Who Trolled Amber? - Three doors down: Episode 4 - Conviction

Episode Date: October 2, 2023

Sharon's case should be extraordinary but it isn't. A few miles away from Sharon another mother was left to solve her own daughter's murder after being let down by police. Listen to the full series today. For the premium Tortoise listening experience, curated by our journalists, download the free Tortoise audio app. For early and ad-free access to all our investigative series and daily and weekly shows, subscribe to Tortoise+ on Apple Podcasts.If you’d like to further support slow journalism and help us build a different kind of newsroom, do consider donating to Tortoise at tortoisemedia.com/support-us. Your contributions allow us to investigate, campaign and explore, and to build a newsroom that is responsible and sustainable. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

ACAST powers the world's best podcasts. Here's a show of glamour and scandal and political intrigue and a battle for the soul of a nation. Hollywood Exiles, from CBC Podcasts and the BBC World Service. Find it wherever you get your podcasts. ACAST helps creators launch, grow, and monetize their podcasts everywhere. Acast.com Tortoise Hello Anne, it's Julie and Sharon.

They're coming in. Thank you. Please enter. Finally got his death. Justice. Did you know I was crying? You're a good dad, aren't you? I'm sure. Set us both off now.

He hasn't remembered where he lived. Did you remember? Aye. Sit down. Yeah. Sit yourself down. Sorry about this. And you're...

I don't want to see you. I'm going to be like... Come on in. Sharon has known An Ming since the mid-1990s, when they met at a victims' rights conference and connected immediately. Both had lost a daughter to murder, and both had been badly failed by the police. In the mid-2000s, Sharon had been admitted to a psychiatric ward,

feeling unable to cope as her drinking and depression became too much to bear. And the nurse said, there's a phone call for you. I was shocked because it was Anne. I've no mirror. And she supported us. And she was giving us hope. Anne had heard Sharon was in hospital.

She called to give her a pep talk. You need to learn to speak up, she went out and she was saying, it'll be so hard, but you need to fight for this. She went, you need to fight on and on and on till you get justice. This is the first time the old friends are meeting, since David Boyd was convicted of killing Sharon's daughter, Nicky. It was the man that lived in our house, right, it was from my dad's,, Nicky. It was the man that lived in our house three doors from my dad's

where Nicky went missing. Nobody listened and then a child come out. He's got convictions going back to 1980 and they still didn't listen. Until finally he got his name that he was using, Bell and Smith. So how did they find him then at the end? I took them Bell and Smith. So how did they find him at the end? I took them here after that.

I think then they realised, which the team that took his case on should have realised in the beginning by his previous convictions and just being three doors away. I knew it was close to home. I knew he wasn't standing outside of a pub. But the public, you know, the truth had come out

and I was telling the truth. The support changed. I'm a bit angry at some of the support because I wasn't asking for people to believe us or support us. The only person I was asking to listen to us was the police. Sharon's case should be extraordinary, but it's not. Anne Ming found her own daughter's body after police failed to follow obvious leads.

Like Sharon, Anne has been instrumental in securing the conviction of her daughter's murderer. I'm Julie Bindle, and this is Three Doors Down. A mother, a murder, and a 30-year investigation. Episode four, Conviction. Lisa Theker, the police officer in charge of the investigation, was made aware of David Boyd's name in 2016. Between the wrongly suspected George Heron being acquitted in 1993 and David Boyd's arrest in 2018, little happened. Nicky's murder effectively became, aside from occasional and cursory reopening of the file

when Sharon made a scene, a cold case. But Sharon took up where the police left off, demanding meetings with the police, writing to politicians, members of the royal family, celebrities, anyone she could think of that might have influence. She made posters of Nicky that she would paste across bridges and shop doorways in Sunderland. Get arrested time after time after time, just for somebody to listen. arrested time after time after time, just for somebody to listen. She wanted direct contact with the police officers, so she got herself arrested purposely so that she could speak to them and ask about the status of the investigation. It's heartbreaking.

It is. It's very hard if you're trying to get the police to listen to you. You know, it really is. Were it not for Sharon's relentless campaign to get justice for Nicky, I would probably never have heard of the case. I got more into campaigning on Facebook and that. Got us some big posters done. And posters were saying things like, do you know anything about this murder?

