‘The sacrifice’: was Kai Shannon wrongfully convicted of murder? Part 2

0:00This is The Guardian.

0:07Today, 13 years ago, a teenager called Kai Shannon was handed a life sentence for a deadly knife attack in London. But did the jury convict an innocent man?

0:25A warning, this episode contains strong language from the start. In 2012, Kai Shannon was convicted for the murder of Wahabzaki and was sentenced to life in prison. He tried to appeal the conviction, but it was unsuccessful. In prison, racking his brains for what he could do next, he decided to make a phone call to Rhys Williams, the prosecution's key witness, and to secretly record it. Hello? No. Yo. They go by their respective nicknames. Kai is sus and Rhys is biscuit or bisque.

1:06Kai confronts him. He wants to know why Rhys named him to the police. It's that you have gone to the police and told them that I did a murder. If it wasn't for that, I doubt the police would have ever caught whoever done this. Instead, you have gone and waited. Instead, you have gone and told them the way... Wait, wait, wait. You have turned my back on everything that I know. I've turned my back on everything that I know for no reason because Feds have got in my head and I've changed my fucking life, brother, and I've had to fucking, fucking, like, become a fucking smith. The line is a bit fuzzy, but Rhys says, the Fed's got in my head.

1:52All right, so let me ask you this now. Why am I in jail right now, bro? You're in jail, yeah? Because man told me the truth about what really happened, yeah? Yeah? And other people didn't want to go to death with it, son. Basically, basically, yeah? Don't think other people didn't tell me to, like, use the sacrifice, bro. That's the way you're seen, you know, son. Kai asks, why is he in prison? He says, you were a sacrifice. While she was reporting this story, Emily spoke to a retired police detective called Graham Satchwell, who's been looking into Kai Shannon's case. I think we all heard that.

2:36He does not say, because you committed murder. That clearly is tremendously important. I didn't kill anybody. I am in jail. But let's not talk about that. We're on the phone, but that's not... Yes, I know, but, but, like, but listen, yeah, like, you know, as well as I know, yeah, the right now, basically, I shouldn't be, I shouldn't be sitting down for 18 years. I know this, sir. I know this, sir. Kai Shannon says, Therese, you know I shouldn't be in prison, and the answer is, I know. It breaks my fucking heart, son. I had to come and old, I had to come and old, baby, and fucking do that, cause, like, man, you don't want to come and lie, you don't want to come and speak to me, cause.

3:26This was the point in the tape when I think the pressure on Rhys Williams really shows. He's practically crying, in my opinion, he's practically crying there. He didn't want to do it. That's what he's saying very clearly. Did they threaten you? Did they threaten you? Did they say to you that if you don't give their names, they're going to take you down? They threatened us. They threatened us, didn't they? They threatened us. It was a group decision, you know, sir. You see, crime. Crime was collateral damage, bro. A group decision was made, yeah, for this to happen, innit, for me to reset their words.

4:05So, Emily, there was a lot to take in there. But Rhys was saying there, they threatened us. What's he talking about? Rhys is saying, when he's saying they're threatening us, He's talking about the police. That's how I understand it. He's talking about the pressure they were put under. And, you know, again, that phrase, it was a group decision. When you hear that section of the call, you can really understand Kai's account that he feels he was set up by the gang. One of the things that Kai keeps saying on it is that he didn't kill Wahab. And at no point does Rhys turn around and say, yeah, he did.

4:45you know that's not that that's never contradicted on the call but equally a lot of it's in slang a lot of it is implied but you can't help but come away from this with the impression that a lot more happened that night than was ever known in court. From The Guardian I'm Helen Pidd. Today in Focus, Why Kai Shannon Insists on His Innocence, Part 2.

5:15So that is a pretty explosive phone call. What did Kai plan to do with it? Well, he wanted to use that to prove his innocence. He wanted to use it to suggest that he'd been set up by the gang and that the wrong person was in prison. That's how he wanted to use it. So he shared it with a solicitor. At this point, he'd got a new solicitor who was acting pro bono. and they put it in an application to the Criminal Cases Review Commission, the CCRC, in 2015. That's the body that investigates miscarriages of justice. If you want your case to go back to the appeal court having been rejected once, the only way back is through the CCRC.

