[ominous music]
♪ "Pretty little thing," he says to me ♪
♪ "Pretty little thing" Don't mess with me ♪
♪ "Pretty little thing, you're mine now" ♪
[narrator] John Lowe has welcomed Christine Lee
and her children into the home he shares
with his partner, Sue Wilson.
John Lowe was the closest thing to a father that I ever got.
[narrator] The move is far from conventional.
Christine had obviously been involved
in a romantic relationship with John Lowe,
which was running in parallel with his romantic relationship with Sue.
[narrator] Pressure at the farmhouse mounts.
We got threats, so the idyllic family home is changing.
-[barking] -[narrator] Until breaking point.
♪ How I love to build you up ♪
♪ Just so I can bring you down ♪
[ominous music]
[heartbeat thudding]
[melancholic music]
[narrator] Teenage sisters Stacy and Lucy Lee
think they're about to live their every dream.
[Stacy] I remember being in my mom's car.
I remember thinking I'm gonna get a puppy. I was so excited.
And we drive into this driveway,
and it looked like Hansel and Gretel's cottage,
and there's monkeys, and there's parrots,
and there's horses, and there's animals everywhere.
It was like being at a really cool zoo.
I loved it. I thought it was magical.
[narrator] Their mom, 32-year-old Christine Lee,
separated from their father and they're moving from London to Surrey.
[Jill] She's setting up home, trying to make a good life
for herself and her daughters,
and one of the ways she tries to do that is to go
and buy a puppy, 'cause we know the joy a puppy can bring in a family home.
[Stacy] I loved dogs. I'd always had dogs.
My granddad had always had dogs. I loved my granddad, I loved the dogs,
so I wanted a German Shepherd.
[narrator] Older sister Lucy wants a puppy too.
The girls are close.
[Sallie] Lucy Lee, she was an incredibly strong creature.
She was somebody that would challenge.
She was described by Stacy
as always being the one to protect her when she was a kid.
And during this experience, they met John Lowe.
[narrator] Fifty-eight-year-old John Lowe
and Sue Wilson have been running the stud farm
at Keepers Cottage for 20 years.
[Jill] Sue was somebody that ran a dog grooming business,
and John Lowe got together in a relationship with Sue,
and together they moved into a farmhouse.
[narrator] The girls meet John and Sue
and leave the farm with a puppy.
Mom Christine leaves with an unexpected proposition
from John Lowe.
He arranged a date with my mom and they went on a date.
[narrator] It's an unlikely turn of events.
I always thought he was a bit old, to be honest with you.
I was like, "Why is she with him? He's so old," because she was lovely,
you know, she was beautiful, she was pretty.
[narrator] After a few months dating John Lowe,
Christine makes a move to provide a kind of normal life.
It seems an odd move,
but in the context of Christine's life, maybe not.
[Jill] We know she's struggling with her mental health.
There's a lot of issues still going on for Christine.
Housing was a problem, debt was a problem, her own wellbeing was a problem,
and here she is with two girls.
[narrator] It's hardly a conventional step,
but she and the children move in with an established couple.
They ended up moving into the farm,
and John Lowe stepping into the position of being,
I suppose, a quasi father,
as the relationship between him and Christine developed.
So John Lowe was the closest thing to a father
that I ever got.
[narrator] At Keepers Cottage, Christine and her daughters find refuge.
It's a vast piece of land, it's pretty remote,
and the farmhouse was sitting within it,
so it'd be quite some way from anybody close by.
[suspenseful music]
[narrator] The new father figure in their lives offers protection.
He was a big man, so he had a real physical presence.
He also had not one, but several guns,
which, again, is a very clear communication of protection.
This is a man that's got a house in the middle of nowhere,
who's got guns, who's got all these protection dogs.
They were in a bubble, their own little world,
and Christine could literally protect her girls
from the horrors outside by actually being in this space
with John and Sue.
[narrator] With John and Sue, Christine feels safe.
She's with other people who are nurturing, who are kind,
compassionate, but also who are very generous,
not only in terms of their time and their attention,
but also financially.
He did so many lovely things for my mom.
He took her out for dinner.
He bought her lovely things and would treat us kindly.
[narrator] John Lowe is not short of money.
The puppy breeding business appears lucrative.
Thousands and thousands of pounds every single week.
There was always money in the cupboard, you know, like stacked up.
