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.
“There you can see the unique number.”
And true determination.
I wanted to fight for her to get the justice that she deserved.
It’s the uncovering of this one clue.
“I have a really good clear picture of the cap.”
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, how a bright yellow cap cracks the mystery identity of a daylight robber.
“As I was going through the footage, right in the very corner, I saw a man wearing a cap, and I thought, let’s just have a closer look at that.”
But first, a pair of unassuming pajamas hold the evidence that puts a husband behind bars.
My gut feeling at that stage was that Jack had assaulted his wife and potentially left her for dead.
DS Mick Curtis is about to walk into a crime scene that would haunt him forever.
It was just after Christmas, very start of the new year, and I got a call around about 6:00 in the morning, something like that, and officers, I was told officers were at the scene of a house fire.
As I drove up the road, I could see the smoke still pouring into the sky. Um, I could see flashing blue lights from the various emergency services. I never expected it to be the weirdest thing that I’ve probably dealt with in my service.
On a quiet suburban street, a house fire rages.
Concerned neighbors dial 999.
“You could see the roof completely gone in. Smoke still coming out. A lot of movement of police officers, fire brigade officers at the scene.”
I found out that the bungalow belonged to a Mr. and Mrs. Tully. Her name was Val. The man was Derek Tully, although that he was commonly known as Jack Tully.
It was explained to me that the officers had returned into the property and found Mrs. Tully laying on the floor. Mrs. Tully had been apparently beaten. There was some severe injuries to the head and she had lost some blood.
Mr. Tully had told the officers that he’d awoken to the sound of some thudding noise in the bungalow and he realized that his wife was being beaten by somebody, an intruder in the property whilst she laid alongside him in the bed.
Still wearing his pajamas, Jack leaps out of bed in hot pursuit, chasing him out of the back of the property into the rear garden.
With dangerous intruders still on the loose in the neighborhood, the first job for DS Curtis is to hunt them down and fast.
We examined the rear garden to see if there was any possible points of exit. But there was no apparent point of escape. So house-to-house inquiries with neighbors was carried out to try and establish if anybody else had been disturbed by anybody or seen anything happening.
As police continue their inquiries, Jack’s wife Valerie lies in hospital fighting for her life.
Valerie had been taken to Worthing Hospital. I think at that stage there was some uncertainty as to whether she would actually regain consciousness.
Mr. Tully was asked if he wanted to see his wife, but he said to officers that he felt he’d rather remember her the way she was.
Him saying that seemed a little strange because no matter what the circumstances, no one had suggested she was dead.
It wasn’t the response Mick expected from a loving husband.
It was really quite concerning that he wouldn’t want to see his wife if it maybe were the last few minutes of her life.
For Mick, things just don’t feel quite right. He heads inside to examine every inch of the crime scene for clues.
I was taken in by the firefighters in through this door here and the very first room on the right hand side is a door into what is the front bedroom. Mrs. Tully would have slept on this side of the bed, Mr. Tully on that side.
As he looks around, there are numerous red flags that trigger his suspicions.
The lounge door had smashed glazing and it would fallen to the floor onto the carpet and the firefighters pointed out in this location here a chair which had been subject of a fire. There were further three points within that room where fires had been started.
If we’d have expected this to be an ordinary house fire, we may have found one point where the fire had started, just a discarded cigarette, a faulty item or whatever. Once we were shown that, we were fairly confident this wasn’t any accidental fire or just an occurrence. It was an arson.
The only version given from Mr. Tully about the fire was that it must have been set by the people that had broken into the bungalow.
It doesn’t make sense.
To help Mick separate fact from fiction, he needs to gather as much evidence as possible. But the crime scene is literally disappearing in front of his eyes.
There was a chance that the ceiling could collapse at any time. We desperately needed to get our evidence out of that room. You were losing it by the minute. You were losing the forensic evidence that we had. In ideal world, we say to the fire brigade, “Please turn the hoses off.” Um, but unfortunately, obviously, they’ve got a job to do. Our evidence is fibers. It’s blood. And at that stage, there is water dripping through onto the bed. We’ve got a soaking wet bed and floor.
