Modern Wisdom - #369 - Mark Williams-Thomas - The Story Of Exposing Jimmy Savile

Episode Date: September 9, 2021

Mark Williams-Thomas is an investigative journalist, an author and former police detective. True crime documentaries are everywhere, and you've probably seen Mark in many of them. He was the man responsible for investigating and exposing Jimmy Savile which then lead to an avalanche of other abusers being arrested. Today we get an insight into what it's like to be a real life Sherlock Holmes. Expect to learn who are the most disturbing criminals that Mark Williams-Thomas has ever met, what the biggest difficulties were when investigating Jimmy Savile, how Jimmy Savile got away with abuse for so long, what it was like interviewing Oscar Pistorious, how accurate life in Line Of Duty actually is, what Mark thinks about Making A Murderer and much more... Sponsors: Get 10% discount on your first month from BetterHelp at https://betterhelp.com/modernwisdom (discount automatically applied) Get 20% discount & free shipping on your Lawnmower 4.0 at https://www.manscaped.com/ (use code MODERNWISDOM) Extra Stuff: Follow Mark on Twitter - https://twitter.com/mwilliamsthomas  Check out Mark's books - https://www.williams-thomas.co.uk/  Get my free Reading List of 100 books to read before you die → https://chriswillx.com/books/ To support me on Patreon (thank you): https://www.patreon.com/modernwisdom - Get in touch. Join the discussion with me and other like minded listeners in the episode comments on the MW YouTube Channel or message me... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/ModernWisdomPodcast Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact/  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello friends, welcome back to the show. My guest today is Mark Williams-Thomas, is an investigative journalist, an author, and a former police detective. True crime documentaries are everywhere, and you've probably seen Mark in a lot of them. But most famously, he was the man responsible for investigating and exposing Jimmy Savile,

which then led to an avalanche of other abusers being arrested all around the world. Today, we get an insight into what it's like to be a real life Sherlock Holmes. Expect to learn who are the most disturbing criminals that Mark has ever met. What are the biggest difficulties when investigating Jimmy Savile? How Jimmy got away with it for so long? What it was like interviewing Oscar Pistorius, how accurate life in line of duty actually is, what Mark thinks about making a murderer, and much more. One of the craziest takeaways from this episode is that the true crime documentaries that

you probably watch on Netflix and ITV aren't just there for entertainment. They are actually a forcing function that creates sufficient public pressure that the police actually begin investigations, often the true crime documentary is the beginning rather than the end of a criminal proceeding, which is crazy, that a private investigator and a TV show can do work that the police haven't, but downstream from that you actually end up getting justice out of the courts. But now it's time for the wise and wonderful Mark Williams Thomas. How do you describe what you do for work? Well, I think now it's probably an investigative reporter.

I do do some private consultancy and I also run a risk management consultancy where I investigate and help organisations with dangerous offenders. So I'm a pretty busy person. But you used to be a police officer, right? So what's the difference between a police officer and an investigator? So yeah, former police detective, and not a massive amount, certainly not the way that I do it. I mean, there are many different investigators out there who do things in different ways. But my ethos and the way I operate is very much along the same lines as if I were a detective. Obviously I don't have the powers of being a detective,

I don't have the warrant. But what I do have is the skills that I've learnt from being a police detective. And I just transfer them into the roles that I do now. I have the same ethical approach, I have the same moral approach in terms of how I do things. And all of my investigations are built around as if I was doing it for a criminal investigation. So the same levels of standards apply. What are some of the restrictions that you have placed on yourself? Obviously, you're not going to be able to go and arrest people. So is it your job as an investigator to put together a kind of case and then pass that up to authorities that can bring people

to justice, how does it work? Yes, so obviously I don't have a power to rest, so I can't force people to talk to me, I can't force people to come with me and do things. But as an investigator and the way that I work within the media, often that actually doesn't make that much of a difference because what it does mean is that people will talk to me and they'll often talk to me when they wouldn't talk to the police and they'll give me information that they wouldn't or don't give to the police. So I have a great opportunity, I think, when I go and do these investigations,

there's not being a police officer. That said, of course, I don't have access to the records that police officers do, so I can't gain as much information about people. But what I have to use is my own sources and also the open source data that exists around the internet to try and find information about people when I'm doing an investigation. My ethos always is about helping people. So whenever I take on any investigation, the starting point is can I make a difference? Because more often than not, by the time people have come to me, as they've tried everything else, they've failed with the police, they've failed with all the other organisations or media

outlets. And they come to me in desperation, can I help them? And what I will never want to do is to give people false hope. It is about being realistic to them. So if I can't genuinely can't see anything if I can't genuinely can't see anything that I can do as far as adding value, I'm no wizard, but what I do is obviously thoroughly investigate and use my skills very successfully. If I can't help them, then I'll be honest up front and say, look, there is nothing I can do because there's nothing worse than being given false hope. It seems crazy that you without access to records and fingerprints and so on and so forth,

that you can do more than the police. I guess it shows the power of finding sources, getting information from people using those, I guess, what would you call them, softer styles of investigation? Yeah, I mean, I wouldn't say in every circumstance, I'm better than the place at all. I think what I can provide is a uniqueness in terms of a dedicated approach. Of course, the police have huge workloads. My workloads are high, but they're in a very different way. So I have to prioritize and say, well, I'm going to really focus on this case now and just

just totally look at it, put everything else to the side, whereas the police can't always do that. They have to manage a number of cases at the same time. Are you legally allowed to surveil people if you're not the police? Yeah, absolutely. So not necessarily in some foreign countries. It's a bit problematic, certainly, in Portugal, there's not meant to be doing any private investigations, but I have done it in Portugal, and I've done it in many other countries. But in the UK, absolutely no problems at all. You have to be aware of people's privacy, and you have to do it in a certain way, but

you can absolutely do surveillance on people, and I very regularly do do. You tap people's phones? Is that something that's allowed? No, you can't do do. You tap people's phones, is that something that's allowed? No, you can't do that. And in fact, the police can't do that without very high authority. So you can't do anything that's overly intrusive.

