All language subtitles for Episode 04 The Murder of Clare Bernal

It's a shop which is famous

for being
the favourite watering hole

of Patsy in 'Absolutely Fabulous'.

What you don't expect
to happen in Harvey Nichols,

is for anyone to be shot
in the head at point blank range.

He'd gone up behind her

and shot her in the head
from behind,

and then she hit the floor

and then he shot her
in the face three times.

As far as we were concerned,

once the professionals,
the police were involved,

the problem had gone away,
the professionals had dealt with it.

It was a crime
of almost breathtaking...

The man who tried to kill her
will never be free to harm again.

...targeted young women
unable to defend themselves.

Colin Sutton

was a Detective Chief Inspector
and senior investigating officer

in the metropolitan police.

He let the investigations
into some of the most complex

and high profile cases ever,

bringing dangerous criminals
to justice.

He showed his cowardliness...

Another 146 victims...

In this series he 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 20...

The officer in charge
described it as a senseless tragedy.

The life sentence
may provide some closure

for his victim's families.

It was a Tuesday evening
in September 2005,

and I was on-call SIO
for West London

and I remember getting the call...

and the control

that give us the jobs said,

"I've got a double fatal shooting

"for you Mr Sutton."

At the time we had been suffering

from a few shootings in West London,

most of them

in Harmston, Stonebridge Park Estate

and that sort of thing,

I assumed that's where I'd be going,

and I think
I might even have said that to them,

"Whereabouts in Harmston
am I going?"

And he said,
"No, no, it's a bit of a funny one,

"so it's at Harvey Nichols."

I was in the office,

so Colin was the kind of guy that...

he was a DCI,

and it wasn't that normal

actually for DCI's to come
running around the office

and say, "Come on, Dave,
we're going out," you know?

Ordinarily a DCI would say,
"A job has come in,

"I want you to go to....

"When you get there let me know,"
that type of way, but Colin was a...

as a detective,
as a man wanted to be involved.

I think most of the team
would have gone home by then,

it was in the evening, but I...

we had a system whereby
we sort of ring each other round

and I scrambled the team
to come to tonight's,

which was Harvey Nichols.

These cases
are obviously rare, fortunately.

It's got huge profile,

it's a major London store...

a young girl being shot

at her place of work, truly awful.

How can that happen?

Why can there be
a double fatal shooting

at Harvey Nichols?

It's got a touch of glamour to it,

what you don't expect to happen
in Harvey Nichols

is for anyone to be shot in the
head at point blank range.

When Clare was little,
she was incredibly shy,

she didn't like
to be in the limelight,

as she got older in her teens,

her confidence started to grow.

She was very gentle...

she was very loving
and very trusting.

She came from a...

you know, probably, you describe it

as quite a middle-class

family and background,

she was a little bit

inexperienced in the ways

of the world in certainly many ways

and certainly in terms

of relationships with men.

She'd love a party,

she was like
any other 21, 22-year-old.

The only difference was that Clare

was somewhat naive I think,

she had dated very few boys

and she always
had very high expectations

of any relationship she was in.

Clare was...

you know, she was a bright,
intelligent, articulate,

very attractive young lady
who wanted to work in the field

of doing make-up and so forth.

She had been working there
for some time,

she absolutely loved the job.

She was beautiful,
she was beautiful inside and out.

She was always interested
when she was about 12, I recall her.

She loved to apply make-up.

She would experiment,

which sort of got her
into that sector.

Michael Pech was a security guard

at Harvey Nichols, he was Slovakian.

And he'd been in the Slovakian army
where he had learned...

is it firearm skills...

come to Britain,

got a job working at Harvey Nichols
where he met Clare

who was a beautiful young woman.

He was ten years or so
older than her,

he'd seen a lot of life,
he was in the military.

And he obviously

just fell completely
in love with her,

he was just absolutely

besotted with her.

And she didn't want the relationship

to be that serious that quickly

and didn't really know

what she wanted I think

but knew that she didn't want

to be tied to Michael Pech

in the way that he did.

But you can't always, you know,
you can't always predict

how somebody is gonna react,
I guess, to those...

to those sort of circumstances.

A girl had been shot
and that this guy had shot himself,

we knew that before we got there.

We didn't know any detail
about what the relationship was,

who he was, we just had a girl shot.

It would appear, on the face of it,

to be a fairly tight investigation
because a suspect is there

and they are deceased,

therefore, a lot of the work

that would have been involved
in identification

and interview strategies etcetera
is not necessary.

