ON PHONE: 'My brother's just been shot.
'Michael? Mike? Mike? Wake up for me.'
KELLY ADAMS: A family make a desperate 999 call.
Somebody was outside, lurking in the dark,
and he was shot in the back without any warning.
I can't even process to think anybody having a grudge against him.
Forensics hold the secret to unlocking the case.
What they don't realise is,
the police can find information by other means.
When we have the phone itself,
we can extract the full range of data,
and this gives us a wider range of information.
We can link the firearm to a crime scene
because we can compare the markings.
From a forensic perspective,
that may help us put the killer in the crime scene.
DOG BARKING, PHONE RINGING
He emerges from the kitchen.
just to my right, felt this rush, this roar.
GUNSHOT
I just knew that something was happening
that was a danger to our lives.
My mum was fast asleep upstairs.
I remember hearing these two bangs. It was louder than fireworks.
My brother just turned round and ran,
and my clad turned round and ran.
I looked behind me, and I seen these two holes in the window.
We made our way into the hallway, and I slammed the door shut.
He just looked at me, Michael, and said, "Dad."
Ancl then he slumped.
I just felt, you know, the full weight of him.
I was shouting at him, telling him to hold on for me,
telling him I love him, you know, shaking him,
saying, "|t's... It's not the time for you."
Didn't feel real at all.
It was like everything was heightened,
and my vision went so weird and everything,
and my fight or flight kicked in, and I chose to fight.
There was a small hole in his chest.
We turned him over, and there was another hole there.
I tried to cover him, his holes, with my T-shirt, which didn't work.
That's when my clad started to do the chest compressions.
We didn't know if somebody was gonna come through the door, or...
...gonna fire more than two bullets.
We were scurrying, and we were talking to Michael,
"Just stay with us, stay with us."
He seen...
was our terrified faces, and he was scared. He was terrified.
He didn't do wrong to nobody,
and I don't have a reason as to why this could have happened.
Within minutes, police surround the house.
It was armed response.
Looked out - helmets, rifles.
They just picked me and Josh up and took us into the living room.
Ancl then, you know, through the crack in the door,
I could see that there was people trying to keep Michael alive.
Our road was completely filled with blue lights.
It got taped off, and they took him away...
and put him on a stretcher.
I remember looking outside
and seeing all of his friends standing there,
all head in hands, just wondering what happened,
and they watched him get wheeled out.
They said, erm...
"..Do you want to hear anything if he's... if... if we get any news,
"cos he's on the way to the hospital?"
Ancl I said, "Yes, please", and about ten minutes later,
he said, "|'m sorry, he's dead."
That was it.
My son's gone.
With the scene secured, CSls are called in.
A scene like this would appear initially very chaotic.
There's neighbours, there's fear for other members of the public.
You can see the blue flashing lights, you can hear the sirens,
the police tape go up,
the people in the white suits that are taking photos
of the key areas outside and inside the property.
Sarah Thirkell is an expert in crime scene management.
Forensically, it's really difficult.
There's been no contact between the offender and the victim.
The offender's been outside the house,
the victim's inside the house, so evidence will be really limited.
There may be footprints, there may be tyre marks,
there may be discarded cartridges from the gun.
Detectives go door to door in search of leads.
The early stages of a police investigation
are absolutely essential.
They'll be speaking to neighbours
because the freshest memories are the most accurate ones.
Those people that may have witnessed something important,
but didn't know that they'd seen something important at the time,
and those are the type of people that can be crucial
to filling in the missing jigsaw parts for the police.
Before examining the family home,
CSls turn to Mikey's family for vital clues.
There may be a transfer of evidence from Mikey
onto his father and his brother because, obviously,
they're trying to preserve his life.
We would have to ensure that we'd seize their clothing,
swab their hands, which can be very traumatic,
but that may help us put the killer in the crime scene.
As the sun rises,
CSls search the garden for any traces of the shooter.
