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NARRATOR: At the
scene of a homicide, forensic scientists
found clues that painted a virtual
portrait of the killer.
00:00:15
They knew he had a dog and
a red carpet in his home. And they even knew the kinds of
trees and shrubs in his yard.
00:00:24
And he left behind an unusual
cable tie and a dog collar that led police straight to
the front door of one
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of England's most
notorious killers. [music playing] After doing some
Christmas shopping,
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16-year-old old
Leanne Tiernan decided not to take the bus home, but
instead, to take a short cut
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through a wooded area in Leeds
England known as Houghley Gill. SHARON HAWKHEAD: I had told her
before not to go down there,
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especially when it was
dark and dingy down there. It's not so bad during the
day but not on the nights--
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might could be a
bit not very nice. NARRATOR: When Leanne didn't
arrive home as planned,
00:01:34
her family went looking for her. SHARON HAWKHEAD: She may have
fallen, possibly broken a leg.
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Then I decided to
call the police because there was
no sign of her. NARRATOR: For days police
scoured the area with no luck.
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CHRIS GREGG: We searched 1,000
houses from top to bottom, but it didn't produce one piece
of evidence that could link
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TO explain what had
happened to this girl. PETER GRANT: We'd found
absolutely no evidence
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of anything connected to Leanne. It was simply as
if she'd vanished off the face of the earth.
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-Hello. Welcome to my talk show.
[laughter] CHRIS GREGG: There
was nothing at school
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that was a problem to her. We couldn't find any boyfriend
in the background that perhaps
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would have explained
why she'd not come home. From that point onwards, we
structured the whole case
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as if it was a potential
murder inquiry. NARRATOR: A television
network broadcast
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a re-creation of
Leanne's walk home. In it, Leanne's sister
wore the same outfit Leanne
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was wearing on the
night she disappeared. This broadcast generated
one promising lead.
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DAVID WILSON: And one
witness did talk to us about having seen a
man in Houghley Gill
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on numerous
occasions and told us that he had a black
and tan small dog. CHRIS GREGG: We
traced 70 plus people
00:02:58
who walked the
dogs in that area. And through a process
of elimination, by showing the witness the
dog walker and the dogs,
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we were able to
eliminate all 70 plus. SHARON HAWKHEAD: I
never gave up hope. If I'd have given up
hope, I'd have probably
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ended up dead
meself at the time. There was always a little
niggle in the back of your mind,
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because you just don't know. But you've got to
give yourself-- self something to keep going by.
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NARRATOR: Nine months
later, a pedestrian noticed a suspicious bundle
of trash in a wooded area
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about 16 miles from where
Leanne was last seen. It was a girl's body, and
it was the body of Leanne.
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-And the immediate feeling,
at first is, total despair, and you want to be with them.
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You want to be dead with them. CHRIS GREGG: The worst possible
outcome had now been realized.
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This girl's body had been found. She'd been murdered in
the most brutal of ways.
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NARRATOR: Leanne's
body was wrapped in nine large green plastic
garbage bags and a bed cover.
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Her clothes were
the ones she was wearing on the day
she disappeared. But it was clear
her body had just
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recently been bumped there. CHRIS GREGG: At
this stage, we're not looking at a
great length of time
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that her body's been there. So of course, the
questions are where has she been up until now?
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-One would expect
if a package like had been left for
any length of time, the animals would have got
to it, would have broken in,
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of they'd have smelt it. That hadn't happened. NARRATOR: The bags were
tied with twine, which
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was unusual in both
color and design. PETER GRANT: Normally,
twine like this is made up
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of three strands
twisted together. This one was unusual
in that it was four strands twisted together.
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And so I had not seen
that sort of thing before. CHRIS GREGG: It wasn't a
standard off-the-shelf product
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that you could buy
at any garden center. There was something
very unique about this.
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NARRATOR: Leanne Tiernan had
given police a valuable tool-- the trace evidence that
could identify her killer.
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NARRATOR: After Leanne
Tiernan's body was discovered in the woods, her family
went on television
00:05:24
to appeal to anyone who
might have seen someone in the area where Leanne's
body had been found.
