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In a quiet English village a few hours drive from London, a threat was delivered to a local farmer.
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Impaled on a fence post, a severed lamb's head along with the message, "You
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next." The note said little about its author, but between the lines it said plenty.
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[Music] [Music] Nestled among the lush rolling hills of England's west country is the tiny
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village of Horton, a cluster of houses lining one main street, a farming community where life is simple, quiet,
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and peaceful. But in the spring of 1984, the peace and quiet was shattered following a series of bizarre events
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that took place here at Widden Hill Farm. 44year-old Graham Backhouse and his wife
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Margaret lived at the farm with their two children. Back House had inherited the farm from his father, but by all
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accounts, Back House, a former hairdresser, was not having financial success as a farmer. he had to take over
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the the farm. He had no option in the business. Uh and there was a pretty obvious that he was a kind of reluctant,
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grudging farmer, but it was well known that uh the farm was not making money. On March 30th, 1984,
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Backhouse reported a grizzly and terrifying discovery. A severed lamb's head had been impaled on his fence post.
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placed next to it a note warning in large handwritten letters, "You next."
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[Music] Back House told police that this wasn't the first time threats had been made
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against him. >> He told me that he was receiving um telephone calls of a threatening
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nature um even threats to kill. As I recall, >> Back House also told police about a
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threatening letter he had received in the mail, >> which said, words to the effect, um,
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"You have ruined my sister's life. Um, I'm going to get you, you bastard."
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>> Less than two weeks later, the threats turned violent. Margaret Backhouse was heading into town
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to do some shopping. She decided to take her husband's car because her car was having some
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mechanical difficulties. Graham was in the barn and never heard the explosion or
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Margaret's screams for help over the music from his radio. The bomb was unsophisticated but
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extremely powerful. It had been planted directly under the driver's seat. >> Strictly speaking, it wasn't a bomb. It
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was a shortened version of a shotgun. It was constructed from a galvanized steel
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pipe, 2-in diameter, quite a thick wall to the pipe. Margaret Backhouse survived
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the explosion because the force of the bomb was directed downwards by the highquality construction of the driver's
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seat. But doctors still had to remove more than a pound of pellets and shrapnel from Margaret Backhouse's body.
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The bombing stunned villagers who now had to accept the fact that the threats against Graham Backhouse were serious.
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>> When bombs go off, you got to take it seriously. And people were thinking that there must be something
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behind this. It was the only possible conclusion that we all reached that the bomb must have been for Graham back
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house. But who wanted Graham Backhouse dead and why? On the same day of the car bomb
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explosion which seriously injured Margaret Backhouse, a threatening letter was delivered to the Backhouse farm and
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the message said something to the effect came twice last week but the pigs were about. The note ended with the words see
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you soon. The words twice and were had both been misspelled and experts believed that the spelling errors were
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deliberate. Investigators also examined the note found beside the severed lamb's
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head, the one which stated, "You next." An analysis of that note revealed a
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possible clue, an impression from a circular doodle. When a doodle is made on a piece of paper, the pressure from
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the writing instrument leaves an impression on the pages underneath the original doodle. Doodle impressions can
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be found using a technique called oblique lighting which casts shadows across the indentations of the paper
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>> so that you can see the impression as a row of shadows and these can then be
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photographed. >> Police ask Graham back house to identify all individuals who may have wanted to
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harm him. He was interviewed at some length about who his enemies were, uh, who his ex-girlfriends were, and things
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of that nature. Back house told police about one possibility, a former quarry worker
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named David Hodkinson. Back house said he once had a sexual affair with Hodkinson's wife. Hodkinson would have
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had access to explosives and was also an electrician who specialized in wiring automobiles. On the day the uh explosion
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took place, this person was in fact um out of the country on holiday and had been out of the country for uh 3 or 4
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days beforehand. When Hodkinson's alibi checked out, police turned their attention to one of Graham Backhouse's
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neighbors, Colin Bedale Taylor. He was a retired engineer, seriously depressed over the death of his 19-year-old son,
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Digby, who died in a car crash 2 years earlier. But Dale Taylor and Back House were involved in a bitter land dispute
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which they couldn't seem to resolve. They lived 200 yards apart. Colin Bedale
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Taylor was wellliked in the small farming community. He was a woodworker and handyman who built this bench for
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his friends in the village with the words by a while inscribed on the back rest. Despite the differences between
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Backhouse and Bedale Taylor, police did not seriously consider him a suspect in the car bombing. There was no reason to
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suspect that Mr. Pedal Taylor was in any way, shape, or form involved in this incident.
