A Sinister Phone Call: The Murder of Robin Chard| Murdered at First Sight | Forensic Files

[Music] thank you remember when that saw that store and he's going to come out come out come out
it's just there's a red star and we'll all run out of the Caravan to have a look at this Redstone and it was
a pylon well anytime we would go out and if there's any stores anywhere open tonight
Robin that's how I remember just like that um yeah or a smile you look very in love
I've told you away this is the Metro that my dad got off after he'd been out to Newcastle
and start to make his way home but never made it tonight I come home and Robin wasn't there
[Music] Earth could he be about 20 yards behind Robin with two men looked as if they were following him
from underneath the underpass the checkout operator and I can remember them being in and can remember seeing
that they had some blood staining on his clothing within 15 minutes are spending the money
from a man who just murdered and robbed the total strangers that were they didn't even live
well near where we lived there shouldn't even have been off at that train station
you just wanted to hurt someone in fact I think they wanted to kill someone I think that was their intention
they were looked for trouble all night long that night and they didn't find trouble they found
my dad and I heard him and I killed him [Music] [Music] the weather on the 23rd of April 2004
was very fine [Music] it was an unusually nice day [Music] I was at the flat but it was an
electrician coming I forgot to take the money to place by the electrician so Robin popped in
I'm so grateful for this but he popped in with the money and he was all about his suit on and his tie on and he was
just dead handsome just gorgeous I hooked him still wearing me marigolds let's just sticks in my house for some
reason and uh well a kiss now he gives the money and us is right I'll see you later
he went by to work after he saw me there was teacher training at the time so I'd
been to school that day teaching a class and I always remember as I left one of the teachers said have a nice weekend as
you do then I went home and I remember watching a Dolly Parton documentary and I went to bed just like
any normal night on the Friday Night of the 23rd I went to Stockton to do a gig because I'm a
performer I'm a singer and it was a working man's club and I used to do them quite regularly
I went down really well and like I said it was a good night dad had gone out quite late I think it
was maybe nine o'clock you know just as a last minute thing because his friend had called him up
this night I come home and uh Robin wasn't there and I thought he might have been in bed
you know he wasn't in the living room so I thought I must be in bed I think I put the television on I did
shout of him and I thought well he's either not answering me or he may not be one top and he wasn't bad and I thought
strange for him not to be home well Earth could he be now come back in the living room not to
stop there was a message on the answer machine on the phone so I flew the message and it was his
friend us and him if he wanted to go for a couple of paints I thought he'd obviously gone out
I ran his friend and so it's Robin with you and he said no no we should have should
be home now definitely he said he's definitely coming home that's as well he's not home don't know what's happened
to him a round Robin's form that says Robin the male voice he says no it's not no
it's not Robin or something like that and I says hey I'm sorry I must have the wrong number
maybe so I've hit I don't know I just was quite shocked so I hung up and I rang again and the phone was off
I'll run up to my sister's house who lived about uh three doors away from me and uh she come down
and I was saying I don't know where he is I don't know there's some Something's Happened I feel like something's
happened to him and I said look I'm gonna I'm gonna walk up to the metro station
because he might have had a fall on the way home I put my coat on I said you stay here
I'd rang the police at that time it was around about 5 a.m on the morning of the 24th of April
the wife of the victim Angela chard had rung the control room to report at her husband Robin child had been missing
from home she said that it was out of character for Robin to be missing you can imagine 47 year old guy no real
reason to think anything suspicious had happened at that particular stage I think the time was around about six
o'clock-ish I remember just getting late and I thought I'm gonna have a walk alone and see if I can find Robin
I remember walking up here frantic and just wondering where Robin was so I'm looking all over obviously
and just shouting his name Robin Robin as long as I could on the 24th of April 7 30 in the morning the phone rang and
