00:00:08
This time on Killers Caught on Camera in Austin, Texas. A woman is shot three times on the eve
00:00:17
of a bike race. Do I stop? I don't know what happened. I just walked in on her.
00:00:24
after a lunch date with a friend shapes a fatal love triangle. This might lead a
00:00:30
bike that evolves into an international manhunt. There's a showcasing to the
00:00:35
right. There's another one. Somebody had stood over her and fired one shot through her after she had
00:00:42
already fallen to the floor. And in the north of England, a suspected Gangland hit involves a shotgun and sulfuric
00:00:50
acid. He's got a lot of white powder around him as well that seems to be sort
00:00:56
of giving off gas. Why would an orchestrated hit like this happen in such a quiet residential area?
00:01:07
[Music] It just sounds like something bad is happening here. We know what happened
00:01:12
because the video tells us what happened. I heard some gunshots. Drop it. Whatever it is, drop it. That does
00:01:19
not prove that I killed my wife. The camera doesn't lie. In central Texas, the state capital,
00:01:34
Austin. In May 2022, emergency services received a panicked call. Austin 911. Um, my friend is staying
00:01:44
with me and I just walked in and she's laying on the bathroom floor and there's
00:01:49
blood everywhere. There's blood all over her face and all on the back of her
00:01:53
head. Austin police were the first on the scene. Austin police. First responders found a young woman
00:02:05
lying on the bathroom floor. The friend who had called 911 was performing CPR. Do I stop? I don't know what happened. I
00:02:16
just walked in on her on the right right here. As the first responding patrol officers arrived and
00:02:24
emergency medical services, they quickly realized that the victim was deceased and they pronounced her um dead on
00:02:32
scene. Okay, I'll let you go. You can talk to them. Okay. She doesn't live here. She's staying
00:02:43
really close with her family. Police questioned the friend to find out who the deceased woman was.
00:02:51
What's What's her name? Her name is Mariah. Mariah is her middle name. Her
00:02:56
first name is Anna. She's 26. [Music] [Applause] Mariah Wilson, known as Mo, was staying
00:03:03
in Austin to take part in the gravel locos race. Well was a remarkable friend. She was introverted, but she
00:03:14
really had this intensity and fierceness and this like quiet power. Mo grew up in East Burke,
00:03:24
Vermont. She was born into an athletic family. Mo comes from an athletic family. Her
00:03:32
dad was a very successful ski racer. She also had a younger brother who was also
00:03:37
a ski racer. When Mo went to study engineering at Dartmouth College, she joined the
00:03:44
women's alpine ski team. She was a competitor through and through. But after a series of injuries,
00:03:53
Mo moved on from skiing to focus on competitive bike racing. Cycling was the next best thing for her. She was really
00:04:01
good at it and she could channel that competitive energy. In 2019, Mo graduated from Dartmouth and
00:04:10
moved to San Francisco. She started competing in gravel racing competitions. Her first few races, she just dominated
00:04:20
the field and a world class field at that. And then from there, her star was on the rise as one of the premier racers
00:04:27
to come along in a long, long time. At the crime scene, police began a meticulous search for evidence. If you
00:04:36
get a chance, you check the calls around the area. There had been fired cartridge cases
00:04:43
located near her body and she had wounds consistent with being shot. There's a
00:04:48
showcasing to the right. There's another one right here. So, there's one in the bathroom.
00:04:55
Three showcases. We got three showcasing. Nobody heard any shots. Do you know how long she's been down? No.
00:05:02
They also discovered that Mo's bike was missing bike. Anywhere you see a bike. She said she
00:05:10
would put it right by the door. No bike. But the bike wasn't far from the apartment.
00:05:18
Hey, come here. Somebody might be in here. This might be the bike. [Music] My initial thought is why is this
00:05:27
property belonging to the victim several feet down and hidden in the bushes? We felt pretty certain that the possible
00:05:34
suspect in the homicide had removed that bike. Mo's injuries also gave the police
00:05:41
another clue about her killer. We located a gunshot wound in her chest that went through her chest, through her
00:05:49
back, and into the floor below her. And it appeared that somebody had stood over
00:05:54
her and fired one shot through her after she had already fallen to the floor. I began to get the feeling that whoever
00:06:01
did this, there could have been a personal aspect to it. Police began searching the area for
00:06:08
surveillance footage. They discovered a camera pointing down the alley beside the apartment where Mo had been found.
