00:00:04
WILL HANRAHAN:
Elderly farmer Bill Taylor missing without a trace. Police interrogate his wife.
00:00:10
They believe she knows
where his body is. POLICE: And now
we're giving you, and have frequently given you,
the opportunity to tell us
00:00:18
what happened to Bill. Can we go out and
get his body back? So that his family can bury him?
00:00:26
So his children can bury him? WILL HANRAHAN: This was a story
of love, of hate, of intrigue.
00:00:34
The simple fact was
they were a family at war. WILL HANRAHAN: Also
on the scene, Angela
00:00:39
Taylor's lover, Paul Cannon. Cannon and Taylor
were exchanging some pretty horrific messages
with each other via WhatsApp.
00:00:47
POLICE: There's no more
talk of getting rid of Bill, killing Bill, making
love while the blood
00:00:55
is running down the drain. WILL HANRAHAN: It
was a countryside murder mystery with an unhappy
marriage at the heart of it.
00:01:03
A mystery which could not
be solved until the body of Bill Taylor was found. [theme music]
00:01:21
[tense music] When farmer William Taylor
met a woman called Angela, she gave him a
new lease of life.
00:01:45
He'd been previously married. He had his son by
that relationship. His first marriage
ended in divorce
00:01:55
when his son Richard was 11. And it seems that his wife
simply just got up and left
00:01:59
and didn't come back. WILL HANRAHAN: It
had been six years of being a single parent when
William Taylor, known as Bill,
00:02:06
found love again. Angela Taylor came from the
Northeast, from Middlesbrough. She came down to
the Hitchin area.
00:02:14
She formed a relationship with
a young man who, at the time, worked on Bill Taylor's farm.
00:02:22
They had a child together. It was a rocky relationship. And it was while she was
with him that she and Bill
00:02:31
became known to each other. And before long, he left. And their relationship
then flourished
00:02:39
in the wake of his departure. Angela was 26 years old. She was 18 years
younger than him.
00:02:45
They seemed to fall in
love extremely quickly. He had a lot of money. She was a young girl.
00:02:52
It's not an unusual pairing. She may have been attracted by
the money and he, by her youth.
00:02:59
He'd inherited a
farm from his family. He was very successful. It was a mixed farm.
00:03:05
Very, very large farm,
and he built it up to be an incredibly
successful business
00:03:09
worth a great deal of money. What lay in the
background, it being on the fringes of Hitchin,
was the possibility
00:03:18
of residential development
of a substantial part of the acreage for housing. There'd already
been discussions.
00:03:26
And the potential benefits or
profits from such a development were truly astronomical.
00:03:34
We're talking many, many,
many millions of pounds. WILL HANRAHAN: In 1993, just a
year into their relationship,
00:03:41
Angela moved in to
Harkness Hall Farm. Events which followed
took place in and around this lush countryside.
00:03:47
Bill's teenage son
Richard now knew others were on the rich, rural scene. Because at the time,
Richard was a young man.
00:03:57
He, up until that point, he
was his father's only child. I think he had been that
for long enough to have got
00:04:04
the idea very
clearly in his head that he would be
the sole beneficiary and would inherit his
entire father's estate.
00:04:13
WILL HANRAHAN: Pretty
soon, that hope evaporated when Bill and Angela
had a child of their own.
00:04:18
John Price, QC, would
become intimately acquainted with the
Taylor's family affairs,
00:04:23
personal and financial. And he realized very quickly,
particularly, of course, when Angela had her
first child with William,
00:04:34
that all of his expectations
would be changed. Not that he would be entirely
disinherited, but that he might
00:04:43
be expected to share that
which, up until that point, he would have had to himself.
00:04:50
It seems to me
like from the get go, Richard had a real
instinct around Angela and potentially the
motives that Angela
00:04:58
had for being with his father. And I don't think
that he set out to be objectionable
or challenging
00:05:05
in the relationship. I just think he knew. I think he loved his father. He wanted to protect his father.
00:05:11
And he went out
of his way to try to make it as
obvious as possible that this was a bad fit.
00:05:17
WILL HANRAHAN: When
Angela had first moved in, 18-year-old Richard Taylor
left the family farm.
00:05:22
Soon after, Bill and
Angela tied the knot. In 1997, Bill and Angela got
married in Stevenage registry
00:05:31
office, a small affair. Richard and his family
didn't go to the wedding. WILL HANRAHAN: Despite
Richard's fears,
00:05:37
the marriage, initially,
was a happy one. They did go on to have
a long relationship.
