# 66: The Bus Station Murder of Shirley Leach

An episode of [Outlore with Eleanor Neale](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1682504024), 28 Feb 2024, 31 min.

Audio: https://traffic.megaphone.fm/APO4629002654.mp3

Today's solved true crime case is on the bus station murder of Shirley Leach in Manchester, England, UK. Trigger Warning: sexual assault, rape Resources: https://linktr.ee/usualdisclaimer Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

## Transcript

[0:05] Hello, usual disclaimer podcast listeners.
[0:08] How are you? Beautiful bunch.
[0:10] It's just Eleanor popping in to let you know that there's not
[0:13] actually going to be a brand new episode this week.
[0:15] But of course, I'm not going to leave you with nothing.
[0:18] So here's a case that we've pulled from the archive to put
[0:21] you on until I'm back. This is a case that I first
[0:23] covered on YouTube back in 2020. The story of Shirley Leach, an
[0:28] elderly woman whose body was found brutalized in the stall of
[0:32] a bus station public toilet. This case has really, really
[0:35] stuck with me since I first recorded it, partly because it's
[0:38] pretty close to home in the literal sense.
[0:41] This case comes out of Manchester, in the north of
[0:43] England, not too far from where I grew up.
[0:45] But the thing that gets me the most about this one is how
[0:48] random and senseless it was. It was so savage, too.
[0:53] How anyone could do something like this to a friendly little
[0:56] grandmother, I will never know. And I do just want to give you
[0:59] guys a a warning before we get into this one that this case
[1:02] does involve themes of sexual assault and rape.
[1:05] So as always, viewer discretion is advised.
[1:08] If you think that this case might be a bit too intense for
[1:10] you, then you might want to click out of this episode now.
[1:13] But don't worry, we have plenty of other stories in our catalog
[1:16] for you to dive into. But with all that being said,
[1:19] let's get into it. I just want to give my usual
[1:25] disclaimer that I mean absolutely no disrespect to
[1:27] anyone that I talk about in this case.
[1:29] This video is for educational purposes and everything I'm
[1:32] about to say is just information that I have found on the
[1:35] Internet and I'm compiling into one video.
[1:38] So today's case takes place in Berry, which is a town in
[1:42] Greater Manchester in the north of England.
[1:44] On January 7th, 1994, a local couple were just coming home
[1:48] from a night out. It was around 4:00 AM at this
[1:51] point and they decided to stop off at Berry Interchange, which
[1:54] was the town's bus station, and use the toilets since they were
[1:58] the only public toilets that were really open at that time.
[2:01] So the man went into the men's toilets and the woman went into
[2:05] the woman's toilets and when she walked in there was only one
[2:08] cubicle available because they block off all the others and
[2:11] just leave one for during the night.
[2:12] So this woman approached the only stall that was available,
[2:15] but when she pushed open the door she discovered a horrifying
[2:20] scene. There was a woman's dead body
[2:23] lying on the floor of that cubicle.
[2:26] She was naked, covered in blood and seemingly mutilated.
[2:30] So this woman that just discovered this screamed, ran
[2:33] outside and called police immediately.
[2:35] When they arrived, the whole area was cordoned off and
[2:39] investigators began looking at the crime scene and the
[2:42] surrounding areas for any clues as to maybe who did this or who
[2:46] this victim was. The body seemed to be the that
[2:50] of an elderly woman. However, like I said, it was
[2:52] mutilated so bad that even that was kind of hard to tell.
[2:56] It was a difficult crime scene to investigate because this was
[2:59] a tiny little dirty toilet cubicle.
[3:03] There wasn't much room in there for investigators to kind of
[3:06] walk in, get a 360 view of the body without actually touching
[3:10] or moving any kind of evidence that might be important.
[3:14] It took almost 14 hours for the victim to be identified, but
[3:18] finally police had a name. This woman was a Mrs. Shirley
[3:22] Leach. Shirley Leach was a 66 year old
[3:25] grandmother, born and raised in Bury.
