Police blunders found to have delayed conviction for suspected serial killer

A STRING of police blunders allowed suspected serial killer Christopher Halliwell to evade justice for the murder of Becky Godden-edwards for several years, heaping further agony on her family, a damning report has found.

Wiltshire Police were found to have missed “significant opportunities” to gather evidence to charge the taxi driver, according to the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC).

Halliwell confessed to killing Godden-edwards in 2011 following his arrest on suspicion of killing Sian O’callaghan, 22, who disappeared after leaving a Swindon nightclub.

Despite pleading guilty to killing O’callaghan, he could not be charged in connection with Godden-edwards’ killing because his confession was ruled inadmissible by a judge. It took Wiltshire Police until September 2016 to convict him of the 2002 murder.

Among the blunders identified was the failure to analyse soil on a spade belonging to Halliwell when he was arrested in 2011. In 2014, the sample was matched with rare soil from where Godden-edwards’ remains were found.

Additionally, a witness who in 2011 said he had seen Halliwell’s taxi close to where O’callaghan was abducted was not interviewed until 2015. The IOPC said if the witness and forensic evidence had been available when the confession was ruled inadmissible, there may have been enough to charge Halliwell.

Kier Pritchard, the current Chief Constable of Wiltshire Police, was among the officers criticised over his failure to “ensure a sufficiently thorough murder inquiry”.

He was also criticised for putting an inexperienced detective in overall charge of the investigation.

Responding to the findings, Mr Pritchard said: “It is of personal regret to me that there were missed opportunities identified... I take full responsibility for any individual short-comings.”

Karen Edwards, Godden-edwards’ mother, told PA news agency the failures were “unbelievable”, adding: “When the chief constable tells the DI [detective inspector] to ‘baby-sit’ a category A murder investigation, what they mean by that is ‘sit on it, she will go away eventually’.”

‘It is of personal regret to me that there were missed opportunities identified’