So, it was obviously one of those,
sort of, really tragic cases,

but it was also one of those
where you can't jump to conclusions

or make assumptions,

although it looks for the world
that it is a murder

and then followed by a suicide,
you still have to respond to it,

there has still
been a murder there, hasn't it?

You know, there is a murder there
even though the suspect is now dead,

and you need
not to make the assumptions

and go there and do all the things
to investigate,

investigate the scene,

preserve it...

and make sure it's done properly.

So, we responded to it,

you know, as if it were a murder
with no suspect.

It was obvious really quite quickly

because you very quickly research
the people concerned

and identify that there are issues
within this case.

Certainly, those of us in the office

that were looking
at the people concerned

knew that this would develop
into a major crime

and a major investigation
for the police service

and the criminal justice system
really from day one.

Harvey Nichols
in London's Knightsbridge.

World-famous department store
with its wealthy clientele,

in a very wealthy area
of the capital.

Not the sort of place
that I'd have expected to get sent

to for a double fatal shooting

but that was the call
I got in September 2005.

I just happened to be
in Central London

when I got the call, so I was here
before a lot of my team,

but I needed the normal

sort of forensic work done
and local inquiries.

So, I called them all over here,

that then gave us the problem
of "Where can we do the briefing?"

But since
we were in the cosmetics department,

there are all the chairs
where customers sit

to have make-up
applied by the staff,

and we were able to use those

and you've got this slightly
surreal scene of a murder squad

sitting down
on the make-up chairs with me

behind the counter
giving them the briefing.

So, you had a counter
in front of her...

highly polished ceramic tiles
on the floor,

the usual sort of beauty products
all around her

and you couldn't at first see her,
but he had gone up behind her

and shot her in the head from behind
and then she hit the floor

and then he shot her in the face.

What we were told
by the eyewitnesses,

was that Clare Bernal was working
as usual on the cosmetics counter,

Pech had come into the store,

he'd shot her twice
then she'd fallen to the ground

and he turned the gun on himself
and shot himself in the head.

The distressing thing I suppose
from our point of view was...

the amount of blood.

The shooter Michael Pech,
who had killed himself,

was not far away with a hand gun,

cartridge cases dotted about.

We were able to do
some immediate searching

and we actually found
four cartridge cases...

but we could only really account
for three of the shots,

two in Clare
and one to Pech at the end.

So, we dealt with the scene,
retrieval of the weapon,

retrieval of the bodies.

Colin had to deal with...

the press outside,
management of the store.

We needed
to find that fourth bullet.

I, in fact, got a call

from the senior executive
at Harvey Nichols

who said,
"When can we have our shop back?

"It's costing us tens of thousands
of pounds every hour

"that we are shut."

And I pointed out that probably

one of his loyal
and wealthy customers

wouldn't be too impressed
if they moved something on a shelf

and found a bloody bullet behind it

and he understood
that issue instantly

and just said,
"Mr Sutton, do what you need to do

"and just tell me
when we can have our shop back."

At the time,
my role was known as 'receiver'

in the incident room,

therefore I'm not deployed
to the scene.

The team were deployed,

I remained in the office
sort of instruction to the set of...

to the set of circumstances
that the team would bring back.

I was still busy with the scene,

so I just had a conversation
with my brother

and said, "Do us a favour.

"Would you go and pick up
the post-mortem the next day,

"because I'm gonna be here
all night and tomorrow."

I attended the post-mortem

as a part of the process
to prove causation of death.

During the post-mortem,

both Clare and Pech
were in the same mortuary.

I remember thinking at the time,
"This is somehow not right."

The process was fine, it was all...

it was perfectly normal,

but from a moral
and personal perspective

it did not feel right

to see the two laying effectively
in the same place.

As my team carried on
with the normal things

that you do in the early hours
of a homicide investigation...

I knew that we were going
to have to find out why a man

who said he loved and cherished
a young woman,

had just walked
into her place of work,

into a shop and brutally shot her,

killed her and then killed himself.

And the big question

we needed to answer quickly,

was he acting alone?

There was just
so many questions as to,

"What's somebody doing
with a handgun in Harvey Nichols?"

"Why has it come to that?"

And it's all set
really in a situation

of so much sadness,

because you've got this
very attractive 22-year-old girl

that we then found out,

you know, really loved her job,

loved what she was doing

working there.

