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-SIX:
On 1st January 1932, in the attic room of 27 Old Compton Street in Soho, 19-year-old domestic servant Edith McQuaid gave birth to a baby boy. Whether he died of natural causes, or she took his life by infanticide will never be known. But she wasn't alone. Edith was one of 1000s of women who concealed the pregnancy, the body of the dead babies or murdered them at birth across the United Kingdom, and yet, it wasn't there fault, as this national scandal had been raging for centuries.
THE LOCATION:
The location is marked with a bright green symbol of a 'P' just by the words 'Soho'. 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 Old Compton Street in Soho, W1; ten doors up from the bombing of the Admiral Duncan, three doors west of the Battle of Frith Street, opposite the gangland hit at the Golden Goose, and two doors from Charles Bertier and the deadly ‘big arms’ quip - coming soon to Murder Mile. At 27 Old Compton Street currently stands a five storey Georgian townhouse from 1781, with high windows and a shop on the ground floor. Today it’s an Italian restaurant called Pepe, where customers waddle out rubbing their bellies groaning “why did I eat so much”, having only planned to nibble a Caesar salad, but was ‘forced’ (they claim) into wolfing down a bowl of antipasti, six loaves of olive-topped bruschetta, a battalion of gnocchi, a metric tonne of pasta, a fistful of parmesan, a pizza so big they had to demolish a whole wall to get it in, and a tiramisu so colossal you could bathe in it. Heaven. But from 1927 until at least 1932, the four floors above was the luxurious West End des-res of wealthy widow, Mrs Lewis. With a whopping 10 rooms, the 1st and 2nd floor was Mrs Lewis’ private abode with its own bathroom, sitting room, dinette and kitchen, on the 3rd floor was her stylish bedroom, and in the loft space was storage, a room for her housekeeper, and a box bed for her servant, Edith McQuaid. As an unmarried 19 year old working-class girl struggling in an era where unfair laws were against her, she was doomed to failure as society decreed what she could or couldn’t do, what was right or morally wrong, and like many women that year, a death sentence hung over her for the infanticide of a child. My name is Michael, I am your tour guide, and this is Murder Mile. Episode 286: The Black Cap Farce. March 1932, The Old Bailey. It had been a short trial, almost perfunctory with the evidence of her guilt as clear as the tears which flowed from her sullen eyes. Judged by a jury of her peers, many of whom (being both men and women) couldn’t look in the eyes as the foreman proclaimed her ‘guilty’. Behind the bench, the Judge nodded with a resigned sigh, he declared “for the killing of a bastard child, I sentence you to death” and upon his white wig, he donned his black cap, a silk square of black silk which the terrified young girl knew what it meant. Judge: “you will be taken from here to whence you came, and there be kept in close confinement, and upon said day, you shall be taken to a place of execution and there be hanged by the neck until you are dead. May God have mercy on your soul”. Barely able to stand as fear ravaged her pale limbs, she sobbed like she had never sobbed before, as the guards dragged her down to the cells to await her fate. She was barely a child, but it wasn’t her fault, as the same law which condemned her to death, condemned her to a life which wasn’t her own. The killing of an infant by its mother has been a tragic phenomenon throughout history, but it wasn’t until 1624, in the reign of James 1st, that an act of law ‘to Prevent the Destroying of Bastard Children’ required that “if a lewd” (meaning an unmarried) “women could not prove that her child had been born dead, she would be tried for its murder, without a need for the prosecution to prove a live birth”. In 1803, Lord Ellenborough, the Lord Chief Justice sought to clarify the term ‘abortion’, and introduced an Act in the all-male House of Lords to crush a woman’s right to decide what she could do with body or her unborn baby. Any termination before 16 weeks, any concealment of a pregnancy and any failure to report a baby’s death during child birth, resulted in transportation for a minimum of 14 years... …or death. Tuesday 2nd of February 1932, Hull in the north of England. At the back of an allotment on Selby Street, a plate-layer working on the railway line spotted a small delicate bundle wrapped in brown paper. He often found junk cast among the bushes, but it was as he unwrapped it, that he saw a tiny pale foot. An autopsy confirmed that this baby boy was not even a day old, and with “no marks of violence, the body had been treated gently” by someone who clearly loved him, but knew she couldn’t care for him. Three weeks later, CID arrested 28-year-old Miriam Forsyth who confessed “it was born upstairs when mother was out. It cried very little, I put it under the bed, then it went quiet", and being charged with the “unlawfully disposing of a child and concealing the birth", her sentence was passed. “Guilty”. But what has this got to do with Edith McQuaid and her dead baby? Nothing… and everything. 1932 was an era of change. With the world still struggling from the Great Depression and the seeds of a second World War looming, that year saw the founding of the British Union of Fascists, the National Hunger March saw street battles by millions of unemployed men, John Logie Baird had demonstrated a precursor to television two streets east in Soho, and even though, Amelia Earhart became first woman to make an non-stop transatlantic flight, the world was pushing towards a brighter and more technological future, yet the laws which governed women’s bodies remained centuries in the past. Born in 1913, Edith was a working-class girl from East London, whose family (it is said) originated from Ulster in Northern Ireland. Her start in life was as unremarkable as most therefore we know little about her life. Educated to a basic level, aged 14, she left school, only she was not expected to have a career, just a low-paying job as a domestic servant to a lady of the kind of class she could never hope to be. Raised as a Protestant to Victorian parents in the progressive 1920s, whereas some girls experienced a sexual freedom unlike those before them, being poor, it’s uncertain what Edith knew of love or sex, if she even knew anything as the life she lived was dictated by society and those who made the laws. In 1930, aged 17, she started working for Mrs Lewis as a servant at her main home in Golders Green. Scrubbing and serving 14 hours-a-day, 6 and a ½ days a week in a job which was physically demanding, given basic food and board with next to no time for herself, and paid a paltry sum of just £3 per week. That was her life, but it was about to change forever. In April 1931, having met an unnamed man – maybe a friend, a lover, a fellow servant, or a relative of Mrs Lewis – what began as a friendship blossomed into something bigger and with hormones raging, their bodies entwined in a loving embrace. The love was exciting and the sex was brief, but with Edith soon discovering that she was pregnant, before those words left her lips, the child’s father was gone. She never uttered his name at the inquest or the criminal trial, but as a young unmarried girl, she was in a predicament she had never experienced before, and she would face it alone; if her family found out she was pregnant, they’d disown her; if her employer found out, she’d lose her job; if the law found out, her baby would be taken from her and she’d be branded as sinful, and left homeless and destitute. This was a scandal which could ruin her life… it also forced her to make a deadly decision. Friday 5th of February 1932, three days after the baby’s body was found in Hull, on the western side of Southwick Green in West Sussex, George Stevens, a greenskeeper found a small parcel. Wrapped in newspaper, he too drew his breath as protruding was a tiny pale foot. Again, an autopsy showed no marks of disease, disability or violence on this baby boy who was carried to full term, but around its neck, a long bandage had been wound three times to strangle him. An investigation failed to find its mother, and although unrelated, it was the second of two dead babies found here within three days. Was this a murder? Yes. Was the culprit evil in the eyes of the law? Yes. Did the public see her as cruel? No. But what has this got to do with Edith McQuaid and her dead baby? Nothing… and everything. Edith’s scandal was one not of her own making, and she could do almost nothing about it. She couldn’t keep the baby as she was unmarried, and she couldn’t terminate it as the law prevented it. She had two options; carry it to full term, and either face the consequences, give it up for adoption, or kill and dispose of it herself, or (illegally) try and terminate it, before anyone knew she was due. It’s easy to say ‘well why didn’t she not have sex’, but with sex education almost no-existent (especially in a Protestant family of the 1930s) and with even basic contraception not available for the masses via the NHS until 1961, between 1923 and 1933, 15% of all maternal deaths were due to illegal abortion. For thousands of women every year, across the 1920s and 30s, many had no choice but to resort to a back street abortionist; an unnamed man of dubious qualifications who – for a substantial fee - sluices out her womb with a caustic solution of acids and disinfectant, fishes out the foetus with a wire scraper and flushes it away, with every unsanitary action risking infection, injury, coma and her own death. A less risky but equally dangerous option were purgatives, which – as an open secret – were advertised in newspapers as “a cure for menstrual blockages”, and although many were illicit compounds of ergot and tansy oil, many resulted in seizures and organ failure. Some women tried even harsher methods, like overdoses, vaginal plunging, a stomach punch or a fall down a flight of stairs. Some were fatal but many did nothing but injure, and although we can’t be certain, it’s likely Edith had tried these too. Which is not to say that these women were alone. Many doctors were sympathetic to every woman’s plight and - sick of seeing the untold suffering and death sweeping the land in the name of morality and religion - disagreeing with the law, although abortion was illegal, risking their own careers, many doctors signed off the baby’s death certificate as ‘puerperal sepsis’, a severe (and incurable, before the invention of penicillin) bacterial infection, also known postpartum infection or childbed fever. Across the 1930s, women’s rights groups and Members of Parliament repeatedly called for changes in the law as the death toll rose. In 1934, with the Conference of Co-operative Women calling for the legalisation of abortion, this led to the establishment of The Abortion Law Reform Association in 1936, and – with the tide of public opinion turning – to cut the number of mothers and babies unnecessarily dying every year, in 1967, the Abortion Act was passed, allowing legal terminations up to 28 weeks. It was centuries too late, but a start, and to ensure that it wasn’t prohibitive for the poorest of women, along with contraception, all abortions were free through the National Health Service, as it is today. Sadly, these changes in the law and society came too late for Edith McQuaid and the unwanted baby in her belly, as across 1932, more babies meant more deaths and more grieving women, who – given the chance - could truly have loved their children rather than being so terrified of the consequences… …of being single mother. Wednesday 3rd February 1932, two days before the dead baby was found in West Sussex, and one day after the one found in Hull, an unmarried 25-year-old woman walked into Cinderford police station in Gloucestershire, having been seen throwing her baby into the River Severn. Jilted by her fiancé, she had tried to put it up for adoption, but with her homelife unpleasant, she later claimed “my child could do better off elsewhere”. The icy cold river was searched, but all that was found was the baby’s glove. By the August of 1931, being (she guessed) three or four months pregnant, Edith was lucky to be able to hide her sin and disguise her changing body as her uniform was baggy and she was short and a little bit plump. No-one noticed an ounce added daily as this insignificant little girl grew, just as long as she scrubbed, polished and fetched over long days with very little breaks, but her body couldn’t cope. Whereas once she was a small but sturdy girl, hormones had loosened her ligaments making standing, lifting and bending difficult, as stabbing pains and cramps gripped her legs, pelvis and back. Headaches and congestion left her sluggish, piles and constipation left her distracted, and along with dizziness, confusion, leaking breasts, vaginal discharge, as well as swollen ankles, hands and feet, it wasn’t long before Mrs Lewis was alerted by the daily sounds of Edith retching and enquired “are you expecting?”