5:57And if you go to CCRC, you usually have to have some compelling new evidence, don't you, or prove that there were fundamental mistakes made in your original trial? So was he thinking that this secretly recorded phone call would be absolutely pivotal to proving his innocence? Yeah, I think he thought this call, he really hoped that this call would be enough to trigger a full review of his case and for the appeal court to hear it again. I mean, there were other things in that application too, but this call was central. And did the CCRC accept his case? No. The CCRC said, oh, well, you know, you were talking in elliptical terms, i.e.

6:38you were kind of vague. It wasn't a totally direct plain English statement, but also that they were using slang. And they reviewed Kai's thoughts on it and they'd gone back over it and they decided that it wasn't enough. So essentially, it sounds like the CCRC were saying it's not clear cut and there are different interpretations of this secretly recorded phone call. And it doesn't prove definitively who did it. Yeah. And they also said that, you know, a lot of the conversation is kind denying that he killed anyone and that he's in prison because of Rhys and that that's a kind of self-serving statement.

7:11Well, that may be the case, but I do think it's significant that at no point is Rhys contradicting that on the call. The CCRC also noted that at the trial and at the appeal, the credibility of Rhys Williams, or rather the lack of it, was actually already a central issue for the jury and for the appeal judges. And so the fact that this puts into question, potentially, Rhys's reliability in terms of, for example, how well he knew Kai or what his account of the night was, that wasn't enough was their argument. OK, so the CCRC application was denied in 2018. What other options did Kai have at that point?

7:54So once the CCRC rejects your case, your options are pretty limited. You have to find some new evidence or some way of getting them to look at it again. And so I imagine there was a period where Kai will have felt pretty despairing, actually, you know, that there was no real avenue left.

8:22Emily came to this story after Kai Shannon's application to the CCRC was rejected. Because despite that rejection, he still has a team of people who believe he's innocent and they're fighting his corner. There's Graham Satchwell, the retired detective. And the more I looked into the case, the more I can see that the prosecution's case was threadbare. And it looked to me as if there'd been a great deal of effort, a great deal of effort put into securing a conviction perhaps at all costs. And the Manchester Innocence Project, headed up by law professor Claire McGaulay. There was just something about the case that just didn't feel right.

9:01There were just bits of information about alibis that he had that he said hadn't been pursued and missing witness statements and DNA and all those cumulative things that he was talking about that we thought, right, OK, we need to take a further look at this and find out whether that information is there. Did you feel that having looked at it that the CCRC had done everything they could? Not really. So Emily, you tried to speak to more people who were there that night, because apart from Rhys Williams, there were plenty of others there, some of whom have never testified in court or given a statement to the police.

9:46Yeah, so I guess I just wanted to go back to anybody who might have been there that night or might have spoken to anyone there that night to try and understand if there was a different picture that the court hadn't heard. According to some witnesses, there were around 20 other people in the stairwell at various times that night You know, we know that by the time police arrived, there's no one to be seen But we did have a list of names of people that we could see could be relevant to the case My name's Emily, Emily Dugan And I tried to track them down in the hope that someone, anyone might remember something about what happened that night

10:27Or perhaps just be willing to finally speak about it, having been more afraid to nearer the town. So I tried some of the police officers who were working on the case at that time. Witnesses who weren't called at the trial. And some who were. Anyone who might be able to just fill in some gaps.

10:55But almost everyone did not want to talk about the case. Obviously, Rhys is the one person who can answer those questions. And we were trying to speak to Rhys himself, but everything I tried didn't get through. And then finally, I got a number for his mum.

11:16Hello. Oh, hi. Is that Petra? And she gave some real insight into that. My name is Emily Dugan. So I started off by saying that I just wanted to speak to Rhys and I was wondering if she could tell me where he was now. Rhys is in prison at the moment. And she said he was in prison, which explained why he didn't reply to any emails or phone calls. But as I was having the chat, I also just said, you know, the reason we want to speak to Rhys is because we're trying to work out, you know, what kind of pressure he was under from the police at the time. And do you remember, I guess it's just about how the police were, were they putting quite a lot of pressure on him at that time?

