Britain's Almost Perfect Murders Season 1 Episode 3

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Transcript

00:01The perfect murder, the unsolvable crime, does it really exist?

00:07In a 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.

01:06The violent crime scene raises the seas of the U.S.

01:21Criminologists have long recognized 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.

01:43The homeless.

01:47On 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

02:08even murders.

02:11The fatal attack on 51-year-old Thomas Downey in the center of Bath shortly before Christmas

02:192014 is a textbook example of how the murder of a homeless man could have been a perfect

02:29murder.

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 and investigations where there is

02:54seemingly no relationship between two individuals.

02:57In order to move towards a suspect, you have to retrace the steps and get to the critical

03:03point in time where the murder and the victim came together.

03:06And unless you can establish that relationship, you can't carry on with an investigation.

03:12So, essentially, what the investigating officers are looking for is the sort of thing that you

03:20do when you create an associations chart.

03:22Yes.

03:23Yes.

03:23Yes, very much so.

03:24So, in investigations where you're unsure or you don't know the relationship, the best

03:31thing to do is to try and establish all of the associates that that person had. You may

03:37have witnesses who give you information and a description about somebody, but they don't

03:43necessarily know the name that goes for that person. You're searching all the other information

03:47coming into the inquiry to 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. It's a layering of that information until you can adequately identify

04:04an 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, with the discovery of a dead body.

04:24I got a telephone call on Christmas morning to say, there's a job in, boss. And in effect,

04:32there was a case in Bath, which was local to where I was living at the time. And basically,

04:39somebody had been discovered there the day before, and they were dead.

04:44The victim had been discovered in a railway arch, a disused railway arch, at about lunchtime

04:50on Christmas Eve. The body was discovered as a result of somebody who said they were walking

04:57past the railway arch and had noticed that the person lying down in there, the victim,

05:02hadn't moved for several days. Police were called. They gained access into the railway arch.

05:07There was nobody there. A lot of debris on the floor, mud floor. And the victim lying there,

05:14covered by a blanket.

05:18They arrive on the scene. There's no-one else around, just the body. What's the automatic initial assumption?

05:27Depending on the weather. You know, was it bitterly cold? Have they died from some form of exposure?

05:34Or also, is it in relation to some kind of alcohol or drugs-related incident? So, could it potentially

05:43be an overdose?

05:50The assumption was that he had died as a result of either natural causes, it was very cold,

05:56he may have had a medical condition, or he'd suffered some form of overdose, which isn't unusual

06:02necessarily in that community. And that dictated the initial response as well by police. It was clear

06:09that they went in looking at it through that lens. In any investigation where somebody dies, you should

06:16always keep an open mind. So, there's a potential here that, actually, there's some bias already

06:23creeping into this investigation, and that it's been assumed that because it's a member of the homeless

06:30community that it could potentially be an overdose.

06:35Well, it's not unusual for somebody from the homeless community to be either dying from an overdose

06:42or, tragically, from some sort of violence. It's not unusual for homeless people to

06:50have an unlawful killing, I think is probably the best way to say it, but not always in a,

06:54in the way that you might have a gang-related killing. So, it's not always from stabbing,

06:58but often from some sort of violence. So, he was from the homeless community.

07:03It was later identified that he was alcohol dependent and he misused other substances.

07:09And, in particular, other substances that were misused at that time were spice,

07:14which was a relatively new drug that we genuinely didn't know much about.

07:19The reality was very different, wasn't it? It was different. And that was only discovered

07:25once the body had, had gone for a post-mortem, when it had been clear that actually that person

07:33had received a fairly severe beating, and that it was likely to be an instrument that was long and

07:40thin and heavy. So, maybe a metal bar of some kind. The traditional blunt instrument? The traditional

07:47blunt instrument. Hammers and metal bars, yeah.

07:53All we could ever ascertain was that there was an argument about something insignificant.

08:01When we first managed to get an examination of him done, and it became more apparent during the

08:06course of the post-mortem, he had injuries to his head that were significant, like a weapon had been

08:14used to hit those blunt force trauma. He had defence injuries on his arm, so he'd obviously put up his

08:21arm to protect himself, broken bones there. And he also had injuries across his shoulder that was broken,

08:28again, where he'd been hit by something really, really hard.

