Why Did A Young Mother Vanish And Leave Behind Her 10 Year-Old? | Nightmare In Suburbia | Real Crime

as the sun began to rise over peterb at 5:00 a.m. on the 12th of August 2011 it seemed to be a morning just like any other 29-year-old Vitalia balovich ventured out into the dawn light making her way to work leaving behind her 10-year-old son sound asleep in bed her main priority was her son and she's never ever gone a day where she had hasn't contacted him by phone during the day but that day was not like any other it was the day Italia disappeared there was just nothing there was hardly any clues at all and it really was like she had completely vanished Without a Trace essentially viala's footprint on life had just stopped what began as a missing person investigation quickly descended into something Al together more Sinister police began to understand that Vitalia had lived in fear for the last decade I'm thinking something has happened to her she's come to some harm this was now a hunt for Vitalia the search to find the missing mother was an Epic Quest spanning 6 months and covering thousands of miles the key to unlocking the horror of what had happened to Vitalia would come from the most ingenious of places taking detectives into the mind of her killer and allowing them to virtually sit by his side as he carried out a cold calculated and ter terrifying crime she' clearly been taken but we never ever gave up hope that we were going to find her alive peterb is cambridge's largest city situated on the river NE it's culturally diverse and has attracted a large Eastern European Community due to the plentiful job opportunities in May 2010 Vitalia bichen a 27-year-old Lithuanian moved to Peter to find work she lived very quiet unassuming life she took work when she could get it which was generally kind of unskilled work so she didn't have a lot of income so she did the best she could with what she had and she was the epitome of of hard work she would work 12h hour days five or six days a week Vitalia motivation for working so hard was back in Lithuania she had an 8-year-old son she plann to bring to the UK once she was settled I have to call my son she was very caring mother she worshiped her son and she was a very very very hard worker she came to the UK to work to ensure that her son had the very best her main priority was her son in July 2010 2 months after moving to the UK Vitalia brought her son to live with her in pabra but he didn't travel alone her husband of 10 years 45-year-old rantas bavius also moved to krid in her younger days Vitalia was in hospital for minor condition so bad noise and met romantis bichas you okay who was working in the hospital during repair work and that blossomed very quickly into the two becoming very close living together and then a few years later vital gave birth to little boy in July 2010 the trio were reunited in the UK and looked like any other familyid stupid woman but behind closed doors the reality was much more Sinister he was a jealous character he was always dominant right from the start and I think he dominated her all the way through the relationship she was a prisoner in a marriage he was a bully and [Music] more he made her life a living hell look at me I'm so sorry sorry sorry and that culminated in him assaulting her a number of times in Lithuania look at me for 10 years Vitalia had been subjected to a Relentless and horrific torrent of physical and psychological abuse she had come to the UK to finally Escape her husband and build a new life with her son but in July 2010 romanas bichas convinced Vitalia to give him one more chance and she conceded the family were reunited in Peter on the promise of a fresh start that promise lasted just 24 hours very quickly he reverted to tip he grabbed her around the throat and tried to strangle her you and she in a terrified State called the police and romantis was arrested Vitalia told the police that romanas had wrongly accused her of having an affair and how did he hurt you he then repeatedly choked her and while she struggled for breath told her that he would bury her in the garden the way the statement reads you could almost feel her fear within the wording of the statement and it clearly was he was very very NY and very very dangerous Vitalia abusive husband was released on bail but whilst the police were awaiting a charging decision from the CPS rantas fled back to Lithuania to avoid prosecution he then came back into the country weeks later and was picked up by police in Essex when they realized that his car and his name had triggered responses with the police national computer that he was actually wanted but after the crown prosecution service had considered all the circumstances in that assault the proceedings were dropped rantis was a free man but something had changed in Vitalia on the 13th of September 2010 she divorced the violent bully she eventually had enough and they split up and I think she was then quite happy that he chose go back to Lithuania and she stay in Peterboro where she could have restarted her life but Vitalia would never truly be free of her obsessive ex he would incessantly text her and he had to come here and see her in February 2011 his threats to return became a horrific reality for the second time in 6 months romanas bichas ferociously attacked his now ex-wife only this time he did so in front of a host of witnesses he grabbed around the throat which is synonymous with the previous attack and it was the vicious