The Gang and The Jeweller: Brutal Killing of Michael Griffiths

When a murder is discovered, it was a female who had her head and her hands removed and she had been found in what could be described was like a duffel bag and she had her her wrist and her ankles bound. It doesn’t just destroy one life. I don’t think he’s capable of loving people cuz how do you kill your own children? That was the last thing those children saw was their dad killing them. How do you do that?

It tears communities apart. When her body was located she was nude, she was deceased, she had some ligature marks on her neck. It’s up to the police to not only solve the mystery… I then went round the house looking for anything that might obviously be stolen and tracked down the killer but bring them to justice. There’s two bodies found. Your first thought is, “Oh my goodness me is there a serial killer?”

In today’s episode a 59-year-old man is found dead after a fire in his home. It was quite clear that Michael had suffered a number of blunt trauma injuries to his head. He had defense wounds on his hand so you could see that he was obviously fighting back. Meet the murder detectives. Anyone who is willing to go in and use that level of brutality with such disregard to human life for purposes of greed… who reveal how they caught the killer. These men are absolutely despicable characters. They have entered a man’s home, they’ve waited for him to return, and they’ve tortured him.

On the 24th of January 2013, police were called to the village of Fernhurst in West Sussex, England after a devastating fire where a body had been found in the house. I was aware there was a fire and I was aware that there was a body was found but local police had attended and they were saying, “We think it’s unexplained but we don’t think it’s suspicious.” As the local police force entered to remove the body they noticed something that troubled them. I had a phone call from the DI who’d dealt with that body that day uh and he said to me, “We’ve just uncovered the body and his hands and feet are tied.” which of course put a completely different view on things.

It clearly was suspicious uh so I said to him, “Okay don’t do anything more, leave the body where it is, i’m coming straight out.” Former detective chief inspector Jeff Riley was appointed as the senior investigating officer. He quickly set off to the crime scene. It was in the middle of winter, there was snow on the ground, it was really bitterly cold evening. As I was driving up I’m thinking what fast-track actions do I need to set that we can do now, what can wait till tomorrow morning, so all these kind of things are going through your head as you’re driving to a crime scene. Detective Inspector Gordon Densow was part of the team. He began his investigations at the scene of the fire. The house had been gutted by fire so there was the scorch marks on the outside of the house. There was quite a bit of activity, there was the fire damage that was really visible, there was a large kind of tarpaulin in the front there which we put to the front of the house just to kind of protect the crime scene around that. Uh there was kind of police tape around here, there was a police officer obviously guarding it with a clipboard and obviously sending people in to the crime scene so that was kind of my first impression when I kind of got to this location. There was a body on the threshold which made it difficult to access the house but what they had um very astutely done was um sought to preserve um the body by covering it in a in a tarpaulin which was really helpful in the longer term investigation. The victim’s body was identified by the neighbors who had discovered the fire as 59-year-old Michael Griffiths.

Before I went into the house I walked around the scene where the scenes of crime lead. One of the windows was open and there were lots of brass ornaments uh on the ground around around the back of the house. There was this brown holdall that again we didn’t quite know what the significance of that was at the time but that was there and that looked unusual. I then went into the house. The house was was obviously blackened and I remember thinking this is going to be a really challenging crime scene for us to to deal with. A, because of the amount of property in the house, B, because of the damage by the fire, and C, because you’re in the middle of winter because there was there no power in the house. Initial assessment of the body indicated that there was some injuries evident and also the way the victim was presenting at the time because he he he’d been tied up. The first thing you got to think about is the dignity of Michael so I was really keen that we did all the forensic work that we could do and we could take Michael out of the house. I wanted to make sure that the family were the first people to know about that, I didn’t want it to leak out so that for me was really really important. We could secure the crime scene for the night.

Fire investigator Ian Peek was called out to attend the scene. We didn’t really know at the time or whether or not it was a murder scene, i was just asked to investigate the fire um and didn’t have really any preconceived ideas of the scene. The fire brigade also called in their investigator Mark Hayter. I was expecting to find somebody had just fallen down the stairs trying to escape their building from an accidental fire, that was one possibility and a likelihood, but he was laying face up and he actually had blood running up his face which is not the normal thing to see.

