All language subtitles for Britains.Most.Evil.Killers.S01E09.WEBRip.en

♪♪

-The whole community
are in shock over this.

-I want Tia found.

-The last time I see her
was Friday.

-We just hope that we find her.

-I'll miss her forever.

-On August the 9th, 2012,

a man desperate to find
his partner's granddaughter

sat down
for a televised interview

in the hope that
she would still be found alive.

-I know deep down in my heart
that Tia walked out of my house.

What happened after that
is I don't know.

-By the Thursday morning
after the phone call

that I'd had saying
Stuart would give an interview,

I knew this was an interview
with the killer,

no doubt about it at all.

-Stuart Hazell had murdered
12-year-old Tia Sharp

and hidden her body

in the loft
of her grandmother's home.

He was hiding in plain sight.

-He knows exactly what happened.

He's the only one who knew
what happened in this situation,

and I think the fact
that he has all this knowledge

and these other people don't,
he's really getting off on that.

-Stuart Hazell had lied
to the country

and become one of the world's
most evil killers.

♪♪

It was a crime
that horrified the nation.

In the summer of 2012,
12-year-old schoolgirl

Tia Sharp disappeared from
her grandmother's house

in South London,

prompting one of the most
publicized search campaigns

in British history,
but on the 10th of August,

it came to an abrupt end
with a twist so horrific,

it seemed
impossible to comprehend.

Tia's body and her killer

had been right in front
of the cameras the entire time.

-The sense of loss here is mixed
with all sorts of emotions.

People feel cheated.

Their week-long campaign

was a desperate mission
to find Tia Sharp.

It ended with the 12-year-old
found dead

in her own grandmother's home.

-The killer was
37-year-old Stuart Hazell,

a man that Tia looked up to

and affectionately
called Granddad.

Detective Nick Scola remembers
encountering him

during the search for Tia.

-Throughout all of my meetings
with him,

his demeanor
never really changed.

He was always
a very quiet person.

He didn't come across as being
particularly intelligent

or articulate,

and he answered questions
very simply.

-But behind
Hazell's quiet nature

was a ruthless, callous killer.

-Stuart Hazell committed
the most horrible of murders,

yet was able to lie to
his family, lie to his friends.

To do that, he must have been

a particularly calculating
and vile man.

-His story begins
over 40 years ago.

Born on the 26th of May, 1975,
in Kingston upon Thames, Surrey,

Stuart Hazell was introduced

to a life of dysfunction
from an early age.

-His father was in
and out of prison,

so there wasn't
a lot of stability.

It was quite disorganized.

It was quite chaotic.

He spent quite a lot of time
in the residential-care system.

He was moved around quite a lot,
and I think that did have

quite a significant impact
on his personality

because he didn't really form
attachments with other people.

So that kind of absence
of warmth,

that absence of closeness
in those early years

is something that
really did shape him.

-By the time
Hazell reached his teens,

he'd already begun
a life of petty crime.

-Stuart Hazell started drinking
when he was about 13,

and that got him into
quite a lot of trouble.

So he ended up
with his first conviction

when he was 14 years old.

-It was a pattern that continued
into adulthood.

Between 2001 and 2010,

Hazell was in and out of prison
for offenses ranging

from racially aggravated
behavior to drug dealing.

In 2003, 28-year-old Hazell
began dating Natalie Sharp,

a single mother with a
3-year-old daughter called Tia,

but the relationship
was in no way conventional.

After they split up,
he began seeing

Natalie's mother,
Christine Bicknell.

-Well, I think Stuart Hazell
is somebody

who is quite predatory,
who identifies people

that he can get things
from, essentially,

and he had a relationship
with Tia's mother

that lasted
all of about 2 1/2 weeks.

And very soon after that,

he started a relationship
with Tia's grandmother,

which was much more
longer lasting.

-Although 10 years her junior,

Hazell moved in to Christine's
home on the Lindens estate

in New Addington, South London,
in 2007.

He soon settled in
and enjoyed spending time

with Christine's now
7-year-old granddaughter, Tia,

but he struggled to find work.

-Well, Stuart Hazell
didn't really have

a regular form of employment.

He was in and out of prison
so much,

and it's very difficult
to maintain regular,

well-paid, steady employment

when you have
a lengthy prison record,

so he would go from job to job

doing work cash-in-hand
and all of that type of thing.

