RedHanded - Episode 18 - The Love Triangle Killing

Episode Date: October 26, 2017

What happens when a stranger turns up at your front door and hands you a bouquet of petrol station flowers? Broken hearts, English countryside and an electric blue Renault Clio set the scene for today's episode as Suruthi and Hannah unpick the tragic death of super sucessful business woman Sadie Hartley.    See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to Red Handed early and ad-free. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. They say Hollywood is where dreams are made. A seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart. But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Saruti.

I'm Hannah. Welcome to Red Handed. So before we get started today, we've had another amazing week. Thank you so much, guys, for everyone who's been leaving us more five-star reviews and being absolutely fantastic on all the social media platforms amazing week thank you so much guys for everyone who's been leaving us more five star reviews and being absolutely fantastic on all the social media platforms that we are currently finding our way

through we just want to do a few very quick thank yous so firstly to home birth midwife who says that i love the camaraderie and banter between the hosts thank you to review nickname 18 that's hilarious well done who said these ladies walk the line of deference towards the victims and entertaining banter without being flippant thank you that is important and then from murderino87 who says these girls are hilarious they cover cases that are a little bit different and not your typical cases that everyone already knows and then word who said there's a lot of d's guys um who says great storytelling posh voices lady podcasters are always a win we've been really enjoying that people the obsession yeah it is verging on obsession now isn't it we feel like you guys

are fetishizing our voices a little bit and our accents We're okay with that Oh we're so fine with it And also people will say like That we sound the same I don't think we sound the same at all You make me sound so common I think you make me sound common as fuck

How rude How rude The truth of it is like sarisi and i like we're we're from we're from the same area of the uk we're both home counties girls so we we will have similar speech patterns but hey hey local comp all the way i was a local comp girl i cannot say that that's why you make me sound common as fuck. Your face said, I'm like, hey, proud local common. You're like, oh.

I got a scholarship, okay guys. I was just trying not to get stabbed every day. No, I'm just kidding. It wasn't rough at all. It was fine. And I was head girl. Like, I wasn't rough at all. I wasn't even a prefect.

I was told I couldn't be a prefect i was told i couldn't be a prefect because i was too much of a loose cannon direct quote mr robinson oh loose cannon that's quite yeah yeah i know i know i got to be head girl of the fucking local comp that's not saying much in a previous episode we were talking about lying on our cvs and i do say well i don't think i do anymore but there was definitely a period of time where i said i was head girl because the heads girl of my school went to do veterinary science at Cambridge and when are we ever going to be applying for the same job I love it absolutely brilliant good there's a window into our lives we also wanted to do a new a new feature of a social media comment

of the week which we just there's so many to pick from though there's so many to pick from maybe we should do one each okay but for this week we have one from more podcast who said that they were driving and they saw a billboard that was mostly red and they thought it was advertising us red-handed the podcast i do like how much we've infiltrated their minds into which they're seeing us everywhere, including on billboards. It's like a cheaper way to advertise, but we did reply to them, if you don't follow us on Twitter, with, we are absolutely flattered that you think that we have billboard money. We don't even have stickers yet because we have no money to put into this podcast right now. But you know, who knows? Maybe, maybe billboards might be our future. Is that the future of advertising?

A big billboard. I'll make one. I'll put it on the A12. Just this big Etsy billboard advertising our podcast. Do you remember Hannah and I went to a True Crime London meetup the other, a couple of weeks ago. You guys might remember us saying. And we saw pictures of the other podcasts that were coming who were all bringing like bags of swag and Hannah and I

both work like I think I was averaging about 12 hours a day the last three weeks at work and we saw this very last minute we're like oh my god I sent you a picture of all these swag bags I was like we should take something and you were like but what we don't have time and it's the night before I was like what about if I buy some red lollipops and print some logos out at work and sellotape them to the lollipops? There was like silence for a bit on the WhatsApp. And then Hannah replies, we're just,