. In the 1930s, there was no sick pay, no maternity cover and no employee tribunal, you were hired to do a job, and if you couldn’t do that job, you were sacked, losing your wage, and in Edith’s case, food, a warm bed and a safe place to hide from the bitter wind and wagging tongues as the scandal brewed. Whether she had a plan will never be known, but the same month she was tried for murder, more babies were found dead having been murdered by their mothers, stuck in a dire situation like Edith’s. Tuesday 2nd of February, the same day that the baby boy was found in Hull, a dead baby girl was found in Leicester wrapped and dumped in a discarded pan. Thursday 18th of February, a baby boy was found in Bayswater, dead for five days and its skull fractured. Sunday 21st of February, Leeds, 19-year-old domestic servant Doris Dowling was arrested after her dead baby boy was found hidden in a suitcase. And on Wednesday 24th of February in Belfast, Annabella Hunter confessed that over five years, she had “unlawfully concealed the bodies four newborn babies by enclosing them in a box or a suitcase”. Across the early 1930s, dead babies were being found dumped at a rate of one every few days, having been concealed and miscarried, or murdered by their mothers before they breathed their first breath. Those cases of infanticide you’ve heard from across February of 1932 were just the tip of the iceberg. Was this an epidemic? Yes, so much so it was debated in Parliament, but unlike a disease, it was one that could be cured with the stroke of a pen to eradicate the unfair laws which ruined so many lives. The final months of Edith’s pregnancy were the worst, as alone and frightened, she hid the truth from her parents, employer, and possibly her friends for fear that one of them would blab. With her lungs, heart and stomach twisted and displaced into a part of the body it didn’t belong, she was exhausted. But it would have been the psychological consequences of the changes in her body which hit her worst. It wasn’t understood in the 1930s, but prenatal depression affects 10 to 15% of women, being caused by physical and emotional changes, increased stress, broken sleep and exhaustion, all of which Edith would have suffered as a lone young girl with no experience of childbirth and no-one to protect her. It wasn’t a failing in her mental make-up, as anxiety, panic attacks, irrational fears and mood swings are common in pregnancy, and although many women who murder their babies may have a history of depression, psychosis or schizophrenia, a rapid drop in hormones like oestrogen and progesterone can trigger mania, psychosis, paranoia, hallucinations and – in some cases – it can lead to infanticide. In fact, babies under the age of 1 are the demographic most likely to be murdered. Edith confided in no-one about her fear as she lay alone in her coarse horsehair bed at 27 Old Compton Street, feeling every kick as the baby grew bigger, and knowing there was nothing to stop its arrival. Whether she was in the grip of depression or if her mind was unbalanced will never be known, but we know one thing for certain, had those unfair laws been changed, the baby inside her may have lived. Friday 1st of January 1932, New Year’s Day. As the sun rose across Soho’s frosty streets, the New Year's revellers staggered home with booze on their breaths as their sozzled merriment made way for a piddle against a wall. That night, Mrs Lewis had held a party at her flat, but with her guests and herself having gone, it was Edith’s job to tidy up. At an unknown hour, in the quiet of the attic, having laid newspapers on the floor to soak up the blood, standing upright (for fear of staining the sheets), Edith gave birth to a baby boy as silently as she could, clenching her fists to fight back the pain and gritting her teeth so her screams became just a muffle. Her boy was pale, tiny, but weighing just 5lbs, he went to full term but was badly malnourished. At her inquest, she said little about his death, except “the baby did not move or cry. I thought it was dead”, which could have been true as the mortality rate of babies in the 1930s was almost one in ten, and with no-one to help her – no midwife, no mother, no friends - we only have her word to go on. The Coroner would ask “did you hit the baby with an object?”; as skull fractures suggested to the pathologist Sir Bernard Spilsbury that “considerable violence caused these injuries... likely caused by a fall” as Edith claimed having given birth standing up, “by banging it’s head on some hard object” such as the floor, “or even an axe” as in the course of her duties, Edith admitted she used one. The baby was alive when it was born, we know that, but if she had committed neonaticide, the wilful murder of a baby by its parent in its first 24 hours, according to those who knew her, she was cold, distant, emotionless and confused, she would state, “if I had murdered my child, I cannot remember it” as that day and all of the days since had become a blur as if none of it had ever happened. But there were other reasons why the baby could have suffered such horrific injuries. Fearful that Mrs Lewis or the housekeeper would discover her shameful secret, believing the baby to be dead when in fact (Sir Bernard would state) “it was alive but in a coma”, she had wrapped the silent baby in her bloodied petticoat, put it in a hessian shopping bag, hung it on the back of a kitchen chair, and – being unaware of its contents – the housekeeper admitted she had dropped it, at least twice. The baby in the bag was found by a neighbour on the 4th of January, four days later, having spotted its tiny pale foot sticking out, and although a doctor said it was “cold, but alive”, it died moments later. As was procedure, Edith McQuaid was arrested, taken to Vine Street police station, and charged with the concealment of a pregnancy and a body, denying a burial, and the wilful murder of a bastard child, which – 33 years before the abolition of capital punishment – was punishable by a death sentence. She refused to name the father (but possibly she didn’t know him), she said that no-one knew about the baby (but perhaps she was protecting them), and although she claimed she had given birth at Charing Cross Hospital, she couldn’t recall any details, she wasn’t listed as an admission, and described as “in a state of shock and confusion”, although a prisoner, the officers didn’t treat her like a criminal. On Thursday 18th of February 1932, the same day that a baby boy was found dead in Bayswater, Edith pleaded ‘not guilty’ but was charged with wilful murder at Great Marlborough Street Police Court. Permitted to sit in the dock, the magistrate Mr R E Dummett quietly listened as she wept through her testimony. Sympathetic to her plight as he had heard many cases similar to hers in the preceding years, and - that month alone – so had most magistrates from Hull, West Sussex, Leicester, Gloucester and Belfast to London, but with enough evidence to convict, she was committed for trial at the Old Bailey. Clerk: “Foreman of the jury, how do you find the defendant?”, Foreman: “Guilty”. And with a resigned sigh, the judge declared “for the killing of a bastard child, I sentence you to death” and upon his white wig, he donned his black cap, and proclaimed her fate “you will be taken from here to whence you came, kept in close confinement, and upon that day, you shall be taken to a place of execution and there you will be hanged by the neck until you are dead. May God have mercy on your soul”. (End) As with so many mothers whose poor mental health or dire situation resulted in infanticide, Edith’s punishment was her execution, only she never made it as far as the gallows or even the Old Bailey. In 1922, 10 years prior, the Infanticide Act was introduced to differentiate it from murder and recognise the socioeconomic stresses put on pregnant women, especially those who were poor and unmarried. It effectively “abolished the death penalty for a woman who deliberately kills her newborn child while the balance of her mind is disturbed”, but with the law slow to catch-up, women like Edith still had to be sentenced to death, even though in most cases the charge was often later reduced to infanticide. It was a cruel pantomime caused by the laws failure to catch up, and even among the judges who were duty bound to enforce it while the lawmakers dithered, it became known as ‘the black cap farce’. With the magistrate deciding that murder could not be proven, and with Edith in a very clear state of distress, she was charged with infanticide and the lesser offence of concealment, and taking pity on her, she was bound over for two years, and sent to a convalescent home for six months to recover. Her trial was not unique, many of the women we mentioned whose babies were found dead were sentenced to death, but few saw prison time, some were sent to asylums, many were acquitted, but the last women to be executed for wilfully murdering her own child was back in 1849. That’s how long the tide had been changing, but with the lawmakers slow to react as society changes, it took a century. After her release from convalescence, Edith McQuaid disappeared from records, it is unknown if she married, had children and went on to lead a happy and fulfilling life as a mother… but let’s hope so. 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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Murder Mile UK True-Crime Podcast - #285: The Suitcase of Death (Jemma Mitchell / Mee Kuen Chong)19/2/2025
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.
9 Brondesbury Park @Googlemaps2025 / April 2015
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-FIVE: On Friday 11th of June 2021 at 6:23am, 34-year-old Jemma Mitchell left her home at 9 Brondesbury Park in Wilsden to visit her friend and fellow Christian Mee Kuen Chong known as Deborah. She was wheeling behind her an empty blue suitcase, five hours later, the suitcase was full and her friend was dead. But why?