08:34The hypothesis was that there had been a fight, or an argument, or something had gone on,

08:39and that during the course of that, that person had then violently assaulted him. And I mean,

08:44it was excessive. You didn't need to hit him that many times.

08:52The crime certainly impacted the homeless community, because whilst their lives can often

09:00involve violence between themselves, and that's just sporadic or knee-jerk reactions,

09:06they still don't expect each other to be the victim of homicide. That's unusual.

09:14It is a really close-knit community, the homeless community, and they know each other well,

09:19and particularly in that city like Bath, which is a relatively small city, everybody tends to hang

09:25around in the same places, or sleep in the same places, visit the same locations to get help and support.

09:31So they were shocked, and it was impactive because it was at Christmas as well.

09:39Why does the fact this is the homeless community, why does that make it more difficult?

09:45There's several issues, one of which is being that they're in an incredibly transient community,

09:51so they may be in one place for a few days, a few weeks, and then they may choose to

09:57move to an entirely

09:59different section of the UK. And 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 that sometimes to the people outside

10:15of that community might not be entirely clear, but they work within the community itself and

10:21how they police and self-regulate themselves.

10:25The homeless community can be challenging when engaging in investigations because they don't trust

10:31the police, often because of their own criminality and their lifestyle. And the other challenges we

10:38had was because it was in the depths of winter and everybody was obviously very cold, if we wanted to

10:43seize anything, we had to make sure we replaced it for them. So we had to look after them.

10:49Very few people really are concerned about the murder of a homeless person, and that's because we

10:55just see these people really, that they've kind of somehow failed, or they're worthless. Had he been,

11:02you know, the son of a doctor, or somebody, an airline pilot, we would probably see much more

11:10media attention, we would see much more police attention. You know, all of those lives are equally valuable,

11:16but for some reason we don't necessarily see this as something that's worthy of the attention,

11:22and worthy of the resources to investigate that murder.

11:27Sadly, on Christmas Eve, when he was first discovered, nobody knew who he was. We 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? Homeless people don't carry much in the way of identification.

11:50No, and that is always a significant problem, identifying people, and quite often

11:56this community will operate on nicknames, and those nicknames are interchangeable,

12:00and the people that you think are known by one nickname might be somebody else. Luckily,

12:06officers had a very good relationship with the homeless community, and they could talk to them

12:12and communicate with them.

12:15For me, as an investigating officer, I was really lucky that the local community team,

12:21based in Bath, knew everybody in that community, spoke to them on a daily basis,

12:26and already had those links. Rather than sending in detectives, or people that didn't know them,

12:35asking difficult questions, what 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, and that worked really, really well.

12:47And they established fairly early on that the victim in this case was 51-year-old

12:52Thomas Downey. In that community, he was known as Manchester Tommy.

12:58This, then, was the victim of the attack just before Christmas 2014. Now, police had a problem.

13:25The victim was known locally as Manchester Tommy, obviously, because he had Mancunian accent,

13:30and that's where he'd originated from. But he'd been in Bath for some time. He was well-known in Bath

13:36as

13:36part of the homeless community, not necessarily for any high-level offending. Tommy had children.

13:43He was estranged from his wife. He'd lost his job. He'd started drinking. And really, it was just

13:50a sequence of events that had led to Tommy becoming homeless. As a consequence of being homeless,

13:56that had then led him to become more dependent on alcohol, and also then engaging in taking drugs.

14:07In amongst his antecedents, of which, you know, he'd been on the street for 10 years, so he had 233

14:14minor criminal offences. But the standout one, and the one that he was most well-known for, is in 2011,

14:22during the riots in Manchester. He took the opportunity to take a box of well-known doughnuts

14:30from a well-known doughnut shop, which gained him quite a reputation in that community.

14:34I mean, he literally stumbled out of the doughnut shop. He did. Into the arms of riot police. He did,

14:42yes. So, his doughnut joy did not last a very long time. But it also lends itself to the sort

14:48of

14:48character that he probably was, and he was probably a lovable rogue.

14:55For his trouble, he got another 18 months in prison.

