Who Trolled Amber? - Three doors down: Episode 3 - Confession

Episode Date: October 2, 2023

The number one suspect is interrogated by police until he confesses but it's not until 30 years later that the right man is put on trial.Listen to the full series today. For the premium Tortoise listening experience, curated by our journalists, download the free Tortoise audio app. For early and ad-free access to all our investigative series and daily and weekly shows, subscribe to Tortoise+ on Apple Podcasts.If you’d like to further support slow journalism and help us build a different kind of newsroom, do consider donating to Tortoise at tortoisemedia.com/support-us. Your contributions allow us to investigate, campaign and explore, and to build a newsroom that is responsible and sustainable. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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ACAST.com Tortoise. Tortoise. This interview is being telecoded on our Detective Sergeant 2862 Geoffrey Walsh Mountain Way Police Station, Sunderland. What's your full name? George Robert Pance, Shalane. There's an interview room at Sunderland Central Police Station. It's 4pm on Friday the 16th of October 1992. Well I've got to tell you that's a lie as well.

I think it's about time we started telling everybody the truth here. He's spelled out one lie after another lie. It's tricky to make it out, and that's because the tape is from 1992. The officer says, I think it's about time we started telling the truth here, because you're spouting off one lie after another lie. He's interviewing George Herron, the main suspect in the Nicky Allen murder. The interviewing officer is pushing for a confession.

George, try to come up the years and tell the truth. George, come on. The truth. I didn't do it. Then what made you do it? I didn't kill her. This is one of George Heron's denials. In total, he denies killing Nikki more than 120 times.

George, if we've got to prove it, all the way, we're going to call. And you're going to constantly deny it. What are people going to think if you're convicted? So all we've got to do is prove that you walked away with it, haven't we? I didn't kill him. You can keep saying that over and over again.

Because that doesn't mean to me you didn't do it. You can keep saying that over and over again. But that doesn't mean to me that you didn't do it. You can keep saying that over and over again, but that doesn't mean to me that you didn't do it. These are the final few minutes of interview tape before George Heron confesses to a crime that he didn't commit. I'm Julie Bindle, and from Tortoise, this is Three Doors Down, a murder, a mother, and a 30-year investigation.

This is episode three, Confession. In October 1992, Heron had been questioned for three days. I've listened to hours of these tapes, and even in listening, it's uncomfortable. I've always been let to believe by the police and other people that weren't looking for anybody else. I wanted to speak to someone who knows how interview tactics work to see what he made of the George Heron interviews. I think what people didn't realise, Julie, was the power of persuasion or the influence that people could have,

especially with dealing with vulnerable people. I'd met Gary Shaw on the Sunderland University campus where Gary is now a Professor of Professional Practice and recognised as one of the leading experts on major crime investigation in the UK. He retired from Northumbria Police in 2007, having served for 40 years. In his 60s, Gary is small and wiry,

with close-cropped hair and a kindly face. I was brought up in the confession-based culture, with, to be fair, limited interview training. You just learn from the culture that was there. And a mark of success for detectives at the time interviewing was confession. Although he wasn't involved in the Nicky Allen case back in 1992, he's since used it as a classic example of poor policing practice and has developed a protocol that he teaches to budding coppers. Can I read you some of the transcript from

the Heron interrogation as was then? Heron, I didn't kill her. Well, I believe you did kill her, George. I didn't. I believe you did. I didn't. George, you've got to help tell the truth about this. I am telling the truth. Come on. The truth, George. Come on. We're not going to mess about. You've told lies. There's lies all the way along the line. You know what happened to Nicky Allen. You do, George. And you know exactly. Her death. into Nicky Allen. You do, George. And you know exactly her death. I don't. Now, repeatedly, just in this section on this one tape that we have, he ends up, Heron, saying, I'm not admitting to something I didn't do. And the investigating officer says, didn't do and the investigating officer says we are not asking you to admit that you didn't do we are asking for the truth about the murder of nicky allen now that's a very

odd and twisted way of putting something they're telling that they're playing with his mind the problem with assumptions of guilt right because assumptions of guilt is exactly what it says on the tin so therefore and if you couple that with look my aim of the interview was to get a confession then you can see how questions of that nature get put together the case of the cardiff three in which three innocent men were convicted of the murder of Lynette White in 1990 became a notorious example of how not to conduct an interview. One defendant, Stephen Miller, confessed to the murder after 13 hours of bullying, oppressive interviews. In some pockets of the world people still don't agree with false confessions.

