- 23 hours ago
Britains Most Evil Killers - Season 10 - Episode 05: Philip Hegarty
Category
🎥
Short filmTranscript
00:07On the 14th of April, 2003, police in the Welsh capital of Cardiff
00:13were called to the scene of a car on fire.
00:18They soon realised that in the back seat there was a dead body wrapped in a carpet.
00:24Now it's clear that this was a murder and that whoever committed the murder
00:29took the precaution of setting fire to the car and the body in it.
00:36Investigators soon identified the victim as 41-year-old Derek Bennett
00:41and the number one suspect was Derek's friend, Philip Hegarty.
00:47For the people around Hegarty, they instinctively felt there were problems with him
00:53but couldn't possibly have known how much danger they were in.
00:56The evidence against Hegarty was strong
00:59but the 48-year-old refused to admit his guilt.
01:04Hegarty walked past me and he just looked at me
01:07and he said, I promise you, I didn't do it.
01:10Driven by violence and greed, Hegarty was willing to kill someone he called a friend
01:16undoubtedly making him one of Britain's most evil killers.
01:47Driven by violence and greed, Hegarty was US$200.
01:51for the murder of his friend Derek Bennett,
01:54it was a shock to everyone who knew them both,
01:57including Derek's partner, Colleen.
02:03It's just unbelievable.
02:05You just don't believe it's true until you're going through it.
02:12Even though Derek knew some of Phil's criminal history,
02:15he didn't have a bad word to say about him.
02:18I suppose that's the show that he put on for him.
02:24Hegarty tried to deny murder,
02:26but the case was built on a wealth of forensic evidence.
02:31There was blood spatter in the basement.
02:34There was blood on the sofa where Derek had been murdered.
02:39There was blood on Hegarty's clothes.
02:41The evidence was overwhelming.
02:46When Hegarty was found guilty at his trial in July 2004,
02:51the judge decided that the 49-year-old career criminal
02:55would become one of around 70 prisoners in the UK
02:58with a whole life tariff.
03:02Handing down a whole life tariff is not going to be something
03:05that the judge is going to take lightly.
03:07I can only imagine the judge had his reasons.
03:11For the murder of his friend,
03:14Hegarty will never see beyond the prison walls.
03:19This killer's story begins in Cardiff in 1955.
03:24Little is known about Hegarty's formative years,
03:27but he appeared to have been on the wrong path from an early age.
03:33Hegarty was a difficult little boy.
03:35There's no doubt of that.
03:36I think he had a mean streak very early on,
03:39and it came out as soon as he got to 10 or 11.
03:43He started stealing from the neighbours,
03:44and he became progressively more belligerent.
03:48He was a career criminal from such a young age,
03:53and that does predict that he will probably carry on that pattern
03:58throughout his life.
04:00As Hegarty grew older, his crimes only escalated.
04:07In his 20s, he went on to become a particularly violent
04:12and nasty handbag snatcher.
04:15He used to creep up behind old ladies,
04:19punch, hit or kick them,
04:23and then run away taking the money.
04:27He only chose people who he thought were vulnerable or weaker than him.
04:33He's become increasingly violent.
04:36Violence works for him.
04:37Why would you pick on elderly women
04:40if you didn't have that mean and violent streak?
04:45In 1987, 32-year-old Hegarty was charged with yet another robbery offence.
04:53And this time, it was even more violent.
04:59He was arrested for beating up a taxi driver.
05:03In fact, so badly that the poor driver had to go to hospital.
05:08Hegarty's persistent law-breaking meant he was regularly in and out of prison.
05:14By May 1988, he was back on the streets of Cardiff once again.
05:23He, at that time, had a bit of a part-time job, measuring people for suits.
05:29And one day, he returned to the home of a retired estate agent,
05:34knocked on the door and said,
05:36oh, I've come to take some more measurements for your suit.
05:40But when he got inside the house, he beat his victim about the head
05:45with a cat-scratching post.
05:48He terrorised him. He tortured him.
05:50He put a knife to his throat.
05:53He slashed his face.
05:56Looking for money, he got away with £60 and a bank card,
06:02put a plastic bag, a bin liner, over his victim's head,
06:06and left him for dead.
06:13What's escalating is the amount of gratuitous violence that he is using.
