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Britain's Countryside Killers - Season 2 Episode 2 - A Monster in Plain Sight
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00:02In the rural village of Brocham, Surrey, 14-year-old Roy Tuttle vanishes on his way home from school.
00:10One evening, though, when he's aged 14, in April 1968, he doesn't come home.
00:16It was so unusual for somebody to go missing, especially a child who was hitchhiking home,
00:21and they just assumed he would return home.
00:23And then three days later, on the 26th of April, the unthinkable happened.
00:27A forestry worker found Roy's body.
00:31There's an absolute shockwave through the community.
00:34People were looking at each other in the street thinking, how could this happen here?
00:38Despite the tireless efforts of Surrey police, the investigation stalls and the case eventually goes cold.
00:45You've looked at all of the leads that you've got. They've all come to a dead end.
00:48Have to start shutting things down.
00:52Abilities in DNA and forensics had moved on.
00:55They were able to deliver a DNA profile and a breakthrough in this historic and unsolved case.
01:29Now, next week, we'll catch up with a second portion of the video.
01:37BROCKHAM
01:38BROCKHAM is a village and civil parish
01:40in the Mole Valley district of Surrey in England.
01:44It's a very picturesque village.
01:46It has the river Mole running through it
01:48and it is a very idyllic place to live
01:50with about 2,500 people living there.
01:54It's a village which has its own identity
01:56and a great history.
01:58The church dates back to the 13th century,
02:00one of the most photographed and picturesque cricket grounds
02:03in the country.
02:04It's right on the North Downs,
02:07very close to Box Hill,
02:08which is made famous by a scene in Jane Austen's novel Emma.
02:13In terms of crime, this is a very low crime area.
02:17You're looking at potentially a bike theft,
02:19occasional fight outside a pub, that kind of thing.
02:21This is an area to raise children happily and safely.
02:24This is an area that you'd probably retire from
02:26if you'd lived in London for many years.
02:28This is an area that's quite close to the big city,
02:31but it's definitely far enough away
02:32that it's quiet, peaceful and safe.
02:36In 1968, 14-year-old Roy Tuttle lives in Brockham with his family.
02:42Raising a family in that area are Hillary and Dennis Tuttle.
02:46They already have one older son, Colin,
02:48and in 1954 they have a younger son, Roy Tuttle.
02:54Roy Tuttle, a 14-year-old boy known as Tuts to his friends,
02:58he was the son of Dennis and Hillary Tuttle.
03:00He also had a brother, Colin,
03:02and they were a very close, very happy family.
03:06The Tuttles were a very close family of four.
03:09Roy was a little bit shy, a bit reserved.
03:12He didn't really go to the Scouts or anything,
03:14any clubs or activities, but to those who did know him,
03:17he was your run-of-the-mill teenage lad.
03:19He was good to be around, happy girl, lucky,
03:21just mischievous as all teenage boys are.
03:25Roy had been going to Kingston Grammar School,
03:27which is a famous old school with a famous old school uniform.
03:31It's a bright red blazer with grey stripes.
03:34This is very unusual for a British school
03:36and it's very, very distinctive in the area.
03:39The children go from many miles away.
03:40The Tuttle's lived around 15 miles from this particular school
03:43and anyone in the area immediately recognised children
03:46wearing this red and grey blazer as Kingston Grammar Boys.
03:51So Roy and Colin both attended Kingston Grammar School.
03:55In order to get there, they would take a bus part of the route,
03:58but then they would hitch the rest of the way.
04:00And this was because Roy was saving for a bicycle
04:03and him and his brother Colin were saving for a train set as well.
04:07So they'd use the money for their bus fare
04:09in order to save for these things that they wanted.
04:13For some context, back in the late 60s,
04:15hitchhiking wasn't as taboo as it perhaps is viewed now.
04:19Their parents at first weren't keen on the idea,
04:21but they did resign themselves to the fact
04:23that their boys would hitchhike home.
04:25Nothing had ever happened, so why wouldn't they trust it?
04:29The late 1960s was considered to be relatively safe.
04:33I remember doing it myself in the early 70s
04:35and you wouldn't have given it a second thought.
04:38Now it's a different thing entirely.
04:43Tuesday 23rd April 1968, Roy leaves school as normal at 3.30,
04:48and he gets the bus.
04:50He gets the bus for the first part of his journey,
04:52but determined to save up for this much sought-after bike,
04:55he decides to pocket the rest of the cash for himself.
04:58And he's seen on a lay-by near Chessington trying to thumb a lift.
05:04However, that evening, Roy doesn't return home.
05:08As the hours ticked by, Dennis and Hillary started becoming worried
05:12about where their youngest boy was.
05:14Perhaps he was out playing with his friends for the first few hours,
05:16that's what they thought.
05:17But as the evening grew later, they decided to phone the police
05:21and report Roy as missing.
05:23So having called the police, they came round to take a missing person report
05:27from Roy's parents.
05:29But they did nothing further that evening,
05:31assuming that he was staying with friends
05:33and he would turn up the following morning.
