Forensics ? or the lack of them ? were at the heart of the botched legal bid to nail the suspects accused of the Rebecca Middleton murder.

Prosecutors and Police pinned their hopes on a confession by Kirk Mundy who claimed to have had consensual sex with the 17-year-old Canadian visitor on Ferry Reach beach ? only to find his friend Justis Smith murdering her when he returned from washing himself in the sea.

Police were influenced by false lab results which initially indicated semen in all three of Becky?s orifices ? suggesting more than one man must have been involved, particularly given the timeline which had the suspects at the scene for only a matter of minutes.

Later it emerged faulty swab evidence had overstated the case and there was only semen in the vagina.

By then the Crown had split the indictment as Mundy had already pleaded guilty to accessory after the fact while there were no forensics linking Smith, now solely charged with the murder, to the scene.

Smith was later cleared by the Supreme Court who ruled he had no case to answer while efforts to recharge Mundy were also blocked by London?s Privy Council.

Yet alarm bells were ringing in all sorts of quarters in the early stages of the investigation. David Middleton, Rebecca?s father, had arrived in Bermuda the day after his daughter?s murder.

Despite the emotional need to take Becky?s body home both he and his estranged wife Cindy, who had joined him on that journey, recall explicitly offering the Police more time to examine the body. But doctors only took one day.

Mr. Middleton said: ?My take on it was they wanted it over and done with as quickly as possible.

?Yet three of the attending physicians suggested they get a further autopsy done by a pathologist from Dade County, Florida. That didn?t happen.

?We said ?do it properly?.? Mr. Middleton now believes authorities in Bermuda didn?t know what properly was.

?Did they do any fingernail scrapings? The answer was no they didn?t. When you have a brutal murder like that would you not think to do that? That?s 101.

?We just assumed that Bermuda being a hi-tech country, with all the banking facilities and tourism, that they have the same types of skills and procedures that we have here.

?But we came to find out they were in the dark ages.?

Mr. Middleton added: ?They didn?t even cordon off the scene. They had people tromping around there.?

That view was backed up the Commission of Inquiry into Series Crimes report in 2000 which looked at the Middleton case.

It said there was no doubt whatsoever that the crime scene was ?not properly secured in the first instance and properly managed thereafter?.

The report went on to say the crime scene was not scoured for clues using the latest forensic methods to pick up trace material which could have pinned the murderers to the scene of the crime. Even when subjects confess, the hunt for DNA must not stop, said the Commissioners. DNA can convict the guilty and absolve the innocent and the report said undue reliance should never be placed on confessions.

However former Superintendent Vic Richmond, who supervised the inquiry in the crucial early stages, said criticism of the Police has been overstated.

He said: ?The crime scene was completely secured and tented with a big marquee over it.?

And he said it was normal to use new recruits to do a thorough inch-by-inch search of the outer perimeter.

?That?s normal procedure here and everywhere else. They won?t touch anything. They just mark it out if it is at all suspicious. Nothing of significance was found.?

Mark Pettingill, Mundy?s lawyer, felt Police could have done better.

?As the investigation progressed I began to think there were things that were questionable given my experience with the Police in the past.

?Many of the usual faces I had seen involved in a case of that level were for some reason not involved. I have no idea why.

?I am a big forensics buff and was pretty well versed in crime scene investigation ? I certainly questioned some of the things I saw.

?A crime scene can tell a lot of stories about a case but it didn?t seem that was the focus.?

He said questions were laid a year after Mundy had been convicted. Attorney General Elliott Mottley decided to seek the advice of US experts Dr. Michael Baden and Dr. Henry Lee on forensics.

?That is certainly something one would have thought would have been prudent to do at the outset,? said Mr. Pettingill.

?They had opinions about what the crime scene indicated that had not been put forward before.

?Nowadays the first thing you will see with a crime is you have your forensics experts in there ? Michael Baden, Valerie Rao, Henry Lee ? to support what is becoming a very good unit in Bermuda.?

He said greater professionalism in handling crime scenes was one of the positives to have emerged since the infamously mishandled case.

?There hadn?t been similar investigations before, that was part of the problem. There had been other murder cases but not where the forensic evidence would have been as significant as it potentially was in this case.

?I think there was habit in Police forces across the world, even as little as ten years ago, to try and obtain verbal evidence, statements and eyewitness reports. Forensics was seen almost as supporting evidence. But forensic evidence doesn?t lie, witnesses do.?

