00:00:04
[dramatic music] [weapon fires] - When a murder's committed, it's always a race against time
00:00:10
to find the truth, to
separate fact from fiction, to catch the killer, and to make sure that
justice is served.
00:00:20
What happens when the truth
vanishes with the victim? I'm Dr. Richard Shepherd and
I've spent my entire career
00:00:26
as a Forensic Pathologist performing nearly
23,000 autopsies, including on some of
the most high profile
00:00:32
cases of recent times. I've learned that the
dead don't hide the truth and they never lie.
00:00:38
Through me, you'll be hearing
directly from the victim, from a state-of-the-art
laboratory
00:00:44
with groundbreaking technology that uses digitally
scanned sample bodies. I'll be investigating a
series of intriguing murders
00:00:52
where from the victim's
bodies, I'll be revealing to you the truth behind
those horrific crimes.
00:00:59
[camera shutter clicking] [dramatic music]
[sirens wail in distance] [fire crackling
over dramatic music]
00:01:11
Late at night on the
6th of January, 2013, 58-year-old Peter Fasoli was
found dead in the burnt out
00:01:19
remains of the small
bungalow in London where he lived alone. [dramatic music] - That evening, neighbors
had been alerted
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to a fire alarm at Peter's house [sirens wailing]
[dramatic music continues]
00:01:34
and called the fire
brigade who came and extinguished a house
fire at his address.
00:01:40
Sadly, within the house,
Peter was found to have died. During a subsequent
investigation,
00:01:49
it was concluded that the house had
probably caught light due to a 40 light bulb fitting
00:01:54
that had fallen down onto the
bedding and caused the fire. - [Dr. Shepherd] A report
by the fire service
00:02:00
said it was an accident, but was it? For almost two years
after the fire, a silent witness laid dormant,
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waiting to be found. While the extra
ordinary true story of how Peter really died
lay hidden within his body.
00:02:20
[dramatic music] Peter Fasoli was born to an
Italian family in Manchester where he lived most of his life,
00:02:29
but he'd moved to London
in 2012, where at the age of 58 he lived by himself.
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- He lived in a small
bungalow in Northolt in West London. [gentle dramatic music]
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He worked as a sort of IT
consultant sitting in front of a computer at home all
day effectively, which meant
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that his social interactions
were quite limited. Mainly he met people
over the internet.
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- Peter Fasoli was a quiet
man, kept himself to himself, lived his own life, no
long-term relationships,
00:03:17
reached out online
to make friendships and to arrange dates. By all accounts, was a
happy individual living his
00:03:24
life the way he
wanted to live it. - He didn't have an awful
lot of contact with the
00:03:29
outside world, and he
didn't have an awful lot of very close relatives
living nearby either.
00:03:35
So he was fairly isolated
from the community, but he was the kind of person who did crave
interaction with people.
00:03:43
He would quite often seek
out young gay men for company and also for sexual
encounters as well.
00:03:57
- We know that
Peter had made use of an online dating
app to meet others. - [Dr. Shepherd] It was on
one of these dating apps
00:04:06
that in January, 2013, he met a man calling
himself Gabriel, who he invited to his house.
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- They'd arranged to meet
at his bungalow in Northolt on the evening of
the 6th of January.
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According to the messages
had gone to and fro, Peter was expecting some
sort of sexual encounter.
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It seemed as if the
person he'd connected with on this website
fitted the bill.
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They seemed to be
into the same things, and this person who went by
the name of Gabriel had said,
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well, I'm gonna come and we're going to
engage in this sort of role play activity.
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So that was what Peter
Fasoli was expecting. - [Dr. Shepherd] They agreed
that Gabriel would come
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to Peter's house at 7:00
PM on the 6th of January. - On the morning of
the 7th of January,
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Peter received some text
messages from Gabriel. [ominous music] Gabriel was apologizing
for not having turned up
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to their appointment
the night before and exploring Peter's
availability for future meetups.
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- And then some more
messages later on saying, oh, why are you ignoring me? So clearly something
has gone wrong
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according to these messages, [ominous music continues] - [Dr. Shepherd] But Peter
never read these messages.
