Jenny Nicholl Murder Trial
The trial of David Hodgson, who is accused of killing teenager Jenny Nicholl. David Hodgson, 47, of Olav Road, Richmond, denies murdering the 19-year-old in June 2005.
VIDEO
* Detective Superintendent Sue Cross speaks outside court
* Brian and Ann Nicholl speak outside court
* Reporter Joe Willis looks back over the investigation.
CASE CLOSED
He was trapped by his own evil web of deceit
FATHER-of-two David Hodgson was described by his defence team as a liar - but not a killer.
However, the jury disagreed and the 48-year-old was yesterday found guilty of murdering shopworker Jenny Nicholl.
Jenny, from Richmond, North Yorkshire, left her family home on June 30, 2005, telling her mother she would not be back that night.
Ann Nicholl never saw her daughter again.
No one, other than Hodgson, knows how the catastrophic sequence of events unfolded that night. Jenny's body has never been found.
No forensic evidence indicating where the 19-year-old was killed has been unearthed.
Without a corpse and with no crime scene, the prosecution team was forced to rely heavily on circumstantial evidence.
Key to the prosecution case were the lies and changing accounts given by the defendant to detectives.
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| One of the hides where Jenny and Hodgson met |
In his first witness statement to police, Hodgson denied having a relationship with Jenny.
Three weeks later, he said they were friends.
Just over a month after Jenny went missing, he said he loved her and his life revolved around her.
Hodgson initially said the pair only had sex in his Ford Fiesta.
When it was pointed out that he owned this car when Jenny was 15 or 16 - contradicting his claim that the pair only had sex when she was aged 18 or 19 - he said he was refering to her father's car.
In court, forensic evidence was produced that indicated he and Jenny were sexually active on mattresses in wooden hides in the Sandbeck Plantation, near Richmond.
Hodgson told police he and Jenny never went camping together.
But when faced with this scientific evidence, he told the jury this was a lie. He said the pair did go camping and they put the mattresses under their sleeping bags in the tent.
This supported one of the few assertions made by Hodgson that has remained constant throughout - that he and Jenny never spent time together in the Sandbeck Plantation.
The prosecution team has never declared that the woodland is where they believe Jenny was killed. No direct forensic evidence has been found to support this theory.
However, the discovery in the plantation of the CD player taken by the teenager on the night she disappeared, meant this area came under the closest police scrutiny of any of the locations searched.
The defendant also lied to his family, telling his wife, Alison, he was late back from selling golf balls to a friend in Trimdon, County Durham, because he had to take the friend to Newcastle.
He later admitted the lie to police, claiming instead that he had gone to the MetroCentre to look for Jenny, spending only 15 minutes there and never getting out of the car.
Hodgson was late home because he had driven to Jedburgh to send a text from Jenny's phone to her father to give the impression she was still alive.
He also misled police about telephone conversations with Jenny.
He initially told police he never spoke to her after he lost his phone on June 9, 2005.
However, he later said he called her from public telephone boxes in Richmond, and spoke to her from his home phone.
He told the court he spoke to Jenny from a Richmond town centre phone box several days after she vanished.
Checks were made and it was quickly discovered this was another lie.
By finding Hodgson guilty, the jury also rejected his claim that notes were left for him on behalf of Jenny in the days after she disappeared.
He said the messages were placed in a tin under a bridge in Green Lane, near Richmond.
Asked why he had initially failed to tell police about the notes, he said they had "slipped his mind".
He admitted in court that this was a lie.
Perhaps the biggest and most damaging lies grew to form the basis of the defence case.
The claim that Jenny was being sexually abused by her father, Brian Nicholl, started life as a subtle hint to police that "something had been bothering Jenny".
By the time the case came to court, Hodgson was claiming the teenager had opened up to him about the abuse.
It was a lie that was intended to muddy the water and shift the blame for Jenny's disappearance elsewhere.
Several witnesses called by the prosecution also gave important evidence, including several of Jenny's friends.
They told of a young woman who liked to drink and take drugs, but had ultimately declared that she wanted to stay in Richmond and marry a rich man.
They also revealed how Jenny loved her car, bought for her by her parents in early 2005.
The vehicle was found abandoned at the Holly Hill Inn, in Richmond, four days after she went missing.
The court heard from residents who reported seeing Jenny and Hodgson in and around the Sleegill and Holly Hill area of Richmond - only two fields away from Sandbeck Plantation - in the months before she went missing.
One man told the court he saw the couple arguing and the accused push Jenny to the floor at the bottom of Sleegill.
Records were provided which showed the defendant had hired a car on the the two occasions when Jenny's phone was switched on and texts were sent to her family and friends.
The mileage used by the accused matched the distance to Cumbria and Jedburgh, where the texts were sent from.
Another key prosecution witness was the defendant's mother-in-law, Evelyn Bagley.
She told the court she saw Hodgson walking back into Richmond from the direction of Holly Hill, the morning after Jenny vanished. Hodgson's wife had earlier told the court her husband left the previous afternoon with his rucksack.
Bank records were shown to the court that revealed Jenny's account was £268 in credit and had not been touched after June 30, 2005.
A tanning salon worker told the court that Jenny had booked 25 sessions in the week she disappeared.
Colleagues said she had talked about booking some holiday during her last shift at work.
The prosecution said these were not the actions of a young woman about to leave her friends and family forever.
The court heard how a month later, Hodgson was found on the moors above Richmond, after an apparent suicide attempt.
Although no confession was left, prosecutors suggested the guilt of Jenny's death had become too much.
When the jury retired to consider its verdict on Monday, members had to decide why Hodgson had lied.
Was it because he mistrusted police, he did not want further earache from his wife or he had "shut off" after four days in police custody, as he claimed?
Or was it because he was covering his tracks?
He had gone camping with Jenny on that Thursday night in June in the Sandbeck Plantation.
For a reason only he knows, he murdered the 19-year-old and hid her body and possessions.
The jury decided this was indeed the reason for his lies
2:01am Wednesday 20th February 2008
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