The Murder of Shani Warren: Lady in the Lake Cold Case Mystery
True-crime documentary revealing how it took a forensic breakthrough to solve a 35-year-old unsolved murder that had remained a cold case mystery until now. The body of secretary Shani Warren was discovered floating face down in a lake. Her hands were tied behind her back with a red jump lead from her car and her ankles were bound with a yellow rope. There was a scarf around her mouth and a ligature had been put around her neck. She had drowned in a lake. It was an investigation that became known as the lady in the lake case and detectives from Thames Valley Police were in no doubt - they were hunting a killer. But was it murder? This true-crime documentary has finally lifted the lid on what really happened to Shani Warren.
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TVTranscript
00:00:00Easter Friday 1987, I was returning from France with a load of apples there, I think it was,
00:00:17and we pulled into the lay-by, and as I came in I saw the car, Vauxhall Cavalier parked
00:00:30in quite a strange place, it seemed to be abandoned, parked the lorry, went past Vauxhall
00:00:40to go home, and noticed that the door wasn't closed, and the driver's seat was fully declined,
00:00:47it was strange that the door wasn't shut.
00:00:49When Cheyney walked into a room, if you really light it up,
00:01:10people would respond to her friendliness, her brightness, her fun.
00:01:19She was found hands tied behind her back, feet bound, mouth gagged.
00:01:33The police came in and they told me that there had been an incident, and a young girl was dead,
00:01:43and could I possibly go with them to identify the body. It was obvious that they were talking
00:01:51about my sister, and I identified Cheyney's body. We don't know why Cheyney's car ended up here,
00:02:00there was nothing to connect her with this particular part of Taplow or Maidenhead.
00:02:13There were so many aspects of it that didn't make sense from a murder point of view,
00:02:21and also from a suicide point of view. A super busy road, if there'd been any sort of fight
00:02:29or altercation in that lay-by, somebody must have seen something. It was full of anomalies
00:02:36that didn't make sense. Murder or suicide, the police can't make it out. If it's a murder,
00:02:43there's signs of violence or sign of a struggle, there isn't. But if it's a suicide, which is very
00:02:49unusual, we do have unusual suicides, it's unusual that there's no history of depression or suicide
00:02:55note. I had to tell them to just back off a bit, because I thought they were being over the top.
00:03:01I thought, I said to them, either charge me, or just leave us alone. The interest was high,
00:03:09because everybody likes a mystery. They had this sort of Agatha Christie style mystery
00:03:17about it, and as such, it got dubbed The Lady in the Lake. It was late on a Saturday afternoon,
00:03:37really nice day, I remember the sun out. It must have been five, six o'clock in the evening. My
00:03:46brother and I were driving home towards Maidenhead, Windsor, through Taplo. All of a sudden, a lady
00:03:54ran out into the road with her dog, and she flagged us down. She stopped us and said,
00:04:04I think I found a body in the lake. I said to my brother, okay, do you want to go and have a look?
00:04:10And then he came back within minutes. There's a body laying face down, with her hands tied behind
00:04:22her back, and her feet tied. I thought, wow, okay. I remember my brother just wading in,
00:04:32with his shoes and socks on, and trousers, and just walked out to the body, and he pulled it
00:04:37to the edge. I then, we then got it onto the bank. The body was fairly stiff. We then contacted the
00:04:49police. Within minutes, the first police car was on the scene. This was the Easter weekend in 1987,
00:05:06and I was on call, phone rant. I was being told the body had been found on a lake,
00:05:15quite close by to where I lived. Could I attend? This location is a large lay-by,
00:05:22alongside the very busy A4. This is a well-used lay-by, where large HGV lorries park. When I
00:05:30arrived at the scene, my first job as a scene to crime officer is to map the scene with a series
00:05:37of photographs. There was a trailer and a lorry, and then in between, a black Vauxhall Cavalier.
00:05:42The doors were locked, except for the driver's door. The seat of the car was
00:05:58completely reclined. In the footwell was a Bunce's bag with an Easter egg inside it.
00:06:12It was reported to me that there was a body in the lake. I went in with the uniformed officer.
00:06:32I could see straight away there was a body of what appeared to be a young woman.
00:06:38I noticed in the mud around where she'd been recovered from, there was small
00:07:07indentations. I was told that when she was found, she'd been wearing stiletto heels.
00:07:13That gave us a starting point from where we needed to search from. I'd been in the water
00:07:23half an hour searching, when suddenly my left hand grabbed hold of something that I knew shouldn't
00:07:28have been in the lake. It felt like a long, thin piece of wire, and as I was feeling along it,
00:07:38I felt that one of the ends had crocodile clips. Just to be sure, I brought the thing close into
00:07:43me, lifting my head above the silt that I'd disturbed, and I could see that it was a jump
00:07:49bead. The whole situation seemed to be an obvious murder. Around dusk time,
00:08:20the pathologist arrived at the scene. Dr. B.T. Davis was his name. I briefed him with what I
00:08:29knew and the photographs I'd taken, and described the scene to him. He looked across the lake to
00:08:36where this body was, and you couldn't see much from where he was, and he said,
00:08:40it looks like she's done it herself. The case of Shaney Warren has been famous or
00:08:55infamous within Thames Valley Police since 1987. She was a young woman of 26 years of age,
00:09:05lived in a house in Stoke Poges. She shared with two others. It was actually her dad's house,
00:09:12but she insisted on paying rent herself for that house, and then rented out a couple of rooms.