00:05:42
And they had children
of their own. They have a nice home. They've got land. They're wealthy.
00:05:47
It looks very comfortable. WILL HANRAHAN: As
the years passed, the couple's wealth grew.
00:05:52
Bill was a shrewd businessman,
as well as a dedicated farmer. He was someone who, over
the course of his career,
00:06:00
acquired more land. And as he acquired more land, so
obviously, his worth increased.
00:06:07
And he worked very hard. He was-- he was a very,
very diligent farmer. WILL HANRAHAN: Less
than a mile away,
00:06:15
at his own farm, Bill's son
Richard was doing equally well. He lived in farming property,
from which he also ran
00:06:23
and managed his coach business. He had a business
running a number of coaches providing transport.
00:06:31
For example, when the
trains didn't run, Richard's coaches would
act as a substitute.
00:06:36
Richard really is a chip
off the old block where it comes down to his work ethic.
00:06:40
He is like his father. WILL HANRAHAN: Bill
and Richard also continued to run the farming
estate at Harkness Hall
00:06:45
together. Father and son worked
together pretty harmoniously on the farms for many years.
00:06:55
And that continued, despite the
relationship and the marriage with Angela. WILL HANRAHAN: This was
the crux of tensions
00:07:05
in the Taylor marriage,
which, as the years passed, began to deteriorate. As far as Angela was concerned,
Bill worked too much.
00:07:13
And he was too close to his son. One of the reasons why,
as the years went by, she became disenchanted
was because she--
00:07:24
the truth was, she
barely ever saw him. You have to think about what
being a farmer's wife is about.
00:07:29
You have to be all in. It is such a long hours job. It is hard work. They barely ever,
ever, went on holiday,
00:07:37
because he would
never leave the farm. So I think she came to
realize that much as he cared
00:07:44
for her as he did,
the truth was she was probably his second love. The first was the
farm and the cattle.
00:07:51
WILL HANRAHAN: To
add insult to injury, the person who did get
all of Bill's attention
00:07:56
was the man Angela
saw as a rival for her husband's
affection and his money. I suspect that that
will have contributed
00:08:04
to Angela's resentment. That not only did she
not see much of him, but she was aware that what
he was doing and where he was,
00:08:13
he was spending large amounts
of time with his son Richard. There was some serious
disharmony within home.
00:08:22
WILL HANRAHAN: By the
time Bill and Angela celebrated their 10th
wedding anniversary in 2007,
00:08:27
son and stepmother were
known to have disagreements with Bill Taylor
caught in the middle
00:08:32
and making a big decision. In 2008, Richard was
absolutely furious to find out that his father
had left his family
00:08:41
home to Angela in his will. WILL HANRAHAN: By 2015,
Angela had had enough. There came a point
when Taylor clearly
00:08:52
wanted out of the relationship. She wanted to leave. She told him she
wanted to leave.
00:08:58
He wasn't happy
about that at all. At the time she left,
she sued him for divorce.
00:09:04
The one thing which
he set his face against, and upon which
he never relented, was the idea of a divorce.
00:09:14
And he dug his heels in over
that and would not flinch. WILL HANRAHAN: Bill would
not accept that the 18
00:09:22
year marriage was over. But he did make
sure his estranged wife was financially secure.
00:09:29
Angela's payoff was
the source of yet more resentment for Richard Taylor. After a series of
protracted negotiations,
00:09:36
they had completed a
deed of separation, whereby she was
provided for materially.
00:09:45
She acquired the sole ownership
of some of the farming property, including
the farmhouse
00:09:51
into which she moved with their
children when she left him. She was given two farms.
00:09:56
She was given various
other properties that could be rented out. She was given, I think,
220 acres of land.
00:10:03
She had been his
wife for many years. They'd had children together. She'd supported him in his
work at the farm as his wife.
00:10:11
And the these were monies
to which, under our family finance laws, she was entitled.
00:10:18
WILL HANRAHAN: Angela
had acquired a great deal of wealth, all debt free. The monetary value
of what she acquired
00:10:26
under the deed of separation
couldn't be precise calculated. But it was somewhere in the
region of 3 to 4 million pounds
00:10:35
on the open market. WILL HANRAHAN: The estrangement
of husband and wife should have eased relations
between father and son.
