THE LOVE TRIANGLE THAT ENDED IN MURDER (Catherine Wells-Burr)

so today's video is going to be another solved true crime case today we're going to be talking about a small town murder from somerset i've been really into researching these kind of small town murders that don't have a lot of reporting done on them they don't have documentaries they don't have netflix series and i've been really interested in all these smaller ones that i've never heard of before so expect a lot more of those on my channel in the coming months so today we're going to be talking about the murder of katherine wells burr but before we get into it i would just like to thank our sponsors for making this video possible seekers nerds seekers notes is a hidden object game app available to download for free on both ios and android devices taking place in the cursed city of darkwood it's your job as the seeker to free the city from the curse weaving through the fascinating storyline with twists and turns at every corner every quest that you complete takes you further and 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win one of 50 10 amazon gift cards so if you want to download seekers notes the link to do so will be down in the description if you want to enter the facebook giveaway the link to their facebook page will also be in the description thanks again to seekers notes for sponsoring this video now let's get into it but before we do i just want to give my usual disclaimer that i mean absolutely no disrespect to anyone that i talk about in this video this video is for educational purposes and everything that i'm about to say is just information that i have found on the internet and i'm compiling into one video catherine wells burr was a 23 year old woman born in the southwest of england i believe she was born in somerset if not it's around that kind of area somerset bristol she lived there her whole life as well in those kind of in that little section of england her friends and family nicknamed catherine caff so spelt c-a-f and would affectionately refer to her as our calf which is such a british thing i think that's like a norman thing especially it made me smile whenever i did she attended bath spa university where she studied business and management she was a very intelligent very ambitious woman she loved music she would always tweet her favorite lyrics her favorite songs that she was listening to at the time she especially liked eminem and the relapse album in the summer of 2010 when katherine was 21 years old she was just finishing her uni course and she got a part-time job at a henry hoover factory in somerset and it was while she was there working at this factory that she met an older man that would sweep her off her feet and this man was 29 year old raphael nervak raphael was originally from poland he had you know a normal life over in poland he had a wife he had a child his life was going well and then he decided to leave all of that he didn't want to be with his wife anymore he didn't want his child anymore he was in a lot of debt and so he decided to come over to the uk get a better job than the one that he had over in poland and pay off this debt and start a new life when he arrived over in the uk i don't know when he actually came to the uk but when he did he began dating another polish woman this woman was named anna lagvinovic but that summer when he started working at the henry hoover factory he met catherine he was still with anna but you know he met catherine he started liking her he started seeing them both at the same time catherine was completely unaware that he was seeing ana legwinovich and anna was completely unaware that he was seeing catherine so the two of them were seeing this man he i think he was living with anna at the time but as things began progressing with catherine he realized that he couldn't keep this up much longer he couldn't be seeing these two women at the same time i mean catherine introduced him to her whole family they loved him they welcomed him in as a son she was telling her family that she wanted to spend the rest of her life with raphael novak and he decided that he liked catherine moore so he broke things off with analog vinovich still at this point both of them are clueless that this ever happened catherine thought he was just hers this whole time and so did anna she had no idea that he was leaving her for another woman catherine and rafal ended up buying their first home together a two-bed terrace home in a town called chard in somerset and catherine and rafal were so happy they were gonna start this live together they were going to make a family they were going to have kids they were going to get married catherine was just about to graduate university she was going to move up in her career everything was looking so good in 2011 when she did graduate from her uni course she decided to get a job still within that same factory the pneumatic factory that make henry hoover's but this time as you know kind of a higher up position the factory had a graduate training program and that's exactly what she wanted to do with her life because her mother her father and her sister all worked at this pneumatic factory so she knew ever since she was young that she wanted to get into that factory but she wanted a more kind of higher up she wanted to be like a manager or a you know one of those higher people in the company and that's exactly what she was on track to do but one day in september of 2012 catherine stopped showing up to work and straight away her boyfriend notices rafal novak notices that she's not at work and he goes to his manager and informs him he says look i'm really worried i left catherine at home this morning she was fine i kissed a goodbye and now she's not turning up to work she's not answering the phone she's not texting me back raphael started work earlier than catherine did like i said she'd recently been promoted after she graduated so he started at like 5 a.m she started more at like 9 00 a.m so he would kiss a goodbye on a morning and go to work and leave her to stay in bed but she'd never just slept in and missed her shift before this was so unlike her but he was hoping that maybe she was just ill and maybe she just hadn't answered the phone so he goes home from his shift as normal that evening but she's not at home and neither is her car catherine's gone off somewhere so rafael novak calls catherine's