24/02/2014 Inside Out West Midlands

Every year we send 145 billion texts ` tonight we follow the team using

texts to crack crime. I'm an applied linguist, I do linguists and I

displayed languages. The language I happen to describe is on criminal

cases. Also on the show we ask ` how much

should we be doing to protect communities from flooding and do we

need to start thinking more radically?

That's all coming up on tonight's Inside Out, with me, Mary Rhodes.

But first: What does a text message say about you? For most of us

they're just a quick and easy way of keeping in touching, but what if

your motives are more sinister? Anthony Bartram was given exclusive

access to the team who are tracking down the criminals trying to conceal

their crimes with a text. This film contains details that some

may find upsetting. I just knew things were not right. I

did not feel like things were correct on the net. I could not

understand how they people could get out of the fire and Amanda did not.

She would have gone through hot coals to get her children out.

At first this looked like a tragic accident. Her killer sent texts from

her phone to cover her tracks. The messages that Beverley Bates

received from her daughter did not ring true. I picked the phone up and

looked at the text messages, they did not look correct. The kisses

were not correct. Her son`in`law, Christopher Birks,

escape from the fire with the two young children. In the eyes of

Beverley, he was the prime suspect. Things did not feel right. I really

thought it was him but I could not prove it.

When a complex case needs unlocking, detectives often call an expert

witness, in this case Staffordshire Police new route to ring. How do you

prove who is holding the phone or capping the keyboard. Even the best

detectives need help. We have got some of the best in the world here

in Birmingham. I am a forensic linguist, the language I happen to

describe is to do with criminal cases.

Does that mean he is a text detective? Text detective or CE SI

chat room, it is not real. `` CSI chat room.

The box case was one of the first cases I worked on. We try to knock

on doors and collected the text messages. It was on the foundation

of the technical skills and old fashioned skills and the sheer

effort of the police that we were able to draw any conclusions. 50

miles away in Stoke`on`Trent, Amanda's mother has custody of Jack

and Amelia. The children were present when this

happened and they still cry for their mother. Especially if they are

not well. Jack feels guilty. He thinks that had he been there on

that day he could have saved his mother. He is only an age`old boy.

Christopher Birks has a history of the mess the violence, he admitted

strangling his wife and setting the fire. Even though he was jailed for

life, five years later the children still have lots of questions as to

what he did. The children need to know the truth and get answers. Even

though, Jack still questions things and wants answers. Aston

University's Centre for forensic with this `` Logistics now has a

worldwide reputation. Detectives in Nottingham Cobden in to help with an

unusual missing persons inquiry. In March 2012 we were asked to look

into this. We made inquiries about to her friends and associates were.

When they spoke to those people, they all reported a common theme

that they had been receiving e`mails over the course of the preceding

years from someone purporting to be deadly but they all felt was not

today and they were suspicious of those e`mails. `` Debbie.

They were looking for a woman who had not been seen for two years.

Debbie Cooper became Mrs Debbie Starbuck in 2010. One monthly target

took off on a round trip of a lifetime. 32 countries covering

Europe, Asia, Africa, America. When he realised that people were

getting suspicious, he made an attempt, more of an attempt to use

disguise. Detectives gathered hundreds of the Couples' e`mails.

They used them for linguists to pull apart. We can distinguish between

small groups and pairs of individuals. We cannot tell someone

was my personality. It received a threatening letter, we cannot tell

you it was a psychopath who wrote it. All we can do as tell you about

their social linguistic background, what their age or personality is

like. In January last year, Jamie Starbuck

dropped his disguise, returns to Britain and confessed to killing his

wife, nine days after they were married. While she never left the

country and police never phoned her remains, Mr Starbuck raided ?75,000

of her savings to fund his globetrotting. He was a pathetic

coward. This was all about money, financially motivated. It would not

have occurred to him that people like Dr Grant existed.

The science was also Christopher Birks's undoing. I talked to

Beverley and her mother and showed them how it was applied to the

investigation. At least we can see how things have worked out and how

he has got all the evidence against Christopher.

But the doctor is used to working in academic isolation and has never met

a victim from one of his cases. That is about to change.

Yes, I am slightly daunted by I hope I can provide answers that Beverley

is looking for. The case we are talking about today

is Amanda Birks who died in a house fire. Sitting alongside his

students, Beverley hopes to find the answers to some of her grandchildren

byes`mac questions. You get down to 1240 on the day of the fire and

after that, all the text messages contain Christopher Birks Plisner

features. What we get in that description are some things that are

only used by Amanda and never by Christopher and others vice versa.

