00:00:08
-September 18, 2008,
Frankfurt, Germany. A 21-year-old man boarded
a plane via Amsterdam
00:00:17
to the U.K. He had one thing on his mind --
murder. -He's got gardening gloves
with him.
00:00:24
He's got a weapon with him. This is premeditated.
This is planned. It is very execution-like
in style.
00:00:33
-David Heiss had become fixated
with a woman he met over the Internet. -His obsession was escalating
by the day.
00:00:41
Any suggestion that
he could be dumped was something that would have driven him
literally off the edge.
00:00:48
-In order for Heiss to be
with the woman he loved, he had to eliminate the one man
he thought stood in his way --
00:00:56
her 20-year-old
boyfriend, Matthew. -He's gonna go from a completely
law-abiding citizen
00:01:03
to a first-degree killer
in one second. -Heiss stabbed the defenseless
man in his own flat 86 times
00:01:14
in a cruel and frenzied attack and then calmly boarded
a plane back to Germany. -The scene --
I can remember it vividly.
00:01:23
It was a --
it was an horrific sight. I've been to lots of scenes
of horrific crimes,
00:01:29
and this one
was particularly bad. -Fueled by jealousy and rage, the obsessive online gamer
turned into a deadly stalker
00:01:39
who would stop at nothing
to get what he wanted. All of this makes David Heiss one of the world's
most evil killers.
00:01:48
♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ Nottingham, England, 2008. The city was in shock after news
broke out that a 20-year-old man, Matthew,
00:02:18
was stabbed to death
in his flat. The killer was
a German National, 21-year-old David Heiss,
00:02:26
who had become obsessed with
Matthew's girlfriend, Joanna. -David Heiss was absolutely
fixated on Joanna.
00:02:34
Now, he didn't want her
to have a relationship with. He wanted to own her.
He wanted to possess her.
00:02:39
And he would stop at nothing
to get what he wanted. -After persistently harassing
Joanna for months
00:02:45
and not getting his own way, Heiss had come
to a fateful decision. -Heiss kills in the name
of love,
00:02:54
and in doing so, destroys
a relationship of actual love. -It would take the efforts
of police forces
00:03:02
from two different countries
to help catch the young killer. Tony Heydon was
a Detective Chief Inspector
00:03:09
for the Homicide Unit at the Nottinghamshire
Police Force. -He'd been in the U.K.
for 16 hours.
00:03:18
Incredible when you think
about somebody that had never been involved
in the police,
00:03:23
never committed a crime,
had got no friends. Everything he'd ever done
was on the Internet,
00:03:28
playing war games. It was just incredible. -Heiss was eventually arrested
at his home
00:03:35
in the district of Limburg
an der Lahn in Germany. Police Chief Inspectors
Uwe Quirmbach
00:03:42
and Rachid Bouarroudj
worked on the case. -[ Speaking German ] -It was all over the press.
00:03:47
It was reported across
the whole of Germany, both in the local
and national media.
00:03:55
-[ Speaking German ] -I would characterize
this kind of killing as brutal. We found out that Matthew had
been killed with 86 stab wounds.
00:04:06
From my experience, this was
a very brutal and cruel act. -David Heiss deserves not
one moment sympathy.
00:04:15
He was a callous, evil man
who killed, for no good reason, an entirely innocent young man.
00:04:24
-This killer's story
begins in 1987. David Heiss was born on June
the 19th to a Bolivian mother
00:04:31
and a German father
in Frankfurt, West Germany. He was the eldest
of two children.
00:04:37
-Affluent.
He had quite a leafy, suburban upbringing,
but he was unhappy. -Heiss's childhood is quite
a turbulent one,
00:04:48
so his parents separated
when he was 6, and his mother
went on to remarry. -After his parents divorced,
it was decided that Heiss would
00:04:57
live with his grandparents
near Limburg an der Lahn. -And he was effectively
brought up by his grandmother
00:05:03
and grandfather,
to whom he was close. -I think he feels like
he's the outcast, and when you have those --
those interruptions,
00:05:13
those disruptions
in the attachment that somebody has
with their parents, their primary caregivers,
00:05:20
that starts to have an impact
on the relationships that they have
with other people.
00:05:24
-Heiss's mother remarried and
went on to have more children. -I think here we've got
an individual
00:05:31
who feels like he never
really sort of fits in. His mother's formed
a new family unit,
00:05:38
so I think there's always that
feeling of being an outsider, of being awkward, of not having a sense
of belonging in the family.
00:05:46
-His mother, a nurse,
still lived in the town, but he barely spoke to her, and his father was even
more distant from him.
