“Catching the Midlands Ripper” S03E09 – Murder Documentary UK 2024

After the bodies of two sex workers were found just months apart in Leicestershire, one woman’s bravery held the key to identifying their killer when the police investigation started to go cold

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In every murder there are Clues vital evidence that points to who the Killer is and how they killed it wasn’t a normal crime scene forensics were crucial every contact leaves a trace it’s down to detectives crime scene investigators and forensic experts to piece those Clues together it’s like

Trying to do a jigsaw when you haven’t got the picture on the box using Cutting Edge techniques and the power of science his jeans had the profile of the crime scene on them I know that he had knelt down on the soil to convict The Killers we’ve got to find him and catch

Him he’s probably the most dangerous person I’ve prosecuted and bring Justice to the victims she never ever coming home she’ll never be forgotten ever in this episode a double murder shatters the piece of the English Countryside the bodies were dumped so close together both of them were

Strangled I just didn’t feel it was a coincidence a baby daughter is left without a mother no one can replace your two pictures that’s all I have of her in my life detectives determined to uncover the truth when you don’t know who the person is You’ got no place to start they had

No idea who she was and a DNA discovery that had to be kept Under Wraps I was very clear that no one needs to know about this the most important thing was that this didn’t dribble out across the force in The Wider Community this is forensics catching the Killer Every time I come back here it’s always a bit chilling really I actually cycle on this Lane sometimes with friends and when I come back here I kind of always go back to December 93 and just wonder you know what was Earth was going on why did

Happen this is the lane leading out of swinford it’s narrow single track Lane places like leerer probably average about 12 murders a year most of them were in the city and related to domestic violence Etc having one in the county like this in a village is unheard of in December 1993 a woman exercising her horses on a quiet Road near the village of swinford

In rural leerer made a terrible Discovery the body of a missing woman called same Paul this is where same was found um she was deep in the ditch we can’t see into the ditch now but it was because the lady was on a horse and a high that she

Was able to look down and see what she saw she thought it was a mannequin because actually and tragically SE was virtually naked there’s no question that she’d been in there a long time the body had been washed clean completely forensically and she could have easily

Been there 2 or 3 weeks but covered CED at times with water covered with times with snow in that December M creeden was a detective inspector for lestershire police at the time I did come to the scene on more than one occasion cuz for me it was important to understand everything about

The location what had happened and try and start to try and think like the offender might think why would he come here and why would he pick this Lane of any Lane whoever’s doing it is seeking to hide a body um and this is not displaying a trophy look what I’ve done

This is a deliberate attempt to secrete it because very few people use this road it’s very very hidden same Paul wasn’t from leerer she came from the West Midlands and police discovered she supplemented her benefits with occasional spells of sex work Pete Priestley was a detective in leester

Police same Paul 20-year-old lady um lived with her boyfriend in Birmingham on the night that she was last seen thir of December 93 she uh traveled by taxi to the bourel heath area of um Birmingham which is a known red light district I believe she was an occasional prostitute she wasn’t massively well known you could almost say the perfect

Victim and the next day her boyfriend who lived with her went and reported a missing to the police and the West Midland started what is known as a missing personal inquiry so’s loved one’s worst fears were confirmed when the missing person report was quickly matched to the awful find on that quiet Rural

Road there’s something called the best chance Rule and in this case the best chance to investigate the murder sat with the West Midlands police because that’s where SE lived that’s where she worked that’s where her family Associates were and so West bid police took Prime for the investigation

Immediately so West Midlands were to run the same pool inquiry but leerer police were soon facing another murder case on their Beat 700 a.m. on the 3rd of March 1994 under dog Walker was confronted by a shocking sight on another of Leer’s quiet country lanes it was the body of a woman later identified as Tracy Turner who was from Staffordshire and who was also a sex

Worker so this is bit as well um not far from swinford where Soo was left it’s just near lutterworth but very close to the M1 M6 the whole Motorway network of the East Midland west mid coming together this is where Tracy was found back in March 94 it’s a quiet single Lane Road leads to Nowhere big wide grass fge her body was found dumped by the side of the road Tracy was naked she’d been strangled um there were marks in her back suggesting that the killer had killed her from behind maybe with a ligature there were certainly

