00:00:04
♪♪ -On the 3rd of October, 2012, Coral Jones gave an emotional
televised appeal for the safe return
of her daughter, April.
00:00:15
The 5-year-old had been
missing for 36 hours. She had vanished while
playing outside her home
00:00:21
in the rural Welsh town
of Machynlleth. -[ Sobbing ] There must
be someone out there
00:00:27
who knows where she is and can help at least find her. We are desperate for any news.
00:00:37
April is only 5 years old. Please... Please, help find her. -The entire community
came together
00:00:47
to help the police search
for the missing girl. There was a real hope
that April would be found alive.
00:00:53
-They were all thinking,
and, of course, her parents were thinking,
she is gonna be found.
00:00:57
There is no doubt in my mind
that she is going to be found. -But the search
would be in vain.
00:01:03
A local 46-year-old man
named Mark Bridger, who was known to the family, had abducted and murdered April.
00:01:11
I said, "I love you.
I'll see you later, and I'll come tuck
you into bed," and she said, "I love you" back,
00:01:15
and that was the last time
I saw her. -Mark Bridger had
undeniably become one of the world's
most evil killers.
00:01:24
♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ It was a crime that
shocked the nation and left a family heartbroken. In October, 2012,
00:01:54
5-year-old April Jones
was abducted whilst playing outside her home on the Bryn-y-Gog estate
00:02:00
in the small town of Machynlleth
in mid Wales. As news of April's disappearance
spread through the media,
00:02:08
police and volunteers scoured
the town and countryside, kick-starting what was to become
00:02:14
the biggest search
for a missing person in the history
of British policing. -She's got to be
around here somewhere.
00:02:21
She's got to be. We will search,
and we will go miles. We will travel miles
to find her.
00:02:26
-...but April's body
would never be found. She'd been abducted and murdered by 46-year-old Mark Bridger,
00:02:34
a local man and well-known
member of the community. April's sister, Jazmin, was just 16 years old
at the time.
00:02:44
-I kind of just knew him. Mum and Dad knew him, would say,
"Hi, are you all right,"
00:02:47
a quick sort of
chat in the street about cars and bikes and that. When I was walking past,
just kind of quick "hello,"
00:02:54
and off he went. -After Bridger's arrest, police searched his laptop and found indecent pictures
of children
00:03:01
and screenshots of young girls
from the area taken from their
social media accounts.
00:03:06
Local reporter Ciaran Jones
reported on the case. -When you look at what was found
on Bridger's laptop,
00:03:14
there are few ways
that this case could have been more troubling. When you see images
of April Jones,
00:03:18
it's clear that Bridger
had this grotesque fascination with young girls, with those type of scenarios,
00:03:24
where young girls were
abducted and killed, and that absolutely is something that is condemning,
condemning evidence.
00:03:32
-This killer's story begins
over 50 years ago. Mark Bridger was born
in Carshalton, Surrey,
00:03:40
on the 6th of November, 1965. He grew up in a happy
family environment with his parents
and two siblings.
00:03:49
-There weren't
any indications for me in terms of Mark Bridger's
childhood or his adolescence
00:03:54
that would indicate
that he'd go on to do something horrendous. He did seem to be an altogether
very average young lad,
00:04:01
and there were no red flags. -His childhood was normal
compared to most people. He came from
a middle-class family.
00:04:10
His father was a police officer, which he actually look up to. -But by 1984, 18-year-old Bridger
had gone off the rails.
00:04:19
He'd dropped out of college and struggled
to hold a job down. -All the jobs he got --
He was a bit of a failure.
00:04:26
So by the age of 20,
this guy is, like... He failed in school.
He failed in college.
00:04:30
He failed on whatever
he wanted to do. -In 1984, Bridger had
his first brush with the law.
00:04:36
-He was convicted of theft
and a firearms offense, and, basically, the story
that he concocted around this
00:04:44
was that he'd planned to go
and fire an old pistol at a friend's farm, and he'd stolen a car because
it was too far for him to walk,
00:04:52
which does seem to be
rather ludicrous, and the prosecution
thought that, actually,
00:04:56
something altogether different
had gone on. He was planning to actually
carry out an armed robbery
00:05:01
with this weapon
and this stolen car. So what Mark Bridger is doing
from this point is,
00:05:07
he's getting used to lying,
to being comfortable in a lie, to maintaining a lie,
00:05:11
and this is something he'll do
throughout his life. -Bridger was placed on
probation for two years,
00:05:17
and he struggled to find work. He lived in a fantasy world, often telling people
he had a military background.
