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On the 5th of November 2007, in the rural village
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of Red Marley in Gloucestershire, England, 55-year-old Kate Prout vanished.
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Her husband, Adrian, claimed she'd walked out on him.
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At first, you know, people's hearts went out to him.
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He'd been abandoned.
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Even though we'd come by, you had no concern about
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her well-being then?
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Well, I did, but I thought if.
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things weren't good, someone would have rang me or assumed
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she was okay.
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He feels that he can just carry on and he
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can just keep diverting and just keep saying the right
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things and this will eventually go away.
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Despite no body being found, the friendly farmer was convicted
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of Kate's murder. The entire community were shocked.
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He goes to prison.
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He maintains his innocence in the way that he has
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all the way through this.
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The missing piece of that jigsaw is we've still got
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a missing body.
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The trail went cold. An army of supporters campaigned to
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overturn this supposed miscarriage of justice until 2010, when Prout
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himself completed the puzzle.
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To be perfectly honest, I just thought I was going
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to be sick. I'm sat opposite him in prison, and
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he's just confessed that he's killed his wife.
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After years of pleading his innocence, the mask had finally slipped.
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Adrian Prout had revealed himself as one of the world's
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most evil killers. For four years after his wife disappeared,
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farmer Adrian Prout claimed that Kate was actually alive and
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well and in hiding. It was a lie, but it
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was one so convincingly told it reeled in Prout's friends, family,
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and the rural community in which the couple lived.
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He said that was her plan. That was her plan
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to disappear. and to get him done for murder, so
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he said it was all set up. Obviously, we believed
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his lies, and we were drawn into whoever lies we
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never knew were lies.
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People lie to the police all the time. That's what
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they do. There is a difference here. He's created a narrative,
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and he has to live and breathe that narrative. Then
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he has to build on it and layer it, and
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every time he has an interaction with another individual or
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friends and family, that narrative has to stand scrutiny.
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Coercive men like Proud, they are incredibly accomplished. They have
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a way of actually reeling you in, of convincing you
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that everything that they're saying is true.
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The seemingly friendly and helpful local farmer was difficult to
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connect to the image of the manipulative killer he'd been
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proven to be.
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It's a dichotomy in my mind, because there is this
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gentle being nature, but now look at his hands and
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think he'd just taken another person's life. The outward appearance
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doesn't come across as what's really going on internally. This
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is a calculating murderer.
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This killer's story begins in the village of Coley, Gloucestershire.
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Adrian Michael Prout was born on the 14th of June, 1962.
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He was the second youngest of four siblings. His mother...
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Jeanette died shortly after the birth of her fourth child.
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Pratt was two years old when his mother passed away,
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so this is something that is lacking in his life.
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He doesn't have that relationship with a mother that is
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going to be the basis on which he forms relationships
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with other women.
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Both Adrian's father and grandfather were farmers, and he grew
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up helping out on the family farms. His dream was
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to one day have a farm of his own.
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Prout grew into a man who really did have quite
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a lot of ambition. He wanted to be successful. He
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wanted to be seen to be successful.
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He was a hardworking individual. He was always around farming.
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He'd had connections locally. He'd worked for people. They were
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always very impressed with the sort of things that he did.
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an engaging and hardworking individual. He'd had quite a successful
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pipeline business.
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In 1999, after a couple of failed relationships, 37-year-old Adrian
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Prout met Kate Wakefield. Kate was a teacher and, like Prout,
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came from a farming family.
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Kate was the sister of a friend of his. At
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this point in his life, Prout was having a bit
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of a difficult time, and Kate's brother... offered to put
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him up in a property whilst he got back on
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his feet. And I think this is quite a significant
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thing because Prout had that friendship with her brother. He
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comes pre-vetted, essentially.
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Kate Wakefield is pretty nearly ten years older than Adrian Prout.
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A wise woman, hard-working, thoughtful, but is, I think the
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phrase would be, bowled over by Adrian Prout.
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They were married within the space of a year, and
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this is an incredibly accelerated relationship. The pace of it
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is incredibly fast.
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Initially, they were seen as the perfect couple. They'd gone
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on really well.
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I think friends and family would describe them, personality-wise, that
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they were quite different, so that old adage that opposites attract.
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In 2004, Prout and Kate buy a farm. It's called
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Redhill Farm. It's near Red Marley in Gloucestershire. She can
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afford it because she's inherited a cottage which she's sold
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and she's contributing to the house.
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This is quite an extensive, quite an impressive property. And
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in this part of the country, agriculture is quite a
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significant industry and farmers have some status. They have a
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lot of land, they have a lot of property. Essentially,
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Kate was, for him, the vehicle that allowed him to
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reach this ambition, and the things that she had were
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very attractive for him.
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At the age of 41, Adrian Prout had achieved his
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lifelong goal of owning his own farm.
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He's going to run pheasant shoots, and she's going to
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cater for them at Red Marley. He's still got the
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pipe-blowing business. And as far as anyone can tell, This
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is a perfectly happy, stable relationship. And so it remains.
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The couple ran successful pheasant shoots over the next two years.
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But in 2006, there were signs that suggested their honeymoon
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period had come to an end.
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There were some public interactions and spats between the pair
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of them. There was starting to be that glimmer of
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things that were not quite as people would thought initially.
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On Boxing Day 2006, things reached ahead during an argument
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over the family's dinner plans.
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It starts in the kitchen and goes outside. And it's
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the first time we see real evidence of the violence
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that was beneath the surface. in this apparently stable marriage.
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Proud pushes Kate against the Land Rover that they have
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with such force that it actually dents the car.
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She's frightened.
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The cracks in the relationship became even more apparent two
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months later, in February 2007.
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Plates had been thrown right across the kitchen. There'd been
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a full-blown confrontation.
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Once again, the argument continued outside.
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He had grabbed her by the neck and held her
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over an empty swimming pool. The police had been called.
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I think he'd actually been arrested.
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She was to say later, he went mad. I really
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thought I'd had it. There was no controlling him.
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This shows me that he's changing tactics at this point
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in time. I think up until this point, he's been
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using charm and manipulation to get control and to get
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his own way, but that is no longer working. And
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with men like Prout, when those techniques no longer work,
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they resort to physical violence.
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In November 2007, after months of living with a volatile
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and violent husband, Kate went to see her solicitor about
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divorcing Adrian Prout.
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The farm by now is valued at £ 1. 3 million. Adrian
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is intent on hanging on to it. Offers Kate 600,000
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pounds to go. Kate consults a solicitor and says, no,
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I want 800,000.
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A settlement of that size meant one thing. Redhill Farm
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would have to be sold.
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We know that that farm was always Adrian Prout's dream.
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To own a farm, to run it like that was
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always his dream. There was a moment then... the dawn
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of realization that he was going to lose the farm.
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He was going to lose everything.
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He feels entitled to that farm. He feels that that
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farm is his. He's very much about ownership and possession
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of things, and now he's got a barrier in between
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the farm and him, and that barrier is Kate.
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Adrian Prout had no intention of giving up the farm,
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but before any settlement could be finalized, there was a development.
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Kate went missing.
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Hundreds and hundreds of people daily get reported to the
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police as missing, but it was the circumstances, really, around
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Kate's disappearance that was the concern.
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It had taken 45-year-old Prout five days to report Kate's
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disappearance to the police, and he didn't appear to be
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a worried husband.
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And you weren't, even though weeks had gone by, you
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had no concerns. about her well-being?
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Well, I did, but I thought if things weren't good,
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someone would have rang me or, you know, I assumed
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she was OK.
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If someone's lost a loved one, it's a powerful emotion.
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That's what you need to see. And if they're not
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displaying that, then immediately your suspicions are up, you're worried
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and you need to be looking into it a little
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bit more.
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Prout freely admitted that he was not concerned by his
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wife's disappearance.
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He was suggesting she'd gone off on her own. It
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was something she wanted. He wasn't concerned. She'd done it before.
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At least some of the locals are convinced that Kate
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had just had enough and left to start a new life.
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It made sense to them. This wasn't a happy couple anymore.
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Pratt was able to draw upon this victim status that
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he'd stepped into. My wife has left me. She's going
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to take me to the cleaners. Poor me. And he
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used this to his advantage in this situation because he's
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going to be saying things like, why would I be
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in contact with her? Why would I want to know
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where she is? She's making my life such a misery.
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It does sound feasible, but when you build into that,
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that none of the family had heard from.
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Her at all, She doesn't go to her niece's 18th
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birthday party. She doesn't contact anyone. As far as anyone
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can tell, she's disappeared into a puff of smoke.
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She might be wishing to split from her partner, but
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you're still going to make social contact, and you're still
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going to have an interaction with your family.
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None of that was happening.
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From the minute Adrian Prout reported her missing, investigators had
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been working through the possible reasons for Kate's disappearance.
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And there's been no contact from Kate since you last
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saw her around lunchtime on Monday?
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No.
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Three things likely to have happened.
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She's either had an accident somewhere and she's fallen off
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a horse or whatever it might be and she's out
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in the fields or wherever. She has gone off her
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own fruition. She doesn't want to be found and hasn't
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contacted anybody and wants to be on her own. Or
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something more sinister.
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She's been murdered. Simple as that. You were aware that
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a car had been left behind. Were you aware of
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any other things that had been left behind that she'd
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normally have with her? No, I couldn't find her car keys,
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which was strange.
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They always put in the drawer in the kitchen and
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they weren't there.
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So I assumed she had her car keys with her.
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If she goes out, what stuff would she normally take
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with her of a personal nature?
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Credit cards, purse, things like that? Yeah, phones.
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All of those things that are part of people's daily
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lives that they never let go of, all that was
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at the house. She'd gone with nothing apart from, in effect,
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the clothes that she was wearing. That's your starting point.
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That doesn't stack up at all. That's not normal behavior
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for people.
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Early investigations revealed only one trace of Kate after Prout
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purported to have seen her.
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The last third-party contact that she'd had with anybody else
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was to ring her bank on the late afternoon of
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that Monday on that 5th of November. From that Monday afternoon,
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she'd literally dropped off the radar. She wasn't seen from
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or heard from again.
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Believing from the outset that it was unlikely that Kate had,
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as Adrian Proud claimed, walked out on her husband, investigators
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were left with two hypotheses.
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Either they want to go and kill themselves, it's suicide,
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or chances are something more sinister in the circumstances.
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So the police are exploring.
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What exists in the background that would mean that someone
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wouldn't want her to be around anymore. And the information
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very quickly reveals that there was trouble in their marriage,
248
00:15:39.309 --> 00:15:42.789
that Kate was seeking a divorce, and she'd been to
249
00:15:42.830 --> 00:15:45.830
see a divorce lawyer, and he's going to lose the
250
00:15:45.850 --> 00:15:47.679
thing that he's worked all his life for.
251
00:15:49.500 --> 00:15:51.200
In the background, we know that not.
252
00:15:51.220 --> 00:15:54.899
Only are things not well in that marriage, but there
253
00:15:54.940 --> 00:15:56.960
is a known level of violence, and the police had
254
00:15:57.000 --> 00:15:58.039
been called previously.
255
00:16:00.539 --> 00:16:05.789
By the 27th of November 2007, the finger of suspicion
256
00:16:05.850 --> 00:16:10.610
was clearly pointing in one direction. Adrian Prout is arrested
257
00:16:11.009 --> 00:16:17.549
on suspicion of Kate's murder. Prout maintained his story, and
258
00:16:17.710 --> 00:16:21.309
an initial search at Redhill Farm proved fruitless.
259
00:16:21.690 --> 00:16:24.190
He'd given her his version of events, they'd found nothing,
260
00:16:24.570 --> 00:16:27.730
and as a consequence of that, he leaves the police station.
261
00:16:29.370 --> 00:16:33.610
Convinced that there was a sinister truth behind Prout's claims
262
00:16:33.669 --> 00:16:38.950
of being the jilted husband, investigators began an intensive search
263
00:16:39.210 --> 00:16:39.830
of the farm.
264
00:16:39.850 --> 00:16:42.960
There's a very good chance, based on his ability to
265
00:16:43.200 --> 00:16:46.320
work heavy machinery and his pipeline business, that the body
266
00:16:46.379 --> 00:16:48.220
is probably on the site. Why would you need to
267
00:16:48.279 --> 00:16:50.980
take her anywhere else if that's the case? When you've
268
00:16:51.000 --> 00:16:53.539
got 250 acres, you can't just search the whole lot.
269
00:16:53.919 --> 00:16:56.000
So you have to be clever and smart in the
270
00:16:56.059 --> 00:17:00.309
way that you approach it. You use tactics like ground-penetrating radar,
271
00:17:00.549 --> 00:17:03.470
dogs that are used to finding bodies and can smell that.
272
00:17:03.769 --> 00:17:05.450
That's your location, that's where you start.
273
00:17:07.599 --> 00:17:11.019
The search team were hopeful of an early lead when
274
00:17:11.140 --> 00:17:14.779
one of the dogs had a reaction inside the couple's home.
275
00:17:14.799 --> 00:17:18.859
It got quite excited, as these things do, around a
276
00:17:18.900 --> 00:17:21.700
sofa in the house, but when the full forensic team
277
00:17:21.740 --> 00:17:25.180
went in and looked, there was no evidence there whatsoever.
278
00:17:27.079 --> 00:17:28.259
The searches around the.
