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00:00In 2011, a young woman is last seen walking home from a nightclub in Swindon.
00:06She never returns.
00:08She's disappeared in the middle of the night.
00:10What could have happened to her? Where is she?
00:14About 400 to 500 members of the public turned up to help search the forest.
00:20Bluebells grow in the spring and there's lots of deer, owls, and there's quite a lot of rare wildlife.
00:26But it's a large expanse. It's around 18 square kilometres.
00:29It's quite easy to get lost.
00:31During the day, it's beautiful. It's tranquil. You can hear the sounds of nature.
00:36But at night time, when darkness comes, it's the last place you want to be. It's chilling.
00:43The investigation becomes much larger than police could have ever anticipated.
00:48It absolutely shook the community of Swindon.
00:51There was a lot of anger that someone could do this to someone that totally didn't deserve it.
00:56Which, at that point, you could literally have struck me down with lightning.
01:01That was not what I was expecting to happen.
01:03I love the span to evenidan.
01:16Soon as I was expecting to come, I have taken 10 minutes past your hand again.
01:18It was really much better.
01:19But I love to the point which I regardless is.
01:24Like I care for this, and then I think the question is.
01:25I hope I have seen the most of the hope in this conversation thing.
01:25I love to know for you to help you to solve this issue.
01:28And make me feel safe as something that this is interesting.
01:28And I think it's also very hard sometimes to do.
01:31I like the footage for this conversation.
01:40Savanak Forest, located in Wiltshire, one of the safest counties in the UK, lies 15 miles
01:46south of Swindon, in the southwest of England.
01:50Savanak is a large forest situated just outside of Marlborough, just over the border in Oxfordshire.
01:57It extends over many, many acres, and whilst there are tracks and paths through it, large
02:04parts of it are effectively wilderness, and peaceful, law-abiding place.
02:10A very beautiful place. There are a multitude of different trees, parkland, people take their
02:16dogs for walks there, and it's a very popular place, particularly in the summer.
02:21It's really rare for crimes to occur of this nature anywhere, but in rural locations even more so.
02:28That all changes on the 19th of March 2011, when a local young woman is reported missing
02:34after failing to return home from a night out.
02:38These kind of incidents are very, very unusual, and clearly have significant community impact
02:44when they do happen.
02:45It was so unusual for her to go missing in these circumstances, for any girl of that age
02:50to go missing in these circumstances.
02:53A missing woman is identified as 22-year-old Sian M. O'Callaghan, an office worker who lives
02:59in Swindon.
03:00So Sian was a young woman in her 20s. She lived with her boyfriend. By all accounts, she was
03:06a young woman who had her life in front of her, and she had those aspirations and dreams that
03:11everyone has in their young 20s.
03:13Sian was a very popular girl. Lots of people knew Sian. She had lots of friends.
03:18Everybody who's spoken about Sian was just saying she was a lovely girl.
03:22Sian's boyfriend alerts the police after waking up to find that she never returned home from her
03:27walk back from the nightclub, just half a mile away.
03:31The first person to call the police was Kevin Reap, who was Sian's boyfriend, and he called
03:36police at about half past nine in the morning. So as far as he knew, she was meeting up with
03:41friends, and they were going to end up in a nightclub in Old Town in Swindon called
03:45Suju Nightclub.
03:48Saturday night in Swindon would be buzzing. There would be people out and about going
03:53out and enjoying themselves, going to pubs and clubs and restaurants, just like any
03:58Saturday night in any town. Just before 3am that night, Sian decides to break away from
04:05her group of friends and decides she wants to go home. And she leaves the nightclub just
04:11before 3am. Sian only lived 800 metres away from Swindon town centre. She hadn't far to
04:19go. She left on her own, but she wouldn't have been feeling any kind of danger. She had
04:25a pleasant evening. She was going home to the house she shared with her boyfriend Kevin.
04:32He'd had intermittent contact with her throughout the evening. But when she didn't turn up by
04:38about half past three, quarter to four in the morning, he sent her a message on her phone
04:44asking where she was. Clearly, this message was never answered.
04:48He starts to worry because she isn't responding to his messages, to his attempts to contact her.
04:56And he sends a message to her at 3.24am with one word, worried.
05:03And this was highly out of character. There was no precursor events, there was no arguments,
05:09there was no discussion about her leaving. It was an unprecedented event within that family,
05:14and there was immediate concern. So her disappearance was treated as a high-risk missing person case.
