This story discusses graphic details of human remains and death that some people may find disturbing
When Kirsty Wilkinson found the perfect dress for her wedding after a whirlwind romance, she bought a pink suit to protect it before her big day in February 2008.
Just over a year later, that pink wearer would make a shocking reappearance in a chilling discovery that sparked a manhunt for a vicious killer.
Now the story of how the killer was brought to justice has been revealed in a new documentary.
On the morning of 6 April 2009, a lorry driver pulled off the M4 and parked in an underpass near Porthcawl, south Wales, and spotted a suitcase in an embankment.
Thinking the suitcase had fallen from the trunk of a car crossing the bridge above, the driver picked it up and began to open it, only to see a hand and some blond hair stained with blood.
20 miles down the road in Swansea, Senior Investigating Officer Dorian Lloyd had been called to help with a missing person case a few days earlier.
Kirsty Grabham, 24, née Wilkinson, had been reported missing by her husband Paul a week earlier on March 30, last seen by friends after a night out the previous Friday.
Police did a quick check of her home following his report but found nothing untoward, but when officers realized the body next to the M4 was that of a young woman, Lloyd was called to the scene.
Kirsty Wilkinson was soft-spoken and tried to please people, her mother says [Family of Kirsty Wilkinson]
He recalls: “It was awful. I discovered two black bags, rubbish bins, inside the suitcase.
“One was placed over the body’s head and the other over her legs and she was also wrapped in a pink bodysuit.”
The investigative team suspected the body was Kirsty, but were not sure.
Penny Roberts, former BBC Wales chief reporter who covered the case at the time, said: “A woman of the same description as Kirsty has gone missing in the same town. It seems so incredible.”
The fact the body was found 20 miles from Kirsty’s home also added to the doubt as Lloyd said it was “very rare for a body to be moved this far”.
Cathy Broomfield said Kirsty’s behavior changed after she got married and she was a ‘nervous wreck’ [Yeti Television/BBC Cymru Wales]
With evidence pointing to Kirsty as the victim, her mother Cathy Broomfield was given the gruesome task of trying to identify her youngest daughter’s body.
She told BBC One Wales: The Truth About My Murder: “She looked like something out of a horror film. Broken nose, broken jaw. They had washed her hair but there was still blood. She didn’t look like my little girl.
“All her features had changed dramatically. Only her eyebrows I could recognize, their shape. I couldn’t even cry, I was so shocked.”
Lloyd said the fact that Kirsty’s body was wrapped in the pink transport she bought to keep her wedding dress was a “particularly painful revelation”.
When the police told Grabham that his wife was the body in the suitcase, his reaction – no comment to any question and no emotion at all at the shocking news – raised suspicions.
But the officers needed much more than suspicion, and this is where the findings of the pathology team proved so crucial in finding Kirsty’s killer.
The post-mortem examination revealed the true extent of the violence inflicted on Kirsty before her death.
Dr Richard Shepherd, a former Home Office forensic pathologist, said the extent and distribution of his injuries showed a “violent, vicious and prolonged attack”.
Kirsty had indented bruises around her neck and a bone at the back of her tongue had been fractured, showing the extent of the force used on her.
Cathy with Kirsty, who was a tiny baby and grew into a petite woman, 5ft 1in a foot shorter than her husband [Family of Kirsty Wilkinson]
Meanwhile, the police were building a picture of Kirsty and Grabham’s relationship.
Cathy said Kirsty, who worked as a glamor model, had been in a relationship with another man but announced almost out of the blue that she was going to marry someone called Paul.
They had an affair and got married three months after meeting, but a short time later, Cathy noticed changes in her daughter’s behavior.
Kirsty “didn’t look like herself” and would run out of the house “like a scared rabbit” when her husband started honking his horn outside.
“It was a nervous wreck. We didn’t like it.”
Letters recovered between the pair revealed problems in their relationship and forensic psychologist Dr Catrin Williams studied evidence about the couple.
“In this relationship, we see some evidence of coercive control behavior.
“This could be controlling their movements, isolating them and controlling the friends they see. It can get to the point where the partner actually controls every aspect of their life.”
Cathy said Grabham even strangled Kirsty at a party, to the point where she “really thought she was going to die”.
Paul Grabham was sentenced to at least 19 years in prison for killing his wife [PA Media]
Although the evidence of Grabham’s violence was mounting, it did not make him a murderer.
He told police he had been out with Kirsty on the night she disappeared but got very drunk and returned alone and claimed he woke up to find her gone, along with her bag, wallet and phone.
But neighbors had heard things between 3am and 4am, shortly after Kirsty left her friends despite their pleas for her to stay at their house.
From the apartment below they heard someone yelling with what sounded like a hand over their mouth, followed by noises and something heavy being dragged from the bathroom.
A witness in a bar where Kirsty and Grabham had been that night recalled serving her sangria with an apple floating in it.
Shepherd said the post-mortem examination found a piece of apple in Kirsty’s small intestine, which “really fits very well with Kirsty dying between three and four in the morning”.
Sisters Hayley and Kirsty Wilkinson ‘really loved each other’, leaving Hayley devastated by Kirsty’s death, their mum says [Family of Kirsty Wilkinson]
The police needed evidence because Kirsty had died in the flat, and forensics expert Claire Morse was the person who found it.
She noticed small traces of blood on the wall and under a bright light found more on the floor.
He also noticed stains under a newly painted ceiling and continued to find blood in other parts of the apartment, including the bathroom.
The DNA profile matched Kirsty and forensics also found tiny traces of her blood on Grabham’s clothes.
To make the case against him watertight, they had to prove that he had moved her body into the underpass.
Phone records placed Grabham’s mobile at the location where Kirsty’s body was dumped at 10.30am on Tuesday 31 March, as Grabham had received and sent a text from there at that time.
In January 2010, Grabham went on trial for Kirsty’s murder and on 4 February was convicted of her murder.
He was sentenced to life in prison with a minimum sentence of 19 years.
Roberts remembers the trial. “Grabham’s demeanor in court never changed. He showed absolutely no emotion. Nothing flashed on his face.”
The impact of Kirsty’s death was to take a tragic new turn.
She had two older sisters – one of them, Hayley, was just 16 months older and extremely close to Kirsty.
Cathy said: “They really loved each other. Hayley said: ‘I feel like a part of me has been ripped away. I can’t live without my little sister.’
“He started drinking heavily. He died in my arms at Warsgrave Hospital in Coventry.
“Two of them have grown much too young.”