EMERGENCY OPERATOR: Hello, police emergency,
what's your emergency?
(SIREN WAILS)
SHIRLEY: You don't, kind of, think of a murder on your doorstep.
Is it possible to get away with murder?
What does a killer do
after committing the most heinous of crimes?
PETER: This was a cold, calculating, callous murder.
Do they carry on as normal, and hide in plain sight?
Or go on the run?
(HORNS HONK)
How do the actions of a killer, after their crime,
influence the police investigation?
Those are all alarm bells that would be ringing for the police.
That's exactly how psychopaths work,
they see the world and then they control it.
By focusing on the aftermath,
we unpick the mindset of a killer...
Understand the motive, and reveal what the killer did next.
For newly married couple, Adrian and Kate Prout,
the rural village of Redmarley, with its acres of green fields,
was the perfect place to settle.
The couple met in 1999, through Kate's brother.
They quickly formed a relationship and married in 2000
and set up home together in the village of Redmarley
where they bought a farm.
It's a sort of normal village community really,
with a school and a church,
a pub down at the bottom of the road.
It's a very uneventful village really in many ways.
Nothing significant really happens,
uh, which is quite how we like it.
Having come from a farming family,
Adrian was keen to build up his own farm
with new wife Kate, a retired teacher,
so they pooled their savings to buy their dream home.
Kate Prout was born into a family of farmers
and after she retired, she was a pillar of the community.
This is the Redmarley woods to the left here,
which is where the pheasant shoots were held
and right the way across here is the farm
and he used to go round in an old clapped out Land Rover,
which he used to feed the pheasants.
So, he was frequently down there.
He used to grow cereals and things of that kind.
He was pretty active as a businessman I think.
He had quite a bit of farm machinery down there,
including a nice JCB.
While Adrian ran the business side of things,
wife Kate settled into the more social side of the community.
They seemed quite friendly when I spoke to them,
and I used to see her... see her more than I used to see him
because always she used to be walking with their two dogs.
Kate Prout was a retired primary school teacher.
She was very well liked within the community,
involved in a lot of activities within the area she lived as well.
Over the years, the couple integrated more and more,
with Adrian becoming well known in the area,
mostly due to the success of his pheasant shoots.
I think he liked to have them every weekend
or every couple of weekends.
And the guns would get in the woods there,
shoot as many as they could.
Farmers that used to come and other land owners
and have a big game shoot there, you know,
and, of course, he had the gamekeepers
to make sure that foxes and other people
or that didn't, kind of, take them,
help themselves to a bit.
But he had quite a...quite a good thing going there I think.
But as Adrian's business grew,
locals noticed the couple appeared to spend more time apart.
His wife used to go to the local church
and she would talk to villagers obviously,
and the general feeling was
that it was a bit of a strained relationship.
She went on holiday in September and October 2007
separate...separate from Adrian.
With the couple spending more time apart,
and even holidaying separately,
it didn't appear unusual to the neighbours
when in November 2007,
they hadn't seen Kate for a few days.
Well, I thought, she's gone away for a holiday or something.
The general consensus was that
she's run off with somebody or whatever,
the normal type of village gossip really.
None of it based on fact of course.
But village gossip aside,
Adrian Prout becomes concerned about his wife's whereabouts
after five days missing,
and calls the police.
EMERGENCY OPERATOR: Police emergency, what's your emergency?
Police log the call as a missing person report
and need to establish if Kate has simply gone away of her own accord,
or if something more sinister has happened.
So, on 10 November, 2007,
that's the day that Adrian Prout
reported his wife Kate Prout as missing
and police then attended Redhill Farm
to take the missing person report,
and provide a grading as to whether that is a standard,
medium or high risk missing person.
Well, the first thing that you would do
on receiving a missing person report
is establish whether this was very unusual for them.
Some people have quite, you know, flighty lifestyles,
they go off on holiday, they nip off here and there.
How unusual is it that this person has gone missing?
Police hope Adrian can give them an insight into Kate's mindset,
to see if they can ascertain where she might be.
So, they call him in for a chat.
In any missing persons case,
police need to put together a timeline
of the person's last known movements.
