Meet, Marry, Murder - Season 1, Episode 8 - Lawrence - Full Episode | Forensic Files

ian and sally lawrence high achievers ian had learned to fly and sally had worked her way up from pa to md ian
lawrence was a pilot and so was i and i actually introduced them to each other she was basically looking for a partner
and i said well i know somebody who i thought at the time would be ideal john bolting a father figure in sally's
life thought them a perfect match but a car crash would claim the life of sally lawrence leave her husband
apparently injured but being treated in hospital detectives arrive at his bedside it was
quite clear at that time that his injuries weren't as severe as first portrayed to me i then made a decision
that mr lawrence would be arrested on suspicion of murder had an airline pilot forgotten that cars
can tell investigators much about how they've been driven data recorders are contained within many modern vehicles
so you end up with windows snapshots of the crash what would a vehicle's digital record
tell detectives searching for the truth in the case of mr mrs lawrence [Music] [Music]
when ian lawrence and sally perks met it seemed that two soul mates had come across each other
ian lawrence was seemingly a very successful man he had been an airline pilot they he was a successful businessman
sally had worked her way up from being pa to the managing director at the chemical spills company and she was
doing particularly well [Music] very very bubbly incredible enthusiasm for life always smiling you know and uh always
looked on the bright side of everything no matter what it was she was always on the on the plus side you know
nothing was ever half empty with sully you know and yeah i thought the world of her
john bolting wanted her to be happy and he thought he knew the right man for her
she was basically looking for a partner and i said well you know i know somebody who
i thought at the time would be ideal when sally was introduced to it and they got on really well and
quite soon were married in a very lavish extravagant wedding i do remember her asking me if i would
go to church and give her away and i said yes absolutely i would providing she asked her father first because
they'd fallen out and i'm very happy to say that she did ask her dad and he did say yes and he did come and give her
away and it was quite um quite a doe they got married instant james the greater church in leicester
and uh they were somewhere around about between 200 and 250 people it's a big church a lot of
people in there they've splashed out on the reception and it's really sort of lavish
celebration and everything looks absolutely fine two people very much in love big wedding good job good future
they led off fifteen thousand quid for the fireworks i mean the display went on for about 40 minutes something like that
it was quite extraordinary i've never seen anything like it [Music] so sally and ian began married life with
a bang and for a few years the marriage sparkled they lived in a home which sally had bought the couple had a baby
they are parents who are older than perhaps many he's 40 she's in their late 30s
but they don't on this child and children can sometimes have a good or a bad effect on relationships it seems in
this case it was a good effect because it bound them together more and they both loved being
parents sally's career was going from strength to strength her boss and mentor handed
over the reins of the business to her and she began running the company she absolutely agreed she took to the job
like a doctor walter i couldn't believe it how good she was but for ian lawrence things weren't
going quite so well in 2007 that seems to be the beginning where things started to go wrong for ian
lawrence and he was sacked from his job as an airline pilot and that seemed to set in motion a kind
of a downward spiral it's from this point that the relationship really started to go downhill and to turn sour
she told me she would have confined an awful lot in me and it was it was apparent to me that
things were were going really really wrong ian became moody short-tempered jealous
perhaps of sally's continued success the first cracks began to appear in this perfect looking life and marriage when
he had lost his job as a pilot and him losing his job coincided with sally being on a period of very
swift advancement in hers she told me things that were not right i knew that they were not you know
sharing a room together i knew that she was spending a lot of time away with a family in derbyshire
so you've kind of got this reversal you've got ian being in the position of being the breadwinner being the person
with the glamorous job he loses that and at the same time sally is on her way up to a position of
power quite often in some relationships that look almost perfect from the outside things
are very very different behind the scenes and where you have this almost sometimes you might think it's like a
managed vision of what the family is that usually means that there's somebody in the background who's very controlling
and i think probably that ian lawrence was a very controlling individual [Music]
there is clear evidence that was the case we were in a local public on to have a business lunch and she was telling me