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- Very late on 6th of January
going into the early hours of the seventh, Peter
Fasoli's fire alarm goes off
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and the emergency
services are called. He's found in the
house, collapsed, and he's pronounced dead.
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Initially, it does seem that the fire was an accident. - There'd been a
initial investigation
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that identified
nothing suspicious. - The death goes through
the usual process. There's a inquest which confirms
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that Peter's death
was an accident. - There was a
post-mortem examination of Peter's body to see
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what it could reveal
about his final moments. Peter's charred body was
found in his bungalow,
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and at the time it was thought that there were no
suspicious circumstances, but the cause of death
still had to be determined.
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I've examined many fire
deaths in my career, and I know that within a
domestic fire, temperatures up
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to 800 degrees Celsius, that's 1500 degrees Fahrenheit,
are easily achieved.
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So the hot gases
themselves can cause death, but the crucial things that kill are the
smoke and the fumes.
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These cases cause problems
for any pathologist who has to examine them. They have to consider a
whole series of things.
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They've got to establish the
identity, the cause of death, but particularly
they've got to try
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and work out whether the
person was alive at the time the fire was burning. We look into the air passages,
the trachea, the bronchi,
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and the lungs, and
this image shows what you find at
postmortem, the black soot and debris distributed
throughout those air passages.
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And if we can find soot and heat damage in
the airways, we know that the person was alive at
the time the fire was burning.
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[dramatic music] The evidence suggested
there was no doubt that Peter was still breathing
when the fire had started,
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and it seemed that the
cause of death was clear. - Peter had some health issues,
he had a heart condition
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and at times needed
the support of oxygen to help him breathe
and get about easily.
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The conclusion was that
Peter had inhaled some smoke during the initial
stages of the fire, that
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that had triggered problems
with his heart condition and that he had died as a
result of a heart attack.
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- That is certainly what
the police decided based on what the fire
brigade was saying.
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So really they didn't
take things any further. They didn't look at
the wider circumstances
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of Peter's death. [dramatic music] - [Dr. Shepherd] After the
inquest in August, 2013,
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the investigation was closed, but there was something
the police didn't know.
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In the hours after Peter's
death, his money was being spent by someone else.
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- So the really curious
thing about this is that Peter Fasoli
dies in a house fire
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and he's found in the early
hours of January the seventh, the next day, his
credit card is used
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to buy a ticket
from London to Rome. On January the 11th, a man called Jason
Marshall boards a flight
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using that ticket. - [Dr. Shepherd] But
who was Jason Marshall and how had he got his hands
on Peter's credit cards?
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- This case was one
of the most unusual that I've ever dealt with. The true facts hadn't been
exposed in the initial
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investigations. [dramatic music settles] - The charred body
of Peter Fasoli had been found in his house
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in Northolt West London. An inquest in August,
2013 had concluded that it was an accident
caused by a faulty light bulb
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and the case was closed, but the body still
had secrets to tell and the truth of what happened
was yet to be discovered.
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- Four days after Peter
Fasoli died in a house fire, a man called Jason Marshall
boarded a flight to Rome
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from Gatwick Airport. He'd used a credit card in
the name of Peter Fasoli to buy the flight,
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and he also had cash
that he'd withdrawn from that account as well. [dramatic music]
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- [Dr. Shepherd] Not long
after arriving in Italy, Jason started using online
dating apps to find gay men.
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- So within days of
touching down in Rome, Jason Marshall is busy setting
up new connections online.
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Jason had set himself
up on dating websites and arranged to
meet older gay guys and arranged to meet them
through these dating websites
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for sexual encounters. He meets a guy
called Vincenzo Iale. - [Dr. Shepherd]
67-year-old Vincenzo Iale
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worked as a tour guide in Rome and lived in a small town outside the city called
Torvaianica Alta.
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Just over two weeks after arriving in Rome,
Jason was on his way to Vincenzo's house.
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[dramatic music] Vincenzo may have been
expecting a sexual encounter, but Jason had
something else in mind.
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- Jason was not interested in sexual meetings. He just wanted to steal their credit card or cash.