00:05:53
-As a result, Heiss became
insular and isolated. -Heiss is put out to pastures, and the message in there
to the child is very simple.
00:06:06
Love can't be counted. The closest thing to you
can just set you aside and go on to a new life
as if it's nothing.
00:06:14
This creates a desperate
sense of insecurity. -I think very early on
in those early years,
00:06:19
we're starting to see the seed
sown for a disruptive adulthood, for somebody who's gonna have
difficulties with relationships,
00:06:27
but it becomes
an awful lot worse than that. -Estranged from his parents, Heiss also struggled
to make friends.
00:06:36
-He was an isolated child. He took refuge, as so many
adolescents do now, in the Net,
in his bedroom, his computer.
00:06:48
-The teen would spend up
to eight hours a day on the Internet and developed
a passion for online gaming.
00:06:55
His social interaction
was limited to other gamers. -Here's somebody who doesn't
have great relationships
00:07:02
with his peers,
so he seeks solace online. He makes friendships with people
in the virtual world,
00:07:10
and the virtual world is very
different from the real one because you've got
a lack of social cues.
00:07:16
You've got that lack of kind
of eye contact, of seeing a person face-to-face,
and I think this is something
00:07:23
that actually suited him
down to the ground. -At school, Heiss excelled
academically,
00:07:30
but he couldn't afford
to go to University. -It was a fact that rankled him. I think he felt,
from a very early age,
00:07:41
"That's what I was due. I want to be at University." He was clearly clever enough,
but it wasn't possible.
00:07:52
-Age 19, he decided to join
the military, but after just two weeks, he was discharged for not being
mentally suitable.
00:08:01
Instead, Heiss took up an apprenticeship at a textile
dye production company. -And in itself, that,
00:08:10
coupled with his extraordinarily
isolated childhood, turned him into an introverted,
unhappy, complicated boy
00:08:19
who had never come to terms
with any kind of relationship. -And things would only get worse
for the troubled teen
00:08:28
when his grandfather
died in 2007. -All that he'd held dear
seemed to be about to be taken away from him,
00:08:37
and he desperately wanted
something else to hang onto, as well. And that is when Matthew and
Joanna entered Heiss's life.
00:08:47
-At this time, Heiss joins an online war-gaming forum
called AW Bunker. It was here that he met Joanna,
an environmental-science student
00:08:57
who lived in Nottingham
with her boyfriend, Matthew,
a former physics student. Both were fellow gamers
who'd also met online.
00:09:06
Later that year, the gaming
forum AW Bunker closed, so Joanna and Matthew set up
another one
00:09:14
called WarsCentral.com. -Joanna is known on the site
as JoJo. Matthew's known as Shade.
00:09:23
There were others
whom he contacts regularly. Increasingly, Heiss's world
contracts so,
00:09:32
in fact, it simply is on
that war-games site. -Joanna, Matthew,
and another individual
00:09:40
had taken on the management
of a war-games forum. And they managed that forum
so that people
00:09:50
who were involved
in certain games could speak to her and Matthew
as experts around how to progress
in the game.
00:09:59
-And he becomes obsessed -- and there's no other
word for it. He becomes inhabited
by his fellow gamers.
00:10:11
-With his newfound
virtual friends, Heiss, whose nickname was Eagle the
Lightning, joined the new forum.
00:10:18
He'd taken a particular
liking to Joanna. -The fact that she had
got ginger hair,
00:10:24
he felt that that made her
more intelligent, so he had this massive respect
for her
00:10:29
and became besotted by her. She was a manager of a forum, and that put Joanna up
on a pedestal.
00:10:37
-He was able to find somebody
who's really enmeshed in his private world. And he not only found a woman
who was living in that world,
00:10:45
which is relatively rare,
he found a woman who was living in that world
as the world's creator.
00:10:51
And that's what I suspect made
Heiss believe that she was for him,
almost the perfect match.
00:11:01
-It would be the start of
an obsessive relationship that would eventually
turn deadly.
00:11:09
Although she had a boyfriend,
Heiss had begun to stalk Joanna by going through
her Facebook account
00:11:15
and online journals. -He was sending her private
messages, which she rebuffed. "Don't do that sort of thing.
00:11:22
I don't need that
sort of attention. I'm in a relationship
with Matthew." And he wouldn't give up.
00:11:29
-Here we've got somebody
who is completely isolated. And normally, when we're forming
relationships with people,
00:11:34
romantic relationships,
we talk to our friends about it. We talk to our family about it.
00:11:38
And they act as a bit of a check
on our behavior, and they might say, "Oh,
I think you're pushing things
00:11:43
a little bit too fast here. You might want to slow down." That kind of thing. He doesn't have that kind of
social filter on his behavior.