John Lowe would pull out £50 notes by the handful.
He liked having money. It made him feel good.
[narrator] And money's not the only perk to living on the farm.
[Stacy] I thought it was magical, the farm,
because if you've got a parrot that's talking back at you,
and you've got monkeys, you know, you've got dogs
that would literally do anything for you,
it's magical because you are getting love from all different angles.
[narrator] The new living arrangement presents advantages for John Lowe, too,
free and willing helpers.
[Stacy] Lucy and I would start about six in the morning.
We'd clean kennels, we'd clean stables,
we'd clean the monkeys, we'd feed the horses,
so we were kept incredibly busy.
[Dr. Babb] He took advantage of these young children,
and actually saw them as extensions of himself,
and objects that he could use for his own game.
[tense music]
[narrator] Things are far from usual at Keepers Cottage,
but the arrangement appears to work.
[Sallie] Christine had obviously been involved
in a romantic relationship with John Lowe, which was running in parallel
with his seemingly romantic relationship with Sue.
[Stacy] Sue was described as the housekeeper, and was for a long time.
It wasn't like Sue was the other woman.
[narrator] But for Jill Barr,
who has a career investigating domestic abuse,
there are red flags.
Is Sue really happy as the so-called housekeeper?
Is this what John said in order to allow and enable Christine
to feel comfortable at beginning to a relationship with him?
Was this a way of John keeping Sue low down,
down below Christine?
He would seem to be controlling the dynamics in that house.
[narrator] The relationship does cause friction between the two women.
I remember Sue was a lot older than my mom,
so she was no competition.
There's like 23 years.
Sue and my mom's relationship was, obviously,
very difficult, as you can imagine. It wasn't a positive relationship,
but my mom decided to stay with John, and that's how it was.
[Jill] There's a lot of issues still going on for Christine,
it would seem that the problems are still ongoing for her.
She's vulnerable.
[suspenseful music]
[narrator] Lucy and Stacy soon witness the darker side
of the puppy farm business.
[suspenseful music]
If an animal was not doing what it was supposed to do, it'd be gone.
[dog barking]
There was no regard for their life,
there was no regard for, actually, that was a lovely, living animal.
He did not care.
[narrator] John Lowe is licensed to own a gun.
In the 1980s, John applied to the local constabulary
for a shotgun, to have a shotgun license,
which given, living on a farm, would seem completely plausible.
[dramatic music]
He would frequently make reference to the need to,
for example, make sure that he could dispose of predators,
so foxes, rats, matters of that sort.
[narrator] But the reason he gives for owning the guns,
controlling rodents and foxes, does not tally with what the girls see.
I never saw him once shoot a rat or a fox ever.
[narrator] Those who know him
suspect that John Lowe is also shooting the dogs.
[Sallie] There was no dignity in death.
The animal would simply be burnt, and so there's that oddity
about the way that he suggested to the authorities
that he would behave with the guns,
and the way that he actually behaved with the guns.
[narrator] And John Lowe is hardly a responsible gun owner.
Guns are supposed to be kept in a sealed cabinet.
John Lowe never did that, so they were always everywhere.
You know, they weren't stored away properly.
There was always shotgun cartridges everywhere in the house.
He just used to like to shoot things.
That's how he looked at animals,
that's how he looked at everything in his life,
if it was of purpose to him.
So Lucy and I were of purpose
because we would clean.
Sue was of purpose
because she would tolerate things. My mom was of purpose
because I think he loved her at one point.
But as soon as something didn't have a purpose, it was dead.
[suspenseful music]
[narrator] Life down on the farm is suddenly not so idyllic.
Lowe takes risks with how he works
and what he asks the girls to do, dangerous risks.
[Stacy] There was one incident
where there was about 12 German Shepherds in a pen.
One of their trap doors had got locked,
and the key was left on the other side,
so I was told that I had to climb over the fence,
go into the pen where all these dogs were,
and some of them were really, really vicious,
so you learn quickly.
[dramatic music]
I felt so good 'cause I managed
to get through the dog hatch through, and I'd done it,
and I got the key, and I didn't get bitten,
and I thought that was normal.
You and I would've maybe seen the red flags differently,
but if we think about where Christine had come from,
the red flags may not have registered
because, in comparison, they were relatively minor.
[barking]
[narrator] The red flags keep coming
over the next six years, and it's not just the animals
that present a danger to the young girls.
