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Expert Witness - Season 5 Episode 5 - Cold Case Convictions engsub watchfull🍿🍿 Secret Engagement
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00:00In this program, an execution-style murder forces a fiber expert to stretch the boundaries of his field.
00:08We pursued these fiber populations to a level which really pushed the limit.
00:16And a forensic scientist finds the crucial DNA evidence that sets a wrongly convicted man free.
00:23This was something of a bombshell. This was now a proper miscarriage of justice.
00:40Welcome to Expert Witness, the series where we reveal how science helps solve some of the UK's toughest criminal investigations.
00:56Redding, Berkshire. The body of 31-year-old father of two, David Watkins, is found face-down in remote woodland.
01:05He's been shot in the back of the head in an execution-style killing.
01:10The murder of David Watkins led to an investigation that spanned more than a quarter of a century.
01:17Senior BBC correspondent Seema Kotecha took an interest in the case.
01:21He was described by his wife as a very caring man.
01:25He had a job as a delivery driver, a part-time job, but to make more money, he was also
01:31dealing cannabis.
01:33On the 14th of January 1993, David told his friend he was meeting a man called Drew to do a
01:41drug deal.
01:42The following day, David's lifeless body was spotted by a motorist in a clearing on Sears Farm Lane, Pingwood.
01:49He had been shot in the back of the head, one shotgun wound, according to a pathologist who studied the
01:57body at the scene.
01:58He was made to kneel down, at least that's what it looked like, in an execution style of murder.
02:05The friend told detectives David had several thousand pounds in his possession when he was lured to his death.
02:12The following day, police arrested a man named Andrew Everson for an unrelated offence in Crowthorne, just 14 miles from
02:21where David was found.
02:23They soon suspected he might be Drew.
02:26They found more than £3,000 on him in a shower bag.
02:30When they looked into David's murder, they found that there were fingerprints, his fingerprints, on some of the money that
02:39Everson had.
02:42Police suspected Everson drove David into the woods in his car, took the money and callously shot him in the
02:49back of the head.
02:52Everson from Weymouth was known to police for having committed numerous offences, including GBH, drug dealing and burglary.
03:00But now, he was the prime suspect in a murder investigation.
03:04When Everson was questioned about David's murder, he denied being with him on the night it happened.
03:10In fact, he said he'd never been in his car and he was actually at a snooker club with a
03:16friend on that evening.
03:18Police wanted to establish whether David Watkins could have been in Andrew Everson's car, a Peugeot 309.
03:26The car and the victim's clothes were forensically examined and numerous fibres were discovered.
03:3139 of the fibres found on Watkins' clothes matched that Peugeot.
03:38Because of that, investigators concluded that Watkins had in fact been in that car.
03:46The case against Everson was then further strengthened when his girlfriend made a statement saying he'd confessed to the murder.
03:54John Price KC was the prosecuting barrister.
03:59He had confessed to her that he was the person who had shot David Watkins.
04:06The prosecution had direct evidence of guilt.
04:10The defendant has told someone that he did it.
04:14Everson was charged with murder, but the witness statement was not a smoking gun.
04:21And at his trial, held at Redding Crown Court on January the 31st, 1994, he chose to plead not guilty.
04:29The prosecution thought they had a strong case.
04:31They had two crucial bits of evidence.
04:34They'd found those specific fibres that linked to the car that Everson was allegedly driving.
04:40And they also had the confession.
04:44Confessions can be very powerful, direct evidence.
04:49But equally, the history books, the legal history books, are full of examples of false, unreliable and untruthful confessions.
05:01Everson's defence team cast doubt on the testimony of his girlfriend.
05:06Prosecutors turned instead to the forensic fibre evidence, but it left a hole in their case.
05:12The fibre work that was done at the time was able to demonstrate that the fibres most likely came from
05:19a vehicle of the type that Mr Everson used.
05:23But it was not so specific as to enable it to be demonstrated that it was his vehicle of that
05:30type.
05:31Within the United Kingdom, there would have been approximately between 4,000 and 5,000 vehicles that were potential sources
05:40of the fibres which had been recovered from Mr Watkins' clothes.
05:46The defence stated that David had actually been in a similar car to the one that Everson was driving just
05:53a month prior to his death.
05:55So, the fibre evidence could show it was a Peugeot, but it couldn't show that it was Mr Everson's Peugeot.
