Murder Mile UK True-Crime Podcast - #282: The Vice Girl Killer - Part 2 of 3 (Racheal Applewhaite)28/1/2025
Nominated BEST BRITISH TRUE-CRIME PODCAST, 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation Channel's Top 20 True-Crime Podcasts, also seen on BBC Radio, Sky News, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week.
Welcome to the Murder Mile UK True-Crime Podcast and audio guided walk of London's most infamous and often forgotten murder cases, all set within and beyond London's West End.
EPISODE TWO HUNDRED AND EIGHTY-TWO: On the weekend of the 24th and 25th of January 1987, two sex-workers vanished from two street (Sussex Gardens and Cleveland Terrace) near to Paddington Station. With their beaten, strangled and mutilated bodies found barely 24 hours apart in places where they didn't belong. The police quickly confirmed that a crazed killer was on the loose. But still unsolved today, it remains one of the most perplexing unsolved double murders in Britain. But who was he? MURDER TWO:
THE LOCATION:
The location is marked with a red symbol of a 'P' just by the words 'Bayswater' off Paddington Station. To use the map, click it. If you want to see the other maps, click here.
SOURCES: a selection sourced from the news archives:
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: Sunday 25th of January 1987 at 9:30pm, around the time that the body of Marina Monti lay on a cold hard slab in Kensington mortuary awaiting a post-mortem, Rachael Applewhaite and an unidentified ‘olive skinned’ male entered The King's Head pub, just two streets south of the red light districts of Sussex Gardens, Cleveland Terrace and Paddington Station, where she was often picked up by punters. Said to be “so drunk she couldn’t walk”, several eyewitnesses (including a friend Deborah Mezen, and several customers and bar-staff) confirmed that she wasn’t wearing her usual clothes – a black jumper, a blue denim skirt and blue shin-length denim boots – being a fashionable look for the era. Instead, she wore a second-hand navy-blue and purple hotel maid’s outfit made from hard-wearing polyester, which being a Size 12, looked like embarrassing hand-me-down as Racheal was barely a Size 10. The uniform wasn’t hers, her own clothes were missing, the white plastic bag she was carrying wasn’t big enough to hold them, and she hadn’t been back to her flat, where her boyfriend Ian was waiting. This could have been a mildly memorable moment in any pub, but it made the last official sighting of Racheal all the more credible, as she had argued and fought with Deborah who had mocked her outfit. Asked to leave just shy of ‘last orders’, she left with the man, who was said to be sober, and witnesses state that he drove her away in a small, possibly light coloured car, its make and reg number unknown. Murdered hours later, that sighting posed three big questions: if this was a pre-meditated attack by a pimp, a drug dealer or a spree-killer with a hatred of sex workers akin to the Yorkshire Ripper, why was she taken to a pub where she was known and dressed in a way which drew attention to her? Why did he allow his face to be seen? And if he had lashed out in a pre-sex rage, why did he murder her? Four days later, having autopsied both bodies, the detectives confirmed “we feel that both cases are linked” and the work of “a very violent man”, as there were too many similarities to be coincidental. Both women were a similar age, weight and size being barely five foot tall, they were sex workers for four years, they worked the same streets with possibly the same pimp, and they might have known each other as they picked up clients a couple of hundred yards apart, but that’s all that connects them. They vanished without a trace, their last client owned a small (possibly light coloured) car, and their bodies were found dumped miles from where they were last seen and in a place they didn’t belong. Both women were strangled with the ligature – a belt or tie – but never were found, both were beaten about the face and head but there were no obvious defensive wounds, there was no sexual assault, no proof they’d been robbed, and in some items of clothing were missing, in both cases, their boots. But there was one difference between both murders… …Racheal’s was much more savage. Monday 26th of January 1987. South Kensington. Two miles south of the pub where Racheal was last seen, a resident living in the affluent Sumner Place was returning from a weekend away. Driving down the busy A308 Fulham Road, she pulled up at a gap between a café and a dress shop, she opened the unlocked wrought iron gates and drove into a private area known as Sydney Close. It’s a place you would only know if you were one of twenty residents who parked their cars in these private garages. Arriving a little after midday, being cramped and surrounded on all sides by the backs of four and five storey Victorian terraced houses, even on the brightest days the sun struggles to reach the floor, but at night, being unlit, it is only illuminated by the odd bedroom window and the occasional headlight. Like the layby at Mitre Bridge junction, the killer had chosen a location which was isolated and dark. At the rear of 30-31 Sumner Place, the resident didn’t need to unlock her garage as she never used it for storage, but as the green steel door rose up, at the back corner, her headlights illuminated what she described as “a bundle of rags” - a phrase identical to the security guard who’d found Marina’s body - as her eyes were drawn to the bare pale legs of a small woman curled-up in the foetal position. The police arrived within minutes and the scene was sealed off. As before, the body looked as if it had been dumped from a car, but this time the killer had reversed in so it wouldn’t be seen by the flats overlooking it. With no signs of a struggle or any bloodstains, that proved she had been murdered elsewhere and driven her in the boot of the car. And with it being a frostless night, the tyre marks were illegible, but the axel width suggested they were from a small car. As with Marina, Racheal’s boots were missing (and were never to be found), and with her feet being bare but not dirty, she had removed them herself but hadn’t walked there. So why had he kept them? Her clothes were the same purple and blue hotel maid’s outfit she was seen wearing in the pub just hours before, but with no traces of mud, dirt or oil, she must have been killed inside a room or a car and was only taken outside when her killer carried her out, only now they were badly bloodstained. Like Marina, Racheal had been beaten about the head and face until she was rendered unconscious. With a ligature, she had been strangled from in-front as this defenceless woman lay limp and helpless. But although Marina’s injuries were limited, upon Racheal’s legs and face were the bruised imprints of a man’s Size 7 or 8 boot, as he repeatedly stamped on her body, breaking her nose, cheek and teeth. And yet, he hadn’t stopped there. Detective Sergeant Jim Hutchinson described