Murder Case: The Digital Detectives

A look at the ground-breaking digital techniques helping police to solve murders. This episode reveals how digital forensics uncovered the months of online escalation of a fascination with blades that led to the murder of 15-year-old Harvey Willgoose. In February 2025, the teenager was stabbed twice in the chest by his former friend Umar Khan in the courtyard of their Sheffield secondary school.

In March 2020, 19-year-old Jaydon McFarlane was fatally stabbed in broad daylight on a residential street in Ashford, Kent, by a man wielding both a zombie knife and a kitchen knife. As detectives began a fast-moving investigation, they discovered how the victim and killer were former friends who had become members of rival gangs, involved in a dispute over counterfeit £20 notes used to buy cannabis, culminating in a terrifying chase through a shopping centre.

The killing of Samantha Holden in Hampshire in September 2022, having received an ominous text from an unknown number saying 'I am 30 seconds from your door'. The message was sent by Adam Watson, who was found to have a history of sexual violence - but he was already halfway to Brussel on the Eurostar.

How detectives used digital forensics to uncover the events of the night 19-year-old Matthew Daulby was fatally stabbed after a street fight in Ormskirk in July 2023. A social media groupchat flagged the names of two men who were also recorded talking about the stabbing in a churchyard.