00:00:04
[light music] - My sister Cheryl,
was by her very nature, a very caring person. - Very bubbly, smiling,
always chatting,
00:00:23
and I was proud to say that
my daughter was a nurse, very proud. Cheryl was coming round
to celebrate me birthday
00:00:33
and really looking
forward to it. And then I've had a call
to say that my daughter
00:00:42
has been involved
in an incident. [sirens wailing] - We found that a nurse
had been savagely attacked
00:00:49
in open air in the
middle of the day. - Cheryl had 72 stab wounds, including in her
back, on her arms.
00:00:57
One of the blows, even
split her skull open. - I drove up to the hospital. My heart was racing,
brain was racing.
00:01:06
- You have a nurse just
minding her own business, looking after people, just popping out
for a quick break
00:01:11
and then meets
this terrible end. - A stranger murder is just
so horrific and difficult
00:01:16
because there's nothing that could have been
done to prevent it. - I think the shock really
00:01:21
of losing your daughter
as badly as that. It's hard to think of
anything else really.
00:01:30
[dramatic music] [sombre piano music] - Hornchurch is at the
London end of urban Essex
00:01:55
and it's at the
end of a tube line. So it's a commuter belt area
in which its entire existence
00:02:02
is based on, as a
London over spill. So there are nice
areas of Hornchurch, but it is very much
a commuter suburb.
00:02:12
- Life growing up in the
Ewart household was say, like most people's
everyday life,
00:02:19
just a normal everyday family. My sister Cheryl was, we had a, I would like to say a typical
brother sister relationship.
00:02:31
You know, I loved my
sister and she loved me. She was my younger sister so I was having to
look out for her.
00:02:40
Back then, people
used to play out so I'd often be sent to go
and look for her. [laughs]
00:02:46
"Can you go and
find your sister?" And I think at the time I used
to find that quite annoying
00:02:51
but not so much now. It was a happy home. My mum was a good mum and Terry, my stepdad was a good father.
00:03:09
- I was so proud of her when she got a job in the
hospital to be a nurse. I mean, nurses are the
most wonderful people
00:03:16
that you can wish for really and to have her as a
nurse was unbelievable. - Mother nature had gifted
her that gene to care.
00:03:27
She had that way about her that she could bring
out the best in people. Her normal day would've been
00:03:35
very similar to
most other people's. Go to work, go home, eat, sleep, do it all again the next day.
00:03:44
[soft music] - It was 6th of
April on my birthday. I was working delivering data
tapes to banks and offices
00:03:55
in the city of London, and about half past nine on my way down to
the van to unload,
00:04:06
I just opened the doors
when my phone went and I picked the phone
up and it was Cheryl
00:04:14
and she wished me happy
birthday and she said, "Dad, I hope you're not
doing nothing tonight
00:04:20
"because we want to
come round for an Indian "and have a few drinks and
have a nice evening for you."
00:04:26
I said, "That'd be great,
I'm not doing nothing." She said, "Well,
that'd be marvellous.
00:04:29
"I look forward to it." And that was about
9:30, 20 to 10:00 and then I moved on said "Tada
Cheryl, I'll see you later."
00:04:41
- She went out to
have a short walk for a breath of fresh air. - She was expecting just
to have a nice normal day
00:04:47
and celebrate her father. She never thought for a second something this horrific and
tragic would happen to her.
00:04:56
- It was about quarter to 11:00 when the phone went again and this time it was my office
where I worked and they said,
00:05:05
"Terry, we just
wanted to let you know "that there's been an incident
at your daughter's hospital
00:05:12
"and we're sending a
driver out with your motor "and he'll take your round over "and we want you to go
00:05:21
"to your daughter's
hospital straight away." And as soon as he arrived
I jumped in my car
00:05:27
and then I headed
for the hospital. I'm thinking to myself, "Oh, she must have had an
accident or something."
00:05:34
Hopefully nothing major. [sirens wailing] - The first I heard was that there's a big police
operation out in Hornchurch
00:05:46
and we didn't know what
it was at the time, but it quickly came through
that a nurse had been attacked.