should we just leave it? Yeah. I was like, oh, thanks. It's hard, it's a hard life. But anyway, anyway. I didn't mean it to be so hard. No, I loved it. It was was so funny it made me laugh and as soon as i sent the text i was like why the fuck did i say that i don't have time to be doing fucking arts and crafts at work i have a job do you know what it is though you're such a producer that's why you're always just like next this this next next next i find it hard to get out of the headspace but then you

we bring reality to each other I feel like I feel like that's what works and you are such drama not like oh my god not in a like oh my god you're so much drama but in a like it's fine I am drama very theatrical theatrical person but anyway back to today's episode and today's case. So today we are discussing the murder of businesswoman Sadie Hartley in Lancashire, Northern England in January 2016, when an affair, a burning obsession and a meticulous murder plot turned into a brutal killing described by seasoned police officers as an act of demonic savagery, an orgy of violence. Now make no mistake, this was no crime of passion. It was a crime of obsession, which left an innocent woman dead, murdered at the hands of her partner's ex-lover. So it's Friday the 15th of

January 2016 in Helmshaw, Lancashire, and 999 receive a call from a woman, an employee of Sadie Hartley's, who asks if they can send the police to Mrs Hartley's house to check on her because they hadn't heard from Sadie in over 24 hours and they thought that was very weird. So the police head over to Sadie's half a million pound house on Sunnybank Road in Helmshore where they found Sadie on the floor of her house in the front lobby, about 10 foot into the hallway, dead. She was lying in a pool of blood, and it was immediately apparent that it was a murder.

Sadie had been stabbed over 40 times in a frenzied attack. Blackburn Police started an immediate homicide investigation, with Senior Investigating Officer, Detective Superintendent Paul Withers, describing the severity of the attack, the extent of the injuries, the level of frenzy, like nothing he'd ever seen before in all of his 25 years as a police officer. He said that the ferocity of the attack shocked him. The post-mortem on Sadie found an item stuck in the roll-top neck of Sadie's jumper. It was a barb from a stun gun. She had been shocked with this stun gun and then stabbed to death. Her body was

covered in almost 50 stab wounds. It was a horrific attack. The wounds were to her hands, arms, torso, face and thighs. Such a personal attack. It really doesn't feel like it was random. No. And the police agreed because in cases like this, they obviously turned their attention immediately to the partner, Ian Johnson, a 57-year-old retired firefighter with whom Sadie had been, you know, they had been partners for a while, they were just planning on moving in together. But Ian had been in

Switzerland for 10 days on a ski holiday and the night she was murdered Sadie had actually been packing to fly out to join him. So Ian's not really ever a suspect, he wasn't even in the country. The police therefore have to dig around. They find out that Sadie had had an intruder break-in in August and that it had really shaken her. With this being the first time Sadie had been alone in the house since the burglary, had the burglar come back? Or was it someone who knew her? They were really stuck.

All they had was that Sadie, a mother of two who ran her own medical communications business, was last seen alive on Thursday at a conference in Manchester with a colleague. She was in contact with a friend and work colleague at about 7.30pm on the Thursday, but then stopped answering emails, which was unusual. But from the very start of the investigation, the police faced difficulties. Sadie was a rich and very successful businesswoman. They lived in a very large, detached house that was pretty secluded. On the road that they lived, Sunnybank, there were only houses on one side lived, Sunnybank, there were only houses on one side of the street so there were very few houses that actually overlooked Sadie's. So with little to go on in terms of leads or any sort of motive there was nothing

missing from the house. The police make a press appeal which also yields little. But the police do get lucky because the way that the street was laid out meant that the houses were quite secluded. They didn't overlook each other. This street was full of million pound houses and they all have CCTV. So they start scouring through all of the video that they can get from each of the houses from the night of Sadie's murder. When they spot something odd, all of the cars parked in the driveways of Sunnybank Road were Porsches, BMWs, Audis. When they look at the CCTV, they see what they feel is a suspicious car. A blue Renault Clio that was driving around and parked in the area at about 7.50pm.