attack the police are on their way unfortunately she escaped with with minor injuries but it was a timely reminder for Vitalia that she may be divorced from him but his appetite and control uh had by no means diminished by the fact that their marriage had ended in July 2010 the case had been dropped but this time the violent bully was charged with common assault but rantas balovich skipped baale and fled to his native Lithuania he's now wanted having failed to turn up for baale but he's also a wanted man that knows that if you come back into the UK the chances are that you're going to be arrested although in Exile and unable to physically harm Vitalia it seemed she would never fully escape the shadow of her violent ex-husband he was obsessed with her from a thousand miles away and he would not leave her alone 28-year-old Lithuanian Vitalia bichen had suffered a decade of horrific abuse at the hands of her ex-husband rantas after Vitalia finally divorced him and attempted to start a new life rantas unexpectedly appeared and attacked her when she was collecting her son from a friend's house wanted for common assault against his wife rantas fled the UK to his native Lithuania to escape prison the fact that he had left the country again was some comfort to Vitalia but she felt as if every corner she turned around there was always the risk that she was going to run into him Vitalia was petrified that her ex-husband would come to the UK and harm her or her son so she put into place strategies to try and protect them as as far as work was concerned she always got picked up by a friend it was her control measure to feel safer such was the fear that romantis had had instilled in her Vitalia felt very vulnerable and that close friend was very important because Vitalia shared with her the secrets of what went on in the marriage I know where you are I know what you leave and even on one occasion allowed her to hear how romantis spoke to her on the mobile phone I have to call my son she would ring her son on her breaks and at lunchtime to make sure he was okay what are you doing she would never ever break that routine because she needed to know that he was okay I'll see you soon and that was born out of her fear that rantis might try something with rantas in Exile and unable to physically harm his ex-wife Vitalia attempted a fresh start after a decade of pain and torture she met a man who she developed a friendship with such that she started to be comfortable around him and and called him her boyfriend I think she was just starting to find her feet and just starting to Blossom and starting to enjoy life again I think you so much but the one thing Vitalia held most dear was used as a weapon against her by rantas she found herself in that terrible dilemma having gone through what she'd gone through that there had to be a level of contact look what's come for you romantis would shower their son with gifts from Lithuania one such gift was a laptop he would insist on contact with the son on Skype but because Vitalia lived in the same room as their son romantis was then able to see what was going on in the background he saw her with a new necklace and he was very quizzical about where this necklace had come from and who'd give it to her and was told that her boyfriend had bought it for her as a gift and that seemed to resonate very deeply with romantis rantas was wanted by the police for assaulting Vitalia and would be arrested if he entered the UK but in July 2011 just after Vitalia received the necklace from her new boyfriend someone matching her ex-husband's description was spotted in Peterborough Vitalia was told by her friend that she saw somebody who who she recognized as romantis but had a beard that she hadn't seen on him before and she knew him reasonably well I think that's an interesting thing this one piece will make 52 layers watch on mobile devices or the big screen all for free no subscription required Natalia went white she was physically sick that just says to me how scared of him she was this would have been a nightmare for her traumatized by the sighting of the violent fugitive Vitalia went to the police I don't know world to do but there was no record of rantas bavius entering the UK it appeared Vitalia friend had been [Music] mistaken for the next month more so than ever Vitalia was Vigilant about ensuring she did everything she could to keep herself and her son safe but on the 11th of August something happened which threatened the measures she had painstakingly put into place checked out tonight are you sure you going to be okay falia would normally be picked up directly outside the house by her friend but the car she was in nearly broke down later on that evening her friend rang back to say my car is undrivable but it was quite late in the evening and that left Vitali with no chance to make alternative arrangements to get to work she would have to to walk into town after romantis surprise attack in February 2011 Vitalia was so scared that she had avoided being anywhere in public alone now she faced the prospect of the 2m solitary walk just after Dawn into [Music] Peter that following morning Vitalia left the house at around 5:00 a.m. she'd got up much earlier than she would otherwise because she had to walk into the [Music] city as the day progressed the 29-year-old failed to follow her usual routine Vitalia was a creature of habit whenever she was at work on her breaks she would always make contact with her son to check in with him