Killers: Caught on Camera (2023-…): Season 1, Episode 10 - Grace and Lucy - full transcript
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It just sounds like something bad
is happening to her.
-I heard her scream, "No, stop it."
-I heard some gunshots.
Drop it, whatever it is, drop it.
It is not true that I killed my wife.
We know what happened because
the video tells us what happened.
The camera doesn't lie.
This time
on Killers Caught on Camera...
In Auckland, New Zealand,
a British backpacker is missing
after going on a date.
When they didn't hear back from her,
this was an alarm bell for them.
As the cameras track the suspect.
I know I haven't done anything wrong.
The story that he's given us,
very plausible as it was,
suddenly that's not what we've got
on camera and CCTV doesn't lie.
And in Southampton in the UK,
a young girl is the victim
of a predatory murder.
She's got multiple stab wounds,
a number around the neck.
In an attempt to cover up
a highly inappropriate relationship.
He only had one intention,
and that was to silence Lucy.
In the UK,
close to Billericay in Essex
lies the small village
of Ramsden Bellhouse.
Home to recent graduate
Grace Millane.
Amber Haque is a journalist
who covered the case.
Grace Millane
was a 21-year-old girl from Essex.
She had just graduated from uni,
she had a marketing degree, in 2018.
Grace had two brothers and was
extremely close to her family.
After graduating
from the University of Lincoln,
Grace decided to travel the world.
She was about to set off
on the adventure of a lifetime.
Living her dream,
traveling the world,
it's what so many of us have done
at that age.
You know, you go on your gap year,
it's the best feeling.
Grace spent six weeks
in South America
traveling around Chile, Patagonia
and Peru
before flying to Auckland,
New Zealand.
Throughout the whole trip,
she was constantly updating
family and friends,
daily check-ins.
And it was quite clear to them that
she was having the time of her life.
Grace was exploring
New Zealand's North Island
and was going to spend
her 22nd birthday in Auckland.
But on her birthday,
the 2nd of December, 2018,
Grace suddenly stopped responding
to messages.
Naturally, her mum and dad were
sending happy birthday messages.
When they didn't hear back from her,
this was an alarm bell for them.
They then decided
to alert the police.
Grace's parents reported
their daughter missing
on Wednesday the 5th of December,
2018.
Detective Inspector Scott Beard
took charge of the case.
Grace had been missing
for basically five days.
The fact that she hadn't
contacted anybody on her birthday
and nobody could contact her,
was a red flag.
One of the first things we have to do
is profile Grace,
who is she, where's she from.
You know, where was she staying.
It was a race against time
to identify and obtain footage
from any cameras
that could lead them to Grace.
She'd been staying at
Base Backpackers in Auckland.
The Backpackers was a key.
We have to work quickly
to obtain CCTV
because some places don't hold it
for too long.
It gets overwritten very quickly.
So the CCTV phase became crucial.
Detective Adam Bicknell
took the lead
on the forensic analysis
of the recordings.
From the CCTV,
we're building a timeline of events.
What's happened,
where it's happened, what time it is.
So what we have is Grace leaving
the Base Backpackers
to head up to the SkyCity Hotel.
She's wearing a black dress.
The CCTV showed Grace
taking a picture of a Christmas tree
outside the location,
sending it to her parents.
And that was the last time
they made contact with her.
Police spoke with one of Grace's
friends in the UK,
who told them
that Grace was on a date
on the evening
of the 1st of December.
Traveling can be
quite a full-on experience.
It can be lonely sometimes.
One of the ways
that Grace was getting around
and meeting people was on the
popular dating apps that are around.
And the night before her birthday,
she had matched with someone
and decided to go out for a drink
with him.
At 5:45 p.m.
on Saturday the 1st of December,
Grace was captured on CCTV
meeting a man at SkyCity,
a casino complex
in the center of Auckland.
They recognize each other
immediately. They hug.
It seems a really friendly,
nice initial meeting.
This place that they met
was a really public spot.
It's the kind of place that Grace
will have felt safe.
Hundreds of hours of CCTV footage
was reviewed
and the police checked
Grace's social media for any clues.
One of the staff members looked
at Grace's Facebook page.
The last person to comment
on their Facebook page
and on a photo of Grace
was a person named Jesse Shane.
Police contacted
Jesse Shane Kempson
via social media
and arranged an interview.
We had matched on Friday.
I said, "I know it's quick, but do
you want to catch up for a drink?"
And she said, "Yep, cool."
He was very comfortable, very polite.
And he spoke and was interviewed
by Detective Ewan Settle.
Jesse was filmed
by multiple hi-tech CCTV cameras
meeting Grace at SkyCity
on Saturday the 1st of December.
The CCTV footage here from SkyCity
is really interesting.
You've got 360-degree cameras,
which means when you play it back,
you can get the camera
to follow your subject,
which is a pretty cool piece
of technology.
So they're able to track Grace
and Mr. Kempson
throughout the entire time they were
in the SkyCity building environments.
Police asked Jesse
how the date went.
How did the evening pan out?
Yeah, pretty good. Yeah.
I...
We drank a lot of cocktails at...
the burger bar.
And we were having
good conversations.
-Yeah.
-Yeah.
After SkyCity, Grace and Jesse
headed to another bar.
At the end of drinks at the second
location, Jesse pays the bill again.
Quite charming behavior,
obviously trying to impress her
and make her feel romanced
and kind of looked after.
After leaving the restaurant, Grace
and Jesse went to a third venue.
They both look really relaxed.
We see Grace sat and she's chatting,
talking really rapidly
and really looks quite immersed
in the conversation.
The recordings show Grace
and Jesse hugging and kissing.
This is the CCTV footage
where we believe
Grace has text one of her friends
back in England.
She says to her friend
that she just can't believe
how well they're getting on.
She said, "We really click,"
and that was the last message
that Grace ever sent anyone.
In his police interview,
Jesse described
how his date with Grace ended.
Was there any discussion about
remaining together at that point?
-No.
-How did the evening end?
There was a hug and a kiss
on the cheek
and a "thanks,"
or, "nice meeting you."
Then I said,
"Let me know about tomorrow."
And she said, "Okay,"
and then she kept walking.
He said that's the last he saw of her
and then he went off to some bar
in the city
and he says
he got paralytically drunk.
Jesse told the police what happened
the next morning.
So at what point do you remember
being back at your unit?
-The next day.
-The next day, what time was that?
I woke up at about 9.
9:00, 10:00. Yeah.
-You woke up at about 9:00 or 10:00?
-In the morning.
In the morning.
You were in your apartment?
Yep.
At this point Jesse
was just a person of interest.
But the police needed to check
Jesse's DNA
to eliminate him as a suspect.
What would your feelings be about
providing a voluntary DNA sample
in the event that we can compare
that against something?
-Would you be happy with that?
-Yeah, 100%.
I know I haven't done anything wrong,
so I'm happy to do it.
-Okay.
-While Jesse was
in the interview room,
the police made
a major breakthrough.
In the first stages of the interview,
he was very plausible, believable.
And we had nothing
to contradict that.
It wasn't until later in the
interview, when there was a break.
One of the staff in the CCTV phase
had found a footage of Kempson
coming down the lift
in the CityLife Hotel
at 8 a.m. on that Sunday morning.
Jesse's seen entering the lift
off his level
and exiting out of CityLife Hotel.
From there he heads to
the Warehouse store on Elliot Street.
He immediately proceeds
to make his way
to where luggage bags are for sale,
and we can see him in the footage
perusing through the selection
of luggage bags there.
And he selects the largest bag there
and wheels it off to the counter
to pay for it.
It identifies him clearly
and identifies what he's doing.
The footage contradicted
Jesse's statement.
He said that he was asleep
until 9 or 10 a.m.,
but he was captured on camera
at 8 a.m.
