In December 1993, a gruesome discovery shocked the quiet village of Cheslyn Hay - a severed head, discarded in a field, sparking one of the Midlands’ most baffling murder investigations.
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00:00It was in a sudden field like this in the South Staffordshire mining community of Chesling
00:22Hay that a murder that gripped the nation, in fact the world, unfolded. An unlikely setting,
00:29an unlikely murder. A murder that involved everything. Money, conspiracy theories,
00:40even links to a royal family. This really was a whodunit that still baffles people today.
00:48It was a murder that had its roots 70 miles away from here, in Manchester. And the victim,
00:56Adnan Abdul Hasim Al-Sami, was no ordinary victim of violent crime. He was Midas rich.
01:06He was a former banker from Kuwait. He mixed in high circles. He had an unquenchable passion
01:18for casinos. Yet he met a horrific end. A horrific end by whom we still do not know.
01:27It has all the hallmarks of a professional hit.
01:30Let us start from the beginning. I, as a journalist working in the area,
01:35was in the middle of this case from the very beginning.
01:41It unfolded on a cold morning in January 1993, when a former school caretaker, Roy Jones,
01:54walking his Spaniel Mickey, came across a grisly discovery. There, embedded in the mud,
02:01a field just like this, was what he thought at first was a case ball.
02:07The dog moved round it, sniffed round it. He took a closer inspection.
02:15He thought it was a case ball, then he thought it was a sheep's head.
02:18He thought it was a case ball, then he thought it was a sheep's head. Then to his horror,
02:24he realised he was looking at the charred remains of a human head.
02:30Crimes like this are actually more common than you might imagine. And Staffordshire and Derbyshire
02:37actually have quite a long tradition of headless bodies being found, or heads being found,
02:45in the countryside. I'm not saying there's anything sinister going on in those two counties,
02:50but body parts turning up and then forming a criminal investigation happens a lot more than
02:55you would think. In terms of the impact this has had on the local community, it can be quite
03:02targeted and quite a feature of interest. So what you often find is, depending on the location,
03:10the headless body, or the body, is sometimes given a nickname, Headless Fred, Fred the Head.
03:17And that's a way, of course, for communities and kids to kind of downplay it and, you know,
03:22not be worried about the darkness on the edge of town, which for many people this represents.
03:26It often means, of course, that the town or village or the community is in the spotlight
03:32for a little while, but it can also arouse a lot of suspicion. So in the case of Mr. Al Saeed,
03:41the individual who found his head, who was a retired school caretaker, he found the head
03:46while he was walking his dog in the fields. And of course, for a moment, he was under suspicion
03:52by the police, and he was interviewed, and his family were also questioned whilst he was helping
03:58the police with the inquiries to make sure that it wasn't a homicide that he was involved in
04:02personally. He was completely innocent. But that just shows you that the police have to be incredibly
04:08thorough. They have to avoid ruling anything out too soon, and they have to follow all possible
04:14avenues. And when you have a single body part found in a rural area, there are lots of avenues that
04:21need to be followed up. In the end, a forensic artist from Manchester University, Richard Neves,
04:28has brought in to reconstruct that badly butchered head. The clay model went on display in April
04:38of 94, and it paid almost immediate dividends. A lawyer who had worked with Al Saeed
04:47Al Sani
04:49recognised the face and alerted police.
04:55They at last had a clue. But from there, the details became more and more baffling,
05:03more and more sinister. Al Sani, it appears, lived in a twilight world. He's affluent,
05:12hugely affluent, but secretive in his dealings.
05:19They discovered his last sighting was on December the 14th,
05:25at a swank restaurant close to his Maida Vale, London apartment. He was dining with a business
05:32colleague. On December the 15th, he missed a key business meeting. Yet strangely, nobody officially
05:44reported him missing until January of that year. That seems a long time for a man in high finance,
05:51a man dealing in very big business circles. Not until January did someone wave a red flag.
06:03A big advantage that the police have in trying to make such identifications in
06:07contemporary times, of course, is digital technology. Almost everybody has a mobile
06:12phone. They live through that phone. And those phones are really useful in helping to identify
06:17individuals or associates of the individual who may be missing or presumed dead. And everybody
06:23leaves a digital footpath that connects people to lots of other people. Back in the 1990s,
06:30when this case happened in late 93, there were no mobile phones, there was no internet technology.
06:36So if you have a disfigured body part, and you have got to sort out the identity and work out
06:43how it got there, it's an almost impossible task. One thing the police did have at the time was
06:49using facial reconstruction. And when you look into this case, you actually find that facial
06:55reconstruction is a technique that homicide detectives have used a lot more than you would
07:01imagine in many cases like this. And it proves to be a scientific art that is a lot more successful
07:10than you might think. So reconstructing somebody's face based on a skull or partial remains that are found.
07:26What was the motive for this? Well, to understand the motive, we have to look deeper at al-Sani.