So they think the confessions, if it's a confession, it's a confession. Now we know from a lot of more studies that have gone on by some very eminent people how persuasion can result in false confessions at times. Why would someone confess to a serious crime that they haven't committed? It might be an internal issue for themselves. They could be trying to protect somebody else. It could be they might have a particular mental health issue

that has convinced themselves that they've committed the offence, but they haven't. Without a doubt, it could be the power of persuasion in an interview for a suggestible person. There's sometimes the internal and external pressures. Heron has obviously denied on several occasions that he killed Nicky Allen. Yeah. And they say this. Now, George, you've been asked that question a few times tonight

and you never answered it. Obviously, he had answered it on numerous occasions. Are you going to tell us why you've been telling lies? It's because you've got something to hide, isn't it? They continue, well, why have you been telling lies? Why won't you answer? And Heron says, how would you like to be accused of a murder you didn't commit? And they respond, you might have convinced yourself you haven't killed Nicky, but George, at the end of the day, you are going to have to face up to reality. You are going to have to tell the truth. So what they're saying to him is you have convinced yourself.

In other words, there's some kind of, again, it's a mind kind of bending exercise. I think fundamentally, Julie, it gets back to this assumption, isn't it? You know, and the culture that existed at the time, where people have got this guilt assumption whereby look, you know, the material I've got, the evidence I've got

suggests that he's responsible. I think with all the pressures and everything else that's going on at the time, the questions or the time there the the the questions or the approaches with done with the best intentions but there was nobody at the time telling people that wasn't the right approach to be taken from a from a persuasive point of view it's not our job to use any type of emotional tactic to get somebody to admit something.

Our job is to conduct a thorough investigation as best we can, gather as much material in as best we can. I couldn't help thinking here of the interview with Joe Bradley and how he felt Heron looked like a stereotypical child murderer. He looked weak, he looked feeble, he looked pale, greasy hair, big glasses. He was kind of your stereotypical child murderer if you like. Northumbria Police's report of an inquiry into the case commissioned by Chief Constable John Stevens and conducted by ACC Alan Oliver, was published in 1994. It focused only on the way the interviews with George Heron were conducted. This wasn't just a bad interview. Whole chunks of Heron's story started to fall apart. Heron was vulnerable, and he was there without a qualified lawyer. The person representing

Heron was not even a paralegal but a legal secretary and therefore had no training or experience whatsoever in ascertaining whether a suspect was being treated fairly during the interview process. The judge ruled Heron's confession inadmissible, saying, that must never be allowed to happen again. But Heron did have an alibi. He was sofa surfing at his sister Michelle's flat in Weirgarth, where she lived with boyfriend Danny Baker.

Both Michelle and Danny confirmed to police during the door-to-door inquiries that Heron was at home with them all evening, except when he popped out to the Boar's Head pub to buy cigarettes. But police continued to suspect that Heron was the killer. And when he was arrested, so were Michelle and Danny, on suspicion of assisting an offender. The police held Danny in custody for three days, until he finally withdraws the alibi and agrees to a new version of events that potentially puts Heron at the scene of the crime. The police also emphasised the eyewitness accounts. There was a misrepresentation or maximisation of material

that was commonplace, I think, in the interviews of the time. There was false evidence put to Heron during interrogation, including that he had been seen with Nicky by two separate witnesses. One witness, Doreen Graham, described a man standing close to Nicky outside the Boar's Head, a three-minute walk from the old Exchange building, fitting Heron's description. A few minutes later, another woman described a man walking towards the Exchange building, when Nicky's body was found the next day, with a child skipping happily behind him.

But the two descriptions had striking differences, and both women were unable to pick Heron out at an identity parade held after he was charged. Trial judge Mr Justice Mitchell said something shocking. He suggested that the reason police delayed the identity parade until after Heron was charged was deliberate. He believed it was to avoid the risk of the women not picking Heron out and damaging the chances of a confession. In the police interview, the officers told Heron there had been confirmed sightings of him with the child outside the pub and walking with her moments later.

And then, an image of the killer was composed by a police sketch artist. A line drawing of a clean-shaven man with cropped hair. Heron's hair was longer, he had a moustache and he wore glasses. When Heron's case was acquitted, the police announced that they were not looking for another suspect. But the image of the clean-shaven man with cropped hair fitted the description of another resident on Weirgarth. The same man who was described in the CCTV footage. The man who lived three doors away from the place where Nicky Allen first went missing. David Boyd.

I think it was important for me to say, ultimately, this case involved one person, and that was David Boyd alone. And I think from an investigative perspective, the case is over, and we have got David Boyd convicted, and he'll be sentenced next week. Lisa Theaker is the chief investigating officer who stood on the court steps in May this year

after Boyd was finally convicted for Nicky's murder. Lisa's investigation is what brought the right killer to justice. But what happened in the three decades in between? In the year after nikki's murder sharon was in a kind of fugue state existing day to day trying to take care of her three girls she relied on prescription medication and alcohol to get her through heron the only suspect had been acquitted police had made it clear that as far as they were concerned, Nicky's killer had got away with it. Eventually, after those first dark months, something in her snapped.

