Killer at the Crime Scene - Season 4 Episode 1 -
Sasha Marsden
#CinemaJourney
Sasha Marsden
#CinemaJourney
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Short filmTranscript
00:00In Blackpool, emergency services are called out to a fire in an alleyway.
00:13Some neighbors had seen some smoke, and they see what appears to be, they think, a mannequin
00:18initially.
00:19Once the flames have been extinguished, it's apparent that this isn't a mannequin, but
00:24it's a human body that's been burned.
00:27The body was in a fetal position, partially closed, wrapped in a carpet.
00:30We don't know who that body is, we don't know anything about it.
00:33The most obvious reason for burning a body is to destroy evidence.
00:36It is possible that there are other reasons too, the kind of total annihilation and disrespect
00:41of that victim.
00:43Every crime scene tells a story.
00:45As a CSI and a crime scene manager, our job is to put yourself in the mindset of a killer.
00:51This is a horrific, sadistic attack on a child who has come to the area and committed such
00:56an awful crime.
01:26Where the body's been placed, it's a small dead-end road, it's old-fashioned cobbled
01:37streets, been from up north, from Yorkshire, recognize those kind of streets.
01:42So you'd have to be local to understand that it's down there.
01:45So someone with local knowledge would know that's a place to hide something.
01:48CSIs are called in.
01:50In my mind, this looks like a deposition site rather than an actual attack site.
01:58They've attacked the victim somewhere else, deposited the body in the alleyway and then
02:03they've set fire to the body because they know that fire is likely to destroy quite
02:09a bit of evidence.
02:11You're either looking for an attack site quite close by or a vehicle that's been used to
02:15transport this deceased to this location.
02:19There's nowhere to cut through there.
02:21So if a vehicle drove in there, it'd be quite obvious.
02:23It's visible to other people within the street and also from the back of the guest houses
02:27as well.
02:28If they've walked there, we need to look at the houses and immediate properties around
02:33the actual dumping site.
02:36Officers go door to door as the team focuses on identifying the victim, but the body is
02:42wrapped in bin bags, bedding and carpet.
02:45In order to identify the victim at the scene, without compromising the forensics, we would
02:50do an initial examination of the media around the victim and the scene, see what's been
02:55dumped there, what's on the person, ID cards, anything like that.
02:59If you've got a body wrapped, the SIO wants to know who the body is, but we need to preserve
03:05the evidence.
03:06The priorities for me on the forensic evidence is, for me, firstly, identify her.
03:10Get the DNA and what can we match that DNA with.
03:13Is there DNA on the database?
03:15If not, what other evidence do we have there?
03:17Can we get fingerprints off the victim?
03:18If not, then we need to secure the evidence that we have with the victim or from the victim,
03:24take it to the mortuary and then we do a more thorough examination.
03:29The body appears to be a partially clothed teenage girl.
03:36It's a cold, wet January evening.
03:40It's a priority to actually get the body removed from the scene and into the mortuary,
03:44so it's a little bit more of a controlled environment.
03:48Blackpool is very transient.
03:50The community is very small and very intimate.
03:53Everybody knows each other, so you want to give people answers, but at the same time,
03:57without compromising the investigation.
03:59So you've got to be phasing what kind of information you give out to the public, especially through
04:03the media.
04:04It's a massive, massive amount of pressure.
04:06Blackpool's a little bit different from the rest of Lancashire in some ways, because it's
04:10a holiday town.
04:11It's a really popular place for people to come and have fun.
04:15They come and spend time on the beach, in the arcades, make memories with their families.
04:28To have a murder like this, just a stone's throw from all the attractions, is really horrific.
04:36This is going to be front-page news, so we need to find out as much as we can about what's happened.
04:44These are crimes that signal to people that all is not well.
04:47If it's a stranger attack late at night, then you might think, well, that can happen to me,
04:52or my family, or my loved ones.
04:54You know, there's all these kind of things that go on in people's minds that feed into their fears, I think.
05:00Who's done it?
05:01Who committed such an awful crime?
05:03There's a lot of speculation.
05:04The victim hasn't been identified at this point.
05:07Often there's names being thrown about that may or may not be true.
05:11Obviously, we can't confirm anything until the family have been informed.
05:16With CSI still searching for forensic leads, detectives trawl through missing persons reports
05:23to identify the teenager.
