Social Media Murders S02E02
Category
🦄
CreativityTranscript
00:00Evening, Northumbria Police.
00:02Hi there, I just need a bit of advice really.
00:05I split up with my boyfriend about three months ago.
00:11He's been sending me a lot of messages
00:13even though I've asked him not to contact me.
00:24I know that he's hacked into my Facebook
00:26and also my phone.
00:30I know that he's hacked into my Facebook
00:32and also my phone.
00:35Basically, like, just messaging my friend tonight,
00:39he's, well, I had a knock at my door.
00:43So a bit, like, shaking it.
00:54Confused, what I call this.
00:55Please, I've just, I've just come back to my flat
00:57and the door was locked, so I curled through the window
00:59and my mate's covered in blood in the bathroom.
01:01Alice!
01:03Alice!
01:06Oh my God, she's dead!
01:23Police have launched a murder investigation
01:25after the body of a Leicestershire woman
01:27was discovered in Gateshead.
01:28Officers found 24-year-old Alice Ruggles
01:31with serious injuries on Rawlings Road last night.
01:34She died at the scene.
01:36The murder was an act of utter barbarism.
01:39Her throat slit from ear to ear in her Gateshead home.
01:43You look at that bathroom
01:45and you think about the injuries she'd sustained.
01:47Five or six times, the knife had been drawn across her throat.
01:51It was so brutal and senseless.
01:55She was a kind-hearted young woman
01:58who had everything to live for.
02:11I first met Alice when she was at uni here.
02:18This is actually a picture taken
02:20on the first night that Alice and I met.
02:22And that cemented our friendship.
02:24It's the kiss of true love right there.
02:32This is a video of Alice doing his signature dance move.
02:36We used to joke that we, like, won the dance floor.
02:44A night out with Alice would be very entertaining.
02:52She had such a lovely, bubbly energy about her
02:55and we were just fast friends straight away.
02:58This is us, drunk in the bathroom, pulling funny faces.
03:03She brought the je ne sais quoi to whatever was happening.
03:10When?
03:16Alice was the third of our four children.
03:19She always had a joke or a story,
03:22something that would make you laugh,
03:24and she had this tremendous sense of fun and of mischief.
03:29When she finished her degree, she wanted to stay in Newcastle.
03:33So she spent a year, 18 months, I think it was, working in bars
03:38and then she got a job with Sky.
03:43Go, Alice!
03:45I think Alice's life really started in that sort of year.
03:48She'd ring me up and say,
03:50Oh, Mum, it's amazing, I've got to organise the Sky Christmas Board.
03:54They're all going to arrive and they're all going to have cocktails.
03:57It seemed almost as if everything she'd been doing before then
04:00had been a sort of practice,
04:02and now suddenly she's doing what she wanted to do
04:05and really enjoying it.
04:08This photo I took on the day that I asked Alice
04:12to come to Sri Lanka with me.
04:14We'd never been outside of Europe, we wanted new experiences,
04:18and it was nice to be able to do that together.
04:37We shared quite a lot on social media
04:39because obviously we wanted everyone to be as excited as we were,
04:42or even just a little bit jealous.
04:45On our way to Sri Lanka,
04:47we sat next to somebody that found Alice very attractive.
04:55I posted the selfie to Facebook.
05:00A friend of a friend actually commented on the photo.
05:05And that person was Harry.
05:09Harry was in the army.
05:12He had been at the same university as me.
05:15He was a very good friend of a good friend of mine.
05:18She thought that he was very nice, very caring.
05:24Harry did send me a message a few days later.
05:34She went straight to Facebook to see what he looked like.
05:40She actually started messaging Harry when we were in Sri Lanka.
05:44He seemed to be being very nice to her,
05:46saying all of the right things.
05:48It seemed to be making her really, really happy.
05:56She was always looking for someone
05:58that could match her level of love and caring and affection,
06:01and she'd basically hit it off with him straight away.
06:04She said they had an instant connection.
06:08Within the space of a month, it was a solid,
06:11I love you, you love me,
06:13we're together, we're going to be together forever sort of thing.
06:17We had FaceTimed like hundreds of times at this point,
06:20but they hadn't physically met.
06:27It's a completely different world for me
06:29to feel that you're in a relationship with someone
06:32and you've only met them on social media.
06:35He was a soldier,
06:37and he was actually out in Afghanistan on tour at the time.