Small marks where she’d been stabbed and snicked with a knife was signs that she’ been dragged she must have been brought here by a vehicle and just by the side of her were the tie marks in the mud which obviously were important evidence in the Investigation both the murders of so and Tracy they weren’t just brutal they sought to humiliate and degrade the victim by stealing everything from them personal effects in trace’s case even her hearing aid so I think this was um thought through it was deliberate it was callous but thoughts about the Killer’s

Mentality weren’t the top priority you know the important thing is they’re treated forensically analytically as crime scenes and that’s where really we should be and the speculation as to why there why here why this is secondary to collecting evidence and trying to prove the case in the case of Tracy all those

Years ago it was a difficult scene but there were opportunities certainly the tire marks uh they were preserved orbe the weather was appalling but the fact that she was stripped naked took away many of the contact opportunities that forensic science gives us coming back to these sites is a bit

Eerie because we’re here on a beautiful summer’s day we can hear birds we can hear traffic in the distance and we look at Countryside they were very different 30 years ago these were murder sites um where women were deposited after having been abducted raped and murdered and it looked like these could

Be lengthy inquiries both cases seem to be stranger murders notoriously the most difficult to Detect stranger murder is classed as a Kate murder and was back in that at that time normally people get murdered are murdered by people they know and anything that appears to be a stranger murder is clearly more difficult to investigate especially cross borders you don’t know where to start

And if you look at the victim and then look at Associates friends family workmates colleagues and you eliminate all them then you start going into that stranger area where you end up looking at really bad people whether it was one killer or two it was clear from the outset that

Forensics would be the key to solving two murders which have brought tragedy to the usually benign leerer Countryside March 1994 two women had been murdered and their bodies dumped in quiet country lanes in leerer over a period of 3 months Birmingham woman SEO Paul and Tracy Turner who was from Staffordshire

Had both been involved in sex work Mike Dolan covered the case for Central TV news starting at the location where SEO was found it would not have been an area that I would have regularly gone to because it’s so quiet this is a rural part of leerer not a lot L happens

There both um Tracy and SEO were left in very small villages in South leerer where there’s hardly any crime that alone violent crime and there was really real concern and shock at the time it made it scary for other people they weren’t sure whether this man would strike

Again SEO Paul was murdered in December 1993 but murders don’t just impact on a Moment In Time the ripples spread out for years as viella Paul knows all too well I was 8 months at the time and I was living with my uh mom’s partner and

My mom he was babysitting me and uh he realized there was a time when she was due to come home and she didn’t come home home so he went and reported it to the police obviously it’s their duty of care they had to take him in for questioning

So I was placed into social care for a period of time and then after that I was given custody to my mom’s sister and she looked after me from I’d say probably about 9 months to 18 years old so had been bringing the L in tough Conditions looking back at what what my mom had back then was very minimal like there was no furniture in there like not even a set of Drawers there’s no cooker no fridge just maybe a kettle so I think day by day she was literally just living like that so so had drifted into prostitution to help provide for her young child I understand now what she did for a reason but seeing everything that she

Went through and what she’s had in her life it wasn’t very much I think given time things would have changed she would have maybe stood on her own feet I think everyone they make mistakes and they learn from their mistakes she never got to learn from her mistake just looking

At your photos you envision what she would have been like very chatty person loved her fashion very bossy that’s all you can go on now isn’t it just pictures two pictures that’s all I have of her in my I two pictures and some clothes which all have

The same smell of her which is nice I just hold them clothed and I think oh this is what you smell like you close your eyes you V in those clothes and she’s talking to me she says but don’t cry you got this se’s lifestyle and her occasional

Work in the red light area of Birmingham made detecting her murder even more difficult so forensics would be vital Orlando Elmhurst was the crime scene manager who attended the location where SEO was found the normal procedure when you get to a major scene there’s sort of four or

