The Lost Boys (Operation Orchid BBC documentary, Sidney Cooke etc.)

a 14 year old streetwise if children's home together my mum wasn't there and because my three younger brothers all being younger than me i kind of like looked to looked after that way make sure that it was when they were 14 they give them a free travel card to give them as kind of like an independent so they get their own way to school instead of catching the coach but jason got this travel card and started traveling all over the place and bunking off school and coming home and pretending there's been at school some days after leaving home jason phoned his sister she wasn't in but he spoke to her fiance hello hello adam where are you i'm staying with a friend from school and he's dead jason where are you ringing from i'm in south london what's the number i'm not saying you coming home yeah i'm thinking about it i'll ring you tomorrow night and let you know all right bye bye for now dear mom i'm okay i'm working with the fair at south end so don't worry see you soon i'm going up north soon jason wrote twice the first card postmarked brighton and then from crawley sussex dear mum i haven't forgot you so don't worry about me i'm alright i will come and see you in the next few months happy birthday from jason the adrenaline starts running the moment that you get the call and you're thinking ahead you're thinking more of what police action you you intend to take rather than actually what is at the scene and it's only when you get to the scene that you get briefed and you see the body for yourself that you start having feelings the body itself was found by local out shooting he's in a bit of a state actually it's not surprising it's not the sort of thing he'd be likely to come across the boy's naked and there's no sign of his clothes anywhere right it's just over here sir i've got sons and one of them would have been about jason's age actually and so you put yourself in to the place of the parents and albeit at that time we didn't know who the boy was who the parents were but you get that same feeling as a parent as a caring parent yeah four foot five yeah missing two teeth yep real hair and slim build but it sounds like this our boy excuse me a moment sir we identified jason fairly rapidly i think within two days and uh the post-mortem was carried out on the evening of the day the body was found and the cause of death was due to asphyxiation but there was signs that boy over a period had been repeatedly buggered there would have been one taking out the start of the summer term it really was yes really was the saddest thing i could remember oh yes it had a terrific effect on the old school here it is that's jason at the end of the front row jason was a loving innocent um little boy who was in need of love and affection and help who um perceived certain people as friends and helpers and suffered for it in fact before jason left home for the last time that already been fears among his family and school friends that he'd started associating with a group of older men a poster campaign by police was aimed at anyone who might have seen him in the months that he'd been missing nearly two weeks a farmer the body of a boy later identified as 14 year old jason swift jason's whereabouts we managed to get the murder on crimewatch incident desk within a few days of the body being found and this helped us fill in the period immediately following jason's disappearance in fact we found a person who had rented a caravan out to jason for a couple of days at camber sands but beyond that there was very little to go on jason referred to a school friend in in his phone call to his uh future brother-in-law and uh that proved to be an adult homosexual that jason had had a previous relationship with who in fact looked after him for two or three days after he first went missing once we had inquired into that aspect uh and eliminated the person from our inquiries there's very little else to go on 15 miles away in london and in the week before jason's body was found several parents had made reports to hackney and stoke newington police of a man in an old jaguar cruising the streets trying to entice children into his car the number plate had been noted but its owner wasn't registered and so he wasn't found for several days morning sir is this your car yes it is why is there a problem can you tell me name please cook sydney cook mr cook does anybody else drive your car at all no why i'd like you to come down to the police station don't worry about your car my colleague will take care of it what have i got to go down the station for don't worry about sir we just need to speak to you in your vehicle sydney cook was a local hackney man who admitted to several offenses of gross indecency but he denied trying to abduct boys and the case was never followed through cook became one of several dozen child molesters seen by detectives from the jason swift inquiry he lived on the same estate as jason and was a fairground worker but that was holy circumstantial evidence and police could find no other stronger links we were looking at literally hundreds of men from similar backgrounds it just seemed that the more we've looked the more we found and sydney cook was just one of many just as sydney cook was being released in london another murder hunt was getting underway an hour ago police in essex announced that there is in all probability a second child killer on the loose pathologists have established that a body discovered in a shallow grave near waltham abbey is that of a boy aged between seven and nine he'd been dead since its discovery yesterday because of the bad weather once skies cleared this morning dozens of police moved in to begin a painstaking search of the farmland the child's body was found by farmer as he was walking along the edge of his field three months earlier on a sunday afternoon in september 1985 six-year-old barry lewis had gone out to play in the streets near his home in walworth in south london bye he just seemed to disappear into thin air every indication that we could find seemed to point to the fact that he had been picked up by a passive motorist the barry lewis incident office got in touch with us virtually immediately really there were common features such as the closeness in distance between where the two bodies were found and the nature of the area both of these young boys died from asphyxiation they were both found naked in shallow graves they were in the fetal position both bodies had been buried within 10 miles of each other and quite clearly a car must have been used to take them to those two different spots thank you well that's been said what's more it emerged that both boys had been drugged there's two particular types diazepam and tamazepam both are sedative tranquilizer type drugs it's not unusual that either of the two drugs can be prescribed together but it will be very unusual in fact for children as young as we're dealing with to prescribe those drugs by a doctor thank you we were beginning to understand that the drugs were particularly used by pedophiles and as the drugs had been found in each of the two bodies we suspected that it was likely to be the same killer the metropolitan police and essex constabulary joined forces this was the first time a combined operation had been formed under a single commander lessons had been learned from the yorkshire ripper inquiry where manual