Body in the River | Case Files: Dark Waters | Forensic Files

[theme music] [ominous music] NARRATOR: Sitting on the River Thames in Surrey, near Sunbury Lock is Donkey Island.
Only accessible by a single footbridge, it's a favorite retreat for anglers. Among them, 48-year-old Scott Wilkinson.
CHRIS MCKEON: Scott Wilkinson was a family man. He had been a truck driver, but had had to give that up,
I believe, for health reasons. He spent a lot of his time fishing on the River Thames.
He'd stay on the island every so often. I think it was a kind of a regular thing for him to go
down and fish there and would kind of camp overnight, maybe a day or two. He's actually quite isolated.
There certainly were, at the time, a few derelict buildings on the island as well.
Otherwise, it's just kind of overgrown yew trees, bushes, that kind of thing. Scott was engaged to Lisa Lane, and she would bring him
some food, things like that. And a number of friends who came and visited him while he was fishing, and it was just a sort of quiet
place to go and fish and enjoy his hobby. NARRATOR: But one July morning, during one of his camping trips
to the island, Scott's fiancée arrived to find him missing and his campsite in disarray.
She immediately called the police. PETER FAULDING: When they arrived, there was blood,
there was tents. There was various items of fishing gear missing as well, including a knife.
It was chaotic. It had been thrown over. Everything had been thrown everywhere. NARRATOR: Locals also told police about a disturbance late
the previous night. - Witnesses living on the other side of the river reported hearing 10 to 15 seconds of shouting
chaos from the island. And that was it. NARRATOR: With no sign of Scott at the campsite,
police turned their attention to the Thames. [water splashes] - The River Thames is as dangerous as any other river
in the country, or in the world for that matter. Obviously, you have the tidal section,
the lower parts going through the center of London, which can be quite dangerous because you get very
strong flows. But even in the non-tidal parts, such as the area around Donkey Island,
the flow is still very dangerous. It has eddies, it has whirls, it's very easy to get caught up in those.
And in particular, where we have these weirs which bypass the locks, those weirs can be absolutely lethal.
The locks themselves, the mechanisms of the locks, can suck a body in as well. So it's a hazardous area for a body in the water.
CHRIS MCKEON: On average, 30 bodies a year are found in the River Thames. SIMON BOXALL: The majority of those, sadly,
are due to suicide. Some will be due to swimmers getting out of their depths or getting into trouble, particularly in colder
weather during the winter. And some are murder victims. [theme music] NARRATOR: Fearing the worst, police called in expert teams
to search the waters around the island. [water splashes] GILL WILLIAMS: This particular area is
part of the non-tidal Thames. This means that the natural flow of the water is only going one way and that never changes.
This makes it easier when working out what search patterns to use. If a body has been placed into the water and it's drifting,
it's only actually going to flow in one direction. So you're working in that direction.
NARRATOR: A lack of rainfall that month also improved their chances of finding a body closer to where it might have gone into the water.
- July 2016 saw a period of drought, relatively low rainfall, which means that the flow rates at that period
would have been a little lower than one might normally expect, which means that the body wouldn't
have traveled very far. If you add to that, the chances of being caught up on branches, on obstructions in the water, piers,
moored boats, and things, then actually the chances are the body wouldn't have gone very far at all.
[ominous music] NARRATOR: That same afternoon, emergency teams searching the area made a discovery not far
from the banks of the island. - They noticed that his rod and tackle box were actually floating just nearby
to where the campsite was. And very shortly after the search commenced, a body was located quite close by at the edge of the river.
Even though it was mid-summer and the water temperatures would have been warm, because you're only
talking a matter of hours, it would have been not enough to enhance decomposition in any way.
And so the body would have been in very good condition. NARRATOR: It was identified as missing
fisherman Scott Wilkinson. From evidence both on his body and the island itself,
police suspected he'd been the victim of a frenzied attack. - There was a large amount of blood in his tent
or near his tent. - They believe they were defensive wounds on the forearms. Mr. Wilkinson always had a knife with him.
