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   Last Updated: Tuesday, 22 July, 2003, 14:02 GMT 15:02 UK
   E-mail this to a friend Printable version 
   Murderer's trail of errors

   Text message
   Baldwin sent a series of texts purporting to be from Jenna

   When he paid by debit card for a spade to bury his victim, killer Mike
   Baldwin had effectively dug his own grave of guilt

   For the 36-year-old factory worker had laid down a financial trail
   which convinced police experts that he had murdered his stepdaughter
   Jenna and had used the spade to bury her on a lonely mountainside.

   Shortly after Jenna disappeared in September 2002, Baldwin used his
   cash point card in Pontypool to draw out £10 to buy the spade, but
   when he visited a local hardware store he found this was not enough.

   Inexplicably, he then used his debit card to pay for the £18.95 spade,
   helping to bring about his own conviction.

   But there was no body, and the police still had to treat Jenna as a
   missing person rather than a murder victim.

   In October, there was another development which was to incriminate
   Baldwin.

   A series of phone calls and text messages were sent to relatives
   purporting to be from Jenna.

   Suspicion fell on Baldwin, and from that point onwards, Gwent Police
   began a cat-and-mouse operation with the man they thought was the
   murderer.

   Mike Baldwin
   Baldwin used his Switch card to buy a spade to bury Jenna

   The man leading the inquiry, DCI Geoff Ronayne explained: "Few people
   knew the numbers and we thought the calls were trying to make Jenna
   appear alive and put us off the scent."

   But detectives were on the scent and experts honed in on various phone
   records, including those of Baldwin who had bought a mobile phone
   under a false name.

   Police experts, helped by the phone providers, traced calls and
   determined their origin.

   Baldwin's clumsy attempts at a cover-up were also discovered when Mrs
   Baldwin, desperately hoping that her daughter was still alive, replied
   to a text asking for proof.

   She was sent a ring Jenna was wearing at the time she disappeared, but
   her husband's DNA was found on the piece of jewellery and the envelope
   by police forensic scientists, further tightening the police dragnet
   around him.

   Surveillance

   Still without a body, they had to be careful not to arouse his
   suspicions and put him on his guard.

   "We had to be careful since we knew we had a murderer in that house
   with two children there as well as Desiree," DCI Ronayne revealed.

   "We had surveillance on him 16 hours a day."

   Jenna Baldwin
   As Baldwin tried to cover-up, Jenna was lying in a shallow grave

   Through the media, the police were also feeding information to Baldwin
   in the hope that he would be forced to go to where he had buried
   Jenna's body.

   They hoped he would try to retrieve some evidence, perhaps
   possessions, which he could use to set up a false trail to show that
   Jenna was still alive.

   Baldwin did eventually accompany police to the place where he had
   buried Jenna - but that was more than two months after she had died,
   after he had been arrested and charged with murder.
   E-mail this to a friend Printable version 
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