05:26What search parameters can we go with?
05:28With very little information, it'd be initially very difficult, especially if that person was missing
05:32from a different area.
05:34Just two hours into the investigation, police receive a call from a worried local family.
05:40And our information comes to us that there's a young lady gone missing.
05:45Supposed to come home that evening after being to a new job, but never returned home.
05:51Her description linked to the victim found.
05:5516-year-old Sasha Marsden has been missing for several hours.
06:02My mum were trying to ring her, messaging her.
06:05None of the messages were going through.
06:08Time went on.
06:10Still couldn't get hold of her.
06:12Even then, she wasn't overly worried because Sasha was known for doing what she wanted to do.
06:23It got to about 11 o'clock at night when my mum said,
06:27I'm going to have to report her missing.
06:30And then the police came to the house.
06:33And that was when we knew that something was really wrong.
06:38Police in Blackpool investigating the murder of a teenager in an alleyway suspect it's 16-year-old Sasha Marsden.
07:05It's been seven hours since Sasha was last seen or spoken to.
07:11There's always going to be that hope, isn't there?
07:14Has she caught up with a friend?
07:16Has she gone to McDonald's?
07:18Has her phone run out of battery?
07:20Is she just late?
07:22And is she just going to walk through the door?
07:26My mum was pacing and she started saying how body's been found in an alleyway,
07:31matching the description of Sasha.
07:35To receive that news is, it's unimaginable.
07:40Really is unimaginable.
07:44It's horrible. It's absolutely horrible.
07:47The family want information.
07:49You want to give the family as much information as possible because their world has just fallen apart.
07:55But all you can do is give them the news.
07:58If you're proven wrong, well, okay, we'll deal with that afterwards.
08:01But all the evidence suggests that she is the victim in the alleyway.
08:07We were all still clinging on to the hope it wasn't Sasha.
08:11We didn't believe for a second it was Sasha.
08:14Detectives still need to forensically identify the teenager.
08:19They just said, could we have a toothbrush that only Sasha used
08:23so we could extract her DNA off it to match that up to the body that we've got?
08:31Toothbrushes used as what the police would call an anti-mortem sample.
08:37So this is where we suspect that the victim of a crime is deceased
08:43and they're not known on the fingerprint database or the DNA database.
08:48Toothbrushes are very good for DNA samples.
08:51Some of the bristles will be cut off and then the DNA would be extracted from those bristles.
08:56So I'm going to remove some of the bristles using some clean tweezers and a clean scalpel
09:04and cut them and then I'm going to place them in a clean universal pot.
09:19As they await the results, detectives look into Sasha's DNA.
09:24Detectives look into Sasha's life.
09:28It's important to understand the victimology.
09:30Who is that victim? What is their patterns? What is their habits?
09:34How has that person ended up here?
09:36So we want to know their life ins and outs of it.
09:39Who are the friends are? Has she got any boyfriends?
09:42Is she part social media? Does she have a phone?
09:45Something that leaves an electronic footprint
09:47then allows the investigation team to basically narrow down the search
09:50to CCTV and see who she has been meeting and where she went from there.
09:55Sasha's phone is missing.
09:58If you don't have the victim's phone, it can be quite challenging.
10:00If you're looking for just cell site data, you don't physically need the phone.
10:04But if you're looking for text messages, then it's handy to have.
10:09Detectives ask Sasha's family if she's in any trouble.
10:14She had an attitude but she was 16. You tell me a 16-year-old girl that didn't.
10:19She was always protective of people that she cared about.
10:23So she was constantly getting into drama with her friends, little Facebook arguments.
10:30It could have been something to do with that. It could have just been a stranger.
10:34We had all sorts of scenarios in our head that what it could be.
10:40We moved into a little village called Staining.
10:43It was a little bit boring in Staining.
10:45So we would get on the bus and we'd go into Blackpool Town Centre
10:48where obviously you've got the arcades and everything else.
10:52But it's not safe.
10:55There is people looking for teenage children to exploit.
11:07This time of the year was winter. It was January, out of season, it's quiet.
11:13A lot of places have closed down, a lot of places have been refurbishing,
11:17redecorating for the next season.
11:20So what you don't have is the regular seasonal holidaymakers
11:23and the transient workers that you may have had during the summer have moved away.
11:28You're just going to have the core people that are in the area now.
