.
03:04Emma Caldwell was the daughter of Willie and Margaret Caldwell.
03:09Emma comes from a family of two girls.
03:12Emma, her sister, and her parents were very close and would stay in regular contact.
03:17Emma had a really tragic thing happen to her when she was young, and that was that her
03:22older sister got 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.
03:35Everything 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
03:51she had a drug habit to fund.
03:56Now, if you're not working, in the sense of having a regular salary, you've got to have
04:01this ready cash available.
04:03And that's going to be done really a number of a couple of ways.
04:06One, it's either through crime, or two, in the case of many, many unfortunate women,
04:11they turn to prostitution.
04:17For young women doing sex work on the street, it's extremely dangerous.
04:22They are extremely vulnerable.
04:23They 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
04:41their past, whether 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
04:51will see a pimp 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, but then they're sending
05:03them back out on the streets again to fund their next hit of drugs.
05:07And it's a brutal, hard, cruel life.
05:14If the 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
05:25very, very dangerous trade, because you don't know who you're going to meet, you don't know
05:29the individual, and you don't know what may happen.
05:34Struggling with drug addiction and wanting to protect her parents from its impact, 27-year-old
05:40Emma Caldwell left her family home and had been living in a woman's hostel in central Glasgow.
05:48On Monday, the 4th of April 2005, Emma Caldwell leaves the hostel that she was living in on
05:56Inglefield Street to go to the streets to do her job as a sex worker.
06:08This is the last time she's 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
06:33contact with her parents.
06:34Emma made a point of seeing her parents at least twice a week, but she would have spoken
06:41to 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
07:07hostel where she lived.
07:09She made inquiries 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
07:19person.
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.
07:44I'm sure she'll turn up.
07:46So 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, and again, it would set alarm
08:03bells 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, and part of that
08:22is that they have a methadone prescription. To get that methadone prescription, they have to go
08:28to a chemist, and it's a specific chemist. They have a certain time of day, they have to turn up
08:33for this methadone. They have to take the methadone there and then in front of the chemist, and if
08:38somebody 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. Emma's routine was different because she
08:55hadn't been out in the streets. None of her colleagues had seen her. Obviously, her family
09:00had never heard anything from her in those days. No phone calls, no meetings, nothing. So
09:05everything had stopped. Her life just seemed to have stopped completely. So police forces,
09:11suspicious, that she had come to some harm.
09:23As time went on, days turned into weeks of Emma being missing, the police really then started to
09:31become more and more concerned. So much so that they warned her parents that they might have to
09:37prepare themselves for the worst. Five 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.
09:56The police found Emma's body in a shallow ditch within Limefield Woods. She was naked.
10:09And of course, we've now got the situation. She's 43 miles from Glasgow, last spotted
10:14on CCTV, going to work. There is absolutely no reason for her to be there. Why was she there
10:20in the first place? Was her body taken there or was she led there? In which case, she must have
10:26been 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. So it was
10:44probably 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
10:55politics within the Strathclyde task force would significantly complicate the search for the killer.
11:21Five weeks after 27-year-old Emma Caldwell disappeared in Glasgow, her naked body is discovered on
11:28May 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
11:51the hardest thing you'll ever have to do. And in many cases, just by turning up when it's
11:56a missing person case, you turn up at the door and you knock on it. The minute they see you,
11:59they 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 and now they were losing
12:15their other daughter in such a cruel way.
12:19The natural landscape of where Emma's body was found poses difficulties for crime scene
12:24investigators.
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. Firstly, you obviously have to
12:37forensically examine, as best you can, under the circumstances, the body whilst it's in
12:43situ. You would obviously conduct a search of the surrounding areas. And this is specialist
12:50police search teams on their hands and knees, shoulder to shoulder, and literally fingertip
12:58searching until they find anything unusual.
13:02And of course, in this instance, one thing that was discovered around her neck was a piece
13:06of wire which becomes very crucial in the investigation.
13:10The post-mortem revealed that Emma had been the victim of strangulation. And there were markings
13:17on her neck consistent with the length of cable that had been found underneath her neck.
13:28With the murder investigation underway, Strathclyde police assemble a task force.
13:34Each investigation in the UK is given an operation. In this instance, Emma's murder, the investigation
13:41into it was known as Operation Grail. And that consisted of about 50 officers. They took
13:47about 8,000 statements and hundreds of DNA samples. So this was a huge inquiry.
