00:00:05
♪♪ -The whole community
are in shock over this. -I want Tia found. -The last time I see her
was Friday.
00:00:12
-We just hope that we find her. -I'll miss her forever. -On August the 9th, 2012,
00:00:19
a man desperate to find
his partner's granddaughter sat down
for a televised interview
00:00:24
in the hope that
she would still be found alive. -I know deep down in my heart
that Tia walked out of my house.
00:00:32
What happened after that
is I don't know. -By the Thursday morning
after the phone call
00:00:37
that I'd had saying
Stuart would give an interview, I knew this was an interview
with the killer,
00:00:42
no doubt about it at all. -Stuart Hazell had murdered
12-year-old Tia Sharp and hidden her body
00:00:49
in the loft
of her grandmother's home. He was hiding in plain sight. -He knows exactly what happened.
00:00:58
He's the only one who knew
what happened in this situation, and I think the fact
that he has all this knowledge
00:01:03
and these other people don't,
he's really getting off on that. -Stuart Hazell had lied
to the country
00:01:12
and become one of the world's
most evil killers. ♪♪ It was a crime
that horrified the nation.
00:01:40
In the summer of 2012,
12-year-old schoolgirl Tia Sharp disappeared from
her grandmother's house
00:01:47
in South London, prompting one of the most
publicized search campaigns in British history,
but on the 10th of August,
00:01:56
it came to an abrupt end
with a twist so horrific, it seemed
impossible to comprehend.
00:02:03
Tia's body and her killer had been right in front
of the cameras the entire time.
00:02:10
-The sense of loss here is mixed
with all sorts of emotions. People feel cheated.
00:02:17
Their week-long campaign was a desperate mission
to find Tia Sharp. It ended with the 12-year-old
found dead
00:02:24
in her own grandmother's home. -The killer was
37-year-old Stuart Hazell, a man that Tia looked up to
00:02:32
and affectionately
called Granddad. Detective Nick Scola remembers
encountering him
00:02:38
during the search for Tia. -Throughout all of my meetings
with him, his demeanor
never really changed.
00:02:45
He was always
a very quiet person. He didn't come across as being
particularly intelligent
00:02:54
or articulate, and he answered questions
very simply. -But behind
Hazell's quiet nature
00:03:01
was a ruthless, callous killer. -Stuart Hazell committed
the most horrible of murders,
00:03:08
yet was able to lie to
his family, lie to his friends. To do that, he must have been
00:03:15
a particularly calculating
and vile man. -His story begins
over 40 years ago. Born on the 26th of May, 1975,
in Kingston upon Thames, Surrey,
00:03:30
Stuart Hazell was introduced to a life of dysfunction
from an early age. -His father was in
and out of prison,
00:03:39
so there wasn't
a lot of stability. It was quite disorganized. It was quite chaotic.
00:03:45
He spent quite a lot of time
in the residential-care system. He was moved around quite a lot,
and I think that did have
00:03:52
quite a significant impact
on his personality because he didn't really form
attachments with other people.
00:03:59
So that kind of absence
of warmth, that absence of closeness
in those early years
00:04:04
is something that
really did shape him. -By the time
Hazell reached his teens, he'd already begun
a life of petty crime.
00:04:13
-Stuart Hazell started drinking
when he was about 13, and that got him into
quite a lot of trouble.
00:04:19
So he ended up
with his first conviction when he was 14 years old. -It was a pattern that continued
into adulthood.
00:04:26
Between 2001 and 2010, Hazell was in and out of prison
for offenses ranging from racially aggravated
behavior to drug dealing.
00:04:38
In 2003, 28-year-old Hazell
began dating Natalie Sharp, a single mother with a
3-year-old daughter called Tia,
00:04:47
but the relationship
was in no way conventional. After they split up,
he began seeing
00:04:54
Natalie's mother,
Christine Bicknell. -Well, I think Stuart Hazell
is somebody who is quite predatory,
who identifies people
00:05:04
that he can get things
from, essentially, and he had a relationship
with Tia's mother
00:05:09
that lasted
all of about 2 1/2 weeks. And very soon after that, he started a relationship
with Tia's grandmother,
00:05:16
which was much more
longer lasting. -Although 10 years her junior, Hazell moved in to Christine's
home on the Lindens estate
00:05:26
in New Addington, South London,
in 2007. He soon settled in
and enjoyed spending time
00:05:34
with Christine's now
7-year-old granddaughter, Tia, but he struggled to find work.
00:05:42
-Well, Stuart Hazell
didn't really have a regular form of employment. He was in and out of prison
so much,
00:05:49
and it's very difficult
to maintain regular, well-paid, steady employment when you have
a lengthy prison record,
00:05:55
so he would go from job to job doing work cash-in-hand
and all of that type of thing.
