Why Did He Do It? The Murder of Debbie Buxton | Murdered at First Sight | Forensic Files

[MUSIC PLAYING] PHIL HARDING: Debbie Buxton was, I think, the word is vivacious.
PIP SHORT: Debbie was a lover of the countryside. She loved walking by the river dove.
It is a beautiful place to walk. DAVID GEE: 27th of April, the sun had been shining,
which may have prompted Debbie to walk the dogs down here by the river. Tragically, the clouds soon descended.
Once we'd heard of Debbie's death, it was such a shock to the village and shocked everyone
involved. KERRY DAYNES: This woman was just out walking her dogs and she met with her killer.
DAVID GEE: It was quite a savage attack to the extent that the wound traveled right through her body
and really ended up with having her throat slashed. JOHN ANDERSON BCAC: It makes it really quite frightening
that a person can go out there and randomly kill another human being for no reason
whatsoever other than they are in the wrong place at the wrong time. PHIL HARDING: This chap was extremely dangerous
and he was still out there somewhere. Our main concern obviously was that he didn't carry out a further attack
before we could catch him. PIP SHORT: I remember a feeling as if I'd had a physical blow.
We all felt a, kind of, almost a personal hurt that it was something that had affected us not just because of how we felt
about Debbie and Ron, but also that we had had a great loss as well. [MUSIC PLAYING]
DAVID GEE: We're in the village of Hatton, which is basically a ribbon village that runs--
builds alongside the 850. There's some great people in Hatton and great community spirit.
PIP SHORT: Debbie loved this area. Yes, I think she came in one direction or another practically every day and with Ron
quite a lot of the time. They lived on the main road over there. And so they would walk along past all these fields
and the Cricket Club, and then they come down the lane from the main road. CHRIS THURMAN: Debbie worked for Ron.
She was his personal secretary. I know Ron had to leave the business quite a lot,
but he restored books and manuscripts and it was quite a tricky job. And, of course, while Ron was away,
Debbie would be in sole charge of the business. And they would run the business for us
as a very key player in the business. PIP SHORT: They were both clearly devoted to each other,
yes. You were looking at a very happy couple who very much found huge satisfaction in each other
and in their relationship. There was a sense, I think, for most of us that while they were very friendly with other people,
really it was each other that was the center of their lives. [MUSIC PLAYING] DAVID GEE: 27th of April, the sun had been shining,
which may have prompted Debbie to walk the dogs down here by the river an actual [INAUDIBLE]..
PIP SHORT: She loved walking by the River Dove. I seem to remember that it was a nice day.
It was one of those spring days with the sun and the flowers coming, out and everything
being as she would have loved to have it on that day walking by the river. CHRIS THURMAN: Ron had gone on a business trip to Paris.
I think-- from conversations afterwards, I think he was looking at some very important documents that
needed preserving, but he was desperate to get back home because it was Debbie's birthday and their wedding anniversary.
[PHONE RINGING] PHIL HARDING: The call came in from a dog walker who had been near the river,
walking his dogs along the bank. He's seen Debbie Buxton before walking the dogs down there regularly.
But the way the dogs were running around wildly and one was whining constantly, that made him cross the river
and see what the score was. He hoped at that point that perhaps Debbie just collapsed and was OK.
Obviously, when he found her he knew differently. [MUSIC PLAYING] It was obvious, as soon as you saw the body, that she'd
been violently attacked. What you couldn't see, of course, was the extent of the stab wounds
to the body she got clothes on. But certainly, all the wounds to the head, you could see that she'd been attacked
violently with something that it caused very serious injury. DAVID GEE: Ron arrived home and Debbie wasn't there
when normally she would be. And because it was such a nice evening, the dogs were gone.
So natural assumption, oh, she's out walk the dogs. I'll go and have a look for her.
KERRY DAYNES: So Ron sees two men and he says to them, have you seen a woman walking her two dogs?
And they say, well, we've actually found-- we found her body. PHIL HARDING: He insisted on going down.
He wanted to see and [INAUDIBLE] why. And when the police arrived, he was actually gathering the dogs
and putting them in the car. BRYANNA FOX: When they arrive on the scene and they see a body that was just so badly, brutally
murdered, and then the husband of the victim is standing right there, it makes sense, not
just investigatively, but statistically that he was the offender. So until he has an opportunity to display his alibi,
and explain where he was at, and go through why he wouldn't have killed her, it was likely that police would
assume he was the murderer. And they wanted to just make sure that he was in their custody and then
they work through the details. [MUSIC PLAYING] PHIL HARDING: Well, of course, it
was very unusual to have a situation, especially in an open field like this to suddenly
arrive and find the husband actually at the scene with the body. It's very strange for that to happen.