00:05:51
[suspenseful Music]
[sirens wailing] - And when I pulled
up at the hospital, there was a policeman in
the middle of the road
00:06:00
and there was lots of
people round by the gates. So I just pulled
up, opened my window
00:06:04
and I said, "Excuse
me, could you help me? "My name's Terry Ewart." This policewoman in plain
clothes called me over
00:06:11
and she said, "I'm very sorry
to have to tell you this." She said, "But we believe your
daughter has been murdered
00:06:21
"She has a badge with
Cheryl Moss on it "and we believe it
to be your daughter."
00:06:27
I was so shocked, I can't actually
remember anything else what she might have said to me.
00:06:33
[suspenseful music] - I was at work that morning
and I was actually coming home.
00:06:46
I was on the bus
when my phone went. It was my mum's
partner at the time. He literally just came
straight with of it.
00:06:54
"Oh, your sister's dead." There I am standing on a bus. Just heard that and I was,
00:07:04
I was just like, "What?" So I went home, grabbed the car keys and shot
straight up to the hospital,
00:07:12
unclear in my mind what
I was going to see. [sombre music] I see a few police
officers, I see police tape,
00:07:24
and I think that's
when the panic started to get a bit more real. A police officer
I think came over
00:07:32
and I kind of walked past him and was gonna go
through the tape. I started to panic and I
wanted to find my sister.
00:07:48
I'm not sure I
really believed it. I said, "Well, do you
want me to identify her?"
00:07:54
The police officer said,
"Well, we can't at the moment. "It's a crime scene." Which took me back because
I thought it was something
00:08:03
I thought she'd fell down the
stairs or something, you know? I just really didn't think
of anything that bad.
00:08:11
[sombre music continues] Where do you even start
processing something like that?
00:08:17
- And I left the hospital
grounds and went back to my car and then I've got an eight mile
drive through country lanes
00:08:25
and all the time I'm driving, I'm thinking about it and
it hadn't hit me really.
00:08:33
When I got to
Cheryl's mum's house, Cheryl's mum was sitting there obviously crying her eyes out.
00:08:40
We couldn't believe it was true. [dramatic music] - Cheryl was found very
close to her workplace
00:08:52
in a park with her body
strewn, just covered in blood. She was stabbed in the
skull, the face, the back.
00:09:00
I mean, it was just an
absolutely horrific scene. - At this stage, the early indication is that
this is a stranger attack
00:09:09
and therefore we have to take
every possible precaution and take every opportunity
we can from the scene,
00:09:16
so the forensic examination
will take some time. - Between 1985 and 2020, I worked for the
Metropolitan Police
00:09:26
as a crime scene examiner
and a crime scene manager overseeing the forensic
response to critical incidents,
00:09:32
there's usually homicide
and unexplained death. I was in the office, an office that I shared
00:09:38
with a number of other
crime scene managers. So I was aware that
the case had come in.
00:09:42
I was dealing with
other things at the time so I didn't respond
to that primary scene.
00:09:48
- The police roped
off the murder scene and started spreading
the search outwards
00:09:53
as far as they could and
as quickly as they could. - As a crime scene manager, you are generally part of
the second wave of response,
00:10:02
the initial police
response, paramedics, that's already happened. At this stage,
00:10:07
we didn't know who
the attacker was and so every
opportunity there is for you to identify that
individual is important.
00:10:14
- I think Hornchurch
was absolutely stunned. A nurse, of all people, a most respected
member of the community
00:10:23
to be savagely
attacked in open air in the middle of the day. These sort of murders
00:10:30
don't happen in little
commuter suburbs. - When trying to
visualise a crime scene,
00:10:38
what you need to do
would be to establish the sequence of events
leading to that incident.
00:10:44
Who is the person
that I'm dealing with? How have they died? Why are they where they are?
00:10:48
The person who's done this to
them, did they drop anything? What weapons have they used?
00:10:53
It's visualising
recording that scene exactly as it is as you arrive. Once that's done, you can
then start to move things.
00:11:00
You can start to deal
with parts of that scene to recover the evidence. - The detectives turned
up that particular evening
00:11:11
and gave us a little
bit more detail. [soft piano music] At the back of the
hospital there's a path.
00:11:21
My sister Cheryl was
attacked there and stabbed. There was no other
sort of details
00:11:29
about stabbing like
the quantity of stabs or anything like that. It was just stabbed.
00:11:36
I remember my mum saying that,
"Could we go and see her?" They said, "Well, unfortunately
she won't be moved.
