Senior Criminal: Frail Old Lady Kills Husband?! | Murder At My Door | Real Crime

paper was light gold in medieval times i want tobacco sugar [Music] that everything we thought we knew about the world might turn out to be completely wrong distracted by the finer things in life [Music] [Applause] [Music] growing old can mean a new chapter in life and elderly locals are an important part of every community so in 2003 a small town on the south coast of england was rocked by a violent crime on one of their own burglars breaking into a house when people are asleep is rare but burglars breaking into a house and murdering somebody so rare is untrue my husband eric did not deserve this as a frail man any resistance he put up could easily have been overcome by these two young men there was no need for them to go to the lengths they did the victims of this crime had got married in the later years of their lives and were hoping to grow old together sometimes things just don't go to plan when the very home that was meant to be a sanctuary becomes the scene of a brutal attack plymouth is a large city on in the southwest of england the largest city in devon a major naval port from a policing point of view it's got many different neighborhoods plymouth as a whole is an interesting city because it is a city but it's a city that's made up of little villages and one of those villages is plimpton it's a morris it's a little pocket community had its own butcher shop little pub a couple of little shops lots of families had been in the area for a really long time and it's fair to say that clinton is not a high crime area it's a really tight close community and they they look out for each other one of the prominent figures in the neighborhood was 83 year old eric kingston he ran the local family butchers in plympton for many years [Music] eric had been a very active man he'd had active war service and then he'd worked in the butcher shop for many years up until his retirement he still lived above the shop he was a very intrinsic part of that community his son had taken over the shop from him but he was still a very familiar face he used to go round to the pub close by everybody knew eric eric hadn't always been a butcher aged 18 he got his pilot's license and joined the raf eric had an incredibly interesting past he was part of a special operations group um during the war which flew covert missions into occupied france an incredibly dangerous expedition something that his family were incredibly proud of in 1950 eric married his first wife jean they had two children together after the war eric set up a butcher's shop and i think he was three shops in the saint allstar area and then after his wife his first wife died he moved back to plymouth and bought a shop in underhill lane eric's wife gene died in 1982 and here he is a widower confronting you know life without his life partner i have no one to share my life with so that's where we find eric so it was widely welcomed a few years later when 62 year old eric found love again this time with 60 year old widow audrey audrey was friends with eric prior to the death of their respective partners and they were just friends and i think that friendship blossomed and eventually they they married of course both sides of the family had family eric had a family and audrey had a family including sons and grandsons and granddaughters so eric meets audrey who's also a widow so they already have something in common they've been through that loss process as individuals they meet they get together and they get married so from eric's point of view he's found love again they like to travel abroad they like to go into the city center and have a cup of coffee and look around the shops together because audrey was quite a spry woman and she was very fit for her age and it's even been said that she wouldn't think twice about walking into plymouth if she missed the bus which would be three miles perhaps into the city center so she was very fit and very sociable they had an active life and one that they both enjoyed and a caring relationship but when he turned 80 eric's health took a severe downturn all of a sudden eric's got heart problems he's asthmatic he's got a catheter he's had a hip replacement the car's gone the social life's disappeared audrey's looking after a very sick man life changed for the couple following eric's illness and audrey became his full-time carer all of their future plans went on hold it meant audrey changed from a companion to almost a carer and i think there was quite a change in their life what happens when one partner gets ill and the other person perhaps takes on the role of carer is there's a shift in the power dynamic it goes from being equal to i now look after him so from her point of view it might have been a very difficult position to find herself in and i think from eric's point of view losing his health in that way may have also made him feel less than in in the relationship he here we are as equals and suddenly i'm not able to do what i used to do he may have felt some level of guilt perhaps that he can't be the man that she thought she married [Music] but eric and audrey seemed determined to make the best of things getting out locally as often as they could they were well known in the area neighbor sean rouse still remembers seeing them throughout his childhood you would see them in the morning you see them they would be down at the front and you'd see them say hello you know they look the usual they were lovely like they would always say hello there weren't people that would just ignore you they were genuinely nice people on friday 29th of august at 3 45 a.m a panicked audrey hinkston called 999 999 which service do you