NARRATOR: In July 1993,
a loving mum and keen student with high hopes for the future
was reported missing by her husband.
She's always a good attender at college, never missed anything.
And all of a sudden,
she doesn't come in.
Very quickly, it, it was clear there was something not right.
Hassan Al Shatanawi's story
about his wife Laura's disappearance
quickly unravelled,
as detectives uncovered lie after lie.
MAN: He had a family
that he hadn't told the police about,
a secret mistress and a child.
WOMAN: He was one of those people
where lies are just like a language.
You just open your mouth
and it's part of the language you use to manipulate.
Decades later,
the truth of what really happened to Laura Al Shatanawi
is still unknown. Just tell us what happened.
Tell us where she is. Tell us what's happened.
For murdering his loving wife in cold blood,
and depriving their son of a mother,
Hassan Al Shatanawi has proven himself to be
one of Britain's most evil killers.
(THEME MUSIC)
The story of a missing mother in a seaside town like Hartlepool
made big waves in 1993.
HENDERSON: It's quite a small community.
Everybody knew what's going on.
And at that time,
to have a missing mother is quite big news
Detectives used every tool at their disposal
searching for 36-year-old mother Laura Al Shatanawi.
BUCKWELL: If there's a missing person
the police usually turn to the public to help.
And they do that by going through the media.
Hassan Al Shatanawi was only too keen
to play the role of the concerned husband.
GROVES: He went on the local tv
and appealed for help in trying to find where his wife was.
MONCKTON: Police would've encouraged him
to do that as well.
Get his face out there,
get any witnesses, who might not know
about Laura going missing,
getting them to see this man on the TV.
The strategy brought in a flood of calls
from good Samaritans
including several who exposed 37-year-old Hassan Al Shatanawi
as a man with many secrets.
That was really his downfall
when he decided to put his face
into the public domain. The more information we got
the more suspicious you got
that this isn't exactly who he appears to be.
This killer's story begins in the Middle East
on the 2nd of January 1946.
Hassan Aissa Salome Shatanawi
was his full name, and he was born in Jordan.
WANSELL: We don't know very much about his early life,
simply that he'd studied medicine.
MCCULLOCH: We think he commenced medical school
or some sort of medical training on two occasions,
but never actually took any exams.
By 1983,
37-year-old Hassan Al Shatanawi
was a post-graduate student in clinical biochemistry
living in Cairo, Egypt.
He was ready to settle down,
and he knew exactly what kind of a woman
he wanted to meet.
WANSELL: He put an ad
in a lonely hearts column,
which said 'Doctor wants to meet English Princess'.
The lady who replied was called Laura May Vaughn.
26-year-old Laura was from the port town of Hartlepool
in the north east of England.
WANSELL: She'd been to Cairo before.
She liked travelling, and she replied to the ad.
Many of her friends
actually did describe her as an English rose.
Open faced, warm, gentle.
MONCKTON: And she goes out to Egypt,
and they start a relationship,
and it all happened quite quickly.
HENDERSON: She was a very likeable person.
nobody had a bad word to say about Laura.
Maybe a bit naive. She wanted love.
I think that's what Laura wanted, really, was love.
And she thought she'd found it with Hassan.
Two years later,
the couple were back in Laura's hometown,
living with her father, Donald.
It was a terraced house
off the main town centre road.
So it was within two minutes' walk to Hartlepool's town centre.
MONCKTON: Laura's father
described Shatanawi
as a real gentleman.
It does conjure up a picture
almost of this perfect man
who had a very strong moral code.
And perhaps a gentleman
would take control,
look after their family.
It's quite an old-fashioned term to use.
So we...
We get back then
to that English princess, real gentleman.
This whole relationship
appears to me to be presenting
as some kind of romantic fairytale.
The couple married,
and in August 1985,
Laura and Hassan Al Shatanawi
welcomed a baby son, Rasheed.
RASHEED: I was born in Hartlepool.
I lived in Hartlepool with my granddad, my mam,
and my dad.
Rasheed's earliest memories
betray nothing out of the ordinary
about his family life.
My childhood was...
..bit like any other childhood really, you know.
Played out. Went to parties.
Went to friends' at school.
I remember me, my mam, my uncle,
and my auntie all going to Rhodes for the week.
I've got some photographs of...
..me, my mam, and my dad in... in Egypt.