The area of concentration would always be on the outside scene first
because you're dealing with weather conditions,
you're dealing with loss of evidence, so, you know,
footprints that might disappear.
There may be some dropped items by the offender
that may get contaminated really quickly.
As a crime scene manager,
they're obviously important questions to ask -
Who are the offenders?
How did they get into the garden?
And where were they stood when the fatal shots were fired?
CSls search for any discarded components from the weapon.
When a gun is fired... GUNSHOT
...the casing of the bullet pops out of the gun,
so from a forensic point of view, that's evidence left at the scene.
From a shooter's point of view, the last thing on their mind,
even if they're forensically aware,
is, "I need to find the bullet casing before I leave the scene."
But when the garden was searched there were no casings found.
It was quite frustrating, but you never stop looking.
Search officers with specialist equipment are called to the scene.
As they get to work, detectives get a lead.
One of the neighbours came forward
and said that they had their own CCTV footage
of two lads on a red electric bike around the time,
and thought that was suspicious.
That might have been the people that were responsible for this.
The team widen the CCTV search,
in the hope of getting a better look at the men,
and ask Mikey's family if they know who they are.
They asked me, "Do you know who could have clone this?
"What's happened? Why?
"Was it Michael they were going for in the first place?"
just didn't have anything.
There were so many unanswered questions.
We didn't know any answers.
20-year-old Michael Rainsford
has been murdered in front of his family.
A neighbour has recovered CCTV
of two suspicious men in the area at the time.
At the family home, officers continue to search
for any hidden traces left behind by the killers.
On all major crimes that I've ever worked on,
if evidence hasn't been found,
you'd always get an extra team in to search,
who are trained searchers.
And these licenced search officers have access
to a lot of other equipment, so in this instance,
the garden was searched a second time using metal detectors,
and they do a very systematic search, which takes hours and hours.
Leading the team is forensic firearms scientist Andre Horne.
In a case like this, we look for fired bullets,
fired cartridge cases,
bullet holes, and impact marks.
Those are the things that would assist us
in piecing together what had happened
and perhaps how it happened.
Andre examines the bullet holes
to determine where the shooter was standing.
In double-glazed windows,
when a bullet strikes a pane of glass,
it then fractures the glass,
and it carries with it not just itself, the bullet,
but also all those fragments from the first impact.
So the hole in the second pane of glass is bigger.
By looking at the holes
and seeing whether they are offset against one another,
that would then tell us if the shot had been fired at an angle,
either up or down or left or right.
And in this case, one of the shots had been fired
at almost right angles to the window,
and the inner hole was exactly centred within the outer hole.
The other hole, however, had slightly different setup.
The outer hole was further to the right than the inner hole,
which tells me that this shot had been fired from right to left.
The team target the search opposite the first bullet hole.
Hidden by the long grass,
they finally find what they're looking for...
two cartridge casings.
It was approximately four metres from the kitchen window,
and the second cartridge case,
approximately a metre to the right of the first one.
This is a massive breakthrough.
Obviously, there's potential forensic evidence on them.
There might be fingerprint evidence,
especially DNA evidence that you would also be able
to identify exactly what weapon's been used.
The cartridges are fast-tracked for forensic testing.
CSls continue their recovery.
Forensically, it's important to think about
what might have happened prior to the incident.
Have they done a recce of the premises?
So, have the offenders been to that location an hour before,
a day before, a couple of weeks before,
and looked through the window?
Have they been close to the window and touched the window?
And also, not only that, you have to think about,
how did they get into the garden?
Did they open the gate? Was the gate locked?
Did they jump over the fence?
They may well have snagged their clothing,
or there might well be some DNA
on the fence where they've climbed over.
So you don't just concentrate your efforts on the two bullet casings,
there's a lot of other areas in that garden
that can be examined for forensic evidence.
Andre attends the postmortem to look for further clues.
The victim's body is an important source of information.