obviously walk me off and straight away I thought that's unusual I went to the phone and Mom said
Juan I don't mean a Warrior but is your dad there it was really wrong and I said no what's
wrong what's what's the matter which one you didn't come home I said right I'm coming over
I got into the house started asking mum questions if he was getting the Metro home which he would do he'd walk down
what we call a black path I said have you been up to the back path and she said I've been he's not there
I just had this picture in my mind of a way like if some Wasteland just off this
bypass that I thought you might be there I don't know why I sort of went there and I was actually looking for him
beaten up that's what I thought had happened but I thought I'd find him alive [Music]
around about 8 A.M on the morning of Saturday the 24th of April the control room in Northern Brad police
received a telephone call from a gentleman he had came across a body in a ditched
area near to where the mission person lived when uniform bosses attended they initially found that the male had some
clothing missing they could also see blood staining around the head area and the guy's shirt
had been pulled up and there were some marks on his back and to all intents and purposes it
looked as if the death was suspicious at that stage next thing I remember was a bit of a
blue I just remember being outside in the street a man who lives a few doors or held me at Arms of said Juan I found
your dad's glasses on the black path it was like phoned your dad I don't know if she said he was I don't
think she said he was dead just remember like I knew something was wrong I just remembered my knees buckled
and I sort of went down under the ground there was an ambulance there that was there for ages and I was like why aren't
they taking the hospital said there was a body they'd found a body [Music] I wanted to know if it was definitely
Robin so my sister reckons that she went along first and when she come back she she said to
me that I was like a wild woman the brother-in-law was standing there George and he's going you're not getting
through you're not getting drunk I remember trying to dive past him but he was big loud and he grabbed us and and I
didn't get through [Music] it wasn't totally that I sort of got the news when I was in mum and Dad's bedroom
with me brother his wife was there I remember her getting told he was dead and his shirt was still hanging on one
he should was still hanging up on the back of the door for the sleeves rolled up as he left her
when he'd taken it off here so if he was sore still there [Music] I didn't find Robin
thankfully first I don't know what I would have done about it actually just discovered
his body it was a grass area just off a foot path it was probably within about 25-30 meters from the
footpath he had been assaulted near to where his body had been found the perpetrators have stamped on Robin
and dragged him into that ditch it actually remarkably when you on the day I was actually standing on the
footpath here and if you were looking across you couldn't see because the body was concealed in this hollow
we obviously do all the forensic work around the recovery of the body means taking job that took several hours
to do at that stage where then in a position to turn Robin over because he was lying face down
um we then put them awful but we then put them in a body bag we then take them to the local hospital
for a post-mortem examination my Uncle George and my Uncle Kenny identified my dad's
body um and I'm really grateful for fun for doing that because I think that must
have just been a very very traumatic experience and something that you know you can't get that image out of
your head could you really the postmortem took considerable length of time four or five hours after the
postmortem when we had the cause of death um the cause of death being asphyxiation
and there will be injuries and things um I then went to visit um the family we told Angela that in our opinion on
the opinion more importantly of the home office pathologist but um Robin had been
murdered [Music] the Metro that my dad got off I've started being out to Newcastle
and started to make his way home but never made it it's hard to come back because I think the last time
he was here he was alive and those are the last steps that he took [Music] when I first met Robin he worked at
osram GCE on the team of valley of making light bulbs and we always used to joke about it being you know meeting
then yeah so I used to say oh yeah the light of my life you know just things like that
mom and dad just just the love teacher there were friends they were always laughing
together it was lovely it's what a relationship should be like foreign aged on the 1st of November 1975.
