- 6/6/2025
#CinemaJourney
#Killers- Caught on Camera
#Killers- Caught on Camera
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Short filmTranscript
00:00This time on Killers Caught on Camera, in Austin, Texas,
00:09a woman is shot three times on the eve of a bike race.
00:14Do I stop?
00:16I don't know what happened.
00:17I just walked in on her.
00:19Sit up.
00:20After a lunch date with a friend shapes a fatal love triangle.
00:25This might be the bike.
00:27That evolves into an international manhunt.
00:30There's a shell casing to the right.
00:32There's another one that I gave it.
00:34Somebody had stood over her and fired one shot through her
00:37after she had already fallen to the floor.
00:39And in the north of England, a suspected gangland hit
00:43involves a shotgun and sulfuric acid.
00:47He's got a lot of white powder around him as well
00:50that seems to be sort of giving off gas.
00:54Why would an orchestrated hit like this happen
00:57in such a quiet residential area?
01:04It just sounds like something bad is happening to her.
01:07We know what happened because the video told us what happened.
01:10I hit some gunshots.
01:12Drop it! Whatever it is, drop it!
01:14It does not prove that I killed a woman.
01:17The camera doesn't hide.
01:26In central Texas, the state capital, Austin.
01:31In May 2022, emergency services received a panicked call.
01:37Austin 911.
01:38My friend is staying with me and I just walked in
01:41and she's laying on the bathroom floor
01:44and there's blood everywhere.
01:47There's blood all over her face
01:48and all on the back of her head.
01:52Austin police were the first on the scene.
01:57Austin police!
01:59First responders found a young woman lying on the bathroom floor.
02:03The friend who had called 911 was performing CPR.
02:09Do I stop?
02:11I don't know what happened.
02:12I just walked in on her.
02:13Sit up.
02:15On the right.
02:16Right here.
02:17As the first responding patrol officers arrived
02:19and emergency medical services,
02:22they quickly realized that the victim was deceased
02:25and they pronounced her dead on scene.
02:28Dad, stay out of here.
02:29OK.
02:30I'll let you guys see.
02:31You can talk to them, OK?
02:32OK.
02:33She doesn't live here.
02:34No, no.
02:35She's staying really close with the family.
02:36Sorry.
02:37Police questioned the friend to find out
02:38who the deceased woman was.
02:39What's her name?
02:40Her name is Mariah.
02:41Mariah is her middle name.
02:42Her first name is Anna.
02:43She's 26.
02:45Mariah Wilson is dead on scene.
02:46I'm dead on scene.
02:47I'm dead on scene.
02:48I'm dead on scene.
02:49I'm dead on here.
02:50I'm dead on here.
02:51I'm dead on here.
02:52I'm dead on here.
02:53I'm dead on here.
02:54I'm dead on here.
02:55I'm dead on here.
02:56Mariah Wilson, known as Mo, was staying in Austin to take part in the gravel locos race.
03:03Mo was a remarkable friend.
03:07She was introverted, but she really had this intensity and fierceness and this quiet power.
03:16Mo grew up in East Burke, Vermont.
03:21She was born into an athletic family.
03:24Mo comes from an athletic family.
03:27Her dad was a very successful ski racer.
03:31She also had a younger brother who was also a ski racer.
03:34When Mo went to study engineering at Dartmouth College, she joined the women's alpine ski team.
03:41She was a competitor through and through.
03:46But after a series of injuries, Mo moved on from skiing to focus on competitive bike racing.
03:53Cycling was the next best thing for her.
03:56She was really good at it and she could channel that competitive energy.
04:01In 2019, Mo graduated from Dartmouth and moved to San Francisco.
04:08She started competing in gravel racing competitions.
04:13Her first few races, she just dominated the field and a world class field at that.
04:18And then from there, her star was on the rise as one of the premier racers to come along in a long, long time.
04:25At the crime scene, police began a meticulous search for evidence.
04:38There had been fired cartridge cases located near her body and she had wounds consistent with being shot.
04:43There's a shell casing to the right.
04:45There's another one right here.
04:47At least, so there's one in the bathroom.
04:50What have we got?
04:51Pre-shell casing.