require i received a phone call somewhere reported to 4 4 o'clock in the morning to say that there'd been an incident at underwood road clinton i attended the scene audrey said intruders had broken into the couple's flat and had stabbed her husband eric he had been seriously wounded the emergency services responded immediately detective chief inspector tony carney was the senior investigating officer on duty that night even after 17 years it hasn't changed at all in terms of looking at this scene no there's no difference whatsoever in the past 17 years the road was taped off here and there were police on the barrier as it were because they were diverting traffic i came over to the door here and had a look at it i noticed that there was no signs of forcible entry to the door so i knocked on the glass and funnily enough it was answered by audrey who appeared in a very confused and shocked state audrey's life had been torn apart her home had been invaded eric attacked and now her home was a crime scene and i think i was actually a paper by the time i just started and i just remember walking down from just up there walking past and seeing all the tape audrey she was a very small woman she's very neat and tidy but she was obviously confused she was upset she was frightened and you automatically felt sorry for her right away and no i wanted to get her away from the house paramedics had got there within minutes but it was already too late audrey said that her husband had been attacked and that is when we went upstairs to find eric [Music] eric kingston had been found dead on the floor of the flat above the butchers in the quiet plymouth suburb of plympton his fragile 81 year old wife audrey had made the desperate call to police [Music] herrick had been killed by downward thrust from a long sharp bladed instrument wasn't a lot of blood at all eric was lying on the floor his head was on a cushion which i thought was strange at first but then i saw patches on the floor and realized that he'd been defibrillated what they hadn't realized of course was that eric had a pacemaker when the heart stops beating the pacemaker kicks in to try and start it again and it gives a sort of a false pulse if you like and this is what the paramedics have picked up they therefore thought that there was still life in eric and tried to resuscitate him senior investigating officer tony tried to find out as much as he could from audrey about what had happened she was sort of leaning forward if you like cringing confused frightened and not not absolutely coherent she was sleeping in a different room to her husband and she'd heard a disturbance she went into the room where he was sleeping she was confronted by two men two burglars who once seen her escaped through the open bedroom window leaving behind a black bin liner by the window with the sort of items that they were intending to steal what looked like a robbery was now a murder inquiry and a large police team was assembled including detective inspector neil treby the body was taken to derriford hospital and audrey was taken by the family liaison officer to her son's address and her son was a retired detective sergeant and he lived in the city with his family she needed support one of the other reasons we wanted to get her out of the house was that unintentionally she could well have contaminated the scene if you know disturbed any evidence that there might be so it was important for us to get her away obviously we've got work to do police arrived at the house to search for any evidence left by the burglars that audrey had seen [Music] the forensic team arrived and they cordoned off the building it looked like a typical burglary scene the wardrobe doors were open the drawers had been drawn open the contents had been disturbed thrown out onto the floor there was a black bin liner by the window which had got items in it including jewellery another item attractive items that they might want to steal when people enter premises they will leave traces they will leave articles of clothing there could be skin there could be a number of things bearing in mind we had in this particular case of stabbing there'd be traces of blood the splattering of blood can be important when you try and work out what level of force was used where the body was where the assailant was stood all of these things can be important by morning the whole community was aware something serious had gone on there was reports of a lot of police activity we'd sent reporters and a cameraman down there to go and see what they could find out we'd had whispers that there had been a murder so it was obvious that something big had happened it was just you could tell around the place it was just shock it was dead quiet everybody stood on the other side of the road trying to figure out what was going on and literally a long he was literally just people just standing there and watching you had police up and around everywhere there were killers in the community and the clock was ticking forensic teams searched for clues as to who these deadly intruders might be [Music] the door that you can see there opens onto a flat roof extension which has got a felt roof cover and the window as on the night in question 29th of august would have been open as the very window open now as it was then eric had a medical condition which caused him breathing difficulties he would often sleep upright in bed with the window open the burglars would have placed the ladder on top of a wheelie bin and climbed onto that flat roof and then gained access to the bedroom where eric was sleeping in bed with the light on window open something that normally would think that deter burglars from entering burglars breaking into a