Speaker 1: Aha, there, Hello, Nina.
Speaker 2: Nina, Nina, and Hey. Eighteen month old Dovenda and his
Speaker 2: baby brother Avinda were the sons of successful businessman Neil Chohan.
Speaker 2: With a loving marriage to his wife Nancy, Neil had
Speaker 2: everything a man could want. But in February two thousand
Speaker 2: and three, just two days after this film was shot,
Speaker 2: all five members of this happy family simply disappeared.
Speaker 3: Vanished without a trace, the generations of one Faba Choan's
Speaker 3: and out the center of a major police hunt.
Speaker 2: Why would anybody want to simply walk away? And Anina
Speaker 2: told me, Hid, this is the story of a man
Speaker 2: who made an entire family disappear.
Speaker 3: Detectives later found evidence of a car bridge an.
Speaker 2: The story of an extraordinary deception by a ruthless criminal
Speaker 2: who wanted to get rich at any cost.
Speaker 4: Had absolutely no moral conscience whatsoever, a.
Speaker 2: Man who almost succeeded in outwitting the police by committing
Speaker 2: a crime so unique and horrific no one dared to
Speaker 2: believe it had taken place.
Speaker 4: Prosecution had described the crimes as beyond belief.
Speaker 2: In two thousand and three, businessman Neil Chohan was the
Speaker 2: owner of a successful fruit importation firm based at Heathrow
Speaker 2: called Siba Freight. With a wife and two children. Choen
Speaker 2: was known to his staff as a contented family man
Speaker 2: and an easy going boss.
Speaker 5: Niel's way of running the company was a relaxed, sort
Speaker 5: of like happy girl lucky attitude. We were mucked in
Speaker 5: whenever it was busy. Here, get pizzas, get drinks. They
Speaker 5: want to sort of like one big, happy family.
Speaker 2: But owning a freight company had made Neil Chohan a target.
Speaker 2: In January two thousand and three, a recently released convict
Speaker 2: arrived at siber Freight looking for work. His name was
Speaker 2: Kenneth Reagan.
Speaker 6: You must be Ken, that's me.
Speaker 2: You're mister choin right. Neil Chohan had spent time in
Speaker 2: prison for tax evasion and was sympathetic to the ex
Speaker 2: con who said he wanted to go straight.
Speaker 7: It was a very fair person. He'd always give people
Speaker 7: not a second chance, but a tenth chance. He'd been
Speaker 7: in prison himself, and obviously he'd had a second chance,
Speaker 7: so why shouldn't anybody else. Ken came on as a
Speaker 7: year driver, not frightening again, his hands dirty.
Speaker 8: As a worker. I thought he was good.
Speaker 2: But Kenneth Reagan was no ordinary delivery driver. Five years earlier,
Speaker 2: Reagan had been a successful drug smuggler known to his
Speaker 2: friends as Captain Cash.
Speaker 9: In the late nineties, Ken Reagan was a career criminal.
Speaker 9: Reagan set up freight companies in around the Heathrow area
Speaker 9: and he'd used those as a front to bring drugs
Speaker 9: into the country. He knew most of the major criminals
Speaker 9: in London and criminal families, and he was very much
Speaker 9: living the high life.
Speaker 2: It was in a fashionable London bar that Reagan first
Speaker 2: met celebrity agent and socialite Belinda Brewin.
Speaker 4: He was a bit rough. I think it's not well educated,
Speaker 4: quite charming, dressed well, nice watch, spent a lot of money.
Speaker 4: He was kind of like a rich wide boy. Reagan's
Speaker 4: nickname was Captain Cash. He always had a lot of money,
Speaker 4: and I mean high denomination notes. He had a briefcase
Speaker 4: and I've seen that twice and it was just full
Speaker 4: of money, and I think he thought it bought in
Speaker 4: class when he had none whatsoever.
Speaker 2: Belinda would eventually be drawn unwittingly into Reagan's world of
Speaker 2: crime and deceit. It started when the gangster became obsessed
Speaker 2: with her.
Speaker 4: He used to phone me quite a lot and emails
Speaker 4: saying I've never i haven't felt like this in thirty years.
Speaker 4: You're like a drug. I can't. I mean, just bizarre,
Speaker 4: considered that he didn't really know me at all. And
Speaker 4: then one day a friend of mine said to me,
Speaker 4: why on earth are you going out with someone like Reagan?
Speaker 4: And I said to him, I'm not, and he said, well,
Speaker 4: he told me that you're his girlfriend. And I said,
Speaker 4: you've got to be kidding, and he said, no, I'm not,
Speaker 4: which I found slightly worrying. And then literally, I think,
Speaker 4: a few days later, he got arrested.
Speaker 2: June the seventeenth, nineteen ninety eight, Reagan was caught with
Speaker 2: twenty five kilograms of heroin. Facing eighteen years in prison,
Speaker 2: he decided to become a grass. Reagan's testimony helped convict
Speaker 2: twelve major criminals, while his own sentence was reduced. By
Speaker 2: the time he was released from prison four years later,
Speaker 2: Captain Cash had few friends and little money.
