JUST a few hours before he disappeared, Christopher Hughes, 37, phoned his sister, Fran, for a chat and told her he loved her.
Tragically that call, on February 18, 2022, was the last time she would speak to him.
Christopher Hughes, pictured with mum Susan, was stabbed to death over false rumours[/caption]
Grainy CCTV showed two men bundling Chris into an Audi[/caption]
Cops released this pic of a blue Audi as they raced to find the culprits[/caption]
Later that day Christopher, from Wigan, was snatched from the street by two men and bundled into the boot of a car which was then driven away.
Four days later his body was found by a dog walker, dumped in a ditch. He had been viciously stabbed to death, with over 90 blows.
The kidnappers had sought what they thought was justice for the knife-point rape of a teenage girl. But they got the wrong man.
“I knew my brother and I knew he wouldn’t have done what they accused him of,” says his other heartbroken sister, Andrea.
The family also had to deal with the hurt caused by the false rumour on the internet that he had sexually assaulted the young woman.
“There are some nasty, vicious comments about how he deserved it because of what he did,” says Andrea.
“I think that kills me more than anything because he’s gone now. We can’t bring him back. But that is eating me every time I see it.”
Race against time
The dramatic events surrounding the horrific incident were captured, minute-by-minute by a TV documentary team following Greater Manchester Police’s Serious and Organised Crime Group which airs on Channel 4 on Tuesday, 14 June.
Called Manhunt, it takes viewers through the first call alerting police about the kidnapping to the desperate search for the perpetrators and their eventual capture and sentencing.
After the police receive a chilling call from a witness that they had seen a man being forced into a car by two men, the race against time begins to find out who has been snatched and to find him.
“In a kidnap it’s life and death,” DI Justin Bryant, who led the case, tells us in an exclusive interview.
“The longer they are in the hands of the kidnappers, that’s when they could be subjected to violence – beatings, torture. The objective is to recover the hostage, preserve their life and get them back as quick as you can. Every second counts.”
He is soon identified as Christopher Hughes and CCTV footage shows his abductors getting back into a blue Audi and driving off.
Due to the immediate threat to his life, multiple units across the force are utilised to try to find the vehicle. At the same time, police conduct a background check on Christopher to see if there might be a motive for the kidnapping. But all they discover is that he is a low-level drug user, former boxer and unemployed. The kidnappers remain unknown.
The tension rises after three days, with still no identification of the kidnappers or sighting of their car. The longer Christopher remains missing, the slimmer the chances of bringing him home alive.
“When someone has been kidnapped and there are ransom demands coming in you know there’s a chance that you can deal with it, because someone’s still saying they’ve got them and we’re making demands,” says DI Bryant.
“Whereas with this one, he’d been kidnapped but we were not getting any demands and that makes you start worrying, after a few days, that you’ve got nothing to go on apart from what you had right at the start. But we’re always hopeful that we’re going to find the hostage and get them released safely.”
DI Justin Bryant was desperate to find Christopher[/caption]
Erland Spahui’s arrest is shown in the documentary[/caption]
Rape rumour
In a new twist, someone who knew Christopher then tells the police that she had heard a rumour that he is being blamed for sexually assaulting the teenager behind a local post office.
“Sometimes people take the law into their own hands because they either don’t trust the police or they feel the outcome, if the police are involved, won’t be good enough and they want their own justice,” says DI Bryant.
A second lead comes when a member of the public says that a man in a black Audi was searching for Christopher the day before he was snatched. Police locate it and see that it is registered to Dean O’Neill Davey, 29, who works at a car garage.
He is arrested but is initially evasive – until he reveals that his employers, brother-in-laws Khalil Awla and Alan Jaf, had told him Christopher Hughes had attacked someone and admitting he was helping them look for him.
The pair are quickly arrested but deny knowing Christopher. Frustratingly, they do not resemble the men in the CCTV footage.
On day four comes the news that police and Christopher’s family and friends have been dreading. A woman, out walking her dog, finds a dead body in a ditch. When it is identified as Christopher, DI Bryant is distraught.