00:10:41
But somehow, Angela continued
to come between them. And the spectacle
of the father
00:10:47
and the son almost
coming to blows was one which simply
delighted her. [birds chirping]
00:11:01
WILL HANRAHAN:
Angela Taylor started her new life as a single woman. But she was still very much in
her former husband Bill's life,
00:11:08
and in Richard's. Angela had moved to
the farm which she'd acquired under the settlement.
00:11:14
That was just across the fields. And only a short walk
from William's farm was that of his son, Richard.
00:11:23
So they were all
very-- they were all within a walk of each other. Angela went nowhere.
00:11:28
She was still a heavy
part of Bill's life. And that made her a heavy
part of Richard's life.
00:11:33
She was still there. She was still benefiting. She was still goading
Richard every day.
00:11:39
There was an
incident at Bill's farm when Richard was hosting
a shooting party. Bill attended.
00:11:49
But he didn't intend to
go along to the shooting. He attended because you want
to complain about the shooting.
00:11:53
For one reason or
another, the two of them had a massive row that day. And all Richard could see
while his father was shouting
00:12:02
at him, telling him off,
over there in the distance, grinning at him, chuckling,
laughing, was Angela.
00:12:09
WILL HANRAHAN: Angela's
presence made an already tense situation worse. Richard lost his temper.
00:12:14
He got into his car. And he drove his
car into Bill's wing mirror, a tiny bit of damage.
00:12:20
Angela was a gleeful
observer of this incident. And it was she who
rang the police
00:12:28
and gave them an
overblown account of what was taking place,
used the word firearm.
00:12:38
Which, of course, had
the police descending upon the farm in their droves. When nothing, in fact, had
occurred involving anyone being
00:12:52
threatened with a firearm. It's just that there
were large numbers of people in the near
vicinity holding shotguns.
00:12:58
So she purposefully and
willfully inflames situations to cause further division.
00:13:04
It was a very significant
moment in the story, because it was the
beginning of, in effect,
00:13:12
a complete breakdown
in the relationship between William and Richard. And they did not speak again
for two or three years.
00:13:25
WILL HANRAHAN: Now
estranged from his wife and his eldest son, Bill
was increasingly isolated.
00:13:30
In the meantime, Angela
was free to find love. About two years later, Angela
starts a new relationship with
00:13:38
a man called Paul Cannon,
who is a 54-year-old farm laborer and digger driver. Paul Cannon was a local man.
00:13:47
He lived at an
address in Hitchin. He worked for a
local company that did quarrying and the like.
00:13:58
And ran heavy goods vehicles. And he came to be introduced
to the story, first of all,
00:14:08
because the company
for whom he worked were contracted by Bill
Taylor to do some work
00:14:15
on Bill Taylor's farm. And as a result,
he and Bill met. And it was as a result
of that that he then came
00:14:24
to be introduced to Angela. WILL HANRAHAN: Not that Bill
was aware of the relationship
00:14:29
at first. There is no doubt that they
conducted the relationship in a furtive way.
00:14:36
They always lived separately. But there was some
evidence to show that they were frequently to be
seen in the local public house.
00:14:45
And there was also
evidence to show that, not infrequently,
local hotel rooms would be booked where they
might be together on their own.
00:14:57
WILL HANRAHAN: Why the secrecy? After all, Angela
was a single woman. I think that they were pretty
determined to try and keep it
00:15:05
from Bill, because Angela
feared what his reaction would be if he found out. The reality is the Bill
is still madly in love
00:15:15
with Angela. And he tells everybody that. WILL HANRAHAN: The feeling
was far from mutual.
00:15:20
Angela was still determined
to make their split permanent. By the time she met Paul
Cannon, she already felt
00:15:28
pretty resentful towards Bill. She wanted to revive divorce
proceedings, which she'd
00:15:35
initially commenced in 2014. And they'd got nowhere. WILL HANRAHAN: In
a small community,
00:15:41
it was only a matter
of time before Bill found out about Angela's new
man, which he did in 2018.
00:15:49
He was bitterly upset when
he learned of her relationship with Paul Cannon. So much so, because
he knew Cannon.
00:15:59
He confronts Paul. And now an elderly man, Paul
effectively laughs at him and tells him to
put up or shut up.
00:16:07
Cannon couldn't have cared
less, faced him down straight. It didn't come to blows.
