LIAM SMITH MURDER: How police solved the case

Police chief tells how they solved the horrific murder of Wigan dad Liam Smith.  CREDIT: Greater Manchester Police

Transcript

00:00 (gunshot)

00:02 - He's got a lot of white powder around him as well

00:05 that seems to be sort of giving off gas

00:08 or some descriptions.

00:10 Smells a bit bleachy.

00:11 - This was a proper whodunit from the start

00:14 where I had a victim that we knew nothing about.

00:18 No witnesses, no suspect, no weapon, no motive

00:23 and very little evidence to go on.

00:26 (dramatic music)

00:29 CCTV footage, some from Liam,

00:35 the victim's home address itself

00:37 and some from a bin wagon and a delivery van

00:41 captured the vehicle driven by suspect Michael Hilliard

00:45 on the day of the murder.

00:46 And what that showed us was that that car

00:48 was outside of Liam's home address for almost 10 hours

00:51 before he got out and murdered Liam.

00:52 (dramatic music)

00:55 (sirens blaring)

00:58 We knew the buildup in that we knew

01:07 the movements of the vehicle,

01:08 we knew the obtained license plates

01:11 and we knew how Liam had been killed.

01:13 But we didn't know who'd done it.

01:15 A couple of weeks into the investigation,

01:18 we received intelligence from South Yorkshire Police

01:20 that a vehicle had been stopped three weeks before

01:25 Liam was murdered.

01:27 And in that vehicle was the R22 ORA plate.

01:31 It was that that really unraveled this case,

01:36 the thread that you pull.

01:38 But after that was a house of cards

01:42 led to one person to another, to another,

01:46 to CCTV, to Michael Hilliard, to Rachel Fullstone.

01:51 [MUSIC PLAYING]

01:55 you