Steve's thoughts

Compared to Case 01 Freddie Davidson: Threat to Life, this one had a lot more information.

As a detective, one of the most important skills you need to learn is managing that information. If you don’t, you’ll miss things, some of which could be crucial in progressing a case.

The first place you need to start, as always, is understanding exactly what you’re dealing with. Then you need to be clear on what your goal is, and only then do you work out how you’re going to achieve it.

A mistake I often see in these kinds of situations is people jumping straight into the third of those three. Jumping into action before they know what the problem is and what outcome they need to be working towards.

So, let’s take those stages one at a time.

What am I dealing with?

On 24th October 2026 at around 11pm, Freddie Davidson was driving his VW Golf in Eastbrook Road with Carl McKenzie as a passenger when a motorbike with two riders pulled up next to them and the pillion passenger fired a shot into the car. The shot hit McKenzie in the head. Davidson then drove to the hospital where McKenzie was pronounced dead.

Dashcam footage showed the motorbike as having blue tape over the registration plate, obscuring the number.

On 31st October 2026 at around 5am, Ryan Fletcher was arrested on suspicion of the murder and has been in custody since.

He has been interviewed and gave a prepared statement. In it he stated he was home all night on the 24th with his mother. He said he didn’t leave the house and was watching TV.

He remains in custody pending a decision of how he should be dealt with i.e. released or have his detention extended by a warrant of further detention. The DCI would need to demonstrate what lines of enquiry are being carried out for that application to be granted.

The DCI has sent us an email requesting our assistance.

What is he asking us to do?

This is the part of the email that shows what he’s asking us to do:

I need you to go through the evidence we have and see if he might be telling the truth. It would be helpful if you could summarise what backs up his account but also if there are any inconsistencies. If there are, the interviewers can put them to him. You might also pick up on some further bits of work we should be doing around Fletcher.

So, there are essentially three things we are looking to achieve:

1. Identify where evidence supports his account that he was home all night with his mother
2. Identify any evidence that contradicts that
3. Identify any further lines of enquiry

Notice what he isn’t asking us to do?

Prove he’s lying.

That’s not how detectives think. What they do is set out to see what evidence corroborates an account. Some might. But in the process of doing that you may also turn up some that suggests the opposite.

And that is fundamentally what a detective’s job is: to collect information.

Be that information that may point to a person’s guilt or information that may point to their innocence. It’s then for others to make their own judgment on what you find, be that lawyers, judges or juries.

So, if we’re clear on those three goals, how do we go about achieving them?

How do we go about identifying that information for the DCI?

What we’re presented with here is, on the face of it, a lot of information.

We have phone data, ANPR, a crime report, a statement, a prepared statement and information on associates of Fletcher.

How do we pull that together?

Well, the way I’d approach it is this.

Review each source of information with these things in my mind:

• Could anything I’m reading be relevant to Fletcher’s account of being at home?
• Could anything I’m reading be relevant to the murder being investigated?

That second part is important because although we’re primarily being asked to assess Fletcher’s account, we’re also part of the wider investigation. If we come across anything that may help solve the murder, it’s important we flag that to the DCI.

What’s in my mind is the first consideration, the second is how we physically record what we may find.

And I identified one part of that in my tips for this case: A timeline.

I honestly can’t over-emphasise the importance of a timeline in an investigation. If you don’t use one, it can be difficult to see how various events may relate to each other. One event here might be directly linked to one over there, but if you don’t lay them all out together, that connection may not be obvious.

In a murder investigation that would probably be the task of an intelligence analyst. They are civilians rather than police officers, who perform a vital role in murder investigations. For this task they would use specially designed software to record events in sequence. We don’t have that luxury, just a paper and pen. But that doesn’t make this exercise any less useful.

But not everything is going to be added to a timeline. You may come across information or lines of enquiry that may be important but not something that would naturally go onto that sequence of events. For those I would keep a running log that can be used to later brief other officers or raise actions for further enquiry.

So, let’s carry out that exact exercise of the evidence we’ve been presented with.

Prepared Statement

This is the starting point as it forms the basis of what we’re being asked to look at.

There’s not a lot in there. He says he was at home all evening and didn’t go out.

What he doesn’t do is mention any times, which isn’t unexpected. In my experience, prepared statements usually contain the minimum amount of information, which makes things easier should the person go to trial as they haven’t committed themselves to any facts that could later be disproved.

So, when he says ‘I was at home all evening watching television with my mum and didn’t go out at any point that night’, it can become subjective as to what constitutes ‘evening’ and ‘night’.

But that’s not for us to worry about now. Our job is to collect the evidence and let others decide its relevance.

Crime Report

This is likely to be the document to provide the best starting point for what I need to know about the murder and also the events to start populating a timeline.

I won’t repeat what we’ve already established above, just any new matters that go towards either the timeline or what we’re trying to achieve.

There’s not a great deal to add to what I’ve already said about the crime.

