Killer In My Family: The Murder Of Danielle Jones - Full Documentary
A landmark British murder case with no body and no crime scene, investigating the murder of Danielle Jones, a young girl who vanished on her way to school on 18 June 2001. In this true-crime documentary learn how a suspected runaway case revealed a story of obsession, grooming and murder from inside the family in this true-crime documentary.
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TVTranscript
00:00:00It was just like a typical Monday morning.
00:00:18Danielle was excited to go back to school because we had just come back from a really
00:00:23nice holiday as a family, so she was quite excited to meet up with her friends.
00:00:29She wasn't overly chatty in the mornings because she wasn't a morning person.
00:00:38Ten to eight was the time she went out every morning.
00:00:46She would just rush round, grab her breakfast and go.
00:00:54Yeah I really wish there was something a little bit more memorable about that morning.
00:00:59It was just a pretty typical morning.
00:01:06In East Tilbury in Essex, police searching for the missing girl were today continuing
00:01:15their door to door enquiries, but so far they've drawn a blank on the whereabouts of 15 year
00:01:20old Danielle Jones, who hasn't been seen since setting off for school on Monday morning.
00:01:26It was totally out of character.
00:01:28My feeling was that this could be something much more serious.
00:01:34East Tilbury is kind of isolated, it's desolate, it's a place you could easily lose bodies.
00:01:44This was geographically the biggest search that I'd ever been involved in.
00:01:49This is a jigsaw puzzle, ordinarily the jigsaw pieces are somewhere on the page.
00:01:54We had no jigsaw pieces.
00:01:57It was clear that something sinister had happened to Danielle.
00:02:00I'm so desperate to get her back.
00:02:03Danielle, come on, go.
00:02:27The phone went about half to a quarter to three time, and it was the school to say that
00:02:43Danielle hadn't attended today, was there any reason why?
00:02:48And I was quite taken aback and said, well where is she then, what's she done?
00:02:53Because it just was not her to do anything like this.
00:02:55It really wasn't.
00:02:58It rang massive alarm bells to us because Danielle wasn't the type of child to have missed school at all.
00:03:05Our first thoughts would have been, right, she's gone off with a friend, she's not just turned up to school.
00:03:09But that seemed very unusual because Danielle was a very innocent, lovely young lady who wouldn't have worried her parents at all.
00:03:18I phoned Tony, Danielle's dad, to tell him what had happened.
00:03:22He then said, well I'll come home, because we were just, this just isn't normal.
00:03:27I think I assumed that she would just turn up home, normal school time, as though I hadn't known anything had happened.
00:03:33But obviously when that didn't happen, panic did set in.
00:03:44As the evening was going on, we became frantic.
00:03:48I stayed at home just in case she turned up, but friends were going to the train station.
00:03:53Friends went up to Lakeside where she had a little job.
00:03:56And we were just like, well where can she be, what's she done?
00:04:00And I thought, well I'm now going to have to phone the police.
00:04:17And they've advised me to get in contact with you.
00:04:19Yes, love.
00:04:20It's regarding my daughter.
00:04:21You are?
00:04:22Yes.
00:04:23How old is your daughter, love?
00:04:24Fifteen.
00:04:25Fifteen?
00:04:26Right, well how long has she been missing, love?
00:04:27Since eight o'clock this morning.
00:04:28Have you tried any of the friends with you?
00:04:30Everywhere.
00:04:31What's her name, love?
00:04:32It's Danielle.
00:04:33Danielle.
00:04:38My name's Keith Davies and during the investigation I was a detective sergeant.
00:04:44It's clear that Linda was very, very concerned and distressed that her daughter was potentially in danger
00:04:50because it was very out of character for Danielle not to have made contact
00:04:54and not to have come home at the normal time.
00:04:59The police came round, it was a local police station.
00:05:04Initially, I think they probably assumed she had run away.
00:05:08They'd asked if there was any family arguments.
00:05:12And took all details.
00:05:15We went into her room to see whether there was anything, any clothes had gone missing.
00:05:21Nothing was missing, nothing was out of place, there was no note anywhere.
00:05:25It was just as it would normally be.
00:05:32Danielle would have been regarded as a vulnerable missing person.
00:05:35Some of the immediate things that were giving really cause for concern
00:05:39was the fact that Danielle was not a truant.
00:05:42She'd never run away before.
00:05:44Things like she hadn't taken a mobile phone charger,
00:05:47she hadn't taken any money to the best of their knowledge
00:05:50and she hadn't taken any change of clothing.
00:06:06She didn't like the dark.
00:06:09She wouldn't like to be left at home in the evening on her own
00:06:12if it was going to get dark.
00:06:14So I assumed if she was going to come home, it would be as it started to get dark.
00:06:18But she didn't.
00:06:20I think I hoped she'll just come home and there'll be a story.
00:06:23And I don't think initially,
00:06:26I don't think I wanted to think it was anything more sinister.
00:06:30And we just sat up all night in case she comes walking through the door.
00:06:40The first 24 hours of a missing person case are absolutely crucial.
00:06:44Thorough Police were doing a lot of house-to-house inquiries.
00:06:47They were making media appeals
00:06:49as to what potentially could have happened to her.
00:06:52The police kind of came in
00:06:54and she'd recently been away on a school trip.
00:06:56A couple of close friends were talked to.
00:06:58The girls and boys who'd gone away on the geography trip
00:07:01were questioned about whether they'd seen anything happening.
00:07:05They were trying to obviously piece everything together.
00:07:15Daniel's uncle came round and said,
00:07:18look, I've had this message from her, she's OK.
00:07:22After Daniel went missing,
00:07:24there was a text message sent to Stuart Campbell's phone.
00:07:27It says this,
00:07:29Hiya, Stu. What you up to?
00:07:32I'm in so much trouble at home at the moment.
00:07:35Everyone hates me, even you.
00:07:38What the hell have I done?
00:07:40Why won't you just tell me?
00:07:42Text back, please, Dan.
00:07:45I was like, thank God that she's contacted someone.
00:07:50I was like, I'm going to go and talk to her.
00:07:53I was like, thank God that she's contacted someone.
00:07:57You know, that's a good thing,
00:07:59but then thinking it was just so out of character.
00:08:03So out of character.
00:08:05We were like, no, this isn't right.
00:08:09This isn't right.
00:08:24MUSIC PLAYS
00:08:39It just kept going over in my head that...