The police believed that Mr. Wilkinson's injuries to his forearms were caused by the knife.
NARRATOR: And although the body was found in the water, pathologists were keeping an open mind
about the cause of death. RICHARD SHEPHERD: We don't just jump in and think, "body in the river, it must be drowning."
Everything is looked at. Everything is examined. We also know with Scott Wilkinson
that he had a pacemaker in. So he has some natural heart disease going on as well.
So there are all of these possibilities that would have been examined, considered, and then
the final conclusions reached. NARRATOR: Police launched an investigation. Forensic search teams were deployed on land and water.
Their task-- to find evidence. PETER FAULDING: We are the underwater search team that
covers the southeast at the time, and we were mobilized and we were there probably within the hour
on scene and ready to be briefed by the senior investigating officer. Crime scene investigators moved in,
searched the bloods, et cetera, took DNA, and it went on from there. NARRATOR: Meanwhile, the press speculated
that this was a killing. - I think it was pretty clear early on that this was a murder.
Just the scale of the investigation. You had police divers cordoned off the area, and for longer
than they usually would in cases like this. And then, as we learned later, the condition in which the body
was found, the injuries he had sustained, and the chaos at his campsite, all pretty clearly
indicated that he'd been murdered. NARRATOR: But who might have had reason to kill Scott?
Police could find no obvious motive, suspect, or even murder weapon. - There seemed to be a lot of uncertainty about what
had happened exactly to him. It was always shock when somebody is killed. And he didn't seem like sort of a person
that would be murdered. [tense music] NARRATOR: Police in Surrey are investigating
after the body of fisherman Scott Wilkinson was found hidden among reeds on the shore of Donkey Island
in the River Thames. Police launched an underwater search believing vital evidence
linked to the attack could have been disposed of in the river. [ominous music] PETER FAULDING: The briefing was,
initially, we were searching for evidence that was missing. There was a large knife that was missing.
And whether it was a murder weapon or not, it was just a large knife because Mr. Wilkinson
had quite vast injuries, including cuts to his forearms. Mr. Wilkinson always had a knife with him,
he would cut bait up and everything. That was part of his standard fishing equipment.
And there was an electric drill missing because what he'd actually done is drill a tree
stump with a drill, with electric drill, and in that, he put his rod rests and we couldn't find no sign of that.
NARRATOR: First, the dive team had to work out where to start. PETER FAULDING: I remember walking around and saying,
this is the most likely area. You always have to put your mind into the killer's mind.
My view was that if they're going to get rid of a knife, if he was going to come out of the camping area
where Mr. Wilkinson was camped, they're very likely to run out and throw it into the water
where the boats go by. And that's one of my key focuses. We didn't need to put our equipment on the island
because we chose to dive from outside the pub. It was better for us. There's not covered in lots of undergrowth,
so we could actually comfortably set our equipment up on the riverbank. And the other thing what you got to think about
is when you're doing this sort of search operation, you've got to have scene guard on.
Because if you're there for two or three days, could the perpetrators come back and retrieve the evidence?
NARRATOR: But that wasn't the only danger Peter and his team faced. [water splashes]
SIMON BOXALL: There are a lot of hazards in the Thames, particularly at this level, where
we have some huge marinas. A lot of people have their small pleasure boats in this area.
This is during July when everyone's out in the water. PETER FAULDING: It's very difficult
to stop marine traffic going up and down on a really busy day. So each time a vessel went by, we'd had to pull the diver out.
If you imagine being on the bottom, we are on a safety line and the propeller caught our line,
it could drag him to his death. NARRATOR: With the hazards assessed, Peter was ready to start the dive.
- And now the pressure's on me now to find this evidence. NARRATOR: Meanwhile, on the island,
a full-scale fingertip search was underway. - They are looking for any blood spatter
because the injuries to Mr. Wilkinson were substantial. You've got the tent, you've got clothing,
you've got everything else. Anything Mr. Wilkinson or the other people touched, they want their prints.