And it had this
difficult relationship

with this man
who used to work there.

It transpired that Clare Bernal,
who was the victim...

shouldn't really
have been working that evening.

She had swapped shifts
with her flatmate...

for various reasons

and when the story started unfolding

and we realised that the shooter,

her ex-boyfriend Michael Pech,

had gone there to find her,

we assumed he must have gone
to her home first

because he would have expected her
not to be at work,

she shouldn't have been
at work that day.

And he used to work

for Harvey Nichols,

he was a security man,

and that's how they met,

and he had, kind of,

access to her rotas and shifts.

And there then became the worry

that if he's gone to the flat

that she shares
with this colleague...

what's happened there?

Have we got another victim,
the colleague...

lying dead in this flat in Dulwich
where they'd lived?

So, that became

quite a priority for us,

was to get down to Dulwich

to check on the safety

of Clare's co-worker.

When we discovered that Clare
was not meant to be working,

that she had actually
swapped her shift

with her colleague and flat mate,

we realised the likelihood was

that Pech
would have come here to Dulwich

to the flat they shared first

because that's where he would expect
Clare to have been.

And that then raised the issue,
"Was she safe?"

We came to the flat,

knocked on the door
and got no answer...

we were sort of debating whether
or not there was a real risk,

and should we try and force entry

and we were sitting outside in a car
at the end of the road

and this young lady comes along
in a tracksuit with a gym bag

and she sat on the wall
just over there,

outside the entrance to the flat
and was talking on a mobile phone.

And we went and approached her,

and realised
she was talking in a language

which sounded like Russian

and we knew that that's
where Clare's friend hailed from.

And so we asked her

and she said, "Yes, I'm sitting here
because I can't get into the flat

"because I haven't got a key

"and I was waiting for Clare
to come back with the key."

We then had to break the news

that Clare, her colleague,
her friend, her flatmate, was dead.

Having found out
that Clare's work mate was safe,

what we then needed to do was do

a bit more investigation
into Michael Pech.

And, of course, at that point
we don't know who he is...

who his associates are.

You know, is he a one off?

Is he a so called 'lone wolf'

and is it only about Clare,

or does he live, frequent,

associate with a lot of people

who are armed and, you know,

and are there any more...

firearms and ammunition back

where he lived

and all things like that.

So, we found out

that he lived in a house
in South Tottenham

and again, while those are the team
that are doing

what they can with the scene
and witnesses at Harvey Nichols.

Tony McEwan and I go
to South Tottenham to this house...

and it was a house
on the end of a terrace

and it was quite derelict almost,
it was not in very good condition,

the grass was three feet high
in the garden,

there was a window or two broken

and the front door
was kind of hanging open

but, sort of,
ajar when we got there.

And it's in the early hours
of the morning

and we've got a panda car

from the local police station
in Tottenham

and a couple
of uniformed police suits

that came with us.

And ultimately we know
that although we're going in there

thinking that we might be looking

for firearms
or people with firearms,

we knew that we had no chance
of getting armed backup.

It's just not...

it's one of these situations
where it's obviously dangerous

but it's not dangerous enough.

We just knew we couldn't get

that sort of backup,

and you do, you know,

quite often as a police officer.

Tony and I just sat there

and, sort of, looked at each other

and said, "Well,

"we know it's not 100% safe

"but 99% of the time it will be,

"so come on let's do it."

And we went into this and it was...

we have got a torch,
a little mini-Maglite, that's all.

And the whole house was quite,
sort of, dark and creepy really

because it was also
a bit threadbare.

We found out there were actually

seven men sleeping
in the house that night.

And all of them from Eastern Europe

and all of them
were working on building sites

and Pech had been the eighth man
who'd been living there.

And there was...

one of the young men,

I think his name was "Georg,"

and he was about 6'8" tall.

He was huge.

And he was Polish

and could speak very good English

and he kind of translated

for the rest of them

and was absolutely helpful,

in fact, he took Tony and I then
to Earls Court

and pointed out us the hotel

where he knew Pech
had been staying once he'd got back.

We were able
to search his room there,

we found nothing, no more firearms.

But it was, one of the newspapers

reported the next day

that armed police

stormed a house in Tottenham,

and I remember Tony McEwan

saying, "Unarmed police,

"with a sense of humour

"and a biro stormed a house

"in Tottenham!"

When we spoke to Clare's friend
outside the flat in Dulwich,

she was obviously devastated
at the death of her friend,

flatmate and workmate.