05:22Boyfriend Kevin is now incredibly alarmed. He gathers together people, friends, anyone he can get
05:28hold of, and they start looking around the surrounding area, and they're incredibly concerned.
05:35We get many people who go missing, missing people. There's thousands that go missing every
05:40single year. And whilst everyone is treated very importantly, you know those ones which
05:46just put the flag up straight away. We go, this is of real concern.
05:53At the time, the senior investigating officer, Steve Fulcher, was my boss.
05:57I spoke to him, and he asked me to come into Gaple Cross Police Station the following morning.
06:03He went through the circumstances of Sian going missing, and the initial fast-track actions that
06:10were being pursued to help identify where she was.
06:15At that point, we are thinking, how can we try and locate Sian? What could have happened? Has she fallen
06:21over?
06:22Is she hurt in any way? Or is it something a little bit more serious, and that someone has taken
06:27her,
06:27and she's come to some harm? So in any high-risk missing person inquiry, we will be utilising the
06:33media to try and identify where she could be. We're utilising CCV opportunities. If we know where
06:39someone was, we could be searching that area. We can be making inquiries. We can be looking at our
06:44intelligence systems and trying to find out if anybody is in that area at the time that is of concern.
06:49So when a call of a missing person comes into police, uniformed colleagues would be sent out,
06:54and they would go and speak to the person who had reported them missing. They would search the home
06:58to make sure that the person hadn't actually come home and was just in a different place than
07:02expected. They would then make initial inquiries with friends and relatives to see if anybody knew where
07:08she might be, and then make inquiries with hospitals to see if she'd potentially been injured and ended
07:14up in hospital. When these proved fruitless, they then called in a CID where I was working.
07:22We were made aware of all the details around her going missing, and as much detail as they were aware
07:28of at that point about where her night had led her. Once we'd had a briefing, we were then given,
07:33allocated different jobs to do, and my job was to go and search the route that she would have taken
07:39from the nightclub back to her home address that she shared with her boyfriend. Partly my purpose
07:45for retracing the steps was A, to make sure she hadn't fallen somewhere and was injured, but B,
07:50also to scope for CCTV. And one of the CCTV cameras I located was at a pub called the Goddard
07:57Arms,
07:58which was not far down the road, but on the opposite side of the road to where the nightclub was
08:02that
08:02Sian had last been seen.
08:08This became the, the last known sighting of Sian. What we could see from the, that CCTV image is that
08:17when she went out of screen in the building opposite, there was flashing amber lights, which
08:24we could hypothesize were from a car pulling up, putting the hazard warning lights on.
08:30The car is stationary. The car is not moving. So that would indicate that the driver of the car
08:36had some reason to stay there and to stop. Was he conversing with someone? Was it Sian?
08:43Was he talking to her? Was he offering her a lift? The car then drives off,
08:49and there's no other sign of Sian. The police make inquiries, house to house, door-to-door inquiries in the
08:58area.
08:59They can't put her past that particular spot. They speak to many people, and that is the last known
09:07setting. So the police theory at that time is that Sian got into that car.
09:13The investigation into Sian O'Callaghan's disappearance has escalated to a suspected
09:20kidnapping. Police are focused on identifying the car seen in CCTV footage,
09:25as the initial hours are crucial to finding her alive.
09:39Wiltshire police are investigating the disappearance of 22-year-old Sian O'Callaghan,
09:44who vanished after a night out in Swindon in the early hours of March 19, 2011. Sian was last seen
09:50on
09:51CCTV, possibly getting into a car, and detectives suspect she may have been kidnapped. Their focus is
09:57to identify the vehicle and its owner. It became our preferred hypothesis, and Steve's preferred
10:03hypothesis, that it was that car that had picked Sian up. And we were left with a grainy black and
10:08white image of a car. So we'd looked at that image, and various people gave different thoughts on what car
10:15it might be. People thought it was a Mondeo, an Audi, a Volvo, various other makes. The police also
10:23found further CCTV footage down the road, this time from a colour camera, that was able to show that
10:30the car in question was green, and that it had a yellow square on the side of the door, which
10:37made
10:37police suspect that this was a taxi or a cab. We were unsure what car it was, but we used
10:43some
10:43specialty services to try to identify what the car was. And it came back within a very short space of
10:49time that it was believed to be a green Toyota Avensis estate. At that point, we were thinking,
10:56well, let's put this out to the media. Detective Superintendent Steve Fulcher used the press to
11:02put out press releases asking for anybody with any information about Sian. Friends and relatives of Sian
11:08were putting up posters, and they were posting on social media. So it was getting the news out as far
11:14and
11:14wide as possible. So as many people knew that Sian was missing, and were able to help look for her.
