Crime Documentary - The Roy Tutill story

  • 7 years ago
Viewer discretion is advised. Some may find this content disturbing. This is a documentary I found interesting.

The murder of Roy Tutill was an English murder case committed in 1968 near Dorking, Surrey, England. The victim was 14-year-old schoolboy Roy Tutill, who was raped and murdered on his way home from school. The crime went unsolved for 33 years, until Brian Lunn Field confessed to the crime after DNA evidence surfaced. It is the oldest cold case to be solved in the United Kingdom.

Tutill, known as "Tuts" to his friends, disappeared on 23 April 1968 on his way from Kingston Grammar School in Kingston upon Thames to his home in Brockham. He left school at 3:30 p.m. and boarded a bus with his friends. To save on bus fare to buy a new bicycle, he then decided to hitchhike the rest of the way home, something he did regularly. Tutill was last seen in Chessington trying to hail a car.

Tutill's parents, Dennis and Hilary, notified police when he failed to arrive home by that evening. The police took a missing person's report, but did not begin investigating until the following day. The body of the schoolboy was found by a policeman three days later outside the gates of Cherkley Court, in Mickleham, Surrey. He had been strangled and sexually assaulted.

On 21 February 2001, police arrested Field at his flat in Birmingham. Field was held in police custody for more than the lawfully prescribed 24 hours in order to assist the investigation. He denied knowing Tutill or having anything to do with his death, and whilst admitting to his historic offences against boys said he had put that behaviour behind him. Just before Field was put into his cell for a third night he had been asked to submit DNA samples. Field could not sleep that night and the following day he confessed in detail to the abduction, rape and murder of Tutill. He said he had seen a boy get off a bus and thumb for a lift and that he had picked him up. He said he drove the boy to a layby where he anally raped him over the front seat. He said when he finished he panicked and then strangled the boy with his own school tie, he kept the body in his car's boot for several days before dumping him in woodland.

On 15 November 2001, the 65-year-old Field was sentenced to life in prison for the death of Roy Tutill. He pleaded guilty to the murder but not the sexual assault. Tutill's parents did not live to see his murderer sentenced. Until Field was convicted, Tutill's murder had been the only unsolved child murder case in Surrey.

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