00:09:17Shaney and I had a special bond. I was her big brother, and she was my little sister.
00:09:24I always felt protective and proud of her. Shaney's relationship with my mum was always
00:09:35close. They would confide in each other. They would talk about each other's problems. They
00:09:41were really more like friends. The thing about Shaney is her fun sense of humour,
00:09:47and her love of other people, and her generosity of spirit, where she would help people out who
00:09:53needed help without really thinking of herself. Shaney was very, very proud of her car. Her car
00:10:03had been bought with the help of a loan from her dad, but Shaney was determined to make her own
00:10:11way in life and repay her dad. The police found a note. So she'd saved up that money, and she was
00:10:23going to make a big presentation about giving this money back. Arranging a restaurant, arranging
00:10:33a bouquet of flowers for her mum, champagne with the meal. So it was going to be a big event. It's
00:10:38not something that had depressed her that she wanted to give this money back. Detectives
00:10:49investigating the death of a Buckinghamshire woman, Shaney Warren. Miss Warren, who was 26,
00:10:54was found bound and gagged in a lake at Taplow at the weekend. Having attended the scene,
00:11:05I then went to the post-mortem, the mortuary. The pathologist, Dr. B.T. Davis, he was an older man,
00:11:16very authoritative. He examines the body for the first time, and there was a simple gag around the
00:11:24mouth tied with a simple single tie. So it wasn't tight. The binding behind the girl's back were
00:11:34actually tied with a jump lead. And Dr. Davis, he quite easily just removed her hand from behind
00:11:43her back out of the binding. No sign of any sexual assault. There didn't appear to be any
00:11:52defence injuries. Marks like this in protecting yourself if you'd been assaulted. She had perfect
00:11:59fingernails that were beautifully manicured, and they still were. She was fully clothed,
00:12:03and her clothing was all tightly done up properly. Her buttons were done up, and she was wearing very
00:12:10tight jeans. Dr. Davis was a home office pathologist, and very knowledgeable. He made me think that it was a suicide.
00:12:34The fact that the pathologist has said that there's no evidence of any sexual activity
00:12:40any sexual attack was discounted. The original investigation concern more to do with Shady's
00:12:48ex-boyfriends or people that were in and around the scene at the time.
00:12:59I think it initially came in as a suicide, or it was treated as a suicide initially. But after
00:13:07doing some inquiries and that, I think they then treated it as a murder, and did all the inquiries
00:13:12that would come with the murder investigation. So the first inquiries would have been who was
00:13:18she with, who's she seeing, and where she'd last been to. I took statements from Shady's friends
00:13:25and work colleagues. Shady was unique, vivacious. She shone. She had the most beautiful smile. She was lovely.
00:13:55The last time I saw her, it was the Thursday before Easter Good Friday. So we were trying to clear up and finish, and we were going to go off for the weekend, and I asked her, what was she doing? And she was so excited.
00:14:17Well, Good Friday, I'm going to buy Easter eggs, sort out my chores, and possibly go out for a drink in the evening. Might go and see a friend. And then I'm off at the weekend, seeing my family.
00:14:34She had a car that she was so proud of, that she wanted to tell me about. And we gave each other a hug, and we said, Tuesday, when we're back at work, let's go out for that drink. We walked down the stairs into the car park, and we waved with a big smile, see you Tuesday. And that was it.
00:15:04She was really bubbly, likeable, easy to get on with, always giggling and laughing, easy to make laugh. Yeah, she was a really lovely person.
00:15:21We went to a restaurant in Maidenhead, an Indian restaurant, and when you book, they ask your name, so I said Roger. So when I walked in the restaurant, they used to go, oh, Sir Roger. And she just thought that was really, really funny, and she always then called me Sir Roger.
00:15:36I think everything was on the table. The idea that it could have been a stranger murder. We were looking at the stories, and we would theorise about what might have happened to her. It could have been a truck driver, an ex-boyfriend.
00:15:57I woke up, picked up the newspaper, looked at the front, and it said, Lady in the Lake. And it said, Cheyney Warren. And I went, wow, that's Cheyney, my Cheyney. And I phoned the police immediately, and said, you know, I saw her on the Thursday, 16th of April, that's the day before Good Friday, and we went to a restaurant in Maidenhead.
00:16:20She bought an Easter egg and an Easter card for an ex-boyfriend, who she'd had the dinner with the previous night. And in the card, she said to Sir Roger.
00:16:36I would think the police interviewed me five or six times, maybe seven times, and they asked me questions about where I was on the Good Friday, questions about did I use bondage at all, and the girlfriends that I'd taken.
00:16:54And in the end, I had to tell them to just back off a bit, because I thought they were being over the top. I said to them, either charge me, or just leave me, leave Tanya alone.
00:17:24Cheyney's house was about six doors down, 50 metres away.
00:17:42And on a Friday and Saturday night, we'd generally have dinner in the lounge. And through the side windows of the house, you could see her house, you could see the edge of her front lawn.
00:17:54I remember seeing Cheyney cutting her front lawn. About half six-ish, so it would have still been light.
00:18:11I can remember her putting grass cuttings into black bags.