The scene part of the fire normally takes about a day, this one was quite unusual um for a number of reasons and I was actually there for eight days actually on the scene. The damage to the victim also meant that we had to get a biologist down to have a look at the blood pattern analysis and to see if the attack site was within the premises. Forensic expert Tracy Alexander explains how they can establish when and where the injuries have occurred. So obviously if somebody suffered a bleeding injury and there is a blood trail or trickle it’s going to follow the path of gravity so that’s going to indicate the position in which the head was at the point when the bleeding occurred. It was clear that the injuries had occurred when Michael was alive and not as a result of a fall. If your heart is pumping and you suffer an injury then even if it’s blunt force trauma as your heart pumps it will fill that area with blood and a bruise would develop. If you’re already dead when an injury’s happened then there is no heart to pump blood to the area therefore it won’t form a bruise.

While the forensic evidence was gathered from the body, fire investigator Mark Hayter searched the area. I was outside the house, we went round to the rear of the property and we looked at the grass and about 5 m away from the property we could find broken glass so it’s obviously that this glass had somehow broken like explosively away from the building which can be a sign of an accelerant. It can be a sign that something in the house like a aerosol can has exploded. We looked on the floor…

…also have previous for burglary but Cury also has previous offending for violence so it’s possible that the dynamics have changed quite significantly for all of them because they’ve come together and have changed their offending pattern quite significantly with the increase of violence. With the defense unraveling the investigation team then brought their evidence to the trial. The trainers were significant. Harvey Munford, his shoe size was the same as those trainers and some analytical work of those treadmarks uh showed that the uh trainers recovered from one of the houses of the offenders matched the treadmarks that were taken from Michael’s face. Harvey Mumford said in evidence that it was his trainer, he was wearing them, and he must have somehow scraped Michael’s body as he stepped over him. This wasn’t a scrape, this was a stamp so of course all their stories has started to unravel. You could quite see that this gap had opened up between the group and to change on day one felt like it was was was a really positive impact for the prosecution. However we still went to trial, they weren’t accepting that they killed Michael in effect. We then had a 7-week trial based around that and and at the end of it a number of the group were found guilty of of actually murdering Michael.

Munford and Cury were both found guilty of murder and sentenced to life with a minimum of 32 years. Penton was found guilty of manslaughter and perverting the course of justice and sentenced to life with a minimum of 26 years. Their associates Kerry Rudder and Damian Craft were found not guilty of murder but guilty of conspiracy to burgle and each received 3 years. It’s very likely that if they had been successful they would have had an almost perfect model and they definitely would have replicated that model with other victims. It was clear from the outset that this was a very unusual crime. You know Michael appeared to have been targeted quite deliberately for his diamonds but we could never show any formal connection between Michael and his killers and that is really really unusual. The majority of murders are committed by somebody who knows the victim, in this case they didn’t and that is really really unusual.

These men are absolutely despicable characters. They have entered a man’s home, they’ve waited for him to return, and they’ve tortured him. This isn’t a bit of violence that’s used in the heat of the moment, this is protracted, drawn-out torture of an innocent man. They left a man dead who had bravely tried to stop them taking his belongings and then they did the most disrespectful thing you can do, they burned his house down with all his possessions inside.

My experience is that it’s very difficult for an offender to commit an offense like this and to not be brought to justice. Anyone who is willing to go in and use that level of brutality with such disregard to human life for purposes of greed, I think they most certainly got what was coming to them.

This group were really challenging because they were career criminals and they had covered their tracks to some extent so much particularly with a fire that we knew that this was going to be a real battle for us to get justice for Michael and for his family. We were determined to do it of course, it wouldn’t bring Michael back but there was some satisfaction in the fact that when we interviewed them all, we showed them the diamonds and the look on their faces just were completely crestfallen because they’d had them and they’d had the diamonds in their hands.