THE NEEDLE IN THE HAYSTACK MURDER
Ian Hepburn, Crime writer
The Sun (England)
March 27, 2006 Monday
How painstaking police work solved a baffling case.
AN off-duty fireman caught a whiff of burning flesh as he biked through
the countryside -and began one of Britain’s most baffling murder cases.
In the corner of a field the body of a stocky man had been doused in
petrol and set alight.
It was so badly burned the face had been destroyed and all that
remained of the hands was a tiny piece of thumb.
The man had been killed by being shot in the head and stabbed
repeatedly.
But finding out who he was and why he died took three years of
painstaking investigation.
The burning body was discovered beside the A47 near Peterborough,
Cambs, at around 10am on December 21, 2002.
Beside the corpse was a distinctive cigarette lighter, two pairs of
latex gloves and the glove packet.
There was also a bag of assorted rubbish including a torn-up and
charred medical memo which was to prove vital.
Visible on the scraps of paper was someone with the surname Armstrong
inviting another person called Talbot to attend a medical appointment
on Wednesday, December 18. It also bore tiny traces of airborne blood,
suggesting it was at the murder scene.
Police brought in a team of specialists who, after studying the shape
of the victim’s jaw and looking at its dental work, agreed he was
Eastern European.
A forensic artist used her skills and computer wizardry to rebuild
the man’s face.
The image was used in an appeal on TV’s Crimewatch UK. Yet no one
could put a name to the victim.
The cops consulted Dr Stuart Black, senior lecturer in Environmental
Radioactivity at Reading University. He asked for a tooth, skin and
bone sample and his analysis showed the victim had lived within the
fall-out area from Chernobyland, Ukraine.
Detectives then began the laborious task of writing to everyone with
the surnames Armstrong and Talbot in Lincolnshire, Cambridgeshire,
Norfolk and Suffolk in the hope of tracking down the people connected
with the medical memo.
More than 2,000 letters were posted and on September 5, 2003 -ten
months later – came a huge breakthrough.
Vanessa Armstrong, a human resources secretary at a bearings factory
in King’s Lynn, Norfolk, contacted the murder incident room and said
she had sent the memo to a machinist called Paul Talbot.
He had been invited to see a nurse in the firm’s medical room for
his routine six-monthly check up.
Detective Inspector Bert Deane set off to King’s Lynn to speak to
the factory manager. The machinist was quickly eliminated as a suspect.
Then came another breakthrough: The team searched the medical room
and found a latex glove packet. The serial number was from the same
batch as the packet found beside the body.
They also discovered paper towels of the same width and texture as
soiled paper beside the body. Three days later they returned with a
full forensic team.
Nothing incriminating was discovered until the officers moved
a cabinet. Behind it they found microscopic specs of the murder
victim’s blood.
Then they closely examined the medical couch and found more blood had
run down a crease in the material. On shelves there was evidence that
a gun had been fired.
The Forensic Science Service declared the medical room was the scene
of the murder.
Inquiries quickly revealed that on December 20, the day before the
body was found, the factory had closed for workers to head off for
their Christmas break.
An Armenian security guard, Nishan Bakunts, 28, worked the night shift
and had arrived with another man who he had often passed off as his
“brother”.
Det Insp Deane said: “We had no idea who the other man was. But it was
known that the guards would use the medical room couch for a sleep.”
When his shift ended Bakunts left the factory alone, never to return.
The security guard who relieved him asked: “Where is your mate and
where is his car?” Bakunts did not give him an answer.
But the shocking truth was he had been shot several times on the
medical couch.
When the bullets failed to kill him he was stabbed to death then
bundled into the boot of Bakunts’ car.
Bakunts then drove to a garage three minutes away, bought a petrol
can and put in a gallon of fuel.
Det Insp Deane said: “We believe he drove his black Rover with
an accomplice and with the body in the boot to the location near
Peterborough where the body was dumped and set on fire.
“We believe that after the murder they cleaned themselves up, scrubbed
the medical room and put everything in a bag.
“That was how the latex gloves got to the body site. We believe the
medical memo had been left in the room when Mr Talbot was seen by
the nurse and was stuffed in the bag with other items.”
Afraid
Bakunts was arrested at his home in Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, on
suspicion of murder. His partner Arpine Karapetian was arrested on
suspicion of helping him.
Then detectives discovered that, two days after the murder, Bakunts
had gone to stay with his father-in-law in Oldenzaa, a Dutch town on
the German border.
He returned two months later. Det Insp Deane said: “We knew a man
had been staying at the house in Great Yarmouth in September 2002.
Bakunts’ partner said she was afraid of him. She only knew him by
the name of Sako.”
Police circulated the name and Sako’s description to police throughout
Europe. The force in Belgium responded immediately. They suspected
the victim was Hovhannes Amirian, also known as Sako.
He was wanted for a murder in Ostend after a member of staff was shot
dead in a phone shop hold-up in October 2000.
Cambridgeshire detectives got authority to take a DNA sample from a
son Sako had with his estranged wife.
It produced a family match with Sako’s DNA. Then a partial thumbprint
from the ravaged body matched fingerprint files in Belgium.
Police took stills of Sako from his wedding video and showed them
to witnesses in Norfolk. Det Insp Deane said: “That put him in the
factory and in the flat in Great Yarmouth. We were able to positively
identify the victim for the first time.”
Police then connected DNA found on the striker of the body scene
cigarette lighter to Bakunts’ father-in-law, Misha Chatsjatrjan,
who was living in Holland.
Knife
They were able to show he came into the UK one day before the murder
and returned three days later.
In October last year Bakunts and Chatsjatrjan were convicted at
Norwich Crown Court. Bakunts was jailed for life for murder.
Chatsjatrjan was cleared of murder but jailed for three years for
assisting.
Det Insp Deane said: “Sako had gone to the factory in King’s Lynn.
“He was asleep on the medical couch when these two men went in armed
with a gun and a knife.
“The gun was designed to fire blanks but it had been converted.
“They put a number of shots into his head. But the gun was not powerful
enough to kill and he reared up and they knifed him to death.
“Sako was part of the Armenian mafia who were involved in people
smuggling, drugs and prostitution.
“He had a string of aliases and false passports. He knew the Belgian
police were after him and he tried to lie low.
“We think the motive for the murder was him trying to take over the
house in Great Yarmouth to commit crime.
“I’ve worked as a detective for most of my 31 years in the police
and this was one of the most demanding, but rewarding,cases I have
been involved in.”