Meet, Marry, Murder - Season 1, Episode 49 - Cavanagh - Full Episode | Forensic Files

NARRATOR: To Martin Cavanagh, his wife, Sophie, was his entire world. But was his devotion to her entirely healthy?
ALEXANDRA HEALY: Martin Cavanagh was incapable of handling his own jealousy and possessiveness.
NARRATOR: As he faced losing his wife, Martin went to desperate measures to spend time with her.
TONY KENT: He told her he was facing a prison sentence. He told her he had been the getaway driver
in a jewelry robbery. NARRATOR: There was even an indecent proposal. RICHARD VANDENBERGH: He was constantly pestering her.
On one occasion, offering her money for sex for one last time. EMMA KENNY: She isn't a woman.
She isn't a human. She's something that can be bought or sold. NARRATOR: Where would Martin Cavanagh's obsession end?
JANE MONCKTON SMITH: It could be said that Sophie was doomed from the moment she met Cavanagh.
NARRATOR: They had met and married shortly after. One of them was stable, happy.
The other had issues. JANE MONCKTON SMITH: If somebody is routinely possessive, routinely jealous, and tries to control
what you do or do not do, I say get out, and get out quick. [theme music] NARRATOR: Martin Cavanagh's friends
might have been surprised when he fell head over heels in love with a young woman called Sophie Wickers.
EMMA KENNY: Cavanagh was a man's man. So he enjoyed going to the football. He enjoyed drinking.
He enjoyed going to the pub, going to the gym. NARRATOR: Born and bred in the London Borough of Croydon,
Martin appeared not to be the settling down type. But in 2010, a chance meeting with Sophie at his local pub
changed all that. EMMA KENNY: Cavanagh and Sophie met when Sophie was 23. He was four years older than her.
And it seems that they had a real whirlwind romance. She was a young, fun-loving person.
NEIL LANCASTER: Sophie is from Croydon. A very happy-go-lucky girl. Her friends remember in school they wouldn't be allowed
to be in the class together because they'd keep each other giggling. She loved a good night out.
She'd had a big circle of friends. NARRATOR: The young couple were far from well off.
TONY KENT: Martin and Sophie Cavanagh were a young couple who had met back where they both grew
up around the Croydon area. They did not have the best start in life. The part of Croydon they grew up in
was very rundown, full of high-rises, and they were living together in Sophie's mother's
very, very small council flat. These were not the circumstances that Sophie certainly
wanted to live her life in. Sophie had her real big dreams of what she was going to do with her life.
She had real ambitions to make it big, to open her own beauty therapy salon, and then to branch out,
and to have lots of them across London and across England. So she was somebody who had some real gumption.
She knew what she wanted, and she wanted to achieve those dreams. NARRATOR: Not the way of life displayed by Martin.
TONY KENT: At the same time, Martin Cavanagh had no discernible source of income.
He spent his time supporting Arsenal, and it seems drinking. NARRATOR: Prosecuting barrister, Alexandra Healy.
ALEXANDRA HEALY: They married in 2011. I think Sophie was 24 years old when she got married.
It was a wedding at which Sophie was said to look like a princess. They had-- everything was white, everything was lavish.
EMMA KENNY: So it really was an event. And there was clearly the idea of it being a fairy tale
when they went through with it. NARRATOR: If their big white wedding hinted at their aspirations for life together,
the reality of their existence was somewhat different. Firstly, they moved into his mother's flat.
And then a short while after that, they moved into a property of their own. EMMA KENNY: It was above the Skoda garage,
and it's not exactly in the most perfect location. So it shows you that they were having those early relationship
struggles financially. NARRATOR: Sophie was determined to make a comfortable life
for herself and Martin. TONY KENT: Sophie found herself a job as a part-time cleaner in Bromley, in the Bromley area.
The whole idea of the job that Sophie had was so she could save some money, and she'd get started on what her real passion was.
And she worked as many hours as she could to make that possible. NARRATOR: Martin Cavanagh meanwhile, still a gym regular,
adorned his musclebound chest with a tattoo expressing his devotion to how his married life had
turned out. Before long, Mrs. Cavanagh would realize that the extra-large tattoo was just
one sign that her husband's devotion was going too far. ALEXANDRA HEALY: He was quite a controlling partner, and quite
possessive and jealous. EMMA KENNY: That statement tattoo isn't just about him letting the world know how much he loves his family,
it's that they belong to him. It's a possession issue. NARRATOR: Professor Jane Monckton
Smith researches the patterns that emerge in abusive relationships I find that quite concerning.