After taking the X-rays,
we were able to establish that he had two bullets in his body.
There were no exit wounds.
One of the wounds was the mid-back, on the left side.
Ancl he also had an entry wound on the left side of his chest.
The bullets were recovered.
The one bullet had a slanted impact mark on the nose
of about 30, 35 degrees,
so I could tell that that was the bullet
that had been fired through the windows at an angle.
That was very important for us to work out what happened.
Andre collates his report with the findings from the crime scene.
It was my opinion, then, that Michael had been standing
in the kitchen, between the sink and the stove.
The shooter was four metres from the window.
When the first shot was fired at almost right angles,
it struck him in the back.
Ancl that caused him to spin around on his way to the door
to get out of the kitchen, sufficiently for the second shot
to strike him in the left side of the chest.
Ancl because he had to move from right to left
to get out of the kitchen,
in order for the shooter to track him,
the shooter had also needed to change his position
from right to left to keep Michael in the sights.
The fact that the shooter had moved
and shot Mikey a second time in a different location means,
quite importantly, that there was a lot of intent there,
and also that potentially the shooter had shot before.
The evidence tells police
that Mikey was deliberately targeted by his killers.
I can't even process to think anybody having a grudge against him.
Everyone knew him as such a charming young man, such a lovely boy.
He didn't do wrong to nobody.
Michael was a very outgoing, pleasant, happy,
funny, caring person.
Ancl everybody loved him. He was just well-loved.
He was the best big brother you could ask for, really.
He was the glue to our family.
Without him, our family's just not the same.
I always looked up to him, still trying to be exactly who he was.
It was always, "Here's Mikey and little Mikey."
I was always called little Mikey.
We were that duo that were never apart.
He got into the skateboarding, that brought him out of his shell.
You know, he thrived there.
You'd always hear that noise of boards banging,
and that was the kid's way
of appreciating somebody else's talents.
Ancl I think that's what I enjoyed more than anything,
was going to these skate parks
and watching the faces of kids I'd never met,
and just seeing how good he was.
ON VIDEO: Yes!
Investigators turn to community intelligence to find a motive.
Michael lived in the Litherland area, just north of Liverpool.
It's an area that's kind of built on the industrial heritage
of the clocks, which are nearby.
Lots of wonderful families.
There are nice estates and nice areas.
But, sadly, there are elements of deprivation.
The network of estates in which Michael lived in
were very much the heartland of the gang
that was known quite widely as the Kirkstone Riot Squad,
and at this time,
were having trouble with a gang called the Linacre Young Guns.
They both had a degree of organisation around violence,
to protect their own business interests, essentially,
which is the drugs trade.
As they look to expand their networks,
in the hope of expanding their profits,
they step onto other people's patches, where they sell drugs.
It's quite easy, then, to understand why you then may have conflict
in two particular postcodes because everybody's fighting for space,
territory, and ensuring that their respect
and their name is known in a particular area.
The Rainsford family home is in the middle of the estate
dominated by the Kirkstone Riot Squad.
Police need to determine if this is relevant
to the murder investigation.
Mikey's family recall a previous incidents involving local gangs.
About a year earlier, on a summer night,
him and his friends just sitting outside the communal flats.
Without warning, a motorbike came round the corner
and rode straight at them.
Because he had a bike,
he couldn't run into the flat with his mates.
He had to ride away, and they even started chasing him.
There was two people on the bike, and one of them had a machete.
I remember him coming home, pale in the face, out of breath,
look like he'd been so shook up.
He said, "Lock the doors."
Ancl I turned round cos I heard this, the roar of an engine, so loud.
Ancl I look out the window,
and I see these two lads on the back of a bike.
He came into the front garden and actually took the mountain bike
and put it on his shoulder and rode off.
I didn't have a clue what was happening, or why.
That's what these people do for fun.
I think that they get an enjoyment out of it.
We logged it, reported it, told the police.