00:18:16After I'd had my dinner up, I remember my dad saying, there goes Cheyney. And as he said that, I looked up out of the window, and I saw Cheyney alone in her car.
00:18:47Drove past the window and out the street, and off she went. And that was the last time I ever saw her.
00:18:53And my mum called her just after she'd gone out. And then my dad called her. He called several times and left messages. So he was very concerned at where she was.
00:19:17We know it was just about six, because her mum rang her just after six, and she missed her. Quite where Cheyney went after that, we don't know.
00:19:48Cheyney's car was found in the lay-by next to the lake. Inside were two empty plastic bags which had contained grass cuttings, and an Easter egg she'd bought for a friend.
00:19:59What the police want to know is where she bought that Easter egg.
00:20:05Murder or suicide, the police can't make it out.
00:20:09When I actually got called on to the incident room, I would say the first day it was being treated as suicide.
00:20:21There must have been getting on for 50 people working in the incident room, the people that log all the statements.
00:20:27The SIO, the Senior Investigating Officer, holds court in these places, and everybody says what they've found from their various deliberations and investigations.
00:20:37And as the information was coming in, there were two factions within the room. One thought, yes, it's a suicide, and the other one said, no, it's definitely a murder.
00:20:49I arranged for her car to be removed, so that we could do a full forensic examination on it.
00:20:58There was no sign of any fighting in the vehicle, there was no blood in the vehicle.
00:21:03If you put yourself in the position of the deceased, if you had been attacked, you think you would fight for your life.
00:21:11Cheyney and I went out one evening.
00:21:16And I told her about how I nearly drowned on my honeymoon.
00:21:21And we had a big conversation about a family.
00:21:28And I told her about how I nearly drowned on my honeymoon.
00:21:32And I told her about how I nearly drowned on my honeymoon.
00:21:35And we had a big conversation about our fears.
00:21:41And I told her about how terrified I was with the near drowning.
00:21:50And she told me that her biggest fear herself was also to drown.
00:21:58For a person who has a fear of water drowning, that would be the last thing they would want to do.
00:22:07This is me having been shown how to do the knots, trying to replicate them, or try and replicate them myself.
00:22:30Even by standing on one end of the jump leads, the knot is not really getting much tighter.
00:22:38Trying to get the other hand that's tied up to, and I've given up because it's nearly impossible.
00:22:46Some people obviously did think it was suicide, but that's their opinion.
00:22:51You couldn't tie yourself up like it without the help of somebody else.
00:22:56People have different opinions on it, so mine was that I thought it was a murder.
00:23:02There was a lot of interest in Cheyney's death.
00:23:06We were talking about a young woman in the prime of her life, she was very attractive.
00:23:12It does tend to generate an awful lot of interest from national media.
00:23:18Mrs Warren said her daughter could not bear to have her face in water.
00:23:24And the interest was high because everybody likes a mystery.
00:23:30Her daughter would never have contemplated suicide.
00:23:37We all knew that Cheyney was the last person you could ever meet who would want to commit suicide.
00:23:43She was fired up, she was happy, she was looking ahead, she had everything to live for.
00:23:54Cheyney Warren was found dead gagged and bound in Taplow Lake on April the 18th this year.
00:24:01Her Vauxhall Cavalier car was found 40 yards from her body, but mystery has always surrounded her death.
00:24:16I went to the inquest at the coroner's court.
00:24:20I went to the inquest at the coroner's court.
00:24:24Cheyney's family were all there and there was a lot of interest from the national media.
00:24:32A lot of papers had sent somebody.
00:24:35We did also hear at the inquest a not expert.
00:24:50At the coroner's court I demonstrated it like this with my hands in front so as not to turn my back on the court.
00:25:00One end was simply wrapped around once and twice to form this very loose handcuff arrangement.
00:25:10The family solicitor pointed out that Mrs Warren's hands were tied behind her back.
00:25:14Mrs Warren's hands were tied behind her back and I simply took one hand out and replaced it behind my back.
00:25:22It was that ineffective as a restraint.
00:25:26This jump lead was used as a ligature, a sliding noose.
00:25:33And because of the stiff nature of the material in which it was tied, it would not have gone very tight.
00:25:42It's very hard to imagine how the stiff loose knotted ligature that was around her neck could have been applied by her.
00:25:56Since as soon as she began to weaken or lose consciousness, she would release a hole in it and it would immediately slacken off.
00:26:06At the inquest I had become aware that the question of suicide was to be considered.
00:26:15I spent ten minutes replicating the bonds on myself unaided and that led me to the conclusion that the deceased could have assembled them on herself.
00:26:30But that there was no evidence that she had done so.
00:26:34Obviously it could have been done by Mrs Warren herself and so I suggested this to the police and suggested they called in the most notable expert in this field in Britain, which they did. And he agreed with me.
00:26:47I have been told since that the pathologist said that the not expert agreed with him. That's not true.
00:26:58Dr Benjamin Davis came across as very smug, I would suggest. He seemed to have this belief, a firm belief, that suicide was a definite situation here.
00:27:11From the beginning I thought this was a suicide. The young lady's tying up of the wrists and ankles was so amateurish that I can't imagine any assailant attempting to tie her up in that particular way.