card index systems used by different forces had allowed peter sutcliffe's name to escape attention several times on this occasion every scrap of evidence would be put on one computer database one of the first lines of inquiry was had jason been murdered by a homosexual pickup over christmas police met london's rent boys the remboy scene was was a completely new scene to us it's something we don't have in essex fortunately we learned a great deal very quickly about them the young boys earning a living doing this as rent boys it seemed to us the younger they were the more they could charge and they knew this um surprisingly uh very few of them were actually homosexual and they were in it just for the money and they obviously learned very quickly that they could earn a lot of money and as i said particularly the younger ones although of course we all knew that these things went on and they existed but the degree and the amount involved surprised us all on reflection it wasn't the right area to look for jason jason we learnt later really was a lad who was a rent boy solely for the purpose of a free meal a bed for the night someone to show him a bit of care and affection really not not as a true professional in it for the money only as his routine we commissioned the second independent post-mortem to allow the boy's bodies to be released for burial we chose professor austin gresham because he often worked for the defense so we knew his findings would be very difficult to challenge in any future court case professor gresham's work produced an even greater sense of urgency and disquiet he agreed with the findings of the first post-mortem that barry lewis had probably been sexually assaulted and then strangled but he found that jason had died while sexual acts were taking place well i mean all deaths of children are very emotive you know it's very difficult sometimes to keep your head and to be impartial when you're dealing with these cases it is unusual to find it child abuse that has proved fatal with evidence of sexual abuse i should say that um over the 40 years i've been working i've only seen two cases of child abuse where the child has died of course and there is evidence of sexual abuse as well it is unusual the findings took the inquiry into a totally different realm the we knew that jason had been involved in homosexual activity previously but what we didn't know was that he had been sexually abused immediately before his death basically we were then looking for a very violent pedophile or a gang a group of pedophiles the prospect of a gang being involved had seemed improbable at first but in the months after jason's death evidence from boys who'd been abused revealed that pedophile rings were more common than detectives had been aware one ring dubbed the dirty dozen involved a man already known to the jason swift inquiry your surname cook with all the anthony with your first names sydney charles your occupation fairground worker the ring included another man lenny smith who like cook lived on the kingsmaid estate both cook and smith were questioned about jason but both exercised their right to silence and the police got nowhere then a year later another inquiry in london uncovered a catalogue of abuse by a group of men posing as babysitters as the 1987 inquiry hackney unfolded it became apparent that there probably were connections and if you know i became obsessed with the fact that we should find out about these connections and uncover them we made the decision to ask all the suspects about the swift inquiry the swift murder and about jason swift in general and that's really how we broke ground on the inquiry one of these routine interviews was with yet another man living on the king's mead estate robert oliver hello robert i'm detective inspector bob brown and this officer is detective constable stuart forrest you have been arrested in connection with allegations of indecency on young boys i would like to ask you some questions about those matters will you speak to me yeah what about jason swift will you talk to me about him you know about jason's death don't you will you talk to me have you wanted to talk to somebody for a while do you want to talk to me here or do you want to talk upstairs in my office in the office i suppose it was beyond our wildest dreams that somebody would actually confess to this which is what in fact happened so there is an element of surprise and almost elation the fact that um an achievement i suppose on the part that of the team who are involved but um there's no point in overreacting to that in terms of the suspect he really shouldn't be aware of your emotions can you tell me how long ago it was you first met jason swift 85 85 something like that where was it you first met him with uh sydney cook and lenny smith what about the other times well he used to come to the shoe shop i've seen him in there which shoe shop shop i used to work in on fridays jason used to come and ask the manager if he wanted any help doing things you know locking up or something i don't need to do anything just for people the hackney shoe shop was well known to oliver and to others as a pickup point for rent boys robert oliver was a pathetic individual he had a particularly unfortunate upbringing his mother used to send him to school dressed in girls clothes and i think the teachers out of sheer frustration used to buy clothing for him certainly by his mid-teens he had what i would describe as a major identity crisis and he'd ended up as a rent boy he's really a lost cause robert oliver in many respects can you tell me more about sid cook and lenny smith well i met said through lenny introduced him as a friend from the estate kingsmaid lenny i've known them since he was in the west end as a rent boy do a lot of people know you're on the king's mate detective inspector bob brown managed to get oliver to go on talking throughout the night over a period of nearly six hours he told the detectives of his relationships with different men on the king's media state and their connection with jason in the months between his disappearance and the time he'd been killed how was it that you came to meet jason swift again in that november through sydon lenny do you know you were going to meet a red boy no all [ __ ] said to me was that he had someone to beat that's all where did you first see jason on that evening lee bridge opposite the toilets by the pubs see it said everything all right he said yeah he's fine does it just turned into the car park and i'd trade with jason through that night oliver admitted a minor part in the affair himself and said jason was abused and strangled in the front seat of the jaguar by sydney cook and lenny smith by daybreak the detectives were elated but still unconvinced i believe the account that robert oliver was there when the killing took place what fussed me was whether or not it was strictly accurate and i thought that maybe certain aspects of it may have been a figment of his perverted imagination and maybe that he'd elaborated or made up certain aspects of the account that's really why great importance was placed on trying to corroborate it one of the first people to see was oliver's roommate leslie bailey well they're sorry to bother you that's okay i want to talk to you about robert but i've got a lot to ask you and it's going to take a long time you come down the station with me yeah no problem we thought that