Latest / The Evolution of Evil - True Crime Stories / Serial Killer Documentary - Adrian Prout: Narcissist Who Thought He’d Never Get Caught
Transcript
- 0:06Speaker 1: On the fifth of November two thousand and seven, in
- 0:10Speaker 1: the rural village of Red Marley in Gloucestershire, England, fifty
- 0:14Speaker 1: five year old Kate Prout vanished. Her husband Adrian, claimed
- 0:19Speaker 1: she'd walked out on him.
- 0:21Speaker 2: At first, you know, people's hearts went out to him.
- 0:24Speaker 3: He'd been abandoned, even though we come by. You had
- 0:28Speaker 3: no concern about her well being there.
- 0:31Speaker 4: Well, I did, but I thought if things weren't going
- 0:34Speaker 4: to someone would have thrown me or I assumed she
- 0:36Speaker 4: was okay.
- 0:38Speaker 5: He feels that he can just carry on, and he
- 0:40Speaker 5: can just keep diverting and just keep saying the right things,
- 0:44Speaker 5: and this will eventually go away.
- 0:48Speaker 1: Despite no body being found, the friendly farmer was convicted
- 0:52Speaker 1: of Kate's murder. The entire community was shocked.
- 0:58Speaker 6: He goes to prison, maintains his innocence in the way
- 1:01Speaker 6: that he has all the way through this. The missing
- 1:04Speaker 6: piece of that jigsaw is we've still got a missing body.
- 1:10Speaker 1: The trail went cold. An army of supporters campaign to
- 1:15Speaker 1: overturn this supposed miscarriage of justice until twenty ten, when
- 1:21Speaker 1: Prout himself completed the puzzle.
- 1:25Speaker 7: To be perfectly honest, I just thought it was gonna
- 1:27Speaker 7: be sick.
- 1:28Speaker 8: I'm sat oppositing him in prison and he's just confessed
- 1:31Speaker 8: that he's killed his wife.
- 1:34Speaker 1: After years of pleading his innocence, the marsk had finally slipped.
- 1:39Speaker 1: Adrian Prout had revealed himself as one of the world's
- 1:43Speaker 1: most evil killers. For four years. After his wife disappeared,
- 2:10Speaker 1: farmer Adrian Prout claimed that Kate was actually alive and
- 2:14Speaker 1: well and in hiding. It was a lie, but it
- 2:20Speaker 1: was one so convincingly told. It reeled in Proud's friends, family,
- 2:26Speaker 1: and the rural community in which the couple lived.
- 2:31Speaker 8: He said that was her plan. That was her plan
- 2:34Speaker 8: to disappear and to get him done for murder. So
- 2:36Speaker 8: he said it was all set up. Obviously, we believed
- 2:40Speaker 8: his lies and we were drawn into a web of
- 2:43Speaker 8: lies we never knew were lies.
- 2:49Speaker 6: People liked it the place all the time, That's what
- 2:50Speaker 6: they do. There is a difference here. He's created a
- 2:54Speaker 6: narrative and he has to live and breathe that narrative.
- 2:57Speaker 6: Then he has to build on it and layer it,
- 3:00Speaker 6: and every time he has an interaction with another individual
- 3:04Speaker 6: or friends and family, that narrative has to stand scrutiny.
- 3:09Speaker 5: Coercive men like Prout. They are incredibly accomplished. They have
- 3:13Speaker 5: a way of actually reeling you in a convincing you
- 3:16Speaker 5: that everything that they're saying is true.
- 3:19Speaker 1: The seemingly friendly and helpful local farmer was difficult to
- 3:24Speaker 1: connect to the image of the manipulative killer he'd been
- 3:27Speaker 1: proven to be.
- 3:29Speaker 9: Its ad dichotium in my mind because there is this
- 3:32Speaker 9: gentle being, but now look at his hands and think
- 3:35Speaker 9: you'd just sicknother person's life. The outward appearance doesn't come
- 3:39Speaker 9: across as what's really going on internally. This had a
- 3:41Speaker 9: calculating murderer.
- 3:46Speaker 1: This killer's story begins in the village of Cooley, Gloucestershire.
- 3:52Speaker 1: Adrian Michael Prout was born on the fourteenth of June
- 3:56Speaker 1: nineteen sixty two.
- 3:58Speaker 10: He was the second youngest of four siblings. His mother, Jeannette,
- 4:06Speaker 10: died shortly after the birth of her fourth child.
- 4:12Speaker 5: Prout was two years old when his mother passed away.
- 4:15Speaker 5: So this is something that is lacking in his life.
- 4:18Speaker 5: He doesn't have that relationship with a mother that is
- 4:21Speaker 5: going to be the basis on which he forms relationships
- 4:23Speaker 5: with other women.
- 4:26Speaker 1: Both Adrian's father and grandfather were farmers, and he grew
- 4:31Speaker 1: up helping out on the family farms. His dream was
- 4:35Speaker 1: to one day have a farm of his own.
- 4:39Speaker 5: Rout grew into a man who really did have quite
- 4:42Speaker 5: a lot of ambition. He wanted to be successful, He
- 4:45Speaker 5: wanted to be seen to be successful.
- 4:49Speaker 6: He was a hard working individual. It was always around farming.
- 4:53Speaker 6: He'd had connections locally, He'd worked for people. They were
- 4:56Speaker 6: always very impressed with the sort of things that he did.
- 4:58Speaker 6: He was a gauging and hard working individual. He'd had
- 5:02Speaker 6: a quite a successful pipeline business.
- 5:06Speaker 1: In nineteen ninety nine, after a couple of failed relationships,
- 5:11Speaker 1: thirty seven year old Adrian Prout met Kate Wakefield. Kate
- 5:16Speaker 1: was a teacher and like Proud, came from a farming family.
- 5:21Speaker 5: Kay was the sister of a friend of his. At
- 5:24Speaker 5: this point in his life, Prout was having a bit
- 5:26Speaker 5: of a difficult time and Kate's brother offered to put
- 5:30Speaker 5: him up in a property whilst he got back on
- 5:32Speaker 5: his feet. And I think this is quite a significant
- 5:35Speaker 5: thing because had that friendship with her brother. He comes
- 5:39Speaker 5: pre vetted. Essentially.