00:08:43..is that the last time I'm going to see her?
00:08:47Bye-bye, see you later.
00:08:51I was just an autopilot,
00:08:53going through the motions of trying to make it normal for the boys,
00:08:57just praying that this was all going to be wrong
00:09:00and that she would turn up.
00:09:02And I think, just trying to convince myself this,
00:09:05she will be fine, she'll turn up, she'll turn up.
00:09:09MUSIC CONTINUES
00:09:14My name's Ed DeMayo.
00:09:16I was deployed to the Jones family as a family liaison officer.
00:09:20My expectations was that we were going to put in some manpower
00:09:25into looking for a missing girl
00:09:28and we would find her with friends, with a boyfriend,
00:09:32something like that.
00:09:34Daniel had two brothers, Mitchell and Ryan,
00:09:37that they could be witnesses, so we needed statements from them.
00:09:40And one of them held a lot of information.
00:09:49When she would leave for school in the morning,
00:09:51Mitchell had this little routine that he'd sit at the front window
00:09:54while she went out, just watch her go,
00:09:57and then he knew it was time for him to get ready for school.
00:10:02When she went for school that morning,
00:10:04Mitchell had seen her go out on her normal route
00:10:07and then, within seconds, turn back and walk past the house again.
00:10:24So this is quite a significant early piece of evidence
00:10:27that gave us an indication that something was not right on that morning.
00:10:31She would have made her normal walking journey this way out of Hale.
00:10:36But we know that he witnessed her see something that spooked her.
00:10:40She turned round and walked back towards her home address in Hale.
00:10:45Having obtained this early piece of important information
00:10:48from Daniel's brother,
00:10:50then basically the intention then was to actually carry out
00:10:53house-to-house inquiries on the whole of East Tilbury
00:10:56to see if anybody else had witnessed something else happening on that morning.
00:11:02BIRDS CHIRP
00:11:08Suddenly, seeing to us this is now escalated,
00:11:11they obviously think something's more.
00:11:16The police searched our house.
00:11:18They took a lot of stuff away from Daniel's bedroom.
00:11:21They really did seem quite concerned that it was now, like, Thursday
00:11:26and there'd been no sighting of her or anything.
00:11:29We were pleased at the fact that it had been stepped up a notch,
00:11:33but then that also came with, well, what do they think's happened then?
00:11:42My name's Steve Reynolds.
00:11:44I was the detective chief superintendent
00:11:47in command of Crime Division throughout the whole investigation.
00:11:52Immediately, my feeling was that this could be something much more serious
00:11:58than just a missing person investigation.
00:12:01Because she'd never been missing before,
00:12:04because she wasn't worldly wise,
00:12:07because we learnt about her mobile phone charger not being taken.
00:12:14The situation, the circumstances, everything about it
00:12:18was flashing alarm bells and that something wasn't right.
00:12:24Operation Spinnaker was the police operation to find Danielle.
00:12:33Well, there was every hope that she could be found alive and well.
00:12:37It was very clear to everybody involved that this was completely out of character
00:12:42and something sinister had happened to Danielle.
00:12:54From the House to House inquiries, it became quite relevant
00:12:57that there was a blue transit van that had been seen
00:13:00at certain points around the estate that would almost be at pinch points
00:13:05where Danielle was travelling to school.
00:13:10One source said that they had seen somebody fitting Danielle's description
00:13:16talking to the driver of a blue van.
00:13:24The police at some point mentioned the significance of sighting of a blue van.
00:13:30The only person I knew at the time who had a blue van was Danielle's uncle.
00:13:37He did use to pick her up from the school bus and he mostly used the blue van.
00:13:43So Stuart Campbell was an uncle to Danielle.
00:13:47He'd received text messages from Danielle.
00:13:50As soon as we'd had the sighting of the blue van and realised that
00:13:54Stuart Campbell often picked Danielle up in that van,
00:13:57he became a very, very important person to focus our attentions on.
00:14:05Stuart Campbell was married to Debbie, Tony's sister.
00:14:10He was a builder and I think they were quite close.
00:14:14They did meet regularly as a family.
00:14:18He was a full-of-life character, liked to be the centre of attention.
00:14:25When they were younger, he would play with them and they thought he was great.
00:14:29You know, he did martial arts and, you know, the boys used to look in awe of him.
00:14:35Stuart Campbell had just been an ordinary loving uncle,
00:14:41didn't really treat Danielle any different to her two younger brothers.
00:14:46But we learnt that since Danielle had become around the age of 13,
00:14:52that he started becoming a lot closer to her.
00:14:56They were expecting a baby. Well, with Danielle, that's like, you know,
00:15:00he said, oh, well, I'm going to go and buy some baby bits, do you want to come and see?
00:15:04Look what I've bought, come back to us, I'll show you what we've bought.
00:15:10She was a teenager and would have the usual
00:15:13strops and falling out with her parents
00:15:15and Campbell became very clever at mediating between Danielle and her parents.
00:15:21Danielle's friends were spoken to and statements taken from them
00:15:25and I think they raised concerns about the friendship,
00:15:28closeness that Danielle had with her uncle.
00:15:34Nobody had heard from Danielle whatsoever
00:15:37and then Stuart Campbell said that he'd received those text messages.
00:15:44HORN BLOWS
00:15:46And a lot of things came out as the investigation developed,
00:15:50like, you know, we know that he'd taken her to the pictures in greys
00:15:55and they'd sat in the back row and held hands
00:15:57and it was clear that this was a grossly inappropriate uncle-niece relationship
00:16:02that was starting to develop.
00:16:07When we started phoning round to say she'd gone missing,
00:16:11Tony had called in there to see whether he had seen her.
00:16:16Tony came home and said, something's not quite right.
00:16:20He looked through the window and there was camera equipment out in the lounge.
00:16:27Empty film spools on the floor, camera equipment all over the floor.
00:16:30He just said, I know he was there and he wouldn't answer the door.
00:16:34I think when we eventually got hold of him,
00:16:37his behaviour just wasn't that of a concerned uncle.
00:16:42We flagged up to the police.
00:16:46Stuart Campbell's name was mentioned a number of times.
00:16:52Text messages that he had received from Danielle.
00:16:57Campbell had a blue transit van
00:17:00and Danielle's parents were concerned about
00:17:05how he had reacted to the disappearance of Danielle.