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Every time he was searching
this kind of victim, and every time he
approached to them for
00:12:12
a sexual meeting, every
time with just one purpose, steal their credit
cards, steal cash,
00:12:22
extorting numbers
and bank details, and then killing his victims. - [Dr. Shepherd] Several
days after his encounter
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with Jason Marshall, Vincenzo Iale's
body was discovered. - Vincenzo was found
00:12:41
completely nude on the floor. One week, seven days
later, the homicide. Because he lived alone.
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- This murder scene
was over a week old and in forensics, time
is of the essence.
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With the passage of time, vital clues such as the DNA of the killer can be lost.
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And in terms of the
injuries, it can be harder and harder to determine which of the injuries actually
was the cause of death.
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Decomposition will have
started to set in on Vincenzo, and it's usually first seen in
the right lower abdomen over
00:13:23
the cecum and the
appendix area of the body as a green discoloration
of the skin
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that gradually spreads
over the entire body. But the pathologist in
this case was well able
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to identify the numerous
stab wounds to the chest of Vincenzo, and he could also
see that he had been tortured
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and the crime scene showed
that it's been dragged around the flat, evidence
of the physicality
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of the murderer. Despite the severity of
the injuries, they were not what killed Vincenzo.
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The pathologist found that
Vincenzo had been strangled by a ligature, and the mark
on his neck was entirely
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consistent with the use
of an electrical cord. Ligature strangulation
causes pressure to the neck
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and the blood vessels and
airways inside the neck. It causes pressure to
these red carotid arteries
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that are taking
blood up to the brain and it causes pressure on
the jugular veins which are
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taking blood away. And so the brain is starved of oxygen when those
blood vessels are pressed,
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but it can also lead to
compression of the airways above and below the larynx, stopping
air entering the lungs,
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and so meaning there's loss of oxygen in the
bloodstream itself. Now, the time it takes
for someone to die
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with ligature strangulation
is very variable. Depending on the ligature and the pressure applied,
it can be very quick
00:14:50
or it can be delayed over
a prolonged period of time, depending how much
pressure is applied.
00:14:56
[dramatic music] On the very day Vincenzo
was found murdered. Jason Marshall was on his
way to meet his next victim.
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[dramatic music continues] - Within days, he moves
on to another guy. This time a chap called Umberto
Gismondi, who lives in Rome.
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- He met him on a
social network site for sexual meetings. The victim invited
Jason in his home
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and they had the
dinner together. [knife chops]
[dramatic music continues] They go to the bedroom.
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Jason not seem so interested to have a sexual meeting. [dramatic music continues]
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- [Dr. Shepherd] Armed
with a truncheon, Jason launched a terrifying
attack on Umberto Gismondi.
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First he incapacitated his
victim with pepper spray, then bound and gagged him and attempted to suffocate
him with a cushion.
00:16:10
And he made it clear to Umberto that this was not the
first time he had carried out such an attack.
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- Jason showed the
picture on his phone and said to the victim,
"Watch this picture.
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Watch this man, I killed
him one month ago. If you don't give
me the PIN number
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of your credit cards,
I'll kill you too." - There's an effect whereby
people become more desensitized
00:16:44
as time goes on, and if they commit
one harmful act, maybe it's easier for
'em to commit another one
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and another one, and
then maybe they realize that they're actually
kind of enjoying this
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and that keeps them going. [gentle dramatic music] - Jason was a serial killer because every time he
made the same actions.
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First of all, victims are the same, homosexual, alone, and they're old men. Why old men?
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Because Jason is
a strong, young, tall, powerful man. And so in case of struggle,
00:17:36
he could win against them. - Very fortunately, the victim's neighbors
hear the commotion
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and raise the alarm, and
Mr. Gismondi is rescued. [eerie music] - [Dr. Shepherd] Umberto
Gismondi was very lucky
00:17:58
to have been saved,
and he survived. Jason fled the scene, but Italian police tracked
his movements using his phone
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and he was apprehended on a bus a few hours after the attack. He was arrested and taken to
a jail in Rome where he was
00:18:19
provided with a defense lawyer. - I was the court
appointed lawyer. In my life, I will not
have a case so bizarre.
00:18:35
I met Jason for the first time
when he was in jail. He said, "I am innocent,
Francesco, I am innocent."