However Mr. Richmond believes little was done wrong by his team who worked around the clock on the case, although he does acknowledge a few ?hiccups?.

Asked what he would have done differently if he was doing it again he said: ?The only thing I may have done differently is brought in a forensic pathologist from the very get-go rather than have the local pathologist perform the autopsy.

?Although the results of both Dr. Johnson and Valerie Rao were in the end the same saying that it was highly unlikely that one person alone committed these crimes, but they couldn?t say for certain.?

He is still angry the failure to nab the murderer has been blamed on a botched Police inquiry.

?Nothing could be further from the truth. This is not an unsolved murder case.?

He said the investigation was characterised by ?dogged determination to identify suspects and build a strong case?.

The bungling commenced long before the tragic events of July 3, 1996, said Mr. Richmond.

?Kirk Mundy should never have been free to have been in Ferry Reach, St. George?s on that fateful night,? he said.

?Despite strenuous Police objections to bail at the time of Becky?s murder he was on Magistrates? Court bail for a serious armed robbery of a Bank of Butterfield van at Mermaid Beach club.?

Police were stretched to the limits at the time of Becky?s murder, added Mr. Richmond, but the force still deployed ?all available resources to that inquiry? in what he said was an intensive investigation which led to the culprits being identified and arrested.

Recalling the strain put on Police he said the murder took place in the early hours of Wednesday July 3. Two days later a tourist died in a parasailing accident which needed a Police probe to makes sure there was no criminal negligence. Then on Saturday Police were called to deal with the fatal shooting of James Caines.

?Despite what Dr. Michael Baden said in the NBC news story on the Middleton case, within hours of the arrests of the two suspects we had recovered the murder weapon from the waters of St. George?s Harbour near to the Swing Bridge.?

It was identified as belonging to a set kept at Smith?s home which had one missing ? after a hiccup in which the KEMH resident pathologist said the murder weapon was a double sided stiletto blade and the knife Mundy had led Police to had too much marine growth on it.

A marine biologist then said the knife could very well be the murder weapon while another experiment showed the knife left the same tear marks as those on Becky?s shirt.

Police were also told there was semen only in the vagina, anus and mouth ? only to discover it was only in the vagina, said Mr. Richmond.

?These little hiccups influenced the direction of inquiry and the method of the interrogation of the suspects. Now when you discover there was semen in the mouth, anus and vagina you think, well how can an individual deposit semen in all three orifices?

?If there was only semen in the vagina, you think only one person did it.?

Police and prosecutors were under massive time pressure to charge the pair within 72 hours ? the standard time charges must be laid before defendants are released.

Mr. Richmond recalled the crucial meeting to discuss the charges. Present were Attorney General Elliott Mottley, Solicitor General Barry Meade, prosecutor Khamisi Tokunbo, Chief Inspector Carlton Adams and Detective Inspectors Leegay Farley and Stuart Crockwell.

?To me it was very unfortunate that perhaps the most experienced and able member of the AG?s staff with regard to criminal prosecution was on overseas leave ? Brian Calhoun.?

Discussions mulled over a successful recent murder case which nabbed the killers of Vincello Johnny Peppers Richardson in St. George?s. That prosecution, by Mr. Tokunbo, used one suspect as an accessory after the fact with his evidence helping secure the conviction against the main culprit, said Mr. Richmond.

He said he had reservations and called the pathologist to ask if it was possible for one person alone to have sexually assaulted and stabbed Rebecca Middleton. The pathologist doubted it, but could not say for sure.

But a consensus of having holding charges against Mundy as an accessory and Smith as the murder accused was garnered, according to Mr. Richmond.

?I had reservations, but the normal thing was to charge them with something rather than release them.?

Asked why the Crown was moving that way Mr. Richmond said: ?We had a statement from Mundy implicating Smith. We had nothing from Smith.

?The feeling was we can?t release them. We have to decide on a holding charge.

?For some reason an event occurred and Mundy was allowed to plead to that holding charge.

?There was never a meeting between us to say ?do we continue with the holding charges???

Asked if he requested one, he said he could not recall. ?If at that time I had no further evidence I would probably have gone along with the process.

?Bearing in mind all the evidence was linking Smith more and more to the crime rather than Mundy. I think Mark (Pettingill) was pretty shrewd. He took care of the interests of his own client and got him a good deal.?