06:05The prosecution case had collapsed. Everson was found not guilty.
06:11The family of David Watkins was absolutely devastated that Everson could now walk free.
06:19And the police still had no doubt that he was guilty of Watkins' murder.
06:27At the time, double jeopardy laws meant he couldn't be tried twice for the same offence.
06:33If Everson was guilty, he got away with murder.
06:38As things stood in 1994 when Andrew Everson was acquitted of murder,
06:44there was no prospect whatever of prosecuting him again for that offence.
06:51You could not try a man twice for the same crime.
06:58The case went cold.
07:00But in 2005, the double jeopardy law was reformed in England and Wales.
07:06Acquittals for serious crimes could now be retried if new and compelling evidence was uncovered.
07:14Nearly two decades after the murder, police reopened the case.
07:18They remained convinced that the fibres found on the victim's clothing came from the car seat in Everson's Peugeot.
07:26What they were not able to do using the techniques that were available in 1993 and 1994 was to prove
07:34it.
07:35But like many other areas of forensic science, techniques are continually improving.
07:45The whole case now hinged on whether those new techniques could give them the proof they needed.
07:51So they enlisted one of the UK's leading fibre forensic experts, Tiernan Coyle.
08:00I was instructed to review the fibre evidence from 1993 with a view to understanding whether there were any new
08:10techniques
08:11or new knowledge that I could bring to bear on the investigation.
08:17Tiernan began by re-examining the fibres taken from Everson's car seats and found something that could turn this case
08:25on its head.
08:26Those seats were covered in hundreds of red polyester fibres that weren't part of the construction of the seat.
08:35So something had been in contact with the seats in Andrew Everson's vehicle that was transferring red polyester fibres in
08:42huge numbers.
08:44Something habitual maybe, something that was worn all the time, maybe it could have been a blanket or anything.
08:49The fibres had come from an unknown source, but that didn't matter.
08:54If they were present on David Watkins' clothing and the car seats, then they would prove that Watkins had been
09:00in Everson's car and not just any Peugeot 309.
09:05They provided a target then to look for those red polyester fibres on the victim's clothing.
09:12Tiernan used a highly advanced technique called spectroscopy to identify and compare the red fibres.
09:19Back in the 90s, the concept of using fibre populations that we don't have a source for would have been
09:29unusual.
09:30Even if the forensic experts in the original case had thought to use the loose fibres on Everson's car seats
09:37as evidence,
09:38there were hard practical limits on what they could have achieved at the time.
09:42The way in which I did it using spectroscopy and creating the databases, the level of computer equipment just wasn't
09:51available in the 90s.
09:52They didn't have the tools which you'd be able to perform it.
09:56It's like Leonardo da Vinci imagining the helicopter. It doesn't make him any more likely to fly in one.
10:03Using these state-of-the-art identification techniques, Tiernan found exactly the same red fibres on David Watkins' clothes.
10:11And there was more to come.
10:14Including the red polyester fibre populations, we found five different fibre populations
10:19that linked the interior of Andrew Everson's vehicle to the clothing of David Watkins.
10:25It really was a significant improvement in the fibre evidence.
10:32As well as definitively connecting David to Everson's specific car, advances in fibre analysis also allowed Tiernan to put a
10:40timescale
10:41on how long after leaving the vehicle those fibres might have stayed on his clothes.
10:46The science behind what we call persistence of fibres is really, really strong.
10:51We know an awful lot about how fibres persist once they are transferred onto something.
10:57In this case, the red fibres on the victim's clothing would have fallen off over a period of time.
11:03The fibre populations that we found on David Watkins were always in low numbers.
11:10Twos and threes, fours and fives.
11:13This allowed Tiernan to estimate how long after leaving the car, David was murdered.
11:20To find Annie at all on David Watkins after he left this vehicle, it must be within a period of
11:27zero to four hours.
11:29He was able to say in this case not only that there was an unusual population of fibres
11:40both on the upholstery of the car and on Mr Watkins' clothing,
11:46he was also able to say that it would only have survived on Mr Watkins' clothing,
11:55all things being equal, Mr Watkins moving about and so on and so forth,
12:00for a very short time.
12:04This was the big breakthrough that investigators needed.
12:08In 2015, Andrew Everson was re-arrested and questioned.
