Kayleigh Hanks and Ian Paton
are irresistibly drawn to each other
despite their obvious differences.
There was many a times we just said,
"Just don't go back, don't," you know,
but she loved him, and there was nothing we could do.
It was an off and on relationship.
Seeing Kayleigh merely speaking to someone in the street
was enough to make him think she had to die.
Would anyone see the danger
lurking beneath the surface of their turbulent relationship
before it was too late?
Bexhill-on-Sea, an ideal environment to raise a family,
something Kayleigh Hanks was told
that she'd never have the chance to do.
She thought every woman's prerogative was to have a baby,
and she found it kind of hard being around others that had babies.
She genuinely did find it hard. It broke her.
Family was everything to Kayleigh Hanks,
as DCI Andy Wolstenholme would one day discover.
Everything that we learned from friends, from family,
was that she was absolutely committed to her family.
Especially her relationship with her mom, Sue,
and her sister, Emma.
Keen to replicate the family life
that she'd enjoyed when growing up,
care home worker Kayleigh had married young.
But very soon the relationship was on shifting sands.
Her first marriage, it wasn't a bad one
at first, very loving.
Then Kayleigh was told that she couldn't have children.
And so being a very, very sort of optimistic
and driven person, she threw herself into life.
She wanted to make something of her career.
She wanted to make something of her life.
She wanted to travel.
So, they separated,
and they were in the middle of a divorce.
So amicable was the split
that the couple were still living happily together
as housemates when, in 2016,
Kayleigh met sales rep Ian Paton.
She was out with a friend one night in the local pub,
then that closed, and she met him in a strip club.
Kayleigh and Ian both, I think very sociable people.
They enjoyed spending time with other people
and that's exactly what they were doing when they met.
They were out socializing with friends.
He give the chase, he wooed and cooed her.
Ian won Kayleigh over, but almost immediately,
her new lover started laying down the law.
Pretty much, say, a month down the line, it went sour.
He didn't like the fact
that she was still in her marital home with her husband.
Didn't think it was right
they were living together,
always had the thought of them
sleeping with each other still, and it got very cold.
So he made her then move out.
He didn't want her having anything to do with her husband,
and made her move in with him.
It was an early sign of how Ian Paton was going to be.
But he largely hid his behavior from Kayleigh's family.
The slightly older man charmed them whenever he could.
He was obviously was very good at this.
He was obviously very, very good at this manipulation,
because Kayleigh's sister Emma
was completely won over by him.
She thought he was fabulous.
You know, a nice guy, come across very nice, you know,
very fun, bubbly, you know, genuine.
From the first word, my mum didn't like him,
my partner didn't like him.
My kids seem to have loved him,
but other people was a bit shady around him.
Kayleigh moved into Ian's flat in Saint Leonard's,
a small town just along the coast from Bexhill.
Very quickly, their relationship became volatile.
I think people that we've spoken you about Kayleigh
and Ian's relationship, have described it
as being a toxic relationship,
a really complex relationship,
one that started off really strong
and then deteriorated into something
that was absolutely untenable.
The couple would have bitter arguments,
but Ian made sure his was the version of events
that everybody heard about.
He would always be the first one to mention an argument
or an upset that they have,
and always tried to make it out that it was Kayleigh
rather than both of them.
I felt a bit like tit for tat.
Each suspected the other of infidelity,
and Ian was happy to play on Kayleigh's jealousy.
He would hide text messages.
He would sit there on his phone
and then Kayleigh would walk back into the room,
and he'd quickly put it away,
sleep with his phone underneath the pillow.
Just generally, like, out to make her feel a bit paranoid.
And it was happening all the time,
and then he would say like,
"I'm not having an affair,
you're thinking, you're thinking it, I'm not doing it,"
and trying to make her feel like she was going mad.
Jill Barr, a former police inspector
who specializes in domestic abuse,
recognizes this as part of a pattern of behavior, a worrying one.
