The father of a missing three-week-old baby girl fled a televised press conference in tears on May Day 1984, but the dramatic appeal for her safe return was a calculated act of deception that would ultimately unravel one of the most chilling cases of parental murder in British criminal history. Former detective chief inspector Bill Foreman, now retired after 30 years with the Metropolitan Police, watched the man he knew as Paul Brown crumble under the glare of the cameras. Brown had claimed his car was stolen outside a newsagent in Battersea, south London, with 15-day-old Louise inside.
The infant, who had Down syndrome, vanished into thin air. Foreman, who had arrested Brown for assault and affray nine years earlier, immediately sensed something was wrong. Brown denied ever meeting Foreman, but the detective’s instincts screamed that this was no random kidnapping.
The search for baby Louise began with an aerial sweep minutes after the 999 call. Brown told police he parked his Ford Fiesta halfway on the pavement and halfway on the road outside a shop called Cheekles, leaving the incapacitated infant alone while he went inside to buy a newspaper. The car was found two hours later in Chelsea, two miles away, but Louise and her carrycot were gone.
Foreman found the parking story absurd. Look at the width of the road, he said. To leave a three-week-old disabled baby in a car to go in there just does not make sense.
With no witnesses and no baby, Foreman needed a breakthrough. He decided to use the father as bait.
The press conference was staged at Putney police station. Brown was reluctant, reversing six times as Foreman dragged him across the yard. Once inside, Foreman ordered the door shut.
Brown sat down, sweating heavily. He began his plea, his voice cracking. What me and Susan would like to say is we want Louise back.
Susan is still sedated at the moment. For Christ’s sake, look after her, whoever’s got her, let us have her back. Then a journalist asked him to speak up.
Brown shouted, I’m going, and fled the room. Foreman watched him go. I said to myself, you’ve hung yourself, he recalled.
The reaction was amazement that he failed to bluff it out. It cemented the view in many people’s minds that it must have been the parents.
Foreman’s gamble paid off. Witnesses came forward, including a bus driver named Fred Brown. He remembered dropping Paul Brown off at Clapham post office just minutes before the 999 call.
Brown had arrived by bus, not by car. This was the first concrete evidence that the story was a lie. Brown’s wife, Susan Pullan, initially backed her husband but later refused to comment.
Foreman’s investigation revealed the truth. Brown had rejected Louise because of her Down syndrome. After a day of drinking, he returned to their flat in Streatham.
A neighbor heard something being forcibly pushed against a wall, followed by stamping sounds. Foreman believed Brown murdered the baby there. Louise’s body was never found, but witnesses spotted Brown and his brother Ian near Brighton.
Police suspect the body was dumped in the chalk dumps that fed furnaces at a power station in Shoreham.
Brown was convicted of manslaughter and served just two and a half years. He was later jailed for life for murdering his brother Ian in a drunken rage, stabbing him 63 times. Foreman’s use of the press conference was a pioneering tactic.
I was the first person to use a press conference in this way to my knowledge, he said. It is a ploy, but it is a facet of investigation that has had more benefits than detriments. In a murder investigation, the first 24 hours are vital.
Detectives use press conferences with friends and relatives to maximize publicity and pressure suspects. Tracy Andrews wept as she described how her fiancé Lee Harvey was knifed to death by a road rage killer. He ruined my life, she sobbed.
But not a single witness confirmed her story, and she was convicted of murder.
Professor Paul Britton, a leading forensic psychologist, explained the three major ways police use the media. First, to manipulate psychological pressure on an unknown suspect. Second, to contact witnesses.
Third, in a small minority of cases, to use someone suspected of involvement to see how they react under pressure. Soldier Miles Evans appealed for his stepdaughter Zoe after she went missing. Zoe, come home, you are not in trouble, he pleaded.
But Evans had murdered Zoe and buried her body in a nearby wood. Perhaps 85 to 90 percent of murders are committed by relatives, friends, or business associates, Britton said. There is always a high risk that someone appearing at a press conference could be the guilty person.
But that is no reason to stop using the media. Sometimes they can pull at the heartstrings of a friend or relative of the offender just enough to get information.
Over the last decade, at least 15 apparently grieving relatives and friends have been convicted of the very murder they were appealing for help to solve. In Suffolk, two days before Christmas, a woman appealed for help to catch the killer of her husband. They have taken away my little boy’s shadow, she said.