279
00:17:28.220 --> 00:17:31.119
Rest of the house and the land that sat around
280
00:17:31.200 --> 00:17:33.380
it went on for an eye on five weeks. There
281
00:17:33.420 --> 00:17:40.339
was no physical evidence of a disturbance, a fight, a murder, homicide,
282
00:17:40.680 --> 00:17:43.210
or indeed the moving of a body. There was nothing there.
283
00:17:45.430 --> 00:17:49.609
Detectives were confident that Prout was a killer, but with
284
00:17:49.710 --> 00:17:54.049
no sign of Kate, they were facing a so-called no-body
285
00:17:54.190 --> 00:17:58.160
murder case. which is notoriously hard to prove.
286
00:17:58.880 --> 00:18:02.039
With a body comes a huge wealth of forensic evidence
287
00:18:02.519 --> 00:18:06.069
to help you unpick how they've died and who potentially
288
00:18:06.150 --> 00:18:11.230
has killed them. Here, you've got no body, so you
289
00:18:11.309 --> 00:18:12.710
really are up against it.
290
00:18:15.309 --> 00:18:18.799
By Christmas, Kate had been missing for eight weeks, but
291
00:18:18.900 --> 00:18:24.430
life for Adrian Prout appeared to continue unaffected. Debbie Garlick
292
00:18:24.490 --> 00:18:26.670
encountered him in a local pub.
293
00:18:27.880 --> 00:18:31.180
I was with my friend, and Adrian walked in with
294
00:18:32.200 --> 00:18:35.980
somebody we knew. If he was in the pub by himself,
295
00:18:36.000 --> 00:18:38.180
we wouldn't have had a conversation with him, but because
296
00:18:38.220 --> 00:18:40.140
he was with people that we knew really, really well,
297
00:18:40.660 --> 00:18:42.220
and sometimes people would come back to my house for
298
00:18:42.240 --> 00:18:44.079
a drink with the pub closed and everything else, so
299
00:18:44.099 --> 00:18:48.269
that's what we did. As we walked out, the landlord
300
00:18:48.309 --> 00:18:50.589
just said, be careful to me and my friend.
301
00:18:50.609 --> 00:18:54.670
I was like, oh, okay. As soon as we got back,
302
00:18:54.809 --> 00:18:57.750
he said, do you know who I am? And then
303
00:18:57.789 --> 00:18:58.650
he told us the story.
304
00:19:01.029 --> 00:19:04.890
Later that night, Debbie did some research on the man
305
00:19:04.970 --> 00:19:05.890
she'd just met.
306
00:19:06.970 --> 00:19:10.400
We just googled everything then. He was under suspicion of murder.
307
00:19:10.420 --> 00:19:14.400
One of our friends said there's no way that he
308
00:19:14.420 --> 00:19:15.859
would have done anything like that.
309
00:19:16.259 --> 00:19:16.619
No way.
310
00:19:17.539 --> 00:19:18.619
Everyone just thought she'd disappeared.
311
00:19:20.859 --> 00:19:24.619
The police disagreed, and on the 4th of January 2008,
312
00:19:24.619 --> 00:19:31.349
they publicly announced their belief that Kate was dead. Two
313
00:19:31.410 --> 00:19:35.529
weeks later, Adrian Prout was arrested for the second time.
314
00:19:36.009 --> 00:19:40.029
They're hoping that he's going to confess to doing what
315
00:19:40.049 --> 00:19:40.730
they think he's done.
316
00:19:42.809 --> 00:19:44.410
There was no confession.
317
00:19:45.210 --> 00:19:48.349
Adrian Prout maintained that Kate had left of her own
318
00:19:48.410 --> 00:19:51.490
accord with the intention of stitching him up.
319
00:19:52.710 --> 00:19:56.299
There is no firm evidence. It is all circumstantial. So
320
00:19:56.339 --> 00:19:58.099
he'd have to go out on police bail. You can't
321
00:19:58.119 --> 00:20:02.799
just hold someone or charge someone without evidence. That's when
322
00:20:03.059 --> 00:20:08.819
a challenging, difficult and protracted police investigation takes place.
323
00:20:10.069 --> 00:20:11.369
And there is no easy answer to that.
324
00:20:13.910 --> 00:20:17.789
Investigators began focusing on proof of life.
325
00:20:18.549 --> 00:20:22.740
It's a common phrase within policing and legal terms. Ultimately,
326
00:20:22.880 --> 00:20:26.960
it's about establishing that somebody lives their life in a
327
00:20:27.019 --> 00:20:32.180
certain way, interacting with banks, financial institutions, friends and family, etc.
328
00:20:33.000 --> 00:20:36.269
And in a moment in time, it all stops. There's
329
00:20:36.390 --> 00:20:42.000
no more interaction. Now, that's unusual. The only reasonable conclusion
330
00:20:42.039 --> 00:20:44.680
that you can reach is that person is no longer alive.
331
00:20:48.529 --> 00:20:51.910
The police began the process of proving not only that
332
00:20:51.990 --> 00:20:58.750
Kate Prout was dead, but that she'd been murdered. In May,
333
00:20:58.990 --> 00:21:03.230
Debbie Garlick had another chance meeting with Prout in the pub.
334
00:21:04.490 --> 00:21:06.650
By the next morning, he'd put a note through my
335
00:21:06.670 --> 00:21:08.940
letterbox saying, with his telephone number on and said, if
336
00:21:08.980 --> 00:21:12.980
you want, give me a call. We went out the
337
00:21:13.019 --> 00:21:16.819
following day and took a picnic, and then he said
338
00:21:16.859 --> 00:21:18.720
that he wouldn't have a relationship with anybody because it
339
00:21:18.759 --> 00:21:19.559
wasn't the right time.
340
00:21:21.349 --> 00:21:24.970
But two days later, Debbie heard from him again.
341
00:21:24.990 --> 00:21:27.470
He phoned me, and from the Wednesday onwards, we just
342
00:21:27.490 --> 00:21:29.049
started our relationship full on from there.
343
00:21:31.230 --> 00:21:34.759
It had been six months since his wife disappeared, but
344
00:21:34.839 --> 00:21:40.279
Prout had a seemingly plausible explanation for her prolonged absence.
345
00:21:40.880 --> 00:21:44.420
She had gone off before and gone.
346
00:21:44.059 --> 00:21:47.319
On holiday with one of her sisters or something, or sister-in-law,
347
00:21:47.759 --> 00:21:50.599
and hadn't told him then where she was going. So
348
00:21:50.660 --> 00:21:52.700
he just thought that they were hiding her away. He
349
00:21:53.599 --> 00:21:56.180
didn't want to be part of his life. It wasn't
350
00:21:56.200 --> 00:21:58.640
a big thing about where she was, if you get
351
00:21:58.680 --> 00:21:59.059
what I mean.
352
00:22:01.390 --> 00:22:06.670
As part of the ongoing investigation into Kate's disappearance, detectives
353
00:22:06.710 --> 00:22:10.450
had discovered she kept a diary. This told a very
354
00:22:10.599 --> 00:22:14.480
different story to the one that Adrian Prout was spinning.
355
00:22:14.819 --> 00:22:18.019
She explains on over a number of entries over a
356
00:22:18.059 --> 00:22:20.960
period of weeks and months what's been happening in her life,
357
00:22:20.980 --> 00:22:24.819
the tension with Adrian, the fact that she's worried and concerned.
358
00:22:24.839 --> 00:22:30.140
There are constant references to her being frightened of Adrian Prout,
359
00:22:31.000 --> 00:22:33.720
references to the fact that he lost it with me.
360
00:22:34.920 --> 00:22:38.519
If you like, it's the clearest evidence so far of
361
00:22:38.559 --> 00:22:43.680
the true nature of the marriage between Adrian and Kate Prout.
362
00:22:45.369 --> 00:22:48.490
All of that is good evidence, as if it's almost
363
00:22:48.549 --> 00:22:51.049
like Kate's voice. That's the importance of it. This is
364
00:22:51.109 --> 00:22:52.630
Kate talking through her diary.
365
00:22:55.029 --> 00:22:59.529
Despite the mounting evidence suggesting Prout was weaving a web
366
00:22:59.569 --> 00:23:04.339
of lies, in January 2009, he was told he was
367
00:23:04.390 --> 00:23:07.480
no longer a suspect and released from bail.
368
00:23:08.359 --> 00:23:10.019
That was the news that we obviously were hoping for.
369
00:23:10.900 --> 00:23:12.920
And that's when we all moved up to the farm together.
370
00:23:15.200 --> 00:23:19.089
The cloud of suspicion appeared to have lifted. Debbie and
371
00:23:19.170 --> 00:23:22.970
her two children moved into Redhill Farm with Prout.
372
00:23:24.079 --> 00:23:26.339
They've reached a stage where we're told him he's no
373
00:23:26.359 --> 00:23:28.519
longer a suspect. I suspect that was to try and
374
00:23:28.619 --> 00:23:31.930
trigger some conversation with friends and family of him. He
375
00:23:31.970 --> 00:23:34.809
might not confess it to the police, but he might
376
00:23:34.849 --> 00:23:36.990
confess it to a good mate, or he might confess
377
00:23:37.029 --> 00:23:38.069
it to Debbie Garlick.
378
00:23:39.910 --> 00:23:43.480
I think Prout feels incredibly victorious at this point in time.
379
00:23:43.700 --> 00:23:46.819
He feels like he has very successfully pulled the wool
380
00:23:47.019 --> 00:23:49.619
over everybody's eyes, and this is a problem that has
381
00:23:49.660 --> 00:23:50.460
just gone away.
382
00:23:52.359 --> 00:23:55.720
In the background, that investigation is continuing and they've gone
383
00:23:55.759 --> 00:23:58.200
to the Crown Prosecution Service around charging.
384
00:24:01.200 --> 00:24:04.720
A month after moving in together, the couple's world was
385
00:24:04.809 --> 00:24:09.069
turned upside down. On the 10th of March, Debbie was
386
00:24:09.170 --> 00:24:11.109
home alone with her children.
387
00:24:11.750 --> 00:24:15.589
We were sleeping bad and we just heard shouting and
388
00:24:16.690 --> 00:24:18.190
so we all just got out and wondered what the
389
00:24:18.210 --> 00:24:20.589
hell was going on and we walked into all these
390
00:24:20.710 --> 00:24:21.470
police in the house.
391
00:24:23.900 --> 00:24:27.609
They asked me not to phone Adrian, but I did.
392
00:24:29.829 --> 00:24:33.809
When Prout returned home, he didn't seem concerned by the
393
00:24:34.130 --> 00:24:35.289
unfolding events.
394
00:24:35.930 --> 00:24:38.549
I think he said something like, here we go again, lads,
395
00:24:38.630 --> 00:24:42.890
or something. And then they charged him with murder in
396
00:24:42.910 --> 00:24:46.660
front of us all and handcuffed him and took him away.
397
00:24:48.880 --> 00:24:51.799
We thought they must have found something then. They must
398
00:24:51.819 --> 00:24:54.619
have found something for him to be charged with murder.
399
00:24:57.359 --> 00:25:00.869
Debbie was left assuming that Kate's body had been found,
400
00:25:01.640 --> 00:25:02.589
but she was wrong.
401
00:25:04.029 --> 00:25:06.950
The police have been really active in progressing the inquiries,
402
00:25:06.990 --> 00:25:09.529
and they've gone to the Crown Prosecution Service, so they
403
00:25:09.549 --> 00:25:12.289
are going to be explaining what they've got, the circumstantial evidence,
404
00:25:12.410 --> 00:25:15.049
and they would be having to seek a decision to
405
00:25:15.130 --> 00:25:18.859
charge him. Once you've reached that stage... There wouldn't be
406
00:25:18.900 --> 00:25:21.380
a need for any continuation of bail or anything of
407
00:25:21.420 --> 00:25:21.900
that nature.
408
00:25:21.940 --> 00:25:22.519
He's coming in.
409
00:25:25.000 --> 00:25:29.210
Adrian Prout appeared later that day at Cheltenham Crown Court,
410
00:25:29.569 --> 00:25:33.269
charged with the murder of his wife, Kate. After a
411
00:25:33.349 --> 00:25:37.349
month in prison, he was released on bail, awaiting trial.
412
00:25:38.890 --> 00:25:41.009
He was saying, I can't believe I've been in prison
413
00:25:41.049 --> 00:25:43.250
and I can't believe that they thought I've done it.
414
00:25:43.509 --> 00:25:46.730
I'm innocent. So we were all like.
415
00:25:47.529 --> 00:25:50.569
few men with the police thinking that they have to
416
00:25:50.609 --> 00:25:53.619
put him in prison for a month for no reason.
417
00:25:56.099 --> 00:26:00.319
Out on bail, life returned to normality, and the couple
418
00:26:00.400 --> 00:26:05.859
celebrated some happy news. Debbie and Prout were engaged to
419
00:26:05.900 --> 00:26:06.359
be married.
420
00:26:06.380 --> 00:26:10.220
I think a few people had made a comment thinking
421
00:26:11.799 --> 00:26:14.839
maybe that was a wrong decision that we made, especially
422
00:26:14.859 --> 00:26:18.180
for Adrian's part because, He's still got a wife, really.