Looking at the bed as best we could see on a wet mattress. There was blood splatterings on the bedding and also on the headboard and pillow. We needed those items more than anything secured because they may well show blood of a potential offender.
But then officers make a significant discovery. The possible weapon used in the attack.
And we found a broomstick handle in the bedroom on the floor. This is very similar to the item that we found in the bedroom at the Tully’s house. That was identified forensically as being the item that had been used to beat Val.
They had the weapon, but the attacker is still at large.
We couldn’t discount the possibility that there had been intruders, but there were certain evidence within the property that raised our suspicions that it wasn’t quite the same as the account given to us by Mr. Tully.
It wasn’t the only thing Mick noticed that made him question Jack’s story.
There was an issue in the bedroom where there had been some nail varnish that had been spilled on the bedside cabinet. Um, Mrs. Tully was renowned apparently for having the most immaculate nails. It did raise a question as to whether there had maybe been some form of dispute within the property between the two of them.
Had an argument turned into something more sinister and left Valerie fighting for her life?
One thing in particular is nagging at the back of Mick’s mind.
When Mr. Tully was taken out of the property, he was wearing a pajama top, pajama bottoms, and a pair of slippers. It was apparent visually that there was blood on his pajama top and also there was some nail varnish on that pajama top.
Jack’s story about the intruder in the bedroom, then the fire just don’t add up for Mick.
My gut feeling at that stage was that Jack Tully had assaulted his wife and potentially left her for dead.
Jack may be the main suspect, but this was set to become a game of cat and mouse as DS Curtis searches for the evidence to prove his hunch.
In our next case, a robbery at a garage in Tower Hamlets in London leaves staff traumatized and thousands of pounds of wages missing. The key to solving the crime would rest on one item of clothing.
DC Shabnam Chowry is about to go off shift.
So, I had already had a relatively long day and I got a call from the custody suite to say that there was a suspect in for a robbery. The information that I had appeared reasonably straightforward, but I didn’t realize at that point how complex and how tricky it was going to be to actually pin this particular crime on that individual.
Witnesses called the police after seeing a getaway car leave the scene of a robbery. 20 minutes later, they stop and arrest the driver, William Boyce.
I had my suspect driving the vehicle that had been used as the getaway vehicle in this crime. So, it seemed fairly straightforward. Literally, go down to the scene, get your statements and so on. Job done.
But the story was about to take a different tack. I came down here to the east end of London where I started off taking my statements from all the potential witnesses. This is Back Church Lane where the violent robbery took place. The garage is just up here.
It was really important for me to get here within the hour, within the golden hour, so that I could try and establish as much information as I could.
Staff are reeling from the shock of the robbery and its chaos. Shabnam’s priority is to find the eyewitness.
The manager told me that the employees had come back with the wages from the bank. They drove into the forecourt and went straight into reception. He at that point saw two men coming through and then what he witnessed next was quite horrific. The employee was attacked, kicked and punched. He was clutching onto the wages. The manager then ran across the forecourt cuz realized that this is a robbery in progress. The other suspect ran in and grabbed the wage bag and ran out the premises. Had the thousands of pounds of money that they’d stolen. They both literally jumped into the getaway car and they headed in that direction.
One member of staff was so traumatized by the assault that they didn’t return back to work. What that does for me, it makes me far more determined to go out and solve crime, to catch the bad guys, so that those victims can have some justice.
Her next job is to cross-examine William Boyce, her suspect, and the driver of the getaway car. But unless she can have him formally charged with some solid evidence, he’ll walk away free. And the detective is up against the clock.
I only have 24 hours in order to build my case. Within that time, I’ve either got to charge him or release him.
And it became very evident to me from speaking with the witnesses at the scene that the two suspects that had entered the reception area of the garage didn’t match the description of the person that I had in custody.
The getaway car is forensically searched from top to bottom, but there’s no sign of the stolen wages or any obvious clue to pin Boyce to the location.
There were a number of items found in the vehicle. There were a couple of baseball caps. Didn’t really think anything of it because there was no descriptions at the scene that matched anything that was found in the vehicle. So, all items were seized and I realized that what was going to be quite a simple, straightforward job was beginning to unravel.