12:13He continued to protest his innocence.
12:17Everson had always claimed he'd never met with David,
12:20but presented with the new forensic evidence, he changed his story.
12:24Andrew Everson decided, contrary to the advice that he was given,
12:29to answer the police questions.
12:31He admitted that he had met with David Watkins on the night that David Watkins had died,
12:37that it was for the purpose of the buying and selling of cannabis.
12:42The only association I had with him was to send him a bit of drugs and that was it.
12:47He still maintained that he wasn't the killer,
12:50but it was a very significant change of account.
12:55His alibi was now cast in doubt because the prosecutors were asking
13:00if he had lied about all of the other stuff, perhaps he was lying again.
13:04And as events were to turn out, that proved to be a very, very serious mistake.
13:14The new forensic evidence and the fact that Everson was now saying
13:19that he had actually seen David Watkins the day he was murdered
13:23was enough for the Court of Appeal to order a retrial.
13:28In March 2019, 26 years after David Watkins was murdered,
13:34Everson's retrial was held at Redding Crown Court.
13:37John Price KC led the prosecution.
13:40If the fibre evidence had not been produced and had not been obtained,
13:46the trial in 2019 would never have taken place.
13:51The new evidence was enough to convince the jury.
13:55And they unanimously found Everson guilty of murder.
13:59A man who carried out an execution-style killing on a cannabis dealer
14:03and thought he'd got away with murder has today been jailed for 27 years.
14:08I met Mr Watkins' family at court on the day that Mr Everson was sentenced.
14:12All these years later, they were very glad that justice had been done.
14:21Today, the two- and one-year-old sons, David Watkins, left behind.
14:25Now, both young men flanked his widow as his killer was jailed.
14:29Murder kills somebody, but it devastates families.
14:34The forensic evidence, second time round, played a massive part in this conviction
14:39because the forensic expert was able to put a timeline on what happened and when.
14:45And that really forced Everson's hand to change his story.
14:50What I loved about this case was that it really showcases and highlights
14:55how valuable forensic fibre evidence can be.
14:58We pursued these fibre populations to a level which really pushed the limits
15:05of our understanding and knowledge of forensic fibre examination.
15:18Strangely, it's not unusual for people to confess the crimes they didn't commit.
15:22In our next case, one man's 1979 confession to murder put him in jail for decades.
15:29But can a forensic science consultant, using cutting-edge familial DNA,
15:35prove his innocence and identify the real killer?
15:45Southampton, the 5th of December, 1979.
15:4922-year-old Teresa De Simone was found dead in her car.
15:54The case led to one of the most serious miscarriages of justice in English history.
16:00Martin Chudley was a crime scene manager on the team
16:03that reinvestigated Teresa's murder 30 years later.
16:07Teresa's been out with her friend in her friend's car,
16:10leaving here at about 11 o'clock,
16:13coming back some two hours later after they'd been to the discotheque.
16:18Teresa had left her car behind the Tom Tackle pub,
16:21where she worked as a barmaid.
16:22A friend would have driven up this street
16:24and parked in through those gates over there
16:27into the car park of the Tom Tackle pub,
16:30leaving Teresa to walk a few short yards to get into her own car.
16:35The next morning, the pub landlord saw Teresa's car still parked outside.
16:40He approached the vehicle and found Teresa lying on the back seat,
16:44lifeless and semi-naked.
16:47The pathology reports confirm that she'd been raped
16:50and strangled with her seatbelt.
16:53Amongst the samples that would have been collected from the scene
16:55were hair samples, fibre samples and sexual swabs to look for semen.
17:02These would have all been sent to the laboratory for testing
17:05and if any blood and or semen was found,
17:09they would have been examined for blood grouping
17:12and it was found that the offender had an unusual blood group.
17:15The murder shot the local community
17:18and investigators were under intense public pressure to catch the killer.
17:23James Park is a retired detective who worked on the cold case review team.
17:28The science at the time couldn't be definitive in identifying a suspect.
17:34So really it was shoe leather work from detectives at the time,
17:39old-fashioned detective work as we say,
17:42and using the media releases to get people to come forward.
17:48A reconstruction of the events leading to Teresa's murder were televised
17:52as police tried to jog people's memories about what they may have seen that night.