11:20Coach loads of people came out, stopped what they were doing, to go out and look for this missing
11:26woman who people deeply cared about. There was grave concern that something could have happened in that
11:32small area, particularly to a young female alone at night. If you didn't know about this girl, it was
11:39because you hadn't really been out of the house. Her name was everywhere, her face was everywhere.
11:47Any girl of that age that goes missing and could have potentially come to some harm would be
11:54a very important case regionally. I think just the nature of the fact that it was so unusual to happen,
12:01it became national news. And the media latched onto it because she was an attractive girl who had gone
12:07missing and her picture was everywhere. And there was real concern in the community as well.
12:13Sian's boyfriend Kevin made an emotional appeal at a press conference for Sian to come home. And for
12:21anyone who had any information as to whereabouts to please, please come forward. This was a young man
12:26who loved Sian very much and that comes across in that appeal. And he is desperately worried, desperately
12:34concerned. He wants his girlfriend to come home. And he is devastated at the fact that she is missing.
12:42Police see that Sian's phone had been active near Savanake Forest shortly after she went missing,
12:48prompting a search by law enforcement and community members.
12:51I think it demonstrates how important it was to the communities of Swinning and Wiltshire at the time and
12:58and the priority they placed on it that people gave up their time to go and search for Sian. And
13:04we had
13:04some information regarding her phone which indicated that she could have been in Savanake. And we didn't
13:12ask, we didn't appeal for the public to come and try and help her search. But the public had picked
13:16up on
13:16that and they responded in their thousands. They're literally coaches of people went out to Savanake.
13:23And it was logistically quite a challenge for us because we wanted to make sure that those searches
13:27were able to effectively contribute to the the searches that took place. We didn't want people
13:33duplicating it. But there's also a health and safety issue there as well because they were walking
13:38through forest. You know, it's not even land. Some of them didn't have the right equipment or footwear
13:43to be able to do that. So it's tricky because you don't want to refuse people because they're trying
13:48to help you and they're trying to help find Shana. That was what we were all trying to do. But
13:52at the
13:52same time, you don't want anyone else to be hurt or harmed as a result of their good intent.
13:58I think people probably put themselves in the shoes of her parents and her boyfriend,
14:04and they thought if this was happening to our family, then that's exactly what we'd want others to do.
14:11As search teams comb the forest, detectives looking into the vehicle have made a breakthrough.
14:18An officer who had been reviewing the camera footage, the video footage from our traffic
14:24cars that were on patrol that night, who came into the briefing room with Steve Fulcher and myself and
14:31a few others and said that they'd identified a taxi leaving the Old Town area at the right time.
14:39And they had the number plate from the traffic car. When they checked that plate,
14:46it came back as a dark green to a Cravensis on a 57 plate, which was obviously corroborating what
14:52we've been told by the other experts. But it was a monumental breakthrough. This was then the Tuesday
14:59lunchtime effectively. So we were already some way into the inquiry. But this gave us a very strong suspect.
15:07And that registration plate showed that the car was registered to a man called Christopher Halliwell.
15:15Christopher Halliwell was a 47-year-old taxi driver who lived at Ashbury Avenue in Swindon.
15:21He was cohabiting with his partner and he had two daughters and a son. He didn't stand out to the
15:29police as the type of person they were looking for initially. The police immediately wanted to know
15:36about the movements of Christopher Halliwell. They wanted to know what fare she took, where he went in
15:40his taxi. They wanted to know everything about him. We look into was he working at the time,
15:48where was his location, his phones, all that kind of thing. But ultimately, at that point,
15:53we just had somebody in that area who was driving that car. We didn't know if it was the same
16:00car. We
16:00didn't know any more than that. But it gave us suspicion that he became someone of interest to us
16:05at that point. They spoke to his bosses. They spoke to the people who ran the taxi rank. And they
16:12told
16:12police that Halliwell phoned into them at 1.30 a.m. and said he was tired, he was going home,
16:18he was
16:19knocking off for the night basically. And yet 90 minutes later, his taxi is still seen
16:24traveling around the streets of Swindon. Halliwell never went home. So why, what was he doing during
16:31those 90 minutes? Police decide to conduct surveillance on Halliwell. The police, bearing
16:41in mind they're dealing with the missing person here, they have to have hope that Sian could still be
16:46alive. And that if Halliwell has kidnapped her, that she is being kept somewhere but is still alive.