For our timeline we can start with these events

Fletcher’s Intelligence Report

I’d next want to know as much as I could about Fletcher himself, and the best place for that is his intelligence profile. That is a document that would have been put together by an intelligence researcher, a similar role to the analyst but their job is more about gathering and presenting intelligence rather than interpreting it.

On reading this, there are a few things we need to know such as his address, phone number, the fact he has no vehicles associated with him and he has several associates.

The phone number ending 540 would be of huge interest in establishing potential movement, and we have the call data for that, so we can look at that in a bit.

The address location is important, and we have been given a map which shows where in Sandford that is.

With no vehicle associated with him, we have no registration number for Fletcher to check against ANPR.

There is nothing that goes directly to his alibi.

For our timeline, there is nothing here to add.

Fletcher’s Custody Record front sheet

Whenever a person is arrested there will be a record of everything that happens whilst they’re in custody. That includes when they arrived, when detention was authorised, when they were interviewed, given food, given a shower, when they were checked on, and any number of activities. All of which will be kept as a running log. For this exercise we have only the front sheet.

From that, we can see he gave the same address in Willow Close and the same telephone number ending in 540.

He elected to have his mother informed of his arrest and he gave the number 0793841265, which we can keep in mind for when we examine his call records.

Karen Fletcher’s Statement

This is what police refer to as an alibi statement. A person says he was at a certain place, with a certain person, and suggests someone who can corroborate that. In this instance it’s his mum.

Does she back him up?

Largely, yes. She says he got home around 6pm and they had dinner around 7pm. As is the case with all witnesses, timings need to be treated with care as they tend to be estimates. However, she does use the words ‘as far as I know’, which does lessen the certainty. She’s not saying she was with him all night and he didn’t leave her sight. If he was upstairs, could he have left the house for a period without her being aware? We simply can’t say. So, if we do go on to find evidence that contradicts what she says, we can’t say definitively she’s lying.

Other than that, her statement doesn’t provide a great deal for us to go on.

In relation to the timeline, I won’t add in what she says but I will keep the timings in mind.

Associates’ Profiles

The next item I would look at is the associate profiles. The reason I’d want to look at them next is to identify anything relevant in terms of vehicles, telephones and addresses. If I have them in mind before I examine the telephone data, it might better help me understand what’s going on.

So, let’s do them as they appear in the evidence.

Leon Grant

We have his address which is marked on the map. As do the others, so I don’t need to keep mentioning that.

He has a phone number of 0758621431

Interestingly he is linked to a motorcycle index HT15 RZU. That we can check with ANPR when we get to it.

The intelligence associated with him suggest he is a drug dealer who is connected to the Heavy Hitters gang.

Marcus Doyle

He has a phone number 0793148232.

Drives a grey BMW 3 Series index FY19YVY. That we can check with ANPR.

He too is associated with drugs, gangs and violence.

Aaron Hinds

He has telephone number 0746128357.

He is a convicted drug dealer and has links to Heavy Hitters and violence.

Although he has no vehicles shown in the main part of his profile he was stopped riding a Suzuki GSX-R600 motorcycle, registration AB12CDE in September. That will need to go through ANPR.

Jeremy Matthews

He has telephone number 0745269133.

No known vehicle.

Intelligence again associates him with drug dealing and violence.

Fletcher’s Telephone Records

Now, for me, this is where things start to get interesting. I love telephone evidence as it could show you so much about a person’s life, habits, movements, associates and communications. Nearly all of us have a phone, so analysing data was one of the most important aspects of my investigations.

The call data you see in this exercise is exactly as it comes to the police. We call it the raw data. Along with this PDF version, there would be an accompanying Excel spreadsheet that would be used by the intelligence analyst.

One thing to point out is that in a real investigation there may be months’ worth of data. I wanted to keep things simple here, so we only applied for about 6 hours’ worth.

Hopefully you got a chance to read the guide at the beginning which I put in to help explain how the data works.

In a murder enquiry, a detective will be allocated the role of communications officer. It is their task to gather the phone evidence by applying for data from the network providers and, eventually, presenting that evidence at court. That is not a role here. So, we won’t be trying to identify callers from the data. Ours is a very different task.

For what we are doing here, when I go through call data, I’m looking for several things to help us.

1. What events took place
2. When they took place
3. Who is in communication
4. Where the handset was being used

One important thing to remember when we look at phone data is this is evidence of a phone’s usage, not necessarily who was using the phone at that time. We just need to keep that in our minds.

The best way to approach phone data is line by line. Each time looking at what it may show and how it relates to what else we know.

For this I won’t write about every line, but I will highlight the ones that appear relevant. Each of those will be added to the timeline.

The first call at 18:06:14 shows an outgoing call to an unknown number using cell site WES/C. When we look at the map, that mast is just north of Fletcher’s home. When we look through the data this cell is by far the most common. That would suggest it is what we call the home cell. As an investigator it’s useful to know that, as it gives you an indication of when he may be at or close to his home.

