All language subtitles for Episode 070 The Disappearance of Maureen Hale

The double jeopardy rule meant that

if you were tried and acquitted,

you couldn't stand trial
for that charge again.

However,
when the double jeopardy law

was abolished in respect of murder,

it became possible to do it.

The police sometimes
will periodically go back

and look at cold cases

and they will review them
to see if there are any grounds

for evidence
to take them further forward.

In 2008,

nine years
after Maureen went missing,

Colin got hold of the review,

looked at it
and he was clearly not happy

at what he saw.

I mean, this was just
a staggering piece of evidence.

His wife has gone missing
two days before

and there he is offering
a large sum of money

to use a crematorium,

an incinerator,

you know, the only use of those
is to dispose of a body.

She disappeared and no-one knows
what happened to her,

there was a lot
of circumstantial evidence

against the husband.

I'd say he was shocked,

it was my opinion
that he had no idea

that he was going to be arrested

or the police were
even reinvestigating the matter.

The whole thing cost him
his business,

it's cost him everything.

It was a crime
of almost breathtaking...

The man who tried to kill her

will never be free to harm
again...

The life sentence
may provide some closure

for his victims' families.

Targeted young women
unable to defend themselves.

Colin Sutton
was a detective chief inspector

and senior investigating officer
at the Metropolitan Police.

He led the investigations
into some of the most complex

and high-profile cases ever,

bringing dangerous criminals
to justice.

He showed his cowardliness...

Then the screaming...

..another 146 victims.

In this series,

we will take you inside those cases

and show you
how he caught these criminals

using nothing
but pure detective work.

This is The Real Manhunter.

Now been found guilty
on all 25 of those charges.

The oldest victim, 89.

The officer in charge described it
as a senseless tragedy.

The life sentence
may provide some closure

for his victims' families.

Every SIO,

every murder squad in London
carries a number of investigations

that are unsolved

and sometimes
you get the opportunity

with new evidence
or something turning up

that means
it's worthwhile re-opening

one of these
unsolved investigations.

There are a number of justifications
for re-opening a stalled case,

an old cold case if you like,

quite often it's when advancements
in science means

you can get DNA from the exhibit,

you couldn't get back at the time
or another witness comes forward.

In the case of the disappearance

of Maureen Hale,

it was slightly more unusual
circumstances.

It was a change in the law.

At the time,

her disappearance was investigated
one would hope thoroughly.

Martin Hale was arrested

as prime suspect
in her disappearance,

but it could never be established

obviously that she'd been murdered
without a body.

That appeared to be no hope
of taking the case any further.

So, her disappearance
was literally chalked up

as a missing person.

Martin Hale and family
continued their lives

without Maureen.

The double jeopardy rule meant that

if you were tried and acquitted,

you couldn't stand trial

for that charge again.

The fear
with the Maureen Hale case was

if her husband Martin
had been charged for murdering her

and was acquitted,

when her body hadn't been found,

at some point in the future,

the body might be discovered,

there might be really
good forensic evidence on that body,

which will point to his guilt,

and it wouldn't be possible
to take him to court again.

So, that's why
it had been held back.

Colin and that team looked
at the circumstances here

and decided
that they needed to go with it,

and they needed
to shake the apple tree

and see what dropped off.

And when we looked

at the circumstances

and when we were able

to kind of lay it out

and think about

what might have happened

to Maureen Hale,

it became
an amazingly compelling case

and really it looked

even at the first review

as if we didn't need

any more evidence

that was discovered before,

but we did find some.

I joined
Colin's major investigations team

during the case
of the Levi Bellfield,

so I was part
of the investigating team there

and I worked alongside Colin
for a number of years after that

on other investigations.

I hadn't worked
with Kev McSharry before.

but he had been around the CID
in South West London for a long time

and a lot of people on the team
had worked with him,

and when he became available,

kind of encouraged me to say,

you know, we should try
and get him onto the team,

and not a single second of regret
that I did that

'cause he was a very capable man,

he could be trusted
through absolutely everything

and anything to a good standard.

And he did it all with a smile,
a nice fellow too,

so he was a really valuable addition
to the team at the time.

