Latest / Weird Darkness:True crime & The unexplained / CAUTION!!! This Story Is Extremely Disturbing True Crime Documentary

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CAUTION!!! This Story Is Extremely Disturbing True Crime Documentary · Weird Darkness:True crime & The unexplained

0:00
Speaker 1: Shana Grice was brutally murdered in her own home by
0:04
Speaker 1: Michael Lane. Lane had become obsessed with Shana, could not
0:09
Speaker 1: accept that she did not want to be with him.
0:11
Speaker 1: This verdict will not bring Shana back, but I hope
0:14
Speaker 1: it provides some comfort for her family and friends who've
0:18
Speaker 1: had to endure a long and distressing trial because Lane
0:23
Speaker 1: would not confess this horrendous crime.
0:27
Speaker 2: A warning to all our viewers. What you are about
0:29
Speaker 2: to watch is a true story. The following programme contains
0:33
Speaker 2: content that some viewers may find disturbing. Viewer discretion is
0:38
Speaker 2: strongly advised. Just don't do it again.
0:41
Speaker 1: And if you come near the house again, I'd... I
0:43
Speaker 1: won't come near the house again. I won't contact you again. OK?
0:49
Speaker 1: I think that's best. Why did you take the key
0:52
Speaker 1: in the first place? I wanted to see you. I've
0:55
Speaker 1: been talking to you and I knew you.
0:57
Speaker 2: Wouldn't let me in otherwise. On that recording, Michael Lane
1:02
Speaker 2: explains to Shana Grice why he took her key. He
1:05
Speaker 2: says he knew she would not have opened the door
1:07
Speaker 2: to him. Shana was 19. She rang him herself in
1:11
Speaker 2: July of 2016 and recorded the call without his knowledge
1:15
Speaker 2: because she wanted the police to hold something nobody could
1:18
Speaker 2: argue with. Days before, Lane had let himself into her
1:22
Speaker 2: bungalow at around 6 in the morning and stood in
1:25
Speaker 2: her bedroom while she lay under the covers, keeping perfectly
1:29
Speaker 2: still pretending to sleep. She took the recording and her
1:33
Speaker 2: account to the police. They recorded a stolen key. Lane
1:38
Speaker 2: was cautioned. Her next two reports ended with no action
1:42
Speaker 2: and a letter telling her the case was closed. Within
1:45
Speaker 2: two months of that phone call, Shana was dead. She
1:49
Speaker 2: was found in her bedroom, in the town where she
1:51
Speaker 2: had grown up. Her killer had used a knife and
1:55
Speaker 2: then set fire to the room. She had reported Lane,
1:59
Speaker 2: She had told officers where he waited for her, how
2:01
Speaker 2: he followed her, and what he did with her key.
2:05
Speaker 2: When that was not enough, she went and got the
2:07
Speaker 2: proof herself. Nobody had to take her word for it.
2:11
Speaker 2: She handed them the recording. Before we go on, I
2:14
Speaker 2: have a request, and I mean it. For months, Shana
2:18
Speaker 2: tried to make someone with the power to act hear her.
2:22
Speaker 2: It did not work. You are hearing her now, and
2:25
Speaker 2: that matters. If you can, do subscribe and give this
2:30
Speaker 2: video a like. It is free, and it puts her
2:33
Speaker 2: story in front of people who need to know it,
2:36
Speaker 2: so that the next person who rings for help is
2:38
Speaker 2: a little harder to turn away. Shana was from Portslade,
2:42
Speaker 2: just west of Brighton. She had no brothers or sisters.
2:46
Speaker 2: Her parents were Sharon and Richard. Straight out of school,
2:51
Speaker 2: in the summer of 2015, she began work on reception
2:54
Speaker 2: at Brighton Fire Alarms. At eighteen, She was the first
2:58
Speaker 2: face every visitor saw. Her boyfriend was Ashley Cook. By
3:03
Speaker 2: the spring of 2016, they were talking seriously about their future.
3:08
Speaker 2: She lived in a shared bungalow out in Mile Oak,
3:11
Speaker 2: with two housemates, and she was looking forward to ordinary things.
