nurses who kill S03E04
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CreativityTranscript
00:00Nurses and carers, we place our life in their hands, but are we always safe?
00:13This is the series that tells the stories of those who take the lives of the very people
00:18they are supposed to care for.
00:48Sean Cummins called himself The Governor. A boxer, he was a tough man to beat, but at
01:10an age when he was hoping for big things, he disappeared from the ring.
01:14It took me a good few years to track him down before I could actually get his voice on the phone.
01:20I was involved in an accident in 2004 and I've currently been bedridden, unfortunately,
01:28and then an accident occurred at home, so I've been stuck in bed now for five years.
01:32He was to lose the use of his legs after becoming paralysed. He needed constant
01:38nursing and a full-time carer. I was initially told that I had no
01:42chance of walking again and I would be wheelchair dependent for the rest of my life.
01:46Sean's carer was Thomas Dunkley, who had one day become the subject of a manhunt,
01:52but who was someone who had never been on police radar. Superficially, Dunkley could be trusted.
01:59Thomas Dunkley's background was, no, there was not a lot to know really,
02:05not from a police point of view. He was somebody who'd never come to the notice of the police.
02:10He was certainly a fan and he was certainly in awe of Sean when he met him.
02:14The fan and the boxing hero were not natural bedfellows. From the start of their relationship,
02:20Sean seemed to resent his caring corner man.
02:23Firstly, he would have been dependent on Dunkley. They'd built a relationship. He didn't hold Dunkley
02:32in high esteem. It was going to take a while to find somebody else like him and I think it's
02:37very probable that he used threats to keep him there, so Dunkley may have started to feel a
02:43little bit trapped. He had been feared in the ring, powerful enough to fight for boxing's top
02:50prizes. But as a child, Sean Cummins's life was moulded by misfortune. His brother, Steve,
02:59was ten years older than him when Sean received his first big knockdown, literally.
03:04As a child, he was hit by a motor vehicle and dragged along the floor and he was in hospital
03:10for a fair while but recovered and I think he had the physical scars with him all his life from the
03:19accident. The boy, Sean Cummins, missed out on a supportive relationship with his mother too. She
03:27suffered a mental illness which caused strains in their relationship. He loved his mum dearly,
03:33but he couldn't deal with my mum's mental health. That was hard for him to shoulder as a man,
03:41as a young man and even in later life. Which left him with an older brother, Steve, two sisters and
03:48a father fixated on fitness and fighting, channelling Sean into sports, running and
03:54boxing. It seemed to suit the boy's needs. He would run around the park and keep running and
04:02beating children and then the next child would come and he'd run and beat that child. That was
04:07the raising that his father started. He didn't have, I don't think, a lot of compassion and
04:15care as he was growing up. Criminologist Jane Munton-Smith links what Sean was eventually
04:21to become, a fighter, to these formative years. Violence seemed to be the way to not only resolve
04:29your issues, but gain status in the world. And he certainly took that message from his father,
04:36who was very pro-boxing, as a way of gaining status, maybe gaining money and gaining a career.
04:44It's where Sean wanted to be and he was a very good boxer. He had punches and combinations of
04:54punches that no other boxer used and he was above everybody else. He was gym every day,
05:03you know, nights, runs, lots of runs, pasta, everything for energy reserves. Boxing was his life.
05:11Donna Youngs is a forensic psychologist. She unravels the motivation behind what people do,
05:19how they choose to live their lives and what they're prepared to do to achieve their goals.
05:24When we think about, psychologically, what drives somebody to submit themselves, day after day,
05:31to the gruelling training, the regimen that's necessary to be a professional level athlete,
05:37is the desire for absolute total control. It certainly suited Sean to be where he was in
05:45sport and in boxing. It was to release his aggression. It's a desire deep down, psychologically,
05:55within somebody like Sean Cummins, to obliterate all his fears, all his weaknesses. That's what
06:03it's about, deep down psychologically. The teenage Sean Cummins often got into trouble. He was,
06:10in the euphemism used by the authorities, known to the police for his use of fists.