They want their DNA, down to a cigarette butt. At the end of the day, if someone's
been smoking a cigarette and they've thrown it down, their DNA is going to be all over it.
So it's vital that every single piece of evidence is looked at. And that is a slow process on any scene.
[tense music] CHRIS MCKEON: So they found a toothbrush, some cans, cigarette butts on the ground near where
Scott had been camping. NARRATOR: DNA from the items revealed Scott hadn't been alone on the island.
Three other people were camping there, too. RICHARD SHEPHERD: The DNA evidence linking the three
people is really very strong. The toothbrush, a beer can, or a ring pull can all contain sufficient material for a DNA match
to be made. And so that evidence puts those people at the scene. It doesn't say they were involved,
but it puts them at the scene of the incident. NARRATOR: The forensic results were
matched with a national DNA database, giving police three names. [tense music] - The three suspects were already known to the police.
Some of them had had minor convictions. Nothing terribly serious, but they were known.
And one of them was a missing person, having absconded from his care home in the North.
Lenny Crawt was 16 at the time. He had grown up in care. He was one of seven children.
He had some learning difficulties. He'd fathered a child already, I believe, at the age of 15.
He had been living in care in Blackpool and had run away from his home to return to his family.
Shane Crawt was Lenny's older brother. He was 17 at the time. He was a tall, fairly muscular lad, almost kind of placid,
and was seen by people as the ringleader of that group. NARRATOR: The third person was 21-year-old Charlie Smith.
CHRIS MCKEON: Charlie Smith was Shane and Lenny's cousin. He was a little bit older at the time.
He was 21. The three boys did not have the best start in life. Shane and Lenny, like their siblings,
grew up in care due to concerns about parental neglect. So yeah, they'd all kind of had had tough, tough childhoods.
JONI JOHNSTON: I think what that speaks to is a pretty unstable upbringing. A lot of perhaps chaos in the family,
a lack of ability to care for these boys, and also perhaps an increasing number of behavior problems
and criminal activity as they grow up. What can happen in homes where you don't have a lot of supervision,
or there's a lot of chaos or dysfunction, is you oftentimes have the siblings really bond together
and almost become like a unit. There's a tremendous amount of loyalty between them.
CHRIS MCKEON: The boys were on the island because they were hiding, essentially.
Lenny had absconded from his care facility. They didn't want the police to find him.
He was a missing person. So he and his brother and his cousin went to camp on Donkey Island.
And they did some fishing while they were there. But mainly, it was to hide from the police.
[ominous music] NARRATOR: At the island, police diver Peter Faulding and his team had started the painstaking task of searching
for evidence on the riverbed. It was a 50-foot stretch across the Thames from the pub on one side to the island on the other.
[water splashes] PETER FAULDING: So now it's a job of we put a line across the river,
and the job is to then swim the line slowly, methodically, and you're feeling around.
There was very, very small growing reeds on the bottom, but not enough to make our life difficult.
I had forensic gloves on. And often what I do if the water's dark, where most of our diving is, I close my eyes.
So I immerse myself into the scene and I just literally swim along the line extremely slowly.
If you're looking for a body, you can move quickly. If you're looking for evidence, it's
a very, very slow operation. NARRATOR: And in this case, Peter couldn't use the traditional method of tread
searching on the riverbed. - The trouble is, with tread searches, when you walk in to do a tread with your feet,
if you're looking for a knife, it's likely to be pushed into the mud and never be found again.
You've got to have hands on. And even when we're diving, we're actually laying on the water, floating just off the bottom,
and we can feel around so we don't miss anything. So I'm swimming along and I'm feeling
around very, very slowly. I'm moving forward slowly and suddenly I felt a handle
and I opened my eyes. And then I could just see something glistening and I'm being very careful.
And I could feel the blade, feel the end. And I'm going running my finger just to confirm it's a knife.