06:19So I think it's the violence that is the real driver here.
06:25After the horrendous attack, Hegarty assumed the man was dead.
06:30But the retired estate agent managed to call the police
06:34and was later able to identify Hegarty as his attacker.
06:41Arrested and put on trial at Newport Crown Court,
06:44the 33-year-old was charged with attempted murder,
06:48wounding with intent and robbery.
06:51But Hegarty denied it all.
06:54He did his absolute best
06:57to wriggle out of being anywhere near the crime.
07:02Hegarty spun a web of lies.
07:05He maintained that he was drinking with female friends.
07:10He maintained that he took one of his friends
07:13to pick up their daughter from school.
07:19On the stand, when asked if he'd been at the victim's house that day,
07:24he responded,
07:25certainly not.
07:30The evidence against Hegarty, I think, was compelling.
07:34But Hegarty's not the kind of person that is bothered by things like guilt.
07:40So he's going to use everything in his power to try and get out of it.
07:47The prosecution had one thing that Hegarty couldn't wriggle out of.
07:52The victim himself had clearly identified him.
07:58It was all lies, and he was convicted of attempted murder, wounding with intent.
08:08He gets a sentence of 15 years for the attack on this elderly man.
08:14He only serves 10 years for the 15.
08:19Newly released after his time in prison, the now 43-year-old Philip Hegarty relocated to the south coast of
08:27England.
08:29When he came out of prison, he would have been, in my opinion,
08:34possibly worse than when he went in, and he was bad enough when he went in.
08:39On his release, Hegarty returns to his old ways.
08:43Robbery, theft.
08:45At one point, he goes to Dorset and starts stealing television sets
08:49and all sorts of other things, and doesn't see any point in earning a living.
08:54He'll make it by theft.
08:57I just don't think he recognised authority.
09:01He was the one who was going to do whatever he liked.
09:07By the early 2000s, Hegarty had a long list of charges to his name.
09:13He decided to move back to Cardiff,
09:16where he resumed an old friendship with a man called Derek Bennett.
09:23At the time, Derek was living with his partner, Colleen.
09:28I met Derek while out with my work colleagues for just a night out.
09:35He walked me home, never laughed.
09:39He was a very charming, lovable rogue, as my mum used to call him.
09:51Derek was so family-oriented, he always seemed so happy, he was never judgmental.
09:57Just basically happy that he had his life with his family, and Derek loved everything to do with family.
10:07Colleen and Derek both already had children, and together they had a son, forming a blended family.
10:15One day, they were out in Cardiff when they bumped into an old friend.
10:23Derek had met Hegarty a few years before I'd met him.
10:28I only met him when we walked into a joke shop.
10:31We were on our shopping trips in town, and Hegarty was working there.
10:36That's how Hegarty came back into his life.
10:40And every now and again, Hegarty would go to football with him, go out drinking with him.
10:46The two bonded over their love of drink and their love of Cardiff City, and they were seen together a
10:54lot of the time going to matches.
10:57Derek even had a key to Hegarty's flat in the Grangetown area of Cardiff.
11:03He'd go there to hang out with Hegarty.
11:07At the time I'd known Hegarty, I'd known he'd been in and out of prison.
11:12But at the time, I never knew what for.
11:17Hegarty seemingly hid his crimes from those around him, but Colleen was still wary.
11:26Whenever Derek would come back from seeing Phil, I'd feel that he was just trying to poison his mind against
11:33everything.
11:35Whether it be our little family or something else.
11:40And when he'd come back home, and he'd be sullen and upset, and he wouldn't talk, and you could see
11:47anger in the eyes.
11:50It's quite possible that Derek was wary of him.
11:56All his instincts were telling him that he didn't really want to be around this guy.
12:03I do believe that Hegarty probably gave out that vibe because he wouldn't have the skills to make people trust
12:11him.
12:14Every time Phil's name was mentioned, I'd say, oh, please don't tell me he's coming.
12:20It's such a chill that would go down my spine, but never pinpointing why.
12:26The thought of being in the same room, it'd make my skin crawl.
12:31I'd never put my finger on it, so I'd try not to be left alone with him.
12:38What Colleen didn't know was that this was a man now facing serious debts.
12:45In the past, Hegarty had always resorted to crime to solve his financial problems.