04:52We have pre-shell casing.
04:53Anybody heard any shots?
04:54You don't know how long she's been down?
04:55No.
04:56They also discovered that Mo's bike was missing.
05:01Is there a bike?
05:02Anywhere?
05:04Do you see a bike?
05:05She said she would put it right by the door.
05:08No bike.
05:10But the bike wasn't far from the apartment.
05:14Hey, come here.
05:16Somebody might be in here.
05:17This might be the bike.
05:21My initial thought is, why is this property belonging to the victim several feet down and hidden in the bushes?
05:28We felt pretty certain that the possible suspect in the homicide had removed that bike.
05:35Mo's injuries also gave the police another clue about her killer.
05:39We located a gunshot wound in her chest that went through her chest, through her back, and into the floor below her.
05:47And it appeared that somebody had stood over her and fired one shot through her after she had already fallen to the floor.
05:54I began to get the feeling that whoever did this, there could have been a personal aspect to it.
06:00Police began searching the area for surveillance footage.
06:06They discovered a camera pointing down the alley beside the apartment where Mo had been found.
06:12There was a vehicle observed on that video footage that was identified as a black Jeep.
06:18We also observed the brake lights going on and off, which showed us that the person was possibly unsure where they were going.
06:26We found the black Jeep also had a very distinct wheel pattern.
06:33Police questioned Mo's friend to find out who Mo had been with that night.
06:38Colin Strickland was a professional bike racer.
06:55He'd won some of gravel cycling's most prestigious races.
07:00Colin and Mariah had a very brief relationship.
07:07That relationship ended when Mariah left to go back to California.
07:11They were still friends and would still meet up on rides every now and then if they happened to be in the same city or at the same race.
07:19As the last known person to see Mo, Colin was now a person of interest.
07:28The next morning, Thursday, May 12th, Detective Richard Spitler went to Colin's residence.
07:34At this point, I didn't know if Colin was the person responsible for this murder or if maybe he was just a witness.
07:41I decided that I would do a death notification.
07:44I didn't have any solid proof to indicate that Colin was the person.
08:13responsible for this murder.
08:15So I told Colin that I wanted his help in investigating this crime.
08:19I wanted to find out who was responsible.
08:24Colin was brought into the police department for an interview.
08:28If you just want to take a seat in here, I'll be right back.
08:33I began asking him more about Mariah, more about their outing.
08:37I had been in contact with Mo earlier in the day.
08:40We were thinking of coordinating a ride.
08:43He was able to show me different text messages, the plans that they were making.
08:47Right.
08:48She sent me a photo of her on the bike.
08:51Is that Mo?
08:52Yeah, that's Mo.
08:53And this is more complexity, but I have it saved us a different name just because I am a little...
09:00I got you.
09:01His name is Christine.
09:02The name in Colin's phone for Mariah was Christine Wall.
09:09The question was, why did Colin have to keep Mo Wilson saved in his phone under someone else's name?
09:15He indicated that he does have a girlfriend named Caitlin Armstrong.
09:22Caitlin currently lives with him, and she would tend to be jealous.
09:26In the past, Caitlin has looked at my phone.
09:30Basically, that would always start fighting.
09:32Exactly.
09:33Like, does she do that with, like, all of the girls that are in your phone or, like, just with most?
09:38Most of them.
09:39You know, she loves me, and she wants to be, you know.
09:44Yeah.
09:45Basically, nobody else can have you.
09:47Yeah.
09:48Yeah.
09:49You know.
09:50Having a contact in your phone under a different name, it definitely feels shady in the first instance.
09:55If you have a partner who is jealous, and you want to communicate with someone whom you've had a sexual relationship with before, then you might just put them under a different name, even if there's nothing else really going on.
10:06The problem with minor deceptions is that it can really amplify a jealous mind.
10:12When he says that Caitlin is jealous of, it seems, all his female friends, that signifies that there's a bigger issue going on here with her general jealousy.
10:22It seems almost as if it's part of this idea of love for him, and that he's thereby normalizing or rationalizing it, even though it sounds like it might be jealousy that is quite severe.
10:39We were able to get an alibi.