[3:27] That was where she'd stayed all her life pretty much.
[3:30] She'd raised her kids there, she'd retired there.
[3:32] She was a widow after her husband passed away 2 years
[3:35] prior in 1992 from cancer. And these days she spent most of
[3:40] her time either with her children, her grandchildren or
[3:43] with her neighbors. She was, from what I could tell
[3:46] in my research, just a very kind old lady lady, just a very
[3:50] loving, doting grandmother. Her grandchildren and her
[3:53] children were absolutely everything to her.
[3:56] She was, she was very caring, very loving to everyone.
[3:59] She met her neighbour's friends. She would go around to the
[4:02] neighbour's house for tea and coffee a lot.
[4:04] They'd loved her. All the neighbors loved her, one
[4:07] of them even saying she was a lovely, kind person that would
[4:10] help anyone if she could. Shirley lived with her son Gary.
[4:14] She actually had two children, both of which were adults now,
[4:17] Gary and a daughter named Beryl. Beryl had moved out, she had a
[4:21] family of her own. She actually had her own child,
[4:24] giving Shirley a grandchild, 19 year old Darren, who Shirley was
[4:28] actually very close with. The two of them.
[4:30] Shirley and Darren shared a love of music and they always used to
[4:34] go to record shops together and talk about new artists.
[4:38] He said that Shirley even knew more about current artists than
[4:41] he did. She was very young for her age.
[4:44] Darren described Shirley as being more like a mother to him,
[4:47] like a second mother rather than a grandmother.
[4:49] They would go out and have a laugh together and go to the pub
[4:53] and you know, they would. They just had a very close
[4:55] relationship. He recalled his grandmother
[4:57] being a very generous woman. She would always help him with
[5:01] finances here and there because this was a 19 year old boy.
[5:04] He doesn't exactly have, you know, all of his finances laid
[5:07] out. He's not at the peak of his
[5:08] career. And she knew that and she would
[5:11] just give him a little bit of extra money here and there when
[5:13] he needed it. He didn't even have to ask for
[5:15] it. Darren's mother, Beryl,
[5:17] Shirley's daughter, was actually in hospital at the time of
[5:20] Shirley's murder. She'd been in hospital for just
[5:23] over a week at that point. I don't think it was anything
[5:25] serious, I think maybe it had just been an accident or
[5:27] something like that. But of course this meant that 19
[5:30] year old Darren was kind of looking after himself in his
[5:33] house for once, and so Shirley would help him out, buying him
[5:36] groceries and stuff like that, just because she was a very
[5:39] generous woman. On the day of her murder on
[5:41] January 6th, 1994, Shirley Leach had been out with her grandson
[5:46] Darren. They'd first been to visit his
[5:49] mother, her daughter Beryl, in Fairfield Hospital and then on
[5:53] their way home they decided to stop off at a pub.
[5:56] They only had one drink, or maybe 2, and then Shirley
[5:59] decided that it was probably time that she was going home.
[6:01] It was winter, it was getting dark outside, and it was getting
[6:04] rather late. It was pushing 9:00 at this
[6:06] point and she needed to get 2 buses home.
[6:09] So they both hopped on the same bus that headed to Bury
[6:11] Interchange and Darren got off a couple of stops before Shirley,
[6:15] who would stay on it all the way to the interchange and then get
[6:18] her second bus. So Darren says goodbye to his
[6:21] grandmother, gets off the bus, waves her off and watches the
[6:24] bus drive off and that was the last time he ever saw his
[6:28] grandmother. Shirley arrived at Berry
[6:31] Interchange around 9:10 PM that night and she was seen by
[6:35] multiple people. She was safe.
[6:36] And well at this point there were actually 2 nurses on her
[6:39] bus that got off at the same time as her that recognized her
[6:42] from the hospital. So they were able to confirm
[6:45] that to police that she got to the bus station safe.
[6:47] She was there safe. But then Shirley made her way to
[6:51] the bus stand that she would get her second bus from, and she
[6:54] realized that she'd just missed it.
