[narrator] Every 90 seconds someone is reported missing.
Many return to their families,
but for others, something has gone seriously wrong.
A young boy cycles to his local shop to buy some sweets,
but doesn't return.
Went down the stairs full of smiles,
got his bike, and off he went to the shop.
[narrator] It's a high risk missing person's case.
[Heather] So as time went on, it become more distressing,
because he's an 11-year-old little boy.
[narrator] What happens in the police investigation that follows?
We were treating it as an abduction.
I was given information that Wesley had been given to this pedophile ring.
[narrator] What happens to the family at its heart?
Mustafa, when he comes in I went, "Have you found Wesley?"
And he got on his knees, and he held both me hands.
He went, "We've found Wesley."
[narrator reading]
[Liz] Everybody liked Wesley because he was straightforward.
Like, he was a fun-loving child, always happy,
always willing to help people.
[Harry] He was just an ordinary little lad.
He didn't see any harm in anybody.
He had a sense of humor, we used to have a good laugh.
[narrator] Mum Liz, Wesley,
and his four-year-old brother Robert
live on the same street as Grandad Harry.
[Liz] Me dad and Wesley were very, very close.
He was his apple of his eye.
Everywhere Grandad went, Wesley went an' all.
He was just a great kid.
He was always pulling pranks, but good pranks.
He's just like to play and he had a funny sense of humor.
And you could never tell him off,
could never tell him off.
[Harry] The day it happened, he was going to school, passing my house.
I says, "I'll see ya' after school."
[narrator] Later that day, Wesley's feeling unwell at school.
He's recently been diagnosed with epilepsy.
[Liz] I went over to collect him,
and I went, "You're all right," I says, "Mummy's here."
He says, "I've got that horrible, horrible feeling" and I went "What?"
He says, "Like a burning sensation."
He says, "Me chest was getting tight."
And I brought him home.
Lay him on the couch.
I said "Just get yourself away to sleep," I says,
"and hopefully you'll be all right shortly."
And he went to sleep for about an hour, an hour and a half.
And then when he woke up, he was right as rain.
And he went, "Mam, can I have 50 pence?"
And I went "What do you want 50 pence for?"
"Get some sweets for me and Robert, when he comes from school."
And I went, "Right you are," says, "hold on."
And he was going berserk 'cause I didn't give him a 50 pence piece.
I gave him two 20s and a 10. I went, "It still makes 50 pence."
He went, "Right, Mum." Went down the stairs full of smiles.
Got on his bike, and off he went to the shop.
About 10 minutes later, I'm looking out the bedroom windows.
Well, where is he?
'Cause by three o'clock we were having to pick Robert up from nursery.
And I thought, "Oh. Well, maybe he's went straight from the shop up to the school."
So I went into the school yard, and there was like
a few of the mothers hanging around.
"Have you seen Wesley on his bike?"
"Ee, no, Liz."
And I went, "You haven't?" "No."
So goes down to the shop.
Went, "Yasmin." Asked, "Have you seen Wesley?"
"Oh, yeah, he was in about 20 minutes ago," she says.
"And he was complaining 'cause he didn't have a 50 pence piece."
"By the way," she says "I give him a 50 pence piece."
She says, "And I gave him the sweets for nothing."
She says because he give us a hand.
And I went, "What do you mean?"
She says, "To haul the empty boxes,
and put them around the back for us, in the yard."
[narrator] Mum Liz and brother Robert
go back home to check if Wesley's there.
And I'm watching the clock, no sign of him.
And starting to get anxious, because obviously he knew
what time his medication was.
And I thought, "Well, maybe he has bumped into some of his pals."
So by six o'clock come, I was starting to panic.
If he didn't have his medication for his epilepsy,
he could have took a fit any time.
And I was petrified in case he had took a fit
and he was lying somewhere on the road.
[narrator] Liz can't sit at home doing nothing.
[Liz] It was getting 6 o'clock and I went out looking
with me friend Sharon.