But as she started to tell us more

about what had gone on
in this relationship

between Clare and Michael Pech,

we came to realise

there was an awful lot

about this murder and suicide

that we had yet to understand.

In late 2004,
Clare had moved up to London,

she was working in Selfridges
for a short while

and then she was moved
to Harvey Nichols.

So, Clare was working on
a beauty counter in Harvey Nichols

where there were four women
that would rotate.

One was a senior woman,
she had been there for 30 years,

and then there was Natalia,
who was...

she was a bit older than Clare
and she played quite a key part

in what happened to Clare
and there was another younger woman

who was working there part time.

These two young women and Clare

moved into a flat
in Dulwich together.

Late January, Clare started speaking
of Michael Pech.

And she said,
you know, he would come up

to her counter
he was a security guard.

And I think it was some time
in February he asked Clare out.

To begin with,
I think you have to look

at the origins
of their relationship.

Clare had only gone out
with Pech for a couple of...

on a couple of occasions.

The girls apparently...

they didn't like him.

They didn't want him
to come to the flat,

they made it very clear

they didn't want him
to visit Clare's...

the flat that they shared.

They only dated for three weeks
and that's the way it looked like,

they'd go for coffee,
you know, they'd meet up...

but it was getting to the point

where he wanted to be with her
all the time.

He resented when she came home,
when she came to visit me

and when she wanted to go out
with her friends.

He had become...

very obsessive and very serious

about their relationship
very quickly

and Clare didn't really know
how to deal with that,

she knew that's not what she wanted.

So, after three weeks, he...

it was a pre-planned holiday
to visit his mother in Slovakia,

he was from Bratislava.

He'd...

asked Clare...

to go to the airport to see him off,

and he returned back from Slovakia,

duly Clare went to the airport
to meet him

and I didn't hear from her
until the following day,

she phoned me up,
she was very upset.

She said that he said, "Look, Clare,

I've got a really heavy case,

I don't want to trudge it
across London...

"is it alright if I stay over?"

And Clare knew that her flatmates

were uncomfortable
about him staying but...

he did.

The next morning,
and she said to me,

"I just wanted him to go mum."

So, this is the call,
"I wanted to be on my own,

she said, "I was tired."

You know,
"I took him, walked with him,

"he insisted me walking him
to the station,

"he wouldn't catch the train,

"and the second train came in..."

I mean, we're talking about,

sort of, February, late February
it was cold,

she just wanted to be on her own.

He hadn't taken his case,
the case was still in the apartment

and he said,
"Oh, I'll collect it later on."

And she said,
"You do what you like!"

Because although Clare
was very loving,

very pleasing and very giving

she also had a very stubborn side
even when she was little.

So, if she made,
um, up her mind about something,

that was it, totally.

You could not budge her.

And she said, "You do what you like,
Michael, I'm going back...

"just get out of my sight."

She went back to the flat,
she went upstairs,

took his suitcase
and put it straight outside.

With that he refused to go...

he sat there outside.

The girls
had by this time come home,

they, in no uncertain terms,
told him to go.

Reluctantly after two hours he left.

There must have been
something about him

which concerned her

because she quickly tried
to move on,

she did not want
to have a relationship.

Well, he was obviously
one of those men

who felt that
if he couldn't have her,

then no-one would.

And he became obsessed with her.

And on this call I had with Clare,

she said, "Mum, I've had enough.

"You know, I'm going
to end the relationship with him.

"This is making me feel
really, really uncomfortable

"and he got really quite aggressive
with the girls."

So, she messaged him

and said, "Michael,
look this isn't working out.

"We can be friends,

"but I don't want us
to have a relationship anymore."

That's when the stalking began.

She'd had conversations

with her friends and her family

explaining that, you know, it was...

this relationship

was causing her difficulties

because she felt
it was all going too far

and he wanted it to be
much more serious than she did.

And I guess that's the kind
of how the relationship fizzled out,

but Pech was not a man to take

"No" for an answer.

The next day,

there he was as a security guard,

he had every reason

to stand close to Clare's counter...

he was very apologetic,

he said,
"Clare, I'm really, really sorry,

"I've got problems at home,

"I didn't mean to upset you,
can we be friends?"

And she said,
"Yeah, we can be friends,

"that's fine, Michael."

He must have messaged her
50 times that day

and every opportunity
he was going up to her counter.

