RedHanded - Episode 94 - The Murder of Alesha McPhail

Episode Date: May 16, 2019

In 2018 on the tiny Scottish island of the Isle of Bute, 6 year old Alesha MacPhail vanished from her bed in the middle of the night. The community was left reeling when just a few hours later her body was found. The question that tore though the small town now was who could have done this? And when the truth was revealed it was more shocking than anyone could have imagined.    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. 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 Suruti. I'm Hannah. And welcome to Red Handed. Today is going to be rough. We are delving into one of the most horrific crimes in Scottish history,

and it occurred just last year in 2018. We're headed to the Isle of Bute, a small island off the west coast of Scotland, with a population of just around 6,000 people. Specifically, we're headed to the town of Rothesay, which is the capital of the Isle of Bute. And unlike Elephant Bute of David Parker Ray fame, the Isle of Bute is actually, I think, quite a beautiful part of the world. Did you read the Katie Morag books when you were a kid? No, I've never heard of those.

Never heard of Katie Morag. She's like this little Scottish girl and she's got curly ginger hair and she lives on an island like this one. And she delivers the post to all of the people on the island from her little like leather rucksack satchel situation. And she's got a granny that lives on the mainland. She's called Granny Mainland. And then she's got another one called Granny Island who lives on the island and she gets the ferry to the mainland and sings a song about both grannies that you can sing with your mom in the car and that is what I think about when I think about like tiny Scottish islands and I met a girl at a party once who lived that life like one of the like really

tiny islands in the Hebrides and I was like are you actually Katie Morag and she's like yes you've got me I put my hands up I am in fact Katie Morag yeah that's the, yes, you've got me. I put my hands up. I am in fact Katie Morag. Yeah. That's the most like twee book I've ever heard of that still somehow incorporates like child labor into it. I never thought about that. She was just helping out. She's a small child. There's also the post woman. I think there's only about 10 people that live on the island. It's not like she was like slaving away all day. Fair enough. She's not got a massive territory to cover. No.

And I think that if you think of the island that we're headed to today, somewhat like that, you won't go far wrong. And because I'd never heard of this little kid, child labour book before, when we were researching this case, to me, I was thinking of it, you know, the setting, the crime, the way the whole thing unfolds. To me, today's case felt To me, I was thinking of it, you know, the setting, the crime, the way the whole thing unfolds. To me, today's case felt really like almost like a broad church storyline. But the thing is, before we get swept away with all of that, we have to remember that this case centers around a six-year-old girl, Alicia McPhail, who was brutalized and murdered in the most sadistic way. And unlike an ITV drama, we're not going to keep who did this a big secret from you.

It was a local teenager, 16-year-old Aaron Campbell. And the very fact that we know his name at all is incredibly strange. The judge in this case agreed to lift the legal protection usually given to minors who were involved in criminal trials in Scotland and allowed Aaron Campbell at just 16 to be publicly named. And I think maybe like with the James Bulger case, this was probably to do with the brutality of the crime. Was it that their names were released immediately? I can't remember with James Bulger.

Yeah, with James Bulger, the kids were definitely named immediately at the time. Their names were known at the time that it happened. Could it be because he's 16? I don't know what the age of criminal responsibility is in Scotland. I don't know either, but I think because they specifically referenced

the fact that it was very unusual that he was named. I think under 18 is a minor. Yeah. Yeah, I think it's very unusual that the judge decided to take that step and name him. And he was quite sort of out there,

wasn't he? Like he just had a lot of social media stuff going on. It's quite easy to find. Yeah, this is true. I mean, you know, he had YouTube videos, he had all of this, but still I guess to publicly name him was unusual. And maybe it's only we know about all his social media behaviour

and everything because he was named. I don't know, but very unusual for sure. It's quite a scary thought, isn't it? That you could just like be accused of something and then immediately quite a lot of details of your life are just completely open for anyone to have a look at everything I mean you go look at his um youtube videos now which we'll talk about later he's got thousands and thousands and thousands of subscribers which I don't think that he had no I've watched the quality of the content that he had before because I've watched the quality of the content that he was providing. I'm so glad that I didn't grow up with that amount of like scrutiny on your, I just left school as Facebook was taking off. It was all MySpace really. I think my,

I bet my MySpace page is still up. Do not try and find it. Just the thing, I never had MySpace. I didn't have Facebook until I went to uni. Really? I didn't start a Facebook account until Freshers Week. That's hysterical. What did you do with all of your time? I just lived in a small town and knew everyone I knew and saw them every day at school. And also I went to an all girls school. So like I needed Facebook to look at boys. Makes sense. That was his only MySpace even. You did have MSN Messenger though, surely? Yeah. Yeah, I had MSN Messenger. That's all right then. But despite all that we know about Aaron Campbell, who is our killer this week,

for our story today, we're going to start with Alicia. In July 2018, six-year-old Alicia had gone to Butte to spend three weeks with her dad, Robert. Robert and Alicia's mum, Georgina Loughran, had split years before, but still maintained a good relationship for Alicia. Alicia loved visiting Butte to see her dad and her paternal grandparents. The family would spend their days on the beach, at the park, or swimming.

Robert recalls how adventurous Alicia was, saying that, quote, we were never in, we were always doing something. On July 1st, the day before she vanished, Alicia was taken by her grandfather, Callum Macphail, to a party in Coatbridge, Lanarkshire. After the party, Callum brought Alicia back to Bute and remembered how Alicia jokingly kept hitting him with a balloon on their way home.