05:34Back then, this was probably the sort of thing that police would have done
05:37because it was so unusual for somebody to go missing,
05:40especially a child who was hitchhiking home,
05:42and they just assumed he would return home
05:44when he'd woken up in the morning at his friend's house.
05:48When Roy still hasn't come home by the next day,
05:51police are now very active in their search.
05:53They're taking descriptions of him to the local Chessington Zoo
05:56where a young boy might have gone
05:57or families who might have seen a young boy might have information.
06:01They take his description and his information to the local area of Toll
06:04to see if anyone has seen him there.
06:06They speak to local bus drivers,
06:08but they don't get any critical information.
06:12Police would have asked everything about him,
06:14what he looked like, what his interests were,
06:16particularly what he was wearing at that time, his route home,
06:19where the likelihood he might be.
06:22They put up posters and started to talk to people
06:25about if they'd seen Roy at any point.
06:27They also checked the military pillboxes
06:29to see if by any chance he had fallen in sleep in one
06:31or was hiding in one, but there was no sign of Roy.
06:36Police threw a whole net around that area of Surrey,
06:39stopping cars on the street, just questioning everybody,
06:42producing pictures to try and get some sort of lead
06:45or some sort of effort.
06:46Media, obviously, was an important outlet for him,
06:48local newspapers, even local TV news.
06:52Anything that could put the picture of Roy in front of the public
06:55to see if that produced any sort of response.
06:58But as the days went on, the pressure was on,
07:00a missing schoolboy, every day that goes by,
07:03people start fearing the worst.
07:06Once you start to publicise this,
07:08then people help join in,
07:11try to provide information wherever possible.
07:13It was Brocombe, Dorking, all around that area was very much a community
07:18and the police at that time could rely on that community
07:21to help them whatever way they could.
07:25With every passing hour, the Fowleys must have just thought,
07:29minds must have raced, the imagination gone wild.
07:31The worst, obviously, scenarios were playing over themselves.
07:34It just got worse and worse and worse,
07:37the pressure higher and higher and higher.
07:38What had happened to their lad?
07:40It's a horrible situation for anybody to be in.
07:44Three days later, everyone's worst fears are confirmed.
07:49So the search continues for the next three days.
07:52People are going more and more concerned about where Roy may be.
07:55And then three days later, on the 26th of April,
07:58the unthinkable happened.
07:59A forestry worker working on Lord Breaverbrook's estate
08:02found Roy's body.
08:04The boy's body is found in a wooded copse near Mickleham.
08:08Forestry workers spot the red jacket of the school uniform
08:12in the dense undergroves, then move towards it.
08:15They horribly discover this young boy found murdered underneath it.
08:21So, interestingly, the forest worker
08:23had been working in that area in the morning.
08:26He had gone off to take a break and had come back later on in the day.
08:29And that's when he had found Roy,
08:31leading to the suggestion that Roy had been put there very recently.
08:35Police sealed off the area where the body had been discovered.
08:38Now, a missing person inquiring suddenly escalated into a murder hunt.
08:42Examination of the body, the pathologist told them
08:44that not only had Roy been strangled, possibly with a ligature,
08:48the police believed it was, in fact, quite possibly his own school type,
08:51but that he had been brutally sexually abused, in fact, raped.
08:58The police have a tough job, and any policeman will tell you
09:01one of the worst aspects of his job is having to go to a family,
09:05particularly the parents of someone who has died in tragic circumstances,
09:09and break the news.
09:10It is a very, very difficult job, and you can just imagine
09:13not only the reaction of the police having to sit down with the parents,
09:17but the parents themselves.
09:18Finally, they have the news they'd been dreading for so many days.
09:21Child murders were almost unheard of.
09:23When a child goes missing, let alone found dead,
09:26there was an absolute shockwave through the community,
09:29through the wider community, even across the country.
09:31The ultimate murderer of Roy Tuthill was real front-page news,
09:35and people were looking at each other in the street thinking,
09:38how could this happen here?
09:41Surrey police are under intense pressure
09:43to locate a child rapist and murderer
09:45and deliver justice for Roy's family.
09:48But will they succeed?
10:02On 23 April 1968, 14-year-old Roy Tuthill disappears
10:08in the quiet village of Brockham in Surrey.
10:11Three days later, his body is found outside Cherkley Court in Mickleham.
10:15He has been sexually assaulted and strangled.
10:20Just three days after Roy first disappeared,
10:23his family get the most upsetting, most awful news that you can imagine.
10:27A young boy's body has been found.
10:30The parents of this murdered schoolboy, utterly distraught,
10:34their lives completely ruined.
10:36Roy's father, Dennis, was to die within a year or two,
10:39no doubt of a broken heart.
10:40I'm sure whatever reason he died
10:43would have been exasperated by what had happened.
10:45Hillary was to die 20, 30 years later.
10:47There's no comeback here.
10:49There's no way you can make this up.
10:51It's always part of your life.
10:54Officers secure the scene to preserve crucial evidence.
10:59This isn't an area where something like this has ever happened before.
