But throughout this period, and in the last two years, the police liaison officer has been good and very, very helpful. And anytime if I phone and suddenly if I’ve remembered something he will go back to his notes, he will come back within 5, 10 minutes to say, Well I’ve checked this and double checked this and treble checked this and this is whom I’ve spoken to and this is what happened. If you, you know, you might have forgotten rdquo; because I was in shock at the time, he reminds me. There are certain things that I’ve suddenly thought, Oh, I never asked about this And he very gently reminds me that he did tell me but it, you know, and he then tells me all of the related information. Very, very good.

Oh, that’s excellent.

He’s a very experienced chap and we were very lucky to have him.

The trial took place a year later. It took a year to get everything together. The police were amazing. I can’t thank the police enough for everything they did, they were marvellous. And we used to have weekly updates where they would come round and discuss what they’d found out, what, what they were going to use as evidence, you know there are certain things the police aren’t allowed to tell you, but they informed us with as much as they were allowed to, and they were always just wonderful. They were really good people. They really were, and that went on for a year. And then the trial started.

Could you ring up the police if you wanted information?

Mm. We had their mobiles and that. Yes, they were brilliant?

Did they come in pairs or did they come alone or..?

Sometimes they came in pairs, and sometimes we had one on his own, sometimes you might have five or six of them, you know a whole load of them.

Did you feel they were trying to get information from you, or was it, or was it they were giving you information?

Both really. I mean they had a lot of questions to ask; they needed to build a huge picture. Yes, it was both. But they were brilliant.

Yes, they were very, very good. The case they built was amazing. You know they really did work hard. They really did, and the trial started the following year. And that went on for I think it was two weeks.

To go back to the Police Liaison Officer, could you phone her at any time if you wanted information?

They gave us a number yes, I mean once we finally met her, it was more a question of who was actually going to take charge of dealing with things, because my sister’s older than me, but she sat there and quite categorically said no, do everything through me. Um, so they said was I happy for that. Well there’s not really a lot of choice is there? So that was fine. And yes, we were given her number, if we needed anything you know well whatever. And they asked that we didn’t actually speak directly to the media because the police were trying to handle the media through them. Because, it was obviously being treated as suspicious so they needed to, to keep a grip if you like on the media to make sure that it wasn’t, wasn’t running off everywhere. So um, but yes she was very helpful.

And you say Family Liaison Officer was the most helpful. Did she come round here every week, every day or?

She was at the end of the phone whenever we needed her. We’d all got her, her number. And so you know, I mean she was at the phone if we needed her, and like as things were progressing she was liaising that back to us. And in terms of like the media and what the police had actually released to the media and that so, so she kept us pretty much up to speed on things.

And she’s based at the police station?

She’s based at a police station, yes.

And then did the police liaison officer contact you regularly with updated [information]?

He did yes, probably about once a month. Yes, right through, and in a funny kind of way that’s one of the things that sets this sort of death apart from heart attack things, because if you’re an ordinary family like us you don’t actually have policemen in their uniforms sitting at your kitchen table for an afternoon talking about things, and that happened a lot. And it was kind of we’d moved into a different place, we are now the recipients of care, i.e. we have a family liaison officer and that’s not the sort of thing that one expects within normal life.

Yes, the police liaison officers were very helpful. They were very nice, they were very sensitive and any development in what had happened, you know, to do with the people that had committed the murder, they made sure that we had all the facts and kept us up to date, and they would visit us regularly, and they almost became like family friends really, you know, they were that close really. It was really good to have had that because you knew where you were at all times. And I know some people have had bad experiences with the police but we couldn’t fault them. And all the way through the court case they were, they were always there, and they used to take us down because it wasn’t in the local area. They used to drive us down there every day.

Did you have two police liaison officers did you?

Yeah. We had, we had two, and then I think there was a third, who was for Lloyd’s friends, and like the witnesses and the people that were standing, the people that were going to stand up and talk in the court case.

The Police Liaison Officers were absolutely brilliant, they treated us so well, they looked after us as though we were part of their family, and even after we moved down to Wales, they still used to pop down and see us occasionally, if they’d see us out in the street, they’d stop and have a chat with us. They were very good, they handled the case very sensitively. I’ve got nothing but praise for them.

And then they kept you up to date over the years while the young men have been in prison.

Yes, yes they did, and they kept in touch with us for many years, in fact it’s only since we moved down here that we’ve actually lost touch with them, but anything that was going on in the prisons they thought we needed to know they would tell us, and they were telling us before probation services were telling us. They handled the case very well, and I’ve no complaints at all with them.

