00:00:04
[tense orchestral music] [gun firing] - When a murder's committed,
it's always a race against time
00:00:10
to find the truth, to
separate fact from fiction, to catch the killer, and to make sure that
justice is served,
00:00:20
but what happens when the
truth vanishes with the victim? [tense orchestral music]
00:00:24
I'm Dr. Richard Shepherd, and
I've spent my entire career as a forensic pathologist
00:00:27
performing nearly 23,000
autopsies, including on some of the most high-profile
cases of recent times.
00:00:34
I've learned that the
dead don't hide the truth and they never lie. [tense orchestral music]
00:00:39
Through me, you'll be hearing
directly from the victim. From a state-of-the-art
laboratory
00:00:44
with groundbreaking technology that uses digitally-scanned
sample bodies, I'll be investigating a series
of intriguing murders where,
00:00:53
from the victim's bodies,
I'll be revealing to you the truth behind
those horrific crimes.
00:00:59
[camera snapping] [tense piano music] The small historic
fishing village of Mumbles
00:01:13
sits on the outskirts of
Swansea in South Wales. [tense piano music] Its idyllic seaside setting
is popular with tourists
00:01:21
and is the gateway to the
beautiful Gower Peninsula. [tense piano music] Lesley and Derek
Potter, happily married
00:01:31
and expecting their
next grandchild, were at the heart of that
close-knit community,
00:01:36
yet on the 7th of April,
2018, Derek found Lesley dead. She'd apparently hung herself
from a beam in their home,
00:01:47
but had Lesley committed suicide or had something more
sinister occurred, and could her body
help reveal the truth?
00:01:55
[tense piano music] Lesley and Derek
Potter lived together on a quiet street rising
up behind the sea front.
00:02:07
[tense piano music] - Mumbles is definitely an aspirational place
to live, there's...
00:02:13
The house prices here
are quite sky-high, lots of people have
second homes here it's quite quiet, idyllic.
00:02:20
[tense piano music] [tense piano music continues] - [Richard] On the evening of
Friday, 6th of April, 2018,
00:02:35
the Potter family were
all out enjoying a meal at the George Pub in Mumbles. [tense piano music]
00:02:42
- Lesley and Derek
liked visiting different
pubs in Mumbles that were quite
close to their home.
00:02:48
They visited the George Pub with their children
and grandchildren, had a family meal together.
00:02:54
[tense piano music] According to staff,
everything seemed normal. [dramatic booming]
00:03:03
[tense orchestral music] - [Richard] But
the next morning, this happy family
was torn apart.
00:03:08
[tense orchestral music] Derek got up earlier and
made Lesley a cup of tea before heading out
to run some errands.
00:03:16
[tense orchestral music] When he returned, his
wife was not in bed, so he searched the house and
found her in the back bedroom,
00:03:31
hanging in an apparent suicide. - Derek said that
morning he went out to go and collect some money that he
was owed from a roofing job,
00:03:42
and was stuck in traffic in
Mumbles for around 20 minutes, and came back to find
his wife hanging naked
00:03:49
in the back room, which he
referred to as his workshop. [tense orchestral music]
00:03:54
[phone ringing] He called his daughter
Nicole at 11:22 AM. [tense orchestral music]
00:04:03
Two minutes later, she
called for an ambulance. [siren blaring] After Derek hung
up on his daughter,
00:04:11
he called the
emergency services, and when they asked him
if he needed an ambulance,
00:04:16
he said, "No, the
person is dead." [tense orchestral music] - Only about half of the
people who commit suicide
00:04:31
actually leave a suicide note, probably a way of revealing
their inner turmoil and their desire to make
the ultimate decision.
00:04:40
In Lesley's case,
no note was found, and when the police
examined the scene, they found no
suspicious circumstances
00:04:47
and nothing to
contradict Derek's story, so Lesley's body was taken
to the local mortuary
00:04:53
for a routine
postmortem examination. When she was examined, a
noose was found on the body,
00:05:01
and that would explain
the marks that were found, which I can show you
on this sample body,
00:05:05
which are described as a
five-millimeter deep furrow to the front of the neck, but which also extended
up the sides of the neck
00:05:13
up behind the ears
on both sides, and these are
typical of the marks caused by a ligature in hanging.
00:05:23
Hanging causes death in
a very particular way, it causes death by
resulting in pressure
00:05:29
to the nerves in the neck, particularly a nerve
called a vagus nerve, which travels down
and affects the heart,
00:05:37
and stimulation of the
vagus nerve by pressure causes the heart to stop, and so, death can occur very
quickly indeed in hanging.