Davey was linked to the black Audi[/caption]
An aerial shot of Manchester marking one of the suspect’s addresses[/caption]
“It was a massive blow when he was tragically found dead,” he says. “And then you question yourself – did I not do enough? Is there something that I could have done better? Was there something we missed? You just keep turning that over in your mind and wondering if you have let them down.”
As it tragically turns into a murder case, the major investigation team, led by DCI Carl Jones, is mobilised to try to track down the killers. Despite 17 years experience with the unit, DCI Jones is visibly distressed when he looks at pictures of Christopher’s body.
“It is brutal,” he says. “There are deep lacerations to the right side of his neck and an even deeper wound to the left. I’d say they tried to decapitate him. They are probably some of the worst injuries I have ever seen. How the f*** can anyone do that to someone else?”
Police speak to Davey again and this time he provides them with crucial information that a man named ‘Mamid’ Curtis Balbas was driving the blue Aldi.
Another lead takes them to an industrial estate 11 miles away from the kidnapping where the car is found in pieces, stuffed into a white van.
Curtis Balbas’s mobile phone signal traces him to an address he is linked to in Manchester where he is arrested. The police are now on a roll.
CCTV footage shows Balbas buying food in a shop with a man who resembles the other abductor. It is Erland ‘Landi’ Spahiu. Units head to his address and arrest him for murder while he is in bed.
Mamid Curtis Balbas is taken into custody[/caption]
Police search for evidence at the garage[/caption]
Alan Jaf is searched by police after being named[/caption]
Five men are now in custody and more were arrested after the documentary filming ended. Eight men were eventually charged and given a life sentence for kidnap and murder.
The gang, who all knew each other or were related, had driven Christopher to a road in Skelmersdale, before brutally attacking him with knives.
Plans to hide Christopher’s body were thwarted by police presence in the area and he remained undiscovered in a ditch for four days in snowy, wet weather.
Convictions over Christopher's murder
On February 9, 2023, nine men were jailed at Liverpool Crown Court in connection with the murder:
- Erland Spahiu, 36, of White Moss Road, Skelmersdale – jailed for life with a minimum term of 35 years for murder, 12 years for kidnap to run concurrently
- Curtis Balbas, 33, of Matheson Drive, Wigan – life with a minimum term of 34 years for murder, 9 years for kidnap to run concurrently
- Martin Smith, 36, of Laithwaite Road, Wigan – life with a minimum term of 33 years for murder, 12 years for kidnap to run concurrently
- Razgar Khader Mohammed, 43, of Plane Avenue, Wigan – life with a minimum term 27 years for murder, 12 years for kidnap to run concurrently
- Alan Jaf, 54,of Ridyard Street, Wigan – life with a minimum term of 26 years for murder, 12 years for kidnap to run concurrently
- Khalil Awla, 51, of Greenwood, Wigan – life with a minimum term of 26 years for murder, 12 years for kidnap to run concurrently
- Dean Smeaton O’Neill-Davey, 32, of Bulteel Street, Wigan – life with a minimum term 25 years for murder, 12 years for kidnap to run concurrently
- Erion Voja, 23, of Peall Road, Croydon – life with a minimum term of 23 years for murder, 10 Years for kidnap to run concurrently
A ninth man, Andrius Uzkuraitis, 29, of Holly Road, Wigan, was convicted of assisting an offender and jailed for six years.
Eight men were jailed for life for murder and given concurrent sentences for kidnap[/caption]
In court it was heard that the guilty men wrongly suspected Christopher Hughes of rape and that there has been no evidence linking him to this crime. DNA evidence ruled him out as a suspect.
“He had a good heart,” says Andrea. “I called him Del Boy, because he reminded me of him.
“I feel like I could have dealt with it a little bit better if he’d been in a pub, a fight had broken out, someone had hit him, he fell and banged his head and that was it,” says Fran.
“But these people meant to do everything they did to him.”
“What that lad went through was horrific,” adds DI Bryant. “So, to think that you can get some peace for his family by catching the people responsible for that is what keeps me going.”
Manhunt airs on Channel 4 from 9pm on Tuesday January 14