- 5:42Speaker 10: Kate Wakefield is pretty nearly ten years older than Adrian Proud,
- 5:47Speaker 10: a wise woman, hard working, thoughtful, but is I think
- 5:54Speaker 10: the phrase would be bowled over by Adrian Prout.
- 5:59Speaker 5: They were married with in the space of a year,
- 6:01Speaker 5: and this is an incredibly accelerated relationship. The pace of
- 6:05Speaker 5: it is incredibly fast.
- 6:09Speaker 6: Initially they were seeing as the perfect couple. They've gone
- 6:11Speaker 6: on really well. I think friends and family would describe
- 6:15Speaker 6: them personality wise that they were quite different.
- 6:17Speaker 3: So that old adage that opposites attracts.
- 6:22Speaker 10: In two thousand and four, Prout and Kate by a
- 6:27Speaker 10: farm called Redhill Farm. It's near red Marley in Gloucestershire.
- 6:34Speaker 10: She can afford it because she's inherited a cottage which
- 6:36Speaker 10: she's sold and she's contributing to the house.
- 6:41Speaker 5: This is quite an extensive, quite an impressive property, and
- 6:44Speaker 5: in this part of the country agriculture is quite a
- 6:47Speaker 5: significant industry and farmers have some status. They have a
- 6:51Speaker 5: lot of land, they have a lot of property. So essentially,
- 6:54Speaker 5: Kate was for him the vehicle that allowed him to
- 6:57Speaker 5: reach this ambition, and the thing that she had were
- 7:01Speaker 5: very attractive for him.
- 7:03Speaker 1: At the age of forty one, Adrian Proud had achieved
- 7:07Speaker 1: his lifelong goal of owning his own farm.
- 7:12Speaker 10: He's going to run pheasant shoots, and she's going to
- 7:15Speaker 10: cater for them at Red Marley. He's still got the
- 7:19Speaker 10: pipeline business. And as far as anyone can tell, this
- 7:24Speaker 10: is a perfectly happy, stable relationship, and so it remains.
- 7:32Speaker 1: The couple ran successful pheasant shoots over the next two years,
- 7:37Speaker 1: but in two thousand and six there were signs that
- 7:40Speaker 1: suggested their honeymoon period had come to an end.
- 7:45Speaker 6: There were some public interactions and spats between the pair
- 7:48Speaker 6: of them. There were starting to be that glimmer of
- 7:52Speaker 6: things that were not quite as people were thought.
- 7:54Speaker 3: Initially.
- 7:56Speaker 1: On Boxing Day two thousand and six, things each the
- 8:00Speaker 1: head during an argument over the family's dinner plans.
- 8:05Speaker 3: It starts in the kitchen and goes.
- 8:07Speaker 10: Outside, and it's the first time we see real evidence
- 8:13Speaker 10: of the violence that was beneath the surface in this
- 8:18Speaker 10: apparently stable marriage. Prout pushes Kate against the land rover
- 8:27Speaker 10: that they have with such force that actually dents the car.
- 8:34Speaker 3: She's frightened.
- 8:36Speaker 1: The cracks in the relationship became even more apparent two
- 8:41Speaker 1: months later, in February two thousand and.
- 8:44Speaker 10: Seven, plates have been thrown across the kitchen that had
- 8:48Speaker 10: been a full blown confrontation.
- 8:53Speaker 1: Once again. The argument continued outside.
- 8:57Speaker 6: He had grabbed her by the neck or over an
- 9:00Speaker 6: empty swimming pool.
- 9:03Speaker 3: The police has been called. I think he's actually been.
- 9:04Speaker 10: Arrested, she was to say. Later he went mad. I
- 9:10Speaker 10: really thought I'd had it. There was no controlling him.
- 9:15Speaker 5: This shows me that he's changing tactics at this point
- 9:18Speaker 5: in time. I think, up until this point he's been
- 9:21Speaker 5: using charm and manipulation to get control and to get
- 9:24Speaker 5: his own way, but that is no longer working. And
- 9:27Speaker 5: with men like Prowt, when those techniques no longer work,
- 9:30Speaker 5: they resort to physical violence.
- 9:33Speaker 1: In November two thousand and seven, after months of living
- 9:37Speaker 1: with a volatile and violent husband, Kate went to see
- 9:41Speaker 1: her solicitor about divorcing Adrian Prote.
- 9:45Speaker 10: The farm by now is valued at one point three
- 9:48Speaker 10: million pounds. Adrian is intent on hanging on to it,
- 9:52Speaker 10: offers Kate six hundred thousand pounds to go. Kate consults
- 9:57Speaker 10: a solicitor and says, no, I want eight hundred thousand.
- 10:03Speaker 1: The settlement of that size meant one thing. Redhill Farm
- 10:07Speaker 1: would have to be sold.
- 10:10Speaker 6: We know that that farm was always agent Prout's dream
- 10:15Speaker 6: to own a farm, to run it like that was
- 10:17Speaker 6: always his dream. There was a moment then, the dawn
- 10:20Speaker 6: of realization that he was going to lose the farm.
- 10:23Speaker 6: He was going to lose everything.
- 10:25Speaker 5: He feels entitled to that farm. He feels that that
- 10:28Speaker 5: farm is his. He's very much about ownership and possession
- 10:32Speaker 5: of things, and now he's got a barrier in between
- 10:36Speaker 5: the farm and him, and that barrier is Kate.
- 10:40Speaker 1: Adrian Prout had no intention of giving up the farm,
- 10:44Speaker 1: but before any settlement could be finalized, there was a development.
- 10:49Speaker 3: Kate went missing.
- 10:54Speaker 6: Hundreds and hundreds of people daily get reported to the
- 10:56Speaker 6: police is missing. But it was the circumstances really around
- 10:59Speaker 6: Kate's disappearance that was the concern.
- 11:04Speaker 1: It had taken forty five year old Proud five days
- 11:08Speaker 1: to report Kate's disappearance to the police. And he didn't
- 11:12Speaker 1: appear to be a worried husband, and.
- 11:14Speaker 3: You weren't, even though weeks gone by.
- 11:17Speaker 11: You had no concern about her well being then YouTube, well.
- 11:21Speaker 4: I did, but I thought if things weren't going to
- 11:24Speaker 4: someone would have rung me or you.
- 11:27Speaker 3: I assumed she was okay.
- 11:30Speaker 6: If someone's lost a loved one is a powerful emotion.
- 11:34Speaker 6: That's what you need to see and if they're not
- 11:37Speaker 6: displaying that, then immediately your suspicions are up.