that she was really frightened of him and that um you know she was frightened of what he would do
as time went on i think those cracks got really big and although that they were living together still they were living
separately so the marriage was falling apart right in front of his eyes as the marriage began to fail so ian
tried to reinvent himself as an entrepreneur he started a number of small businesses
he would again appear to be a great success sally would be impressed he then set up some businesses and
latterly he was running a trailer business locally in leicester he genuinely thought that the marriage
was worth saving and he wanted to save it and he also had a share in a go-kart racing
business which was based at leicester airport this is very much a man who wants to be
in control this was a man who insisted that his wife fall back in love with him again which
clearly wasn't going to happen all of his business ventures failed friends suggested to ian that he was
trying too hard he was noticeably changed from the high-flying successful pilot with a confident way
it's pretty clear to see that this was a term for the worst for their relationship
[Music] one of the things that that controlling people really do not deal with very well
at all is when they are challenged and usually their home life their family their
children their financial status is is the way they perceive themselves in the world and when that starts to
crack they can get quite panic stricken as time went by sally could no longer face living within the relationship had
broken down she wanted to move on with her life and it becomes apparent that the relationship had broken down between
ian and sally in 2012 sully actually filed for divorce and it was that divorce that seems to have unsettled
things at that point sally had commenced another relationship with another man she wanted a new relationship and that
would have been incendiary for somebody like ian lawrence at least at this point there was the
facade that they were still together that he was still in control and in a lot of ways he did still have a lot of
control over her because they were still living together but she was going to leave
and that would have escalated things dramatically she was looking to move on and just
start a new life away from here things between ian and sally get so bad that she asks him to leave the house and
he refuses stays there but they are small intents and purposes living separately under the same roof they'd
been living separate lives for for over a year although living in the same house
and they were sharing custody of their 10 year old son the relationship was stressful
for sally what had begun as the perfect marriage had turned into a prison she felt she
couldn't escape ian was refusing to leave her home and refusing to accept that the marriage was over i said at the
time to sully i said don't worry all bullies are cowards i said the chances are he won't
do anything but i couldn't have been more wrong living under the same roof but leading
separate lives tensions were high in the lawrence household and sally was desperate to move on
witnessing her one-time high-achieving husband reduced to a frightening wreck she would have seen first hand the
escalation in his anxiety and his anger and his resentment and she would have been
very well aware that perhaps he was becoming quite threatening and it was probably quite an
intimidating atmosphere in that house during this time months after sally had told ian of a new
relationship ian lawrence was still refusing to accept that the marriage was over and was unrealistically hoping to
convince sally to stay with him ian has the aim to try to patch things up try and make the marriage
the relationship and the family work but sally doesn't think that's the way to go
she doesn't think that that can be done she was looking to move on and just start a new life away from here
telling ian once and for all that there was no future in the marriage was to be the trigger behind what appeared to be a
car accident on a road in leicestershire england in october 2012. ian in the background was
refusing absolutely refusing to let go his whole identity was tied up in this family his
whole status in the world and there was no way in his head that he was going to let her
as he saw it do this to him no one but he knew that ian had set a date for murder the
divorce proceedings were ongoing uh we found out that the decree nissi was was due to be served on monday the 8th of
october while sally planned her life without him ian lawrence was planning how to get what he felt he deserved
which in his case meant the proceeds from the sale of the shared house a house he had not paid for
the house was at the time valued at three hundred thousand pound there's a lot of equity in it that was all in
sally's name he had nothing and they'd agreed terms and then a couple of days before what one day before um he he
changed the terms and said he wanted half of the house and she said no he wasn't getting it
sally had texted her close friends and her daughters and just raising some concerns
around ian's demeanor he was demanding more money out of the house she was saying in some of her text
