The Trial The Prosecutors: Real Crime and Punishment

In 2014 there were over 500,000 criminal prosecutions

in England and Wales.

Each one was prosecuted, not by the police,

but by the lawyers of the Crown Prosecution Service.

My job is about applying the law to other people's lives,

and hopefully for the public good.

The defendant is found locked inside the house,

with his mother dead downstairs.

In every serious criminal case, the Crown Prosecution Service

must decide who to charge and what to charge them with.

I think that this will come down to, I suppose, is he bad or is he mad?

Sometimes the difficult decisions are unpopular decisions,

but they are the right decisions.

It's their job to build the case and battle to secure a conviction.

All the defence have to do is just pick at things.

They just have to go like that.

And say "Well, you're not right about that."

Now, for the very first time, the Crown Prosecution Service has let

cameras in to film this unseen world between the police and the courts.

These are real people, they're real people's lives

and real emotions involved.

We may have our suspicions, but if the evidence isn't there,

the evidence isn't there.

For them it's evidence.

It's my life.

This programme contains scenes which some viewers may find upsetting.

For over 21 years no-one has been brought to justice

for one of Britain's most notorious murders.

Now the CPS is preparing for a trial.

On the evening of Monday 18th January 1993,

in an alleyway just off the London Road, in Greenhithe North Kent,

Claire Tiltman, a 16-year-old schoolgirl,

was killed in an apparently motiveless attack.

A massive police investigation followed, but uncovered no suspects.

Claire, the only daughter of Lin and Cliff Tiltman,

had been stabbed no less than nine times.

Cliff, this is obviously a very difficult time for you.

How are you managing to get through it with your wife?

Very, very difficult.

Well, we're not really. Sort of shattered.

Erm... I don't know, a lot of people...

People have asked me how I am...

and all I can say is what I've said to the doctor and everyone else -

do you know anyone that's got a tablet for a broken heart?

If anybody knows anything, you know, if they just phone the police...

-Please.

-If anybody's got any idea...

So that they can't do it again to anybody else.

The investigating team believe that Claire's killer did indeed attack again.

And now they want to use the details of that attack

and a recent change in the law to try and prove

Colin Ash-Smith guilty of the murder of Claire Tiltman.

We're here to talk about the murder of Claire Tiltman.

And I know, looking around the room here, there's a fair few

of you that have followed this case for many years,

and probably like I, share a real passion to try and bring

some resolution to the murder of Claire Tiltman,

in such horrific circumstances, back in 1993.

For the past three years Nigel Pilkington has been in charge

of building the case for the prosecution.

Claire Tiltman was walking to her friend's, Victoria Swift.

It's about a mile or so from her house.

They were going to discuss college.

She never made it to her friend's house.

She was stabbed in an alleyway near to where Victoria Swift lives.

Initially, people see her come staggering out

and they think there's been a car accident.

It's very quickly when people go to her aid,

see that she had actually been stabbed a number of times.

And Claire died tragically at the scene.

And what then took place was probably one of the largest

murder investigations that Kent Police have ever run.

However, Claire's attacker was never identified.

Then we have to go forward

about two and three quarter years to the 17th October, 1995.

On that day, literally, round the corner -

we are talking no more than 300 yards -

a woman called Charlotte Barnard is approached by a man.

He grabs her, pulls her across the road, he stabs her about 14 times.

It is literally a miracle that she did not die.

But she did not die.

Now, on that night and on that evening

a very distinctive car was seen just up the road.

And also recognised in the area was Colin Ash-Smith.

He was the attacker for this lady.

He subsequently went on to admit it.

Did you attack Charlotte Barnard on the 17th of October with a knife?

Yes.

Why did you do it?

I don't know.

Is there anything at all that actually triggers off this act in you?

It's like an impulse. I don't know if...

Most of the time I just snap out of it.

The similarities of the two attacks were...well, remarkable.

And so at that stage Colin Ash-Smith's name had been

linked to Claire Tiltman's murder.

I would be lying to you if I said I'm not going to be looking

very closely at you for the death of Claire.

Out of all the interviews I've...been in,

I haven't told one single lie.

Out of every single interview I haven't told one single lie

in any interview at all.

And I can categorically deny I didn't have anything to do with that.

OK. That's a double negative, but I take what you mean.

I didn't have anything to do with that.

You didn't kill... You're telling me you didn't kill Claire Tiltman?

I know I didn't her, kill Claire.

Colin Ash-Smith, born on 3rd of June '68, lived not far away.

And what we also knew was that Colin Ash-Smith actually knew Claire Tiltman -

an association through the British Legion.

Colin Ash-Smith was arrested for Claire's murder and denied it.

At that stage we couldn't link it.

Despite his denials,

the manner of the attacks made Colin Ash-Smith a suspect.

He was put into an identity parade.

OK, I suggest, in consultation with your solicitor,

you select your position in the line-up, please.

Number two to swap, please.

Witnesses who'd seen someone on the London Road

on the night of Claire's murder three years earlier

could not make a positive identification.

And with no forensic evidence Colin Ash-Smith was not charged.

Right, if you'd like to come this way.

He did, however, plead guilty to the attack on Charlotte Barnard

and to an earlier attack on another woman, and was sentenced

to life imprisonment with a minimum of term of 15 years.