- 11:40Speaker 3: You're worried and you need to be looking into a
- 11:42Speaker 3: little bit more.
- 11:45Speaker 1: Proud freely admitted that he was not concerned by his
- 11:48Speaker 1: wife's disappearance.
- 11:50Speaker 6: He was suggesting she'd gone off for a rown, something
- 11:53Speaker 6: she wanted.
- 11:54Speaker 3: He wasn't concerned she'd done it before.
- 11:58Speaker 10: At least some of the lovocals are convinced that Kate
- 12:04Speaker 10: had just had enough and left to start a new life.
- 12:08Speaker 10: It made sense to them this wasn't a happy couple.
- 12:13Speaker 5: Proud was able to draw upon this victim status that
- 12:16Speaker 5: he'd stepped into. My wife has left me. She's going
- 12:20Speaker 5: to take me to the cleaners, poor me. And he
- 12:23Speaker 5: used this to his advantage in this situation, because he's
- 12:27Speaker 5: going to be saying things like, why would I be
- 12:29Speaker 5: in contact with her? Why would I want to know
- 12:31Speaker 5: where she is? She's making my life such a misery.
- 12:35Speaker 6: It does sound feasible, but when you build into that
- 12:39Speaker 6: that none of the family had heard from her at all.
- 12:43Speaker 10: She doesn't go to a niece's eighteenth birthday party, she
- 12:45Speaker 10: doesn't contact anyone. She's as far as anyone can tell
- 12:50Speaker 10: she's disappeared into a puff of smoke.
- 12:53Speaker 6: She might be wishing to split from a partner, but
- 12:55Speaker 6: you're still going to make social contact, and you're still
- 12:57Speaker 6: going to have any interaction with your family.
- 12:59Speaker 3: None of that was happening.
- 13:02Speaker 1: From the minute Adrian proud To reported her missing. Investigators
- 13:06Speaker 1: had been working through the possible reasons for Kate's disappearance.
- 13:11Speaker 11: And there's been no contact from Kate since you last
- 13:16Speaker 11: saw her around lunchtime on Monday.
- 13:19Speaker 5: No.
- 13:21Speaker 3: Three things likely to have happened.
- 13:23Speaker 6: She's hardly had an accident somewhere, and she's fallen off
- 13:25Speaker 6: a horse or whatever it might be. And she's out
- 13:28Speaker 6: in the fields or wherever she has gone off her
- 13:31Speaker 6: own fruition. She doesn't want to be found, and hasn't
- 13:34Speaker 6: contacted anybody and wants to be on her own, or
- 13:38Speaker 6: something more sinister.
- 13:39Speaker 3: She's been murdered, as simple as that. You were aware
- 13:43Speaker 3: that a car had been left beyond him.
- 13:46Speaker 1: Were you aware of any other things that have been
- 13:49Speaker 1: left behind that that she'd normally have with her.
- 13:52Speaker 3: No.
- 13:53Speaker 4: I couldn't find the car keys, which was strange. So
- 13:57Speaker 4: they always put in the drawer in the kitchen and
- 13:59Speaker 4: they were so I assumed she had a car, keys with.
- 14:02Speaker 6: Her if she goes out, I mean what stuff would
- 14:05Speaker 6: she normally take?
- 14:06Speaker 3: Her other personal nature? I mean credit cards, purse, things
- 14:10Speaker 3: are there.
- 14:10Speaker 9: Yeah, So.
- 14:13Speaker 6: All of those things that are part of people's daily
- 14:15Speaker 6: lives that they never let go of.
- 14:18Speaker 3: All that was at the house.
- 14:19Speaker 6: She'd gone with nothing apart for him, in effect, the
- 14:21Speaker 6: clothes that she was wearing. That's the starting point that
- 14:25Speaker 6: doesn't stack up at all. That's not normal behavior for people.
- 14:32Speaker 1: Early investigations revealed only one trace of Kate after Proud
- 14:37Speaker 1: purported to have seen her.
- 14:39Speaker 6: The last third party contact that contacted she'd had with
- 14:43Speaker 6: anybody else was to wring her bank and the late
- 14:46Speaker 6: afternoon of that Monday, on that fifth of November.
- 14:50Speaker 5: Can I help you to do? I start playing one
- 14:53Speaker 5: of my old bank statements, go back to nineteen ninety nine.
- 14:59Speaker 6: From that Monday afternoon, she'd literally dropped off the radar.
- 15:03Speaker 6: She wasn't seen from or heard from again.
- 15:07Speaker 1: Believing from the outset that it was unlikely that Kate had,
- 15:11Speaker 1: as Adrian Proud claimed, walked out on her husband. Investigators
- 15:16Speaker 1: were left with two hypotheses.
- 15:19Speaker 6: Either they want to go and kill themselves, at suicide
- 15:22Speaker 6: or chances are something more sinister in the circumstances.
- 15:25Speaker 3: So the police are.
- 15:26Speaker 6: Exploring what exists in the background that would mean that
- 15:30Speaker 6: someone wouldn't want her to be around anymore.
- 15:33Speaker 3: And the information very quickly.
- 15:35Speaker 6: Emerged that there was trouble in their marriage, that Kate
- 15:39Speaker 6: was seeking a divorce and she'd been to see a
- 15:43Speaker 6: divorce lawyer and he's going to lose the thing that
- 15:46Speaker 6: he's worked all his life for. In the background, we
- 15:50Speaker 6: know that not only are things not well in that marriage,
- 15:54Speaker 6: but there is a known level of violence and the
- 15:56Speaker 6: police has been called previously.
- 16:00Speaker 1: By the twenty seventh of November two thousand and seven,
- 16:04Speaker 1: the finger of suspicion was clearly pointing in one direction.
- 16:08Speaker 1: Adrian Proud is arrested on suspicion of Kate's murder. Proud
- 16:15Speaker 1: maintained his story and an initial search at Redhill Farm
- 16:20Speaker 1: proved fruitless.
- 16:21Speaker 6: He given him his version of events that found nothing,
- 16:24Speaker 6: and as a consequence of that, he leaves the police station.
- 16:29Speaker 1: Convinced that there was a sinister truth behind Proud's claims
- 16:33Speaker 1: of being the jilted husband. Investigators began an intensive search
- 16:39Speaker 1: of the farm is.