leslie might be a useful witness and i'm speaking to him i realized that he was bottling something up i wanted to give him the opportunity to to get that out but i never realized that he would tell us the things he did where were you living in 85 less i was on the kingsmead with a friend stephen barrel stephen and me used to work on cars robert oliver lived there in a flat with loads of men went up to robert's flat to borrow a screwdriver and as i was leaving i popped my head around the corner and looked into the living room there was a boy on the settee lying face up wrapped in a gray blanket his face was white what's the matter with him he's ill i'm taking him to the hospital weren't you worried about the boy i just thought he was ill a little while later downstairs carrying a little thin bundle the back door of the jag was already open us stop working and watch them what exactly was this car parks if you take me out there i'll show you oh liz it seems as if you're uh more involved than at first we thought i've just been to where you said you were working on the car and you couldn't possibly have seen what you said you saw i think we'd better have a chat don't you is there much more detail late i knocked on the door someone answered in the door who invited you in uh sid he asked me to go into the bedroom there are other men there and jason where was jason on the bed i held his wrist he went white tear ran down his face he went unconscious sid said they were gonna take him to hospital he made me go with him queen he ended up in filled sid drove the jag we took the body down to the joint me sid robert please i'm arresting you for the murder of jason swift you're not obliged to say anything unless you want to but what you say will become an evidence you understand like there's this gentleman over here behind you sitting is is captain thompson he's from the salvation army and i've invited him to come along to this interview so that he can see and if you like make sure that the interview is conducted fairly leslie bailey was an intellectual lightweight with a speech impediment and he had a poor education and defence council could easily uh portray him as a malleable individual who was open to a suggestion and so keep an eye on my pen to make sure you're not going too quickly for me all right he chose not to have a solicitor and this was a worrying factor and neither do you want anybody else present and in those circumstances it was necessary to have some insurance for both him and i and so um aware of the fact that in in the court it's easy for police officer to be accused of ill treatment or lying i chose to have a salvation army officer present who really could be accused of neither of those leslie i want to go over what we discussed this morning in the car first of all who opened the door to you when you went to the flight sid i had to be there for leslie bailey's interest to make sure that he was treated fair that there was no undue pressure that there was no leading questions the police made it quite clear to me that my bias was towards leslie bailey and his interests and for that purpose i sat in on the interview chase how had you seen these blogs before it was quite traumatic first of all i wasn't quite certain what i was going into and having listened to all the details of what had happened i came away with a turmoil terrible turmoil in my thinking over what i'd sat and listened to i had to read his statement back to him which was 47 pages long and in the statement use words that i wouldn't normally use so it really left quite a mark on me for quite a long time i remember when i got home thinking i won't do this again i really don't want to be part of this it's what we've been waiting for that's pretty good yeah anyway of course we would have all liked it to have been an essex breakthrough but uh having said that that the whole inquiry was centered within the metropolitan police strategy so if anyone was going to crack it it was going to be those cheers i had become convinced that the jason swift case would go undetected this had been in fact the most expensive investigation essex had ever run and as always there were financial considerations it was more than a year and a half since jason's body was found and by now we'd wound the inquiry down to just three or four officers and only seven lines of inquiry left to follow up two of those loose ends of course were sydney cook and lenny smith for over 18 months had been no evidence against them but now that both men have been implicated by oliver and bailey ethics police had good reason to talk to them again finding cook was easy he was in brixton doing two years for his part in an earlier pedophile case the so-called dirty dozen how long did you live on the kingsweed estate since the september so let's say from september to february sometime sydney cook is speaking into the microphone so let's say september october november december january february seven six months seven six months and in that period of time you're absolutely sure you didn't visit anybody else on the estate absolutely sure absolutely del positive bloody impossible absolutely sure of all of them cook was the most difficult to interview he's a very awkward person he enjoyed being the center of attraction he would do various things to make himself the center from whining and whinging trying to manipulate the interview and and endeavoring to control it the previous time i interviewed sydney cook some nine months earlier he had effectively ended the interview by storming out of the interview room in a fit of temper on this occasion when we were talking to him uh he would talk to us until we got close to the subject of jason and then he would try and turn the interview around talk about anything other than jason and his death it seemed we were getting nowhere at that time have you got any complaints sydney no is there anything else you wish to say no are you sure yes well it's seven o'clock and i now propose to have the tape stopped remember sydney we'll be back tomorrow i've got other questions to put to you but we haven't discussed what other people have spoken about have we noticed it it wasn't meant to hurt me it wasn't meant to be like that it wasn't an accident it was an accident things just went too far at all what happened somebody grabbed him dragged him used him well for the first time he had admitted that he was actually there at the time of jason's death but again he was endeavoring to manipulate the situation because he made this admission after the state was switched off so that was a partial admission he was still thinking all the time trying to trick us but in admitting he was there he confirmed my suspicions that we had the right man the leader the person responsible for the death of jason swift there were six of us lenny robert three others and me i who know good morning steven barrel yeah i'm dc car from the essex police this is my colleague petey austin from mitch politon police i'm arresting you on suspicion of being involved in the murder of a boy called jason swift in november 1985. you didn't know what was your party they asked me if i wanted to they asked you if you wanted what you know on detective constable foster from essex police you're being arrested on suspicion of the murder of jason street and swift we have a reason to believe you don't have to say anything unless you wish to do so do you understand