[soft music]
[narrator] 16 year-old Jayden Parkinson
is on her way to meet her lover.
She was like, "That's my boyfriend."
And I was like, "You're joking."
She's like, "No, I really like him.
I've fallen in love with him."
'Cause at that age, you know,
young girls want the bad boy.
♪ Blood is on my hands ♪
[narrator] Jayden has something important to tell the man in her life,
and then to tell her mom.
♪ It's all I understand ♪
I woke up to about 50 missed calls.
"Mom, Mom, you've got to ring me.
Please ring me. I've got something really important to tell you."
"I'm pregnant."
♪ These are violent times ♪
"What?"
She said, "I'm pregnant." I was like, "Whose is it?"
She's like, "Who do you think it is?"
She was absolutely besotted with him.
♪ I'm the violent kind ♪
[ominous music]
[heartbeat thudding]
[soft, tense music]
[narrator] A young man called Ben Blakeley
unexpectedly calls at the home of his grandmother,
saying that he needs to borrow a suitcase.
She said Ben had collected from her, a few days before,
he'd come in, in a rush, saying "I need a suitcase."
He'd emptied the contents out on the floor
and just taken the suitcase.
He had then returned two or three days later
with the suitcase,
and thrown it into her shed and it was covered in mud.
[narrator] The suitcase appears heavy.
What part will it play in the mystery of a missing teenager?
Where is Jayden Parkinson?
With any missing person investigation,
it is about what I would call victimology.
Where would they normally be hanging?
Who would they be hanging with? What's their pattern of behavior?
And really going back to, where were they last seen
and who were they last seen with?
[narrator] Jayden had recently moved out
from her mom's home in Didcot.
They'd had their ups and downs.
So, she was like a little whirlwind.
She'd follow me everywhere.
Everything was "What? Why? When? How?"
She could be your best friend
and your worst enemy, all in one.
[gravel crunches]
[narrator] Samantha Shrewsbury's own life
has not been an easy one.
Problems with her health,
failed relationships, and domestic violence.
But Samantha never stops loving her children.
She's devoted to Jayden.
She was born on the 26th September
at 10 to six in the evening.
She weighed five pound, 15 and a half ounces.
She wasn't planned.
She was a bit of a surprise.
But she was one of those squidgy babies that you just, do you know what I mean?
Peaches and cream sort of skin that you could just, sort of thing to.
She was proper cute.
[narrator] The popular Jayden's early passions, her pets.
She loves animals.
She was easily liked.
I can honestly say she probably had about 10 best friends.
[narrator] When Jayden was still little,
Samantha temporarily lost custody
of her two youngest children.
But one day, Jayden will choose to come back
to live with her mom.
It wasn't until she was 13, that she voted with her feet,
and turned up at my house
in Didcot.
[train rumbles]
[narrator] Didcot is a small town
15 miles southeast of Oxford,
with more than its fair share of problems,
poverty, teenage drug abuse.
Jayden spent most of her life in the north of England,
so her accent soon makes her stand out at her new school.
I thought, "Right, girls' school, yes.
No distractions, no boys."
I thought that it would be good.
But she was bullied quite relentlessly
in the beginning, at school.
Different accent, new kids.
It was quite a vicious cycle.
She was running away from school.
I was having to take her to school.
At that time, we built a very, very good friendship.
And even when we weren't at school,
we were always seeing each other out of school.
[narrator] When back at home with mom,
Jayden could give her a hard time.
It was never-ending, in and out.
In one term, she had 26 exclusions.
They put her on an anger management course,
and she did really, really well.
She was
hilarious,
funny,
quirky,
annoying,
all those things that a teenager is.
She'd be your best friend and your worst enemy at the same time.
Then she met Ben.
[dramatic music]
[narrator] She met Ben's younger brother, Jake, too.
Jake and Jayden are in the same year at school.
The Blakeley brothers
lived just around the corner from Jayden.