That form of coercive control,
that form of head working, as it's known, gaslighting,
making the person believe that actually
they are the ones at fault, questioning themselves,
questioning their own sanity.
He would kick her out,
and then so she'd have to sleep on the side of a road
or someone's porch or like wherever she could find.
She was sleeping rough on park benches
if she ever had the temerity to disagree with this man.
She was being treated less than a dog.
And then he would ring her back up and say,
"Come back and everything's fine."
Just a lot of mental games.
At home, she was never able to wear pajamas.
She always had to brush her hair and do her makeup,
wear nice clothes.
Very much had to be dolled up if they went out,
had to buy things new.
Always like if we went out like to the pub or something.
It was always she had to present herself well,
she wasn't allowed to down dress or go out kind of relaxed.
She had to be always done up and smart
and kind of present herself to everyone as his.
She would have to make that effort and then be told off
because everybody was looking at her
and giving her attention, which he didn't like.
Social occasions were a frequent flashpoint for the couple.
When under the influence of drink or drugs,
Paton could be especially cruel.
We went out for a meal all together.
Went back to Ian's, had a few more drinks.
Kayleigh and Emma went outside.
I mean, maybe for a cigarette or whatever reason
they went outside.
When they tried to come back inside, they couldn't get in,
and they couldn't get in because Ian had locked the door.
Like literally, he locked us out, it was raining.
They had to beg him to allow them to come in,
and he told them they could not.
Then he let us back in, and Kayleigh was like, "Oh I'm sorry."
And he was like, "No, you're not sorry."
And she was like, "I love you."
And he was like, "No, you don't,
otherwise you wouldn't have gone out."
And she's like, "I do." And he was like, "Prove it."
And she was like, "Well, how do you want me to prove it?"
And he then said, "Well, get down on your hands and knees
and tell me how much you love me."
As far as alarm bells go,
must be just about the biggest alarm bell
you could possibly hear.
Horrified, Emma Hanks watched
as her sister submitted to Paton's demand.
And she got down on her hands and knees and then said, "I love you."
And he's like, "No, it's not good enough."
And in the end, she was like on her knees,
like in the praying position.
And is like, "I love you, I love you, I love you, please."
And then he was like, "Oh get up,"
at like, as in like "stop being desperate,"
and then started laughing at her.
Neither Kayleigh nor her family knew
of something else about Paton.
If they had, it would have worried them deeply.
Detectives would learn of Paton's violent ways.
Ian I think showed a real propensity
for grabbing people's throat,
and through police investigations, we were able to identify
that there were other instances where Ian had grabbed people by the throat
in violent attacks, in public and in private.
And it seemed to us to be his go-to move,
it's the sort of aggressive act that he went to first of all.
The first occasion upon which he put hands
on Kayleigh's neck was not the first occasion
upon which he'd done that to anybody.
He had done it to a former girlfriend.
He had done it to a male friend.
How long could Kayleigh ride the crest
of Paton's everchanging moods and stay alive?
He pointed his two fingers at her forehead and said,
"No one would believe you anyway.
You're crazy, you're mental."
Periods of stability and calm
were few and far between in the world
of Ian Paton and Kayleigh Hanks.
Their phones gave the topsy-turvy game away.
There were a large volume of messages
from both sets of phones that we recovered.
DCI Andy Wolstenholme
would soon be tasked with building a picture
of the couple's life together.
I think they really tell a story of a real mixed relationship,
one where there are periods
that people are incredibly happy together,
and it's a really strong, loving relationship,
and then these periods of real distrust
and anger with each other, and also,
some concern about the state of the relationship.
And I think they show, in everyday life,
the sort of rollercoaster that Ian and Kayleigh went on
through their time together.
On one occasion in 2017,
sister Emma thought the couple had split up for good.
So, they'd had an argument,
and Kayleigh had asked Ian to stay away from her
and not contact either me or her
or any of my family ever again.