423
00:26:20.009 --> 00:26:23.880
We see this similar pattern happening again, the accelerated pace
424
00:26:24.009 --> 00:26:27.869
of a relationship, the need for that early commitment. And
425
00:26:28.009 --> 00:26:31.730
this is something that happens frequently with men like Proud.
426
00:26:33.690 --> 00:26:35.569
We had the engagement party and found out I was
427
00:26:35.609 --> 00:26:39.829
pregnant with my daughter, which was a nice surprise. And
428
00:26:39.849 --> 00:26:42.470
then we found out the court case was going to
429
00:26:42.509 --> 00:26:45.789
be January the 11th, the same day that she was due.
430
00:26:48.349 --> 00:26:51.789
Debbie was induced a week early so that the birth
431
00:26:51.829 --> 00:26:55.289
of their daughter wouldn't coincide with the trial.
432
00:26:56.599 --> 00:27:00.319
He loved having a baby, yeah. He fed her, changed her,
433
00:27:01.559 --> 00:27:02.380
got up in the night.
434
00:27:03.579 --> 00:27:06.599
He was a hands-on dad. And then she was a
435
00:27:06.619 --> 00:27:08.259
week old when the court case started.
436
00:27:08.279 --> 00:27:14.509
The evidence presented to the jury over the course of
437
00:27:14.609 --> 00:27:17.630
three weeks was entirely circumstantial.
438
00:27:18.730 --> 00:27:19.789
There is no forensic evidence.
439
00:27:20.410 --> 00:27:27.279
There is nothing to suggest, more importantly, physically, if you like, evidentially, forensically,
440
00:27:27.359 --> 00:27:29.059
that Kate has been killed.
441
00:27:29.660 --> 00:27:30.920
That's why it took so long.
442
00:27:31.140 --> 00:27:34.119
That's why this proof of life as the expression, which
443
00:27:34.200 --> 00:27:36.259
is a bit of a nuance, really, because you're proving
444
00:27:36.279 --> 00:27:38.509
that someone's died rather than that they're alive.
445
00:27:39.289 --> 00:27:40.430
That's why it's so important.
446
00:27:42.509 --> 00:27:45.329
I didn't go to court for the first three weeks, but.
447
00:27:45.789 --> 00:27:47.990
I went every day for the fourth week because Adrian
448
00:27:48.029 --> 00:27:51.789
was convinced he'd be found not guilty. So he wanted
449
00:27:51.829 --> 00:27:53.930
us to walk out the court together to move on
450
00:27:53.970 --> 00:27:54.849
with the rest of our lives.
451
00:27:56.809 --> 00:28:00.599
Unusually, in this case, there were only 11 members of
452
00:28:00.640 --> 00:28:04.460
the jury and they retired to consider their verdict.
453
00:28:05.359 --> 00:28:07.259
And then rumours were going around that it was nine
454
00:28:07.319 --> 00:28:10.700
people together and two people weren't. And a commembrant said
455
00:28:10.720 --> 00:28:12.579
to me, oh, I can't believe two people think that
456
00:28:12.619 --> 00:28:16.730
I've done it. So he's thinking now that nine people
457
00:28:16.769 --> 00:28:19.549
think he's innocent and two people think he's guilty.
458
00:28:21.390 --> 00:28:25.190
The jury were clear ultimately that Kate was alive on
459
00:28:25.210 --> 00:28:29.640
the 5th of November and within five days later, she
460
00:28:29.680 --> 00:28:30.380
wasn't alive.
461
00:28:31.880 --> 00:28:34.359
Adrian could only have been the person that killed her ultimately.
462
00:28:34.720 --> 00:28:35.559
So he had all of.
463
00:28:35.559 --> 00:28:38.819
The motivation there, sure that she wasn't around because she
464
00:28:38.880 --> 00:28:41.400
wasn't going to get that money. That's what's presented to
465
00:28:41.440 --> 00:28:44.690
the jury. That's what they thought, well, actually, there's only
466
00:28:44.750 --> 00:28:46.630
one conclusion we can reasonably make here.
467
00:28:49.769 --> 00:28:53.819
The verdict came that he was guilty. I just burst
468
00:28:53.880 --> 00:28:58.000
into tears. Of course, he goes straight to prison then,
469
00:28:58.960 --> 00:29:01.880
but we went home without him that day, which is
470
00:29:01.900 --> 00:29:03.740
really hard, and our baby was four weeks old.
471
00:29:07.710 --> 00:29:11.670
Having never believed that he would be found guilty, Proud's
472
00:29:11.710 --> 00:29:14.500
family had to face a harsh reality.
473
00:29:15.500 --> 00:29:18.579
I went down to the post office to get every
474
00:29:18.599 --> 00:29:21.740
single paper that.
475
00:29:20.519 --> 00:29:21.059
I could get.
476
00:29:21.720 --> 00:29:25.309
All the papers were killer Adrian Pratt, Adrian Pratt's killed
477
00:29:25.329 --> 00:29:29.309
his wife, no body, and even the chap who owned
478
00:29:29.329 --> 00:29:31.930
the shop at the precise time came out and he
479
00:29:31.970 --> 00:29:33.950
put his arms around me and went, it's so wrong,
480
00:29:34.069 --> 00:29:34.779
what's happened to him?
481
00:29:35.890 --> 00:29:37.289
He said, you don't know. You'll get him out.' Because
482
00:29:37.309 --> 00:29:39.700
that's what everyone was like. It wasn't just me. It
483
00:29:39.740 --> 00:29:40.380
was everybody.
484
00:29:43.119 --> 00:29:47.400
On the 8th of February, 2010, Prout was sentenced to
485
00:29:47.440 --> 00:29:51.579
a minimum of 18 years in prison, but the convicted
486
00:29:51.680 --> 00:29:54.160
murderer maintained his innocence.
487
00:29:54.559 --> 00:29:56.519
Ultimately, what you've got is you've got a guy that
488
00:29:56.559 --> 00:29:59.440
was charged with murder, been convicted, and he's gone to prison.
489
00:30:00.170 --> 00:30:03.710
The missing piece of that jigsaw is we've still got
490
00:30:04.509 --> 00:30:07.799
a missing body somewhere. We still think that Kate is
491
00:30:08.000 --> 00:30:11.440
out there somewhere and we want to find her ultimately.
492
00:30:11.480 --> 00:30:14.200
So that will always remain open. But you're gonna need
493
00:30:14.240 --> 00:30:16.319
some information before you can do anything else.
494
00:30:18.480 --> 00:30:20.940
I did have doubts then. I went to see him.
495
00:30:20.960 --> 00:30:23.319
I asked him to swear on our daughter's life that
496
00:30:23.359 --> 00:30:25.819
if he has not killed Kate and he swore on
497
00:30:25.859 --> 00:30:28.000
her life and said he hasn't killed her. And then
498
00:30:28.059 --> 00:30:32.390
I got upset then because I thought, that was bad
499
00:30:32.410 --> 00:30:34.710
for me to have doubt that he might have done something.
500
00:30:35.289 --> 00:30:37.380
He might have killed her, so I felt really bad
501
00:30:37.410 --> 00:30:38.170
in myself then.
502
00:30:41.059 --> 00:30:44.299
Prout knows exactly what buttons to push with Debbie. He
503
00:30:44.319 --> 00:30:46.779
knows exactly the kind of things to say to make
504
00:30:46.880 --> 00:30:49.920
her feel bad for even raising the question. So I
505
00:30:49.920 --> 00:30:52.000
think that shows how manipulative he really is.
506
00:30:55.480 --> 00:30:59.720
Believing an innocent man had been jailed Prout's supporters were
507
00:30:59.740 --> 00:31:03.500
determined to prove that Kate Prout was alive.
508
00:31:04.180 --> 00:31:05.579
The only thing we could do was to prove he
509
00:31:05.599 --> 00:31:07.700
was innocent, that the crime had not been committed. And
510
00:31:08.019 --> 00:31:10.880
then obviously we started searching for Kate. We put out
511
00:31:10.900 --> 00:31:14.579
a reward that if anyone had any information on the
512
00:31:14.720 --> 00:31:18.319
whereabouts of Kate Prout, then obviously they would claim the reward.
513
00:31:18.759 --> 00:31:21.619
And that's when it all started to begin, the campaign
514
00:31:21.640 --> 00:31:22.440
to get him out of prison.
515
00:31:24.819 --> 00:31:29.859
Debbie's campaign caught the attention of veteran reporter Tom Hendry.
516
00:31:30.420 --> 00:31:33.559
Here was a woman who still believed, even though he
517
00:31:33.579 --> 00:31:36.920
was in jail, that he was innocent, and she launched
518
00:31:37.420 --> 00:31:42.049
a huge crusade to try and find Kate. And as
519
00:31:42.109 --> 00:31:46.049
a result, I realized there was potential for a really
520
00:31:46.130 --> 00:31:46.769
great story.
521
00:31:49.579 --> 00:31:54.039
Tom became Debbie's media advisor and assisted with the appeal
522
00:31:54.059 --> 00:31:57.000
for information on Kate's true whereabouts.
523
00:31:57.839 --> 00:32:01.230
We had a number of sightings. One was in Cork,
524
00:32:01.450 --> 00:32:02.349
in Southern Ireland.
525
00:32:03.809 --> 00:32:04.930
Somebody got in touch.
526
00:32:05.069 --> 00:32:07.490
They said it looked like Kate, and she was a tutor,
527
00:32:07.970 --> 00:32:09.109
and Kate was a teacher.
528
00:32:10.410 --> 00:32:11.710
We actually thought we'd got her.
529
00:32:12.769 --> 00:32:15.730
We went over to Ireland. The news agency sent a photographer.
530
00:32:16.269 --> 00:32:19.380
I didn't go personally. And Debbie was joking, you know,
531
00:32:19.480 --> 00:32:23.380
as to if Kate had turned up, there would have
532
00:32:23.400 --> 00:32:25.920
been a film made, and who would have played her?
533
00:32:28.059 --> 00:32:32.000
Every single member of Adrian's family and my family came up,
534
00:32:32.619 --> 00:32:35.640
and we waited for the telephone call to say that
535
00:32:35.759 --> 00:32:37.799
it was Kate, but the telephone call come through to
536
00:32:37.839 --> 00:32:39.420
say that it obviously wasn't Kate.
537
00:32:39.819 --> 00:32:41.339
So we were all devastated about that.
538
00:32:41.359 --> 00:32:45.940
And then we had a sighting in Scarborough, and that
539
00:32:45.960 --> 00:32:49.059
wasn't her either. We did articles on the news, we
540
00:32:49.099 --> 00:32:52.359
did articles in the paper for any information, and the
541
00:32:52.400 --> 00:32:54.700
website to do with the miscarriage of justice, they were
542
00:32:54.740 --> 00:32:55.880
looking into that for us.
543
00:32:58.420 --> 00:33:01.140
Prout is going along with this, but the outcome that
544
00:33:01.180 --> 00:33:03.619
he wants is to get out of prison, and he
545
00:33:03.660 --> 00:33:06.700
will be using people to his advantage. He won't be
546
00:33:06.720 --> 00:33:09.720
feeling bad about it. He doesn't see his family and
547
00:33:09.759 --> 00:33:12.619
friends in the way that most people do. Other people
548
00:33:12.680 --> 00:33:15.049
exist in terms of what they can do for him.
549
00:33:15.369 --> 00:33:18.009
So he was simply surrounded by useful people at this
550
00:33:18.069 --> 00:33:18.670
point in time.
551
00:33:20.950 --> 00:33:24.589
Desperate to prove that there had been a miscarriage of justice,
552
00:33:24.990 --> 00:33:29.609
Prout's supporters were running out of options until journalist Tom
553
00:33:29.670 --> 00:33:32.609
Hendry had an unconventional idea.
554
00:33:33.710 --> 00:33:35.829
It had gone on for so long, they thought, if
555
00:33:35.849 --> 00:33:39.740
this guy Prout took a lie detector test, That would prove, maybe,
556
00:33:40.119 --> 00:33:42.200
once and for all, if he was telling the truth
557
00:33:42.380 --> 00:33:44.539
or not. And Debbie agreed.
558
00:33:46.200 --> 00:33:48.059
I was like, couldn't wait for the headline to be,
559
00:33:48.119 --> 00:33:51.349
Adrian Pratt is innocent, he's just passed the lie detector test.
560
00:33:53.190 --> 00:33:56.849
Debbie and Tom visited Pratt in Bristol Prison.
561
00:33:57.269 --> 00:33:59.430
We asked Adrian if he'd do a lie detector test,
562
00:33:59.529 --> 00:34:00.930
and Adrian agreed straight away.
563
00:34:00.950 --> 00:34:06.230
I didn't have any suspicions about him. He was very calm,
564
00:34:06.369 --> 00:34:10.860
very controlled. And therefore, you know, I didn't smell any
565
00:34:11.079 --> 00:34:12.260
kind of rat at all.
566
00:34:13.980 --> 00:34:19.070
Don Cargill, one of the UK's leading polygraph experts, arranged
567
00:34:19.130 --> 00:34:22.010
to conduct a test on Adrian in prison.
568
00:34:22.590 --> 00:34:25.630
Bear in mind, this Adrian who was wanting the test,
569
00:34:26.010 --> 00:34:28.630
I thought he would have, great, this is my day of,
570
00:34:28.769 --> 00:34:31.230
you know, the truthful out, and I'll be proven to
571
00:34:31.269 --> 00:34:34.690
be a non-killer and wrongly convicted. But the reality was,
572
00:34:35.070 --> 00:34:37.820
it was a frozen reaction. He didn't really want to
573
00:34:37.860 --> 00:34:41.070
do this, which really, that did take me by surprise.