A car that will go on to be absolutely pivotal in this case. But let's come back to it. Also, there's nothing wrong with a Clio ever. It's a solid car. But I think it stood out like a sore thumb in this road. Because it's like a cul-de-sac. You wouldn't just be driving through Sunnybank. You would be going into Sunnybank because you live there or because you're visiting somebody. So I can understand why their attention is drawn to this car. It's not in great condition either. So by this time Ian has come back from Switzerland and finally the police get some real leads from him. Ian tells them that when he spoke to Sadie during the week,

she had been worried because of something that happened the Tuesday before. So pretty much the day that Ian had left for Switzerland. Someone had knocked on the door of the house. And when Sadie opened it, it was a person in a baseball cap who handed her a cheap bunch of flowers. I find it so offensive when someone clearly brings flowers to your house that they bought at a fucking petrol station. Like, I find it so offensive.

Especially if it's a fucking stranger. Well, exactly. That's even worse. But, you know, if it's your boyfriend and you've fallen out and he's done something wrong and he clearly, just at the last minute, picks up a bunch of flowers at the petrol station, I literally would rather you, like, never returned again rather than gave me flowers from a petrol station. Anyway.

Hannah, I think you need to be more grateful. Not for petrol station flowers, Cerise. I mean, I'm not really a flowers kind of girl, but this would kind of freak you the hell out. Some random person turns up at your house and just gives you a bunch of flowers. There's no note. They're clearly not florist flowers.

It's a bunch of, like you said, petrol station flowers from a stranger with nothing. No note, no card. Yeah, it's's terrifying sadie was really unnerved by this and she thought it might be linked to the burglary that they had had in august and then ian shockingly revealed another lead he admitted to having an affair with another woman whilst he was with sadie he tells the police about an obsessive woman living in chester with whom he'd had a fling. Ian told the police that her name was Sarah Williams. They had met at a dry ski slope. The chill factorio?

Is that how we're going to say that? I don't know why there's an E at the end of it. I think it's the chill factor, but with an E at the end. I don't know why the E is there. Fine. It's in Manchester. Who knows? Yeah, so it's a dry ski slope with a funny name in Manchester in 2012.

They had a brief affair and he broke it off in August when the burglary happened. But an angry Sarah apparently wrote a letter to Sadie disclosing the affair. It is far too long to read out here and it's just an entire page. I typed in like size nine and it details the affair between her and Ian. So who is Sarah Williams? She was a 34 year old woman living in Chester, 55 miles from Helmshore. She worked at a travel company organising ski holidays. It all just fits together doesn't it? It's very weird. Ski holidays, he's on a ski holiday, they met at a dry ski slope, they break up in August, they have the burglary. I mean I'm pulling together points

that like will not even make any sense by the end of this case but it's interesting to think about. After Ian points them in the direction of Sarah and says that this might be a potential lead you want to look at, the police check her phone activity and they're able to determine that she was in Helmshaw. On the Tuesday Sadie received the flowers so she buys the flowers hypothetically and goes to the house but why? To clarify who Sadie was? Check that she had the right address and then return nine days later to kill her? In any case they have enough to bring her in for questioning. So on Sunday the 17th of January the police storm into her house early in

the morning and arrest her. There's a really good documentary on this that if you do want to watch, it's on YouTube. I think it's just called The Murder of Sadie Hartley by Sarah Williams. And they show you the like police camera footage of them storming into her house and arresting her. And she's just sat in bed. It's so weird. Imagine how terrifying that would be. Not that she doesn't deserve it if she did this. So she's arrested and taken to Blackburn police headquarters to be questioned where the police now learn that as well as her relationship with Ian, she's in a relationship with a 75 year old man. She's 34. 75 year old married man named David Hardwick. Her neighbours tell the police that he comes over every morning at 5am.

And Sarah admits that they've been together since she was 17. So he would have been 57. That just made me mini sick. And he's married and apparently his wife knows all about it and he just goes round there for sex. It's very weird and very gross. But it finally looks like the police have a motive.

