Original subtitles

On the morning of the 18th of June 2001, a young girl leaves home for school but

never arrives.

Linda got a phone call from school just saying that she'd been absent.

They're calling and texting her phone, but she's not responding, which is very

out of character.

With no response, they begin to fear the worst.

Her parents call Essex Police to report that she's gone missing and...

Immediately, the police launch a missing persons inquiry.

The police very quickly escalate this case from a missing person to a

potential abduction case.

The local community comes together to help find her, except for one man.

This is someone who has reportedly had a very close relationship with her, so the

fact that he's not out searching is very suspicious.

He was doing everything he possibly could to make her turn to him.

saying that he would look after her.

Essex is a low-lying county known for its rural charm, extensive coastlines

and for being a major commuter belt to London.

I often think of Essex as being a sort of New Jersey to London being New York.

It's sort of the hinterland of the big city. A lot of people commute into

London from Essex and it sort of ranges from suburbs which are very urban part

of London to quite rural areas.

East Tilbury is a pretty small community in semi-rural Essex. There's about 8,000

residents. It's a mix of sort of council housing, family homes, and is just a

very small kind of community-based place.

It was actually originally sort of founded around the Batter shoe company,

and crime there is low.

Comparatively to more urban Essex, there's a very low crime rate and so

extreme violent crimes is something pretty much unheard of in this area.

You don't get huge volume of offending and particularly you don't get serious

crimes either.

Living with her parents in East Tilbury is 15-year-old Danielle Jones.

At the end of June 2001, it's approaching the summer holidays. Kids

and parents alike are looking forward to the break.

You know, people are planning their trips. And for young people like

Danielle, she's looking forward to a summer of spending time with her

friends.

Danielle Jones was a 15-year-old girl, the first child of Tony and Linda. They

had two other children.

She's a fairly quiet and reserved child.

But she does have a really great group of friends who, you know, she's very

well liked at school, has a great community. She loves animals and has

even been caring for two bunny rabbits. So she's a very kind and caring and kind

of gentle young girl.

Nothing I would think sort of stood out about her. She was just a typical 15

-year-old girl from a close-knit family.

I think teenagehood is inherently a potential high-risk time for being

manipulated because you're going through so many changes physically, mentally,

which means particularly emotionally, there is more opportunity for adults to

abuse that inherent vulnerability.

But I actually think in Danielle's case, she was a very sensible teenage girl.

You know, she had a great close relationship with her family.

She would always leave notes for her mom if she was going to be out or stay in

touch with her friends and family so they knew where she was.

She didn't like going out late because she had an inherent fear of the darkness

as well. And so she was actually a very sensible, considered young girl, which

normally would mean that she's perhaps somewhat protected.

You know, she is someone who has these close relationships, has people who are

looking out for her, which should reduce her vulnerability.

Within her tight-knit family, Danielle is very close to her 43-year-old uncle

Stuart Campbell.

So Danielle had an uncle, Stuart Campbell.

Stuart was married to her father's sister.

They had grown up with Stuart in the family.

He's been around for a long time, since she was little.

You know, she was a bridesmaid at their wedding.

He's a trusted part of the wider family network, and the whole family are pretty

close. They visit with each other often, they live nearby, and they're all pretty

connected together.

He was a builder, and he used to spend quite a lot of time with Danielle and

her siblings when they were growing up. You know, family time, playing together,

that kind of thing.

Linda, Danielle's mum, described Stuart Campbell as a bit of a charmer. And she

didn't quite trust him. And she also said that there was something about him

that Tony, Danielle's father, didn't quite like. And that sort of... That

feeling persisted for quite some time.

Though Danielle's dad doesn't have a great relationship...

with this uncle.

He doesn't know why, but he just feels a slight unease around him.

And the uncle, you know, he's a nice enough person, he seems pretty involved

with the family, but he also gives off a real air of arrogance and that rubs some

people up the wrong way.

As Danielle grows up, Stuart's behaviour begins to change.

When Danielle was younger, Stuart Campbell used to play with her and her

siblings quite a bit, and the attention was sort of evenly spread. But when

Danielle became an adolescent in her teenage years, there was much more

attention from Stuart Campbell focused on Danielle, and some red flags started

to appear for the family. There were a lot of visits to Danielle's home, and it

got to a point where it was quite intrusive.

