// BBC UK NEWS — CRONACA
How a passenger's confession helped convict her cousin of murder
The killer was caught on camera filling his car shortly after leaving Michael Mullins for dead
One afternoon in April, a children's nursery worker approached her manager in a what she described as an hysterical state.
Gabrielle Debotte said she had something serious to tell Nicola Goddard, adding: "You're going to hate me and I'm going to lose my job."
What the 27-year-old said next proved a turning point in the investigation into the death of popular head teacher Michael Mullins, who had been struck by a car the previous day and dragged under its wheels for more than a mile.
Debotte told the astonished Goddard she not only knew who was responsible for hitting the 56-year-old as he cycled home from work, but she witnessed what happened from the passenger seat.
That night, having initially been treated as a suspect, she sat in the interview suite at Stretford Police Station and named her cousin, 35-year-old former mechanic Simon Richardson, as the driver.
Thanks in part to the evidence provided by Debotte, Richardson was found guilty of murder after a two-week trial at Manchester's Minshull Street Crown Court.
Simon Richardson stopped at a petrol station minutes after he killed cyclist Michael Mullins
The contrasts between the lives of the killer and his victim were stark.
Less than a month before he struck the head teacher, Richardson was freed from prison.