♪♪

-By 2012, Hazell had found work
as a window cleaner

and was still living
with Christine.

Over the past five years,

he'd grown close
to her granddaughter,

but on Friday,
the 3rd of August,

just 2 months
after her 12th birthday,

Tia Sharp went missing.

-Tia went to her grandparents'
house on the 2nd of August,

and that was a Thursday.

She was supposed to have
stayed there overnight,

and then Friday morning,
gone into Croydon.

She was due home Friday evening
at about 7:00,

but she never returned.

But by Saturday evening,

it was clear
she wasn't coming home.

She hadn't made contact with her
family or any of her friends.

Levels of worry and suspicion
obviously became higher.

-By the morning of Sunday,
the 5th of August,

Tia had been missing
for 48 hours.

♪♪

-I led a major
investigation team.

It was myself,
two detective inspectors,

five detective sergeants,

approximately 20
detective constables,

and some civilian support staff.

I called my team in
for an 8:00 meeting

on the Sunday morning.

We got together.

We read all the hand-over files
that had been done

during the course of the Friday
and the Saturday

and started to set
some lines of inquiry.

-As the community
rallied together

in search of
the missing schoolgirl,

the media descended
on New Addington,

clamoring to find out

any information
on the whereabouts of Tia Sharp.

One of the reporters
at the scene

was Sky News correspondent
Martin Brunt.

-It's that complete
lack of evidence of Tia

after she supposedly
left the house

that's fueling police concerns.

I had a call from Scotland Yard.

I was aware that
a girl had gone missing.

Girls go missing
on a regular basis.

Most of them turn up
in one form or another,

and nothing more is said
or done or reported,

but I think there was a sense
early on through police contacts

that this was
rather more serious.

They were very keen for us
to give a lot of publicity

to the circumstances
of Tia Sharp's disappearance.

That suggested to me that
they were already suspicious

that she may have come
to some harm.

-Investigative journalist

and former police officer
Mark Williams-Thomas

was also intrigued
by Tia's disappearance.

-I think what was very clear
from the beginning,

both in terms of
talking to family members,

also being aware of her
as an individual,

was that this isn't something

that was likely to be herself
running away,

and it had now become
a number of days

that she had been missing.

So that concern about
something having happened to her

I think was very, very real,

and when I went
and looked at the area,

my focus was very much
on those people

who had the last contact
with her,

and therefore, I wanted to try

and speak to those people
as quickly as possible.

-On Monday,
the 6th of August, 2012,

three days
after her disappearance,

Tia's family made an
emotional appeal for her return.

-She's not in trouble.
Come home.

She's very much loved,
very, very much missed.

Just contact any of us
whatever way she can.

-I want to say thank you
to the police

for doing everything
that they can

and the public
for being our support

and being out there
day and night.

I urge you not to stop.
I want Tia found.

-The police were desperate
for any leads

about Tia's disappearance,

and a new piece of information
received by Nick Scola

made him focus on one member
of the family in particular.

-It was soon reported to me

that Tia had spent the evening
at her grandparents' house.

During the Sunday,
it became clear that actually,

her grandmother wasn't present

and Stuart Hazell wasn't
her natural grandfather.

That made us very interested
in the account he would give.

-While the police continue
to search

for the missing 12-year-old,

they were growing ever more
suspicious of the last person

to see Tia,

a man whom she loved
and trusted -- Stuart Hazell.

♪♪

In August 2012,

the police were searching for
missing schoolgirl Tia Sharp.

She'd traveled from
her grandmother's home

in New Addington to Croydon
on Friday, the 3rd of August,

but seemingly vanished
into thin air.

-We've got several hypotheses
I start to work from.

The first one is that
she didn't go to Croydon,

that she was still on the estate
somewhere playing with friends,

staying with friends,

and deliberately not coming home
as a missing person.

There's a lot of open
countryside around the estate.

As a second hypothesis,
she's gone out there to play,

and she has come
to accidental injury

and is laying unconscious
or otherwise disabled outside.

Thirdly is that she's still
in the estate,

and she's been abducted
by somebody on the estate.

-She doesn't appear on the
CCTV cameras on any of the buses

or trams that would have
carried her to Croydon.

