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Christopher Halliwell Convicted of the 2003 Murder of Becky Godden

Five years after he led police to her grave, a Bristol jury took under three hours to reject his claim that drug dealers had buried her.

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A white prisoner transport van at an open steel gate in a high concrete wall, on a wet road in the rain

It took the jury at Bristol Crown Court just under three hours. On Monday, September 19, 2016, it found Christopher Halliwell, 52, a former Swindon taxi driver already serving life for stabbing Sian O'Callaghan to death, guilty of a second murder: that of Becky Godden, a Swindon woman killed in 2003.

He had told the police himself. In March 2011 Halliwell was arrested on suspicion of kidnapping O'Callaghan, a 22-year-old office worker. He admitted that he had murdered her, told the officers he had killed before, and took them to the remote field where he had buried Becky years earlier. Then he was given legal advice, and from then on he answered "no comment." At a pre-trial hearing early in 2012, a judge ruled that the confession about Becky could not be used because of the way it had been obtained. Halliwell was sentenced to life for Sian O'Callaghan's murder that year. The charge over Becky was dropped.

What brought it back, years later, was evidence that had been within the police's reach all along. A spade seized from Halliwell at his arrest in 2011 was not forensically examined until three years later, when soil on it was matched to rare soil in the field where Becky lay. An RAC recovery driver had attended Halliwell's broken-down vehicle in the early hours of January 3, 2003, six miles from her grave. A doctor had seen him that same day with severe scratches to his face and an injured hand, which he blamed on an assault by a passenger he never reported. And a medical officer at the Gablecross custody suite said that on March 24, 2011, Halliwell had told him he had been arrested for killing two people. That evidence helped convict him. Before trial, a different judge ruled that the jury could hear the confession after all.

Halliwell denied the murder and made legal history by defending himself through the two-week trial. He told the jury he knew where Becky's remains were because he used to drive a pair of drug dealers around Swindon, and that it was they who buried her. He refused to name them. The jury did not believe him.

He faced sentencing that Friday. Six years later the Independent Office for Police Conduct, investigating complaints from Becky's mother, Karen Edwards, found that Wiltshire Police had missed significant opportunities to bring him to justice sooner, and that after the first charges were dropped no one in the force had taken responsibility for seeing the murder inquiry through.

What this story covers. The verdict, the length of deliberations, the 2011 arrest and confession, the "no comment" interviews and Halliwell's defense come from ITV News West Country's report of September 19, 2016. The 2012 ruling, the life sentence for Sian O'Callaghan's murder, the evidence of the spade, the RAC driver, the doctor and the custody medical officer, the later ruling that the confession could be heard, and the 2022 findings come from the Independent Office for Police Conduct's announcement of September 2, 2022. Some reports call her Becky Godden-Edwards. Claims that Halliwell killed others have not been established and are left out.

Sources