They look at the text between Ian Johnston and Sarah Williams. They see that he told her 16 months before the murder that it was all over and this is when Sarah sends the letter revealing the affair to Sadie. This has unsurprisingly caused a lot of drama between Ian and Sadie but Ian also met up with Sarah to lay into her essentially and the two have a blazing row over the letter. But weirdly, I don't like this one bit. Ian says, to avoid any more issues and

bombshells, he stays in touch with Sarah, dropping her the odd text. Yeah, fucking right. What the fuck? That makes no sense. But there are reports that the two were still exchanging flirtatious texts and explicit photos until just days before the murder and in

the notes app on sarah's phone they find essays and essays of fantasy of what she wants ian to do to her and she just clearly is fixated with ian totally unhealthily obsessed with him him just being like oh i didn't really want to cause any more trouble so i just kept talking to her no you weren't you wanted to keep her there for when something went wrong with Sadie. He was just benching her. It's gross. It's hard to know the extent of what was going on in the videos of Ian talking about Sadie. He does seem to me like a genuinely broken man at the murder of Sadie. I do think he really loved her or at least cared about her but yeah the whole like I'm just gonna keep texting you to keep you sweet that's that's not real that's not a thing but the essays that they find on her notes app she never sent to him she's

just writing herself so I do feel like to some extent it's a one-way fatal attraction kind of thing but when questioned about the continued texts Ian denies that he led her on as the police accuse him of telling them that that whole relationship with Sarah had just been about sex. But it would later come out just how obsessed Sarah was with Ian. For starters, she had even planted a secret tracking device on his car to follow his movements. Yes, she is clearly very mentally unstable, but this idea of, like, this man who's, like, in this relationship with this woman, he goes and has an affair, he then decides that it's over,

and he's like, now I just want, I need you to just go away. Like, just go away. Like, I also find that very infuriating to be like, oh, she's such a crazy bitch. I slept with her for, they were sleeping together for quite a while. Brief affair is not true. They were together for like a year.

And then to be like, oh, it's inconvenient now. Just go away. He's a piece of shit too. But she is not well, mentally well in how she's behaving. definitely he's a piece of shit too but she is not well mentally well in how she's behaving but back to the arrest of sarah so they bring her in for questioning and she tells police that she was at home from 4 p.m on the day of sadie's murder and that she had been sent home ill from work and that david hardwick her 75 year old boyfriend had come over for a bit she then said that he had gone home and that she

was alone for the rest of the night. But she's so specific in the interview. She tells them very calmly, very methodically, in great detail, how she went to bed early because she wasn't well, then woke up in the night because the dog was being sick. So then she had to get up and clean that up. There's just so much detail. And it's so weird in the interviews we'll post this on the facebook group how weirdly calm she is just so matter of fact it's almost like she's on drugs or something she's so placid yeah because this is a 34 year old woman who's never been in trouble with the police before she's being arrested in the early hour of the morning in her fucking pajamas and is being questioned for a murder and she just seems totally detached and just keeps

denying it. But the forensics might tell a different story. They find blood in the bath at Sarah's house and the blood doesn't match Sarah's blood type. Sarah's bathtub had been cleaned with bleach but this one spot had been missed. They know that if they can just match this blood to Sadie, they've got Sarah, they've got her in the bag. So the lab team, get on it. And we will come back to this, put a pin in it, don't forget it. The police, meanwhile, question Sarah on her relationship with Ian. And her story pretty much matches the story that Ian told. She tells them that they fell out in August. And when the police ask her why, she says, he said that I was too clingy too needy but I don't think I am and she also admitted to writing Sadie the letter and said after getting my letter Sadie rung me and had a go at me and this is when the police probe her

