CSI Chadderton

They say you can’t teach an old dog new tricks, but that’s certainly not true of a unique murder investigation team in Chadderton.

The veterans down at the new Broadgate police station use the most up-to- date technology and forensic techniques to assist them. Janice Barker investigated the investigators at the Category C team.


It’s a bobby’s job with the ‘Cat C’ murder investigation team — ex-bobbies that is, like former detective superintendent Andy Tattersall and detective inspector Vinnie Chadwick.

They head a team of more than 20 specialists who, between them, have hundreds of years of experience of putting together the jigsaw pieces of evidence which will eventually get suspects into court.

The Cat C team is unique, formed when Greater Manchester Police decided to free-up its most senior murder investigation officers and local CID teams by taking away the painstaking gathering and collating of evidence in the most straightforward cases.

Murders are categorised as A, B or C where A is the most serious, probably involving someone famous or notorious, perhaps a child killing, and sure to make major headlines.

Then comes category B, serious and probably needing high level investigation, then C where an offender is likely to be identified early on, such as a domestic incident where one partner has struck out in an argument.

A and B cases probably account for 40 per cent of investigations across Greater Manchester, so the Chadderton team handles 60 per cent of the work.

Mr Tattersall was a Senior Investigating Officer (SIO) scrutinising murders until two years ago. He cut his teeth as a detective sergeant in Oldham from 1980 to 1986.

He was named SIO of the year in 2006 by the Association of Chief Police Officers and jointly wrote the ‘Bible’ for murder squad officers, the Senior Investigating Officers’ Handbook published by Oxford University Press in 2008, which sold out its initial 2,000 copies.

He was asked to set up the new team two years ago and his deputy, Vinnie Chadwick, is also another old hand who served as a detective inspector in Oldham and Chadderton.

Their office manager was an experienced Lancashire detective. The the majority of the team has either been detectives or is experienced in other police work, plus three civilians from the Department for Work and Pensions, Probation Service, and an experienced support staff member.

They have 13 different cases at varying stages, some in court next week, some still in preparation, and one where Mr Tattersall is reviewing all the evidence again.

Debbie Remorozo was a Filipino nurse who came to work at the Royal Oldham Hospital, but was brutally stabbed at her flat in Summervale House in 2002.

The 26-year-old staff nurse, who worked in the coronary care unit, was found a day later in her locked flat by worried friends.

But in the majority of the 13 cases currently being worked on, it is the painstaking piecing together of multiple strands of evidence which is the team’s forte.

One example illustrated by Mr Tattersall is a Heywood case where barmaid Emma O’Kane was killed by a shard of broken glass which flew from a broken bottle thrown into a pub.

It was investigated as a murder, but the defendant Neil McNulty claimed he was throwing the bottle at a closed door when he was refused admission. Meticulous evidence from various CCTV recordings proved to the jury that in the split second that he threw the bottle, the pub door was open, the bouncer ducked and the bottle hit a pillar, splintering and sending a shard of glass into Emma’s neck, severing her artery.

He was convicted of manslaughter.

The team’s evidence gathering also helped convince the jury at the murder trial of Cheshire policeman Martin Forshaw, who killed his fiancee Claire Howarth, also a police officer, last year after hitting her with a lump hammer.

Forshaw claimed she had attacked him first and he defended himself, but the jury saw photographic and computer generated evidence of blood splatters on wardrobes at their Bury home, proving where the first blows were struck.

Mr Tattersall said: “In the short period of two years we have now had 41 cases, so we have taken that volume of work off local detectives.

“The first period of 24 or 48 hours after a murder is a massively intense period, but very often that is just the tip of the iceberg.”