Is he lying to us, is he mistaken?
The story that he's given us,
very plausible as it was,
suddenly that's not what we've got
on camera and CCTV doesn't lie.
Armed with this critical piece
of footage,
the police confronted Jesse.
There's quite a difference
between waking up at 9:00,
which is a pretty positive statement,
and walking in...
With a suitcase
I still have in my room.
-Clearly under your own steam.
-Yep.
Okay.
-Explain that.
-I might have got the times wrong.
But if you're assuming
that I was using that suitcase
for something, I've still got
that suitcase in my room.
Police later checked Jesse's room
and found an empty suitcase.
But without any more
substantial evidence,
the police had to release Jesse.
At the time,
all we had was Jesse Kempson
and that first interview, what
we believed was telling us a lie.
But that didn't prove
that he had done anything to anyone
or to Grace.
So in the United Kingdom,
they can hold someone for 48 hours.
We don't have that. So we either have
sufficient to charge
or we have to release them.
So in this case Jesse Kempson
was released.
Police continued to sift
through the CCTV footage
from Jesse's apartment block.
The CCTV phase in that hotel,
CityLife Hotel, becomes more crucial.
And just our general investigation.
You know, what's the background
of Jesse Kempson.
So Jesse Kempson was 26.
He would tell people
that he had a law degree
and he was
a successful businessman.
Jesse's family
painted this picture of him
as being a bit
of a complex character.
He had fallen out
with his dad two years previously,
and he wasn't really talking to much
of his relatives at the time.
His grandfather made this comment.
He said he was a really nice kid,
but he would just constantly fall out
with people.
As police uncovered more
footage from Jesse's residence,
it showed that he was wasn't telling
the truth about how the date ended.
On the 1st of December, Grace
went up to Jesse's apartment.
We see them,
having left Bluestone Room,
cross over to outside CityLife Hotel.
They're arm in arm, Mr. Kempson's
got his arm around Grace.
She's holding on to his hand.
Everything appears to be fine.
Grace is going back
of her own volition.
This is a key moment in time,
9:40 p.m.
on Saturday the 1st of December,
2018.
Grace has entered this lift,
exits on level three,
and it's the last time
she's seen alive.
Police continued their
forensic analysis of the footage.
They needed to find out
what happened to Grace
after she went into Jesse's room.
The recordings from the next day
aroused more suspicion.
He's seen to buy bleach,
cleaning gloves,
some sponges,
general cleaning material.
A couple of hours later,
Jesse took a taxi to Apex Car Rental
and hired a car for 24 hours.
Jesse was seen again at 2:53 p.m.
leaving his apartment block.
He was going on another date,
with another woman he'd messaged
on a dating app.
This is a date that Jesse goes on
on the afternoon
of Sunday the 2nd of December.
So he spent the morning
buying a suitcase,
getting some cleaning product
and now he's headed to another date.
This woman who went
to meet him describes
that he was quite intense but calm.
He comes out with this story
where he says, "Oh, I heard about
this guy who got caught up in a case.
He'd asked his girlfriend to have
rough sex, and it ended badly.
He'd ended up killing her."
He came out with this comment
to the girl where he said,
"It's crazy how a guy
can make one wrong move
and end up in jail
for the rest of his life."
It was quite a strange story
to come out with on a first date.
This woman understandably
got very freaked out
and didn't want to stay,
kind of, on the date, she left.
But this all happened the day after
he'd been on a date with Grace.
Less than 24 hours
after being last filmed with Grace,
Jesse was seen
with an industrial carpet cleaner.
We see Jesse entering the lift.
He's got the carpet cleaning machine
and a couple of bottles of liquid
to clean up whatever mess
he's got going on in his apartment.
He only has the Rug Doctor up there
for just under half an hour.
But as the evening progressed,
Jesse's actions became
even more alarming.
He was seen taking an empty
luggage trolley up to his room.
Minutes later, he returned
to the lift with it fully loaded.
It's got a suitcase on it
and you can see as he wheels
the luggage trolley into the lift
from his apartment floor
that it's heavy.
He's had to physically pull it
around the corner
to get it into the lift.
And Jesse, he's a big guy.
He's, you know, like 6-foot-1 or 2
and pretty solidly built.
So he was strong,
and he had to maneuver that.
I recall the chills
and the goosebumps
when I saw that footage
for the first time.
Jesse was brought in for questioning
a second time
and his version of the night's
events completely changed.
She started talking to me
about Fifty Shades of Grey
and she told me that there's
a few things she likes doing.
We started having,
I guess, more violent sex.
We ended up on the floor...
and we kept going on the floor.
Then...
she took a photo
of my genital area...
and so I obviously took photos
of her too.
And then we kept going.
And she told me that--
hold her arms tighter.
And then she told me
to hold her throat.
He accepted that they'd gone
to his apartment.
They'd had consensual sex. It's rough
because that's what she wanted.
And he must have strangled her
to death.
And then he says, after the rough sex
and strangling her,
not realizing, he'd gone to have
a shower, fell asleep in the shower.
I woke up the next day
and I saw that she was lying
on the floor.
I saw that she had blood
coming from her nose.
I screamed, I yelled down to her
and I tried to move her to see
if she was awake.
That second interview
was a totally different,
contradictory interview.
I saw it as self-serving. Yeah.
"It wasn't my fault, she wanted it.
And it just was an accident
that I strangled her to death."
In these circumstances,
what they're trying to do
is to blame the victim and say,
"It's because of her kink.
She didn't know her limits
and I accidentally killed her."
Diminishing your blame
or trying to in the process.
Whether or not
that's still an acceptable excuse
and whether it just is an excuse?
Probably most of the time.
It's conceivable that sometimes
sex games do go wrong.
But that is up to you as the person
who's administering the strangulation
to make sure
that you are not crossing that line,
not the person who's being strangled.
-You found Grace deceased.
-Yep.
How long did you make any efforts
to resuscitate her?
I was trying to shake her.
I was listening to see
if her breathing was coming through.
And that's when I panicked
'cause I couldn't hear or--
And she was cold.
He panicked. Saw Grace down there,
screamed, panicked,
was going to ring 111,
but didn't press the call.
Jesse didn't call anyone
to help Grace.
And afterwards
his online browsing revealed
a sinister train of thought.
The police managed to try
and piece together a timeline.
And this was based on Jesse's
Google searches. They figured out
that Grace was probably killed
before around 1:29 a.m.
And after that, he was looking
on hardcore pornographic websites.
Jesse was also searching
for "hottest fire," "rigor mortis,"
and the "Waitakere Ranges,"
a mountainous area
west of Auckland.
The police found these images
on Jesse's phone,
which he had taken of Grace's
naked body after she was killed.
They were described
as grossly indecent.
And comprehending that he had done
that after killing her so senselessly
and just taking that last shred
of dignity from her
and knowing her family
had to hear that
and know that that had happened
to her is just unbelievable.
Jesse's actions didn't correspond
with his statement in the interview.
I didn't believe what had happened.
I was just terrified and scared.
I...
remember...
putting Grace in the suitcase.
I was...
I was just in shock the whole time.
Jesse was recorded
taking the suitcase
down in the lift at 9:30 p.m.
On the face of it, when you see him
with the trolley and the suitcases,
it just looks like a suitcase
on a luggage trolley.
But when you know
that Grace Millane
is dead in one of those suitcases,
it's quite chilling. It's quite cold.
When police recovered
the CCTV footage,
it showed a disturbing sequence
of events.
I put Grace in the back
of the hire car.
I woke up the next day
at about 5:00 a.m.
and drove the car
out to Kumeu, at first.
I picked up a shovel.
Detectives were able to locate
video footage from the store
on Monday the 3rd of December.
Here he is returning to the counter,
and he's got these nuts and bolts.