00:06:00
♪♪ -By 2012, Hazell had found work
as a window cleaner and was still living
with Christine.
00:06:09
Over the past five years, he'd grown close
to her granddaughter, but on Friday,
the 3rd of August,
00:06:17
just 2 months
after her 12th birthday, Tia Sharp went missing. -Tia went to her grandparents'
house on the 2nd of August,
00:06:26
and that was a Thursday. She was supposed to have
stayed there overnight, and then Friday morning,
gone into Croydon.
00:06:33
She was due home Friday evening
at about 7:00, but she never returned. But by Saturday evening,
00:06:40
it was clear
she wasn't coming home. She hadn't made contact with her
family or any of her friends.
00:06:44
Levels of worry and suspicion
obviously became higher. -By the morning of Sunday,
the 5th of August,
00:06:51
Tia had been missing
for 48 hours. ♪♪ -I led a major
investigation team. It was myself,
two detective inspectors,
00:07:01
five detective sergeants, approximately 20
detective constables, and some civilian support staff.
00:07:08
I called my team in
for an 8:00 meeting on the Sunday morning. We got together. We read all the hand-over files
that had been done
00:07:15
during the course of the Friday
and the Saturday and started to set
some lines of inquiry.
00:07:19
-As the community
rallied together in search of
the missing schoolgirl, the media descended
on New Addington,
00:07:27
clamoring to find out any information
on the whereabouts of Tia Sharp. One of the reporters
at the scene
00:07:34
was Sky News correspondent
Martin Brunt. -It's that complete
lack of evidence of Tia
00:07:41
after she supposedly
left the house that's fueling police concerns. I had a call from Scotland Yard.
00:07:48
I was aware that
a girl had gone missing. Girls go missing
on a regular basis. Most of them turn up
in one form or another,
00:07:59
and nothing more is said
or done or reported, but I think there was a sense
early on through police contacts
00:08:06
that this was
rather more serious. They were very keen for us
to give a lot of publicity
00:08:14
to the circumstances
of Tia Sharp's disappearance. That suggested to me that
they were already suspicious
00:08:22
that she may have come
to some harm. -Investigative journalist and former police officer
Mark Williams-Thomas
00:08:29
was also intrigued
by Tia's disappearance. -I think what was very clear
from the beginning,
00:08:35
both in terms of
talking to family members, also being aware of her
as an individual,
00:08:41
was that this isn't something that was likely to be herself
running away, and it had now become
a number of days
00:08:48
that she had been missing. So that concern about
something having happened to her
00:08:53
I think was very, very real, and when I went
and looked at the area, my focus was very much
on those people
00:09:01
who had the last contact
with her, and therefore, I wanted to try and speak to those people
as quickly as possible.
00:09:07
-On Monday,
the 6th of August, 2012, three days
after her disappearance, Tia's family made an
emotional appeal for her return.
00:09:17
-She's not in trouble.
Come home. She's very much loved,
very, very much missed.
00:09:23
Just contact any of us
whatever way she can. -I want to say thank you
to the police
00:09:28
for doing everything
that they can and the public
for being our support and being out there
day and night.
00:09:36
I urge you not to stop.
I want Tia found. -The police were desperate
for any leads
00:09:43
about Tia's disappearance, and a new piece of information
received by Nick Scola
00:09:48
made him focus on one member
of the family in particular. -It was soon reported to me
00:09:55
that Tia had spent the evening
at her grandparents' house. During the Sunday,
it became clear that actually,
00:10:01
her grandmother wasn't present and Stuart Hazell wasn't
her natural grandfather.
00:10:09
That made us very interested
in the account he would give. -While the police continue
to search
00:10:15
for the missing 12-year-old, they were growing ever more
suspicious of the last person
00:10:20
to see Tia, a man whom she loved
and trusted -- Stuart Hazell. ♪♪ In August 2012,
00:10:33
the police were searching for
missing schoolgirl Tia Sharp. She'd traveled from
her grandmother's home
00:10:39
in New Addington to Croydon
on Friday, the 3rd of August, but seemingly vanished
into thin air.
00:10:47
-We've got several hypotheses
I start to work from. The first one is that
she didn't go to Croydon,
00:10:52
that she was still on the estate
somewhere playing with friends, staying with friends,
00:10:58
and deliberately not coming home
as a missing person. There's a lot of open
countryside around the estate.
00:11:04
As a second hypothesis,
she's gone out there to play, and she has come
to accidental injury
00:11:10
and is laying unconscious
or otherwise disabled outside. Thirdly is that she's still
in the estate,
00:11:17
and she's been abducted
by somebody on the estate. -She doesn't appear on the
CCTV cameras on any of the buses
00:11:25
or trams that would have
carried her to Croydon. -The small community
of New Addington
00:11:32
rallied around the Sharp family and began forming search teams
to assist the police.