and got married on the 20th of February 1976. I got pregnant so we brought the wedding
forward I was 18 and so was Robin Robin was 19 two weeks later so he was a bit older than me not much
I couldn't have wished for a better dad than him yeah he was my best friend and I loved him and he loved me
as I was traveling to the scene I received a telephone call to tell me that I'm two young men were in custody
that came completely out of the blue to me I didn't know anything about that as I was at the crime scene I was asking
some detectives to find out who was in custody why have they been arrested why are they in custody and what's the
circumstances surrounding that police received information that two teenagers have been trying to rob
vehicles in and around the metro station the teenagers have been picked up because of the element of robbery so if
they'd been stealing from Cars would they be willing to steal from a man they were arrested and to be honest I
was worried that it was them because being teenagers there wouldn't have been punished properly they wouldn't have
been named and I don't think they would have gone to a normal prison as it turned out they had nothing
whatsoever to do with it we very quickly eliminated them from the inquiries most homicides happen as a result of
close association between the victim and the perpetrators in a lot of the instances they are family members
um or they are friends and all the rest of it so the starting point inevitably in that is to try and find out where the
people who had been closest to Robin on that particular night were essentially it might sound colors but you've got to
clear the ground under your feet first to just basically say where was Angela where were the children
typically when police will see any type of murder they're looking for somebody who knows that victim so police will
start with the most likely and work outwards the last thing is thinking that a stranger committed a crime like this
that's probably the least likely thing but it's also the thing that police are most afraid of because that means that
anyone could be a suspect and their investigation is that much harder to complete
I was never interrogated I think I was just felt like I was casually asked where I was and it never felt like an
interrogation but obviously probably later on I thought I'll have been a suspect
having spoken to the people who we've been with and Angela and all that were quickly made an assessment that this
looked like stranger attack that's very rare So based on that you then begin to think okay where do we
start and that's when you start hypothesizing and that's when you start to put strategies in place as to how we can try
and identify the perpetrators this horrendous attack what struck me immediately was how close
it was to the footpath just here there were some drag marks in the grass you could see but it looked like as if his
body had been dragged into this like shallow ditched area in a bit of an attempt to conceal the
body I didn't know how many people had been involved at a particular stage but what I did know is whoever had done
this was dangerous it's fairly obvious as well that the police need to try and catch whoever it
is as quickly as possible to minimize the risk to the public there was no obvious lines of inquiry at
the scene it wasn't surrounded by houses there was nobody immediately knocked on
a detective's door or approached a detective in any of the cordons and said we know who's done this there was no
telephone calling so the incident room saying XYZ has committed this particular murder there was nothing there was
nothing at all at this particular crime scene to suggest who had done it but very quickly um the Press were on scene
and by that it was the local press merely in the local TV stations we watched every single news report
about Dad would all sit around the Telly every night almost hoping for some for some
news even though we knew everything there was to know at that point still seemed like
a nightmare like that it can't be real that it can't possibly be my dad they're talking about
[Music] Saturday the 24th of April 2004. not when we start the inquiries to try and establish what has happened
the first thing we did was we sent officers to where Robin had been the night before and the goose in the
Gardens public house we made the inquiries there we tracked Robin's movements from there
and we managed to through a lot of painstaking work truck Robin getting on the Metro
we had him going down the Escalade us we had him boarding the train then we track him coming out of with
Metro Station and his root would have taken him from he was Metro station down a foot path to
an underpass and he would have walked across there to take the shortcut to his home address
he was found murdered not far from there ultimately for us there was some cameras
the ones outside of here with Metro station actually were really poor they were grainy they were just weren't good
you could identify Robin a tiny little dot but you couldn't really identify anything else
but as he made his way to the underpass there was some underpass CCTV footage and that proved to be Dynamite really
important because it showed Robin entered the underpass and walking through it and then about 20 yards behind it with
two men wearing quite distinctive clothing and it looked as if they were following him from underneath you
underpass this was probably only 200 yards from where he was murdered as police are piecing together the CCTV