And, erm, Michael said to me, he said,
"I don't like living round here, Dad."
If we'd have took it seriously enough,
or we'd have just decided to move,
but there was never ever another incident,
and we never really talked about it again,
but I don't think they were linked.
Police need to determine if Mikey has links to any local gangs.
The reality is that,
when you have incidents like this, of this very nature,
you can quickly piece together an idea
as to why the person may have been targeted.
The people who are involved
are normally involved in a similar background.
The context is crime.
The police will be looking for strong evidential links
between Mike and with gangs from the surrounding areas.
CSls search Mikey's belongings for clues.
The police had to investigate every avenue.
Obviously, one of them involves checking on his lifestyle,
checking his bedroom, checking his bank accounts.
Michael had £1.10 in his pocket.
They didn't find a single thing, no money, no weapons,
no drugs, no paraphernalia, no nothing.
There was absolutely nothing that showed him to be...
that type of person, because he wasn't.
JOE: Became quite clear this wasn't your typical victim of gun crime.
You know, this was a young lad that had pursued his education.
A popular, bright, talented young lad
who had no real backdrop to criminal activity.
He wasn't somebody that you could find an obvious reason
as to why something as serious
and as poisonous as this had happened.
Back in the lab, forensics are examining the cartridge casings.
Once I had the opportunity
to examine the cartridge cases at the laboratory,
I was able to determine
that they had both been discharged in the same firearm -
a 9mm short-calibre self-loading pistol,
most likely a Makarov-style pistol of Russian origin.
Ancl we could tell that from the firing marks that had been left
on the cartridge cases and the bullets.
Finding the gun is the investigation's best chance
of identifying Mikey's killers.
We can associate a firearm with a person
from the DNA recovered from a firearm.
Ancl then, of course, we can link the firearm to a crime scene
because we can compare the markings.
So, the striation marks, or scratch marks,
on the casing is unique to that gun,
so it's almost like a fingerprint for the gun.
So, if you can find the gun that it was fired from
and do test shots, you're able to match the bullets back.
We had cartridge cases from the scene.
We had bullets from the autopsy.
And both were then used
for comparing to a database of firearms
and shooting incidents in the country.
Ancl some links had been made.
This gun had been linked to two other shooting incidents
in the Merseyside region prior to Michael's shooting.
Once that gun's been utilised in a particular crime,
rather than get rid of it,
they sell it on to another group of individuals,
because, essentially, it's like a car -
you use the car, you burn out the mileage,
you sell it for whatever price that you can get it for,
and you move on.
Licensed search officers look in all nearby bins, drains,
and parkland for the gun,
and detectives speak to members of the community.
People are worried about snitching,
simply because there's repercussions that come with that.
There's an unseen code, or unknown law, within communities
that when you cooperate with the authorities,
there's things that can happen.
And what often times happens is that wall of silence.
And, as the police will say,
that wall of silence is one of the hardest things
because people in the community want justice, they want peace,
they want their communities and streets to be safe,
but how can they be safe if you're not willing to break the silence?
But the murder of Michael crossed a threshold that just led
to an overwhelming reaction of people saying,
"You know what, regardless of the idea of snitches get stitches,
"|'m willing to kind of put myself at risk to try and help this family,
"this upstanding family within their own community to get justice."
We were told by a fellow officer at the time
that they had received over 100 phone calls the same clay,
giving information in.
Everybody spoke out. Everybody helped.
They had given the same two pseudonyms again and again -
Pip and Worm.
Detectives use police intelligence to find their true identities.
If they can identify who that is quickly,
then they can take massive strides in their investigation,
ancl that potentially leads them to the perpetrator.
After appealing for information
about the shooting of 20-year-old Mikey Rainsford,
police have been told his killers go by the nicknames Pip and Worm.
I didn't have a clue who they were.
Because of the area, you hear things, you hear names,
but I didn't have a clue who they were.
Detectives run the pseudonyms against police intelligence
and get a result.