shouldn't have ended like this how do you know sydney if you weren't there just answer the question you're obviously getting upset you clearly know more about this and you've told us so far at one particular stage cook lay on the floor and demonstrated to us how jason was held down by the various gang members and uh how they performed certain sex acts upon him in my mind cook again was reliving the incident he seemed to be enjoying it and as before he was trying to take over the interview as wicked and perverse it was although he was telling us what happened as i say in my mind i was absolutely sure he was enjoying what he was doing then and there in the interview room sydney you've told us about the most horrific assault on a frail young boy by you say six men some of whom are known to you and you know their sexual history what i want to know is were you a willing participant in this crime and i would like a truthful answer i told you sir it wasn't meant to be like that in order to have cook in prison as long as possible he wasn't charged until six days later he completed his sentence at brixton sydney cook i'm detective constable head from essex police and i'm arresting you for the murder of jason swift on or before the 30th of november 1985. and obliged to say anything unless you should do so what you say you may be given an evidence lenny smith was also doing time for earlier pedophile offences and he was met on his release from wandsworth jail i think you remember us i'm arresting you for the murder of jason swift on before the 3rd of november 1985. you're not obliged to say anything unless you wish to do so but what you say you may be given in evidence in fact lenny smith never went to trial for jason's murder his lawyers argued there was no evidence against him except the words of other pedophiles people who were plainly unreliable one of the problems that you face in these circumstances are that the people from whom the evidence is likely to come are invariably um low-grade witnesses you would scarcely get somebody the caliber of caesar's wife coming forward and giving evidence i'm quite convinced that there were suspects who slipped through the net who never reached court or were not convicted and that probably has meant that the inquiry has an incomplete side to it four of jason's killers were convicted but for lesser crimes than murder no one could prove which of them actually caused his death but they were sentenced to over 60 years between them sydney cook got longest one word from you said the judge could have stopped the agony of jason swift these are the men who murdered jason swift but did they also murder barry lewis and maybe other children too detectives hadn't given up hope of proving their suspicions but they couldn't have dreamt of how dramatic new evidence would be next week in crimewatch file the investigation continues as another crimewatch case is followed through officers who have which some viewers will find distressing so hey guys what is it now gab i gotta tell someone look i wrote it all down jesus is this straight up all right it's unbelievable i swear it's true last week crimewatch fire reported back to crimewatch viewers on the murder of jason swift the inquiry revealed a secretive underworld of child abuse and resulted in the conviction of several men who were operating a pedophile ring centered on north east london that seemed to be the end of a deeply unpleasant episode but it was just the start one of jason's killers confided in a cellmate in wandsworth prison the cellmate was so sickened he told prison staff and the subsequent investigation was to become one of the most complex ever undertaken it eventually resolved the murders of two other boys whose deaths had remained unexplained despite crime watch appeals a dog collar seemed the easiest disguise for a detective who had to be discreet hello ian i understand you've asked to speak to a police officer i'm bob brown d.i you don't look like a copper you've been sharing yourself with leslie bailey what's he said that's upset you the man is disgusting he's bloody disgusted it's little boys he's talking about little boys if he's done a quarter of what he says he should be backed up forever here don't blow your head off i've written it all down everything he says word for word he was giving graphic detail of murders of children burial sites times places all of this came as a complete revelation i was shocked to see the accuracy of it in fact two of the names on the front page of gab's notebook were tragically familiar to the police four years earlier in september 1985 six-year-old barry lewis had disappeared while playing near his home in south london his remains were later found in a field near anger in essex about the same time the body of a fourteen-year-old jason swift had been found not far away for a time the two murders had been linked but while jason's killing had been solved barry's death was still a disturbing mystery inspector bob brown had been instrumental in catching jason's killers it was one of that gang who'd been blabbing to a cellmate and whose stories recorded in a prison issue notebook bob brown now took home with him that notebook was as gap had said explosive it listed victims and names of pedophiles and several of those names were familiar to inspector brown through the jason swift investigation leslie bailey although you helped dispose of the boy's body you came i think nearer than the others to telling the truth and you get credit for that on the counts of which you have been convicted you must go to prison for 15 years robert oliver now i think it's unlikely that on your own you would have used violence towards jason swift however you played your part and the sentence must be long you must serve 15 years stephen barrow alone of the defendants you have no previous convictions for sexual offenses you must serve 13 and a half years sydney cook you bear the greatest responsibility for the events surrounding the death of jason swift of that i have no doubt a word from you and the cruelty to the boy would have ceased what you did was utterly terrible you must go to prison for 19 years there were a number of child murders of national importance which had featured in the inquiry and we were keen to look into in greater detail we were looking for opportunities to expand the investigation and of course when gab came on the scene and the information that he supplied presented us with the perfect opportunity to do this what do you think sir at first sight i've got to say i find it totally inconceivable what do you make of this manga as far as the content is concerned it seems very accurate and i'm very familiar with the names that he's mentioning certainly your old mate baby my first reaction was astonishment we had a man who was locked up in prison serving a long sentence for rape himself who was prepared to give evidence against a fellow inmate right now you've all read gab's notebook and you all know what he's saying what we've got to do now is to find out where there's any truth in what he says the team had to be small because we wanted to keep it confidential that was important because um the allegations it was that 20 boys had been killed there are a lot of parents who have children missing and we didn't want to cause them any unnecessary anguish without evidence that their children were involved i picked bob brown of course because he knew all of