I've certainly not experienced that before. Ron wasn't arrested. He accompanied us to the police station
so that we could question him further and we could eliminate him from the inquiries.
KERRY DAYNES: A police investigation of this type is enormous. And you can't imagine the number of things that
start to happen simultaneously. So somebody, of course, is going to be questioning Ron,
somebody is going to be questioning the men who found Debbie's body, and then there's going to be police
all over the area and, of course, there's going to be a forensic team trying to gather
as much forensic evidence as they possibly can from Debbie before they're able to move her body.
[MUSIC PLAYING] PHIL HARDING: They secured the scene to the degree that nobody else could get anywhere near it
from any direction. They secured pathways into the scene in case there were anything like footprints or evidence
that lay in the field, both to the body and back to the road. Once scenes of crime had arrived,
they will call for a pathologist to come along, to have a look at the body and certify death, et cetera.
And then they would take pictures, photographs, examine the scene, and look for things like blood, footprints,
DNA, anything that had been left at the scene that could assist the inquiry. There was no indication that the body had been moved.
So it would appear that she was killed where the body was found. It's quite possible that she tried to run away
from her attacker, but we couldn't say that for certain from what we found at the scene.
KERRY DAYNES: This has happened in broad daylight, early evening, and there's not been any attempt
whatsoever to conceal the body. So the killer, whoever they are, is only concerned with the killing.
Nothing after that. And they're certainly not trying to cover their tracks in any way.
That's not forefront in their mind. It is all about their own needs and their own gratification.
PHIL HARDING: Because it's in an open field, trying to find bits of blood or anything of that description
is extremely difficult. We will be concentrating more on-- perhaps at that stage, trying to find the weapons
if the weapon were about, looking for any clues, such as bits of clothing that have been left,
things that might have been either in the offender's possession or in the victim's possession
that had been scattered about, and looking if those could be used for fingerprints or DNA
and examine later. DAVID GEE: Debbie would have been murdered just along-- from where we are
now, just along the riverbank. An attack of such severity, but those who attended the scene
and dealt with the case are still to a large or lesser extent traumatized by what they saw
and what they had to deal with, such was the savagery of the attack. PIP SHORT: I can actually remember very
vividly my husband phoned me. And when he told me what it was, I remember feeling
as if I had a physical blow. We all felt a almost a personal hurt that it was something that had affected us,
not just because of how we felt about Debbie and Ron, but also that we had had a great loss as well.
[MUSIC PLAYING] CHRIS THURMAN: We heard about Debbie's murder at the rotary club meeting on the Tuesday.
Obviously, complete shock, usual reactions. It was just unbelievable really. The last time I saw Debbie was this rotary dinner
dance a few days before she was murdered. DAVID GEE: I was a serving police officer
at the time of the murder. I didn't actually work on the case. It was a colleague of mine who rang me actually.
"There's an attack on a woman in Hatton by the river in the village." I said, I don't know.
What's that about? Well, it sounds really bad. I think it's going to be a murder.
We don't know who she is yet. But, of course, later on, it turned out to be poor Debbie Buxton who walking out with the two
Weimaraner dogs and who was actually looked upon as one of our own. And it being such a close knit community.
CHRIS THURMAN: Didn't know any of the details at the time. The details started to emerge after we discovered
that Ron had been arrested. And the emotions that you have then, of course, it's one thing for family purposes to be eliminated,
but it's another thing when someone's arrested. And sadly, your first thought is, well, no smoke without fire
and that's a dreadful feeling to have about someone. PIP SHORT: The problem was that because he caught the earlier
plane, he could have done it. The timing worked. Now, that for us, as his friends,
didn't really enter our thinking at all. It seemed completely logical that if he was going
to go out and celebrate that evening and he got a chance to get back earlier, he would take it.
But obviously, there was a discrepancy in his return time, which then meant that he could have
actually committed the crime. PHIL HARDING: Ron Buxton was telling us about his trip
to Paris, and why he'd came back early, and his planned romantic meal, et cetera.
All of this, we ought to double check, which means contacting the airline, what time did the plane land?
