[narrator] Every 90 seconds someone is reported missing.
Many return to their families,
but for others something has gone seriously wrong.
A 15-year-old girl has gone missing.
I just couldn't believe that she hadn't been to school.
[Steve] By the time Linda Jones dialed 999,
she'd been missing all day.
[narrator] It's immediately a high-risk case.
We were approaching holidays and the community were concerned
about a potential predator at loose.
[narrator] What happens in the police investigation that follows…
We identified some 30 victims over a 20-year period.
[narrator] What happens to the family at its heart…
You think you'd protect your children
and obviously, I feel that I let her down, I didn't protect her.
[narrator reading]
[people chattering]
Danielle was a very shy girl,
lacked self-confidence.
Um, but she had quite a big group of friends.
She was a very fun-loving girl.
She had a good sense of humor.
Just a really happy, fun-loving
teenage girl really.
If Danielle ever went out to meet friends or shopping,
there would never be a time where I didn't know where she was.
She would always tell me where she was going.
She had her breakfast as normal.
She was always the one to be running late, always.
She left at ten to 8:00 most mornings.
She went out the door as normal,
said goodbye to me as normal.
[narrator] Danielle's brother, Mitchell,
is watching from the window.
That morning, he watched her go out of the gate
and turn left, which was her normal route to school.
And within seconds, watched her turn 'round
and walk back past the house the other way,
which was very unusual.
But at the time, he didn't say to me. She's…
'Cause perhaps she was going 'round to the shop.
So, at that particular time he didn't mention it,
because it wasn't of any relevance that morning.
Heard absolutely nothing till,
I think it was probably about half past two.
I had a phone call from the school
to say, "Was Danielle unwell? she hadn't been at school,"
which horrified me because that wasn't something she'd do.
She was a bit of a scaredy-cat. Not that she would have been punished for it,
but she just wouldn't have ever dared to do something like that.
It got to half three and I started to phone her school friends.
They didn't seem to, any of them, have heard from her or anything,
which was very strange.
The whole thing was just not her character to do this.
And I think I then began to panic a little bit.
I phoned the police and just said,
explained that she'd gone out to school
that morning as normal.
[police officer speaking]
[Linda speaking]
[police officer speaking]
[Linda speaking]
Any missing child, there is always the potential
that something dreadful may have happened to them.
And that is why missing children are given such a high priority.
So in this case, Danielle had never been missing before.
And by the time
Linda Jones dialed 999,
she'd been missing all day and into some of the evening.
So Linda's distress was totally understandable.
It was initially dealt with by the local divisional police
as a high-risk missing person.
She was a girl that wasn't worldly-wise.
She was afraid of the dark.
And there had been no incidents of her truanting at all
from school before.
[Steve] Missing people generally go missing for a variety of reasons.
Maybe some sort of cry for help.
It may be, particularly with children,
that they have fallen out with their parents, and,
and they see this as causing stress on their parents
and solving whatever problems they've got.
[Linda] I couldn't believe she hadn't been to school.
I just don't think I could comprehend
that she'd not done what she would normally do.
I don't think I believed
that she would have bunked off school.
I don't think I really knew what to think, to be quite honest with you.
I thought by, say, 6:00, she'll turn up
and say oh, with a story, "Oh, I went, I didn't go to school."
I thought she'd just walk in with a story at any point.
But I think I was just in total disbelief of,
of what had gone on in that day.
I stayed here with a close friend in case she did come home.
Um, and just friends and family
were just trawling 'round the estate,
going to the train station,
waiting there to see if she got off a train.
Everyone was just out looking 'round the local area for hours and hours.
[Keith] The first 24 hours are very critical.
Obviously the whereabouts, last sightings.
Had she taken a mobile phone,
had she taken a change of clothing,
had she taken cash?
Was there any potential for her to catch public transport?
Really just trying to trace down her movements.
[narrator] Danielle's been missing all day.
Her mum, Linda, and dad, Tony,
speak to everyone who knows her, friends and family.
I think on the Monday evening,
Tony had gone 'round to his sister's house,
um, to see whether they'd heard from her.
And he couldn't get any answer.
