This Burnt-Out Skeleton Identified a Murderer

“Every day over 17,000 crimes are committed in the UK.”

“The demand was for £5 million. They were getting deeper and deeper into this guy’s trap.”

“Up against brick walls and denials. There were no leads, no evidence. This was going to be a mountain to climb. What does it take to catch the criminals?”

“I knew that I had to be relentless to build my case. An eye for detail and true determination. I wanted to fight for her to get the justice that she deserved. It’s the uncovering of this one clue that finally solves the mystery. It’s just fantastic. Everything has come together for you. And that was the moment of proof. Putting the criminals that affect the lives of innocent Britons behind bars. We will find you. We will prosecute you.”

“Today, a grainy image from a petrol station helps convict a gang of cold-blooded killers. This was an absolute callous execution in broad daylight on a Saturday afternoon. But first, a criminal’s mobile phone list finally connects an unscrupulous gang targeting the vulnerable. There was call after call being made to the residents of Canterbury.”

“Detective Constable Mark Newman works for the Economic Crime Unit specializing in fraud, the most commonly experienced crime in the UK, and his next case would be no exception.”

“At this early stage, we had one victim. I had no idea how this was going to snowball.”

“Mark receives a call from a distraught elderly lady. She’s been contacted by a man who claims to be a fraud investigator.”

“She said that a man with a Scottish accent, calling himself Anthony Andrews, had called her and told her that her bank account had been compromised. Therefore, she had to transfer her savings into a bank safe account that they had set up for her.”

“The man on the phone tells her she’s been a victim of fraud. He’s convincing and the woman believes the story. She’s told to transfer her money into a safe account. Dutifully, she follows the instructions to go to her bank and quickly deduce that she didn’t use online banking. So they had to come up with a different tactic. What they did was to employ the use of taxi cabs.”

“They brought the victim here and they dropped her off just at the end of this alleyway here. She then had a short walk to the branch in the corner to my right where she transferred a total of £6,500.”

“No less than an hour later, she received another call from the offenders and they convinced her to transfer a further £5,600.”

“Thankfully for her and for us, the transaction was declined. Luckily, the pensioner is saved from losing even more money. But now Mark’s got to work fast before anyone else falls foul of the fraudsters.”

“It was incredibly difficult for us at the outset. We had a victim that had been called by a faceless and unidentified offender and had been taken to the bank in a taxi. That’s all we had. There’s nothing to go on.”

“But Mark’s not one to give up easily. He goes over every last detail with a fine-tooth comb.”

“We knew that the offenders had called the victim and taken her to the bank using the taxi company across the road. They called her on two occasions and both times they supplied the taxi company with two telephone numbers. But what they forgot to do, they forgot to hide their phone number and they provide us their own phone number which was a critical mistake and a very, very important point in the investigation.”

“The criminals left two phone numbers with the taxi company. Mark gets busy inspecting them in detail.”

“The first time they used a number ending 281. That was in fact what we call a dirty phone. It was a burner pay-as-you-go throwaway phone with no subscriber. However, the Eureka moment was when I realized that the second taxi was booked by a phone number that was actually somebody’s personal phone. They’d made the mistake.”

“Now Mark has a registered number to work from.”

“When I put that number into open source research on the internet and it came up with a picture of Sam Hill-Bake, therefore I believe the number that had been calling the victim was owned by Samuel Bake. Bit more research, I realized that he lived in an area of Glasgow. I then did some other checks on him on the phone and realized that that phone had been topped up at a convenience store in Bells Hill in Glasgow. At that point, I’m thinking I’ve got my man.”

“Mark has a name: Sam Hill-Bake. Years of experience is telling him that Bake’s not working alone.”

“I suspected that there was an organized crime group behind this.”

“The only other lead Mark has is the burner or throwaway phone. He digs deeper into the number.”

“When I scroll through that data, I could see there was call after call being made to the residents of Canterbury.”

“It’s an important piece of evidence connecting the pay-as-you-go number directly to his victim in Canterbury. But that’s not the only discovery.”

“It was shocking to see that that phone had not only called our victim, it had called over 50 other Canterbury residents over two days. I was very concerned that we could obviously have possible other victims.”

“Mark immediately contacts everyone on the list.”

“When I identified that there were two other victims in Canterbury that have been called by these offenders, I confirmed that they had both been called by a Scottish male. I knew then that they were linked to Samuel Bake.”

“Another one of Bake’s victims is 91-year-old retired teacher Jock Asbury-Bailey. He’s at his home when he receives a call from the fraudsters.”