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>> With no other leads, Back House and his family were given 24-hour police
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protection immediately following the bombing. After a week, Graham Backhouse began to resent the police intrusion and
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asked them to end the aroundthe-clock protection. Before they left, police installed an alarm button connecting the
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back house home directly to the police station. Just 2 weeks later, the alarm sounded.
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>> Police cars began streaming up the hill. We knew that something was seriously
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wrong. >> When the police arrived at the farm, they saw a horrific scene of blood and
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death. Blood was found on the kitchen floor. The chairs had been overturned. And at the bottom of the stairs, at the
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end of a hallway, lay the body of Colin Bedale Taylor, Back House's neighbor. He had been shot
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twice in the chest. In his right hand, firmly clutched, was a Stanley knife inscribed with his own initials, CBT.
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Back house was bleeding profusely with gaping slash wounds on his face and chest.
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Well, I'd pop in to see how your wife is fairing. >> She's doing very well. Thank you.
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>> He told police that Bedale Taylor stopped by to ask how his wife was doing
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in the hospital following the car bombing. >> Justice. >> Without warning, Colin flew into a rage
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and attacked Back House with a Stanley knife. It's >> me that set the bomb in your car.
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>> You should have been the victim, not her. >> He said he was doing God's work. blamed
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Back House for the death of his son and admitted planting the car bomb. Back House ran to the hallway, grabbed his
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shotgun, and shot Bedale Taylor in self-defense. Police roped off the farm and called for
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forensic detectives to conduct an examination. They were particularly interested in the blood trails, the one
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they could see and the one they couldn't find. Graham Backhouse told police that he
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killed Colin Bedale Taylor in self-defense after his neighbor went berserk and attacked Backhouse with a
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Stanley knife. Back house said his neighbor admitted planting the carbon and that it was intended for him, not
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his wife. When police searched Bedale Taylor's property, they found evidence
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linking him to the bombing. >> We found a long section of pipe on grounds quite close to Colin Beetle
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Taylor's home, and this matched the remnants of the bomb that were reconstructed.
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>> The obvious implication was that the pipe bomb had been made by him and come
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from his land. >> But forensic detectives were confused by what they found at the scene of the
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attack. First, the blood spatter on the kitchen floor told a story, but it was a
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story inconsistent with Backous's version of events. >> The staining was predominantly in the
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form of small circular drips of blood. The circular drops of blood found on the kitchen floor were not consistent with
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the struggle, but indicated that the blood dripped from an individual standing still.
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>> Blood dripping vertically to a surface during a passive act of bleeding will
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form circular spots or stains. But if we have a violent movement of the body, the
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flicking of the hand, see a different shape of stain. They're more elongated and some of the stains
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will show a tail shape to them pointing in the direction of travel that the blood impacted the surface.
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>> And there was something missing. Back house said he ran for his life from the
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kitchen down the hall to get his gun, but police could find no trail of blood. We seem to have a man who was dripping
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blood profusely in the kitchen manages to to move over 15t of carpeted hallway without leaving any drips of blood. And
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police were faced with another discrepancy. Back house said he shot the Dale Taylor
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after his face and chest had been slashed, but his blood was not found on the gun. Had he been attacked before
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firing the gun, blood from his face wound or from his hands would have dripped onto the gun as he fired in
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self-defense. So, both features missing from the gun suggested that he wasn't
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bleeding and hadn't blood staining on him at the time that he picked up that
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gun. >> The victim was found clutching the Stanley knife firmly in his right hand.
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The forensic pathologist found this highly unusual. when somebody's shot or when somebody dies, they go limp.
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Uh so then I would expect to see the response of the body's response to being shot twice in the chest and death
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taking place simply to relax and the knife would fall from the hand. It wouldn't be clutched tightly in the
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hand. And Bedale Taylor's right palm was bloody. When an individual holds a knife
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during an attack, the knife usually prevents blood from staining the entire palm.
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>> There's an area of the palm which is either very lightly stained with blood
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or not stained with blood. Um the knife protects that part of the palm. >> Back house's chest wound was also
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inconsistent with the struggle >> cuz normally if you're cut you withdraw,
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your body jerks away. So, how on earth are you going to get a wound which then travels almost half the circumference of
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the chest in a onetoone confrontation? I would never expect to see that pattern of injury.