THE LOCATION:
The location is marked with a brown symbol of a 'P' just by the words 'Kilburn'. 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 Brondesbury Park in Wilsden, NW6; four roads south of Karl Hulton’s bungled taxi heist, three roads east of the botched burglary of Bernard Cooper, four roads south of the little drummer boy, and three streets west of the PIN number murder - coming soon to Murder Mile. Brondesbury Park is a middle-class street where most homes sell for £1-4 million. Being a bit showy, it’s easy to imagine that many neighbours are desperate to outdo one another; if he has a garage, you build two; if she has a pond, you dig a pool; if they decorate with Laura Ashley wallpaper at £100 a roll, you cover the outside walls in Armani with gold leaf; and if they dare have an open-plan kitchen, you hire a 24 hour in-house Michelin-starred chef to deliver you mega cheese toasties in bed. Sorted. It may sound pretty pathetic, but for some people, their life is that kind of one-upmanship. Back in 2015, at 9 Brondesbury Park stood a little two-storey house. Compared to the others, it was modest and simple, but desperate to keep-up with the Jones’, Jemma Mitchell and her mother Hillary decided to renovate and add an extra floor. Anyone else would have killed to live in this lovely little home on a nice street in a good part of town. And yet, to finish the build, that’s just what Jemma did. My name is Michael, I am your tour guide, and this is Murder Mile. Episode 285: The Suitcase of Death. On the surface, this may seem like a story about two friends who truly cared for each other. And it was. But whereas one was dedicate to their friendship, the other had just one thought – money. Born in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia in 1954, Mee Kuen Chong was raised in a loving hard-working family during the peak of the Malayan Emergency, a brutal guerrilla war between communist rebels fighting for an independent state from their colonial oppressors, and (of course) the British who were fighting to protect their economic interests in Malaya. Across 12 years, of those reported, 2400 civilians and 6700 soldiers were killed, many were imprisoned, and at least 810 men and women simply vanished. For the Malayans, the fight it was for freedom, for the British it was about money and power. Agreeing to independence in 1957, the state of emergency ended in 1960, and the country went on the flourish. Mee, who everyone knew as Deborah, was a spiritual women and a passionate Christian who had seen a lot of hardship and grief in her community, and believing that she must always help those in crisis, she opened her door to any strangers for a hot meal, some clean clothes and a safe place to sleep. By the 1990s, as she entered her 40s, with both Britain and Malaysia in an economic boom, Deborah came to the UK for work; she married, she became a British citizen, she and her husband worked hard, they saved, they paid off their mortgage, and although not considered wealthy by any standards, being financially astute, they ensured that they would live comfortably without worry into their later years. Sadly, it was not to be, as with her husband dying and her family back in Malaysia, she was left a widow with no children, but aided by her good friends as well as her faith, she was safe and secure… for now. Since at least 2003, Deborah had lived in a modest two-storey semi-detached house at 196 Chaplin Road in Wembley, a nice middle-class enclave where the neighbours looked out for one another, and valued at almost £700,000, having retired with her mortgage paid off, she was comfortable and well. Described as small (being just 5 foot 2 inches tall) and slim (about 7 stone and 10lbs), Deborah was no threat to anyone, and said to be “chatty and sweet with a childlike nature”, to assuage her loneliness, she rented out her rooms to lodgers, but always planned to leave her home in her will to the homeless. Only this wasn’t just her home, this was her church. At the start of 2020, Deborah’s home on Chaplin Road was registered as The Sons & Daughters of The King, a charity providing support for survivors of abuse, human trafficking, sexual exploitation and it counselled those who had experienced coercion and domestic violence. Using their Christian faith as a cornerstone, Deborah and her friends bought safety and support to those who needed it most. Deborah thrived on helping others, only she was also struggling herself. Five years earlier, her friends had noticed that she’d become more passionate, animated but increasingly paranoid, and although a small frail pensioner, her irrational actions had already caused one lodger to move out. In 2015, her doctor noted in her records that she was suffering from “acute stress and a schizoaffective disorder”, which resulted in moods swings, anxiety, depression and risky behaviour, especially around money. As a lone widow, a community mental health team assessed her, she was prescribed antipsychotic medication, and across the next few years, she stabilised. Her faith, her friends and her charity work kept her happy and safe, and yet a new friend in her life who she trusted would destroy everything. Born in Australia on 22nd of July 1984, Jemma Mitchell was raised in Altona North, a Melbourne suburb where families live in peace, and as one of two daughters to their mother Hillary who worked at the UK's Foreign & Commonwealth Office, they never went without and were both educated well. In 2000, aged 16, Jemma’s family came to Britain after her parents divorced, and gifted a great start in life; she was educated at the prestigious King Edward's boarding school in Surrey; in 2004, she began a degree in Human Sciences at King's College London in which she excelled in experimental anatomy and human dissection, she graduated with a First, she was awarded the Hamilton Prize for Anatomical Excellence, and later became a qualified osteopath having studied at the British School of Osteopathy. She was intelligent, confident and impressive, she could achieve anything she set her mind to, but as her old friend, Nick Novachevski would later say “money issues always bought out the worst in her”. In 2008, Jemma returned to Melbourne and practiced as an osteopath – detecting and treating health problems by the manipulation of muscles and joints – where she remained for seven years and owned her own home in Helensvale, a suburb of the City of Gold Coast in Queensland. She was a success, she lived a good life, she was well liked, respected and was later described as ‘a woman of good character’. But one problem bought her back to Britain with a bump… …and that was their family home in Brondesbury Park. Flying back in 2015, Jemma instantly began struggling, as although educated here, not being registered with the General Osteopathic Council, she couldn’t practise as an osteopath in Britain. Living off her savings, those stresses causing a deep rift with her sister, culminating in her being issued with a non-molestation order (banning her from intimidating or harassing her sister and brother-in-law), but as a prickly and highly strung individual, she breached the order and was given a conditional discharge. With the family fractured, and with Jemma being unmarried, jobless and childless, their family home at 9 Brondesbury Park became her obsession, and needing renovations, it also became a money pit. In October 2015, the house was a basic two-storey, three-bedroomed, brown-bricked detached block from the 1930s, it was nothing special and all it really needed for this family of two was modernising. It was a perfect little home, but envious of her neighbours, in January 2018, they had the whole thing reduced to rubble, with the plan to replace it with a three-storey monstrosity with two kitchens, two bathrooms and at least four bedrooms, which was of equal size to the homes either side, if not bigger. Jemma wasn’t working and Hillary had retired, so their savings had to fund the build entirely. But by adding an extra floor and paying out £230,000 to two builders, one of whom had refused to complete the work, by the end of 2019, they had no savings, no roof, and the building was barely fit to live in. Covered in scaffolding, with two floors not even watertight, Jemma & Hillary lived on the ground floor of this unsafe half-built home, and over the next year, they let it go to ruin. Prosecuting lawyer, Deeana Heer KC stated “everywhere there were boxes, suitcases, freezers, old mattresses, filth and building materials. The kitchen was dirty, with rotting food on the stove… paperwork covered the surfaces... the bathroom was stained and in a poor state of repair, and it looked like a hoarder's residence". Through their own greed and neglect, their dream had become a nightmare… …but what had any of this got to do with Deborah Chong? To escape the stresses of the renovations, as a Christian, Jemma needed an outlet, and like Deborah, her faith was her sanctuary. In August 2020, just weeks after we all experienced a little hit of freedom after the first Covid lockdown, they met at a church they both attended, and they become firm friends. This wasn’t a ploy by Jemma to snare a likely victim, they really were good friends, as the 100s of text messages between them would testify, and seeing that Deborah still struggled with her mental health, Jemma used her skills as an osteopath to help her and many others who attended the spiritual healing sessions at Deborah’s home, of which Deborah later said "I was being healed by Jemma and Jesus". With 33 years difference between them, Jemma often acted like a protective daughter to Deborah, as she struggled to walk unaided, and (exacerbated by the lockdown) even with medication, her paranoid schizophrenia ran rampant. On 1st of March 2021, her mental health team were alerted by theFixated Threat Assessment Centre at Buckingham Palace that Deborah believed she was in a relationship with Prince Charles, that he spoke to her through YouTube, and that, although unthreatening in any way, she had sent a series of bizarre letters to the future King, and the then-Prime Minster, Boris Johnson. Deborah was physically frail, mentally unstable, and with her schizophrenia causing her to make risky financial decisions, she was vulnerable and needed protection from those who would exploit her generosity. And although, Jemma offered that protection, what she saw in Deborah wasn’t a friend… …but a big fat bank account to refill her money pit. As Detective Chief Inspector Jim Eastwood who led the investigation would state “desperate to obtain the money she needed to complete the renovations, (Jemma) took advantage of Deborah’s good will”. For almost a year, from the month they first met to the month she would murder her, Jemma applied continuous pressure to get Deborah to transfer £200,000 to her own bank account and even suggested that (to avoid inheritance tax) that she should sign over her £700,000 house in Wembley to herself. Deborah was vulnerable… but she was still financially astute. Seeing that Jemma had let her home go to ruin, she (rightly) berated her for living like a “hoarder”, she wisely advised her “more construction will cost more money you don't have. Sell the house, enjoy the money, life is too short" as even unfinished, the house was worth at least £4 million. But with Jemma too stubborn to listen, on the 7th of June 2021, Deborah rescinded her offer to financially help her, and the next day, Deborah texted Jemma: “until