HE CAUGHT KILLER …BUT IT COST HIM HIS JOB
HEwas the top detective who caught an evil killer… and then lost his job because of it.
Steve Fulcher was the man who nailed murderer Christopher Halliwell.
And he remains convinced he could have found many more victims if senior colleagues had given him the chance.
Halliwell is a father of three children with his ex-wife Lisa.
But the “respectable” family man had a dark side and regularly used prostitutes.
Hookers who were picked up by him said he got “rough and weird” with them and some got so frightened they called for help.
Police say Halliwell had a brutal childhood and has “issues” with women.
Detectives fear he may have killed as many as 27 more victims after he boasted he wanted to be a serial killer, like his “idol” Myra Hindley.
He has been linked to a string of women who went missing in his home town.
And the cop who nailed him has also linked Halliwell to the disappearance of Claudia Lawrence in York, where his father lived close by back in 2009.
After he was arrested for killing Sian O’Callaghan, Halliwell offered detectives “another one” and led them to where he had buried her headless corpse eight years earlier.
He told officers he was a “sick f**ker” and asked: “Is it too late to get help?”
He then added: “I know you aren’t a psychologist but what the f**k’s wrong? Normal people don’t go round killing.”
IT’S 10 years since Sian O’Callaghan went missing while she was walking home from a nightclub.
The popular office worker had been partying in Swindon, Wilts, before she set off on the relatively short 800m journey home.
But the 22-year-old never made it.
Her body was found five days later near Uffington, Oxon, and her disappearance set in motion a series of events which led to the resignation of investigating officer Steve Fulcher.
The ex-detective superintendent was handed the 2011 case and clues led him to Christopher Halliwell, now 57.
The taxi driver was convicted of Sian’s murder in 2012 and handed life in prison.
But during his arrest, Halliwell also told Fulcher about another killing he had carried out, and offered to show him the body.
His admission took police to the remains of Becky Godden, 20, who had disappeared from the same town back in 2003.
Halliwell was sent down for her murder in 2016, where a judge described the killer as “both calculating and devious”.
Between the confession and conviction, Fulcher quit the police, after the High Court ruled his actions during the arrest were “wrong”.
It was decided the detective had broken guidelines by failing to caution Halliwell during his revelations.
Pleaded
Fulcher had driven the killer to a beauty spot and pleaded with him to finally give up Ms O’Callaghan’s location.
He invoked “emergency powers”, usually used when there is a threat to life, like a terrorist attack, when he asked Halliwell to help.
But it was ruled he should have cautioned the then-suspect under PACE rules, which he knowingly failed to do.
Fulcher later said the situation was on a “knife-edge”, fearing that Halliwell might change his mind about showing them where the body was located.
Fulcher, now 54, was later found guilty of gross misconduct by a disciplinary panel and was handed a final written warning.
He decided to leave Wiltshire Police in 2014 and remains “bitter” a decade after the events.
He said: “What should have been a triumph became a disaster.
“It was an extremely painful period of time for a good three-plus years.
“The tragedy for me is that quite clearly there are other victims.
“As I have said time and time again, he abducted from a public place Sian O’Callaghan and murdered her within moments of her getting in his car.
“He’d killed Becky Godden eight year earlier.
“Everything about his MO, everything about the calls he received and made from prison, the notion that ‘police are investigating me for eight murders’, his own words.
“His trophy store at Ramsbury with 60 items of women’s clothing, everything about his history and behaviour indicates that we haven’t, and probably never will, get to the bottom of his full offending.
“And that in turn means there are any number of mothers and fathers who will never find their daughter again.
“I’m left with a very bad taste in my mouth.”
Drama
Fulcher’s arrest of Halliwell was made into the ITV drama The Confession in 2019 starring The Hobbit actor Martin Freeman as Fulcher, and has been the source of much debate.
He has received support from some of the victim’s relatives, with the mother of Ms Godden campaigning to David Cameron, who was the Prime Minister at the time.
But Fulcher still feels wronged by senior officers and believes he may have been able to prise information about more victims from Halliwell if he’d been given the chance.
Earlier this year he said: “I’m still bitter and angry, nothing’s changed.
“If your daughter went missing tomorrow, I
would not be confident that the police would do the right thing in preserving your daughter’s life.
“We don’t know how many victims there are, but we should have done.
“If I hadn’t been so brutally abused by that set of circumstances there was a fighting chance Halliwell and I would have got to the bottom of all this.
“But, obviously, that moment is a very long time in the past.”
Asked if he regrets his actions, he said: “If I’ve saved a victim as a consequence of sacrificing my career, then I’m happy with that deal.
Disappointment
“It didn’t need to be this way. That’s my disappointment with the thing.”
Fulcher resigned in 2014 and quickly moved into conflict resolution, working to reform police forces in places such as Somalia and Libya.
He returned to the public eye in March after throwing his support behind former colleague Mike Rees, 55, who stood as an independent candidate for the role of Police and Crime Commissioner in Wiltshire.
Mr Rees eventually came second in the election, which was won by Tory candidate Philip Wilkinson by 7,000 more votes.