I think he's made that purchase
as a distraction
to the fact that he's buying a spade.
After buying the shovel,
Jesse disappeared
from surveillance footage
until he was seen at a car wash,
four hours later.
He drives into one of the wash bays.
From here he's going to get
the mats out, spray them cleaned,
get the shovel out,
to spray that clean.
It's a rental.
You don't need to clean rental cars.
The rental car company
will do that at the end.
You can see him washing the dirt off
here, and the brownness coming off.
Later, Jesse explained exactly
what happened
between buying the shovel
and washing the car.
I ended up driving
towards the Waitakeres
and I remember pulling off
after a reservoir
into a stop zone.
I went into the bush and dug a hole.
He finds a car layby
where he can park.
He drags the suitcase
into the bush,
only about probably 10 meters
from the roadside,
and he digs a shallow grave
and he buries the suitcase.
The police were already
one step ahead,
they had been tracking Jesse's
movements on his mobile phone.
We had found on his phone
that it had been polling up
on the Waitakere Ranges.
I was already speaking
to our search-and-rescue experts.
Because it's not the first time
a body has been found
buried in the Waitakere Ranges.
We're going to head out of here
very soon,
and you're going to take us
to where you buried her.
Yeah.
-She will likely be exhumed tomorrow.
-Okay.
At some point. And after that,
they will-- a pathologist,
specialist doctor,
will perform a post-mortem.
They're very skilled at establishing
people's causes of death.
-Do you understand that?
-Yeah.
-Did you kill Grace Millane?
-No.
Okay.
Jesse Kempson, you're under arrest
for the murder of Grace Millane
on or about the 2nd of December.
Do you understand?
-Yeah.
-Okay.
Grace's body was found the next day
in the Waitakere Range.
We were already close.
We were about two minutes away.
So when he described the area,
we were there before he actually
came out to point it out.
And I've always said
that we would have found Grace.
Not as quickly,
but we would have found her.
After Jesse was charged,
the police needed to build
a watertight case against him,
they discovered that Jesse
had bought a second suitcase
on the 3rd of December.
We know, obviously, that he's taken
Grace in one suitcase
and he's bought the duplicate
to try and cover up his tracks.
Police also uncovered
another clip of Jesse,
throwing out a bag
filled with something.
We believe it's Grace's purse
or bag and maybe
some personal belongings.
Analysts also found
an alarming piece of footage
from Grace and Jesse's date.
We see Grace go to the toilet.
He's grabbed her bag,
he's opened the purse
and he's looking through
Grace's personal items and contents.
Is he looking for cash, drugs,
information, identification?
I don't know.
As well as
the incriminating footage,
police also had evidence
from the scene of the crime.
We'd done this scene examination.
We sprayed a chemical
called luminol,
and that reacts with blood
and the blood will glow.
When we did that in this apartment,
there was
a significant amount of blood.
On the 16th of January, 2019,
Jesse Kempson pleaded not guilty
to murder
at the High Court in Auckland.
A character emerged, opportunistic
and emotionally unpredictable.
Our investigation identified
that Kempson was prolific on Tinder
and had numerous, numerous dates.
We spoke to,
we'd like to think, virtually
every single date he'd had on Tinder.
Then you start to get this pattern
of how he operates,
of what happens, how he can switch
from a Jekyll-Hyde scenario.
He can be nice, pleasant one minute,
goes to the bathroom,
comes out the next,
and he's angry and he's violent.
I've always said
if it wasn't Grace, it would have
been someone else
that Kempson would've killed.
And I think I look at that simply
because of the evidence that we know
from propensity witnesses
who gave evidence,
particularly the month beforehand,
where he suffocated one of his dates.
And she thought she was going to die.
The defense case was
that this was rough sex gone wrong.
It was accidental.
The pathologist agreed
that the strangulation
had to be for five to 10 minutes.
It had to be sustained
and with pressure.
That's not rough sex
and the jury convicted him
very quickly of murder.
And that's what it was.
Jesse Kempson was found
guilty of murder.
He was sentenced to life in prison
with a minimum non-parole period
of 17 years.
Is he a psychopath?
There's no emotion. He doesn't
believe he's done anything wrong.
And that's--
Yeah, it's disappointing, really.
The CCTV in this particular case
was so crucial.
You know, it told us the story.
And we could follow
Grace's movements
from the moment
she left the Backpackers
to the moment she got out of the lift
up in the CityLife Hotel.
But we could also follow Kempson's
movements before and then after.
And of course, that proved all his
lies. That proved that he was lying.
We just kept recovering
CCTV footage that was
a goldmine for the enquiries.
I think what kind of stuck out
about this story
and just chimed with so many people
is the nature
of what happened to Grace.
Like, you know, dating apps and
kind of the freedom that it gives us
to sort of meet people so casually
and easily,
I guess it's something where you put
a lot of trust in the stranger
that you're going to meet.
And this was supposed to be
one of the most exciting chapters
of Grace's life,
an adventure of a lifetime.
And to think she's traveled halfway
across the world
so far away from her family
and that trip of a lifetime ended up
being the end of her life.
CCTV and 360-degree cameras
were vital
for the New Zealand police to track
Jesse Kempson's movements
and convict him
of Grace Millane's murder.
Public transport is peppered
with cameras
as pervasive digital witnesses.
Like in the case of Lucy McHugh,
where a camera on a bus
led to a breakthrough.
Southampton, UK.
Home to 12-year-old Lucy McHugh.
Bright, bubbly and nicknamed Brains
by her grandmother.
Paul Barton was
a detective superintendent
-with Hampshire Police.
-Lucy lived at home with her mother.
She was estranged
from her natural father.
Mum had a new partner
who was 21 years of age.
They had a baby between them
and Lucy had other siblings.
So it was probably a bit
of a chaotic household.
In 2017, Lucy's mother
rented out a room
to 25-year-old Stephen Nicholson.
Kirsty Bennett
is a criminal psychologist.
Stephen was a tattoo artist,
but also a care worker.
He was having financial difficulties
and struggling to pay rent.
They allowed him to move in.
Stacey had actually got Nicholson
a job as a carer.
Stephen made an immediate
impression on 12-year-old Lucy.
Stephen likely paid Lucy
a lot of attention
and that was quite flattering.
Their relationshp quickly developed
and became sexual.
At Lucy's age, she wouldn't have
realized that's inappropriate,
and Stephen took advantage of that.
A few people raised concerns about
Lucy and Stephen's relationship.
It can be incredibly hard
for parents to accept the fact
that their child's groomed
because it feels like failure.
So it feels like you should've known.
And so you might be defensive.
Most of the time it is someone
who you have some relationship with,
even if it's not a close one,
so you think you would have known
if that person was doing
something terrible to your child.
But there was growing tension
between Lucy and Stephen.
Nicholson could be moody
and, you know, kind of would dismiss
Lucy the next minute.
And that would then get Lucy angry
and there would be arguments.
By July 2018,
Stephen was no longer living
with Lucy and her family.
Lucy confided in her cousin
that she was scared of Stephen,
who was violent.
She was now 13 years old.
She had actually been grounded.
She had her mobile phone
taken from her
by her mother, but it was
the school summer holiday,
so she was allowed out
during the daytime hours.
On the 25th of July, 2018,
Lucy asked her mum
if she could go and visit her friend,
which Stacey agreed to.
But as evening approached,
Lucy didn't come home,
and no one had heard from her.
And Lucy wasn't picking up messages
or phone calls.
Stacey then rang the police
to notify them that Lucy was missing.
News spread quickly
and Stephen texted Stacey.
Early the next morning
there was a grim discovery.
Hampshire Police received
a treble-nine call
from a member of the public.
An individual walking his dog in the
area of Southampton Sports Center.