00:05:25
-There were tales
that he'd been a soldier, that he'd been a lifeguard, that he might have worked
in a meat factory,
00:05:30
and when you boiled it down, you realized that
nobody really knew. He was wearing
military fatigues,
00:05:35
wearing a camouflage jacket
and camouflage trousers, waterproof over-trousers, almost like he thought he was
some kind of action-man figure,
00:05:43
you know, and driving about
in his Land Rover, projecting
this image of himself as, I don't know,
a brave father,
00:05:49
as someone who'd, you know,
done his duty for his country, and that wasn't a reality
whatsoever.
00:05:55
-This is a very common thing
that happen, not only with killers, but it happens with
other people, as well.
00:06:01
You tend to make up
for your failings by creating things that will
impress other people.
00:06:07
You want people to not
look at you like, "Okay. Dude, you're a loser.
Get out." So he starts making
these stories
00:06:14
to try to bring himself up
in front of others, like, "I've been to the Army. I did a tour of Vietnam,
or I did a tour of Iraq."
00:06:23
-Mark Bridger and secrecy
do go hand-in-hand. You've got the Mark Bridger that he's presenting
to the outside world
00:06:30
who's this kind of heroic figure who has traveled the world, who is this alpha male,
00:06:35
but actually, on the inside,
you got somebody who is fundamentally ashamed
of themselves,
00:06:40
and that's something that
they want to keep secret. He doesn't like who he is. He isn't the kind of man
that he thinks he should be,
00:06:47
but he's become so comfortable in lying and elaborating
and exaggerating that he just continues
to do that.
00:06:54
-In 1990, Bridger moved away from his home
in the south of England and relocated to Machynlleth,
00:07:01
a market town
near the Welsh coast. -Machynlleth in
North Wales, in Powys, is that it's a tiny
rural community
00:07:11
where everyone knows
pretty much everybody else, where no one would appear to be
threatening in the least.
00:07:19
-Bridger moved from job to job, including working as a lifeguard
and in abattoir.
00:07:24
-I think Mark Bridger
was somebody who had a significant history
of failing at things,
00:07:29
of failing at jobs,
of failing at relationships and of developing
a bit of a reputation
00:07:34
in the local community, and I think what he was doing
by moving to Machynlleth was basically starting over,
00:07:40
wiping the slate clean and trying to control
the amount of information that people had about
him and his life.
00:07:47
-By the age of 20, Bridger had fathered
his first child, but he'd left his partner
before the birth
00:07:53
to start another relationship. It was a pattern
that would repeat itself. -He has a total of six children
with four different women,
00:08:02
but none of those relationships
seems to stick around. He was always there, gone,
often with the women
00:08:07
not really knowing
a great deal about him. -He doesn't manage
to hold down a relationship
00:08:12
in the same way he doesn't
manage to hold down a job, and when he doesn't
get what he wants,
00:08:17
he tends to start
using violence. -In 2004, Bridger was
charged with battery against his girlfriend,
00:08:24
and just three years later, he was convicted of assault after punching a man
in the face.
00:08:30
By October, 2012, Bridger was living alone. -So he now didn't have a job, didn't have the girlfriend
with the baby,
00:08:39
and now got away
from his father and mother. So it was a triple-wham there. My guess is that he was feeling
extremely low.
00:08:48
So it could be that his interest
for little kids started then. -He does start
to kind of withdraw
00:08:56
and spend a lot of time
on his own, spends a lot of time
on his laptop computer,
00:09:01
and on that computer,
there are images of children in the local community
who are known to him.
00:09:08
There are pictures of
child-abuse imagery on his laptop. He's pushing the boundaries
00:09:13
of what's acceptable
and what's not acceptable, of what's legal
and what's illegal,
00:09:17
and it's all becoming
incredibly blurred. -Just a few miles across town
from Mark Bridger's cottage,
00:09:24
5-year-old April Jones
could often be seen playing on the street
in front of her family home.
00:09:30
-April's character is really
bubbly, really happy, constantly smiling,
constantly laughing.
00:09:37
So if you're ever
feeling sad or down, she'd basically be there, and she'd make you laugh
in an instant,
00:09:43
and she got, like,
a really contagious smile. Like, you just see her smile,
so you'd want to smile.
00:09:49
She was just a happy, fun,
bubbly little girl. -April's bike was
a constant companion.
00:09:56
For a young girl
who had cerebral palsy, she didn't let her disabilities
slow her down.
00:10:02
-We taught her to ride the bike
from a young age. So she's been on a bike
constantly.
00:10:06
So she'd never ever be
without her bike. If she wants to go out,
or if we were gonna go
00:10:09
down the street to shop,
it was on her bike. You couldn't get her to walk. It was on her bike,
and that was that.
00:10:17
-On Monday,
October the 1st, 2012, the two sisters were together at the local swimming pool
with their mum, Coral.