10:41We were able to get a story of where he had been, what he had done, and so we started trying to look to see if we could find surveillance video at that point to try and corroborate his story and his alibi.
10:53Police obtained surveillance footage from the pool bar where Colin said they went after their swim.
10:59This video shows Colin and Mariah having a conversation.
11:08They appear calm.
11:10She doesn't look like she's in any kind of fear.
11:13She drinks from his drink very friendly.
11:17Mo and Colin left the pool bar together.
11:22They were then captured on multiple cameras on Colin's motorcycle, heading towards the apartment where Mo was later found dead.
11:31There's another angle of Colin on that white motorbike.
11:41This is important because this corroborates the story that Colin has told us of what happened that evening.
11:48In his interview, Colin told police that he had dropped Mo off in the alley behind the house where she was staying.
11:55We said a pretty brief goodbye there.
11:58I didn't actually watch her go up the stairs.
12:05I got back to my house a little bit before dark.
12:08Investigators discovered that the apartment where Mo was staying had an electronic door lock.
12:15It logged her arriving home at 8.36 PM.
12:21Just one minute later, the black Jeep was captured on camera in the alley just outside the apartment.
12:32While we don't have a clear view of the license plate of this car, that doesn't stop us from getting a lot of information.
12:39This very obvious running stripe, as well as what appears to be some sort of rack on the back of the vehicle.
12:47This car is in the area at the time of the homicide.
12:51In the hours leading up to Mo's murder, the black Jeep was caught on camera multiple times, circling the neighborhood.
13:01We're able to see that running stripe in the bike rack on the back.
13:06We've seen this vehicle now on several camera angles and traveling at a very slow rate of speed, really appearing to prowl the area.
13:16This is potentially the suspect in this homicide.
13:20Police had seen this vehicle before.
13:27It had been parked in Colin's driveway when they first visited his house.
13:32We noticed this dark SUV with the bike rack on the rear.
13:38We see that silver running stripe along the side of the vehicle.
13:43Detective Spittler asked Colin who owned the Jeep.
13:50The Jeep is hers.
13:52OK, so that belongs to her.
13:53OK.
13:54Do you ever track the outline?
13:55No.
13:56I know for a fact that her vehicle was at the apartment.
14:00I told Colin that Caitlin's Jeep is on camera, that it's in the neighborhood at the time that Mariah had gotten home after he had already dropped her off.
14:12Colin was shocked. He was very surprised.
14:15Whenever she got home, was there anything?
14:20I didn't think it was anything.
14:22Has Caitlin ever gotten so mad in the past that not necessarily thinking that she would do anything?
14:30You know, but I mean, has she ever threatened to do anything?
14:33Or is she a mild, gentle person?
14:40When he says that she's a mild, gentle person, that to me feels like he, in his mind, has a version of her that even though she's jealous, she would never do anything.
14:51He's probably running through all these moments, maybe even the jealous moments, maybe the moments where she's potentially gone through his phone, and yet thinking, no, but she's gentle and she's like me, we're the same, we're calm and quiet.
15:04And so, it feels like he's trying to say to this police officer, it couldn't have been her, like this is not in her demeanor at all.
15:12When they asked if Caitlin owned a gun, Colin told the police that he had recently bought two handguns.
15:21One for himself and one for Caitlin.
15:24She's had a couple of incidents where she's been like, accosted or had people in parking lots.
15:32Your friend.
15:33Colin had been in an on-off relationship with Caitlin Armstrong since 2019.
15:41She was a yoga teacher, realtor, and also had a background in finance.
15:50It was found that Caitlin had an active warrant for her arrest, a class B misdemeanor warrant for theft of service.
15:56She had received a Botox treatment, but she didn't pay for it.
16:04Just in a quick pat down real quick.
16:06It gave the police a reason to bring Caitlin in.
16:09All right, just stay tight and sit right here in this chair.
16:12It was a chance to volunteer anything she might know about Mo's death.
16:18She was placed in the interview room and we let them sit for a little bit because we do want to kind of watch their body language, see what they do, how they respond.
16:28They're fidgety if they're not.
16:30She was interesting because she was extremely still, which kind of stood out to me.
