What Makes Mass Shooters Snap? Examining Columbine and Utoya (Crime Documentary)

0:02 in 1999 students Eric Harris and Dylan cold would embark on a massacre that would make history people are getting shot all around me and the name of one Colorado High School synonymous with tragedy children were running from the school at break neck speeds and I knew that the world had changed as the clock ticked that guy is in a black trch Co the body count Rose they would pop underneath a table they would say something like peekaboo and they would shoot someone and with it the question why have these two young men waged war on their classmates and teachers a bullet entered the side of my backpack spun around and actually shot

0:49 me in the back and committed the world's most notorious Killing Spree what caused them to have so much hatred they were willing to walk in and kill his many people as [Music] possible in 1999 the area of Coline on the outskirts

1:34 of Denver Colorado had been the epitome of ordinary it's a suburban area it's pretty quiet not a lot of crime it's um overwhelmingly white middle class which is to say very homogeneous place but one spring day in 1999 would bring the unremarkable neighborhood worldwide notoriety you know April 20th of 99 was it was a typical day I was eager to get my grades bumped up because I was uh I was 15 at the time so getting a driver's permit was definitely on the horizon the morning definitely was just a regular

2:19 day starting my shift I was an emergency response specialist I just took uh regular phone calls to the Sheriff's Office as well as phone calls normal day we had ran a couple you know basic calls U medical calls it was just like any other day went off to work I was leaving that day for a conference in another part of our state Tom's 15-year-old son made his way to Coline high school Daniel was um very shy kid very shy very reserved but very sweet a very lovable kid he was someone who even as a teenager was not ashamed to give his mom

3:07 uh a big hug for fellow students 16-year-old Craig Scott and his 17-year-old sister Rachel the morning had not started harmoniously my sister was in the car she was uh honking her horn uh because I was making us late and uh I had to have my hair just perfect and uh we got into the car together and she was kind of getting on on to me about being late and we got into an argument this is the road that Rachel and I were on together to go to school and Rachel would pull into here to drop

3:52 me off she was just asking me not to make us late all the time and and so we were kind of back and forth in an argument and we pulled up to the school and I got out of the car and I turned and I looked at her and I slammed the car door shut and I walked in the school I had no idea that'd be the last time that I'd see Rachel [Music] alive around 11:19 a.m. Coline School West entrance sha Graves and his friend's world was about to change forever for lunch there was three of us that day that chose not

4:38 to eat uh Dan robau Lance Kirkland and myself we stepped out the side door like we typically would we'd usually grab a soda at the vending machines right there and and we'd just jet up and take the path off um only that morning uh things were a little different we were looking up at the top of the dirt Hill and we saw two two guys that were wearing all black their black trench coats and with them they were carrying a couple of black duffel bags we witnessed them loading weapons um that we just assumed were were toys and that's when uh it started they showered us with with rounds and

5:25 Dan and Lance both went down one floor above in the library Craig and his friend Matt were sitting revising you know we we thought that we were hearing uh fireworks we saw students running away from the school they were trekking through the the soccer field you know we thought that you know was a senior prank it's about that time for the uh the end of the year for for some silly prank to happen it was a tradition but this was no prank a nightmare that would Shock the World had just

6:15 begun at approximately 11:19 a.m. on the 20th of April 1999 a deadly Killing Spree had begun at Coline High School in Colorado outside the school cafeteria 15-year-old student sha Graves and his friends Dan and Lance were being fired on by two teenagers dressed in black trench coats my body was completely uh behind a a concrete wall so I was protected the only thing on me that was sticking past that was my backpack a bullet entered the side of my backpack spun around and actually shot me in the back and shot out my right hip and at that moment

7:00 um I lost my legs completely I was paralyzed from the waist down [Music] immediately what sha had originally thought was a prank was far from it I found myself laying halfway in the school and halfway out and at that moment I knew that my worst nightmare had come true uh months possibly years before the shooting actually took place I had a reoccurring nightmare of of somebody in my family or even myself being paralyzed it didn't make any sense then uh but the second I looked back at my legs I realized that that dream had come true

7:47 and I was the one that was going to be paralyzed sha lay in the doorway of the cafeteria and for hundreds of students inside the reality of what was happening was beginning to sink in all I remember from that moment was just the fear in their eyes looking at me and I'm sure I had fear looking back and that's when the fire alarm went off and the cafeteria started to evacuate 91 Yep this is Shar at col Mike high school we have shots being fired okay the guy is in a black trench coat they just by the temperature I'm going have to try and get out here and

8:32 call you back over the prior year the two mystery Shooters had made several extraordinary videos both spoof and serious that were chillingly similar to the Spree to come the violent merciless attacks played out in the videos had now become a reality the two Shooters walked down uh to try and finish off everyone and I watched um one of the shooters uh shoot Lance in the face at Jefferson County Sheriff's Department Detective Kate Batton was just returning from an early lunch I

9:19 asked what was going on they said that there was a shooting at Coline high school so at that point I started driving towards colum line and that's when it became surreal because the dispatcher was talking about snipers on the roof they were talking about bombs exploding and I'm I'm just astounded that this is information that's being relayed in Suburban Littleton my secretary ran in the door was shut and she said there's been a report of shootings or gun fire and bombs expl I and I'm thinking what are you talking about I came out of my

10:05 office and I ran down here and as I looked down the corridor I saw a gunman coming towards me uh with the shotgun when I was staring down and I made contact it seemed like the size of a cannon all I kept thinking is what it was going to feel like to be shot you know I I thought of my family was I going to die quickly each time a bullet was fired from the gun then glass would chatter behind me I hear bullets exploding in that area and what really probably saved my life is girls coming out of the gymnasium in this Crossing Hall they