11:56Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was, yeah. And that's when we had a bit of a breakthrough. What kind of things? Do you remember? Well, they was going to charge him for murder if he didn't tell them who it was and all that. They was giving him a hard time, yeah. and you're suddenly thinking this is a scared teenager who's just been told you're going to be charged with murder unless you give us another name effectively and I just asked if there was anyone else who could help me get in touch with Rhys or you know provide some of that context and she said she was speaking to Rhys that night and would ask him but unfortunately after that call she never responded to any of my calls or messages again.

12:47Rhys Williams didn't respond to the Guardian's questions about his testimony against Kai Shannon.

13:00So I was starting to think we'd kind of reached the end of it. But then finally we spoke to one witness who remembered things really differently to the prosecution.

13:12Hello? Oh, hi. Is that ****? Is this? Hey, my name's Emily. I'm a journalist. I don't know if you've heard that I've been looking into the Kai Shannon case. Yeah. And so what can you tell me about this witness? He's someone who was at Atlee Terrace that night, and he knows both Rhys and Kai. He didn't want to use his name, but he was able to tell me his memories of that night. A lot of the conviction rested on the testimony of Rhys Williams, who up until that point had been, you know, obviously the main suspect. Yeah, because I was shocked because I heard these stories change, like, a couple of times.

13:53Whose did? Rhys. Because basically my thing was, is I was in the block, but I was upstairs with another two guys, like filling up a split basically. Yeah. And then next minute I see everyone running so we ran and that's when I saw Rhys with blood coming down from his hands. Blood coming down? Yeah, at the same time. I was like to him, what the hell happened to you? And he was like, oh, I'm dying, I'm dying, I'm dying. So all I was trying to do was get him to his ass because I ran to his mum's ass to tell his mum, look, something happened to your son and then next minute, No, he sort of jumped into a car and disappeared somehow.

14:39And did you see Kai? Mm-mm. I didn't see Kai at all. Before I went into the block, I saw Kai. And then when I went in, I didn't see him at all after that. And what did Rhys say had happened that night? All he kept saying to me is, oh, I'm dying, I'm dying. So I'm telling him, shut up, because it's only your hand. What actually happened? And he's not telling me what happened. And all he kept saying is, ah, I've been stabbed, I've been stabbed, ah! And that's all he kept saying. So did the police come and talk to you? Yeah, they did. The murder squad came to speak to me, yeah. What did they say?

15:19The same thing I told you is what I told them. And blimmin' there said to me, all right, thank you for that. Because I didn't try and run like other people trying to hide from them, I came straight to them, told them what I'd seen and what I heard. And then that was it. They said, all right, we might need you to come to court and whatnot. I said, that's no problem. And no one got back to me. And the next minute, now I'm hearing his case was on. So I'm thinking, right, so what witness of us went there then? Because we all got interviews, but no one went caught. That's what I was waiting for. Then I got told the case was going on.

15:52So I'm like, okay. That's why I thought straight away, this is a setup. Do you know what I mean? And then a couple years later, I saw Rhys Williams. he was talking to me and then he was like to me yeah, Kai took the rap for everyone I said what do you mean he took the rap for everyone he's like yeah basically everyone put the blame on Kai

16:19Do you think the right man is in prison? No, I honestly don't Listen, I already know yeah we've done stupid things we've done silly things but killing someone, no, there's no reason to do all that. In my eyes, I couldn't see him doing that but I don't know what other people see, do you know what I mean? I can only go based on what I've seen and what I've heard. This man says that Rhys Williams told him Kai took the rap for everyone. But took the rap for who? There were around 20 people there that night. We don't have an answer for that. And to be clear, Emily saw nothing in her investigation to suggest that Rhys Williams killed Wahab Zaki.

17:03But what she has found, cast doubt on the version of events he told to the court back in 2012. Coming up, what's next for Kai Shannon?