Speaker 9: When Reagan was released from his prison sentence, He's very
Speaker 9: much gone back to having nothing. All his assets have
Speaker 9: been stripped from him. It's part of the confiscation order.
Speaker 9: And here he was back living in one bedroom of
Speaker 9: a very small bungalow with his father. Reagan I think
Speaker 9: very much wanted to get back in the driving seat
Speaker 9: as a drug importer. Mister Chohan's business was the perfect
Speaker 9: framework to hang his drug dealing activities on.
Speaker 2: Reagan came up with a plan to steal Neil Chohan's company,
Speaker 2: a plan so ruthless that no one would realize it
Speaker 2: had taken place. He began by setting a trap. Soon
Speaker 2: after starting work at SEBA, Reagan approached Chohan and said
Speaker 2: he knew some investors who wanted to buy the company.
Speaker 2: The bait was a cash offer of three million pounds,
Speaker 2: a large enough sum to tempt the businessman whose wife
Speaker 2: Nancy wanted him to retire.
Speaker 4: I investors.
Speaker 10: I knew that Nancy wanted to go back to Inda.
Speaker 10: She'd made it clear she missed India, and we talked
Speaker 10: about it a couple of times, because he did say
Speaker 10: that the level of education India was higher than the
Speaker 10: UK and Nancy was desperate to go back there.
Speaker 2: While Chohan considered his offer, Reagan began working on the
Speaker 2: next phase of his plan. Seber freight was not the
Speaker 2: only thing he wanted to acquire. By this time, Belinda
Speaker 2: Bruin had given up her house in Chelsea for a
Speaker 2: new life in Devon. Reagan's obsessive calls and letters had
Speaker 2: stopped during his four years in prison, but now free,
Speaker 2: he began to pursue Belinda once more.
Speaker 4: A few weeks after you got out of prison, he
Speaker 4: left me a few messages on my mobile. He said
Speaker 4: that he had a business deal he wished to discuss
Speaker 4: with me. And at the time, I had this huge house,
Speaker 4: a huge mortgage and two kids at private school. When
Speaker 4: I'd given up my job and then my boyfriend left me,
Speaker 4: so I was it was how can I put it? Yes,
Speaker 4: so I rang him.
Speaker 2: Reagan told Belinda he was planning to take over Seber
Speaker 2: Freight and needed a new managing director. Although she had
Speaker 2: no relevant experience, Reagan offered her a huge salary for
Speaker 2: a two day week.
Speaker 4: At first, he offered me fifty four thousand pounds, which
Speaker 4: is a lot of money. But I thought, you know,
Speaker 4: I've got two kids at private school and a huge mortgage.
Speaker 4: That's not going to cover everything. And so he said, fine,
Speaker 4: I'll pay you seventy two thousand, and I thought, well,
Speaker 4: that's great.
Speaker 2: The job offer gave Reagan an excuse to visit Belinda
Speaker 2: at her isolated Devon home.
Speaker 4: He'd come up with bizarre reasons, like he'd want me
Speaker 4: to sign a letter or form, or he'd want me
Speaker 4: to help him fill in a form, and he'd drive
Speaker 4: all the way from Salisbury or from London to my
Speaker 4: house for twenty minutes.
Speaker 2: Reagan seemed to become strangely fixated on the land around
Speaker 2: Belinda's farm.
Speaker 4: He used to moan about the mud a lot the
Speaker 4: mud in the lane. You know, I couldn't live here,
Speaker 4: it's so disgusting. He wanted to cut down some of
Speaker 4: the trees and build a nice wall and electric gates.
Speaker 4: I mean, this was an old farmhouse, not a football
Speaker 4: as pad in Essex. He kept saying, I could make
Speaker 4: this place really, really nice for you. What you need
Speaker 4: is a drainage ditch.
Speaker 2: By February, chohen had made up his mind he would
Speaker 2: meet the investors that Reagan said wanted to buy his company.
Speaker 2: On the Thursday morning before Valentine's Day, he left his
Speaker 2: office telling staff he had a meeting at Stonehenge.
Speaker 8: He said, I'm going off to do a deal and
Speaker 8: sell the company. He said, and I'll let you know.
Speaker 8: And that was the last time I saw him.
Speaker 2: On Monday morning. The employees at Siba were greeted with
Speaker 2: a shock announcement.
Speaker 5: I came in on a shift on Monday. We all
Speaker 5: gathered around and Blinda was introduced as a new owner
Speaker 5: of the company by Ken.
Speaker 4: Came in.
Speaker 9: The shocked everyone.
Speaker 5: It was something we were expecting.
Speaker 3: Everyone was thinking, what had happened to Neil? Where he
Speaker 3: had gone? But is it real that he sold the company?
Speaker 3: Or what about our jobs? And so many things happening
Speaker 3: At the same time.