Mr. Richmond said normally a suspect who gave evidence against an accomplice would be liable for a sentence reduction.

?But you have to be convicted before you can give evidence against your co-accused.?

However, by the time of Smith?s trial Mundy had already been put away for 16 years for armed robbery which was added to his five years for accessory. There was little incentive to play ball although Mr. Richmond can?t recall why Mundy was not called as witness.

Mr. Richmond said plea bargaining was a calculated risk prosecuting authorities took. ?But it happens all the time. Generally the person will come through.?

He believes if the case had gone to the jury, as the Privy Council said it should have done, the Middleton case would not still be such a running sore.

?I think a jury would have come to the same conclusion as both the pathologist and myself ? that they acted together.?

Mr. Richmond questioned why Smith?s trial case was handled by newly-arrived Solicitor General William Pearce whose expertise was in civil litigation and not the Attorney General Elliott Mottley or top prosecutor Brian Calhoun.

?I got the sense that if Brian wasn?t there from the get-go, liasing with Police, he didn?t want to be involved.?

He said a timeline, corroborated by security guards in the Ferry Reach area, cell, phone and Police radio records and statements, showed from the time the motorbike with three people entered Ferry Reach and the time it left, with two people and a rag covering the number plate, was a matter of minutes.

?That was never used. Bill Pearce never introduced that. Say it was 12 minutes for people to go in there and commit a heinous crime, sexual assault and multiple stab wounds was strong evidence for a jury to say they must have been acting together to do all this in that short space of time.

?But it was never introduced as evidence.?

Becky?s mother Cindy said she felt sorry for Mr. Pearce.

Becky's mother Cindy said she felt sorry for Mr. Pearce.

?He had just arrived on the island and this had already happened and he gets this thing to work on.

?Why would not someone who had been there and knew the system take the case? One of the others.

?Bill did a fantastic job. I don't fault him at all. He did the best job he could with the hand he was dealt. Sandra Bacchus, his assistant was phenomenal too.?

By the time of Smith's trial the Middleton's had already had bitter experience of Bermuda's court rooms after seeing Mundy got a deal they knew nothing about. One time Dave Middleton and his son Mark flew down for an arraignment session but were cleared from the courtroom. Cindy said: ?I thought ? this is about our daughter. Why are they hiding - why can't they be in there?

So the Smith trial was yet another ordeal for the family of the slain girl.

Cindy said: ?Some people were in court just because it was a high profile case. Smith's father slept in the back of the court. Smith was never called to the stand.?

She said hot-shot English QC John Perry seemed to control the court with presiding judge Vincent Meerabux enthralled ? when he wasn't showboating himself.

?It was like he was on TV, it was like a little stage up there, the way he acted.?

At the start she had every hope but towards the end of the three-week trial she felt it was slipping away.

?I think if the judge had let it go to the jury they would have done the right thing. I felt sorry for the jury having to sit there and listen to everything, see everything and not given the chance to do the job they had to do.?

When Mr. Justice Meerabux aborted the trial Mrs Bennett felt ?sick to my stomach?. ?To me he didn't let people give the evidence they wanted to. I don't think he had control of the court. I think the defence lawyer did.

?It was like a little show with bantering back and forth. Maybe Meerabux found it humorous.

?But you know it is a serious thing, somebody is dead and it happens to be my daughter. I didn't appreciate it. It was a serious thing but they would be laughing.?

She never saw ?hide nor hare? of the Police she'd met who had done the investigation. ?You would think they might come around. But at that point I didn't know how badly things were screwed up.

?I think some of them were embarrassed and they had a right to be embarrassed.?

She said she felt a lot better when Det. Sgt. Terry Maxwell got involved with the case but she said it was too late by then.

Cindy Bennett said Attorney General Elliott Mottley, who along with Mr. Tokunbo has declined to be interviewed for this series, should take some responsibility for the fiasco.

?I never met him but I think he played a part in the way the charges were laid out.

?The Police don't make deals. Maybe they rushed to get a conviction. Maybe they should have been more careful.?

And Mr. Pettingill, despite having a professional victory in the case, said it gave him no personal satisfaction.

He said: ?The obvious conclusion was that the whole matter was a complete debacle and in these types of instances the buck should stop with the man in charge - the Attorney General in my view should have resigned over it.?

In conclusion Cindy Bennett said: ?My daughter was murdered and no one was convicted. Did she murder herself? No. I blame the Policing and blame the prosecution. I blame them all.?