00:00:06
ian and sally lawrence high achievers ian had learned to fly and sally had worked her way up from pa to md ian
00:00:15
lawrence was a pilot and so was i and i actually introduced them to each other she was basically looking for a partner
00:00:22
and i said well i know somebody who i thought at the time would be ideal john bolting a father figure in sally's
00:00:31
life thought them a perfect match but a car crash would claim the life of sally lawrence leave her husband
00:00:37
apparently injured but being treated in hospital detectives arrive at his bedside it was
00:00:42
quite clear at that time that his injuries weren't as severe as first portrayed to me i then made a decision
00:00:49
that mr lawrence would be arrested on suspicion of murder had an airline pilot forgotten that cars
00:00:55
can tell investigators much about how they've been driven data recorders are
00:01:00
contained within many modern vehicles so you end up with windows snapshots of the crash
00:01:07
what would a vehicle's digital record tell detectives searching for the truth
00:01:11
in the case of mr mrs lawrence [Music] [Music] when ian lawrence and sally perks met it
00:01:35
seemed that two soul mates had come across each other ian lawrence was seemingly a very successful man he had
00:01:44
been an airline pilot they he was a successful businessman sally had worked her way up from
00:01:52
being pa to the managing director at the chemical spills company and she was doing particularly well
00:01:59
[Music] very very bubbly incredible enthusiasm for life always smiling you know and uh always
00:02:08
looked on the bright side of everything no matter what it was she was always on the on the plus side you know
00:02:14
nothing was ever half empty with sully you know and yeah i thought the world of her
00:02:19
john bolting wanted her to be happy and he thought he knew the right man for her
00:02:25
she was basically looking for a partner and i said well you know i know somebody who
00:02:30
i thought at the time would be ideal when sally was introduced to it and they got on really well and
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quite soon were married in a very lavish extravagant wedding i do remember her asking me if i would
00:02:47
go to church and give her away and i said yes absolutely i would providing she asked her father first because
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they'd fallen out and i'm very happy to say that she did ask her dad and he did
00:03:00
say yes and he did come and give her away and it was quite um quite a doe they got married instant james the
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greater church in leicester and uh they were somewhere around about between 200 and
00:03:16
250 people it's a big church a lot of people in there they've splashed out on the reception
00:03:21
and it's really sort of lavish celebration and everything looks absolutely fine two people very much in
00:03:27
love big wedding good job good future they led off fifteen thousand quid for the fireworks i mean the display went on
00:03:35
for about 40 minutes something like that it was quite extraordinary i've never
00:03:40
seen anything like it [Music] so sally and ian began married life with a bang and for a few years the marriage
00:03:49
sparkled they lived in a home which sally had bought the couple had a baby they are parents who are older than
00:03:57
perhaps many he's 40 she's in their late 30s but they don't on this child and
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children can sometimes have a good or a bad effect on relationships it seems in this case it was a good effect because
00:04:10
it bound them together more and they both loved being parents sally's career was going from strength
00:04:16
to strength her boss and mentor handed over the reins of the business to her and she began running the company she
00:04:24
absolutely agreed she took to the job like a doctor walter i couldn't believe
00:04:28
it how good she was but for ian lawrence things weren't going quite so well in 2007 that seems to be the beginning
00:04:38
where things started to go wrong for ian lawrence and he was sacked from his job as an airline pilot
00:04:46
and that seemed to set in motion a kind of a downward spiral it's from this point that the relationship really
00:04:53
started to go downhill and to turn sour she told me she would have confined an awful lot in me
00:05:03
and it was it was apparent to me that things were were going really really wrong
00:05:08
ian became moody short-tempered jealous perhaps of sally's continued success
00:05:14
the first cracks began to appear in this perfect looking life and marriage when he had lost his job as a pilot
00:05:22
and him losing his job coincided with sally being on a period of very swift advancement in hers