In the interview, he was absolutely adamant that he was nowhere near the scene of the crime. He’d been at his girlfriend’s house. It does sew the seed of doubt in your mind.
My gut feeling was that this definitely was the driver and involved in that robbery.
Even though the evidence seems stacked against her, police know how is telling Shabnam otherwise. And it seems her instinct is right.
As we walked out of the interview room, he turned to me and he just said to me,
“I’m going to come back one day and I’m going to kill you.”
He must have seen the shock on my face. It’s never happened to me in my 31 years policing service. If this man had the arrogance to say what he said to me, I was kind of even more convinced now that this was the person that had committed that crime.
In 24 hours, Boyce will be released unless she can blow holes in his alibi. Shabnam’s last resort is his girlfriend.
My big hope had been that somewhere along the lines that the evidence or the information that she provides is in contradiction to what he has already said. Then I went back to the girlfriend. She was quite credible. She provided a reasonable alibi. There was no reason it could be disbelieved.
Shabnam has hit a brick wall. She’s convinced she’s got the right man. And after digging deeper, her hunch is confirmed.
When I did some more checks, I found out then that he’d actually only been released from prison 4 days before for similar offenses.
Now, with some circumstantial evidence behind her, Shabnam can have him charged and remanded while she builds her case. She’s got her suspect. She knows the location of the crime. But she needs to put the two together to put Boyce behind bars.
I was always like a dog with a bone. I was absolutely not going to let it go until I’d exhausted every possible line of inquiry. Whether it’s forensics, CCTV, even if it’s a tiny little bit of information, you need to pursue that line of inquiry.
Shabnam won’t stop until she’s proved Boyce’s alibi is all a lie. She goes back to the beginning.
So, I looked at the police 999 call from when the call was originally made and then to when he was exactly stopped by the arresting officers.
The timings just wouldn’t have been possible to get from his girlfriend’s house to where he was stopped. The likelihood is he’s gone from here Back Church Street where the violent crime took place all the way up Kings Road where he was stopped. It just actually disproved that the times he gave it wouldn’t be possible.
Proving he wasn’t at his girlfriend’s is one thing, but placing him actually at the scene of the crime is another.
There was no CCTV at the premises. So, I decided to go back to the bank where the two members of staff had originally collected the wages from and taken them back to the garage to speak to the staff there to see if they could find anyone fitting the description of any of the suspects.
Leaving no stone unturned, Shabnam painstakingly retraces the victim’s steps. She starts where the robbers could have followed them from, the bank.
I knew that I had to be relentless to build my case to add to the evidence that I already had. It meant going to the bank and getting the CCTV. I started to go through the CCTV. It was quite busy. There were customers milling around. As I was going through the footage, right in the very corner, I saw a man wearing a cap. And I thought, let’s just have a closer look at that.
A distinctive yellow cap catches her eye.
I was pretty sure that I’d seen that baseball cap somewhere else.
It could be the moment of proof.
I have a really good clear picture of the cap which is absolutely identical to the cap that was found in the car which is absolutely brilliant.
The cap is the clincher found in the getaway car. It now proves at the bank trailing the garage workers who minutes later are attacked and robbed of their wages.
Given that Boyce had been released from prison literally 4 days before, the strong likelihood was that the other two had been planning this. They probably staked out the premises. For them, it would have been easy pickings. And I strongly believe that he was brought in as getaway driver because they thought there’d be absolutely no chance of him being identified. What he didn’t count on was that I was going to actually identify him in the bank and most importantly from that baseball cap.
Thanks to Shabnam’s tenacious detective work, Boyce is sent down for 4 years for his part in the violent robbery.
It’s a fantastic result to me. Policing isn’t just a job. It’s about protecting the public. It’s about making them feel safe and that victims of crime get the justice that they deserve.
Back in Findon Valley, West Sussex, a baffling crime has left 62-year-old Valerie Tully in hospital and her home burnt to the ground. DS Mick Curtis suspects the mystery attacker is in fact her husband Jack, whose elaborate story doesn’t ring true, but he needs that one piece of evidence to prove his theory.