He moved her stuff out of his house
and brought it back to Kayleigh and Gavin's marital home.
Then I went home thinking everything had settled,
and about half an hour, Kayleigh said she was coming over with Ian.
Then they pulled up,
and Kayleigh automatically just jumped out the car and said,
"He's just grabbed me by the hair
and slammed my head down on the dashboard."
Thing to remember here, he is 19 stone.
He is six foot tall, and he's twice her size,
and he leans across and smashes this poor girl's face
off of the dashboard of a car.
And when they get to her sister's house,
she tells her sister, and he just flatly denies it,
denies that it happened.
And he was like, "No, no, I didn't, no, I didn't.
She hit me. She slapped me across the face."
My partner then asked him just to get in the car and go,
and then Kayleigh kicked the door on his shin.
Not very long after that, he dragged her out of the car by her hair.
And again, she told her family and he just denied it happened.
Though Kayleigh's family knew
some of what she suffered at her boyfriend's hands,
much later on, more would come to light.
Quite a lot of the things that she'd said, we didn't witness.
Kayleigh did keep diaries.
She did keep notes, and I do think that she was concerned
about her relationship with Ian.
Her words would eventually be read out in court.
"Ian keeps telling me I'm no good.
Ian would kick me out and I would leave
and sleep on a bench.
We had a night out at Yates' and Ian called me names."
I would say without a shadow of a doubt,
there was certainly an impact on Kayleigh's mental health.
She become very depressed, anxious.
She'd been diagnosed with OCD, like delusional thoughts
where medical wise that she thought she was ill when she wasn't.
Struggling with her mental health,
Kayleigh was even more susceptible to being controlled
by her on-off lover.
Kayleigh's diary entries would expose
how violent Ian would become.
She wrote in one...
"Ian has strangled me,
and if I tell the police they would not believe me."
He would do these terrible things,
and he would just deny them.
And if he was challenged upon them by Kayleigh
or by anyone else, well, he would resort
to casting aspersions on Kayleigh's mental health.
And that I think was the turning point for her as well,
because she then went very within herself,
was very withdrawn.
When my sister said she was gonna go to the police,
go and ask for help,
he pointed his two fingers at her forehead and said,
"No one would believe you anyway.
You're crazy. You're mental."
There was many a times we just said,
"Just don't go back, don't,"
but she loved him, and there was nothing we could do.
And then something remarkable happened
which gave Kayleigh renewed hope for her future,
what she thought was a miracle.
After being told by the medical professionals
it could never happen, she fell pregnant by Ian.
Kayleigh was absolutely over the moon that she was pregnant.
It was a FaceTime call on the toilet
and it was, "Is this correct?"
And suddenly all the terrible things he'd done,
they were in the past, they were a family,
they were everything she'd ever wanted.
I was very, very happy for her, but I was very, very worried.
What was Ian Paton's reaction to Kayleigh's news?
Happy, happy, but they were only together a couple of weeks.
Because Paton then did something
that despite everything,
Kayleigh never imagined he would do.
He kicked her out of the flat one night
and never to be seen again in nine months.
Me and my sister made him aware of every appointment,
every scan, messaged him
so we had proof that it was happening.
Kayleigh didn't let her partner's absence
take away the joy she was feeling.
She just focused on the future from that moment on,
she stood up and she was gonna be a mum.
Emma's friend Adella would come to share
in some of Kayleigh's happiest moments.
Everything was about the baby.
Everything, every sentence you had with her,
it was, "I'm so excited.
I can't wait, it's just couple more days."
She was just ecstatic.
During Kayleigh's pregnancy,
so she could save a bit of money,
and just to take a lot of strain off of her,
I asked her to move in with me and give up her property
in another, obviously in another town,
and make it easier for her to go to her appointments,
and so I asked her to move in with me.