00:27:41So the mysteries over the death of 26-year-old Shanie Warren still remain. Was she murdered or did she commit suicide?
00:28:02The police and other independent experts still can't agree and today's verdict leaves the way open for conclusive proof to be found either way.
00:28:12Although it was an open verdict, we knew that it was murder and we'd never accept anything less.
00:28:20After that we didn't hear anything more from the police. They hadn't closed the case but they had stopped working on it.
00:28:31After the coroner's verdict, the investigation did cease. Things still remained open but there was no further investigation at that point.
00:28:45When I was appointed as a Senior Investigating Officer in Thames Valley in 1997, towards the end of that year, I was asked to look at the investigation because it had been identified that it might be linked to a number of other investigations.
00:29:15I was asked to look at the investigation because it had been identified that it might be linked to a number of other investigations.
00:29:22I was asked to look at the investigation because it had been identified that it might be linked to a number of other investigations.
00:29:30I was asked to look at the investigation because it had been identified that it might be linked to a number of other investigations.
00:29:37Operation Links was targeted to tracking down a serial rapist, a man who abducted women and then raped them.
00:29:48The hunt for this man has now become the biggest since the search for the Yorkshire Ripper. He's wanted by police forces in Nottinghamshire, Leicestershire and Yorkshire.
00:30:06The other offences were all rape offences. The only murder investigation was of Cheyney Warren.
00:30:15The offender was clearly a very dangerous sexual predator. He was a violent man, he was a ruthless, psychopathic individual and therefore it was absolutely clear that he had the potential to commit the most violent sexual offences and also use extreme violence against women.
00:30:39So the fact that one of the potential victims had been murdered did not seem out of place.
00:30:48They all had the same method, M.O. the police call it, modus operandi.
00:30:53What it basically means is that an offender will commit an offence in the same way continuously and that's what will ultimately give you away.
00:31:01Victims were abducted in their own vehicles, lone women. They were driven to a secluded location, raped in their vehicle, were allowed to get dressed again, taken to a location where there was water like a canal or a river or something similar and then tied up and pushed in that water.
00:31:25Each victim had their hands tied behind their back and were blindfolded. They were abducted in their own cars.
00:31:31One in particular of the victims had been bound and gagged in a very, very similar way to Cheyney. Her ankles had been bound together, her hands had been tied behind her back, she had a gag, she had been threatened with strangulation and we know that there had been an attempt to strangle Cheyney.
00:31:51In one attack he tied a woman's hands and feet, blindfolded her and then threw her into a canal.
00:31:58Kalaibaba victims were similarly tied up using the same sort of implements, things that came from the car itself rather than something that the offender would have brought with him to the scene.
00:32:11One of the other victims had been pushed into water and had it not been for the fact that she was able to get her feet on the bottom of the canal and get to the other side and escape then she could very well have become a second murder victim and there were threats to kill other victims as well.
00:32:35So there were some very striking similarities between Cheyney's death and that case.
00:32:41The breakthrough came in March 1998.
00:32:57It was discovered that the offender had picked up an envelope and the victim had identified that to the police who took a partial fingerprint from the corner of the envelope.
00:33:08A partial fingerprint can't be searched against the entire database by computer and it had to be done manually.
00:33:17The decision was taken to get all the fingerprints from those people that attended Leeds Magistrates Courts for six months before the first offence and six months after that offence which was 1982.
00:33:45And to eliminate everybody that didn't fit the physical description of the offender, the white male in his 30s to 40s.
00:33:55It was discovered fairly quickly that it was a positive match which meant they'd identified the offender.
00:34:02Clive Barwell was arrested after DNA testing proved that four attacks in Leeds, Bradford and Nottingham were all linked.
00:34:11I became part of an intelligence cell and we were tasked with producing a timeline of Clive Barwell's life.
00:34:21And my focus was very much on Cheyney Warren with an eye on the fact that she may have been linked to that particular series of crimes.
00:34:34The lay-by in which Cheyney Warren's car was discovered and then just behind that where the lake is, is heavily used by lorry drivers, couriers, truckers.
00:34:49Clive Barwell was a courier.
00:34:53On the exact weekend when Cheyney Warren was murdered, that Clive Barwell was on duty, driving between Swindon and Wiltshire at Heathrow Airport.
00:35:05He went to Maidenhead and Maidenhead and Taplow are very close together.
00:35:11Maidenhead town centre is only a mile away from Taplow where the scene of where Cheyney Warren was found.
00:35:17All these factors made us feel that Clive Barwell was responsible.
00:35:26Myself and a colleague sat and interviewed Clive Barwell in the presence of his solicitor.
00:35:32In the entire interview, Clive Barwell never looked up, felt really uncomfortable in that room, could feel the atmosphere.
00:35:42We did specifically ask him whether he killed Cheyney Warren and he replied no comment.
00:35:49My colleague and I showed him the photographs of Cheyney, he didn't react at all to it, didn't look up.
00:35:54Myself and many other detectives I worked with in that incident room did believe Clive Barwell was responsible for the Cheyney Warren murder.
00:36:12Yes, we got the right guy in terms of what had happened to the other victims but had we given any justice for Cheyney Warren? No.
00:36:42It was a sense of disappointment and mild regret because I felt that we hadn't put any closure on what had happened to Cheyney Warren.
00:37:00And that hurt me for some time.