00:05:31
she told me things that were not right i knew that they were not you know sharing a room together
00:05:39
i knew that she was spending a lot of time away with a family in derbyshire so you've kind of got this reversal
00:05:45
you've got ian being in the position of being the breadwinner being the person
00:05:49
with the glamorous job he loses that and at the same time sally is on her way up to a position of
00:05:56
power quite often in some relationships that look almost perfect from the outside things
00:06:04
are very very different behind the scenes and where you have this almost sometimes you might think it's like a
00:06:10
managed vision of what the family is that usually means that there's somebody
00:06:15
in the background who's very controlling and i think probably that ian lawrence
00:06:20
was a very controlling individual [Music] there is clear evidence that was the case
00:06:29
we were in a local public on to have a business lunch and she was telling me that she was really frightened of him
00:06:36
and that um you know she was frightened of what he would do as time went on i think those cracks got
00:06:44
really big and although that they were living together still they were living separately so the marriage was falling
00:06:53
apart right in front of his eyes as the marriage began to fail so ian tried to reinvent himself as an
00:07:01
entrepreneur he started a number of small businesses he would again appear to be a great
00:07:07
success sally would be impressed he then set up some businesses and latterly he was running a trailer business
00:07:16
locally in leicester he genuinely thought that the marriage was worth saving and he wanted to save
00:07:21
it and he also had a share in a go-kart racing business which was based at leicester
00:07:29
airport this is very much a man who wants to be in control this was a man who insisted that his wife
00:07:38
fall back in love with him again which clearly wasn't going to happen all of his business ventures failed
00:07:47
friends suggested to ian that he was trying too hard he was noticeably changed from the high-flying successful
00:07:54
pilot with a confident way it's pretty clear to see that this was a term for
00:08:01
the worst for their relationship [Music] one of the things that that controlling
00:08:06
people really do not deal with very well at all is when they are challenged and usually
00:08:13
their home life their family their children their financial status is is the way they perceive themselves
00:08:22
in the world and when that starts to crack they can get quite panic stricken as time went by sally could no longer
00:08:32
face living within the relationship had broken down she wanted to move on with her life
00:08:38
and it becomes apparent that the relationship had broken down between ian and sally
00:08:47
in 2012 sully actually filed for divorce and it was that divorce that seems to have unsettled
00:08:55
things at that point sally had commenced another relationship with another man she wanted a new relationship and that
00:09:04
would have been incendiary for somebody like ian lawrence at least at this point there was the
00:09:11
facade that they were still together that he was still in control and in a lot of ways he did still have a lot of
00:09:19
control over her because they were still living together but she was going to leave
00:09:24
and that would have escalated things dramatically she was looking to move on and just
00:09:33
start a new life away from here things between ian and sally get so bad that she asks him to leave the house and
00:09:42
he refuses stays there but they are small intents and purposes living separately under the same roof they'd
00:09:50
been living separate lives for for over a year although living in the same house
00:09:55
and they were sharing custody of their 10 year old son the relationship was stressful
00:10:03
for sally what had begun as the perfect marriage had turned into a prison she felt she
00:10:08
couldn't escape ian was refusing to leave her home and refusing to accept that the marriage was over i said at the
00:10:16
time to sully i said don't worry all bullies are cowards i said the chances are he won't
00:10:21
do anything but i couldn't have been more wrong living under the same roof but leading
00:10:34
separate lives tensions were high in the lawrence household and sally was desperate to move on
00:10:40
witnessing her one-time high-achieving husband reduced to a frightening wreck she would have seen first hand the
00:10:46
escalation in his anxiety and his anger and his resentment and she would have been
00:10:54
very well aware that perhaps he was becoming quite threatening and it was probably quite an
00:11:01
intimidating atmosphere in that house during this time months after sally had told ian of a new
00:11:07
