THE STEPHEN LAWRENCE CASE

so today's video is going to be another salt true-crime kiss today we're gonna be talking about the case of Stephen Lawrence so quickly before I get into this video I just want to give my usual disclaimer that I mean absolutely no disrespect to anyone that I talk about in this video this is all just information that I have found on the internet and I'm compiling into one video so Stephen Lawrence was an 18 year old boy born on September 13th 1974 in southeast London he was the first child of Jamaican bon parents Neville and Doreen Lawrence Stephen eventually became the oldest of three siblings when two years after Stephen was born they had his younger brother Stewart and then when Stephen was eight years old they had his younger sister Georgina Stephen was very determined and headstrong and stubborn but not always in the negative way he just kind of knew what he wanted and he was gonna go out and get it he was very creative he was a very talented artist he could draw really well but above all else Stephen was very athletic and he excelled in running he took part in marathons and so many kind of athletics competitions all of which he did really well in he studied technology physics English language and English literature at college and hope to one day become an architect on Thursday April 22nd 1993 18 year-old Stephen Lawrence had his usual day at school when after school he decided to go into Lewisham with his friend Dwayne Brooks and they were just gonna kind of look around the shops after about an hour in town the boys got the bus back to Stephens uncle's house where they played video games for a while before long it was coming up on 10 o'clock and Stephens mom always wanted him home by 10:30 and so the boys realized it was getting late and so they rushed to the bus stop the bus that the boys would have normally got from this stop wasn't actually due until 10:00 Thursday and obviously that was gonna get them home way too late and so the boys began formulating another route that they could take home instead of getting the usual one bus all the way home the boys were gonna get a few shorter bus routes that would hopefully get them home within the half an hour so the boys took two shots of buses with no problems when they arrived to finally take the last bit of the journey from Alton to lewisham where Stephen lived they arrived to Elton at 10:25 so Stephen had five minutes to get home and he knew he wasn't gonna do it but this boss that they were supposed to be getting from Elton to Lois him seemed to be running a little bit late still at 10:35 so at this point Stephen was already five minutes late and the bus still wasn't there so Stephen was getting really anxious that his parents were gonna be mad at him or that they were gonna be worried so Stephen left win at the bus stop and walked to the end of the road to a little Junction bit to see if he could see a bus come in that way at all he was only there for a few seconds just to check if the bus was coming and then he turned round and set back off to Duane he was around halfway of the distance between where he'd gone to check for the bus and the bus stop where Duane was when he heard shouting so Stephen looked across the road where he saw five or six white boys running towards him shouting racist slurs i within seconds the group had swarmed Stephen and Duane still at the bus stop watched one of them lived a knife over the top of the head and plunge it down into Stephens shoulder and Duane was just kind of stood there in shock as he watched them do it again they lifted the knife up again and stabbed into Stephens body on the other side this time by his collar bird both of the wounds were so severe that they actually punctured five inches or thirteen centimeters into Stephen they also punctured one of his lungs and cut open two of his main arteries he will have been losing blood so quickly at this rate that scientists in he would have lost all feeling in his right arm and he would have been having a lot of trouble breathing at this point Duane realized that he was also in danger this was an obvious racist attack that ran over to his friend shouts him racist slurs and then stabbed him twice and so Duane began running and shouted to Stephen to run with him too and Stephens attackers actually ran off straight after the second stabbing the whole attack must have only lasted around ten seconds and even with a punctured lung severed arteries and constricted breathing Stephen began running he actually ran a 20 meters before collapsing to the ground and began bleeding out so do wane run to a nearby phone box and call for an ambulance a few minutes later a police car arrived at the scene a police car not an ambulance a policeman Duane had called the emergency services asked for an ambulance because his friend was bleeding at an alarming rate and they sent a policeman instead obviously Duane was very angry and so the police that came actually sent off for an ambulance themselves but meanwhile they didn't seem to be too bothered with Stephen at all police were actually more concerned with accusing Duane Brooks Stephens best friend who had been there the whole time told them the whole story from start to end but they're still somehow believed it was him they were accusing him of maybe having an argument with Stephen and so he'd done this to him on maybe the two boys were part of the gang and this was