00:11:42
"She'll be there for the night." I just sort of pictured her laying on a path
behind the hospital,
00:11:53
but they said, "No, it's
just forensics there." There's tents, there's
this, there's that.
00:12:00
I've actually drove
down to the hospital, although I wasn't
allowed inside. I sat just outside because
I wanted to be close to her.
00:12:11
[sombre piano music] I just felt so useless. I was her big brother and
I wasn't there for her.
00:12:43
[sombre piano music] - Well, I had loads
of family come round consoling me on me birthday
when I was supposed to have been
00:12:55
sitting there with
Cheryl having a meal and having a few
drinks, you know? Just had people around all
the time just consoling me.
00:13:02
How sorry they are. I'll never forget that
birthday, honestly. Cheryl's mum was
absolutely devastated.
00:13:12
It didn't really matter
what the police said because it didn't make any
difference to how you felt
00:13:18
because of what had
happened to your daughter. So she just let them get on
with what they've gotta do
00:13:24
and get this person. - Over a career with the police, you end up dealing with an awful lot of quite
traumatic crime scenes.
00:13:35
This one stands out because it appeared to
be a stranger attack. - A complete stranger
with a knife.
00:13:42
How on earth does a man
with a knife run amok unchecked in a public place? Someone, possibly a neighbour,
is actually a murderer
00:13:52
and if he's not caught,
he'll do it again. [suspenseful music] - This is one of
my big memories.
00:14:13
This one is my 60th birthday
and I had a fabulous time. It was a surprise party.
00:14:20
- Did you know she
was gonna be there? - And I never knew she
was gonna be there.
00:14:24
And course when I
walked in the door and there was Cheryl, well, I
was over the moon, you know?
00:14:30
So I was really so glad to
have her there, you know? My first child, I was overwhelmed and
I had tears in my eyes
00:14:41
and she was a
beautiful little baby. She was always
playing with her toys. I didn't see nothing
bad in her at all.
00:14:49
She was the most
wonderful little girl and I was so proud
of her, I really was. - My sister was very,
she's a very honest person.
00:15:00
If she liked you, she liked you. If she didn't, you
would know about it and she wouldn't be
afraid to tell you that.
00:15:09
She enjoyed family, she
enjoyed visiting family. I'd just not long started a
family myself and you know,
00:15:16
if the opportunity was there, she'd be happy to
come down and visit. You always assume that
00:15:24
there's gonna be time
to make more memories and you never assume that
that will come to an end.
00:15:32
Yeah, one of my fondest moments was she wanted to be there
for the birth of my son.
00:15:39
She really was so overjoyed
with that experience and my guessing is that
probably it's an experience
00:15:49
she would've liked
to have had herself. Just look at that smile. - [Terry] Her wedding day.
00:15:57
Her wedding day sitting
on my lap having a drink, like she likes a nice
drink, don't she?
00:16:02
- She was just so
happy, you know? - She'd only been
married for 18 months. She was still obviously
very much in love.
00:16:11
She had a loving family and yet she was struck down in the most brutal
fashion imaginable.
00:16:20
- My first impression
of the case was the amount of
media interest. You don't get that
on every case.
00:16:26
There are always
one or two cases that seem to spark more interest
than normal in the media.
00:16:31
This one clearly did. - The main gates to St. George's are now covered
in floral tributes
00:16:36
from friends, family
and work colleagues, the whole community
still shocked at the senselessness
of the murder.
00:16:42
Cheryl was murdered on
her father's birthday. A card on a bunch of
roses from him reads,
00:16:48
"So cruelly taken from us,
will always be in our hearts." - [Terry] You
know, what made you
00:16:55
want to do that
to my little girl? Cheryl's my only child and to
have her not around anymore,
00:17:03
it was awful. - People have often asked me, when did you last
see your sister? What did you speak about?
00:17:12
And truthfully, I
couldn't remember. I suppose you never
really imagine the last conversation
you're gonna have
00:17:23
is gonna be the last
conversation you have, so why would you
necessarily remember it?
00:17:34
- I've always kept
her mobile number. I'll never ever change it. Her name's there and her phone
number's there and that's it.
00:17:42
You know when I browse through
and I look at that sometimes, but I won't, I won't take it off
00:17:49
'cause I can't
ever forget Cheryl. - It's thought the nurse had just popped out
for a cigarette.