10:51 were coming into the crossfire and I wanted to make sure that they were not hit by the gunman's gunfire I ran down to this hallway and I was able to get the girls into the gymnasium Area emergency well we got a friend a call from my daughter saying he's chasing us with a gun and then he hung up the phone and you could hear the screaming in the hallways [Music] yeah 6 weeks earlier March the 16th 1999 in the mountains south of Coline the two shooters recorded another video this time the weapons were

11:37 real that's a slug I imagine that in someone's brain both were students at Coline High School just weeks away from graduating entry exit 17-year-old Dylan cold and 18-year-old Eric Harris no no no Harris was a young man that was in advanced classes um you know he had dreams of going to the military he was going to he applied or to enlist in the Marines Cal was a kid who a few weeks prior had visited one of the state

12:23 universities in Arizona so his plan was to go to college Cal was at prom 3 night prior now both Harris and cold seemed intent on the destruction of the school and everyone in [Music] it by 11:27 a.m. the two shooters were in an area near the library where Craig Scott and numerous fellow students were working we're hearing the uh the the firecrackers we're thinking that it's a prank we're laughing we're joking about it um and then that's when a a uh teacher ran into the room uh she ran out over to the phone she got on the phone to call the police Jefferson County 911 the phone rings and um you know I had a

13:10 caller on the other end of the line who stated that something was happening at Coline High School there is a student here with a gun he get shot out a window there was children in the library and she wanted to obviously you know protect them and take care of them I'm on the table kid head on the table she saw the shots happen she knew this was serious she knew this was real okay we've got help on the way ma'am okay okay oh God stay in the line with oh God stay down I got underneath the table with my buddy Matt um and then my friend Isaiah he came and he sat next to me still lying paralyzed in the cafeteria doorway 15-year-old Shawn

13:57 could do nothing but listen I can hear explosions going off upstairs and I can hear people screaming and I can hear gunshots just echoing throughout the school and there's just chaos everywhere I've got every student in this library on the floor you better stay on the floor we have paramedic we have fire and we have police on Route we were just sitting down to lunch and the tones went off for a reported possible drive by shooting near Coline High [Music] School my partner and I jumped into the medic unit and started heading towards Coline as we pulled up several students running by and and one young gal had a

14:43 bullet hole in her I believe right Cal we treated her after several minutes shooting and throwing homemade bombs in the corridor outside Harris and cold now approached the library entrance where the teacher was under the desk on the line to 911 dispatch I remember trying to get her to close the doors and lock them to keep everyone in is there any way you can block the door so no one can get in I I do not right outside that door I'm afraid to go to the it's okay it was trying to keep her calm so that I could you know figure out what was going [Music] on get up

15:30 [Music] my I'll rip off your goddamn head Dylan was a family friend of our kids for a long time he grew up here uh sort of Dylan was here a lot um the kids met each other in the first grade and became best friends hey what's going on dude this is Dylan there were never fights a lot of kids you have to send home after a while cuz you know it gets with boys it was great the three of them got along great he was a nice gentle young man Dylan cold was born in Colorado and at the time of the shooting was living in his parents' Designer Home in a desirable natural area just outside the town Dylan's parents they were intellectuals and artists at heart they had met at Ohio State University uh in

16:18 the art uh program they didn't believe in spanking um they didn't believe in guns they didn't believe in war they were pacifists Eric Harris's background was also far from underprivileged Eric's father was ex-military he was a decorated uh air force test pilot it required them to bounce around a bit from City to city as his father would get transferred but lived in normal middleclass neighborhoods not living in the inner city and subject to gangs or drugs or violence it did affect Eric however always having to move to another school make new friends again that was tough for

17:05 him Eric Harris and Dylan cold were both deeply into computers and both complained they were victims of bullying by sporty students known as [Applause] jcks after settling in the Coline area Harris became friends with cold and as such also hung out with Dylan's friend Brooks brown but it would not always be a smooth relationship he had thrown a snowball at Brooks's car and cracked the windshield and a kid came up and said here's Eric's backpack I took it while he was throwing the Snowballs so I'm thinking what's this I'm going to take the backpack back so we drove down in the car and I rolled down the window and I said to Eric um

17:53 I've got your backpack meet me at your mom's house and we rolled back up the window well he started banging on the window crazy saying give me my backpack he was frantic that was the first time I saw that anger and it was very unusual it was it was quick and it was fast and it was unrelenting I will freaking kill you I'm going to pull out a goddamn shotgun the 20th of April 1999 11:29 a.m. Coline High School western side Eric Harris and Dylan cold entered the library where four staff members and 52 students were hiding as soon as they came in they were

18:38 shooting off their guns they began to uh yell at students they were making some mocking comments nobody whatever their race sex or social status would be safe from The Killing Spree the first person that they killed was Kyle Blasco who who didn't know to hide he had a disability and he likes simple things his family said he liked um panda bears he liked coloring and they became the bully what would happen next in that Library would horrify the [Music] world throughout 1998 and early 99

19:27 Coline high school students Eric Harris and Dylan cold had made a number of Home Videos themed around violence on April the 20th just weeks before they were both due to graduate fantasy became reality at 11:29 a.m. they entered the [Music] library like his fellow students 16-year-old Craig Scott was hiding under a table with his friends mat and Isaiah a lot of students were um were being were being quiet some girls were crying and some girls were begging for their life 911 dispatcher Renee Napoli was

20:15 listening in to a phone line left open at the library desk I could hear um them speaking as well as the children in the library and I the was the the definite sound of gunshots they actually fired out the windows at the police officers and two of those police officers or Deputy sheriffs um fired back they then walked over and they started systematically shooting the kids they treated it like it was a game uh like they were having fun at one point they would pop underneath a table they would say something like peekaboo and they would shoot someone I think that they were enjoying

21:01 themselves through a good portion of the shooting there was a lot of hooting and hollering and and uh um false bravado between the two of them three would be shot dead and four injured before Harris and cold worked their way towards Craig Scott they came over to where I was um and they saw Isaiah and Isaiah was one of the very few africanamerican students in our school and I believe Dylan called Eric over and using a racial slur we have an n-word over here one point he was kind of backing up underneath the table and then they were one point he was being P pulled out and this is something that came up in my memory later I remember