11:32So you have to focus on potentially somebody that's local.
11:36In cases like this, the prime suspect would be somebody that was already connected to the victim
11:40and particularly if there was a boyfriend or an intimate sexual partner,
11:43the police would want to interview that person.
11:47And if they started to think that it wasn't them, then they would look to eliminate the suspect.
11:53With the help of Sasha's family, detectives urgently pieced together her last known movements.
12:00She'd been at college that day.
12:02Sasha was studying childcare. She wanted to work with kids.
12:06She loved kids.
12:07She'd already completed the work and progressed on to the next level.
12:11She'd finally found what she wanted to do and finally got herself together and was going for it.
12:21After college, Sasha's dad picks her up and takes her into Blackpool City Centre to start a new cleaning job.
12:30Sasha had been offered a job on Facebook.
12:33She'd met this guy before with a friend outside Coral Island.
12:37She didn't remember him, but he'd approached her on Facebook and then reminded her who he was
12:42and asked if she wanted to come to the hotel.
12:45Sasha was really excited for the job and it was coming up to Valentine's Day
12:50and she really wanted to take her boyfriend to an all-you-can-eat buffet for his Valentine's Day present.
12:56So, she went on her first day. That was on the Monday.
13:00She had an induction and she'd come away with £10 and arranged to go back on the Thursday.
13:07She'd told her dad that she'd message him when she was ready to be picked up,
13:11so we were just waiting for that message.
13:13Obviously, time went on and we're like, well, she was only there just over an hour last time.
13:19As evening falls, Sasha's dad and Sasha's friends arrive at the hotel.
13:24As evening falls, Sasha still hasn't been in touch.
13:29At 8.30, her parents, Jane and Gary, go to look for her, starting at the hotel.
13:37Time was getting on and they were getting quite worried about her.
13:40They drove down there and knocked on the door to ask where Sasha was.
13:44He said that she'd left.
13:46The deposition site is at the rear of the hotel.
13:49Who's the person that she met at that hotel?
13:52Did she arrive at work? Did she leave work?
13:56That hotel is now the team's focus.
13:59Officers ask to see Sasha's Facebook messages.
14:03From there, the officers were able to identify who she was communicating with
14:07and where the work was and the tone of the messages as well.
14:11The sender kept on asking Sasha to come there on her own.
14:15Officers became concerned.
14:17Why is an adult male asking for a young girl to come on her own?
14:22It wasn't just in one message.
14:25It was several messages.
14:27Making sure she's on her own.
14:30That's a red flag straight away.
14:32That's very suspicious.
14:34Predatory to a certain extent.
14:36And also it's out of season.
14:38So why would he be recruiting staff out of season?
14:40Somebody needs to be spoken to as soon as possible.
14:43The man is identified as 22-year-old David Minto.
14:48That person is the last person that's seen the victim alive.
14:53You look at what his social media is like,
14:55you look at what his profile is like,
14:57you look at what his social media is like,
14:59you look at what his social media is like,
15:01you look at what his social media is like,
15:02you look at what his social media is like,
15:04Digital forensic experts find that online he uses the name Demon.
15:11They were concerned about firstly his name, Demon,
15:14or a nickname of Demon, which is a little bit strange,
15:18but also a lot of his friends were young females of the same age as Sasha.
15:24Detectives speak to David Minto at the hotel
15:28where he lives with his girlfriend.
15:29his girlfriend. He tells them he spent the afternoon alone.
15:35We already know that the victim's at the back of the property. We know that he's been in
15:40communications with her. Her parents have been to the address and he's already told
15:46them that she's been here, but then left. Officers attend and now he's denying it. Would
15:51that be cause to arrest him on the spot? Me, yeah.
15:58In custody, he refuses to answer any further questions.
16:03The most common thing for suspects to do in arrests in homicide cases is to say nothing
16:07actually. To deny involvement is the most usual. There's very few cases where a suspect
16:12will say, yes it was me and here's all the grisly details about what I did.
16:18The next day, the results of the DNA testing confirm Sasha's family's worst fears.