and make sure he was okay that day Vitalia did did not call to check on her son once as it was the school holidays the 10-year-old was being looked after by her housemates until she finished work any news Vitalia should have been home by about 6:00 in the evening but she didn't return home straight away her son became anxious he called Italia's boyfriend I'm on my way and a pair of them came to thorwood police station in Peterborough to report Vitalia missing we needed to establish did fatalia go missing before she arrived at work or had she actually gone to work for the day and then gone missing on her way home from work because that gave us a difference of 8h hour window so we made inquiries with the agency and she actually never arrived for work that day Vitalia had not been in touch with anyone for over 12 hours so at this point in the investigation I'm thinking one she could have left on her own accord she could have just decided that she'd had enough wanted to leave or two that actually something has happened to her she's come to some harm if Vitalia had left of her own accord she couldn't have traveled very far when Vidalia left for work that morning she had with her a phone I think she had quite a distinctive butterfly bag with her but there was nothing else in there there was no clothing there was nothing that you would take with you as if you were intending to leave home therefore by leaving everything else at home including passports she was expected to come home that day had she made an attempt to think I've had enough I want to go she probably would have packed more things but she didn't and there was one clear reason why Vitalia would not just leave without a word I mean I've got boys they're both the same age and I thought as a mom I wouldn't believe in my children and I wouldn't have not made any sort of contact with [Music] them does she normally text you or ring you the police interviewed Vitalia son her boyfriend her housemates and her friends I don't believe anybody thought that she was actually um leaving home I don't believe for a second that anybody thought that she was going on her own accord if vatalia had not left of her own accord perhaps someone had forced her her ex-husband he's crazy and I think he's talking her he tried to strangle her and threaten because of the problems that viar had had with her ex-husband they thought somewhere along the line that he was involved he knows where she lives he knows where she goes to work their troubled history meant that rantas bichas was someone the police wanted to talk to we felt that actually we should just phone him and ask him have you seen her where are you and when his phone was rung we heard a foreign ringtone to his mobile phone European daugh rantas was over a thousand miles away in Lithuania and he was asked explicitly if he had seen Vitalia or knew of her whereabouts and he was fairly emphatic that he couldn't possibly know where she was because he hadn't been to the UK since February although the obvious suspect is it appeared if Vitalia had been abducted her ex-husband could not have done it with rantas in Lithuania and Vitalia missing their son was all alone bless his heart he was just the most adorable little boy he just didn't know what was going on I mean the police were constantly in the house was interviewing asking them all these questions as a d of cared to him I felt that he needed to be properly looked after so actually I took out a police protection on um the son so I asked him to pack all his things and he asked me so sweetly he said am I allowed to take my Lego I said yeah of course you can the 10-year-old was taken into foster care until Vitalia was found but 36 hours had now passed since she was last seen nothing unusual she was on her way to work she does factory work in the CER area there was just nothing there was hardly any clues at all and it really was like she had completely vanished Without a Trace she just disappeared off the face of the Earth there was no information that there was no Financial information she had access to a bank account she wasn't calling her friends essentially Italia's footprint on life had just stopped the common scene throughout the whole time was this concern with the ex-husband but I still had no evidence to say that anybody had seen him in the country any time at the time that she was reported missing um it was just really unusual and it really was like she just completely vanished there was absolutely no trace of her 48 hours after her disappearance and there was still no sign of V for 2 days the police had been working tirelessly sourcing and examining local CCTV footage interviewing viala's friends and family and analyzing phone records and it was those phone records that gave detectives their first Breakthrough by calling into question a key fact despite the fact that romantis had told us that he had not been in the UK since February we investigated his mobile phone which showed in fact that on Thursday the 11th he received a text message somewhere in the region of DOA and that was likely to be a welcome to the UK text message rantas balich claimed he had not been to the UK for 6 months but his phone records implied otherwise if he' lied and actually entered the UK just hours before Vitalia vanished there should also be a record of his fery Crossing so then we look at what the arrival time was of that Ferry and look at the Manifest you'd come in and look at all the names and the vehicles were on that