The race against time to find 'The Heavy Bag Man' they knew was a murderer (2025)

After Marcin Majerkiewicz was found guilty of Stuart Everett's murder, chief reporter Neal Keeling looks back at the painstaking and complex police investigation that brought the killer to justice

It’s the beauty spot that’s been a favourite with generations of Mancunian families. But last year Boggart Hole Clough in Blackley became the early focus of one of the most gruesome crimes in recent memory in the region.

The country park was one of five places where Marcin Majerkiewicz dumped 27 body parts of his victim Stuart Everett.

Now, after Majerkiewicz was found guilty of murder, chief reporter Neal Keeling looks back at the manhunt and the painstaking and complex police investigation that brought the killer to justice...

Police knew from analysing his phone - and trawling CCTV - Majerkiewicz had been in the vicinity of Boggart Hole Clough.

In a clip shown to a jury at Manchester Crown Court, a man believed to be Majerkiewicz was seen boarding a number 10 bus at Patricroft, Eccles, buying a ticket at 8.24am on March 29 - the day after Mr Everett is believed to have been murdered.

The bus headed into Manchester city centre. The same ticket was used to board the number 17 bus at Shudehill station at 9am, jurors were told.

The bus travelled along Rochdale Road in the direction of Boggart Hole Clough. Jurors were shown a clip of the individual prosecutors claimed Mr Majerkiewicz sitting on the lower deck.

But the task facing police was to work out where in the sprawling 76 acre park - which they nicknamed ‘The Beast’ - he left body parts.

That puzzle was solved by officers from two specialist police teams.

Heidi Cullum is a Detective Sergeant in GMP’s Video Evidence Recovery Analysis Unit (VERA), which played a vital role in collecting evidence and by a strange twist of fate the actual arrest of Majerkiewicz.

Her team’s involvement began on April 4 with the discovery of a man’s lower back, buttocks and thigh wrapped in cling film and left on display in a bunker at Kersal Dale.

“Our role in this was to find out who and when [the person] we now know to be Stuart was deposited in Kersal Dale,” Det Sgt Callum said. “To try and track that individual to some kind of home or significant address and then any other journeys they made.

“Our first focus was the obvious access route into Kersal Dale and all the other ways in and out of it. We got footage from about six days showing every route in and out. We went to schools, shops, residential properties, for CCTV and appealed for dash cam footage.”

Vital CCTV evidence which showed Majerkiewicz walking up Bury New Road was recovered from a school.

By speaking to the community in the Kersal Dale area, a substantial amount of footage was recovered. “The problem was we didn’t know who we were looking for,” Det Sgt Callum added.

But her team had been given certain criteria to look out for - namely what Senior Investigating Officer Lewis Hughes described as ‘the heavy bag man’. He had deduced that whoever left 13kg of Stuart’s body in a bunker in Kersal Dale must have walked into the location.

Det Sgt Callum said: “We then had a breakthrough when this individual with a heavy laden blue bag for life was seen on footage. They were struggling, having to stop and change hands.

“We were also lucky enough to locate a camera which looked pretty much into the woods. So we could then corroborate that that person goes into the woods, very close to the scene. Within 10 minutes he was on film coming out of the woods with an empty folded bag.

“That was the start of the tracking aspect of this individual. We were able to see him get on an identifiable bus, after he left the area then came back to the area. I contacted Transport for Greater Manchester who were really helpful.

“I asked them for information as he was the only passenger to get on at that point, so I thought, brilliant, we might get some financial transaction. But he, unfortunately, paid cash.

“But we found out that he had bought a Any Bus Day Saver using that cash, so that gave us every journey he had done with that ticket, which opened the doors to the significant address [where he lived on Worsley Road Winton] and another possible deposition site for the body parts, which was the area around Tesco in Pendleton.

“It exploded from there and our team went out tracking him to and from bus stops. After some work we were able to narrow down the area on Worsley Road to within a small group of houses from cameras to say his house was within a specific section of Worsley Road.