Have we looked at attacks since 1990 kind of 5?

-Oh, there's been no attacks.

-There haven't?

-No.

So they stopped after Colin Ash-Smith

-had been arrested?

-Yes.

The similarity of the cases meant Colin Ash-Smith remained

the prime suspect for the murder of Claire Tiltman.

But the details of those cases could not be used as evidence

until a recent change in the law.

The prosecution can now introduce

what's called bad character evidence.

So if there is behaviour which is very similar,

the prosecution could then rely upon it as part of their case.

But there would have to be other evidence,

so it's part of the prosecution case.

The law was changed to allow bad character to be introduced,

not completely, but on certain conditions.

But there's still quite a high hurdle,

and I couldn't run a case if all I had was a bad character.

And people might take the view well, you shouldn't

because it could be a little bit difficult for a defendant

if all the prosecution are saying is that he's a man of bad character.

Before the prosecution will be allowed to introduce any

bad character evidence, they will have to persuade

the judge that it is not the only thing their case is relying upon.

It'll be a difficult case because it's a circumstantial case.

But then there's no point in doing this job

unless you do difficult cases.

Difficult historic crimes often form part of a workload

of the complex casework unit.

Here, lawyers on average spend a year to 18 months on a case.

In Mersey Cheshire, a non-recent sex abuse case is being

prepared for trial in five months' time.

Shall we just start from...base one really.

When's the trial?

The trial is the 27th of October.

We've got one defendant,

and at the moment we've got...

13...complainants.

The defendant, Cavendish-Coulson, was a teacher

in a private school in Cheshire.

It was a boarding school.

And some complainants came forward to say that many years ago they'd

been indecently assaulted by him when they were boys at the school.

So the 13 we've got,

how many are from the school in Chester?

-12.

-So we've got 12 from that school,

and the 13th is from where?

-He was privately tutored.

-Right.

There's actually a sort of ten year gap between the offences

involving the boys from the Cheshire school and the offence on him.

I think that the fact that something happened some years ago

doesn't mean it didn't happen,

or doesn't mean we shouldn't bother with it.

If they give a credible description of what happened to them

and they're reliable witnesses,

who are we not to prosecute?

We look at the evidence, and if we think there's enough evidence,

then I think it's very much in the public interest

to prosecute sex offenders.

We had our original, very original two,

if you recall, and one of those wasn't wanting to give evidence.

-Is that right?

-That's staying the same for his health reasons.

His family don't want him to become involved.

-And that's sad.

-Yeah.

-Yeah.

-Because it's probably because of this offending...

-It may be.

-..that he's not in a fit state to...

-It may be, yeah.

We get criticised in the press sometimes as if

we've dredged it up, we've dreamt up cases, we've found victims.

Those victims come to the police and they come to us.

And what offences are we going for on the indictment?

It's all indecent assaults.

Right. Under the old...

-Under the '56 Act, yeah.

-Yes.

-And he won't plead?

-No.

Just denies it.

Accepts he was at the school, denies committing the offences,

and says they were colluding.

It's been fabricated.

And yet there's no evidence of collusion.

They've come forward separately, from separate lives now.

This was a prep school.

There were only there till they were 13.

So they've had no contact, many of them, for many, many years.

It's like some old school friend of mine

-coming forward at the same time as me and I haven't seen them.

-No.

It's the only defence he can come up with though.

If he's still going to plead not guilty, that IS his only defence.

Cos why else would all these people come forward?

So he can only really claim collusion and fabrication, can't he?

Yes, he can.

He's filed a defence case statement now, which confirms that.

-Oh, does it?

-Yes. That that's his defence.

-Is that it there?

-Yes.

-That's it there.

When people say there isn't any evidence,

well, the evidence is the fact that somebody's come forward

and has given a good description of what happened to them.

And if there's no reason to distrust them or disbelieve them,

then we believe them.

And I'm sorry, but if you get a lot of victims in essence saying

more or less the same thing, it does make it more likely to be true.

Difficult though in front of juries,

particularly with non-recent sexual offences.

The main bit, which is paragraph two, isn't it?

"None... None of the assaults took place, and they're all false."

Yes.

And then he has to say... He HAS to, doesn't he?

"The defendant suspects there's been collusion."

-That's because he's got no evidence of collusion.

-No.

He's going to suggest possibly that the police in their investigation

gave information away that indicated what they were investigating...

-Oh, I see.

-..to come forward.

-So the collusion is sort of via the police.

-Yeah.

-As if they've corralled it all.

-Yeah.

That kind of makes more sense.

We're satisfied that he is somebody who is a serial sex offender.

So clearly in the public interest to prosecute, as far as I'm concerned.

In North Kent, the prosecution team are on their way to visit

the site of Claire Tiltman's murder.

This offence took place in 1993.

And over 21 years a lot has changed.

Not just the geography of where the offence took place,

but also people's thinking and social habits have changed,

the way people now communicate in terms of telephone evidence,

all impact upon the thinking.

So for us, it's very important that how we present a case to a jury

is how the case would have looked like back in 1993.

Claire lived at Woodward Terrace.

Just this one here.

So she left five to six, I think around then.

