Ambulance, police emergency.
Is it possible to get away with murder?
What does a killer do after committing
the most heinous of crimes?
There was also placed items around Sian's body that could
have caused you to believe that this was a burglary gone wrong.
Do they carry on as normal and hide in plain sight?
He violently killed this woman and watched her bleed and die
and he just went round about his business as usual.
Or go on the run?
He's always on foot.
He had his bag over his shoulder. We had him on camera.
How do the actions of a killer, after their crime,
influence the police investigation?
He thought that he'd managed to conceal all evidence
of any blood on his footwear and hadn't anticipated
that we would find blood on his footwear.
By focusing on the aftermath, we unpick the mindset of a killer,
understand the motive and reveal what the killer did next.
In 1998, 29-year-old Sian Roberts moved to this quiet street in Salford
near Manchester and gave birth to a baby daughter.
Sian trained as a hairdresser at a local college and soon found work.
But after her father's death and a series of break-ups,
she began to struggle with depression.
In 2015, her mother died.
Having nursed her through a long illness, the loss hit Sian hard.
Sian cared for her parents
up until their deaths and this really did affect her.
She suffered from depression and she really felt like she
needed a fresh start.
But the local community rallied round and by the end of the year,
Sian was starting to turn her life around.
Of who within the community, there are people who cared for Sian.
In fairness, it's no different to anywhere else.
It's a diverse community.
But in November 2015, everything would change forever.
Having not seen her for a couple of days,
Sian's friends start to become concerned.
One of them goes to her house and is shocked by what he finds.
Within minutes, first responders arrive in the cul-de-sac.
My name is Pam Mather.
I've worked for Greater Manchester Police for 19 years
and I currently hold the position of Crime Scene Manager.
It was on the Sunday evening.
I was on a 2:10 shift and the DI contacted me directly
and asked me to attend the scene.
He explained that it was a suspicious death.
At the scene, police are met with a man claiming to be
a friend of Sian's, who says he found her lying dead in her bedroom.
This is the same man who had made the emergency call from her house.
He had found Sian and it was him that had alerted the police
to attend at the property.
We entered upstairs of the property,
where we were told that there was a body, a female body, on the floor,
in what would be the back bedroom.
When police try entering the room, it appears to be blocked.
You couldn't really enter the scene of the bedroom
because the door would only open ajar.
You could see, just from opening that door,
that there was numerous items spilt around that floor -
clothing, boxes, wardrobe door, footwear scattered all around.
Police managed to break their way into the bedroom,
and find Sian dead on the floor.
A knife had also been placed into Sian's hand, potentially,
initially making it look like she'd inflicted the wounds to herself.
Just from the injuries, from the scale,
from the depth of the injury to the right side of the chest,
we knew that the murder weapon was bigger than the knife in her hand.
This wasn't a suicide, self-inflicted or accidental.
This was a murder enquiry.
Police launch a murder investigation.
But first, they need to secure the scene.
The man who made the 999 call is taken to the station
to give a statement.
It's quite clear from that,
that he's very distressed at what he's seen.
He's very concerned and he's very distressed on the phone
when he makes that call.
Police swiftly assess the scene before them
to try to ascertain what had really gone on.
A lot of items had been tipped out and placed onto Sian's body.
There was also some sex toys, a vibrator and some handcuffs.
Was this a burglary gone wrong
or was there a sexual motive behind this brutal crime?
Police then make a crucial discovery.
After Sian had been stabbed,
it's quite clear that she'd lived for a time after,
because there's evidence at the murder scene - in the bedroom -
that Sian, at some point, had been sat on the side of the bed,
bleeding out.
But, of course, she's found on the floor at the side of the bed.
That was denoted by the large pool of blood
that was found on the floor just under the bed,
which would indicate that she has been moved
during or potentially after she has passed away.
It's now clear that after killing Sian,
her attacker moved her body.
Could her killer have then panicked and called the police?
Police immediately hone in on the man who found Sian.
Mother-of-one Sian Roberts has been murdered,
her body found in her home by her friend -
a man by the name of Joel Gordon.
But having assessed the scene and discovered Sian's body
was moved after her death, police have a theory.
The working hypotheses that we had was that Joel Gordon,
who found her, was involved in the murder following an argument.
Police immediately arrest 36-year-old Joel Gordon
so they can interview him under caution
to ascertain if he knows more about what happened.
A 36-year-old man has been arrested on suspicion of murder,
after a woman was found dead in Salford.