“It was probably about 10:00 in the morning and the phone went and this man introduced himself as Anthony Andrews and said he was a member of the fraud department. He then said that two attempts had been made to remove money from my account. He was investigating the bank in Canterbury. The bank didn’t know anything about this and it was very important that they did not discover that he was doing this and that it was necessary to transfer the money from my account into another account.”

“He was so convincing. I was absolutely taken in.”

“The bogus fraud investigator instructs Jock to go to his bank and transfer £6,500. As soon as he returns home, he gets another call to go back and move another £7,650.”

“So I went back to the bank again that same afternoon. This time the teller did ask me one or two questions. I either didn’t tell him or deliberately lied to him.”

“Over the next few days, Jock is told to make further transfers. So in total, it was about £40,000.”

“It’s only when Jock makes a transaction from another one of his bank accounts that the penny drops.”

“I suddenly began to realize that I’d been had. Well, I thought, ‘What an idiot you’ve been.'”

“It was incredibly stressful for him, one, believing that he was a victim of fraud, and two, the actual being controlled by his offenders. This type of crime is heinous. It destroys the trust that these vulnerable and elderly victims have in society.”

“Mark knows he’s got a ruthless organized gang targeting the elderly. The victims have lost their life savings. But with only one name and some phone records, the criminals are giving him a run for his money and he’s got to stop them.”

“In our next case, CCTV from a petrol station is the final clue to solve a murder.”

“Detective Chief Inspector Steve Whitaker has spent more than three decades cracking crime and held one of the top jobs in the force in South Yorkshire.”

“I was a senior investigating officer in charge of serious crime within South Yorkshire Police, such as homicides, manslaughters. You know, it’s the pinnacle of any police officer’s career really to be in charge of murder investigations. So, really, really enjoyable, worthwhile job.”

“Just 6 months before he’s due to retire, a case falls on Steve’s lap that forces him to rethink his plans.”

“I was told that a shooting had occurred in the middle of the afternoon in a suburb of Sheffield and a firearm had been discharged at close range and that there’d been a fatality.”

“Steve heads straight to the scene of the crime. He learns the victim is 23-year-old Ail Alisai.”

“Yeah, this is Daniel Hill where the offense took place and Ail was killed just there. Just as I’m looking now, I can almost see the car now.”

“Steve quickly discovers that the circumstances surrounding Ail’s murder are especially tragic. The sister of Ail was celebrating her engagement that day. The entire family was there. Everybody got dressed up. Him and his brother had hired two nice Mercedes motor cars and they were driving around in the nice clothes and trying to impress the friends and family. And he drove along this road then came back on himself. There was a coming together of two cars and unfortunately, that’s when Ail drew his last breath when he was shot from that vehicle. This was an absolute callous execution on a busy street in Sheffield in broad daylight on a Saturday afternoon.”

“The bullet enters Ail’s shoulder. His brother rushes him to hospital, but it’s too late. The vehicle responsible had driven off. I was told there might be two or three people in that car, the offending car, and I was told that an active investigation was ongoing to try and find the people responsible from that car.”

“The senseless shooting occurred in broad daylight, but Steve notices there’s a suspicious lack of eyewitnesses.”

“Although you’ve got lots of residential areas and lots of passing traffic, very few people want to speak to us. There is a wall of silence in this area. It was very, very difficult investigation. It was quite clear that this investigation was only going to be detected by hard police work and trying his best to weak out as much intelligence, much evidence as we could to move the investigation forward.”

“Steve’s facing an uphill battle but does receive one useful piece of intelligence.”

“We knew that the car responsible was a P-registered Golf and quite an unusual Golf with a double exhaust at the back.”

“Tracking down the car without a full number plate will be tricky. But then Steve finds out about a separate 999 call that came in shortly after the shooting.”

“The police got a phone call from a farmer to say that there was a car fire. The fire brigade attended. As you can see, it has been considerably burnt out. It was almost unrecognizable, but you can still see it’s a VW Golf. An unusual VW Golf with twin exhaust at the back.”

“Police suspect it’s the car used in the drive-by shooting, but any hopes of forensic analysis are long gone.”

“I believe that they removed the vehicle registration numbers and then burnt the car out, pouring lots of petrol into the car to ensure that it basically was nothing more than a wreck.”

“What they didn’t realize is that each car has a unique vehicle identification number near to the engine. This was good for us because the vehicle identification number was still within the vehicle and still intact.”

“Using the vehicle ID number, police can find out the Golf’s registration details. And the police national computer throws up some very interesting information.”

“That vehicle was being driven by a well-known criminal from Sheffield called Matthew Cohen. Matthew Cohen is a notorious criminal, drug dealer. He’s a proper, proper criminal.”