21:48 Isaiah said I want to see my mom they shot Isaiah and then they turned their gun towards Matt and they shot Matt I had decided to uh pretend to be dead and not draw any attention to myself and so I um I laid there and uh I could hear their last breaths being taken five more students would lose their lives leaving 10 dead and 12 injured in the deadly Library spree before Harris and cold left the room at 11:36 a.m. and began wreaking

22:35 further Havoc around the school sh an emergency yes we do you guys s lots and lots of paramedics we have paramedics we have fire and we have police on rout SWAT sniper sha Dugen was one of several Law Enforcement Officers with children at the school I got a page and it said uh all SWAT respond to a critical incident so I have all my gear and I'm trying to call my daughter and uh she's not answering her page and she was a senior in the school that day so I'm a little frantic that uh she's not responding hundreds of emergency Personnel were flocking to the school there was ambulances and fire trucks and police cars and and sheriff's cars

23:21 parked everywhere and children were running from the school at break neck speeds as fast as they could I was running for my life and when I got behind the police car I couldn't help but be thinking about Matt and Isaiah because they they were there was still there was still a little bit of breathing and I felt I felt a little like a [Music] coward my God I was under a table and people were getting sh all around me it was overwhelming to see the emotion on these kids' faces and I knew that the world had

24:07 changed and there's so many people oh my God everybody was calling 911 from inside the school from outside the school so the information that we were getting was conflicting as a sniper um you ask what your Rules of Engagement are is this a deadly for situation and I was told if any any High School age kids come out in Black trench coasts with weapons they were to be shot amongst the confusion the name of one suspect began to trickle out I SP to Brook Brown as a student given me good suspect information I think this is the guy okay what's what do you got for name okay last name is Harris he was friends with him approximately 2 years ago but

24:54 then he started acting really strange okay it would be revealed that Eric Harris's Behavior had already been seriously worrying some people along the way Eric did let out of different lot of signs he had on his uh his website talking about how we wanted to kill all sorts of people hundreds of people wanted to kill everybody in Denver um and in particular Brooks Brown his former friend disputes like the incident with the broken windshield had put Brown on Harris's hit list Brooks was supposed to pick Eric up for school and Brooks was terrible with being on time and Brooks slept in and didn't pick him up and that was it that was it and I said to Brooks can you

25:40 smooth it over and Brooks said it doesn't work that way with Eric and so that was the indication Eric doesn't forgive he was an injustice collector L Dylan who was still friends with and had been lifelong friends with uh Brooks warned Brooks uh to go to the website and see what was going on he was posting threats about uh wanting to kill Brooks and that's the thing we took to the police and from when he started making the death threats he wasn't allowed in our house anymore we knew that Eric was dangerous we did not know Dylan when we turned them into to the police Eric was into pipe bombs and he was talking about it on his website there was actually a search warrant drawn up um but then was never taken before a judge to search Eric's house um

26:27 that was never followed up on because there was another series of murders in the town where the person investigating sort of went off that case for a while and never picked it up again X but Harris and Cold's plan involved something much worse than homemade pipe bomb grenades as Shawn Graves still paralyzed and bleeding half inside the cafeteria door was about to experience I started hearing the gunshots getting closer and that's when I realized that they were coming down the stairs in the cafeteria they just kept getting closer and closer closer and closer and I started hearing explosions but every time there was a shot and then one of those larger booms went off I

27:14 flinched Harris and Cold's Killing Spree had not just been planned as a shooting before they had opened fire that morning they had placed two large explosive devices in the canteen they had been timed to explode at 11:17 a.m. and the two students had planned to wait outside to pick off any survivors fleeing the scene Eric Harris had even gone so far as to study how many people were in the cafeteria at any given time during the lunch hour so he set those bombs to go off when he would have the mass casualty approximately 450 is what he was estimating and we had 455 kids down there the bombs timers had not worked which is why Harris and cold had begun

28:00 their Killing Spree with their guns however they'd not given up on their dream of blowing up the school well I didn't know it at the time there was actually a propane canister bomb essentially that was no more than 5 ft from where I was laying and they were shooting at it trying to get the bomb to go off the new new attempts to detonate the bombs only succeeded in a relatively small partial explosion and fire but they were aign of a highly planned premeditated suicide mission these two students did not just snap in this case it was clear they began talking about doing something like

28:49 this just about uh a little over a year before Eric Harris's first entry in his journal in his notebook is April 10th 1998 the first words I read I think kind of set the tone and it was I I hate the effing world you know he's not talking about hating jocks he's not talking about um you know any kind of particular group later he makes fun of just about everybody people who drive too slow in the fast lane people who say across instead of across or you know mispronounced words you know any trivial thing you know there's there's nothing too trivial for Eric to have contempt for you Dylan also had a lot of writings and

29:34 notes that he left his centered around his emotions his feelings uh he clearly stated he was depressed he clearly stated that uh his his life was a mess Dylan's Journal went on for two years and the very first page he talks about killing himself he had a miserable perception of himself and often at complete odds with reality he was in my mind a classic adolescent depressive or going through an adolescent depressive episode when confronted with some of his inappropriate behavior he would get extremely angry whereas when people confronted Eric with some of his earlier misbehaviors he would respond in a classic Psychopathic way he would tell you what you wanted to hear promis never

30:21 to do it again and would be looking you in the eyes and deliberately telling you what he thought you wanted to hear Harris had a personality disorder uh that made him uh lacking in empathy for the suffering of victims uh made him very manipulative and crafty you know he had a uncanny ability uh to present himself any way he wanted so he looked like a good guy to many people but actually he didn't have a conscience or what Sigman Freud called a super ego Brooks Brown's mother experienced Eric's excuses when his father sent him around to apologize for damaging her son's

