00:00:05
-In February 1994, a badly burned body
of a teenager was found on an allotment
in Sunderland, in England.
00:00:13
It was the third similar death
in three months. Pathology reports
gave the police no reason
00:00:19
to treat the deaths
as suspicious, but they were dealing with
a sadistic serial killer.
00:00:25
-He knew that he got sexual
excitement from killing them. He knew that he wanted
to destroy evidence
00:00:31
of the strangling
by setting fire to them. -The murderer was a 23-year-old
man named Steven Grieveson.
00:00:39
The papers had begun to call him
the "Sunderland Strangler." -He's making a decision
00:00:45
to take someone's life
time and time again. He's somebody who has chosen
to do evil things,
00:00:51
and in that way, he is a classic
psychopathic serial killer. -It would take the efforts
of one detective
00:00:58
supported by the stoic family
members of Grieveson's victims to finally bring the killer
to justice.
00:01:07
-Steven Grieveson is the most
evil man I've heard of. Horrible. Just can't understand
how someone could be like that.
00:01:15
-Steven Grieveson,
the Sunderland Strangler, had been revealed as one of
the world's most evil killers.
00:01:22
♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ It was a case
that almost went unsolved. For 3 months in the early 1990s,
00:01:50
there was serial killer
on the loose in the Sunderland in the northeast of England.
00:01:55
The deaths of three teenagers -- Thomas Kelly, David Hanson, and David Grieff --
00:02:04
were all initially believed
to be mysterious but not suspicious. Pathologists
had ruled out murder.
00:02:13
It would take a new detective
to finally uncover the truth and bring justice
upon the 25-year-old local man
00:02:22
named Steven Grieveson. -As the guilty verdicts
were read out, there were loud cheers
from the public gallery.
00:02:30
Handing down three
life sentences, the judge described Grieveson
as evil and dangerous.
00:02:35
-When the body
of 18-year-old Thomas Kelly was found in a fire
on November 26, 1993,
00:02:43
the police came
to the conclusion that the death
was solvent-related. Local journalist Nigel Green
covered the case.
00:02:52
-I don't recall there being
any great fuss after the first death, and it obviously makes you think
what would have happened
00:02:59
if Grieveson had just killed
the first lad, presuming he would have
got away with it,
00:03:05
and it would have
just been dismissed as some poor lad
who died glue sniffing. -It wasn't until
in November 1995
00:03:15
that Grieveson
was finally charged. Nicknamed
the Sunderland Strangler, he was eventually found guilty
of a fourth murder
00:03:23
at a second trial
in October 2013. -I still remember this case
as if it was yesterday.
00:03:32
It's still fresh in my mind,
even 20-odd years on, and I would imagine
it's still similar
00:03:38
for the other people
of Sunderland. -This killer's story begins
over 45 years ago.
00:03:45
Steven Grieveson was born
in Sunderland on the 14th of December 1970. He grew up in a large family,
00:03:53
but his parents were reportedly
violent towards one another. -You are molded by
the environment you live in.
00:04:01
It's a fact.
Everybody knows this. So if you grow up with violence, you tend to be more violent
00:04:08
than people that don't. -Grieveson appears to show
some psychopathic traits in childhood.
00:04:14
Some of his old school reports
are looked at by a psychologist at his trial,
and within these reports,
00:04:19
they talk
of his lack of empathy, about his callousness, about his real lack of emotion
towards other people.
00:04:27
I think there are
a few red flags in Steven Grieveson's childhood, but they're not necessarily
red flags that say to me,
00:04:34
"This person's going to turn
into a murderer." They are red flags that say, "This is somebody who perhaps
needs some help,
00:04:40
needs some support, you know,
later on in childhood and in their teenage years."
00:04:46
-Growing up, Grieveson was
often in trouble, and in 1982,
he was arrested for shoplifting.
00:04:55
-He opened a pack of nails
inside a shop. He didn't take the whole pack. He took one nail
and he got caught.
00:05:01
And obviously,
the owner of the shop didn't like that very much, and he actually went to court
for stealing one nail.
00:05:08
One nail,
not a pack of nails. One nail. But he was only 11 years old. -Extraordinarily, he was taken
in front of the magistrate.
00:05:16
Now, for most 11-year-old boys,
that would be the most terrifying experience
imaginable,
00:05:22
and they would certainly
not dream of doing it again, even though it was in many ways
00:05:26
an absolutely irrelevant
tiny crime, certainly not punishable
by anything significant.