16:54The police want to find Sian, they want to rescue Sian, they want to bring her back
16:58safely to her family. They hope that by putting Halliwell under surveillance, and Halliwell has no
17:04idea that the police are looking at him, the police are hopeful that Halliwell unknowingly leads them
17:12to where Sian is. Unfortunately, that doesn't happen. Halliwell goes about his normal routine.
17:24He's working as a taxi driver, he's spending time with his family, he's taking fares and going along
17:30with his normal daily routine. However, there were things that he was observed doing whilst under
17:38surveillance that firmed up the police interest in him. The police also observed him cleaning out the
17:43back of his taxi with a blue fluid. And the police also observed him setting a fire to burn things
17:51in
17:51the middle of the night, which the police thought was unusual. They found articles of cloth material,
17:59and one of these was actually the seating from his vehicle, so from the back seat of his car.
18:04They were able to find that in one of the bins. So it was just various articles that were being
18:11dumped around and about. I believe that the ones in the fire were actually too badly burnt for them to
18:16be able to ascertain what they were. There was an item, a perfume bottle,
18:21that he'd discarded into a skip. And whilst taxi drivers would always clean their cars,
18:27it was giving us suspicion that this was more than just a routine clean after passengers,
18:32that he was going at length to try and remove forensic evidence from the car.
18:38I think the most worrying thing, and the thing that struck in accord with all of us,
18:43given that he was our prime suspect at that point, was that he put up posters about Sian in his
18:48car.
18:49And by this time, there was national interest, but the local interest was immense in Sian and trying
18:54to find her. So posters had been produced and circulated widely, and he'd actually put those up in his taxi.
19:01And that was something that was troubling all of us.
19:05So the senior investigating officer, Detective Superintendent Steve Fulcher,
19:10was working on the hypotheses that Sian was alive and being kept somewhere.
19:15This was what's known as a crime in action. So it was very fast moving. They were following Mr.
19:22Fulcher, and they were very much relying on members of the public to assist them in their investigation.
19:30Whilst following Mr. Halliwell, they were alerted to the fact that he had gone into a supermarket
19:36in one of these out-of-town shopping places just on the edge of Swindon.
19:41They observe Halliwell getting out of his vehicle and going into a chemist, and particularly alarming
19:49for the police, they observe him leave with a huge quantity of pills. A quantity of pills that
19:55police describe as something that you would do if you were planning on ending your life.
20:00Steve Fulcher's concern at that point was that he may be about to attempt suicide,
20:06which isn't unheard of in circumstances such as that. And clearly, we didn't want that to happen.
20:11That wouldn't help us to find Sian, and it would definitely not help her family or her friends
20:16gain justice. So the decision was taken to arrest him at that point and to carry out what's known in
20:24policing world is an urgent interview. Urgent interview is where time is running out and the
20:31life of the missing person is under threat. And the safety of that person and the chance of recovering
20:38that person alive is the main priority. So rather than take the individual to a police station to
20:46talk them through their Miranda rights and have them consult with a solicitor,
20:51they conduct an urgent interview right there at the scene of arrest.
20:56When questioned, will Christopher Halliwell admit what happened that night
21:00and the whereabouts of Sharno Callaghan?
21:13Wiltshire Police are investigating the disappearance of 22-year-old Sharno Callaghan,
21:18who went missing in the early hours of March 19, 2011, after a night out in Swindon. Using CCTV,
21:26investigators discover that Sharno most likely got into a taxi owned by a man named Christopher Halliwell.
21:33The senior investigating officer, Steve Fulcher, has Halliwell arrested.
21:38Two officers were sitting in a vehicle. When Mr. Halliwell was arrested, he was put into the back
21:45of this vehicle. And straight away, these officers asked him a number of questions. Where is Sharno?
21:52How did she get there? You know, all the sort of questions, trying to ascertain where Sharno was.
