For more than three decades Gavin Moss served with Kent Police, rising through the ranks to head up some of the county’s most high-profile murder investigations.

Ahead of his retirement last week, he sat down with reporter Rhys Griffiths to look back on a long and successful career and recall some of the biggest cases he has overseen…

Seven days had passed since the discovery of the body of a dog walker bludgeoned to death in the east Kent countryside, and Gavin Moss was no closer to identifying the killer.

The murder of 53-year-old serving PCSO and mother-of-two Julia James had shocked Kent Police and people across the country - and the pressure was growing on detectives to track down the person responsible for the brutal slaying.

“I didn’t have a clue who was responsible for Julia's murder,” Det Supt Moss recalls of the unfolding investigation, “and for a week that was an uncomfortable place to be, trust me”.

One of Kent Police’s most senior detectives, with a career’s worth of successful cases to his name, Moss had been given leadership of the investigation into Julia’s killing which would grow to encompass the combined effort of 1,100 police officers and staff.

When he took on the senior investigating officer role on the case in April 2021, Moss – who retired from the force last week at the age of 57 – had almost three decades of policing experience under his belt. But every fresh investigation brings its own unique challenges.

“The scene itself was probably, in my experience of being a major crime detective, the biggest I've ever had to contend with,” he said. “It was a rural area, which brings on its own complications.”

The ‘golden hour’

Detectives talk of the importance of the so-called golden hour – the window of opportunity immediately after a crime is uncovered when proactive steps should be taken to secure the scene and preserve evidence. And it all comes down to getting boots on the ground as soon as possible.

“It's about making sure, whatever rank you are, you get to the scene,” he said.

“Because if you get to the scene, you understand the scene. Make sure that you get it done right, because if you don't get it right first time it's really difficult to recover from that.

“It's really important to get a detective there at the beginning to set those strategies, to set those parameters, whether that be house-to-house, whether that be forensic, whether that be communications data, whether that be CCTV.

“At the beginning of an investigation, the reality of it is we might not know anything about the victim or the offender and we've got to try and piece that all together.

“Now, it is called the golden hour, but it's a period of time, because you can't be that exact about it. What that really means to me is getting it right the first time and getting it done quickly, because as I say, that's really difficult to recover from [if you get it wrong].”

Julia was ambushed and killed while she walked her Jack Russell, Toby, on a rural footpath near her home in the hamlet of Snowdown, between Canterbury and Dover. Her body was discovered by walkers shortly after 4pm on April 27, and the first police officers arrived at the scene within half an hour.

The random and senseless nature of the attack, combined with the isolated nature of the crime scene, presented two significant challenges for detectives: firstly, to identify a killer who was unknown to their victim, and secondly, to provide reassurance for a community living in fear that until apprehended they could strike again.

“That's the biggest thing,” Moss said of the immediate hours and days following a murder. “Will this person do it again and how quickly, if at all? So we have to find out who's responsible and we have to find out quick.”

For Moss and the growing team of police officers and support staff assigned to the case, this meant allying some of the most modern investigative lines of enquiry with some old-fashioned approaches familiar to generations of coppers.

“The investigation based itself largely on some older techniques and some modern techniques,” he said. “For instance, you don't always see a reconstruction done.

“You don't necessarily see the road checks that were done, where we stopped over 500 vehicles.

“I think there's a reliance on more technical elements, CCTV for example, but I wanted to do that. I really needed the community to know we were doing everything we could to find who's responsible.

“You know, it didn't yield a great deal of success. Would I do that again? 100% I would, because that really was a good message to give to the community: ‘We're here and we really want to find who this person was.’”

How Julia’s killer was caught

Old-school, visible policing may have helped provide vital reassurance to the community that everything possible was being done to find Julia’s killer. But as the days went by, Moss admits he felt the pressure to track down the murderer only growing more intense.

Crucial evidence which allowed them to track down Callum Wheeler – who was later convicted of the murder and jailed for life – came from some very modern technology: CCTV video footage, a picture taken on a phone camera, and data from the smartwatch Julia was wearing when she died.

Local gamekeeper Gavin Tucker said he was "suspicious" when he spotted Wheeler – carrying a duffle bag containing what turned out to be the murder weapon, wrapped in carrier bags – on his land less than a mile from the murder scene.

