Man's Body Found Dead In Scottish Nature Reserve | Murder Case: Digital Detectives | Channel 4

Police have said they are treating the discovery of a man's

body

in Angus as suspicious. The discovery was made in the Canori Nature Reserve near Kir Mure early yesterday morning. I have been in the police for 26 years and this is definitely the most sustained violent attack I think I have ever been involved in they thought they were being covered up with the burning of the

body

, the burning of the vehicle and although people can often lie about Your fingerprint is like a key that unlocks all the truth you could be hearing. to your calls he could be looking at your text messages he could be looking at where you are now and you wouldn't know 23,000 lines of Snapchat data 1,980 voice notes that cell phone can incriminate him by showing his knives he was 13 years old there are huge amounts of data coming in, all they expect the analyst to come up with the products you can't afford to waste even a minute, it was just chaos and even if you haven't been told the truth, you can't argue with a fingerprint, it was a Thursday morning we got up around 5:30 in the morning and I saw that there had been an incident in the Canard Nature Reserve which was on Mount Teide.

It caught my attention at the time, you know it was a very remote place, very remote, within walking distance with kir. but completely out of the ordinary, you know, crimes of this kind generally do not happen in Kir, you know, it is a very quiet agricultural town, the people who are RSPV workers had gone to the Nature Reserve around 4:00 in the tomorrow. I saw what they thought was my body next to a vehicle that had been set on fire. I have been a police officer for 18 years and what I saw at the crime scene in Canard was probably one of the most shocking scenes I have ever seen in my life. seen in my race he had serious injuries on his face, neck, body and legs, there were very serious cut wounds, what was the reason for this and who is who we are dealing with the identification of the deceased was challenging the word that Ya You know, check that person's pockets and look for marks that could lead us to identify the owner of the vehicle, but a lot of the material was burned, so in a

case

like this

digital

equipment is crucial to discover exactly what is happening.

Our

digital

detectives

. Operating in the background, these specialists can access aspects of our lives that not even we know about. I think we all carry a small digital device that tracks your movements and records all your communications as we pass through digital devices. That's where the art of comes in. The analyst comes in and starts overlaying all this data to give a complete picture. A mobile phone is like a black box when it comes to an investigation, so one of the initial priorities was to identify whether or not the deceased had a phone and to locate that phone the hands that they had recovered were wrong and we made some attempts to try to turn it on but we couldn't, we couldn't get it to come to life, not having that presents a real difficulty the car was completely destroyed there was no registration plate so we couldn't identify the vehicle so we looked for other identification marks on the vehicle It was not so destroyed that we could not recover the engine number related to a white BMW 1 M, this vehicle was particularly rare why would a person with clear access to significant amounts of money, given the vehicle involved, die in this strange place and given the level of violence and the attempts to destroy the evidence that this could have been related to organized criminal activity, some type of drug-related crime, the vehicles registered to Steven Donaldson Steven was a 27-year-old man years working offshore and living with these parents and our growing up Stevie D.

Everyone knew Stevie D. You know, I knew Stevie. boy, about seven or eight years ago, it was always bringing my Stevie, it was just laughing and joking and confronting Mickey, you know he's very popular, yeah, I don't know, no one could say a bad word against it. him, so what we still didn't know at this point is whether the body next to the car was Steven Donaldson or was it someone else. One of Steven's friends actually came to our house and asked us if we had seen Steven and we said no because uh Steven, he does what he wants and we just let him get on with it.

Later that day we discovered that a body had been

found

in C mure and we were a little worried as we were informed that it had gone up. there the night before we thought no, it can't be him, surely not, you know, and uh, we just spent that day not really knowing what to do and uh, obviously, the longer the day went on, the more worried we were and the more worried we were. that's why. When the missing person report was taken from Steven's family, they described tattoos on his legs that were identical to the tattoos in Canard's mail.

This is now a

murder

investigation and I can confirm that the deceased is a 27-year-old man from the Aruth area. of Angus, uh, Steven Donaldson, the victim of a brutal and sustained attack, um, so it is absolutely critical that we identify who is responsible for delivering news like that to a family and get confirmation that he was in fact deceased, um it would have been horrible for the my family can't find out anything about those days how I got through them what I did something it was an absolutely horrendous moment and I would never wish anything on anyone it's tragic it's absolutely tragic for a family for me this particular investigation was a I spent a lot of time reflecting on it while driving home in the evenings and then, you know, waking up in the middle of the night and thinking, do you know why this happened?