00:37:04Well the forensics didn't bear it out. I mean they were acting in good faith.
00:37:08I mean they really, really, really wanted to solve this thing but credit to them, they did a thorough investigation.
00:37:17And then another credit to them is that when they found out that the forensics or whatever it was didn't match up that they carefully put it all back again so it could be used again.
00:37:38In 2020, myself and the rest of the team were of the view that without a doubt Cheyney had been murdered.
00:38:00There was a person responsible for her death that hadn't been brought to justice.
00:38:08From the beginning I thought this was a suicide.
00:38:12The young lady's tying up of her wrists and ankles was so amateurish that I can't imagine any assailant attempting to tie her up in that particular way.
00:38:23Dr. Davis' opinion was that Cheyney had committed suicide.
00:38:29When he first attended the scene he'd looked at the knots that were around her wrists and around her feet.
00:38:36It was his view that Cheyney had done those herself and had then thrown herself into the lake.
00:38:42He was of the view that there was no signs of a struggle, that Cheyney had not been the subject of a sexual attack.
00:38:49Most of our historic unresolved cases remain stored within our archives so that we can work on them in the future.
00:39:00We had the jump leads, we had the toe rope, we had the mouth gag.
00:39:05It was sort of gluey stuff.
00:39:07It had the appearance of being a small tablecloth.
00:39:11We requested the actual original forensic science service file.
00:39:16So this file contained what's called tapings.
00:39:20We didn't know those tapings existed, we didn't know that they were actually used.
00:39:25We had to go and look at it.
00:39:27We had to go and look at it.
00:39:29We had to go and look at it.
00:39:31So this file contained what's called tapings.
00:39:35We didn't know those tapings existed.
00:39:38They had been taken when Cheyney's clothing had been examined in the laboratory back in 1987.
00:39:44Pieces of sellotape are laid on the item and just moved up and down.
00:39:52Back in 1987 when Cheyney was killed, DNA was in his infancy.
00:39:57But now we know from previous cases that touch DNA can be obtained and kept within those tapings.
00:40:08So we asked forensic scientists to do various tests.
00:40:12We're hoping that there is foreign DNA.
00:40:22The items that were sent in to us to examine
00:40:27were the cloth or gag that had been found around Cheyney's face
00:40:33and tapings which had been taken from various items of her clothing.
00:40:40They wanted me to help to see if we could identify someone else who might have been involved in her death.
00:40:50There was still a possibility that she had committed suicide.
00:40:54No one had shown that it was a murder.
00:41:00Because the items had been immersed in water for over 24 hours,
00:41:05we couldn't be certain that any results would be obtained forensically by having those items re-examined.
00:41:15When I looked at the cloth that had been around her mouth as a gag,
00:41:21I found there were some blood stains on it.
00:41:25And so that was where I started my examinations
00:41:30by testing some of the blood stains to see if I could get Cheyney's DNA profile.
00:41:39I've zoomed in here on part of the profile and you can see quite clearly the X and the Y peaks.
00:41:47And the results came back indicating that there was male DNA present
00:41:52in those two blood stains.
00:41:56And that was obviously an unexpected finding.
00:42:00I needed to try to find out what body fluid was producing the male profile
00:42:07and the most obvious place to start was to see if it was semen.
00:42:12I looked at two samples which were next to the two blood stains.
00:42:22And in one of those I found sperm.
00:42:31I knew at that point that we had a breakthrough, a very significant breakthrough in the DNA profile.
00:42:37I knew at that point that we had a breakthrough, a very significant breakthrough in the case.
00:42:44Pete Byrne said when he turned up the first time,
00:42:48very cautious, the police always are and always have to be.
00:42:51There's forensics, it's moved along, but there's a long way to go.
00:43:00We started looking at the tapings from Cheyney's bra.
00:43:04The first thing was to look for any flakes of material
00:43:08that might be dried body fluids or flakes of skin.
00:43:16And we found well over a hundred flakes like that on the taping.
00:43:24The DNA result we got from the sample of tape was quite promising.
00:43:32It was a partial profile.
00:43:38Once we'd got a male profile, we were able to load that onto the National DNA Database.
00:43:47And that profile is then compared with millions of profiles which are held on the database.
00:43:53If a profile matches, then that information is sent back directly to the police force.
00:44:01This lay-by is used by lorry drivers.
00:44:06Clive Burrell was a lorry driver.
00:44:09He remained a strong suspect in the Cheyney Warren case.
00:44:15The lake was used by fishermen.
00:44:17When a DNA profile is launched against the database,
00:44:22you don't necessarily know who you're going to get.
00:44:33I first heard about the case of Cheyney Warren in October 2020
00:44:39when I got a phone call from Pete, my boss,
00:44:42to advise that we'd had a DNA hit on the case.
00:44:47When we heard of the DNA hit, we were all really excited.
00:44:52It was a case that had been unsolved for a long period of time.
00:45:05We had this DNA profile.
00:45:08We had this DNA profile.
00:45:11There was a full DNA profile on the mouth gag,
00:45:15then a more or less full profile on the tapings.
00:45:18It then gets launched against the National DNA Database.
00:45:30Pete arranged a briefing with the whole team to talk about the DNA hit.