06:16Not everybody liked him. Yeah, I loved him. He had his beliefs and that was probably his
06:24undoing. It rubbed people up the wrong way. There was one place where Sean kept out of
06:31trouble. The boxing ring. Steve Bunce is an internationally renowned boxing commentator
06:37who came to know Sean well. Without a doubt, boxing helped him get through those tricky
06:42teenage years. He was a decent amateur boxer. He was a committed amateur boxer. He turned pro
06:47very young, which tends to suggest that he needed the money. In professional boxing, a good fighter
06:55can earn a living and Sean was a good fighter, but one who did not ration himself to a bout or two
07:01every year. He was always on the lookout for another payday. From the start of his professional
07:07career, Sean was his own man and he took risks. When Sean accepted some of these fights,
07:13he didn't accept them as the guaranteed winner. He'd accept them, not necessarily on a 50-50 basis,
07:22but on a basis of 60-40 in his favor. Whereas most young professionals, when they're being
07:28groomed for titles, they're in fights that are 90-10 in their favor or even 95-5 in their favor.
07:36Sean had no silver spoon boxing apprenticeship. He had won 20, lost 4 and earned a shot at the
07:46European Middleweight Championship, when he would controversially lose to a man called
07:51Agostino Cardamone. When Sean went to San Remo to fight Agostino Cardamone for the European
07:56Middleweight title, he was just a couple of seconds away from winning that title. He dropped
08:02Cardamone. Cardamone was out. He was on the canvas for about 20 seconds. Cardamone was given
08:08so much time to recover, he managed to see it out to the final bell and he won a disputed points
08:13decision. And that was the pivotal fight because if Sean wins the European title, the Italians would
08:21want a rematch and they would throw all sorts of money at Sean to get the rematch. So Sean would
08:27have made an absolute fortune for going back to Italy to defend the title. But more than that, if
08:32you're the European champion, you get a genuine world ranking and that ranking would have guaranteed
08:37him a world title fight at some point. So it was that close. It was down to a referee not doing
08:45his job one evening in San Remo on the Italian Riviera that in many ways stopped how far Sean
08:53could go. It was to be a life-changing decision. Sean Cummins would be able to attract smaller purses,
09:02not the big boxing bucks which would have offered him security. But in his hometown of Leicester,
09:08the naughty boy, the tough teenager that Sean Cummins had been, was now gaining a following.
09:13Sean Cummins was a little bit of a celebrity. He was quite big in the boxing world. He'd won lots
09:19of fights. He was certainly known locally as a hard man, somebody you didn't want to upset,
09:24somebody perhaps you might want to avoid. And I think he enjoyed that status. He enjoyed the power
09:30that it gave him and the kudos. Amongst those noticing the success of the local boy Cummins
09:36was somebody who was something of a hanger-on, a man who clung to the success of others to gain
09:41his status, to people like Sean. The name of a man who would one day become Cummins' carer,
09:48Tom Dunkley, someone Detective Inspector Simon Shuttleworth of Leicestershire Police
09:53would one day see in court. He was a boxing fan and he'd had a go at boxing and he showed some
09:59promise from what I was told. He looked like he could be a pretty decent fighter, but I don't
10:03think it really worked out for him. Tom Dunkley would loom large in the timeline of Sean Cummins'
10:09life. For the moment, Sean's chosen escape route from poverty and trouble, boxing, brought its
10:15dangers. In the case of a boxer, every time you step into the ring, you're running the risk
10:23of a huge blow to the head, which could cause bleeding inside the brain. Near the top of the
10:30boxing tree, his world came crashing down again. This time it was Sean's health that let him down.
10:37Sean found a routine British boxing border control scan and then he requested another scan and he
10:43found that one as well. That was in greater detail. That was an MRI scan. He claimed the
10:49injury was from his childhood accident, but the British Boxing Board of Control held to its
10:55decision and rightly so, according to doctors. Even if this injury that he'd had had happened
11:01as a result of a skull fracture in childhood, it still meant that he had a fundamental weakness
11:07in his brain and it may well be that the boxing authorities made the decision
11:12that that put him at greater risk of injury and damage in the future.
11:18Sean Cummins' hopes, dreams, ambitions and desires had been destroyed. And that must have had a big
11:25effect on his sense of self, his standing in the community, you know, the way he perceived
11:33his status and of course the way he perceived his future and where that was going to go
11:39if he wasn't allowed to box. Sean Cummins' whole world was boxing. His whole world in an instant
11:48came crashing down around him. Not just what he did for a living, but all his social status.
11:57People who box become absolutely driven. To have that taken away
12:03overnight would be devastating for anybody. But the tragedy of the life and death of
12:09Sean Cummins had a long way to go before the grisly final bell would be rung.
12:14Having been fighting fit and then lost his license, Sean Cummins entered the Leicester
12:20scene aimlessly, the ring no longer the disciplining influence that it had been.