Callum took Alicia to her father Robert's attic flat after the party and given that it was her summer holidays Alicia was in no hurry to go to bed. So Robert and his girlfriend Tony who usually stayed over at his let Alicia stay up with them. Alicia was finally put to bed between 10 30 and 11 p.m that night. Robert says that he tucked her up with her favorite Peppa Pig DVD to help her get to sleep and she told him, see you in the morning. Soon after he put Alicia to bed, Peppa clearly did the trick because Tony, Robert's girlfriend, went back into Alicia's room to give her a kiss and switch the Now Sleeping Girls DVD off. It was the last time Alicia was seen alive by her family. While all this was going on at Alicia's house, 16-year-old Aaron Campbell was at home celebrating the end of exams and the end of the school year with his friends.

They were partying on wine and Mad Dog 2020. And apparently Aaron Campbell drunk a bottle of each on his own. I have a confession to make. I've never seen a bottle of mad dog 2020 in my life really i had to google it when you were talking about it no i've never seen it and the bottle says md 2020 so i never knew actually until we did this case the md 2020 stood for mad dog 2020 i didn't know that that's what that meant i never knew i just thought what a shit name for an alcohol but yeah we used to drink I used to drink the green one. What is it?

It's just like, you know, like apple sours. Oh, yeah. I'm very familiar with apple sours. It's like apple sours, but cheap. And you get loads and loads and loads of different flavours. So, you know, you can get like blue raspberry, like the green one that I used to drink was like kiwi flavour. And do you shot it or do you mix it with something?

You shot it. We used to shot it how strange i'd never i just never thought about it in korea they have like a smirnoff ice type equivalent that's called kgb oh my god so i used to drink quite a lot of that just because it's very nice if you're hung over because it's got the sugar and the alcohol just takes you back up it's not a great alcohol but it is you know it tastes it's like apple sours it's sweet it's a bit sharp it's a high alcohol content i've always found that like apple sours just like covered your teeth like iron brew does so much sugar oh my god but yeah so that's basically what he was drinking i don't know which flavor they were drinking but apparently he drank an entire bottle of it to himself and

an entire bottle of wine. Okay, so that would have been... You'd be fucked. I mean, a bottle of wine for a 16-year-old is free. Oh my god, yeah. If I had a bottle of wine now, I'd be pissed. I'd be absolutely smashed. Depends how quickly I drink it, I'm probably drunk.

Anyway, who knows? The point is, he drank a fucking lot of it. And the inevitable happened, and Campbell got into a blazing row with his mum about his younger sister being out late at night. And apparently this argument left him suicidal. That's a quote. But whatever he was feeling after this argument, he left the house at 1.54am on the 2nd of July, drunk and carrying a knife. And we can't be 100% sure what his actual goal was. It seems that he knew exactly where he was headed because within minutes of leaving his house, Campbell was silently climbing the stairs to Robert McPhail's flat. And let's be honest,

walking out of your house in the early hours drunk and carrying a kitchen knife doesn't scream I'm just going for a quick walk to cool down. And also I imagine in quite a small place like Butte I don't think people are locking their doors. No this is the thing people aren't locking their doors because Robert, Alicia's dad, thinking exactly like you said that this was a small safe little town on a tiny island he had the habit of leaving a key in the door and not locking it because nobody thought that they needed to and the thing is as well Campbell's house is like right next to Robert McPhail's flat like they're so close it's like a literally like a two minute walk away and we're also saying that it's not it's not their fault because they didn't lock the door that's what we're not saying oh my god no like you don't lock

the that's what I'm saying he didn't lock the door because he didn't think he needed to and it was a habit i just don't think it ever crossed anybody's mind that anything like this would happen i think everyone knows each other it's fine it's safe whatever um absolutely not their fault campbell's fucking on one basically yeah like hannah said he climbed up the stairs to robert mcphail's like attic. He lives in the top floor of this building. And yeah, just let himself in because I think he knew that the key would be there. I think probably everybody knew. Yeah, I think everybody would have known that nobody really locked their door.

So if you just try enough houses, you'd probably get in. But Campbell seemed to know that he was going to Robert MacPhail's house. It doesn't seem like there's enough time for him to walk around to many places and try houses. He seems to go straight to Robert's house. And if you're wondering, that's weird. Why does he do that? The only real connection that I could find between the two, apart from the fact that they lived really close together,

was that Aaron Campbell had occasionally apparently bought weed off Robert McPhail in the past. And some people do speculate, was Aaron's original motivation to go over there and maybe steal some weed? Like, I don't know. But why the kitchen knife? And like, how expensive is weed? He's got Mad Dog 2020 money. Like, how much is a bag of weed? Like, why does he have to steal that?

I don't know it's weird I think it is strange I don't know the thing that really strikes me about the case this week is that it just seems totally senseless I don't know at this point whether he knows what he's going to do or not I mean he must be fucking absolutely trashed yeah I think so so maybe I mean he don't think he's in a clear decision-making frame of mind. Maybe he was just like, I'm going to take this knife, threaten Robert with it, and I'm going to take all of his weed. Yeah, potentially.

But whatever he was doing, Aaron Campbell didn't get the chance to steal any weed. But he didn't leave the flat empty-handed. Because when he walks into the house, the door to Alicia McPhail's room was slightly ajar. And Alicia McPhail was asleep was slightly ajar and Alicia McPhail was asleep in her bed when Campbell saw her. And it's hard to know exactly at this point what happened or what was going through Campbell's head, but I think he saw Alicia and impulsively he took her and just walked out the house. And remember, it's the dead of night. It's like gone two o'clock in

the morning and obviously everyone else in the house is asleep. And Alicia was probably too sleepy and disoriented to tell what was going on. So Campbell was able to carry Alicia out of the flat without the family knowing. And kids are like that. They fall asleep anywhere. And I also think that kids that are six years old, they're used to being picked up when they're asleep. Yeah. They fall asleep on the sofa. The dad will pick you up and go put you into your bed. Like, I just don't think that if somebody tried to pick me up when I was asleep, I'd fucking obviously wake up. Six-year-olds are used to being handled when they're asleep, I think. I tried to pick you up loads in your sleep in Cuba.