00:06:18
There was a vehicle observed on that video footage that was identified as a black Jeep. We also observed the brake
00:06:24
lights going on and off which showed us that the person was possibly unsure of where they were going. We found the
00:06:32
black Jeep also had a very distinct wheel pattern. [Music] Police questioned Mo's friend to find
00:06:40
out who Mo had been with that night. She was with my friend Colin. Yeah. Colin Strickland. Colin. Strickland.
00:06:51
Yeah. Yeah. I They went swimming. Colin Strickland was a professional bike racer. He'd won some of gravel cycling's
00:07:04
most prestigious races. Colin and Mariah had a very brief relationship. That relationship ended
00:07:12
when Mariah left to go back to California. They were still friends uh and would still meet up on rides every
00:07:18
now and then if they happen to be in the same city or or at the same race. As the last known person to see Mo Colin
00:07:27
was now a person of interest. The next morning, Thursday, May 12th, Detective Richard Spitler went
00:07:36
to Colin's residence. At this point, I didn't know if Colin was the person responsible for this
00:07:42
murder or if maybe he was just a witness. I decided that I would do a death notification. I don't really know what
00:07:51
to say, sir. So, apparently last night she she passed away. How did she right now? It's a it's an open
00:08:05
investigation, but it is being investigated as as a homicide. I didn't have any solid proof to
00:08:16
indicate that Colin was the person responsible for this murder. So, I told Colin that I wanted his help in
00:08:22
investigating this crime and I wanted to find out who was responsible. Colin was brought into the police
00:08:30
department for an interview. if you just want to take a seat in here. I'll be right back.
00:08:37
I began asking him, you know, more about Mariah, more about their outing. I had been in contact with Mo earlier in the
00:08:44
day. We were thinking of coordinating a ride. He was able to show me different text messages, the plans that they were
00:08:50
making, right? She sent me a photo of her on the bike. Is that Mo? Yeah, that's Mo. And this is more complexity,
00:08:59
but I have it saved as a different name just because I am a I got you. His name is Christine.
00:09:07
The name in Colin's phone for Mariah was Christine Wall. The question was, why did Colin have to
00:09:16
keep Mo Wilson saved in his phone under someone else's name? He indicated that
00:09:22
he does have a girlfriend named Caitlyn Armstrong. Caitlyn currently lives with him and she
00:09:29
would tend to be jealous. In the past, Caitlyn has looked at my phone. Basically, that would always
00:09:35
start fights. Exactly. Like, does she do that with like all of the girls that are
00:09:40
in your phone or like just with most most of them? You know, she's she loves
00:09:44
she loves me and she wants to be, you know. Yeah. Basically, nobody else can have you. Yeah. Yeah. You know,
00:09:54
having a contact in your phone under a different name, it definitely feels shady in the first instance. If you have
00:09:59
a partner who is jealous and you want to communicate with someone whom you've had
00:10:04
a sexual relationship with before, then you might just put them under a different name, even if there's nothing
00:10:08
else really going on. The problem with minor deceptions is that it can really amplify a jealous
00:10:15
mind. When he says that Caitlyn is jealous of it seems all his female friends, that signifies that there's a
00:10:23
bigger issue going on here with her general jealousy seems almost as if it's
00:10:27
part of this idea of love for him and that he's thereby normalizing or rationalizing it. Even though it sounds
00:10:34
like it might be jealousy that is quite severe, we were able to get an alibi. We
00:10:44
were able to get a story of where he had been, what he had done, and so started trying to look to see if we could find
00:10:50
surveillance video at that point to try and corroborate his story and his albby. Police obtained surveillance
00:10:58
footage from the pool bar where Colin said they went after their swim. This video shows Colin and Mariah
00:11:10
having a conversation. They appear calm. She doesn't look like she's in any kind
00:11:15
of fear. She drinks from his drink. Very friendly. Mo and Colin left the pool bar
00:11:26
together. They were then captured on multiple cameras on Colin's motorcycle heading towards the apartment where Mo
00:11:33
was later found dead. This is another angle of Colin on that white motorbike. This is important
00:11:46
because this corroborates the story that Colin has told us of what happened that
00:11:51
evening. In his interview, Colin told police that he had dropped Mo off in the alley behind the house where she was
00:11:58
staying. We said a pretty brief goodbye there. I didn't actually like watch her go
00:12:07
up the stairs. I got back to my house. Um, a little bit before dark, investigators discovered that the
00:12:15
apartment where Mo was staying had an electronic door lock. It logged her arriving home at 8:36
00:12:23
p.m. Just 1 minute later, the black Jeep was captured on camera in the alley just outside the
00:12:31
apartment. While we don't have a clear view of the license plate of this car, that doesn't
00:12:39
stop us from getting a lot of information. This very obvious running stripe, as well as what appears to be um
00:12:47
some sort of rack on the back of the vehicle. This car is in the area at the time of the
00:12:55
homicide. In the hours leading up to Mo's murder, the black Jeep was caught on camera multiple times.