31:08 windscreen he looked at me and he said Mrs Brown I'm sorry I didn't mean any harm and I said look Eric you can pull the wool over everyone's eyes but you're not going to do it over mine I you come by this house you threaten my kid you do damage I'm going to call the police so you stay away from our house and stay away from me and he said are you calling me a liar and I said yes I am and don't come around the house again and he got bright red I mean he was so angry at me and he left the house together Eric Harris and Dylan cold had become a deadly partnership and the two killers were now wreaking havoc not only inside the school but outside too as parents feared for the fate of their

31:55 children about the time I got to my sniper position my phone rang and it was my daughter and I said are you okay she say yeah I'm home and I said okay uh I have to go I love you and uh we hung up many parents including Daniel mouser's father learned of the unfolding events through the media there in on the television was news coverage it looked terrible but I said to myself well if there's something going wrong at the school certainly my son wouldn't be involved he was not somebody who'd be in trouble or being targeted by somebody when I got home my wife had a very concerned look on her

32:42 face why wasn't he calling us so I agreed to go to another school where a number of the students were being taken in school buses after they escaped and as I was driving I was listening to the news coverage and at one point I heard them mention that they were taking some students to the hospital and one of the ones they mentioned was a 15-year-old boy who was shot so of course the first thing I thought was 15 years old that's how old Daniel is what if that's Daniel could that be my [Music] son at the nearby Elementary School many parents would be reunited with their

33:28 traumatized kids I saw parents walking out with children and I just said to myself I want to be one of them I want to get this over with I want to be one of those people by 12:02 p.m. Coline High School cafeteria exit student sha Graves bleeding profusely had passed out meanwhile two medic units approached his location I drove around the South outside as we're pulling into the parking lot through all the cars see several students hiding behind cars several deputies with their weapons strained on the building I couldn't figure out what woke me up but when I did snap back to it

34:13 there was some commotion behind me and as I overlooked my shoulder the there was an ambulance sitting right behind me I saw two paramedics one jumped out of the driver's seat and the other from the back of the ambulance and they grabbed me picked me up up by my shirt and my belt and they were dragging me out and I remember just looking down to see my arms and my legs dangling and that's when the shooters realized that somebody was down there helping us and I could see the concrete just poofs of white dust they were they were opening fire on us they were trying to kill us again holed up amongst the dead and injured in the library Eric Harris and Dylan cold now had their weapons trained on the paramedics and casualties below

35:05 by 12:02 p.m. on the 20th of April 1999 Eric Harris and Dylan cold had been running a muck in Coline high school for more than 40 minutes leaving a trail of dead and injured in their wake then as fire department paramedics moved in to assist casualties like Shawn Graves and his friends Harris and cold began firing on the kids and Rescuers I found medic 13 crew were struggling to get sha Graves loaded up into the medic unit so I came up in the middle of him and one had the head the other had the feet and we stepped into the ambulance they threw me in first saw another young man laying by

35:51 the fence and then he turned his head and made eye contact with me and said help me I scooped up and dumped the young man literally into the back of the ambulance so that they could get out of the gunfire I just remember hearing that the sounds of bullets hitting the top of the ambulance just the metal tinging and that uh I'll take that away from all of that as being a sound that I'll never forget it would be among the last acts of Harrison Cold's Killing Spree they were shooting at the cops they were taking pot shots and police were firing back I think they realized the only Escape was going to be into the long arm of the law and a prosecution

36:39 and jail and prison and I think there was a thought of let's end this the way we want it to end let's control our own destiny at around 128 p.m. Eric Harris and Dylan cold took their own lives but for the children of Coline high school and their parents the nightmare was far from over kids would leave Coline and they would be placed on a bus and reunified with their parents and as the night went on uh buses were not arriving and there were still parents left after nothing happening for a while

37:26 they informed us that there was one last school bus that was coming one last school bus with students but for some desperate parents Clinging On To The hope that their children would return there was to be no happy ending later [Music] on the authorities confirmed to us that they made a terrible mistake there was no last scopus at the the end of the day we had innocent people killed which were 12 students and and one teacher Harrison clayball also dead uh by a parent

38:11 suicide in the library so we knew we had 15 fatalities most of the fatalities in the library for Craig Scott who had suffered the trauma of having his friends murdered beside him in the library there was worse to come when he learned of the fate of his sister Rachel was the first one that was killed and she had been killed right outside the school library and I realized that when I ran out of the school I had ran right by Rachel and

38:59 [Music] my son was one of the the last that was shot he was next to last who was shot and from the reports that we have Eric Harris looked at Daniel and insulted him I believe it was he called him for eyes he guess he wore glasses and he fired a shot's hand Daniel fought back he took the chair that was there uh towards Eric Harris and for that he paid with his life Eric Harris fired one more

39:46 time and shot him in the face killed him so what caused these two students both weeks away from graduating to have such disdain for human life these two kids did not come out of their mother's womb hating what happened from the time they were born to the time that they carried out this horrific act one thing that is erroneous is to talk about why they did this implying that it was for the same reasons they were two basically different guys in my colloquialisms I would say Eric Harris was filled with anger with rage he

40:31 wanted to hurt other people and didn't care if he died Dylan on the other hand I believe was hurting inside and at various times wanted to die because he felt so bad he just saw no reason to keep on living people who study these called them diads and you know this's a long history of Bonnie and Clyde Leopold and lobe and very often most often you have a stronger person and a weaker person in this case um Dylan had incredibly low self-esteem needed somebody to validate him make him feel good about himself some consider bullying at the school to be the primary factor once you hate the bullies and no one does anything to defend you you hate the people in the class that don't say anything you hate the teacher that

41:17 doesn't say anything you hate the counselors that allow it to happen they in in essence end up hating the school not just the bullies they hate the school and they want to kill the school I think that they didn't see that they had a lot going for them they became isolated and that isolation and then exposure to a lot of negative influences in their life that they chose to focus on I think really took them towards a darker and darker Place Harris was the dominant person who inspired the Coline Massacre and I think Cleo went along to get along it was that chemistry that created this insane circumstance where they were able to