00:11:38
Thousands of posters
and leaflets with Tia's photo were soon spread
all across the area and beyond.
00:11:45
It became clear this was
more than a family matter. It involved an entire community.
00:11:52
-Everybody is out looking
for little Tia because we are
a tight community. We will always come together.
00:11:58
Anything that goes on,
we're there, you know? We are there for the family
and for little Tia.
00:12:04
-She was a nice young, girl,
and so, as a result of that, the concerns became heightened.
00:12:10
There was huge public response
within the community, within this estate, and I think
00:12:15
as a result of that,
it grabbed public's attention. -Joining the locals
in this search
00:12:21
was the last person to see Tia
before she disappeared -- her grandmother's partner,
Stuart Hazell.
00:12:29
-He would walk out of the house
and go off to do his daily business
or to get involved in searches
00:12:36
or to make an appeal
in front of the cameras. He seemed to be doing
what you would expect him to do
00:12:45
in furthering the search for
his missing step-granddaughter. I mean, I don't think his
behavior in front of the cameras
00:12:53
was particularly alarming,
but from early on, he was clearly a suspect
for the police,
00:13:00
and we shared the same view. The last person to see Tia
was always going to be somebody
00:13:08
that the police would have
an interest in. -Stuart Hazell places himself right in the middle
of this campaign.
00:13:14
You see him walking around wearing a T-shirt
with "Find Tia" on it, almost as if to try
and prove that,
00:13:22
"This is exactly what happened, and I'm not covering
anything up." -It's not unusual
00:13:26
for an offender
to get involved with the search. It's very usual
because actually,
00:13:31
they then know what's going on. They've got a contact
of what's taken place, and of course it pushes
that concern away from them.
00:13:38
-What it did for me
as a reporter covering the case was to give me
lots of vision of him
00:13:43
because we did see him
out and about on the estate joining in those searches,
and there was a vigil one night,
00:13:50
and we had some very vivid
images of him walking towards the setup
on the estate
00:13:56
with a candle in his hand
looking very concerned and joining in
the search for Tia.
00:14:04
-The fact that Hazell
wasn't a direct relative of Tia meant he was more of a concern
for the police.
00:14:11
-I had a call from somebody involving the investigation
saying, "Be very careful about
your choice of words.
00:14:17
He's not Tia's grandfather.
He's a step-grandfather. He is
her grandmother's boyfriend."
00:14:25
Now, the very fact that somebody
was telling me something like that, again, made me feel that Scotland Yard
certainly saw him
00:14:35
as somebody that they needed to
show a particular interest in. I think they were suspicious
about him from the start.
00:14:43
Bear in mind that he said
that Tia had left the house in the morning
to go into Croydon shopping,
00:14:48
and yet the early searches
of CCTV, eyewitnesses found nothing
to corroborate what he said.
00:14:58
♪♪ -With no reported sign of Tia
in the neighboring areas, police turn their attention
towards the last place
00:15:07
they definitely knew
Tia had been -- her grandmother,
Christine Bicknell's, house,
00:15:13
number 20, the Lindens. Something about Hazell's story
didn't add up. -He gave an account
that they spent a very happy
00:15:23
Thursday evening together,
got up Friday morning. He had made breakfast, and Tia
decided she was going to go
00:15:30
and visit friends in Croydon,
meet a friend in Croydon. The unusual part of that aspect
is that
00:15:36
when we visited the house, we found that Tia's phone was
still there, her mobile phone,
00:15:42
and in the back of your mind,
then, you're wondering, "Well, how exactly are you going
to arrange to meet a friend?"
00:15:48
Perhaps when we were younger, we'd arrange to meet
at 3:00 at a certain place, but people today --
young people today --
00:15:54
they need the mobile phone
to make the arrangement. -On Tuesday, the 7th of August,
5 days since her disappearance,
00:16:01
CCTV footage of Tia
was released. They were the last-known images
of her before she went missing.
00:16:09
The pictures showed Tia
looking relaxed at a supermarket with Hazell. -When I was dealing
with Tia's family,
00:16:17
they themselves
had no suspicions that Stuart Hazell
may be involved. No one took me to one side
to say, perhaps,
00:16:25
"We're not happy about Stuart,"
or anything along those lines. In actual fact, quite the
opposite -- they trusted him,
00:16:32
and I could see from the CCTV
that Tia very much trusted him. She enjoyed going
to her grandparents' house.
00:16:40
She had younger siblings
at her address, and there wasn't
a lot of space there. So she got some time and
attention from her grandmother,
00:16:48
and her grandmother
helped to make sure she got to school on time and just generally
provided support for her.