06:41But they just communicated a lot.
06:46And she started sending him things.
06:49She just said, you know, I've met this person
06:51and I think he might be a really good person
06:53and it's quite interesting and I'm enjoying it.
06:57I didn't realise that they'd never actually met each other at that point.
07:07A 25-year-old man's been arrested on suspicion of murder
07:10and remains in police custody.
07:13Are you saying that Alice is dead?
07:16Or someone's...
07:18All I can tell you is that you've been arrested on suspicion
07:21of the murder of Alice Rogalski.
07:27MUSIC FADES
07:37The first time they ever met each other,
07:39they spent, like, two solid weeks together.
07:42He stayed in Newcastle for a week with Alice at her flat.
07:46He spotted Silly during that time, he bought lots of things,
07:49they went out places,
07:51and then he went back to Afghanistan
07:53to complete his tour for a couple of months.
07:57Then he came back for good.
08:00He lived in barracks just south of Edinburgh.
08:04Two-and-a-half-hour journey down to Gateshead, where Alice lived.
08:11They were technically long-distance,
08:13but I don't think that impacted so much.
08:16She said to us it was the most she'd ever felt for anyone
08:19and she was completely head over heels
08:21and he reciprocated that and that made her feel really special.
08:26He was everything Alice wanted him to be.
08:30And she said to me,
08:31''Mum, I think he's the one.''
08:46There were obviously a couple of wobbly issues.
08:49If things are going that fast,
08:51it doesn't necessarily seem out of sorts
08:54that there would be a teething issue at some point.
09:09We just assumed that it's just very clumsy
09:12and, of course, he would never do this on purpose.
09:16I wasn't seriously worried.
09:19I assumed that there would be common ground found
09:23and they would work through it.
09:25But Alice was very choice with what she shared and with whom.
09:31I don't think anybody actually knew the full story.
09:37We got, like, all of the juicy gossip at the start.
09:41We got, like, all of the juicy gossip at the start.
09:45And then it petered off and we didn't hear loads.
09:51We would arrange casual meet-ups and she'd brain check on
09:56and she was just a little harder to get hold of.
10:00I just kind of pinned it on a new relationship
10:03being something that does take up a lot of your time at the start, in a way.
10:08Alice took steps to withdraw from all of her friendships.
10:13It was very difficult.
10:15I thought of Alice like a little sister.
10:19To see somebody completely...
10:22..become a shell of exactly who you know them to be,
10:26I think was pretty devastating.
10:29I highly suspected that Harry had a lot to do with that.
10:38It was really a little bit later before we started to realise,
10:42hang on a minute, things aren't right.
10:46He demanded to know where she was going and what she was doing.
10:51Unannounced, he'd just drive down to Newcastle and turn up.
11:01What he was actually doing was gradually isolating
11:06Alice and making her more and more dependent on him.
11:13We just didn't realise the danger that she was in.
11:26So, Harry, at 18.34 hours yesterday, Alice Ruggles was found
11:31at her home address in Gateshead and should be murdered.
11:34Did you murder Alice? No, I did not murder Alice.
11:46Police have launched a murder investigation after the body
11:49of a Leicestershire woman was discovered in Gateshead.
11:52Officers found 24-year-old Alice Ruggles with serious injuries
11:56on Rawlings Road last night.
11:58She died at the scene.
12:01A 25-year-old man remains in police custody.
12:05So, Harry, at 18.34 hours yesterday, Alice Ruggles was found
12:10at her home address in Gateshead and should be murdered.
12:13Did you murder Alice? No, I did not murder Alice.
12:16Do you have any knowledge of this?
12:18No, I don't have any knowledge of this.
12:20Were you present when this murder occurred? No, I wasn't.
12:24HEARTBEAT
12:35We used to have a family holiday to Cornwall every year.
12:39It was quite a nice excuse for everyone to get together,
12:42especially considering we're normally remote
12:44and everyone's in different places.
12:47That year, Alice invited Harry.
12:50And I thought, OK, it must be quite serious if she's bringing him along.
12:57Alice was a little less outgoing than she'd normally be, I think.
13:02She was a bit less...a bit less Alice.
13:07She was less self-confident.
13:09She'd lost weight. She had this sort of faraway look.
13:13It was quite clear there was something seriously wrong.