Through the window, there was a lot of camera equipment
which he thought was quite a bizarre thing to be doing.
And everyone was out looking but he wasn't.
It didn't sit right with him,
didn't sit right with Tone at all.
Uh, when Tone came home, Tone was quite agitated about it.
I don't think at that time I really thought that much of it.
I think my focus was mainly on,
where is she… Where is she… Is she coming home?
I think I took on board what he said,
but I don't think at that moment
it was that relevant to me.
I was just more concerned about where she was,
why hadn't she come home?
[narrator] As night falls, Danielle is still missing.
It was the following morning when I first become aware
of Danielle's disappearance.
There was a call in
from the police, I believe.
And the then editor and his head of news desk
were clearly concerned about what might be developing.
[Linda] The police I think came back that day.
We had the dog, the sniffer dogs came
and walked all 'round the estate
in which they established the route she'd taken.
They could tell that she'd walked so far and retraced her steps.
They were able to ascertain that.
And I just think I was in total shock
that a girl that never really would put a foot out of line
suddenly went to school yesterday
and hadn't come home, uh…
I don't think I thought anything sinister had happened.
I just hoped, I think, that she would come home.
The first three days,
inquiries were made with school friends,
searches were made of her home address.
But no particular relevant evidence was found at that time.
Eventually the search expanded.
And every house in East Tilbury,
the village where she lived,
was visited by the police.
And the occupants of every address were spoken to
and asked to check their sheds
and outbuildings just to make sure that Danielle
was not hiding there.
But as hours went by,
it became clear to Grays Police
that something awful may have happened.
And that's when it was referred to headquarters,
to the major investigation section.
[narrator] Danielle Jones has been missing for three days.
The investigation steps up a gear.
[Linda] When they turned up, it was quite a shock really.
Because, although, we'd had police in and out since the Monday,
this sort of took a whole different level.
[narrator] DC Ed Mayo is the family liaison officer
assigned to the Jones family.
When you deploy to a family, you don't know what the family set up is,
the dynamics of that family.
You don't know what the relationship between mum and dad is.
Are they still together?
Or what siblings there are.
And if we were gonna find out exactly
what Danielle was like, what her routine was,
where she'd likely to go, who did she associate with?
That's all gonna come from within the family.
We had several police come in.
I was taken upstairs and asked to give statements.
Tone was sat down here, asked to give statements.
It was just a completely different level.
[Ed] I needed to take alibi statements from both Tony and Linda,
try and exclude them as being suspects.
We went to search her room and the whole house.
So, quickly I've gotta build up a rapport and start getting the things that we want.
[Steve] What we're trying to achieve
is all the information we can about Danielle
and about the family.
[Ed] She had quite a close-knit group of friends,
girlfriends who, actually they did lots together, shopping,
typical teenage girls.
But Danielle was quite naive in the way she was.
She was a, a really nice kid.
They raised concerns about
her relationship with her uncle,
which until that time,
I don't think they had been unduly concerned about.
But now that she was missing,
I think they began to become very worried
about what that relationship was all about.
[gentle music]
[narrator] Danielle Jones has been missing for three days.
There's suspicion that her uncle,
Stuart Campbell, is involved.
I think Tony had suspicions 'cause he knew Campbell had a bit of a past.
He had some sort of glamour photography business.
Although he was actually a builder by trade.
[narrator] The family may have suspicions,
the police need to find evidence.
Initial inquiries by Grays Police,
and then confirmed by the Major Investigation Team,
centered around a blue van,
the driver of which was seen speaking to a girl
fitting Danielle's description.
There was also sightings of an altercation
between somebody matching Danielle's description
with a man in a blue van.
[narrator] Danielle's uncle, Stuart Campbell,
owns a blue van.
[Steve] Once the information regarding the blue van
came to my notice,
it confirmed my worst fears
that she had been abducted.
[dramatic music]
I recall pretty quickly a press conference being set up.
A huge story was unfolding.
There was national press.
It was clear that there was some real concern
around what had happened to Danielle.
[Steve] In a case where a child goes missing,
the police rely heavily on the media
to put out appeals,
appeals for witnesses, appeals for information.