How long would it take to get from Birmingham in London back to his home? We had to check everything that he was telling us.
All this takes time. PIP SHORT: They allowed my husband to go and see him while he was with the police.
And at that stage, I think Ron's mind was just so full of the horror of it all and being unable to go.
And release this grief that he would have wanted to just made it worse. It made it worse [INAUDIBLE] stayed.
PHIL HARDING: Basically, we formed a timeline for his movements, where he was at any given time.
And that eliminated him from being at the scene and committing the murder. [MUSIC PLAYING]
BRYANNA FOX: After police were able to speak with Ron and establish his alibi and understand that he absolutely
was not the person responsible for the murder of his wife, they were able to then examine who
could have possibly done this. And that's where better forensics are needed. They're needed to do more investigation.
It really meant expanding their circle of who could be a suspect and trying to use forensics and witnesses
to try to fill in these gaps and understand what really happened in that case. PHIL HARDING: Well she'd been struck
over the head four times. One blow particularly smashed her skull, which would have
rendered her unconscious, but she was still alive at that point. Then she'd been stabbed with such force
that the instrument used had traveled right through her body on seven out of 11 stab wounds.
The amount of force needed to do that is actually tremendous. It must have been hectic, it must have been frantic,
it must have been really, really frightening. KERRY DAYNES: The injuries to Debbie
showed that she had been the victim of a blitz attack. This is ferocious. This really is.
This is somebody who has come equipped with not one, but two weapons and who is incredibly, incredibly angry.
This is rage in motion. So he's either angry at Debbie herself or at women in general.
PHIL HARDING: There were numerous lines of inquiry that we obviously needed to follow.
We ought to look at people in the area, we ought to look at any relatives, we ought to look
at people that she might have fallen out with, anybody who disliked her for any reason.
Really the lines of inquiry at that point were innumerable. KERRY DAYNES: So suddenly, that pool of potential people
grows and it grows massively. Look at the amount of violence that was used here.
How rare is that? So of course, they're going to start looking for people in the locality that have got similar types of offenses
and there's not going to be a lot of them. PHIL HARDING: One of the first things
we would do, we would look into Debbie's past and see whether she's got any enemies, whether somebody
hold a grudge against her, somebody had fallen out with her. To such a degree to do something like this, of course,
would be absolutely phenomenal. But we didn't get anywhere with that. She was well liked, she was well-known in the area,
she walked dogs here regularly. Inquiries were still continuing. It was only the next day.
And it takes a while to eliminate anybody. It was extremely busy and everybody-- everybody involved
was anxious to get to the bottom of this as quickly as we could. A number of people came forward to say they'd seen a man acting
suspiciously in the area. Particularly a fisherman on the other side of the river
had seen a man acting suspiciously while he was fishing. JOHN ANDERSON BCAC: Back in 1993,
I used to spend a lot of time fishing along the River Dove. I used to see Debbie walking by with the dogs regularly.
If she came near by walking, I'd be more static fishing. We'd have a quick chat for a couple of minutes.
I didn't know her very well, but she was a nice lady who just came down to clear her head like we all do with the countryside,
and walk her dog. She minded her own business. She was a lovely person to talk to.
Very well-known with the local people as a person that was down here every day walking.
[MUSIC PLAYING] I was actually fishing down by the river here, just minding my own business.
And I became aware of a person at the top of the bank on a bicycle that got black jeans.
The clothing they wore just looked completely out of place. There was something that made me feel uneasy.
Down by the side of me was a branch of a tree and I actually put my foot out and brought it closer to me
to defend myself, because that's how uneasy I felt with this person. I really didn't turn my back on them.
I really don't know why either. I couldn't say why I felt that way. They just didn't look as if they belonged there.
I felt very vulnerable is the word I would use. I felt very vulnerable standing here by the river at that time.
But eventually, after some time, he just moved on. He disappeared over the other side of the home
and had gone out of site. But even after that, I kept looking over my shoulder in case he came back.
It was just-- it's very, very hard to explain that feeling, but it was just a sense that something was wrong.
PHIL HARDING: The day after the events, we were contacted by a witness who had actually seen
a man riding an orange mountain bike across the bridge and carrying a pair of garden shears, which fitted in to what
we felt had happened at the scene with the wounds that had happened, et cetera. We thought straight away, well, perhaps there
could be the murder weapon. Inquiries found he'd also been seen again the day before at the church where he'd frightened
a couple of old ladies who were in the churchyard at the time to the degree that when they left and not to go past him,
they carried their little garden shears in front of them to show that they would defend themselves if he attacked them.
