The double murder is different from what the top murder police in Scotland Yard has seen before-this is the complete extraordinary story of how they solved the case
This is a murder case, and even the top murder police officer in Scotland Yard was immediately confused and shocked.
The murdered 69-year-old Noel Brown, a convicted sex offender, was found mutilated in the bathroom of his home in Dartford.
His daughter Mary, a single mother of two children from Peckham, was strangled to death in the living room of the apartment.
No intrusion; no direct motive; no clear indication of who the murderer was.
Here, for the first time, in extraordinary details, a complete account of how the top murder police in the metropolis solved the double murder in December 2017-they said it was one of the most challenging cases they had ever seen.
Read more: "Act of revenge": Police reveal their theories about the murders of Mary and Noel Brown
Backpacker-later identified by the police as Nathaniel Henry
The apartment is one of four blocks in New Butt Lane, surrounded by busy Deptford High Street.
There are cameras everywhere.
But one immediately caught the police's interest: a parliamentary camera pointed directly at Noel's front door.
"But this is because one CCTV camera in the entire estate is not working properly," said DCI Simon Harding.
The sheer number of cameras, combined with the number of people walking on nearby streets, means that the police need some way to shorten the period of time they need to look for the camera in four days.
Detectives described Noel as a "safe-conscious" and "habitual creature" and there was no sign of forcibly entering his apartment. The murderer must have come in effortlessly.
Use the key to enter the apartment, and record the time and data when the key enters the building.
When the detective thought he was dead, people used the keychain believed to have been taken from Noel, which gave time to search on CCTV.
But after contacting the remote control key company many times, it was found that the clock on the remote control key had not been reset to the correct time-this meant that the police had been away for an hour during the CCTV inquiry.
With the correct timing, the police finally found a photo of a man whose actions matched the fob record of the failed entry in the block.
This photo, believed to be Henry, shows a man carrying a large backpack walking on the road at around 5 am on Saturday, December 2.
The police referred to the suspect as a "backpacker." This video was released to the public in an appeal.
On December 1, 2017, another man was thrown out on CCTV-officials called him Bike Man
Several hours of further searches on closed-circuit television — the search eventually extended to nearly three miles, much higher than normal police procedures — also sparked another person of interest.
On Friday, December 1, the police noticed a man riding a silver bicycle entering the estate at about 10:30 in the morning, which would place him near the murder when Noel was murdered.
He was spotted again on CCTV, nearly two miles from Grinstead Road, and appeared to be on his way to the scene. Since the police could not determine that he and the "backpacker" were the same person, he was called the "cyclist".
Detectives began to painstakingly piece together CCTV footage to understand the suspect's actions and reveal that Backpacker and Cyclist are the same thing.
Closed-circuit television recorded four visits by the suspect to the scene.
A cyclist was seen entering the manor on Friday morning and leaving an hour later—it seemed to have killed Noel Brown.
He appeared for the second time as a "backpacker" in the early hours of Saturday morning.
Read more: Peckham's woman "strangled to death by disturbing killer after dismembering her father's body with a saw"
This time he did not enter the apartment-because the key he took from Noel did not actually belong to Noel, but his neighbor Jennifer Hilton.
The murderer returned shortly before noon on Saturday and saw Noel's body. It is unclear how he entered.
Soon after noon on Saturday, December 2, Mary went to her father's apartment to check his condition. She was strangled to death by the murderer.
The cyclist left the scene at about 1 pm and killed Mary. The fourth and final visit was captured by CCTV that night. He didn't stay long, and the detectives didn't know why he came back.
The police officer then had a clear understanding of the murderer's movements-but still didn't know who he was or why he committed the crime.
There is no obvious sign that someone broke into Noel Brown's apartment or bedroom
By early spring, hundreds of exhibits submitted by the murder police were returned.
The DNA found at both ends of the tubigrip, which is believed to be the murder weapon, matched the DNA of the suspect in the 2011 Hounslow burglary in West London.
The blood on Noel's pillow also matches the image of the suspect and is called the "Unknown Seven".
But the burglary has never been solved, and no one can match the DNA.
The top murder police turned to family DNA matching-searching similar files in the database to determine that they might be the criminal's immediate family.
Detectives stumbled upon a woman in Birmingham. Her fingerprints on the national DNA database were relatively similar to those of the unknown seven.
The police told her that they were investigating a double murder in Dartford more than 130 miles away. They said that her relatives might be involved in some way.
Only when the women concerned revealed that her father had lived in Dartford did they become more excited about the possible breakthrough in the case.
However, as happened before in the investigation, it turns out that this is a red herring.
