# 22: Lured from Facebook to Her Murder (Kayleigh Haywood)

An episode of [Outlore with Eleanor Neale](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1682504024), 29 Jun 2023, 43 min.

Audio: https://anchor.fm/s/105f723ac/podcast/play/103880393/https%3A%2F%2Fd3ctxlq1ktw2nl.cloudfront.net%2Fstaging%2F2025-5-9%2F401851607-44100-2-92c106c7fee4edc5.mp3

Today's episode is on the Kayleigh Haywood case Trigger Warning: rape, child death Resources: https://linktr.ee/usualdisclaimer Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

## Transcript

[0:05] Hello everyone, and welcome to Usual Disclaimer with Eleanor
[0:09] Neil, a true crime podcast where we crack open some of the most
[0:12] notorious cases in history. Given the topics that we'll be
[0:16] investigating, it goes without saying that this show comes with
[0:20] a content warning. The details can get a bit heavy
[0:23] and you might find some of the themes we discuss triggering.
[0:26] Listener discretion is strongly advised and check the
[0:29] description for some resources and further information.
[0:39] Today we're going to be talking about Kaylee Haywood.
[0:41] But quickly before we get into it, I just want to give my usual
[0:44] disclaimer that I mean absolutely no disrespect to
[0:46] anyone that I talk about in this video.
[0:48] This video is for educational purposes and everything that I'm
[0:51] about to say is just information that I have found on the
[0:54] Internet and I'm compiling it into one video.
[0:56] S Kaylee Haywood was a 15 year old girl born in August of 2000
[1:01] in Leicestershire. I don't know specifically where
[1:04] Kaylee lived in Leicestershire, but I know the nearest town to
[1:07] her was called Ipstar. And Ibstock was known for just
[1:12] being a really nice, safe place to live.
[1:14] Everyone knew each other. It was very aesthetically nice.
[1:18] Everyone that lived there took pride in their homes and their
[1:20] gardens. It had low crime rates.
[1:23] It was really friendly. It was just known as a really,
[1:25] really nice place to live. That's not exactly where Kaylee
[1:28] lived, but she lived just outside of there.
[1:31] However, Ibstock is important to this video.
[1:33] Kaylee was one of seven children to her parents, Stephanie and
[1:37] Martin. So as you can imagine, there was
[1:39] a lot going on in that household every single day.
[1:42] And Kaylee loved it. She loved having a big family.
[1:44] She loved all of her siblings. She was particularly very close
[1:48] to her youngest sister and her mother Stephanie.
[1:50] She was just a very family oriented person.
[1:53] Kaylee was known for being very bubbly, very outgoing.
[1:56] She didn't have the biggest group of friends, but she was
[1:59] very social. And the friends that she did
[2:02] have were really, really close. And just like pretty much every
[2:05] other teenager at that time in 2015 and still now, Kaylee was
[2:10] absolutely glued to her phone and social media.
[2:14] Her favorite social media or the one that she used the most was
[2:17] Facebook. She was always uploading new
[2:19] pictures, posting statuses. She was in Group chats, talking
[2:23] with her friends, messaging people, sending friend requests,
[2:26] receiving friend requests. She was very social online.
[2:29] And I don't know how much other people can relate to this.
[2:32] I know I can. When I was like 15, I didn't
[2:35] know half the people on my friends list on Facebook.
[2:38] I just kind of accepted anyone that wanted to be friends with
[2:40] me. I just liked to be in friends
[2:42] with people. And so did Kaylee.
[2:44] She didn't really know everyone on her friends list at that age.
[2:48] I can only speak for myself. I can't speak for Kaylee
[2:51] obviously, but I, I wasn't thinking very logically about
[2:53] it. I wasn't thinking why does this
[2:55] stranger want to be friends with me?
[2:57] I was just thinking this stranger wants to be friends
[2:59] with me. OK, cool, let's let's be
[3:01] friends. And that is exactly what
[3:03] happened to Kaylee Hayward. On October 31st of 2015, she
[3:08] received a friend request on Facebook from someone that she
[3:11] didn't recognize. She didn't recognize the picture
[3:13] or the name or anything. And it was a boy, well a man, a
[3:17] 27 year old grown man named Lou Carlo.
[3:21] And Kaylee probably not thinking much of it, just accepted Luke's
[3:25] phone request, put her phone down, whatever.
[3:27] And then her phone buzzed again. It was her new friend Luke
[3:30] Harlow sending her a message. The message said hi, how are
[3:34] you? And Kaylee was a little bit on
[3:36] guard at this point. She didn't just jump straight
[3:38] into this conversation, well she kind of did.
[3:40] She said hi, who are you? And Luke replied that they had a
[3:44] lot of mutual friends, so they had a lot of the same friends,
[3:47] like friends of friends. He was a friend of 1 of Kaylee's
[3:50] friends and he just thought she was really beautiful.
[3:53] He came across her profile and thought he would add her.
[3:55] He pointed out how close the two of them lived to each other.
[3:59] He lived in the town of Ibstock and Kaylee obviously I don't
[4:03] know why she lived but it was just outside of Ibstock and he
[4:06] said he wanted to get to know her a bit more and Kaylee was
[4:09] flattered by this. This guy was calling her
[4:11] beautiful. He was saying he wanted to get
[4:13] to know her and she was 15 years old.
[4:15] She was going through that phase where you just kind of like
[4:17] wanting your first boyfriend. You want to get into a
[4:19] relationship like you kind of starting to notice boys at
[4:23] school, and when you're 15, you're also starting to get a
[4:26] little bit rebellious. This was an older man.
[4:28] She didn't, at this point know quite how old he was.
[4:31] He was 27, but obviously he looked older in his pictures.
[4:36] This was an older man. He was showing us some attention
[4:39] and she liked it. And so the two of them began
[4:41] messaging over the next few days, backwards and forwards.
[4:44] He was flirting, she was kind of flirting back a little bit.