00:17:57
The killer could easily have
made a getaway along this path and then out into
a country park.
00:18:02
[tense music] - The initial information
that the police received was that the
assailant was wearing
00:18:12
sunglasses, sports clothing, and what is described
as an Ozzy Osbourne wig. I received a call at home
that evening to alert me
00:18:21
about a dog walker was walking
through the country park where he saw a bag
on the riverbank
00:18:27
and he could see what
looked like a wig poking out of the bag. He called the police.
00:18:32
Maybe this could lead us
to identify the suspect? - Cheryl had been stabbed over
70 times in broad daylight
00:18:39
and police knew that this was
probably a stranger murder. They had to find them
as fast as possible
00:18:45
and hopefully prevent the
same type of horrible thing that happened to Cheryl from
happening to somebody else.
00:18:54
- So arriving at the scene, it was probably gone
10 o'clock at night. So it's pitch black,
we're in a country park,
00:18:59
there's no lighting. So we had to go and
find where this bag was within a cordoned
area to try and stop
00:19:05
any people from getting in
and interfering with it. So this is where it was. The undergrowth has grown
considerably, the brambles,
00:19:15
but it was between the tree
and the riverbank here. It's not just a
case of turning up
00:19:21
and picking up the bag and
taking it away to look at it somewhere warm and comfortable.
00:19:26
It's far more involved than that because if you pick
it up and move it, you're gonna contaminate it.
00:19:31
[suspenseful music] You deal with this
bag item by item. You take out a single item,
you look at that item,
00:19:40
you photograph the item, and
then you package the item. Once the wig had been removed
and packaged carefully,
00:19:47
we went on to see what
else was in the bag and gradually the
sunglasses came out,
00:19:54
sports clothing, a
blood stained knife, and this bag had appeared to be a direct link with the suspect.
00:20:01
The knife wasn't a knife you
might find in your kitchen. It was a far more
sinister looking knife,
00:20:07
which is fairly
unusual in itself. Kitchen knives are far and away the most popular knife to use.
00:20:12
So as soon as you find something which is apparently
blood stained that isn't a kitchen knife,
00:20:17
it has a degree of
significance to it. - How could someone
be so careless to leave the murder
weapon in a bag
00:20:27
close to the crime scene? It wasn't necessarily
carelessness, it was arrogance. - Was it intentional?
00:20:36
Had he stashed it here in
order to return to it later? Or had he meant to
throw it into the river
00:20:41
and the bag perhaps caught
on a tree and didn't make it as far as the water itself?
00:20:48
When I was removing
items from the bag, I was aware of what looked
like a brown package
00:20:54
right at the bottom of the bag. I remember thinking
perhaps it was a weight so that when the bag was
thrown into the river,
00:21:00
it made it sink. I picked it up and it
was virtually weightless. It was an empty cardboard box.
00:21:06
And as I picked it
up and turned it over to see if anything was written
on the other side of the box,
00:21:13
I saw that it was a parcel that had been
delivered in the post and it had the name Harling
on it and a local address.
00:21:22
[suspenseful music] - Police have the name
and they have an address. I'm sure they're thinking,
is this too good to be true?
00:21:29
That it was left right
there in the murder kit so close to the crime scene. - Seeing that name and address
00:21:36
was probably one of the
most startling things I came across throughout
my entire career.
00:21:42
There was a realisation
at that point that if this was the name and address of the man that
had killed Cheryl,
00:21:49
then at that point there was
only two people in the world who knew who'd killed
Cheryl, him and me.
00:21:57
You can understand that
there might be desire to suddenly send
people around to go
00:22:01
and kick the door in on the
address, but you can't do that. You don't know what the
significance of it is.
00:22:05
So it's a question of just
passing that information on to the murder team who
carried out their inquiries.
00:22:13
[dramatic music] - We never done enough together
as father and daughter. I just can't believe any
person could do such a thing.
00:22:25
You know, all I
wanted at the time was for him to be locked up and away from doing
anything to anybody else.
00:22:36
[suspenseful music] - When you're dealing with a
complex traumatic crime scene, it is quite difficult
to switch off.
00:22:45
I think that you have
to allow your brain a little bit of time to process what you've just
been dealing with.
