00:00:04
[dramatic music] - When a murder's committed,
it's always a race against time
00:00:10
to find the truth, to
separate fact from fiction, to catch the killer and to make
sure that justice is served.
00:00:20
But what happens when the
truth vanishes with the victim? I'm Dr. Richard Shepherd
00:00:26
and I've spent my entire career
as a forensic pathologist performing nearly
23,000 autopsies.
00:00:35
I've learned that the
dead don't hide the truth and they never lie. Through me, you'll be hearing
directly from the victim
00:00:45
with the aid of a
state-of-the-art laboratory using groundbreaking technology, I'll be investigating a
series of intriguing crimes
00:00:54
where, from the victim's
bodies, I'll revealed to you the truth behind these murders.
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[photos snapping] [soft music] [phone dialing and ringing] - [Dispatcher] Good
morning Dorset police.
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- On 17th of June, 2013, Dorset police pay a welfare
visit to a flat in Bournemouth.
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It's the home of taxi
driver William Spiller, who hasn't been
seen for some time.
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And there they make
a gruesome discovery. [beeping] [phone dialing and ringing] - Dorset police receive
a phone call from a woman
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who says she's concerned. She's had no contact with her
boyfriend for some weeks, now.
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The problem the police
have in relation to a phone call
like that is that they're both adults,
they're both grownups.
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These are not uncommon
things to happen. If as an adult you don't
want to contact somebody
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or call them, then you're
perfectly entitled to do that. It's a very difficult situation
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for the police to deal with. [dramatic music] - William's girlfriend
hadn't heard from him
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for quite a while, and obviously she was worried,
something didn't seem right,
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and the neighbors
also alerted them. They're reporting
there are flies, dead flies, flies everywhere.
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Swarming and a smell. The police or a social
services type of organization must go and look 'cause you
know there are welfare concerns.
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- The woman had
been receiving texts and messages via the phone but had never actually
spoken to the boyfriend.
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And that was unusual. And at that point, I think
Dorset police were quite right to decide that they would go
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and check on the
person's welfare, which is basically you
go knock on the door
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and say, are you okay? [police knocking] They enter the block of flats and as they approach
the front door,
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they're aware of an
odor, a musty smell. They force entry into the flat. [door clicking]
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- The smell was coming
from the bedroom and there discovered this
absolutely horrific scene.
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- Any experienced
officer will tell you, once you've witnessed that
odor of decomposition,
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you will never forget it. There's a TV in the bedroom and the TV is on
a makeshift table
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made of four plastic boxes. And it's obvious to them
because of the infestation
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and the smell that they
contained remains of some sort. - When the police smelt this
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and saw all the flies
around these plastic boxes, which are clear, so they
would've seen these body parts.
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- A further search
is made of the flat and in a filing cabinet,
they find a box.
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When they open up that box
to see what the content is, their worst fears are realized.
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They discover it's a human head, an absolutely horrific
find for the officers
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that go there initially
to find human remains that have been dismembered. [drawer rumbling]
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- It must have been so
traumatic for the police to deal with in
that investigation.
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- Imagine that the
forensic scientists or the detectives that came on after would've
been very surprised
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by the head in the
filing cabinet. So this particularly grizzly
murder would've certainly
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affected, you know, some of
the police in terms of trauma that they may have
suffered afterwards
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from dealing with the case. - At this point, the
officers withdraw, the flat is cordoned off,
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and obviously detective
branch is informed and a homicide
investigation is commenced.
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- [Richard] It was
immediately clear from the way the body
parts have been stored
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that this was not typical
of a murder scene. - It would be unusual for
the police to find something
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so ordered and
something so obvious. I mean, usually, if someone
is dismembering a body,
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it's to conceal it not to
use it as a table for the TV. So the police would've been
very confused about why
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has this person gone
to so much time to put a body in boxes and then just to leave it
there for it to discovered.
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So in this case, this
isn't about concealment, this is about order. [tense music]
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- The evidential trail
starts right away. This is actually a very
complex crime scene.