00:16:11
There was an angry
exchange of words. But Cannon was
not to be bullied. That was the only ever
direct confrontation
00:16:18
that took place between them. He asked Angela to
finish the relationship. She refuses to acknowledge
there even is one.
00:16:23
He went and saw his employers
and actually got him fired. So he was interfering
in their relationship.
00:16:35
I think that started a
chain of events that very quickly got out of control. WILL HANRAHAN: Bill
had got Paul Cannon
00:16:43
sacked from his place of work. He was refusing to
grant Angela a divorce. In the eyes of the couple,
Bill Taylor was standing
00:16:51
between them and happiness. In March 2018, Angela
begins divorce proceedings. But Bill is not
going to play ball.
00:17:00
His comment to his son is
she made me suffer for 20, I'm going to make
her suffer for 5.
00:17:06
And what this was
meaning and referring to was that in order to
get a contested divorce,
00:17:10
you have to show a
five year separation. And that's what Bill
was going to do. WILL HANRAHAN: Privately,
Angela and Paul
00:17:16
began fantasizing about
getting their revenge on Bill. In public, they were
openly hostile towards him.
00:17:23
He was, in effect,
being bullied by them. He would describe how, if
they came across each other,
00:17:29
for example, in Hitchin,
they wouldn't move out of the way of the pavement. They'd sort of walk straight
at him and try and barge him.
00:17:36
Angela and Paul
love taunting Bill. If they were in a
car, and he was walking, the car would, as
it were, swerve
00:17:43
towards the pavement,
that sort of childish, petulant, but nevertheless
threatening, behavior.
00:17:50
And it was clear from what he
said to friends in the period leading up to his disappearance
that it did disconcert him,
00:17:57
if not cause him some fear. I mean, the level of
nastiness, cruelty, even narcissism, to some
degree, is really clear
00:18:10
in both of these human beings. WILL HANRAHAN:
Bill was suffering. But from April 2018,
he was no longer
00:18:16
bearing the burden alone. Richard and one
of his daughters were out walking
their dog one day.
00:18:22
And it just so
happened that coming in the opposite direction
down the path was his father.
00:18:28
And it was one of those
situations where, really and truly, they simply could not
avoid speaking with each other.
00:18:35
Once they were confronted
with each other and did actually exchange a
few words, the ice was broken.
00:18:43
Because the deep roots
of affection were there. WILL HANRAHAN: Richard was
shocked at Bill's appearance.
00:18:49
One of the things that Richard
really notes about his dad is he just looks sad. And this demonstrates just how
broken he is by this point.
00:18:57
You know, it's taken
its toll on him. He describes him
as seeming frail, as seeming half of
the man that he was.
00:19:03
WILL HANRAHAN:
The reconciliation with his son and
grandchildren when some way to reviving Bill's spirits.
00:19:09
But just a month later, he
came under attack once again. On the 26th of May, Bill's
blue Land Rover is set on fire.
00:19:17
His Land Rover vehicle was
badly damaged by fire whilst parked in one of his barns.
00:19:25
There was no doubt that
this had been deliberate. The fire had not, in fact,
caused as much damage
00:19:32
as was clearly intended. And the items which had
been used to start it were found, pretty much intact,
in the cab of Bill's Land
00:19:42
Rover, consisting
of a petrol can with a residue of
accelerant in it and some cloths which
had been used as a wick.
00:19:51
WILL HANRAHAN: Police
attended and collected evidence of the arson attack. The petrol can and clothing
was sent for forensic analysis.
00:19:58
There is some evidence to
suggest that he suspected that Paul Cannon, and
indeed, Angela might
00:20:05
have been responsible for it. He told the police
that he thought he had seen the petrol
can at Angela's farm
00:20:12
on a previous occasion. That had a profound
effect on Bill. It made him very
frightened, very concerned.
00:20:19
Bill, this has been his
world for most of his life. This has been his community.
00:20:24
This is where he's
grown his family. And now suddenly, he's feeling
threatened in his own home.
00:20:30
As a result of that,
Richard moved an employee of into Bill's farm to live
in the farmhouse as a lodger,
00:20:39
to act to some
reassurance to his father in the days that followed this
very frightening incident.
00:20:46
That lodger was called-- was a man called Lush. WILL HANRAHAN: A week after
Bill's Land Rover was torched,
00:20:52
the Taylor family was
following what had recently become the Sunday ritual. What they used to do was they
had their lunch themselves.