relationship ian lawrence was still refusing to accept that the marriage was over and was unrealistically hoping to
00:11:14
convince sally to stay with him ian has the aim to try to patch things up try and make the marriage
00:11:21
the relationship and the family work but sally doesn't think that's the way to go
00:11:26
she doesn't think that that can be done she was looking to move on and just start a new life away from here
00:11:33
telling ian once and for all that there was no future in the marriage was to be the trigger behind what appeared to be a
00:11:39
car accident on a road in leicestershire england in october 2012. ian in the background was
00:11:49
refusing absolutely refusing to let go his whole identity was tied up in this family his
00:11:56
whole status in the world and there was no way in his head that he was going to let her
00:12:04
as he saw it do this to him no one but he knew that ian had set a date for murder the
00:12:14
divorce proceedings were ongoing uh we found out that the decree nissi was was due to be served on monday the 8th of
00:12:20
october while sally planned her life without him ian lawrence was planning how to get what he felt he deserved
00:12:26
which in his case meant the proceeds from the sale of the shared house a house he had not paid for
00:12:33
the house was at the time valued at three hundred thousand pound there's a lot of equity in it that was all in
00:12:40
sally's name he had nothing and they'd agreed terms and then a couple of
00:12:44
days before what one day before um he he changed the terms and said he wanted half of the house
00:12:51
and she said no he wasn't getting it sally had texted her close friends and her daughters and just raising some
00:13:00
concerns around ian's demeanor he was demanding more money out of the house she was saying in some of her text
00:13:08
messages that she felt threatened she didn't want to be alone in the house with him
00:13:13
one of them said she'd locked herself in her bedroom she feared that he would actually kill
00:13:19
her one day this is one of the really big red flags that we see when this kind of thing
00:13:26
happens that the victim actually foretells what could possibly happen to them ian was fixating on a date
00:13:36
october 8th 2012 the day of the decree nissi the day he would get his hands on a family home and
00:13:43
an insurance payout but only if sally was dead sally also had a life insurance and that would have given in 250 000
00:13:54
so when we're looking at potential motives for murder there aren't that many but two of the
00:14:02
main ones are jealousy and greed and they're both motives that ian would have had
00:14:10
and i think he felt he was running out of time and he needed to put his plan into action he wouldn't have wanted
00:14:17
sally to be with anybody else and then the financial side that he would gain through sally dying
00:14:25
before the decree in ec then that was substantial to him as well it's a surprising fact
00:14:31
more often than not in these cases where somebody absolutely refuses to let go and their behavior starts to escalate
00:14:40
that they may make the decision that they're going to kill the person who they see as causing all the angst in
00:14:46
their life once ian lawrence had decided upon his plan sally's fate was sealed there was
00:14:53
no going back then it was going to happen and lawrence's weapon of choice would be
00:15:00
a car as a pilot he felt he had the skills to maneuver an engine the way that he
00:15:05
wished ian lawrence made the decision that he was going to kill sally and he started
00:15:13
to plan for that and it seems that what he decided he was going to do was make her death look like an accident so that
00:15:20
he could protect himself he devised a plan to actually crash the car into the tree
00:15:29
on the road near where they lived iam's practical man and he was an intelligent
00:15:33
man and he put a lot of thought into his plan the car crash he was planning would
00:15:39
happen on the ghatri road in odb leicestershire he decided upon the road where he was
00:15:46
going to do it picked out the tree that he was going to hit done some dummy runs
00:15:50
or reconnaissance runs to to see what it was like there work out the time of day when it was best to do
00:15:58
it the murder spot picked he then needed to manipulate things to ensure that sally
00:16:03
would be in his car the weekend before the divorce would be finalized their child was on a school
00:16:09
trip and this would mean that ian and sally would be left in the house without him and that's something sally felt she
00:16:16
couldn't face and didn't want to happen so she made arrangements to go and stay indeed
00:16:22
with a boyfriend she had her overnight bag packed she had a handbag with a purse and a
00:16:28
phone all ready to go on the back seat of her car and that would have been around between