00:45:35As it turns out, that new forensic evidence
00:45:40actually cleared Clive Barwell of being involved in Cheyney's case.
00:45:44I got a surprise phone call,
00:45:47completely unexpected, from a former colleague of mine, Pete Byrne.
00:45:51He told me that DNA had been discovered on the gag
00:45:55that had been tied on Cheyney Warren's mouth
00:45:57and it had been identified as a different person other than Clive Barwell.
00:46:01It was, in fact, Donald Robertson,
00:46:04someone that completely had not featured in the investigation at all.
00:46:12Robertson was part of a large-ish family
00:46:16from a Britwell estate in Slough.
00:46:19He's got a horrendous criminal record.
00:46:23It appears that he's always been a danger to females.
00:46:32I felt very ashamed and embarrassed.
00:46:58At the time of the crime, I was taking exams and finishing project work.
00:47:02I did not pass the course.
00:47:03I felt very much that it was my fault I was raped.
00:47:06I could not understand. Why me?
00:47:10Looking at his offending history, he always appears to re-offend
00:47:14within a very short space of time,
00:47:16between six and nine months of coming out of prison.
00:47:28The day Robertson was arrested, it was a huge undertaking to plan
00:47:33and organise the operation behind that,
00:47:36because Robertson was a serving prisoner,
00:47:38so he was the responsibility of the prison.
00:47:40They had to agree to him being released,
00:47:43to being interviewed and arrested.
00:47:45So, just confirm your full name.
00:47:47Don't worry about it.
00:47:49I'm not going to tell you what it is.
00:47:50I'm not going to tell you what it is.
00:47:52I'm not going to tell you what it is.
00:47:54I'm not going to tell you what it is.
00:47:56So, just confirm your full name.
00:47:58Donald William Robertson. Perfect.
00:47:59I'm here today on behalf of the Major Crime Review Team
00:48:02of Tannen Valley Police in Milton Keynes.
00:48:04So, following a re-investigation into the murder of Sharni Warren,
00:48:08whose body was found in a lake at Taplow in April 1987,
00:48:11forensic evidence has now been obtained that identifies you as a suspect.
00:48:15Just clarify, if I may. Yeah.
00:48:18Shane Warren?
00:48:19Shani Warren, yes. Shane Warren.
00:48:21Shani. Shani.
00:48:23Yeah, a female.
00:48:26MUSIC PLAYS
00:48:32In building the case against Robertson,
00:48:34a number of witnesses had to be revisited.
00:48:39I was given multiple actions,
00:48:42some of them to do with contacting witnesses,
00:48:45witnesses who had made a statement in the original investigation.
00:48:50We know on Thursday that she went out for a meal with Roger Powell
00:48:54and then following that, on Friday,
00:48:57Shani was seen by her neighbours mowing the lawn,
00:49:01bagging up the grass cuttings...
00:49:04..and putting them in a vehicle.
00:49:07She was seen leaving the close where she lived.
00:49:12And that was the last that was seen of her.
00:49:16It's my theory, and it's no more than that.
00:49:19Shani probably was en route to an ex-boyfriend,
00:49:23a guy called Roger, who she'd been out with the night before.
00:49:30And she was going there to give him a thank-you note.
00:49:35And we know that a note addressed to Sir Roger,
00:49:38a joke name for him,
00:49:40was found together with an Easter egg in a Bunce's paper bag.
00:49:45And we know that there was a Bunce's News Agents
00:49:47on the Britwell Estate where Robertson was living...
00:49:51..in a direct line between Shani's house and where Roger lived.
00:49:58It's my view that Shani potentially stopped off at Bunce's
00:50:02to buy him an Easter egg, get him a card or a notelet,
00:50:06which he then gave to Sir Roger.
00:50:08And that was the last that we know of.
00:50:10We were aware from research and also from information
00:50:14that we received from the prison
00:50:17that he was regularly supported and visited
00:50:21by a man who lived in London.
00:50:25And we know that he was a very, very good man.
00:50:29And we know that he was a very good man.
00:50:31And we know that he was a very good man.
00:50:34And we know that he was a very good man.
00:50:36He was regularly supported and visited by a man who lived in London.
00:50:42He had lived with him for a period of time.
00:50:47We had arranged inquiry officers to go visit this particular person.
00:50:52And this particular individual consented to us
00:50:55searching Robertson's belongings,
00:50:57which he had stored in his house still.
00:50:59The officers found some fishing gear, a fishing tackle,
00:51:02and clearly that was of interest to us.
00:51:06Gatlow Lake was known as a fishing lake.
00:51:09That was very much relevant to the interview,
00:51:12so that's why it was important that information came back
00:51:15as quickly as possible.
00:51:22She was 26 years old at the time.
00:51:25I'm showing you that photocopy of photo number one.
00:51:28She was five foot four in height,
00:51:31and as you can see, she's got blonde hair.
00:51:33Do you recognise her?
00:51:35No comment.
00:51:37Can you tell us about any contact that you had with her?
00:51:39No comment.
00:51:40She was later pulled from the lake,
00:51:42and she was wearing blue jeans, a red T-shirt,
00:51:45a black body warmer, and had on black stiletto shoes,
00:51:50so they had a heel.
00:51:51Do you remember any of that clothing?
00:51:52No comment.
00:51:55And witnesses have remarked the fact that she had
00:51:59beautifully manicured nails, which were red in colour.