So the girls that she was hanging around with
knew of Jake.
They'd hang about, smoking cigarettes, drinking cider,
that sort of thing.
Didn't think nothing of him.
He was polite enough to me.
He was just another lad.
It wasn't that unusual for him to be hanging around.
Although he was older,
which, it's a bit strange
to be hanging around with 15, 16, 17 year-olds.
♪ Crime ♪
♪ Is on the rise ♪
He took drugs, he took cannabis.
They were dabbling, you know, trying it.
Whatever they could try.
Didn't think nothing really of either of them, to be fair.
They're ordinary boys.
♪ I'm the violent kind ♪
[narrator] Jayden's friend, Kayleigh,
lives next door to Ben Blakeley, and knows him all too well.
At the park one day, she says, "I like this older guy."
I was like, "Okay. What's his name? Like, what's he like?"
And then she told me, "Ben Blakeley."
I must have been silent for about five minutes.
And I was like, "Please Jayden. Please, do not go there with him."
I told him, "Leave her alone."
Like, I just thought he was wanting to like,
have a little, you know, fun time with her
and like, you know, that was it.
[narrator] Jayden's mom sees no reason to worry
about her daughter's new friend.
Ben's family lived around the corner.
All her mates lived in that vicinity, sort of thing.
And she would have pizza nights with her girlfriends.
They would all sit in my flat, have pizza. I'd come back and they'd all go.
It was just a massive group of 'em, boys and girls.
Didn't think much of it, to be fair, you know.
No worries, in the beginning.
[narrator] Ben goes out of his way
to make a good impression on Jayden's mom.
He was always polite to me.
"Yes, Mrs. Shrewsbury." "No, Mrs. Shrewsbury."
Do you know what I mean? "I'll go to the shop for you, Mrs. Shrewsbury."
Butter wouldn't melt in his mouth.
But I always had that, I can't put my finger on it
type gut feeling with him
that there was something not quite right.
I couldn't figure out what it was.
I'd come home, and all my knives would be missing out of my drawer.
Ben's got it. Why has he got my knives?
[tense music]
[narrator] Worse revelations were to come
about Ben Blakeley.
He was always being chased by police.
He wasn't allowed home.
He didn't have a very good home life.
I'd said to him, "Oh, you're too old for her."
He's like, "That's alright, I'll wait 'till she's 16."
Jayden was just a child,
a 15 year-old child when she met Blakeley.
And he was, you know, it was a 20 year-old man.
There was a huge experience difference there.
There was a power difference.
[narrator] Jayden's mom is reassured by Ben's offer
to wait until Jayden turns 16 before they begin dating.
Jayden's best friend isn't so sure.
I said to her, like,
"You know, it's all right for you to be interested in guys
and like, have a boyfriend if you would want one,
but just not him."
[narrator] Jayden won't listen.
Kayleigh can see that Jayden is beginning to fall for Ben.
She's like, "No, I really like him.
I've fallen in love with him."
He would just be all light and lovey in front of her,
like, cuddle her and kiss her in front of me.
One day, I remember him buying her chocolates and flowers and that,
and it's like, "Oh, there's no way he's like that. That's just a show."
[narrator] Ben is soon able to convince Jayden
that he loves her, too.
Well, a 15 year-old girl getting attention from a man,
it's going to be maybe different.
I can imagine it was an incredibly exciting time for her.
'Cause at that age, you know,
young girls want the bad boy.
True to his words, on her 16th birthday,
that's when they started going out with each other.
And as time went on, I didn't get to see her as much.
Like, "Do you want to hang out?"
"Oh, no, I'm seeing Ben tonight."
It was difficult to take in.
I knew he was pulling her away from me.
I knew what he was doing, and I told her that.
And she's like, "Don't be so stupid. Like, he's not doing that.
We just want to spend time together."
[narrator] Kayleigh also begins to notice changes
in the way that her best friend is behaving.