So Stuart's attention towards Danielle became slightly obsessive. He would hang

around. When she finished school, he would be in his blue van waiting for

her. Danielle found this very embarrassing amongst her peers to have

him waiting for her when she got off the school bus.

There was one occasion in particular that really made Danielle's dad quite

uncomfortable.

Danielle was sitting on the sofa next to Stuart Campbell.

And he kept asking Danielle why she was embarrassed, why she was blushing, why

she was going red. When Tony, Danielle's dad, sort of pointed this out or made a

comment, Campbell sort of said, oh, it's nothing to worry about, you know, and

brushed it aside. But there was clearly some signs, some warning signs that

something was not right in that relationship between Stuart Campbell and

Danielle.

It's a really difficult situation for the family to be in, though. If they try

to make accusations about Campbell being inappropriate with Danielle, that could

absolutely fracture the family. And if they don't have any grounds for it on,

that's almost one of the worst social accusations that could occur, and it

could really fracture the whole family apart.

And so whilst they're feeling uncomfortable, they haven't actually

seen anything inherently wrong yet.

So they're keeping an eye out, but actually progressing that any further

and keeping him away.

is a very difficult situation and that's exactly why predators choose their

targets exactly like that. The majority of sexual offences against children

happen from someone within the family or within the immediate circle of friends

and family and that's because they're relying on that social pressure to not

accuse someone of such a crime and that's exactly what Stuart Campbell was

counting on.

So even Danielle was finding this relationship slightly strange the older

she got. It wasn't just her parents that were picking up on it.

Danielle actually did everything right as well. She even tried to distance from

Campbell as hard as that would be because he's within that immediate

family unit.

But she did try and create that distance because he was making her feel

uncomfortable.

But Campbell, in the position of power as an adult within the family, would

simply turn the story around on its head, go to her parents and make it seem

like Danielle was being unreasonable.

And because they were dealing, again, with a trusted adult in their lives too,

they took his word for it. And unfortunately, it meant that there was

still this access to Danielle and this trust from her parents, at least, that

meant that he could continue to access Danielle.

Danielle and her family hope their issues with Stuart will resolve soon,

but everything changes the morning she disappears without a trace.

East Tilbury, Essex.

43-year-old Stuart Campbell has developed a strange affection for his 15

-year-old niece, Danielle Jones.

But neither Danielle nor her parents want to cause strife in the family by

making any accusations.

However, things are about to take a turn for the worst.

On 18 June 2001, Danielle leaves in the morning to go to school, normal time, 7

.55am, but her brother does notice that while she immediately turns off in the

right direction towards the bus, she does then turn back on herself and start

walking the other way.

But he doesn't think much of this because she might be going a different

route or popping to the shop first, and it's not particularly abnormal

behaviour.

It was about 2.30 that afternoon. Linda got a phone call from the school just

saying that Danielle had been absent.

And I think Linda was very surprised by that. It was certainly out of the

ordinary. I think she just wondered to begin with, well, perhaps she's played

truant for some reason.

and she would obviously challenge her about it when she came home.

But I think just that call alone certainly put Linda on edge.

I think it is significantly concerning that the school don't call until 2.30pm,

but we do have to remember that this case happened 25 years ago when

safeguarding regulations were not as stringent as they were now.

When Danielle didn't come home from school, Linda became much more anxious.

and started ringing around her friends ringing around sort of family and

started actually searching a few places like the local lakeside shopping center

that sort of thing just to see if for some reason that she was there

danielle's parents and all of her friends immediately start trying to get

in touch with her because they know that something's not right they're calling

and texting her phone but she's not responding which is very out of

character

And previous to this, if she'd ever had any plans after school, she'd have

always made sure to have either sent a text or to have left a note at home, at

least explain that she might be back a little bit late. Because she was a very

conscientious young girl. She didn't want anyone to worry.

So during the day, especially into the evening, the various members of the

family were ringing Danielle on her phone and getting no replies whatsoever.

You know, the line was dead. They might have thought, oh, maybe the battery's

flat and she hadn't been able to charge it.

But the darker it got, the more and more worried they'd be getting.

When night falls and Danielle still doesn't show up, a real panic begins to

set in.

Danielle's family are particularly concerned now because Danielle is scared

of the dark. So they know even if something totally out of character had

happened and she'd skipped school that day, they know that she would have been

home before this time because she doesn't like being out after dark.

