On the morning of Thursday, March 24, 2011, a Swindon taxi driver named Christopher Halliwell was arrested in an Asda car park on suspicion of kidnapping a young woman who had disappeared five days earlier. Within hours he had taken the senior detective on the case to her body on the Berkshire Downs, and then, unprompted, to a field in Gloucestershire where he said he had buried another woman years before. Both confessions were later ruled inadmissible because of the way they were obtained. Halliwell pleaded guilty to the first murder in 2012. It took until 2016, a second police team and evidence that had been sitting in police hands since 2011 before a jury convicted him of the second. The detective who obtained the confessions was found guilty of gross misconduct and left the police. The police force was later found to have missed significant chances to bring the second case sooner.
Christopher John Halliwell was born in 1964, according to VICE. Police sources quoted by ITV News in 2012 described a hard childhood in which he was abandoned by parents who did not care for him; the sources opened give no birthplace or other details of his early years. As a young man he burgled houses, and in the 1980s he served a prison sentence at HMP Dartmoor. A cellmate there, Ernest Springer, later said Halliwell had talked about wanting to become a serial killer, had asked how many murders it would take to be called one, and was fascinated by the Moors Murders. Springer also said Halliwell told him he had had sex with a woman while strangling her. Detective Superintendent Sean Memory of Wiltshire Police said in 2016 that Halliwell had spoken "candidly in 1985 about wanting to be a serial killer."
After his release, which Crime+Investigation UK dates to 1987, he went back to Swindon, worked as a window cleaner and married Lisa Byrne. They had three children. Crime+Investigation reports that the couple divorced in 2005 and that he then moved in with a neighbor, Heather Widdowson, and her three daughters. By 2011 he was driving a minicab for a Swindon firm and living in a semi-detached house in the town; the court reports of 2012 give his address as Ashbury Avenue, and a 2016 report calls him "formerly of Nythe." Earlier he had lived on Broad Street. He was a keen fisherman who knew the countryside around Swindon well.
Friends quoted by ITV described a devoted family man, and a fellow driver told VICE he had seemed ordinary and trustworthy. Police sources quoted by ITV said he was a regular customer of sex workers, that he had become rough or strange with some of them, and that he had "issues" with women. His criminal record, as the sentencing judge in 2012 noted, was for dishonesty. He had no convictions for sexual or violent offenses.
Rebecca Godden, known as Becky, was born in April 1982; April 4, 2011, would have been her twenty-ninth birthday. Her mother is Karen Edwards and her father is John Godden. In later years she is often called Becky Godden-Edwards, the name her mother and the police complaints body use.
By the time she was twenty, Becky was addicted to drugs and was working as a sex worker in Swindon to pay for them. The judge who sentenced Halliwell in 2016, Sir John Griffith Williams, said she hoped to overcome her addiction and return to her family, and spoke of the "potentially fulfilling life" Halliwell had taken from her. He described their dealings as a controlling sexual relationship in which Halliwell used her and exploited her vulnerability, and he doubted Halliwell's claim that he had been fond of her. The judge said the relationship was "not conventional" and that she had little time for him.
In the early hours of January 3, 2003, Halliwell drove to the Destiny and Desire nightclub in Swindon town center and, in the judge's word, "summoned" her. A friend, Rebecca Boast, saw an argument and then saw Becky get into the back of his taxi, "huffed," and the judge found she went unwillingly. He concluded that Halliwell wanted her for sex, that she refused, and that he killed her when she did. He found that she struggled hard but was no physical match for him. Halliwell removed her clothing to destroy forensic evidence and buried her naked body in a shallow grave in an isolated field known as Oxo Bottom, near Eastleach in Gloucestershire. The judge found that he went back to the place repeatedly over the years to make sure she stayed hidden.
Later on January 3, Halliwell saw a doctor. He had scratches on his face and a broken little finger, and told the doctor a taxi passenger had assaulted him. He never reported the assault to the police. Earlier that morning an RAC recovery driver had been called to his broken-down vehicle about six miles from the field.
Becky's family did not report her missing until 2007, according to a PA Media timeline. For eight years no one knew where she was.
