Forensic Files - Season 9, Episode 11 - Making the Collar - Full Episode | Forensic Files

NARRATOR: At the scene of a homicide, forensic scientists found clues that painted a virtual portrait of the killer.
They knew he had a dog and a red carpet in his home. And they even knew the kinds of trees and shrubs in his yard.
And he left behind an unusual cable tie and a dog collar that led police straight to the front door of one
of England's most notorious killers. [music playing] After doing some Christmas shopping,
16-year-old old Leanne Tiernan decided not to take the bus home, but instead, to take a short cut
through a wooded area in Leeds England known as Houghley Gill. SHARON HAWKHEAD: I had told her before not to go down there,
especially when it was dark and dingy down there. It's not so bad during the day but not on the nights--
might could be a bit not very nice. NARRATOR: When Leanne didn't arrive home as planned,
her family went looking for her. SHARON HAWKHEAD: She may have fallen, possibly broken a leg.
Then I decided to call the police because there was no sign of her. NARRATOR: For days police scoured the area with no luck.
CHRIS GREGG: We searched 1,000 houses from top to bottom, but it didn't produce one piece of evidence that could link
TO explain what had happened to this girl. PETER GRANT: We'd found absolutely no evidence
of anything connected to Leanne. It was simply as if she'd vanished off the face of the earth.
-Hello. Welcome to my talk show. [laughter] CHRIS GREGG: There was nothing at school
that was a problem to her. We couldn't find any boyfriend in the background that perhaps
would have explained why she'd not come home. From that point onwards, we structured the whole case
as if it was a potential murder inquiry. NARRATOR: A television network broadcast
a re-creation of Leanne's walk home. In it, Leanne's sister wore the same outfit Leanne
was wearing on the night she disappeared. This broadcast generated one promising lead.
DAVID WILSON: And one witness did talk to us about having seen a man in Houghley Gill
on numerous occasions and told us that he had a black and tan small dog. CHRIS GREGG: We traced 70 plus people
who walked the dogs in that area. And through a process of elimination, by showing the witness the dog walker and the dogs,
we were able to eliminate all 70 plus. SHARON HAWKHEAD: I never gave up hope. If I'd have given up hope, I'd have probably
ended up dead meself at the time. There was always a little niggle in the back of your mind,
because you just don't know. But you've got to give yourself-- self something to keep going by.
NARRATOR: Nine months later, a pedestrian noticed a suspicious bundle of trash in a wooded area
about 16 miles from where Leanne was last seen. It was a girl's body, and it was the body of Leanne.
-And the immediate feeling, at first is, total despair, and you want to be with them.
You want to be dead with them. CHRIS GREGG: The worst possible outcome had now been realized.
This girl's body had been found. She'd been murdered in the most brutal of ways.
NARRATOR: Leanne's body was wrapped in nine large green plastic garbage bags and a bed cover.
Her clothes were the ones she was wearing on the day she disappeared. But it was clear her body had just
recently been bumped there. CHRIS GREGG: At this stage, we're not looking at a great length of time
that her body's been there. So of course, the questions are where has she been up until now?
-One would expect if a package like had been left for any length of time, the animals would have got to it, would have broken in,
of they'd have smelt it. That hadn't happened. NARRATOR: The bags were tied with twine, which
was unusual in both color and design. PETER GRANT: Normally, twine like this is made up
of three strands twisted together. This one was unusual in that it was four strands twisted together.
And so I had not seen that sort of thing before. CHRIS GREGG: It wasn't a standard off-the-shelf product
that you could buy at any garden center. There was something very unique about this.
NARRATOR: Leanne Tiernan had given police a valuable tool-- the trace evidence that could identify her killer.
NARRATOR: After Leanne Tiernan's body was discovered in the woods, her family went on television
to appeal to anyone who might have seen someone in the area where Leanne's body had been found.
-Leanne was a lovely girl. She was me baby. She was me mate. [inaudible] NARRATOR: Unfortunately, the appeal
didn't generate any leads. But the autopsy answered some questions about where Leanne's body had been
over the last several months. PETER GRANT: It appeared to have deteriorated in a-- in a reverse way.
It seemed to be more decayed on the inside than the outside. And that started us thinking in terms of,
has she maybe been frozen? NARRATOR: Samples of Leanne's heart tissue were analyzed under a scanning electron microscope.
ASHLEY WILSON: In the case of Leanne's tissue, there were large gaps, which, to me, were indicative of an ice
crystal once having been present and forced the muscle bundles apart. NARRATOR: The size of these gaps indicated she probably
had been kept in a home freezer. ASHLEY WILSON: If you freeze very quickly in a-- a material like liquid nitrogen,
or liquid oxygen for example, the freezing rate is very, very fast, and the ice crystals are tiny.
If you freeze very slowly, for example, in a deep freeze, the cooling rate is much slower, and the ice
crystals are very much larger. NARRATOR: And scientists found more telling evidence in Leanne's hair.
It was pollen. Specifically, pollen from the Ligustrum vulgare, otherwise known as the Privet, which is a hedge plant.
Pollen from the Populus Fastigiata, a poplar tree, and Prunus domestica, which was from a plum tree.
There were also remnants of burnt wood, an indication she had been close to a bonfire.
The cause of death appeared to be strangulation. There was a knotted scarf and a cable tie around her throat