house when people are asleep is rare but burglars breaking into a house and murdering somebody in the house is even rarer and on this occasion the victim was an elderly man who was bedridden and there would really be no requirement to murder somebody who was sat up in a bed because he wasn't a threat physical threat he couldn't be the only possibility is that he would have seen the burglars and then we got called along to a press conference later on that morning we were told that there had been a murder and that the victim was an elderly man at that stage we didn't know his identity from the police but of course from the information that we we'd garnered from being on the ground we realized that it was eric kingston we were told that he'd been killed by intruders who'd come into the house being the victim of a burglary is something everyone dreads but eric and audrey's home had been invaded by people who were willing to kill and it terrified the whole community murders in plymouth are rare enough um but stranger murders are incredibly rare um and for something like this to happen particularly to an older gentleman it caused shock waves you know we were we were shocked in the newsroom the whole of the city of plymouth was was shocked it was all over the news and that was the first time that i think it really hit me in the sense that it was so close even at that age you could feel the shock and everything going around it was everybody was talking about it what was going on and one thing we wanted to do was a to obtain information and b to provide some sort of community reassurance and for that purpose we parked a mobile mini incident room just here where these cars are now outside the building it gave people the opportunity to come to talk to the police to give them information to receive reassurance from them about the safety of the neighborhood when something like this happens in a community as quiet and peaceful as this people see burglars and murderers on every corner for several days saturday 30th of august the day after the attack audrey who was now staying at her son's house said she was able to give a detailed description of the two intruders she said that she had a good sight of them before disturbing them and then making off one of the offenders had a very distinctive appearance six feet one inches tall wearing a deer stalker hat and white trousers and that she'd seen him around the village on some a number of occasions his partner was a shorter guy a bit stocky five feet eight inches tall one of the first lines of inquiry that the police gave us as the media was that they had these really clear descriptions of two young men that audrey had seen come into the house and who were who were responsible for the attack on eric with the whole community concerned that there were unknown killers at large the story became nationwide news and the search for suspects intensified we had asked whether audrey would be willing to give a press conference and we didn't think to start with that she would but all of a sudden the police came to us and said actually audrey is going to give a press conference something doesn't happen very often and of course we all went along to it there were an awful lot of us um the national media had become involved as well as all of us local reporters and we were all crammed into a little room and then audrey walked in with her son and then she gave her statement during the early hours of friday morning two men came into my home and ruined my life my husband eric did not deserve this as a frail man any resistance he put up could easily have been overcome by these two young men there was no need for them to go to the lengths they did i remember the room being incredibly quiet um you could hear a pin drop this doesn't happen very often speaking to somebody who'd been there when such a terrible event had happened and she was just a little old lady gray hair and glasses she looked you know like your grandma somebody somewhere knows who did this i ask them and my family asks them to please contact the police if you have any information at all please pass it to the police on a personal note may i thank you for all the love and kindness you've shown us but please please do anything you can to help us thank you [Music] on the 1st of september 2003 audrey hingston had just given an emotional press conference pleading for information on the two male burglars she said killed her husband her detailed descriptions of them had been circulated to the media it was obviously the lead story on all of the front pages of the newspapers and all of our news programs that evening with all the public attention focused on these suspects there was a result almost immediately they were quickly identified in fact having circulated their description they came forward voluntarily they were arrested we were told that arrests had been made and we all sort of breathed a bit of a sigh of relief because you know it was such a disturbing thing for the whole of the community that relief turned out to be short-lived when police questioned the two young men inquiries were made into their background and they didn't fit the profile at all of a burglar anybody who might have committed this type of offence they were resident in a bail hostel which was within half a mile or so of the premises we looked closely at the opportunity that the two guys might have had but the bail hostel assured us that in accordance with their terms and their procedures there was no way that these two people would have been out at that time of night and the record showed that and so having been interviewed and their alibis substantiated they were released we were all disappointed because clearly that