[4:48] And the compliments just kept building and building and
[4:51] building. He was calling her beautiful,
[4:53] saying she was a Princess. He would say things like, how
[4:56] are you still single? Like someone's so beautiful.
[4:58] I bet you have all the boys after you.
[5:00] Like, how are you not in a relationship yet?
[5:02] And Kaylee never really fully accepted these compliments.
[5:05] Whenever he would call her beautiful, she would say, like,
[5:07] oh, no, I'm not. And this just kind of made him
[5:09] compliment her even more. Like, yes, you are.
[5:11] You're stunning, You're gorgeous, You're this, you're
[5:13] that. And not to get like sciency.
[5:16] I never really talk about science too much in my videos,
[5:18] but him messaging her and compliment in her and stuff is
[5:22] building up her confidence and self esteem.
[5:24] And she's kind of getting addicted to these compliments
[5:27] because it releases chemicals. It releases dopamine or you
[5:31] know, the happiness chemicals and she likes it.
[5:33] And every single time she gets that dopamine release, she
[5:37] relates that to Luke and she wants to go back to him and she
[5:40] wants to talk to him more. She doesn't necessarily like
[5:44] Luke, she just likes the compliments.
[5:46] Whenever she was upset or angry, if she'd got into a fight with a
[5:50] sibling or a friend or a family member or something, she'd go to
[5:54] him. He would comfort her, he would
[5:56] take her side. He would just make her feel
[5:58] better. He was like her security
[6:00] blanket. He just made her feel so special
[6:03] and so beautiful. And it's a mixture of like, the
[6:06] male attention, but also the rebelliousness of this whole
[6:10] other world On her phone, where there's an older man interested
[6:14] in it, no one knows about it because it's on her phone.
[6:17] So like I said, Luke Harlow was 27 years old.
[6:21] And in one of the very early messages, he asked Kaylee
[6:25] Haywood how old she was. And she lied about her age.
[6:29] She told him that she was 19 because she knew that he was
[6:33] older. She didn't know exactly how old
[6:35] he was, but she knew that he was older and she knew that she had
[6:39] to be over 18. So she said that she was 19,
[6:42] four years older than she actually was.
[6:44] She was 15. And Luke also lied about his
[6:47] age, not too much. He just said he was one year
[6:50] younger than he actually was. He said he was 26, but a 26 year
[6:53] old and a 19 year old. Age gap is not the biggest and
[6:58] it's also not illegal. It's still quite a gap.
[7:00] But for two consenting adults, that's their decision to make.
[7:04] If they're happy, whatever. But that's not the case, of
[7:07] course. Literally just a couple of days
[7:10] into the two of them talking, Kaylee posted a picture with her
[7:13] friends of them all in their school uniform.
[7:16] And obviously a 19 year old wouldn't have a school uniform.
[7:19] So Luke confronted Kaylee about this and she just came clean.
[7:23] She said she was actually 15 and instead of blocking her,
[7:27] unfriending her, deleting the messages, he decided that he
[7:31] would continue this online relationship that he and Kaylee
[7:34] were having, but now they just had to be more secretive about
[7:38] it. He told her that the only way
[7:39] that they could continue talking was if it was their little
[7:42] secret. And she couldn't tell anyone.
[7:45] She couldn't tell her parents, she couldn't tell her friends.
[7:47] And he would say things to her, like if you tell anyone that
[7:50] we're talking, I'm going to get in big trouble, I'm going to get
[7:52] locked up, blah, blah, blah. So he knew that this was wrong.
[7:55] Of course he knew that this was wrong wrong, but he was using
[7:58] that to scare Kaylee into not telling anyone.
[8:01] But this online relationship didn't stay online for very
[8:06] long. Literally within hours of their
[8:08] first messages, Luke was already hinting at meeting up, although
[8:11] obviously right then there wasn't any set plans.
[8:14] And then within a few days of messaging he was then suggesting
[8:18] the plans more explicitly. Like, I want to meet you, come
[8:21] to my house, Like let's meet up. His first suggestion was that
[8:24] Kaylee comes round to his house and they have a real kind of
[8:27] typical cute first date. They were going to have a movie
[8:31] night and he was going to get snacks in and they were going to
[8:33] cuddle and it was going to be really cute.
[8:35] Obviously it's not cute to us knowing about the age gap and
[8:38] everything like Lukes intentions, but so Kaylee, that
[8:42] would have seemed really nice. And so she agreed to that.
[8:45] She said, yeah, I'd love to. And then as the plans kept
[8:48] progressing, Luke said, well, why don't we get a bottle of
[8:51] vodka? Why don't we get drunk?
[8:53] And this only added to the excitement for Kaylee.
[8:56] She was doing something she wasn't supposed to be doing,
[8:58] drinking with someone. She wasn't supposed to be doing
[9:00] it with an older man. And she just felt really grown
[9:04] up. So the two of them agreed on a
[9:06] date that Kaylee would go to Luke's house and they would have
[9:09] this like movie night with alcohol.
[9:12] They decided on November 13th, 2015, which was exactly 2 weeks
[9:17] after Luke sent that first message.
[9:19] In their messages, Luke suggested to Kaylee that she lie
[9:22] about where she was staying. Obviously her parents weren't
[9:25] going to let her stay at a stranger's house, let alone a
[9:28] man that was 12 years older than her.
[9:30] And so Kaylee told her parents that she was going to be staying
[9:33] at a friend's house, a friend that they knew.
[9:35] They'd met this friend before so they wouldn't be suspicious and
[9:38] they'd just let her go. On the day that Kaylee was going
[9:41] to meet Luke, she got her parents to drop her in the car
[9:44] park of the local leisure centre.
[9:46] I'm guessing that she might have told the parents that the friend
[9:48] had a swimming lesson and that she was just going to meet her
[9:50] there and then they were going to go to this friends house.