“Steve knows he’s dealing with a drive-by shooting. He has a burnt-out vehicle registered to a suspect, Matthew Cohen. But with no one in the community prepared to talk, he’s hit a dead end.”

“Now forced to find a different avenue, he makes inquiries into the victim, Ail Alisai. He uncovers an explosive backstory.”

“There’s clearly a feud between Ail and his brothers and Matthew Cohen. He believed that the Alisai brothers were trying to get onto his patch. Matthew Cohen didn’t like this and decided to attack one of the brothers one evening by slashing him across the face with a knife. The Alisai brothers and Matthew Cohen fell out, and fell out big time over this.”

“Steve reckons bad blood between the brothers and Matthew Cohen led to Ail’s murder, but he’s got nothing to tie Cohen to the scene of the crime. He orders his team to locate every CCTV camera they can find in the area.”

“As a result of trolling and trolling people’s houses, factories, closed-circuit television, we found a camera, a very small camera near to where the offense took place which was really good for the investigation and really good for the team.”

“Even though the camera is located around the corner from the crime scene, it’s a significant breakthrough. Steve examines the moments leading up to the murder.”

“As you can see, the offending vehicle pulls up. It sees Ail drive past. He turns round and decides to go hunting for Ail, who was driving a black car at the time.”

“Frustratingly, it’s not clear who’s driving the Golf, but Steve can barely believe what it shows next. Ail’s brother drives past in a white car and words are exchanged. The driver then drives away and then the car pulls next to Ail’s car, which unfortunate for us is just off camera. Ail’s brother witnesses this and literally a yard further that way, this is where the murder then takes place.”

“It was quite clear after watching the CCTV that the brother of Ail had witnessed this offense take place.”

“A team of detectives are immediately sent to take a fresh statement from Ail’s brother. He witnessed the offense and refused to speak to us. He was scared himself.”

“When you realize as a scene investigating officer that the brother of a person that’s been shot dead in the street in the middle of the afternoon isn’t going to speak to us, it makes it even more difficult and it makes you probably more determined as a police to ensure that we get justice for the family.”

“Steve needs to find a way around the community wall of silence. He knows the one thing that never lies is the camera.”

“I made a decision of securing CCTV evidence from garages, petrol stations around where the Cohen family lived on the hope that at some stage I may get Matthew Cohen or anybody in that vehicle prior to the shooting. We just needed that lucky break that was going to come and present to us.”

“As weeks turn into months, there’s no sign of that lucky break. Nearly 6 months after the murder, one of Steve’s team discovers something of interest.”

“I received a phone call from the CCTV operator who told me that they got something they wanted me to watch.”

“Steve rushes to his laptop to download the file. And there it was, Matthew Cohen in a petrol station filling up the car 2 hours before the murder took place.”

“It’s the crucial moment in the case that Steve’s been waiting for. Finally, he can place Cohen in the car that delivers the fatal shot.”

“Mr. Cohen’s there, extremely close proximity to where Matthew Cohen lived, dealt his drugs, and close proximity to where the shooting took place, literally a few yards from his garage. We could now say to a jury, ‘You can be safe in the knowledge that Matthew Cohen is driving that car prior to and during the shooting.'”

“Cohen is arrested and charged with murder. It was great to capture him. It was great to get him off the streets. Yes, you want to be elated. Yes, you want to put the pen down and go home early and think we’ve had a good day. But you know that’s just the thin end of the wedge and you’ve still got a lot of work to do.”

“Steve knows Cohen couldn’t have been driving and pull the trigger. There had to be at least one other person in the car. He goes back to Ail’s brother and, this time, knowing Cohen’s safely behind bars, he tells a different story.”

“Within 10 minutes of that meeting, saying he wanted to come to the police station that evening and give a statement and tell us all exactly what he’d seen that day. And that was a significant point. That was a Eureka point of that investigation.”

“Ail’s brother identifies a known gang member, Dale Gordon, and further police work leads to the other person in the car, Keelan Brian. All three men are found guilty and ordered to serve no less than 30 years each behind bars.”

“This validated everything we’ve done within this investigation. I didn’t want to consider retirement, but there was elation, absolute elation amongst me and the team after this investigation, knowing that these three people, three people that caused so much carnage and heartache throughout Sheffield, were now going to spend almost the rest of their lives in prison. That was a good way to end my police service.”

“200 miles away in Kent, Detective Constable Mark Newman is on a mission to catch an unscrupulous gang coining it in and defrauding elderly victims on his patch in Canterbury.”

“The detective’s got one suspect, but he believes he’s a small cog in a larger operation and they need to be stopped fast.”

