01x03 - Episode 3

[bunniefuu]

I tried to imagine what my
sister would be like now.

What she’d look like,

where would she be
in life now,

how many more kids
would she have.

I think about it sometimes.

I do.

But I’ll always remember her as that
smiling 18 year old little sister.

[dramatic music]

I think you could pretty much go up to
anybody in Coventry and say,

“Nicola Payne” and they’ll tell you what
happened that day.

MAN: It’s one of the greatest unsolved
crimes in this country.

REPORTER: Nicola Payne had left
her boyfriend and baby son

to go to her parents.

She simply vanished into the mist.

It’s just hitting home that summut
serious has happened to my sister.

REPORTER: A team of police officers today
began a yard by yard search

of the waste ground where
Nicola was last seen.

MALCOLM ROSS:
It was the biggest search

that West Midlands Police
had ever encountered.

Every effort, it seems, is being
made to find Nicola Payne.

If anybody is holding Nicola,
just take her somewhere,

or to just phone anybody.

I kept thinking, where’s my Nicola gone?
Where’s me Nicola?

MAN: What happened to Nicola
could happen to any woman.

How can an 18 year old disappear
and just never be seen again?

It’s just a never
ending real life horror story.

The truth.
That’s all we want is the truth.

If it was your sister,
when would you give up?

NIGEL PAYNE: It just got more and more
difficult as the years went on.

MARILYN PAYNE: Every morning
when you wake, it’s there before you.

Every night when you say a prayer,
you think about her.

And how things were
and might have been.

It was just talk to any journalist.
Keep it in the papers.

Keep it going.

That is what we want,
to have her found,

even if it’s only a body,
so we could lay her to rest.

Every year there would be an appeal
around Christmas.

It would be my auntie,
it would be my uncle,

begging, pleading for someone
to just say something.

MARILYN PAYNE: People say time heals,

but I’m sorry, I feel that,
in fact I feel worse now

than what I did on
the first Christmas that she went.

I’m sorry.

I still get people coming up saying,

“Oh, how are things, John?

We remember that day,"
like, you know.

They all know about it.

In an appeal for information
last December,

Nicola’s parents spoke of
the toll of her disappearance.

You get bad days.
you’re alright like, you know.

But it’s just slowly got worse.

You don’t get any better, you just
slowly, more and more thinking about it

and where did we go wrong?
Like what happened? And...

...could we have done any more?

NIGEL PAYNE:
I remember somebody saying,

“My God, why are you
still going on about this?

Come on, this has happened years ago,
can’t we just move on?

Every year we’re hearing about it.”

We wanted answers.

For years we was frustrated.

We were always,
oh the case’ll never be closed.

Yeah, it’ll also never be open.

It wasn’t the case was never closed,

there was nobody from the police
actively on that case,

until Martin Slevin
come along.

[clock ticking]

My name’s Martin Slevin.

I’m a retired Detective Chief Inspector.

When Nicola Payne went missing
in December of 1991,

I was working in Coventry
as a police officer.

In 2012, I was Detective Inspector

in charge of one of the major
investigation teams in Coventry.

I first became involved in investigation
into Nicola’s disappearance

when my Chief Inspector at the time
asked me to review intelligence

that had come to the police’s attention
first in 2007 or 8

from a potential witness.

And the intelligence surrounded
his father and brother.

He had told the police that Nicola was
buried in an area called Purcell Fields.

It’s an area of open wasteland
and moorland,

which is about a mile away from
where Nicola went missing.

He told us that his father had helped
dispose of Nicola’s body

because his brother had accidentally
knocked Nicola over in his car.

The son who allegedly
had knocked Nicola over

had committed suicide some
weeks after Nicola had gone missing

and also drove a dark coloured Ford Capri,

which was a vehicle of interest
to the enquiry.

So we’re now in Purcell Fields and this
is an area that was searched in 2012.

The land that as we see now was
a lot less overgrown

and we were able to
access the trees quite easily.

REPORTER: A tip off to detectives in
Coventry has led to teams of officers,

supported by
Home Office scientists,

starting a forensic search of parkland
in the Bell Green area of the city.