42:03 kill lots of people uh with moral impunity for the Coline teachers students and parents life would never be the same again I was paralyzed from the waist down I spent um months in the hospital they didn't see me ever walking again and I I was angry I was very angry about that but at the same time I'm I'm extremely stubborn so I didn't let that be the end of it I made a goal for myself to walk across the stage of graduation I wanted to be able to graduate knowing that I didn't let those

42:50 two control my life I didn't let them ruin my life and I've actually been walking ever [Music] since for 911 dispatcher Rene Napoli who listened as 10 children were murdered in the library the enormity of what she'd heard soon hit home my first day off um I went to pick up my children from high school and I had a uh had a really hard time picking up my own children from high school so much so that my son had to drive home and that's when it really hit me is that I I'm able to pick up my children from high school and somebody

43:36 else is not able to do [Music] that the words that we have here uh were written by my wife she did a great job of summing up Daniel's life and what this means to us to have to have this here to honor him wow it's like they did it for [Music] Daniel in 2006 a campaign of murder was

44:21 carried out on the streets of suffk something was happening you know every 24 hours the discovery of five bodies in 10 days would leave the community stunned and authorities overwhelmed this was a story which was completely unprecedented as the clock ticked the body count Rose made me wonder you know how many more are they going to find and with it the question what had driven Steve Wright this quiet middle-aged man to commit his Killing Spree not in a million years you think he's ever capable of that why did this happen I mean that that's the $65,000 [Music]

45:10 [Applause] [Music] question Sunday the 10th of December 2006 the Tranquil Market town of ipswitch was gearing up for the holiday season it was late night shopping and Christmas parties um and uh yeah very much the lead up to the uh the festive period however despite the festive cheer there was an undercurrent of unee in early November two girls had been reported missing from the streets

45:56 of the red Light District by the 8th of December both their bodies had been found dumped in a nearby Brook the disturbing discoveries separated by just 6 days senior investigating officer Roy Lambert would receive a phone call that would thrust him to the center of the newly unfolding drama Sunday the 10th of December I was at home about 4:00 when I got a phone call from Stuart go he said we've got a bit of a problem so I said what's happening now and he said we've had another another body has been found of a young woman on arriving at the location on the edge of the nearby Village of nacton he would encounter a haunting scene I

46:43 remember when I arrived uh it was about just after 4:00 uh it was it was then dark it was really really windy and the rain was absolutely lashing it down although the scene of this Sinister crime gave no immediate Clues to the identity of the killer that of the victim was soon established quite early on we we could see from the scene some there were some tattoos which gave us an indication who this person may be uh it wasn't a formal identification this early on the Sunday evening but we sent some family layers and officers to the mother of uh this young woman who turned out to be anal Alon

47:28 when I looked at the video which had been taken by the the crime scene investigator of what uh the position of how the body was I was actually uh shocked to to to see the image of anal lying uh naked and and posed in in the middle of these uh these Woods the Killer's public display would give investigators an insight into the Disturbed mind of the man responsible for this sadistic spree she'd clearly been laid out by the offenders she was in a cruciform position so uh her arms were out wide um and her hair had she had long peroxide blonde hair that had been pulled back in a conical form and um she

48:16 was pristine she was very clean and she was naked um but clearly the offender had spent some time laying her out I was thinking what are we in the middle of here this is the third girl taken off the streets of ipswitch uh found on land now in Woodland so we didn't know what was happening really the uncovering of a third body in only 8 days would prove unnerving it was almost a public display by the by the killer because her body was left so close to the road um it was clear that she'd be found pretty soon um it seemed at that time almost as if the kider was perhaps

49:01 taunting the police things were happening so quick it was actually difficult to sort of comprehend and get get a handle on what in fact was happening to us in suffk the genuine shock and fear in IP switch was ramped up a 100 times pretty early on we found that analie was living in Colchester with a boyfriend initially we sort of said to him well why haven't you reported a missing and he did say well analie sometimes would go miss him for two or three days at a time he wasn't concerned about it they the last time he saw her they were on good terms and in fact he said she said she was going to go and see her mother uh that afternoon and take some Christmas presents to her son and in fact uh when we relay that to her mother her mother did confirm

49:48 that when we found out from analie's boyfriend that uh we were going to that she was going to go to Harris to see her mother on the train uh obviously a lot of trains have CCTV these days and uh so we we looked and in fact we did obtain some footage of her actually on the train coming back from harage towards Manning Tre on that Sunday night the 3rd of December it gave us a starting point from when she was last one of the time she was last seen alive uh also gave us a description of what she was wearing and what she was carrying uh which is important or asked that if we found any clothing subsequently and in fact we got her only on the train we found further CCTV of her at the railway station and also later on the outskirts of the red

50:33 light area later on on that Sunday the uh 3rd of December while the inquest into analie's death continued the results of the autopsy would provide police with a new piece of the puzzle the pathologist was able to give us a cause of death and uh he descri he described it as an interference with the airway um he either asphixiation or strangulation news of the discovery of analie's body would travel fast we're all scared of our WTS thinking who's it going to be next Who's it going to be next the media uh interest just went into the stratosphere suddenly resources right around the

51:19 country were coming to it switch to really try and nail down who was doing this yet the killer was closer than anyone could have dared [Music] imagine in 2006 ipswitch will be struck by a killing spree in only 6 weeks five girls disappeared from the streets of the red light district their bodies found over just 10 [Music] days the 1 of October 2006 London Road Ipswich 48-year-old forklift truck driver Steve Wright moved into a flat in

52:04 the heart of ipswich's red light [Music] area W's younger brother Keith recalls a quiet life in their early years suppose my earliest memor I can sort of really remember he used to walk all to school and stuff I was probably only about five or six I and Steve must be was he about 14 I that's always good I mean we was always quite close as a family that way obviously had arguments where between stepmom and step children or whatever Steve Wright's natural mother had left the family home in

