A sensational case involving a body encased in concrete, a domineering father, and a defiant son entangled with a glamorous yet ‘unsuitable’ lover captivated the English countryside years ago. Add to the mix a neighborhood of nosy onlookers, and it’s no surprise that the Alexander case was likened to a real-life episode of Midsomer Murders, the popular TV series known for its portrayal of dark deeds in picturesque villages.

The intrigue reached its peak 15 years back when Mark Alexander, a dashing former public school student, found himself at the center of the scandal. Then a 22-year-old law student, Mark was accused of murdering his demanding, elderly father, Samuel. The motive? Allegedly, the elder Alexander’s plans to send Mark to study at the Sorbonne in Paris, a move that threatened to tear him away from his beloved life in London and his stunning Russian girlfriend.

Mark faced serious charges, with evidence stacking up against him. He had motive and means, having even ordered the concrete used to seal his father’s grave. Despite this, Mark has steadfastly maintained his innocence since his conviction in 2010, when a jury at Reading Crown Court sentenced him to life in prison with a minimum of 16 years for murder.

In a new twist, a Daily Mail investigation has unearthed startling evidence that casts doubt on the original verdict. Campaigners now argue that this revelation could be the key to securing a retrial, potentially paving the way for Mark Alexander’s release.

But now a Daily Mail investigation has found startling new evidence which raises extraordinary questions about the case, and which campaigners believe could be grounds for a retrial that could see Alexander freed.

Will this evidence – an unearthed list of ‘enemies’ compiled by Samuel Alexander, who was a shady character with a double life, according to his son, who even lied to him that his mother had died – cast doubt on Mark Alexander’s guilt?

Alexander, now 37, certainly hopes so.

Speaking exclusively to the Daily Mail from his prison cell, he said he believed his father was killed after one of his scams went wrong.

‘At the time of my trial, we didn’t have any evidence about the nature of my father’s lifestyle – the people and activities he was involved in, perpetrating frauds and using different aliases,’ he said.

‘All the jury had was my word, without any evidence to back up what I was saying. Now we have much more insight into my father’s lifestyle and the kind of things he was involved in, it paints a very different picture.’

Intriguingly, prominent on Samuel Alexander’s ‘enemy list’ was a convicted rapist and violent criminal who would later be jailed for a multi-million pound lottery fraud.

And, in a bizarre twist, we have discovered he submitted his forged lottery ticket a week before Samuel disappeared, in August 2009 – more of which later.

Yet it was never properly investigated by Thames Valley Police due to their ‘tunnel vision’, claims Alexander. ‘They had a suspect in their sights – it was just far easier for them to not explore other avenues of inquiry that may have pointed away from me.’

One thing no one disputes is that Samuel Alexander was a very tricky character.

A Coptic Christian originally from Egypt, he’d spent his career working as an English lecturer at De Montfort University in Leicester.

Described as ‘cantankerous’ and ‘controlling’ in court, Samuel Alexander had raised his only son alone, from when he was about eight, after his wife left him due to his boorish behaviour.

Mark Alexander’s mother would visit occasionally, but broke contact when she met a new partner, and was scared about how her ex-husband would react. It was at this point that Samuel told his son his mother had died of cancer. Alexander only found out she was alive when he read reports of her being interviewed by police following his father’s murder.

The pair have since reconciled and, he says, she believes he is not guilty. He said: ‘She’s absolutely convinced that Dad was up to something and, tragically, it went wrong. He’s pushed the boundaries of what he was doing too far.’

Samuel Alexander often pushed things too far: he was highly ambitious for his son, repeatedly moving him between schools and keeping him away from other children. Despite his difficult upbringing, Mark Alexander excelled academically and at 16 he won a music scholarship to the then £27,000-a-year Rugby School, in Warwickshire, where he scored one of the best A-level results in the country, before studying Law and French at King’s College London.

Samuel was especially proud that the final two years of the degree were due to be spent at the prestigious Sorbonne University in Paris.

In mid-August 2009, he boasted to neighbours about his son’s impending move to France over tea and cakes at in his village in Drayton Parslow, Buckinghamshire.