Hassan Al Shatanawi
told people he'd been a GP
in Jordan and Iraq,
but once living in the UK,
he did not practise medicine.
HENDERSON: For someone
that professed to be a doctor,
he'd never studied it, never practised it
in this country.
BUCKWELL: He may not have had the UK qualifications required,
but he took up property developing.
I think he owned a few houses which he rented out,
and he also bought houses
to do up for renting.
Entrepreneurial Al Shatanawi
had numerous money-making projects on the go.
RASHEED: He had a carpet shop.
He had a garage.
He'd bought
a big plot of land, up Oakenshaw,
to plant Christmas trees on.
Meanwhile, Rasheed's mother Laura
had ambitions of her own.
She was studying travel and tourism.
And she loved travelling.
GROVES: She was working
for a local Co-op Travel Agency
and as a result of that,
was attending Hartlepool College of Further Education,
doing tourism.
She was quite a bit of a character in, in the town,
particularly throughout the travel agents.
She would always fantasise about where she was going on holiday.
She wanted to visit here, and she wanted to visit somewhere else,
always very exotic places. And she came across
as a very nice person who was, who was wanting to better herself.
In June 1993, when Laura was 36,
and her son Rasheed just seven years old,
her hopes for the future stalled
in a way no one could have foreseen.
WANSELL: On June the 15th,
Laura takes her son Rasheed to school
and goes off to college
to take an exam.
BUCKWELL: She was due to meet her husband Hassan,
after the exam.
According to Hassan Al Shatanawi,
Laura never showed up.
The last time she was seen by anybody
was sitting the exam at the college.
Though her car was found parked
in its normal spot near the family home,
Laura didn't return that night.
Hassan Al Shatanawi
told her father she was working late.
Days passed with no sign of Laura.
But when her father and brother enquired about her whereabouts,
Hassan Al Shatanawi told them not to worry.
HENDERSON: He said he was concerned she hadn't come home,
but he wasn't concerned about her safety.
He believed she'd gone on holiday
and would return very shortly.
MCCULLOCH: She's gone away to Egypt
or wherever, or somewhere in the, in the, in the Middle East,
and I've never heard from her and I don't know anything about it.
No one doubted
that Laura had the travel bug.
But the idea of her taking off alone
seemed unlikely.
My mam always took me, no matter where she went...
..I was always with her.
So it was... it was just out the character,
her supposedly going on holiday without me.
Weeks passed and Hassan Al Shatanawi
received no phone call,
no postcard,
no contact at all from his wife.
MONCKTON: Laura's friends and family were very concerned
about her suddenly disappearing,
even with his story
about this impromptu holiday. And they were pushing him
and pushing him to say, "You've got to report her missing."
But he resisted that.
He really, really didn't want to.
On Thursday the 8th of July 1993,
Hassan Al Shatanawi
finally reported his wife missing.
With over three weeks having passed since she vanished,
the police would have their work cut out
to follow her trail.
On Friday the 9th of July 1993,
detectives John Groves and Iain Henderson
from Hartlepool Police
visited 47-year-old Hassan Al Shatanawi at his home
to find out more about his wife Laura's disappearance.
HENDERSON: We interviewed Hassan
and took a lengthy statement off him
to see what his account of Laura, lifestyle,
how they'd met.
He was very plausible, very polite,
and he was never disrespectful,
and he never talked badly of Laura.
GROVES: He thought that she may have gone on holiday,
although when questioned, she'd never ever
been on holiday with anybody else before,
other than the family.
She'd never spent a night away from home before.
This was not the only thing
that stood out for the CID officers.
It wasn't the demeanour
you would expect of somebody whose wife was missing.
He was very calm.
There were no tears,
there was no such sense of urgency
in what he was telling us.
The alarm bells were ringing
Detectives began the methodical process
of searching for 36-year-old Laura.
We wanted to put the bigger picture together.
You start back at the beginning
and the beginning's always where she lived
with her husband. The house was searched
with the consent of Hassan and the father.
BUCKWELL: They went to local travel agents.
If you were gonna buy a ticket somewhere abroad,
you would, you would be doing it
through a travel agent, most likely.
There was nothing to suggest, that they could see,
that Laura had gone abroad.
WANSELL: There's no evidence that her passport has been used.
There's no evidence that her bank cards have been used.
There's no evidence of her leaving any port in the British Isles.