Five main steps the first one is you have to preserve it or at least protect it the next one is to then record it the next thing is to actually uh get to the body and approach it so you then have to forensically clean your path to the

Body the body then needs to be removed and taken to a Mory and you really have to as fast as possible carry out a postmortem and then they can establish cause of death then obviously what one will do is then investigate the crime scene itself in a minute detail and

Collect as much forensic evidence as you can these are little little things that can give you Clues and hopefully identify who or who may not be responsible so’s body clothed only in a short white top seemed to have been there for some time she was taken away for a postmortem examination which which

Would help give Orlando’s team a steer on what to look for at the scene strangulation was was given as a prelimary cause of death we we knew at this stage we weren’t looking for anything like a knife or a gun or anything of that nature um but we were

Looking for potential things that could have caused strangulation that involved us on our hands and knees going through all the grass trying to see if there’s anything that may have been deposited but very little was found that could have been a associated with the incident seamos Keller had either been clever or lucky

There was no trace of who he might be from the forensics at the scene there was though more to go on at the Tracy Turner crime scene not least because police could pinpoint more accurately when the killer had dis exposed of her body at 5:00 in the morning a group of

People walked past the scene and she wasn’t there at 700 a.m. she was Orlando Elmhurst was again one of the first people at the crime scene when Tracy Turner’s Body was discovered it was very strange it was it was the only time I’ve ever had a sort

Of deja vu things were just so similar although the body wasn’t in a ditch it was l Ling on the roads side on the verge and it was a quiet Country Road out of the village and this is really weird this sort of thought I’ve been here

Before we could see that there were track marks tire marks leading up to the body so these meant that we had to start recovering those photographing them casting them and obviously uh recording where we’d got them at the postmortem it was fairly obvious that uh strangulation was a cause we could see a

A lure Mark around the throat and there were scratches under under the chin where presumably she was trying to prevent it happening there was one major issue there was nothing at the crime scene that could initially identify the victim they had no idea who she was in a conventional murder

Investigation the most important thing to understand is who the victim is their lifestyle their Associates their movements and that will often lead you towards the suspect when you don’t know who the person is You’ got no place to start and so they went to all fource missing from home records in case like

Sayo she’d been reported missing nothing nobody had reported her missing um and that was partially sad as well because you kind of think who is she is no missing her her fingerprints were taken and and Tracy had some convictions for prostitution and theft uh where she would have been fingerprinted and the

The national approach National Database was used and the fingerprints were matched up it took two weeks to do but that gave the identity of who she was and then from that leerer police were able to trace her mother and go and confirm sadly that it was her daughter been killed we discovered that

Tracy um was profoundly deaf she couldn’t hear um we also discovered that she didn’t have many friends she would often go to Motorway service stations where she would try to befriend Lorry drivers we believe that part of the reason that she was a sex worker was for Companionship inquiries soon revealed the last sighting of Tracy was at Hilton park services north of Birmingham a drive of over 50 mil from where her body was discovered things were Beginning to Look sort quite similar by the stage so we’ve got similar sort of deposition sites we’ve

Got um similar sort of victims and a similar sort of uh cause of death same o Paul was basically the body was dumped in the open Tracy Turner was dumped on the side of the road on a Verge it’s very similar and because they were so closely in proximity it was a

Logical conclusion that they would be connected a friend of mine was the superintendent who led the investigation into Tracy’s death Dave was strongly of the view that there was a link between the two murders and there are many similarities many cities the West Midlands police were of a cont view they

Didn’t want to link the investigations so two separate almost parallel inquiries were set up one run by West Midlands and one by Lester but the fears persisted that police in reality were chasing a serial killer 1994 two women had been killed same Paul and Tracy Turner were both found

Strangled in isolated country lanes in leerer the two murders weren’t being forly linked and there was no obvious motive for killing these two women who had both been connected to sex Work I know back at the time of the Yorkshire Ripper a lot of people were convinced that the case wasn’t treated as seriously because they were sex workers I never felt that about the case of same Paul and Tracy Turner I always believe that the officers who investigated those cases always took it