footage they see the moment where Robin Chard is still alive even for trained investigators watching
this footage they know what happens to Robin they know how horrific and awful it must have been for him and know
ultimately what happened to him and now they know they have to watch this and there's nothing they can do to stop it
but they have to see it all occurring in order to help solve this crime we had the footage of two men in the
underpass we backtracked from that onto the Metro System that sounds as if it's an instantaneous
thing that can be done immediately the click of a fingers there's actually hundreds of cameras on the Metro system
and it takes time probably two three days of painstaking CCTV work well we're in a state of limbo
the days were long and it was like a waiting game it was a week after that had been
murdered I remember my uncle Philip had really sort of Taken on the role of you know
looking after everybody and I had a trip out to Asda I remember I went over to the newspapers
and I saw him on the front cover and I just started to cry and sob and I remember people looking at us and I
thought you don't realize that's my dad on there [Music] we were confident we could probably
identify the two individuals the difficulty I had was do I go public with um producing those two images
you're balancing that against the dangers to the public obviously of getting them arrested
so what we did was we started to show the images in the police station to offer us to at least that particular
area and lo and behold um one of the officers that was shown the picture immediately recognized the
two men one was called Christopher Smith and the other one was called Joseph Scott May
it was nine days after Dad was found dead but they found the people that had killed him
Christopher Smith who's 24 and Joseph May was 27 at the time that particular day the Friday of the
23rd of April pride of Robin's murder he had been involved in anti-social Behavior being a nuisance to be frank
with you there was one particular footage called Christopher Smith and he was trying to
Cork somebody into assault he was making stamping actions on the ground and it's
all caught on CCTV footage laughs I'll bear in mind how Robin had died in these foot marks
it was almost scary this has to be very ominous and menacing for the police because they knew if
somebody had potentially seen this stopped him reported this done something maybe this crime wouldn't have been
committed is this something that happens leading up to this crime that instigated this
was there some motivation between this person who knew Robin would be coming through and it was personal between them
police could not at that point rule anything out but they knew this is a man who was very angry
[Music] having identified them we were then on to a Manhunt really and how we go about
the rest of the two of them we're actually now entering whitemere Gardens this is where Joseph and me
lived and as you can see just around where it's an extremely difficult place to conduct surveillance operations in a
car parked on a street here for any length of time which it would have to be they'll stand out like a sore thumb
[Music] I decided that I want to get the two of them arrested at the same time and I wanted to do that obviously you've
got to make sure that they're in the house at the same time and your trust in the surveillance teams who are experts
at these sorts of things the reason for this thinking and then go to ground and they wanted to
get both of these men they didn't want one to suddenly disappear and they didn't want to go knocking on doors not
knowing whether they were there or not because again the risk of them taking flight and disappearing somewhere was
really high I was probably after two years of surveillance work to work could guarantee that they were in both
aggressors and we entered them by force enforcement lend me through the front doors and arrested the two of them
are arrested they are taken from the address and taken to a police station they were kept
separate for obvious reasons and having arrested them that gives us the power to
search the addresses there wasn't really any doubt that it was there because the police informed us
that they had a lot of evidence transpired that they'd cleaned the house such as the bits that were touched one
that came in after killing them like the light switches door handles and also a knife was used
to clean one of the nails trying to get rid of DNA and blood underneath the nails and that had been
put under the sink with the evidence still on there when we were speaking to Angela just
after Robin's body had been found Angela said she'd rang Robin's number to find out where he was
somebody answered the phone it was a male's voice and it clearly wasn't Robin but it was answered for a period of time
from that information you can try and draw up where that telephone call was received and that telephone call was
made in from Angela into Robin's mobile phone the mass that that head off was very close to Christopher Smith and
Joseph May's home addresses foreign [Music] Smith and Joseph May around about 8 P.M
9 P.M and the first thing I did was I went to see Angela uh and I explained that we'd charged two
men in connection with murder I told her who they were at that stage because it was going to become public
knowledge I'd never heard their names in my life didn't know them never seen them in my life before were
total strangers that were they were they didn't even live well near where we lived