00:16:55
-And new evidence discovered
the following day, Wednesday, August the 8th,
steered Nick
00:17:01
and his team
away from Hazell even further. His next-door neighbor
told police he'd seen Tia leave for Croydon
00:17:08
on the Friday morning
she disappeared. -What certainly frustrated
the investigation
00:17:14
was the evidence
of the next-door neighbor. He knew Tia well,
and he clearly stated
00:17:20
he saw Tia leave for Croydon
at the time Stuart Hazell said. So he came up
with this statement,
00:17:26
and it affects your whole
investigative strategy because it directs attention
away from the house back towards
00:17:32
was she abducted
or taken on her way to Croydon or lost in Croydon or returning?
00:17:38
-By now, the police had searched
Hazell's home twice and found nothing. With an eyewitness
backing up his story,
00:17:46
it was looking increasingly
likely that Stuart Hazell was going to get away
with murder.
00:17:52
-This is somebody who had very
little control over his life in his early years,
his early days,
00:17:57
but now he would see it as he's
the one who is running the show. He knows exactly what happens.
00:18:04
He's the only one who knew
what happened in this situation, and I think the fact
that he has all this knowledge
00:18:09
and these other people don't,
he's really getting off on that. -He put himself
right at the center of this.
00:18:14
He needed to know what was
going on, because don't forget, he knew
exactly what had happened,
00:18:22
and he wanted to keep as much
as possible away from the home address. He must have been, I mean,
jumping up in air, thinking,
00:18:29
"They've searched the house, and they haven't found
Tia's body. I've got away with it."
00:18:34
-The police searched
Hazell's house for a third time on Wednesday, the 8th of August,
00:18:39
but this time
with specially trained dogs. -I then asked a body-recovery
dog to search the premises
00:18:46
because the searches
hadn't been destructive. The bath panel
hadn't been removed.
00:18:50
Floorboards hadn't been lifted. It's hopeful, then,
the body-recovery dog would give an indication
if there was a dead body there,
00:18:59
still a missing-person inquiry,
but just in case. The body-recovery dog didn't
give an absolute indication,
00:19:05
but a handler afterwards told me that it behaved unusually
in one of the rooms, so, armed with that information
and the fact the investigation,
00:19:14
we're going and we're checking
the facts on the investigation, decided to have a more
forensic look at the house,
00:19:20
but through this search,
the family had to move out. -By Wednesday evening, there'd been more than 50
reported sightings of Tia Sharp,
00:19:31
and the police were still hoping
she may be found alive. As investigators prepared
00:19:37
for a more forensic search
of Hazell's home, he thrust himself
into the spotlight once more.
00:19:43
A TV interview was about to make
a supposedly concerned relative look like a guilt-ridden killer.
00:19:52
-Tia, come on back. Come on.
Come and eat dinner. I want me 10-pound back
from me garden.
00:19:58
We love you, babe.
Come back. -Come back to normal. -Please.
-Enough of this. It's going to be back to normal.
00:20:04
Just come home
and be back in the family. She's part of the family.
Come on. Nothing has changed.
00:20:08
No one is in trouble. Come on. ♪♪ -On Thursday,
the 9th of August, 2012, Tia Sharp,
a 12-year-old schoolgirl,
00:20:20
had been missing
for almost a week. The police were certain
that the last person to see Tia,
00:20:26
her grandmother's partner,
Stuart Hazell, knew more about
what had happened to her
00:20:32
than he was letting on. The media felt the same way
and began to question Hazell's role
in Tia's disappearance
00:20:40
as the news story
continued to shock the country. ♪♪ -Well, people were horrified.
00:20:48
They always are
when girls go missing, and I think people
who were watching TV saw the blanket coverage
that we were giving to the case,
00:20:56
and I think they perhaps
picked up on the fact that the police
were more concerned
00:21:00
about her disappearance than they might be with the
disappearances of other girls.
00:21:05
I think throughout that week, there was a growing sense
that this was a girl who probably wasn't
going to be found alive.
00:21:16
It was a story that I think
more and more people, as the days went by,
believed that this was a story
00:21:21
that would end
in the discovery of her body. -So whilst it was clear the media were portraying
Stuart Hazell as a suspect,
00:21:30
you must go
where the evidence takes you, and there was no evidence
that Stuart Hazell was involved
00:21:35
in Tia's disappearance
at that stage. -Hazell agreed to
a televised interview with
00:21:41
Mark Williams-Thomas
from ITV News to tell his side of the story. -This is going to go
onto the ITV News.
00:21:48
-So this will go on the 6:00.
6:30. -6:30 news, yeah. -Okay. That's good enough.
00:21:54
-I said, "Right, whatever
happens, we run throughout, so even if we break,
we keep the recording going
00:22:00
so the mic is on constantly,"
and I said, "Just go with it. Whatever happens, go with it,"
so we got in.