16:35So there's a situation that's going on.
16:37Did you hear about what's happened over the past 24 hours?
16:41Colin walked in the house and said one of the women in the cycling community passed away.
16:45Yeah.
16:46It sounds like maybe he went out with this girl the other day.
16:49And from what he's saying that you were a little upset about it.
16:52I, that is not accurate.
16:55Yeah.
16:56And that's why I wanted to chat with you because it's a guy.
16:59He's going to say stuff.
17:00And so we want to make sure that we get both sides of the story and everything and clear it up.
17:05So what, what were you doing yesterday?
17:08I would like to leave.
17:09I think you'd like to leave.
17:10Yeah.
17:11Okay. That's, that's totally your choice.
17:13Um, and, and the doors open, you're welcome to leave.
17:16Um, but again, that limits us to where we only have one side of the story and your vehicle was seen next to her house.
17:24I would like to leave if I'm free to leave.
17:26Okay.
17:27Typically with a truthful person that has not done anything, they're going to respond in a manner of, how can I help you?
17:43They're going to offer up information.
17:45So it was, it was a very different reaction than what I expected from her.
17:50Caitlin Armstrong was allowed to walk free.
17:55But the police had a search warrant for the home she shared with Colin.
18:00We were able to locate two handguns.
18:06Those handguns were tested against the fired cartridge cases that I found on scene near the victim.
18:14One of the handguns came back as a positive match.
18:18Police also found footage of Caitlin at the shooting range.
18:23She was clearly capable of handling a gun.
18:31Both Colin and Caitlin's cell phones were seized during the search of their property.
18:36When the police traced both of their movements on the night that Mo had been killed, they revealed a major discrepancy.
18:47Colin's whereabouts are no for that night, but Caitlin's are not.
18:50It appeared as though her device had circled around downtown Austin and then began traveling to East Austin.
18:56Caitlin's device, it turns off.
18:58This is something that is normally seen when someone is trying to conceal their movements because they are about to commit a crime.
19:07Colin Strickland was now in the clear.
19:11Armed with this new evidence, police issued a warrant for Caitlin's arrest.
19:15The only problem was that when they went to pick Caitlin up, no one could find her.
19:22We noticed that her social media shut down.
19:25Nobody had heard from her.
19:26So we knew, OK, something's up.
19:28She might have taken off at that point.
19:32Police discovered that two days after Mo had been killed, Caitlin Armstrong was at a car dealership in South Austin where she sold her black Jeep for $12,000.
19:45This video shows Caitlin Armstrong in the waiting area dealing with her cell phone.
19:51There appears to be some plastic hanging off this phone.
19:55Is this a new cell phone?
19:58Is she making plans to leave the area?
20:01She doesn't seem agitated.
20:03When the police seized the Jeep, the GPS system revealed Caitlin's exact movements on the night Mo Wilson was killed.
20:12There was a lot of data and GPS hits showing the Jeep circling the neighborhood.
20:20We were able to put that black Jeep on the scene at the time of the murder.
20:24It showed that Caitlin Armstrong had planned this.
20:26It showed that she knew where Mo was staying and she was going to wait for them to come back to possibly confront Mo.
20:36Mo Wilson was caught in the middle of a complicated situation, unaware of the intensity of emotions and their consequences.
20:44Police knew Mo had been shot three times, twice in the head and once in the chest while lying on the floor.
20:54Then police found footage from a neighbor's security camera, which revealed the distressing sound of Mo Wilson's last moments.
21:06The pattern of the shots is callous.
21:09The space of time between that second and third shot would have allowed the shooter to turn and leave, but this perpetrator didn't do that.
21:29They followed the victim into another room and fired that third and fatal shot.
21:37I stayed away from the investigation.
21:41I found that it just, it kind of unraveled me.
21:46The more I learned, the more it just deeply upset me.
21:49But Caitlin Armstrong was on the run.
21:54She was missing, wanted as part of a murder investigation.
21:59Weeks passed by and the investigation hit a dead end.
22:04Then, a breakthrough.
22:07Police discovered that Caitlin had fled the country using her sister's passport.
22:14We have Caitlin just making her way calmly through the airport.