It wasn't in the middle of the river. It was actually towards the bank. And then I'm asking for assistance
to pull me in slowly. Because what I don't want to do is take my hands off this blade, because I can't risk losing it.
The knife, it was rather like a kitchen devil knife. And it was, I would say, a carving knife.
What you would cut meat with. Stainless steel blade, black plastic handle, an evil-looking weapon, actually.
I'd bring my arm out of the water and it's like a Excalibur coming out of the water with this knife.
The trouble is, with any water, it's going to potentially wash evidence away. So what we would do as the knife comes out,
it gets put in a tube, an evidence tube, it gets sealed up, and then that gets labeled and then whisked off to the lab for the experts,
the other end. And that way you reduce cross-contamination. Never found the drill.
The key was the knife because they thought that the knife created the wounds on the forearms.
And it was a great feeling knowing that now the police have got that vital evidence
and potentially they're going to get a conviction out of this. [tense music] NARRATOR: Police in Surrey, England, strongly
believe a knife found by expert divers in the River Thames is linked to the death of fisherman Scott Wilkinson.
The knife is sent to the lab for forensic testing, but when the results come back, it's bad news.
PETER FAULDING: Eventually, it was found to have no DNA or blood on it because it got washed off in the river.
But that knife, someone had thrown that knife into that water. NARRATOR: It was a major setback for the investigation.
The water had destroyed any remaining evidence. But by now, the post-mortem had revealed more detail
about how Scott had died. And it wasn't the knife wounds that had killed him. RICHARD SHEPHERD: The wound's were interesting.
They show the type of weapon used. He had extensive blunt force trauma to his body
centered around the head. There were multiple deep lacerations, some of them running parallel, and
phrase we use to describe those is tramline bruises, which shows that an object, a linear object,
has been used to cause them. When someone is being attacked, they will often raise their arm
and receive blows to the outer aspect of the little finger sides of the arms as they raise them to defend themselves.
And they were present, showing that Scott was alive at the start of this incident.
But there were also other blows fracturing his ribs and bruising the upper parts of his body.
So this was a sustained beating with a blunt object of some sort. The crucial bit about the cause of death
here is the fracturing of the skull and the damage to the brain underlying that.
Injuries to the head are the most important thing that would have been identified and
immediately triggered a proper homicide investigation. NARRATOR: Scott's death was now confirmed as a murder.
News that shocked this usually quiet Surrey community. - I think people are always kind of
surprised when they see headlines about people being killed here. And not that many people get murdered in Surrey, thankfully.
NARRATOR: Police redoubled their efforts to find the actual murder weapon, but it would be no easy task.
- Blunt trauma can be caused by anything that is hard and firm. A brick, a plank, a punch all cause
blunt trauma, which has very similar features on the body. Unless the particular weapon sheds slivers of wood,
say, or fragments of metal or a fingernail, it's very difficult to determine exactly what caused it.
NARRATOR: Ultimately, despite an extensive search on the river and island, the murder
weapon could not be found. It was given up for lost in the river's flow. [water splashes]
GILL WILLIAMS: With any murder scene, you're keeping your options completely wide
open when you're searching. And in this case, there was mention of a possible murder
weapon being a plank of wood. They could have thrown that into the middle, where they might well have been a stronger current.
Wood does tend to float. It could have been carried quite a long way in a short length of time.
[tense music] NARRATOR: With no murder weapon and just DNA evidence from the campsite to go on,
police brought the three suspects in for questioning. Brothers Shane and Lenny Crawt, and their cousin Charlie Smith.
- And they were arrested really within a couple of days of Scott's body being found.
[tense music] NARRATOR: At the police station, the three were interviewed separately.
- And also, it's been video recorded. So you've got the cameras in the corners, the soundproof room.
- All three boys gave no comment/answers to questions. - From 6 o'clock in the evening onwards last Wednesday,
the 27th of July, tell me where you were, Shane? - No comment. - Lenny, were you in Walton upon Thames
on Wednesday the 27th of July? - No comment. - When you look at the interview tapes,
you just see this recurring theme of no comment, no comment, no comment, no comment.