574
00:34:43.309 --> 00:34:45.989
I left him alone for about 20 minutes, went back,
575
00:34:46.170 --> 00:34:48.909
and he said, I suppose I'd better do it. I
576
00:34:48.949 --> 00:34:53.409
suppose I'd better do it for Debbie's sake. And I said, no, no, no, no, no.
577
00:34:53.590 --> 00:34:54.789
Do it for your own sake.
578
00:34:56.730 --> 00:35:00.510
The questions put to Adrian Prout during the test were
579
00:35:00.570 --> 00:35:01.840
very straightforward.
580
00:35:02.280 --> 00:35:05.119
Did he kill his wife, Kate Prout? Did he pay
581
00:35:05.159 --> 00:35:07.130
someone else to do it? And did he know where
582
00:35:07.150 --> 00:35:09.329
the body was? He said no to all three questions.
583
00:35:10.010 --> 00:35:12.369
So when we did the test three times, I looked
584
00:35:12.429 --> 00:35:15.280
at the results and quite clearly he had murdered his wife.
585
00:35:15.469 --> 00:35:17.300
And I did say to him, I'm sorry, but I'm
586
00:35:17.320 --> 00:35:22.340
looking at a murderer. And he just went, well, are
587
00:35:22.360 --> 00:35:26.440
you saying my test is wrong? And he said, no,
588
00:35:27.619 --> 00:35:28.519
your test is not wrong.
589
00:35:31.559 --> 00:35:35.820
Don Cargill phoned me up. And just said, Debbie, you're
590
00:35:35.860 --> 00:35:39.800
engaged to a murderer. And that was Don's words.
591
00:35:43.239 --> 00:35:44.539
It was just so emotional.
592
00:35:45.099 --> 00:35:48.139
I didn't want to believe it. And of course, my
593
00:35:48.179 --> 00:35:50.550
plans have all gone out the window now. Because obviously
594
00:35:50.570 --> 00:35:53.010
the plan was it was going to pass. The plan
595
00:35:53.030 --> 00:35:55.289
was we were going to go to the papers. Agent
596
00:35:55.309 --> 00:35:59.869
Pranks passed. But everything stopped. There was no further forward now.
597
00:36:01.869 --> 00:36:06.219
Maybe he was so arrogant, proud, that he thought he
598
00:36:06.239 --> 00:36:09.099
could beat this test, and clearly he couldn't.
599
00:36:11.300 --> 00:36:14.699
My sister said to me that if he'd done it,
600
00:36:14.719 --> 00:36:17.369
you'd have gone to the papers, you'd have believed it,
601
00:36:17.869 --> 00:36:20.150
so really you should believe in it, that he's failed it,
602
00:36:20.170 --> 00:36:22.929
that he has done it, he is a murderer, because
603
00:36:23.670 --> 00:36:25.090
you can't believe one way and not the other.
604
00:36:28.170 --> 00:36:31.949
When Debbie visited Prout, he was adamant that the polygraph
605
00:36:31.969 --> 00:36:34.710
had been rigged and professed his innocence.
606
00:36:35.590 --> 00:36:40.059
Here, he brings back that victim persona. Poor me. Everybody's
607
00:36:40.099 --> 00:36:42.079
against me. Everybody's out to get me.
608
00:36:43.820 --> 00:36:46.519
For the next couple of months, it was strained between
609
00:36:46.579 --> 00:36:50.699
us both. The phone calls were strained. I think he
610
00:36:50.739 --> 00:36:54.929
knew that failing that, however much he tried to deny it,
611
00:36:55.610 --> 00:36:56.849
had changed all our minds.
612
00:36:59.170 --> 00:37:01.210
My thoughts now have gone to Kate's family.
613
00:37:02.349 --> 00:37:05.030
So we're protesting his innocence, and these poor people now
614
00:37:05.210 --> 00:37:09.300
have lost Kate. And for the last year, I've never
615
00:37:09.340 --> 00:37:13.480
thought about their feelings. So I wanted to find out
616
00:37:13.500 --> 00:37:18.219
the truth for their sake and for Kate's sake. That
617
00:37:18.260 --> 00:37:22.800
was my plan now. The plan had changed. I just
618
00:37:22.860 --> 00:37:24.239
knew we would get to the bottom of it, but
619
00:37:24.300 --> 00:37:24.980
I didn't know when.
620
00:37:27.320 --> 00:37:32.920
In November 2011, three months after the failed polygraph test,
621
00:37:33.420 --> 00:37:37.969
Debbie visited Adrian Prout, determined to get an answer once
622
00:37:38.329 --> 00:37:38.949
and for all.
623
00:37:39.670 --> 00:37:42.309
I went there with my sister, and I did say
624
00:37:42.489 --> 00:37:45.449
that I'd stick by him, but then I didn't always
625
00:37:45.530 --> 00:37:48.239
think I'd get the answer that I did. I said,
626
00:37:49.420 --> 00:37:52.619
if you have killed Kate, I will stand by you,
627
00:37:52.639 --> 00:37:54.300
but you need to tell me the truth so we
628
00:37:54.320 --> 00:37:57.340
can give Kate a proper funeral. and he just said,
629
00:37:57.460 --> 00:38:00.239
she's had one. Well, I knew then he'd killed her.
630
00:38:03.889 --> 00:38:06.210
I just, I don't think me and my sister knew
631
00:38:06.230 --> 00:38:07.989
what to say. We just sat there because I think we,
632
00:38:08.510 --> 00:38:09.849
to be perfectly honest, I just thought I was going
633
00:38:09.869 --> 00:38:10.469
to be sick.
634
00:38:12.969 --> 00:38:17.570
Now the floodgates had finally been opened, Prout did not
635
00:38:17.670 --> 00:38:18.309
hold back.
636
00:38:19.210 --> 00:38:23.670
He said that they argued and she upped the money
637
00:38:23.690 --> 00:38:28.289
that she wanted. And they started arguing and he strangled her.
638
00:38:30.289 --> 00:38:32.929
He went to the pub and then got back and
639
00:38:33.010 --> 00:38:34.869
buried her in the woods. He said he dug a
640
00:38:34.909 --> 00:38:37.210
hole by hand and he had a shoot the next
641
00:38:37.250 --> 00:38:40.659
day and carried on as normal. And the police never
642
00:38:40.679 --> 00:38:41.940
found one bit of evidence of that.
643
00:38:47.400 --> 00:38:50.559
One of the detectives came in and said, we've just
644
00:38:50.619 --> 00:38:54.539
had Adrian's girlfriend come to the police station and say...
645
00:38:54.889 --> 00:39:00.340
that Adrian has confessed that he's killed Kate Pratt. There's
646
00:39:00.360 --> 00:39:03.320
the potential that we've got that final piece of the jigsaw.
647
00:39:03.780 --> 00:39:06.539
So within 24 hours, we've got police officers at the
648
00:39:06.579 --> 00:39:09.639
prison talking to him. And he may well have said, no,
649
00:39:10.010 --> 00:39:12.429
I didn't say that, made it all up, but he didn't.
650
00:39:13.989 --> 00:39:16.309
This morning, I'm going to read you a prepared statement
651
00:39:16.369 --> 00:39:17.869
in relation to why we are here.
652
00:39:19.710 --> 00:39:20.389
The statement goes.
653
00:39:20.909 --> 00:39:24.769
Yesterday morning, we received some new and significant information in
654
00:39:24.789 --> 00:39:26.469
relation to the murder of Kate Prout.
655
00:39:28.940 --> 00:39:32.860
Prout agreed to show police where he'd buried his wife.
656
00:39:33.719 --> 00:39:37.420
From his prison cell, handcuffed to a policeman, the convicted
657
00:39:37.480 --> 00:39:41.519
killer and now confessed murderer, Adrian Prout, returns to the
658
00:39:41.559 --> 00:39:42.969
farm where he committed his crime.
659
00:39:44.889 --> 00:39:47.429
He took us to a location on a hill, which
660
00:39:47.489 --> 00:39:50.320
was quite an extensive piece of woodland, probably a bit
661
00:39:50.340 --> 00:39:53.260
bigger than a football pitch. There was no X marks
662
00:39:53.300 --> 00:39:57.760
to spot, for sure. So where he'd initially pointed out,
663
00:39:58.079 --> 00:40:03.039
we dug, and unsuccessfully, so we couldn't find Kate. And
664
00:40:03.079 --> 00:40:06.280
what we brought in then were Godiva dogs, so sniffing
665
00:40:06.300 --> 00:40:08.179
dogs to see if we could find a body, and
666
00:40:08.219 --> 00:40:11.139
they did the usual dog thing of sniffing places, and
667
00:40:11.880 --> 00:40:15.139
that was unsuccessful. And then we used ground penetrating radar
668
00:40:15.179 --> 00:40:19.300
as well. And that didn't help either. And day one,
669
00:40:19.480 --> 00:40:24.659
day two, after that, could only be described that initial excitement, really,
670
00:40:24.679 --> 00:40:26.579
that actually we might solve this and we could do
671
00:40:26.619 --> 00:40:29.780
this really quickly now and move it on, that wasn't happening.
672
00:40:31.780 --> 00:40:35.079
The media had taken over the chocolate box village of
673
00:40:35.139 --> 00:40:38.599
Red Marley and expectations were high.
674
00:40:39.000 --> 00:40:43.030
Pressure's massive. The pressure was huge, waiting for something to happen.
675
00:40:45.010 --> 00:40:49.909
Finally, on day four, the search team made the grim discovery.
676
00:40:50.829 --> 00:40:54.469
At 1 o'clock this afternoon, we have found human remains
677
00:40:54.650 --> 00:40:58.170
close to the location Adrian Prout identified as the place
678
00:40:58.230 --> 00:40:59.070
he buried his wife.
679
00:41:02.090 --> 00:41:05.320
I just cried for her family, and it must have
680
00:41:05.340 --> 00:41:09.760
been horrendous for them. I thought they were hiding her,
681
00:41:09.800 --> 00:41:12.760
so I thought they knew where she was, but for them...
682
00:41:13.550 --> 00:41:15.179
They knew that she was dead.
683
00:41:14.900 --> 00:41:16.840
Because she would have been in contact with them.
684
00:41:17.860 --> 00:41:20.340
They had to live all that time knowing that she's
685
00:41:20.380 --> 00:41:23.460
just been buried somewhere and concealed and would they ever
686
00:41:23.500 --> 00:41:24.099
get her back?
687
00:41:24.539 --> 00:41:25.820
But when I say it, I don't think they thought
688
00:41:25.840 --> 00:41:26.300
they would.
689
00:41:30.710 --> 00:41:34.150
Kate's family were finally able to lay her to rest
690
00:41:34.510 --> 00:41:37.550
in January 2012, more than four years after she'd been killed.
691
00:41:41.179 --> 00:41:43.860
That information came from Debbie at that moment in time.
692
00:41:44.460 --> 00:41:48.570
If it hadn't then, Adrian may well have served his sentence,
693
00:41:49.090 --> 00:41:51.909
life moves on. It may never have come out.
694
00:41:54.469 --> 00:42:01.659
Adrian Prout will be eligible to apply for parole in 2028.
695
00:42:01.659 --> 00:42:05.360
As an individual, I struggle with the concept of being
696
00:42:05.400 --> 00:42:07.860
able to harm someone in the way that he has,
697
00:42:08.480 --> 00:42:10.869
but not just to do that. but to harm so
698
00:42:10.929 --> 00:42:14.429
many other people around him as a consequence. That's not
699
00:42:14.530 --> 00:42:15.789
normal human behavior.
700
00:42:17.650 --> 00:42:21.070
Everybody was fooled by him. Lie detector test proved that
701
00:42:21.550 --> 00:42:24.929
I was among them, but he was a very convincing liar.
702
00:42:27.610 --> 00:42:32.070
Scars remain for those who were burned by Prout's lies.
703
00:42:32.469 --> 00:42:35.150
He took away the family that we all were going
704
00:42:35.170 --> 00:42:35.869
to have together.
705
00:42:38.070 --> 00:42:40.320
You don't expect things like that to happen to your family.
706
00:42:43.239 --> 00:42:48.039
My daughter, I think that's the hardest part because she's
707
00:42:48.380 --> 00:42:50.000
always had to be grown up knowing that her dad's
708
00:42:50.039 --> 00:42:52.889
in prison and he's a murderer.
709
00:42:58.750 --> 00:43:03.590
Prout was a master manipulator whose selfishness knew no limits.
710
00:43:04.360 --> 00:43:07.280
He killed his wife just to avoid having to give
711
00:43:07.340 --> 00:43:11.840
her what was rightfully hers. Then he played the jilted
712
00:43:11.940 --> 00:43:15.909
husband and cruelly pulled others into his web of lies.
713
00:43:16.769 --> 00:43:20.489
He never had a thought for anyone but himself, making
714
00:43:20.650 --> 00:43:24.320
Adrian Prout one of Britain's most evil killers.
1
00:00:06.990 --> 00:00:11.269
On the 5th of November 2007, in the rural village
2
00:00:11.310 --> 00:00:16.429
of Red Marley in Gloucestershire, England, 55-year-old Kate Prout vanished.