In a quick-thinking move which proved vital in identifying the killer, Mr Tucker took a picture of Wheeler seconds before he ran off. This image was initially shared only among law enforcement, but it was eventually released publicly and within hours the suspect was identified and arrested.

“That was our breakthrough,” Moss said, reflecting on the progress of the investigation.

“I wasn't getting pressure from the chief officer team, I was making that pressure myself because I wanted so desperately to find who was responsible, as were my team. It really was a case of making sure we did everything. But the breakthrough was getting that photograph.”

The data retrieved from Julia’s smartwatch also proved essential in allowing detectives to build an accurate picture of her movements in the lead-up to Wheeler’s attack. It showed the route she had taken walking to Ackholt Wood, and the spike in her heart rate when she encountered her killer.

“I knew very quickly we weren't going to have a great deal of witnesses,” Moss said of the remote nature of the scene of the crime.

“We were hoping we would get people who were out walking their dogs. There was a bridleway there, so we might have been lucky to get somebody on the horse.

“But from the moment Paul James, Julia's husband, saw his wife in the morning nobody had seen Julia afterwards, apart from when she’d been dialling in on Teams to some meetings, but nobody had physically seen her.

“So how do I explain, how do I evidence, how Julia had got to where she was found from when she left her home address? And that was through technology.

“Her smartwatch was able to give us the exact route she'd taken, the speed she was walking at, the time she disconnected with her own router at home.

“All of those things really helped to build the picture. I can think of cases in Kent before where they haven't had that luxury, you know, and that just demonstrates how technical evidence has changed over the years to where we are now.”

The Breaking Bad-inspired murderer

Det Supt Moss grew up in Strood, attending Temple School for Boys, and joined Kent Police in August 1991, serving initially as a probationary constable in Sheerness before rising through the ranks as a detective.

Policing was very different back then, in an age before mobile phones and much of the technology which has since come to dominate our lives – and the investigation of crime.

But when it comes to the investigation of homicide cases he says he has always been guided by one maxim: “If you find out how somebody lived, you'll find out how they died.”

The value of the so-called golden hour has not changed in three decades and more of policing, and he says that bringing an investigation to a successful conclusion still relies on the same strategies as ever, despite advances in technology.

“In the world of major crime investigation, we go to absolutely finite detail about the offender, about the victim, and we'll do everything we can to find out exactly how they have come to their death,” he said.

“Because ultimately we all do it because we want justice for the families. We want to make sure that we make Kent a safe place to work, live and visit. And we do that by making sure we have those strategies and those structures in place.

“I always think if you've got your structure in place, you'll stand a chance of finding out who your offender is.”

Asked about other major crimes he has had a hand in solving, Moss recalled the “particularly challenging” investigation into the murder of Stephen Chapman in Rochester in October 2020.

The 38-year-old victim had died from a single stab wound from a double-edged military dagger which had been embedded deep into the skull. But a court later heard how his teenage killer, George Knights, had taken inspiration from crime drama Breaking Bad in trying to dispose of the body.

“He had been stabbed and then he'd been put in a wheelie bin and then sulphuric acid had been poured over him, which was awful, absolutely awful,” Moss said.

“And I really felt for the family. Because of the safety issues, they couldn't see Stephen, they couldn't say goodbye to Stephen because he had to be so contained because of the damage it could cause them, and the safety aspects.

“I always felt really genuinely sorry that they were unable to do that, but that was completely out of my hands.

“The issue for me was how on earth are we going to do a post-mortem. If it isn't deemed safe, how do we do that? And we did overcome it.

“That case was the first one, I believe nationally, where we did a CT post-mortem as opposed to an invasive post-mortem and that didn't get any challenge in court.

“Because it was dangerous because of the presence of sulphuric acid, you couldn't do an invasive procedure. But I need a post-mortem because I need to establish the injuries, how the person died, are there any defence marks, defence injuries that the offender needs to be asked to explain, all sorts of things.”

The shocking gang killing

Throughout our conversation, Det Supt Moss returns time and time again to his thoughts for the families of all the victims whose deaths he has investigated in his time as a major crime detective. The desire to seek justice for them has evidently motivated him throughout his career, during which he could be overseeing as many as a dozen cases at any one time.