parents and says look catherine's not at home she didn't turn up to work today her car's missing she's not answering her fun i'm really worried about her and so her parents decide to come to the home that she shared with rafael and on the way there catherine's mother recalled feeling this kind of gut feeling that something wasn't right but something very serious had happened to her daughter she labeled it mother's instinct she just knew she just had this awful feeling still by this time catherine hadn't got in contact with anyone not her parents not her friends not raphael and rafal actually expressed to catherine's parents that he had one major worry in particular he told them that catherine had been receiving texts and emails from an ex-boyfriend for some time now and they were very threatening in nature saying things like if i can't have you no one can and they were worried for catherine's safety but not only that raphael was also worried that catherine might do something to herself she was so distressed and anxious with these texts he said that she'd spoken of suicide before so there was there were multiple different things that could have happened here so the family decided that this was very serious and they informed the police and the search began immediately an investigation began to find catherine wells burr meanwhile rafal the whole family all stayed at home comforting each other and it didn't take long until the family received the news that they were dreading the most that katherine wells burr had been found but she was dead her body was found on the side of a road in her own car about seven miles away from where she lived in a town called ashel the car had been set on fire and burned out pretty much with her in the driver's seat catherine's body was recovered and taken for an autopsy because right now it was unclear what exactly her cause of death was however this just seemed suspicious the circumstances in which she went missing and how her car was found maybe this could have been a suicide but it's unlikely that suicide victims will burn the vehicle that they commit suicide in you know what's what's the use in that what's the point in that the fact that the crime scene potential crime scene was set on fire insinuates that maybe this was foul playing murderers will often set the crime scene on fire if they want to get rid of all evidence in there that's not something you see often with suicide cases i mean it's possible but it's unlikely and so for that exact reason police were treating this as a suspicious death and so they began interviewing all of catherine wells burr's family and rafael novak police didn't have any concrete reason to suspect rafal novak but in these kind of cases where someone is unexpectedly and suspiciously killed out of nowhere police often look to the partner you know the ex-partner the husband the wife you know it's always the romantic partner that is looked at first but police reassured both him and the rest of the family that this was just routine procedure they have to look at the romantic interest rafal novak with a little bit of a closer eye is that the saying but they did reassure them that they were going to look into other avenues they were going to look at everything that they possibly could in this case to get catherine some justice so rafael novak told police that he was with catherine the whole evening before her murder he said that that night they'd gone to the supermarket to buy some last minute ingredients for dinner they were gonna make burgers so they needed buns they needed lettuce whatever so they went home they made this meal they ate it together then they watched a dvd together and fell asleep he said that the next morning he woke up around 5 a.m catherine was still asleep so he just got ready for work got showered got dressed and then as he was leaving he worked catherine up to give her a good bye kiss and then left for work leaving catherine to sleep in a little bit longer because she didn't start work for another few hours and he said that this is what they would do every single morning he would give her a kiss and then leave and she would come to work in her own time whenever her shift started so that was the version of events that rafale told the police and that night the night that catherine's body was found her family offered raphael novak to come and stay at their house because they didn't want him staying alone in the house that he bought with their daughter for them to start a family in and now she's gone they just they didn't want him to be alone they wanted to all be together so that they could all comfort each other like i said catherine's family treated raphael novak like he was their own son they really welcomed him into their family but within 24 hours of catherine's body being found her family began having some doubts about raphael nervak so much sir that they actually went to the police and informed them for starters the way that he was acting on the evening that he found out that the love of his life was murdered he was never gonna see her again he just didn't seem as sad as everyone else and while people deal with grief in different ways he just he didn't cry he didn't cry at all he was barely speaking about catherine that night he he spoke about wanting a stick dinner more than he spoke about losing the love of his life they also remembered something that rafale had said when catherine was just missing so before her body was found they're thinking that maybe she could come back he was saying that he'd lost his world he lost his whole future and her family has stood there thinking well she's not even been missing 24 hours yet this could be a misunderstanding so it was almost as if rafal knew that catherine wasn't gonna come back and catherine's family also remembered one very important piece of information and that was that catherine and rafal had recently taken out life insurance policies and made each other the sole beneficiary and these life insurance policies turtled at 123 000 pounds each so if anything was to happen to the other person the other one would get 123 000 pounds and while life insurance is of course a good thing to have because you never know what's gonna happen and you need to make sure that your family are prepared it's quite uncommon for someone so young you know catherine was 23 years old to have such an expensive life insurance policy at her age or