00:05:47
The pathologist
who examined Lesley found no evidence to
contradict Derek's account,
00:05:52
and so, her body was released to the funeral
directors for cremation. [gentle piano music]
00:06:02
Lesley's suicide
stunned the family, who to the outside world
had seemed to be so regular.
00:06:09
- Lesley and Derek
Potter married in 1992 and had been together
for 26 years, they had three children,
five grandchildren
00:06:19
and one on the way. - And this was their
second marriage, I think Lesley came
originally from Bristol
00:06:25
or the West Country, but
we don't really know much about her background or about
his background, to be honest.
00:06:33
- They had run a cafe
together in Mumbles, and then, in their
later years together,
00:06:40
Derek became a
carpenter/tradesman doing odd jobs, and roofing,
and things like that.
00:06:48
- [Richard] Their
daughter, Nicole, who was four months pregnant,
had recently become friends
00:06:52
with a woman who'd
lived locally. - I met Nicole in the pub, she started chatting to me first
00:06:58
and I make friends
with everyone, I started talking to her, and ever since, we became
friends, quite good friends.
00:07:04
We went out together a
lot, we went partying, you know, we went to friend's
house, having parties there,
00:07:11
so yeah, we went out
quite a lot together. [gentle piano music] - [Richard] Shortly
after meeting Nicole,
00:07:18
Natalia met her parents. - Lesley was really
happy person, she was kind, genuine person,
00:07:28
I mean, she took
me, one day, home and drove me all the way home, and she was really nice,
we had a lovely chat
00:07:36
and she was looking forward
to having another grandkid. [gentle piano music] I met Derek, first
time, in Nicole's house.
00:07:45
I was sitting on the
sofa chatting to Nicole, just playing with Nicole's son, and then, Derek walks
in through the door
00:07:55
and Derek sits down, has a
cup of tea, has a cigarette, let's just say he... Derek seemed interested in
me, if you know what I mean.
00:08:08
He seemed nice, but he
was always, at that point, staring at me and looking at me,
00:08:13
so I was a bit
awkward at that time and I was really
quite wary about him, you know, just was interested
in another young woman,
00:08:23
if you know what I mean. [gentle piano music] - [Richard] When her
mother was found dead,
00:08:29
Nicole called Natalia. - Nicole was the first person that told me that Lesley
committed suicide.
00:08:39
- Nicole, Lesley's daughter, received that phone
call from Derek. She must have been in a
complete state of shock.
00:08:49
- Then Nicole was
crying on the phone and all I could say to her, anything at all, I'll
be there for her.
00:08:55
[gentle piano music] - How devastating it
must have been for her to find out that her
mother's died from suicide
00:09:03
and she was four months
pregnant at the time. Terrible. - For Nicole, it
was devastating.
00:09:11
You know, Nicole was... She was really, really sad. - [Richard] Their
shock was compounded
00:09:20
by the fact there was no
suicide note left by Lesley explaining why she
would take her own life.
00:09:28
- When the emergency
services arrived, Derek claimed that he'd
tried to revive her,
00:09:32
but Leslie was
found dead, naked, lying on a cabinet with the
noose still around her neck.
00:09:38
[indistinct] Police were there and
questioned Derek initially. - When police got there, they
found Derek Potter upset,
00:09:52
although it was noted, perhaps not as upset as you
might expect, he wasn't crying.
00:10:07
- Paramedics straight
away noted something odd. Leslie Potter was found naked, laying on a table
in the workshop,
00:10:16
and the paramedic
who first responded said he'd been, sadly, to
many hangings over the years
00:10:22
and he'd never seen a
naked person hang themself, but the scene was photographed,
his account was taken,
00:10:31
and then, the body
was taken away. There were no suspicious
circumstances. - It just shows you
never really know
00:10:38
what's going on
behind closed doors. [dramatic booming] [gentle piano music] - On the 7th of April, 2018,
Lesley Potter was found
00:10:59
hanged at home in
Mumbles, South Wales. She was found by
her husband Derek, and her death seemed to
come out of the blue.
00:11:08
Derek appeared quite calm when speaking with
the police officers. - [Officer] How long were
you married to Lesley for?
00:11:17
- 25 years, 26 years. - But the authorities
had no reason to suspect that
anything was amiss.
00:11:25
However, Lesley's body would
have its own story to tell. [ethereal electronic music]
00:11:34
Derek Potter had
a troubled past. He had previous convictions,
including violent offenses.