The stalking by Pech of Clare Bernal

just became so bad,
there was one point

where she was averaging 50 texts
or calls per day from him...

and she didn't want to know,
she wasn't returning them.

He was quite obviously obsessed.

Over the next three weeks,

he became increasingly

more present in Clare's life.

The very first day
after she ended the relationship,

he followed her home
with a bunch of flowers

and she said,
"Michael, please leave me alone."

She left the flowers outside
as a demonstration

that she meant what she said.

Wherever Clare, he was.

He would stand in line
of her counter,

he'd watch her in mirrors,
he'd follow her home,

he'd plead with her.

And during those three weeks...

he was getting
increasingly more agitated.

Really engaged upon

a course of stalking of her

and he would appear at her flat,

he would appear at railway stations

when he knew
she was travelling to and from work.

There was an incident,

so here we are now
in the fourth week,

she was on the platform of the tube

and she saw that Michael
was coming towards her,

she ran,
and she jumped on the train,

he jumped on the train after her,

and he was sitting opposite her
and she was crying

and she said, "Michael, if you
don't leave me alone,

"I'm gonna have to report you."

And he went very close to her face
and said, "If you report me,

"I will kill you."

And she felt at the time
that her world was shrinking,

it just started
to affect her health...

she was having sleepless nights...

she was making mistakes at work,
she was being told off at work.

Eventually, Clare felt
that she had no choice

but to take the appropriate action
about this stalking

that she was suffering.

One of the girls reported him...

the head of security saw that it,
you know, it was true...

and he said,
"You go up to a counter..."

another counter, but he ignored it.

The reaction of the management
at Harvey Nichols

was to make sure
that Pech was deployed

in a different part of the building

but he was using
the internal CCTV to see

where Clare was and then going
and being close to her

and talking to her.

Completely against the instructions

he'd receive from his management

and he was waned about it,

he persisted and eventually

he was suspended by them.

But they could only suspend him
from the store...

he was still standing outside,
following her home.

And Clare was advised
by the head of security

to go to the police,

because
that was the only way that...

it potentially could stop,

that there could be
a restraining order.

Pech continued this behaviour,

and Clare got quite disturbed
when she heard

that he had been asking
around colleagues

what the penalty for murder
was in the UK.

And his stalking behaviour continued

and eventually she had no choice

but to go to the police

and report him.

And they came

and actually arrested him

while he was at work

at Harvey Nichols and at that point,

Harvey Nichols said,

"Sorry, that's it, you're sacked"

and he was fired from the job.

He was escorted out

by two police officers
in front of Clare.

Clare phoned me up, she was crying

and said, "Mum, he looked
so angry with me."

And, yes, Clare felt guilt
that she had...

she had been the one
to get him dismissed.

The police took the report seriously
and investigated it

and Pech was charged
and had to appear at Court.

That was possibly the,

you know, the catalyst

that tipped him over the edge,

that was probably the thing

that he realised then

that his dream of his relationship

with Clare Bernal

was never going to happen.

After Pech was arrested,

life got back to normal for Clare,
he was no longer harassing her,

the police had dealt with it.

Unbeknownst to us,
he had gone to Belmarsh prison

for breaking bail conditions

and then he was given
the same conditions

with a pending court case
to be heard in August,

towards the end of August.

He wasn't given
a custodial sentence,

from his stalking crime

that he had committed against Clare.

This is one of those situations

where the police...

etcetera, try to do what they can.

The crime as I'm sure
any young women

who are subject to it
will tell you, is truly awful.

And it takes real guts
for young women

to come and report it
and keep reporting it

and it's terrifying for them.

The police in this situation
did what they could...

they charged him,

put him before the court process
and then he was released.

Having been charged
with harassing Clare,

Pech was bailed
by the court...

there would have been
conditions for him

not go near Clare,

but, of course, can the police...

enforce those conditions
24 hours a day?

No, they can't.

What I find bizarre
in this case is that,

despite being on bail from a court,

Pech was able to return
back to Slovakia...

enrol on a firearms
refresher course.

It looks like he took that,

kind of, cliche view that,
"Well, if I can't have you,

"then nobody can."

Because what he did
was he got a coach journey

to and from his homeland.

While he was there
he took a proficiency test

to get a licence
for an automatic pistol.

And quite lawfully

bought the pistol and ammunition,

but then hid it in his holdall,

got on the coach,

came back to the UK,

smuggled this gun in

with the ammunition

through Dover, through customs.