Speaker 2: Reagan produced a letter which explained that Chohan had sold
Speaker 2: the company and was retiring abroad with Nancy due to
Speaker 2: ill health. It bore the signature of Neil Choen Well.
Speaker 3: Because of it being a busy company, you couldn't sort
Speaker 3: of sit down and start whinging about her or do
Speaker 3: anything about it. You just had to get on with
Speaker 3: the work. Because it was a busy company, you would
Speaker 3: have to get on with the work and get the
Speaker 3: work done.
Speaker 2: Belinda was given a desk and a computer and began
Speaker 2: examining the books as Reagan had asked her to, but
Speaker 2: on her second day she felt ill. Instead of going
Speaker 2: to Siba, where Reagan was expecting her, she drove home
Speaker 2: to Devon.
Speaker 4: When I pulled into the drive, I couldn't believe it.
Speaker 4: There was this old beaten up jack yo and I thought,
Speaker 4: what an's going on here? And I saw these two
Speaker 4: guys in my field with a digger.
Speaker 2: The two men were William Harnsey and Peter Reese, both
Speaker 2: friends of Ken Reagan.
Speaker 4: I went absolutely mad and I swore a lot, and
Speaker 4: I said, you know, what on earth did they think
Speaker 4: they were doing? And he said, well, we're building you
Speaker 4: a drainage ditch, you know. And there's this bloody great
Speaker 4: big ditch in the middle of my field running along
Speaker 4: the side of the hedge. I just couldn't believe it.
Speaker 4: Reagan arrived. I said, you know, it's not the fact
Speaker 4: that I might not need a drainage ditch. It was
Speaker 4: my land. You never asked my permission. You just don't
Speaker 4: go digging up people's land. He said, well, I thought
Speaker 4: you would appreciate it. I mean, it just looked like
Speaker 4: a car park and now I'd just hated it. But
Speaker 4: I was going to have it taken up, and they
Speaker 4: said wait till the summer. But as it happened, the
Speaker 4: Metropolitan Police dug it up for me.
Speaker 2: In two thousand and three, convicted drug smuggler Kenneth Reagan
Speaker 2: was on the verge of regaining his former millionaire's lifestyle.
Speaker 2: Neil Chohen, the previous owner of siber Freight, had disappeared.
Speaker 2: Now Reagan was in control of his bonded warehouse, an
Speaker 2: ideal front for importing drugs. For five years, Reagan had
Speaker 2: been obsessed by socialized Belinda Bruin from a farm, but
Speaker 2: now she was on his payroll. It seemed as if
Speaker 2: Reagan's dreams had all come true, but the secret behind
Speaker 2: his success was about to be exposed. Twelve thousand miles away,
Speaker 2: on Coverma was working as a journalist in New Zealand.
Speaker 2: Nancy was raising a family in England with her husband,
Speaker 2: Neil Chohan, and Onca was planning to visit the family
Speaker 2: for the very first time.
Speaker 6: I was very excited because I was going to see
Speaker 6: Nancy after nine years, and it was like our family
Speaker 6: reunion after a long time.
Speaker 2: Onca used to speak to his sister and mother almost
Speaker 2: every day, but on the fifteenth of February, the phone
Speaker 2: calls simply.
Speaker 6: Stopped, and I was trying to get all of Nancy.
Speaker 6: I was trying to get a lot mom and ill.
Speaker 6: Nobody was here, so you know, I thought something's not right.
Speaker 2: Concern for his family's safety, Oka contacted the Metropolitan Police.
Speaker 2: A routine missing person's inquiry established that the family home
Speaker 2: was empty, but neighbors and colleagues seemed to think the
Speaker 2: Choen's had all gone to India.
Speaker 9: You have to remember that if people wish to leave
Speaker 9: a country and relocate to somewhere else, then it's their
Speaker 9: right to do so. In this particular inquiry, the friends
Speaker 9: and family in the UK were very much of a
Speaker 9: belief that mister Chohan had decided to do that.
Speaker 2: Onca decided that if the police couldn't find his family,
Speaker 2: he would fly to Britain to investigate the disappearances himself,
Speaker 2: alone in a country he'd never been to before. Oncer
Speaker 2: went to the family home in Hounslow and was shocked
Speaker 2: by what he discovered.
Speaker 6: As I entered the house, I could the kids twice
Speaker 6: on the floor, the baby feed bodens, all the baby
Speaker 6: feed and the clothes. They were still in the house.
Speaker 6: They afraid that there was a cook food inside.
Speaker 2: Onca became even more suspicious when he discovered his mother's
Speaker 2: most treasured possession.
Speaker 6: My mom's prayer book was there inside the house. That
Speaker 6: was something strange because my mum used to carry it
Speaker 6: with her all the time. One thing I couldn't figure
Speaker 6: out that Harwood a family disappear. We're talking about two
Speaker 6: three adults and two kids, you know, two babies, and
Speaker 6: how can they just disappear without telling me?