Like we went to the shop once in the town,
clothes shopping.
And I said, "Oh, look at this top."
And the first thing, she turned around and said to me was,
"Ben wouldn't like me wearing that."
I was like, "He can't tell you what to do.
You're your own person, Jayden.
If you want to wear that top, you wear it."
And that's when it finally dropped.
I was like,
"He's controlling her."
[narrator] Ben is able to convince Jayden
that she shouldn't dress to attract other boys.
She's his and his alone.
He would've started by saying things to her like,
"Don't wear makeup, it makes other men look at you."
"I love you so much. I don't know why I feel like this,
so strongly about you, but I do."
And she thinks, "I'm going out with my friends tonight.
I'm gonna wear my makeup and I'm gonna do my hair."
That would have provoked consequences from him.
"I told you, you can't wear a short skirt.
You know what it does."
Then all of a sudden you've got a situation
and that's when that can turn to violence.
[narrator] Jayden's mom knows
that her daughter is vulnerable, but she's powerless.
He made her want him by not being available,
and then being available,
and she needed a man to step up for her, so to speak,
and show her that he could protect her, no matter what.
[narrator] The two start spending more and more time alone together,
turning away from friends and family,
shutting out the outside world, with alarming consequences.
At first, it was just the controlling that I could see.
But it wasn't until when we went to the park
and we sat there and she was on the swings.
And I said to her, "What's that on your arm?"
And she kind of pulled her sleeve down.
"Oh, it's all right. I just fell off the swing
when I came here the other day."
I was like, "That's not from you falling off a swing."
I said, "Who'd done that?"
I said, "You're my best friend and you can tell me anything.
You know that."
She's like, "Ben done it."
[music crashes]
[tense music]
I said to her, "If he's hitting you, this isn't normal.
This is not love."
And she just said,
"But I love him and he doesn't mean to do it to me.
He just gets angry sometimes."
I said, "That's not love, Jayden."
I said, "He's controlling you
and he doesn't want you to have anyone.
He wants you all to himself."
As soon as Jayden had made
some sort of commitment to Blakeley,
that's when things would start to change.
That's when even the violence might start.
For some of these controlling-type men,
the first time that they have sex,
that might be the moment where,
"Right, you've committed to me now.
You've made that commitment."
And that can be the point then at which
the control and the violence and the abuse can start.
[narrator] Her oldest friend believed
that Blakeley was answering a dark need.
It was like she was painting on a smile sometimes,
when she knew what he was doing.
That's all I used to get was,
"I love him, he doesn't mean it."
And I suppose she felt like he loved her,
'cause she wanted love.
She always used to tell me, "I can't wait to find someone to love me
and we have this happy life together.
Marriage, children."
But I knew that wasn't going to come from Ben,
'cause of the type of person Ben is.
[narrator] Already worried
by how Jayden's behavior and appearance
had been affected by her older boyfriend,
mom Samantha now begins to pick up frightening stories
about Ben's history of violence.
I'd heard that he'd stabbed a kid
in the neck with a biro.
Bottled some kid because
the lad had said something to his cousin, a female girl.
[narrator] And it isn't long
before Samantha discovers Ben's vicious violence herself.
She'd gone out with this girl.
And they were in a car with Black lads, and he's very racist.
And he'd come to the flat and she was downstairs,
I was in the flat.
And she come up and she had a big mark on her face
and I was like, "What's happened to you?" She was like, "Nothing."
I was like, "Get here." And she was like, "Nothing."
I was like, "Who's punched you?"
"Ben."
I went running down the stairs. He'd already gone.
[narrator] How has Blakeley bent Jayden to his will?
Criminologist Jane Monckton-Smith
has seen the tactics that he used many times before.
If he's saying things like, "Your mom doesn't like me,
your friends are bad for you, they're making you make bad decisions,"
she'll listen to that and she'll want to be loyal to him.