gang-related police seem to want to believe anything other than what Duane was telling them meanwhile an 18 year old boy is bleeding to death on the road and they don't seem to care at all even if police thought that Stephen was already dead he could have still been just unconscious and so they should have been doing some farm and first aired on him until the paramedics got there but they weren't Duane was practically begging the police to give Stephen some farmer first aired at least just check his pulse or his breathing or anything but they literally just didn't touch him in fact because police didn't touch him or even look at him for too long they didn't know the source of the bleeding they actually believed that Stephen was bleeding from an injury in his head not two stab wounds to the chest and even though it Wayne was telling them the story of what had happened Duane was telling them that he saw these people stab his friend twice in the chest they weren't believed in him they believed that he had a wound to the head but they didn't even check it these officers at the scene will later on questioned about their ability and their willingness to give first end at the scene and it was found that these officers weren't even trained in first aired in a basic UK first aired cast one of the first julen is the acronym AVC meaning airways breathing and circulation and that is the first thing that you check someone's Airways everything in the circulation in fact years later when this investigation into the police officers was going on they were asked what ABC meant and none of them could even name one of the letters never mind the whole thing anywhere as Dewayne and the police officers were waiting at the scene with Stephen for an ambulance to come to people pass by to crispian's name Conner and Louise Taff they saw that no one was really paying any attention to this body bleeding out on the floor and so they stepped in and give this boy some attention they didn't know thirsted or anything they didn't know how to physically help this boy but they just kind of knelt by him they held his hands they spoke to him and they soothe him they prayed for him Conner prayed for the boy and his family while Louise held his hand and told him in his final moments that he was loved and that people cared for him finally an ambulance arrived took Stephen to the hospital where he was finally pronounced dead however it's believed that he died within minutes of collapsing to the floor so within the hour Stephens family were informed of his murder and so they went to the hospital to go and see him Stephens mother Doreen said that he looked peaceful almost as if he was smiling a little bit like it was just a sleep she expected him to look scared or sad or angry just due to the way that he was killed but he didn't look any of those things she explained it as if maybe Stephen didn't know or expect that he was gonna die of his wounds he just looked so peaceful that that thought couldn't possibly have been on his mind in his last moments so right away I Stephens murder investigation began and one officer was appointed the lead investigator even though this officer knew that he probably couldn't handle this case this officer that was appointed lead investigator already had a lot on his plate had a lot of different cases to be dealing with and instead of just passing it on to someone else and saying no look I don't have time for this he took it on anywhere it was extra work and extra pair he knew that he couldn't do it but he took it on anywhere and he knew he was probably gonna have to pass it on to someone else and he did after just a couple of days it had to be passed on to another officer and this meant that the case pretty much had to be start and write all over again so those first two or three days were a complete write-off when they could have got so much done right in the beginning because now this new lead investigator had to be caught up on everything that was going on he had to be told every single little detail of this case which took another few days to do and so at this point been lost maybe five or six days when they could have been tracking down some murderers that is a huge amount of time to just go missing in a murder case so there were three people that actually witnessed Stephens murder obviously Duane Brooks his friend and then two of the people that were stood at the bus stop all three of them were able to give witness statements and that ruled Duane Brooks out as a suspect completely but none of them could actually identify the real attackers but in the days following the murder several members of the public came forward with possible names of suspects including a gang some people will call it in to police to give these names over but other people were also trying to do it anonymously so one person left a note on a police car one person left a note in a phone box and then rang police and told him to check that phone box so it was clear that a lot of people kind of feared for their own safety given in these names so there were obviously dangerous people within days of the murder of five suspects were identified a gang of young boys from Eltham the lead member of the gang was 17 year old Neil aircard who was the older brother of another gang member inside that gang 16 year old Jimmy a cop and then there was 17 year old Gary Dobson who was kind of believed to have been like the brains