Murder at the Wedding| Forensics: Catching the Killer – British Murder Documentary

Murder at the Wedding| Forensics: Catching the Killer – British Murder Documentary
Bite marks in a block of cheese hold the key to catching a killer when he helps himself to a snack after a home invasion.

Whenever there’s a murder it’s the job of detectives to find out who the Killer is and how they killed and often it’s forensic evidence which provides the clues each bit of information delivers that to the whole jigsaw I was able to test that sample uh

And I got a DNA profile there’s no doubt at all that forensics were absolutely crucial in this case in this series we shine a light on how Cutting Edge forensic techniques and the power of science were able to bring some of our most dangerous and Despicable Killers to

Justice this was such an unnatural crime it’s not a question of if he will kill again it’s a question of when he believed that he was invincible and and that nothing could stop him we’ll hear how some of the toughest and most disturbing crimes were solved thanks to

The tiniest fragments of evidence when you begin a forensic investigation you don’t know what you’re going to find the officer plunged his hand into loose soil and actually felt cold flesh from the type of insects that were around she’d been dead for at least 5 years and how

Even the most forensically aware of killers couldn’t beat the experts and hide their crimes you know if he comes out hav help somebody cuz he is a dangerous dangerous man in this episode a brutal Massac following a family wedding leaves three dead and communities living in fear was

Scary to think that was going to come back to this area who knows what he could have done a sadistic killer who taunted the police and vowed he would never be caught he started writing telling us that the police were no more than Boy Scouts uh they couldn’t catch

Him he was a Master of Disguise and the vital forensic evidence that would tie the triple murderer to the scene of the crime we also found uh cheese in the fridge that had bite marks in it um and have it examined by a forensic odontologist this is forensics catching the Killer I was actually in Wakefield with the regional crime Squad when I got the call from the head of CID to attend at door where there’ being a murder there was obviously going to be need for a major incident room to be set up and an investigation to be run from that

Location and so I came straight to [Applause] here the house itself is just on the left of here behind the lot of this foliage and it looks nothing like it did on the day that I attended when we were called to the incident you never know what you’re coming to so

I was always thinking what are the logistics of investigating this crime and how are we going to deal with it from this particular location in 1983 detective Chief Inspector Mick burdis was one of South yorkshire’s most experienced detectives but when he arrived at the scene in door

An affluent suburb on the outskirts of Sheffield he was greeted with a scene that he had never witnessed before when I arrived there will probably be a sergeant and and a couple of officers and then gradually scenes of crime officers arrived and and uh and then others

Came they would have found a horrendous scene really because there were the bodies of three people on the staircase itself there was the body of Basil who had been um attacked on the stairs his wife ail was in the downstairs bedroom and Richard the son he was in one of the bedrooms

Upstairs and called for the officers from the forensic science service and from our own crime scene officers uh to attend and deal with sealing the scene to prevent it from being contaminated by a too many feet and too many bodies inside um and and we effectively we’re preserving

Evidence one of the things you do when you arrive at a crime scene of this nature is to imagine the the the route that might have been taken what implements have been used what what else has happened in that scene itself so you try to build a case

In your mind of of what what actually took place these were extensive premises because almost every room in the house had been part used by the person responsible for the murder you can’t trample all over the place because you’ll damage and and Destroy valuable forensic evidence just hours after a family

Wedding at the house three victims had been viciously stabbed to death death while a fourth had been subjected to a sustained sexual assault but had been spared by the killer for Mick burdis and his team of officers the first task was to discover who the victims were and understand more about

Them Basel lner was the senior partner in his own law firm in Sheffield he was a solicor and a very well respected member of the public his wife AEL was a psychologist who worked with Sheffield Council child psychologist and again had many many clients in the in the Sheffield area and

Very highly regarded um and Richard uh the the son who was murdered was a barrister who worked in London and out of London Chambers and so they were all a very highly respected family and well-liked family there been a wedding here the daughter of the ler family and there have been

200 guests entertained in a a marquee uh that had been erected in the back Garden um and in the evening itself the the guests dispersed to the various places and uh it was well a happy time that was being celebrated by a family but one what has happened to turn