Seriously and were always determined to try to get to the bottom of who’d killed Them against a background of fear that a Midland’s Ripper might be killing prostitutes the investigation into SEO Paul was being run by West Midland’s police there was very little forensic evidence to go on but there had been a potential sighting by a woman near where so’s body was

Found she saw a brown for Sierra go down that lane swinford lane and she looked at the car and a couple of things stood out to her one was that there was a guy driving it a male driving it and the female passenger wasn’t in the passenger

Seat it was in the back seat behind him the second thing was mid December a cold month this lady was only wearing um a top a vest negl something very slight and the third as the car turned around the corner the body slumped slightly and she was of the opinion that this lady

Was Dead on that day she went home and told her family and her family um didn’t dismiss it completely but uh they certainly didn’t treat it seriously and so they watched the news that night and there was nothing on the news of any relevance so the whole thing was

Forgotten then weeks later when um SE had been found and there was big publicity with a picture of SEO she said to her family that’s her that’s the lady I saw that woman contacted the police and gave a statement and another potentially significant lead from a witness in

Birmingham could have been connected the witness had seen um a struggle taking place in the Boral Le area and a guy trying to drag a woman into a car she called the police and the vehicle she described as a brown vehicle and Remembered at least three numbers and letters from the registration

Number but the hunt for this Sierra peted out without Success the West Midlands case went cold very quickly They carried out their investigation it wasn’t lengthy and they concentrated particularly on se’s Partner at the time who lived with her and really looking at suspects in the borol heath area of which they identified no one as a mains

Suspect so the killer remained at large potentially free to strike again with few leads from the investigation into se’s murder could forensic evidence from Tracy provide clues to who killed the women fragments of yellow paint were on the body and there were some yellow paint when we went back to where the

Body was lying and those were recovered they were little Flex if they sort of broken off something there were quite a number of them um so there were obviously quite a lot of chips lying around where where she’d pick them up from as a passive sort of a

Transference but it was consistent with a car being resprayed or some kind of um car paint uh respray material it’s quite distinctive it’s a yellow color we thought at the time it might have something to do with the uh construction of the A14 which was just the south of

There and there’s almost like a a a moving Village of contractors moving along we thought perhaps it was someone there all these diggers and they’ve all got yellow paint perhaps but again that that that proved to be a sort of bit of a dead end so the yellow paint Flex were

Ultimately of no use but there was evidence of what vehicle Tracy’s killer may have been driving and it wasn’t a brown Sierra at the scene of Trace Turner’s murder there was time marks on the verge quite wide Verge specialist officers investigated that they could identify the type of

Tire the width of the tire the tread of the tire and then astoundingly they could even tell which car it would have been fitted to and experts believed that the tires were fitted to a citen bx19 and there seemed to be one potentially critical piece of forensic Evidence swabs taken from the scene of Tracy’s murder revealed the presence of seaman could this have been left behind by the killer we we’d got Seaman sample which meant that we were able to get a DNA profile um unfortunately it didn’t match anything on the DNA Database there were no hits whatsoever either on other crime scenes or on Suspects so then they started the challenge of okay where do we go and DNA people and who are they um which is really complicated so if if you have a murder take place in a village for example uh

Of 2 3,000 people you might decide to look at men age between age X and Y but because of where Tracy was found and because of the fact she’ been abducted from somewhere 60 Mi away on a Motorway service station where do you start your Troll and who do you go to

So leester police and the investigating team had to work out who we start to take DNA samples from as potential Suspects DNA trolls were taken near to Tracy’s place where she was left at that time the A14 was being built there was a huge site with a lot of workers there transient workers a lot of DNA profiles were taken and the case continued I say for a long long time um

And sadly in the end when you can’t do anymore you can’t do anymore and it Closed the killer of Tracy Turner had evaded one of the biggest manhunts in the history of lerer police but although the case went onto the back burner it was never completely shelved I remember talking to detec detectives in leerer uh about this case as part of a larger investigation into unsolved

Crimes and potential serial killers and so you’re clearly aware that they’ve not forgotten about these two women certainly the forensic evidence was retained and that was to prove crucial that DNA profile was put onto the national DNA database every person that was charged with an offense had