of the gang and although he wasn't a leader he was actually more of a follower in this gang he was still the most kind of logical one there was 16 year old link night and also 16 year old David Nora David Norris was actually the son of a notorious gangster and drug dealer in that area as well the gang were known to have a fascination with knives they would always carry them and sometimes use them in fights and the boys had been involved in racially motivated attacks before one of which was only a few weeks before Stevens murder just four weeks before Stevens murder Garry Dobson and Neil aircar attacked a young black teenager called Kevin London and attempted to stab him around the same time Neil Jamie David and Gary were all accused of stabbing two victims named gurdy and Stacy and a year earlier Neil's younger brother Jimmy stabbed a black teenager named Aaron with him so the gang have been involved in a lot of knife crime a lot of racially motivated crime as well like I said these five suspects have been put forward by a lot of people and looking at their criminal history it looks likely that it could be them but they still weren't arrested there was grounds for reasonable suspicion at this point I understand that there was no evidence but there was grounds for reasonable suspicion and those boys should have been arrested but they were in and police did nothing really they didn't put them on surveillance they didn't question them at all they didn't do much of anything but they did put a photographer outside an abandoned house that the boys used to use as a kind of gang based type thing they put a photographer outside there not a policeman a photographer to take pictures of the boys entering and leaving the building to see if they were doing anything suspicious and they did do something suspicious that the photographer calls so jimmy air caught the younger of the air cult brothers was seen taking out a bin bag full of whatever believed to have been evidence he took it from this abandoned house into his car and drove away with it but obviously because this photographer it was the 1990s he didn't have a phone he had no way to contact police all he could do was take pictures of it had that been a policeman there instead of a photographer had I've been watching these boys like police surveillance he could have followed them and seen what was in that bin bag but by the time the photographer had told police what he'd seen it had been too late they've been nowhere to find where the boys took that bin bag that would have probably burned it or something like that so that's just another thing that the police did wrong in this case and the police work in this case is just gonna continue to get more and more frustrating that's just a warning just a side note on how bad the police work was in this case years later after this case was solved and everything they had a kind of internal review on how the police handled this case and it was found that a woman that could have been a vital witness could have been there to witness Stephens murder try and get in contact with police three times in the days following the murder all of her calls were missed or ignored and so on each of these three calls that she attempted she also left a voicemail saying please can you get back in contact with me but police never did and I understand that they were busy but that is one of the biggest parts of the investigation answering calls taking leads and things like that and you can't tell me that they don't listen to voicemails I understand them may be missing the calls but there's no excuse for them not getting back to her when they have time and it'd be different if they just did that for one or two calls like they accidentally miss one or two calls accidentally miss one or two voicemails but to miss three calls and three voicemails from the same woman that just shows how much information they could have possibly ignored in this whole case they also decided pretty early on in this investigation that they were going to use a computer system called homes to star all the information from this case it's designed to hold a lot of information that can be accessed by any officer at any time multiple officers at the same time and it's laid out so that the most important leads are right on the front page as you open it so the most important things in the case are right there for you to see it's basically designed with cases like this in mind to make it easier to solve them quicker to solve them however kind of worked in the opposite way in this case it turned out that less than half of the officers put onto the ceilin Lawrence case actually knew how to use the home system and so the people that did know how to use the system were putting information onto it but obviously the other half of the people couldn't access that information and the other half of the people that didn't know how to use it were trying to use it trying to put information into it but they were doing it wrong and so this information was getting lost because they were putting it in the wrong places and it was just getting missing in this big system and so all in all this system wasted a lot of time it meant that a lot of information and leads and people's numbers and witness statements and things like that would just go in mixing and it just made the case so much harder than it needed to be so any we're back to the present time of them trying