00:05:32
But it's interesting
that Grieveson didn't take that experience
as any kind of lesson.
00:05:40
He simply brushed it off,
water off a duck's back. He simply went on and did
what he wanted to do.
00:05:46
♪♪ -At the age of 13, Social Services
made the decision to remove Grieveson
from the family home.
00:05:56
-Well, when he was
an adolescent, he was taken into
the residential care system,
00:06:00
and he ends up at
a children's home in Carlisle. -Grieveson's troubles continued
through his adolescence.
00:06:09
-He's had a real sense of shame instilled in himself
at this point in his life. This is the point where
many people are
00:06:16
realizing things
about their sexuality, experimenting
with their sexuality, and at the same time
when people should have
00:06:22
the freedom to do that, he's been experiencing abuse
and violence and neglect, and all of this is fueling
a sense of shame.
00:06:31
-Grieveson struggled with
his homosexuality in an environment
designed to quash it.
00:06:36
-I think that the context
of the 1970s, 1980s northeast is another factor
in the Steven Grieveson story.
00:06:44
This is an area of tough
working-class masculinity, of mining, of shipbuilding,
of those kind of jobs
00:06:51
that make men masculine men. So there'll be very much
a culture of what a man should look like,
how a man should behave,
00:06:58
and for Steven Grieveson, for somebody who realizes
that he's gay, this is another way in which
he's not going to fit in.
00:07:05
He's not gonna be accepted. -People that grew up
in an environment where it's a macho environment,
it's like,
00:07:12
"Oh, no.
You have to be a man. "If you were born a man,
you have to be a man. "You have to play football.
You have to do this.
00:07:16
You have to go and drink
with the lads." Suddenly, you start having
all these, you know, affections
00:07:21
or feelings for another male,
is a very common thing for people to be
a little bit ashamed,
00:07:27
and go, "What's going on?
This cannot be." And they will lie to themselves.
And that's --
00:07:31
I'm pretty sure that's exactly
what happened with Grieveson. -Grieveson didn't fit
into the world around him,
00:07:37
and by the age 19,
he'd become a social outcast. -By 1990, Steven Grieveson
had been convicted
00:07:46
of around about
38 different offenses. So he was in and out of prison, and it's this very typical
revolving door
00:07:54
that we see with kind of
low-level crime, property crime. It's a way of life
for some people.
00:08:01
-In May of the same year, 1990, Sunderland was rocked by
the murder of a 14-year-old boy
00:08:08
called Simon Martin. He had been found semi-naked and bludgeoned to death
in a derelict building
00:08:15
after running away from home
just days before. -I remember the Simon Martin
murder very well.
00:08:22
We had five murders in
less than a week in Sunderland, and in hindsight, looking back,
00:08:28
whether that was putting
extra pressure on the police with a given murder inquiry
00:08:34
involving
40, 50 police officers, a hell of a lot
of police resources, and whether that would
have put strain
00:08:41
on the Simon Martin murder
at the time. -The police initially thought they had quickly solved
the crime
00:08:49
after arresting
a local teenager. -He was 16. He lived nearby. He was a respectable lad
from a good family from memory,
00:08:59
and he had been playing
in that building with others, and they found his fingerprints
in the building.
00:09:04
There was blood
in the building as well, and they found
his fingerprint in blood,
00:09:09
which was just coincidence. -All charges against
the 16-year-old boy were eventually dropped.
00:09:16
The murder of Simon Martin would
remain unsolved for 23 years. But during the original
investigation in May 1990,
00:09:27
police had also spoken
to a local 19-year-old man named Steven Grieveson. -He's somebody who had
a reputation in the local area
00:09:37
for hanging around
with people younger than him. I think when you've got somebody
who's trying
00:09:43
to get a sense of control,
get a sense of power, you often feel that
they hang around with people
00:09:47
who they see
as slightly inferior to them. -Grieveson was questioned
by the police
00:09:53
in the wake of Simon
Martin's body being discovered, and Grieveson said, "Yes. Certainly, I saw him, but he was
fine when I left him."
00:10:01
-Grieveson was released
without charge. Three years later,
the discovery of the body
00:10:06
of 18-year-old Thomas Kelly would trigger a series
of similar deaths that would spread fear
across the whole of Sunderland.