00:17:09That certainly heightened the suspicions regarding Stuart Campbell.
00:17:15This was a real dilemma for the senior investigating officer
00:17:18because we still believed that Danielle potentially could still be alive.
00:17:22He may have her hidden somewhere.
00:17:24So while there was a desire to arrest him,
00:17:27we might have lost the opportunity to locate Danielle,
00:17:31if indeed she was still alive.
00:17:33So he was put under immediate 24-hour surveillance.
00:17:50I'm Glen Mullery.
00:17:52I was the operational commander for all the surveillance activity.
00:17:58There was a huge amount riding on this.
00:18:01We believed that Danielle was alive
00:18:03and we wanted to be the ones that found her and saved her.
00:18:07So my team assembled and we were plotted up around Campbell's home address
00:18:13by shortly after six o'clock in the morning.
00:18:15When somebody doesn't realise that they're a suspect,
00:18:18they're quite likely to revisit scenes
00:18:22and as soon as he realised he was under the microscope,
00:18:26his behaviours would change.
00:18:29The first day's surveillance was quite unremarkable.
00:18:34He went about his morning routine,
00:18:36which I believe that day was literally pop up to the shops
00:18:39and get a newspaper and a pint of milk.
00:18:42Because I really did have some confidence
00:18:44that if we could spend more time with Campbell,
00:18:47he would take us to wherever he had placed Danielle.
00:18:53That wasn't to be the case.
00:18:55We had to take some tough decisions.
00:18:59Every day that went by,
00:19:01the chance of finding Danielle alive was getting less and less
00:19:05and that was my biggest concern.
00:19:08Stuart Campbell was arrested at midnight on Friday the 22nd of June
00:19:13and he was brought into Gray's police station for an urgent interview.
00:19:25MUSIC
00:19:46My name is Paul Mullery and in June 2001,
00:19:49I was a detective on the Major Investigation Team
00:19:52and at that time, I was deployed to interview Stuart Campbell.
00:19:57He was the suspect for the disappearance of Danielle
00:20:01and it was vital that we found Danielle alive and well
00:20:05and he was the person that held the key to recovering her.
00:20:10This is a jigsaw puzzle
00:20:12and when you go into an interview ordinarily,
00:20:14the jigsaw pieces are somewhere on the page.
00:20:17We had no jigsaw pieces.
00:20:19It was simply the fact that we believed that Stuart Campbell
00:20:23knew the location of Danielle Jones, his niece.
00:20:35We have reasonable grounds to believe, Stuart,
00:20:38you know where she is, don't you?
00:20:40No.
00:20:42Where is she?
00:20:43The lady said to me not to say nothing, right?
00:20:46Right.
00:20:47Can your conscience allow you to do that?
00:20:49You know where she is? What's her name?
00:20:52Danielle.
00:20:53Danielle.
00:20:55You're not going to talk to me, Stuart?
00:20:57I'm not going to say it.
00:21:00I vividly remember Stuart Campbell sitting opposite me.
00:21:04He couldn't maintain any form of eye contact.
00:21:07He wasn't having any form of conversation.
00:21:09He was so non-committal and non-plus around the whole event,
00:21:14he just didn't care.
00:21:16Tell me what it was about her, Stuart.
00:21:19Why you wanted to be with her.
00:21:24No comment.
00:21:26He said no comment at least 50 times during a 20-minute interview.
00:21:31No comment.
00:21:32No comment.
00:21:33No comment.
00:21:35At no time did Stuart Campbell display the feelings of a concerned uncle.
00:21:41He displayed the feelings of self-preservation.
00:21:45He wanted us to prove that he had done something wrong.
00:21:48But the fact is that his lack of cooperation
00:21:52meant that we honed in completely on Stuart Campbell.
00:21:56It was clear that he'd come to the notice of the police on more than one occasion,
00:22:00but a significant previous conviction and offence
00:22:03was the potential abduction of a 14-year-old girl in 1989,
00:22:08albeit he'd been convicted of a much lesser offence
00:22:11of taking a child without lawful authority.
00:22:16The family knew that he had convictions,
00:22:19but they never knew the extent or the nature of the convictions,
00:22:23so when they found out the nature of one of the convictions,
00:22:26they were quite horrified.
00:22:28Campbell said that on the Monday
00:22:31that he was in fact alone in Raleigh
00:22:34at a do-it-yourself shop buying building materials.
00:22:38Dealing with his alibi was crucially important,
00:22:41so firstly, we looked at all the CCTV for Wick's DIY store at Raleigh
00:22:47and there was never either of his vehicles seen entering or exiting.
00:22:53He said that when he was returning to his home in Greys
00:22:59that he telephoned his wife to tell her
00:23:02that he'd been delayed because of traffic.
00:23:07This is going back to 2001,
00:23:09the use of telephone evidence was still in its infancy,
00:23:12so having the telephone expert on board,
00:23:14he was able to technically show where Campbell was likely to be
00:23:18when he made that telephone call
00:23:20because a mobile phone picks up on the nearest mast to activate that call
00:23:25and it was very clear that he was nowhere near Wick's DIY store.
00:23:29When he made that call,
00:23:31it was more likely that he was around his home address.
00:23:34Although you had your suspicions of Campbell,
00:23:36there was still nothing proven.
00:23:38There was still a concern that Daniel may still be out there,
00:23:41may still be alive and needing help and needing rescue.
00:23:57We were asked if we would do a television appeal
00:24:00and obviously, in this situation,
00:24:02you'll do whatever it takes to get your daughter back.
00:24:08Just take a moment, get yourself a glass of water.
00:24:11For God's sake, come forward.
00:24:14I'm so desperate to get her back.
00:24:17You saw the agony on their faces.
00:24:20The back of your head is saying,
00:24:22is this just a missing person?
00:24:25We know she definitely would not run away.
00:24:28I know that for a fact.
00:24:30East Tilbury is almost like a village.
00:24:32We'd never been called there for much in the way of crime,
00:24:35but suddenly there was everybody there, all the nationals, all the TV,
00:24:38and that's when you realise, yeah, this is now a national news story.
00:24:42Daniel, come home.
00:24:45The pressure and the scale of the press conference was immense.
00:24:48Every move she makes and every time she put a tissue to her nose,
00:24:52there'd be click, click, click, click, click.
00:24:57Faced with all these cameras,
00:24:59we never having experienced anything like that was horrendous, really.