Christopher Nugent, 39, was shot twice in the face at close range in his mortgage office in Mildenhall. Police believed the motive was not robbery, as only 20 to 40 pounds was stolen. An Austin Princess car was involved.
Superintendent Terry Abrahams asked Chris’s widow, Linda, to make the appeal. It was daunting, she said. I had never sat in front of a camera before.
Supporting Linda was Chris’s business partner and friend of 20 years, James Douet. He was a great comfort, Linda said. We gave each other comfort.
Six weeks later, police traced the getaway car to a man named Steven Gray. Gray admitted the shooting and named Gary Rumsey as his accomplice. He said he was paid 20,000 pounds to 𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁 Nugent.
Then he made one more confession. The man who paid him was James Douet. Douet stood to collect a big insurance payout.
He ordered the murder and then acted as the supportive friend. Linda was told of the arrest. She broke down, unable to believe it.
He sat with me through a press conference, in solicitors’ offices, after I buried Chris. I do not know how they could watch you at your lowest point and know what they knew. Douet even cried into his handkerchief at the funeral.
He said to police, I wish I could have shaken his hand before he went. Douet, the hitman, and the getaway driver were all sentenced to life. Linda said, I hate him with a vengeance.
I hope he sees Chris’s face every day of his life.
In another case, John Tanner reconstructed his girlfriend Rachel McLean’s last known movements with a policewoman. Then he gave a press conference and appealed for help. Rachel was very friendly, a lover of life, he said.
But Tanner had already killed Rachel and hidden her body under floorboards at her flat. Britton said the one characteristic shared by people attempting to deceive at a press conference is the belief they can do it. Some believe they are great actors.
Others feel they did not know it was going to go this way and begin to fold. Graham Allerton called his own press conference when his three children died in an arson attack on his council home. Everyone has a conscience, he said.
Just give yourselves up. But Allerton had started the fire himself in a bid to be rehoused.
On a winter morning in Wallington, engineer Nimal Samrina was stabbed in the heart as he reached his car. He crawled to the street and died. His 12-year-old daughter was nearby, waiting for him to take her to school.
Detective Constable Mark Randall was first on the scene. If someone told you the story as we found it, you would not believe it, he said. Sam’s wife, Flo, was a high-flying executive, head of housing benefits at Croydon Council.
Police asked her to make a public appeal. Please come forward, she said. Someone out there knows who did it.
Flo became actively involved in the investigation, coming into the incident room almost daily. She referred to officers by their first names and tried to give the impression she was the senior investigating officer. But Randall formed the opinion that this woman was trying to hinder the inquiry.
Flo portrayed herself as the loving wife, but the image unraveled when police spoke to Sam’s lawyer, Mark Williams. I felt sick when I saw her on television, Williams said. Sam had discovered a card from an escort agency and believed something was going on.
Flo had become a 100-pound-a-day fruit machine addict, estimated to be 30,000 pounds in debt. Sam had evidence to win a custody battle for their daughter. He wrote to his lawyer, I am genuinely worried about my wife using her immoral associates to harm me.
He listed songs for his funeral. Flo asked a bodybuilder named Gerard Smithers if he knew how to get rid of her husband. She also asked John Cheetham, chairman of the police consultative group for Croydon.
Both refused and contacted police. Flo found a hitman willing to carry out the murder. She was arrested and charged.
Florence Samrina was found guilty and imprisoned for life. She never revealed the identity of the hitman. Sam’s funeral music was The World You Love Keeps Giving All the Love.
In 1994, Detective Superintendent Tony Bis was in charge of a high-profile murder case in Warwickshire. A building society manageress lay dead, and her distraught husband appealed for help. My interest is to catch the killers of my wife, Gordon Wardell said.
He claimed Carol was kidnapped from their home by an armed gang wearing clown masks. He said he was tied up and unconscious while the gang stole 14,000 pounds from her building society. Carol’s strangled body was found by a lorry driver.
It seemed to me that everybody in the country knew Gordon Wardell had done it, Bis said. But he kept an open mind. People react differently to being interviewed on the press.
It is a nerve-wracking experience, never mind if you have just had your wife murdered.