00:10:16
By the winter of 1993,
22-year-old Steven Grieveson had built up a reputation
as a troublemaker.
00:10:25
In November of the same year, Thomas Kelly,
an 18-year-old student, had gone missing
from the family home
00:10:32
he shared with his parents
and his sister, Lyndsey. -My brother, Thomas, was just
a normal boy for the time,
00:10:41
just kind, helpful. He would do anything
for anybody. Loved life. We wouldn't go to bed
on the nighttime
00:10:50
without saying
we loved each other. He used to call me "Pins"
instead of "Lynds,"
00:10:55
which was...a bit strange, but that was the way we went on. We argued quite a bit,
as brother and sister do,
00:11:05
but never went to bed
without making up. We were very close
as brother and sister.
00:11:10
We were close as a family. We didn't have loads of money,
nothing like that, but...
00:11:16
we went out
and done things together, silly things
like willick picking and, you know, we'd just...
00:11:24
Very close family, I'd say. -Lyndsey vividly remembers
the day her older brother disappeared.
00:11:34
-I went to school. Me mum went to work, and then Thomas had left
for college, and that was the last time
we had seen him.
00:11:46
It was actually a bit strange
that morning because we were very close
as brother and sister,
00:11:52
but that morning he was standing
by the fireplace in me mum's house, and, um... as we said bye,
he walked forward
00:12:02
and grabbed me hand
and squeezed me hand. -On November 26, 1993,
the emergency services
00:12:11
were called to a burning shed
on an allotment near Monkwearmouth Hospital
in Sunderland.
00:12:17
♪♪ -The fire
attracts attention, inevitably, and the body of Thomas Kelly
is found.
00:12:29
♪♪ It's hard to imagine
what it must have been like for whoever arrived
on that allotment
00:12:37
to confront the sight
of a burning body in a burning building. It is gruesome. -When it came on the news,
I wasn't listening to the news.
00:12:50
I was sitting in the house,
and I had seen me dad cover his face,
and I went, "What's wrong?"
00:12:55
And he went,
"There's a body been found." And they say parents
get a feeling. I don't know whether he got
a feeling at that point.
00:13:03
-Thomas' badly burned body
had seemingly destroyed any possible evidence, and senior detectives at
Northumbria Police
00:13:12
were not convinced
that he been murdered. -They were treating it as
mysterious but not suspicious.
00:13:20
They didn't quite know
what had went on with Thomas. We had told them that everything
was out of the ordinary.
00:13:28
Thomas wouldn't be in
an allotment like that or a place like that normally unless he'd went with somebody.
00:13:35
♪♪ -Drug and solvent abuse
were prevalent in working-class areas
at the time, and detectives were keeping
an open mind.
00:13:49
-It's very hard for the police
at that point to know quite what had
been going on.
00:13:54
Solvent was found in the area,
but they weren't certain. -I think there was
a real stigmatization
00:14:01
of young men in this area
during the 1980s, the 1990s. It was a period
of industrial decline.
00:14:08
There were a lot
of social problems often in some of the deprived communities
in this part of the U.K.
00:14:13
So it was very easy
to attach a particular story to a situation. -Initial pathology reports
on Thomas' body
00:14:24
were also inconclusive. -The question is whether
the death is suspicious or not,
00:14:30
in the era when solvent abuse
was common, young lads found dead in
an allotment, evidence of fire.
00:14:40
If you're not thinking dirty, you're not seeing what
it may be. It's the initial assessment,
00:14:46
and if that misses
what it's likely to be, then the whole investigation
goes down the wrong route.
00:14:53
-And that's
exactly what happened. Because of a lack
of pathological evidence, the police had ruled out murder,
but they were wrong.
00:15:02
Thomas Kelly had been
strangled to death with his own bandana
after bumping into
00:15:07
a local 22-year-old man
named Steven Grieveson. ♪♪ -I think they probably
knew each other or at least met,
00:15:17
perhaps at football. -Grieveson reportedly revealed his homosexuality
to Thomas Kelly,
00:15:23
and it is assumed that he killed
the 18-year-old to cover his secret. ♪♪ -He then decides
to burn Kelly's body
00:15:36
in an effort to disguise
what has gone on. It is merciless. It is without
possible explanation.
00:15:46
Why would you set fire
to the body of a boy unless within you there is
some kind of lack of conscious?