at least it's like that in the uk i don't know what it's like everywhere but i don't know many people at my age and i'm 21 that have such an expensive life insurance policy so not only was it slightly odd that they did that in general but they also made each other the soul beneficiary her parents got nothing it just all seemed like it was fitting into place there was a motive there was money there was the way that he was acting after this happened he didn't seem to be too affected and it was almost as if he knew that she wasn't going to be coming back so police decided to look further into raphael novak they seized his phone they searched his home and they uncovered a whole double life that rafal novak was living whilst he was in a relationship with catherine he had in fact been seeing his ex-girlfriend anna lagvinovich again had they ever really broken up i don't even know and texts on his phone revealed that he'd been secretly meeting up with ana lagvinovich multiple times a week sometimes even twice a day and anna was very jealous of catherine and she was very angry that raphael wasn't leaving catherine for her and these texts suggested that the two of them rafal and anna lagvinovich had met up 78 times in the past however many months police also decided to look into raphael novak's history in poland a little more and they found that he actually had a criminal record for violence against women he'd actually been convicted of a number of things in poland including reckless drunk driving but also abusing his wife he was very abusive towards his wife and that contributed to one of the reasons why he moved to the uk and moved away from her of course as all of this was going on as they were looking into rafael novak they were also just still looking into catherine wells burr's life just kind of seeing what kind of person she was what kind of people she would hang around with and that was when they found that catherine had a number of profiles and accounts on adult online dating sites but these dating sites they weren't like tinder on match.com they were like casual sex meetup websites but something was off about these dating website profiles that catherine had supposedly set up the wording just didn't seem like her and police had her phone they had her text history so they could see what she talked like what kind of words she used and these profiles it just didn't seem like it was catherine and sir police looked further into this in all these profiles and they found some pornographic images supposedly of catherine that were edited they weren't catherine they were pornographic images of some other woman with catherine's face edited on them these profiles and messages on these websites dated back a few months before catherine was actually murdered but the most recent of which the most recent message that catherine sent was at 5 00 am on the morning that she was murdered she texts one man saying that she was on her way to meet up with him and then within a few hours of sending that text message she was killed so police got to work tracing the phone number the sim card that catherine texts that morning hoping it would lead them to this man that she'd been texting and meeting up and hopefully they would find who had done this to her so as they were doing all of that the results of catherine's autopsy came back and her cause of death was actually found to be asphyxiation so suffocation it seemed as though she'd been suffocated and then put into her car and transported somewhere someone else had probably driven her car out there with her body like in the boot and it was at this point in the case that police recalled that when they first went round to the house to speak with rafal at this point catherine was just missing she wasn't murdered so they weren't particularly looking for for odd things in the house but when they found out that catherine was suffocated to death they remembered seeing one pillowcase one single pillowcase pegged out on the line after it had been washed just drying and how common is it for people to wash their bedding one pillar case at a time no one does that so this led police to believe that catherine was suffocated using this pillar and then her killer had washed it and put it on the line forensic experts were also sent in to look at the car catherine's car that she was left in and that was burnt out and they found that the fire was set around 6 a.m and while police were suspicious of raphael nervak he did clock in to work at like 5 30 that morning so it couldn't have been him that set the fire but what was odd was that those same forensic scientists that examined the car found that catherine was wearing shorts at the time that her body was burned and people that knew catherine said that she never wore shorts you know they'd never seen catherine wearing shorts during the day the only time they'd ever seen catherine wear shorts was like pajama shots to sleep in sir had catherine been killed in her sleep or at least when she was in her pajamas she wasn't ready for the day yet which kind of contradicts the theory that she was going to meet up with a man from one of these websites surely she would have gotten dressed to go and meet up with this man that she was gonna hook up with she wouldn't go there in pajama shots so right now this is a very confusing case but all it took was one more piece of evidence to come forward from catherine's autopsy and that was that she still had undigested food in her stomach at the time that she was killed which forensic psychologists said that it would be impossible for her to have undigested foods still in her stomach if she was killed any later than 5 a.m so she was killed before 5am they actually placed it more around 2 3 a.m that she was killed and who was home with her at 2 30 a.m rafale nervak rafal even told the police that he kissed her on his way to work but she was dead at 5am so he'd lied to police about giving her a goodbye kiss on his way to work maybe he had murdered catherine before he left for work and then maybe this was all part of his alibi that someone he was gonna hire someone or bring someone in to take her body away and set the fire once he was already clocked in at work so that it couldn't be traced back to him so within 24 hours of catherine wells burr's body being found raphael novak was arrested and brought into police custody and from there this whole thing began unraveling