This has been a personal lecture by Beverley who knows she was right to

be suspicious and can then see for herself how the work of Dr Grant can

cooperate with the evidence of police to prove that Amanda was

murdered at lunchtime, eight hours before Christopher started the fire.

Next, the doctor is going to show us a simple social media experiment to

prove that we all have an individual text identity.

You are all going to tweak the same message to me. You are coming into a

lecture but your boss is broken down so you know you will not make it.

The result was what he expected. We all had the same message to send and

only 140 characters to play with, but none of the tweets are the same.

For Beverley it has been both fascinating and very personal. I

have clung to those text messages for 24 hours, thinking that was my

last point of contact with my daughter. That was then snatched

away. It was really devastating. I can understand that and it is the

amount of time. It was not a crime in the moment. The university has

the greatest concentration of forensic linguists on the planet.

Combining teaching, research and real criminal cases.

These are not crossword puzzles we are dealing with, these are real

people, there are devastated families behind a lot of these cases

and you must be aware of that. These are human stories, this is not an

ivory tower. Beverley has learned there is far

more to this place than tracking phones. It is amazing, you would not

think that you could pick that out of the text. You would not believe

that you could get that evidence from a few simple text messages. It

could be used in a tile. You're watching Inside Out for the

West Midlands. Next, at the moment pretty much anyone can open a tattoo

studio, you don't even need training. Public Health England

recently launched new national guidelines but critics say those

aren't tough enough to protect the public. Stuart Woodman's been

investigating what happens when tattoos go wrong.

Getting a tattoo can take minutes, the regrets can last for years.

Sometimes you look at a tattoo and you have got to be very diplomatic

which is the hardest part, because sometimes you look at it and think

what the hell happened! I usually just say, I have seen worse. Some of

them really are terrible. Bob runs a tattoo laser removal

service in Derby and says business has never been impressed. I have had

children coming into me who have had tattoo is done by tattoo artists,

Sobel it was painful and they had to stop. Misspellings, it is all

frightening. Bob's clients include people who have had bad artwork and

practical jokes tattooed into their skin but everyone who visits has one

view in common, they are unhappy with the ink. What are you having

done today? Something removed from my back. People who have not had a

tattoo do not realise the risks. It is supposed to be Chinese writing,

it says the names of my children in Chinese with a son around it. But

instead it says hot lesbian. It needs to come off!

Tattooists use a device that works in a similar way to a sewing

mission, more and more needles here is the skin and with heavy puncher,

illegal inserts tiny drops of ink. Because it breaks the skin, for

hygiene is Paul, captaining carry serious health risks. I went to a

local tattooists in Derby and I had come up with a big design, a planted

flower bulb that looked like it was coming out of my skin. I went in for

a three hour session which was quite painful, it was the first one I had

had were it seems really bad. I went home and looked after that but woke

up the next day and my foot was two to three times the size it had been

the day before. Gemma contacted the studio which carried out the work.

They dismissed her concerns claiming her tattoo was on a sensitive area

and that this was a normal reaction. Things became so painful that it

pained Gemma and she had to admit herself to hospital. Then I went

into the hospital, they diagnosed me with septicaemia, blood poisoning.

Is this person still tackling in Derby? Yes, the art. Gemma asked us

not to contact the tattoo studio responsible, because she is

concerned about reprisal. You can get really bad infections, things

inflamed, things not even properly. You name it, we see it all the time

`` things not healing properly. Apart from infection and poor

design, there are other concerns, the law states people undertaking

cannot get a tattoo. But the EU Summit is often ignored. I was 14 at

the time and saw this design I really liked and I wanted to be the

first one at school to get one. I went to someone who was a trainee

but I knew he did under age, but it was not the best. It is raised and

bumpy, the ink is not black and the lanes are not straight. You were 14

years old, was there no questions asked? No. What has happened to the

problem DIY tattoo is you can on the Internet. Anna Symns knows only too

well how Tatooine at home can lead to long`term regrets. I had them

done by an ex`boyfriend who did it with a piece of kit that he bought

off of the Internet. They have not gone in properly and I certainly

don't want any more. What to do you think about it looking at it now? It

is a mess and that is why I am having them removed. Some tattoo 's

look like someone has taken a Bible pen and done a scrawl all over the

back. I had the mother and father who got

their 17`year`old son and and he had this scrawl all over his neck.