00:18:50
Jason was very convinced and
Jason was very believable, and I thought, oh, maybe
he's really innocent.
00:18:59
But what he said to me was not supported by the facts. - [Dr. Shepherd] When
Jason had been arrested,
00:19:11
he had fresh blood on him and he had credit cards and a gate key of his first
Italian victim, Vincenzo Iale.
00:19:20
He was also found in
possession of pepper spray, a fake pistol and a counterfeit badge
from the British embassy.
00:19:26
- Jason said to me, "I work
for the British Embassy, I work for MI5," but it was unbelievable.
00:19:37
It was not credible. [dramatic music] - [Dr. Shepherd] In 2014, Jason Marshall
stood trial in Italy
00:19:46
for the attempted murder
of Umberto Gismondi and the murder of Vincenzo Iale. - During the final
part of [indistinct],
00:19:57
Jason want to speak, and I remember that
Jason said to the judge, "You can't judge me
00:20:06
because only God can judge me." [dramatic music continues] - [Dr. Shepherd] In July,
2014, he was found guilty
00:20:15
and sentenced to
16 years in prison. Now he was confined to
an Italian prison cell,
00:20:23
Jason Marshall could
not kill again, but the question being asked
was, had he killed before?
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Shocking evidence was
about to come to light. - This case is back
to front really,
00:20:36
in that the suspect was
locked up for murder before we even knew
there was a murder.
00:20:41
I've investigated many cases
which have strange aspects to them, but very rarely do
you find a murder set to music.
00:20:49
[dramatic music settles] [dramatic music] - [Dr. Shepherd] On the
6th of January, 2013,
00:21:04
58-year-old Peter Fasoli had
met a man called Gabriel on the internet and invited him back
to his home in West London.
00:21:13
But later that night,
his house was on fire and Peter was found dead. An inquest concluded that
it was an accident caused
00:21:23
by a faulty light bulb,
and the case was closed. The body had revealed Peter
was alive during the fire,
00:21:30
but there was more to tell. An all-seeing
witness was waiting, ready to reveal a
shocking secret.
00:21:41
- There is an investigation and it does confirm that
Peter's death was an accident.
00:21:47
So, you know, the family are
obviously shocked and grieving, but since it was just
a tragic accident,
00:21:54
they move on with their lives. Peter Fasoli's family are
not particularly local.
00:22:04
His belongings what's left
of them, what's not been, you know, completely destroyed
by the fire in his house
00:22:12
collected up and they're stored by a friend of the family up in Yorkshire. - [Dr. Shepherd] It was
not until almost two years
00:22:21
after his death that evidence
emerged revealing the truth of what really
happened that night.
00:22:28
- Peter Fasoli's nephew decides that he'd be quite interested
in going through some
00:22:34
of Peter's effects, which have
been stored up in Yorkshire. So he goes to have a look.
00:22:41
He's particularly interested because he knows that
Peter had a shared interest
00:22:47
with him in his family tree. So he thinks that there might
be something on the computer
00:22:54
that Peter had in his house that might give him a bit
more information about the family history.
00:23:00
So he goes to Yorkshire and collects the hard
drive from the computer and takes it home with him
00:23:07
and sets it up so he can kind of have a look and
see what's on there. [suspenseful music]
00:23:13
What he finds is not anything
to do with the family tree. He makes a very shocking
discovery of a series
00:23:22
of videos that Peter
Fasoli had made initially meeting guys for sex, and it had been
filmed on his webcam.
00:23:34
- [Dr. Shepherd] But what
he sees on the final video shows something else entirely.
00:23:39
Shocked by what
he had discovered, Peter's nephew immediately
handed the video
00:23:44
to the local police. - We received a call from
West Yorkshire Police with some really
significant information
00:23:51
that was gonna take the whole
case into a new direction. So once we got back to London
00:23:58
and reviewed the video that
Peter's nephew had found, it was really shocking
00:24:05
and quite a harrowing
watch to be honest. It happened that Peter had
a kind of hidden CCTV camera
00:24:12
that was connected
to his laptop. It was effectively a recording
of the events of the evening
00:24:19
of his uncle's death and showed that Peter had
been visited by another male.
