Hi All
First time poster here, please be kind. I've become interested in this case as it is very local to me and obviously tragic. I'm no expert in LE or anything like that, and whilst I have read quite a lot of the very informative posts here, I haven't read everything and my understanding could be some way off events. That said, some thoughts (I've seen that at least one other poster has recently posted a similar theory/hypothesis so I'm not trying to claim that any of this is necessarily original). All speculation/hypothetical obviously.
- as far as I know, WC has a clean criminal record previously or else for minor/spent offences only, given he would have undergone vetting when he entered the police.
- if WC/the perp were some kind of highly methodical individual who had engaged in criminality of this nature/severity on previous occasions and not been caught, one might reasonably expect that he/the perp would not have gone about this (SE) in the manner that he has, which has some signs of being more scattergun/impulsive.
- there seem to be signs that WC has recently been undergoing some type of breakdown/strange behaviour (bereavement at death of father, time off work seemingly beyond that of a normal bereavement even of a parent/close family member, the brazen flashing at McDonalds when he must have know/enjoyed the element of risk or it having been an impulsive/spur of the moment thing).
- he has the hire car for whatever reason, but maybe he thinks that whilst he has it he can do a bit more IE without exposing himself quite as immediately as in his own vehicle. He's driving round London for whatever reason, and on the spur of the moment sees SE walking down a dark and quiet Poynders Rd (I walked a little bit up the road from there the following evening and noticed how quiet the normally busy South Circular was) and thinks he has an opportunity.
- he pulls over, perhaps into the drive/car park, and gets out of his door, and flashes (or whatever) at her. She takes a picture or two, possibly getting him in the act and the car, and says she is going to send it to the police. She goes to carry on walking.
- he panics, realises this will be the end for him, career in police, and almost instinctively thinks that he has to get the phone.
- he grabs her in some fashion whilst still a bit manic/panicked, perhaps drags her to the bin store, and somehow, before he realises what he has even done, she is not breathing anymore.
- he then gets the car near her, panicking, and shoves her into the front seat. Ditches her phone quickly before driving off e.g. maybe down a drain. She would look asleep to any other road user once she is in there. No visible marks or anything, at least from a distance. No or not very much blood/ton clothing or anything on either of them
- he drives off, on autopilot, and leaves London. Instinctively he heads towards home and quickly realises/decides that he can't turn himself in as he has no reasonable excuse and it all means that his career/family life is over.
- he therefore pauses, perhaps stopping somewhere on the way to transfer the body to the boot, and leaves the car/stores the body somewhere whilst he tries to think what to do next.
- coming up with no better alternative (in his mind) he burns the body as well as he can (sorry for gruesome- ness, and I have no idea how hard or not it is to burn a body effectively) and then puts the remains as best he can into a builders bag and dumps it, perhaps thinking that he will move it/bury it at some point in the future if he thinks of a better alternative.
- he then disposes of the various items that he thought it better not to burn, and does this in various bins/rivers/whatever, as he thinks that a single item here and there won't be noticed whereas dumping a number of things together might do.
- he does all of this a bit recklessly because he knows he has to try to get rid of the stuff quickly and in his mind this was all just a terrible 'accident'. He's scared and not able to think things through properly or rationally, perhaps as well as not being the sharpest tool in the box generally.
- he hopes it will all go away and that he might get away with it having done his best, and then the night there is the knock at the door and he walks out calmly, knowing that he's done for.
- he gives some version of this story to the police/an 'it was an accident and then I panicked' line, and then when he realises the police can place him at various places he begins to slowly give them certain pieces of information about where the stuff has been ditched.
- he knows he is finished, and will now be trying to think how he can best try to engineer a situation where things look least bad for him (plead not guilty to murder and say he will accept manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility or something along those lines).
- in saying all of this, what I have in mind is that it would seem unusual for someone at 48, a family man (for whatever thats worth) to have the idea/possess such evil that he was going to kidnap and then take them somewhere to assault and kill them (i.e. the most dreaded scenario), and then to think that the best place to 'source' the victim would be one of the busiest roads in London, and then drive 70 odd miles. IN his mind the IE is probably just a 'bit of fun' sort of thing. I also have in mind that it doesn't seem as though the police have spent any significant time at a separate murder scene, which would presumably be an area of intense focus for them. So maybe SE had died very suddenly/early on, and perhaps he did a transfer of the body between cars at home at some point, so as well as searching the house very thoroughly they might be able to see if her DNA is there, asking neighbours if they saw anything etc.
All speculation and without any insight/experience, but interested in the views of others as to whether this might be viable.
Separately, can we rule out that he ran her over accidentally (she stepped into the road with headphones on and he had no chance to stop, perhaps even there was an element of drink or drugs involved)? And then he panics as above?