3:16
Speaker 2: Her boyfriend remembers a kind girl who was never too
3:19
Speaker 2: busy for anyone. It is worth holding on to how
3:22
Speaker 2: young and inexperienced she was. because the judge who later
3:26
Speaker 2: sentenced her killer did. He said that, because of her
3:29
Speaker 2: age and her lack of experience of life, Shana had
3:33
Speaker 2: not known how to deal with the man in front
3:35
Speaker 2: of him. That man was Michael Lane. He worked at
3:39
Speaker 2: the same company, as a fire alarm engineer, and he
3:43
Speaker 2: was several years older than she was. But Lane had
3:47
Speaker 2: a past, and it had left a mark on paper.
3:51
Speaker 2: Back in 2010- Officers had taken him in over a
3:55
Speaker 2: suspicion that he had been grooming a girl of fourteen,
3:59
Speaker 2: someone he knew through a volunteer scouting group. The case
4:03
Speaker 2: went no further. No charge was brought, and his record
4:07
Speaker 2: was marked. There is no sign that Shana ever knew
4:10
Speaker 2: about that marker. It is the first thing in this
4:13
Speaker 2: story she did not know, and it will not be
4:16
Speaker 2: the last. What Shana shared with Lane, for a time,
4:21
Speaker 2: was a secret. It ran alongside her relationship with Ashley,
4:25
Speaker 2: and Ashley was not told. By December 2015, Shana had
4:30
Speaker 2: started to pull away from Lane. She called things between
4:34
Speaker 2: them quietly, the way people do when they hope an
4:37
Speaker 2: ending will simply be accepted. It was not accepted. Around
4:42
Speaker 2: New Year, a note appeared on Ashley's car, telling him
4:46
Speaker 2: that Shana had been unfaithful. Someone had keyed the paintwork
4:51
Speaker 2: and dented the bodywork. For her nineteenth birthday, in January,
4:57
Speaker 2: Lane sent flowers to her office. Shana told her manager
5:01
Speaker 2: the gift was unwelcome, and she did not want it.
5:04
Speaker 2: Within days the tires on her car had been slashed,
5:08
Speaker 2: and Lane showed up, saying he would sort it out.
5:11
Speaker 2: Her housemates saw Lane loitering near the bungalow at dawn,
5:15
Speaker 2: more than once. Letters followed as well. insisting she repay
5:20
Speaker 2: sums he claimed to have spent on her. What Shana
5:24
Speaker 2: could not see was the other half of the picture.
5:27
Speaker 2: The judge would say later that Lane had been keeping
5:30
Speaker 2: the messages they exchanged, including embarrassing ones, and that he
5:35
Speaker 2: meant to use them as a form of moral blackmail.
5:39
Speaker 2: At some point in these months, a date the evidence
5:42
Speaker 2: does not pin down, he also fitted a tracking device
5:45
Speaker 2: to her car and recharged it. So while Shana was
5:49
Speaker 2: working out how to describe what was happening to her,
5:52
Speaker 2: Lane was assembling a file of his own. It was
5:55
Speaker 2: 8 February 2016 when Shana first rang Sussex Police. Her
6:02
Speaker 2: opening to the handler was hesitant. She was unsure how
6:05
Speaker 2: to open the conversation, she said, but as she saw it,
6:09
Speaker 2: someone was stalking her. Stalking had been a specific criminal
6:14
Speaker 2: offence in England and Wales since 2012. four years before
6:19
Speaker 2: she made that call. This was the first cry for help,
6:23
Speaker 2: and it was lost. Put that beside what existed in
6:26
Speaker 2: the system that day. A young woman had used the
6:29
Speaker 2: word stalking. She had named a man who damaged her car,
6:34
Speaker 2: sent her unwanted gifts, and kept turning up where she was.
6:38
Speaker 2: And attached to that man's name was a marker left
6:41
Speaker 2: in 2010, when he was questioned over suspected grooming of
6:45
Speaker 2: a young teenager. According to reports on the case, the
6:50
Speaker 2: marker was not noted when Shana reported him. It was
6:53
Speaker 2: there to be found. It changed nothing. An officer is
6:58
Speaker 2: reported to have visited Shana's workplace and spoken with her
7:02
Speaker 2: manager about her safety. Lane was spoken to and warned off.
7:08
Speaker 2: That was the whole response. A verbal warning is informal.