Ironically, while the current rules and regulations governing the tattoo

industry are relaxed, using a laser to remove them is not properly

regulated either. Derby tattooist, Kevin Paul, started his own campaign

to clean up the industry. He has taken these concerns to the top and

recently went to Westminster to talk to the Health Secretary. These are

some of the problems we are getting. You must be registered. Today he is

meeting Chris Williamson MP who is backing his campaign and lobbying

for change. These are horrific and it has

convinced me that we need proper regulation to ensure that these

sorts of practices are stabbed out. It will be difficult because this is

often done at home but every can regulate the availability of

materials, we can make sure that the studios are proper regulated and

that would be a big step in the correct direction. You are selling

me these guidelines are not enough? The toolkit is a welcome step.

Unless you have statutory backing for it, people will ignore it. The

good guys will follow it as best practice, but it is the rolled

tattooists, the people who are not properly set up, those Tatooine at

home or importing these inferior materials which are the real problem

and that is what we need to deal with. This is blood`born diseases.

You cannot buy it off eBay and on your way. It's shocking you're

allowed to do it. Both Chris and Kevin welcome the guidelines, but

they're not convinced they are the underlying problem and unless new

laws are introduced they are certain there will be more cases like Gemma.

She says she had a lucky escape and wants to warn others. You see this

as a smaller form of cosmetic surgery. It is something that will

be there for the rest of your life. If you were changing another part of

your body you wouldn't go to someone who wasn't qualified or certified

and it shouldn't be like that with tattooing.

It just goes to show, you can't be too careful. Remember, you can keep

up`to`date with the programme by going to our website.

We are in Bewdley, a town that's breathing a sigh of relief, because

it escaped the recent flooding. It stayed dry thanks to new flood

defences which are coming down, but Colm and Mary Howell remember how it

used to be. You have been in Bewdley since 1945, so how do the floods of

the lasting week compare with previous floods? I can only describe

it as a tiddler, because in 1947, though we didn't have the barriers,

it came right up the main street to the George Hotel. And that really

was a massive flood. One thing I suppose just postwar and we were

used to the flooding and everything was quite normal. You just got the

local authority and the police and one or two others together. There

was no bureaucracy. Keep calm and carry on. The defences have worked

here, but as we have seen, the water has to go somewhere. David Gregory

Kumar has been looking at other possible solutions to the problem of

flooding, which might not be good news for everyone.

We have had some extraordinary weather conditions over past several

weeks. In fact, England's had its wettest January since 1766 and

what's more, in some parts of the area, this is said to be the wettest

winter for 250 years. Scientists can't say for certain whether or not

all of this is down to climb change. But what we do know is here in the

Midlands, after decades of little or no major flooding, in the last 16

years we have been faced with four huge flooding events. So, while this

may or may not be climate change, this is a scene with which we are

all becoming more family. `` familiar. There are four main types

of flooding, coastal fleding. Not such a problem in the Midlands, what

with us not having a coast. Then there's ground water flooding and

surfacewater flooding and then there's river flooding. It occurs

when the volume of flow of water just overwhele ms the river and here

in the Midlands we have got some really big rivers. `` this is the

seven in Worcester, the longest river in the UK but the Wye, Avon

and Trent are no babbling brooks either. Prior to 1998, there hadn't

been any major floods in the region for decades and people, me included,

were simply caught by surprise. I've been reporting on a lot of floods,

and it's true in the last 16 years we have learnt an awful lot and done

an awful lot to try to stop the worst effects, but properties are

still being flooded. It's really interests looking back and seeing

how things have changed. I remember this helicopter flight. It was

awful. You can see the trees which normally marks the boundaries of the

river on the bank. The river is now up to five or six times wider than

this in parts. You wouldn't see that any more. The defences are in there

now. Look at the tarmac. But there are flood defences which are keeping

Ironbridge dry. You forget how shellshocked were in 1998 and then

the floods kept on coming. We don't get scenes like that. 1300 homes are

now protected up and down the River Severn, but this year, we are still

seeing flooded properties. I guess my question is ` are we tackling

flood defences in the right way here in the Midlands? After all, as the

Prime Minister him sex has said... Money is `` himself has said. Money

is no object. What should we be spending money on that on? In the

Netherlands they are familiar with flooding. But even the water`savvy

Dutch were caught out in 1995, when extreme flooding forced the

evacuation of 250,000 people, with many more homes affected.