00:15:55
It is a monstrous act.
There's no two ways about it. -Detectives had questioned
known troublemaker Grieveson
00:16:02
about Thomas Kelly's death, but they had to reason
to arrest him. It was a grave mistake.
00:16:10
-Thomas Kelly was killed
at the end of November. By early February, just
literally a few weeks later,
00:16:18
he had abducted or persuaded
another young man called David Hanson to go
with him to a derelict building.
00:16:29
-On February 4, 1994, Grieveson strangled the life
from 15-year-old David Hanson
00:16:35
before setting his body alight. Once again, he was questioned
about the death, but released without charge.
00:16:44
-So now Grieveson's starting
to be calculating. He starts to realize that he can
actually get away with things
00:16:52
by getting rid of the evidence. By burning the victim, you get rid of all
the circumstantial evidence
00:16:58
and all the evidence that
he could have left on the body. -With another
inconclusive report
00:17:05
from a different pathologist,
detectives rule that David Hanson
had not been murdered
00:17:11
despite the similarities between
his and Thomas Kelly's death six weeks earlier.
00:17:18
-I remember speaking to one
police contact on the case telling me that it didn't add up
that it was murder,
00:17:25
and it didn't add up
that it was solvents. I didn't get into the precise
details of why that was,
00:17:31
but I remember him
telling me that, as they say, the first one
was just deemed to be a tragedy.
00:17:36
The second one was deemed
to be a coincidence. And officers said to each other
at the time,
00:17:41
"As long as we don't get
a third one," and they did get a third one. ♪♪ -Just a few weeks later,
the end of February '94,
00:17:52
Grieveson persuades
another boy -- David Grieff, also 15 -- to go to another allotment.
00:18:01
Grieveson kills him, strangles him
and does set fire to him again. ♪♪ Grieveson has now killed
three young men
00:18:10
in the space
of literally 3 months. -Steven Grieveson is escalating
his offending,
00:18:16
and for somebody
with psychopathic traits, it's not unusual for them
to get bored easily,
00:18:21
and that applies
to their offending as it does
to their life in general. They've got a need
for simulation.
00:18:26
They've got a need to
up the ante and experience that kind of thrill
again and again.
00:18:34
-I don't know.
I look back on it, and I sometimes wonder
if Grieveson had some kind of almost desire
00:18:40
to see how far he could
push it without being caught. It's hard to say. It's speculation,
but it seems...
00:18:49
strange use of the words, almost reckless
from the killer's point of view to repeat a similar murder in
a similar area for a third time.
00:18:57
-The police spoke to
Steven Grieveson for a third time, and for a third time,
they let him go without charge,
00:19:05
much to the frustration
of the families of the three deceased teenagers. -Steven Grieveson was
interviewed.
00:19:14
We didn't know this at the time 'cause the police were saying
that it was drug abuse.
00:19:19
It was afterwards
that we realized that he was arrested and interviewed
at the police station,
00:19:25
only later to be let out
and murder again. -Well, I think Steven Grieveson
felt absolutely invincible.
00:19:33
He was picked up by the police, yet after each
of these boys' deaths, but they didn't connect him
00:19:39
to the actually murders
until much later. So it really did kind of shore
up a sense in which he felt,
00:19:47
"I can do this again because
the police have talked to me. "They clearly haven't
joined up dots.
00:19:52
I'm getting away with this." So he feels
absolutely invincible. -But less than a month after
the death of David Grieff,
00:20:00
Grieveson was finally
in police custody. He was arrested and charged
with robbery
00:20:07
after forcing staff
at a local fish-and-chip shop to empty the till. Although sentenced
to 18 months in prison,
00:20:15
investigators still
weren't considering charging Grieveson with murder because three reports from
three different pathologists
00:20:23
had failed to linked the deaths. All of them were being treated
as solvent-related.
00:20:30
-We didn't understand where
the idea of drugs came from. There was no evidence
on any of the boys to say
00:20:35
that they've taken anything. No matter what the families
were saying and telling the police
what these boys were like,
00:20:43
it felt like no one
was listening. People were grabbing hold
of a story that wasn't true,
00:20:49
and I think to drag
three boys' names down, it was awful. It was just...
They didn't deserve it.
00:20:58
They didn't deserve it, and they only had us
to defend them, that they weren't here
to defend themselves.