[9:53] But of course her parents just dropped her in the car park and
[9:56] never knew where she went. There is CCTV footage of Kaylee
[9:59] Haywood being dropped in that car park that day and I don't
[10:03] know if it's public because I haven't seen it and I haven't
[10:06] like seen it in any documentaries or anything like
[10:09] that. All I've seen is investigators
[10:12] describing the footage so I'm not sure if it's public.
[10:15] However, she gets dropped off in this car park.
[10:18] She waits until her parents car is out of sight and then she
[10:21] walks down the road so she doesn't wait there for anyone.
[10:24] Presumably she begins walking to Luke Harlow's house.
[10:28] So on the Friday night, Kaylee Haywood was at Luke Harlow's
[10:32] house and she was posting on social media as she always had.
[10:36] She was taking photos, she was posting statuses, nothing seemed
[10:39] amiss. She didn't seem distressed at
[10:41] all. She seemed like she was having
[10:42] fun. To be fair, the next day around
[10:45] lunchtime on the Saturday, so she will have gone to bed and
[10:48] woken up and everything. Kaylee's mother, Stephanie,
[10:51] received a text message from Kaylee phone asking her if she
[10:54] could stay at this friend's house another night.
[10:57] And Kaylee's mother believing that she was happy and safe and
[11:01] with this friend that she knew, Stephanie said yeah, of course.
[11:05] And so Kaylee stayed at Luke Harlow's house one more night.
[11:09] The following morning on the Sunday, a local builder was just
[11:13] walking down the road by Luke Harlow's house when he found a
[11:17] smashed iPhone on the floor. And so he picked it up to see
[11:21] who's it was, like try and get into it to try and get it back
[11:23] to the owner. So this guy went on to the
[11:26] recent call log and called the last number that this phone had
[11:30] called, hoping that he could obviously get it back to the
[11:33] person through their friends. So he calls this number and a
[11:37] teenage girl answers the phone. It was Kaylee Haywood's friend.
[11:41] This man had found Kaylee Haywood's phone smashed on the
[11:45] floor. So this builder just informed
[11:47] the friend that he'd found this phone smashed on the floor where
[11:50] he'd found it and everything. And this friend didn't recognize
[11:54] the area that the builder said that he found the phone.
[11:56] And besides, it's weird that Kaylee's phone would be just on
[12:00] the floor smashed somewhere anyway.
[12:02] And so as soon as this friend got off the phone with the
[12:04] builder, she rang Stephanie, Kaylee's mother, and just
[12:07] informed her that Kaylee's phone had been found.
[12:09] When Kaylee's mother received the phone call from this friend,
[12:12] she was very confused because this friend was actually the
[12:16] friend that Kaylee said she was staying with.
[12:18] And Stephanie says this to the friend, but the friend's like,
[12:21] no, sorry, I haven't seen Kaylee since school on Friday.
[12:25] So now Stephanie is panicking. Her daughter is not where she
[12:29] said she was going to be for the past two days and her phone was
[12:33] found smashed on a road that she doesn't recognize.
[12:37] So she immediately knew that something was wrong and so she
[12:39] called 999 to report Kaylee misses.
[12:42] So police came round to Stephanie House immediately and
[12:46] just started asking questions about Kaylee, her daily routine,
[12:49] like people she might know, you know, just getting a feel for
[12:52] the situation. And one of the first questions
[12:55] they asked was, does Kaylee have any social media or obviously
[12:59] she was a teenage girl, Most of them do.
[13:01] And that could have been a huge clue as to where she was.
[13:04] Teenagers update social media all the time, sometimes even
[13:07] before they update their parents on certain things.
[13:10] They've already written a status about it.
[13:12] So immediately they seized Kaylee's laptop and the phone
[13:15] that was found and they began looking through them, looking
[13:18] through her messages, all her posts from over the weekend.
[13:21] On 1st inspection of Kaylee's profile, nothing really seemed a
[13:25] miss. Like I said, all her photos
[13:27] seemed fine. She was posting statuses up
[13:30] until Saturday night like everything seemed normal.
[13:33] And that is when police began looking at her private messages
[13:36] and immediately the first one that stuck out to them was Luke
[13:40] Carla, an older man, way older than Kaylee.
[13:43] And Luke's profile really did show his difference in age from
[13:47] Kaylee. He didn't have his age on his
[13:49] profile. Obviously he was trying to hide
[13:51] it from Kaylee. But Kaylee's was very typical
[13:53] teenage girl. She had like pictures with her
[13:55] friends and statuses and song lyrics and stuff like that.
[13:59] Whereas Luke's had a lot of like drink and drugs and adult themed
[14:04] jokes. And their difference in age was
[14:06] just very emphasized by their different profiles.
[14:09] And so police were immediately confused as to why these two
[14:13] people were connected because they didn't seem to have
[14:16] anything in common. So as police were looking
[14:18] through the messages, it became very clear what kind of
[14:21] relationship the two of them had.
[14:23] The messages were very flirty. There were a lot of kisses on
[14:26] the end and love hearts and stuff.
[14:28] And one message that stood out to police immediately was one
[14:33] that Luke sent to Kaylee saying, can I kidnap you forever?
[14:37] So immediately, some police officers went out to find Luke
[14:40] Harlow while the rest of them were still going through these
[14:43] messages. Back at the police station,
[14:45] police arrived at Luke Harlow's house pretty much within the
[14:48] hour of seizing Kaylee's phone. It was that serious.
[14:51] They realized that he must have been a big part of this.
[14:55] And so they were there within the hour.
[14:57] And Kaylee wasn't at his house, although he did let them in.
[15:01] Like, he didn't have a problem speaking to them or anything.
[15:03] Immediately, of course, they asked him, do you know Kaylee
[15:06] Haywood? Like, have you seen her
[15:08] recently? And he didn't even try and lie.
[15:10] He was like, yeah, she was here on Friday.
[15:12] She stayed over on Friday. She was here most of the day on
[15:16] Saturday, but then she left late at night.