11:02This is forest close to the estate of Lord Beaverbrook,
11:05the Canadian press baron who was part of Winston Churchill's war cabinet.
11:09So police at that time in the late 1960s don't have the DNA and forensic capabilities that we have today.
11:16But police work in terms of boots on the ground is very much the same.
11:19They cordon off the area.
11:21They seal the scene.
11:22They speak to anyone that's been through the area.
11:24And they're busy knocking on doors asking,
11:26did you see anything?
11:28Have you seen this missing boy?
11:30It was a country lane, for want of a better term.
11:34There was metal railings, metal fence either side.
11:38And the body was actually about a couple of yards just over the fence.
11:43Slightly concealed, but not overly concealed.
11:46So there was no great effort.
11:48No houses nearby, no witnesses nearby.
11:51And it looked as though it was a sort of hurried dump, if that made sense.
11:55You know, no great effort was taken to conceal the body.
11:58The police were working on the theory that this had to be someone who had a previous M.O.
12:03for picking up boys and sexually abusing them and then disposing of them.
12:07They didn't think this was a single one-off opportunist crime,
12:11that this was someone who had a pathway and knew how to do this.
12:16The fear, of course, that the community was a child killer on the loose.
12:19All the pressure that they were under didn't change the fact that they had so little to go on.
12:23It was not impossible for someone to have picked up this boy, sexually abused him,
12:27killed him, left the county, left the area,
12:31could have gone to any other part of Britain
12:33and just disappeared way out beyond the reach of Surrey Police.
12:39Investigators begin their enquiries within the local community.
12:43Surrey Police brought in officers from over the county
12:46who were engaged in house-to-house enquiries,
12:49trying to identify Roy's last movements, etc.
12:52The SIO at that time, Paddy Doyle.
12:54I know that this was very personal to Paddy,
12:56because Paddy had a son of the same age.
12:58And it really was a case of trying to trace witnesses,
13:02identify Roy's potential last movements
13:04and appeal for people to come forward.
13:07Police have now got 150 officers on the scene
13:10and they are now interviewing people at mass scale.
13:13They complete 10,300 interviews in a very short amount of time.
13:18These interviews, there could be anything from sort of 20, 30 minutes to several hours.
13:23They interview pretty much anybody that might have seen anything in that area.
13:28So police had very little to go on at this point.
13:30So they put up posters in the area to ask if anybody had seen anything suspicious.
13:35And a bus driver came forward to say there had been an Austin Westminster parked in the lay-by
13:40where he should have been able to pull his bus into at the relevant time that Roy disappeared.
13:45A boy matching Roy's description was seen leaning into that window.
13:49The driver was leaning across, speaking back to him.
13:53This man was described as being short, stocky, with white greyish hair.
13:57The same car had been reported seen near where the body was dumped.
14:04One of the most significant details about this car,
14:06not only is it a grey, silver Austin Westminster, which is quite a distinctive vehicle,
14:10but it has also got new registration plates on it.
14:13In the late 60s, the British government decided to have yellow registration plates on the back of a car
14:18and white registration plates on the front of a car.
14:21This car has those white and yellow registration plates.
14:25So following the posters being put up for information,
14:28a lady came forward to say that at about half past four on the relevant day,
14:32she had seen a boy matching Roy's description, hitchhiking.
14:36And she had said to him, being concerned, she had said,
14:38there are plenty of buses passing here, you don't have to hitchhike.
14:41But Roy, being unconcerned, said, oh, I'll be absolutely fine.
14:44So she left and she went to do some grocery shopping.
14:47And when she came back about 20 minutes later, Roy was gone,
14:50suggesting that in that time span, he had got into a vehicle.
14:55So please carry out an exhaustive search of anybody that owns an Austin Westminster.
15:00And in those days, this is a manual search in every sense of the word.
15:04You've got to get the phone book out.
15:05You've got to have paper records.
15:07You've got to go through, find somebody's phone number, phone them, speak to them,
15:11go around to their address, record it all on separate bits of paper,
15:14and then it all goes back into case files.
15:16This is an exhaustive search, and in the end, it proved a fruitless one.
15:20With the car search yielding no results,
15:23police turned to a newly emerging field of investigation.
15:28Forensic science was still in its infancy, really,
15:31when it comes to helping police detectives in the late 60s.
15:35And all the forensic examination of the scene, and the body was able to show,
15:39was a blood stain on Roy's trousers.
15:42The problem was that the blood stain could only narrow it down to either blood group A
15:47or blood group O.
15:49Now, unfortunately, those are the two most common blood groups in the world.
15:53So the police were not given any help, really,
15:56certainly when you judge it by modern times, by what they found at the scene.
16:01They would have spoken to anyone who they considered as a potential suspect,
16:05and eliminated them.
16:06Did they have any firm idea as to who was responsible?
16:10Absolutely not.
16:11You know, they had no fingerprints or anything else like that
16:14that could have identified the suspect from.
16:16So even if they had a suspect, trying to tie that suspect down to the scene
16:20and to the murder, unless their witnesses, may have been an uphill struggle.