there shouldn't even have gonna off at that train station dad left Newcastle around about 11-ish
got a Metro home and sadly that was the Metro that Smith and me also got on into
a different courage and um he got off and he stopped you with and walk tall as you'd normally would
down a path that I've walked down thousands of times late at night on my own as well and felt safe
there's definitely a sense of relief but whoever had done this wasn't on the streets anymore
but when I did find out that one of them had been was on bail at the time I remember I think
like I couldn't understand why someone had who had done what he'd done to be out on bail
you know he's just walking the streets if he hadn't been out on bail my husband would still be alive
[Music] this was a 24-hour garage it certainly was back in 2004. Smith and me following the murder had
come to where we are now with this garage and they came into this garage and they bought some cigarettes some
drinks and some confectionary sweets and they used the 30 pounds that they'd robbed from Robin chard
the checkout Arbor area and I can remember them being in and can remember seeing Smith had some blood staining on
his clothing at the time that was really important evidence and I would suggest quite callous evidence as well because
within 15 minutes they're spending the money from a man that just murdered and robbed
that didn't show any Mercy there couldn't have been any more cruel than there were
in a cowardly act on a defenseless man if you are doing nothing wrong it's just walking home to his wife
I was told Smith hit him on the back of the head and he went down what I knew initially was that he'd be
knocked out beaten put into a ditch and died there Ali I found out it was much worse than
that I hate the fact that they were the last people to be with him when he was alive
I hate the fact that he died alone in a field with his face down in the mud I'm so
this 16 year old boy walked into the police station at gateshead and he asked to speak to Detectives
he then went on to explain that he had been with Christopher Smith and Joseph May on the day of Friday the
23rd of April 2004. he'd been with him all day and Smith and me were boasting but they
just violently assaulted somebody and um and stolen from them as well he then went on to see that he started
playing Bohemian Rhapsody the queen track and there's a line in that that says mama just killed the man
um and they played that over and over and over again and they kept singing a song to that thing and he remembers that
very distinctly me and Christopher Smith showed after committing this crime it's very
indicative of almost a euphoric manic feeling that they had they clearly were not concerned that they were going to be
caught while they were doing the behaviors to try to cover up their crimes [Music]
Robin's phone was in Christopher Smith's possession and he left the house for a very short period of time with the
mobile phone in his hand and he came back and he said probably around a minute and he came back and he didn't
have the mobile phone just in front of the car here there's a drain and I think we put a gully sucker
into this strain and we recovered obviously sludge and slurry at the bottom of the drain
but when we went through that and shifted through that we found um Robin Chad's mobile phone which was a
real break When We examined the chip in the phone we also found that they'd been making
telephone calls from Robin's handset to some Associates of theirs which were able to trace through
um Telephone billing so it was quite a well a very important piece of evidence we had a very compelling case against
the two of them very compelling awful lot of work to be done after that you know and and innocent until proven
guilty and then you've got to go through a court case and a trial process you've
got to build the evidence you've got to prove the evidence [Music] Dad's Body wasn't released for at least
a month because obviously you'd have to have an autopsy and he was taken at the chapel of rest
and that was when I got a little bit of time to be on my own with a coffin and I just
spoke to him and I told him that I would get on with me life I thought what would he say to me if he could if
he could speak to us now I think you would say I'm really sorry this has happened I didn't want it to
happen I wanted to leave I wanted to come home here all well I can't so this has happened
I want you to get on with your life it's a relief for the family to know that the two perpetrators are in custody
but even so it must change your entire world view the world which was a safe and pleasant place to live suddenly
becomes far more frightening [Music] what I remember about dad's funeral is that there was so many people there
was a sad service everyone was just devastated foreign [Music] [Music] even harder again because
you knew he wasn't coming back insane and being married with horrendous [Music] I couldn't really stand up
because I was so destroyed we played some bird song it might sound a bit cheesy to some people but he loved
Nature's we had some nice tunes that I'd chosen one was Tomorrow Never Comes so I
decided that it would be a nice song to play we had expected that there would be a
murder trial which was another thing that we had to deal with thankfully because there was so much evidence
against them they were advised to plead guilty and they did so not long before the trial was due to