[15:19] Luke even told police that she'd left a few of her belongings
[15:22] there, and he handed them over to police.
[15:24] He thought that she would be coming back on the Sunday, but
[15:27] obviously she never came back. And he was particularly
[15:30] interested in Kaylee's phone and where they'd found it.
[15:34] And like, had they looked on it yet?
[15:36] Which was very weird. Like police noted that down
[15:39] immediately. So I don't believe they arrested
[15:42] him at this point, but they did take him down to the police
[15:44] station for a proper question in like getting to run through the
[15:48] whole weekend, the whole timeline.
[15:50] And as he was, he actually revealed to police that he and
[15:53] Kaylee weren't alone on Saturday night, the night that she went
[15:58] miss it. Luke said that in his flat that
[16:00] night, there was him and Kaylee obviously, but also his neighbor
[16:04] Stephen Bedman. Lukes version of events is that
[16:08] Kaylee and Steven left the house that night.
[16:11] He didn't know where they went. He didn't remember exactly what
[16:14] time it was and he waited around for them to get back for like an
[16:18] hour, but then he thought, well they can just let themselves
[16:22] back in whenever they come back, and he decided to go to bed.
[16:25] He then said he woke up the next morning and they still weren't
[16:28] there, so he thought maybe they just went back to Stephen's
[16:30] house instead. Maybe they came back so late
[16:33] that they didn't want to disturb Luke and so that would explain
[16:36] why he still had a lot of Kaylee's items when police came
[16:40] to question it. So police are obviously still
[16:43] suspicious of Luke at this point, but now they're even more
[16:46] worried because there is a second older man in this
[16:49] situation that Kaylee was supposedly alone with that
[16:53] night. So police began trying to find
[16:55] Stephen Biedman, but he wasn't at his house, He wasn't at his
[16:58] workplace, and they couldn't find him anywhere for hours.
[17:02] Police eventually found Stephen Biedman at a believer friend's
[17:06] house or a relative's house, someone's house.
[17:08] He was there, but Kaylee wasn't. So police now decided to
[17:13] officially arrest Luke Harlow and Stephen Biedman on suspicion
[17:17] of kidnap. So in Luke Harlow's questioning,
[17:20] he was asked how he originally connected with Kaylee online.
[17:24] Obviously at this point police already read all the messages,
[17:28] but he didn't know that Luke Harlow didn't know that police
[17:32] had read everything, or at least they were making their way
[17:34] through everything. But police could tell from the
[17:36] messages that they hadn't spoken before that because obviously
[17:40] Kaylee asked who he was and like he explained it.
[17:43] So it was very clear that that chat log was their first ever
[17:47] conversation, but they just wanted to see what Luke would
[17:49] say. Annoyingly, I can't put any of
[17:52] the police questioning videos in this video because they're
[17:55] copyrighted. Oh, it really makes me so mad
[17:59] because now instead I'm just going to have to try and quote
[18:01] them and summarize them and describe them as much as I
[18:04] possibly can. I mean, they are online.
[18:06] So Luke Harlow was asked how he and Kaylee originally connected
[18:10] on Facebook, like how they became friends, how the messages
[18:13] came about. And he was very hesitant at
[18:16] first. He was earning a lot.
[18:18] And then he said he couldn't remember who added who first,
[18:22] but it was a random ad. He told police that he just had
[18:25] a bunch of random people on Facebook book anyway.
[18:28] He had quite a bad habit of just accepting people even though he
[18:31] didn't recognize them. Although police obviously knew
[18:34] this whole time that he was the one that sent her the phone
[18:37] request. He was the one that messaged her
[18:39] first. They just kind of wanted to get
[18:41] him to say it. Luke then said that once they
[18:44] were connected, once they were friends, they started messaging
[18:47] just the odd hi, how are you every so often.
[18:50] But police knew it was a lot deeper than that.
[18:52] It got really deep really quickly with these two.
[18:54] So almost straight away in his question in police noticed that
[18:58] Luke Harlow was using a lot of body language, a lot of hand
[19:01] gestures, a lot of movement to express himself.
[19:05] And we've talked about this before in videos, but a lot of
[19:08] like excessive hand gestures and movement and everything like
[19:12] that is consistent with telling a story or trying to make
[19:17] himself seem so much more confident in what he's saying so
[19:20] that the police will believe him better.
[19:23] Of course, that's not an indicator of whether someone is
[19:25] lying or not. But it, I mean, you know, it's
[19:30] interesting. And yeah, as he was telling this
[19:32] story, he just pretty much said the same as what he said to
[19:35] police back at his house, that Kaylee and Stephen left that
[19:38] night. He went to bed and he didn't
[19:40] know where they went or what they did that night.
[19:43] He doesn't know where Kaylee is now.
[19:44] He doesn't know where Stephen is now.
[19:47] Meanwhile, in Steven Biedman's questioning, everything was a
[19:51] little bit different from his point of view.
[20:00] Stephen Bedman said that he got involved in this whole situation
[20:04] when Luke Harlow knocked on Stephen's door at 7:30 on
[20:08] Saturday evening. So Luke knocked on Stephen's
[20:11] door and just asked him if he had any like lemonade or cola,
[20:15] like any mixers that he could put with alcohol.
[20:18] And Stephen told him no, sorry, I don't have anything, why do
[20:22] you need it? And Luke said because I've got a
[20:24] bird around for people that are from the UK, a bird is someone
[20:29] that you a girl that you are romantically involved with or
[20:32] one that you want to be romantically involved with.
[20:35] So yeah, Luke described Kaylee as a bird to Stephen and said
[20:40] that they got drunk last night, which was the Friday night, and
[20:42] that they were getting wrecked again on Saturday.
[20:45] He said the word wrecked. That's not just me being really
[20:48] informal in this video. S Anyway, somehow Stephen
[20:51] Beedman ends up round at Luke Harlow's house and he's drinking
[20:55] with him and Kaylee. And now this is where Stephen
[20:59] Bedman's version of events differs completely from Luke's.