00:16:34
5 and six pm on that saturday evening sally was ready to drive away in her car the other difficulty that he
00:16:43
had was getting sally actually to get into the car because it was so old and so grubby
00:16:50
she never went in it she wouldn't go in it she refused to go at it most times
00:16:55
so he had to come up with a plan that was going to put her in the passenger seat of that car so that he could do
00:17:02
what he wants to do but she didn't get in to her car and drive away and some of her friends
00:17:09
thought that that was very unusual she actually got into his car so he must have somehow
00:17:17
and we don't know how got her to get into his car sally's car was very clean and tidy
00:17:24
pristine inside very well kept ian's car was more like a workshop it was full of junk full of rubbish
00:17:32
sally was always well dressed and her daughters would say that she would have never got in that car voluntarily in
00:17:40
which i don't know how he ever got her into that car it's an old banger and i
00:17:44
just bought her a new jaguar so i don't know what happened there i never will no
00:17:48
i don't suppose he may have frightened her into getting the car he may have told some plausible
00:17:54
story whether he she was coerced whether she was forced we do not know only ian lawrence knows the answer to that
00:18:01
question but she did get into the car and that was the last time anyone saw her alive
00:18:08
but what we do know is that she left her home address in the passenger seat of that peugeot and was then driven along
00:18:15
towards the racecourse and then along stoughton road towards the airport [Applause]
00:18:23
he had adapted the car to suit his needs for the crash he had planned so at the time ian lawrence had a maroon
00:18:31
red peugeot 406 estate i think at the time it would have been about 10 years old
00:18:38
had a private number plate on it which felt windy which um alluded to his flying days i think some of his
00:18:46
friends called in that as his nickname it was so it's a big big side estate car
00:18:53
he had her in the position that he wanted with him in control in an area he knew intimately
00:19:00
he had a go-kart track just up the road we used to go from home to every day so that's the route that he took with
00:19:07
sully in the car as he drove towards where he knew he was going to crash the car
00:19:15
he suddenly leaned over and he unclicked sally's seatbelt he had to wait until it was too late for
00:19:24
sally to realize what was happening but he had to get that seat belt off of her before they hit the tree or else it
00:19:30
could have saved her and he then put himself into the brace position and drove straight into a tree at 50
00:19:37
miles an hour in a collision of a magnitude of 50 miles an hour there's a huge amount of
00:19:46
energy that's dispersed in a collision if you remove all of the restraint systems in a vehicle that are designed
00:19:53
to protect you the likelihood of injury goes up incredibly and therefore your likelihood of
00:20:00
suffering fatal injuries are increased greatly this was a high impact collision with a motor
00:20:06
vehicle and a very large tree the car had an impacted uh almost square on but mainly on the on the passenger side and
00:20:15
the the hole at the front of the car had crumpled up so it was a significant impact
00:20:23
if you're not wearing a seat belt when the vehicle stops moving your inertia
00:20:28
causes you to travel forwards in the case where a seat belt isn't being worn and there's a sudden
00:20:33
deceleration of the vehicle the occupant moves forward and you can often see them
00:20:37
striking the windscreen and you end up with damage to the inside of the windscreen pushing it outwards
00:20:44
and that was how sally was found she died on the scene probably aware in her last few seconds what was happening
00:20:51
it would have been quite a scary moment particularly in the last few seconds at a speed of 50 miles an hour closing in
00:20:58
on a tree would have been quite scary the airline pilot had used his skills to fatal effect
00:21:07
and not without risk to himself the simple act of driving a car deliberately into a tree
00:21:13
at 50 miles an hour without breaking is something i think many people would find
00:21:17
very difficult to do it's a high risk strategy driving a car into a tree with the hope that it's going to go so
00:21:26
perfectly well that you're going to survive and the other person isn't but
00:21:32
it still shows a very reckless nature he was willing for it to go wrong he felt so strongly
00:21:39
he was probably willing to die if that's what happened but the important thing
00:21:45
was that she did i found out the next day the next morning it was absolutely horrendous i was with
00:21:53