52:50 1965 I think his parents divorced when he was quite young um and he didn't see his his mother particularly was brought up by his father Conrad um who was in the services his father would have lived by strict rules and he would have expected his son to do so so if he ever stepped out of line then he would have been very quickly and strongly put back into line and so I think Steve's uh childhood was spent moving around in different parts of the country as his dad was uh dispatched to different um parts of the the UK to work what he did become quite Adept at was putting on a Persona an easygoing affable almost every man Persona so that people could get along with him easily that may not have necessarily been the real Steve wgh

53:38 so his early years were ones where he clearly learned to talk the talk and those were skills that he used to lethal effect later on the exceptional story began in Earnest on the 1st of November 19-year-old Tanya nickel had disappeared without Trace Tanya was first reported missing I think it was the 1st of November 2006 uh when she's reported missing by her mom she caught the bus into town at just after 11:00 p.m. I think it was a Monday evening um clearly with the intention of uh operating as a street prostitute Roy Lambert will be called upon to review the facts of the case Tanya would S stand down here on

54:24 this uh corner of this Junction uh and cars would uh would come around and and they would stop and speak to the girls uh and they would discuss Services uh the girls were getting the car and off they were going to do whatever they were going to do but um this was very uncharacteristic and uh Tanya's mom subsequently reported her as missing with detectives puzzled by The Disappearance concerns would grow for Tanya's safety and the alarm Bells began to ring at that early stage um and T literally disappeared off the face of the Earth just 2 weeks later on November the 15th concerns were raised for the safety

55:11 of a second missing girl 25-year-old Gemma Adams She too had been last seen in the area surrounding London Road initially it was only one girl gone missing so there's nothing to really as a force to get too concerned about it was when the second one was reported missing the 14th or 15th of November we thought this is a bit unusual gmer Adams was reported as missing to US during the early hours of uh that morning her boyfriend had taken her down into the uh red light area to to to do some work uh and he was anticipating seeing her after after a period of time and I think what happened was that she didn't come back you know sort of girls who would

55:57 just go away and not come back for days and it's like oh they've just gone on a bend that they doing whatever but you knew the girls who were sensible had their Partners or whatever they wouldn't just that's not their normal routine to do that friends of Gemma were becoming worried for her safety I know Gemma was a really kind person she was a really nice person to talk to she weren't a person who would double cross you who would like be proper like nasty towards you or backstab you steal offia or anything like that she weren't that sort person she was the opposite polite noce as the authorities gathered more evidence their concern would grow also because of her lifestyle and the fact that uh uh she might have gone off with a client initially there was not

56:43 great concern for that first couple of days but then when the phone went off completely off the network I mean that was the big indication that something uh serious might have happened to her [Music] the 2nd of December 2006 11:40 a.m. hintlesham the developing story would open a haunting new [Music] chapter the weather was exceptional for that time of the year everywhere was in flood I got into the lakes and because the floods had receded the first thing I done was well not the first thing I just checked the grounds

57:29 checked the leges then got me waiters on and then patrolled the Brook and I suddenly noticed like a mannequin yeah a dresses m is dummy upon closer inspection Trevor would find himself horrified at the true nature of his Discovery there was not until I'd got into the brook and got up right beside her and just moved the hair a little bit the debris away from her hair then that is when I suddenly knew was realized that no it's a young body and me first thought was it's one of the missing girls well at first a

58:15 shock and sort of maybe jump back a little bit and then I had to sort of take control of myself and got straight out of the brook still shaking and phoned the police up you know that know the exact time where I found them at 11:44 when I founded them I just phoned them up and said who I was where I was and that I've just found the body of a young girl face down in a Brook Police would descend on the scene and begin their efforts to determine the identity of the unfortunate victim when the report first came in uh because of the the body had been in the water that long we didn't initially know who this was uh not until uh we' taken

59:02 the body out of the water and got them back to the hospital and started to conduct our our examinations did we identify who who it was the body was that of Gemma Adams who had last been seen some two weeks earlier on the 15th of November friends had long suspected the worst GMA when she first witness when I first knew that there had been a murder because she'd have never just gone off that weren't her style she wouldn't have just left and her boyfriend followed her about every night so if you saw her boyfriend you knew she was out because he'd be a couple of steps behind her and for her not to come back that weren't no way that wouldn't happen I'll never forget it I should never forget that day I should never

59:49 forget the timings of that day I shall never forget the night when they um it's something that's never going to go away with detectives now on the trail of a killer they began looking closely at the emerging pent people say if you find out about the victim you might find out uh how they've died the clues and list of likely suspects however were few and far between when you get into this area of the sex industry dealing with uh men who travel from a long way away there's also some really interesed individuals they were

1:00:35 starting to look at clients friends and victimology of of of Gemma to find out you know how she lived who she associated with there was no indications at this stage of who was responsible for her death since moving to London Road only a matter of months before Steve Wright was already known as a regular client of the girls who worked the streets surrounding his home his history of indulging in the world of the sex industry was long established Steve Wright wasn't somebody who just suddenly woke up one morning and wanted to explore the sex trade uh or go to a massage parlor to see what it

1:01:20 was like this was a man who' been dipping his toe in and out of that life his whole life we saw the first uh example of that when he was traveling around the world uh working on the QE2 to places that opened his eyes to these sorts of things Wright would join the crew of the famous Cruise liner in 1980 working as a steward and traveling the world when he was on this sort of Q2 you thought must be quite a smart old job it tell us all the things that the traveling they go up to and obviously a lot of hard work put on place like that in that kind of job one's got to be affable and one defers to the customer he'd do anything for everybody he'd always help anyone out if you wanted