and ask her were you jealous of Sadie and Ian but she says she wasn't jealous because they can't have had that good a relationship if he cheated on her with me for 12 months and again she seems so calm and apathetic for someone who's never been in custody or in trouble before to now go to be in custody for murder it's just so weird but the police now know that they just have three days to question and charge her or to release her so they get to work and they focus on looking for the murder weapon so they comb the woods and the streams around the house whilst also pouring over the cctv footage the detectives also now look into the flowers that were delivered to sadie's house on the tuesday because they strongly feel that the incident was

linked to the murder the police think that maybe it was like a dry run but they think the person delivering the flowers may not have been sarah herself the cctv footage shows maybe it was like a dry run. But they think the person delivering the flowers may not have been Sarah herself. The CCTV footage shows that it was the silver Astra that came to deliver the flowers. And in the CCTV, when you look at it, it looks like it's a woman and a bald man. The woman was Sarah, but who was the other passenger? So this is what led police to find a woman, Sarah Williams' best friend, Katrina Walsh. Because Katrina drives a silver Astra. They first thought when they look in the CCTV

that it was a bald man but when they went to question Katrina they discover that she has alopecia and often wears baseball caps. So new CCTV footage now also shows Sarah buying the flowers in a local shop accompanied by someone wearing a baseball cap. You don't believe in ghosts? I get it. Lots of people don't. I didn't either until I came face

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Experience all episodes ad-free and be the first to binge the newest season only on Wondery Plus. You can join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Start your free trial today. So the police examine Katrina's phone and discover that she was in Helmshaw on the Tuesday. Couple all of this with the fact that Sadie had told Ian on the phone that it was a woman in a baseball cap who had delivered the flowers. It must have been Katrina. And with that, she went from witness to suspect and they arrest her.

Now, Sarah still denies everything, but their phones give them away. Both Sarah and Katrina's phones ping masks in Helmshaw on the Thursday night Sadie was killed and when the police tell Sarah they have arrested Katrina it is the first time detectives say that Sarah looks visibly shocked. So the police now have Katrina Walsh, a 56 year old riding instructor who had apparently been friends with 35 year old sarah since she was 17 coincidentally the same as that david guy when she's brought in she actually says you better tell david because i've been staying at his and he'll be expecting me back why is she staying with the 75 year old man as well i don't understand it's so weird that these two people come into Sarah's life at the same time when she's 17. Maybe David and Katrina know each other.

And, like, David becomes her boyfriend, Katrina becomes her best friend. Like, it's all just a bit weird and incestuous. We don't know that much about them, to be honest. But now, Katrina, she is a really odd person. In the interviews, she keeps saying she can't remember anything. She tells the police that she has a memory problem and that after three sleeps she can't remember anything. And she says that she leaves notes for herself and writes in-depth diaries to try and remember things. It's like that movie Memento. I think she's seen that movie

and that's what she's trying to pretend to be because I don't believe her but despite her three-day memory she says that she believes that Sarah did it and by did it we mean murder Sadie Hartley apparently she believes this because she found a note that she had written to herself and she felt that that note was telling her that Sarah had done it this note makes no sense the note read if it all goes up say by stream, by the southwest of Debbie's field and high above the southern. It's like some weird poem. That makes no sense at all. What does that mean? But it was like a loose page in the diary. And when she finds it, she says, this is what I wrote to myself that makes me think that Sarah did it. But she said that she also had no idea

what it actually meant. And she's just so erratic when they bring her in. She keeps saying, I have to tell you, I have to tell you what I remember before I forget it. And she keeps screaming that she's terrified of Sarah and she would have done anything Sarah told her to. But after she calms down and the police question her about the strange note, she said the note was maybe with regards to having hidden something. Maybe the words in the note were about where the murder weapons, so the stun gun and the knife, were hidden. And suddenly, now, she has a memory surge and she tells the police to go and look near where her horse is kept.

