Five time nominated BEST BRITISH TRUE-CRIME PODCAST at the True Crime Awards, Independent Podcast Award and The British Podcast Awards, and voted 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation Top 20 True-Crime Podcasts, also seen on BBC Radio, Sky News, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week.

EPISODE THREE HUNDRED AND THIRTY-SEVEN: On the 8th or 9th of December 1913, William & Eliza, now in their late 60s or early 70s were curled up in front of the fire in their small lodging on New Compton Street in St Giles in Holborn, London. Their life had been an unbearable tragedy which had tested every ounce of their love and strength, and yet, one more punishment was yet to come for this couple who deserved to die a dignified death. This a story about grief and how we all cope with it in our own way

• Locations:basement flat, unrecorded number New Compton Street, London, WC2
• Date: 8th or 9th of December 1913
  
• Victims:William & Eliza Smith
• Culprit: ?
  

SOURCES: a selection sourced from various archives: 

• http://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/search/results/1900-01-01/1909-12-31?basicsearch=3%20bedfordbury&somesearch=3%20bedfordbury&exactsearch=true
  
• The Daily Telegraph 27 May 1914
• The Daily Telegraph 26 May 1914
• The Scotsman - 26 May 1908
• Illustrated Police News - 04 June 1887
• St. Pancras Gazette - 20 January 1872
• Evening Despatch - 26 May 1893
• Evening Despatch - 17 Feb 1872
• Illustrated Police News - 09 July 1883
• Illustrated Police News - 12 July 1883
  

This was pieced together by many fragments, as there was no full file on their lives, demise, the disappearance of Jane, etc. 

MUSIC:

• Man in a Bag by Cult With No Name

UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT:

Can a broken heart ever be cured? Find out on Murder Mile.

Today, I’m standing on New Compton Street in St Giles, WC2; one street north of the body of Norah Upchurch in the empty shop, one street west of the killing of Diego Pineiro-Villar by a Satan-loving paedophile, the same street as where Georgia Antoniou was given some ‘deadly soap’ for a backstreet abortion, and just shy of the rabid Nazi who could never fight back - coming soon to Murder Mile.

New Compton Street currently connects St Giles High Street on the western side of Holborn, and now nothing, as whereas once it was a logical extension of Old Compton Street in Soho, just after Charing Cross Road, some council plonker put a massive pointless office building in its place, and that was that.

Forgotten by tourists and locals alike, New Compton Street is a joyless chasm devoid of any sun, being full of council flats and the backs of office buildings, it’s where workers nip out for a crafty ciggie, the binmen divvy up their half-inched haul and where the drunks have a widdle, but no-one willingly goes.

Back in the early 1900s, the same was said. Littered with factories which swathed this unlit street in a caustic blanket of choking fumes, in a basement room in an unrecorded flat, an elderly couple shared a last moment. Their life had been an unbearable tragedy which had tested every ounce of their love and strength, but a punishment was yet to come for this couple who deserved to die a dignified death.

My name is Michael, I am your tour guide, and this is Murder Mile.

Episode 337: Everything is broken.

It is said that “life is there to test you”, but whoever set the rules was clearly flawed, as some people seem to breeze through life with barely a wrinkle on their brow and their worries hardly worth a second thought, yet others like the Smith’s were undeservedly punished to live in pain and purgatory.

William Smith was born on an undocumented date in the late 1840s in and around Clement St Danes, where Covent Garden sits. As the second or third son of several siblings to William James, a grocer, with his mother dying in his teens, he was never allowed to wallow in grief, as with his father having remarried a good woman, William was raised to feel loved and protected within this solid family unit.

They weren’t well off, far from it. In fact, as a small market-stall holder whose seasonal products were often blighted by mites, storms, frosts, thefts, lost stock, bad handling, high seas and con merchants, when something bad blocked their way, they didn’t grumble and gripe, they adapted and coped.

With William educated before the Elementary Education Act 1870 which made school compulsory for the under 10s, everything he knew he had learned from his parents who were exemplary role models.

Every day, except Sunday worship, they worked from dawn till dusk, breaking their backs and never taking hand-outs. When times got tough, they didn’t steal, they diversified; the bruised stock became stews, pickles and jams; sometimes they sold loaves, knitted scarves and hats; if they had to, mum made cat meat and dad did repairs, as working together, they knew that love would see them through.

William Jnr was like his dad; tall, strong, bushy bearded and barrel chested with a big heart, so when something tickled his fancy, his garrulous laugh could be heard on the next street, and when he cried, he wept buckets. Like his family, William had done everything right and he deserved to live a good life.

