The words of the guilty - part three: Stuart Hazell

His vile lies exposed through his words

This is the third post in a series which looks at the words used by guilty people when they’re pretending to be innocent. Could we have known they weren’t innocent just from their words?

Part One

Part Two

The first two posts dealt with Karen Matthews, who faked her daughter’s kidnapping. This post looks at an interview with Stuart Hazell. In 2012, he murdered his partner’s granddaughter, Tia Sharp. At the time of this interview, he had reported Tia as missing.

Let’s break it down

Interviewer: Tell me a little bit about Tia’s life. I mean, is she a happy girl is she jolly? Has she got any problems?

Hazell: No, she got no problems at all. She's .. she’s a happy go lucky golden angel, do you know what I mean? She's perfect. She’s.. there’s no arguments, no nothing. No… Nothing we can think of, absolutely nothing.

In this answer, if I didn’t know that Hazell has admitted killing Tia, I would pick up two reassuring factors.

He answers the question directly. He is asked is she happy and has she any problems?. He replies she is happy, she has no problems.

Secondly, he refers to Tia in the present tense. This is what we would expect from someone who believes the person is missing and has no knowledge they have died. Often, someone with guilty knowledge will slip up and refer to them in the past tense.

To compliment the two reassuring factors, I see two concerns.

Referring to Tia as a “golden angel” may be a normal thing to do, but angels live in heaven. It is not necessarily guilty knowledge slipping out, but it’s a marker to remember.

And Hazell adds in the line about arguments, even though he wasn’t asked about them. This could be because he has his cover story all planned and is so keen to use it that he starts verbalising it without being asked.

It’s also noticeable from this that Mr Hazell isn’t the brightest person in the room. This can make looking at his words a challenge as he isn’t very eloquent, but may mean his mistakes are more obvious too.

Detailed answer

Int: So Tia stays here Thursday night just with you, Christine's working. Talk me through Friday, up until the last time you see her. Tell me exactly what you did.

Hazell: Tia’s come downstairs … round about half-ten… eleven, something like that maybe. Cos I know she was on about going up to Croydon.. so that’s why she wanted to get up early.

She picked up..erm.. your mum’s DS up. Played the DS for a little while. I said well, we’re gonna have breakfast. I made her some toast and she had toast and then she wanted a sausage roll because she's always eating sausage rolls (small laugh).

There are reassuring factors in these words too. He isn’t storytelling, which is where someone says words in the form of “this happened, so that means this happened”. He isn’t jumping time, which is when someone says, “this happened, and then this happened”.

He’s listing events in the order they happened. Almost. The most important thing for him to mention is that Tia is moving (ie, she’s alive). So, he starts with “Tia’s come downstairs”. Once he has said his most essential thing, he has to jump back in time to say there has been some prior discussion about going to Croydon and therefore getting up early.

I didn’t like his line about sausage rolls. It may be an affectionate tease along the lines of “oh… you’re always doing that” but he doesn’t say he got her or made her a sausage roll. He merely says, “she’s always eating sausage rolls”. If felt more of a disparaging put down than an affectionate remark.

Let’s carry on with more from the same answer

Hazell: Eh..eh.. basically and she was sitting and she doesn't take her washing up out so I took her washing up out. Erm just started doing a bit of washing up in the kitchen.

Now he’s started storytelling with the “and…so” format. And again it feels like he is putting her down by saying she “doesn’t take her washing out”. He could have just said that he did the washing up.

Hazell: She was in here, she was telling me what she was doing but I weren’t really logging it into my head, I didn’t… do you know what I mean? You know like kids they talk to you, it goes in one ear, stays there for a second, and it goes out, you know what I mean?

This feels like another part of his prepared cover story coming out. For some reason, he wants to be able to claim to be vague about Tia’s plans because he wasn’t listening.

Once more, he uses odd choices of words to show Tia is alive and present. “She was in here”, “she was telling me”. Hazell is very keen to show Tia in a place and doing actions that morning.

Hazell: As I was hoovering, then she walked out the… she walked past me from the front room to go out and she walked out the front door and that is all I know.

There is more of this “Tia is alive” convincing going on here. Generally, people would only say someone “walked out the front door” if it was done with anger or resentment. We’d usually use something softer like “she left the house” or “she went out”.

It looks like Hazell chose “walked out the front door” and “walked past me” to try to show Tia was active that morning.

Finally, why tell us “that is all I know”? It’s a good indicator that he knows much more. People who’ve told us all they know don’t feel the need to convince us they’ve told us all they know, they just tell us.

We’re still on the same answer

Hazell: And she left her (bleeped) phone on charge ‘cause I told her to sit there and leave her phone on charge. I didn't mean leave it on charge because what Tia’s doing, she plays on the.. on the…the BB thing. But then she uses it as it's charging so there’s no charge going through to it. So when I said to her leave… just leave your phone on charge it means leave her phone on charge not use it, let it charge up a bit then you can actually take with you or whatever.. ‘cause she's been responsible go to Croydon before she been responsible for going on trains and buses and trams and everything before on her own.

Most of this is just a big word dump. It’s him jumping onto his prepared cover story. This part would answer the question “If Tia was going to see friends in Croydon, why did she leave her phone behind”. However, having prepared the answer and being confident he can deliver it, Hazell throws the words out anyway without being asked that question.