14:58When he emerged, he gradually made his way south, and he ended up in the Bath and Bristol areas.

15:08And here, he lived rough. He continued to abuse alcohol, and he also began taking illicit drugs,

15:17including spice. Now, spice was then a new phenomenon. It is a synthetic cannabinoid. It was originally

15:27designed to mimic the effects of marijuana, but its effects are far more devastating. Paranoia,

15:34heart and chest pains, and sometimes people who take it become immobile, having taken this.

15:44The senior investigating officer now has a name. We know this is Thomas Downey. Yes.

15:50Ridley from Manchester. Yes. What an amazing SIO. The community itself, and also, as it turns out,

15:57later on, the 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 as they normally would on other murder

16:10investigations. Thomas Downey's murder would be investigated, but maybe not with the

16:15full force of the major crime team behind it, but how wrong they were.

16:20She faces a dilemma at this point, doesn't she? Christmas Day. Yes.

16:28Had a really difficult decision to make on Christmas Day when we identified the victim

16:33of going to see his family and upsetting their Christmas Day forever more. But it was clearly

16:38the right thing to do because it's not something you want to hide from somebody any longer than you

16:42needed to. And I was really fortunate to speak to the family of the victim when they came down

16:48a few days later to visit us down in the incident room. The victim's family are really important.

16:55And one of the reasons that the cases involving the homeless community don't often get any media

17:01coverage or feature on anything is because the victims aren't very well thought of.

17:08When that victim's family came to see me on the first day, the victim's family said to me,

17:13we didn't think anyone would be interested in the death of a homeless alcoholic.

17:19And it really struck a chord with me as I said to them, well, not only am I interested in

17:24it,

17:24we're going to absolutely find who's done it and bring them to justice. And as we were having that

17:30conversation, people were being arrested, people who were not subsequently charged, but people were being

17:35arrested. And I think and I hope that that gave them some confidence that what I said was going to

17:41happen was going to happen.

17:48So now we've got a dead body known to be Thomas Downey. We've got a family who knew and cared

17:57about him.

17:57Yeah. We've got a senior investigating officer who's fired up to get at the truth. What's the missing bit?

18:05So at this stage, you're at the most difficult part of the investigation because you are then going to have

18:14to establish the circumstances in which Tommy ended up underneath those rail arches beaten to death.

18:22So at that point, you're left with a murder victim and no suspect and no weapon. So in a case

18:32like this,

18:33you've got to start to rely on the old adage of somebody knows something and put in the fact that

18:42that is a community. And what do communities do? They talk to each other and they know what's going on.

18:48And somebody did know something, didn't they? They did. Not an entire identity. No, exactly that.

18:56People knew who he was within the community, but they didn't really know his name. They weren't sure

19:02who he was. But as soon as we got the first name of Darrell, that's where our community policing team

19:09came in. And they were able to say, well, the only person we know is Darrell who's been in this

19:15area

19:16recently is Darrell Richards. Then we started looking for CCTV. And once we get an image of him,

19:23then we could start to confirm that. Darrell Richards was somebody who'd been on the streets for a number

19:29of years. He misused substances, which included alcohol and controlled drugs. He did have a criminal

19:36history in the same way that a number of people do who live on the streets, which usually centered on

19:45property theft, so shoplifting and lower level offending, which is usually in line with stealing

19:52alcohol or stealing food or maybe stealing something to sell in order to source those other things. So

19:58not somebody who was necessarily particularly violent. He did have a violence in his background, but

20:04was not known on a regular basis for someone who was violent.

20:10So it appears that there was some intelligence that he had been responsible for Tommy's murder,

20:17and people around that kind of homeless community start to suspect that he had done that. There's

20:23possibly some previous incidents where he has threatened people, he's used violence and intimidation in

20:29the past. And certainly he would have used that fear and intimidation to exploit those people. These are

20:36people who are, you know, living day to day, they're looking after themselves to survive. So they would not

20:42have wanted to find themselves, even though they wanted to help their friend Tommy and to try to solve

20:48the murder. At the same time, they need to look after themselves. And had the police not been able to

20:53secure

20:53a conviction, they would have left themselves vulnerable in that situation.