Over the years, you see parents giving press conferences
of children that have gone missing
and your heart goes out to them.
And then suddenly, to be the mother
and father having to actually do that yourself is…
Is unreal. The fact that you've got to, actually, beg your child
to come home or beg whoever,
is stopping your child coming home to let them come home,
it's just a completely unreal situation.
It's horrendous, absolutely horrendous thing to have to go through.
It's like being thrown into the lion's den, to be honest.
I met Stuart pretty much
within weeks of meeting Tony really.
Because he was going out with Tony's sister.
He was a bit of a charmer,
very full of himself.
But there was always something with Tone and him
that Tone wasn't 100% with him.
But he still couldn't have told you he didn't like him, 'cause he did.
Stuart's relationship with the children
when they were small was great, he used to play with them,
treat all of them exactly the same.
And I would say not until a year, 18 months,
before Danielle went missing
that he would take more of an interest in Danielle.
I think the boys were growing up then and weren't so interested in
playing silly games with their uncle.
[Steve] Initially, he didn't pay much attention to her.
But once she became a teenager,
he seemed to become
very friendly with her,
very interested in what she was doing.
It became apparent that her uncle, Stuart Campbell,
was quite an influence in her life at that time.
The more you delved into Tony and Linda's relationship with Danielle,
it was almost seen, from an outsider's point of view
that he had been there driving a wedge
in between Danielle and Linda.
And he had put himself in that position
as a comforting uncle but his intentions
were more than comforting.
Got on fine with him. We just fitted in altogether as a family.
No reason to distrust him in any way really.
[Keith] It certainly became clear from her friends that they thought
Danielle was having what they, in their words,
an inappropriate relationship with Stuart Campbell.
Friends would say, initially,
that she was not unhappy with this attention.
As the time drew on,
clearly she became more and more frustrated
and anxious about the attention
that Stuart Campbell was giving her.
We'd known that actually he spent a lot of time
coming to the house and speaking to Danielle
quietly, to one side.
And I think they'd been to the pictures together.
I think one of her friends said that they thought she saw her holding hands.
So it had become apparent that perhaps actually the relationship
between an uncle and his niece wasn't
perhaps as it should be.
[Steve] As Campbell became more and more of interest,
inquiries were made into his background.
And it was ascertained
that he'd had a previous conviction
about a year earlier
for abducting a 14-year-old girl,
where he'd received a suspended prison sentence.
So clearly our concerns about him as a predator
were there and were absolutely real.
And when we started to look at his background,
we identified some 30 victims over a 20-year period.
And there'd been a very common modus operandi with Campbell.
He posed as a glamour photographer.
And he would approach young girls in the Grays area,
particularly when they were around 13, 14,
starting to become young women.
And basically, he was so confident in his own ability
that he would encourage these young girls back to his home address
where he would take inappropriate photographs of them
on the premise that they were gonna be model photographs.
I don't think I really knew that he did photography particularly.
But we became to know that a young girl had been
to the police because she said he wanted
to take photos of her and wouldn't let her out of the house.
We didn't know all the details of that at the time.
Apparently he was taken in for questioning,
but let off.
And we were told, "Oh, it was all a big misunderstanding.
The girl had a bit of a hissy-fit, she wanted him to take some photos."
It was all very much brushed off, under the carpet.
We thought nothing of it, but we didn't.
It was just, "Oh, it's a big misunderstanding."
Campbell had actually convinced them, post-trial,
that he was an innocent victim
and that he wasn't guilty of this offense.
So they knew of the background of it but they'd dismissed it,
obviously, up 'til the time Danielle went missing.
Campbell was a concern to the investigation.
He was somebody, a person of interest,
who we needed
to either implicate or eliminate.
They had looked into him and found out this history he'd got.
And I don't think that from any point
there was ever any other suspect.
As you can imagine, in a week now since Danielle has gone missing,
the community concern is really heightened.
We were approaching holidays and the community were concerned
about a potential predator at loose and young people.
That the world's media really were on our case,
so there was a real level of intensity around that.
And, of course, in the background,
your ultimate aim is to try
and find Danielle safely and return her to her home.