and cable ties around her wrists. The printed lot numbers reveal the ties were standard issue,
available through many retail outlets. But one yellow tie yielded an important clue.
Its lot number showed it had been manufactured exclusively for the British postal system, which comprises
the Royal Mail and the Parcelforce. PETER GRANT: Useful information, but there are several thousand
people who work for both companies. So it wasn't going to provide us with a name.
NARRATOR: The materials which covered Leanne's body. were also revealing. DAVID WILSON: She was wrapped in a duvet.
And she was also wrapped in a number of green plastic refuse sacks. NARRATOR: The duvet bed cover had a floral design, which
had been manufactured for decades and was impossible to trace. Scientists had better luck with the trash bags.
They were 40 microns thick-- a small piece of intelligence that identified them as a brand sold only
through the Morrison grocery store chain. There were two of these stores near Leanne's home.
CHRIS GREGG: Actually finding out who bought those bags w-- was just an impossible task.
But the main piece of information it helped give to us was that the killer's likely to be from the area where these supermarkets are located.
NARRATOR: On the trash bags, bed cover, and Leanne's clothing were significant pieces of trace evidence--
tiny, red carpet fibers. PETER GRANT: These were distinctively lobed fibers. They were twisted in a particular way.
They were also dyed in a particular way in that they were more red at one end of twist than at the other.
NARRATOR: There were also dozens of animal hairs, which appeared to be from a black and tan dog.
This was consistent with the information from the witness who saw a man with the same type of dog in the area
where Leanne disappeared. The killer used an unusual dog collar to wrap the garbage bags around Leanne's body.
Investigators now knew the killer had a dog, red carpet in his home, and worked for the postal service.
Now, all they had to do was find him. NARRATOR: The forensic evidence revealed Leanne's Tiernan's
body had been frozen before it was dumped in the woods almost a year after she was murdered.
If the killer kept the body in his freezer, he probably lived alone. There was further evidence that he lived near a privet hedge
and a poplar tree, had red carpet in his home, and a dog. And he most likely worked for the postal service, where
he obtained the distinctive yellow cable ties. The last item for scientists to analyze
was the dog collar used to fasten the garbage bag over Leanne's head. PETER GRANT: It did appear to be a very good quality dog collar.
And it did have some distinctive features about it-- that nature of the stitching, the thickness
of the leather, the color of the leather. NARRATOR: Detective David Wilson was assigned the task
of determining where the color came from. DAVID WILSON: Our first aim was to try
and identify the dog color itself. And then perhaps if we couldn't do that, move on to finding out
where it had been sold and then who it had been sold to. NARRATOR: The color was manufactured by Armitages Pet
Products in nearby Nottingham, England. DAVID WILSON: Because the uhm, stitching process
had become computerized in 1999, we were able to tell, straight away, that this collar was made between 1999 and 2001.
NARRATOR: The manufacturer provided the names of more than 100 retailers who sold
these colors during that time. Each one was contacted to see if they had kept any customer records.
DAVID WILSON: At that stage, it was trying to find a needle in a haystack. But they didn't really keep records of people's names
and addresses who had bought a dog collar. They just sold a dog collar. Uh, it wouldn't necessarily mean that they would have details
uhm, of anybody within our area who had bought one. NARRATOR: On a hunch, Wilson asked for the names
of customers who purchased the collar over the internet. This gave them their first real break.
DAVID WILSON: There were only three people from the auction and only one person from Leeds who appeared on that list.
This was a John Taylor of Cockshott Drive in Leeds, and he'd bought six of these dog collars.
NARRATOR: John Taylor was 45 years old, divorced with two grown children, and was currently living alone just 3/4
of a mile from where Leanne disappeared. And there was another startling revelation.
Taylor worked for a division of the Royal Mail with access to the yellow cable ties, like those found on Leanne's wrists.
According to his neighbors, Taylor was a loner who raised hunting dogs and had a dark side.
CHRIS GREGG: He was a man who led a very nocturnal life. He'd go out at all times at night, poaching and hunting.
This was seemingly his supply of food. We found that he had been cruel to animals, particularly
in the killing process of animals. NARRATOR: Investigators also discovered that Taylor met
women through Lonely Hearts newspaper ads. SHARON HAWKHEAD: We were checking telephone bills
of his, and we found but he was making literally thousands upon thousands of calls to newspaper date lines.
And he'd met quite a number of uh, of-- of ladies and partners through this. -When we spoke to one female acquaintance in particular,
she told us that he would like to take her up into his bedroom, that he would like to place a cable
tie behind each of her wrists, and then tie that cable tie together, and then put a scarf over her face,
and have quite violent sex with her. -Three cable ties tied together, one around each wrist, and one
linking the two together, which was precisely the same way that he tied Leanne Tiernan up.
NARRATOR: When police searched Taylor's home, they were surprised to see that there was no red carpet
in his home, and he didn't have a black and tan dog. Was it possible that John Taylor was the wrong man?
NARRATOR: Police were convinced that John Taylor was involved in Leanne's Tiernan's murder.