20:59So the relationship between the victim and killer was just that they were two homeless people who

21:03resided in the same area at the same time. And in that particular railway arch, they have both been

21:11staying there. The homeless community, so whilst you say they are homeless, they're actually quite

21:17territorial about where they do sleep and who they do share that space with. So that's when conflict

21:24can arise. So if somebody is imposing on somebody else's area, then that can lead to upset. I think

21:31in this case, the victim and offender, whilst they were both sharing that same railway arch, there was a

21:38little bit of conflict around who should be there or how big the fire should be or what noise was

21:44going on.

21:45So it's not dissimilar to being in a home environment. It's just they're on the street.

21:52So Tommy was homeless. He was somebody who was, you know, on the fringes of society. He had very few

21:57connections, very few kind of people looking out for him, if any. And so he's very, very vulnerable.

22:04And he would have seen this, Daryl Richards would have seen this as an opportunity, really,

22:08to commit this crime, that no one was going to really be looking, no one was going to really miss

22:13him.

22:14And even if they did find his body, it was unlikely that police were going to extend

22:18great resources into trying to find the murder of, you know, another homeless person who's died.

22:24And such is the state, really, of some people, where they find themselves in society, is that they

22:30are really neglected in that situation. And he would have known that, and he would have used that to

22:35his advantage. And that's potentially why Tommy became a victim.

22:44So if we go to your association chart, we've now got Thomas Downey. We've now got Daryl Richards.

22:51Yes. Next problem. So the next problem is tracking where Daryl Richards is. Given that he also had

22:59antecedents, then there would have been visual images. So we've now got a name, we've now got an

23:05image of somebody. And the local bath area was scoured. The PCSOs once again did a sterling job along with

23:13the major inquiry team. And he was nowhere to be seen. Again, particular problem with the homeless

23:21community, isn't it? Yes.

23:22They are, as you say, transient. Police did identify a member of the homeless community called

23:31Timmy. And Timmy had said, yeah, he'd witnessed a dispute between Tommy, Manchester Tommy, who is our

23:41victim, and another male. He didn't really know what it was about, but he had witnessed his dispute. But he

23:48did know that the other male was called Daryl. Our victim, Tommy, was discovered on the 24th of December.

23:57And we thought he had died around the 21st of December. And through doing some CCTV work,

24:06we then identified the key witness, Timmy, who told us that Daryl was present.

24:13He, too, was alcohol-dependent. And whilst he gave some account, he was very frightened and didn't

24:22want to give the full account. Coupled with, he said he had gone to sleep in the arch and

24:29wasn't really aware of everything that had gone on.

24:33So the grounds for making the suspect, Daryl Richards, our key suspect and the person we wanted to find,

24:40was initially the account of the witness, Timmy, who was present there at the same time.

24:45He told the police that he remembered the date on which he had seen Tommy and Daryl Richards together.

24:54He said it was December the 21st. And he knew that, he said, because on that day,

25:02he'd gone to a local petrol station and stolen snacks from it.

25:08Timmy talked about going into the petrol station, buying some stuff, stealing some stuff, and CCTV corroborated that.

25:16Timmy had gone to the petrol station on that day. But that date didn't match the forensic evidence.

25:28The post-mortem had shown that Tommy had been killed several days before the 21st.

25:37So Timmy couldn't be right, could he? The police decided to go back through all the evidence they'd taken

25:46from underneath the arches. When we were revisiting the exhibits, and in this archway,

25:54there was a lot of items that we recovered. There was a railway ticket that related to the 16th of

26:00December. And we hadn't been able to get a last sighting of Tommy alive, so we went back to that

26:06as

26:06our start point, and managed to get him coming back to Bath from Bristol. On the 17th of December,

26:13the same sequence of events going to the petrol station, stealing things that Timmy had relayed to us,

26:19the police also took place. So in fact, the actual date of the murder was the 17th of December.

26:26It reinforced the belief that Daryl Richards had killed Tommy Downey.

26:36But there was a major hole in the police's case, and one which could cause problems should the case

26:45ever come to trial. That problem? There was no sign of the murder weapon.