What you can do, of course, is use techniques that enable you to gain access to people. So sometimes, you know, we might run a decoy, we might run a courier pretending to look for somebody or deliver a package and that will often lead to identifying where somebody is. We might use trackers, we might use listening devices, all of those little techniques now which are very readily available and easily applied to gather intelligence or information. but it's always about a bigger cause. It's about being proportionate. If I'm investigating something, for example, if it was very minor, then one has to

look at the proportionality of the techniques that you're employing, the more serious it is, the more serious the techniques that you can apply. If someone's wanted for murder or wanted for very serious offenses, then of course the proportionality of what you're going to deploy and use increases. What was your role in the Jimmy Savile case? Well Jimmy Savile, I was actually coming back from Interpol, I've been over there making a film for BBC Newsnight and the producer said to me have you ever heard anything about Jimmy Savile as being a sex offender? And I said, well, no, it seems very strange, but I've never heard that. And he said, never he is. My aunt was at a school where he used to visit and there's a lot of chat online about it. And he said, you know, we've been looking

at it and we're looking to do something. And I said, well, I've never heard anything about that. Anyway then moves forward over the next few weeks and he said look we were aware that apparently he was arrested by a police force either sorry or Sussex you know do you think you can find out? Well I wasn't sorry police and I could tell him that it didn't happen during my time in the police so it had must have happened after that and then when I looked into it I established that it had been a case sorry police would look at pass that back to him and news nice at that point

then said well we can't show any failings by the police so we're gonna drop it and he said to me you know news like I'm gonna run it and I said well that's mad because I've now done some digging myself and there clearly looks to be something there there still needs an awful lot of work to stand it up. I mean, there were a long way away from standing up a program to make any difference. And I said, well, let me look at it. So I did, so I set off on the path to try and establish victims and see what the accounts were.

And as a direct result of that, 12 months later, made a program and kind of the rest of history really, you know, third of October 2012 was a pretty momentous occasion, not just in terms of showing what Jimmy Savile did, but actually making a difference for the rest of certainly the UK and actually had ramifications around the world. I think if it hadn't been for Jimmy Savile's exposure, I wonder whether Weinstein and the other individuals who have now been exposed Epstein would actually have taken place because what it did do is it created a tidal shift of attitudes and approach

from victims up to authorities who said, you know, what we now need to get a hold of this and we now need to start to listen to people who are telling us about what's going on, no longer should people be untouchable. And I think there was a massive, massive change in attitudes as a direct result of that program going out. I think you're right. The reckoning around men in positions of power, abusing that power to gain access to either women or minors. I mean, was it Ralph Harris who was also downstream from that? Who was the media guy in the UK?

So there's Max Clifford, Ralph Harris. Yeah. There was the, there was the, at the Isle Knockout guy, I can't remember his name now, you know, Bill Cosby. Bill Cosby. Bill Cosby, you know, there's a number of individuals. Certainly, Ralph Harris and Max Clifford, you know,

I was instrumentally involved in both of those cases as far as bringing them to the police and getting the police to investigate them. And, you know, people turned around afterwards. There were some critics who said, yeah, but you're just going after the celebrities. Well, what they didn't realize is as a result of getting those people who were the most powerful untouchable, it meant anybody was touchable. It meant anybody could be gotten. Therefore, up and down the country, teachers, scoutmasters, you know, those people in positions of trust who were having access to children were being arrested. And I can tell you that the knock on effect of

that was phenomenal. We got contacted by the NSPC and the weeks after the program went out. Just telling us the massive difference that has the result of our program is made to the amount of people calling into their hotline and the amount of cases that were coming in. And I know because of my work with police forces up and down the country that they saw a significant spike in new cases. And as a result of that, victims coming forward and offenders being caught and I think it generally did make offenders think that the next knock on the door could well be from the place. Yeah, I mean, if you can get a Harvey Weinstein or an Epstein or a Ralph Harris or whoever,

you can get anyone. It really does sort of flag in the ground and say, okay, you think that you're safe in your position of power is like you say, a teacher, a scoutmaster, priest, whatever it might be. If you can take down people at the top of the tree in terms of media, it really does, I suppose, put the shits up people that think they can get away with it being below the radar. So talk to me about the difficulties in investigating that. I mean, apart from the fact that he was this huge media personality, I guess there must have

been so many obstacles in there. Yeah, huge amounts. I mean, I've never spoken about it. And my book talks about the case. And you know, there's bits and pieces that we did behind the scenes in order to get the program Broadcast, which I've never spoken about. And I don't think I ever will do.

Because for me, it was about the five women that came forward. And we'd had to do whatever we could to try and get it broadcast And thankfully ITV did broadcast it But it was really difficult, you know There was no stage really during the course of that 12 months investigation Was there any time that I thought, you know what? This is a quite an easy investigation to do at every stage. There was hurdles to face and there was First of all, how many victims could we find was four enough was five to face and there was, you know, first of all, how many

victims could we find? Was four enough, was five enough, was six enough, was seven enough, how many was enough? Now, would we get the authorities to believe us? Would we, would we get the public on our side? Were people prepared to talk to us? Would people give up their anonymity to go on telly and explain that they were a victim of abuse. What was the fear of being sued? What was the damage to us doing? I remember very clearly that my producer and I, we talk about it during the course of about 12 months, it was a consistent thing. I remember saying to her once, if this program doesn't land right, we'll never work in telly again. You know, we put ourselves on the line absolutely to make that program.