13:54The 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. And so,
14:09even the sex worker themselves probably doesn't know these people, doesn't know their names,
14:16doesn't know where they live. And that's why it becomes really problematic.
14:21Police begin their search with the people closest to Emma.
14:25Well, first of all, the police obviously spoke to Emma's family. They tried to get as much information
14:29from her family as possible, what kind of person Emma was, and basically her whole backstory as a human
14:35being. They then spoke to people in the hostel who knew Emma. And then they obviously made their way
14:41to speaking to other sex workers on the streets of Glasgow's red light district who would have knew
14:47Emma and would have knew her habits, her movements and things like that. So they were basically casting
14:52as big a net out as possible to speak to as many people as possible, to get as much information
14:59about Emma and her movements to try and find out who killed her.
15:03The senior investigating officer, Willie Johnston, makes a number of public appeals for information on Emma's murder.
15:12They were appealing to the public. They were appealing to punters who may well
15:16have remembered Emma, who may well have, you know, been with Emma. They wanted as many people to come
15:22forward and give as much of a detailed description about Emma and her life as possible. They also had
15:31billboards with Emma Caldwell's face on it, saying that they were looking for any information. This was
15:37really because a lot of people would have seen Emma as a sex worker and that's all they would have
15:43seen. They wouldn't have seen beyond that. They wouldn't have seen that she was somebody's daughter.
15:47She had a sister who died of cancer. You know, she was a human being and this was trying to
15:52make
15:53and help people to see her as a human being and 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
16:23with Emma. This client would hide out behind some billboards and if another client tried to talk to
16:31Emma or engage with Emma, he would drive his van at full speed past them to try and intimidate them,
16:37to try and scare them off, almost 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. So investigators now started to
16:52build up potentially a suspect here, someone who's fixating on Emma, has used violence, sexual violence
16:58against her and he's described as driving a van that's been seen in that area. So police now had
17:04somebody that they could start to focus in on. Investigators quickly locate the distinct vehicle
17:10described by the sex workers. Detectives were able to identify a van that was likely to be being used
17:17by this man and it had some writing down the side that said alpha beta sign services. The police were
17:25suspicious of this individual. One of the reasons why was because one of the detectives on the case
17:30used to work as a repairman for neon signs. He 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 and from his experiences he thought
17:43that's
17:44the kind of thing that could have happened through repairing a sign and he thought could there be a
17:49connection between the cable and this man and his line of work. So suddenly you've got an awful lot
17:55of information, not evidence at this stage, but a lot of good information saying well this individual
18:01ever drives or ever owns that van, definitely worth questioning. On the 22nd of June 2005 police identified
18:08that the man they were looking for was Ian Packer. So a decision would need to be made. How do
18:16we speak
18:16to this person? Do we speak to them as a witness or speak to them as a suspect? If they're
18:21spoken to
18:22as a suspect they would need to be cautioned and they would need to be done under certain circumstances.
18:27The police decided they would speak to him as a witness. They go to this man's house the next morning,
18:317.30 in the morning. He's getting up, getting ready to go to work. He is the director of a
18:37science company
18:40and they ask him, you know, have you ever used prostitutes? Have you ever been in the red light
18:45district? Things of that nature. He denies using sex workers. He denies being a regular in the red light
18:52district and he is very much given the impression that this has nothing to do with him, that he is
18:58just an ordinary guy. Fortunately, the detective at the time did take a picture of him. In most cases,
19:05if you deal with somebody as a suspect, you take fingerprints, you take DNA. That wasn't the case.
19:12He's been dealt with as a witness. So this detective had the thought, I'll take the picture and just to
19:17find out. And of course, then they had a picture they could take back to some of the witnesses who
19:21worked
19:22with Emma to say, is this the individual that you've told us about? So they showed 12 photographs
19:27of men to these girls and asked them whether the person who they described as fixated with Emma is
19:35amongst them. And he was. They identified Ian Packer as being that man. A background check on Packer
19:44revealed more incriminating information. During this investigation, a number of women who were also
19:52sex workers came forward to say that they knew Ian Packer and they described him as someone that was
19:56quite scary. They described him as someone who could get very aggressive, very angry, someone that was
20:03reluctant to use protection, someone that would force them to strip off all of their clothing. And if
20:09they didn't do that, he would get very angry. And he would do things like stomp his feet and raise
20:15his voice and just not a nice guy. To the point that they actually had come up with a book
20:21called
20:22the Beware Book. And within that, they had the names of clients that they were warning other working
20:28girls to stay away from. And Ian Packer's name was put in that book quite a few times, as well
20:34as an alias
20:35he had used called Peter. You've got so much evidence now coming from these wonderful witnesses
20:41who said, this is the man who is sexually violent towards us. And we believe he is responsible for
20:48the death of Emma. We know he actually goes to certain areas. We know what he's like. So there's so
20:54much evidence being put together that these detectives think they've got the right guy. They've got the guy
21:00that's been driving the van. They've got the guy that has actually possibly been involved with some
21:06sort of cable involved with neon lights. And they've got these witnesses saying he has previous for being
21:12violent towards women on the street. Obviously, 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. And in this particular case, the SIO decided
21:32that that was not the course of action that they were going to take.