MARTIN SLEVIN: Once the media knew
that we were searching

and knew that the search
was related to Nicola’s disappearance,

the story went into overdrive
very, very quickly.

REPORTER: Using the latest
advances in technology,

police try to solve a mystery that’s
remained unanswered for so many years.

SENIOR OFFICER: We’re here today
as a direct result of new information

and that’s leading us to investigate
the piece of land that’s behind me.

REPORTER: Specialist ground radar
equipment is being used,

as well as a dog
trained to find human remains.

PETER WILSON: At the time,
when all of this is unfolding,

we’re talking to the family.

Their expectation, their hopes are rising.

You get this excitement that maybe
a breakthrough is about to occur.

They started bringing teams of police in
to fan out and go through everything.

We always held out for finding Nicola,

but then the dread comes in.

PETER WILSON:
After years of seeming inertia,

momentum in the search
for Nicola Payne.

MARTIN SLEVIN: I made the decision
at the end of the first day

to put the father
into suspect status

and therefore he was arrested
and interviewed.

And I ordered the excavation
of his garden.

The source of the information
was also arrested,

because the intelligence began
to grow and grow.

More and more witnesses
were coming forward.

Largely people that had either been
girlfriends or partners.

From early this morning
police activity switched to this address,

just a few hundred yards
from the main search location.

Door to door enquiries
are being carried out

and there’s also a search team
in the back garden.

MARTIN SLEVIN:
As the search had progressed

and more and more people were
telling us the same story

all emanating from one person,

it became apparent that the intelligence
was becoming too far-fetched.

Despite searching our suspect’s
garden and house,

we didn’t find anything
of interest.

There was no evidence
to support the proposition

that he’d been involved in
Nicola’s disappearance.

In the end, neither the father or the
son were charged with any offence.

My assessment was that the source
of all of the information

was a complete
Walter Mitty character.

He told this story to so many people
in order to impress them.

But it was only largely to
bolster his own credibility and ego.

When you were told
the search had found nothing,

what was your reaction
at that time?

Disappointment,
but I think all day yesterday,

the longer it went on,

the more we began to realise that there
was nothing gonna come out of this.

And we just felt really down last night.

And...

just felt really low, you know.

And, oh, well, we’re back
to where we was.

NIGEL PAYNE: At the end of it,
it’s just another dead end.

Yeah, you’ve gotta be realistic,

but you always wanna try and hold
that little bit of hope out.

There’s something about this one.

It just felt different.

It felt like, well, this could be it.

You know, this could be
the closure for all of us.

SCOTT PAYNE: Just still had that hope
that she would suddenly turn up one day.

And then, over time,

you do sort of like think,
well, she ain’t coming back.

She ain’t coming back.

It was never just one specific moment,

it just ground me down,

like slowly arrived, reluctantly,
to that conclusion.

MARTIN SLEVIN:
Once the search had been completed,

I sat down with John and
Marilyn for quite a period of time

and we had quite a heart to heart.

I’d only had permission to look at that
discreet line of enquiry

that we’d exhausted.

But John and Marilyn clearly had
had, at that point,


happened to Nicola.

They’d lived and breathed
the investigation.

There were lots of searches,
there was lots of intelligence

and potential sightings of Nicola.

It sparked my investigative curiosity.

It would be a mammoth task to start
from scratch to review the case,

but I persuaded my boss
to let me look at it,

really in my own
time without any other resource.

JOHN PAYNE:
When I first spoke to Martin Slevin,

talked on the phone for about an hour.

I put the phone down,
and I says to Marilyn, I said,

“That guy’s thinking right.

He’s thinking how I’m thinking,
how we’re thinking.

I think he’s gonna do summut here.”

PETER WILSON: The feeling I had,
once Martin Slevin took over,

was that it was a completely
fresh set of eyes,

because it did feel as though
a scientific mind,

proper investigator was saying,

“Okay, well, let’s open the boxes.
Let’s go back to the beginning.”

MARTIN SLEVIN: When I recalled the
material from offsite storage,

there were 36 large cardboard boxes
full of hardcopy paperwork.

And I would sort of spend five
or six hours sat in the office,

just reading through
these papers to try and understand

what its senior investigating officers
had done before,

what intelligence existed.