00:20:59
And then one of Richard's,
by now adult children, it was his eldest son who used
to work on the farm with him,
00:21:07
would take a plate of food
round to Bill Taylor's farm so that Bill could have
a good Sunday lunch.
00:21:14
On Sunday the 3rd of
June, it's a beautiful day in Hertfordshire. Richard's eldest son
had taken a Sunday lunch
00:21:23
around to his grandfather. He went round there in the
late afternoon, early evening.
00:21:28
He stayed with his grandfather
whilst he ate the dinner. WILL HANRAHAN: Bill
washed up his plate,
00:21:35
meticulous as always. And at around 9 o'clock, his
grandson prepared to leave. Bill walked him to the gate
of the farm in his slippers.
00:21:46
They said goodbye
at the farm gate. And Richard's son walked home. And that was the
last that anybody
00:21:54
ever saw of Bill Taylor. [tense music] WILL HANRAHAN: Farmer Bill
Taylor, for all anyone knew,
00:22:08
had gone home after a
family Sunday lunch. William is last
seen by his grandson at about 9:30 when his
grandson leaves to go home.
00:22:16
And Mr. Lush, the lodger,
returned to the house at about 2 o'clock in the morning.
00:22:23
He went past William's room. And the door was closed. And he assumed William
was in bed and asleep.
00:22:28
He got up early
the next morning. Again, William's door
was still closed. He thought the same.
00:22:35
He went downstairs, he made
himself some breakfast, and he left the unwashed
crockery in the sink.
00:22:42
WILL HANRAHAN: It was on
his return to Harkness Hall that afternoon that
coach driver Richard Lush
00:22:46
noticed something troubling. The breakfast crockery
was still unwashed. And he knew that that would
not have been the case if Bill
00:22:55
Taylor had been up
and around and about the house as he expected. So now, he went up to Bill's
door, he knocked on it.
00:23:04
Then he went into the room and
he found Bill's bed made up. It was quite obvious that
no one had slept in it.
00:23:13
And therefore, it appeared
that Bill must already have gone before Mr. Lush had
arrived back in the early hours
00:23:23
of that morning. WILL HANRAHAN: This was
totally out of character. Mr. Lush was sure
that Bill Taylor
00:23:28
would not simply leave his farm
and his animals unattended. The police were notified.
00:23:33
Immediately, the
police treated it as one of those
disappearances which attract concern and suspicion.
00:23:43
WILL HANRAHAN: Immediately,
searchers found evidence to reinforce their
fears that Bill had
00:23:48
been the victim of foul play. They had an enormous
amount of volunteers in. They had search and
rescue teams coming in.
00:23:55
And they searched all the
farmland meticulously. One of the things
that they couldn't
00:24:02
find anywhere when they
searched the house was Bill's Wellingtons. Bill's hearing aid
was found in the house.
00:24:09
Now, he never went
anywhere without this. WILL HANRAHAN: Police did
not believe Bill Taylor
00:24:13
had left of his own accord. The search went on
for weeks, the area expanding to cover the
fields and farmland
00:24:20
for miles around Bill's farm. A month later, another
troubling clue. When, about four weeks
after Bill disappeared,
00:24:30
Richard and Richard's sons were
working in Bill's farmyard, and one of Richard's sons found
a link of an arthritis bracelet
00:24:44
that was immediately
recognized as being one that had belonged to William. And that since it
had been given to him
00:24:54
by Angela several years
ago, he pretty much never took off his wrist. Now, this led
the investigators
00:25:01
to think that possibly
this had fallen off during some kind of
a struggle as he was
00:25:05
being led from the property. WILL HANRAHAN: In the first
days of the investigation
00:25:09
into Bill's
disappearance, police had interviewed his family,
his estranged wife Angela,
00:25:14
and of course, her
boyfriend Paul Cannon. Paul, who, at the
start of June, had been the proud owner
of a Suzuki 4x4,
00:25:21
had raised suspicions early on. Only very shortly before
Bill's disappearance, Paul had acquired the vehicle
from one of Angela's sons
00:25:32
and had been driving it around. There was evidence that on
the Monday, on the very Monday
00:25:38
that Bill disappeared,
Paul Cannon was using his telephone to
be in contact with someone
00:25:45
to sell that car. So he was, having acquired
it relatively recently, now he was getting rid
of it within less than 24
00:25:55
hours of Bill's disappearance. WILL HANRAHAN: When
questioned as witnesses, Paul and Angela
professed to know nothing
00:26:02
about Bill's whereabouts. They appeared happy to help
police with their inquiries.