BRYANNA FOX: The thing about random killings is that they're not that premeditated.
He knew he wanted to commit murder, but he didn't know who, or when, or what the circumstances
were going to be like. He wasn't able to case a place or stalk her and know her behaviors and pattern of life.
This is something that had to be a little bit happenstance. PHIL HARDING: Well, we got a situation
whereby a man on an orange mountain bike, which is pretty distinctive, had been seen in the area over the previous two days
and actually on the day. He was actually seen on the riverbank actually in the same field where the murder took place that day.
And so obviously, he became very much a prime suspect. The man had got fairly long, bushy hair.
He was in his late 20s. He was quite rugged build. And that's really all we got to that stage.
KERRY DAYNES: By and large, killers choose isolated areas that they are very familiar with in order to kill.
And so the fact that this happened where it did suggest that this is somebody fairly local.
PHIL HARDING: Well, once this information was out there with the public, then obviously nobody had
been arrested at that point. And it caused widespread fear as it naturally would.
You can try and alleviate that fear to some degree by saying, well, we'll have extra patrols and we have no reason
to believe that a further attack will take place, but obviously we were concerned because
of the nature of the offense that something else could have. PIP SHORT: It was the violence of the attack
as much as the fact of it that made people feel not only very sad and horrified, but also quite
uneasy. And for a time, at least the whole area around where she walked was regarded with some fear
by a lot of people. WOMAN: Ron Buxton had returned home from a business trip to France and was expecting to go out to dinner,
but Debbie wasn't at home. Police say they've been in touch with other forces to see if there are any similarities
with the murders of Rachel NIckell and Jean Bradley. But at the moment, there's no connection.
At this point in time, we cannot connect this-- our offense with any other murder down the country.
We obviously looked at it very, very close. We are aware of the murders. [MUSIC PLAYING]
PHIL HARDING: It's the first time that I've ever been called to a body in the middle of a field
where there appears to be no motive whatsoever for the actual violence that's been used.
There was absolutely no evidence of any, sort of, sexual assault to a body. Clothing and not being raped or anything like that.
There was no evidence that anything had been stolen from her at the scene. So perplexing really in many ways.
Why, why on Earth would somebody kill this woman in the middle of a field that must [INAUDIBLE]??
[MUSIC PLAYING] DAVID GEE: So I was in the Derbyshire police force at the time and was actually at work when the news
broke about the attack. And of course, that's quite an alarming thing to happen.
Not an everyday occurrence. I think Derbyshire, at the time, was going through about 15, 16 murders a year,
which is obviously too many. But in terms of numbers, not that great. And every time a homicide happened, it
was quite rightly a big news. And this was made bigger news, in fact, because of the strange element involved, which is very unusual then
and it's still very unusual today. So the attack on Debbie Buxton really raised a level
in terms of not only the public interest in the area, but also the police interest across the forest area.
KERRY DAYNES: A crime like this has such a massive impact on us all really. I would say that they are like acts of terrorism.
So wherever this had taken place, this was going to be felt very widely by the community.
But the fact that this is in a very small, rural area where really there's not a lot of crime
just makes that impact even greater. So you can imagine that everybody was talking about it.
And I imagine that every woman for a 10, 15, 20, 25, maybe more mile radius must have been feeling the fear at that time.
PHIL HARDING: An officer who had just gone off duty and obviously had learnt about the murder came forward
and told us that we should really be having a look at a man by the name of David Bond.
He previously committed violent offenses against women and we should consider interviewing
him, seeing him, and eliminating him from the inquiry. Well, obviously, this was a very interesting development.
We searched the police database, looked at previous convictions, et cetera, and found that he had indeed
committed numerous offenses against women, very violent offenses. And that actually only been out of prison for about 11 weeks.
KERRY DAYNES: David Bond is 27 and he's living with his mom fresh out of prison.
So he's just 11 weeks out of serving an eight-year sentence for the assault of two girls, a 14-year-old and a 20-year-old.
And he left a 20-year-old with life-changing injuries and scars. He stabbed her several times, a brutal attack also that took
place in a riverbank location. PHIL HARDING: So that fitted in to the modus operandi of attacking lone women for no reason whatsoever.
