Latest / The Evolution of Evil - True Crime Stories / Serial Killer Documentary - Adrian Prout： Narcissist Who Thought He’d Never Get Caught

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Serial Killer Documentary - Adrian Prout： Narcissist Who Thought He’d Never Get Caught · The Evolution of Evil - True Crime Stories

0:06
Speaker 1: On the 5th of November 2007, in the rural village
0:11
Speaker 1: of Red Marley in Gloucestershire, England, 55-year-old Kate Prout vanished.
0:17
Speaker 1: Her husband, Adrian, claimed she'd walked out on him.
0:21
Speaker 2: At first, you know, people's hearts went out to him.
0:24
Speaker 2: He'd been abandoned.
0:26
Speaker 3: Even though we'd come by, you had no concern about
0:29
Speaker 3: her well-being then?
0:31
Speaker 4: Well, I did, but I thought if.
0:33
Speaker 5: things weren't good, someone would have rang me or assumed
0:36
Speaker 5: she was okay.
0:38
Speaker 6: He feels that he can just carry on and he
0:40
Speaker 6: can just keep diverting and just keep saying the right
0:44
Speaker 6: things and this will eventually go away.
0:48
Speaker 1: Despite no body being found, the friendly farmer was convicted
0:52
Speaker 1: of Kate's murder. The entire community were shocked.
0:58
Speaker 4: He goes to prison.
0:59
Speaker 7: He maintains his innocence in the way that he has
1:01
Speaker 7: all the way through this.
1:03
Speaker 4: The missing piece of that jigsaw is we've still got
1:07
Speaker 4: a missing body.
1:10
Speaker 1: The trail went cold. An army of supporters campaigned to
1:15
Speaker 1: overturn this supposed miscarriage of justice until 2010, when Prout
1:22
Speaker 1: himself completed the puzzle.
1:25
Speaker 8: To be perfectly honest, I just thought I was going
1:27
Speaker 8: to be sick. I'm sat opposite him in prison, and
1:30
Speaker 8: he's just confessed that he's killed his wife.
1:34
Speaker 1: After years of pleading his innocence, the mask had finally slipped.
1:39
Speaker 1: Adrian Prout had revealed himself as one of the world's
1:43
Speaker 1: most evil killers. For four years after his wife disappeared,
2:10
Speaker 1: farmer Adrian Prout claimed that Kate was actually alive and
2:14
Speaker 1: well and in hiding. It was a lie, but it
2:20
Speaker 1: was one so convincingly told it reeled in Prout's friends, family,
2:26
Speaker 1: and the rural community in which the couple lived.
2:31
Speaker 8: He said that was her plan. That was her plan
2:34
Speaker 8: to disappear. and to get him done for murder, so
2:36
Speaker 8: he said it was all set up. Obviously, we believed
2:40
Speaker 8: his lies, and we were drawn into whoever lies we
2:43
Speaker 8: never knew were lies.
2:49
Speaker 7: People lie to the police all the time. That's what
2:50
Speaker 7: they do. There is a difference here. He's created a narrative,
2:55
Speaker 7: and he has to live and breathe that narrative. Then
2:57
Speaker 7: he has to build on it and layer it, and
3:00
Speaker 7: every time he has an interaction with another individual or
3:04
Speaker 7: friends and family, that narrative has to stand scrutiny.
3:09
Speaker 6: Coercive men like Proud, they are incredibly accomplished. They have
3:13
Speaker 6: a way of actually reeling you in, of convincing you
3:16
Speaker 6: that everything that they're saying is true.
3:19
Speaker 1: The seemingly friendly and helpful local farmer was difficult to
3:24
Speaker 1: connect to the image of the manipulative killer he'd been
3:27
Speaker 1: proven to be.
3:29
Speaker 3: It's a dichotomy in my mind, because there is this
3:32
Speaker 3: gentle being nature, but now look at his hands and
3:35
Speaker 3: think he'd just taken another person's life. The outward appearance
3:38
Speaker 3: doesn't come across as what's really going on internally. This
3:41
Speaker 3: is a calculating murderer.
3:46
Speaker 1: This killer's story begins in the village of Coley, Gloucestershire.
3:52
Speaker 1: Adrian Michael Prout was born on the 14th of June, 1962.
3:58
Speaker 9: He was the second youngest of four siblings. His mother...
4:04
Speaker 9: Jeanette died shortly after the birth of her fourth child.
4:12
Speaker 6: Pratt was two years old when his mother passed away,
4:15
Speaker 6: so this is something that is lacking in his life.
4:18
Speaker 6: He doesn't have that relationship with a mother that is
4:21
Speaker 6: going to be the basis on which he forms relationships
4:23
Speaker 6: with other women.
4:26
Speaker 1: Both Adrian's father and grandfather were farmers, and he grew
4:31
Speaker 1: up helping out on the family farms. His dream was
4:35
Speaker 1: to one day have a farm of his own.
4:39
Speaker 6: Prout grew into a man who really did have quite
4:42
Speaker 6: a lot of ambition. He wanted to be successful. He
4:45
Speaker 6: wanted to be seen to be successful.
4:49
Speaker 7: He was a hardworking individual. He was always around farming.
4:53
Speaker 7: He'd had connections locally. He'd worked for people. They were
4:56
Speaker 7: always very impressed with the sort of things that he did.
4:59
Speaker 7: an engaging and hardworking individual. He'd had quite a successful
5:04
Speaker 7: pipeline business.
5:08
Speaker 1: In 1999, after a couple of failed relationships, 37-year-old Adrian
5:13
Speaker 1: Prout met Kate Wakefield. Kate was a teacher and, like Prout,
5:18
Speaker 1: came from a farming family.
5:21
Speaker 6: Kate was the sister of a friend of his. At
5:24
Speaker 6: this point in his life, Prout was having a bit
5:26
Speaker 6: of a difficult time, and Kate's brother... offered to put
5:30
Speaker 6: him up in a property whilst he got back on
5:32
Speaker 6: his feet. And I think this is quite a significant
5:35
Speaker 6: thing because Prout had that friendship with her brother. He
5:38
Speaker 6: comes pre-vetted, essentially.