[Steve] We conducted surveillance on him,
on that Friday, the 22nd of June,
to try and ascertain where Danielle was.
[Keith] We believed that he may be involved in her abduction
and it would have been easy to arrest him there and then.
But there was some concern and hope that Danielle was still alive.
The few hours of sleep you manage to have in all this time,
which it was few and far between,
you'd wake up and for that split second
it wasn't there. And then it's like, stabs you in the stomach that,
oh, my God, Danielle's not home,
we don't know where she is, we don't know what's happened. It's…
An absolutely awful feeling.
It's… It is like you're…
You're a bit like a zombie,
you're not living in any sort of real world.
You're still trying to sort the boys out,
get them to school, trying to be normal.
But you're just living in a complete daze.
[Keith] He was acting in a very strange way.
And certainly not the way that a concerned uncle
would naturally be.
He seemed to be spending time driving to car parks.
Taking photographs of silver cars
which matched the description of his own Nissan Primera.
And in some bizarre way,
appeared to be, sort of, building an alibi for himself.
Following that surveillance,
which lasted several hours,
he was then arrested.
[Keith] Campbell was arrested around midnight.
And he was interviewed quite intensely.
[female police officer speaking]
[Stuart speaking]
[Keith] So his initial alibi for his movements on the 18th of June
was that he'd travelled to a local DIY store at Rayleigh,
and then, he had returned home straightaway,
before working at his neighbor
to do some decking work later on that morning.
But his decision to go "no comment" I think
concreted, or cemented in our mind,
that he was a primary suspect.
I don't think I thought she was dead.
'cause I don't think I could conceive
that her uncle would hurt her.
I think probably at that point I thought, "Well, he's got her somewhere.
Why would he hurt her?"
[Keith] There was certainly an element of Tony and Linda
now having a backward look at the intensity
in which Stuart Campbell had been with Danielle
at their home address.
And certain things I think were dropping into place
that they now had real concerns about.
There was insufficient evidence to charge him,
so he was released on bail.
[narrator] The police dig deeper for more evidence.
Everything is checked and checked again.
[Ed] When they searched Danielle's bedroom,
in a pencil case there were two notes
which, said, "Hello, princess."
And that was a nickname that Campbell had given to Danielle.
It's believed that actually Campbell had put those in her room
while she was away on a school field trip.
'Cause Campbell previously had done some work around Tony and Linda's house
and fitted a new back door.
Although, we never found the keys,
we believed that actually he had a key to that house,
and that it gave him easy access when Tony and Linda weren't there.
[narrator] Simultaneous searches are carried out
at Stuart Campbell's family home.
[Steve] A team conducted a thorough search of Campbell's house,
including searching his loft.
And in that loft a bag was discovered
containing a number of significant articles.
In the bag was found a pair of white hold-up stockings.
And on one leg of the stockings,
we found a small item of blood.
And when that was subject to further examination,
there was a mixed DNA profile of Danielle
and Stuart Campbell in that stain.
[Ed] That was very hard to explain to Tony and Linda.
That actually there are a pair of stockings
in a bag that effectively had some sort of sexual nature to it.
Uh, and Danielle's DNA was on those stockings.
It was very hard. I think it was hard for Tony.
He felt helpless and hopeless that he couldn't do anything,
and that it's terrible.
But also, it's very good evidence to convict him.
[narrator] All the indicators are pointing police to one conclusion.
I believe Campbell had an obsession
regarding Danielle,
one that developed
since she became a, a teenager.
And the nature of that relationship is still unknown to us.
It was certainly inappropriate and probably unlawful.
We honestly believed that Danielle's been murdered.
Campbell was our main suspect.
We believed it. We just needed to prove it.
[narrator] Fifteen-year-old Danielle Jones has disappeared.
Police believe that she's been murdered by her uncle, Stuart Campbell.
At that time, from June the 23rd,
we were satisfied that he was the person responsible
for Danielle's disappearance.
But that couldn't be relayed to the public
because we can only name an offender
once they're charged.
[Gary] There's some real momentum now with this story
and it's clear now
that this is no longer a missing persons investigation.
The severity was clear.
At this point they started to do search areas.