They are identified as brothers James and Michael Foy.
JOE: They did carry a reputation.
Michael Foy, who's the older of the two brothers, you know,
I'd previously sat in court with him
whilst he got jailed for a previous drug offence.
Within that case, he was named as being linked
to the gang called the Linacre Young Guns.
Michael Foy's younger brotherjames
is also found to have links to criminality.
There's a hit against him on the National DNA Database.
Related to the finding of a gun that was discovered not far
from where the Foys lived in November 2019,
so some five months before the murder.
The firearm was a Grand Power K100.
It's a Slovakian pistol,
and it is not the same calibre of firearm
that was used to shoot Michael Rainsford.
It's a more powerful calibre.
So, there's normally a joint fingerprint and DNA examination,
and it's done of a weapon. And normally,
the areas that have been handled and touched,
like the grip, the trigger mechanism
are swabbed for DNA
because they're too rough to get fingerprints on,
and also, potentially, they're too small.
So, in this case,
there were four different profiles found on this gun.
The strongest profile was found on the magazine of the gun,
and this came back to James Foy.
It was recovered with more than 20 rounds of ammunition,
and that only one of the cartridges was in fact compatible with the gun,
that could perhaps mean that he had access to more than one firearm.
He wasn't convicted, but it could show that,
for months before the murder of Michael,
James Foy was already caught up in this type of activity.
He was already having access to firearms.
He was already involved in the type of gangland activity
that had the potential to lead to something as serious
as the murder of Michael Rainsford.
When we're talking about urban youth crime,
and especially things like gangs,
individuals that are involved in drug trade,
guns tends to be a thing that comes hand in hand.
Having a gun shows more superiority, as it relates to holding a knife.
Loads of young people carry knives, but when you hold the gun,
having a gun brings a different type of power.
Despite the Foy brothers' criminal history,
the team need evidence linking them to Mikey's murder.
Turning to police intelligence to find out more about the pair,
the team discover an incident
that took place an hour before the shooting.
JOE: There's a PC who was driving past
the area in which the Foys live.
She looked down the street,
and she saw two males on an electric bike,
which are quite often used by criminals
in order to transport drugs and guns.
She's suspicious. She goes to have a look down that street.
She witnesses quite a commotion.
That was because the house had had its windows put through with bricks.
The officer took a witness statement.
A brick has been thrown at the home of James and Michael Foy.
When we talk about gangs and urban groups,
status is everything.
A brick thrown through a window,
through the lens of an individual that's a part of a gang or a group,
that's a high level of disrespect.
JOE: They want to protect their reputations.
If they feel slighted in any way,
their response will quite quickly lead to violence.
That's how their reputation thrives and exists,
mainly through fear and intimidation, and,
"|f you come at me, I'll come back at you, twice as hard."
The incident gives police a potential motive for Mikey's murder.
If the Foys suspected he was involved,
the shooting could be an act of revenge.
That could potentially be circumstantial evidence,
but what you really need is crucial piece of evidence
that connected the Foys to Michael Rainsford.
The team request his cell site data to track his movements.
It's really important to, obviously, to treat the victim as a victim,
but also, you need to look into any communication
with these potential offenders or any other gang members.
And also, there may be other phone data on Mikey's phone
that may be pertinent to the investigation.
With very little forensic evidence,
the SlOs main thrust of the investigation
would then be towards the digital side,
trawl of CCTV, social media,
to see if there's any intelligence that comes up.
Social media has had a massive impact
on police investigations over the past decade.
The proliferation of sites and Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram,
all those others, as well.
It's often one of the most interesting places
for the police to go to
in the aftermath of an incident as serious as this.
And, actually, that kind of gives police an additional option
when they're looking for information.
The Foy brothers were very well-known on their local estate
for riding round terrorising the local residents
on electric motorbikes.