So this is the footpath
that the dog walker used
on that morning.
Just his dog went off track
and went into the undergrowth here.
Lying face down was the body
of a young girl.
She was quickly identified as Lucy.
She had been stabbed 27 times.
She's got multiple stab wounds,
a number around the neck,
one in her sternum,
one on the back of her shoulder.
And then a number of small wounds
on her wrists,
which we would say
are defensive injuries.
-Detectives sealed off the area.
-We could see there was blood
on the leaves and on the trees,
but no obvious weapon.
Lucy was wearing a watch, so tend
to rule out the motive of robbery.
And she was fully clothed.
So again, you would eliminate
a sexual element to the attack.
Investigators re-traced Lucy's steps
in an effort to find out
who was responsible.
Time is critical
in these investigations.
And quite often CCTV
can be overwritten within 24 hours.
A digital forensics team
was assigned to process
thousands of hours of CCTV footage
At 8:59 that morning,
there's a camera
just on the end of this house here
from private CCTV
that picked up Lucy
entering this road
and walking in this direction.
So that was our first sighting
of Lucy.
And then it's just a question now--
just following up from this road
to look at the possible route
she may have taken.
The camera had picked up
an important detail.
Because she didn't have a phone,
she asked her brother
if she could borrow his watch,
which would indicate that she needed
to be somewhere at a particular time.
So this first image
was really crucial.
It also gave us this confirmation
of what Lucy was wearing on the day.
As the investigators continued
to search through material,
more details
and digital clues emerged.
Dr. Vasileios Karagiannopoulosis
is a cybercrime expert.
We can see that she's holding
a bottle with some liquid in it
that was also found
in the crime scene.
What that tells me
is that it's likely
that Lucy was killed
in that location.
She wasn't killed elsewhere
then deposited in that location,
because the water bottle was there
as well.
Lucy was filmed multiple times,
walking towards the sport center.
It's a two-mile journey, I think,
from her home to the sports center.
She's got her coat under her arm.
She's got her bottle in her hand,
but she is walking with purpose.
As well as examining
the CCTV footage,
police also searched Lucy's bedroom
for clues.
What we uncovered quickly
was that she held a diary,
a private diary that she was keeping.
She made notes
to indicate that she was potentially
in a sexual relationship
with Stephen Nicholson.
Some of the entries
were really concerning.
Lucy had written him letters
asking him to buy some condoms,
asking him to buy a pregnancy kit.
As far as the law is concerned,
that is statutory rape.
Stephen Nicholson was brought in
for questioning.
He acknowledged
that Lucy probably had
a bit of a schoolgirl crush on him.
But he said, you know,
she was a pain.
You know, "I didn't like her,
I always fell out with her."
The police wanted to know
Stephen's whereabouts
on the day Lucy went missing.
He started giving us an account
as to his movements that day.
He had gone to visit
an elderly gentleman
who lived not too far
from Southampton Sports Center.
And he would go and do his shopping
for him.
He said he went to visit this chap
at around about 9:00 that morning.
Detectives visited the man
to corroborate
Stephen Nicholson's account.
He knew who Nicholson was,
but he would pretty much agree
with anything you put to him.
He wasn't a credible witness in that
sense, and we couldn't rely on him.
On the morning Lucy went missing,
Stephen told the police
he'd left his phone
in the home of the man he cared for
while he went shopping for him.
He said he came back
and stayed there until 11 a.m..
The phone's GPS signal
backed up
Stephen's version of events.
Initially,
Stephen's alibi seemed to check out,
so it's important that police
are then going through
and trawling through hours of CCTV
to check where Stephen was
and whether there was any crossing
between him and Lucy
on the day she disappeared.
CCTV from a local supermarket
provided the police
with the breakthrough they needed.
We've got a small CCTV camera
that's just on the outside
of the building looking out.
It picked up Lucy
at 9:28 in the morning,
walking purposely
towards the sports center.
And we believe that's the last time
she was seen alive and on camera.
The supermarket cameras
had also captured Stephen
26 minutes earlier.
Now, I think he was deliberately
trying to catch himself on CCTV.
That would support his alibi
that he was in the area.
The supermarket CCTV footage
was crucial.
Not only did it provide
the last sighting of Lucy,
it placed Stephen in the area.
There was another recording
of Stephen,
riding a bike at the sports center.
It's 9:39, and that's 10 minutes
after we've seen Lucy
walking past the supermarket CCTV
towards the sports center.
This video is really important
because it places
both Stephen and Lucy in the area.
What's significant
about this particular location
is just in the distance there,
where those trees are is the location
where Nicholson
had visited this elderly man.
It's almost in line of sight
of where Lucy was found,
which is just up there in the woods.
Doorbell and dashcam footage
was recovered
which captured Stephen cycling
home a couple of hours later.
Dashcam footage from vehicles
such as buses or even private cars
is very, very useful
for investigators
because it can pick up movements
that might not be evident
using CCTV camera,
for example, that's more static.
The footage revealed a key detail.
We see Stephen with the bag
and the bag being very full
and cycling down the road.
But as we kind of followed
those cameras on,
there's this gap
where we just don't see him at all.
Further down the road,
we pick him up again.
And sure enough, he's there,
he's riding his bike,
he's got the Tesco bag.
But actually when we look at the bag,
the contents look a lot slimmer.
He's emptied that bag
of whatever was in it.
But more importantly, we want
to know where he's emptied that.
The digital forensics team
gained access
to Stephen's Google account
and made a discovery.
We put the Google password in,
we get all of these apps,
sort of, that he's using.
And one particular app that comes up
is Google Fit.
It operates off of GPS.
It then mapped his journey home.
And now showing this diversion
going down towards a place
called Tanner's Brook,
which we hadn't picked up
on CCTV
and he hadn't mentioned
in his account.
Tanner's Brook is a wooded area
which borders a river
running through Southampton.
It flows close to the other woods
near the sports center
where Lucy's body was found.
We know that he went into this area
with a fairly full bag,
and when he reappeared,
there was less items in there.
Within the first few hours, we had a
stroke of luck. I had the phone call
from the team saying they found
a significant find at this location.
What they found
was some burnt boxer shorts,
a blue hooded sweater
that had apparent blood on it,
and some tracksuit bottoms.
-They also found blue latex gloves.
-Nicholson, being a carer,
had access to those sorts of gloves.
They had apparent blood on them.
So all these items,
we're going to send off for analysis.
And within a few days
we had the result
that actually that DNA matched
Nicholson and Lucy McHugh.
Police finally had enough evidence
that Stephen had killed Lucy.
I think he was fairly confident
that he was gonna get away with this
because he had the perfect alibi.
You know, he was at an address for
the period when Lucy was murdered.
His phone supported him
by showing it was at this address.
And he gave us a detailed account
as to his movements afterwards
and was so confident with that
account that he said, you know,
"Look on CCTV,
you'll see me taking that route."
But, actually, that was his downfall
because the CCTV didn't cover
all of the route
that he said he had taken.
The cameras
ultimately provide the truth.
On the 19th of July, 2019,
Stephen was found guilty of murder
at Winchester Crown Court.
He was sentenced to a minimum
of 33 years.
I think she had contacted him
and said,
you know, "Unless you stay with me
or you treat me better,
I'm going to tell my family
and I'm going to tell, you know,
the police or whoever
that we've been having sex."
He only had one intention,
and that was to silence Lucy.
I think we had over 10,000 hours
of CCTV footage that needed viewing.
That is painstaking.
But people do it
because they are so motivated
to get justice for the victim.
CCTV is so crucial
in any investigation.
They say the camera never lies.
Lucy's case is really tragic
and upsetting
because what we have
is a 12-year-old girl
who was infatuated with somebody
who was taking advantage of her.