00:11:52
-Heiss's obsession with Joanna
was escalating. Even though he'd never met her
in person, in May that year,
00:11:59
he declared his love for her. -Heiss had become
totally obsessed with Joanna and confessed,
00:12:08
"I love you, JoJo, more than
anything else in my life." And he went on, "I shouldn't,
but I can't help it,
00:12:15
and to be honest,
it's a great feeling." A great feeling,
someone you've never met,
00:12:20
you only know
on a war-games site? It is the most extraordinary
thing to say. You know, he has no emotions
for reality.
00:12:28
It simply exists on the screen
in front of him. This is a young man who has
lost contact with reality.
00:12:37
-He becomes fixated with Joanna,
and these are behaviors that really are quite abnormal
and out of the ordinary.
00:12:44
He's doing this quite early on. He has no kind of concept
of the pacing of a relationship,
00:12:49
of the norms and the values that inform how we actually
come to construct relationships.
00:12:55
So I think at this point,
Joanna's warning signs were probably
going off a little bit.
00:13:00
-Heiss continued to
harass Joanna, and his messages became
more intrusive and obsessive.
00:13:08
-It's perfectly normal for
a human being to bond tightly. What happens to the stalker
is they bond too narrowly,
00:13:18
too tightly,
too quickly, too completely, and that becomes
a pathological bond. And that's --
that's what happened for Heiss.
00:13:28
Because Heiss bonds with
somebody and falls in love, not knowing who they are. He falls in love with,
what he bonds to
00:13:35
is his fantasy about who she is
and what she is. And what's his fantasy? It's his perfect match.
00:13:43
Two people who can game forever, if we can just get rid
of that one little problem.
00:13:50
But she's in love
with somebody else and living with somebody else. -Joanna continued to dismiss
Heiss's messages and told him
00:13:58
that she was in a happy
relationship with Matthew. This only antagonized Heiss, and his fantasies
became more sinister.
00:14:06
And on the 10th of June, he sent a fellow gamer
an ominous message. -That is Matthew, Joanna,
and David Heiss.
00:14:15
It was an eerie, indeed,
almost creepy thing to say. -Heiss had now become frustrated
with the virtual world.
00:14:23
He needed to see Joanna
in the flesh. Having got her address
from another forum member,
00:14:29
on the 21st of June,
he made his way to England. -Heiss can control
his enthusiasm no longer.
00:14:37
He has to meet Joanna. Having discovered
where they live -- in a flat above
a pub in Nottingham,
00:14:44
he goes to visit them. Uninvited, simply turns up
on their doorstep. -Heiss just popped out
of the side and said,
00:14:52
"You know, hello, I'm David." There had been no discussion
around him coming to see them.
00:14:56
None of the other gamers
had ever come to see them within the U.K. So for someone to come
from Germany
00:15:01
was really,
really extraordinary. -He wants to basically follow
through that fantasy
00:15:07
of a relationship with her that he has in his head
and make that a reality. -A day before he arrived,
00:15:14
Joanna had received
a text message from a friend to tell her that Heiss
had intended to visit them,
00:15:20
but they were still surprised
by the unannounced visit. -Joanna already knew
that this was not right.
00:15:27
She really,
really didn't like it, but Matthew invited Heiss
into their flat. They sat, watched football,
00:15:35
and they enjoyed
their time together. During that time, Joanna was
ringing local hostels
00:15:41
to try and find somewhere
for Heiss to stay and couldn't. Couldn't find anywhere, so they
decided to let Heiss
00:15:48
stay in their flat, which
really again unnerved Joanna. -They're obviously
slightly astonished
00:15:56
that this man should turn up
on their doorstep uninvited, but they take pity on him,
and he sleeps on the floor.
00:16:04
-The sleeping arrangements
were far from ideal, especially for Joanna. -She relayed a story that,
as Matthew slept,
00:16:14
she lay wide awake. And every time she would look
at Heiss lying on the floor in a sleeping bag,
he was staring at her.
00:16:21
So, really, really
difficult time for them. -Feeling uneasy about
their uninvited guest,
00:16:29
the next morning, the couple found alternative
lodgings for Heiss. -In the coming days,
they did see him,
00:16:36
but Joanna was adamant that she
didn't want to see him too much, so she sent Heiss off
around the country
00:16:43
to go and visit
some of the other gamers. She thought that was
a good idea. And then there was chats behind
Heiss's back, on the forum,
00:16:51
which then Heiss
then found out about, which escalated the issue, so that's when it really
began to break down.
00:16:57
-I think Joanna rejecting
Heiss is something that he would not
have anticipated.