3
00:00:17.190 --> 00:00:20.350
Her husband, Adrian, claimed she'd walked out on him.
4
00:00:21.969 --> 00:00:24.530
At first, you know, people's hearts went out to him.
5
00:00:24.629 --> 00:00:25.570
He'd been abandoned.
6
00:00:26.690 --> 00:00:29.949
Even though we'd come by, you had no concern about
7
00:00:29.969 --> 00:00:30.710
her well-being then?
8
00:00:31.149 --> 00:00:32.460
Well, I did, but I thought if.
9
00:00:33.299 --> 00:00:36.549
things weren't good, someone would have rang me or assumed
10
00:00:36.570 --> 00:00:37.189
she was okay.
11
00:00:38.850 --> 00:00:40.850
He feels that he can just carry on and he
12
00:00:40.869 --> 00:00:44.310
can just keep diverting and just keep saying the right
13
00:00:44.350 --> 00:00:46.649
things and this will eventually go away.
14
00:00:48.259 --> 00:00:52.659
Despite no body being found, the friendly farmer was convicted
15
00:00:52.700 --> 00:00:57.340
of Kate's murder. The entire community were shocked.
16
00:00:58.479 --> 00:00:59.179
He goes to prison.
17
00:00:59.920 --> 00:01:01.880
He maintains his innocence in the way that he has
18
00:01:01.939 --> 00:01:02.799
all the way through this.
19
00:01:03.579 --> 00:01:07.099
The missing piece of that jigsaw is we've still got
20
00:01:07.560 --> 00:01:08.260
a missing body.
21
00:01:10.280 --> 00:01:15.439
The trail went cold. An army of supporters campaigned to
22
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overturn this supposed miscarriage of justice until 2010, when Prout
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himself completed the puzzle.
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To be perfectly honest, I just thought I was going
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to be sick. I'm sat opposite him in prison, and
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he's just confessed that he's killed his wife.
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After years of pleading his innocence, the mask had finally slipped.
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Adrian Prout had revealed himself as one of the world's
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most evil killers. For four years after his wife disappeared,
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farmer Adrian Prout claimed that Kate was actually alive and
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well and in hiding. It was a lie, but it
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was one so convincingly told it reeled in Prout's friends, family,
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and the rural community in which the couple lived.
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He said that was her plan. That was her plan
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to disappear. and to get him done for murder, so
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he said it was all set up. Obviously, we believed
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his lies, and we were drawn into whoever lies we
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never knew were lies.
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People lie to the police all the time. That's what
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they do. There is a difference here. He's created a narrative,
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and he has to live and breathe that narrative. Then
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he has to build on it and layer it, and
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every time he has an interaction with another individual or
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friends and family, that narrative has to stand scrutiny.
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Coercive men like Proud, they are incredibly accomplished. They have
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a way of actually reeling you in, of convincing you
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that everything that they're saying is true.
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The seemingly friendly and helpful local farmer was difficult to
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connect to the image of the manipulative killer he'd been
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proven to be.
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It's a dichotomy in my mind, because there is this
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gentle being nature, but now look at his hands and
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think he'd just taken another person's life. The outward appearance
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doesn't come across as what's really going on internally. This
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is a calculating murderer.
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This killer's story begins in the village of Coley, Gloucestershire.
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Adrian Michael Prout was born on the 14th of June, 1962.
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He was the second youngest of four siblings. His mother...
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Jeanette died shortly after the birth of her fourth child.
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Pratt was two years old when his mother passed away,
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so this is something that is lacking in his life.
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He doesn't have that relationship with a mother that is
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going to be the basis on which he forms relationships
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with other women.
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Both Adrian's father and grandfather were farmers, and he grew
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up helping out on the family farms. His dream was
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to one day have a farm of his own.
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Prout grew into a man who really did have quite
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a lot of ambition. He wanted to be successful. He
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wanted to be seen to be successful.
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He was a hardworking individual. He was always around farming.
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He'd had connections locally. He'd worked for people. They were
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always very impressed with the sort of things that he did.
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an engaging and hardworking individual. He'd had quite a successful
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pipeline business.
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In 1999, after a couple of failed relationships, 37-year-old Adrian
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Prout met Kate Wakefield. Kate was a teacher and, like Prout,
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came from a farming family.
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Kate was the sister of a friend of his. At
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this point in his life, Prout was having a bit
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of a difficult time, and Kate's brother... offered to put
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him up in a property whilst he got back on
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his feet. And I think this is quite a significant
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thing because Prout had that friendship with her brother. He
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comes pre-vetted, essentially.
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Kate Wakefield is pretty nearly ten years older than Adrian Prout.
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A wise woman, hard-working, thoughtful, but is, I think the
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phrase would be, bowled over by Adrian Prout.
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They were married within the space of a year, and
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this is an incredibly accelerated relationship. The pace of it
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is incredibly fast.
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Initially, they were seen as the perfect couple. They'd gone
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on really well.
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I think friends and family would describe them, personality-wise, that
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they were quite different, so that old adage that opposites attract.
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In 2004, Prout and Kate buy a farm. It's called
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Redhill Farm. It's near Red Marley in Gloucestershire. She can
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afford it because she's inherited a cottage which she's sold
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and she's contributing to the house.
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This is quite an extensive, quite an impressive property. And
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in this part of the country, agriculture is quite a
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significant industry and farmers have some status. They have a
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lot of land, they have a lot of property. Essentially,
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Kate was, for him, the vehicle that allowed him to
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reach this ambition, and the things that she had were
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very attractive for him.
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At the age of 41, Adrian Prout had achieved his
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lifelong goal of owning his own farm.
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He's going to run pheasant shoots, and she's going to
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cater for them at Red Marley. He's still got the
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pipe-blowing business. And as far as anyone can tell, This
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is a perfectly happy, stable relationship. And so it remains.
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The couple ran successful pheasant shoots over the next two years.
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But in 2006, there were signs that suggested their honeymoon
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period had come to an end.
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There were some public interactions and spats between the pair
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of them. There was starting to be that glimmer of
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things that were not quite as people would thought initially.
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On Boxing Day 2006, things reached ahead during an argument
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over the family's dinner plans.
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It starts in the kitchen and goes outside. And it's
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the first time we see real evidence of the violence
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that was beneath the surface. in this apparently stable marriage.
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Proud pushes Kate against the Land Rover that they have
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with such force that it actually dents the car.
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She's frightened.
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The cracks in the relationship became even more apparent two
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months later, in February 2007.
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Plates had been thrown right across the kitchen. There'd been
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a full-blown confrontation.
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Once again, the argument continued outside.
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He had grabbed her by the neck and held her
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over an empty swimming pool. The police had been called.
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I think he'd actually been arrested.
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She was to say later, he went mad. I really
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thought I'd had it. There was no controlling him.
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This shows me that he's changing tactics at this point
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in time. I think up until this point, he's been
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using charm and manipulation to get control and to get
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his own way, but that is no longer working. And
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with men like Prout, when those techniques no longer work,
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they resort to physical violence.
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In November 2007, after months of living with a volatile
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and violent husband, Kate went to see her solicitor about
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divorcing Adrian Prout.
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The farm by now is valued at £ 1. 3 million. Adrian
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is intent on hanging on to it. Offers Kate 600,000
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pounds to go. Kate consults a solicitor and says, no,
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I want 800,000.
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A settlement of that size meant one thing. Redhill Farm
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would have to be sold.
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We know that that farm was always Adrian Prout's dream.
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To own a farm, to run it like that was
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always his dream. There was a moment then... the dawn
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of realization that he was going to lose the farm.
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He was going to lose everything.
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He feels entitled to that farm. He feels that that
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farm is his. He's very much about ownership and possession
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of things, and now he's got a barrier in between
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the farm and him, and that barrier is Kate.
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Adrian Prout had no intention of giving up the farm,
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but before any settlement could be finalized, there was a development.
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Kate went missing.
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Hundreds and hundreds of people daily get reported to the
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police as missing, but it was the circumstances, really, around
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Kate's disappearance that was the concern.
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It had taken 45-year-old Prout five days to report Kate's
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disappearance to the police, and he didn't appear to be
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a worried husband.
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And you weren't, even though weeks had gone by, you
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had no concerns. about her well-being?
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Well, I did, but I thought if things weren't good,
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someone would have rang me or, you know, I assumed
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she was OK.
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If someone's lost a loved one, it's a powerful emotion.
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That's what you need to see. And if they're not
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displaying that, then immediately your suspicions are up, you're worried
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and you need to be looking into it a little
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bit more.
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Prout freely admitted that he was not concerned by his
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wife's disappearance.
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He was suggesting she'd gone off on her own. It
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was something she wanted. He wasn't concerned. She'd done it before.
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At least some of the locals are convinced that Kate
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had just had enough and left to start a new life.
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It made sense to them. This wasn't a happy couple anymore.
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Pratt was able to draw upon this victim status that
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he'd stepped into. My wife has left me. She's going
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to take me to the cleaners. Poor me. And he
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used this to his advantage in this situation because he's
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going to be saying things like, why would I be
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in contact with her? Why would I want to know
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where she is? She's making my life such a misery.
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It does sound feasible, but when you build into that,
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that none of the family had heard from.
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Her at all, She doesn't go to her niece's 18th
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birthday party. She doesn't contact anyone. As far as anyone
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can tell, she's disappeared into a puff of smoke.
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She might be wishing to split from her partner, but
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you're still going to make social contact, and you're still
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going to have an interaction with your family.
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None of that was happening.
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From the minute Adrian Prout reported her missing, investigators had
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been working through the possible reasons for Kate's disappearance.
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And there's been no contact from Kate since you last
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saw her around lunchtime on Monday?
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No.
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Three things likely to have happened.
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She's either had an accident somewhere and she's fallen off
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a horse or whatever it might be and she's out
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in the fields or wherever. She has gone off her
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own fruition. She doesn't want to be found and hasn't
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contacted anybody and wants to be on her own. Or
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something more sinister.
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She's been murdered. Simple as that. You were aware that
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a car had been left behind. Were you aware of
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any other things that had been left behind that she'd
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normally have with her? No, I couldn't find her car keys,
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which was strange.
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They always put in the drawer in the kitchen and
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they weren't there.
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So I assumed she had her car keys with her.
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If she goes out, what stuff would she normally take
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with her of a personal nature?
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Credit cards, purse, things like that? Yeah, phones.
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All of those things that are part of people's daily
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lives that they never let go of, all that was
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at the house. She'd gone with nothing apart from, in effect,
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the clothes that she was wearing. That's your starting point.
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That doesn't stack up at all. That's not normal behavior
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for people.
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Early investigations revealed only one trace of Kate after Prout
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purported to have seen her.
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The last third-party contact that she'd had with anybody else
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was to ring her bank on the late afternoon of
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that Monday on that 5th of November. From that Monday afternoon,
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she'd literally dropped off the radar. She wasn't seen from
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or heard from again.
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Believing from the outset that it was unlikely that Kate had,
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as Adrian Proud claimed, walked out on her husband, investigators
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00:15:16.490 --> 00:15:18.850
were left with two hypotheses.
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Either they want to go and kill themselves, it's suicide,
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or chances are something more sinister in the circumstances.
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So the police are exploring.
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What exists in the background that would mean that someone
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00:15:30.730 --> 00:15:34.570
wouldn't want her to be around anymore. And the information
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00:15:34.649 --> 00:15:38.370
very quickly reveals that there was trouble in their marriage,
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that Kate was seeking a divorce, and she'd been to
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00:15:42.830 --> 00:15:45.830
see a divorce lawyer, and he's going to lose the
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thing that he's worked all his life for.
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In the background, we know that not.
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Only are things not well in that marriage, but there
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is a known level of violence, and the police had
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been called previously.
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By the 27th of November 2007, the finger of suspicion
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was clearly pointing in one direction. Adrian Prout is arrested
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on suspicion of Kate's murder. Prout maintained his story, and
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an initial search at Redhill Farm proved fruitless.
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He'd given her his version of events, they'd found nothing,
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and as a consequence of that, he leaves the police station.
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Convinced that there was a sinister truth behind Prout's claims
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of being the jilted husband, investigators began an intensive search
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of the farm.
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There's a very good chance, based on his ability to
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work heavy machinery and his pipeline business, that the body
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is probably on the site. Why would you need to
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take her anywhere else if that's the case? When you've
268
00:16:51.000 --> 00:16:53.539
got 250 acres, you can't just search the whole lot.
269
00:16:53.919 --> 00:16:56.000
So you have to be clever and smart in the
270
00:16:56.059 --> 00:17:00.309
way that you approach it. You use tactics like ground-penetrating radar,
271
00:17:00.549 --> 00:17:03.470
dogs that are used to finding bodies and can smell that.
272
00:17:03.769 --> 00:17:05.450
That's your location, that's where you start.
273
00:17:07.599 --> 00:17:11.019
The search team were hopeful of an early lead when
274
00:17:11.140 --> 00:17:14.779
one of the dogs had a reaction inside the couple's home.
275
00:17:14.799 --> 00:17:18.859
It got quite excited, as these things do, around a
276
00:17:18.900 --> 00:17:21.700
sofa in the house, but when the full forensic team
277
00:17:21.740 --> 00:17:25.180
went in and looked, there was no evidence there whatsoever.