Lucy's murder
is particularly concerning
because it's a child, which we all
have this desire to protect
and look after.
---
It just sounds like something bad
is happening to her.
-I heard her scream, "No, stop it."
-I heard some gunshots.
Drop it, whatever it is, drop it.
It is not true that I killed my wife.
We know what happened because
the video tells us what happened.
The camera doesn't lie.
This time
on Killers Caught on Camera...
In Auckland, New Zealand,
a British backpacker is missing
after going on a date.
When they didn't hear back from her,
this was an alarm bell for them.
As the cameras track the suspect.
I know I haven't done anything wrong.
The story that he's given us,
very plausible as it was,
suddenly that's not what we've got
on camera and CCTV doesn't lie.
And in Southampton in the UK,
a young girl is the victim
of a predatory murder.
She's got multiple stab wounds,
a number around the neck.
In an attempt to cover up
a highly inappropriate relationship.
He only had one intention,
and that was to silence Lucy.
In the UK,
close to Billericay in Essex
lies the small village
of Ramsden Bellhouse.
Home to recent graduate
Grace Millane.
Amber Haque is a journalist
who covered the case.
Grace Millane
was a 21-year-old girl from Essex.
She had just graduated from uni,
she had a marketing degree, in 2018.
Grace had two brothers and was
extremely close to her family.
After graduating
from the University of Lincoln,
Grace decided to travel the world.
She was about to set off
on the adventure of a lifetime.
Living her dream,
traveling the world,
it's what so many of us have done
at that age.
You know, you go on your gap year,
it's the best feeling.
Grace spent six weeks
in South America
traveling around Chile, Patagonia
and Peru
before flying to Auckland,
New Zealand.
Throughout the whole trip,
she was constantly updating
family and friends,
daily check-ins.
And it was quite clear to them that
she was having the time of her life.
Grace was exploring
New Zealand's North Island
and was going to spend
her 22nd birthday in Auckland.
But on her birthday,
the 2nd of December, 2018,
Grace suddenly stopped responding
to messages.
Naturally, her mum and dad were
sending happy birthday messages.
When they didn't hear back from her,
this was an alarm bell for them.
They then decided
to alert the police.
Grace's parents reported
their daughter missing
on Wednesday the 5th of December,
2018.
Detective Inspector Scott Beard
took charge of the case.
Grace had been missing
for basically five days.
The fact that she hadn't
contacted anybody on her birthday
and nobody could contact her,
was a red flag.
One of the first things we have to do
is profile Grace,
who is she, where's she from.
You know, where was she staying.
It was a race against time
to identify and obtain footage
from any cameras
that could lead them to Grace.
She'd been staying at
Base Backpackers in Auckland.
The Backpackers was a key.
We have to work quickly
to obtain CCTV
because some places don't hold it
for too long.
It gets overwritten very quickly.
So the CCTV phase became crucial.
Detective Adam Bicknell
took the lead
on the forensic analysis
of the recordings.
From the CCTV,
we're building a timeline of events.
What's happened,
where it's happened, what time it is.
So what we have is Grace leaving
the Base Backpackers
to head up to the SkyCity Hotel.
She's wearing a black dress.
The CCTV showed Grace
taking a picture of a Christmas tree
outside the location,
sending it to her parents.
And that was the last time
they made contact with her.
Police spoke with one of Grace's
friends in the UK,
who told them
that Grace was on a date
on the evening
of the 1st of December.
Traveling can be
quite a full-on experience.
It can be lonely sometimes.
One of the ways
that Grace was getting around
and meeting people was on the
popular dating apps that are around.
And the night before her birthday,
she had matched with someone
and decided to go out for a drink
with him.
At 5:45 p.m.
on Saturday the 1st of December,
Grace was captured on CCTV
meeting a man at SkyCity,
a casino complex
in the center of Auckland.
They recognize each other
immediately. They hug.
It seems a really friendly,
nice initial meeting.
This place that they met
was a really public spot.
It's the kind of place that Grace
will have felt safe.
Hundreds of hours of CCTV footage
was reviewed
and the police checked
Grace's social media for any clues.
One of the staff members looked
at Grace's Facebook page.
The last person to comment
on their Facebook page
and on a photo of Grace
was a person named Jesse Shane.
Police contacted
Jesse Shane Kempson
via social media
and arranged an interview.
We had matched on Friday.
I said, "I know it's quick, but do
you want to catch up for a drink?"
And she said, "Yep, cool."
He was very comfortable, very polite.
And he spoke and was interviewed
by Detective Ewan Settle.
Jesse was filmed
by multiple hi-tech CCTV cameras
meeting Grace at SkyCity
on Saturday the 1st of December.
The CCTV footage here from SkyCity
is really interesting.
You've got 360-degree cameras,
which means when you play it back,
you can get the camera
to follow your subject,
which is a pretty cool piece
of technology.
So they're able to track Grace
and Mr. Kempson
throughout the entire time they were
in the SkyCity building environments.
Police asked Jesse
how the date went.
How did the evening pan out?
Yeah, pretty good. Yeah.
I...
We drank a lot of cocktails at...
the burger bar.
And we were having
good conversations.
-Yeah.
-Yeah.
After SkyCity, Grace and Jesse
headed to another bar.
At the end of drinks at the second
location, Jesse pays the bill again.
Quite charming behavior,
obviously trying to impress her
and make her feel romanced
and kind of looked after.
After leaving the restaurant, Grace
and Jesse went to a third venue.
They both look really relaxed.
We see Grace sat and she's chatting,
talking really rapidly
and really looks quite immersed
in the conversation.
The recordings show Grace
and Jesse hugging and kissing.
This is the CCTV footage
where we believe
Grace has text one of her friends
back in England.
She says to her friend
that she just can't believe
how well they're getting on.
She said, "We really click,"
and that was the last message
that Grace ever sent anyone.
In his police interview,
Jesse described
how his date with Grace ended.
Was there any discussion about
remaining together at that point?
-No.
-How did the evening end?
There was a hug and a kiss
on the cheek
and a "thanks,"
or, "nice meeting you."
Then I said,
"Let me know about tomorrow."
And she said, "Okay,"
and then she kept walking.
He said that's the last he saw of her
and then he went off to some bar
in the city
and he says
he got paralytically drunk.
Jesse told the police what happened
the next morning.
So at what point do you remember
being back at your unit?
-The next day.
-The next day, what time was that?
I woke up at about 9.
9:00, 10:00. Yeah.
-You woke up at about 9:00 or 10:00?
-In the morning.
In the morning.
You were in your apartment?
Yep.
At this point Jesse
was just a person of interest.
But the police needed to check
Jesse's DNA
to eliminate him as a suspect.
What would your feelings be about
providing a voluntary DNA sample
in the event that we can compare
that against something?
-Would you be happy with that?
-Yeah, 100%.
I know I haven't done anything wrong,
so I'm happy to do it.
-Okay.
-While Jesse was
in the interview room,
the police made
a major breakthrough.
In the first stages of the interview,
he was very plausible, believable.
And we had nothing
to contradict that.
It wasn't until later in the
interview, when there was a break.
One of the staff in the CCTV phase
had found a footage of Kempson
coming down the lift
in the CityLife Hotel
at 8 a.m. on that Sunday morning.
Jesse's seen entering the lift
off his level
and exiting out of CityLife Hotel.
From there he heads to
the Warehouse store on Elliot Street.
He immediately proceeds
to make his way
to where luggage bags are for sale,
and we can see him in the footage
perusing through the selection
of luggage bags there.
And he selects the largest bag there
and wheels it off to the counter
to pay for it.
It identifies him clearly
and identifies what he's doing.
The footage contradicted
Jesse's statement.
He said that he was asleep
until 9 or 10 a.m.,
but he was captured on camera
at 8 a.m.
Is he lying to us, is he mistaken?