my best friend and i just went into shock i think i think it was about our past midnight
00:22:01
so going into the 7th of october when i received a call from one of my detective inspectors
00:22:07
the passenger in the vehicle that has collided with a tree had died at the scene and the driver of
00:22:14
the vehicle who was a male uh had been taken to hospital and appeared to be unconscious um and had
00:22:22
on on the face of it some trauma and some potential brain injuries ian lawrence stood to own the family
00:22:30
home outright and to benefit from a 250 000 pounds insurance payout he had survived the car crash and was going to
00:22:37
be rushed to hospital whilst sally lay dead in the passenger seat had he committed the perfect murder
00:22:45
ian lawrence's story after the accident was a kind of a low risk strategy really
00:22:51
because he pretended that he couldn't remember anything if you can't remember
00:22:56
anything you can't be picked up on lies through meticulous planning ian lawrence
00:23:09
had murdered his wife to investigate as his own injuries seemed oddly superficial
00:23:15
in this case there was a huge disparity in the injuries suffered by both of the occupants in the vehicle the driver
00:23:21
suffering relatively low level injuries for an impact of this type and the front
00:23:26
seat passenger sustaining fatal injuries the police and the paramedics arrived at
00:23:32
the scene and i think there were suspicions straight away especially with the paramedics there were some comments
00:23:41
around whether or not he was feigning some of his injuries and feigning unconsciousness
00:23:48
ian lawrence was pretending that he was unconscious but he he wasn't acting that
00:23:54
out awfully well and the paramedics would be very used to seeing people who who really are unconscious and they
00:24:02
told of their suspicions to the police the fire brigade had attended and had actually cut the occupants out of the
00:24:10
vehicle because the doors wouldn't open that was the severity of the impact the
00:24:14
first two people to arrive on the scene one was a retired police officer and the
00:24:19
other one was a retired fireman and they knew straight away that something was wrong he was feigning
00:24:25
being unconscious and they they knew that something was completely wrong the condition that i was being told of the
00:24:35
driver was that he was in and out of consciousness was displaying signs of trauma
00:24:44
but nothing visibly physically so he had no cuts no apparent broken bones despite ian's odd behavior and the
00:24:54
reservations of paramedics on the scene he was admitted into hospital he had been in an accident and seemed to be
00:25:00
showing signs of a severe head injury he was displaying symptoms equivalent to a seven on the glasgow coma scale
00:25:10
so the glasgow coma scale is used to ascertain somebody's consciousness and alertness when they've been involved in
00:25:18
some kind of trauma usually head trauma and they rate from 15 being fully conscious fully mobile down to three
00:25:28
which means you'd be lying there in a coma and and probably going to die so to be scored as a seven by medical
00:25:36
experts at that time would put mr lawrence with some severe head injuries that on the face of it weren't apparent
00:25:45
there didn't appear to be any bruising any swelling or any lacerations that would cause him to have a glasgow coma
00:25:53
scale of seven at the hospital ian lawrence continued to appear to feign injury by this time the nurses caring for him
00:26:03
had become suspicious later on a nurse contacted us in the incident room saying she wasn't
00:26:10
comfortable with a patient that she treated that evening and believed that he may have been feigning some of his
00:26:17
injuries elsewhere another aspect of ian's story was unravelling so when the police
00:26:23
started their investigation they were able to find out a lot of information and i don't think people realize quite
00:26:31
how sophisticated these crash scene analysis are especially with the computerization of
00:26:37
cars and the knowledge we have about things like tire marks from looking at the scene they weren't
00:26:46
satisfied that this was a pure accident they noticed that the roads were dry the bend on which the accident happened
00:26:55
was not a severe bend in fact it would have been drivable to upwards of 70 miles an hour on and
00:27:01
that would be to remain on the same side of the carriageway it became clear to investigators that
00:27:08
there was no clear cause for the crash and further anomalies were appearing all of the time
00:27:14
mark crouch is a crash scene investigator who examines cases just like this one when a tyre slows it will
00:27:23
lock those kind of marks can be seen on a road surface but there weren't any found on this
00:27:30