27:05This is what we call a category B murder. Category B is where the victim and the assailant weren't

27:12connected with each other. Although they knew each other within the community, they were effectively,

27:16they weren't in a relationship or household. We 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 what the murder weapon was, because there was nothing present within

27:32the archway. There was one item that I thought was a great fit, and when I showed the pathologist,

27:39he's like, no, that's not it, it's not good enough. So having a look at the area, there was a

27:45river

27:45really nearby, and I asked the divers to go into the river. This was about 10 days after, I suppose,

27:54so maybe even 15 days after the actual murder itself.

28:00Any murder investigation, how crucial is it for a successful prosecution to find the murder weapon?

28:09It's critical to establish the item that caused those injuries, particularly from a point of view of

28:17putting it in the hands of your suspect. So you're looking for those solid forensic links that are going

28:25to really firm up your investigation. To bring this case to court, she knows she's got to find

28:32the murder weapon. Yes. This is December. Yes. This is Bath. Yes. This is the River Avon. Yes.

28:44It's very fast and very deep. And very cold. Would you have liked to have been the person speaking to

28:50the underwater team, asking them to go in the water in December to look for an item that might

28:57be a metal bar? Bearing in mind, it's been thrown from a bridge where probably all sorts of things,

29:05be it shopping trolleys and various items on drunk nights out, the conditions must have been horrendous

29:13for that underwater search team. There's an aspect to this that if I can't see it then nobody else can

29:23and nobody would ever find it. So disposing of the weapon into a water body is very commonly

29:29encountered in crime investigation because it's one way to try and destroy and hide the evidence.

29:39Police divers are very specialist individuals who are trained to recover material from water bodies.

29:48And in this particular case, they would have methodically examined where they believe the murder

29:55weapon may have been discarded. Once they find it, there's a very clear set of processes that need to

30:03be followed in order to ensure that the material, the item is recovered in a safe and secure way.

30:10And that once it is removed from that water, that any material that is associated with it is protected.

30:19The river in winter is high, fast flowing and not an area that you would usually search unless you had

30:28a

30:28really, really, really good strong reason at that time of year. The divers brought out of the river four items.

30:35Three of them were covered in green slime and not quite barnacles because it's not the sea, but that sort

30:40of thing,

30:41layers of rubbish on them. The fourth article was a long barbell that you have the dumbbells screwed on either

30:47end.

30:48And that was relatively new. When we took that out, I was talking to our forensic coordinator.

30:57And I said to him, I don't know, I'm not sure that's going to be the weapon. And he said,

31:00well,

31:01I think it looks quite good. We'll send it off to get DNA.

31:05We know that the weapon would have been affiliated with blood staining from the victim. So that is a very

31:14rich

31:14source of DNA, which can persist in very inhospitable conditions, including submersion in water.

31:25Our DNA techniques are so sensitive that they would still have a very good chance of recovering

31:32viable DNA from that type of weapon, even if it has been submerged for some time.

31:38And anyone who handles that implement will also be leaving their skin cells and DNA, which, again,

31:47can get caught in the nooks and crannies of a of a weapon. If there's a textured surface,

31:52it might persist there longer than, let's say, if it was a smooth surface. And we know very well

31:59that we can recover usable and viable DNA from items that have been submerged for decades.

32:07Having submitted our barbell, which we now believe to be our murder weapon,

32:11the forensic scientists managed to recover from one end of it, a partial profile DNA profile of the victim.

32:19And from the other end, a partial profile DNA profile of the offender, Darrell Richards.

32:25And that was the first that any item that had been in water that long had had any form of

32:30DNA recovered for it in a murder trial.

32:33So, along with our witness testimony, our albeit partial profiles of DNA from the murder weapon,

32:42we then managed to identify some CCTV. And whilst it was from a distance, it showed the splash in the

32:49river,

32:49and he was throwing the weapon into the river. And we could marry that up with some other CCTV,

32:55which showed him crossing the road almost moments before. We just didn't quite have him in sight,

33:00throwing it over. But the amazing work that the team did around that helped to bring it all together.

33:06It's a bit of a jigsaw puzzle when you investigate murder.

33:10It was enough. The problem was finding him, because Darrell Richards was not in Bath and was nowhere to be

33:19found.

33:20Where and when, from what you laid out, did the police first lay hands on Darrell Richards?