12:52But in the early months of 2003, his debts were growing and growing, and he needed to do something to
13:00solve that problem.
13:02He was becoming increasingly more dangerous to the people that he actually knew, because this was a man who enjoyed
13:13violence.
13:16Derek and Hegarty's friendship continued, and in April 2003, they went to a party together.
13:24On the surface, it was two friends out on a Friday, but only one of them would make it home
13:31alive.
13:41In April 2003, Philip Hegarty was living in Cardiff and had rekindled a friendship with 41-year-old Derek Bennett.
13:55By 2003, Hegarty has a string of violent convictions to his name, and it was inevitable that he would use
14:02violence again.
14:04For the people around Hegarty, they probably instinctively felt there were problems with him, but couldn't possibly have known how
14:13much danger they were in.
14:19On Monday, the 14th of April, police received a 999 call informing them that a car was on fire in
14:28the Wychurch area of Cardiff.
14:30The fire brigade arrive, put the fire out, but then discover inside a body wrapped in a rug.
14:38They have no idea who the body is. They have no idea whose car it is. It's simply a burnt
14:45body in a car.
14:47The intriguing case landed on the desk of DS Martin Lloyd Evans.
14:53I hadn't long come home from work, and it was about 9 o'clock on a Monday evening.
14:58I had a phone call just telling me that a body had been found in a burnt-out car in
15:03a car park in Wychurch.
15:05I remember people couldn't quite believe that such a horrific thing had happened within that community.
15:14A battered body wrapped in a carpet in the back seat of a blazing car in the middle of Wychurch.
15:22That doesn't happen very often.
15:25As head of homicide, Martin was quick to assess the scene.
15:32There was a body in the back seat wrapped in something.
15:36You couldn't say it was male or female.
15:39Everything was protected by what was seen to be some sort of blanket or material over the body,
15:45but you could see the person's head and you could see their arm.
15:50We could see the feet were bound together with a bath towel.
15:54On top of the head had been placed a pillowcase.
16:00And then the person had wrapped in this carpet.
16:03The jumper, it was a reddish jumper with black stripes on it.
16:08Martin and his team began to look for clues as to what had happened
16:12and found two witnesses who saw the fire start.
16:16They didn't even smell smoke or see anything coming from the car when they parked quite near to it.
16:22They'd only literally got into a club upstairs to the snooker room a matter of minutes when they look out
16:28and see this car ablaze.
16:30Nobody remembers when the car was put there.
16:33No one remembers seeing anybody running away from it.
16:36It's a complete mystery.
16:37Reaching an impasse with the witnesses, Martin used his detective instincts to ascertain whether or not he was at an
16:46active murder scene.
16:47My suspicions were aroused when I saw this browny red fluid in the water that had washed out from the
16:54car.
16:55A crime scene examiner at the scene tested it and in fact it was blood.
17:00Now it's clear that this was a murder and that whoever committed the murder took the precaution of setting fire
17:08to the car and the body in it in an attempt to cover his or her tracks.
17:14One thing was clear, the killer had attempted to destroy all the evidence, but they'd overlooked something.
17:23Whoever put the victim in the back of that Renault Laguna had made a fatal mistake.
17:28They'd shut the doors and windows so that there wasn't enough oxygen for the fire to burn really fiercely.
17:35And although the facial features had been destroyed, a lot of the body was still intact.
17:44Because the body was cocooned in the carpet, it actually was protected from the fire.
17:49You could see that it was a male, probably aged about 45.
17:54But what was significant on the right-hand side of the temple,
18:01you could see that the person had suffered a number of blunt trauma to the right side of their head.
18:06Given there were no witnesses, police worked on the theory these blows to the head happened elsewhere,
18:12and the body had been transported in the car.
18:16They managed to track down the registered owner to see if he could answer their questions.
18:22What he said is that he'd sold the car some six weeks before to a guy that he'd met in
18:27a public house.
18:29All he knew, this guy was called Dell, and he was a Cardiff City supporter.
18:34But who was this Dell?
18:37This is where the media can be really helpful.
18:41They had a name, they knew he was referred to as Dell, but really that's all they had.
18:48The day after discovering the body and armed with nothing more than the name Dell,
18:55South Wales Police held a press conference to appeal to the public for information.