And I would say actually
it became an obsession.

And ultimately the force agreed
that I could reopen the investigation.

[clock ticking]

When I assessed previous reviews
of the investigation,

one in particular in 2007,

it had highlighted all of the persons of
interest to the enquiry at that stage.

And I used that to set out, had we
actually eliminated all of these people

using modern day policing technology,

using modern day elimination techniques?

And that really left me with two
distinct persons of interest.

Nigel Barwell and Thomas O’Reilly.

They were the central figures
in the investigation

when Nicola first went missing.

One of the key documents
that pushed the investigation along

was the pocket notebook entry
from one of the first detectives

that had worked on the enquiry.

It indicated that there were
three or four witnesses

that had seen Nigel Barwell
outside his home address

on the Saturday at around 11.30,

one hour before Nicola went missing.

Now, that was significant

because Nigel Barwell’s alibi

was that he’d actually
broken down in Rugby

on the Friday night with Thomas O’Reilly.

And that they hadn’t returned to Coventry

until the early hours
of the Sunday morning.

And so I made a decision to try
and trace the witnesses.

And subsequently, I obtained
two statements

from key witnesses that had
initially refused to do so back in 1991.

That was the first...that sort of
spark, if you like,

that ignited the investigation.

From that point on I had something
tangible to work with.

SCOTT PAYNE:
Martin totally restored faith.

He suddenly looked at all this
and went,

"How could we have not, as the police,
looked into it further? "

It’s like it wasn’t part of his job.
It was like a little crusade for him.

He really wanted to get this sorted.

He kept the family very well informed

on how the investigation was going.

But he gave you that confidence,

he knew what he had to do
and you trusted him.

Martin didn’t need undisputed evidence.

Martin looked at all the small things
and pieced them together.

One of the areas that I reviewed,

and was of particular interest to me,

was after Nigel Barwell
and Thomas O’Reilly had been bailed

to return to face
an identification parade,

they actually fled the country.

We found out subsequently

that they’d been seen leaving a house
with a bag and they’d fled to France,

leaving on Christmas Eve

and coming back on
New Year’s Eve into Coventry.

And I believe to Coombe Abbey
Country Park.

Coombe Abbey Country Park
is on the east side of Coventry.

About four miles from
Coventry city centre.

We learnt from interview, in fact from
Nigel Barwell and his wife Mary Barwell,

that they used to come to this area
and they used to camp

in an area behind me
at the top end of the lake.

So there were
some direct links to the area.

Also, whilst Nigel Barwell
and Thomas O’Reilly were on the run,

there was another significant
piece of information

that linked Coombe Abbey Country Park.

And that was an attack on a taxi driver
in January of 1992.

A taxi driver was called to a location
about a mile from here.

Two men got into the taxi
in the early hours of the morning.

And they asked to be taken to Leamington.

The taxi driver described them
as dishevelled,

he described them as looked like
they’d been sleeping rough. They smelt.

When the taxi driver was about to
turn the cab around,

they actually told him to come past
the entrance to Coombe Abbey Fisheries.

One of the men held a knife to him,

threatened him and made him pull
into a car park,

and said, “Don’t try anything.

We’re the b*stards that did Barbara Finn
and Nicola Payne.”

Barbara Finn was a young girl
that had gone missing

very shortly before
Nicola went missing.

So, the man clearly indicating that
they were involved in both murders.

Then the two men threw him
into the icy lake

and essentially left him for dead.

He literally swam 200 metres
across the lake to the far side

and was able to raise the alarm
at some properties

that are on the far
bank of the lake.

The only link to Barwell and O’Reilly

was the fact that we knew that
Nigel Barwell had spent time in this park

and was familiar with its surroundings.

So there was a geographical link,

but we could never prove
that Nigel Barwell was involved,

or Thomas O’Reilly,
was involved in that offence.

But in over 90 percent of occasions

where a k*ller disposes of a body,

it will be somewhere they know.

Somewhere where they’re used to,
they’ve been before.

So this was the first area that we felt
was appropriate to search.

[clock ticking]

REPORTER: 22 years on,

yet still this investigation seems to have
a degree of momentum.