16:25Fibres at that time wasn't a science.
16:28You know, you're talking about 1968.
16:30You're talking about fingerprints and the fact that you had a blood type.
16:34They were the most important aspects of forensic recovery that they had.
16:38Fibres wasn't one of the considerations.
16:43In 1968, nobody had ever thought of a sex offenders register.
16:47This wasn't to come in for many decades.
16:49So there was no actual list of known sexual deviants.
16:53If the police were there trying to trace around the country those who had committed sexual offences,
16:59they would have to make individual inquiries to each individual police force,
17:03which, of course, would take forever.
17:04And, of course, many police forces couldn't be bothered to cooperate with over a crime that wasn't committed in their
17:09area.
17:10It was a very haphazard approach to dealing with sex crimes, partially because these sort of sex crimes,
17:18wouldn't say unheard of, but they were rare.
17:20And police were more concerned with more routine crimes which kept on recurring.
17:25TV reconstructions of high-profile cases are a familiar thing for TV viewers today
17:30and a familiar thing on social media and TV news.
17:33However, at that time, they hadn't been done.
17:35And desperate to get a breakthrough in this case,
17:37Philip Doyle, the lead inspector on this case,
17:40creates the first TV reconstruction of this boy's final moment.
17:45He recruits his own son to walk up and down, similar to Roy Tuttle,
17:50in the same uniform, along the same road, in a bid to try and jog the memory
17:55of anybody who might watch that broadcast
17:57and anybody who might have seen something on that fateful day.
18:02Yes, the police were now under serious pressure.
18:05They'd never lost a child in these sort of circumstances, but they had no leads.
18:09The bloodstay wouldn't have helped them a great deal.
18:12The sightings that had come up had really amounted to nothing
18:15between the possible connection with the driver of an Austin Westminster Mark II,
18:22which was looking like a needle in a haystack across the country,
18:25and the fact that he was hitchhiking home.
18:27They had nothing else to go on.
18:30Detectives pursue other lines of inquiry,
18:33learning of a potential suspect whose profile bears similarities to this case.
18:39They then start to look at similar crimes
18:41and similar offenders.
18:43They know that this individual has a predilection for young boys
18:46and has a sexual interest in school boys.
18:48And so they head to the north of Scotland, Aberdeen,
18:52where police have apprehended a man who has been sexually assaulting a young boy there.
18:57In custody that day is Brian Lund Field.
19:01Field himself said he had nothing to do with the Surrey incident,
19:05nothing to do with Tuttall's disappearance.
19:07Despite the obvious similarities of the two attacks,
19:10there was nothing that a Surrey police could take from this connection at all.
19:15With no evidence linking him to the murder of Roy Tuttall,
19:18Brian Field is dropped as a suspect.
19:21So the investigation went on for years with very little leads.
19:26Scotland Yard were called in to assist.
19:28They couldn't find anything to further the investigation.
19:31Every now and then they would put out an appeal for information
19:34and somebody would come forward with something fresh,
19:36but it never led anywhere.
19:37Although it remained high profile,
19:39they never got anywhere with finding out who had killed Roy.
19:43There does come a period in time where you've exhausted all of your inquiries
19:47that you can conduct.
19:48You've looked at all of the leads that you've got.
19:50They've all come to a dead end.
19:51Then you have to start shutting things down.
19:54Because you start shutting things down doesn't mean to say it comes to an end.
19:58And of course, over the years, if they had other pieces of information coming in,
20:02they would take the files off the shelves
20:04and they would pursue these pieces of information
20:07to see if they could identify who was responsible.
20:09Sadly, they were unlucky, unfortunate, and just couldn't identify a suspect.
20:16By 1996, almost 30 years after schoolboy Roy Tuttle's unsolved murder,
20:21his parents had now passed on without knowing who was responsible for their son's death.
20:25His brother had moved to America to start a new life
20:28and police were still working away trying to catch this killer.
20:32Abilities in DNA and forensics had moved on.
20:36Studying again the trousers Roy wore on the day he was murdered,
20:39they were able to deliver a DNA profile
20:42and a breakthrough in this historic and unsolved case.
20:48Finally, police have a genetic profile of the killer.
20:51But will this breakthrough lead to an arrest?
21:0730 years after the murder of 14 year old Roy Tuttle,
21:11police have finally made a breakthrough with the use of forensic science.
21:15However, their work is still far from over.
21:19By 1996, both of Roy's parents had passed away.
21:23Colin had moved to America.
21:26His, at that point, was the longest unsolved child murder case in Britain.
21:30That wouldn't be the case for much longer, though.
21:33In that year, cold case reviews were being looked at again.
21:37This was after the introduction of the DNA database a year earlier in 1995.
21:41Forensic technology had advanced in the three decades since Roy's murder.
21:45The cold case review came at the perfect time.
21:48In December of 1996, a sample was recovered from Roy's trousers.
21:52It was semen.
21:53So now police had a DNA profile of Roy's killer.
21:57They just needed a name and a face to match.