So the police waste no time and head to the farm where Katrina has directed them. But it's a massive farm consisting of 58 stables, 12 fields and countless sheds. Meanwhile, the investigation team have more CCTV evidence. They now have footage of Sarah leaving her house on the evening Sadie was murdered, directly contradicting her story that she had been at home in bed ill all night. The police also have the CCTV of them buying and delivering the flowers on the Tuesday nine days before the murder. So they want to challenge both Sarah and Katrina using all of this evidence and this is when you see the biggest shift in mood with Sarah. They show her all of the CCTV and she just replies no comment to everything and in the interviews she's changed from sitting forward and

making full-on eye contact with the interviewers and now she's just looking into her lap and making no comment. So with all of this evidence now mounting it is however mostly circumstantial but they dig even deeper and what they find they find this old Nokia phone hidden under Sarah's bed at her house and when they check the call activity they find that she had called Crystal Holidays so her place place of work, and also Hartley Medical, Sadie's place of work, on the night of the murder. Was it maybe to check if Sadie was still at work or if she'd gone home maybe? And then the phone also gives them another vital clue. Sarah had been calling car dealerships and the final one that she'd called confirmed that they

had indeed sold a car to Sarah Williams, who had paid in cash for, guess what, a blue Renault Clio. The same make, model and colour as the car seen near Sadie's house around the time of her murder. But where was the car now? The police needed it, because it was bound to be saturated with blood. If Sarah had killed Sadie, she'd left far too quickly to clean up at Sadie's house, so the car was the key. It was what the police needed to absolutely forensically link Sarah to the murder at Sadie's house so the car was the key. It was what the police needed to absolutely forensically link Sarah to the murder of Sadie Hartley. They immediately start

looking for the car using the license plate number visible in the picture of the car and very quickly the license plate recognition software hit a match but it is a totally different model so what had happened? The police go on a hunch. Had Sarah made the three on the license plate into an eight? And what a hunch because that is exactly what she had done. She had used black tape to change the three to an eight. Now they've realized this and changed the license plate. They were looking for accordingly. They find the car and this time it is the right car.

It's exactly the same one she bought. And it was a critical find for the investigation. So the it is the right car. It's exactly the same one she bought and it was a critical find for the investigation. So the forensics get to work. Now back with the detectors at Blackburn Police Department on Thursday the 19th of January they conduct their first interview with Katrina Walsh. In the footage before she goes in to be interviewed she just sits on the floor and cries hysterically. When eventually they are able to calm her down and get her into the interview room she says that she didn't kill Sadie, but she knows who did, and she keeps saying that she knows it was Sarah, but she constantly says she can't remember anything, just bits and pieces. She

tells them that Sarah wanted to find out where that bitch was and take Ian off that bitch. So Katrina, also after being shown the CCTV footage, admits that Sarah had made her go and give Sadie the flowers. Now, for a woman claiming to have a three-day memory, she spills a lot of information. She continues, telling the police that she and Sarah had gone on a road trip to Germany to buy the stun gun. When the police show Katrina the picture of the stun gun, she starts screaming, Germany, Germany, Germany, and she behaves incredibly strangely throughout the interview. But despite all of the information she's giving, they still need to understand what Katrina's role was.

And absolutely, I will agree that there are those incidents of people who are clearly vulnerable, clearly mentally not well, being taken in by police, being put under duress and made to give false confessions. The police acted acted because you can see all of the footages in this interview of how they treated her absolutely fairly she is not being mistreated in any way that you can see i think it's an act the way that she's behaving i do think it is a bit peculiar though for a 34 year old to say that her best friend is 20 years older than her and they met when Sarah was 17

that feels quite peculiar to me I do think that Katrina is very infantile and I can imagine that her having been like 30 something being friends with a 17 year old doesn't feel too strange but I think that she has some issues but when you hear her speak she's's articulate. She's strange, but she's articulate. She's not impaired in any way. She's acting, I think. Whilst Katrina was being interviewed, the police get a huge break in the case. The blood sample found in the bath at Sarah's house was confirmed to be Sadie Hartley's blood. And there is absolutely no way you can explain that away. They had her, but they absolutely needed to nail her down. It was time to discuss weapons, injuries and how she had committed the murder and police go in on Sarah for six hours of interviewing. They need to close every loophole but Sarah still remains silent