In 2008,

the Metropolitan Police decided
to do a cold case review

on the disappearance of Maureen Hale

and that's
when a fresh investigation

was initiated.

It was during the trial
of Levi Bellfield

and obviously he was very,
very stretched,

but he made sure
he spoke to me every morning

because I was the case officer,

and my job was the day
to day running of the investigation,

so we would discuss
what was happening that day

and how we were gonna move
the investigation forward.

We had to do the two simultaneously,

if we were going
to really make some progress

with Maureen Hale's disappearance,

so that was why
that was really given off

to another part of the team,
and principally,

DS Kevin McSharry and DI Amy Perrot
had a look at that

and once we were able then to
finally disentangle ourselves

from the Bellfield investigation,

then Maureen Hale's disappearance

became a kind of priority focus
for the team.

It was given to our team
to revisit all the witnesses,

look at all the evidence
and make decisions around

what direction that investigation
would then take.

Maureen Hale was born
as Maureen Weatherly,

and she got married at a young age,
she was about 19,

she got married to a man called Agg,

so she became Maureen Agg

and they, together,
had a son called Nathan.

And when that marriage split up,

she took Nathan,

he was still quite young then,

she took him with her

and then when she got together

with Martin Hale,

Nathan was adopted into the family.

And although they went on
to have four more children,

Nathan was very much
part of the family

and they always thought
of themselves

as having five children.

Maureen Hale really fell nicely
into her role

as sort of stock broker belt mother.

She didn't work,
she didn't have to work.

Martin's business was booming,

and she spent her time
looking after the children.

And then while the children
were at school,

it would be coffee mornings
and gym sessions

and socialising with the other women
in the area

that were in a similar position
to her,

and she had a lot of friends.

Martin Hale was essentially
a self-made man.

He started off with the fruit
and vegetables at Kingston Market

and by the '90s
he had built up a business worth

over a million pounds

based at
Western International Market.

It was wholesaling
fruit and vegetables.

It was a lucrative
and profitable business for him,

he employed two or three people.

And the profits from that meant

they could afford
to live in Ember Court Road

in a five-bedroom detached house
in the stock broker belt.

Maureen Hale didn't have to work,

she brought up the five children

and she became part of the local
sort of mum's set

going to coffee mornings,
making friends,

to all external appearances
she had an idyllic life.

Martin Hale was a trader in here
for many, many years.

He was one
of the biggest wholesalers

in Western International.

I used to work opposite Martin,

did so for a number of years.

Very quiet man,
just a decent sort of chap.

He had a very good catering business
which did restaurants

and food service side
that was very good,

he had the wholesale unit,

and then he had his retail unit
as well,

which seemed to work very well.

Very hard working,
very conscientious,

did everything right
as far as the stand goes,

yeah, well run stand, good business.

But it did have its pressures
for him though,

as it was a trade that works
in the early hours of the morning.

It meant that for years
he was getting up

at 2:00 in the morning
six days a week,

and although
he was home by lunchtime,

that sort of lifestyle puts pressure
on anybody.

The hours are a bit off,
it's got earlier and earlier.

It used to be a 5:00 start,

we're now here by 1:00,

some of the guys
are even here at midnight.

There's two different sets
to the business,

there's the wholesale business,
then there's the food service.

The food services are 24 hours,
they supply restaurants.

He would come home,
and he would grab some sleep

and then he'd be back again

early hours of the morning

and it was a tough life in that way.

To the outside world,

they appeared to be
a happy married couple,

living a comfortable lifestyle.

But in reality,

Martin and Maureen
had a fractious relationship.

There had been suggestions

that he had assaulted her
in the past.

Martin Hale working all the hours
he can virtually,

Maureen's got her life
with children,

taking children to school,

coffee mornings with the other mums
and that sort of thing.

And it took a toll on their marriage

and then they started arguing

and that was when Maureen,

despite all the
wonderful surroundings she had,

the home, the children
and everything, thought,

you know, there could be more
to life than this

and she started thinking about
being with somebody else,

and that was what led her

into starting affairs
outside the marriage.