“I had a suspect, Sam Hill-Bake. I also had proof that these offenders were calling possible other victims. This was on a large scale. I had to move quickly. So the first thing I could do was secure resources to go to Glasgow to arrest Samuel Bake.”

“Mark plans an early morning raid to catch his one suspect, Sam Hill-Bake, off guard at his home in Scotland.”

“After we entered the address, the first thing that I was desperate to undertake was to secure Bake’s phone. We know that that number had called the victim in Canterbury. So it was intrinsic to the investigation that that phone was seized from him.”

“And it was. But the phone’s not the only thing Mark finds. There were two other males staying in the front room with him, Muhammad Aar-Rafi and Shazer Javeed.”

“They told us that they didn’t know Bake very well and that they were just staying there overnight. I didn’t believe their story that they had only just met Bake. They were obviously friends of Bake’s and it was my suspicion that these two were also part of this organized crime gang.”

“Mark struck gold with the two other possible suspects, but they’ll count for nothing if he can’t find the proof to connect them to Bake or the crime.”

“I knew that my case against Bake was quite strong. The evidence of him calling the victim and then us finding the phone on him personally was strong. However, I had nothing on Javeed and Rafi.”

“Mark needs evidence to link them. While searching for a clue, he makes a shocking discovery.”

“We also found at the flat in the front room a briefcase. In that briefcase, it contained a USB stick containing the names and personal details of 5,000 people. This was 5,000 potential other victims. We also found a pile of invoices that contained people’s credit card details, names, and addresses. I found out these this pile of papers were in fact stolen as part of a burglary a few months before.”

“It’s a crucial breakthrough proving the gang are running a sophisticated nationwide fraud operation, but it’s still not enough for Mark to link them all.”

“It’s incredibly frustrating when you feel that you’ve got the right people. However, you then need to prove that they’ve committed the crimes. Sam Hill-Bake down, I had his phone. I knew that that had contacted the victim. However, I still had Rafi and Javeed.”

“Mark begins with Javeed’s phone. It immediately throws up some incriminating evidence.”

“There was an incredible amount of detail. The images that were on Javeed’s phone showed people’s names, addresses, dates of birth, passwords. It was incredible. It’s evidence to show Javeed sharing details about the victims and that he’s part of the gang committing the crimes.”

“Mark now needs to connect the final person, Rafi. He goes back to the phones.”

“So the contact list of Shazer Javeed’s phone showed that he had three contact numbers for the ‘Azara’. First of all, you see ‘AZ iPhone’. Also in the same contact list, you then get ‘AZ legit’ and ‘AZ Bash’. Now a ‘basher’ phone is a phone that’s used like a burner phone. It’s a cheap throwaway handset with no subscriber that can be used just to pay as you go. Often used in crime.”

“Rafi has three listed numbers. Mark’s got his money on the pay-as-you-go number on the contacts list. Is there anything on there to link him to Sam Hill-Bake and therefore to the crimes?”

“When I examined the number against the data that was held for Sam Hill-Bake’s phone, I could see that the pair were communicating between each other. But not only that, more importantly, they were sending the personal details of my victims. So that was the real Eureka moment when I found that ‘AZ Bash’ phone. I knew that I could link Rafi to that conspiracy.”

“Mark’s hit the jackpot. The phone number from the contacts list connects the whole gang together.”

“And that was the moment I realized that I’d infiltrated this organized crime gang. These phones were incredibly important. The phones were obviously located with cell sites so we could show the position of the phones and we could also see from the call data that the phones were contacting our victims.”

“Mark finally has the evidence to prove the whole gang are involved in the crimes against his victims in Canterbury. But it turns out this is just the tip of the iceberg.”

“I was incredibly shocked to find that there was 33 victims in total following analysis of the phones. These were contacted and confirmed that they had been indeed victims of fraud. The total loss of these people was £629,000.”

“Through determination and tenacity, Mark has solved this huge nationwide conspiracy. He’s ready to bring the criminals to justice.”

“This is Canterbury Crown Court. It’s where it all came to an end for Sam Hill-Bake. He was sentenced for seven and a half years. The other two, Muhammad Aari and Shazer Javeed, were sentenced to 3 and 1/2 years and 18 months suspended for two years.”

“We were able to recover a significant amount of funds for the victims. We had 33 victims across the UK that lost a staggering £630,000. The victims received just under £200,000 back in total, and one of those is 91-year-old Jock.”

“So I got about what, three quarters of the money back. I like to think I will not ever be taken in by the same sort of thing again.”

“Us cracking this case was an incredible moment and it’s why I do what I do. I feel that I can hold my head up high and feel that I’ve protected the residents across the UK and particularly the residents of Kent.”