5:42
Speaker 9: Kate Wakefield is pretty nearly ten years older than Adrian Prout.
5:47
Speaker 9: A wise woman, hard-working, thoughtful, but is, I think the
5:54
Speaker 9: phrase would be, bowled over by Adrian Prout.
5:59
Speaker 6: They were married within the space of a year, and
6:02
Speaker 6: this is an incredibly accelerated relationship. The pace of it
6:06
Speaker 6: is incredibly fast.
6:09
Speaker 4: Initially, they were seen as the perfect couple. They'd gone
6:11
Speaker 4: on really well.
6:13
Speaker 7: I think friends and family would describe them, personality-wise, that
6:16
Speaker 7: they were quite different, so that old adage that opposites attract.
6:22
Speaker 9: In 2004, Prout and Kate buy a farm. It's called
6:28
Speaker 9: Redhill Farm. It's near Red Marley in Gloucestershire. She can
6:34
Speaker 9: afford it because she's inherited a cottage which she's sold
6:37
Speaker 9: and she's contributing to the house.
6:41
Speaker 6: This is quite an extensive, quite an impressive property. And
6:45
Speaker 6: in this part of the country, agriculture is quite a
6:47
Speaker 6: significant industry and farmers have some status. They have a
6:51
Speaker 6: lot of land, they have a lot of property. Essentially,
6:54
Speaker 6: Kate was, for him, the vehicle that allowed him to
6:57
Speaker 6: reach this ambition, and the things that she had were
7:01
Speaker 6: very attractive for him.
7:03
Speaker 1: At the age of 41, Adrian Prout had achieved his
7:07
Speaker 1: lifelong goal of owning his own farm.
7:12
Speaker 9: He's going to run pheasant shoots, and she's going to
7:15
Speaker 9: cater for them at Red Marley. He's still got the
7:20
Speaker 9: pipe-blowing business. And as far as anyone can tell, This
7:24
Speaker 9: is a perfectly happy, stable relationship. And so it remains.
7:32
Speaker 1: The couple ran successful pheasant shoots over the next two years.
7:37
Speaker 1: But in 2006, there were signs that suggested their honeymoon
7:42
Speaker 1: period had come to an end.
7:45
Speaker 7: There were some public interactions and spats between the pair
7:48
Speaker 7: of them. There was starting to be that glimmer of
7:52
Speaker 7: things that were not quite as people would thought initially.
7:56
Speaker 1: On Boxing Day 2006, things reached ahead during an argument
8:02
Speaker 1: over the family's dinner plans.
8:05
Speaker 9: It starts in the kitchen and goes outside. And it's
8:10
Speaker 9: the first time we see real evidence of the violence
8:16
Speaker 9: that was beneath the surface. in this apparently stable marriage.
8:22
Speaker 9: Proud pushes Kate against the Land Rover that they have
8:28
Speaker 9: with such force that it actually dents the car.
8:34
Speaker 4: She's frightened.
8:37
Speaker 1: The cracks in the relationship became even more apparent two
8:41
Speaker 1: months later, in February 2007.
8:46
Speaker 9: Plates had been thrown right across the kitchen. There'd been
8:48
Speaker 9: a full-blown confrontation.
8:53
Speaker 1: Once again, the argument continued outside.
8:58
Speaker 7: He had grabbed her by the neck and held her
9:00
Speaker 7: over an empty swimming pool. The police had been called.
9:04
Speaker 7: I think he'd actually been arrested.
9:07
Speaker 9: She was to say later, he went mad. I really
9:11
Speaker 9: thought I'd had it. There was no controlling him.
9:15
Speaker 6: This shows me that he's changing tactics at this point
9:18
Speaker 6: in time. I think up until this point, he's been
9:21
Speaker 6: using charm and manipulation to get control and to get
9:24
Speaker 6: his own way, but that is no longer working. And
9:27
Speaker 6: with men like Prout, when those techniques no longer work,
9:30
Speaker 6: they resort to physical violence.
9:33
Speaker 1: In November 2007, after months of living with a volatile
9:38
Speaker 1: and violent husband, Kate went to see her solicitor about
9:42
Speaker 1: divorcing Adrian Prout.
9:45
Speaker 9: The farm by now is valued at £ 1. 3 million. Adrian
9:49
Speaker 9: is intent on hanging on to it. Offers Kate 600,000
9:54
Speaker 9: pounds to go. Kate consults a solicitor and says, no,
9:59
Speaker 9: I want 800,000.
10:00
Speaker 1: A settlement of that size meant one thing. Redhill Farm
10:08
Speaker 1: would have to be sold.
10:10
Speaker 7: We know that that farm was always Adrian Prout's dream.
10:15
Speaker 7: To own a farm, to run it like that was
10:17
Speaker 7: always his dream. There was a moment then... the dawn
10:20
Speaker 7: of realization that he was going to lose the farm.
10:23
Speaker 4: He was going to lose everything.
10:25
Speaker 6: He feels entitled to that farm. He feels that that
10:28
Speaker 6: farm is his. He's very much about ownership and possession
10:32
Speaker 6: of things, and now he's got a barrier in between
10:36
Speaker 6: the farm and him, and that barrier is Kate.
10:40
Speaker 1: Adrian Prout had no intention of giving up the farm,
10:44
Speaker 1: but before any settlement could be finalized, there was a development.
10:49
Speaker 4: Kate went missing.
10:54
Speaker 7: Hundreds and hundreds of people daily get reported to the
10:56
Speaker 7: police as missing, but it was the circumstances, really, around
10:59
Speaker 7: Kate's disappearance that was the concern.
11:04
Speaker 1: It had taken 45-year-old Prout five days to report Kate's
11:09
Speaker 1: disappearance to the police, and he didn't appear to be
11:13
Speaker 1: a worried husband.
11:14
Speaker 4: And you weren't, even though weeks had gone by, you
11:17
Speaker 4: had no concerns. about her well-being?
11:21
Speaker 5: Well, I did, but I thought if things weren't good,
11:24
Speaker 5: someone would have rang me or, you know, I assumed
11:28
Speaker 5: she was OK.
