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Expert Witness - Season 5 Episode 1 -Intent to Kill: The Ashley Dale Murder engsubtitle fullmovie❤️🎥 Secret Engagement
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00:02This time, when a young woman is gunned down in her home,
00:06detectives turn to a firearms expert to crack the case.
00:10The Scorpion machine pistol would fire in fully automatic mode
00:14between 14 and 15 cartridges per second.
00:19And will a forensic scientist's high-risk DNA strategy
00:23put a sex attacker behind bars?
00:26We'd have to get the material off the tape in,
00:29and we only had one shot at it.
00:42Welcome to Expert Witness,
00:45the series where we reveal how science helps solve
00:48some of the UK's toughest criminal investigations.
00:59Liverpool, Merseyside.
01:01At around half past midnight on the 21st of August 2022,
01:06Merseyside police are called by concerned neighbours
01:09and race to a property on Leinster Road.
01:12Police arrive at Ashley Dale's house.
01:19They find the front door kicked in and the lights still on.
01:22There are bullet holes everywhere, shattered kitchen tiles.
01:25Back door is open.
01:26And at the back door, they find a woman fatally injured.
01:31Lying in the back garden, they find 28-year-old Ashley Dale.
01:36She appears to have been shot and dies of her injuries later in hospital.
01:41There is no one else in the house.
01:45BBC journalist Johnny Humphries was a crime correspondent for the Liverpool Echo
01:49and was there for every moment of the trial.
01:53We heard the name of Ashley Dale quite early on after the news broke that somebody had been murdered.
01:58She was actually the first woman who was shot dead in Liverpool in over 17 years,
02:01so it was a bit of a shock.
02:04At the time of the incident, mum Julie, partner Bobby and Ashley's two younger sisters were all asleep.
02:12We awoke to a knock on the door.
02:16We looked out the window and there was two plainclothes police officers.
02:20They said that there had been an incident at Ashley's property at her home.
02:25The police then revealed that Ashley had died.
02:29Fell to the ground, just couldn't believe.
02:32It was like someone was just...
02:34Like I was just looking into someone else's life at that moment in time.
02:38I've got, sorry, these two young girls upstairs.
02:44I'm going to have to just completely shatter their lives
02:47to tell them that the big sister who they love is just not here anymore
02:50and that was just horrendous.
02:55Julie gave birth to Ashley when she was just 16 years old.
02:59As Ashley got older, we did grow up together.
03:03People, like, used to think we were sisters.
03:05We were literally, like, best friends.
03:07She was great. She loved life.
03:09She was very glamorous.
03:11Loved her clothes, loved shopping, but also loved her home as well
03:15and loved being at home.
03:17She went to university and she did a degree in environmental health
03:21and then she was working as an environmental health officer
03:26with Nosley Council and she just had a promotion within her work.
03:32The council leader from Nosley, where Ashley worked,
03:36paid tribute to what he described as a rising star within the council.
03:41Colleagues left flowers on her desk in tribute to the woman who was killed.
03:48As Merseyside police began a massive investigation,
03:52Ashley's murder received intense coverage in the press
03:56and the shocking events of the night were revealed.
03:59Ashley was home alone.
04:01She was on her living room sofa watching the television.
04:05The gunman burst in, fired multiple shots throughout the house
04:09and Ashley was struck in the abdomen.
04:11Ashley's car, that was parked on the street
04:14and the police noticed three of the tyres on the car were slashed.
04:18Police say it was a targeted attack
04:21but that Ashley was not the intended victim.
04:23It wasn't long before detectives focused their investigation closer to home.
04:29We started to get rumours coming in about her boyfriend
04:32that the name Lee Harrison started to emerge.
04:35He didn't have any kind of legitimate job or legitimate income.
04:40He was involved in drugs.
04:43Voice notes recovered from Ashley's phone
04:46revealed that Harrison was involved in a feud
04:48with the second drug dealer, Niall Barry.
04:52There's this background of escalating tension and anger between the two men.
04:58Ashley's family had no idea about Lee Harrison's criminal connections.
05:03Ashley had been with Lee about five years
05:05but we never really knew a great deal about him in the beginning
05:08and I felt like she did keep it quite quiet.
05:12Lee Harrison was interviewed by police about the shooting
05:15but claimed he had no idea why he or Ashley would have been targeted.
05:20In Liverpool, if you're known to be a grass or a snitch,
05:24then that doesn't go down very well with, you know,
05:26these types of people who were involved in criminality
05:30and organised crime and stuff like that.