7:13
Speaker 2: It carries no charge and no court order. and no
7:16
Speaker 2: further action followed, because the evidence was judged too thin
7:20
Speaker 2: to go any further. For Lane, a warning like that
7:24
Speaker 2: was easy to absorb. He was still working at the
7:28
Speaker 2: same company and still had her private messages. It is
7:32
Speaker 2: hard to see what it cost him. For Shana, the
7:35
Speaker 2: first report had brought no relief. She had asked once,
7:40
Speaker 2: and she had been heard, in the narrowest sense of
7:43
Speaker 2: the word. After that call, The police file went quiet
7:47
Speaker 2: for several weeks. Shana carried on going to the same
7:51
Speaker 2: office as the man named in her report. The quiet
7:54
Speaker 2: ended on the evening of 24th March 2016, when Lane
7:58
Speaker 2: turned up at the bungalow while her housemates were there.
8:02
Speaker 2: Shana had not asked him there. She left the house
8:05
Speaker 2: on foot and set off for Ashley's family home. Lane followed.
8:10
Speaker 2: He caught her up on the road, pulled her hair,
8:14
Speaker 2: and wrenched her phone away. She was on a public road,
8:18
Speaker 2: in the evening, with the man she had reported to
8:21
Speaker 2: the police six weeks before, and she no longer had
8:24
Speaker 2: a phone to call for help. One way or another
8:27
Speaker 2: she made it to Ashley's, and the police were called.
8:31
Speaker 2: Lane was arrested over the assault and then released. No
8:35
Speaker 2: charge followed. By now the file held a February report
8:39
Speaker 2: of stalking and a physical attack on the same woman
8:42
Speaker 2: by the same man, with the name a date and
8:46
Speaker 2: a place. Read together, the two showed a pattern forming.
8:51
Speaker 2: Shana's statement was taken on 25th March by PC Trevor Godfrey,
8:56
Speaker 2: in the home of Ashley's family, with Ashley's relatives around.
9:01
Speaker 2: In that setting, she left something out. She did not
9:04
Speaker 2: tell the officer that she and Lane had been in
9:07
Speaker 2: a relationship. Lane, when he was interviewed, had no such
9:11
Speaker 2: gap in his account. he produced messages that the two
9:15
Speaker 2: of them had exchanged. They were friendly, affectionate, and many
9:20
Speaker 2: were signed off with kisses. At sentencing, the judge drew
9:24
Speaker 2: a straight line from those messages to the outcome. The
9:27
Speaker 2: judge said Lane had stored them up for this very purpose,
9:31
Speaker 2: to steer officers towards seeing Shana as the one at fault.
9:35
Speaker 1: It worked.
9:37
Speaker 2: Godfrey said afterwards that the kisses at the end of
9:40
Speaker 2: her messages showed him a way of hiding an affair,
9:44
Speaker 2: rather than any harassment, and that he had seen nothing
9:47
Speaker 2: to suggest she was in any danger. So an officer
9:50
Speaker 2: had two versions in front of him. One was from
9:54
Speaker 2: a girl of 19 who had held back the single
9:57
Speaker 2: fact that explained her fear. The other was from a
10:00
Speaker 2: man who had spent months stocking up the very thing
10:04
Speaker 2: that would answer her. And there were things the officer
10:07
Speaker 2: did not have in front of him. The marker from 2010.
10:10
Speaker 2: The weight of a report that had already been made
10:14
Speaker 2: in February. The way Lane's behavior had moved, step by step.
10:19
Speaker 2: from gifts and tires to a hand in her hair.
10:22
Speaker 2: Nothing in the public record shows that anyone put those
10:25
Speaker 2: before him. The outcome was a penalty notice. It was
10:30
Speaker 2: issued to Shana for wasting police time, and it carried
10:34
Speaker 2: a fine of ninety pounds. In the file there was
10:37
Speaker 2: a recorded assault. One person in it was fined, and
10:41
Speaker 2: it was the person who had been assaulted. The man
10:44
Speaker 2: who had grabbed her by the hair went home. In
10:47
Speaker 2: one short phone call, A teenager who had gone to
10:51
Speaker 2: the police for protection learned that, in their view, she
10:55
Speaker 2: was the problem. When a disciplinary panel finally examined Godfrey's work,
11:00
Speaker 2: in 2019, it said he had not looked into the
11:04
Speaker 2: background to her relationship with Lane and had made up
11:07
Speaker 2: his mind too soon. Shana was never given those words.