If we then go through the data looking for either contact with a known subject or a change of cell site, the first we come to is 20:48:00 when he receives a 31 second call from Aaron Hinds. At that time, he is using his home cell.

Action: I would ensure that steps are being taken by the communications officer to obtain the call data for Hinds (never assume it’s being done).

Almost immediately he makes a call to phone number 0756148932 for 42 seconds. The fact there is so little time between those calls, could be significant.

The next event is a call that is very interesting. At 20:56:41 he receives a 46 second call from his mother, and the cell site is different. He’s now using cell RIV/B which is located in the Riverside Industrial Estate.

Firstly, that is a strong indication he left home. Not only has the cell site changed, but it’s also his mother calling him.

If we think about what that might mean, the first thing for me is in relation to the alibi. If, as mum says, he was home all night and had been there since 6pm, why is she calling him? Now, it might be that he was upstairs and wanted to speak to him without going up. Or she knew perfectly well he’d gone out and lied in her statement. Ultimately, that’s not for us to decide. It is information for us to pass to the DCI and the interviewers.

The second point here is the fact he looks like he’s moved from home after a call from Hinds. Is that significant? We have a murder involving two suspects. If Fletcher was one of them, his contacts prior to the crime are important. This movement may be something we call cause and effect. i.e., some action taken as the result of a communication. As could be the call straight after to the number ending 932. We can’t know for sure, but it certainly is something to make a note of.

Then at 21:11:32 a data session began using the cell WES/C. What does that tell us? Well, we need to be careful. Yes, that’s his home cell, but it will cover a wide area. I think the most we can say is by this time it looks like he’s moved back towards his home area. From an investigation point of view, it would also have me thinking that wherever he travelled to, it appears he wasn’t there for very long. Was he dropping something off or picking something up? They would certainly be considerations for me.

With those three events, our timeline now looks like this (I won’t use seconds as they’re not important for what we’re doing):

So, an investigative interpretation from the events so far suggest that Fletcher received a call from Hinds. When that call hangs up, he immediately calls 932. He then left home and travelled to the Riverside area and after a short time headed back towards home.

Action: I would ensure that steps are being taken by the communications officer to identify the user of 932.

Something to make clear at this point is that although this would be my thought process, this is not evidence. It would take an engineer to visit these areas, testing the phone signals, to make this evidential. At this stage of the investigation, these interpretations are made as potential lines of enquiry or investigative focus.

The next event of interest is an incoming call from Hinds at 22:27:18 for 24 seconds.

That is then followed by two unanswered calls, all using the home cell. The first is at 22:51:36 and the second at 22:57:42. Is that significant? Well, maybe. It could mean several things. One could be that he didn’t hear the call. Another could be that he ignored the call. He may also not have the phone in his possession. As a detective I know many criminals are aware of the evidence that can be provided by phones. Some will try to distance themselves from a particular crime or area by switching off their phone or not having it with them. The missed calls suggest it wasn’t switched off, but could it have been left at home? As before, that’s not for us to decide, merely to make others aware of the possibility.

At 23:32:18 there is a data session. But we need to treat that with care because it tells us very little other than the fact the phone connected via data to the network. That doesn’t have to be done manually. Phones have apps running in the background that can connect to the network automatically.

The next event which was definitely a conscious action was an outgoing call at 23:37:05 for 38 seconds to 0795361742. Now, experience tells me that is important. Imagine if Fletcher had committed this murder, the very next call he makes afterwards is highly likely to be connected to what just happened. So, I would want to ensure we knew who that call was to.

Action: I would ensure that steps are being taken by the communications officer to identify the user of 742.

Those calls would then be added to the timeline.

From the call data we have, I see these events as the ones that may have the most significance attached.

ANPR Activation Records

The final set of evidence we have relates to ANPR. They are cameras located throughout the town that record the registration numbers of cars as they pass.

From the research we’ve done, there are three numbers for us to check:

• Leon Grant: HT15RZU
• Aaron Hinds: AB12CDE
• Marcus Doyle: FY19YVY

HT15RZU - Kawasaki motorcycle

There were no activations in the data we have.

AB12CDE - Suzuki motorcycle

1. 22:34:22 - Camera 01 - westbound
2. 22:47:11 - Camera 01 – eastbound
3. 23:24:38 – Camera 01 - eastbound

When we look at the map, these could be highly significant as camera 01 is close to Fletcher’s home. So, they need to be added to the timeline.

FY19YVY - BMW 3 Series

There is one activation for this which shows the car heading out of town at 22:46:34 on Camera 03. As it’s a car and not a motorbike and heading out of town, I don’t think this is significant to our task.

That leaves AB12CDE. So, let’s add that into our timeline.

My conclusion of the evidence

We've now worked through a lot of information, so let's return to the three things the DCI asked us to establish.