Racheal’s injuries as “frenzied and horrific… two or more instruments were used to batter her about the head and face”, one of them believed to be either a wrench or a tyre-iron, stating “and we cannot rule out a chainsaw”. This wasn’t a killing in panic, as either someone truly hated her or didn’t want the body to be identified. That differentiated the killings, but was Marina’s mutilation cut short? One theory quickly dismissed was mistaken identity as Racheal had mousey brown hair and Marina’s was black. Another was a vengeful drug-dealer, only Racheal’s vice was drink. And although the press tried to attribute it to a copy-cat, that was impossible, as the first murder wasn’t reported until the second body was found. The autopsy was conducted by pathologist Dr Iain West who said it was impossible to pin down an accurate time of death as the body had been moved from a warm interior, to a slightly chilly car with its heating intermittently on, and into a cold and damp garage on a night barely above freezing. As an estimate, rigor mortis stated she had died eight to ten hours before she was found, so between 2am and 4am, but owing to the haemorrhaging she had suffered, she wasn’t dead when she was dumped. Having been subjected to horrifying injuries (using feet, fists and several tools) while she was still alive, she had lain there - unconscious and possibly paralysed - inside the closed garage in an isolated area that very few people knew about or would pass, bleeding and barely able to breathe, as she lay dying. Her killing was almost certainly committed a man without any compassion, someone who could kill at will, who had a history of physical assaults on women and sex-workers, who they trusted as neither woman was abducted, and with no empathy, he saw prostitutes as someone to be used and discarded. With such levels of violence, the police suspected he was likely to be a man was who unstable… …but who was he? With no witnesses to her murder, no clue as to where she was killed, no sighting of the car which had dumped her, and no idea who the ‘olive skinned’ man in the ski jacket she was last seen with in the pub was (or even if he had murdered her), detectives had to rely on the limited evidence they had. With her bag nowhere to be found, a positive ID was made by her boyfriend Ian who had reported her missing. Questioned over their disappearances, Racheal & Marina’s boyfriends remained as suspects as many men were, but with alibis and witnesses to prove their innocence, they were eliminated. All the usual suspects were rounded up – pimps, punters, perverts, addicts and prowlers, as well as the former owner of an illicit escort agency in Bayswater who lived off the earnings of prostitutes and was questioned over the assault of others – but there didn’t seem to be a suspect who stood out. Racheal’s murder was as mysterious as Marina’s, but what baffled detectives most was the purple and blue polyester uniform she was wearing for no known reason. When examined, the blouse’s label confirmed it was made by Warren Petites, a manufacturer of uniforms to the hotel and catering trade which were sold in shops and via mail-order. It wasn’t unique enough to identify who had bought it and it was the type used by mid-range boutique hotels across London, but also Britain and Europe. It wasn’t Racheal’s as it was a size too big and the arms creased in the wrong place, but faintly written in pen on the label, months if not years earlier, someone had scrawled in permanent marker ‘P Suarez’. It was faded from numerous washes, and although police suspected that this was its original owner, they were unable to find a ‘P Suarez’ missing from any local hotels, or any uniforms reported stolen. If her killer was a pervert who took pleasure in stealing his victims boots and in one case, dressed her up a like hotel maid, the Police warned others that “this terribly dangerous killer could strike again”. With no witnesses to her death and her timings a mystery, although said to be passive and quiet, the only likely suspect in her killing was the man that Racheal was last seen alive with. On Thursday 5th of February, barely a week after her body was found, Police issued a Photofit of him. It was a risk as if he was the killer, it could cause him to go into hiding or flee, but they desperately needed to find him. Blessed with reliable witnesses, each article stated “Police want to speak to a man of continental, maybe Greek or Arabic appearance, 5ft 9in, 35-40, hair black with specks of grey, wearing gold rimmed glasses and maybe a ski jacket, and on his left finger of his left hand was a large gold medallion ring”. Sadly, it failed to give them the leads they needed, so on Thursday 26th of February, detectives broadcast an appeal on the BBC’s Crimewatch, a successful TV show which drew in 14 million viewers. At this point, he was only a witness who police believed had information vital to the case - and having televised a recreation of her last sighting in the King’s Head pub, the unusual uniform she was wearing, where and how her body was found, and accompanied by a description and the Photofit of the man - police at the murder incident room took a few hundred calls from friends, associates and witnesses… …one of whom was the man himself. Watching TV, recognising the girl and seeing his own face staring back at him, that night, having first called his wife in Mexico, two days after its broadcast, 42 year old Guillermo Suarez walked into Kensington police station where detectives were shocked at how perfectly he matched the Photofit. Guillermo Suarez was an administrative attaché at the Mexican embassy in West Kensington, roughly half way between the street where Racheal was picked up by her punters and his third floor flat at the exclusive Coleherne Court in South Kensington, which – coincidentally – was barely half a mile west of the garage where Rachael’s body was found. He also was the owner of a small light-coloured car. When questioned, he confirmed that he was with Racheal in the pub that night, that he’d picked her up for the purposes of sex, and that the maid’s uniform belonged to his wife who – although in Mexico – sometimes visited him in London and worked at various hotels. Initially he denied leaving the pub with Racheal, but when confronted with witness testimony, he changed his story, and stated that after they left the pub, he drove them back to his flat, where in his wife’s wardrobe “she took a fancy to it”. This made no sense, as the uniform was unfashionable, uncomfortable, her denim skirt, boots and black jumper were nowhere to be seen, and it was the wrong size, so much so it was laughable. Asked if he dressed her up as part of a sexual fetish, he refused to answer the question as he feared it might incriminate him, with detectives later stating that “we don’t know what happened to her own clothes, nor do we have a satisfactory explanation as to why she wanted to take this new set”. Police said “he had offered himself as a witness of his own accord” and was treated