00:00:06
NARRATOR: 22nd of
December, 1984, Roehampton, Southwest London, England. 29-year-old Deirdre Sainsbury
had left her parent's home
00:00:16
in Sussex and was
heading to Berkshire and the Greenham Common
Peace Camp she called home.
00:00:23
ROGER NICKLIN: She was described
by the family as a free spirit. If she needs to get from A
to B, she would inevitably
00:00:29
do that by hitchhiking. NARRATOR: A car soon pulled
over to offer Deirdre a ride.
00:00:35
The driver was a man
called Colin Campbell. GEOFFREY WANSELL:
There was nothing frightening about Campbell.
00:00:40
He just looked like your
dad or your brother. NARRATOR: Looking
like Mr. Ordinary
00:00:44
was what Campbell relied on. He was a predator,
hunting for victims. ELIZABETH YARDLEY: When he
sees a woman out on her own
00:00:52
he sees that as an opportunity,
an opportunity to go and take what he feels entitled to.
00:00:58
NARRATOR: Campbell was
friendly and soon made it clear what he really
wanted, but Deirdre
00:01:03
resisted his sexual advances. And he lost his
temper, strangled her. ELIZABETH YARDLEY:
This is somebody
00:01:09
who didn't just
want to kill her, but wanted to completely
obliterate her. ROGER NICKLIN: His
response to that
00:01:15
was to make it look like
the work of a madman so nobody would
suspect it was me.
00:01:21
GEOFFREY WANSELL:
It's the satisfaction of someone who has
got a most incredible
00:01:27
thrill out of killing. NARRATOR: Colin Campbell was
ruthless and manipulative. Killing Deirdre
wasn't enough for him.
00:01:36
He wanted to destroy her
because she was a woman. He didn't fear being caught. He'd got away with it before.
00:01:44
No one suspected this
ordinary looking man was one of the world's
most evil killers.
00:01:52
[theme music] NARRATOR: In August 1981, Colin
Campbell was on the prowl. 17-year-old Claire
Woolterton was walking home
00:02:22
in West London
when Campbell drove past and offered her a ride. He was 20 years
older than Claire,
00:02:29
married, and worked
as a traveling salesman with a company car. He looked like a safe
bet for a young woman
00:02:37
to accept his kind offer. She was wrong. Campbell was anything but. GEOFFREY WANSELL: There was
nothing remarkable about him.
00:02:48
But there must
have been something because as you
look at his crimes you realize that
there was a rage,
00:02:56
particularly
against women, built into his character somewhere. NARRATOR: The following
morning, 18 miles
00:03:03
from where she'd met Campbell,
Claire's mutilated body was found naked on a riverbank
in the town of Windsor.
00:03:11
ELIZABETH YARDLEY: When we
look at how Claire was killed, she had a very deep
wound to her throat
00:03:16
so her throat had been
cut by her killer. And this was a very
significant injury.
00:03:22
It was very clear what the
killer's intention was, and that was to end her life.
00:03:26
This was no accident. NARRATOR: Despite exhaustive
efforts by the police, there was nothing to connect
Campbell to Claire's murder.
00:03:34
It was 1981 and DNA
profiling was in its infancy. The forensic evidence
recovered from the crime scene
00:03:43
and Claire's body
revealed nothing. The case went cold and the
files were put in storage.
00:03:51
Campbell had got
away with murder. ELIZABETH YARDLEY:
After he'd killed Claire and he thought he'd
got away with it,
00:03:58
Campbell just returned
back to his normal life. And we see this happening in
quite a few cases of people
00:04:05
who commit multiple murder. They commit the most horrendous
crimes and then the next day
00:04:10
they're back to their mundane
reality, their routine. NARRATOR: Claire's family
were left in a painful limbo
00:04:18
knowing her killer
was still out there. It would be 32 years before
they'd get any closure.
00:04:30
This killer's story begins on
the 16th of September, 1947. Colin Frederick Campbell
was born in India.
00:04:39
ELIZABETH YARDLEY: We don't seem
to know very much about Colin Campbell's background.
00:04:43
We know that he lived in
India until he was nine because his father was in
the British army over there,
00:04:49
but aside from
that, there doesn't seem to be very much
information about his childhood,
00:04:54
his upbringing,
anything that might have had an impact on him. GEOFFREY WANSELL: So this is not
a boy who's been furious with
00:05:02
the world, who is
desperate to make his mark, who is in and out of
juvenile court, in and out
00:05:10
of prison as a young man, .... No, none of that. ELIZABETH YARDLEY: Looking
at Campbell's relationship
00:05:16
with his mother, she seems to
see him as a little angel who can do no wrong. She seems to be somebody
who protects him
00:05:24
from the outside world,
who kind of makes him immune to any consequences
for his actions,
00:05:30
and I think that does
go quite some way to making sense of
the person that he is
00:05:35
and the way that he behaves. So I think that did have an
impact on his relationship
00:05:41
with women, how he saw women. He saw women as there
for him, to protect him, to do things for him.