you sell house, I won't want you to come to me or my house. I'm stressed to the core". Money had split their friendship apart, the house lay in ruins, and even though Jemma still had £93,000 in the bank, this co-called devout Christian would break at least three of the Ten Commandments… …such as ‘thou shalt not steal’ and ‘thou shalt not kill”. On Friday 11th of June 2021, Britain was emerging from a second lockdown, as schools re-opened but non-vital shops were shut, with masks and social distancing mandatory. With Jemma suggesting they meet, Deborah agreed with the caveat ‘no talk about house or money’ but her fate was already sealed. At 6:23am, her face hidden by a black hat, scarf and a Covid mask, Jemma exited the plywood gates of her half built home at 9 Brondesbury Park; her backpack filled with cleaning products, an orange rope, a saw, bin bags and possibly a hammer, and she wheeled a large but empty bright blue suitcase. She was alone, the streets were empty, and as she rode the tube to Wembley Central, it was only a 45 minute trip to Chaplin Road, but arriving at 8:01am, it’s likely she stopped for supplies, maybe a knife. That day, the lodgers were out and Jemma knew that as she rang the bell. Over the door, a sign read ‘agape selfless love for all’, meaning to sacrifice oneself to help others, and though that’s how Deborah lived her life, Jemma was only here to help herself. As planned, she was let in, they sat, had a cup of tea and chatted, but what happened inside will never be known, except that Deborah never left alive. Pathologist Dr Curtis Offiah said “she sustained a complex head injury at or around her time of death", but due to decomposition, it couldn’t be determined if she’d been hit with a blunt object or against a hard surface, whether accidentally or intentionally. Either way, no surface or weapon was ever found. With her either unconscious or dead, Jemma tied her up using the length of orange rope, and carefully opening each drawer with gloved hands so as to not make it look like a burglary, she stole Deborah’s bank cards, passport, driving licence and naturalisation papers – everything she needed to steal her life savings – and having gained access to the room of Virgil Gheorghita, a lodger who had died just a few months earlier, she also stole his passport, his ID, his statements and his defunct mobile phone. It was premeditated, it was callous, it was cruel, and it was all for the sake of money. Then possibly in the bath, making full use of her human science degree and award winning knowledge of human dissection, she cleanly cut-off of Deborah’s head. Why she beheaded her remains a mystery. Maybe it was to disguise her identity, as Deborah’s corpse was then stripped and redressed in clothes meant for a larger women, possibly to make the police believe she was a refuge, rather than a citizen. With the wound wrapped in towels and tape, in an act of outrage at being denied the money, Jemma stuffed Deborah’s tiny body into the bright blue suitcase with such force that she snapped several ribs and dumped the head in the corpse’s lap. She cleaned-up so thoroughly that the lodgers didn’t suspect a thing, and even the forensics team would later struggle to find a print, a hair, DNA or blood spots. At 1.13pm, five hours later, a neighbour’s CCTV captured Jemma leaving the house; in the backpack was her ‘murder kit’ (which would never be found), a small red suitcase belonging to Deborah was filled with paperwork, and the blue suitcase was almost 8 stone heavier than when she wheeled it in. Over the next two hours, she tried to drag both cases the full five miles back to Brondesbury Park, but with the wheels buckling under the weight, and frequently needing to kick them to get it moving (and cursing the corpse for making this so difficult for her), after nine failed attempts, she hailed a taxi. And in the mess of Jemma’s half-built house, the body festered for the two weeks that she laid low, only leaving her house twice; once to have her finger set at St Thomas’s hospital having broken it when she attacked Deborah, and to go on a date at London Zoo with a man she met on Christian Connection. But such a popular, kind and vital woman couldn’t simply vanish without anyone noticing. With her lodger reporting Deborah missing, posters were placed across London and with an appeal by the police, as the last person to text her, they questioned Jemma who claimed “she went to stay with friends close to the ocean, she had been depressed", but Jemma knew that soon they’d find the body. On Saturday 26th of June 2021, even though she had her own car, using the dead lodgers credit card, Jemma hired a blue/grey Volvo XC40 from Hertz at Brent Park. Hidden by the gates of her drive, with a white plastic sheet underneath, she heaved the blue suitcase into the boot which stunk of decay and having re-activated the dead lodger’s phone, she plotted a route to Devon, leaving her phone at home. Why she chose to drive to Salcombe is unknown, but as one of the most south-westerly parts of the UK, it took her 4 hours 30mins to travel 215 miles, with brief stop for fuel and coffee outside Bristol. According to the GPS, she was heading to Bennett Road, a remote spot surrounded by woodland, very few houses and seaside coves along the Kingsbridge Estuary, by then being just 2 and a ½ miles away… …but that day, luck was against her. On Island Street, her front left tyre blew, the oversized car ground to a halt on this tiny alley barely big enough for one car, and speckled with a bar full of locals and a branch of the Co-op, she drew a crowd. Running on a flat and with no idea how to fix it, she limped the car to Marlborough Garage on Gould Road, where Lee Gardin, an AA mechanic stated that she looked “shaky, distressed and confused". The car’s tyre was flat, the spare was in the boot under the suitcase with the headless body in it and with the stench permeating – which he described as “a very odd smell… something I’d never smelt before" - he only saw blankets and pillows as Jemma opened the boot removing the spare tyre herself. It was 8:49pm, barely 30 minutes before dusk, when the car left the garage on four fully-inflated tyres. Her plan was to bury the body, hiding it where it would never be found, but with the dark approaching and strange cars likely to raise suspicion, in a remote spot on Bennett Road, she wheeled the suitcase down a set of stone steps (of what was in fact a public footpath), she dumped the body behind a fence, tossing the head (missing two spine bones and the larynx) barely 30 feet away, and then drove home. Having had it valeted, she returned the car back to Hertz shortly before 7am on Sunday 27th, and after all that planning and preparation, she flung the bright blue suitcase on top of her neighbour’s shed. The body was found that morning by a dogwalker. Four days later, they found the head. And although she had been stripped of any ID, bafflingly her handbag contained a piece of orange rope, excerpts of The Bible and a business card of an evangelical church that both Deborah & Jemma regularly attended. On 30th of June 2021, to aid her alibi, Jemma filed missing person’s report. But there was no concern shown, only for herself. On the 1st of July, the day the head was found, Jemma forged Deborah’s will leaving 95% of the £700,000 estate to herself as a trustee, and the rest of it to her mother, Hillary. The faked will was supposedly signed off by Deborah herself and witnessed by Virgil Gheorghita (who was dead) & Sanjay Samson (who hadn’t seen her since 2013), but it was clear Jemma had copied their passport signatures, having first read a handy guide called 'The Dos and Don'ts of Claiming an Estate'. With murder established, the Police had one suspect – Jemma Mitchell - the last women to text the victim before she went missing, and armed with CCTV from both houses, and (even though she had thoroughly cleaned it) inside the suitcase pocket she’d left a tea towel with traces of Deborah’s DNA, on 6th of July at 11:45pm, officers kicked down her door and arrested her, and yet she didn’t ask ‘why?’. The evidence was clear as day to Detective Chief Inspector Jim Eastwood. They had CCTV footage from Brondesbury Park, Chaplin Road, Hertz rental, St Thomas’s hospital, Marlborough garage and the Co-op on Island Street. Witnesses statements from the lodgers and the mechanic. Sections of the orange rope was found in Jemma’s home, along with the dead lodger’s phone, passport and bank details. They also found the fake Will which had been backdated to 27th October 2020, and the original which left everything Deborah owned (including her home) to her charity, The Sons & Daughters of The King. And bafflingly, Jemma’s wall calendar on which she had written: “June 26, 8am, collect body”. (End) Held on remand at HMP Bronzefield, 34-year-old Jemma Mitchell appeared via video-link at Wilsden Magistrates Court in which she pleaded not guilty. Tried in Court 12 of the Old Bailey from the 11th of October 2022, Deanna Heer KC put forward the “basic and bald" evidence, with Jemma’s defence that there was none of her DNA found, that the day-trip Salcombe was a spontaneous holiday, and with her half built house worth £4 million and £93,000 in her own bank, she had no motive to kill Deborah. The jury deliberated for seven hours, being asked to consider “a charge of manslaughter if she had cut off her friend's head and disposed of her body, but had not intended to kill her”, as she later claimed. On the 27th of October, Judge Richard Marks KC summed up “you have shown absolutely no remorse and you are in complete denial as to what you did, notwithstanding the overwhelming evidence. The enormity of your crime is profoundly shocking, even more so given your apparent religious devotion and that Deborah Chong was a good friend who had shown you great kindness". She was sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum of 34 years, and won’t be eligible for parole until October 2056. Speaking outside of the court to journalists, Jemma’s mother Hillary defended her daughter by stating she was “absolutely agog” that she had been convicted with “so little forensic evidence”, and although an appeal was lodged, again citing the fact that no blood was found in Deborah’s home, again it failed. Jemma’s motive was pure greed not desperation, as with money in the bank, a home overseas, a good career she could always return to, a qualification she could easily pass, and a modest two-storey three-bedroomed house in a nice part of town, her wealth wasn’t enough for her and it drove her to kill. Now, because of her greed and selfishness, she is stuck inside the smallest room she’ll ever live in, a prison cell measuring six feet by eight, with a poor view, a lumpy bed, a snoring cell-mate, bland food, no freedom, and if she’s ever released, she’ll be the same age as Deborah when she murdered her. 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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5 Westbourne Park Road - Copyright @Googlemaps2025 April2019
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-FOUR:
Monday 31st of October 1960, at 5:30pm, the body of 53-year-old William Davies was found inside the top-floor flat of 5 Westbourne Park Road in Bayswater, London, W2. There was no sign of a break-in, no struggle and no obvious robbery. He was found on his knees, with a knife in his chest, and even though all the evidence pointed to this being a suicide, the police knew it wasn't.