00:22:51
I think it's a question of
trying to get some sleep before you go back into work,
00:22:55
at which point you'll receive
any updates that there are. - By the next morning,
the next news we heard
00:23:03
was that the police
had arrested a suspect. - What we'd heard is just
that they'd arrested somebody.
00:23:11
It wasn't known at that time
whether she knew this person. [suspenseful music] The police kept us informed
00:23:26
when they had
anything new to say but sometimes you just
heard more in the media
00:23:31
than you did from the police. There was a great deal
of media coverage. It was on the telly, it was in
newspapers, it was on radio.
00:23:41
You couldn't get away from it. I had a barrage of people
knocking on my door, dozens of times a day,
different newspapers
00:23:49
wanting this, wanting that. And I really just
had no interest in dealing with any of it.
00:23:59
- It upsets me at seeing it all and I remember watching
the television, all the news programmes really,
00:24:05
and Cheryl's photo came up
and talking about the murder. But for me, it didn't
last long enough.
00:24:15
I felt it should have
gone on a bit longer. Remembering Cheryl, you know? It's sort of murdered
and then finished.
00:24:25
And I wanted people to realise
what a lovely girl she was and she deserved more than
what she got from the media.
00:24:37
I tried to go back to work after what had
happened to Cheryl. I'd done my first
day's delivery.
00:24:43
As soon as I walked
into the office, they said how sorry they were
to hear about my daughter.
00:24:49
After that, I couldn't go
back there and do it anymore. I just walked away from it.
00:24:54
[sombre music] - Stuart Harling was arrested just the day after
the murder occurred.
00:25:05
When police first
searched Harling's home, they got a much better
picture of who he was
00:25:10
and it essentially
solidified in their mind that this actually
was the person that committed these murders.
00:25:15
- Nobody looks like
a Hollywood villain. They look like ordinary
people in the street
00:25:20
and Stuart Harling
was no different. He was a teenager. He was only 18 at the time.
00:25:28
- It was a young man, not too
far away from where we lived, not known to my sister, to
the best of our knowledge,
00:25:36
not known to anybody
on the grounds. And at that time it
seemed to indicate that it was a motiveless crime.
00:25:46
[dramatic music] - Who was Stuart Harling? We know that when he was younger he was quite
academically gifted.
00:25:57
He went to a grammar school. His teachers spoke
highly of him. He was an altar boy, he
was a scout troop leader.
00:26:05
But unfortunately
things seemed to go awry as he got a bit older. The teachers noticed that
he didn't really interact
00:26:12
or mingle with his
peers particularly well and over time he became a loner. He became preoccupied
with spending time online.
00:26:20
He started playing
violent video games often for hours or
entire days at a time.
00:26:27
- The police told me that
when they went into his house, they looked on his laptop,
which he was always on,
00:26:33
and the last 30 pages that
he visited on his laptop was all about serial killers.
00:26:42
And the first page
he visited was, "Is there any serial
killers in Essex?" To hear something like that,
a young lad that he was,
00:26:51
wants to do what he wanted
to do, it is terrible. - Stuart Harling had developed
00:26:58
a mad fantasy virtual
world for himself in which he admired
serial killers like Daniel Gonzalez and Dennis
Nilsen and Colin Ireland,
00:27:13
almost as if they were
pop stars or footballers. - He was researching what
these people had done.
00:27:18
Similarly, he was doing
combat training on his own. He was trying to
become a better killer.
00:27:23
It was almost like
planning for a vacation except he was planning a murder. - The police had Harling,
00:27:31
but so far all they had was
circumstantial evidence, so this is why the DNA was key.
00:27:37
[dramatic music] - In a case like this where
there's no apparent connection between the suspect
and the victim,
00:27:43
you need to prove that contact. You need to be able to
demonstrate to a court that Stuart Harling came into
contact with Cheryl Moss.
00:27:50
If you can't do that, then it's very difficult to
prove what's actually happened.
00:27:56
- Stuart Harling's DNA evidence was found in the bag
as well as Cheryl's and that is really significant
00:28:02
because there's
no feasible reason why the two of them
would've met before. So that means it
would've confirmed the
police's suspicions
00:28:09
about him being the
number one suspect. - While he initially
was reluctant to
confess to the crime,
00:28:17
that faded away very
quickly and ultimately he was almost proud to
admit to what he had done.