This joyous evening in a leafy City suburb into a blood bath a specialist forensic teams searched the scene for Vital Clues news of the murders began to spread back then I was a reporter at the Yorkshire post based up in leads and I remember on that day just a

As routine a day as new rooms ever are you know you get the call and there’s something happening in Sheffield we’re not entirely sure what it is just yet but um be ready then you find out that there’s certainly something major happening in Sheffield in the car drive down so that

You’re on the uh on the S and I came down here with a colleague with other journalists arriving from across the country Allan set to work on the story they were a prosperous comfortably off Family living in this really very pleasant house in in a very pleasant part of the City they must have had a pretty enjoyable lifestyle up until that day and then bang suddenly Everything Changes by the morning Yorkshire would be waking up to news of a multiple murder news that would stir horrific memories of another notorious killer the effect it had on South Yorkshire was remarkable because you’ve

Got to remember again that we we were less than two years after the arrest of Peter sliff the Yorkshire Ripper who of course was caught here in Sheffield it seemed to bring a lot of memories flooding back and overnight um women were being protected by menfolk who

Would insist on picking them up dropping them off escorting them to here uh taking them there so there was this uh almost overnight changing Behavior across the city you know you could you could tell it was happening uh and that was a direct result of all these memories recent memories being

Reawakened Allan was covering one of the biggest stories of his career while Mick and his team knew a vicious killer was still at large the race was on to find evidence that could reveal who they were looking for and where they might be Sheffield South Yorkshire the Steel City

A place that back in the 1980s kept police officers on their toes it was a busy industrial city I knew Sheffield because my grandparents live there uh my mother came from Sheffield the crimes were mainly what every other City uh would experience burdy assaults um Saturday nights and

Friday nights were busy nights but generally it was the type of crime that you would expecting any connation by 1983 Sheffield was gripped by Rising unemployment as its once Mighty steel industry declined but there remained pockets of affluence Untouched by the city’s economic woes one such place was the upper middle

Class suburb of D only 6 mil from the city center its Village atmosphere and location on The Fringe of the Peak District National Park attracted wealthy professionals you know adors this leafy Pleasant little suburb it’s not the sort of place that news happened but it was

Here on Door Road that the piece of suburban life was shattered with news of the triple murder of the Laker family just hours after a family wedding at their home now detectives had the task of finding out who had been in the house and whether any of them had information

That could help catch a killer at at the wedding there were 200 guests and there would be many other people involved in the catering the preparation for the wedding while detectives sought statements from guests crime scene examiners scoured the property for forensic clues for most police forces in the

Early 80s DNA analysis was more science fiction than forensic tool so the CSI team first relied on an oldfashioned technique fingerprints on the work toop in the kitchen was a a bottle of champagne and we were able to see that there was a fingerprints on that bottle uh and we needed to identify

Them they could easily have been part of the family but at the same time they could have been the Fingerprints of the Killer that fingerprint was a vital first clue but without a digitized National Database it could take days if if not weeks to match the print to known offenders however the CSI team had discovered another forensic clue to accompany the print but we also found uh cheese in the

Fridge and that cheese had bite marks in it and we were able to take that that cheese and have it examined by a forensic odontologist and even in 1983 detectives knew that the indents left in the cheese could reveal who it was Simon crew is an expert in forensic

Odontology from an analyzing the marks in the uh the bitten food the odontologist should be able to compose an idea of what sort of teeth Arrangements may have made them so they will identify marks that must have been made by adult teeth in fact with the cheese uh being such a

Better recording material than the skin that we’re used to you have got a wonderful three-dimensional um Mark uh of the passage of the teeth through the cheese so there’s much more information in a bitten piece of cheese than there is in a bruise on skin experts were quickly able to obtain

A clear impression of the teeth this along with the fingerprint could put a potential suspect at the scene of the murders but this forensic evidence wouldn’t be of any use until the police had a suspect in custody there is no Central database of teeth and there’s no

Magical way of looking anything up it has to be good oldfashioned detective work but the police will come up with somebody that they suspect must have made this Mark and then uh a comparison can be made between the teeth of the suspect and the marks in the

Food so the police had two important Clues but there was one more Discovery in an upstairs bedroom when we searched the house in the bed itself we were able to find what appeared to be an imprint of blood um and it appeared to have come through a bandage because you could see