The story that he's given us,
very plausible as it was,
suddenly that's not what we've got
on camera and CCTV doesn't lie.
Armed with this critical piece
of footage,
the police confronted Jesse.
There's quite a difference
between waking up at 9:00,
which is a pretty positive statement,
and walking in...
With a suitcase
I still have in my room.
-Clearly under your own steam.
-Yep.
Okay.
-Explain that.
-I might have got the times wrong.
But if you're assuming
that I was using that suitcase
for something, I've still got
that suitcase in my room.
Police later checked Jesse's room
and found an empty suitcase.
But without any more
substantial evidence,
the police had to release Jesse.
At the time,
all we had was Jesse Kempson
and that first interview, what
we believed was telling us a lie.
But that didn't prove
that he had done anything to anyone
or to Grace.
So in the United Kingdom,
they can hold someone for 48 hours.
We don't have that. So we either have
sufficient to charge
or we have to release them.
So in this case Jesse Kempson
was released.
Police continued to sift
through the CCTV footage
from Jesse's apartment block.
The CCTV phase in that hotel,
CityLife Hotel, becomes more crucial.
And just our general investigation.
You know, what's the background
of Jesse Kempson.
So Jesse Kempson was 26.
He would tell people
that he had a law degree
and he was
a successful businessman.
Jesse's family
painted this picture of him
as being a bit
of a complex character.
He had fallen out
with his dad two years previously,
and he wasn't really talking to much
of his relatives at the time.
His grandfather made this comment.
He said he was a really nice kid,
but he would just constantly fall out
with people.
As police uncovered more
footage from Jesse's residence,
it showed that he was wasn't telling
the truth about how the date ended.
On the 1st of December, Grace
went up to Jesse's apartment.
We see them,
having left Bluestone Room,
cross over to outside CityLife Hotel.
They're arm in arm, Mr. Kempson's
got his arm around Grace.
She's holding on to his hand.
Everything appears to be fine.
Grace is going back
of her own volition.
This is a key moment in time,
9:40 p.m.
on Saturday the 1st of December,
2018.
Grace has entered this lift,
exits on level three,
and it's the last time
she's seen alive.
Police continued their
forensic analysis of the footage.
They needed to find out
what happened to Grace
after she went into Jesse's room.
The recordings from the next day
aroused more suspicion.
He's seen to buy bleach,
cleaning gloves,
some sponges,
general cleaning material.
A couple of hours later,
Jesse took a taxi to Apex Car Rental
and hired a car for 24 hours.
Jesse was seen again at 2:53 p.m.
leaving his apartment block.
He was going on another date,
with another woman he'd messaged
on a dating app.
This is a date that Jesse goes on
on the afternoon
of Sunday the 2nd of December.
So he spent the morning
buying a suitcase,
getting some cleaning product
and now he's headed to another date.
This woman who went
to meet him describes
that he was quite intense but calm.
He comes out with this story
where he says, "Oh, I heard about
this guy who got caught up in a case.
He'd asked his girlfriend to have
rough sex, and it ended badly.
He'd ended up killing her."
He came out with this comment
to the girl where he said,
"It's crazy how a guy
can make one wrong move
and end up in jail
for the rest of his life."
It was quite a strange story
to come out with on a first date.
This woman understandably
got very freaked out
and didn't want to stay,
kind of, on the date, she left.
But this all happened the day after
he'd been on a date with Grace.
Less than 24 hours
after being last filmed with Grace,
Jesse was seen
with an industrial carpet cleaner.
We see Jesse entering the lift.
He's got the carpet cleaning machine
and a couple of bottles of liquid
to clean up whatever mess
he's got going on in his apartment.
He only has the Rug Doctor up there
for just under half an hour.
But as the evening progressed,
Jesse's actions became
even more alarming.
He was seen taking an empty
luggage trolley up to his room.
Minutes later, he returned
to the lift with it fully loaded.
It's got a suitcase on it
and you can see as he wheels
the luggage trolley into the lift
from his apartment floor
that it's heavy.
He's had to physically pull it
around the corner
to get it into the lift.
And Jesse, he's a big guy.
He's, you know, like 6-foot-1 or 2
and pretty solidly built.
So he was strong,
and he had to maneuver that.
I recall the chills
and the goosebumps
when I saw that footage
for the first time.
Jesse was brought in for questioning
a second time
and his version of the night's
events completely changed.
She started talking to me
about Fifty Shades of Grey
and she told me that there's
a few things she likes doing.
We started having,
I guess, more violent sex.
We ended up on the floor...
and we kept going on the floor.
Then...
she took a photo
of my genital area...
and so I obviously took photos
of her too.
And then we kept going.
And she told me that--
hold her arms tighter.
And then she told me
to hold her throat.
He accepted that they'd gone
to his apartment.
They'd had consensual sex. It's rough
because that's what she wanted.
And he must have strangled her
to death.
And then he says, after the rough sex
and strangling her,
not realizing, he'd gone to have
a shower, fell asleep in the shower.
I woke up the next day
and I saw that she was lying
on the floor.
I saw that she had blood
coming from her nose.
I screamed, I yelled down to her
and I tried to move her to see
if she was awake.
That second interview
was a totally different,
contradictory interview.
I saw it as self-serving. Yeah.
"It wasn't my fault, she wanted it.
And it just was an accident
that I strangled her to death."
In these circumstances,
what they're trying to do
is to blame the victim and say,
"It's because of her kink.
She didn't know her limits
and I accidentally killed her."
Diminishing your blame
or trying to in the process.
Whether or not
that's still an acceptable excuse
and whether it just is an excuse?
Probably most of the time.
It's conceivable that sometimes
sex games do go wrong.
But that is up to you as the person
who's administering the strangulation
to make sure
that you are not crossing that line,
not the person who's being strangled.
-You found Grace deceased.
-Yep.
How long did you make any efforts
to resuscitate her?
I was trying to shake her.
I was listening to see
if her breathing was coming through.
And that's when I panicked
'cause I couldn't hear or--
And she was cold.
He panicked. Saw Grace down there,
screamed, panicked,
was going to ring 111,
but didn't press the call.
Jesse didn't call anyone
to help Grace.
And afterwards
his online browsing revealed
a sinister train of thought.
The police managed to try
and piece together a timeline.
And this was based on Jesse's
Google searches. They figured out
that Grace was probably killed
before around 1:29 a.m.
And after that, he was looking
on hardcore pornographic websites.
Jesse was also searching
for "hottest fire," "rigor mortis,"
and the "Waitakere Ranges,"
a mountainous area
west of Auckland.
The police found these images
on Jesse's phone,
which he had taken of Grace's
naked body after she was killed.
They were described
as grossly indecent.
And comprehending that he had done
that after killing her so senselessly
and just taking that last shred
of dignity from her
and knowing her family
had to hear that
and know that that had happened
to her is just unbelievable.
Jesse's actions didn't correspond
with his statement in the interview.
I didn't believe what had happened.
I was just terrified and scared.
I...
remember...
putting Grace in the suitcase.
I was...
I was just in shock the whole time.
Jesse was recorded
taking the suitcase
down in the lift at 9:30 p.m.
On the face of it, when you see him
with the trolley and the suitcases,
it just looks like a suitcase
on a luggage trolley.
But when you know
that Grace Millane
is dead in one of those suitcases,
it's quite chilling. It's quite cold.
When police recovered
the CCTV footage,
it showed a disturbing sequence
of events.
I put Grace in the back
of the hire car.
I woke up the next day
at about 5:00 a.m.
and drove the car
out to Kumeu, at first.
I picked up a shovel.
Detectives were able to locate
video footage from the store
on Monday the 3rd of December.
Here he is returning to the counter,
and he's got these nuts and bolts.