-The small community
of New Addington

rallied around the Sharp family

and began forming search teams
to assist the police.

Thousands of posters
and leaflets with Tia's photo

were soon spread
all across the area and beyond.

It became clear this was
more than a family matter.

It involved an entire community.

-Everybody is out looking
for little Tia

because we are
a tight community.

We will always come together.

Anything that goes on,
we're there, you know?

We are there for the family
and for little Tia.

-She was a nice young, girl,
and so, as a result of that,

the concerns became heightened.

There was huge public response
within the community,

within this estate, and I think

as a result of that,
it grabbed public's attention.

-Joining the locals
in this search

was the last person to see Tia
before she disappeared --

her grandmother's partner,
Stuart Hazell.

-He would walk out of the house
and go off to do

his daily business
or to get involved in searches

or to make an appeal
in front of the cameras.

He seemed to be doing
what you would expect him to do

in furthering the search for
his missing step-granddaughter.

I mean, I don't think his
behavior in front of the cameras

was particularly alarming,
but from early on,

he was clearly a suspect
for the police,

and we shared the same view.

The last person to see Tia
was always going to be somebody

that the police would have
an interest in.

-Stuart Hazell places himself

right in the middle
of this campaign.

You see him walking around

wearing a T-shirt
with "Find Tia" on it,

almost as if to try
and prove that,

"This is exactly what happened,

and I'm not covering
anything up."

-It's not unusual

for an offender
to get involved with the search.

It's very usual
because actually,

they then know what's going on.

They've got a contact
of what's taken place,

and of course it pushes
that concern away from them.

-What it did for me
as a reporter covering the case

was to give me
lots of vision of him

because we did see him
out and about on the estate

joining in those searches,
and there was a vigil one night,

and we had some very vivid
images of him

walking towards the setup
on the estate

with a candle in his hand
looking very concerned

and joining in
the search for Tia.

-The fact that Hazell
wasn't a direct relative of Tia

meant he was more of a concern
for the police.

-I had a call from somebody

involving the investigation
saying,

"Be very careful about
your choice of words.

He's not Tia's grandfather.
He's a step-grandfather.

He is
her grandmother's boyfriend."

Now, the very fact that somebody
was telling me

something like that, again,

made me feel that Scotland Yard
certainly saw him

as somebody that they needed to
show a particular interest in.

I think they were suspicious
about him from the start.

Bear in mind that he said
that Tia had left the house

in the morning
to go into Croydon shopping,

and yet the early searches
of CCTV,

eyewitnesses found nothing
to corroborate what he said.

♪♪

-With no reported sign of Tia
in the neighboring areas,

police turn their attention
towards the last place

they definitely knew
Tia had been --

her grandmother,
Christine Bicknell's, house,

number 20, the Lindens.

Something about Hazell's story
didn't add up.

-He gave an account
that they spent a very happy

Thursday evening together,
got up Friday morning.

He had made breakfast, and Tia
decided she was going to go

and visit friends in Croydon,
meet a friend in Croydon.

The unusual part of that aspect
is that

when we visited the house,

we found that Tia's phone was
still there, her mobile phone,

and in the back of your mind,
then, you're wondering,

"Well, how exactly are you going
to arrange to meet a friend?"

Perhaps when we were younger,

we'd arrange to meet
at 3:00 at a certain place,

but people today --
young people today --

they need the mobile phone
to make the arrangement.

-On Tuesday, the 7th of August,
5 days since her disappearance,

CCTV footage of Tia
was released.

They were the last-known images
of her before she went missing.

The pictures showed Tia
looking relaxed

at a supermarket with Hazell.

-When I was dealing
with Tia's family,

they themselves
had no suspicions

that Stuart Hazell
may be involved.

No one took me to one side
to say, perhaps,

"We're not happy about Stuart,"
or anything along those lines.

In actual fact, quite the
opposite -- they trusted him,

and I could see from the CCTV
that Tia very much trusted him.

She enjoyed going
to her grandparents' house.

She had younger siblings
at her address,

and there wasn't
a lot of space there.

So she got some time and
attention from her grandmother,

and her grandmother
helped to make sure

she got to school on time

and just generally
provided support for her.