[Jill] Then the real John started to show his face.
We've got incidents of abuse,
we've got incidents where the police are called,
we've got threats, we've got all this going on
with quite a short space of time, so the idyllic family home is changing.
[narrator] By the mid '90s, violence is a daily part of the Lee family life,
but they stay on the farm.
She certainly suffered physical assault at his hands.
[suspenseful music]
[narrator] It's not just the girls on the receiving end
of John Lowe's violence and intimidation.
We know that there was a fight between him and Sue,
which resulted in police intervention,
and John actually stating that he wanted to shoot Sue.
All I remember about that time was that Sue never hit John, ever,
but John would hit both my mom and Sue.
[suspenseful music]
She did try to report it,
but he hurt her so many times,
you give up in the end.
[narrator] A report results in an officer requesting
to have Lowe's shotgun taken away,
but the request goes nowhere.
[Stacy] I don't know how he got away with anything
in regards to how he treated animals, how he treated people,
but he got away with it.
[narrator] John Lowe's character
and the standing in the community might explain
why the authorities took no action.
He was like, oh, thought of as a really great guy
in the community.
[Dr. Babb] John probably had a character
that comprised different sides, and he was careful to show
different sides to different people,
so when the police came and he was talking to them,
and Sue actually stated that he wanted to shoot her
or he said he wanted to shoot her.
It seemed at odds with the police officer's idea,
knowledge and experience of John,
and that led them to believe him rather than Sue.
[tense music]
[narrator] Around Christmas in 1997,
Sue receives an ultimatum.
[Jill] Things were changing in that household,
when the issue would appear to be John wants Sue to go.
[Stacy] John wanted her out.
He wanted her gone from the farm, so he gave her some money.
[tense music]
[Jill] And he said there's a place for her to go, you know, a flat.
She doesn't wanna go, and she's saying,
"I put into this. I'm entitled to half,"
which John quite clearly does not want to give her.
You have evidence that there had been physical violence done
to the woman who lives in the premises, where guns are kept.
It's not a very healthy situation.
It's got obvious risks.
[suspenseful music]
[tense music]
[narrator] The risks of domestic violence
at Keepers Cottage, and a man licensed to own a gun,
are not picked up by the police back in the 1990s.
[Stacy] They did nothing. They didn't arrest him.
He was let go.
There was no consideration of the women's safety,
there was no consideration of safety full stop, to anything
because as they described him,
he was a diamond in the rough.
[tense music]
[narrator] As the battle for the farmhouse continues
between John and Sue, Christine has problems of her own.
We know that Christine had gone to a GP and was actually taken antidepressants
and had been referred for counseling.
[Stacy] Lucy had bad episodes as well, so did I,
where we'd get terribly depressed about everything
because it was so violent.
They would hide some of it from the normal world
so others wouldn't see it, and try and get on as best they could.
[narrator] Despite the challenges with her mental health,
Christine works hard and tries her best
to be a good mother for Stacy and Lucy.
Christine was always working because she had to
because she was bringing up those two girls on her own.
She was very strong as a woman,
and she was very protective of the girls.
[narrator] Lucy, the oldest sister of the two,
is particularly close to Christine.
She was really kind, really sweet,
very intelligent, very artistic.
She was very, very close to her mom,
whereas Stacy was always the one who would push the boundaries
and want to experience the outside of life.
They were very different girls,
very different personalities.
Lucy was almost like, well, on her mom's aprons, you know?
It felt like that, almost. She would always be by her mom's side.
[suspenseful music]
[dog barking]
[narrator] As the girls grow and spend less time at Keepers Cottage,
Sixty-eight-year-old John Lowe has allowed the puppy farm to slip.
[Jill] There is more complaints from people
about having puppies that aren't being bred correctly,
there's discrepancies in paperwork,
the standards that the puppies are being brought into
are ones that are raising concerns, so we've got the police
being called up to the farm fairly regularly,
and we've also got environmental health, and animal services has been called in.
[dog barking]
[Dr. Babb] And when they were investigated,
the condition of the dogs were seen in various states of neglect.
The dogs were not only neglected, but also kept in inhumane conditions.
[suspenseful music]
[narrator] Alongside investigations by environmental health,
John's Puppy Farm makes national headlines after an undercover investigation.
[Stacy] There was a documentary.