00:21:04
-Even at the time,
you could look back and think that police
should have looked on that
00:21:09
as being suspicious that they were apparently
glue sniffers and the fires. They should have realized
from day one there
00:21:14
was something not right. -But time was running out
for Grieveson. Investigators believed
the deaths were suspicious,
00:21:24
but so farm no one
had been charged with murder. The families of the victims
were far from satisfied.
00:21:31
-I think before the three
families had met up and got together, we were all
fighting from separate corners.
00:21:37
We wouldn't let anything lie. We were trying to get
information from everywhere.
00:21:40
And I think when the families
did come together, the police knew that
we were a stronger force,
00:21:46
and we weren't going to
back down. Didn't matter what, we knew that
these boys were murdered.
00:21:50
-By the time
of the third death, the families were starting
to kick up a fuss, and the media were quite rightly
paying attention.
00:21:58
One of my colleagues,
Paul Watson, went down to see the families, and I remember him
coming back quite vociferous
00:22:06
that there was something
in what they were saying 'cause obviously there
could be a cynical approach
00:22:10
that the families
of glue sniffers are going to try
and make it look like their sons
00:22:15
hadn't got involved
in that kind of thing and that there was
some more to it, but he came back
very convinced.
00:22:20
I also went up to see
the families, and I remember coming away
thinking, "Yes, what they said."
00:22:24
There is something definitely
in what they say that way too much coincidence, way too many things
that were wrong.
00:22:30
-Months passed as the families
and local press continue to pressure the police
to change course.
00:22:38
-You got to look
at the sheer weight of the pressure
the families brought, the campaigning that they did
00:22:47
that they were convinced
from day one there was something
not right about it. -All the families of
the victims were really close.
00:22:55
We needed each other. We stuck together,
and that's what we needed. We were no one alone,
but to have those people
00:23:04
who understood what you were
going through around you made a difference. -Finally,
the families got their wish.
00:23:15
A new detective, Dave Wilson,
had taken over the case. He wanted to re-examine
the evidence
00:23:23
gathered by three
separate pathologists. -Some causes of death
are simply more difficult
00:23:29
to identify than others,
particularly if there's been postmortem changes
in the bodies.
00:23:34
Pathologists are human. People make mistakes. What you need is a new person, a new way of thinking,
like the officer David Wilson,
00:23:44
in this case
who comes in and says, "What about
thinking about it differently? What about these factors?
Let's look at it again."
00:23:52
And that's the sort of thing
that can often just kick-start an investigation
into the right frame of mind.
00:24:00
-David Wilson was a different
person altogether, a different detective. He wanted to find out
what happened.
00:24:07
He thought could there be
a sexual motive, which it would have been
locked in straightaway
00:24:12
if they were girls
who had been murdered. And he went down that route,
and it really helped.
00:24:17
We felt like someone
was listening to us, and someone was fighting with us
rather than against us.
00:24:23
You could say David Wilson, he was hungry to get
this person off the streets and get this person convicted.
00:24:32
He wasn't going to just lie back
and leave it. He was looking at everything,
everything again.
00:24:38
He looked in at the boys. He looked in all the evidence, and he wasn't going to give up
until he got his man.
00:24:44
-Detective Wilson was certain that all three deaths
were linked. Not only were the crime scenes
extremely similar,
00:24:51
all three boys had attended
the same school -- Monkwearmouth Comprehensive. In August 1994, Wilson asked
for a second postmortem
00:25:03
to be carried out
on all the bodies by a senior pathologist. -You don't just
call a friend, say,
00:25:10
"Can you re-examine the body?" No, you have to get, you know,
court orders and judges
00:25:15
and everybody involved, and this detective
was relentless. He went after it, and he got
the court order that was needed.
00:25:22
This was a detective that he
knew that something was wrong. You know, when you read a case
and you just --
00:25:27
Maybe it's a gut feeling or
there's something there, you go, "Okay.
This cannot be like this."
00:25:32
-On closer inspection,
all three teenagers appeared to have died in the same way.
00:25:40
-So in Grieveson's case,
the most important factor was that the ligature marks
are then identified.
00:25:47
We're now moving from
three similar but apparently discreet
incidents all involving three young boys
from the same school
00:25:58
to three potential homicides
from the same school the same way. Now you're almost looking
towards a serial killer.