00:17:03
I think he's got this
very fixed idea of how that relationship
is going to go, and I think he is
quite knocked back,
00:17:10
quite surprised
when this isn't a reality. -At that time, Matthew began to understand
what had been happening
00:17:18
because he'd obviously had
a conversation with Joanna. He had a conversation
with the gamers.
00:17:22
They all thought that,
when they met Heiss, that he was a bit strange. He didn't want to talk
about the games.
00:17:27
He wanted to talk about Joanna. So when he arrived back
in Nottingham, they really wanted him
to go back home.
00:17:35
-After spending three weeks
in the U.K., Heiss finally returned
to Germany. Meanwhile, Matthew, now fed up
with the unwanted attention
00:17:44
from Heiss,
made his feelings clear with a damning post
on the gaming forum. -Matthew decided to write
a document called
00:17:52
"The 19 Reasons
Why I Hate David Heiss." It was all the things that
Matthew had either discovered
00:17:58
or felt that he hated about him, and Heiss really,
really didn't like that. -Furious at Matthew's post,
Heiss told a fellow gamer
00:18:08
that he had a strong desire
to grab his head and smash it against
a wall several times.
00:18:13
On the 31st of July, 2008, just 13 days after
he left the U.K., Heiss decided to head
to England once again.
00:18:23
-It clearly incensed
Heiss enough that he borrowed
his uncle's car in Frankfurt,
00:18:30
and then drove all the way
to Nottingham. It's sort of over 600 miles, and it was unannounced,
again, nobody knew about it.
00:18:40
-However, things didn't
quite go to plan. In the early hours
of August 1st, Heiss crashed his car
on the M11 in Cambridgeshire
00:18:51
after colliding with a truck. ♪♪ -He then got up in the morning
from hospital with a minor arm injury
00:19:03
and got on the train
and came to Nottingham. And then Joanna saw him
on the street.
00:19:07
It absolutely freaked her out. She was frightened and ran
into the flat and told Matthew.
00:19:14
You know, that really
escalated things, and I think at that point,
Matthew and Joanna
00:19:19
clearly thought this was --
this was getting out of hand. -The couple made the decision
to block Heiss from their forum.
00:19:27
-Heiss's obsession had begun
to completely terrify Joanna. She blanked all contact
with him,
00:19:37
and indeed, told him
to see a psychiatrist. She'd realized that this
apparently harmless German
00:19:43
was actually
potentially dangerous, but she did the one thing that
was probably destined
00:19:51
to tip Heiss over the edge. And that was to abandon him. -For somebody like Heiss
that was clearly a loner,
00:19:58
clearly somebody
who didn't have friends, was clearly reliant
on the chat room and the gaming site all day,
all night,
00:20:05
to be told
to get out of the room, you can't be part
of the conversation, was clearly, clearly something
that he didn't like,
00:20:13
and that escalated his anger. -Other members followed suit,
which infuriated Heiss
00:20:18
and aggravated him further. -Heiss had threatened to come
to England and kill himself
in front of Joanna.
00:20:27
Heiss had been fallen out
with all the other gamers. They'd been calling him names
00:20:31
and telling him
that he was strange. There was clearly a real
hatred within this group.
00:20:36
Heiss against everybody else,
but in particular, Joanna and Matthew. -Despite this, Heiss continued
to declare
00:20:44
his undying love for Joanna. -His obsession was escalating
by the day, by the week.
00:20:51
Any suggestion that he could be
dumped by them was something
that would have driven him
00:20:57
literally off the edge. It would have been
another abandonment, which ran like a thread
through David Heiss's life.
00:21:05
It was part of what made him the
killer that he was to become. -Heiss was now
at breaking point,
00:21:13
and his unpredictable
and obsessive behavior would only escalate. He was determined
to kill Matthew.
00:21:24
-I think Heiss sees the world
in a very black-and-white way. He wants a relationship
with Joanna.
00:21:30
Matthew is a barrier
to that relationship. Therefore, I must remove
that barrier.
00:21:34
And it really is quite chilling the way in which
he goes about this. -On the 18th of September,
Heiss made his third trip
00:21:41
to England
in less than three months. -Heiss takes another trip
to Nottingham. He flies from Frankfurt
to Birmingham Airport,
00:21:51
and then takes the train
from Birmingham to Nottingham. -The 21-year-old office worker
had come well-prepared
00:21:59
to put his murderous
plan into action. -He'd brought with him
enough clothing to keep him warm
00:22:05
'cause he knew that he was
gonna have to sleep outdoors. He'd brought a sleeping bag.