- 16:40Speaker 6: A very good chance based on his ability to work
- 16:43Speaker 6: heavy machinery and his pipeline business, that the body is
- 16:46Speaker 6: probably on the site. Why would you need to take
- 16:48Speaker 6: here anywhere else. If that's the case, you got two
- 16:50Speaker 6: hundred and fifty acres, He can't just search the whole lot.
- 16:53Speaker 6: So you have to be clever and smart in the
- 16:55Speaker 6: way that you approach it. You use tactics like ground
- 16:59Speaker 6: penetrating race dogs that are used to finding bodies and
- 17:02Speaker 6: can smell that that's your location, that's where you start.
- 17:07Speaker 1: The search team were hopeful of an early lead when
- 17:11Speaker 1: one of the dogs had a reaction inside the couple's home.
- 17:15Speaker 6: It got quite excited, as these things do, around a
- 17:18Speaker 6: sofa in the house, But when a full forensic team
- 17:21Speaker 6: went in and looked, there was no evidence there whatsoever.
- 17:27Speaker 6: The searches around the rest of the house and the
- 17:30Speaker 6: land that sat around it when on for.
- 17:31Speaker 3: A nine to five weeks.
- 17:33Speaker 6: There was no physical evidence of a disturbance, a fight,
- 17:39Speaker 6: a murder, homicide, or indeed the moving of a body.
- 17:42Speaker 3: There was nothing there.
- 17:45Speaker 1: Detectives who were confident that Prout was a killer, but
- 17:49Speaker 1: with no sign of CAD they were facing a so
- 17:52Speaker 1: called no body murder case, which is notoriously hard to prove.
- 17:58Speaker 6: With a body comes a huge wealth the forensic evidence
- 18:02Speaker 6: to help you unpick how they've died and who potentially
- 18:06Speaker 6: has killed them. Here we've got no body, so you
- 18:11Speaker 6: really are up against it.
- 18:15Speaker 1: By Christmas, Kate had been missing for eight weeks, but
- 18:18Speaker 1: life for Adrian Prout appeared to continue unaffected. Debbie Garlic
- 18:24Speaker 1: encountered him in a local pub.
- 18:27Speaker 8: I was with my friend and agent walked in with
- 18:32Speaker 8: somebody we knew. If he's in the pub by himself,
- 18:35Speaker 8: he wouldn't have had.
- 18:36Speaker 7: A conversation with him. But because he's with people that
- 18:38Speaker 7: we knew really really well.
- 18:40Speaker 8: And sometimes people come back to my house for Jini
- 18:42Speaker 8: with the pep clothes and everything else.
- 18:43Speaker 7: So that's what we did.
- 18:46Speaker 8: As we walked out the landl has said be careful
- 18:49Speaker 8: to me and my friend. I was like okay. Soon
- 18:53Speaker 8: as we got back he said, do you know who
- 18:56Speaker 8: I am? And then he told us a sorry.
- 19:01Speaker 1: Later that night, Debut did some research on the man
- 19:04Speaker 1: she'd just met.
- 19:06Speaker 8: We just scooped everything. Man he was under suspicion of murder. Well,
- 19:13Speaker 8: our friend said, in no way that you would have
- 19:14Speaker 8: done anything like that, no way, everyone just thought she disappeared.
- 19:20Speaker 1: The police disagreed, and on the fourth of January two
- 19:24Speaker 1: thousand and eight, they publicly announced their belief that Kate
- 19:29Speaker 1: was dead. Two weeks later, Adrian Proud was arrested for
- 19:34Speaker 1: the second time.
- 19:35Speaker 6: They're hoping that he's going to confess to doing what
- 19:40Speaker 6: they think he's done.
- 19:42Speaker 1: There was no confession. Adrian Proud maintained that Kate had
- 19:47Speaker 1: left of her own accord with the intention of stitching
- 19:51Speaker 1: him up.
- 19:52Speaker 6: There is no firm evidence. It is all circumstantial, so
- 19:56Speaker 6: he'd have to go out and police bail. You can't
- 19:58Speaker 6: just hold someone or charge someone without evidence. That's when
- 20:02Speaker 6: a challenging, difficult and protracted police investigation takes place, and
- 20:10Speaker 6: there is no easy answer to that.
- 20:13Speaker 1: Investigators began focusing on proof of life.
- 20:18Speaker 6: It's a common phrase within policing and legal terms. Ultimately,
- 20:22Speaker 6: it's about establishing that somebody lives their life in a
- 20:27Speaker 6: certain way, interacting with banks, financed institutions, friends and family, etc.
- 20:32Speaker 6: And at a moment in time, it all stops. There's
- 20:36Speaker 6: no more interaction. Now that's unusual and the only reasonable
- 20:41Speaker 6: conclusion that you can reach is that person is no
- 20:44Speaker 6: longer a life.
- 20:48Speaker 1: The police began the process of proving not only that
- 20:51Speaker 1: Kate Proud was dead, but that she'd been murdered. In May,
- 20:58Speaker 1: Debi garlic another chance, meeting with Prout in the pub.
- 21:04Speaker 8: By the next morning put a note into through my
- 21:06Speaker 8: letterbox with a telephone number one and said if you
- 21:09Speaker 8: want to give me a call.
- 21:12Speaker 7: We went out the following day and took a.
- 21:14Speaker 8: Picnic, and then he said that he wouldn't have relationship
- 21:18Speaker 8: with anybody because it wasn't the right time.
- 21:21Speaker 1: But two days later Debbie heard from him again.
- 21:25Speaker 8: He phoned me and from Wednesday onwards we just started
- 21:27Speaker 8: a relationship for long from there.
- 21:31Speaker 1: It had been six months since his wife disappeared, but
- 21:34Speaker 1: Proud had a seemingly plausible explanation for her prolonged absence.
- 21:40Speaker 8: She had gone off before and gone on holiday with
- 21:44Speaker 8: one of his sisters or something or sister in law,
- 21:47Speaker 8: and hadn't told him then where she was going, so
- 21:50Speaker 8: he just thought that they were hiding him away. Didn't
- 21:53Speaker 8: want to be part of his life. It wasn't a
- 21:56Speaker 8: big thing about where she works, if you.
- 21:58Speaker 7: Get what I mean.
- 22:01Speaker 1: As part of the ongoing investigation into Kate's disappearance, detectives
- 22:06Speaker 1: had discovered she kept a diary. This told a very
- 22:10Speaker 1: different story to the one that Adrian Prout was spinning.