I was trying to get into prison to make a big campaign thing. The judge kept saying, if you come back in front of me, you'll go to prison. I refused solicitors, thinking, well, if I just admit it, they'll send us to prison.

Now I've put the windows out and gone looking for these people. And these people were all potential witnesses to what had happened to Nicky. I think people used to think I was crazy and think, oh, that's Sharon, she's been drinking. I think the thing in my area was I was a bit of a nutter because I wouldn't show up. Sharon, a grieving mother with three other kids to raise, was in a position of having to delve

deep into her former community. A community that had decided she was a bad mother who neglected her child and almost caused her murder. But she was actually the polar opposite and was doing the police's job. So I asked them, say I do in this new call case team, can you put Nicky's case on crime watch? Now next month will mark the 21st anniversary of seven-year-old Nicky Allen's murder. She'd been a happy child, growing up in the Weirgarth flats in Sunderland, but on the night of 7th October 1992, she went missing.

Despite a frantic search, she wasn't found until the following day. Her body was discovered in a disused building near to where she used to play. She had been stabbed 37 times. That Crimewatch episode was down to Sharon. She had been asking police for years why they couldn't get the case back on TV. And when they did nothing, she contacted the producers herself and set the wheels in motion. I've just got a wheels in motion. And that was not all Sharon was doing.

Through her own investigation, Sharon came to suspect David Boyd. Dad gave his name in after 11 years watching him because his ex-partner gave him other names he was using, Smith and Bell. Anne Ming has never liked being told what to do. Now in her late 70s, as a 15-year-old, she fell in love with Charlie, an older man of Chinese heritage whose family ran the Chinese takeaway. Her parents seriously disapproved at first, but Anne stood firm and persuaded them to sign the form to allow them to marry when Anne was just 16 years old. Anne and Charlie stayed happily together until his death 12 years ago. As a dual heritage couple in a white working class town in the North East, life wasn't easy, but Anne fought back against the prejudice that came their way. And then the worst happened. Their daughter Julie disappeared off the face of the earth,

and the police refused to believe Anne that something terrible had happened to her. In November 1989, Anne was looking after her grandson Kevin for her 22-year-old daughter Julie. She said to me, don't forget, ma'am, to ring me in the morning at half seven to wake me up. Little did I know that would be the last time I'd see her alive. I went around the house next morning, got no reply. I just thought she'd slept in because we were working late. So I drove down to the house. When I got to the house, all the curtains were closed, doors were locked, I didn't have a key.

The man over the road was up. I said, had he seen Julie at all? He hadn't seen her at all, so what I did, I went and got my son out of work to come and break in. So he broke into like a narrow glass panel at the back door. He said, something wrong in here, ma'am? He said, there's no keys, no sign of Julie, nothing at all. He said, beds all made, everything. My gut feeling at that time told me something was wrong. I said, I'll phone the police. Anne's assumption is that the police would help. And they said, it's too soon to report somebody missing. I suggest that you go home and wait for it to phone.

The phone didn't ring. We went down there to report that she'd disappeared mysteriously, and the policewoman on the desk, she said she could have gone to a nightclub, she could have got drunk, she could have slept it off. I said, she's left her young child, three-year-old, with me. The police officer said to Anne... Your daughter's a typical case just to take off. I said, what do you mean by that?

I said, well, she had problems in her marriage, she was due to go to court for a separation. He said, she'd probably come home. It's been cold and dark. And she said she knew the little boy was being looked after. She said she could have gone down to the A19 and hit the lift and gone and started a new life in London. I said, I don't care how long we've been in community relations.

You are dealing with a stranger. And I'm dealing with my daughter. And as a mother mother I'm telling you something's happened to my daughter but his attitude to me was he knew better As in Sharon's case the police took an early view

of what had happened to the victim which impacted how they investigated the case In the vital golden hour after Julie went missing where police are trained to secure vital evidence in a missing person case In the vital golden hour after Julie went missing, where police are trained to secure vital evidence in a missing person case, they insisted that she had taken off to London to start a new life. Julie always confided in her mum and dad if anything was troubling her.