21:58He wasn't initially forthcoming. He simply didn't comment on his involvement at that point. He just
22:03said he wanted to go to the police station. So Steve intervened at that point, because that would have
22:07routinely been what would have happened. The urgent interview had effectively been exhausted.
22:12There'd always been a suspicion from some of the telephone data we'd been able to acquire,
22:18that he could have been out to Barbary Castle at one point.
22:22Fulcher commands search teams to focus on the areas surrounding Barbary Castle.
22:27Barbary Castle was a beauty spot on the outskirts of Swindon. And Steve had initiated some searches
22:35that were taking place. So on that morning, the Thursday morning, there were search teams in and
22:40around Barbary Castle. He made the decision to meet Halliwell and question him himself at that location. So he
22:52instructed the detectives to take him there. And he would urgent interview him there.
22:58His reasoning for that course of action was he believed that if Halliwell was being taken close
23:07to where Sean's body was, and speaking to him as the SIO, that he might realize the game's up here,
23:16and he might cooperate better.
23:20Fulcher's unorthodox approach raises some concerns within the police force.
23:25I support Steve on what he did. It was a very brave decision, and you need courageous SIOs in that
23:31scenario.
23:32And my role at that point, I actually drove Steve out there along with his PA, who'd been making notes
23:38of
23:38everything that had been happening over the preceding days. And as I drove him out there,
23:44I said to Steve, are you really sure you want to do this? Because it was such an unusual thing.
23:49And he looked me in the eyes, really. And he'd spoken to Sean's family. He'd met Sean's family.
23:55And he said, I've promised Sean's family I'm going to get her back. And this is the only way.
24:03Mr. Halliwell gets out of the car and goes off with Detective Superintendent Fulcher.
24:08And Mr. Fulcher asks him, where's Sean? Initially, he won't talk to Mr. Fulcher. He won't answer any questions.
24:15He keeps saying he wants his solicitor. But eventually, just as Mr. Fulcher thinks he's going to have to give
24:22up
24:22and take him back to the police station, Mr. Halliwell says, have you got a car? I'll take you to
24:28her.
24:31After a few minutes, Steve Halliwell and his PA got into a marked car and started to head off from
24:38Barbary Castle. And I followed them. And at that point, I thought that we were probably going back
24:43to Cable Cross police station. I thought we'd probably exhausted that further interview that
24:49Steve had with Halliwell. But then what happened is we drove straight past the police station and
24:54out towards the Oxfordshire border. And that was the moment that Halliwell was taking Steve to
25:00Huffington.
25:04Huffington is also a beautiful rural location in that part of Wilshire. But at night time,
25:13extremely dark. You wouldn't like to be walking about it at night. You could easily get lost or
25:19something could happen. It's just that kind of eerie kind of place at night.
25:23And it is literally in the middle of nowhere. It's a very secluded area. Lots of green fields
25:29and not much else. So they head up to Huffington Whitehorse, where whilst they're driving the car,
25:36they drive along the road. And Mr. Halliwell says she's down there somewhere, indicating down a slope.
25:47I continued to follow them and we went out to the location where he had disposed of Sian's body. And
25:56when
25:56he got to that location that the car slowed and Steve got out and said, he's not sure exactly where,
26:03there, which to this day, in my view was a lie. But it's somewhere between this point and the next
26:09point I show you.
26:10And Halliwell then took them another couple hundred yards down the road. But I think Halliwell was just nervous of
26:16showing Steve Fulcher in the cold light of day what he'd done to Sian.
26:21They brought out search teams to do a proper forensic sweep of the area to see if they could find
26:28Sian.
26:28And the search officers would have a lead search officer who would dictate exactly what formation
26:35they used. And they would, in a very studied manner, they would work their way down the area that Mr.
26:41Halliwell had pointed to until they found what they were looking for.
26:46The investigation into Sian's disappearance reaches a devastating end.
26:52When I received a call that he'd taken us to Sian's body, in utter despair that she's dead,
26:59very pleased that we'd managed to find her. And at that point, I started to put in motion
27:05forensic teams to go to the scene, traffic teams to secure the area, all the procedures that you'd
27:11normally undertake when the body is found. He disposed of her from the road into a ditch,
27:15which was some distance away from the raised road, in undergrowth, that it would have meant
27:23it would have been a long time before she'd been found. I believe that the location was such that
27:30even the farmers didn't go into that particular location much. So it would have been some time.
27:37Sian was found naked from the West End, and she had died as a result of a stab wound to
27:44her head.