To say on a tattoo that you have no life gives us an insight into some of the anxieties
and some of the concerns he had about the way relationships should be. No matter what you write on your body, the assumption
there is that you've not thought that things could ever go wrong, meaning that in the likelihood,
he was never prepared for that to actually come to an end. And that kind of shows you his mindset;
his wife is his wife for life. JANE MONCKTON SMITH: The relationship would have been dominated by his anxieties
about that relationship ending. So he would have been possessive and controlling to, in effect,
trap Sophie in the relationship, so that he felt OK, he felt stable. EMMA KENNY: While he definitely loved Sophie,
he loved her in a jealous way. And we see this in controlling relationships. The belief is that their partner is one step away always
from betraying them, so they must keep a tight leash on them. NARRATOR: So paranoid was Martin about the possibility
of Sophie leaving him that he began to haunt her every move. ALEXANDRA HEALY: If she were to go out on her own without him,
with friends or something of that nature, he would tend to plague her with telephone calls incessantly.
He was not happy with her not being with him. Cavanagh is one of those individuals
who has a very short fuse. He's your typical road-rage person. An individual who, if there's somebody
looking at him the wrong way, is going to start a fight. So we know that throughout his life,
he was one of those people with that kind of streak. And certainly in his marriage, it didn't
play out any differently. He was a bully. NARRATOR: The man charged with one day
finding the truth about the married couple and their relationship is the top murder investigator,
Richard Vandenbergh. He would go into her social media accounts. He would look at her phone.
On occasions, he changed her passwords and spoke to people she was communicating with, telling
them that he was Sophie. There'd been an occasion where they'd booked a holiday, where
he ensured that he was the lead person, and she was unable to change any of the details of the holiday
and cancel the booking. She didn't like that possessive, controlling behavior. You know, she felt like it was constraining her.
She had things she wanted to do. She wanted to enjoy life. NARRATOR: Before long, Sophie Cavanagh
was miserable in her marriage with Martin. She started hinting she wanted out. They separated on more than one occasion.
Like many whirlwind relationships, their relationship comes crashing down within six years.
It's unsurprising. With Cavanagh being such a bully, being incredibly jealous, really controlling,
when you are the partner of somebody like that, it is exhausting. You are constantly walking on eggshells.
You don't ever feel secure in your world. And you're just waiting for the next set of questioning,
or the next argument. A very dominating, controlling character, who took every opportunity to spy on Sophie.
JANE MONCKTON SMITH: A lot of people are controlling, and they are controlling for different reasons.
High-risk controlling people are largely controlling for two key reasons. One, that they might have a personality disorder,
and just be very, very focused on themselves and not really care about anybody else.
Another broad category is those people who are quite dependent on the relationship,
only see themselves as whole within a relationship. So they're quite needy. But they're high-risk because their whole world falls apart
if the relationship falls apart. NARRATOR: Towards the end of 2016, as Martin's controlling behavior escalated,
things came to a head in the Cavanagh household. ALEXANDRA HEALY: There was an incident
then on the Boxing Day, which again, related to his jealousy. Because they having been separated,
Sophie had used her social media to date other people. I think he found her Kik Messenger application
and found that she had been messaging somebody, and this infuriated him. And he went onto Kik Messenger, and he
sent a message to the person, telling them to keep away from her. He, I think, changed the password
to her social media account. He ended up smashing her mobile phone on that occasion,
and there was a physical altercation. The police were called, and he was arrested and interviewed
in relation to that incident. JANE MONCKTON SMITH: Cavanagh was a controlling person.
And the reason he was controlling is because he wanted to trap Sophie within the relationship.
So all of that control, all of that abuse was to stop her leaving. Of course, it had the opposite effect
because Sophie actually wanted to end the relationship, she wanted to leave. And when he found that out, that's all his fears realized
all at once, the worst possible thing was happening, it's like putting a stick into a hornet's nest.
NARRATOR: They had met. They had married. But six years on, the world that Martin Cavanagh
said was his everything, his reason for living, was slipping away. It meant that Sophie was in a dangerous place.