She had a three-year-old son who she was devoted to. Her work, friends and social life were all in the North East. She didn't take clothes, keys or passport. Nothing suggested she had left, as the police kept insisting. But while the police focused on this theory, a man who knew Julie had been seen close to her home on the night she disappeared. Billy Dunlop was known to be violent to women. It wasn't until four days after Julie disappeared that police sent a forensic team to investigate,

which means that vital evidence, such as DNA, was lost. For 75 days, Anne was left in limbo. Anne describes that period as torture. She was convinced that her daughter had been killed. All of Julie's things were in her apartment, including her clothes and make-up. And I said, you're suggesting she took off to London? I said, she wouldn't go to the end of the street without her make-up on. I said, you've got it wrong. I said, my daughter's dead.

On the Friday of that week, the inspector rang us up and he said that they'd finished the search of the house, but could guarantee me that nothing went to what had happened to her in the house. So I said to him, if that's what you were telling me, me as a mother telling you she'd never been in the house, because I know something's happened to her. And then, six weeks later i said i'll go and have a look at myself she says i'm going up the stairs to go to the bathroom instead i'm screaming please god don't let it be julie because at that point

i'd worked as a theater nurse over 22 years, in operating theatre and I knew what the smell could be. And I got into the bathroom, so I leaned over the bath. The bath panel was an old, like a hardboard panel because it was an old house. And as I leaned over the bath, my knees went against the bath panel and it had always been loose at one end. And the smell come out and I just bent down and pulled it open and she was under the bath. I was absolutely hysterical and I ran downstairs as I'm screaming, she's under the bath, she's under the bath. So he looked at me. Well afterwards he said to me, I thought you'd cracked up. He said he didn't think I'd seen anything and I got hold of him and I said please God

tell me it isn't. So he'd gone up on the panel and he went upstairs with a screwdriver to unfasten the bath panel and then all I heard, he's on the top of the panel and he went upstairs with a screwdriver to unfasten the bath panel. And then all I heard was on the top of the night, he shouted, oh Jesus Christ, no need. I said, what do I do? During Dunlop's trial, it was revealed that during the house search, a police sniffer dog was guided upstairs. The police dog became highly agitated and pulled him into the bathroom, where it became highly agitated. Brainy's wisdom pulled it out and took it in the garden.

And he had to sit and listen to that. I thought any dog, never mind the police dog, any dog would have found a body. Any dog, I don't care which dog it would be, You know, and he dragged the dog out into the garden. Anne didn't just find her own daughter's body. She solved the case. Billy Dunlop was picked up by police nine days after Anne discovered Julie's body. But Anne's campaign didn't end there. The jury twice failed to reach a unanimous verdict

and Dunlop was formally acquitted. For both Sharon and Anne, it was the acquittal that initiated their own hunt for justice. Anne knew that Billy Dunlop was the murderer, but police told her there was no way of getting him back in the dock. The double jeopardy rule meant a person can't be tried for the same crime once they had been acquitted. I used to write letters to different politicians and see them on the television opposing double jeopardy changes and

I think I'll write to him I'll send a video of the our case and you know Charlie would say to me you're wasting your time they're never going to even my solicitor said to me, you're wasting your time. Even my solicitor said to me, Anne, you're wasting your time. He said, they will never, ever change a law and apply it retrospectively. Never. But they did change the law, thanks to Anne and her campaigning. In both Sharon and Anne's cases, the police made sweeping assumptions about the victim, missed key evidence and didn't listen to the mothers.

Anne told police that she knew her daughter and that no way would she have gone to live in another city, leaving a three-year-old child. Sharon repeatedly told police that someone in the Garths knew her daughter's killer and that they had to carry on looking for him. And she knew Nicky wasn't the child that witnesses had seen outside the pub on her own. She wouldn't have crossed the road. She wouldn't have.

To stand outside of a pub when her aunt is just... would be too frightening for her. That's why she was sitting on the road, because she was... She didn't... I mean, she knew that the band's up was playing in the Garth, but she wasn't the type to join in. So she would just sit. Somebody said, and I believe the words were used, what Erin used,

I'm going to take you to the lights to see you, Mum. Now she loved the fair and things like that. Why do you think the police have treated you like this? I used to say, your mum, now she loved the fair and things like that. Why do you think the police have treated you like this? I always said because of my background. I was brought up in care. I never had nothing. I was here on the news, prejudiced against black and white.