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Even down to some of the things that perhaps might
not be obvious. Do all the body parts belong
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to the same body
is the first thing, or are we looking
for other victims? [dramatic music]
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- As a pathologist, when I'm faced with
multiple body parts, the first thing I must do
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is make sure they all
belong to the same person. We could possibly be dealing
with a serial killer,
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but in this case, there
is a torso, a head, arms, and legs, all neatly
severed through the joints
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and stacked in plastic boxes. They did all fit together and DNA testing confirmed
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they all belonged
to the same person. This was the body of a
white man in his 40s,
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who was large, he was
around 20 plus stone and the cuts who the
bone were not those
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of an expert which suggested
he'd been dismembered using some kind of saw. Certainly the cuts
weren't smooth
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or made with surgical
tools, but who was it? - One of the most important
things in a situation like this,
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you have to identify the victim, that is of paramount importance. - The dismembered body was
in such a state of decay.
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There was very little left
to identify the remains, but what we did
have was his teeth.
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The inner soft tissue of the
tooth is covered by a layer of enamel, which is a
very, very hard substance,
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capable of withstanding
incredibly high temperatures, and can sometimes last for
hundreds of years after death.
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Comparing the teeth with
dental records confirmed that this was 48-year-old
taxi driver William Spiller.
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- William was known
locally as a gentle giant. He's a fun-loving, humorous man
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that was known to
a lot of people. William was in a
long-term relationship with a woman called Glenys.
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It was her that had called
the police initially. - William was a taxi driver. He seemed very popular where
he lived down in Bournemouth.
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He was also a doorman at one
time. He loved playing snooker. He did all this sort
of usual things.
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He had a caravan at the
beach and he'd go down there and he was also a father.
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[dramatic music] - [Richard] William
had a 27-year-old
son, Nathan Robinson, who spent his childhood
growing up in the Midlands
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with his mother before
moving to Bournemouth to be with his dad. - Nathan studied at
Aberystwyth University.
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He has a degree in mathematics and at one point he
was considering doing
a master's degree.
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- Nathan had just
finished a degree, graduated from Aberystwyth, with he'd gone and lived
down in Bournemouth.
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He didn't actually have
a job at that time, but the two were
living together.
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- It was fairly obvious
when William was found that nobody had been in
the flat for some time.
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However, Nathan had lived
with William for some years. So where is Nathan now? Nathan falls into two camps.
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He's either in the suspect
camp or the victims. He could be either
at this point.
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If Nathan is a
suspect or a victim, what's imperative, regardless
of which camp he's in,
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we need to find him as
a matter of urgency. [dramatic music] [dramatic music] - In a quiet cul-de-sac
in Bournemouth,
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police have launched
a murder investigation after finding the
dismembered body of taxi driver William Spiller
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neatly packed in storage boxes. [dramatic music] There was a torso, a
head, arms, and legs,
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all neatly severed
through the joints and stacked in plastic boxes. The dismembered body was
in such a state of decay,
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there was very little left
to identify the remains, but dental records confirmed
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this was 48-year-old
William Spiller. William shared his flat
with his 26-year-old son,
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Nathan Robinson. - Nathan's not there. From the investigative
perspective, why
is he not there?
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Nathan now has a foot in
two potential boxes here. He's either a suspect,
he could be a victim.
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We need to find out
which one he's in. - Police launched a countrywide
search for William's son.
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William's body was dismembered
and badly decomposed. But could it still
tell us something about
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what had happened to him in
those moments before he died, he was found to have
a number of stab
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and slash wounds
all over his body. If we look at the torso,
we can see the spine
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and the ribs that protect
the vital internal organs. But if we look at just the
soft tissue of the torso,
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we can see that the
wounds are superficial. They cut through the skin and the underlying muscle only,
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they go nowhere near
penetrating through the ribs and into the vital organs. And that's really important
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because it tells us that
the weapon that used to cause these injuries is very
sharp but also very shallow.
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[dramatic music] - During the search of the flat, police seized a Stanley
knife, a box cutter,
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a saw, and a hacksaw - While the Stanley knife
was the likely weapon used to inflict soft tissue
wounds on William,
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these injuries
alone weren't enough to have caused William's death, but there was something
else his body told us
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about this brutal attack. Often at a post-mortem,
it's not what you see, but what you don't see
that can become important.
