Murder or Suicide? Part 2

Police measure and weigh Samak in custody to assess whether he could physically have overpowered his wife, Jo, and organise a further search of the family home, hunting for financial documents and life insurance records that might reveal a motive.

But then a witness points them in a new direction. Samak let slip that he'd been back in contact with a woman from his past. Analysis of his phone backs this up: in the weeks before Jo's death, Samak had been secretly pursuing a former girlfriend, travelling to London to meet her. For detectives, it's a significant find.

A critical breakthrough comes when a neighbour's account places a female scream at the property at 3am, more than an hour before Samak made his 999 call. Confronted with this in interview, Samak admits the gap but claims he was too frightened to call for help. Detectives are unconvinced.

Reviewing the 999 call, they realise that the sounds of CPR on the recording are too slow and too deliberate. Samak, they conclude, was pretending to try and resuscitate his wife for the call handler. Challenged in a final interview, his account collapses under pressure.
The Crown Prosecution Service authorises a charge of murder. As Samak is charged and protests his innocence, Jo's family speak movingly about the woman they have lost. But when the case goes to trial, the jury cannot reach a unanimous verdict and a retrial is ordered.

Meanwhile, in Ross-on-Wye, a new investigation begins when a concerned neighbour calls police after finding the front door of 68-year-old Theresa Harvey's home ajar. Officers discover the body of Teresa's 44-year-old daughter Laura inside. Laura had learning difficulties and had recently returned to live with her mother after a period in social care. Teresa is missing.

DI Cath Taylor leads a team investigating the circumstances, keeping an open mind on four possible scenarios: natural death, suicide, murder by Teresa, or an unknown third party.

The initial post-mortem reveals no injuries of concern to Laura and, though decomposition makes a full assessment difficult, no clear evidence of third-party involvement.

CCTV then captures Theresa walking barefoot from the house in a distressed state, heading towards the River Wye. As search teams focus on the riverbank, a body is found nearby matching Theresa's description, with a significant wound to her wrist. It appears that following her daughter's death she may have been unable to cope any longer.

For the detectives involved, it is a case without easy answers and one that proves difficult to forget.