27:46It was a particularly brutal murder.
27:49I hope that he didn't sexually abuse her. The fact that she was naked from the waist down obviously
27:55raises that concern. There was never any conclusive evidence to say that she was sexually assaulted.
28:01He did whatever he did, and I just hope that that he killed her quickly and as far as possible,
28:09painlessly from Sian's perspective. The fact that he took the steps he did afterwards are chilling.
28:16You know, the fact that he chose to put posters of Sian being missing in his car, driving around
28:23Swindon, trying to get other taxi fares, goes a lot to say about who he is.
28:35Sadly, I was the one that had to also tell them that Sian had been found.
28:39And that is something you never get used to. As police officers, we deal with some
28:45some harsh things that we have to deal with. And what we call passing death messages. This is one
28:51of the things that we do do. And no matter how many times you do it, it never gets easier.
28:56So, passing that message was, that's one of those jobs that will live with me.
29:01It doesn't come up in my mind very often, but it's there. And it was hard. They were devastated.
29:07But you're there to support them and help them through it. So it was a very difficult case,
29:11but I remained with the family throughout the whole of the case.
29:18DS Fulcher has the harrowing task of contacting the police station and informing them that they have
29:28found Sian O'Callaghan's body. They then send in a team of forensic scientists to preserve the scene.
29:38And they make arrangements for Christopher Halliwell to be returned to the police station in Swindon,
29:45where he can be read his rights, meet with his solicitor, and then undergo questioning.
29:52They are still at the scene where Sian O'Callaghan's body was found. He and DS Fulcher,
30:02in that short period of time together, had built up somewhat of a rapport together.
30:06DS Fulcher had successfully got inside Halliwell's head and had gained some trust
30:14that they are sharing a cigarette. And Halliwell leans in to DS Fulcher and said,
30:22me and you should have a chat. And DS Fulcher, not knowing what was coming, said,
30:27yes, okay, what do you want to talk about? Perhaps thinking Halliwell was going to give more details
30:35about Sian's case. He instead says to DS Fulcher, do you want another one? And DS Fulcher inquires,
30:46another what? To which Halliwell replies, another body.
30:52Steve then came over to me and said that he was going to take us to another. And I had
30:56to clarify,
30:57what do you mean another? And he said to another body, which at that point, you could literally
31:02have struck me down with lightning. That was not what I was expecting to happen.
31:08Christopher Halliwell's admission forces investigators to confront the chilling possibility
31:12that they may be dealing with a serial killer.
31:17You know, to find one body is shocking. To be told that there's a second,
31:22I don't think many police officers would have that in their career. And I told the senior officer
31:27straight away, the deputy chief constable at the time, and had to inform them that this was the case.
31:31And straight away, that led us to believe that this was going to be bigger than we initially thought.
31:38DS Fulcher found himself in such a precarious position because he had a number of choices to make
31:48and so little time to make them. Because this was a moment in time. This is a moment in time
31:52between two people, two individuals, between a killer and the detective hunting him down.
32:00And the killer has all the power. Because the killer has the knowledge. The detective wants the
32:05knowledge. He has to make the decision on what way to go. Because if he goes off path either way,
32:10the whole moment could be over. The whole moment could be ruined. And the information that he really
32:15needs could be lost, lost forever. He decides to break away from the PS protocols. The PS protocols are the
32:22police and criminal evidence act of 1985. He decides to break away from that and decides to
32:31go along with Halliwell and question him without arresting him, without arresting him for this new
32:37confession. Doesn't read him his rights, doesn't get him a solicitor. He decides to take that risk
32:43risk for moral reasons because he knows I have the chance here to uncover the body of a human being
32:51that's also missing. It is a decision that jeopardises Fulcher's career.
32:58Fulcher has the position of, if he takes Halliwell back, procedure dictates PACE regulations,
33:08that you have to take the individual back, formally charge them, offer them a lawyer, read them their
33:14rights, and a process has to go through for a police investigation to start. However, he has created this
33:21unique bond with this violent killer. And he's aware that this bond is fragile. He's aware that this
33:29stream of information which has previously not appeared from Halliwell or indeed at any other
33:34point in the case might only exist in that moment. It might only exist there and then in this forlorn
33:41place that they're standing where this poor young life had been snuffed down. And he's in a position where
33:49he stood there with Halliwell, looking at this killer, knowing that this information wasn't
33:54available 10 minutes ago and it might never be available again. Detective Superintendent Fulcher
34:02thought, I'm going to go with this. So they got back into a vehicle and Mr Halliwell directed him out
34:09to a field, again in the middle of nowhere, in Gloucestershire. And he said, there's a body in that field.