Their DNA taken and it was put on the database and all crime scene DNA profiles were also put on the database so we had a number of years where lots and lots of potential uh matches were getting put onto the database but again we we heard nothing it was just a matter

Of uh sitting and Waiting but then in March 1998 Orlando Elmhurst received the news he’d all but given up hope of ever receiving I was sitting in my office and I got a knock on the door and it was one of uh my administrative officers and they were holding a fact report which was a DNA

Hit um a DNA hit is effectively where a crime scene sample matches an individual and in this case the crime scene sample there was a reference number our reference number but it had the offense type and it was murder there had been a match to the DNA from

The Seaman found in the Tracy Turner case it was from a man accused of a rape in Western superare Orlando took the findings to Mick creeden who was now a detective superintendent for leester police he came to see me um excited and he said um we’ve got a breakthrough on

The Tracy turn murder and then told me about the fact there been a DNA hit from the DNA data base which was F fantastic and so immediately I started to think okay what does this mean what’s the implication I was very clear to Orlando that no one needs to know about this and

We kept it very tight the most important thing was that this didn’t dribble out across the force in The Wider Community maybe with defense listers because the obvious line of defense for a suspect would be I use prostitutes and that forensic intelligence is irrelevant cuz

I didn’t do the killing it was clear to me that this was going to significant investigation enormous investigation because I knew the linkage between same and Tracy um I knew whoever had done it was clearly a very evil individual with potential for more forensic science had reopened the

Door to investigating the murders of Tracy Turner and same Paul March 1998 and police had made a breakthrough in the same o Paul Tracy Turner murder investigations 4 years after the second murder that of Tracy a recent DNA sample on the National Database had been matched to a sample found on her Body there had been a rape in Somerset in December 97 DNA had been taken from the suspect the crime scen from Tracy Turner was on the database and this DNA gave a match so we suddenly from nowhere we had a name for the potential suspect for Tracy’s murder that name was Alan

Kite he was 33 years old and lived in Staffordshire at face value kite was immediately an obious VI candidate he was a part-time van driver who knew the motorway Network that connected the victims to the crime scenes and he was in custody charged with a serious sexual

Assault in December 97 he was living in a hostel in Western supermare he befriended a lady he took her out drinking uh they went back to the hospital he raped her at knife point he fell asleep briefly and she luckily managed to escape she went to see the

Warden of the hosel and the warden called the police so they arrested Alan kite um he denied the offense he claimed consensual sex but his DNA was taken and that’s what gave us the link to Tracy we have a now a strong suspect the mistake would be to Russian

Go and interview the suspect Paul pause everyone pause first thing I do was get a team together we set about essentially reading every single piece of paper every action from the system every statement every exhibit we went through and what we were looking for was lines of inquiry and anything that could

Potentially relate to Alan kite which of course we found in there because Alan kite was in the first Investigation on the original inquiry uh the Tracy Turner inquiry there was a a lady who worked at a um petrol station strike service station an area of Birmingham and she was suspicious about a man who came into the garage and told this lady that he was a reporter and she

Looked at him he didn’t look like a reporter and was highly suspicious of him the Apparently bogus journalist had asked questions about whether the murder victims have been seen in the service station the woman that was working there was really concerned about this took the vehicle number that was passed to the

Inst room in leerer who then did some work on it and they identified Alan kite at the time when they investigated it Alan kite was at Stafford um atmp he was actually serving in prison for I think theft offense they went to see him at the prison and he’s arrogant he’s plausible he’s

He’s really quite convincing and he said it wasn’t him it was a mistake and they left Him and a key piece of forensic evidence also linked kite to the Tracy Turner murder inquiry specialist forensic motor teams had identified the time marks at the crime scene belonged to a citon bx19 inquiries revealed kite was using a vehicle of this type in March 1994 links to se’s killing were less

Obvious but police were now forly linking the two murder cases a view shared by the Press Tracy Turner like SEO Paul was a sex worker I just didn’t feel it was a coincidence that the bodies were dumped so close together in a manner that was very similar and both of them were strangled

