23/01/2017 Inside Out South East

Gone in 60 minutes, why land Rovers are being stolen to order in Kent

and Sussex. It is not just a car that people drive, it is a car that

they love and cherish and the impact from these people, when they have

had it stolen, it is like losing your dog. The Brighton teenager who

fought had cancer on YouTube. It was something that she needed to do,

something that she wanted to do. I think she wanted to share with the

world. And we go looking for medieval graffiti in the castles of

the south-east. To find something like this in a castle is rare and it

makes this very special. I'm Natalie Graham with untold stories closer to

home, from all around the south-east, this is Inside Out.

Hello, and welcome to the programme. This week we come to you from Brodie

Castle in East Sussex. No rural scene in the south-east would be

complete without a mud splattered land Rover but it is surprisingly

one of the most stolen cars in England. We found out why.

Sunday morning in a Sussex wood, for these Land Rover

It s a dirty homage to a cherished off-road car.

They are an iconic British vehicle, a work horse for the army,

farmers and also a whole generation of families and hobbyists.

Some of these Land Rovers are worth north of ?50,000.

Lovingly built and tinkered with over decades, to their owners

these vehicles are much more than just a car.

Problem is, to organised gangs of car thieves,

the Land Rover has become a top target.

But Land Rover owners are fighting back, some using social media

to get their cars back some using a host of new security devices

others using social media to try and track cars down

We have a couple of Facebook pages and always someone's

coming up there, saying, "Please help, my Land

So who is stealing the Land Rovers here in Sussex and Kent,

why are they doing it and where are they going to?

18 months or two years ago it was off the drive in the middle of the

night and someone broke into a tad I never saw it again.

This one now lives my garage, under lock and key.

Everything else I have got is very well secured.

They are unfortunately very stealable.

Stealable because the last Land Rover Defender rolled off

And since then this car has been one of the most stolen

The NFU Mutual insurance company saw a surge in theft claims

When you buy a Land Rover you are not buying a car, it is a hobby.

It's the heart and soul people put into these vehicles.

Sometimes the car is passed down through the family and the impact

when they have it stolen in cities like losing their dog. It is not

nice. This Land Rover was the pride

and joy of Leicestershire police until the thieves took

it apart overnight. It was parked outside

a local Police Station. But all these stolen

Land Rovers have got to be going somewhere,

so what exactly Police say high-end vehicles,

like these Range Rovers, are being stolen to order

and shipped abroad, Older, more vintage models,

are equally as desirable to the thieves that s

because Land Rovers were designed to the thieves because Land

Rovers were designed to be simple to fix out

in the field, they can easily be stripped down into parts,

parts which are now more valuable because they are no

longer being made. Because they have stopped making

them the spare parts are few and far between but with a box of spammers

and an hour you can add one Mbits completely. There are no codes

stamped on most of the parts so they appear on eBay and there is a market

unfortunately for stolen bits. Jon Rush is a Land Rover mechanic

from Sussex who was hit As someone who knows

Land Rovers inside-out, So just how easy is it for

the criminals to strip a Land Rover? Well, we came up with

a little experiment. We are calling it

Gone In 60 Minutes. plan is to unbolt parts of the Land

Rover until we end up with as big a pile of bits and as little Land

Rover as we can finish with. OK, that is 23 minutes, 23 minutes gone.

Jon firmly believes that his beloved Land Rover was stolen to order

Now he's going to show us just how easily a Land Rover comes apart.

With the clock ticking, and multiple cameras running,

we'll check back in with Jon in a while.

Henry Mowforth is a mechanic on slightly larger vehicles.

His Land Rover was special, it was his wedding car.

We used it to get from the church to the reception.

Me, my wife and son have used it ever since, used it all the time.

It was my first vehicle. It is soul destroying because you spend all of

that time with it and that it is just gone.

Our next victim thinks thieves may have planted a tracking device

on his Land Rover when it was parked at his local railway station

When he drove home they electronically followed him,

then nicked his Land Rover off the drive.

It's in the middle of nowhere so there may have been a tracker put on

the car and they came back whenever they wanted to come and get it.

Nathan Ricketts is a detective on the national car squad

and he knows all the latest tricks and tactics car crime

Have you ever come across cases where organised crime gangs

are putting trackers on commuters' cars at railway stations,

where they follow them home to steal the vehicle?