You weren't having any of it. Oh, my God. Sleeping next to you for a week in Cuba was hilarious. The one time you fucking scared the shit out of me when we were in Trinidad. Hannah's sleeping in the bed next to me. It's fucking pitch black in that room. And suddenly in the middle of the night, she just goes, what? And I was like, oh my God, what? And she woke me up and I was like Hannah and then she just sat up in bed she's still asleep and I was like Hannah you okay you're like yeah and then you just went back to sleep and all I was thinking after that is I felt like someone was in the room and you had been like saying what at them or you had been startled by them I have absolutely no memory of this at all and you just went straight back to sleep I'm terrible for it I was terrified when I'm sleeping in new places you're lucky I didn't sleepwalk that's the worst one i've done some really fucking fucked up

shit while i was sleepwalking brilliant you're right i'm glad you didn't or if you did i didn't know that you were sleepwalking and i absolutely didn't help save you or try to save you you just like right just fall down those stairs i'm not risking this don't wow so uh with all this going on like i said i think we can safely say that Campbell picking her up and carrying Alicia out of the house, she probably wouldn't have even stirred. She probably wouldn't have made any noise. And he was able to walk out of the flat with her. And we know that he did this because at around 2.30am, a neighbour, Alexander McLaughlin's CCTV, clocked a suspicious shadowy figure on a nearby beach.

It was Campbell and Alicia. Campbell was carrying her away down to the beach. And it was on this walk that Campbell had to calm Alicia down. She woke up and asked him who he was and where they were going. Campbell told her that he was her dad's friend and that he was going to take her to her father. But of course, that wasn't true. At around 6.30am, the alarm was raised when Alicia's grandparents realised that she wasn't

in her bed. The family flew into a panic. Robert, Tony and Callum went straight out to look for Alicia while her grandmother Angela stayed at home and called the police. Angela even started a Facebook group to help try and find Alicia. And Tony, Robert's girlfriend, actually contacted Aaron Campbell. She messaged him saying, To which Aaron Campbell replied, Tony told him, this is a quote, She went missing from house, police are looking for her and a helicopter is out. And he had the nerve to say oh damn i'm

sure she's not went too far kiss that makes my skin crawl he's just so disgusting so disgusting pretending like he doesn't know what's happening and saying oh don't worry you know putting her mind at ease she's not gone too far and this is a very small community like how does he think that people are not gonna how does he think that people are not going to, how does he think he's going to get away with it? That's what I can't understand. Insane amount of arrogance. And also, if people are wondering, well, obviously, he's not going to commit, like, immediately admit to it just because she texts him. He could have ignored the text. He gets off on texting her back and being like, oh, no, why? What's happened? And then being like,

oh, no, I'm sure she's not gone too far. You could have just ignored that text. They're just neighbours. He loves this. But the thing is, after the alarm was raised and the police came out, the search wouldn't last long because Alicia's body was discovered just over two hours later at 8.45am that morning. It was a local man, George Williams.

He had joined the search party hoping to find Alicia alive, and maybe, like everyone else in the town thought, just wandering around on the beach alone. But it was on the wooded and desolate grounds of the former Kyle's Hydro Hotel on Butte that George found her lying face down against a tree. George said he approached her, crouched down, and put his fingers on her neck to try and find a pulse. But Alicia was dead. Her vest and pants and shorts were dumped beside her. And word quickly spread on the Isle of Bute that the hunt to find Alicia alive had turned into a massive police probe to catch her killer. As islanders reeled from the news, Aaron Campbell and his friends

joined in the chatter on their Snapchat group. Just hours after he had killed Alicia, Campbell posted a selfie video. It was of him going into the bathroom and filming his face in the mirror. And the message on the Snapchat shot, fuck me, that is hard to say. Snapchat shot was, quote, found the guy who's done it. I mean, seriously. Not that Snapchat is something I particularly understand. I'm not down with the kids in that way.

But, like, that seems... He finds this hilarious. He does. This is, like, two hours after she was reported missing. Her body's just been found. Everyone on the island is obviously going crazy about it. And he posts a Snapchat shot saying, found the guy who's done it. Fucking hell. I mean, he's something else. I don't think, I can't remember the last person we came across that was this brazen.

Yeah, I was just thinking, I was thinking that when I was reading it. Age and brazenness wise, never. I can't think of anyone. I can't think. I think he, I don't know what he thinks. Maybe he thinks he's just going to get away with it and he's so much smarter than everyone else. And he's like covered his tracks enough that he can make jokes like this because there's no possible way it's going to come back to him. But like, it's such a small community of people. That's what I just don't understand. So he was bra brazen shit chatting with his mates that day but he loses his bottle a bit because later that night after his bravado had worn off he went to google and searched how do police find dna excellent question aaron they find it when they

have a load of your fucking sperm but uh we will uh come back to that one So, I mean, I think it's fairly obvious where that's going, but we'll come back to it in a sec. So while Aaron Campbell was being a prick on Snapchat, the town of Rothesay went into overdrive. Who could have done this in their tiny little town? And of course, it's at times like this that the opportunistic witchfinder generals rear their ugly heads. And right on target, as expected, anti-immigration columnist, one-time reality star, and full-time troll Katie Hopkins took to Twitter once Alicia's body was found

and posted a picture of the six-year-old girl alongside two articles, one noting increases in sexual violence and another about Syrian refugees who were settled on the island of butte in 2015 she's just the worst she is the worst and she posted this picture of a little girl who has just been found dead and these two articles for her own you know her own political gains her own like nasty muck spreading because we know she did that because the caption that she posted with this stuff was quote for an island with close to zero crime there has been a recent disturbing trend

on the isle of butte scotland i wonder what point she was trying to make with this because basically what happened is the isle of butte when the syrian refugee crisis was really hitting here in a big way the isle of butte, you know, those places have like very, very low population. So the government took Syrian refugees and placed them in these islands. And at the time, there was a big backlash against this because it's such a big change to a lot of these islands, a big influx of new people. But actually now, if you Google it, the island is like those islands that took a big influx of refugees feel like that has completely revitalized their economies it really helped those islands boom but there are

obviously the people who have written about like sexual violence increases the thing with the stuff that katie hopkins is posting the article that she posts about sexual violence increases is not related at all to the syrian refugee crisis and isn't even within the same timelines it just doesn't make sense i can post the articles you guys can read it there are articles out there refuting what she's posted she's posting bullshit she knows that people aren't going to read the articles they're just going to look at the pictures side by side and be like oh all right that must be that what that is then and she she knows exactly what she's doing you know have you seen her cover art for herself no what is it I don't look at her.