Some investigations that we simply cannot solve. I did not do it. I want this to be one of them. A forensic pathologist who examined Mr Donaldson's body said he died after his spinal cord was severed by repeated blows to the back of the head and neck with a weapon such as an ax or machete. He said he had suffered a number of other stab and slash injuries and there were signs that he had tried to defend himself, possibly while sitting in a car, what must this person have done for the level of violence and injuries that had been caused to his body.

I had to decide the quickest way. to find out the answers to what happened to Steven Donson we went and talked to Steven's friends from our Roth to develop a little bit of victimology, understand who he was and what his lifestyle was initially, at the beginning of this modern investigation, it seemed sort of drug-related

murder

in gangland, however, as I delved deeper into Steven's background, it seemed less and less likely that he was a young guy, had a good job, a great social circle of friends, and a lovely family and really living their best life. the person who was lying in Canard Lo didn't fit, that was the point of you being like that is just strange.

Steven's friends told us that too, but his mobile phone was broken and he visited the Apple Store in Aberdine. go fix his phone and that's what brought him to the Apple Store when I first

found

out he was in the Apple Store. I was pretty sure they would have CCTV. It is a fairly new shopping center, exclusively for singers and dancers, in Aline. I could see that Stepen came in with his friend and hands his Apple phone to the staff member. You know, that's a sign to me because then I know that there's a chance that Apple has downloaded their phone that we'll have access to. take us through his movements during the day who had been in contact his text messages his whatsapps you know us getting that obviously opens a lot of doors the store assistant at the Apple Store was able to tell us that Steven had backed up his old mobile phone to another device and discovered that that device was absolutely paramount and a high priority in getting the answers to who killed Sten Donaldson.

The digital forensics team was then able to recover a backup of his iPhone data on his laptop and gave us details of the communications he had recovered up to the day before the murder, it was exciting to know that we had managed to obtain that information after After we lost the phone, the messages showed that Steven had been in a relationship with a young woman called Tasman, Tasmin Glass, she was a She was 19 years old and from Ker Mure. She had been a student in Glasgow. She had also been a singer and actress. Did you hear that voice?

I've known Tasmin since she was in prom, so his whole life you know. There is nothing I didn't like about Tasmin. She said it sounded really funny. She's just a 19 year old girl. K, the two of you hit it off pretty quickly. In a boyfriend and girlfriend situation, Tasman provided information to police indicating that she had gone swimming with three friends during the night of June 6. Colum Davidson Steven de and CLA Aon After swimming, the four returned to Callum Davidson's house in Mary Wellb. Later, Tasmin was going to meet Steven at Peter Pan Park, which is a local park in Kure, it's about a 5 minute drive from Canard La, the Nature Reserve.

She got there around 11 p.m. The night of the murder when she got there Steven was gone so she went home and didn't contact him again until late morning when she texted him she told us she was back home shortly after 11:00 where she talked to her mom before going to bed, then you go and check all those things to see if what they told you is true when you have a route at home, some devices are configured automatically to connect to that RoR, there is a log created that gives us a date and time and allows us to narrow down the timelines.

We looked at Tasman's devices and her RoR at her home and her Apple watch indicated that she came home just after 11 and recorded Tasman's heartbeat and there was no change. in Rhythm, that suggests she went to sleep, it seemed unlikely that Tasmin could have been responsible for the death of her current partner, but everyone was a witness until the suspect was identified. All we wanted to do in the early stages was clarify that what Tasman was telling us was the truth, the quickest way is to speak to Steven Dicky Callum Davson and clarify to Aon because they were all people who were in Tasman's company in In the hours before she was to meet with Steven Rdson, their statements were very similar.

I said they had returned to Davidson's house. I had a couple cans of beer and then fell asleep around midnight. I reflected on what we were facing. We had a remote location with a lack of CCTV and no one came forward to let us know. Any indication as to what the motive of Steven Donaldson's Mur may be, that really started to give me a high level of concern, it makes you reflect on your own performance, ultimately we will be able to get some justice for the family by day three. We were still no closer to finding out who killed Steven Donaldson.

We see somewhere between 15 and 20 phones belonging to Steven's friends, Tasmin Glass and others. It is a complex job, but it is the only way to truly analyze and evaluate who. people are and they corroborate what they are saying, anyone can go and delete the call log or message log on a phone, but a record of that call or message will still be recorded in your call data, so If the police obtained this data then there would still be a record of the call or text message sent or received when my team of digital investigators began downloading the information from the phones, this really began to change the course and direction of the investigation.