RICHARD: Kate Prout was last seen at her home in Redmarley.
The last time she was heard from was at 15:29
on the 5th November 2007,
when she made a phone call to her bank
regarding some money she was looking to withdraw
from a joint account with her husband.
In terms of somebody withdrawing money,
potentially that could indicate that they might be looking to go missing.
Kate was an independently wealthy woman,
having been left inheritance from her parents,
and had the financial means to make a new life for herself...
But where could she have gone?
But as six days pass, and with no sightings of Kate,
a police missing person investigation intensifies.
MALE REPORTER: Now, Kate Prout went missing on November 5.
She lived and worked on a large dairy farm
in Redmarley in the Forest of Dean.
Concern for Kate's welfare increases.
Is there more to her disappearance than meets the eye?
There's so many tales going around and rumours,
you don't know what to believe and what not to believe.
That she'd just left him and gone.
And as the hunt gathers pace...
The family are desperate to know what's happened to her.
..police take action.
(SIREN WAILS)
In Gloucestershire, police are making enquiries
as to the whereabouts of farmer's wife, Kate Prout,
who was reported missing by her husband Adrian.
Having interviewed Adrian
about his wife's last known movements,
police attention turns to the community.
It's quite a small community
so the community would then be starting
to talk amongst themselves about it.
Word would soon get round and hopefully
information would come back in to the police as well.
There was a knock at the door then,
you know, and there was enquiry and they said
"When was the last time "you seen her?
Have you seen her with her dogs?"
and things like that,
"Have you seen her dogs loose?"
Because they thought perhaps she might have fell down somewhere
and...
but I don't think anybody really had seen her
or heard anything about her.
At this early stage,
the police would be wanting to rule out the fact
that she's just disappeared of her own free will.
She might have come to some sort of accident on the farm
and be out there needing some help, can't walk for example.
Or there might have been something more sinister happened to her.
None of the locals have seen Kate since her disappearance,
but they do provide the police with new information.
But there has been some issues in the relationship recently,
and Kate had moved out
for a short time before they reconciled.
So, neighbours presumed the pair had had another tiff.
She'd left...
because of the tensions and the situation,
and his view was that she would turn up...
eventually.
The police would be looking into other possibilities
in terms of where Kate may have gone.
It could be that she'd have disappeared of her own free will,
tried to go on holiday for example,
tried to get away from the relationship
with Adrian for a number of days.
These are all possibilities that the police would be looking into,
but they could also do that in tandem with searching
quite intensively at the same time as well.
There'd be a lot of different strands of the investigation
happening at the same time.
There was nothing to suggest at the very early stages
that there had been foul play.
Enquiries reveal
Kate is a wealthy woman in her own right,
having been left a large inheritance.
Having been on holiday several times
over the past year with other people,
police wonder if she's met someone else.
Without any concrete leads,
the police make a direct appeal to the public for information.
NEWS REPORTER: Kate Prout was last seen on 5 November.
Her husband Adrian is currently staying with friends
while police search for her.
Today, they made a direct appeal for her to come forward.
Kate, if you're watching this broadcast,
and you're able to do so, we urge you to contact us.
Police enquiries intensify and calls to Kate's bank
and mobile phone provider immediately spark concerns.
These are kind of your proof of life checks,
you're looking to see whether that person has had any activity
on these things before they went missing
and then anything afterwards.
If they suddenly stop,
that indicates the person may have passed away.
People have got to live somehow, they need money,
they need their belongings,
so if they don't have any of those things,
and there's no evidence of them having access to funds,
then there is a real fear that something has happened to them.
People don't just disappear off the face of the earth for no reason.
So, we're really looking to then
see whether there is any indication that person is still alive.
If the answer to that is no,
then we're really considering
this ought to be a murder investigation
and really ramping up the police response,
getting more resources in to search the area.
Police find no evidence of a digital footprint
since she went missing.
It appears Kate has vanished without a trace.
Suddenly, the missing persons investigation changes focus,
as police make a decision.
RICHARD: Police arrested Adrian Prout on 27 November 2007.
They would be wanting to interview him,
see if his account matched up with the account
he initially gave to the police on 11 November,
after Kate was reported missing.