And of course the women did more, you know, those victims of his. For them, it was not only if they gone through that abuse, but for them to give up their identity in the ways that they did, was huge, far bigger than the risk that I took. But there was a risk, you know, there was a personal risk and damage that I may never have ever worked in television again, if we'd have got it wrong and no one had supported us and gone with us.

And even up until the last moment, I mean, I remember doing an interview for BBC Radio Leeds, the day before the program broadcast and the reporter there who was very supportive of Savile because Savile was from Leeds was basically saying, you know, who do you think you are to be the judge and jury, you know, to put this program together when the man's dead? I'm in my response very clearly was and I wrote a piece about this and said, look, you know, I'm not judging jury. All I am doing is presenting the facts.

You are the judging jury, the public are the judging the jury. Ultimately, you will decide whether or not you believe the evidence being presented. All I'm doing is putting it out there. And then it's up to you to make your decision. So Savile was alive when he started your investigation. But no, no, he died. He died by the time, so he was alive when news night started. There's, yep, then he died. But by the time I started my investigation, he had already died.

Did the fact that he was dead make things easier or harder? Oh, it would never have broadcast in a month or some days, if he'd been alive. No one would have touched it. It was hard enough to get it touched and he was alive. What he was dead, nobody would have touched it. You know, I did a big piece in the garden about that that was very clear. That had savils still been alive. Our program would not have gone off the ground.

It wouldn't even move forward. There'd be no traction for it. Nobody would have been interested in broadcasting it. And that tells you a lot about the power that he had, even when he was still dead. Was that just him wielding solicitors left right and centre and threatening to sue people? Yeah, incredibly litigious. The victims wouldn't have stood up for it because they'd have been sued by him. And the broadcaster wouldn't have treaded, wouldn't have trodden there because they wouldn't have wanted to face the backlash from him and the financial implications from it.

Why is it that so the police were notified of this Sussex Police or sorry police had been notified that there was something to investigate, but they hadn't got anywhere with their investigation. How did it come to someone that why was television the place that justice was found as opposed to in the police? Well, there was three allegations that were made. They went to Surrey Police, Surrey Police investigated it, and as a result of that interviewed, Savile at Stoke-Mandival Hospital, interviewed him in relation to sexual offenses, didn't make any contact with the hospital to tell them that they were going to interview an individual

on their grounds for sexual offenses, which is astonishing. He gave his account, basically said, none of it's true, absolutely no rubbish. And sorry, please decided to, well, within conjunction with the Crown Prosecutor's Service, close the case. But significantly without making any inquiries, had they have followed up on some of the things he'd told them, they could have shared that that wasn't true, that he was lying, and simply fell sadly years later to me to pick it up and do the job properly.

It seems crazy that there's things that you can do that the police can't, that there's lines of inquiry that get chased up. I suppose you're right. The fact that your focus is narrowed for a period of time really, really does make one team look at a particular case. Yeah, I find that fascinating. I find it absolutely fascinating that you can have somebody who's got the expertise and outside of the institution that's able to do that work. Yeah, I mean, I'm not the only person, I'm not the only investigative reporter that's out there that does these types of things, but it's about, you know, it's also about having experience and having the ability to go and do those things. I mean, the police officers that were investigating that case made some fatal mistakes.

The Crown Prosecution Service made some very fatal mistakes. And, you know, sadly, whatever you do, you know, you could easily say, well, they're busy, they're overworked, they've got so many cases. That doesn't wash, does it? It doesn't wash at all because as far as the victims are concerned, they don't care when you've got another case. I want you to deal with my case properly. And so when one argues and says,

well, I've just so busy I didn't do it properly, it's like, well, you shouldn't have done it then. Was there anything unique about Savile? Obviously, outwardly, he's a bit of a weird guy, but was there anything particularly unique about him that sort of came up during your investigation as well? Yeah, I mean, I think the uniqueness of Savile, and it really is a uniqueness, it was his broadness of his offending, so he offended against predominantly women, overwhelmingly women,

from all age groups, from 12, 13 all the way up to 50, 60, I think one of his latest victims was 70 or something, but but real broad range of a family behaviour, which is very strange because he quite clearly was interested in young children, you know, 14, 15 around puberty ages, but he also had an interest in women who were a lot older than that, which is very strange for an offender. You wouldn't normally have such a broad range of offending behavior targeting group. What do you think that says about him? Well, I think a lot of his effect, I mean, it becomes quite a complex process, but I think in terms of offences, offenders, why do they offend? A large majority

of sex offenders use powers and influence of their offending behaviour, and I think that power played massively into him. He was a completely narcissistic, egotistical, control freak, and had his way nearly all the time. So when he thought that, well, I want it, I'll have it. He just when it did it. And of course, nobody challenged him. He was fairly untouchable. He was fairly unchallengeable. And he lived a consistent lie, you know, his ideas that he was out doing lots of, um, marathons and things like that. I mean, yeah, I think he finished two or three marathons in his life. And he was meant to have finished about 30 or 40. He was start the marathon. His roles

would pick him up and he'd be dropped off just before the end and come out. You know, he'd go to charity events and he'd be there for 10 minutes and he'd disappear, be paid for the full time. He was a complete charlatan, you know, but very, very good at it. You know, he pulled the wall over his eye and for a large majority of people, if I can work 20% but get paid 100%, I'll do it.

And you know, majority of people would work like that. Do you think that him creating his children's shows was his way of gaining access? I think it was. I rate peace in the radio times and there was a number of people who said that actually, you know, that's not true. But the evidence would suggest that it was, whether it was subconscious or whether it was a deliberate act by him, there's

no doubt that by having a chat show or a show like Jimel Fixett enabled him to get access to children. And predominantly his offending behaviour was against young people, children. So whether it was subconscious or not, or whether it was a direct decision by him, I have no doubt that that played absolutely into his offending behaviour. Did he ever cross over to boys or men? Well, there were a number of allegations of males that he'd sexually abused who were around the teenage years. I never saw any evidence about that and I'm not suggesting that they weren't, they aren't correct but I never saw any evidence of his offending against males.