00:25:02We would just hope that either she would see it
00:25:05and realise how distressed we were and that they'd come home
00:25:09or that if someone had seen her being abducted,
00:25:13that they would come forward and say,
00:25:15well, actually, we saw a girl that looked like that.
00:25:25My name is Tom Harper
00:25:27and I was the crime scene coordinator for Operation Spinnaker.
00:25:33When Campbell became a suspect in the inquiry,
00:25:37it was important that we looked at his house
00:25:40to make sure that we either found Danielle
00:25:43or evidence that Danielle had been there.
00:25:46The scene was examined in great detail.
00:25:51Every item needed to be examined
00:25:54to establish whether there was any evidential relevance to it.
00:25:58Anything that would have had a connection
00:26:00between Stuart Campbell and Danielle.
00:26:12We seized from his home address
00:26:15thousands of photographs of young girls
00:26:18in various states of undress.
00:26:21His main job was as a self-employed builder,
00:26:24but his sideline that he used to show off about
00:26:27was that he was a glamour photographer
00:26:30and he had called his brand Cinderella's.
00:26:37These photos didn't end up anywhere.
00:26:39They weren't in any publication.
00:26:41This was just him effectively getting his jollies,
00:26:45making out he was a glamour photographer.
00:26:47Of the type of girls that he would approach with his business cards
00:26:51were normally girls around 14, 15-year-olds.
00:26:54He absolutely had a type,
00:26:57and Danielle was his type.
00:27:01Between their teenage, being a teenager and being a woman.
00:27:10It was fairly clear that he had at least 20 years
00:27:15of serial offending
00:27:17and were able to go back and identify around about 30 victims.
00:27:22We had allegations of indecent photography,
00:27:26indecent assault and rape.
00:27:32During the search of Campbell's house,
00:27:35amongst the items that were discovered
00:27:39was what we described as the Danielle diary.
00:27:47It was noting various incidents involving the two of them.
00:27:53There was a lot of detail.
00:27:57Almost an obsession.
00:28:02When a grown man like that starts writing a diary
00:28:04about his 15-year-old niece, all the interactions,
00:28:08it's beyond weird, it is creepy, it is unsettling, it's disturbing.
00:28:18There was an entry in the diary for the 30th of April
00:28:22and there was clearly an incident that had taken place on that day.
00:28:27It was clear that Campbell had written in,
00:28:30played some PC games with Danielle and the boys,
00:28:33but what he'd also written and erased,
00:28:36but we were able to recover, was the words,
00:28:39an accident, panic.
00:28:41That was a very relevant entry for us
00:28:44and the family liaison officer spoke to Tone and Linda about that day
00:28:48and Linda remembered it vividly.
00:28:53I remember he brought her home
00:28:55and she came in and ran straight upstairs.
00:28:59He came in and said,
00:29:01''Oh, she's had a bit of an accident, she's wet herself.''
00:29:04He said, ''She sort of passed out briefly,
00:29:07''bit of a funny turn, so I've brought her home.''
00:29:11Well, when he'd gone, I obviously spoke to Danielle about it.
00:29:15I think she thought she'd just passed out.
00:29:18She was mortified more that she'd wet herself than anything.
00:29:24But she had marks round her neck.
00:29:28She did wear a chain, so I think I just assumed
00:29:32the chain had made the marks.
00:29:34The neighbour at Stuart Campbell's home address,
00:29:37she remembers hearing voices next door that day.
00:29:42She overheard a disagreement between what she thought was a young girl,
00:29:46who we believe to be Danielle, and Stuart Campbell,
00:29:49and him saying to her words to the effect of,
00:29:52''You don't have to do anything you don't want to do.''
00:29:56When we first searched his home address,
00:29:59we also found two pieces of paper,
00:30:02and there was three things written down.
00:30:05Danielle's pin, 1610,
00:30:08which actually was her pin, it was her birthday.
00:30:11Chloroform and taser.
00:30:15Why would you have a 15-year-old girl's pin number?
00:30:18Why would you be writing about chloroform and tasers?
00:30:22You know, you're a builder.
00:30:24I'm certain that on the 30th of April,
00:30:26I'm certain that on the 30th of April,
00:30:28he had tried to incapacitate Danielle,
00:30:31and it had gone too far.
00:30:33And that would explain why Danielle,
00:30:36when taken home by Stuart Campbell,
00:30:38was in the state that she was when Linda saw her.
00:30:44There was a green holdall recovered from the loft of the property.
00:30:49When we looked at the contents of that,
00:30:52it was clear that this became an object
00:30:55that we would want to examine further.
00:31:00So there was lingerie, there was handcuffs,
00:31:03there was durex in there, and we firmly believed,
00:31:07particularly after looking at photographs
00:31:09that were found at his home address,
00:31:11that he had often dressed young girls up in some of this clothing.
00:31:15The entire bag was sent to the Forensic Science Laboratory
00:31:18as a high priority to examine those items
00:31:22to try and establish a link between Danielle and or Campbell.
00:31:28This was 2001, very early days of DNA.
00:31:31You couldn't turn a sample round in 24 hours as you can now.
00:31:36So it was a frustrating wait
00:31:38to potentially see what we could obtain
00:31:41from an evidential point of view.
00:31:44I'd update Tony and Linda all the time.
00:31:47I didn't want anything to come out that we hadn't told them first.
00:31:50It was confusing because you don't want to believe
00:31:53someone that close could be involved in anything like this.
00:31:57Just wishful thinking that, well, it can't be him,
00:32:00and yet, blue van, camera equipment out.
00:32:06Little things maybe started...
00:32:10Little things maybe started going over in my head.
00:32:18We obviously couldn't say too much about Stuart Campbell at that stage
00:32:22because he'd not been charged.
00:32:24So although these initial finds gave much more concern
00:32:28about what had happened to Danielle,
00:32:30and there was potentially some good forensic evidence in there,
00:32:33but you have to keep an open mind.
00:32:35So we had to find out what had actually happened to her
00:32:38on the 18th of June.
00:32:59A girl just leaving her home and going for a walk
00:33:02and not wanting to come back, that's not that unusual.
00:33:05But doing it just before she goes to school in her school uniform,
00:33:09that's a bit more unusual.
00:33:11Not coming back after a couple of days, a week she hadn't been seen,
00:33:15that's when it all starts to go, there's something else going on.