Would it be fair to say that?

Yes, we constantly review information
that comes into the incident room.

The investigation continues to
move forward,

and we’re positive that
at some time

we will get a successful
conclusion.

We used a search team,

we used specialist advisors,

and we used specialist
teams of divers

to cover all of the lake and also
the sonar of the lake bed itself.

We covered a large area of ground

and there wasn’t any sign that Nicola
had either been buried here

or any of her effects
were buried in the park.

Which was incredibly disappointing,

but the biggest breakthrough
for the enquiry

was clearly advances in DNA
techniques over many, many, many years.

Back in 1991, the analysis of DNA
was still fairly new.

And as the science around DNA
progressed and advanced,

we were able to capture
more strands of DNA within samples.

A tent had been recovered
in the initial investigation.

And so I asked for the tent
to be re-examined

to look at what hair was in there,

whether there were skin flakes,
blood flakes.

What we found were a number of hairs
including one hair with a root

that was capable of being examined
for the presence of DNA.

We submitted that sample
in the July, 2014.

And in early September,

we got the result that the probability
that it was anyone other than Nicola

was one in a billion.

That turned the case, really.

My test then was to try and link that
tent to Nigel Barwell and Thomas O’Reilly.

Out of the other 30 or 40 hairs
that we’d recovered from the tent,

none of them had a root that was
of sufficient condition

in which to extract DNA.

So, we resorted to sending
a number of the hairs

to initially America and then Canada,

for testing under what’s called
mitochondrial DNA technique.

Mitochondrial DNA is handed down
through the female line of the family.

And I sent a batch of ten hairs,

and out of that batch,
we were informed that we got a result

where the mitochondrial DNA
matched either Mary or Thomas O’Reilly,

because they were brother and sister
and had the same mitochondrial DNA.

Thomas’ sister, Mary,
was actually married to Nigel Barwell.

So, for the investigation that linked
the tent finally to Barwell and O’Reilly.

The DNA results gave us
something independent

in terms of evidence,
rather than just witness testimony

and hearsay evidence,

in order to build the case against
Barwell and O’Reilly.

JOHN PAYNE: When Martin Slevin
explained the case to me,

what they were doing,

I think we’ve got it here. It’s right.

Once we were told about the DNA,

we thought, that’s it we, we’ve got them.
That’s it.

We’ve actually got the evidence
that can prove

Nigel Barwell and O’Reilly
was involved.

When I got this result,

we were confident enough to prepare
a file of evidence

for the Crown Prosecution Service
to consider.

And it wasn’t until January of 2015

that I received the authority to charge
Nigel Barwell and Thomas O’Reilly

with Nicola’s m*rder.

It’s kind of a mixture of emotion, really,

because it was the end of one journey

and a degree of satisfaction,

but also a realisation that the hard work
starts here.

And as soon as they were charged,

I went with the family liaison officers
to the house,

and the family were gathered there.

A number of the boys were coming back
from work, were rushing back.

It was quite emotional
delivering the news to them.

There were lots of tears, lots of hugs,

lots of emotion in the room.

And clearly it was a big step for
them, and I felt proud of them,

as a family, for persevering
to fight for Nicola,

to get to this point.

And it was an emotional evening
for everybody involved.

Including myself
and my staff that were there.

[clock ticking]

Nigel Barwell and Thomas O’Reilly

appeared briefly here
in court this morning,

confirming their names, addresses,
and dates of birth.

They were told they’d both
been charged jointly

with the m*rder of Nicola Payne


Nicola’s parents and other members
of her family

were in court to witness this
latest development

in the case this morning.

Her aunt read a few words
outside of court.

Although this is a significant step,

our ultimate aim has always been
to find Nicola,

in order to bring some peace
to our family.

GARRY PAYNE: I said to Martin,
before we go ahead with this,

you’ve gotta be certain that
you’re gonna get a conviction,

because it’d be hard enough for us lads,
but for my mum and dad.

'Cause they‘d had so many ups and downs
over the years.

Arrests, false alarms,

and it was just
getting too much.

AMANDA EALES: There was no plan B.

This was everything.

So, I think there was huge expectations

that we were finally gonna get
the answers that we’d always searched for.

