World's Most Evil Killers - Season 2, Episode 2 - Mark Bridger - Full Episode | Forensic Files

♪♪ -On the 3rd of October, 2012, Coral Jones gave an emotional televised appeal for the safe return of her daughter, April.
The 5-year-old had been missing for 36 hours. She had vanished while playing outside her home
in the rural Welsh town of Machynlleth. -[ Sobbing ] There must be someone out there
who knows where she is and can help at least find her. We are desperate for any news.
April is only 5 years old. Please... Please, help find her. -The entire community came together
to help the police search for the missing girl. There was a real hope that April would be found alive.
-They were all thinking, and, of course, her parents were thinking, she is gonna be found.
There is no doubt in my mind that she is going to be found. -But the search would be in vain.
A local 46-year-old man named Mark Bridger, who was known to the family, had abducted and murdered April.
I said, "I love you. I'll see you later, and I'll come tuck you into bed," and she said, "I love you" back,
and that was the last time I saw her. -Mark Bridger had undeniably become one of the world's most evil killers.
♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ It was a crime that shocked the nation and left a family heartbroken. In October, 2012,
5-year-old April Jones was abducted whilst playing outside her home on the Bryn-y-Gog estate
in the small town of Machynlleth in mid Wales. As news of April's disappearance spread through the media,
police and volunteers scoured the town and countryside, kick-starting what was to become
the biggest search for a missing person in the history of British policing. -She's got to be around here somewhere.
She's got to be. We will search, and we will go miles. We will travel miles to find her.
-...but April's body would never be found. She'd been abducted and murdered by 46-year-old Mark Bridger,
a local man and well-known member of the community. April's sister, Jazmin, was just 16 years old at the time.
-I kind of just knew him. Mum and Dad knew him, would say, "Hi, are you all right,"
a quick sort of chat in the street about cars and bikes and that. When I was walking past, just kind of quick "hello,"
and off he went. -After Bridger's arrest, police searched his laptop and found indecent pictures of children
and screenshots of young girls from the area taken from their social media accounts.
Local reporter Ciaran Jones reported on the case. -When you look at what was found on Bridger's laptop,
there are few ways that this case could have been more troubling. When you see images of April Jones,
it's clear that Bridger had this grotesque fascination with young girls, with those type of scenarios,
where young girls were abducted and killed, and that absolutely is something that is condemning, condemning evidence.
-This killer's story begins over 50 years ago. Mark Bridger was born in Carshalton, Surrey,
on the 6th of November, 1965. He grew up in a happy family environment with his parents and two siblings.
-There weren't any indications for me in terms of Mark Bridger's childhood or his adolescence
that would indicate that he'd go on to do something horrendous. He did seem to be an altogether very average young lad,
and there were no red flags. -His childhood was normal compared to most people. He came from a middle-class family.
His father was a police officer, which he actually look up to. -But by 1984, 18-year-old Bridger had gone off the rails.
He'd dropped out of college and struggled to hold a job down. -All the jobs he got -- He was a bit of a failure.
So by the age of 20, this guy is, like... He failed in school. He failed in college.
He failed on whatever he wanted to do. -In 1984, Bridger had his first brush with the law.
-He was convicted of theft and a firearms offense, and, basically, the story that he concocted around this
was that he'd planned to go and fire an old pistol at a friend's farm, and he'd stolen a car because it was too far for him to walk,
which does seem to be rather ludicrous, and the prosecution thought that, actually,
something altogether different had gone on. He was planning to actually carry out an armed robbery
with this weapon and this stolen car. So what Mark Bridger is doing from this point is,
he's getting used to lying, to being comfortable in a lie, to maintaining a lie,
and this is something he'll do throughout his life. -Bridger was placed on probation for two years,
and he struggled to find work. He lived in a fantasy world, often telling people he had a military background.