00:10:26
-Every Monday, April used
to get swimming lessons. So I'd always meet my mum
and April in the lesson.
00:10:31
So when I got off the bus,
take April in to get changed and to her swimming lesson,
and then meet her afterwards.
00:10:38
So she finished
the swimming lesson. It was about a half an hour. Went in, got her changed,
come back out.
00:10:43
She's walking out,
and went back home. I went to the youth club. I said, "I love you.
I'll see you later,
00:10:50
and I'll come tuck you into bed
and everything," and she said, "I love you" back,
00:10:53
and that was the last time
I saw her. -On the evening of
October the 1st, 2012, 5-year-old April Jones
was playing outside
00:11:02
the front of her family home on the Bryn-y-Gog estate
in Machynlleth, Mid Wales.
00:11:08
April's mum and dad,
Coral and Paul, had just returned
from a parents' evening at the local school.
00:11:16
-It was still light that day. So I went to let April out
a little bit longer because of the good
school report,
00:11:22
and there was three
of her friends, and her and her friend cycled
their other friend back home,
00:11:28
and then it was just her and her
friend that were coming back. -At around 7:20 p.m.,
Coral grew concerned
00:11:36
that her daughter had been out
a little too long. She sends April's
younger brother out
00:11:41
to look for her. -And then Harley came
running back with the bike, saying, "She's gone.
She's not there.
00:11:48
She's been taken,"
and then that's when it kind of all escalated. -Detective Superintendent
Reg Bevan was part
00:12:19
of the investigation team. -When the call first comes in, there's a crime in action
in effect.
00:12:26
So April's mum makes
the initial call to say that her daughter
has gone off in a vehicle.
00:12:33
That is treated as
an abduction, kidnap, and the initial response
is very much to secure the area,
00:12:41
try to identify the last person
to see her and identifying people who were
in the area at the time.
00:12:46
-Detectives immediately
questioned April's young friends who had seen her get into a car
with a stranger.
00:12:53
-And they gave
this basic description of a small front
and a large rear to a vehicle,
00:12:59
and they couldn't be
more specific, but these are children,
young children, but it was a key piece
of evidence,
00:13:05
particularly when
they talk about how she got into
the right-hand side, and they were quite sure
of that.
00:13:12
-I think the real crucial detail
they were able to drill down very, very quickly
was that April may have
00:13:17
got into what would
ordinarily appear to be the driver's side, which indicated perhaps that it
was a left-hand drive vehicle.
00:13:24
I think that was very,
very quickly seized upon as something that was unusual, something that could perhaps
be decisive in the investigation
00:13:33
because, other than that, initially,
there didn't seem to be a great deal
for the police to go on,
00:13:39
because she'd been seized
very, very quickly, very, very discretely,
with only children as witnesses.
00:13:46
-Meanwhile, the local community
in Machynlleth rallied around the Jones family and assisted the police
in their search for April.
00:13:55
News of her disappearance
quickly spread on social media. -Machynlleth is
such a small town.
00:14:01
You just wouldn't think of... I think we have a population
of about 2,500, maybe a bit more,
maybe a bit less.
00:14:07
-Five, six, seven... -The amount of people
that came out of their houses and just started searching,
of all sort of ages,
00:14:14
all sorts of ages, it was just incredible
to even see. Like, they've all kind of
come out
00:14:19
just to look
for my little sister, and it's kind of breathtaking,
in a way, to see the amount of people
and how close Machynlleth is,
00:14:27
how close the community is. -From the very first day,
I think the police were using
00:14:31
the word "unprecedented" in terms of the scale
of the search, and that was certainly true.
00:14:36
I remember arriving
in Machynlleth and immediately
hearing the constant swashing
00:14:41
of rotor blades, seeing boat teams coming in
from Mountain Rescue, seeing cavers,
00:14:46
every conceivable
emergency service, every conceivable specialism
was there very, very quickly,
00:14:53
and then you had the public
element of the search, where people were splitting
into small teams,
00:14:59
dividing up an area on a map
and going out and fanning out and covering
what area they could.
00:15:04
People,
at the most rudimentary level, going out with torches
and calling April's name.
00:15:09
So you had an unprecedented
police search, involving, I think, in the end,
dozens and dozens of forces
00:15:15
covering dozens and dozens
of square kilometers. -Despite an exhaustive search
by police and volunteers
00:15:21
stretching into the early hours, April could not be found. The small town was in shock.
00:15:30
-I remember one of the people
I spoke to said, "It can't have been somebody
from the area
00:15:34
because we all know one another. We all trust one another." -It almost defies belief
00:15:40
when that sort of thing happens
in a small rural community because, somehow,
you immediately think
00:15:45
that everybody knows
everybody else's business, and that it's impossible. How can a child disappear
into the thin air
00:15:53
in a tiny Welsh village in which everybody pretty much
knows everybody else? But that's the devil
in plain sight, isn't it?