22:17She's wearing a face covering, which while not mandated at this time, it's very easy for her to obstruct her face from view of the cameras and from other people without causing any alarm or raising any red flags for those around her.
22:34But we can see Caitlin's distinctive yoga mat here.
22:38Her yoga mat was the only clue the police had.
22:42U.S. Marshals flew to Costa Rica.
22:47Weeks of investigation drew a blank.
22:51Investigators decided to try their luck and put out a flyer for a yoga teacher.
22:57Caitlin just happened to reach out to one of those flyers.
23:02After 43 days on the run, Caitlin Armstrong was finally located and arrested at a hostel.
23:09But she looked different.
23:13Caitlin had changed her hair color, her style, the length of hair.
23:20But she also had gotten a nose job.
23:23And she was currently in the healing process from this surgery.
23:25She ran, she fled the country, changed her appearance, spent thousands of dollars altering her face with cosmetic surgery.
23:36Because she traveled into the country illegally on her sister's passport, Caitlin was deported from Costa Rica and arrested by U.S. officials.
23:45Caitlin was charged with first-degree murder.
23:50She pled not guilty.
23:53But two weeks before the trial was due to start, her determination to flee justice surfaced again.
24:00She claimed that she had a leg injury, which required her to not use leg restraints and that she needed to go to a doctor's office that was outside of the jail.
24:13As they go to this doctor's office, she bolts for it.
24:16It was a thought-out escape.
24:20It was not something that was the spur of the moment.
24:25She gets almost a mile away before she's actually caught.
24:30It was very telling.
24:32She does not come across as a person that has any remorse.
24:35After a 17-day trial, Caitlin Armstrong was found guilty of the first-degree murder of Mo Wilson.
24:46She was sentenced to 90 years.
24:49But the question remained, why did she commit such a horrific murder?
24:54By all accounts, Caitlin Armstrong appeared to be a fairly intelligent person.
24:58I believe that there was a jealousy issue, and I believe that she killed Mariah Wilson in cold blood.
25:05She plotted and planned this murder.
25:07She tracked Mariah Wilson to that apartment, and she stood over her and shot her one final time.
25:14And for somebody to be able to do that, to have the capacity to do that, it's just cold-hearted.
25:21It's extremely rare to have a woman kill another woman over a partner.
25:26Mo ends up being the target of Caitlin's jealousy, of her morbid jealousy.
25:37And I feel like it could have almost as easily been somebody else, but maybe because Mo kind of had it all.
25:43She was a really successful cyclist, which was exactly what her partner was into.
25:47She was beautiful. She was intelligent.
25:50She was a friend who often saw her partner and had a sexual history with him.
25:55So maybe she was the ultimate threat in her mind, and so that's why she killed Mo.
26:03The reaction among the cycling community was just utter disbelief that something like this could befall our world, let alone Mariah Wilson, someone who had just so much future, so much potential.
26:16It was devastating and shocking on every level.
26:22I think I'll best remember her as this hard-charging, gritty, sweet girl.
26:29She was fierce, intense, but so sweet and had the kindest heart.
26:34She was really special.
26:36She was really special.
26:37Caitlin Armstrong brutally murdered Mo Wilson as a result of her morbid jealousy.
26:55What jealousy does is it moves you from suspicions to beliefs, and those beliefs become your reality.
27:07And at some point, you might feel the need to act on that reality, even if it's not based in fact.
27:13And sometimes you might be jealous or morbidly jealous because you perceive a relationship between your partner and somebody else, and you seek at some point to eliminate the romantic rival.
27:25In other circumstances, though, you can have a single instance that is just sticking in your mind.
27:32And in those cases, it can become an all-consuming experience where, again, even without sufficient evidence that anything particularly untoward happened, you constantly are thinking about this moment in time.
27:45And that kind of fixation, that version of morbid jealousy can also lead to taking matters into your own hands.
27:52In the winter of 2022, British police found themselves confronted with a complete mystery, a case which ultimately also came down to jealousy.
28:15In the northwest of England is Wigan.
28:19Wigan is a former industrial town.
28:22It was known back in the day for its textiles.