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-Leanne was a lovely girl. She was me baby. She was me mate.
[inaudible] NARRATOR: Unfortunately,
the appeal
00:05:43
didn't generate any leads. But the autopsy
answered some questions about where Leanne's
body had been
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over the last several months. PETER GRANT: It appeared
to have deteriorated in a-- in a reverse way.
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It seemed to be more decayed
on the inside than the outside. And that started us
thinking in terms of,
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has she maybe been frozen? NARRATOR: Samples of
Leanne's heart tissue were analyzed under a
scanning electron microscope.
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ASHLEY WILSON: In the
case of Leanne's tissue, there were large gaps, which,
to me, were indicative of an ice
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crystal once having
been present and forced the muscle bundles apart. NARRATOR: The size of these
gaps indicated she probably
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had been kept in a home freezer. ASHLEY WILSON: If you
freeze very quickly in a-- a material
like liquid nitrogen,
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or liquid oxygen for example,
the freezing rate is very, very fast, and the ice
crystals are tiny.
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If you freeze very slowly,
for example, in a deep freeze, the cooling rate is
much slower, and the ice
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crystals are very much larger. NARRATOR: And
scientists found more telling evidence
in Leanne's hair.
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It was pollen. Specifically, pollen from the
Ligustrum vulgare, otherwise known as the Privet,
which is a hedge plant.
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Pollen from the Populus
Fastigiata, a poplar tree, and Prunus domestica,
which was from a plum tree.
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There were also
remnants of burnt wood, an indication she had
been close to a bonfire.
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The cause of death appeared
to be strangulation. There was a knotted scarf and
a cable tie around her throat
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and cable ties
around her wrists. The printed lot numbers reveal
the ties were standard issue,
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available through
many retail outlets. But one yellow tie
yielded an important clue.
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Its lot number showed it had
been manufactured exclusively for the British postal
system, which comprises
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the Royal Mail and
the Parcelforce. PETER GRANT: Useful information,
but there are several thousand
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people who work
for both companies. So it wasn't going to
provide us with a name.
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NARRATOR: The materials
which covered Leanne's body. were also revealing. DAVID WILSON: She was
wrapped in a duvet.
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And she was also
wrapped in a number of green plastic refuse sacks. NARRATOR: The duvet bed cover
had a floral design, which
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had been manufactured
for decades and was impossible to trace. Scientists had better
luck with the trash bags.
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They were 40 microns thick--
a small piece of intelligence that identified them
as a brand sold only
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through the Morrison
grocery store chain. There were two of these
stores near Leanne's home.
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CHRIS GREGG:
Actually finding out who bought those bags w--
was just an impossible task.
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But the main piece
of information it helped give to us
was that the killer's likely to be from the area where
these supermarkets are located.
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NARRATOR: On the trash bags,
bed cover, and Leanne's clothing were significant pieces
of trace evidence--
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tiny, red carpet fibers. PETER GRANT: These were
distinctively lobed fibers. They were twisted
in a particular way.
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They were also dyed in a
particular way in that they were more red at one end
of twist than at the other.
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NARRATOR: There were also dozens
of animal hairs, which appeared to be from a black and tan dog.
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This was consistent with the
information from the witness who saw a man with the same
type of dog in the area
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where Leanne disappeared. The killer used an
unusual dog collar to wrap the garbage bags
around Leanne's body.
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Investigators now
knew the killer had a dog, red
carpet in his home, and worked for the
postal service.
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Now, all they had
to do was find him. NARRATOR: The forensic evidence
revealed Leanne's Tiernan's
00:10:15
body had been frozen before
it was dumped in the woods almost a year after
she was murdered.
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If the killer kept the
body in his freezer, he probably lived alone. There was further evidence that
he lived near a privet hedge
00:10:32
and a poplar tree, had red
carpet in his home, and a dog. And he most likely worked
for the postal service, where
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he obtained the distinctive
yellow cable ties. The last item for
scientists to analyze
00:10:50
was the dog collar
used to fasten the garbage bag
over Leanne's head. PETER GRANT: It did appear to be
a very good quality dog collar.
