Silent Witness

So who is Manfred?

It's a chatroom for people who struggle with suicidal thoughts.

How many people are on here?

It's Rowan Cole. "I want to knock

"myself out and let my aircraft take me."

"Do it. Stop hurting. With you."

This is incitement to suicide.

You don't know the half of what I've done.

SCREAMING

So who was on it?

Ezra Heller. 11-years-old. Jonathan Kraft.

Ex US Ambassador Jonathan Kraft?

Matt, can you give me a call?

Jonathan didn't make it.

A couple of pilots.

The captain, Alex Vitarnen, and Rowan Cole, a non-flying pilot.

Rowan Cole was seeing a psychotherapist.

Did he express suicidal thoughts?

Not to me.

Peter Sachs.

Shot himself through the roof of his mouth.

Desperate men looking for someone to trust and he's praying on them.

I haven't been completely honest with you.

Matt?

The last moments that plane was in the air, it was trying to pull up.

Which is why the tail hit the ground first? Right.

So, what? Did Alex come around and find the plane in a steep dive?

He was fighting to save the people on board?

Nikki, you with me here or what? Can I catch you up?

Yeah.

Hi, this is Matt.

I can't get to the phone. Please leave a message.

Well, everything's been catalogued and laid out,

so it's up to you what you want to see first. Great.

Sorry.

So what does the flight data recorder tell us?

The FDR will give us stuff like the heading direction of the aircraft,

airspeed, altitude, et cetera.

But it's not going to tell us who was flying the plane? No.

It won't tell us whose hands were on the controls,

just that the inputs were being made.

The plane was in a dive, then it levelled out, then dived again.

Am I right in thinking that the nose came up just before impact? Yes.

And that wasn't the autopilot? No, it wasn't engaged.

OK. So the two steering yokes. They move in unison.

Though the FDR can record that the plane

was being moved or put into a dive,

it won't be able to tell you which yoke, which pilot, did that.

But you got fingerprints from both, right?

Yes. Extensive patterning on Alex's. Less so Cole's.

Cole shouldn't be flying at all. He wasn't rostered to fly this trip.

He was just a pilot hitching a lift home.

Can we see the steering yokes? Sure.

Which one had Cole's prints on it? This one.

We're looking for blood.

Cole had lacerations on the palms of his hands.

Yeah, there's handprints.

Where most of the blood is,

it's where his hands would've been if he was flying the plane.

See here, these tears on his palms? Right.

X-rays confirm fractures of the thumbs and both wrists.

It's more than straightforward impact damage though.

The way they're broken suggests specifically that his thumb

and fingers were firmly closed around something on impact.

Holding on to something like a steering column?

More than holding on. Fighting with it. Pulling back hard.

Like maybe when you put the plane into a hard dive

then changed your mind at the last minute?

So, are we saying he was definitely flying the plane?

I can't confirm that, absolutely,

but his injuries may be consistent with it, yes.

The aircraft's descending at six thousand feet per minute.

But at fifteen hundred feet, whoever is flying the plane panics

and tries to pull up.

But too late to save the aircraft.

And 15 seconds later, the tail and rear fuselage hit the ground.

Immediately after that the rest of the aircraft hits the ground.

The cockpit and central section break away

and the fuel tanks in the wings ignite

and the passenger cabin bursts in to flames.

This is all borne out by the Flight Data Recorder.

So, Rowan Cole.

What were his movements before boarding the flight?

Did you manage to... Yes. He flew out of the UK the day before

to pilot an empty aircraft

from Schiphol Airport, Amsterdam, to Dubai.

But the job was cancelled. The client changed their mind.

So he hitches a ride back to the UK on Juno 537.

When did he know he'd be on that flight, then?

Just a couple of hours beforehand.

It couldn't have been his intention to target Kraft then, could it?

So it's pilot suicide?

A few people on the chatroom are using a Virtual Private Network.

Which is what, some sort of device to hide your identity?

Normally your internet service provider gives you an IP address

that we can trace you to or ID you that way.

You paid for it, so you'll have given them your info or whatever.

Yeah. If you're using a VPN, it takes you to a remote server,

usually in another country.

What, and that's it? Yeah. In effect, that's who you are.

The server.

No name, no address, no payment details, nothing.

This guy, Manfred.

He's using multiple VPNs.

If I trace him to a server, well,

there's another and another and another.

So he's untraceable? Pretty much.

But here's the interesting thing.

I traced this user to his ISP.

The police got a warrant for LoneRangerUK78's payment details.

He's your guy.

Peter Sachs.

We've got more from Cole's smartphone.

He's been communicating privately with Manfred

on a secure messaging app.

The messages were encrypted, but...

This is how it looks after we got access.

These are from a user called Ridley33.

Ridley meaning Rowan Cole? Yes.

He's at Schiphol in Holland

panicking because his flight's been cancelled.

The Dubai flight presumably? Mm-hmm.

"Schiphol cancelled,

"back to UK with one crew, three cabin, and me, deadhead."

"Need to take my life so bad now."

He's going to be on a flight with other people,

but he still wants to bring it down.

So he's got a dilemma.

He wants to die now, but that involves killing other people.

Manfred tells him to do it anyway.

Manfred killed them.

By incitement. By inciting Rowan Cole.

TEXT ALERT

So who else is he private messaging?

All the people on that chatroom are potentially at risk.

Ezra Heller, the boy on the plane.

He's conscious.

Help! Dad!

Ezra.

Was this your seat? Here by the window?

But you didn't stay in your seat, did you?

The other guy took me.

To the flight deck? To meet the captain.

And then you went back to your seat?

And while you were on the flight deck,

did you see him do anything, the other pilot?

That's enough now. He texted.

Just a minute, please.

He texted.

And you saw that clearly, did you, Ezra?

Did you see who he texted? Did they have a name?

No.

No. OK.

Well done, Ezra.

Hey.

Thanks for that.

How's he doing?

It's watch and wait.

Right.

It's so tough for you.

Telling him about his mum as well.

I'm sorry, I didn't...

He doesn't know.

I can't tell him.

No, text.

Yeah, definitely text.

Here's Jack. I'm just going to put us on speaker phone.

I've not started to try and recover texts, yet.

Everything was deleted.

Just a sec.

Hi, Clarissa.

There's a list of numbers Rowan Cole called and texted,

but no content yet, not from the texts.

It's in a file called RCTXT. Yep, I've found it.

Well, the last text he sent was at 05:34am

to 07700900475.

So, 12 minutes or so before the plane went down.

We're just looking that number up.

The last person he contacted was a John Stanley.

His psychotherapist.

OK. I'll get a warrant.

So, when we spoke previously, why did you withhold that information?

Why didn't you tell me that he'd texted you from the aircraft?

You must have realised it was relevant to our enquiries?

How is it relevant who he texted?

I didn't tell you about it because I didn't think it was important.

If it is.

And I didn't reply to it, so it wasn't a conversation.

Rowan was searching for direction in his life.

Answers to things that had happened to him in the past.

Childhood events he'd not been able to come to terms with.

He'd never been taught how to love freely.

His parents were damaged people.

And he couldn't accept that he was capable of being loved.

Or that he could love in return.

He didn't trust anyone. Me included.

And progress was limited, at best.

I don't remember asking for an analysis of his psyche.

I'm sorry? That's because I didn't.

Why did he text you?