I think he's made that purchase
as a distraction
to the fact that he's buying a spade.
After buying the shovel,
Jesse disappeared
from surveillance footage
until he was seen at a car wash,
four hours later.
He drives into one of the wash bays.
From here he's going to get
the mats out, spray them cleaned,
get the shovel out,
to spray that clean.
It's a rental.
You don't need to clean rental cars.
The rental car company
will do that at the end.
You can see him washing the dirt off
here, and the brownness coming off.
Later, Jesse explained exactly
what happened
between buying the shovel
and washing the car.
I ended up driving
towards the Waitakeres
and I remember pulling off
after a reservoir
into a stop zone.
I went into the bush and dug a hole.
He finds a car layby
where he can park.
He drags the suitcase
into the bush,
only about probably 10 meters
from the roadside,
and he digs a shallow grave
and he buries the suitcase.
The police were already
one step ahead,
they had been tracking Jesse's
movements on his mobile phone.
We had found on his phone
that it had been polling up
on the Waitakere Ranges.
I was already speaking
to our search-and-rescue experts.
Because it's not the first time
a body has been found
buried in the Waitakere Ranges.
We're going to head out of here
very soon,
and you're going to take us
to where you buried her.
Yeah.
-She will likely be exhumed tomorrow.
-Okay.
At some point. And after that,
they will-- a pathologist,
specialist doctor,
will perform a post-mortem.
They're very skilled at establishing
people's causes of death.
-Do you understand that?
-Yeah.
-Did you kill Grace Millane?
-No.
Okay.
Jesse Kempson, you're under arrest
for the murder of Grace Millane
on or about the 2nd of December.
Do you understand?
-Yeah.
-Okay.
Grace's body was found the next day
in the Waitakere Range.
We were already close.
We were about two minutes away.
So when he described the area,
we were there before he actually
came out to point it out.
And I've always said
that we would have found Grace.
Not as quickly,
but we would have found her.
After Jesse was charged,
the police needed to build
a watertight case against him,
they discovered that Jesse
had bought a second suitcase
on the 3rd of December.
We know, obviously, that he's taken
Grace in one suitcase
and he's bought the duplicate
to try and cover up his tracks.
Police also uncovered
another clip of Jesse,
throwing out a bag
filled with something.
We believe it's Grace's purse
or bag and maybe
some personal belongings.
Analysts also found
an alarming piece of footage
from Grace and Jesse's date.
We see Grace go to the toilet.
He's grabbed her bag,
he's opened the purse
and he's looking through
Grace's personal items and contents.
Is he looking for cash, drugs,
information, identification?
I don't know.
As well as
the incriminating footage,
police also had evidence
from the scene of the crime.
We'd done this scene examination.
We sprayed a chemical
called luminol,
and that reacts with blood
and the blood will glow.
When we did that in this apartment,
there was
a significant amount of blood.
On the 16th of January, 2019,
Jesse Kempson pleaded not guilty
to murder
at the High Court in Auckland.
A character emerged, opportunistic
and emotionally unpredictable.
Our investigation identified
that Kempson was prolific on Tinder
and had numerous, numerous dates.
We spoke to,
we'd like to think, virtually
every single date he'd had on Tinder.
Then you start to get this pattern
of how he operates,
of what happens, how he can switch
from a Jekyll-Hyde scenario.
He can be nice, pleasant one minute,
goes to the bathroom,
comes out the next,
and he's angry and he's violent.
I've always said
if it wasn't Grace, it would have
been someone else
that Kempson would've killed.
And I think I look at that simply
because of the evidence that we know
from propensity witnesses
who gave evidence,
particularly the month beforehand,
where he suffocated one of his dates.
And she thought she was going to die.
The defense case was
that this was rough sex gone wrong.
It was accidental.
The pathologist agreed
that the strangulation
had to be for five to 10 minutes.
It had to be sustained
and with pressure.
That's not rough sex
and the jury convicted him
very quickly of murder.
And that's what it was.
Jesse Kempson was found
guilty of murder.
He was sentenced to life in prison
with a minimum non-parole period
of 17 years.
Is he a psychopath?
There's no emotion. He doesn't
believe he's done anything wrong.
And that's--
Yeah, it's disappointing, really.
The CCTV in this particular case
was so crucial.
You know, it told us the story.
And we could follow
Grace's movements
from the moment
she left the Backpackers
to the moment she got out of the lift
up in the CityLife Hotel.
But we could also follow Kempson's
movements before and then after.
And of course, that proved all his
lies. That proved that he was lying.
We just kept recovering
CCTV footage that was
a goldmine for the enquiries.
I think what kind of stuck out
about this story
and just chimed with so many people
is the nature
of what happened to Grace.
Like, you know, dating apps and
kind of the freedom that it gives us
to sort of meet people so casually
and easily,
I guess it's something where you put
a lot of trust in the stranger
that you're going to meet.
And this was supposed to be
one of the most exciting chapters
of Grace's life,
an adventure of a lifetime.
And to think she's traveled halfway
across the world
so far away from her family
and that trip of a lifetime ended up
being the end of her life.
CCTV and 360-degree cameras
were vital
for the New Zealand police to track
Jesse Kempson's movements
and convict him
of Grace Millane's murder.
Public transport is peppered
with cameras
as pervasive digital witnesses.
Like in the case of Lucy McHugh,
where a camera on a bus
led to a breakthrough.
Southampton, UK.
Home to 12-year-old Lucy McHugh.
Bright, bubbly and nicknamed Brains
by her grandmother.
Paul Barton was
a detective superintendent
-with Hampshire Police.
-Lucy lived at home with her mother.
She was estranged
from her natural father.
Mum had a new partner
who was 21 years of age.
They had a baby between them
and Lucy had other siblings.
So it was probably a bit
of a chaotic household.
In 2017, Lucy's mother
rented out a room
to 25-year-old Stephen Nicholson.
Kirsty Bennett
is a criminal psychologist.
Stephen was a tattoo artist,
but also a care worker.
He was having financial difficulties
and struggling to pay rent.
They allowed him to move in.
Stacey had actually got Nicholson
a job as a carer.
Stephen made an immediate
impression on 12-year-old Lucy.
Stephen likely paid Lucy
a lot of attention
and that was quite flattering.
Their relationshp quickly developed
and became sexual.
At Lucy's age, she wouldn't have
realized that's inappropriate,
and Stephen took advantage of that.
A few people raised concerns about
Lucy and Stephen's relationship.
It can be incredibly hard
for parents to accept the fact
that their child's groomed
because it feels like failure.
So it feels like you should've known.
And so you might be defensive.
Most of the time it is someone
who you have some relationship with,
even if it's not a close one,
so you think you would have known
if that person was doing
something terrible to your child.
But there was growing tension
between Lucy and Stephen.
Nicholson could be moody
and, you know, kind of would dismiss
Lucy the next minute.
And that would then get Lucy angry
and there would be arguments.
By July 2018,
Stephen was no longer living
with Lucy and her family.
Lucy confided in her cousin
that she was scared of Stephen,
who was violent.
She was now 13 years old.
She had actually been grounded.
She had her mobile phone
taken from her
by her mother, but it was
the school summer holiday,
so she was allowed out
during the daytime hours.
On the 25th of July, 2018,
Lucy asked her mum
if she could go and visit her friend,
which Stacey agreed to.
But as evening approached,
Lucy didn't come home,
and no one had heard from her.
And Lucy wasn't picking up messages
or phone calls.
Stacey then rang the police
to notify them that Lucy was missing.
News spread quickly
and Stephen texted Stacey.
Early the next morning
there was a grim discovery.
Hampshire Police received
a treble-nine call
from a member of the public.
An individual walking his dog in the
area of Southampton Sports Center.
So this is the footpath
that the dog walker used
on that morning.