00:28:26
- I suppose it was a blessing
from a certain perspective that it wasn't a long drawn
out type of investigation.
00:28:33
You know, nothing
makes up for the loss, you know, they catch
him, don't catch him.
00:28:38
The loss is still there, but we take it as
the only positive you can get from a
very bad situation.
00:28:48
- I'm pleased that he got
caught as early as he did because who knows
how many more people
00:28:53
he would've done like
he did to Cheryl, you know, if he
hadn't been caught? - For a stranger murder,
00:29:01
there's an added layer of trauma because the whole thing
is just so senseless. It's just so random.
00:29:08
It's literally a case of the victim being at the
wrong place at the wrong time. [sombre piano music]
00:29:17
- I remember Cheryl's
funeral pretty well actually. I don't think I took on board
00:29:25
with the amount of people
that would be there. I never really realised
when that car pulled in,
00:29:32
it was in the first
car behind the hearse, all I could see was a wall
of people and I was just,
00:29:40
I was amazed. - On the route and everything because they stopped
past the hospital,
00:29:48
the nurses there
brought out wreaths. Oh, it was so heartbreaking. I never expected that amount
of people to be there.
00:29:58
And it broke my heart to
think that she was so popular and she had all these people
there supporting the funeral.
00:30:05
You know, it was amazing. And when we all came outside,
people were coming up, you know, people I didn't
even know were there,
00:30:16
just putting their
arm around you and it's hard to say be strong
after just what has happened.
00:30:23
Like, you know? - In the funeral I was
asked if I wanted to help carry my sister and I
couldn't bring myself to do it.
00:30:36
When you see the curtains
close, it's kind of, it's real anyway, but makes it even more final,
00:30:49
you know? [sombre piano music] - Police had obviously
arrested their suspect and it seemed that
it was likely to be
00:31:03
a very straightforward case
in terms of who had done it. Of course it then
emerged that the issue
00:31:09
would not be who had done
it, but why he did it. - In the days leading
up to the killing,
00:31:15
he prepared a murder kit. He bought the wig
and the glasses. He bought the murder weapon.
00:31:22
And perhaps most hauntingly, it seems like he was even
practising the route of where he was gonna commit
his horrific killings.
00:31:32
- There were other
reports from other people in the preceding days to
the attack on Cheryl Moss
00:31:37
that they'd seen
somebody acting strangely in the country park wearing what was described as
an Ozzy Osbourne wig.
00:31:45
- And he had gone off a
number of sort of dry runs, walking for hours and hours
in the parks of Hornchurch,
00:31:49
as if he was planning exactly what he was intending to
do, finessing details. On the day of Cheryl's killing,
00:31:58
he had set out with
his murder kit, obviously with the intent
of finding someone to kill
00:32:06
and the tragedy was that it was
Cheryl who crossed his path. - People often say,
how do you say goodbye?
00:32:17
And... I think I've never said goodbye. Not sure I could. [sombre piano music] - Stuart Harling was 19 by
the time he came to trial.
00:32:49
So he was still a very young man and it was a very, very sad
tale of a very promising boy
00:32:55
who suddenly went off the
rails in his teenage years. - We went to the Old Bailey
and his mum and dad were there.
00:33:04
I didn't talk to them at all, but they were there as
well for the same reason, to see what he had to say.
00:33:12
- A trial is a horrid
thing to sit through and you have to go through
it day in, day out.
00:33:18
- Harling would plead
not guilty to murder, but guilty to manslaughter on the grounds of
diminished responsibility.
00:33:25
The basis of the plea was that
his lawyers would be claiming that he was so mentally unstable
00:33:31
at the time that he
committed the killing, that he was not responsible,
in law, for his actions.
00:33:38
[suspenseful music] - Stuart Harling
had a diagnosis, which is known as autistic
spectrum disorder.
00:33:45
Autistic spectrum disorder
is a developmental disorder. And people who have
this condition,
00:33:51
they often struggle with
social interactions. They might not fully understand some of society's
norms and behaviours
00:33:59
and also they can have
quite restricted interests or repetitive kind of movements.
00:34:06
Harling's solicitors
tried to propose that he had schizoid
personality disorder associated with people being
00:34:12
quite cold, quite
distant, quite aloof. There was something
quite narcissistic
about Stuart Harling.