05:33So, a big wall of silence went up on that side
05:36in terms of, like, Lee and Lee's friends.
05:39How could someone who claimed to love my daughter so much
05:43not speak up or not want to try and help the investigation?
05:49The police brought gangster Niall Barry in for questioning.
05:53He was arrested outside of a hotel
05:55and he had a bag of cash, I think around £10,000, with him,
05:59a big bag of clothes
06:01and he was clearly trying to get out of the country.
06:04But he had an alibi for the night of the murder.
06:07He was in his flat.
06:09He was with a couple of other guys.
06:11He was watching boxing and UFC.
06:13There was CCTV cameras covering the front at the entrance
06:16so they could see he hadn't left the flat
06:18in the hours leading up to the shooting.
06:20So they knew he couldn't have been the gunman
06:22and at that stage they didn't have anything to keep him in custody.
06:26This was a big setback for the investigation.
06:30Facing a wall of silence,
06:31the crime scene and forensics
06:33were going to be pivotal in solving this case.
06:37So police enlisted the help of forensic firearms expert Andre Horne.
06:43When I arrived I did an initial walkthrough of the scene
06:47just to get an idea of what physical evidence is immediately apparent.
06:53I could see some forensic markers
06:56where police had already identified
06:58some bullets and cartridge cases that they had observed.
07:03Andre's first task was to examine the discharge case
07:06of three sins and bullets
07:07to establish whether there was more than one weapon used at the scene.
07:12This is a comparison microscope
07:14and it is something we use to compare the firing marks on bullets to one another.
07:19We will mount a bullet on the one side
07:22and then we will look for a significant unique mark
07:25and then see if we can find that same mark on another bullet.
07:30If we find the same marks on the same two ammunition components,
07:34we can then come to the conclusion that they had been discharged in the same firearm.
07:40Andre was able to identify not just that the ammunition came from the same weapon,
07:45but the type of weapon used.
07:48Cartridge cases in this case had dual ejector marks,
07:52which is very particular to a specific type of machine pistol called a Scorpion.
08:01The Scorpion machine pistol is a very compact weapon
08:05and you get magazines with different cartridge capacities.
08:08It is a very rapid firing gun.
08:12It would fire in fully automatic mode between 14 and 15 cartridges per second.
08:20Andre hoped that forensic examination of the bullet casings found at the scene
08:24could help identify Ashley's killer.
08:27When cartridges are loaded into a firearm, they are handled by a person
08:30and that person could potentially deposit their DNA on the cartridges.
08:37Meanwhile, detectives analysed the CCTV outside Niall Barry's flat
08:42from the evening of the murder.
08:45Inside the flat in the hours leading up to the murder were Niall Barry,
08:50Sean Zeiss, who had a beef with Ashley's boyfriend as well,
08:53James Witham and Joseph Pears, and police were able to record on CCTV
08:58Joseph Pears and James Witham leaving the flat shortly after 10 o'clock on the 20th of August.
09:05The footage also showed the two men heading towards the car
09:09and leaving in the direction of Ashley's address.
09:12It was quite a distinctive Hyundai
09:15and they'd had that on CCTV going into Ashley's road
09:18and then leaving again around the time of the shooting.
09:22Messages sent from Ashley to her mum just before midnight
09:25revealed her car alarm had gone off,
09:27helping detectives to reconstruct the events leading to her death.
09:33One of Joseph Pears or James Witham slashed the tyres on the car
09:36in an attempt to lure whoever was in the house outside.
09:42Investigators' theory was that when that didn't work,
09:44the gunman had burst through the front door,
09:47showering the inside of the house with bullets.
09:49The net was closing in on Pears and Witham,
09:52but they needed to link them physically to the crime scene.
09:56But then they got the breakthrough they needed.
09:59DNA found on a bullet casing came back with a profile.
10:03James Witham had left a piece of DNA on one of the bullet cases
10:07that was found in Ashley's property.
10:08The evidence was beginning to become overwhelming.
10:10This is the moment James Witham was arrested.
10:13What's your name, fella? Francis.
10:15Say that again. Francis Kelly.
10:17He gives a false name but eventually admits who he is.
10:20You're under arrest for a suspicion of murder.
10:22Joseph Pears was also arrested.
10:24They were interviewed over the course of a couple of days.
10:26Both of those men answered no comment to all questions.
10:31Two family liaisons came to our house
10:33and they said, they told us the names,
10:36James Witham and Joseph Pears.
10:38We were like, who?
10:40Who are these people?
10:41We'd be a bit shocked because we didn't know
10:43we'd never heard of them before.