You know, ultimately this is a man
who was clearly disturbed.

Um, it's easy to come by guns

in Europe at times,

if you're really looking for one.

How hard is it to get
into the country, that's debatable.

I mean, you know,
it's not as difficult sometimes

unfortunately as you'd think
it could be.

Anyway, he managed it.

This thing extraordinary really,

that despite being on bail...

he was able to come in
without any apparent proper searches

of his possessions
being carried out.

So that here he was, back in London,

having been freed on bail
from the court,

now armed with a gun,

still totally obsessed with Clare

and with clearly one thing
only in mind

and that was to kill her.

And you've then
got tragedy waiting to happen,

you have a frustrated.

Demented man almost,
in possession of a machine pistol

that he can use, with ammunition...

and he's taken the decision,

"I'm gonna kill her

"and then kill myself."

There was a dark cloud
hanging over Clare that was...

that she might have
to see Pech again in court.

He was still pleading...

"Not guilty" to harassment
and threats to kill.

As it happened,
it was settled out of court

at the very last minute
he'd pleaded guilty to harassment...

and Clare was advised
to drop the, "Threats to kill..."

it would be difficult to prove
and she was happily accepted that.

And she said to me,

"Mum, finally I can put this
whole awful episode to bed...

"he will get a minimal fine...

"maybe a community service."

And these words
will always ring in my...my...

always be with me.

She said, "Now finally,
people will believe me."

"As far as we were concerned,
once the professionals,

"the police were involved...

"Michael was no longer a problem,

"the problem had gone away,
professionals had dealt with it."

Pech appears at court
on the harassment charge,

he pleads guilty,
and Clare is quite relieved by that

because it meant
she didn't have to go

and give evidence against him

and she is
now thinking

that the
whole thing is over,

that, you know,
it's behind her.

Within a few days
of pleading guilty...

he had gone on to take Clare's life

and that was
because he had been bailed by court

which clearly did not see

that she was at serious risk
from any harm from him.

What nobody expected
was that he was going

to take a large dose of cocaine...

go into the store
with an automatic pistol...

killing her
and then killing himself.

And that's what he did,

while he was on bail.

Clare was working a late,
there were four witnesses...

one young woman
who was directly opposite Clare...

and I found out this young woman
put her hand up...

and looked at Clare

and as if to say,
"Ten minutes to go."

And Clare gave her
this beautiful smile...

and then she saw a shadow
behind Clare.

And in that instant
she thought maybe it was a boyfriend

who was meeting Clare.

And then he, Michael raised a gun...

and he shot Clare
in the back of the head,

she fell...

and with that he shot her
three times in the face,

he then turned the gun on himself.

Clare was laying there
in an enormous amount of blood

and the suspect...

the shooter, Michael Pech, who...

had killed himself
was not far away.

Through the weakness of the law,

he was able
to go into Harvey Nichols,

early one evening,

and take her life
in the most horrific fashion with...

her colleagues,
members of the public

all standing there
as this lunatic goes up

and she would have perhaps known
what was coming,

because she must have been
terrified of him.

I think it was about a quarter
to two in the morning

and there was a loud
bang on the door

and my partner went down,

my ex-partner went down,

and I could hear
that it was the police

and one of the police officers said,
"It's Clare."

And I knew...
I knew at that moment that...

she'd gone.

And I said, "How did it happen?"

And they said, "She was shot."

I said, "It was Michael, wasn't it?"

And they just nodded.

In that...in that moment...

it's so enormous,
your brain can't take it in...

you can't process it.

As I guessed from the very start

there was a very huge amount
of media interest in this case

because it was so unusual,
and it was so tragic.

As the story unfolded

and as more became

known about Clare

and about Michael Pech

and about the court cases...

it was not only tragic,

but it was sort of avoidable.

Clare's case was so high profile...

it wasn't that
she was a young beautiful girl

who was stalked and murdered...

it was where it was,
it was Harvey Nichols,

the most glamorous store
in the world.

The press were...

I would say
were very helpful in that as well.

Because they...

I think they saw the issue,

they saw that this was a chance
to do some real good,

to make a real difference...

so that people

in the future wouldn't...

or be less likely to suffer

in a way that Clare did.

There were a lot of magazines
and TV programs

that wanted Clare's story
and wanted to hear it

from her mother's point of view,

but I felt that Clare wasn't around
to fight her battle

for want of a better word

and I needed
to be Clare's voice piece.