13:17But we couldn't talk to her about it because he was always there.
13:25Just a couple of days after, they went back up from Cornwall.
13:31Alice was contacted by someone she didn't know to say,
13:35do you realise your boyfriend's cheating on you?
13:38All through this time, he was actually dating other women
13:42on other social media.
13:46When she discovered that he'd been cheating on her,
13:50that was when she ended the relationship.
13:59Or tried to, because, of course, he wasn't going to have any of that.
14:03MUSIC CONTINUES
14:33I thought it was a very extreme breakup, based on what she shared, but I think she made the
14:58decision that she needed to fully move on from this relationship.
15:24In the background, Harry was unleashing the most awful strain of harassment.
15:51If he couldn't get a hold of her, he would drive down.
15:58He inserted himself physically into her life.
16:09He's messaged her any way he can, from his friends' mobile phones.
16:19He sent a message to me, and he sent messages to some of Alice's other friends, and I just
16:24messaged him and I said, if things are really going so badly, then maybe it's better that
16:28you don't carry on going out.
16:30And then I put at the bottom, good luck, Harry, meaning, go away and get on with your life.
16:36I have a horrible feeling he took that good luck Harry to mean, carry on.
16:45She's tried telling him she's not interested, that hasn't worked, he's escalated, he's continued
17:00the behaviour and it's got worse.
17:02So I think at this point she starts trying to ignore him, and that's when it starts to
17:05get a bit more serious.
17:18I'm a tech guy, I'm from a tech background, so my first instinct is of course, right,
17:22well he's got access to accounts and devices, we need to get that back, we need to lock
17:25him out.
17:29The problem with these big social media companies is you're not really talking to a person and
17:37they can't really help you for a lot of these things.
17:40In the end, she closed that Facebook account and started a new one.
17:44And that's not necessarily the best way to go about it.
17:47If you factory reset devices and reset all the accounts, you gain back that control,
17:52but you can cause the perpetrator to escalate further.
18:12It's something that I did I shouldn't have done, but, because I had her Facebook password,
18:17so I went on her Facebook and changed her password.
18:20So you've logged on as her and changed her password?
18:22Yeah, obviously I'm not going to sit here and say I don't stalk her and all that, but
18:25obviously I did look at her Facebook to see what's going on, because I've been with her
18:29for so long through all these things, so I can't just turn it off my head.
18:50Alice went and stayed with her sister, who lived in Germany at the time, for a weekend,
19:00which was really lovely because it just took her away from everything.
19:06She was telling me that she was having the best time, there was a guy that she was interested
19:09in.
19:10She also joked that, thank God, because she actually didn't know if she was capable of
19:16that again.
19:18Alice didn't really share that on any public social media, but she did talk to us about
19:23it over WhatsApp.
19:24She was being cautious, because she didn't know how Harry would respond when he found
19:29out about it.
19:33Harry found out about it quite quickly.
19:35I suspect he was reading the WhatsApp messages the whole time.
19:39So Alice is left in a position where her ex is weaponising her social life, she doesn't
19:43know how to stop him, she doesn't fully know what he's got access to.
19:46She couldn't hide anything from him.
19:48Every waking minute he was, right, what's the next thing I need to do, how do I do this?
19:53I'm not a mobile geek.
19:55I couldn't go on her Facebook or on her WhatsApp, I couldn't hack her phone.
19:59I just played that card out, like, well, I've got on your phone, and I can see there's a
20:02guy you're speaking to.
20:03Tell me what his name is, tell me what's going on.
20:06She fell for it.
20:07And she was like, oh, I met this guy, and I was like, please don't do this to me.
20:11How can you move on so fast?
20:12I'm still in love with you, and you're like, you've moved on.
20:17PHONE RINGS
20:20Evening, this is the office.
20:22Hi there, I just need a bit of advice, really, more than anything.
20:27So I split up with my boyfriend about three months ago.
20:31Great.
20:32Since then, I know that he's hacked into my Facebook and also my phone.
20:39He's been sending me a lot of messages, even though I've asked him not to contact me.
20:43And then tonight, he's...
20:47Well, I had a knock at my door.
20:49There was no-one there, and then it happened again two or three times.
20:53He's come round the back, knocked on my bedroom window, at the back of my ground floor flat.
20:59He's been outside, and he's, like, left some flowers and chocolates on the, like, outside
21:04window sill, and, like, he walked off.