00:16:03
-Witness reports of
a distinctive blue Land Rover on the Bryn-y-Gog estate gave the police a crucial lead
in their investigation.
00:16:12
-It was said on the night
that she got into a car that was on the wrong side,
and, straight away,
00:16:20
everyone knew we were looking
for a left-hand drive, and there's only person
in Machynlleth
00:16:24
who had a left-hand drive, and that was Mark Bridger. Where we used to live,
he kind of lived,
00:16:31
like, at the end, sort of just above everyone, and he was kind of,
"Oh, hi. Are you all right,"
00:16:36
in the street sort of thing. I didn't know his name.
I just knew his face. He was always in combat
trousers, always.
00:16:44
-Mark Bridger was named by some
of the residents living locally in the house-to-house
investigation,
00:16:50
and then once he's been named, and when you compare
the description given by the children of the vehicle
that April Jones got into,
00:17:01
and then some work
that we were able to do behind the scenes
with the analysts, we were able to link
the Land Rover discovery
00:17:07
to Mark Bridger,
and then, all of a sudden, things start to fall into place. ♪♪ -The following morning,
Tuesday, October the 2nd,
00:17:18
the small market town
of Machynlleth awoke to a media swarm. April had now been missing
00:17:26
for 12 hours. -I've been saying this
from the very beginning. We still have hope.
00:17:33
-It was a fast moving,
very emotional place. People were desperate. People were filled with hope,
00:17:41
and people were galvanized to go out there
and to find someone, and those people
that were there generally,
00:17:48
beyond perhaps knowing
the family or knowing the area or knowing them in passing,
00:17:52
had no personal connection,
in a lot of cases. They wanted to go out
and find a vulnerable child,
00:17:57
and there was lots
and lots of hope and just sheer determination. People saying, "I can't sleep.
00:18:03
I can't go home. I can't rest. I can't do anything while I know
that somebody is out there,"
00:18:08
and that was incredibly stark
and incredibly moving. -The police were desperate
to find Mark Bridger,
00:18:15
and they soon had
a major breakthrough. His distinctive blue Land Rover had been found
at a local garage.
00:18:24
It had been dropped off that same morning. -They didn't really disclose too much about his demeanor
00:18:32
other than he dropped it off, suggesting it had been involved
in an accident, and they were quite happy
to have a look at it,
00:18:38
and from what they had seen,
it didn't appear to have been involved in any kind
of road accident.
00:18:43
-The police continued
their manhunt. They hoped that finding Bridger would lead them
directly to April.
00:18:50
-We were still hoping
that she would be alive. So it was very much,
speed is of the essence.
00:18:55
So you had to ensure
that you were doing as much as you could
as quickly as you could
00:19:00
in an effort
to identify where she was. -Having dropped off his car the morning after
April's disappearance,
00:19:07
Bridger met a search party
looking for the 5-year-old. He was hiding in plain sight.
00:19:13
-Mark Bridger had effectively
stumbled upon a search party and wished them good luck
00:19:17
and claimed to have been out
searching all night, which was,
when you reflect on that,
00:19:21
deeply, deeply troubling, deeply shocking. -Despite it being a small town, detectives had discovered
multiple addresses
00:19:30
linked to Bridger, whose transient lifestyle had made finding him
extremely difficult.
00:19:36
-We had some previous addresses
that we knew he'd lived at or where he may
still be living at,
00:19:42
and we were sending teams
of officers around to those addresses
to try to locate April.
00:19:47
And on the some occasions
there was no answer, we were forcing entry
into these properties.
00:19:52
We're quickly searching
in a hope to find her. So it was a very fast-paced,
fast-moving investigation
00:20:00
to try to locate him. -As the search for April
entered its 19th hour, her older sister, Jazmin,
began to fear the worst.
00:20:09
-I knew we were never going
to get her back alive. Something in me just said, "She's not gonna
come home alive."
00:20:16
-By 3:00 p.m. on Tuesday,
October the 2nd, 2012, 5-year-old April Jones had been
missing for almost 20 hours.
00:20:25
The number-one suspect
in her abduction was 46-year-old Mark Bridger. April had been seen getting into
his car the previous evening.
00:20:37
The police had finally
traced Bridger to a cottage called
Mount Pleasant on the outskirts of Machynlleth.
00:20:44
They forced their way
through the door. -So when the first officers
arrive at Bridger's home,
00:20:50
his fire is lit. It is very hot in there. There is a strong smell
of detergent, bleach, cleaning fluid,
00:20:59
and the initial
forensic examination then starts at that point, but it's clearly looking
more and more suspicious
00:21:07
that something has happened
at that address. -Just half an hour later,
at 3:30 p.m.,
00:21:13
Mark Bridger was spotted
by a patrol car on the A487 Road heading back
into Machynlleth on foot.