but it no time did we find rantus bichas on any of the passenger manifests rantas bavius could not enter the UK he knew he would be stopped and arrested at Customs because he was wanted for common assault yet his mobile phone was telling a different story so we started to refine the types of names we were looking for other uh Eastern European sounding names to then try and identify from passport images whether or not he had come into the UK under a different identity and we very quickly narrowed that list of names down to just a handful but one completely stood out from the rest and that was the identity of a man called rimas ven Clovis who when we compared the image on his identity card looked strikingly similar to the man that we knew as romantis balus Vitalia EX husband had lied to the police he had legally changed his name to rimas vanen Clovis and arrived in the UK the evening before Vitalia disappeared with his new name the passenger manifest also provided the registration to his vehicle a Mercedes veto van the police set about tracking its Journey once it entered the UK we were able to show through automatic number plate recognition cameras that the vehicle had crossed the bridge at Dartford and had then worked its way all the way up to Cambridge here and indeed was within a few hundred yards of Vitalia home after midnight and was clearly in the vicinity when Vitali would leave for work just a few hours later rantas had gone to Great Lengths to drive to Vitalia house undetected the police knew he was already back in Lithuania but they had no idea where his ex-wife was this was a crime in action now we believe that Balia has been kidnapped but we were never ever going to lose sight of the fact that we could get Balia back on the 16th of August 2011 4 days after Vitalia had last been seen a chilling image was discovered by the officers who had been trolling the hours of local CCTV footage an image that reinforced the detective's worst fears when I saw that CCTV I felt that in the pit of my stomach because for the first time we had some clear steerers to what had gone on here and it clearly showed the footage of a woman that looked quite a lot like Vitalia being grabbed from behind by somebody that looked a lot like romantis balus this is not going to end well really he's with her and if he's with her this is not good for her because we you could tell from the statements and from the buildup of the picture we had from family and friends that him being anywhere near her was not going to be a good thing the glimpses of Vitalia on CCTV confirmed once and for all that she had been snatched by her violent and obsessive ex-husband but it didn't reveal what happened once her as salent dragged her beyond the frame of the camera for me my thought processes around what had happened to her were that she'd been kidnapped and that he had control over her and that she was still alive or that the worst case scenario had occurred and actually he had done what he'd been threatening to do for a number of years in their marriage and that was to kill her and bury her 29-year-old Vitalia bichen was reported missing on the 12th of August 2011 it was suspected that her violently abusive ex-husband rantas had had a hand in her disappearance he had traveled from Lithuania to the UK under an alias the night before she vanished the police's worst fears were confirmed 4 days after Vitalia went missing when they uncovered CCTV footage that captured rantas abducting his ex-wife this was now a hunt for Vitalia but a hunt for him uh and to try and determine just how much damage he has done for a decade Vitalia had been subjected to the most terrific physical and mental abuse at the hands of rantas he would regularly beat her her hold her by the throat and threatened to kill and bury her the police knew he had taken Vitalia but now they needed to uncover what he had done once he had abducted her I needed some clarity about what took place in that road so I acquired a dog handler and the dog followed the route that we knew Vitalia had taken on CCTV hugging the wall on the left hand side of the road all the way to the end and the dog stopped at the only reasonable place that that van could have pass parked up waiting for Italia so I was very very clear in my mind at that point that the van had been used to carry Vitalia away from that scene at 5:20 on the Friday morning I know that Balia was taken hello Balia dragged into thismore Road in Peterborough by rantes 58 minutes later we see the van that romant has brought into the UK driving back along thismore Road the Talia had been a prisoner in her violent ex-husband's van for almost an hour before it was captured on CCTV as it left the area the police had no idea what dantas had done to Vitalia in that time or where he had taken her so the challenge was to map the route that that vehicle took when it turned left out of thismore Road in Peterborough there's a huge array of CCTV to try and draw through and to try and find sightings of him um and we spread that net quite wide by piecing together the glimpses of the van on CCV the police tracked the vehicle carrying Vitalia Beyond Peter and out into the Cambridge Countryside but then the CCTV runs dry towards the fenland area of Cambridge here [Music] which is vast open agricultural land with ditches and areas of forestation it would be appealing if you wanted to hide a body and stand a good chance of it not being found the same CCTV camera captured the van returning to