Hope to Die

‘No,’ says Gislingham at the other end of the line. ‘Sorry, Nina, my bad. I should have thought.’

Mukerjee smiles to herself; it might have been a waste of time but it was very far from being the dimmest question a police officer has asked her about DNA. And in any case, she likes Gislingham; she’s glad to see him making a success of his step up to sergeantship.

‘No problem at all – really.’

‘I just remember the boss saying you were surprised you hadn’t found as many matches as you usually would and thought this might be the explanation.’

‘Well, the first half of that’s true, at least.’

Gis laughs. ‘Back to the drawing board, eh?’

* * *

www.bbc.com/transcripts/Behind_the_Headlines

BEHIND THE HEADLINES aired October 26, 2018 – 18:30 GMT

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[18:00:18]

HELEN KERRIDGE, HOST: Good evening, I’m Helen Kerridge and this is BEHIND THE HEADLINES, where we take an in-depth look at a story that’s making the news this week. Tonight it’s an ‘infamous’ case from fifteen years ago that’s once again making the front pages. Back in 2003, Camilla Rowan, then 23, was accused of killing her newborn son six years earlier. She has always claimed she gave the baby to its natural father, a man called Tim Baker, but this man has never been found. Rowan was convicted of murder at the Old Bailey, and sentenced to life. And that seemed to be the end of it. But then in 2016, investigative journalist John Penrose revisited the case in a now-celebrated series for Netflix, which raised some serious questions about the reliability of the original police investigation. And now, two years on, the case has taken another sensational turn, and we have the man who made that documentary here with us tonight. John –

JOHN PENROSE: Thank you, Helen. Back in 2016, I ended Infamous: The Chameleon Girl by asking if the time had come to take another look at Camilla Rowan’s case. Had there, in fact, been a serious miscarriage of justice which led to a victim of child abuse being imprisoned for a crime no one could prove she had committed? A few months later, the Criminal Cases Review Commission did indeed look at that question, but they concluded that the answer, then, was ‘No’.

But now we know better. Because earlier this week the news broke that Camilla Rowan’s lost baby had been found. Not, sadly, alive and well, but dead; killed in the most bizarre circumstances. Here in the studio tonight we have Detective Inspector Adam Fawley, who is leading the investigation into that death for Thames Valley Police. Inspector Fawley, perhaps you could tell us how you came to identify this man as Camilla Rowan’s son.

DETECTIVE INSPECTOR ADAM FAWLEY: Officers were called to a house on the outskirts of Oxford last Sunday night after reports of an intruder. They discovered the body of a man in the kitchen.

PENROSE: He’d been shot. By the owner of the house.

FAWLEY: Yes, I’m afraid so.

PENROSE: The householder thought the man was a burglar?

FAWLEY: It would be a natural assumption to make.

PENROSE: So what led you to connect this incident to the Camilla Rowan case?

FAWLEY: Unfortunately, the dead man did not have any identifying documents on him, so we took DNA samples at the scene, which later proved him to be the biological son of Camilla Rowan.

PENROSE: It seems an awfully big jump from an unidentified corpse in 2018 to a baby last seen in 1997.

FAWLEY: Camilla Rowan is a convicted criminal; her DNA is in the National DNA Database. It was bound to produce a match.

PENROSE: So you’re 100% sure this man was her long-lost child?

FAWLEY: We are. Our task now is to establish exactly where he’s been for the last twenty years. Without any identifying documents, that’s proving a challenge.

PENROSE: Do you have any potential lines of enquiry at all?

FAWLEY: The only lead we have is that the man may have been brought up overseas, possibly in the US. But as you can appreciate, that doesn’t narrow the field down very much, so we’re hoping that someone who sees this programme may recognise him and come forward.

(SHOW STILL)

PENROSE: This is the man? At Oxford railway station, the evening he died?

FAWLEY: That’s right. If any viewers know this man, or can give us any information about who he is, please contact Thames Valley Police on the phone number or email address at the bottom of the screen now. All calls and emails will be treated confidentially.

PENROSE: (GESTURING AT THE PHOTO) He has a backpack with him – surely that must have contained something that would tell you who he was?

FAWLEY: Unfortunately, the backpack has not been found.

PENROSE: That’s a bit odd, isn’t it?

FAWLEY: An extensive search has been conducted –