The mesh uh in the way that the the blood was was was imprinted into the sheets on the bed in 1983 blood couldn’t be simply tested for DNA but the blood grouping could be determined forensic analysis of the bloody sheets would reveal a relatively rare combination of blood groups that

Only one in 50,000 in the UK shared all this information was fed into the murder incident room and within 24 hours of being live detectives hunting the killer received crucial intelligence I received a telephone call from a a a friend who had been one of my detectives

In Doncaster years earlier who was then the detective inspector at Selby police station and he told me that a man that they had charged with with the rape of a lady and that it was very likely the type of crime that he would be involved in the man’s name was Arthur

Hutchinson he’d been on the run for 3 and 1 half weeks and he was rapidly becoming the prime suspect but who was he Hutchinson had grown up on the tough out and Manor Estate in Harley poool as a young man he already had a bad reputation but that reputation wasn’t confined to the Northeast 7 8 mil away in the quaint North Yorkshire town of Skipton his nephew Dino also knew of his uncle’s background when I was younger me my dad made me aware that he did have this uh half brother Arthur and he was sort of bit of a black sheep of the family he was involved in petty crime uh bit of a local

Hardman as is often the case with families rumors swirled about the Outcast member there a story that M arur uh had a bit of a disagreement with one of his Elder sisters and think he stabbed her in that the hand uh whether that’s or tells you anything about the future

Arthur or whether it’s just sibling rivalry at its worst I’m not really sure Arthur soon appeared in Skipton looking for a fresh start but a row between the brothers over unpaid rent would escalate into violence I think they went down and there was sort of some major altercation

And uh my father demanded that he leave the house and evicted Him but anyway Arthur bore a bit of a grudge about this Dino’s dad evicted Arthur from the property but Arthur reacted in the most terrifying way possible by trying to kill him as he traveled home from from work on his motorcycle my father worked night shift at a local engineering company he used

To travel five or six miles on his motor bite yeah so this is the bridge where Arthur was waiting that evening to uh take a pot shot at me dad you’ve got a good line of vision here obviously pre-planned it probably see about 700 M there so he would have

Only been going at 20 25 miles an hour so’ had time to sort of take a wait for him to get closer took a shot luckily missed I think my father come off his bike case of attempted murder which he was imprisoned for found guilty he served 5 years but

By September 1983 Arthur Hutchinson was back in the Community a free man with a plan he’d read a an article in the national news about a woman in sby who had come into to some money and he decided to pay her a visit he had this ability to believe that he would be overbearingly attractive to these these ladies and

That every lady that he met would want to to sleep with him and and be with him uh and he was convinced that that that he would be able to persuade this woman to to to marry him and and and set up life to together but Hutchinson wasn’t a

Hopeless romantic before executing his plan he stopped outside the house lurked in the distance and watched when he was watching the house he saw that this lady had a a boyfriend so he decided that he would dig two graves in a field near to the house Hutchinson’s murderous plan never came

To fruition the boyfriend left but Hutchinson broke into the house and raped the woman incredibly the next morning she talked her way out of Hutchinson’s clutches and raised the alarm once again he was facing a lengthy prison sentence however this cunning criminal was determined to avoid another spell inside at any cost

Now the courtroom at Selby was immediately above the police station and it was being decorated and on the day that he was due to appear in court he was going to be moved from the cell area to an office in the building which was going to be used

As a temporary court but unfortunately he managed to find the staircase that led from the cell area at the police station up into the dock of the court and when he climbed up these stairs he he he found that there were decorators and and Scaffolding and he was able to

Escape from the dock um and crashed through uh a a big window uh and landed on some barb wire uh and then over on into a field the side of a railway line it was the classic Escape bid you know I want to go to the toilet and they

Put him in the the toilet and he escapes through the back window you know you you couldn’t have made that up really Hinson injured from the fall from the courtroom window had escaped amaz on the loose his leg was lacerated his trousers ripped but Sheffield was more than 60 M from

Selby could it really be him who had made his way to Door Road and killed the Lakers and and if so why in 1983 police in South Yorkshire were investigating the brutal and apparently random murder of the Lea Family the three victims had been stabbed to death in their own home after