00:26:06
All of the members
of the family, Richard's side of the
family, and Paul Cannon,
00:26:12
and Angela Taylor had
been asked by the police, whilst they were dealing
with them as witnesses,
00:26:17
if they would
voluntarily surrender their mobile telephone handsets
for forensic examination.
00:26:24
And they all did. WILL HANRAHAN: Paul Cannon was
confident there was nothing on his phone to trip him up.
00:26:30
Overconfident, perhaps. Cannon and Taylor
were exchanging some pretty horrific messages
with each other via WhatsApp.
00:26:38
They had assumed that because
WhatsApp is advertised and promoted as a secure and
an encrypted chat application
00:26:47
that it wouldn't be possible for
their messages to be recovered. [message sounds]
00:26:57
POLICE: WhatsApp
messages, WhatsApp's safe. What do you mean by that? PAUL CANNON: No comment.
00:27:04
POLICE: Did you
think that WhatsApp couldn't be accessed by police? What was it you had
to be safe about?
00:27:14
What was it you were worried
about police finding out? There was some
evidence in text messages
00:27:20
to suggest that Paul
Cannon had reassured Angela Taylor that
he had deleted their WhatsApp conversation.
00:27:28
And so at the end
of July, 2018, when asked to hand over his handset
for forensic examination.
00:27:36
He did so. It was downloaded within
a matter of minutes. And it was returned to him.
00:27:41
And the police began
the process of examining the content of the download. WILL HANRAHAN: Phil
Ridley specializes
00:27:53
in digital forensics. It is possible for
forensic analysts to recover encrypted
messages from devices,
00:28:02
as we've discovered
in this case. Recovering those messages
requires technical knowledge.
00:28:08
And particularly if
things have been deleted, it can take a while
to uncover them.
00:28:14
And they needed to use more than
one program to try and do it. WILL HANRAHAN: In the
meantime, with Angela Taylor
00:28:21
and Paul Cannon at the top
of their list of suspects, police continue
to look for Bill.
00:28:26
By the end of August of 2018,
they had decided that this was no longer a disappearance.
00:28:34
This was a murder. They installed surveillance
equipment to monitor Angela and Paul Cannon.
00:28:46
This included a camera
overlooking Angela's house. And, as it turned out,
a listening device
00:28:54
was installed in their car. WILL HANRAHAN: The couple were
arrested in September 2018
00:28:59
on suspicion of Bill's murder. But there wasn't
enough to charge them. Days later, a breakthrough
that changed everything.
00:29:07
And it wasn't until after
Angela and Paul Cannon had first been arrested
and then bailed
00:29:15
that at the
beginning of October, the technical man
suddenly unearthed, as it were, deep in the
recesses of the download
00:29:25
from Paul Cannon's phone,
28,000 WhatsApp messages. When the police
recovered these messages,
00:29:35
this was probably exactly
what they were looking for in terms of evidence. The discovery of the
cache of text messages
00:29:42
was the moment that
the case broke. It was the eureka moment. [grim music] WILL HANRAHAN: When the
messages were read and analyzed,
00:29:56
they revealed the
escalation of a macabre plot between Paul and Angela. It would have shown
intent to commit
00:30:04
the murder and also
the nature of the crime in that it was premeditated. A six-month long conversation
between him and Angela,
00:30:15
starting in mid-February of 2018
and coming to an end after Bill had disappeared,
in which, on many,
00:30:25
many occasions, they had talked
about bringing about his death. WILL HANRAHAN: Frustrated that
Bill was denying her a divorce,
00:30:36
Angela had raised the
subject in a WhatsApp message about finding another solution.
00:31:09
Police would come to suspect
plan B meant hiring someone to bring about Bill's demise.
00:31:15
[tense music] He replies to
her that he knows someone who might be able
to give the answer to that.
00:31:40
There's a gap in the messages
of about three or four minutes. And then he comes back and tells
her that the answer is 20k.
00:31:47
WILL HANRAHAN: Over
weeks and months, the messages between
Angela and Paul became less matter of
fact and more disturbing.
