BBC Crimewatch 6 November 1984 Transcript
[0:07 – 0:15] Shelley (actress): That’s it, darling. Good. I’m nearly ready. I’m just going to do a bit of packing.
[0:16 – 0:17] Liam (son – actor): What are you taking that for mum?
[0.18 – 0:22] Shelley (actress): My camera. Well, you know that bridge I showed you the other day, that pretty one near Clifton?
[0:22 – 0:23] Charlotte (daughter – actress): Oh, mum, that big one?
[0:24 – 0:25] Shelley (actress): Well, that’s the last of my sketches.
[0:26 – 0:26] Charlotte (daughter – actress): Oh.
[0:27 – 0:31] Shelley (actress): And if I take some photographs, then I can paint and draw at all the angles that I want.
[0:32 – 0:32] Liam (son – actor) & Charlotte (daughter – actress): Ah.
[0:33 – 0:39] Shelley (actress): Okay? Come on.
[0:40 – 0:40] Shelley (actress): Oh!
[0:41 – 0.41] Postman (at house door): Good morning.
[0:42 – 0:42] Shelley (actress): Good morning.
[0:43 – 0:43] Shelley (actress): Come on, darling.
[0:52 – 0:52] Woman (in street): Hello, Charlotte.
[0:53 – 0:53] Shelley (actress): Hello.
[0:54 – 0:54] Woman (in street): Hello.
[0:55 – 0:55] Woman (in street): How at usual time?
[0:56 – 0:57] Shelley (actress): Yeah. Bye-bye.
[0:58 – 0:58] Woman (in street): Bye.
[1:09 – 1:10] Woman (on school bus): Morning Mrs Morgan.
[1:10 – 1:11] Shelley (actress): Morning Mrs …..
[1:27 – 1:37] Sue Cook (Crimewatch presenter): A couple of hours after seeing her children off to school sometime between 10 and 11 a.m. Shelley Morgan called into the sorting office in Kent Street to collect a registered letter.
[1:38 – 1:39] Shelley (actress): I’ve got a banker’s card.
[1:39 – 1:44] Sue Cook (Crimewatch presenter): The letter contained money from her husband which he sent every week while he was away working on their house in Wales.
[1:50 – 1:51] Employee (Post Office sorting office): There you go.
[1:51 – 1:52] Shelley (actress): Thank you. Bye.
[1:57 – 2:08] Sue Cook (Crimewatch presenter): Where Shelley went next has not been fully established. However, a witness travelling on this bus thinks she saw someone closely resembling Shelley get on at about 10 past 10 that morning.
[2:12 – 2:16] Sue Cook (Crimewatch presenter): She remembered the woman because of her long fair hair and her distinctive red glasses.
[2:26 – 2:31] Sue Cook (Crimewatch presenter): If indeed it was Shelley Morgan, that bus would have taken her to the centre of Bristol and the bus station.
[2:37 – 2:47] Sue Cook (Crimewatch presenter): Police would like to hear from anyone who may have spotted Shelley after 11 o’clock that morning. If she did plan to photograph the Clifton suspension bridge, she could have got a bus from here.
[2:56 – 3:02] Sue Cook (Crimewatch presenter): When the children came home from school their mother wasn’t there. The house was locked and empty.
[3:05 – 3:13] Sue Cook (Crimewatch presenter): Finally a neighbour took them into her house to wait for her. As time went on it became increasingly clear that something was very wrong.
[3:17 – 3:43] Sue Cook (Crimewatch presenter): At 7.30 p.m. that Monday the 11th of June Shelley Morgan was officially registered as a missing person. Months went by, birthdays passed and still no word from Shelley. Fears were becoming expectations. Then on Monday the 24th of September, police headquarters in Bristol received this dramatic phone call.
[3:44 – 4:06] Telephone call (anonymous caller): I got some very important information about the missing woman from Windmill Hill. Unfortunately this is going to turn out to be a murder inquiry. The body is in a watery grave. I’m not certain whereabouts to. Uh, it’s in Hanham River between the bottom of Conham Hill and the old tea room.
[4:16 – 4:27] Sue Cook (Crimewatch presenter): Police had to take this call seriously. Immediately they launched an underwater search team to look for the body. After 19 days, Their intensive search revealed nothing.
[4:28 – 4:30] Instruction (dive team lead): Tell me when you’re ready to leave bottom over.
[4:31 – 4:53] Sue Cook (Crimewatch presenter): The call about the stretch of river at Hanham had been a hoax. Then just two days later police were speeding west. West of the suspension bridge where Shelley had intended to take photographs and west of Bristol to Backwell, just eight miles from where Shelley lived. Their destination was Long Lane in Backwell, Avon.
[4:56 – 5:00] Sue Cook (Crimewatch presenter): The missing person inquiry had become a murder investigation.