On the evening of her disappearance, Danielle's parents call Essex Police to

report that she's gone missing and immediately the police launch a missing

persons inquiry.

A 15-year-old girl going missing isn't necessarily that unusual.

And in this instance, it was dealt with by local police officers who,

I believe, quickly attended Linda's house, spoke to Linda, and actually

commenced a missing person investigation.

For any missing person, the first thing, and particularly a child,

a police officer attending that report would do would be to search the house

and just make sure that the person, particularly a child, wasn't just hiding

somewhere in a wardrobe in their bedroom or whatever.

And I understand those sort of inquiries were made at the very beginning. Some

inquiries regarding the background, if there'd been any domestic issues, any

family arguments.

which may have led to Danielle going missing.

But I think it quickly became apparent that this was totally out of character.

And just inquiries such as, and questions such as, whether she'd

taken her mobile phone charger. And it was found that no, that was still there.

Was there any money missing?

All those sort of obvious...

questions were asked and it was ascertained that there was no obvious

reason for her disappearance.

The police very quickly escalate this case from a missing person to a

potential abduction case.

And that's because of the patterns of behavior from Danielle.

This is not a young troubled girl who has prior history of running away or is

mixed up with some bad circles.

So because this is so out of character, that's why they then start looking at

potential abductions.

And at this point, the local community really gathers together.

Everyone starts going out and looking for her. The police are directing groups

of volunteers.

And this is really where the small community tries to band together to find

this young girl to support the family and to try and bring her home as quickly

as possible.

So as part of the police investigation, they would have done door-to-door

inquiries in East Tilbury, asked...

Anybody, if they had seen her, asked them to check their outbuildings and

then probably, you know, check them themselves, sheds, garages, anywhere

that she could be hiding or she'd come to to no good.

In victimology, you look at three groups of victims.

So you have your primary victim, who the crime happens to, the secondary victim,

which is their immediate friends and family, and then you also have something

called the tertiary victims, and that's the whole wider local community.

and so the fact that this local community all got together to search for

danielle really goes to show the kind of ripple effect of crimes even missing

people on these kind of small communities it impacts everyone and

that's why they've all banded together to try and do everything they can to

bring danielle home so when somebody is reported missing there are different

levels that they are graded at by the police obviously danielle as a young

girl who For it being totally out of character for her to go missing, they

decided that this was serious, something seriously wrong, the fact that she was

missing. And therefore she was graded as a Level 1, which means that it's

extremely urgent that they find out what has happened to her and where she has

gone.

This kind of case is really difficult for law enforcement because there's no

identified person. There is no trail. There are no messages.

There's no prior, you know, out-of-character behavior from Danielle.

And so they've got very little to work from. And especially in the context of

this being 2001 with less technological developments, that means that they're

really just searching openly at this point for her. They've got very little

to go off.

One can only imagine what this must have been like for Danielle's parents and for

her siblings, waiting for a call, waiting for news.

Disappearance was so out of character. But also for the local community, a low

-crime area, for someone to go missing like that, a teenage girl, they must

have been really, really fearful about what had happened to Danielle and who

potentially could have done this and were they still out there.

Whilst the rest of the community lends their support in the search, there's one

person of note absent.

Stuart Campbell has reportedly had a very close relationship with Danielle.

So the fact that he's not out searching is very suspicious.

But you'd immediately think that even if he had done something, surely he would

go out and look like he was getting involved so as to not look suspicious.

But I actually think that this is representative of a very narcissistic

personality because he's always been described as very self-assured, very

overly confident.

And I think it's entirely possible that had he done something, he would still be

so confident in getting away with it that he wouldn't feel the social

pressure to go and try and look innocent.

As soon as Tony Jones came home from work, he'd obviously been telephoned by

Linda to say that Danielle hadn't been at school and she hadn't returned home.

He went round to his sister's house in Greys because there had been some

concerns about the relationship which was being formed between his brother-in

-law, Stuart Campbell, and Danielle.

Now, there was nothing...

that the family thought was necessarily inappropriate, but

they were just uncomfortable with the attention that Stuart Campbell had over

the last year or so started to pay to Danielle.

And so with that in mind, Tony went round to their house in Greys just

to see if Danielle could have been there.

And when Tony, Danielle's dad, went round to his house to call on him, he

peered through the window and what he noticed was quite surprising.