[narrator] Jayden hides the signs of Ben's increasing violence from her mom,
until a girlfriend's spots tell-tale signs on Jayden's body.
My best friend rung me and said,
"You need to have a chat with Jayden." I was like, "What about?"
She's like, "That Ben." I was like, "What do you mean, 'that Ben'?"
She went, "Well, when she was getting undressed,
she was getting undressed with Remy,
and Remy'd seen burn marks on her chest."
[narrator] Ben has been burning Jayden with cigarettes.
[lighter flashes]
I don't think you ever become used to it
or accepting of violence towards you,
especially sadistic violence.
Some of it was absolutely awful.
[narrator] Even when confronted,
Jayden tries to hide the extent of injuries from her mom.
I made Jayden stand in my sitting room
and strip to her underwear.
But little did I know, that it's under her bra.
So I couldn't physically see anything.
And as of that point, it just steadily got worse and worse and worse.
[narrator] Samantha tries to convince her daughter
that she's now trapped in an abusive relationship.
"This isn't healthy.
If he loves you, he don't punch you in the face."
But he just had, I don't know, some hold over her.
I wanted to shake her.
I wanted to shake some sense into her.
We fought over him.
And I even...
locked her out of my flat
and she slept on my doorstep.
And I did, I literally stepped over her to get in and out of my flat.
'Cause I tried, I wanted to prove a point.
I tried tough love, and tough love came back
and smacked me in the face.
I'd given up.
And I was like, "Go and do what you've got to do."
She was stealing out of my flat,
taking things and going selling it
for his drug debts or to get him drugs.
So that's why I put my foot down and said,
"I'm not having this no more."
[narrator] It's a time of maximum danger for Jayden.
Ben starts a new pattern of intimidation
as he targets the family's pets.
I'm stood in the kitchen.
I used to wash up with headphones on, 'cause, like you do.
You know, you're in your own home, you feel safe.
And I remember you get that feeling, don't you,
somebody behind you.
And as I've turned like that, I see something black.
♪ Blood ♪
♪ Is on my hands ♪
Somebody run through the gate at the back.
So I've gone out, locked the gate, locked the back door.
♪ Crime ♪
♪ Is on the rise ♪
And I've gone back in, started washing up.
♪ These are violent times ♪
And then my partner come in, he's like, "It's Stripey."
I was like, "What do you mean, 'It's Stripey'?" That was my cat.
"Well, he's dead, he's on the front doorstep."
I was like, "I think it's Ben."
♪ I'm the violent kind ♪
He killed the cat and showed her and said,
"If you don't behave, this is what's going to happen.
Plus I'll take it out on your mom."
[whip cracks]
[gentle music]
[narrator] At just 16,
Jayden is trapped in the abusive
and increasingly dangerous relationship
with her older boyfriend, Ben Blakeley.
He wants Jayden to cut herself off
from friends like Kayleigh Walker.
I went to go up to her and give her a hug,
and he was like, "What are you doing?" I was like, "Hugging my best friend."
He's like, "No, you're not. She's with me today."
And Jayden was like, said to me,
"I think it's best if you go."
Which was very weird,
because she'd never ever say something like that to me ever.
And I just remember walking away like, crying,
like, "I don't know what to do in this situation."
And I just almost felt lost, like I'm losing someone.
I think anybody who knew anything about domestic abuse,
unhealthy relationships, they would have known.
Whether they could have got Jayden to listen to them
is another matter.
You could visibly see her getting thinner and thinner,
more dowdy, more...
not her.
He literally drained her personality.
[narrator] Samantha becomes resigned
to Jayden choosing Ben over her own family.
[music crescendos]
But then, Samantha gets a desperate call for help.
His cousin had rung me up,
saying, "Come and get her now.
Ben's out of the house."
And this girl's going, "Thank you, thank you.
I can't listen to her being beaten up in the toilet anymore.