Sian O'Callaghan was twenty-two in March 2011. She worked as an office administrator in Swindon, lived in a flat on Westmorland Road with her long-term boyfriend, Kevin Reape, and, according to the police at the time, had a supportive family and a job she enjoyed. Her mother is Elaine Pickford. At sentencing, Mrs. Justice Cox called her "a much loved daughter, sister and partner" and a happy, lively and caring young woman. Her partner had told her never to walk home alone and always to take a taxi.
On the evening of Friday, March 18, she went out with friends in Swindon's Old Town and ended the night at the Suju nightclub. Reape had been at the races and went to bed at about 10:30 p.m. Sian left the club alone at about 2:52 a.m. on Saturday, March 19, to walk home, a distance of about 800 meters, or roughly ten minutes. The judge found that she was drunk and unsteady on her feet.
Halliwell was working that night. At about 2:13 a.m. he switched off the handset that connected him to his taxi company and did not go home as he had told the company he would. Closed-circuit television later showed his green taxi circling the area around the club for about forty minutes. Shortly after Sian passed the Goddard Arms on High Street, the taxi passed her, turned back and pulled up beside her, and she got in.
He did not drive her home. He drove out of Swindon toward Marlborough and the Savernake Forest, about half an hour away. In court he claimed she had asked to go to Covingham, a Swindon suburb; the judge rejected that and found he knew exactly what he was doing. In or near the forest he attacked her with a six-inch kitchen knife he kept in the car, stabbing her twice in the head and neck, and compressed her neck. She also had bruising to her face, neck and breasts. Judge Cox said she was helpless and alone, and that her fear probably began as soon as she realized she was not being taken home.
He left her body in the forest area, went back at lunchtime, logged on for work again that evening and switched the handset off again at around 7 p.m. while he looked for a more remote place on the Berkshire Downs. On Monday, March 21, he moved her body to a steep bank near the Uffington White Horse in Oxfordshire, about twelve to thirteen miles from the club, and partly hid it in undergrowth.
Reape woke at about 9:45 a.m. on Saturday, found that Sian had not come home and could not reach her. He had texted her at 3:24 a.m. and had no reply. He reported her missing. Wiltshire Police put more than sixty officers on the case under Detective Superintendent Steve Fulcher. Chief Inspector Mike Jones said it was unlike her not to contact anyone.
Her phone had connected to a mast near the Savernake Forest about thirty-two minutes after she left the club, and it went on receiving calls and texts there for about twelve hours until its battery ran out. That told the police she had been taken by vehicle. More than four hundred volunteers, Reape among them, searched the 4,500-acre forest. On the fourth day an anonymous donor offered a 20,000-pound reward.
On March 22, investigators named Halliwell a "TIE" (a person to trace, interview and eliminate) after his car was seen in the area where she disappeared, and he was placed under surveillance in the hope that he would lead officers to her. That day, while being watched, he cleaned the back seat of his taxi and dumped its seat covers in an industrial bin; they carried Sian's blood. On March 23 he went back to the place where her body lay and burned more seat covers by the roadside. He also put a police appeal poster about Sian in his taxi window.
On the morning of March 24, Halliwell bought paracetamol. Fearing he might take his own life and with it any chance of finding Sian, the police arrested him in the car park of an Asda supermarket in Swindon on suspicion of kidnap.
What happened next became the center of the case for the following five years. Under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 (PACE) and its codes of practice, an arrested suspect must be cautioned, taken to a police station and offered a lawyer before being questioned, except in narrow circumstances. Code C, paragraph 11.1, allows an "urgent interview" outside a station where delay is likely to lead to harm to others. Officers carried out a short urgent interview in the police car. Halliwell said nothing useful.
Fulcher, who has said he still hoped Sian might be alive, then had the car diverted from the Gablecross police station to Barbury Castle, an Iron Age hill fort on the downs south of Swindon. According to VICE's account, he met Halliwell there at 12:11 p.m., about fifty yards from the other officers, with a civilian note-taker recording what was said. Halliwell repeatedly refused to say where Sian was and asked for a solicitor. Fulcher told him he was being given an opportunity to say where she was and that he would be vilified if he did not. After a long silence, Halliwell asked whether they had a car and said they would go.