The thing that this person has been guarding against for the entire relationship,
there it is, it's happened. And what they usually do is panic. Cavanagh felt that if he couldn't have his wife,
then nobody could. NARRATOR: It was on Boxing Day 2016 that Sophie Cavanagh told her husband, Martin,
that their marriage was over. TONY KENT: She leaves Martin, and she finds her way back to Croydon.
She gets herself her own flat. RICHARD VANDENBERGH: She was a young, fun-loving person.
She had her whole life ahead of her and was looking to move on, looking to enjoy life.
Sophie's really looking to the future now. She wants to build a new life for herself.
She wants to build an online beauty brand. She's boasting on Facebook about it, about how she's a "boss girl" building her brand.
NARRATOR: Martin moved to a one-bedroom flat on Chatterton Road in Bromley. Though Sophie had ended things with Martin,
she couldn't wash her hands completely of him. She would still involve Martin in her life.
Despite all these things he was doing, she tried to involve him in her life. EMMA KENNY: One of the key characteristics
we see in Sophie is that she's a peacemaker. She doesn't really want any antagonism, or any arguments.
So when Cavanagh asks her to meet up with him for days out, she does it to placate him.
NARRATOR: But in denial about the end of the marriage, Martin would simply not let go.
JANE MONCKTON SMITH: He knows that whatever happens, he's going to have some connection to Sophie
for the rest of her life. And it also will help to keep some of the panic at bay if she leaves him, because he
knows that connection is there. He clearly was not happy accepting the end of the relationship.
Sophie had moved on, but was trying her best to handle him in a way. Sometimes it involved deflecting what he was saying,
and in other times, trying to ignore him when he was pestering her, or threatening
to come and see her when she didn't want to see him. NARRATOR: Sophie filled out divorce papers
and asked him to sign them. There was no ambiguity on what she wanted. Sophie wants to move her life on.
She's desperate for a divorce, but he will not agree to it. TONY KENT: Martin has no intention of letting
this be the end of things. She is desperate-- Sophie is desperate for a divorce by this point.
She has tried everything she can to force the divorce. And Martin just will not let her have one, because Martin has
not accepted that his possessions, allegedly his world and his life, his possessions,
are no longer his own. He's saying no, this is one bit of power that I have got,
I'm not giving you a divorce. NARRATOR: In fact, far from granting her a divorce,
Martin tried to find more ways to keep Sophie tied to him. ALEXANDRA HEALY: Sophie didn't have a car available to her.
Her car had been off-road for tax purposes, she said as a result of Martin's recommendation to save money.
And so the idea was that she would borrow his car. But he would then use the offer of the loan
of his car to continue to try to control her. And so if she needed the car to get to a cleaning job,
because she was working sometimes as a cleaner, they would have arrangements. And he would then leave the car, but not the keys.
She would be waiting to go to work, waiting for him to drop the car off, and he would refuse to drop the car off, just
to frustrate her life. NARRATOR: Things became even worse for Sophie when she decided it was
time for a new man in her life. She wants to meet new people. She wants to date people.
She starts up an online dating profile. NARRATOR: Martin Cavanagh was not about to let that happen.
The muscle-bound, gym enthusiast may have appeared very intimidating. He finds a way to contact the people
with whom she's making dates. He texts them and calls them. He frightens them off.
ALEXANDRA HEALY: He was somebody who had said at times during their relationship,
if he couldn't have her, nobody could. And he put that into practice in doing everything
that he could to disrupt her opportunities of going out with other men. She would use social media sometimes to meet people,
and he would become aware of it. Maybe he knew her passwords, but he would access dating sites,
change her profile on dating sites, send messages to people with whom she was in contact,
in an effort to scupper her making, or moving on with other relationships. JANE MONCKTON SMITH: He's thinking, how do I keep
this relationship together? How do I get her back? But he's in a state of panic.
So his controlling behaviors start to escalate, and he starts stalking her. So he's outside of the relationship
as far as she's concerned, but in his head, he's still in it. And he's following her, surveilling her, seeing
if she's meeting other men. If he finds out that she is meeting other men, he tries to go and warn them off.
You know, he's doing everything in his power to stop her moving on. NARRATOR: One night in February 2018, Martin
took drastic action when his efforts to ruin Sophie's love life didn't work. She made him really jealous by the fact
that after meeting up with him, she confessed to him that she was going to go and see another man.
He became infuriated that he couldn't get hold of her, knowing that she was with another man.