1:02:08 anything he'd try and help you out with it I'm very confident that he would have learned how to be a ladyes man he would have learned how to be sociable he would have learned how to make people feel a teas and relaxed about him I met Steven Wright probably probably in the summer of ' 81 he was had this sort of grin like a like he was laughing inside um and I was always a little bit uneasy around him he kind of fancied himself to a degree he was a bit of a sort of a ladies man I don't think he dated any any on board women because there was you know very few ladies on there anyway so um whatever female company he wanted he made use of it when we was uh on sure a lot of the pts of C that we used to go to uh were all in the less salubrious

1:02:55 parts of of the Town sort of thing so the ladies that he met were ladies who wanted their payment as it were ladies of the night kind of the strains of a life at Sea would eventually take their toll on right having divorced his wife he would return to England in [Music] 1987 some 19 years later as the news of the Grim discovery of Gemma Adam's Body broke the story began to gather momentum initially when the two girls were missing the the interest locally certainly with the media was mixed they were two girls uh from the the sex industry got missing but of course when one was found murdered now uh the

1:03:40 interest with the media particularly was heightened local crime reporter Josh Warick would be assigned to cover the case it was a Saturday morning and police got in touch to say that a body had been found any murder is headline new in the uh in the local press um and so for two girls to be missing one of whom had been found by that stage was uh was really frightening and really shocking however few could have prepared themselves for the next turn in this Twisted Tail we then started to search the beled brook we used a police dive team to do this and on the 8th of December the police dive team had work their way from

1:04:26 hintlesham towards copdock which is down Downstream towards the river Orwell and they unfortunately came across uh the body of another uh white naked female and this later turned out to be [Music] Tanya Tanya had been missing for nearly 6 weeks the discovery of her body leading detectives to believe that they were now looking for one man on a killing spree so we Now quickly move from what was two missing vulnerable young women to a double murder inquiry I heard about it as soon as she'd been ban because the police had

1:05:13 their incident Vans and the rest of it at our place at the fisheries and when I got down the next morning they' all disappeared and that's when I found out that they had found a few miles Downstream just 6 days on from the discovery of Jimma Adams the revelation of a second body being found would make waves across the country got a phone call from the news desk my news editor said look you know this doesn't look good don't pack for a night you know I would pack for the best part of a week we don't know where this is going so I arrived up in uh cop do to the uh scene of where this second body uh had been found Tanya

1:05:59 nichel it was pouring with rain through the sort of windshield of the uh car you could see in the distance the uh police car lights the blues and twos flashing the road was blocked off and suddenly what had once felt like perhaps a very short trip for an isolated very tragic death of a young woman now took on a slightly more sinister [Music] angle as Christmas approached in 2006 ipswitch would be plagued by a killer on a ruthless

1:06:45 spree beginning with The Disappearance of 19-year-old Tanya Nickel in early November by the 8th of December Tanya's body and that of Gemma Adams had been found in a brook on the outskirts of ipswitch while the town came to terms with the grave situation an ominous atmosphere began to envelop the area a little bit of Honey started to creep in like not wanting to walk out on your own over night time once it got dark and making sure your children were okay and escorting them everywhere it was a culture of fear in many respects um there were more police on the streets

1:07:30 handing out rape alarms to women Friends of the street girls noticed the increased police presence was not welcomed to be honest a lot of the girls was pissed off about it because you couldn't get the money so with the police being there they can go and get what they needed to get anyway so yeah you felt a bit safe but at the same time they're all shouting at them because they want them to go away because they want do you know I mean they want people to be driving around so cuz otherwise you're not going to you're going out there for nothing really then on the 10th of December just 2 days on from finding the body of Tanya nickel a third horrifying Discovery was made when I got a call from the force control room to say that a motorist had driven through the street at nacton and

1:08:16 this motorist reported finding what appeared to be the naked body of a of a female my mind was racing when I got this call cuz you're immediately thinking you know who is it um and as we now know that was the body of anal aleron found laid out and posed in a cruciform position the disturbing ritual demonstrated that the killer was becoming ever Bolder unlike Tanya and Gemma before her 24-year-old Ana Le had not been reported missing making the revelation of her untimely end all the more shocking I got a phone call um from the news desk and

1:09:02 they said something along the lines of you know you're you're not going to believe it um but the police have just announced that they've found the body of a third woman suddenly attention raised several notches Are We Now talking about a serial killer are we talking about somebody picking off young women right from under the police's noses living in the heart of the area from where the girls were disappearing Steve Wright had a history of violent Behavior towards women he had a track record for being a brutal for being violent um against his two previous wives we've got an individual who would

1:09:49 would would batter his partners and we know that that's usually a Hallmark symptom of men who feel inadequate who feel they can't cope who feel they're not in control of the relationship and they don't feel uh terribly manly that they lack something in their machismo Steve Wright was all about trying to be something he wasn't uh trying to live out or find excitement in his life and it was pretty tough it's tough for a lot of people to to find excitement um he found it in in prostitution he also found it in gambling it meant that he built up debts by the year 2000 Steve Wright's life was in steady decline with drinking and gambling taking their toll

1:10:34 Wright had accured £40,000 of debt yet he continued his habit of paying for sex graduating from the massage Paras he would formerly frequent Wright began to take his fantasies out into the open money gets tight you have UH responsibilities bills to pay suddenly it makes more sense to be out on the streets where you can turn a trick for 20 quid uh rather than 50 60 70 in a massage parlor and so that's how we find eventually Steve Wright coming out onto the streets rather than doing what he did to get his kicks behind closed

1:11:20 doors later that same year Wright would hit the bottom of his spiral in depression he tried to top himself at one time just for everything got to him and uh then he sort of came back like they have done when they ever get in trouble and normally come back home to see your dad and that and he came back here Dad sort of set him up this was a man either crying out hoping he'd get caught uh or being an attention seeker on the one hand or this was a man who genuinely felt felt that his life was that tragic that he just needed to be here no longer after working in a succession of smalltime jobs Wright eventually took