So where is she?
The police could not find anyone
who could say with certainty they had seen Laura
since the 15th of June.
MCCULLOCH: So all sightings
or all of her normal activity ceased
on that particular day.
Very quickly investigators realised that something was very wrong.
She's left her son behind,
which isn't normal. There's nothing to suggest
that she would disappear.
Clearly there's something untoward and, there's no doubt about it
that Laura Shatanawi come to son harm.
And it was a matter of finding out
what harm that was and who's responsible.
Hassan Al Shatanawi
was invited to the local police station
to give a full account
of the circumstances surrounding his wife's disappearance.
It was a comprehensive statement.
That statement ended up at nearly 50 pages.
So halfway through
Mr Shatanawi said,
"I'm sorry, I've got a prior appointment. I must leave."
"And I'll come straight back."
Suspicious from the start
about Al Shatanawi's version of events,
detectives wondered
if this was the moment
he would lead them to his missing wife.
HENDERSON: What was decided
we'd put surveillance on him, to see where he went.
So Mr Shatanawi leaves the police station.
He's gone into the town centre area.
He's gone on a local bus, which was to Seaton Carew,
which was also boarded by the surveillance team.
Seaton Carew
is a small town just three miles down the coast from Hartlepool.
He was followed to Seaton Carew
where he got off the bus,
crossed the road
to the bus stop and got on the bus
and came back to Hartlepool.
It was a journey that made no sense
to the plain clothes officers
following Al Shatanawi.
Over the next couple of days,
they constantly kept eyes on him.
It would've taken a lot of staff
to do surveillance, really,
because if he's on a bus they'd work in pairs
and they've gotta be inconspicuous.
And when he's on a bus every day, we'd have to be different people.
He never appeared
to become suspicious or aware of the surveillance,
which continued
for probably a couple of weeks.
On Monday the 12th July,
Hassan Al Shatanawi
met with local journalists,
telling them of his hopes for Laura's safe return,
claiming that he'd wanted to report her missing much sooner,
but had been put off by her family.
MCCULLOCH: He was in the Hartlepool Mail,
the local media, appealing for her to come forward and saying,
"Well, I think she's gone on holiday somewhere without me."
As a result of the media report, we had an awful lot of people
saying, "I've seen a woman I think is Laura Shatanawi."
Any sighting that came in,
we would dispatch a team
to that location,
and try and find anybody else
to confirm that she'd been there,
and nobody could.
Increasingly sure
that Laura HAD met with some kind of foul play,
the police kept her husband Al Shatanawi
firmly in their sights.
Within a couple of days, the costly operation
brought them a lead.
He took the surveillance team
all over Durham and Cleveland
whilst he was travelling on the bus.
So inquiries were made in all these locations.
And whilst we were doing these inquiries,
one of the things that we found out
that he did have an allotment at Seaton Carew.
Al Shatanawi's green fingers
were news to the police.
He had failed to mention in his lengthy statement
the existence of an allotment.
Other holes were also appearing
in the Jordanian's account.
We realised that he was living
a bit of a fantasist life. He called himself
Dr Hassan Al Shatanawi, but we know
that he had no medical qualifications.
We actually spoke to his doctor at the time,
and they questioned
whether he had been fully medically qualified.
He would tell different stories too
about how he was making his living, what he'd done, where he'd been.
There was just little bits of information
that came in that this, this person isn't all he appears to be.
The secret allotment seemed like a promising lead
in Laura's disappearance.
Detectives thought
it might explain Al Shatanawi's fleeting visit
to Seaton Carew
the day they started following him.
The surveillance team noted that he was interested
in what was going on in the allotment when he went past.
Our supposition then
was he was there
to see if there's any police activity.
But an initial search of Al Shatanawi's plot
failed to yield any clues.
We identified the allotment,
a warrant was obtained,
and it was searched,
with a negative result at the time.
By Thursday the 15th of July,
a month after she was last seen,
the police still had no clues
as to Laura Al Shatanawi's whereabouts.
That day, her husband made another emotional appeal
via the media.
Mr Shatanawi went on the local TV, and appealed for help
in trying to find where his wife was.
There were some tears shed on the TV.
MONCKTON: The police
would've been watching him like a hawk.
We know, don't we,
that a lot of killers have gone and done press conferences
and have revealed themselves
in those press conferences.