created quite an issue for us and we were all a bit confused as to why she identified these two individuals which clearly couldn't have been responsible apparently these people were quite a common sight in the village there's a pub next door there was the butcher's shop and the pasty shop so it's the sort of place that you'd expect young men to frequent the consensus of opinion was she must have seen him earlier that day and recalled seeing them due to the shock it felt a lot like the the trail had gone cold and you know we made regular calls to the police to try and find out if there were any updates but there didn't seem to be any and we were all wondering you know are these people ever going to get caught everybody was talking about it you'd even i went to school and you could hear the teachers talking about it when they were having their breaks and everybody was on edge the police were working around the clock and despite the media appeals there was still no leads something wasn't right we were looking at a burglary that had gone wrong we thought it was strange that we didn't find any signs of fingerprints or even glove marks on any of the furniture or drawers that had been ransacked forensics found nothing of alien fingerprints or scenes of crime marks at all which we thought was strange as there had been a struggle police hoped that eric's killers may have left their dna on or around his body clearly this is one of the problems that was created by the paramedics quite rightly of course they would have been breathing over him talking over him touching him fibers from their clothes might have fallen onto him that would have contaminated any type of dna or fiber evidence that the offenders might have left on him it took us some time obviously to obtain the uniforms and dna samples from the paramedics but once the police lab had managed to identify and separate the traces left by the medical team there was still no forensic evidence of the offenders inside the flat or out and that's one of the things that struck us as strange because there was no disturbance under the window as you climbed through no signs of entry no dirt no gravel and it just didn't look right whether somebody was wearing gloves or no they will leave marks i.e you will see where they pulled themselves into a room if they pull themselves through a window you'll see something also if somebody pulls himself through a window like in this particular instance and they're wearing clothing you would expect them to leave traces or fibers from the clothing on that scene of entry we didn't get any by the 11th of september audrey's family were saying that they felt something wasn't right a tragic death like eric's can have far-reaching consequences and there were real concerns in the family that audrey was holding something back the police began to change the focus of their investigation really and truly at that time none of us would consider audrey as a suspect he was unbelievable at that time everything that you'd expect to find from a burglary dwelling we weren't finding and then you think back to audrey's account in the flat about seeing two men and then you start to think well this this isn't making sense and it's at that stage that we decided that we would have to look very closely at audrey because there was no forensics but before the police could pay audrey a visit to find out more she shocked everybody by attempting suicide she took an overdose and left a note please catch these terrible people who ruined my life i cannot live without eric she was detained in derriford hospital whether this was a real attempt at suicide or whether it was a ploy to put forward a picture of the aggrieved widow who couldn't live without her husband and i'm not sure but we were also still aware of the family's feelings that order ordery wasn't being truthful that audrey was holding something back and she had been treated for depression by a gp in clinton since june of that year two or three months earlier obviously depression can affect someone profoundly it affects you psychologically physically people have you know might have difficulty getting up in the morning they might struggle with insomnia they might feel irritable angry other times hopelessness is something that people often feel loss of interest in life in general they might even engage in reckless behavior with audrey in a fragile state recovering in hospital detectives were unable to interview her but they discreetly continued to investigate whether she was connected to eric's death and not the burglars she'd claimed bearing in mind audrey's son was an ex-police officer we had to make sure that the information didn't leak out of the police station police were doing a lot of um forensic searching in the property we saw them going in and out all the time we had to turn the negative aspects of the lack of forensic evidence into a positive which is why we decided that we'd reconstruct the alleged entrance to the premises we specifically targeted some very very fit individuals police officers to break in to that to the flat and we were not surprised to find they couldn't do it without leaving any trace bearing in mind they tried to break in without leaving any trace of forensic evidence they couldn't that reinforced all beliefs that a burglary was pretty much impossible although we'd searched the flat extensively during the early stages we carried out another search and we found a long seven-inch butcher's knife down the side of the drawers which is why it had been missed eric's post-mortem examination revealed that the cause of death was a single stab wound by a long sharp-bladed instrument which had been forced down past his collarbone puncturing his lung which