I can't do it."
[narrator] After being repeatedly beaten by the man that she thinks she loves,
Jayden agrees to move back in with her mom
and to stop seeing Ben.
Once back home, Jayden at first shows signs
of being her old self.
I had her for about five days.
It was our Jayden again.
She was singing her head off and stuff.
[narrator] But Samantha soon realizes
that her daughter hasn't really broken away from Blakeley.
I was just so exhausted,
so cheesed off at banging my head against a brick wall
and not getting anywhere.
[narrator] Jayden leaves the family home
to live in a hostel.
It's really difficult for moms and dads
when they recognize that their children are being abused.
Very often, the children have been isolated
from their parents.
Jayden would have been listening more to him
than she would to her parents.
[narrator] Her mother is so convinced
that Ben is a real threat,
that she tells the local authorities about her fears.
He's been following me, he's been threatening me.
If anything ever happens to me, I believe it's Ben.
Nobody else, it's Ben.
And I made them document it officially.
I left it at that.
Didn't think nothing more of it, really.
[narrator] Away from her mother,
Jayden is now completely under Blakeley's control.
She just said to me,
"Ben's been really nasty to me."
I was like, "What do you mean?"
"He's trying to even control me whilst I'm here.
I can't go out of my room. I have to pee in a bucket.
I have to do as I'm told."
And my first reaction to that was
I just grabbed her and I just hugged her, and she cried and I cried.
We cried together.
[narrator] Now just 17 years old
and living in a hostel for troubled teens,
Jayden calls her mom.
The weekend before the 3rd of December,
I think on the Monday, I woke up to about 50 missed calls.
"Mom, mom, you've got to ring me. Please ring me.
I've got something really important to tell you."
I said, "Oh, God, what now?
What's he done now? Where is she now?"
You know, like geez.
And she's like, "No, no, no, no, it's all right.
Do you want to meet me tomorrow?"
Which was the Tuesday, the third.
I said, "Yeah, yeah."
She's like, "I've got something to tell you."
"I'm pregnant."
"Whose is it?" She's like, "Who do you think it is?"
[foreboding music]
[narrator] Jayden has finally managed
to break away from her abusive boyfriend, Ben Blakeley.
But she faces being a lone parent at just 17.
When she told me, I was happy for her to keep the baby,
because I said, "Your mom will support you.
I will support you.
Your other friends will support you. Your family will support you.
You'd be a great mom.
But you can't have him in your life.
He's bad news."
I just said, "You know, Ben, look what he's doing to you,
doing these horrible things to you.
You can't have a baby with him around you."
And she was kind of getting her head round it,
slowly, I think,
coming to terms with the fact
that she doesn't wanna be with Ben anymore.
And she did tell me that.
She's like, "I don't want to be with him. I want to have a baby."
She was adamant that she wanted to keep it.
She'd done five pregnancy tests that weekend.
They were due for the next morning
to get her into the doctors to have it confirmed.
Once it was confirmed, then she would've been put forward
for a mother and baby unit,
and they were going to get her into college for hairdressing.
[narrator] Her mom recognizes that for Jayden,
this offers the chance of a new start, a clean break.
She was glowing.
She was absolutely
chuffed.
And there is a picture of me and her sat in a pub
and you can see the absolute horror on my face
of the thought of, "Jesus Christ, she's pregnant to him."
And you can see her, she's happy as Larry.
She's proper chuffed.
[narrator] Jayden phones Ben
to tell him that she's pregnant
and that she's going to keep the baby.
He threatened to chuck her off a bridge
to kill her and it, 'cause it wasn't his baby.
He had a history of getting girls pregnant
and then behaving viciously
after he finds out that they're pregnant.
Jayden couldn't have known that.
So it was quite a dangerous thing for her to do, to tell him.
But she probably thought she was doing the right thing.
[narrator] Despite his anger and threats,
Jayden asks Ben to meet up to discuss their future.
