Trial Verdict and Final Justice

We'll get back to your true crime story in just a moment This podcast is part of the always True Cime netwk home of thousands of episodes exploring gripping true crime cases If you're looking for somewhere to start, check out our recent investigative series, Project Mind Control It uncovers a chilling chapter in history, examining the disturbing experiments carried out on vulnerable people in an attempt to erase and reprogram the human mind featuring testimony from one of the last known survivors of a notorious Canadian psychiatric institution powerful story that's as shocking as it is important. Check out the show and more at alwaysTrue crime. com Mittie knows that just when you thought you had your body all figured out, bam Perryenopause. Suddenly, your hormones are raging like it's puberty round two. You're waking up at three AM and dealing with mood swings that have mood swings Your ears are itchy, your jeans don't fit. You need an industrial size band to cool down, and you've suddenly forgotten the word for microwave Most women in perimenopause don't know that they are, even though it can last for ten years. They also don't realize that most of their symptoms are treatable. That's why we built MIDI Health. MIDI is a company built by women who've been through it. Our menopause experts actually listen and treat the real symptoms you're feeling Your symptoms aren't just common, they're treatable. Schedule a visit with a menopause specialist at MIDI. Visit joinMidDI. comot spepecialist led care, virtual visits, inssurance eligible. Midlife needs MIDI. Results may vary. medications prescribed only if clinically appropriate based on a consultation with a clinician. Insurance coverage varies. cheheck with your plan for coverage In november nineteen seventy eight, a woman locked up her dress shop on a quiet street in Roford, Essex and stepped out into the evening to run a simple errand for a friend It was a sort of ordinary trip made without a second thought, the kind of everyday moment none of us expect to matter But somewhere between her front door and her car, Nora Tott vanished into the darkness By the early hours of the next morning, she was found brutally murdered just yards from her home Police flooded the area. When Witnesses came forward, thousands of people were questioned. A suspicious man had been seen nearby carrying Nora's bag And for a while it looked as though the case might be solved quickly But leads soon dried up years passed, and the man responsible simply melted back into ordinary life cage rolled on, it began to seem like he'd got away with it until the science finally call o In this episode of British Murders with Stu Blues, we're discussing the murder of Nora Trott A case that lay dormant for more than a quarter of a century before modern DNA technology changed everything It's a story of patience, perseverance, and the chilling reality that killers liive on borrowed time Before we start, just a quick reminder to follow the podcast or subscribe on YouTube. It's completely free and one of the best ways to support the show If you're able to leave a rating or review that helps enormously as well, and for ad free listening, early access to episodes and exclusive content, head to patreon. com forward slash British Murders to join my ever growing community. There was once a time when if someone committed a murder and was not brought to justice for a good few years, they probably thought they were in the clear They believe they'd gotten away with it by keeping the red down, saying nothing to no one cararrying on with life and simply letting the years roll by. Memories tend to fade with a passage of time Witnesses move on. evidence gets boxed up and shoved on a shelf somewhere, seemingly forgotten about So for plenty of offenders, that must have felt like freedom But times have changed so much in recent years bit the science caught up with the crimes What once looked like a dead end could suddenly be reopened with a cotton swab, a microscope and technology that detectives in the nineteen seventies could only have dreamed of Tiny traces left behind at a crime scene. Things no one knew how to properly use back then, nor preserve started speaking their truth decades later. Then came the UK's national DNA database in nineteen ninety five and that changed the game once more Names could now be much to evidence from old cases P people who'd spent years believing they'd beaten the system were suddenly getting an early morning knock at the door. pasts finally catching up with them and thankfully we're seeing more and more of it Cold cases are becoming solved at an increasingly frequent rate, meaning bereaved families and friends are now getting answers and some semblance of closure Pillars are dragged in a court with grey air and wrinkles and forced to answer for something they thought had been buried in the past Today's case is one of those stories It all started in nineteen seventy eight in the Essex town of Rchford, where a woman named Nora Trott lost her life in shockingly brutal circumstances twenty six years, her killer remained unidentified No arrests were made, no justice served. Just a series of questions which detectives had no answers to until a combination of science patients and a national DNA database callallope with it Nora was sixty three years old in november nineteen seventy eight. That's when our main timeline started And based on the research I've done, it seems she was a well liked, respectable and hard wororking woman who'd built a life for herself in Rochford She'd been divorced from her former husband, Barrister Ronald Trott for more than twenty years by then But the two had stayed on good terms, which says plenty in and of itself She lived alone on North Street, right in the heart of the town and ran her own ladies' clothing