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And as you look
at William's arms, I can see there are no slash
wounds to his lower arms
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and wounds like that are caused. When someone raises their
hand to defend themselves,
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they're called
defensive injuries, and the lack of those
defensive injuries in this case
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suggests to me that
this was a sudden attack and that William was
taken by surprise.
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[dramatic music] - So there's no defensive
wounds on the body and you're talking about
a man as big as William
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who is 20 stone and 6'4. So what you're looking at
here is a surprise attack
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or an attack by somebody
actually trusted, and there was no time, obviously for William to defend himself.
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- When the police
attend any homicide in a domestic environment, one of their suspicions is
an immediate family member
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because unfortunately
40% of all homicides actually are domestic homicides
in the home by relatives.
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It's actually more
common than you think and people are more
at risk sometimes
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from people they
know than strangers. And so therefore the police
would first investigate
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the immediate family
members for a motive, for potential harm
to each other, and they would suspect
that a domestic argument
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that had gone too
far, et cetera. However, they would've
been shocked by the fact
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that this body had
been dismembered, and
ordered into boxes, and left there in the apartment
in such an ordered way
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because that sort of approach to a body is very unusual in a family murder
or domestic murder.
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- [Richard] The police
investigation continued to focus on Nathan Robinson, and detectives began
to build a picture
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of his relationship
with his father. - When the police were
searching the flat looking for evidence,
one of the things
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they found was an IOU note
from Nathan to William, for an absolutely staggering
sum, 36,000 pounds.
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That is just unbelievable. Nathan doesn't have a job and William is
effectively funding
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Nathan's lifestyle. [dramatic music] - There seemed to be an
issue of money between them.
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Nathan, he was certainly seeing
in his father a cash cow. He owed his father
a lot of money
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and if he needed anything,
he would go to his father. He didn't actually have a job,
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although he did
have a good degree. He seemed to depend on
his father for money and the relationship seemed
pretty heavily biased that way.
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- There were obviously problems
within the relationship and a lot of this
stems about money.
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William lent Nathan some money so that he could go on
holiday to Thailand. The understanding was that
that money will be paid back
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to William, but
that never happened. And the problem arose because William now
didn't have that money.
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He was unable to pay the
insurance for his taxi. It's his livelihood. That's
how he makes his living.
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[soft music] - Nathan wasn't in education, so the father's
expectation would be
00:16:28
that he should support himself
through being employed. And of course there would've
been a disappointment
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for the father if
that didn't happen. So that would've
created conflict.
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- [Richard] Police
inquiries with friends and family revealed
that Nathan, his father,
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repeatedly clashed over money. - Do you expect me
to subsidize you for the rest of your life?
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Was one of the remarks that
was heard by a neighbor during one of their arguments.
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- Money can be a source of conflict in a
relationship within a family. It certainly can be.
00:17:03
There was a conflict
between them about money and that seemed to
escalate over time.
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- [Richard] As work continued
on tracking Nathan down, detectives needed to
establish a timeline of events
00:17:17
around William's death. - The time when that person
might have died is paramount
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because it will direct
your investigation. It will also give you a window
of when that person died.
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You get that, you know where
to start your inquiries - [Richard] Pinpointing
an exact time of death
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was difficult, but
the hatched flies and state of decay
suggested William's body
00:17:46
had been in the flat
for around four weeks. - There was confirmation from
Glenys about contact she had
00:17:54
and contact she then
didn't have with a victim. And that period of
time is narrowed down
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as to when it's highly likely, most likely, that
William was killed. - [Richard] A phone call from
her neighbor corroborated
00:18:10
this timeframe. [phone dialing and ringing] - [Dispatcher] Good
morning, Dorset Police.
00:18:16
- [Richard] The
neighbor went on to say he'd heard a commotion
and William calling out
00:18:20
to phone for an ambulance on
the night of the 16th of May. [dramatic music] With a rough time of death,
00:18:32
the investigation
could pick up speed and hone in on a
potential suspect. - Part of the
investigative process,
00:18:39
the victim is
gonna be lifestyle. Where do they work?
What hours do they work? Who are their friends?
Where do they frequent?