the characters from the jason swift inquiry as disney about them and you report back on the progress you make from that research what does this say dick langley had been working on the essene publications branch where he specialized in child pornography i wanted he learned a lot about how pedophiles were we're going to play it it's a horrifying thought so what i want you to do is go ahead and prove it's a load of nonsense prison informants must be handled carefully if only for their own protection detectives named the operation orchid you understand we've been looking into what was written in the notebooks and in the meantime you're going to get a new cell mate i didn't mean to play he's winding me up something wrong i just couldn't listen to him anymore but what's important now is that you're able to cope next time just try and write down as accurately as you can what he tells you don't try and get him to confess okay it was important that we never allowed him to ask leading questions we couldn't suggest questions to him to ask of the fellow inmates it had to come from them otherwise the evidence would have been inadmissible i was still very skeptical about the whole thing but we decided to take it one more step by letting gab share with another of jason's killers i'm robert cook i'm your new cell mate i thought i was getting a geezer called oliver oh no no not anymore i changed my name in honor of my dear and close friend sydney cook we're going to live together when this is all over there are things i could tell you about here sydney the things he used to get up tonight guy never stops talking which is great in many respects but as you so rightly warn me he is able to exaggerate fortunately it's quite easy to tell when he's doing this because the exaggerations are really quite fantastic and quite unbelievable jason swift remember jason swift it's not easy to stop him once he gets started is it he is totally selfish he just doesn't have a thought for anyone else like bayley he doesn't show any concern over the death of jason swift unlike bailey he manages to pull faces and appear to be putting some form of effort into expressing himself even so the expressions contain no remorse no sympathy no pain no concern well we had to devise a system where gab could get letters out to us without going through the approved channels because we didn't want people knowing what he was doing inside the prison another one for you thank you he was a rapist himself accused of sex crimes and yet he seemed to think that his crimes were natural when compared with the activities of the pedophiles which i think generally disgusted him and therefore that was his reason i think for helping us the way he was sometimes i get angry sometimes i find it almost impossible to believe what i'm hearing what's difficult to come to terms with is that robert shows no remorse when he talks about all the other sex acts committed by himself and his friends he's a matter of fact oh cheers thank you bob brown the detective inspector got moved to the flying squad i'd been introduced to in gabbian prison to build up some trust between the two of us and when bob moved i took over as his handler gab was very difficult to deal with it's quite intelligent very eager to please but he found the whole thing very frustrating particularly if i tended to not go near him for a few weeks he would think that we weren't actually doing anything another one from once you're addicted yes go i think he's getting a bit upset i don't need hype and i don't need to be patronised this work i'm doing and believe me it is work i am doing for free because i want to see this scum brought to justice and i want a judge who at the end of the day is not scared to sentence the criminals to a proper long term in prison the only reward i will get will be this it's getting too risky i think we're gonna have to move him okay he's been in with over what two months are there any advantages isn't hanging on in there well i know oliver's talking all the time the quality of the intelligence coming from him it's not as good as staley's and i think that uh gabs likely to blow it and hit him gabe had problems inside the prisons obviously with association with prisoners we were asking them to share ourselves with and at certain times things just got too much for gab and we in fact had to call things down and remove him from a situation to release pressures on him ian gabb may have been frustrated by the apparent lack of progress but the orcid team was slowly growing as his secret correspondence helped to build a case each piece of information had to be checked out and every known pedophile in london had to be reviewed one name kept coming up again and again time after time and that was the name of lenny smith he'd been strongly implicated in the case of jason swift however charges at that time had been dropped against him it was decided that it would be best to invest time in surveillance with regard to lenny smith and in fact the surveillance paid off from 17 yeah go go i'm in the tk i've got eyeball he's in the park on his bike he's towards the toilets all units from two six nine i've got an oakley and i can see the target coming towards me now standby all units all units from two six nine i've got the target in the toilets where are you two nine zero ever fifty yards to your left okay where are you two nine one on the bench over the child was badly scared but physically uninjured even so lenny smith was convicted of indecent assault and was given a three-year sentence meanwhile inside wandsworth prison ian gabb was still prepared to help in any way he could six weeks since he'd been moved from robert oliver's cell the orchid team decided to play for the highest stakes of all what you did was truly terrible you were the dominant influence one word from you could have stopped the agony of jason swift dear richard i moved in with sydney cook yesterday afternoon please god don't ever let this man walk our streets again he continually talks about sex with children it's really sickening i can tell you that there are probably 25 to 30 dead children buried out there cook has already admitted to me that he's seen about 15 killed he boasts of this figure all that i write is the truth the only part that is missing is the creeping feeling of evil i get while listening to cook tell me of these events i cannot relate the fear i feel for children everywhere that i feel while this man cooked laughs and squeals in delight as he tells me of the things he has done and the things he intends to do in the future i have just about had it i'm getting annoyed and if i stay any longer i might do him an injury get me out quick when gabe shared a cell with cook he only lasted a few days um i don't actually think anyone could have lasted longer than that because cook was talking about the murder of a number of kids a number of horrendous offenses against children and i think it just got too much for camp ian gabb's role in operation orchid was now over but he'd set in train what would become a huge inquiry it was very difficult to understand gab's motivation because he was not promised anything in return for the information he was giving us he didn't discuss a reduction in sentence or special privileges whilst in prison he just wanted to help us to clear up the crimes that he was hearing about at one stage gab even volunteered to remain in prison beyond beyond