00:05:49
NARRATOR: When his
father's tour of duty was over the family returned
from India to the UK.
00:05:55
By the age of 34,
Campbell was married, working for an
engineering company, and living with his wife
in Hanwell, West London.
00:06:04
ROGER NICKLIN: I don't think he
had any previous convictions. I don't think he'd come to the
notice of the police at all.
00:06:11
He was working as a salesman. On the face of it, a
respectable person. His next door
neighbor, I recall,
00:06:19
was a serving police officer,
and they did socialize, albeit only to a
limited extent, but he
00:06:26
was a respectable citizen. GEOFFREY WANSELL: Campbell--
to an ordinary person, Campbell would be the neighbor
that you were quite used to who
00:06:36
went about his business,
was a traveling salesman, came in and out,
dropped the car, walked round.
00:06:43
As far as anyone
would know, Campbell was a perfectly ordinary guy. NARRATOR: Campbell
suffered from epilepsy,
00:06:53
though not severely enough
to prevent him from driving. He enjoyed sport and
regularly played hockey.
00:07:00
He had no children, but appeared
to be a happily married man. ELIZABETH YARDLEY: Having
a place within a family
00:07:07
means you've got a
roof over your head, you get looked after, you get
your meals cooked for you,
00:07:11
you get some of your needs met. So it's not surprising to me
that we do see many murderers
00:07:18
living relatively normal
lives because it provides that veneer of respectability.
00:07:24
GEOFFREY WANSELL: I
would love to have talked to his wife to find out what
he was like in the privacy
00:07:30
of their house. It would have been
fascinating, I think. ROGER NICKLIN: Because
he was a salesman
00:07:37
and he had a company car,
he was, to some extent, free to roam. You know, he obviously had
an area that he had to cover,
00:07:45
but he would set off
each day or whatever and could be doing
almost anything and going almost anywhere.
00:07:54
NARRATOR: On the 27th of
August, 1981, Campbell's life changed forever when he
killed for the first time.
00:08:04
He was driving in
Southwest London when he saw 17-year-old
Claire Woolterton walking
00:08:10
along the Uxbridge road alone. PHILIP DEWEY: She was described
as a hard working, precious
00:08:16
girl in the prime of her life. She was also described as
having a great sense of humor
00:08:21
and sort of had the whole
world in front of her. She's also described as sort
of helping anyone who would ask
00:08:26
for help and was a great--
was popular with a lot of her friends. NARRATOR: Claire was
in a relationship
00:08:32
with a married man,
and she planned to see him that evening. GEOFFREY WANSELL:
Claire makes it
00:08:39
seem to her mother
and brother that she isn't going out that night. She's gonna stay at home.
00:08:45
She's done some ironing. Nothing untoward. But later, she slips out of
the house to go and visit
00:08:54
the older married lover. But at some point in that
meeting the couple have a row.
00:09:05
He says, I'll drive you home. She says, no. He says, yes, I will. PHILIP DEWEY: And
obviously Claire
00:09:11
had been brought to the
destination by this man, but following that
argument she decided
00:09:16
to head back home on her own. GEOFFREY WANSELL: So she starts
to walk back home to her home
00:09:22
in Northolt, not all that far. In other words, she's
not hiking across London. She's comparatively small
part of West London.
00:09:31
And then she has
the misfortune-- and it is simply misfortune--
to encounter Colin Campbell.
00:09:39
NARRATOR: Campbell
offered her a lift, and the next day
Claire would be found dead by a commuter heading
to Windsor and Eaton
00:09:47
railway station. PHILIP DEWEY: He was
walking along Barry Avenue, adjacent with the River
Thames, when he discovered
00:09:54
a young girl lying in the road. She was naked, had
her throat cut. ELIZABETH YARDLEY: Claire
was out on her own,
00:10:02
and society, especially
at this time, judged women for
those things, putting themselves in these situations.
00:10:09
He knew about that, and that
is something he would seize on. PHILIP DEWEY: Her
mother woke the next day
00:10:15
to find Claire wasn't home. She turned the television,
watched the news, and saw that a body
had been discovered
00:10:21
in Windsor in Berkshire. She sort of had a
feeling that something wasn't quite right
and just thought
00:10:28
instantly that could be Claire. GEOFFREY WANSELL: Well,
yes, unfortunately, it was.
00:10:32
She just had a
dreadful misfortune to be in the wrong place at the
wrong time, and it's a tragedy.
00:10:40
She couldn't have known. She could not have known. And what's more, it was
an entirely random attack.