12:25How now would he earn a living? Things soon went downhill.
12:31Sean was at a loose end. His career was like a dead end. His career was like a dead end.
12:39He turned to a world where muscle was used on the street rather than in the ring. He became
12:44a doorman at nightclubs. Sean was a slim and immensely fit boxer. He left boxing and went
12:51into another world, a world of being in charge of door supervision, a bouncer if you like.
12:58He was a very good boxer. He was a very good boxer. He was a very good boxer.
13:04Being in charge of door supervision, a bouncer if you like, at a sort of senior level and also
13:11worked as a bodyguard, so he was still pretty fit then. Part of the man that he wanted to appear to
13:17be meant bulking up. Once Sean was refused a license by the British Boxing Board of Control,
13:26he seemed to flip between several things. And someone would say, well he's 18 stone,
13:31he's working on the door, he's going to open a boxing gym, he's working with Blue, the boy band,
13:36oh he looks like he's done loads and loads of steroids, he's 20 stone. So he just kept hearing
13:41these bits and pieces. I think it's almost inevitable that he ends up doing something
13:47like bodybuilding because he can harness all the obsessive drive within him to construct strength,
13:54to construct a physical identity that screams of strength, that persuades the external world,
14:01and by persuading the external world persuades him himself, and this is the most important thing,
14:06of his strength, of his indestructibility. I wasn't working side by side with Sean on a door
14:13at a really mucky nightclub in Leicester that notoriously had fights every single weekend and
14:17inside there was 200 dealers. But the combined testimony does suggest he was a handful away from
14:26the boxing ropes. Violence was what Sean Cummins knew, it's what he was trained in, and maybe even
14:34what he enjoyed. So it's no surprise at all that he used those skills, if you like, in pursuing a
14:42career as, well, in security, in debt collecting, in working the doors. Sean going off the rails and
14:49Sean leading a normal life, there's a very thin line between those two. One's not over here and
14:54one's not over here. You know, Sean was a bit of an on-edge character.
15:00He had been badly hurt as a child in an accident. He overcame it to become a promising boxer and
15:06contender for major titles. He had lost his license after a brain scan, but in 2004 worse was to come,
15:14another road accident. He was feeling quite positive about the future, that he could go
15:19back into boxing. But that all came to an end for him when he was involved in the road traffic
15:25accident, where his motorbike collided with a large SUV type vehicle. And the complications
15:31from the injuries in that accident left him paralysed from the waist down for life.
15:39Though left paralysed, the accident was one most would not have survived.
15:44Dr Sarah Jarvis has investigated the health of Sean Cummins.
15:48Many, if not most people, would have died following this sort of accident, this sort of
15:54vast impact which shattered so many of his bones and would have damaged his organs. So you might
16:00say that because he was physically so fit, he was very lucky to survive.
16:06I found out that he was in hospital and I went to see him and he said he was
16:10paralysed from there down.
16:15He would have had to come to terms with the fact that his life was completely over and that any
16:23normal life ever again was going to be impossible.
16:28Sean told friends he'd rather be dead.
16:30Becoming paralysed was probably the most awful thing that could have happened to Sean Cummins.
16:37Sean Cummins said something along the lines of, I'd rather die fighting.
16:41It's not an exclamation of bravado, it's not an attempt to
16:46to garner sympathy, it's how he would have really felt.
16:51It was everything to him, not only his aspirations but his career, his way of making money and his
16:59It was everything to him, not only his aspirations but his career, his way of making money and his
17:06status in the community. He couldn't really be the person he was without the use of his legs
17:15and that must have been a very, very difficult load to bear for him.
17:20I've seen men like Sean Cummins fall apart.
17:24They just can't cope with the contrast with what they were.
17:28For him it would have been particularly devastating because the contrast between
17:34who he was before and who he had become was so great.
17:40Some tried to help but it was too little and it was not for long.
17:45Some of the boxing fraternity raised money for him, they had venues for him
17:50but they did sort of disappear once Sean was in his bed.
17:57He didn't get many people visiting them.
18:01Confined to a life on a bed, unable to move from the waist down,
18:05Sean Cummins needed help. Community nurses came and went and did a superb job but he needed more.
18:11A carer who knew just how important Sean Cummins had been. Status was vital to him.
18:17So Sean has a following and it's a lively following and that's because he's a lively character.
18:21He's a face, he's the top dog, he's called the governor.