00:33:19Where is Danielle Jones?
00:33:21Every time you drove around,
00:33:24all that was in our heads over those times was, where is she?
00:33:27You know, you'd be driving to work thinking, is she there?
00:33:30Has she gone here?
00:33:32East Tilbury is a big community that work together.
00:33:36Every car that you saw would have a picture in the back saying,
00:33:39have you seen this girl?
00:33:49I think we were all of a view that we had our main suspect.
00:33:55Nothing that he'd said or not said in interview
00:33:58changed our mind as to that view.
00:34:02But ultimately, we had insufficient evidence to charge him
00:34:05with any offences and we had to release him from custody.
00:34:10So from the moment that Campbell was released on bail,
00:34:14we set up a 24-hour surveillance.
00:34:19He would have had absolutely no idea
00:34:22that these surveillance operatives were carrying out this work.
00:34:27We are always on standby,
00:34:29that we're waiting for that front door to open
00:34:32or to hear the engine start on the van.
00:34:36Standby, standby, standby, movement at the front door.
00:34:45As he was being released, he did walk past a building site.
00:34:49He actually paused and was looking all around the site.
00:34:54His interest in that site perked our interest.
00:34:58Knowing that he's got the skills, the ability,
00:35:01the physical strength to dig holes, his equipment on site.
00:35:05There were already holes dug on that site.
00:35:09Has he taken opportunity to hide Danielle on that site?
00:35:15There were a number of searches that were carried out
00:35:19as a direct result of Campbell's words or actions.
00:35:24The police planned to continue the search
00:35:26of a building site near Danielle's home.
00:35:28Yesterday, they uprooted foundations and sifted through the earth.
00:35:40Campbell had access to at least two vehicles.
00:35:43One was a blue transit-style van
00:35:46and the other one was a silver small family car.
00:35:52He would very abruptly, suddenly stop, just get out,
00:35:56and he would look back along the street
00:35:58and then up the street and side to side,
00:36:01and it was very odd behaviour.
00:36:03And then we noticed he was taking photographs.
00:36:08Every image was of a silver car of a similar shape
00:36:12and a similar size to his own silver car.
00:36:17I suspected that he was trying to build an alibi, effectively,
00:36:22that if we were to say to him,
00:36:25a silver car was seen at a location, he would answer,
00:36:29there are dozens of silver cars around my streets.
00:36:32What was very clear, he was not acting as a concerned uncle should be.
00:36:38And our suspicions just got stronger in relation to him
00:36:43and what would potentially happen to Danielle.
00:36:46The more little things were coming out, we were like,
00:36:49no, this isn't right, this isn't right.
00:36:55One of her friends mentioned that Danielle had found
00:36:59some notes in her pencil case, which Danielle was quite upset about.
00:37:04We then went and went through her stuff and found the notes.
00:37:10Note one read the following,
00:37:12Hi, Princess, I hope you had a lovely holiday.
00:37:16Text me when you get back. Love, Stuart.
00:37:19And then the second note was,
00:37:21Hi, Princess, in case you missed my last note,
00:37:24I just thought I'd pop another to let you know I do miss your smile.
00:37:28Kiss, kiss.
00:37:30I think it's very clear reading those notes
00:37:33that how inappropriate this relationship was.
00:37:38Because Campbell had done building work at their house
00:37:40before he had a key to the house,
00:37:42because he was close to the family, he knew when they were there
00:37:45and when they weren't there, when they were on holiday.
00:37:47He gained access not only to the house, but also to Danielle's bedroom.
00:37:53It wasn't natural at all.
00:37:55It wasn't natural at all.
00:37:58Yeah, there's many things now that I think, why didn't we pick up on that?
00:38:04Like, she'd had a portrait done on holiday
00:38:08and the artist had made her collarbone look a little bit pronounced.
00:38:14But he made some comment about, oh, he's put your boobs a bit high.
00:38:17And she sort of, Will sort of jumped in, no, it's her collarbone.
00:38:21At the time, thinking nothing of it, but when you think of it now,
00:38:24you think, is that appropriate to say about a drawing of her?
00:38:28Probably she was 14 at the time.
00:38:34Little comments you look back on now don't seem so innocent.
00:38:39We definitely wanted to believe that she was still alive.
00:38:43We still had hope that he would lead us to wherever he had held her captive.
00:38:49But we could see that he was not going anywhere
00:38:53and attending to anybody other than himself.
00:39:05East Tilbury is kind of isolated,
00:39:08surrounded by a lot of just marshland, fields, farmland.
00:39:14And it's a very bleak, flat, derelict expanse of nothing.
00:39:20It's huge. It's a really large area.
00:39:22And you'd think, well, they're going to a lot of trouble for this.
00:39:27A decision was made that this needed more support
00:39:32than what Essex itself could actually provide.
00:39:37My name's Nick Aldworth. I was a police search advisor
00:39:40who were drafted in to help Essex Police.
00:39:43Our main challenge was, to start with, was the scale of the search area.
00:39:49This is a urban, rural and semi-wild area in some places
00:39:56where you have completely unmanaged land.
00:40:02High thistles, high nettles, marshland.
00:40:05And we'd actually be taking machetes and other manual tools
00:40:10to actually cut things down so you can see through them and see into them.
00:40:14Sticks to prod through and drag things out to see what they might be.
00:40:19A piece of paper might be a piece of a school book.
00:40:22So you're looking at all these things.
00:40:26If you went out towards East Tilbury,
00:40:28there was a lot of police helicopters, police searching.
00:40:31And then you'd be looking places thinking, what are they going to find?
00:40:35And that, I think, scared people a little bit.
00:40:37The whole community just needed to have some sort of answer, really.
00:40:41The community was shocked.
00:40:44It's hard to believe something would happen in a place like that.
00:40:47Everyone looks at their own kids and just thinks, are you next?
00:40:59Bainly, it's such a big area.
00:41:01Combined with a need to cover it as quickly as possible,
00:41:04there was a real sense of, we need to help, we've got to help.
00:41:08A lot of the searches were for anything that might link to the disappearance.
00:41:13Anything at all.
00:41:15People were brilliant.
00:41:17They did the public search,
00:41:19and they came from probably 10, 15 miles to come and do that.
00:41:23But any searching that was done and people going out looking for her,
00:41:27the one person that didn't was him.