11:12
Speaker 2: She was given a bill. And a bill like that
11:15
Speaker 2: carried a message. It said that coming forward could cost
11:19
Speaker 2: more than keeping quiet. It said that her account weighed
11:23
Speaker 2: less than his messages. And it said, to Lane, that
11:27
Speaker 2: when the system looked at the two of them side
11:29
Speaker 2: by side, it had chosen. From then on, someone in
11:34
Speaker 2: her circle checked in with her every few hours. None
11:38
Speaker 2: of it stopped Lane. In the months after the fine,
11:41
Speaker 2: Shana and Lane drifted in and out of contact. By
11:45
Speaker 2: early July she had ended things with him for good,
11:48
Speaker 2: and Lane came to the bungalow to collect his belongings.
11:52
Speaker 2: When he left, he took something that was not his.
11:55
Speaker 2: He kept her rear door key. The judge would say
11:58
Speaker 2: that Lane stole that key so that he could get
12:00
Speaker 2: into her bedroom. Saturday, 9th of July, just after dawn,
12:06
Speaker 2: he used it. Shana became aware that Lane was inside
12:09
Speaker 2: her room. She did not call out, and she did
12:12
Speaker 2: not turn over. She stayed under the duvet and let
12:16
Speaker 2: him believe she was still asleep. Lane stood over the bed.
12:20
Speaker 2: After a while he left the way he had come.
12:23
Speaker 2: She had been alone in her own home with a
12:25
Speaker 2: man who had decided that a locked door was not
12:28
Speaker 2: a refusal. By now she had already been fined once
12:32
Speaker 2: for reporting him. She was not going to ring the
12:34
Speaker 2: police and simply hope. She rang Lane and she recorded
12:39
Speaker 2: the call. What makes the recording hard to hear is
12:43
Speaker 2: how much it admits. Shana asked Lane why he had
12:47
Speaker 2: taken the key at all. He told her he had
12:50
Speaker 2: wanted to talk to her and that he had known
12:53
Speaker 2: she would not let him in otherwise.
12:55
Speaker 1: Why did you take the key in the first place?
13:04
Speaker 2: She told him that was not good enough and that
13:06
Speaker 2: it was out of order. He said there was something
13:09
Speaker 2: wrong with him. He apologised for the key. and for
13:13
Speaker 2: going into her bedroom, and he promised not to contact
13:16
Speaker 2: her again. Shana did not accept that as enough. Put plainly,
13:22
Speaker 2: he was admitting that he had been refused, and had
13:25
Speaker 2: gone around the refusal. She had said no, and he
13:29
Speaker 2: had treated a no as an obstacle with a way
13:32
Speaker 2: past it. Shana now had what she had wanted, his
13:36
Speaker 2: own voice, on tape, admitting that he had been in
13:40
Speaker 2: her room. She took it to Sussex Police and reported
13:45
Speaker 2: what had happened. When Lane arrived at her home to
13:48
Speaker 2: return the key, officers were already there. He was arrested
13:53
Speaker 2: over the key, and he was given a caution. That
13:56
Speaker 2: was the formal response to the morning a man stood
13:59
Speaker 2: over a young woman's bed as she pretended to sleep,
14:02
Speaker 2: and to a tape on which he apologized for being
14:05
Speaker 2: in her room. A caution is a warning, not a prosecution.
14:10
Speaker 2: It deals with a stolen object. It says nothing about
14:13
Speaker 2: what the man intended to do with it. When a
14:16
Speaker 2: disciplinary panel came to examine the case, it found that
14:20
Speaker 2: the officer dealing with the key incident, P.C. John Mills,
14:24
Speaker 2: had not investigated it properly. So a recording that Shana
14:29
Speaker 2: had made to demonstrate his intentions ended up, on paper,
14:34
Speaker 2: as a record of a theft. The paperwork was thin.