33:30So, what they had to do, once they realised he wasn't in the Bath area and the likelihood is that

33:36he would have gone,

33:37is to start to widen the search for him. Theoretically, he could have been anywhere in the UK.

33:43He could have gravitated to a homeless community in a seaside town.

33:47They widened the search. Starting in the local area, as you do, you tend to start small and then work

33:54out.

33:54And once again, through excellent communications, saying, putting wanted people out,

34:00and he would have been down as wanted. A local beat officer from Bristol had seen him,

34:06and he was in the Bristol area.

34:11Darrell was arrested, having been found in an underpass in Bristol.

34:15Interestingly, by another beat officer, so it just goes to show the importance of the community beat teams.

34:21And he was brought into custody, but very mild-mannered, didn't say anything,

34:26didn't give protestations about anything.

34:30Darrell was somebody who was used to being in police custody, and he behaved in a very mild way.

34:37He gave a prepared statement and basically said that he wasn't responsible.

34:43He couldn't remember being there with Tommy, and it was not to do with him.

34:51Were the police ever able to ascertain

34:57that middle word on our trinity of police investigative must-haves?

35:03We've got the means. We've got the opportunity. What's the motive?

35:08Yeah, they've never established a firm motive as to the reasons as to why

35:16Darrell Richards felt it was necessary to beat Tommy to death.

35:22When I presented this case, which had been challenging from the beginning to our barrister,

35:28who was not that enamoured at prosecuting, I portrayed it as a skeleton.

35:34And the way I described it was that also was the victim, and he was at the heart of it.

35:40The right arm was our key witness, and the left arm was effectively the perpetrator.

35:47The legs that it was built on were the CCTV evidence, the DNA evidence,

35:54and just tying everything together. And then the bit on the top, the head,

35:59was the understanding of how it all linked in and how we could then present it to a court.

36:06Richard's maintained his innocence up 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, not murder, but the lesser charge of manslaughter.

36:24In essence, he said he lacked what lawyers call the mens rea, the 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 out of a low-level argument whilst they were in that railway arch over the

36:52fire and who was going to do what.

36:55I think, and of course we'll never know because nobody's ever told us exactly what happened,

37:01but I think that Tommy was probably goading Daryl a little bit and then it was backwards and forwards and

37:09it's just escalated and very quickly to extreme violence.

37:20The law is clear. You don't have to meticulously plan out a killing to make it murder.

37:27Even something that happens in a short space of time in the heat of an argument can be classified as

37:37murder.

37:37And so police and prosecutors refused to accept Daryl Richards' lesser plea of manslaughter.

38:06We didn't accept his plea to manslaughter and we had a full trial.

38:13In the courtroom, Richard's behaved in the very same way that he had in custody.

38:17He's still portrayed as somebody who was quite mild-mannered.

38:22He didn't speak at all during the course of his trial.

38:24He didn't give evidence and was just present in the dock looking on.

38:31The victim's family did come to court and they had their victim impact statements that were read out.

38:38And I go back to that point of people think because somebody's homeless they're not worthy or they don't have

38:42a life or they don't matter to anybody.

38:44But their victim impact statement talked about how the fact that Tommy was a father, he was a brother, he

38:51had been a husband, he was a son and he was somebody who clearly really did matter to them.

38:58In December 2015, one year after he beat Manchester Tommy Downey to death with a metal bar,

39:08Daryl Richards was convicted of murder, sentenced to life imprisonment and given a minimum tariff of almost 11 years.

39:19This case hit the media locally because it always will.

39:25If ever there's a murder locally, then the local news are interested as they should be.

39:30It didn't go any wider than that.

39:33And when Daryl Richards was convicted, again, it was very local reporting in the media.

39:39I think people underestimate a case like this, the impact it has on the community, so the homeless community.

39:47The amount of work that still goes into investigating a homicide like that is significant.

39:52And it is important that we learn from it and help to prevent it happening in the future.

39:59So whether he could be rehabilitated is really quite a difficult question to answer.

40:03There is obviously a long history of drug and alcohol abuse and he obviously found himself on the streets.

40:09So it's not to mitigate what he did in any way.

40:12We must remember that he committed a very, very violent crime and murdered a very vulnerable, innocent person.