00:52:03Do you remember that?
00:52:05OK.
00:52:06The previous interviews, he'd pretty much gone no comment
00:52:09throughout, which is not unusual,
00:52:12but he felt quite comfortable talking about the property
00:52:15that we'd recovered from his associate's home address.
00:52:20The one thing, when officers were at David's,
00:52:25they noticed a lot of relatively new angling equipment.
00:52:30That's mine.
00:52:30That's yours?
00:52:31Yeah, all of it.
00:52:32Are you a fisherman then?
00:52:34I am, yeah.
00:52:34OK.
00:52:35When did you start fishing?
00:52:37How long you been doing it for?
00:52:39Since I was a kid.
00:52:41I'm not, I'm saying, not every time I come out,
00:52:44but I was fishing, but as soon as I brought that stuff,
00:52:48I was from the hostel.
00:52:49I was leaving at 6 o'clock in the morning.
00:52:51Have you ever been to the lake in Tatlow?
00:52:53No, not fishing.
00:52:54You haven't been fishing there?
00:52:58But have you been to that lake for other reasons?
00:53:01No comment.
00:53:05Although he, when interviewed, he went,
00:53:08no comment throughout in relation to questions
00:53:11about any involvement in the attack on Shaney,
00:53:16what he did say was that when asked,
00:53:18had he ever been to the, to Tatlow Lake,
00:53:21he did say, not for fishing.
00:53:34BIRDS CHIRP
00:53:47Back in 1981, I was actually working at Maidenhead at that point.
00:53:51Donna Robertson had been arrested, interviewed,
00:53:55denied any involvement and had gone on an identification parade.
00:54:00I had the job of picking up the victim,
00:54:02bringing her to Maidenhead Police Station.
00:54:07This poor 16-year-old had to go into a room
00:54:10with nine people there at least,
00:54:13walk up and down that line and pick out the man
00:54:15that she believed had raped her.
00:54:22And that identification has got to be completely unambiguous,
00:54:25so she's got either a touch or identify in some way
00:54:29that it's not in doubt as to who she's identifying.
00:54:37She didn't pick him out, but when she left the room,
00:54:40she burst into tears and said that she thought the man
00:54:45that had raped her was in that room
00:54:48and picked out the point where Donna Robertson was.
00:54:51But unfortunately, because the identification hadn't taken place,
00:54:54what's called in the presence and hearing of Robertson,
00:54:58it was deemed as inadmissible at that point,
00:55:00so therefore he was never charged with that offence, unfortunately.
00:55:03So back then, it would have been horrendous for a girl of that age
00:55:07to have to go through that.
00:55:09Fortunately, things have changed now
00:55:12inasmuch that it's all done digitally.
00:55:24When we went to the Forensic Science Service archive,
00:55:27we saw that various slides had been prepared
00:55:31when they did the original examination back in 1981.
00:55:34Those slides were requested and then submitted to forensic scientists.
00:55:40And we could see that they found semen in the victim's pants.
00:55:43These were pants that she'd put on after the offence,
00:55:46and it was in there that we found the DNA of Donald Robertson,
00:55:50indicating that he was the person that raped her.
00:55:52I made contact with the lady who had been the victim of the rape
00:55:56to explain that the man that had raped her
00:55:59was now going to be standing trial for murder and a rape of another lady.
00:56:03And myself and a colleague went to visit her at her home address
00:56:07to advise her that we weren't reinvestigating,
00:56:10or if she consented to.
00:56:12Sorry.
00:56:23I'm sorry it's not even happened to me, it's just...
00:56:26I remember how upset she was.
00:56:35The attack on this 16-year-old girl from 1981
00:56:38was then joined with the murder charge on Cheyney.
00:56:42So both the murder of Cheyney and the rape of the 16-year-old
00:56:46went before the same jury.
00:56:53In building the case against Robertson,
00:56:55there's really good evidence against him.
00:56:57However, we try and look ahead and look at what potential
00:57:03there might be for the case to be undermined.
00:57:08Pete is aware that previously there has been the theory
00:57:11of Cheyney committing suicide,
00:57:12so it was something that could undermine the prosecution case
00:57:15and put him on trial.
00:57:17But it's something that could be undermined.
00:57:20So he's asked for the jury to go back to Robertson
00:57:23and investigate further.
00:57:24But we've got another case to deal with.
00:57:27He's asked for the jury to go back to Robertson
00:57:30and investigate further.
00:57:31So he's asking for the jury to go back to Robertson
00:57:34and investigate further.
00:57:36to undermine the prosecution case and assist the defense.
00:57:38For any murder charge, you have to show
00:57:40that a person has been murdered.
00:57:50What we didn't want was Robertson's defense team
00:57:52to say that, for whatever reason,
00:57:54he'd potentially been in that lay-by
00:57:57and possibly masturbated or something like that
00:57:59onto a cloth and thrown the cloth away,
00:58:01and then somebody had then picked that cloth up,
00:58:04murdered Cheyney, and that's why his semen was on that cloth.
00:58:26Leading up to the court case, I had no doubt
00:58:29that Donald Robertson was guilty of the offences
00:58:31for which he had been charged.
00:58:32Until the verdict is delivered, you can never be...
00:58:35You can never be sure as to what the verdict will be.
