Detective's shock at young man's murder as teenage killers spend 'best years' locked up

Not just because Mr Cairns, 26, was an unsuspecting and undeserving victim but that the boys who were found guilty of murdering him were and still are so young.

Innocent victim Mr Cairns was stabbed in the heart with a knife while a display Samurai sword, a wheel brace and a hammer were also carried in a joint-enterprise confrontation. Violence broke out after the teenagers took offence after they were told to move away.

The teenagers, one now aged 15 and two now 16 years old, have all been detained for more than 10 years.

“I think everybody was shocked at the ages,” said Det Insp Holehouse, of the West Mercia Police’s major investigation unit. “To have defendants as young as that prepared to use weapons like that does shock you.”

Manchester-born DI Holehouse, who joined the force on March 4, 2020, says Telford is no different to anywhere else in the country when it comes to an attitude among teenagers who are prepared to use weapons.

“It is a national issue and Telford is not an outlier,” he said.

Tackling such a deep-rooted social issue he believes is something for all of society to resolve; parents, the police, schools, councils, and friends. Agencies across Shropshire and Telford & Wrekin have programmes designed to try to steer young people away from gang culture.

“It is easy to see how people can be drawn into gang activity,” said DI Holehouse. “There is a mystique to it, but there are no winners and as happened here, someone can lose their life.”

DI Holehouse said the three youngsters involved – children at the end of the day – now face time behind bars, and a lifetime on licence. He said he hoped they would reflect on their actions as they spend “the best years of their lives” in custody and on licence.

Although only one of the teens struck the fatal blow to Peter Cairns when he stabbed him with a knife, two others were also convicted of murder.

“The law is clear,” said DI Holehouse. “If you participate you are guilty.

“It is like a football team. The striker scores the goal but it is a team game.”

DI Holehouse added that it is “not easy to say no to your mates”, but everyone needs to take responsibility.

“Parents need to know what their children are doing,” he said. “If we are going to stop these things happening it has got to be a societal effort.”

DI Holehouse said the parents of the young men were “decent parents who believed their youngsters were not involved".

"They are very good, hard-working people who weren’t aware of it. It is a wake up call to us all.”

The 40-year-old officer is also a father of one daughter and a stepfather to a boy.

“It had me thinking what if my kids had been involved,” he said. “It is about understanding and having conversations. We have all got to do it.”

But he added: “You can only do your best.”

An 11-week trial of three youngsters resulted in a jury finding two of them guilty of the murder. The other was acquitted.

A fourth youngster had previously admitted murder. The convictions provided the conclusion to an investigation that took place over 11 months and involved 150 officers and civilian staff. They included forensics people, technical officers, detectives and beat officers.

DI Holehouse recalls being on call and watching Euro 2020 at home on the evening of June 11, 2021 when he was called at 9.30pm that a man had been fatally injured in Silkin Way, Telford.

His job was to make sure police had enough boots on the ground, preserve the murder scene, which was made more complicated by being in three parts. Mr Cairns’ body was in one area, a moped he had been riding was in another, and a park bench he and his friend were sitting on was another.

“We had to work out where the incident took place, and because of the moped whether it was a robbery gone wrong. We had no indication at that stage that a group of youngsters had gone to the scene tooled up.

“In murder cases it is key to identify the victim, inform the family and try to get some of an idea why he might have been killed. Mr Cairns’ friend came back to the scene and gave us information. We found out that Pete had lost his job and had been out looking for work and was with his friend testing his moped.

“It became clear that this was a category A murder.”

He praised the “hard working” family of Peter Cairns for conducting themselves with “great dignity” and for being supportive of the investigation.

“They did not deserve to go through this.”

The police put their helicopter up during the evening and that had a role in getting the culprits to talk about the incident.

“We got a phone call from a local resident in Woodside telling us that she had a conversation with one of them. She rang us up with the names so it was then about getting teams together to go and find them.”

One of the boys spoke openly about what had happened quite quickly, said DI Holehouse, and it became clear that there had been a group of boys with weapons.

“I was confident that we were going to detect it,” he said. And early on he took a decision to search the whole of Rough Park Way and to take a defendant out to look for the weapons.

“We don’t normally take a defendant out to look,” he said. “But we found all the weapons involved. The Samurai sword and the wheel brace had Peter Cairns’ DNA which became strong evidence to show that there was some sort of joint enterprise.”

Police teams put in 11-hour days to find the crucial evidence, making it very difficult to put any kind of costing on the whole investigation.

Research included poring over hours of video footage from CCTV, dash cam footage and from door bells, to piece together the movements of the defendants and their victims in the run up to the fatal confrontation.

One of the crucial pieces of CCTV footage involved two of the defendants making gestures to each other as they allegedly described what had happened while they were walking down an alley close to the Tesco store in Madeley.

DI Holehouse admitted that with CCTV he would “rather have it than not”. One the one hand it takes hour upon hour to go through but on the other it can provide a jury with clear evidence. And in this case he considers the Tesco alley clip a “pivotal” moment.

The police for the first time created a timeline for a jury involving pictures, visuals and CCTV clips. All told 199 clips of CCTV footage were presented to the court.

“It is nice to have it concluded and have a conviction. It is some form of closure for Peter Cairns’ family. We can’t bring back Peter but we can have justice for him which is what we have done.”

Responding to critics of the legal system DI Holehouse said: “Sentencing is a reflection of the fact that courts are sentencing children. They are dealt with less severely than adults but they will be on licence for the rest of their lives.”

But in terms of all the murder investigations he has been involved in he said they still have the same impact. “Every one is different and the impact does not lessen, it can’t lessen on this type of work.” He said there is support available for officers, including debriefing sessions.