And I was just walking around and all over the place,
up and down the streets.
Went around everybody's house that Wesley knew.
I got a horrible, horrible feeling.
And I must keep saying to me friend Sharon,
"There something not right, there's something not right."
It's not like Wesley doing this.
He's always on time for his meds,
I says, "and it's really, really hurting us."
I wonder if somebody's knocked him off his bike?
And then your mind starts running wild.
You're looking into every building everywhere, alleyway,
you're looking everywhere.
You simply believe he's there somewhere, we've just gotta find him.
Me son, he had a pink and white bike.
Obviously when people went out looking,
they were also looking for the pink and white bike.
[Harry] I went after, you couldn't help thinking
something happened, 'cause it wasn't like him.
[Liz] With him not coming home, I knew there was something wrong.
The time was getting on, 'cause it was still quite bright,
and I phoned the police.
[siren wailing]
[Heather] When a missing person report comes in,
it goes to the uniform teams immediately.
And a uniformed officer will go out,
and take a report from the member of the family
that's reported that person missing, or a friend or whoever.
And a young police officer come down.
And he went, "What's the problem?"
I says, "Well, me son's missing."
He went, "He'll just be playing around with his pals."
I went, "He's not. I've been to everywhere."
You would have expected someone to have seen him
if he'd been around.
But nobody had seen him.
I says, "What about if he's lying in a ditch or somewhere?"
I says, "Somebody's knocked him off his bike.
I'm telling you, there's something not right."
And I got out of this young policeman,
"Well, I think you're being over-anxious."
But by this time, I was frantic.
Kids go missing all the time,
but usually they're found very quickly.
Police officers were in and out the house,
checking to see if he was in the loft and under me bath,
under his bed.
And I just used to look at the police officers,
and just say, "Really?"
I went, "Do you not think I would know if me son was around?"
I says, "The first thing me son would say is, 'Mum, I want something to eat.'"
I knew there was something wrong.
I think they just thought, "Oh, he's just a naughty boy. He's just ran away."
I couldn't get that over to the police.
He wouldn't put me through it, he wouldn't put his grandad through it.
We were very, very close.
[Trevor] Psychologically, one of the biggest issues
is when someone goes missing,
particularly a vulnerable person like a child,
it's incumbent on the police to ensure
that the home address is searched properly,
so you can be confident that person is not in that address.
Now that does cause some trauma sometimes,
'cause the family immediately think, "Ah, the police suspect us."
But that's not the case.
[Harry] A lot of the neighbors would come and they were searching.
And all the family was out.
All me nephews, nieces and everybody.
Everybody was searching and everybody was looking.
We searched parks and fields, you name it, everywhere.
It takes over your mind, your body and everything.
[narrator] Heather Carroll is the Family Liaison Officer
assigned to this case.
[Heather] When I asked Liz where Wesley had gone,
she had said, "Well, he had gone to get some sweets."
This was just something that happened all the time, it was nothing strange.
But we have to look at the family and friends first,
because we don't know what's gone on behind closed doors.
We don't know what's gone on in those few hours beforehand,
so although I was there to support the family,
I'm also there to investigate, to find out.
So I spent hours with them.
Hours and hours and I got to know them very, very well.
[Trevor] He could have been found unconscious.
He could have been in a building, requiring his medication.
It was important the police put sufficient resources
into it to find him.
Search teams were brought in immediately.
Sent to parks, sent to back lanes.
[Trevor] Quite a number of officers involved, helicopter involved,
dog handlers, horses.
So as time went on, it become more distressing,
because he's an 11-year-old little boy.
[Harry] It was hitting the papers by then the bairn was missing.
And then they're making stories up
if he was some kind of urban guerrilla, you know.
[Heather] At the time that it was reported in the press that he played out,
and there were no rules and boundaries. And there were rules and boundaries.
This was a family who cared about a little boy.
But unfortunately things like that in the press don't help.
People had the idea that he was just a kid
from the west end of Newcastle that was running wild.