00:24:25
[suspenseful music] The man in the video
is wearing a clothing that clearly intending
to portray himself
as plain clothes,
00:24:41
law enforcement of
some description,
jeans, bomber jacket, T-shirt under that. When he takes the
jacket off at times,
00:24:49
you can see that
he's got a holster with whether it's
handcuffs in one slot,
00:24:53
pretends to have a firearm. I think there's a radio
clip to it as well. And if you were left in
any doubt at that point,
00:24:59
he's also wearing an ID badge
on a chain around his neck, clearly intending to portray
himself as law enforcement.
00:25:10
The events ran on
for several hours, but for the vast majority of
the time entirely consensual.
00:25:17
There'd been different role
plays with the suspect, a role playing either a
police officer or a an agent
00:25:24
or a spy or whatever was
going through his mind, but was certainly asserting
a position of power
00:25:31
and authority over Peter who
was quite willingly submissive to that power and authority.
00:25:40
[handcuffs clicks]
[dramatic music continues] - It was like a role
play taken to extremes.
00:25:49
There was a role certainly, and it was a powerful role. [suspenseful music continues]
00:25:56
A dominating role, a
role that had authority and also access to specialized
procedures and equipment.
00:26:05
But the play part
of the role play, play itself can serve a
function even for adults.
00:26:13
It can give them a
taste of that identity that they're aspiring to. Whilst they're
acting out this role,
00:26:22
life might seem different, the situation might
seem different to
how they are in their
00:26:28
usual everyday
life as themselves. - [Dr. Shepherd] But as the
hours passed, something changed.
00:26:38
- It was only right at the
very end when things took a more sinister turn. - The young man in the video
starts becoming quite violent.
00:26:49
He threatens him with
a knife repeatedly. He also injects him with
a needle more than once.
00:27:01
He really, really becomes
quite violent and aggressive and he's clearly enjoying it.
00:27:08
He's clearly taking some
sadistic pleasure in bringing Peter
Fasoli down so low
00:27:15
and humiliating him. - Jason Marshall was calm
and collected throughout. There didn't seem to be
any agitation, any panic.
00:27:27
It's as if he kept
on playing the role. - And there's a
point in the video
00:27:32
that I remember quite clearly
actually, where it seems like the penny drops and Peter
going from being quite excited
00:27:42
and energized about
this kind of role play. It suddenly dawns on him, it's
not a game for him anymore,
00:27:49
and he actually becomes
very frightened for real. - [Dr. Shepherd] Eventually
the torture escalated
00:27:57
to a point of no return. - The suspect took
a roll of cling film and wrapped it round Peter's
head, causing him to struggle
00:28:07
to breathe and suffocate and then put a plastic bag
over his head causing Peter to fall to the floor.
00:28:13
- [Dr. Shepherd]
Without realizing it, Peter Fasoli had recorded
his own brutal murder.
00:28:20
- This is a video showing
Peter Fasoli's death at the hands of an extremely violent
sadistic killer.
00:28:28
[dramatic music] - The cuffs were
removed, the bag and the cling film were removed.
00:28:33
Shortly after that, the video then shows
the suspect clearing up the scene behind him, and
then the video is cut,
00:28:41
but the sound continues. And what can be
heard is the sound of probably some accelerant
being poured around the flat
00:28:50
[lighter clicks] and the sound of
that being ignited. And it's within
seconds of those sounds
00:28:57
that you then hear
the smoke alarm, which alerted the neighbors
who then subsequently,
00:29:01
as we know, called
the fire brigade. - Throughout the video
of Peter Fasoli's torture
00:29:08
and ultimate death, there is a sort
of weird situation because he'd put on classic
FM in the background,
00:29:18
you know, for this encounter, I wouldn't say
romantic particularly, but it's an encounter of sorts
00:29:27
with Jason Marshall
and it is very bizarre because you hear Myleene Klass
talking about classical music
00:29:34
in the background, and that is on throughout
this horrendous violent situation that's
unfolding in his house.
