In the room with a gloating killer . . . this is truly chilling reality TV
For sheer authenticity, nothing beats the tapes of an original police murder interview in a crime documentary. Audio from the interview room in historic cases plays an increasing role in television investigations. We’ve heard actual playbacks from several tense inquiries, most chillingly the quizzing of ten-yearolds Jon Venables and robert Thompson in 1993, when both boys blamed each other for the horrific killing of toddler James Bulger.
Private eye Mark Williams-Thomas had access to police recordings of detectives in Glasgow, interrogating triple murderer Peter Tobin in 2007, in The Investigator: A British Crime Story (ITV).
Tobin had battered a Polish church volunteer to death with a chair leg and hidden her body under the presbytery floor. His arrogance was vile, as he taunted officers to ‘waste your money’ looking for the remains of other victims.
Disgusted by the killer’s cold contempt, one of the detectives on the tape burst out: ‘ You have no humanity in you.’ It was a verdict as damning as the ‘whole life order’ Tobin later received, condemning him to die in prison.
What interested Williams-Thomas was not the murders we knew Tobin had committed, but the ones he might have done. The first thread in this tangled murder probe, which continues over the next two weeks, began with 18- year- old Louise Kay. She disappeared after a night at a Brighton disco in 1988.
Perhaps out of respect to Louise’s family, this programme did not inquire too closely into what made Louise decide to spend the night in her Ford Fiesta at a car park at Beachy Head, instead of returning home to her parents. She might just have wanted to see the sunrise — but whatever her reason, it can’t help the investigation to be coy.
Strong circumstantial evidence suggests that Tobin, who was living nearby, met and killed Louise at the beauty spot — and that he had murdered another young woman, Jessie Earl, there nearly a decade earlier.
The lack of police urgency into the disappearance of both girls was disturbing.
Worse still was the authorities’ complete disregard, in the late Sixties, for the fate of Tobin’s first wife — taken to hospital after he stabbed her, but never interviewed, let alone offered protection. Her story, of how he held her prisoner for months, was enough to freeze the blood.
And if he’d been caught then, perhaps Jessie and Louise would still be alive . . . and who knows how many other victims.
The evidence that confronted conservationist Giles Clark, during a trip to save lions in Kenya on Big Cats About The House (BBC2), was also truly upsetting. Video footage showed a wild lioness dying from the effects of poison, fed to her in meat by frightened local villagers.
This has been a mostly heartmelting series, crammed with pictures of adorable jaguar cub Maya, reared by Giles in his family living room. The switch to the harsh reality that threatens big cats everywhere with extinction was necessary.
Giles is doing amazing work, but he can’t save a species on his own.
In fact, more of this episode should have been devoted to the work of protecting lions at the ol Pejeta conservation zone in Laikipia National Park, Kenya – also the final home of Sudan, the last male Northern White rhino, who died last month.
Maya is a gorgeous animal, living happily in captivity. But that doesn’t mean we want a world where the only big cats left are behind bars.
SMOOTHIE OF THE NIGHT: On board the Royal Princess, in The Cruise (ITV), Staff Captain Alessandro coaxed the winches into action. ‘Automation is like a nice lady,’ he said, ‘you need lots of patience. High maintenance too.’ He’s married to the job!