She walked along here.

It's a dark January night.

She's made an arrangement with Victoria Swift,

who lives over here, to discuss college, because they're 16.

She's only just 16,

she was 16 four days previously, on the 14th January.

So she walked all the way down here.

It's quite a lengthy route. People see her along this road.

Following the 1993 appeal for information,

the police took over a thousand witness statements.

We'll park in here and walk the rest of the way.

At the trial, Nigel wants to try and use five of these witnesses

to piece together the events of that night.

Lee Hooper arrives here at almost certainly six minutes past six.

So Lee Hooper, remind us who he is.

He takes a call from his father, which is on a BT phone bill.

He puts the phone down and leaves the house,

and it takes him 12 minutes to walk here.

And on the south side of the road he sees Claire Tiltman.

Now, that's really important because, if we turn around,

she is going to go to her friend's, Victoria Swift's,

which is in the corner there.

To get to that house, if you were a 16-year-old girl in the dark,

you'd probably walk that way along Station Road and up there,

there's a road up there.

She doesn't do that.

Because she's murdered in the alleyway which is

-just beyond those lights.

-OK.

To get from here to that alleyway is going to take us about 90 seconds.

She's here at 18:06, she's murdered 18:20.

-So what happened?

-That's 14 minutes later.

So where does she go in 14 minutes?

We say she went up the hill and came down.

And when you do that timing, you arrive at the alleyway about 18:20.

Why did she go up the hill?

We say, almost certainly,

or probably, she went up to go to a shop to buy cigarettes.

Cigarettes were found on her. Ten, but one was missing.

Cigarettes are found on her but we've got no evidence to

say that she bought any cigarettes up at the shop there.

No, we don't.

We then say she came down across the zebra crossing.

We say the zebra crossing's really important in this case.

We say he drives down here.

He sees Claire crossing the zebra crossing.

So he sees her. His plan is hatched in ten seconds.

He's going to get in front of her, he's going to kill her,

he's going to go round, double back and come back to his car.

-It was more opportunist.

-It's opportunist.

-That's it.

OK. We're going to go back now to the alley.

We've got a number of eye-witnesses,

who see a bit of what happened in the case.

Now, the prosecution role is to ensure we bring all those

pieces together to show that it was Colin Ash-Smith who murdered Claire.

The role of the defence barrister is challenging, undermining,

bringing out the inconsistencies,

trying to show that the story doesn't fit.

Kathleen Still is driving her car up London Road.

And as she drives up the road, she sees something quite unusual.

She sees a man on that side of the road.

You can look at that side of the road.

You can't walk on that side of the road. Look how busy it is now.

She notices this man because it's unusual,

and she gives a description of him.

5 foot 8, 5 foot 10.

20 to 22, fair blonde hair.

Light, fawn beige jacket, dark trousers. That is Colin Ash-Smith.

He's on this side of the road when she's on the other side of the road.

He's determined to get in front of her.

A thing he was to repeat in the attempted murder

of Charlotte Barnard two and a half years later.

That's what he does.

We say that's what we call a very similar fact - that he moves in front of his victim.

Danny French has walked from the station, getting off his train

about 18:07, 18:08, and he's going to get here at about 18:13.

And as he's walking up the road he will see Claire Tiltman coming down.

The other thing he sees, he sees a man in front of Claire.

His description - young man, lightish hair.

He says a light blue denim wash jacket, which is disappointing

cos we don't think Mr Ash-Smith was wearing such a jacket.

But he can't really describe him very well.

And he sees the man in front of Claire,

but he doesn't see anybody behind her.

He walks on. She walks down.

Claire gets to the alleyway.

So here's the alley.

He may know it's her or he may not realise it's her.

But he's in this state that he has to attack.

This is one of his characteristics.

He's says he's got to, you know, when the urge comes upon him he has to attack.

And he stabs her. And it's a ferocious attack, and it's seconds.

Witnesses Harris and Hanson are driving,

and they come up here and they see a girl.

-And she's waving her arms, and clutching her back and looking behind her.

-Right.

They see nobody else on the road.

What happened to the suspect?

His car, remember, is up the top of the hill.

He got down, got in front of her. So what does he do?

He needs to get back to his car, but in a circuitous route.

So, in my view, he comes this way.

-Oh, I see.

-Yeah, OK.

He gets to the top of the stairs and he runs past this house.

And there's a woman in there and she sees a man.

And she describes that man as having blonde fair hair with a beige jacket.

And he's about 5 foot 10.

She gets the age as 40, which is way out.

But I'm not so concerned about that

because people's misdescription of age is understandable.

People's misdescription of people's clothing is not, or hair colour.

I mean, you'd want to get that right. But you can understand.

And he's limping.

We've checked everybody at the Ivy Bower Surgery,

nobody went in for a limp.

That's not to say that they didn't go in for something else and they had a limp.

But isn't it possible that he fell over running up the stairs?

Well, he would have run away.

He's looking behind him, he seems to be agitated.

He is the description, save for age, which is a description of Colin Ash-Smith.

Once again this evidence is challengeable. There's thousands of statements of people giving

descriptions of different people in different clothing. Why are we picking these people?

Well, of course we're picking them people because they say it fits our case.