00:22:07
We set up,
and Stuart was really anxious. He was very anxious,
and what I needed from him
00:22:12
was a really detailed account
in real micro-detail about what happened
from the point
00:22:22
that Tia came to the home
to the point that she was last seen by him,
so minute by minute,
00:22:29
as much as he could
breaking that down, and that's what I did, and I got him
to talk in real detail
00:22:34
because I knew that every single
piece of that interview would be pored over
by the police
00:22:39
because by the Thursday morning
after the phone call that I had saying
Stuart would give an interview,
00:22:45
I knew this was an interview
with a killer, no doubt about it at all. -Well, if they believe
what they read in the papers,
00:22:51
they can do whatever they like
because I know deep down in my heart
that Tia walked out of my house.
00:22:56
She walked out there. I know damn well because she was
seen walking down the pathway.
00:23:00
-Body-language expert
Robert Phipps was certain Hazell was lying. -I loved her to bits.
She's like me own daughter.
00:23:08
-Stuart's behavior throughout
this interview in inconsistent with somebody who is in turmoil,
worried,
00:23:15
you know, anxious about
Tia Sharp being missing. His body language
is far too animated.
00:23:20
He's shrugging his shoulders
a lot. People shrug their shoulders
when they're saying,
00:23:24
"I don't know,"
but he's giving supposedly truthful statements
and saying, "I don't know."
00:23:31
-I know she made that trek
down to that light. -And I think he was struggling
at times,
00:23:35
sometimes,
to be able to remember what he necessarily said
to everybody else, and, of course, the more detail
I asked of him,
00:23:46
the more difficult it became
for him to remember exactly what he'd said because
what he couldn't do, of course,
00:23:53
was give me something that he'd given
to somebody else differently. -"Did you do anything to Tia?"
Well, no, I bloody didn't.
00:24:00
-Stuart adds in a lot of detail, which is superfluous
to his actual answer. -From the co-op,
we just gone to tea
00:24:07
because you come out the co-op
and take a right, cut down. There's a little pathway
and the bus stop, the T31 bus.
00:24:12
-This is to pad out the story
because it's not the truth, so he's adding in other bits
that make it sound truthful.
00:24:20
Now, when you talk to
most people to recall a story, they don't tell it
in a logical, orderly sequence.
00:24:27
They start saying something, and then they remember
something else, and the conversation actually,
00:24:32
or the statements that
they're making, chop and change. -Crossed over
and bought groceries
00:24:36
and come home. -During normal conversation, people blink around
about 20 blinks per minute.
00:24:42
-If you look
at Stuart's behavior, his blinking rate is around
about 40 to 45 blinks.
00:24:47
This is very high
and would indicate that he's actually nervous
about what's going on
00:24:52
during the interview. -He seemed to me
somebody who was insincere. His breaking down,
his almost-tearful performance
00:25:04
smacked to me of somebody who was trying to put on
a performance. The fact that he was sitting
there with the T-shirt,
00:25:13
"Find Tia," I think there was a picture
of her in the background, all suggested to me
that this was a man
00:25:20
trying too hard
to appeal for information when he knew exactly
what had happened to her.
00:25:27
-She walked past me
from the front room to go out, and she walked out
the front door.
00:25:30
That is all I know. -What he's doing
is he's looking away from the interviewer
and down and to his right.
00:25:36
This normally indicates
that he's using the left-hand side of his brain. This is where you go
to construct pictures.
00:25:43
If it's a memory that you have
in your head, you would generally look up
and to the left,
00:25:48
which means you're using the
right-hand side of your brain, which is generally where most
people hold their visual memory.
00:25:53
-It's bad. It's bad. No one knows. We're getting false hope. We're getting people
seeing sightings.
00:26:00
Yeah, it's good to get
the sightings, but we want 100%
definite sighting, so, I mean, it's just crazy.
00:26:06
-One interested viewer was
the detective leading the case, Nick Scola. -So whilst Hazell was a
person of interest at that time,
00:26:15
there was no evidence to suggest that he had actually been
involved in Tia's abduction,
00:26:22
so, for that reason,
you're clearly interested in what he's got to say. We were surprised when
the TV interview came out
00:26:30
because the family never told us
it was going to take place. We had been with the family
that morning,
00:26:36
and then suddenly, that evening, his interview
is appearing on TV. -Interviews like this with
Stuart are crucial to the police
00:26:45
in helping them gain
a further understanding to what they already know because the person
is sort of off-guard
00:26:51
because it's not the police
interviewing them anymore. -Stuart Hazell is
a narcissistic predator.
00:26:57
He sniffs out
other people's vulnerabilities. He inserts himself into families
where he will be looked after
00:27:03
and he will be pandered to and he will have the things
that he wants, and I think what we can see
when we look at him
00:27:11
performing in his interviews
with television and with newspapers,
he is the center of attention,
00:27:18
and he absolutely loves that
because he's fully in control of everything
that's going on around him.
