In 2010 when Vitalija Baliutaviciene, a Lithuanian living in Peterborough did not return home after work, her 9-year-old son contacted police. Her ex-husband who had been convicted for violent behaviour towards his wife was contacted but was in Lithuania. But phone records, AMPR cameras and Dover CCTV told a very different story leading police on a complex investigation and the discovery of a shallow grave over a thousand miles away.
In December 2005, 30-year-old Andrew Scanlan was reported missing from his home in Peterborough. Vague witness reports put police on a false trail until an eyewitness account placed Andrew with his two half brothers on the evening he was last seen. The police investigation revealed a murderous plot that would deliver a prison cell confession and lead them to Andrew’s body, dismembered in two shallow graves deep in Aldershot woods.
Kathy Goble had worked at a clothes shop in Charleston, West Virginia for 10 years, and was last seen on 24 April 2010 on the shop’s CCTV after leaving work. After being reported missing by her family, her phone and keys were found at her boyfriend’s house and her locked car found abandoned along Interstate 64. Her mysterious disappearance drew no answers from detectives until two years later when a garden excavation in Kathy’s home town revealed a shocking discovery.
December, 1999, restaurateur, Rumel Bakar left his Raj Douth restaurant in Lincoln at 9pm telling his staff he would be gone 15 minutes; he never returned. After Rumel’s family offered a reward for his safe return, the restaurant received an anonymous phone call. Police surveillance identified two potential suspects Mark Falco and Billy Wharton. The following investigation led detectives on an extraordinary trail of multiple burial sites and dismembered body parts from the wild coastline of Lincolnshire to the English Channel.
In December 2004, the family of Fred Moss, a traveller from the Stansted, Essex was reported missing. As hundreds of the traveller community descended on rural Essex in search of the missing 21-year-old, the police came under increasing pressure to find answers but Fred Moss had vanished without a trace. 4 days later his beloved dog was found starving, lost and wandering on a road 16 miles from Fred’s home. A call for witnesses brought forward Christopher Nudds, a local pest controller and friend of Moss. His account of last seeing Fred the day before he went missing didn’t match the account from Fred’s aunt and when Nudds found Fred’s missing car a day later both the police and the travellers began to suspect Nudds knew more than he was revealing. What followed included an abduction, a shallow grave, an extraordinary second murder and one of the British police’s largest scale manhunts.
William and Patricia Wycherley had faded from view sometime after May 1998. The elderly couple had little contact with neighbours in their quiet Mansfield cul de sac. They had few family bar their daughter Susan, an only child. They were described as reclusive. None the less, Christmas cards were sent and their home and garden were well maintained with no cause for concern. Their daughter Susan mentioned the retired couple would probably settle in Ireland having sold their house. However, in 2005, Susan’s husband Christopher Edwards made a shocking confession that would lead detectives back to the Wycherley’s garden.
June 2008, a lorry driver awoke from his cab, parked in a layby in Hinxton, Cambridgeshire to see a fire at the back of the lorry. Closer inspection revealed the fire was, in fact, two suitcases alight and what appeared to be a burning body inside the cases. No eyewitnesses, no identification of the body, no forensic material found at the scene, police initially were at a dead end calling in a forensic entomologist and archaeologist to help place time of death and a victim profile. Dismembered and badly burnt the identification and even gender of the corpse was unknown until a partial print was lifted from a scorched finger eventually leading police to North London and the scene of a bloody murder.
16-year-old Ericka Brown had spent Saturday 9th August 2014 shopping with her family in preparation for the new school semester. The following morning her mother went into her bedroom to find her missing. A frantic 911 call alerted the Kanawha County Sheriff's and so began the hunt for the missing teenager. Ericka's home was located in a remote part of Cross Lanes, a small town in West Virginia. With no car, bus routes or taxi service, investigators believed Ericka must have met a vehicle in order to leave the area. Eight days later and still with no trace of her, her family were frantic with worry although clinging to hope that Ericka was playing truant. As investigators dug deeper into Ericka's digital footprint they discovered a terrible secret.
WatchShallow Grave, Mondays at 10pm