07:35A man born into wealth. His family were very, very powerful in Kuwait. They owned the biggest hotel
07:44in Kuwait. They also had a chain of hotels and construction interests. They had wealth.
07:51They were connected to the Kuwait royal family. Al-Sani
07:58was a multimillionaire from the beginning.
08:04Rumours surfaced. The Guardian newspaper claimed that al-Sani was forced to leave Kuwait in 82
08:14after the collapse of an unofficial stock market which left a paper trail of debt
08:20amounting to billions upon billions. What he did now then, we do not know, really.
08:30There was talk, certainly in the Italian media, that he simply became bored with his lifestyle
08:37and started to dabble in dangerous things. Rumours surfaced that some of those dark dealings
08:46might have been bold arms. We simply don't know. We simply do not know.
08:52What we do know is that shortly after that head, the reconstruction of that head
09:00was made public, a former business associate of al-Sani was shot
09:07in the streets in London. Police did not think that was significant. They did not see a link.
09:14But what it was also claimed, in national newspapers over here,
09:20was that he and al-Sani had been involved in a bitter court battle over finances.
09:29Al-Sani was a man with secrets.
09:32A man who maybe walked close to the line. His finances were not what they were when he met his
09:39demise. And it was a brutal demise. It was a brutal demise. Whoever did it went out of their way
09:50to conceal his identity. There was initially talk that his head had been severed with a
09:54ceremonial Arabic sword. Police later denied that.
09:58Having the job of trying to identify what happened to a crime victim who was high-profile
10:06can be both a blessing and a curse. The advantage of having a high-profile victim, of course,
10:12is that many people may recognise the victim and they may have spotted them or seen them
10:17or had some interaction where they can help the police place where the victim was.
10:21That can be invaluable to an investigation. The other problem with high-profile victims,
10:27though, is that the higher the profile, the greater the potential for more people who would
10:32wish them harm or want to do them some damage. So it doesn't help the detectives if you've got
10:38a high-profile victim because there could be hundreds or thousands of people who may have
10:42disliked that high-profile individual. And that makes the task of tracking a lead down
10:48even more arduous. It involves more legwork, more detectives, more paperwork and administration.
10:54And that can really tie up and slow down an investigation. And as you know, these things
10:58need to be identified and investigated quickly. Stories like this drop out of the news and they
11:04become replaced by other stories. So the detectives really need to make advances in the early stages
11:10of these investigations while it's still news. So the problem with high-profile detectives is
11:17So the police, as always, have a very difficult job of trying to keep the story in the headlines
11:22to keep people awake and paying attention. And hopefully just that one lead will help them.
11:29But high-profile victims of crime can also mean that there's a lot of finances involved,
11:34a lot of power and influence. And some people might be frightened of coming forward because
11:39of connections or fear of reprisals. So a high-profile victim can be both a blessing
11:45and a curse when trying to solve out what happened to somebody.
12:05Alsani was a man with secrets.
12:08A man who maybe walked close to the line. His finances were not what they were when he met his
12:15demise. And it was a brutal demise. It was a brutal demise. Whoever did it went out of their way
12:25to conceal his identity. There was initially talk that his head had been severed with a ceremonial
12:31Police later denied that. His face had been slashed so that any features were completely
12:40destroyed. The body and head left in different areas. Someone went out of their way to make sure
12:53Someone went out of their way to make sure Alsani paid for something,
12:59some slight. And we still don't know what. We still don't know what.
13:05Alsani was in life a very powerful man. It appears he had even more powerful enemies.
13:17The facts are hard to believe and in fact it remains the most gripping case that I was involved
13:24in. The drama began on December 17th 1993 under the arches of Piccadilly railway station in
13:37Manchester. There Christmas shoppers discovered a smouldering body, badly battered,
13:50clad only in underpants. This was the start. This was the start of a case that would meander
13:58and mutate and spawn many many conspiracy theories. Six weeks later Roy Jones
14:09made the almost unbelievable discovery of a head.
14:13DNA analysis eventually matched the head to the torso. And detectives leaving the case realized
14:27the head had been tossed like garbage, like litter out of the window of a car traveling along the M6.
14:34Out of the window of a car traveling along the M6. The murder had not taken place here
14:42but remains had been scattered here. This was a whodunnit the baffled police
14:49who had first described the crime as meticulous but non-professional.
14:58As further information came to light it became obvious it was very professional.
15:03This had all the hallmarks of a hit. It took many many months for the victim to be identified.
15:18What we need to remember in this investigation is what happened to Mr R Saeed. All we know is
15:24that he was somehow located in Manchester when he was killed and he was only wearing his underwear.