There was a lot of photographs on social media about the bikes,
but, interestingly, one of the bikes was red in colour,
just like a witness stated that there was a red bike at the scene.
So finding that red bike
becomes a really important part of the investigation
because there's a wealth of forensic evidence that might be on that bike.
Having completed the forensic harvest of the crime scene,
the Rainsford home is returned to the family.
We made the decision to give it a try to come home...
...but there was glass everywhere in the kitchen.
The half-eaten birthday cake was still there.
The trauma to walk past that window to wash dishes
and know that everything we ever did in the house,
Michael was a part of it.
That was my home since I ever known.
Millions of memories made there with my brother, with my family.
it just took away a part of me that I'm never gonna get back.
Two days on from Mikey's murder,
police are granted a search warrant for the Foy's family home.
The purpose of the house search is to search for any evidence
that may link that offender back to the crime scene,
so there's always, like, a list of priority items that might be found.
You would obviously be searching for a weapon, an electric bike,
mobile phone, or potential clothing.
None of the items of interest were found,
then that obviously arouses suspicion.
Where is this bike?
Hypothesis is, well, maybe they're not involved in the incident,
but also, another hypothesis is, well, they are involved in incident,
but they've got rid of those items in question,
that maybe there's further scenes that need finding and examining.
The warrant also allows police
to seize the Foy family's mobile phones.
Now, one of the slightly bizarre and surreal coincidences
is they would have you believe Michael Rainsford was shot dead
just after 1 1 o'clock on the night of April the 7th.
Over the course of April the 8th, both brothers and their mum
managed to somehow lose their phones.
It's very clear to see why suspicions were raised
within the police.
If they are involved, that shows a certain level
of forensic intelligence by the offenders,
that they know to get rid of items, but what they don't realise is,
just because they don't have the phone itself,
the police can find information by other means.
Mobile phones now store so much about our lives
that they really are almost like a personal diary.
'In a case like this,
'where we don't have access to the phone itself,
'you can go to the service providers and get the call logs,
'which will give us a breakdown of when calls were made,
'the cell site towers that were used,
'the locations, and other data.
'It's important to identify where people were
'just before the murder took place.'
There's no better way of doing this than cell site analysis.
In order for a phone to communicate,
it sends and receives a signal to the nearest
of the 1.5 million cell site towers across the country.
These cell site towers
are continually sending and receiving data.
When we're looking at where perpetrators may have been,
cell site location can give us a rough proximity
that can tell us they were within a few streets.
The data shows that the Foy's mum called James
minutes after the brick was thrown into their window.
James then immediately calls his brother.
When looking at cell site data,
we can compare different people's traffic and see where they overlap.
When they overlap,
it's likely that they were together or in a close proximity.
Those movements of those devices suggested the pair,
who were at opposite ends of Sefton, decided to meet up with each other,
go home, and then move to the murder scene.
They were able to look at CCTV
along those suspected routes of those mobile phones
to see if the two mirrored each other.
They could find corresponding CCTV images
for the same time, in the same areas,
showing two males on the back of an electric bike.
It's a massive breakthrough.
It's really important for the crime scene manager
to view that CCTV evidence,
to see where they were at the scene,
what routes they took, what the offenders were wearing.
There's potential forensic evidence that might be found
on those items of clothing.
There's not gonna be any contact trace evidence
because the offenders haven't been in close contact
with the victim, but they've fired a gun.
There may well be gunshot residue.
Following up on intelligence,
licensed search officers raid other homes on the Foy street.
While they look for any hidden evidence,
the results from Mikey's cell site data are in.
His phone was tracked, along with everybody else's phone...
...and his phone was in our house,
and it went from our house to an ambulance.
Ancl then, when the police received his phone,
it was in... it was in the mortuary.
JOE: The police explored all the avenues that were open to them -
his mobile phone cell site data, to speaking to witnesses,
it's very, very clear that Michael had absolutely no involvement
in that brick attack in the first place.