You couldn't be farther from the truth.
[Heather] It wasn't fair to judge this little boy
from the area he came from.
So he played out perhaps to a later time than another child might in another area.
It's not the way he is.
He would have come home, he wouldn't have done this.
And yet they were convincing everybody
that he was just a runaway.
I was annoyed that they could even think
that Wesley was being portrayed as a runaway.
The Artful Dodger.
Because I'm thinking, "They're not talking about my son.
Talking about somebody else, but not talking about Wesley."
But he wouldn't have stayed away.
If he had been all right, he would have been home.
He would never have stayed out that way, never.
[Heather] The more the time went on, the more you don't feel like
this is gonna have a good ending.
My feelings were this just wasn't a little boy
who would have gone missing.
That there was something had happened which was very, very sinister.
I am not happy that this is still a missing from home.
[narrator] It's the morning of the 6th of June, 1998.
Eleven-year-old Wesley, who needs epilepsy medication,
has been missing all night.
His family are frantic with worry,
and doing everything they can to find him.
[Liz] We decided to go out with the flyers with Wesley's picture on.
So what we were doing was like three or four doors, knocking,
"Please, can you put this in?" Or "Have you seen this child?"
And we got nowhere, really.
All we could do is pin posters out, trying to jog somebody's memory,
has somebody's seen this, that and the other.
It was just asking questions to anybody, anywhere.
You just cannot get that one bit o' luck, you cannot get that one little clue,
you cannot move forward.
You're just stuck in this same place.
Oh, because I was frantic.
There was no sleep,
'cause he was just running on fumes, I think.
If you were sat in the house, and you were tired, you felt guilty,
'cause you were sitting and weren't doing anything.
I was told to stay beside the phone, 'cause Wesley knew the phone number.
If there was any news that anybody had found him,
I had to stay at the house.
[narrator] Day Two of the missing person's investigation,
and there's a discovery.
[Liz] It was me partner, he answered the door.
And he shouted, "Liz!"
He went, "Somebody here, they've got the bairn's bike."
I don't know, I didn't walk down the stairs. I must have jumped.
And I got outside and it was a lad.
And I went, "Where did you get that bike?"
He says, "I've took it off two little girls."
And by this time, I was screaming in the street.
"They've got the bike, they've got the bike.
So where did you get me son's bike?"
"The girls just said they found it in Wingrove."
He says, "So I've took it off them and brought it back to you."
[narrator] Wingrove Road is a short 15-minute walk
from Wesley's home.
Once I found the bike and I thought,
"Well, he's not gonna leave it, he wouldn't leave his bike.
Something's happened somewhere.
[narrator] The police make an appeal for anyone who might have spotted Wesley.
Scores of people come forward claiming they've seen him.
[Trevor] The family were coming across as being very anxious.
They were going on the television appealing to the public,
which generated more sightings.
The police were making appeals to the public.
Those sightings were coming in from strangers
who thought they'd recognized him.
They were coming in from fellow school pupils.
So there was upwards of a hundred sightings of him.
So it seemed that he was in the west end of Newcastle somewhere.
They were getting phone calls, inundated, that he was down in the park,
and he was seen everywhere.
So immediately we say to the search team or uniformed officers,
"Right, get down to the park,
get down to this area, get down to the back lane."
And the police officers responded immediately.
When I was thinking at home, "Well, Wesley wouldn't do this to us.
He wouldn't stay away for days."
To me, the police wasn't listening to the family.
[Heather] Every piece of information, the police officers cling to it for hope.
But it is like an emotional roller coaster.
We wanted to find that little boy.
We wanted a happy ending.
I didn't want to tell the family bad news.
[narrator] The investigation has been running for three weeks,
but still no Wesley.
The search teams kept searching,
the sightings kept coming in, but something had to change.
[narrator] DC Trevor Fordy picks up the investigation.
[Trevor] One of the first duties I did when I took over the investigation
was to look at these sightings,
and to establish if these witnesses were positive in their sightings.