Peter an hour later detectives were faced with the reality that rantas had not just kidnapped his ex-wife but also murdered her to drive out to that remote location and then within an hour drive back again that for me suggested that he was going there to deposit Italia's [Music] body the analogy a needle in a hay stack is as real as it's probably ever going to be in in these sorts of circumstances there is water in drains open Farmland forested areas with really dense undergrowth all of which present different challenges in trying to find somebody who's either dead or alive but [Music] incapacitated whilst the police believed Vitalia was hidden somewhere in the vast cambrid Countryside and began their search to uncover her they knew exactly where her abductor and possible killer was located I secured a European arrest warrant to forly arrest rantis in Lithuania and sent A team out to Lithuania with a view to getting him arrested as quickly as possible so that vital evidence could be recovered which might give us some idea of where Vitalia was the officers in Lithuania were able to tell me through working with the local police that he was trying to sell the distinctive Mercedes van so in order to secure him and the van we posed as customers and he was arrested on suspicion of the murder and kidnap of Italia rantas bichas was arrested 2 weeks after Vitalia abduction now in Lithuanian custody his home was searched and belongings secured in the hope they would offer the key to locating her back in the UK the hope of finding Vitalia alive had all but extinguished but the Intensive search for her body continued those searches went on for weeks and weeks every effort um that we possibly could that was reasonable we used to try and find Vitalia body but she was nowhere to be found will we ever find her will we ever find her and I think it's important for her family and especially her son for her to be found because they need that closure don't they one way or the other they need that closure 2 months after rantas abducted his ex-wife from the street the 47-year-old Lithuanian was finally brought to the UK to stand trial rantis was eventually extradited uh from Lithuania um and officers transferred him back into the UK and he was formerly charged with the murder and kidnap of Vitalia with Vitalia still missing and presumed dead the police faced going to trial without knowing what rantas had done to her and where he had hidden her body one of the massive restrictions when dealing with European arrest warrants is that you lose the right to interview somebody and I went against the guidance and I asked two of my officers to interview him okay romantis but ask him one question where is Vitalia he refused to help what have you done with her romanas would not respond to the one question the police and his own son needed answering however his demeanor noticeably changed when officers mentioned to him the belongings they had secured cured from his home in Lithuania we've got your wallet and we've got your [Music] sna he hadn't acknowledged the fact that we got his mobile phone hadn't acknowledged the fact that we' got his credit cards and bank cards but as soon as he was aware that we had got his sat Nerf the color drained out of his face rantas batavia's reaction to the mention of his satnav led the police to believe it could hold the key to where Vitalia was hidden the satnav is constantly recording Point data and romanis satav had all of this data collected for the last 6 months his full Journey from Lithuania to Peter was there and the return Journey as well but also the missing time has filled in of his route around Peterborough that led us to believe that we might be able to locate bala's body for months the police had been tirelessly searching the cambrid countryside but had not found one clue to help pinpoint Vitalia location but with Roman's satnav it was almost as if detectives were sat with him in his van for every mile of his ominous Journey we particularly focusing on the route after Vitalia had been abducted we found that route went all the way to a village in the fence called upwood as we studied the route from peur to upwood we could see that as it was passing wooded areas the vehicle slowing down the critical data from the setav showed that he was parked under a an oak tree in a field adjacent to a forest for somewhere in the region of 8 or n minutes and it was at that point we were fairly confident that we may have found aalia's grave it seemed the SAT now pinpointed the exact location rantas had dumped his ex-wife's body we had dogs in there I had search team officers in there in real number looking for Vitalia ready I even had officers piggybacking other officers to see how far you could get into that Forest carrying a body but she was nowhere to be found the police had been convinced Vitalia body lay in the Cambridge offend and they had spent months searching for her grave but detectives were beginning to to realize that she wasn't there in fact she may not be in the UK at all could rantas have smuggled his ex-wife's body abroad it was extremely risky move we couldn't conceive that he would have done that which is why we focused all our inquiries initially into the UK until we'd really explored every Avenue of that and concluded that we've looked everywhere that he's been and she's not there I had to countenance the fact that actually he against all the odds he'd been brave enough to take her out of the UK the police were now faced