Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
I stood two feet from Bellfield as I read his charges.. he looked at me with hate but knew he’d lost - FORMER DCI COLIN SUTTON
Vauxhall Corsa travel past as she got off. They worked out Bellfield owned one but had to rule out 610,000 similar vehicles. When that was narrowed down to 178 cars, 177 separate statements just left Bellfield.
And they uncovered a link to the attempted murder of Kate Sheedy, run over as she attempted to cross the road three months before Amelie’s death.
Sutton found crucial CCTV footage of the hit-and-run in Isleworth, West London, but initially detectives viewed the wrong night. Six months later they watched the correct footage.
It showed Bellfield’s car and could have led police to him and saved Amelie’s life – had they viewed it.
Viewers of the series will see Sutton visit the Delagranges to tell them the truth and apologise for Scotland Yard.
“I was tearful talking to the Delagranges, I think I managed to mask it, I don’t know,” he recalls. “It was the most difficult thing I can remember having to do in the police. I spoke to a lot of recently bereaved people, but to explain they had been let down because of this stupid mistake. In some ways the way they reacted made it more emotional.
“If they, as I feared, had got really annoyed and upset, I had prepared myself, but I hadn’t prepared for them being so utterly reasonable.
“It was almost surreal, they were so calm and understanding. So dignified. I felt exactly the same emotions welling up when I watched that scene in the drama, it put me back there doing it. I cried again, it brought it all back and I remembered how emotional an experience that was.” Sutton is still in touch with the family, as he is with Marsha’s.
Since writing the book he has also made contact with the Dowlers for the first time.
While investigating Bellfield, it dawned on him that the nightclub doorman had lived close to where Milly went missing near the railway station in Walton-on-thames.
Today, he says he can’t blame Surrey police for missing that link – Bellfield wasn’t on their radar.
But in the book, Sutton’s frustration is clear when he describes the moment where he takes investigators his theory and proof Bellfield was on the scene – only to discover they had a lack of crucial CCTV evidence. “I knew they had messed up, they knew they had messed up, and now they knew I knew they had,” he writes. But the Dowlers are clearly grateful for his input. “The Dowlers have thanked me,” he admits. “It means a lot.”
Sutton is unaffected personally by the trauma of the case but knows nothing can ever heal the victims’ families hurt.
“I always had this great feeling of hopelessness, powerlessness, at the end of trials,” he says.
“We had done the very best we could for them but it still wouldn’t bring the person back.”
Manhunt: How I Brought Serial Killer Levi Bellfield To Justice by Colin Sutton, published by John Blake on Thursday, £8.99. Manhunt continues on ITV tonight, 9pm.