18:25So that puts him as a guy who gets what he wants and demands things and gets them
18:30whether as a bully or through right because he's the governor.
18:33And then you add to that 18 stone and then suddenly you just take all that away
18:38and stick that giant man with that giant ego and that giant mentality into a bed.
18:46Not for six months of rehab but for year after year after year after year.
18:52I can't even begin to imagine how frustrating that must have been for an ex-boxing champion.
19:01He now needed the equivalent of a corner man for every day of his life.
19:05He'd been awarded £400,000 compensation after the accident.
19:10Enter Tom Dunkley, a man who had money worries but who claimed he held down a job.
19:16Sean was actually training Tom Dunkley with the weights and the friendship was
19:21sort of a bond of that and Sean believed he worked for somebody
19:27and his boss was letting him come and care for him.
19:32Tom Dunkley was a very nice man on the outside, very quiet but Sean was always talking to him
19:40so I felt like Tom didn't have a voice maybe in the situation.
19:46Tom's job was to do the fetching and running for Sean,
19:49preparing his food and reports suggest badly.
19:54Tom prepared meals for Sean and in the kitchen it was not the tidiest.
20:01And it was, you know, unhygienic and I said to Sean at the time that
20:07I don't think you should have him cooking your food for you
20:10but Sean said he's my friend and they were a partnership.
20:16And that is how Sean Cummins was to come to know his killer, Tom Dunkley,
20:21the man nursing his former boxing icon but a carer with his own agenda.
20:32In 2012, Sean Cummins was living here, a shadow of the former man that he'd been.
20:39Sean was really in a mess.
20:42After losing his legs, he struggled and yes, he had lots of issues because of that.
20:52Always someone who knew what he was doing.
20:54We had arguments and fallouts and I would say things that I would walk away from
21:01and then I'd know that I'd go back and see him again.
21:05Also feeling the lash of Sean's tongue and possibly a punch or two, Thomas Dunkley,
21:11the fan who'd followed Sean's career and saw him in action.
21:16He was a man of his word.
21:17Dunkley offered a very attractive alternative to the pity that would have been coming from
21:25regular carers who didn't know who Sean Cummins was or who he had been.
21:31And this would have been incredibly appealing.
21:33It would have been a very attractive alternative to the pity that would have been
21:38coming from regular carers who didn't know who Sean Cummins was or who he had been.
21:43And this would have been incredibly appealing.
21:46And this would have been incredibly appealing to Cummins.
21:50I think Sean probably needed somebody with him.
21:55Somebody to do the things that he could no longer do himself,
21:59but also somebody to be that person who he could be superior to.
22:05His need for Dunkley was absolute.
22:09It's also part of his world that you have a runner,
22:12somebody out there doing your business for you so that you maintain that status,
22:17you maintain that maybe element of menace or threat to the people that you're working with.
22:24What developed was the creation of a very odd couple.
22:27There were tensions between the boxing fan who needed money
22:30and the one-time self-styled governor who was now physically devastated and with few friends.
22:35Sean Cummins was already a man who was fairly isolated.
22:39He wasn't married, he had relatively few friends.
22:42He certainly didn't have people who would step in and care for him
22:47if he suddenly became physically dependent.
22:50I think Thomas Dunkley acted eventually as a de facto carer for Sean.
22:55But initially in those early days they'd play computer games together
22:58and he'd just be a companion for Sean.
23:00They had loads in common.
23:02There is no getting around the fact that very fundamental aspects of your care
23:07need to be dealt with by somebody else and ideally should be dealt with by somebody
23:12who is consistently looking after you because they really are taking care of the most
23:18intimate moments of your life.
23:21I think they were making plans which Dunkley believed would come to fruition about the future.
23:26I think they were making plans which Dunkley believed would come to fruition about the future.
23:31About things they may be able to invest in and maybe some of those were connected to boxing.
23:37So they got along famously.
23:39But I think Thomas Dunkley always thought he would ultimately get
23:43some reward and some pay for the amount of care he was given.
23:47Sean remained determined to make his mark.
23:50Though confined to bed he had ambitions
23:53and looped Cummins into his still forming business plans.
23:57Tom Dunkley was, I believe, promised a role in a gymnasium that Sean was invested in
24:04and Tom was going to be installed in some management or part of that business
24:11that Sean was, you know, funding.
24:13All he has, the only option he has, is to find an alternative outlet for that dominance.
24:20And Sean wanted that business to take off and he was full steam ahead people.