00:13:02
circling the neighborhood. We're able to see that running stripe in the bike rack on the back. We've seen
00:13:10
this vehicle now on several camera angles and traveling at a very slow rate of speed, really appearing to prowl the
00:13:19
area. This is potentially the suspect in this homicide. Police had seen this vehicle
00:13:29
before. It had been parked in Colin's driveway when they first visited his house. We noticed this dark SUV with a
00:13:40
bike rack on the rear. We see that silver running stripe along the side of the vehicle.
00:13:50
Detective Spitler asked Colin who owned the Jeep. The Jeep is hers. Okay. So, that belongs to her. Okay. Do you ever
00:13:58
drive that one? No. I know for a fact that her vehicle was at that apartment. I told Colin that Caitlyn's Jeep is on
00:14:08
camera, that it's in the neighborhood at the time that Mariah had gotten home
00:14:13
after he had already dropped her off. Colin was shocked. He was very surprised. Whenever
00:14:21
she got home, was there anything? I didn't say anything. Has Caitlyn ever gotten so mad in the
00:14:29
past that not necessarily thinking that she would do anything, you know, but I mean, has she ever threatened anything
00:14:36
or she's always such a like mild like gentle person? When he says that she's a mild gentle
00:14:46
person, that to me feels like he in his mind has well a version of her that even
00:14:51
though she's jealous, she would never do anything. He's probably running through
00:14:56
all these moments, maybe even the jealous moments, maybe the moments where she's potentially gone through his
00:15:00
phone. And yet thinking, "No, but she's gentle and she's she's like me. We're
00:15:04
the same. We're we're calm and quiet." And so it feels like he's trying to say
00:15:09
to this police officer, "It couldn't have been her." Like, "This is not in
00:15:13
her demeanor at all." When they asked if Caitlyn owned a gun, Colin told the police that he had
00:15:22
recently bought two handguns. one for himself and one for Caitlyn. She's had a couple of incidents where
00:15:30
she's been like costed or had people in parking lots. Colin had been in an onoff relationship
00:15:42
with Caitlyn Armstrong since 2019. She was a yoga teacher, realtor, and also had a background in finance.
00:15:53
It was found that Caitlyn had an active warrant for her arrest, a class B misdemeanor warrant for theft of
00:15:58
service. She had received a Botox treatment, but she didn't pay for it. Just do a quick pat down real quick. It
00:16:09
gave the police a reason to bring Caitlyn in. All right, just hang tight and sit right here in this chair. It was
00:16:15
a chance to volunteer anything she might know about Mo's death. She was placed in the interview room and
00:16:24
we let them sit for a little bit because we do want to kind of watch their body language, see what they they do, how
00:16:29
they respond, if they're fidgety, if they're not. Um, she was interesting
00:16:34
because she was extremely still, which kind of stood out to me. So, there's a
00:16:39
situation that's going on. Did you hear about what's happened over the past 24
00:16:43
hours? Colin walked in the house and said one of the women in the cycling community passed away. Yes. Yeah. It
00:16:49
sounds like maybe he went out with this girl the other day and from what he's
00:16:53
saying that you were a little upset about it. I that is not accurate. Yeah. And that's why I wanted to chat with you
00:17:00
because it's a guy. He's going to say stuff and so we want to make sure that
00:17:05
we get both sides of the story and everything and clear it up. So what what were you doing yesterday? I would like
00:17:11
to leave. I think you would like to leave. Yeah. Okay. That's that's totally
00:17:15
your choice. Um and and the doors open. and you're welcome to leave. Um, but
00:17:20
again, that limits us to where we only have one side of the story. And your vehicle was seen next to her house. I
00:17:27
would like to leave if I'm free to leave. Okay. Is there any explanation as far as why the vehicle would be over
00:17:34
there? I would like to leave if I'm free to leave. Okay. Typically, with a truthful person
00:17:41
that has not done anything, they're going to respond in a manner of, "How
00:17:46
can I help you?" they're going to offer up information. So, it was it was a very
00:17:50
different reaction than what I expected from her. Caitlyn Armstrong was allowed to
00:17:57
walk free, but the police had a search warrant for the home she shared with Colin.