- 22:14Speaker 6: She explains on over a number of entries over a
- 22:18Speaker 6: period of weeks and months, what's been happening in her life,
- 22:21Speaker 6: the tension with Adrian, the fact that she's worried and concerned.
- 22:26Speaker 10: Her constant references to her being frightened of Adrian. Prout
- 22:30Speaker 10: references to the fact that he lost it with me.
- 22:34Speaker 10: If you like, it's the clearest evidence so far of
- 22:38Speaker 10: the true nature of the marriage between Adrian and Kate Prout.
- 22:45Speaker 6: All of that is good evidence, as if it's almost
- 22:48Speaker 6: like Kate's voice.
- 22:49Speaker 3: That's the importance of it. This is Kate talking through her.
- 22:52Speaker 1: Diary, despite the mounting evidence suggesting Prout was weaving a
- 22:59Speaker 1: web of life. In January two thousand and nine, he
- 23:03Speaker 1: was told he was no longer a suspect and released
- 23:06Speaker 1: from bail.
- 23:08Speaker 8: That was the news that we obviously were hoping for,
- 23:10Speaker 8: and that's when we all moved up to the farm together.
- 23:15Speaker 1: The cloud of suspicion appeared to have lifted. Debbie and
- 23:19Speaker 1: her two children moved into Redhill Farm with.
- 23:22Speaker 6: Prout they've reached a stage where we told him he's
- 23:26Speaker 6: no longer a suspect. I suspect that was to try
- 23:28Speaker 6: and trigger some conversation with friends and family of him.
- 23:31Speaker 6: He might not confess it to the police, but he
- 23:34Speaker 6: might confess it to a good mate, or he might
- 23:36Speaker 6: confess it to Debbie Garlic.
- 23:39Speaker 5: I think Prout feels incredibly victorious at this point in time.
- 23:43Speaker 5: He feels like he has very successfully pulled the wall
- 23:46Speaker 5: over everybody's eyes and this is a problem that has
- 23:49Speaker 5: just gone.
- 23:50Speaker 3: Away in the background.
- 23:53Speaker 6: That investigation is continuing, and they've gone to the Crown
- 23:56Speaker 6: Prosecution Service around charging.
- 24:01Speaker 1: A month after moving in together, the couple's world was
- 24:04Speaker 1: turned upside down. On the tenth of March, Debbie was
- 24:09Speaker 1: home alone with her children.
- 24:11Speaker 8: We were sleep in bed and we just heard shouting
- 24:15Speaker 8: and so we all just got out and wonder what
- 24:18Speaker 8: the how was going on, and we walked into all
- 24:20Speaker 8: these police in the house.
- 24:23Speaker 7: They asked me not to pH an Adrian, but I did.
- 24:29Speaker 1: When Prout returned home, he didn't seem concerned by the
- 24:34Speaker 1: unfolding events.
- 24:35Speaker 8: I think he said something like here we go again,
- 24:38Speaker 8: and ads or something, and then they charged him with
- 24:41Speaker 8: murder in front of us all and handcuffed him and
- 24:46Speaker 8: took him away.
- 24:48Speaker 7: We thought they must have found something.
- 24:50Speaker 8: Then they must have found something for them for him
- 24:53Speaker 8: to be charged with murder.
- 24:57Speaker 1: Debbie was left assuming that Kate's body had been found,
- 25:01Speaker 1: but she was wrong.
- 25:03Speaker 6: The police have been really active in progressing the inquiries
- 25:06Speaker 6: and they've gone to the Crown Prosecution Service, so they
- 25:09Speaker 6: are going to be explaining what they've got the circumstantial evidence,
- 25:12Speaker 6: and they would be having to seek a decision to
- 25:15Speaker 6: charge him once she've reached that stage, there wouldn't be
- 25:18Speaker 6: a need for any continuation of bail or anything of
- 25:21Speaker 6: that nature.
- 25:21Speaker 3: He's coming in.
- 25:24Speaker 1: Adrian Proud appeared later that day at Cheltenham Crown Court,
- 25:29Speaker 1: charged with the murder of his wife Kate. After a
- 25:33Speaker 1: month in prison, he was released.
- 25:35Speaker 3: On bail awaiting trial.
- 25:38Speaker 8: He was saying, I can't believe I've been in prison
- 25:40Speaker 8: and I can't believe that they thought I've done it.
- 25:43Speaker 7: I'm innicent.
- 25:46Speaker 8: So we were all like few men with the police
- 25:48Speaker 8: thinking that they have to put me in prison for
- 25:51Speaker 8: a month for no reason.
- 25:56Speaker 1: Out on bail, life returned to normality. All celebrated some
- 26:01Speaker 1: happy news Debbie and Prout were engaged to be married.
- 26:07Speaker 8: I think few people admit a comment thinking maybe that
- 26:12Speaker 8: was the wrong decision that we made, especially for.
- 26:14Speaker 7: Agent's part because he still got a wife.
- 26:17Speaker 5: Really, we see this similar pattern happening again, the accelerated
- 26:23Speaker 5: pace of a relationship, the need for that early commitment,
- 26:27Speaker 5: and this is something that happens frequently with men like Crowd.
- 26:33Speaker 8: We had the engagement party and find out I was
- 26:35Speaker 8: pregnant with my daughter, which was a nice surprise, and
- 26:39Speaker 8: then we found out the court cake was going to
- 26:42Speaker 8: be January the eleventh, the same day that she was due.
- 26:48Speaker 1: Debbie was induced a week early so that the birth
- 26:51Speaker 1: of their daughter wouldn't coincide with the trial.
- 26:56Speaker 8: He loved having a baby, He fed, a changed, got
- 27:01Speaker 8: up in the n eye. It was a hands on dad.
- 27:05Speaker 8: And then she was a week old when the court
- 27:07Speaker 8: case started.
- 27:11Speaker 1: The evidence presented to the jury over the course of
- 27:14Speaker 1: three weeks was entirely circumstantial.
- 27:18Speaker 6: There is no forensic evidence. There is nothing to suggest,
- 27:22Speaker 6: more importantly physically, if you like, evidentially forensically, that Kate
- 27:28Speaker 6: has been killed.
- 27:29Speaker 3: That's why it took so long.
