Hunting The Essex Lorry Killers

Factual, Documentary, Current Affairs

It started with a 999 call from a lorry driver in an industrial estate in Essex and ended in one of the UK’s biggest ever police investigations, into the deaths of 39 Vietnamese migrants.

Spanning Britain, Europe and Vietnam, the film shows how detectives cracked open a multimillion-pound international smuggling ring with its roots in a seemingly innocuous haulage business in the heart of Northern Ireland. 

With exclusive access to Essex Police, their officers and the evidence, this film reveals how detectives painstakingly pieced together a complex web of evidence, including the extraordinary role of a witness known only as “Witness X”, whose evidence helped bring down the gang.

The film travels to Vietnam to meet the families of some of those who died in the back of the lorry and hears their heart-breaking stories of losing loved ones on the false promise of a new life in the UK.

This is a gripping and humane account of one of the UK’s most shocking crimes and a story that lifts the lid on the hidden world of organised crime's trade in people smuggling.