00:11:40
[ethereal electronic music] - People who were
friends with Derek have reported in local press
that after a few drinks,
00:11:52
that he became quite
erratic and confrontational. In the years leading
up to Lesley's death,
00:11:58
Derek had actually
given up drinking and had tried to
control that behavior, but just before Leslie's death,
according to her friends,
00:12:07
he had started drinking
again and was often seen frequenting the George
Pub with Leslie.
00:12:14
[tense orchestral music] - [Richard] But by all accounts, Lesley seemed to
be enjoying life.
00:12:21
- Lesley was in a
really good place, she was a really happy woman,
and she was over the moon
00:12:26
that she was gonna
have another grandkid. Everything was normal with
the family as far as I know.
00:12:32
Nicole never ever
said that, you know, she argued with her family
or anything like that.
00:12:39
- [Richard] Lesley did have
some physical health issues. - She wasn't very well,
00:12:45
she had massive
arthritis on her fingers, she couldn't move her
fingers really well,
00:12:49
I think she had
problems with her legs. [ethereal electronic music] - [Richard] But three
days before her death,
00:12:58
she was out shopping
and moving around without too much difficulty. [ethereal electronic music]
00:13:09
[dramatic booming] The morning Lesley
was found dead, Derek said she had come
home from the shops upset.
00:13:19
- He said that she
had been to a pharmacy to get her pain medication, but had been denied the
usual strong medication
00:13:26
and was quite upset about this. [tense orchestral music] - [Richard] The pharmacy
had no recollection of this,
00:13:34
and Derek's accounts of
his movements that morning appeared to have
some holes in it.
00:13:38
[tense orchestral music] - Derek had said
that on that morning, he had been collecting
money from a job
00:13:48
and that he'd been
stuck in traffic for 20 minutes in Mumbles. The CCTV from the area
showed free-moving traffic.
00:13:59
He was not stuck
in traffic, no way. - Was there more to
this death than suicide?
00:14:07
Only Lesley's body
could give any clues. Derek told police he'd
found Lesley hanging
00:14:15
and he'd cut her down and
laid her on the cabinet. He also said he'd performed CPR.
00:14:20
When injuries from
CPR are present, they're usually pretty obvious, and you find them in the muscles
on the front of the chest,
00:14:27
but also, when CPR has been
performed with some force, you can find fractures of the
breastbone and of the ribs,
00:14:33
but it's all in the
front of the chest, but sometimes, no injuries
are present at all,
00:14:39
even though we know
resuscitation has
been performed. To see if any further
injuries were present,
00:14:45
a more detailed examination
would've been necessary, but the routine examination
raised no issues.
00:14:51
They'd established
a cause of death, asphyxiation by hanging, and so, no further
questions were asked.
00:14:59
[waves rushing] Still in a state of shock,
Nicole and the family started preparing
for the funeral.
00:15:07
Nicole's friend Natalia
was a huge support. - After Lesley died, Natalia
offered her condolences
00:15:14
to the family and
offered her help in any way that she could, so she started doing some
cleaning for the family,
00:15:22
and eventually,
she helped Derek. - I was gonna clean Derek's
house, so I offered to clean,
00:15:28
I said to Derek, "You don't
have to owe money 'cause of..." "Because of your
daughter, Nicole,
00:15:33
I will just do anything
I can to help." Derek started showing
me around the house
00:15:39
and he took me to the room and he literally said, "This
is where she hanged herself."
00:15:47
[gentle piano music] I went out of the room because I felt I didn't
wanna stay in the room
00:15:53
where a, you know, woman,
Lesley, committed suicide, I got a bit freaked out about
it, so I just left the room,
00:16:00
I said, "I'm going." There was something
not right with Derek, but I didn't know what it was.
00:16:07
[gentle piano music] - [Richard] Natalia
also helped Derek with some roofing work
00:16:12
in the days leading
up to the funeral. - I worked with
Derek on the roof because Nicole said to me,
00:16:18
"Can you please help my father
to do a couple of jobs?" And I wasn't scared
to work on the roof
00:16:22
because I've done
roofing before, so I said, "Yes, I'll help out." [dramatic booming]
00:16:29
[tense orchestral music] - [Richard] 18 days after
Lesley's body was found, they started the
roofing work together.
00:16:41
- We were on top of the roof
and Derek was already making kind of weird sayings to me,
00:16:49
like I told Derek I broke
up with my boyfriend, and he was, like, using a
hammer and a nail and saying,
00:16:56
"Oh, you should do this
to your boyfriend." You know, I was a
bit scared then, but I didn't think a lot of it.
00:17:04
[tense orchestral music] - [Richard] After work, Derek
invited Natalia for a drink.