00:27:23
-Hopefully, time will -- The next 12 hours
will bring some good news. -Yeah. We haven't got
any of that lately.
00:27:29
-[ Chuckles ]
Yeah. I'll be honest. -The following day,
Friday, the 10th of August,
00:27:34
the police were due
to return to Hazell's home to carry out a forensic search
of the property.
00:27:41
On the same day,
Tia's grandmother, Christine Bicknell, noticed a bad smell
coming from the house.
00:27:48
-So she calls the police. The police turn up, and it was
a family liaison officer
00:27:53
walks into the house and goes, "Yeah. You're right.
Everyone out." -It would be the fourth
and final time
00:27:59
the police search the house. -When we went back
on that Friday morning, immediately,
officers went into the house.
00:28:07
They could smell
a very strong smell that from their experience,
they recognized
00:28:13
to be that
of a decomposing body. -The forensic teams follow
the smell up into the attic,
00:28:20
where the police made
an horrific discovery. ♪♪ -Pushed into the eaves
was Tia's body,
00:28:29
completely wrapped
in black bin liners and taped in very tightly. -You know, very sad moment
00:28:36
because, you know,
you always live in hope. Although the reality is probably
less than a percent,
00:28:42
you always live in hope
that she will return until they found the body. -The search was over.
00:28:48
Tia had never left the house
to travel to Croydon. She'd been murdered
in her grandmother's home.
00:28:54
Her body had been
hidden away for a week. The entire nation was stunned. -The sense of loss here is mixed
with all sorts of emotions.
00:29:06
People feel cheated. Their week-long campaign
was a desperate mission to find Tia Sharp.
00:29:13
It ended with the 12-year-old
found dead in her own grandmother's home. -I was gobsmacked.
00:29:21
We had watched detectives,
forensic teams, police dogs go in and out
of the house several times,
00:29:27
but even I, at that time, didn't think for a moment
that they were about to say they'd found Tia's body
in the house
00:29:35
where I'd been standing outside
for the best part of a week and the police had searched
three times already.
00:29:40
-I just got off the tube,
and my phone went mad with loads and loads of text messages,
voicemails.
00:29:47
Anyway, I read one text message,
which was from a colleague of mine at the BBC,
a correspondent.
00:29:53
He said, "You know
they found the body?" and I said, "Where?"
and he said, "In the house."
00:29:57
I said, "You're joking,"
and he went, "No, in the loft." I mean, that's terrible,
and I said,
00:30:02
"Well, where is Stuart?
What's happened to him?" and they said, "Oh,
he's on the run. He's gone."
00:30:06
-"Where is Stuart Hazell?" was the question running through
a lot of people's minds.
00:30:11
That morning, he'd left
the house and had yet to return. -Hazell had told
Tia's grandmother, Christine,
00:30:20
that he was going to get
a paper, and he disappeared
and never came back. So we immediately mounted
a London-wide search for him.
00:30:31
He was seen on a train going up
towards Central London, and, again, we know
he got off that train
00:30:38
in the city of London,
and we searched for him there. He then disappeared
off the radar for a short while
00:30:43
before reappearing
in a supermarket. -The CCTV captured a distressed
Hazell buying some vodka.
00:30:52
-He was drunk. He was rambling. He was talking to people about, "You still need to help me find
my missing granddaughter."
00:31:01
It was obvious to
those in the shop who he was, and they were aware
the police were looking for him.
00:31:06
-The owners of that supermarket
recognized his face from the press appeal
and contacted police.
00:31:13
Hazell, by that stage, had gone
into an area of open parkland where he'd bought vodka
in the supermarket,
00:31:23
and he drank the vodka. Police searched for him, and a police dog found him
in the undergrowth.
00:31:29
-This all unraveled
on a Friday early evening, and by late evening, we were
told that he'd been arrested.
00:31:36
-Hazell had lied to police
about Tia leaving the house for Croydon a week earlier.
00:31:41
He was the last person
to see her alive and the number-one suspect
in her murder.
00:31:47
♪♪ The week-long search for missing
12-year-old schoolgirl Tia Sharp had come to a tragic end.
00:31:59
Police had found her body in the
loft of her grandmother's house. On Saturday,
the 11th of August, 2012,
00:32:07
Stuart Hazell,
Tia's grandmother's partner, was being questioned
on suspicion of her murder.
00:32:15
-So what can you tell me about
the murder of Tia Sharp, Stuart? -I'm kind of
[Speaks indistinctly]
00:32:24
-Okay. -On the same day, a postmortem
was being carried out at Croydon Mortuary.
00:32:30
-Clearly, Tia had been dead
for a week, and unfortunately, the body had
begun to decompose quite badly.