-And new evidence discovered
the following day,

Wednesday, August the 8th,
steered Nick

and his team
away from Hazell even further.

His next-door neighbor
told police

he'd seen Tia leave for Croydon

on the Friday morning
she disappeared.

-What certainly frustrated
the investigation

was the evidence
of the next-door neighbor.

He knew Tia well,
and he clearly stated

he saw Tia leave for Croydon
at the time Stuart Hazell said.

So he came up
with this statement,

and it affects your whole
investigative strategy

because it directs attention
away from the house back towards

was she abducted
or taken on her way to Croydon

or lost in Croydon or returning?

-By now, the police had searched
Hazell's home twice

and found nothing.

With an eyewitness
backing up his story,

it was looking increasingly
likely that Stuart Hazell

was going to get away
with murder.

-This is somebody who had very
little control over his life

in his early years,
his early days,

but now he would see it as he's
the one who is running the show.

He knows exactly what happens.

He's the only one who knew
what happened in this situation,

and I think the fact
that he has all this knowledge

and these other people don't,
he's really getting off on that.

-He put himself
right at the center of this.

He needed to know what was
going on, because don't forget,

he knew
exactly what had happened,

and he wanted to keep as much
as possible away

from the home address.

He must have been, I mean,
jumping up in air, thinking,

"They've searched the house,

and they haven't found
Tia's body.

I've got away with it."

-The police searched
Hazell's house for a third time

on Wednesday, the 8th of August,

but this time
with specially trained dogs.

-I then asked a body-recovery
dog to search the premises

because the searches
hadn't been destructive.

The bath panel
hadn't been removed.

Floorboards hadn't been lifted.

It's hopeful, then,
the body-recovery dog

would give an indication
if there was a dead body there,

still a missing-person inquiry,
but just in case.

The body-recovery dog didn't
give an absolute indication,

but a handler afterwards told me

that it behaved unusually
in one of the rooms,

so, armed with that information
and the fact the investigation,

we're going and we're checking
the facts on the investigation,

decided to have a more
forensic look at the house,

but through this search,
the family had to move out.

-By Wednesday evening,

there'd been more than 50
reported sightings of Tia Sharp,

and the police were still hoping
she may be found alive.

As investigators prepared

for a more forensic search
of Hazell's home,

he thrust himself
into the spotlight once more.

A TV interview was about to make
a supposedly concerned relative

look like a guilt-ridden killer.

-Tia, come on back.

Come on.
Come and eat dinner.

I want me 10-pound back
from me garden.

We love you, babe.
Come back.

-Come back to normal.

-Please.
-Enough of this.

It's going to be back to normal.

Just come home
and be back in the family.

She's part of the family.
Come on. Nothing has changed.

No one is in trouble. Come on.

♪♪

-On Thursday,
the 9th of August, 2012,

Tia Sharp,
a 12-year-old schoolgirl,

had been missing
for almost a week.

The police were certain
that the last person to see Tia,

her grandmother's partner,
Stuart Hazell,

knew more about
what had happened to her

than he was letting on.

The media felt the same way
and began to question

Hazell's role
in Tia's disappearance

as the news story
continued to shock the country.

♪♪

-Well, people were horrified.

They always are
when girls go missing,

and I think people
who were watching TV

saw the blanket coverage
that we were giving to the case,

and I think they perhaps
picked up on the fact

that the police
were more concerned

about her disappearance

than they might be with the
disappearances of other girls.

I think throughout that week,

there was a growing sense
that this was a girl

who probably wasn't
going to be found alive.

It was a story that I think
more and more people,

as the days went by,
believed that this was a story

that would end
in the discovery of her body.

-So whilst it was clear

the media were portraying
Stuart Hazell as a suspect,

you must go
where the evidence takes you,

and there was no evidence
that Stuart Hazell was involved

in Tia's disappearance
at that stage.

-Hazell agreed to
a televised interview with

Mark Williams-Thomas
from ITV News

to tell his side of the story.

-This is going to go
onto the ITV News.

-So this will go on the 6:00.
6:30.

-6:30 news, yeah.

-Okay. That's good enough.

-I said, "Right, whatever
happens, we run throughout,

so even if we break,
we keep the recording going

so the mic is on constantly,"
and I said, "Just go with it.

Whatever happens, go with it,"
so we got in.