But they needed forensic evidence to prove it. CHRIS GREGG: We knew that we had to examine every single inch
of his home, and his garden, and his sheds and his out buildings to find any evidence which could match to those items which
had been found a Leanne's body. PETER GRANT: The initial thing that struck us when we went in was that all the floorboards had been stripped.
And this made us think, where the carpets? CHRIS GREGG: There were no carpets in John Taylor's house,
but what he couldn't remove were the strands around the nails on the floorboards.
There were bare boards with the nails in that had been used to hold down the carpets.
Those carpet strands in Taylor's home were microscopically similar to the carpet
fibers found with Leanne's body. And on a loose nail in the kitchen, investigators found a tiny fragment of a trash bag,
as if someone brushed up against the nail while carrying a bag. The trash bag fragment was the same brand
as the type found with Leanne's body. DAVID WILSON: We found two dog collars, which
were identical to those ordered from Armitages. In addition to that, we found an amount of twine.
And that was forensically examined, and found to be identical to that recovered from Leanne.
NARRATOR: In the backyard, scientists found a broken cable tie identical to the one around Leanne's wrists.
And there was also a poplar tree and a privet hedge consistent with the pollen found in Leanne's hair.
When police excavated Taylor's yard, they made a gruesome discovery. They found the corpse of a black and tan terrier.
DAVID WILSON: We felt that Taylor had killed this dog as soon as he heard major appeals trying to identify
that person, who he knew to be himself. NARRATOR: The hair from Taylor's dog was microscopically similar to the dog
hair found with Leanne's body. John Taylor was arrested and charged with Leanne's murder.
When confronted with the overwhelming forensic evidence, Taylor confessed. He admitted abducting Leanne as she walked
along the wooded path and forcing her to a half mile back to his home. Taylor used a distinctive cable tie from work to tie her wrists
and at some point, he strangled her to death. The ice crystals in Leanne's heart tissue
showed Taylor stored her body in the freezer. Almost nine months later, he covered the body
with garbage bags and the bed cover, and fastened them with the black twine and the dog collar, which
was traced to Taylor through his internet purchase. CHRIS GREGG: There's no doubt in my mind
that John Taylor set out to kill on that Sunday. Leanne Tiernan was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
This man is a predator. It could've been any woman, that afternoon, who fell into his hands.
She was subject to the most savage, brutal, and callous attack imaginable. NARRATOR: Although Taylor admitted the abduction,
he insisted Leanne's death was an accident, claiming she had fallen and hit her head on the floor.
But this was a lie since the autopsy showed no such injury. CHRIS GREGG: He couldn't explain how the girl had been strangled
with a plastic cable tie and a double-knotted scarf. He couldn't account for that at all.
NARRATOR: Investigators find it hard to believe that Taylor left so much forensic evidence.
Pollen from his garden, carpet fibers, the distinctive cable tie, the twine, garbage bags, the hairs from the dog
all bore Taylor's signature. CHRIS GREGG: John Taylor's not as clever as he thought he was.
He didn't leave his DNA. He didn't leave fingerprints. But he left items there that led a trail back to him,
and that was is own doing. NARRATOR: John Taylor was found guilty of kidnapping and murder
and was sentenced to two life terms in prison. 14 years earlier, another woman had been sexually assaulted
in the same area where Leanne's body was found. The biological evidence from that case
proved that John Taylor was the perpetrator. For that crime, and one other to which Taylor confessed,
he received two additional life sentences. But no one is convinced that all of John Taylor's deadly secrets
have been unearthed. CHRIS GREGG: There are for murders that we're investigating in, in very great detail.
One of the cases actually involves a prostitute whose body was found buried in the same woods
that Leanne was later found. NARRATOR: Without forensic evidence, Taylor would not have been implicated
in any of these crimes. PETER GRANT: I think what satisfied me most about this case was the fact that we weren't relying on
very powerful DNA, or very powerful fingerprint evidence to identify an offender.
It was old-fashioned forensics, if you like. It was fibers. It was hairs. It was uhm, the construction of various items,
and all these things came together to provide some extremely powerful evidence. [music playing]

The body of 16-year-old Leanne Tiernan was discovered nine months after she disappeared. Forensic scientists found clues that painted a virtual portrait of her killer.

Forensic Files is the longest-running true crime series in television history. Evidence and interviews with experts help solve real crimes, disease outbreaks and accidents around the world.

Brief Summary

The episode details Leanne Tiernan's murder and how forensic evidence led to John Taylor's arrest and conviction.

Key points

The Discovery of Leanne's Body. Nine months after her disappearance, Leanne's body was found in a wooded area.
Forensic Evidence Leads to Arrest. Forensic evidence linked John Taylor to Leanne's murder, leading to his arrest.
Taylor's Confession. John Taylor confessed to abducting and murdering Leanne, claiming it was an accident.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

She was me baby. She was me mate.

Leanne's family expressing their love for her after her body was found.

5:31WatchJan 1, 2022

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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