“We were also able to place him on bus journeys all across Salford and Manchester, tied in with analysis of the location of his phone. We got well over 4,000 hours of CCTV footage because of the different camera angles and the volume acquired from around Kersal Dale, and the home address.

“It is always a race against time getting CCTV because it gets overwritten so quickly. We then went everywhere where body parts were found.

“Days and days of footage from around Kersal Dale did not need to be viewed because we had what we needed. But footage from around his home address did as we had to establish when he was leaving that address 24/7.”

Cameras near Majerkiewicz’s home did capture aspects of the ‘clean-up operation’ after the murder - including items being put in a skip on the driveway and a van arriving to remove furniture.

"I got a call saying 'we are behind him'"

It was while officers from VERA were out collecting CCTV they had a gamechanger of an encounter.

They were on Eccles Old Road when they saw a man who matched the description of ‘heavy bag man’ waiting for a bus.

Det Sgt Cullum said: “I got a call from one of my team saying ‘we are behind him’. This triggered a chain reaction. Ultimately, we got a uniform response and they followed him onto the bus, and were able to stop the bus and stop him leaving, and arrest him. So having viewed many hours of footage it was VERA officers on the ground who spotted him.”

Majerkiewicz was carrying the bag for life. Inside were Mr Everett’s bank cards, phone, and cleaning equipment.

“It was a totally unique investigation,” Det Sgt Callum added “It was huge in terms of volume. A lot of footage was recovered and viewed and exhibits prepared for court to make these journeys understandable to the jury.

“This investigation very quickly became about not only finding evidence, but for us, also finding as much of Stuart as we could for his family, which was really important. Normally if we are dealing with a murder we have our body, it is recovered.

“This was very different and a race against time to get as much of Stuart back as possible. It was not just about catching the guy who has done it, there is the more humane side to it as Stuart’s family will have wanted to lay to rest as much of him as possible.”

Det Sgt Danielle Bullivant worked as a scene co-ordinator, organising searches of locations where body parts had been found or were suspected of being.

She said: “The work of the Polsas (Police Search Advisors) is phenomenal. Part of what they do is map out an area. So if you can get CCTV footage and a bus route and we know what time the suspect arrived and we have CCTV of him working to an area and leaving they will then set parameters saying this is how far an average person will be able to walk. They would then identify a specific area we need to prioritise our search.

“We would then zone it off into sections and systematically search each one.

“The first site I got involved in was Blackleach Reservoir and we only had phone data from Majerkiewicz’s handset. We knew he was located at the bottom end of the reservoir and it literally looked like he was standing in the water.

“But if you are static on your phone and not moving it will ping on your phone. So we knew there were four different points on that reservoir where he had been. We then got VERA staff out when I went down to assess that scene looking to see if there were any cameras and they found footage of him walking into Blackleach Country Park and walking out.

“We ended up cordoning off the majority of the park and the whole of the reservoir. We had to weigh up the impact on the local community and our priority, which was to find Stuart.”

How police searched the parks

At Blackleach Reservoir an underwater police search team found parts of Stuart’s skull in four different locations.

Pinpointing remains at Boggart Hole Clough was more difficult. DS Bullivant said: “When I looked at Blackleach, I thought that was huge and I had seven members of staff who cordoned it off. Whereas at Boggart Hole we had 33 people standing on cordons across the whole of the park.

“Initially we had no CCTV of him in the area and he didn’t take his phone either. We just knew he was there because of the bus journey and could have potentially got off at two or three bus stops. So at first we just cordoned off the whole Boggart Hole Clough.

“Specially trained search officers were then deployed to the park. Every day we had a briefing at Sedgley Park (police training centre) in relation to the parameters we needed to search and the tactics that we needed to use. There were six to eight groups and each had a sergeant and six officers.