Is that what is happening? In my spirits I have come across an

organised crime group and they were particularly selective of cars and

they would see them in supermarkets and drive into them and pretend it

was an accident and leave a note saying they were really sorry about

it and they would offer a paint job with their friends so they didn't

have to to do it on the insurance. You would take it there and they

would do a great job of it -- not repairing the bumper or the Dent and

they would put a tracking device into the vehicle.

This garage in Kent is full of top-end Range Rovers.

The manufacturers fit all of these cars with at least one tracker

for the benefit of the owners, but the car gangs have

They are now using one of these, a magic wand to sniff

I will just turn that up. They will know that there is something in the

vehicle. A tracker. Now when people steal the car they will block the

signal and they will block any signal coming out of the car and

take it somewhere safe and take it to a side road or in the unit

somewhere and when they feel safe somewhere and when they feel safe

they will switch the unit on and try and find the tracking unit and as

soon as they find it will be disconnected.

Being one step ahead of the thieves is the only way to catch them,

and the latest gadget does just that.

A tiny, highly intelligent tracker that can't be sniffed

What is the product you have come up with? What is the secret tracker? I

would love to be able to show you but we don't do that. It could be

anything on the car. It is not one particular unit, it is well it now

we don't talk about it. It could be in the headlights or anywhere and I

will not show you any specification for it. We don't want the thieves to

get the upper hand on us. And Neil's intelligent

tracker is getting results. It can runs for months and send

a signal from inside Here police are recovering

Land Rovers at Southampton Docks, just about to be shipped abroad,

and then here are dozens more They don't just steal the whole car,

they take just bits of a car. There are shots on the Internet of a

police Land Rover taken to bits. Why did they take to bits? It reduces

the risk. If you take a whole car and steal it and try and move it

then it is easier to identify but is parts can look like scrap or a few

car parts and it reduces what it is, and it is a stolen vehicle.

With stolen Land Rover parts vanishing so quickly,

police need to catch the criminals in the act.

And that's exactly what happened to these three Land Rover thieves.

A call from a neighbour led to a quick police reaction,

and last October this trio were handed a prison

sentences totalling six and a half years in all.

I believe it was quite a slick operation.

These vehicles, in my mind, were going to be taken either to another

country or stripped down for parts and sent out to another country for

money. Back in Jon's barn, how

was his attempt at stripping Now you see it, now you don't. Time!

That is a Land Rover stripped in 60 minutes. We are done. Are you a

pricey did it so quickly? I am surprised but I don't think I would

like to do it as a business. Thank you for letting us film you work

very hard, now put it back together! Thank you. That will take longer.

As far as we are aware, they are still rebuilding that car! Coming

up: we get medieval on the graffiti on the walls of our castles. As far

as we are aware, they are still as we are aware, they are still

rebuilding that car! Coming up: we get medieval on the graffiti on the

walls of our castles. We have been told there weren't any medieval

inscriptions to be found here so to uncover we have been told there

weren't any medieval inscriptions to be found here so to uncover

inscriptions that date back inscriptions that date back to when

this was occupied then that was a very special moment indeed. When a

teenager from Brighton found that she had cancer it was devastating

news but she decided to fight the disease in her own way, very

publicly. Mark Norman reports. I'm just like any other typical

teenage girl, but I have a twist. 16-year-old Charlotte

had been diagnosed with an aggressive brain tumour,

but rather than hide away, she decided she was going to use

the power of social media to tell the world

what was happening and how she felt. But I found when I had cancer

and wanted some advice videos, In June she said, "I think I m

going to start a YouTube "channel," and I said,

"What are you going to talk about?" And she said "my cancer",

and it developed from there. I've had purple hair, no hair, long,

dark and shiny hair. Black lips, red lips,

dry cracked from chemo lips. I'd finished my exams, I had these

three months when I was free, It was actually on the day of

problem that I was diagnosed which is kind of depressing.

Obviously that was all taken away from me after being

Charlotte posted more than 100 videos in the two

The early ones were watched a few hundred times.

By the time Charlotte lost her battle with cancer, people

all over the country, indeed from around the world,

So, yeah, sorry for these random snippets.

Maybe this is the way I vlog, literally picking up the camera.

After she passed away her videos were nominated

video award and then, remarkably, Charlotte s family

found dozens of unedited, unseen video files on her camera.

I inherited her DSLR which was very special to her.

It was her window onto the world, and I went through her stuff,

and I've had this memory card for months, and I found a new folder

I think most poignant for me is how frank they are, how honest.