21:36They were instructed by the SIO not to treat this individual as a suspect. And of course,
21:44as a junior officer, you respect the decision of a SIO, but it makes you wonder why.
21:51What 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
22:19Linefield Woods near Biggar, Scotland on the 8th of May 2005. Authorities have identified a strong suspect,
22:28Ian Packer, a man known for his violent behaviour towards sex workers, and is reported to have been
22:34obsessed with Caldwell. However, detectives are unaware that there is a parallel, covert murder
22:41investigation underway. Some 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? He goes, oh yeah, we've had someone
22:59just, you know, been here recently and spoken to me. And the detectives would ring back to the police
23:05station and enquire and be told, oh no, they haven't been spoken to. But the witnesses were absolutely
23:10insistent they have been spoken to. It then transpires that alongside Operation Greil, there is a secret
23:17unit working on the Emma Caldwell investigation called Operation Guard. There was a whole different
23:22strand to the investigation that they weren't being told about. For me, it's unprecedented in the sense
23:27that I've not known that. If you've got one operation running, that's that operation, even if it might
23:34coincide or conflict with another one, but you're both aware of both operations. You don't keep an
23:41operation within an operation secret from police officers, because you're going to get the conflict
23:46of interest and the conflict of evidence. You can't do it that way. DCI Colin Field holds a briefing in
23:54the morning with DS Willie Johnson and all the detectives from Operation Greil and Operation Guard.
24:01And he tells all the detectives what they've been doing, what they've been working on. We understand
24:07that you're interested in Ian Packer, but this, this is where we're heading and this is why we're heading.
24:12The details of Operation Guard's line of inquiry was revealed to be in relation to a Turkish man
24:18that had called Emma's phone. The last phone call made to Emma's phone on the night of Monday,
24:27the 4th of April 2005, was a 70-second phone call from a man called Abu Bakar Anku. He was
24:35a Turkish man,
24:36and he had rang Emma that night, the night of her murder. And of course, in many, many murder cases
24:43that you deal with, the last person that had contact with the victim tends to be the murderer.
24:49Further examination of cell phone data reveals that the night of Emma's disappearance,
24:54one of her last known locations, was near a Turkish cafe.
25:00So now, there's a lot of circumstantial evidence, not evidence pointing to a murderer or a suspect,
25:07but it's circumstantial evidence that the SIO's taken on board to think, right, it's got to have
25:11something to do with that cafe, because we've got the phone, Emma's phone near the location,
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
25:22contact with Emma, and we've got the location. So let's now concentrate on looking at the cafe,
25:28because they know that that's also a cafe that's frequented by women and prostitutes. So that's where the
25:35line 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. But he did
25:57concede
25:58that 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
26:09man and his comrades.
26:12The decision was made to conduct 24-hour surveillance on the cafe, which would include visual surveillance,
26:23surveillance and also audio surveillance. And this would entail putting listening devices or bugs,
26:32if you like, inside the premises so that they could listen to conversations.
26:36This surveillance is massively expensive. Not only is it time consuming, but finding people to follow
26:45people 24 hours a day, to fund the bugging of rooms, of people's phones. It is a huge undertaking,
26:54cost-wise, but also in terms of manpower, and is a very complicated and complex procedure.
27:04To get that type of clearance to start that kind of a surveillance and investigation is a massive step,
27:12but you have to be very sure that you're on the right track. You have to be able to demonstrate
27:15that
27:16these are the people involved. We really believe strongly they're involved and we want to gather
27:20more evidence. So you have to convince further up the line that this is why you're doing it,
27:26that there is a valid reason for doing it, and that you're confident that you will get some reward
27:30at the end to build a case against these people.