shop called Phillicy Jane Appears she lived above the premises too, so work and play were both in one place Hers was a proper old school small business a type where all the regular customers know you by name and pop in for a chat Nora had basically become part of the fabric pun intended, of the community The locals adoreder And she in turn, was loving life, looking forward to those golden retirement years, which were not too far ahead of her After years of hard graft, she should have been entering a quieter chapter al life Instead, her story was about to end in the most horrific way imaginable On the evening of Monday november sixth, nineteen seventy eight, sometime between seven and eight PM Nora closed up her shop and headed out to a car which was parked in a garage nearby It may be that she was simply leaving her home rather than the shop, but we sh't get bogged down with semantics Either way, Nora was running an errand for a friend, a task she perhaps did often, and certainly nothing unusual. It was just one of those everyday things people do without a second thought Tragically for Nora, she would not make it back home Somewhere near them lock up garages where she kept a car, in a lane beside the old shit pub on North Street, which was literally across the road from her home and shop Nora was attacked by someone who was waiting in the shadows under the cover of darkness She was tackled, stripped, raped, and left to die out there in the cold. Oldship Lane was the precise location running down the side of the pub During the assault, a passerby heard some scuffling coming from the lane and called out, wondering what was going on A man, the killer, then appeared from behind a brick wall. and calmly told the passerby that it was there with a woman. The phrasing he used was that he was necking with his girlfriend It basically means kissing or mking out if you like It was such a casual response. So cool and controlled that the witness accepted it as fact and moved on, thinking nothing more of it. Looking back now, it's a fair assumption that said witness may have wished they'd done more in hindsight But in fairness, they weren't to know they'd been just yards away from a murder in progress. At aroundround eight thirty PM, two fourteen year old boys noticed a fair haired man dressed in dark clothing acting suspiciously near North Street that was less than half a mile from Old Ship Lane where Nor had been attacked He was carrying a Rafia shopping bag, one of them woven bags made from palm fibers, which belonged to Nora The two lads sensing something wasn't right. Followed him. And fair play to him because most adults might not have bothered, just as the previous witness had opted to take no further action But their chers ended when get this, a police officer stopped them in the tracks. Why did he stop them ' they were cycling the wrong way down a one way street All their goodwill and excellent tellailing of Norah's suspected killer. They were rumbled by the one person they no doubt have been looking for In that moment when they were stopped, the suspect slipped away. And as he vanished, he threw the raaffia bag into a rubbish bin The boys later recovered the blood stained bag and handed it in to the police, which was something But as we've covered in the intro DNA technology was basically non existent back then So there wasn't much the officers could do with at the time Then in the early hours of the following morning around two AM on what was by then november seventh Nora's body was found by a friend of hers behind the old ship pub barely two hundred yards from her home and shop. So she really didn't make it far before being attacked on that fateful night There's actually a really haunting crime scene photograph which were taken that morning. I think it's a shutterstock one. which shows police cordens in place at the top and bottom of Old Ship Lane A distance you can clearly see the sign for Felicity Jaye Nora hiss own shop, eerily staring back at the camera from across the road Nora had suffered some severe head injuries, with investigators believing she'd choked to death on her own blood Postmorton later confirmed the violence she'd endured, including the rape Nor it was found either fully or mostly naked according to which source you read Clothing and possessions were gone Meaning whoever killed Nora had taken them to either hide the evidence, destroy it, perhaps both. Maybe the killer kept possessions as a trophy as is common with many murderers. is conjecture on my part for the record, but it does seem plausible Looming over the crime scene was the old ship itself, a building dating back centuries, with parts of it believed to stretch to the sixteen hundreds As for Rchford, it's one of those towns where history seems built into every brick The market at Roford was established in the mid thirteenth century And that's when the first evidence of settlement in the town center dates from The area has been used by humans as far back as the Stone Age But on that cold November night in nineteen seventy eight That old lane in the center of Rochford became the setting for a crime the town would never forget Hunt for Nora's killer began straight away and Essex police knew from the start they were dealing with something and someone deeply disturbing The initial investigation were led by detective Chief superintendent Peter Krust of Essex CID And he made it clear that his team of officers urgently wanted to trace the young man seen near the old ship pub on the night of the murder. The same fair hared suspect spotted by those two teenagers. DCS Krust didn't mince his words when speaking about the attack either, calling it savage and brutal He said Nora's clothing had been ripped from her body, some of them torn to shreds and warned that he believed they had what he described as a sex maniac on their