messages that she felt threatened she didn't want to be alone in the house with him
one of them said she'd locked herself in her bedroom she feared that he would actually kill
her one day this is one of the really big red flags that we see when this kind of thing
happens that the victim actually foretells what could possibly happen to them ian was fixating on a date
october 8th 2012 the day of the decree nissi the day he would get his hands on a family home and
an insurance payout but only if sally was dead sally also had a life insurance and that would have given in 250 000
so when we're looking at potential motives for murder there aren't that many but two of the
main ones are jealousy and greed and they're both motives that ian would have had
and i think he felt he was running out of time and he needed to put his plan into action he wouldn't have wanted
sally to be with anybody else and then the financial side that he would gain through sally dying
before the decree in ec then that was substantial to him as well it's a surprising fact
more often than not in these cases where somebody absolutely refuses to let go and their behavior starts to escalate
that they may make the decision that they're going to kill the person who they see as causing all the angst in
their life once ian lawrence had decided upon his plan sally's fate was sealed there was
no going back then it was going to happen and lawrence's weapon of choice would be
a car as a pilot he felt he had the skills to maneuver an engine the way that he
wished ian lawrence made the decision that he was going to kill sally and he started
to plan for that and it seems that what he decided he was going to do was make her death look like an accident so that
he could protect himself he devised a plan to actually crash the car into the tree
on the road near where they lived iam's practical man and he was an intelligent man and he put a lot of thought into his
plan the car crash he was planning would happen on the ghatri road in odb leicestershire
he decided upon the road where he was going to do it picked out the tree that he was going to hit done some dummy runs
or reconnaissance runs to to see what it was like there work out the time of day when it was best to do
it the murder spot picked he then needed to manipulate things to ensure that sally
would be in his car the weekend before the divorce would be finalized their child was on a school
trip and this would mean that ian and sally would be left in the house without him and that's something sally felt she
couldn't face and didn't want to happen so she made arrangements to go and stay indeed
with a boyfriend she had her overnight bag packed she had a handbag with a purse and a
phone all ready to go on the back seat of her car and that would have been around between
5 and six pm on that saturday evening sally was ready to drive away in her car the other difficulty that he
had was getting sally actually to get into the car because it was so old and so grubby
she never went in it she wouldn't go in it she refused to go at it most times so he had to come up with a plan that
was going to put her in the passenger seat of that car so that he could do what he wants to do
but she didn't get in to her car and drive away and some of her friends thought that that was very unusual she
actually got into his car so he must have somehow and we don't know how got her to get
into his car sally's car was very clean and tidy pristine inside very well kept ian's car
was more like a workshop it was full of junk full of rubbish sally was always well dressed and her
daughters would say that she would have never got in that car voluntarily in which i don't know how he ever got her
into that car it's an old banger and i just bought her a new jaguar so i don't know what happened there i never will no
i don't suppose he may have frightened her into getting the car he may have told some plausible
story whether he she was coerced whether she was forced we do not know only ian lawrence knows the answer to that
question but she did get into the car and that was the last time anyone saw her alive
but what we do know is that she left her home address in the passenger seat of that peugeot and was then driven along
towards the racecourse and then along stoughton road towards the airport [Applause]
he had adapted the car to suit his needs for the crash he had planned so at the time ian lawrence had a maroon
red peugeot 406 estate i think at the time it would have been about 10 years old
had a private number plate on it which felt windy which um alluded to his flying days i think some of his
friends called in that as his nickname it was so it's a big big side estate car he had her in the position that he
wanted with him in control in an area he knew intimately he had a go-kart track just up the road
we used to go from home to every day so that's the route that he took with sully in the car
as he drove towards where he knew he was going to crash the car he suddenly leaned over
and he unclicked sally's seatbelt he had to wait until it was too late for sally to realize what was happening but
he had to get that seat belt off of her before they hit the tree or else it could have saved her and he then put