27:37Meanwhile, 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
27:53by one of her customers. They then decided to conduct another line-up with this particular sex worker,
28:04and again she picked out Ian Packer. And she said that Ian Packer was someone who would have
28:13picked her up on a Monday, Wednesday and a Friday. And she said on one occasion he took her
28:20outside of Glasgow to a very remote location, at least an hour's drive away. And the police asked her,
28:28could she retrace that route? They were very interested in knowing exactly where Ian Packer
28:33took her. And 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. She told them
28:46that
28:46she noticed a bus stop that she took note of because she said that Packer was taking her so far
28:51that she
28:52at one point was going to jump out of the bus stop to escape because she was getting very nervous,
28:55because he was going so far off the beaten track. She then noticed that at one stage they went over
29:02something that made like a do-do-do-do-do type noise. Well that turned out to be a cattle
29:06grid.
29:11She eventually took them to the exact spot and she described seeing Christmas trees on either side
29:17of the road as she described them. And 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, has been taken to this area by the
29:46person that she's named as Ian Packer. And it just so happens that that's the same location as Emma.
29:52This cannot be a coincidence. It can't be a coincidence. And yet it still wasn't acted on.
29:58They're directed from above to say, Ian Packer is not our man. Ian Packer will never be charged over
30:04this. This is not the direction we are heading in. You just get the feeling that the SIO is thinking,
30:11no, I want to forget that guy because the more I've got the distraction of people talking about
30:16Ian Packer, I'm losing what I'm trying to gain on the individuals who I believe are responsible for it
30:23from the Turkish cafe. So he tells the officer straight away, go and speak to him as a witness
30:28and tell him that is it. We 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, he makes a shocking
30:40admission. Now he admits to everything. Yes, he does know Emma. He has met Emma. He does use
30:48prostitutes, but he didn't hurt her. He's non-violent and he sticks to that type of story. But now we
30:55go
30:56back and you think these detectives must be sitting there thinking, well, hang on, you've gone from lying
31:01to us. So driving that van, being possibly associated with the cable. We've got witnesses
31:09who've put you at the location. We've got witnesses who say you're a violent individual who's raped some
31:15of the prostitutes. And now you're admitting to knowing Emma and having been with her.
31:23Based on Packer's confession, detectives on Operation Grail make a tactical decision.
31:30Now they asked Packer to take them to the area where he takes the girls. And he took them to
31:37exactly the same area.
31:43He was within yards of where Emma's body was found. Now for those officers, it would have been
31:49almost a surreal moment. Here's somebody that we suspect as being the killer, and he's actually
31:54taken us to the site where the body was dumped. So these detectives now had a decision to make,
32:03essentially. In their minds, they already suspected that Packer was the killer. Now him taking them to
32:09the deposition site, that can only firm that up. How can it not be him? How can all this evidence
32:16pointed to him not be right? In their minds, they're thinking, are we missing something?
32:21Are we going crazy? We need to take this to the bosses. So that's what they did.
32:27Packer has taken us to the deposition site, a deposition site that we ourselves struggle to find.
32:34What came back was the same thing. No, leave him alone. It's not him. We've got the right people.
32:41It is not Packer. I can't even begin to imagine the frustrations of those officers. Good detectives,
32:48good experienced officers that in their minds would have been absolutely convinced at this point,
32:52but were being told by senior officers, no, you're wrong.
32:57The senior investigating officer orders the detectives pursuing Packer to stand down,
33:02asserting that they have damning evidence from translated audio recordings captured during
33:07the surveillance of the Turkish cafe. During these conversations, a casino was mentioned,
33:14and in fact, the casino was next door to the premises. They searched the casino,
33:20and in the casino, they found clothing that they believed to be Emma's. And they also found a little
33:26key ring with a horse on it, which was interesting because Emma had previously worked at the stables as
33:33young girl. Police were convinced that these clothing and items did belong to Emma Colwell.
33:43Their final piece of evidence was found within the cafe.
33:49The police, when they were searching the Turkish community cafe, found some bed linen,
33:53and on that bed linen, they found two specks of blood. That blood was found to belong to Emma Colwell.
34:00So there were a number of things that made the police very confident that these Turkish men
34:05were involved and ordered them to be arrested. One of the officers who strongly suspected Packer as
34:12being Emma's killer was given the task of interviewing Onku, which essentially involved him playing the
34:20recordings from the cafe. Recordings that he had been told had been translated by the best in the business.