Speaker 2: With compelling evidence that his family had left the house
Speaker 2: against their will, uncle went to the police and convinced
Speaker 2: them to launch a full investigation. DCI Andy Rowl began
Speaker 2: his inquiry by interviewing the last person who was known
Speaker 2: to have seen Choan on the day he disappeared, Kenneth Reagan.
Speaker 9: Mister Reagan told us that mister Chohan was trying to
Speaker 9: sell his business and he was very much trying to
Speaker 9: steer it down the lines of that mister Chohan was
Speaker 9: an unsavory businessman who had got himself into deep water
Speaker 9: financially and that had no other choice really but to disappear.
Speaker 2: But detectives were unconvinced by Reagan's story. Using new forensic technology,
Speaker 2: they were able to track the movements of both Reagan
Speaker 2: and Chohan's mobile phones on the day of the disappearance.
Speaker 9: Initially, we could see mister Chohan's telephone was in the
Speaker 9: Handslow area. We then tracked the phone down to the
Speaker 9: Stonehenge area. Now, of course, mister Reagan lived not far
Speaker 9: from Stonehenge in a village called Wilton in Salisbury. What
Speaker 9: we could see is that Reagan's telephone met up with
Speaker 9: mister Chohan's telephone, and then the two telephones traveled from
Speaker 9: that meeting point further down into the West Country towards.
Speaker 2: The only lead the detectives had in Devon was that
Speaker 2: it was home to the new managing director of SIBA
Speaker 2: by Linda Brewin. They decided to pay her a visit.
Speaker 4: When Reagan found out that the police were coming to
Speaker 4: my house, he was furious and he said to me,
Speaker 4: you know, you mustn't allow the police to come to
Speaker 4: your house. They'll just cause you aggravation. You know, once
Speaker 4: they get a foot in your house, you mustn't let
Speaker 4: them come to your house. I want you to phone
Speaker 4: them back and go and meet them somewhere else. And
Speaker 4: I thought, well, why would I want to do that.
Speaker 2: Later that day, DC hi Andy Rowell received a phone
Speaker 2: call from Reagan's associate.
Speaker 3: I've got some information about Neil Chohan.
Speaker 2: William Halsey claimed he'd recently spoken to Neil Chohan and
Speaker 2: that the missing businessman was still in the UK.
Speaker 9: I don't know if he told me he's on the
Speaker 9: Mister Hauntsey had told me that he was going to
Speaker 9: meet with mister Chohan in Newport in Wales by the
Speaker 9: Passport office to supply him with stolen passports. So what
Speaker 9: he was saying to us was is that he was
Speaker 9: happy to deliver mister Chohan into our hands.
Speaker 4: And then what happened was that got a phone call
Speaker 4: from Dr Ral saying listen, thank you very much, Blinda,
Speaker 4: but we won't be coming to see you today. We
Speaker 4: have other information and in fact we probably won't need
Speaker 4: to come and see you at all. Reagan then rang
Speaker 4: me up, obviously to check to make sure that the
Speaker 4: police had canceled their meeting, and he seemed to know
Speaker 4: that they had and I said, yes, they're not coming.
Speaker 4: He said, yes, I know. They're going to go to
Speaker 4: Wales and arrest Neil Chohan. So that was the end
Speaker 4: of her.
Speaker 2: The meeting with Chohan was due to take place on
Speaker 2: Easter Monday, but over the weekend, Belinda received an unexpected
Speaker 2: visit from Reagan. Harnsey and Greece.
Speaker 4: Reagan said, I'm going to do the lane by your stables,
Speaker 4: which actually did need graveling, and that would have been
Speaker 4: a great place for the gravel. So I thought, well, okay.
Speaker 4: So when a digger arrived, I wasn't. It didn't surprise
Speaker 4: me because I thought, oh, they're going to come and
Speaker 4: grade the lane. And it was a Saturday, and I
Speaker 4: took the kids into town and I let them get
Speaker 4: on with it.
Speaker 2: Two days later, detectives traveled to the spot where Harnsey
Speaker 2: said he was planning to meet Chohan.
Speaker 9: In Newport where the passport of this is quite an
Speaker 9: iconic bronze statue of a pig, and that's where Haunsey
Speaker 9: said that he would bring mister Chowhan to notice. On
Speaker 9: the day in question, he in fact turned up with
Speaker 9: mister Reagan as well, and the pair of them stood
Speaker 9: there for some moments. They then enacted receiving a phone
Speaker 9: call and a text, and then made it plainly obvious
Speaker 9: through their body language that something had gone wrong with
Speaker 9: the arrangement, and they explained they'd received a phone call
Speaker 9: from someone saying we know you've told the police. We're
Speaker 9: friends of Nil's or Annul Chohans. The deals Off.
Speaker 2: Police traced the calls, but only to an unregistered phone.
Speaker 2: They were no closer to finding Neil Chohan, and all
Speaker 2: they knew for certain was that they had been led
Speaker 2: on a wild goose chase.
Speaker 9: I don't think personally he was having a swipe at
Speaker 9: the police and the sort of the subtle choke about pigs.
