Bill McDonald

And you then recall that there's been a conversation in the past about the deceased having some ex-partner.

There's no playbook for this type of fraud.

A woman called Elaine, Elaine Boyes.

In suggesting Elaine Boyes, I think he was hoping that she might be able to answer more of the questions that would help us. And then it's right, okay, we need to find Elaine Boyes.

We track Elaine down, and she tells us a fascinating and very interesting story.

I guess it's at that point that you, I guess, a bit more switched on to, right, OK, we need to step this up a level.

I'm Bill McDonald, Detective Sergeant in the Dublin Cornwall Police. So I was a team leader, effectively.

We felt that in the next couple of days, there would be something that would get reported, which was an explanation. Sooner or later, somebody would get reported missing.

We were doing stuff within the media.

We'd released a photograph of the tattoo.

Obviously, within our police computer systems and databases, you can also search on tattoos.

We were talking to different shipping companies.

Well, we got passenger manifests for different boats and stuff.

I seem to recall there was a passenger reported missing from a cross-channel ferry. But over the coming days, sort of, actually, when you looked at the description, you looked at, you know, the person involved, none of it matched.

You would think distinctive tattoo, circumstances, media coverage, press, something would come out somewhere. But it just didn't. It was just, it was just unexplained.

An autopsy is looking at something which will give you more information. And you're looking for clues.

One thing that was obvious, though... The cause of death was recorded as drowning because of sea water detected in the lungs. So clearly, when the body entered the water, that person was breathing and they drowned. And that you would expect if somebody had fallen into the sea or if somebody was taking their own life or there was an accident at sea, drowning would be the natural cause.

And he said, look, Rolex keep records and you might be able to identify this person by contacting Rolex.

But when the son of a fisherman says something... Each Rolex watch has a, and we're talking obviously there's fake and there's real Rolexes, but a real Rolex will have a serial number which is recorded by Rolex. That's unique to that watch.

And just over a week later... Rolex were able to tell us that, yes, the watch had been serviced, it had a service history, and it had been serviced at a jeweler's called Fattorini's in Harrogate.

And sure enough, they had a record, a card in a filing system, which had the serial number of the Rolex watch, and then underneath had a name. R.J. Platt. And the Platt was P-L-A-T-T. R.J. Platt. Of course, it doesn't mean to say that just because the watch has got a service history for a man called Platt, that the person wearing the watch is the person called Platt.

But it certainly took us further forward than where we were at that particular time.

They matched. And by searching his service record, it confirmed the fact that they had a record of this tattoo.

So we're starting to get some real progress.

My brother lived in Hay-on-Wye. He welcomed me into his studio. He was a cartoonist.

And he confirmed that actually the stars were in the shape actually of a Canadian maple leaf. And he talked about his brother having dual nationality and holding a Canadian passport and the fact that he loved Canada.

I explained obviously the circumstances. We had a difficult conversation. He was clearly obviously distressed and perplexed and concerned and had absolutely no idea why his brother would be in Brixham or on the south coast of Devon.

Are we looking at somebody who's taken their own life? Potentially this man, Platt, had some form of mental health worries.

And you would think at that point it would be obvious as to, right, what had happened. But actually it wasn't. And we were equally perplexed and left scratching our heads thinking, well, what's this man's connection with Devon? And we couldn't find one. And that in itself was just very odd.

You can imagine you work in a busy office with lots of people. Everybody had a suggestion. And I remember being frustrated with, you know, I was saying to a lot of people, without any evidence, you need evidence to draw a conclusion.

Everybody had a theory. I look back on it now and smile because we had some fairly imaginative suggestions, but actually none of them were anywhere near the true reality and the story that unfolded, which was the most incredible story with the most sensational ending, I guess you would say.

And, you know, you're both looking at each other with some disbelief, I guess, as to, well, what's this all about?

There's too many unanswered questions. There's too many unknowns. Because it would seem that David Davis was probably, from what we could identify, one of the last people to see him alive.

And we knew that David Davis could be tied to a yacht of that name. And when we researched Coast Guard records and maritime records, There was a boat in the name of the Lady Jane at sea off the coast of South Devon around the time of what we believe to be the murder and recovery of the body.

The general circumstances put forward a fairly strong but not conclusive case that actually David Davis could be responsible for this man's murder.

We were literally running out of time. They were huddled in a room up on the top floor of the police station for literally hours, poring over documentation, representations from us and from other experts in relation to what we had and what we could actually prove.

And you're looking at the clock and thinking, we need a decision. And it was a question, you know, they're still considering it.

And he says, authorize a charge, charge him. And we charged him with murder.

He came rushing into the inquiry room and ushered me outside.