28:25Like many of the towns and cities around here in the north, that declined throughout the 20th century.
28:30And nowadays, it's a lot more known for its green spaces, its parks and canal side.
28:38At 6.38pm on November 24th, Greater Manchester Police received a call.
28:44A body had been found in the Shevington district of Wigan.
28:49Emergency services were quickly on the scene.
28:53What they found was highly disturbing.
28:57When the first responders arrived at the scene, it was apparent quite quickly that the victim had been attacked with some sort of corrosive substance.
29:05Well, he's got a lot of white powder around him as well that seems to be sort of giving off gas and some description.
29:14It smells a bit bleachy.
29:16His body was covered in sulphuric acid and sodium carbonate.
29:21His body was smoking.
29:23Really concerning for everybody who approached there and also prevented people actually rendering first aid.
29:29The paramedics were uncertain about what this corrosive substance might be, but it was apparent that the victim had succumbed to his injuries.
29:46It was only when police accessed footage from security cameras that they began to understand what they were dealing with.
29:53Although it was dark at the time, the police heard this really distinctive noise of a gunshot.
30:07Alongside the acid attack, the victim had suffered a single gunshot to the face.
30:12This changed the police investigation completely.
30:18The crime presented a total mystery for investigators.
30:23Even though this shooting bore all the hallmarks of a gangland shooting, this is 90% elderly people living there.
30:31So who and why would an orchestrated hit like this happen in such a quiet residential area?
30:38It wasn't until the day after the murder that a possible name for the victim emerged.
30:46In their initial search of the area, police found a property which had been left unsecured as though somebody had just popped out.
30:53A short while afterwards, that person's family then reported him missing.
31:00The victim was confirmed as 38-year-old Liam Smith.
31:07Liam Smith was an electrician.
31:10He had his own business.
31:11He was the father to two young sons.
31:14And although he was separated from his partner, he was still very much a part of his children's life.
31:20In many ways, this only deepens the mystery for the police.
31:24They're then wondering about the motive for such a vicious crime.
31:28Could it even be the case that this was an incident of mistaken identity where Liam was just in the wrong place at the wrong time?
31:39The extreme use of violence may communicate a number of things.
31:42It might be about destroying evidence, it may be about obliterating the identity of the individual, but it could also be about sending a clear message to the families of the victim that this person has done something wrong and retaliation has taken place.
31:59An autopsy on Liam's body revealed further alarming details of the manner of his killing.
32:07He was shot in the face with an adapted Glock with shot pellets and a much larger sphere that had been added, I believe, for maximum damage.
32:19They were really interesting aspects and as a team made us ask lots of questions around why somebody would use those particular types of chemicals.
32:33Why would somebody use that particular combination of ammunition?
32:38With so little information to go on, police began to search for more video evidence.
32:44Liam's own security cameras provided the first breakthrough.
32:49A little after 6.30pm, a man in a high-vis jacket and a head torch gets out of a car which is parked a little further away on the street and heads towards the house.
33:06It disappears for probably about 40 seconds out of camera, potentially to lure Liam out of his address.
33:13He has a phone in his hand and then he turns left from Liam's drive and he walks back in the vehicle wearing a fluorescent jacket, a headlamp, all efforts to disguise his identity.
33:26Liam comes out of his house presumably alerted by the CCTV cameras.
33:29Liam comes out of his house presumably alerted by the CCTV cameras.
33:33He checks round the side of the house, he then comes to the front and pauses before heading towards this parked car a little further up the road.
33:42That's a heartbreaking moment to watch.
33:46It's the last few seconds of Liam's life.
33:49Less than half a minute later, there's the sound, the audio sound of one gunshot.
33:54The vehicle drives away but then strangely a few minutes later returns to the crime scene.
34:06The man gets out of his car with the chemicals and pours them onto Liam's body.
34:11It does seem strange after shooting Liam in the face fatally that this assailant would return to the crime scene to then throw these chemicals on the body.
34:22It does beg the question was this to cause further damage and pain to him or maybe even to send some kind of message.
34:33Police continued to search through hours of footage from the surrounding area.
34:37Police now discovered two vital pieces of evidence.