00:31:57
Cannon and Taylor
sent 1,500 messages with some horrific
content, living out this bizarre fantasy that
devolved into the murder
00:32:07
of her estranged husband. [typing sounds] WILL HANRAHAN: Of the 28,000
WhatsApp messages recovered
00:32:22
from Paul Cannon's
phone, almost 2,000 were about his and
Angela Taylor's hatred
00:32:27
of her estranged husband Bill. And there were a significant
number of those messages
00:32:34
were conversations in which
they explicitly contemplated his death, sometimes
in the most grotesque,
00:32:43
even pornographic, of terms. I think that Taylor was in
a grand passion with Cannon.
00:32:54
And that passion was
very sexual for her. Maybe this was the
first time she'd ever
00:33:01
felt like this in her life. But it started to have meaning. And their whole
relationship revolved
00:33:08
around this sexual pairing,
this electricity, passion that they had together. POLICE: Obviously
we know, and you
00:33:19
know, that Bill Taylor
hasn't been heard of since the 4th of June, 2018. And what's clear
from those messages,
00:33:29
those WhatsApp messages
between you and Angela is that after that date, there's
no more talk of violence,
00:33:36
there's no more talk of revenge,
there's no more talk of, you know, getting rid
of Bill, killing
00:33:42
Bill, making love while the
blood's running down the drain, none of that. Why is that?
00:33:53
PAUL CANNON: No comment. POLICE: Why has it stopped
on the 4th of June? Is that because you knew
that Bill Taylor was dead?
00:34:06
Is that you didn't
have to talk about killing him, because you knew
that he'd already been killed?
00:34:13
WILL HANRAHAN: By the time
these messages were unearthed, another crucial piece of
evidence had been secured.
00:34:19
NEIL LANCASTER: During the
investigation into the arson on the Land Rover,
the police retrieved
00:34:23
some exhibits from within. And they were submitted
for DNA analysis. And DNA connecting
them to Paul Cannon
00:34:30
was discovered on
some of the fabrics which had been used as
part of that attempt
00:34:37
to torch Bill's car. This made him a prime
suspect for these offenses. WILL HANRAHAN:
The forensics were
00:34:44
reinforced by hints in Paul
and Angela's message trail. POLICE: Why did you make
the comment, light my fire?
00:34:53
Or does he say it to you? Because neither of you have said
it to each other ever before.
00:35:00
You call each other
darling quite a lot. And he calls you wife. But it's never been a phrase of
endearment between you before.
00:35:09
Can't be a
coincidence that night the Land Rover gets
set on fire can it? There is no
question that the Land
00:35:16
Rover was set on fire by Paul
or by someone acting for Paul. We know this because
Angela sent a message
00:35:23
immediately afterwards
along the lines of baby, you light my fire. Paul replied by talking about
how he would like to see
00:35:30
the expletive deleted dead. It's quite clear from this
point that they don't just
00:35:38
fantasize about Bill's death. They intend Bill's death. WILL HANRAHAN: By November
2018, police had enough
00:35:44
to charge the couple with
the murder of Bill Taylor, as well as the arson
attack on his car.
00:35:50
Of course, at the time,
he was still missing. They hadn't found his body. But the content of
these text messages
00:35:57
was so explicit that it did
tell them why he had disappeared and who was responsible
for having done it.
00:36:05
POLICE: Are you ever going to
tell us where Bill's buried? You ever going to
help us with that?
00:36:12
But without a body, it could
still be hard to convict them. It was fully
expected that we were
00:36:17
going to be trying to prove a
case of murder without a body. WILL HANRAHAN: The trial was
scheduled for April 2019.
00:36:25
Two months before it
commenced, a local fisherman made a shocking discovery. On the 10th of February
2019, eight months
00:36:34
after he was reported
missing, Bill's skeleton was tragically found,
waist deep in mud,
00:36:39
adjacent to the river Hiz close
to Hitchin in Hertfordshire. It was found when a
local fisherman was looking
00:36:49
along the banks of the
river Hiz in a very quiet part of the river. He was propped up.
00:36:57
He was seemingly--
maybe having a picnic or sitting down, having
something to eat or drink.
00:37:06
But it was staged to look
as if he was sitting there. His feet were
on the riverbank.
00:37:11
He was bent over in a
sort of inverted L shape. And his head was
resting on the bank.
00:37:19
WILL HANRAHAN: The trial date
delayed by this new discovery, Angela Taylor and
Paul Cannon eventually
00:37:24
stood in court to face murder
charges in November 2019. Key to the
prosecution's case were
00:37:30
the violent, bloody, frequently
sexual WhatsApp messages. And for the
purposes of the trial,
00:37:36
we extracted between
about 1,500 and 2,000 of those messages, which
were relevant to what
00:37:46
had happened to Bill Taylor. And they were, all
of them, placed before the jury in writing.