to solve the case so police really just kind of assumed that Steven was a gangster he was a criminal and that he probably knew his attackers and possibly expected that he was going to be attacked they believe that Steven probably provoked his attackers because he was part of a gang or because it was drug or crime related despite witnesses telling police what they saw telling police that they saw a group of white guys attacking this boy on reduct just because of his race and it's believed that police assumed a lot of these things but just assumed that Steven and Dwayne were in a gang or just assumed that Steven was a criminal because he was black and that is what a lot of people assume that is what Steven's own family assumed that is what the majority of people that look into this case assume that the police had some sort of racial bias and that was why they didn't care to look after Steven as he was land on the side of the road bleeding out that is why this case was so slow in the beginning that's why they didn't answer too many calls that's why they just didn't care to put too much effort into this investigation because it was black and therefore they believed that he was a criminal and brought this on himself police spent a lot of time Janene Stephens family Stephens friends everyone in Stephens life rather than actually trying to find his killers they checked all of Stephens families kind of criminal records even though that has literally nothing to do with Stephens own murder police just wanted to find any kind of evidence to confirm their assumptions they just wanted to believe anything other than the obvious true story that even witnesses were telling them and police had 22 tip offs about this one specific gang who had backgrounds of racially motivated crimes knife crimes how much more obvious could these suspects be yet police didn't care about that but still ten days after Stephens murder no arrests have been made even though police could arrest these five boys on the grounds of reasonable suspicion they're just when they didn't want to it was at this point that Nelson Mandela was visiting the UK and he'd actually heard of Stephens murder and wanted to meet with his parents after the meeting with Doreen and Neville Lawrence Mandela held a press conference where he said from what I hear from the Lawrence's black lives are cheap in this country and it took being shamed by one of the world's most powerful and respected activists the police to finally make arrests in this case so the aircar brothers and Gary Dobson were the first to be arrested and then David Norris actually turned himself into police and was arrested three days later and then Luke Knight was the last to be arrested almost a month after the first three the questioning of these boys however was really kind of useless all the body said was no comment even to their own end they would just say no comment everything even one of the boys question is I don't know which buy it was but one of the boys question is actually only lasted for seven minutes and within that seven minutes that boy was actually only asked seven questions relating to Stephen Laurence's murder police also searched the boys Hans but with very kind of minimal effort police have actually a tip-off that the boys were hiding weapons underneath their floorboards however the police didn't inform the office is going to search the houses that they'd had that tip-off and so how would the officers actually search in the house supposed to know that they were supposed to look underneath the floorboards they wouldn't think that and they didn't think that so if there were weapons under the floorboards they completely missed it because they didn't check and obviously because police had waited so long to actually arrest the boys they'd had chance to get rid of any evidence or clothing that might have forensics on it that have had chance to wash it or burn it weapons obviously they will have gotten rid of so how much evidence were they're really gonna fighting in these home searches they did however seize some clothing from each of the boys that matched kind of witness descriptions of what the attackers were wearing they also got some witnesses to look at a police lineup with Neil Air cot in it and several of them actually picked out Neil as one of the attackers and one of these witnesses that actually picked Neil out of the lineup was Dwayne Brooks and so police felt that that was good enough evidence so they charged Neil Earhart with murder then over a month later police charged a second boy Luke Knight with the murder of Stephen Lawrence as well but then just over a month after that prosecution decided that they didn't have enough evidence and so they dropped the charges against the boys so in August of that year after the charges were dropped police were forced to do an internal review of the police investigation of Stephens murder but somehow in April of the following year after the review was done and everything the officer that carried out the review of his own team said that everything was done how it should have been obviously is gonna say that about his own team otherwise he'd get into trouble why would he say anything else but over a decade later way after this I'm just skipping way ahead in the timeline another review was done about the whole case once it was solved and it was found that everything was so corrupt in this police investigation