It was at this point that Sharon realised that the police were treating her daughter's murder as a cold case. In other words, not actively investigating it at all. I had a few conversations with the police and they didn't have funding, they didn't have cold case teams and that then, so that told me that the police that was dealing with Nicky's case in the first place wasn't trained enough to deal with a murder case. Kept asking for meetings with the police, time after time, though I was busy. And there wasn't seem to be anybody looking into Nicky's case. Nicky's case and where I was treacherous shouldn't have happened.

Sharon was becoming desperate. Nicky's case and the way I was treated shouldn't have happened. Nicky's case could have been sorted out many other cases years ago and it wouldn't have took all this policing. I believe the police knew who murdered Nicky all this time and they'd missed that opportunity. Sharon did three things. She drew a map of the Garths. She filled in what she knew about who lived there and where the gaps were.

She then set out to complete the puzzle, to find out the name of every single man living in the Garths at the time Nicky went missing. And I just sat in a room all the time without anybody around us. And I'd done that for weeks at a time and I focused on the Garths house, every house. I even went out to people's houses and this house just stuck out all the time. The house that David Boyd lived in. Boyd was her partner and Caroline was there with her daughter.

There was a little girl that lived there. That's how Nicky knew the little girl. They started playing on the veranda and she was only about that big. So Caroline was the partner ofid boyd and they were three doors away there's about 26 years that they come forward to say that there was a man living in their house but they kept quite for 26 years i wasn't accusing anybody all i wanted to know was what happened to your partner because Because a partner just disappeared. I was just asking a simple question.

That's how it became that he did get arrested, through a simple question what the police should have asked. So basically you had a role to play in the police looking at Boyd. I've been mentioning for a few years about Boyd. Sharon's campaign to find the killer took over her life. She even moved to an area of Sunderland where certain people lived who she suspected might know something but had never spoken out. She began to purposely get herself arrested so that she would be able to speak to police and find out exactly what, if anything,

was happening with the investigation. Frustrated and angry that the police only seemed to contact her to either tell her they had nothing to report or to ask how she was. Because I told them not to come back to my door because I got sick of being let down by them. Not to come back to my door until they've charged the suspect. She said, I won't come back to your door unless they've charged the suspect she said and we won't come back to your door unless we're not 100 102 percent that we've got the killer We'll see you next time. Find your perfect somewhere. Charlie Chaplin, and many others were caught up in a campaign to root out communism in Hollywood. It's a story of glamour and scandal and political intrigue and a battle for the soul of the nation.

Hollywood Exiles from CBC Podcasts and the BBC World Service. Find it wherever you get your podcasts. ACAST helps creators launch, grow, and monetize their podcasts everywhere. ACAST.com I first got involved and became the Senior Investigating Officer of this case in 2016. This is Lisa Thieker. And that was the first time that I'd met Sharon. And Sharon has, you know, got a real mistrust of the police, understandably. Can you talk me through how you

were first alerted to Boyd? Yeah, so in 2016, when I first got this case, I went to the lab. We knew that YSTR obviously was coming in new techniques and it would give us a potential opportunity to revisit some of the exhibits in the case. So we spent some time going through like where we could test, where we could target and looked at Nikki's clothes. So the first time that Boyd was on your radar was through this DNA match that came back? When the hit came back, we didn't have a match, we didn't have a name. I just had an unidentified profile in February 2017. Sharon had a meeting that year in April

with the then Chief Constable Steve Ashman around an investigation, a re-investigation as she would term it. I think probably from Sharon's perspective and everybody's, where it was agreed that ultimately we would effectively get more staff on the inquiry. We pulled together a list of names of males that had been involved in the inquiry originally, and there was 212 names, and the plan was to work through all of them and take their samples of DNA.

The term nominations in police jargon means a person who cannot be eliminated as suspects unless they meet particular criteria. For example, they were in the area, knew the victim, broadly fitted the description of the suspect. We took the first sample in July. We took David Boyd's sample on the 4th of October. So Boyd wasn't actually on your radar prior to this scientific examination of the clothing? What I would say is when I first started looking at this case, genuinely, it was like a mountain, like where do you start? I had 212 names, but the starting point had to be the forensics. So 4th of October, we take his sample, and then I get his name on the 3rd of November.