Two weeks later, a tree surgeon visited the four-bedroom, detached, family home at Samuel’s request to discuss some gardening work.

According to the police, it was the last independent sighting of the 70-year-old. He then simply disappeared. Neighbours spotted Mark Alexander coming and going. When they asked where his father was, he claimed he was too upset to socialise following the death of Samuel’s sister in Egypt.

As the weeks dragged by, the neighbours started to get suspicious– especially after one couple noticed a foul smell, like ‘a rotting sheep’, from their back door.

Some joked that Samuel might have been ‘knocked off’ and that they would soon see a ‘cement mixer’ pull up at the property.

Sure enough, weeks later, Alexander was seen taking delivery of concrete at the house.

The arrival of Christmas cards to others in the cul-de-sac in December signed ‘from Samuel and Mark’ fuelled speculation further, as neighbours noted Samuel usually signed his name ‘Sami’.

When confronted by the chairwoman of the parish council, Alexander claimed Samuel was staying with friends in London.

Soon afterwards a group of concerned neighbours handed a dossier of their suspicions to a retired detective inspector who also lived in the village.

Within days the garden was dug up and Samuel’s battered and partially burned body was discovered in plastic bags within four levels of concrete.

Forensic studies indicated that Samuel had probably been murdered on or around September 5, 2009, shortly before his son was due to leave for Paris.

Further evidence started piling up; detectives discovered that on September 8, Mark Alexander had bought a steam cleaner online using one of his father’s bank cards, which he asked to be delivered to the family home.

They also soon learned that he had told his university tutors that he would not be going to Paris and had instead set up home in his Fleet Street flat in London with his girlfriend, Russian student Senta Nazarbekova, who told police she felt Samuel disapproved of the relationship.

Alexander had withdrawn hundreds of pounds from his father’s account and bought a flatscreen television and dishwasher for the property.

It all made a compelling case for prosecutors to put to the jury at his trial.

In his defence, Mark Alexander testified that he could never have harmed his father, a man whom he regarded as his ‘mentor’ and ‘inspiration’.

He admitted laying the top level of industrial strength concrete in November 2009, but claimed he had no idea his father’s body was already in the makeshift grave, and expert evidence revealed that lower layers showed signs of being professionally installed. He claimed the hole had been dug previously as a ‘root barrier’, as a tree was causing problems on the property.

He assumed the job had been left incomplete, and so ordered the top layer to finish it off.

But why lie to neighbours about where father’s whereabouts?

‘I believed Dad was still alive, I was trying to cover for him,’ he says now.

‘Mum and I were always encouraged to keep our mouths shut and not say anything that would give rise to any suspicion that Dad was up to something.

‘Also, in my naivety as a 22-year-old, I believed I knew Dad best, that he was up to his old tricks – being stubborn and laying low, trying to stay off the radar.

‘I didn’t take seriously the red flags that the neighbours were picking up on, because I thought I knew him better than them. To me, what they were describing was just his normal behaviour.’

Speaking to the Daily Mail, Alexander’s mother – who didn’t want to give her name – also recalled her husband’s shady, violent side.

‘He used to have debt letters laid out across the carpet … I knew he was caught up in something.

‘It felt like he was constantly trying to be one step ahead, trying to keep people from getting close to what he was doing.

‘He got a buzz out of living life on the edge and out of fooling people.

‘He always made me feel as though I wasn’t much of a person, he had me in my place. Once I’d given him a child, he just wanted to take full control. He didn’t want me to be in contact with my family, I couldn’t talk to neighbours. I didn’t even have my own front door key.

‘When he got angry, he used to hit me – and it’s only now that I understand why. It’s because he was caught up in something and he took it out on me.’

Mark Alexander said he had ‘trusted the process’, and thought the jury would accept his version of events. ‘I couldn’t believe it when the verdict came through – I was convinced I’d misheard it, that it was actually “not guilty”.

‘Then it started sinking in and my knees gave way. There was this feeling of being emptied out.