[6:56] And she'd never missed this bus before.
[6:58] She'd always made this connection every time she'd come
[7:01] home from the hospital. And what's worse, this was the
[7:03] first time she'd ever done that journey alone.
[7:06] Normally at this point, for her second bus, she would be with
[7:09] another family member because they tended to go to the
[7:12] hospital in groups. So it just so happened that the
[7:14] first time she ever missed her connecting bus, she was also
[7:18] alone at night time. So anyway, she gets to the bus
[7:21] stand, she realizes that her next bus won't be there until
[7:24] around 9:40 PM. So she had about 20-30 minutes
[7:28] and she decides to go to the toilet while she waits.
[7:32] The toilets were on the opposite side of Berry Interchange and
[7:35] they were actually on the outside of the building, so the
[7:37] door to get in was outside rather than inside.
[7:40] So the likelihood of anyone seeing Shirley enter or leave
[7:44] the toilets was very low. She was spotted making her way
[7:48] across the interchange around 9:15 PM that night.
[7:51] She was spotted by one of the nurses that recognized her, and
[7:55] within 5 minutes of that sighting, Shirley Leach would be
[7:59] brutally murdered. Her body was taken for an
[8:01] autopsy, and it was found that despite all of the blood, there
[8:05] was a lot of blood at this crime scene.
[8:08] Her cause of death hadn't actually been from all of her
[8:11] wounds, it had actually been from strangulation, and it
[8:14] seemed that there'd actually been quite some time between her
[8:17] actual murder and the time that she was mutilated.
[8:22] They believe it was done, of course, after she was already
[8:24] dead and with a smashed glass bottle that was never found.
[8:29] One of her breasts was fully amputated, and that too was
[8:32] never found. It wasn't left at the crime
[8:34] scene. They believed that the killer
[8:36] took it as some kind of trophy. There was that, along with just
[8:40] a lot of other cuts and wounds in her whole body.
[8:42] Perhaps the killer was trying to make the body unidentifiable so
[8:47] that it couldn't possibly trail back to the them.
[8:49] Say if the killer had bitten Shirley during this attack, then
[8:53] there would be a teeth imprint on her body and that could be
[8:56] checked against dental records and that would easily lead to a
[8:59] killer. And there was actually saliva
[9:02] found on Shirley's body. So it seemed that that was the
[9:05] most likely case. Maybe the killer remembered
[9:08] after the attack that they'd bitten Shirley and then returned
[9:12] to her body to mutilate her and possibly cut off her breasts
[9:16] that they'd bitten. That saliva sample that was
[9:19] found on Shirleys body was DNA tested but nothing was found.
[9:23] This was the early 1990s, so DNA testing wasn't very good.
[9:27] There was also a fingerprint taken from the crime scene, but
[9:30] same thing. Again, there were no match
[9:32] results on the database. And as I said, there was a lot
[9:36] of blood at this crime scene. However, when it was all tested,
[9:41] it seemed that there were two different blood samples, of
[9:43] course, one of them a match to Shirley Leach, but then the
[9:47] other one didn't have a match. So it's believed that that was
[9:50] her killer's blood. Maybe Shirley had hit her
[9:53] attacker, been defending herself and, you know, caused them to
[9:57] bleat all of the crime scene. That could be a potential huge
[10:01] lead in this. And it was also found in her
[10:03] autopsy that 66 year old Shirley had been raped as part of this
[10:08] ordeal. Police had thought that would be
[10:10] the case, some kind of sexual assault alongside the murder due
[10:14] to how her body was found. She was found naked.
[10:16] But the autopsy did confirm that some sources say that Shirley's
[10:20] dentures and her clothes were found on the floor of this
[10:24] toilet cubicle. Although I'm not 100 sure that
[10:27] that's accurate, so I thought it was worth mentioning, but again,
[10:31] not sure if it's true. The murder was theorized to have
[10:34] taken place between 9:15 PM and 9:20 PM that night, which yes,
[10:40] it is late, but this was a bus station, an interchange as well.