21:06He's not done anything, but I'm just...
21:08I'm concerned.
21:10Like, my friends have been telling me to call the police.
21:13I've been putting it off, but I just feel a bit, like, shaken up tonight, so...
21:21Yeah.
21:24The guy at the end of the phone, he identifies it as harassment, not as stalking.
21:30And there's a serious difference there.
21:33The fact that he is prepared to spend five hours just to come down on the off chance
21:39of seeing her gives you an idea of how dangerous this situation is getting.
21:45Hey, Alice.
22:05He's telling her how he would never kill her, but why would you talk about that
22:10if you were not trying to frighten someone?
22:15PHONE RINGS
22:18You have no indication that Alice wanted anything to do with you ever again?
22:22Yeah. Yeah, you've still come down? Yeah.
22:24And it's not like you live in Newcastle. No, I know.
22:27You live over two hours away. I understand.
22:29So that, to me, makes me think this guy is, like, desperate.
22:34You are desperate to speak to her. Yeah.
22:44Alice, once she had made that phone call to 101,
22:49the best practice would be to get an SPO issued, a Stalking Protection Order,
22:54which would protect her but also manage Harry Dillon's behaviour.
22:58Unfortunately, this time they weren't in place and a PIN was issued.
23:03She believed the police and the PIN would be that full stop.
23:08She was told on the first call that if he contacted her again,
23:13he would be in breach of his PIN and he would be arrested.
23:19We didn't really understand that he was obsessed with Alice
23:22and how dangerous a person he was.
23:25We didn't really understand that he was obsessed with Alice
23:28and how dangerous a person he was.
23:31And after she'd gone to the police
23:33and Harry found out she'd gone to the police...
23:37..he messaged me again.
23:40He was absolutely, furiously angry.
23:44It really, really disturbed me at the time.
23:47And then she also received a parcel with a really weird letter.
23:53Dangerous characters, often mentally challenged,
23:56were allowed on their way and sent to be executed by the police.
24:00This was a veteran journalist.
24:02She couldn't speak, she couldn't walk, she couldn't move her head,
24:06she couldn't make eye contact.
24:08She was just completely hypnotised,
24:10she didn't know what to do, she couldn't make eye contact,
24:13she just couldn't move her head in the moment.
24:16One of the worst, the most dangerous,
24:18♪♪
24:22Dangerous stalkers often only reveal themselves
24:24when it is made absolutely clear
24:26that you are the wrong side of the law.
24:28Significant number of people will step back at that point,
24:31but for other people, it will be the sparking point
24:35of absolute control.
24:37I have nothing to lose.
24:39Harry took that course of action.
24:43I think that once Alice called the police,
24:48that was when he decided he was going to kill her.
25:02Alice was taken away from her family by an obsessed man
25:06who was so controlling, he chose to brutally murder her
25:10rather than let her go.
25:18Alice has done all the right things.
25:20She's contacted the police.
25:22She's moving on.
25:24She expects him to move on,
25:26and, you know, the protections should have been there,
25:30but they weren't.
25:49So, pictures of me and him, like, because this is my ex-boyfriend,
25:53so, like, a notebook that I sent him when we were together
25:56and a letter.
25:58It says at the bottom, he won't contact, you know,
26:00this will be the last I hear from him,
26:02but he's said that a lot of times,
26:03and he never does seem to stop.
26:13She was phoned back by the police,
26:15and all we know is Alice was so upset by this
26:19because they, in fact, they said,
26:20well, what do you expect us to do about it, arrest him?
26:24In a tone of voice that made it sound completely ridiculous
26:27to want that.
26:29I just can't even comprehend the level of despair
26:33someone has to be at,
26:36because they essentially knew,
26:39given the last interaction with the police,
26:41that they were on their own.
26:43There was no help for them.
26:47Alice ran me to the police station,
26:49and they said, well, you know,
26:51we've got to get you out of here.
26:53We've got to get you out of here.
26:56Alice ran me and said,
26:58they're not going to do anything, Mum.
27:00Nothing's going to happen.
27:02And I said, well, Alice, just ignore him,
27:04and he'll go away.
27:06And, of course, that's the most ridiculous advice ever,
27:08and I know that now, but I didn't know that at the time.
27:10It doesn't really matter, though,
27:12because the police should never have asked her
27:14what she wanted to do.