11:31
Speaker 7: If someone's lost a loved one, it's a powerful emotion.
11:34
Speaker 7: That's what you need to see. And if they're not
11:37
Speaker 7: displaying that, then immediately your suspicions are up, you're worried
11:41
Speaker 7: and you need to be looking into it a little
11:43
Speaker 7: bit more.
11:45
Speaker 1: Prout freely admitted that he was not concerned by his
11:48
Speaker 1: wife's disappearance.
11:50
Speaker 7: He was suggesting she'd gone off on her own. It
11:53
Speaker 7: was something she wanted. He wasn't concerned. She'd done it before.
11:59
Speaker 9: At least some of the locals are convinced that Kate
12:04
Speaker 9: had just had enough and left to start a new life.
12:08
Speaker 9: It made sense to them. This wasn't a happy couple anymore.
12:13
Speaker 6: Pratt was able to draw upon this victim status that
12:17
Speaker 6: he'd stepped into. My wife has left me. She's going
12:20
Speaker 6: to take me to the cleaners. Poor me. And he
12:23
Speaker 6: used this to his advantage in this situation because he's
12:27
Speaker 6: going to be saying things like, why would I be
12:29
Speaker 6: in contact with her? Why would I want to know
12:31
Speaker 6: where she is? She's making my life such a misery.
12:35
Speaker 7: It does sound feasible, but when you build into that,
12:39
Speaker 7: that none of the family had heard from.
12:40
Speaker 9: Her at all, She doesn't go to her niece's 18th
12:44
Speaker 9: birthday party. She doesn't contact anyone. As far as anyone
12:49
Speaker 9: can tell, she's disappeared into a puff of smoke.
12:53
Speaker 7: She might be wishing to split from her partner, but
12:55
Speaker 7: you're still going to make social contact, and you're still
12:57
Speaker 7: going to have an interaction with your family.
12:59
Speaker 4: None of that was happening.
13:02
Speaker 1: From the minute Adrian Prout reported her missing, investigators had
13:07
Speaker 1: been working through the possible reasons for Kate's disappearance.
13:11
Speaker 7: And there's been no contact from Kate since you last
13:16
Speaker 7: saw her around lunchtime on Monday?
13:19
Speaker 5: No.
13:21
Speaker 4: Three things likely to have happened.
13:23
Speaker 7: She's either had an accident somewhere and she's fallen off
13:26
Speaker 7: a horse or whatever it might be and she's out
13:28
Speaker 7: in the fields or wherever. She has gone off her
13:31
Speaker 7: own fruition. She doesn't want to be found and hasn't
13:34
Speaker 7: contacted anybody and wants to be on her own. Or
13:38
Speaker 7: something more sinister.
13:39
Speaker 4: She's been murdered. Simple as that. You were aware that
13:44
Speaker 4: a car had been left behind. Were you aware of
13:48
Speaker 4: any other things that had been left behind that she'd
13:51
Speaker 4: normally have with her? No, I couldn't find her car keys,
13:55
Speaker 4: which was strange.
13:57
Speaker 5: They always put in the drawer in the kitchen and
13:59
Speaker 5: they weren't there.
14:00
Speaker 4: So I assumed she had her car keys with her.
14:04
Speaker 7: If she goes out, what stuff would she normally take
14:06
Speaker 7: with her of a personal nature?
14:08
Speaker 4: Credit cards, purse, things like that? Yeah, phones.
14:13
Speaker 7: All of those things that are part of people's daily
14:15
Speaker 7: lives that they never let go of, all that was
14:18
Speaker 7: at the house. She'd gone with nothing apart from, in effect,
14:21
Speaker 7: the clothes that she was wearing. That's your starting point.
14:25
Speaker 7: That doesn't stack up at all. That's not normal behavior
14:28
Speaker 7: for people.
14:32
Speaker 1: Early investigations revealed only one trace of Kate after Prout
14:37
Speaker 1: purported to have seen her.
14:39
Speaker 7: The last third-party contact that she'd had with anybody else
14:44
Speaker 7: was to ring her bank on the late afternoon of
14:47
Speaker 7: that Monday on that 5th of November. From that Monday afternoon,
15:01
Speaker 7: she'd literally dropped off the radar. She wasn't seen from
15:04
Speaker 7: or heard from again.
15:07
Speaker 1: Believing from the outset that it was unlikely that Kate had,
15:11
Speaker 1: as Adrian Proud claimed, walked out on her husband, investigators
15:16
Speaker 1: were left with two hypotheses.
15:19
Speaker 7: Either they want to go and kill themselves, it's suicide,
15:22
Speaker 7: or chances are something more sinister in the circumstances.
15:25
Speaker 4: So the police are exploring.
15:26
Speaker 7: What exists in the background that would mean that someone
15:30
Speaker 7: wouldn't want her to be around anymore. And the information
15:34
Speaker 7: very quickly reveals that there was trouble in their marriage,
15:39
Speaker 7: that Kate was seeking a divorce, and she'd been to
15:42
Speaker 7: see a divorce lawyer, and he's going to lose the
15:45
Speaker 7: thing that he's worked all his life for.
15:49
Speaker 4: In the background, we know that not.
15:51
Speaker 7: Only are things not well in that marriage, but there
15:54
Speaker 7: is a known level of violence, and the police had
15:57
Speaker 7: been called previously.
16:00
Speaker 1: By the 27th of November 2007, the finger of suspicion
16:05
Speaker 1: was clearly pointing in one direction. Adrian Prout is arrested
16:11
Speaker 1: on suspicion of Kate's murder. Prout maintained his story, and
16:17
Speaker 1: an initial search at Redhill Farm proved fruitless.
16:21
Speaker 7: He'd given her his version of events, they'd found nothing,
16:24
Speaker 7: and as a consequence of that, he leaves the police station.
16:29
Speaker 1: Convinced that there was a sinister truth behind Prout's claims
16:33
Speaker 1: of being the jilted husband, investigators began an intensive search
16:39
Speaker 1: of the farm.
