‘GOLDEN HOUR' THAT TRAPPED ALICE’S KILLER
That’s what police call the make-or-break first 60 minutes of a murder hunt. This gripping account reveals what happened after a Sky TV girl was found with her throat slashed
ONE year ago today, 24-year-old Alice Ruggles was found by her flatmate lying in a pool of blood at her home. Her throat had been slashed.
The horrifying discovery was the starting point of what would prove to be a harrowing murder investigation — one which for the first time was intimately tracked by body cameras worn by members of the homicide squad investigating the crime, who also had cameras mounted in their cars.
Now the footage is featuring in a compelling ITV documentary which follows the efforts of the murder squad to catch Alice’s killer, and which shows the vital nature of decisions made in the first hour after a major crime has been committed, when evidence is fresh and uncontaminated.
Known as the ‘golden hour’, it can define the rest of the investigation — and the chance of justice for the victim. Here, Femail tracks what happened in those crucial moments after Alice’s death . . .
OCTOBER 12, 2016: DAY ONE
18.34: Emergency services receive a call from Alice’s distraught flatmate Maxine McGill, who reports that she has arrived at their home in Gateshead to find her friend covered in blood in the bathroom. The recording tracks Maxine’s mounting anguish as she realises Alice is dead. ‘Alice. Alice,’ she cries repeatedly. ‘ Oh my God, she’s dead, she’s dead.’ Paramedics are immediately sent to the scene.
19.30: Alice is declared dead. Given the terrible nature of her injuries — her throat has been slashed — the homicide squad are immediately notified. No one else will enter the crime scene until they arrive.
19.45: Called into work, DCI Lisa Theaker is notified about the death by a fellow officer and is given some basic background on the victim as she drives to meet her team. Her ‘golden hour’ starts now.
‘There are a number of things going through my head,’ she reveals. ‘ Where’s my offender? That’s a real priority for me because there will be a wealth of forensic evidence on them. I’m also thinking about the victim in this case, Alice, and preserving the crime scene.’
Over the phone Lisa instructs one of her officers to seize Maxine’s clothing along with that of Alice’s boss at Sky where she worked as an office co-ordinator. He is believed to be the last person to see her alive after giving her a lift home and dropping her off at 5.30pm, but DCI Theaker urgently needs to corroborate this.
Ordering her team to assemble at Gateshead police station for a briefing, she also learns there was some tension between Alice and her ex-boyfriend, Lance Corporal Trimaan ‘Harry’ Dhillon, who is now based in barracks in Edinburgh.
DCI Theaker asks for his car registration to be run through the Automatic Number Plate Recognition system to see if he has been in the area.
20.20: In a tense incident room the homicide squad receives their first briefing. ‘ You want to know as much as you can. I need to understand my victim,’ says DCI Theaker. ‘That’s the hardest thing for me. Because you think: “That could have been my sister, that could have been one of my friends.” ’
20.32: DCI Theaker learns that Dhillon had had trouble accepting Alice’s decision two months earlier to end their year-long relationship. She decides he is a suspect and orders that he is located and arrested. She also orders extensive CCTV search of the area around Alice’s home.
20.35: She obtains a warrant for Alice’s mobile phone records — a decision that will later prove crucial. Simultaneously she learns the APNR has located Dhillon’s car heading from his barracks to Alice’s flat.
At the same time, she also needs to establish the credibility of Maxine McGill and Alice’s Sky boss, and orders her officers to conduct interviews with them as soon as they can.
‘ I’m keen to see what their accounts are. It’s quite easy to go down one path and focus your attention on a certain person. I want to get a clear picture in my mind that what I’m being told is the truth.’
20.45: DCI Theaker arrives at the scene to examine the evidence for herself. Alice’s body is still there, lying in a bathroom awash with blood, and with horrific injuries to her neck that could not be selfinflicted. ‘It’s murder,’ she says.
Sporting protective clothing to avoid contaminating the crime scene, she looks over the rest of the flat, establishing that the front door is locked, and there are footwear marks on the sofa below the windowsill of the open window. These correspond with Maxine’s account of how she entered the flat through the window after finding the front door locked from the inside, but DCI Theaker worries they look too big and orders Maxine’s footwear to be seized.
Crucially, they realise that Alice’s phone is missing — and if they can find it it might lead to her killer.
The ‘ golden hour’ is now over. The investigation may only just be beginning, but the decisions DCI Theaker has already made will help determine whether she will catch her killer or not.
21.00: Back at the major incident room a chilling discovery has been made — just 11 days earlier, Alice had called the police to ask for advice about the soldier boyfriend she had split up with in August. The call was recorded and DCI Theaker listens intently as Alice relates her concerns.
‘I know that he’s hacked into my Facebook account and also my phone,’ she says. ‘He’s left flowers and chocolates on the windowsill.’ It does not make for easy listening for the team.
23.59: In the guardroom of Glencorse Barracks in Edinburgh, officers arrest Dhillon on suspicion of the murder of Alice Ruggles. He appears surprised. ‘Are you saying Alice is dead?’ he asks.
Officers note he has a couple of scratches on the left side of his cheek and a scratch down the right side of his neck which are indicative of a struggle.