Maureen being unhappy
in her marriage,

feeling
that she wasn't really getting

the companionship
she wanted from Martin,

started to look elsewhere

and the first person

she turned to

was a man called John Potter

who was a local plumber

who'd done some work for them,

was friendly with them.

And that never came for her,

I think,
she went out for a drink with him

and they might have had
a quick kiss in his car,

but what happened was that
for some reason Martin

had suspected something
was going on between the two.

And he had put a recording device
in Maureen's car,

and he had a recording of her
with John Potter

and was able to confront her with it
and she had to admit it

and it caused further conflict
between them.

It's perhaps worth thinking,

you know,
that most people don't feel

the need to put listening devices
into their partner's cars,

there was obviously something
going on,

some sort of suspicion
in Martin Hale's mind

that Maureen was up to something
or might be up to something,

otherwise he wouldn't have gone
to those lengths

to record her in the car
when she went out.

Clearly Martin Hale
had a lot to lose,

if Maureen walked out the door
and divorced him,

there were five children,

there was an expensive house,

there was a thriving business.

And she potentially had claims
on all of those things

if they divorced.

So, the next time

she was a little bit more careful
I suppose.

And she struck up a relationship
with a man called Andrew Horton.

Now, Horton was a gardener,

he worked at the military cemetery
at Brookwood.

And Maureen Hale had been there
visiting with her friends

to look at the gardens
and the flowers there,

got into a conversation with him

and they had exchanged
phone numbers.

It's quite fair to say that

Andrew Horton was probably somebody
you'd describe as a ladies' man.

He was not backward
at trying to make new relationships

with women he encountered
during his job.

Maureen, although
she was absolutely devoted

to her children,

became disillusioned
with the marriage.

And there were one or two episodes
of severe arguments

between her and Martin,
some domestic violence,

although not
to cause serious injuries.

Maureen decided in 1999

that the marriage
really wasn't gonna go anywhere,

and she needed to be out of it

and she was going to file
for divorce.

This all came to a head
on the 22 June, 1999.

It was the very day
that Maureen Hale

had divorce papers served
on Martin Hale,

and about 10:00 that night
in their house here,

they had a terrible row.

Blazing noisy row
that all the children heard.

Martin Hale's version of events
was that at the end of that row,

Maureen Hale took up,

left the house
and was never seen again.

The police sometimes
will periodically go back

and look at cold cases
and they will review them

to see if there are any grounds
for evidence

to take them further forward.

In 2008,

nine years
after Maureen went missing,

Colin got hold of the review,

looked at it
and he was clearly not happy

at what he saw.

Maureen was still outstanding,

and the investigation
had never come to a conclusion.

So, the Metropolitan Police decided
there would be a cold case review.

When we started to re-open the case
of Maureen Hale's disappearance,

the first thing we did
was to repeat all those inquiries

that had been made
nearly a decade before

when she went missing first of all.

So, we looked at her bank account,

her doctors, her dentist,

hospital records, all her friends,

all her family that we could trace,

and we got the same answers,

nothing, still no trace of her,

no brush with officialdom
since 1999.

She disappeared

and no-one knows
what happened to her,

there was a lot
of circumstantial evidence

against the husband.

On the evening she was last seen,

she certainly had an argument
with Martin Hale

and the children in the house
gave evidence of this.

They heard a noisy argument

between the parents.

Coincidentally perhaps,

it was the day
that Martin Hale had received

the divorce papers through the post

saying that his wife
wanted a divorce.

It wasn't until 25 June, 1999,

some three days
after Maureen Hale had disappeared

that her husband Martin Hale
came here

to Kingston Police station
to report her missing.

The missing person report
was assessed

as they always are
by a supervising officer

to see if anything else
needed to be done.

No hide or hair was ever heard
from her again,

she didn't attend
dental appointments,

there was no money taken
from her account,

she didn't take her son
to a medical appointment,

which her friends found
very strange,

and she missed out on not going
to a concert

which she had tickets for

and had been eagerly
looking forward to going.

For all intents and purposes,

she just disappeared into thin air.

And then finally
in the middle of July,

so about two or three weeks
after the missing report was made,

the police here in Kingston decided

to arrest Martin Hale
on suspicion of murder.