This is a very strong statistic, two a week, on average,
women killed by a former partner,
which always puts a partner or a former partner
at the top of the list of suspects when somebody goes missing.
News travels fast around the community.
Could Adrian really be behind Kate's disappearance?
SHIRLEY: Wait.
I think I was told that they had arrested him,
couldn't really believe it really.
We saw this reporter standing there in front of our house,
talking about a suspected crime in Redmarley (LAUGHS),
and as you can well imagine,
that sort of got our attention for a while,
and we were a bit puzzled really.
NEWS REPORTER: Gloucestershire police say that this morning
they've arrested a 45-year-old man on suspicion of murder
and he continues to be questioned.
With Adrian under arrest, the investigation ramps up.
Gloucester police are now able to search the home...
and they deploy 50 officers, heat sensing helicopters,
and sniffer dogs to trawl the 276 acres of farmland.
By arresting him they bring in greater powers
of search of the property,
can seize things like his computer, mobile phones,
things that may have some sort of digital evidence
that might link him to the disappearance of Kate Prout.
I was out in the garden, doing whatever I was doing
and this helicopter was at quite low level
and was circling round here all the time
and it had an arm out the side with a device on the end,
which I thought was probably a camera,
but it was up there for quite a long time.
The police did a very good job,
I mean, they were round here quite a long time
and they, you know, they seemed to search everywhere
that they could think of...
and I mean, they came back two or three times
to ask you if you'd thought about anything
and we remembered something but...
The frenzied police activity brings a media circus to Redmarley,
a quaint rural village formerly well known
only amongst the farming community.
Press agency journalist Emily Pennink
was one of those alerted to the story.
The story was a huge part of...
of our daily news,
so I was following all the developments.
I think it really caught the imagination of the media
because of who she was
and the life that she had led before her disappearance.
Despite the intense searches, the police uncover no evidence
linking Adrian Prout to his wife's disappearance.
They had no choice but to release him without charge,
and concede perhaps Kate Prout
has just disappeared of her own free will.
This was very difficult for the police,
there was no body, no crime scene,
there was no clues, there was no motivation.
The police had no positive evidence
to suggest that she had come to harm,
so there was still a chance that she was safe
and she'd simply gone off on holiday and hadn't told anybody,
like, you know, people...people do sometimes.
With Adrian released,
and once the initial commotion dies down,
life in the village goes back to normal.
I did see him around
and he would pass the time of day with you,
but that was all.
He carried on as normal,
carried on with his work and ran his business.
He continued farming
and continued to run the pheasant shoot as well,
and spent most of his time doing that.
And so for Adrian Prout, life moves on.
He met a new woman, fell in love...
and they start a new life together.
The whole thing sort of faded away to a large extent,
and that was really the end of it.
We didn't really hear any more about it.
He had a girlfriend down the road.
Adrian Prout may have forgotten about his wife
but police haven't.
A key discovery
during another in depth search of the house...
casts extreme doubt on Kate's missing status.
Kate's passport and bank cards are found.
They found her passport and all the other stuff,
credit cards and so on, was still in the house.
Adrian Prout is arrested for a second time.
The evidence is still quite circumstantial,
there's no body,
so it's a real struggle to actually corroborate sufficient evidence
to charge him with the murder of Kate Prout,
but it indicates that he is clearly a suspect in this case.
Rumours now flood through the village.
Well, they all had their own points of view, you know...
they said "Oh, I suspect he's burnt her
"and gave her to the pigs, the pigs had eaten her."
All kinds of things like that.
Police believe Adrian Prout
knows more about the disappearance of his wife Kate
than he's letting on,
but once again, they don't have enough evidence...
and he is released.
With police still searching for Kate Prout,
they soon make a surprising discovery.
It appears Kate has left clues behind...
It really exposed what was going on in their relationship.
..but will they lead police to Adrian's door for a third time?
In Gloucestershire, Kate Prout remains a missing person.
Another year passes.
Police suspect she's been killed
but despite her husband having been arrested twice,
there's no evidence linking him to her disappearance
and no charges have been brought.
A case such as this would be immensely challenging
for all involved from the police point of view.