had collapsed and considering his state of health at the time had led to his death they found traces of blood on the blade which were later forensically examined dna came back as eric's and there were fingerprints on the knife of audrey's and strangely enough just the previous week she'd asked james hankston in the butcher shop to sharpen it for her and so eventually we found the murder weapon on the night of eric's death audrey had called 999 at 3 45 am to report the attack we located a delivery driver who delivered some goods to the shop at around 2 a.m the morning eric was found dead and he remembered hearing some groaning noises like somebody was in pain coming from one of the upstairs windows now we know eric slept in the bedroom with the window open so he'd probably been stabbed at or just about that time after the post-mortem we got some more information around the likely time of death and that was a lot earlier than the telephone call put in by audrey to the control room during this time audrey had been opening drawers scattering their contents around the bedroom filling a bin liner possibly even while eric was lying on the floor still alive and in great pain the evidence was now only pointing in one direction but it was hard to believe that audrey could have killed eric there were still a lot of officers who couldn't accept the fact that audrey was a suspect there were still people who just couldn't accept that she could have done it we had some social workers visit her in hospital talk to her and they came back and said something's not right she wasn't exhibiting any signs of loss or grief and and the social workers picked up on this as had the family and so again that more or less confirmed our suspicion on the 7th of october 2003 audrey was released from hospital and arrested on suspicion of eric's murder you did feel that there was a lot of people watching the other thing to remember is audrey would have been the eldest female suspect arrested for murder so it was quite a challenge and we couldn't afford to get it wrong police had taken audrey hingston into custody on the suspicion that she had murdered her husband eric they'd found no evidence to back up her claim the crime had been committed by burglars we'd been calling the police constantly asking for updates on the case but it seemed to have gone very very quiet and then all of a sudden one day we were making our regular police calls and they said that uh audrey hingston had been arrested we were all completely shocked to suddenly be told that this 81 year old lady who'd given that impassioned appeal at a press conference to find the people that had killed her husband this little tiny old lady with curly grey hair apparently done something so cold-blooded to the man that apparently was the love of her life it was really shocking we were incredulous what we don't know about audrey is who is she i mean has she shown sparks of aggressive behavior throughout her life we don't know i think the thing is seeing somebody as old comes with a stereotypical they have no strength they are a particular way there is a perception that 81 years old is too old to commit crime be violent be aggressive clearly that is not true in her interview at crown hill police station in plymouth audrey wasn't admitting to anything and came up with yet another explanation audrey then decided eric must have committed suicide as a result she ransacked the flat and made it look like a burglary she identified two men that she'd seen earlier in the day has been responsible for the burglary because she didn't want to embarrass the family as soon as audrey changed her statement to police aware the murder weapon had been identified her son a former detective requested to see his mother in custody peter came to the police station his mother had been in custody uh some time and and he was with his wife he wanted to see his mother and we thought it would be useful if that was allowed it's not common but we allowed it we're at crown hill police station this is the custody suite where audrey would have been at the time she was under arrest her son and her son's family came to visit her and they had that conversation with her and that's when audrey told her son that she did in fact kill eric any relationship can become difficult or strained but it's hard to imagine a situation where the only way out was to kill your partner she apparently fed up of caring for him see previously um eric had been in good health they had a car they had a good social life they traveled out a lot they visited you know local beauty spots pubs sandwich and this had all disappeared and this is with a the this had caused the depression and this is what culminated in the murder of eric without speaking to audrey we don't know what led to her breaking point she may have felt frustrated resentful stressed distressed unable to ask for help feeling that she'd lost her partner going through in her mind what might have felt like a living bereavement this is not the future i'd planned he's become sick instead of going out and enjoying ourselves you know he can't do what i hoped he could do with me and that sense of frustration might have been bottled up until she finally blew audrey's family now knew the truth but police needed an official record of the confession and this responsibility fell to her son i then said to him pete i i need a statement from you about what your mother said are you prepared to give me one and he said yeah i don't want her looking silly i had a lot of sympathy for peter and his family it must have been awfully embarrassing for peter and i felt that for him i had to take my hats off to him because he did the right thing but it must have been