accordingly, as a witness. But that night, always eager for the latest scoop, even though he hadn’t been charged with any crimes, the Daily Mirror and the Daily Mail – two tabloids famed for printing incorrect information, then days or weeks later in a barely visible column hidden inside where no one would read it issuing a retraction of their accusations – having already incorrectly listed his name as Jose and his job as a ‘Top Envoy’ when he was little more than a middle ranking administrator, they printed his details and a photo beside the headline of ‘I am TV Murder Suspect’, which in the public’s eyes made him as good as guilty. Details of the case had been leaked, possibly by a bent copper willing to blab for some cash to a sleazy hack, and - of course – they only printed the most sensational details, which derailed the questioning. Having admitted to paying Racheal £20 and having sex with her in his flat in and around the time that the pathologist said she had been viciously attacked which led to her death, detectives were later able to confront him with the evidence that witnesses had positively identified him as the man last seen with the victim, and that between the 31st of January and the 7th of February, one week after both murders were reported, Theresa Mellett, the manageress of a dry-cleaners a few streets from his flat identified him as a man who had “taken in a bag of bedding that was soiled with blood. He told me his wife had an accident”, but when the police checked, his wife in Mexico hadn’t visited him for months. The evidence was circumstantial, but Police later confirmed “although he had offered himself up as a witness, as a result he was arrested”. Guillermo Suarez was locked up for 1 ½ hours and questioned for 30 hours, but on the 1st of March, as they couldn’t charge him, he was de-arrested and released. Forensic tests were carried out on his car and his flat, but they were unable to prove whether Racheal was there or if this was where she had been murdered, and fearing another leak of information to the tabloid press, it was never reported what make of car he had, or if his boot prints matched those which had stamped on Racheal’s face. On Monday 23rd of March, Guillermo Suarez was interviewed a second time by detectives, this time about the double murder of Racheal Applewhaite and Marina Monti… … but again, lacking conclusive evidence, he was released without charge. Many questions we will never know the answer to, as after this point, the information fed to the press dried up; we’ll never know what he said happened to Racheal after they had sex, whether he knew of or had been to the garage in Sydney Close, whether he owned the orange Mini which picked Racheal up earlier that night, whether he took prostitutes to the layby at Mitre Bridge, whether had sex with Marina at the Lion Court Hotel, or if any of his fingerprints or items containing his DNA were found. In both murders, police said, he was the most likely suspect, but then a force more powerful than the police took control of the investigation, as although not high ranking Suarez was entitled to protection. Granted by the 1961 Geneva Convention, diplomatic immunity offers a degree of legal protection to the diplomats, their families and staff from criminal and some civil prosecution. Designed to prevent international incidents between governments whose relations may be strained, it ensures that a blind eye is turned to minor crimes like speeding or drink driving, but with rape, manslaughter or murder, if the diplomat is charged, they would be ‘expected’ to waive their immunity, but this is not a given. In 1986, one year before, 39 criminal offences were committed in the UK in which diplomatic immunity was used, including a US diplomat’s husband who was charged with the sexual assault of a child. When Suarez was arrested, it was reported “the Mexican charge d'affaires in London was summoned to the Foreign Office where he was told that the British expected the Mexican authorities to waive his protection”, but instead aided by the Mexican Ambassador, he refused to answer further questions. And like most people in powerful places their influential friends sought to protect them. On Monday 2nd of March, one day after his release, several MPs asked for the Home Secretary Douglas Hurd to mount an investigation “into the appalling way the Met Police treated this Mexican diplomat”, with none of them expressing remorse at how two women had been murdered at the hands of a maniac. On the 1st of July 1987, an inquest into the murder of Racheal Applewhaite was held at Hammersmith Coroner’s Court, as presided by Dr Paul Knappman. Having waived his diplomatic immunity, instead Suarez chose not to answer any questions for fear they may incriminate him, and with this meaning he couldn’t and wouldn’t say anything, at that point, the inquest couldn’t proceed with that charge. By the time the Director of Public Prosecutions had re-examined the case, without enough evidence to re-arrest him, using his diplomatic immunity, Suarez flew back to Mexico, where he was safe… …and there he remains, even today. John Folkes, Racheal’s father stated “I want him to come back to Britain and tell the police what he knows. It makes me sick that he has rebuilt his life in Mexico… I bet Suarez has a big house and plenty of money, all the things my Racheal dreamed of but never had and now never will”. Tracked down by the Daily Mirror one year later, it was true, he was living in a nice house in Mexico City with his wife and two children, and having left the embassy, he worked for the Epsom Computer Printing Company. Again, he refused to answer any questions, instead stating “I was innocent and simply trying to help. It's case closed as far as I am concerned”. Frustrated, Detective Superintendent Hutchinson’s reply was “the case is still open and I would like to ask Mr Suarez a number of vital questions”, but owing to a lack of conclusive evidence, the Crown Prosecution Service could not extradite him from Mexico. And that is where the case into the murder of Racheal Applewhaite remains… …unsolved, but with a very likely suspect whose guilt cannot be proven. On 13th of August 1987, at the inquest into the murder of Marina Monti, having previously stated that “we feel that both cases are linked” and the work of “a very violent man”, DS Hutchinson would confirm “I have now ruled out any link that the killings of Rachel Applewhaite and Marina Monti were connected”, stating that “Guillermo Suarez was no longer suspected of killing Marina”, only Racheal. There was no serial or spree-killer akin to the Yorkshire Ripper stalking the streets of Bayswater. There was no double murder of two seemingly associated prostitutes just streets apart. And although it was believed there were too many similarities for the murders to be coincidental – the time, the place, the small car, the ligature, the beatings, the lost clothes, the vanished handbags and the missing boots - that’s exactly what they were, two coincidental murders, but by two