24:27He wanted, you know, he could see a career out of where he was and get him back to what he was.
24:35And I think that's why we see these, larger than life, these big wealth accumulation schemes.
24:42Wealth is the only possible route he now has open to him to dominate.
24:47But nothing became of it and Sean lost a lot of money.
24:54In Dunkley's eyes the relationship was about money.
24:59He was not being paid for his caring services.
25:02But being this close to someone of the stature and standing of Sean Cummins
25:06surely had to pay off one day.
25:09But the truth is, as detectives discovered, there was nothing agreed between the men.
25:15Dunkley may have thought that he was about to win big, but Cummins didn't see it that way.
25:21There was no financial arrangement between Dunkley and Cummins.
25:24That was part of Dunkley's problem.
25:27I think he always thought he would get paid for being a carer, for looking after Sean.
25:32He always thought the payday was around the corner.
25:34Whether it was going to be from some investment they were going to go into together or not.
25:38But that never came.
25:39Dunkley expected some kind of money as things were going along for him.
25:44You know, his daily living expenses.
25:48And it became clear that some of those investments that Sean Cummins had made
25:54weren't going to come good at all.
25:59It's a very unusual power dynamic.
26:02On the one hand, we have a character who is traditionally seen as having the power.
26:07That is, the physical carer.
26:09The one who can do things the other person can't and can walk away.
26:16He is the provider.
26:18On the other hand, we have somebody who is a legendary figure.
26:23Somebody who has been in a position of power.
26:26Someone that he hero worships.
26:29So, a hero up here, a fan down here.
26:35A carer up here, a physical dependent down here.
26:40How did they match?
26:41How did they balance that power dynamic?
26:44Was Sean Cummins taking advantage of the fact that Thomas Dunkley hero worshipped him?
26:51Or was Thomas Dunkley taking advantage of a man who was a pale shadow of what he'd been before?
26:59The fact was that Sean Cummins was indeed benefiting from Dunkley's false assumptions
27:05that he would get rich off the back of the paralysed man's reputation.
27:10Dunkley was doing the running, the to-ing, the throwing, the extra caring.
27:14And he wasn't being paid.
27:17Dunkley was also growing increasingly angry at a lack of results from Cummins' business investments,
27:22whilst his own finances were getting worse.
27:25At the time we got involved in the investigation,
27:28Dunkley's finances were in a pretty poor state.
27:31He was in debt to the tune of £15,000.
27:35The atmosphere inside the house was occasionally very bad.
27:38Suspicions were aroused as to Dunkley's motivations.
27:41Sean's brother was confused.
27:43Dunkley claimed he paid his own bills because he had a job.
27:46But where and when was he doing it?
27:49But he was always round Sean's.
27:52I felt that there was something behind the scenes with Tom,
27:56because it just didn't ring true that Sean believed he had a job
28:01and he was still coming round and helping Sean.
28:04There was, you know, there was an agenda somewhere.
28:08There's nothing in Dunkley's personality which suggests to me
28:12that he has a vocational draw to caring in any way.
28:17This is a man who is entirely focused on his own...
28:21..on the satisfaction of his own needs.
28:23The egocentricity of somebody like Dunkley is something that it's hard
28:28for normal people to really understand, I think.
28:32So focused was he on what he needed, what he wanted,
28:36that anything beyond that is just...
28:39..would just not have resonated with him at all.
28:42Visitors to the house would see tensions rising between the untrained
28:45carer and the still muscle-bound Cummins.
28:49You can imagine the two men may have started arguing,
28:53and it was certainly said that sometimes Sean was not very nice to Dunkley.
29:02Sometimes they did get into, you know, fights with each other,
29:08to Dunkley.
29:09Sometimes they did get into, you know, physical fights.
29:13And given Sean's history, that probably was the case,
29:18and he was probably wanting to assert his physical self.
29:22And it's quite possible that that relationship,
29:25in those circumstances, broke down very quickly.
29:30The boxer beaten up by life's misfortunes,
29:33and the carer who wanted money rather than to serve
29:36the needs of somebody he thought would get him out of his debts.
29:42Both inside a house where battle lines were being drawn.
29:47But this was no even contest.
29:49Physically, Dunkley held the upper hand
29:52as he learned of the failed business ventures.
29:55When he sees what he's been waiting for evaporating,
29:59his response would have been one of tremendous anger.
30:07What he was entitled to had just disappeared,
30:10and he would have blamed Cummins after he had controlled himself,
30:16delayed gratification in a way which I think is quite alien to Dunkley.