10:45With Witham and Pears not cooperating,
10:48detectives set about making the case against their mortar tights,
10:52starting with the vehicle that was seen on CCTV,
10:55parked outside Babby's flat,
10:56then driving to and from the scene.
11:01The police were able to recover the car
11:03and it was examined forensically
11:05and swabbed for DNA.
11:06And one significant finding
11:08and that was the DNA of Joseph Pears
11:11on a bottle cap inside the vehicle.
11:14That linked Joseph Pears to the car.
11:18The shoe prints would further strengthen the case against Witham.
11:22On the front door of Ashley's house was a footprint.
11:25The police were able to tie that to James Witham.
11:28He was seen on CCTV buying that exact pair of trainers.
11:33Within the days and hours before the shooting.
11:37The footprint on the door, the DNA on the Spence cartridge and DNA found in the car,
11:42all pointed to Witham being the shooter and Pears being the driver.
11:47Confronted by the evidence, Witham confessed, but not to murder.
11:51He claimed he was just firing warning shots rather than targeting Ashley and that her death was a tragic accident.
11:59Could ballistics expert Andre Horne disprove Witham's testimony and prove he had intent to kill?
12:07During the autopsy I found that Ashley had been shot once and that she had an entry wound in her
12:13abdomen
12:14and an exit wound in her left lower back.
12:18And that was very important for us to determine where Ashley had been standing when she was shot.
12:26A bullet with Ashley's DNA was recovered from a kitchen chair indicating it had passed through her body and lodged
12:33there.
12:34The chair was standing adjacent to the kitchen counter and the bullet lodged into a wooden support inside the chair.
12:42The bullet impact marks tell us in which direction the bullets had been fired, where they had struck.
12:49In other words, where the gun was pointing at the moment of discharge.
12:53We know she was in the living room where she was watching television when the shooter came through the door.
13:01Ashley made her way to the kitchen where the fatal bullet was found.
13:05By recreating where Ashley was standing when she was shot and using a laser to mimic the bullet's path,
13:12Andre could determine where the shooter had been located.
13:15The image that we see here would have been the viewpoint of the shooter as he was looking through this
13:21doorway.
13:22We then extrapolated the trajectory towards where the shooter had been standing.
13:27And we had a tripod, and where that tripod then intersected, we knew that that was most likely the position
13:36where the shooter had been standing.
13:39From this, Andre was able to recreate the events moments prior to Ashley's death.
13:45The first shots were discharged by the shooter when he was standing in the hallway.
13:53He had then progressed further into the dining room towards the kitchen where some further shots were fired.
14:02It is at that point that Ashley was fatally wounded.
14:07Andre's analysis put the lie to Witham's defence.
14:10He hadn't fired shots randomly.
14:12He'd chased and murdered Ashley as she fled the room.
14:18During the course of our examinations, it was apparent that the shooter had been following Ashley and that he had
14:27pursued her.
14:29Both Witham and Piers now faced a murder charge.
14:33But as the long-standing feud was between Ashley's boyfriend and Niall Barry,
14:37police strongly believed he and associate Sean Zeiss ordered the attack.
14:43And as luck would have it, they were already in custody for unrelated offences.
14:49That meant that police were able to analyse data on all four suspects' phones.
14:55There's a flurry of calls before and after the shooting.
14:58There's contact on there before they get there.
15:00Then afterwards, Witham and Piers in touch with Niall Barry and Sean Zeiss.
15:05This pointed to all four being in constant communication on the night of the murder.
15:11Messages on an encrypted communications app on Barry's phone would seal their fate.
15:17Police were able to link him to an EncroChat handle or a username called Better Trunk,
15:24which they showed was in contact with other EncroChat users about firearms, about drugs.
15:30And most pertinently in this case, Niall Barry had discussed a SCORP, which is short for a SCORP in submachine
15:37gun,
15:38the exact kind of weapon that was used to kill Ashley Dale.
15:42All four were charged with the murder of Ashley Dale and conspiracy to murder Lee Harrison, Ashley's boyfriend.
15:49Her family arrived at court today at the start of a trial, which is expected to last for two months.
15:56They all pleaded not guilty, putting Ashley's family through a full trial.
16:01Seeing them every single day and then when they took the stand as well, listening to the lies,
16:08you know, to save their own skin and what they'd done.
16:11And that was, that was difficult because we all knew they'd done it.
16:14No, no remorse, nothing, nothing, nothing for us, no remorse for Ashley, no, nothing, no respect.
16:20Witham has admitted manslaughter, but denies murder.