very different killers. (End) As of 2024, 37 years after the murders of Racheal Applewhaite & Marina Monti, they remain unsolved. With no new witnesses nor evidence, it’s a cold case which only gets colder. In 1997, Marina’s murder was one of 32 cold cases the Met’ Police re-investigated, but that didn’t include Racheal’s, as with the only suspect in her killing living in Mexico, that case would only be solved when Suarez is extradited. At the inquest into Marina Monti’s murder, DS Hutchingson’s claim that the murders weren’t connected didn’t come out of no-where, as before the coroner, Dr John Burton, he stated “we believe we know who her killer is, we just can’t prove it”, as having also extricated another man, he said “the Crown Prosecution Service feels there is insufficient evidence to charge him, but inquiries continue”. In the initial stages of their investigation, knowing the area well, all the usual suspects were rounded up; whether pimps, punters, perverts, addicts or prowlers, as well as one primary suspect who drew their attention. Said to be unstable, volatile and with a long history of violence against women, he was the former owner of an illicit escort agency in Bayswater who lived off the earnings of prostitutes and was questioned over the brutal assault of West End sex workers, who were left traumatised for life. As a robber, a pimp and a drug dealer who is currently incarcerated for a horrific murder, suspected of others and some say could even be a serial killer, just days after Marina’s murder – for no reason at all – he adopted several aliases, fled the country and went into hiding. But did he kill Marina Monti? The final part of The Vice Girl Killer concludes next week. The Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast has been researched using the original declassified police investigation files, court records, press reports and as many authentic sources as possible, which are freely available in the public domain, including eye-witness testimony, confessions, autopsy reports, first-hand accounts and independent investigation, where possible. But these documents are only as accurate as those recounting them and recording them, and are always incomplete or full of opinion rather than fact, therefore mistakes and misrepresentations can be made. As stated at the beginning of each episode (and as is clear by the way it is presented) Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast is a 'dramatisation' of the events and not a documentary, therefore a certain amount of dramatic licence, selective characterisation and story-telling (within logical reason and based on extensive research) has been taken to create a fuller picture. It is not a full and complete representation of the case, the people or the investigation, and therefore should not be taken as such. It is also often (for the sake of clarity, speed and the drama) presented from a single person's perspective, usually (but not exclusively) the victim's, and therefore it will contain a certain level of bias and opinion to get across this single perspective, which may not be the overall opinion of those involved or associated. Murder Mile is just one possible retelling of each case. Murder Mile does not set out to cause any harm or distress to those involved, and those who listen to the podcast or read the transcripts provided should be aware that by accessing anything created by Murder Mile (or any source related to any each) that they may discover some details about a person, an incident or the police investigation itself, that they were unaware of.
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Nominated BEST BRITISH TRUE-CRIME PODCAST, 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation Channel's Top 20 True-Crime Podcasts, also seen on BBC Radio, Sky News, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week.
Started in 2018, Murder Mile UK True Crime is a weekly podcast exploring the untold and long-forgotten murders covering just 20 square miles of West London, especially areas like Soho, Fitzrovia, Marylebone, Paddington, Kensington, Notting Hill, Shepherd's Bush, Westminster and Fulham, as well as the Royal Parks and some of the most infamous streets of West London.
Here's just a small sample of the 300+ cases already covered in Murder Mile: CLICK ANY PLAYER BELOW TO LISTEN.
This is Part One of Ten of The Soho Strangler, Britain least known and long forgotten serial killer. On Monday 4th November 1935, at roughly noon, the body of 41—year-old Josephine Martin, a Soho prostitute known as ‘French Fifi’ was found by her maid in her own bed, having asphyxiated herself using her own stocking. Wracked with debts and depression, her death was noted as “possibly a suicide”… when in fact, it was the first killing by The Soho Strangler.
Across October and early November 1888, when 'Jack the Ripper' slayed several women in the East End of London, a smaller and largely forgotten sexual sadist was attacking women in Soho in the West End. Masked using a series of baffling distractions, his crimes were made possible owing to the fevered frenzy in the midst of a mini media mania committed in the Ripper's shadow.
But who was he, was it a hoax, or did he even exist? For those fascinated by Jack the Ripper, here's an interesting side story about a crazed sadist who committed a shocking crime spree in West London, just three miles from Whitechapel, and possibly used Jack the Ripper's crimes to cover his own.
#232 - Finally, a home. On Friday 23rd April 1960, 23-year-old Elaine Baker finished her shift as a striptease artiste at the Peeperama on 47 Frith Street in Soho. It was an odd job for her to do, as she was so quiet and shy. Fifteen minutes after her arrival back home at 19 Tredegar Square in Bow, East London, she stabbed her boyfriend to death. But why?
On Tuesday 15th June 1948, in the 'The Maltese Club' situated in the basement of 3 Carlisle Street, one of Soho’s deadliest and most feared gangsters known as 'The Terror of Maltese London' was murdered by Joseph Farrugia? But who was 'The Terror' and why did he have to die?
Today’s episode is about Joe Gynane, a drug-addict, it’s hard to say more as drugs consumed his world. But when this hopeless junkie took a life, the law would ask a valid question: “who was responsible for the murder; was it Joe’s fault or his drugs?”
On Tuesday 4th October 1853, in a squalid first-floor lodging at 6 Little Dean Street, the beating of baby Richard began… and ten days later, he would be dead. Described as a ‘bastard’ child, his widowed mother struggled against insurmountable odds in the hope that he would survive, only those she was forced to trust with his care, became his killers.
On Saturday 25th September 1948, Rachel Annie Fennick (alias Ginger Rae), a veteran Soho sex-worker with a sweet smile and a kind heart was brutally murdered. And yet, her bloody death remains shrouded in so much mystery, that 70 years on, her murder may remain unsolved forever. This is Part One of Two of the untold story of Ginger Rae's murder.