Speaker 9: I hope not.
Speaker 2: Anyway, While Reagan returned to work at SIBA, the police
Speaker 2: reverted to their original plan and called in Belinda Brewin
Speaker 2: for questioning.
Speaker 4: D I Raoul said to me, I want to have
Speaker 4: a full and frank discussion with you. And as I
Speaker 4: was leaving, Reagan said to me, listen, Belinda, if the
Speaker 4: police ask you what I was doing on your land,
Speaker 4: he said, you're to tell. He said, just tell them
Speaker 4: that I was helping you with your water system. I
Speaker 4: thought that was very odd. I mean, he'd said he'd
Speaker 4: look at it, but no work had been done on it,
Speaker 4: and I just thought it was odd. When I went
Speaker 4: to meet the police, they said to me, what do
Speaker 4: you think has happened? And I said, well, I don't
Speaker 4: really know. I said, I've told you everything that I know,
Speaker 4: and he said is there anything else that you think
Speaker 4: is odd? And I said, well, when I was leaving today,
Speaker 4: Reagan asked me not. It said that if you were
Speaker 4: to ask what he was doing on my land, I
Speaker 4: was to say he'd been working on my water system.
Speaker 4: And they said, well, what was he doing? And I
Speaker 4: said he'd dug a drainage ditch. And the two of
Speaker 4: them looked at each other and said he did what.
Speaker 2: Detectives rushed to Tibetan, convinced that a gruesome discovery awaited
Speaker 2: them on Belinda's farm.
Speaker 9: We exhumed the dig site painstaking fingertip forensic examination using
Speaker 9: highly trained forensic archaeologists and pathologists.
Speaker 2: The murder squad spent the next five days digging in
Speaker 2: Belinda's field, but the bodies they had expected to find
Speaker 2: were nowhere to be seen. In April two thousand and three,
Speaker 2: police had been so watching for the Chowan family for
Speaker 2: over two months, but they'd been looking in the wrong place.
Speaker 1: We planned to go out for an evening's canoe in
Speaker 1: nice quite a day, nice calm, see pleasantly warm time
Speaker 1: of year. Yeah, it's an enjoyable evening that we decided
Speaker 1: to venture out further than what we.
Speaker 6: Know we would do.
Speaker 1: After a short while, I noticed on the floating in
Speaker 1: the sea it appeared to be three floating objects, which
Speaker 1: at a distance was unusual, you.
Speaker 5: Know, as we were sort of just canoeing around looking about,
Speaker 5: or I hadn't noticed something, but I just totally discarded it.
Speaker 4: It wasn't until he sort of shouted body at me.
Speaker 2: I was just like what.
Speaker 1: As I approached them, realize that he.
Speaker 11: Was obviously our body, a large body because it was oversized,
Speaker 11: somewhat inflated, but the feet were floating out of the
Speaker 11: water and the torso the head was face downwards in
Speaker 11: the water.
Speaker 4: He got me to go in call up nine ninety nine.
Speaker 1: I'll determine to stay with the body, come what may.
Speaker 1: But I did expect the rescue service would have been
Speaker 1: there sooner rather than later. It mightn't have been in
Speaker 1: the water cano in in the dark for nely three hours.
Speaker 1: He does get a bit unnerving. You can't ignore a body.
Speaker 1: Since you find a body, just say it's there. I
Speaker 1: guess I think I can still see the body flats on.
Speaker 2: The body was taken to a mortuary in Bournemouth, but
Speaker 2: it would be almost a week before it was identified
Speaker 2: as that of missing businessman Neil Chowman.
Speaker 6: I went to Bournemouth and saw the body. The first
Speaker 6: time I had a look on Neil's face. I could
Speaker 6: I could see that he suffered a tragic debt. Here
Speaker 6: was he suffered a violent debt.
Speaker 9: He had received a blunt drawn ra injury to the
Speaker 9: back of his head. He had had a packing tape
Speaker 9: wound round his mouth, but the main blow to the head,
Speaker 9: followed by a subsequent suffocation, is the likely cause of
Speaker 9: death of mister Chohan.
Speaker 2: While Neil Chohan's clothes were removed for forensic analysis, a
Speaker 2: hundred miles away police was still searching for evidence that
Speaker 2: his body had been buried in Belinda Bruin's field.
Speaker 9: The sight of the dig obviously became extremely important and
Speaker 9: we recovered some substantial evidence from that dig site, namely
Speaker 9: hares from their burnt clothing jewelry, which suggested that there
Speaker 9: had been, in fact been a burial site. Those hares
Speaker 9: were subsequently identified as mister Chohan's. He had been murdered
Speaker 9: at some stage he had been placed in the grave
Speaker 9: down in Devon, that he had been exhumed from that
Speaker 9: grave at a later date put into a boat. The
Speaker 9: boat had gone out into the middle of the bay
Speaker 9: at Bournemouth and dumped it into the sea.