The witnesses maintained they'd seen Wesley, they knew Wesley,
so they're what we refer to as confirmed sightings in those days.
As long as that was maintained,
the inquiry was going nowhere.
It has to be accepted there was a lot of hours,
and police resources wasted
trying to follow up all these sightings of Wesley Neailey.
And that threw the inquiry from day one, basically.
From the outset, the bike was the most significant thing
as far as I was concerned,
because of Wesley's attachment to the bike.
Because, from what I understood from the family,
he would have never, ever left that bike.
Finally we've got somebody that's got experience
at these kinda things.
It wasn't 'til Mr. Fordy come in.
He got a hold of me hand and he went, "Liz,"
he says, "I've had a look at it," he says,
"and I do honestly believe your son has been abducted."
And I just looked at Mr. Fordy and I burst into tears.
I went, "So where do we go from here?"
And it was a matter of,
I'd say two days and everything was pum, straight round.
[narrator] A number of sightings have been reported by Wesley's school friends.
They all need verifying.
And one by one we were able to eliminate those sightings.
These children started withdrawing,
or that people starting withdrawing their sightings,
said they may have been mistaken.
So one by one, the sightings were starting to crumble.
We were treating it as an abduction.
And therefore it was incumbent on us to try and find him
as soon as possible.
He gave a little bit of a glimmer of hope.
Well, is it true he's been abducted?
I knew he was not in Newcastle, 'cause he would've made his way home.
He would have put a fight up.
[narrator] With Wesley's disappearance all over the media,
and the high-profile police investigation into his presumed abduction,
a name is put forward.
[Trevor] The Incident Room was contacted by a social worker
who was aware of an individual that lived in the Wingrove Road area of Newcastle,
who was forming a friendship with young boys in his area.
Within a few days, I had occasion to drive down Wingrove Road,
and was aware that the individual concerned
had a Range Rover motor car.
I saw a Range Rover motor car parked in the immediate vicinity,
and a young lad, quite a distinctive young lad, washing the car.
We dug out the house to house questionnaires,
and found the one relative to that young guy.
He was called Dominic McKilligan.
And not only had his name been put in to the system,
but he'd actually put a sighting in of Wesley.
Now that did have an effect on me,
and I wasn't comfortable with that.
[narrator] Further investigation
reveals extremely disturbing information about 18-year-old Dominic McKilligan.
We were aware from contact with Dorset Police
that he'd been involved
in abusing somewhere upwards of 40 children
in the Bournemouth area.
[narrator] Four years earlier,
Dominic McKilligan had been convicted of gross indecency against minors.
Authorities described him as seriously disturbed.
And he was also deemed capable of carrying out fantasies
of killing a child.
And decided to bring that guy in for questioning,
and, if possible, eliminate him from the inquiry.
[narrator] Dominic McKilligan is interviewed with his solicitor present.
McKilligan was relaxed.
He answered all the questions.
He said that he knew Wesley from the TV,
but he hadn't actually met him.
And again, for whatever reason, I just wasn't happy with his account.
[narrator] DC Trevor Fordy simultaneously orders a search
of McKilligan's house, but nothing is found.
We therefore had no option but to release him,
but to release him on bail.
[narrator] DC Trevor Fordy isn't satisfied
with Dominic McKilligan's account.
[Trevor] And I decided to put what's called a Police PolSA Team,
or a Police Search Team,
uniform officers to go through that house with a small toothcomb.
And then I remember distinctly
Inspector Dawson come to me and said an officer had found
a torn-up bank cheque stuck to the bottom of a bin,
and it was addressed to Wesley Neailey,
and signed by McKilligan.
[narrator] Could this be the breakthrough in the case?
[Trevor] It was necessary to prove
that he'd written the name Wesley Neailey on the cheque.
So initially we got the cheque fingerprinted,
but there was nothing positive on that.
The next thing was to look at the inks
that he'd signed the name McKilligan,
and compare it with the name Wesley Neailey as the payee.