When it came to wearing them is, this one is the most comfortable,

so, yes. This is how I look,

and there is nothing I just wanted to me myself? bald,

with hair, whatever. But with the type of tumour

Charlotte had, her condition Charlotte s videos became more

reflective, sometimes difficult to watch, and bringing back

difficult memories for her family. It's grown from a few millimetres

to a few centimetres, Her right hand side was paralysed

and she couldn't move her leg or her arm and then very slowly took every

part of our. Unfortunately things have taken

a turn for the worse. The medication I was on isn't

working very well, so, yeah, I'm looking a bit

the worse for wear. We went to see her consultant

and he more or less had his head in his hands, and he said it's very,

very bad news, the tumour And we cried and I think

it was disbelief. And she just looked at me and said,

"Does that mean I ll never get And I said, "I think it

does," and she went back to see her consultant and said,

"Am I going to die?" He said it seems the

most likely outcome. This is where Charlotte

was diagnosed with a brain tumour. This is where she spent a huge

amount of time being treated. And this is where, despite seeing

a huge number of patients every day, One of the things about Charlotte

is that Charlotte was a phenomenal individual who, despite being faced

with certain death from her tumour, did not say, "Oh, well,"

but she went out there. She raised funds, raised awareness,

she pushed and pushed right to the end, and what an amazing

and humbling experience it is for me, an adult

and a neurosurgeon to see someone so young grasp the enormity

of their diagnosis and just not accept there was nothing

she could do. I have mixed feelings

talking about Charlotte. The only negative thing that comes

to mind is her loss. All the rest is in my mind

a celebration of beauty, life, positivity, bravery,

generosity, that is what She was blogging, making

videos on YouTube. Describing her experience

in an attempt to help others who were going

through the same thing. She was doing it in a very stylish

way, in a way I am certain that would be very helpful for many

people, thousands across the globe. And support was one of the reasons

Charlotte was online. Many of her friends before

her diagnosis couldn't cope with her illness,

something she reflected I've had 60s eyes, red eyes,

dancing-until-dawn eyes. Boyfriends, me friends,

never seen again friends. But Charlotte made new friends

online, friends like Emily, I went over to her channel

and I looked at some of her videos and I loved what she had created

and I loved her personality We arranged to meet up

and we met in the June. I will get back to you guys when I

see Emily. I am meeting at Brighton station and she will be getting in

at them. I've still got all her texts,

I've not deleted one single one. She said she was so grateful to be

here for me and that was the last text I got from her.

She has left her legacy, her videos and she has left

an impact on me that I will carry into my later life.

That legacy and that impact now extend to the charity Charlotte's

They are raising money to raise awareness and fund

research into glioplastomas, the type of brain

I know that she is up there and she will be looking down

and I have promised her that I will make it work.

So obviously hopefully she is proud of us and the charity and it

Towards the end of Charlotte's life her mum had to voice up her videos,

including this final one in February last year.

It is with regret that this will be the last YouTube

Charlotte passed away peacefully at 1.03pm in our local

My family have been with me 110% and I love the more than anything. We

will always come together as a sort of team, if you like. I have just

been incredibly blessed to have that around me.

I don't really know what else I had to say. If anything else exciting

happens I will grab the camera again, so let's wait and see.

Mark Norman reporting. If I were to scratch my initials onto the stones

of this beautiful castle I would be improbable -- trouble, but for

hundreds of years people have been leaving their marks on our much

loved historic buildings. And thanks to a new study

across the South East, we re finding out more

about who wrote them and why. For some, graffiti is vandalism

and for others it s an art form, but maybe there's another

way of looking at it. More and more archaeologists

are studying the scratchings and scribblings of people who've

wanted to, for one reason Matt Champion is an archaeologist

specialising in historical graffiti. As an archaeologist my interest

has always been people of the past, it's always been

about telling their story. He's carrying out a survey on behalf

of the National Trust at many of their famous historical

properties, like here What the graffiti can do is kind

of give you an insight into their hopes and dreams,

their fears and I think that really gives it an edge that you just

don't get elsewhere. This historic graffiti can be

an absolutely fantastic He has been studying the graffiti at

Bodiam Castle stone by stone and has found thousands of inscriptions.

As soon as you get here to the gatehouse and just start

looking at these walls you realise they are absolutely covered

in graffiti inscriptions, so we've got James Bryant,

who is in the 35th regiment, and he was here in 1818.

Now, the traditional story was that James

was here as a Napoleonic Solider guarding French prisoners of war,

however the research we've done indicates that actually by this time

all the French prisoners of war had been repatriated

and he was here as a visitor, a day tripper.