[21:03] So Luke said that Stephen and Kaylee went out and so he
[21:07] decided to go to bed. Stephen's version of events was
[21:11] that he was drinking with them for about four hours and they'd
[21:15] already been drinking at this point.
[21:16] And he said that the two of them, Luke and Kaylee especially
[21:20] Kaylee, got so drunk that they couldn't even hold a
[21:23] conversation anymore. Kaylee was slur in a word, she
[21:26] couldn't even sit up. She could barely even keep her
[21:29] eyes open. And so Steven Biedman got bored.
[21:32] These two couldn't talk to him anymore.
[21:34] And so he decided to go home and left Kaylee there with Luke.
[21:38] So now we have two men telling two different stories, each of
[21:42] them saying that the other one was the last to see Kaylee.
[21:45] So obviously at least one of them is lying, if not both of
[21:48] them. So now police had to find some
[21:51] real evidence. So the search for Kaylee began.
[21:54] And there were hundreds of officers out just like manually
[21:58] searching, walking around, looking for Kaylee on foot.
[22:01] Police knew that this was a very, very time sensitive case.
[22:05] And if Kaylee was still out there somewhere, they needed to
[22:08] find her quick. She could be injured really
[22:10] quite badly. She was without food and water,
[22:13] obviously, because if she was kidnapped and held somewhere,
[22:16] the two people that kidnapped her are now in police custody.
[22:19] So no one's going to be giving her anything.
[22:21] They knew they had to find her quickly.
[22:23] And so the manpower that police put into this investigation was
[22:27] unreal. They had helicopters, they had
[22:29] sniffer dogs, they had police out on foot, like I said.
[22:33] And it wasn't long before they found their first lead in a park
[22:37] very close to Luke Carlos House on the top of like some
[22:41] overgrowth, some plants, whatever.
[22:43] A bra was found. And it was very obvious to
[22:46] police right away that this bra had not been there long.
[22:49] It wasn't affected by the weather, It wasn't dirty.
[22:52] It was pretty much in pristine condition.
[22:54] It was as if some literally put it there that day.
[22:57] So police took this bra back to the police station and kept it
[23:00] as evidence. And when they brought in
[23:03] Stephanie Kaylee's mother, she confirmed that that was her
[23:06] daughter's bra. And this only added to the fear
[23:10] and the stress on police because it was obvious that something
[23:14] must have happened to Kaylee. She was not going to take off
[23:16] her bra and just leave it in a Bush.
[23:18] So the investigation was stepped up even more than before and
[23:22] there was something in the range of 400 police officers assigned
[23:25] to this one case. And of course it wasn't just
[23:28] police either. There were volunteers, there was
[23:30] Kaylee's friends and family and everyone all out looking for
[23:33] her. At this point, police were still
[23:36] looking through the messages between Luke and Kaylee on
[23:38] Facebook because there were two weeks worth of messages and
[23:42] there were messaging 24/7 non-stop.
[23:45] So there was there were thousands to go through and the
[23:47] more they read, the more concerning this situation was
[23:50] getting. Luke was very sexual with
[23:52] Kaylee, even knowing her age. He would describe things that he
[23:56] wanted to do to her and everything, and when paired with
[23:59] this situation, a missing girl, obviously missing her bra that
[24:03] seemed to have been ditched somewhere, it wasn't looking
[24:06] good at all. Like I said right at the
[24:08] beginning of the video, Kaylee did lie about her age to Luke
[24:11] when they first started speaking.
[24:12] He thought he was talking to a 19 year old, but she was
[24:15] actually 15 and that was when the sexual comments began, when
[24:18] he thought that she was over the age of 18 and everything was OK.
[24:22] However, then he did find out that she was 15 very quickly
[24:26] after, but the comments didn't stop, they got worse if
[24:30] anything. They got more and more explicit,
[24:32] more and more frequent, and police believed this was because
[24:35] she was now off limits. It was something that he
[24:37] couldn't have, so he wanted it more.
[24:40] At this point, police had seized Luke Harlow's phone and
[24:43] electronics and everything. And when they compared the
[24:46] messages, like the messages between him and Kaylee from
[24:50] Kaylee's phone and his phone, Kaylee's phone had thousands
[24:54] more messages on it and his only had something like 500.
[24:58] And police found that Luke Harlow had deleted all of the
[25:02] messages on his phone that contained anything
[25:05] incriminating, anything about her age, anything about meeting
[25:08] up, anything about sex. So police found that there was
[25:11] no activity from Kaylee Hayward's phone as of 9:00 PM on
[25:16] Saturday night. She posted no more photos, no
[25:18] more statuses, no more texts or messages or anything.
[25:21] Her phone just kind of stopped at 9:00 PM, so they assumed that
[25:26] something must have happened to her around that time because
[25:28] this wasn't a natural cut off point for Kaylee.
[25:31] Kaylee would often be on her mobile phone until 1112,
[25:36] sometimes even the early hours of the morning.
[25:37] As with most teenagers, she was pretty much like surgically
[25:40] attached to this phone. Like she was addicted to her
[25:43] phone. She wasn't just going to stop
[25:45] using it at 9:00 PM. There were chargers in Luke's
[25:48] house. He had Internet.
[25:50] There was nothing stopping her from using her.
[25:53] So as part of this investigation, police began
[25:55] speaking with Stephen Beedmans friends, family, anyone that
[25:59] knew him just to kind of get more of an idea about his life.
[26:03] And one of his family members actually told police that
[26:05] Stephen Beedman owned a storage locker.
[26:08] You know, like where you can just put a bunch of your stuff
[26:11] and just keep it there out of your house.