00:18:03
We were able to locate two handguns. Those handguns were tested against the fired cartridge cases that I
00:18:12
found on scene near the victim. One of the handguns came back as a positive match.
00:18:21
Police also found footage of Caitlyn at the shooting range. She was clearly capable of
00:18:28
handling a [Music] gun. Both Colin and Caitlyn's cell phones were seized during the search of
00:18:38
their property. When the police traced both of their movements on the night that Mo had
00:18:44
been killed, they revealed a major discrepancy. Colin's whereabouts are known for that
00:18:51
night, but Caitlyn's or not. It appeared as though her device had circled around
00:18:55
downtown Austin and then began traveling to East Austin. Caitlyn's device, it
00:19:00
turns off. This is something that is normally seen when someone is trying to conceal their movements because they are
00:19:06
about to commit a crime. Colin Strickland was now in the clear. Armed with this new evidence,
00:19:15
police issued a warrant for Caitlyn's arrest. The only problem was that when
00:19:21
they went to pick Caitlyn up, no one could find her. We noticed that her social media shut down. Nobody had heard
00:19:28
from her. So, we knew, okay, something's up. She She might have taken off at that
00:19:33
point. Police discovered that 2 days after Mo had been killed, Caitlyn Armstrong was
00:19:40
at a car dealership in South Austin where she sold her black Jeep for $12,000. This video shows Caitlyn
00:19:50
Armstrong in the waiting area dealing with her cell phone. There appears to be some plastic hanging off this phone. Is
00:19:58
this a new cell phone? Is she making plans to leave the area? She doesn't seem agitated. When the police seized
00:20:07
the jeep, the GPS system revealed Caitlyn's exact movements on the night Mo Wilson was killed.
00:20:17
There was a lot of data and GPS hits showing the Jeep circling the neighborhood. We were able to put that
00:20:24
black Jeep on the scene at the time of the murder. It showed that Caitlyn Armstrong had planned this. It showed
00:20:31
that she knew where Mo was staying and she was going to wait for them to come back to possibly confront
00:20:38
Mo. Mo Wilson was caught in the middle of a complicated situation, unaware of the intensity of emotions and their
00:20:49
consequences. Police knew Mo had been shot three times, twice in the head and once in the chest while lying on the
00:20:57
floor. Then police found footage from a neighbor security camera which revealed the distressing sound of Mo Wilson's
00:21:07
last moments. The pattern of the shots is callous. The space of time between that second
00:21:27
and third shot would have allowed the shooter to turn and leave, but this perpetrator didn't do that. They
00:21:33
followed uh the victim into another room and fired that third and fatal shot. I stayed away from the
00:21:42
investigation. I found that it just it kind of unraveled me. The more I learned, the
00:21:50
more it just deeply upset me. But Caitlyn Armstrong was on the run. She was missing, wanted as part of
00:22:00
a murder investigation. Weeks passed by and the investigation hit a dead end. Then a breakthrough. Police
00:22:10
discovered that Caitlyn had fled the country using her sister's passport. We have Caitlyn just making
00:22:19
her way calmly through the airport. She's wearing a face covering, which while not mandated at this time,
00:22:26
it's very easy for her to obstruct her face from view of the cameras and from
00:22:32
other people without causing any alarm or raising any red flags for those around her. But we can see Caitlyn's
00:22:39
distinctive yoga mat here. Her yoga mat was the only clue the police had. US marshals flew to Costa
00:22:50
Rica. Weeks of investigation drew a blank. Investigators decided to try their luck and put out a flyer for a
00:22:59
yoga teacher. Caitlyn just happened to reach out to one of those flyers. After 43 days on the run, Caitlyn
00:23:09
Armstrong was finally located and arrested at a hostel, but she looked different.