00:17:10
[tense orchestral music] - Derek said, "Oh, you
know, normal workers, we'll go to the pub
00:17:16
and we'll have, you
know, one or two pints," I said, "Okay, no
problem," so... And he wasn't supposed
to be drinking,
00:17:24
I didn't know he
was an alcoholic. [tense orchestral music] He bought the first
round, we drank it,
00:17:31
I went to the
bathroom, came back, and he already got
me another one. - Several witnesses reported
him and her in the pub...
00:17:39
And this bear in mind was a fews
after his wife had committed su, and you see him with a
woman, laughing and joking,
00:17:45
an attractive young woman, perhaps there's an element
of flirting, he's... Whether he's trying to
impress in some way,
00:17:51
in the middle of the pub, amongst people who
knew him and knew... And had known his wife.
00:17:56
[tense orchestral music] - [Richard] And this is where
the evening took a dark turn.
00:18:01
- We were just sitting,
drinking our drinks, Derek looked in my
eyes and said to me,
00:18:06
"I need to tell you something." [tense orchestral music] [ethereal orchestral music]
00:18:26
- Over two weeks had passed
since Derek Potter's wife had allegedly committed
suicide at home.
00:18:33
The postmortem hadn't
raised any issues, but had the right questions
been asked of Lesley's body?
00:18:39
[ethereal orchestral music] The funeral was a week away, and Derek was out having a drink
00:18:45
with a work colleague, Natalia, when they had a conversation
that she would never forget.
00:18:49
[ethereal orchestral music] - We were sitting
together, me and Derek, Derek looked in my
eyes and said to me,
00:19:02
"I need to tell you something,"
I said, "What is it?" He says, "I strangled my wife."
00:19:06
[tense orchestral music] - After a few pints,
two or three pints, not a huge amount,
you would think,
00:19:15
he confessed to
murdering his wife, he said, "I love my wife,
but she was," as he said,
00:19:20
"Doing my head in
and I strangled her," and I think,
initially, she thought, "He's joking, he's had a
pint or two, he's joking."
00:19:28
- He was calm, he was... He just looked straight
in the eyes to me and Derek was really calm, he...
00:19:36
It's like he thought that
he didn't do nothing wrong, it's fine, you know? - [Richard] Derek
also asked Natalia
00:19:43
not to mention
anything to Nicole. - To me, it's clear
that Derek Potter suffers from not just
one, not even just two,
00:19:52
but in fact, three distinct
personality disorders, I see signs of
borderline personality,
00:19:59
antisocial personality and
narcissistic personality here, but I think with Derek
Potter, it's the way
00:20:07
that his destructive
components of his personality magnify each other and
feed into each other,
00:20:16
so the lack of
emotional regulation feeds into the
sense of superiority and feeds into the
disregard for other people.
00:20:25
[tense electronic music] - It was a shock
for me, literally, I didn't know what to do,
00:20:32
I didn't know whether to
run, whether to sit there, I didn't believe it at first,
I really didn't believe it,
00:20:39
but he also... But Derek also said to me, "I've done this for you," as to say, "I've done this
for you so you can move in
00:20:49
'cause I wanna help
you with everything," as that's what Derek words were. [tense electronic music]
00:20:55
- The only thing
that drives him, the base that he operates from, is what is in his best
interests in that moment.
00:21:01
[tense electronic music] - Goodness knows
what must have been going through Natalia's mind,
00:21:07
because on one hand, he's
just confessed a murder, and the next minute, he's
asking her to move in with him.
00:21:15
- At that point, I
thought that he was lying. I said to Derek, "I got my
own place, I don't need help,"
00:21:24
so I was stressed out, I
didn't know what to think, and I thought, "If
I was a stupid girl,
00:21:29
and I went and lived with
him, what would happen to me?" [tense electronic music]
00:21:33
- He completely misjudged
the situation with Natalia, he thought from his
narcissistic perspective
00:21:39
that she would understand
why he had to do what he did, that she would understand
that and be on his side,
00:21:46
completely misreading
the situation. [tense electronic music] - At the time that Derek
and Natalia were at the pub,
00:21:57
Lesley's body was
at a chapel of rest. This confession to Natalia
came at a really poignant time,
00:22:07
it was the week before
Lesley's funeral, so Natalia had a really
big dilemma on her hands.
00:22:15
If the family went ahead
with the cremation, all possible evidence would
be completely destroyed.
00:22:21
[tense orchestral music] - [Natalia] I said to Derek,
"Look, I gotta go home," so I went home, I sat
there for a while,
00:22:33
didn't know what to do, whether
to report it to the police. - [Richard] Natalia was
in a state of panic.