[26:13] Now, this gave police a little bit of hope because if the men
[26:16] had kept Kaylee alive and she was just kidnapped and she was
[26:19] just being held somewhere, this seemed like a pretty promising
[26:22] place that she would be. So as soon as police got to the
[26:25] storage lockup place, they began speaking to staff and they found
[26:29] that Stephen Beadman had actually been to his storage
[26:32] locker at 2:00 PM on the Sunday, so the day after Kaylee went
[26:37] missing. And he was actually seen on CCTV
[26:39] at the this storage lock up place.
[26:42] He drove up in his van to his storage locker and just sat
[26:46] there in his van for a while. And I don't believe CCTV caught
[26:51] in doing anything. Whether the CCTV camera like
[26:54] moves and by the time it came back, he was still sat in his
[26:56] car or whether he just didn't do anything, I don't know.
[26:59] As soon as police found out that Stephen Beeman had this storage
[27:03] lock up, they actually went straight away.
[27:05] And this was at 3:00 AM in the morning.
[27:07] So they had to call up the guy that owned this, like, storage
[27:10] facility and say, will you come and unlock like this guy's
[27:14] locker with the master key? Because obviously there's one
[27:16] key that opens all of them. And so they did all of this at
[27:19] 3:00 in the morning. And when they initially got into
[27:22] Stephen Beeman's locker, Kaylee wasn't there.
[27:25] And it didn't seem like it was going to be much help in the
[27:28] investigation. It was pretty tidy in there.
[27:30] There was literally just like furniture or whatever he was
[27:33] keeping in this locker. There was nothing like thrown in
[27:36] there. So it didn't look like he'd been
[27:37] in a rush and he was trying to dispose of things.
[27:40] No obvious weapon, nothing like that.
[27:43] So police began looking at the surrounding area because we know
[27:46] that Stephen Beeman went there, but maybe he was sat in his van.
[27:50] Maybe that's why he was sat there so long, because he was
[27:52] thinking, if I put something in this locker, they're going to
[27:55] find it straight away. It's really obvious.
[27:57] So police began to look around the area.
[27:59] They were looking between the lockers, behind the lockers,
[28:02] outside of the front gates as well.
[28:03] There was a skip, obviously, for people that want to just like
[28:06] get rid of anything in their lockers, there was a skip there.
[28:09] And so police went and looked through it and pretty close to
[28:12] the top of the skip, there was women's clothing and a handbag.
[28:15] Once again, police took these items back to the police station
[28:19] and Stephanie Kaylee's mother confirmed that they were her
[28:22] daughters. Now at this point police were
[28:25] very doubtful that they would find Kaylee Haywood alive
[28:29] because they had most of her clothes, most of her belongings,
[28:33] no sign of her, and both of the men that were with her that
[28:36] night were lying, or at least one of them was.
[28:39] They both had different stories, which meant that something
[28:42] happened that someone was trying to cover up.
[28:45] And this was only made worse when police interviewed a bunch
[28:48] of Luke and Stevens neighbors to see if they heard or saw
[28:51] anything that night. And several of them had a lot of
[28:55] different people heard screaming and banging.
[28:58] And one neighbor in particular actually saw something.
[29:01] The people that heard noises just kind of assumed it was a
[29:04] group of drunk people because that wasn't out of the ordinary
[29:07] to hear people running around and shouting on their way home
[29:11] from a night out. This was at like 3:00 in the
[29:13] morning. And the neighbor that saw
[29:15] something believed that he was just seeing a domestic argument,
[29:19] domestic fight between a couple. It was a man and a woman, a
[29:23] young woman. The man pinned down this woman.
[29:26] And that is where the neighbor saw it from.
[29:28] This guy was pinning this woman down on the floor.
[29:31] They were talking or like shouting.
[29:33] And then he finally let her up and started to walk away.
[29:36] But this woman, this girl stayed on the floor.
[29:40] And so the man walked back over to her, grabbed her, helped her
[29:43] up, and they held hands walking away.
[29:46] And so this guy, this neighbor that witnessed it just thought,
[29:49] oh, well, it was a domestic. They've made-up what?
[29:51] Whatever. And so he went back in the
[29:53] house. So the evidence of this
[29:55] eyewitness account was presented to Stephen Bedman.
[29:57] Police told him, look, we've got someone that's seen a couple, a
[30:01] young girl and a man together shouting.
[30:04] He pinned her down. Was that you?
[30:06] And he denied either of those people being him or Kaylee.
[30:10] But during this questioning, police noticed that Stephen
[30:13] Beadman had a lot of cuts and scratches on his arms and three
[30:17] very significant injuries on his face, like his forehead, nose
[30:21] and I think on his chin. I don't know exactly what
[30:23] Stephen Beadman did for work, but I know he worked outside.
[30:27] And so police decided to go and check his workplace, like speak
[30:31] to his Co workers, see to see if they can find any more leads.
[30:35] And that is exactly what they found.
[30:37] As soon as they got to Steven Beadman's workplace, they walked
[30:40] into one of the fields and found an unlit bonfire.
[30:44] So there were pretty much a bunch of materials, a bunch of
[30:47] wood like firewood. And it hadn't been lit yet.
[30:50] And so police went over and kind of dismantled the whole thing to
[30:53] see if anything was in that pile of wood.
[30:56] And there was there was a bin liner, just a big black bin bag
[31:01] full of clothing that had blood all over it.
[31:04] So this clothing was taken to the police station and it was
[31:07] found to be men's clothing with blood all over it, like I said.
[31:11] And so it was sent off to be tested.
[31:13] And that blood was confirmed to be that of 15 year old Kaylee
[31:17] Haywood. Now police had not only a
[31:20] missing girl and two men arrested for her kidnap, but
[31:23] they'd also found her blood on their clothing.
[31:27] This was not looking like they were going to find Kaylee alive.
[31:30] So now Luke Harlar and Steven Beadman were both rearrested on
[31:34] suspicion of her murder rather than her kidnap.
[31:37] Now all police had to do was find her body.