- 27:31Speaker 6: That's why this proof of life as the expression, which
- 27:34Speaker 6: is a bit of a nuanced really, because you're proving
- 27:36Speaker 6: that someone's died rather than that they're alive.
- 27:39Speaker 3: That's why it's so important.
- 27:42Speaker 8: I didn't go to court for the first three weeks,
- 27:45Speaker 8: but I went every day for the fourth week because
- 27:47Speaker 8: Asy was convinced you'd be found not guilty. So we
- 27:51Speaker 8: wanted us to walk out the court together to move
- 27:53Speaker 8: on with the rest of our lives.
- 27:56Speaker 1: Unusually, in this case, there were only eleven members of
- 28:00Speaker 1: the jury and they retired to consider their verdict.
- 28:05Speaker 8: And then rumors are going mine that it was nine
- 28:07Speaker 8: people together and two people weren't, and a com member
- 28:10Speaker 8: who said to me, oh, I can't believe two people
- 28:12Speaker 8: think that I've done it. So he's thinking now that
- 28:16Speaker 8: nine people think he's innocent and two people think he's guilty.
- 28:21Speaker 6: The jury were clear ultimately that Kate was alive on
- 28:25Speaker 6: the fifth of November, and within five days later she
- 28:28Speaker 6: certainly she wasn't alive.
- 28:31Speaker 3: Adam could only have been the person.
- 28:33Speaker 6: That killed her ultimately, so he had all of the
- 28:35Speaker 6: motivation there sure that she wasn't around because she wasn't
- 28:39Speaker 6: going to get that money. That's what's presented to the jury.
- 28:42Speaker 6: That's what they thought. Well, actually there's only one conclusion
- 28:45Speaker 6: we can reasonably make it.
- 28:49Speaker 8: The verdict came that he was guilty. I just burst
- 28:53Speaker 8: into tears, and of course he goes straight to prison then.
- 28:58Speaker 8: But we went home without him that day, which is
- 29:01Speaker 8: really hard, and our baby was four weeks old.
- 29:07Speaker 1: Having never believed that he would be found guilty, Proud's
- 29:11Speaker 1: family had to face a harsh reality.
- 29:15Speaker 8: I went down to the post office to get every
- 29:18Speaker 8: single paper that I could get. All the papers were
- 29:23Speaker 8: killer aging Pride agent Prits killed his wife.
- 29:26Speaker 7: Nobody and even.
- 29:28Speaker 8: The chap you owned the shop at the precise time
- 29:30Speaker 8: came out and he put his arms round me. When
- 29:33Speaker 8: he's so wrong. What's happened to him? He said, you
- 29:36Speaker 8: don't where you're getting, mit, because that's what everyone was like.
- 29:38Speaker 8: It wasn't just me, it was everybody.
- 29:43Speaker 1: On the eighth of February twenty ten, proud To was
- 29:46Speaker 1: sentenced to a minimum of eighteen years in prison, but
- 29:50Speaker 1: the convicted murderer maintained his innocence.
- 29:54Speaker 6: Ultimately, what you've got, You've got a guy that was
- 29:56Speaker 6: charged with murder, being convicted and he's gone to prison.
- 30:00Speaker 6: The missing piece of that jigsaw is We've still got
- 30:04Speaker 6: a missing body somewhere. We still think that Kate is
- 30:07Speaker 6: out there somewhere, and we want to and I find
- 30:10Speaker 6: her ultimately, so that will always remain open. But you're
- 30:13Speaker 6: going to need some information before you can do anything else.
- 30:18Speaker 8: I did have doubts then, and I went to see him.
- 30:21Speaker 8: I asked him, just on our daughter's life, that if
- 30:23Speaker 8: he has not killed Kate, and he sworn her life
- 30:26Speaker 8: and said he hasn't killed her.
- 30:27Speaker 7: And then I got upset then because I thought.
- 30:31Speaker 8: That was bad for me to have doubts that he
- 30:33Speaker 8: might have done something, he might have killed her.
- 30:36Speaker 7: So I felt really bad in myself.
- 30:37Speaker 5: Then Proud knows exactly what buttons to push with Debbie.
- 30:44Speaker 5: He knows exactly the kind of things to say to
- 30:46Speaker 5: make her feel bad for even raising the question. So
- 30:49Speaker 5: I think that shows how manipulative he really is.
- 30:55Speaker 1: Believing an innocent man had been jailed, Proud supporters were
- 30:59Speaker 1: to prove that Kate Prout was alive.
- 31:04Speaker 8: The only thing we could do is to preview was innocent,
- 31:06Speaker 8: that the crime had not been committed, and then obviously
- 31:08Speaker 8: we started searching for Kate. We put out a reward
- 31:12Speaker 8: that if anyone had an information on the whereabouts of
- 31:15Speaker 8: Kate Price, then obviously they would kick claim the reward.
- 31:18Speaker 7: And that's when it all started to begin the campaign
- 31:21Speaker 7: to get in my prison.
- 31:24Speaker 1: Debbie's campaign caught the attention of veteran reporter Tom Hendry.
- 31:30Speaker 2: Here was a woman who still believed, even though he
- 31:33Speaker 2: was in jail, that he was innocent, and she launched
- 31:37Speaker 2: a huge crusade to try and find Kate. And as
- 31:42Speaker 2: a result I realized there was potential for a really
- 31:46Speaker 2: great story.
- 31:49Speaker 1: Tom became Debbie's media advisor and assisted with the appeal
- 31:54Speaker 1: for information on Kate's true whereabouts.
- 31:57Speaker 2: We had a number of sightings. One was in Cork
- 32:01Speaker 2: in Southern Ireland.
- 32:03Speaker 7: Somebody got in touch.
- 32:05Speaker 8: They said it looked like Kate and she was a tutor,
- 32:07Speaker 8: and Kate was a teacher.
- 32:10Speaker 7: We actually thought we'd got her.
- 32:12Speaker 2: We went over to Ireland, the news agencies and a photographer.
- 32:16Speaker 2: I didn't go personally, and Debbie was joking, you know
- 32:20Speaker 2: if Kate, if Kate had turned up, there would have
- 32:23Speaker 2: been a film made and who would have played her.
- 32:27Speaker 8: Every single member of agent's family and my family came
- 32:31Speaker 8: up and we waited for the telephone calls to say
- 32:35Speaker 8: that it was Kate, but the telephone call come through
- 32:37Speaker 8: to say that it obviously wasn't Kate.