They never had the evidence,

they knew
they didn't have the evidence

to charge him with

unless he admitted it
once he was arrested.

But it did give them the opportunity
to interview him,

get his side of the story,

his account

and also to search both his home
and his workplace.

The gist of the allegation
was that Maureen

had wanted a divorce
from her husband

and he didn't want to settle
an expensive divorce claim

and lose his house
and lose his children potentially,

and the argument was that
he decided to kill her

rather than go through the divorce.

So, if Martin Hale
were to be believed

and she just literally upped
and left after the argument,

she'd done that without any

of the basic sort of necessities,

clothing, means of support, money,

means of communication,

means of transport.

No trace of Maureen Hale

existed officially
after that moment,

she hadn't spoken to her doctor,
her dentist,

hadn't used her bank account,
hadn't used her mobile phone.

Everything was just dead.

There was no trace of her
in any way.

She hadn't contacted
any of her friends,

her other family and crucially

she hadn't contacted
any one of her five children.

Everybody said that this was just
completely out of character,

even if it had all got too much
for her

and she disappeared,

she would still have
maintained contact

with those children.

There were a number of things
that were out of the ordinary

in relation
to Martin Hale's business here

on the night
that Maureen Hale went missing.

First, he called his manager
and told him that he was unwell

and he wouldn't be in to work
that night,

but the manager drove past
Martin Hale's house

at 2:00am as he did every day,

and they used to sort of check

to make sure
each other had woken up,

and he noticed
that Martin Hale's BMW car

was missing.

So, he found this a bit odd,

and his boss had phoned him to say,
"I'm not well.

"I'm not coming to work"

but when he went past his house
in the early hours of the morning,

his car wasn't there
implying that he was out somewhere.

You could say that was suspicious.

There were further circumstances
which would have created suspicion.

When the manager got to work,

they found
that there was a spade missing,

they had a spade that they use
for clearing up the rubbish

and bits of old fruit and veg

and they had to find another way
of doing it for a few days

and then Martin Hale
brought the spade back to work

and he was not asked about it,
and nobody said anything about it.

He was the boss.

He could do what he likes,
but it was an odd thing

that he would want to use the spade
at home for reason

during that period immediately
after Maureen went missing.

Lastly, both Martin Hale
as the owner of the business

and his manager had company cars,

but they were very different,
Martin's was a 7 Series BMW,

whereas the manager had
a little Ford Fiesta.

An employee of Mr Hale
stated that on the night in question

when Maureen vanished, Martin,

Mr Hale had rung him

and said that he wanted
to use his Ford Fiesta car.

He said, "Well,
I just fancied a change,

"I'm allowed to change my mind,

you know, "they are both cars
belonging to my business

"and I'm entitled to drive them,

"and I just fancied driving
something different for a while."

During the course of the search
of Martin Hale's house,

a briefcase was recovered

and within that briefcase
was a list.

In his briefcase
were the divorce papers

that Maureen had had sent to him,

and with them was a pad,

and on that pad,

in Martin Hale's own handwriting,

which he admitted
to writing himself,

there was a numbered list
of four choices,

"At sea, landfill,

"acid, by fire,"

and when he was asked
why he had written that,

he said he'd been
having some dark thoughts

and he thought about
if he were to kill his wife,

how would he be able
to dispose of the body.

And he had written that down
as his brainstorming session

with himself,
but of course he never meant it

and never come through with it

and never did go through with it.

He told the investigating officers,

the interviewing officers

that he was going through
a black time at that stage

and that he used to make notes about
absolutely anything.

He said, "Yes, I did write it,
that's what they are,

"I was in a particularly dark place,

"but it doesn't mean I did it,

"I was just writing down
dark thoughts."

Now, who knows
why someone would have wanted

to write those things down,

but it could be argued

that it may be in the instance
of disposing of a body.

When the double jeopardy rule
was changed

and it became possible
to try people twice

for the same murder,

then that really was the removal
of the barrier to prosecuting him,

so that was why in 2008,

we decided to re-open
the investigation thinking that

even if we couldn't find the body,

then we still had a chance
for prosecution.