17:27Emily, you mentioned earlier that Kai's first CCRC application was refused. Where does the case stand now? Well, last autumn, the Innocence Projects submitted another application to the CCRC, urging them to investigate Kai's case, but also looking in detail at lots of points that they thought raised serious concerns. And the good news for Kai is that the CCRC decided it did merit a full review. So they'll now be looking in detail at the full police file and potentially exploring other avenues, including Kai Hopes, the forensics. So what would that be, retesting the knife that had originally found some partial DNA match that couldn't rule him out as having been at the scene at the time of the murder?

18:17Yeah, so because forensics have moved on so much, these kind of mixed DNA profiles where you've got these tiny fragments, you can get a lot more from them now when you test. And I think Kai is very keen for that testing to happen because the implication that somehow he was connected to that knife because he couldn't be ruled out was clearly an issue in his trial. but better forensics might show that he's not connected to the knife at all, you know, that this was just a false lead. That might make a material difference to his case. So I guess it's positive for Kai that they've agreed to carry out this official review into his case but you've already told us how slowly the wheels of justice move at the CCRC so he could be waiting some time and until then he's in prison.

19:07What can you tell me about what his life's like inside? It's been really hard for him. He's been moved around quite a lot and he often seems to be quite a long way from London, which is where he's got family and friends. And currently he's in Yorkshire. And I'm like, if he's still there, are we going up next month to do an actual physical visit? So his mum, Bianca, speaks to him on the phone every week or sometimes more often and she told me how he's doing. My son's remarkable. like his positivity for everything that he's going through like I'm telling you like not just the fact that he's sitting in prison as an innocent man he's had the best years of his life taken by the system he gets down but by and large the way that he's kept his head together the way that he's kept his spirit together the way that he's kept himself strong um yeah it's it's astonishing and I'm really super, super proud of him.

20:08And if the new CCRC decision doesn't go his way, when will he be eligible for parole? In around five years. But in most cases, to be even eligible for that, he'd have to admit guilt. How does an innocent man stand before a parole court and admit guilt? How do you do that? How do you actually do that, Emily? Could you do it? Because this is the biggest thing. If he can't sit in front of that parole board and say, yeah, I did it, I'm guilty and I've got remorse, then how the fuck's he ever going to get out? He ain't. Because it's an indefinite life sentence and the only hope we've got is the one we've got now and that has proven he's innocent.

20:47It's time. It's time for him to come home.

20:55And Emily, we've heard from you that Rhys's testimony seems to lack credibility, considering the fact that the police were offering him a council flat if he was going to implicate somebody else and his mum told you that he felt that he was at risk of being accused himself and it is important for us to say that we don't have clear evidence that Kai was completely uninvolved in all of this and we know that he was at Atlee Terrace for at least some of the time that night and while he denies being the killer when he's on the phone to Rhys neither of them actually say in that conversation, do they, that he wasn't there?

21:31And I'm interested to hear, after so many months of looking into this, where have you landed in terms of what you think happened? I guess my feeling at the end of all this is that we still don't know for sure what happened that night. There's still so few witnesses who are willing to speak. But to me, the court's version of what happened that night, given that the inconsistencies in Rhys's testimony were acknowledged, given that beyond Rhys's witness testimony, there wasn't much to put Kai in the frame for that murder. I just don't think anyone can say beyond reasonable doubt that Kai Shannon murdered Wahab Zaki.

22:16A CCRC spokesperson said, Mr. Shannon has made two applications to the CCRC. The first application did not result in a referral. We've received a second application in relation to this case. A review into this application is ongoing. It would be inappropriate for us to discuss the case or make any further comments while the application is being reviewed. A Met Police spokesperson said, we are aware of the case and that it's currently being reviewed by the Criminal Cases Review Commission. We're unable to comment on any specific matters relating to the original investigation while this process is ongoing.

22:49Rhys Williams did not respond to questions put to him by The Guardian. That's it for today. My thanks to Emily Dugan. you can read more about her reporting on this case at theguardian.com. This episode was produced by Alex Atak and Eleanor Biggs and presented by me, Helen Pidd. Sound design was by Brian McNamara and the executive producer was Elizabeth Kassin. Our thanks to the Manchester Innocence Project, Claire McGawley and Graham Satchwell. We'll be back on Monday.

23:28This is The Guardian.