Jayden genuinely had feelings for Blakeley.
She really did.
And she wanted a good relationship with him.
[soft, tense music]
[narrator] On December 3rd,
Jayden asks Ben to meet her for a walk in the countryside.
CCTV catches the two leaving Oxford train station.
They appear to be arguing.
Three hours later, CCTV shows Ben
returning to the train station alone.
There's no sign of Jayden.
[intensifying music]
On the fourth, I think, December,
Sam phoned me.
And said, "Have you heard from Jayden?"
I was like, "No."
"Not since
yesterday,
the third, afternoon."
We always used to text, call,
like to let you know she's there, safe, sound.
So when Sam phoned me, I was a bit shocked.
I went onto Facebook
to see if anyone had seen or heard from her.
But nothing.
[intense music]
The police weren't listening.
Me and her, to them we're just another pain in the backside.
And she's just another annoying runaway, basically.
[suspenseful music]
[gravel rustles]
Jayden had been reported missing
on the 4th of December in the early hours of the morning.
So it was around about the 11th of December,
she still hadn't been found. So I was asked to review
the circumstances of her disappearance,
and to look at what else needed to be done
in order to try and find her.
[narrator] When a person at risk goes missing,
the police carry out what they call proof-of-life checks.
It's very difficult for a young person to go missing
without leaving any sort
of what the police would call a footprint.
That might be a financial footprint,
a computer footprint, or contact with their friends,
social media, all these sorts of things.
There was no contact.
Everything was starting to suggest
that she'd come to some sort of harm,
because she hadn't been seen or heard of for a week.
So days went on, and I just thought,
"This is it.
I'm never, ever gonna see her again.
I'm never gonna see her, hug her,
have fun with her ever again."
[narrator] Blakeley insists he has no idea where Jayden is.
But the police are beginning
to uncover some disturbing information
about Blakeley's treatment of Jayden.
What we know is, prior to her going missing,
she had reported to the police
that he had taken indecent images of her
coming out of the shower.
And he had threatened to distribute those on social media.
He kept lots of things in his bag of tricks
to make sure she stayed in his control.
And one of those things was he had managed to get
intimate pictures of Jayden,
either with or without her consent,
and was threatening to publish them on social media
if she didn't do as she was told.
That must have been terrifying.
You put pictures on social media, they're there forever.
Forever.
If she's named, if people recognize her,
how do you live with that?
[foreboding music]
Clearly she was in a very controlling,
coercive, controlling relationship.
So, you know, they are red flags there.
That started to really worry me.
There was CCTV footage of Jayden with Ben Blakeley.
So she'd arranged to meet him on the 3rd of December.
That initial CCTV showed, first of all,
they went to Oxford Railway Station in the afternoon.
And they were seen then to get on a train,
go through the barriers,
and they got a train to Didcot.
And then the last CCTV that we had of Jayden with Ben
was that afternoon when they got to Didcot
and walked through the station.
And then that's the last time she was seen alive.
[whip cracks]
[dramatic music]
[narrator] As police combed through CCTV,
they spot Ben Blakeley.
It showed Ben Blakeley coming back from Didcot
through Didcot Railway Station later that evening.
But very concerningly, he was on his own.
She wasn't with him.
I had to start thinking about, "Well, what are the possibilities here?"
You know, has she left of her own accord
and doesn't want to be found?
Is it because she has been a victim of a crime
and she's been abducted?
Or is it because she's been injured
and hadn't been found and wasn't able to get any help?
So they were the three possibilities.
Obviously, this was a young girl,
a child, effectively, that had gone missing.
And it did really start to ramp up the media
and it became national news then.
[narrator] The media reports prompt a key new witness to come forward.
A taxi driver contacted the inquiry team
and said that he picked up a male
from a rural location in Didcot in the early hours of the morning.
And this guy had a suitcase.