[10:44] So it had a lot of people come in and go in at no matter what
[10:47] hour it was. So police thought that surely
[10:49] someone in that bus station had to have seen something that
[10:53] night, Maybe someone following Shirley hanging too close to
[10:56] her, someone hanging around the toilets maybe.
[10:59] So the original public appeals in this case really focused on
[11:03] getting witnesses that were at the station that night to come
[11:06] forward to police with any information they might have
[11:08] because there was no way of tracing everyone that was at the
[11:12] bus station that night. So they were just kind of hoping
[11:14] that someone might see the appeals and voluntarily come
[11:17] forward. A man named Gary O'Neill saw the
[11:20] news and got in contact with police because he too was just
[11:24] getting off of a bus at Berry Interchange around 9:00 AM that
[11:27] night, the same time as Shirley would have been.
[11:29] He said he was just walking in the direction of the toilets.
[11:32] Once he got off the bus, he wasn't going to the toilets, but
[11:36] like he was walking in that direction, he could see it and
[11:39] there was a man standing outside of the toilets that night.
[11:43] And you know, on a normal day this wouldn't have been
[11:46] suspicious, so he didn't really think much of it.
[11:48] However, now that he knew a murder had taken place inside
[11:51] the toilets, he wanted to come to police and kind of describe
[11:55] this man. He said he thought the man was
[11:57] either in his late 40s, early 50s.
[11:59] He was wearing a long light coloured coat, maybe a flat cap
[12:04] and a green bag, but that was all he could really tell police.
[12:07] Another female witness came forward to police saying that
[12:11] she was in Berry Interchange around 8:30 PM that night.
[12:14] So that's about 40 minutes before the murder would have
[12:17] taken place. And she said that she'd come
[12:20] across a very suspicious man. This man had approached her and
[12:24] he wouldn't leave her alone. He was asking her loads of
[12:26] questions. He asked her for a cigarette.
[12:28] He was kind of, I don't think he was flirting with her, but it
[12:32] was, it was odd. It was uncomfortable for her.
[12:34] And she didn't want to wait for her bus while this man was
[12:39] there. And so instead of waiting for a
[12:41] bus, she called a taxi. And if that was Shirley's
[12:44] killer, that this woman was speaking to her that night,
[12:47] maybe she was meant to be the killers first victim and maybe
[12:51] her calling a taxi was what saved her life that night.
[12:54] This woman also described a very similar looking man to the first
[12:59] witness, so police were already feeling like they were on the
[13:03] right track. A group of teenagers came
[13:05] forward to police saying that they'd been hanging around Bury
[13:08] Interchange that night, not in the bus station but kind of down
[13:12] the road a little bit. But like I said, the toilets
[13:15] were on the outside of the building, so they would have
[13:18] seen or heard something if they were on the street.
[13:20] And they said that they'd actually heard a woman's scream
[13:24] coming from the toilets that day.
[13:26] They said they heard it, but they didn't think too much of
[13:28] it, and they never saw anything. They weren't particularly
[13:32] looking for anything, so they just carried on talking.
[13:34] And although that, of course, wouldn't help police identify a
[13:37] suspect, it did help them narrow down the timeline of events.
[13:41] If that scream had been from Shirley Leach, then her murder
[13:45] was between 9:15 and 9:20. Just like they'd theorized.
[13:49] Another elderly woman came forward to police and told them
[13:52] that she'd been waiting in a queue for a bus that day with
[13:55] her friend when they'd seen a man hanging about outside the
[13:59] woman's toilets. She never saw his face.
[14:01] He had her back turned to her the whole time so she couldn't
[14:04] really tell police much. However, she did add on to the
[14:07] description of the other people by saying that she believed the
[14:10] man to be around 5 foot seven or five foot 8.
[14:14] But there was one particular sighting from a young girl at
[14:17] the bus station that night the police believed was their most
[14:20] promising lead yet. This girl had been queuing for
[14:24] her bus in one of the outside bus shelters around 10:10 that
[14:28] night. So that's almost an hour after
[14:30] they believe Shirley was murdered and this girl said that
[14:33] she'd seen a man walking away from Bury Interchange that night
[14:38] holding a handkerchief soaked in blood.