17:58Seven separate people came forward to confess,
18:01all claiming they were the one who killed Teresa.
18:05Kerry Danes is a forensic psychologist who's familiar with the case.
18:10Wherever you get a high-profile killing,
18:13you will usually get people voluntarily saying to the police,
18:17it was me, I did it.
18:18And there are various reasons for that.
18:21Now, the most common reason for a voluntary false confession
18:25is that somebody is mentally unwell.
18:28But there are those that like to become involved in police investigations
18:35simply for the attention,
18:37or it might be somebody who feels that they have guilt
18:41about other things that they are carrying.
18:45Sean Hodgson was a petty thief from Durham.
18:48He had been arrested for car theft the day after Teresa's murder.
18:52Now, a year later and in prison,
18:55he confessed to killing a woman outside the Tom Tackle pub in Southampton.
19:00Sean gave detail of the scene,
19:03of the way Teresa was dressed,
19:07of her lack of clothing,
19:09of her jewellery,
19:10of the vehicle,
19:11that made them feel that he probably was the offender.
19:18When detectives compared Hodgson's blood type
19:21to the unusual blood type found at the scene,
19:23it was a match.
19:26Hodgson was tried for Teresa's murder in February 1982,
19:30but at the trial he retracted his confession claiming he was a pathological liar.
19:36Hodgson has been getting an awful lot of attention
19:40due to the fact that he is the number one suspect
19:45in the murder of Teresa DeSimone.
19:48But when it comes to him being charged and actually having to face a jury,
19:54then he starts to retract his confession.
19:58I suppose police are thinking,
20:00well, this is somebody who's trying to evade justice.
20:04The jury thought so too.
20:06They found Hodgson guilty and he was sentenced to life in prison.
20:11But he continued to protest his innocence.
20:14Then 26 years later,
20:16in 2008,
20:18he saw an ad for a law firm specialising in miscarriages of justice.
20:23He answered one of those adverts.
20:26The solicitors then came to Hampshire Police,
20:29where I was working on the review team at the time,
20:32and said to us,
20:35you know,
20:36chaps,
20:36with the event of DNA and scientific improvements,
20:42can you have another look at this, please?
20:45Police agreed to review the case
20:47and contacted expert witness and forensic science consultant,
20:51Dr Colin Dark.
20:53They wanted to know whether modern DNA testing
20:56could confirm Hodgson's guilt
20:58or finally exonerate him.
21:00When I was briefed by the police,
21:02they had very little of their own material.
21:04So my task was to check with our archives.
21:08For Colin,
21:09the critical pieces of evidence to locate
21:11were the intimate swabs taken from Teresa's body.
21:15These were the only hope for finding her killer's DNA.
21:19But there was a strong chance that after 30 years,
21:22they had been destroyed.
21:24So the first thing I did was to contact the National Archive
21:28and a couple of days later,
21:30a large crate arrived at my desk.
21:35The case had been considered sold for decades
21:38and the evidence was on the verge of being destroyed
21:40to make room in the archive.
21:43This was the crate that was going to be sent away,
21:46but we'd got it.
21:48So I opened the crate up and I could see on top
21:51were all the old case files.
21:53Got to the bottom of the box
21:55and to my complete surprise,
21:58were the intimate swabs still in their evidence bags?
22:03Colin was concerned that the swabs may not provide
22:05the answers police were hoping for.
22:07They'd been kept in dry storage conditions,
22:12low temperature, but not frozen.
22:15So I knew that there was a good chance
22:18that it could completely fail.
22:21The sample was sent off for testing
22:23and against the odds,
22:24it came back with a full DNA profile.
22:27The question was,
22:28did it match Sean Hodgson?
22:31The answer was no.
22:34This was something of a bombshell.
22:36This was now a miscarriage,
22:37a proper miscarriage of justice.
22:39Sean Hodgson's conviction was quashed
22:42and he left court a free man.
22:44Gives away, sir.
22:46Today, Sean Hodgson walked free
22:47from the court of appeal
22:49after 27 years behind bars,
22:52almost half his life.
22:54Ecstatic.
22:55Created to be free again.
22:58Did you ever think this day would come?
23:00No.
23:03Police had proof who hadn't killed Teresa DeSimone.
23:07Now they needed to figure out who had.
23:10There was certainly a shock.