And it was unusual to see him quite so agitated. And he dragged me down the corridor into an office next to the fax machine. And I'm kind of perplexed looking at him. He said, we're just about to get a fax.

The fax machine sort of fires up and then lights are flashing and stuff and the pages are starting to come off the fax machine. And the first page that comes off is a mugshot of David Davis. And then the next thing that's coming off is an international arrest warrant in the name of Albert Walker.

It turns out that our man David Davis was actually wanted in Canada for theft, fraud and the embezzlement of money. We're not talking small change, we're talking big money. And then off the fax machine next is this picture of Noelle. And the next thing that emerges is that actually it's Sheena Walker.

And the allegation is that she's been abducted from Canada and taken overseas by her father, who is in fact Albert Walker. So we're looking at father and daughter together.

And then we both stand there and we're looking at each other and it's like, oh my God, that's that moment, you know?

And he said, well, there was the anchor in the net.

But interestingly, the anchor wasn't in the net, in with the fish, down at what we called the cod end.

We had a local scenes of crime sergeant and he'd been involved in investigation all the way through and he takes the anchor and I can remember coming back in a day or two later and he's very excited and he's clutching the anchor and he's got photographs that have come from the post-mortem and he has a photograph of the anchor laying on the bench next to the body

And the anchor shaft perfectly fits the bruising on the thigh.

And it didn't just match. It was a really, really strong evidential match. It wasn't a question, well, it could be the anchor. It was almost, yes, that's the anchor.

I said, don't touch it, don't switch it on, don't do anything with it, just box it up, bring it back here.

Not only could they say that that was the date and time that it had been switched off, they could also say the location at which it had been switched off.

five miles off the coast of Tynmouth, out to sea, virtually contemporaneous on the spot where John Coppock recovers the body.

She was delicate. She was vulnerable. She was nervous. She was anxious.

You need to understand that having arrested somebody, you only have a limited amount of time that you can hold that person in police detention.

You need to move quickly.

It's difficult at this point to explain to somebody listening the speed at which things start to happen.

They're held in the custody suite at Torquay Police Station. It's myself and Ian Clenahan that are conducting the interviews. He's a tall, confident man.

Very plausible. Immediately seeking to establish rapport.

You have a sense that at every point, he feels superior.

He did what we would call a no comment interview.

She exercised her right to speak, and actually she ended up, as time went on, tying herself in knots, because more and more times she was, well, I can't remember.

You start asking her about addresses that she lived at, she couldn't remember them. You started asking her about places that she went to, family, and she couldn't remember those either. And there were fundamental things like, well, you must remember where you lived. And then it was a question of, well, can you remember what school you went to?

And she named an area that she'd gone to school, but she couldn't remember the name of the high school.

Something from her that, concretely, we could go and say, right, OK, that proves you are who you are purporting to be.

I had a sense that she'd been schooled and rehearsed on what she should say when she got into that situation. The cover story, although she was comfortable with it, as it turned out, was fairly limited. So she kept repeating it.

We were kind of up against a brick wall and clearly we weren't going to be going any further.

Our main interest was with him.

And then there's breaks in the interview process where, you know, refreshment breaks, comfort breaks or whatever.

And I remember in one comfort break in front of his solicitor, David Davis kind of joyed me by suggesting that I should try harder or in some way I was going to have to up my game. And I... I can remember at the time that really sticking. The arrogance of somebody to say that in that situation.

But then when the tape is running during the formal interview, you're back to that, you know, no comment. I'm sure psychologists and people would have a field day.

She couldn't recall the date specifically, but remembered that during the day, as she was sat with the kids, just waiting for her dad to return, she watched the opening ceremony of the Atlanta Olympics.

And that, for us, to be able to tie that down, that was huge.

We took a decision that to get her into the UK safely, we wouldn't put her on a commercial airline, and we approached the RAF, and they very kindly agreed to fly Sheena and a Nimrod with a whole complement of RAF personnel, who had no idea who she was, into Britain. That was a very, very unusual step. It was the right thing to do.

paparazzi were actually at every airport near to Sheena's location in Canada, waiting for her to be spotted or seen for the scoop that she was leaving.

She was delicate, she was vulnerable, she was nervous, she was anxious. She wanted to come over and do the right thing.

I was so unprepared for the tidal wave of global interest that the inquiry would then take.

In Canada, unbeknown to us, it was incredibly high profile and that kind of transferred over here.

Mobile trucks from CNN, Sky News, Fox News.

In English law, the prosecution bat first, so our witnesses are heard first.

And that in itself was a, I know, a very emotional and hugely significant moment for Barbara Walker, Sheena's mother.

As soon as we started to uncover what was happening on the ground here in July, the picture really started to... really crystallize in our minds.