00:18:47
Where might they be expected
to be at any particular time? 'Cause that's where
the paths of our victim
00:18:53
and our suspect or suspects
may well have crossed. There's a huge
amount of work to do.
00:18:59
We all leave a pattern
wherever we go. Going into places,
in buying things, you're using cards, credit
cards, debit cards, even cash.
00:19:12
One of the main investigative
strands these days, closed circuit TV, hundreds of hours of CCTV
is seized and looked at.
00:19:26
On that CCTV, we see Nathan. Nathan is at the
railway station. Nathan is seen buying a
ticket to travel to Scotland.
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[train rumbling] [dramatic music] - [Richard] This trip
to Glasgow in Scotland happened on the 17th of May.
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The day after a
neighbor reported a commotion at William's flat. It made Nathan
the prime suspect,
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but with no criminal record, lots of friends, and
no concrete evidence, he seemed an unlikely murderer.
00:20:05
Police continued to investigate. - Now that we know
where Nathan has gone, crucial evidence is being
gathered in Scotland.
00:20:14
We need to know his
movements, where he's been, who he's seen, and what he's
actually doing in Scotland.
00:20:20
[beeping] His friends said that he
was being extravagant, he was buying the meals, he was
staying in expensive hotels.
00:20:29
- He treats his friends,
he's buying drinks. He's buying food. You see this large ask, you see
00:20:35
he's trying to
impress his friends. He has a definite sense
of, in my opinion,
00:20:40
a definite sense of
entitlement about him. He feels this is his right.
He's there showing off.
00:20:49
- Question is, where
does this money come? - But we know that he
doesn't have any money,
00:20:54
he doesn't have a job, and his father didn't want
to give him any more money.
00:20:58
You can only assume that he's
taken his father's money. - After leaving Scotland,
Nathan's spending
spree continues.
00:21:06
He goes to see his mother. He takes her on an expensive
spa weekend in a hotel. - When he goes
down to Birmingham
00:21:14
when he takes his mother
out again, look at me. I'm the business. He's the center of his
world, totally egocentric,
00:21:22
but he wants admiration, which you always
see in narcissists. - In the four weeks since
leaving Bournemouth,
00:21:29
Nathan had spent
over 8,000 pounds. [glasses clinking] - [Richard] So did Nathan
murder his father for money?
00:21:38
- He used his father's
money to an extreme, spending a lot of
money in a weekend,
00:21:44
that may tell me that he was
half expecting to be caught, and he was having a big
splash before he got caught.
00:21:53
- Police eventually
track Nathan down and they arrested
him on suspicion of being involved in
the murder of William.
00:22:01
His remark when he is
arrested is, is this a joke? [dramatic music] [dramatic music]
00:22:21
- After William Spiller's
body was discovered, carefully dismembered and neatly packed
in storage boxes,
00:22:27
police arrested
their prime suspect, his 26-year-old son,
Nathan Robinson. William's body had been
slashed with a knife,
00:22:37
but there were no
defensive wounds suggesting a surprise attack
by someone in the home.
00:22:43
Shortly after the murder, Nathan had gone on a
spending spree in Scotland and Birmingham with
his father's money.
00:22:52
- Well, it seemed that
after he'd cleaned up and he'd ordered the flat
in the way that he did,
00:22:58
that he couldn't remain there. He needed to leave the flat and go away to Scotland,
to Glasgow to see friends.
00:23:06
And so obviously the
environment of his father being there
was impacting on him that he couldn't stay
there the weekend.
00:23:16
- Police eventually
tracked Nathan down and they arrest him on suspicion of being involved in
the murder of William.
00:23:22
[handcuffs clicking] His remark when he is
arrested is, is this a joke? It's a strange response for
somebody that's been arrested
00:23:32
for such a serious offense. I've experienced silence,
I've experienced anger,
00:23:39
I've experienced confusion, but that response is strange. I think it's the response
of somebody in denial
00:23:51
and certainly is going to
be denying any involvement. And what they now
want to know is
00:24:01
how much do the police know? In other words, how much
evidence have you got that I'm involved in this?
00:24:08
[dramatic music] - This is classical
of narcissism. They don't expect to get
caught. They're very arrogant.