Celebrating a family wedding while a fourth had been left clinging to life detectives had found numerous Clues at the scene including a fingerprint on a champagne bottle sent away for expert analysis they’d got a match a known offender Arthur Hutchinson but it wasn’t just the fingerprints that pointed to Arthur the

Survivor victim in the care of a hospital spoke to police and despite the harrowing experience was able to tell detectives what she knew she had such a traumatic experience of being handcuffed the physical and the the sexual assault on her and she’d been handcuffed overnight and she’d had to

Climb over her father’s body to get down the stairs so we had to be very very conscious of of the difficulty that that she was having mentally as well as as as physically and we assigned one of our uh female detectives to work with her and to be very close to her and

This was long before the days of family leas officers uh but it was the obvious thing to do remarkably she was able to provide a sketch artist with a detailed description of her attacker that was almost as lifelike as a photograph probably better even than a photograph

Because it it had detail in it uh that was really really lifelike it was an amazing picture um and we were very very successful and very very fortunate to have that sort of picture uh to as part of our investigation process that picture was released and they named him as the prime suspect

Indeed the only suspect with the usual warning not to approach him but if you see him or if you know anything call us call it in don’t approach him it was the community in Yorkshire that Mick wanted to speak to most of all Arthur Hutchinson was on the run and

Chances are he was still in the county good to see you again after all this time yeah and he turned to then Yorkshire post journalist Alan for help it was a strange inquiry it was different to to any of the other inquiries I never done well there was

That urgency wasn’t and the fact that you named him early on you were so confident that you got the right man well we knew we’d got the right man because of the incident that had happened in Selby and the escape from the from the Selby courtroom so we knew

We we were on to the right man you know he’s out there he’s on the loose that’s right nobody’s any idea what he might do now no quite of course when we published his name um that that really brought us major major problems because we got such

A huge response um hundreds of calls and hundreds of of letters that that we got into the incident room telling us that they’d actually seen him or thought they’d seen him um I mean many of them were were genuine but wrong some were not necessarily genuine

And and and caused a bit of problem but but in the main it was uh it was quite remarkable the number of calls we got yeah I think the the other big standout for the from this one was just the the she you know um evilness of

It phone calls did start coming into mix incident room people who thought they’d seen Arthur Hutchinson all across the north of England I think we were all you know police journalists everybody involved really we were all sort of on tender hooks you know waiting waiting uh half

Expecting there to be a call to say you know they found a body they found two bodies there’s been an incident in x town or you know y place I think one of the big police concerns while he was on the run about what his State of Mind was and what he

Might do out of a sense of desperation Arthur Hutchinson had vanished and his days on the Run turned into weeks and time was making him more confident even goding the officers chasing him in a letter to the Yorkshire post he started writing telling us that the police were no more

Than Boy Scouts uh they couldn’t catch him he was a Master of Disguise that was another phrase he used uh and he’d walked past the police several times disguised and they never spotted him and they were never going to catch him you it was all this taunting I’m the master

Uh I’m Invincible uh sort of stuff and he also created this identity for himself of the fox for us this was great because you know as a journalist normally you sit at the end of a police table a bit like the family dog waiting to be tossed a few

Scraps of information you know to keep you going for tomorrow morning’s paper and you know we were on tent hooks now we were waiting for the postman to arrive every morning because we were wondering would there be another letter from Arthur Hutchinson in fact the letters from Arthur Hutchinson to the Yorkshire post

Made this a unique investigation and from a journalist point of view that was just great because you know we got to open the letters before you’d even seen them so by the time you got your hands on them we knew what was in them and that’s not

The way it normally works normally we have a system where the police tell us what you want us to know but this time you know we we got full access it was great remember right I seem to remember we we we sent a motorcycle runner up to

Uh to collect the the the letters yeah it was uh it was quite a unique um experience I really to see these letters and to understand them and and and of course because he was on the Run we we were and didn’t we didn’t know where he

Was those letters gave little away to the detectives in the incident room they analyzed the postmarks attempted to learn where they’d been sent from but it didn’t lead them to his Hideout detectives knew that Hutchinson may stop at nothing and as the man had dragged on fear was

Growing my dad was aware that he tried to kill him once and the police were aware of this so they sent two policemen around to our house and for several weeks while Arthur was on the Run we had two policemen sitting down watching TV with us and sharing