00:23:18
Caitlyn had changed her hair color, her style, uh the length of hair, but she also had gotten a nose job, and she was
00:23:26
currently in the healing process from this surgery. She ran. She fled the country. Changed
00:23:32
her appearance. Spent thousands of dollars altering her face with cosmetic surgery. Because she traveled into the
00:23:41
country illegally on her sister's passport, Caitlyn was deported from Costa Rica and arrested by US
00:23:49
officials. Caitlyn was charged with firstdegree murder. She pled not guilty. But two weeks before the trial
00:23:58
was due to start, her determination to flee justice surfaced again. She claimed that she had a leg
00:24:06
injury and which required her to not use leg restraints and that she needed to go
00:24:12
to a doctor's office that was outside of the jail. As they go to this doctor's
00:24:18
office, she bolts for it. It was a thoughtout escape. It was it was not something that was a spur of
00:24:25
the moment. She gets almost a mile away before she's actually caught. It was very telling. She does
00:24:36
not come across as a person that has any remorse. After a 17-day trial, Caitlyn Armstrong was found guilty of the
00:24:44
firstdegree murder of Mo Wilson. She was sentenced to 90 years. But the question remained, why did she
00:24:54
commit such a horrific murder? By all accounts, Caitlyn Armstrong appeared to be a fairly intelligent
00:25:01
person. I believe that there there was a jealousy issue and I believe that she killed Mariah Wilson in cold blood. She
00:25:08
plotted and planned this murder. She tracked Mariah Wilson to that apartment and she stood over her and shot her one
00:25:15
final time. And for somebody to be able to do that, to have the the capacity to do that, it's just it's just
00:25:22
cold-hearted. It's extremely rare to have a woman kill another woman over a partner. Mo ends up being the target of
00:25:36
Caitlyn's jealousy, of her more morbid jealousy. And I feel like it could have
00:25:41
almost as easily been somebody else. But maybe because Mo kind of had it all. She
00:25:46
was a really successful cyclist, which was exactly what her partner was into. She was beautiful. She was intelligent.
00:25:52
She was a friend who often saw her partner and had a sexual history with them. So maybe she was the ultimate
00:26:00
threat in her mind. And so that's why she killed Mo. [Music] The reaction among the cycling community
00:26:08
was just utter disbelief that something like this could befall our world, let alone Mariah Wilson, someone who had
00:26:17
just so much future, so much potential. It was devastating and shocking on every level.
00:26:25
I think I'll best remember her as this hard, charging, gritty, sweet girl. She
00:26:32
was fierce, intense, but so sweet and had the kindest heart. She was really [Music]
00:26:52
special. Caitlyn Armstrong brutally murdered Mo Wilson as a result of her morbid
00:27:00
jealousy. What jealousy does is it moves you from suspicions to beliefs and those
00:27:08
beliefs become your reality. And at some point you might feel the need to act on
00:27:14
that reality even if it's not based in fact. And sometimes you might be jealous
00:27:19
or morbidly jealous because you perceive a relationship between your partner and
00:27:23
somebody else and you seek at some point to eliminate the romantic rival. In other circumstances though, you can have
00:27:30
a single instance that is just sticking in your mind. And in those cases, it can
00:27:38
become an all-consuming experience where again, even without sufficient evidence
00:27:42
that anything particularly untoward happened, you constantly are thinking about this moment in time. And that kind
00:27:49
of fixation, that version of morbid jealousy can also lead to you taking matters into your own
00:27:56
hands. In the winter of 2022, British police found themselves confronted with a complete mystery. A case which
00:28:05
ultimately also came down to jealousy. In the northwest of England is Wigan. Wigan is a former industrial
00:28:23
town. It was known back in the day for its textiles. Like many of the towns and cities around here in the north, that
00:28:29
declined throughout the 20th century, and nowadays it's a lot more known for
00:28:33
its green spaces, its parks and canal [Music] side. At 6:38 p.m. on November 24th,
00:28:43
Greater Manchester Police received a call. A body had been found in the Shvington district of
00:28:50
Wigan. Emergency services were quickly on the scene. What they found was highly disturbing.