00:10:48
Campbell did not know her,
did not know Claire at all. Because without this cheerful
young 17-year-old knowing it,
00:10:59
she falls into the
hands of a man who can only be called a predator. NARRATOR: Colin Campbell
was Mr. Ordinary,
00:11:07
a respectable, hardworking man. The perfect disguise. The police would be
faced with a worst
00:11:13
case scenario, a random
victim murdered by a stranger. Just after 6:00 in the
morning on the 28th of August,
00:11:23
1981, the body of 17-year-old
Claire Woolterton was found. ELIZABETH YARDLEY: After
Campbell had killed Claire
00:11:36
and mutilated her
body, he left it out in public to be discovered. She was on display, in a way.
00:11:43
And this was an incredibly
deliberate part of the murder. He wants the body
to be discovered.
00:11:50
He doesn't want to
be caught, but he wants it to be acknowledged that
this killing has taken place.
00:11:55
And he knows that he's
responsible for it, so this is his way of
displaying what he's done.
00:12:02
This is rage at women, and
in particular, their sexuality. It's truly terrifying.
00:12:09
ELIZABETH YARDLEY:
Colin Campbell didn't just kill Claire. He spent time with
her body afterwards.
00:12:15
He mutilated her body. He slashed and stabbed at her
private parts, her vagina. He went for the parts of
her that were distinctly
00:12:23
female, distinctly feminine. So this tells us
that Campbell has an underlying hatred of women.
00:12:30
He is a misogynist. It's also a way of saying
that this victim is mine. I possess them.
00:12:37
I own them. I can do what I want with them. NARRATOR: Forensic analysis
determined that Claire had not
00:12:43
been killed at the crime scene. Police had a lot of
questions and no answers. Only her killer, Colin
Campbell, knew the truth.
00:12:53
GEOFFREY WANSELL: How long
did he keep her in the car? Where exactly did
he commit the crime?
00:13:00
We're not sure. Was it committed in the car? I doubt it because her
throat was cut from behind,
00:13:07
and that would be
difficult to do if he was in the
driving seat and she was in the passenger seat.
00:13:10
So A, where did he kill her? And B, where did
he mutilate her? Where did he strip her naked?
00:13:18
NARRATOR: Claire's
married boyfriend was questioned and
released when he was found to have a solid alibi.
00:13:25
The police had few leads and
very little forensic evidence. GEOFFREY WANSELL:
A couple of ladies
00:13:31
come forward and say
they might have seen a girl dragged into
a car, but there's
00:13:35
no description of the car. There's no description
of the number plate. There's no description of
who might have been in it.
00:13:42
Nothing. NARRATOR: Claire's horrific
murder was a high profile case that attracted national
media attention,
00:13:49
yet the police had
no other suspects. EDWARD JARMAN: In
the early '80s, there wouldn't have been DNA
profiling as we know it today.
00:13:57
Their sort of
biological analysis would be limited mostly
to hair examinations or blood grouping type tests.
00:14:05
PHILIP DEWEY: As part of this
investigation, strips of tape was placed on the body to
remove any potential debris
00:14:11
or evidence which might link
her killer with the murder. EDWARD JARMAN: Effectively, it's
just sections of adhesive tape
00:14:21
just applied systematically
over the body or the items of clothing. So there were a series of
tapings taken at the scene,
00:14:28
and then subsequently
in the post mortem. BOB GREEN: Tapings have been
common practice for many years,
00:14:33
doing fiber tapings,
particularly in crimes like this where you
suspect a close connection
00:14:38
between victim and suspect. NARRATOR: Analysis of the
samples taken from Claire's
00:14:44
body at the time of her
discovery revealed nothing, and the forensic exhibits
were placed in storage.
00:14:52
PHILIP DEWEY: Despite
all the investigations that had gone on
into Claire's murder,
00:14:55
there had been no evidence to
link anyone with the murder. A lot of work had gone
into sort of like speaking
00:15:02
to witnesses, people who
discovered the body in Windsor. There was nothing to
link any individual,
00:15:08
and the case had to be put
on ice for the time being. GEOFFREY WANSELL:
You're looking at one
00:15:13
of the worst kind of cases. No connection to the
victim, an entirely random attack, and the
police, not surprisingly,
00:15:21
run out of leads. Doesn't mean they don't
care about the case. I think they cared
about the case a lot.
00:15:27
She was brutally
attacked, savagely. But where do they go? They can do house to house,
they can make appeals,
00:15:36
but who's gonna point
the finger at Colin Campbell, a man who
lives with his wife
00:15:40
and is a traveling salesman? Answer, nobody. NARRATOR: The police feared
that Claire's sadistic killer
00:15:47
may never be caught. ELIZABETH YARDLEY: The
fact that Campbell was not caught for this
murder really would
00:15:53
have increased his confidence. It would have given him a
significant kind of sense
00:15:59
of, oh, I got away with this. I could potentially
get away with it again. There are no consequences
for his actions,
00:16:06
and this seems to be
a bit of a continuity with Campbell in terms of
actions and consequences.