The woman he would marry and love for the rest of his life was Elizabeth Kelly, known as Eliza.

It is said, they had known each other since their earliest days being nearly neighbours, but with William being at least six or seven years her senior, they barely even acknowledged each other being children of very different ages, but in their late teens and early twenties, a romance had begun to blossom.

From the start, Eliza’s life was always hard, being one of at least three daughters born into a festering family or drunks and deadbeats, pickpockets and petty criminals. For them; jail time was a way of life, everything was there to be nicked and they spent the best (and worst) part of their lives fighting. They had a reputation for dishonesty, and although they were only small-fry, they had no shame or morals.

Eliza’s life could have been short and miserable, but it was her hard start which made her the woman she was; a strong-willed and formidable woman, who with ‘that’ walk and ‘that’ look, that was what William loved about her, as rejecting her old life and embracing the new, she was the family glue.

William & Eliza married as soon as they could, a solid bond made by two lovers who made each other happy, who kept each other straight, and when one of them was down, they picked the other one up.

Like his parents, William & Eliza ran a small market stall, side by side, always with a sense of pride in a daily grind which was barely enough to cover their costs, but it was theirs, it was hard, but it was legal.

As happens to all of us, they experienced the same struggle and strife we all do, dealing with disease and death, poverty and plight, and like so many others, their desire to be a family was sadly hindered.

Of those we know, their first babies never made it to full term. The first that did, a boy named William Jnr died as his lungs were too weak to breathe his first breath. The second, a girl called Eliza, made it to be a toddler until she was taken by a hacking bout of influenza. Showing their persistence, love and resilience, a third and fourth survived with these also called William Jnr and Eliza, and growing up to be healthy and strong, they were swiftly followed by another, a blossom-cheeked cherub named Jane.

They never forgot their babies who never made it, and knowing they were blessed to have three who had survived, they bestowed upon them every ounce of love to ensure they lived good, happy lives…

…yet, William & Eliza were about to confront of one of life’s most harrowing tests.

The winter of 1878 was interminably bleak, as hours before the dawn, the Smith family left their tiny two-roomed lodging and trudged the icy cobblestoned streets to market, their woollen clothes made even heavier by the wet sludge which in turn froze, as their ladened hands burned red with chilblains.

Together, William & Eliza pushed their battered old hand cart of produce while wrangling a trifecta of brats which scurried around them; William Jnr, aged about 10, had been awoken from a warm bed so was grumbling and scuffing his feet; Eliza Jnr, about 5, was naughtiness personified as she tested the boundaries of her parent’s patience; whereas Jane, who was barely 3, was asleep on her mother’s hip.

It had been a hard start to the day, as with the coal wet, the kindling damp and the logs sodden, their lodging’s fire had gone out hours earlier, so no-one was in the mood to spend the next twelve hours selling their wares on a poorly populated market to earn a pittance just to survive, but they had to.

That year had seen a series bad harvests owing to early frosts, soggy summers and a pinprick of sun.

The usually reliable winter vegetables like carrots, turnips and potatoes looked as bruised as a boxer’s nose, many of the summer fruits like plums and gooseberries which were turned into jams had soured, with the wheat harvest bad bread was too pricey to produce except at scale, a higher sheep mortality meant less wool, and by the winter, with onions and chestnuts in excess supply, everyone was selling the same goods at a discount. Only those with overseas fruits like oranges made any actual money.

Their market stall looked pitiful, hardly a radiance of nature’s bloom, so sales were sluggish. With most customers milling around the roast chestnut stall simply to keep warm, William & Eliza worked harder than usual to drum up trade, and with no money for a baby-sitter, they only had one eye on their kids.

A few hours in, 5-year-old Eliza was having a tantrum, as with her brother William having slipped on a patch of ice, with a microscopic graze, he was wailing and getting the attention that his sister wanted. Father saw to son while serving a miser who was prodding the potatoes with displeasure, mother saw to daughter while reassembling the stock that the mardy little tyke had knocked over out of petulance, and as their eyes were distracted for a split second, this gave way to every parent’s worst nightmare.

Eliza noticed first, seeing the little dot was missing from her side. She asked “where’s Jane?”, but she wasn’t there. William barked “Jane?!” across a sea of mingling adults, it impossible to spot their two-foot-tall daughter who could have gone in any direction. It was then that panic set in, “Jane?”, replaced by terror, “Jane?”, and as they grabbed and pulled at every child of the right height only to have their hopes dashed, “Jane?”, every second gone was another she would vanish further into the distance.