NIGEL PAYNE: Well, we had a pre-trial
meeting at one of the police stations.

MARTIN SLEVIN: I wanted to see
the family, to talk to them together

to prepare them for trial.

Because when we did DNA testing
on Nicola’s hairs,

we also found a hair that
matched Nicola forensically.

And that was a pubic hair.

NIGEL PAYNE: They were quite concerned
about how they were gonna break it to us

about the DNA.

We were ready for just about anything
and everything.

We’d been waiting for all these years.

But when he was saying,
“It was pubic hair that we’ve found.”

Put two and two together then.

Was she r*ped?
Was she assaulted before?

But to think about that she suffered,

yeah, that’s a different thing
for us.

GARRY PAYNE: Then I started
thinking about it.

Then I started thinking...

[exhales]...

what my sister went through, you know.

What my sister had gone through and...

Hold on...

It’s hard to take. Very hard.
It was different, totally different.

It was...it was hard.

[clock ticking]

AMANDA EALES: First day of the trial
was really nerve-racking.

Originally, I was going to the trial
because everybody else in the family

were giving evidence.

My auntie had wanted someone to represent
the family from the first minute, really.

But then I just ended up being there
the whole time,

because I was just desperate to try
and find out for my own sake,

what on earth had happened?

The prosecution alleged
that the two defendants,

Nigel Barwell and Thomas O’Reilly,

abducted, m*rder*d and then
discarded the body of Nicola Payne.

MELANIE EALES: Marilyn found it very hard.

She did go to court on some days,
but it was too much of a toll on her.

It, it was really...

She would be at the court,
but perhaps not in the courtroom.

DALE PAYNE: It was strange looking at them
so close.

They did look scared,
they looked very nervous and scared,

which you would do.
And I think they were fearful.

SCOTT PAYNE: Part of their defence

was the fact that Nicola
wouldn’t have known Barwell.

And if she’d been approached
by two people,

she would have caused a commotion.

He would not have been able to
get close to Nicola.

She wouldn’t have got in the car
with somebody she didn’t know.

It was a, a significant question

whether Nicola Payne knew Nigel Barwell
in any way.

And our evidence was
that there was some connection,

that they would’ve been in the same
location/vicinity at the same time.

Nicola Payne’s brother, Scott,
also took to the witness stand.

He was asked by Mr Smith if he had
ever seen Mr Barwell and his sister

in the same place together.

“Yes,” he replied, “In a pub a couple of
months before she went missing.”

He said Mr Barwell was with a man
called Michael Cooke,

who was the older brother
of Nicola’s boyfriend, Jason.

Mick Cooke hit on Nicola several times.

Jason was Mick Cooke had had
a punch-up once over it.

And we were in our local pub,
the Red Lion,

and Nicola came over to me and said,
“Oh, Mick’s hitting on me again.”

And I went over and confronted
him and Barwell.

That was establishing
that Barwell knew Nicola.

MARTIN SLEVIN: The difficulty
with Scott’s account

was that we couldn’t find
anything to support it.

Nigel Barwell and Mick Cooke both denied
that that incident had taken place.

They both denied being in each other’s
company, certainly within the Red Lion.

Counsel for Nigel Barwell suggested
Scott Payne made this up

purely to fit the circumstances.

And it was an act of spite or revenge.

PETER WILSON:
The problem for the prosecution was

there was nobody who could clearly say,

these two men were seen in a car
with Nicola Payne.

Nobody saw Nicola being seized by anyone.

And it was twenty-five years
after the event itself.

In some cases, people had
made statements at the time

which said one thing,

when presumably it was fresh
in their memories,

then suddenly in court they were saying
something slightly different.

Many of the witnesses had not performed

whilst giving testimony,
to the same standard,

as when giving that evidence
to us.

And inconsistencies were exposed
in that evidence

by very skilful Queen’s Counsel
for the defence.

PETER WILSON: So, the forensic evidence
was always going to be absolutely crucial.

If you could prove that there was
a connection between the man in the dock

and Nicola Payne,

that was going to be
absolutely powerful evidence.

REPORTER: Police searches found a tent,

which the prosecution claim was used
to wrap Nicola Payne’s body.