his term of imprisonment which seemed a strange thing to do but i think he was genuine in his motivation to get to the truth and provide evidence against the pedophiles the evidence supplied by gab was remarkable in its precision it included a series of maps drawn by leslie bailey and purporting to show where the bodies of several of his victims had been buried the time for secrecy was over one of the maps that bailey drew for us looked very promising and we decided it would excavate one of these sites but unfortunately once it did become public because we were looking for a missing boy it'd become public in a big way and it'd become a quite a big media event which made it very difficult for us we were trying to professionally dig up a plot of the time for secrecy was over one of the maps that bailey drew for us looked very promising and we decided it would excavate one of the sites but unfortunately once it did become public because we were looking for a missing boy it become public in a big way and it'd become a quite a big media event which made it very difficult for us we were trying to professionally dig up a plot of land in stone mountain nothing was found but now public interest had been alerted the police published a telephone hotline number in an attempt to get confidential information from youngsters who'd been working as rent boys i saw the telephone number on tv tonight my son's been gone four years he was 12. perhaps he'll ring you please let me know if you find my son please tell him he can come home we miss him tell him we're sorry it was heartbreaking instead of actually getting calls from rent boys we were in fact continuously getting phone calls from mothers and fathers of missing boys lost boys boys that have been gone for some number of years if they hadn't seen we got so many phone calls that during the night time like to bring officers in to change the answer phone the phone run continuously for over 24 hours please if my boy rings you please tell us or if you find him we don't know what's happened to him we don't know where he is we didn't realize that there were that many missing boys and you're looking at children here aged from 11 12 upwards and some have been missing for a long time and the parents saw us naturally enough as a means of trying to find out where their children were the phone calls were distressing but they were distracting from the inquiry instead the orcid team now focused on a single issue what had happened to barry lewis his was the first name in the wandsworth prison notebook and there was a wealth of clues from earlier inquiries run btn found soon after they went missing and arrested made there is no trace of the fourth child six-year-old barry lewis from number two four and a half years earlier crimewatch uk had reconstructed barry's last known movements after the child had disappeared several witnesses saw a white man with a small black boy in the waltham abbey area east of london seeing the boy and the petrol can a local man on his way home stopped to help the driver took him back he was always thought that the boy must be buried and that the man must be his killer but we had never been able to prove it or to discover exactly what had happened between the time the pair were dropped off at the car and the time barry's body was buried bailey's map put him squarely in the frame and we decided it was time to talk to him directly is this the boy you're talking about yeah that's him i was working on a car outside ashmead house and one or two of them i think came up to me and said there was a boy upstairs in the flat in previous interviews leslie bailey had denied all knowledge of barry lewis now five years after barry's murder and after many hours of questioning he slowly opened up where did barry die in the car why did you do it liz woke up started to cry les show me on gary lyons how you did it well he had very cold clammy sweaty hands and he placed both of them on my face and pressed into my skull it was quite a frightening moment in the sense that i felt when he put his hands on my face to indicate how he'd killed him that the last time he'd put his hands in somebody's face he had actually killed them in my profession as a police officer we're in the business of obtaining confessions from people but i could honestly say i don't really know if i'd ever want to hear another confession again if it was in those circumstances some facts about the case notably the pathologist's report on barry's body had been kept secret even from the interviewing team only the murderer could have known several of the details that leslie bailey was describing members of the public do from time to time confess wrongly to crimes and if they don't know the vital clue then they can be eliminated from the inquiry the method of barry lewis's death how he met his death was confidential to me and to the officer who had previously investigated his disappearance and none of the inquiry team knew and that was a safeguard for them and in bailey's case so that we could be sure that he was the killer bailey was taken out of prison to retrace the fateful journey he'd described i said there was going to be a pie what kind of party lies game bank who was there i knew seven or eight of them a little more where was barry in one of the bedrooms how did he get into the flood one of the gang brought him he held his hand gave him sweets was he drugged someone gave him a big wrath thing like a swing was he crying he wanted to go home yeah leslie bailey said that after six-year-old barry had been left for dead he had been ordered by other members of the gang to dispose of the body this changed pumps different color is there anything else we should be looking out for from here liz there's a cottage where the lane starts um this is the place are you sure when he took us back to the field he went immediately to the spot we were all quite amazed because taking into account the great storms of that winter a large portion of the scenery had been totally changed from the last time he was there so really when he got there and went straight to the spot it really confirmed it in all our minds that he was telling the truth leslie bailey you are charged with the murder of barry lewis on or before the 7th of december 1985 within the jurisdiction of the central criminal called the old bailly since going public it had been a deliberate policy not to correct exaggerated stories which appeared in the press we knew the gang would be reading the papers avidly especially the tabloids we wanted the message to get through to them that we're after them yeah thanks very much one day that's runsworth it went smoothly last night cook safely tucked up in albany oliver has been taken to dartmouth and he's none too happy about it by all accounts and bailey's as we discussed as we discussed brady in waiting we're dealing with this afternoon great thank you the strategy was to cause them maximum disruption while they're inside prison we wanted them to be going to bed of an evening not knowing what was going to happen to them in the morning it very much was a question of feeding them snippets of information either through the press or through friends that visit them letting them know that we were actually looking at them and whereas they've been serving their sentence quite happily eating their breakfast having their tea living their life all of a sudden out of nowhere they realized