We're heading up into the upper section of the gatehouse.

But the bit I really want to show you is over here.

If I turn the light off, it will completely disappear.

So if I turn the light on here and suddenly you can see

all these markings all over the wall, but this one

This is what we call a ritual protection mark,

or more commonly referred to these days as a witch mark,

and essentially this is one of a whole series of symbols that

were applied to the castle by the people who built it,

but also by the people who were later living here,

Well, this and the other marks we've recorded here,

these ones date back to the period when the castle, just

So we are looking really back into the late 14th

and early 15th century, and so even in a place like Bodiam,

which is designed as a castle, you know with battlements,

with gun-loops with drawbridges, they really wanted to add another

layer of spiritual protection on top of those defences.

They've found over 40 of these marks around every window and door,

just on this side of the castle, but Matt wants to show me something

Now, if you look across here, we have a name and it

This is unusual in the fact that it's a text inscription,

so it's clearly done by someone who is both used to the writing

So actually it's quite unusual to find medieval name,

because most people didn't know how to write.

Literacy levels in the middle ages were certainly a lot less

What did you think then when you saw it?

Well, we'd been told that there weren't any medieval

inscriptions to be found at Bodiam Castle, so to actually

come and start looking stone by stone and to uncover inscriptions

which clearly date back to the period when this

was being occupied that was a very special moment indeed.

Nathalie Cohen is the National Trust's Archaeologist

She is equally enthusiastic about this area of study.

So why carry out this graffiti survey?

We want to present it as a part of the fabric of the building,

we are obviously not encouraging people to leave their own mark now

because we don't want to obliterate the earlier marks that are part

So is there graffiti on every National Trust

So far pretty much wherever we've gone we've been finding it.

And at Bodiam they've been sharing these findings with the public,

The response has been fantastic and people really love getting that

further insight into the stories of the places.

Or did you know, is that why you initiated it?

I just thought, well, yeah, this is amazing.

This is really interesting; surely people will find

Over the border in Kent, I'm at Sissinghurst

Most people come here for the world famous gardens,

but head inside the tower and there's another

If I turn on the light, you can see dates back to the 18th

century and we've got a name in there and our date 1761 down

This was created by a French, a captured French sailor.

And what many people don't realise is that Sissinghurst,

prior to being the home of Vita Sackville West,

and after being a great Tudor mansion, was leased out

to the government, and during the Seven Years War,

there were as many as 3,000 French prisoners of war located here.

But their names weren't all they left behind.

If I turn the light on here, you can see that what we've got

across this whole surface is a series of images of ships.

And these are quite probably the ships that these French

This represents freedom, the freedom of the seas,

here they are incarcerated, over-crowded, in very squalid

conditions, and actually what they are thinking

I mean, what, would it simply be that they were really bored

Well, I think boredom partly has something to do with it,

but what we have noticed, looking at graffiti not just

here, but elsewhere, is that there are certain times

in history when people are much more likely to create than in others,

and we call them chronological hotspots, those periods tends to be

times when society is under stress, so things like war, things

this is right in the middle of the Seven Years War,

so frankly when things go bad, people start writing on the walls.

We're used to learning about history through dates and documents,

but graffiti gives us a direct line to the past, it tells us

about the hopes, the dreams and the fears of the people

who lived in, who worked in, and like us who visited

Now, if you would like to know more about the programme go to our live

pages on the BBC News website. You can also watch the show again on

iPlayer. Make sure you tune in next week because we have a lot to tell

you about, in particular, this. We've discovered an island in Kent

littered with historical human remains. It looks like it could be a

leg bone, couldn't it? It is a thigh bone. Are there other groups there?

Football for females in their 50s? It is an absolutely fantastic

feeling. That is it from us for tonight from bodhi Castle, thank you

for watching. -- from Bodiam Castle. Hello, I'm Riz Lateef

with your 90 second update. The Government says national

security means it won't confirm if an unarmed nuclear missile

veered off course during testing. Theresa May now admits

she knew about the test. She refused to answer

the question yesterday. In his first day

in the job as US President, Donald Trump met

businesses and said he'll cut taxes

and slash red tape, as long as they don't

move jobs abroad. That's the message after nearly

8,000 drivers were caught in just one week

during a police crackdown. Brothers Erwin and Krystian

Markowski illegally recruited Poles to work

at Sports Direct. But they threatened them,

and kept most of their wages.