00:29:44
- The detail of this
remains with me today. It was unbelievably shocking. It was a showing of
such determination,
00:29:55
such calculation,
planning, evil almost. And seldom do you see
in a domestic context
00:30:05
footage of someone's death through evil crime. [dramatic music] - [Dr. Shepherd] The
truth of what happened
00:30:14
that night had been hidden
in Peter's body all along, waiting to reveal itself, but
the body had never been asked.
00:30:24
A body may never lie, but sometimes it's really
important to make sure that you ask the
right questions.
00:30:32
We know that Peter was
still fighting for his life after Jason had set
fire to his house
00:30:37
and the initial cause
of death was inhalation of fire fumes in association
with his heart complaint.
00:30:44
But the major contributing
factor to Peter's death, despite all he'd endured,
was clearly suffocation.
00:30:50
And suffocation occurs when
the external air passages the mouth and the
nose are blocked
00:30:58
so the air can't enter the body and that will deprive
the body of oxygen and eventually
result in brain death
00:31:07
and the death of the individual. And we know from the video
that Peter was struggling
00:31:11
and fighting to breathe, and we also know that the
cling film was removed and replaced several times,
00:31:20
but that when the fire was
burning, Peter was still alive and struggling to breathe,
which accounts for the soot
00:31:28
that was present in
his airway at the time of the first
postmortem examination. And it's clear that wrapping
cling film around Peter's head
00:31:36
by Jason was intended to kill or at least cause serious harm. - What had been thought to
have been an accidental death
00:31:45
as a result of a house fire
had now turned into something much more significant.
00:31:49
This was now a
homicide investigation. [dramatic music settles] [suspenseful music]
00:32:04
- [Dr. Shepherd]
In January, 2013, Peter Fasoli invited a man calling himself
Gabriel to his home
00:32:10
after they had met
on a dating website. The next morning,
Peter was found dead after his house caught fire.
00:32:19
[suspenseful music continues] Almost two years
after his death, shocking footage was discovered
00:32:27
that revealed he had in fact
been tortured and murdered. But although detectives had
the footage, they still had
00:32:35
to identify the man responsible. - What really goes
through your mind then is that you have an
absolute passion
00:32:43
to do the right
thing for the family. The whole point of doing
my job is to find answers
00:32:48
for the family and what
becomes an absolute priority and a real motivation
piece is to identify
00:32:55
who the suspect is and preventing causing any
more harm to anybody else. [dramatic music]
00:33:02
- [Dr. Shepherd] But just
who was this sadistic internet predator? [door knocking]
00:33:08
- They had an image of
this person who'd been with Peter Fasoli on
the night of his death.
00:33:14
They had him on the video, but obviously at that stage
they didn't know who he was.
00:33:19
They then have to follow this
trail of evidence and try and find out who the person is,
00:33:27
who's clearly, you know, been extremely violent. [dramatic music continues] - First thing that we had
to do was look through all
00:33:37
of the video to try
and identify any clues or anything that would help us with the identity
of this suspect.
00:33:45
So that involved hours and hours of going through
minute by minute, almost frame
00:33:49
by frame at times in terms of what had happened in the house. Is there any telltale signs
that the suspect's giving out?
00:33:56
Is there anything that he says? Any information, any use of
names, anything like that?
00:34:01
[dramatic music continues] At one point during the evening, the suspect had demanded
Peter's credit card,
00:34:10
had demanded the PIN
number for his bank card, and had gone away from
the house for a period
00:34:17
of time and then returned. This opened up the consideration that the murder was
financially motivated.
00:34:24
[suspenseful music] When we looked at his
finances in more detail, what we identified was that
the days following his death,
00:34:34
his bank details were used to purchase some
flights from an airline. And then inquiries with
that airline identified
00:34:41
who had bought the tickets and in what name those
tickets had been purchased. We established from the airline
00:34:49
that the account had been
used to buy tickets to Italy in the name of Jason Marshall.
00:34:57
- [Dr. Shepherd] So
the man Peter had met who called himself Gabriel, was in fact Jason Marshall.
00:35:03
Jason was already known
to the Italian police, but not to the UK detectives. A quick search revealed that
Jason Marshall had spent most
00:35:12
of his life on the
wrong side of the law. - And when we did some
police background checks,
00:35:18
it was found that he was
known to the police for, amongst other things,
impersonating a police officer.