It's Katie Hopkins with, like, devil horns on the O. She knows what she's doing. She's just a professional troll. She is. She's fucking disgusting. And I only... Remember when she was on The Apprentice? She's famous because she came second in The Apprentice.

And then she went on I'm a Celebrity. She's just such a foul little woman. For our American listeners, there we have a TV show called I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here, where D-list celebrities go to the jungle and eat kangaroo testicles and stuff. And Katie Hopkins went on that. That was exactly it. And they probably had the best views ever watching her eat kangaroo testicles. And the thing is, we only bring this up because, well, obviously I hate Katie Hopkins.

And I know that she wants me to hate her I know she's a troll I get it I do but I also do hate her I find her so just always in there fucking stoking and prodding at the like flames of disgruntlement and anger that simmer in any country she went on this morning and she was talking about how she doesn't like children who are named after places her child is called India she was talking about how she doesn't like children who are named after places. Her child is called India. She was like, I just wouldn't want my children to be friends with someone called London or Paris. Her kid is called India.

She's ridiculous. How dare she call her child India? Who allowed that to happen? You fucking bitch. Oh, my God. I can't. I can't start talking about Katie Hopkins because she A, doesn't deserve the airtime or our rage. I don't want any of you who don't know who she is,

don't go Google her. You don't need to know who she is. Ignore her. And I know I've brought her up here, but only because this was a feeling on the island because it did sweep the island up a little bit because it surely must have been an outsider. This little girl who's part of their community

is suddenly horribly murdered and found dead. It couldn't have been a outsider. This little girl who's part of their community is suddenly horribly murdered and found dead. It couldn't have been a local. Surely not a native Butanian. It had to be someone else. The thing is, it wasn't. It was one of their own. A very much a local. And very soon after Alicia's body was found on the 3rd of July,

the police first had Campbell on their radar. Thanks to his own mum. Aaron Campbell's mum, Jeanette, called the police because she was suspicious after watching back her home CCTV and noticing her son had been out when Alicia was taken. That's funny that no one's locking their doors, but they've all got CCTV. That is weird, isn't it? Anyway. It's also weird. Why is she watching it? Yeah, who's sitting and re-watching?

Well, I suppose it's an event, though. She's like, oh, well, maybe someone walked past the house at the time. Or I think she knows. I think she is already suspicious of her son. But anyway, after watching the CCTV, Jeanette said that she had confronted her son about it on the day Alicia was found, asking him why he went out again that night. Campbell told her that it had been to look for his phone.

Jeanette later told police that at this point she told her son they had found the little girl and asked him outright, quote, Are you sure you don't know anything about this? And Campbell told her, No. But the thing is mum Jeanette still told police about the fact that Aaron had been out that night mum Jeanette didn't take this no

for an answer and she still told the police that her son had been out that night she put him on the police radar she says that she did this to eliminate him from their inquiries and also that quote obviously i didn't think he had anything to do with it whatsoever it was just to help the police maybe he saw something that he wouldn't tell me i don't know i don't know how i feel about that janet no i don't know what to think of it because either she genuinely thinks that he's just seen something and that he won't tell her but maybe if the police ask him he'll feel pressured enough to do it or she genuinely thinks that he did it but I don't know because I feel like if she thought he did it would she try to cover it up and not put him on their radar oh that's a good point actually I hadn't thought of that I think I don't know but

I also I mean we don't know that much about her relationship with him but I imagine it wasn't sparkling the only thing I really read about Jeanette and Aaron's relationship apart from the fact that they argued a lot but then he's a 16 year old boy who yeah yeah of course they argue a lot drinking bottles of mad dog 2020 exactly but the only other thing I did read was an interesting story that kind of makes me think that maybe she would be the kind of mom who would protect him no matter what and again this is huge generalizations like we don't know much more information about Jeanette. But I did read a story that when Aaron Campbell was like 13, 14, he got into an argument and a fight with another girl who was the same age. He apparently told her, quote, your face looks

like a vagina. And this girl got mad at him. They were having a physical fight. He was and this girl got mad at him they were having a physical fight he was on this girl hitting her and that girl's mum pulled aaron campbell off her daughter and pushed him away and jeanette aaron campbell's mum pressed charges against that girl's mum oh wow and it got thrown out of court like she didn't get convicted of anything but she pushed it all the way to the point that they were in court about it because she apparently hit her son. This is what I mean. Like, is she the kind of mum that wouldn't just stand by her son even if she thought he had done something? I don't know.