Bis called in forensic psychologist Paul Britton. Britton examined Wardell’s CV and saw membership in the Institute of Logistics. That is the basis for a person being able to identify problems with a three-scene scenario, he said.
They deal with problems of time and distance. Gaps appeared in Wardell’s story. His bruises were too widespread for one punch.
A police surgeon found pinch bruises and tiny marks on Wardell’s hands, consistent with Carol trying to free herself from his grip around her neck. Wardell gave the appearance of a bereaved husband, even reenacting his movements. But he was caught in his own web of lies.
He claimed he was drinking in a Coventry pub, but no one remembered seeing him. The pathology report on Carol’s stomach contents revealed she died two hours after eating a roast lunch. Wardell claimed she was kidnapped six hours after lunch, when she was already dead.
This was the crucial piece of evidence. Wardell was arrested and brought in for questioning.
The interview was a battle of wits. Britton trained the interviewers. If they show any sign of weakness, Wardell gains strength, Britton said.
It was important to engage him in detailed questions about the meals. We did not want to dwell on the meals because he might smell a rat. Wardell stuck to his version, proving he fabricated the entire kidnap story.
He was charged with murder and sentenced to life. The 14,000 pounds was never recovered. Wardell never expected to be caught.
He believed he had planned a scenario that would see him through the investigation and be regarded as the grieving widower. He went to the press conference expecting to be successful, expecting people to feel sympathy for him. That is not what he was able to pull off.
For local journalist Mel Price, the murder of 14-year-old schoolgirl Sarah Bottomley near Oakham in Leicestershire was one of the most 𝓈𝒽𝓸𝒸𝓀𝒾𝓃𝑔 stories he ever covered. Sarah’s body was found tucked under a hedgerow, badly decomposed. The murder stunned the small town.
Sarah was a lively, outgoing girl. Her parents were divorced. Her mother, Carol, was devastated.
You feel numb, she said. Floral tributes included one from Sarah’s father, Mark. I love you and I miss you, it read.
Police asked Mark to appear at a press conference. She bought new jeans and a new tape, he said. She was really happy.
She went out and said, See you, Dad. Someone has to be able to help us. I want to catch my daughter’s killer.
Please help us catch my daughter. When journalists walked away, there were conversations. Yeah, bet he did it, they said.
Many people in the town were unconvinced by Mark’s performance. The word spread that he might be involved. Please help, he said.
I feel sure the answers lie locally. Mark found himself a suspect in his own daughter’s murder. A police officer asked him if he had an argument with Sarah.
The pressure was intense. The police told me parents are always suspects for the first few days, he said. I could not go downtown because people still thought it was me.
Britton said one problem with putting traumatized relatives in front of a press conference is that under the barrage of media speculation, no one can say what is a natural reaction. With Mark still a suspect, police turned their attention to Sarah’s stepfather, Nigel Rawlings, who was also Mark’s best friend. Rawlings was a violent man.
When Sarah’s mother left him, he swore revenge. Mark said, I thought it might be him because he had done so much to me. But he trusted Rawlings with his kids.
He was a convincing liar, Mark said. He convinced you black was white.
Forensic evidence proved Rawlings’ car was in the field where Sarah’s body was found. Traces of her blood were on his jacket. He was charged with murder.
Even when he was arrested, I still would not go downtown, Mark said. People thought I was in with it. The dreadful truth was revealed.
Sarah’s death was instant, painful terror. Rawlings had raped and murdered a 14-year-old schoolgirl. Before her body was found, he joined the search, leading it away from where he hid the body.
He brought me here looking for Sarah, Mark said. He knew what he had done to my daughter, and he still brought me out looking for her. Rawlings was sentenced to life.
The jury took just four hours to find him guilty. Mark said, I have since found out that Nigel Rawlings wanted to do that press conference with me. You see it a lot where the person who has done the murder wants to go on the press conference.
He wanted to do that.
Mark was innocent. His distress was real. His ordeal left him battling to come to grips with the murder of his daughter by a man he trusted and facing a legacy of suspicion.
He told me that he likes prison life, Mark said. How can that be justice? It is myself and my family that are being punished.
Next week, when lust and betrayal lead to killing, the men and women who commit crimes of passion show a feeling of great resentment about another man being in bed with your wife. The more she screamed, the more he ped it.