00:35:24
So when you look back
at the investigation and what we'd gathered so far, the whole evening
involved role play
00:35:31
and role play in
law enforcement, and here we've
identified the name of a suspect who's
got convictions for
the very same thing.
00:35:41
- There'll be some
people who feel the need or desire to dress up and
pretend to be a policeman
00:35:49
or an ambulance man or a
fireman, but they don't go on and kill somebody
playing out that role.
00:35:55
[suspenseful music] - You can probably fairly
describe Jason Marshall as a lifelong fantasist.
00:36:03
You know, his life is to a certain extent,
a bit of a mystery. He claims that his parents
were both drug addicts
00:36:10
and he grew up in East London. His obsession with
living a fantasy really comes from his desire
00:36:21
to block out the harsh
realities of life and also give him the kind
of status that he's craved.
00:36:29
And that's really where his
obsession with police officers and anyone in a
uniform comes from.
00:36:38
Because he puts on a uniform, he becomes a different person and the kind of person
that people respect.
00:36:45
But in reality, his
life is quite a sad one. He makes money as a male escort, he becomes increasingly unhappy
00:36:55
and he's taking out his anger and frustration on these
older guys that he's meeting
00:37:02
for sexual encounters. And there comes a point
where he moves down a very, very dark path.
00:37:09
And that's really the point
at which unfortunately, his life collides
with Peter Fasoli's.
00:37:16
[suspenseful music] - [Dr. Shepherd] Jason
Marshall's online profile on dating apps
00:37:23
gave a chilling clue
to his state of mind. When he had met up with Peter Fasoli the
night before he died,
00:37:30
Jason had used the
online name Gabriel. - He imagined that he
was the Archangel Gabriel
00:37:39
and he's creating
this online persona. I mean, a lot of people
don't use their own names
00:37:45
on dating websites. That's not unusual. But the fact that not only has he created
this online persona,
00:37:54
he carries it over
into real life and carries it over
into this very different and extreme character
that he's created.
00:38:04
So he goes from a position
where he's less powerful, he's working as a male escort,
00:38:12
but because he's created
this complete alter ego where he is in charge and he
is the one with the handcuffs
00:38:20
and the police radio
and making the arrests, and he's a big man, he's turning the
tables on people
00:38:29
who want him for his services. - [Dr. Shepherd] Having
identified Jason Marshall,
00:38:37
police now had to
bring him to justice. - The next challenge really was
where is Jason Marshall now?
00:38:45
And some fairly quick
research using the internet and identified to my horror that Jason Marshall was in
Italy serving a custodial
00:38:55
sentence, having killed a
male over there in the weeks that followed the
death of Peter Fasoli.
00:39:05
It was a moment really where
I had to temper my kind of enthusiasm and joy that we'd identified
who this person was
00:39:13
and we were gonna make some
progress with a real kind of somber moment of reflection
in terms of, you know,
00:39:19
had there been
opportunities missed, what if things had
been done differently? What was the consequences
00:39:25
of the delay in
identifying this offense? But it was never lost on me. In those kind of early
moments, the kind of
00:39:33
what if questions around
those victims in Italy. - [Dr. Shepherd] The
video of Peter's murder
00:39:39
shed light on the murder
of Vincenzo Iale in Italy. People are murdered in all sorts
00:39:45
of different ways, and some crime scenes
are really horrific. The pathologist found that
Vincenzo had been strangled
00:39:52
by a ligature, and in fact,
the crime scene showed that Vincenzo had been
dragged around the flat,
00:39:58
evidence of the physicality
of the murderer. But in Peter's case, the
fire had changed everything.
00:40:06
A fire means that a lot of valuable evidence
will have been lost, and there was evidence that
he had also been tortured.