00:22:09
We have some CCTV footage of him
coming to the tram station and becoming really,
really confused
00:22:15
because they'd stopped running
because he'd arrived too late. So that kind of messed with him
a little bit,
00:22:20
so then he had to walk
all the way through Nottingham. -At approximately 1:00 a.m.,
00:22:24
David Heiss made his way
to Joanna and Matthew's flat. -We've got images of him
putting his bag down,
00:22:31
walking up the road,
hiding his bag coming back. Spending a lot of time just
thinking what he was gonna do.
00:22:38
-He doesn't knock on the door. He sleeps outside the flat
beside an air-conditioning unit,
00:22:43
which was presumably
giving out some heat. It's not the depths of winter,
but it still was cold.
00:22:50
-Joanna and Matthew had no idea
that Heiss was back in the country
and just meters away from them.
00:22:57
-When Joanna got up in the
morning in order to go to work, she kissed Matthew goodbye,
and she walked out.
00:23:06
-And he specifically waits
for Joanna to go out
to work in the morning. He watches her leave.
00:23:13
He's now decided that
the only way he can have her is if he kills
her boyfriend, Matthew.
00:23:20
-With Joanna now out of sight, Heiss made his way
up to their flat. -He's got gardening gloves
with him.
00:23:27
He's got a weapon with him. This is premeditated.
This is planned. This is something
that he intends to do.
00:23:33
It is very execution-like
in style. -Heiss then knocked on the door. -The moment that Matthew
opens the door,
00:23:42
David Heiss launches himself
at him, stabbing him repeatedly. And indeed, stabbing him
relentlessly with the knife
00:23:52
that he's brought specifically
for the purpose. -In a cruel and frenzied attack,
00:23:57
Heiss chased Matthew
around the small flat. -Matthew had gone into the fetal
position behind the closed door,
00:24:04
and then managed to escape
and go running down the corridor and into the lounge.
00:24:09
You could see evidence of where
he had banged into items, such as doors or cupboards,
and where the blood was smeared.
00:24:21
And then he was pursued across
into the corner of his bedroom-cum-lounge. -David Heiss had viciously
stabbed Matthew
00:24:30
a total of 86 times. -So this is something
that is way more than you need to do to end a person's life.
00:24:40
He didn't just want
to kill Matthew. He wanted to completely
obliterate him and have complete control.
00:24:46
He was very incensed that
this barrier was in the way to getting the thing
that he wanted,
00:24:51
which was a relationship
with Joanna. So killing him wasn't enough. -To stab somebody 86 times
actually takes time.
00:24:59
It takes energy.
It takes effort. It tells you
that somebody really, really means to cause
that person very serious harm.
00:25:06
We would normally describe
this sort of murder as a sustained assault. This is not a moment of madness.
00:25:14
This is planned.
It's calculated. -It's an explosion
of cathartic rage. He has been between him
and his true love
00:25:25
from the day that they met. -Despite his horrific injuries,
Matthew managed to leave a clue
00:25:31
to his killer
at the scene of the crime. -To Matthew's eternal credit,
he managed in his last moments
00:25:40
to write the first three letters
of David Heiss's name in his own blood
on his computer console.
00:25:48
He wrote "DAV,"
presumably hoping that someone would recognize
what that meant and lead the police
to David Heiss.
00:25:59
-In one sense, the fact that he
was still conscious enough, still willing enough to try
and identify his assailant
00:26:07
to write the first three letters
of his name on a monitor shows how strong he was.
00:26:13
But at the same time, it tells us
that he was conscious. He knew what he was doing
00:26:18
throughout
the whole of that attack. -Tragically, Matthew died
from his horrific injuries.
00:26:26
His murderer then proceeded
to cover up his callous crime. -He had made two suicide notes.
00:26:34
One for him and one
written for Matthew. And the one written for Matthew
included personal details
00:26:41
that he got out of Matthew
using certain historical events, using certain people's names
in a note.
00:26:49
-But given the horrific scene
before him, Heiss realized
he could no longer make Matthew's murder
look like suicide.
00:26:58
-He is also premeditated enough
to realize that he's probably gonna better
make the whole affair
00:27:03
look like a burglary gone wrong. So he ransacks the flat
to conceal the fact that it's actually
00:27:10
a particularly
directed attack at Matthew. -Intent on making the attack
look like a burglary,
00:27:16
CCTV footage captured Heiss carrying items
that he'd stolen from the flat and dumping them
in a nearby Dumpster.
00:27:24
But there was something odd
about the way he walked. -One of the things that I've
never really understood is that
00:27:31
Heiss had not brought
any spare shoes. His shoes were covered in blood, so he had to borrow
some shoes of Matthew's.