16:28I think we were still in disbelief because we wasn't allowed to see her. They said that
16:34it would be too traumatic and that she was not identifiable, she didn't look like Sasha
16:40anymore. From our perspective, Sasha's not come home and we've got some strangers in
16:47our house saying she's dead. We were waiting for Sasha to walk in through that door and
16:56give her a good telling off for having us all worried. She had the biggest heart and
17:04she was just caring. She loved spending time with her family though, she definitely put
17:11in a lot of effort with people. She loved so hard and she was just the best friend that
17:17you could ask for.
17:24The team still needs to determine where Sasha was attacked. Detectives secure a warrant
17:30to carry out a forensic search of the hotel.
17:33Once you walk into a crime scene, there's always different things you take into account.
17:36Evidence is not going to be obvious. You're looking for the invisible. The most obvious
17:40thing is the smell.
17:43There's an instant recognition of bleach and of cleaning product smells in that hotel.
17:49It looks like there's been a clean-up operation. That would ring alarm bells with the police
17:54and the CSIs.
17:57He's living in a hotel that's otherwise empty. There are premises that he can control. He
18:02could invite somebody there that was vulnerable and then not fear that anybody was going to
18:07come along and interrupt them.
18:11How do you start looking at a scene like that for an attack site? Clearly, you're going
18:15to start looking for blood or any damage in a room, etc. But searching a big property
18:21like that is a very arduous task and can take a long time.
18:27To focus the search, CSIs refer to the post-mortem results. The pathologist finds Sasha has been
18:35raped and stabbed over 50 times in the head and neck. Her cause of death is catastrophic
18:42blood loss.
18:44Being stabbed over 50 times, that's a frenzied attack. That's someone that has been fighting
18:51for their life.
18:52I had all sorts of visions in my head. It's such a brutal, gruesome murder that actually
18:59it's more something out of a horror film and you don't expect that to happen to somebody
19:04that you know.
19:06It just tells us that there was overkill, whether that was because he was angry, whether
19:12he just enjoyed inflicting that much pain. The suspect sexually assaulted the victim
19:19and obviously from the police point of view, points to a particular kind of offender with
19:23abnormal sexual fantasies and desires.
19:28Real DNA is recovered from Sasha's remains and sent for profiling. At the hotel, CSIs
19:36continue to search for the attack site.
19:39Fifty stab wounds would cause a lot of blood and a lot of blood spatter. There must be
19:44a scene that's heavily bloodstained. Even if someone's tried to clear it up, there still
19:50would be some traces there. We would check under the carpets, under the floorboards.
19:57Research teams would literally rip that scene apart looking for potential traces of blood.
20:04Sometimes we use chemicals to try and enhance where a scene's been cleaned up. So there's
20:09a chemical called luminol that detects trace levels of blood, so blood that's been diluted
20:16by washing.
20:20The male DNA recovered from Sasha's body returns a partial match to David Minto.
20:29It's not definitive. However, it's another piece. When he was confronted with the DNA
20:34evidence, he changed his story. He made a prepared statement through his solicitor.
20:40He alleged that Sasha came to work there, she did a cleaning job. During the shift,
20:45she threw herself at him, and they had consensual sex, and then she had a nosebleed, and then
20:50left, which is a little bit strange. I think he's just trying to prime the police investigation
20:57because the police will turn around and say, well, actually, we found blood there. There
20:59is blood there. Well, yeah, she's had a nosebleed, and he can answer that back.
21:04What many suspects will do in these kinds of cases is once they're presented with compelling
21:08evidence, then they will find a way to talk out of that.
21:14Forensics will come up with some sort of alibi. You listen to what they're saying,
21:18but you listen to the evidence. So what's that telling you? And you can close down their
21:23alibis. What we need to do now is tear it apart. Absolutely, literally tear it apart.
21:29The forensic teams used luminol in multiple areas of the hotel, and it was clear that
21:37there'd been a massive cleanup operation.
21:40Blood traces are revealed throughout the hotel, including in the bathroom of the apartment
21:46Minto shares with his girlfriend.
21:52His shoe marks were in blood, and then he's taken his shoes, and then started walking
21:55in his socks. So there's a lot of blood there. There's a lot of blood.
22:02At the top of the basement stairs, CSIs find the largest concentration of blood.
22:08No nosebleed in this world would produce that amount of blood. The amount of blood that's
22:14been found fits with the pathologist's report. This is the attack site. This is where Sasha
22:20has been attacked.
22:24Forensic science can prove that his story was just a load of lies.