14:38
Speaker 2: The recording was in it. The report of the bedroom
14:41
Speaker 2: was in it, and on Lane's record, where it had
14:44
Speaker 2: been since 2010, sat the marker, which, by the reports,
14:50
Speaker 2: had not been noted when she first came forward. The
14:53
Speaker 2: next day, 10 July, Shana's phone began ringing from a
14:57
Speaker 2: withheld number. There were around seven calls. Each time she answered,
15:03
Speaker 2: nobody spoke. At least one was nothing but breathing. She
15:07
Speaker 2: reported them. Officers told her there was nothing more they
15:11
Speaker 2: could pursue. It later emerged that the number belonged to
15:14
Speaker 2: a landline at Lane's own home. Two days afterwards, on
15:19
Speaker 2: 12 July, she made another report. This time Lane had
15:24
Speaker 2: tailed her car. It was graded low risk, and the
15:28
Speaker 2: report went to PC John Mills. Mills never telephoned her
15:32
Speaker 2: to say what was happening. In time, Shana received a letter.
15:37
Speaker 2: it told her the case was closed. Within a few
15:41
Speaker 2: days she had given police a recording, a phone number
15:44
Speaker 2: and a car, and what she received in writing was
15:48
Speaker 2: the end of the matter. As July wore on, there
15:51
Speaker 2: is no sign that anyone at Sussex Police was still
15:54
Speaker 2: looking at Michael Lane. By the end of July, the
15:58
Speaker 2: police file on Shana Grice was closed. In the first
16:02
Speaker 2: days of August, Shana spotted Lane outside her house once more,
16:08
Speaker 2: She confided in a friend, Joanne Pumphrey. After the fine,
16:12
Speaker 2: she said, she doubted the police would take her word.
16:16
Speaker 2: So she did not report it. That is what the
16:19
Speaker 2: fine cost her. In a single sentence. Four months on,
16:24
Speaker 2: it was still steering her choices. Around 20 August, Lane
16:28
Speaker 2: told a friend that Shana would pay for her behavior.
16:32
Speaker 2: On 23 August, they met at a hotel. Shana told
16:36
Speaker 2: him again that it was over. and that she wanted
16:38
Speaker 2: to be with Ashley. On the 24th of August, Lane
16:43
Speaker 2: bought a fuel can and filled it, and a petrol
16:46
Speaker 2: station camera recorded the whole thing. At trial he claimed
16:50
Speaker 2: that the petrol had been meant for himself. Ashley and
16:53
Speaker 2: Shana made plans for the following evening. What comes next
16:57
Speaker 2: is the death itself. I will keep it factual, but
17:01
Speaker 2: it is heavy, and nobody needs to sit through it.
17:05
Speaker 2: Pause the video if you need to. If you choose
17:08
Speaker 2: to hear it through, I would ask you for one thing.
17:11
Speaker 2: Do subscribe, so that stories like this keep finding the
17:15
Speaker 2: people who refuse to look away, and get harder for
17:18
Speaker 2: everyone else to ignore. The bank keeps the clearest clock
17:22
Speaker 2: in this case. At 8.06 on the morning of 25 August, 2016,
17:28
Speaker 2: on Graham Avenue, a short walk from the bungalow, Shana's
17:32
Speaker 2: bank card went into a machine. The request was for £ 250.
17:36
Speaker 2: The account held £ 60, so £ 60 was all that came out.
17:43
Speaker 2: Cameras showed who was standing there. Michael Lane. Work back
17:48
Speaker 2: from that moment, and the rest falls into place. Ashley
17:52
Speaker 2: was at work, and the housemates had gone out. Shana
17:55
Speaker 2: was alone. Lane had set out from his own home
17:59
Speaker 2: at around twenty-five past seven, in his work jacket and
18:03
Speaker 2: a cap that hid his face. At 7.29 a camera
18:07
Speaker 2: caught him walking towards her road. By half past he
18:10
Speaker 2: was inside the bungalow. He took a kitchen knife, probably hers.
18:16
Speaker 2: A neighbor heard a woman cry out, then silence. At
18:20
Speaker 2: about 20 to 8 he cut Shana's throat. She was 19.
18:25
Speaker 2: Between that and the cash point there were 26 minutes.