He saw what looked like cameras and some kind of photography set up in the living

room.

Suspicious signs are emerging that hint at Campbell's possible involvement in

Danielle's disappearance. But without concrete evidence, no accusations can be

made yet.

East Tilbury, Essex. On the morning of 18th June 2001, 15-year-old Danielle

Jones disappears without a trace on her way to school.

While her family hopes she'll be found safely, suspicions begin to fall on her

uncle, 43-year-old Stuart Campbell, who had a strange affection for Danielle

prior to her disappearance.

So the family liaison officer would probably have picked up quite quickly

Tony's concerns about Stuart Campbell.

And having done that, then he would follow up those concerns and he would

talk to his senior officers at work to pass on his concerns and the family's

concerns. So very quickly, Stuart Campbell became a person of interest.

Campbell is immediately brought to authorities' attention because

Danielle's family flag that he has been hovering around a lot and he has been

sort of increasingly invasive in Danielle's life.

Investigators looking into Stuart are quick to find issues with his statement.

Stuart Campbell had an alibi.

He told police that on the day that Danielle disappeared, he was actually

quite some distance away in Raleigh, buying tools from a DIY shop.

Problem for him is that there was no evidence that he had been buying tools

from that shop in Raleigh. There was no evidence that he'd bought any tools or

that he'd been there.

But Campbell's alibi was disproven by data from his mobile phone, cell site

analysis, and it seemed that he'd never been to Rayleigh that day and he'd never

been buying anything from a DIY shop there.

This seems like a blatant lie, which I think, again, evidences someone who...

is almost so self-assured that they don't believe they're going to be

questioned. They don't believe that anyone's really going to dig into them.

And so they're almost not taking any care to this. This isn't someone who is,

you know, even actively trying to manipulate the situation very

effectively because he's...

not lying with any real substance.

He's not creating a particularly strong alibi. It's one that's very easily

disproven. But again, this is someone who's so self-assured that he doesn't

think anyone's going to point fingers at him in the first place.

Stuart Campbell was also on police radar because a blue van matching the

one that Campbell owned...

have been seen talking to a girl matching the description of Danielle.

Very soon after Danielle's disappearance, Stuart Campbell is put

under police surveillance.

And he's spotted taking photographs of cars that seem to be very similar to his

own. And it's thought that this may have been an attempt to try and form another

alibi.

To say while his car is in a particular location When of course it wasn't

another attempt by a Stuart Campbell to construct a false story to distance

himself from Daniels disappearance But in a surprising twist Danielle's phone

activity shows signs of life

Campbell himself starts receiving texts after Danielle's gone missing, and it's

from Danielle saying that she's left and that she doesn't want to be contacted,

doesn't want to be found, and this is kind of giving the family some hope that

maybe she's okay and she's run away.

In actual fact, though, forensic linguistics, which look at how people

communicate and text, very quickly identify that it doesn't follow the same

normal texting pattern of Danielle.

There are differences in how she's spelling things, in how she's using

punctuation, that don't line up with her usual texting pattern.

So instead, what's actually happened is the perpetrator is texting from

Danielle's phone, trying to divert attention, giving false hope to the

family. And it's actually a very cruel and manipulative process by this

perpetrator, who clearly thinks that they're going to be able to get away

with this. This is Campbell himself showing these messages to the family and

really trying to manipulate the situation, control the situation.

but still clearly ultimately thinking that he's not going to be apprehended,

not going to be caught for this.

Campbell is clearly trying to redirect attention away from him because the

family have identified him as someone for the police to talk to. So he's

constructed this alibi.

He's sending these messages within which, you know, it looks like Danielle

is calling him a great uncle, even though he's actually fabricating all of

this. He is, you know, taking pictures of other vans in the area that look like

his to try and construct this narrative that it could have been someone else. So

he's working very hard to redirect attention away from him and ultimately

is trying to manipulate and control the situation from within that family unit.

Once again, he's using his position of power within the family to abuse it.

Police continue to make further discoveries into Campbell's strange

fascination with Danielle.

During a search of Danielle's home, police officers found some notes in her

pencil case in Danielle's room, some inappropriate notes that appeared to

have been written by Stuart Campbell, and that was another factor that pointed

towards him having something to do with her disappearance.