This is where Valerie Tully was brought by ambulance after she left the scene of the fire. She had terrible injuries, terrible bruising all around the head and the upper body. At the early stages, we didn’t really know whether she would recover.
Mick’s one hope is that Valerie holds the key to help identify the intruder. And after a touch and go six weeks, she regains consciousness only to deal Mick’s investigation a brutal blow.
What we were hoping was to get an account from her as to what had happened and if in fact it was Jack that was her attacker. But unfortunately, although she was now conscious, she had no recollection of what had occurred.
Hearing that she had no recollection deflated the team somewhat. And the fact that we got nothing at all really put us back a little bit on the inquiry.
There’s no clear motive. It’s a dead end. Not only did Valerie Tully have no memory of the attack, it would appear her relationship with her husband was a happy one.
Everything she said indicated that they were in a loving relationship, had been for 50 years, and he would never do anything like this, and she wouldn’t accept that it was a possibility.
We realized we were now relying solely on the forensics, and we realized the importance of the bedding, the headboard of the bed, the carpet, and some other items that we’d retrieved, including Jack Tully’s clothing.
The detective’s very last hope to pin Jack to the crime is the salvaged evidence. The couple’s bedding and Jack’s pajamas.
One of the scientists looked at the clothing worn by Jack Tully that night and found fresh fragments of shards of glass which were consistent with the lounge door. Not something that he would have attracted in passing a broken window, but he would have been at that location when the glass was smashed.
The shards and his pajamas are evidence that Jack was involved in the breakage. But now they need to prove where he was during the attack.
One of the forensic scientists involved in the case was an expert in blood splattering and he felt that the account of Mr. Tully was not consistent with what he had found and he wanted to conduct some tests in a laboratory setting.
To disprove Jack’s intruder story, Mick must examine every splatter of blood in minute detail.
We know that Valerie Tully was asleep on this side of the bed and that Jack Tully slept on that side of the bed. Um, in the event that Jack Tully was asleep in bed when he was awoken by the sound of his wife being battered next to him, we would have expected effectively the blood splatterings to have been all over the bedding.
To test their theory, the forensic team recreate the scene in the most unconventional way.
The scientist told us the most effective way would be to have a pig’s head, which he would cope with artificial blood, and then he would hit it with a stick similar to the one believed to have been used on Valerie.
A pig has the closest skin and flesh to humans. It’s placed next to DS Curtis, playing the role of a sleeping Jack.
I was laying on the bed like this. The pig’s head was here. The scientist was hitting the pig’s head and the spray was going all over me and you can see here much like that blood was being splattered across leaving a pattern of spray from the battery.
What this really showed us was that if she was being hit here, blood would have splayed out this way onto the headboard up here and all over the body of Jack and the bedding. But in fact, the truth of the matter was Jack didn’t have a pattern of spray on him that indicated he was alongside Valerie at the time that she had been struck.
Could the blood splatter on the pajamas be the moment of proof Mick so desperately needs? And there’s more.
When I moved off of the mattress, what you could see was a clear area where there was no blood whatsoever. And yet in the bedding retrieved from the Tully’s house, what we do know is that the whole area was evenly splattered in blood. This indicated to us that the account given by Jack Tully of being alongside Valerie in the bed at the time she was assaulted when he alleges he woke up was not true.
Forensics have cracked it. There’s no way Jack could have been next to Valerie on the bed during the attack.
The blood splattering was that piece of the jigsaw that was missing. His account was false and that there was no other reasonable explanation for what had happened that night.
It’s the Eureka moment every detective dreams about. Mick can finally prove Jack was lying and he was the attacker.
The evidence that was found suggested that possibly the assault had occurred first and that to cover up what had happened, he wanted to burn the bungalow down. And with Val inside it, he went off trying to cover these possible intruders by smashing glass within the property.
Mrs. Tully still had no recollection of the incident that night and was never supportive of the charges.
Jack Tully is put behind bars for 6 years for the attempted murder of his wife, Valerie.
All we ever wanted to do was know the truth of what had happened that night. We were all of the opinion that it was the right result and that we had got the right person.