It's so difficult to search
in this part of the world.

There's so many woods and forest
and opens land,

we saw that
in the Millie Dowler investigation

where Surrey police searched
their county virtually continuously

for six months
and still hadn't competed it,

there was no way that we could do
a speculative search like that.

If we were going
to search somewhere,

we had to be doing it
on firm intelligence,

with a good idea
that we were gonna succeed.

So, when it came to the searches
that we were going to do

for Maureen Hale's body,

we had to be a little bit selective
and the only place really

that we had any source
of intelligence

or idea
that it was a good place to look

was of course the family home.

They had a large garden

and we searched not only
inside the house

and the building
but the entire grounds

and that even meant
as far as removing

a recently erected shed
and looking underneath it,

we had ground
penetrating radar there

to see if we can find areas of land

that had been recently
turned open or disturbed,

and the whole thing took three
or four days

and was quite a large operation.

But of course it came to nothing

and we found no trace of her there.

when the back garden was re-examined
and that was dug up

to see if they could find a trace
of her there which they didn't.

We dug up the patio

and we dug up areas of interest
in the garden,

but we never found any body

or any bones or anything like that.

I don't think
that they realistically

would have had any expectation
of finding Maureen, wherein,

you know, lay the great problem
with this case

because without her body

and the potential forensic
opportunities

that might have thrown up,

it neither rules Martin Hale in
as a definite suspect

nor rules him out
as definitely being innocent,

at least in the eyes of the police.

During the course
of the investigation,

we were contacted by a man
by the name of Timothy Gilbert,

he was the manager
of the Silvermere Pet Crematorium,

and he told us that around the time
that Maureen Hale went missing,

he was approached
by a member of the public

who asked to hire the crematorium.

There was another
remarkable piece of evidence.

And Martin Hale was in the habit
of drinking

in a sports club

which is effectively in the middle
of Sandown Park race course,

but there is a bar
and he used to go in there

and drink quite a lot.

And just a day or two

after Maureen had gone missing,

he is in the bar and he meets a man

he went to school with,
went to primary school with

but he hasn't seen
for 30 or 40 years.

And he's chatting to him
and this man tells him

that he's now the manager
of a pet cemetery

and golf course
down in Cobham called Silvermere.

So, Martin says,
"That sounds really interesting.

"I might pop down and have a look,"

and the man who he was speaking to,

the old friend thought
that he meant the golf course

and he was interested
in playing golf.

But Martin Hale turned up
there the very next day.

And it wasn't the golf course
he was interested in,

it was the crematorium.

He asked the manager

if he ever rented out
the incinerators at the crematorium

and he looks at him,
you know, aghast and said, "No,"

and Martin Hale then said,

"What if I were to offer you
20,000 pounds,

"would you let me borrow one
for the weekend then?"

We found this quite interesting
because it wasn't the norm

and we asked Mr Gilbert,
"Was it the norm?"

And he said it was very,
very unusual

for individuals to approach
and ask to hire it,

not to cremate an animal,

so he found it very interesting,

and we also found it
very interesting.

I mean, this was just
a staggering piece of evidence.

His wife
has gone missing two days before

and there he is offering
a large sum of money

to use a crematorium,

an incinerator,

you know, the only use of those
is to dispose of a body.

He just said, "No,
that didn't happen,

"I went there,
I spoke to the man in charge,

"who was an old friend
from primary school.

"But I went there to look
and talk about the golf course,

"not about the pet crematorium."

The legal position is
when someone has been missing

and there is no proof of life
for over seven years,

you can apply to the court
to have them ruled

and deemed as dead

and that leaves you free
to marry again

and also claim on any insurances
or various other things.

You know, that the person
is legally treated as dead then,

although there is no hard evidence
of it.

As I understand it,

it was very shortly
after that seven-year period was up

that Martin Hale
made the application to the court.

The court had no option
but to declare her dead

because
there was absolutely no trace

of her being alive

since that day in 1999
when she was last seen.

