My uncle found me to say that have I seen Leslie and the kids and I said no why because she’s gone missing I said to him I’m going to find a place in combo Leslie Ford and four of her children Sarah Jane and Marie Steven and Craig haven’t been seen or heard from for several days when police take report of a missing person they have to assess the risk and they’ll do that by ranking it as either low medium or high risk police have to consider the various different scenarios one was that Leslie was well somewhere and she’ taken her and her
Children there voluntary another that harm had come to them there’s a lot of work that’s done behind the scene to try and identify where they have gone also from a forensic perspective if they are not known on fingerprints and DNA and not known on any databases it’s important for us to get samples if the worst case scenario they are found dead and decomposed then we’re able to identify through fingerprints and DNA it’s really important important to act fast right from the start because there may be crucial evidence that will
Get lost really quickly what they’re trying to do is assess is this person at risk they’ll be looking at things like has person gotone missing before what are the circumstances of a relationship they’re in um have they been a victim of any violence or any threats mom of six Leslie Ford lives with her second husband Lee in the quiet Hamlet of car key she wanted a football team I think her kids we always thought that she was going to beat mcgran mcgran actually had 19 children so it was a big family she was a great mom she used to
Make it fun all the time with her kids she loved her kids to bits they seemed quite gentle and they seem to have fun with him they would be in the garden playing basketball and they’d be laughing and joking King normal procedure would be the uniform officers would go to Leslie’s home address they would need to investigate that they would need to understand particularly from Lee well where is llie is she missing where is she if if if you know where she is when did you last see her Etc officers find Lee and the two
Youngest children at the family home when police officers attend a scene they you tend to to get a bit of a feel about what might or might not have happened there was a signs of a disturbance was the signs of items that probably are in the wrong place so for example a kitchen knife is in the bedroom sometimes the scenes are cleaned up and therefore there’s very little forensic evidence there to be able to link a crime there’s nothing within the house to raise the suspicions that any harm come to the family police ask Lee where his wife and
Four older children are Lee Ford gave them a story that he and Leslie had had an argument and she left Lee tells police the couple had a fight about money he said that she went off in a posh car with a guy with the four kids he claims Leslie left around a month ago and he hasn’t heard from her or the children since and it seemed quite a plausible story he took school books for the children back to the school saying that they weren’t coming back he gave some Christmas presents to a neighbor to look after just in case the children came
Back but the team needs evidence the family are alive and well quite often on a missing person inquiry they’ll use licensed search offices to search areas where the victim was last seen we search large areas looking for Clues police will now be looking for what we call signs of life proof that they’re still alive that they’re still well when were they last seen who saw them they would be looking for cash withdrawals from Leslie has she been using her bank cards were her or Sarah Jane using their mobile phones and
the family were last seen alive on the 31st of August the day before a friend sent a text message to 17-year-old Sarah Jane she never replied fears for the family grow I knew that something horrible had happened and I was just hoping it was going to be a dream really there was no sign of life this is the kind of thing that would really really raise the concerns of the police the police would now be starting to wonder whether this was actually a murder investigation what they then have to do is look at well if that’s the case
who is it most likely to have harmed them there’s a say in in Murder investigations to understand how somebody died you have to understand how they lived and that’s because in most murders there’s a link between the suspect and the victim in my heart I knew what had happened cuz she wouldn’t have left them two kids Lea Ford was the number one suspect police in Cornwall fear a missing family has come to harm they can can find no proof of life for Leslie Ford and her four Teenage children Sarah Jane an Marie Steven and Craig
tranta officers had been alerted by Mrs Ford’s concerned brother she was last seen in August and her children hadn’t attended school at all this term Leslie’s husband Lee has told police that she’s left him for another man but they have serious doubts about his account statistics show that in over half cases the suspect is likely to be a partner or ex partner of the victim the information they got from Leslie’s brother the relationship was violent this is the kind of thing that would really really raise the concerns of the
police recently divorced and already a mother of four Leslie met her second husband Lee in their hometown of Telford in 1990 you actually be quite Pleasant and SMY I suppose in some ways acting normal the relationship moves quickly the couple soon welcomed two more children into the family but relatives become increasingly concerned after a while the Dynamics of their relationship started to change and Lee started to become controlling he would decide what she was wearing who she could see she wasn’t allowed to come