And we quickly got the result back that the inks matched,
which meant that McKilligan
had to have written the name Wesley Neailey on the cheque.
We decided to put him under surveillance.
The reason being, if Wesley was alive, and he was locked away somewhere,
or even if he wasn't alive, we might get taken to a body.
And during the course of that surveillance
he was observed getting some number plates,
registration plates made up.
He then went to a pharmacist,
he bought razor blades and aspirin.
And we had to consider
was he looking to abduct another child?
Was he looking to cause Wesley some harm if he was still alive,
or was he looking to take his own life?
And we couldn't let the surveillance carry on.
We had additional evidence, the cheque,
so I made the decision that he was to be arrested again,
and brought back to Newcastle.
[Heather] I was given information that McKilligan
may be involved in a pedophile ring,
and that Wesley had been given to this pedophile ring.
When we brought McKilligan in again for re-interview,
it was put to him that the inks matched,
and that he had to be the person
that had written that cheque out.
That got to him,
and we thought there was going to be a breakthrough.
And indeed there was a breakthrough, but what he said was,
"I am responsible for his abduction, but I haven't harmed him.
I actually gave him to a pedophile group."
I was actually shocked.
I remember seeing him, thinking,
"He's just a slight young man."
No big signs above his head, not dressed inappropriately.
[Trevor] He was a Harry Potter lookalike,
and yet he was so confident, so relaxed, so uncaring.
And when he told me that, I couldn't believe it.
'Cause here, three, four weeks down the road,
the indications are Wesley's still alive.
[narrator] Dominic McKilligan
has told police that he's abducted 11-year-old Wesley Neailey,
and given him to a pedophile ring.
McKilligan has given the name of someone he says is involved
to the police, who follow up on this lead.
We undertook quite a lot of surveillance on this suspect's house
in the belief that there was possibly
a pedophile group that had Wesley.
And the priority was obviously, to find him.
[narrator] DC Trevor Fordy also interviews the suspect
to implicate, or eliminate from the inquiry.
[Trevor] He admitted that he'd met McKilligan
as through a newspaper advert, and he'd had a gay relationship with him.
But McKilligan had just thrown him into the mix to complicate things.
And you could say he was playing with us.
It was like a psychological thriller.
[narrator] DC Trevor Fordy
now knows that Dominic McKilligan is playing games with the police.
His next move steps things up a level.
[Trevor] His next ploy was to say
"Okay, I am responsible for his death, but it's not murder,
it was an accident."
McKilligan told us that he'd been in the house,
he'd known Wesley, he'd given him a cheque,
which attracted him back to the house.
And one day he had a mini in a garage behind his house,
and he'd heard a noise and gone out,
and Wesley was climbing all over his car, was sitting on the car roof.
Fell off when he was shouted at by McKilligan,
and hit his head on a wrench that was lying on the floor.
All they could do was interrogate him.
And they wanted a confession,
and they wanted to find out where the bairn was.
'Cause by this time, they had found the blood
on the concrete in the garage and different things,
they had been building things up.
[Trevor] It was clear to me that he'd probably hit him with the wrench,
but then he went into some detail
that because of his history, because of his past,
nobody would believe him.
So he decided to put a bin liner over his head,
and strangle him.
[dramatic music]
He'd told that many lies before.
We had to prove that what he was saying was correct.
And the ideal way of that was to try to persuade him
to take us to where Wesley was.
He finally admitted, and he took him to where the bairn was.
[narrator] McKilligan takes the police
to a remote forested area west of Newcastle.
[Trevor] Dominic McKilligan had admitted being responsible
for the death of Wesley Neailey.
And on his direction, we came here.
And he said to me, "If you walk down there to the left,
you'll see a bin liner in the undergrowth."
And I looked down and I was familiar with what Wesley had been wearing.
I could see his legs sticking out of the bin liner,
and his little shoes, and I knew he was in there.
And it was now a confirmed murder inquiry.
I remember it was a Saturday morning,
and it was the 4th of July.