I don't know. I don't want to like say anything. We don't have enough information. But I did think that was an interesting story that gives a bit of insight into her way of thinking potentially. And maybe she thought, you know, the police are going to find out eventually that he was out at the time that it happened. So maybe I head this off at the pass and get him to tell them what he was doing. So he's off the list. Maybe. Exactly. So we don't know why, but we do know that she did it. And tipped off by Jeanette, the police watched the CCTV and they saw exactly as Jeanette had said, Campbell leaving the house at different times that

night between 1.54am and 4.07. Now at one stage in the CCTV footage that they have, Campbell is seen only wearing shorts and looking like he's just taken a shower. Detective Superintendent Stuart Houston, the detective leading on the case, wondered where Campbell's clothes were at this point. Had he been out to dump the hoodie, the jogging bottoms the case, wondered where Campbell's clothes were at this point. Had he been out to dump the hoodie, the jogging bottoms and the boxers that he'd worn during the killing, during the second trip that he'd taken out of the house at around 4am? Stuart Houston is right because he must have. Aaron Campbell's clothes, along with his knife, were later found washed up on the shore.

Again, fucking stupid. He just goes and dumps them at sea like they're not just going to get pushed back onto the beach. Again, fucking stupid. He just goes and dumps them at sea, like they're not just going to get pushed back onto the beach. Not thought this through. Actually, though, I was watching... Our sponsor this week is C Plus I. I was watching one of their documentaries of kids behind bars. So there are 2,000 people who are serving life sentences in the US who were convicted of them as children,

and in 2012 that was found to be unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. So basically, it follows the cases of eight kids who either murdered people or did horrible things when they were younger. And it follows their stories of trying to get out of prison. And the point they make in that documentary is there's this kid who murders this guy, I think he's 14. And when the police are interrogating him, they were explaining that kids who are 16 don't think about the long term consequences of their actions in the same way that an adult does. And I think that's very obvious with Aaron Campbell. Like he's not thinking even an hour ahead of what he's doing.

He's just doing it and then dealing with it later. And I think that is just the nature of a teenage brain. It's called Kids Behind Bars, Life or Parole is what it's called. And it's on Crime and Investigation at 10 o'clock every Tuesday. Oh, that's interesting. And you're right. I've read into this kind of thing before, where the idea of the adolescent brain is really interesting. The adolescent brain is actually risk seeking. Like whereas though, like when you're an adult, your brain starts to like put in safeguards almost to stop you doing that, to be more risk averse, to protect yourself. But actually the teenage brain actually rewards, so releases dopamine when a teenager engages in risky behavior.

Isn't that so interesting? Aaron Campbell sits well outside of the spectrum of any kind of thing when it comes to normality, when it comes to teenage brains, but interesting point for sure. So whatever possessed him to just go down to the beach and fucking shove his clothes in the water like they weren't going to come back he's not thought any of this through and Aaron Campbell was arrested at his home on July 4th 2018 and at this point he remained uncharacteristically silent. After his arrest police questioned some of his friends and a girl told them about a chat that she had had with Campbell on Facebook Messenger in January 2017. It was a conversation about crime documentaries or like crimey TV shows,

which is obviously in isolation not weird at all. Like, who isn't binging every single crime documentary on Netflix and every single true crime podcast there is in the world? Keeping us in a job, so please don't stop. Exactly. But the thing is, in this chat, Campbell had gone a stage further and said to the girl, quote, I would kill for the lifetime experience. And it's kind of what we talk about, like, we're not here to be like, Aaron Campbell is a psychopath. We'll talk about that later when we come to the trial and the psychological

evaluations that were done. But this is what we talk about with people like this who do show psychopathic, sociopathic tendencies. They get numb quite quickly. They get bored very easily. They have a higher threshold for what it takes to excite them. And I think that Aaron Campbell was probably bored with what was going on. He needed something more. And for him, that quote in itself I think is so telling. I would kill for the lifetime experience.

He talks about killing like how people would talk about like... Bungee jumping, yeah. Yeah, exactly. That's how he sees this. And the deeper police dug, the clearer a picture emerged of a boy with a disturbing personality. Aaron's own dad, Chris Campbell, told papers that his son was a sick and arrogant boy with no moral compass or empathy. Those are direct quotes from his father.

My philosophy teacher told me I had a dented moral compass when I was at school. Really? Yeah. I remember it like it was yesterday. I had the same form tutor from year 7 to year 13 and she told me I had a very strong sense of justice. 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.

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Claudian Gay is now gone. We've exposed the DEI regime, and there's much more to come. This is The Harvard Plan, a special series from the Boston Globe and WNYC's On the Media. To listen, subscribe to On the Media wherever you get your podcasts. Chris, Aaron's father, said that the warning signs had been there with Aaron since he was a boy, and that as a teenager he would often take knives to school,

and that he and his wife had felt powerless to stop their son. But this is my biggest fear, is like to have a child that i just feel completely out of control of and feel slightly terrified by i think that's maybe what he was like and it's also alleged because i couldn't confirm this but it is alleged that chris campbell had even told close family friends years before this brutal murder had happened that aaron had quote no empathy or feelings and while his dad just coming right out and saying this does raise some alarm bells there's even more to come and we have to be careful here because the media went into meltdown about the stuff that emerged about Campbell's behavior

and we're not saying that the following is wholesome but a lot of it doesn't sit far outside of somewhat normal teenage behaviour. But retrospectively, of course you're horrified by it because he does some horrific stuff. And I guess the question is, as it often is in cases like this, what is normal teenage angst? And what should have raised some more red flags? And before we delve into that, it's important to remember that Aaron Campbell had mates. He wasn't some weirdo mumbling in the corner, as we'd like to believe of people who commit crimes like this. It's the thing, when you go onto his YouTube channels now and you see

him just talking like a totally fucking normal teenager, and now he's got all these new subscribers who are clearly, I think, just watching his videos now that we know who he is, commenting on it. And every single comment is, I can't believe it. He's so normal. He's so normal looking. He sounds so normal. I can't believe he could do this. Like, that is the overriding thing with this case. You have to remember, he's not some fucking weirdo like we want to think about. He's, as we talk about a lot in cases like this, he was just a totally fucking, quote unquote, normal seeming kid. So his behavior now is shocking, but kids his own age weren't freaked out. So what is it that we're talking about? Well, firstly, Aaron Campbell was obsessed with Slender Man.