He picked him up and the guy who'd phoned the taxi said,
"Look, my wife's kicked me out the house.
Can you help me lift the suitcase? It's really heavy."
He helped this guy put the suitcase into the car.
But he was now very concerned, of course, because of all of the media attention.
He started to wonder
if there was something more sinister to that suitcase.
[music intensifies]
[suitcase clamours]
[narrator] It doesn't take long
to identify the man with the suitcase.
When we looked at who made the telephone call,
it was Ben Blakeley's phone that had made that call.
He'd used a false name.
So I was now convinced
that Ben Blakeley had made that call to the taxi driver,
and it was Ben Blakeley that was in that vehicle.
It was that evening after we'd spoken to the taxi driver,
and the telephone investigations had been completed,
that he was then arrested on suspicion of murdering Jayden.
[narrator] House-to-house inquiries
lead to another breakthrough.
One of those addresses that the officers called on
was Ben Blakeley's grandparents.
And when they knocked on the door,
his grandmother said, her first words were,
"Have you come about the suitcase?"
That she said Ben had collected from her a few days before.
He'd come in, in a rush, saying, "I need a suitcase."
He'd emptied the contents out on the floor
and just taken the suitcase.
He had then returned two or three days later
with the suitcase and thrown it into her shed.
It was covered in mud.
And I now believe
that Jayden's body had been in that suitcase.
[dramatic music]
[narrator] CCTV shows Ben
traveling through the same train station
four days after Jayden has disappeared,
and he's covered in mud.
Police decide they now have enough evidence
to charge Ben and his younger brother Jake.
His brother had been arrested in the investigation,
because we had information
that he'd tried to get rid of some of Ben's clothing.
So he was arrested and interviewed.
Both of them said absolutely nothing.
Until we charged them.
So Ben Blakeley was charged with murder,
and his brother was charged with
perverting the course of justice.
[narrator] But to get a conviction for murder,
the police still feel they need to find Jayden's body.
Then we had to look at telephone records.
We had 23 crime scenes in the end.
So these are all places where we believed, at some point,
Ben and Jayden had been,
and areas where there could be significant evidence.
One of those places was called the Spooky Barn,
which is an old dilapidated barn in a field,
where Ben and Jayden had previously met.
We know they'd been drinking there,
probably having sex there as well.
I asked for the police body recovery dogs
to go into the barn,
and they indicated very clearly
there'd been a body inside the barn and just outside.
[narrator] The body has clearly been moved
from the Spooky Barn.
The police call for assistance.
A remarkable detective story is about to begin.
There was miles and miles of land,
far too difficult to search
with police officers and search teams.
So I then asked the RAF to do some aerial photography,
which they did.
Statistically, people that are murdered
are either buried, put in water, or set on fire.
In this case, because we had the soil on the suitcase,
I believed she'd been buried.
So they identified 10 areas where there had been soil moved
in a relatively short space of time.
And they were areas of interest now.
[narrator] The police search reveals a grave
belonging to a family member of Ben Blakeley.
The last area that we were concerned about, if you like,
was the St. Mary's Church in Didcot.
Because that was one area where there was evidence
of a grave that had been, the grass was flat.
So it looked like somebody had walked around it.
[narrator] Jayden's body has been removed
from where she had been murdered, and reburied by Ben.
Blakeley will admit to police
that he has coerced his brother into helping.
[leaves crunching]
It didn't take long before, as they were excavating,
they start to see the flesh
and then it became evident that it was a body
that had been dumped into the grave.
This was the first case where
a body had been disposed of in a grave,
in such a manner.
So, it's very unusual.
I remember, Sam phoning me,
telling me,
"They found Jayden's body."
And I just said,
"You're being serious?"
And I remember I just cried and cried and cried.
And when I got off the phone, I just screamed,
and I fell to the floor.
'Cause I knew that I'd never, ever see that person ever again,
the person that made me happy,
the person that
made me smile.