with the daunting prospect that rantas had hidden his ex-wife in his van and buried her somewhere on the European Mainland I mean from Dunkirk to his home it was about 1160 miles that he' driven to get back home so she could have been somewhere on that way so we then knew we had quite a task on a hands to find uh where we might have dumped her now police believed Vitalia was hidden in Europe they were uncertain as to whether her body would ever be found but while romanas was on remand awaiting trial a witness came forward from the most unlikely of places was on just before Christmas A man was released from prison that had been on remand with Van Clovis and the two had been [Music] conversing and he'd told him something along the lines of that they would never find her they never find her she was buried near a railway track but near water rantas bichas had bragged openly about killing his ex-wife and disposing of her body for the first time detectives had some sort of description of the area where Vitalia lay they once again turned to the satnav and virtually joined rantas on his journey to dispose of the 29-year-old's body what it showed is that he'd been driving along and he'd been driving quite steadily and normally with just these few stops in these garages and lay buys but his driving pattern changed once he got into Poland he then arrived at this area called little Suchi there was a dirt track into a woods and he didn't hesitate to go straight into this dirt track drove along it for about 400 m and then the vehicle stopped rantas biches had driven into a deserted polish wood in the dead of night and the satnav told the police just how long he stayed in the forest he was probably stopped in that wood for about 40 minutes which was enough time to dispose of a body after months of searching the police believed this time Roman's satnav had guided them to the correct location of Vitalia grave when I learned of that fact I was really upbeat that that actually the the search for was was about to come to an end earlier in the investigation the police had issued details about Vitalia across Europe and there had been no results now the coordinates of the satnav were given to Poland via Interpol in January 2012 with a request to search the location for a hidden grave but a month after the satnav data had been sent there was still no word it seemed Vitalia had vanished and the police began to accept they would never find her by February this investigation had been running for 6 months and we still had not found Vitalia eventually you have to kind of start to get your head around the fact that whatever you try you're never going to find her and that search had to stop somewhere in time it would have had to have stopped we thought we were going to go to trial um without a body the police had a strong case against rant's bichas but in any murder investigation the body is the most significant piece of evidence there was no way to delay the trial and tragically Vitalia body appeared to be lost [Music] [Music] forever but little did the police know back in October 2011 a mushroom picker had found a body near the location revealed by romantis satnav it was the body of a female with blonde hair found 2 months after Vitalia was taken in February 2012 just 2 weeks before the trial the cambridg police received word from Poland telling them about the unidentified female body they'd uncovered four months earlier it just had to be Vitalia at dawn on the 12th of August 2011 29-year-old Vitalia balovich Yen had been abducted by her obsessively jealous and violent ex-husband the police believed rantas had murdered the mother of his son but by February 2012 it seemed that they would never find her grave or truly know what had happened to her detectives had analyzed Roman's satnav which had told them the exact movements of the heartless killer after the abduction it took them to a remote forest in Poland initially it seemed Vitalia wasn't there but in February 2012 just 2 weeks before the trial word reached Cambridge that a body had been found in that Forest back in October in 2011 so about 10 weeks after Vitalia was taken a mushroom picker stumbled across uh things sticking out of the ground and very quickly it was established that it was the body of a female she'd been in the ground for a number of weeks and polish police were running a murder investigation and they concluded that she'd been violently strangled the body of the naked woman in the woods was discovered on the 30th of October 2011 and at the time was believed to be a murdered prostitute who disappeared from the local area the decomposing body had been in the ground for about 10 weeks which tallied with Vitalia disappearance but at the time of its Discovery the Polish police did not make the connection between the body and the missing 29-year-old for some reason they never identified her they never informed us and they never matched her DNA now we don't know why that was hi I'm calling from the Cambridge we requested all of the countries that he' passed through that should they find any unidentified female bodies that we'd be informed about it we also supplied these countries with valia's DNA but it would appear that something had gone [Music] wrong the location of the body fitted with the information detectives had retrieved from romantis satnav when Cambridge Police contacted the Polish authorities via Interpol in January 2012 the Polish police realized the potential connection with the female