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And it did have some
distinctive features about it-- that nature of the
stitching, the thickness
00:11:02
of the leather, the
color of the leather. NARRATOR: Detective David
Wilson was assigned the task
00:11:08
of determining where
the color came from. DAVID WILSON: Our
first aim was to try
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and identify the
dog color itself. And then perhaps if we couldn't
do that, move on to finding out
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where it had been sold and
then who it had been sold to. NARRATOR: The color was
manufactured by Armitages Pet
00:11:28
Products in nearby
Nottingham, England. DAVID WILSON: Because the
uhm, stitching process
00:11:37
had become computerized in 1999,
we were able to tell, straight away, that this collar was
made between 1999 and 2001.
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NARRATOR: The manufacturer
provided the names of more than 100
retailers who sold
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these colors during that time. Each one was contacted
to see if they had kept any customer records.
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DAVID WILSON: At
that stage, it was trying to find a
needle in a haystack. But they didn't really keep
records of people's names
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and addresses who had
bought a dog collar. They just sold a dog collar. Uh, it wouldn't necessarily mean
that they would have details
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uhm, of anybody within our
area who had bought one. NARRATOR: On a hunch,
Wilson asked for the names
00:12:21
of customers who purchased
the collar over the internet. This gave them their
first real break.
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DAVID WILSON: There were only
three people from the auction and only one person from Leeds
who appeared on that list.
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This was a John Taylor of
Cockshott Drive in Leeds, and he'd bought six
of these dog collars.
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NARRATOR: John Taylor was 45
years old, divorced with two grown children, and was
currently living alone just 3/4
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of a mile from where
Leanne disappeared. And there was another
startling revelation.
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Taylor worked for a division
of the Royal Mail with access to the yellow cable ties, like
those found on Leanne's wrists.
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According to his
neighbors, Taylor was a loner who raised hunting
dogs and had a dark side.
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CHRIS GREGG: He was a man who
led a very nocturnal life. He'd go out at all times at
night, poaching and hunting.
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This was seemingly
his supply of food. We found that he had been
cruel to animals, particularly
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in the killing
process of animals. NARRATOR: Investigators also
discovered that Taylor met
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women through Lonely
Hearts newspaper ads. SHARON HAWKHEAD: We were
checking telephone bills
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of his, and we found but he
was making literally thousands upon thousands of calls
to newspaper date lines.
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And he'd met quite a number of
uh, of-- of ladies and partners through this. -When we spoke to one female
acquaintance in particular,
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she told us that he
would like to take her up into his bedroom, that he
would like to place a cable
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tie behind each of her wrists,
and then tie that cable tie together, and then
put a scarf over her face,
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and have quite
violent sex with her. -Three cable ties tied together,
one around each wrist, and one
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linking the two together, which
was precisely the same way that he tied Leanne Tiernan up.
00:14:25
NARRATOR: When police
searched Taylor's home, they were surprised to see
that there was no red carpet
00:14:31
in his home, and he didn't
have a black and tan dog. Was it possible that John
Taylor was the wrong man?
00:14:48
NARRATOR: Police were
convinced that John Taylor was involved in Leanne's
Tiernan's murder.
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But they needed forensic
evidence to prove it. CHRIS GREGG: We knew that we
had to examine every single inch
00:15:03
of his home, and his garden, and
his sheds and his out buildings to find any evidence which
could match to those items which
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had been found a Leanne's body. PETER GRANT: The initial
thing that struck us when we went in was that all the
floorboards had been stripped.
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And this made us think,
where the carpets? CHRIS GREGG: There were no
carpets in John Taylor's house,
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but what he couldn't
remove were the strands around the nails
on the floorboards.
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There were bare boards
with the nails in that had been used to hold
down the carpets.
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Those carpet strands
in Taylor's home were microscopically
similar to the carpet
00:15:42
fibers found with Leanne's body. And on a loose nail
in the kitchen, investigators found a tiny
fragment of a trash bag,
00:15:53
as if someone brushed up against
the nail while carrying a bag. The trash bag fragment
was the same brand
00:16:02
as the type found
with Leanne's body. DAVID WILSON: We found
two dog collars, which
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were identical to those
ordered from Armitages. In addition to that, we
found an amount of twine.