He was bombarding his wife with texts, with messages. He was bombarding friends, trying to find
out exactly where she was. NARRATOR: Ten months later, Barrister Alexandra Healy
would play for a jury messages left by Martin Cavanagh that night. ALEXANDRA HEALY: What the trial heard
were a series of recordings, of voicemail messages that he left for a mutual friend as he tried to persuade the friend to tell
him where Sophie was, because he didn't know where she was, and he couldn't get her to answer the telephone.
And it showed him apparently searching for Sophie in his car, waiting outside her mother's house.
Desperate to find out where she was, unable to bear the thought that she was with another man,
and then saying that he didn't know what he was going to do if he found her. NARRATOR: When Martin failed to find Sophie,
he made a dramatic video call to a friend, a man called Plowman, who he thought might be able to reveal the whereabouts of Sophie.
ALEXANDRA HEALY: Martin Cavanagh was at home. He was seen to pick up a knife on the video
and hold it against his neck. And Mr. Plowman said he saw red coloring on the neck.
So whether, in fact, the defendant even went to the lengths of getting some ketchup or something
of that nature, I don't know. But having held the knife to his neck and there being apparent redness, he then collapsed.
Police were called to his address, but they found him unharmed. This was clearly just him trying to prompt Sophie
to reach out to him again. He was so manipulative as to even fake a suicide attempt,
thinking that surely will push him to reveal where Sophie is and/or get Sophie to come and see him.
And that was a completely fabricated suicide attempt. NARRATOR: It was a desperate play for Sophie's attention.
And it was by no means his final play. JANE MONCKTON SMITH: This is where Cavanagh would have made
a decision about how he was going to finally resolve the situation. And I think from--
maybe from things that happened afterwards, this is the point at which he made the decision
that he was going to kill her. NARRATOR: After months of begging, threatening, stalking,
manipulating Sophie, desperate to get back into her bed, in May 2018, he tried a new tactic.
On the 15th of May, Cavanagh sent Sophie a whole load of WhatsApp messages. A number of them were rambling, where he was accusing her
of breaking him, and saying other really, really unpleasant things to her. NARRATOR: Angry that Sophie had refused to see him that night,
Martin was drowning his sorrows in the pub with friends. That evening, he drank, and he may have taken some cocaine.
And one could see from his messages that they became more and more paranoid, more
and more jealous. He was more and more angry. He sent her a message which he introduced by saying--
it's going to sound strange, but he said, you've stripped for money, for peanuts, online--
so he'd apparently been told she was stripping online-- so I want you to sleep with me one final time.
NARRATOR: One message said, "You have broken, shattered, destroyed, ripped me to shreds.
I want to have u 1 last final time ok." Another one begged, "And I mean badly it's all I fink about."
TONY KENT: And he tells her, I've got 100 pounds. I want to have sex with you one last time.
I want to-- I need it. I'm obsessing with it. This is the thing that I have to do.
NARRATOR: Repeating his untrue claim, he said, "u stripped online to strangers for money.
If you were able to do that then plz Sophie I'm begging you plz do this for me just 1 last time plz."
"Uno wot I've got 100 pounds hear spare. I won't see it as I'm paying to sleep wiv u,
but at least that way u get something out of it." Another message, "It will mean nothing, it won't lead me on.
I'm just craving to have you 4 1 last final time. PLEASE SOPHIE." ALEXANDRA HEALY: He effectively said, "it won't lead me on,"
so it was clear that he knew that she was trying to get him to accept the relationship was over.
And he'd come up with this rather bizarre proposal, which was if she slept with him that
would help him have closure. NARRATOR: Sophie refused, telling her family she was furious and disgusted.
Once again, she tried to put some distance between her and her obsessive ex. But once again, he appeared to know just
the line to reel her back in. And this time, he had more than sex on his mind. This was the moment he was going to make his decision;
you either get back with me, or I kill you. NARRATOR: On Friday, the 18th of May 2018,
Martin Cavanagh contacted his estranged wife, Sophie, with an urgent request. He cooks up this story, saying that he
is about to be sentenced for his part in a jewelry robbery. He's saying he's facing 8 to 12 months.
JANE MONCKTON SMITH: In his head, he's probably thinking, I'm going to give her one last chance to change her mind.
I am going to-- because of the nice guy that I am and because I love her, I'm going to give her one last chance to come back to me
and save her own life. So he thinks up this-- another absurd story. ALEXANDRA HEALY: He told her that his fingerprint had been
found on a watch stolen in the robbery when someone had tried to sell the watch.