They did, on the Saturday I believe it was,
a public search down by the Thames,
which is literally down the road to us.
[Gary] There was almost like an eerie silence
and seriousness within the people involved.
And their determination to try and help the family,
and come up with something in the search. It was…
I remember being taken aback
by how many people had actually got involved
in something like that at such short notice.
There was always that anticipation
that something at any moment could be turned up
that could be a significant piece of evidence, or,
or something even worse.
And there was always that heightened feel
about any of those searches.
The only person that wasn't involved was her uncle.
Surely, he would be the first one to be involved
when he had a close relationship with her,
thought a lot of her.
And yet, he was probably the only person
I could think of that never got involved in searching for her.
[Ed] Linda's hopes were always
Danielle was gonna just walk straight back in.
Linda realized actually when we started searching deep water
and we were looking in disused buildings
and it was really ramping up,
that we believe the hypothesis is,
Danielle's been murdered,
we're looking for a body,
and this is why we are searching in these places.
[Linda] They were searching in the local area with
police that were searching underwater.
And I think that tipped me over the edge a little bit.
I think part of me knew,
but a bigger part of me didn't want to know,
didn't want to accept
that that is what the outcome was gonna be.
And I think the more the investigation went on and the more we were told,
I knew she was dead,
but you still can't quite get that…
That slither of hope that they're wrong,
she's gonna walk through the door.
The first contact we had from Danielle wasn't to us,
it was to her uncle.
He was very keen to show them a text message
that he'd received on his phone from Danielle
which said, "Hi Stu wot u up 2.
I'm in so much trouble."
Just hearing that someone had had contact,
for me was a bit of a relief.
She's alive.
Everything will be all right.
There's gonna be ups and downs until that point, but she's alive.
And you cling to that hope for the amount of time
until you hear anything different.
I clung to the hope that,
well, someone's heard from her, so everything's fine,
there's obviously an issue, but she's fine.
And I think that's all I cared about at that moment.
Linda is really upset at this point.
She can't understand why Danielle hasn't contacted her,
why she hasn't come home
and why she would contact Stuart Campbell?
As the days went on,
and as they became aware of Stuart Campbell's background,
they then realized that this wasn't such positive news,
it was, in fact, quite sinister news.
Once the investigation's progressing,
we sought the assistance of a range of experts.
The introduction of a telephone expert into the inquiry really cemented our view
that Stuart Campbell had lied
about his alibi on the 18th of June.
Campbell had said that at the time Danielle
went missing on her way to school that morning,
that he was at a do-it-yourself shop in Rayleigh.
And that, having been to that shop,
first of all, he didn't buy anything, which was suspicious,
but on returning back to the Grays area,
he was delayed
and that he'd telephoned his wife.
When cell site analysis was carried out
regarding that phone call that he made to his wife,
it was proved that his telephone
was actually not in Rayleigh,
but that the call was made
from the East Tilbury, Corringham area.
That was strong evidence that Campbell was lying.
We also employed the services of a forensic linguist
to actually analyze the language
she was using in those text messages,
and compared it to language that she'd used
in other text messages which we knew that she was sent,
and they were very, very different.
In one of the messages that Stuart Campbell
had sent to his own phone purporting to be Danielle,
he's used the word what, spelt W-O-T.
Danielle never spelt the word, "wot,"
she spelt it in the normal spelling.
[Steve] The fact that the cell site analysis
proved that his phone and Danielle's phone
were so close together
during the first couple of days
that she was missing was significant evidence.
As inquiries developed regarding Stuart Campbell,
once we learnt more about his background,
once we identified
his predilection
for girls of Danielle's age,
it really only confirmed my fears
that she'd been murdered.
Inquiries continued regarding him,
and other offenses
that he had committed came to light.
Inquiries regarding his computer
identified that he had been taking photos
of other young women,
some without their consent.
So on the 17th of August,
when he answered his bail
he was rearrested and charged with those offenses.
[narrator] In the background, police are building their case
against Campbell for Danielle's murder.
[Steve] We had so much circumstantial evidence
that the case to us
appeared to be very strong,
notwithstanding Danielle hadn't been located.