00:16:12
So when he doesn't get
caught for something, when he gets away
with it, that just
00:16:16
emboldens him all the more. GEOFFREY WANSELL:
And he goes back to conducting his life exactly
as he conducted it before.
00:16:23
He's still a traveling salesman. He's still out and about. Does what he wants, comes
and goes, back to his wife.
00:16:29
Nothing. Nothing to suggest that
he's committed a crime or that he's suffering any
kind of guilt or remorse.
00:16:36
Nothing. NARRATOR: For
almost three years, Colin Campbell continued
to hide in plain sight,
00:16:42
going about his daily routine. ELIZABETH YARDLEY:
From the outside, Colin Campbell appeared to
have a relatively normal life.
00:16:50
He has this veneer
of respectability. He has a job. He's married. It looks like he's just
your regular average guy.
00:16:58
But this is something
we see very often in cases of people
who go on to commit horrendous violence and murder.
00:17:05
They don't stand out. They're chameleons. They blend in to the background. NARRATOR: In 1984,
there was a heated ban
00:17:17
the bomb debate over the arrival
of American missiles in the UK. 29-year-old Deirdre
Sainsbury was
00:17:25
a passionate anti-nuclear
weapons campaigner. GEOFFREY WANSELL: The
daughter of a very well known
00:17:31
British psychiatrist. She was idealistic. She believed that
the world could change, and for the better.
00:17:41
And indeed, was so convinced
that she joined what was then a burgeoning
movement at Greenham
00:17:49
Common of women
committed to saving the world from cruise missiles. It had been decided that this
airfield, not far from Newberry
00:17:59
in Berkshire, would
be the site for 96 cruise intercontinental
ballistic missiles.
00:18:07
And the women of Greenham--
and they were all women-- camped there in protest. Indeed, the protest lasted
for almost 20 years.
00:18:16
ROGER NICKLIN: She was
described by the family as a free spirit If she
needed to get from A to B,
00:18:21
she would inevitably
do that by hitchhiking. She was a really
experienced hitchhiker,
00:18:28
didn't really seem to
have any fear of that, and had not ever in the
past had any problems, as
00:18:34
far as I'm aware. So you know, she
was her own woman and did what she
thought was right.
00:18:42
NARRATOR: On Saturday,
December 22, 1984, Colin Campbell had
been playing hockey,
00:18:48
one of his favorite sports. After the game he was
driving on the South Circular road in London near Roehampton.
00:18:57
ELIZABETH YARDLEY: Campbell
is a killer who is predatory. He is quite good at
sniffing out vulnerabilities
00:19:03
in other people. So when he sees a
woman hitchhiking, when he sees a woman
out on her own,
00:19:09
he sees that as an opportunity. An opportunity to go and take
what he feels entitled to.
00:19:15
NARRATOR: Deirdre Sainsbury
had been visiting her parents in Sussex and was
hitchhiking back
00:19:21
to Greenham Common via London. A car stopped to pick her up. It was being driven
by Colin Campbell.
00:19:28
He saw an opportunity, and
before long, he'd killed again. Deirdre, his unfortunate victim.
00:19:35
ROGER NICKLIN:
He'd picked her up and had made advances towards
her, and she objected.
00:19:41
So he lost his temper and
thought he'd strangled her. He wasn't sure that she was dead
so he got her out of the car
00:19:50
and hit her with
his hockey stick. NARRATOR: Realizing
that he was running late and that his wife would
wonder where he was,
00:19:58
Campbell drove home
with Deirdre's dead body in the boot of his car. GEOFFREY WANSELL: He goes
home and then he makes up
00:20:06
the most bizarre excuse. He's got blood on his jacket. He's got Deirdre Sainsbury's
blood on his jacket,
00:20:13
and he makes the most
ridiculous excuse about how he's broken his
nose while he's playing hockey
00:20:20
and it's his blood on
his jacket and he's gonna go and get an X-ray
to make sure he's all right.
00:20:26
ELIZABETH YARDLEY: Campbell
is a pathological liar. He's able to lie very easily
because his main concern is
00:20:33
protecting himself, is
preserving his freedom, preserving his ability to
potentially do this again.
00:20:39
So lying is something
that he doesn't struggle with because he
doesn't feel bad about it.
00:20:45
He doesn't feel guilty
when he misleads somebody or he says something
that isn't really true.