00:22:39
[tense orchestral music] - I think two days, 48
hours, I didn't sleep, my mind was going out,
I was lost, I was,
00:22:51
so I contacted my best
friend, who's a lawyer, and she said to me,
"Natalia, you..."
00:22:56
"It's best you report it," so it was something like
four o'clock in the morning,
00:23:01
and I phoned the police then,
and obviously, they came, they took me and
they interviewed me.
00:23:06
[dramatic booming] - [Richard] Five days after
Derek confessed to Natalia, police arrested
him for the murder
00:23:14
of his wife, Lesley Potter. [gentle piano music] So once the allegations
had been put to the police
00:23:22
about Potter's confession,
he was arrested, and straight away, he
began to change his story,
00:23:30
even in the police car, on
the way to the police station, he made comments about
how he'd helped his wife,
00:23:36
how he'd typed knots in the rope and helped her to
end her own life. [gentle piano music]
00:23:44
- [Richard] The arresting
officers pulled the car over and made a note of his remarks,
00:23:48
which Potter signed three times. [gentle piano music] - I was relieved when
Derek was arrested
00:23:55
because to be honest, if
he did what Derek told me, it's not fair for
a woman like Lesley
00:24:02
to go and get cremated, and then, he's
living a normal life knowing that he can
do it to someone else.
00:24:10
- I think he will
have been surprised that Natalia reported his
confession to her in the pub.
00:24:19
He will have been
shocked, because for him, he thought he was entitled
to do what he was doing,
00:24:24
and he was just explaining that to a woman that he
was interested in and that he assumed, from
his narcissistic perspective,
00:24:32
was interested in him, it
wouldn't have occurred to him that she would tell what
he'd confessed to her.
00:24:39
[gentle piano music] - [Richard] But
Natalia's actions did ultimately mean the
end of her friendship
00:24:45
with Lesley's daughter, Nicole. - At first, when I told Nicole I had to report her father
to the police, she...
00:24:55
Nicole was not happy, but I
think Nicole and the family didn't wanna think it was Derek,
00:25:03
you know, they
didn't look that way, maybe because Derek
was so convincing, but I say to myself, "The
family's gonna have to cope
00:25:11
because if it's the truth, they
have to know who Derek was," you know, and it's justice
for Lesley, as well.
00:25:19
- [Richard] The police now had a murder investigation
on their hands. [dramatic booming]
00:25:28
- On the 1st of May,
which was only three days before Lesley's funeral
was due to take place,
00:25:34
the police intervened
and her body was taken for a second postmortem, a more detailed
postmortem in Cardiff.
00:25:44
- Derek claimed that
when he'd found Lesley, she was already dead,
she'd hanged herself,
00:25:49
but given what he's
just told Natalia, which story would be supported by the second
postmortem examination?
00:25:56
Hanging leaves a particular mark across the skin of the neck, and ligature strangulation
leaves a horizontal band
00:26:05
on the skin and in the
muscles underneath, but manual strangulation
can produce bruising
00:26:11
all over the muscles of
the neck and even deeper, and the second postmortem showed
00:26:19
marks of bruising to
the muscles of the neck, it showed evidence of bruising
to the base of the tongue,
00:26:27
and it showed
evidence of bruising around the carotid artery
to the sides of the neck,
00:26:33
and even deeper than that, it was found that the
larynx was fractured. This pattern of injuries
is not consistent
00:26:41
with ligature
strangulation or hanging, but it is consistent with
manual pressure to the neck,
00:26:48
and so, the second
pathologist concluded that Lesley had been manually
strangled, and then, hanged.
00:26:56
[tense orchestral music] Lesley's body had
finally been given the opportunity to
reveal the truth,
00:27:04
and going back over the
reports of the crime scene with a critical eye, some things
were looking out of place.
00:27:12
- Her body wasn't found
directly below the noose, it was found on the
other side of the room
00:27:17
on top of a cabinet, and it was found that the
noose was around her neck, but her hair was still
tucked inside of the noose,
00:27:25
which really struck a
chord with the pathologist. [tense orchestral music] - [Richard] Natural instinct
when putting anything
00:27:32
around your neck, like
a necklace for instance, is to tuck it under your hair. Also, Leslie had
been found naked,
00:27:40
which is almost unheard
of in suicide cases. These are all
significant red flags,
00:27:46
and while none of them
on its own is critical, the three together
strongly support
00:27:51
the postmortem findings, but during police interviews,
Derek stuck to his story that Lesley had
committed suicide.
00:28:02
- Derek was, in fact,
interviewed 12 times by police after his arrest, and many a story
started being spun.