[14:40] It was unclear whether this was his blood or Shirleys blood, if
[14:44] this was the killer that this girl had seen, because we know
[14:47] that both of them bled. Of course this timing lines up
[14:51] perfectly with probably when the killer would have gone back to
[14:54] mutilate Shirley, so perhaps it was Shirley's blood.
[14:57] But we also know that Shirley had defended herself and hit her
[15:01] attacker in the face, causing them to bleed too, so it could
[15:05] have also been him trying to patch up his wounds.
[15:08] Possibly because she did say that he was holding it to his
[15:11] face quite a lot of the time. Although of course she didn't
[15:14] pay too much attention to this man.
[15:16] However, all of these witness statements came together to
[15:19] produce 1 killer profile. They believed that this was a
[15:22] white man in his late 40s to early 50s.
[15:25] He was between 5 foot 7 and 5 foot eight.
[15:28] He seemed to dress well. He was wearing like a long coat
[15:32] and a flat cap, so perhaps that was just how he dressed
[15:35] normally. And that was pretty much all
[15:36] police really had. An E fit sketch was made, a
[15:39] police sketch, which is where they get all the witnesses in,
[15:42] and they asked them to describe the man in as best detail as
[15:46] they possibly can. And that sketch was put all over
[15:49] the news. Reconstructions were made of all
[15:52] of these sightings of this man as well as reconstructions of
[15:55] Shirley's last known movements. And they were all aired on BBC's
[15:59] Crime Watch. And when they were aired, police
[16:02] did receive a lot of calls with a lot of potential leads.
[16:05] However, none of them really led to a suspect.
[16:08] They didn't give any substantial information in the case.
[16:11] All in all, 700 people were interviewed in this case, be it,
[16:16] you know, witnesses, people that were in the bus station, all
[16:19] that area that night, family and friends of Shirley.
[16:22] But police were coming to a dead end in this case.
[16:25] None of these interviews LED anywhere.
[16:27] There were no new leads coming in.
[16:29] Police knew that they had to take a different approach if
[16:32] they wanted better results, so they decided to do a mass DNA
[16:37] screening of hundreds of men in the surrounding area of Bury
[16:41] Interchange. All of these men had to give
[16:43] birth a fingerprint and a saliva sample so that they could be
[16:47] tested against the fingerprint and saliva sample found at the
[16:49] crime scene. Over 500 men were tested as part
[16:53] of this screening and not one match was found.
[17:04] Police theorized that Shirley was being watched as she headed
[17:07] to the toilet that night. It wasn't like her killer was
[17:10] already in the toilets. They think that he'd seen her as
[17:13] she was walking there and took the opportunity.
[17:16] In a split second. They believe he followed her
[17:19] into the toilets and followed her to the cubicle and before
[17:22] she could turn around and shut the door and lock it behind her,
[17:25] he attacked. There, the killer raped and
[17:28] strangled Shirley to death before leaving her there alone
[17:33] in that toilet cubicle for over half an hour and then returning
[17:37] with this smashed glass bottle to mutilate her body.
[17:41] Perhaps the killer was intending on leaving this as just a rape
[17:45] and murder. Maybe they weren't going to
[17:47] mutilate her. But perhaps after they left and
[17:50] all of that adrenaline was leaving their body and they were
[17:52] thinking about what they just did, maybe that was when they
[17:55] remembered the bite mark. I say that like there was
[17:58] definitively a bite mark. We don't know because the body
[18:01] was mutilated and one of her breasts has never been found.
[18:05] That's just theorized to be the most likely reason for the
[18:08] mutilation and the fact that one of her body parts wasn't found.
[18:12] Again, some people think that maybe he took the breast as a
[18:15] trophy, others think that it was literally just to try to dispose
[18:20] of evidence. Or maybe the killer hadn't
[18:22] returned to the body to mutilate it because of evidence.