00:26:07
-I think that the fact
that Steven Grieveson killed his victims
by strangulation
00:26:11
is very significant because it's one of the most
personal forms of killing. You are watching the life
drain out of the them.
00:26:18
He's probably feeling
more in control at the time
he's killing his victims than he's ever felt
at any point in his life before.
00:26:25
So I think it's a very
deliberate choice of method. -I think they were groomed,
encouraged,
00:26:32
cajoled, or perhaps
even threatened by Grieveson, and they paid the price
with their lives.
00:26:40
♪♪ -I remember the day very well. I was on the Sun
when Northumbria Police revealed that they were treating
the deaths as murder.
00:26:55
And tragic as it was, the family would have seen that
was a victory and that finally
something was happening.
00:27:02
-Detective had found
fingerprints and a footprint
belonging to Grieveson in the derelict house
where David Hanson was murdered.
00:27:11
They were from a burglary Grieveson had committed
months before, but proved he had access
to the property.
00:27:19
And by September 1994, Wilson had retrieved
some conclusive evidence. Semen found in the stomach
of the third victim,
00:27:28
15-year-old David Grieff, was a DNA match
for Steven Grieveson. -If you burn the outside
of the body,
00:27:38
then you can lose injuries if you lose the skin
and the soft tissues beneath it.
00:27:44
There's going to be less
and less that you can see, but it can be surprising
what you can still identify,
00:27:51
particularly if the area
is protected from the fire. You can still see
maybe stab wounds.
00:27:57
You can see all sorts of things
that many people who try to dispose of a body
by fire think will be gone.
00:28:05
-Grieveson was already
in prison for robbery after holding up
a fish-and-chip shop.
00:28:12
-Steven Grieveson was a bully.
He wasn't nice. He used to go around picking on
lads and taking stuff off them.
00:28:19
He picked on teenage boys,
old women, anybody that was
smaller than him, I think.
00:28:27
He was a troublemaker,
someone to keep away from. When Grieveson was arrested
for the murder,
00:28:33
we weren't shocked at all 'cause it was what we were
fighting for, for months. We knew it was him.
00:28:40
We knew that those boys had
done nothing wrong. We knew that someone
had done that to them.
00:28:47
-Grieveson's trial was set
for January 1996. He was going to plead not guilty
to the murders of Thomas Kelly,
00:28:56
David Hanson, and David Grieff. -I think Steven Grieveson
maintained his innocence
00:29:02
for quite a while initially because he thought that he was
going to get away with it
00:29:07
because he had come on to
the police radar several times and had gone off it again,
00:29:11
and now he finds himself
charged with these murders. I think he's just chancing it.
00:29:16
I think he's just pleading
not guilty and saying,
"I'm not responsible," because he thinks
there is actually a chance
00:29:21
that he's going
to get away with this. -He is a man who wishes to
conceal the darkness in his soul
00:29:29
and will go to any lengths
to do so. He absolutely refuses to accept that he could have played
any part
00:29:36
in the deaths of these three
innocent young men and fronts that lie without any possible
flicker of doubt
00:29:46
throughout his 6-week trial. -The parents of
the three murdered teenagers arriving at court,
00:29:53
where today they listen
to details of how, according to the prosecution,
their sons were killed.
00:30:00
-During the trial
at Leeds Crown Court, Grieveson showed
complete contempt for the families of his victims.
00:30:08
-I was 17,
I think, at the time, and it was a hard thing
to take in, not just for me,
for all the families.
00:30:16
None of us were used to being
in a court surroundings or anything like that. We didn't know what normally
went on in court.
00:30:27
What made it worse was Grieveson
sitting at the dock sticking his fingers up at us,
00:30:33
just goading us,
pulling faces, laughing at us. It wasn't nice. -The evidence against Grieveson
was compelling.
00:30:43
He had left prints at the house
where David Hanson was murdered and his DNA
on the body of David Grieff.
00:30:49
The jury took just 4 hours
to find him guilty. When Steven Grieveson
got convicted,
00:30:56
we all erupted, the public gallery, the family. Everyone had jumped up
off their seat.
00:31:03
We didn't think that we were
going to get that because of the lack of evidence
on some of the boys,
00:31:08
and when he got convicted
of Thomas first, we knew that he would get
convicted of the other two.