Interesting. So is it just his power that allowed him to get away with this for so long? Yeah, I think essentially I think he became fairly untouchable. And as a result of that, I mean, there were people through the over the years who could quite easily have stopped him. Before he became a very powerful person, but they didn't do anything about it. And as a result of that, his power increased, his family behavior increased. And he could get away with it. He knew he could get away with it. He knew that no one was ever going to challenge him because if he did challenge him by the time he got to such a position he was so powerful he was able to be very litigious.

Presumably that means that there were other people who were either the willfully ignorant or negligent or turned a blind eye or perhaps even complicit. I know that one of the big wigs at the BBC had to resign in the aftermath of this. But do you think that there's still more fallout or there's still more conspirators or enablers out there that probably do need to be called to justice? And definitely. I mean, there are people out there who knew that he was offending, not to the degree necessarily of what it was, or did he anybody knew about that other than him, but there will be other people who knew about his offending or knew about his inappropriateness working in the field to the, he was and did nothing about it. And one of the massive problems is,

so there's a number of television programs have be made at the moment. His anniversary is coming up very soon, and there's a number of programs that were made that are being made around it, and I've not taken part in any of these, and the quite simply because, you know, just that will now really is a matter I've put it behind me. It's a position I've done the job, I've done my work, I've let other people now get on with their bits, but it's still unfinished in terms of holding people to account. And until somebody wants to commission or make a program which actually holds people to account, then I've got no interest. You know, it's for me,

it's not about going over, you know, his offending behaviour again, we know that. That's been covered extensively. And what we now need to do is hold people to account. And until somebody wants to do that and commission a program to do that, then I'm not interested. How many people do you think you abused? Well, when we did the investigation, we said in excess of 500. And that might seem strange to people. But it's a figure having worked in child protection for a long time that I know that someone of his age is likely to incur that amount of contact with that many victims. And it's interesting when we met the officer in charge of the Metropolitan Police Operation Utry, he came to meet us at ITV

and we had a meeting and he said, you know, after an initial assessment of the case, we reckon there's probably about 13 or 14 victims, I went 500. And he went really? I went, yeah, he said, well, I'll bow to your your knowledge, having investigated for the last year. And of course, when the final report came out, there was just an excessive 500 victim. I suppose that's what happens when you were around for that long, right? If you've been in this position of power for such a long amount of time, it just gives you this constant access. Yeah, that's some. That's terrifying. Another thing to consider as well, that thought was quite interesting.

He's obviously Louis Theroux, who from what I know is a pretty shrewd guy, seems like a smart fellow. He's able to exist on multiple planes at once. He can play with power dynamics within the documentaries that he does to great comedic effect. And he didn't see it. Not the first time that he met him. No, I mean, no, I think it's when you're in a merst in that, I mean I know Lily very well, when you're immersed in something like that, I think it's very easy to have the wall pulled over your eyes unless you step back from it and you have the ability to be objective and detangle yourself from the whole thing.

And I think Lily got caught up in it all and as a result of that, I actually became friends with him. I mean, there's a very strange Louis through program, which was the one that he did, for his last program about several, where he said it was really about Louis. It was a very strange program where he talked about the impact that it's had on him about he became friends with him. He spent a lot of time with him. And yeah, I mean, he had the opportunity, he was in a way, you could say, well, Louis missed it, because Louis had the opportunity when he was in the car with him talking about, interested in children to take it to the one step further. And actually talked to people around and find out

those people that didn't like, Savon, why didn't they like him, but what was everything going on? But I think he got caught up in it all. And of course, when you were immersed in that new being given access to an individual, the access they'll give you is the access they want to give you. Yeah, he's the gatekeeper. He's totally the gatekeeper. So you then have to step outside that and go, do you know what? You know, when I investigated Oscar Restorias, you know, in terms of the case, all the program that we made for Oscar, one of the things I said right at the very beginning is Oscar, you know, I'm going to go to perhaps places that you are uncomfortable with. You know, I will, I will set the scene here, not you. You're giving me access,

but I'll take where I will go wherever I want to go. And that might mean asking you difficult things. And he was absolutely fine with that. You could never have done that with Jimmy Savo. Jimmy Savo would have go, no, no, no, I'm telling you where to go. He controls the frame. You are stepping into my world. Totally, totally. And you saw that when you see that actually with the majority of people that Louis goes and visits. He's great access TV, but ultimately he's always doing it on their terms. Correct, yeah, but that's the that kind of side eye, what's it called, Gonzo style of reporting.

That's the way that it works, right? The point is that it's a fly on the wall, sort of candid approach. Yeah, I think as well, maybe another thing to play devil's advocate for Louis, Savile's such an eccentric overall. You kind of don't know what's character, what's truth. There's a lot being thrown at you. I mean, does that clip that Louis did put just after he's cycling around his living room, which is like a bizarre scene from like some horror movie in itself. And he says, there's this clip of Jimmy looking at the camera and going, women know too

much. I don't like women. They shouldn't know so much. I think that's in isolation when you take it with the frame of everything else, it makes sense. But when you've got this guy that says, I'm going to go out backwards. So when people look at me, they think that's in isolation when you take it with the frame of everything else, it makes sense. But when you've got this guy that says, I'm going to go out backwards. So when people look at me, they think that I'm coming in, I'm coming in forwards. They want no weather, I'm coming or going. You think, right, okay, this is just a litany of a fucking weird guy. And I think, you're right. And I think one of the problems with Savile is that he made himself incredibly eccentric. So people didn't know whether or a lot of people just said, well, that's just him. That's just how he behaves. That's what he is. And I think in order to properly pull Savile apart, it also requires you having knowledge of how offenders operate and how

