A Killer Makes a Call: Season 2, Episode 1

2 - 1: Robert Brown

This true crime series uses the recording of a 999 call as the starting point to investigate a murder. Each episode focuses on a different crime but in each case the person who made the 999 call turns out to be the killer. Robert Brown, a veteran British Airways pilot, calls the police. After much coaxing, he reveals that there has been a very serious domestic incident with his ex-wife, Joanna, and that one of them has been hurt. Officers visit her cottage. But she isn't there, and worryingly, they find blood spots on the driveway. Brown is arrested and interviewed. After three days of interrogation, Brown's solicitor reads a prepared statement in which Brown confesses to having killed her by accident but the truth is far more sinister. Robert Brown attacked Joanna with a claw hammer, striking her 14 times while their children were in the next room. Despite evidence pointing to the fact that Brown had planned the killing for weeks, a jury found him not guilty of murder, controversially convicting him of manslaughter, meaning he would be automatically released in just 13 years. Joanna's family and friends mounted a campaign to keep him behind bars.