00:27:40
Matthew's shoes were very small. Heiss was a size 11, so as he's
walking up and down the road,
00:27:46
he's actually pigeon-toed,
and you can see that. He'd also in the frenzied attack
on Matthew stabbed himself
00:27:54
and cut his leg,
so he was bleeding. -With Matthew lying dead
in his flat, Heiss casually made his way
to Birmingham Airport
00:28:04
to catch the 1:20 p.m.
flight back to Germany. -Most people, when they've
committed a murder,
00:28:10
are so horrified
at what they've done, it really knocks them back. They don't quite realize
beforehand,
00:28:16
even if it's something
that they've planned, the enormity
of what they've done. And that they're unable
to function normally.
00:28:23
So the fact that Heiss can do
this shows me that he is a very cold and
a very calculating individual.
00:28:29
-He's in the country
for less than 16 hours. In that 16 hours,
he kills Matthew and leaves him in the flat
in Nottingham.
00:28:39
-That evening, having not heard
from Matthew all day, Joanna anxiously made her way
back home from work
00:28:46
and made the horrific discovery
in her flat. -She rang three 9s and spent
a long time on the phone
00:28:55
relaying the fact that
she'd found Matthew deceased. And you know, Joanna was in
a really bad state,
00:29:03
but she was taken to the local
police station in Nottingham. -The next morning, Tony Heydon
00:29:10
went to examine
the murder scene. -It was an horrific sight. I've been to, unfortunately,
00:29:18
lots of scenes
of horrific crimes, and this one
was particularly bad. There was blood on the outside
of the front door to the flat.
00:29:30
It was absolute carnage. It was clearly evident
from the scene that Matthew had been attacked,
00:29:37
and then attacked
again and again and had been chased
through the flat. It was just a terrible thing
to see.
00:29:47
-With no witnesses, the police
were keen to find out who could have committed such
a vicious attack on Matthew.
00:29:55
-Well, Joanna was vital. She had a story to tell,
and it was imperative that we got to the basic
information very, very quickly.
00:30:07
And she relayed certain
information to us that really set
that investigation going.
00:30:12
She told us about the fact
that Matthew had got no enemies. He -- he wasn't involved
in anybody
00:30:19
that had got criminal links,
all those sort of things. So very quickly steered us
towards the problems
00:30:25
that she was having
in her life at that time. And they were all centered
around David Heiss
00:30:30
and all of the harassment
and all of the issues that her and Matthew had
been experiencing for months.
00:30:36
-The police gathered
CCTV evidence, which showed Heiss
in the Nottingham area the day of the murder.
00:30:44
-It was one of those
where things, like, dropped into place pretty --
pretty quickly.
00:30:48
It was an extraordinary case
for lots of reasons, but actually identifying
Heiss as the main suspect
00:30:54
was, for us,
a relatively easy thing to do. Gathering the evidence of what
he did was extremely difficult.
00:31:02
-As the news broke
of Matthew's murder, fear had spread amongst
the local community.
00:31:08
-We had lots of problems
in the student fraternity. We had officers involved in trying to reassure
the student community
00:31:17
that it wasn't
an attack on them. We had to look at the general
community in Nottingham
00:31:21
and the fear
that this particular crime may have created
by trying to reassure them
00:31:27
that we had an idea
of who it was that had committed the offense. The difficulty was,
was where was he?
00:31:34
What might he do next? And we had a real concern about
the other gamers that were involved
in this investigation, as well.
00:31:41
-Heiss had thought he had
committed the perfect murder, but he was now
the police's main suspect.
00:31:47
They just needed to find him. The police were now looking
into the killer's background.
00:31:55
-Well, we started to make some
investigations around Heiss and where he was from.
00:32:01
The only thing that we'd got
from some of the gamers was that
he maybe lived near Frankfurt,
00:32:07
and we didn't have
any other information. -After talking to other gamers,
the police discovered
00:32:14
that Heiss was apparently online the morning
that Matthew was murdered. -He had managed to convince
his sister
00:32:21
that he was going away overnight
to a party, and that he needed somebody
to manage his online account,
00:32:30
and then got his sister
to log on to the computer. We were really concerned
about that.
00:32:35
Had we got this right? -Even though he'd
killed Matthew, Heiss continued to act innocent
to the other gamers.
00:32:43
-When he was back in Germany, he began to say,
"How is Matthew?" And "Has anybody heard
from Matthew?"
00:32:48
"Well, Matthew is dead." -However, the police
were still convinced that Heiss
was their main suspect,
00:32:55
but since he was
an online gamer, they had no idea
where to find him. Then there was a breakthrough
in the case.
00:33:03
Information came through
about the car crash that Heiss was involved
in back in August.