I’m not an investigator but it did feel like to me that they were connected and there was some evidence linking kite to so’s murder especially the woman who’d witnessed what may have been her abduction by a man in a brown car in birmingham’s red light

Area when I spoke to her um and took a statement they gained from her even four years later she remembered far more than was said in her initial statement and the key things were the color of the car vague description of kite and the fact that um she remembered certain parts of

Registration number and we could trace that vehicle to kite Alan kite was arrested in prison in connection with both murders and detectives prepared to question question him there was a clear strategy planned for the interview it was really important in this case that we let kite give his

Account and his explanation and don’t frontload him with our evidence some officers are too Keen to give all the evidence away at the start of Investigation when we looked at the the interviews that conducted over the the rape in Western supermare it was apparent that he was quite friendly with the interviewers and

Also quite pushy and quite confident and quite arrogant we did what we call a phase disclosure interview at that time it was it was pretty unusual number one you prepare secondly you engage with the individual thirdly you get an account from the individual fourthly you challenge the individual fifthly you evaluate

It was crucial that the Revelation that police had kite’s DNA was kept from him as long as possible I was really concerned that he’s just going to walk in and say do you know what guys I’ve sex with prostitutes regularly I have them for years and if there’s any anything

Forensic don’t look at me because I didn’t kill them that would have been problematic Pete Priestley started his interviews with kite on the 20th of May 1998 He answered lots and lots of questions a lot of useful stuff about what vehicles he was driving around the time and his movements around the time and it was almost indant when we asked him whether he had sex with Prostitutes you know me I don’t have sex with prostitutes almost how dare you that kind of attitude and then we get to the point at the end of the interview where we reveal the evidence in this case it was a one crucial one and the crucial one was the DNA

Hit he was visibly shocked he was stunned absolutely stunned didn’t see it coming never expected It ultimately kite was charged with both murderers MERS he was remanded in custody where Witnesses claim he made a shocking admission he was speaking to another prisoner there who um had been convicted

Of murder guy from Birmingham he told this guy that he had committed both those murders same o Paul and Trace Turner and other murders as well K also told an old school friend of his that he killed Six Women and including in those six women was same o Paul and Tracy Turner but when the court case started on the 28th of February 2000 kite pleaded not guilty he’d already been convicted of the rape in Western super mayor the previous year a fact that wasn’t revealed to the jury he was very calm he clearly was aware that his only way of getting off

This case this murder trial was to convince a jury that he was a decent man and that the murders had nothing to do with him he gave it a go it didn’t take a jury long to convict him when his history was read out to the court

Um it was upsetting for one female member of the jury particularly when they found that he was already serving a sentence for rape a significant horrific rape the judge at the time said it was clear that Alan kite despised the women you could tell by the way he discarded their bodies

Like they were rubbish um but the judge told him that he was the one who should be despised and he said he was clearly a very dangerous Man kite was sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum term of 25 years since then he’s been convicted of a further 11 offenses including the rape of a young boy in the 1980s he was given an additional sentence of 10 years and 8 months and please suspect he’s committed many more crimes including

Murder there’s no question that um had kite not been caught as a man in his mid to late 30s as evil as he is he’ have carried on lives have been saved by the fact that forensic science and the investigation and the jury managed to stop him but that’s too late for Vella

Paul whose mother was taken away from her when she was just 8 months Old no one no one can replace you moment it’s the person that brought you into this world and they’re not supposed to leave you and she’s left and now there’s no One i’ would say to my mom that I love her and no matter what mistake she makes or she ever needed help I’d be there for her cuz I know that’s what she did for me we would have Stu stuck it out for each other and we don’t never got a chance to

Have that conversation and I think as well maybe when she was in that position the altercation just leading up to the altercation with she’s probably thinking my child at home she’s going to need me she wants me and it’s hard to think of someone that young having to struggle like

That it was life was just taken from her and now it’s over I have to move on she’ always be remembered even though I’m not don’t know what she looks like H or like anything she likes I’ve built my own memory of her and that helps me today that keeps me Standing