“We took over the community facility which is a hut in the middle of Boggart Hole Clough and a map on the wall. Each time a zone was done it was crossed off.

“We described Boggart Hole Clough as like a beast. You needed officers who could work at height because of big drops, so they were on ropes. We needed officers with dogs, officers to do fingertip searches - it was a lot of work.

“Eventually when we figured out which bus he could have got off, myself and the police search advisor walked about 27,000 steps that day as we walked from each bus stop to work out how far he could have walked. We worked out he could not have walked as far as the lake.”

Half of Boggart Hole Clough had been searched before they made a discovery.

Det Sgt Cullum said: “We got some CCTV and got an image of Majerkiewicz on the bottom deck. There were two stops and then coverage of no one on the bottom deck, so we were able to say it has to be one of those two stops where he has got off.”

Officers were able to pinpoint that he had got off near an entrance to the park. Stuart’s spine and the end of two ribs were found within 50 metres of him walking into the park.

At Boggart Hole Clough, home to badger sets and foxes, empty black plastic bags with Stuart’s DNA were found. It is believed it had been reached first by animals.

A fingertip search revealed more packaging and body parts.

In total Mr Everett’s remains were found in five different locations - Boggart Clough, Blackleach Reservoir, Chesterfield Close, Eccles, Kersal Dale, and Linnyshaw Colliery Woods in Walkden. About one third of his body was recovered.

'If it had not been for CCTV, we wouldn't have got him'

Detective Chief Inspector Rachel Smith said: “If it had not been for the CCTV work we would not have ended up with someone in custody.

“Also, we would never have identified the deceased person. He was not on the national DNA database, and Marjerkiewicz was after Stuart’s death purporting to be him by sending messages to his family on his phone, and even a birthday card to his brother, so he was not reported missing.

“It could have been many weeks or months before he was reported missing. We might never have determined who that person was. The work the VERA team has done has also ensured we can return what we have recovered to his family.”

Mr Everett was described by his pal Allan Perry as 'pleasant and jolly'. He was unmarried and had no children. He loved cricket and a flutter on the horses.

He kept in touch with his family in Derby where his brother, Richard, lives. In March last year he had been to visit him, just weeks before he was murdered.

Cruelly, Mr Everett's family were deceived about his fate. After killing him, Majerkiewicz kept up a false impression that he was alive. He sent Richard a birthday card, purported to be from his sibling and text messages.

Why Mr Everett died is a mystery. But the jury was told there were tensions in the household he shared with Majerkiewicz over bills and a proposed rent increase.

Mr Everett sub-let the property to his killer and another man. Majerkiewicz had debts after taking out bank loans and had not worked for six months prior to murder.

The police investigation team uncovered Majerkiewiczhad debts totalling £58,210 from personal loans and unpaid credit cards.

He was drawing out the money he had acquired from the loans and from his credit card. Therefore, the view is the loans were to maintain his lifestyle.

There is no evidence of any wages going into his bank accounts after November 2023 and it is apparent he has been living on credit for some time.

He regularly made rent payments to Mr Everett via his bank account but these ceased in November 2023. He searched for long term rentals in Alicante on his own phone on April 18th - two weeks after the largest part of Mr Everett’s remains were found in Kersal Dale.

It is likely Mr Everett was hit over the head repeatedly with a hammer-type weapon before being cut up into pieces with a hacksaw.

When some of his remains were found at Kersal Dale speculation at the time included the possibility that the then unidentified victim was the target for a gangland hit - albeit an untidy careless one.

But Mr Everett could not have been further removed from the underworld. He lived a simple life with no enemies. His parents came from Poland seeking work in the UK in the 1940s and Mr Evertt, who was born here, worked for the NHS and later the DWP.

He had a passion for music by the Rat Pack - Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, and Sammy Davis Junior - and the Queen of Jazz, Ella Fitzgerald.

In strong contrast, Majerkiewicz was fixated with horror movies, especially ones which contained graphic scenes of murder.