True Crime Collection

Danielle Jones

15 year old Danielle Jones was last seen near her home in East Tilbury, Essex, on the morning of 18th June 2001, while walking to a bus stop. Suspicion fell on Stuart Campbell almost immediately and he was first arrested on 23rd June 2001, 5 days after Danielle went missing. Detectives had delayed his arrest while weighing the possibility of endangering Danielle's life, on the presumption she was still alive and being held against her will, against the possibility of Stuart leading the police to her. During police interviews Stuart was described as "uncooperative". In one 20 minute interview with the police, Stuart refused to comment on 50 questions. 

The investigation included several appeals to the public for information, including a reconstruction on the BBC television programme Crimewatch. During the investigation, over 900 police officers and support staff searched over 1,500 locations for Danielle's body, as within 2 months of her disappearance police working on the case were convinced that she was dead. 

On 17th August 2001 police re-arrest Stuart on suspicion of murder, after finding "significant evidence" which appeared to support their theory that Danielle Jones was now dead.

A police superintendent said to the BBC that Stuart "developed a relationship with Danielle that was certainly inappropriate and probably unlawful." Danielle apparently tried to disengage, but Stuart resisted. By 14th November 2001, the Crown Prosecution Service decided that the police had enough evidence to charge Stuart for murder - even though her body had not been found. 

On 14th October 2002, Stuart went on trial for abduction and murder, having spent 11 months on remand. The Crown's case rested upon several pieces of evidence. Danielle had disappeared without contacting her parents and had been seen talking to a man in a blue Ford Transit van resembling Stuart's on the morning of her disappearance. The testing of blood stained stockings discovered in the loft of Stuart's house found DNA matching both himself and his niece; lip gloss used by Danielle was also found in Stuart's home. A diary kept by Stuart revealed an obsession with teenage girls, with testimonies that Stuart had manipulated young girls into posing for topless photographs. 

                HI STU THANKZ 4 BEIN SO NICE UR THE BEST UNCLE EVER! TELL MUM I'M SO SORRY LUVYA LOADZ DAN XXX - The text message that Stuart claimed Danielle had sent to him. The message was sent in uppercase, however, Danielle habitually sent messages in lowercase. 

Mobile Switching Centre records demonstrated that Stuart's alibi of being at a DIY store half an hour away in Rayleigh was false and that Stuart's and Danielle's mobile phones had been within the range of a single mobile phone mast at the time that a text message had allegedly been sent by Danielle to Stuart. This, along with forensic authorship analysis, indicated that Stuart had written the message, not Danielle, implying that Stuart had sent the message to himself using Danielle's phone to make it appear that she was still alive.

Stuart was found guilty of both charges on 19th December 2002 and sentenced to life imprisonment for murder to run concurrently with a 10 year sentence for abduction. The High Court later ruled that Stuart should serve a minimum of 20 years before being considered for parole, meaning that he is set to remain imprisoned until at least November 2021 and the age of 63. 

After his trial, it was revealed that in 1989, Stuart had received a 12 month suspended sentence for forcibly detaining a 14 year old girl in his house and taking indecent photographs of her. 

The use of text message evidence in the trial led a group of researchers at the University of Leicester to begin studying text messaging styles under the hypothesis that forensic research into the authorship analysis of such messages might help in future criminal cases. 

In 2004, Stuart was granted leave to appeal against his conviction on the grounds that evidence of his obsession with Danielle, and of his interest in school girls, should have been excluded at his trial and on the further grounds that one of the jurors, the next door neighbour of a police officer involved in the case, should have been discharged. The appeal was dismissed in 2005 by the Court of Appeal. 

On 28th July 2005, an inquest by the coroner was held into Danielle Jone's disappearance, returning a verdict of unlawful killing. Police interviews with Stuart in prison reported that Stuart had still refused to tell them where he had disposed of his victim's body.