Nothing in Al Shatanawi's words or behaviour
gave anything away that day.
But very quickly,
the calls from TV news viewers
began to pour in.
People started
contacting the incident room to say that,
"I know this person,"
but they don't call him Hassan Shatanawi.
"I know him as something else."
He seems to say he doesn't drive,
somebody else came in and said, "I've seen him driving this car."
So, the more information we got result of him putting himself
in the public domain, the more suspicious you got
that this isn't exactly who he appears to be.
With the help of the public,
the Hartlepool police incident room
was building up a picture of a husband who was a liar
and a fantasist.
The next call that came in
would prove that he was also...
..a killer.
After Hassan Al Shatanawi's TV appeal
for the safe return
of his missing wife Laura
on the 15th of July 1993,
a local tradesman called the incident room
at Hartlepool police.
HENDERSON: He'd been approached by Hasan Shatanawi,
to get rid of a shed that he had in the allotment.
GROVES: He'd said, "That chap there,"
"he paid me an amount of money to take the shed away and burn it."
This had happened around the 21st of June,
a week or so after Laura went missing.
The police quickly discovered
the shed had only been built
around the 14th of June.
BUCKWELL: The shed had cost,
you know, quite a sum, £250.
The shed was brand new.
It had no windows in it, just a door.
It was an astounding development.
Hassan Al Shatanawi had paid someone
to build a shed the day before his wife's disappearance,
then asked someone else
to destroy it just a week later.
MCCULLOCH: Who would want a shed building, immediately,
with no windows, and then pay somebody 50 pounds to burn it.
That's just not normal.
The existence of the shed
was a significant development,
but detectives knew that if it had been burned,
any forensic evidence it held
would have gone up in smoke.
MONCKTON: They would've wanted that shed back
against all odds.
That's what they would've been looking for.
Even if it was in pieces, it wouldn't matter
because every contact leaves a trace.
That's the mantra in forensics.
But, in an incredible stroke of luck,
the workman hadn't carried out the job he'd been paid to do.
When he went to see it, it was brand new.
It was far too good to burn.
So, "I took it apart"
"and I sold it to a guy over in Middlesborough."
So, we found the address
and we hot-footed it to this gentleman's house in Middleborough.
The shed had been rebuilt
in the buyer's garden,
but it would soon be on the move once more.
Piece by piece, forensics officers
dismantled the shed and took it to their lab.
Investigators realised immediately
it would be a crucial piece of the puzzle.
The floorboards in the centre of the shed
had been gouged out quite crudely
with probably a hammer and chisel
to about half of the depth of the wood.
The damaged section
had been painted with a thick layer of creosote.
Officers suspected the work had been done
to hide something.
Further examination by the Scenes Of Crime
revealed some head hairs and some blood between the laths
on the floor of the shed.
HENDERSON: It showed significant blood loss,
not just a cut,
something very serious had happened in that shed.
Within a week, a brand-new shed had been built,
stained with blood, painted, and dismantled.
It was a turning point in the investigation,
one which dashed any hopes of finding Laura Al Shatanawi alive.
Our assumption from that was that, you know,
this has been the murder scene.
And she's been murdered here,
and this is the remnants of the blood
and he's gouged it out
to try and get rid of it.
What investigators couldn't prove just yet,
was that the large quantities of blood
definitely belonged to Laura.
MONCKTON: 1993
was quite early for DNA analysis. I think...
..probably started using it
in criminal justice around 1986.
Attempts to extract a DNA profile
from the strands of hair found in crevices of the shed floor
were unsuccessful.
But, while efforts continued,
detectives felt they had enough to bring Al Shatanawi into custody.
HENDERSON: Hassan was arrested.
Even then, he was very polite.
There was no fear in him or anything like that.
Al Shatanawi may have been calm,
but for seven-year-old Rasheed,
already missing his mother,
it was a watershed moment.
When I first really knew about it was when my mam's best friend
come to pick us up from school.
That's when it really, the alarm bells started ringing.
I knew there was summat up, but I didn't know what.
And we went back to my mam's friends
and the police were there.
I was feeling scared, not knowing what, what was happening.
While Rasheed was being sheltered by his mother's friend,
his father was denying any knowledge of Laura's whereabouts
to interviewing officer John Groves.
GROVES: He answered some questions,
and we decided we'd produce the photographs of the shed floor.