Knock, knock, knock on the door.
Mr. Fordy comes in.
I went, "Have you found Wesley?"
He says, "That's what I've come to talk to you about."
And I just looked at him.
And I went, "What?" and he got on his knees,
and he held both me hands.
He went, "We've found Wesley."
And I just looked at him, I went, "And?"
He said "But I'm sorry, he's not alive."
My world just ended there.
It's the most horrible feeling
then it just flashes up to you, you're never gonna see him again.
Oh, it was horrible.
But at least we didn't have to search no more.
All we wanted to find out now is what happened and why.
Harry absolutely… His world had ended.
Angry, hurt, upset,
and just couldn't believe it.
Me dad come out, he went, "Take us to Wesley."
And Mr. Fordy says, "I'm sorry, I can't."
He went, "What do you mean you can't?"
And both me and me dad were just stood, and we were just grief-stricken.
"What do you mean you can't take me to him?"
He said "We know it's definitely Wesley", he says,
"'cause he's got his clothes on.
Everything you tell me Wesley had on," he says, "this child's got on."
He says, "So we do definitely believe it's Wesley."
By this time I wanted to vomit.
The whole of me body was shaking.
And all I kept saying is, "No, I need to go and see him.
And I need to go and see him,
I need to go and give him cuddles and kisses.
I mean, you're telling me me son's not alive."
And he's going "Liz, no please."
He's, "I don't want you to go through what we've seen."
[Trevor] He'd been there since day one, so it was about a month.
That image will live with me forever, basically.
Harry and Liz were desperate to see him, and I absolutely understand that.
And I'll always remember Harry saying,
"I just wanna look in his eyes, I just wanna see his eyes."
And I know that haunts him to this day.
[narrator] DC Trevor Fordy has more news for Liz and Harry.
He says, "We've got the person that killed your son."
And I just looked at him, I went, "You've got him? Who is he?"
"Dominic McKilligan."
McKilligan actually took them to me son's body,
and that he was wrapped up in a black bag,
and put inside a box,
and just hoyed in the ditch.
[Trevor] After finding Wesley's body,
we had then to then look at why he had to die.
The next morning,
when I got up, it was Robert's birthday,
and he had hundreds of cards.
All the police officers and everybody.
And Robert just looked at us and he went, "Mum."
And I went, "What?" He went, "Where's my Wesley's card?"
Well, the lump in me throat.
And I had to think quick, and I went, "Eh, well maybe he forgot to post it."
I went, "It is the weekend, you know,"
I says, "so maybe you might get one tomorrow."
I just didn't know what to say to him.
Try and celebrate your son's birthday
knowing that your other son isn't coming home,
it's not very nice.
It's very hard.
[narrator] Police are determined to make sure
the case against Dominic McKilligan is absolutely watertight.
[Trevor] Because of this confession,
we then got scientists up from Yorkshire,
and recovered quite a lot of forensics
putting Wesley at the house.
There was no evidence that he'd been on top of the car.
We believe he just raped him and then decided to kill him,
so that he couldn't complain.
Well, Mr. Fordy told us obviously where he lived.
Roughly 20 minutes' walk, if that.
[Trevor] During the course of the inquiry, a social worker
arrived unexpectedly at the police station in Newcastle
with this file.
Having examined the file, we knew well
the extent of his offending in Bournemouth.
As a consequence of that contact with Bournemouth police,
and got even more information.
[narrator] DC Trevor Fordy then makes a tragic discovery
about McKilligan's previous conviction.
[Trevor] Now it transpired when he was convicted in Bournemouth,
he'd missed going on the Sex Offenders' Register by one day.
Had he been on the Sex Offenders' Register,
the police would have known.
Neither Dorset Social Services or Durham Social Services
had informed Newcastle Social Services
that this guy was in their area.
[narrator] DC Trevor Fordy believes
McKilligan should face charges for both the murder,
and rape of Wesley Neailey.
At that time, the legislation was such that
to get on the Sex Offenders' Register,
a person had to be convicted of a sexual offense.