00:21:21
-So when he is seen
walking down the road, officers pull up alongside him
and speak to him,
00:21:27
confirm that it is Mark Bridger, and he immediately makes
a disclosure to the officers
00:21:32
that April is dead and that he has run over her
by accident. -I think Mark Bridger's
selfishness really did come out
00:21:39
when he was picked up
by the police, and he said to them,
"I need to talk," and the police said,
"Okay, but can you wait
00:21:45
until we get to the station,"
and he didn't. He just proceeded
to basically engage
00:21:50
in this lengthy monologue about what had gone on,
about how he felt, and, basically,
when he was saying,
00:21:57
"I need to talk,"
he wasn't just saying that. He was saying,
"You need to listen to me."
00:22:01
It was another way of him trying to exert control
over other people. It's something he's always doing
all of the time.
00:22:07
-In the police car
on the way to the station, Bridger continued
to tell officers
00:22:12
his side of the story. -He gave a very strange, fantastical description of what had really happened
to April.
00:22:20
"I ran over her
with my Land Rover, and she was underneath
the wheels, and I didn't know what to do,
00:22:26
and there was no pulse
and no sign, and she wasn't moving." Well, any normal person surely
would have rung the police
00:22:35
or the hospital or 999 at that instant,
wouldn't they? "Well, you see, I didn't know,
and I didn't mean to,
00:22:41
I mean, I was going to just
lean her up against something." Well, she wasn't leaned up
against something.
00:22:48
She disappeared. -He created the stories
in his head. Maybe he even believed
it himself, you know?
00:22:53
Some people will do...
Some people -- They are so desperate to be
accepted by others and in life
00:22:59
that they will
create the stories, and they are so into it
and so desperate that they will believe
those stories themselves,
00:23:07
and that's where you get
the compulsive liars. So he might even believe
himself, that he...
00:23:11
Because he was actually telling
those stories to the police. -He seems to think that
what's happened is quite blurry,
00:23:19
but what he does remember is that he drove off
with her body somewhere, but after that, he says,
"It's all blank.
00:23:25
I can't remember what happened." -Bridger's bizarre
account of events led detectives to believe
he might be lying,
00:23:33
and that April may still
be alive somewhere. -So although when Mark Bridger
is first detained,
00:23:40
he says that he's killed her,
he's run over her, we, obviously,
haven't found a body.
00:23:46
So there's still some hope that you may be able
to find her alive. So the thrust of searching
as many places as possible
00:23:53
and continuing to search
the countryside didn't stop. -The following day, the 3rd of October, 2012,
00:24:02
April's mother, Coral Jones, appeared in front
of the world's press. Her daughter had been missing
for over 36 hours.
00:24:11
-And so the atmosphere
in the room awaiting that was quite extraordinary, and when the door opened,
there was the briefest sense,
00:24:19
I remember even now,
of complete silence, complete shock, complete... captivation, almost,
00:24:29
and as Coral walked
into the room, then, obviously,
the noise began. The shutters of the cameras
began to click.
00:24:36
To see up close,
merely a few feet away, somebody going through
what Coral and her family
00:24:42
were going through
was astonishingly painful. -[ Sobbing ] It's been 36 hours since April was taken from us.
00:24:54
There must be someone out there who knows where she is and can help the police
find her.
00:25:02
We are desperate for any news. April is only 5 years old. Please... Please, help find her.
00:25:14
-When you see firsthand
the impact it has on the family, you can only imagine
what Coral
00:25:20
and the rest of the family
have gone through, but it's when you see them
face-to-face,
00:25:25
and you're sitting next to them in some of those
press conferences, it is heartbreaking,
and, you know,
00:25:29
it just makes you more resolved
to try to do all you can. -But as police forensic teams
began an intricate search
00:25:37
at Bridger's home,
it soon became clear that April Jones would
never be found alive.
00:25:44
♪♪ -We do know from the detailed forensic examination
of his home, is that she probably died there.
00:25:55
We found her blood
at that address, significant amounts
of her blood. Clearly, he attempted
to clean the place,
00:26:02
which is part of the reason
the initial officers found that overwhelming
smell of bleach.
00:26:07
He tried to clean up
several parts of the house. There was blood in the lounge
and in the bathrooms,
00:26:14
and the wood burner was lit,
we believe, because he was
looking to dispose of incriminating evidence.