THE LOCATION:
The location is marked with a black 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: this is just a selection from various sources:
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: Welcome to Murder Mile. Today, I’m standing on Westbourne Park Road in Bayswater, W2; one street north of the suicide pact of Barbara Shuttleworth’s unrequited lover, one street west of the old lady killer, two streets north-west of the fake SAS initiation, and one street south of the cat pate - coming soon to Murder Mile. At 5 Westbourne Park Road stands a three-storey brown-bricked Georgian terrace. As is typical in this area, it has pretentious white doric columns on either side of the door as if an ancestor of Julius Caesar lives there, when it’s probably a corporate lawyer called Farquar, his Russian dial-a-bride whose name looks like someone fell on a keyboard, their two sons Tarquin & Fortesque, a daughter called Avocado Plum Cake, and they all have their own scooter rack, briefcase tree, humus maker and S&M dungeon. Back in the 1960s, being more of a rundown area, this was a slightly better than average lodging house, where – it was said, using a parlance of its day –some of the lodgers were of an “artistic persuasion”. With homosexuality still illegal and punishable by a fine or some prison time, this was considered a safe space for its residents, one of whom was a 54-year-old openly gay butler called William Davies. With his life having taken a tragic turn over the two years prior, William had grown despondent with what his existence had become and seeing no happiness in his future, he took his own life. And yet, a small (and almost insignificant) detail told a bigger picture; one of greed, lies, and (possibly) murder. My name is Michael, I am your tour guide, and this is Murder Mile. Episode 284: Dead Man’s Hand. Monday 31st of October 1960, as dusk broke and the evening set in, the casual murmur of communal living echoed inside of 5 Westbourne Park Road. Owned by the landlord Ernest Kyffin, in the basement and ground floor lived Ms Margaret Morris with her best friends Ken Tylisen & actor David Hart, the first floor was split into two for Mr & Mrs Fermie and Mr & Mrs Perrin, on the second lived William’s sister Annie (only that week she was on holiday), and the small attic flat was occupied by William. Being about 5:30pm, the tenants were coming home, checking their post, popping the TV’s and radios on, and Ken’s dog barked excitedly as the house filled with the smells of cooked meat and potatoes. It had been an ordinary weekend as everybody went about their business in this pleasant little house where they all looked out for one another. It was typically quiet, as they all respected each other’s privacy, they were never any issues and as he always did, Mr Perrin had popped a half pint of milk and the Sunday papers on the second floor landing for William… only 36 hours later, they were still there. At 5:35pm, as he had been unwell and was going through a rough patch, being a good neighbour, Mrs Perrin and the landlord climbed the stairs up to the attic to check that he was okay. Nothing raised their suspicions; the landing light was on, but then it often was; the single window was shut, but the night were cold; and the bedroom door was open, which is how William often left it when he was in. With the light off, the only illumination was an orange glow from the gas heater which cast a shadow across the bed, it being empty except for the bedsheets and pillows piled up. In the dark, William was nowhere to be seen, but then having switched on the light, they froze at the tragic sight before them. PC Hudson arrived at 5:40pm to secure the scene, and at 6pm, Doctor Roughton certified him as dead. As was standard procedure in any suicide, a detective was called in to establish the facts, in this case, it was DI Walters. As an experienced officer, the scene was a familiar one; with no signs of a break-in, no marks suggesting a struggle, nothing obviously stolen and with none of the tenants having seen or heard anything usual in the last 36 hours, it was likely that the perpetrator of this crime was William. Beside the bed, lay two glass tumblers and a cup; one had a brown liquid in it said to be ale bought as an off-sale from a pub hours before his death, one had water in which he’d used to take two headache tablets (the empty Aspro packet on the bedside table), and the only fingerprints found were William’s. Witnesses state that at the bars he visited that night – The Prince Albert, The Oak, The Three Bells, The Redan and the Carmalite Club where (as an openly gay man) he was known – his blue overcoat, grey suit and waistcoat he had draped over the armchair, his beret and bowtie was on the dresser, and still wearing a green pullover, no underpants but a pair of cord under trousers, the police report states “this is a type of clothing a person who indulges in perversion would wear”, meaning anal sex. As expected from a gay man who often bought men home, the sheets and pillows had been arranged, as the police report states “to assist in some form of gross indecency”, but with no cuts or bruises to his body, on initial inspection, either the sex was loving and consensual, or it hadn’t taken place. A while later, William had slipped on his brown suede shoes as if he was planning to escort that night’s date out of the flat, and as heard by several of the tenants, the man then calmly left of his own accord. Nowhere in the room was a suicide note found, but then with his head clouded by grief, it’s unlikely he was thinking of others in his final moments alive. Standing alone, the evidence showed that with a six-inch sheath knife in his right hand, he had plunged it two inches deep into his left lung and with the blood dripping vertically and not one drop anywhere else as he didn’t flee or stagger, having pulled the blade out of his chest, he slumped to his knees where he was found, his arm and head on the bed. By the time his body was discovered, rigor mortis was complete and he hadn’t been moved. The Police report states that “it was suggested that this was a case of suicide”, that a lonely gay man wracked with grief and despair had tragically killed himself, possibly after one last rejection of a potential lover. But what had driven him to take his own life? Born on 2nd of February 1906 near Port Talbot in Wales, William Davies was one of five siblings raised in the mining town of Cwmafan. Being thick with belching chimneys and the clank of industry, as a delicate boy who enjoyed reading and hated that everything he touched was caked in a layer of coal dust, he knew he wasn’t built to be a labourer or a miner, and sought out a place he would fit in. Educated to a decent level, although at least one sister and a brother were teachers, William did his bit for King & Country by serving in the Army during World War Two, but for the bulk of his career, he worked in hotels as a silver service waiter, and later became a prestigious butler at Fishmongers Hall, Buckingham Palace and five months before his death, he was a butler at Princess Margaret’s wedding. Said to be easy going, cheerful and sociable, everyone agreed he was chatty and fun, but 1958 was a bad year for William, and although he painted on a smile, it saw the start of his downfall. With his asthma getting worse and his lungs so weak he sometimes struggled to walk, he was forced to live on benefits, and with a feeling of shame, his sister had to pay his rent and gifted him a weekly allowance. Those who knew him said he was quiet and pleasant; the shopkeepers said “he was a good customer”, across most pubs in Paddington they said “he drank, but never caused any trouble”, he had only one criminal conviction being the theft of an Easter Egg to give to his sister, he had a small pocket of close friends and no enemies, and although by 1960 it was still illegal to be a homosexual in Britain, he was openly gay, he flaunted his flamboyance, and he was well known on the gay scene as ‘Bert the Queer’. For several years, William had lived with an older gentleman, a grey-haired well-dressed civil servant called Percy Sellers, they lived together in a flat off Westbourne Park Road with his sister Annie, and the two men lived happily as a couple. Percy was his love, his life and his everything, but in 1958, at the delicate age of 71, Percy died suddenly, leaving William alone, but also broken and distraught. He was lonely, tired, sick and in the quiet of his room, he often got depressed. His autopsy, conducted by Dr Francis Camps, confirmed “the blade penetrated the upper lobe of left lung causing massive haemorrhage… it was consistent with the knife and its subsequent withdrawal”. Asked if it could have been an accident, Dr Camps stated “it’s almost impossible to have been caused by falling upon the knife unless in some grossly abnormal posture. Further, had the full weight of the man’s body fallen upon this knife, penetration would certainly have been greater”. With scarring due to asthma on his lungs, it was confirmed that this had hastened his death, which took barely a minute. On the surface, it looked like a regular suicide... …yet the truth was lying in the dead man’s hand. The man who had visited William’s flat that night was 21-year-old Istvan Szabo, a Hungarian refugee. Born in Tallya, a small village 35 miles north of the capital on the 13th of February 1939, he was raised in poverty and conflict as the Second World War loomed on the horizon. With Hungary having sided with the Axis Powers (Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy & Japan), even before he was able to speak, Szabo’s country was chaotic, as in 1944 they unsuccessfully tried to switch sides to join the Allies, they suffered under the Soviets and the establishment of the People's Republic in 1949 lead to the Hungarian uprising in 1956, which culminated in Soviet tanks invading and the Hungarian people fought back. Leaving school aged 12, he aided his father in running their small farm and although he was a labourer at the stone quarry, the uprising gave him a reason and an opportunity to flee. Alone, aged 17, Szabo entered England as a refugee on 12th of January 1957 (about the time that William’s lover died) and billeted at Butlins Holiday Camp in Skegness, he was registered as an alien on the 20th of October 1959. He had no family, no friends, he spoke modest English, and for the two years he was here, he struggled. Based on his record, he tried hold down several jobs – as a labourer in Deepcar, as a miner at the New Monkton Colliery in Barnsley, as a machinist at a textile factory in Preston, all short term jobs for small pay – but being immature and lacking intelligence, he also got several small convictions for wounding, twice taking a car without permission, the theft of some food and the forging a postal order for £2. He was hardly a big time gangster, but a silly mistake by this stupid boy would change both their lives. In October 1959, having moved to London, this should have been the fresh start he needed, only once again he treated life like it was game. Across the next year, he had three jobs (as a labourer, a servant and a kitchen porter) which he lost or left in quick succession, he served six months in prison for theft, and upon