From where? From the lab. So basically, we submitted his sample, and then they come back and say, David Boyd matches. matches. So as you know, Lisa, Sharon has said that before, prior to 2016, when you took on the job, that she had given police a map of the Garth with flats marked where men had lived that hadn't been investigated as suspects, as potential suspects, and that one of those was the flat where Boyd was living, three doors away from Nicky's grandfather, Dicky Prest. When we would go and see Sharon, or when officers would go and see Sharon,

understandably she was talking to officers and she was giving different people's names. So in this inquiry we've looked at 1,226 men or tried to identify that many people. And within that number are some of the names and people that Sharon has put forward as well. Boyd had a number of names, including Bell and Smith. So Sharon told me some time ago that she moved to Ryop

in order to talk with the Carolines to find out who this David Smith Bell was, what the name was that we now know is Boyd that he was using. And that it was through talking to them that she discovered that he was David Boyd. So did that not come before he was on your radar? No, the name has come subsequently. I've been in regular contact with Sharon since 2006 and do recall her telling me way before 2016 that she was desperate to get the name of Caroline's partner who was living with her in the same block from where Nicky went missing. But once we had David Boyd's name and I started to look at him on our systems,

that's when the hairs started to kind of go on the back of my neck a little bit. The team had established that Boyd was familiar with the old exchange building where Nicky's body was found. The timings on his original alibi were false, which put him potentially at the scene of the murder. And he was a convicted child sex offender. And ultimately, Boyd's was the only DNA and the only person of concern in the inquiry.

So we arrested him in the April of 2018. Yeah, this is Terry. This is Marty. April of 2018. suspicion, OK, but that offence, you do not have to say anything but it may harm your offence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later lie in court. Anything you do say. He was never going to admit it looking back. He answered the questions very straight faced but looked nervous and the leg repeatedly moving. I kind of get the impression that he thinks or has convinced himself that he was going to get off and that he was going to get out. Are you expecting other victims to come forward?

So we have looked extensively around any other offending in Northumbria's area, Cleveland's area, Durham area, to see whether there is anything potentially that we could link to him. And we haven't found anything. Because it would be highly unusual for a child killer to stop offending and to just retire from offending. He was on the sex offenders register for 10 years and he was monitored throughout that time so there was there was no offending known then so but you would naturally think that there would be something else. But who is going to answer to the catastrophic failures of that 1992 investigation? Because

there's an assumption, I think, that it was just about the interviews that were the problem. We had Darren Baker and Michelle Herron locked up until they changed their story about Herron's alibi. That's corruption, not incompetence, surely. So things absolutely were done very differently. And you're right, it wasn't just around the interviews. And the judge touched on that as well, about how evidence had been misrepresented and stuff. There was a review done back in the day. I know there was an assessment

made in terms of some of the allegations that were made and nothing was proven then. I know that Sharon's made a number of allegations over the years that has been looked at as well more recently. Massive mistakes were made and the implications of that have been huge onto Heron, onto the investigation and getting justice for Sharon and her family. So what do you think are the consequences of the 30-year delay in getting a man locked up for this murder? What I can say from my perspective here is, without the advances in the DNA, we wouldn't have identified David Boyd.

Even though he lived three doors down from Nicky's grandfather and he was a sex offender? And I think that comes back to, even just, I say small, it's not that small, 212 people. There was 118 people alone who were nominated as matching the artist's impression. Were all those nominations sex offenders? So we had, I think it was just over 20 people within that category.

And they weren't all people convicted. Do you remember the time that you told Sharon Boyd had been arrested? I do. I remember that vividly. And that was a, it kind of makes me feel a bit emotional about it now, talking about it actually, because that was a massive, massive moment. They smiled and they said they wouldn't come back and they didn't and she smiled at us and I knew the three of them just smiled at us. I couldn't walk for a bit after that.

I felt like... Sharon came face to face with Lisa Theaker, who had finally found the right man. A man whose name Sharon had scribbled on paper while the case went cold. How did it take the police that long to interview him? The police missed multiple steps in hunting for Nicky's killer. Mistakes that feel like they should have been a one-off.

But a few miles away, and just a few years apart from when Nicky was murdered, another working-class mother went head-to-head with the police when their investigation into her daughter's murder fell apart. And as I leaned over the back, my knees went against the back panel and it had always been loose at one end. And as I leaned over the bath, my knees went against the bath panel and it had always been loose at one end and as I leaned over my knees went against the panel and she was under the bath. I was absolutely hysterical and I ran downstairs and as I'm screaming she's under the bath, she's under the bath. These two mothers did more to get their daughter's murderers in the dock than

the officers during initial investigations? Why should a mother be responsible for solving their child's murder? And how were these women able to find leads that the police missed? This series was reported by me, Julie Bindle. It was written by me and Joanna Humphreys. The producer was Joanna Humphreys. The narrative editor was Gary Marshall. The sound design and original theme is by Tom Kinsella. The executive producer was Jasper Corbett. Tortoise.