Campbell is increasingly possessive of Danielle because he's not only turning

up and picking her up from the bus stop regularly and coming over to the house

all the time, but he's even entering the house when all the family are out to

leave notes in Danielle's pencil case that she will only open and read when

she's at school.

The police eventually ascertained that in actual fact Stuart Campbell had

fitted the family's back door.

and they believed that he probably held a set of keys for that door. But how

uncomfortable that he had been wandering around their home, particularly

Danielle's bedroom, when there was nobody there.

So this to Danielle is making her feel kind of constantly observed and

constantly under this pressure of Campbell's presence.

And for a young girl, this has got to feel really intimidating.

And I think that's exactly what he's trying to do. He's trying to make

Danielle feel like there's nowhere she can turn because he will quash it with

her parents, but he knows where she's at school. He knows where she is at

nighttime. He knows everything about her life. And so she's got to be feeling

really penned in and just, you know, cut off, really.

In the days leading up to Danielle's disappearance, she'd visited Stuart

Campbell's home, and when she came back, Danielle's mum, Linda, had seen some

purple-coloured bruises on her neck that she was slightly concerned about, and

Danielle had said something weird had happened while she'd been at Campbell's

house. But Linda thought this could have been connected to some jewellery that

she was wearing round her neck.

Investigators looking into Campbell make some dark discoveries about his past.

Campbell actually had an existing criminal history relating to young

girls. In 1989, he had falsely imprisoned a 14-year-old girl and had

been taken to court for this. But he'd only received a 12-month suspended

sentence, which is an incredibly lenient sentence for a crime of that type.

And in addition to that, the sex offenders register was not implemented

until 1997.

If that crime that he committed in 1989 had happened after 1997, he would have

had to be on the sex offenders register and he would have had to disclose that

to his future family and partner.

But because of timings, that simply didn't happen.

And I think that that is an unfortunate error of policy being

far too slow in a way that could have protected a young girl's life.

There was a dilemma. That dilemma was, do we now arrest Stuart Campbell and

hope to find evidence which will prove his involvement, or could Danielle still

be alive? Could he be holding her somewhere where he is visiting her,

going from his house to wherever she is detained?

So the decision was made to place him under surveillance.

And he was put under surveillance for pretty much one day.

And during that time, his activities were suspicious.

He seemed to be taking a lot of photographs of cars similar to his own.

There was also a possibility that he realised that he was under surveillance.

But whatever, there was no evidence really found.

during that surveillance operation to implicate him any further or to

eliminate him.

So at the end of that day, the decision was made to arrest him on suspicion

of abducting Danielle.

Stuart Campbell is officially arrested on 23 June 2001. Whilst in custody,

police search his house for further evidence.

During the search of Stuart Campbell's property, one thing police did find was

a diary that Stuart had been keeping.

This diary was for a number of days leading up to Danielle's disappearance,

and every day he was noting down his communication with Danielle, whether he

had seen her, whether he had spoken to her, what he said, what Danielle said,

that she would be upset because her mother had taken her phone, and he

documented every...

interaction he had with Danielle, up until the day she went missing, and then

it stopped.

It would also appear that Stuart was trying to turn Danielle against her

parents. He was doing everything he possibly could to make her turn to him,

saying that he would look after her.

When police carried out a search of Stuart Campbell's home, they made some

really alarming discoveries.

Not only was there photography equipment, but they also found indecent

images of girls and they also found some handcuffs and some lingerie as well.

When police looked into Stuart Campbell's background, they found that

he had a history of grooming young girls.

He would approach them on the street and then invite them back to his house.

He said he was a representative from a modelling agency called Cinderella's

Modelling Agency.

But it was clearly an attempt to groom girls and then presumably sexually

assault them.

Following Campbell's arrest, around 30 women came forward to tell the police

that over the span of around 20 years, he had regularly been posing as a fake

model agency to get young girls to come into his home to take pictures of them.

often in very inappropriate states of undress, often making them feel very

uncomfortable, and he'd also assaulted multiple of these young girls.

Now, this is very significant because it picks up a clear modus operandi for

Campbell. This is clearly someone who has a sexual interest, a sexual

fascination with young girls.

And that is really significant when we're looking at his criminal profile,

because... Sexually motivated perpetrators are at very high risk of

repeat offending.

And that's because the sexual gratification wears off.