22:39In the basement of the hotel, there's been a cleanup operation. A necklace was found
22:44in the toilet to suggest that someone's tried to get rid of the evidence, someone's tried
22:48to flush it away.
22:50CSIs in Blackpool searching the hotel where teenager Sasha Marsden was working as a cleaner
22:57are convinced she was killed here. Extensive blood traces have been found throughout the
23:02basement and ground floor. But the team still needs to forensically link the prime suspect,
23:08David Minto, to the crime scene.
23:11It'd be quite unusual to find blood on a necklace that's been in a toilet for a period of time.
23:18The water would potentially have washed off any blood that's on that necklace.
23:24The back of an earring is also recovered from the bath plug hole. Sasha's family confirms
23:30the jewellery is hers. It suggests the killer was under pressure.
23:35He didn't have time to dump anything anywhere. Because his girlfriend came back soon afterwards,
23:40he knows she's coming back from work at a certain time. If anything has been dumped,
23:45it's in the immediate vicinity. So you look at the bins, drains, literally within a couple
23:51hundred metres, if that, of the actual murder scene.
23:55And the weapon would be a real breakthrough moment, and you would potentially be able
24:00to put the killer at that crime scene. Following the post-mortem, you would have a fairly good
24:04idea about what type of knife you'd be looking for, the length of the blade, whether it was
24:08serrated or non-serrated.
24:11It was suggested that it was potentially a kitchen knife.
24:14Bins would be searched quite quickly by the crime scene investigators at the scene to
24:18see if there's anything obvious that's been placed inside. For example, a weapon or an
24:22item of clothing that would be taken out and preserved. And then a further meticulous
24:27examination would be done of the bin at a later stage, when the bin would be taken away
24:32from the crime scene.
24:35At the bottom of one bin, CSIs recover a bag containing clothing matching those Sasha was
24:41last seen wearing, and her BlackBerry phone, with the battery missing.
24:47A lot of data can be recovered from a mobile phone. So once a digital device is found,
24:53that's really important to get that fast track to the digital services.
24:58The clothing appears to be bloodstained.
25:02It's important to confirm whether this is blood or not. So, several tests that you can
25:08do. You can use a KM test, which basically is a colour change reaction. You just have
25:16a little piece of filter paper, and you rub a corner of the filter paper on the stain.
25:22So you just need a really small amount on the tip. This is a colour change reaction
25:29with three different chemicals. So, the first chemical goes on, which is alcohol, and then
25:35we'll use the reagent. And then the third chemical, which is hydrogen peroxide. Now
25:41this should change pink, which will show the presence of blood. So you can see that
25:49there's a pink colour that's coming up, which confirms that that is blood.
25:55A forensic lab were able to DNA profile those stains, but also a blood pattern on the clothing
26:01may have helped to interpret what's happened to the victim.
26:06The blood is confirmed to be Sasha's.
26:10Identifying the clothing at the time of the attack might help with any CCTV images earlier
26:16in the day to try and identify who she was, where she was, who she was with, was she being followed?
26:26At 3.51pm, Sasha is captured following David Minto towards the hotel to start her shift.
26:35This is the last time she's seen alive.
26:40That was hard to watch because it was the last footage of Sasha and she's walking behind him
26:47and the visible difference in height. It's not difficult to see how he would have overpowered her,
26:55especially with a knife. And you just want to jump into that telly and stop her going.
27:01And you can't, you can't do nothing.
27:07In custody, Minto maintains Sasha came to work, that they had consensual sex, she had a nosebleed,
27:15then left to meet her dad. But as well as mounting forensic evidence,
27:20detectives make a sinister discovery.
27:24Initially he told officers that he was the owner of the property.
27:28Initially he told officers that he was the owner of the property.
27:32In fact, he's the caretaker stroke barman. He doesn't have authority to recruit staff.
27:38The hotel is owned by his girlfriend and her mum.
27:42On this day, the hotel was closed for renovations, so there wasn't even anything to be done.
27:48We know that his girlfriend and her mum were going to be out,
27:51so he's lured her there on the promise of a job that doesn't exist,
27:56completely under false pretenses.
27:58Sasha perceived the suspect as actually a potential employer,
28:02so there was already a power imbalance, really, between a very young female
28:06seeking a job opportunity and a man pretending to be the hotel owner,
28:12which would have probably fed into her perceptions to trust him.
