Page 37 of Murder in the Family

TITLE OVER

INFAMOUS

FADE IN

WHO KILLED LUKE RYDER?

FADE OUT

BLACK FRAME, TEXT APPEARS, with VOICEOVER – narrator (female)

October 3, 2003: Luke Ryder’s badly beaten body is found by his 15-year-old stepdaughter in the garden of his wife’s home, in an upscale district of west London.

There was no one else in the house, no signs of a break-in, nothing had been stolen and there was no apparent motive for the brutal attack.

As far as the public were concerned, the police were making little progress.

What they didn’t know was that a man had been taken in for questioning within hours of the body being found.

That man’s name was Mitchell Clarke.

FADE OUT

CUT TO: team standing outside the gate of Dorney Place. The weather is cloudy but clear and obviously cold for April, as they’re all in coats and scarves.

BILL SERAFINI

So, Mitch, the end of the last episode was probably a real shock for our viewers. Why was this never made public at the time, do you know?

MITCHELL CLARKE

Well, I was never actually arrested for the murder, and I guess the police were wary of being seen to target a black guy. Especially in that part of town. You have to remember that in 2003 the Macpherson inquiry was still pretty fresh in people’s minds.

BILL SERAFINI

(to camera)

For our US viewers, this was an investigation into how the Metropolitan Police handled the murder in 1993 of a young black man called Stephen Lawrence.

The findings were published in 1998, and accused the Met of being ‘institutionally racist’. That was pretty explosive at the time, right?

MITCHELL CLARKE

Absolutely.

BILL SERAFINI

So talk us through what happened to you – how did you end up involved? You were already a journalist, right, even though you were only in your early twenties?

CUT TO: MONTAGE of stories with Clarke’s by-line, interspersed with images of him around the time of the murder. Images continue under Mitch’s next speech, then cut back to Bill.

MITCHELL CLARKE

I was 21 in 2003. And I was freelance – I wasn’t attached to a particular paper until a lot later. I was living in Ladbroke Grove and that’s where most of my stories were coming from.

BILL SERAFINI

Ladbroke Grove’s right next door to Campden Hill, but in every other respect it’s very different, right?

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