And as a result of that, the police had contacted him and asked him to attend the police station.
JANE MONCKTON SMITH: He tells Sophie that he's about to be arrested. He tells her that within days, he's going to be gone,
he's going to be out of the picture. But this was just a ruse to get her on her own with him,
have a family day, and give her that last chance to say, yes, let's be a family again.
He'd done that because their relationship was at an all-time low ebb after he'd asked her to sleep with him for money,
and she was disgusted by it. So having reached that very low ebb, he needed to come up with something quite spectacular
in order to be able to manipulate her to spend the day with him. NARRATOR: Perhaps Martin Cavanagh
thought this would be the dramatic scenario that would finally win his wife back.
But to Sophie, agreeing to a day out was probably more about getting Martin off her back once again.
In order to appease Cavanagh, she agreed to go out with him. And on the 19th of May, they went together to Wingham
Wildlife Park near Canterbury. EMMA KENNY: And I do think, probably, part of that
is because she's hoping that he will be going to prison, because she'll have some relief from him.
There was CCTV footage showing them having a happy day out. They returned to Bromley, and then CCTV
showed them going to a local pub, where they met some friends. And there was CCTV footage showing
them apparently getting on well, having a pleasant afternoon. It was a sunny afternoon.
They had some drinks in the pub garden together. I think there may have been some sport on an outdoor screen.
And then they returned to Martin's flat. NARRATOR: To Martin, it had been just like the old days.
Had he deluded himself that he was winning his wife back? Cavanagh possibly thought that things
were beginning to get back on track between him and Sophie. But he was wrong. NARRATOR: What exactly happened next may never be known.
ALEXANDRA HEALY: They appear to have spent the evening together. I think some neighbors were walking a dog
and heard a scream that they thought sounded like someone in real distress late in the evening.
NARRATOR: Only the following morning did the estranged couple's family begin to get an inkling
that something was wrong. NEIL LANCASTER: At 10 past 8 the following morning, Cavanagh goes to his mother's house.
He's clearly in a bit of a state. He tells his mother that he's got to go to the police station.
NARRATOR: He then leaves and doesn't make it clear to his mother where he's going.
ALEXANDRA HEALY: During the day, his mom tried to get hold of him to find out where he was, sent
him messages, unsuccessfully. So she contacts a couple of his friends and says, can you go and have a look for him.
The friends that Sophie and Martin had been out with the day before had gone back to the flat.
They went to the address, looked through the window, and saw Sophie's handbag there, which
was unusual because Sophie wasn't living there. Martin's mom gave them the key to the flat
and asked them if they could check the flat. When they returned to the flat with the key,
they discovered that Sophie was lying dead under the duvet, on the mattress in the bedroom.
She was naked. She had her clothing folded neatly at the end of the bed. NARRATOR: 31-year-old Sophie Cavanagh was dead.
Her estranged husband, Martin, the last person to see her alive, was nowhere to be seen.
NEIL LANCASTER: While it's clear from the outset to the police officers attending, this is a murder scene,
their first job is to make sure that Sophie is in fact dead. Of course, they checked, and she was deceased.
When we first took the case on, we didn't know where Cavanagh was. And we believed he'd been on the run.
NARRATOR: DCI Richard Vandenbergh was tasked with finding out how Sophie had died, and why.
Upon the initial finding of Sophie, it was unclear at this stage, whether it was indeed a murder
or not. There was no obvious signs of injury to Sophie. There were no signs of a disturbance
to speak of at the address. The flat itself was very untidy, but there was no clear disturbance that was obvious.
NARRATOR: Work had already begun to build a picture of what had actually happened at the flat.
RICHARD VANDENBERGH: There was another team that first went to the address from the homicide assessment car,
and made the initial assessment, and secured the crime scene. ALEXANDRA HEALY: There was in the kitchen dustbin
a mobile telephone that had been destroyed, as well as a pair of scissors that were bent.
Her handbag had been-- the contents of her handbag appeared to have been tipped out.
In the living room was a child's easel-type whiteboard, and there was a note on the whiteboard that was written,
we believe, by Martin. He thanks his family, which we believe is directed probably towards his mom.
He then goes on to talk about no more suffering. There were the words, "she deserved it."