00:37:54
WILL HANRAHAN: Not only that,
but a pair of police officers were drafted in to read the most
incriminating messages aloud
00:38:00
in front of the open court. Some evidence has an ability
to still a court, or to quieten
00:38:10
a court, or to
create an atmosphere in a court that is, when you're
there, immediately noticeable.
00:38:19
And there's no doubt about
it that the presentation of the evidence of
the text messages
00:38:24
had that effect on the
atmosphere in the courtroom. And I believe that in
this particular instance,
00:38:31
the atmosphere was created
by the shock that was felt at listening to two people
seriously contemplating
00:38:41
the death of a
third, and doing so using such appalling
language, and seeking to conjure up images
of violence that were
00:38:52
really, profoundly shocking. Sexually feeling
aroused by the idea of torturing him,
making him watch,
00:39:00
being covered in his blood. And there was, undoubtedly,
an element of exaggeration,
00:39:06
and of hyperbole, and of them
speaking to each other in ever more explicit and
pornographic terms
00:39:15
just for the sake of enjoying
what they were talking about. And it is, perhaps,
no coincidence
00:39:22
that when faced with the
discovery of these messages and with the task of
trying to explain them,
00:39:30
Paul Cannon's
evidence to the jury was that they were no more than
an exercise in sexual fantasy.
00:39:37
WILL HANRAHAN: Though Bill's
body had yielded few clues, and though Angela Taylor
and Paul Cannon refused
00:39:42
to help police, prosecutors
laid out what they believed had happened on Sunday,
the 3rd of June, 2018.
00:39:50
Paul and Angela form a plan. They understand what Bill
is like about his cows. You know, he's devoted to them.
00:39:57
So one evening,
they spook the cows. All we know is this. He was lured from home by
the movement of his cattle.
00:40:05
WILL HANRAHAN: Just days
shy of his 70th birthday, hardworking farmer Bill
Taylor was ambushed.
00:40:11
It was the moment
he stepped outside to check on his livestock. If the prosecution were
right that the fatal attack
00:40:19
took place in the
farmyard of his own farm-- And then when he was killed,
his body was disposed of.
00:40:26
And it was disposed
of in the most secluded spot possible on
land that belonged to Angela.
00:40:33
So it seems highly likely that
Bill was conveyed to the place where his body was found.
00:40:38
It is difficult to
imagine that all of that could have been achieved
by a man on his own.
00:40:43
WILL HANRAHAN: Though only
two accomplices were on trial, the prosecution believes they
were not the only culprits.
00:40:49
So there are strong grounds
to suspect that there may have been a second person involved.
00:40:56
And of course, when
you combine those facts and those circumstances
with the fact
00:41:02
that in February
of that year, there is the clearest of evidence that
Angela and Paul Cannon and were
00:41:08
looking to recruit someone
to get rid of Bill, there is every possibility
that out there somewhere is
00:41:16
a third person who was
involved in the events of that night, but who has not
yet been identified
00:41:22
and might possibly
never be identified. WILL HANRAHAN: But for
the jury at St. Albans
00:41:26
Crown Court in
November 2019, there were two people in the dock. Was their claim that their
violent fantasies were
00:41:32
essentially innocent credible? The jury, however,
rejected this out of hand. On the 8th of November,
2019, they were
00:41:41
both found guilty of murder. Both Paul Cannon
and Angela Taylor were sentenced to life imprisonment.
00:41:49
And in each of their cases, the
judge fixed a very substantial minimum term. They were sentenced
to life imprisonment
00:41:57
with a recommendation
that they should not be considered for parole
before 22 years had expired.
00:42:03
They both received
two year sentences for arson of a motor vehicle
which were to run concurrently.
00:42:08
WILL HANRAHAN: The
real Angela Taylor couldn't have been more
different from the woman
00:42:11
that her former
husband continued to love and to idealize. There's no doubt about it that
Bill retained deep affection
00:42:19
for Angela no matter what. And if the opportunity
had presented itself, the evidence indicates
that he would, undoubtedly,
00:42:27
have wished, right up until
the day he disappeared, to be reconciled with her. And there was nothing to
indicate that he wouldn't have
00:42:34
had another try at it
were it not for the fact that he was murdered. [tense music]