“It's really difficult to explain, but when you're in court and you hear that foreperson of the jury say ‘guilty’, it's just a huge relief,” he said.

“It's a huge relief knowing the family who are sitting behind you have got that justice. That's the big thing for me - it's about getting justice for families who so desperately want it.

“It is often said [after a trial] we hope that the family can close this chapter – but they will never close it. The reality is they never do. We say it because we would like to think that's what happens, but they have to live with that for the rest of their life.

“As long as Gavin Moss and his team have done their utmost to help them see that they've got justice, then you know they can deal with that and find that easier, but some will never get over it.

“I know some families who I've been involved with over the years that still can't accept it, and I think if I were in their shoes I think I could understand that.”

Thoughts turn to the killing of Xhovan Pepaj, who died in December 2021 when a gang tried to steal drugs from a cannabis farm at a property in Tunbridge Wells. In all 13 people were eventually convicted in relation to the killing.

“Some people might think if you get involved in crime you may have to suffer the consequences,” Moss said. “But you know what, he was somebody's son, he was somebody's brother, he was clearly very well loved.

“His uncle was somebody who I met very frequently. They wanted justice, and I think they were completely taken aback by how we were investigating it, what we did, the steps that we went through, because I'm not quite convinced that they would have felt you get the same in their country.

“His mum and his dad couldn’t speak a word of English, but you could tell they were really appreciative of what went on.”

The ones that got away

But what of the investigations where no one has ever been convicted? Although not wishing to be specific in details relating to cases which remain open, Det Supt Moss admits there have been times where – despite officers being certain they know who was responsible – it has simply not been possible to secure sufficient evidence to bring about a charge and successful conviction.

He also speaks of the pressure on detectives to build a case strong enough to make a charge stick, where otherwise it might see someone walk free from custody.

Recalling a particular case involving gun violence, he said: “That's a real concern for me as the senior investigating officer, because I'm [going to be] releasing people I think have shot somebody.”

‘It ain’t a 9-to-5 job’

Now he has reached retirement after 33 years on the force, the married father-of-three hopes to be able to spend more time with family and friends and do some travelling.

He is honest in his reflection about what his intense work solving some of the county’s most high-profile crimes has meant for life away from the job.

“It ain’t a 9-to-5 job, it really isn’t,” he said. “With the Julia James case we were working 16-hour days, we were cancelling our weekends where we were due to have time with our friends and family, and that's what policing needs sometimes, because everybody was committed, everybody.

“And I will never forget, and it will remain with me for a very long time indeed, that we were approaching a bank holiday weekend and I said I need people to work the weekend and I was almost overwhelmed by what I could see on a whiteboard that was in one of the DI's offices.

“Saturday, Sunday, Monday, I saw him input the dates up there and I can tell you now by the end of the day that board was full and that was full because everybody wanted to find Julia’s killer. That was quite something to be part of because they wanted it, I wanted it, and we were all committed to it.”

He continued: “I try to keep my work life and my home life separate if I can. My family might disagree with that but I really do. But they know when my mind's elsewhere.

“I'm blessed because my wife has been absolutely truly incredible throughout all of this. She's been fully supportive, and certainly for the Julia James case she knew I wasn't going to be home. She really knew that, and my children likewise as well, they know I'm fully committed to it.

“I've had their support which has meant an awful lot to me. I'm grateful to them for that really because it's allowed me to do what I've done.”

And if he could turn the clock back to 1991 and have his time over, would he do it all again?

“I've worked in Kent Police now for 33 years and I've worked with some truly unbelievable people,” he said.

“The focus is on what we have to do, because that's what we're here to do, but we've had some fun along the way.

“I can tell you now I've made a lot of good friends in the police and worked with some truly remarkable people. There's a couple of light-hearted stories, but they’re in my leaving speech.

“I've had a fantastic career and would recommend anybody, if they want to do public service, if they want to commit themselves to helping other people and you're that type of person, this is a fantastic career to be and it really is.

“I look back, and would I have joined again? I would 100% join again. It gives you that real team ethos, you're part of a big team trying to make the place better.”