278
00:17:27.079 --> 00:17:28.259
The searches around the.
279
00:17:28.220 --> 00:17:31.119
Rest of the house and the land that sat around
280
00:17:31.200 --> 00:17:33.380
it went on for an eye on five weeks. There
281
00:17:33.420 --> 00:17:40.339
was no physical evidence of a disturbance, a fight, a murder, homicide,
282
00:17:40.680 --> 00:17:43.210
or indeed the moving of a body. There was nothing there.
283
00:17:45.430 --> 00:17:49.609
Detectives were confident that Prout was a killer, but with
284
00:17:49.710 --> 00:17:54.049
no sign of Kate, they were facing a so-called no-body
285
00:17:54.190 --> 00:17:58.160
murder case. which is notoriously hard to prove.
286
00:17:58.880 --> 00:18:02.039
With a body comes a huge wealth of forensic evidence
287
00:18:02.519 --> 00:18:06.069
to help you unpick how they've died and who potentially
288
00:18:06.150 --> 00:18:11.230
has killed them. Here, you've got no body, so you
289
00:18:11.309 --> 00:18:12.710
really are up against it.
290
00:18:15.309 --> 00:18:18.799
By Christmas, Kate had been missing for eight weeks, but
291
00:18:18.900 --> 00:18:24.430
life for Adrian Prout appeared to continue unaffected. Debbie Garlick
292
00:18:24.490 --> 00:18:26.670
encountered him in a local pub.
293
00:18:27.880 --> 00:18:31.180
I was with my friend, and Adrian walked in with
294
00:18:32.200 --> 00:18:35.980
somebody we knew. If he was in the pub by himself,
295
00:18:36.000 --> 00:18:38.180
we wouldn't have had a conversation with him, but because
296
00:18:38.220 --> 00:18:40.140
he was with people that we knew really, really well,
297
00:18:40.660 --> 00:18:42.220
and sometimes people would come back to my house for
298
00:18:42.240 --> 00:18:44.079
a drink with the pub closed and everything else, so
299
00:18:44.099 --> 00:18:48.269
that's what we did. As we walked out, the landlord
300
00:18:48.309 --> 00:18:50.589
just said, be careful to me and my friend.
301
00:18:50.609 --> 00:18:54.670
I was like, oh, okay. As soon as we got back,
302
00:18:54.809 --> 00:18:57.750
he said, do you know who I am? And then
303
00:18:57.789 --> 00:18:58.650
he told us the story.
304
00:19:01.029 --> 00:19:04.890
Later that night, Debbie did some research on the man
305
00:19:04.970 --> 00:19:05.890
she'd just met.
306
00:19:06.970 --> 00:19:10.400
We just googled everything then. He was under suspicion of murder.
307
00:19:10.420 --> 00:19:14.400
One of our friends said there's no way that he
308
00:19:14.420 --> 00:19:15.859
would have done anything like that.
309
00:19:16.259 --> 00:19:16.619
No way.
310
00:19:17.539 --> 00:19:18.619
Everyone just thought she'd disappeared.
311
00:19:20.859 --> 00:19:24.619
The police disagreed, and on the 4th of January 2008,
312
00:19:24.619 --> 00:19:31.349
they publicly announced their belief that Kate was dead. Two
313
00:19:31.410 --> 00:19:35.529
weeks later, Adrian Prout was arrested for the second time.
314
00:19:36.009 --> 00:19:40.029
They're hoping that he's going to confess to doing what
315
00:19:40.049 --> 00:19:40.730
they think he's done.
316
00:19:42.809 --> 00:19:44.410
There was no confession.
317
00:19:45.210 --> 00:19:48.349
Adrian Prout maintained that Kate had left of her own
318
00:19:48.410 --> 00:19:51.490
accord with the intention of stitching him up.
319
00:19:52.710 --> 00:19:56.299
There is no firm evidence. It is all circumstantial. So
320
00:19:56.339 --> 00:19:58.099
he'd have to go out on police bail. You can't
321
00:19:58.119 --> 00:20:02.799
just hold someone or charge someone without evidence. That's when
322
00:20:03.059 --> 00:20:08.819
a challenging, difficult and protracted police investigation takes place.
323
00:20:10.069 --> 00:20:11.369
And there is no easy answer to that.
324
00:20:13.910 --> 00:20:17.789
Investigators began focusing on proof of life.
325
00:20:18.549 --> 00:20:22.740
It's a common phrase within policing and legal terms. Ultimately,
326
00:20:22.880 --> 00:20:26.960
it's about establishing that somebody lives their life in a
327
00:20:27.019 --> 00:20:32.180
certain way, interacting with banks, financial institutions, friends and family, etc.
328
00:20:33.000 --> 00:20:36.269
And in a moment in time, it all stops. There's
329
00:20:36.390 --> 00:20:42.000
no more interaction. Now, that's unusual. The only reasonable conclusion
330
00:20:42.039 --> 00:20:44.680
that you can reach is that person is no longer alive.
331
00:20:48.529 --> 00:20:51.910
The police began the process of proving not only that
332
00:20:51.990 --> 00:20:58.750
Kate Prout was dead, but that she'd been murdered. In May,
333
00:20:58.990 --> 00:21:03.230
Debbie Garlick had another chance meeting with Prout in the pub.
334
00:21:04.490 --> 00:21:06.650
By the next morning, he'd put a note through my
335
00:21:06.670 --> 00:21:08.940
letterbox saying, with his telephone number on and said, if
336
00:21:08.980 --> 00:21:12.980
you want, give me a call. We went out the
337
00:21:13.019 --> 00:21:16.819
following day and took a picnic, and then he said
338
00:21:16.859 --> 00:21:18.720
that he wouldn't have a relationship with anybody because it
339
00:21:18.759 --> 00:21:19.559
wasn't the right time.
340
00:21:21.349 --> 00:21:24.970
But two days later, Debbie heard from him again.
341
00:21:24.990 --> 00:21:27.470
He phoned me, and from the Wednesday onwards, we just
342
00:21:27.490 --> 00:21:29.049
started our relationship full on from there.
343
00:21:31.230 --> 00:21:34.759
It had been six months since his wife disappeared, but
344
00:21:34.839 --> 00:21:40.279
Prout had a seemingly plausible explanation for her prolonged absence.
345
00:21:40.880 --> 00:21:44.420
She had gone off before and gone.
346
00:21:44.059 --> 00:21:47.319
On holiday with one of her sisters or something, or sister-in-law,
347
00:21:47.759 --> 00:21:50.599
and hadn't told him then where she was going. So
348
00:21:50.660 --> 00:21:52.700
he just thought that they were hiding her away. He
349
00:21:53.599 --> 00:21:56.180
didn't want to be part of his life. It wasn't
350
00:21:56.200 --> 00:21:58.640
a big thing about where she was, if you get
351
00:21:58.680 --> 00:21:59.059
what I mean.
352
00:22:01.390 --> 00:22:06.670
As part of the ongoing investigation into Kate's disappearance, detectives
353
00:22:06.710 --> 00:22:10.450
had discovered she kept a diary. This told a very
354
00:22:10.599 --> 00:22:14.480
different story to the one that Adrian Prout was spinning.
355
00:22:14.819 --> 00:22:18.019
She explains on over a number of entries over a
356
00:22:18.059 --> 00:22:20.960
period of weeks and months what's been happening in her life,
357
00:22:20.980 --> 00:22:24.819
the tension with Adrian, the fact that she's worried and concerned.
358
00:22:24.839 --> 00:22:30.140
There are constant references to her being frightened of Adrian Prout,
359
00:22:31.000 --> 00:22:33.720
references to the fact that he lost it with me.
360
00:22:34.920 --> 00:22:38.519
If you like, it's the clearest evidence so far of
361
00:22:38.559 --> 00:22:43.680
the true nature of the marriage between Adrian and Kate Prout.
362
00:22:45.369 --> 00:22:48.490
All of that is good evidence, as if it's almost
363
00:22:48.549 --> 00:22:51.049
like Kate's voice. That's the importance of it. This is
364
00:22:51.109 --> 00:22:52.630
Kate talking through her diary.
365
00:22:55.029 --> 00:22:59.529
Despite the mounting evidence suggesting Prout was weaving a web
366
00:22:59.569 --> 00:23:04.339
of lies, in January 2009, he was told he was
367
00:23:04.390 --> 00:23:07.480
no longer a suspect and released from bail.
368
00:23:08.359 --> 00:23:10.019
That was the news that we obviously were hoping for.
369
00:23:10.900 --> 00:23:12.920
And that's when we all moved up to the farm together.
370
00:23:15.200 --> 00:23:19.089
The cloud of suspicion appeared to have lifted. Debbie and
371
00:23:19.170 --> 00:23:22.970
her two children moved into Redhill Farm with Prout.
372
00:23:24.079 --> 00:23:26.339
They've reached a stage where we're told him he's no
373
00:23:26.359 --> 00:23:28.519
longer a suspect. I suspect that was to try and
374
00:23:28.619 --> 00:23:31.930
trigger some conversation with friends and family of him. He
375
00:23:31.970 --> 00:23:34.809
might not confess it to the police, but he might
376
00:23:34.849 --> 00:23:36.990
confess it to a good mate, or he might confess
377
00:23:37.029 --> 00:23:38.069
it to Debbie Garlick.
378
00:23:39.910 --> 00:23:43.480
I think Prout feels incredibly victorious at this point in time.
379
00:23:43.700 --> 00:23:46.819
He feels like he has very successfully pulled the wool
380
00:23:47.019 --> 00:23:49.619
over everybody's eyes, and this is a problem that has
381
00:23:49.660 --> 00:23:50.460
just gone away.
382
00:23:52.359 --> 00:23:55.720
In the background, that investigation is continuing and they've gone
383
00:23:55.759 --> 00:23:58.200
to the Crown Prosecution Service around charging.
384
00:24:01.200 --> 00:24:04.720
A month after moving in together, the couple's world was
385
00:24:04.809 --> 00:24:09.069
turned upside down. On the 10th of March, Debbie was
386
00:24:09.170 --> 00:24:11.109
home alone with her children.
387
00:24:11.750 --> 00:24:15.589
We were sleeping bad and we just heard shouting and
388
00:24:16.690 --> 00:24:18.190
so we all just got out and wondered what the
389
00:24:18.210 --> 00:24:20.589
hell was going on and we walked into all these
390
00:24:20.710 --> 00:24:21.470
police in the house.
391
00:24:23.900 --> 00:24:27.609
They asked me not to phone Adrian, but I did.
392
00:24:29.829 --> 00:24:33.809
When Prout returned home, he didn't seem concerned by the
393
00:24:34.130 --> 00:24:35.289
unfolding events.
394
00:24:35.930 --> 00:24:38.549
I think he said something like, here we go again, lads,
395
00:24:38.630 --> 00:24:42.890
or something. And then they charged him with murder in
396
00:24:42.910 --> 00:24:46.660
front of us all and handcuffed him and took him away.
397
00:24:48.880 --> 00:24:51.799
We thought they must have found something then. They must
398
00:24:51.819 --> 00:24:54.619
have found something for him to be charged with murder.
399
00:24:57.359 --> 00:25:00.869
Debbie was left assuming that Kate's body had been found,
400
00:25:01.640 --> 00:25:02.589
but she was wrong.
401
00:25:04.029 --> 00:25:06.950
The police have been really active in progressing the inquiries,
402
00:25:06.990 --> 00:25:09.529
and they've gone to the Crown Prosecution Service, so they
403
00:25:09.549 --> 00:25:12.289
are going to be explaining what they've got, the circumstantial evidence,
404
00:25:12.410 --> 00:25:15.049
and they would be having to seek a decision to
405
00:25:15.130 --> 00:25:18.859
charge him. Once you've reached that stage... There wouldn't be
406
00:25:18.900 --> 00:25:21.380
a need for any continuation of bail or anything of
407
00:25:21.420 --> 00:25:21.900
that nature.
408
00:25:21.940 --> 00:25:22.519
He's coming in.
409
00:25:25.000 --> 00:25:29.210
Adrian Prout appeared later that day at Cheltenham Crown Court,
410
00:25:29.569 --> 00:25:33.269
charged with the murder of his wife, Kate. After a
411
00:25:33.349 --> 00:25:37.349
month in prison, he was released on bail, awaiting trial.
412
00:25:38.890 --> 00:25:41.009
He was saying, I can't believe I've been in prison
413
00:25:41.049 --> 00:25:43.250
and I can't believe that they thought I've done it.
414
00:25:43.509 --> 00:25:46.730
I'm innocent. So we were all like.
415
00:25:47.529 --> 00:25:50.569
few men with the police thinking that they have to
416
00:25:50.609 --> 00:25:53.619
put him in prison for a month for no reason.
417
00:25:56.099 --> 00:26:00.319
Out on bail, life returned to normality, and the couple
418
00:26:00.400 --> 00:26:05.859
celebrated some happy news. Debbie and Prout were engaged to
419
00:26:05.900 --> 00:26:06.359
be married.
420
00:26:06.380 --> 00:26:10.220
I think a few people had made a comment thinking
421
00:26:11.799 --> 00:26:14.839
maybe that was a wrong decision that we made, especially
422
00:26:14.859 --> 00:26:18.180
for Adrian's part because, He's still got a wife, really.