28:17It's just easier for an offender to manipulate somebody if the victim
28:20believes them to be a trusted person.
28:22It's a bit like some offenders will wear a uniform, you know,
28:24they'll pretend to be a security guard or a police officer because,
28:27you know, generally people will trust that person.
28:32The team still needs forensic evidence to prove Minto planned Sasha's murder.
28:39They're hoping the recovery of her BlackBerry device
28:42will help pinpoint how quickly she was killed after arriving at the hotel.
28:47Digital forensic experts find there is no record of any outgoing calls
28:51or messages after Sasha is last seen.
28:56But an hour later, they identify suspicious activity.
29:00So there were two draft messages in the BlackBerry,
29:03and those just were strange ones.
29:08You looked at the messages, and we look at how, what her victimology is
29:11and how she communicated with other people.
29:12Sasha had a BlackBerry, and she never topped her phone up as such.
29:17She'd top it up so she could use BlackBerry Messenger.
29:21So Sasha communicated with everybody via BBM.
29:25But the two messages are drafted as standard texts.
29:30When we looked at the phone and her history of usage,
29:33she had no credit on her phone.
29:34She's a typical 16-year-old teenager,
29:36so why would she draft these two messages that she couldn't send?
29:40I have come across a number of cases where suspects will retain the victim's phone,
29:45and they will send messages to suggest that the victim is still alive.
29:49It's normally not that difficult for the police,
29:51or certainly for family members, to realize that it's not their loved one,
29:55because normally they're written in a different way,
29:57sometimes there's spelling mistakes or just a different language use.
30:00But it buys suspects time to clean a crime scene or to look at the victim's phone.
30:06The time frame is very, very tight.
30:08She was attacked quickly when she arrived.
30:11He has to clean up quickly.
30:13He has to come up with a story quickly.
30:14He had no choice because it's his girlfriend's, his girlfriend's mum's hotel.
30:18It's not his controlled environment.
30:21At the hotel, searchers for the murder weapon continue in the kitchens.
30:29Possibly his girlfriend, it could be his girlfriend's mother.
30:32Possibly his girlfriend may know what knives are there,
30:35and she may ask the question, why is that knife missing?
30:39How do you identify which knife it is?
30:42A knife used in such a vicious attack may well be damaged.
30:47One knife had a bent tip.
30:49This has been clearly used with some force.
30:54The damaged knife is sent to the lab for closer inspection.
30:58There is no visible bloodstaining.
31:00When a knife's been used in a murder,
31:03quite often they're cleaned down,
31:05but it's quite interesting how badly knives are cleaned.
31:13It's quite easy to clean the blade and the handle,
31:16but the area between the handle and the blade itself,
31:20you tend to get quite a lot of almost cruddy stuff there.
31:25There may well still be some DNA in the knife.
31:27There may well still be some DNA and some blood traces in this area here.
31:33The ideal situation would be to get the victim's blood or DNA on the blade of the knife,
31:40and then the offender's DNA or fingerprints on the handle of the knife.
31:47Blood found on the knife returns a one in one billion DNA match for Sasha.
31:53The results confirm her blood is evident throughout the hotel.
31:58Including a bloodstained glove with traces of both Sasha and David Minto's DNA.
32:05That is just real anger.
32:08Why someone would do that to Sasha?
32:11Maybe she said no to him and she tried to fight back.
32:14Didn't like that.
32:16Did he like being in control?
32:17Did he like being in charge?
32:19And the level of force that was used against her, especially to bend the knife, it's incredible.
32:25Minto is charged with Sasha's rape and murder.
32:30Faced with the overwhelming forensic evidence,
32:33he confesses to putting Sasha's body in the alleyway,
32:36but still insists he didn't kill her or start the fire.
32:41His theory is that someone else has done it.
32:44When we have to present evidence to the jury,
32:46we have to be able to convince the jury that this is the only person that's committed the murder.
32:52Minto tells police he thought Sasha had gone home when he found her dead in the hallway.
32:58In a state of shock, he says he wrapped her remains
33:02and took her out of the hotel because he has a phobia of blood.
33:07I think there's some indication that suspects who talk to the police
33:10either think that they are cleverer than the police,
33:12that they can talk their way out of these things,
33:16or that they just kind of want to talk about it.