30:21For then that not to pay off,
30:23I don't think we can understand the anger he felt.
30:26The once mighty boxer, stricken by paralysis,
30:29was about to engage in a fight for his life.
30:37In 2012, Thomas Dunkley had had enough of Sean Cummins' violent moods,
30:42had decided that he'd waited long enough for the money he thought was coming his way.
30:47He began using Cummins' cash cards to get money for himself, and more.
30:53He used Sean's identity to get loans,
30:55but he did, with that money, with money he got, start to repay things.
31:01This is beyond audacious, but it's a very, very serious matter.
31:05This is beyond audacious, and by this point, actually,
31:09I think that Dunkley has bought into his own myth,
31:12his own idea of his absolute entitlement to all the money and wealth
31:19that Cummins, after all, promised him,
31:22and all the disrespect and all the disdain that he feels for Cummins
31:26emboldens him further.
31:28After all, Cummins is just an invalid.
31:30Around that time, Dunkley was captured by security cameras
31:33buying a circular power saw,
31:35using Sean's cash and credit cards to pay for it.
31:39Far from being in control with his superior fighting ability,
31:42Sean Cummins found himself in a different class of fighting,
31:46one between an able-bodied, spiteful man,
31:49and a man whose disabilities rented him bed-bound.
31:53It's Dunkley that has all the power, physical, emotional,
31:57Cummins is a man clinging to his past,
32:00clinging to some sense of dignity by this point,
32:03and Dunkley completely abuses that.
32:06Dunkley is the one that carried out the bullying, I suspect.
32:11I think Tom was obviously devious.
32:14I think he was there just after Sean's money, basically.
32:20I think that was the crux.
32:22One day in 2012,
32:23Cummins' real carers, the community nurses, became concerned.
32:28She wasn't happy with Thomas Dunkley,
32:30and that takes us back to sort of nine days earlier,
32:35when the nurse had previously been round,
32:37and she'd been told by Thomas Dunkley that Sean was in hospital.
32:42Sean Cummins' care team turned up at the house
32:45to do the usual things that they would do for him,
32:49and the two of them,
32:50and the door was answered by Dunkley,
32:53who told them that Sean had been taken to hospital,
32:57didn't need them that day.
33:00The fact is, Sean had been ill, and the nurses knew this.
33:03His community nurses had visited him, and he was ill.
33:06So hearing this on the 1st of September, as she did,
33:09it was no massive surprise to her.
33:13Nine, ten days later, when nobody had heard anything of Sean,
33:18she rang the house, and Dunkley immediately put her on guard,
33:21because he answered the phone and pretended to be Sean.
33:24She thought, how strange.
33:26The nurse was not prepared to let matters lie.
33:29Something clearly was not right.
33:33The conversation ended, and the nurse very switched on,
33:35you know, a medical professional.
33:38She just wasn't having any of that.
33:40She didn't believe a word he was saying.
33:41So she started to make her own inquiries,
33:43and she inquired with Leicester Hospital,
33:46and she inquired with Leicester Hospitals Trust,
33:49and rang various hospitals in the West Midlands,
33:51in the Dudley area, rang the GP that Sean used.
33:55Nobody had any record of Sean Cummins being admitted to hospital.
34:01So she rang the police.
34:04When they visited, they immediately knew something had happened.
34:08The first thing they found when they forced entry
34:10was something they smelled.
34:11What they smelled was what we in the police,
34:13and what any police officer will tell you,
34:15is called the smell of death.
34:19There's no smell like it, and when you smell it,
34:21you know what it is.
34:22So those officers, as they moved into that house,
34:24knew they were looking for a body by this time.
34:28They phoned me up and just said there'd been a death at the house.
34:33I was actually on holiday at the time.
34:36They didn't say who it was, but I knew it was Sean.
34:40And I couldn't get home from the holiday,
34:44because there was a storm that grounded the planes.
34:48So I couldn't even get home.
34:52Police did not discover a body.
34:54Instead, a search through the property turned up plastic bags
34:58with horrifying contents.
35:00What they found was something a hell of a lot worse
35:03than just finding a body.
35:04What they found when they started to get into the kitchen
35:07was three freezers, and within the freezers
35:10were the 10 body parts of the decapitated Sean Cummins.
35:15Now, the way he decided to get rid of Sean's body
35:18was through dismemberment,
35:22which is why he bought the circular saw.