They weren't sexually assaulted, there wasn't any sign of robbery, there wasn't anything
that gave a reason other than his mental state for these attacks. KERRY DAYNES: The similarities are just too
much for the police to ignore. PHIL HARDING: We went to his mother's house in Stretton.
He was out at that point. He'd gone to have his haircut. We stayed at the house and talking to his mother.
His mother said that he did own an orange mountain bike and that he had been out the previous afternoon.
So again, he became very strongly a suspect. When he came back, they saw that he fitted the brief description
that we got at that point and they asked him to accompany them to the police station
while further inquiries were made. [SIREN] [MUSIC PLAYING] Soon after Bond had been taken from his home
to the police station, we spoke again to his mother. His mother revealed that going for an [INAUDIBLE] was unusual.
She'd been on a team for a number of days because he looks scruffy. But she did say that he'd done exactly
the same thing after his previous attacks on women. She also said that on the day of the offense,
he'd arrived home around about 5:30 I believe, and that he'd got changed and asked her to wash
[INAUDIBLE] that got on it with grass stained and it had got dirt and was spotted on it.
KERRY DAYNES: It must be very difficult for a mother to have to acknowledge to herself
that her son is capable of such a dreadful act. But luckily, Bond's mom was sensible
and she knew she couldn't deny her son's history. And I think that she genuinely wanted to help the police
and prevent anything further from taking place. PHIL HARDING: David Bond was being interviewed as a witness.
His movements were such, according to him, that he'd been nowhere near the scene.
He'd been elsewhere and completely the opposite direction to where the murder took place during that day.
He told us that he'd been to look at a new bike. And in actual fact, that's what he'd also told his mother.
We became more and more suspicious. And at that point, in order to carry out further inquiries
and to interview him under caution, he was arrested on suspicion of the murder. At that stage, we were unaware of any connection between David
Bond and Debbie Buxton. And subsequent inquiries revealed that there was actually no connection
whatsoever between the two. CHRIS THURMAN: Debbie, she was just a lovely, sweet, bubbly
person, so inoffensive. And so in so many ways, this would have been a purely absolute evil random act of murder
without question. No motive. I cannot possibly see why anyone would want to destroy
such a lovely person frankly. PHIL HARDING: After we'd spoken to David Bond and got his account of his movements,
we were quickly able to disprove some of those. We traced the fact that he'd actually visited the Spread
Eagle Rolleston that day on two occasions on the day of the murder according to his story at the beginning.
He'd been nowhere near there. After he'd been arrested and he was confronted with that fact,
he changed his story and admitted that he had been there, but still denied being
anywhere near the murder scene. We looked at the route that he would have taken on his mountain bike to get to and from the scene.
So we searched in that area and we found a jumper that we later identified as being identical to one
that he'd been wearing at the time. Well, all this area was thoroughly searched.
It was searched more or less fingertip search, which is a massive field, but it had to be undertaken.
There was always the possibility, of course, that the assailant had thrown the weapons into the river.
So we had to get our underwater search team out and search the full length of the river
as it went past the field. [MUSIC PLAYING] JOHN ANDERSON BCAC: I came fishing along the river
again a few days later with a friend of mine. We walked for quite a long way downstream from where we
stand today and walked up along the river, fly fishing for trout. As we got a short way up from where we stand now,
there is a big red buoy in the middle of the River Dove. And what was even more bizarre was it started moving upstream
and we couldn't really work out why this red buoy was moving up against the current.
It was quite a bizarre thing. It doesn't sound it possibly now. And we stood staring and a diver bobbed up, and then
another diver, and they turned out to be police divers looking for weapons in the river.
[MUSIC PLAYING] PHIL HARDING: The divers were searching for a number of days actually.
But on the 1st of May, they were searching below the weir, and they came across a ball-peen hammer
and they came across half of shears. The bolt in the middle of the shears had been taken out
and the half shear was found there. We knew that somebody had been seen riding a bicycle in the area with a pair of shears.
By comparing the stubble to the shears themselves, we found that this was probably the murder weapon.
JOHN ANDERSON BCAC: There was a porta cabin in the field, which was a little bit odd
with people sitting outside. We waded in the river and they came over. It turned out that there were the police from the murder
squad that streamed all of the undergrowth from around the bushes and found various weapons.