00:28:59
When the first responders arrived at the scene, it was apparent quite quickly that the victim had been attacked with
00:29:05
some sort of corrosive substance. Oh, he's got a lot of white powder around him as well that seems to be sort of
00:29:12
giving off gas of some description. It's It smells a bit ley. His body was covered in sulfuric acid
00:29:20
and sodium carbonate. his body was smoking. Really concerning for everybody who approached there and also prevented
00:29:28
people actually rendering first aid. The paramedics were uncertain about what this corrosive substance might be, but
00:29:36
it was apparent that the victim had succumbed to his injuries. It was only when police accessed footage
00:29:49
from security cameras that they began to understand what they were dealing with.
00:30:01
Although it was dark at the time, the police heard this really distinctive noise of a
00:30:07
gunshot. Alongside the acid attack, the victim had suffered a single gunshot to the
00:30:14
face. This changed the police investigation completely. The crime presented a total
00:30:22
mystery for investigators. Even though this shooting bore all the hallmarks of a gangland shooting, this
00:30:30
is 90% elderly people living there. So, who and why would an orchestrated hit like this happen in such a quiet
00:30:37
residential area? It wasn't until the day after the murder that a possible name for the
00:30:44
victim emerged. In their initial search of the area, police found a property which had
00:30:51
been left unsecured, as though somebody had just popped out. A short while afterwards, that person's family then
00:30:58
reported him missing. The victim was confirmed as 38-year-old Liam Smith. Liam Smith was an electrician. He
00:31:11
had his own business. He was the father to two young sons. And although he was separated from his partner, he was still
00:31:18
very much a part of his children's life. In many ways, this only deepens the
00:31:23
mystery for the police. They're then wondering about the motive for such a vicious crime. Could it even be the case
00:31:31
that this was an incident of mistaken identity where Liam was just in the wrong place at the wrong
00:31:39
time? The extreme use of violence may communicate a number of things. It might be about destroying evidence. It may be
00:31:48
about obliterating the identity of the individual, but it could also be about sending a clear message to the families
00:31:55
of the victim that this person has done something wrong and retaliation has taken
00:32:02
place. An autopsy on Liam's body revealed further alarming details of the manner of his killing.
00:32:10
He was shot in the face uh with an adapted Glock with shot pellets and a much larger sphere that had been added I
00:32:20
believe for maximum damage. They were really interesting aspects and as a team made us ask lots
00:32:28
of questions around why somebody would use those particular types of chemicals. Why would somebody use that particular
00:32:36
combination of ammunition? With so little information to go on, police began to search for more video
00:32:44
evidence. Liam's own security cameras provided the first breakthrough. A little after 6:30 p.m.,
00:32:55
a man in a high viz jacket and a head torch gets out of a car, which is parked a little further away on the street, and
00:33:02
heads towards the house. It disappears for probably about 40 seconds out of camera, potentially to
00:33:12
lure Liam out of his address. He has a phone in his hand and then he turns left from Liam's drive and he walks back in
00:33:20
the vehicle wearing a florescent jacket, a headlamp, all efforts to disguise his
00:33:26
identity. Liam comes out of his house presumably alerted by the CCTV cameras. He checks
00:33:35
around the side of the house. He then comes to the front and pauses before heading towards this parked car a little
00:33:42
further up the road. That's a heartbreaking moment to watch. It's the last few seconds of
00:33:49
Liam's life. Less than half a minute later, there's the sound, the audio sound of
00:33:55
one gunshot. The vehicle drives away, but then strangely a few minutes later returns to
00:34:06
the crime scene. The man gets out of his car with the chemicals and pours them onto Liam's
00:34:13
body. It does seem strange after shooting Liam in the face fatally that this asalent would return to the crime
00:34:21