release began working as a packer at an office furniture company earning just £9 per week. As far as we know, Szabo didn’t know William, and they were as different as chalk and cheese. William was an immaculately-dressed poetry-loving butler who was polite, quiet and caring. Szabo was a thick-set uncouth youth with a crew-cut, who was grubby, rowdy and rough looking, and in an impenetrable Hungarian accent, he tried to speak like an East End gangster, only this always came off as laughable. Besides, set aside their 33-year age difference, and everybody knew that William was gay. He wasn’t only openly gay, he was flamboyantly gay, and yet, as a lad who it was said ‘liked the girls’, Szabo was raised under homophobic laws of the Soviets, so it doesn’t make sense that they would ever meet… …but they did. Saturday 29th of October 1960. At 1:45pm, William waved goodbye to his sister Annie at Paddington station as she headed off for a week to see her family in Port Talbot. With no real plans that weekend, William met his pal, Janie Irons outside her flat, and sat in their usual seats at the Three Bells Club. Drinking a half pint in each pub, such as The Redan, The Prince Albert and The Oak, they were said to be merry, and Janie recalled “William looked as if he was expecting to meet someone”, but never did. “He never said who this person was, but he was often on his own and would happily talk to anyone”. With ‘last orders’ called at 10:30pm, they headed back to Janie’s flat to watch the telly until shutdown at 11:25pm, he was said to be as chatty as always and expressed no grief or gripes, and (although the evidence suggests he ended his life that night), he made plans to meet Janie for lunch the next day. At 11:30pm, as he regularly did, he headed a few doors down to the Carmalite Club at 57 Westbourne Grove, a gay-friendly member’s club where he was known and liked. He signed in as ‘Mr Sellers’, the name he used when his beloved Percy was still alive and this was their nightly hangout, but after 30 minutes, he told Reginald Rice, the owner “I’ve had enough to drink. I’m going home to bed”. He was wearing the clothes he died in, he was alone, he was in a good mood, and no-one followed him out. Those details were corroborated by multiple independent witnesses, yet although he was seen and heard arriving home at 12:20am, that seven minute walk took him almost triple the time. But why? The only eyewitness to the missing minutes was Szabo, who Janie (William’s closest friend) confirmed she had never met before, and neither had his sister Annie, or the tenants who he lived with. Szabo would claim “I was going home from Praed Street to St Stephen’s Gardens”, a route which goes along Westbourne Park Road, “and this bloke followed me. I couldn’t get rid of him. I tried going fast, but he started running after me”. William wasn’t known to be predatory, but he was lonely and drunk. Szabo would later claim “It was midnight, he catch me, he say good evening, he ask me ‘what about a drink’ as he have no-one to keep him company”, and being a statement so speckled with inaccuracies that it ignores that fact that William was more than double Szabo’s age and had asthma so bad that running was almost impossible, that Szabo did drink, and although the police report states “there is little doubt that they went there for the purposes of indulging in homosexuality but what transpired in the room will never be known”, if Szabo wasn’t gay, why did he willingly enter a gay man’s flat? At exactly 12:20am, they entered 5 Westbourne Park Road. We know that, as hearing the door, Ken’s dog started barking at the stranger, and coming out of the ground floor bathroom, both Ken and David stood just inches away from William and Szabo, at which William introduced him as “my friend”. They went up to the attic flat, the door was locked behind them, and none of the tenants heard a sound. According to Szabo, they both had a glass of ale, and once this was drank, William suddenly turned. “He went down on his knees and pulled my zip off. He says to show him my body. I told him I won’t”. The boy said he was terrified as the older man kissed his neck, “he says I have nothing to worry about if I do what he says”. Szabo tried to flee, “but he took the key. He says sit down. He started to undress and he told me to do the same. Then I told him I won’t do it”. It was then that William pulled out the knife. “He say he like me very much. He say he kill me if I do not. And as he lift his hand”, in a stabbing striking motion, “I grab his wrist, twist the knife round and kicked him with my knee in the bollocks”. In Szabo’s own words, he was defending himself from being raped by a predator, but as William fell with the knife in his hand, ”he fell on the bed and the knife run in deep in his chest. He tried to get up but he couldn’t. I seen the knife was in his hand. I got frightened, I was scared to death, I ran”. That was his statement, and although entirely possible, it was littered with mistakes. They arrived at 12:20am, the attempted assault supposedly occurred after one drink, but as Margaret on the ground floor heard Szabo calmly leaving (not running) at 2am, what happened in those missing 90 minutes? He said William fell on the blade, but the autopsy states this was impossible. The bed was disarranged “with the pillows placed to assist some form of indecency” as the police report says, but if Szabo had fled before any assault by William took place, why were faint bruises and scratches found on William’s body but not Szabo’s, why was William missing £3 that his sister had given him, why was William’s anus dilated consistent with anal sex and why did a swab test on it prove positive for semen? It can never be proven to be Szabo’s, but if William was a rapist, how did he get Szabo to violate him? Initially, the only fingerprints found in the room and on the drinking glasses were William’s, but later finding a partial print on a bottle, we know he wiped his prints off everything he touched, but missed that. There also didn’t seem to have been a robbery as the room looked neat, so (although he claimed he was in panic) he tidied up, and took a cigarette case, brown leather gloves and a leather note case. At the time that William’s body was found, Szabo bragged to his lodger “I had a fight and stabbed a bloke”, stating with glee details only the killer would know, “I struck him in the left breast. He fell to his knees gurgling and blood came out of his mouth and nose”, and eerily mirroring the autopsy’s assumption, “I put his gloves on, pulled the knife out, wiped the fingerprints off and stuck it back in his dirty hand” as if he had stabbed himself. When the lodger asked “what was his name?”, Szabo replied “William Davies”. Only, that Sunday night, this supposed suicide hadn’t been reported in the papers and he claimed he didn’t knew William’s name, as in his statement as he only called him ‘the bloke’. As for the knife, none of William’s friends or family recall him owning one, but when Janos Puskop, a colleague of Szabo’s was questioned, he stated that Szabo owned an identical sheath knife engraved with the maker mark of ‘William Rogers’, having been threatened with it just three days prior. On Wednesday 2nd of November 1960, with the ‘supposed suicide’ now confirmed as ‘a murder’ and the newspapers stating that police were seeking a man matching Szabo’s description, armed with his woefully flimsy alibi, he gave himself up to PC Victor Ridge who was on duty in St Stephen’s Gardens. Taken to Notting Hill Police station, he repeated to Inspector Walters “I don’t know this man. I have never seen him before”, but he still gave himself time to brag “he came at me with a knife. I blocked his arm. I have done a bit of judo. He fell on to the bed. I saw blood. I got up and ran for my life”. At 5:30pm, he gave a voluntary statement, but by 9:40pm, they had charged him with murder. For the police and the pathologist, at first glance “it was suggested that this was a case of suicide”, but they both knew that it wasn’t. Upon his arrest, William’s lodging was searched, and along with the possessions he had stolen, he had recently burned some letters on the fire (their contents impossible to determine), blood was found on his jacket sleeves which he had hastily tried to sponge-off (only that wouldn’t have been there if he hadn’t touched the knife as his statement claims), and he also had a key ring with 14 keys on it; one for his room, one for the front door, one for his bike, several for his work, and one for the street door at 5 Westbourne Park Road, and one for the door of William’s flat. Any killer who had mistakenly taken a key would have thrown it away, but he had them on a keyring? And of course, the final piece of the puzzle was the clue he had left in the dead man’s hand. Although inexperienced in the ways of murder, Szabo had done almost everything right; popping on William’s leather gloves (later found in Szabo’s lodging caked with blood), he used a hankie to wipe off his prints (which he later burned), he pulled the blade from William’s chest (and having seen which hand William smoked with) and placed the knife into his right hand as if he had stabbed himself. It was nearly perfect. The problem was, the blade was facing the wrong way. (End) It was a simple mistake which he could only have known if he had stopped and thought about it. If William had stabbed himself in his chest, the tip of the blade would be facing towards him, not away. Quickly ushered from coroner’s Court to committal at Marylebone Police Court, with such a wealth of evidence against him and the investigation needing only a few loose ends tied up, the trial was held at the Old Bailey on the 12th of December 1960, barely six weeks later, before Mr Justice Thesiger. Pleading ‘not guilty’ to the charge of murder but guilty of robbery, across three days the jury carefully considered the evidence, and yet it didn’t take long for them to come to a conclusion. Guilty of non-capital murder, as they didn’t feel it was premeditated and aggravating circumstances suggested that they were uncertain whether William had lured Szabo to the flat and had attempted to assault him. On the 23rd of December 1960, Istvan Szabo was sentenced to life in prison as the death penalty could not be considered, and with at least 15 years to be served, the judge decreed “should you be released, I recommend you be deported to the country you came from”. With his name being common and shared with a famous Hungarian film director of that era, it is likely he returned home, but uncertain. The trial answered one question, ‘did Szabo kill William’, but why he did it will never be known. If it was a robbery, was William a chance encounter, a planned target, and if so, did Szabo use himself as gay bait for an elderly drunk? And if this was a failed sexual assault, why (if they did) did the men have what resembled consensual sex? It’s a mystery lost in the midst of time, which might have ended up as a ‘death by suicide’, had he not left a seemingly insignificant detail in the dead man’s hand. 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. Murder Mile UK True-Crime Podcast - #283: The Vice Girl Killer - Part 3 of 3 (Justin Martin Clarke)5/2/2025
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.
