Legendary TV detective reveals unsolved Scots case that still haunts him

Scottish Sun

31-05-2025

A COP who snared serial killer Levi Bellfield and was portrayed by Martin Clunes on telly has revealed an unsolved Scots case still haunts him.
DCI Colin Sutton, 64, solved more than 30 murders during his legendary career with The Met and rarely failed to find justice for victims and their families.
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Colin Sutton still hopes to find justice for families who don't have answers.
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Private James Collinson died while stationed at the Royal Logistic Corps headquarters.
Credit: PA
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Sutton helped catch serial killer Levi Bellfield.
Credit: PA
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Martin Clunes as DCI Colin Sutton in Manhunt.
Credit: ITV
The detective was an integral part of the operation that nailed evil Bellfield, 57 — now serving two whole life terms for the murders of Marsha McDonnell, Amelie Delagrange and schoolgirl Milly Dowler.
But it was the unsolved death of army recruit James Collinson, from Perth, who was shot dead at Deepcut Barracks in Surrey aged 17, that the top cop regrets not solving.
Colin, whose incredible detective work was turned into ITV series Manhunt starring Doc Martin favourite Clunes, 63, said: 'When I was working in Surrey Police in the early 2000s, I started the reinvestigation into the death of four soldiers at Deepcut Barracks.
'It's a difficult situation. We were never able to prove one way or the other conclusively what had happened. And part of that was because the original investigation really was so poorly done.
'There are various parents now that have gone to their graves not knowing what happened to their son or daughter.
'And that's what you want to try to save, it's not always about nailing somebody and banging somebody up behind bars.
'Sometimes there's a kind of a justice — I never say closure, because I don't think it exists — but you can give some sort of peace to victims' families or at least help them to learn how to live with the loss better if they know exactly what happened and they feel that justice has been done.'
Collinson was one of four teenagers to die from shootings at the base between 1995 and 2002.
Privates Sean Benton and Cheryl James lost their lives in 1995, followed by Pte Geoff Gray in 2001 and the young Scot a year later when he was found with a single gunshot wound to the head during a routine guard duty shift.
A fifth victim, Pte Anthony Bartlett, was only revealed two decades after his death from an alleged drug overdose.
Three more women claiming to be Levi Bellfield victims come forward after ITV Manhunt, detective Colin Sutton, played by Martin Clunes, reveals
An inquest into Collinson's death ended with an open verdict and his parents finally dropped calls for an inquiry in 2020 due to the emotional strain.
Colin added: 'There were a lot of assumptions made, assumptions of suicide. And it might be that they were suicides. I'm not saying they weren't.
'But there's a difference between them being suicides and proving that they were suicides. The non-commissioned officers (NCOs) were lending money at ridiculous rates of interest to the young recruits. And when they couldn't pay it back, because they were 17 years old and hopeless at managing their budgets, they could make life hell for them.
'And I think that got to the stage where it made life such hell for some of them that they saw that as the only way out.
'I think that's the most likely answer to what went on. But I can't put my hand on my heart and say the evidence was there to prove that because the initial steps that were taken in the investigation didn't preserve those things that might have been proved wrong.
'Without being conspiratorial about it, you had two big, powerful organisations — the British Army and the British Police Service.
'When you've got big organisations like that, they tend to close ranks and they tend to try to sort of make things go away. I think there was an element of that, which was what riled me enough to want to carry on talking about it.'
The first TV series of Manhunt, screened in 2019, focused on Bellfield's arrest in 2004 on suspicion of the murder of Delagrange and the painstaking efforts to charge him with the subsequent killings.
Meanwhile, the second instalment was an account of the ex-cop's efforts in apprehending 'Night Stalker' rapist Delroy Grant in 2009 after a 17-year terror spree.
Colin then fronted his own documentary series called The Real Manhunter where he looked back at his most important cases and how they were solved.
The crime expert will now be taking his incredible tales on tour — with his Makings of a Murderer 2 gigs coming to Glasgow's Pavilion Theatre on June 2 and Dunfermline's Alhambra Theatre on June 12.
And he still can't believe people are so keen to hear such grisly stories from his career.
He said: 'It's overwhelming, the amount of interest there is. It all started just because I wanted to write a book about the Bellfield investigation because I thought my team had done so well that it would all get lost in history if nobody wrote it down.
'I think it gives people a safe window into a world they know exists but don't want to be part of.
'The interesting thing for me about it is when I first started doing true crime stuff, I wasn't entirely happy with the way that it was done. It was done in a bit of a sensationalist way. It was a bit sort of perpetrator-focused.
'I really thought that it would be much better if we were to focus on victims, on the officers and on the investigations. And that can be just as interesting, just as enthralling, but it doesn't give the kind of attention and publicity to these horrible people that do it.'
And while Colin isn't sure whether Clunes will attend any of his tour dates, he's counting on those in attendance to keep asking the big questions.
He added: 'The tour is so much fun. It's hard work because I'm all over the place and driving lots and lots of miles.
'But when you're writing a book or making TV, there's no audience. Whereas now I've got real-life people who are reacting to the things I'm saying. And the best part for me is, I do the sort of meet and greet at the end and I get to talk to people and they ask me questions.
'There's absolutely no doubt many of the people in the audience have a far more wide-ranging knowledge about true crime than I do.
'I know a lot about my cases and about the cases that I've made programmes about, but their knowledge is phenomenal and that comes through when they speak to you.'
The Makings of a Murderer 2 is at Glasgow's Pavilion Theatre on June 2, for trafalgartickets.com, and for the June 12 show at Dunfermline's Alhambra Theatre, log onto alhambradunfermline.com.