Officers were called to St Heliers Drive last night.
Police say the area is still cordoned off
to find out how she died.
Detectives want to know who Joel is
and what his relationship is with Sian.
They were childhood sweethearts and they reconnected later on in life.
People would describe them as inseparable and that they had
a really strong connection.
Despite the pair having given their relationship another go,
they soon split up, but remained friends and in daily contact.
Joel Gordon, a very interesting character -
albeit all the family of Sian was saying he was
a good influence and good for her.
When Joel is questioned by police, he maintains his innocence
and explains that he broke into Sian's home
after not being able to get through to her for almost two days.
Joel was explaining that he had found Sian and it was him that
had alerted the police to attend at the property.
Joel found her. The events on the Sunday night,
having failed to get hold of her on the phone,
having failed to get a reply to the door,
he goes round to the back of the house
and the back patio door was open.
So he goes in, up to the bedroom and he finds Sian.
He gave quite a graphic account as to how he had found Sian,
what actions he had taken to see whether she'd passed away.
He also was able to describe the crime scene in a level of detail
that potentially somebody that hadn't taken those actions,
wouldn't have been able to do.
When detectives look into Joel's background,
they make a key discovery.
He has a criminal history.
He'd killed someone previously.
He was, in fact, a man who is out on licence, having been
convicted of a previous murder, which was a knife murder.
Police quickly establish that Joel Gordon has already
served time for murder back in 1997, after stabbing a teenager to death.
That person had a past which was very concerning and that put him
at the top of the list of suspects.
Because of his criminal past, police are able to keep Joel in custody
while they continue their investigation into Sian's murder.
When the results of the post mortem come in,
they reveal Sian suffered a brutal knife attack.
The nature in which Sian had been killed
appeared to be incredibly violent to me.
She'd been stabbed four times.
That stab wound was the fatal one, in her right chest area, right side.
That went in 16cm deep and was 4.1cm wide.
Sian's wounds also show a struggle may
have taken place with her killer.
She had two potentially defensive injuries to her right hand,
where you either grab that or try to deflect the knife
that's being thrust at you.
Defensive injuries make you readily aware
that that person knows somebody is coming at them with a knife
and they think they need to protect the vital parts of their body.
That person knows that somebody is trying to, at the very least,
really hurt them and probably kill them.
With Joel Gordon still in custody,
forensic officers process the crime scene,
hoping to find more evidence linking him to the murder.
And when they inspect the pool of blood in the bedroom
where Sian was found, they find footwear marks.
In some of the clothing that was around and bedding that had been
placed on top of Sian,
it was very evident that there were footprints in blood.
So once we'd photographed some of the footwear evidence
or footprints in blood and also latent footprints,
copies of those impressions were given to the major incident team
that was dealing with this job at the time.
The footwear, the impressions that we had, seemed very consistent.
Footwear impressions in blood and in Sian's blood.
They were in the bathroom.
They were in the bedroom on different layers of debris
that was put on top of Sian.
So we knew what type of footwear we were looking for.
Police have a strong clue in the hunt for Sian's killer.
Will this link Joel Gordon to the murder?
As forensics decide to head back to compare the footprint
with Joel's shoes, there's a development outside Sian's house.
David Morgan turned up at the police cordon
and declared himself to be boyfriend of Sian.
And his behaviour, by the officer that called him,
was considered a bit odd.
David Morgan asks the police if the person inside the property
has been stabbed.
But this information has not been revealed to the public yet.
It is an immediate red flag to the police.
And he was also asking who was inside the property which,
as Sian's boyfriend,
he probably should have known that she lived there.
So this raised some eyebrows with the police force
and they decided that they should investigate him further.
Another hypotheses was that he was involved because crimes like this,
generally, it's somebody known to the victim - not always.
And you do keep an open mind,
but you do start looking close to home first.
Police want to know more about David Morgan
and his relationship with Sian.
But he leaves the scene before police can question him further.
We had a phone number that he'd left at the cordon.
He answered once. He failed to keep an appointment.
He then didn't answer his phone.
So his behaviour was strange.
Detectives become concerned that David Morgan appears to be
avoiding their calls.
Has this man got something to hide?
We knew he knew the victim,
so a decision was made to arrest David Morgan.
Police have now identified two suspects in connection
with Sian's murder -
an ex-partner and a current boyfriend.
When a murder takes place, it's often the people who are closest
to them who've carried out the crime.
So if you are a partner or an ex-partner, statistically,
you are more likely to be the person who's murdered them.