NARRATOR: Police suspected those words amounted to a confession. RICHARD VANDENBERGH: It became apparent to me
fairly quickly that Martin was pivotal to the investigation, and we needed to ask questions of him.
NARRATOR: They had a potential murderer on the loose, and they had no idea what his mental state might be.
I had concerns around the phrase in the whiteboard, "together forever and no more suffering."
I thought that he was going to be committing suicide. NARRATOR: It was clear to London Metropolitan Police's Homicide
Major Crimes team that catching up with Martin was a matter of urgency. This is now a manhunt.
The police are searching for Cavanagh. They know he is the only suspect to this offense.
They're looking all over. There is a media appeal for him. RICHARD VANDENBERGH: Martin was on the run.
We needed to try and locate where Martin was. One, for his own welfare and his own safety.
But equally, for the investigation of Sophie's murder, he was a prime suspect. I put out a media appeal--
we had a photograph of Martin-- with a view of identifying him to the public and asking for help in locating where Martin is.
We knew Martin had family in the area and ties to the area, so I never suspected that he'd gone very far.
So it was important that we use the media to try and flush him out, or to locate him.
NARRATOR: In the meantime, pathologists confirmed what Detective Vandenbergh had suspected.
Because there was no clear injuries at the scene to Sophie, a special post-mortem was held.
And it wasn't until that post-mortem that we identified that she had bruising around her neck,
under the skin. But also that she had hemorrhaging around the eye sockets. She had been strangled.
She had bruising around her neck. She had what are called petechial hemorrhaging
in her eyes. So the capillaries in the eyes are very thin, and if a person constricts the blood supply to the head,
because the arteries are thicker walled than the veins, blood still goes to the head, but can't
get away because the veins are compressed by the pressure to the neck. And that causes the pressure to build up.
So then the very smallest capillaries, those burst. And when those capillaries burst,
you get petechial hemorrhaging. She also had congestion to her face, which again,
is a sign of the blood having gathered in her head and not been able to be released.
And that's an indication that there's been pressure to the neck. So this did show to us that Sophie's cause of death
was strangulation. NARRATOR: Sophie's death was no accident, no sudden illness, she had been murdered.
The autopsy that was carried out stated that he must have strangled her for a sustained period of time to ensure
that she was not only unconscious, but was, in fact, dead. NARRATOR: It was now even more crucial to track down
and apprehend her former husband, Martin Cavanagh, suspect number one in a case of murder.
He didn't travel far as part of his escape plan On the 23rd of May, Martin was found by his family,
hiding in the garden shed. Police had arranged to go around to the family address
and take some statements that day. But before we got round there, they'd discovered Martin and taken him in their car
to Bromley Police Station. ALEXANDRA HEALY: When he was arrested, and he gave himself up to the police,
as they were arresting-- this was all captured on CCTV in the police station-- he said, I would never hurt a woman.
And he said, that's why I run, I tried to do CPR. NARRATOR: Martin Cavanagh was denying
that he had murdered his wife. Was he implying that he'd simply discovered Sophie
already lifeless on the floor? RICHARD VANDENBERGH: Martin made a comment to an officer
that he wouldn't hurt a fly, that he'd even tried to do breaths and pumps on her, but had
to stop because her nose started to bleed. NARRATOR: Where custody officers were booking Martin in,
they found in his pockets three of Sophie's bank cards. But when questioned, he gave no explanation
for that, or for anything else. When he was formally interviewed, he elected to make no comment to the questions
that were asked of him. He was charged and remanded in custody. NARRATOR: Detectives were left with the task
of finding out exactly what had happened on the Cavanagh family day out. RICHARD VANDENBERGH: During the early hours, he'd been out,
and met with a drug dealer, and bought drugs, and would return to the address. NARRATOR: In December 2018, as families around the world
began their preparations for Christmas, Martin Cavanagh went on trial for murdering his wife.
RICHARD VANDENBERGH: At court, Martin maintained that, yes, he had grabbed Sophie around the neck,
but that he'd let go. And he certainly didn't strangle her to the point of suffocation.
He said that they had spent the day together. He said they had a very nice day and they'd returned.
They'd gone to the pub and had a very nice time, and then returned to his flat. He said at the flat, they had a pleasant evening.