[narrator] Jayden's mom has to identify
her daughter's body.
And they identified her 'cause we've both got same tattoo.
[gentle music]
And I looked up and she looked like she was asleep.
She wasn't, she was dead.
I just don't know.
My whole life
was stuck at that one point,
and has been for a long time since.
[melancholy music]
And it turned out that he'd strangled her three times.
Two times he brought her around, the third time she didn't come around.
She was dead.
[narrator] When confronted with this overwhelming evidence,
Blakeley begins to talk freely.
He spoke to a priest in the prison,
said, "I was responsible for Jayden's death."
So this was the first time
that he'd taken any responsibility.
But he said it was an accident,
and he had grabbed her around the throat,
she'd fallen off a bridge.
He had tried to resuscitate her, but he couldn't.
He was losing control of Jayden, really.
And then, of course, she was pregnant.
She told him she was pregnant.
And we know, of course, in domestic abuse cases,
this is a real factor
in the next level of aggression and violence.
He didn't want her to have the child.
He was angry.
He met her and that's where I think he had decided
he was going to kill her.
[narrator] Blakeley faces a trial for murder.
His brother will face a charge
of perverting the course of justice
by trying to hide Jayden's body.
Well, the prosecution set out, you know,
a pattern of abusive relationships that Ben Blakeley had been in.
We had previous partners
who were brave enough to come to court
and talk about how he had treated them.
It was all evidence of coercive control.
[narrator] In court, Blakeley shows no contrition,
no remorse.
When I first walked in, he looked at me, and then he came up to the glass
and started banging on the glass.
He started shouting, "You bitch!"
He was calling me a bitch and all that horrible stuff.
It was a circus.
Him and his brother were fist-bumping each other,
chatting and joking.
Soon as it'd come for,
they'd be up standing for the judge and the jury.
In 32 years in the police, and lots of court cases,
I've never, ever seen anybody behave in the way in which he behaved.
It was absolutely shocking.
He was threatening witnesses, shouting, being aggressive.
He threatened to stamp the prosecution barrister.
He was returned to the cells
because he couldn't remain in the courtroom.
So he was, I have to be honest with you,
in some ways I was pleased he was behaving like that.
Because actually it just demonstrated what he's like,
you know, a really unpleasant, violent, aggressive person.
He used sadistic assaults on Jayden.
Burning someone with a cigarette is not something that is necessary to do.
He used to strangle her.
So he was literally holding her life in his hands
on numerous occasions.
He killed her, and he,
you know, he made a decision to do that.
But even after he'd killed her,
where we would expect to see fear, guilt, remorse,
none of that, none of that at all.
[narrator] Blakeley was given a 20-year sentence
for the murder of Jayden Parkinson.
Her unborn baby did not survive the attack.
Just, it's not enough.
What he got was not enough.
He's took a... two lives.
He should be in there for life.
He should never be allowed to walk again, out here, ever.
So I was quite angry,
the fact that he didn't get
long enough for what he's done.
[narrator] Jayden was the 138th woman in Britain
to be murdered by her partner that year.
Jayden's mom is campaigning for a national register,
where men like Blakeley can be named and shamed.
It's not a new thing.
It's been going on decades, millennia, whatever.
I honestly believe if there had been a register back then,
that my Jayden, I wouldn't be sat here talking to you.
And that's...
what we should have had.
She'd still be here now.
[intense music]
It's bittersweet, in so many ways.
'Cause I don't want any other parent
to go through what we went through.
It's horrendous.
And it breaks families.
And I think about her every single day.
There isn't a day that goes by that I don't think about her.
And I'm never, ever going to see her again.
There are no amount of sorries that come out of his mouth
will make up for what he's done.
'Cause I don't wanna hear it. I don't wanna hear his "Sorry."
I don't want his excuses.
'Cause what he done,
I'll never forgive him.
Ever.
[dramatic music]
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