[31:40] And so because the men were rearrested like it was a fresh
[31:44] charge that they were given, police decided to re question
[31:48] them because now it was more intense and because of the step
[31:52] up in the charge, Stephen Beedman decided to start telling
[31:56] the truth. So before Stephen Beedman's
[31:58] story was that Kaylee and Luke were too drunk to talk to him.
[32:02] They were too drunk to form a conversation and so he just went
[32:05] home and left her there. But now Beedman was saying that
[32:09] actually he and Kaylee decided to go out for a walk that night
[32:14] and they left Luke in house. And he also said that that
[32:17] couple that was seen having a domestic argument could have
[32:21] been him and Kaylee. He said that she was walking
[32:24] freely for the most part, but he started to get annoyed with her
[32:27] because she was so drunk that she was stumbling and falling.
[32:30] And he said that what the neighbor saw of this guy pinning
[32:34] her down was actually him kneeling by Kaylee, making sure
[32:38] that she was all right after she'd drunkenly fallen.
[32:41] But anyway, he helped her up in the end and they carried on
[32:43] walking. He said that he was just pulling
[32:45] her about by a hand like to kind of control her a bit more
[32:47] because she was so drunk. He said he didn't have any
[32:50] weapons or anything like that. So in admitting this, that he
[32:54] was with Kaylee and that he was the person seen by the
[32:56] eyewitness, he was not only admitting that he was alone with
[33:00] Kaylee outside for a long time and there's no explanation after
[33:05] that, but he's also admitting that he previously lied to
[33:08] police, which doesn't look good. So at this point, police were
[33:12] pretty straightforward with Stephen Biedman and they just
[33:15] said, look, it's not looking good for you.
[33:17] They said you've lied, you've been seen with her.
[33:20] There's no explanation as to where she went after she was
[33:23] with you. So whether he pled guilty or
[33:26] not, he was probably going to be found guilty anyway.
[33:29] So they left it to him. They just said you can carry on
[33:31] this fake story, plead not guilty and get found guilty
[33:35] anyway, or you could plead guilty and get a lesser sentence
[33:39] for admitting it. And that is exactly what Steven
[33:41] Beadman chose to do. He sat there and confessed to
[33:45] raping and murdering 15 year old Kaylee Haywood.
[33:49] He said that he left her body in like a field slash wooded area
[33:54] and he pointed to a map where he left her and police went to go
[33:58] and look for her. However, this area that he left
[34:01] her was very overgrown. Like the grass was so tall it
[34:05] was going to be really, really hard to find her, especially at
[34:07] this time of year. It was November, it was dark, it
[34:10] was cold, everything was covered in maybe snow or rain.
[34:14] And because Stephen admitted to all of this on the Wednesday
[34:17] night, it was already dark at this point.
[34:20] But police knew that they had to go and find her as soon as
[34:22] possible. But they couldn't get a proper
[34:24] search team together until the next morning, obviously because
[34:27] no one was at work at this time. So about four or five officers
[34:30] that were in the police station at the time said that they would
[34:34] go to this field on on their own time, in their own hours, when
[34:38] they should have been at home with their families or in bed
[34:41] sleeping. They went out to find Kaylee.
[34:44] And after searching this field, this kind of wooded area for
[34:48] hours, police finally found Kaylee Haywood's body.
[34:52] She was naked apart from one sock, and she was laid in a very
[34:57] unnatural position. It was obvious that she'd been
[34:59] like dumped there or thrown there.
[35:01] She was laid like half on her front, half on her side, like,
[35:05] it's not like a natural fallen position.
[35:09] And immediately it was very obvious that Kaylee Haywood had
[35:12] suffered A brutal death. It seemed as though she'd been
[35:15] bludgeoned to death. She had a lot of injuries on her
[35:18] head. There were a lot of wounds, a
[35:20] lot of dried blood in her hair. And there were a lot of injuries
[35:23] all over her hands and her arms from where she tried to defend
[35:27] herself. So she was fighting until the.
[35:30] However, at this point Luke Harler and Stephen Beedman did
[35:34] not want to talk. Luke was denying being involved
[35:38] in this at all. He was still sticking to his
[35:40] story that he was asleep and the two of them left and that was
[35:43] all he knew. And Stephen Beedman wasn't
[35:45] really willing to elaborate on anymore of his story.
[35:50] So I don't know if we ever found out how exactly he killed her,
[35:53] how many times he hit her, because police believe that she
[35:56] was bludgeoned to death because Steven just wouldn't tell them.
[35:59] And so everything from like here on is just pretty much police
[36:02] theory on what happened that night from like witnesses and
[36:06] the evidence and things like that.
[36:08] So they believed that Kaylee was the one that sent her mother
[36:11] that text on Saturday at lunchtime asking to stay another
[36:14] night. They believed that Kaylee had
[36:16] had a good weekend so far and she did want to stay another
[36:19] night. However, police believed that it
[36:21] got to a certain point in the night.
[36:23] She was very drunk, so was Luke, so was Stephen, and Luke and
[36:27] Stephen made unwanted sexual passes at Kaylee.
[36:31] And police believed that Kaylee kind of freaked out as you
[36:35] would, and she decided to run from the house.
[36:38] They believed that Kaylee ran out of Luke Harlow's home and
[36:42] down a few different roads where eventually Stephen Beadman ran
[36:46] out and caught up to her. And that is when he pinned her
[36:48] down. And that was when this neighbor
[36:50] saw the two of them. This person said that they
[36:52] believed it was a man and a woman on their way home from a
[36:55] night out because this woman was wearing either a dress or a top
[36:59] and a skirt, so basically she had bare legs.
[37:02] However, police believed that this was Kaylee wearing one of
[37:07] the men's baggy T-shirts and she was just half dressed because
[37:11] they had tried to sexually assault her.
[37:14] Anyway, police believed that Beadman pinned her down to like
[37:17] shout at her or tell her to get back to the house or something
[37:20] like that, and then he got up and started to walk away.