00:20:55
GEOFFREY WANSELL: We do know
that she wasn't sexually assaulted, but we also know that
she was again mutilated just
00:21:01
as Claire had been mutilated. That same rage that
came out in the killing of Claire Woolterton
comes out in the killing
00:21:08
of Deirdre Sainsbury. She is something to
be defiled, made to-- subjected to the
worst indignities
00:21:17
imaginable to a woman. And all to satisfy
Campbell's urges. But this time there
is a slight difference
00:21:29
because this time he
cuts off her left breast and takes it away. NARRATOR: In the early morning
on 23rd December, 1984,
00:21:41
a woman out walking her dog
in Denham Buckinghamshire saw what she thought was
a tailor's dummy lying
00:21:48
by the side of the golf course. On closer inspection, she
realized it was the naked body
00:21:55
of a young woman. It was my duty
weekend, the weekend running up to Christmas 1984.
00:22:04
I think it was
obviously apparent to the initial
officers who attended that this was a murder.
00:22:11
The woman had quite
significant head injuries so there were a number of other
police personnel at the scene
00:22:17
when I got there. I think we very quickly
came to the conclusion that she'd been
murdered elsewhere
00:22:25
and the body had
been dumped there. And bearing in mind,
Denham Golf Course is one of the first
areas of green
00:22:32
you come to when
you leave London. The body was there, naked
other than a pair of socks,
00:22:39
but the scene search
didn't reveal anything of evidential value at all. GEOFFREY WANSELL: Well, the
police, not surprisingly,
00:22:48
are struggling for leads. There is no obvious-- there's no boyfriend
to be interviewed.
00:22:56
There's no angry lover. There's no one. I mean, what you
literally have is a body.
00:23:02
ROGER NICKLIN: There
were significant injuries to her head, including one
at the time we thought,
00:23:11
that's a strange looking injury. It was sort of a curved
shape on the side of her head
00:23:17
What we didn't realize initially
until the pathologist arrived and we were able to look
at the body more closely
00:23:27
were there were quite horrendous
mutilation injuries that had been caused after death.
00:23:34
NARRATOR: There
was no indication that she had been raped,
but the sadistic killer
00:23:38
had sliced off her left breast. Officers searched the area,
but there was no trace of it
00:23:44
at the crime scene. It doesn't need to be
sexual contact or rape for a murder to be sexually
motivated because this
00:23:52
is about possession. It's about control. Sometimes killers will achieve
that through sexual assault
00:23:57
through the rape
of their victims. Other times they will achieve
it in alternative ways,
00:24:02
and I think here is an
example of a case like this. NARRATOR: The police had
no idea who the woman found
00:24:10
dead on the golf course was. In 1984, they had limited
technology to work with. Identifying the victim
could have been difficult.
00:24:22
Luckily for the
investigation, many of the women peacefully
protesting at Greenham Common
00:24:28
were on police file. GEOFFREY WANSELL: And so she's
had her fingerprints taken, so it does not take the police
any time at all to identify
00:24:36
her as Deirdre Sainsbury. Not that that helps
them very much because there isn't a great
string of suspects around her.
00:24:45
It simply says, well
unfortunately, this is the victim. NARRATOR: Once Deirdre
had been identified,
00:24:53
the police needed to
trace her last movements. But first, her
family were informed.
00:24:59
ROGER NICKLIN: When we traced
Deirdre's parents living at an address in Sussex, they're
both medical consultants,
00:25:06
and they were
absolutely horrified that anything like this could
happen to their daughter.
00:25:12
GEOFFREY WANSELL:
Imagine the impact that must have had on her family. This extraordinary
and motiveless crime
00:25:19
against an entirely
innocent, and indeed, bright, caring young woman. ROGER NICKLIN: She'd
been to visit her parents
00:25:29
and she'd left Sussex intending
to hitchhike her way back to Greenham Common. She was an
experienced hitchhiker
00:25:39
and had been doing
it for some years, and we thought that her
route would have taken
00:25:44
her initially towards London. NARRATOR: An extensive
investigation to find Deirdre's killer was launched.
00:25:54
It began in the roads
around the golf course where she'd been found. ROGER NICKLIN: A social
event for Christmas
00:26:01
was being held at some premises. Traffic on Saturday night
had been far heavier than one would normally expect.
00:26:10
So very quickly when we
started to trace people who'd been at the social
event, we were
00:26:18
able to find several
different witnesses who'd seen cars parked
in the pull in where
00:26:24
the body had been found. The people passing the point
where the body was discovered,
00:26:30
I can remember there was
the headmaster of a school. There was a dustman and a
range of people in between,
00:26:37
and I can't remember
the exact number. There might have been somewhere
between, I don't know,
00:26:41
half a dozen and a
dozen different people who described seeing a car. The descriptions of
the car were so vague
00:26:50
that we couldn't say we were
looking for a Ford or a Volvo or whatever. It was just a dark colored car.
00:26:57
We blitzed the area
as best we could with the description of
Deirdre, her photograph,
00:27:03
and where she was making for. We did the usual house
to house inquiries, not that there were many
houses in the vicinity.