Steven Dicky's phone showed that no calls or messages were sent or received for approximately two periods before the murder. The call data obtained from the telephone company did not match the data saved on the phone, suggesting that some data had been deleted from the phone. One of those moments when you start to think something is happening here. You know, if someone starts deleting their phone records, you have to start asking why the digital forensics team can get more than just text messages and call data. your phone, the mobile phone, records things all the time in the background, which could potentially be the fast track to where the answers are on Apple phones, there's a setting called significant locations and if you have that on your movements, it will appear in your list of significant locations.

Steven Dicki had his important locations set up on his device and that was pretty exciting because it opened up the possibility of being able to track his movements more closely on the night of the murder. Both Steven Dicky and Callum Davidson had stated that they were both sleeping places but important for Steven Dicky's phone, they recorded that between 0039 hours and 0051 hours the phone was in a place close to the Health Center in which he said he was sleeping and never left the house, however, we had a phone that showed that that was not the

case

, so we had ainconsistency, what we were able to do next was Task DAV bud and his team with the CCTV coordinators to recover the CCTV near the Health Center because K is such a rural place that not much happens after 11:00. there are not many people walking, we had a CCTV sighting of two figures crossing from the health center at 12:49, which correlated with that important location, which gave me confidence to say that that sighting Of the two figures were Steven Dicky and potentially Callum Davidson.

We had to wonder why Steven Dicky would be lying about this. This is after a time in which they had both realized that they were sleeping inside Mary Wilbrey. Know? Is this something he overlooked? Is he involved anywhere in Steven Donaldson's death? Then he started digging into his background to understand what kind of people they are, which we found out was a massive shock. Steven Dicky and Kum Davidson were quite violent individuals who threatened many different people in km. Callum Davidson has a previous conviction for assault causing serious injury, so we know she has a propensity for violence, but why?

Would Steven Dicky and Callum Davidson have a grudge against Steven Donaldson? I was asked to come and renew Tasmin's glass as a witness. I went to Lee Cafe where Tasman was working during this time. Tasman's behavior I would say was quite strange, she continued making sandwiches. stuffings and rolls to spread and have the general chat with us considering this is her boyfriend, he's been brutally murdered and she's standing there mixing her chuna and onion and then she said she needed to tell me something: she's in a sexual relationship with Steven Dicky as As far as we knew, Steven Donaldson believed that Tasman was his girlfriend, however, she was providing information to claim that she was actually the ex-girlfriend who split in April and which raised several red flags.

Tasmin Glass was clearly leading a different life. Based on the account he gave to the police, we began to focus on the fact that the motive could be this new relationship between Tasmin Glass and Steven Dicky, but I quickly received word that Callum Davson's friend Clare Oxon was point of telling us. Our most complete version of events, which was a pivotal moment, was able to tell us that on the night of the murder, Tasman had become angry because he received several calls from Steven Donaldson instead of everyone staying at his, Steven Dicky and Callum's address. Davidson.

He left with Tasman, she also said they did not return in the early hours of the morning, which is crucial to the investigation. Steven Dicky and Callum Davidson had told Clare Aon that they had attacked Steven Donaldson and at the beginning of that assault, Tasmin Glass was present at the statement. She was absolutely key to this investigation because she was the first person who was able to properly locate Steven Dicky and the Davidson car at the scene and was involved in an assignment with the deceased. She now she knew that she was in a position to arrest tasmin glass Steven Dicky and Carvin Davidson for Steven Donaldson's M, please, she wants to speak to the lawyer in private before being questioned by the police.

Why was he kept in custody? There is an allegation that okay, it is now 006 hours on Friday 15 J 2018 I. I am detected, conable niol Anan from the main investigation team in Dund D. Okay. Are you responsible for the M of St. Donon? You have been arrested on suspicion of Steven's murder. How did he deserve to be left in that car along with these injuries? So we had Tasman Callum Davidson and Steven Dicky at the police station under arrest, but the statement given by Oxon was not enough on its own. I needed evidence that would allow me to prove exactly what happened to Steph Donaldson so that we could Char him now that we had this CA account, what could we do to corroborate that in the next 12 to 24 hours so that we could present a compelling case to the cut so we don't let them out?

We will check the phones very closely and We will look at CCTV and movements, okay you understand, so we asked the team to investigate further what devices we had. Is there anything we can do through location data sessions? Anything we can use that can help us link them. the scene where Steven Dson was killed. To be fair, I didn't have too much hope. It wasn't something we had done in the past. I looked at the phones more to establish if there was any way to interpret the data from the Health app. So the Health app records a variety of data, including the number of steps taken, the distance traveled, and the number of flights boarded, but when you look at that, you're not really sure from that data alone what it means we need something. of time to determine if that corresponded with being at our crime scene, will there be any signs of evidence of the murder, Steven, will your phone have any information, do you know any evidence or material related to the V, those of us who knew that Steven Dicky had data Apple Health on his By phone we could see that there was activity during the night of the murder when he said he was home and sleeping in bed around 11:00 for a period of 10 minutes. 11 sections were climbed. 416 M were covered and 585 steps were taken.