16:39
Speaker 7: There's a very good chance, based on his ability to
16:43
Speaker 7: work heavy machinery and his pipeline business, that the body
16:46
Speaker 7: is probably on the site. Why would you need to
16:48
Speaker 7: take her anywhere else if that's the case? When you've
16:51
Speaker 7: got 250 acres, you can't just search the whole lot.
16:53
Speaker 7: So you have to be clever and smart in the
16:56
Speaker 7: way that you approach it. You use tactics like ground-penetrating radar,
17:00
Speaker 7: dogs that are used to finding bodies and can smell that.
17:03
Speaker 4: That's your location, that's where you start.
17:07
Speaker 1: The search team were hopeful of an early lead when
17:11
Speaker 1: one of the dogs had a reaction inside the couple's home.
17:14
Speaker 7: It got quite excited, as these things do, around a
17:18
Speaker 7: sofa in the house, but when the full forensic team
17:21
Speaker 7: went in and looked, there was no evidence there whatsoever.
17:27
Speaker 4: The searches around the.
17:28
Speaker 7: Rest of the house and the land that sat around
17:31
Speaker 7: it went on for an eye on five weeks. There
17:33
Speaker 7: was no physical evidence of a disturbance, a fight, a murder, homicide,
17:40
Speaker 7: or indeed the moving of a body. There was nothing there.
17:45
Speaker 1: Detectives were confident that Prout was a killer, but with
17:49
Speaker 1: no sign of Kate, they were facing a so-called no-body
17:54
Speaker 1: murder case. which is notoriously hard to prove.
17:58
Speaker 7: With a body comes a huge wealth of forensic evidence
18:02
Speaker 7: to help you unpick how they've died and who potentially
18:06
Speaker 7: has killed them. Here, you've got no body, so you
18:11
Speaker 7: really are up against it.
18:15
Speaker 1: By Christmas, Kate had been missing for eight weeks, but
18:18
Speaker 1: life for Adrian Prout appeared to continue unaffected. Debbie Garlick
18:24
Speaker 1: encountered him in a local pub.
18:27
Speaker 8: I was with my friend, and Adrian walked in with
18:32
Speaker 8: somebody we knew. If he was in the pub by himself,
18:36
Speaker 8: we wouldn't have had a conversation with him, but because
18:38
Speaker 8: he was with people that we knew really, really well,
18:40
Speaker 8: and sometimes people would come back to my house for
18:42
Speaker 8: a drink with the pub closed and everything else, so
18:44
Speaker 8: that's what we did. As we walked out, the landlord
18:48
Speaker 8: just said, be careful to me and my friend.
18:50
Speaker 10: I was like, oh, okay. As soon as we got back,
18:54
Speaker 10: he said, do you know who I am? And then
18:57
Speaker 10: he told us the story.
19:01
Speaker 1: Later that night, Debbie did some research on the man
19:04
Speaker 1: she'd just met.
19:06
Speaker 8: We just googled everything then. He was under suspicion of murder.
19:10
Speaker 8: One of our friends said there's no way that he
19:14
Speaker 8: would have done anything like that.
19:16
Speaker 1: No way.
19:17
Speaker 10: Everyone just thought she'd disappeared.
19:20
Speaker 1: The police disagreed, and on the 4th of January 2008,
19:24
Speaker 1: they publicly announced their belief that Kate was dead. Two
19:31
Speaker 1: weeks later, Adrian Prout was arrested for the second time.
19:36
Speaker 7: They're hoping that he's going to confess to doing what
19:40
Speaker 7: they think he's done.
19:42
Speaker 4: There was no confession.
19:45
Speaker 1: Adrian Prout maintained that Kate had left of her own
19:48
Speaker 1: accord with the intention of stitching him up.
19:52
Speaker 7: There is no firm evidence. It is all circumstantial. So
19:56
Speaker 7: he'd have to go out on police bail. You can't
19:58
Speaker 7: just hold someone or charge someone without evidence. That's when
20:03
Speaker 7: a challenging, difficult and protracted police investigation takes place.
20:10
Speaker 4: And there is no easy answer to that.
20:13
Speaker 1: Investigators began focusing on proof of life.
20:18
Speaker 7: It's a common phrase within policing and legal terms. Ultimately,
20:22
Speaker 7: it's about establishing that somebody lives their life in a
20:27
Speaker 7: certain way, interacting with banks, financial institutions, friends and family, etc.
20:33
Speaker 7: And in a moment in time, it all stops. There's
20:36
Speaker 7: no more interaction. Now, that's unusual. The only reasonable conclusion
20:42
Speaker 7: that you can reach is that person is no longer alive.
20:48
Speaker 1: The police began the process of proving not only that
20:51
Speaker 1: Kate Prout was dead, but that she'd been murdered. In May,
20:58
Speaker 1: Debbie Garlick had another chance meeting with Prout in the pub.
21:04
Speaker 8: By the next morning, he'd put a note through my
21:06
Speaker 8: letterbox saying, with his telephone number on and said, if
21:08
Speaker 8: you want, give me a call. We went out the
21:13
Speaker 8: following day and took a picnic, and then he said
21:16
Speaker 8: that he wouldn't have a relationship with anybody because it
21:18
Speaker 8: wasn't the right time.
21:21
Speaker 1: But two days later, Debbie heard from him again.
21:24
Speaker 8: He phoned me, and from the Wednesday onwards, we just
21:27
Speaker 8: started our relationship full on from there.
21:31
Speaker 1: It had been six months since his wife disappeared, but
21:34
Speaker 1: Prout had a seemingly plausible explanation for her prolonged absence.
21:40
Speaker 10: She had gone off before and gone.
21:44
Speaker 8: On holiday with one of her sisters or something, or sister-in-law,
21:47
Speaker 8: and hadn't told him then where she was going. So
21:50
Speaker 8: he just thought that they were hiding her away. He
21:53
Speaker 8: didn't want to be part of his life. It wasn't
21:56
Speaker 8: a big thing about where she was, if you get
21:58
Speaker 8: what I mean.
22:01
Speaker 1: As part of the ongoing investigation into Kate's disappearance, detectives
22:06
Speaker 1: had discovered she kept a diary. This told a very
22:10
Speaker 1: different story to the one that Adrian Prout was spinning.