19:00At the press conference I released some certain information,
19:04and watching the television was Dell's brother.
19:08And he came forward and said he recognised the cars belonging to his brother,
19:13Derek, known as Dell.
19:15So now we had our victim, Derek Bennett.
19:25The last time I saw Derek, we'd had a lovely day out, we'd had food,
19:31and then he was coming back and he was getting changed to go out and celebrate a birthday
19:35with his brother and a few of their mates.
19:41Colleen knows he went out on Friday night, and she hasn't heard from him by Sunday,
19:46and it's beginning to be really worrying.
19:56I was drinking a cup of coffee, and I had a knock on the door,
20:00and it was Derek's sister-in-law and niece,
20:04saying they've been in contact with the police,
20:07and something's happened to Derek, and I needed to phone them straight away.
20:13And I laughed.
20:15Don't be stupid.
20:17I just laughed.
20:21And when I phoned, I went to Peter's.
20:34So just things from there on are spotty and grainy.
20:44Investigators had to tell Colleen the devastating news.
20:48Derek had been murdered, and they didn't know who was responsible.
20:54I think it's a mixture of confusion and shock rolled into one.
20:58It's pure sadness.
21:01A life taken.
21:02Children are seeing their father again.
21:05Colleen had to break the news to her children.
21:08Their dad wouldn't be coming home.
21:12I just said some bad man had heard Derek,
21:16and Derek's not coming back.
21:19And one of my daughters at the time said,
21:22can I go and see him in a balloon with a basket?
21:30Well, child's imagination, eh?
21:36The police asked us all to leave the house so that they can search their place.
21:41Just basically to rule out me as a suspect.
21:45That's the only way you can put it.
21:51I spoke to Derek's partner in several days of the murder taking place.
21:56She, in fact, was a great source of information for us.
22:00Wanted to find out who would kill her partner.
22:04And she assisted us no end in that regard.
22:10Police were determined to find out who was responsible for Derek's brutal murder.
22:16The post-mortem gave them some of the answers they'd been looking for.
22:20Well, it was clear that the cause of death was blunt trauma to the right-hand side of Derek's body.
22:27He'd been hit a minimum of six times with a blunt object.
22:31Probably a hammer, I would have thought.
22:35Which had caused the skull to shatter in numerous pieces.
22:41And that's what killed him.
22:45At least six blows, that means the first blow wasn't enough for this person.
22:51And they continued, probably, until he was completely incapacitated or even dead.
23:07Investigators established that Colleen last saw Derek on the Friday night.
23:11They spoke to the people that Derek had been out with to try and establish a timeline.
23:18He'd been out. He'd been visiting a number of public houses in Cardiff with his brother and a number of
23:25other people.
23:27Ending up then in a nightclub in Cardiff.
23:29And then in the early hours then of the Saturday morning, going to a house party in the Rumley area
23:34of the city.
23:36It seemed from those investigations that the last sighting of Derek was on the early hours of the Saturday morning.
23:47Derek's brother told police that Derek had left the party around 6.30 in the morning.
23:54He'd left in a friend's car, that of 48-year-old Philip Hegarty.
24:02Philip Hegarty, he was driving the car and Derek was sitting in the car together as Derek's brother.
24:08And they went to the petrol station and they bought petrol.
24:12We recovered the CCTV footage and we could see that Derek was wearing that red top with the black stripes
24:19on it.
24:21And that top is on the charred body in the car, which means he was probably killed not long afterwards.
24:30Investigators were now certain that Derek Bennett had been murdered in the early hours of Saturday morning.
24:36And the last person seen with him was Philip Hegarty.
24:40The 48-year-old was now the main suspect.
24:43But was it truly conceivable that Derek's good friend was also his killer?
24:56In April 2003, 41-year-old Derek Bennett was found murdered on the back seat of his own burnt-out
25:05car.
25:06He was last seen driving through Cardiff after leaving a party with his friend Philip Hegarty.
25:12As the last person to see him alive and with a violent track record, police needed to speak to Hegarty
25:20to get his account of that fateful Friday evening.
25:28He claimed that Derek Bennett hadn't been to his house, that he'd dropped him off at the international arena.
25:37He'd gone one way, he'd gone another, and he hadn't seen him since. Simple as that.