So what it seemed as if it happened is this person had stashed various weapons on both sides of the river, just waiting for the right person
to come along. That put the wind up me a little bit, thinking that I could very well have
been the right person as well. I don't think he cared who he was out to murder from what we could make out from the police.
It was just out to murder a person. PHIL HARDING: We then thought, well, where did he likely to have got those from
and where would garden shears be used locally? So we thought of the church, the church yard.
We went up there and spoke to the grave diggers and the gardeners there. When we talked to the grave digger,
it was apparent that the other half of the shears was still in his tool shed and we recovered it from there.
We subsequently heard that examined and it matched the other half that we found in the river.
Also taken from there was the ball-peen hammer that was identified. And apparently, at the same time two belts went missing.
We found that the belt that David Bond was wearing when he was arrested fitted that description of one of the belts
that had been stolen. When it was shown to the grave digger, he identified it as being taken from his shed.
[MUSIC PLAYING] On the 2nd of May, Bond was charged with the murder of Debbie Buxton.
He appeared in court and was remanded in custody awaiting trial. BRYANNA FOX: The fact that Bond stole
these weapons from a church shed before he went to commit the murders indicates that he knew
he was going to commit murder. This is premeditated. It was not something that was spontaneous and indicative
of an argument between these two strangers that went wrong and escalated. It was something that he wanted to do,
went through steps to prepare to do, had the chance to cool off, and Bond chose to do it anyway.
CHRIS THURMAN: After Ron was released, there was absolute relief. And of course, we were able to reconcile our own feelings
with Ron, which of course, had been a lot of turmoil up to that point. DAVID GEE: The stranger element is so unusual that made it
all the worse for any person walking around, minding their own business, and Debbie Buxton just
happened to be in the wrong place unfortunately at the wrong time and fell prey to this violent attack.
PHIL HARDING: I was obviously very pleased. We were all very pleased that we'd managed
to charge somebody so quickly. The situation, at that point, as it is with every murder
is that the job's not finished at that point. We have still got to make loads more inquiries,
gather evidence. We still need to establish and prove beyond doubt that that person has committed the offense.
After Bond had been charged, we'd still got to try and gain as much evidence as we possibly could.
So we carried out a further search of the route that Bond would take down to the scene
of the murder from his home. We found a glove in a ditch. An examination of the glove, it was
found that there was blood inside the glove, which matched Bond's blood. And on the outside of the glove was blood that
matched that of Debbie Buxton. So it was very good evidence as far as we're concerned.
We made further inquiries about the glove it was shown. To David Bond's stepfather who identified
it as being identical to a glove he'd given Bond in January. KERRY DAYNES: It really is one thing to know who your man is
in your heart, but of course, you've got to build a case and you've got to have the physical evidence
to support your case. So when you find what we call that golden nugget of forensic evidence, it's a massively exciting time
for an investigation because you know you've got a good chance of securing a conviction.
PIP SHORT: My husband conducted Debbie's funeral and I attended. It was a marvelous funeral in the sense
that this church was packed. And there was an enormous sense of support for Ron and for the members of Debbie's
his family who were there. And it was one of those occasions where people seem to participate quite consciously in a way
to try and help people to feel that they have got people behind them. [MUSIC PLAYING]
PHIL HARDING: Bond, at court, was again expressionless. He took the occasional note both occasionally
to his defense barrister. He showed no emotion as such. He was sentenced to life imprisonment
with a minimum time of 40 years. He became very angry in the door. He was upset and he shouted out to accuse
the police that it was all of it-- that he had not done it. He was innocent. Shortly after he was sentenced, the judge
was asked to speculate on what Bond would have been given-- what the minimum sentence he would
have been given had he not had his previous convictions. And he wrote a letter saying that he thought
he would have sentenced him, under those circumstances, 25 years. That letter somehow came to light at a later time
and the actual sentence was reduced to 25 years. CHRIS THURMAN: I find that beggars belief quite frankly.
