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Swindon Taxi Driver Christopher Halliwell Is Arrested Over Sian O'Callaghan and Leads Police to a Second Grave

Halliwell was charged with O'Callaghan's murder two days later. His roadside confessions were later ruled inadmissible because police broke the rules on questioning.

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Illustration of police officers walking across an English field toward a white forensic tent on a gray day. Not an actual scene from the case.

Police searching for Sian O'Callaghan, missing in Swindon, arrested taxi driver Christopher Halliwell on March 24, 2011. Within hours he had led them to her body and to a second woman's grave.

O'Callaghan, 22, had not been seen since leaving a Swindon nightclub early on March 19. According to a summary of 2012 court rulings, Halliwell, 47, was arrested at 11:06 a.m. and reached Gablecross police station about four hours later. In that time Det. Supt. Steve Fulcher, the senior investigating officer, made a deliberate decision to breach the mandatory rules on questioning arrested suspects, against his deputy's advice, and Halliwell was questioned without a caution. Halliwell directed Fulcher to O'Callaghan's body, near Uffington, Oxfordshire, then began talking about another killing and led officers to a field at Baxter's Farm in Eastleach, Gloucestershire. On March 26, police said they had found human remains there, and that evening Halliwell was charged with O'Callaghan's murder. On April 4, which would have been her daughter's 29th birthday, police told Karen Edwards that the remains were those of Becky Godden, who was 20 when she was last seen getting into a taxi outside a Swindon nightclub in January 2003.

Halliwell was charged with Godden's murder on May 23, 2011. In 2012, Mrs. Justice Cox ruled his confessions inadmissible because of the breaches, and the Godden charge was dropped from the indictment. He pleaded guilty to O'Callaghan's murder on October 19, 2012, and was jailed for life with a minimum of 25 years. He was convicted of Godden's murder on September 19, 2016, and given a whole-life order four days later.

Days after the arrest, police estimated that the woman buried at Eastleach had been between 23 and 30, but Becky Godden was 20 when she disappeared in 2003.

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