00:24:17
No way is this
anything to do with me. It's very casual denial. [dramatic music]
00:24:26
- He wants to elicit a response
from the arresting officers. He wants them to
carry on talking.
00:24:34
He wants them to say something
back, even if it's just, no, it's not a joke, mate.
00:24:41
He's now entered a conversation
that he has started. That's the start of
him trying to control.
00:24:49
- Nathan claimed he was
innocent of his father's murder, but William's body would
reveal more answers
00:24:54
about what happened the
night he was killed. It's the job of the forensic
pathologist to determine
00:25:01
what was the fatal injury. There were knife wounds
all over William's body, but critically there were
also injuries to his neck.
00:25:10
The neck is where there are
some major blood vessels and you can see
them here in red,
00:25:14
there's the carotid artery, which carries blood from
the heart up to the brain,
00:25:18
and the jugular veins which
carry blood back to the heart. Some of these blood
vessels are protected
00:25:25
beneath this big
muscle of the neck, the sterner mastoid muscle. But there's one
blood vessel here,
00:25:31
one branch of the jugular vein that sits on top of this muscle. And if it's cut, it's going
to bleed torrentially,
00:25:39
and is likely to cause
death very quickly, without immediate
medical assistance.
00:25:45
William Spiller's neck
was severed in this place. An injury that
would have produced
00:25:51
a considerable amount of blood. Cutting up the body would
create even more blood.
00:25:57
But when police first
discovered William, the flat didn't look
like a crime scene.
00:26:03
- One of the things
that was noticed was that the flat was very clean. In other words, if somebody
is dismembered at that flat,
00:26:11
you would expect there
to be blood staining, blood spattering, a
whole array of things.
00:26:16
If you dismember somebody, it's very difficult to
clean up afterwards. Takes quite a considerable
amount of effort.
00:26:25
One of the things that the
police discovered afterwards was that the neighbor
had complained to Nathan
00:26:32
that he had a pink liquid coming down the wall
in his bathroom. - The neighbor came upstairs
to inquire what that was,
00:26:45
to report it to him, and he immediately
covered for that. The neighbor said he was very
cool, calm, and collected.
00:26:51
- [Richard] Nathan claimed
he had spilled red wine. - Nathan didn't bat an eyelid
00:26:58
and was absolutely
normal in explaining why that was happening
to the neighbor. - It was a pink fluid,
00:27:06
was probably a mixture
of bleach and blood. [dramatic music] - [Richard] Armed
with this information,
00:27:16
detectives homed in on the CCTV that captured Nathan's movements around the time of the murder.
00:27:23
- He goes out and he buys
steam cleaning equipment. He actually buys
two steam cleaners.
00:27:31
- There's a lot of
evidence to indicate that Nathan is in fact
the killer of his father.
00:27:37
- [Richard] And a
forensic sweep of the flat revealed critical evidence that the killer hoped
to have washed away.
00:27:46
- Just because
you clean up blood doesn't mean to say
it's not still there.
00:27:51
So it might look
clean, but it's not. From the investigative
process of using a liquid,
00:27:59
be it bleach, be it soapy water to try and get rid
of blood stains. What you're actually
doing is spreading it.
00:28:06
That stain that was
six inches around, when you dilute it
now becomes 12 inches,
00:28:13
14 inches, 24 inches. And what you're actually
doing is moving the blood into the cracks and the crevices
00:28:22
where you may not
be able to see it, but forensically we can find it. [dramatic music]
00:28:30
- Cuing up a body, especially
in a domestic environment rather than the
clinical environment,
00:28:35
will make a lot of mess. The systematically go
through and clean that up. It shows a level of not
thinking about what has happened
00:28:43
and just getting on with the job and thinking about it as a task, cleaning task rather
than what it represents.
00:28:51
This was just something
that had to be cleaned up and ordered, which he did
meticulously and very carefully.
00:28:58
So obviously this, to him, was just a task that
needed to be done. - So he was completely in
control of what he was doing.
00:29:09
You know, there was no sort
of lost touch with reality. He knew what he'd done, knew
what he was going to do,
00:29:15
he was going to try
and cover for himself to get away with this murder. - [Richard] Nathan also spun
a web of lies to make it look
00:29:24
as if his father
was still alive. - After William's death, Nathan goes to a
huge amount of effort
00:29:31
to cover up the
fact that he's dead. - So he didn't want
that murder discovered.