33:19It's another possibility because, you know,
33:22most offenders in very serious cases will take the advice of the solicitor and will go no comment.
33:29Detectives find numerous occasions where Minto has attempted to seize control of the story
33:35to explain away incriminating evidence.
33:38Phone records show he contacted his girlfriend shortly after Sasha's remains were found.
33:48Then he makes a strange comment saying, actually, I touched the body.
33:53So why did you touch the body? Why? Why?
33:56He's controlling the narrative as he's trying to deflect suspicion away from him,
34:02but he can't get away from it because the body's so close to the hotel.
34:05He has to say something. He cannot just ignore it.
34:08I think what he's saying there or trying to do is basically account for his DNA being on the body.
34:12Touching the body, you may have touched DNA.
34:15Some offenders do tell a narrative to the police that they start to believe,
34:20that they convince themselves.
34:21It's much easier for them to buy into the story they've told and to kind of go along with that.
34:26It's probably a more comfortable position to be in.
34:28I think in other instances, you know, they're lying just to try and obviously get away with
34:33the offence and they don't believe a word of it.
34:37What we know now is the CCTV covered the area.
34:41The team's investigated it, looked at it, and found nothing.
34:43The team's investigated it, looked at it before, after, during, everything.
34:47There is no third party there.
34:49Her clothing's missing, so why would her clothing be missing?
34:52Which was in the bins.
34:54Her jewellery was missing.
34:55Where was that?
34:56Down the drains.
34:57So what he's been saying and using as a defence does not match the evidence.
35:02Him claiming that he walked down the stairs and she was dead there,
35:06that doesn't work with the evidence.
35:08What the evidence has shown is that it's all premeditated.
35:11Everything was planned by him to sash her to the hotel, to rape her.
35:17He's a predator.
35:18Absolute predator through and through.
35:19There is no third party there.
35:21That murder was committed by him.
35:25I think there's little doubt that he would have tried again if this had been unsuccessful
35:30and if he hadn't been caught, he might have, you know, done a repeat of this.
35:35At his trial hearing, Minto pleads not guilty.
35:41It doesn't matter how unbelievable your story is.
35:45If you can provide reasonable doubt, then the jury has to find you not guilty
35:49and that's what he was trying to do.
35:51Change his story to match the evidence that the police found.
35:54He's going to try and get away with this and therefore,
35:58Sasha's family are now going to have to sit through
36:02two weeks of awful evidence about the most horrific crime.
36:10As Summer in Blackpool returns,
36:2623-year-old David Minto takes the stand, accused of murdering teenager Sasha Marsden.
36:36The atmosphere in court is quite tense.
36:38There's a lot of members of the press that want to follow what's been going on.
36:41People are horrified by what's happened to this young girl just starting out in life.
36:48There was an overwhelming amount of forensic evidence
36:51that was able to tie the offender to the murder of Sasha.
36:56There was so much blood at that scene.
36:58There was blood on the clothing.
36:59There was a knife with a bent tip.
37:01There was DNA on the knife.
37:03The perpetrator had tried to cover his tracks, tried to clean up the scene.
37:08But actually, he hasn't done a very good job.
37:12Every contact leaves a trace.
37:14Minto admits to moving Sasha's body but continues to claim someone else killed her.
37:22It was horrible sitting in the same room as him,
37:29like, you're yards away from him.
37:31You're not allowed to speak.
37:33You're not allowed to show emotion.
37:35And even though you're finding out all this horrible information,
37:38and he's sitting there picking his nose, like, looking round like he's bored,
37:42he just didn't care.
37:45Very, very disrespectful.
37:48Not once did he refer to Sasha as a person.
37:50He referred to Sasha as it.
37:53He didn't see her as a living thing.
37:55She was just there for his sexual gratification.
37:58When a suspect views a female as an object, not a person,
38:02I think it becomes easier for them to justify the violence against them.
38:07It's a process of kind of dehumanizing the victim
38:11and distancing himself from, you know, the horror of what he's actually done, of course.
38:15He believes that he's not done anything wrong.
38:17He's plainly not guilty because he believes in himself he can get away with this.
38:24But along with the powerful forensic evidence at the crime scene,
38:27digital experts have uncovered a crucial new lead.
38:33The scene became aware of another victim
38:38who had come across the suspect,
38:40who had been offered a job as well at the hotel.