In a neighbouring house,
search officers find a bag of clothes hidden by the Foys.
It's fast-tracked to the lab for gunshot-residue analysis.
Gunshot residue is chemical trace elements
that result when a cartridge is discharged.
It is quite unique, and it is deposited on surfaces
that are in close proximity to a firearm when it is discharged.
Samples obtained from the examination of the garment
will be analysed with an electron microscope.
JOE: Now, what's quite interesting is the fact
that they did find some gunshot residue on the coat,
but they found some... very, very few particles.
Because of how few there were, they couldn't specifically say
that coat had been worn during a shooting.
It's not possible for a forensic scientist to say
that's conclusive evidence, so it's a bittersweet moment.
It's not enough to be able to charge somebody.
I would imagine the police would have found that quite frustrating
and desperate to find further evidence
to be able to nail the offenders.
JOE: They had a lots of things they could go,
"When you add all these things up, how could it not be them?"
But what you really need, that final piece of information,
around which they could build the rest of their storyline.
The team double down their efforts to recover the Foy's phone data
by targeting their associates' devices.
In this case, the Foys and their mum had got rid of their phones,
but it's also really important to then find the phones
they'd been communicating with.
There may be further intelligence and evidence on the other phones.
On one device, experts recover a social media post of interest.
So, the way in which Snapchat works, if you put a message on there,
it will... quite often, it will disappear after 24 hours.
But if people interact with it,
it can leave almost a forensic trail on people's phones.
When an expert goes in to analyse it,
they can find traces of that interaction.
What they found was, that on April the 7th,
that this individual had responded to a Snapchat message
from the account that was known to be operated by James Foy,
in which he had put an image of the bike
that was known to be involved in the shooting,
a bike that was known to be owned by the Foy brothers,
and within it was the caption, "Tell ye mar duck don't use bricks."
Two bang emojis.
Bricks had gone through the window of their own mum's address.
Well, in response, they were gonna do something else.
They were warning, essentially,
that their next victim's mum to duck
cos something was coming through their window.
It wasn't gonna be bricks.
Sometimes, social media creates narcissistic tendencies,
so when you post on platforms
like Snapchat, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok,
often times, it's about, "Look at me, look at me, look at me."
Which goes back to the conversations about status, respect, being known,
being seen, being heard.
In a little community within Liverpool,
you can make the world know who you are through Snapchat.
The message supports the police's hypothesis
that this was a revenge attack...
...though why Mikey was targeted remains unknown.
The Foy brothers are arrested on suspicion of murder.
Honestly, knowing he was arrested, I can't even say I was relieved.
I definitely felt safer.
But every other feeling that I felt still felt the same
because my brother was no longer there.
My role model, my big brother.
just cos they've been arrested,
that doesn't mean he's gonna come back.
In custody, police questioned the brothers.
Michael Foy says he was with his partner
on the night of Mikey's murder.
Police askjames Foy about the previous gun allegation.
He says he's never seen the gun
and claims his DNA must have been transferred from another object.
JOE: The Foys played their cards very close to their chest,
and essentially answered "no comment"
to the vast majority of the questions.
If you were arrested on suspicion of murder and you hadn't clone it,
surely you'd be there saying,
"No, I was here, I was there, I was doing this, I was doing that."
If you say, "No comment"...
well, maybe that's because you've got something to hide.
Despite their refusal to speak,
the wealth of evidence means both are charged with murder.
Mikey's family prepare to face them for the first time in court.
I wanted to look both of them in the eyes the whole time, just...
I just wanted them to know...
...who we were as a family and what they'd clone to us.
Six months after being charged with the murder
of 20-year-old skateboarder Mikey Rainsford,
the trial againstjames Foy
and older brother Michael Foy begins.
The communities of Seaforth and surrounding areas...
...were all breathing a sigh of relief...
...that hopefully these animals had finally been taken off the street.
The evidence is presented to the jury.