Police make their way to David Morgan's address to arrest him.
However, upon arrival,
they stumble across another man leaving the house.
This man is called Glyn Williams.
But before he is able to leave,
detectives notice his shoes look rather familiar.
Glyn Williams was stopped by a very alert detective
who said, "Who are you?"
"Glyn Williams." "Let me look at your feet, your shoes."
So he showed him the soles of his shoes
and the officer knew that they were the same type of footwear
that we were looking for from the murder scene.
So Glyn Williams was arrested.
So that was not just luck,
it was good, old-fashioned policing.
Both David Morgan and Glyn Williams had been arrested in connection with
Sian Roberts' murder.
Police now have three suspects in custody,
but who was actually responsible?
So, you're trying to piece together, are they involved,
aren't they involved?
How can we eliminate them?
With his boots appearing to match the footprints found in Sian's blood,
detectives want to know who is Glyn Williams
and what is his connection to Sian Roberts?
Sian Roberts and Glyn Williams
met probably three months prior to her murder.
They didn't know each other that long.
They'd met through mutual friends.
During a police interview, Williams describes to police,
a party that took place at Sian's home the night before her murder.
He was absolutely adamant he hadn't seen Sian.
He hadn't been with her.
Police only have a matter of days to find evidence to charge
one of their three suspects or let them go.
They need to piece together their movements on the CCTV
in the days leading up to and the day of Sian's murder.
And it isn't long before police uncover a vital clue.
It's absolutely crucial.
It's on camera. It is what it is.
It has been less than a week
since Sian Roberts was found murdered in her home.
Police still have three people in custody -
Joel Gordon, David Morgan and Glyn Williams.
There was quite a bit of interest from the local media, now that
three people had been arrested on suspicion of Sian's murder.
People wanted to know who had murdered her
and what the connection was between three different men.
Police have a crucial source of information
to help them crack the case.
Hours of CCTV footage of Sian in the hours leading up to her murder.
So, we had four people we needed to track on CCTV
and we started to piece together the movements of Sian,
the movements of Glyn Williams,
the movements of Joel Gordon, and we had David Morgan.
We really do go far and wide for CCTV,
because it's absolutely crucial
and it's something that cannot be argued.
It's on camera. It is what it is.
When police trawl through the local CCTV,
they manage to locate video footage that reveals a group of people
entering Sian's house the night before her death.
We were very, very fortunate in that
we had a camera from another residence
that covered the front address of Sian's house.
So what that CCTV showed was the events on the Friday night,
into the Saturday morning, whereby her friends attended her property
and they had a party on the Friday night.
When police watched closely,
they see five people enter the house at 9:10pm, one by one.
But five hours later, only four people leave.
The following morning,
the CCTV reveals Sian leaving her home with a man.
Just after 10am, they both return. They both enter the house.
One of them is Sian. The other is her killer.
Police hone in on the person seen with Sian
leaving her house at 9:35am,
30 minutes before she was viciously murdered.
But can they identify this person?
Police spread their net wider and locate multiple cameras
in the local area,
tracking the pair's movements before they return to Sian's house
in St Heliers Drive 30 minutes later.
They go to a cafe called The Godfather Cafe, where they separate.
Sian goes in and buys two breakfasts.
The other person appears to walk off up the high street
while Sian waits inside.
But some minutes later,
Sian's friend returns and can be clearly seen outside.
Sian sees him.
They speak to each other.
She waits for the breakfast to be completed cooking
and then follows him to a local shop.
And when police trawl the CCTV in this local shop,
they finally identify the man as 53-year-old Glyn Williams.
When the police bring him in for interview,
Williams doesn't know he's been spotted on CCTV with Sian.
Glyn Williams denies being with Sian Roberts
on the morning she was murdered.
But police believe the CCTV footage proves otherwise.
And when the DNA results from the footprints found
in Sian's blood come back, they point to one clear suspect.
It was Sian's blood on his shoes.
Once we'd presented him with that,
he then came up with the story of he found her.
He went in the back patio doors and he found her in that state.
He didn't ring the police
because he thought he would get arrested for murder.
Glyn Williams now changes his story.
Having initially claimed he last saw Sian on Friday night
when she was still alive, he now tells police he discovered her dead
and panicked, fleeing the scene without reporting it.
Something he claims he is ashamed of.
Detectives re-look at the CCTV
to see if Glyn Williams actually left the house
shortly after finding Sian's body.