- Have you been there since that time? - No comment. - What was your location? - No comment.
JONI JOHNSTON: And I think that's just a very clear example, visual example of the loyalty
that these three feel toward each other. - I want to talk about the weapon that was used to assault
and kill and murder Scott. Describe that weapon to me. - No comment. - All three of these offenders continue
to say no comment, no matter the evidence presented to them. - We believe that you were at the island
with at least two other people, Shane Crawt and Charlie Smith. - No comment. - It starts making sense in a way, because in their minds,
we are in the presence of enemies. I also think it may have a practical reason as well.
The worst thing you can do is snitching on your loved one. We know that when individuals are incarcerated,
if you have told on a fellow offender, if you've told on somebody in your family,
there can be practical consequences for that as well. NARRATOR: Then, in a written statement,
Charlie suddenly broke silence. - He essentially, through his attorney, makes a statement that he had nothing to do with violence,
that he had talked to Scott Wilkinson. They had come back to the island and their tents,
had these three tents set up, and they had been kind of turned over and they were in disarray.
Their equipment was missing. Scott told them that he had no idea what had happened.
He'd been sleeping, but he actually helped the boys locate and find their equipment.
And made a comment about what a nice guy that Scott Wilkinson was, but absolutely denied that there
had been any violence at the time and that they all just kind of left amicably after this point.
CHRIS MCKEON: Charlie Smith had claimed that a group of travelers had appeared and suggested that it might be them who had killed Scott.
There was no such group, and there was no evidence-- no evidence for that. NARRATOR: Without solid proof, police had no choice but
to let the three suspects go. - They were released because it was still very early in the investigation,
and while the police seemed sure that it was them, they still needed time to build up a watertight case
against them. NARRATOR: Next, police focused on gathering video evidence from the area.
CHRIS MCKEON: After the three boys were released, the police continued their investigation, looking at CCTV,
trying to establish who had been on the island and when. There is a bridge from the Towpath to Donkey Island.
It's the only way on or off the island and it's covered by CCTV. And that was the bridge that Lisa Lane would
have used to visit Scott. So it was quite easy for the police to see who had gone on to the island, who
had come off the island, and when they'd done that. So they spent hours and hours looking through CCTV
to establish that the three boys were the only other people on the island. NARRATOR: CCTV from the bridge showed the group leaving
the island at 11:22 PM on the night Scott went missing, but crucial evidence from Scott's heart rate monitor
suggested he was attacked four minutes before that, when the three suspects were still present.
- There's an incident at about 11:18 on that night where his heart monitor shows a sudden increase in heart rate
of the type that could be associated with fear and the release of adrenaline, causing
the heart rate to surge up. And that strongly suggests, together with some other evidence of shouting and noise
at about that time, that that was the time that Scott was attacked. NARRATOR: The heart rate monitor also showed that Scott
did not die immediately. [ominous music] - The heart rate monitor showed that he was alive for a couple
of hours after the attack. And then at 2:27 AM, it recorded a cardiac arrest when he died.
- Head injuries are very commonly not immediately fatal. That it takes time for the brain
changes to occur and actually to cause death. - The heart rate monitor allowed them to narrow down
when exactly the attack happened, because they have the spike in his heart rate,
and then combined with CCTV evidence, that showed that the boys were still on the island
and indeed left the island very shortly after that time. It gave them a stronger case against them.
NARRATOR: But it wasn't until two years later, when a final piece of evidence landed
on the investigator's desk, that they knew they could get a conviction. - This, we say, is quite clear, details your involvement
and others in the murder of Scott Wilkinson. NARRATOR: In a secret recording, Charlie Smith described to a friend
what his two cousins had done to Scott that fateful night. [ominous music] It was damning evidence that would
change the course of the entire murder investigation. [ominous music] [tense music]
In Walton on Thames, police investigating the savage murder of Scott Wilkinson on Donkey Island
have received a recording that turns the case on its head. On the tape, Charlie Smith, one of the three main suspects,
is heard admitting that he and his cousins were involved in fatally attacking Scott with a nail on a stick.