We worked with the Crown Prosecution Service.
And between November
when he was charged with murder and kidnap,
there was then almost a year
before the trial.
I can't believe that someone
who had watched
Danielle grow up from a baby…
[exhales]
could end up doing something like this.
It's just, you always assume
that children that go missing, or anyone that gets murdered
is something quite a random thing to happen
from someone you don't know.
I don't think in a million years,
I would have ever dreamt
someone in my own family would have done this.
[Ed] Linda and Tony were very angry,
angry that they had allowed
Campbell into their home,
allowed that relationship to develop and not noticed it.
People did say, how did you not know,
how did you not know that that was going on?
And it was just, he was very clever, manipulative.
He knew what he was doing
when he was speaking with Danielle,
when he was like pushing that barrier
between her and Linda.
And it's just difficult 'cause you don't see it,
unless you're aware of it you just don't see it.
He was very clever.
I think that was where the anger stems from,
that actually perhaps they could have stopped it previously,
but didn't because they didn't know.
[Steve] There was shock in the community
that an uncle of Danielle
had been charged with her murder and kidnap.
At the same time,
I think there was some relief
that there wasn't still someone at large
who may be responsible for abducting young girls.
[narrator] Stuart Campbell has been charged with kidnap and murder.
But sightings of Danielle are still being reported to police.
[Steve] As a result of all the appeals
that Essex Police made,
we had 830 different sightings,
alleged sightings, of Danielle
throughout England,
the United Kingdom, Europe,
and some other places in the world.
The sightings, there were hundreds and hundreds of sightings
that went on for months and months.
Uh, I think the sightings did
initially give me hope that,
yeah, she's been seen.
But then as I sort of would be out
or myself see girls from the back
and even myself think it was her, I think the reality
that any of them probably were her was fading.
This provided
a massive logistical problem
for Essex Police,
particularly after Campbell had been charged with murder.
Because every sighting
had to be investigated
and eliminated.
Because if there was the slightest chance
that Danielle was alive,
and that particular sighting
had not been properly investigated,
it would have been easy
for the defense
to raise that during the trial
and leave some shadow of doubt
that Danielle was still alive.
And, therefore, the case of murder
could not be proved.
[dramatic music]
[siren blaring in distance]
[narrator] 43-year-old, Stuart Campbell,
has been charged with the kidnap
and murder of his 15-year-old niece, Danielle.
Her brothers need to be told what's happened.
When, um, we had to tell the boys
that their uncle had been arrested
and was responsible for Danielle's disappearance,
it was a really difficult time.
Mitchell was possibly just turned 11, by then, Ryan was 13.
How do you tell…
How do you tell your sons that…
[clears throat]
…not only is your sister dead but your uncle is responsible?
How do you… How do you word that?
Um…
So our FLOs came 'round
and we asked them to be here while we told them.
And we told them exactly that.
Your sister's been murdered and this is who's responsible.
I don't think Mitchell really comprehended it,
Ryan did, I think.
And they just disappeared upstairs and our FLO went up
and spoke to them and they were fine.
But I never ever thought I'd be in a situation,
to tell my sons that their sister was dead,
and to tell them that a family member
was responsible.
That was probably the point where I thought,
well, I've… I've got to accept
this is what's happened and that I'm never gonna see her again.
[narrator] Nearly one year after Danielle went missing,
Stuart Campbell goes on trial for her kidnap and murder.
[Keith] By the time we came to trial in November,
we had obtained huge amounts of circumstantial evidence.
On this occasion, we didn't have a body,
we didn't have a deposition site.
But we did have a scene of crime
in so much that we had the searches
at Stuart Campbell's home address.
Because of the absence of a body, we had to prove negatives.
So we had to show that as a 15-year-old girl,
Danielle wasn't worldly-wise.
She was afraid of the dark.
She wasn't the sort of person that would simply have run away.
We had to prove things like the fact that she hadn't taken
her mobile phone charger,
she hadn't taken a change of clothing and she had no money.
All the things you'd expect a young person to do
if they were planning on running away from the family home.
[Linda] I went every day, Tone went, I would say 90% of the time
but he still had to earn a living.