DVC are and how they operate and grooming and you know, Louis didn't have that knowledge understandably so you know, it doesn't come from that background. So I think it's very difficult to for anybody to have been in an environment around Savile in those days and for the majority of people to actually know to pick up on it. He was weird, you know, definitely a strange bloke, but if you spend some time with him and you had the knowledge of how offenders operate, I think alarm bells will be ringing very quickly. You reckon. But you'd have to have that knowledge, and you'd have to spend the time with him,

and you'd have to ask searching and difficult questions. And you'd have to know how to do that. So I think it's say, he was on a pretty safe wicket, wasn't he, getting Louis in there, because, and the same with Max Clifford, you know, Max Clifford had Louis in, and, you know, for both of those, of course it raised some slightly strange stuff, but ultimately they all came out of it okay,

or well. I'm not sure if you've seen the Andrew Cuomo allegations that are coming out of America at the moment. I think he's the governor of New York and he has been accused of being very inappropriate with a number of the women that are in his office. And one of his defenses around this is that he's a very touchy affectionate person. So there's some photos and videos that come out. And what it's made me think is you were talking about Jimmy used his global personality as a smoke screen to make it very difficult to pick out what elements of his personality were predatory and which elements of it were just more of the eccentricity,

whereas Andrew Cuomo has said pretty much exactly the same thing, talking about his team released a bunch of photos or someone got a bunch of photos together of him holding hands with other men, hugging other men, sort of kissing men on the cheek, just generally being overly affectionate. And you think, well, if you presume that someone isn't that smart, then maybe that's just the way that they go about it. But if someone's a very clever predator, then what they can do is think, right, if it does come out that there are accusations around me having touch people, I have this huge backlog of all of this media here that I've created. And I think underestimating the level of planning that these people go to is probably an error that we shouldn't be making.

Yeah, and I think actually, I can't talk about his case because I don't know it, but I think also there are cases where individuals are very, you know, contact. They do have a lot of contact and actually what ends up happening is that they take that contact too far or they end up touching somebody of obviously when there is no consent to apply.

And I think that's what happens with a lot of people. And when we, all these people start to be arrested and there's a lot of chat obviously around, you know, these crimes happened a long of people. And when we, all these people started to be arrested and there was a lot of chat obviously around, you know, these crimes happened a long time ago. What has been very clear, essential assault in the 1970s, 80s and 90s is no different than an exceptional assault in 2020. The nature of the offense was the same. It was about not having consent to touch. So nothing changed. What happens is the whole attitude has changed slightly or significantly because what used to be accepted, it wasn't accepted but it was accepted because by reporting it nobody would do anything,

you wouldn't be listening to, there wouldn't be any action from it. So people's, people's are simply put up with it. As a result of that, nothing was done. Of course, then when they have a voice and they're being listened to and the view is action, do you know that isn't acceptable. I mean, there are many people who will be able to tell you, well, those things used to happen in offices, up and down in the country,

people, bosses would do basically appropriate things, and absolutely they are wrong. They'd never been acceptable. So those people who have carried out those acts, you know, should be worried that there are some of those kinds of work, but it's be clear, you know, the allegations against those people that were convicted, and the words we're talking about, were very serious allegations. You know, we're talking about, you know, full sexual contact and full sexual abuse of children. Yeah, this is the premier league of of predators that we're talking about here. Yeah. Well, I mean, it's kind of defending.

It's all a horrific nature and repeatedly, or repetitively, and of course, they've used their position of trust. To abuse and not laugh it down in the country, there will be other people. I was into a prison. There's a Greenland prison in UK, which is I think it's a lot of the show. There's a great, great an imprisoned in UK, which is I think it's a lot of the show and there's a

That is a therapy to prison and I would have spent half a day there sat in a room with about 15 or 16 other offenders in there And part of the process is they have to be very open about their opinion The way man in the room each Explain the offenders as they have they committed and the first man sits there and talks, he says, I rate to five year old murder, turn that murder to the partner, and there's other people talking about it. And what was interesting with what I was talking to them is that every single one of them said at some stage they knew they were going to get caught. It was just a matter of time.

And one guy who said, you know, I used to come home from work and I drive around the corner and almost every night, I'd imagine that there was a police car on the drive. You know, I was waiting for when that police car was going to be on the drive. And I think in one way, that's quite reassuring that offenders think that they will get caught one day. The sad reality is that they don't always get caught. And you're a nice bent, most of my time now, a bent away from my private worker around managing dangerous sex offenders.

He's very much around investigating murders, unsolved murders. And up in the country, there are sadly people walking around who are responsible for a murder, who have got away with it, and have not yet got caught. And that is, that is for me, horrific, taking somebody's life. And sadly, we have far too many unsolved murders in this country. What is some of the most disturbing cases

that you've investigated? I think the hardest ones are when I know somebody is guilty and know someone has done it, I just can't get enough evidence to get them prosecuted. And that might be a case of Nick Lepaine, who was 18 year old young girl who wasn't missing in Coventry in 1991, and actually we're featuring location at Crime Comedy

Sierra, and we've done an awful lot of work around that. I have no doubt who the offenders are, absolutely no doubt. The evidence is pretty compelling against them, but just not enough to get them convicted. I've got another case that I've taken on more recently, which is the murder of two young boys in Liverpool in the 1980s. And I've now managed to get an interview with the person I believe responsible, and actually incredibly, he has opened up for the first time and has admitted to being the last person that saw them alive and has admitted to something happening when he was with them.