But as Kayleigh's due date approached,
a decidedly mixed blessing,
the re-emergence of Ian Paton.
He only came back into her life
when Emma contacted him two weeks before the baby was born
to say the baby is due in two weeks.
Ian then chose to get back in contact,
and said thank you very much for letting him know,
and would it be okay for him to attend
a hospital appointment?
And suddenly he made the decision,
"Well, I'm back involved, then.
I'm now going to come and be a dad."
And Kayleigh accepted this with open arms.
She was in such a position.
She still wanted this so much that she accepted
this sort of terrible behavior.
She accepted it.
And just like that,
Paton had insinuated himself once again
into every aspect of Kayleigh's life.
Would they finally be the happy family
she was hoping for?
Would they finally be the happy family
she was hoping they could be?
No.
And when she went to see her sister,
her sister noticed black marks,
thick black marks around her neck.
After Kayleigh Hanks gave birth
to her baby daughter,
she moved out of her sister Emma's home
to a place of her own.
When she had the baby,
she wanted to make a go of things on her own,
just be the mum that she always wanted to be.
So she chose to move out and take that step forward.
Local councilor Christine Bayliss
visited the flat that Kayleigh now called home.
It's right on the top floor of an old Victorian house.
Very steep stairways.
It was almost like it was up in the attic,
and you found it hard to imagine how anybody would cope
with a small baby in that sort of situation.
But Kayleigh very quickly turned
the cramped apartment in Bexhill town center
into the perfect nest for her little family.
The first thing that struck me when I went into the home
was how well-appointed it was.
She'd obviously taken great care in making a home,
something that was really warm
and somewhere that it was great to spend time.
Everything was really still very tidy.
Everything was clearly well looked-after.
I had my little boy, and she was so excited.
And then, yeah, she had her little girl,
they got on really well.
My little boy would come over for play dates
and they'd lay on the floor together and have tummy times
and just, it was lovely, just kind of us three,
like sitting there on the floor, and it was really nice.
Kayleigh was amazing mum.
She was loving, always had the baby in her thoughts,
she lived for the baby.
She was dedicated. She was a dedicated mum.
You could tell that,
you could tell by the way that she was with the child
and the way she talked to the child,
I was just left with a lasting impression
that this was somebody that I really wanted to help.
Kayleigh was ready to raise
her precious daughter as a single mother
in their new London Road home.
But Ian Paton had other ideas.
The day she moved in is the day
that he stayed there permanently,
even though he has his own flat.
Ian never left Kayleigh and the baby's side.
And that's when me and my family thought,
"Okay, this could be something of a new beginning."
And for a while after the baby was born,
he was allowed to play Dad.
And what's very interesting is for a very short time
after the baby was born, the relationship became very good.
Kayleigh's loved ones were optimistic.
They thought being a new father might change Ian
and the way he treated the mother of his child.
I wasn't surprised that Kayleigh and Ian got back together.
After having the baby, everything seemed perfect,
and they were gonna make a real go of things
to be parents and to love one another,
be the best that they could.
In a relationship that appeared
for the first time calm and stable,
Kayleigh was able to focus on making
the best life she could for her baby.
It was now she met Christine Bayliss.
Kayleigh contacted me in July of 2019.
She had applied to go on the housing waiting list.
She was a single parent and she wrote to me saying
that she hadn't heard anything
from Rother district council.
She blew me away, I really loved her.
She just wasn't what the stereotype you think of
as a sort of single parent benefits scrounger.
She was brilliant.
She got a job, she was on maternity leave.
She had real ambitions for her daughter,
and I just left thinking
if I can't help somebody like Kayleigh,
what's the point in being a councilor?
The councilor's visit saw her see Paton
as part of Kayleigh's life.
I went along to visit her.
I met a guy there who she introduced me to
as the father of her child.
He was present all the time at that first initial meeting.
After that meeting, she told me that they co-parented
the daughter, he seemed fairly caring.