But we're also picking them because they give the most proximate times and they give that

-narrative of the clothing and the age and the hair is Ash-Smith.

-Yeah.

And he's got to double back and get up to his car.

So he's gone round here, he's come up here.

There are three boys here who do see a man whom

-they give a description of, and he's limping.

-Right, OK.

Unfortunately the description's not great.

-Are we using them in evidence?

-No, we're not using them.

We have to be careful about completely exposing our case.

I mean, what we say about Colin Ash-Smith, this is the evidence.

And these are some of the witnesses who will help us.

But we don't have to prove definitely how he got back to his car.

We don't have to provide a whole story.

-We don't know how he got back to his car.

-No.

We suggest that that's a way.

Yeah. That's not...

Sure, the murderer did go somewhere.

It is possible that it is another man who has perpetrated

the attack on Charlotte Barnard two and a half years later,

in exactly the same way, entirely motiveless, with a knife,

having moved in front of the girl he was about to attack,

about 200 yards away.

It's possible that it's another man.

But the more you look at it, and the more you put your case together,

the more we considered, actually,

Colin Ash-Smith did kill Claire Tiltman.

That's the reality. Do we have sufficient evidence?

Well, yes, I think we do. He'll never admit it.

And it'll go to full trial, I've no doubt.

Following press coverage of Keith Cavendish-Coulson being charged

with indecent assault, more pupils from the preparatory school where

he taught French in the 1970s have been to the police to make reports.

The defendant has now been charged with a number of other offences

involving other complainants, and then...

How many more complainants?

-13, I think.

-Yeah.

13 more? Because didn't we have...

-presumably coincidentally 13 before?

-Yeah.

-So we've now got 26.

-Yeah.

Presumably the idea being that we'll link those 13 into the trial, the October trial?

-No. There's going to be two trials.

-Yeah.

The victims who have suffered the greatest impact

are in the first indictment,

so they don't have to wait for the second trial to give their evidence.

Right.

The hope is that if trial number one does go for full trial

and he's convicted, the hope is trial two,

he'll just see sense and plead guilty.

So with a bit of luck those complainants will never have to give evidence.

If he's acquitted in trial number one,

we just need to regroup, don't we?

-And consider our position, cos it's the same defence.

-Yeah.

But we've got quite a lot of evidence as well as all

-these people saying the same thing.

-Yeah.

And what's he going to do?

Sit there for eight weeks and listen to that?

He needs to really be thinking about his position now.

The longer he pleads not guilty and won't plead,

the worse it is for complainants.

-The worse it is for him.

-And the longer sentence he gets.

But you imagine that he's got no care for the complainants anyway,

really, wouldn't you?

In that this is just dragging on.

-Anyway...

-It's serial offending, isn't it?

Colin Ash-Smith has now served 19 years of his life sentence

and has applied for parole.

That hearing will not take place

until after he goes on trial charged with the murder of Claire Tiltman.

Five and a half weeks before the trial begins,

the prosecution have a conference to make sure they're ready.

Do you want to go through page by page, Brian?

No, because I think that would take us forever to do.

The CPS have instructed Brian Altman QC

to lead the team that will present their case in court.

Brian Altman QC is one of the leading barristers in the country.

I used to brief him as a barrister many kind of years ago

when I used to run the Old Bailey murder unit.

And he's just the type of barrister you would want for a case like this,

as he's able to bring all the circumstantial evidence,

tie it together and present a very compelling case for the prosecution.

We're not talking about the type of killer,

or man who attempts to kill,

who plunges the knife in once, twice, and runs off.

Actually, it's frenzied.

We've got, in Claire's case, front and back.

Charlotte, I think it was front and back as well.

So, you know, there is a similarity there.

It's an unusual, rare event.

Frenzied, quick, rapid,

planned and ostensibly not sexually motivated,

which is actually a fairly exceptional feature, I think.

And of course within a few hundred yards of each other.

And apart from all the other similarities. All right.

It's not just the details of the knife attacks

on Colin Ash-Smith's other victims that the prosecution

want included in their bad character application.

They also want the judge to allow the jury to hear about other similarities.

We say that in four separate occasions when he attacked someone,

he always gives a false alibi.

The morning after Claire was murdered

and the call for witnesses put out,

Colin Ash-Smith rang the police.

So he's setting up his alibi.

And he's doing that because sooner or later somebody might say

"Oh, I saw Ash-Smith up near the newsagent."

It's what he always does, he gets in early.

But he makes a big mistake.

He says 6:30, and that's just not the right time.

Six days later, the police visited Colin Ash-Smith

to record his written witness statement.

6:30 is after the murder.

It's no use talking about what happened after the murder, so he changes it.

Was it a man or was it a woman?

"I don't really know and I can't really give a description."

What's the point of that?

And it's really important for the bad character perspective

to understand the reason that it's so important

is that he keeps doing that.

And if it isn't him, then how extraordinarily coincidental

is that that he keeps doing it? Why does he do it?

And funnily enough, the description that he gives,

if it's a description of anyone it's a description of Claire. Amazingly.

Because he just says,

"Oh, it could have been a female. longish hair down to shoulder.

He's really giving a description of a girl.

It's quite difficult if you're asked to give a description which

you know is going to be false to actually give a false description.