34:42The first was some footage from the dash cam of a supermarket delivery van.
34:52On that footage we see the assailant's vehicle arriving on the street at 7.30am that morning.
34:59This vehicle was also spotted on the cameras of a bin lorry in the area that morning.
35:07It was a car with the license plate beginning R2-2.
35:14He parked up on Liam's road and there he stayed without breaking cover, without leaving that vehicle for almost ten hours before he murdered Liam.
35:23The fact that someone sat outside Liam Smith's house for ten hours gives us a real insight into their psyche.
35:33This is someone who's committed to the course of action that they want to take.
35:38They're subscribing to a code that makes sense to them, but really makes them judge, jury and executioner.
35:44Police quickly discovered the license plates on the vehicle had been cloned.
35:51From the assailant's movements, the police thought that he must have had some prior knowledge of the area, maybe had even visited the address previously.
35:59The hunch proved to be correct.
36:02After days meticulously searching CCTV, they found further sightings of the car in Liam's street, three weeks before the murder.
36:14The driver of this car matched the description of the description of the assailant from the night of Liam's killing.
36:29Police believed it was a hostile reconnaissance.
36:33At that time, the license plate on the Jeep was different.
36:40Again, they checked and worked out that the plate was also fake.
36:46These false plates had been caught on an ANPR camera over in Sheffield, so this now gave the police their first clue and a new area to search.
36:55A couple of weeks into the investigation, we received intelligence from South Yorkshire Police that a vehicle had been stopped three weeks before Liam was murdered.
37:09And in that vehicle was the R22 plate.
37:13It was that that really unravelled this case.
37:17This is a false number plate, so they confiscate it.
37:21But it then seems that the driver created an identical set.
37:27Police were now able to link the driver of that vehicle back to a business in Sheffield.
37:33They visited the premises and searched CCTV cameras in the vicinity.
37:40They found footage of an individual who matched the description of the assailant parking a shogun car with the false number plates and then going into the business.
37:50premises.
37:53They then found footage of the same individual parking an Audi car outside the premises.
38:02A check of the license details on the Audi gave them a name.
38:06Michael Hillier.
38:07Michael Hillier was a known drug dealer around the area of Sheffield. He had previous convictions for violence.
38:18Police also discovered incidences of coercive control and domestic violence.
38:24Hillier was tracked down to his home in Sheffield and taken into custody.
38:32This photograph communicates power, control and dominance.
38:36To me it's a communication of aggression, distance.
38:39There's the communication that this connects to a gangster lifestyle.
38:47When Hillier was first interviewed by police he played it very cool, giving no common answers across the board.
38:53And the police were really struggling at this stage to establish a link between Liam and Hillier other than the fact that he had been seen on that CCTV footage outside Liam's home.
39:05But unbeknown to Hillier, his car insurance details revealed another name to the police.
39:12Rachel Falstow.
39:14Rachel had been in a relationship with Hillier since 2021 and they had just come back from a holiday to Jamaica.
39:24When police arrive at Rachel Falstow's address, she admitted to officers that she had met Liam Smith in September 2019, that they'd gone on a date after meeting on Tinder.
39:36They'd spent the night together and also gone for lunch the next day.
39:39She was initially brought in and questioned as a potential witness.
39:46When she was interviewed Rachel spoke at length but denied any involvement.
39:51She said she only knew that Liam had been killed when Hillier told her the day after Liam had been murdered.
39:57At first she was treated as a witness, but it wasn't long before further evidence came to light.
40:03Police found she searched for Wigan murder just hours after Liam had been killed, before his name had been released to the public.
40:14That in itself was a really significant search.
40:18How could she have known that the man that she'd had a one night stand with two years before was dead on the street, unless she was involved?
40:25Detectives then found a string of suspicious messages on Falstow's phone.
40:35The day before the murder, Hillier sent a text to Rachel saying he was ill and in need of some TLC.
40:40She said she was on her way.
40:47Rachel was sending Hillier messages knowing he wasn't there because Rachel had been at Hillier's house when he left to murder Liam and she knew he'd left his phone there.
40:58Clear alibi messages.
41:01Hillier sent no messages.
41:02He had no phone with him.