And so he was, for a month or two.
But while the baby was still tiny,
her father's attitude changed.
There was a hint of the return of the man
who'd been so possessive and violent with Kayleigh.
And then it went downhill ever since then.
Ian would come in from work,
wouldn't pay any attention to the baby.
Just smoke, drink coffee,
and just moan that he's tired or he's got a bad belly,
and then he would suddenly pick the baby up...
and start the role,
and then put her down like she was just a doll,
and that's the way it was.
He decided "I didn't want that, but now I do.
I'm going to play daddy."
And he played daddy for a while, but the monster came back.
Ian was up to his old tricks again.
Kayleigh said she was feeling a bit suspicious of his actions.
Again, the phone was being hidden.
The phone was used quite a lot of the time.
So she just asked me what should she do?
And I said, "Confront him, but don't let him
tell you otherwise.
If he has nothing to worry about, then you'll know."
The warning signs were there,
but Kayleigh thought she could overcome
the couple's difficulties.
Kayleigh really was so focused on her daughter.
She wanted things to be really straightforward.
She wanted Ian to be really focused on her
and their daughter.
She wanted a knight in shining armor,
and I think she was really determined to get that,
and to really, for her daughter, to put in such an effort
to try and bring that about.
In the last month he was getting help.
He was having counseling.
We thought everything was slowly working itself out.
He was dealing with his demons.
Kayleigh was dealing with hers.
They just seemed to be like a family.
But appearances were deceptive.
As Bexhill's hot, dry summer weather
brought tourists flocking to England's south coast,
Ian was becoming, again, increasingly violent.
At least once, he hit her.
Kayleigh told no one.
Kayleigh never reported any domestic abuse to the police.
Had she reported those to,
naturally she would have been listened to
and taken seriously.
There was a reason Kayleigh did not report Ian's abuse.
He would threaten her with social services.
He would say, "I'm going to call social services
and gonna get them to take the baby away."
And on top of the natural effects of the kind of physical
and emotional abuse that he was inflicting on her,
she's now living in fear that he'll call the police,
or he'll call social services
and she will lose her child,
the one thing she's always wanted.
We know it's not uncommon for there to be many instances
of domestic abuse before people take the step
of reporting it to the police.
Kayleigh Hanks was not yet ready
to call the police,
but she did begin to fear for her daughter's future,
and on July 17th, 2019, she hinted at her fears.
One of the most tragic things in this case
is that Kayleigh seems to have some inkling
of what might be coming.
Went over on the Wednesday
to go and help Kayleigh with the housework,
help her out with the baby.
From out of the blue, she asked me
if anything ever happened to her,
she would like me to have the baby.
Making it clear, Emma, not Ian,
is to have custody of her child.
Me thinking, okay, because she's been poorly,
she's getting a bit paranoid.
So didn't think anything of it, agreed.
He'd strangled her,
he has made her get on her hands and knees
in their presence.
He has beaten her, he has smashed her head
off of a dashboard, he has done so, so much
to prove that he is this evil monster.
The following Saturday,
a family gathering at Emma's house started on a sour note.
She arrived with Ian,
Ian came in through the gate first with the baby,
dumped the baby in front of me.
And I asked him where Kayleigh was, how is everybody,
and he turned around and said,
"Look, she's down there."
Kayleigh had spotted an old friend on the street.
She had gone up and said hello, and they had a chat,
nothing more than that.
Ian did not like the fact that she was talking
to another male.
He was very annoyed.
I could see by his facial expression
when he came in through the gate,
dropped the baby down in front of me
and then had about three roll-ups.
And then afterwards Ian had said nothing.
And then Kayleigh came bouncing through the gate, happy,
went over to Ian, sat on his lap,
give him a kiss, and everything seemed to be okay.
Like they were quite loving with one another.
But Ian was biding his time
until he and Kayleigh were alone.