00:40:13
The burning of the body
had obscured any evidence of bruising or the
injection sites,
00:40:18
which made them
much harder to see, and there was no
evidence of suspicion. And it's not possible
00:40:24
to determine if death occurred
deliberately or by accident. But now the evidence proved
without a shadow of a doubt
00:40:34
that something very
sinister had happened. After four and a half years, Jason Marshall would
finally face justice
00:40:43
for the brutal murder
of Peter Fasoli. [dramatic music] - And it was early 2017 when
Jason Marshall was finally
00:40:53
extradited back to the UK. He was met by my officers
and arrested on UK soil. And at that point, the
prosecution for the murder
00:41:03
of Peter Fasoli started
in earnest really and led to the subsequent trial. And that's probably the first
time that there's a real sense
00:41:13
that we are now starting
to deliver justice for Peter's family. Jason has to answer for his
actions and in a UK court,
00:41:22
and he can't hide behind the Italian
prison cell bars anymore. [dramatic music]
00:41:30
- [Dr. Shepherd] In July, 2017, Jason Marshall finally stood to trial in London.
00:41:37
- It was an extraordinary
trial at the Old Bailey. Extraordinary because of the
material that the evidence,
00:41:45
I've done many serious cases, but I have never seen
footage showing the crime in such a calculated,
cold, powerful way.
00:41:58
I've never come
across that before. It was very disturbing and it must have been very
disturbing for the jury.
00:42:07
- [Dr. Shepherd] In court,
Jason Marshall claimed he had amnesia and couldn't remember
anything from that night.
00:42:14
- The purpose of the
cross-examination was to show that his amnesia, as
he claimed, was a lie
00:42:24
and there was quite a
bit of material, such as what he did afterwards
when he sent a text
00:42:32
to Peter's phone,
the text message is so obviously purposeful
and thinking and calculated
00:42:41
and is not consistent with
amnesia of an event at all. Leaving aside what he then
went to do, getting himself
00:42:48
to Italy and killing one
and trying to kill another. - His behavior in the
witness box was pretty
00:42:58
strange to say the least. He'd run out of excuses
and he'd run out of stories
00:43:05
and the fantasy was
quickly unraveling and it just didn't hold. It just didn't hold
for him anymore.
00:43:12
So there was nowhere
for him to go. - [Dr. Shepherd] The evidence
on the video was damning.
00:43:19
- Having this piece
of footage meant that Jason Marshall couldn't
deny that he was there.
00:43:26
He couldn't deny
what had happened and it would made it extremely
hard for him to wriggle out
00:43:32
of it because it's all there,
you know, you only have to watch what he did to realize
00:43:39
that this was an
extremely sadistic and cruel act of violence
against a defenseless man.
00:43:47
- Marshall is an
extremely dangerous man. I think he knows, he
knew what he was doing.
00:43:53
He wanted to do it.
He wanted to kill. He never expressed any
true remorse at all.
00:44:02
He was determined
to do what he did and he did it again
and he did it again. And I don't think
he's someone who
00:44:12
is capable of remorse. [gentle bright music] - One of the most important
things at this moment,
00:44:19
of course, is to get back in
touch with Peter's family, explain what we had found
00:44:24
and explain the process we
had made at every single stage of the investigation. It's critical to me,
00:44:30
and I think it's
really important that the family understand what's
happening, ultimately,
00:44:36
that's what I'm there for,
is to find the answers that the family are looking for.
00:44:41
And if I can find a way
to keep them up to speed and up to date with
the investigation
00:44:45
and the progress that
we're making, then that's really, really important.
00:44:53
- [Dr. Shepherd] The
jury took just 75 minutes to reach a unanimous verdict, and Jason Marshall was sentenced
to life with a minimum term
00:45:01
of 39 years. - He will spend pretty much
the rest of his life in prison. He tortured Peter
Fasoli for seven hours
00:45:11
before killing him, and that made it an even
more serious murder. He took sadistic
pleasure in it and
00:45:23
after he was caught, he
showed absolutely no remorse. - Serial killer Jason Marshall
clearly had the intent
00:45:36
to kill, and if it hadn't
been for the discovery of that video, we'd never have known how Peter
Fasoli met his tragic end.
00:45:45
In the end, the
answers were hidden in Peter's body all along, but no one had asked
the right questions.
00:45:54
We must always be highly
suspicious in the autopsy room and make sure we find
the cause of death,
00:46:01
not just a cause of death. [dramatic music continues] [dramatic music continues]
00:46:34
[dramatic music concludes]