00:34:19
He wanted this infamy and that doesn't fit in
with the characteristics of schizoid
personality disorder.
00:34:26
People with that condition are indifferent to what
others think about them. - The jury's job was to decide
in basic layman's terms,
00:34:35
whether Stuart Harling
was mad or bad. [dramatic music] - During the trial, you do,
00:34:45
you hear a lot of
factual information delivered without any
emotion, which I understand,
00:34:53
but it's very,
very, very graphic. - They actually had the
stab wounds on the screen
00:35:01
and they went through
every single stab. It was 72 and we had to
sit there listening to that
00:35:09
and I just had tears
in my eyes to think, you know, he could
do such a thing. - You run through
it in your own mind
00:35:18
what it must have been like and I wouldn't wish
that on anybody. Because my mum was too
ill at the time to go,
00:35:28
she was fighting
cancer at the time and she just couldn't make it. So to a degree I had to relay
00:35:36
that to her as well afterwards. So I kind of had to
go through it twice. You're upset about that and
you're very angry as well.
00:35:46
All the time, you've got
police officers with you just in case you decide
to do something stupid,
00:35:51
which is tempting, trust me. You feel that anger just
build up inside you, you know?
00:35:59
Just... Anyway, I'll leave that
to your imagination. - I remember looking at him,
00:36:09
the hatefulness in me
was untrue, you know? But there's nothing
you could do about it
00:36:14
because there were
so many police there preventing you from
doing anything. [sombre music]
00:36:22
- Mostly in these cases, defence lawyers decide
that their client would be too unpredictable
to allow to give evidence
00:36:29
personally from the witness box and be open to
cross-examination. But Harling was different.
00:36:36
Harling went into the witness
box and he told the court that having seen Cheryl on
her phone alone, distracted,
00:36:44
very vulnerable
because she's only a small woman of five foot one. He waited 'til she'd
finished on the phone
00:36:51
and then launched his attack. [dramatic music] - He was asked, does he know how many
times he stabbed her?
00:37:05
And he didn't have a clue. He just said it was
quite a few times. - Standing there,
00:37:12
just having a little
cigarette break and then someone from
behind done what he did.
00:37:19
I know Cheryl
would've fought back. - The coroner said
more likelihood is that she was defending herself
00:37:28
and doing the best she
could in that situation. He just kept going
until she stopped.
00:37:40
- [Terry] She was a tough girl, but there wasn't much she could
have done is there really?
00:37:48
- He spied Cheryl,
lying in wait, looking for a random
stranger to attack in his warped fantasy world.
00:37:58
Harling then headed
off back to his home where he logged on his
computer straightaway
00:38:04
to find out how the media
were covering his attack, his killing that he
had just performed.
00:38:13
- Most of us would be
horrified and think, oh, the news is covering this
and the police are closing in.
00:38:18
But that's not how it is
for some of these people. They think I'm not
gonna get caught,
00:38:23
or I don't care if I get caught. They just wanted to feel
almost important and famous.
00:38:29
It seems strange
that Stuart Harling would've wanted to
pick broad daylight and a place right next to a
hospital to commit a murder.
00:38:36
But ultimately he didn't
care if there were onlookers. He didn't care if
it was a nurse,
00:38:41
somebody who was an
upstanding citizen. The only thing he cared about was his own infamy in his mind.
00:38:47
[sombre piano music] - The thing I recall
during the trial, he was completely unemotional
about what he'd done.
00:38:58
I think he just saw the
trial was an inconvenience. - He said he was bored. Bored with his life and
he wanted to do something.
00:39:09
Surely he could've thought
of something better to do than do what he did and
what he wanted to do.
00:39:17
Surely there's something
better in life than that. - In fact, he said he
was kind of surprised
00:39:24
when he found out that
she'd actually died despite the fact he had
stabbed her 72 times.
00:39:28
He went on to say that
he wasn't bothered by the fact that he
had killed Cheryl,
00:39:36
although it had kind
of ruined his day. - He was happy what he did
and if he got released,
00:39:43
he might do it again. That's what he said. - Bizarrely, Stuart
Harling claimed that he was trying to organise
a coup in Equatorial Guinea.