25:42And he was quite happy to tell us all that he knew or wanted us to know.
25:47He's setting the narrative about who he is.
25:51He knows that he's got a really, really long criminal past with violence, so he's obviously going to come onto
26:01the radar.
26:03Hegarty was the prime suspect, but investigators had no solid evidence against him.
26:11Martin spoke to witnesses about Hegarty's movements after Derek's murder.
26:25On a Saturday, he should have gone to work.
26:27He didn't. He took the day off.
26:29He used to work in a call centre.
26:31He just didn't show up and ran in sick on that particular day.
26:36He had a car that, yet three days later, he scrapped it and bought another car.
26:41Now, this is a man that didn't have any money.
26:44He seemed to be in possession of quite a substantial sum of money.
26:48He paid off a number of debts that he borrowed to people that he worked with.
26:55Martin started to work on the theory that Hegarty could have stolen money from Derek, but he had no proof.
27:02Whilst detectives looked into this motive, Hegarty was making sure to pay his condolences to Derek's family.
27:16In the days that followed, Hegarty came over and he'd just sit in my house with his feet on my
27:27chairs.
27:27He'd sit there and start crying.
27:32Why did someone take my friend? What happened? Why?
27:38I felt so uncomfortable and I just didn't want to be there with him.
27:44I just needed him gone.
27:47He was desperately trying to portray himself as somebody trustworthy, who couldn't possibly have been involved in this.
27:56He was offering up his sofa when one of the family needed that.
28:00This was a man who simplistically thought, if I look like a nice guy, everybody will think I'm a nice
28:09guy, so nobody is going to point the finger at me.
28:17Investigators believed Derek was murdered in a different location to where his body was found.
28:24Martin decided to bring Hegarty back into the police station for an interview.
28:28And whilst he was there, they obtained a warrant to search his home.
28:34What the police didn't have in the wake of the discovery of the body in the car was where the
28:41crime took place.
28:42And so they're looking for a crime scene.
28:44And one potential crime scene would be Philip Hegarty's flat.
28:50The Tedros went to his house to do a cursory search.
28:53Now, he lived in a rented accommodation, ground floor flat.
28:57When they looked around that house, they found Derek's bum bag where he kept his money.
29:07Finding Derek's empty money bag backed up the theory that Hegarty had stolen cash from his friend.
29:14But investigators needed a lot more if they were going to prove murder.
29:22One major thing the police discovered in their search of Hegarty's flat was a speck, literally, of blood on the
29:30wall.
29:32We took a sample of the blood, but in the blood was a fingerprint.
29:36And that fingerprint belonged to Philip Hegarty.
29:41Martin didn't know who the blood belonged to yet, but he suspected it would turn out to be Derek's.
29:47He decided to follow his hunch and arrest Hegarty on suspicion of murder.
29:52Now he was against the clock to prove it.
29:57I decided then to fast track the blood we'd found at the scene.
30:01And dispatched it to the forensic science service, who came back a DNA profile of Derek Bennett.
30:09So we've got Philip Hegarty's fingerprint and Derek Bennett's blood at his scene.
30:15Police could now formally charge Hegarty with murder, but he continued to deny it.
30:21Without a confession, investigators knew they would have to find even more evidence.
30:27They started with a full forensic search of the flat.
30:35As the scientists carried out a more detailed search of the lounge, there was a leather setting underneath the bookcase.
30:42And underneath the bookcase was small droplets of blood.
30:47And once you found one, we found loads of them.
30:51And it was quite clear this was the spray from where he struck Derek Bennett.
30:57The blood had splattered over the wall in minute spots.
31:01The blood spit indicates to the police that Derek was probably asleep on the sofa when he was attacked.
31:14Shockingly, this was the very same sofa that Hegarty had let Derek's grieving son stay on in the days after
31:22the murder.
31:23The evidence all pointed towards Derek being killed in Hegarty's flat.
31:29Now they wanted to see if they could link him to the carpet that Derek's body was wrapped in.
31:36As we continued to look in the house, there were signs that it had been cleaned.
31:40It was just quite a dirty flat, but this particular room had a shape of a carpet on the floor,
31:46and clearly that had gone missing.
31:49Philip Hegarty had two dogs.