We set up,
and Stuart was really anxious.

He was very anxious,
and what I needed from him

was a really detailed account
in real micro-detail

about what happened
from the point

that Tia came to the home
to the point

that she was last seen by him,
so minute by minute,

as much as he could
breaking that down,

and that's what I did,

and I got him
to talk in real detail

because I knew that every single
piece of that interview

would be pored over
by the police

because by the Thursday morning
after the phone call

that I had saying
Stuart would give an interview,

I knew this was an interview
with a killer,

no doubt about it at all.

-Well, if they believe
what they read in the papers,

they can do whatever they like
because I know

deep down in my heart
that Tia walked out of my house.

She walked out there.

I know damn well because she was
seen walking down the pathway.

-Body-language expert
Robert Phipps

was certain Hazell was lying.

-I loved her to bits.
She's like me own daughter.

-Stuart's behavior throughout
this interview in inconsistent

with somebody who is in turmoil,
worried,

you know, anxious about
Tia Sharp being missing.

His body language
is far too animated.

He's shrugging his shoulders
a lot.

People shrug their shoulders
when they're saying,

"I don't know,"
but he's giving supposedly

truthful statements
and saying, "I don't know."

-I know she made that trek
down to that light.

-And I think he was struggling
at times,

sometimes,
to be able to remember

what he necessarily said
to everybody else,

and, of course, the more detail
I asked of him,

the more difficult it became
for him to remember

exactly what he'd said because
what he couldn't do, of course,

was give me something

that he'd given
to somebody else differently.

-"Did you do anything to Tia?"
Well, no, I bloody didn't.

-Stuart adds in a lot of detail,

which is superfluous
to his actual answer.

-From the co-op,
we just gone to tea

because you come out the co-op
and take a right, cut down.

There's a little pathway
and the bus stop, the T31 bus.

-This is to pad out the story
because it's not the truth,

so he's adding in other bits
that make it sound truthful.

Now, when you talk to
most people to recall a story,

they don't tell it
in a logical, orderly sequence.

They start saying something,

and then they remember
something else,

and the conversation actually,

or the statements that
they're making, chop and change.

-Crossed over
and bought groceries

and come home.

-During normal conversation,

people blink around
about 20 blinks per minute.

-If you look
at Stuart's behavior,

his blinking rate is around
about 40 to 45 blinks.

This is very high
and would indicate

that he's actually nervous
about what's going on

during the interview.

-He seemed to me
somebody who was insincere.

His breaking down,
his almost-tearful performance

smacked to me of somebody

who was trying to put on
a performance.

The fact that he was sitting
there with the T-shirt,

"Find Tia,"

I think there was a picture
of her in the background,

all suggested to me
that this was a man

trying too hard
to appeal for information

when he knew exactly
what had happened to her.

-She walked past me
from the front room to go out,

and she walked out
the front door.

That is all I know.

-What he's doing
is he's looking away

from the interviewer
and down and to his right.

This normally indicates
that he's using

the left-hand side of his brain.

This is where you go
to construct pictures.

If it's a memory that you have
in your head,

you would generally look up
and to the left,

which means you're using the
right-hand side of your brain,

which is generally where most
people hold their visual memory.

-It's bad.

It's bad. No one knows.

We're getting false hope.

We're getting people
seeing sightings.

Yeah, it's good to get
the sightings,

but we want 100%
definite sighting,

so, I mean, it's just crazy.

-One interested viewer was
the detective leading the case,

Nick Scola.

-So whilst Hazell was a
person of interest at that time,

there was no evidence to suggest

that he had actually been
involved in Tia's abduction,

so, for that reason,
you're clearly interested

in what he's got to say.

We were surprised when
the TV interview came out

because the family never told us
it was going to take place.

We had been with the family
that morning,

and then suddenly, that evening,

his interview
is appearing on TV.

-Interviews like this with
Stuart are crucial to the police

in helping them gain
a further understanding

to what they already know

because the person
is sort of off-guard

because it's not the police
interviewing them anymore.

-Stuart Hazell is
a narcissistic predator.

He sniffs out
other people's vulnerabilities.