And it is concerning that what steps are taken when someone is let out on parole, are
they being properly monitored? Are we safe? Am I safe? Who knows? KERRY DAYNES: I suspect that Debbie was probably
aware of her attacker because I think that he probably stalked her for a while, waiting for the opportune moment
to assault her. So I think that she would have been incredibly nervous and then, of course, she would have
been aware of the first couple of blows to her. There were defensive wounds to her hands,
so she's clearly tried to protect herself at some point. So she wasn't killed instantaneously
and her last moments were spent in fear. [MUSIC PLAYING] PIP SHORT: After Debbie died and after people begun to come out
of the shock, there was a very strong feeling amongst the rotary wives that they would like
to do something in her memory. And one of them, who was a professional photographer,
had started to take photographs of Debbie's walk as a memento of that. And one of the other wives is a beautiful landscape
watercolor painter. And so she chose the three views of the church from the photographs that had been taken
and she painted three lovely watercolors of them. And so it starts, just as Debbie's walk did,
with the lane from the main road and then across the little lane to the church. And that's the view you get from the main road
and as you walk towards it. And the central one was from just opposite the church,
the left gate entrance there. They were chosen because the church is set in Midland
beside the River Dove. And it was the area that Debbie so much loved. PHIL HARDING: Bond, after serving his minimum sentence,
was fully entitled to apply for parole. Fortunately, the parole panel refused to give him parole
or send him to an open prison based on information that they got at that time. In my view, if I met Bond, I would
be extremely concerned should he be released back into society. JOHN ANDERSON BCAC: It was an awful crime.
It was a totally random crime. Why does he deserve to be ever free again, ever? And for him to come up for parole,
I can't think of anybody that should think that he should be paroled and should be free again.
Now, he needs to stay in prison till the day he dies. PHIL HARDING: David Bond showed no emotion whatsoever.
He made no admissions to the murder. He was a man who showed no remorse whatsoever.
People tell me that there's good in everybody. I never saw any good in David Bond.
He was, in my view, evil. He's a very, very, very dangerous man. CHRIS THURMAN: After the event, Ron and I
became much closer friends and then we did socialize quite a lot. The room would confide in us up to a point
we'd have no discussion. Then suddenly, it would all come back and he'd say, enough is enough.
And he would have to stop. One can only imagine what he must have gone through. He was very brave.
He handled it very well, but he was always there underneath. He got that for the rest of his life,
and that's the tragedy of when these things happen. DAVID GEE: I don't think Ron ever recovered from seeing
his wife in that position. Who would? Such a traumatic event. He had to move on and he certainly did,
but the memory of that image, I would suggest, plus the fact that it was well-known that they had
a very, very strong, loving relationship would be difficult for him to dismiss. And I know that he carried--
he carried his heartache to his grave. PIP SHORT: Debbie loved this area. I think that was part of the sorrow at all in a way.
And it really made people who lived near feel as if somehow the beauty had been sullied for a long time.
That it had been something which not just killed Debbie, but damaged the whole place itself for a while.
It's still referred to, from time to time, as, Oh, that's where there was that murder.
And that's sadly what happens with places. They hold on to something that happens there, good or bad.
[MUSIC PLAYING]

EPISODE 5 – DEBBIE BUXTON

In April 1993, 35-year-old Debbie Buxton is walking her dogs in the village of Marston on Dove in Derbyshire, when she crosses paths with a man that she’s never seen before. A chance encounter with a stranger leads to a grisly crime that sends shockwaves throughout the United Kingdom.

Even in the idyllic English countryside there are monsters lurking, waiting for the moment to strike. Is there anywhere left where you can feel truly safe in public? Share your thoughts in the comments and also like and subscribe if you’re looking forward to seeing more episodes of Murdered At First Sight. Murdered At First Sight is a true crime documentary series that tells the first-hand stories of the most complex and hard-to-solve homicide cases: murders committed by strangers.

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Brief Summary

Debbie Buxton was murdered in a brutal attack, leading to a complex investigation and the arrest of David Bond.

Key points

The Tragic Death of Debbie Buxton. Debbie Buxton, a beloved local figure, was brutally murdered while walking her dogs, shocking the community.
A Community in Shock. The murder of Debbie Buxton left the village reeling, as friends and neighbors struggled to comprehend the tragedy.
The Nature of the Attack. Investigators describe the savage nature of Debbie's murder, raising fears of a random killer on the loose.
The Impact of a Crime. The attack on Debbie Buxton shocked a small, rural community, raising fear among residents.
David Bond's Violent Past. David Bond, just out of prison, had a history of violent offenses against women.
Murder Weapon Discovery. Police divers found a ball-peen hammer and half of shears believed to be the murder weapon.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

This woman was just out walking her dogs and she met with her killer.

Kerry Daynes reflects on the tragic circumstances of Debbie's death.

0:41WatchNov 10, 2022

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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