Apparently, he once shared a video clip of himself playing a psychological Slender Man horror game and posted, quote, there's a monster inside of me. I'm the one guy who would run to him as in Slender Man and not run away from him. I think there are a lot of teenagers who post stuff like that who never kill anyone. I think that's pretty normal. And even when he's talking to that girl saying like, oh, I'd kill for the lifetime experience. He's just showing off like you could. Obviously, he's not because he does end up actually killing someone. But I think there are quite a lot of teenagers who would say something like that

this is the thing that's um that I wanted to point out in this case is that the things that he does now retrospectively seem horrifying because of what we know that he has gone on to do with Alicia McPhail but if you just look at them without considering what he does, it's not that weird. What he's doing is just totally like what so many other thousands and thousands of teenagers are doing right now. Being obsessed with Slender Man, the newspapers were obsessed with that topic. Slender Man is so strange to me because like it's a story. It's a creepypasta. Like it's a story.

That's what it is. But obviously, yes, there is the case from Wisconsin in 2014 where those two young girls who were about 12 lured their friends into the woods and stabbed her 19 times and tried to offer her as a sacrifice to Slender Man. But if it's not Slender Man, it's video games or it's drugs or it's sex on TV. You know, like it's I don't it's not I'm not sure how significant Slenderman is in that case. But Campbell being into this meme is really neither here nor there. And it's like the whole Momo thing. Like, oh, parents, be terrified that your kids are being turned into monstrous murdering criminals by the internet. Thing is, if it's not the internet, it's something else. The classic something else that is thrown into the mix in Aaron Campbell's case is video games video games because aaron campbell was into them in a big way and this is the thing when you go into

his youtube channel you can watch videos of him you know playing like doing showing gameplay of him playing violent video games right but i also found videos of him on youtube giving trampolining tutorials genuinely yeah genuinely it's like him filming himself in his bedroom and he's like okay thanks so much we've got so many subscribers now but in like quite obviously a Scottish accent and then he's like I'm going to show you guys some tricks now that you can try at home on your trampoline and then he's like here are the clips and then it cuts to him of a clip on a trampoline doing tricks so I just don't know if anyone saw this coming him playing video violent video games and being

into Slender Man and trampolines what the fuck does that prove we're looking at the wrong thing I'm not saying that violent video games or online creepypasta like Slender Man are not part of cases like this but everyone is at it if everyone who pissed away hours on the internet reading about Slender Man lore or shooting sex workers on GTA turned into a killer, then we'd be done as a species. And while it is natural that the media would point out these things because they fit the narrative, it ignores, or in my opinion, at least moves attention away from other characteristics or factors that are bigger drivers in cases like this. Personally, it makes sense to me that things like violent video games or scary stories like Slender Man would only have a significant impact on the behavior of a child or person who

already was predisposed to either being detached from reality to an extent or harboring underlying sociopathic tendencies or emotional issues. So to me, it's like these things are the bullets that load the gun and the gun has to already exist for the bullets to fire. And we've touched on this before, the idea of child psychopaths or sociopaths. At what point do we feel able to label children? This is such a big question. People are always quite nervous to label children because then it can just become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Hannah, I think you raised this issue the last time we talked about this. They go through so much change and development at this age between what, like five and 16. It's probably the most amount of change you're ever going to go through as a human thing. How can normality be benchmarked?

On the topic of like change, have you seen Child of Rage? Yes. The changes that young girl goes through in a few years, it's like she's a completely different person because she was given the right care and the right help. Absolutely, and that is such an important point. Needless to say, the trial of Aaron Campbell was a grim one. Even experienced police officers and scientific experts

struggled to maintain their composure while giving evidence during the nine-day trial of Alicia's killer. Pathologist John Williams, who performed the autopsy on Alicia, confirmed in court that the little girl had sustained a total of 117 injuries. That is so much rage. Yeah, yeah. I don't think anything he was doing had to do with Alicia. You know, she just happened to be there and he took her. I agree.

Williams told the court that Alicia was violently shaken and sexually assaulted in the most horrific way and finally killed by being smothered using, quote, significant force. In court, Dr. Williams was asked, quote, You have carried out many postmortems on crime victims, including children. Have you ever seen anything of this sort? To which the pathologist replied, no, and went on to call the injuries catastrophic. Campbell pled not guilty and did so for the entire trial, only seemingly admitting to the murder after the verdict was announced. Throughout the

trial, Campbell whined that he was a victim of an evil and wicked plot to frame him for a crime that he hadn't committed. But the evidence said otherwise, because Aaron Campbell's DNA was found on at least 14 places on Alicia's body, including a match for semen indicating that he had in fact raped Alicia. Fibers from the dump jogging bottoms were also discovered on Alicia's clothes. Jurors were also shown CCTV of a figure on the shoreline who a number of witnesses said appeared to be carrying something heavy. The timing of the video matched other footage which showed Campbell leaving his family home on three separate occasions during the night. So the police were basically completely able to show he's not in his house, he's leaving his house because of this CCTV footage. Now the CCTV footage ofv footage of somebody who matches his sort of height weight description carrying something heavy walking along

the beach which is where his clothes are found later and where alicia was definitely attacked like it's a slam dunk there's no there's no ambiguity there really isn't any question here despite all of this overwhelming evidence and and just the overwhelming case against him, Aaron Campbell still refused to accept his guilt. But finally, faced with DNA, he tried to change track. And oh no, this doesn't mean that he just admitted to what he'd done and spared everyone this horrific trial. No, instead he changed track and accused Robert McPhail's girlfriend, Tony McLaughlin. In court, he does this for the first time.

This isn't like part of his defence. This isn't like a story he's told before. I bet his lawyers were just like, shut up, for God's sake. I have a lot of respect for his lawyers. I feel like people will feel like, oh, you know, they're defending this scumbag. But like, the judge even paid respects.