00:33:09
-The fact that the police
had attended that crash and what had happened was that
some items had been sent
00:33:17
to Heiss from the car
by the Travel Aid. It's like European version of the recovery service
in the U.K.
00:33:23
And that gave us a couple of
addresses that linked to Heiss. So we were then able to go
to the courts in the U.K.
00:33:31
We give them enough information
that suggests we should arrest
this individual. -With a European arrest warrant,
the police went through Europol
00:33:41
and made contact
with the German authorities. Uwe Quirmbach
and Rachid Bouarroudj
00:33:47
were assigned to the case. -[ Speaking German ] -After receiving
a formal request,
00:33:53
we carried out
the background checks. The only thing we knew was that
he was a young man
00:33:57
that lived in the District
of Limburg-Weilburg. He didn't show up in any police
records, so we found nothing.
00:34:03
It was a total blank
slate for us. -Heiss, unaware that he was
being investigated,
00:34:10
decided to send Joanna
a message on Facebook, four days after
he'd murdered her boyfriend.
00:34:17
-He wrote a note which said, "I'm sorry for causing you
so much trouble. I hope you won't lose
all your hope.
00:34:25
We will be there for you." That gives you an indication of
the distortion of Heiss's mind.
00:34:33
"We will be there for you"? No, I think what he really meant
was, "I will be there for you."
00:34:39
What he really hoped is that
Joanna would fall into his arms. That she'd somehow be won over
00:34:46
by the fact that
he'd eliminated her boyfriend. -This is a very clumsy attempt
at trying to worm
00:34:53
his way back
into her affections. And this really does, again, show his complete lack
of judgment,
00:34:59
his complete lack of awareness,
of social norms, of ways to behave
when somebody has died.
00:35:08
-It reflects
a complete inability to see the world from -- from the perspective
of the victim.
00:35:16
-Meanwhile,
the German authorities now had an address for Heiss. And on the 24th of September,
he was finally arrested.
00:35:25
-[ Speaking German ] -David Heiss was arrested
by the Special Unit, and he didn't resist arrest.
00:35:33
He was brought to our office, and my colleague,
Quirmbach, and I went over the case with him.
00:35:38
We made him aware
that he was accused of committing a murder
in Nottingham, to which he immediately
responded by saying,
00:35:47
"I was in Nottingham,
and I'm glad that I was arrested because I wanted
to break away from it all."
00:35:56
-It was strange. There are offenders
who don't say a single thing, but I got the impression
from him that he was relieved
00:36:02
that he could talk
to someone about it. He almost got the whole thing
off his chest.
00:36:07
-Heiss continued to open up
to the German detectives. -After we informed him
about his situation,
00:36:16
he told us
that he didn't need a solicitor, and he wanted to tell us
what happened.
00:36:21
We started the interrogation
around 10:00 p.m., and we finished around 3:00 a.m.
00:36:27
During that time, he told us
how he met Joanna and Matthew
over the Internet, and how he fell
in love with Joanna.
00:36:34
He said that he'd visited Joanna
twice in Nottingham, and the third time
he went over was mainly
00:36:40
because he wanted to punish
Matthew for the bad things he had written about him
on the Internet.
00:36:45
We asked him whether,
at the time, he had the intention
to kill him. He said no,
he wanted to punish him,
00:36:53
but he had taken
the knife with him. -Heiss then gave his version of what happened
that fateful day.
00:37:02
-He told us that he had waited until Joanna had left
for work that morning, and then went up to the flat.
00:37:11
Matthew opened the door,
and there was a fight. He hit Matthew to the ground
with the first punch,
00:37:18
and then added countless stabs
with the knife during the fight. That was how David Heiss
described it.
00:37:31
During the investigation, David gave clear details
about everything. He had to stop two or three
times because he started to cry.
00:37:41
They were genuine tears because he had just realized
exactly what he had done. -Heiss hadn't admitted a murder.
00:37:50
He'd admitted
that he'd killed Matthew, but suggested that he went there
to talk to Matthew,
00:37:54
and Matthew had attacked him, and he had to stab him
in order to defend himself.
00:38:00
-Tony, along with a
German-speaking detective, flew out to Frankfurt
on the 25th of September.
00:38:07
-The German officers received
us extremely well. They took us to Heiss's house, and they showed me
what they had found.
00:38:18
Below his bed was a suitcase. Within the suitcase
was blood-stained clothing. Lots and lots of information
that clearly reassured me
00:38:27
that we'd got
the right individual. -The items found in Heiss's room reveal the true state
of mind of the killer.
00:38:36
-So, Heiss actually hung
onto some items that were related
to Matthew's murder, so he hung onto
the bloody clothes.