So I went every day.
And there were things I heard that I really didn't wanna hear.
But you're almost compelled that you need to hear it.
It wasn't pleasant a lot of it.
But I think come that point there wasn't a lot else
that could upset us, to be honest.
On the first day, I went up to report on the trial,
my eyes were immediately drawn over to,
to where Campbell was sitting in the box.
And I just remember him seeming,
had, definitely had an air of confidence about him,
that he seemed un-phased with what was going on around him,
what the prosecution was saying, what he was being accused of.
Almost bordering on arrogance I would have said.
I don't think I looked at him at all, I couldn't.
Just the fact that he was in there was quite hard.
[Gary] During trial, I would see Linda in the public gallery
and it sticks in my mind of just how upset
and traumatized Linda seemed,
and you couldn't help but feel for her. It was…
It was a very emotional time.
[Ed] Campbell was very quiet whilst sat in the dock…
And at all times he had to have a connection
with his defending team.
And let's say passing notes.
If he was not happy with one of the witnesses,
th-there quickly would be a scribbled note through.
Clearly, he wanted to have a certain amount of control
over what was being asked of each witness.
We would never have got through it without the support
we had from family and friends.
But I think the support of our FLOs was outstanding.
I really don't think we would have got through it without them.
It was a long, long trial, long trial, harrowing.
[narrator] The 11-week trial finally draws to a close.
Following the jury's deliberations,
they returned a verdict, a majority verdict,
of guilty of murder and guilty of kidnapping Danielle.
I can't think of a situation that is,
that is worse than being someone
that you've trusted, trusted with your children,
let into your home, be part of your life,
do something so horrendous
to someone that supposedly they thought the world of.
How?
I can't comprehend that even now.
I think life should be life.
But he got a sentence of 23 years.
[dramatic music]
[Steve] I was elated.
Most of all for Tony and Linda,
but also for the investigation team
and everybody on Essex Police
who had worked so hard
for almost two years.
[Linda] I live with guilt quite a lot because
you protect your children.
[crying] You like to think you'd protect your children
and obviously, I feel that I let her down,
I didn't protect her.
Had I known possibly what she was going through
I could have done something about it.
But I didn't and I feel guilty
that I wasn't aware of that.
And I just feel guilty that I wasn't able to protect her,
which was, as a mum is your job.
And I didn't fulfil that job for her.
He's still alive and still will come out
with a life at the end of it.
And she never will.
But to say where her body is, he's got to admit he's done it.
And I don't know that he ever will.
But we still haven't got our daughter back and that is torture.
After the trial,
I hosted a press conference
with the media.
And during that time,
I made the declaration
that Essex Police would never stop searching
for Danielle's body.
[narrator] Until Danielle's body is found,
this case remains open.
In May, 2017,
16 years after she disappeared,
police get a tip-off about a possible burial site.
[Ed] Just last year there was, some information come to light.
And a number of garages were demolished
and dug up in the hope that actually this is gonna be
where we expect to find Danielle.
So obviously, I was with the family again,
going down, keeping them informed what was happening.
At the time, I remember being quite optimistic
that Danielle's body was gonna be found
and there would be some closure for Linda,
Tony and the rest of Danielle's family.
Whilst we were all hopeful this would produce
some evidence, I wasn't confident,
knowing how intense the searching
had been during the 12-month period of the investigation.
[Gary] So after all of these efforts
by police there's no body found,
and I couldn't help but think
just how horrendous
that must have been for
Tony, Linda,
and their other children.
That Danielle wasn't found
and they weren't able to lay her to rest
in the way they'd want to.
[Ed] Linda's desperate to get Danielle back now.
Now, even now, she's desperate,
that's all she wants, is Danielle back,
to actually bring her home.
To get 100% justice, which is getting her back.
Without that, we've been robbed of some of the justice
that she deserves, and she does deserve that. [crying]
She deserves to be brought home and…
[clears throat and sniffles]
…and put somewhere nice not just discarded,
which is what she has been.
The only thing I would say to him
if he ever was in a position to listen,
is to do the right thing.
Just once, do the right thing
and give her back to us.
[gentle music]