Speaker 3: Until his body was found. We all hoped that he
Speaker 3: would be back one day, even if he had sold
Speaker 3: the company or not, he would still be back one
Speaker 3: day just to to visit us or whatever. But when
Speaker 3: his body was found, you had just lost all hope
Speaker 3: and that it was the end of him.
Speaker 5: But then our concerns sort of we knew what happened
Speaker 5: to Anil, but then our concerns drifted towards Nancy and
Speaker 5: the kids and the mother.
Speaker 9: The fact that the dig site was so big, and
Speaker 9: that if if you had wanted just to hide one body,
Speaker 9: you wouldn't needed to have gone to the extent of
Speaker 9: digging such a huge sight. Couple with the fact the
Speaker 9: entire family had gone missing. Couple with the fact there
Speaker 9: had been a bonfire there and we had recovered some
Speaker 9: items of jewelry which we believed to belong to Nancy.
Speaker 9: And also there was some small poppers found that that
Speaker 9: one would find on baby gross suits, so we believed
Speaker 9: that the family had all been put into the ground
Speaker 9: at that point. From that moment on, the entire investigation
Speaker 9: changed focus and became a category A, which is the
Speaker 9: highest category of murder inquiry. Kenneth Reagan, obviously, from that
Speaker 9: point on, became prime suspect. At that stage, Reagan's whereabouts
Speaker 9: were unknown, as were Hauntsey's. They were very much on
Speaker 9: the loose, so to speak.
Speaker 4: I was a bit overcome by the whole thing, really,
Speaker 4: and I don't really know what I thought, but it
Speaker 4: never sort of maybe I just didn't want to think
Speaker 4: that somebody had been buried in my field, so I
Speaker 4: tried to make myself busy, and I noticed that my
Speaker 4: horse had ripped its horse blanket, so I took it
Speaker 4: off the horse, put it in the car, and I
Speaker 4: drove up the lane and lo and behold, I bumped
Speaker 4: into Reagan and Haunsey, who were in a car. I
Speaker 4: was really shocked to see them, and Reagan wound the
Speaker 4: window down and I said to what are you doing here?
Speaker 4: And he said we need to have a little chat.
Speaker 4: And Haunsey then said, why didn't you get in the car.
Speaker 4: We'll go and have a coffee. And I thought, well,
Speaker 4: I don't want to get in the car with them.
Speaker 4: So I had the horse blanket next to me, and
Speaker 4: there was a little cottage just and I said, I've
Speaker 4: got to take this back. I've borrowed this from you know.
Speaker 4: Pointed to I've got to take it back, and they
Speaker 4: were expecting it back. I'll be back in two minutes,
Speaker 4: I said, so they said okay. So I drove off
Speaker 4: and I drove round the corner and I phoned d
Speaker 4: Iral and he said, whatever you do, don't get in
Speaker 4: the car with them. So I said, okay. He said,
Speaker 4: I'm going to send two police officers back. Two police
Speaker 4: officers arrived, but Reagan and Hauntsey had gone.
Speaker 2: Reagan and Haunsey had escaped to Europe, leaving Peter Reese behind.
Speaker 2: But alone and on the run, Reese developed a guilty conscience.
Speaker 12: I think he was cornered. He didn't know me from Adam.
Speaker 12: He just came in, sat down, and more or less
Speaker 12: started pull on his heart.
Speaker 2: At at the time, Wendy Powells was staying at a
Speaker 2: boarding house when a new lodger moved in within hours.
Speaker 2: Reese made a startling confession.
Speaker 12: I just took him as any you know, new lodger
Speaker 12: that came there until he started saying, have I seen
Speaker 12: him on TV? And I said no, should I have done,
Speaker 12: and so I just wondered, he said, because I have
Speaker 12: been on TV and I thought, oh, he's not a
Speaker 12: celebrity or anything.
Speaker 7: You know.
Speaker 12: He didn't look that way, and he just said that
Speaker 12: he was involved with an Asian family that had disappeared.
Speaker 4: They could put me at the scene.
Speaker 12: Of where the bodies were buried, but I didn't kill anybody.
Speaker 12: Was going. You know, they can't do that. They can
Speaker 12: paign that on me. And I'd say to him, you
Speaker 12: know what is going on?
Speaker 4: You know?
Speaker 12: He just said that Reagan was crazy because he killed
Speaker 12: two children. I gasped and I said, hey, did you
Speaker 12: were they killed? He said that Reagan had shot them.
Speaker 12: It was Reagan. He's his psycho, he said he killed
Speaker 12: them all. I knew what I had to do because
Speaker 12: how many people coming to your home every day and
Speaker 12: say that they've killed five people and two babies, three
Speaker 12: adults and two babies.
Speaker 2: Wendy Powells alerted the police, and after just twelve days
Speaker 2: on the run, Peter Reese was arrested at a nearby pub.
Speaker 2: Despite his confession to Wendy Powell's, Reese refused to answer
Speaker 2: any questions and the whereabouts of the Chowen family remained
Speaker 2: a mystery, but three weeks later a fisherman discovered another
Speaker 2: body floating in the solent.