Noke Lane where Paul Milburn's murder took place @googlemaps April2019
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-THREE:
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:
SOURCES: a selection sourced from the news archives:
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: Wednesday 15th of July 1987, on the last day of the inquest into the murder of Racheal Applewhaite, using his full diplomatic immunity, the police’s primary suspect flew to the safety of Mexico. But having ruled out both cases being linked, Detective Superintendent Jim Hutchinson stated “Guillermo Suarez was no longer suspected in the murder of Marina Monti”, ruling out a spree, a serial, or a lone killer. It's a brutal occupation where some of the most vulnerable women face dangers every night, whether robbery, assault and rape, with sex workers the second most likely demographic to be murdered. Both killings had all the hallmarks of most prostitute murders being attacked by either a punter or pimp, but with every similarity highlighted and every difference dismissed, the fact that two men had chosen that date and place to murder two sex workers in a seemingly identical way was entirely coincidental. Before Guillermo had fled, police were already investigating another suspect in Marina’s murder, stating before the coroner “we believe we know who her killer is, we just can’t prove it”. In their eyes, he knew the West End, he had probably worked as a pimp or drug-pusher in Bayswater, had a history of theft, assault and violence against women especially sex-workers, and was dangerous and unstable. While police and the press mistakenly believed that both murders were connected and that therefore Guillermo must also be the murderer of Marina Monti, that gave her real killer his chance to flee. But who was he? Sources list him by several of his aliases, whether Mark Mellor, Justin Maher-Clarke or Martin Anthony Maher, but in truth, born in Birkenhead near Liverpool in 1956, his real name was Justin Martin Clarke. Few details exist about his early life – his upbringing, his schooling, or why he turned to crime – but what became clear was that Clarke was angry, erratic, selfish and cruel. Everything he did was to suit himself, and with no empathy, other people were merely there to be used, abused and discarded. Said to be six foot tall, well built with broad shoulders and (what was later described as) “mad staring eyes” like Hannibal Lector, it’s unsurprising that he was a bouncer in Merseyside’s roughest nightclubs. But what made him stand out, beyond his gruff demeanour was his accent; strong Liverpudlian with a odd twang of South African, but rapid fired in a high-pitch staccato as if ever word was a red hot bullet. Growing up in a hostel, he began his criminality in his teens, and first gained notoriety under the alias of Martin Maher, when in 1977, aged 21, he was convicted of two burglaries, stealing a TV, jewellery worth £6000, and many irreplaceable heirlooms, leaving both homeowners traumatised. Unwilling to aid the police, he was found guilty and sentenced to two years in prison, but he barely served one. In 1978, as he often did when things got hot, he fled the country. Where he went is uncertain, but we know he joined the French Foreign Legion; a military unit which accepts men from any nation willing to fight for France (which Clarke was, as although he didn’t give two hoots about the French, he loved a good scrap) with the criteria being you had to be young, fit, and with no ‘serious’ criminal record. With the training said to be physically and psychologically punishing, he quickly became adept at hand-to-hand combat, weapons training, survival, urban warfare, interrogation, and escape and evasion. He was trained to fight and to kill, and with his only mission ‘to survive’, he was a fearless brutal soldier. Where he fought is unknown, as in the FFL, anonymity is guaranteed (it own diplomatic immunity), but although in the late 70s and early 80s, the Legion were engaged in bloody conflicts like the Battle of Kolwezi (in the DRC) and in Chad for Operation Tacaud 4 and Operation Sparrowhawk, his accent suggests he had served in South Africa, where they trained the South African National Defence Force. It was the perfect job for a violent man with no compassion, as he learned to hurt others and bend them to his will, and skilled in torture and strangulation, he befriended bad men who ran trafficked women in brothels and kept their girls in check with daily beatings, as well as sadistic mercenaries of a similar psychotic mindset, alongside gun smugglers, drug runners, fascists, warlords and terrorists. By the early 1980s, Clarke returned to the UK, although what year is uncertain, as well as why? It is unknown whether he served the full five years, or if he was arrested or kicked out for war-crimes. But again, possibly having fled when things got hot, London is where he made the most of his ‘new skills’… …as a violent West End pimp. Again, his movements were impossible to pin down as he used so many aliases to disguise his nefarious income. Often, Justin Clarke would state he was just a ‘security guard’ in a Bayswater hotel, when in truth, he was an enforcer for sex traffickers and - it is said - he ran (what was euphemistically called) an ‘escort agency’ which was in reality a low-rent brothel where many girls lived in fear of his wrath. We know he commanded the red-light districts of Bayswater, Notting Hill and Paddington, especially the pick-up spots like Sussex Gardens and Cleveland Terrace, he was feared by the girls who he forced into sex-work, they paid him protection money, and were violently assaulted if they didn’t, or worse. Whether he knew Racheal and Marina can never be confirmed, but it is likely, just as we can never be certain whether both girls were friends or strangers. And yet, we can get a brief glimpse at his life in London based on the type of crimes he was awaiting trial for in 1987, the year of the double murder. In 1983, he deceived the Chartered Trust insurance company out of £3500. Between August 1985 and March 1986, he lived off the immoral earnings of a 20-year-old prostitute from West Kensington who - it is said - “worked for his escort agency”, in August 1985 he coerced or forced another teenage girl into sex-work, in November 1986 he caused the Actual Bodily Harm of prostitute Madelaine Greydon who – again – he had violently beaten and strangled, and on the 15th of January 1987, just one week before both murders, he sadistically beat and robbed prostitute Joann Flynn for the sake of just £20. These were not out-liars in his criminal career, these were the crimes the police had enough evidence to charge him with – and given how rare it is for prostitutes to willingly face their pimp in a court of law, knowing that regardless of the outcome, they would be beaten, disfigured or killed in revenge - his assaults on the prostitutes who were forced to work for him were likely to be frequent and vicious. Which begs the question; was this why Marina Monti was so eager to meet that unidentified man on All Saint’s Road at 11pm, as although she’d cashed a £240 benefits cheque, she needed another £50? Did she know him, did she fear him, or did he find her first and drive her to Mitre Bridge? Across the weekend of Saturday 24th of January 1987 when Marina Monti was murdered and Monday 26th when the body of Racheal Applewhaite was discovered, we have no idea where Justin Clarke was. There was no known evidence of what he was doing, whether he was in Bayswater, Shepherd’s Bush or Kensington, or even if he drove or owned a small light-coloured car, possibly an orange Mini. But one thing we know for certain is that on the day both murders were reported… …as he often did when things got too hot, Justin Clarke fled the country. Like so many elements of these two murders, this could have been a coincidence, as awaiting trial for fraud, ABH and pimping, maybe he was fearful of serving another stint in prison? Or maybe, knowing that murder carries a life sentence, the only place he felt safe was 8000 miles away in South Africa. Entering illegally, under an alias, 31-year-old Justin Clarke hunkered down in the notorious Hillbrow area of Johannesburg, a crime-ridden den of inner-city squalor awash with drugs, sex and death. Again, claiming to be a ‘security guard’ in (what was conveniently) the red light district, he stuck out like a sore thumb being tall and solidly built with glaring eyes, and a voice like he was having a sneezing fit. As one of the Met’ Police’s usual suspects, having been arrested on an illegal immigration warrant, on the 24th of March, three weeks after Guillermo Suarez was released, two detectives escorted Clarke back to the UK, where they reported “he is being questioned about other attacks on prostitutes”. But again, maybe this was just another coincidence? On Friday 3rd of April 1987, although he proved hostile throughout, questioned at Kensington Police station by the same detectives who had quizzed Guillermo Suarez, he later re-appeared at Horseferry Road Court having been charged with fraud, ABH and pimping, as well as the murder of Marina Monti. Held at Brixton Prison, Justin Martin Clarke was tried at Southwark Crown Court on Wednesday 19th of August 1987, just four days after the inquest. On the charge of robbery, as the victim was too afraid to testify, that case was dropped; the fraud was rescinded owing to a lack of evidence, both assaults could not be proven, and with his defence counsel stating “he has always denied committing the murder and any other offence, although he believes the police are convinced he is guilty of murder”… …that day, Justin Clarke walked free. It’s an unsettling thought, but had the police and the press not been so insistent that – being desperate to find a connection linking these two coincidental murders to Guillermo, or a spree or serial killer –this might not have given Clarke enough time to destroy any proof of his guilt, if indeed he was guilty, as with two inquests and one criminal trial having failed, maybe the police were clutching at straws? After the trial, like any innocent man would do, he got on with living an honest life. Said to have moved to Hendon in leafy north-west London, in December 1991, he married Androulla Pallikarou, a Greek lawyer who specialised in wills, probates and residential properties, and that year as a mature student, he began studying law at the University of Luton specialising in Tort law (which deals with civil wrongs). With no known arrests over the next six years and none of his aliases appearing in any newspapers, he didn’t flee the country, he didn’t hastily change his address, and he didn’t frequent his old haunts in Bayswater. In April 1993, after half a decade of freedom, he was a married man who was taking his exams in a degree which could positively impact his life and lead to peace, happiness and harmony… …only crime was always a part of his life, especially killing. As a side hustle, even amidst the peace of St Alban’s, Clarke remained in the shadows of criminality, we know this as he was later charged with supplying class B drugs, and with two associates equally as keen to cheat and steal, they began perpetrating several frauds in which they targeted drug-dealers. The scam was simple; having purchased several kilos of paraffin wax from an arts & crafts shop, they boiled it down on the kitchen hob, added a brown dye, set it using thin baking trays into half kilo bars, added a gold seal to each (taken from boxes of