00:41:39We had what we call a cell in a disused building
00:41:44where we would monitor the surveillance that was taking place.
00:41:49If he said something, for instance,
00:41:51I have no idea where Danielle is, she could be buried in Epping Forest.
00:41:56That would spark a reaction.
00:42:00My team's desire was to find her.
00:42:03We want to find her alive...
00:42:05..and we didn't.
00:42:17It was a dawning realisation for not only us but also for Tony and Linda
00:42:22that it was likely that Danielle was dead,
00:42:26but the most important thing was trying to locate her body
00:42:29and return her to her family.
00:42:36I think the first time I actually thought she was never going to come home
00:42:42was when they sent the divers down into a lake locally
00:42:46and I was watching the television.
00:42:50And I think that hit home.
00:42:59I said to someone...
00:43:05..are they looking for a body?
00:43:08The Essex Police diving team resume an underwater search
00:43:11in a flooded gravel pit on the outskirts of East Tilbury.
00:43:15The nature of today's search is a further indication
00:43:18that police are beginning to fear the worst.
00:43:20One of the most difficult things we had to deal with
00:43:23was the absence of a body,
00:43:25and this is quite a difficult thing to overcome
00:43:27when you're looking at a charge of murder.
00:43:29We did start to get the feel that this had gone from a missing person
00:43:34to this may actually be a suspicious death.
00:43:38But because there was no body, they couldn't be definitive.
00:43:41There was always this, well, she might be somewhere.
00:43:43She might be somewhere else. We're just searching at the moment.
00:43:51It was a massive operation.
00:43:54This was geographically the biggest search
00:43:57that I'd ever been involved in.
00:43:59To give yourself a fighting chance,
00:44:01you need to apply some science to it.
00:44:04Bodies generally are disposed of near a roadway or a track,
00:44:08normally within about 150 metres of that location.
00:44:14I remember thinking about Danielle
00:44:18and just thinking that every day we went out searching,
00:44:21this would be the day, this would be the day
00:44:23that we were gifted the opportunity to find her.
00:44:32I was called to an area near to the Thurrock services
00:44:36where the search team had identified
00:44:38what they thought was a shallow grave.
00:44:40It was recently dug soil,
00:44:42and they thought that they had identified the skin of a torso.
00:44:46So I engaged the services of a forensic archaeologist to help us
00:44:52because when you've got a body that's buried in the ground,
00:44:56there is potential evidence all around that body
00:44:59that we need to recover and record.
00:45:04Once we'd recovered all of that evidence
00:45:06and finally got down to what was the skin of a torso,
00:45:09it was, in fact, a dead dog
00:45:11that had been buried there by a local dog owner.
00:45:14We had a number of false alarms.
00:45:16If somebody doesn't want you to find somebody,
00:45:19it does become incredibly difficult.
00:45:21The fact that the suspect was a builder
00:45:25changes the dynamic of the search considerably.
00:45:28Campbell, being a builder,
00:45:30certainly had the wherewithal to dig a grave somewhere
00:45:36and bury Danielle.
00:45:38This was a real challenging case.
00:45:41I was the senior investigating officer on many, many murder cases,
00:45:46and there is no other murder that I can recall
00:45:51where we didn't have a crime scene and we didn't have a body.
00:45:56There is now a note of desperation about this inquiry.
00:45:59There have been no positive sightings of Danielle
00:46:01since the morning she disappeared,
00:46:03and officers are starting to talk openly
00:46:05about the possibility that she won't be found alive.
00:46:16Conducting house-to-house inquiries
00:46:18intensively around East Tilbury
00:46:20took weeks in the early stage of the inquiry.
00:46:26So from those house-to-house inquiries,
00:46:28we identified a witness living in these flats behind me,
00:46:31and she saw on the morning of the 18th
00:46:33a girl fitting Danielle's description
00:46:35arguing with a man that we'd say was Stuart Campbell.
00:46:43More importantly, she heard the words said by Danielle,
00:46:47no, leave me alone, go away, you pervert.
00:46:56They needed every scrap of information they could get,
00:46:59and there was a need to keep the public's interest on board.
00:47:02You know, the news cycle changes so fast.
00:47:05One month is a long, long time in news.
00:47:16Essex police are hoping today's reconstruction
00:47:19of the 15-year-old's last known steps from her own front door
00:47:22will jog someone's memory.
00:47:28The reconstruction resulted in a number of members of the public
00:47:32reporting they had seen someone fitting a description of Danielle,
00:47:36but there was over 800 of them.
00:47:39It was almost overwhelming.
00:47:41These alleged sightings were all over the country,
00:47:44from Land's End to John O'Groats and everywhere in between.
00:47:47Dealing with all of the sightings
00:47:49was very, very important.
00:47:51There was always that concern that if just one sighting
00:47:55was seen to be credible,
00:47:57well, how can you convict Stuart Campbell of murder?
00:48:01All the defence have to prove is some doubt
00:48:05that Danielle could have still been alive.
00:48:08If the member of the public thought that they'd seen her,
00:48:11then we would go and carry out house-to-house inquiries.
00:48:14We'd go and seize the CCTV.
00:48:16We would look at all the data that is available
00:48:19to either prove or disprove her presence in that location.
00:48:24We had officers literally all over the country.
00:48:30There was one significant sighting.
00:48:33It would have been on the back road from East Tilbury
00:48:37to Stuart Campbell's address,
00:48:39and the witness was able to say that they saw a blue van go past
00:48:44with a male driving and a young girl slumped in the passenger seat.
00:49:15Campbell had bought some software, which he'd put onto his computer,
00:49:19which he believed would have deleted all of the images he looked at.
00:49:23But what became clear was that over the weekend of the 16th, 17th of June,
00:49:27the day before Daniel went missing,
00:49:29he looked at a huge amount of images of young girls
00:49:34scanned to the computer,
00:49:36and he was able to see that there was a young girl
00:49:39He looked at a huge amount of images of young girls, scantily clad.
00:49:45There were a number of photographs that the officers felt could be Danielle,
00:49:50so I did show those to Linda.
00:49:54It took me a long time to decide that it wasn't Danielle.
00:49:57It was very, very similar,
00:49:59but it took me quite a while to actually say,
00:50:01no, it isn't her.
00:50:04I don't know if there's a word to describe it, really, just total disgust.
00:50:09The police arrived at the home of Danielle's uncle, Stuart Campbell,
00:50:13just after 7 o'clock this morning.