00:38:43
He hung onto a fake
suicide note, and often, killers will do this, especially if this killing holds
specific significance to them.
00:38:54
It's something that has been
important for them, for their sense of power,
for their sense of status.
00:39:00
And often, they will revisit
these items, and they will relive that moment
when they were all-powerful,
00:39:05
when they'd got control back. -He kept them as a trophy
to remind himself that he had dispatched
his love rival.
00:39:14
But what is absolutely
undeniable is that Heiss, who'd got rid of the weapon, found it impossible to get rid
of the clothes he wore.
00:39:22
Now, that says a lot about his delight
in the killing of Matthew. -On the 25th of November,
it was agreed
00:39:31
that David Heiss
would be extradited to England, and he was charged
for murdering Matthew.
00:39:37
His trial was set for April 2009
at Nottingham Crown Court. None of Heiss's family attended.
00:39:45
-As far as we could tell, he never had any contact
with his parents whilst he was
in custody in England.
00:39:52
It seemed really unusual to us for parents not to want
to contact their son. I can't give you a reason why,
even if I wanted to.
00:40:01
-Details of what happened
on the morning of the 19th of September
were presented to the jury.
00:40:07
-The critical element there was
that the crime-scene examination was meticulous.
00:40:12
It showed exactly where
the stabbing started and where it finished, and we were able to show
how Matthew defended himself.
00:40:21
He'd got knife wounds across his
hand where he'd grab the knife. Matthew was a strong,
00:40:28
determined young man that fought
for his life like anybody would. But he -- he tried his utmost.
00:40:35
He ran away.
He fought back. He grabbed the knife. He did all he could to save
his own life,
00:40:41
but he was just overpowered
and clearly very surprised. -Heiss claimed that he'd only
gone to confront the couple
00:40:50
after they'd started to abuse
him on the gaming forum, and that he'd attacked
in self-defense.
00:40:57
-A feeble argument,
to put it politely. If you've killed someone
in self-defense,
00:41:02
the first thing you would do
is run and find a policeman and admit it at once. You wouldn't get back on a plane
and fly to Germany.
00:41:10
You wouldn't dispose
of the weapons. You wouldn't keep the bloody
clothes under the bed.
00:41:15
-The calculated killer even
tried to manipulate the jury. -His English was immaculate,
and he was trying to tell
00:41:25
the jury
how it was all Matthew's fault. And he spent two days
doing that, and I'd never seen a suspect
do that in a trial before.
00:41:34
So, it was a very,
very difficult, very long trial. We had to prove everything. We had to bring officers
from Germany to give evidence.
00:41:45
-[ Speaking German ] -I was asked to be a witness
at the hearing. The judge wanted to know
00:41:54
what David Heiss had said to us
during the interrogation. And once again,
I described it in detail.
00:42:04
-The evidence against
David Heiss was undeniable. -CCTV of him coming from
Birmingham to Nottingham.
00:42:12
There was the bloodstains,
the walls, elaborate evidence shown
to the jury of the spatter.
00:42:19
DAV written on
the computer screen. The evidence against David Heiss
was utterly compelling.
00:42:25
-On the 11th of May,
after just 2 1/2 hours, the jury found
David Heiss guilty for the murder of Matthew.
00:42:33
Mr. Justice Keith told Heiss
that Matthew's death involved a substantial degree of
both planning and premeditation,
00:42:41
and that he brought the knife
to kill Matthew, and then make it look
as if he killed himself.
00:42:47
David Heiss was sentenced
to life imprisonment with a minimum
of 18 years before parole.
00:42:53
-He was only sentenced
to a minimum of 18 years because of his age. If he had been older,
he'd get a lot longer term.
00:42:59
This was an horrific crime. -I think had he not been caught
for Matthew's murder,
00:43:05
I think this is an individual
who would have, at least, gone on to harm other people,
00:43:10
if not kill somebody else
because he was prepared to go to these extreme lengths
to get what he wanted.
00:43:17
Who's to say that he wouldn't
have done the same with the next thing that comes along in his life
that he can't have?
00:43:24
-What makes David Heiss one of
the world's most evil killers is the total lack of conscience,
remorse, empathy,
00:43:34
sympathy with the victim. He is a machine. A machine who has disappeared
into a virtual reality,
00:43:43
who is not any more a man,
but is suddenly simply a symbol. -Heiss was a selfish,
obsessed individual
00:43:51
who callously killed
an innocent man in cold blood just because he didn't get
what he wanted.
00:43:57
His meticulous planning
and depraved, obsessive urges make David Heiss one of the
world's most evil killers.
00:44:06
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