Ferrero Rocher chocolates), sprinkled them with coffee granules and wrapped these nine bars in cling film, so they’d look like £23,000 worth of cannabis resin. As a selfish conman with no empathy, it’s unsurprising that Clarke’s insane brain had spawned this kind of caper, given that he would beat up a prostitute for the last £20 in her purse, or even worse. His victim was Paul Anthony Milburn, a 42-year-old self-employed builder and father of two, who was renovating his semi-detached home on Sunbury Lane in Walton on Thames following his divorce. He wasn’t a big-time drug dealer, as he only did it to when he needed to and he was short on quick cash. On Monday 26th of April 1993 at 3pm, Paul borrowed a pal’s black B-reg Saab 900 turbo, and with a friend nicknamed ‘Ginge’ beside him, they drove 33 miles from his home to a pre-arranged spot at the car park of the Little Chef at Chiswell Green, a roadside eatery off the North Circular at St Alban’s. While families sat eating their Jubilee pancakes, Paul’s Saab pulled up, he saw the two dealers he knew and the four men politely chatted. Clarke was nowhere to be seen, as knowing that Paul didn’t like or trust him, the deal would be off if that psychotic scouser was spotted, having scammed Paul before. Besides, that day, he had been “talking incoherently” and even his own associates didn’t trust him. At a little after 4:20pm, having agreed to buy nine bars of what he thought was cannabis for £2250 a bar, the two cars headed off in convoy to a secluded location where the deal could take place, far away from any cameras, police cars and prying eyes. Barely half a mile south-west, they drove up Noke Lane, a quiet agricultural rabbit-run surrounded by high hedges, long fields and a smattering of farms. The day was bright and clear, and the lane was quiet and isolated, as both cars pulled up, one behind the other. Keeping the mood light with a bit of cheeky banter and blokey football chat, the dealers discretely moved the nine half-kilo bars into the boot of the Saab, and with the deal done, Paul reached into the glovebox to pull out the slightly-discounted £18000 in used notes he’d agreed to pay for it. The scam was done, Paul was unaware that the drugs were fake, and the money was inches away. For the sake of the deal, Clarke had agreed to stay out of the way… …but being the epitome of unstable, from the bushes, he burst out brandishing a US Army .45 calibre pistol, as he ran towards the Saab. Terrified, Paul’s pal ‘Ginge’ fled across the open fields for his life as this thick set ex-soldier ran screaming towards them with his wild staring eyes, but as he frantically tried to start the engine, it was as Paul hunkered down that Clarke slammed his fist into the window. Making a hand-sized hole which showered Paul in shards of glass, it was as the Saab’s engine roared and tried to pull away that Clarke ran alongside it, the wheels mounting on a grass verge as the tyres slipped losing traction. Paul was alone, defenceless and afraid, but it was as Clarke shoved the pistol through the hole, that from inches away, he fired once, and slumping forward, the car ran into a hedge. Entering his right shoulder at point blank range, the bullet passed through his upper ribs, both lungs, his heart, it disabled both arms, and as several massive haemorrhages from all his vital organs flooded his weakening chest with blood, it embedded into the passenger’s seat, as within seconds, Paul lay dead. Diving into his associates’ car, Clarke shouted “Drive or I'll put one in your f**king head”, as the car sped away, leaving behind a fleeing witness, a dead body, the fake drugs, £18,000 and his own blood. It was all for nothing, but his deranged desire to kill. With the Saab blocking the lane, the body was found minutes later by a mother doing the school-run. Detectives initially stated “it did not appear to be a professional killing”, as the scene was awash with evidence like the bullet, glass fragments, foot marks, fingerprints and bloodstains, and coupled with advances in DNA profiling, whoever this killer was, the Police had the evidence to arrest and convict. On the 12th of May 1993, two weeks later, one of the dealers was arrested in Worcester Park. Charged with conspiring to supply drugs, as a result of his questioning, he gave a name - Justin Martin Clarke. Launching one of Britain’s biggest manhunts, police searched Birkenhead, London, Ireland and offered a £10,000 reward for information on BBC’s Crimewatch and ITV’s CrimeNet alongside his name, details and a photo, with the public warned “he’s armed, extremely dangerous and not to be approached”. Having driven south to the county of Kent, as he crossed Dartford Bridge, Clarke threw the bullet casing into the River Thames, but – like a coldblooded coward - as he always did when things got hot… …he fled the country. Hopping a late-night ferry from Dover to Calais, he hid-out in Paris, re-associating himself with his old comrades from the French Foreign Legion. The Police tried to track him and his aliases, and knowing that this “dangerous fugitive” had connections to the IRA, the FFL, the SANDF and Islamic terror cells in the Middle East, the British Government issued an International Arrest Warrant. The net was closing in on him, but with Bosnia & Herzegovina not being part of The EU, they didn’t receive the warrant. Across the 1980s and early 1990s, the former Yugoslavia was a country in chaos, torn apart by inter-ethnic wars, political corruption and genocide. With many militia groups needing experienced soldiers who’d fight for a wage and would kill without question, it was a great place for a sadistic killer to hide. Clarke enlisted in the Army of the Republic of Bosnia & Herzegovina, where although he was regarded as a bully, a drunk and a womaniser, far from the ramifications of a war-crimes trials, he was praised for his brutal and aggressive fighting which earned him the nickname of ‘The Truck’. He served for so long, that in 2007, aged 51, he was given Croatian citizenship and qualified for a full military pension. But evil will always be evil. Semi-retiring to the coastal village of Baska, although he had married a local girl, had a son and seemed to be living an ordinary life as “a security guard at the hotel Dubravka”, working as a criminal enforcer for a warlord and kingpin, he smuggled arms and drugs, he blackmailed officials, he took whatever he felt was his, and threatened locals at gunpoint by bragging “I could kill you with a fucking phone call". Between 1995 and 2007, although he had repeatedly terrorised the town into a state of fear, Clarke was arrested at least five times by Croatian police, but with powerful men in his pocket, his crimes were dismissed by the State Attorney, and not once were the British authorities told that he was there. Clarke was feared, especially because being a violent drunk with no morals, he loved bragging about those he had hurt, claiming “I was questioned by the police in 1987 about a woman I’d murdered”. If he had murdered Marina Monti, he wasn’t grief stricken, as to him this was a badge of honour. Had he lived an ordinary life, he could have remained hidden in Croatia until today, but as always, his arrogance took a step too far. In 2007, finally arrested for the assault of municipal commissioner Jeka Rošcic, with the authorities closing in, when things got hot, he fled, leaving behind his wife and child. Flying to Qatar in 2007 under a forged passport, Clarke got work as a minder for the Saudi royal family, he was hired as a security expert for the Qatar-arm of international engineering firm, ‘Konstruktor’ and across that year, he was living in a self-built fortified camp in the desert surrounded by concubines. But even here, his luck was running out, as the selfish psychopath left a slew of enemies in his wake. Following a tip-off, the Met’ Police flew two detectives out to interview staff at the engineering firm, as Qatar was a country where the international arrest warrant was valid. Only having been forewarned by the one friend he had left, they missed him by minutes, as grabbing a worker’s passport, he fled. Again, Clarke had vanished, this time heading to Hungary, and there they lost him. Every year since, the police issued a new appeal to find him, refusing to give up in the hunt for this dangerous fugitive, but every year he seemed to vanish further and further into obscurity, until he made a simple mistake. 29 years after the murder of Marina Monti, and 23 years after the killing of Paul Milburn, Justin Clarke sent a letter to his 81-year-old mother in Henley-on-Thames, and the Police intercepted that mail. Aided by the German authorities, on Thursday 4th of February 2016, a six-foot scouser with a strange accent was arrested in Berlin and extradited to Britain. In his possession was a Dutch ID card in the name of Michael Anderson, but his fingerprints were a perfect match to Justin Martin Clarke. As was his method, he refused to co-operate giving only “no comment” answers, but the Major Crime Unit of Beds, Herts & Bucks Police who had tracked him, knew they had the evidence to convict him. Tried at Woolwich Crown Court on 15th of January 2018 before judge Sir Peter Openshaw, he refused to have a lawyer present and – from his cell in HMP Bellmarsh – he pleaded ‘not guilty’ to conspiracy to defraud and the supply a Class B drug, possession of a firearm and the murder of Paul Milburn. Found guilty, on the 2nd of February 2018, 62-year-old Justin Clarke was given a life sentence meaning he must serve a minimum of 25 years in prison, and won’t be considered for parole until he’s 87. (End) A violent unstable psychopath was off the streets for good, but what remains uncertain is whether it was him who murdered Marina Monti? With no witnesses nor fingerprints, in 1996, her murder was 1 of 32 cold cases the CID were re-examining with advances in DNA profiling, later extended to 220, but it proved inconclusive, and again, those 220 cases didn’t include Racheal Applewhaite’s murder, as they knew they had the right suspect, but evidence and diplomatic immunity had thwarted them. As of today, 38 years later, the murders of Racheal Applewhaite & Marina Monti remain unsolved. With the questioning derailed by the press and the investigation stymied by a belief that this had to be a spree or serial killer - akin to Jack the Ripper - rather than (what it was) a series of coincidences, we may never know why these women were killed, maybe a robbery, hatred, a debt, or a cruel sadist? With Guillermo Suarez and Justin Clarke claiming their innocence, we can never be certain whether Guillermo killed Racheal and Justin killed Marina, if one of them killed both girls, or with both men seen as likely suspects, did this give an alibi to the real killer who got away with murder, twice? The one thing we do know is that had these women been diplomats or politician’s wives, they would have been treated better by the press, the public, and their outcome may have been a very different story. With Marina cremated in Hendon on 7th August of 1987 and Rachel in Kensington & Chelsea 12 days later, sadly the identity of the Vice Girl Killer remains a mystery that both women took to their graves. 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. 
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Note: This blog contains only licence-free images or photos shot by myself in compliance with UK & EU copyright laws. If any image breaches these laws, blame Google Images.
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