00:31:16
-On February 28, 1996, Judge Mr. Justice Holland
described Grieveson as plain evil as he handed out
three life sentences
00:31:27
to the 25-year-old. He was sent to
Full Sutton Prison in Yorkshire. -I mean, nothing is going to
bring these poor lads back,
00:31:37
and the pain is going to be
with the families forever, but at least in finding out
what happened to their sons
00:31:42
and finding out that
they weren't just glue sniffers who died
in a burning building,
00:31:47
that they were innocent victims
of a serial killer and the truth
finally coming out
00:31:52
would hopefully alleviate some
of the pain for the families. -In December 1997,
Northumbria Police apologized
00:32:00
to the families of
the three boys for the distress caused to them during
the initial investigation.
00:32:08
-I think if the police
had done a better job and looked into this properly, maybe listen more
to the families
00:32:15
about what kind of boys
they were, they would have took him
off the streets a lot earlier
00:32:19
and maybe could have saved
a lot of lives. -But the police weren't done
with Steven Grieveson just yet.
00:32:26
Northumbria Police
were convinced that he was also responsible
for a death that preceded
all of his other victims --
00:32:34
the murder of Simon Martin
in May 1990. The body
of the 14-year-old schoolboy had been found half-naked
in a derelict house.
00:32:47
-Grieveson clearly decided that he didn't want
this little boy to tell anyone
what had happened,
00:32:54
and so he decided
that he would silence him, and he hit Simon Martin
with some of the rubble
00:33:00
in the house,
persistently around the head. Later, he was to claim,
"I just flipped."
00:33:08
No, Grieveson didn't just flip. He decided that he didn't
want anyone to know what had happened,
00:33:15
and the easiest way of doing
that was to kill the boy because he couldn't tell anyone.
00:33:20
Therefore, this was a little boy who was being killed
to keep him quiet. -However, the murder didn't
match Grieveson's usual M.O.
00:33:31
-Simon Martin was not strangled
to death by Grieveson, nor was he set on fire. But at the time of Simon's
killing in 1990
00:33:45
when Grieveson
was only 19 and a half, he hadn't yet refined the method
that he wanted to use to kill.
00:33:57
He was still working out
in his own mind, I suspect, what gave him
the most satisfaction.
00:34:05
Martin was,
if you like, a prototype. Kelly, Hanson, and Grieff were
the finished article.
00:34:12
-Simon's murder predated
the others by 3 years. -I think the thing that I'd say
with this case
00:34:19
is that we have quite
a significant gap between 1990 and 1993. I'd be really interested to know
what Steven Grieveson
00:34:28
was doing
during that time period because often when
somebody commits a murder and enjoys
committing a murder,
00:34:35
they often don't wait years
until they commit another one. So that gap is
quite a problem for me.
00:34:42
-Just as before,
Detective Dave Wilson had re-examined Simon's case and discovered some DNA
belonging to Grieveson
00:34:51
at the scene of the murder. In November 2000,
he was arrested in his cell at Full Sutton Prison
and questioned by detectives.
00:35:02
-There's no doubt
that he had attacked and killed Simon Martin. Grieveson
denies any knowledge of it,
00:35:11
flatly refuses
to say anything. -Without a confession,
the police decided they couldn't
00:35:17
charge Grieveson
with Simon's murder. -Serial killers keep secrets
because it gives them power,
00:35:25
and it also gives them power
to torment the families
of their victims. Simon Martin's father,
who had been in the army,
00:35:34
launched a great appeal
to find his missing son. These were...real, ordinary,
decent people
00:35:45
whom Grieveson
took inordinate pleasure in tormenting. -But over a decade later,
out of the blue,
00:35:54
Grieveson finally confessed. In a series of interviews with
detectives in February 2013,
00:36:02
he admitted
that he was responsible for Simon Martin's death, but he still denied murdering
the 14-year-old schoolboy.
00:36:13
-When we find out
that Grieveson had admitted to killing Simon Martin,
none of us were surprised.
00:36:20
We always knew, and we always
wanted justice for Simon as well as ourselves. -So Steven Grieveson said
that he was haunted about Simon.
00:36:32
This is something
that had troubled him during his time in prison, and all of this apparently
from a man with no conscience,
00:36:39
with little empathy
for other people, somebody with significant
psychopathic traits.