Dinners but it was quite shocking that it was me me a uncle that was responsible for this terrible crime while police and Skipton were on high alert soon reports emerged of Hutchinson being seen in various towns and cities he was actually covering a lot of

Ground and you know and we know that uh he was in barnesley he was in two or three places in North Nottinghamshire in guest houses and the like uh in Manchester uh in York and in scarra so you know he was crisscrossing almost the whole of the north of

England he was certainly stealing food he was certainly moving around his own account is that he slept during the day and moved at night just trying to stay one step ahead of the police and of course the police were becoming increasingly anxious to get him back under lot and Key he he he boasted about um being able to live off the land and eat dandelions but he could eat plenty of other things besides Lander lions and I’m sure that he got good Rich pickings from some of these places after all he was on the run

For quite a long time and um he was uh able to to avoid arrest um even to communicate with newspapers about what he was doing but it would be his arrogant letters to the newspapers which would lead to his downfall if Hutchinson was writing letters he must know they’re being printed and that

Must mean he was reading the newspaper if the police could get a story printed that could lure Arthur in a certain direction it could help them catch him we had connections with his family and we were able to discuss these issues was with his mother uh and and his his

Family his mother was not a well person and was due to have some hospital treatment uh for a heart condition and she um was agreeable that we should uh arrest Hutchinson as quickly as we could detective suspected that a story about Hutchinson’s ailing mother would have the desired effect of flushing The

Fugitive out they knew that when he latched onto this story he would begin to make his way home he had a strong bond with his mother perhaps because she was the one who had always stood by him most of the rest of his family by this stage had

Completely disowned him you know they wanted no more of Arthur Hutchinson we didn’t realize at the time quite how good how brilliant the police operation was so he began making his way back to harle poool where she was living uh and slowly but surely the net tightened while detectives set their trap for

Residents living on the out and Manor Estate the prospect of Arthur Hutchinson returning to his native Northeast was something that filled many with Dread Tracy Mitchell was a teenager in the80s and had regularly come into contact with Hutchinson me and my mom would walk down this way and go through this alleyway go

In the shop and then we come out and Arthur richon always seemed to be lurking about and always used to come over talking and he used to make me feel really uncomfortable I didn’t like him he’d be smiling but his eyes weren’t I just didn’t like his eyes it might sound

Strange but that’s just how I felt like it made me uncomfortable according to Tracy Hutchinson once threatened and then chased her and her friends a terrifying experience for the then 13-year-old girl the the older you get um the more you think what could have happened if he

Caught us at the time it was scary then but more so I think now because you understand more what he what he could have done to you because he’s obviously capable of it with every day Hutchinson remained at large tension on the estate grew there was a sense of feure when he

Was on the run that he would come back because a lot of people thought he would come back to see his mom because he was very close to his mom I think and who knows what he could have done with communities across Northern England gripped by fear police officers

From across the north were also making their way to harleypool where they were sure Hutchinson would soon arrive but would he fall for the bait or did he have one final flourish at his sleeve In November 1983 police from South Yorkshire were closing in on the man suspected of murdering three members of the same family in a brutal attack Arthur Hutchinson had labeled himself the fox after going to ground following the Savage stabbings of the lner family in door near Sheffield detectives had tracked him to

The Midlands Manchester and Yorkshire now they were preparing to close in on the killer after concocting a plan to lure him back to his hometown of harle pool were able to set up a trap to try and catch him we knew that Hutchinson was making his way uh into the Area but while while Mick and his detectives finalized plans to ens snare the fog a farm near heartley pool was already picking up suspicious activity we have a a sensor that crosses the Farm Lane that if that sensor’s broken then there’s a bleeper goes off in my parents bedroom and this sensus

Started to go off at the same time every morning C Laden remembers the mystery over what was causing the alarm to sound so it was about 4:00 in the morning and when it had happened a few days in a raw my father set his alarm so that he was

Awake ready for the sensor going off and when he looked out of the window as the sensor went off he saw the silhouette of a man walking briskly so he was dressed in camouflage type clothing the the green color and because he was walking away he couldn’t see his face