You're the first people I've worked with that have taken the trouble to come down and actually come and see it properly. Because I think you have to see it to really understand it and see how it all fits together.

Could that have been an abortive attempt on that particular visit? Was it a dress rehearsal for what was to come? Was he just putting the final preparations to his final plan? We don't know. The only person really that could tell us that would be the two people involved.

They wanted to extend the stay. Father was insistent they extended the stay. That property, Potter's Loft, they were unable to secure that. There was obviously other people coming in.

They had to vacate. So Sheena had to move everything, all their, all their clothing and the kids and everything they brought with them down the hill into the old brew house.

As we're stood here now, it's an idyllic setting. It's a beautiful stretch of river. And it's difficult to conceive that this is the backdrop to what eventually would be the day of the murder.

So the sequence would have been able to come out of this accommodation as we're stood here now, walk down the pontoon.

Kirk would have come over, picked him up, and they would have taken him the short distance upriver to the river mooring.

As you look up through the trees, you'll see a large white house set back on the hillside.

Coincidence? Maybe not.

The yacht, the Lady Jane, would have been moored mid-river. He would have got on board. Kirk would have come back to his pontoon. And then Walker would have sailed the Lady Jane boat up the river, probably about half an hour, to the port of Dartmouth.

That holiday accommodation was called the Anchorage. And it's only hours later, having left that, that he's murdered at sea with an anchor.

I'm Bill McDonald, Detective Sergeant in the Devon and Cornwall Police. So I was a team leader, effectively.

We felt that in the next couple of days, there would be something that would get reported, which was an explanation. Sooner or later, somebody would get reported missing.

We were doing stuff within the media.

We'd released a photograph of the tattoo.

Obviously, within our police computer systems and databases, you can also search on tattoos.

We were talking to different shipping companies.

We got passenger manifests for different boats and stuff.

I seem to recall there was a passenger reported missing from a cross-channel ferry, but over the coming days, sort of, actually, when you looked at the description, you looked at, you know, the person involved, none of it matched.

You would think distinctive tattoo, circumstances, media coverage, press, something would come out somewhere. But it just didn't. It was just, it was just unexplained.

An autopsy is looking at something which will give you more information. And you're looking for clues.

The cause of death was recorded as drowning because of sea water detected in the lungs. So clearly, when the body entered the water, that person was breathing and they drowned. And that you would expect if somebody had fallen into the sea or if somebody was taking their own life or there was an accident at sea. Drowning would be the natural cause.

And he said, look, Rolex keep records and you might be able to identify this person by contacting Rolex, right?

But when the son of a fisherman says something... Each Rolex watch has a, and we're talking obviously there's fake and there's real Rolexes, but a real Rolex will have a serial number which is recorded by Rolex. That's unique to that watch.

And just over a week later... Rolex were able to tell us that, yes, the watch had been serviced, it had a service history, and it had been serviced at a jeweler's called Fattorini's in Harrogate.

And sure enough, they had a record, a card in a filing system, which had the serial number of the Rolex watch, and then underneath had a name. R.J. Platt. And the Platt was P-L-A-T-T. R.J. Platt. Of course, it doesn't mean to say that just because the watch has got a service history from a man called Platt, that the person wearing the watch is the person called Platt.

But it certainly took us further forward than where we were at that particular time.

They matched. And by searching his service record, it confirmed the fact that they had a record of this tattoo.

So we're starting to get some real progress.

The brother lived in Hay-on-Wye. He welcomed me into his studio. He was a cartoonist.

And he confirmed that actually the stars were in the shape actually of a Canadian maple leaf. And he talked about his brother having dual nationality and holding a Canadian passport and the fact that he loved Canada.

I explained obviously the circumstances. We had a difficult conversation. He was clearly obviously distressed and perplexed and concerned and had absolutely no idea why his brother would be in Brixham or on the south coast of Devon.

Are we talking about somebody who's taken their own life? Potentially this man, Platt, had some form of mental health worries.

And you would think at that point it would be obvious as to right what had happened, but actually it wasn't. And we were equally perplexed and left scratching our heads thinking, well... What's this man's connection with Devon? And we couldn't find one. And that in itself was just very odd.

You can imagine you work in a busy office with lots of people. Everybody had a suggestion. And I remember being frustrated with, you know, I was saying to a lot of people, without any evidence, you need evidence to draw a conclusion.

Everybody had a theory. I look back on it now and smile because we had some fairly imaginative suggestions, but actually none of them were anywhere near the true reality and the story that unfolded, which was the most incredible story with the most sensational ending, I guess you would say.

And, you know, you're both looking at each other with some disbelief, I guess, as to, well, what's this all about?

There's too many unanswered questions. There's too many unknowns. Because it would seem that David Davis was probably, from what we could identify, one of the last people to see him alive.