that there was a special squad actually looking at them and looking at what we believed they'd done to other children my own was to see if one of them perhaps realizing that the police were looking at them would actually admit the truth about some of the other murders are you feeling right liz it's going to be another day like yesterday okay we know you've been talking about the boy mark tilsley and we think it's about time we follow that up now okay that's who we're going to talk about today it's a photograph for mark tillerson do you recognize him mark tildsley had disappeared six years earlier in 1984 when he was seven he'd been visiting a fair near his home in wokingham in berkshire mark was a lively young man mark used the town as his playground and riding his bike around the town getting in everybody's way everybody in the town knew it i'd known him since he was born because his mother used to work at the police station as a cleaner i was part of the family as far as i was concerned and i felt the same way mark was concerned mark's failure to come home from the fair led to a massive police search his bike was found but nothing else do you recognize this leslie it's a map you drew in ones worth he told your cell mate it showed where mark tilsley had been killed in woken him remember mark don't you and you also wrote a letter about him well you didn't write it you got your cellmate to write it because you don't write too well do you list i'll remind you a bit of what it says i have been questioned about mark do you remember 1984 at a fair you're my oddbod what can you tell me about mark leslie lenny asked me to drive him there driving wailers wokingham affair he said there was would be a party layer and what did you understand by access i thought you meant blokes oh blokes together yeah leslie barely had a mild learning disability which in his case meant limited understanding and he had a right in law to when being interviewed to have present a person fulfilling the role of appropriate adult to protect his rights and i fulfill that role during all the time that he was being interviewed the time is 11 50 am i'm going to turn the tape off your lady's okay fine yeah he had limited understanding so say for example one was saying on such and such a date um where were you doing x and y and this would mean absolutely nothing to him and often you had to put the question in a different way for example say it was was it summer or autumn were there leaves on the trees or was the sun shining was it wet or cold or what time of day was it was it in the morning was it beginning to get dark he had his own moral code but it was different to ours it was a different one he had been abused as a child and he'd had abusing relationships so it was a very different view to ours i sat on my motor waited for lenny he came with another man had a young boy with him who is the other man liz well i didn't know then until they got to the car then lady told me it was sid the other man's name was sid a young boy was he just walking freely no he was sort of dragging back like hold it back you mean like tugging on the man's arm bro he was trying take your timeless trying sort of to get free you had to detach yourself from what he was actually saying and try and be professional about the whole thing because i know if i'd actually really started to think deeply about what he was saying it would have been very distressful i have nothing but admiration for the inquiry team they spent day after day hour after hour week after week sitting closeted with people who were relating horrendous details of what they'd done to young children most of them are adult experienced police officers who could deal with the stress and the problems that they encountered and for example dick langley would take himself off fishing and and i couldn't help him with that because i'm not a fisherman but you could go and have a drink with them after work just settle down talk to them and generally pat them on the back tell them how well they've done and hope that they'd calm down sufficiently to go home and deal with their family lives once more bailey was taken out of prison this time to wokingham to check the accuracy of his recollections against locations he'd described and to try to retrace mark's last hours on the day that we went back to walking him i was convinced that we were being followed we were all aware at that time that there was much media speculation as to what was actually happening during the conduct of the investigation and that some of the newspapers were starting to link the inquiries into jason swift with the mark tills lee case we were obviously concerned that the investigation did not become a media circus this would not help the investigation and would certainly not have helped mark's family when leslie first came back to working i felt that although the met lads had done a wonderful job this was my case this is the one i've been on since the day that i went missing and i felt very emotional about it and him being there i'm wondering if when i first saw him if that was our link to telling us what happened to mark have you remembered the name yet leslie okay gary go around again leslie was fairly certain when he first came back to work as to where he'd parked his car but of course there was a difficulty in that the fairground that was was being dug up for a municipal swimming pool and we were driving around in circles until he recognized one road there it's that he road just down there uh we walked into the field together and he pinpointed exactly where sydney cooked had parked his caravan which way had been facing how close to the fence it was it was an experience that really just made the hairs on the back of your neck stand up he was there again with the boy at the time that boy was killed leslie went into the middle of the field with one of the met officers and you could see leslie visibly shake and change and then i knew that we had somebody who knew what happened to mark and was probably there when he died it wouldn't have taken a lot for me then i don't think to have burst into tears what i'd like you now to look at is a reconstruction of mark's disappearance that went out on the television in 1985. it was about this time last year that the papers were headlining the disappearance of mark tillsley 10 miles from reading and boxing the crimewatch reconstruction in 1985 had had a huge response but little concrete evidence had emerged now six years later thames valley officers reviewed the tape in partnership with the metropolitan police operation orchid was now a large combined inquiry it's never an easy thing to run a joint operation for simple reasons silly reasons really things like inter-force jealousy and can prevent a joint operation from working correctly but we felt that from the start we had to make a statement so mick short and myself decided that we would pull every bit of information that nothing was kept from the inquiry teams um so that really instead of being two forces investigating one murder it was one force investigating several murders and i think we maintained that cooperation until the end one man became central to the inquiry a fair ground worker whom several people as well as bailly had placed in wokingham on the day mark had disappeared but he'd had an alibi sydney cook said that he'd been working at another fair near henley on the day now with witnesses