What you would often do is just focus on somebody you know,

not that I'm a master criminal who does that sort of thing, but I think

you would probably focus on somebody you know and give that description.

Otherwise you could be caught out later on in a police interview,

if you can't remember what description you've given.

So I think what happens is that he gives a description of somebody

and only person's whose description he's given if it's of anyone,

is of Claire.

The CPS' handling of non-recent sex abuse cases

is often highly controversial.

The month before Keith Cavendish-Coulson goes on trial,

Claire and Janet have come to London for a meeting with

the Director of Public Prosecutions.

I'm ultimately responsible for all cases that go through the CPS.

But when we have case management panels

we have criteria which will say, "Are they very serious cases?

"Are the trials going to last a long time?

"Are there particularly vulnerable, sensitive victims and witnesses?

"Is there going to be lots of press interest in it?" For example.

And those are the cases that will come in for a case management panel.

So it's really around making sure that these cases are dealt with properly.

Sorry, we're almost late.

No, no, no. You ARE late.

-You're not almost. You are.

-THEY LAUGH

A problem with the trains, I gather. So...

Do you want to just give us

a very quick sort of run through of the brief facts?

It is a number of complaints,

non-recent complaints of indecent assault against the defendant,

who was formerly a teacher at a private preparatory school in Cheshire.

A boarding school for boys under the age of 13.

-OK. So total number of complainants now is about 20...

-26.

-26.

Because they took place so long ago, quite often evidence that you

would have had, had you been able to get to the

scene of the offending earlier, of course that's no longer there.

People's memories, if it's 20 years ago as opposed to two weeks ago,

will be very different, but we will also go back and look

at things like, are there other witnesses we can get who saw people

at particular times that can support the victim and their allegations?

-So the size of the case served evidence is quite substantial?

-Yes.

And I presume you've got some school records stuff because certainly

some of the parents made complaints to the school, didn't they?

-Yes, and we've got...

-He was eventually dismissed or...?

-He was.

Well, arrangements were made for him to be let go,

if you like, yes, by the headmaster of the school.

So we've got evidence from that headmaster,

and we've got evidence from parents at the school.

Excellent. That's good.

And I presume his defence case statement was no more than,

"Never happened."

No. Fairly standard, isn't it, really?

And there's been nothing from them in relation to sort of medical

or anything like that or

bearing in mind as well his age, that sort of thing? No?

-No, cos how old is he now? Is he 70?

-71.

No, seems to be completely compos mentis, doesn't he?

Age in itself isn't a bar to prosecution.

It's more around do they have any mental issues,

will they understand what's happening?

And sometimes they may be so ill that we do have to make

a judgment about whether it's in the public interest to prosecute.

And whether they'll be able to stand trial,

whether they'll understand the whole process.

Is there anything in relation to any of the individuals that might

lead to a specific attack on them?

The character of the victims?

-No.

-They're all professional people, living all over the country.

None of them have any previous convictions or health issues

that would give rise to a concern about vulnerability

and an attack on that basis.

And certainly the defence haven't raised any issue so far.

Although I accept that that's

very often something that waits until the trial.

In the years following Claire Tiltman's murder,

the case was never closed.

After her mother died in 2008, her father kept campaigning.

Never given up hope.

Never. Never have done, never will do.

But she would have been 30 now, so.

Yeah it's... Yeah, she was a good kid, really was.

I miss her to bits.

He died in 2012 before Colin Ash-Smith was charged

and the campaign to keep the case in the public eye

was taken over by a group of Claire's school friends.

Tilt was just someone really, really fun,

galvanised people together, had lots of different friends.

I always remember afterwards that she was portrayed as this

very goody-goody, two-shoes grammar school girl.

She was so far away from that.

She was nothing like that at all.

She was real good fun and just someone that always,

always made you laugh, that's what I always remember.

-Had a really good laugh.

-Superb sense of humour.

She definitely got her sense of humour from Cliff

and Cliff totally doted on her.

As a 15, 16-year-old, your parents aren't always the people that

you're closest to at that time, by far.

-They were all just best friends.

-Yeah.

Very, very close unit, had a lot of respect and thought

so much of her parents.

Now, almost 22 years after Claire's death, the prosecution

are going to try and prove Colin Ash-Smith is guilty of her murder.

Some people look at this case

and say, "I don't know what you're doing, Nigel.

"You haven't got a case here." Because it's a circumstantial case.

There's no direct evidence in the case to say that Colin Ash-Smith

was responsible but yet the case is overwhelming, in our view.

It doesn't quite take a leap of faith cos that's not

part of the Code for Crown Prosecutors.

But you have to take a view that, if we look at all the case

together, do we have a case that could succeed?

The problem with that is that many people would disagree.

So you put 10 lawyers in a room and some agree with me

and some would not.

But at the end of the day, it's just about judgment.

For two days, the judge considers

whether to allow the prosecution to use details

of Colin Ash-Smith's other offences as evidence of bad character.

He decides in the prosecution's favour and the trial can now begin.

It's taken an awful lot of hard work from a lot of people from all the

organisations to get this to where it is, unrelenting over the years,

try, try, try again, try something different, try something new.

Do you know I think it does mean a lot to the officers working on it.