I underestimated
the danger Clare was in,

but also so did the professionals
and so did Clare...

and nobody understood
the dangers of stalking.

They needed to know everything
and the only door

that was open
really was the inquest,

there were women out there,

10,000 women at the time

who were reporting domestic violence

and some of them

had to have their faces slashed

and nobody would have seen

the risk that Clare was in

and also it didn't follow

the normal pattern

of behaviour of stalking.

They knew that I was intent
on getting the inquest,

looking into the circumstances
leading up to Clare

because there
wasn't domestic homicide reviews

at the time.

It hadn't become law...

It was, I guess at the time,

when the response of law enforcement

and the courts
to stalking as a kind of a crime

and phenomenon in its own right
was pretty much in its infancy.

And though we...

there were measures you could take
and there were offences

that he was committing...

it kind of wasn't joined up

in the way that it is now.

Because it was so high profile,

I got to meet some amazing people

that have become
quite important in my life.

I got to meet Carol Faruqui
whose daughter Rana

was stabbed 16 times
by an ex-boyfriend.

I met Stella Moore,

whose daughter Tania
was shot dead like Clare.

I also met Frank Lane

who is the CEO of the charity
I work for,

supporting bereaved families
after domestic homicide

and steering them

through the review process
or inquests.

Great credit
to Clare's family,

particularly her mother,

they went on to try
and toughen up those laws

to prevent any similar tragedies
from occurring again.

Together we started
to attend conferences,

started to understand
far more about mental abuse,

coercive control,

whether obsession and fixation
can have fatal consequences.

Stella decided to work locally

and Carol Faruqui and myself,

alongside other professionals
decided to set up a charity

called,
"Protection against Stalking."

I'm Jan Berry,
I was a police officer for 38 years,

I finished off as a chair

of the Police Federation
of England and Wales.

Nowadays, I'm a trustee

with a domestic abuse charity

and I'm the co-CEO
of "Protection against Stalking."

I've always greatly admired people

who have taken total tragedy
in their own lives

and turned it to good.

I was asked to help Tricia and to,

maybe, re-focus Protection
against Stalking,

I didn't have
any hesitation in agreeing.

When Protection against Stalking
became a charity in 2010,

the first thing
it did was to establish

the national stalking helpline.

Today, it's still managed
by the Susie Lampley trust

and it's really the first point
of call for anyone

who is gonna be a victim of stalking
or sometimes professionals

who need to understand it
a little bit more.

They then got the legislation change
so that there was a...

there were two offences which said,
"Stalking" in their title.

The section 2A
which is a lesser offence,

but it still carries a sentence
or the section 4A

which is 'Fear of Violence'.

So, a victim doesn't have
to be physically abused

or if they can demonstrate
they have fear,

then it has a sentence
up to ten years.

So, in record time...

in ten months
we managed to get that through.

They then made sure
that there was greater awareness

and training programs out there,

stalking is still
not well understood

by criminal justice professionals,

by community safety partners,
so there is still some work there.

It's not properly understood
by the public,

so if you are being stalked,
you don't necessarily know about it.

So, we want to carry on
raising awareness

but most importantly we want
to provide support or ensure

that there is support
for victims of stalking.

It's difficult to understand how...

somebody could react
to rejection by somebody

they thought they loved...

and wanted to be with,
by killing that person.

What the investigation
did throw up...

was some...

serious questions
about the laws of harassment,

I think what it showed
was that Clare's murder

was totally unnecessary.

If the law and systems
had been working properly

and that the issue of harassment

had been taken seriously
by the judiciary,

which I don't believe they were,

Clare would still be alive
to this day.

If only you could put
the clock back,

but that's not possible,
if only we had hindsight.

I'm just...

I'm so proud of Tricia
that even now, 15 years on,

she's still using her experience
to help other people

and I'm delighted to work with her

and give her
that bit of support as well.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing...

as they say,
but nobody understood stalking then.

Clare didn't understand stalking,

she didn't even know
she was being stalked.

It happens
and we know that it happens,

it doesn't make it easier
to understand

how someone can react like that.

Clare's mother used the tragedy
to the best effect

she could by making herself

a voice for victims

of stalking and making herself...

part of the pressure

on the government

to change the law,

to make the law stronger

and to give the courts

and the police more powers

when they are dealing

with these offences

and when they are trying to protect,

more often than not,

vulnerable young women

from unwanted attention from men.