00:32:38
-The thing with decomposition is that the rate
can be very variable. It depends on
all sorts of factors.
00:32:46
If you've got somebody who is wrapped up to prevent the smell
getting out, they're potentially in somewhere
that's not particularly warm,
00:32:52
which will retard decomposition. In this particular case,
the passage of time and the changes
that had occurred to the body
00:33:01
in the postmortem period really limited
what pathology could tell you. -The police
still had no evidence
00:33:08
that Hazell had killed Tia,
but a further search of the loft had uncovered
her clothes, glasses,
00:33:15
and, hidden elsewhere in the
house, something truly sinister. -On this occasion, found pushed
behind the doorframe
00:33:26
on the inside of a cupboard door
above head height was a memory card
for a digital camera.
00:33:33
We recovered deleted images
from that card that were quite disturbing. There were some where clearly,
he had searched the Internet
00:33:41
and found pictures of girls that were not
dissimilar-looking to Tia in that they had glasses
and a similar hairstyle,
00:33:49
but worst of all
on that memory card was perhaps the most
grotesque image I've ever seen.
00:33:56
♪♪ So we took the photograph
to show a pathologist, and he pointed out
the hypostasis on it,
00:34:06
which is essentially how
the blood pools on a dead body, and this pathologist
was of the opinion that
00:34:12
that was a picture
of a dead girl. -Also recorded on the memory
card were a number of videos.
00:34:19
-One was of Tia
sitting on a settee. It looked like she was rubbing
suntan lotion,
00:34:24
some kind of cream
into her legs. Clearly, he had given
the impression perhaps he was sending a text
or something,
00:34:30
but all the time,
he was secretly filming Tia. -One of the clips undeniably
linked the camera to Hazell.
00:34:39
-Another video which was
particularly unnerving, it showed Hazell filming Tia
when she was asleep.
00:34:46
He had obviously gone
into her room and was walking around her
with the phone in his hand.
00:34:54
He also just briefly filmed
his own shadow on the wall menacingly standing over her.
00:35:02
-On Saturday,
August the 11th, 2012, Stuart Hazell was charged
with the murder of Tia Sharp.
00:35:10
He was remanded in custody
at Belmarsh Prison, where he wrote a letter
to his father
00:35:15
claiming Tia's death
had been an accident and that he was
contemplating suicide.
00:35:22
He wrote, "I can't sleep,
can't eat. I wish I could turn back
the clock, but I can't.
00:35:31
I'm sorry to have lied
to you all, but I didn't know what to do.
Forgive me." ♪♪
00:35:39
Nine months after the murder
of Tia Sharp, on the 7th of May 2013,
37-year-old Stuart Hazell
00:35:47
pleaded not guilty as his trial
began at the Old Bailey. -Hazell pleaded not guilty
at court.
00:35:56
His defense case statement
indicated he was going to say that Tia had accidentally
fallen down the stairs.
00:36:02
He had panicked, didn't know how
to tell her mother and grandmother
that the granddaughter was dead,
00:36:10
so panicked and hid the body. And that's the stance
he maintained throughout the prosecution case.
00:36:18
-The training
of forensic pathologists is not only to identify injuries but to recognize patterns
of injuries,
00:36:28
and to suggest that someone had
died of falling down the stairs, there are very specific things
that we would expect to see.
00:36:36
And if we don't see those, you can fairly quickly exclude
such an explanation. -Investigative journalist
Mark Williams-Thomas
00:36:44
was in the courtroom. -So the interview I did
with Stuart Hazell opened the trial up
for the prosecution's case.
00:36:50
The trial sat through, and information
started to come out. And it was very clear
that Stuart Hazell had become...
00:36:59
very sexually interested
in young Tia. -And one of the searches he had
carried out on his mobile phone
00:37:08
on the Internet was incest sex, and that just highlighted
and reinforced that interest.
00:37:14
-For Tia's mom, seeing
Stuart Hazell in the dock would have been the first time
she had seen him
00:37:21
since the day of his arrest,
and I can remember trying to watch
the interaction between the two.
00:37:29
It's a classic thing that crime
reporters look for to add color to the reporting
of the first day of a trial,
00:37:35
and she looked at him, stared daggers at him,
if you like, and as far as I can remember,
he spent those first few moments
00:37:44
and most of the trial
looking down, not wanting at all,
for very obvious reasons,
00:37:50
to catch the eye
particularly of Tia's mother, but for any members
of Tia's family,
00:37:57
quite a few of who were there. -On the third day of the trial, the indecent photograph
of Tia's body
00:38:04
was shown
as evidence against Hazell. The entire courtroom,
including the Sharp family,
00:38:10
were horrified. -They were so upset. They were unbelievably upset
because, you know,
00:38:19
they've heard the detail, but there's one thing hearing it
and another thing seeing it.