22:14
Speaker 7: She explains on over a number of entries over a
22:18
Speaker 7: period of weeks and months what's been happening in her life,
22:20
Speaker 7: the tension with Adrian, the fact that she's worried and concerned.
22:24
Speaker 9: There are constant references to her being frightened of Adrian Prout,
22:31
Speaker 9: references to the fact that he lost it with me.
22:34
Speaker 9: If you like, it's the clearest evidence so far of
22:38
Speaker 9: the true nature of the marriage between Adrian and Kate Prout.
22:45
Speaker 7: All of that is good evidence, as if it's almost
22:48
Speaker 7: like Kate's voice. That's the importance of it. This is
22:51
Speaker 7: Kate talking through her diary.
22:55
Speaker 1: Despite the mounting evidence suggesting Prout was weaving a web
22:59
Speaker 1: of lies, in January 2009, he was told he was
23:04
Speaker 1: no longer a suspect and released from bail.
23:08
Speaker 8: That was the news that we obviously were hoping for.
23:10
Speaker 8: And that's when we all moved up to the farm together.
23:15
Speaker 1: The cloud of suspicion appeared to have lifted. Debbie and
23:19
Speaker 1: her two children moved into Redhill Farm with Prout.
23:24
Speaker 7: They've reached a stage where we're told him he's no
23:26
Speaker 7: longer a suspect. I suspect that was to try and
23:28
Speaker 7: trigger some conversation with friends and family of him. He
23:31
Speaker 7: might not confess it to the police, but he might
23:34
Speaker 7: confess it to a good mate, or he might confess
23:37
Speaker 7: it to Debbie Garlick.
23:39
Speaker 6: I think Prout feels incredibly victorious at this point in time.
23:43
Speaker 6: He feels like he has very successfully pulled the wool
23:47
Speaker 6: over everybody's eyes, and this is a problem that has
23:49
Speaker 6: just gone away.
23:52
Speaker 7: In the background, that investigation is continuing and they've gone
23:55
Speaker 7: to the Crown Prosecution Service around charging.
24:01
Speaker 1: A month after moving in together, the couple's world was
24:04
Speaker 1: turned upside down. On the 10th of March, Debbie was
24:09
Speaker 1: home alone with her children.
24:11
Speaker 8: We were sleeping bad and we just heard shouting and
24:16
Speaker 8: so we all just got out and wondered what the
24:18
Speaker 8: hell was going on and we walked into all these
24:20
Speaker 8: police in the house.
24:23
Speaker 10: They asked me not to phone Adrian, but I did.
24:29
Speaker 1: When Prout returned home, he didn't seem concerned by the
24:34
Speaker 1: unfolding events.
24:35
Speaker 8: I think he said something like, here we go again, lads,
24:38
Speaker 8: or something. And then they charged him with murder in
24:42
Speaker 8: front of us all and handcuffed him and took him away.
24:48
Speaker 8: We thought they must have found something then. They must
24:51
Speaker 8: have found something for him to be charged with murder.
24:57
Speaker 1: Debbie was left assuming that Kate's body had been found,
25:01
Speaker 1: but she was wrong.
25:04
Speaker 7: The police have been really active in progressing the inquiries,
25:06
Speaker 7: and they've gone to the Crown Prosecution Service, so they
25:09
Speaker 7: are going to be explaining what they've got, the circumstantial evidence,
25:12
Speaker 7: and they would be having to seek a decision to
25:15
Speaker 7: charge him. Once you've reached that stage... There wouldn't be
25:18
Speaker 7: a need for any continuation of bail or anything of
25:21
Speaker 7: that nature.
25:21
Speaker 4: He's coming in.
25:25
Speaker 1: Adrian Prout appeared later that day at Cheltenham Crown Court,
25:29
Speaker 1: charged with the murder of his wife, Kate. After a
25:33
Speaker 1: month in prison, he was released on bail, awaiting trial.
25:38
Speaker 8: He was saying, I can't believe I've been in prison
25:41
Speaker 8: and I can't believe that they thought I've done it.
25:43
Speaker 10: I'm innocent. So we were all like.
25:47
Speaker 8: few men with the police thinking that they have to
25:50
Speaker 8: put him in prison for a month for no reason.
25:56
Speaker 1: Out on bail, life returned to normality, and the couple
26:00
Speaker 1: celebrated some happy news. Debbie and Prout were engaged to
26:05
Speaker 1: be married.
26:06
Speaker 8: I think a few people had made a comment thinking
26:11
Speaker 8: maybe that was a wrong decision that we made, especially
26:14
Speaker 8: for Adrian's part because, He's still got a wife, really.
26:20
Speaker 6: We see this similar pattern happening again, the accelerated pace
26:24
Speaker 6: of a relationship, the need for that early commitment. And
26:28
Speaker 6: this is something that happens frequently with men like Proud.
26:33
Speaker 8: We had the engagement party and found out I was
26:35
Speaker 8: pregnant with my daughter, which was a nice surprise. And
26:39
Speaker 8: then we found out the court case was going to
26:42
Speaker 8: be January the 11th, the same day that she was due.
26:48
Speaker 1: Debbie was induced a week early so that the birth
26:51
Speaker 1: of their daughter wouldn't coincide with the trial.
26:56
Speaker 10: He loved having a baby, yeah. He fed her, changed her,
27:01
Speaker 10: got up in the night.
27:03
Speaker 8: He was a hands-on dad. And then she was a
27:06
Speaker 8: week old when the court case started.
27:08
Speaker 1: The evidence presented to the jury over the course of
27:14
Speaker 1: three weeks was entirely circumstantial.
27:18
Speaker 4: There is no forensic evidence.
27:20
Speaker 7: There is nothing to suggest, more importantly, physically, if you like, evidentially, forensically,
27:27
Speaker 7: that Kate has been killed.
27:29
Speaker 4: That's why it took so long.
27:31
Speaker 7: That's why this proof of life as the expression, which
27:34
Speaker 7: is a bit of a nuance, really, because you're proving
27:36
Speaker 7: that someone's died rather than that they're alive.