-There were tales that he'd been a soldier, that he'd been a lifeguard, that he might have worked in a meat factory,
and when you boiled it down, you realized that nobody really knew. He was wearing military fatigues,
wearing a camouflage jacket and camouflage trousers, waterproof over-trousers, almost like he thought he was some kind of action-man figure,
you know, and driving about in his Land Rover, projecting this image of himself as, I don't know, a brave father,
as someone who'd, you know, done his duty for his country, and that wasn't a reality whatsoever.
-This is a very common thing that happen, not only with killers, but it happens with other people, as well.
You tend to make up for your failings by creating things that will impress other people.
You want people to not look at you like, "Okay. Dude, you're a loser. Get out." So he starts making these stories
to try to bring himself up in front of others, like, "I've been to the Army. I did a tour of Vietnam, or I did a tour of Iraq."
-Mark Bridger and secrecy do go hand-in-hand. You've got the Mark Bridger that he's presenting to the outside world
who's this kind of heroic figure who has traveled the world, who is this alpha male,
but actually, on the inside, you got somebody who is fundamentally ashamed of themselves,
and that's something that they want to keep secret. He doesn't like who he is. He isn't the kind of man that he thinks he should be,
but he's become so comfortable in lying and elaborating and exaggerating that he just continues to do that.
-In 1990, Bridger moved away from his home in the south of England and relocated to Machynlleth,
a market town near the Welsh coast. -Machynlleth in North Wales, in Powys, is that it's a tiny rural community
where everyone knows pretty much everybody else, where no one would appear to be threatening in the least.
-Bridger moved from job to job, including working as a lifeguard and in abattoir.
-I think Mark Bridger was somebody who had a significant history of failing at things,
of failing at jobs, of failing at relationships and of developing a bit of a reputation
in the local community, and I think what he was doing by moving to Machynlleth was basically starting over,
wiping the slate clean and trying to control the amount of information that people had about him and his life.
-By the age of 20, Bridger had fathered his first child, but he'd left his partner before the birth
to start another relationship. It was a pattern that would repeat itself. -He has a total of six children with four different women,
but none of those relationships seems to stick around. He was always there, gone, often with the women
not really knowing a great deal about him. -He doesn't manage to hold down a relationship
in the same way he doesn't manage to hold down a job, and when he doesn't get what he wants,
he tends to start using violence. -In 2004, Bridger was charged with battery against his girlfriend,
and just three years later, he was convicted of assault after punching a man in the face.
By October, 2012, Bridger was living alone. -So he now didn't have a job, didn't have the girlfriend with the baby,
and now got away from his father and mother. So it was a triple-wham there. My guess is that he was feeling extremely low.
So it could be that his interest for little kids started then. -He does start to kind of withdraw
and spend a lot of time on his own, spends a lot of time on his laptop computer,
and on that computer, there are images of children in the local community who are known to him.
There are pictures of child-abuse imagery on his laptop. He's pushing the boundaries
of what's acceptable and what's not acceptable, of what's legal and what's illegal,
and it's all becoming incredibly blurred. -Just a few miles across town from Mark Bridger's cottage,
5-year-old April Jones could often be seen playing on the street in front of her family home.
-April's character is really bubbly, really happy, constantly smiling, constantly laughing.
So if you're ever feeling sad or down, she'd basically be there, and she'd make you laugh in an instant,
and she got, like, a really contagious smile. Like, you just see her smile, so you'd want to smile.
She was just a happy, fun, bubbly little girl. -April's bike was a constant companion.
For a young girl who had cerebral palsy, she didn't let her disabilities slow her down.
-We taught her to ride the bike from a young age. So she's been on a bike constantly.
So she'd never ever be without her bike. If she wants to go out, or if we were gonna go
down the street to shop, it was on her bike. You couldn't get her to walk. It was on her bike, and that was that.
-On Monday, October the 1st, 2012, the two sisters were together at the local swimming pool with their mum, Coral.
-Every Monday, April used to get swimming lessons. So I'd always meet my mum and April in the lesson.
So when I got off the bus, take April in to get changed and to her swimming lesson, and then meet her afterwards.
So she finished the swimming lesson. It was about a half an hour. Went in, got her changed, come back out.