38:43The modus operandi, how he enacted that,
38:45was very much the same to the attack on Sasha.
38:48The woman tells police Minto attempted to sexually assault her at the hotel.
38:53She managed to fight him off and get away.
38:55Three weeks later, after this incident, Sasha was murdered.
39:00Phone and computer data show that after assaulting her,
39:04Minto repeatedly contacted the woman, asking for another meeting.
39:09When finally rebutted, records show it's just minutes
39:13before he turns his attention to Sasha.
39:17There's little doubt that he would have gone on to try and
39:21he would have gone on to try a third time or a fourth time if he hadn't have been caught.
39:27This shows how calculated Minto was.
39:31He planned this and he planned it for some time.
39:35There's definitely some research that suggests that some of the men
39:38that commit these serious sexual acts of violence,
39:41they themselves have had very traumatic upbringings,
39:43that they may have been abused physically, sexually, emotionally.
39:47The court hears Minto had psychiatric problems as a child.
39:52However, the vast majority of people who suffer those very adverse childhood experiences
39:59don't, of course, go on to commit any kind of violent offences.
40:03What he would have learnt from that first time is be more dynamic and do it straight away.
40:07He was a predator. He was going to kill at some point.
40:11It takes the jury less than three hours to come to a verdict.
40:17David Minto is found guilty.
40:21He's sentenced to life with a minimum term of 35 years.
40:26That's one of the longest sentences I've seen passed.
40:29But there are certain circumstances when somebody can be locked up for the rest of their life.
40:35There are certain circumstances where they can be locked up for the rest of their life.
40:40There are certainly some very strong indicators in this case.
40:45I had been hoping that Minto would get a whole life order.
40:49Sasha was 16.
40:51There was premeditation. There was clear, significant suffering.
40:56It was a horrible, sadistic, sexual attack on a child.
41:01We've never got closure.
41:03Sasha was my mum's youngest child and my mum always called Sasha her baby.
41:08They were very, very close, my mum and Sasha.
41:10Something died in my mum that day.
41:13After Sasha's death, her mum Jane's health declined.
41:17A few years later, my mum suffered a really bad stroke.
41:21She lost her ability to speak.
41:23She lost a lot of her independence.
41:25And then she was diagnosed with stage four small cell lung cancer.
41:31Tragically, Jane Marsden died in March 2024.
41:38It was my mum's dying wish to make sure David Minto could never get out of jail.
41:43That was something that my mum could never accept,
41:46that her daughter's murderer could potentially one day be allowed to walk the streets again.
41:53David Minto is always going to be a danger to anybody, especially women and young girls.
42:01Via the unduly lenient sentence scheme,
42:04Katie has requested to increase David Minto's term to a whole life order.
42:10But she's discovered it's too late.
42:14It's got to be referred to the Court of Appeal within 28 days.
42:18If it's not done within 28 days, then the Court of Appeal cannot look at it.
42:24It's important to change this law because when families have sat through a murder trial,
42:30your heart is breaking.
42:31And it's broken into a million more pieces once you hear the details.
42:36Like you're having to hear how deep each individual stab wound was.
42:43And then you're expected to make that decision within 28 days.
42:47We're not the only people that have tried to,
42:52you know, tried to challenge a sentence and been told it's too late.
42:55In her sister's memory, Katie is campaigning for Sasha's law,
43:00fighting to increase the time grieving families have to appeal an offender's sentence.
43:08I'm just trying to get the support of the public,
43:11to try and get people to sign our petition and change the law.
43:16We need 100,000 to get it debated in Parliament.
43:21Grief is real.
43:23Grief is real.
43:25And it needs to be considered because families can't just switch off from that.
43:33I did speak with the SIO after the whole court case,
43:39once we'd been given all the full details after the trial.
43:44She's been evidence.
43:45She's been handled by whoever does the post-mortem.
43:49And I said, I want to see my sister.
43:53So they let me go and see Sasha under a cover.
43:57And I just put my hands all over her.
43:59I touched her everywhere because everybody else had touched her there,
44:04and they didn't love her.
44:05So I was touching her and putting the love there.
44:08And I gave her a kiss on the head.
44:11Night, night, love you.
44:12And that's written on Sasha's headstone.
44:15She loved to sing and dance.
44:17She didn't care what anyone thought.
44:19Yeah, she was just cheeky.