16:24He told the jury that when he went into the house, he didn't see Ashley Dale, he didn't know that
16:29he'd shot at anyone.
16:29He just, he just pulled the trigger and fired a load of shots and left.
16:33He didn't realise that he'd even hurt anyone until afterwards.
16:38But it was Andre Horne's firearms analysis that proved pivotal.
16:42The prosecution asked Mr Horne what he thought had happened.
16:46He said, my explanation is that she moved towards her only escape, the rear door, and the shooter followed the
16:52same route and fired shots in the direction that Ashley was attempting to escape.
16:58Andre Horne's evidence proved that James Witham had to have chased Ashley Dale through her house to where she was
17:06found and where she'd been struck.
17:08That showed that he had murderous intent.
17:11The jury retired for deliberations.
17:14I was really, really anxious. What's going to happen? Am I going to cope with her?
17:20After just over nine hours, the jury returned. It was a tense moment for everyone.
17:25They came to the verdict, the Nile barrier that haunted the shooting of Ashley Dale.
17:29He was found guilty of murder, conspiracy to murder and related charges.
17:33Sean Zeiss also found guilty of murder, conspiracy to murder.
17:36And Witham and Pears were also convicted of murder as well.
17:39All four suspects received life sentences between 41 and 47 years before they could even apply for parole.
17:48We were quite shocked but happy, like really, really happy because they're never going to get out.
17:54And Andre took the stand.
17:56He was able to pinpoint where James Witham was standing.
18:00It really did help.
18:01Without my evidence, there would probably have been some doubt in the jury's mind as to the intentions of the
18:09shooter.
18:10And that is why this case stood out for me.
18:12I'm not the same person anymore.
18:14Like, that night when Ashley died, I'd say the old Julie died as well.
18:32Every year, historic cold cases are solved using new forensic science.
18:36But success is often not straightforward.
18:39In our next case, a forensic scientist is faced with finding a suspect's DNA when all the original exhibits have
18:46been destroyed.
18:54Bracknell, Berkshire, the 11th of September, 1986.
19:00A three-year-old girl is playing outside with a friend when she's abducted.
19:07She was lured into a van as she played with a friend outside a block of flats.
19:11After the attack, she was dumped nearby and found crying in the street.
19:17Nikki Mitchell, home affairs correspondent for BBC South, reported the case.
19:23This was a horrific attack on a vulnerable three-year-old child who was just playing outside with a friend.
19:32A stranger approached the two, asking them for help with his car.
19:37A friend ran off and said she wasn't allowed to talk to strangers.
19:42But unfortunately, the three-year-old did go with him.
19:45He lured her into a camper van and then he got in the back with her.
19:51Obviously, she thought she was helping him and he was a nice man, but actually, he attacked her, sexually assaulted
19:59her in the back of that camper van.
20:03The man brought her to a local shop, gave her money to buy sweets and drove away.
20:09Thames Valley police immediately launched an investigation into the serious assault.
20:15Fibres, hairs and other samples found on the victim's clothes were sent for examination.
20:20But in 1986, forensic techniques were limited.
20:24They analysed them as best they could, but obviously, you know, DNA profiling wasn't a thing back then.
20:31So they would have kept all of that evidence.
20:34There were witness statements, but they just hit dead end after dead end after dead end.
20:41The police made public appeals for information.
20:44We'd like to hear from people who were in the area of the Holbeck Flats, where this little girl was
20:49playing, at about 6pm last night.
20:53But the young girl's attacker seemed to have vanished.
20:56And the case went cold for the next 20 years.
21:01Without the scientific breakthroughs we've had since, they were handicapped.
21:05And, you know, massive disappointment that one of the most high-profile cases that Thames Valley police had at that
21:11time, they couldn't solve.
21:14But police remained determined to catch the attacker.
21:17And in 2008, the major crime review team reopened the case.
21:23This time with the help of modern forensics and scientist Andrew Parry.
21:28He specialises in cold cases involving murder or sexual assault.
21:33And it was about the time that most police forces were starting to look at their undetected cases.
21:40This was primarily due to the advances in DNA technology.
21:44So over the years, the technique had improved and we could get DNA profiles from smaller and smaller samples.
21:51Andrew was given a case file which included a report written 22 years previously by the original forensic scientist.
22:00It offered a possible line of inquiry.
22:03He had noted that there was body fluid staining on the undergarment worn by the victim.
22:10Andrew hoped to retrieve a DNA sample from the clothing.
22:13Something impossible back in 1986.