23:12For us,
23:13that he'd first of all spent 27 years in prison
23:17for something he didn't do.
23:19But worse than that, I guess,
23:21that Teresa's murder
23:22hadn't received the justice that it deserved.
23:27Once again, police turned to Colin Dark.
23:31He cross-referenced the new DNA profile
23:34with the National DNA Database.
23:36But there were no matches.
23:38So he turned instead to checking
23:40for familial DNA
23:41to try and identify relatives of the killer.
23:45So one of the aspects of familial DNA searching
23:48is using the principle
23:49that criminality runs in families.
23:54So what you're hoping for when you're doing a familial search
23:57is that someone in that family
24:01has committed a crime of some sort,
24:03it can be a petty crime or it can be a serious crime,
24:07and that's got them on to the database.
24:10Because a sibling will have very similar DNA
24:13because they're getting it from the same parents.
24:16You provide those names to the police
24:19and they will then look to see
24:21if they have relatives still alive
24:23who can be investigated.
24:25So when we got the results back
24:28from the familial search,
24:30we had a partial result
24:31against a female who was on the database,
24:36which we believed would be
24:38the sister of, potentially, of our offender.
24:43The woman's surname was Lace,
24:45and she was the sister of David Lace,
24:47a convicted burglar who lived in Portsmouth
24:49at the time of Teresa's murder.
24:52Incredibly, he was one of the seven men
24:54who originally confessed to the crime
24:57following the public appeals in 1979.
25:01In looking back at his history,
25:04we found that his admission was made in 1983
25:07when he was being investigated
25:08for a robbery at a post office
25:11for which he was convicted
25:14and sent to Dartmoor Prison in 1983.
25:19He was released from prison in 1987
25:23and subsequently,
25:25on the 8th, 9th of December that year, 1988,
25:30he committed suicide in Brixham.
25:34Familial DNA alone was not enough
25:37to prove Lace was the killer.
25:39Colin needed a sample of Lace's actual DNA
25:42to compare to samples from the scene of the crime.
25:45So the next stage now is to see
25:48whether we could obtain a sample for David Lace.
25:51And he'd been buried,
25:53so the next step was to get an exhumation order.
25:56It's not an easy process.
25:59You have to obtain lots of permissions.
26:03But everyone, I think, recognised
26:05the urgency to do this.
26:09Disturbing the dead to solve a 30-year-old murder
26:12that led to one of the worst miscarriages of justice
26:15in English legal history.
26:16At a Portsmouth graveyard,
26:18police have exhumed the body of a new prime suspect
26:20for the murder in 1979 of Teresa de Simone.
26:24The body itself there was exhumed.
26:27Samples were taken, the usual samples from a femur
26:30and from a tooth.
26:32And full DNA profiles were obtained.
26:35And it was confirmed that this was a match to David Lace
26:38and he was indeed the killer.
26:42David Lace was just 17
26:43when he raped and murdered Teresa de Simone.
26:46It's difficult to know or to get into the brain of Mr Lace
26:50as to exactly what he did or why he did it.
26:52However, it's clear that he was in the area at the time,
26:56he'd walked some distance
26:57and would have been in the car park in the dark.
27:00He saw Teresa suddenly come to the car.
27:02Whether it's initially an offence of robbery that's gone wrong,
27:06but it was certainly sexually motivated
27:08and, in my view, opportunistic.
27:13Police believe that once Teresa had been murdered,
27:17Sean Hodgson happened upon her in the car.
27:20The CPS confirmed that had David Lace still been alive,
27:24the evidence against him would have been sufficient
27:26to warrant his prosecution.
27:29None of this would have been possible
27:31without the advancements in forensics
27:33and Colin's vital work on the cold case review.
27:37Scientists like Colin Dark
27:38have been instrumental in pushing the boundaries of science
27:43to be able to examine the DNA,
27:45to be able to give us the answers to these cases.
27:47And they can't be praised highly enough, in my view.
27:50This case gave me a lot of personal satisfaction.
27:52It shows the power of DNA.
27:54It could exonerate an innocent person
27:57as well as finding the guilty party.
28:06These stories highlight the vital work of expert witnesses.
28:10Working behind the scenes,
28:11these experts can challenge narratives,
28:13confirm suspicions,
28:15and ultimately guide the course of justice.
28:44This is a production of the CPS.
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