At around 6.30 p.m.,
Kayleigh and Ian left Emma's house.
So I gave her a kiss, a cuddle.
We said we loved each other.
She walked out of the gate,
and that was the last time we heard or see her.
The last person to hear from Kayleigh
was a man called Ashley Boxall,
the old friend she'd bumped into outside her sister's home.
We know an argument started because that same man
from the street was sent a text message by Kayleigh.
Ian accuses Kayleigh of having an affair,
and Kayleigh makes some effort to contact the individual
and get some confirmation for Ian.
And the text messages said,
"Please tell Ian that we never had an affair,
that we're just friends."
And then she tried to call him.
So the text message wasn't enough, she tried to call him.
He didn't answer the phone,
but he did send a text message back confirming,
no, it was no affair, we're just friends.
Ashley could see that Kayleigh
had read his response.
Then she went offline.
It would be hours before anyone found out
what happened next.
Kayleigh was found in her bedroom.
She was on the floor right by the door, and really close
to the crib where her daughter would have slept.
In the early hours of Sunday, July 21st, 2019,
Emma Hanks awoke to a nightmare.
In the morning, it was half past four,
I get a knock at the door and I was a bit uneasy.
Went down, obviously, opened the door
to find two police officers stood there.
And he asked my name,
and I said "Yes, that's correct."
And he said, "Is it okay if we come in?"
And I said, "Of course."
They followed me in and said,
"I'm sorry to have to tell you this,
but we were called to a disturbance this morning
and your sister's dead."
The Major Crime Team
at Surrey and Sussex police had begun to build a picture
of Kayleigh's final moments.
Kayleigh died in the very early hours of Sunday morning.
But how? She had been strangled.
Ian Paton offered police his version of events.
On the night of Kayleigh's death,
Ian is the one who called the police.
He called the police to tell them that Kayleigh had died,
and he told them that Kayleigh had died
in the course of an attack by Kayleigh, upon him.
Ian's claimed that it was self-defense
because Kayleigh had charged at him with a knife.
So he acted in self-defense and held her by the throat.
But from the very moment that Ian had made that 999 call,
police began to note troubling anomalies.
Initially, the call after Kayleigh had been killed,
it came to the police rather than the ambulance
as a cry for help.
Small details like that, that made me think,
well, that's quite an unusual thing.
If there's a tragic accident, something you didn't intend,
you immediately try and get into the ambulance
and try and get some help for Kayleigh
and try and get the situation back.
There was shock in the local community
as news spread of a violent incident
in a town center flat.
The full facts were yet to be released.
I heard about Kayleigh's death
actually through my son who sent me a text
saying that there'd been a murder in London Road.
I was sort of fairly shocked,
and I just dropped Kayleigh a text message to say,
"Hope everything's all right."
She didn't respond to me,
I phoned a few more times,
and I walked up there,
and of course, when I got to her flat,
there was a policeman outside.
He wouldn't tell me anything,
but he did take my telephone number,
and I did say to him, "Please tell me that the little baby is fine."
He said, "I can tell you that the baby is unharmed,
but I can't tell you anything else."
And I said, "Thank you."
And on the way back, a police sergeant phoned me from Lewes,
from the incident room,
and just asked me what I knew
and confirmed to me that she had been murdered.
By this time, mid-morning on Sunday,
DCI Andy Wolstenholme and his team
were following every possible line of inquiry.
The detective story in the tragedy of Kayleigh Hanks
was under way.
We always look at things like phones.
We look at computers where we have them,
but in Kayleigh's case, we were looking at a really short period of time
for the investigation, and what we really needed to know
was about her relationship with Ian,
and Kayleigh's family, friends,
were all able to tell us what sort of relationship that was,
and we were quickly able to understand
perhaps some of the difficulties that they'd been facing
over the period preceding her murder.
Friends and family painted a picture
of a volatile, sometimes violent relationship.