after reading the texts between raphael novak and his girlfriend anna lagvinovic all of these you know jealous texts from anna and tex saying that he was gonna meet up with anna they thought that maybe she at least at the very least might know something about this if not maybe she was involved so they decided to arrest 32 year old anna lagvinovich so police have and anna in custody while they're also doing all of this other stuff in the background like tracing the sim card that catherine texted that morning and finally they got the results back they were able to trace this sim card to a familiar location and finally they were able to track this sim card they followed it all the way to its location and found that it was actually inside anna legwinovich's vehicle in her car and using this sim card and its location and its you know tracking gps they were able to trace ana lag vinovich's movements in the days before catherine's murder and things only got deeper from that anna's 38 year old uncle to dewish demetrician was seen with her on a petrol station's cctv footage the two of them buying jerry cans of petrol together and what was used to light catherine wells bear's car on fire when she was murdered petrol this murder was way bigger way deeper way more premeditated than police initially realized now it seemed as though three people were involved and they needed to know more so they looked into anna's uncle todoish demetrician and they found that the two of them were very very close anna was to dewish's only friend in the uk they'd come over from poland he'd struggled to make friends and so his niece who was very close to him in age was like his world and he was very devoted to anna you know he would do anything that she wanted and this now seemed to police as though this was a huge web of just a bunch of tangled motives and reasons for these three people to have come together and worked together to murder catherine wells burr there was the love triangle between anna and catherine and rafal there was the money motive of the insurance perhaps that's what got the uncle involved maybe he was promised a cut of the money that they would get from the insurance there was jealousy there was the fact that rafal was juggling two women perhaps he'd gone back to anna realized he'd made a mistake going with catherine instead of anna so now he needed to get out of that relationship with catherine there were a lot of different motives a lot of different reasons and so police decided to look into the months before this and see how this exactly went down and that was when they realized just how premeditated this murder was this had been in the planning for months they'd all made these fake profiles these fake pornographic images of catherine they'd been messaging random men asking to meet up and never going through with it they were putting all of this in place for months beforehand so that when katherine was murdered police might see these messages and think oh she was just murdered by one of these men that she met up with when in reality it was all raphael novak and anna legwinovich i don't believe the uncle was involved in the premeditation just more the actual event of getting rid of catherine's body it seemed as though raphael and anna had planned how they were going to do it what alibis they were going to use what kind of reasoning they were going to give as to why they think that catherine was killed and then anna brought in her uncle to help her dispose of catherine's body while raphael was at work this was the man that she loved the man that catherine wells burr saw herself spending the rest of her life with she had a house with him she was gonna get married to him she was gonna start a family with him and this whole time he'd been cheating on her and planning how he was gonna kill her just to get the life insurance money from the policy that he encouraged her to take out and she was completely unaware of it the whole time so all three of them anna to dewish and rafal were all arrested and all pled not guilty they said they had no part in catherine wells burr's murder disappearance the disposal of her body they had no idea what had happened to her they refused to tell police anything and so police had to come up with a theorized version of events now i know this case has been a little bit confusing so far but hopefully this will kind of even that out police believe that of course this had been in the works for months before the actual murder but that night everything went as normal they had dinner together rafale and catherine they watched a dvd they went to bed and then while catherine was asleep they believed that raphael picked up a pillar and smothered her with it while she was sleeping in the early hours of the 12th of september 2012. they believed that he then contacted his girlfriend analog vinovich and her uncle to jewish demetrician and told them to come to his house these accomplices then picked up catherine's body took it out and put it in the boot of her own car and drove her body out to a place that to doistrometrician had planned a few days in advance he'd gone out for a drive in that general area in a few miles radius and looked for kind of out of the way places where they could set a car on fire and no one would notice for a while so anna legwinovich and todoistramitricion drove this red ford focus that catherine earned out to ashel which is seven miles away from where she lived they then got her body out of the boot placed it in the driver's seat they put the seat belt on her in the driver's seat placed her shoes back on her feet so it looked as if she'd driven herself there and then they waited until 6 a.m and lit the car on fire because like i said rafael novak will have clocked in at work at around half past five that morning so then if police come sniffing around rafale it can't have been him because he was at work they thought that this was the perfect plan the perfect alibi but they didn't plan everything else quite so well anna lagvinovich was caught on cctv at the local tip just a couple of hours after catherine's body was dumped in that area and anna was disposing of a few items in the tip that were later recovered and found to belong to catherine in custody while they were awaiting their trial rafale anna and todoish are all in police custody and police are continuously interviewing them you know trying to get any more information