himself into the brace position and drove straight into a tree at 50 miles an hour
in a collision of a magnitude of 50 miles an hour there's a huge amount of energy that's dispersed in a collision
if you remove all of the restraint systems in a vehicle that are designed to protect you the likelihood of injury
goes up incredibly and therefore your likelihood of suffering fatal injuries are increased
greatly this was a high impact collision with a motor vehicle and a very large tree the car
had an impacted uh almost square on but mainly on the on the passenger side and the the hole at the front of the car had
crumpled up so it was a significant impact if you're not wearing a seat belt when
the vehicle stops moving your inertia causes you to travel forwards in the case where a seat belt isn't
being worn and there's a sudden deceleration of the vehicle the occupant moves forward and you can often see them
striking the windscreen and you end up with damage to the inside of the windscreen pushing it outwards
and that was how sally was found she died on the scene probably aware in her last few seconds what was happening
it would have been quite a scary moment particularly in the last few seconds at a speed of 50 miles an hour closing in
on a tree would have been quite scary the airline pilot had used his skills to fatal effect
and not without risk to himself the simple act of driving a car deliberately into a tree
at 50 miles an hour without breaking is something i think many people would find
very difficult to do it's a high risk strategy driving a car into a tree with the hope that it's going to go so
perfectly well that you're going to survive and the other person isn't but it still shows a very reckless nature he
was willing for it to go wrong he felt so strongly he was probably willing to die if that's
what happened but the important thing was that she did i found out the next day the next
morning it was absolutely horrendous i was with my best friend and i just went into shock i think
i think it was about our past midnight so going into the 7th of october when i received a call
from one of my detective inspectors the passenger in the vehicle that has collided with a tree
had died at the scene and the driver of the vehicle who was a male uh had been taken to hospital and appeared to be
unconscious um and had on on the face of it some trauma and some potential brain injuries
ian lawrence stood to own the family home outright and to benefit from a 250 000 pounds insurance payout he had
survived the car crash and was going to be rushed to hospital whilst sally lay dead in the passenger seat
had he committed the perfect murder ian lawrence's story after the accident was a kind of a low risk strategy really
because he pretended that he couldn't remember anything if you can't remember anything you can't be picked up on lies
through meticulous planning ian lawrence had murdered his wife to investigate as
his own injuries seemed oddly superficial in this case there was a huge disparity
in the injuries suffered by both of the occupants in the vehicle the driver suffering relatively low level injuries
for an impact of this type and the front seat passenger sustaining fatal injuries
the police and the paramedics arrived at the scene and i think there were suspicions
straight away especially with the paramedics there were some comments around whether or not he was feigning
some of his injuries and feigning unconsciousness ian lawrence was pretending that he was
unconscious but he he wasn't acting that out awfully well and the paramedics would be very used to seeing people who
who really are unconscious and they told of their suspicions to the police the fire brigade had attended and had
actually cut the occupants out of the vehicle because the doors wouldn't open that was the severity of the impact the
first two people to arrive on the scene one was a retired police officer and the
other one was a retired fireman and they knew straight away that something was wrong he was feigning
being unconscious and they they knew that something was completely wrong the condition that i was being told of the
driver was that he was in and out of consciousness was displaying signs of trauma
but nothing visibly physically so he had no cuts no apparent broken bones despite ian's odd behavior and the
reservations of paramedics on the scene he was admitted into hospital he had been in an accident and seemed to be
showing signs of a severe head injury he was displaying symptoms equivalent to a seven on the glasgow coma scale
so the glasgow coma scale is used to ascertain somebody's consciousness and alertness when they've been involved in
some kind of trauma usually head trauma and they rate from 15 being fully conscious fully mobile down to three
which means you'd be lying there in a coma and and probably going to die so to be scored as a seven by medical
experts at that time would put mr lawrence with some severe head injuries that on the face of it weren't apparent
there didn't appear to be any bruising any swelling or any lacerations that would cause him to have a glasgow coma
scale of seven at the hospital ian lawrence continued to appear to feign injury by this time the nurses caring for him