occasion when a vehicle leaves the road particularly on mud grass verge you can get quite a
00:27:36
distinctive mark where the tire drags the grass drags the mud along and you would expect that to happen even with
00:27:44
quite a low level of braking what was found on the verge in this case was a rolling tire mark
00:27:49
that wheel didn't lock out the car had gone into the tree and had not slowed down and they were also able
00:27:59
to show that there were lots of other places that the car could have come to a stop there were escape routes either
00:28:06
side of the tree there was a farm gate entrance that would have offered little resistance if you'd wanted to drive
00:28:13
through that if your brakes had failed you'd have gone into a field and gradually just coasted to a stop so then
00:28:18
we looked at the actual tyre tracks and and the road that led to the point of impact
00:28:24
and there was no apparent skid marks on the tarmac further evidence emerged as detectives
00:28:31
dug deeper the seat belt clasp the retainer of the driver was protruding upwards and that
00:28:39
is a sign that that has been in an impact and there was abrasions on the seat belt itself consistent with it
00:28:47
being in place at point of impact the passenger side the clasp retaining claps was sitting
00:28:54
down in the normal position indicating that the seat belt had not been engaged on the passenger at the time of impact
00:29:03
her family members were adamant that she was very very safety conscious she would
00:29:08
never get in a car without putting on her seat belt it was second nature to her and nobody had ever seen her in a
00:29:15
vehicle without her seatbelt on for ian lawrence apparently slowly regaining consciousness in a hospital
00:29:22
bed a new challenge what story could he tell the police to explain the mounting evidence against him
00:29:29
it was about four o'clock in the morning when i had a conversation with the collision
00:29:35
investigator and as a result of everything that he'd relayed to me i then made a decision
00:29:42
that mr lawrence would be arrested on suspicion of murder while he was in hospital it was quite clear at that time
00:29:48
that his injuries weren't as severe as first portrayed to me and he could really at any time discharged
00:29:56
himself and walked out of hospital so to prevent that and in line with what i knew um he was
00:30:03
arrested on submission of murder he said he got no memory of it he was unconscious
00:30:09
memory loss was a convenient claim at the time but it didn't match the fact that medical practitioners could find no
00:30:15
head injuries it wasn't going to convince the police he was then released from hospital later
00:30:21
that morning and then taken to a nearby police station he was assessed for suitability for
00:30:28
detention booked into the police station and then he was underwent a series of interviews
00:30:35
in his first interviews mr lawrence claimed that he had a total loss of memory um he didn't remember
00:30:41
anything after five o'clock and he regained his memory he remembers being in hospital at about nine o'clock that
00:30:47
night so there's a four hour gap there where he he couldn't remember what had
00:30:52
happened he underestimates all of the other people around him and that's probably because
00:30:57
he's got a very high opinion of himself and he he it doesn't uh occur to him
00:31:03
that anybody would see anything other than an accident because he said so ian lawrence was a prime suspect in the
00:31:11
murder of sally perks who became sally lawrence but detectives have to prove their case beyond doubt
00:31:18
and ian was sticking to his story so ian maintained throughout his police interview his amnesia and therefore his
00:31:27
innocence he denied that there was any anything wrong with the relationship he denied that he'd intentionally
00:31:37
crashed his car he denied that he'd unclipped sally's seatbelt prior to the point of impact
00:31:46
facing a resolute ian lawrence investigators needed a breakthrough it would come in the shape of a little
00:31:51
known fact about cars they have the motoring equivalent of the black box found in aeroplanes and are
00:31:57
designed amongst other things to record the details of an engine's performance
00:32:02
we found out that within the vehicle there was a electronic control unit that controlled the deployment of the airbags
00:32:09
vehicles were fitted with supplementary restraint systems srs for short they control everything the the airbags the
00:32:16
seat belts but in order to control those it needs to decrypt some of the signals
00:32:20
that are going around the car but the vehicle needs to make a decision when it's going to deploy an airbag that's an
00:32:26
electronic control module often shorted to an acm and it decides when the crash is happening and decides when to deploy