22:00In the late 90s, suddenly DNA sourcing exploded.
22:05The science suddenly took huge leaps forward.
22:08Particularly, it helped in forensic police work.
22:10Suddenly, police didn't just have a blood group to go on.
22:13They had all the integral patterns of blood and semen to work on,
22:17which produced like a passport.
22:19It really could narrow it down to just single people.
22:23Despite this progress, investigators are unable to match the DNA to a suspect.
22:29Then in 2000, a cold case unit re-examines the case.
22:34I first heard about Roy Tootle and the murder of Roy Tootle in August of 2000.
22:41I was basically the head of CID for Surrey.
22:43We were going through a quiet period, and one of the DCIs popped his head into the office
22:48and said, do you mind if we start looking at the cold case?
22:50And the cold case was the one of Roy Tootle.
22:53We had time on our hands, so we gave the authority for him to pull out all the case file
22:58and start seeing what we could find, if there's anything further we could do.
23:03It's a small team, because it was a cold case.
23:06And in fairness, I don't solve crimes.
23:09The team solved the crime.
23:11I'm just the head of the team.
23:13There was the DCI, who was like a dog with a bone, and they collected all the paperwork.
23:19And what they actually did was, there was a thing called the National Crime Faculty at that time in 2000.
23:24This was down at Brams Hill.
23:26And they had started a section called the Series Crimes Analysis section.
23:29And they had started doing an analysis of all sex crimes and suspects throughout the country,
23:37bringing all the information together.
23:38They put the files that we had, we put the information that we had in respect of Roy Tootle
23:43into the Series Crimes and Analysis section.
23:46And they actually came out with a report, and they had identified Brian Field as a potential suspect.
23:53Brian Field re-emerges as a lead suspect.
23:57Detectives look into his past to get a better understanding of the man.
24:02Brian Lundfield is born in 1936 in Market Raisin, a market town with its own racecourse,
24:09in a largely rural area.
24:11He doesn't live with his parents, they put him into foster care,
24:14and he's put into a home called Lynne Wode House.
24:19So, Paul and Ruby Field were actually very well known.
24:22He had used all his money to buy a home that he could then adopt children into.
24:27So, Brian had 14 siblings, there were 15 of them all together living in this house.
24:31And it was like a bit of an experiment really, but seemed to the outside world to be absolutely perfect.
24:37Paul Field was such a familiar name in the media at that time.
24:41Not only was he awarded an OBE for his services to young children,
24:44but he was singled out to appear on This Is Your Life,
24:47which was an enormous program in the 60s, presented by Eamon Andrews,
24:51Primetime, ITV, anything between 13-15 million people would tune in to watch the story of this man's life.
24:58He was a familiar figure in the media and on television.
25:01Brian Field was doing national service, but he was given leave to attend the filming of this program,
25:06along with his 13-14 other siblings, to support his foster father,
25:11and was there on television in his military uniform.
25:16On the outside, in the press, the home has a glowing reputation.
25:20On the inside, for many of the boys there, this is not the case.
25:24Other boys at the home accuse Brian of abusing them, and say in later years,
25:30Brian had an obsession, a predilection for sexual abuse.
25:34Age 15, Brian leaves the foster home, and after a brief spell in the military,
25:39he goes to work for the Milk Marketing Board.
25:41Faithfully, this is a job that allows him to move easily around different parts of the country.
25:46He sells milk machinery around the West Country,
25:49and for a spell in the late 60s, he also lives in Surrey.
25:55Brian Field had a long criminal record.
25:58It started in 1969, when he was in his 30s, with a gross indecency charge.
26:04In 1972, that case in Aberdeen, where he'd abducted a young 14-year-old boy,
26:09sexually abused him.
26:11The boy managed to escape, but he was jailed for that.
26:14In 1986, he was jailed for four years after abducting two boys aged 13 and 16,
26:21though thankfully, they did manage to flee.
26:24He put them in the back of his car, and as he's driving along, he took a tire iron out,
26:29and said, right, you two, take your clothes off.
26:32The boys, scared witless, managed to fight and struggle and get out the car,
26:37as it was driving along the road.
26:40And then Field was later identified as the driver, arrested and convicted for that.
26:45Had these boys not managed to get out of the car, they would have been dead.
26:49Here's a man who lacked complete empathy and was bordering on the fact of being a psychopath.
26:56So with all these convictions, it meant that Bryan was well known to police by this point.
27:01He was described as a bit of a Jekyll and Hyde, a hard-working man when he was sober,
27:06but give him a drink and he turned into somebody completely different.
27:09So this made him prime suspect, really, for the disappearance of Roy in 1968.
27:17Now in his 60s, Bryan Field lives in the small town of Solihal, near Birmingham,
27:22where he's a respected member of the community.
27:25Bryan Field was like many pedophiles in so much that he was intensely devious
27:30and had two sides to his character.
27:33Outwardly, he was charming to people, to his family and friends.
27:37He was seen as a hard worker, but his more sinister side would come out,
27:40particularly when he was drunk, and that was he had a vicious and violent temper.