More real when he said he was sleeping at Clear Oxton's house in Mary Willb, his phone was shown to be very active, so we knew there was information there that there was activity, but we needed help interpreting that data and allowing us Using that as evidence, we had officers walk, run and also cycle those distances to try to see what results could be produced in terms of using health app data to recreate journeys taken. I think we knew at this point that it was pretty innovative. and that no one else could have done this work within the UK.

Do you know where the Cani Natural Reserve is? Yeah, did you ever go there? Not really. You went there on Wednesday, June 6, 2018. It was Thursday, June 7, 2018. Sure. Latest reconstructions revealed there was a similar distance between the Canori Nature Reserve where Steven Donaldson's body was found and Mary Well BR, Colum Davidson's home and Cl Aon. There was clear evidence that Steven Dickin was involved with Steven Donaldson's mother, this provided several CCTV opportunities to be analyzed in areas and times that had not previously been covered based on health status data. CCTV for this investigation was a huge job.

I had a team of 10 people who were just checking CCTV, you know, 10 hours a day. In my office and one of the lads came and said: I think we've got Callum Davidson riding around Ker M on his bike at 2: in the morning I thought it was a joke, I thought he was fooling me. Know? Were you biking his LS in the morning? He said he'd never been offside and lo and behold, here's Callum Davidson pedaling down the one-way system, he doesn't care at all on this bike and we've got CCTV evidence. of you with the house, how do we explain, is there any reason for the police to have evidence that links that bicycle was later examined by forensics and blood was found on the handlebars of that bicycle that matched Steven Donaldson, so he must have had contact with Steven during this it happened it was a moment that was probably one of the best moments I've ever had at work this was a really important moment clearly this involved Callum Davidson at this point we still don't have an obvious motive for the murder of Steven why they would want to kill Steven they had never met him they had never met him the violence Steven suffered against two men who were strangers to him would have been difficult to understand Tasman said that Steven Dicky was present when Steven Donaldson called her Steven Dicky is jealous and angry about the fact that her ex-boyfriend contacted her.

They told us he wasn't happy. Tasman was talking to Steven Donson. Was he jealous of your relationship? He didn't know they were in a relationship. I told you from the beginning, I think it's a little jealousy. I think you're not happy that she's talking to St. Don him on the phone to get us to the next stage. We needed evidence to prove that Tasman was involved in Steven's case. Mur, that's a missing piece of the puzzle that was potentially going to be key and understanding why I was there. The interview with tasmin glass was conducted by niola Anan.

All I want to know is what happened to Sten. Do you realize how serious this is? It doesn't seem like it to me, do you know what the F of evidence is? There are large amounts of data coming in quickly and there is a real pressure for you to then become the bottleneck in that process, everyone is waiting on a knife's edge for the analyst to come. up with the goods, it's not always easy to recover all this stuff, you know, we make it seem like everything is nice and simple, but it's not, sometimes you can't recover it and the deleted text we realize how much work the police with this.

Yes, and that will continue until we find out that we looked at Tasman's phone data, which showed a series of calls and text messages that Tasman had made to Steven Donaldson, Steven Dicky and others, but when we looked at the download from his device, that information was not there. has been deleted, it is a red flag for the investigation team when only certain messages have been deleted, you said that your phone was not working properly and it was not stored in your call data but that is not true because it is working properly and it only stores your call to Dat, including text messages, messages and phone calls that you try to delete after you've done it, your phone still stores all that kind of stuff, it's still there, you're a little confused about it and they thought they were being smart by deleting some of the data without having the knowledge that once it's there, it's there, even if you delete information from your phone, the police can still get that information in other ways.

When I saw what the team had discovered on Tasman's phone, I couldn't believe it. He still had 000 for the car Steven Donaldson had given him. Steven had bought her a car that she had paid off and she had not returned all the insurance payment money according to the statement. I have seen £1,000. Do you have financial difficulties? Fighting for money. You told Colen you couldn't pay him back because your bank account had been frozen. We've been contacting you for a while to ask. According to Har, he was harassing her. her for the money and she was probably already a little on the ropes at that point she was in financial difficulties and she had also promised to show up with the outstanding money to meet Steven at Peter Pan Park and pay him the money.

