Technology boosted Olly Stephens murder investigation - police

A successful murder investigation into the death of a 13-year-old boy was boosted by advancing technology, a senior police officer has said.

Olly Stephens suffered fatal stab wounds to his chest and back in a field in Reading, Berkshire, in January 2021.

Two schoolboys who ambushed him after a dispute on social media were convicted of his murder later that year.

Det Supt Andy Howard said officers' pursuit would have been different had the murder taken place months earlier.

His killers had fallen out with Olly because they believed he "grassed" on them to the brother of a boy they had mocked in a social media group chat.

A girl was also convicted of Olly's manslaughter. None of his killers can be identified for legal reasons.

Voice notes and text messages were found by police in which the boys talked about taking revenge.

Mr Howard, of Thames Valley Police, said technological advancements in the way police could access messages boosted the investigation.

He appeared in a Channel 4 documentary on Monday discussing the role the force's digital forensics unit played.

"I mention in the documentary that if Olly had been killed perhaps six months earlier we would have had to look at the investigation in a very different way," Mr Howard said.

"We were able to harvest so much information from the digital data it meant we didn't have to rely on calling a single young person or child to court, which I think was positive all round."

He added: "We knew quite quickly in that investigation that it was going to be information on the mobile phones, the digital data, the social media material, that ultimately gave us the answer as to why Olly had been killed."

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