Forensic Files - Season 2, Episode 6 - The Blood Trail - (In HD) | Forensic Files

In a quiet English village a few hours drive from London, a threat was delivered to a local farmer.
Impaled on a fence post, a severed lamb's head along with the message, "You next."
The note said little about its author, but between the lines it said plenty. [Music]
[Music] Nestled among the lush rolling hills of England's west country is the tiny
village of Horton, a cluster of houses lining one main street, a farming community where life is simple, quiet,
and peaceful. But in the spring of 1984, the peace and quiet was shattered following a series of bizarre events
that took place here at Widden Hill Farm. 44year-old Graham Backhouse and his wife
Margaret lived at the farm with their two children. Back House had inherited the farm from his father, but by all
accounts, Back House, a former hairdresser, was not having financial success as a farmer. he had to take over
the the farm. He had no option in the business. Uh and there was a pretty obvious that he was a kind of reluctant,
grudging farmer, but it was well known that uh the farm was not making money. On March 30th, 1984,
Backhouse reported a grizzly and terrifying discovery. A severed lamb's head had been impaled on his fence post.
placed next to it a note warning in large handwritten letters, "You next." [Music]
Back House told police that this wasn't the first time threats had been made against him.
>> He told me that he was receiving um telephone calls of a threatening nature um even threats to kill. As I recall,
>> Back House also told police about a threatening letter he had received in the mail,
>> which said, words to the effect, um, "You have ruined my sister's life. Um, I'm going to get you, you bastard."
>> Less than two weeks later, the threats turned violent. Margaret Backhouse was heading into town
to do some shopping. She decided to take her husband's car because her car was having some
mechanical difficulties. Graham was in the barn and never heard the explosion or
Margaret's screams for help over the music from his radio. The bomb was unsophisticated but
extremely powerful. It had been planted directly under the driver's seat. >> Strictly speaking, it wasn't a bomb. It
was a shortened version of a shotgun. It was constructed from a galvanized steel
pipe, 2-in diameter, quite a thick wall to the pipe. Margaret Backhouse survived
the explosion because the force of the bomb was directed downwards by the highquality construction of the driver's
seat. But doctors still had to remove more than a pound of pellets and shrapnel from Margaret Backhouse's body.
The bombing stunned villagers who now had to accept the fact that the threats against Graham Backhouse were serious.
>> When bombs go off, you got to take it seriously. And people were thinking that there must be something
behind this. It was the only possible conclusion that we all reached that the bomb must have been for Graham back
house. But who wanted Graham Backhouse dead and why? On the same day of the car bomb
explosion which seriously injured Margaret Backhouse, a threatening letter was delivered to the Backhouse farm and
the message said something to the effect came twice last week but the pigs were about. The note ended with the words see
you soon. The words twice and were had both been misspelled and experts believed that the spelling errors were
deliberate. Investigators also examined the note found beside the severed lamb's
head, the one which stated, "You next." An analysis of that note revealed a possible clue, an impression from a
circular doodle. When a doodle is made on a piece of paper, the pressure from the writing instrument leaves an
impression on the pages underneath the original doodle. Doodle impressions can be found using a technique called
oblique lighting which casts shadows across the indentations of the paper >> so that you can see the impression as a
row of shadows and these can then be photographed. >> Police ask Graham back house to identify
all individuals who may have wanted to harm him. He was interviewed at some length about who his enemies were, uh,
who his ex-girlfriends were, and things of that nature. Back house told police about one
possibility, a former quarry worker named David Hodkinson. Back house said he once had a sexual affair with
Hodkinson's wife. Hodkinson would have had access to explosives and was also an electrician who specialized in wiring
automobiles. On the day the uh explosion took place, this person was in fact um out of the country on holiday and had
been out of the country for uh 3 or 4 days beforehand. When Hodkinson's alibi checked out, police turned their
attention to one of Graham Backhouse's neighbors, Colin Bedale Taylor. He was a retired engineer, seriously depressed
over the death of his 19-year-old son, Digby, who died in a car crash 2 years earlier. But Dale Taylor and Back House
were involved in a bitter land dispute which they couldn't seem to resolve. They lived 200 yards apart. Colin Bedale
Taylor was wellliked in the small farming community. He was a woodworker and handyman who built this bench for
his friends in the village with the words by a while inscribed on the back rest. Despite the differences between
Backhouse and Bedale Taylor, police did not seriously consider him a suspect in the car bombing. There was no reason to
suspect that Mr. Pedal Taylor was in any way, shape, or form involved in this incident.
>> With no other leads, Back House and his family were given 24-hour police protection immediately following the
bombing. After a week, Graham Backhouse began to resent the police intrusion and
asked them to end the aroundthe-clock protection. Before they left, police installed an alarm button connecting the