He directed the officers to the bank near Uffington, where Sian's body was found that day. Then, according to Crime+Investigation, he asked Fulcher, "Do you want another one?" He took the detectives about twenty miles north-west to the field at Eastleach and said he had buried a Swindon sex worker there years before. He was not cautioned for that second offense, and he did not see a lawyer until about four hours after his arrest. Once he had legal advice, he answered "no comment" to every question in his formal interviews.
At Gablecross that day, a custody medical officer recorded that Halliwell said he had been arrested for killing two people. That remark would matter later.
The excavation at Eastleach took days. At a press conference Fulcher said that Wiltshire had only one outstanding missing adult case, "from some years ago," and asked for time "to recover these bodies with the dignity and respect they deserve." On March 26, police said they had found human remains in the field, and that evening Halliwell was charged with Sian O'Callaghan's murder.
On March 28 he appeared at Swindon Magistrates Court. About a hundred people had gathered outside; some attacked the police van, and two men were restrained. He spoke only to confirm his name and address and was remanded in custody. Police estimated at first that the woman at Eastleach had been between twenty-three and thirty and had gone missing between 2003 and 2005.
On April 4, 2011, what would have been Becky's twenty-ninth birthday, police told Karen Edwards that the remains were her daughter's. On May 23, Halliwell was charged with Becky's murder. On June 4, according to the PA timeline, Fulcher stepped down as senior investigating officer.
In January and February 2012, a week-long hearing at Bristol Crown Court considered defense arguments that Halliwell could not get a fair trial, both because of the PACE breaches and because of Fulcher's media briefings, in which he had said Halliwell admitted two murders. Mrs. Justice Cox ruled that the confessions to both killings were inadmissible. She found that the Barbury Castle conversation breached the codes, that Halliwell should have been cautioned as soon as he began to talk about another offense and the questioning stopped, and that the confessions had been obtained by oppression. She also excluded evidence of what happened between his detention and his arrival at the station. The Crown Prosecution Service did not appeal. She rejected the argument that the publicity made a fair trial impossible, finding that Fulcher had not acted in bad faith and that his conduct was a "misjudgment, serious as it was," rather than an attack on the integrity of the justice system. The IPCC later quoted her description of "wholesale and irretrievable breaches of Pace and the codes."
Without the confession there was, in the prosecutors' view at the time, nothing else to link Halliwell to Becky's death, and in February 2012 the charge was dropped.
The case over Sian continued on other evidence, including her blood on the seat covers and DNA. Halliwell pleaded not guilty on May 31, 2012. On October 19, 2012, at Bristol Crown Court, he changed his plea to guilty. He offered the court an account of what had happened, which Judge Cox rejected. She found that he had intended to kill, that the killing involved sexual conduct, and that it was aggravated by his abuse of his position as a taxi driver, premeditation, Sian's vulnerability, a prolonged period of fear and pain, and his efforts to hide her body. She took a starting point of thirty years, reduced it by five for the guilty plea, and set a minimum term of twenty-five years, less 571 days already spent in custody. She told him that if he were ever released, he would remain on license for the rest of his life.
Becky's father, John Godden, complained that Fulcher's actions had caused the charge over his daughter to be dropped. The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) investigated that complaint along with two referrals about Fulcher's dealings with the media. On September 9, 2013, it found that he had a case to answer for gross misconduct for breaching PACE and for ignoring force orders. "Detective Superintendent Fulcher's actions were in deliberate breach of PACE," said its deputy chair, Rachel Cerfontyne. It said the effect on the Godden prosecution could not be known. Separately, it found he had met BBC and ITV journalists after being taken off the inquiry, against express orders.
On January 23, 2014, an independent disciplinary panel found him guilty of gross misconduct. He received a final written warning and kept his job. His statement said he accepted the panel's findings and was "humbled" by the support of Karen Edwards and Kevin Reape. He resigned from Wiltshire Police in May 2014, ending a twenty-seven-year career, and later worked as a security consultant in Somalia.
Fulcher has argued that he acted to save Sian's life and that leading the police to the two women was "the right and moral thing to do." Karen Edwards has thanked him for "bringing my little girl home." Others disagreed sharply. A commentary in the Law Society Gazette, written after the 2012 sentencing, criticized Wiltshire's chief constable for calling his decision "brave," arguing that it had "stopped one trial and jeopardised another" and that the PACE rules exist to prevent miscarriages of justice.