But he was just walking briskly up our lane so of course we put two and two together and we thought ah is that Connected just a couple of days later her farm would be the center of a massive nationwide manhunt so the first thing I remember is being Walken up by the police at 6:00 on the morning um they knocked on the front door to ask us to stay Lo Locked In The

Farmhouse and to ask my dad permission to search the farm when I looked out the bedroom window all I could see was this line of police and if you go beyond this grass field and into the corn field Beyond and you just look across the Horizon you’ve

Got from the trees on that side right across to the large tree in the middle over there and they were just literally side by side all in uniform just saw many of them there must have been hundreds of police not just across there but down the road and then around

The back of the farm as well it’s a bit like being in a film really down the bottom there you can see that large hedge underneath it is the brook that flows fresh water along underneath it so it probably goes down another 3 ft and then if you scan your

Eyes across the top you can see the trees on the top there that’s how far it goes everyone was in position saw the um police officer that was um in charge of the whole investigation was asking if the armed police were all in position and they said yes they were and then the

Dog Handlers asked permission to release the dogs and the permission was granted and the dogs went in and you could hear all the kafuffle and the men shouting and running and as what would go with that kind of scene and then eventually after a few minutes he was arrested It was amazing news when we we learned the the fact that that he’d been arrested um and we were there was a lot of Jubilation in the in the incident room at the time um it is a great relief that that you’ve made an arrest of somebody as dangerous as

This to think that we were flating around the farm as young ladies to think that that could easily have happened to us it’s just not worth thinking about it does give you Goose Pimples after 39 days on the run the prime suspect Arthur Hutchinson had been arrested but that didn’t mean the police work was Over now Mick and his team needed to gather the remaining evidence that could prove he was responsible for the lner’s murder this was in an era before complex DNA evidence so they relied on more primitive methods to tie Hutchinson to the scene first was a fingerprint found on a

Champagne bottle which they knew matched their suspect but on its own it wasn’t enough Proof detectives also had teeth Impressions made by the killer after he’d bitten into a piece of cheese with Hutchinson now in custody a fresh Improv could be taken for comparison the cast of the teeth is offered up against either the original piece of food or more likely a cast of

The food and there would be enough similarity between the edges of the teeth and the marks in the food the value of the the examination and the forensic examination was to find the B Marks and to look at the the shape of the bite mark and to find the

Fingerprints on the uh the champagne bottle which were conclusive forensic evidence that uh HUD jinson was the person responsible for this crime and last of all detectives had found blood on bed sheets in an upstairs bedroom which forensic tests had identified as a blood grouping combination shared by only one in 50,000

People when Arthur was arrested they found a cut on his leg and tests carried out in custody confirmed he shared the same rare blood group combination found at the scene science could prove without doubt that Hutchinson had been in the property and together with the evidence from the Survivor everything suggested

He was responsible for the murders there’s no doubt at all that forensics were absolutely crucial in this case uh the weight of forensic evidence ultimately is What trapped Hinson at Durham Crown Court in September 1984 for Hutchinson faced trial for triple murder and rape it took

Just 4 hours for a jury to find him guilty on all counts initially sentenced to life with a minimum of 18 years his sentence was later increased by the Home Secretary to a whole life tariff meaning he’ll die Behind Bars you can put together a really strong argument that says he can never

Be safe among normal people no matter how old he is there will always be a flicker of doubt about letting him back into society personally I’m more comfortable with him behind Bars as far as I’m aware Arthur’s never shown any remorse he’s never admitted to the crimes but the fact that you can’t hold your hand up and say that you’ve done it you’re not coming out of prison you can’t get into the mind of of of these people uh because of his his

Fantasies uh because you don’t know what the next fantasy is going to be um and he was such a dangerous man he believed that he was invincible and and that nothing could stop Him putting Hutchinson Behind Bars couldn’t change the fate of the lner family for them it was too late but forensic science had ensured that artha Hutchinson wouldn’t harm anyone else thanks to science one of Britain’s most dangerous Killers had been stopped in his Tracks Spe fore speee foree fore speee [Laughter] spee Foree Foree for Andee sit in [Applause] foree Foree in Fore oh she on And foree Speee Foree foree For this Foree next Fore Fore Fore fore Speee foree Foree Foree fishe fore speee speee fore speee yes I what