But they quickly discover he did not leave her house
until several hours later.
CCTV and DNA evidence put Glyn Williams at the scene of the murder
around the time it was committed.
But who is Glyn Williams?
How does his path cross with Sian's and why would he want to kill her?
Sian had a troubled life.
She got involved in drugs early in her life.
Her family, her sister, had tried to help her give up drugs.
She'd even been living at her sister's house in the weeks prior
to her death, in an effort to go cold turkey to give up the drugs.
But that had failed and she'd left her sister's house
and gone back to her group of friends and drug taking.
During this time, Sian was introduced to Glyn Williams.
Sian and Glyn knew each other
because of their common use of drugs.
They were both drug users and hence, from that,
had a very chaotic lifestyle.
People would say that Sian was a very friendly and lovely person who
had a lot of friends. But perhaps after the death of her parents,
she was a bit lonely and she liked to invite people into her house.
On the night before Sian's murder, several people went to her house.
They are caught on a neighbour's CCTV camera.
One of these partygoers is Glyn Williams.
The following morning, both Glyn and Sian
are seen walking towards The Godfather Cafe.
Sian is on her way to buy them both breakfast,
unaware her companion will kill her within the next 30 minutes.
Shortly afterwards, Sian follows Glyn to a local shop.
They start a conversation and then leave.
Moments later, they are seen returning to her house.
Just after 10am, they arrive back,
enter,
but Sian is never seen again.
Our view is that he killed Sian very shortly after they returned
to her house on the morning of Saturday, 28 November.
They went in with their breakfasts. They didn't eat them.
There was only one sausage that had a slice taken out of it
and the fork that they had used had Glyn's DNA on it.
He then spends approximately the next seven hours in the house,
compromising the crime scene,
disguising it, positioning Sian's body.
Following this, Glyn Williams stays in the property
and attempts to remove himself from any traces of the crime.
In the bathroom,
we actually found DNA evidence to suggest that Glyn Williams
had actually been in that bathroom, potentially bleeding.
We found a diluted blood stain on the window sill of the bathroom,
which turned out to be a mixed profile DNA sample
from both Sian and Glyn Williams.
Glyn Williams remains in Sian's house for several hours.
He's waited for the cover of darkness.
He leaves via a neighbour's garden,
so he's hopped over a couple of back garden fences,
because we have him on CCTV, coming out.
And from there, he then just resumes his normal daily business
of going buying drugs, going mixing with drug takers,
and socialising with people.
The following day, Williams meets up with friends
and makes himself known to Sian's current boyfriend, David Morgan.
He wants information.
He wants to see if the police are going to get close to him.
So, he's befriended David Morgan
and presented himself as a friend of Sian's,
when that actually wasn't true.
But it's this new friendship
which leads Glyn Williams right into the arms of the police.
Police have three men in custody, but all the evidence is pointing
to Glyn Williams as being Sian's killer.
But with Glyn claiming he was in the property but did not murder Sian,
detectives need irrefutable evidence before they can charge him.
Police interrogate Joel Gordon and David Morgan
and are told by both men that they had, in fact,
been calling Sian for two days before she was found.
Police follow this through and check the phone records
of Joel Gordon and David Morgan during 29 November.
Some of the telephone evidence was really important.
They were making calls to Sian.
And even though at the murder scene the phone was there,
but the sim card had been taken out,
the battery had been taken out by Glyn Williams.
It was the phone calls going in to try and locate Sian
from Joel Gordon and from David Morgan
that certainly helped us to eliminate them
from the investigation.
Police release the two men.
They need to build their case against Glyn Williams.
Days later, new DNA results return from the lab.
There is a breakthrough.
53-year-old Glyn Williams has been interviewed by police for two days
for the murder of Sian Roberts.
After exploring all the evidence,
police now know their killer is sitting right in front of them.
Detectives are prepared to offer him one, final chance
to confess the truth.
He isn't commenting. He isn't responding.
His body language demonstrates quite a lot of arrogance.
It's almost as if he's resenting.
"How dare you question me about this?"
He deflected anything that pointed evidence at him by simply either not
answering it or saying, "You've got it wrong," in interview.
With Glyn still denying his involvement,
police need to decide whether to charge him or release him.
But then, new DNA results come in and it's a game changer.
Glyn Williams' cellular material was found under Sian's fingernails.
Significantly to that is, on arrest,
Glyn Williams had some scratch marks on his throat
that indicated that Sian had scratched him during the struggle
and the altercation that took place.