For more than a year after Fulcher stepped down, the Becky Godden inquiry had no senior investigating officer. In October 2012, Detective Inspector Matt Davey took it on. It was his first murder inquiry, and he had been accredited as a senior investigator only in June 2011. He was left in sole charge without the staff or supervision the job needed, the IOPC later found.
In 2014, Kier Pritchard, by then an assistant chief constable, became Gold Commander for the investigation. He has said he referred the case to the police watchdog himself, declared a critical incident, set up a new oversight group, appointed a new senior investigator and commissioned an independent review by the East Midlands Special Operations Unit. Detective Chief Inspector, later Detective Superintendent, Sean Memory took over.
Memory's team went back over what the police already had. A spade seized from Halliwell in 2011 was finally sent for forensic testing, three years after it was taken. Soil on it matched the rare soil of the field at Eastleach. The team fully established the RAC driver's evidence about the breakdown near the burial site early on January 3, 2003. The doctor, who had told police in April 2011 that Halliwell came in that day with scratches and an injured hand, became a witness. So did the custody medical officer who had heard Halliwell say he was under arrest for killing two people. Officers also examined a pond at Ramsbury, Wiltshire, which the IOPC later called Halliwell's "trophy store." Clothing and other items recovered there and nearby had degraded by then. Crime+Investigation reports that items belonging to Sian and Becky were identified among them and that the rest have not been.
On February 18, 2015, Halliwell was arrested on suspicion of Becky's murder. According to the PA timeline, he told Memory he would accept responsibility for her killing if the police asked him no more questions about other offenses. On March 30, 2016, he was charged with her murder.
Halliwell pleaded not guilty in June 2016. He dismissed his legal team and defended himself. Before the trial a different judge, Sir John Griffith Williams, reversed the 2012 position and ruled that the jury could hear the 2011 confession. The trial began at Bristol Crown Court on September 5, 2016, with Nicholas Haggan QC prosecuting.
Fulcher gave evidence. He told the jury that Halliwell had led him to believe he had killed more people, and that because Halliwell could not remember the year he had killed Becky, "that led me to conclude that there were other victims."
Halliwell's defense was that he had known where Becky was buried because he used to drive two drug dealers around Swindon and they had buried her there. He refused to name them. ITV reported that under cross-examination he admitted strangling her and leading the police to her body.
On September 19, 2016, after deliberating for just under three hours, the jury found him guilty. Becky's family cheered and wept in the public gallery, and ITV reported that Halliwell smiled. Outside court, John Godden wept and said his daughter could now be at peace.
On September 23, 2016, Sir John Griffith Williams sentenced Halliwell to life imprisonment with a whole life order, meaning he will never be released. The judge called the drug-dealer story "a cock and bull story" with "all the hallmarks of a contrived explanation," and described Halliwell as "a self-centred and domineering individual who wants his own way" and "calculating and devious." He found that both murders involved abduction, sexual conduct and concealment of the body, and that the gap of about eight years between them most likely reflected a lack of opportunity. He gave Halliwell some credit for the 2011 confession, which had led to Becky being found, but said it was outweighed by everything since: the "no comment" interviews, the lies to the jury, the attempts to manipulate the investigation and trial, and what the judge called his "cynical indifference" to the families. He said that a minimum term would have been so long that Halliwell would in all probability never be released in any case.
The judge praised the Godden family for their "quiet dignity and courtesy" and said they had lived with every parent's worst fear, only to learn their daughter had been dead for years and buried naked, without the chance to say goodbye. He also praised Sian's family, who had to hear again during the trial how she died. Halliwell offered no mitigation. As he was taken down, he said, "Thank you."
Halliwell has been convicted of two murders. Everything below is suspicion or speculation. He has not been charged with any other offense.
The police raised the question themselves. After the 2016 sentencing, Sean Memory said, "I don't think that these are his only two offences," pointed to the eight-year gap and called the possibility that Halliwell was a serial killer "distinct." He contacted other forces about unsolved killings and missing people and appealed to Halliwell to "tell the truth for once in your life." After his conviction, Halliwell reportedly claimed in a phone call from prison that officers wanted to question him about eight murders. As early as March 2011, press reports said the police would look again at the 1996 murder of Melanie Hall in Bath and the 2001 disappearance of Tina Pryer in Trowbridge.