it found that that officer that carried out that review was wrong he was lying just to protect these they found that so much went wrong in this first investigation and they were forced to do a public apology just years and years and years later but anyway back to the timeline for a whole year after Stephens murder the kiss just went pretty much cold despite constant campaigning from Stevens family and after being pushed by Stevens family's campaign in and public outrage that police still hadn't found these murderers police finally stepped up the investigation a little bit they planted a hidden camera and recording device inside the flat that Gary Dobson was renting hoping that maybe he'd have the whole gang round and maybe they'd talk about the murder and when police listened to the tapes they didn't hear anything about the murder but they heard a lot of just vile racist language well like I said the men never spoke about Steven's murder because why would they it was a whole year after his murder if they had committed it why would they still be talking about it a year later if police were gonna do this hidden-camera thing hit a recording device they should have done it within the first few weeks of the murder when they were suspects not wait a full year because they wouldn't have been talking about it on the day-to-day the only thing that police did get from these hidden recordings was the racist language which was a proof for a motive maybe but it wasn't substantial evidence enough to rehearse the it was just in case they have aware we arrested for more substantial evidence this could also be used to back that up there were three exist and so at this point Stevens family was sick of being told that they didn't have enough evidence to prosecute the gang so they pulled their case from the Crown Prosecution Service which is the service that does all the prosecution's in the UK and they decided to go private now this was gonna be very very risky just in case they didn't have enough evidence or the right evidence and maybe the gang were acquitted of Stephens murder due to double jeopardy laws if that did happen and if the gang were acquitted that means that they can never be tried again for Stephens murder so it was like they have to get this right this was only chance so in April of 1994 a year after Stephens murder Jimmy a cop Gary Dobson and David Norris all stood trials so Stephens family's biggest piece of evidence that they had against the boys was that Dwayne Brooks a witness of the merger had picked two of them out in police lineups so now Dwayne had to withstand some form of kind of cross-examination in car to check that he was reliable in his evidence however he couldn't prove that he was found to be unreliable and that evidence was thrown out and mainly because of that after just a week of trial the prosecution just completely collapsed and so Dobson Knight and Jamie a cot were all acquitted as Stephens murder and so another police inquiry went on into Steven Lawrence's murder and for three years as that was going on everything just kind of went pretty quiet in the public about this case the inquiry resulted in Stephens death being branded as unlawful killing in a completely unprovoked racist attack by five white youths and that was based on evidence and witness testimonies then that was now official even though we pretty much already knew that that was now official and after this verdict the Daily Mail newspaper in the UK I decided to make Steven it's from Paige star a and Stevens case hadn't been in the headlines for coming up on four years at this point and this had learned that the Daily Mail mid was one of the most kind of memorable parts of this whole case the main headline on that front page was murderers in huge block capital letters with all five boys pictures their names their ages everything on the front page and as you can imagine this was very risky of the Daily Mail to do because they were calling these men murderers when they went officially guilty of murder so if they were ever found not guilty they could sue the Daily Mail for calling the murderers in front of millions of people in the UK Daily Mail knew that so they wrote on that front page the mail accuses these men of killing if we are wrong let them sewers and this really just shot Stevens cares straight back into the public eye and because the Daily Mail was so confident that these were the killers so was the rest of the public and so everyone began campaigning again but this time ten times harder but still police didn't really seem to be doing anything at all it seemed as though there were to be nothing they couldn't tell anyone what exactly they were doing to investigate this case they were just saying we're working on it then in 2004 the Crown Prosecution Service announced that there was insufficient evidence to prosecute anyone for Stevens murder and this was as you can imagine the absolute worst news that Stevens family could have gotten it means that no one is gonna pay for taking the life of their son but then a year later in 2005 the law was changed and double jeopardy was allowed to be repealed in very serious crimes such as murder rape just very serious crimes when new evidence comes up and so in June of 2006 police began reexamine in this case to see if there was any new evidence that they could bring up so that they could repeal the double jeopardy because three of those