00:26:21
-From a policing
and prosecution perspective, the key piece of evidence
in a murder inquiry
00:26:26
is almost certainly going
to be having a body, and they didn't have that
in this instance,
00:26:32
so they were very,
very reliant on not just on the human
witnesses that they had,
00:26:37
which were, in many cases, friends of April's who had seen
the abduction take place,
00:26:42
but incredibly up-to-date
forensic technology, which enabled them
to pinpoint fragments of bone
00:26:49
found in the wood burner
at Mark Bridger's house. -Although there was bone,
it was burnt to such a degree
00:26:55
that we weren't able
to match it forensically through any DNA profile, albeit we know it is human
from the pathologist
00:27:02
and the scientists
that examined it subsequently. -Forensic teams also found
a burnt boning knife
00:27:08
in Bridger's home. The disturbing discovery
at Mount Pleasant cottage shocked the entire community.
00:27:16
-There almost certainly was
no longer any chance of a happy ending to this story,
00:27:20
a positive outcome of April
coming home to her family, and that was very,
very powerful,
00:27:27
and when you saw the tiredness that people understandably felt, 2, 3 days of hard working,
00:27:33
searching, not going to sleep, to have everything that
they'd worked for crushed in that way was
00:27:39
deeply, deeply dispiriting
for everybody, and it was clear quite quickly
that there needed to be then
00:27:46
that further little bit
of perspective and of rowing back a little bit
from the media
00:27:51
and from everybody
that was there just to give people,
not just the family, but the people in the town
that have been so affected,
00:27:55
that little bit of space and that little bit of freedom to grieve and to process
everything that happened.
00:28:02
♪♪ -For a while, they were
searching for April, and they were hoping
she'd come back alive.
00:28:08
And I think it was a couple days
later, or something or other, that it turned into
a search for the body.
00:28:15
And I kind of knew
that it must have been some horrific crime
for them to search a body,
00:28:21
and in the sort of town we live in where there's rivers
flowing through, there's forestry everywhere,
00:28:28
I kind of knew there must have
been something quite bad, otherwise you kind of would
have found a child's body
00:28:33
around this sort of area
straight away. -After three days
of questioning, on October the 5th, 2012,
00:28:43
Mark Bridger was arrested
on suspicion of murder, but the 46-year-old continued
to protest his innocence.
00:28:51
-In interview, he's very
matter-of-fact in his answers, and he says that he's
run over her accidentally,
00:28:58
and that he gets out
of his vehicle and sees that he's run over her,
and he picks her up,
00:29:02
and he thinks, believes,
she's dead. He does try resuscitating her. But at each stage,
00:29:08
when you're then able to rebut
some of his story by saying, "Well, there's no
forensic evidence
00:29:13
to show that she's come
to any harm in your vehicle, albeit we could put her inside the vehicle
with fingerprints,"
00:29:22
he would always suggest,
"Well, she wasn't bleeding." So when you'd ask him, "Well,
00:29:25
how do you know that
she's dead, then," you know, he would say,
"Well, I knew she was dead."
00:29:30
His story didn't make sense. -The reason why people hold back
information about murder
00:29:35
can vary from one case
to the next, but, for me, the central element
is often control.
00:29:42
When somebody has been
convicted of murder, when somebody has been sentenced to a very lengthy term
in prison,
00:29:49
they don't have control
over many things, at all. The one thing that they do
have control over is
00:29:53
the knowledge of what happened, of what they did
to their victim, of where their victim is,
and often that's something
00:30:00
that people won't want
to part with very easily. -Nothing that he said
we could back up
00:30:06
with any evidence
or forensic recoveries. In fact, everything led
quite the contrary.
00:30:11
He had abducted April from outside,
near to her home, and then driven her back
to his house immediately,
00:30:19
and she probably met her end
very soon after that. -He could have been curbing it
for a long time,
00:30:27
but on that day,
it overpowered him, and once she was in the car,
then that was it.
00:30:32
Then he goes into
a different state of mind. Then he can't stop it anymore. It would be very hard
for him to stop.
00:30:37
-The following day,
October the 6th, Mark Bridger was charged with the abduction and murder
00:30:43
of 5-year-old April Jones. -It's an absolute shock
with that, and you don't know
what to think,
00:30:50
and then you start,
in your mind, questioning, do you really know someone,
you know?
00:30:55
You could have known
this person, like, 15, 20 years, but then it comes to the fact
of, do you really know them?
00:31:03
-And so the shock
to the community, and, of course,
to April's parents, to realize that not only
were they living with,
00:31:13
but they knew, the man who had abducted
their daughter is even more terrifying. -The search for April's body
continued for seven months,
00:31:23
until the police called it off
in April 2013. -The fact that
no body was found didn't alter the course
of the investigation.