00:28:13
At first, Derek talked
about their sex life, he said that him and Lesley were very much
into sadomasochism
00:28:23
and that she had
liked being strangled, he claimed that he'd
strangled her 15 times
00:28:32
in their relationship,
some of them sexual, and then, some of
them out of malice.
00:28:38
- He tells the police that when he first sees
her body hanging there, his first thought
is, "You bitch,"
00:28:45
we know that he
talks about her body as being like a sack of spuds, all of these give
us just a glimpse
00:28:54
into the depths of depravity
of this man's personality, into the degree of damage
that is deep within.
00:29:01
[tense orchestral music] - [Richard] But Derek
Potter was adamant that his wife had
committed suicide,
00:29:09
and that he hadn't
strangled her this time. [tense orchestral music] - Derek also claimed
00:29:16
that Lesley had often
talked about suicide, he said that he'd
offered to buy her heroin
00:29:24
to make the process
easier for her, that she was often
in so much pain that that's why she wanted to go.
00:29:32
- It's this seething combination
of personality dysfunctions that produce somebody for
whom remorse, and guilt,
00:29:44
and any kind of finer feelings have almost been obliterated. [tense orchestral music]
00:29:53
- Derek was coming up
with lots of excuses, but none of this
really added up. [dramatic booming]
00:30:09
[waves rushing] [gentle piano music] - When Lesley Potter was
found hanged at home,
00:30:25
her husband Derek
initially claimed that she'd committed suicide. Now, he was charged with murder,
00:30:31
and a full forensic postmortem had allowed her body
to tell the truth. She had been brutally
murdered by strangulation.
00:30:40
Everything he told
the police was a lie, and the lies just
kept on coming. - He initially told police that
his wife had been depressed
00:30:50
and also suffering
with severe arthritis, she was in pain and
couldn't take any more,
00:30:56
reached the end of her tether, and straight away, he
began to change his story, and over the course
of several interviews,
00:31:03
he just spun story
after story after story, claiming his wife had
taken her own life,
00:31:10
and then, had died in some
kind of autoerotic sex game. - Derek was coming up
with lots of excuses
00:31:17
and lots of different stories of where he was that day
and how Lesley was feeling,
00:31:23
but something wasn't
quite adding up. All these stories
didn't make sense. - It was clear that Lesley
hadn't hanged herself
00:31:33
as Derek had claimed, but that something far more
malicious had occurred. In addition to the revelation
00:31:40
that Lesley had been manually
strangled, and then, hanged, other injuries showed that
a substantial struggle
00:31:48
had also taken place. The home office
pathologist identified over 30 areas of bruising
and grazing externally
00:31:58
on her arms, and on her neck, and on her legs,
and on her back. He also found that there were
30 fractures of her ribs,
00:32:06
two of them to the back, and some ribs have been
fractured more than once, and these injuries
were not consistent
00:32:14
with simple resuscitation. Furthermore, he found
evidence of bruising deep within the
abdominal cavity,
00:32:22
and this type of
bruising is consistent with severe force being
applied to the abdomen,
00:32:27
such as stamps and kicks. He described these
injuries as extreme, and he said they were consistent
00:32:35
with having been caused at
about the time of death. It was concluded that
there was no evidence
00:32:42
that Derek had ever attempted
to resuscitate his wife, instead, he'd spent the time
trying to stage the cover-up.
00:32:48
This was clearly a
very violent death with widespread and
severe injuries, injuries that were
not of the sort
00:32:58
that could have been caused
during a suicide attempt. [dramatic booming] On Monday, the 22nd
of October, 2018,
00:33:08
Derek appeared at Swansea Crown
Court charged with murder. Natalia gave
evidence against him.
00:33:16
- It was very nerve-wracking
when Derek was there, because I had to
obviously see him
00:33:20
through the glass, and I... The police did say to me, "Do
you want him to be, like...?"
00:33:28
You know, "Do you want
a board in front of you so you don't have to see Derek?" And I said, "No, why shall
I hide myself from him?
00:33:36
Why shall I?" But no, I was... I just... I looked in his eyes, I did, every time I answered the
question to the judge,
00:33:46
I just looked in Derek's eyes. [gentle piano music] Derek was looking at me as well
00:33:53
as to probably say, "Why
did you do this to me?" You know, I felt like he was
angry, his face was very angry,
00:34:02
but I just kept
on staring at him and answering the questions. [gentle piano music]
00:34:07
- [Richard] Then it was
Derek's turn to take the stand. - He gave a very strange
performance in the witness box
00:34:14
throughout his three
days of giving evidence. He was boastful, he talked
about his sexual prowess
00:34:22
and his crazy sex life,
number of sexual partners, number of marriages he's had,
00:34:28
how strong he was, he
seemed to want to... He seemed to enjoy being
in the witness box.