27:16They should have said, this guy sounds dangerous.
27:19We are going to arrest him.
27:21Or at least we're going to go and talk to him.
27:24Because their job should have been to keep Alice safe.
27:44Five days later, on the 12th,
27:46Alice had been brought home,
27:48as usual, by someone from work.
27:54But her flatmate wasn't there that day.
27:56She had been delayed a bit at work
27:58and was going to be another half-hour,
28:00an hour getting home.
28:02So Alice gets to the flat,
28:04locks herself in, as always.
28:06She was organising meeting up with this new guy.
28:08She was very excited about it.
28:11Suddenly, she stops responding to anything.
28:20Her flatmate gets home
28:22and she can't get into the flat.
28:24She's been in there for a long time.
28:26She's got her phone,
28:28she's got her phone,
28:30and she's got her phone,
28:32and she's got her phone,
28:34and she's got her phone,
28:36and she's got her phone,
28:38and she's got her phone,
28:40and she's got her phone,
28:42and she's got her phone,
28:44and she's got her phone,
28:46and she can't get in through the door.
28:50So she has to go round climbing through a window
28:52which has been left open.
28:56She finds Alice.
29:10Alice. Oh my God, she's dead. She's dead.
29:23Can you have a look and see if she's breathing for the ambulance?
29:26She's not. She's not.
29:27She's not breathing?
29:28No, she looks... No. Everything's been knocked off.
29:32It looks like she's been attacked. Please help.
29:35Oh my God, I can't even go on. I'm so scared. I'm so scared.
29:39Try and stay calm. You're doing really well.
29:41She's not breathing. She's actually blue. Wait.
29:47Please, I need something here right now.
29:49I know you do. We're getting to you as soon as we can.
29:52She's only 23. I mean, here this is coming. Our ex is an absolute psychopath.
29:56Say that again, sorry.
29:58She's put in a complaint about her ex and she wrote 101 at the weekend to a reporter
30:02and he started getting in contact and he says we're going to do nothing.
30:05Now this has happened to me.
30:06About who?
30:08I don't know.
30:19I woke up first and I could hear this knocking at the door and the dog barking.
30:25Of course, I get to the front door and there's two police there asking if they can come in.
30:29You know it's something horrible and the question in your mind at that stage is simply
30:33which of them is it? Who is it?
30:35As soon as they said it was Alice then we kind of knew immediately who'd done it.
30:42We dismissed it as being, we were overreacting and then suddenly this was really happening
30:48and it's sort of, you can't believe, you can't believe it that it's happened.
30:58Officers found 24-year-old Alice Ruggles with serious injuries on Rawlings Road last night.
31:04She died at the scene.
31:06A 25-year-old man's been arrested on suspicion of murder and remains in police custody.
31:14So Harry, at 18.34 hours yesterday Alice Ruggles was found at her home address in Gateshead
31:22and should be murdered.
31:23Did you murder Alice?
31:24No, I did not murder Alice.
31:26Do you have any knowledge of this?
31:27No, I don't have any knowledge of this.
31:32I think he genuinely believed that he would get away with it.
31:37Can you tell me what you were doing yesterday then from 10am until the time you were arrested last night?
31:43I drove down towards Newcastle and because I was, I just wanted answers.
31:53So I drove down to speak to her.
31:58So you've knocked on the door and there's been no reply.
32:00No reply.
32:01Did you go back to the car?
32:02No.
32:03Did you go straight round the back?
32:04Straight round the back.
32:05I jumped over the wall.
32:06So you've jumped over.
32:07Yeah, so I've jumped over and she then started saying, what are you doing here?
32:11I'm going to call the police, leave now.
32:12And I'm like, Alice, please calm down, stop panicking, I'm just here to speak to you.
32:16You've not given me my answers, I just want my answers.
32:18Yeah.
32:19She's like, I'm going to call 999.
32:20I'm like, OK, I'm leaving.
32:21I don't want any trouble with the police again.
32:23I'm leaving.
32:25I found out at about 4 in the morning.
32:28Immediately I knew it was Harry.
32:31Although obviously nothing's been proven or anything yet.
32:34We're looking for fingerprints.
32:36We're looking for blood transfer from the scene to the car.
32:40See, the thing is, sorry, I'm in trouble.
32:42There won't be any blood transfer because there was no blood on me when I left that place.