It's the final piece of evidence police need to charge him and brothers Lenny and
Shane Crawt with the killing. [tense music] CHRIS MCKEON: At the start of the trial,
I think there was an apprehensive atmosphere. It wasn't helped by a series of delays.
The prison had failed to produce the defendants on time, it had to be pushed back.
And eventually, they managed to open the case in the afternoon. NARRATOR: In court, the three defendants pleaded not guilty.
- There was a division between the brothers and the cousin. It is what is described as a cut-throat defense,
in which a group of defendants all start to blame each other. Shane's case was that Charlie had killed Scott,
and that Lenny had been standing by their tents and hadn't been involved at all.
Charlie's case was that Shane and Lenny had killed Scott, and he'd been barely involved.
Lenny didn't put up really a defense. He didn't give evidence in his own defense.
His statement chimed with his brothers in that he was standing in a different part of the island
and had no idea what was going on. NARRATOR: The defense team also cast doubt over Scott's cause of death
being his fractured skull. The post-mortem showed he was still breathing when he was thrown into the Thames.
RICHARD SHEPHERD: We know that his heart monitor continued to work after this initial spike
associated with fear. NARRATOR: So could Scott have drowned? [water splashes] GILL WILLIAMS: Whenever we recovered a body
from the water, we would always take a couple of water samples, one from the surface of the water
where the body was recovered from, and one from near the riverbed. And what you're looking for there,
though you'd never see it with your naked eye, are diatoms in the water. As you breathe in on your last breath,
you would be breathing in water that had diatoms in it, and in the last bit of circulation
in the body, that would filter around the body into the organs. Under forensic analysis, as part of the investigation,
if you found diatoms in the organs of the dead body, it would prove that the body was
still alive and breathing when they were placed in the water. - There were some features of water entering Scott's lungs,
so that is a possibility. But the signs of drowning are quite soft. Water can get into the lungs as the heart fails,
and the lungs fill up with water, in a sense, from the inside. But of course, in drowning, water
can enter through the air passages and the appearances can be very similar and difficult to determine.
In Scott's case, the head injuries were so severe they were going to be fatal whether or
not he was put in the water. CHRIS MCKEON: There was no way of saving him at that point,
even if help had been called immediately. NARRATOR: As the trial progressed, a picture emerged of what happened
on Donkey Island in the days leading up to Scott's murder. - The boy's campsite was quite close to where Scott was.
In fact, I think they'd camped in the place that he usually camped. They turned up before him, so he
moved a little distance away, but not very far to set up on his own. One of Scott's friends remarked how much of a mess they'd made.
Maybe a little bit about noise but, in general, that doesn't seem to have been kind
of hostile relations between Scott and the three boys. There was a strange incident mentioned
during the trial, in which the three boys had gone back to Shane and Lenny's parents' house for, I think, some food
and maybe a change of clothes, and then came back and found that their fishing rods, which had belonged to Shane and Lenny's father,
had disappeared. There's some suggestion that maybe Scott had moved them, that they wanted to teach them a lesson
for moving their fishing gear. That was one of the reasons that was advanced as a possible motive.
Another was that as well as fishing on the island, Scott would occasionally deal small amounts of cannabis.
And the boys claimed that he had given some to them. The suggestion then was that on the night
they had gone to see him to get more cannabis, and he had refused on the basis that they
hadn't paid him for the stuff that he'd already supplied. Later on that night, Scott was beaten
by a blunt object, probably a piece of wood, very severely. He was very badly injured.
His skull was cracked, and he was left in the river to die. JONI JOHNSTON: Who knows what started it?
Maybe one of the people felt disrespected by something Scott Wilkinson said. Maybe one of the guys saw something he wanted
that Scott Wilkinson had. I don't think it took very much. And I think the minute one of those boys picked up a board
and attacked Scott Wilkinson, it would have been almost impossible psychologically
for one of them to intervene. I think that this was, in many respects, a somewhat impulsive crime.