In February 2017, Wiltshire Police dug up the gardens and searched the garages of two properties on Broad Street, Swindon, where Halliwell had lived. Detective Chief Inspector Jeremy Carter said the work was intelligence-led, part of an ongoing investigation by the Brunel Major Crime Investigation Team, and that the current residents had nothing to do with it. VICE reported that the ten-day search found nothing of significant interest.
Fulcher went much further. In September 2016 he told the Sunday Express that he believed Halliwell had killed six more women, and he named four:
Sally Ann John, a 23- or 24-year-old sex worker who disappeared from Swindon in September 1995 and has never been found. She worked on Broad Street, where Halliwell lived, and Fulcher said Halliwell knew her. ITV called this the most compelling of his suggested links. Three men from Swindon and Chippenham had been arrested over her murder in 2015 and released on bail.
Linda Razzell, 41, a college worker and mother of four, who disappeared in Swindon on March 19, 2002. Fulcher said Halliwell had done building work at her home. Her estranged husband, Glyn Razzell, was convicted of her murder in 2003 after her DNA was found in the boot of his car; he maintains his innocence, and his appeals have failed.
Melanie Hall, 25, a university graduate who vanished after leaving a Bath nightclub in 1996 and whose remains were found beside the M5 near Thornbury in 2009. Fulcher said the circumstances, and the rope used to bind her, fitted Halliwell's methods and interests. Avon and Somerset Police said there was no link between Halliwell and their investigation, and ITV reported no evidence that he was in Bath at the time.
Claudia Lawrence, 35, a chef who disappeared on her way to work at the University of York on March 18, 2009. Fulcher pointed out that Halliwell's father lived a few streets from where she vanished. North Yorkshire Police said at the time that they knew of no evidence linking him. In April 2023, after renewed claims, Detective Superintendent Wayne Fox said the two forces had examined Halliwell's digital devices and interviewed witnesses, that he had kept working as a taxi driver in Swindon during the relevant period, and that it was "unlikely that Halliwell left the Wiltshire area" when she disappeared. He said he would keep an open mind.
Fulcher's 2017 book, Catching a Serial Killer, described the Ramsbury items as trophies and suggested Halliwell might have killed as often as once or twice a year. Lists published since, including one by Crime+Investigation UK, tie him speculatively to more than twenty unsolved killings and disappearances across Britain from 1983 onward. No police force has announced evidence linking him to any of them.
The speculation was not welcomed by everyone. Wiltshire's chief constable, Mike Veale, called it "a disgrace" and said it was unhelpful and distressing to families, and that his force had found no links between Halliwell and other murders. Senior officers privately called Fulcher's remarks irresponsible. Sian's mother, Elaine Pickford, wrote, "I personally do not feel it is helpful to either the police or those families to publicly speculate." Karen Edwards has backed Fulcher; in 2023 she said she feared Halliwell had also killed Claudia Lawrence and that women had told her he had stalked them in Yorkshire. In 2021, ten years after Sian's death, Wiltshire Police said it would keep an open mind about further offenses and follow the evidence.
Karen Edwards complained about the handling of her daughter's case. An investigation by the Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Hertfordshire professional standards department, directed by the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC, the IPCC's successor), reported on September 2, 2022.
It found that Wiltshire Police had missed significant opportunities to bring Halliwell to justice sooner. From 2011 to 2014, the Becky Godden inquiry was poorly progressed and supervised, reasonable lines of inquiry were not pursued, and key evidence was not examined. It listed the spade, the RAC driver, the doctor, the custody medical officer, the Ramsbury pond, and a gamekeeper who reported in 2011 that he had seen a taxi near the place and time of Sian's abduction but from whom no statement was taken until February 2015. It found there had been enough evidence to prosecute Halliwell for Becky's murder in 2011 even without the confession, and that if that evidence had been gathered, or the CPS told of the outstanding inquiries before the 2012 hearing, the ruling, an appeal or the decision to prosecute might have been different. "No one in Wiltshire Police took responsibility for ensuring that the murder inquiry progressed effectively," said the IOPC's regional director, Catrin Evans. The force had "allowed a fog of confusion to develop regarding who was in command." The IOPC found that the misconduct case against Fulcher had not drawn resources away from the Godden inquiry.
