Following every move

When Detective Superintendent Simon Steel of the Thames Valley Police Major Crimes Unit was appointed senior investigating officer (SIO) on Wednesday May 4, 2016, in the suspected murder of a young mother-of-three, the prime suspect had already been arrested, but the body of the victim had not been found. The case had begun just after 4pm the previous day when Margaret Hammond called 999 with concerns about the welfare of her daughter, Natalie Hemming. They normally saw each other regularly and spoke on the phone at least twice a day, but Ms Hammond had not seen her daughter since Sunday and had not been able to contact her by phone. Neither had her sisters. Natalie had also failed to show up for work. “What’s your specific concern?” asked the 999 operator. Ms Hammond replied: “Him.” The ‘him’ was Natalie’s partner, Paul Hemming. When Ms Hammond called at the house the couple shared in Milton Keynes, Hemming told her grumpily that “Natalie had arrived home on Sunday afternoon, upset about something, and said she needed to get away from everyone and everything”. When Ms Hammond asked why Natalie did not take her car, which was parked outside the house, Hemming claimed it had broken down. That was when Ms Hammond decided to call the police. She explained that although the couple had been together for more than ten years and had two children together, and lived with Natalie’s daughter by an earlier partner, the relationship had been beset with problems. Hemming was jealous, manipulative, deeply controlling and occasionally violent. Once, on her birthday, Natalie got a text from an ex-boyfriend. Hemming snatched the phone, read the text and then threw the phone at her, cutting open her head. In 2013, Natalie made a statement to officers at Thames Valley Police Police after Hemming poked her in the eye and hit her over the head with a bottle. They had planned to get married and Natalie had even ‘taken’ his name, but Hemming cancelled the ceremony without telling her. She had tried to leave him on a number of occasions, but he always persuaded her to return. However, early in 2016, Natalie told Hemming that she had met someone else and was taking the children and “leaving him for good”. On the Saturday before she vanished, Natalie had stayed overnight at a hotel with her new boyfriend while her mother looked after the children. Hemming had not known her whereabouts, but had his suspicions, adding to Ms Hammond’s concerns that he had found out and murdered Natalie in a fit of rage. As the investigation proceeded it became clear the case would involve some of the most extreme elements of coercive control, a new offence introduced under the Serious Crime Act 2015, intended to help victims experiencing behaviour that stops short of serious physical violence but amounts to extreme psychological and emotional abuse. It was introduced to close a gap in the law around patterns of coercive and controlling behaviour during a relationship between intimate partners, former partners who still live together, or family members in which police were previously powerless to act. The law states that coercive or controlling behaviour does not relate to a single incident. Instead it is a “purposeful pattern of incidents that occur over time enabling someone to exert power and control, or coerce another”. It is still relatively little used by the police, partly because it revolves around a type of behaviour that the majority of the public – including potential victims – do not realise constitutes a criminal offence. It was in an effort to address this knowledge gap that the murder of Natalie went on to become one of the most extraordinary investigations of recent years. From the initial 999 call to the outcome of the subsequent trial, virtually every element of the police case was filmed as part of a documentary, Catching a Killer, to be screened on Channel 4 this week (Thursday, June 1). Some of the early footage is taken from the body-worn video cameras of the first officers on the scene, an