In custody at the local police station,
Ian Paton described the events of the previous evening,
after the couple, with their baby, left Emma Hanks' home.
Going home to Kayleigh's flat and ordering some food together,
and sharing that in the evening,
Ian popped out to the shop.
And then when he came back,
he describes the atmosphere changing,
there being some arguments between him and Kayleigh.
They were clearly arguing 'cause he thought she was having an affair.
We know that from the text messages.
But in fact, he said, "No, no, it was about my ex-girlfriends
and her jealousy."
There was more argument, and Ian described Kayleigh saying
that their relationship had finished
and that he was to sleep on the sofa.
And Ian said that, absolutely, that suited him.
He says that he went into her bedroom to get a pillow
because he was gonna sleep on the sofa,
and when he was doing that,
Kayleigh attacked him with a knife.
Kayleigh had come at him with a carving knife.
Kayleigh was trying to kill him, says Ian,
and he said, "I had to restrain her."
But in Ian's words
on the call that he made to emergency services that night,
"I think I restrained her too hard,"
something else that jarred with investigating officers.
Restraining someone by strangling them,
it's an incredibly brutal way of restraining someone,
and the force that is required
to physically restrain someone to the point
that they pass out and ultimately die,
that's an awful lot of force.
And it seems absolutely incredible
that someone could consider that level of force
as being appropriate against anyone,
particularly their partner.
There was certainly disparity in size and height
and weight between Kayleigh and Ian,
so I would suggest that it would be relatively easy
for Ian to restrain Kayleigh
in all manner of different methods.
Another factor in the case building
against Paton was the time which elapsed
between the incident and Ian calling emergency services.
It appeared to be around 15 minutes.
Kayleigh was found in her bedroom.
She was on the floor right by the door,
and really close to the crib
where her daughter would have slept.
So she was right beside her mum when she passed.
Ian's reason for not calling for an ambulance sooner
was that he really needed to settle his daughter.
He could hear that she was unsettled,
and he said that he was happy to leave Kayleigh
because he thought she was safe on the floor.
When Ian returned to the bedroom
10 to 15 minutes later,
he realized that she had still not moved,
that she was in fact dead.
When he finally made the 999 call,
there was little anybody could do.
The police and the ambulance crews arrived really quickly
at Kayleigh's flat,
and they really did work hard to try and save her life.
And they spent quite some time doing that,
both the paramedics and police officers
giving CPR there at the scene
and trying everything absolutely possible.
The problems with Ian's version of events were many.
For one thing, someone's coming at you
with a carving knife, placing your hands around their neck
is not going to protect you from the carving knife.
Ian claimed that they had barreled around the room
and that they had smashed into a dressing table.
The dressing table it seemed on examination was untouched.
The scene in Kayleigh's room
was much like the rest of her flat,
was really well looked after.
Everything was tidy, everything was in its place,
and there wasn't really much to evidence
that there was a struggle that had gone on in that room.
Detectives found Ian Paton's account
of how Kayleigh had died difficult to believe,
especially once the autopsy had been carried out.
The forensic pathologist was able to tell us
that Kayleigh had died from neck compression.
He discovered that there was bruising on both sides of Kayleigh's neck
and was able to say that he believed
that that was as a result of neck compression.
It was quite separate to the medical intervention
to try and save Kayleigh's life.
Also, we found that there were hemorrhages in the eyes,
petechial hemorrhages, and they are found quite frequently
in cases where somebody dies by strangulation.
We carried out a micro-CT scan of Kayleigh's neck,
and one of the bones in her neck,
the hyoid bone, was found to be fractured.
And again, that's found to be fractured in a number of cases
where strangulation is the cause.
She had the post-mortem on the Monday,
and on the Tuesday, we knew then,
when they charged him with murder,
that's when they had to come and tell us.
And then it just went on from there.
Six months later,
36-year-old Ian Paton stood in the dock
at Hove Crown Court and denied murdering Kayleigh Hanks.