31:51He took samples from the carpet found at the scene,
31:55compared them with the contents of the vacuum cleaner, which was in Philip Hegarty's house, and they matched.
32:03The evidence against Hegarty continued to mount, but investigators wanted even more.
32:10This time, they honed in on the pillowcase and towel that were found covering Derek's head and body.
32:19I had a phone call of the police officers dealing with Derek's murder,
32:24and they asked me if I could go to the police station to identify some things.
32:30When I went down there, I identified pillowcases and towels,
32:34and I only knew they were from me because a couple of months previously,
32:39Hegarty asked me if I had any spare bedding.
32:41So I sorted out where I had, and I gave it to him.
32:47The gathering of evidence in this case was probably one of the best cases.
32:52Everything just came together to make a complete picture,
32:55pointing to only one person that committed this crime, which was Philip Hegarty.
33:00Derek's family were shocked to discover that the man charged with his murder
33:05was someone that they all knew and had invited into their homes.
33:13Never suspected Hegarty at all.
33:16Why would you suspect someone who's coming to visit you?
33:20Why would you suspect them of them being a killer?
33:29Faced with a murder charge and a solid forensic case,
33:33Hegarty still refused to admit to killing his friend.
33:38And at his upcoming trial, he was going to try and get away...
33:44...with murder.
33:56In 2003, Philip Hegarty was charged with the murder of Derek Bennett.
34:01But despite the overwhelming forensic evidence against him,
34:06Hegarty refused to admit to killing his friend.
34:09As the prosecution prepared for the upcoming trial,
34:12they used the evidence to paint a picture of exactly what happened
34:16between the two friends on the night of Derek's murder.
34:23We know that Derek had gone to Hegarty's flat
34:26and was lying face down on the sofa,
34:30sleeping off this very boozy night.
34:33We can only suppose that Hegarty thought,
34:36this is my chance to get some money.
34:40Hegarty knew that Derek had around £3,000 with him.
34:46I think it's something he just took advantage of,
34:48the situation that he found himself in.
34:52But he was a danger, a danger to everybody,
34:55almost like a ticking time bomb, waiting for an opportunity
34:58to get what he wanted, using force if necessary.
35:02And that's what he did.
35:04Hegarty had been violent in the past,
35:06but this attack went further.
35:12It may look on the surface as if he just wanted to rob him.
35:17He did not need to kill Derek to rob him.
35:23This was a very frenzied, brutal killing,
35:27straight from the Hegarty playbook.
35:30What he did was he beat his so-called best friend around the head.
35:41He had a slow and painful death.
35:44It took Derek one and a half hours to die,
35:48and all the time Hegarty was there by his side.
35:54This is an out-of-the-blue anger from Hegarty,
35:58probably driven by his need to pay off his debts,
36:01but also out of envy.
36:12Hegarty refused to admit to the murder,
36:15let alone a motive for it.
36:17But it seemed clear that money was at the centre of the vicious attack.
36:22He was skint.
36:24He owed people money all over Cardiff.
36:27On the day of the murder and days following,
36:30he paid off a lot of his debts with money that he'd got from Derek.
36:35Witnesses describe him as being flush with money.
36:40It didn't seem to occur to him that somebody might say,
36:45where did that money come from?
36:46You've been in debt for ages.
36:48How have you suddenly got the means to pay that off?
36:54I just don't think Hegarty is very clever.
37:03Not only did investigators believe Hegarty murdered his so-called friend,
37:09but they also believed he took multiple steps
37:12to try and cover up what he'd done.
37:16It's clear from the timeline
37:18that Derek's body was kept in the flat for some time,
37:23because it was two days later that Derek's body was found
37:27in the blazing car in Whitchurch.
37:31This man, I think, enjoys the violence so much,
37:36everything else kind of just goes for a blank for him.
37:41And he panics afterwards
37:43and just tries to deal with it afterwards in whatever way he can.
37:48Hegarty had committed a very brutal murder.
37:51What we know is that he made not terribly successful
37:54but extensive efforts to clear up the blood
37:57to try and cover his tracks.
37:59But he had a problem.
38:00He was in a flat in a busy area of Cardiff
38:03and there was a dead body on his sofa.