The jury was told that Nicola Payne
must have been in that tent

and that a partial DNA profile
also linked Thomas O’Reilly to the tent.

And the jury were also told
that they could be satisfied

that that tent
belonged to Nigel Barwell.

They nailed the whole case
on that DNA.

That was it.
That was the make or break.

'Cause everything else was circumstantial.

MARTIN SLEVIN: In relation to
the forensic evidence,

we’d built a strong case against
the two suspects.

Unfortunately, the defence were able to
expose the continuity of that tent

and where that had been kept
over the years,

and the conditions it had been kept in,

which ultimately led to the forensic
evidence being significantly challenged.

HAZEL JOHNSON: Unfortunately,
the tent wasn’t properly packaged.

Any item submitted for forensic
examination has to be sealed,

because if it’s not sealed,

there’s potential for forensic evidence
to be lost

and equally potential for evidence
to actually be introduced to that item.

Although I’d been called by
the prosecution,

forensic means on behalf
of the court,

so, you have to be open and honest

when you’re asked questions
by the defence.

So, I knew that I was going to
be asked about

the poor packaging of the tent.

And I would have to be honest about
what our feelings were at the time.

Remember her saying, she’s got the tent.

It was delivered to her and she’s saying,

“Well, what am I gonna do with this?
The bag’s open.” It was open.

PETER WILSON: As it turned out,

you couldn’t say that this tent had been
properly looked after.

That this tent had been sealed.

That this material hadn’t
been contaminated.

AMANDA EALES: There was a huge,
huge issue in court

about the lack of continuity
with taking exhibits,

documenting them
and storing them correctly.

And that’s where the defence
could do their job, really,

because the police
had left it wide open.

Knowing that there would be a challenge

around the continuity
of the forensic evidence,

I spent a significant amount of
money on scientists

to assess the probability of
cross contamination.

The probability of
that happening was very low.

But, of course, the defence argued that
there was a probability,

and it was down
to the jury to decide.

NIGEL PAYNE: I was just sat there
with my mouth open.

You just look at the jury and you’re
like, all of a sudden, that DNA is gone.

Your whole case has just gone.

After that day, that was it, finished.

I just wanted to get up out of court,

get back on the train, go back to Coventry
and never come back to court again.

PETER WILSON: If they’re found not guilty,

if the jury decide that, what would be
going through your minds?

Where does it leave you?

I would be heartbroken.

I really would be heartbroken.

My heart’s tore out enough,

and I won’t go in the room
when they’re gonna say.

I’m gonna go and sit somewhere else.

I can’t sit and even listen to it,
because it's all too much.

[clock ticking]

MARTIN SLEVIN: So, the jury went out
on the Friday

and on the Monday morning
I heard the tannoy

to call all parties back to the court

in respect of Barwell and O’Reilly’s case.

PETER WILSON: When you’re called back
you have that natural adrenaline,

which is running through you.
It’s almost contagious.

We were surprised they came back
quite quickly,

so, we went down.

Marilyn didn’t want to be in the court,
so she waited with the liaison officer.

NIGEL PAYNE: That morning,
we were getting on the train,

we had plenty of time to get
on the train, on it there,

but then all of a sudden there was
some signals out

and so we couldn’t get there.

So then we were at the station and I’m on
the phone listening to the verdict.

JOHN PAYNE: I was very anxious,

‘cause Nigel had got caught
and hadn’t quite made it.

I was at work.

The jury are coming back out,
so I raced home, back to the house.

I couldn’t get to the court.

SCOTT PAYNE: And then the jury come back.

I had my hands over my eyes.

I was sort of like this.
I couldn’t bear it.

Not guilty.

I put my arm around my dad.
He broke down.

Very disappointed. I just sat there
and I couldn’t believe it but...

Me mum just collapsed.

Me dad just fell to bits.

They were just broken,
absolutely broken.

I weren’t there to like catch them
and hold them and things like that,

but it was just like,
get a taxi, get a taxi here,

get us there
as quickly as you can.

I got a phone call
off me mum.

I could hardly make out what
she was saying, she was that upset.

And I just heard her say,
“Not guilty, not guilty.”