And I hope we're currently working on maps to try and get it to a position where we make it into a program which forces the hands of the Clare of the Illusion Service and the police to arrest him and prosecute him. They've gone, these are two young boys and in the for a lot of people, they even know about it. That's horrific. Two boys murdered in the 1980s. Why don't we all know about that? And there are other cases, a big article recently about unsolved murders because I get a free information request at every police force to get details of their murders. Unsolved murders. And it is frightening, it is genuinely frightening,

how many murders there are that remain unsolved. I mean, there's a horrific case of a young baby who was sexually assaulted and then cemented into a barrel. And the most probably why she was still alive, that's a family that's ever been caught or a family that's never been caught. There's an other case where an individual was cut up and put into a big barrel, an oil barrel. I mean, there are shockingly cases where offenders have never, ever been caught. And that for me is the, you know, the drive that makes me get out of bed in the

morning and go to you know what I'm going to go and try and catch somebody else and I have you know I have an incredible amount of of workload you know my next podcast on the detective series is Lee Boxel we're just cutting episode one and that will be released within the next couple of weeks. And it's a three-part set. And the evidence we have uncovered is phenomenal. It is, you know, we, I will name who I think the killer is. He died about six months ago, actually died during COVID. I wish he was still alive.

And actually, I probably couldn't have been so forced with him because of the name of him, but he is now dead so I can name him and I will categorically tell you that I think he is responsible. And actually we have evidence now from his son and his daughter who for the very first time have given me some evidence which pinpoints him as being the offender. What happened to those Asian guys that you featured in a series of podcasts that you did? What was the come-up and to them? So, that was for the first series of the Detective Podcast, which was the four main in jail for a terrorist attack.

They were accused of being involved in a terrorist attack in the West Midlands and quite clearly the evidence had been planted by the police, the police have planted the evidence, everything tells you that. There's no doubt even the judge alluded to that, he couldn't go as far as to say that it was, but everything pointed that, they constructed it, they put the matter there, But as is the case sadly for some of these things, when they go wrong, very often the police will just close ranks, the judiciary will close ranks. And I can't tell you whether or not those individuals had any intention to commit a terrorist attack in UK. What I can tell you, that the evidence that they were convicted on was fabricated, was made up. And it goes

to the heart of any investigation, in fact my podcast uses this at the very end, is that there is never in my mind a case where the means justifyifies the end. So in other words you can't make something up just because you think it's right. We have a judicial system in this country and we have to see that through properly. So by creating evidence, by fabricating evidence, that for me it is never acceptable and I think that's what happened with them. And in fact, in my series 2 of the podcast, we look at a lady that was a Harman Hindu Sangiri who was prosecuted for a murder in Manchester and it's absolutely clear that it's not murder, it's suicide.

She got jails for what is a suicide and everyone thought it was a suicide at the time and then the scene investigating police officer came in and as a result of the the pathology say, well this looks like murder and then there follows a path where they then go to prove murder. They had no evidence that it was murder in any way at all. I've looked at it now. We've done a full forensic examination. We've reconstructed the crime scene. We've reconstructed the fight with the or the so-called fight. We've looked at the injuries and it's now currently sitting with a new pathologist who I hope will concur with my decision. She's out of jail now. She's no longer in jail. She's just come out on license but she's still a convicted killer and I hope that the pathologist will concur with with my conclusion and we'll get it to the court of appeal and her verdict will be quashed and interestingly the

senior best-gain officer who I know actually who gave me an interview and I think she probably regretted massively giving me an interview but she gave me an interview and one of the things I said to her is you know there's no evidence to say that this was murdering everything pointed to suicide it all looked like suicide the whole crime scene looks like suicide you know why did you decide that it was murder when it looked like suicide you know when it looks like suicide, it is suicide. And her response was, if it looks like a duck, it quacks like a duck, it's a duck. And I went exactly, you know, and want to strange analogy for her to make. I thought, well, you're spot on there. You made the wrong call, didn't you? And she said, well, no, I don't think we did. I said, well,

you did. You know, you put an innocent person to jail. I mean, this is a person she never she's a ledger of turned up with the knife in her handbag and then left without taking the knife with her. And there's none of her forensics on there. And what makes this whole case absolutely bonkers is that it's based on the premise that the offender turned up at the crime scene puts a whole forensic suit on, including gloves, hat, shoes. Commits the murder. In the middle of the murder, she changes her gloves and puts a different pair of gloves on. She then leaves the property, not leaving a single trace outside of the bedroom. Takes her forensic suit off,

disposes her forensic suit somewhere, and that is the basis of the prosecution's case. That's why she had no blood on her clothes because she carried it out, wearing a full forensic suit. Has that ever occurred at any other crime in the UK? No. Not that I can find out. Has it ever occurred in any other country? No. You know, their analogy or the reasons why they say that this hat to be murder was the sheer number of wounds that

the victim incurred and 40 plus wounds. But that takes out and what they failed to acknowledge both the pathologists and the senior investigating officer. Is that that might be the case in your limited understanding and research around stab wounds. But if you do a little bit of research around the world, you'll find that there are people

who have stabbed themselves in excess of a hundred times, and there are lots of cases where people have carried out exactly the same types of injuries that she had. And so when you do the research properly, when you look atvesty, it's an absolute travesty, she should never have gone to jail. And I hope that the pathologist will concur with our decision and we'll get it back to the court of appeal. And she's languished in jail for those years, thankfully she's now home, but hopefully we can clear her name. This is some line of duty shit. It's funny, you know, by and large, the police are not corrupt at all. No.