She's walking out, and went back home. I went to the youth club. I said, "I love you. I'll see you later,
and I'll come tuck you into bed and everything," and she said, "I love you" back,
and that was the last time I saw her. -On the evening of October the 1st, 2012, 5-year-old April Jones was playing outside
the front of her family home on the Bryn-y-Gog estate in Machynlleth, Mid Wales.
April's mum and dad, Coral and Paul, had just returned from a parents' evening at the local school.
-It was still light that day. So I went to let April out a little bit longer because of the good school report,
and there was three of her friends, and her and her friend cycled their other friend back home,
and then it was just her and her friend that were coming back. -At around 7:20 p.m., Coral grew concerned
that her daughter had been out a little too long. She sends April's younger brother out
to look for her. -And then Harley came running back with the bike, saying, "She's gone. She's not there.
She's been taken," and then that's when it kind of all escalated. -Detective Superintendent Reg Bevan was part
of the investigation team. -When the call first comes in, there's a crime in action in effect.
So April's mum makes the initial call to say that her daughter has gone off in a vehicle.
That is treated as an abduction, kidnap, and the initial response is very much to secure the area,
try to identify the last person to see her and identifying people who were in the area at the time.
-Detectives immediately questioned April's young friends who had seen her get into a car with a stranger.
-And they gave this basic description of a small front and a large rear to a vehicle,
and they couldn't be more specific, but these are children, young children, but it was a key piece of evidence,
particularly when they talk about how she got into the right-hand side, and they were quite sure of that.
-I think the real crucial detail they were able to drill down very, very quickly was that April may have
got into what would ordinarily appear to be the driver's side, which indicated perhaps that it was a left-hand drive vehicle.
I think that was very, very quickly seized upon as something that was unusual, something that could perhaps be decisive in the investigation
because, other than that, initially, there didn't seem to be a great deal for the police to go on,
because she'd been seized very, very quickly, very, very discretely, with only children as witnesses.
-Meanwhile, the local community in Machynlleth rallied around the Jones family and assisted the police in their search for April.
News of her disappearance quickly spread on social media. -Machynlleth is such a small town.
You just wouldn't think of... I think we have a population of about 2,500, maybe a bit more, maybe a bit less.
-Five, six, seven... -The amount of people that came out of their houses and just started searching, of all sort of ages,
all sorts of ages, it was just incredible to even see. Like, they've all kind of come out
just to look for my little sister, and it's kind of breathtaking, in a way, to see the amount of people and how close Machynlleth is,
how close the community is. -From the very first day, I think the police were using
the word "unprecedented" in terms of the scale of the search, and that was certainly true.
I remember arriving in Machynlleth and immediately hearing the constant swashing
of rotor blades, seeing boat teams coming in from Mountain Rescue, seeing cavers,
every conceivable emergency service, every conceivable specialism was there very, very quickly,
and then you had the public element of the search, where people were splitting into small teams,
dividing up an area on a map and going out and fanning out and covering what area they could.
People, at the most rudimentary level, going out with torches and calling April's name.
So you had an unprecedented police search, involving, I think, in the end, dozens and dozens of forces
covering dozens and dozens of square kilometers. -Despite an exhaustive search by police and volunteers
stretching into the early hours, April could not be found. The small town was in shock.
-I remember one of the people I spoke to said, "It can't have been somebody from the area
because we all know one another. We all trust one another." -It almost defies belief
when that sort of thing happens in a small rural community because, somehow, you immediately think
that everybody knows everybody else's business, and that it's impossible. How can a child disappear into the thin air
in a tiny Welsh village in which everybody pretty much knows everybody else? But that's the devil in plain sight, isn't it?
-Witness reports of a distinctive blue Land Rover on the Bryn-y-Gog estate gave the police a crucial lead in their investigation.