scene to then throw these chemicals on the body. It does beg the question, was this to cause further damage and pain to
00:34:28
him or maybe even to send some kind of message? Police continued to search through hours
00:34:36
of footage from the surrounding area. Police now discovered two vital pieces of evidence. The first was some
00:34:44
footage from the dash cam of a supermarket delivery van. [Music] On that footage, we see the asalent's
00:34:56
vehicle arriving on the street at 7:30 a.m. that morning. This vehicle was also spotted on the cameras of a bin lorry in
00:35:04
the area that morning. It was a car with the license plate beginning R22. [Music]
00:35:15
He parked up on Liam's road and there he stayed without breaking cover without
00:35:20
leaving that vehicle for almost 10 hours before he murdered Liam. The fact that someone sat outside
00:35:30
Liam Smith's house for 10 hours gives us a real insight into their psyche. This
00:35:35
is someone who's committed to the course of action that they want to take. They're subscribing to a code that makes
00:35:42
sense to them, but really makes them judge, jury, and executioner. Police quickly discovered the license
00:35:50
plates on the vehicle had been cloned. From the asalent's movements, the police thought that he must have had
00:35:57
some prior knowledge of the area, maybe had even visited the address previously. The hunch proved to be
00:36:04
correct. After days meticulously searching CCTV, they found further sightings of
00:36:12
the car in Liam's street. 3 weeks before the [Music] murder, the driver of this car matched
00:36:27
the description of the asalent from the night of Liam's killing. Police believed it was a
00:36:33
hostile reconnaissance. At that time, the license plate on the Jeep was different. Again, they checked and
00:36:43
worked out that the plate was also fake. These false plates had been caught on an AMPR camera over in Sheffield. So,
00:36:52
this now gave the police their first clue and a new area to search. Couple of weeks into the investigation,
00:37:03
we received intelligence from South Yorkshire Police that a vehicle had been stopped three weeks before Liam was
00:37:10
murdered. And in that vehicle was the R22 plate. It was that that really unraveled
00:37:17
this case. This is a false number plate, so they confiscate it. But it then seems
00:37:24
that the driver created an identical set. Police were now able to link the driver of that vehicle back to a
00:37:33
business in Sheffield. They visited the premises and searched CCTV cameras in the vicinity.
00:37:41
They found footage of an individual who matched the description of the asalent parking a Shogun car with the false
00:37:50
number plates and then going into the business premises. They then found footage of the
00:37:56
same individual parking an Audi car outside the premises. A check of the license details
00:38:05
on the Audi gave them a name, Michael Hillier. Hillia was a known drug dealer around
00:38:14
the area of Sheffield. He had previous convictions for violence. Police also discovered
00:38:20
incidences of coercive control and domestic violence. Hillier was tracked down to
00:38:27
his home in Sheffield and taken into custody. This photograph communicates power, control, and dominance. To me,
00:38:37
it's a communication of aggression, distance. There's the communication that
00:38:42
this connects to a gangster lifestyle. When Hillia was first interviewed by police, he played it very
00:38:51
cool, giving no common answers across the board. And the police were really struggling at this stage to establish a
00:38:58
link between Liam and Hillia, other than the fact that he had been seen on that CCTV footage outside Liam's home.
00:39:06
But unbeknown to Hillia, his car insurance details revealed another name to the police. Rachel
00:39:16
Folto. Rachel had been in a relationship with Hillier since 2021, and they had just come back from a holiday to
00:39:23
Jamaica. When police arrive at Rachel Folsto's address, she admitted to officers that
00:39:30
she had met Liam Smith in September 2019, that they'd gone on a date after meeting on Tinder, they'd spent the
00:39:37
night together, and also gone for lunch the next day. She was initially brought in and questioned as a potential
00:39:45
witness. When she was interviewed, Rachel spoke at length, but denied any involvement.
00:39:52
She said she only knew that Liam had been killed when Hillia told her the day after Liam had been murdered.