hands who may kill again That gives you a sense of the fear hanging over Rotford at the time Because this wasn't a case of a mugggin gone badly wrong This was a vicious attack by a stranger on a woman well known in a local community just yards away from the safety of her house If someone could do that once, people feared they could do it again Police searched everywhere they could think of offfficers armed with scythes hacked back undergrowth along nearby Stanbridge Road, looking desperately Murder weapon but to no avail Tracker dogs were brought in to search ditches, hederows and gardens, but once more found nothing of notes Even the landlord of the old ship reported hearing a disturbance near the bottom of the garden and seeing a man on the far side of the wall close to Nora's garage. But despite all the activity Despite the urgency and manpower Solid leads were hard to come by. By march nineteen seventy nine, just four months after the murder, detectives were trying something you don't hear about every day, especially now brought in Tist Dror David Waxman, a leading member of the British Society of Medical and Dental Hypnosis A conducted an hour long session with a key eyeewitness The same man who'd heard the scuffling in the lane and spoken briefly to that calm, cool stranger. Claiming to be with his girlfriend was simple enough, albeit an incredibly optimistic one. The idea was that just maybe, under hypnosis, some buried memories might come back to the witness Detail which may have been missed at the time Something such as a face or a voice, anything would do As the witness spoke, an artist sketched the man he described With that, the police had a vague idea of who their prime suspect was And based on that sketch, he later became known baby face We're going to take a break here When we return, we'll discuss that person the police and media referred to as baby face in a bit more detail See you soon Mitty knows that just when you thought you had your body all figured out, bam Perenopause. Suddenly, your hormones are raging like it's puberty round two. You're waking up at three AM and dealing with mood swings that have mood swings. Your ears are itchy, your jeans don't fit. You need an industrial sizeed band to cool down, and you've suddenly forotten the word for microwave Most women in perimenopause don't know that they are, even though it can last for ten years. They also don't realize that most of their symptoms are treatable. That's why we built MIDI Health. MIDI is a company built by women who've been through it. Our menopause experts actually listen and treat the real symptoms you're feeling. Your symptoms aren't just common, they're treatable. Schedule a visit with a menopause specialist at MIDI Visit joinmIDi. comot spepecialist led care, virtual visits, insurance eligible. Midlife needs MIDI. Results may vary. medications prescribed only if clinically appropriate based on a consultation with a clinician. Insurance coverage varies. check with your plan for coverage. Welcome back. Let's now carry on with the story Babyface was said to be between eighteen and twenty five years old, around five foot ten inches tall. Sim build Can shaven with a pointed nose and medium brown hair. reportedly wn a dark bomber jacket, a lie open neck shirt, and dark flared trousers on the night of the killing And yet, even with a sketch and a town on edge Nothing came of it By that stage, detectives had interviewed around eleven thousand people taken more than one hundred statements and checked out hundreds of young men aged between eighteen and twenty five who live near the scene. They'd thrown the kitchen sink at it. That's terminology the detectives actually used at the time. Still No arrests were made, and the suspects list compiled solely baby face drawing The case called not long after that, before briefly being reignited in may nineteen eighty one when police received fresh information over a period of ten days. Detective Chief Inspector Ken Smith said he and other officers would revisit the area of Rochford and interview a number of people as they pursuue this new line of inquiry But once again Whatever promise it held came to nothing. And so The years rolled on. For two decades it looked as though Norot Trot's killer had done exactly what so many violent offenders dream of doing disappear into ordinary life after getting away with murder But that all changed suddenly at the turn of the millennium In two thousand three twentywenty five years after Nora was murdered, Essex police reopened the case again after receiving an anonymous letter that year from someone claiming to have fresh information The letter, sent to South End police in July, suggested the killer was from Ilford. That's a town in East London roughly thirty miles west of Rchford and had been a regular at the old shit pub back in nineteen seventy eight Then another witness came forward A woman told police that just days before Nora's murder, she had been followed home in Rchford and grabbed by a man She managed to escape the assailant, fighting him off after two passers by stepped in couldn't be ruled out that that same man had then gone on to kill Nora after failing with his first attempt That's the sort of chilling information that suggests Nora's murder may not have been a random one off incident at all It suggested a predator had been prowling the streets of Rotford, waiting opportunistically for his next victim By the summer of two thousand four, Essex Police's investigative review team, led by Detective suuperintendent Sammon Coxell Prepared to publicize ten cold cases in the hope of finally cracking murders going back nearly thirty years Prime Stoppper's rewards of up to five grand were offered, which equates to almost double that in today's money, just over nine thousand Police said advances in forensic science might be the