Our thought was you know,

if you put everything we know
about this case

in front of the jury,
and you have got,

you know,
Hale trying to lose his car

for a few days,

borrowing a shovel from work,

listing on a piece of paper

the ways which he might dispose

of his wife's body,

and then asking
if he could pay a large sum of money

to rent a pet crematorium
for the afternoon.

There's so much there

to build a circumstantial case

that I thought it was time
we went to the CPS

and said, "What do you think?"

A file was eventually presented
to the Crown Prosecution Service

and because he never had
previously been charged

or taken to court and acquitted,

there were no
double jeopardy issues,

and the CPS gave the go ahead
for him to be prosecuted

on a charge of murder.

It didn't take the CPS very long

to come back to us

and say, "Yeah, we've looked

at this circumstantial evidence

"and we think
there's a realistic prospect

"of conviction here,"

and that's the criteria they use,

"Go and charge him."

I was the arresting officer
for Martin Hale.

Colin Sutton had decided
that he wouldn't be arrested

at his home address

because we didn't want
to bring any more pain

to his family.

So, it was decided
he'd be followed away

from his address,

when he came to a stop,

we'd engage with him
and he would be arrested,

unfortunately
as we were following his car away,

the surveillance team lost sight
of him,

and we bomb-bursted
to all corners of Surrey

to try and find him.

I parked up in a Tesco's car park

and was reviewing
what was said in the logs.

It said he left his home address
with an orange carrier bag,

and as I sat in the car on my own,

I thought, "Halfords,"

so I drove to the nearest Halfords
and his car was parked up there.

He came out of Halfords
with another male,

as he approached his car,

I stopped him, introduced myself,

and formally arrested him
and cautioned him.

I had never met him,

so I hadn't formed an opinion
on him,

during the cold case review,

I met him on a number of occasions,

and I found him to be accessible,

he would always talk.

Pretty normal
to be perfectly honest,

I didn't dislike him,

but I had a job to do
and that's what I had to do.

GOOD EVENING

When Martin Hale was arrested,
he was polite,

you know, he was a reasonable man.

He was a man who ran a business

and knew how to interact
with people.

I'd say he was shocked,

it was my opinion
that he had no idea

that he was going to be arrested

or the police were
even reinvestigating the matter,

so when I formally arrested him,

the expression on his face
I'd describe as sheer shock.

Martin Hale was arrested,
interviewed,

and he denied knowing anything
more than he had said before

about the disappearance of his wife,

that he had nothing to do with it
at all.

So, we were always unable

to find Hale's body,

but nevertheless we went to court
in 2008

and we were reasonably confident
that we had enough evidence

that any reasonable jury

would look at all the facts

and conclude

that she must have been
murdered by him.

The children didn't know
which way to turn,

once we'd arrested him
and charged him

because
they've already lost their mother,

they've lived
with their father growing up

into adults, most of them

and, you know,
it was really difficult for us

to deal with them

because they wanted to be supportive
of their father

and we sort of tried
to deploy family liaison officers

to them as we would do

to the children
of any murder victim.

But of course, the difficulty was,

the suspect
was also very close to them,

it's a really unusual situation.

The children
I'm sure were extremely traumatised

by losing their mother

and I'm aware
that they supported their father

throughout the whole trial process

and didn't believe

that he could have killed
their mother.

And perhaps even more so

because they'd spent the last
seven or eight years

thinking their mother
has deserted them

and they are living
with their father,

so there is a lot of
kind of conflict

and conflicted ideas and views

for those young people
to understand.

It was something we were never

really able to come

to terms with satisfactorily,

the relationship
that we had with the children

was always a little bit
at arm's length.

It wasn't like

a normal family liaison relationship

because of that.

By the time the case came to trial
in 2009,

Martin Hale had
already had his wife, Maureen,

declared legally dead by the court.

Although we had to go

through the process of proving that

and making sure that we could find

no trace of her being alive,

I really don't think

that was an issue for the jury,

their sole issue was who killed her.

The defence case was clearly

that Martin Hale
had nothing to do with it.

He couldn't answer anything more
than he'd answered already,

he didn't know
what happened to his wife,

she just left.

What they also did though

was they kind of exploited

the lover Andrew Horton.