-It was said on the night that she got into a car that was on the wrong side, and, straight away,
everyone knew we were looking for a left-hand drive, and there's only person in Machynlleth
who had a left-hand drive, and that was Mark Bridger. Where we used to live, he kind of lived,
like, at the end, sort of just above everyone, and he was kind of, "Oh, hi. Are you all right,"
in the street sort of thing. I didn't know his name. I just knew his face. He was always in combat trousers, always.
-Mark Bridger was named by some of the residents living locally in the house-to-house investigation,
and then once he's been named, and when you compare the description given by the children of the vehicle that April Jones got into,
and then some work that we were able to do behind the scenes with the analysts, we were able to link the Land Rover discovery
to Mark Bridger, and then, all of a sudden, things start to fall into place. ♪♪ -The following morning, Tuesday, October the 2nd,
the small market town of Machynlleth awoke to a media swarm. April had now been missing
for 12 hours. -I've been saying this from the very beginning. We still have hope.
-It was a fast moving, very emotional place. People were desperate. People were filled with hope,
and people were galvanized to go out there and to find someone, and those people that were there generally,
beyond perhaps knowing the family or knowing the area or knowing them in passing,
had no personal connection, in a lot of cases. They wanted to go out and find a vulnerable child,
and there was lots and lots of hope and just sheer determination. People saying, "I can't sleep.
I can't go home. I can't rest. I can't do anything while I know that somebody is out there,"
and that was incredibly stark and incredibly moving. -The police were desperate to find Mark Bridger,
and they soon had a major breakthrough. His distinctive blue Land Rover had been found at a local garage.
It had been dropped off that same morning. -They didn't really disclose too much about his demeanor
other than he dropped it off, suggesting it had been involved in an accident, and they were quite happy to have a look at it,
and from what they had seen, it didn't appear to have been involved in any kind of road accident.
-The police continued their manhunt. They hoped that finding Bridger would lead them directly to April.
-We were still hoping that she would be alive. So it was very much, speed is of the essence.
So you had to ensure that you were doing as much as you could as quickly as you could
in an effort to identify where she was. -Having dropped off his car the morning after April's disappearance,
Bridger met a search party looking for the 5-year-old. He was hiding in plain sight.
-Mark Bridger had effectively stumbled upon a search party and wished them good luck
and claimed to have been out searching all night, which was, when you reflect on that,
deeply, deeply troubling, deeply shocking. -Despite it being a small town, detectives had discovered multiple addresses
linked to Bridger, whose transient lifestyle had made finding him extremely difficult.
-We had some previous addresses that we knew he'd lived at or where he may still be living at,
and we were sending teams of officers around to those addresses to try to locate April.
And on the some occasions there was no answer, we were forcing entry into these properties.
We're quickly searching in a hope to find her. So it was a very fast-paced, fast-moving investigation
to try to locate him. -As the search for April entered its 19th hour, her older sister, Jazmin, began to fear the worst.
-I knew we were never going to get her back alive. Something in me just said, "She's not gonna come home alive."
-By 3:00 p.m. on Tuesday, October the 2nd, 2012, 5-year-old April Jones had been missing for almost 20 hours.
The number-one suspect in her abduction was 46-year-old Mark Bridger. April had been seen getting into his car the previous evening.
The police had finally traced Bridger to a cottage called Mount Pleasant on the outskirts of Machynlleth.
They forced their way through the door. -So when the first officers arrive at Bridger's home,
his fire is lit. It is very hot in there. There is a strong smell of detergent, bleach, cleaning fluid,
and the initial forensic examination then starts at that point, but it's clearly looking more and more suspicious
that something has happened at that address. -Just half an hour later, at 3:30 p.m.,
Mark Bridger was spotted by a patrol car on the A487 Road heading back into Machynlleth on foot.
-So when he is seen walking down the road, officers pull up alongside him and speak to him,
confirm that it is Mark Bridger, and he immediately makes a disclosure to the officers
that April is dead and that he has run over her by accident. -I think Mark Bridger's selfishness really did come out
when he was picked up by the police, and he said to them, "I need to talk," and the police said, "Okay, but can you wait
until we get to the station," and he didn't. He just proceeded to basically engage
in this lengthy monologue about what had gone on, about how he felt, and, basically, when he was saying,
"I need to talk," he wasn't just saying that. He was saying, "You need to listen to me."