- 32:39Speaker 7: So we were all devastated about that.
- 32:43Speaker 8: And then we had a sighting in Scarborough and that
- 32:45Speaker 8: wasn't her either. We did articles on news, we did
- 32:49Speaker 8: articles in the paper for any information, and the website
- 32:52Speaker 8: to do with the MISCO suggest as they were looking
- 32:55Speaker 8: into that.
- 32:55Speaker 5: For us, that is going along with this. But the
- 33:00Speaker 5: outcome that he wants is to get out of prison
- 33:03Speaker 5: and he will be using people to his advantage. He
- 33:06Speaker 5: won't be feeling bad about it. He doesn't see his
- 33:09Speaker 5: family and friends in the way that most people do.
- 33:12Speaker 5: Other people exist in terms of what they can do
- 33:14Speaker 5: for him, so he was simply surrounded by useful people.
- 33:17Speaker 1: At this point in time, desperate to prove that there
- 33:22Speaker 1: had been a miscarriage of justice, Proud supporters were running
- 33:26Speaker 1: out of options until journalist Tom Henry had an unconventional idea.
- 33:33Speaker 2: It had gone on for so long. I thought, if
- 33:35Speaker 2: this guy Prout took a lie detected test, that would
- 33:38Speaker 2: prove maybe once and for all, if he was telling
- 33:41Speaker 2: the truth or not. And Debbie agreed.
- 33:46Speaker 8: I was like, couldn't wait for the headline to be
- 33:48Speaker 8: agent pract is innocer and he's just passed to the
- 33:50Speaker 8: lie detected test.
- 33:53Speaker 1: Debbie and Tom visited Prout in Bristol prison with our.
- 33:57Speaker 8: Stag and if you do a lie detective test, an
- 33:59Speaker 8: agent greed straight away.
- 34:02Speaker 2: I didn't have any suspicions about him. He was very calm,
- 34:06Speaker 2: very controlled, and therefore, you know, you know, I didn't
- 34:10Speaker 2: smell any kind of rat at all.
- 34:13Speaker 1: Don Cargill, one of the UK's leading polygraph experts, arranged
- 34:19Speaker 1: to conduct the test on Adrian in prison.
- 34:22Speaker 9: Bear in mind this Adrian who was wanting the test.
- 34:25Speaker 9: I thought he would have great, this is my day
- 34:28Speaker 9: of you know, the truthful out and I'll be proven
- 34:31Speaker 9: to be a non killer and wrongly convicted. But the
- 34:34Speaker 9: reality was it was a frozen reaction. He didn't really
- 34:37Speaker 9: want to do this, which really that did take you
- 34:40Speaker 9: by surprise. I left him alone for about twenty minutes,
- 34:45Speaker 9: went back and he said, I suppot I better do it.
- 34:48Speaker 9: I suppot I better do it for Debbie's sake, and
- 34:51Speaker 9: I said no, no, no, no, no, do it for
- 34:53Speaker 9: your own sake.
- 34:56Speaker 1: The questions put to Adrian Prouds during the test were
- 35:00Speaker 1: very straightforward.
- 35:02Speaker 9: Did he kill his wife Kate prout? Did he pay
- 35:05Speaker 9: someone else to do it? And did he know where
- 35:07Speaker 9: the body was? He said no to all three questions.
- 35:09Speaker 9: So when we did the test three times, I looked
- 35:12Speaker 9: at the results and quite clearly you had murdered his wife.
- 35:15Speaker 9: And I did say to him, I'm sorry, by I'm
- 35:17Speaker 9: looking at a murderer. And he just went said, well,
- 35:22Speaker 9: are you saying my test is wrong? And he said, no,
- 35:27Speaker 9: your test.
- 35:28Speaker 3: Is not wrong.
- 35:31Speaker 8: Don Cargol phone me up and just said, Debbie, you're
- 35:35Speaker 8: engaged to a murderer. And that was Don's words. It
- 35:43Speaker 8: was just so emotional. I didn't want to believe it.
- 35:46Speaker 8: And of course my plans have all gone out the
- 35:49Speaker 8: windown't I? Because obviously the plan was he was going
- 35:51Speaker 8: to pass. Plan works, We're going to go to the papers.
- 35:54Speaker 8: Agent parents passed. But everything stopped. There was no further
- 35:59Speaker 8: forwardn't I.
- 36:01Speaker 2: Maybe he was so arrogant, proud that he thought he
- 36:06Speaker 2: could beat this test, and clearly he couldn't.
- 36:11Speaker 8: My sister said to me that if he had done it,
- 36:14Speaker 8: you'd have belonged to the papers, you'd have believed it.
- 36:17Speaker 8: So really you should believe in it that he's failed,
- 36:20Speaker 8: it that he has done he is a murderer, because
- 36:23Speaker 8: you can't believe.
- 36:24Speaker 7: One way and not the other.
- 36:28Speaker 1: When Debbie visited Proud, he was adamant that the polygraph
- 36:31Speaker 1: had been rigged and professed his innocence.
- 36:35Speaker 5: Here he brings back that victim PERSONA poor me. Everybody's
- 36:40Speaker 5: against me, everybody's out to get me.
- 36:43Speaker 7: For the next couple of months, it was strained between us.
- 36:46Speaker 7: Both the phone calls astrain.
- 36:50Speaker 8: I think he knew that failing that, however much he
- 36:54Speaker 8: tried to deny, it had changed.
- 36:56Speaker 7: All our minds, my thoughts. Now, I've gone to.
- 37:00Speaker 8: Kate's family, so we're protesting his innocence. And these poor
- 37:04Speaker 8: people now have lost Kate. And for the last year
- 37:08Speaker 8: I've never thought about their feelings. So I wanted to
- 37:13Speaker 8: find out the chief for their sake and for Kate's sake.
- 37:18Speaker 7: That was my plan.
- 37:18Speaker 8: I the plan had changed. I just knew we would
- 37:23Speaker 8: get to the bottom of it, but I didn't know when.
- 37:27Speaker 1: In November two and eleven, three months after the failed
- 37:31Speaker 1: polygraph test, Debi visited Adrian Prout, determined to get an
- 37:36Speaker 1: answer once and for all.