They came in and looked at the farm
and the puppies, et cetera, and John Lowe lost his license
for breeding dogs, and that changed everything.
[narrator] He may have lost his license to breed dogs,
but John retains his license to keep shotguns.
It's difficult to think that the police and the firearms licensing department
would not have been aware of the issues raised by the,
for example, the documentary about him and the puppy farming,
that they didn't seem to join up the dots
that this was a man who had a terrible temper,
who was aggressive, who was volatile,
unpredictable, and who had access to a number of firearms at his disposal.
There's a lot going on now that's starting to maybe unravel this life
that John had envisaged for himself,
and also we've got the dynamics of Christine
and her two daughters being on the farm as well,
so it's a very, very mixed dysfunctional situation that's going on.
[melancholic music]
[narrator] Despite losing his license to breed dogs,
a year later, John Lowe is still selling puppies
at Keepers Cottage Stud.
He was still breeding, he was always breeding.
John was intent to continue what he was doing
because, I think, fundamentally,
he didn't see anything wrong with what he was doing.
[narrator] But Stacy does see something wrong.
Now 30, and with a family of her own, she distances herself from the farm.
I moved away, just stayed away for a bit.
Stacy has seen the flags.
She's no longer happy with the situation
and she's not prepared to endure it anymore.
[narrator] The move causes tension
as Stacy loses touch with Christine and Lucy.
[Stacy] It was really difficult because my mom,
as far as I could see was being used, Lucy was being used,
I'd been used, and I didn't wanna know.
I'd got my children and I'd had enough.
I don't want my children around men that shout at women.
I do not want it.
I learned to cope so much better
because I basically thought, "I'm not doing this anymore.
I'm not being someone's slave, or used,
or not being paid, or being told what to do, no."
[narrator] With no license to breed dogs within the law,
and a family in turmoil, John Lowe is on the brink of ruin.
[Dr. Babb] And this must have been devastating for John.
His control on his little sanctuary, if you like, was slowly slipping.
[narrator] Stacy is worried about what Lowe will do next.
So to take someone's power away with any abuser,
and his power was to make money and breed dogs,
to take that away from him was dangerous.
[suspenseful music]
[narrator] By 2009, John Lowe has been prosecuted twice
in relation to the dogs at Keepers Cottage Stud.
He's got no regard, clearly, for authority,
because around the same time,
he's put in planning permission and that was declined.
What does John do?
Ignores it all, carries on doing what John wants to do
'cause it's about John. Everything is about John.
John needs to get his needs met.
We know that in addition to the conditions on the puppy farm,
he was also prosecuted for theft of a dog.
And so we can see that he was a shady character
that would go to any length necessary in order to ensure that his puppy farm
and his reputation as a breeder would stand.
[barking]
[narrator] Mandy Farance later manages a reptile rescue
at Keepers Cottage and witnesses John's illegal activity.
[Mandy] There was a few times at the farm
that we'd go in in the morning and he'd put the male in with the females.
He was basically, "This is my land, I'll do what I like on it,
and if you don't like it, go away."
[suspenseful music]
[narrator] Sue, still living at Keepers Cottage,
is in declining health.
[Sallie] Sue was living, at a stage of her life
when she was very unwell, in conditions of real squalor.
There were mattresses on the floors. It was unsanitary.
That's the best way of describing it.
And it's really, I think, that which took Stacy
back to the farm on a rather more permanent basis.
[narrator] Stacy feels the need to help Sue
and returns to Keepers Cottage,
a place that has changed dramatically in the five years since she's been gone.
[Stacy] It was run down, it was dirty, it needed cleaning,
it needed basic stuff, painting, carpets cleaned,
new kitchen, all of those sorts of things.
[narrator] It was a difficult situation for Stacy.
She was close to Sue after spending so many years with her.
[Mandy] It was an almost surrogate mother type thing.
She loved Sue to bits, yeah.
She's somebody that was intent on making sure
that Sue, who she regarded as second mother,
should not end her life in the squalor that Stacy found her in.
[narrator] John Lowe soon slips into old habits
in his relationship with Stacy.
His temper was terrible. It was so erratic.
[Mandy] I didn't like the way he spoke to Stacy or the way he treated her.
It was a bit slave-like. "This needs cleaning, this needs doing."
One day he could be nice as pie, but then 10 minutes later,
he'd come out effing and blinding and screaming and shouting
and calling her all the names under the sun for no reason.