Investigation team, through to the people searching,
they will all be feeling real pressure
to try and find Kate Prout,
and try and bring some sort of closure to the family.
After 14 months, police inform Adrian Prout
he is no longer a suspect in his wife's disappearance.
He moves on with his life,
asking his girlfriend, Debbie, to move in with him.
The couple soon announce they are expecting a child together.
What we can see from his behaviour, getting into a new relationship,
getting a woman pregnant within that relationship,
he's certainly not concerned about where his wife's gone.
It's about him ultimately starting his new life.
But then everything changes.
So, Adrian Prout might have felt that
it was all going to quieten down
and Kate's disappearance
would just slowly, slowly fade away,
but the police hadn't given up
and they uncovered Kate Prout's diary.
KATE: Sunday, 18 March, 2007.
Awoke with Adrian, nice time.
Met with him after 'The Archers' to discuss our future.
Then he told me that he did not want to continue being my husband.
Wanted a divorce as had no real feelings for me anymore.
I wonder how his mind works.
He seems so mixed up inside and I still care for him so much.
It's all over for good.
No hope for a future together.
Devastated really, as I still have hope.
Officially separated now as very frightened to return.
He went mad, I really thought that my end had come.
I was very, very shaken.
So, Kate's diary revealed
a number of domestic violence issues,
a rather turbulent marriage to Adrian Prout.
It seemed that he was a very controlling partner
and Kate was the one who was controlled,
and, from that perspective,
it followed a very typical trajectory
of a coercively controlling marriage.
And the domestic violence wasn't all.
It seems that the marriage was still quite turbulent,
they were looking to divorce around the time that she disappeared.
The discovery of Kate Prout's diary
leads police to uncover the crux of the divorce proceedings.
At the very heart of this case
is difficulties over the divorce settlement.
Kate Prout wanted 800,000 pounds.
Adrian Prout offered 600,000 pounds
and he really didn't want to give her
any more money than that,
because if he had,
it would have meant him having to sell the farm,
and really changing his life.
For Adrian, knowing that his wife
was not only leaving him,
therefore taking back control of her own life,
she was financially going to take from him also,
and the problem there is that she was considered a possession.
Adrian saw her as an object that he owned.
The minute that she has the potential to leave him,
and also take his possessions with her,
well that's a problem that needs to be solved.
Sixteen months after Kate's disappearance,
and police finally have enough evidence
and, crucially, a motive to make their move.
They now believe Adrian Prout murdered his wife over money,
but they still need to find a body.
The fact that there's an ongoing divorce issue
and that money is a factor in that.
Those are all alarm bells that will be ringing for the police.
On 10 March, 2009,
Adrian Prout is arrested for a third time
on suspicion of murder.
He is then charged with the murder of Kate Prout
and appears at Cheltenham Magistrates Court.
It would have been a case of third time lucky for the police
and there would have been a real feeling
that there was finally some movement.
Ten months after he is charged,
Adrian arrives for his trial, flanked by new girlfriend Debbie.
Despite having never found the body of Kate,
the prosecution needs to convince a jury she is dead...
and that Adrian killed her.
The police and the CPS worked really hard,
they did a great job in actually bringing this case to court,
but they would have had a nagging doubt
in the back of their mind that they might not have won this case.
No body convictions...
we have got some convictions
but they're very, very difficult to get
and that's largely because, you know, in a court
it has to be beyond reasonable doubt,
and if the body isn't there to give us the clues,
to give us those forensics, to tell us the story,
it's very, very difficult then to create a story
that's plausible and convincing for a jury.
Two years and three months
to the day of Kate Prout's disappearance,
Adrian Prout is convicted of her murder.
He is sentenced to life with a minimum term of 18 years.
There'd be real mixed emotions.
You'd be feeling quite pleased
that there'd been a conviction of Adrian Prout,
but at the same time there would be that continual frustration
that the body was never found.
You can never bring that closure to the family
and as a result of that, you'd always feel like
you'd let the family down to a certain extent.
Adrian Prout is in prison,
but his new fiancee Debbie,
family and friends refuse to believe his guilt,
with a huge wave of support behind him,
a miscarriage of justice campaign begins.