He inserts himself into families
where he will be looked after

and he will be pandered to

and he will have the things
that he wants,

and I think what we can see
when we look at him

performing in his interviews
with television

and with newspapers,
he is the center of attention,

and he absolutely loves that
because he's fully in control

of everything
that's going on around him.

-Hopefully, time will --

The next 12 hours
will bring some good news.

-Yeah. We haven't got
any of that lately.

-[ Chuckles ]
Yeah. I'll be honest.

-The following day,
Friday, the 10th of August,

the police were due
to return to Hazell's home

to carry out a forensic search
of the property.

On the same day,
Tia's grandmother,

Christine Bicknell,

noticed a bad smell
coming from the house.

-So she calls the police.

The police turn up, and it was
a family liaison officer

walks into the house and goes,

"Yeah. You're right.
Everyone out."

-It would be the fourth
and final time

the police search the house.

-When we went back
on that Friday morning,

immediately,
officers went into the house.

They could smell
a very strong smell that

from their experience,
they recognized

to be that
of a decomposing body.

-The forensic teams follow
the smell up into the attic,

where the police made
an horrific discovery.

♪♪

-Pushed into the eaves
was Tia's body,

completely wrapped
in black bin liners

and taped in very tightly.

-You know, very sad moment

because, you know,
you always live in hope.

Although the reality is probably
less than a percent,

you always live in hope
that she will return

until they found the body.

-The search was over.

Tia had never left the house
to travel to Croydon.

She'd been murdered
in her grandmother's home.

Her body had been
hidden away for a week.

The entire nation was stunned.

-The sense of loss here is mixed
with all sorts of emotions.

People feel cheated.

Their week-long campaign
was a desperate mission

to find Tia Sharp.

It ended with the 12-year-old
found dead

in her own grandmother's home.

-I was gobsmacked.

We had watched detectives,
forensic teams,

police dogs go in and out
of the house several times,

but even I, at that time,

didn't think for a moment
that they were about to say

they'd found Tia's body
in the house

where I'd been standing outside
for the best part of a week

and the police had searched
three times already.

-I just got off the tube,
and my phone went mad with loads

and loads of text messages,
voicemails.

Anyway, I read one text message,
which was from a colleague

of mine at the BBC,
a correspondent.

He said, "You know
they found the body?"

and I said, "Where?"
and he said, "In the house."

I said, "You're joking,"
and he went, "No, in the loft."

I mean, that's terrible,
and I said,

"Well, where is Stuart?
What's happened to him?"

and they said, "Oh,
he's on the run. He's gone."

-"Where is Stuart Hazell?"

was the question running through
a lot of people's minds.

That morning, he'd left
the house and had yet to return.

-Hazell had told
Tia's grandmother, Christine,

that he was going to get
a paper,

and he disappeared
and never came back.

So we immediately mounted
a London-wide search for him.

He was seen on a train going up
towards Central London,

and, again, we know
he got off that train

in the city of London,
and we searched for him there.

He then disappeared
off the radar for a short while

before reappearing
in a supermarket.

-The CCTV captured a distressed
Hazell buying some vodka.

-He was drunk. He was rambling.

He was talking to people about,

"You still need to help me find
my missing granddaughter."

It was obvious to
those in the shop who he was,

and they were aware
the police were looking for him.

-The owners of that supermarket
recognized his face

from the press appeal
and contacted police.

Hazell, by that stage, had gone
into an area of open parkland

where he'd bought vodka
in the supermarket,

and he drank the vodka.

Police searched for him,

and a police dog found him
in the undergrowth.

-This all unraveled
on a Friday early evening,

and by late evening, we were
told that he'd been arrested.

-Hazell had lied to police
about Tia leaving the house

for Croydon a week earlier.

He was the last person
to see her alive

and the number-one suspect
in her murder.

♪♪

The week-long search for missing
12-year-old schoolgirl Tia Sharp

had come to a tragic end.

Police had found her body in the
loft of her grandmother's house.

On Saturday,
the 11th of August, 2012,

Stuart Hazell,
Tia's grandmother's partner,

was being questioned
on suspicion of her murder.

-So what can you tell me about
the murder of Tia Sharp, Stuart?

-I'm kind of
[Speaks indistinctly]

-Okay.

-On the same day, a postmortem
was being carried out

at Croydon Mortuary.