Normally, with a murder inquiry you would charge murder,
and murder on its own.
There was a rape involved during the course of that murder,
that wouldn't be charged.
However the rationale was to charge rape,
which is clearly a sexual offense,
so that McKilligan would be on the Sex Offenders' Register.
If he was only charged with murder,
he wouldn't be on the register.
But there was sufficient evidence
after liaising with the Crown Prosecution Service
to charge both murder and rape.
[Liz] The day I buried him was the 28th of August.
That was the hardest day of my life, that.
Looked at me son's coffin, and I went, "We'll never say goodbye."
And that was the hardest thing I had to ever do.
[Harry] We didn't view him, we couldn't see him, it was a sealed coffin.
And then this Norman Oliver said to Elizabeth, he says,
"I know you couldn't view the bairn,"
but he says, "Look I have picked him up,
I carried him to the van when we found him."
And he says, "I had this suit on,"
and he says, "I've never had it cleaned.
And I just kept it and you give it a cuddle."
He says, "I'm sorry that's the closest you're gonna get to him."
Oh, it was things like that.
And it was the fact that you couldn't say ta-ta to him.
That was heart-breaking.
The mother couldn't say, "Ta-ta, son." Or view him, or whatever.
There was a lot of people think that the police are this, that and the other.
They're only human. They're just like ourselves.
I thanked him for that.
That's the only closest thing I got to being next to me son again,
was to have his smell.
[Heather] To see that little coffin was just heart-breaking.
It's not what you want,
this isn't the end result that any police officer wants.
And it's absolutely heart-breaking.
And it's something I'll never forget.
[narrator] It's one year since Liz Neailey
was told that Dominic McKilligan killed her 11-year-old son Wesley.
Today, she comes face to face with him.
[Liz] The first day that I went in to Magistrates,
was the first time I actually seen McKilligan.
And I stopped breathing.
All her family and that went to the court.
When I come out me sister says to me,
she says, "Harry, I never ever thought I'd meet the Devil in this world."
And she says, "But I have, I've just seen him.
And it's McKilligan."
It was quite emotional for everyone.
There was so much media interest,
a court called the Moat Hall in Newcastle,
which hadn't been used for years, was re-opened,
specially for this case.
I went to court every day as a Family Liaison Officer
with the family,
and they wanted to see the person
that was responsible for taking their young son away from them.
And I'm sure they were as astounded as everybody else
to see this slight, young man
who was standing there with no emotions showing.
He looked harmless.
He just looked like an overgrown school kid sort of thing
and there was nothing big, or brawny, or anything about him.
Just a little weasel, and yet he'd played the game.
He pleaded not guilty.
He said it was an accident.
Well, he said he had fell off the car or something,
and banged his head and different things.
But they found a wrench with the blood on it.
[Trevor] Obviously the cases sometimes are abbreviated,
but the full thrust of how McKilligan had behaved,
how he'd told lies, how he'd diverted the inquiry,
how he'd manipulated the police…
all those things came out.
You were hearing all this thing.
And it was something that was turning your stomach
when you were there. And then you were listening to the last minutes
of the bairn's life and then you were looking,
and he just had this smirk on his face sort of thing.
And he always gave the impression
that he just felt he was smarter than everybody else.
McKilligan gave evidence in his own defense,
and admitted that he'd taken Wesley,
and put a bin liner over his head and squeezed his neck.
Clearly that was enough to convict.
McKilligan showed no remorse whatsoever.
I've never seen anything like that before.
He just got the impression he didn't even think he would go to prison.
[narrator] After a three week trial,
it takes a jury less than three hours to return its verdict.
So I can remember sitting beside me dad.
And the Judge turned round and asked the jurors about the rape charge,
and that come back guilty.
About the murder, life.
I went, "Right."
And just looked at me dad and I says, "We've got him."
I was standing behind them, but they had their hands backwards,
and were holding on to my hands,
because they needed to hear that this man was guilty.