This evidence proved to police that Glyn Williams must have fought
Sian that morning, after they'd returned with their breakfast.
And that, in a fit of rage, he stabbed her to death.
And yet, even with all the evidence stacked against him,
police do not have a clear motive for the crime.
But friends of Sian reveal to detectives that she had
to fend off Glyn's unwanted advances.
Glyn was attracted to Sian.
He was attracted to her and wanted to go into a relationship with her.
Glyn Williams was telling people that he loved Sian
and he wanted to marry her, but it turns out,
he was actually giving her gifts of jewellery
that belonged to other people.
And it appears it wasn't just other people Glyn was stealing from.
Police believe he had started to steal from Sian.
And on the morning of her murder,
they believe he was trying to sell jewellery
he had stolen from her house.
He had disposed of some of her property earlier that day.
He'd passed on cheap items of jewellery
to a shop in Chiltern Hills
and he is seen on CCTV going into that shop, bending down,
opening his rucksack,
as Sian comes back to meet him with their breakfast.
Police interview the shop worker seen present in this footage,
who confirms that Glyn Williams was about to show him some jewellery,
but is interrupted when Sian walks in.
I think, Glyn Williams' violence towards Sian
was probably escalated
because he was stealing from her and she's probably found him.
That's what we believe.
And Sian is not somebody who will sit back and accept that.
She will have challenged him for sure.
Police believe that when Sian confronted Williams,
it caused the argument which erupted into violence
and led to her untimely death.
Police have everything they need
to charge Glyn Williams with the murder of Sian Roberts.
He now faces a murder trial
and a jury will ultimately decide his fate.
But this isn't the first time Glyn Williams has been linked to a crime.
His life is, in fact, a story of crime.
He's a great criminal. You know, from the 1970s, he's been thieving.
He's a burglar. He's many, many events of burglary.
Some minor assaults.
What we do know of Glyn Williams, he, from a young age,
got involved in petty crime and drug abuse.
He was in and out of prison for burglary and over time,
became a prolific burglar.
And his criminal backstory didn't stop there.
25 years before Sian's murder,
a Manchester prison riot lasted for 25 days.
A shocking revelation was this man was a key figure in
the Strangeways riot, the longest prison revolt in British history.
So it's no surprise that someone who was exposed to violence
from such a young age, would be able to go off
and do something like this in later life.
Glyn Williams' history is littered with rebellion.
He doesn't care for authority.
The riots that he took part in were violent.
They were sustained. They were prolonged.
And it was all about saying no to the rules and regulations.
If you think about him in society, in general,
that's how he lives his life. He rejects the norm.
He rejects morality and he does exactly what he likes to do.
The trial into the murder of Sian Roberts
begins at Greater Manchester Crown Court.
The prosecution present every detail of the evidence
against Glyn Williams.
But even with this stacked up against him,
Glyn Williams denies it all.
The defence tactic in this trial
was to blame anybody and everybody except Glyn Williams.
But his favourite line was that the killer was Joel Gordon,
a convicted killer.
Throughout the course of the trial, Williams disrupts the courtroom.
He, on occasions, wouldn't come out of his cell and he'd sacked
two lots of counsel who were representing him.
That shows his power need. He wants to control everything.
If it's not going his way, he will create a diversion
so that he can hopefully regain that power and control.
And Williams' behaviour reaches new levels of barbarity.
He actually throws his own excrement at his defence team.
That is absolutely unheard of.
The fact that somebody would act that way in court, but it draws us
in to his personality traits and that's how he's lived his life,
disrespecting rules, regulations and authority.
And in this scenario where he had little control,
it was the only way to draw attention back to him.
In February 2017,
the trial into the murder of Sian Roberts comes to a close.
The jury have reached a verdict.
The jury came back with their verdict and they found him guilty
of murder and he was sentenced to 21 years.
He would not accept his guilt. He was absolutely dishonest.
A despicable character.
He is just someone who is in denial of what he's done. He has done it.
There is no question of that.
But even with the case now closed and Glyn Williams locked behind bars,
nothing will alleviate the pain inflicted upon Sian's family.
What's really sad about this case is that Sian represents
so many people out there.
Good, compassionate, loving humans who unfortunately find themselves
in the throes of a serious drug addiction.
The most tragic thing about this case is that Sian simply
got involved in the wrong crowd.
She was trying to kick her drug addiction for her daughter,
but she could never manage it, and this is where she ended up.
Captions edited by Ai-Media ai-media.tv