and stay with the kids on her own or if she did it would only be a couple of the kids if if anything but there would always be some left with Lee so it was a control thing again it was a bargaining point to make sure that Leslie now would go back Leslie’s ex-husband Michael tells police he’s found it increasingly difficult to see his children since she married Lee I was going around to pick up the children didn’t take long before um he would come on the scene saying they’re not ready they’re not dressed come back in an
hour and then I was told that no they don’t want to see me I asked to speak to Leslie and I was told that she didn’t want to speak to me I just thought that he didn’t like me being on the scene knowing I was the father of the children the kind of behavior that you would typically see within that kind of relationship where it is coercive control that controlling Behavior started to escalate and Lee Forge started to become violent towards Leslie the kids were really scared of him I think she was scared of him yeah
yeah she’s very scared of him domestic violence is a heinous crime and is a red flag to the police based on Lee’s violent history police are convinced that Leslie and the children haven’t left the family home unharmed when there’s been a suggestion by the victim of separation or a trial separation that produces an intense fear of Abandonment and loss and a way to manage that intense anger and those intense feelings of fear is to in a way to prevent their separation is to take the life of the partner Leslie has tried to leave Lee
before being in a coercive controlling relationship it’s often very difficult to get out of but Leslie took the brave step and she did she took the children and she left leie did a run up with the children dance Coro and she moved into a caravan but Ford is determined to find the family he used a very manipulative way of doing this phoning Leslie’s mom he rang up posing as a solicitor saying that he needs to know where Leslie and the children are U making sure they’re safe and well and they need to come down to do a safe
check that’s how he found her and he moved to commo she used to let him back in I suppose because they’ve made made you feel that you’re not worth anything and no one would ever want you after tracking them down Lee Ford moves the family to the remote Village of Ki and tightens his grip over them essentially they were living in a Hamlet and if we’re talking about a controlling relationship where Lee didn’t want her to have access to friends and family Etc what better way of controlling LLY the moving it down to
somewhere that they’re going to be isolated where just him and her and the children and he could have complete control over them Leslie’s personality did changeed but she acted like things were normal as well I suppose that’s what they people do in front of people if there’s a history of domestic abuse often there’s a social withdrawal from their social activities and friendships there were no shops nearby the children had to travel in a car with Lea for to get to school all of this really really added to lead towards
control over them Leslie’s brother tells police that a couple of weeks before the family went missing she contacted him distraught I had a phone call from Leslie saying that she thought that Amry and Sarah Jane was being sexual abuse by Lee Peter me ex- brother-in-law rang up and said Leslie’s found him in my daughter’s bedroom Peter pleads with Leslie to take the children to a women’s Refuge that was my last words to her officers return to the family home to confront Lee about the abuse and again ask if he knows the family’s
whereabouts but he and the two younger children have vanished this is now a Manhunt they now have to find this person as a matter of urgency they’ll be looking for any intelligence that would indicate where he may have gone to fearful for the younger children’s safety the team releases a statement to the media by using a press conference that may prompt him to act in ways that may benefit the investigation if harm had come to lesser than the children could he try and dispose of any evidence the team receives intelligence that Ford is 285 M
away the police discovered that Lea Ford had traveled to tford with his two biological kids to leave him at their grandparents house Ford is next cited at Leslie’s parents address he actually took everything round to my parents all their bits of pieces my mom actually don’t even know what was in the bags she put it straight up in the attic and said give it give this all to your daughter when you see her offenders get to know the system they get to understand forensic evidence how the police work so an offender is
unlikely to store bloodstain clothing a machete or any other weapon at his home address no one has seen Lee since as a team of licensed search officers travel to Telford police traffic squads across the country are put on red alert the Police National computer said PNC it’s able for a police force to put markers on there to say this vehicle needs to be stopped as soon as possible the team get a hit the vehicle is heading back towards Cornwall the police set up a road trap on bodman Mo and that’s where he was stopped
detectives had been quizzing Le forward at this police station looking for Clues as to what happened to the young mom and her teenage children because he was arrested their police were able to take his DNA and fingerprints specialist police interviewers prepare to grill Lee about the whereabouts of Leslie and the four older children but before they get the chance he changes his story he just admitted that he’ killed all five the police actually told us he canest in the cells with his sisters present familiar side is the killing of
three or more family members by somebody is relatively rare the risk is one in 10 million killing the children as well as the partner is actually really really unusual Lee directs officers to look in the garden of the family home the scene is secured and CSI is called in when the police officers do a house search they will always search the house any vehicles and also the garden looking for anything that might lead to The Disappearance obviously if there was an area in the garden that had been freshly dug then that would be highlighted to