1:12:07 employment at the Felix toow docks when he come back here he just went more and more silent about things and he wouldn't sort of chat about nothing really he went more into himself and quiet and non-confrontational to anybody dad set him up at his then he got the job down on the docks everything was going well we s of what that's in sort of sa for now he was now involved in another long-term is relationship and she has a normal job where the evenings are spent together but then there's a change in job

1:12:54 suddenly his partner is now working night shifts so Steve Wright finds himself sitting in London Road in the middle of the red light district with an opportunity to fulfill his fantasies while Wright struggled with his personal life the pace of the unfolding story playing out on the streets of suffk continued to accelerate by this stage three women have been found in the space of little over a week that that speed at which things were developing um just meant there was shock upon shock upon shock the 12th of December 2006 levington 6 weeks on from The

1:13:39 Disappearance of Tanya nickel the first girl to go missing just 24 hours after uncovering the body of third victim analie aleron detectives will be struck by a sickening double Discovery I became aware that another sex worker called Paula clel had been reported missing by her boyfriend he was concerned because he'd naturally heard what's on the radio and seen what was on the television and then what happened again there was another sex worker reported missing Annette Nicholls was reported missing by her mother she'd been trying to get hold of Annette by her phone no reply so she became very very concerned about why she couldn't get all of an net so she reported missing I can remember

1:14:26 going to the police headquarters after anley alon's body had been found and identified and it was a press conference we were handed a press release uh which we weren't expecting telling us there were two more women who've been reported missing um and I can just remember phoning the news desk and saying this is not just about the third girl who whose body has been found there are two more missing what is going on here what are we involved with this is like a a whirlwind of all these incidents keep happening I mean something was happening sort of you know every 24 [Music] hours close friend Sarah grimwood had been one of the last people to see Paula before she disappeared me another friend and Paula

1:15:13 and at the time my boyfriend we were all in the house together I thought she was staying I didn't think she was going to go out and then I said to her are you going to stay in tonight now she did say yeah but then when her was gone she changed her mind and then the next day she didn't come around mine and knock on the door like she does every day both these girl to locate the newly missing girls the police would appeal for information I would ask either the girls themselves or anyone with information as to their whereabout and I can remember appealing certainly throughout that Monday for anybody that knew of the whereabouts of Anette or Paula to make contact with us they quickly ascertained that certainly uh as it turned out both

1:15:59 Paula and Annette I think they both been last seen alive about the 8th of December so we're now the 12th of December so there's four sort of days there which uh this window we got to sort of try and close down and probably naively I thought that they'd make contact with us or somebody would their appeals however would prove futile the 12th of December a member of the public is walking along the old A14 at levington which isn't far from naon and uh he sees in the foliage about seven or eight yards in from the road what he believes is the body of a white naked

1:16:49 female we've got a force helicopter and in Major Crimes like this it's a it's good practice they asked the helicopter to have a fly over the scene and have a look around so they went the helicopter was put up we quickly able to see a video down link on screen and I can remember seeing the crumpled body of a of a naked female um and as it turned out that was the body of Paula clenon the helicopter goes up and sees where the member of the public is and sees that first body and then they naturally they they then start to slowly work their way out from there and what happened then is unbelievable I will need you at some point to go all right and I can remember turning away from the screen and speaking to the

1:17:36 inspector um and then turning back to the screen and a second image caught my eye and I could see that it was the image of a naked female but it was in a different form to that of Paula and um this female was in a cruciform position much like Ana Lee had been [Music] found and it takes a few seconds for the brain to catch up with what the eye is seeing um and of course it quickly Dawns on me that this is a second body and as we now know that was the body of a Nick

1:18:22 Nichols I mean I've never known anything like this in over 40 years of being in the in in the [Music] police so Paula was in fact the first one to be found on the the 12th on Tuesday the 12th and this was the one that uh the member of the public found and Paul was found just seven or eight yards in I cry at first because I didn't I didn't believe it do you know what I mean I didn't you didn't believe it at first because you're so scared yourself you don't want to believe it you know what I mean cuz that's a big thing

1:19:07 that's a big part of my life which that's really hard really do you know what I mean it's to think about that's where uh the tributes are to where the net now a net was found not obviously right by the side of the road but uh about 10 yards in detectives were faced with the reality of chasing down an increasingly Reckless killer one believed to be responsible for the murder of five young women it was almost seemed audacious you know it was almost a killer mocking the police in a way and saying I can get away with this right under your noses were the offender offenders were they

1:19:53 enjoying this or were they being panicked into uh some sort of activity was it all com to a crescendo whoever this was he was losing control pressure on the police was enormous we just didn't know what was going to happen next with the stakes of this Savage spree escalating ever higher the Killer's deadly designs would be undone by his previous sins the only way they were able to track him down was through DNA evidence of a crime that he committed you know dozens of years [Music] prior in December 2006 an elusive killer

1:20:42 stalked the streets of ipswich's red light district praying on the girls who pled their trade disappearing over 4 weeks the bodies of five vulnerable young women had been found in only 10 days with detectives under increasing pressure to close their net around this violent Predator DNA evidence would prove the key that would crack the murderous code we' managed to obtain some DNA from the anal scene and when the forensic scientist had processed this through and looked on the national DNA database this same DNA uh profile came up as being Steven

1:21:28 Wright he'd been dealt with for theft whilst employed as a ban at a hotel in Felix in 2001 I think it was so here we are 5 years later and uh all the indications are that he's a Serial murderer that DNA sample was his big downfall had he never taken that money had he never got into debt uh then the police quite possibly would never ever have found him with Steve Wright now firmly in the police's sites they would move to get their man with regard to the arrest of Steve Wright uh he was arrested in the early hours of the 19th of December it was about about 5:00 a.m. he was

1:22:14 arrested at his home address he was up he was getting uh prepared to go to work so he was arrested and taken into custody it was interesting his reaction

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