[18:25] Maybe this was just such a sick, twisted individual that they
[18:29] just didn't feel done yet and the killer wanted to return to
[18:34] the body and keep going. Despite all of police's efforts,
[18:38] this case very quickly went cold, which was terrifying for
[18:43] the people of Berry because someone that was capable of
[18:46] doing this to a 66 year old woman and then going back to the
[18:50] body and mutilating it further, whoever had done that could
[18:55] easily do it again. In fact, someone as sick and
[18:58] twisted as the killer that carried this out probably would
[19:01] do it again because now they feel like they can get away with
[19:04] it. They feel like they're above the
[19:06] law and, you know, they can just commit crimes like this without
[19:09] being caught, and that's all the more motivation for their
[19:13] horrendous mind to want to do this again.
[19:16] Berry was never quite the same after Shirley's murder.
[19:20] Women were terrified to go anywhere alone, especially the
[19:23] bus station, especially at night.
[19:26] Sales of protective accessories like rape alarms and stuff
[19:30] increased in that area by so much because everyone was just
[19:34] terrified that the killer was going to strike again.
[19:37] A year later, around the anniversary of the murder, the
[19:40] following January, police planned a stakehouse mission at
[19:44] very interchange, almost hoping the killer might come back as
[19:48] some sort of sick remembrance of their crime.
[19:52] But they didn't see anything. Years and years went by with no
[19:57] real developments in this case, although Shirley's family never
[20:01] stopped fighting, they were doing continuous appeals and
[20:04] always campaigning for Shirley's killer to be brought to justice.
[20:09] And in this time since the murder, Shirley's daughter Beryl
[20:12] had actually developed. A form of mouth cancer which her
[20:16] doctors believe was brought on or worsened from the stress of
[20:20] going through this, through the loss of her mother in such a
[20:23] horrific way. Through the investigation, of
[20:26] course, police had checked any and every CCTV camera they
[20:31] possibly could in that area. However, it was the 1990s so
[20:36] both camera quality and the amount of cameras in areas
[20:42] wasn't very good. Having security cameras
[20:45] everywhere on pretty much every single building is actually
[20:48] quite a new thing. And back then they were only on
[20:51] like important buildings that had stuff to steal.
[20:55] So it was kind of hard for police because there were no
[20:58] cameras near the toilet, so they couldn't see anyone go in or
[21:00] out. There were only cameras on
[21:02] certain parts of the bus station.
[21:04] And of course they checked CCTV cameras from the surrounding
[21:08] areas to see if they could see anyone, kind of walk towards the
[21:11] bus station and then walk away at specific times.
[21:14] Because then they could piece that together with the timeline.
[21:16] Say they saw a man walk towards the bus station just before 9:00
[21:20] PM and then leave again and then come back just before 10 because
[21:24] that had kind of fit with the timeline of the killer coming,
[21:27] murdering Shirley, leaving and then coming back to mutilate
[21:30] her. And there was one man who was
[21:33] seen on a few different CCTV cameras in that area of around
[21:37] the bus station. And he did vaguely match the
[21:40] suspect description. One of these cameras that this
[21:43] man was spotted on was at a local garage.
[21:46] One of them was of course, Bury Interchange itself.
[21:49] And then another one was another St. kind of in another
[21:52] direction. And at one point on these
[21:54] cameras, this man is seen running, which is rather
[21:58] suspicious. So a screenshot from the CCTV
[22:01] footage was taken and it was plastered all over the news with
[22:05] police saying if anyone can identify this man on the CCTV
[22:09] footage to come forward and give a name.
[22:11] This man was mostly bald. He had a ring of bushy hair
[22:15] around this kind of area of his head.
[22:17] And he seemed to have one limp arm that kind of stayed by his
[22:21] side even when he was running, and he was using the other arm.
[22:24] So police theorized that either this arm was injured or maybe it
[22:28] was you know, maybe this was more of a permanent medical
[22:31] condition that this man had that meant he couldn't move his arm.