-Clearly, Tia had been dead
for a week,

and unfortunately, the body had
begun to decompose quite badly.

-The thing with decomposition

is that the rate
can be very variable.

It depends on
all sorts of factors.

If you've got somebody who is

wrapped up to prevent the smell
getting out,

they're potentially in somewhere
that's not particularly warm,

which will retard decomposition.

In this particular case,
the passage of time

and the changes
that had occurred to the body

in the postmortem period

really limited
what pathology could tell you.

-The police
still had no evidence

that Hazell had killed Tia,
but a further search of the loft

had uncovered
her clothes, glasses,

and, hidden elsewhere in the
house, something truly sinister.

-On this occasion, found pushed
behind the doorframe

on the inside of a cupboard door
above head height

was a memory card
for a digital camera.

We recovered deleted images
from that card

that were quite disturbing.

There were some where clearly,
he had searched the Internet

and found pictures of girls

that were not
dissimilar-looking to Tia

in that they had glasses
and a similar hairstyle,

but worst of all
on that memory card

was perhaps the most
grotesque image I've ever seen.

♪♪

So we took the photograph
to show a pathologist,

and he pointed out
the hypostasis on it,

which is essentially how
the blood pools on a dead body,

and this pathologist
was of the opinion that

that was a picture
of a dead girl.

-Also recorded on the memory
card were a number of videos.

-One was of Tia
sitting on a settee.

It looked like she was rubbing
suntan lotion,

some kind of cream
into her legs.

Clearly, he had given
the impression perhaps

he was sending a text
or something,

but all the time,
he was secretly filming Tia.

-One of the clips undeniably
linked the camera to Hazell.

-Another video which was
particularly unnerving,

it showed Hazell filming Tia
when she was asleep.

He had obviously gone
into her room

and was walking around her
with the phone in his hand.

He also just briefly filmed
his own shadow on the wall

menacingly standing over her.

-On Saturday,
August the 11th, 2012,

Stuart Hazell was charged
with the murder of Tia Sharp.

He was remanded in custody
at Belmarsh Prison,

where he wrote a letter
to his father

claiming Tia's death
had been an accident

and that he was
contemplating suicide.

He wrote, "I can't sleep,
can't eat.

I wish I could turn back
the clock, but I can't.

I'm sorry to have lied
to you all,

but I didn't know what to do.
Forgive me."

♪♪

Nine months after the murder
of Tia Sharp,

on the 7th of May 2013,
37-year-old Stuart Hazell

pleaded not guilty as his trial
began at the Old Bailey.

-Hazell pleaded not guilty
at court.

His defense case statement
indicated he was going to say

that Tia had accidentally
fallen down the stairs.

He had panicked, didn't know how
to tell her mother

and grandmother
that the granddaughter was dead,

so panicked and hid the body.

And that's the stance
he maintained

throughout the prosecution case.

-The training
of forensic pathologists

is not only to identify injuries

but to recognize patterns
of injuries,

and to suggest that someone had
died of falling down the stairs,

there are very specific things
that we would expect to see.

And if we don't see those,

you can fairly quickly exclude
such an explanation.

-Investigative journalist
Mark Williams-Thomas

was in the courtroom.

-So the interview I did
with Stuart Hazell

opened the trial up
for the prosecution's case.

The trial sat through,

and information
started to come out.

And it was very clear
that Stuart Hazell had become...

very sexually interested
in young Tia.

-And one of the searches he had
carried out on his mobile phone

on the Internet was incest sex,

and that just highlighted
and reinforced that interest.

-For Tia's mom, seeing
Stuart Hazell in the dock

would have been the first time
she had seen him

since the day of his arrest,
and I can remember

trying to watch
the interaction between the two.

It's a classic thing that crime
reporters look for to add color

to the reporting
of the first day of a trial,

and she looked at him,

stared daggers at him,
if you like,

and as far as I can remember,
he spent those first few moments

and most of the trial
looking down,

not wanting at all,
for very obvious reasons,

to catch the eye
particularly of Tia's mother,

but for any members
of Tia's family,

quite a few of who were there.

-On the third day of the trial,

the indecent photograph
of Tia's body

was shown
as evidence against Hazell.

The entire courtroom,
including the Sharp family,

were horrified.

-They were so upset.