When Shatanawi saw the photographs
he was, he was taken aback.
He was visibly shocked. You could see
he didn't think, for one moment,
that the police would ever recover this shed floor,
that he had paid a workman to dispose of and to burn.
With Hassan Al Shatanawi
refusing to answer further questions,
the police took their case to the Crown Prosecution Service.
The circumstances
which we found the shed,
the fact that he hadn't reported her missed for 23 days
when she'd never ever spent a day from home before.
All circumstantial, but put it all together...
And CPS thought we had enough to, to charge him, which we did.
Charged on the 19th of July with his wife's murder,
Al Shatanawi was remanded in custody.
In the meantime, the search for Laura's body continued.
Recovery of the body was obviously paramount to the investigation.
We believe that she was killed in the shed.
We don't know
where her body parts or body was disposed of.
There were several avenues...
..chased.
There was a report that he dismembered her,
and he'd taken her to the skips in, in Stockton.
There were stories
that she'd been fed to the pigs. People would say,
"Oh, 'cause he was a doctor in Jordan he'd be aware"
"of how to dismember people."
MCCULLOCH: It's quite possible he knew how to dismember a body
because the first year at university if you wanna be a doctor
you actually dissect a body.
It was one of many theories the police worked on
as they explored every line of enquiry.
I don't know whether that's true or not.
You do get people phoning in with false stories.
And again, you've still gotta chase them
to see whether they're right or or not.
Without Laura's body,
the police and prosecutors knew
convicting Al Shatanawi for her murder
would be much more difficult.
They were also struggling to identify a motive.
He never disclosed anything other than a normal relationship.
And, as far as he was concerned, it was a happy relationship.
The answer, when it came,
was a bombshell from an unexpected source.
MONCKTON: The police found
that Shatanawi was actually living a double life.
We understood from social services
that Mr Shatanawi had been involved with another woman.
WANSELL: Hassan
has started a second relationship
with a woman
whom he met at a bus stop in 1988
and indeed,
she becomes pregnant with Hassan's child.
In the early days of their relationship,
Al Shatanawi told his new partner
he was single.
Even when he admitted to being married,
he insisted it was in all but name,
the marriage was effectively over.
The other woman had some health problems.
And as a result, social services were involved
and they were intent on taking the, the child
from the other woman.
Al Shatanawi was faced with his secret child
entering the care system,
something he could not accept.
There was a court case at Leeds Family Court
where Shatanawi attended
and gave evidence to say that his wife
knew all about the affair, knew all about the other child,
and he was willing to...
..look after this other child.
Neighbours of the Al Shatanawi family
would later report
that, shortly before Laura disappeared,
they'd heard an almighty, and unusual, row
coming from the home,
something which may tally with a memory
the couple's son Rasheed
now re-lives in his nightmares.
RASHEED: I just remember my dad,
like, attacking my mam.
Then he set about me.
So...
on one hand he could be this nice caring person.
Then on the other hand
he could be a psychopath. But luckily, I only saw him
do it the once.
In hindsight, Rasheed wonders if this was the day
Hassan Al Shatanawi's two world's collided,
when Laura found out about her husband's mistress.
I think that's why my mam died that day.
'Cause I think she might have found out what had happened.
A couple of days after the alleged fight,
Laura disappeared.
Two days after that,
Hassan Al Shatanawi met with his lover,
and a social worker,
to say he was ready to move in with his second family.
The thoughts of the investigating team were...
..well, was this motive?
MONCKTON: It is quite possible...
..that it had come to the point
where Laura HAD to know
and it's quite possible
that she decided
to leave him at that point.
If he killed his wife,
he's still got both his sons.
It tells us an awful lot about...
..Shatanawi's mindset.
Having custody of those boys
meant more to him than anything else.
The women were expendable, disposable.
These were HIS sons.
It was a strong motive
to take to trial. But as the court date approached,
Laura's body was still missing.
In fact, detectives still couldn't prove
the blood in the shed was even hers.
Would they be able to convince a jury
that Hassan Al Shatanawi was...
..a cold-blooded killer?
On the 13th of October 1994,
48-year-old Hassan Al Shatanawi
stood trial in Newcastle
for his wife Laura's murder.
HENDERSON: The trial was at Moot Hall in the centre of Newcastle.
It was the old Crown Court building.