And the additional tragedies of her parents that are now both

deceased, who aren't here hopefully to see justice.

So that moment when you know the trial is just about to start,

it's quite an emotional thing.

The opening in my estimation is probably the most important

thing that any prosecuting counsel can do.

It's the old thing, isn't it?

You tell them what you're going to tell them,

you tell them it and then you tell them what you've told them.

And you give them a sound bite,

something that they're going to remember about the case -

senseless slaughter, motiveless, remorseless, savage, brutal.

I'm afraid they're all adjectives and adverbs

which we have used down the ages, but it grabs people.

And I use my mannerisms

and I use my gestures in such a way that they will understand this is an

important, really important point. Perhaps that's not so important.

And at times you'll see that I deliberately drop my voice.

That's cos I want them to strain to listen to what I'm about to say.

And other times, I'll really raise my voice.

And all of that, I'm afraid, is entirely deliberate.

Not because I'm playing a game. Far from it.

And not because I'm trying to embark on an Oscar-winning performance,

I'm not.

It's because I have a job to do.

And my job as an advocate is to persuade.

And if I can't persuade them on the basis of this opening,

then I'm not doing my job.

The position is that we're not being contradicted, nobody's objecting

to anything we're saying so it's our best chance to put our case forward.

But hereafter, our case will come under scrutiny, because the

defence will be cross-examining our witnesses and putting their case.

They haven't put anything of their case yet.

All that's happened so far is that he's said he's not guilty.

Over seven days, 19 witnesses will be presented by the prosecution

and then cross-examined.

The evidence of a further 88 people, some now deceased,

will also be read to the jury.

One of the key witnesses is part of the prosecution's new evidence.

He's a friend Colin Ash-Smith made in prison.

Monday we have a man to whom we say Ash-Smith confessed

aspects of what he had done in prison, 10 or so years ago,

which will be interesting.

Of course Dubois assumed he was talking about the offence

that Colin Ash-Smith was in prison for.

But when you know the case and you know the detail of the case,

there wasn't a zebra crossing in that case at all.

It didn't feature.

But when you know the Claire Tiltman murder case, it is

really quite relevant because Colin Ash-Smith had phoned in

on the day after, mentioned a zebra crossing, seeing somebody on there.

The story, as we believe it, was that actually

he has seen Claire Tiltman in that area, in that location where he was.

So that piece of evidence is really, really powerful

because it isn't a straight confession.

It isn't "I did it", and you can make comment on that, that maybe

that could be bravado about something.

It's something that didn't mean an awful lot.

It didn't mean anything to Dubois.

And the other dynamic is that he's still friends with

Colin Ash-Smith, and when the prosecution case is served,

Colin Ash-Smith gets a copy of Dubois' statement.

He then makes a phone call from prison into Dubois

and then introduces this whole business of the zebra

crossing in that phone call.

I've seen the evidence they think they have

and I'm wondering why I'm still here actually, to be honest.

-Right.

-I even saw your statement actually. There's nothing in there.

You knew me in prison. So what?

Yeah. I knew you in prison. We talked about a couple of things.

I can't remember if they were related to any offence or not.

Well, the thing is,

they said you'd mentioned like a pedestrian crossing.

That day when I was arrested, I went probably about through 50 of them.

-A-ha!

-You know what I mean?

They're trying to link it to the one, this thing, you know.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. The 20-year-old case, yeah.

You know, she said I got upset at a pedestrian crossing probably.

I got upset at a lot of things back then.

You know, it's quite comical when I look at it.

It's not... It's a serious thing but I've sort looked through

the statements and their evidence and stuff and think, "is that it?"

-You know...

-There's nothing there.

There's nothing there that relates to this offence. There's nothing.

Well, why's he picking out that particular bit of information?

Well, the reason is

because it's extremely relevant to what happened on that day.

And we would say he was talking about Claire Tiltman on that day.

That's exactly what happened.

That fits into exactly what the whole case is

and that's what makes it so powerful.

Keith Cavendish-Coulson is facing 42 counts of indecent

assault on boys he taught during the 1970s and '80s.

Today he is expected to appear in Chester Crown Court

for a plea and case management hearing.

It's not an easy thing for people to come forward

and make these complaints.

And part of the reason that they make complaints to the police

is they want to see justice done.

But it won't be an easy process. They will have to give evidence.

They will have to be cross-examined about the allegations.

The defendant's version of events will be put to them

quite robustly by those representing him.

And it is a high burden of proof.

And so, very often there are cases where they may think, well,

some of that's right and some of what the defendant says is right

and the truth probably lies somewhere in the middle,

so we can't be sure.

So we've got to find the defendant not guilty.

And it doesn't necessarily mean the complainant must have been lying

and what the defendant says is completely true,

which I think sometimes is the public perception.

Due to earlier cases in the day over-running, Cavendish-Coulson

hasn't actually had the charges read to him in court.

But there is a development.

-PHONE RINGS

-'Hello?'

Hi, Claire, it's Janet. The defendant's appeared.

He's not actually been arraigned. Although...

-'Oh, no.'

-I know.

Although the defence have indicated that he's going to plead guilty.

'Did he indicate that in open court?'

Yes, he's indicated it in open court.