[5:14 – 5:21] Sue Cook (Crimewatch presenter): On Sunday the 14th of October, three small children found a badly decomposed body. It was Shelley Morgan.
[5:23 – 5:36] Sue Cook (Crimewatch presenter): Missing from the scene were her clothing, glasses and bag containing her camera, sketchbooks and the registered letter from her husband. The body was found not in a watery grave, but at Watercatch Farm.
[5:40 – 5:48] Sue Cook (Crimewatch presenter): A full-scale police investigation to find her killer has now begun. Shelley Morgan’s father speaks for the first time about his daughter’s death.
[5:49 – 6:57] Frederick Brian (Shelley’s father): Well, the biggest irony of this whole thing is that for 12 years during which time Shelley was here, we never worried about her physical safety. We knew that she was here in a very highly civilised, decent country, surrounded by people of goodwill and honesty and uh generally well-ordered community. And we simply did not have to worry about our daughter. Of course, now this is all gone. She’s um, we can’t bring her back, but we can, I think, consider those who are still here. We feel that this person is an extreme menace to just about anyone. And we hope that anyone who might someday or somehow know something about this person that they will be able to come forward to the police and convey this information to them.
[7:02 – 7:08] Sue Cook (Crimewatch presenter): Well, Detective Superintendent, the anonymous caller who called you had a local accent. Do you think he would have had anything to do with Shelley’s death, in fact?
[7:08 – 7:27] Detective Superintendent Lew Clark (Avon & Somerset Police): Well, we won’t know until we trace him. I wouldn’t have thought so. Um, but it is very strange that he phones us three months after her disappearance. Why? Why was he phoning us at that time? Is there some little piece of information that he’s got that he wanted us to be interested in? We won’t know until we find him.
[7:28 – 7:30] Sue Cook – (Crimewatch presenter): If it is a hoax and he comes forward, will you prosecute him?
[7:31 – 7:42] Detective Superintendent Lew Clark (Avon & Somerset Police): Of course not. We’re dealing with a murder inquiry. All we want to do is arrive at the truth, and that’s it. So if he is watching, please contact us and we’ll resolve it and find out what it was all about.
[7:43 – 7:48] Sue Cook (Crimewatch presenter): Now, you’re sure that she was killed on the actual day she disappeared, on June the 11th. What was the motive for her murder, do you believe?
[7:49 – 8:08] Detective Superintendent Lew Clark (Avon & Somerset Police): Well, it has all the appearance of sex. She was naked apart from her shoes and a pair of tights, face down in a copse. Her clothing’s gone somewhere. We’re still carrying out certain tests, but there’s little doubt that it must have been a sexual attack and then a murder.
[8:08 – 8:13] Sue Cook (Crimewatch presenter): So what exactly do you need the public’s help with? The clothing’s missing, as you say. Do you think somebody might have found that?
[8:13 – 8:34] Detective Superintendent Lew Clark (Avon & Somerset Police): Anything and everything. Anything that anybody knows about her movement. Perhaps the man responsible is already in prison and has talked to somebody. Anybody who’s got a lodger they’re worried about, a woman who’s had a bad experience in a car, somebody trying to pick her up in a car. That’s the one thing we are certain of. She must have been taken there in a car. At that time she was either alive or she was dead.
[8:35 – 8:35] Detective Superintendent Lew Clark (Avon & Somerset Police): Um.
[8:35 – 8:37] Sue Cook (Crimewatch presenter): That bag is very distinctive, isn’t it? That might provide a clue.
[8:38 – 8:54] Detective Superintendent Lew Clark (Avon & Somerset Police): It is. That bag was made from a blueprint that her mother supplied from materials that we found at her home, very similar to the one she had. As you’ve already said, her dress is missing, her red spectacles are missing, the registered envelope is missing, all those items are somewhere, her clothing is somewhere.
[8:55 – 8:57] Sue Cook (Crimewatch presenter): And the most vital clue of all of course is the camera.
[8:57 – 9:36] Detective Superintendent Lew Clark (Avon & Somerset Police): This is, and this is the most vital clue that we have got as you said. This is an identical camera, it’s an Olympus as you see, it’s an OM20 camera, and I do appeal to anybody watching tonight, please give us two minutes of your time, because there’s only one camera in the world that’s got the number 1032853 on it. It’s stamped there on the metal at the bottom here. That camera was stolen from her. Please take time after the program to look. If you’ve acquired a camera like that since the 11th of June, please check it. And any dealer that’s watching will you please take a note of that number and check your stock in the morning.
[9:36 – 9:51] Sue Cook (Crimewatch presenter): Detective Superintendent, thank you very much indeed. The number to ring is 01 811 8055 or you can call the incident room in Bristol which is Nailsea 854011 0272 854011 and if you live in Bristol you can…