So whilst they get gratification from controlling and manipulating the

situation and putting these young girls into very vulnerable situations, that

only lasts so long.

And that's when they go out and seek it again. And that's exactly what Campbell

has repeatedly been doing for over 20 years before turning his sights to a

young girl.

within his immediate family, giving him even more direct access to control and

manipulate.

So during the search of Campbell's home, they found a pair of stockings.

On these stockings was a speck of blood.

When they analysed this blood for DNA, it was a mixture of Campbell's and

Danielle's DNA.

So you had the sightings, you had the self-sight analysis, you had the text

messages, you had Campbell's background, where it was clear that he had a

predilection for girls of Danielle's age.

And all of those pieces of the jigsaw coming together made it

a compelling case, albeit based solely on circumstantial evidence.

Two months later, after significant new evidence came to light, police arrested

Stuart Campbell again, this time on suspicion of murder.

And in November 2001, he was charged with adoption and murder.

Everything was put to him in November when he was re-arrested, and he made no

comment, so there was never any explanation from him at all.

We believe that you have got her or you put her somewhere.

You've taken her somewhere, you know?

That's what we believe.

Yeah? And what we want is to find out where is she.

Please, Jo.

Is there anything you want to tell us?

No. Nothing you want to tell us?

Is it because you're frightened?

No.

So throughout this investigation, Danielle's parents, they must have been

beside themselves.

I know that Danielle's mother has said that she felt and still feels guilty

that she could not protect Danielle, but during that time they had nothing to

suggest she was alive, but likewise nothing to suggest she was dead either.

They were just in limbo throughout the investigation.

Despite Danielle still not being found, police begin preparing for the murder

trial. However, without any concrete evidence, the prosecution will have an

uphill battle to prove Campbell's guilt and to achieve justice for Danielle and

her family.

East Tilbury, Essex On 17 August 2001, Stuart Campbell is officially re

-arrested for the abduction and murder of his 15-year-old niece, Danielle

Jones.

Prosecutors prepare to deliver their case against Campbell with only

circumstantial evidence and the location of Danielle's body still unknown.

On 14 October 2002, an 11-week trial commenced at Chelmsford Crown Court.

Campbell had pleaded not guilty, maintaining his innocence.

He knew nothing about this. It was nothing to do with him.

At trial, this was actually a really difficult case to prosecute because a

lot of it relied on very circumstantial evidence.

Campbell did not admit what he'd done. He withheld all of the information,

which meant that Danielle's family had to go through this very painful trial,

which in itself is a very traumatic experience for a family to have to go

through.

Now, trials like this are fairly uncommon, and at the time, this was a

pretty landmark case in terms of being able to use this variety of evidence to

gain a conviction, because they didn't have any admission of guilt. They didn't

have Danielle's body.

They didn't have, you know, any CCTV directly showing this happening.

what they had to rely on was building a picture of Campbell's character as

someone capable of committing these crimes of abduction and murder.

And so one thing that was really important in doing that was presenting

how dishonest he had been and how he would often abuse power in order to gain

access to young women.

And that's why his fake modelling agency would have been brought up in court.

And that kind of shows this pattern of continued and escalating behaviour over

a very long time, which really paints him as this significant repeat

perpetrator and offender, which is going to be very important in trying to ensure

a conviction in a case like this.

Throughout the trial, I mean, bearing in mind that was the first time I'd ever

seen him, I wasn't...

present during the interviews.

So I'd seen his photo, but I'd never actually seen him. But in court, he was

animated. He would sort of shake his head or just his body language was

challenging all the time, you know, just disagreeing with the evidence. He'd be

forever writing notes to his defence team.

And he was very obvious. He wanted to make an impression.

He wasn't happy to sit in the background and just listen. He wanted to be part of

it, albeit that when it was the defence case, and I think the prosecution case

lasted about nine weeks and there was over 100 witnesses, the defence case

took about two days, and he chose not to give evidence.

The police and prosecutors worked together to look for evidence to use

against Campbell during the trial.

At one point during the trial, the bag which was found in Campbell's loft

was discussed during the evidence, and it was noted that amongst the

contents of that bag was a tube of lip gloss.

Now, that evening, as we did every evening at the end of...

a day's call, we sat down with prosecuting counsel and just debriefed

the day.

Brian Altman said, how about analysing that lip gloss to see if we can

find Danielle's DNA on it, which is what we did, and it came back positive.