And in fact, I often get asked this, you know, do the police set people up? Occasionally, they do. Of course, they do. It happens in every line of work. And particularly when you've got police officers who hold a lot of power. But overwhelmingly, it's incompetence. It's overwhelmingly a vision that they are right. So one of the positions of the murder manual and training is to allow senior best student

officers to come up with hypotheses in terms of what's happened, because of course the victim's dead and the only other person that probably knows what's happened is the offender. So, you have to start guessing and you have to start thinking, well, if this evidence is telling us this, this is what's likely to have happened. And sometimes that's right. But what ends up happening is seeing the investigating officers come up with this hypothesis and then, of course, they then look for evidence to fit that. And you can take all kinds of evidence and make it as strong

or as weak as you want to make it. And this is what happens with senior investigators. They run down a blind alley to prove their hypothesis, which unfortunately in itself, when you look at it in the light of day without those blinkered visions, blinkered goggles on, you're looking and going, well that doesn't make sense, because what is the likelihood of an offender turning up at a crime scene, putting a whole forensic suit on, positioning the body in a certain way, leaving the knife there, coming out at the house, making a phone call immediately to a friend and telling her exactly what happened within the house. All of that doesn't make any sense and it doesn't make any sense unless

you want to change the narrative to make it suspicious. Yeah, you're finding, you're repurposing the facts of the case in order to fit the predefined idea that you have about what happened. And that's what happens and it's happened in many, many cases. It's happened in Joey Bamber. It's happened in Gildando. It's happened in this case and I'm sure it's happened in a number of other cases that you know, that I'm not aware of. Speaking of line of duty, apart from the corruption and people shooting their ways out of

interviews and that really really really long buzzer That happens when they start an interview. How accurate is that as a representation of what life is like for the police? Yeah, I mean it's very accurate in many ways and you know, Joe Paker is an Inspirational writer. He's very very clever. I know world productions very, very well. Actually, I've grown up in their stables and have a very good relationship with them. They are brilliant. They're absolutely brilliant. But of course, there's poetic license to some of it.

Of course there is. But overwhelmingly, it is pretty accurate in most parts and some of it, I think probably the last series slightly stretched the imagination in certain ways and it probably wasn't the best of endings. No, God, what a fucking shit way to finish a season. Yeah, quite disappointing really and I think some of it got lost along the way slightly, which is a real shame, because it is an amazing programme. Eruption does happen in the principles, of course it does, because police officers are very powerful people, so they can do an awful lot of things.

More so years gone by, the 70s, 80s and 90s, police corruption was at its highest, really, really bad. It's far less now because the police do police themselves in sometimes better than they police the public, which is disappointing. And I think sometimes they go after ridiculous things. But line of duty, of course they go after bent coppers. That's the basis of why there is. Ted's view is, he is after bent coppers all the time. Of course, they're around. And they should be eliminated.

They need to find those people and get them out of the force as quickly as possible. And people will cover up for other people. need to find those people who get them out of the force as quickly as possible. And people will cover up for other people. Organized crime is organized crime involved in some aspects of policing. Yeah, I think there will be, there will be, less so in the UK. You go to some of these other foreign countries and absolutely. I mean, the chief of policing in one of the areas in Thailand, I think it's Bangkok.

He is currently on the run. He's on the run in relation to having shots somebody in the head with his team because they wanted him to pay 20,000 pound drive and now they've said that during the course of the interview they actually have 40,000. But the background to him is, he only's driving his house. He has breweries, rose voices, because the pay is so bad for the police in Thailand, that tends to what happened is, when they go to a location to do a search or something, if they have cars there for the offenders,

there's a picking order in terms of seniority of the police. Take the car. That's crazy. And they will take the cars and that becomes their own cars. And you take that to other countries. I've done a lot of work in Cambodia, Thailand. Total corruption, you buy yourself out of these places in Cambodia. If you get arrested in Cambodia for child abuse, you can pay your way out of it.

South Africa, you can do that. The corruption in the UK police force is... Pales. Pales and institutions. I've heard of it in significance when you go to other countries around the world. But it has been significantly impacted on. There's no doubt that the British police force of the 70s, 80s and 90s compared to what it is now, is a world away. The corruption that existed in those periods of times was frightening.

And thankfully, the police has got a grip of us so much of it now, and those people are no longer in the police force because there's no room for it, there's no room for it at all, as police officers we have a I say we I was, we sign a note, we sign a note to the Queen to do our duty to the Crown and we've is down to us to act professionally morally responsible the whole time. And we have to keep that and whatever the power is, you can see the power there to some of these people's heads. But whatever it is, we have to be upholding the law.

And the moment that we step the wrong side of the law, then we were as bad as they are. Yeah. Did you watch Murder Next Door? That Chris Watts story? What was your assessment of him? I mean, I firstly have to say probably the best program I've watched. All archive footage as well, wasn't it? All police cam and just, they filmed nothing for that show. I concise, precise accurate in the moment, brilliant because of course it was all on the camera and our interview stuff. Oh, it's brilliant, brilliant. I mean, it was the best program next week to have done for a very long time. What a nice piece of work.

I mean, I think, you know, I've got a program coming out very soon on Channel 5, which is about the Yorkshire Ripper, where basically it's beyond her tape to the Yorkshire Ripper. I managed to get access to someone who'd been visiting him in prison for the last 15 years. And in his dying year, I wanted her to put to him cases that were unsolved and information to get information from him and she did that. And as a result of that, we've got audio recordings because she recorded a word of phone calls with him and we've got those audio recordings and I tell you what, it's a fascinating mission. So that was... When is that allowed?

Well, we're waiting for a broadcast date, but it's likely to be September So we was waiting for that at the end of channel five and sold internationally as well So that's very exciting But I think what it tells you as a result of that we did a lot of work around looking at psychosis and psychopathy and schizophrenia and there is no doubt that the looking at psychosis and psychopathy and schizophrenia. And there is no doubt that the Chris was at psychopathy.