and combative but maybe sensing that the net was closing in on her, Katrina now says that she wants to be interviewed again because she remembers things. How convenient. And with Sarah refusing to speak, this was absolutely invaluable for the police. Katrina now tells the police that she hid a zapper, some shoes, clothes, towels, and a knife for Sarah. The police ask Katrina what a zapper is,

and she tells them, this is, I don't know why but this makes me so Uncomfortable. It's even worse When you watch the full documentary and you watch Her say it. It's horrifying She tells the police Where she's explaining to them what she means by a zapper She says, and this is a quote

A black thing with squeezy squeezies With prongs and it makes a Horrible crackly crackly noise This is a woman in her 50s speaking like this i know but i do think she maybe has some developmental issues so yeah you know her behavior and speech is odd it is quite childlike as you say but it does seem a bit fake and exaggerated and the police think the same thing But in any case she tells the police That she had been told by Sarah

To destroy these items and now She has a panic attack in the interview But again it does seem quite disingenuous It's very dramatic I've seen people have panic attacks in real life Quite a few times actually And it doesn't look like What she's doing

She looks like she's in a movie You know how in like real life apparently If somebody gets shot they don't fall over And it doesn't look like what she's doing. She looks like she's in a movie. You know how in, like, real life, apparently, if somebody gets shot, they don't fall over? They stay standing. But movies, they fall over. So people who are faking things, they copy what they think should happen. And I just find her quite disingenuous. And she starts screaming, she's done it, she's done it,

and I've got evidence, I've got evidence. It's like she's trying to mimic sudden memory coming back and that's why she's reacting in such an overtly like outrageous way about it but with that the police who are running out of time were convinced that the evidence in this case was compelling enough so they charged sarah with sadie hartley's murder but now the hard work would begin because it doesn't end with the charge it's the focus and the attention to detail that they now need to show on how the case will be built that will determine the outcome of justice when they go to court so the police having charged sarah now have a problem

what to do with katrina she keeps telling them that she was sorry deeply deeply sorry and that the only reason she hadn't come forward before was because she was terrified of Sarah. They need to understand Katrina's role. So they take her, in a quite like unorthodox mission, they take her out to the farm that she had originally sent them to, because they'd had absolutely no luck finding anything on their own. And they wanted to take her out there so that she could lead them to the weapon, because that would be totally damning for her and for Sarah. And once at the farm, almost immediately, Katrina starts pointing out where the car keys, the knife and the stun gun are. And exactly where she points is where they find everything. And the stun gun they find is

missing a barb, like the one found in Sadie Hartley's jumper. They find everything and Katrina led them straight to it they now determine that katrina played a significant and willing role in the murder of sadie so they charge her too but she keeps saying i didn't i didn't it is truly chilling how much planning went into the murder and in the building case the team unearth even more evidence when they went through katrina's house they found stacks and stacks of diaries, and they meticulously go through the diaries from 2010 to 2015, when they realise that the planning for the murder of Sadie Hartley came much, much earlier than anyone had thought. The pair, so Sarah and Katrina, had been planning this murder for 18 months, because this is when the

first mention of Sadie being taken out occurs in the diaries. Katrina writes that Sarah wants to take the evil bitch out and that she may take part. She's strangely excited by it. She even writes after the first day of planning, wow, I may get to be instrumental in helping remove that awful woman. This may happen. Wow, I'm unexpectedly excited by it. Was buzzed so much i need a southern comfort to wind down a bit she's such a twat who drinks southern comfort seriously oh basic and in september 2015 five months before the murder she referred to thoughts of a hit on a motorcycle and also wrote of using the flag of so-called islamic state to mislead

investigators like she was thoroughly excited by this those diaries were filled with plans and plots and fantasies about murdering sadie hartley and this woman katrina had no real link to her she just wanted to kill i think the diaries also reveal something in there this kind of infatuation that katrina has with sarah but katrina what's really interesting is when you look at the diaries she's cut things out she's torn pages out she's crossed things out she's redacted whole paragraphs so she knew that it was incriminating obviously exactly and the memory problem well she remembered to go back and take things out and line after line the bits that are left implicate her