Moot Hall is a traditional
old-fashioned Victorian court.
It's how everybody imagines a Crown Court to be
from the olden days.
It's quite daunting really.
Sitting in the dock, the medic-turned-property developer
exhibited the same smooth plausibility
he'd presented to police officers like Hamish McCulloch from day one.
His demeanour throughout the trial
was very sure of himself that he was not going
to be convicted. he didn't look concerned,
he didn't look worried
because he knew we didn't have a body.
And without a body, it's very hard to get a conviction
Though 36-year-old Laura's body had not been recovered,
investigators had no doubt
that her husband had killed her.
BUCKWELL: The prosecution was centred on his character
and behaviour. I mean, here was a man that had not
reported his wife missing initially.
She'd gone missing without, apparently, telling anyone
where she was going. And we were relying only on him
that she'd gone on holiday.
There was a suspicious nature of his visits to the allotment,
then the discovery of this shed,
which he'd bought and disposed of very quickly.
One of the most amazing moments of the trial
was when the police reconstructed the shed
in the courtroom.
To show the jury
exactly what the police had found
so it was built and was taken apart
and showed them the, the wood
where it had been gouged out
and where it had been creosoted.
Can you imagine what the jury must have thought
looking at the shed?
Was this where Laura May met her end?
We said it was premeditated.
Building the shed, getting the shed made
ready for that particular day.
He'd organised everything
and then he thought 23 days
would give him time
to get rid of the shed
but I'm afraid he was wrong.
The prosecution argued that Al Shatanawi's motive for murder
was his secret partner and child,
whom he had promised to move in with
shortly after Laura went missing.
MONCKTON: The trial must have been difficult
for so many people.
And especially the other woman
who could so easily
have been the victim in this.
And of course, a murder trial of this type
is gonna bring all sorts of press and media interest.
Going back into her history, putting her in the limelight
and her son, it must have been
absolute torture for her.
Even worse, detectives had also discovered
that even this second relationship was not sacred to Al Shatanawi.
MCCULLOCH: He wasn't a stranger
to advertising in publications to meet other women.
He put an, an advert in Farming Weekly or something,
wanting to meet a, a farmer's daughter
or somebody of that nature in, in Ireland.
The prosecution's circumstantial case
against Hassan Al Shatanawi was strong.
And they had another card to play.
For over a year, forensic scientists had been trying to prove
that the blood found in the slats of the shed floor
belonged to Laura.
The police...
..had some challenges
to match forensic samples from the shed
to Laura.
WANSELL: There is no conclusive DNA
from the blood in the shed,
and there is no conclusive DNA
from the hairs.
In September 1994,
just one month before Al Shatanawi's trial,
the UK Home Office
had approved a new technique for obtaining DNA.
At long last, scientists had managed
to successfully extract a DNA profile
from the blood,
but they had no confirmed sample of Laura's
to compare it to.
BUCKWELL: What they did was take DNA from her son, Rasheed
and her father.
Cross-examined the results
and came up with a positive result.
We share around 50% of our DNA
with siblings and children,
so it was a strong indication that the blood in the shed
belonged to Laura.
Neither Rasheed nor his grandfather
had ever been inside the shed.
But the prosecution wanted to be even more sure.
They asked Laura's father for mail she'd sent him,
and he found something
from five years earlier.
Laura had sent a postcard home
to her parents from a holiday she'd taken in Malta,
and she'd licked the postage stamp.
Once again,
the new technique for analysing DNA was employed.
They got the postage stamp and were able
to extract DNA
from the gum of the stamps that had been licked by Laura.
And that gave them a much clearer match,
with the DNA from the blood found in the shed floor.
So, this was a huge breakthrough
in terms of proving Hassan Shatanawi's guilt.
Incredibly, DNA from beyond the grave
had given Laura a chance of justice.
But the job wasn't done just yet.
Al Shatanawi's defence lawyers
brought up the many well-intentioned phone calls
from citizens who insisted
they'd seen Laura alive and well
over the last year.
HENDERSON: It was used by the defence to say,
"Well, she's not dead. People have seen her."
"Blood in the shed, doesn't prove that she's dead."
It's not for the defence to prove that he DIDN'T kill her.
It's for the prosecution to prove that he did kill her.
After a five-week trial,
on the 21st of November,
1994, it was time to find out
if the prosecution had proved their case.