the crime scene manager but in this case there was no obvious area where um it appeared that her body had been buried the best plan really is to get all your Specialists there at the scene to a briefing to decide what you’re going to do and how you’re going to do it I would absolutely ensure that had a frenic archaeologist at the scene to effectively recover and find the bodies I had a phone call to say that the forensic teams were going to go into the house there was a very strong smell coming from the garden and in particular The Woodshed
which was down the bottom of the garden the smell of decomposition is unmistakable is a smell that will stay with you for life from a forensic perspective it’s clear that something is dead out there when a body is decomposing it emits something called volatile chemicals or voc’s the bacteria that naturally live in our gut no longer have an immune system to keep them in check and they start to overproduce and they emit smells a fenic strategy has to be written a senior investigation officer will need to know what am I dealing with
there needs to be a systematic slow examination of the Woodshed they’re able to find items that are wrapped in material which look like potential bodies they told us that they’d found the first body and we just watched it actually on TV really the bits and pieces just kept on the news really waiting for more then they found the three bodies there the team are in no doubt the remains are human the human sceletal form is quite unique our hands our feet our skull are completely different from any other members of the animal kingdom these
morphological differences between humans and animals are some of the first things we look for when we go to a scene we can see that the individual had some understanding about Body Disposal because they weren’t dumped they weren’t left exposed which would possibly indicate a rush or a hurry this individual took their time was very careful and very thoughtful about the choices that they made the bodies were clearly prepared and placed there with a sense of purpose the identities of the bodies are concealed The Remains are sent to the
Mory for formal identification still wrapped in the bed sheets to preserve evidence the police are investigating five missing people there are only three in this Woodshed what they need to do now is find out where are the other two the science speaks the truth if the evidence is there we will find it Lee Ford has confessed to killing his wife and four stepchildren in the Family Garden CSI eyes have made a Grizzly Discovery three bodies wrapped in bed sheets buried under a Woodshed but with five people missing
police need four to tell them where he’s put the other two bodies he says two officers that initially came around in relation to the missing person report spooked him and he would felt that he now needed to move the bodies before police come back and did a proper search he says he drove the two bodies about 5 miles to a potato field where he dug a shallow grave police CAU an off the field an outdoor scene in a field is very difficult scene to examine you’ve got the weather conditions you’ve got inclement rain potential Farmers that
have used the field for growing crops when the police have to search large areas for uh potential human remains it’s a very useful tool to be able to use a sniffer dog so there are dogs within the place that are trained on different aspects some are trying to do drug searches and search for money but they’re also dogs that are trained to search for cadavers these dogs are invaluable to identifying particular areas to be able to reduce the search area for the licensed search offices and the csis to then concentrate that efforts on a
particular area if a body is left exposed in Outdoors you might smell it once you get quite close to it but if you’re far away you probably wouldn’t notice anything a caber dog definitely would be able to smell it a possible burial site is identified an excavation begins two additional bodies were recovered these were young teenage girls cuz girls actually develop quite a bit faster than boys they would have already started to look like women like have a female shape to the skeleton so even upon initial inspection we would be able
to say that these were young women police suspect these are the bodies of 17-year-old Sarah Jane and 15-year-old an Marie there was nothing in my mind that it wasn’t them at all all right I suppose in some ways in your heart you wish it wasn’t but it was definitely going to be them despite Ford’s confession the team needs to formally identify the bodies at the Mory the pathologist Begins by carefully unwrapping the three bodies found beneath the Woodshed one of the key things would be to help identify some features of these
individuals so how old they were and whether they were likely to be male or female an anthropologist is able to age people via bones and skeletons it was an adult female and two teenage males the adult skeleton is fully formed it has finished growing whereas a child skeleton is still the process of growing and developing so the bones aren’t adult size they’re smaller the ends of the bones haven’t fully developed and attached themselves to the main part of the bone also the two younger individuals they probably
hadn’t hit their gross forur yet so they would have been quite small relative to the adult skeleton the bodies under the Woodshed are believed to be Leslie and her two sons Steven and Craig they had the same degree of decomposition which Intimates that they were probably killed around the same time it wasn’t possible to do facial recognition or identify them on fingerprints in this case there was another way of identifying the the remains and that was by a dental records so at the postmortem where forensic odontologist would be brought in the