back house home directly to the police station. Just 2 weeks later, the alarm sounded.
>> Police cars began streaming up the hill. We knew that something was seriously
wrong. >> When the police arrived at the farm, they saw a horrific scene of blood and
death. Blood was found on the kitchen floor. The chairs had been overturned. And at the bottom of the stairs, at the
end of a hallway, lay the body of Colin Bedale Taylor, Back House's neighbor. He had been shot
twice in the chest. In his right hand, firmly clutched, was a Stanley knife inscribed with his own initials, CBT.
Back house was bleeding profusely with gaping slash wounds on his face and chest.
Well, I'd pop in to see how your wife is fairing. >> She's doing very well. Thank you.
>> He told police that Bedale Taylor stopped by to ask how his wife was doing in the hospital following the car
bombing. >> Justice. >> Without warning, Colin flew into a rage and attacked Back House with a Stanley
knife. It's >> me that set the bomb in your car. >> You should have been the victim, not
her. >> He said he was doing God's work. blamed Back House for the death of his son and
admitted planting the car bomb. Back House ran to the hallway, grabbed his shotgun, and shot Bedale Taylor in
self-defense. Police roped off the farm and called for forensic detectives to conduct an
examination. They were particularly interested in the blood trails, the one they could see and the one they couldn't
find. Graham Backhouse told police that he killed Colin Bedale Taylor in self-defense after his neighbor went
berserk and attacked Backhouse with a Stanley knife. Back house said his neighbor admitted planting the carbon
and that it was intended for him, not his wife. When police searched Bedale Taylor's property, they found evidence
linking him to the bombing. >> We found a long section of pipe on grounds quite close to Colin Beetle
Taylor's home, and this matched the remnants of the bomb that were reconstructed.
>> The obvious implication was that the pipe bomb had been made by him and come from his land.
>> But forensic detectives were confused by what they found at the scene of the attack. First, the blood spatter on the
kitchen floor told a story, but it was a story inconsistent with Backous's version of events.
>> The staining was predominantly in the form of small circular drips of blood. The circular drops of blood found on the
kitchen floor were not consistent with the struggle, but indicated that the blood dripped from an individual
standing still. >> Blood dripping vertically to a surface during a passive act of bleeding will
form circular spots or stains. But if we have a violent movement of the body, the
flicking of the hand, see a different shape of stain. They're more elongated and some of the stains
will show a tail shape to them pointing in the direction of travel that the blood impacted the surface.
>> And there was something missing. Back house said he ran for his life from the
kitchen down the hall to get his gun, but police could find no trail of blood. We seem to have a man who was dripping
blood profusely in the kitchen manages to to move over 15t of carpeted hallway without leaving any drips of blood. And
police were faced with another discrepancy. Back house said he shot the Dale Taylor
after his face and chest had been slashed, but his blood was not found on the gun. Had he been attacked before
firing the gun, blood from his face wound or from his hands would have dripped onto the gun as he fired in
self-defense. So, both features missing from the gun suggested that he wasn't bleeding and hadn't blood staining on
him at the time that he picked up that gun. >> The victim was found clutching the
Stanley knife firmly in his right hand. The forensic pathologist found this highly unusual. when somebody's shot or
when somebody dies, they go limp. Uh so then I would expect to see the response of the body's response to
being shot twice in the chest and death taking place simply to relax and the knife would fall from the hand. It
wouldn't be clutched tightly in the hand. And Bedale Taylor's right palm was bloody. When an individual holds a knife
during an attack, the knife usually prevents blood from staining the entire palm.
>> There's an area of the palm which is either very lightly stained with blood or not stained with blood. Um the knife
protects that part of the palm. >> Back house's chest wound was also inconsistent with the struggle
>> cuz normally if you're cut you withdraw, your body jerks away. So, how on earth
are you going to get a wound which then travels almost half the circumference of
the chest in a onetoone confrontation? I would never expect to see that pattern of injury.
>> And back house had no defensive injuries commonly found when a person fends off a
knife attack. >> They actually grab hold of the weapon itself and they get cuts across the
fingers and the palm. And sometimes you find that they've tried to block the weapon, put their hand up, and they get
cuts in the back of the forearm or the side of the forearm or on the back of the hand. None of these were present
here. And there was something else, something small but significant. When police searched Backhouse's study, they
found a notepad. On one of the pages was a circular doodle. The ink doodle found
on Back House's notepad was identical to the impression found on the U. Next note.
>> It was a whole series of circles. Quite a complicated thing. The impressions were quite deep so that you had a good
photograph and you were able to get a good alignment and you could see clearly that it came from this doodle. It was
exactly the same. There was no doubt whatsoever about it. This is the doodle that we're talking about here. Uh you