Nicky's case and other cases are to reach up over. What do you think, Anne? Well, I feel as though when they went in Julie's house to go and search, they just went in there to shut me up. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter what you are, you know, whether you've just been a man or whether you're a politician,

if you've got a family member murdered, you should all retract the same. It just doesn't seem as though it's moving any further forward though, with the support you've had. Definitely hasn't. What's the point of the police force from waiting on their jobs? There is more to this story than just a delayed conviction. The wait to find Boyd had an immense impact on Sharon. No, we had survived this.

Sharon's other daughters were taken into foster care. I got loads of crap, and then I was on this strong medication, and my daughter being murdered, and I didn't have any family. My step-mom was looking after me, and then they said they would look after them for ages, for a few weeks. I trusted them, I believed them. And then years later, they come to me. They say I'm same social worker was another one I used to work with. And said that the person that was looking

after them, what they recommended was a paedophile for 20 years. What they recommended was a paedophile for 20 years. Sharon was grossly let down by the authorities again. You can't believe it. Hey, Sharon. So I've got some angry issues and... Yeah, yeah. Sharon felt as though she could only rely on herself to solve the murder. Can't believe her every step of the way.

You've been let down, haven't you? I know. Acast powers the world's best podcasts. Here's a show that we recommend. Hi, I'm Una Chaplin, and I'm the host of a new podcast called Hollywood Exiles. It tells the story of how my grandfather, Charlie Chaplin, and many others were caught up in a campaign to root out communism in Hollywood. It's a story of glamour and scandal and political intrigue and a battle for the soul of the nation. Hollywood Exiles from CBC Podcasts and the BBC World Service. Find it wherever you get your podcasts. Acast helps creators launch, grow and monetize their podcasts everywhere.

Acast.com You learn different ways of how the police dealt with our case, not dealing with your case. Sometimes you start to feel like, sorry for yourself, cousin. I used to think, why is that? I'm not getting this help, why? And you question everything, because you do. If somebody tells you something, you're trying to look into it because you think, is that true? Is that right?

And that's a lot of stress, you know that. And then the police are sort of like, more or less, telling you not to be like an amateur detective. But you can't help yourself, because you're looking to get the justice. I mean, when you think it's taken over your life. But it's for me balance, isn't it? I know, yeah.

I wouldn't have it any other way. Yeah. So our kids and our grandkids didn't have to live this life what we are. I'm just glad you got the conviction because it's, you know, you've got to have a bit of closure now and let her rest in peace, Sharon. You know, you've been in a bad place for a lot of years. People don't realise when you're fighting for justice, it just takes everything over.

Mentally and everything, you know. It's women in the past that say, strong like you in that round, that's... Cos you were tough on us, you were tough on us. I mean, when you think, like, years ago, neither of us had got any justice at all. I mean, he was wandering free, you know. You would have the acquittal, so...

It's just horrible. You're left in a state of limbo. People don't realise your whole life's left in limbo. And all you can do is to fight for justice. Not only did police spectacularly fail in both of these cases, but the mothers that should have been listened to and taken seriously were dismissed and patronised in a way that can only be described as sexist. A key component as to why it took the police 30 years to find David Boyd. For Sharon and Dan,

they were left with the mental weight of an unsolved murder, taking the cases on themselves to solve. The harm to both Sharon and Dan is immeasurable, but it spreads far wider than the impact on grieving mothers. And there are other consequences to the police not stopping David Boyd in 1992. He was a known child sex offender who had murdered Nicky

and not been caught. He'd not even been questioned. Emboldened by getting away with a brutal murder, he was free to continue to target other girls. In the next episode... And it was only when I started reading the article

and I got to the bottom and I seen his face, I said to my mum, I was like, oh, my God, that's him that had grabbed me when I was 13. I was absolutely horrified. It's a face you never forget. This series was reported by me, Julie Bindle. It was written by me and Joanna Humphreys. The producer was Joanna Humphreys.

The narrative editor was Gary Marshall. The sound design and original theme is by Tom Kinsella. The executive producer was Jasper Corbett. I will, I will TOTUS