Just flew out the workshop
and just...went straight home.

It was not a nice day.

First time I’d seen my dad upset and my
brothers all upset at the same time.

It’s...yeah, not a nice day.

I looked across then to Barwell and that
and they were all celebrating.

Nigel Barwell jumped up and I think
he mouthed or shouted the words,

“Thank you," to the jury.

And the look on the Payne family,

that was just, again, t*rture for them.

They were distraught.

Their hopes had been raised
and again it ended up with nothing.

Today, the two local men who’d been
accused of murdering the teenager

walked free from the court,
flanked by their families.

Brothers-in-law Nigel Barwell
and Thomas O’Reilly,

seen on the left with a beard,

were cleared of any involvement
in her disappearance.

We, as a family, are pleased this
nightmare has now finally come to an end.

Our father and uncle have
always maintained,

from the onset of this
investigation,

that they have had no involvement
in the disappearance of Nicola Payne.

Both our father, uncle and the whole
family have suffered

for the past 24 years from suspicion
and innuendo

hanging over our family’s head.

MARTIN SLEVIN:
It was incredibly disappointing.

You are in the hands of judicial system

and you’re in the hands of the jury.

And, no matter what your views on
what you feel the outcome should be,

you have to respect
the court’s process.

NIGEL PAYNE: Our family are devastated
and heavy-hearted with today’s verdict.

For nearly 24 years we have lived daily

in the anguish of not knowing what’s
happened to our beloved Nicola.

And worse than that, to this day
not even knowing where she is.

[clock ticking]

PETER WILSON: Today, the Payne
family were together,

united and still determined.

Yesterday for them was heartbreak

as two men were cleared of murdering
Nicola Payne after a five week trial.

Buckets of tears.

Got a bit cross.
Did a bit of shouting,

which I’m sorry about.
Let meself down, but...

I just couldn’t help it, you know.

I just feel the longer this goes on,

the longer we’re letting Nicola down.
[cries] I’m sorry.

DALE PAYNE: This one took a lot of
getting over.

Took quite a bit of getting over,

‘cause we honestly thought this was it.
We did.

JOHN PAYNE:
Yeah, really let down.

You know, afterwards you always sit
and think about these things

and when you’re going over it,

you realise then that,
where it all went wrong.

And there were some big mistakes made.

PETER WILSON: What was key
at the end of the trial

was that the defence teams
were able to paint a picture

that the police investigation,
certainly the way that exhibits were kept,

had been both sloppy and shambolic.

And the judge actually returned to that
in his summing up.

MARTIN SLEVIN: Was it a sloppy
investigation? I don’t agree.

There were elements exposed at court
of the exhibits handling,

which led to the forensic evidence
being challenged.

But my view is, that the 1991
investigation,

in the most part,
was professional.

And they identified the two suspects,

which ultimately I came back to
and charged.

When I took over the investigation,

I had the passage of time on my side

and, of course, I had most significantly,
the benefit of forensic advances.

Thomas O’Reilly and Nigel Barwell
have stood trial.

They’ve been acquitted
and been found not guilty.

The question is, are there any other
viable suspects?

I think I’ve eliminated
everybody else that came into the enquiry.

It still leaves a question mark
against Barwell and O’Reilly.

Well, police say that this is very much
a live investigation.

And they still believe that someone in
Coventry knows something

which might help them.

We’ll take this opportunity to appeal for
anybody who may have any knowledge

about the circumstances that led to
Nicola's disappearance,

or indeed where her
body is currently located.

MARTIN SLEVIN: In the coming days and
weeks we sat down

and looked at where do we go now?

Very soon after the trial,

we had new information
coming to the investigation,

about a sighting of two men

acting suspiciously on the day
Nicola went missing.

I’m confident, from the information
that witness has given us,

that Nicola was brought to that site
on the day she vanished.

The investigation was not over.

We were never gonna stop
searching for Nicola.

A significant event happened here
on the day that Nicola disappeared.

The police have now begun searching a new
location at Coombe Abbey Country Park,

after a witness came forward.

PETER WILSON: There was hope that
something significant would be found.

Is this gonna be it?

You know, because surely at some point

things have to change
and go in our favour.