Traditionally, the Dutch have always relied on a vast network of dykes to

protect them, but following huge floods in 1995 they decided on a

whole new approach to flood defences. They've actually been

lowering the dykes and encouraging flooding in some parts of the

Netherlands. It sounds completely ill logical, but it's all part of a

cunning plan. It's part of a ?1.8 billion project called Room for the

River. The premise is simple enough, by pushing the dykes back they are

creating more of an overflow for the river, so now when the water reaches

a critical level, it has a new flood plain to spill on to. But to create

this, the Dutch had to evict over 200 homeowners and farms are. And I

can't imagine that would be too popular around here. Not everyone

was evicted though and some Dutch farmers had their farms rebuilt on

top of mounds. Could we see ideas like that introduced here in the

Midlands? Take Worcester for example. The floodwaters may be

going down now, but could all of this have been avoided altogether?

To find out more I have arranged to meet professor Nigel Wright, an

expert if flood management. What about radical solutions like

Holland? That's just the sort of thing we need to look at and maybe

other measures, but we need to think differently. What is the choice we

have to make? Widen the river or broaden it in places? That will

displace farmers and shops and businesses and people. That may be

what is needed to be done and there has to be a discussion and

negotiation and in the end people need to be compensated for that.

It's not going to be popular with farmers? No, it's not. None of this

is popular with anybody. Who are the lambs? You can see areas which could

be flooded, but there are people farming there at moment, so there

has to be a negotiates with them. There `` negotiation with them. That

would certainly be radical, but it wouldn't be cheap. It costs a lot,

but is that better in the long term? Do you save money? That's the

calculation you have to make, but do you spend a lot of money now, but it

means in the future you wouldn't be spending money to clean up. That's

what the Dutch are trying. But we are no strangers to schemes

ourselves. The Jubilee River was created in the late 1990s and

rerouted parts of the Thames around Windsor, Eton and Maidenhead. It's

not been entirely popular, because whilst in recent weeks those towns

have remained dry, other places, particularly Wraysbury, have been

flooded and some are blaming the river. That's the thing with water,

it's got to go somewhere. Nigel, could we have a Jubilee River here?

Yeah. We could trace the channel around here, but I've cut across a

number of roads, including the M5. Very expensive and disruptive. There

you have it. An idea based on Dutch principles that could in theory work

and a solution to reroute the River Severn that might not be so pract

kele. `` practical. What would the people feel about something like

this? Their city centre was cut off for days when the main bridge was

closed because of flooding and many were forced to vacate their

properties. Surely they would want the shorts to try anything, wouldn't

they? One of the options might be to flood some of the farmland further

up to protect Worcester? I don't agree with that. Even all the flood

barriers they put up, some poor soul down the line gets all the water. I

don't know, because I'm not clever enough to say what needs to be done.

I would like a greater plan, a better plan. If David Cameron said

money no object... We'll see. Are businesses working more `` worth

more than a farmer upstream? That is tricky, especially some of my family

are in farming. Subsidise the farmers. It's not the point. I

wouldn't like to be flooded. Would you like to see it priority tied in

towns rather than the countryside? I would say so, because it's clearly

going to be hugely expensive, so I think in order to get the best value

for money you are probably going to help more people by do it in the

towns. Anyone got any other bright ideas? We'll have a hot summer and

dry it all up. Thank you very much. That's what the people on the street

think, but what about the authorities? We asked the

Environment Agency and they said: It seems unlikely we'll see any

major changes any time soon then, but people will no doubt continue to

ask questions as the clear`up from these floods begins. There's always

going to be flooding, but I think the age of the big individual scheme

defending a town or a village is over now. Instead, we need to look

at the whole river catchment and whole Midlands and make difficult

choices about areas we might sacrifice to try to save places like

Worcester and whatever we decide to do, some people are going to be left

very unhappy. Some interesting ideas there. Bound

to provoke debate. If you've got a story you think I should know about,

drop me an e`mail. For tonight, from the banks of the

River Severn in Bewdley, good night. Mary and the team are back next

week, when they investigate the rise in students using sugar daddies to

help pay their tuition fees. Hello, I'm Ellie Crisell with your

90 second update. Two women and four