34:16And following an excavation by police, they located the remains of another female called
34:24Becky Gordon Edwards. In a shocking twist, Christopher Halliwell leads Detective Superintendent
34:30Steve Fulcher to a second body. However, as Halliwell has not been read his Miranda rights,
34:36the case has become significantly more complicated.
34:52In the early hours of March 19, 2011, 22-year-old Shano Callaghan disappears after a night out in
35:00Swindon. CCTV shows her getting into a taxi driven by Christopher Halliwell, who is later arrested.
35:07Detective Steve Fulcher brings Halliwell to a search site near Barbary Castle, where Halliwell
35:12eventually reveals where he buried Sian. But just as they're about to return to the station,
35:17he leads Fulcher to the body of another young woman.
35:22The body that was recovered in East Leach was that of Becky Gordon Edwards, a young woman in her early
35:3020s, who disappeared on the 27th of December, 2002, after being seen getting into a taxi outside a nightclub
35:39in Swindon. Becky had a loving family around her. She was very well loved, very well liked, popular young
35:46woman. But unfortunately, she had fallen on some hard times around the time of her disappearance.
35:52I still believe we would never have found Shana, we would never have found Becky,
35:56if it weren't for the intervention of Steve in the urgent interview.
36:00Halliwell confesses what happened the night he abducted Becky to investigators at the scene.
36:07Halliwell explained in very simple, concise language that he'd taken Becky from Swindon,
36:16that he'd driven her out to where we were, that he'd killed her, that he'd indicated that he'd
36:24strangled her. He indicated that he'd left her behind the wall and we were stood in the field with a
36:30wall
36:30as the boundary. And he then explained that he'd come back the following day and that's when he buried
36:37her. And he indicated to Steve and I the point where he'd buried her. And what stands in me,
36:45which I'll never forget, is it was his eyes. So he had blue eyes and they were piercing and steely.
36:54And he was very matter-of-fact in what he told us.
37:01There's been a lot of speculation about
37:04whether Christopher Halliwell has killed more people. And I know Steve Fulcher believes he has.
37:09I know of some of the inquiries that have gone on since then and to date, nothing has
37:15been found to show that he has killed anybody else. A lot of lone female passengers during that time.
37:22And I suspect if, you know, if you're subsequently one of those and you knew that he was later
37:28convicted of double murders, you'd be very concerned. There was a brief discussion about whether or not
37:34there was anyone else that he needed to take us to. And the words that he used were something very
37:40similar to not today, which stays with me as well. But at that point, Steve, I think, felt that we
37:48had to sort of draw under a line under what was happening. So Steve and Halliwell went back in the
37:55police car and they went off and to Cable Cross Police Station.
38:00The trial is delayed due to Detective Fulcher's actions during the investigation.
38:07So Mr. Halliwell would have been taken the following day. He would have been remanded in custody
38:12and he would have been taken the following day to the Magistrates Court, where again,
38:16he would have been remanded in custody for further investigations and for the trial,
38:20for preparation for the trial. During the course of the investigation, one of the avenues they had
38:26to go down was a thing called a voir dire. This was when they went to court to hear the
38:33facts of the
38:33case. And the facts of the case were around where Mr. Halliwell was not given access to a solicitor
38:40and where he was not cautioned when he should have been. So this had to be heard in front of
38:44a judge.
38:45Now this hearing took five days and during that they were given all the evidence. Mr. Fulcher was
38:52given his opportunity to put forward why he didn't comply with the requirements of an arrested person.
38:58The judge, however, in this case ruled for Mr. Halliwell and said that anything from the point of
39:05his initial urgent interview, anything after that was not allowed as evidence within the case. So this
39:16included pointing out where Sian was and it included pointing out where Becky Gordon-Edward was.
39:23Thankfully, they had a fair amount of other evidence, forensic evidence in relation to the murder of
39:30Sian and they were able to build a case around her murder. However, around Becky Gordon-Edwards,
39:39there was only the word of Mr. Halliwell who had taken them to the field where she was located.