‘Two days later I was sentenced to 16 years. It feels like your whole life. It was an impossible length of time to imagine, and yet at the same time I was convinced it couldn’t last, that they would realise they’d made a mistake and all this would be resolved.’

One appeal against his conviction has already been refused – but that could be about to change.

New evidence found by the Mail centres around a list of contacts discovered by detectives on Samuel’s home computer after his death, which included three names under the heading ‘enemies’.

One name that stood out was a builder called Eddie Putman, who rented a two-bedroom flat from Samuel in Hemel Hempstead in around 1999.

This seems a significant oversight given that by the time of Samuel’s murder, Putman had a violent criminal past.

He had previously been jailed for raping a pregnant teenager in 1991 – who described how he punched her so hard in the attack she thought her head would cave in – and for a separate offence of knifing a neighbour.

Unbeknown to the police investigating Samuel’s murder in 2010, Putman had also committed a third major crime which happened almost in parallel with the killing.

On August 28, 2009 – eight days before Samuel is believed to have been killed – Putman submitted a forged Lottery ticket to falsely claim a £2.5million jackpot.

He initially got away with the scam, which was carried out with the help of National Lottery insider Giles Knibbs, and used his winnings to bankroll a life of luxury.

The truth only emerged years later when Knibbs sought vengeance on his accomplice because he had not shared the cash as promised.

Knibbs tipped off friends about the scam before killing himself. His evidence from beyond the grave was used to convict Putman at his 2019 trial at St Albans Crown Court, where he was jailed for nine years.

So was the timing overlap with Samuel Alexander’s murder simply a coincidence – or was it something more sinister?

Inevitably, Mark Alexander thinks the latter. He recalls, while still in primary school, visiting the flat his father let to Putman to collect rent, before Samuel asked his tenant to move on after a couple of years.

‘The rent wasn’t being paid, Dad was trying to chase money from Eddie and I think he just lost his patience. He told him he had to go.’

Although he didn’t recall anything ‘sinister’ about Putman, he added: ‘You have to remember I was just a kid at the time, Dad was very secretive. I believe there was a lot more going on there.’

The flat is believed to have been rented to Putman under one of Samuel’s aliases, which included Sami Yacoub or Sami El-Kalyoubi.

Regardless of whether the lottery fraud was directly connected to Samuel’s murder, campaigners believe the previously undisclosed revelations of Putman’s criminal past are enough to throw doubt on Mark Alexander’s conviction.

Court files seen by the Mail document officers’ efforts to trace and speak to people who had been in contact with Samuel, but there is no mention of efforts to contact Putman or of his criminal past, which could have been used by Alexander’s defence team.

When asked about this, Thames Valley Police declined to comment, explaining the force ‘doesn’t answer inquiries on named individuals’.

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) said it had ‘cooperated extensively’ and made ‘all appropriate post-conviction disclosures’ that were requested by Alexander’s solicitors and, as far as it was aware, no further evidence had emerged to ‘suggest this conviction is unsafe’.

Dr Michael Naughton, from campaign group Empowering The Innocent, said: ‘It could have a major impact on the safety of Mark’s conviction.’

He added: ‘All of these “enemies” should have been properly investigated. They should have been interviewed under police caution.

‘The police should have looked at their alibis, and anything they found should have been disclosed to both the prosecution and the defence.’

When approached by the Daily Mail through his solicitor, and asked whether he would like to comment to Mark Alexander’s allegations, Eddie Putman did not respond.

Alexander has served most of his sentence at the bleak HMP Coldingley in Surrey, a different world from his middle-class upbringing.

‘I had a view from my cell of barbed wire and high fences for eight years. No green space, no nature – just grey.’

He continued to study law in jail and has helped many fellow prisoners successfully appeal cases even while struggling with his own.

Last year, he was moved to an open prison, a change which proved to be a literal light at the end of the tunnel.

‘The night I arrived, I saw my first sunset in 15 years,’ he said. ‘It was such a powerful moment.

‘The colours felt more intense. It felt very symbolic of things to come.’

Whether Mark Alexander ever sees the sun rise as an innocent man remains to be seen.

investigations@dailymail.co.uk