difficult for audrey's family it's incredibly shattering to discover that you know their family member has committed such a crime and they've literally got to rewrite their understanding of that person it's incredibly painful everything you thought you knew about that person isn't anymore you almost feel alienated from them audrey hingston could now be formally charged with the murder of her husband eric it was such a shock to hear that she'd been charged but then to find out that she had actually confessed to killing eric there's huge disbelief um in the community nobody could believe that this little old lady could have done something so terrible shocked i was shocked i think there was a lot of people that there was relief because obviously at the time it was supposed to be a burglar um so i think for as bad as it sounds a lot of people were relieved um but there was still that shock that it was so close i spent a long time talking to eric's family to his son and daughter-in-law you know they all lived and worked very closely together they were very upset very very upset particularly thinking about the way that she was willing to point the finger at two young men give very accurate descriptions of two people who were then picked up and arrested that she was willing to literally let them take the blame for what had happened you know they really feel that she was an incredibly calculating woman it's if you like a double violation first you take away somebody we love and then second of all you lie to cover up your own guilt to cover your tracks in such detail to play the victim speaks to quite a character from my point of view but it's her age the life stage the violence and the lying that are an interesting cluster for me and very surprising on the 3rd of december 2003 eric kingston was laid to rest alongside his first wife jean three months later on the 12th of march 2004 his second wife audrey appeared at plymouth crown court to answer for his death it was downgraded to manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility i think in view of her age her history of depression and the fact that she didn't present any danger to the public it was not going to please everybody particularly not the hangston family so this is plymouth crown court we were expecting to come here for a trial to start something that was possibly two or three weeks long and in fact it all happened in just one day it's a plea of guilty to manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility so actually in the courtroom there weren't very many people not even eric's own family because they didn't expect it to happen either eric's family weren't happy with the way the court case went so one of the things that happened as part of this court hearing was that there was a victim impact statement read to the court um on behalf of eric's family jimmy hinkston gave that statement but he actually gave it at a time when he still thought that audrey was a victim so it was fairly sympathetic to her and the work that she'd done in looking after eric if they're given a different witness impact statements that was after they found out that audrey had been um charged with his uh killing it might have been very different audrey hingston was convicted of manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility and sentenced to two years in prison i think she was very lucky to get away with the manslaughter in two years as far as eric's family are concerned they felt that the sentence was very lenient they weren't able to give their say they weren't even told that it was happening on that day so they didn't come they didn't see audrey for that final time they did appeal against the sentence to try and get it increased but it never was and i think that eric's family certainly feel that they didn't get justice for him in this courtroom in 2004 aged 81 audrey hingston became the oldest woman to be jailed in britain she served one year of her sentence before she was released she died 12 years later in 2016 i've covered an awful lot of murder trials in my time and and horrendous cases but this one has always lived with me um i think partly because we were also taken in by audrey from the beginning you know you don't see very many elderly ladies giving press conferences like that and you know we all felt like we've been hoodwinked by her i suppose and in particular the fact that she only served a year for taking the life of eric just felt like a slap in the face for the hingstone family i understand that she was under probable quite a lot of mental pressure however if there was a cry for help cry for help ask for help it's rather extreme to stab your husband when he's asleep in bed [Music] you've got here a man who'd flown missions into europe during the war he'd been a businessman a licensee a butcher worked hard all his life to end it like this was not i'm sure not the way that he would have expected to die and wasn't right and and i don't think he did get justice no for eric and audrey hingston his illness changed everything and incredibly the only way out for audrey was to commit the unthinkable

Channel: Real Crime

Views: 398,780

Keywords: Real Crime, cold case investigation, crime scene analysis, crime scene discovery, crime scene forensics, crime scene reconstruction, criminal alibis, criminal investigation, criminal justice, criminal prosecution process, criminal trial process, elderly criminal psychology, elderly killer case, elderly murderer case study, homicide investigation, murder conspiracy, murder motives, senior criminal, true crime series, unsolved murder, wrongful conviction

Id: A6Dkw-dmCSI

Length: 44min 4sec (2644 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 08 2021