41:03He deliberately left his phone at home.
41:05Deeper dives into Falstow's search history only added to the weight of the evidence against her.
41:14In October 2022, a month before Liam's killing, Falstow had been searching for his company details online and she'd been looking up his address on Google Earth.
41:24Her phone also showed searches for a Mitsubishi Shogun car and how long it takes to burn a car out completely.
41:31This was just days before Liam's killing.
41:33The vehicle was eventually found burned out in a forest in the north of England.
41:40Hillier and Falstow were charged with murder.
41:46Rachel and Liam had gone for one day in Rachel's hometown of York.
41:52They'd stayed the night in a hotel together.
41:54The pair never saw each other again.
41:55In 2021, Rachel began a relationship with Hillier, who she said could be verbally abusive and quite volatile.
42:07Falstow said that Hillier was not happy when he found out about this one night stand with Liam, despite this happening two years earlier and that he would continuously bring this up whenever the pair would argue.
42:19Michael Hillier had very strong views about women.
42:25He was disturbed by the fact that Rachel Falstow did not only have a dating life before they met, she also had a sexual life and that was intolerable for him to comprehend.
42:34This is where things become a bit complicated.
42:41So Rachel Falstow denies that she ever said this.
42:43But Hillier seems to get in his mind that that night Liam Smith had unconsensual sex with Rachel and that he then needed to take revenge against Liam in this act of vigilante justice.
42:58We can understand how someone may feel jealous when they hear about a partner's sexual past because it does challenge sometimes the experience in the here and now.
43:12However, it's not so much the feelings that's problematic, it's how a person responds to that.
43:17And it seems that in some cases the activation of a criminal code provides a pathway by which to resolve this issue.
43:24What Michael Hillier would say is that he is someone of very traditional values and he didn't like the fact that Rachel Falstow had had a one night stand with Liam.
43:36The disturbing thing about this situation is that these thoughts and opinions about women initiated and fueled a very calculated, sadistic and violent response that ended up in a person dying.
43:49Fulstow claims she knew nothing of the killing until Hillier came back to her house the next day and that she was petrified to go to the police.
44:02But police found evidence that Hillier and Falstow began planning to murder Liam in May 2022, six months before he was eventually killed.
44:11Just days after the brutal murder, they marked the occasion by wallowing in the luxurious bays of the Caribbean.
44:25Their case went to court in the summer of 2023.
44:30As the trial wore on, Hillier and Falstow seemed to turn against one another.
44:35Hillier claims that it was Falstow that planned the routes to and from Liam's address, that she had sourced the acid to use in the attack,
44:43and that she had even suggested that he sever Liam's penis.
44:47Hillier and Falstow were both convicted of murder.
44:53Falstow was also convicted of perverting the course of justice.
44:58Michael Hillier was sentenced to 33 years in prison.
45:04And Rachel Falstow was given a 30-year sentence.
45:11Liam was more than just a family member to us.
45:14He was our rock, our Liam.
45:17He had the biggest and most kind-hearted soul and would literally do anything for anyone.
45:23Liam's life wasn't the only one that was destroyed that night.
45:27Everyone who knew and loved Liam had been left completely heartbroken, devastated and traumatised by the events that happened on the 24th of November.
45:40It was unbelievable, the motive for Liam Smith's murder.
45:44Liam's family will never ever get over that, nor should they be expected to.
45:49This case begins with police arriving to this crime scene.
45:54There's an unknown body laid in this residential street covered in a mysterious, corrosive substance.
46:00It's confusing and mysterious from the get-go.
46:03But what materialises is this really senseless, brutal killing of a father of two, grounded in nothing more than malice.
46:14And Liam Smith did not deserve to die in the way that he did.
46:18As the last afternoon, it's just the same.
46:22And the second time we looked for him, he was dead, while we were still moving along, the dead man's death.
46:26He was dead.
46:27There was a death!
46:29He was dead.
46:30He was dead.
46:31This is not all .
46:33He was dead.
46:34He was dead.
46:35He was dead.
46:36He was dead.
46:37He was dead.
46:38He was dead.
46:39He was dead.
46:40He was dead.
46:41He was dead.
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