35:24So he cut Sean's body up into 10 pieces.
35:29He filled the freezer.
35:31The freezer wasn't big enough, so he had to go out
35:35and buy another freezer so that he had enough space
35:38for the rest of the body.
35:40Somehow, Dunkley had murdered Sean Cummins,
35:43and then embarked on a gruesome exercise,
35:46all behind closed doors.
35:48Perhaps those of us who look at butchers
35:50might assume that cutting up a body is easy.
35:54It's not.
35:55And cutting up a human body
35:57without very, very specialist equipment
36:00and without very specialist knowledge
36:03of where to cut is harder still.
36:06Add to that the fact that Sean Cummins was a huge man,
36:11and this was a gargantuan challenge.
36:16The physical endeavour involved in cutting,
36:21sawing through bone if you don't get right on the joint,
36:25would have been immense,
36:27particularly if Thomas Dunkley was not a very,
36:30very fit and strong man.
36:35The deed was done.
36:37Dunkley went about his life,
36:39still spending Sean's money.
36:42After the discovery of Sean's body parts,
36:44police knew they were dealing with murder,
36:46and Dunkley was immediately a person of interest.
36:49But evidence still had to be found.
36:52A case had to be built.
36:54There's always got to be some doubt,
36:56and when you're investigating a murder
36:58or investigating any serious crime,
37:00you have to investigate every relevant line of inquiry.
37:05And so Sean Cummins came from a world
37:08where not only was he a boxer,
37:10which is a profession that can attract trouble,
37:12he also then went on to be not only a doorman,
37:15but also a bodyguard.
37:17And again, we're talking about two professions
37:19that attract trouble.
37:20So these were always going to be lines of inquiry
37:22that had to be followed.
37:24But what we're really talking about here
37:26is the fact that Thomas Dunkley has caused this suspicion
37:30and really getting to the point.
37:32Thomas Dunkley's nowhere to be seen.
37:35Dunkley had fled from the scene of the crime.
37:39That fact, together with the dismembered body parts,
37:42clearly indicated he was the killer.
37:45Dunkley tried to cover up the fact that Sean had died,
37:50and that certainly makes him look very, very guilty,
37:54especially the way that he did that.
37:57How had Sean Cummins been killed?
37:59That may forever be a mystery.
38:02We can never know how Sean Cummins was murdered,
38:06but one of the obvious ways to do it
38:10would have been to suffocate him.
38:12He was relatively helpless,
38:14although his upper body strength was there
38:17if Thomas Dunkley had approached him when he was sleeping,
38:19which, of course, he was able to do
38:22because of this position of trust and closeness that he was in.
38:26By the time Sean Cummins realized what was happening,
38:29it would have been very difficult for him,
38:32and the fact that almost certainly by this stage
38:34he was physically significantly weakened.
38:38Having dismembered and packed away Sean's body,
38:40Cummins became a fugitive but left a trail of evidence.
38:44We quickly find that he has borrowed his brother's car
38:48and gone off in his brother's car,
38:49and the registration number is provided
38:51to the officers that were called out on that night,
38:54and the search was on for Dunkley's brother's car.
38:57That started to show up after a few hours
39:00because it went through an automatic number plate
39:02recognition camera on the M1 going northbound.
39:06Thomas Dunkley was a man without a plan.
39:09He was making things up as he was going along.
39:11He was dealing with situations as they arose,
39:14and when the police finally broke into Sean Cummins' house,
39:19Dunkley was outside watching, so he knew the game was up.
39:23He just got in his car, and he drove up north.
39:25I don't think he knew where he was going.
39:27I don't think he knew what he was going to do.
39:29He just needed to get out of the area, probably,
39:31and think about, right, how am I going to deal with this?
39:36Having been picked up by cameras,
39:38officers surrounded him at a motorway service station.
39:41One of their armed response vehicles had found the car
39:44on the Woolly Edge services in Wakefield,
39:47and they'd gone in with another vehicle and with air support.
39:53The rest had done clear at gunpoint.
39:54In custody, despite the strong evidence,
39:57Dunkley refused to confess.
40:00Thomas Dunkley said that he had not murdered Sean Cummins.
40:03He said that Sean had died of natural causes,
40:06and he pointed to the fact that we knew Sean had been ill,
40:09and he said having noticed that Sean had died, he panicked,
40:13and he thought he may get the blame for that,
40:15so he decided to chop up the body.
40:17I'm not sure what his intention was meant to be after that,
40:21and the story wasn't, you know,
40:22all that plausible, really.
