Richard Martin can still remember the face of the blonde little girl, lying with her body covered by a pristine white sheet, her eyes shut, she could have easily been dreaming of her first day of holiday with mum and dad.
But tragically, she would never wake up and her angelic face, perfectly still and silent, haunts the former senior police officer 12 years later.
The girl, no older than eight years old, was one of the youngest victims of the Malaysian Airline crash that saw 298 innocent people murdered when their flight was shot down over eastern Ukraine by a Russian-made Buk missile.
Mr Martin, a former deputy assistant commissioner, tells The Crime Desk: ‘Ironically, she was the same age as my daughter at the time, so suddenly you’ve got that professional and that personal thing just colliding in a way that was impossible to ignore
‘I spent time inside the mortuary and witnessed first-hand the true horror of what had happened. But the real work was done by my officers.’
Mr Martin is speaking for the first time about what happened at Eindhoven air base, near the Dutch town of Hilversum, where his team aided formal identification taking place after bodies were flown to the Netherlands, the country that bore the heaviest toll.
‘That was the one that stayed with me for quite a while, because you just got to think, you know that could be my daughter, somebody’s daughter, that’s someone’s whole world.’
A suitcase belonging to a child lies open at the site of the crash in Ukraine in July 2014
The plane wreck. On July 17, 2014, MH17 – a Boeing 777 aircraft – was travelling from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur when it was downed
Victims of the crash return home. All passengers, including 80 children and 15 crew members on board perished. Of those who died, 10 were Britons
Mr Martin, now 58, had been the on-call lead for UK policing’s Disaster Victim Identification team, a remarkable set of volunteers who can be sent anywhere in the world if British citizens die in a mass casualty event.
Their deeply human work – for which they receive no extra payment – helps grieving relatives seeking answers and justice at the most unimaginable times.
Unlike the girl, for scores of other jet victims the destructive force of the explosion above conflict-hit Ukraine left them unrecognisable.
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Witnesses told how the ‘sky rained bodies’ as some came crashing through the roof of their cottages near the rural town of Rozsyne.
Others were hideously torn to shreds, with limbs severed and bones broken amid 19 miles of charred debris including seats, twisted metal, boarding passes, smashed computers and piles of clothes.
‘Nothing prepares you for mass casualties like that,’ said Mr Martin who retired in 2020 after three decades with the Met, West Midlands Police and National Criminal Intelligence Service.
‘You know, I had dealt with quite a lot of death during my service, having been a detective and working my way through.
‘As you can imagine, in something that’s quite traumatic like a plane disaster people don’t always look like people any more. If a plane is hit by a missile in midair, you could be only talking about very tiny parts of people.’
Asked if he ever saw the tragic girl’s face again while asleep, Mr Martin recalled: ‘Yeah, for a while it came back and haunted me.
‘If I’m honest, I don’t think you’d survive in policing without being resilient.’
On July 17, 2014, MH17 – a Boeing 777 aircraft – was travelling from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur when it was downed.
All passengers, including 80 children and 15 crew members on board perished. Of those who died, 10 were Britons.
Among them was Ben Pocock, a 20-year-old from Bristol, due to begin a placement at the University of Western Australia in Perth.
Andrew Hoare, 59, who grew up in Somerset, died alongside his Dutch wife Estella, 51.
Supermarket worker Liam Sweeney, 28, of Killingworth, Tyneside, was travelling with fellow Newcastle United fan John Alder, 63, a retired BT worker, to the side’s pre-season New Zealand tour.
Maths student Richard Mayne, 20, from Leicester, Glenn Thomas, 49, a spokesperson for the World Health Organisation of Blackpool, and dog breeder Robert Ayley, 28, died.
Also murdered were: Andrew Hoare and his Dutch wife Estella; University of Leeds student Richard Mayne, 20; former RAF search and rescue co-ordinator Stephen Anderson, 44; and helicopter pilot Cameron Dalziel, 43.
20-year-old Ben Pocock, a former Wellsway School pupil who was studying at Loughborough University, was on board Flight MH17
Robert Ayley with his wife Sharlene. Robert died on board flight MH17 which was shot down over the Ukraine as it travelled from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur
Judges and lawyers view the reconstructed wreckage of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17, at the Gilze-Rijen military Airbase, southern Netherlands
A woman stands behind part of the blown up plane
Witnesses told how the ‘sky rained bodies’ as some came crashing through the roof of their cottages near the rural town of Rozsyne
As fighting continued around the crash site, there were reports rebels deliberately tampered with evidence, looted from dead passengers and moved bodies
British lawyer John Allen, 44, died with his Dutch wife, Sandra Martens, and their three sons – Christopher, Julian and Ian.
Shortly after 2pm, news of the crash and its global repercussions reached the control room at the Met’s New Scotland Yard headquarters.