00:36:44
I'd be quite cautious about
this statement because it suggests to us, doesn't it,
that he had some empathy,
00:36:50
that he has some remorse,
that he's feeling bad. But this is somebody
who's been in prison
00:36:55
for a significant amount
of time. He's been learning about
other people's emotions
00:36:59
while he's been in prison. He's been learning
what other people want to hear, what they need to hear,
and also the kind of things
00:37:06
that you need to say to make
your own situation better. So I'd be cautious about attaching
any real meaning to that.
00:37:15
-On the 14th of October 2013,
at New Castle Crown Court, Grieveson was back in the dock,
charged with a fourth murder
00:37:25
that had taken place
23 years beforehand. ♪♪ -When the Simon Martin trial
came up,
00:37:35
we all went to court every day, the same as we did
the first time, stuck together at the three
families or the four families,
00:37:43
which it had become. It was just as hard
as the first trial. We learned a lot of stuff
about our boys
00:37:50
that we got told wrongly
at the beginning. There was lots of stuff
that we didn't know came out.
00:37:57
So it was just very hard. It was difficult. -The jury did not believe that
Simon's death was an accident,
00:38:06
and on October 24, 2013, Grieveson was
found guilty of murder. -It was good news.
It was good news for Sunderland.
00:38:15
It was good news for the family
that this unsolved murder could finally be laid to rest,
00:38:21
and that would ease
some of the pain not only for the family
of Simon Martin but also for the family of
the boy who was wrongly arrested
00:38:29
and wrongly charged
with the killing. -It was revealed during
the second trial that Grieveson had written
to all three families
00:38:36
of his initial victims
asking for forgiveness. In extracts from a letter
to the family of Thomas Kelly,
00:38:43
he wrote, "I know you think
I am evil, horrible. "I should never have done
what I did.
00:38:50
"I never ever intended
to take Thomas away from you. "I am sorry I destroyed your
son's life, your family's life.
00:38:58
"I wish I could
turn the clock back. "I hope one day you will find it
in both of your hearts
00:39:04
to forgive me." -Those letters meant nothing
to me, nothing at all. And I think he wrote them
to wind us up.
00:39:14
It was his way
of getting to us again. -There's several levels
of psychopath. The top level is when
you have zero, zero emotions.
00:39:23
There's other levels that you
will have certain emotions but not other emotions
towards people.
00:39:30
But in his case, one thing I
have seen in other psychopaths and people who have been
to prison is that
00:39:35
they like the limelight, and once the limelight
starts to die down, they will find something else
to bring the limelight.
00:39:41
So it could have been that
that's the reason why he wrote the letters. -In respective of his motive
00:39:47
for writing
the letters of forgiveness, nothing will bring back
the four boys who Grieveson
heartlessly murdered.
00:39:57
-I think about Thomas
every day, many times in that day. He's always on me mind
and he's always there.
00:40:03
He's probably the first thing
I think about when I wake up and the last thing I think about
when I go to sleep.
00:40:08
It doesn't just go away.
It doesn't. It's hard. -The man who brought Grieveson
to justice,
00:40:16
Detective Superintendent
Dave Wilson, passed away in 2011. He was 64 years old. The shadow of the Sunderland
Strangler
00:40:26
still looms over the city today, a man who killed young boys
just to keep them quiet.
00:40:34
-Many people struggle
with their sexuality, but very few of them are going
to go on and harm other people,
00:40:39
let alone kill them. I think in the case
of Steven Grieveson, what we've got is a unique
toxic combination of factors.
00:40:46
We've got
a disruptive childhood. We've got a lack of acceptance
within a community.
00:40:52
So we've got all of these things
coming together to almost create
the perfect storms.
00:40:56
That's a horrible way
of describing it, but that's what we have
in this case. -I look back on it now,
and I thank God
00:41:02
that the families did do
what they did and that the media and the journalists at the time
did what they did
00:41:08
and really pushed
for the truth to come out. -We will never forgive
Steven Grieveson.
00:41:13
Never forgive him. He said it was too much,
and to be honest, if I was to find out
he died in prison tomorrow,
00:41:23
wouldn't bother us one bit. -Grieveson was a troubled man
with a troubled childhood,
00:41:30
but this can be no excuse for callously taking the life
of four young boys. His capture was all down
to the passion and hard work
00:41:40
of a detective spurred on by
the victims' families. Together, they finally brought
about the downfall
00:41:47
of Steven Grieveson, one of
the world's most evil killers. ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