00:32:33
the airbag lots of those acms record the events of a crash so you end up with windows snapshots of the information
00:32:42
that that black box had at the time that the crash occurred the so-called black box revealed the
00:32:49
lengths that ian went to to ensure sally's death so that was recovered from the wreck of the vehicle and we took
00:32:56
that to peugeot and a technician there was able to read the data from that and from the data held within that box we
00:33:03
ascertained that the passenger airbag had been switched off and had been switched off some six
00:33:09
cycles prior to the crash that was was groundbreaking for us we could actually prove that somebody had turned
00:33:18
that airbag off intentionally and that's why it didn't deploy in this collision we have a number of
00:33:27
different factors striking the tree on the passenger side the seat belt not being worn the air bag
00:33:33
being deactivated the lack of clear braking marks as the vehicle left the verge individually those pieces
00:33:41
aren't that significant but when you start looking at all of those together it starts to build quite a compelling
00:33:47
picture that something unconventional happened in this collision in order to disable the airbag
00:33:54
it takes a physical act you have to have the key to the vehicle insert it into a
00:34:00
socket press down into the spring and turn it physically so it couldn't have been done
00:34:06
accidentally it was an intentional act to turn that airbag off so detectives had the method but at that
00:34:15
stage they felt they didn't have the motive ian was maintaining that the couple were
00:34:20
in a close relationship to him um they lived together they've been living together for over 10 years
00:34:26
they had a 10 year old son they had a normal family life and he didn't allude
00:34:32
to any problems with the relationship at all so as part of our ongoing investigation throughout that next day
00:34:38
we're in contact with sally's family members through her sister her daughters
00:34:44
and it becomes apparent that the relationship had broken down between ian and sully they'd been living
00:34:51
separate lives for for over a year although living in the same house um the relationship was
00:34:58
stressful and we we then later found out that in fact sally had commenced another
00:35:04
relationship with another man um and had been in that relationship for about 10 months
00:35:12
this coupled with the black box evidence was enough for detective neil castle to
00:35:16
make his move that on the face of it was fresh evidence for us it was something that we
00:35:20
weren't aware of before wally and lawrence had been in custody either made policy decisions that was fresh evidence
00:35:27
sent officers out to further arrest lawrence he was brought back into custody a short interview and then we
00:35:34
presented those facts to the cps and they gave us authorized to charge murder ian lawrence was arrested for murder but
00:35:44
he was maintaining his innocence and police had to convince a jury that these were not just coincidences or ian
00:35:50
lawrence might still walk free and he was already planning what he might say to get away with murder
00:35:57
he said he had a dream while he was in prison and it came back to him in a dream
00:36:02
saying that he had a medical condition and he could prove that his leg spasm ian lawrence had been charged with the
00:36:21
murder of his wife investigators were painstakingly piecing together events before the car crash that lawrence was
00:36:27
still claiming had been an accident it emerged that central to what happened that october evening was sally's planned
00:36:34
trip sally was planning to go away for the weekend on that saturday evening and she had her overnight bag
00:36:42
packed and that would have been around between five and six pm on that saturday evening
00:36:49
why then had she got into the car with ian clearly she would not have left a handbag there and keys and money
00:36:58
to get into his car this filthy car that she'd never get into unless she'd been forced
00:37:06
part of the defense evidence that the jury had to consider was that lawrence had crashed because of a leg spasm
00:37:13
ian lawrence eventually came up with a version of events that while he was driving along that road he had a seizure
00:37:21
in his leg which then pressed down on the accelerator increased speed of the vehicle he was
00:37:26
unable to move his leg and engage the brake but he did manage to get his foot off
00:37:33
the accelerator but the vehicle glided and continued towards the tree he didn't give any
00:37:39
explanation as to why the passenger side took the full full force of the impact the prosecution evidence was put to the
00:37:53