Speaker 6: I was told that Nancy's body was decomposed, but I
Speaker 6: interested on seeing the body because for me, it was
Speaker 6: not a securitan. For me, it was my baby sister.
Speaker 6: For me, she was she was still alive, and I
Speaker 6: was to her.
Speaker 4: And that was it.
Speaker 6: Tearful goodbye, That's what I said. I felt sorry that
Speaker 6: I can't hear her. I did sear dead, nanty. I
Speaker 6: tried my best, but I can't tear you.
Speaker 2: Kenneth Reagan was tracked down by police in Belgium after
Speaker 2: two months on the run, and just six weeks later,
Speaker 2: William Harnsey gave himself up. The three prime suspects were
Speaker 2: now in custody, but they refused to answer any questions.
Speaker 2: With three family members still missing and no witnesses to
Speaker 2: the murders, police needed hard evidence to link their suspects
Speaker 2: to the crime. Little did they realize that the vital
Speaker 2: clue they needed had been left by Neil Chohan himself.
Speaker 2: April two thousand and five saw the start of the
Speaker 2: longest criminal trial in the history of the Old Bailey
Speaker 2: Police were trying to prove that Kenneth Reagan, William Hornsey
Speaker 2: and Peter Reese had abducted and murdered all five members
Speaker 2: of the Chohan family. The nine month trial saw almost
Speaker 2: four and a half thousand different exhibits from financial transactions
Speaker 2: to petrol receipts, but it was telephone tracking evidence which
Speaker 2: provided the foundation for the whole case.
Speaker 9: We got ourselves into position where we pretty much knew
Speaker 9: exactly what had gone on and could give a very
Speaker 9: clear indication to the trial the enormity of the crime
Speaker 9: and who'd committed it.
Speaker 2: Initially, police had established Reagan and Chohan's movements by tracking
Speaker 2: their mobiles. Once they gained access to Haunsey and Reese's phones,
Speaker 2: they had compelling evidence for an abduction.
Speaker 9: Our telephone intelligence had suggested that mister check Johan had
Speaker 9: been with mister Reagan, Haauntsey and Reese, and then the
Speaker 9: telephones traveled down to Wilton in Salisbury, namely three Forge Close,
Speaker 9: which was Ken Reagan's home address. Over the critical period
Speaker 9: when mister Johan had initially been had gone missing, there
Speaker 9: was never a time that one of those telephones wasn't
Speaker 9: in that area, leading us to believe he was being
Speaker 9: guarded at number three Forge Close.
Speaker 2: All the men could now be placed at the scene,
Speaker 2: but detectives still needed further clues as to what really
Speaker 2: happened at three Forge Close. In the run up to
Speaker 2: the trial, they unexpectedly received some vital new evidence from
Speaker 2: one of the suspect's own relatives.
Speaker 13: Mister Hauntsey's son approached police and produced to us alex
Speaker 13: Mark color printer and also this gray suitcase, which contained
Speaker 13: a number of pieces of a four paper with mister
Speaker 13: Chohan's signature.
Speaker 2: On the printer and documents from Horns's suitcase explained how
Speaker 2: Reagan had managed to convince the staff at SIBA that
Speaker 2: Neil Chohen had sold the company and left the country.
Speaker 2: Police argued that Neil Chohan was held at three Forge
Speaker 2: Close so Reagan could force him to sign the documents
Speaker 2: under duss what.
Speaker 13: Are you playing at?
Speaker 4: What are you doing? Just fucking sign it.
Speaker 2: The suitcase contained ten blank sheets with Showen's signature spares,
Speaker 2: which Reagan could have used to produce other forgeries if
Speaker 2: they were needed.
Speaker 9: Reagan's initial plan was to get rid of Annual Chohan.
Speaker 9: I think once he'd gone down that road, he was
Speaker 9: left in a position where he had to murder the
Speaker 9: entire family because he knew that had he not done so,
Speaker 9: that Nancy would have raised the alarm. We could see
Speaker 9: clearly from the telephone intelligence that while mister Reese remained
Speaker 9: in Salisbury, Reagan and Hauntsy traveled to London to Sutton Road, Hounslow,
Speaker 9: where they spent several hours. I can only guess, but
Speaker 9: it's possible that that is when the family met their
Speaker 9: deaths in that address. I don't know that to date.
Speaker 9: What I can say is that Reagan haunts you were
Speaker 9: in the area, and I can say that the family
Speaker 9: disappeared on that day. For mister Reagan, these murders were
Speaker 9: something he had to do to get what he wanted,
Speaker 9: and it was meant almost meant little to him as
Speaker 9: changing his shirt.
Speaker 2: The police were unable to establish precisely where or when
Speaker 2: the family were murdered, but they were convinced that Neil
Speaker 2: Chohen had been killed at Reagan's bungalow. The problem was
Speaker 2: proving it.