00:39:58
At first, she was treated as a witness, but it wasn't long before further evidence came to
00:40:04
light. Police found she searched for Wigan murder just hours after Liam had been killed, before his name had been
00:40:12
released to the public. That in itself was a really significant search. How could she have known that
00:40:20
the man that she'd had a one night stand with two years before was dead on the
00:40:24
street unless she was involved? Detectives then found a string of suspicious messages on Folto's
00:40:33
phone. The day before the murder, Hillas sent a text to Rachel saying he was ill
00:40:39
and in need of some TLC. She said she was on her way. Rachel was sending Hilly messages
00:40:49
knowing he wasn't there because Rachel had been at Hilly's house when he left
00:40:54
to murder Liam and she knew he'd left his phone there. Clear alibi messages. Hillia sent
00:41:02
no messages. He had no phone with him. He deliberately left his phone at home. Deeper dives into Folto's search history
00:41:09
only added to the weight of the evidence against her. In October 2022, a month before Liam's
00:41:17
killing, Fto had been searching for his company details online, and she'd been
00:41:22
looking up his address on Google Earth. Her phone also showed searches for a Mitsubishi Shogun car and how long it
00:41:29
takes to burn a car out completely. This was just days before Liam's killing.
00:41:36
The vehicle was eventually found burned out in a forest in the north of England. Hillier and Folto were charged
00:41:46
with murder. Rachel and Liam had gone for one day in Rachel's hometown of York. They'd
00:41:53
stayed the night in a hotel together. The pair never saw each other again. In 2021, Rachel began a relationship with
00:42:01
Hillia, who she said could be verbally abusive and quite volatile. Folto said that Hillia was not
00:42:10
happy when he found out about this one night stand with Liam. Despite this happening 2 years earlier and that he
00:42:16
would continuously bring this up whenever the pair would argue. Michael Hillier had very strong
00:42:24
views about women. He was disturbed by the fact that Rachel Falsto did not only have a dating life before they met, she
00:42:31
also had a sexual life and that was intolerable for him to comprehend. This is where things become
00:42:39
a bit complicated. So Rachel Fto denies that she ever said this, but Hillier seems to get in his mind that that night
00:42:48
Liam Smith had unconsensual sex with Rachel and that he then needed to take revenge against Liam in this act of
00:42:57
vigilante justice. We can understand how someone may feel jealous when they hear about a partner's
00:43:07
sexual past because it does challenge sometimes the experience in the here and now. However, it's not so much the
00:43:14
feelings that's problematic, it's how a person responds to that. And it seems
00:43:18
that in some cases the activation of a criminal code provides a pathway by which to resolve this issue.
00:43:26
What Michael Hillier would say is that he is someone of very traditional values and he didn't like the fact that Rachel
00:43:33
Folste had a one night stand with Liam. The disturbing thing about this situation is that these thoughts and
00:43:41
opinions about women initiated and fueled a very calculated, sadistic, and violent response that ended up in a
00:43:49
person dying. Falso claimed she knew nothing of the killing until Helia came back to her
00:43:59
house the next day and that she was petrified to go to the police. But police found evidence that Hillier and
00:44:05
Folto began planning to murder Liam in May 2022, 6 months before he was eventually
00:44:14
killed. Just days after the brutal murder, they marked the occasion by wallowing in the luxurious bays of the
00:44:24
Caribbean. Their case went to court in the summer of 2023. As the trial wore on, Hillier and
00:44:32
Folto seemed to turn against one another. Hillia claims that it was Folto that planned the routes to and from
00:44:39
Liam's address, that she had sourced the acid to use in the attack, and that she
00:44:44
had even suggested that he sever Liam's penis. Hillier and Folto were both convicted of
00:44:54
murder. Folto was also convicted of perverting the course of justice. Michael Hillier was sentenced to 33
00:45:03
years in prison and Rachel Folto was given a 30-year sentence. Liam was more than just a
00:45:13
family member to us. He was our rock, our Liam. He had the biggest and most kind-hearted soul and would literally do
00:45:22
anything for anyone. Liam's life wasn't the only one that was destroyed that
00:45:26
night. Everyone who knew and loved Liam had been left completely heartbroken, devastated, and traumatized by the
00:45:35
events that happened on the 24th of November. It was unbelievable the motive for Liam
00:45:43
Smith's murder. Liam's family will never ever get over that, nor should they be
00:45:48
expected to. This case begins with police arriving to this crime scene. There's an unknown
00:45:55
body laid in this residential street covered in a mysterious corrosive substance. It's confusing and mysterious
00:46:02
from the get-go, but what materializes is this really senseless, brutal killing of a father of two grounded in nothing
00:46:12
more than malice. And Liam Smith did not deserve to die in the way that he did. [Music]
00:46:51
[Applause] [Music]