00:29:38
He had the foresight
to make sure that nobody would be
calling around for a while.
00:29:44
[dramatic music] [notification chiming] - He pays the rent for the
flat a month in advance
00:29:53
so nobody's gonna come
knocking on the door. He actually used his
father's phone to communicate
00:29:59
with William's
girlfriend Glenys, to convince her that
he's still alive.
00:30:04
- She'd had some text messages and those that she'd had,
she didn't actually think
00:30:10
sounded quite right because she knew that William
would be in touch with her. - He sends messages
saying that William's gone
00:30:18
to the Midlands because
one of his friends is dying and he wants to be with him.
00:30:22
You know, a terribly
cruel thing to do. - [Richard] And when Glenys
first tried to report
00:30:29
William missing to the
police, Nathan called them with his own version of events.
00:30:58
- He's actually
explaining away why his father is not being seen and all the time he knows
exactly where his father is.
00:31:09
Just a cold, callous,
calculating thing to do. I think that Nathan is
looking for excuses.
00:31:24
He knows the evidence that's
against him gets overwhelming and he's trying
every single avenue
00:31:31
to get out of it. - But he'd reached
the end of the road. [dramatic music] On the 18th of June, 2013,
Nathan Robinson was arrested
00:31:42
and later charged with the
murder of his father, William, the unlawful disposal of
human remains, and theft.
00:31:51
- What we understand
by patricide, when a son or daughter
kills a parent is that the relationship between
00:32:00
the son and the
father is detached and possible hatred
between each other. There must been level
of conflict in the past
00:32:12
and indeed what we
found in this case, that it was so extreme that he
committed murder, patricide.
00:32:20
- There is a link and
a bond that we all have with our family, which is close, and the breaking of that bond
00:32:28
almost feels like sacrilege. - Nathan was a very
cold, calculated killer and he certainly never
expected to get caught.
00:32:37
[dramatic music] - The evidence
that's against him, to be quite frank,
it's overwhelming.
00:32:44
[dramatic music] - [Richard] The police were
confident they had their man. But in court, Nathan
Robinson denied murder
00:32:51
on the grounds of
diminished responsibility. [dramatic music] - And what that means is
that he's saying to the court
00:33:01
and wanted to prove to the court he actually didn't know what
he was doing at the time
00:33:06
because he had no
mental faculties that enabled him to know
what he was doing at all.
00:33:14
[knife clicking] - [Richard] But was there
a reason why he did it? - During the court case,
00:33:20
Nathan makes an absolutely
explosive claim. He'd forgotten about it and
suddenly it came back to him.
00:33:29
[dramatic music] [dramatic music] [beeping] - When police officers carried
out a welfare check on a
00:33:45
Bournemouth flat, they
discovered the dismembered body of taxi driver William Spiller
stored in plastic containers.
00:33:54
The postmortem showed that
wounds across William's body were inflicted by
a Stanley knife,
00:34:00
also found at the flat. William's son, Nathan
was the only other person living at the flat.
00:34:06
Around the time of the murder, neighbors had
reported a commotion. Nathan was spotted on CCTV
buying cleaning products,
00:34:15
and then went on a spending
spree with his father's money. After a nationwide search,
00:34:21
police arrested
William's son, Nathan, and charged him with murder. [dramatic music]
00:34:33
- He eventually goes to court
and he pleads not guilty. As part of that not guilty plea,
00:34:38
he's offering up a defense,
a defense that is known as diminished responsibility.
00:34:43
[dramatic music] If you're found guilty with
diminished responsibility, you cannot be given a
whole life sentence.
00:34:51
You will be sentenced to a much
lesser term of imprisonment. - There's an element of
sadism almost in this
00:35:00
because he's making
William's girlfriend and the family of his father go through the horrific
details of the crime.
00:35:09
If he'd have pleaded guilty,
none of that would've happened, but now he's got the
best of both worlds.