When cases go to trial, they can be incredibly intense
and quite stressful.
You're never quite sure how the jury's gonna react,
especially to a huge amount of evidence.
It's the mobile phone cell site analysis,
and it's the CCTV images,
they suggest that the brothers met up with each other
on a red electric bike and then went over to the area
in which Michael Rainsford lived,
around the same time that the gun was fired.
The prosecuting barrister details,
"The rider waited outside the address,
"while the other climbed over the gate to the back garden
"and lay in wait for his target with a loaded gun."
Tragically, the two gunshots are heard on nearby CCTV.
GUNSHOT
Although only one of the Foys pulled the trigger,
the prosecution argues both are to blame,
as the brothers were out intent on retribution.
It was an organised gang member who decided...
...that he wasn't gonna accept his window being broken...
...and he was going to dish out retribution...
to somebody, anybody...
to show what kind of person he was.
One of many tragic elements of this case
is the fact that, whilst police had the motive for the murder,
it's clear that Michael died as a result of that incident,
but had absolutely nothing to do with it.
Police suspect someone known to both the Foys and Mikey
pointed the finger at him...
but why remains unknown.
I was told that, "All your questions are gonna be answered
"throughout this trial."
Sadly, they weren't.
It haunts me every clay.
It's clear that, after the Foy's home was bricked,
their gut instinct, their reaction was,
"Well, it's probably by someone from our rival gang."
So, going to their rival gang's turf was probably a natural reaction.
Now, when you looked at the CCTV, you could see them peering
over a back garden gate, looking into another property.
It suggests that they weren't necessarily set
on an address to target when they set out there,
which adds more questions about how they ended up
at Michael's address in the first place.
Street gangs do feel that notion of, "Nobody can touch me."
And that may help to explain why you have sporadic violence.
They don't care about forensics and stuff like that
because, maybe at some point,
they actually think they're untouchable.
Michael was in the kitchen,
and he had absolutely no idea that somebody was outside,
lurking in the dark.
Ancl he was shot in the back.
For me, that is perhaps cowardly,
and I could just imagine how traumatic
that must have been for Michael's family.
The jury retire.
16 hours and 20 minutes later,
both brothers are found guilty of Mikey's murder.
It was all over a broken window, which he didn't do.
When the trial actually finished,
he said, "We'll be out in a few years,
"but your Mikey will still be in the ground."
Ancl that stuck with me.
At the sentencing,
Mikey's family are in for one more heartbreaking detail.
James Foy actually admitted to be the one
that pulled the trigger of the gun,
I'm assuming in an attempt to lessen his sentence
and put the blame more on himself rather than his brother.
That doesn't necessarily help the family.
It does give them a degree of closure
over that chapter in their life,
but it won't bring anyone back, and that's heartbreaking.
What I'll never come to terms with, the senselessness of it -
of being murdered for something that he had nothing to do with.
Ancl it'd destroy your family.
Michael Foy is sentenced to life, with a minimum of 30 years.
James Foy is also convicted of possession of a gun
and sentenced to life, with a minimum of 28 years.
Afterwards, I was called a grass.
I received death threats.
I got added into a group chat,
and there was quite a lot of people in there,
just hurling insults, horrible, horrible, horrible things.
Pictures of clogs...
shitting on Michael's grave.
"We'll put two bullets in your chest,
"just like we did to your Mikey."
They murdered Michael. They terrorised us.
We couldn't stay. We had to move house.
We loved that house.
We had a million memories
of all the things we did as a family.
You know, your Christmases, your birthdays,
trampolines, swimming pools.
Countless memories just taken away by...
...evil that just decided to...
choose our house, choose Michael.
I miss the arguments
that you have with your brother over the petty little things.
They're the things you really take for granted.
You wish you could have it all over again.
I miss the laughs, his banter, everything about him.
From the good to bad, I just miss it all.
That's my big brother...
ON VIDEO: Yes!
..and I'll always love him.