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And that was forensically
examined, and found to be identical to that
recovered from Leanne.
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NARRATOR: In the backyard,
scientists found a broken cable tie identical to the one
around Leanne's wrists.
00:16:31
And there was also a poplar
tree and a privet hedge consistent with the pollen
found in Leanne's hair.
00:16:41
When police excavated
Taylor's yard, they made a gruesome discovery. They found the corpse of
a black and tan terrier.
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DAVID WILSON: We felt that
Taylor had killed this dog as soon as he heard major
appeals trying to identify
00:16:56
that person, who he
knew to be himself. NARRATOR: The hair
from Taylor's dog was microscopically
similar to the dog
00:17:04
hair found with Leanne's body. John Taylor was arrested and
charged with Leanne's murder.
00:17:13
When confronted with the
overwhelming forensic evidence, Taylor confessed. He admitted abducting
Leanne as she walked
00:17:26
along the wooded
path and forcing her to a half mile back to his home. Taylor used a distinctive cable
tie from work to tie her wrists
00:17:39
and at some point, he
strangled her to death. The ice crystals in
Leanne's heart tissue
00:17:46
showed Taylor stored
her body in the freezer. Almost nine months later,
he covered the body
00:17:59
with garbage bags
and the bed cover, and fastened them with the black
twine and the dog collar, which
00:18:06
was traced to Taylor through
his internet purchase. CHRIS GREGG: There's
no doubt in my mind
00:18:12
that John Taylor set out
to kill on that Sunday. Leanne Tiernan was in the
wrong place at the wrong time.
00:18:20
This man is a predator. It could've been any
woman, that afternoon, who fell into his hands.
00:18:26
She was subject to the
most savage, brutal, and callous attack imaginable. NARRATOR: Although Taylor
admitted the abduction,
00:18:36
he insisted Leanne's death was
an accident, claiming she had fallen and hit her
head on the floor.
00:18:43
But this was a lie since the
autopsy showed no such injury. CHRIS GREGG: He couldn't explain
how the girl had been strangled
00:18:52
with a plastic cable tie
and a double-knotted scarf. He couldn't account
for that at all.
00:18:59
NARRATOR: Investigators find
it hard to believe that Taylor left so much forensic evidence.
00:19:06
Pollen from his garden, carpet
fibers, the distinctive cable tie, the twine, garbage
bags, the hairs from the dog
00:19:16
all bore Taylor's signature. CHRIS GREGG: John Taylor's not
as clever as he thought he was.
00:19:23
He didn't leave his DNA. He didn't leave fingerprints. But he left items there that
led a trail back to him,
00:19:32
and that was is own doing. NARRATOR: John Taylor was found
guilty of kidnapping and murder
00:19:38
and was sentenced to two
life terms in prison. 14 years earlier, another woman
had been sexually assaulted
00:19:48
in the same area where
Leanne's body was found. The biological
evidence from that case
00:19:55
proved that John Taylor
was the perpetrator. For that crime, and one other
to which Taylor confessed,
00:20:05
he received two
additional life sentences. But no one is convinced that all
of John Taylor's deadly secrets
00:20:14
have been unearthed. CHRIS GREGG: There
are for murders that we're investigating
in, in very great detail.
00:20:21
One of the cases actually
involves a prostitute whose body was found
buried in the same woods
00:20:28
that Leanne was later found. NARRATOR: Without
forensic evidence, Taylor would not
have been implicated
00:20:35
in any of these crimes. PETER GRANT: I
think what satisfied me most about this case was the
fact that we weren't relying on
00:20:42
very powerful DNA, or very
powerful fingerprint evidence to identify an offender.
00:20:47
It was old-fashioned
forensics, if you like. It was fibers. It was hairs. It was uhm, the construction
of various items,
00:20:56
and all these
things came together to provide some extremely
powerful evidence. [music playing]