body they' found in the Forest months [Music] before we went back to all the countries and we gave M list of all the stops that the satnav had identified as one last chance to say this is everywhere we believe this guy stopped and then we got an email to say one of those areas that you've highlighted in the wood in little Suchi we actually found a body in there many months ago they Revisited the DNA of the body they found and found then that it matched with vatalia 6 months after her Abduction the police finally understood what had become of Vitalia her body had been the missing piece of the puzzle and with that now found rantas bavius stood trial for the kidnap and murder of his ex-wife the trial began on the 2nd of October 2012 at the Old Bailey in London rantis who had changed his name to Rus van Clover pleaded did not guilty I think he thought he was going to get away with her murder I think he actually thought he should get away with her murder um and I'm sure to this day he actually feels that he's been the victim in all of this the prosecution presented compelling evidence to prove how the obsessively jealous and violent romantis had plotted to kidnap and murder his former wife and the mother of his 10-year-old son he had planned this for a number of weeks and he knew that with his new identity he could safely get to Peter and stay under the police radar go undetected now legally named remas Van Clovis rantas bichas tested this Theory with a trial run a month before he abducted and killed his ex-wife it appeared romantis decided to kidnap and murder Vitalia because he was bitterly jealous of her new [Music] relationship the Revelation that Vitalia had a boyfriend that he had bought her a silver necklace that she'd moved on that kicked off a chain of events that would see him buy a van black out the windows a satnav journey recorded that brings him all the way to Peter and he's waiting outside her door he abducted her on the corner as she went to work dragged her into his fan she was probably very well aware of what was going to happen to her because she'd been reminded of it throughout her marriage that it was his Destiny to kill her he would have terrified her she would have known what was going to happen romantis was captured on CCTV dragging his ex-wife to his parked van just after 5:00 a.m. almost an hour later the van emerged from the street Vitalia was almost certainly already dead he then drove into the remote area of of cambridgshire where he attempted to dispose for her body found that there was too many people around or he couldn't find a nice spot unable to dispose of her in the UK romantis hid Vitalia body in his van headed for DOA and bought a ferry ticket to Dunkirk in France and then he drove her all the way across Europe 900 miles and he then buried her in a field in a remote part of Poland and in doing that put her family through hell and deprived their son of a mother for the rest of his life that's the sort of man that RIS van Clovis is the compelling evidence was supported by one key irrefutable Source s now ended up being really the foundation that all the other evidence was pinned against really it's like a technical fingerprint or DNA there's no argument about it it's it's there in black and white it's right it said it was at a location at a certain time there's no arguing that there's there's no way around that the jury was left in no doubt about what had tragic happened to Vitalia jury took 2 hours to convict him the case was always strong and he knew that but he fought all the way he lied all the way he played the system all the way he put the family through hell all the way just as he showed no emotion buying tickets to get on a ferry to go home after he's just killed his wife he showed no emotion that he'd just been found guilty of it and that's the true Testament of the person that he is the emotion is missing in him the man who for a decade had violently abused the mother of his own son was sentenced to life imprisonment to serve a minimum of 20 years Vitalia tried to separate her her her life from one of domestic violence with rantas but it was his jealousy his obsession and his compulsion that would stop her from being happy it's absolutely critical that people who are the subject of domestic violence do not endure it do not let it go on in secret the police will support you you have to tell us that it's happening on average two women are killed in the UK every week by a male partner or ex partner romantis is now in prison and his son who lives with Vitalia surviving family has to come to terms with the reality that his mother has gone forever the lasting victim now is her son he's effectively orphaned family are looking after him I believe but you know he had his parents taken away from him and will he ever get over it I don't know I think the whole thing is a [Music] tragedy [Music]

Channel: Real Crime

Views: 334,646

Keywords: Real Crime, crime investigation, crime scene analysis, crime scene investigation, crime scene reconstruction, crime-solving strategies, criminal behavior analysis, criminal evidence analysis, criminal forensics, criminal intent analysis, criminal profiling, criminal psychology, disappearance case study, missing person case, solving cold cases, spine-chilling mysteries, true crime TV series, true crime cases, true crime podcast, vanishing mother, violent crime stories

Id: S7Gv1wv1NLY

Length: 46min 28sec (2788 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 19 2023