32:46So are you saying when you left her, she had no injuries or anything?
32:49Oh, no, no, absolutely nothing.
32:50No injuries, nothing.
32:51She was perfectly fine, fit, healthy.
33:00Who's been told exactly what happened to her?
33:03And how you, you cut her throat?
33:07No comment.
33:09Are you looking back?
33:11Are you?
33:12Do you remember what happened?
33:13No comment.
33:14Do you remember what you did?
33:15No comment.
33:16Do you remember how bad it was?
33:17No comment.
33:18Do you remember the blood spraying?
33:19No comment.
33:21I'm being told that she suffered.
33:23She must have known what was happening.
33:28Because she didn't die straight away.
33:30Harry made the choice to drive two and a half hours and end Alice's life.
33:50And then pretend like it never happened.
33:55That is what happened.
34:01A man has appeared in court accused of murdering a woman from Leicestershire.
34:0425-year-old trim man Dylan, also known as Harry Dylan from Scotland,
34:08appeared in front of magistrates at Newcastle Crown Court this morning.
34:13But a case like this one, where you think the evidence is overwhelming,
34:16everybody expects the person to be convicted.
34:20I was very surprised at the first hearing when he said he was not guilty of murdering Alice.
34:31Tonight, a soldier accused of killing his ex-girlfriend at her home in Gateshead
34:37today described the events leading up to her death.
34:40Lance Corporal trim man Dylan told jurors at Newcastle Crown Court
34:44he went to retrieve clothes from the home of Alice Ruggles,
34:48but after a prolonged scuffle she fell and was wounded in the neck by a knife.
34:53He denies murdering her.
34:55I didn't think there could be anything more hurtful that could come out of this.
34:58I'd lost Alice and that was horrific.
35:02But Dylan had put in this counterclaim that Alice had tried to murder him.
35:10It's really difficult to think this was that person we met
35:15to someone who is clearly an evil person.
35:20We spent two days standing just five metres in front of us in the courtroom
35:24explaining his story.
35:26He was totally unemotional.
35:29He'd keep putting nasty words into Alice's mouth
35:32as he was describing his version of what happened.
35:36That, I really hadn't been able to understand.
35:40I'd never seen anything like it.
35:42He'd keep putting nasty words into Alice's mouth
35:45as he was describing his version of what happened.
35:49That, I really hadn't been prepared for.
35:52It was really, you know, a hyper level of nastiness.
36:06He used the opportunity to undermine, devalue,
36:11that he possibly could.
36:13I think Harry thought that we were essentially just...
36:19..all puppets that he could play with during that trial.
36:24As a prosecutor, you don't know what a jury will make of it.
36:28So you've really just got to break it down and not take any chances.
36:34The background and the atmosphere that was leading up to this killing
36:38was so important.
36:40Over many, many weeks and months,
36:42there'd been this campaign of telephone calls.
36:45Alice, please call me back, please.
36:47Text messages, WhatsApp messages, Facebook messages.
36:52A heaping on, pressure on, pressure on, pressure.
36:59Prosecutor Richard Wright QC accused Lance Corporal Harry Dillon
37:04of stalking his ex-girlfriend Alice
37:06and being utterly obsessed with her.
37:10It was a very important theme in the evidence
37:13that he had a real history of controlling behaviour.
37:18It was a feature of not just his relationship with Alice,
37:21but of all of the relationships we were able to identify.
37:26We learned lots of things during the trial that we didn't know before.
37:32For example, there were two or three occasions
37:34when he'd stalked other people.
37:36We'd had some inkling of one of them, but, yeah, not the others.
37:41He told Alice about the restraining order against him,
37:45and, in fact, he used that as a sort of weapon for Alice and said,
37:49there's no point in you calling the police
37:51because I've done this before and I got off with it.
37:55The prosecution suggested Dillon is a person who lies to help himself.
38:01Dillon accepted he has lied in the past.
38:05We were able to really break it down and demonstrate to the jury
38:09that what he was doing was lying,
38:11and every time a lie was disproved,
38:13he'd come up with another one to tell in its place.
38:18The scenes of crime analysis demonstrated the slitting of the throat
38:23and bruising to Alice's back.
38:26Suggested, clearly, was that Dillon had kneeled or stood on her back,
38:31pulled back her hair and slit her throat in the shower.