further she writes i've been wrapped up today in murder plots and god help me i'm going to do it i have no moral qualms with it i just hope we don't get caught ultimately the two thought they had planned the perfect murder but i do think it's so childish the the way that obviously they think that they this is the perfect crime seriously an islamic state flag like it's such a hard case to understand because when you see the way that they behave they come across and the plot that they put together it's so childish but then don't you find their vocabulary everything is quite sophisticated they're not stupid in many ways no i don't think they're stupid and i wonder if it's all an act to be seen as like having developmental problems or being a

bit slow or having these memory problems i don't really think that that's the case and how methodically it was planned for 18 months they went to germany just to buy a stun gun they plan this so much but who do you think is the ringleader? I think it was Sarah that was the ringleader. I think Katrina's like a bit like, yeah, let's go do it, like a bit frenzied and is I think a little bit obsessed with Sarah. Yeah, I agree. Yeah, but you know, long and the short of it is they, they were idiots. And the police built, I mean, it's ironclad really, isn't it? Like there's? There's no way you can talk your way out of it. And after a trial that lasted six weeks,

the jury convicted both of murder, with Sarah Williams receiving minimum sentence of 30 years and Katrina Walsh receiving a minimum sentence of 25 years. There's no did they do it. It's just the horrifying level to which one man's decision to have this affair and pick the wrong... Firstly, to make man's decision to have this affair and pick the wrong firstly to make the wrong decision to do that and then pick the wrong woman to do it left his completely

innocent partner dead and she didn't know for 18 months that someone was plotting to murder her that's absolutely terrifying i just and i hate it as well like when like they never go after the blow no like i really as you say like sadie was completely innocent in all of this but she was made out by sarah to be this villain and like she's the one that's standing in the way when she had nothing to do with it at all and it's so i hate it when stuff like that happens it's really tragic it's such a tragic story and you know like i said we'll post the documentary on there and you can see Sadie's daughter talking about it. And they've just broken their entire family. And by all accounts, Sadie Hartley was an absolutely lovely woman. She was incredibly

successful. So wealthy, ran that business. She was 60. She was planning on retiring. Her daughter had just gotten engaged. She was really excited about her daughter life and having some grandkids soon. She wanted to retire and just enjoy her life. And at that point, after working your entire life to build up to that point, you get murdered by some piece of shit like those two. It's horrifying. Thanks for listening. Thank you for listening

and next week, we're gonna switch it up a bit. It's Halloween. It is our Halloween special episode. Exactly. So tune in for that. And we're not gonna tell you what it is because it's a surprise. So we're doing a case each next week for in for that. And we're not going to tell you what it is because it's a surprise. So we're doing a case each next week for the Halloween murder

and we'll be telling each other for the first time, which is exciting. I can honestly say that the case I chose and have done is the only case that I have ever researched for this show that has genuinely given me nightmares afterwards. On that note, we'll see you next week. Tune in. See you on Halloween.

Bye. Bye. Bye. He was hip-hop's biggest mogul, the man who redefined fame, fortune, and the music industry. The first male rapper to be honored on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Sean Diddy Combs. Diddy built an empire and lived a life most people only dream about. Everybody know ain't no party like a Diddy party, so.

Yeah, that's what's up. But just as quickly as his empire rose, it came crashing down. Today I'm announcing the unsealing of a three-count indictment, charging Sean Combs with racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking, interstate transportation for prostitution. I was f***ed up. I hit rock bottom. But I made no excuses. I'm disgusted. I'm so sorry. Until you're wearing an orange jumpsuit, it's not real. Now it's real. From his meteoric rise to his shocking fall from grace, from law and crime, this is the rise and fall of Diddy. Listen to the rise and fall of Diddy exclusively with Wondery Plus.

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