On Sunday 29th May 1887, in the first-floor flat of 29 Great Windmill Street in Soho, twenty-year-old Amelie Pottle had a “little accident” with an oil-lamp which would lead to her slow and painful death. But was it a mishap, or a murder?
The Blackout Ripper Part 2: On 10th February 1942, 34 year old Evelyn Oatley was found strangled, posed and mutilated in her flat at 153 Wardour Street in a murder strangely similar to Evelyn Hamilton, just one night before. Was this coincidence, or was there a sadistic spree-killer on the loose in Soho?
On Thursday 29th October 1883, William Crees had married Eliza Horsman having known each other for just a few weeks. Initially it seemed like they were very much in love, but with William being a man with a few secrets, Eliza should have been worried.
But everything would come to a head, just two weeks after their wedding, as William was also harbouring a deadly disease, which would not only take the host, but also the lives of those he (claimed to) love.
On Saturday 27th October 1956, 26 year old Canadian sailor Richard Rhodes Henley committed armed robbery for the first and very last time, but he didn’t steal money, or booze, or drugs to feed his habit, he stole pornography to fuel his addiction to masturbation, and yet, so desperate was his carnal needs that it would drive him to commit murder.
Today we delve into the deeply depraved and yet strangely sad life of one of Britain’s most infamous serial-killers, and two of his would-be victims who came within inches of death, and yet survived the clutches of Dennis Nilsen. This is Part One of Two about those who survived one of Britain's most infamous serial killers.... as well as his dog, Bleep.
THIS IS JUST A SMALL SAMPLE of the cases already covered by Murder Mile UK True Crime. If you would like to find other, please explore the MURDER MAP OF SOHO below, which contains every case, including the latest. If you love true crime and are fascinated by the people and the streets where murder takes place, check out Murder Mile UK True Crime on any podcast app'
MURDER MAP OF SOHO (West End, London)
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Murder Mile UK True-Crime Podcast - #281: The Vice Girl Killer - Part 1 of 3 (Marina Monti)21/1/2025
Nominated BEST BRITISH TRUE-CRIME PODCAST, 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation Channel's Top 20 True-Crime Podcasts, also seen on BBC Radio, Sky News, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week.
Welcome to the Murder Mile UK True-Crime Podcast and audio guided walk of London's most infamous and often forgotten murder cases, all set within and beyond London's West End.
EPISODE TWO HUNDRED AND EIGHTY-ONE:
On the weekend of the 24th and 25th of January 1987, two sex-workers vanished from two street (Sussex Gardens and Cleveland Terrace) near to Paddington Station. With their beaten, strangled and mutilated bodies found barely 24 hours apart in places where they didn't belong. The police quickly confirmed that a crazed killer was on the loose. But still unsolved today, it remains one of the most perplexing unsolved double murders in Britain. But who was he? MURDER ONE:
THE LOCATION:
The location is marked with a red symbol of a 'P' just by the words 'Bayswater' off Paddington Station. To use the map, click it. If you want to see the other maps, click here.
SOURCES: a selection sourced from the news archives:
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: Welcome to Murder Mile. Today, I’m standing on Sussex Gardens in Paddington, W2; the street where Doris Jouanette became the Blackout Ripper’s last victim, where Agnes Walsh was brutalised by the ‘sad faced killer’, where Ruby Bolton, Sharon Pickles and Kathleen Moloney picked up punters, and where Amanda Walker was last seen before being mutilated by the sadistic ‘Honey Monster’ - coming soon to Murder Mile. As a busy tree-lined street just south of Paddington Station, by day Sussex Gardens is a peaceful row of cheap B&Bs, but by night, it’s a one stop shop for the drug addled and the sexually desperate. With cars pulling up on every corner to greet a shivering wreck in a mini skirt and fish-net tights, having bartered a price for her pussy, what follows is either grunting in a doorway or a head bobbing in a bush as their feet dodge heroin needles like a spiky assault course and crack addicts straining to shit. It may seem like a nightmare, but as we’ve seen many times before, this is a place where (for more than a century) destitute women have traded their bodies to bad men - some of whom end up dead. On the weekend of the 24th and 25th of January 1987, two sex-workers vanished from these streets just south of Paddington Station. With their beaten, strangled and mutilated bodies found barely 24 hours apart, the police quickly confirmed that a crazed killer was on the loose. But who was he? My name is Michael, I am your tour guide, and this is Murder Mile. Episode 281: The Vice Girl Killer – Part One. As with most cases involving prostitutes, many witnesses refused to give evidence for fear of perjuring themselves, so much of their lives remain as mysterious as the motive for these senseless killings. Born in Edmonton, North London on the 13th of September 1959, Marina Alexandra Monti was one of at least two daughters to Froukje Poelstra, a native of Limburg in the Netherlands who had lived in the Yemen prior to coming to England, and Angelo Monti, a man of Italian heritage. As a petite pale-skinned girl with deep blue eyes and dark black hair, she had the exotic look of both of her parents. Little is known about her upbringing; where she went to school, where she lived, or what her parents did. It was said she had married a man called Neil Carter, but there was no proof that she ever wed. Across the sixties, seventies and most of the eighties, Marina didn’t make many (if any) ripples in life, as with few documents and nothing in any papers, it’s as if she didn’t exist, and soon she wouldn’t. By the turn of 1987, Britain was in a wintery slump; unemployment was high, the pound was weak, AIDS was that decade’s deadly pandemic, several massacres (the King’s Cross fire & Hungerford) were brewing, we were months away from the Black Monday financial crash, and in the second week of January, the Big Freeze had blanketed parts of the UK in 30 inches of snow, with the rest cold and icy. These dark cold streets mirrored Marina’s life, as with her family having left England for warmer climes (later moving to Australia), except for her on-and-off boyfriend, 27-year-old Marina was on her own. For several years, Marina had scraped together a basic living by selling sex on the streets, in recent weeks she’d begun living in a shabby DHSS hostel at the Shelbourne Hotel in Kensington (where 25 years before, Churchill’s forgotten super spy Krystina Skarbek was murdered), and