McKilligan was eventually found guilty of murder and rape.
[Heather] I remember Harry crying and shouting out
that was the result he wanted. It didn't bring their little boy back,
but that was the result.
[Trevor] Following McKilligan's conviction at court for murder and rape,
he appealed the conviction against rape.
And for reasons that might be obvious,
i.e., how long Wesley had lain there in the countryside,
the evidence in relation to the rape was very weak.
And the Court of Appeal decided to quash that conviction.
Missed it by one day, Sex Offenders' Register.
And then for him to overturn me son's rape charge,
and he's not gonna be on the Sex Offenders' Register again,
that's a no-go area.
'Cause he's dangerous, a very dangerous person.
[Trevor] A local newspaper approached me, and approached Wesley's family,
and asked if we were interested in getting involved with them
with a campaign called Never Again.
It was a campaign to tighten the loopholes in the law.
And that was designed to change legislation,
whereby if someone was convicted of a murder
that was sexually motivated,
then they could go on the Sex Offenders' Register.
To think he missed it
being on the Sex Offenders list by one day.
And here he was just in the community,
picking his way through looking for a victim,
and he found Wesley.
All I can think of is, me son would want us to fight for other children.
I wouldn't be a mother if I didn't think that.
That Wesley's standing behind us, and he's pushing me all the way.
I know for a fact it's not gonna bring Wesley back.
But if I can save one child…
I think me son would want us to do that.
[Trevor] The local community got involved,
and the greater community of Northumberland,
and Durham got involved.
And there was so many signatures, Parliament couldn't ignore it.
And the legislation was subsequently changed.
[narrator] Dominic McKilligan was sentenced
to life imprisonment with a minimum term of 20 years.
Twenty years have now passed,
and Wesley's family don't want him to get out.
If they let him out of prison,
who's gonna put their hands up to say "We've got it wrong again"?
And when you look back at this fella's criminal history,
from a kid, he was a right lunatic.
They knew what he was,
and I don't want this man out, not to do it again.
Not to put a family through what we've went through.
We don't live, we just exist.
And it's not just the fact that he committed a crime on Wesley,
and then he's paying for it,
he's committed a crime with the whole family.
It isn't just the victim,
it's everybody around him.
It's hard, because there's still a lot of people
who was around when this all happened to Wesley.
I keep seeing Wesley,
I wonder how he would be as a grown man,
and if he would have had children or anything.
I says, well, that was taken away.
I'll never, ever come to terms with that.
He trusted everybody, and I think that's why he lost his life,
because he trusted this person.
There's not a day goes by that I don't think about him.
I just wish he had a chance to live his life
instead of being cut down the way he had.
[narrator] Wesley's death hasn't just prompted a change in the law.
[Trevor] Wesley's case had such an effect on me,
and particularly the sightings,
all the sightings intrigued me why people in the circumstances that were presented
would come forward, and give all this false evidence, basically.
But having made some inquiries, I discovered
that a similar case, very similar case in Aberdeen.
I then discovered another one in Manchester, Greater Manchester,
and I liaised with the Senior Investigating Officer on that,
and he'd had similar experiences.
Sightings, sightings, sightings all the time.
I was then co-opted onto the missing person's working group
and national working group,
and we debated this subject at length.
And decided to call them Empathetic Sightings.
So they're now known as Empathetic Sightings.
So I think the general thrust of an inquiry
changed as a result of this and these two other cases,
and that you can't always be convinced by sightings.
[Heather] Another part that the police can learn from this
is about the different agencies talking to each other.
Perhaps if we'd had knowledge
that he'd been re-released sooner from social workers,
from youth offenders.
That he was put in this area and that his background was,
I don't know, who knows, it's hindsight, but it wouldn't have harmed.
Oh, it's torture.
I mean 20 year later, and I'm still looking for answers.
I'm still wanting to find out why.
He was just an ordinary kid that went out,
went out on his bike, met a monster,
and lost his life.
[somber music playing]