He was able, he was a psychopath. He was able to compartmentalize his life. You know, he wasn't in the form of the schizophrenia, which is up and down all over the place. He had a very, he was very calm, absolutely, you know, really dangerous piece of work. And to be able to kill your children in that fashion, in that way, joking. That's the thing, the amount of trauma that you would go through, if you'd done it in a fit of rage, if you'd seen red, it would tear people apart. Most people simply wouldn't be able to exist. They'd be shaking in the corner. The PTSD would be unmanageable. And yeah, he was able to think

rationally drive them, dispose of them, come back, speak to the police, trying... It was a psychopath. Which actually, it's interesting, because of course, Peter Suckley from Yorkshire Ripper was convicted, and for a huge conviction, it ended up in the result of him getting a court, then deciding that he was a psychopath. Sorry, he was schizophrenic, but actually that's the wrong category. He wasn't schizophrenic at all. He was a psychopath. Sorry, he was schizophrenic, schizophrenic. But actually, that's the wrong category. He wasn't schizophrenic at all. He was a psychopath. You know, there was, there was no change in behavior. He commits a murder. He'd come home. He's getting better with his wife, Sonja, and he'd wake up the following day in Normandy. Got about his business, yeah. That's the sign of a psychopath.

And, you know, and exactly what what's this? What is, will a forever be a psychopath? Making a murder of what he thought. Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, it could never have brought casting British television because it was totally one-sided, unbalanced, and lacked any integrity from anything other than the one-side. It drew huge fans, it was a massive, massive success, but ultimately do I think that he was responsible?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you watch the program and you come away after and think, yeah, you're as guilty as hell. You know, without an earth, did human remains up in, you know, being burned in the grounds of your place. So, I'm sorry, that's because she was burned there and you would know it about it. Now the cousin, I think it's the cousin. Brendan, yeah. The Brendan, Brendan, I mean, I think Brendan is absolutely innocent. I'm very sadly sadly we should never have ever been prosecuted. I mean, the actions of that investigate that. Yeah, pretty despicable.

Shocking, absolutely shocking. You should be convicted himself and the defense was very poor. They could have really highlighted a whole load of things that would never have gotten convicted. So yeah, a great visual and I suppose entertainment program, but didn't do very much for any credibility. As an investigator, it was poor. The thing that's really interested me during this conversation is understanding the forcing function of putting something onto television to cause downstream impact with regards to what happens judicially. I would have never thought watching how many seasons of your things on Netflix now, the

investigative thing. Two seasons of that and consistent one-offs and specials and so on and so forth. And you watch it and you think, well, this is interesting. It's almost like it's there for our entertainment. But you forget that after that airs, there are downstream implications that cause investigations to be reopened within the police for evidence to be looked at because there's now societal public pressure, there's press attention, there's more, it galvanizes presumably the families and other people as well that are a part of that. That to me is, you know, I enjoy watching true crime on Netflix, I think they have some really awesome stuff. But I never

realized that it was, apart from being entertaining, it's actually like a service being done to the investigation itself. All of my programs are, there's a backend to all of my programs, they all have a value, they all have a purpose. I mean, my most recent program on ITV, which was the murderous season clerk, you know, as a direct result of our involvement in that program, the parents got cleared of murder. Yeah, we, without us involving, without my involvement, they would never have been cleared.

And I don't know if you've seen it, but it's quite a fascinating program. And, and I think, you know, there's season two, you know, season one of the investigators when we focus on, in fact, sorry, I'm right, season two, when we look at Jesse Elmer, the young girl in beachy head, you know, following that, one of the areas that we focused on and looked at is, could we get a new inquest? Because if we get a new inquest, potentially we can have the body zoomed and then we can collect some evidence from the body, the DNA has never been taken from the body.

That's happening, right? Haven't you got some huge turnaround? Yeah, so in relation to Jesse Earl on Series 2, we as a result of that have, or put in a very detailed application to the Attorney general, and we've now got a position where the attorney general has allowed us to appeal the conviction, and we're waiting now in hot, if for the high court to hear the case very soon, and we're hoping that that inquest will be overturned, which is unheard of. You know, you're lucky if you get one inquest overturned every couple of years. They are so, so rare. So we've managed to get that and the purpose of it is, and this is where the interest comes to share. So you could say, okay, well, get them a new

inquest, fine, you know, they get an outcome, which is positive, but how is that helpful? Well, the situation is, is that as a direct result of that, we are now hoping that the body will be exhumed, that we can get DNA from the body, we can put DNA onto the national database, we can check that DNA across the unsolved crime database and the existing marks, and it might link up to items being recovered from an offender that as a result of that could be linked to her. So it all has a purpose. Talk to me about the psychological price that you pay for what you do. Yeah, I think you have paid a massive price. I didn't probably think that it was that big an impact on me until more recently. Now I have suffered from my mental health over the last two years

and I do have dark days which is you know I never thought I'd talk about really because of how dark it's been but it has had an impact on me and I try to deal with it you know sport and and getting in the garden and those types of activities have been really important for me. But it is hard, and I think it's hard because you're taking on other people's pain, taking on other people's sadness, and I live in a pretty dark world because of the type of work that I do. But that said, I love it.

I wouldn't do anything else. I can't do anything else. And I'm passionate about what I do. It genuinely looks like you're built for this. And like you were designed in some labs somewhere to be in this position. Well, if only I was, I can't remember the guy's name that was the $6 million man, but that would be lovely. Mark Williams-Thomas, ladies and gentlemen, if people want to keep up with what you're doing, where should they go?

Yes, I've got an Instagram account, which is M Williams-Thomas, I've got a Twitter account, which is M Williams-Thomas, and I've got a TikTok account, which is M Williams-Thomas. I keep them all up to date with with crime related things. My next program to come out will be the Yorkshire Ripper, which is a tape to the Ripper. You can check out my podcast at the detective, which is on it. I've written all the podcast platforms. And I'm currently working on it. I'll just leave you with a bit of a tease. I'm currently working on a three-part investigation into the disappearance of Madeline McCann. working on a three-part investigation into the disappearance of Madeline McCann. Serious stuff, Mark. Thank you for today. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Take care. Bye-bye. you