00:34:33
- One of Derek's claims of why Lesley had
maybe killed herself was that it was a
sex game gone wrong,
00:34:41
that they were both
into strangulation and she was trying to strangle
herself and surprise him
00:34:48
when he came back
from collecting money, but it had gone wrong. - He came out with
some bizarre claims,
00:34:54
he claimed he had healing
powers in his hands, it was a strange
performance in the box,
00:35:00
not what you typically
see of somebody facing such a grave charge. He seemed to want to
take on the barristers
00:35:06
and to prove himself, I think he thought
he was really clever, and he wanted to take
them on and beat them,
00:35:12
and that rarely, rarely
ends well for a defendant. [ethereal electronic music] - The way Potter
behaves in trial
00:35:21
is really quite
hard to understand, I mean, this apparently
reasonably intelligent man
00:35:28
is spinning all sorts
of implausible stories. - Part of the story,
or part of the stories
00:35:35
which Potter told involved a
lodger that he and Lesley had had in their Mumbles
home by the name of Paul,
00:35:42
and he claimed both
he and Lesley had
been in love with Paul and had been involved in a
three-way sexual relationship
00:35:49
involving role-playing and
all kinds of sexual games. He claimed that his
wife was depressed
00:35:56
after the death of Paul, and
that was part of the suicide, we don't know anything about
that, whether that's...
00:36:02
Whether Paul even
existed, it's all... It could well just be
another story spun by him,
00:36:10
his own barrister
called him a fantasist. - What we've got
here is somebody who's really not a very
good liar, if you will,
00:36:18
which may be surprising, but actually, to be a good liar, you have to be aware
of other people
00:36:27
in order to present your
story in an effective way, and you have to care what
other people think, he didn't.
00:36:33
[ethereal electronic music] - You can only imagine how
hard it was for the family
00:36:38
to have to sit in court
and to hear his lies... Lie after lie after
lie that Potter told,
00:36:45
spinning these outrageous
lies about her, some outlandish stories, it
must have been heartbreaking,
00:36:52
heartbreak upon heartbreak. [somber orchestral music] - [Richard] As well as insisting
00:36:57
Lesley had committed suicide, Derek Potter pointed the
finger at other people as well.
00:37:02
[somber orchestral music] - He also tried to
blame Lesley's murder
on his son-in-law,
00:37:10
on the Masons, and
on drug-dealers. The stories were getting
quite out of hand. - There's all sorts of
bizarre conspiracy theories
00:37:20
he's drawing in, it reminds me
of a child caught out lying, and I think that
if you understand
00:37:28
that this is a man
who, his entire life, has never justified
himself to anybody,
00:37:34
that's not his personality, and now, here he is
suddenly finding himself realizing that actually,
he is having to answer
00:37:43
for his actions, so
we see him reacting, to my mind, like a young child, with these unsophisticated,
frankly ridiculous lies.
00:37:56
[somber orchestral music] - But Lesley's body
had told the truth and revealed the facts.
00:38:03
[somber orchestral music] - The trial turned on the
forensic postmortem evidence,
00:38:10
which was vital for
the prosecution case 'cause there was no
witness evidence, no CCTV,
00:38:17
it all came down
to the postmortem, the detailed forensic
evidence from that which was laid out to the jury
00:38:24
in great detail
during the trial. [somber orchestral music] - [Richard] No
explanation of a motive
00:38:30
was ever proven in court. [somber orchestral music] - We hear quite
a bit of evidence
00:38:36
in the trial about
Derek Potter's temper, and we heard from a
number of colleagues,
00:38:41
former colleagues who testified
to outbursts of temper, and even the witness box,
00:38:47
Potter himself talked
about his temper, he recounted one bizarre story where he said he'd
strangled a man on holiday
00:38:55
who'd annoyed him almost
in a boastful way, how he turned on this
man and strangled him,
00:39:00
'cause he'd said something, or something had been
done which annoyed him, which for a man accused
of a loss of temper
00:39:06
and strangling his wife,
was a strange thing to say. [somber orchestral music] - To the extent that
there was a trigger,
00:39:15
I think it was this. Lesley was becoming
increasingly arthritic, and suffering, and aging.