had become suspicious later on a nurse contacted us in the incident room saying she wasn't
comfortable with a patient that she treated that evening and believed that he may have been feigning some of his
injuries elsewhere another aspect of ian's story was unravelling so when the police
started their investigation they were able to find out a lot of information and i don't think people realize quite
how sophisticated these crash scene analysis are especially with the computerization of
cars and the knowledge we have about things like tire marks from looking at the scene they weren't
satisfied that this was a pure accident they noticed that the roads were dry the bend on which the accident happened
was not a severe bend in fact it would have been drivable to upwards of 70 miles an hour on and
that would be to remain on the same side of the carriageway it became clear to investigators that
there was no clear cause for the crash and further anomalies were appearing all of the time
mark crouch is a crash scene investigator who examines cases just like this one when a tyre slows it will
lock those kind of marks can be seen on a road surface but there weren't any found on this
occasion when a vehicle leaves the road particularly on mud grass verge you can get quite a
distinctive mark where the tire drags the grass drags the mud along and you would expect that to happen even with
quite a low level of braking what was found on the verge in this case was a rolling tire mark
that wheel didn't lock out the car had gone into the tree and had not slowed down and they were also able
to show that there were lots of other places that the car could have come to a stop there were escape routes either
side of the tree there was a farm gate entrance that would have offered little resistance if you'd wanted to drive
through that if your brakes had failed you'd have gone into a field and gradually just coasted to a stop so then
we looked at the actual tyre tracks and and the road that led to the point of impact
and there was no apparent skid marks on the tarmac further evidence emerged as detectives
dug deeper the seat belt clasp the retainer of the driver was protruding upwards and that
is a sign that that has been in an impact and there was abrasions on the seat belt itself consistent with it
being in place at point of impact the passenger side the clasp retaining claps was sitting
down in the normal position indicating that the seat belt had not been engaged on the passenger at the time of impact
her family members were adamant that she was very very safety conscious she would
never get in a car without putting on her seat belt it was second nature to her and nobody had ever seen her in a
vehicle without her seatbelt on for ian lawrence apparently slowly regaining consciousness in a hospital
bed a new challenge what story could he tell the police to explain the mounting evidence against him
it was about four o'clock in the morning when i had a conversation with the collision
investigator and as a result of everything that he'd relayed to me i then made a decision
that mr lawrence would be arrested on suspicion of murder while he was in hospital it was quite clear at that time
that his injuries weren't as severe as first portrayed to me and he could really at any time discharged
himself and walked out of hospital so to prevent that and in line with what i knew um he was
arrested on submission of murder he said he got no memory of it he was unconscious
memory loss was a convenient claim at the time but it didn't match the fact that medical practitioners could find no
head injuries it wasn't going to convince the police he was then released from hospital later
that morning and then taken to a nearby police station he was assessed for suitability for
detention booked into the police station and then he was underwent a series of interviews
in his first interviews mr lawrence claimed that he had a total loss of memory um he didn't remember
anything after five o'clock and he regained his memory he remembers being in hospital at about nine o'clock that
night so there's a four hour gap there where he he couldn't remember what had happened he
underestimates all of the other people around him and that's probably because he's got a very high opinion of himself
and he he it doesn't uh occur to him that anybody would see anything other than an accident because he said so
ian lawrence was a prime suspect in the murder of sally perks who became sally lawrence but detectives
have to prove their case beyond doubt and ian was sticking to his story so ian maintained throughout his police
interview his amnesia and therefore his innocence he denied that there was any anything wrong with the relationship
he denied that he'd intentionally crashed his car he denied that he'd unclipped sally's
seatbelt prior to the point of impact facing a resolute ian lawrence investigators needed a breakthrough it
would come in the shape of a little known fact about cars they have the motoring equivalent of the
black box found in aeroplanes and are designed amongst other things to record the details of an engine's performance