Over the phone DCI Theaker orders his clothing to be seized, as well as swabs taken of the injuries to his face and neck and nail scrapings collected. She also requests that officers seize the jewellery he is wearing — a ring and a Help for Heroes wristband.
‘Quite often suspects will wash their hands hoping there won’t be any blood or traces on the jewellery so that is one of the first areas that I would think about,’ she reveals. A forensic examination of Dhillon’s car has also found a spot of blood on the steering wheel.
DAY TWO
03.00: ( approximately): Harry Dhillon arrives from Edinburgh at Forth Banks police station. DCI Theaker now has her suspect in custody but as yet no concrete evidence against him. She has to keep all lines of enquiry open.
08.00: DCI Theaker and her murder squad have been up all night, but they are making progress. Results from forensics show that the treadmarks on the sofa match Maxine’s shoe, corroborating her version of events.
CCTV footage ordered by DCI Theaker, meanwhile, has yielded an unusually helpful result: a dashboard camera installed on a car parked near Alice’s home shows her emerging from the car of her boss at 17.31, just as he had told police.
It is the last image of Alice alive — within approximately one hour she will be dead. Harry Dhillon is now the sole suspect.
14.00: The custody clock is ticking — the police have 11 hours left to hold Dhillon. In his first police interview, he denies killing Alice but places himself at the scene, saying he drove to Gateshead to speak to her as he ‘wanted answers’.
His story becomes ever more elaborate, with Dhillon claiming they became involved in an altercation outside the flat during which Alice’s mobile phone went flying out of her hand
— a significant claim as Alice’s phone is still missing. ‘ She was holding it in her right hand,’ he maintains.
DCI Theaker’s team are convinced Dhillon has taken her phone, but they need to prove it.
‘You don’t know what’s going to become important — it could be something as simple as what hand something was in,’ says DS Joanne Brooks. ‘ So it’s about getting all the details, because if you’re the suspect that’s where you will make the mistake.
‘You do get a gut feeling when someone is telling lies, but you have to follow that through and stick with all that detail so you can prove or disprove it.’
20.00: With forensics still investigating fingerprints and footprints at the flat, DCI Theaker holds a brief meeting. She’s frustrated — while CCTV footage now shows Dhillon’s white BMW passing by Alice’s house at around the time of her death, the police still have no forensics tying him to the scene. Nor have they located Alice’s phone. The pressure rises when forensics confirm that there is blood on the wristband — but it will take hours before DNA analysts can confirm whose it is.
DAY THREE
03.00: Dhillon was due to be released in the early hours, but Theaker has managed to convince her superintendent that she has reason to keep him in custody and is granted a 12-hour extension.
Her best chance now is to confirm her suspicions that Dhillon has taken Alice’s phone — and her ‘golden hour’ order to seize Alice’s phone records comes up trumps.
They show Alice last used her phone at 18.01 on October 12 to send a WhatsApp message to a friend. CCTV footage shows Dhillon’s car leaving the area 24 minutes later, and nine minutes after that Maxine McGill calls 999.
Data gathered from telecoms masts then shows Alice’s phone connecting with a mast near Newcastle airport at 18.39 — the route Dhillon says he took home after his ‘confrontation’. It’s caught him in a provable lie. ‘ We know she’s dead then,’ says Theaker. ‘He’s got her phone in the car.’
13.34: Harry Dhillon is re-interviewed about the phone evidence. Previously talkative, he now resorts to ‘no comment’ to questions.
‘You told me you love her. You don’t love her. You thought if you can’t have her no one else can have her,’ interviewing officer DC Beth Murphy tells him. A watching DCI Theaker admits feeling anger. ‘He’s not got the balls now to admit what he’s done,’ she says.
14.00: Dhillon has been in custody for 35 hours, and DCI Theaker has only one hour left to provide concrete evidence to the Crown Prosecution Service or she will have to release him.
With forensic evidence still outstanding, she is relying on his police interviews and phone data to be enough — and with just seven minutes to spare the CPS agrees. Dhillon is formally charged.
18.00: The murder team recon- vene in the major incident room. They have passed one major hurdle but their job is far from over. ‘He definitely did it — there’s no doubt in my mind — but my job is to show them nobody else did it,’ says DCI Theaker.
The team are buoyed by news from the forensics lab showing that it is Alice’s blood on Dhillon’s Help for Heroes wristband. That’s not all — DNA results prove that it is her blood in his car, too.
‘ I can piece together what actually has happened,’ says Theaker. ‘Without doubt he has stalked Alice.
‘She probably did love him once but something’s happened where she hasn’t wanted to continue in that relationship and he hadn’t been able to accept that.
‘In my mind, she’s been in the bathroom, he’s approached her from behind and he’s slit her throat. He’s known what he’s been doing. We can’t believe what he says. He’s denying murdering Alice. But he killed her.’
Harry Dhillon continued to deny it.
On April 10 this year he pleaded not guilty to Alice’s murder at Newcastle Crown Court — a plea that the jury rejected, convicting him unanimously.
Just over three weeks later, on April 26, he was sentenced to life with a minimum term of 22 years.
His imprisonment will, of course, never bring Alice back, as her devastated parents Clive and Sue made plain in a highly charged statement on the steps of the court. ‘Justice has been done,’ said Sue. ‘But none of our family or any of Alice’s closest friends will ever be the same again.’