40:23I mean, who does that?
40:25It's macabre, and it made no sense.
40:29Computer searchers contributed to the evidence haul.
40:33A mass of searches about how to kill somebody,
40:36what happens if you cut a carotid artery,
40:38how long does it take to die,
40:39how long does a body take to go off,
40:42what happens if you inject bleach into the veins,
40:44searches like that.
40:45So searches about how to kill,
40:47and then later, searches about what do you do with the body
40:50when you've got a carotid artery,
40:51what do you do with the body when you've got it?
40:53And we were able to attribute those to Thomas Dunkley.
40:58We had Dunkley on CCTV buying the chainsaw
41:01he used to chop Sean's body up.
41:03He bought that from a local DIY store
41:06just a couple of miles away from where Sean lived.
41:08He bought it with Sean's credit card.
41:10He was already using his murder victim's credit card
41:14by this time, and he bought a lot of other kit
41:16that he would need, kit to clean up with.
41:18He bought the incinerator,
41:19which he later used to burn things in the garden.
41:22He bought his coveralls, mask and shoe protectors,
41:27things like that, all from local DIY stores.
41:32Dismembering the body of Sean Cummins
41:35says much about the nature of Thomas Dunkley.
41:38We see killers who dismember bodies
41:42and go through this kind of calculated strategy
41:45to keep or dispose of the body.
41:47But normally we're dealing with an offender who is psychotic,
41:50who's out of touch with reality essentially then.
41:53That's not the case with Dunkley.
41:56And what's more, we see where the victims are strangers.
42:00Again, that's not the case here.
42:01So this shocks me in its evil.
42:05I mean, it's one thing perhaps even to kill somebody
42:08in self-defence or something like that,
42:09but then to get a circular saw
42:11and to start chopping the body up,
42:13that's a whole other level.
42:16And to be able to do that,
42:17you have to be comfortable with violence.
42:20You've got to be on the psychopathic spectrum somewhere
42:23to be able to pull something like that off and to remain calm.
42:28In interview, Dunkley continued to deny everything.
42:32He was really calm.
42:33He was really in control.
42:35He was a good liar in those interviews.
42:40I imagine his pulse rate was low
42:42and he was able to, there was no shaking.
42:45He was never distressed.
42:49Sean Cummins had been unlucky as a child.
42:52He had found an escape through his fitness
42:54and the boxing ring where tragedy befell him,
42:57first losing his licence, then the use of his legs.
43:01And now unable to defend himself,
43:03the fighter had his life cruelly snatched from him.
43:07And still no one knows precisely how.
43:10This is an absolutely terrible thing for Sean Cummins' family.
43:13It's bad enough that you lose somebody,
43:16that somebody close to you dies.
43:18Homicide is another level,
43:20to lose somebody in those circumstances.
43:23But then on top of that, again,
43:24to not know what happened to your loved one,
43:28it's the kind of thing that keeps you awake at night,
43:31asking the questions that are never going to be answered.
43:34The evidence suggests that Sean Cummins
43:36was not the most likeable man.
43:39But the simple fact of the matter is
43:41that he was physically very vulnerable
43:45and that he was absolutely in a position
43:49to be abused by somebody caring for him.
43:53To come in and abuse the power that you have
43:56over somebody who is essentially physically helpless
44:00is never forgivable.
44:02Sean Cummins' life, from start to finish,
44:04had been about one thing.
44:06Sean was a good fighter.
44:08It's not a case of if he'd have done this
44:09or if he'd have done that or if he'd have done this.
44:11No, Sean was a good fighter.
44:14But his final bout had been one
44:16where he stood no chance of winning.
44:18Again, it was unbelievable
44:22what actually happened in that house.
44:25At the height of his career,
44:27he'd defined himself almost as a serial killer.
44:29At the height of his career,
44:31he'd defined himself almost as a superhuman.
44:33He is defined by this dominance,
44:35by this governor role, inside and out.
44:38But an accident which left him immobile
44:41meant that he could never be invincible.
44:44Instead, he was the victim of a greedy carer
44:47who knew no other way of enriching himself
44:50but by killing Sean Cummins,
44:52a man who could no longer defend himself.
44:56Sean was an icon, really.
44:58Loved him dearly.
45:00Tomas Dunkley was sentenced to life in prison
45:06at Leicester Crown Court for the murder of Sean Cummins.
45:10He was ordered to serve a minimum term of 34 years.