27:39
Speaker 4: That's why it's so important.
27:42
Speaker 10: I didn't go to court for the first three weeks, but.
27:45
Speaker 8: I went every day for the fourth week because Adrian
27:48
Speaker 8: was convinced he'd be found not guilty. So he wanted
27:51
Speaker 8: us to walk out the court together to move on
27:53
Speaker 8: with the rest of our lives.
27:56
Speaker 1: Unusually, in this case, there were only 11 members of
28:00
Speaker 1: the jury and they retired to consider their verdict.
28:05
Speaker 8: And then rumours were going around that it was nine
28:07
Speaker 8: people together and two people weren't. And a commembrant said
28:10
Speaker 8: to me, oh, I can't believe two people think that
28:12
Speaker 8: I've done it. So he's thinking now that nine people
28:16
Speaker 8: think he's innocent and two people think he's guilty.
28:21
Speaker 7: The jury were clear ultimately that Kate was alive on
28:25
Speaker 7: the 5th of November and within five days later, she
28:29
Speaker 7: wasn't alive.
28:31
Speaker 4: Adrian could only have been the person that killed her ultimately.
28:34
Speaker 4: So he had all of.
28:35
Speaker 7: The motivation there, sure that she wasn't around because she
28:38
Speaker 7: wasn't going to get that money. That's what's presented to
28:41
Speaker 7: the jury. That's what they thought, well, actually, there's only
28:44
Speaker 7: one conclusion we can reasonably make here.
28:49
Speaker 8: The verdict came that he was guilty. I just burst
28:53
Speaker 8: into tears. Of course, he goes straight to prison then,
28:58
Speaker 8: but we went home without him that day, which is
29:01
Speaker 8: really hard, and our baby was four weeks old.
29:07
Speaker 1: Having never believed that he would be found guilty, Proud's
29:11
Speaker 1: family had to face a harsh reality.
29:15
Speaker 8: I went down to the post office to get every
29:18
Speaker 8: single paper that.
29:20
Speaker 10: I could get.
29:21
Speaker 8: All the papers were killer Adrian Pratt, Adrian Pratt's killed
29:25
Speaker 8: his wife, no body, and even the chap who owned
29:29
Speaker 8: the shop at the precise time came out and he
29:31
Speaker 8: put his arms around me and went, it's so wrong,
29:34
Speaker 8: what's happened to him?
29:35
Speaker 10: He said, you don't know. You'll get him out.' Because
29:37
Speaker 10: that's what everyone was like. It wasn't just me. It
29:39
Speaker 10: was everybody.
29:43
Speaker 1: On the 8th of February, 2010, Prout was sentenced to
29:47
Speaker 1: a minimum of 18 years in prison, but the convicted
29:51
Speaker 1: murderer maintained his innocence.
29:54
Speaker 7: Ultimately, what you've got is you've got a guy that
29:56
Speaker 7: was charged with murder, been convicted, and he's gone to prison.
30:00
Speaker 7: The missing piece of that jigsaw is we've still got
30:04
Speaker 7: a missing body somewhere. We still think that Kate is
30:08
Speaker 7: out there somewhere and we want to find her ultimately.
30:11
Speaker 7: So that will always remain open. But you're gonna need
30:14
Speaker 7: some information before you can do anything else.
30:18
Speaker 10: I did have doubts then. I went to see him.
30:20
Speaker 8: I asked him to swear on our daughter's life that
30:23
Speaker 8: if he has not killed Kate and he swore on
30:25
Speaker 8: her life and said he hasn't killed her. And then
30:28
Speaker 8: I got upset then because I thought, that was bad
30:32
Speaker 8: for me to have doubt that he might have done something.
30:35
Speaker 8: He might have killed her, so I felt really bad
30:37
Speaker 8: in myself then.
30:41
Speaker 6: Prout knows exactly what buttons to push with Debbie. He
30:44
Speaker 6: knows exactly the kind of things to say to make
30:46
Speaker 6: her feel bad for even raising the question. So I
30:49
Speaker 6: think that shows how manipulative he really is.
30:55
Speaker 1: Believing an innocent man had been jailed Prout's supporters were
30:59
Speaker 1: determined to prove that Kate Prout was alive.
31:04
Speaker 8: The only thing we could do was to prove he
31:05
Speaker 8: was innocent, that the crime had not been committed. And
31:08
Speaker 8: then obviously we started searching for Kate. We put out
31:10
Speaker 8: a reward that if anyone had any information on the
31:14
Speaker 8: whereabouts of Kate Prout, then obviously they would claim the reward.
31:18
Speaker 8: And that's when it all started to begin, the campaign
31:21
Speaker 8: to get him out of prison.
31:24
Speaker 1: Debbie's campaign caught the attention of veteran reporter Tom Hendry.
31:30
Speaker 2: Here was a woman who still believed, even though he
31:33
Speaker 2: was in jail, that he was innocent, and she launched
31:37
Speaker 2: a huge crusade to try and find Kate. And as
31:42
Speaker 2: a result, I realized there was potential for a really
31:46
Speaker 2: great story.
31:49
Speaker 1: Tom became Debbie's media advisor and assisted with the appeal
31:54
Speaker 1: for information on Kate's true whereabouts.
31:57
Speaker 2: We had a number of sightings. One was in Cork,
32:01
Speaker 2: in Southern Ireland.
32:03
Speaker 10: Somebody got in touch.
32:05
Speaker 8: They said it looked like Kate, and she was a tutor,
32:07
Speaker 8: and Kate was a teacher.
32:10
Speaker 10: We actually thought we'd got her.
32:12
Speaker 2: We went over to Ireland. The news agency sent a photographer.
32:16
Speaker 2: I didn't go personally. And Debbie was joking, you know,
32:19
Speaker 2: as to if Kate had turned up, there would have
32:23
Speaker 2: been a film made, and who would have played her?
32:28
Speaker 8: Every single member of Adrian's family and my family came up,
32:32
Speaker 8: and we waited for the telephone call to say that
32:35
Speaker 8: it was Kate, but the telephone call come through to
32:37
Speaker 8: say that it obviously wasn't Kate.