00:38:23
And at times,
they actually had to leave. -And it appeared it was all
too much for Hazell, as well.
00:38:29
On May the 13th, he changed
his plea to guilty, stating, "Tia's family
have suffered enough."
00:38:36
It was a huge shock. -I think you can only imagine
the reaction of people in court.
00:38:42
There were gasps. There were shrieks. There were tears from some of
those in the public gallery.
00:38:49
It really was one of those
courtroom moments of real drama. I've seen a few, but this is
still very vivid in my mind.
00:38:59
-Hazell definitely didn't
change his plea to save the family
any more agony or despair.
00:39:05
He changed his plea
because he's a coward because that morning,
he would have to account
00:39:09
for the disgusting photograph
of Tia's death, and he just didn't have
the moral strength to do that.
00:39:17
-On May the 14th 2013,
Mr. Justice Nicol sentenced Stuart Hazell
to life imprisonment
00:39:24
with a minimum term of 38 years. He was immediately sent
to Belmarsh Prison. -I mean, I don't know,
sad and sad,
00:39:34
it's just really sad,
the whole thing. When you add it all up,
you get to the situation.
00:39:38
Now, here was a young girl
who loved her gran. She loved her mom,
but loved her gran,
00:39:43
loved spending time
with her gran, you know? She saw solitude in her gran,
as many, many young children do,
00:39:49
and to go to a place where,
of course, that eventually was where her death occurred
was so sad.
00:39:58
And of course,
nobody could have predicted that other than Stuart Hazell. -Christine Bicknell said
it never crossed her mind
00:40:04
that Stuart Hazell
would hurt Tia. She knew nothing about
his alleged involvement
00:40:09
in her murder. If she had, she said,
he would be dead, too. -In his sentencing remarks,
Mr. Justice Nicol stated that
00:40:17
Hazell had developed
a sexual interest in Tia but that the murder wasn't
necessarily sexually motivated.
00:40:25
Now, that does seem to be
a bit of a confusing thing to say on the surface, but essentially, what the judge
means there is that
00:40:32
Stuart Hazell is somebody
who has a sexual interest in young girls,
but in terms of did he kill her
00:40:38
in order to have sex with her,
possibly not. We can't know that for sure, but the overarching theme here
is power
00:40:47
because that's
what sex is about. It's about power
over another individual, especially when it comes
to Stuart Hazell.
00:40:54
-Hazell has never spoken about
how or why he killed Tia Sharp. -All I can tell you
from Stuart Hazell
00:41:03
is that he took away a life,
a precious life of a young girl who had an amazing future
in front of her,
00:41:10
and as a result of that, he has impacted on many,
many other people's lives and he deserves to spend
the rest of his life in jail.
00:41:19
-I don't think we'll ever know what made Stuart Hazell
kill Tia Sharp. That's information
that I don't think he's ever
00:41:26
going to share with anybody, but we can surmise a little bit
as to the context of it.
00:41:30
He's trusted to look after
this girl, and he abuses it. And we don't know what the
circumstances are around that,
00:41:39
whether he felt that
she would perhaps tell somebody about something that he had done
to her or to somebody else,
00:41:46
but he found himself
in a situation where he had to control her. He felt that she had slipped out
of his control,
00:41:54
and she posed
some kind of a threat to him. -If that is in torment,
if he lives in anguish every day,
if he regrets or he thinks about
00:42:02
what he's done every single day,
then so be it. -In August 2013,
Hazell's next-door neighbor,
00:42:08
who had given police
a false witness statement, was sentenced to five months
in prison.
00:42:14
Hazell had asked him to lie about seeing Tia
leave for Croydon, and in June of the same year,
the house where Tia was murdered
00:42:22
was bulldozed to the ground
in an attempt to erase the memory
of the sickening murder.
00:42:29
-I think Stuart Hazell did
some incredibly evil things, but he chose to do
those evil things.
00:42:35
He could have chosen not to, and he was fully aware
of the impact of his actions.
00:42:40
-He's a horrible man.
He's a dangerous man. You know, Stuart Hazell
is the reason that she's dead,
00:42:45
nobody else,
Stuart Hazell, and if Stuart Hazell hadn't
done it to her, in time,
00:42:51
he'd have probably done it
to somebody else. -We may never know what drove Hazell to kill
the 12-year-old girl
00:42:58
who called him granddad, but we can be sure his
unhealthy interest in Tia Sharp led to the innocent girl
being murdered.
00:43:08
He caused the Sharp family
unimaginable torture, knowing all along
what he'd done to Tia.
00:43:16
His empathy towards them
came too little too late, proving that Stuart Hazell is one of the world's
most evil killers.
00:43:25
♪♪