00:50:15The police there, admitted, is unusual,
00:50:17making an arrest when nobody's been found.
00:50:20The first we heard Stuart Campbell's name
00:50:23was when he was arrested in the August,
00:50:25and his name was put out there as somebody
00:50:27who'd been arrested in connection with this case.
00:50:29But then when he was charged, it was for a string of other offences.
00:50:32So on the surface, they didn't seem to have anything directly to do with Danielle.
00:50:37They were very much holding charges
00:50:40involving some of the females that he had enticed back to his house
00:50:46and also some of the images that had been downloaded to his computer.
00:50:51That actually meant that Campbell could be remanded in custody
00:50:56whilst inquiries continued regarding Danielle's disappearance.
00:51:01The telephone expert was able to show
00:51:04there had been a significant relationship,
00:51:07not only in relation to the geographical location of each phone
00:51:11using the same mast, but also the relationship.
00:51:15For example, when Campbell sent text to himself
00:51:19purporting to be Danielle, his phone would be off.
00:51:23He would turn his phone on, the text would be incoming from Danielle,
00:51:28and then he'd turn his phone off again...
00:51:32..indicating that he had both phones.
00:51:36This happened on six separate occasions.
00:51:42Also, we had a forensic linguist
00:51:45look at what was in those text messages.
00:51:48So we were able to prove things like
00:51:51she didn't normally send her text messages
00:51:54using uppercase text.
00:51:57She'd purportedly used the word WOT and had spelt it W-O-T
00:52:02when any other text message had been spelt properly.
00:52:06We know that Stuart Campbell was visited by a uniformed officer
00:52:10around about two days after Danielle's disappearance
00:52:13as a normal routine inquiry.
00:52:16And Stuart Campbell asked him,
00:52:19what sort of things could you do with a phone?
00:52:21And innocently, believing that he was just a concerned uncle,
00:52:25the police officer told him about
00:52:27how we could maybe trace Danielle via a phone.
00:52:32Within half an hour of that visit...
00:52:36..he turned off Danielle's phone, never to be turned on again.
00:52:40Another important piece of evidence.
00:52:43In 2001, the use of telephone evidence
00:52:47hadn't been appreciated by the wider public,
00:52:51and so somebody like Campbell would not have probably believed
00:52:57that that could incriminate him.
00:53:18During a search of Campbell's loft, a bag was found in the loft,
00:53:24and amongst the items in that bag were a pair of stockings.
00:53:30And when those stockings were forensically examined,
00:53:33a small bloodstain was found on them.
00:53:37And when that bloodstain was analysed,
00:53:39a mixed DNA profile of both Danielle and Stuart Campbell
00:53:46was found to be present.
00:53:48We were all very excited.
00:53:50So this was clearly an important breakthrough for the team
00:53:54to show that contact between Campbell and Danielle
00:53:57was not just an uncle and niece relationship.
00:54:02We re-arrested him on additional evidence.
00:54:05I took part in the final interviews
00:54:07at Southwood and Ferris Police Station.
00:54:10Have you ever seen these items before?
00:54:12No, I haven't.
00:54:14Have you ever handled any of these items before?
00:54:20From the stain on the toe, Mr Campbell,
00:54:22we have a partial DNA profile which matches your own.
00:54:26Mine? Yes.
00:54:28Can you explain that?
00:54:43Stuart Campbell had a blanket over his face,
00:54:46masking it from the crowd of cameras that waited for him.
00:54:49We were 100% yeah, they've got the right man.
00:54:52I think we felt relieved that they'd charged him, but where was she?
00:55:07The body was found at this cement works at Northfleet in Kent,
00:55:11a few miles from where the missing teenager Danielle Jones was last seen.
00:55:16We were getting information through,
00:55:18a body of a female, very similar to Danielle.
00:55:21Clothing could be similar.
00:55:23It was potentially a young girl in school uniform,
00:55:25not far over the Thames crossing,
00:55:28where Campbell could have easily have got to.
00:55:31You're hoping it's your daughter,
00:55:33but you don't want it to be your daughter,
00:55:35because you want the closure of, yes, they found her,
00:55:38which is what we wanted.
00:55:40The first thing you want to hear is, we found your daughter.
00:55:43It's a very strange experience, very strange.
00:55:48All the time I'm saying to Linda,
00:55:51just remember that we've had false hopes before,
00:55:54but I was getting the information through
00:55:56that actually we're checking dental records now,
00:55:58we think this is hopeful.
00:56:00Detectives looking for the body of Danielle Jones
00:56:02confirmed this afternoon that a corpse found at a cement works in Kent
00:56:06is not that of the Essex teenager.
00:56:09Dental records proved this was another murder altogether.
00:56:12Police have no idea who the victim is or how she died.
00:56:18It's a bizarre situation to be in.
00:56:21We were...
00:56:23An awful thing to say, praying it was her,
00:56:25because then that would really seal the nail in his coffin.
00:56:29But without a body, we knew it was quite hard to get a conviction.
00:56:39Stuart Campbell was brought to Chelmsford Crown Court in a prison van.
00:56:43Described as having an irresistible sexual attraction for his niece,
00:56:46he kept a diary almost exclusively detailing his contact with Danielle.
00:57:09SIREN WAILS
00:57:17I wasn't looking forward to the court case at all.
00:57:21I knew he would be there.
00:57:23Very anxious about that, but I didn't make eye contact with him at all.
00:57:27I couldn't... I couldn't look at him.
00:57:32He pleaded not guilty, and I think that was to be expected,
00:57:36cos his attitude was,
00:57:38prove it. Prove I did it. Prove I killed her. There's no body.
00:57:46I knew I was the first witness as well,
00:57:48so I was extremely anxious about that.
00:57:51The barrister, he sort of went for me a little bit,
00:57:53and I just broke down in tears, and I was on there for three days.
00:58:01A lot of it was regarding her relationship with Danielle,
00:58:05her qualities as a mother.
00:58:08The defence almost pushed the blame back onto Linda and Tony,
00:58:13that that's the way... that's the reason she ran away and never came home.
00:58:19I knew we'd accumulated
00:58:21an extremely good and impactive level of evidence,
00:58:25albeit circumstantial.
00:58:28But were we able to get that evidence across to the jury?
00:58:36The defendant, they were told, was a man fixated with his niece,
00:58:40a man who eventually killed her.