32:39
Speaker 10: So we were all devastated about that.
32:41
Speaker 8: And then we had a sighting in Scarborough, and that
32:45
Speaker 8: wasn't her either. We did articles on the news, we
32:49
Speaker 8: did articles in the paper for any information, and the
32:52
Speaker 8: website to do with the miscarriage of justice, they were
32:54
Speaker 8: looking into that for us.
32:58
Speaker 6: Prout is going along with this, but the outcome that
33:01
Speaker 6: he wants is to get out of prison, and he
33:03
Speaker 6: will be using people to his advantage. He won't be
33:06
Speaker 6: feeling bad about it. He doesn't see his family and
33:09
Speaker 6: friends in the way that most people do. Other people
33:12
Speaker 6: exist in terms of what they can do for him.
33:15
Speaker 6: So he was simply surrounded by useful people at this
33:18
Speaker 6: point in time.
33:20
Speaker 1: Desperate to prove that there had been a miscarriage of justice,
33:24
Speaker 1: Prout's supporters were running out of options until journalist Tom
33:29
Speaker 1: Hendry had an unconventional idea.
33:33
Speaker 2: It had gone on for so long, they thought, if
33:35
Speaker 2: this guy Prout took a lie detector test, That would prove, maybe,
33:40
Speaker 2: once and for all, if he was telling the truth
33:42
Speaker 2: or not. And Debbie agreed.
33:46
Speaker 8: I was like, couldn't wait for the headline to be,
33:48
Speaker 8: Adrian Pratt is innocent, he's just passed the lie detector test.
33:53
Speaker 1: Debbie and Tom visited Pratt in Bristol Prison.
33:57
Speaker 8: We asked Adrian if he'd do a lie detector test,
33:59
Speaker 8: and Adrian agreed straight away.
34:00
Speaker 2: I didn't have any suspicions about him. He was very calm,
34:06
Speaker 2: very controlled. And therefore, you know, I didn't smell any
34:11
Speaker 2: kind of rat at all.
34:13
Speaker 1: Don Cargill, one of the UK's leading polygraph experts, arranged
34:19
Speaker 1: to conduct a test on Adrian in prison.
34:22
Speaker 3: Bear in mind, this Adrian who was wanting the test,
34:26
Speaker 3: I thought he would have, great, this is my day of,
34:28
Speaker 3: you know, the truthful out, and I'll be proven to
34:31
Speaker 3: be a non-killer and wrongly convicted. But the reality was,
34:35
Speaker 3: it was a frozen reaction. He didn't really want to
34:37
Speaker 3: do this, which really, that did take me by surprise.
34:43
Speaker 3: I left him alone for about 20 minutes, went back,
34:46
Speaker 3: and he said, I suppose I'd better do it. I
34:48
Speaker 3: suppose I'd better do it for Debbie's sake. And I said, no, no, no, no, no.
34:53
Speaker 3: Do it for your own sake.
34:56
Speaker 1: The questions put to Adrian Prout during the test were
35:00
Speaker 1: very straightforward.
35:02
Speaker 3: Did he kill his wife, Kate Prout? Did he pay
35:05
Speaker 3: someone else to do it? And did he know where
35:07
Speaker 3: the body was? He said no to all three questions.
35:10
Speaker 3: So when we did the test three times, I looked
35:12
Speaker 3: at the results and quite clearly he had murdered his wife.
35:15
Speaker 3: And I did say to him, I'm sorry, but I'm
35:17
Speaker 3: looking at a murderer. And he just went, well, are
35:22
Speaker 3: you saying my test is wrong? And he said, no,
35:27
Speaker 3: your test is not wrong.
35:31
Speaker 8: Don Cargill phoned me up. And just said, Debbie, you're
35:35
Speaker 8: engaged to a murderer. And that was Don's words.
35:43
Speaker 10: It was just so emotional.
35:45
Speaker 8: I didn't want to believe it. And of course, my
35:48
Speaker 8: plans have all gone out the window now. Because obviously
35:50
Speaker 8: the plan was it was going to pass. The plan
35:53
Speaker 8: was we were going to go to the papers. Agent
35:55
Speaker 8: Pranks passed. But everything stopped. There was no further forward now.
36:01
Speaker 2: Maybe he was so arrogant, proud, that he thought he
36:06
Speaker 2: could beat this test, and clearly he couldn't.
36:11
Speaker 8: My sister said to me that if he'd done it,
36:14
Speaker 8: you'd have gone to the papers, you'd have believed it,
36:17
Speaker 8: so really you should believe in it, that he's failed it,
36:20
Speaker 8: that he has done it, he is a murderer, because
36:23
Speaker 8: you can't believe one way and not the other.
36:28
Speaker 1: When Debbie visited Prout, he was adamant that the polygraph
36:31
Speaker 1: had been rigged and professed his innocence.
36:35
Speaker 6: Here, he brings back that victim persona. Poor me. Everybody's
36:40
Speaker 6: against me. Everybody's out to get me.
36:43
Speaker 8: For the next couple of months, it was strained between
36:46
Speaker 8: us both. The phone calls were strained. I think he
36:50
Speaker 8: knew that failing that, however much he tried to deny it,
36:55
Speaker 8: had changed all our minds.
36:59
Speaker 10: My thoughts now have gone to Kate's family.
37:02
Speaker 8: So we're protesting his innocence, and these poor people now
37:05
Speaker 8: have lost Kate. And for the last year, I've never
37:09
Speaker 8: thought about their feelings. So I wanted to find out
37:13
Speaker 8: the truth for their sake and for Kate's sake. That
37:18
Speaker 8: was my plan now. The plan had changed. I just
37:22
Speaker 8: knew we would get to the bottom of it, but
37:24
Speaker 8: I didn't know when.
37:27
Speaker 1: In November 2011, three months after the failed polygraph test,
37:33
Speaker 1: Debbie visited Adrian Prout, determined to get an answer once
37:38
Speaker 1: and for all.