I think this crime took on a life of its own once it started. And it did become kind of a mob mentality.
NARRATOR: As well as the secret recording, the prosecution had witnesses who had encountered the group
shortly after the murder. CHRIS MCKEON: They were helped by the three boys essentially
confessing, not to the police but to other people that they knew or that they'd met.
JONI JOHNSTON: As the three boys leave the island, they run across these three teenagers who
have been intimidated by them in the past, and they continue to intimidate them.
As a matter of fact, at one point, one of the kids says to these three teenagers, don't mess with us because we
just committed murder. Why would you go and then brag about a murder that you've committed?
It doesn't make any sense, except if you're in the moment and you aren't thinking about the future,
and your goal is to feel good about what you've done. One of the things that you see so much
of the time with these young offenders is they like judgment in a lot of respects.
Their crimes can be very, very impulsive. They aren't very sophisticated in terms of hiding evidence.
There's a sense of we're so cool because we did this, so I'm going to brag to other people about this.
CHRIS MCKEON: The boys didn't seem particularly remorseful during the trial. They just sort of sat there listening.
At separate ends of the dock, you had Shane and Lenny at one end and Charlie at the other with what's called an intermediary,
someone to help him understand what was happening in court. When the verdict was read out, the initial reaction was shock.
The first verdict to be delivered was Charlie Smith being found not guilty of murder.
There were audible gasps in the courtroom. But obviously, very quickly after that,
the foreman said that they found him guilty of manslaughter. There was less surprise when Shane and Lenny
were convicted of murder. I recall the three boys showing very little emotion. NARRATOR: Shane and Lenny both received
a life sentence with a minimum term of 15 years. Charlie Smith was jailed for 13 years.
- I think it's always especially shocking when very young people commit offenses of this nature.
It was a slightly strange case in that because two years had passed since the offense,
they were all technically adults. And I think that maybe slightly clouded the fact that, actually, Lenny had
only been 16 when he did this. Shane was 17. But yes, I think it's still-- any murder is shocking, but particularly one carried out
by people who were so young. JONI JOHNSTON: These three boys had a history, ranging
from stealing to assault. So they obviously had developed a way of life that, at the very least,
accepted criminal behavior, if not promoted, that as a way to survive, a way to be tough,
a way to get back at the system. This was a group that was not willing to go along
with society's rules, and likely saw again the world as this us against them mentality.
- It was a tragic case, and I think more tragic because it was so senseless. Scott seemed like a perfectly nice
bloke, didn't really do anything to invite this on himself. And then you've got three boys who were very young,
immature, came from a difficult background. And for seemingly no real reason at all,
decided to carry out a brutal attack on this man that they barely knew. I've only covered a couple of murders, and as I say,
they're all tragic. But this one is particularly, particularly so because there seems to be no reason behind it.
[theme music]

When a fisherman is murdered and dumped in the River Thames, forensics link three men to the scene.

In this chilling true crime series, detectives, pathologists and police divers work together to decode complex crime scenes where victims' bodies are discovered in water.

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Brief Summary

Scott Wilkinson was murdered on Donkey Island; three suspects were convicted after a lengthy investigation and trial.

Key points

The Discovery of Scott's Body. Scott Wilkinson's body is found in the River Thames, raising alarm about a possible murder.
The Search for Evidence. Police divers search the river for evidence linked to Scott's murder.
DNA Evidence Links Suspects. DNA found at the campsite connects three suspects to the scene of the crime.
The Knife's Disappointment. The knife found in the river yields no DNA evidence, complicating the investigation.
Murder Confirmed. Post-mortem reveals Scott's death was a murder, shocking the community.
Charlie Breaks Silence. In a written statement, Charlie claims he had nothing to do with the violence.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

It was chaotic.

Describing the scene at Scott's campsite.

2:38WatchMar 24, 2026

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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