00:31:33
You know, we're still
treating it as a murder. There's a huge impact
on the family, obviously,
00:31:37
but the search continued
for months and months afterwards because we had to be sure,
in that area,
00:31:44
that we had searched everywhere
we possibly could in an effort to find her. So although we're confident
00:31:52
that she probably died
in his house, what he's done with the body
after that, only he knows.
00:31:59
-On April the 29th, 2013, the trial of Mark Bridger
began at Mold Crown Court. The 47-year-old was charged
00:32:08
with the abduction and murder of 5-year-old schoolgirl
April Jones. Seven months
after her disappearance,
00:32:16
her body had still
not been found. There was real hope
that the truth of what happened to her
00:32:21
would emerge during proceedings. ♪♪ -I think from
the very first moment that Mark Bridger appeared
in court,
00:32:30
he was a pathetic figure, somebody that appeared to be
feeling sorry for himself,
00:32:35
that almost couldn't realize the gravity of the situation in which he found himself,
00:32:40
as though he somehow
was the victim when absolutely he wasn't. He was the offender.
00:32:46
He was the person that had done
this barbaric, inhuman thing. -He just kind of hung
his head in shame.
00:32:52
He never once looked over,
ever, like, not even a slight glance of his eyes, didn't move his head,
00:32:57
just kind of hung his head
in shame. -Bridger pleaded not guilty. He was sticking
to the same story
00:33:04
he told police
back in October 2012, claiming that April's death
was an accident.
00:33:11
-Mark Bridger used this
cloak of amnesia, almost, to say that he couldn't account
for what had happened.
00:33:18
He accepted that he was
behind April's death, but not that he intended
in some way to kill her,
00:33:26
and he concocted
this fanciful story about potentially having
knocked her over with his car,
00:33:31
something that was never
born out in any of the evidence, somehow claiming that
he then couldn't recall
00:33:38
what he'd done with her body,
that he was drinking lots, and that the whole thing
could have been a nightmare.
00:33:44
This was someone
that was prepared to go as low as they possibly could, desperately trying
to save their own skin
00:33:50
in view of all evidence
to the contrary. -So at the beginning,
I was kind of shocked, like,
00:33:56
"Oh, he hit her off the bike,"
but she knows well, too well, not to go near the road
when there's a car.
00:34:02
She knows this really well, and she knows to look
left and right and everything,
00:34:06
and we've always, always
taught her from a young age, and then he starts
saying he panicked
00:34:10
and he just drove off with her,
and you kind of... He's got kids around her age,
around April's age,
00:34:17
so you kind of think,
"You wouldn't panic. You kind of, in a sense, as a parent,
you'd know what to do."
00:34:22
So towards the end of it,
you're just like, "Oh, shut up. Just shut up, really. You just make yourself
look a fool."
00:34:30
-During the trial,
police helicopter footage emerged from the morning
after April's abduction.
00:34:37
It showed
a calm-looking Bridger. -He seemed kind of casually out, walking his dog
as if nothing had happened,
00:34:45
and I think what we've got here is somebody who is struggling to figure out what is the
appropriate way to behave here.
00:34:52
What are people going
to be looking out for? What are they going to
be expecting to see?
00:34:57
-Most normal people would
look up at the helicopter and wonder what was going on.
00:35:00
He knew exactly
what was going on. He knew exactly what
he'd done with April, and at that stage, you know,
00:35:07
the net was closing in on him, and he was trying to blend in. -On the 15th of May,
00:35:12
the jury was shown evidence from Mark Bridger's laptop. It was a key moment
in the trial.
00:35:19
-Bridger had begun to assemble a collection of particularly
nasty child pornography
00:35:26
as well as photographs
of local children, including April
and her elder sister. At his trial, the prosecution
made a considerable play
00:35:37
of the fact that these images
were on his computer and suggested that he may not
have been seeking specifically
00:35:45
to groom April. It could have been
another member of the family or another of the girls
that were on his computer,
00:35:53
but that he was certainly
seeking to groom someone, some young girl. -There are two types of people
or offenders
00:36:00
that would look at different
kinds of things on the Internet, pornography, for example.
00:36:05
The first type is the people
who will be satisfied by the photographs,
by the films,
00:36:10
by reading stories maybe,
but at the end of it, that's it. It's, like, that's good enough.
00:36:16
They can turn off the computer,
and they forget about it. But there are certain
other types --
00:36:20
and Bridger falls
into this category -- that, at the end,
that is not enough. -He'd also been looking
at website reports
00:36:29
of previous child abductions, and you're starting
to build a picture now of a pedophile,
a dangerous, evil man,
00:36:36
who, for whatever reason, has gone from minor offending and tipped over into, you know,
00:36:44
the most serious crime. -On May the 30th, 2013, the jury took just four hours to unanimously find Mark Bridger
00:36:53
guilty of murdering April Jones. Judge Mr. Justice
Griffith Williams sentenced him
to life imprisonment
00:37:01
with a whole-life order. He was immediately sent
to Wakefield Prison. He will never be free again.