we found out that within the vehicle there was a electronic control unit that controlled the deployment of the airbags
vehicles were fitted with supplementary restraint systems srs for short they control everything the the airbags the
seat belts but in order to control those it needs to decrypt some of the signals
that are going around the car but the vehicle needs to make a decision when it's going to deploy an airbag that's an
electronic control module often shorted to an acm and it decides when the crash is happening and decides when to deploy
the airbag lots of those acms record the events of a crash so you end up with windows snapshots of the information
that that black box had at the time that the crash occurred the so-called black box revealed the
lengths that ian went to to ensure sally's death so that was recovered from the wreck of the vehicle and we took
that to peugeot and a technician there was able to read the data from that and from the data held within that box we
ascertained that the passenger airbag had been switched off and had been switched off some six
cycles prior to the crash that was was groundbreaking for us we could actually prove that somebody had turned
that airbag off intentionally and that's why it didn't deploy in this collision we have a number of
different factors striking the tree on the passenger side the seat belt not being worn the air bag
being deactivated the lack of clear braking marks as the vehicle left the verge individually those pieces
aren't that significant but when you start looking at all of those together it starts to build quite a compelling
picture that something unconventional happened in this collision in order to disable the airbag
it takes a physical act you have to have the key to the vehicle insert it into a
socket press down into the spring and turn it physically so it couldn't have been done
accidentally it was an intentional act to turn that airbag off so detectives had the method but at that
stage they felt they didn't have the motive ian was maintaining that the couple were
in a close relationship to him um they lived together they've been living together for over 10 years
they had a 10 year old son they had a normal family life and he didn't allude to any problems with the relationship at
all so as part of our ongoing investigation throughout that next day we're in contact with sally's family
members through her sister her daughters and it becomes apparent that the relationship had broken down between
ian and sully they'd been living separate lives for for over a year although living in the same house um the
relationship was stressful and we we then later found out that in fact sally had commenced another
relationship with another man um and had been in that relationship for about 10 months
this coupled with the black box evidence was enough for detective neil castle to
make his move that on the face of it was fresh evidence for us it was something that we
weren't aware of before wally and lawrence had been in custody either made policy decisions that was fresh evidence
sent officers out to further arrest lawrence he was brought back into custody a short interview and then we
presented those facts to the cps and they gave us authorized to charge murder ian lawrence was arrested for murder but
he was maintaining his innocence and police had to convince a jury that these were not just coincidences or ian
lawrence might still walk free and he was already planning what he might say to get away with murder
he said he had a dream while he was in prison and it came back to him in a dream
saying that he had a medical condition and he could prove that his leg spasm ian lawrence had been charged with the
murder of his wife investigators were painstakingly piecing together events before the car crash that lawrence was
still claiming had been an accident it emerged that central to what happened that october evening was sally's planned
trip sally was planning to go away for the weekend on that saturday evening and she had her overnight bag
packed and that would have been around between five and six pm on that saturday evening
why then had she got into the car with ian clearly she would not have left a handbag there and keys and money
to get into his car this filthy car that she'd never get into unless she'd been forced
part of the defense evidence that the jury had to consider was that lawrence had crashed because of a leg spasm
ian lawrence eventually came up with a version of events that while he was driving along that road he had a seizure
in his leg which then pressed down on the accelerator increased speed of the vehicle he was
unable to move his leg and engage the brake but he did manage to get his foot off
the accelerator but the vehicle glided and continued towards the tree he didn't give any
explanation as to why the passenger side took the full full force of the impact the prosecution evidence was put to the
jury they were told that sally known for her safety consciousness had not been wearing a seatbelt at the time of the
crash ian appeared to be prepared for the crash by adopting a brace position that could be concluded from a mark left
on his chest by the watch that he was wearing it was a large face watch and visibly