And it was like something just clicked.
[narrator] Staying at Keepers Cottage was no longer an option,
but staying away was not an option either.
[suspenseful music]
And I was frightened what he was gonna do to Sue,
to the point I moved Sue out to my house,
but he went mad that I had the audacity
to move her in with me, so I had to take her back.
So it was that bad. It was scary bad.
But I had to look after her. There was no one else.
I didn't want her going into a home.
[suspenseful music]
[narrator] Twelve Months later, Sue Wilson dies.
John turns violent and threatening.
[Stacy] Sue had died.
His temper was terrible. He was burning all of Sue's stuff,
literally piling up Sue's stuff, taking it out.
And then I said something, I can't even remember,
I think I was making something, and he threatened to,
he got the gun and he, I heard it,
so you hear the-- the noise.
And he said, "If you don't fuck off, I'm gonna blow you up."
[ominous music]
And I ran, and I ran, and I ran.
Once he threatened Stacy with a gun, I was worried, obviously,
because I'd had my granddaughter at the farm,
Stacy had had the children up there,
and we basically decided it wasn't safe to stay there.
[narrator] Stacy moves out of the farm and reports John's behavior to the police.
I thought he'd gone bonkers.
I thought he was gonna go and kill himself, actually.
He became... odd.
Like, creepy odd, and would say things that were so inappropriate.
He was just-- became worse.
I thought he was gonna kill himself,
or kill... people.
I don't think you can put to one side the fact of his age.
He was, I think, in his 80s,
and there is the specter of, perhaps, diminishing cognitive ability,
but still having access to lethal weapons.
At this point, police intervened and took away his guns, thankfully.
[narrator] Mandy and Stacy rescue the dogs from the farm.
[Mandy] I then went there with Stacy,
and the RSPCA and the police, to remove a lot of the dogs
because they were in Stacy's name,
and he stood there with the police next to him,
"If I had my guns, I'd shoot the lot of you,"
in front of the police, and they did nothing.
The dogs, I managed to get out, I had 14 dogs in my kitchen.
It was ridiculous.
[narrator] Stacy's relationship with her mom and sister becomes fraught.
They're still part of Lowe's life at the farm,
despite his threats to shoot Stacy.
They were coming and going, coming and going,
but it was, again... odd.
It was all a bit weird. It was too uncomfortable.
So, Sue had gone, so I'd done my job, I'd looked after her.
That was it.
[narrator] Lucy and Christine are in a constant state of fear.
Their arguments were horrendous by this stage.
Really, really bad.
The pressure was on for John, everything was going on,
and everything was going wrong for him.
[suspenseful music]
[tense music]
[narrator] After numerous calls to police over disputes
between Stacy and Lowe, things appear to settle down,
but only because Stacy agrees to withdraw any charges
that may have been brought
after she was threatened with a gun by Lowe.
She did not pursue that allegation.
That doesn't mean to say that she ever accepted
that John didn't threaten her in that way.
This was a man who'd been her stepfather, effectively,
who apologized to her,
and she didn't want to cause him any more difficulty.
Sue had died.
The place was a squalid mess.
He was aging, and she felt very strongly
that she couldn't contribute to the difficulties
that she perceived he had.
[ominous music]
[narrator] John Lowe called Surrey Police to request his guns back,
claiming to have a hen on the loose.
Unbelievably, John was given five of the seven guns back.
There was a matrix of information about him
that should have been raising red flags,
and the red flags tracked back to the 1990s.
They were consistent.
You had this man uttering a threat to kill,
and yet still the guns were returned to him.
[ominous music]
[narrator] Stacy is unaware.
Christine and Lucy are also unaware as they make plans to follow Stacy's lead
and move out of Keepers Cottage for good.
[Dr. Babb] Christine and Lucy had actually decided to leave,
and had begun removing their belongings.
John may have felt that he was not only been disobeyed,
but also betrayed.
With my mom leaving, it was a very dangerous situation she was in,
incredibly dangerous.
[narrator] They have no idea just how dangerous.
Lowe is, again, the owner of a gun,
and one day he uses it.
[Lucy panting]
He shot Christine in the farm premises
or very close by, and it's clear that Lucy was aware of it.
It's clear that Lucy had seen it.
[narrator] He is now hunting Lucy down.
