Murders taught me value of life, says top West Midlands Police officer

After a 30 year police career spent investigating more than 100 murders, retired Detective Inspector Buck Rogers admits it has had a lasting impression on his view of life.

Looking back on his three-decade long career – the last 11 years of which were spent exclusively investigating murders for West Midlands Police – he said: "Life is precious."

The 49-year-old, who has been given the Chief Constable's Award following his recent retirement, added: "This job has made be very fatalistic.

"When your time is up there are no ifs and buts and there is nothing you can do about it.

"It is fate and you should never forget life is precious because it could be taken from you at any moment."

For the father-of-two, who lives in Aldridge, two of the more shocking and recent cases he dealt with stand out as helping to form his views.

The first was the murder of pensioners Giuseppe and Caterina Massaro.

The couple were savagely attacked and killed in their Wolverhampton home in 2011 by Ireneusz Bartnowski.

The other is the death of schoolgirl Christina Edkins.

The 16-year-old was ruthlessly knifed to death on the bus ride from her home in Birmingham to school in Halesowen last year.

Philip Simelane, aged 23, of Walsall, has been detained indefinitely for her murder.

Mr Rogers said: "None of them knew their murderer which is highly unusual.

"It was just chance. The level of unnecessary violence used to kill Mr and Mrs Massaro – a couple in their 80s – in their own bedroom was so dreadful that it is difficult to forget.

"Christina ran to catch the bus on which she was murdered by a complete stranger.

"Another thing was that you do not tend to ever see a murder actually being committed, but this was all on CCTV which was very difficult. Mr and Mrs Massaro and Christina were just normal people.

"It could just as easily have been your parents or daughter."

Mr Rogers followed his father – who also completed 30 years service – into the police in 1983 and soon decided that he wanted to concentrate on murder investigations.

"There were no specialist murder teams when I started and initially my ambition was to be in the drug squad which I was from 1995 to 1998."

But by then he had been involved in his first major murder inquiry when he was a detective based in Erdington and arrested Patrick Hassett in 1991 for the murder of 13-year-old schoolgirl Candice Williams 13 years earlier.

The breakthrough came as a result of the developments in DNA technology.

Mr Rogers – his real name is Pete but the nickname Buck stuck to such an extent he is even called it by his family – added: "It was a lot more difficult in the early days when fingerprints and eye witness statements were all you had to work on.

"DNA is unquestionably the biggest development I saw and it is being further developed all the time. "The advent of CCTV and mobile phone evidence has also transformed the job." Mr Rogers transferred to Hertfordshire Police and later the Met before returning to the West Midlands as a Detective Sergeant on the murder squad in 2002.

Later that year he was sent to South Africa on his first major case to help extradite two hit men who were later convicted of the 1995 killing of Sutton Coldfield man Barry Trigwell bludgeoned to death on he orders of his fourth wife who wanted to cash in on a big insurance pay out of his life.

Soon afterwards came the murders of Birmingham teenagers Charlene Ellis and Letisha Shakespeare, both innocent victims gunned down in a drive-by shooting at a New Year party in Aston on January 2 2003.

Mr Rogers continued: "In those first few hours following a murder, you meet the family and you have to look them in the eye and promise you will do everything you possibly can to get the justice they deserve.

"You know you can never bring that person back but what you can do is catch the killer or killers and put them behind bars for a long time.

"Hopefully that brings some sort of closure for the family.

"That is a lot of pressure but it is nothing like what they have to deal with.

"If you took all of these murders home with you, you would not be able to do the job effectively. He added: "What you need is dedication and teamwork.

"You need people to recover the CCTV from cameras in the area and then study hours of film looking for what could be just a two second clip that proves to be vital to the inquiry.

"They rely on that person to do his or her job properly just like those who are taking witness statements for you."

Mr Rogers retired from the force in October last year and although he still works in the private sector, is enjoying spending more time with his wife and children.

He was honoured earlier this month with the Chief Constable's Award by West Midlands Police, which he says he was 'very proud' to receive. "It is nice to be appreciated but if anybody ever stands up and says they solved a murder on their own they are lying because every officer, every witness, every pathologist all have to play their part to bring people to justice," he said.