27:45From the 80s and 90s, he was working as a gardener and outdoors as a labourer,
27:50and he built up quite a physique.
27:52So this was an extremely dangerous character in that he had a violent temper,
27:56he was very fit and strong, and he had paedophilic tendencies.
28:01This was a horrendous cocktail and put every schoolboy in danger.
28:06With the evidence aligning, the cold case unit is determined to link Bryan
28:11to the murder of Roy Tuttle.
28:14Having identified him as a potential suspect was one thing,
28:17being able to prove it was a different thing entirely.
28:20So we started making inquiries at Bryan Field,
28:23we found out that he was living up in Solihal, near Birmingham,
28:27and then at the same time we started to chase up if there was any forensics.
28:31We found that Roy's clothing had been put away at the forensic science laboratory
28:36up in Huntingdon, in the freezer.
28:38They dug the clothes out, we asked for an analysis to be made of the clothing,
28:43and much to our joy, much to our surprise, there was a DNA hit,
28:49and the DNA hit came back to Bryan Lunn Field.
28:54In September 1999, Bryan Field was arrested in Birmingham for drink driving.
29:00After the introduction of the database, it was mandatory to give a DNA sample after being arrested.
29:05In the year 2000, the DNA sample recovered from Roy's trousers matched Field's DNA sample taken when it was arrested.
29:14So we had this sort of parallel, intelligence suggested it could have been, DNA said it was.
29:21And it's a case of then, of a sharp intake of breath, because you're now looking at 30 years has
29:27passed,
29:28and you're now on the track of a killer.
29:31So we set up surveillance up in Birmingham.
29:33We started to watch, identify where Field was living, and we were watching him.
29:38I think he was a 64-year-old man, who was very fit and agile.
29:43So it was then a case of getting all of our eggs in one basket, getting all the evidence together,
29:49and then deciding, right, we're going to go and arrest them.
29:52Police immediately elated by this sudden, explosive new breakthrough,
29:57and they placed Field immediately under surveillance, just to try and get a feel of who he is,
30:03and then amass all the evidence that they have in order to finally go and arrest him.
30:09We lost sight of him for a brief period in time, and I remember jumping in one of the cars,
30:14and we hot-footed it up to Birmingham.
30:17And as we got to Solihull, they had identified that it was in his flat, and he was arrested there.
30:24Members of the community are stunned at his arrest for such a horrific crime.
30:29After he's been released from the prison in the 80s, he settled into the Birmingham area.
30:34His marriage broke up. Three children no longer lived with him.
30:37But he pursued his life as a gardener, as a labourer, often for cash in hand,
30:42which meant that he didn't have to pay tax, or he virtually disappeared.
30:46But those who knew him, who lived around him, thought, what a great guy.
30:49He was down the pub, by a drink. Amiable, outgoing, a perfect neighbour.
30:53Nobody who lived in his area, in his street, or knew him, had any idea whatsoever about this man's past.
31:02He exploited trust and normalcy as a way to mask his deviance and avoided detection for decades.
31:09His arrest created genuine shock among those who believed they knew him.
31:15He was taken to Solihull Police Station, where he was booked in, and then he was driven south down to
31:21Surrey.
31:22And we had each stage planned out. There was going to be no conversations in the car.
31:28Everything was going to be done exactly by the book.
31:31So we got him down to Surrey, and we had prepared an interview strategy with him.
31:37Obviously, you've been arrested for the murder of a boy called Roy Lindsay Tuttle.
31:44Tuttle.
31:45Yeah.
31:46Now that boy was a Kingston Grammar School boy, and he went missing on his way home from school in
31:52April of 1968.
31:54Did you ever give any school boys a lift in your car at all?
31:59No.
31:59In 1968?
32:00No, no.
32:01Are you quite sure about that?
32:02Yeah, positively.
32:03Did you ever stop and talk to any school boys and engage them in any kind of conversation?
32:10No.
32:10No.
32:11Did you murder Roy Tuttle?
32:12No.
32:13I did not.
32:14I don't even know.
32:15I've never seen him.
32:17I'm going to show you a photograph of this boy, OK?
32:20OK?
32:21And that's a copy of Roy when he went missing.
32:27No, no, I've never...
32:30I mean, he looks like a lot of lads, really.
32:34Yeah.
32:35No, I've never seen him before.
32:37Never seen him?
32:38No.
32:38You're 100% sure you've never seen this boy before?
32:41Yeah.
32:42Yeah.
32:43And he was sat down and faced with all the evidence the police had accrued.
32:48A billion to one DNA evidence.
32:49His past record of identical attacks.
32:52I think the police immediately expected that Field would crumble.
32:55He was now in his mid-60s and he could see that surely that there was no way out.
33:00In fact, Field accepted his past behaviour but said that that was all gone.
33:05Nothing like that now.
33:07And what's more, he had no knowledge of who this Roy Tuttle was.
33:11Had never been in that area at that particular time all the way back in 1968.
33:16Forget it.
33:16I have nothing to do with it.
33:19Police have his DNA, but they want a confession.