TONY KENT: Martin claimed that, in fact, he'd acted in self-defense. He claimed that they'd been drinking together, that they
had taken cocaine together. ALEXANDRA HEALY: They then went on, he said, to have an in-depth, a very nice conversation
about their relationship over the years. And what had gone wrong, and what they'd
done to one another, which had exacerbated their relationship difficulties. In the context of this heart-to-heart conversation,
he told her that he'd lied about the robbery. And he said, she then got irate. And then after that, Sophie had attacked him.
And that when she attacked him, he restrained her by putting his hands around her neck.
So he described having held her back by his hand to her neck for a short period of time.
But he said there were no ill-effects. He didn't describe her as having collapsed.
He said, in fact, she kneed him to the testicles, and that caused him to take his hand down.
And then she walked off into the hallway. JANE MONCKTON SMITH: In court, Cavanagh claimed
that Sophie had attacked him. It's just, you know-- it's just a ridiculous defense,
and he was just trying to get himself out of trouble. He was trying to say, look all this violence was spontaneous,
nobody could have predicted it. NARRATOR: A forensic examination of Sophie's phone
opened up questions about his version of events. The phone itself had been found at the scene.
That phone was found after the murder was discovered, to have been broken apart and destroyed, and was
found in the kitchen dustbin. NARRATOR: Much more damage than simply a cracked screen.
Forensic teams also discovered that Sophie had apparently continued to use it long after the incident.
Impossible, as she was dead, so somebody else must have been using it. If your telephone is switched on,
it continually sends GPRS signals to the masks, so you can tell when a phone is switched on and connected
to the telephone network. And Sophie's phone remained on until shortly after midnight, when it disconnected from the network
and didn't ever reconnect. NARRATOR: Martin had long been fixated on Sophie's use of her phone and, in particular,
who she was contacting. Would that same phone now be the evidence that gave lie to his version of events,
events that he offered as proof of his innocence? Martin told the court that Sophie had talked about taking
sleeping tablets, and that he had also heard a crash in the hallway and wondered
if she'd banged her head. TONY KENT: What makes his not guilty plea even more bizarre
is that when Sophie's body was discovered, there was a note. And it was unmistakably written by Martin, because Martin
was at best illiterate. It was written in what could almost be described as badly spelled text speak.
It effectively said that he had killed Sophie and that she deserved it. NARRATOR: He was sowing seeds of doubt for the jury
about what had killed her. ALEXANDRA HEALY: But he said she came to bed, so they slept in the same bed.
What he then said was, he checked her and realized that she wasn't breathing. And he then described having attempted
to carry out CPR on her for a period of time, unsuccessfully. And so he then said, he realized she had died,
and he then decided to finish off the cocaine they already had in the flat. NARRATOR: Alexandra Healy presented the jury
with a completely different story. ALEXANDRA HEALY: The prosecution case was this was a nonsense story.
If he had put his hands to her neck and then she had recovered, then she would not subsequently have died.
If the pressure to her veins had been removed, the blood flow would have been restored,
and there would be no reason for her to have died. There was absolutely no way that she recovered
consciousness, or continued to operate in any way, shape, or form from the point at which the pressure around her neck
was released. In other words, he killed her there, and he killed her then, and he intended to do it.
NARRATOR: Had it finally dawned on Martin Cavanagh, his marriage was over? RICHARD VANDENBERGH: We'll never really know the conversation
that triggered the murder that night, but it potentially could have been the fact that Sophie
was looking to get a divorce. We discovered divorce papers in Sophie's flat, and she was in the background, trying to obtain
a divorce against Martin. After her death, a divorce petition was found that she'd clearly taken out a year earlier,
but never actually filed. It got to the point for Cavanagh where he could see the situation was irretrievable
and Sophie wasn't coming back. This is a really dangerous time, this last-chance thinking.
It's the time when killers decide they're going to kill. There was a confrontation between herself and Martin.
That confrontation ended in Martin taking Sophie by the neck and strangling her until she was dead.
That's a really intimate murder. It's being able to see the life going from the person
that you're killing. That's the biggest type of power play that you'll ever have,
it's snuffing the life out of your victim. NARRATOR: Even more intimate was what Martin did next.
EMMA KENNY: After he murders her, he strips her and puts her in bed. And I imagine that this is about trying to play out some fantasy
of when she was his. And now, she's powerless, and she can't leave him, and he has full possession of her.
I think Martin killed Sophie because he couldn't accept the relationship was over.
And he couldn't live with the fact that she was moving on and wanting to meet, or meeting other people.