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>> And back house had no defensive injuries commonly found when a person fends off a
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knife attack. >> They actually grab hold of the weapon itself and they get cuts across the
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fingers and the palm. And sometimes you find that they've tried to block the
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weapon, put their hand up, and they get cuts in the back of the forearm or the side of the forearm or on the back of
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the hand. None of these were present here. And there was something else, something small but significant. When
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police searched Backhouse's study, they found a notepad. On one of the pages was
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a circular doodle. The ink doodle found on Back House's notepad was identical to
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the impression found on the U. Next note. >> It was a whole series of circles. Quite
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a complicated thing. The impressions were quite deep so that you had a good photograph and you were able to get a
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good alignment and you could see clearly that it came from this doodle. It was exactly the same. There was no doubt
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whatsoever about it. This is the doodle that we're talking about here. Uh you
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can see just various scribble. When we turn the page, I think you can still see the
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impression. This note is now very old and has been well handled. So it's not
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terribly clear now, but it is still there. Just see it there. Still see the impression just there.
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proof that the UN next note was written on Graham Backhouse's own notepad. >> We now had a document in the form of the
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UNX note that we could positively link with Wenhill Farm. >> Police believed they could now piece
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together the bizarre events which led to the coldblooded murder of Colin Bedale Taylor.
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After two straight years of crop failures, Graham Backhouse was £50,000 in debt to a local bank and was in
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desperate need of funds. Back House devised an elaborate scheme to get out of debt once and for all. His
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plan was to kill his wife and collect on her life insurance policies, which he had recently doubled to 100,000.
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But he wanted the murder to appear as if Margaret had been killed by someone out
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to kill him. So Backhouse fabricated the story about the threatening phone calls
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and letters. Back house himself wrote the you next note and impaled the severed lamb's head
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on his fence post establishing the ruse that someone was out to get him. With the stage now set, Backhouse turned his
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attention to the murder of his wife. He planted a pipe bomb under the driver's
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seat of his own car. He knew his wife would drive his car into town the next morning because her
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car was having mechanical problems. But Back House never expected his wife to survive the explosion. Desperate and
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fearing the police would consider him a suspect. Back House panicked and decided
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to set up a scapegoat, someone to divert the police inquiry from himself. The logical choice was his neighbor
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Colin Bedale Taylor. Back >> I'm fine. >> Thanks for coming about the furniture.
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I'm >> villagers knew that the two were involved in a land dispute. >> When Bedale Taylor accepted Graham's
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invitation to discuss a piece of furniture, he had no way of knowing he had walked into a death trap.
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Going [Music] Colin was shot twice in the chest in cold blood [Music] to make the shooting appear to be in
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self-defense. Back house slashed himself in the face and chest with a knife he had inscribed with his neighbors
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initials. Bleeding profusely from the self-inflicted wounds, back house overturned kitchen chairs to make it
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appear there had been a struggle, never realizing the shape of the blood spatter
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would indicate no struggle at all. Back house's own blood was found on the victim's shirt because he stood directly
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over the body when he placed the knife in the dead man's hand. With the crime
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scene now complete, Graham Backhouse called the police. Sometime earlier, Back House planted a piece of pipe on
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Bedale Taylor's property identical to the type used in making the car bomb. When the forensic evidence contradicted
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Back House's version of events, he was arrested for both the attempted murder
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of his wife and the murder of Colin Bedale Taylor. In addition to the blood spatter evidence, the doodle impression
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found on Backhouse's notepad, and the medical examiner's opinion that the cuts
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on Graham Backhouse were self-inflicted. Another crucial piece of evidence helped
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seal the case. It came from the letter delivered to the Backhouse farm on the day of the bombing. Forensic detectives
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wanted to analyze the glued envelope for saliva, hoping to determine the blood type of the individual who sent the
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letter. But they discovered much more under the microscope. The fiber found in the envelope matched
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fibers found in a brown cardigan sweater owned by Graham Backhouse. further proof
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that Backhouse had mailed the threatening letter to himself. Graham Backhouse's plotting continued from his
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prison cell. He conned a fellow prisoner into smuggling out an unsigned letter to
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a local newspaper. The letter implicated Colin Bedale Taylor in the car bombing,
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but the letter was confiscated and Backous's handwriting matched the handwriting on the letter delivered to
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the farm on the day of the bombing. After a 16-day trial, Graham Backhouse was convicted of all charges against him
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and received two life sentences. >> If somebody had set out to write a novel
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along those lines, it would never have been accepted by anybody. I mean, this is absolutely truth being stranger than
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fiction. >> This was an outstanding case in many respects, principally because without
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forensic evidence, there was no case. The worst aspect was of course the fact that he picked on a totally innocent man
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in the village uh and killed him for no other reason than to try to remove blame
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from himself. And that's what made it a diabolical murder. [Music] Heat. Heat.
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[Music] [Applause] [Music]