Kier Pritchard, by then Wiltshire's chief constable, was found to have a case to answer for misconduct over his oversight of the inquiry as head of protective services from 2012 to 2014, including appointing an inexperienced senior investigator, and was given management action. There was no case to answer for Mike Veale or Matt Davey. The IOPC made ten recommendations on oversight of murder inquiries, which the force said it had already acted on. Pritchard said, "I am very sorry for the impact that failures in this case have had on Becky's family." Karen Edwards said the IOPC had sugar-coated its findings and wrapped the police "in cotton wool," that she believed the force had sat on evidence and only prosecuted because her daughter's case had become "a thorn in their side," and that she would campaign for reform of the IOPC.
Halliwell is serving a whole life order for the murder of Becky Godden and a life sentence with a twenty-five-year minimum for the murder of Sian O'Callaghan. The most recent source opened for this page, an April 16, 2023, Yorkshire Post report, describes him as serving life sentences for both murders, with no further charges. No later information on his status or on any of the other investigations was checked for this page.
Other victims: Halliwell has been convicted of two murders only. Links to Sally Ann John, Linda Razzell, Melanie Hall, Claudia Lawrence and others come from a former detective, from press reports and from his own reported prison remarks. The forces responsible for the Hall and Lawrence cases have said they found no evidence connecting him, and a man was convicted of Linda Razzell's murder.
Fulcher's decision: whether breaking PACE at Barbury Castle was justified is still argued. A judge, the IPCC and a disciplinary panel found it was a serious breach; Fulcher and Karen Edwards say it was the only way the two women were found.
The 2011 evidence: the IOPC concluded there was enough evidence to charge Halliwell over Becky in 2011 without the confession; at the time prosecutors dropped the charge for lack of it.
What Halliwell said: in 2015 he reportedly offered to accept responsibility for Becky's death in return for no questions about other offenses; at trial he blamed drug dealers he would not name.
1964: Christopher Halliwell born (per VICE).
1980s: Serves a sentence for burglary at HMP Dartmoor; a cellmate later says he talked of wanting to become a serial killer.
1987: Released; returns to Swindon (per Crime+Investigation UK).
January 3, 2003: Becky Godden, 20, last seen getting into his taxi outside the Destiny and Desire nightclub, Swindon. He sees a doctor that day with facial scratches and a broken finger.
2007: Becky's family reports her missing.
March 19, 2011: Sian O'Callaghan, 22, leaves the Suju nightclub at about 2:52 a.m. and gets into his taxi.
March 22, 2011: Halliwell named a person of interest and put under surveillance.
March 24, 2011: Arrested; at Barbury Castle, without caution or lawyer, leads Fulcher to Sian's body near Uffington and then to Becky's grave at Eastleach.
March 26, 2011: Remains found at Eastleach; Halliwell charged with Sian's murder.
April 4, 2011: Karen Edwards told the remains are Becky's, on Becky's twenty-ninth birthday.
May 23, 2011: Charged with Becky's murder.
June 2011: Fulcher steps down as senior investigating officer.
January to February 2012: Mrs. Justice Cox excludes the confessions; the Godden charge is dropped.
October 19, 2012: Pleads guilty to murdering Sian; life with a minimum of 25 years.
September 9, 2013: IPCC finds Fulcher has a case to answer for gross misconduct.
January 23, 2014: Fulcher found guilty of gross misconduct; final written warning. Resigns in May 2014.
2014: New investigation team; the spade is tested and the Ramsbury pond searched.
February 18, 2015: Halliwell arrested over Becky's murder.
March 30, 2016: Charged with Becky's murder.
September 19, 2016: Convicted after a two-week trial in which he defended himself.
September 23, 2016: Whole life order.
February 2017: Police search gardens at his former Broad Street homes; nothing of significant interest found.
September 2, 2022: IOPC report finds missed opportunities; Wiltshire Police apologizes to Becky's family.
April 16, 2023: North Yorkshire Police says it is unlikely Halliwell was in York when Claudia Lawrence vanished. Halliwell still serving his sentences as of this report.