22:17But when he contacted the National Archive to retrieve the evidence, there was bad news.
22:23There were no actual exhibits retained from the victim.
22:27It was not unusual for items to be returned to the victim or to be destroyed.
22:35However, one single piece of adhesive tape used to lift trace evidence from the victim's clothes had survived.
22:45This is a typical taping.
22:47It's a piece of sellotape that stuck down onto a clear acetate sheet.
22:53We had to fully concentrate on that sample and try to get a DNA profile from that.
22:59And if it didn't work, we had no other samples to go to.
23:03The taping now became their only hope.
23:08This is not the way we would normally recover biological material from an item.
23:13We would normally cut out the stain and extract that for DNA.
23:16So this makes it quite difficult to get a DNA profile from the sample.
23:21In order to recover the material that we're interested in, we cut up the tape into small pieces in order
23:28to remove any cellular material that may be present on the adhesive side of the tape.
23:33It's likely that only a small amount of material would be transferred to the taping.
23:38We'd have to get the material off the taping and we only had one shot at it.
23:43We only had one taping and that's all we could analyse in this case.
23:47The next step was to extract any microscopic traces of biological evidence.
23:53We take a moist cotton swab and rub that against the surface of the tape and the acetate.
23:59So we're trying to recover as much material as we can from the adhesive side of the tape.
24:05That sample is then processed using DNA profiling analysis.
24:09Incredibly, Andrew successfully extracted a tiny amount of DNA.
24:14So what we obtained from this sample was a mixed DNA profile.
24:18There was a high level male DNA component and there was also some lower level DNA.
24:24I requested that we get a DNA profile from the victim herself.
24:29We compared it to the result and found that she was present at a low level.
24:33So we were now left with this prominent male DNA profile in the sample.
24:38This was the first major breakthrough in two decades.
24:43This was very exciting to get such a strong male profile in the sample because this potentially could lead us
24:48to identifying the offender.
24:51By now, in 2008, a huge national database had been established, holding millions of DNA profiles.
25:00They knew there were likely to be other victims and if other victims had come forward, then they may be
25:05able to get a hit on the DNA database.
25:07We loaded this profile against the national DNA database, but we got no matches.
25:13This could indicate that he has not been arrested in relation to any crime.
25:17Or if he was involved in any crime, then no DNA profile was obtained.
25:22The attacker was still evading justice.
25:26But with his profile now on the national database, detectives were confident he would one day be caught.
25:33We knew that the DNA profile would sit there waiting and in the event that that offender is arrested or
25:40involved in any other crime, it's likely that a sample will be taken from him.
25:44They ran the DNA through every single year, no match, no match, no match, no match.
25:51Until ping, the email into the inbox, bingo.
25:57The cold case team were, they couldn't believe it.
26:01Finally, they got a name.
26:04Robert Frid lived in Farnborough, Hampshire.
26:07In September 2021, aged 76, he had been sentenced to 12 years in prison for a separate case of sexual
26:16offences against children.
26:17His DNA was taken and uploaded into the police database.
26:23That now clearly linked him to the 1986 attack in Bracknell.
26:28The DNA evidence was in the order of a billion times more likely if the DNA originated from Robert Frid
26:35rather than if it had come from some other unknown person.
26:41Frid was in jail when he was interviewed by the Thames Valley cold case team.
26:45Did you have any connections to Bracknell at all?
26:48No problem.
26:50He refused to cooperate, but the DNA evidence against him was solid.
26:56And at Red and Crown Court in January 2023, he pleaded guilty to the kidnap and sexual assault of the
27:03girl in 1986.
27:05A serial paedophile has been sentenced to another ten years in prison for kidnapping a three-year-old girl in
27:12Berkshire.
27:13After Frid's conviction, Nikki interviewed the victim as an adult.
27:18The memories from inside the van, it's as if I'm watching it happen to someone else.
27:24A child's memory should be happy ones.
27:27And for her, she's just got this vivid video, you know, playing in her head.
27:32Every parent's worst nightmare.
27:34The only reason that he's been brought to justice and convicted was because somebody spoke out.
27:41Therefore, he was arrested, he was charged.
27:45His DNA was then in the database and it matched the crime from 36 years ago.
27:50It's very satisfying to eventually get a match to the DNA profile to help resolve the case, solve it for
27:58the police and solve it for the victim and their family.
28:05In both of these cases, the turning point came from expert investigation.
28:10When the stakes are high, it's science and expertise that brings the truth into focus and ultimately helps deliver justice
28:17for the victims.
28:33To be continued...
28:44Transcription by CastingWords
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