- 37:39Speaker 8: And I wentn't there with my sister, and I did
- 37:41Speaker 8: say that would stick by him, but then I didn't
- 37:45Speaker 8: always think i'd get the answer that I did. I said,
- 37:49Speaker 8: if you have killed Kate, I will stand by you,
- 37:52Speaker 8: but you needed to tell me the truth so we
- 37:54Speaker 8: can give Kate a proper funeral. And he just said
- 37:57Speaker 8: she's had one. Well, I knew they need to kill her.
- 38:03Speaker 8: I just I don't think me and my sister knew
- 38:06Speaker 8: what to say. We just sat there because I think,
- 38:08Speaker 8: to be perfectly honest, I just thought it was gonna
- 38:10Speaker 8: be sick.
- 38:12Speaker 1: Now the flood gates had finally been opened. Prout did
- 38:17Speaker 1: not hold back.
- 38:19Speaker 8: He said that they argued, and she the money that
- 38:24Speaker 8: she wanted, and they started arguing and he strangled her.
- 38:30Speaker 8: He went to the pub and then got back and
- 38:32Speaker 8: buried her in the woods. He said he took a
- 38:34Speaker 8: hold by hand and he had to shoot the next
- 38:37Speaker 8: day and cowed on as normal, and the police ever
- 38:40Speaker 8: found one bit of evidence of that.
- 38:47Speaker 6: One of the detectives came in and said, we've just
- 38:50Speaker 6: had Adrian's girlfriend come to the police station and say
- 38:54Speaker 6: that Adrian has confessed that he's killed Kate Brown. There's
- 39:00Speaker 6: the potential that we've got that final piece of the jigsaw.
- 39:03Speaker 6: So within twenty four hours we've got police officers at
- 39:06Speaker 6: the prison talking to him and he may will have said, nah,
- 39:09Speaker 6: I didn't say that made it all up, but he didn't.
- 39:13Speaker 11: This morning, I'm going to read you a prepared statement
- 39:16Speaker 11: in the relation to why we are here. The statement goes,
- 39:20Speaker 11: yesterday morning, we received some new and significant information in
- 39:24Speaker 11: relation to the murder of Kate Prount.
- 39:28Speaker 1: Proud agreed to show police where he'd buried his.
- 39:32Speaker 12: Wife from his prison cell, handcuffed to a policeman, the
- 39:36Speaker 12: convicted killer and now confessed murderer, Adrian Prout, returns to
- 39:41Speaker 12: the farm where he committed his crime.
- 39:44Speaker 6: He took us to a location on a hill which
- 39:47Speaker 6: was at quite an extensive piece of woodland, probably a
- 39:50Speaker 6: bit bigger than a football pitch.
- 39:52Speaker 3: There was no x markster spot for sure.
- 39:55Speaker 6: So where he'd initially pointed out, we dug and unsuccessfully,
- 40:01Speaker 6: so we couldn't find cape. And what we brought in
- 40:03Speaker 6: them were diver of dogs, so sniffing dogs to see
- 40:06Speaker 6: if we could find a body, and they did the
- 40:09Speaker 6: usual dog thing of sniffing places and that was unsuccessful.
- 40:13Speaker 6: And then we used ground penetrating radar as well, and
- 40:16Speaker 6: that didn't help either. And Day one, day two after
- 40:21Speaker 6: that will only be described that initial excitement really that
- 40:24Speaker 6: actually we might solve this and we could do this
- 40:26Speaker 6: really quickly now and move it on.
- 40:28Speaker 3: That wasn't happening.
- 40:31Speaker 1: The media had taken over the Chocolate Box village of
- 40:35Speaker 1: Red Marley and expectations were high.
- 40:38Speaker 6: Pressure is massive. The pressure was huge waiting for something
- 40:42Speaker 6: to happen.
- 40:44Speaker 1: Finally, on day four, the search team made the grim discovery.
- 40:50Speaker 3: At one o'clock this afternoon.
- 40:52Speaker 6: We have found human remains close to the location Adrian
- 40:56Speaker 6: Prout identified as the place he buried his wife.
- 41:02Speaker 8: I just cried for her family and it must have
- 41:05Speaker 8: been horrendous for them. I thought they were hiding her,
- 41:09Speaker 8: so I thought they knew where she was. But for them,
- 41:13Speaker 8: they knew that she was dead because she would have
- 41:15Speaker 8: been in contact with them. They had to live all
- 41:18Speaker 8: that time knowing that she's just been buried somewhere and concealed.
- 41:22Speaker 8: And would they ever get her back? But wannists, I
- 41:25Speaker 8: don't think they thought they would.
- 41:30Speaker 1: Kate's family were finally able to lay her to rest
- 41:34Speaker 1: in January twoenty twelve, more than four years after she'd
- 41:39Speaker 1: been killed.
- 41:41Speaker 6: That information came from Debbie at that moment in time.
- 41:44Speaker 6: If it hadn't, then Adria may well have serve his sentence.
- 41:49Speaker 6: Life moves on. It may never have come out.
- 41:54Speaker 1: Adrian and Proude will be eligible to apply for parole
- 41:58Speaker 1: in twoenty and twenty eight.
- 42:01Speaker 6: As an individual, I struggle with the concept of being
- 42:05Speaker 6: able to harm someone in the way that he has,
- 42:08Speaker 6: but not just to do that, but to harm so
- 42:10Speaker 6: many other people around him as a consequence. That's not
- 42:14Speaker 6: normal for human behavior.
- 42:17Speaker 2: Everybody was fooled by him. Light detector test proved that
- 42:21Speaker 2: I was among them. But he was a very convincing liar.
- 42:27Speaker 1: Scars remain for those who were burned by Proud lies.
- 42:32Speaker 8: He took away the family that we all were going
- 42:35Speaker 8: to have together. You don't expect things like that to
- 42:39Speaker 8: happen to your family. My daughter, I think that's the
- 42:45Speaker 8: hardest part, because she's also have to be grown up
- 42:49Speaker 8: knowing that her duds in prison and he's a murderer.
- 42:58Speaker 1: Proud was a mass manipulator whose selfishness knew no limits.
- 43:04Speaker 1: He killed his wife just to avoid having to give
- 43:07Speaker 1: her what was rightfully hers. Then he played the jilted
- 43:11Speaker 1: husband and cruelly pulled others into his web of lies.
- 43:16Speaker 1: He never had a thought for anyone but himself, making
- 43:20Speaker 1: Adrian Prout one of Britain's most evil killers.