00:58:42And so you had this uncertainty right the way through the trial.
00:58:46You just didn't know.
00:58:50At every stage, you never think,
00:58:52OK, this is good.
00:58:53You're on the edge the whole time,
00:58:56and it was very difficult to think
00:58:59that this person would be found guilty.
00:59:03You know, you're reliant on a jury making a decision
00:59:07about the evidence presented to them,
00:59:09but we were confident that our case was strong.
00:59:14The new pathologist said that, in their opinion,
00:59:17Cheyney hadn't committed suicide.
00:59:20And that pathologist's view was that the black jumper lee
00:59:24that was found in the lake, but quite close to Cheyney's body,
00:59:27where her body was found, had been made into a noose
00:59:32and it was his view that that black jumper lee
00:59:35had been forced up over her neck
00:59:37to the point where Cheyney had lost consciousness.
00:59:43She was unconscious when she went into the water
00:59:45and she'd become unconscious because of the noose
00:59:48that had been put round her neck.
00:59:52When I gave my evidence to the jury,
00:59:55in relation to the sperm that we extracted from the cloth,
01:00:01we found that the results were one billion times more likely
01:00:06if DNA from Donald Robertson was present in that sample
01:00:10than if none of the DNA came from him.
01:00:15The DNA result we got from tapings from her bra,
01:00:21I then carried out a statistical evaluation
01:00:24of that DNA result.
01:00:25The result was 27 million times more likely
01:00:31if Mr Robertson's DNA was present in that sample
01:00:34rather than if none of the DNA was from him.
01:00:39His DNA was on those tapings taken from the bra,
01:00:44showed that he couldn't come up with any potential excuse
01:00:47as to why his DNA or his semen was on that mouth gag
01:00:51and his DNA on her bra
01:00:52without him being involved in the attack on Cheyney.
01:00:56When the verdict was announced, it was unanimous,
01:00:59absolutely no doubt in their minds.
01:01:03I think the feeling was just relief.
01:01:08It was just relief that this person hadn't got away with it.
01:01:26When I heard the verdict,
01:01:28my overriding feeling was one of relief,
01:01:32that we'd managed to get enough evidence to persuade a jury
01:01:36that Robertson was the person responsible for Cheyney's murder
01:01:42and then the rape of the 16-year-old.
01:01:44In 1987, the investigation was flawed
01:01:50because of the appeal of the jury.
01:01:53It was his view that Cheyney had not been the subject of a sexual attack.
01:01:58He said there was no evidence of any recent sexual activity
01:02:01and he didn't take mouth swabs.
01:02:05If a mouth swab had been taken
01:02:07and that had been examined back in 1987,
01:02:11semen would have been found on that swab.
01:02:14That might have suggested that there was a sexual attack
01:02:18that might have suggested that there was a sexual element to her death.
01:02:24Perhaps there had been a sexual assault
01:02:27and that might have changed the outcome of the investigation at that time.
01:02:34Dr Davis, in his evidence at the coroner's inquest,
01:02:38made reference to three other cases which had occurred, I think,
01:02:42in the last six months, where a female had committed suicide,
01:02:46which bore resemblance to what happened to Cheyney Warren.
01:03:06I wish Dr Davis was still alive today
01:03:09so that we could show him the evidence that he got completely wrong.
01:03:14He made a mistake. He made a huge mistake.
01:03:18He brought extra distress to Cheyney's family.
01:03:22It was just this theory from this pathologist
01:03:26who said that within the previous six months
01:03:31that he had witnessed three other cases
01:03:35of women tying themselves up and drowning themselves in a bath.
01:03:39We never found out who those people were
01:03:42and I still wonder to this day whether that was true.
01:03:47MUSIC PLAYS
01:04:07The people who we identify as being responsible for these crimes
01:04:12are incredibly dangerous people.
01:04:16Some of them are in prison already
01:04:19because they've since been identified for other crimes
01:04:21and that's where we want them to stay.
01:04:23Robertson had already made one parole application.
01:04:28He could potentially have made a second one and been successful.
01:04:32He would be out and, without a doubt, he is a danger
01:04:36and would have committed further offences.
01:04:39This case should instil some fear into people
01:04:43that have committed offences 10, 20, 30 years ago,
01:04:47knowing that contained within archives up and down the country
01:04:52there is evidence that is waiting to be looked at, developed
01:04:56and once that evidence is obtained,
01:04:58people will be brought before the courts
01:05:00and these people will be convicted.
01:05:04The police never give up.
01:05:0635 years ago, they had nothing to go on.
01:05:10Nowadays, they can pick up the minutest trace of DNA
01:05:15and there you are, proven guilty.
01:05:19So, one day, there'll be a knock on the door.
01:05:27Cheyney had lived what would her life have been like.
01:05:31Cheyney had lived what would her life have been like.
01:05:35She would have undoubtedly married.
01:05:38She would have had children.
01:05:41She would have been the most loving mother and wife
01:05:45that you could ever imagine.
01:05:47She would have been a source of support to the rest of her family.
01:05:53She would have been a wonderfully well-liked and well-loved person.
01:06:01But that was taken away.
01:06:23Next, one man with two distinct personalities
01:06:27and a young woman caught between them
01:06:29sleeping with my murderer in just a moment.