odontology is fast-tracked the DNA from the teeth matched the dental records of Leslie anarie Sarah Jane Steven and Craig you see someone being murdered or something like that before this happened to me and you think God how would I feel but I know how they feel now know how they felt at that time and it’s very hard and not nice it’s not nice at all in some ways you were hoping that they were going to walk through the door and it is a big dream um very emotional the hardest day of my life I worked in an Army
Depot and on the bus was Leslie she used to work in a care home I was on the same bus every day and we soon started saying hello to each other good morning and then it developed from there we got together and it was lovely she was a bubbly person always laughing she’s always smiling funny girl Leslie gave birth in 1983 to Sarah Jane um beautiful little girl um absolutely changed us as a person Sarah Jane was definitely a mommy’s girl although she was fine with both of us she was always mommy first we had um amarie she was born a year
later she was very clingy to me if I went out of the room whichever room I was in she be there with me she just followed me around and then we had Steven Paul he was happy little boy kicking a football around even at an early age we planned on having the children all together so they could grow up together and we decided that we’d have another one which is Craig Jonathan he was born a year and a half later and again that made our family is is beautiful in custody police asked Lee Ford how he killed his family on a
police interview he admitted to arguing with his wife Leslie about money and beating her around the head with rounders bat then he went to the garage and came across some rope his account is that he just flipped and saw the rope and then decided to go back to attack Leslie Ford tells officers that over 24 hours he strangled his stepchildren in the kitchen it appears that he’s targeted the children one by one and called them into the kitchen uh and grabbed them from behind and strangled them his version of events to the police
is the fact that they wouldn’t have known anything because he jumped them from behind this is such a heinous crime as a homicide detective dealing with child murders was always a har is for me something that you could never really get used to it was always hard maybe being a parent so looking at this crime looking at four children and how they died in those circumstances for me is harrowing sometimes stepchildren are more likely to be killed in those cases because the stepchildren are seen as an extension of their partner and so in
order to really hurt the partner they will kill her children as well Lee is charged with five counts of murder but he pleads not guilty he pleaded not guilty on a ins sanity case that he flipped but most people actually who flip and kill their family kill their themselves as well and why would they keep two kids alive and not kill all of them so he was just hoping to get away with it so he didn’t go to prison I supp he didn’t think of the step kids like his own kids because he would have actually killed the his own kids as well
he had no feelings for the kids considering actually he brought them up for 11 years and they’ve been in his life 11 years there was no love or anything in there at all Lee refuses psychiatric assessment police have to prove how it happened what were the circumstances even though Lee fored confess to killing Leslie and the children that doesn’t really alter the process that the police have to go through because they still need to prove the case against him for instance he could go to court and he could say actually that confession was given under
duess or he could change his mind police have to carry on as if he hasn’t said anything even if someone confesses to a crime it’s still important for us to forensically prove that because someone may change their mind in court and if the police haven’t examined everything and provided a watertight case the case could fall down police turned to the science at the potato field csis recover potential evidence you want to try and put the vehicle of the offender there because it’s impossible to carry dead bodies very
fast the closer the body there was some tire truack marks which may or may not have been linked to an offender’s vehicle obviously at the time of any investigation you’re not sure what evidence is relevant and what isn’t relevant these Tire truck marks would have been photographed by a CSI they would have been photographed with a camera on a tripod using a scale being able to photograph the full length of the tire truck Mark after it’s been photographed they will cast them with casting material which is a little bit
like plaster of Paris they cting material is mixed up at the scene and then it’s poured very carefully into the tire track this actually takes an impression of the tire track mark which can then be examined by forensic scientist and be compared to tires that may or may not have uh made that impression the tire tracks are sent for comparison with Lee’s car as csis recover another possible Trace they find a face mask that has obviously been dropped in the field DNA testing on this face mask confirmed that this was the
offender’s DNA this almost shows some pre-planning that he’s worn a face mask when he’s transported the bodies because the bodies were starting to decompose and there for the smell was very strong this shows some pre-planning in tford search officers investigate the belongings he dropped off the items that he dropped off at the grandparents house uh included some bed linen an examination of the sheets indicated that there was blood on these sheets there’s quite a large amount of blood distribution which fit with a