Paid respects? That sounds like they're dead. Gave them credit in his closing remarks for the way that his defense lawyer had handled himself he never tried to fabricate anything he never tried to lie about anything he just offered his client defense and i think he does that very well but fucking aaron campbell must have been a fucking nightmare to try and defend he reminds me of like a ted bundy just going rogue in court saying what he wants doing what he wants suddenly just starts accusing robert mcphail's 18 year old girlfriend tony of having done it and it gets better because his story was that he and tony so robert's

girlfriend who and remember robert is um alicia's father had had sex in a garage on july the second how romantic yeah the day that she went missing tony and him are having sex in a garage on July the 2nd. How romantic. Yeah. The day that she went missing, Tony and him are having sex in a fucking garage. Yep, that's what he says happened. And then he said that Tony must have then planted evidence with the condom that he had used to put his DNA at the murder scene. What?

I think it's a thing of just he can't think in long term it's just what can i say now and try convince everyone yes right right right exactly and he actually says in court quote i cannot think of any other way it could get onto alicia and it is obviously being his sperm and he says other than that tony took the condom i uh tony took the condom when I left and just went and killed Alicia. Needless to say, Tony vehemently denied any involvement with this or having done this throughout the trial. And obviously it's fucking bullshit. Mr. McSporran, the lead prosecutor in this case, called Campbell a quote, confident liar and said that his claims about Tony were preposterous. But whatever the prosecution said, Campbell just denied his

guilt, sitting back and just coolly claiming, quote, I would never do something like that. Mr McSporran, who has led on many high profile and difficult trials in his career, told the jurors, this must have been one of the worst cases to have come into as a jury to hear something terrible was done to that girl. and Campbell has shown no remorse during the trial and he was bang on. Campbell looked at the whole process with contempt. He'd sit in the dock and try and stare intimidatingly at the witnesses. He's 16, how intimidating can he have been really? But you can tell that's what he's trying to do. That's what he thinks. He thinks he's the big man and he'd always smirk as he was led back to

the cells after another grim day of evidence. He later said that he had to try and stop himself laughing out loud during the trial. A psychologist, Dr. John Marshall, a man who'd spent 25 years assessing psychopaths, was charged with compiling a report on Campbell for the trial. In this report, Dr. Marshall raises important points. Quote, you don't become a psychopath on your 16th birthday. Psychopathic traits start in very early childhood. You have predictable pathways, and yet we do not assess children for this neurodevelopmental problem. At the age of 16, such traits are already entrenched and chronic. So it's time for policy to catch up with research,

given the enormous social costs of psychopathy. We have to deal with psychopathic trajectories in childhood, head on now, to divert budding psychopaths. I think it's also like no one wants to believe their kids are psychopaths, you know? So people are going to confirmation bias the other way. And the main point of Marshall's report was that early identification is key because his studies have shown, like you were talking about with the child of rage, that warm parenting can make a huge difference to children with psychopathic traits. But it has to happen early. The question is, though, as we mentioned earlier, how do you

really notice such traits in young children? When do you label such children? And with what? Like, I don't know, how do you recognize psychopathy in a child? A lot of non-psychopathic traits are learned behavior, aren't they? Oh, totally. And I also think that, like, I've always said that the reason I don't particularly enjoy hanging around with children is that, like, a person nice to be around is sympathy and empathy and kids haven't learned that yet and I don't like being around them but like I think learning you know how many kids hit other kids they don't want to share they steal you know so at what point does it stop being normal and be like

oh well you should have learned that by now but then also kids develop at different rates in every respect of things so it's it's so difficult to be able to to pick out quite a lot of kid behaviors in an adult would be psychopathic ones i think the only thing you could say maybe from observing like a group of children is like maybe this child is displaying a few more emotional or behavioral challenges and you know maybe we just need to be more aware of that child's development and to be fair what dr marsh is saying isn't like we need to dose them up with drugs and we need to like fucking sick them in a care home or whatever he's just saying they need warm parenting they need more attention to be paid in how they're parented which i think would be a good

thing for any child anyway so maybe it's just being more aware and not pussyfooting around children that show early signs of behavioral challenges maybe it's complicated and it's just being more aware and not pussyfooting around children that show early signs of behavioural challenges. Maybe. It's complicated and it's very, very controversial. I did find another part of his report quite interesting because Dr. Marshall notes that in his opinion, social workers are in denial about child psychopaths. And quote, he says, There is a culture in social services of linking everything to past trauma.

But that wasn't a factor in Aaron Campbell's case. And other warning signs should not have been ignored. I know that we have social workers listening. I'm not saying that we agree with Dr. Marshall. I feel hugely conflicted about the whole thing. You know, I went down a bit of a rabbit hole with this because I find it very interesting. Evidence does show that people with the warrior gene, so those genetically predisposed to increased levels of violence, increased like anger levels, lower sort of impulse control,

you know, those are the signs that we see of people who have that warrior gene. Evidence does show that when they grow up in nurturing, loving homes free from abuse, the gene often isn't even triggered and so people with that gene who grow up in abusive homes or whatever the gene does express itself and it is triggered but then we also see children without that gene who are abused and some who aren't who still go on to become psychopaths and killers there are just too many moving parts i think and i definitely think that we should have this conversation though we should have conversations like this because i'm like the one that Dr. Marshall is proposing. But I understand why this topic makes people feel so uncomfortable and why any truly definitive

action to be taken would be near impossible in practice because it's just too controversial. Like, what could you do? We should do a Patreon bonus on the warrior gene. Yeah, that'd be really interesting. I think it's such a fascinating topic coming soon stay tuned watch this space but for now at least let's go back to the trial and after over a week of traumatic evidence the trial of aaron campbell finally ended and before the sentencing at the high court in glasgow which interestingly this sentencing was live High Court in Glasgow, which interestingly, this sentencing was live streamed for what seems to have been the first time ever in the UK. Wow. So I thought that