At the time, Mr Martin was commander for all operational issues within the force area that serves some 8.6 million residents.
In normal circumstances, this would mean oversight of serious offences such as murders and kidnap in London.
But he was on call for the DVI if any response was required in the UK or internationally.
Within two hours, Mr Martin was called into a COBRA briefing where senior government ministers, law enforcement and other agencies coordinated the emergency response to the rapidly developing situation.
‘Initial assessments suggested that this was not simply an aviation disaster,’ he recalled.
‘The crash site was located within an active conflict zone in eastern Ukraine.
‘As part of our considerations, discussions were made about deploying personnel directly to the scene.
‘My position was clear: while we had a duty to support the international response, I was not prepared to send British officers into what was effectively a war zone where their safety could not be guaranteed. As senior officer, I had a responsibility not only to the victims and their families but also to the welfare and safety of the officers under my command.’
As fighting continued around the crash site, there were reports rebels deliberately tampered with evidence, looted from dead passengers and moved bodies.
Authorities quickly decided with the situation extremely volatile, initial body recovery would be conducted by the local fire brigade and volunteers. All victims could then first be put onto a train and finally given safe passage to Hilversum by air.
Images show members of the Dutch royal family, then-Prime Minister Mark Rutte and hundreds of victims’ relatives receiving the coffins at Eindhoven.
Churches around the Netherlands rang bells for five minutes before the planes landed. Flags of all 17 nations affected by the disaster flew at half-mast and there was a minute’s silence before the coffins were slowly loaded into a fleet of waiting hearses which then moved off in motorcades.
Glenn Thomas, a WHO’s spokesperson, who died when heading to the 20th International AIDS Conference in Melbourne (left) and Richard Mayne, student at Leeds University (right)
20-year-old Ben Pocock, a former Wellsway School pupil who was studying at Loughborough University, was on board Flight MH17
Debris from the plane lays scattered in the field alongside the belongings of the victims
Former deputy assistant commissioner Richard Martin who led the UK policing response to the MH17 plane crash in Ukraine in 2014
It wasn’t until November 2022 that three soldiers in a pro-Russian separatist army were found guilty of all 298 counts of murder in The Hague
Heroic Met, British Transport and City of London Police officers were among those from around the world involved. There’s no nice way of saying what they were tasked to do, other than ‘sifting through pieces of people’ in an attempt to identify them. Some worked for 12 hours a day and remained until 2015.
Humbled Mr Martin added: ‘What remains with me to this day is the dignity shown. It was a powerful reminder that despite the scale of the operation and the complexity of the forensic work, every individual was treated as a person, not a case number.
‘Those moments reflected the values that underpin the Disaster Victim Identification team. The science is essential, but so too is the humanity. The respect shown to the victims, the compassion to their families and the dedication involved demonstrated the very best of international cooperation and public service.’
Mr Martin insists he did ‘nothing out of the ordinary’ and ‘was simply doing the job I was trained and expected to do’, adding: ‘When people speak about MH17, they often focus on the tragedy itself. I look back and remember the people who responded to it. Their quiet professionalism was exceptional, and it was a privilege to serve alongside them.
‘MH17 was the very best of people in the face of the very worst circumstances. Volunteers from many nations, different professions and organisations came together for one purpose – to return loved ones to their families with dignity, certainty and respect.’
It wasn’t until November 2022 that three soldiers in a pro-Russian separatist army were found guilty of all 298 counts of murder in The Hague and sentenced to life in prison.
Igor Girkin, Sergei Dubinsky and Leonid Kharchenko had to be tried in absentia. It was heard the Boeing was targeted in error, as they believed the plane was a military aircraft over a Kremlin-occupied region.
The men are unlikely to spend time behind bars, as Mr Martin concludes: ‘They’ll never be extradited by Russia.
‘They’ve got away scot-free, which is a real shame. I would love for them to pop up in a country somewhere outside of Russia and then get nicked.’
After spending several busy and emotional days with his officers in Eindhoven, it was time for Mr Martin to return to duties in London. Ironically, his flight was taking off from Schiphol Airport – the same as MH17’s origin.
While sat outside a coffee shop with an inspector, Mr Martin recalls observing dozens of joyful children amongst the general buzz of international departures.
‘I remember turning to him and saying, ‘All those people that we’ve just been dealing with, and we’re trying to identify, they were [once] as excited as everybody else.
‘It really brings it home to you and makes it very, very personal.
‘I think is it Hugh Grant in Love Actually who says ‘Whenever I get gloomy with the state of the world, I think of the arrivals gate at Heathrow Airport’.
‘You see all these lovely pictures of people coming through the doors, meeting their families, you know, and that’s no different to what these 298 people that were on that plane were going off to do.’