38:09Philip Hegarty wrapped Derek in the carpet
38:13and had to carry it out of his flat to the car in the street.
38:17So he had to hide the feet and hide the head.
38:22Prosecutors believed that in Hegarty's efforts
38:25to disguise the crime scene,
38:27he left behind a trail of evidence
38:29which they were now ready to present to a jury
38:33in the courtroom.
38:35In July 2004, the trial began at Swansea Crown Court.
38:47The prosecution had a very good case against Philip Hegarty.
38:52They had all the forensic evidence
38:55that scenes of crimes officer had gathered from Hegarty's fat.
38:59The blood, the fibres, the dog hairs from the carpet
39:03that was used to wrap Derek's body.
39:06The evidence in this case wasn't just circumstantial,
39:09it was overwhelming.
39:16Despite the odds being heavily stacked against him,
39:20Philip Hegarty pleaded not guilty.
39:25He did put forward a defence, although it was very, very weak.
39:30He said that there were heavies, drug heavies, that Derek was afraid of
39:36and they must have come and killed him and murdered him
39:40and left his body in a car.
39:42He spent days trying to create false alibis.
39:47It was ridiculous.
39:48He also said he didn't know the area of Whitchurch in Cardiff,
39:51so how could he possibly leave a dead body in a blazing car there?
39:57Hegarty would have continued to deny everything
40:01whilst there was the slightest chance that he might have got off.
40:06Simple as that.
40:08Derek's partner, Colleen, sat in the courtroom
40:10hearing Hegarty's passionate denial, day in, day out.
40:16Every day I'd go to the courts in Swansea and he'd walk past
40:22and they nearly took him back out of the court because he spoke to me.
40:26He just said out loud, I promise you I didn't do it.
40:34After 27 days, the trial concluded, and on the 23rd of July, 2004,
40:41the jury were ready to deliver their verdict.
40:47It only took them a day and a half.
40:49They came back into court and told the judge,
40:53Mr. Justice Roderick Evans, that they had a verdict.
40:56That verdict was guilty. Hegarty was guilty of murder.
41:03Finally, Philip Hegarty would be back behind bars.
41:07When it came to sentencing,
41:09the judge spoke of the 49-year-old's continued duplicity.
41:14Sentencing Hegarty, Mr. Justice Roderick Evans turned to him
41:19and said that he was a very dangerous, violent man,
41:24a manipulative and resourceful liar.
41:27In Hegarty's case, the judge said life should mean life.
41:33He imposed a whole-life tariff.
41:36Whole-life tariffs are reserved only for the most serious of offenders.
41:47There's probably only about 70 of them
41:52because we only use them in the most extreme circumstances.
42:01When I heard the sentence, I thought, my life can carry on.
42:06My life can go, make a new normal.
42:10Because my old normal's gone now.
42:15How do you get a new normal?
42:16You've got to work hard.
42:19For Derek's family, the ordeal was finally over.
42:27But they would never get their partner and father back.
42:32The two children Derek and I have together,
42:35they definitely felt what it's like growing up without a dad.
42:41The younger one has no photos with his dad,
42:45no memories, no nothing.
42:48It definitely doesn't heal,
42:50but it makes it easier to cope with as well.
42:54So all I've got to do is just keep living my life with my families
43:00and my life will get where it should be.
43:05Philip Hegarty murdered Derek Bennett
43:08with little regard for his friend or his friend's family.
43:13This was a story of a Jekyll and Hyde character
43:17who was always short of money and wouldn't stop at anything
43:21to get what he wanted, to get that money.
43:28He's used violence to his advantage throughout his life.
43:32The public should be protected from a man
43:34who's entirely capable of violence at a moment's notice.
43:38When Derek said goodbye to Colleen and his children that Friday night,
43:43he couldn't have known what his so-called friend was capable of.
43:47Philip Hegarty brutally murdered Derek for no other reason than pure greed,
43:53which is why Hegarty will forever be remembered
43:55as one of Britain's most evil killers.
44:14He was considered as one of Britain's most evil killers.
44:26He was also and he was just too old friends.
44:28I've got my son and my son and my son.
44:31I feel like he was a father.
44:31He was a brother.
44:31When Derek said goodbye to me,
44:31He was more of a girl than he said goodbye to me.
44:31He did not even think about him.
Comments