His counsel has confirmed that he's got signed instructions

to that effect,

and that there is no dispute with any of the prosecution evidence

and there is no basis of plea.

Apparently he's having everything. No basis of plea.

No issue with any complainant. So it's a full hands up.

Is that a likely custodial sentence?

I think so. Coming his way.

I know.

-How old is he?

-Erm, I think he's 70, 71.

Finish his last days in prison maybe. Oh, dear.

Yeah, probably.

-That's a fantastic result for us.

-I know. I'm really pleased.

Absolutely fantastic.

It's been a year's work actually. So really good.

Keith Cavendish-Coulson finally does appear in court

to enter his plea to the charges against him.

Everyone's done so much work on the case, I thought I'd go in and

listen to the words "guilty" 42 times,

as it happened in this scenario.

He, erm, queried one of them.

Said he didn't know the person and then seemed to change his mind,

so a great feeling of relief, to be honest.

And then two of the victims

of course gave Victim Personal Statements,

which means they are reading out to the court

how the offences have affected them.

And gosh! It was upsetting, to be honest.

The one victim who read his statement out particularly

seemed almost that this was a cathartic exercise for him, I think.

Because over... I know it was the '70s,

but different authorities had let them down, sort of,

teaching professionals and the like,

and here was the criminal justice system

actually listening to what he had to say.

So, I think he felt that was quite cathartic, to be honest.

The judge has retired to consider the sentence he will impose.

At Inner London Crown Court,

the prosecution has finished presenting their case.

It's been all us so far.

Everybody in that court seemed convinced.

But as I've said to you, you've only heard our side of the story.

Now you will hear the defence's side of the story

and that might change the position.

Part of the defence case is to pin their colours to two other

individuals, one of whom, erm, is...

is and was a serial killer.

And another individual who killed his mother, a year or

so after Claire was killed,

in the local area,

leaving behind, erm, a note.

Course the one difference between us

is I have to prove it was his client.

He doesn't have to prove it was either of the other two.

He just has to put before the jury evidence, which if

they are unsure about it, means that they wouldn't convict this one.

Peter Rivers, if you look at the picture of Peter Rivers,

he's a middle aged man, quite large.

No description of that person is given anywhere near this.

He could have got to that place at 6:20 on the train.

But you know, the fact that we can't alibi him out causes us a problem.

But there's no DNA of him at the scene.

So there's nothing to suggest him apart from that note.

And myself and counsel have come to the view that we're quite

sure that that isn't a line that's going to go anywhere.

But it remains a highly unusual feature of the case that you

seem to have someone admitting it.

Of course, he committed suicide and that was a year later.

They're using it just to sow a little seed of doubt

but, er, we'll see.

Not the first time that defence counsel do that in cases like this.

The trial is now entering day 15.

It's been communicated to us today by the defence that they

have chosen to call their client, which is

the single biggest tactical decision they need to make.

The danger to them is that as soon as their client

goes into the witness box, they lose control.

At the moment, if there's a break,

they can have a discussion with their client.

As soon as he goes into that witness box,

he cannot say one word to his lawyers.

So, for the first time in this case, Colin Ash-Smith will be alone.

-Very much alone.

-And at his most vulnerable.

He'll be very, very alone.

In interview when we asked him those questions all those years ago,

he chose not to answer any questions.

But now he's going to have to answer the questions

because he's not in a position to refuse to answer.

And I think we've got some very good questions to put to him.

There is a possibility I will be cross-examining him

for about two days.

But the most exceptional feature from his point of view is because

he pleaded guilty to both of those offences in 1996, he wasn't tried.

So, for him, stepping into the witness box will be a completely

novel experience. And sometimes, I think quite naively,

they think all they have to do is give their account

and everybody will believe them, that'll be the end of it.

That's not how it works.

So it will be a bit of a shock to him, I suspect, once I start on him.

The cross-examination of Colin Ash-Smith

begins on day 16 of the trial.

His house was searched on his arrest

and he wrote four plans.

"Number three, at an old people's home,

"total abysmal failure rather not talk about it."

I'm just coming out of court, not long.

I still don't actually know what to think.

Cos it's a very, very strange set of circumstances, this.

You've got somebody in the witness box, admitting

and talking about the most horrific things.

Even for hardened police officers that are here at the moment,

it's quite shocking the things that are coming out.

The writings that he put about a care home in Swanscombe.

It was complete disaster, as he wrote it, with no detail on it.

And you could have heard almost like an audible gasp in the court

when talking about breaking in, "Why were you doing it?"

"Oh, just to go in because I hadn't done it before."

"Did you have a knife with you?" "No, I didn't."

And he said, "but I had a crossbow".

And when he's talked about going out at night, undoubtedly

looking for victims, armed with knives, walking the streets

of that area, once, twice a week after his parents went to sleep.

This is a very, very dangerous man.

I think it's gone all right but it's for others to judge.

I'm actually coming to the important stuff. First thing tomorrow, Nigel.

Claire's old school friends have been in court throughout

the proceedings.

There's a beautiful thread through the whole thing,

it's all about that zebra crossing.

All roads lead to it.

And if I didn't get that across, I didn't do a good job.

We did want to give you a standing ovation actually.