It was another way of him trying to exert control over other people. It's something he's always doing all of the time.
-In the police car on the way to the station, Bridger continued to tell officers
his side of the story. -He gave a very strange, fantastical description of what had really happened to April.
"I ran over her with my Land Rover, and she was underneath the wheels, and I didn't know what to do,
and there was no pulse and no sign, and she wasn't moving." Well, any normal person surely would have rung the police
or the hospital or 999 at that instant, wouldn't they? "Well, you see, I didn't know, and I didn't mean to,
I mean, I was going to just lean her up against something." Well, she wasn't leaned up against something.
She disappeared. -He created the stories in his head. Maybe he even believed it himself, you know?
Some people will do... Some people -- They are so desperate to be accepted by others and in life
that they will create the stories, and they are so into it and so desperate that they will believe those stories themselves,
and that's where you get the compulsive liars. So he might even believe himself, that he...
Because he was actually telling those stories to the police. -He seems to think that what's happened is quite blurry,
but what he does remember is that he drove off with her body somewhere, but after that, he says, "It's all blank.
I can't remember what happened." -Bridger's bizarre account of events led detectives to believe he might be lying,
and that April may still be alive somewhere. -So although when Mark Bridger is first detained,
he says that he's killed her, he's run over her, we, obviously, haven't found a body.
So there's still some hope that you may be able to find her alive. So the thrust of searching as many places as possible
and continuing to search the countryside didn't stop. -The following day, the 3rd of October, 2012,
April's mother, Coral Jones, appeared in front of the world's press. Her daughter had been missing for over 36 hours.
-And so the atmosphere in the room awaiting that was quite extraordinary, and when the door opened, there was the briefest sense,
I remember even now, of complete silence, complete shock, complete... captivation, almost,
and as Coral walked into the room, then, obviously, the noise began. The shutters of the cameras began to click.
To see up close, merely a few feet away, somebody going through what Coral and her family
were going through was astonishingly painful. -[ Sobbing ] It's been 36 hours since April was taken from us.
There must be someone out there who knows where she is and can help the police find her.
We are desperate for any news. April is only 5 years old. Please... Please, help find her.
-When you see firsthand the impact it has on the family, you can only imagine what Coral
and the rest of the family have gone through, but it's when you see them face-to-face,
and you're sitting next to them in some of those press conferences, it is heartbreaking, and, you know,
it just makes you more resolved to try to do all you can. -But as police forensic teams began an intricate search
at Bridger's home, it soon became clear that April Jones would never be found alive.
♪♪ -We do know from the detailed forensic examination of his home, is that she probably died there.
We found her blood at that address, significant amounts of her blood. Clearly, he attempted to clean the place,
which is part of the reason the initial officers found that overwhelming smell of bleach.
He tried to clean up several parts of the house. There was blood in the lounge and in the bathrooms,
and the wood burner was lit, we believe, because he was looking to dispose of incriminating evidence.
-From a policing and prosecution perspective, the key piece of evidence in a murder inquiry
is almost certainly going to be having a body, and they didn't have that in this instance,
so they were very, very reliant on not just on the human witnesses that they had,
which were, in many cases, friends of April's who had seen the abduction take place,
but incredibly up-to-date forensic technology, which enabled them to pinpoint fragments of bone
found in the wood burner at Mark Bridger's house. -Although there was bone, it was burnt to such a degree
that we weren't able to match it forensically through any DNA profile, albeit we know it is human from the pathologist
and the scientists that examined it subsequently. -Forensic teams also found a burnt boning knife
in Bridger's home. The disturbing discovery at Mount Pleasant cottage shocked the entire community.