00:39:22
For Derek, he resented the
way that this impacted on him and reflected on
him in a bad light,
00:39:32
and I think to the extent that there was a
trigger, that was it. [somber orchestral music]
00:39:38
- [Richard] The trial
lasted two weeks, and throughout, Derek Potter
took no responsibility
00:39:43
for what had happened to Lesley. - Potter maintained his
innocence right to the end,
00:39:50
showed no remorse at
all for what he'd done and sought to blame others, it was a shameless
performance in the box
00:39:58
and not a hint of
remorse from him for the death of his
wife of 26 years. - Remorse is not a big part
00:40:09
of Derek Potter's personality, he will have had moments
of grief, for sure, but this is a man
who has, for years,
00:40:20
thought and felt in ways
that are all about himself, that are all about hatred, that are all about
disregard for other people,
00:40:32
so yes, there will
have been moments, but moments is all
it will have been. [somber orchestral music]
00:40:39
- [Richard] On Tuesday,
the 6th of November, the jury delivered
their verdict. - Throughout the trial,
00:40:46
Potter maintained his
innocence to the end, he denied murdering his wife and just put forward the
series of lies and tall tales
00:40:57
to try and cover his tracks, but I think the jury saw
through it straight away and the prosecution
case was so strong,
00:41:03
particularly the postmortem
medical evidence, that told a very
different story. [somber orchestral music]
00:41:11
- So when it came to the
jury's deliberations, they unanimously decided
that Derek was guilty
00:41:17
in just over an hour, in one hour, seven
minutes, to be precise, the jury of eight
men, four women
00:41:26
all decided that he
was guilty of murder. [somber orchestral music] - [Richard] Two days later,
00:41:34
the honorable Mr. Justice
Saul sentenced him. - When passing his sentence, the judge described the
attack on Lesley Potter
00:41:41
as a ferocious attack and
said that what Potter did next with the lies he told was a
despicable and shameful charade,
00:41:50
and that claim had caused the
family even more distress. - [Richard] The judge stated
00:41:57
that Potter had strangled his
wife without premeditation in a sudden and furious
burst of temper.
00:42:05
- I think the judge accepted, and it was argued in the case, that it wasn't a planned murder,
00:42:10
as it was a spontaneous
outburst of anger, but while the murder
wasn't planned, what happened next clearly was,
00:42:18
and he'd gone to the trouble
of staging his wife's suicide. - He's not somebody who gives
00:42:24
a great deal of thought
to other people, so he won't have given
a great deal of thought
00:42:30
to whether or not he was
going to get away with it, he's just acting from his own
immediate selfish impulses.
00:42:39
What he does is an
instinctive product of his disordered personality, of his dysfunctional
personality.
00:42:48
- [Richard] Derek Potter was
sentenced to life in prison, and will have to spend at
least 17 years in jail.
00:42:55
- When they sentenced
Derek, I was so chaffed, I was so chaffed, and
I went out of the court
00:43:02
and just prayed
for Lesley and say, "You know, I've done a good
job, I've done it for you."
00:43:09
[gentle piano music] - [Richard] After the hearing, the police family
liaison officer
00:43:14
made a statement on
behalf of the family. - "Not only have we
had to come to terms
00:43:19
with the fact that he so
cruelly killed our mother, but we have had to listen
to him tarnishing her name
00:43:25
throughout the investigation
and the court case." - The family, they didn't
really want to speak publicly,
00:43:33
but I thought that that was
a really touching sentiment, and they felt... Their mother had gone
00:43:37
and her memory was
now being tarnished by what her husband of 26
years was now saying about her
00:43:44
and the lies he was
saying about her. I think two things really stood
out for me from this case,
00:43:52
one was the strength of
the medical evidence, which told the true story
of what happened that day,
00:43:59
not the lies which Potter told, and also, the pub confession, without which, there would've
been no detailed postmortem,
00:44:09
so together, I think they
made for an unusual case, quite unlike any case
I've covered before.
00:44:16
- The only thing
that I'm struck by is the way that somehow, Lesley Potter managed to be
married to this man for 26 years
00:44:30
without something like
this happening before, and I think that speaks of
the patience, resilience,
00:44:38
adaptability and
humbleness of this woman that she managed
to manage somebody as destructive and
damaged as Derek Potter
00:44:49
through a 26-year marriage. [ethereal piano music] - With the trial
over, Lesley's family
00:44:55
could finally grieve
for their loss. If Natalia had not
plucked up the courage to report what Derek said
to her in that pub that day,
00:45:04
this could so nearly have
been the story of a man who got away with murder,
but Lesley's body showed
00:45:10
that she had been subjected
to a violent attack, strangled to death,
and then, hanged,
00:45:15
so it's a prime
example of the fact that the body always
tells the truth, but you do have to ask
the right question.
00:45:24
[dramatic orchestral music] [dramatic orchestral
music continues] [dramatic orchestral
music continues]
00:45:52
[no audio]