out of them that they possibly could and they weren't giving anything for a long time and then all of a sudden rafal and anna turn on each other rafal said that anna killed catherine out of jealousy she wanted to be with him and catherine was in the way so she got rid of catherine whereas anna said that rafal hired a hitman to kill katherine to get the insurance money these two people had completely different stories anna even attempted to smuggle out of prison a fake confession letter from this hitman now this is a little bit confusing so let me explain anna was in jail with her you know cell mate and her cellmate was due to be released and so anna wrote this fake confession letter from the hitman that killed catherine saying that rafale had offered the hitman 20 000 pounds to help him kill catherine and then anna gave this fake confession letter to her cellmate to take out with them when they left prison and mailed to the police station so it looked as though the hitman was just confessing but of course her cellmate once she got out of prison she gave this letter over to the police and said look analog vinovich tried to make me do this anyway all three of them were put on trial for murder rafal novak sobbing in the dock saying that he'd lost the love of his life he was defending himself saying that he had no part in this murder and that it was all anna but it actually arose during this trial that on the way to court one day raphael novak had been overheard saying to ana legwinovich that he loved her and she said it back and this only confirmed police's theory that the two of them murdered catherine together for their own joint gain when he was asked about this when he was asked well why did you tell her you loved her then he said that he only said it because he wanted to keep her happy he wanted to keep her on his side he didn't actually mean it and he was only saying it to hopefully get a little bit more information out of her about how she'd killed catherine alone rafael novak's defense was that he believed that anna lagvinovich murdered catherine out of jealousy and out of spite that raphael had moved on to catherine but of course there's so much more evidence against that it also came out during this trial and i don't actually know how police know this so take this with a pinch of salt but it was theorized police theorized that the three of them actually intended to murder catherine the night before they actually did it but they believed that in the middle of the night sir rafal was going to wait until the middle of the night to do this however catherine received a phone call in the middle of the night that woke her up and that foiled the whole plan because then when she went back to sleep she wouldn't be in as deep of a sleep so she might wake up as he was doing it you know and that meant that she lived one more day and her killers decided to strike again the next night of course like i said i don't know how police know that but they did anyway all three of them were found guilty of murder and sentenced to life in prison with a minimum of 32 years each the killers have since appealed for their sentences to be served back in poland which would mean that the minimum sentence would be reduced from 32 years to 25 years i don't know how that works just different countries laws this appeal has since been rejected they've also appealed loads of different things to like get their sentences reduced all of which have been rejected they are serving that amount of time in a uk prison catherine wells bear's family have since set up the katherine wells birth foundation which raises money to help victims and families of murder victims to kind of cope with the aftermath the very unexpected aftermath of a murder so things like buying headstones maybe they don't have enough money for a funeral so unexpectedly the family have also campaigned for tighter immigration laws on the uk saying that people moving into the uk from elsewhere aren't screened enough in terms of like their criminal history you know of course rafal nervak was known to the polish authorities for abusing his wife and reckless drunk driving and the wells burr family believed that he should have been screened harder and potentially not let into the country if he had such a criminal history or at least he should have been monitored more once he was in the uk but yeah that is all i have on this case thank you so so much for watching thanks again to seekers nuts for sponsoring this video if you want to download the app the link to download is in the description as well as the link to their facebook page remember there are 50 chances to win a 10 amazon gift card on their facebook page so make sure you go and enter that good luck also i can't remember if i mentioned this in the end of my last video but my merch is out still i have these in black pink and blue hoodies mugs socks face masks everything i have so much so if you want to go and support me that is probably one of the best ways to do it is going and purchasing some merch thank you so much if you have i really really appreciate it and i hope you love it i love it huge thank you to all of my channel members for helping me decide the cases that i cover especially my tier 2 members whose names are all on screen right now if you want to become a channel member you can just click the join button on a desktop or there'll be a link in the description of this video but yeah thank you so so much for watching this video if you enjoyed make sure you leave a big thumbs up down below if you want to subscribe there's a link right here if you want to subscribe to my second channel there's a link right here and if you want to watch another video there's a playlist on screen right now bye

Channel: Eleanor Neale

Views: 1,094,884

Rating: 4.9485955 out of 5

Keywords: eleanor, neale, eleanor neale, eleanor neale true crime, eleanor neale makeup, mystery, unsolved, unsolved mystery, true crime, solved, documentary, killer, murder, serial killer, buzzfeed, buzzfeed unsolved, podcast, true crime podcast, bbc, itv, netflix, storytime, forensic files, 2020, crime watch daily, dateline, interview, news, creepypasta, horror, catherine, wells-burr, wells, burr, somerset, rafal nowak, rafal, england, uk, cold case files, real stories, bristol, poland, love triangle

Id: 4eatyxM-UhE

Length: 34min 39sec (2079 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 18 2020