was quite interesting. Just like Ted Bundy, first televised trial. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So before the sentencing, Campbell's lawyer told the court that Aaron Campbell had finally admitted responsibility for the crime during interviews for background reports ordered by the judge. So basically, Aaron Campbell denies his guilt throughout the entire trial. And it's, you know, verdict's been read, he's guilty. And it's only before sentencing that he says, all right, fine, I did it. He told a psychologist that in the weeks leading up to the murder, he had entertained thoughts of, quote, doing something extreme. When Campbell returned to the dock, the judge, Lord Matthews, began sentencing with, quote, social workers and lawyers have painted a clear picture of a cold, callous, calculating, remorseless and dangerous individual. You have shown a staggering lack of

remorse and not once did I detect a flicker of emotion from you. Members of Alicia's family sobbed as the judge detailed the contents of the clinical psychologist reports in which Campbell confessed, all I thought about was killing her once I saw her. Aaron Campbell was sentenced to a minimum of 27 years. So Lord Matthews said that in setting the term of 27 years, which was, he admitted, necessarily shorter than if Campbell had been an adult. It was clear to him that, quote, reintegration or rehabilitation were only remote possibilities. The judge described this as, quote, a cruel travesty of the truth and reiterated the woman that Aaron Campbell had tried to blame, Toni McLaughlin, was completely innocent. Because I

think there was a bit of like oh maybe he's telling the truth like fuck no this is bullshit he was the only person involved in this case Aaron Campbell was totally solo in this like I don't really understand a motivation he never really gives a motive I don't think he has one no I think the only thing he ever says is I had just been thinking about doing something extreme for a long time. He went in there, he saw Alicia, he thought, yeah, I'll fucking do it. And he took her and he raped her and he killed her. He didn't have some elaborate motive. I think he's a psychopathic teenager. I think he was bored. I think he needed a thrill. And unfortunately, this is what he thought would be thrilling enough to excite him. That's the case of Aaron Campbell and Alicia McPhail.

So thank you for listening. I know it's a tough one, but I thought it was just so strange. There are so many parts to it. I just thought it would be interesting for us to have a conversation, particularly in light of the whole child psychopath, child sociopath. And yeah, as Hannah said, we're going to definitely do some sort of bonus episode on Patreon around the warrior gene, around any information we could dig up on that if you would like to um you know the drill you can follow

us at red handed the pod on all the social medias so we're on twitter on instagram on facebook so exciting the facebook group hits 6 000 members yeah this week like today or last night it's amazing but also feels quite strange also if you're listening to this on the Thursday, the day it comes out, Saturday is the British Podcast Awards. So please send us your positive vibes. We are in the top 20 again for the second year in a row for the listener's choice. You guys, that's so crazy. I looked at the list of that top 20. It is like fucking everyone else on there is famous. And then there's us. Just like last year year i can't believe you guys did it it's so cool you're you're amazing it makes it's just there's no words thank you so much so the voting is now closed you can't vote anymore but we are nominated this year for best true crime so send us

your big good vibes please so that's a good reason to follow us on social media if you don't already we will let you know what happens on saturday night and we'll be sure to post lots of drunk pictures of us at the awards either way we're gonna get drunk and we're gonna go and get a share box of McNuggets just like last year amazing and if you would like to support the show in another way and you would like to maybe get your hands on that warrior jean plus lots of other bonus content that we post on patreon you can do so. Head over to patreon.com slash redhanded. And we've changed the tiers recently. You can become a pledgee, pledger, pledgee, I don't know, pledger.

And you can get stickers, you can get bonus content, you can get an extra episode every first Monday of the month. Also, everyone's getting an extra episode next week on Tuesday. Thanks to our friends over at ADT Home Security, who are an American security company. They are helping us out. So we are going to give you an extra episode on Tuesday, the 21st of May, I believe is the correct date. But so everyone's getting a bonus one next week anyway, whatever happens.

Yes, because ADT are showing us some love. So we thought we'd show you guys some love. get a whole extra episode that's so cool look forward to that um back to patreon here are some amazing people who have become patrons this week I'm really struggling to speak I'm just gonna go through this right Libby Wales, Stacey Allard, Debbie Van Rankin, Leah Ariana, Tracy Lance, Steph Kendall, Sana Puri, Bianca Dryden, Erica Damaris Hinckley, Anne-Marie Svensson, Jennifer, AJ Vieira, Grace Burdrick, Jen Bemmert, Amy Elmore, Kelsey Moore, Tanya Hill, Cynthia Cooper, Stacey Lang, Colin Chepeka,

Amma Upal, Tara Carson, Ashley Summer, Sophia Davidson, Megan Harris, Amanda Guido, Jeffrey Jones, and Holly Tragutha. Thank you guys so much. Well done. Thank you guys. And we'll see you next time. Well, we'll see you on Tuesday for a bonus something. Oh, yeah.

See you early then. Yeah. we'll see you on Tuesday for a bonus something. Oh, yeah. See you early then. Yeah. See you then. Bye. Bye. You don't believe in ghosts? I get it. Lots of people don't. I didn't either, until I came face to face with them. Ever since that moment, hauntings, spirits, and the unexplained have consumed my entire life. I'm Nadine Bailey. I've been a ghost tour guide for the past 20 years. I've taken people along with me into the shadows, uncovering the macabre tales that linger in the darkness, and inside some of the most haunted houses, hospitals, prisons, and more.

Join me every week on my podcast, Haunted Canada, as we journey through terrifying and bone-chilling stories of the unexplained. Search for Haunted Canada on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you find your favorite podcasts. 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 Cone. 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.

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