We resisted the urge to stand up and clap.

We were expecting the jury to do it actually.

Can I just mention something about this afternoon?

You've all been very, very good but there will be a defence speech.

No rolling the eyes.

No tutting. Nothing like that.

It's just undignified.

The last thing I want is anybody excluded.

And you've all been great.

It's good to have the odd reminder because it's...

It does get hard, doesn't it?

It's automatic to do those things.

It's quite hard sitting there and not having...

You know, you have an emotional stake in the whole thing,

understandably.

But in so far as one can ever read a jury, I think it's gone all right.

I hope history doesn't say I'm wrong.

At Chester Crown Court,

the judge is due to sentence Keith Cavendish-Coulson, after

he pleaded guilty to 42 counts of indecent assault

in the '70s and '80s.

If you were sentencing today for offences today,

it would be 14 years.

But, although we're sentencing in modern times,

we've to sentence in relation to the regime that was in place

at the time, but not as a judge in that time would have sentenced.

So you've to apply the maximum sentence here, which is 10 years,

under the 1956 Act but then try and sentence it as best you can

within that regime, as a modern judge would sentence.

Not as a judge would have sentenced then. It's quite tricky actually.

Before sentencing, the judge describes the case as a shocking

episode of criminal sexual behaviour and comments that the sheer scale

of the offending with the number of offences and victims is truly awful.

Here he's just said, "I've read the pre-sentence report

"and the defendant, beyond his guilty plea,

"any other remorse is minimal.

"He attempts to justify his behaviour,

"saying it's what the boys wanted."

And that it's just a media storm.

That otherwise these victims would have forgotten

what had happened to them.

And the judge says, "For an intelligent man,

"this is an extraordinary statement and a highly revealing statement."

I think it is, actually.

He didn't seem to think that it would have had

an effect on his victims.

Maybe that just shows his psyche though, really, rather than

a lack of remorse, it's a lack of understanding or something.

Yes, it's a complete lack of empathy, isn't it.

He thought they should just have...

Got on with it.

..shut up and got on with it, which is quite remarkable really.

But clearly shows a lack of understanding

of why he's been prosecuted, even.

And then he's said, "Stand up Keith Cavendish-Coulson.

"I sentence you for a catalogue of shocking sexual abuse

"on a large scale, involving boys who should have been able to look

"to you to be treated with respect, rather than wholesale sexual abuse."

And then he said,

"All sentences will run concurrently making the total of six years

"and nine months, which in my judgment is the correct custodial

"sentence for the criminality revealed in this quite exceptional case."

That's it. Six years and nine months.

Sentences are a matter for the judge.

It's not really for us to, erm,

pass comment on it, erm...

to the public.

Our role is to prosecute, it's not to sentence.

At Inner London Crown Court on the 22nd day of the trial,

Colin Ash-Smith's defence team finish their closing speech.

The jury has now retired to consider their verdict.

You just don't know what word they're going to utter.

There's only one defendant and there's one count of murder

so it'll be over very, very quickly when the word is uttered.

And that'll mark a turning point in 21-plus years,

uttered in one word in a few seconds within a courtroom.

And when you're waiting for that, that does get you a bit.

Well, I hope it's one word, by the way.

And not two words!

HE LAUGHS

It'll be one word. One word.

It's very difficult because, you know, for us it's...it's a job.

We take a professional approach, we hope.

But we have invested time and to some extent emotion

into a case like this and so

inevitably you want it to go your way.

But in the meantime, we have other work to do.

That's what we do, as best we can.

Sometimes it's very difficult to focus

but you just fill in the time and you wait.

It takes the jury just over a day to come to a unanimous verdict.

They find Colin Ash-Smith guilty of the murder of Claire Tiltman.

The prosecution enjoys no victories and suffers no defeats, Mr Withers.

Justice has been done.

Yes. But it was a nice win on this occasion.

No, I'm absolutely delighted.

We're all delighted, I mean just to see their faces,

it makes it all worthwhile.

The last bit, it was critical, when you turned round

and they're all hugging each other and in tears.

Yeah, absolutely makes it all worthwhile.

It's incredibly emotional, especially in a case like this

where, you know, it's 22 years, and so much time passed

and so many people have invested so much time and effort in it.

And the family and the friends.

So, it's amazing when that happens and makes it all worth it.

The judge describes it as a brutal pre-meditated murder

of a much-loved child,

carried out for a feeling of power, and sentences

Colin Ash-Smith to life imprisonment with a minimum term of 21 years.

It's nearly 22 years since Claire was cruelly taken from us.

Today we finally know who murdered her

but we will never understand why.

But we should not be out here speaking with you today.

It should be Claire's parents,

Lin and Cliff, who both tragically died too soon, after trying to deal

with the devastating loss of their only child.

We will never get our friend back and we'll never forget her.

But now Claire and her beloved parents, Lin and Cliff,

can rest in peace, knowing that her murderer

has finally received his justice.

Thank you.

Anyway, there it is. That's it. That's the end of the case.

-Successful.

-On to the next one.

On to the next one.

If you are interested in finding out more about the justice system

you can join in a simulated court case

from The Open University and reach your own verdict.

Go to bbc.co.uk/prosecutors

and follow the links to The Open University.