Speaker 13: We carried out a full forensic examination of the premises
Speaker 13: over many days. There was nothing significantly found there. The
Speaker 13: reasons for this was that the room had been recently decorated,
Speaker 13: and certainly the furniture from that room was certainly removed,
Speaker 13: and Reagan had replaced it immediately with new furniture.
Speaker 9: The fact that premises had been redecorated, the carpet had
Speaker 9: been removed, the sofa had been removed, really was clearly
Speaker 9: indicative of someone trying to conceal evidence and clean up
Speaker 9: a crime scene.
Speaker 2: But despite the suspicious activity at the house, it was
Speaker 2: not proof that Chohen had been murdered by Reagan. It
Speaker 2: was only a single extraordinary piece of evidence that will
Speaker 2: convince the jury beyond reasonable doubt, a clue which had
Speaker 2: been initially overlooked by the scientists and left in storage
Speaker 2: for almost eight months, A clue left by Neil Chohan himself.
Speaker 13: We have two exhibits here. One is the right sock
Speaker 13: of mister Chohan, which was taken from him at the
Speaker 13: post autumn down in Dorsets. Most of the clothes were
Speaker 13: submitted immediately to the Forensic Science Service for examination, but socks.
Speaker 13: Normally is very little evidential value in socks. But for completeness,
Speaker 13: we decided to send the remaining items of clothing to
Speaker 13: the scientists who had requested them. When the scientists unpackaged
Speaker 13: the sock and examined it. Inside was found a folded
Speaker 13: piece of paper. As you can see, it's in a
Speaker 13: very delicate state. He has been dried, but it's obviously
Speaker 13: been in the seawater. I think the way it's been
Speaker 13: folded so many times has protected it. And it's a
Speaker 13: letter from the Cheltenham and Gloucester Building Society and it's
Speaker 13: addressed to mister Reagan of number three Forged Close, and
Speaker 13: it's dated the twelfth of February two thousand and three,
Speaker 13: which clearly meant it arrived the day we believe mister
Speaker 13: Chohan was being held captive at Forge Close. You can
Speaker 13: only imagine the fear that mister Chohan would have been
Speaker 13: in to secret this in his person, and certainly to
Speaker 13: put it into his sock. He must have realized that
Speaker 13: he faced imminent death.
Speaker 9: Of course's overwhelming evidence of the message that mister Chohan
Speaker 9: was trying to descend from beyond the grave as to
Speaker 9: who had actually murdered him.
Speaker 2: After a nine month trial, the jury reached a unanimous verdict.
Speaker 2: Peter Reese was sentenced to twenty three years for the
Speaker 2: murder of Neil Chohen Harnsey and Reagan each received five
Speaker 2: consecutive life sentences for murdering the Chohen family. They will
Speaker 2: never be released from prison. The remains of Challenge at
Speaker 2: Corps Neil Chohen's mother in law, were eventually found off
Speaker 2: the coast of the Isle of Wight. The bodies of
Speaker 2: the two babies, eighteen month old di Wnder and eight
Speaker 2: week old Ravender, have never been found.
Speaker 9: I think that the killing of any child is extremely tragic,
Speaker 9: and I think as a police officer, having investigated such crimes,
Speaker 9: you can normally see a reason why that happened. Someone snapped,
Speaker 9: someone was depressed, someone was mentally ill, and there's normally
Speaker 9: a variety of motivations for a child being murdered. In
Speaker 9: these circumstances, the motivation was purely self gain and greed,
Speaker 9: and for me, I found that particularly horrific.
Speaker 6: I still have nightmares about all the killers might have
Speaker 6: killed Nancy, or who was killed first. Was Nancy killed
Speaker 6: in front of my mom, or my mom killed in
Speaker 6: front of Nancy, or the kid killed in front of
Speaker 6: Mom and Nancy. And it's just very hard, you know,
Speaker 6: and I don't think I'll ever be able to come
Speaker 6: to terms with it.
Speaker 2: Uncle returned to New Zealand. He would never meet his
Speaker 2: sister's children. The only time he saw them altogether was
Speaker 2: on a family video he found in their empty home.
Speaker 6: When I found Nancy's video was filmed just two days
Speaker 6: before the disappearance, Hello, and I could see in the
Speaker 6: video of the family celebrating life and the kids playing
Speaker 6: in the house. The eldest son, he took his first
Speaker 6: steps in the video, and my mom, she was very
Speaker 6: happy in the video. When I had looked at the video,
Speaker 6: I was very happy, you know, because I never actually
Speaker 6: saw Anil and Nancy living together.
Speaker 13: It's probably gardener, very nice.
Speaker 6: But through that video, I came to know that Nancy
Speaker 6: was very happy with Neiland. She was, you know, she
Speaker 6: was very lucky to have a guy like Anil with her.
Speaker 6: Every time I close my eyes, I can I can
Speaker 6: see Nancy smiling and as if nothing has happened. She's
Speaker 6: still there and she's waiting for me to come over.
Speaker 1: Bat Fold actuated b