-There almost certainly was no longer any chance of a happy ending to this story,
a positive outcome of April coming home to her family, and that was very, very powerful,
and when you saw the tiredness that people understandably felt, 2, 3 days of hard working,
searching, not going to sleep, to have everything that they'd worked for crushed in that way was
deeply, deeply dispiriting for everybody, and it was clear quite quickly that there needed to be then
that further little bit of perspective and of rowing back a little bit from the media
and from everybody that was there just to give people, not just the family, but the people in the town that have been so affected,
that little bit of space and that little bit of freedom to grieve and to process everything that happened.
♪♪ -For a while, they were searching for April, and they were hoping she'd come back alive.
And I think it was a couple days later, or something or other, that it turned into a search for the body.
And I kind of knew that it must have been some horrific crime for them to search a body,
and in the sort of town we live in where there's rivers flowing through, there's forestry everywhere,
I kind of knew there must have been something quite bad, otherwise you kind of would have found a child's body
around this sort of area straight away. -After three days of questioning, on October the 5th, 2012,
Mark Bridger was arrested on suspicion of murder, but the 46-year-old continued to protest his innocence.
-In interview, he's very matter-of-fact in his answers, and he says that he's run over her accidentally,
and that he gets out of his vehicle and sees that he's run over her, and he picks her up,
and he thinks, believes, she's dead. He does try resuscitating her. But at each stage,
when you're then able to rebut some of his story by saying, "Well, there's no forensic evidence
to show that she's come to any harm in your vehicle, albeit we could put her inside the vehicle with fingerprints,"
he would always suggest, "Well, she wasn't bleeding." So when you'd ask him, "Well,
how do you know that she's dead, then," you know, he would say, "Well, I knew she was dead."
His story didn't make sense. -The reason why people hold back information about murder
can vary from one case to the next, but, for me, the central element is often control.
When somebody has been convicted of murder, when somebody has been sentenced to a very lengthy term in prison,
they don't have control over many things, at all. The one thing that they do have control over is
the knowledge of what happened, of what they did to their victim, of where their victim is, and often that's something
that people won't want to part with very easily. -Nothing that he said we could back up
with any evidence or forensic recoveries. In fact, everything led quite the contrary.
He had abducted April from outside, near to her home, and then driven her back to his house immediately,
and she probably met her end very soon after that. -He could have been curbing it for a long time,
but on that day, it overpowered him, and once she was in the car, then that was it.
Then he goes into a different state of mind. Then he can't stop it anymore. It would be very hard for him to stop.
-The following day, October the 6th, Mark Bridger was charged with the abduction and murder
of 5-year-old April Jones. -It's an absolute shock with that, and you don't know what to think,
and then you start, in your mind, questioning, do you really know someone, you know?
You could have known this person, like, 15, 20 years, but then it comes to the fact of, do you really know them?
-And so the shock to the community, and, of course, to April's parents, to realize that not only were they living with,
but they knew, the man who had abducted their daughter is even more terrifying. -The search for April's body continued for seven months,
until the police called it off in April 2013. -The fact that no body was found didn't alter the course of the investigation.
You know, we're still treating it as a murder. There's a huge impact on the family, obviously,
but the search continued for months and months afterwards because we had to be sure, in that area,
that we had searched everywhere we possibly could in an effort to find her. So although we're confident
that she probably died in his house, what he's done with the body after that, only he knows.
-On April the 29th, 2013, the trial of Mark Bridger began at Mold Crown Court. The 47-year-old was charged
with the abduction and murder of 5-year-old schoolgirl April Jones. Seven months after her disappearance,
her body had still not been found. There was real hope that the truth of what happened to her
would emerge during proceedings. ♪♪ -I think from the very first moment that Mark Bridger appeared in court,
he was a pathetic figure, somebody that appeared to be feeling sorry for himself,
that almost couldn't realize the gravity of the situation in which he found himself,
as though he somehow was the victim when absolutely he wasn't. He was the offender.
He was the person that had done this barbaric, inhuman thing. -He just kind of hung his head in shame.
He never once looked over, ever, like, not even a slight glance of his eyes, didn't move his head,
just kind of hung his head in shame. -Bridger pleaded not guilty. He was sticking to the same story
he told police back in October 2012, claiming that April's death was an accident.