18:29
Speaker 2: He then went back to the bungalow with petrol, soaked
18:32
Speaker 2: the bedding and the floor with it, lit it, and
18:35
Speaker 2: walked out, pulling the bedroom door shut behind him. The
18:39
Speaker 2: judge made a point of that door. With it closed,
18:43
Speaker 2: the fire was starved of air. Had it been left open,
18:46
Speaker 2: he said, the flames could well have taken the entire house,
18:50
Speaker 2: and the neighbors next door with it. Fifty-seven minutes separated Lane,
18:55
Speaker 2: leaving his house, from the fire taking hold. The judge
18:59
Speaker 2: found that every step of it had been planned. And afterwards,
19:04
Speaker 2: By Lane's own later account, the day carried on. He
19:08
Speaker 2: kept a dental appointment. By midday he was back in
19:11
Speaker 2: his routine. It was one of Shana's colleagues who first
19:15
Speaker 2: sensed something was wrong. When she failed to arrive at
19:18
Speaker 2: work that morning, the colleague rang Ashley. Ashley was at
19:22
Speaker 2: his own job, so his father, Ian Cook, who lived closer,
19:27
Speaker 2: was asked to call round and see how she was.
19:30
Speaker 2: It was just before ten. When Ian got to the bungalow,
19:34
Speaker 2: smoke was curling out of the letterbox. Alarms were going
19:38
Speaker 2: off inside. On the front step was a footprint in blood.
19:43
Speaker 2: The bedroom door was shut, and he had to force it.
19:47
Speaker 2: Ian told the court that, at first glance, the shape
19:50
Speaker 2: on the bed looked like a duvet. Then he saw
19:53
Speaker 2: it was Shana, and he called out to her. Emergency
19:57
Speaker 2: crews came, but it was too late. Nobody at Sussex
20:01
Speaker 2: Police had to search for the name of a suspect.
20:05
Speaker 2: Shana had spent six months supplying it. After her death,
20:10
Speaker 2: Officers found a tracking device fixed beneath her car. In
20:14
Speaker 2: a search of Lane's home, they found an empty box
20:17
Speaker 2: for it and a receipt in his name. Set that
20:21
Speaker 2: against everything Shana had reported. On that February call, Shana
20:26
Speaker 2: described being stalked. In March, a man pulled her phone
20:30
Speaker 2: from her grip. In July, she lay beneath a duvet
20:35
Speaker 2: while he stood in her room. and she recorded his
20:38
Speaker 2: explanation for taking her key. At some point in those months,
20:43
Speaker 2: a small device under her car had begun reporting where
20:46
Speaker 2: she went, and nothing shows that anyone looked there while
20:50
Speaker 2: she was alive. Nobody asked Lane the question that would
20:53
Speaker 2: have led them there, so far as the record shows.
20:57
Speaker 2: On the afternoon of 25 August, Lane was arrested. Officers
21:03
Speaker 2: found him stowing a spare wheel in his Audi. He
21:06
Speaker 2: denied it. At first he described a mundane round of errands,
21:11
Speaker 2: a trip for water, an appointment at the dentist. Then
21:16
Speaker 2: the footage was set in front of him. A street
21:19
Speaker 2: camera had him walking close to her home. Another had
21:22
Speaker 2: his car nearby during the minutes that counted. The bank
21:26
Speaker 2: had a record of the withdrawal. A forecourt camera had
21:30
Speaker 2: filmed him filling a red can the day before. His
21:34
Speaker 2: story kept bending to fit whatever was put in front
21:37
Speaker 2: of him. The trainers surfaced through a tip-off. Five days
21:41
Speaker 2: on from the killing, a motorist near New Barn Farm
21:45
Speaker 2: phoned detectives, because a man in the appeal photograph looked
21:49
Speaker 2: familiar to her. A search of the track beside the
21:52
Speaker 2: farm turned up white trainers, branded Lonsdale, dumped under a hedge.
21:58
Speaker 2: The souls carried Shana's blood. Lane's DNA was inside. The
22:03
Speaker 2: pattern of the tread fitted the bloody print on her step.
22:07
Speaker 2: Eventually Lane settled on a final account. He had called
22:11
Speaker 2: at the bungalow that morning, he said, found the door open,
22:15
Speaker 2: and Shana already dead, and run, because he was afraid
22:19
Speaker 2: of being blamed.
22:21
Speaker 3: So I went.
22:25
Speaker 2: I went round, walked round there, the door was open...
22:29
Speaker 2: The front door was open. Wide open or unlocked? No,
22:32
Speaker 2: it was open.
22:33
Speaker 1: It wasn't wide open, but it was half.
22:36
Speaker 2: Okay.
22:36
Speaker 3: Half open. So I went in there.
22:43
Speaker 2: Her bedroom door was half open again, and she was
22:47
Speaker 2: on the floor.