with at least one conviction for soliciting, unable to hold down a legitimate job with a regular wage, she wasn’t only trapped in a vicious circle of poverty due to her past but because she was hopelessly hooked on heroin. Saturday 24th of January 1987 was a bitterly cold night as Marina walked the icy streets of Bayswater and Queensway. Dressed in red knee-length boots which matched her lipstick, and carrying a white shoulder bag (full of all her essentials, like make-up, a hair brush, underwear, condoms, her purse, tin foil and a lighter to cook up her drugs), although petite and pretty, with the streets being so deathly quiet on this hellishly frozen night, she couldn’t be as choosy about which punter she’d have sex with. At the back of the Bayswater tube station, from 9pm to 10pm, Marina earned £30 having satisfied an unnamed punter in The Lion Court Hotel at 26 Prince’s Square, a disreputable hotel where you could rent a bed by the hour. With a solid alibi, he said she had told him “I gotta go, I gotta get my stuff”, by which she possibly meant her heroin fix, and said “I gotta be in All Saints Road and need £50 by 11pm”. She left a little after 10pm, but never said who she was meeting, or why she had to do it by that hour. That was her last confirmed sighting. But who was she meeting? Was it a dealer who she owed money to, a pimp who she was afraid of, or someone who had threatened to kill her, and (possibly) others? If it was to buy drugs, it seems odd as she’d cashed-in a benefits cheque for £240 (roughly £350) that day, and even though her and her boyfriend both had an £80-a-day habit, she didn’t go to All Saints Road to score any heroin. So having not got high since that morning, her withdrawal was kicking in. Across her final hour alive, the flu-like withdrawal symptoms had taken hold of her body; her muscles ached, her stomach twisted, even amidst the frozen air she sweated with a red hot fever, and feeling sick, irritable, anxious and depressed, all she could think off was drugs, which clouded her judgement. By 10:30pm, having travelled in the opposite direction to Sussex Gardens, two miles south-east of All Saints Road, an anonymous prostitute stated she saw Marina touting for business, her red boots, white bag and red lipstick making her stand out. She spoke to no-one, she didn’t seem distressed, and at sometime between 10:45pm and 10:50pm, an unknown punter in an unseen car picked her up… …and there she vanished. Nobody saw her leave Paddington, nobody heard them drive along the Bayswater Road to Shepherd’s Bush, nobody sensed anything suspicious as they headed up Wood Lane, past Wormwood Scrubs prison and its desolate scrubland, and just shy of a defunct stretch of the Grand Union canal, this small car turned right into an isolated unlit layby used by truckers, work-crews and prostitutes. Not wanting to be seen by the police, it was a perfect spot as the sound of sex is muffled by a steady slew of trains heading east and west, and with no houses nearby, neither party would be arrested for lewd conduct. At a little after 11pm, around the time that Marina had planned to meet a man in All Saints Road, over Scrubs Lane and just shy of the Iron Bridge, a signalman working the nightshift at the Mitre Bridge junction box – an elevated cabin beside the railway, where he pulled levers to change the signals and redirect trains onto different lines - spotted the headlights of a car from roughly 150 feet away. Being dark, he couldn’t tell its make or colour, but he knew why it was there having witnessed this before. With the car’s inside light off, he saw nothing. Because of the trains, he heard nothing. And with this small two or four door car parked up for just four or five minutes, he suspected nothing was wrong as it drove away. He continued his nightshift, ate his sandwiches, and thought nothing more about it… …and yet, the Vice Girl Killer had made his first kill. At 7:15pm, 40 minutes before dawn, a security guard at the Scrubs Lane railway depot spotted what he described as “a bundle of rags in the layby”. Shimmering in his torchlight, this tiny tragic lump was covered in a light dusting of frost having been dumped at least six hours before, but it was as his torch shined lower, that it illuminated the bare pale legs of a small woman curled-up in the foetal position. With rigor mortis two-thirds complete, detectives determined she had died between 9pm and 11pm. Found in a familiar layby, the initial investigation stated it was likely that this unidentified women was a prostitute who had been driven here for the purposes of sex, and although the press said she was partially clothed, she hadn’t been stripped or sexually assaulted, as being found without any knickers, this was common in the sex trade as it speeds up the sexual transaction, as time (literally) is money. The same was said about her dark-red knee-length boots. Her feet were bare but clean when she was found proving that she hadn’t walked there or got out of the car, and as prostitutes often remove their shoes as this makes it easier to have sex in cars, the Police believed she’d been killed just before the sex. But for some reason - known only to the killer himself - he had taken with him, her red sexy boots. With her white shoulder bag missing, it was suspected that this was a robbery, but although she had cashed a £240 benefits cheque, it was impossible to tell if she had spent it, lost it, or he had stolen it. What was known was the method of her death. In the darkness of the car, he had brutally beaten her about the face, breaking her nose, fracturing an eye socket and leaving her features a bloody swollen mess, and with an unidentified ligature - said to be either a tie or a stocking - he had strangled her. As with the boots and bag, having squeezed every last breath out of her, he took the ligature and left nothing behind to identify him; no footprints, no fingerprints, no semen and no hairs. The small car (whose make and colour was impossible to tell, as on a moonless night even whites can look black) had left a few tyre marks, but after a night of drizzle and a top layer of frost, they were barely legible. For the Police, this seemed like the familiar killing of a prostitute by a punter… …but had the Vice Girl Killer already moved onto his second kill? Just 7 years after the Yorkshire Ripper, 45 years after the Blackout Ripper, 51 years after the Soho Strangler and almost exactly a century after Jack the Ripper had terrorised Whitechapel, a serial-killer of sex-workers still haunted the memories of every citizen and detective. Every time a sex-worker was found slain, it made them ask “is this a new ripper?”, as although improbable, it was always possible. Because of those killings and the frequency of which sex-workers are assaulted or raped by drunks or a slew of sad men seeking