-Mark Bridger used this cloak of amnesia, almost, to say that he couldn't account for what had happened.
He accepted that he was behind April's death, but not that he intended in some way to kill her,
and he concocted this fanciful story about potentially having knocked her over with his car,
something that was never born out in any of the evidence, somehow claiming that he then couldn't recall
what he'd done with her body, that he was drinking lots, and that the whole thing could have been a nightmare.
This was someone that was prepared to go as low as they possibly could, desperately trying to save their own skin
in view of all evidence to the contrary. -So at the beginning, I was kind of shocked, like,
"Oh, he hit her off the bike," but she knows well, too well, not to go near the road when there's a car.
She knows this really well, and she knows to look left and right and everything,
and we've always, always taught her from a young age, and then he starts saying he panicked
and he just drove off with her, and you kind of... He's got kids around her age, around April's age,
so you kind of think, "You wouldn't panic. You kind of, in a sense, as a parent, you'd know what to do."
So towards the end of it, you're just like, "Oh, shut up. Just shut up, really. You just make yourself look a fool."
-During the trial, police helicopter footage emerged from the morning after April's abduction.
It showed a calm-looking Bridger. -He seemed kind of casually out, walking his dog as if nothing had happened,
and I think what we've got here is somebody who is struggling to figure out what is the appropriate way to behave here.
What are people going to be looking out for? What are they going to be expecting to see?
-Most normal people would look up at the helicopter and wonder what was going on.
He knew exactly what was going on. He knew exactly what he'd done with April, and at that stage, you know,
the net was closing in on him, and he was trying to blend in. -On the 15th of May,
the jury was shown evidence from Mark Bridger's laptop. It was a key moment in the trial.
-Bridger had begun to assemble a collection of particularly nasty child pornography
as well as photographs of local children, including April and her elder sister. At his trial, the prosecution made a considerable play
of the fact that these images were on his computer and suggested that he may not have been seeking specifically
to groom April. It could have been another member of the family or another of the girls that were on his computer,
but that he was certainly seeking to groom someone, some young girl. -There are two types of people or offenders
that would look at different kinds of things on the Internet, pornography, for example.
The first type is the people who will be satisfied by the photographs, by the films,
by reading stories maybe, but at the end of it, that's it. It's, like, that's good enough.
They can turn off the computer, and they forget about it. But there are certain other types --
and Bridger falls into this category -- that, at the end, that is not enough. -He'd also been looking at website reports
of previous child abductions, and you're starting to build a picture now of a pedophile, a dangerous, evil man,
who, for whatever reason, has gone from minor offending and tipped over into, you know,
the most serious crime. -On May the 30th, 2013, the jury took just four hours to unanimously find Mark Bridger
guilty of murdering April Jones. Judge Mr. Justice Griffith Williams sentenced him to life imprisonment
with a whole-life order. He was immediately sent to Wakefield Prison. He will never be free again.
-For them to turn around and say, "Life, and never to be released from prison," is, like, wow.
It's just... You can't explain the feeling of it because it's good that he's never going to be released from prison,
and he's never going to be able to hurt anyone again. -Well, when Bridger was sentenced,
the judge referred to him as a pathological liar and a pedophile, and I think both of those descriptions are accurate.
Mark Bridger was somebody who is very comfortable in a lie. He would lie as easily as he would breathe,
and if you look at some of his behavior in the final months before April's death,
he was collecting images of children on his laptop. He was engaging in behavior that was incredibly bizarre.
So he was a pathological liar. He was a pedophile. He was a very dangerous man. -The murder of April Jones
ruined the lives of not just her family, but an entire community. -The Jones family were very clearly a respectable family,
people that were well-known in their community, and there was that shock element.
This could be anyone's child. It wasn't somebody that was put in harm's way. It was a girl that was playing on her bike outside her home
with her parents' blessing, like she would every day. They would call her in for her dinner.
She would sit at home and tell them about her day at school and how well she was doing.