34:27But when they played this recording to Onku, he started to laugh at them, saying that what you're
34:35telling me on there isn't true. Almost ridiculing the product, ridiculing the officer, putting them in a
34:42really awkward position. The problem was the quality of the audio recordings weren't great, and the
34:48detective himself had to concede that it sounded like a bunch of men sitting around a television chatting.
34:54There was just nothing really decipherable there. Basically, he went out and told the SIO that,
35:00and told his superiors, I'm not convinced this is right. And they said, well, he's our man,
35:05go back in and charge him. So he did so.
35:09After four million pounds had been spent on the investigation into Emma Caldwell's murder,
35:14the most expensive murder inquiry ever in Scotland, the four Turkish men are charged with the crime.
35:20The pressure is on to secure a conviction, but some detectives are convinced the killer is still
35:26walking free.
35:41On May 8, 2005, the body of 27-year-old Emma Caldwell was discovered in a remote woodland,
35:4830 miles south of Glasgow, five weeks after she disappeared. Strathclyde police charged four
35:55Turkish men with her murder following 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, and that's granted.
36:10So they're now going to stand trial for Emma's murder. And the defence team would have to look
36:17at the evidence and essentially question it, test it. And the main part of the evidence were these
36:22recordings from the cafe. Worryingly, what transpired was the experts that the senior officers had used to
36:32transcribe the recordings were in fact Turkish-speaking officers whose grasp of Turkish actually wasn't
36:38fluent. One of the police officers, whilst he was of Turkish descent, he only had an O-level in the
36:45subject of the Turkish language. Another officer, again of Turkish descent, had to confess that his
36:51knowledge of the language was at best limited. So it was far from the best experts in the land.
37:00Independent translators are brought in to transcribe the recordings in preparation for the trial.
37:05The independent experts come in, they listen to the recordings, and they say,
37:12what is alleged to have been said here is not obvious. We can't say that this is what is being
37:18said. It's quite clear that none of us is being said. The other situation was that, yes,
37:24Emma Colzel's blood was found in the Turkish cafe, but you have to remember that police knew that sex workers
37:31had been taken there in the past. That 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, they were never 100%
37:44confirmed to belong to Emma Colwell. The police found them and put two and two together and thought,
37:49well, these have to be Emma's, but they were never independently verified as having belonged to Emma
37:54Colwell. At this point, obviously, that line of inquiry has completely collapsed, which is unusual,
38:02because generally speaking, all the evidence is checked and double-checked to make sure that we've
38:11got it right. This strand of the inquiry collapsed very, very quickly.
38:19You've now got the whole situation here that you've got the money being spent. The four million
38:25pounds that have been spent on this operation alone, not the original operation Grail. So what do
38:30they do? We've got the wrong people. We've got no evidence. It's fallen through. What do we do?
38:35It's quite an embarrassment for that SIO.
38:40Hindsight is a wonderful thing. It's not like this was built on no foundations. This was built on
38:45some foundation. The problem was that it went further than what it should have. If the police
38:50had got the independent experts in at an earlier stage to make the translations and to transcribe the
38:57audio recordings, and if they had turned around and said, this is not going to get the court. We can't
39:02hear anything. This is not what is being said. This is inaccurate. It may not have went as far.
39:08The situation now was that the evidence they had against these four men was essentially
39:14rubbished, meaning that the case against them collapsed. They were now to be released.
39:19It is strange and questionable as to when the Turkish men are eliminated and exonerated as suspects,
39:28that they didn't return to the alternative and a very strong suspect in Ian Packer.
39:35That in itself is strange, because there was so much pointing to Packer.
39:43Though suspicion remains towards Packer, nothing happens for almost 15 years.
39:51In 2019, Ian Packer approaches the BBC, and he approaches a well-known journalist called Samantha
39:58Poling, and he wants to tell his side of the story. He wants to clear his name, and he feels
40:05her interviewing him is the best way to achieve that. In the production of this particular documentary,
40:12Ian Packer decides that he will voluntarily appear and openly admits that he knows Emma, openly admits
40:20that he uses prostitutes, but says he is never being violent towards them, and he certainly has never
40:28raped any of them. If Ian Packer had been raised as a suspect by detectives originally, one of the
40:36processes that they would go through is to build up a picture of his life, trying to understand if
40:42there's a pattern of behaviour. That didn't take place because he wasn't raised as a suspect. But those
40:49making the documentary went through that process, trying to build up that picture of him.