Martin Hale was eventually charged
with his wife's murder

and stood trial here
in Kingston Crown Court

in January and February 2009.

What happened was that Andrew Horton
who was Maureen Hale's lover

was called as a witness.

He gave a rather colourful account
of his lifestyle

and his philandering
and misogyny I suppose.

And he told the jury all about

how he would often have
several lovers

on the go at the same time

and I don't think he really
endeared himself to the jury.

And the defence then called
a couple of his former girlfriends.

And the jury heard

that he had been violent
towards them

and he threatened
on one occasion to kill them.

There was some potential evidence
against Martin Hale,

otherwise the case
would never have been brought.

There was a note he'd written,

he didn't deny writing it,

in which he wrote about the various
means of disposing of a body.

He'd gone to see someone
about the potential

for using a pet crematorium.

There was the aspect
of his fractured relationship

with Maureen.

There was some evidence
that was never even presented

to the jury

in the sense
that it didn't lead anywhere.

But Martin Hale
had a reasonable explanation for

all of the evidence
that was put against him.

The fact
that his marriage broke down,

that kind of thing happens,

it doesn't mean
that someone has killed somebody

or murdered someone.

It doesn't necessarily provide
a motive

for killing his wife.

All that you need
is a reasonable doubt

and all it needed was just
a couple of members of that jury

to think this
rather unsavoury character

who they see before them

could have been responsible
for the murder.

It was a three-week trial,

and at the end of the trial
he was found not guilty

and so allowed to go a free man.

It took the jury three hours
to acquit him,

hardly anything
in a long murder trial

as this was
or a longish murder trial.

They must have been fairly certain

that there was not enough evidence
to convict

and that he was therefore

not guilty of the crime,

the only way
that could ever be changed now

is with double jeopardy laws
and the discovery of a body.

I was sitting
at Kingston Crown Court

waiting for the verdict

and it came rather more quickly
than we might have expected.

And it's a fool's game really
to try and read into that

because, you know, you can have
guilty verdicts very quickly,

you can have not guilty verdicts
very quickly.

But I guess given the amount
of evidence

that I thought
we'd presented to the court,

I kind of expected it
to take a little bit longer

for the jury
to deliberate through it,

and I was shocked,

I really was shocked

because I thought we had presented

a compelling case

and we'd worked hard at it.

And it was difficult really to see

if, you know,
the jury accepted the evidence

that we'd discovered,

then I thought they were bound
to convict him.

The children gave evidence
in court,

saying there had been a row
between their parents

on the night that Maureen vanished,

but their demeanour
towards their father

was the all-important thing
for a jury,

they would have been looking
very carefully at that

and it wouldn't fail to register
with them

that Martin's children
were being supportive of him

in what must have been
his darkest hour at that point,

facing trial for the murder
of his wife,

their mother,
a very difficult situation.

But the fact that the children
didn't turn their back on him

would certainly have been
a compelling factor in this case.

It's always difficult
when you think you've got a good

and solid case and you go to court,
and the jury acquit.

In this case, we had a mass
of circumstantial evidence,

there was all the evidence
about Maureen not having any contact

with officialdom with her bank,

doctors, hospitals,
anything like that,

missing out
on important family events,

walking out
and never saying a word again

to five children.

You've also got the fact that
on the night that she went missing,

Martin Hale borrowed a spade
from his place of work

which he didn't take back
for a few days

and bizarrely also at the same time
swapped his 7 Series BMW

with his manager's car,
which was a Ford Fiesta.

And he didn't swap that back

until after he had been arrested
by police

and they'd searched the Fiesta.

But the fact is that

it is the prosecution
who bring the case

and the prosecution have to prove it
beyond any reasonable doubt,

if any member of the jury
has a reasonable doubt,

they have to say not guilty.

It's always slightly disappointing
when you get a non-guilty verdict,

but the evidence
was put before 12 men and women

and they came back
with a not guilty conclusion,

so we have to accept it and move on.

I think in this case,

there was a witness
called Andrew Horton

who was Maureen Hale's lover.