Everyone can identify with that, whether they have children or not. It's a brutal thing that rips out a family's heart,
and that really, really touches people. -There was people that we hadn't spoken to
who had little kids around sort of the same age, and they were really affected. On the estate we live, kids were outside all the time playing,
and then you didn't see a kid for, like, two years outside playing. -In a final cruel act,
Mark Bridger has never revealed the location of April's body. -I think that the key question for many people in this case is,
will Mark Bridger ever give up the information about what happened to April Jones,
about where she is, to enable her parents to basically say goodbye to her properly,
and, unfortunately, I don't think he will. I think Mark Bridger is somebody who will always have self-preservation
as his number one priority, and he's just simply not going to put himself in a position
where he's got no power left. -It's difficult not getting a body back because when you have a body back,
you can lay them to rest. You can say your goodbyes, but when you've got bone fragments and ash,
it's not the same at all, because you can not say your final goodbyes, and Mark Bridger is such a pathological liar,
and he believes his own lies, he believes he's telling the truth that he's never gonna tell you.
He's never going to say what really happened that day, that evening, and what he's done with the body,
and you kind of have to come to terms with that, and you kind of have to accept that
you're never going to be able to fully say goodbye, and you're never going to be able to fully lay April to rest.
-On November the 17th, 2014, Jazmin Jones stood alongside her parents and watched as the probable site of April's murder,
Mount Pleasant cottage, was bulldozed to the ground. -You've changed. You've completely changed.
You're never going to be who you were. I mean, when I have kids, I could be completely different
to them to what I was thought I was going to be because of this event. You've just completely changed.
You're never going to be who you were, and the demons you've had to fight along the way,
they've changed you, be it for the better be it for the worse, but the positive thing
is we've come out stronger. We've come out. We stuck together through it all. -Because the community have gathered around
and been so positive in the face of such a grotesque crime, it's not been something that's been allowed to define them.
April Jones is not remembered for how she died, but for being a beautiful young girl
who was happiest in her community and in her family. So what happened to her will always be a part of the history of Machynlleth.
That will never be laid to rest or put to one side, but the fact that people do not want to be defined by this,
do not want to be remembered purely as the place where this act of evil happened,
will mean that they can go on and they can grow and they can develop. -Mark Bridger is a perverted killer
who selfishly snatched and killed an innocent 5-year-old for his own gratification.
He has constantly lied and still refuses to admit where April is buried. Bridger has shown no remorse for his actions
or explained the reasons for the murder. We should forget his name and instead remember the smiling face
of April Jones, the girl whose life he cruelly took away at such a young age. ♪♪
♪♪ ♪♪

In October 2012, Mark Bridger abducted and murdered five-year-old April Jones in Machynlleth, Wales. Evidence found on his laptop led to his conviction.

An in-depth look at the lives and crimes of some of the world's most evil killers, including Jeffrey Dahmer, Richard Ramirez, Cary Stayner, Leonard Lake, Dorothea Puente and more.

Brief Summary

The episode details the abduction and murder of April Jones by Mark Bridger, highlighting community efforts and the investigation's emotional toll.

Key points

Coral Jones' Emotional Appeal. Coral Jones pleads for help in finding her missing daughter, April, who has been gone for 36 hours.
The Search for April. The community unites to search for April Jones, sparking the largest missing person search in British history.
Mark Bridger's Arrest. Mark Bridger, a local man, is identified as the prime suspect in April's abduction after she was seen getting into his car.
Coral Jones' Heartbreaking Plea. April's mother, Coral, addresses the press, pleading for help in finding her daughter.
Mark Bridger's Arrest. Mark Bridger is arrested on suspicion of murder, maintaining his innocence throughout.
Trial of Mark Bridger Begins. The trial for Mark Bridger starts, with hopes that the truth about April's fate will emerge.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

There must be someone out there who knows where she is.

Coral Jones' emotional appeal for her missing daughter.

0:24WatchJul 20, 2021

Tension

85/ 100High tension

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