The sock bandage that Noel wore on his infected leg is believed to be used by the murderer to strangle him
Her father happened to live in an area where the police were investigating a brutal double murder, which was completely coincidental-because a DNA test proved that she was not related to the murderer.
From their CCTV footage, the police knew that they were looking for someone old enough to be a suspect between 30 and 50 years old, or young enough to be his child.
The technology was developed by the National Crime Agency, cutting-edge and rare.
The list of partial matches is further narrowed by geography and age, so only those with links to the area where the crime occurred will be prioritized.
Lee Rainbow of the UK National Crime Agency explained that it was only used for about 250 investigations in the UK, most of which were homicides.
Among them, about 60 people successfully played a game with criminals. The Dartford double murder case will now join the ranks of the case.
Taking age and location as factors, rearranging the priority of the DNA list, detectives hit its first entry.
It turns out that this is Nathaniel Henry's father. "Is this about my son?" he asked the detective.
A mobile phone belonging to Mary was discovered by the murder policeman hiding on the sofa
Nathaniel was found dead in a locked electrical cabinet in Peckham, who had taken a drug overdose on New Year's Eve.
Read more: Nathaniel Henry: A few weeks later, the double murder suspect was found dead in a locked cabinet
DCIS Lance and Harding celebrated in the bar that a suspect in a "distressing case" pleaded guilty when the call was connected.
"I received a call from an officer," DCI Rance told reporters. "He said,'We have found his boss.'" She secretly told DCI Harding across the busy table.
At the beginning of the investigation, Henry was on the list of five hundred names-these people were in some way related to Noel Brown, his past crimes, or his daughter Mary.
A preliminary background check has been conducted, but it is not particularly noteworthy.
However, considering the number of names on the list, he was not redone after he disappeared or was found dead.
Only a few weeks later, Nathaniel Henry was found dead in a locked cabinet-but why would he kill when he apparently did this?
Why did Henry decide to murder when he should?
Although Noel Brown was a "friendly" "well-known" figure in the estate, he was still convicted of 12 counts for serious crimes such as rape, sexual assault, and burglary. He was a registered sex offender.
However, Mr. Brown was released in 2004 for his last crime, and the probation authorities rated him as “low risk”.
For a long time, there was nothing wrong with the rope he committed.
For more than ten years, he has been safe and sound in the community, and Henry is believed to have committed any crime that killed him a few years ago.
"After so many years, I don't know what the trigger is," DCI Harding admitted. "we do not know."
"We never figured out how he entered the building for the first time," he added, and speculated that he could pretend to be a fueler or walk in after others.
Officials also found no evidence of planning ahead. Officials also knew nothing about the condition of Mr. Brown's amputated leg and arm.
The lake was searched, the trash cans were swept away, and a helicopter was even sent to check the nearby rooftops-but they were never found.
Only one aspect of the investigation remains: Henry's phone, which can provide clues about the time and plan of the murder. However, DCI Rance warned: "It may never be unlocked." "Then why?" The mystery may never be solved.
The Browns lost two relatives-they will never get justice
The Browns say that the pain and injury of losing two relatives in such a terrible way will only be exacerbated by the inability to conduct a criminal trial.
Noel’s daughter Sharon said: “This devastating loss unfairly deprives us of our existence, and the situation is made worse by knowing that no one has been brought to justice for this crime.”
"In the past two years, we have experienced severe shock, severe anxiety and depression, and when everything has changed no longer the same, we are still trying to continue our lives."
"As a family, it is really difficult for us to accept the death of our lovely Mary," Mary's daughter Vanita and sister Cassandra added.
"It has been almost two years since she left us, and we are still suffering."
Senior police said that part of the reason for the unprecedented publicity of the murder hunt was to provide some closure for families who lost two relatives.
The murdered Mary Brown was a single mother of two children from Peckham, who was the head of the nursery in Nunhead
DCI Rance told this newspaper: "Unfortunately, they were not closed in the criminal trial.
"It's fair to say that it's fair to be disappointed. The police and family members always want to ask this man why he did it.
"But we don't have that chance."
Lance added that Henry may have taken an overdose of drugs because he felt guilty for Mary's murder after discovering that Mary was a single mother of two children.
An investigation last month heard how he sent a text message to a friend on the night of his death, the day after the bodies of Mary and Noel were found, saying: "I will be missing this week. I am. Not the usual self."
"We now want to mourn the loss of Mary privately and continue our lives," said Vanita Brown, who was only a teenager at the time of the murder.
"We have started a lot of things that Mary is proud of, and we intend to finish them."
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