423
00:26:20.009 --> 00:26:23.880
We see this similar pattern happening again, the accelerated pace
424
00:26:24.009 --> 00:26:27.869
of a relationship, the need for that early commitment. And
425
00:26:28.009 --> 00:26:31.730
this is something that happens frequently with men like Proud.
426
00:26:33.690 --> 00:26:35.569
We had the engagement party and found out I was
427
00:26:35.609 --> 00:26:39.829
pregnant with my daughter, which was a nice surprise. And
428
00:26:39.849 --> 00:26:42.470
then we found out the court case was going to
429
00:26:42.509 --> 00:26:45.789
be January the 11th, the same day that she was due.
430
00:26:48.349 --> 00:26:51.789
Debbie was induced a week early so that the birth
431
00:26:51.829 --> 00:26:55.289
of their daughter wouldn't coincide with the trial.
432
00:26:56.599 --> 00:27:00.319
He loved having a baby, yeah. He fed her, changed her,
433
00:27:01.559 --> 00:27:02.380
got up in the night.
434
00:27:03.579 --> 00:27:06.599
He was a hands-on dad. And then she was a
435
00:27:06.619 --> 00:27:08.259
week old when the court case started.
436
00:27:08.279 --> 00:27:14.509
The evidence presented to the jury over the course of
437
00:27:14.609 --> 00:27:17.630
three weeks was entirely circumstantial.
438
00:27:18.730 --> 00:27:19.789
There is no forensic evidence.
439
00:27:20.410 --> 00:27:27.279
There is nothing to suggest, more importantly, physically, if you like, evidentially, forensically,
440
00:27:27.359 --> 00:27:29.059
that Kate has been killed.
441
00:27:29.660 --> 00:27:30.920
That's why it took so long.
442
00:27:31.140 --> 00:27:34.119
That's why this proof of life as the expression, which
443
00:27:34.200 --> 00:27:36.259
is a bit of a nuance, really, because you're proving
444
00:27:36.279 --> 00:27:38.509
that someone's died rather than that they're alive.
445
00:27:39.289 --> 00:27:40.430
That's why it's so important.
446
00:27:42.509 --> 00:27:45.329
I didn't go to court for the first three weeks, but.
447
00:27:45.789 --> 00:27:47.990
I went every day for the fourth week because Adrian
448
00:27:48.029 --> 00:27:51.789
was convinced he'd be found not guilty. So he wanted
449
00:27:51.829 --> 00:27:53.930
us to walk out the court together to move on
450
00:27:53.970 --> 00:27:54.849
with the rest of our lives.
451
00:27:56.809 --> 00:28:00.599
Unusually, in this case, there were only 11 members of
452
00:28:00.640 --> 00:28:04.460
the jury and they retired to consider their verdict.
453
00:28:05.359 --> 00:28:07.259
And then rumours were going around that it was nine
454
00:28:07.319 --> 00:28:10.700
people together and two people weren't. And a commembrant said
455
00:28:10.720 --> 00:28:12.579
to me, oh, I can't believe two people think that
456
00:28:12.619 --> 00:28:16.730
I've done it. So he's thinking now that nine people
457
00:28:16.769 --> 00:28:19.549
think he's innocent and two people think he's guilty.
458
00:28:21.390 --> 00:28:25.190
The jury were clear ultimately that Kate was alive on
459
00:28:25.210 --> 00:28:29.640
the 5th of November and within five days later, she
460
00:28:29.680 --> 00:28:30.380
wasn't alive.
461
00:28:31.880 --> 00:28:34.359
Adrian could only have been the person that killed her ultimately.
462
00:28:34.720 --> 00:28:35.559
So he had all of.
463
00:28:35.559 --> 00:28:38.819
The motivation there, sure that she wasn't around because she
464
00:28:38.880 --> 00:28:41.400
wasn't going to get that money. That's what's presented to
465
00:28:41.440 --> 00:28:44.690
the jury. That's what they thought, well, actually, there's only
466
00:28:44.750 --> 00:28:46.630
one conclusion we can reasonably make here.
467
00:28:49.769 --> 00:28:53.819
The verdict came that he was guilty. I just burst
468
00:28:53.880 --> 00:28:58.000
into tears. Of course, he goes straight to prison then,
469
00:28:58.960 --> 00:29:01.880
but we went home without him that day, which is
470
00:29:01.900 --> 00:29:03.740
really hard, and our baby was four weeks old.
471
00:29:07.710 --> 00:29:11.670
Having never believed that he would be found guilty, Proud's
472
00:29:11.710 --> 00:29:14.500
family had to face a harsh reality.
473
00:29:15.500 --> 00:29:18.579
I went down to the post office to get every
474
00:29:18.599 --> 00:29:21.740
single paper that.
475
00:29:20.519 --> 00:29:21.059
I could get.
476
00:29:21.720 --> 00:29:25.309
All the papers were killer Adrian Pratt, Adrian Pratt's killed
477
00:29:25.329 --> 00:29:29.309
his wife, no body, and even the chap who owned
478
00:29:29.329 --> 00:29:31.930
the shop at the precise time came out and he
479
00:29:31.970 --> 00:29:33.950
put his arms around me and went, it's so wrong,
480
00:29:34.069 --> 00:29:34.779
what's happened to him?
481
00:29:35.890 --> 00:29:37.289
He said, you don't know. You'll get him out.' Because
482
00:29:37.309 --> 00:29:39.700
that's what everyone was like. It wasn't just me. It
483
00:29:39.740 --> 00:29:40.380
was everybody.
484
00:29:43.119 --> 00:29:47.400
On the 8th of February, 2010, Prout was sentenced to
485
00:29:47.440 --> 00:29:51.579
a minimum of 18 years in prison, but the convicted
486
00:29:51.680 --> 00:29:54.160
murderer maintained his innocence.
487
00:29:54.559 --> 00:29:56.519
Ultimately, what you've got is you've got a guy that
488
00:29:56.559 --> 00:29:59.440
was charged with murder, been convicted, and he's gone to prison.
489
00:30:00.170 --> 00:30:03.710
The missing piece of that jigsaw is we've still got
490
00:30:04.509 --> 00:30:07.799
a missing body somewhere. We still think that Kate is
491
00:30:08.000 --> 00:30:11.440
out there somewhere and we want to find her ultimately.
492
00:30:11.480 --> 00:30:14.200
So that will always remain open. But you're gonna need
493
00:30:14.240 --> 00:30:16.319
some information before you can do anything else.
494
00:30:18.480 --> 00:30:20.940
I did have doubts then. I went to see him.
495
00:30:20.960 --> 00:30:23.319
I asked him to swear on our daughter's life that
496
00:30:23.359 --> 00:30:25.819
if he has not killed Kate and he swore on
497
00:30:25.859 --> 00:30:28.000
her life and said he hasn't killed her. And then
498
00:30:28.059 --> 00:30:32.390
I got upset then because I thought, that was bad
499
00:30:32.410 --> 00:30:34.710
for me to have doubt that he might have done something.
500
00:30:35.289 --> 00:30:37.380
He might have killed her, so I felt really bad
501
00:30:37.410 --> 00:30:38.170
in myself then.
502
00:30:41.059 --> 00:30:44.299
Prout knows exactly what buttons to push with Debbie. He
503
00:30:44.319 --> 00:30:46.779
knows exactly the kind of things to say to make
504
00:30:46.880 --> 00:30:49.920
her feel bad for even raising the question. So I
505
00:30:49.920 --> 00:30:52.000
think that shows how manipulative he really is.
506
00:30:55.480 --> 00:30:59.720
Believing an innocent man had been jailed Prout's supporters were
507
00:30:59.740 --> 00:31:03.500
determined to prove that Kate Prout was alive.
508
00:31:04.180 --> 00:31:05.579
The only thing we could do was to prove he
509
00:31:05.599 --> 00:31:07.700
was innocent, that the crime had not been committed. And
510
00:31:08.019 --> 00:31:10.880
then obviously we started searching for Kate. We put out
511
00:31:10.900 --> 00:31:14.579
a reward that if anyone had any information on the
512
00:31:14.720 --> 00:31:18.319
whereabouts of Kate Prout, then obviously they would claim the reward.
513
00:31:18.759 --> 00:31:21.619
And that's when it all started to begin, the campaign
514
00:31:21.640 --> 00:31:22.440
to get him out of prison.
515
00:31:24.819 --> 00:31:29.859
Debbie's campaign caught the attention of veteran reporter Tom Hendry.
516
00:31:30.420 --> 00:31:33.559
Here was a woman who still believed, even though he
517
00:31:33.579 --> 00:31:36.920
was in jail, that he was innocent, and she launched
518
00:31:37.420 --> 00:31:42.049
a huge crusade to try and find Kate. And as
519
00:31:42.109 --> 00:31:46.049
a result, I realized there was potential for a really
520
00:31:46.130 --> 00:31:46.769
great story.
521
00:31:49.579 --> 00:31:54.039
Tom became Debbie's media advisor and assisted with the appeal
522
00:31:54.059 --> 00:31:57.000
for information on Kate's true whereabouts.
523
00:31:57.839 --> 00:32:01.230
We had a number of sightings. One was in Cork,
524
00:32:01.450 --> 00:32:02.349
in Southern Ireland.
525
00:32:03.809 --> 00:32:04.930
Somebody got in touch.
526
00:32:05.069 --> 00:32:07.490
They said it looked like Kate, and she was a tutor,
527
00:32:07.970 --> 00:32:09.109
and Kate was a teacher.
528
00:32:10.410 --> 00:32:11.710
We actually thought we'd got her.
529
00:32:12.769 --> 00:32:15.730
We went over to Ireland. The news agency sent a photographer.
530
00:32:16.269 --> 00:32:19.380
I didn't go personally. And Debbie was joking, you know,
531
00:32:19.480 --> 00:32:23.380
as to if Kate had turned up, there would have
532
00:32:23.400 --> 00:32:25.920
been a film made, and who would have played her?
533
00:32:28.059 --> 00:32:32.000
Every single member of Adrian's family and my family came up,
534
00:32:32.619 --> 00:32:35.640
and we waited for the telephone call to say that
535
00:32:35.759 --> 00:32:37.799
it was Kate, but the telephone call come through to
536
00:32:37.839 --> 00:32:39.420
say that it obviously wasn't Kate.
537
00:32:39.819 --> 00:32:41.339
So we were all devastated about that.
538
00:32:41.359 --> 00:32:45.940
And then we had a sighting in Scarborough, and that
539
00:32:45.960 --> 00:32:49.059
wasn't her either. We did articles on the news, we
540
00:32:49.099 --> 00:32:52.359
did articles in the paper for any information, and the
541
00:32:52.400 --> 00:32:54.700
website to do with the miscarriage of justice, they were
542
00:32:54.740 --> 00:32:55.880
looking into that for us.
543
00:32:58.420 --> 00:33:01.140
Prout is going along with this, but the outcome that
544
00:33:01.180 --> 00:33:03.619
he wants is to get out of prison, and he
545
00:33:03.660 --> 00:33:06.700
will be using people to his advantage. He won't be
546
00:33:06.720 --> 00:33:09.720
feeling bad about it. He doesn't see his family and
547
00:33:09.759 --> 00:33:12.619
friends in the way that most people do. Other people
548
00:33:12.680 --> 00:33:15.049
exist in terms of what they can do for him.
549
00:33:15.369 --> 00:33:18.009
So he was simply surrounded by useful people at this
550
00:33:18.069 --> 00:33:18.670
point in time.
551
00:33:20.950 --> 00:33:24.589
Desperate to prove that there had been a miscarriage of justice,
552
00:33:24.990 --> 00:33:29.609
Prout's supporters were running out of options until journalist Tom
553
00:33:29.670 --> 00:33:32.609
Hendry had an unconventional idea.
554
00:33:33.710 --> 00:33:35.829
It had gone on for so long, they thought, if
555
00:33:35.849 --> 00:33:39.740
this guy Prout took a lie detector test, That would prove, maybe,
556
00:33:40.119 --> 00:33:42.200
once and for all, if he was telling the truth
557
00:33:42.380 --> 00:33:44.539
or not. And Debbie agreed.
558
00:33:46.200 --> 00:33:48.059
I was like, couldn't wait for the headline to be,
559
00:33:48.119 --> 00:33:51.349
Adrian Pratt is innocent, he's just passed the lie detector test.
560
00:33:53.190 --> 00:33:56.849
Debbie and Tom visited Pratt in Bristol Prison.
561
00:33:57.269 --> 00:33:59.430
We asked Adrian if he'd do a lie detector test,
562
00:33:59.529 --> 00:34:00.930
and Adrian agreed straight away.
563
00:34:00.950 --> 00:34:06.230
I didn't have any suspicions about him. He was very calm,
564
00:34:06.369 --> 00:34:10.860
very controlled. And therefore, you know, I didn't smell any
565
00:34:11.079 --> 00:34:12.260
kind of rat at all.
566
00:34:13.980 --> 00:34:19.070
Don Cargill, one of the UK's leading polygraph experts, arranged
567
00:34:19.130 --> 00:34:22.010
to conduct a test on Adrian in prison.