it looked a similar size to the bruce on his chest and the only way that that could have got there is that if he and
lawrence had adopted a brace position by folding his left arm right arm under his seat belt and then on impact
the seat belt would have tensioned and squeezed his arm and hence his watch tightly into his chest causing that
bruise he knew that he was going to strike that tree and yet he had peace of mind to adopt
that brace position he also must have raised his legs up because there was no impact and no injury to either of his
legs and yet the car was concertina quite badly the car's controls had been altered to prevent an airbag deploying a
job lawrence would have found straightforward turning passenger airbags off is quite
an easy thing to do it's a function that's built into many vehicles because if you wanted to fit a child seat to the
front of the car for example it's unsafe to have an airbag that would go off in those scenarios
most of them activated on a key so you can just turn it off on the side of the vehicle to stop the
airbag activating in a crash laptop at the scene of the crash he had pretended to be unconscious
not too convincingly to the paramedics who arrived even at a crime scene those suspicions of the paramedic are
probably the thing that sparked the investigation so ian lawrence made another mistake there he
tried to fake being unconscious and he clearly didn't know how to do that and as investigators probed the
timelines of the lives of ian and sally it became clear that they were far from happy and that ian stood to gain
financially from sally's death to do so however might not be possible after their divorce was final the former
airline pilot had a deadline to meet he decided that he was going to try to murder sally and try and do that in a
way which as far as he could see would be the perfect murder and if he succeeded there was much to
gain i know why he did it he did it for money he he was a failed businessman he got
three small companies all of which were struggling he murdered her on a saturday
the decree nice high was due two days later on the monday and um sally had been very successful she had a
great job she was well paid she had a lovely big house at that time was worth i don't know
350 000 pounds something like that and he had nothing despite his careful planning and
continued claims of innocence the jury unanimously found him guilty of the murder of his wife
i had no misgiving thoughts however i knew what the verdict was going to be everybody cheered at the time i didn't
ian lawrence made one last desperate bid to escape justice he appealed offering evidence of an excuse that he had raised
in court during his trial he claimed to have multiple sclerosis which had caused
a spasm in his leg so that he had unwillingly pushed down hard on the car's accelerator
i mean it was just so pathetic you know there was nothing wrong with the steering wheel even if what
ian lawrence had said about having a leg spasm were true he could still have steered the car away from the tree but
what they found in the appeal was that his leg spasm would not have caused the accident as it happened
he got life with a minimum of 24 years the judge put three years extra on for it being for money
he put another three years on for him using the car as a weapon to kill her and then he put another three years
on because it was premeditated the couple had met and appeared the perfect match on a lavish wedding day
they had begun their own family before ian's world disintegrated around him leaving him bitter
angry eventually he had killed his wife but justice had been done so everything we do as police officers
is for the families of the victims and it's a great feeling when you can look the family in the eye and you know that
you've done you and your team have done everything you can to secure and preserve the evidence to then
put a case together presented at court and convince the jury that that person was guilty of that offence and that's
what we did ian lawrence will not be eligible for parole until 2037. sally was 47 when she died and was
described in court as inspirational caring and kind [Music] you

Sally Lawrence brought her husband Ian the status and wealth he craved. When she tried to leave him, he couldn't bear losing it all.

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

Ian Lawrence murdered his wife Sally in a staged car crash to gain financially from her death amid their failing marriage.

Key points

A Perfect Match. Ian and Sally seemed like soul mates, both high achievers in their fields.
The Cracks Begin to Show. Ian's job loss leads to jealousy and tension in their marriage.
A Marriage in Crisis. Sally files for divorce, escalating tensions with Ian.
Planning the Unthinkable. Ian meticulously plans Sally's murder to look like an accident.
The Fatal Crash. Ian crashes the car, resulting in Sally's death.
Ian's Arrest. Ian Lawrence was arrested on suspicion of murder while recovering in the hospital.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

I couldn’t believe how good she was.

Referring to Sally's success in her career.

4:28WatchJun 8, 2022

Tension

85/ 100High tension

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