He then clumsily goes into the answer he has prepared for a question like “has such a young girl gone to Croydon on her own before?” even though this question wasn’t asked either.

What concerns me most is this is the third time that he has put Tia down. She’s always eating sausage rolls, she didn’t wash her dirty plates and she is sloppy about charging her phone.

At this point, his story is that Tia is missing. We’d expect petty grievances to be forgotten and his focus to be on finding out where she is, not pointing out her flaws. After hearing these, I would be wary that I’m hearing from someone with a personality disorder.

That was it

Int: So she when she walked past you and out to the door. Did she say anything?

Hazell: Eh.. she said eh…oh.. goodbye, I said make sure you're back at six. She went yeah, yeah, yeah. And that was it, then the door closed and she walks out.

We can add dismissive to Hazell’s list of flaws he thinks Tia had with the way he claims that she merely said, “yeah, yeah, yeah” to his reminder.

And his ordering is out badly here. “The door closed” and then she “walked out”. How?

Hazell: I don't take precise times and things like that. But when she walked out that door, I know damn well it was 10 past 12, according to my clock because as I was hoovering up the dog mess by my, by my kitchen, I look up and I’ve got a great big clock in front of me on the cooker, which says 12:10.

This is Hazell using another of his prepared answers. For some reason, it is important to him to say he knows she left at ten past twelve. There is an indication that this is fabricated due to all the unneeded detail. He could have said simply “I know she left at ten past twelve as I looked the clock on the cooker when she left”. He feels the need to embellish the story so adds in hoovering, the dog mess and the size of the clock.

Sorry for himself

Int: Now listen, you've been living in house arrest for the last seven days almost now. How's that been?

Hazell: Oh it’s been horrible, it’s been horrible, do you know what I mean? The family’s… we’re stuck inside here, do you know what I mean? We've got all them.. papers outside, all putting accusations down.

And they asked me stupid questions yesterday like I was … ‘Did you do anything?’ I said well, no I (bleep) didn’t, excuse my language but no I didn't. I’d never think of that. I loved her to bits she like me own daughter for God’s sake.

The questions have turned from Tia to Hazell now, and his language becomes much more emotional. He shows more emotion for his plight than that which Tia is supposed to be facing.

When dealing with the question he states as “did you do anything” he only says he would “never think of that”. Not, “I didn’t do anything” or even “I would never do anything”—only “I’d never think of that”. After such a strongly accusing question, why is the answer so weak?

Finally, after a reassuring run with the tenses he uses, Hazell uses the past tense to refer to Tia “I loved her to bits”.

Hazell: We had that sort of relationship. It was that sort of thing. It was just.. do you know… she wanted it and she got it. She's got a loving, loving house and she never gone without anything. So I can't work it out what the hell's going on. They’re all out there. They want to report the truth.

This may be driven by hindsight, since Hazell’s paedophilic and violent tendencies came out later, but I disliked the use of the word “relationship” and “she wanted it and she got it”. Both have meanings apart from the innocent ones that Hazell no doubt wanted us to assume he meant here.

He seems to be giving a justification as to why Tia wouldn’t have run away of her own accord. He doesn’t seem open to the fact that she may have been abducted or worse. At this point, his claim was he had no idea what had happened.

Hazell uses more past tense to describe Tia here, “she wanted it and she got it”.

Pressure

Int: So do you feel under pressure? Do you feel that perhaps the people are looking at you?

Well if they believe what they read in the papers they can do whatever they like because I know deep down in my heart that Tia walked out of my house. She walked out there, I know damn well because she was seen walking down the pathway. I know she made that track down to that way, what happened after that is, I don’t know.

In one answer, Hazell reenforces his theme that Tia was moving using “walked” twice and “walking” once. The words or concepts people repeat are important to them. Either internally significant or it’s important to them that you hear those words being said.

The most worrying part of this is when he says, “I know deep down in my heart that Tia walked out of my house”.

“Deep down in my heart” is a phrase we use to describe emotions we rarely access, or we don’t like to admit to very often, or even are contradictory to us. For example “My son has been a terror this week, I’m delighted he’s going to stay with my mum this weekend, but deep down in my heart, I’ll miss him”. Another would be, “I’ve worked 5 12-hour shifts in a row this week, it’s been really stressful, but deep down in heart I do enjoy it”.

Truthful people in general don’t feel the need to convince us they’re telling the truth. They just tell the truth. Here, Hazell can’t just say “I know she left this house to go out with her friends”. Sadly for him, he can’t find a way of persuading us that would sound natural and believable.

Conclusion

There is enough in these words that would have convinced me at the time that Hazell was hiding guilty knowledge. He words reveal he is fabricating events and jumping to cover stories for all the questions he feels he will be asked. He tried too hard to convince us he is telling the truth and shows only emotional concern for himself, not Tia.

The use of the past tense to refer to Tia and his constant ways of putting her down would have led me to suggest he should be a main suspect in her disappearance.

It turned out that Stuart Hazell killed Tia and hid her body in his loft. Subsequently, it was revealed he is a vile character with a sexual interest in young girls.

He’s very similar to the next person we’ll look at in this series of guilty people—Ian Huntley’s words will be analysed next.

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