HOW YOUR CALLS CRACKED THE TOUGHEST CASES OF ALL
NOTORIOUS CRIMES IT HELPED SOLVE
JAMES BULGER: In February 1993, Crimewatch showed grainy CCTV footage taken in a shopping centre in Liverpool of two ten-year-old boys hand-in-hand with two-year-old James Bulger.
Soon after, they beat him with bricks and iron bars, before leaving his body on a railway line.
Robert Thompson and Jon Venables were already in custody in connection with the crime, but detectives couldn’t place them with James or at the scene.
After Crimewatch went out that same month, two key witnesses rang in to confirm they had seen Thompson and Venables with a toddler, and later testified in court.
Venables and Thompson were sentenced to indefinite imprisonment, but released in 2001 and given new identities. LIN AND MEGAN RUSSELL: A reconstruction of the fatal hammer attack on Dr Lin Russell and her daughters, Megan, six, and Josie, nine (who survived), as they walked along a Kent country lane was shown in July 1997 on the first anniversary of the attack.
It featured a man with a piercing stare seen driving nearby that day. A psychiatrist recognised the description and connected it with a patient, Michael Stone, known to be violent and obsessed with hammers.
After clearing his actions with his professional body, the doctor rang in. Stone is serving life. STEPHANIE SLATER AND JULIE DART: Estate agent Stephanie Slater was kidnapped in Birmingham in January 1992 by Michael Sams, who posed as a client. He held her captive in a makeshift wooden coffin inside a wheelie bin for eight days at his workshop in Newark, Nottinghamshire.
She was freed after her employer paid a £175,000 ransom.
Crimewatch broadcast Sams’s ransom demand the following month. His voice was recognised by his ex-wife, who named him.
Julie Dart, 18, had been kidnapped in Leeds by Sams in July 1991. He killed her because she screamed so much when he tried to put her in the coffin. Sams is serving life. SARAH PAYNE: A clown-patterned curtain featured on Crimewatch in January 2001 in an appeal for information to help find the killer of eight-year- old Sarah Payne, who disappeared from Kingston Gorse, West Sussex, where she had been staying with her grandparents, in July 2000.
Sixteen days later, her body was found.
Fibres from the curtain were found on Sarah’s shoe and a viewer recognised the fabric. She had left it in a van her boyfriend sold to Roy Whiting.
He was convicted of Sarah’s abduction and murder in December 2001 and sentenced to life. RHYS JONES: Eleven- year- old Rhys was caught in the crossfire of rival gangs as he walked home from football training across the car park of the Fir Tree pub in Croxteth Park, Liverpool, in August 2007.
Twelve callers gave police the name of the youth who callously gunned down Rhys after Crimewatch aired a re- enactment of the murder the next month.
The killer, 16-year- old Sean Mercer, was a member of the Croxteth Crew gang. He was jailed for life and ordered to serve a minimum of 22 years.
BIGGEST VILLAINS BROUGHT TO BOOK
KENNETH NOYE: A notorious criminal, Noye was convicted in 1986 for his involvement in the 1983 Brink’s-Mat heist — one of the UK’s biggest robberies. He got 14 years and was released on licence in 1994. In May 1996 electrician Stephen Cameron, 21, was stabbed to death on a slip road of the M25 at Swanley, Kent.
Noye was arrested in Spain in 1998 and extradited back to the UK. Karl Simcox, who worked for a valeting firm and recalled seeing flick- knives in two of Noye’s cars, contacted Crimewatch and was a witness at Noye’s Old Bailey trial in 2000.
Noye was convicted of murder and sentenced to life, with a minimum term of 16 years. ANTONI IMIELA: Imiela was labelled the ‘M25 rapist’ after snatching women off the street in several Home Counties before using the motorway as a getaway route in 2001 and 2002.
An e-fit was shown on Crimewatch in October 2002.
A viewer recognised the face and directed police to his neighbour, railway engineer Imiela. He was jailed for life in 2004.
PRESENTERS PAST AND PRESENT
THE first Crimewatch presenters back in 1984 were Nick Ross and Sue Cook. In 1995 Cook left and Jill Dando took her place.
Miss Dando, 37, was tragically shot dead outside her home in Fulham, south-west London, in April 1999 — with her murder later reconstructed for Crimewatch. Detectives also examined whether her Crimewatch role
was linked to her murder. Self-confessed stalker Barry George was convicted but acquitted after an appeal.
It was later claimed Miss Dando was investigating rumours of a VIP paedophile ring, although the BBC says nothing substantiates these claims and she was not in involved in a programme investigating child abusers.
Fiona Bruce also worked on the show (1999 to 2007). After Ross’s departure in 2007, Kirsty Young became the main anchor, with newsreader Matthew Amroliwala as co-host.
Radio 2 DJ and former Newsnight presenter Jeremy Vine and Radio 1 Newsbeat presenter Tina Daheley were named the new hosts last year. IN ITS heyday, Crimewatch was shown monthly on BBC1, with an update following the main 10 O’Clock News. From 2011, it was broadcast roughly once every two months.
Last September, Crimewatch was relaunched as a weekly show, but in 2017 there have been just three episodes aired in March and February.
The spin- off show, Crimewatch Roadshow, which began in 2009, is a day-time programme which takes to the streets to appeal directly to the public for help with unsolved cases and will continue.