[22:34] Luckily for police, you could actually see this man's face on
[22:37] the CCTV screenshots and this led to a lot of people calling
[22:42] in and giving the same name over and over again.
[22:46] Peter Buchanan and so Mr. Buchanan was brought in for
[22:50] questioning. He was asked where he was on the
[22:52] night of the murders and Mr. Buchanan said that he wasn't
[22:56] even in buried that night. Although, well, something
[22:58] interesting to note about this man was that he actually had a
[23:02] prosthetic arm that he couldn't move and it just laid limp at
[23:07] his side. He denied being the killer,
[23:09] although he did admit that the man on CCTV looked an awful lot
[23:13] like him. The hair was exactly the same,
[23:15] of course. The arm was exactly the same.
[23:17] His build, his height. It looked very suspicious.
[23:21] And for that reason, Peter Buchanan was asked to give a DNA
[23:24] sample so that his saliva and fingerprints and even blood
[23:29] could be tested against that found at the crime scene.
[23:32] But it wasn't a match. For that reason, Mr. Buchanan
[23:36] was ruled out as a suspect, although that didn't stop the
[23:41] reputation that he now had in Bury.
[23:44] He was bullied in the streets. He would have people drive past
[23:47] him and roll down their windows just to scream at him, just to
[23:50] call him a murderer. And this would continue for
[23:53] years until police finally had a breakthrough in this case that
[23:57] led to a new suspect being identified, not Mr. Buchanan.
[24:02] And this came as quite a surprise for police because they
[24:05] believed that Shirley's murderer had either died or moved away
[24:09] since they really expected him to strike again.
[24:12] But on the 18th of February 2006, so 12 years after the
[24:17] murder took place, police found their killer, but in a very
[24:22] unexpected way. On this day, officers were out
[24:25] doing Rd. checks in Moston in North Manchester when they saw
[24:28] one car driving particularly recklessly.
[24:32] So they pulled over the driver suspecting him of drink driving
[24:36] and they gave him a breathalyzer test which actually came back
[24:39] positive. This man was drunk and so they
[24:42] brought him back to the police station.
[24:44] And one thing that police in the UK do is that everyone that
[24:48] comes into the police station on any kind of offence, they
[24:52] fingerprint them. They take DNA just, you know,
[24:55] for any future crimes that they might commit, they've got all
[24:59] their information in the database.
[25:00] So these DNA samples were taken, the fingerprints, the saliva,
[25:04] and it was inputted into the DNA database.
[25:07] And when it was, it rang up as a match to the DNA found at the
[25:12] site of the murder. This man was Shirley Leach's
[25:16] killer. His name was Ian O'Callaghan.
[25:18] He was a former soldier, a former Rd. cone manufacturer and
[25:23] now a bus driver. He would have been 25 years old
[25:26] at the time of the murder. But now when he was caught 12
[25:30] years later, he was 37. He couldn't give police an alibi
[25:34] as to where he was on the night of the murder, but it was 12
[25:38] years ago at this point. And I'm not sure a lot of people
[25:41] would remember where they were 12 years ago on a specific day.
[25:44] Police kind of understood that they were just asking, you know,
[25:47] just because it's part of the interview process.
[25:50] But that would have been insignificant compared to the
[25:52] amount of evidence that they now had against him, the DNA
[25:56] evidence. But not only that, police
[25:58] decided to search up Ian O'callaghan's name in the
[26:01] database to see if he had any kind of criminal history.
[26:05] And he had a lot. Most of the crimes connected to
[26:10] O'Callaghan was sexual in nature, and this included rape,
[26:14] sexual assault, and indecent exposure.
[26:16] One of which was when he was just 16 years old, Ian
[26:20] O'Callaghan broke into the home of a 46 year old woman and raped
[26:25] her in her own home in the middle of the night.
[26:28] Other charges included one for punching a random woman in a
[26:32] bar. He didn't know this woman and he
[26:33] knocked her unconscious. Another one for exposing himself
[26:37] to three siblings. Three female siblings, one of
[26:39] which was 19 years old, but the other two were much younger.