jury they were told that sally known for her safety consciousness had not been wearing a seatbelt at the time of the
00:37:59
crash ian appeared to be prepared for the crash by adopting a brace position that could be concluded from a mark left
00:38:08
on his chest by the watch that he was wearing it was a large face watch and visibly
00:38:14
it looked a similar size to the bruce on his chest and the only way that that could have got there is that if he and
00:38:20
lawrence had adopted a brace position by folding his left arm right arm under his seat belt and then on impact
00:38:28
the seat belt would have tensioned and squeezed his arm and hence his watch tightly into his chest causing that
00:38:36
bruise he knew that he was going to strike that tree and yet he had peace of mind to adopt
00:38:44
that brace position he also must have raised his legs up because there was no impact and no injury to either of his
00:38:51
legs and yet the car was concertina quite badly the car's controls had been altered to prevent an airbag deploying a
00:39:00
job lawrence would have found straightforward turning passenger airbags off is quite
00:39:05
an easy thing to do it's a function that's built into many vehicles because
00:39:09
if you wanted to fit a child seat to the front of the car for example it's unsafe
00:39:13
to have an airbag that would go off in those scenarios most of them activated on a key so you
00:39:18
can just turn it off on the side of the vehicle to stop the airbag activating in a crash laptop
00:39:25
at the scene of the crash he had pretended to be unconscious not too convincingly to the paramedics
00:39:31
who arrived even at a crime scene those suspicions of the paramedic are probably the thing
00:39:39
that sparked the investigation so ian lawrence made another mistake there he tried to fake being unconscious and he
00:39:48
clearly didn't know how to do that and as investigators probed the timelines of the lives of ian and sally
00:39:55
it became clear that they were far from happy and that ian stood to gain financially from sally's death
00:40:01
to do so however might not be possible after their divorce was final the former airline pilot had a deadline to meet he
00:40:10
decided that he was going to try to murder sally and try and do that in a way which
00:40:17
as far as he could see would be the perfect murder and if he succeeded there was much to
00:40:23
gain i know why he did it he did it for money he he was a failed businessman he got
00:40:30
three small companies all of which were struggling he murdered her on a saturday
00:40:34
the decree nice high was due two days later on the monday and um sally had been very successful she had a
00:40:42
great job she was well paid she had a lovely big house at that time was worth i don't know
00:40:48
350 000 pounds something like that and he had nothing despite his careful planning and
00:40:57
continued claims of innocence the jury unanimously found him guilty of the murder of his wife
00:41:02
i had no misgiving thoughts however i knew what the verdict was going to be everybody cheered at the time i didn't
00:41:09
ian lawrence made one last desperate bid to escape justice he appealed offering evidence of an excuse that he had raised
00:41:16
in court during his trial he claimed to have multiple sclerosis which had caused
00:41:21
a spasm in his leg so that he had unwillingly pushed down hard on the car's accelerator
00:41:27
i mean it was just so pathetic you know there was nothing wrong with the steering wheel even if what
00:41:35
ian lawrence had said about having a leg spasm were true he could still have steered the car away from the tree but
00:41:42
what they found in the appeal was that his leg spasm would not have caused the accident as it happened
00:41:51
he got life with a minimum of 24 years the judge put three years extra on for it being for money
00:42:01
he put another three years on for him using the car as a weapon to kill her and then he put another three years
00:42:10
on because it was premeditated the couple had met and appeared the perfect match on a lavish wedding day
00:42:21
they had begun their own family before ian's world disintegrated around him leaving him bitter
00:42:28
angry eventually he had killed his wife but justice had been done so everything we do as police officers
00:42:39
is for the families of the victims and it's a great feeling when you can look
00:42:43
the family in the eye and you know that you've done you and your team have done
00:42:47
everything you can to secure and preserve the evidence to then put a case together presented at court
00:42:54
and convince the jury that that person was guilty of that offence and that's
00:42:59
what we did ian lawrence will not be eligible for parole until 2037. sally was 47 when she died and was
00:43:07
described in court as inspirational caring and kind [Music] you