And he couldn't handle that. NARRATOR: According to the prosecution, after killing Sophie, Martin had needed to calm his nerves.
ALEXANDRA HEALY: Further investigations revealed that her card had been used at a cash point in the early hours of the morning.
And in fact, further CCTV coverage showed that a car arrived outside the flat, picked Martin up in the early hours of the morning,
traveled to a cashpoint, where he was to use Sophie's card to withdraw 250 pounds in cash.
And it's apparent from the text messages surrounding that journey, that the person who picked him up
was a drug dealer. He was getting cash out in order to buy yet more cocaine, which he then took after Sophie
had died that night. NARRATOR: Having killed Sophie, Martin scrawled a message on the family whiteboard.
RICHARD VANDENBERGH: What Martin had written on the whiteboard was really important for the case,
because it showed that he had made an admission of sorts around what he had done,
"she deserved it." ALEXANDRA HEALY: He couldn't explain what he'd written. And he couldn't account for it, because he
said he was now off his head because of the drugs that he'd taken. So we can see in his head how he's perceiving this murder.
He thinks he's a victim. He thinks she caused this, she brought all this on herself,
and he is entirely justified. NARRATOR: Throughout the trial, Martin Cavanagh continued
to maintain his innocence. Would his version of events be believed? ALEXANDRA HEALY: It's extremely difficult, whether you're
prosecuting or defending, to even begin to predict what a jury will do. And the moment you start thinking you might know,
they will always surprise you. NARRATOR: On the 10th of December, the jury returned their verdict.
Had Martin's tale of self-defense, of an accidental death that was not his doing,
sewn enough doubt in the jury's minds? The jury didn't believe him. They convicted him of murder.
Cavanagh was sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum term of 16 years to be served.
He clearly had a very jealous personality. And he clearly could not accept that Sophie wanted
to move on with her life. He accepted that he drank and took cocaine, both on the night
and on other occasions, and it's likely that both alcohol and cocaine would exacerbate any feelings
of paranoia and jealousy. NARRATOR: When Sophie met Martin Cavanagh, she was a young woman who was determined to succeed.
JANE MONCKTON SMITH: She got into a relationship. She committed to him. She couldn't have known when she first
met him how dangerous he was. NARRATOR: When Martin's controlling and jealous ways
began to grind her down, Sophie took the decision to leave him. But by then, it was too late.
Martin had decided that she would be his or nobody else's. RICHARD VANDENBERGH: I think it's really important
that people recognize the signs, and they understand what a healthy relationship looks like
and what a controlled relationship might look like. And if they're in that kind of relationship,
seek help, seek advice, speak to the police. If somebody is routinely possessive, routinely jealous,
and tries to control what you do or do not do, I say get out, and get out quick.
NARRATOR: In his sentencing remarks at the Old Bailey, Judge Michael Grieve said that Martin Cavanagh had begged
his wife to sleep with him and even offered a hundred pounds before acting out of pent-up jealousy.
"You had resolved," the judge told the court, "that if you could not have Sophie,
no-one else was going to. You caused a wholly unnecessary death." The man who had professed to the world
his love of family on an unmissable chest tattoo had taken his wife's life.

After Sophie Cavanagh left her husband Martin, he did everything he could to continue spending time with her and to stop her from meeting another men.

Though wedded couples vow to stay together until death do they part, this new true crime series looks at what happens when a groom or bride causes their beloved's death.

Brief Summary

Martin Cavanagh's obsessive jealousy leads to the murder of his wife, Sophie, after a controlling relationship spirals out of control.

Key points

Martin's Obsession. Martin Cavanagh's jealousy and possessiveness spiral out of control, leading to desperate measures.
Sophie’s Dreams. Sophie Cavanagh aspired to open her own beauty therapy salon, but faced financial struggles.
The Breaking Point. On Boxing Day 2016, Sophie tells Martin their marriage is over, escalating tensions.
Desperate Pleas. Martin's messages to Sophie reveal his obsession and desperation as their relationship deteriorates.
The Final Decision. Martin makes a chilling ultimatum to Sophie, leading to a dangerous confrontation.
The Last Chance. Martin concocts a story to manipulate Sophie into spending time with him.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

Get out, and get out quick.

Advice on possessive relationships.

1:03WatchJun 8, 2022

Tension

85/ 100High tension

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