key but that the public could still hold the most crucial information Time so often changes people and loyal is shift, meaning secrets can become heavier a cararot Too much to bear at times And behind the scenes, science was doing exactly what we spoke about at the start of the episode The original semen samples recovered from Nora's body and clothing when she was killed had been preserved Back in nineteen seventy eight, there were important pieces of evidence but the tools available back then simply weren't sufficient to fully exploit them Now, however They were. The semen samples recovered were placed on the National DNA database in march two thousand three. Scientists at the Forensic Science Service then ree examamined the material and created a DNA profile for Nora's killer which was itself then loaded to the database. At first, there was no match, which left the case as cold as it had been before them ten cases were chosen and made public Even so, just months later, a breakthrough finally came A man who'd been arrested and swabbed in custody on an unrelated matter had his DNA entered into the database as part of routine procedure Advances in the technology meant scientists could now compare it with far greater confidence than ever before. And this time, the database spoke to them. twenty six years of silence, Nor is Killer finally had a name And if we fast forward three months from that DNA breakthrough to october two thousand four Police made the move Fortty nine year old Wayne Deter, a builder in her fixed address, was arrested in the Channel Island's in connection Winora's murder He was found in Gernsseay, where he was staying at a hotel in St. Peter Port Dote would have been around twenty three years old back in nineteen seventy eight, placing him right in that estimated age range of eighteen to twenty five for the man known to detectives as Babyface. He also lived locally at the time But what makes his arrest even more striking is that Doatee wasn't some random name plucked from thin air in two thousand four Police had actually spoken to him during their extensive inquiries back in nineteen seventy nine. At time, he told officers he'd been at home decorating on the evening Nor were killed After that, he faded into the background. But while researching this case, I came across something deeply disturbing from Doeet's past Something which happened just two years after Nara were killed In july nineteen eighty, he was jailed for fifteen months after abducting a two year old girl from her mother's car and indecently assaulting her though we he deny the charges Prosecution said the little girl had been left in the car with her thirty month old brother while the mum went to collect another child When she returned just five minutes later, her daughter had vanished, and she was later found crying alone on nearby wasteland Dherty claimed he hadn't taken her at all Instead saying the girl had approached him while he was walking through Roford and saying he believes she were lost That incident happened around a hundred yards from where Nora was murdered Yet even that conviction, vile as it was, did not place his DNA on the national database Because as we've covered, that wasn't introduced until a nineteen ninety five, fifteen years later So for years, it slipped through another gap in time And who knows what other crimes he went on to commit in the two decades plus after Nora were murdered? It was in july two thousand four, the same month the police received that anonymous letter when the start of Dooughet's downfall began He was stopped by police in Cambridge and arrested for drink driving Part of that routine procedure a mouth swab were taken his DNA profile was then added to the DNA database. And that was the precise moment the past caught up with him because the semen sample recovered from Norah's blood stained skirt matched Dah's DNA profile tives after twenty six years finally had their man Dherty was brought back from Guernsey and first appeared before South End Magistrates courourt on october eleventh, two thousand four Just over a week later, on october nineteenth, he appeared at Chelmsford Crown Court, where he was formally charged with Nora's murder and rape and remanded in custody In may two thousand five at Basleden Crown Court, he entered pleas of not guilty to both them charges By then he was a grey headired man nearing fifty standing in the dock wearing a white collared shirt and blue jeans, reportedly showing little emotion as members of his family watched on The plea hearing concluded, Da tape was remanded, and the case was set for trial On october thirty first, two thousand five, Halloween of all Days. Dough's trial began at Basleden Crown Court before Judge Philip Clegg The prosecution's case led by Martin Levitt was a damning one. DNA scientists had obtained from the semen samples Match Dete Th it was stated that the odds of said DNA found on Nora's clothing belonging to another unrelated person were one in one hundred and ninety million As for the DNA found on Nora's body, the odds were one in one hundred eighty thousand That's the sort of evidence defense teams hate seeing because it seems so clear and obvious that their client is banked to rights Doah's barrister argued the science was wrong and that the prosecution's interpretation of the DNA evidence could not be trusted In his closing speech, Michael Walkin told jurors they would be gambling and making a grave mistake if they convicted his clients But the jury had heard much more than statistics. told Nora had been repeatedly struck in the face Her attacker had stamped on her body, breaking her voice box in the process, so she could not scream for help He then raped her It was savage and cowardlly. And after hearing all the evidence, the jury unanimously found Doughty guilty of both the murder and rape charges.