MCCULLOCH: The jury retired
to decide their verdict. And it took them quite some time.
I remember they were out a long time.
I've been at many murder trials and you, you look
at the juries and you try to work out
what way the, what way the juries are thinking.
And you don't know.
After two days of deliberation,
the jury were ready to deliver their verdict.
BUCKWELL: One member of the jury
had fallen ill,
and they accepted a majority verdict.
WANSELL: They decide by a majority of 10 to one
that Hassan is guilty of the murder of Laura May.
Sentencing Hassan
to life with a minimum of 16 years.
The judge said "You deprived your son of his mother."
"This is a wicked crime."
It's a bittersweet sort of result.
You're happy that we've got the result,
but then underneath it all, there's always the family.
You know, they haven't got a result.
They then know that their mother, daughter,
sister, is dead.
But they've still got no answers.
They don't have any closure for what happened.
Al Shatanawi's conviction
confirmed he had killed his wife
in an act of cold-blooded premeditation.
On the face of it he was quite polite.
It was all a cover.
He was evil. He was a horrible man.
MCCULLOCH: He's planned to get rid of his wife Laura,
and he's had no thought about his son
and how he's going to miss out on his mother bringing him up.
The guilty verdict ended a tumultuous time
in Rasheed's young life.
Aged just nine,
he would have to live his life
knowing his father had murdered his mother.
RASHEED: To me, both my parents had gone.
I lost both my parents that day.
Although my dad was alive and well...
..he couldn't do
what normal fathers do.
He was locked up.
Rasheed moved to Durham
to live with his great aunt.
I had to, like, rebuild my life, you know?
I went to a new place to live.
I had to make new friends.
I had to go to a new school, fit in there,
what wasn't easy.
For years and years, I was having nightmares.
The hardest thing for Rasheed and the rest of Laura's family
is that her body has never been found.
I just want to know where my mam is.
That's all I want. I just want to finally bury her, you know.
Like, my grandad went to his grave not knowing where she is.
My uncle, who passed away a couple of years ago,
he... he kept on trying.
He's gone to his grave not knowing.
So I think it's only right we try and...
..just try and get it done.
Just for my mam's friends as well
and the rest of the family.
People would visit him in jail to ask, after he was convicted,
would he disclose where the body was
and he wouldn't. He showed no remorse.
He never showed any empathy
to the family, to his son,
who he's left without a mother, to Laura's brother who asked.
And they begged him to say where it was.
Hassan Al Shatanawi continued to protest his innocence,
and has never revealed
where his wife's remains can be found.
Over the years,
efforts have continued to locate Laura.
BUCKWELL: 2005, more than 20 years
after, uh, Laura's disappearance, the police received a tip off,
that she may have been disposed of
in Seaton Carew golf course.
GROVES: Somebody had phoned in
to say that round about the time of the murder
the disappearance of Laura,
somebody was seen carrying
what appeared to be a body over the golf course.
The search team were brought out
and they exhumed what they thought was the body,
which transpired to be, uh, those of dog.
In January 2013,
Rasheed got a phone call
that shook his family and dashed their hopes
of finding Laura.
I'd just come in from work
and the phone was ringing.
So I answered it
and it was the probation service.
And they'd they'd been notified off the police that my dad
had been deported.
And it, it just happened that quick.
WANSELL: He was freed, even though the parole board
had said he was still dangerous.
And the Home Office decided
that he should be deported back to Jordan
without any hesitation,
which is indeed what happened.
That annoyed the family who felt that he was dangerous
and that they still didn't know
what happened to Laura May's body.
MONCKTON: Even when his son has, you know,
implored him to give some answers,
he hasn't.
He doesn't really want to take responsibility for this.
He still maintains his, his innocence
and for him,
I suppose it's a way
of being the victim in this rather than the killer.
Having lost touch with his father, and lacking the answers he craves,
Rasheed and his young son
have their own way of remembering Laura.
We've got a headstone now with a name and that on.
We do go and we let a balloon off
and we put some flowers and that down.
In 1983,
Laura Vaughan was a young woman with a passion for travel,
and a desire to find the love of her life.
Just 10 years later
she'd been murdered
by the man she'd fallen in love with.
An arch manipulator
who lied as easily as he breathed,
Hassan Al Shatanawi
was finally proved to be one of Britain's most evil killers.
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