can see just various scribble. When we turn the page, I think you can still see the
impression. This note is now very old and has been well handled. So it's not terribly clear now, but it is still
there. Just see it there. Still see the impression just there. proof that the UN next note was written
on Graham Backhouse's own notepad. >> We now had a document in the form of the UNX note that we could positively link
with Wenhill Farm. >> Police believed they could now piece together the bizarre events which led to
the coldblooded murder of Colin Bedale Taylor. After two straight years of crop failures, Graham Backhouse was £50,000
in debt to a local bank and was in desperate need of funds. Back House devised an elaborate scheme
to get out of debt once and for all. His plan was to kill his wife and collect on
her life insurance policies, which he had recently doubled to 100,000. But he wanted the murder to appear as if
Margaret had been killed by someone out to kill him. So Backhouse fabricated the
story about the threatening phone calls and letters. Back house himself wrote the you next
note and impaled the severed lamb's head on his fence post establishing the ruse
that someone was out to get him. With the stage now set, Backhouse turned his attention to the murder of his wife. He
planted a pipe bomb under the driver's seat of his own car. He knew his wife would drive his car
into town the next morning because her car was having mechanical problems. But Back House never expected his wife
to survive the explosion. Desperate and fearing the police would consider him a suspect. Back House panicked and decided
to set up a scapegoat, someone to divert the police inquiry from himself. The logical choice was his neighbor
Colin Bedale Taylor. Back >> I'm fine. >> Thanks for coming about the furniture.
I'm >> villagers knew that the two were involved in a land dispute. >> When Bedale Taylor accepted Graham's
invitation to discuss a piece of furniture, he had no way of knowing he had walked into a death trap.
Going [Music] Colin was shot twice in the chest in cold blood [Music] to make the shooting appear to be in
self-defense. Back house slashed himself in the face and chest with a knife he had inscribed with his neighbors
initials. Bleeding profusely from the self-inflicted wounds, back house overturned kitchen chairs to make it
appear there had been a struggle, never realizing the shape of the blood spatter
would indicate no struggle at all. Back house's own blood was found on the victim's shirt because he stood directly
over the body when he placed the knife in the dead man's hand. With the crime scene now complete, Graham Backhouse
called the police. Sometime earlier, Back House planted a piece of pipe on Bedale Taylor's property identical to
the type used in making the car bomb. When the forensic evidence contradicted Back House's version of events, he was
arrested for both the attempted murder of his wife and the murder of Colin Bedale Taylor. In addition to the blood
spatter evidence, the doodle impression found on Backhouse's notepad, and the medical examiner's opinion that the cuts
on Graham Backhouse were self-inflicted. Another crucial piece of evidence helped
seal the case. It came from the letter delivered to the Backhouse farm on the day of the bombing. Forensic detectives
wanted to analyze the glued envelope for saliva, hoping to determine the blood type of the individual who sent the
letter. But they discovered much more under the microscope. The fiber found in the envelope matched
fibers found in a brown cardigan sweater owned by Graham Backhouse. further proof
that Backhouse had mailed the threatening letter to himself. Graham Backhouse's plotting continued from his
prison cell. He conned a fellow prisoner into smuggling out an unsigned letter to
a local newspaper. The letter implicated Colin Bedale Taylor in the car bombing,
but the letter was confiscated and Backous's handwriting matched the handwriting on the letter delivered to
the farm on the day of the bombing. After a 16-day trial, Graham Backhouse was convicted of all charges against him
and received two life sentences. >> If somebody had set out to write a novel along those lines, it would never have
been accepted by anybody. I mean, this is absolutely truth being stranger than fiction.
>> This was an outstanding case in many respects, principally because without forensic evidence, there was no case.
The worst aspect was of course the fact that he picked on a totally innocent man
in the village uh and killed him for no other reason than to try to remove blame
from himself. And that's what made it a diabolical murder. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music]
[Applause] [Music]

In a quiet village in Great Britain, a farmer came upon a chilling sight. Impaled on his fence post was a severed lamb's head along with a note which read, "You next." Now in HD.

Brief Summary

Graham Backhouse attempted to murder his wife and killed a neighbor to cover it up, leading to his conviction.

Key points

The Severed Lamb's Head. A severed lamb's head is found with a threatening note, signaling danger ahead.
The Car Bomb Explosion. Margaret Backhouse survives a car bomb explosion intended for her husband, Graham.
Murder in Self-Defense?. Graham Backhouse claims he shot his neighbor in self-defense after a violent confrontation.
The Diabolical Murder Plot. Graham Backhouse orchestrates a plan to kill his wife for insurance money, leading to disaster.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

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A chilling message left with a severed lamb's head.

2:13WatchSep 22, 2025

Tension

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