Former Lincolnshire detective Stuart Gibbon to talk about 2011 murder of carpenter David Twigg in Burgh le Marsh for A Killer Makes a Call on Channel 5

A former Lincolnshire detective will be talking about one of the most challenging cases of his 30-year police career during the first episode of a new true crime series starting on Channel 5 this week.

Former DCI Stuart Gibbon will recount how he and his team solved the 2011 murder of carpenter David Twigg, in Burgh le Marsh, near Skegness, during the 90-minute feature-length episode of A Killer Makes a Call, which airs at 10pm today (Tuesday May 21).

David’s partner, Julie Dixon, was eventually convicted of his murder, and sentenced to life in prison, after making a 999 call which was described as ‘worthy of an Oscar’.

She initially claimed two masked men attacked the couple while they were in David’s workshop and set the building on fire when in reality it was her who locked him in and started the fire.

After three months of investigations by Stuart and his team Julie’s story began to unravel and she was arrested on suspicion of murder, before being charged.

“I dealt with quite a few murders during my career, but this one is one of the most challenging investigations I’ve been involved in,” said Stuart, who since his retirement in 2012 has worked as consultant to crime authors and also co-penned a series of books offering guidance on police procedure to writers.

“We had limited resources and no CCTV. How do you identify two masked men in the middle of nowhere? We searched and looked for forensic evidence but were led in a completely different direction by someone we thought was a victim.”

A preview of the series from C5 explains a killer calls the authorities after committing a murder in each of the shocking true crime stories which features.

It explained: “Some concoct an elaborate alibi or blame someone else. Others claim self-defence or confess to a bizarre and twisted series of events that lead to them committing the killing. In every case the call is a key piece of evidence in the search for justice, as investigators piece together the case.”

Illustrated with evocative dramatic reconstruction, location filming and archive, each story is told through interviews with family and friends, insights from detectives who solved each case, and analysis from expert criminologists.

In the Lincolnshire case, although she suffered burns herself, Julie claimed she managed to escape from the workshop and raise the alarm, but the fire brigade unfortunately couldn’t save David.

“Friends and family rally round to support Julie who is in a traumatised state. Nobody can understand why anyone would want to murder David. The local community are terrified, and police are under enormous pressure to catch the culprits quickly,” the show preview adds.

“Julie helps police with their enquiries and describes the attackers and the events that took place in detail.

“As they start their enquiries the police discover that David’s business was in serious debt. Could this be a factor in his murder? They start to pursue different leads: did he owe someone money? Was it a robbery gone wrong? Or a neighbour with a grudge?

“But their investigation stalls and so they begin to relook at the case again, starting at the beginning with the person who made the 999 call – his partner Julie. This sends the investigation into an unexpected and shocking direction.”

Stuart says that several flaws in Julie’s story, which she later changed, claiming the couple had made a suicide pact, before changing it again to state she was helping David who wanted to end his own life, led officers to question her as a suspect.

She was charged with David’s murder and following a trial at Lincoln Crown Court, was sent to prison for a minimum of 23 years.

“There’s still a lot of interest in the case – I think there have already been four documentaries about it; the circumstances are quite unusual, it’s a woman, and for whatever reason it seems to be attracting the attention of the media who want to cover this sort of thing,” adds Stuart.

“Even now all this time later, we’ve never really been able to establish a clear motive to make sense of what happened, but we got to the truth for David’s family.”

* A Killer Makes a Call is on C5 on Tuesday, May 21, at 10pm and can also be streamed on My5.