Adrian Prout had always protested his innocence
quite strongly
and a lot of people believed
that he had nothing to do with Kate's disappearance,
let alone murdered her.
What's compelling about Adrian's behaviour
is the community know that he's been abusive to Kate,
so when she goes missing, you'd automatically imagine,
wouldn't you, that they'd think, well, it's clearly him,
but actually they don't feel that, and he has a great deal of support.
People believe he's completely innocent.
With a campaign to release Adrian Prout growing,
police are desperate to find Kate's body,
to prove beyond doubt that the right man is behind bars.
By recovering a body
you then have another crime scene to work with.
You can recover forensic evidence, you can do post mortem examinations,
and actually establish how that person died.
After two and a half years,
and with one man in jail with no new evidence,
police reluctantly reveal
they are calling off the search for Kate Prout.
With a police search like this, it will come to a stage
where they've exhausted all the lines of enquiry,
there is literally nothing else for the police to do
that can progress the case.
It would have been a very frustrating decision
for the police to make.
They would have really wanted to find Kate's body
and bring some sort of closure to the family,
but there has to come a point where they draw that line
and say we can't do any more here to try and resolve this case.
With police retreating,
the campaign to free Adrian Prout intensifies,
and his fiancee Debbie deploys a final weapon,
in a drastic bid to prove his innocence.
She persuades her partner to take a lie detector test
so that she can satisfy herself and gather some evidence.
DON: My name's Don Cargill.
I'm a Polygraph Examiner.
The correct title for a Polygraph Examiner
is a Forensic Psycho-physiologist,
which means detection by psychology and physiology.
Adrian's girlfriend hopes the outcome of the lie detector test
will support his case.
I spoke to Debbie over the phone many, many times,
and then we got the questions right.
And the result all hangs on one question.
Very simple question don't forget, did you kill your wife Kate?
Adrian Prout has been jailed
for the murder of his wife Kate, who disappeared in 2007.
Her body has never been found, but her diary was,
and it detailed a marriage blighted by domestic violence,
heading for divorce, and bitter arguments over money.
While police believe they have the right man behind bars,
Adrian's new fiancee Debbie, mother to his baby daughter,
is heading a campaign for his release,
claiming his conviction is a miscarriage of justice.
He was obviously, clearly, promoting the idea
that he was not responsible for her demise.
People supported his view and believed him.
There was a real lack of evidence in the case.
There was no body, the evidence was largely circumstantial,
and Adrian Prout was convincing a lot of people
that he was innocent along the way.
Having served 18 months in prison,
it's finally time for Adrian Prout to take the lie detector test.
He has to sign a consent form to allow me to do the test
and he seemed to want to think about it at great length.
I kept popping back and eventually he said, "OK, I may as well.
I may as well, for Debbie's sake."
"No, do it for your own sake"
I said, he said "No, I may as well do it, OK, I'll go ahead".
So, we did it.
Adrian Prout answers the questions put to him,
hoping the results might allow police to re-open the case,
allowing him to go free.
He did the test and the questions were very simple,
did you kill your wife?
Did you pay anybody else to kill your wife?
Do you know where the body is? Etcetera.
So, he was answering no.
When Don examines the results, they are astounding.
At the end of it I said,
"My charts are showing that you're a murderer."
And he went "Mm-hm,"
that was a little shrug of his shoulder...
and I said, "Are you saying my charts are wrong?"
And he said, "No, they're not wrong,"
under his breath.
That was enough for me.
Adrian's downfall is clearly taking the polygraph test.
When you take a lie detector test,
unless you are specifically trained in how to get through them,
the likelihood is that you will fail,
but there's some pressure there.
He has his supporters,
so if he's unwilling to take that test,
to some degree, he's evidencing his guilt.
So, he takes a risk.
He believes that maybe he can be the one to get through it.
When I spoke to Debbie,
obviously it's very difficult conversation
I'm going to have with her.
Because this is the first time, she believes in a guy for so long,
and loved the guy so much, had a child by him,
that I'm gonna break the bad news to her that...
sorry, but you've been misguided,
and that your fiance is actually a murderer.
You could see the resignation in her to what I was thinking and going,
this is not what I wanted.