Just his dog went off track
and went into the undergrowth here.
Lying face down was the body
of a young girl.
She was quickly identified as Lucy.
She had been stabbed 27 times.
She's got multiple stab wounds,
a number around the neck,
one in her sternum,
one on the back of her shoulder.
And then a number of small wounds
on her wrists,
which we would say
are defensive injuries.
-Detectives sealed off the area.
-We could see there was blood
on the leaves and on the trees,
but no obvious weapon.
Lucy was wearing a watch, so tend
to rule out the motive of robbery.
And she was fully clothed.
So again, you would eliminate
a sexual element to the attack.
Investigators re-traced Lucy's steps
in an effort to find out
who was responsible.
Time is critical
in these investigations.
And quite often CCTV
can be overwritten within 24 hours.
A digital forensics team
was assigned to process
thousands of hours of CCTV footage
At 8:59 that morning,
there's a camera
just on the end of this house here
from private CCTV
that picked up Lucy
entering this road
and walking in this direction.
So that was our first sighting
of Lucy.
And then it's just a question now--
just following up from this road
to look at the possible route
she may have taken.
The camera had picked up
an important detail.
Because she didn't have a phone,
she asked her brother
if she could borrow his watch,
which would indicate that she needed
to be somewhere at a particular time.
So this first image
was really crucial.
It also gave us this confirmation
of what Lucy was wearing on the day.
As the investigators continued
to search through material,
more details
and digital clues emerged.
Dr. Vasileios Karagiannopoulosis
is a cybercrime expert.
We can see that she's holding
a bottle with some liquid in it
that was also found
in the crime scene.
What that tells me
is that it's likely
that Lucy was killed
in that location.
She wasn't killed elsewhere
then deposited in that location,
because the water bottle was there
as well.
Lucy was filmed multiple times,
walking towards the sport center.
It's a two-mile journey, I think,
from her home to the sports center.
She's got her coat under her arm.
She's got her bottle in her hand,
but she is walking with purpose.
As well as examining
the CCTV footage,
police also searched Lucy's bedroom
for clues.
What we uncovered quickly
was that she held a diary,
a private diary that she was keeping.
She made notes
to indicate that she was potentially
in a sexual relationship
with Stephen Nicholson.
Some of the entries
were really concerning.
Lucy had written him letters
asking him to buy some condoms,
asking him to buy a pregnancy kit.
As far as the law is concerned,
that is statutory rape.
Stephen Nicholson was brought in
for questioning.
He acknowledged
that Lucy probably had
a bit of a schoolgirl crush on him.
But he said, you know,
she was a pain.
You know, "I didn't like her,
I always fell out with her."
The police wanted to know
Stephen's whereabouts
on the day Lucy went missing.
He started giving us an account
as to his movements that day.
He had gone to visit
an elderly gentleman
who lived not too far
from Southampton Sports Center.
And he would go and do his shopping
for him.
He said he went to visit this chap
at around about 9:00 that morning.
Detectives visited the man
to corroborate
Stephen Nicholson's account.
He knew who Nicholson was,
but he would pretty much agree
with anything you put to him.
He wasn't a credible witness in that
sense, and we couldn't rely on him.
On the morning Lucy went missing,
Stephen told the police
he'd left his phone
in the home of the man he cared for
while he went shopping for him.
He said he came back
and stayed there until 11 a.m..
The phone's GPS signal
backed up
Stephen's version of events.
Initially,
Stephen's alibi seemed to check out,
so it's important that police
are then going through
and trawling through hours of CCTV
to check where Stephen was
and whether there was any crossing
between him and Lucy
on the day she disappeared.
CCTV from a local supermarket
provided the police
with the breakthrough they needed.
We've got a small CCTV camera
that's just on the outside
of the building looking out.
It picked up Lucy
at 9:28 in the morning,
walking purposely
towards the sports center.
And we believe that's the last time
she was seen alive and on camera.
The supermarket cameras
had also captured Stephen
26 minutes earlier.
Now, I think he was deliberately
trying to catch himself on CCTV.
That would support his alibi
that he was in the area.
The supermarket CCTV footage
was crucial.
Not only did it provide
the last sighting of Lucy,
it placed Stephen in the area.
There was another recording
of Stephen,
riding a bike at the sports center.
It's 9:39, and that's 10 minutes
after we've seen Lucy
walking past the supermarket CCTV
towards the sports center.
This video is really important
because it places
both Stephen and Lucy in the area.
What's significant
about this particular location
is just in the distance there,
where those trees are is the location
where Nicholson
had visited this elderly man.
It's almost in line of sight
of where Lucy was found,
which is just up there in the woods.
Doorbell and dashcam footage
was recovered
which captured Stephen cycling
home a couple of hours later.
Dashcam footage from vehicles
such as buses or even private cars
is very, very useful
for investigators
because it can pick up movements
that might not be evident
using CCTV camera,
for example, that's more static.
The footage revealed a key detail.
We see Stephen with the bag
and the bag being very full
and cycling down the road.
But as we kind of followed
those cameras on,
there's this gap
where we just don't see him at all.
Further down the road,
we pick him up again.
And sure enough, he's there,
he's riding his bike,
he's got the Tesco bag.
But actually when we look at the bag,
the contents look a lot slimmer.
He's emptied that bag
of whatever was in it.
But more importantly, we want
to know where he's emptied that.
The digital forensics team
gained access
to Stephen's Google account
and made a discovery.
We put the Google password in,
we get all of these apps,
sort of, that he's using.
And one particular app that comes up
is Google Fit.
It operates off of GPS.
It then mapped his journey home.
And now showing this diversion
going down towards a place
called Tanner's Brook,
which we hadn't picked up
on CCTV
and he hadn't mentioned
in his account.
Tanner's Brook is a wooded area
which borders a river
running through Southampton.
It flows close to the other woods
near the sports center
where Lucy's body was found.
We know that he went into this area
with a fairly full bag,
and when he reappeared,
there was less items in there.
Within the first few hours, we had a
stroke of luck. I had the phone call
from the team saying they found
a significant find at this location.
What they found
was some burnt boxer shorts,
a blue hooded sweater
that had apparent blood on it,
and some tracksuit bottoms.
-They also found blue latex gloves.
-Nicholson, being a carer,
had access to those sorts of gloves.
They had apparent blood on them.
So all these items,
we're going to send off for analysis.
And within a few days
we had the result
that actually that DNA matched
Nicholson and Lucy McHugh.
Police finally had enough evidence
that Stephen had killed Lucy.
I think he was fairly confident
that he was gonna get away with this
because he had the perfect alibi.
You know, he was at an address for
the period when Lucy was murdered.
His phone supported him
by showing it was at this address.
And he gave us a detailed account
as to his movements afterwards
and was so confident with that
account that he said, you know,
"Look on CCTV,
you'll see me taking that route."
But, actually, that was his downfall
because the CCTV didn't cover
all of the route
that he said he had taken.
The cameras
ultimately provide the truth.
On the 19th of July, 2019,
Stephen was found guilty of murder
at Winchester Crown Court.
He was sentenced to a minimum
of 33 years.
I think she had contacted him
and said,
you know, "Unless you stay with me
or you treat me better,
I'm going to tell my family
and I'm going to tell, you know,
the police or whoever
that we've been having sex."
He only had one intention,
and that was to silence Lucy.
I think we had over 10,000 hours
of CCTV footage that needed viewing.
That is painstaking.
But people do it
because they are so motivated
to get justice for the victim.
CCTV is so crucial
in any investigation.
They say the camera never lies.
Lucy's case is really tragic
and upsetting
because what we have
is a 12-year-old girl
who was infatuated with somebody
who was taking advantage of her.
Lucy's murder
is particularly concerning
because it's a child, which we all
have this desire to protect
and look after.