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The Crime

Crime Files

The Crime

“(Hazell) convinced himself that Tia loved him.” Nick Scola, Detective Chief InspectorHazell’s now obsessed enough to watch child pornography, violent child pornography: “He was looking at illegal underage incest pictures, daddy and daughter incest pictures. He is getting off on the voyeurism, but at the same time it’s not going to be enough.” Emma Kenny, PsychologistTia is entering puberty. For Hazell, this means she’s becoming sexually available. He starts secretly filming her. He covertly captures her doing everything from moisturising to sleeping. He films his shadow standing over her unconscious body in bed. Police believe he removes the door in the bathroom and tampers with a light fitting in Tia’s bedroom to create spy holes:“...voyeurism is something that we see in violent sexual offenders. Once offenders go to the next level, they don’t go back.” Dr Keri Nixon, Forensic PsychologistJUNE 2012Tia’s twelfth birthday is spent at Chessington. She goes with her mum and grandma and she has the choice of one friend to go with them. She picks Hazell. Hazell is by now viewing violent pornography on his mobile phone. His search terms include ‘schoolgirl rape’ and ‘incest sex’:“Fantasies are really important in understanding what leads to murder.” Dr. Keri NixonSome of Hazell’s online searches have the key word ‘glasses’ in them. Tia wears glasses.2 AUGUST 2012 The country is in full Olympics mode. Tia texts her grandma and Hazell, asking if she could stay the night with them. Hazell texts Natalie back saying he doesn’t mind if Tia comes: But adds that Christine won’t be there. So Natalie asks Tia if she still wants to go? Tia replies, “Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.”“I wished I hadn’t have read the text message. I wished I hadn’t have read it out to her. I wished I’d told her no, she wasn’t staying there.” Natalie SharpHazell meets her from the tram. A CCTV captures the last images of Tia alive. Hazell and Tia are shopping.  That night, Christine phones Hazell. He says they’re playing computer games. Christine hears Tia laughing in the background. Sometime later, stoned and drunk, Hazell makes sexual advances to Tia. Tia says she’ll tell her mum. Rather than feel shame, he’s instead filled with sadistic, sexual lust.It is not known at what point he kills Tia, or even how he kills her. It is suspected that he suffocates Tia. What is certain is that he uses a vibrator on her. Tia’s blood is later found on it. Hazell strips her naked. He arranges her dead body into a ‘sexually posed position.’ It’s then alleged he uses his mobile phone camera to take a photo of her from behind:“After murdering a girl that he has brought up as his own granddaughter...he totally dehumanises and humiliates the body, using it for his pleasure with absolutely no moral care, no emotional feelings towards somebody that, from two years of age, he has held as his own. That demonstrates just how dark, detached and sinister his personality is. This is a man who is capable of anything.” Emma Kenny, PsychologistHe saws her body up in a bathtub.He places the pieces of her body into black sacks. “Tia’s body was taped up, almost cocooned, in the black bed sheet and the black plastic.” Nick Scola, Detective Chief InspectorHazell places Tia’s dismembered remains in between the rafters where the loft meets the roof. He carefully wraps Tia’s clothes and her broken glasses in small black bags and places them next to her. He covers it all in general debris:

“For someone who wasn’t intelligent, Hazell had done a remarkable job in hiding the evidence of his crime.” Nick Scola, Det Ch InspThe one thing that Hazell hadn’t calculated was the impact his one moment of sickness would have on the family that had taken him. “I think he’s worse than Ian Huntley, for the simple fact is he done it to his own.” Christine Bicknell