from wokingham his story began to crumble it's number four cook must have made a deep in sydney cook said that he'd been working at another fair near henley on the day now with witnesses from wokingham his story began to crumble it's number four cook must have made a deep impression it was more than seven years since mark had been abducted it's four number four i think you said there was a devil in you that you couldn't control there's a devil in all of us and you said that ninety percent of the time you could control it yeah there's a devil in you and there's a devil in him and there's a devil in him there's a devil in each and every one of us so are you saying that it's this 10 of the time when you can't control the devil that you have these fantasies about the young boys yes well it's a stupid thing i should have been firmer with my thoughts with my fantasies i presume that is what you're trying to say just plain stupid mistakes well most of the time kirk had refused point blank to say anything about the deaths of barry lewis or mark tilsley and apart from the jason swift interviews this was probably the closest would come to him telling us anything about the abusive young children by now sydney cook was so deeply implicated in the murders of barry lewis and mark tilsley police were confident they'd be able to press charges even without a confession meanwhile the man who had confessed was tried and found guilty of murdering barry and was charged with the manslaughter of mark but ironically bailly's admissions led to appeals by his co-defendants in the jason swift case i believe the original trial judge would not have dealt so severely with you had he known of the full activities of leslie bailey and the full responsibility he bore in this matter sydney cook we quash the sentence of 19 years and substitute it with one of 16 years stephen barrel the sentence of thirteen and a half years is too severe we substitute for it ten years imprisonment robert oliver now known also as robert cook we see no reason to disturb the careful decision of the judge your appeal is dismissed when the blame was laid fairly and squarely at bailey's door i find it offensive when bailey was just the minnow and the sharks had their sentences reduced in fact worse was to come for the detectives for months the orcid team had been waiting for a decision from the crown prosecution service on what charges would be brought against sydney cook or lenny smith for the killings of barry lewis and mark tillsley there'd be no more action taken against anybody they'd made their minds up before i even got there they just wouldn't listen to anything i had to say i was very depressed i had a tremendous fight to get bailey to court on the barry lewis murder and yet afterwards we seemed forever to be supplying the cps with what they wanted and prosecution council witnesses to the others and yet to no avail it seemed to me that whatever we did we were never going to get anybody else to court and it was very depressing lenny smith was serving his three years for the indecent assault on the boy in the public lavatory he refused to cooperate with operation orchid a number of witnesses linked him to barry lewis and mark tilde but again the cps felt it was not enough some of their arguments were on the basis that the people that we had got who were witnesses were not credible witnesses because they were criminals pedophiles themselves well i'm very sorry but if you're dealing with pedophiles the only persons who can give evidence against them are victims in our case who are mostly dead or fellow pedophiles who witnessed and took part in some of the activities we're not talking about stealing a bar of chocolate from wolves we're talking about the violation and killing of young boys obviously if there is no evidence against a person we can understand that there should be no charges against that person but we weren't arguing that there wasn't evidence there was evidence and some credible evidence which is what a trial should be based on it's just that they didn't believe that they would result in a conviction bailly alone stood trial for mark tilde's killing leslie bailey has acknowledged that on the 1st of june 1984 he agreed to drive a man he knew a man called lenny smith to wokingham and that on the journey down smith told him that a man called sydney cook had arranged a homosexual party in his caravan that evening sydney cook dragged mark tillsley to his car and gave directions to his caravan in everton's lane there the boy was drugged and undressed the men all took their clothes off and one after another beginning with cook and ending with lenny smith they buggered mark tools it is highly unusual for the prosecution to name so explicitly men who have not been charged it was the closest the crown would come to putting the others in the dock equally unusual leslie bailey instructed his own defense barrister to seek the maximum sentence possible i've come to understand my client and he would like very much to be able to shed some light on the mystery of where mark's body is but he can't the significant fact in dealing with the killings of these three boys is that the man you have to sentence is the only one who has sought to clear the air the others have always remained silent my client is surprised and disappointed that he's here in the dock on his own today and that smith and cook are not here with him he does not understand why this should be so this has been the most tragic case i can imagine the distress of the parents is enormous leslie bailey was sentenced to life to run concurrently with prison terms he was already serving all the officers in the case received a judge's commendation for pursuing an honorable and sustained investigation but that was small compensation for what detectives acknowledged in public was unfinished business one of the main aims we set out at the beginning of the inquiry was to find the body of mark we failed and i feel i failed the family mrs tildesley will never give up her search for mark until that body is found i've told her that i'm certain mark is dead a man has pleaded guilty to the killing but nevertheless she still has that hope and that hope will continue as far as leslie bailey is concerned i don't believe he is the most wicked of the people that killed mark in fact in many respects he was the least guilty the other men i believe are evil and i'm certain they will come out of prison and when they come out i'm convinced they will kill again you feel for mrs tildesley and you feel for other mums dads that don't even know what's happened to their children and you know there are evil people and and i believe certainly in two cases there was ample evidence to put those people before the court young boys were being carried out of flats on the king's media state in hackney without anybody apparently noticing or phoning the police or in any way caring about what had occurred it's a very worrying situation out of all the inquiries i've ever been on and i've been a police officer for nearly 26 years it's the one that still comes back to me time and time again and i find that a quiet moment in a day i'll be thinking about something to do with these boys and the charges that were never brought you

Channel: Fabrice Bardsley

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Length: 87min 24sec (5244 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 14 2013