boys were acquitted in 1995 and so to find this new evidence they began re-examining a bunch of the evidence that they had before but this time with better forensic technology because the first time that they tested like all the boys clothes and things it was in 1993 and now it was 2006 and so forensic technology will have been ten times better they might have been able to find something that they couldn't find before and they actually did on the collar of Gary Dobson's jacket they found a microscopic stain of blood it's believed that some point during the attack possibly after the knife was drawn for a second time so I think was coming out of Stephens body a tiny microscopic droplet of his blood will have become a bond this tiny drop of blood was less than half a millimeter in diameter and it actually splashed onto Gary Dobson's collar which was now tested in 2006 and found to be a match to Stephen Lawrence's blood there was actually observe a billion to one of it being anyone elses blood and so this was really promising evidence they also found fibers on the jacket with a 99.9% chance that they were from the perler shed that Stephen Lawrence was wearing that night as well and also on an item of David Norrises clothing there were tiny little fibers of Stephen Lawrence's hair proving that David Norris was also at the scene of the murder so with this new promise in forensic evidence in May of 2011 Garry Dobson and David Norris both now in their 30s were both arrested and charged with the murder of Stephen Lawrence their trial began in November and lasted two months when in January of 2012 both men were found guilty with the murder of Stephen Lawrence both men were given life sentences Gary Dobson got a minimum of 15 years and David Norris got a minimum of 14 years and the reason their minimum sentences were so low is because the men were actually sentenced as juveniles because there were only 16 and 17 when they actually committed the crime had they been sentenced as adults because they were now in the 30s had they been sentenced as adults the minimum terms would have been more like 25 to 30 years rather than 14 and 15 years in April of this year Prime Minister Teresa Mayer announced that as of next year in 2019 the UK will have what is known as Stephen Lawrence day every year on April 22nd the day that Stephen was killed the UK will have Stephen Lawrence Day which will be used to commemorate his death but also to educate young people of racism and violence but yeah that completes this case and very very frustrating one honestly this is genuinely worst police work I've ever seen and this is deliberate as well well I personally think it's deliberate whatever you think is so to you you know everyone's got opinions everyone's entitled to their opinions that's fine but Stephens family and the majority of people that know about this case believe that the police had some sort of racial bias when it came to looking after this case and I just think the way that the police treated Stephen as he was laying there bleeding out on the floor whether it was due to his ribs or not that is completely unacceptable for whatever reason they give for not helping that boy even just speaking to him off sitting with him even if they didn't know at first and they could have at least sat with him and held his hand like those Christians did thank God that they were there I would hate to be Stephens mom and to think that he died on the side of the road alone I just think the way that police handled this in so many different ways is disgusting from the time of his death all the way up until these boys were sentenced the police barely did anything right and it's infuriate and it's really infuriated I'm gonna calm down now because I have been researching this case for way over a week and I've just been an absolute ball of anger for the last week but yeah I quickly want to apologize now right at the end of the video I was gonna do this right in the beginning but then people are no people are like you apologize too much yeah cuz I got a lot to apologize well I'm sorry for not bludgeoning like way over a week at this point I mean I think I uploaded a makeup video the other day but it's because I had a migraine I'm really bad migraine it was still bad it lasted six days and it was awful and it was terrible and it was really bad and a lot so I'm sorry that hasn't been a video in so long that's my reasoning for it and I'm sorry I'm also sorry for apologizing again cuz people don't like it when I do that but yeah thank you so so much for watching this video if you enjoyed make sure you leave a thumbs up so that I know really helps me out and subscribe down below if you want to see some more from me and yeah thank you so much for watching and I will see you in the next one bye

Channel: Eleanor Neale

Views: 904,451

Keywords: 2018, abducted, abduction, crime watch daily, disappearance, documentary, eleanor neale, eleanor neale 2, interview, killer, missing, mystery, now, serial killer, solved, solved disappearance, solved mystery, true crime, unsolved, unsolved disappearance, unsolved mystery, where is, stephen lawrence, gary dobson, neil acourt, david norris, jamie acourt, luke knight, lawrence, doreen, stephen, neville, nelson mandela, stephen lawrence documentary, bbc, documentary 2018, ross parker

Id: 46fu3K-pIm0

Length: 31min 31sec (1891 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 04 2018