take place that was actually a relief not to have to go through trial and wonder if on a technicality they might
get away with it it was a relief the sentence indeed was given for the 23rd of December for them to be
sentenced and they were taken down clearly guilty away ago when they were pushed off the
prison awaiting the sentence no trial the sentencing I remember just being in an absolute state
as I knew that I was going to have to come face to face with them I don't know why I looked at Christopher
Smith just wanting them to look at me in the eye look at me and all I wanted to do was launch at them well at the both
you know I just I just wanted to give them what they had done to my husband you know
[Music] Smith just looked straight ahead with her face like you know like totally unbothered
when they were talking about it when the judge was taught about what had happened
and uh what Robin had been through and you know what they've done to him the other one had his head down
but uh Smith just stood there include the CCTV footage of dad walking under the underpass
and that was the last Satan of him alive [Music] was just too much out I wasn't expecting
to see that and I ran out of the room [Music] the guilty pleas were accepted Christopher Smith caught
life with a minimum wreck ideation of 17 years Joseph May got life with a minimum
recommendation of 15 years but the reality of the situation is the reality is when this in their sentences
they will come out and they will still be relatively young men they asked us if we wanted to appeal
it was three days before Christmas the thought of peeling at that point just felt like too much stress and too
much pain to go through again as the years gradually ticked by I realized it wasn't long enough
Joseph me is out of prison now and Smith is coming for parole I believe that the fourth should have
been sentenced for a lot longer Robin chard was killed in 2004 and now one of his attackers is out he served
his 15-year tariff that's the thing about the justice system I don't think that you can ever
really achieve Justice for a family they will be thinking well Robin doesn't get
another crack at life we've never been given an explanation of why he killed my dad
except that it was gratuitous violence that they did it for fun that wanted to hurt someone the judge said that when
they when they sentenced them he said you looked for someone to hurt that night and you found a peaceful man
walking home to his wife and you chose him they just wanted to hurt someone in fact
I think they wanted to kill someone I think that was their intention they were looked for trouble all night long
that night they didn't find trouble they found my dad and I heard him I killed him
Robin was my world so that we could remember him in a nice way we decided that there would plant trees
in his memory which is only at Drew Ridge Bay and we've planted lots of little seedlings I think that was about 16
years ago now and they're absolutely huge now the last time I went there and I saw the
trees had grown you know taller than me it was a nice feeling to think that we'd
done that as friends and family and dad's name and that it had made a difference and that was treated a little
sort of mini Forest and it's a bit of a legacy to leave when Dad was out that night on the 23rd
of April I said to his friend that night and the happiest I've ever been in my life
and I'm glad he was the happiest he'd ever been I'm glad he got to that stage of feeling that happy
um but it just saw a bitter sweet to hear that and then think about what happened you didn't get
to enjoy that happiness you didn't get in that you didn't get another day I haven't remembered about that
it's all right Daisy oh I'll never be okay let's go and pretend like I always do
carry on in your life as best I can [Music] thank you

EPISODE 6 – ROBIN CHARD

Doting father of two Robin Chard is making his way home from a night out with friends in Newcastle back to his home in Gateshead, United Kingdom, when he encounters two strangers. When Robin never makes it home, his wife receives a sinister phone call and a shocking story unfolds. You never know what evil can be waiting around the corner. What did you think of this episode? Share your thoughts in the comments below and be sure to like and subscribe so you can stay in tune with new episodes. Murdered At First Sight is a true crime documentary series that tells the first-hand stories of the most complex and hard-to-solve homicide cases: murders committed by strangers.

Brief Summary

The episode recounts the murder of Robin Chard and its devastating impact on his family and the justice system's response.

Key points

The Night Robin Went Missing. Robin's absence sparks concern as his partner searches for him, fearing the worst.
Discovery of a Body. A call comes in about a body found, leading to devastating news for the family.
Identifying the Perpetrators. Police identify two suspects in Robin's murder after reviewing CCTV footage.
Arresting the Perpetrators. After two years of surveillance, the suspects were arrested simultaneously to prevent escape.
The Pain of Loss. The aftermath of the murder left a family devastated and struggling to cope with their grief.
The Sentencing. The guilty pleas were accepted, but the family felt the sentences were not long enough.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

I think they wanted to kill someone.

2:16WatchNov 17, 2022

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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