someone to blame for their own failings, sex workers often work in pairs or bring their pimp or boyfriend along should the client get rough. But they can’t always be there. The second murdered girl was 24-year-old Rachael Applewhaite. Born on the 7th of February 1963 in Gloucestershire to a loving father, mother and sister, it was said that Racheal Ann Folkes (as she was christened) had a solid and loving upbringing being raised in a hard-working lower-middle class family. Later moving to the West Oxfordshire district of Carterton, although little is known about her early life, it wasn’t burdened by trauma or tragedy, and unlike Marina, she hadn’t been abandoned by her loved ones. She was educated, she had worked, and – aged 19 - although she believed she was madly in love with a man called Grantley Applewhaite in Autumn 1981, sadly their marriage didn’t last a year. By the end of 1982, she had left home. She wasn’t a runaway as she had nothing to run from, but with her village being a too quiet for this ambitious teenager, she headed to the bright lights of London. As a big city with lots of thrills and danger, it could have been the making of her, but within the year, ending up homeless, penniless and depressed, 20-year-old Racheal was earning a living on the streets. No-one sets out to sell their body for sex, but as a lone girl who drowned her sadness with drink, she made use of what life had given her just to survive. Being mousey blonde with hazel eyes and a petite Size 10 frame, she would have known that her girlish looks would attract men, and in turn, she’d live. Between 1983 and 1987, for four years, Racheal Applewhaite barely existed, except in a few mugshots having been convicted of soliciting, her weekly signature when she cashed in her dole cheque, and at the check-in for her DHSS hostel in Earls Court where she lived with her boyfriend, not far from Marina. They weren’t friends, but some said they knew each other. It’s uncertain if they knew each other’s name, but as young women who worked on the same unlit streets, faced the same dangers, maybe had the same pimp, and probably picked up the same punters, they may have warned each other of the men to look out for. Their connection may have been merely a quick nod in passing, or perhaps they didn’t know each other at all, but they could never know that they’d be linked in a tragic fate. Saturday 24th of January 1987, the same bitterly cold day that Marina was murdered, Racheal was in her DHSS hostel, with her 20-year-old boyfriend Ian. They’d been together for just six months, but the honeymoon was over, as too often being broke, they spent their meagre earnings on alcohol. The press said Racheal was a heroin addict, but this was wrong, as unlike Marina, drink was her demon. That day, she received no calls, no visitors, she didn’t seem usually upset and she had no-one to meet. That evening, on a small black and white television, Ian & Racheal watched BBC One. At 5:20pm was US sitcom Perfect Strangers, at 5:45pm was the now-problematic kids TV show Jim’ll Fix It, and as the fluffy British sitcom Hi-De-Hi started at 6:20pm, Racheal got changed into a black jumper, a blue denim skirt and blue shin-length denim boots. Escorted by Ian, they walked to Earls Court tube station and caught the District Line tube to Paddington, where she plied her trade just shy of this bustling station. Just three streets south and almost identical to Sussex Gardens, Cleveland Terrace is another street where – even today – punters pick up prostitutes and shabby little rooms can be rented by the hour. Standing on the eastern edge of Cleveland Terrace near to the station, it was a perfect spot being busy but discrete, opposite the Prince of Wales pub and nearby to a raft of unlit car parks, garages or mews where – spending a maximum of 25 to 30 minutes per client – she could assuage their sexual needs. Ian said they had arrived a little after 7pm, and even though a blisteringly cold wind howled, it wasn’t long before a car pulled up. It was a small, two-doored, orange Mini, its licence plate unknown. Being tiny, it wasn’t the easiest car for two adults to have intercourse in, but it wasn’t impossible. According to Ian, the man was polite as he discretely engaged Racheal using all the right lingo in this illegal affair; (him) “you busy?”, (her) “no, fancy a date?”, (him) “sure, hop in”. And as was his duty, Ian had a brief look at the man to check he wasn’t dodgy or suspicious, and having given his okay, they drove away. Quite how he could tell if this man was mad, bad, twisted or sinister having barely had a brief glance at him in an unlit car on a dark street, yet he later couldn’t recall the man’s face, as he’d been drinking. By 7:05pm, Racheal was gone, the car having headed north up Westbourne Terrace, either leading to a side street, a mews, a park, or onto the Westway leading to Wood Lane, passed Wormwood Scrubs and up Scrubs Lane, where 12 hours later, Marina’s battered and strangled body would be found. By 7:30pm, he had expected her back, but she was nowhere to be seen. By 8pm, he was getting a bit peeved, as even on a cold night, she could hope to have sex four or five times, and several new punters had passed by. By 8:30pm, he was growing worried as she was never this late. And by 9pm, about the time that Marina had entered the Lion Court Hotel with her client, she’d been missing for two hours. Every time, it must have crossed his mind that she was in danger, but no-one expects a serial killer… …and although one was said to be lurking nearby looking for women, this time she was safe. Just after 9pm, Racheal arrived back on Cleveland Terrace, where he had last seen her. She was unhurt, she was smiling, and she was drunk. Having gone to the pub, she’d spent the money she’d earned on drink, and with Ian being furious, they argued. There was no violence, but as she tried to get into a cab Ian pulled her out and as their angry words reached an impasse, they walked off in different directions. This rift was not uncommon for Ian & Racheal, as they always knew they’d make up and would return to the same vicious circle. Had they made up right then, she would probably be alive today. But although Ian was back at their hostel at 11pm, as seen by eyewitnesses, he never saw her alive again. That night, she vanished a second time. Three and a half miles west, Marina Monti’s body lay dumped in an unlit layby beside Mitre Bridge, it growing ever colder and stiffer, as a faceless man with no known motives drove away in a small car. He had fled, taking her boots, bag and the ligature. Across the night, he had probably washed his car, cleaned his clothes, destroyed any evidence, and gave himself an alibi for the hours he was missing. His method was neither the work of an amateur nor a professional, and yet it didn’t make sense to kill her; he