40:54What Samantha Poling did was Samantha Poling went and spoke to as many people as she could
40:59about Ian Packer. And far from a man who denied being sexually violent or abusive to women,
41:05who had never raped a woman, who had never hurt a woman, she found a truckload of circumstantial evidence
41:11from people who had had experiences with Ian Packer, very negative experiences. One sex worker told her
41:18that Ian Packer had got her inside his van and had attempted to strangle her, and she was only saved
41:23when
41:24a security guard banged on the van, and she managed to escape. Another one told about being taken behind
41:30some shops. Ian Packer had tried to force her onto her knees, and she managed to escape. And when she
41:36was running down the street, Packer was running after her, shouting threats. She was building this picture
41:42of a very, very dangerous man. Someone that was controlling, someone that was aggressive, and someone that was violent.
41:53A woman called Magdalene Roberts is interviewed as part of the documentary. She knew Packer when
41:59she was a child. Ian Packer had become a friend to her family, and she had a very disturbing experience
42:07with Ian Packer to tell. She said that Packer would sexually harass her, and she's 14 years of age at
42:15this
42:15point. He would sexually harass her. He would intimidate her. She would wake up in the middle
42:21of the night to find him standing by her bed, staring at her. That then escalates to him sexually
42:27assaulting Magdalene, and eventually raping her in her own home. She told her family what had happened,
42:36and they basically said to her, you know, you're making it up, but they didn't really believe her.
42:41But ten months after the murder of Emma Caldwell, Magdalene Roberts reports her rape by Ian Packer
42:50to the police. And the police, unfortunately, do nothing with it.
42:57On camera, Samantha Poling confronts Ian Packer with her findings. His decision to participate in the
43:04documentary would be his downfall.
43:07While he's happy to say, yes, I knew Emma, yes, I visit sex workers, what he's not expecting is the
43:13fact that, hang on a minute, we know you're violent. We know you're a rapist. We know that you've
43:17actually committed rape. We know that you actually raped a girl when she was 14. He is sitting there
43:23being hit with everything, and that must have taken him by surprise.
43:27He was dumbfounded and really taken aback when she told him that she believed he was a dangerous
43:34man, and that he was dangerous to women, and that he had lied to her, and that he had questions
43:39to
43:39answer regarding the death of Emma Caldwell. Shortly after the documentary is published,
43:4513 years after Emma's murder, an ex-partner of Packer comes forward and tells police that he had
43:51attacked her. He actually was jailed for attacking his former partner. He then subsequently,
43:59post that, is charged with the murder of Emma Caldwell, and the interviews he give to Samantha
44:05Poling form part of the evidence. Ian, can you describe the relationship to me with Emma Caldwell?
44:13Could you provide a description of Emma to me? Can you confirm when you first met?
44:21On the 28th of February 2022, Ian Packer was convicted of Emma's murder, and he was also convicted of 33
44:32other counts relating to assaults, sexual assaults. And over his lifetime, he had targeted and attacked
44:3922 women. Ian Packer was sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum term of 36 years.
44:47It has turned out that he has become one of the most prolific rapists and sex offenders in modern
44:54Scottish history. He has put himself in the frame for a murder that he committed some many years ago,
45:06and I find it astonishing that he would do such a thing and unbelievable.
45:13When I look at Ian Packer, I see a sexual predator who was driven by his need for power and
45:22control
45:22over vulnerable women, sex workers, 14-year-old girl, people that he could easily prey on. And the fact that
45:31he was allowed to keep carrying on his crimes, he was almost emboldened. And I think that's the biggest
45:37tragedy here of how many victims that fell foul of him when they didn't need to. For the family,
45:46they would have undoubtedly mixed feelings about his conviction. They would be that satisfaction that
45:53eventually someone has faced justice for Emma's murder. But he was allowed to live for that interim
46:00period. He was allowed out and about to live his life, a life that Emma will never lead.
46:38So next year the leader would become a person to live for the innocent people of the world.
46:39A pain in the ruin.
46:39And the planet just came across a different world.
46:39king was on the other side by the man's life.
46:39A history of the world had left a man's life.
46:41A history of the world had been he was not a person that was a part of his life.
46:43A history of the world had been he was right.
46:43It's a woman that was a sister of the world had been in the first hand before his life and
46:45his life.
46:50It was an idea as a person that still hit his mind.
47:05Transcription by CastingWords
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