medium impact velocity batter pattern when blood is found on an item it’s normally tested to confirm that it’s blood and the police normally use a km test a castle Maya test which is a simple color change test to confirm if it’s blood or not the blood is DNA tested and it was confirmed by the forensic lab that the blood on these sheets had come from Leslie this fits with the story that he had attacked Leslie with rounda back whilst she was lying on the bed potentially Lee has hidden evidence of his violent crimes 285 mil
away together the evidence is mounting that this was premeditated murder the police reckon he knew how to cover up what he’d done in this case there was a reason for why the bodies were in quite an advanced stage of decomposition the killer had actually covered the bodies in calcium hydroxide which is lime which would speed up the decomposition of the flesh the fact that he put lime onto these bodies could suggest that he was forensically aware he knew what to do if the situation presented itself this is clearly a premeditated
attack someone that knows what they’re doing someone that’s thought out how they’re going to do it and what are they going to do with the bodies one of the things that’s so kind of chilling about famili side is that we often think about family as the safe haven from all that’s bad in the outer world it’s the place where we feel protected and particularly the role of fathers in terms of the traditionally seen as the head of the household they often take on that role of protector of the family so when they enact something like this and
enact the most extreme form of violence on their family it’s absolutely chilling Lee Ford has confessed to killing his wife and forced stepchildren he claims he wasn’t of sound mind at the time but police have Unearthed evidence that suggests he knew exactly what he was doing killing five people in an identical way was a very planned and premeditated attack forensic experts have found that the bodies were covered in calcium hydroxide to speed up decomposition Lea Ford used polye bags to move the two bodies and for very good
reason because of the state of decomposition that the two bodies were in the smell would have been overwhelming it’s no surprise that Lea Ford used a face mask in order to carry that out is Left Behind telltale signs in about a third of cases of familiar side substance use does play a role in terms of intoxication at the time of the deaths whether through alcohol use or through substances so it might be that those substances have um created a kind of distortion in the perpetrators thinking however in actually the majority of cases there
isn’t any signs of intoxication and actually perpetrators in the main are very lucid when they enact a familicide although the offender has admitted to quite a lot of this crime um it’s really important to have the forensic evidence to back up not only history but also to boost the the police prosecution case it’s down to the police to prove what has actually happened so forensic evidence can be vitally important in the court of law faced with the evidence of his cover up Lee Ford changes his plea to guilty you feel relieved in some ways
but you don’t in another because you don’t know why cuz he doesn’t have to say why he did it so you know it’s there all these years 23 years later Lee insists he doesn’t know why he did it but Leslie and the children’s families have their own theory about Ford’s motive he killed Leslie and the kids cuz if there was something going on between him and Sarah Jane there’s no evidence there I suppose I think he was hoping all the way through that he weren’t going to lose his children the two remaining kids not long before their deaths Leslie
sought advice from a solicitor about getting full custody of all six children if the separation has been instigated by the partner that feeling of loss can sometimes produce a sense of rage and hostility and one of the ways of dealing with that feeling of loss and hostility is to enact the most severe form of violence the family are laid to rest in their hometown of Telford at the funeral I was ring numb it was only 2 miles away from where me and Leslie lived before we had the children um very emotional day obviously it was so hard the the morning
was so hard because obviously before Garden was covered in flowers wreaths Ford is given five life sentences and must a minimum term of 27 years he’s taken five lives um to be honest I I feel he always taken more than that because he’s taken mine and my family sare and obviously Les’s family suffered how’s only he’s only been given 27 years he’s been beyond me it really is feel as though I’ve got the sentence not so yeah the anger’s still there it really is the Tariff would have been better if he was never going to ever see the light
of day again that he was going to stay in prison until he dies friends have said James and Amar um set up this petition in 2027 he can put in parole so hopefully if we had the petition actually and we can get the votes and get into Parliament and perhaps we might be a to stop him from being out to put him for parole and hopefully he will stay there then in prison until he dies it would be the little piece for me to say right he’s where he should be he should never come out he should stay where he is um and that’s also
because if he does come out what’s he going to do when he does come out is he going to do it to anybody else because of what my family’s gone through what my children obviously have been through it’s for it’s for all five I want Justice for them missing family is probably the worst thing and missing Leslie V there of H way very hard very hard I can imagine her now with all our grandchildren running around her she would have been a great gr they’re buried together um I do um go up there regular and I can sit up there for up to
two hours talking it’s very hard but very it helps me the children are Lesly um are with me every day you never lose their memories never can