00:39:54
- He had told the jury
that he needed a car as part of his role
in this attempted coup
00:39:59
of transporting arms, thousands of miles to
this African country. - That he attacked Cheryl
00:40:05
because she had car keys
and he needed a car. - It seems impossible
that the jury or a judge
00:40:11
would hear this story about wanting to kill
someone to steal a car, to get a arms deal going on
00:40:18
because of a coup in
Equatorial Guinea. It seems absolutely outlandish, but I think that's exactly
what he was going for.
00:40:26
- On the surface, it seems like he was
just making a last ditch, desperate attempt to
appear mentally ill
00:40:31
and not in control
of his actions. Stuart Harling was
intentionally abrasive and obstructive when
he was in court.
00:40:39
He was shouting at the judge. He was threatening
the prosecution, he
was throwing papers.
00:40:46
- [Chris] I think he
was just play acting. When he got told off for that
and then later on after that
00:40:52
he never appeared much because he said he couldn't
be bothered coming because he didn't really care.
00:40:57
He had no interest. Yeah, so I didn't wanna
see him anymore anyway, so. - The jury must have thought
00:41:09
not only is this an
extremely dangerous person who's admitting to committing
this senseless murder,
00:41:14
but he's also trying
to manipulate us to making us think
that he's crazy and he's clearly calculating,
00:41:21
premeditated and absolutely
ruthless and dangerous. - Diminished responsibility could have been quite
relevant in this case
00:41:30
because murder carries a
mandatory life sentence. Whereas manslaughter has varying sentencing
options for the judge.
00:41:39
- The jurors returned a
verdict of guilty to murder by a 10 to one majority. - The verdict of
the jury was that
00:41:46
Harling was not a man who was
consumed by mental illness. He was in control
of his actions.
00:41:51
He carried out these killings
to fulfil his own agenda, his own desires to become
this notorious serial killer.
00:41:58
So ultimately he was sentenced to a life sentence with
a tariff of 20 years. Meaning that the
minimum amount of time
00:42:05
he would spend in
prison would be 20 years until the parole board would
even consider his release.
00:42:12
[suspenseful music] - I dunno what I would've done if it wasn't a guilty
verdict, you know?
00:42:20
I just dunno how I
would've coped with it. Really. - It was very important
that he got done for murder
00:42:25
'cause that's what it was
at the end of the day. - I think his sentence
is disgusting,
00:42:36
absolutely disgusting
for what he did. You know, he should be
serving life for life,
00:42:43
not coming out at the age of 38. Who stabs someone 72 times
and only gets 20 years?
00:42:52
I just hope he don't come
out while I'm still alive. - I think it would be a
very crazy parole officer
00:43:00
that decided he was fit
to enter the human race, particularly when he was
adamant he was gonna continue.
00:43:07
I'm one of these that believes
that if you take a life, you should pay the
ultimate price for that.
00:43:13
Not that that would
bring my sister back, but I just think he's
a waste of space.
00:43:22
- The parole board obviously have to take every
case seriously. They have to assess
in meticulous detail
00:43:28
whether an individual is safe to be released into
society or not. But I think in a case like this
00:43:33
where the murder was so
random, so senseless, their threshold for
releasing somebody like this
00:43:39
would probably be even higher. - I mean, who would've thought
that it was the last time
00:43:48
that I was ever
gonna speak to Cheryl on the day of my birthday? I would've had a lovely evening
00:43:55
with my little
precious daughter, which I was so
looking forward to, and you just don't know in
life what's gonna happen.
00:44:03
Every time a birthday comes
around, I'm at the cemetery, you know, that's where
I spend my birthday.
00:44:10
Laying flowers for
her and her mum. - [Chris] Sometimes you
look back and wonder
00:44:17
what your life would be like if that particular
event hadn't occurred. - I do believe she might
have had her own children
00:44:30
and I would've
been a grandparent, which I would've loved
to have been, you know?
00:44:35
But it never happened. When you lose your children
through illness is bad enough.
00:44:42
But to lose the way I
lost is 10 times worse. As I say, she was only 32 and she had a lot
of life left in her.
00:44:53
- I think if people live
life the way she did, there'd be a lot more
happier people in the world.
00:45:01
You'd rarely see her
without a smile on her face. You know, even the problems, she would push her way through
because she always knew
00:45:09
that somewhere out
there there was a... some light at the
end of the tunnel. [sombre music]
00:45:27
[dramatic music]