00:37:09
-For them to turn around
and say, "Life, and never to be released
from prison," is, like, wow.
00:37:16
It's just... You can't explain
the feeling of it because it's good that he's never going to be
released from prison,
00:37:24
and he's never going to be able
to hurt anyone again. -Well, when Bridger
was sentenced,
00:37:29
the judge referred to him
as a pathological liar and a pedophile, and I think both of those
descriptions are accurate.
00:37:35
Mark Bridger was somebody who
is very comfortable in a lie. He would lie as easily
as he would breathe,
00:37:41
and if you look at
some of his behavior in the final months
before April's death,
00:37:46
he was collecting
images of children on his laptop. He was engaging in behavior
that was incredibly bizarre.
00:37:54
So he was a pathological liar.
He was a pedophile. He was a very dangerous man. -The murder of April Jones
00:38:01
ruined the lives
of not just her family, but an entire community. -The Jones family were very
clearly a respectable family,
00:38:10
people that were well-known
in their community, and there was
that shock element.
00:38:14
This could be anyone's child. It wasn't somebody
that was put in harm's way. It was a girl that was playing
on her bike outside her home
00:38:23
with her parents' blessing,
like she would every day. They would call her in
for her dinner.
00:38:28
She would sit at home
and tell them about her day at school
and how well she was doing.
00:38:32
Everyone can identify with that, whether they have children
or not. It's a brutal thing that
rips out a family's heart,
00:38:41
and that really,
really touches people. -There was people
that we hadn't spoken to
00:38:49
who had little kids
around sort of the same age, and they were really affected. On the estate we live, kids were
outside all the time playing,
00:38:56
and then you didn't see a kid for, like, two years
outside playing. -In a final cruel act,
00:39:03
Mark Bridger has never
revealed the location of April's body. -I think that the key question
for many people in this case is,
00:39:10
will Mark Bridger ever
give up the information about what happened
to April Jones,
00:39:15
about where she is,
to enable her parents to basically say goodbye
to her properly,
00:39:22
and, unfortunately,
I don't think he will. I think Mark Bridger is somebody who will always
have self-preservation
00:39:29
as his number one priority, and he's just simply not going
to put himself in a position
00:39:34
where he's got no power left. -It's difficult
not getting a body back because when you have
a body back,
00:39:43
you can lay them to rest. You can say your goodbyes, but when you've got
bone fragments and ash,
00:39:50
it's not the same at all, because you can not say
your final goodbyes, and Mark Bridger is
such a pathological liar,
00:40:00
and he believes his own lies, he believes
he's telling the truth that he's never gonna tell you.
00:40:05
He's never going to say
what really happened that day, that evening, and what he's done
with the body,
00:40:13
and you kind of have to come
to terms with that, and you kind of
have to accept that
00:40:16
you're never going to be able
to fully say goodbye, and you're never going to be
able to fully lay April to rest.
00:40:25
-On November the 17th, 2014, Jazmin Jones stood
alongside her parents and watched as the probable site
of April's murder,
00:40:36
Mount Pleasant cottage, was bulldozed to the ground. -You've changed.
You've completely changed.
00:40:44
You're never going to be
who you were. I mean, when I have kids,
I could be completely different
00:40:48
to them to what I was thought
I was going to be because of this event. You've just completely changed.
00:40:53
You're never going to be
who you were, and the demons you've had
to fight along the way,
00:40:57
they've changed you,
be it for the better be it for the worse,
but the positive thing
00:41:02
is we've come out stronger.
We've come out. We stuck together
through it all. -Because the community
have gathered around
00:41:09
and been so positive in the face
of such a grotesque crime, it's not been something that's
been allowed to define them.
00:41:16
April Jones is not remembered
for how she died, but for being
a beautiful young girl
00:41:21
who was happiest
in her community and in her family. So what happened to her will always be a part
of the history of Machynlleth.
00:41:28
That will never be laid to rest
or put to one side, but the fact that people do not
want to be defined by this,
00:41:35
do not want to be remembered
purely as the place where this act of evil happened,
00:41:39
will mean that they can go on and they can grow
and they can develop. -Mark Bridger is
a perverted killer
00:41:46
who selfishly
snatched and killed an innocent 5-year-old for his own gratification.
00:41:52
He has constantly lied and still refuses to admit where April is buried. Bridger has shown no remorse
for his actions
00:42:01
or explained the reasons
for the murder. We should forget his name and instead remember
the smiling face
00:42:09
of April Jones, the girl whose life
he cruelly took away at such a young age. ♪♪
00:42:24
♪♪ ♪♪