00:27:11
We spoke to those people
who we could trace who'd used the lane at the
time with the results
00:27:17
that I've just mentioned, but
things were looking quite grim, to be honest. NARRATOR: During the
1980s, hitchhiking
00:27:26
was a common way to get around. After several high
profile incidents, the media were warning
young women of the dangers.
00:27:34
This was about to give the
police the break they needed. ROGER NICKLIN: And
then the phone rang
00:27:41
and it was a man who was
aware of the publicity and called to say that
he'd read an article
00:27:49
in a "Reader's Digest" about
the dangers of hitchhiking. I had actually read
the same article.
00:27:55
But he read the article and
he saw this lady getting into a car on the South
Circular road, and he thought,
00:28:02
I don't know. That might be dangerous. So he noted the registration
number of the car.
00:28:07
GEOFFREY WANSELL:
The police could barely believe their luck. It's an extraordinary--
literally out of the blue.
00:28:14
This is not the
marvelous police work. It's not CCTV
footage being gone. It's simply a bolt
from the blue.
00:28:24
NARRATOR: The number
plate given to the police was registered to an
engineering firm in West London.
00:28:31
ROGER NICKLIN:
Inquiry there showed that it was used by
Colin Campbell, one of their salesmen.
00:28:38
We discovered that he was
attending a sales conference at Newberry, so a team went
immediately to Newberry
00:28:45
to the hotel where this
conference was taking place, interviewed him. Most dissatisfied
with the explanations
00:28:54
that he gave, they found what
they thought could have been a blood stained
penknife in his car,
00:29:00
so he was arrested on
suspicion of murder. NARRATOR: Hopeful that they
had Deirdre's depraved killer
00:29:08
in custody, a team
of investigators were sent to search
Campbell's home. ROGER NICKLIN: And in the shed
in the garden of his house,
00:29:17
they found some of Deirdre's
belongings, most important one of which was her passport.
00:29:24
So there was no doubt
that this was Deirdre. And the other thing was, when
they interviewed his wife,
00:29:31
she said that he'd come
home on the Saturday having been out to play
hockey, and claimed--
00:29:40
because his clothing
was extensively bloodstained-- that he'd been
injured whilst playing hockey.
00:29:47
We had the car. We had Deirdre's passport. So he really had little
room to wriggle with it all.
00:29:54
The evidence was there
and it was overwhelming. ELIZABETH YARDLEY: But the fact
that Campbell uses his own car,
00:30:01
a car that can be traced back
to him through his work, just shows how brazen
he is and it shows
00:30:07
how confident he is that he'll
be able to get away with it. NARRATOR: Campbell
knew the evidence
00:30:12
was stacked against him. He couldn't deny
he was the killer, but he did have a plan
to defend himself.
00:30:21
ROGER NICKLIN: I spoke
briefly to Campbell. He was obviously interviewed, in
detail, by members of the team.
00:30:28
But when I asked him why
he'd mutilated the body, his response to
that was to make it
00:30:35
look like the work of
a mad man so nobody would suspect it was me. ELIZABETH YARDLEY: Deirdre
was beaten, she was strangled,
00:30:43
she was hit with a hockey stick. There was much more violence
than necessary to end her life,
00:30:49
so this speaks to a real rage,
a real anger in her killer. This is somebody who didn't
just want to kill her,
00:30:56
but wanted to completely
obliterate her. And I think this does tell
us about Colin Campbell.
00:31:03
This tells us about his
state of mind at the time. He knew exactly
what he was doing,
00:31:08
but he was incredibly
disproportionate in terms of what he was
doing in her murder.
00:31:15
ROGER NICKLIN: His only
excuse was he was an epileptic and he was tending
to rely on the fact
00:31:22
that that's what
caused it to happen without really being able to
explain it in any way at all.
00:31:28
And when his mother
came to see him, she clearly saw him as
the victim, I think.
00:31:36
No real thought about Deirdre
or her family or anything. Colin was in a
situation that he didn't
00:31:44
deserve, that he
shouldn't have been in, and the world was against him. NARRATOR: On the 24th July, 1985
at Reading Crown Court, Colin
00:31:56
Campbell was facing trial
for the brutal murder of 29-year-old peace
campaigner Deirdre Sainsbury.
00:32:03
Campbell was convinced
he'd found a legal loophole to get away with murder. He never really
denied it at any stage
00:32:14
because he didn't really
have the opportunity to. It was his car. Deirdre's passport
was in his shed.
00:32:22
The bloodstained
clothing which his wife was able to tell us about. NARRATOR: Campbell was willing
to plead guilty to manslaughter
00:32:31
on the grounds of
diminished responsibility, claiming that the
savage murder of Deirdre
00:32:37
was the result of an
epileptic episode. He's managed to hold
down a perfectly good job
00:32:44
for many years,
conduct a perfectly ordinary life with a wife
in spite of his epilepsy.
00:32:51
Why does his epilepsy
suddenly drive him to kill Deirdre Sainsbury? Didn't make any sense.