00:35:14
He's trying for that,
he's trying to get
a reduced sentence, and he's enjoying the details
of his crime coming out
00:35:21
and it's a kind of
celebrity notoriety that you get from that as well. So I think that would
have appealed to him
00:35:29
because I do think
he wants attention. - As part of Nathan's
diminished responsibility plea,
00:35:36
Nathan accepts that
he killed his father. He accepts that
he watched him die and that he didn't
call an ambulance
00:35:43
that could have
potentially saved his life. He then says he has no memory
whatsoever of those events.
00:35:50
[dramatic music] Nathan then says the
next thing he remembers is he's in the shower washing
off the blood from his father.
00:36:04
Now, I would suggest that
the cognitive thought process of realizing that you
have to wash the blood off
00:36:13
to get rid of
evidence means that there is a thought process that has been followed
from the actual event
00:36:24
of killing his father,
which he has accepted. And it's selective,
is being selective in
00:36:32
what not to remember. - [Richard] The prosecution
argued against the plea of diminished responsibility,
00:36:39
claiming Nathan had a
clear, financial motive for murdering William. - Father of 48, supporting his
son of 26 is nothing unusual
00:36:50
as long as that son is
in higher education, and he's seen to be achieving. The arguments come
when he's dropped out,
00:37:00
Nathan owed his
father 36,000 pounds. What are you gonna do? When
are you gonna get a job?
00:37:05
That's when the arguments come. And of course there would've
been a disappointment
00:37:10
for the father if
that didn't happen. [soft music] - In my opinion, he had
a sense of entitlement.
00:37:19
He wanted the money, his father was fed up
with giving him money. He clearly had a grudge
against his father.
00:37:25
[soft music] - And of course the most
telling thing is the fact that the way Nathan
wanted to spend his time
00:37:33
after he'd murdered his father
was to support his mother, show her a good time,
00:37:38
go out and spend
money with his mother. And he obviously
had an emotional
attachment to his mother
00:37:43
that was absent for his father because he took his
mother's surname, not his father's surname.
00:37:51
The Id of his complex
was first talked about by Sigmund Freud and he suggested
that sometimes a son
00:38:00
competes with the father for the attention and
love of the mother, and so that the son and
father are in conflict.
00:38:07
And in some cases
this can be so extreme as to lead to violence
between the father and son
00:38:13
and even death and homicide. - [Richard] After the
prosecution rested their case,
00:38:19
it was the turn of
Nathan's defense team. - Nathan's barrister
suggested during the case
00:38:26
that this was an unusual
crime, that it was a result of a sudden snapping that
caused the killing,
00:38:35
and that the crime
had no motive. - But did William's
body support this claim?
00:38:42
The multiple injuries on
William's body would tend to indicate a sudden
explosion of violence.
00:38:49
But the fact that Nathan
watched him bleed to death and then dismembered his body
00:38:54
would suggest something
far more calculated. We know that Nathan had used a Stanley knife to
inflict the injuries,
00:39:02
but the police also
found a couple of saws that he'd used to
dismember the body.
00:39:08
William Spiller was a
big man, he was 6'5. That's nearly two meters
tall, weighing 160 kilograms.
00:39:15
That's about 25 stone. Dismembering him would
not have been easy. Joints are particularly complex
with interlocking pieces
00:39:24
of bone held together
with tight ligaments. Take the shoulder
joint, for example,
00:39:29
here the head of the
humerus, the clavicle, and part of the shoulder
blade all are fixed together
00:39:35
by tight fibrous bands. And then we can see how
they're surrounded by muscle
00:39:40
and other ligaments
keeping it together. Dismembering a
body is never easy. It must have taken
him hours and hours.
00:39:49
William's dismembered
body revealed that this was not a moment of
madness, quite the opposite.
00:39:57
This was a considered
and determined action. [dramatic music] - There's no doubt
that the son was
00:40:06
emotionally detached
from his father. This particular individual
would've been particularly
00:40:11
callous and not have much
empathy for a victim. And to have
systematically tied it up
00:40:17
and then stack them in boxes after dismembering the body shows a level of
detachment from reality,
00:40:24
and that what has
gone on in a room. [dramatic music] - It's so bizarre that he
went to all that trouble
00:40:34
to dissect the body, to put
it in all these plastic boxes, which to me seems
like utter contempt,
00:40:43
utter contempt for his father, and then to build them
up and to put the TV on and to use that as a stand.