Throughout the course of the trial,
Ian seemed very relaxed and unconcerned
about what was happening.
He seemed almost quite jocular,
that he wasn't concerned about what was happening
and how serious the events in the case were.
I think perhaps his confidence is part of that persona,
part of that control that he tried to exert over Kayleigh,
and I think by showing himself as being confident
and even to a point disinterested in the trial,
he sort of took back some of that control for himself,
and was able to cause I think distress to the family.
Paton continued to deny the charge against him.
He insisted that Kayleigh had come at him with a knife,
and that when he had tried to protect himself,
he'd accidentally strangled her.
His story simply did not stack up.
Ian describes being attacked by Kayleigh
and sustaining injuries,
and through our investigations
and discussion with the pathologist,
we were able to suggest that those injuries
appeared to be self-inflicted by Ian,
so it was our case that Ian was responsible
for injuring himself with that knife.
He caused his own wounds
and placed the knife beside her
to make it look like that Kayleigh had had the knife.
Prosecutors told the jury that Ian Paton
had strangled Kayleigh to death,
maintaining his hold on her throat for at least 15 seconds.
It is an incredibly aggressive thing to do anyway,
grabbing someone by the throat and the neck,
and squeezing so that they can't breathe.
But of course, when you do that,
generally when you release your hand,
the person starts breathing again.
And so in order to kill someone by strangulation,
you generally have to hold on for a long period
after they've stopped breathing,
and that was the prosecution's case,
that actually in order to cause Kayleigh's death,
Ian had to hold onto her neck
far longer than she'd stopped breathing.
The autopsy found an injury to Kayleigh's lip,
as well as blood on the top that she'd been wearing
earlier that day.
There was bruising on her legs, cheek,
and the back of her head, some of it new,
some of it days old.
These were signs there had been another choking incident
a week or so earlier.
Prior to her death, he strangled her.
We don't know what it was over.
We don't know what happened.
I think that goes a long way
to showing that that is really something
that he feels comfortable with
and is something that he feels gives him a good degree
of control and power over someone else.
Despite Paton's bravado in the dock,
the jury was unconvinced by his version of events.
On February 7th, 2020, they returned their verdict.
Ian was found guilty of Kayleigh's murder.
He received a mandatory life sentence,
and he has to serve a minimum of 17 years.
The verdict and the sentence
are of little comfort to Kayleigh's grieving family.
You know, no matter how long he's got,
we're still living without Kayleigh.
He's still living, he's still breathing, you know,
he's still got food, he's living a life in prison.
He's got a second chance coming out.
My sister's never gonna have that chance.
Where the family does find comfort
is in raising the daughter that Kayleigh left behind,
and in reading the diaries that she secretly kept.
"Real time, real love, real me, real us."
Kayleigh kept diaries for the baby for when she was older,
just to give her the insight of what her dad was like
and what Kayleigh was like,
what Kayleigh had done previously, i.e. holidays,
and just to give a real insight of the beginning
and how she felt when she was pregnant.
Me and Kayleigh skinny dipping.
Kayleigh just givin' words of wisdom from a mom,
letting her know that her dads was about,
and her dad wasn't all bad in their relationship.
You know, there was happy times,
but also Kayleigh wrote down
the things that he used to do to her, to say to her.
So just in case, like, everything about Kayleigh's life was in a book.
"At bowling night with your father was okay, not great,
due to your dad strangling my friend after."
So, the baby could read and understand
what Kayleigh was about.
In the meantime,
Emma Hanks wants to use Kayleigh's story
to stop another innocent person losing their life
at the hands of their lover.
I just urge anyone that's going through it,
or they think they're going through it,
just to go and get some help. Go and talk to someone.
It doesn't matter how stupid it sounds.
Just have someone's support.
You never know, you might think it's stupid,
and they might have made you believe that it's stupid,
but just go and seek some advice.