00:32:57
It's a pathetic excuse,
utterly pathetic. ROGER NICKLIN: He would like to
have pleaded to manslaughter.
00:33:05
The prosecution wouldn't
accept a plea to manslaughter, and insisted that he
should be tried for murder.
00:33:12
NARRATOR: The trial
lasted just three days, and Campbell was found
guilty of the murder
00:33:17
of Deirdre Sainsbury. ROGER NICKLIN: I don't recall
the jury being out very long,
00:33:23
and he was sentenced
to life imprisonment. And I think we all thought
that that was the right result.
00:33:29
ELIZABETH YARDLEY:
Campbell's behavior in court was like something out of a
made for television movie.
00:33:34
When he was convicted, he
appeared unsteady on his feet and then he appeared to faint.
00:33:40
So, incredibly dramatic. And what he's trying
to achieve here is a kind of poor me narrative.
00:33:47
Feel sorry for me. Isn't this terrible? Look at my suffering. GEOFFREY WANSELL:
When the jury convict,
00:33:53
his mother shouts, you're
cruel and ignorant at the jury. This is a man who's been
presenting his entire life
00:34:00
as though he's nothing but
ordinary, nothing but butter wouldn't melt in his mouth.
00:34:08
ROGER NICKLIN: The attitude
of Campbell's mother, it was very much that
Colin was the victim.
00:34:16
He had a medical condition
that put him where he was. It wasn't his fault, and
nobody seemed to care for him.
00:34:24
There was no remorse shown as
far as Deirdre is concerned. ELIZABETH YARDLEY: And I think
if that was the tone that
00:34:31
was set when he was really
young, if that was what he was used to, just being able to
get away with doing whatever he
00:34:37
wanted, then actually
that's something that's been quite damaging in this case. NARRATOR: While
serving his sentence,
00:34:45
Campbell continued to
fight for a retrial, still blaming his
actions on his epilepsy.
00:34:52
He was medically assessed
at Broadmoor Hospital, and in 1999 he was
granted the right
00:34:58
to take his case to the
Court of Appeal, 15 years after the murder of
Deirdre Sainsbury.
00:35:05
ELIZABETH YARDLEY:
Campbell appeals it and he says that his
epilepsy is a factor here,
00:35:11
and this lessened his
culpability for the crime. And he agreed to plead guilty
to manslaughter on the grounds
00:35:18
of diminished responsibility,
and this was something that was accepted by the prosecution.
00:35:24
But this is a play on
his skills, essentially, his manipulation, his ability
to grasp for anything to save
00:35:32
his own skin, and
it's just a shame that the system fell for it. NARRATOR: Campbell's
sentenced remained unchanged,
00:35:39
but the lesser
manslaughter charge meant he was a step closer
to being eligible for parole.
00:35:47
PHILIP DEWEY:
Following the downgrade in his conviction
to manslaughter, Campbell remained in prison.
00:35:52
He'd been downgraded to a
category D prisoner, which meant he was able to leave
prison for five days a month
00:35:58
and spend time in the community
before going back to custody. But obviously he was out
and about with the public,
00:36:05
and compared to the life he
had been living for decades, he had some kind of
freedom back in his life.
00:36:10
GEOFFREY WANSELL: And that might
well have been the way in which Campbell returned to society.
00:36:17
He's now a man in his 50s. He's clearly working
his way towards freedom, at least freedom on license.
00:36:26
NARRATOR: There was a
genuine possibility Campbell could be granted parole. The detectives who'd
brought Campbell to justice,
00:36:34
however, were determined
he shouldn't be released. ROGER NICKLIN: I was aware
of an outstanding murder
00:36:41
in Thames Valley. I'd not been involved in
it, but I knew about it, of a young girl by the name of
Claire Woolterton who, again,
00:36:49
was from West London
whose mutilated body was found by the side of the
River Thames in Windsor.
00:36:57
It seemed to be quite
close to the circumstances of Deirdre's death. We spoke to him about it
and any other offenses,
00:37:07
and he didn't want to know. Just not interested at all. Officers from the Claire
Woolterton inquiry
00:37:13
interviewed him as well, but
didn't get anywhere with him. And we were unable to
find any evidence at all
00:37:19
to relate him to Claire
Woolterton or the area where she was last seen,
or indeed, to Windsor.
00:37:27
NARRATOR: With no evidence to
connect him to Claire's murder, there was nothing further
police could charge him with.
00:37:34
Campbell believed he was
on the home straight. What he didn't know
was that a cold case
00:37:39
review had begun into the
murder of Claire Woolterton. GEOFFREY WANSELL: To
their eternal credit,
00:37:46
the detectives who originally
investigated the murder of Claire Woolterton all
those years ago in 1981
00:37:56
reopen the case, and
they reopened the case in a very distinct way. They re-examine taping
from the body of Claire.