What the defence then did
was brought two witnesses

who were former girlfriends of his

who kind of painted a picture of him
as this misogynist

and somebody
who'd been violent towards them,

threatened violence to them,

and in one case actually threatened
to kill her.

I remember watching
Andrew Horton give evidence

at Kingston Crown Court
during the course of the trial.

He was very confident,

and he came across
as very believable

and that's a case
of swaying the jury

with what he had to tell.

He had been involved
in numerous affairs

and he had
assaulted numerous ex-girlfriends,

but he was quite happy
to talk about that.

I think it's easy to understand

how the jury didn't take to him

and the suggestion
that it could have been him

and not Martin Hale
that murdered Maureen Hale

was enough
in some of those jurors' minds

just to provoke that doubt
and that's all they need,

a reasonable doubt
and they must acquit.

And I think it is the main reason

that the jury found
there was a doubt

because the question
was left hanging there,

you've got Maureen's lover
at the time is this man,

who has a record
of using violence towards women.

Is it possible, members of the jury,
that he might have killed her?

I was surprised
that the jury found him not guilty,

but our justice system means

that there only has to be
a small amount of doubt

to go for a not guilty verdict,

so I can only assume
that they thought

there was some reasonable doubt
that he had not murdered his wife.

That's what happened.

Ultimately professionally,

you know, I did my job,

I got a team together
to get the most evidence we could

and to put it before a court

and then the rest of that process
kind of takes over.

Of course, during the trial,

the fact that Martin Hale

might have been
in another relationship himself

was never put before the jury

and indeed it was difficult
for us to work out,

we still really don't know

how long his relationship
had been going on

and whether that was prior

to Maureen's disappearance

or something
that occurred afterwards.

I think the depth and breadth
of the evidence

that we presented
to the court in this case

exceeded that in other cases
that I had

where the defendant
was found guilty.

At the conclusion of the trial,

the Metropolitan Police
made a statement

to say
that there was no further leads

for them to pursue at that moment,

so unless it goes back
to another cold case review

or someone approaches
the investigation

with some new information
at this stage,

it's not being re-opened.

He seemed a very decent quiet chap,

yes, and still
is a very level-headed,

calm sort of person,

that's as much as we know him.

The whole thing cost him
his business,

it's cost him everything.

Yes, it's a very strange,
horrible situation.

The law was served

and police officers in that position

have to expect that verdicts

are not always gonna go their way,

they may invest a long period
of time,

a lot of resources,

they may spend weeks and weeks
in terms of administration

that goes into mounting
of a court case.

But at the end of the day,

it's a jury of 12 fellow peers,

the man and woman
on the Clapham London bus

will decide whether a person
is guilty or not quite rightly

and in this instance
the world has to assume

that Martin Hale was innocent.

I'm overjoyed really,

it put some sort of closure
on the case

and really I'd just like to thank
my legal team, Richard Christie,

that's worked very hard
on putting the case together

over the last few months.

There's not much really more to say
on the matter at the moment.

I'm really just pleased to be out
and there's some closure on it.

After Martin Hale's acquittal,

the Metropolitan Police
re-assessed the case

and decided not to proceed
with the inquiries any further,

the case effectively now is closed.

And one has to accept
a course of a jury's decision,

but perhaps we're also entitled
to look at why a case was brought

in the first place
against a suspect,

there is still a mystery
about what happened to Maureen

because her body
has never been found.

We took every opportunity there was,

we found new evidence,

we found compelling evidence,

the only clincher may well have been

had we'd been able
to find Maureen's body

because that may have given us
some more scientific evidence

or its location might have pointed
towards guilt or otherwise.

Martin Hale was found not guilty
for his wife's murder,

so he is free to continue
the rest of his life,

and in the meantime,
Maureen remains missing.

It's increasingly difficult

in the 21st century

to disappear without trace

because everything has a record,

you know, your phone, money,

doctor, dentist,

all sorts of things like that.

And, you know, there was just simply
no trace of Maureen Hale

from the day she was last seen.

Yeah, I'm sure she's dead.

It was the only case I did
where there wasn't a body,

and it's also the only murder case

that I ever had that got
before the court

and the defendant was acquitted.