Well, if I could say one thing about my liaison officers, they were fantastic. If there’s one criticism about them I think that sometimes they can be, one of them was a little bit insensitive because literally 18 months after my son’s death he turned up one Sunday afternoon. I was cooking the Sunday dinner. He didn’t ring, and he came to my front door here, my front door here and he said, Hiya Terri, here’s Ben’s shoes.

And it ruined my day. And I couldn’t believe he’d done it. No phone call. You see to him it’s just a pair of shoes, but it’s my son’s shoes that he was wearing while he was killed. And it might only be shoes to them but it’s not to me.

And I couldn’t believe it. He just passed them me, not even in a bag. Here you are. And that was it. I was crying my eyes out because I smelt them and everything.

No warning or anything. And it’s all in the line of duty. And I think sometimes you’ve got to step back and put yourself in, in the shoes of the victim, haven’t you? And think, you know, how would, how would I feel if it was my child?

A bit more empathy. But apart from that they were brilliant, I can’t really be critical.

But the Family Liaison Officer, I think, I can’t remember whether it was because we didn’t sleep I mean, you know you don’t know days or whatever, but she called shortly after, and the family were all there. Friends and family of my daughter in laws were all sitting, as people do, they collect in houses, sit and drink tea, nobody does anything, they just sit and drink tea, and the Family Liaison Officer called and started to tell us in great detail, she said that Marks’ death had been recorded in CCTV, and they had all been watching it back at the station, and that it was quite horrific, his death was quite horrific, and she started to tell us details then, of just what happened, in front of everybody.

And my grandson was there. And my daughter had flown over from Italy and she took my grandson out and she said, You shouldn’t have to hear this. He shouldn’t be listening to this And she [the officer] actually enjoyed it, it was like she was describing a good film she’d been to, an exciting film she’d been to, and she seemed to quite actually enjoy the gory details of the whole thing.

How awful.

And to cut a long story short the woman was just absolutely horrendous, she added to our agony so much, so we eventually phoned the police and said, don’t send that woman back to this house, because she’s not doing us any favours whatsoever And with that the police more or less withdrew and didn’t, we didn’t get another Family Liaison Officer and we got no more, no more help from the police at all.

Did you explain why you didn’t want to have her back in the house?

Yes, yes.

And they didn’t apologise or send anybody else?

Well that came much later, I made an official complaint to the Chief Constable of that particular force. And that came much later, that was a lot later. Because you don’t know what, nobody comes forward to help. Nobody says. This is what you do, this is what happens, this is what should happen No, this is a new experience, you don’t know, you really don’t know what you, what should be happening.

Some of the misunderstanding that can happen is where families think that the Family Liaison Officer is a support network person, when in fact they are investigative bodies, an intermediary between the family and the investigation team, so it’s important that the family are made aware, in a sensitive way by the Family Liaison Officer, but that the Family Liaison Officer is armed with an understanding of the serious trauma that the family are going through, so that he or she is able to have that two way important rapport with the family. So that important information will be forthcoming from the family, but sensitivity and an expert way of dealing with the family is also going back, so it’s
Mm. So you think the family should be warned that anything they say might go back to the investigation team?

Well I think they should be told frankly that the police work is about justice for their loved one, and part of that justice will mean that any information that that the family can give is important to that process, and that is part of their job.

And then what happened when the police liaison officer arrived at your parents’ house?

Well oh gosh, at the time
Were you there?

Yes, at the time to me, because they came continuously for three months, at all different hours of the night, and I think when you watch the, the, because this has never happened to me before, I don’t know anyone it’s happened to, when you hear of this you kind of think the police come, and you, there’s the crime, and you have a court case, and they was our hope, they was all we had to hold onto. But they was consorting to build up intelligence, and their job is to solve the crime, and that was their objective, it was to, it was to build up a case and it wasn’t for the help that I thought they was providing.

Not to provide help did you say?

Yes, because after the three months was up, they disappeared and you never see them again.

And that’s quite sudden?

It was, it was like another death to me. I often say that at the end of the three month, because your house is bombarded with people, they all come, people you’ve not seen for years, the house is packed, then three months down the line everything’s empty, and the police don’t come, when you phone them you can’t get hold of them and they’re all working on different cases then.

Whereas before that you had a police liaison officer coming to see you regularly.

Oh constantly. They’d phone up, they’d phone you, but they was phoning to build the case and not as your support you know so, then it’s just cut off.

I’m so sorry.