33:22Will Bryan Field admit to the sexual assault and murder of Roy Tuttle back in 1968?
33:41More than 30 years after the murder of Roy Tuttle, police finally have DNA evidence linking Bryan Field to the
33:49crime.
33:49But when questioned, he denies all accountability.
33:54Police now have Field in custody and they put to him that they have a match, a DNA profile that
34:00links him to the murder of Roy Tuttle in 1968.
34:03Field announces, yes, I did have an interest in young boys.
34:08Yes, I've been convicted of multiple assaults on young boys and the kidnap of young boys.
34:13But I don't know anything about this case.
34:15This was not me.
34:17The lack of response from Field may have taken police by surprise, but they immediately went off to magistrates to
34:24apply for an extension to the custody time limits,
34:27i.e. to keep him under arrest for longer before they had to make the decision whether to charge him
34:31or to release him.
34:32At the end of the second day of questioning, they told Field that tomorrow we're going to have to take
34:36fresh DNA evidence from you and match that up.
34:41The last thing we were going to do that night was get a DNA sample from him.
34:46So we requested a DNA sample from him, which he supplied, and then we let him stew overnight.
34:52And he obviously started to put two and two together.
34:56So therefore, the following day when he was brought out for interview, he sat down, I've got to tell you
35:01something.
35:03He confessed in detail to the abduction, rape and murder of Roy Tuttle.
35:09I'm sorry, I've just slagged you all the time.
35:14But I didn't, you know, I've been to prison.
35:19I've got to relate to my alterations. I'm sorry.
35:24Bye. Bye. Look at me.
35:27Come in your way.
35:31It's important now for everyone concerned that we finish this.
35:36Yeah, it's gone a long, long time.
35:39Yeah, yeah. Okay.
35:42I was driving along the road and I saw this lad come get off the bus
35:53and he sat for a lick, I'm sure he sat for a lick, he stood there and I stopped and
36:00he got in
36:03and I asked him where he was going. Do you mean Nicole? Yeah. What do you do? Right, I'm tightening
36:14the bin.
36:16Ok, how did you just do that? You went over the front seat and I tried to do it on
36:29the front
36:29and put it across it on its head, for him to get thrust again.
36:35There's no ironic and ironic in me. There's a bit of a head of strength.
36:42You know, just put the tie down his neck and just tighten it.
36:49Can you demonstrate how he hated it and put it around his neck and just tighten it right now?
36:56Yeah. He just saw the poo box that they...
37:00that they cast him for air and I just... carried out and suddenly he won't lie for me.
37:07I looked like he got out, strength himself on, put him in the boat.
37:14And I went home.
37:19You've lived through this secret for 30-odd years, haven't you? Yeah.
37:26Have you feeling? Yeah.
37:31He proceeded to tell us exactly how he picked up Roy Tootel, how he got him in the car,
37:38how he tried to force him to perform oral sex and how he strangled him.
37:43It's actually quite chilling to watch how Brian Field describes how he strangled Roy Tootel.
37:53And then, of course, he put him in the boot of the car and he kept him in the car
37:56for a few days.
37:57We've got the DNA, we've got his admissions, etc.
38:00But was it possible for him to put him in the boot of a mini?
38:03So we got a mini.
38:04We got someone about the size of Roy Tootel.
38:06We tried to get him in the mini to make sure it was physically possible.
38:09So we started to follow up on the results of his interview
38:13to try and find some physical corroboration as much as we had the DNA and his admissions, etc.
38:20So an awful part about this is that Brian admits that after dumping Roy's body,
38:25he then drives to the hospital to visit his wife, who has just given birth to their child.
38:31The fact that he's going to see his wife in the hospital who's just given birth
38:35and he picks a young boy up and kills him tends to suggest that lack of empathy,
38:40the lack of feeling, the fact that he's, you know, psychopathic tendencies, no emotion.
38:48Field's complete lack of emotion just highlighted the fact that here was a callous killer,
38:54completely no interest whatsoever in the knock-on effect of his sexual activity
38:59and that her family had been completely destroyed, utterly destroyed.
39:03In contrast to the grief that he had caused, Field's life just went on as normal.
39:08After compiling the full body of evidence,
39:11authorities moved to prosecute Brian Field for the murder of Roy Tootel.
39:16What we had was a case file which was substantial because of all the information that had been gathered over
39:23the years.
39:24And of course, in the year 2000, 2001, there was a different way of presenting a case at court.
39:30You had a thing called disclosure, whereas we had to disclose any material that could potentially undermine a prosecution case.
39:37And of course, within these files, there was massive potential and it had not been for the DNA and the
39:43admission.
39:44But nevertheless, you still got to go through this disclosure process.
39:47So we bought this scanner that did something like about a thousand pages a minute and we scanned every single
39:53document into this scanner.
39:55So therefore, we had a composite file from the paperwork to put it, made it electronic.
39:59And that meant we were then able to disclose everything to the defence solicitor who was representing Brian Field.
40:07So eventually the trial date arrives and Brian is taken to the Old Bailey, where his case is heard.