So perhaps something we should have done at the very beginning, but having said

that, you can't submit everything to the laboratory.

You've got to be discerning about what is and isn't submitted, but this was

indicative of the close liaison between the police and prosecuting team.

On 19 December 2002, after seven hours of deliberation, the jury

found Campbell guilty on all counts.

Mr Justice McKinnon described Campbell as a dangerous man, unable to control

his fixation with teenagers.

He also emphasised in his sentencing remarks the fact that Daniel's body has

never been discovered and that Campbell had given no help whatsoever to police

in terms of finding it.

Campbell was sentenced to life in prison with a minimum recommended term serve of

20 years and in addition to that he was sentenced to a 10-year concurrent

sentence for abduction.

Now, just because it's 20 years doesn't mean that Campbell will get out at 20

years. That's just the first time that he'll become eligible for parole.

And particularly the fact that Campbell has consistently refused to admit his

guilt and perhaps most importantly refused to share where Danielle's body

is means that it's likely now, after Helen's law,

that he will never get out because he is refusing to share this information to

offer the family any sort of closure and, you know, just ability to process

and mourn Danielle properly.

And because of that, thankfully because of Helen's law, this means that it's now

unlikely that he will ever see the light of day.

To this day, Danielle's body has still never been found.

Danielle was declared dead in 2005 in something called In Absentia.

which essentially just means that because they had no body, they were now

assuming her death because of the length of her absence.

And this is just an additional trauma to the family who are already having to

process the loss of their child, of their sibling, who now, you know, don't

even get to have a final resting place for their loved one.

Stuart Campbell is still in prison. He's passed his minimum term, his 20-year

date, and he's had opportunities to request release, but the parole board

has turned him down, principally because of his lack of remorse and also his

refusal to disclose where Danielle's remains are. He has never given the

police any information about that whatsoever.

In cases where murderers refuse...

to reveal what they've done with the victims remains the parole board must

now take that into account when considering whether someone should be

released or not that was a recent rule change introduced a few years ago

because of the case of a woman called helen mccourt i think the problem he

has is that when he was arrested his wife so bearing in mind

that's tony's

Sister, Danielle's auntie, she stood by Stuart Campbell.

She didn't believe that he was guilty.

Furthermore, her parents, Tony's parents, Danielle's grandparents,

also didn't believe that Stuart Campbell was responsible

for Danielle's murder.

That caused a family rift.

that has never been healed.

And I think that's another reason why he would find it very difficult to now say,

well, actually, I did do it.

Campbell was a family member. You should be able to trust your family members.

But he took advantage of that trust.

He was a devious, sick individual, a paedophile who took advantage of

his position as an uncle.

to a young girl the tragic loss of danielle is still felt deeply by her

family and the surrounding community case of daniel jones got national

coverage in the media in 2001 i remember it as a correspondent covering the case

it was a terrible case because you really felt for daniel's parents and her

family this lovely family girl who just sort of disappeared out of the blue

And yet the family could never get real closure on what had happened because her

body has never been discovered.

I think also this happened in a period when we knew less about

sexual grooming and the ways in which sex offenders try and manipulate people

who are close to them and then commit sexual offences.

And this was, I think, one of the first cases that really brought that to light.

Stuart Campbell had groomed Danielle Jones over a period of time and then

something had happened, we will never know what, that made him kill her.

Because Campbell refuses to share the information about where Danielle's body

is, the police are still open to hearing tips and places to look.

Even in more recent years, they had a tip to look at a storage unit close to

where Campbell had lived.

And unfortunately, they didn't find anything.

But this is still a case that they are looking to find that closure for, to

offer Danielle's family that final sense of being able to truly mourn her.

The fact that it's not over, it wasn't over when he was convicted, there's

still... an important element missing, and that is Danielle.

And I know that if ever her remains were located, it would

bring so much relief to the family. They could properly lay her to

rest. There'd be somewhere that they could go to on her birthday or other

significant dates, and it would mean so much to everybody, the family.

the police officers who were involved in it and I guess the community as well.

East Tilbury is a close-knit community you know this shocked them at the time

and I'm sure many people remember it. It's often in the news

if for example Campbell makes a parole application or if there's a new

search it always hits the local press and I'm sure many, many people still

remember it and are still saddened by what happened.