[37:23] However, she was still emotional on the floor, obviously, and so
[37:27] they believed that Beadman walked back over to her, pulled
[37:29] her up and held her hand as they walked back to Luke Harlow's
[37:33] house. But police don't believe they
[37:35] ever got to the house. Police do kind of believe Luke
[37:38] Harlow's version of events, although they believed that he
[37:41] knew a lot more than he told police he knew.
[37:44] But they believed that he didn't have anything to do with her
[37:47] actual murder. He didn't know that that was
[37:49] going to happen. He wasn't part of the planning.
[37:52] Police believe that the two of them, Stephen and Kaylee, set
[37:55] off back to Luke's house, but at some point actually turned round
[37:59] and went in a different direction.
[38:01] Stephen then pointed out on a map a particular car park a few
[38:05] roads away from where Luke Harlow lived, where he said that
[38:09] he raped Kaylee Haywood. He said the two of them then
[38:11] walked quite a fair walk to the woods kind of field area where
[38:17] he eventually killed and left Kaylee's body.
[38:20] Within four days of Kaylee Hayward's disappearance, 28 year
[38:23] old Stephen Bedeman was charged with her rape and murder. 27
[38:27] year old Luke Harlow was charged with grooming and two counts of
[38:31] sexual activity with a child. So that is the Kaylee Hayward
[38:35] case officially solved. But police weren't fully
[38:38] satisfied. They weren't done there.
[38:40] They felt that Stephen Bedeman did this far too effortlessly.
[38:45] Like he knew exactly what to do. Like it just seemed very
[38:48] methodical. He didn't have any remorse.
[38:50] He was quite good at lying, and so police were worried that
[38:53] maybe he'd done this before. So police began searching his
[38:56] home. They seized all of his
[38:58] electronics, his phone, his computer and everything.
[39:00] And they began searching like his whole past for like a
[39:04] criminal record. And while they didn't find any
[39:07] evidence of physical crimes on his computers, on three
[39:11] different electronics, so like phone, computer and something
[39:15] else, they found thousands of indecent images of children,
[39:20] along with a search history of some very violent and graphic
[39:23] pornography. And police theorized that these
[39:26] images were not enough to satisfy Stephen Biedmans kind of
[39:31] pedophilic urges that he had. And the minute he got an
[39:35] opportunity to act out these urges on a child, he did.
[39:39] And Kaylee just happened to be that child.
[39:42] So skipped forward to June of the next year.
[39:45] Stephen Biedman and Luke Harlow are going to trial to be
[39:49] sentenced for these crimes. And suddenly Stephen Biedman is
[39:52] very remorseful. He doesn't want to hear the
[39:55] evidence presented to him. He tried to hide in his cell so
[39:58] that he didn't have to go to trial.
[40:00] He suddenly couldn't live with himself and his crimes as he
[40:04] shouldn't. However, Luke Harlow seemed to
[40:07] be the complete opposite. So if you watch quite a few of
[40:10] these videos, you might know that people's lawyers like
[40:12] killers Lawyers often tell them not to take the stand and give
[40:17] evidence at their own trial because it never really ends up.
[40:20] Well, the prosecution always find a way to twist their words
[40:23] and use their own words against them.
[40:25] It's never good if the person is trying to avoid being found
[40:29] guilty. So if these killers want any
[40:31] chance of beating the case, then their lawyers just tell them to
[40:34] stay quiet, let them do the talking.
[40:37] However, the very kind of narcissistic and cocky killers
[40:41] tend to want to take the stand. It's like it's one last act of
[40:45] bravery in a way. Like one last big closing
[40:49] statement, like I don't. And Luke Harlow did exactly
[40:52] that. And of course, it only made him
[40:54] look worse. It seemed as though Luke Harlow
[40:57] was trying to gain sympathy for himself as if he was a victim.
[41:01] His neighbor used him to get to Kaylee, his girlfriend, but he
[41:06] didn't once come across sympathetic for his girlfriend.
[41:10] And I say this because she wasn't his girlfriend.
[41:13] Luke Harlow was, of course, found guilty of his grooming
[41:16] charges and his sexual misconduct charges, and he was
[41:19] sent in to 12 years in prison. Stephen Beadman was also found
[41:23] guilty of the rape and murder of Kaylee Haywood and was sentenced
[41:27] to life in prison. They both had a few other
[41:30] charges as well, like false imprisonment and perverting the
[41:32] course of justice for lying to police.
[41:34] So in the aftermath of this case, police and Kaylee's own
[41:39] parents decided to create a kind of educational short film named
[41:43] Kaylee's Love Story. I'll link it down below.
[41:46] It's just a YouTube video that tells the story of the last 13
[41:50] days of Kaylee Haywood's life, from the second she got that
[41:53] frame request on Facebook to the second that she died.
[41:56] Please do consider watching that video if you are on social media
[42:00] a lot or if like your kids are on social media, try and show
[42:03] them it. If you're a teacher, I know
[42:05] quite a few teachers watch my videos.
[42:07] Consider showing it to students. It is really, really important
[42:10] stuff. That video alone has helped
[42:12] hundreds of children and teenagers in the UK go to either
[42:16] police or an adult or a teacher about someone that that they
[42:20] think is grooming them online. And without videos like that,
[42:24] you probably wouldn't consider it as grooming.
[42:27] You would think it was just someone trying to be a friend.
[42:29] Online, just like Kaylee did. Thank you so much for listening
[42:36] to usual disclaimer. At this point, I just want to
[42:38] say that if you've been affected by any of the topics we
[42:41] discussed today, please check the description where we've left
[42:44] some helpful resources. If you want to hear more cases
[42:47] like this one, make sure to follow Usual Disclaimer on your
[42:50] podcast app so that you get notifications when we post new
[42:53] episodes. And if you really enjoyed, I'd
[42:56] love it if you could leave a rating and a review too.
[42:59] Usual Disclaimer with Eleanor Neil is an Audio Boom Studios
[43:02] production. See you next time.

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