00:58:43When you hear that story, it seems really obvious,
00:58:45yes, of course he did it, and then you realise
00:58:47that they've actually got to stand up that story with the evidence.
00:58:51There was a lot of theories, but there was nothing that you could...
00:58:54that any jury could look at and go,
00:58:56that's definitely what happened.
00:58:58And there were points where you think, this is almost going either way.
00:59:06One of the most significant things that came out during the trial
00:59:11was as a result of one of the prosecuting barristers
00:59:14identifying the lip gloss that had been found at Meadow Road.
00:59:22One of Danielle's friends, in her evidence in court,
00:59:25explained that they'd been shopping together, so Lakeside,
00:59:28that they'd been shopping together,
00:59:30that they'd been shopping together,
00:59:32and she explained that they'd been shopping together, so Lakeside,
00:59:35that they'd both bought identical lip glosses.
00:59:38Then Danielle had gone away on holiday.
00:59:42The relevance of this, of course, is because Danielle went on holiday...
00:59:48..and the only way that that lip gloss could have got into
00:59:52Stuart Campbell's home address was if he had abducted her
00:59:56and she'd been to that home address on the Monday the 18th.
01:00:00It's a classic case, really, of a jigsaw.
01:00:03The telephone evidence is compelling.
01:00:07The DNA evidence on the tights is compelling.
01:00:14His computer.
01:00:16The Danielle diary.
01:00:20It was everything pieced together
01:00:23that overall made a very strong case.
01:00:30It seems like an eternity.
01:00:33I was petrified that they were going to come back with a not guilty verdict.
01:00:37Absolutely petrified that we'd gone through all this
01:00:39and that he was going to get away with it.
01:00:41And I think it was based on the fact that there was no body.
01:00:45For Stuart Campbell, the uncle of Danielle Jones
01:00:48is beginning a life sentence tonight for murdering Danielle Jones.
01:00:52He's been sentenced to six years in prison.
01:00:55For Stuart Campbell, the uncle of Danielle Jones
01:00:58is beginning a life sentence tonight for murdering the Essex teenager.
01:01:03So the jury came back with a guilty verdict
01:01:06on both the murder of Danielle and the abduction of Danielle.
01:01:13I just flopped down in the chair.
01:01:15I was like, thank God that that's what's happened, you know.
01:01:19I remember Linda cried
01:01:22and I think Tony put his arm round her
01:01:24and Campbell, I think, briefly shook his head
01:01:27but his face was just stone.
01:01:29Impassive.
01:01:31As the judge sentenced Campbell, he described him as a dangerous man,
01:01:35unable to control his obsession with teenage girls.
01:01:38Why he'd killed Danielle, he said, only he would know.
01:01:41But he'd done a truly terrible thing.
01:01:47I don't know if he intended to kill her on that day.
01:01:51We'll never really know because Stuart Campbell's never said.
01:01:57I think he intended to do something,
01:01:59whether he intended to take photographs of her
01:02:02and something went wrong...
01:02:05..which led to the subsequent death of Danielle.
01:02:10I do feel guilty.
01:02:21Because I didn't protect her.
01:02:29And as a mum, that's your job, isn't it?
01:02:33And I'll always have that bit of guilt there,
01:02:36but things that I now know weren't innocent comments,
01:02:40at the time I thought was,
01:02:42and I've got to live with the fact that I didn't act on them.
01:02:46Today is teenagery, sadly, because we still don't have her back.
01:02:51We need to find her so that we can lay her to rest and grieve properly.
01:02:56It was a very satisfactory result,
01:02:59but it was never euphoric because we always felt that
01:03:03until we were able to return Danielle's body to her parents,
01:03:07the job was only half done.
01:03:10Whenever we get any intelligence,
01:03:12which may indicate where Danielle is,
01:03:14that we will deploy whatever resources are needed
01:03:18and try and recover her body.
01:03:20I always said to Tony and Linda
01:03:22that I would always do anything I could
01:03:25to assist them in finding where Danielle is.
01:03:29And one of the last things I did before I retired
01:03:32was to go to see Stuart Campbell at Wakefield Prison,
01:03:36but unfortunately he refused to come out of his cell.
01:03:40A single garage, the focus of a police search
01:03:43which could end the mystery of where the body of Danielle Jones
01:03:47has been hidden for the last 16 years.
01:03:51There was a piece of, in the base of the garage,
01:03:54a piece of concrete,
01:03:56a piece of metal,
01:03:58a piece of glass,
01:04:00a piece of metal,
01:04:02a piece of glass,
01:04:04a piece of glass,
01:04:06a piece of glass,
01:04:08a piece of concrete
01:04:10that was newer than the rest of the foundation.
01:04:14And I was 99% sure they were going to find her
01:04:17because it was big enough for a body.
01:04:20Essex Police have confirmed that they have not found
01:04:23the body of a teenage girl murdered 16 years ago
01:04:26at a location they were tipped off about.
01:04:30I'd sort of convinced myself that we were going to get her back
01:04:35and we didn't.
01:04:38And it's hard to keep going through those glimmers of hope,
01:04:42but as long as there is glimmers of hope now and again,
01:04:46one day maybe it just might be the right one.
01:04:50I believe something like 1,600 different locations were searched
01:04:54and we weren't able to find her and bring her home to her family.
01:04:58I worry that we failed them.
01:05:02I worry that we didn't do a good enough job.
01:05:06I pray that at some point in the future,
01:05:09you know, they'll be receiving the gift of a body being found
01:05:13and it being Danielle.
01:05:16In 30 years of service, this is the most complex case
01:05:20that I've ever worked on as an investigator.
01:05:23Whilst there might not be any more evidence forthcoming,
01:05:27this case will remain open until we do find Danielle Jones's body.
01:05:33I have this feeling that she is quite local to here.
01:05:36I could walk past her a million times.
01:05:41I feel like she's just been slung somewhere and left.
01:05:47We'd like to have her somewhere where we can go and put some flowers.
01:05:52To have her back would...
01:05:57..would mean everything.
01:06:02..would mean everything.
01:06:32Investigating the pampered rich kid who became a brutal killer.
01:06:36We've more true crime with Mummy's Little Murderer,
01:06:39the killing of Emily Longley, brand new next Wednesday at 10.
01:06:43Next tonight, the ICC Cricket World Cup highlights.