39:46So they had to disallow that from the hearings that went to the first trial at court. Yes,
39:51they had their daughter returned to them. But it also meant that the person who had admitted
39:58admitted to killing her by taking officers to the field where she was buried,
40:03that evidence was not allowed and there was no trial in relation to her.
40:10Christopher Halliwell appears in court on the 31st of May 2012 for the murder of Sian O'Callaghan and pleads
40:18not guilty.
40:21I think it is well known. It took many years for this case to come to court for a number
40:27of reasons.
40:28But the trial from memory is 2016. I gave evidence immediately after Steve Fulcher
40:34and that was quite challenging really. As is his right, Halliwell had sacked his defence team and
40:42represented himself at his trial. And when Steve Fulcher had finished giving his evidence,
40:51Halliwell had made some really unsavory comments towards Steve, basically gloated in the fact that
40:58he felt he'd ruined Steve's career, which is a bizarre and random thing for anyone to take pleasure in.
41:05But that was what Halliwell did. But those comments and statements caused a bit of a ripple
41:11through the court, certainly through the public gallery.
41:16He represented himself in court, which made the spectacle even more unbearable for the families
41:24of Sian and Becky, and the performance of watching him wriggle around details, denial,
41:33failure to answer any questions. This was a man who didn't feel any level of shame
41:38of what he'd done or of what he was accused of.
41:43His demeanour in court was what you would expect from a hardened criminal,
41:47from an utterly depraved evil man. He was smirking at family members, he was looking quite relaxed,
41:56like he hadn't a care in the world, like he was totally free from worry. He didn't really care.
42:04His defence was that she attacked him, and it was self defence. That was a man just trying to
42:09grasp onto anything that he could think of in those moments when he knew he was going to be
42:13convicted and face a full life tariff. 19th October 2012, Christopher Halliwell pleads guilty to her
42:21murder. He is sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum of 25 years.
42:27It's indescribable. Unless you've been through it yourself, you can't ever really relate to it.
42:32We could all imagine what it would be like to lose a loved one. But not many people will have
42:38lost
42:38a loved one in these circumstances. And that would be very, very difficult for anyone to come to terms
42:46with. And you have to admire the families of Sian and Becky for the way they have handled coming to
42:54terms with what Halliwell did to them. As Halliwell is being transported from the prison to the court,
43:04there are people on the streets. The community are out and they are angry. They are throwing things at
43:10the prison van. They are banging their fists off the prison van side. There is a level of anger and
43:17a
43:17pouring of rage at what this man has done. It is reminiscent of similar actions from the public when
43:25you're dealing with particularly infamous criminals who've carried out some truly horrific crimes. So that
43:32demonstrates the level of infamy that Halliwell was beginning to attain and the anger that the
43:38public had for him in Swindon.
43:41Killers very often don't look or appear outwardly evil. They look entirely like normal people moving
43:48amongst all of us. And when people are confronted with the horror of this individual, the man that
43:54was driving a taxi that was potentially capable of taking any number of individuals in the course of
44:02their job driving around the town. People's feelings, emotions about the case reached boiling point.
44:10There had been murals around Swindon of Sian's lightness. She was called Swindon's angel. There was
44:16vigils, there was candles lit everywhere, commemorations in churches. Her name and her memory were
44:24constantly on local news, radio, national news.
44:32Police did an amazing job. They very quickly ascertained the vehicle that was being used and this was
44:38great police work to have the forethought to look through the ANPR cameras on traffic vehicles.
44:46And then Detective Superintendent Fulcher locating him, arresting him before he was able to do anything
44:53with the tablets, which potentially he had bought to harm himself. You know, the police work was fabulous.
45:00There are questions around the way Mr Halliwell was dealt with when he was apprehended.
45:06But ultimately, two women were returned to their families because of the actions that he took that day.
45:15I think it's well documented and well publicised that other SIOs would have dealt with this case differently.
45:22I'd go as far as saying that I don't know any other SIO who would have taken the steps that
45:28Steve did
45:29when he went out to Barbary Castle. But perhaps that's a reflection on us rather than Steve.
45:35Because what I would say as well is that if one of my daughters went missing, I'd want Steve to
45:40investigate it because I'd have the confidence that he would find her. And that's what happened in this case.
45:46Oh my goodness.
45:46Oh my goodness.
46:04Oh my goodness.
46:07Oh my goodness.
46:36Transcription by CastingWords
46:39CastingWords
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