There is absolutely a buzz of anticipation as we begin to formulate an image, we are looking at a series of text messages between them when they are arranging a meeting. Steven is very young and he comes to her house to meet her and she wouldn't accept any of that, so he was so insistent that the park had to be the place and obviously now we know why I think that at this moment she is more involved in the murder of Steven Donon than we initially thought. at the plant to kill Steven Dson, there was no comment, so you would stop looking for the money, self without comment and tell yourself what they have done and if they told you, how did you react?

It's like I've surprised you now. Did you hear what I just told you? And your behavior changed even more and you are still sitting there emotionless. You could sit and watch me all you want. I was dissuaded by his behavior. I would say it didn't really change at all. She was still calm, collecting heads, while people can often lie. A fingerprint cannot be argued. The text removed. The fact that she was involved in a new relationship. The money she owed. There were multiple reasons why Tasmin Glass wouldn't have wanted Steven Donaldson. Moving forward in her life, she is a very devious and ruthless person, if you listen to the community, she led a normal life, if you will, but that is very far from how I would describe her.

She prepared Steven for this to happen to him. king under the pretext of returning this money and in reality you are the death of him. I've never seen anyone or left like that, you leave an animal like that, it's horrendous that £1,000 is worth £1,000 there. He had no doubt now that the three of them were responsible for Steven's murder. Now I knew she was in a position to turn everything over to prosecutors and that's exactly what we did. It is now 3:48 a.m. on June 15. 2018, this is Anan and Bud from DC concluding the interview with tasmin BL in June of last year.

Steven Donaldson's body was discovered in the car park of this Angus Nature Reserve. Tasmin Glass was his on-again, off-again girlfriend. She is one of three people who are now on trial for murder for me. The biggest part of this case is the trial. What happens in court is out of my control. When the evidence is presented, do we think we will get a conviction? It definitely gave me sleepless nights. What we think happened that nightis that Tasmin set the wheels. movement I think the phone was probably ringing constantly from Steven Donaldson asking to meet with Tasman.

I think in Tasman's head she had moved on, she started a new relationship at this point with Steven Dicky and I think Steven Dicky and Callum Davidson decided to take the matter seriously. his own hands Tasman Glass colen debson and Steven deck drove halfway up the hill to Peter Pan park where Steven Donaldson already went and he is there waiting at Tasman Glass he let Davidson and Dicky get out of the car for part of the way up the hill upstairs and then she drove to make sure Steven Donaldson was there, colon and Steven Dick ran on foot the rest of the way, she would have had her father open and they got into that car once the attack was in progress and Steven Donaldson was incapacitated , I think he got in his car and left and was able to go home peacefully with his mother and then the state of health shows that he was able to then go to his bed and sleep that night the entire time while Steven Donaldson was being murdered by Colin Davidson and Steven Dicky you carried out the attacks in two different locations initially overpowered Mr.

Donaldson at the Peter Pan Playground, he would have been completely ambushed and then probably put in the back of the car or the trunk of the car and you drove that car to canori where you continued to attack him, you renewed your attacks on him with unbridled ferocity, he tried to escape and defend himself, but you cut him off without Mercy, then you dragged Steven's body under the car. and set it on fire to destroy any evidence linking them to her murder, then they left and returned to Mary with the data from the health app and the important location data on Dicky's phone corroborated this, it was really important in terms of building the case and then present it in court, the two former friends tried to blame each other for the murder, Dicky said at his trial, Davidson was the muscle that kept people apart, Davidson said.

Dicky hit Steven 12 times with a baseball bat and he had a knife. We weren't sure if all three would be convicted or not, or just one, two, or none. So, he was a nervous weight. He was a loved and admired young man. Many years of life looking forward to the evil of his crimes caused shock and outrage. No sentence I can impose will repair the grave pain and loss each of you have caused by taking the life of this young man on the steps of the superior court. The grieving family of Steven Donaldson, his sons, the killers convicted just minutes before, the jury read the verdict in Tasmin glass, were found guilty of manslaughter and Steven Dicky and Callum Davidson were convicted of murder.

For me, the question that remains unanswered is: you know? Just because at first I felt like it was an amazing job on the police's part to catch them, but deep down it was like it didn't really matter because I lost Steven and whatever happens to them, I will never replace them. I'll never know the full story, all the ins and outs of it all, but all I know is my friends listen that's it, we usually go to Steven's grave at least once a week, now we're going to Canard L again . but on special occasions his birthday and the date of his murder we will be up there we know we will never see him again I just want to remember to remember Steven as the boy who gave us a lot of enjoyment and great things, great memories.

You will never be lost in our memory and no matter how long it continues