A convicted drug dealer was pictured enjoying ringside seats for the Chris Eubank Jr boxing match after taking a Rolls-Royce to the arena.
24.08.2023 - 15:17 / manchestereveningnews.co.uk
In the words of Det Chief Insp Gina Brennand, it was a 'proper whodunnit from the start'. At 6.40pm on November 24 last year, Liam Smith was shot dead yards from the front door of his home in Wigan.
His cold-blooded killers then doused the dad-of-two's face and body in sulphuric acid and fled the scene. And, initially at least, the brutal murder left detectives baffled.
There were no witnesses, no suspects, no evidence and no motive. And to add to the confusion very little was known about the victim.
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But then came the breakthrough every big case needs. CCTV pulled from varying sources showed a car driven by the killer Michael Hillier.
"Footage, some from Liam, the victim's home address itself, and some from a bin wagon and an Asda delivery van, captured the vehicle driven by the suspect Michael Hillier on the day of the murder," said DCI Brennand. "What that showed us was that that car was outside of Liam's home address for almost 10 hours before he got out and murdered Liam.
"We knew the build up in that we knew the movements of the vehicle. We knew the obtaining of license plates, and we knew how Liam had been killed but we didn't know who'd done it.
"A couple of weeks into the investigation, we received intelligence from South Yorkshire Police that a vehicle had been stopped three weeks before Liam was murdered and in that vehicle was the R22 ORA plates. It was that that really unravelled this case.
"The thread that you pull that after that was a house of cards that led to one person to another to another to CCTV to Michael Hillier to Rachel Fulstow."
Today Hillier and his girlfriend Rachel Fulstow were sentenced to life
A convicted drug dealer was pictured enjoying ringside seats for the Chris Eubank Jr boxing match after taking a Rolls-Royce to the arena.
Miley Cyrus has reflected on the day she decided to divorce Liam Hemsworth.The pair announced their split in August 2019, less than a year into their marriage. They had been together for 10 years and got engaged in 2012.During a recent instalment of her ‘Used To Be Young’ video series on TikTok, Cyrus said: “I just want to slow down because this is actually serious.” She went on to recall her performance at Glastonbury 2019, which was when she decided to break up with Hemsworth.“The day of the show is the day that I had decided that it was no longer going to work in my life to be in that relationship,” Cyrus remembered.The singer explained that while her and Hemsworth’s initial commitment to being married “came from, of course, a place of love”, it also came from a place of “trauma” and the need “to rebuild as quickly as [they] could” after losing their Malibu home the Woolsey fire in 2018.Looking back on her set on Glasto’s Pyramid Stage, Cyrus said: “That was another moment when the work, the performance, the character came first.
Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic Somewhere, at any given moment, there’s a film director adapting a stage play to the big screen. Yet it’s rare, and fascinating, to see a filmmaker steeped to the gills in cinema as cinema who also has a grand obsession with the theater.
Can Finbar Murphy escape his past? “In The Land of Saints and Sinners” presents a mysterious man with a dark past who faces a crisis between doing what’s right and facing his own mistakes. Liam Neeson stars as Murphy, a man searching for solace and redemption; it’s yet another film that sees the actor carefully balance his dramatic roots with his recent success in high-profile action hits.
The plan was for renowned director William Friedkin to be appearing at the Venice Film Festival presenting the out of competition World Premiere of his latest production, an adaptation of Herman Wouk’s 1954 play The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial. Unfortunately Friedkin died August 7th, but the show goes on anyway.
It has been a busy month in our region's courts.
Chris Eubank Jr. is one of the most recognisable names in British boxing, having become an established figure within both the middleweight and super-middleweight divisions.
Few characters in Oliver Stone’s “JFK” leave as indelible an impression than Donald Sutherland’s mysterious Capitol Hill informant. In just one short scene, Sutherland masterfully provides Kevin Costner’s Jim Garrison with intel about the assassination that makes Garrison realize exactly what he’s up against.
Miley Cyrus spoke about the “magic” Malibu house she shared with ex-husband Liam Hemsworth in her new “Used to Be Young” TikTok series.
TOWIE alumni Clelia Theodorou revealed she broke both her legs and feet while pregnant in the car crash that tragically killed her mum. The 28 year old former reality star, who is due to give birth to her first child in a matter of weeks, last month told how she was left in “paralysing” pain following the death of her beloved mother. Her unborn child, who she is expecting with boyfriend Tommy Cole, was thankfully unharmed in the smash - but Clelia was left with “terrible injuries”.The TV personality has now given an update on her condition to fans on social media.
The heartbroken family of Liam Smith have paid tribute to their 'rock' as they begin to piece their lives back together following a gruelling six-week trial. The 38-year-old dad-of-two was murdered by former couple Michael Hillier and Rachel Fulstow, jurors at Minshull Street Crown Court ruled on Wednesday (August 23).
As Michael Hillier and Rachel Fulstow enjoyed the Jamaican sun - posing for pictures astride horses in the crystal clear Caribbean Sea - they had no idea the net was closing in. They thought they'd got away with murder.
As they took in the majestic surroundings of the Caribbean, Michael Hillier and Rachel Fulstow looked just like any other loved-up couple. They had flown to Jamaica for a two-week trip of a lifetime.
The family of a man killed in cold blood screamed at one of the murderers in court and told him he should 'hang from a noose'.
The family of Liam Smith have said they will 'always love him' in a heartfelt tribute given as his murderers received life sentences.
The couple who murdered a dad in cold blood have been sentenced to life in jail today.
This is the horrifying moment Liam Smith was shot outside his home in Wigan.
Staring into the camera following their arrest in the wake of an unthinkable act of violence, this is the killer couple behind the murder of a father in a gun and acid attack. Ex-partners Michael Hillier and Rachel Fulstow were today (Wednesday, July 23) convicted of Liam Smith's murder.
A former couple who plotted the killing of an electrician before he was shot and doused in acid have both been found GUILTY of murder. Michael Hillier blasted dad-of-two Liam Smith in the face yards from his home in Wigan, before throwing sulphuric acid over his body.
A man accused of murdering a father-of-two who was shot and attacked with acid has been removed from court after interrupting the judge's summing up.The jury in the trial of Michael Hillier and Rachel Fulstow, both accused of the murder of Liam Smith, 38, in Wigan, Greater Manchester, in November last year, have retired to consider their verdicts shortly before 1pm today (Tuesday, August 22).Minshull Street Crown Court has heard Mr Smith, an electrician, went on a date with Ms Fulstow, 37, in 2019.