40:13Brian pleads guilty to the murder of Roy Tootel, but denies the sexual assault.
40:17And the reason for this is that he will know that he could be given extra time if he admitted
40:21to a sexual assault on top of the murder charge.
40:24So he only admits to the murder and is found guilty of the murder of Roy Tootel.
40:29He didn't plead guilty to the sexual assault.
40:32Had he pleaded guilty to the sexual assault and he'd gone to prison as a sex offender like that,
40:38then of course the regime within prison would have treated him differently.
40:41So being a murderer is one thing.
40:43Being a murderer with serious sexual assault on a young boy would have been something else.
40:49In November 2001, Brian Field is sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of 14-year-old Roy Tootel.
40:57He would serve 22 years.
41:01The judge's open court remarks emphasised the importance of DNA technology
41:05and how it was essential for bringing justice for Roy's family.
41:10Field's confession was the first time that the police realised that what Field was driving was a white Mini.
41:17Not an Austin-Westminster Mark II.
41:20All that period of time searching for Austin-Westminster Mark II had been completely wasted.
41:27Police at the time obviously weren't to know that.
41:30That was the only lead they had.
41:31But it's come as a blow to the pride of the police that they had been chasing a complete red
41:35Henry for so long.
41:38There was a lot of relief the fact that Field was convicted.
41:42There was a lot of relief within the team that he was convicted.
41:45But there was also a lot of relief is that Field was a predator from the day that he lived
41:51in the foster home to the day that he died was a danger to society.
41:57So there was a great relief the fact that after the conviction Field couldn't harm anyone else.
42:04This was a huge story for the media.
42:06Not only was it the longest running cold case success and that it was finally a killer court after 33
42:13years.
42:13But the throwback to those of us who were there in the 60s.
42:18The newspapers, the black and white pictures of Roy looking at this schoolboy.
42:22Pictures of what had happened in Chessington in 1968.
42:26Remarkable how evocative those pictures can be.
42:31Field was a persistent, aggressive paedophile who'd proven that he was capable of taking schoolboys off the streets and abusing
42:38them.
42:38This was somebody that kidnapped two young boys after Roy Tuttle's death.
42:42Thankfully they escaped and had abused another 14 year old boy on another occasion.
42:47Police looked at his profile and were linking him to any number of assaults and any other number of missing
42:53children for cases that they hadn't found.
42:55But as yet they don't currently have the DNA breakthrough to convict him on any other charges.
43:00Field is a practiced psychopathic offender.
43:03He is able to behave without any empathy, without any humanity.
43:07Even though he's able to keep up a veneer of respectability as a working man, a family man.
43:12He's somebody that was an ever present danger to children.
43:16And somebody under drink or without drink was able to act on these inhuman, beastly impulses in the middle of
43:23the day.
43:23This is somebody that snatched the child off the road at the end of the school day.
43:27This is somebody that acted in broad daylight, that acted in public and acted even though he had multiple sentences
43:33for this kind of behaviour.
43:35This is somebody that was not going to be stopped.
43:38Field ultimately died behind bars at the age of 87 in 2024 at HMP Full Sutton from natural causes.
43:46A serenity, he denied his victims.
43:51You meet with the brother and you meet with Perry Doyle and you saw what it meant to them.
43:57And you then get this stark realisation that after 30 years if this was solvable, then potentially any cold case
44:04is solvable.
44:05All we really have to do is look hard enough and look for the opportunities and look for the clues.
44:12And it gave me confidence in going forward that cold cases are actually worth investigating.
44:20Because had we not arrested Brian Field then he would have continued to offend and potentially kill other people.
44:28Despite finally closing the case on his murder, there weren't many left alive who knew Roy to witness justice being
44:36served.
44:37So tragically the parents of Roy never got to see justice done.
44:41They never got to learn who had killed their child.
44:44But the reaction to Brian being found guilty or even being accused of this crime was incredible.
44:50He had built a whole new life in Birmingham and people there thought he was just wonderful.
44:56He was a regular at the pub.
44:58They had a whip round for his 60th birthday, something which was unheard of.
45:02He was a really popular man.
45:04And when people heard of his arrest, they absolutely said the police had got the wrong person.
45:09Could not believe that he could be responsible for anything quite so heinous as this murder of a young boy.
45:17The Roy Tuttle story has stayed with me for countless years.
45:21When he was killed, he was 14 and I was 12.
45:24I had a bike, I had a train set, the two things he had set his heart on as well.
45:29And I went to school in 1968 on a bus.
45:32And I look back on all those years, how lucky I was to lead a life that I have
45:38and how lucky I've been to live as many years as I have.
45:41And if only Roy had even a slice of the luck that I had,
45:45he would never have ended in such a gruesome, degrading, humiliating, terrifying murder that he had to undergo.
46:11I'm like, I'll see you then.
46:12I'm a party, I've been so depressed.
46:12I'm going to never leave the shop at night.
46:13What am I doing?
46:13Because I'm doing a lot of work.
46:14You know what's going through?
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