[Cass] John had threatened her with a shotgun,
and that he had chased her down the lane of the farm.
Now, I've been to the farm and that is a really long, straight track,
and that must have been so frightening.
I mean, she would've been running for her life.
She must have been an incredibly brave woman
to have gone into the situation of knowing
that here was her former stepfather
roaming around the property with a loaded weapon,
having shot her mother,
and knowing that the reality was she would be next.
[narrator] An hour after Lucy's frantic call to police,
there's a dramatic standoff at Keepers Cottage.
[Jill] Firearms officers were deployed,
and you can see John walking out the farmhouse
and surrendering himself into custody.
This was four months after the return of the firearms
that were removed from him then given back to him.
[narrator] Now living away from Keepers Cottage,
it's a Sunday when Stacy receives a visit.
I made a Sunday dinner and there's a knock on the door.
It was about quarter to one,
and that's when the clock stopped for me.
Because two officers said, "Can we come in?"
And I said, "What's it for?
What's going on?"
And I said, "He's killed them, hasn't he?"
[ominous music]
And it was like time had stopped. It was like everything had stopped.
That moment had stopped in time,
because, obviously, then, they were dead.
Stacy phoned me, I said, "Hi, what's up?"
She went, "You're not gonna believe me." I said, "What?"
Thinking she's mucking about.
"John shot my mom and Luce."
I just couldn't believe that it was real. I believed he was capable,
but you don't think anybody's ever gonna do that.
[Stacy] Well, my mom was leaving him on that day,
so my mom was leaving.
Lucy, her car was packed up.
Her little dog beds were in there.
Lucy was going to do the horses for one last time.
It wasn't like they weren't leaving, they were leaving.
[Mandy] She was in shock.
She was in tears.
It was just total disbelief.
And then it hit me that it could have been us.
It could've been Stacy, it could've been me,
it could've been my granddaughter, it could've been Stacy's children.
If he flipped and killed these people, Lucy and Christine,
he could have killed any of us.
[narrator] Stacy has the heartbreaking job of identifying the bodies.
I just wanted her to wake up, and I gave her a kiss,
and I asked them, "Can I come and see her again?"
They said, "Yes, no problem."
And then they said, I need-- "You need to prepare yourself for Lucy."
So I was given five minutes and I went in to see Lucy.
[tense music]
Nothing can prepare you for that. Nothing.
We'd always lived with violence.
So for her to die how she died is... so sad.
[narrator] Stacy is warned by the coroner
that her sister Lucy has been badly beaten in the attack.
[Stacy] Lucy was... allowed to bleed out.
She was so beautiful.
I can't... She looked like Snow White. She was so pretty.
And he damaged her. Her whole face was black.
And I say black like as black as this dress.
It was black, because he beat her so badly.
And then she'd fought and fought and fought for life,
and he shot her again after 45 minutes.
And she was still alive when the ambulance got there.
And then she died.
My sister was executed.
[suspenseful music]
[narrator] In custody, the 82-year-old claims
the shootings were accidental.
He had an arrogance about him,
and it was as if they had no value.
He saw them as if he saw the dogs.
[Mandy] He still thought he was untouchable, I think.
He played the victim and the old man
who was really frail and couldn't do this.
I think he felt the law didn't apply to him.
It didn't actually mean anything to him, and I think that level of confidence
probably kind of spills over into a level of arrogance
and possible narcissism.
[narrator] Stacy helps police any way she can.
At that moment, I knew that I had to fight
harder than anything in my life, harder than any violence,
harder than any abuse, harder than anything in my life.
I knew that I wanted justice.
[ominous music]
[narrator] In October, 2014, the trial begins.
The harrowing 999 audio made by Lucy is played to the court.
That phone call was unbelievable.
It was unbelievable in regards to how brave she was.
She was a witness at her own murder trial.
They used that as one of the key features.
She's witnessed John shooting Christine, her mother.
She then flees the house for her life,
and she's very clear, she's telling the police officers, "He's gonna kill me."
And then she rushes back in to save her mom
and she tells the police officers, "I'm going back in.
I think he will kill me, I'll be dead," and tragically, she was right.
She is somebody who would've stood up to John Lowe,
and perhaps it was that standing up to him
which contributed to the terrible tragedy of that day.
[Stacy] She went in like a soldier goes to war.
She didn't care about that she was gonna be killed.