40:19So that goes at odds with whether we could safely release this person into the community again.

40:26I say sometimes in situations where there is a precipitating mental health problem or substance abuse, then there are some

40:33avenues there to address it.

40:35But certainly whether, you know, it's possible to then, you know, where would he go, what would he do if

40:42he has any ability to find himself and build himself a new life, then potentially does have a chance.

40:48But the fact that he was already on the streets and he was already struggling initially would go against him

40:55in some respects.

41:01When you look at the portrait, the pen portrait, if you like, that you've been able to put together of

41:09Daryl Richards,

41:11this doesn't strike me or, or I suspect anyone else, as the picture of a calculating murderer, someone who set

41:21out to carry out the perfect murder.

41:25No.

41:26Was it the case that he tried to make it a perfect murder after the event?

41:34Yes, I mean, obviously, we don't know where that murder weapon came from, if it was just lying around at

41:42the arches.

41:42And it was this argument that escalated and exploded into extreme violence after a relatively minor incident.

41:51But through covering the body, disposing of the murder weapon and then leaving the local area,

41:57he thought he was going to get away with it, because why would somebody care about a homeless person that's

42:04been found under the arches?

42:06And if that person had been subjected to an assault, was the full force of a major crime investigation team

42:13going to work as hard as they normally do?

42:16And he's transient, so get a case of catch me if you can.

42:26I think Richards believed he had committed the perfect murder.

42:30I think he thought he'd committed the perfect murder because the time between the murder and when he was arrested.

42:38I think he thought that perfect murder was definitely because he'd got rid of the murder weapon in the river

42:43and didn't think we'd get it out, let alone get any forensic evidence off it.

42:48I think he thought he'd got away with it, and it was the perfect murder in his view,

42:54because it involved another homeless person, a homeless alcoholic,

42:58and the police wouldn't bother investigating it as well as another type of murder.

43:05He was wrong on all counts, but he was also almost right.

43:15In my own career, this was really challenging because the time of year, so Christmas,

43:23we had a really small team investigating it.

43:26There was something like 14 of us in total.

43:28If you think the average murder will attract 50 detectives, maybe 100, depending on the scale of it.

43:35And the challenges around recovering items, that barbell from the river, the dive team finding it,

43:43and the forensic scientists getting that DNA on it, you know, that was really, really important,

43:48as well as being able to match the actual weapon to the injuries that Tommy had suffered.

43:55It was layering it up.

43:57I think we learned a lot about how to engage with that community, and we had almost a year to

44:03the day

44:04a similar incident where a homeless person was killed by another one,

44:09and the response was much more positive and on the front foot, and our homeless community were much more engaging.

44:18So that's why it endured, because we learned a lot from the way we investigated it.

44:23We learned how important it was to engage with the community, and we learned when the next one came along,

44:29which sadly it did, we were good at investigating it.

44:33One of the things that struck me was that this case was unusual for the rigour and the perseverance shown

44:43by those police officers.

44:45Yes, yeah, and also the excellent relationship that the BEAT officers had,

44:53and the officers from the major crime investigation team.

44:56That community held the key to this murder, literally held the key to it in their hands.

45:02And without their cooperation and a mutual respect to one of their community,

45:09and also to the relationship that the police officers had, that was what got this case over the line.

45:16In another place, in another time, with another homeless community,

45:21and a police force not quite as dedicated, that could have been a perfect murder, couldn't it?

45:28It could have been.

45:29And if he'd have absconded to Scotland, you know, or another area,

45:35it might have been months and months and months, he would have had to have been

45:38potentially arrested for something before he'd been caught for this particular crime.

45:43So, really excellent, excellent police work.

45:47An almost perfect murder.

45:50And an almost perfect murder.

45:54The murderers themselves underestimate the police.

45:59They underestimate the desire of the community to actually engage when there's a homicide.

46:05So, people who perhaps don't usually engage with the police generally always do when there's a murder.

46:10And I think they underestimate the impact that it has on the victim's family.

46:17And that victim's family will always be a driver to say,

46:21we want justice and we want an outcome, and we'll be pushing behind any investigation.

46:53So, we'll see you in the next episode.

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