[26:43] At the time of Shirley's murder, Ian O'Callaghan was living
[26:47] around 25 minutes away from Bury Interchange.
[26:50] He was living with his wife, who was then his girlfriend, now his
[26:54] wife and his child. Little did his family know that
[26:58] he was a callous, twisted murderer among other things too.
[27:02] Like I said, he had multiple other convictions and
[27:05] allegations against him for years he denied all involvement
[27:10] in Shirley Leachers murder but the evidence against him was
[27:13] just way too strong. How was his saliva and blood at
[27:17] the scene of the murder? But if the DNA sample wasn't
[27:20] good enough, which it was, he also matched all of the witness
[27:25] descriptions that were given from the bus station that night.
[27:28] As soon as police got the DNA test results back that this was
[27:32] Ian O'callaghan's blood and saliva at the scene, he was
[27:35] arrested on suspicion of the murder of Shirley Leach, 12
[27:39] years after it happened. A trial commenced and
[27:43] O'Callaghan was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison with
[27:47] a minimum of 28 years. But unfortunately, that is not
[27:51] quite the end of this case. Something else came out about
[27:55] Ian O'Callaghan in the years following that that gave him
[27:58] even more time in prison. A girl in her 20s had been
[28:01] searching online one day in the mid 2010, so almost a decade
[28:06] after he'd actually been imprisoned for the murder, when
[28:10] she came across an article about Shirley Leachers murder and she
[28:13] saw the mug shot of Ian O'Callaghan.
[28:16] And this mug shot brought back a lot of memories for this girl.
[28:21] She told police that this man, Ian O'Callaghan had actually
[28:25] raped her over a decade ago when she was 11 years old and she'd
[28:29] kept it a secret this whole time because she was genuinely scared
[28:33] that this man would murder her. This attack happened in 2001.
[28:37] So after the murder of Shirley Leach, it's obvious that he,
[28:42] once he'd gotten away with that murder, he thought that he was
[28:45] above the law and he could get away with anything.
[28:48] She said that he was wearing his bus driver's uniform when it
[28:51] happened. He got her alone in a dark
[28:54] alleyway and said to her, let's see if you can keep this one
[28:57] secret. It wasn't until she saw that he
[28:59] was in prison and he was going to be in there for a long time
[29:03] that she finally felt safe enough to come forward about her
[29:06] story and tell police. And this had been such a mental
[29:10] prison for this woman for for years because her rapist had
[29:15] been her local bus driver. And so every time, pretty much
[29:19] every time she would go to the bus station, she would have to
[29:22] see him there and pretend like nothing had happened because she
[29:26] was too scared that he would kill her.
[29:28] In 2019, Ian O'Callaghan was taken to court for this incident
[29:33] as well, and he was given a further 16 years that would run
[29:37] alongside his trial that he was facing for the Shirley Each
[29:41] murder. Of course, that doesn't add any
[29:43] time to his sentence, but it was more just about this woman
[29:46] finally getting justice, this crime getting put on his record.
[29:50] Because when it does finally come to the point where he will
[29:54] be applying for parole 28 years into his sentence, they'll see
[29:58] that extra charge as well. And that'll be taken into
[30:00] account when they decide whether he is suitable to leave or not,
[30:04] which will hopefully mean that he will never leave because now
[30:07] there's two charges against him. I hope that makes sense.
[30:10] I explained that in the most confusing way possible, but that
[30:14] is all I have for this case. Thank you so much for listening
[30:20] to Usual Disclaimer. At this point, I just want to
[30:23] say that if you've been affected by any of the topics we
[30:25] discussed today, please check the description where we've left
[30:28] some helpful resources. If you want to hear more cases
[30:32] like this one, make sure to follow Usual Disclaimer on your
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[30:38] episodes. And if you really enjoyed, I'd
[30:40] love it if you could leave a rating and a review too.
[30:44] Usual Disclaimer with Eleanor Neil is an Audio Boom Studios
[30:47] production. See you next time.

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