They were unbelievably upset
because, you know,

they've heard the detail,

but there's one thing hearing it
and another thing seeing it.

And at times,
they actually had to leave.

-And it appeared it was all
too much for Hazell, as well.

On May the 13th, he changed
his plea to guilty, stating,

"Tia's family
have suffered enough."

It was a huge shock.

-I think you can only imagine
the reaction of people in court.

There were gasps.

There were shrieks.

There were tears from some of
those in the public gallery.

It really was one of those
courtroom moments of real drama.

I've seen a few, but this is
still very vivid in my mind.

-Hazell definitely didn't
change his plea

to save the family
any more agony or despair.

He changed his plea
because he's a coward

because that morning,
he would have to account

for the disgusting photograph
of Tia's death,

and he just didn't have
the moral strength to do that.

-On May the 14th 2013,
Mr. Justice Nicol sentenced

Stuart Hazell
to life imprisonment

with a minimum term of 38 years.

He was immediately sent
to Belmarsh Prison.

-I mean, I don't know,
sad and sad,

it's just really sad,
the whole thing.

When you add it all up,
you get to the situation.

Now, here was a young girl
who loved her gran.

She loved her mom,
but loved her gran,

loved spending time
with her gran, you know?

She saw solitude in her gran,
as many, many young children do,

and to go to a place where,
of course, that eventually

was where her death occurred
was so sad.

And of course,
nobody could have predicted that

other than Stuart Hazell.

-Christine Bicknell said
it never crossed her mind

that Stuart Hazell
would hurt Tia.

She knew nothing about
his alleged involvement

in her murder.

If she had, she said,
he would be dead, too.

-In his sentencing remarks,
Mr. Justice Nicol stated that

Hazell had developed
a sexual interest in Tia

but that the murder wasn't
necessarily sexually motivated.

Now, that does seem to be
a bit of a confusing thing

to say on the surface,

but essentially, what the judge
means there is that

Stuart Hazell is somebody
who has a sexual interest

in young girls,
but in terms of did he kill her

in order to have sex with her,
possibly not.

We can't know that for sure,

but the overarching theme here
is power

because that's
what sex is about.

It's about power
over another individual,

especially when it comes
to Stuart Hazell.

-Hazell has never spoken about
how or why he killed Tia Sharp.

-All I can tell you
from Stuart Hazell

is that he took away a life,
a precious life of a young girl

who had an amazing future
in front of her,

and as a result of that,

he has impacted on many,
many other people's lives

and he deserves to spend
the rest of his life in jail.

-I don't think we'll ever know

what made Stuart Hazell
kill Tia Sharp.

That's information
that I don't think he's ever

going to share with anybody,

but we can surmise a little bit
as to the context of it.

He's trusted to look after
this girl, and he abuses it.

And we don't know what the
circumstances are around that,

whether he felt that
she would perhaps tell somebody

about something that he had done
to her or to somebody else,

but he found himself
in a situation

where he had to control her.

He felt that she had slipped out
of his control,

and she posed
some kind of a threat to him.

-If that is in torment,
if he lives

in anguish every day,
if he regrets or he thinks about

what he's done every single day,
then so be it.

-In August 2013,
Hazell's next-door neighbor,

who had given police
a false witness statement,

was sentenced to five months
in prison.

Hazell had asked him to lie

about seeing Tia
leave for Croydon,

and in June of the same year,
the house where Tia was murdered

was bulldozed to the ground
in an attempt

to erase the memory
of the sickening murder.

-I think Stuart Hazell did
some incredibly evil things,

but he choseto do
those evil things.

He could have chosen not to,

and he was fully aware
of the impact of his actions.

-He's a horrible man.
He's a dangerous man.

You know, Stuart Hazell
is the reason that she's dead,

nobody else,
Stuart Hazell,

and if Stuart Hazell hadn't
done it to her, in time,

he'd have probably done it
to somebody else.

-We may never know what drove

Hazell to kill
the 12-year-old girl

who called him granddad,

but we can be sure his
unhealthy interest in Tia Sharp

led to the innocent girl
being murdered.

He caused the Sharp family
unimaginable torture,

knowing all along
what he'd done to Tia.

His empathy towards them
came too little too late,

proving that Stuart Hazell

is one of the world's
most evil killers.

♪♪