00:40:52
I mean that really
is a horror movie. When the police
eventually arrived, they found that
his father's head
00:41:00
was actually in
the filing cabinet. - No matter how emotionally
detached you are
00:41:05
from your father, you know
what your father looks like. So the head
represented a challenge
00:41:12
to the way he was trying to blank the whole
thing out of his memory. And so it had to be hidden
away so the son could forget
00:41:19
what had happened in that room. - [Richard] But was his motive
really just purely financial?
00:41:26
- So from the veracity
of the attack, from slitting his throat
with a Stanley knife,
00:41:30
and then when his father
was laying on the floor pleading for an ambulance
and bleeding out
00:41:34
to continually stab him, means there was real
hatred in the act, which suggests that it
wasn't just an argument
00:41:41
about financial concerns and
about the amount of money that his dad, as a taxi driver,
00:41:47
was paying for his
son to sit at home. This was something else. - During the court case,
00:41:54
Nathan makes an absolutely
explosive claim. He says that when he was 13 he was sexually
abused by his father.
00:42:03
He'd forgotten about it and
suddenly it came back to him. - Nathan tried to claim that
he'd suffered from PTSD,
00:42:11
that he'd been
abused by his father and that had a
really bad childhood. If somebody has
post-traumatic stress disorder
00:42:19
from a long period of abuse, if that had happened
in childhood, then yes, I could see
how a person could snap
00:42:31
or a child might want to
get out of that situation. He seemed to kind of
come out of the blue,
00:42:36
his defense of abuse. [soft music] - He knows it can't be proved, but also he can't be
disproved as well.
00:42:49
- Nathan says,
while I was sexually and physically
abused as a child, that may well have happened.
00:42:55
We do know that children who have been sexually
abused under the age of 10 are much more likely
00:43:05
to commit homicide than children who have not had
that experience. But with no evidence,
00:43:11
the court finds it difficult because he could be making it up as a way of defending himself.
00:43:18
[soft music] - William is described as
a caring, loving father. - His father always kept him.
00:43:28
He didn't have to
have him at the flat. Nathan didn't have
to go and live there.
00:43:32
He could have gone and live
somewhere else, you know, after his degree
course finished it.
00:43:37
It just doesn't wash. There's nothing there
actually in his past or they had nothing there
that could back up that claim.
00:43:46
- Nathan is easily able
to manipulate William to wrap him around
his little finger
00:43:51
to get him to do what he wants. We can speculate as to why
William is happy to do that.
00:44:00
It could be guilt, it could
be a whole host of reasons. It's up to the jury to decide
00:44:04
whether or not they believe him. [dramatic music] - [Richard] We'll never
know exactly what happened
00:44:11
between William and Nathan and why their
relationship broke down with such devastating
consequences.
00:44:18
After a three week trial,
the jury took just two hours to return their verdict. - Nathan was found guilty and
sentenced a life imprisonment.
00:44:29
The judge remarked
during his sentencing that this was a callous, cold-blooded, premeditated
murder of William.
00:44:37
The motive being financial. - He believed the money was his. He had this sense
of entitlement.
00:44:45
It was there and he would do
what it took to get this money and then to cover his tracks.
00:44:52
- I think the only way
you can look at Nathan, when you know all
the circumstances,
00:44:58
and all the facts
of this case is he was a cold,
calculating person. He was driven by money.
00:45:08
People say that money
is the root of all evil, and that's actually not correct.
00:45:15
What is correct is
the love of money is the root of all evil. Nathan is just pure evil.
00:45:24
[dramatic music] - It was a fatal
wound to the neck that killed William Spiller.
00:45:32
But the lack of defense
wounds proved he didn't expect to be attacked by his own son
and left to bleed to death.
00:45:40
Nathan tried to
cover his tracks, throw the police off the scent and claim childhood abuse
had triggered the assault.
00:45:48
But the clinical dismembering
of William's body proved this was no
sudden snap of anger.
00:45:54
It was considered
and calculated. And for that reason, his body revealed the cold,
hard truth about his murder.
00:46:03
And a dangerous killer
was brought to justice. [dramatic music]