38:35So the idea that she was the one with the knife was ludicrous.
38:40You want the jury to get there themselves.
38:42You've got to give them the tools to make the decision.
38:45Alice Ruggles wanted to live because she loved life,
38:49and that image of Alice is what I wanted the jury to remember,
38:53not what he did to her.
38:57Her murder was an act of utter barbarism, the words of a judge today,
39:02as he jailed a soldier for killing his ex-girlfriend at her flat in Gateshead.
39:09The judge formed the view that Harry Dillon was an obsessive,
39:15controlling narcissist who'd shown no remorse at all...
39:21..and gave him 22 years as a minimum term.
39:26..of a life sentence.
39:29Alice was a kind, incredibly sociable, fun-loving person.
39:34She had the ability to light up the room whenever she walked in.
39:38We miss her so much.
39:45There wasn't enough understanding about stalking laws
39:47and there wasn't enough training within the police about stalking.
39:50The police should have been able to identify that this was a stalking case,
39:54they should have understood what was going on
39:56and had known what they should have done.
40:00The IOPC, the Independent Office for Police Conduct,
40:04found that Northumbria police officers
40:06did not properly investigate Alice Ruggles' concerns about stalking.
40:11His use of social media isolated Alice from support
40:15and limited her ability to prevent unwanted contact.
40:20I think there's a thousand and one lessons.
40:23We need to know what stalking is and how dangerous it can be.
40:29I think people need to be able to spot things like gaslighting
40:33and love-bombing and controlling behaviour.
40:37We also need to learn that it's not just the person who's being stalked
40:42who needs the attention.
40:45We need to think about what is it that we can actually do
40:48to these people who are stalking.
40:53MUSIC PLAYS
41:09By no means will everybody who harasses somebody go on to kill them.
41:15But people who kill their partners in domestic contacts
41:19will often have harassed them.
41:21And so one is a warning sign of what might happen.
41:24The criminal justice system will always be the blunt instrument
41:28at the end of the process.
41:30What needs to change is at the front end,
41:32in terms of protective measures that can be put in place
41:36before you get to court.
41:38In terms of the police taking these issues seriously
41:41and in terms of having the resources and the tools
41:46to tackle this sort of behaviour.
41:49If we think half of all stalking cases are about relationships
41:54or intimate connections that have come to an end,
41:58those relationships will have most likely come from a relationship
42:02that was coercive and controlling
42:04that then becomes stalking at the point of separation.
42:07So if we can educate people more about both recognising control
42:13when it's happening to you
42:15and recognise when you're being controlling of others,
42:18then we stand a better chance of reducing the rate of stalking in the future.
42:24The Alice Ruggles Trust, for example,
42:26are very committed to education from a young age
42:29about healthy relationships.
42:32We founded the trust in Alice's name
42:35because we thought, no, we've got to stop people like ourselves
42:39not knowing how dangerous stalking is.
42:42We wanted to prevent what happened to Alice happening to others.
42:46Social media has changed stalking in that
42:50all cases of stalking will now have a cyber aspect.
42:53We can be more exposed because of our social media accounts.
42:57We can be researched in a way that wasn't possible before.
43:07The cyber age has given us so many other ways
43:10in which people can be stalked.
43:12There are various really quite worrying surveillance tools out there.
43:18We have to be acutely aware of those.
43:22The purpose of the trust is to raise awareness, to do training,
43:26to try to change the problems that we found.
43:30I think there's more public understanding now than there was in 2016.
43:35There are more safeguards in place, but there's always more to do.
43:41I think a lot of stalking victims feel like they're overreacting
43:46and they need to not worry about it.
43:48But I think that's the way the stalker wants you to feel.
43:51And actually, they need to feel like it is serious
43:54and the people are there to help them.
43:58What happened with Alice, it was tragic.
44:02It shouldn't have happened.
44:04She did a lot to try and make sure that it didn't,
44:08but it just goes to show that you need every cog in the system working
44:12and it's a big system.
44:17Alice will always be a gaping hole in my life
44:20and a gaping hole in my children's life.
44:24I want to remember Alice as the lovely, happy, funny, wonderful person that she was.
44:33I don't want to remember she was murdered.
44:39What I wish is that people would see her more as a human rather than a victim.
44:45She is a human first and she was my friend first
44:48before she was Alice Ruggles, the victim.
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