hadn’t raped her, they weren’t seen, there were hints of sadism or perversion (but maybe her boots and her bag were merely missing, having been left in his car by mistake?) and if it was robbery, why would anyone steal from a destitute woman, who had usually spent all of her money on drugs? That night, he might have checked the radio for reports of a woman’s body being found, but with the next day’s newspapers (even the Sunday evening edition) reporting nothing, did he believe he had got away with murder? Did it make him feel braver, did it not fully assuage his sickness, or was he merely a pimp reprimanding one of his street girls, or a drug dealer who was taking more than he was owed? Racheal had vanished… and yet again, by the morning, she was found alive and well. As an alcoholic, she had returned to the warm bosom of booze, having stayed at a friend’s house in West London. On Sunday 25th of January 1987 at about 12.30pm, as the police carted Marina’s body to the mortuary, out of the blue, Racheal phoned John, her father in Oxfordshire, having not spoken in a while. She told him she’d split from Ian, they were living apart, but like the rest of the family, he didn’t know that she was a prostitute. She never said why she called him, but maybe she just wanted to hear a kind voice? Across those next nine hours, again Racheal was nowhere to be seen… …and yet, her final sighting alive would be the epitome of strange. At 9:30pm, Deborah Mezen of Illford, who knew Racheal both by sight and name, saw her enter The King's Head at 132 Edgware Road, just two streets south of Sussex Gardens and Paddington Station. Racheal was said to be drunk, and was sitting with a man she assumed was a punter. Said to be olive-skinned and maybe wearing a ski jacket, it wasn’t him who drew Deborah’s attention. The clothes Racheal was last seen wearing - a black jumper, a blue denim skirt and blue shin-length denim boots with a white stripe – were gone. Instead, she was dressed in a maid’s outfit. Not the kind a sexy French maid would wear in a fantasy, but a cheap, navy blue, hotel maid’s two-piece outfit made of Polyester. It was generic, dull and being one size too big for her, it hung off her bones like a set of rags found in a skip. Described by some as a smock, complete with a purple blouse and a purple hankie in her breast pocket, but oddly possibly no shoes, it looked as if she was here to make the beds and clean the loo. It was so bad, it was laughable, and as Deborah and her friends began to mock Racheal across the bar, known to have a fiery temper especially when drunk, Racheal started to argue. With their fight broken up by the landlord at just before 10:30pm when ‘last orders’ was called – said to be ‘so drunk she was incapable of walking’ – Racheal left the pub carrying a white plastic bag, and was followed by the man. She had vanished twice before in the last 24 hours, but this time would be her last. (End) By Thursday 29th of January 1987, just four days later, detectives appealed for witnesses, they stated they were looking for a “very violent man” and had confirmed in the press “we feel that both cases are linked”. The murders of Marina Monti & Racheal Applewhaite were too similar to be coincidental. They were both young female prostitutes who picked up clients just off Paddington Station, they were acquaintance who were murdered within a day of each other, they had both been beaten, strangled and dumped, their boots, bags and certain items of clothing were missing (and never to be seen again), and both bodies were found in isolated spots far from where they were picked up. With the only difference being that Racheal’s injuries were much more brutal, and some say, deliberately sadistic. Posters were plastered across the city by the Police featuring their faces and the headline of ‘Murder’ ‘do you know them?’. Witnesses were slim, evidence was limited, and with few suspects, it remains a case which is as perplexing even today. Seeking a man with a history of violence against prostitutes, the police questioned (and in some cases arrested then released) several pimps, punters, prowlers, perverts, drugs dealers and addicts, even going so far as to question a security guard in South Africa. The investigation was thorough, so diligent were the detectives in their mission to convict their most likely suspect that is caused an uproar in the Houses of Parliament, upset several embassies, unsettled some precariously balanced diplomatic relations, and led to an intervention by the Home Secretary. Having got a taste for blood, there were more deaths to come, and with one man soon be arrested on suspicion of murder, was he the Vice Girl Killer or was this double-murder just an odd coincidence? Part two of three of The Vice Girl Killer continues next week. The Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast has been researched using the original declassified police investigation files, court records, press reports and as many authentic sources as possible, which are freely available in the public domain, including eye-witness testimony, confessions, autopsy reports, first-hand accounts and independent investigation, where possible. But these documents are only as accurate as those recounting them and recording them, and are always incomplete or full of opinion rather than fact, therefore mistakes and misrepresentations can be made. As stated at the beginning of each episode (and as is clear by the way it is presented) Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast is a 'dramatisation' of the events and not a documentary, therefore a certain amount of dramatic licence, selective characterisation and story-telling (within logical reason and based on extensive research) has been taken to create a fuller picture. It is not a full and complete representation of the case, the people or the investigation, and therefore should not be taken as such. It is also often (for the sake of clarity, speed and the drama) presented from a single person's perspective, usually (but not exclusively) the victim's, and therefore it will contain a certain level of bias and opinion to get across this single perspective, which may not be the overall opinion of those involved or associated. Murder Mile is just one possible retelling of each case. Murder Mile does not set out to cause any harm or distress to those involved, and those who listen to the podcast or read the transcripts provided should be aware that by accessing anything created by Murder Mile (or any source related to any each) that they may discover some details about a person, an incident or the police investigation itself, that they were unaware of. |
AuthorMichael J Buchanan-Dunne is a crime writer, podcaster of Murder Mile UK True Crime and creator of true-crime TV series. Archives
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