22:49
Speaker 3: Tell me about your thought process then, about what made
22:52
Speaker 3: you think, right, rather than just calling the police.
22:54
Speaker 1: And the ambulance, I'm going to just leave.
23:06
Speaker 2: Okay, so let's go with this idea that you're scared.
23:12
Speaker 2: Talk me through that. What were you scared would happen?
23:15
Speaker 2: That things would turn out something that I didn't. Murder,
23:19
Speaker 2: arson and theft were the charges. Months later, at Lewis
23:24
Speaker 2: Crown Court, the trial opened with a jury chosen on
23:27
Speaker 2: the 7th of March 2017. Lane's plea was not guilty.
23:33
Speaker 2: His lawyer suggested that Shana had been less than truthful
23:37
Speaker 2: about how she felt, and pointed to affectionate messages between them.
23:42
Speaker 2: On 9 March the jurors listened to the recording Shana
23:45
Speaker 2: had made. It was the tape that no officer had
23:48
Speaker 2: treated as decisive. On it, they heard Lane explain why
23:53
Speaker 2: he had taken her key, and apologize for going into
23:56
Speaker 2: her bedroom. Her housemates described how fixed on her he
24:00
Speaker 2: had become. The jury were shown the cashpoint footage, the
24:04
Speaker 2: fuel purchase, and the trainers. The court heard about the
24:09
Speaker 2: tracker beneath her car, and about the box, and the
24:12
Speaker 2: receipt that detectives had taken from his home. A domestic
24:17
Speaker 2: homicide review afterwards counted 12 girls and young women whom
24:21
Speaker 2: Lane had harassed between 2006 and 2016. Some of them
24:26
Speaker 2: reached through youth groups, and the 2010 marker had a sequel.
24:31
Speaker 2: In 2015, when Lane went back to the Scouts, a
24:35
Speaker 2: fault in the group's IT system failed to flag him
24:38
Speaker 2: as a former member. Laid together. Those facts do not
24:42
Speaker 2: describe a man who suddenly lost control. They describe a
24:46
Speaker 2: man whom no record had managed to stop. The jury
24:50
Speaker 2: returned its verdict on the 22th of March. Michael Lane
24:54
Speaker 2: was guilty of murder. The sentence came on the 23rd
24:57
Speaker 2: of March. handed down by Mr Justice Green. Life in prison,
25:03
Speaker 2: and no chance of parole for at least 25 years.
25:08
Speaker 3: A judge today sentenced Michael Lane, the killer of Shana Grice,
25:11
Speaker 3: who was 19 years old and from Port Slade, to
25:14
Speaker 3: a life in prison for at least 25 years before
25:17
Speaker 3: he can be considered for parole.
25:19
Speaker 2: He found that the killing had been planned. He cited
25:23
Speaker 2: the petrol and the disguise, and he dismissed Lane's account
25:27
Speaker 2: that the fuel had been meant for himself. Stealing from
25:31
Speaker 2: her was callous, the judge said, but money was never
25:34
Speaker 2: the reason. Anger at being left, and jealousy of other men, were.
25:40
Speaker 2: Then he addressed the police. Shana, he said, had been
25:45
Speaker 2: so worried about Lane that she complained more than once.
25:48
Speaker 2: Lane had put his messages to work, steering officers into
25:52
Speaker 2: regarding her as the wrongdoer and himself as the innocent one.
25:57
Speaker 2: And the tragedy, the judge said, was that she asked
26:01
Speaker 2: the police for help, and was given none. His wording
26:05
Speaker 2: left no room for the idea that officers had simply
26:08
Speaker 2: overlooked a detail. Her request had gone to the right place,
26:12
Speaker 2: and the right place had given her nothing. The verdict
26:16
Speaker 2: brought Sussex Police's first public response, and it was an apology.
26:21
Speaker 2: Bernie O'Reilly, the Deputy Chief Constable, admitted the force might
26:26
Speaker 2: have fallen short. and said it had asked the watchdog
26:29
Speaker 2: to look at how it handled Shana in the months
26:32
Speaker 2: before she died. Shana's parents have said they firmly believe
26:36
Speaker 2: she would still be alive had officers listened to her
26:40
Speaker 2: fears and taken them seriously. The police watchdog of the day,
26:45
Speaker 2: the IPCC, reported back, and by April 2017, the force
26:51
Speaker 2: had agreed to act on six of its recommendations. They
26:55
Speaker 2: dealt with trainings, with data systems, and with the way
26:59
Speaker 2: relevant information was used. Lay those headings over Shana's file.