37:39
Speaker 8: I went there with my sister, and I did say
37:42
Speaker 8: that I'd stick by him, but then I didn't always
37:45
Speaker 8: think I'd get the answer that I did. I said,
37:49
Speaker 8: if you have killed Kate, I will stand by you,
37:52
Speaker 8: but you need to tell me the truth so we
37:54
Speaker 8: can give Kate a proper funeral. and he just said,
37:57
Speaker 8: she's had one. Well, I knew then he'd killed her.
38:03
Speaker 8: I just, I don't think me and my sister knew
38:06
Speaker 8: what to say. We just sat there because I think we,
38:08
Speaker 8: to be perfectly honest, I just thought I was going
38:09
Speaker 8: to be sick.
38:12
Speaker 1: Now the floodgates had finally been opened, Prout did not
38:17
Speaker 1: hold back.
38:19
Speaker 8: He said that they argued and she upped the money
38:23
Speaker 8: that she wanted. And they started arguing and he strangled her.
38:30
Speaker 8: He went to the pub and then got back and
38:33
Speaker 8: buried her in the woods. He said he dug a
38:34
Speaker 8: hole by hand and he had a shoot the next
38:37
Speaker 8: day and carried on as normal. And the police never
38:40
Speaker 8: found one bit of evidence of that.
38:47
Speaker 7: One of the detectives came in and said, we've just
38:50
Speaker 7: had Adrian's girlfriend come to the police station and say...
38:54
Speaker 7: that Adrian has confessed that he's killed Kate Pratt. There's
39:00
Speaker 7: the potential that we've got that final piece of the jigsaw.
39:03
Speaker 7: So within 24 hours, we've got police officers at the
39:06
Speaker 7: prison talking to him. And he may well have said, no,
39:10
Speaker 7: I didn't say that, made it all up, but he didn't.
39:13
Speaker 7: This morning, I'm going to read you a prepared statement
39:16
Speaker 7: in relation to why we are here.
39:19
Speaker 4: The statement goes.
39:20
Speaker 7: Yesterday morning, we received some new and significant information in
39:24
Speaker 7: relation to the murder of Kate Prout.
39:28
Speaker 1: Prout agreed to show police where he'd buried his wife.
39:33
Speaker 2: From his prison cell, handcuffed to a policeman, the convicted
39:37
Speaker 2: killer and now confessed murderer, Adrian Prout, returns to the
39:41
Speaker 2: farm where he committed his crime.
39:44
Speaker 7: He took us to a location on a hill, which
39:47
Speaker 7: was quite an extensive piece of woodland, probably a bit
39:50
Speaker 7: bigger than a football pitch. There was no X marks
39:53
Speaker 7: to spot, for sure. So where he'd initially pointed out,
39:58
Speaker 7: we dug, and unsuccessfully, so we couldn't find Kate. And
40:03
Speaker 7: what we brought in then were Godiva dogs, so sniffing
40:06
Speaker 7: dogs to see if we could find a body, and
40:08
Speaker 7: they did the usual dog thing of sniffing places, and
40:11
Speaker 7: that was unsuccessful. And then we used ground penetrating radar
40:15
Speaker 7: as well. And that didn't help either. And day one,
40:19
Speaker 7: day two, after that, could only be described that initial excitement, really,
40:24
Speaker 7: that actually we might solve this and we could do
40:26
Speaker 7: this really quickly now and move it on, that wasn't happening.
40:31
Speaker 1: The media had taken over the chocolate box village of
40:35
Speaker 1: Red Marley and expectations were high.
40:39
Speaker 4: Pressure's massive. The pressure was huge, waiting for something to happen.
40:45
Speaker 1: Finally, on day four, the search team made the grim discovery.
40:50
Speaker 7: At 1 o'clock this afternoon, we have found human remains
40:54
Speaker 7: close to the location Adrian Prout identified as the place
40:58
Speaker 7: he buried his wife.
41:02
Speaker 8: I just cried for her family, and it must have
41:05
Speaker 8: been horrendous for them. I thought they were hiding her,
41:09
Speaker 8: so I thought they knew where she was, but for them...
41:13
Speaker 8: They knew that she was dead.
41:14
Speaker 10: Because she would have been in contact with them.
41:17
Speaker 8: They had to live all that time knowing that she's
41:20
Speaker 8: just been buried somewhere and concealed and would they ever
41:23
Speaker 8: get her back?
41:24
Speaker 10: But when I say it, I don't think they thought
41:25
Speaker 10: they would.
41:30
Speaker 1: Kate's family were finally able to lay her to rest
41:34
Speaker 1: in January 2012, more than four years after she'd been killed.
41:41
Speaker 7: That information came from Debbie at that moment in time.
41:44
Speaker 7: If it hadn't then, Adrian may well have served his sentence,
41:49
Speaker 7: life moves on. It may never have come out.
41:54
Speaker 1: Adrian Prout will be eligible to apply for parole in 2028.
42:01
Speaker 7: As an individual, I struggle with the concept of being
42:05
Speaker 7: able to harm someone in the way that he has,
42:08
Speaker 7: but not just to do that. but to harm so
42:10
Speaker 7: many other people around him as a consequence. That's not
42:14
Speaker 7: normal human behavior.
42:17
Speaker 2: Everybody was fooled by him. Lie detector test proved that
42:21
Speaker 2: I was among them, but he was a very convincing liar.
42:27
Speaker 1: Scars remain for those who were burned by Prout's lies.
42:32
Speaker 8: He took away the family that we all were going
42:35
Speaker 8: to have together.
42:38
Speaker 10: You don't expect things like that to happen to your family.
42:43
Speaker 8: My daughter, I think that's the hardest part because she's
42:48
Speaker 8: always had to be grown up knowing that her dad's
42:50
Speaker 8: in prison and he's a murderer.
42:58
Speaker 1: Prout was a master manipulator whose selfishness knew no limits.
43:04
Speaker 1: He killed his wife just to avoid having to give
43:07
Speaker 1: her what was rightfully hers. Then he played the jilted
43:11
Speaker 1: husband and cruelly pulled others into his web of lies.
43:16
Speaker 1: He never had a thought for anyone but himself, making
43:20
Speaker 1: Adrian Prout one of Britain's most evil killers.