00:38:06
So they take little DNA swabs on
sellotape, almost, lifted them, and even more remarkably,
they've kept them.
00:38:15
PHILIP DEWEY: By that
time, the technology in DNA evidence and forensics
had sort of progressed.
00:38:22
As a result of that, police
forces from across the UK were looking into cases
which had been unsolved
00:38:28
and looking at the DNA evidence. BOB GREEN: When a
suspect is arrested for a recordable offense,
their DNA is stored
00:38:36
on the national DNA database. If, at that time, a sample is
not there to match against,
00:38:44
so if we don't have a victim
sample, then, of course, that individual will not
match against that case.
00:38:49
PHILIP DEWEY: In
particular, they looked at Claire
Woolterton's case and looked at the strips
of tape which had been
00:38:54
taken from her body in 1981. GEOFFREY WANSELL: Now, there
are many cases in which
00:39:00
the police lose evidence. It's discarded. It's just not there anymore. But someone was
very, very careful
00:39:10
about Claire Woolterton. Perhaps it was the police
involved specifically. But they were very careful
because they wanted to know.
00:39:20
NARRATOR: The cold
case review found two DNA profiles on the
30-year-old tapings,
00:39:26
one linked to Claire. PHILIP DEWEY: The other profile
found on that piece of tape
00:39:30
was from an unknown male. When police ran that DNA
profile through their database,
00:39:37
they discovered that it matched
a profile for that of Colin Campbell, who was
already serving
00:39:41
time in prison for the
murder of Deirdre Sainsbury. EDWARD JARMAN: We subsequently
received a reference sample
00:39:47
from Colin Campbell to do
a more complete comparison of his reference DNA
profile and the profile
00:39:54
we obtained from the
table, and that's what established the initial link. NARRATOR: Further analysis
of the DNA profile
00:40:02
found it to be a one
in a billion times likely a match to Campbell. ELIZABETH YARDLEY: I think
Campbell did believe that he
00:40:09
had gotten away with it,
and he was quite surprised to see this come up again
because at this point in time,
00:40:15
he'd been inside for a while. He'd made his way through
the prison category system.
00:40:20
He was in an open prison. He was tantalizingly close
to being released again. So I think he was
incredibly angry to discover
00:40:29
that actually, there was
a spanner in the works. NARRATOR: On the
14th of November,
00:40:35
2013 at Reading
Crown Court, Campbell finally stood trial for the
murder of Claire Woolterton.
00:40:42
He didn't take the
stand in his defense. In an attempt to explain his
DNA being found on Claire,
00:40:48
a video of an interview with
the cold case review team was shown in court. ELIZABETH YARDLEY:
And all of this
00:41:47
is going to be
incredibly grating when Claire's family eventually
get to hear about it.
00:41:53
He knows that he has
that knowledge about her. He knows how she died,
and he is essentially
00:41:58
just playing with people
at this point in time. NARRATOR: On the 3rd
of December, 2013,
00:42:08
Colin Campbell was found
guilty of the murder of Claire Woolterton. He's now in his
60s, in his mid 60s.
00:42:16
The judge makes it
abundantly clear that he has to serve a
minimum of 24 years in jail
00:42:23
for Claire's murder,
this brutal attack, and says it's very unlikely
that you will ever be released.
00:42:33
It's the equivalent
of a whole life term. He knows perfectly well that
by the time Campbell is 90,
00:42:39
he's very unlikely
to be released from the prison system. PHILIP DEWEY: Come to spend
all this time in prison
00:42:45
for the manslaughter
of Deirdre Sainsbury while having this secret,
knowing that he had done this
00:42:50
to another girl, that
was quite exceptional, the fact that he had got
away with it for so long
00:42:58
and knew about it. ELIZABETH YARDLEY: I have no
doubt that Campbell is a very dangerous man, and I do
believe he would have gone on
00:43:05
to kill more women had he
been released from prison, had he never been apprehended
for Claire's murder
00:43:12
because he'd gotten
away with murder. He'd learned from
Deirdre's murder, and I think he was in
quite a strong position
00:43:19
to do something else again. GEOFFREY WANSELL: 32 years
after Claire's murder Campbell is convicted.
00:43:27
It's a remarkable
piece of police work. One of the most remarkable
in British legal history,
00:43:34
and for which the police deserve
every possible commendation. NARRATOR: Colin Campbell was
a vicious, callous killer
00:43:42
hiding behind a mask
of respectability. He killed and maimed
two young women to satisfy his own perversion.
00:43:50
When caught he refused
to face his guilt, instead attempting to blame
epilepsy for his actions.
00:43:57
Since 1981, Claire
Woolterton's family had waited desperately
for answers only one man could give.
00:44:04
That man chose not to
relieve their pain, making Colin Campbell one of
the world's most evil killers.
00:44:12
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