15:32His body was then burned, his head was then removed and his head was attacked and lacerated
15:41probably to hide his details and to make identification harder. For psychologists
15:48the separation of body parts particularly decapitation could have some psychological
15:53meaning but it's also likely that it's not of deep psychological meaning but it's simple
16:00practicality. In cases where there has been a targeted assassination or a hit sometimes the
16:08head is offered as proof that the individual has been killed and that might be necessary before
16:14full payment is made. So it could be highly likely in a case where someone has been targeted
16:20and murdered for money that the attackers and the murderers need to provide the head
16:26or some other form of ID to complete the deal and the payment. Obviously transporting a head
16:32is a lot cleaner and safer than trying to transport a body so that could explain why
16:38the head was removed and taken from where the body was eventually left and found.
16:45What's key in the investigation of course is that Mr R Saeed was found wearing his underwear.
16:52What we do know is that when individuals are sometimes captured and held against their will
16:58and sometimes tortured those victims are more compliant when they are effectively naked or
17:04they have their clothing removed but their underwear is kept on. Now this may be that the
17:10captors are trying to avoid any suggestion that there was a sexual motive on their behalf.
17:16They don't want people to think that this was a sex crime, they want people to know that this was
17:21possibly business. But the removal of clothing usually means that the victim, the captive is more
17:27compliant and will do what the captors want. What happened to the clothing could also be really
17:34important. How was it removed? What was done with it? Was it found at the location where the body
17:40was also found? But nudity of the victim is key in trying to understand the relationship between
17:47the victim and their captors. It was in December the 14th at a swank restaurant close to his
17:55Maida Vale London apartment. He was dining with a business colleague.
18:03On December the 15th he missed a key business meeting. Yet strangely nobody officially reported
18:12him missing until January of that year. That seems a long time for a man in high finance.
18:19A man dealing in very big business circles. Not until January did someone wave a red flag.
18:32A search of his apartment showed there'd been no struggle inside it.
18:37The place was neat and tidy. Yet strangely six boxes were missing. Six boxes containing papers
18:47involved in stocks and shares. That was the only thing missing. So in terms of motives some things
18:53became quite clear quite quickly. He was very wealthy and his movements were not necessarily
19:00transparent. This of course would have been a big potential motive for investigators.
19:06Financial gain. His personal life was very simple and straightforward. There seemed to be
19:12no romantic complications or affairs or romantic skeletons in any closet. So it seemed quite
19:18apparent to the investigators early on that it could have been financially motivated more than
19:24anything else. At the time of Mr. Al Saeed's disappearance the investigators found that he
19:30was also involved in legal proceedings with one of his former friends and he was taking his former
19:35friend to court for several thousand pounds. I mean this was big money and of course that could
19:41have been a motive that the police would have investigated as a natural line of inquiry.
19:48I'll never forget the morning when news of the discovery of the head filtered through
19:58to the newsroom of the weekly paper where I then served as editor.
20:04It began with a phone call from a parish council contact who said he wanted to talk about
20:12tree preservation orders, hedgerows, the state of potholes. Then at the side he laughed and said
20:20by the way the missus reckons she's found they've found a head in playing fields close to
20:27Chesanay school. He said uh well I shouldn't take your notice it's probably a cabbage knowing her.
20:34I didn't. I didn't. It was only later that news started to come through from official sources
20:40and as macabre it sounded it was a discovery that for many many months spawned some gallows humor
20:49amongst pupils at the schools in this village. All of a sudden the joke was we'll take you to
20:56see the head and they didn't mean the headmaster. For some reason and I can never really track this
21:02back through the case records but it became a bit of a myth the notion that Mr. Al-Sayed's body was
21:09tossed from a moving vehicle on the southbound M6 and just discarded casually like that gives the
21:15story quite a mythological element. The truth is however that Mr. Al-Sayed's body was found in a
21:22dead end country lane and it was at least a quarter of a mile from the M6. So there's no truth to the
21:29myth that his body was thrown from a vehicle but that kind of callous element is one of the reasons
21:35why the story has such a mythological fascination. The reality is that where his head was found was
21:41in some bushes in a dead end country lane near some school playing fields in fact just on the
21:47border. So the truth is a little bit more boring is that someone had to go up that disused lane
21:53to deposit that head and then go back again. That doesn't sound as interesting as the head being
21:59tossed from a moving vehicle but that could also be one of the reasons why this has never been
22:04solved because people are looking in the wrong direction for the culprit. There could have been
22:09some good vehicle evidence, some possible sightings of suspicious activity in that country lane at the
22:16time that the police might have found beneficial. But if the story is the head was tossed on the
22:21motorway then people are going to be looking or not looking for what might have happened at the
22:27time in that specific location. Who killed Al-Sayed? You tell me. You tell me.
22:36Was the killer from Kuwait? Did he do what he was paid to do and then return or did Al-Sayed make
22:46powerful enemies in this country? So much of his life is shrouded in a mist of secrecy that we
22:54simply don't know. His movements are not well charted. What was he into? What was he doing?
23:03What was he doing? Why were those papers stolen from his apartment? We simply don't know.
23:12It is a whodunit of global proportions and it is a whodunit that after so many years
23:22will remain unsolved.
23:52you