27:04
Speaker 2: A marker that was never noted. A phone number that
27:07
Speaker 2: belonged to the man she was reporting. A tracker beneath
27:11
Speaker 2: her car. A recording that became a caution. Everyone was
27:16
Speaker 2: relevant information. The very thing those recommendations were about. The
27:21
Speaker 2: officers were dealt with one by one. Fourteen people were investigated.
27:26
Speaker 2: The most serious allegation, gross misconduct, was put to one
27:31
Speaker 2: of them, and the other thirteen faced lesser misconduct allegations.
27:36
Speaker 2: Only two cases reached a public hearing. John Mills had
27:40
Speaker 2: already resigned by the time his came, in May 2019.
27:45
Speaker 2: The panel held that he had failed to look properly
27:47
Speaker 2: into her reports that Lane had been in her house,
27:51
Speaker 2: and had left her without updates after her July report.
27:55
Speaker 2: It called this, Gross misconduct, said dismissal would have followed
28:00
Speaker 2: if he had still held the job and put him
28:03
Speaker 2: on the police barred list. Trevor Godfrey's hearing came at
28:06
Speaker 2: the end of July that year. He had retired in
28:09
Speaker 2: December 2017, and no sanction followed. The panel found misconduct
28:16
Speaker 2: for the failings described earlier. The graver charge, gross misconduct,
28:22
Speaker 2: was not made out. Her parents were blunt about it.
28:26
Speaker 2: They described the outcome as a joke and the hearing
28:29
Speaker 2: as a sham. Back in April 2019, inspectors had reported
28:34
Speaker 2: that Sussex Police understood stalking and harassment far better than before,
28:38
Speaker 2: but still had work to do. These offences were not
28:42
Speaker 2: always being properly investigated. A training programme begun after Shana's
28:47
Speaker 2: death was unfinished, and most of the officers investigating such
28:51
Speaker 2: cases were untrained. Four months after that report, In August 2019,
28:57
Speaker 2: the force was reported to have ended wasting police time
29:00
Speaker 2: fines for people who come forward about domestic abuse. Reports
29:05
Speaker 2: say her case now features in police training. The family's
29:09
Speaker 2: solicitors at Hudgel have said that there were many warning
29:12
Speaker 2: signs which Sussex Police ignored and that its officers must
29:17
Speaker 2: be held to a higher standard. Look back over what
29:20
Speaker 2: Shana did. She had used the word stalking in February.
29:25
Speaker 2: She reported the man who followed her. She reported the
29:29
Speaker 2: man who took her key, and she recorded his explanation.
29:33
Speaker 2: She reported the calls, and then the car. She did
29:37
Speaker 2: everything a person in her position is told to do.
29:40
Speaker 2: Every time, the answer was smaller than the problem.
29:44
Speaker 1: A warning.
29:45
Speaker 2: A fine. A caution. A letter. The facts that could
29:50
Speaker 2: have changed the ending already existed. There was a marker
29:53
Speaker 2: on Lane's record, a device beneath her car, and her
29:57
Speaker 2: own recording on file. All of it was waiting for
30:00
Speaker 2: someone to look. If Shana's story has made you moved
30:06
Speaker 2: you in any way, please do subscribe so cases like
30:11
Speaker 2: these keep finding the people who need them and switch
30:15
Speaker 2: notifications on so the next one does not pass you by.
30:20
Speaker 2: If you know someone living in fear of a partner
30:22
Speaker 2: or an ex, remind them that asking for help is
30:26
Speaker 2: never wasted effort. I want to know what you think
30:30
Speaker 2: Godfrey retired before his hearing, and no sanction followed. Should
30:35
Speaker 2: leaving the force ahead of a hearing ever mean escaping
30:38
Speaker 2: the consequences? Leave your answer in the comments, along with
30:42
Speaker 2: the country you are tuning in from. Anyone being stalked
30:46
Speaker 2: or abused, or worried about someone who is, will find
30:50
Speaker 2: support links in the description. She deserved to be heard
30:54
Speaker 2: in full, and you have done that. Thank you.