Adrian Prout murdered his wife Kate,
but for almost four years he's denied his involvement
and denied Kate's family the chance to bury her
and fully grieve for her.
Having failed the polygraph test,
his devastated fiancee Debbie confronts him,
begging him to reveal the truth.
He just said, he just confessed.
INTERVIEWER: What were the words he used?
I'm sorry, I did.
What's really significant about this case
is just how convincing a murderer can be.
That you can literally carry out a brutal killing of your wife
and then seemingly convince the whole world
that you're an innocent man.
Four years after Kate went missing,
and with the hunt for her body having gone cold...
police have their biggest breakthrough.
Adrian Prout agrees to show police where her body is.
Having now confirmed he murdered Kate,
it leaves one unanswered question.
What had happened on that fateful day four years ago?
On the day of the murder, Adrian Prout is preparing
a pheasant shoot for the following day.
Kate Prout goes to see him
and there's an argument around the divorce,
around the money.
He then strangles her.
He then wraps her body in a curtain
and puts the body in the back of the Land Rover...
and goes to the pub.
Firstly, he's having a pint with his friends, acting normally,
whilst his dead wife is in the back of his Land Rover,
but then to wake up the following day
and go on a pheasant shoot,
it demonstrates that he clearly thinks
that he's gonna get away with it.
He has no concern,
he's just not connected to this crime at all.
She's a problem, he's created a solution
and everything is gonna be alright.
During this period, that lack of remorse,
that lack of compassion, that lack of concern,
and that focus on himself to move on to another relationship,
is very, very typical of somebody on the psychopathic spectrum.
The type of person who is very self focused
and lives in the moment.
Even in police interviews after Kate's disappearance,
Adrian remains aloof
and seemingly unaffected by the situation.
We now know this is the voice of the cold blooded killer
who, just six days earlier, had strangled his wife.
When Adrian Prout's interviewed by the police,
he appears to be completely unemotional
and completely non concerned
that his wife has disappeared for a period of time,
in fact he kind of suggests
that this is just something that she might have done
because she needed to get away, or...
there's no real drama.
Adrian Prout felt that he had actually solved a problem
through this homicide,
so he wasn't concerned that he had done it.
He would have been concerned however,
that he wasn't held to account for it,
so probably his calm behaviour
after the homicide
was that, one, he'd solved a problem
so he was feeling a lot calmer than he had before,
and he had to appear as if he was not responsible.
To the police that would be wholly unusual.
A partner whose wife has gone missing for a period of time,
should be panic stricken.
Should be phoning everybody, talking to anybody,
searching for them wildly,
and actually, he seems like,
she might have just gone down the shops.
Despite trying to great away with murder,
and trying to convince everyone around him
he had been wrongly convicted,
it took a simple polygraph test to reveal Adrian Prout
for the man he really is,
a cold blooded killer.
And after four years of searching,
police are finally about to find the body of Kate Prout.
RICHARD: From where the body was found,
it's possible that Adrian Prout put a lot of thought
into where he buried Kate Prout's body.
So, much so that he probably hoped that she would never be found
and ultimately he may have got away with the murder of her.
But the pen which housed the pheasants
mainly is literally in front of you there.
And it was fenced off, the wire fencing,
and that was where he put the young pheasants
and allowed them to grow,
obviously before releasing them into the wild so to speak...
and that was where they found his wife.
On the night of the murder,
and after he returned from the pub,
Adrian Prout dug a five foot deep, five foot long hole
inside the pheasant pen under a feeder in the woods
a mile from the farmhouse he shared with wife Kate.
It was here he dumped her body.
At 01:00 this afternoon we found human remains
close to the location Adrian Prout
identified as the place he buried his wife.
With a body, police could now fit
the final pieces of the puzzle together.
However, a post mortem was unable to reveal the cause of death.
RICHARD: Whether Adrian Prout intended to kill his wife,
whether he planned it,
or whether it was just something that happened in a moment of rage,
only he really knows.
The actions he took after the death of Kate Prout
indicates that he actually really tried
to get away with the murder of her.
The type of murder that Adrian Prout carried out
is sadly one of the most common,
it's domestic homicide.
It involves control and power
and it happens regularly, every week in the UK.