She cared about my mother and how she died.
My sister went in
and faced the worst kind of fear
because there's a man that she'd always trusted,
that had done that to my mom.
[narrator] The bodies of the two women at the crime scene
provide evidence that contradict Lowe's claim
that it was accidental.
The way my mom was positioned,
she was begging for her life.
She was kneeling when she was shot.
The position in which she fell, of course, is as a result of the shotgun injury,
which the shotgun wounds were to the head.
[tense music]
[Mandy] It was an execution.
Christine was on the ground when he shot her.
He didn't have enough from just shooting Lucy,
so he beat her with the gun as well. That's not an accident.
How he could try and call it an accident, I don't know.
It's clear these were two unarmed women.
One of them, certainly, was running for her life.
[suspenseful music]
[narrator] The trial lasts four weeks at Guildford Crown Court.
[Jill] John was convicted for the murder of both Christine
and for the murder of Lucy, and was given life imprisonment.
From what I saw of him in the courts, not long after,
he was extremely frail.
[Jill] In the judge's summing up, they make mention of the fact
that had these guns not been returned to John,
he would not have been able to commit the tragic murders
of both Christine and of Lucy.
John was an 82-year-old man
and would not have been physically capable, we think,
of carrying out the murders
had it not been for him given those shotguns.
[suspenseful music]
[narrator] Just four years into the life sentence,
Eighty-seven-year-old John Lowe dies in prison
after being diagnosed with dementia and cancer.
The woman who once saw him as a father figure
tries not to think about him anymore.
I would like to say nothing about him
because he isn't relevant.
What is relevant is learning if someone hurts you,
you have to get out.
[narrator] Stacy spends five years campaigning
for an inquest to understand the role that the police played
in what was an awful tragedy.
[suspenseful music]
It is called Article 2 and it's Right to Life,
and my sister and mom had a right to life.
They had to right to be protected and they weren't.
It was very much an avoidable double tragedy,
because two women lost their lives.
It was a way of being able to see
how bad the failures were.
They weren't little ones. We're talking about massive failures
of the firearms teams not looking at something like a pink file that showed
all John Lowe's domestic violence.
So under law, if you have any history of domestic violence,
you should not have a gun license, you should not have a gun.
[narrator] The inquest ruled
that the Surrey Police firearms licensing department
failed to consider all of the evidence and information available to it
before returning the shotguns to John Lowe.
[ominous music]
Looking at the investigations that were made
and those that weren't made, it's a totally staggering situation.
I would very much hope that there would be a lot of lessons to be learned
from this terrible tragedy,
and I know that that has been Stacy's mission, really,
to ensure that no family ever has the type of trauma
that she's gone through.
[Stacy] I don't understand the full ins and outs of it,
but I can now process that in a way of,
"Well, that person didn't care enough to do their job."
In any situation where there's an imbalance of power
and access to a lethal weapon,
there have to be real questions.
[suspenseful music]
It's very tightly controlled. It's very properly controlled generally.
And the firearms licensing department is there to ensure that
only those who can be trusted
are allowed to have these firearms, because they are lethal weapons.
My personal view is that where firearms are concerned,
we can never be too careful,
and if there's any form of flag,
any form of threat said to have been made by an individual who holds firearms,
that then that really must be something
that is painstakingly investigated
before anybody could be allowed to hold a firearm again.
[Stacy] They were able to get-- to ask all the questions
that I needed so desperately answered,
and that exposed the failures to such a level
that I had-- give me some closure.
[narrator] Stacy has suffered the devastating loss
of her mom and sister, but she's surrounded
by her family and friends as she moves forward.
He took her whole family, so she's become my family.
I think that the interesting development
that she's had is that she herself has created
the role of being protector for her own children,
and if I'm allowed to give a personal view,
she's done an extraordinary job of it.
[melancholic music]
[Stacy] Whether it's verbal, whether it's mental,
get out, run, because it only gets worse.
That's it. And don't stop fighting for justice.
Believe in justice.
[dramatic music]
♪ "Pretty little thing," he says to me ♪
♪ "Pretty little thing" Don't mess with me ♪
♪ "Pretty little thing, I'll find you" ♪
♪ 'Cause now I am the voice Inside of you ♪
♪ Pretty little thing, I love you ♪
♪ How I love to build you up ♪
♪ Just so I can bring you down ♪