568
00:34:22.590 --> 00:34:25.630
Bear in mind, this Adrian who was wanting the test,
569
00:34:26.010 --> 00:34:28.630
I thought he would have, great, this is my day of,
570
00:34:28.769 --> 00:34:31.230
you know, the truthful out, and I'll be proven to
571
00:34:31.269 --> 00:34:34.690
be a non-killer and wrongly convicted. But the reality was,
572
00:34:35.070 --> 00:34:37.820
it was a frozen reaction. He didn't really want to
573
00:34:37.860 --> 00:34:41.070
do this, which really, that did take me by surprise.
574
00:34:43.309 --> 00:34:45.989
I left him alone for about 20 minutes, went back,
575
00:34:46.170 --> 00:34:48.909
and he said, I suppose I'd better do it. I
576
00:34:48.949 --> 00:34:53.409
suppose I'd better do it for Debbie's sake. And I said, no, no, no, no, no.
577
00:34:53.590 --> 00:34:54.789
Do it for your own sake.
578
00:34:56.730 --> 00:35:00.510
The questions put to Adrian Prout during the test were
579
00:35:00.570 --> 00:35:01.840
very straightforward.
580
00:35:02.280 --> 00:35:05.119
Did he kill his wife, Kate Prout? Did he pay
581
00:35:05.159 --> 00:35:07.130
someone else to do it? And did he know where
582
00:35:07.150 --> 00:35:09.329
the body was? He said no to all three questions.
583
00:35:10.010 --> 00:35:12.369
So when we did the test three times, I looked
584
00:35:12.429 --> 00:35:15.280
at the results and quite clearly he had murdered his wife.
585
00:35:15.469 --> 00:35:17.300
And I did say to him, I'm sorry, but I'm
586
00:35:17.320 --> 00:35:22.340
looking at a murderer. And he just went, well, are
587
00:35:22.360 --> 00:35:26.440
you saying my test is wrong? And he said, no,
588
00:35:27.619 --> 00:35:28.519
your test is not wrong.
589
00:35:31.559 --> 00:35:35.820
Don Cargill phoned me up. And just said, Debbie, you're
590
00:35:35.860 --> 00:35:39.800
engaged to a murderer. And that was Don's words.
591
00:35:43.239 --> 00:35:44.539
It was just so emotional.
592
00:35:45.099 --> 00:35:48.139
I didn't want to believe it. And of course, my
593
00:35:48.179 --> 00:35:50.550
plans have all gone out the window now. Because obviously
594
00:35:50.570 --> 00:35:53.010
the plan was it was going to pass. The plan
595
00:35:53.030 --> 00:35:55.289
was we were going to go to the papers. Agent
596
00:35:55.309 --> 00:35:59.869
Pranks passed. But everything stopped. There was no further forward now.
597
00:36:01.869 --> 00:36:06.219
Maybe he was so arrogant, proud, that he thought he
598
00:36:06.239 --> 00:36:09.099
could beat this test, and clearly he couldn't.
599
00:36:11.300 --> 00:36:14.699
My sister said to me that if he'd done it,
600
00:36:14.719 --> 00:36:17.369
you'd have gone to the papers, you'd have believed it,
601
00:36:17.869 --> 00:36:20.150
so really you should believe in it, that he's failed it,
602
00:36:20.170 --> 00:36:22.929
that he has done it, he is a murderer, because
603
00:36:23.670 --> 00:36:25.090
you can't believe one way and not the other.
604
00:36:28.170 --> 00:36:31.949
When Debbie visited Prout, he was adamant that the polygraph
605
00:36:31.969 --> 00:36:34.710
had been rigged and professed his innocence.
606
00:36:35.590 --> 00:36:40.059
Here, he brings back that victim persona. Poor me. Everybody's
607
00:36:40.099 --> 00:36:42.079
against me. Everybody's out to get me.
608
00:36:43.820 --> 00:36:46.519
For the next couple of months, it was strained between
609
00:36:46.579 --> 00:36:50.699
us both. The phone calls were strained. I think he
610
00:36:50.739 --> 00:36:54.929
knew that failing that, however much he tried to deny it,
611
00:36:55.610 --> 00:36:56.849
had changed all our minds.
612
00:36:59.170 --> 00:37:01.210
My thoughts now have gone to Kate's family.
613
00:37:02.349 --> 00:37:05.030
So we're protesting his innocence, and these poor people now
614
00:37:05.210 --> 00:37:09.300
have lost Kate. And for the last year, I've never
615
00:37:09.340 --> 00:37:13.480
thought about their feelings. So I wanted to find out
616
00:37:13.500 --> 00:37:18.219
the truth for their sake and for Kate's sake. That
617
00:37:18.260 --> 00:37:22.800
was my plan now. The plan had changed. I just
618
00:37:22.860 --> 00:37:24.239
knew we would get to the bottom of it, but
619
00:37:24.300 --> 00:37:24.980
I didn't know when.
620
00:37:27.320 --> 00:37:32.920
In November 2011, three months after the failed polygraph test,
621
00:37:33.420 --> 00:37:37.969
Debbie visited Adrian Prout, determined to get an answer once
622
00:37:38.329 --> 00:37:38.949
and for all.
623
00:37:39.670 --> 00:37:42.309
I went there with my sister, and I did say
624
00:37:42.489 --> 00:37:45.449
that I'd stick by him, but then I didn't always
625
00:37:45.530 --> 00:37:48.239
think I'd get the answer that I did. I said,
626
00:37:49.420 --> 00:37:52.619
if you have killed Kate, I will stand by you,
627
00:37:52.639 --> 00:37:54.300
but you need to tell me the truth so we
628
00:37:54.320 --> 00:37:57.340
can give Kate a proper funeral. and he just said,
629
00:37:57.460 --> 00:38:00.239
she's had one. Well, I knew then he'd killed her.
630
00:38:03.889 --> 00:38:06.210
I just, I don't think me and my sister knew
631
00:38:06.230 --> 00:38:07.989
what to say. We just sat there because I think we,
632
00:38:08.510 --> 00:38:09.849
to be perfectly honest, I just thought I was going
633
00:38:09.869 --> 00:38:10.469
to be sick.
634
00:38:12.969 --> 00:38:17.570
Now the floodgates had finally been opened, Prout did not
635
00:38:17.670 --> 00:38:18.309
hold back.
636
00:38:19.210 --> 00:38:23.670
He said that they argued and she upped the money
637
00:38:23.690 --> 00:38:28.289
that she wanted. And they started arguing and he strangled her.
638
00:38:30.289 --> 00:38:32.929
He went to the pub and then got back and
639
00:38:33.010 --> 00:38:34.869
buried her in the woods. He said he dug a
640
00:38:34.909 --> 00:38:37.210
hole by hand and he had a shoot the next
641
00:38:37.250 --> 00:38:40.659
day and carried on as normal. And the police never
642
00:38:40.679 --> 00:38:41.940
found one bit of evidence of that.
643
00:38:47.400 --> 00:38:50.559
One of the detectives came in and said, we've just
644
00:38:50.619 --> 00:38:54.539
had Adrian's girlfriend come to the police station and say...
645
00:38:54.889 --> 00:39:00.340
that Adrian has confessed that he's killed Kate Pratt. There's
646
00:39:00.360 --> 00:39:03.320
the potential that we've got that final piece of the jigsaw.
647
00:39:03.780 --> 00:39:06.539
So within 24 hours, we've got police officers at the
648
00:39:06.579 --> 00:39:09.639
prison talking to him. And he may well have said, no,
649
00:39:10.010 --> 00:39:12.429
I didn't say that, made it all up, but he didn't.
650
00:39:13.989 --> 00:39:16.309
This morning, I'm going to read you a prepared statement
651
00:39:16.369 --> 00:39:17.869
in relation to why we are here.
652
00:39:19.710 --> 00:39:20.389
The statement goes.
653
00:39:20.909 --> 00:39:24.769
Yesterday morning, we received some new and significant information in
654
00:39:24.789 --> 00:39:26.469
relation to the murder of Kate Prout.
655
00:39:28.940 --> 00:39:32.860
Prout agreed to show police where he'd buried his wife.
656
00:39:33.719 --> 00:39:37.420
From his prison cell, handcuffed to a policeman, the convicted
657
00:39:37.480 --> 00:39:41.519
killer and now confessed murderer, Adrian Prout, returns to the
658
00:39:41.559 --> 00:39:42.969
farm where he committed his crime.
659
00:39:44.889 --> 00:39:47.429
He took us to a location on a hill, which
660
00:39:47.489 --> 00:39:50.320
was quite an extensive piece of woodland, probably a bit
661
00:39:50.340 --> 00:39:53.260
bigger than a football pitch. There was no X marks
662
00:39:53.300 --> 00:39:57.760
to spot, for sure. So where he'd initially pointed out,
663
00:39:58.079 --> 00:40:03.039
we dug, and unsuccessfully, so we couldn't find Kate. And
664
00:40:03.079 --> 00:40:06.280
what we brought in then were Godiva dogs, so sniffing
665
00:40:06.300 --> 00:40:08.179
dogs to see if we could find a body, and
666
00:40:08.219 --> 00:40:11.139
they did the usual dog thing of sniffing places, and
667
00:40:11.880 --> 00:40:15.139
that was unsuccessful. And then we used ground penetrating radar
668
00:40:15.179 --> 00:40:19.300
as well. And that didn't help either. And day one,
669
00:40:19.480 --> 00:40:24.659
day two, after that, could only be described that initial excitement, really,
670
00:40:24.679 --> 00:40:26.579
that actually we might solve this and we could do
671
00:40:26.619 --> 00:40:29.780
this really quickly now and move it on, that wasn't happening.
672
00:40:31.780 --> 00:40:35.079
The media had taken over the chocolate box village of
673
00:40:35.139 --> 00:40:38.599
Red Marley and expectations were high.
674
00:40:39.000 --> 00:40:43.030
Pressure's massive. The pressure was huge, waiting for something to happen.
675
00:40:45.010 --> 00:40:49.909
Finally, on day four, the search team made the grim discovery.
676
00:40:50.829 --> 00:40:54.469
At 1 o'clock this afternoon, we have found human remains
677
00:40:54.650 --> 00:40:58.170
close to the location Adrian Prout identified as the place
678
00:40:58.230 --> 00:40:59.070
he buried his wife.
679
00:41:02.090 --> 00:41:05.320
I just cried for her family, and it must have
680
00:41:05.340 --> 00:41:09.760
been horrendous for them. I thought they were hiding her,
681
00:41:09.800 --> 00:41:12.760
so I thought they knew where she was, but for them...
682
00:41:13.550 --> 00:41:15.179
They knew that she was dead.
683
00:41:14.900 --> 00:41:16.840
Because she would have been in contact with them.
684
00:41:17.860 --> 00:41:20.340
They had to live all that time knowing that she's
685
00:41:20.380 --> 00:41:23.460
just been buried somewhere and concealed and would they ever
686
00:41:23.500 --> 00:41:24.099
get her back?
687
00:41:24.539 --> 00:41:25.820
But when I say it, I don't think they thought
688
00:41:25.840 --> 00:41:26.300
they would.
689
00:41:30.710 --> 00:41:34.150
Kate's family were finally able to lay her to rest
690
00:41:34.510 --> 00:41:37.550
in January 2012, more than four years after she'd been killed.
691
00:41:41.179 --> 00:41:43.860
That information came from Debbie at that moment in time.
692
00:41:44.460 --> 00:41:48.570
If it hadn't then, Adrian may well have served his sentence,
693
00:41:49.090 --> 00:41:51.909
life moves on. It may never have come out.
694
00:41:54.469 --> 00:42:01.659
Adrian Prout will be eligible to apply for parole in 2028.
695
00:42:01.659 --> 00:42:05.360
As an individual, I struggle with the concept of being
696
00:42:05.400 --> 00:42:07.860
able to harm someone in the way that he has,
697
00:42:08.480 --> 00:42:10.869
but not just to do that. but to harm so
698
00:42:10.929 --> 00:42:14.429
many other people around him as a consequence. That's not
699
00:42:14.530 --> 00:42:15.789
normal human behavior.
700
00:42:17.650 --> 00:42:21.070
Everybody was fooled by him. Lie detector test proved that
701
00:42:21.550 --> 00:42:24.929
I was among them, but he was a very convincing liar.
702
00:42:27.610 --> 00:42:32.070
Scars remain for those who were burned by Prout's lies.
703
00:42:32.469 --> 00:42:35.150
He took away the family that we all were going
704
00:42:35.170 --> 00:42:35.869
to have together.
705
00:42:38.070 --> 00:42:40.320
You don't expect things like that to happen to your family.
706
00:42:43.239 --> 00:42:48.039
My daughter, I think that's the hardest part because she's
707
00:42:48.380 --> 00:42:50.000
always had to be grown up knowing that her dad's
708
00:42:50.039 --> 00:42:52.889
in prison and he's a murderer.
709
00:42:58.750 --> 00:43:03.590
Prout was a master manipulator whose selfishness knew no limits.
710
00:43:04.360 --> 00:43:07.280
He killed his wife just to avoid having to give
711
00:43:07.340 --> 00:43:11.840
her what was rightfully hers. Then he played the jilted
712
00:43:11.940 --> 00:43:15.909
husband and cruelly pulled others into his web of lies.
713
00:43:16.769 --> 00:43:20.489
He never had a thought for anyone but himself, making
714
00:43:20.650 --> 00:43:24.320
Adrian Prout one of Britain's most evil killers.