The barrister went on to list the damning evidence against the accused. He said analysis of mobile phone records showed that calls from Nancy Chohan to her husband stopped on 15 February. Mr Horwell said: ‘It is a certainty that Mrs Chohan and her family were imprisoned or murdered that afternoon and it is of great significance that on that afternoon the mobile telephones of Regan and Horncy were used [in the vicinity of] the Chohan family home.’ He said that mobile phone evidence also proved ‘beyond doubt’ that Regan and Chohan met near Stonehenge on the day that the businessman vanished, adding: ‘Within days of Mr Chohan’s disappearance, Regan had replaced the carpet and the furniture from the front room of his home address. At some point the room had been redecorated… Something happened to Mr Chohan [there].’ Forensic officers testified that the place was ‘unfeasibly spotless’.
But the killers left a macabre clue: a drop of blood was found on Regan’s garden wall which was conclusively proven to have come from 18-month-old Devinder. It was 4ft above ground level and described as a ‘downward drop’ by a forensic scientist, suggesting the toddler was being carried at the time. The court also heard that traces of Amarjit Chohan’s blood were found on the speedboat used by the three men to dump the bodies.
However, the prosecutor still had the ace up his sleeve. He told the court how Mr Chohan had left a piece of paper in his sock designed to lead police to his killers. The paper – a letter bearing Regan’s name and address – had been folded so many times that it had survived days in the sea. ‘When it was unfolded it became apparent that it was a letter addressed to Kenneth Regan and his father at their home,’ Mr Horwell said.
The QC said the letter’s contents were unimportant, but the date was significant. It was dated 12 February 2003, the day before Mr Chohan disappeared. He added: ‘It is not just, of course, the fact that in folding the letter and placing it in his sock, Mr Chohan had intended to leave a clue as to the identity of his captors and the place of his incarceration. It also means that Mr Chohan had known that he was going to be murdered.’
The prosecutor then turned his attention to the trench dug by Regan and his accomplices to bury the bodies: ‘Horncy told Ms Brewin that Regan had asked them to come and sort out the drainage problem. It was supposed to have been a surprise. A drainage ditch is hardly a conventional gift. The element of surprise is not just unnecessary, it is positively unwelcome as far as the recipient is concerned.’
Mr Horwell said that when the trench was excavated months later by police, they found human hair matching Mr Chohan’s: ‘The DNA of Mr Chohan was found in the grave, but the entire family was murdered as part of a single plan and it is beyond belief that two or more separate graves would have been used. The grave these men dug was very large. It was a grave for five bodies, not one; it was only too clear what they had been up to – the trench had been dug as a communal grave for the Chohan family.’
By then, Mr Chohan had agreed to sell his business but he underestimated Regan’s ‘duplicity and ruthlessness,’ said the prosecutor in his closing speech. The barrister added: ‘Regan was penniless. He had no legal right or interest in CIBA; there were no backers. Regan did not have the collateral to buy a minority interest in CIBA, let alone the entire company. Regan’s motive and intentions are obvious: he was desperate for a return to the days of “Captain Cash” – banknotes in the boot of a Mercedes and the luxury home.
‘There was only one way he could realise such an ambition and that was through drugs. That meant the means or disguise under which drugs could be imported into the UK in large quantities. CIBA was the perfect vehicle.’
The defence team in the £10 million, eight-month murder trial – one of the longest in British legal history – had a difficult job arguing against the evidence. In his closing speech to the jury, Regan’s defence counsel Paul Mendelle, QC, had little to offer: ‘The prosecution have invited you to speculate – there is not a scrap of evidence. Regan would have had to be desperate beyond belief to slaughter an entire family for the sake of a business.’
After 12 days of deliberations, the jury found Regan and Horncy both guilty of all five murders. Rees was convicted of false imprisonment and the murder of Mr Chohan, but cleared of the other four killings. He was handed a life sentence, with a minimum recommendation of 23 years.
Judge Sir Stephen Mitchell jailed Regan and Horncy for the rest of their lives, telling them: ‘Your crimes are uniquely terrible. The cold-blooded murder of an eight-week-old baby, an 18-month-old toddler, not to mention the murders of their mother, father and grandmother, provide a chilling insight into the utterly perverted standards by which you have lived your lives.’
Detective Chief Inspector Dave Little of the Metropolitan Police led the investigation. He said outside court: ‘This is a crime utterly beyond the comprehension of decent society. A young family, a new family, was entirely wiped out at the hands of these murderous men in an attempt to line their own pockets. I hope they reflect on their crimes long and hard for the rest of their lives, which will be spent in prison.’
‘Glen had established himself the credentials that made him an ideal recruit for a contract killer. He had murdered before.’
Prosecution Counsel Rex Tedd, QC
Name: Paul Glen
Crime: Contract killing
Date of Conviction: 29 July 2005
Age at Conviction: 34
At around 7.55pm on 8 June 2004, builder Robert Bogle was in the kitchen of the house that he shared in the quiet, picturesque village of Farcet, Cambridgeshire. He was cooking a bolognaise sauce for himself and his girlfriend Angelina Walker when a man wearing a hooded top, heavy overcoat and black gloves kicked down the kitchen door.
Without saying a word, the stranger brandished a foot-long kitchen knife and began stabbing Robert, who tried desperately to defend himself. As he fought for his life, Robert was knifed 10 times – to his hands, his arms, through his right cheek and his heart.
The 25-year-old struggled to keep his balance as he slid through his own blood to the doorway, leaving red handprints along the kitchen units. While his girlfriend hid behind a sofa in the living room in shock – she was so traumatised by what she heard and saw that she could not properly give evidence at the subsequent trial – Robert made it out of the kitchen and to the pavement outside, clutching his chest.
It was just after eight o’clock and his desperate plight was witnessed by a group of teenage girls, who were ambling along with bags of chips from the village takeaway. Robert, with his clothes wet with blood, told the frantic, screaming girls to call an ambulance. As one of them dialled on her mobile phone, he staggered to a nearby shop and the house next door, banging on the windows. But no one came out and he collapsed on a patch of grass.
A recording of a 999 call, made by a 14-year-old girl, went: ‘It’s right in his heart,’ while in the background the victim was heard to shout, ‘Get help!’ and ‘Get off, get off, get off!’ as people desperately tried to stem the flow of blood.
Seconds later, the terrified group saw his attacker stroll down the alleyway adjacent to his house. One of the teenagers would later testify in court that she was ‘really scared’ by ‘a large man who wore black gloves’. She said: ‘I thought, “Why wear gloves in warm weather?”’ Another recalled: ‘We thought it was all a joke at one point because the other man just walked away like nothing had happened.’
It would later transpire that the calm stranger