A constable was called for, but what could one man do in a cross-crossing crowd of hundreds. Sobbing and frantic, by the time this family of now four were taken to Vine Street police station to make a report, valuable hours had passed, and no-one had seen three-year-old Jane, and they never would…

…at least not alive.

Three days later, washed-up on the half frozen shoreline of the River Thames, not far from the recently erected Cleopatra’s Needle, a tiny body was dragged from the water. It was limp and lifeless. Laid on the pavement; her once rosy skin was now a pale and sickly blue, her eyes were open but motionless, and although her doll-like frame was caked in a thick mud, it was unmistakeably her, as the sweater she was wearing had been knitted by her mother and, still attached to it, was one of the mittens.

William & Eliza howled when they identified her, as with her missing there was hope, but with her body found, there was none. As an unnatural death, an autopsy was performed, and although a verdict of “accidental drowning” was listed at the inquest, several details were never explained; her clothes were torn (possibly in the fall), she had bruises and scratch marks (possibly having been rolled against the river bed as ships passed over), and what was said to be “a faint ligature mark” around her neck, it couldn’t be ruled out that the body had got caught in river’s detritus like old ropes and fishing nets.

The case was closed and in a small grave paid for by the heartbroken locals, her body was buried. As the small plain box was lowered, Eliza wept as a very literal piece of herself had died, and her children clung to her hips having blamed themselves for the family tragedy, but William was unusually quiet.

The death of their youngest posed so many questions, but it left so few answers.

Always a fighter and the family glue, Eliza gave herself a gap to grieve, but with two youngsters who needed her more than ever, she brought their lives back to the familiar warmth of normality as fast as she could to ensure they lived the life that Jane never would - she had to live, so they could live.

But William was broken, in his heart, in his mind, and in his soul. The big-hearted barrel-chested bellow laughing man was gone, replaced by a lolloping lump who couldn’t function. When he laid in bed, all he did was cry. When they sat at the dinner table, all he did was stare at her empty seat. And unable to return to the market stall, Eliza tried to run their business alone, as all he did was sit and wallow.

Everyone deals with grief in different ways; some cry, some shout, some lash-out, some like Eliza use their pain to rebuild the shattered fragments of their lives, and whereas others, like William, collapse.

He was going through what we know to be the seven stages of grief; shock, denial, anger, bargaining, depression, testing, and acceptance. The numbness had hit them both hard, an intolerable pain which left her with an empty void, but him frozen like every ounce of his being had been ripped out whole.

Next came the blame. He blamed himself, cursing himself for being a bad parent and scolding his total failure for not keeping an eye on his child every second of every day that she was alive, especially then.

Then he blamed Eliza his wife, as Jane was barely a foot from her side when she vanished, so why didn’t she grab her, why didn’t she stop her, and why didn’t she see whoever had taken their baby?

Then he blamed the children, uncharacteristically chastising them both for their innocent acts, such as William Jnr slipping on the ice and Eliza’s tantrum which distracted both parents for a brief second. And as he shouted, they cried, but the moment he saw sense, he wept a heartfelt apology as they all knew it wasn’t true. Then, he blamed everything else; the market, the street, the weather, the harvest, the fruit, the icy cobbles, the wet coal on the fire, the bad sleep they’d had the night before, and then God. As a devout Christian, how could God be benevolent yet let his daughter die? If he had been so faithful, why was God punishing them? And if – as his priest pleaded – if everything was part of God’s big plan, why did he decide to test of his faith by letting his baby possibly be murdered by bad men?

What kind of a God would do that?

William was angry, and he needed someone to blame, as this didn’t just happen by accident.

With the case closed, the Police wouldn’t be investigating further, but something didn’t sit right.

They said there was no hint of any foul play, no suspicion that she had been taken, and no suspects to lay the blame on, but how did this three-year-old girl make it two miles south to the river by herself?

Jane hadn’t wondered away by herself, she never would, as wherever they went, she either held his hand tight, clung to her mother’s hip or was carried. She never ran away, was never out of their sight, and would happily play by their sides, rarely distracted by the sights and sounds of the bustling city.

No-one was arrested, no-one was suspected, and having heard that several children had gone missing recently, why wasn’t Jane’s disappearance being linked to those, as surely they were connected?

William’s decline began simply enough, as whenever William (who Eliza had lured back to the market to work) served a man whether he knew him or not, William always seemed to be eyeing them up as if this was the filthy beast who – he believed – had kidnapped Jane, all those weeks before. It wasn’t, but for as long as he didn’t sleep or breathe, he believed someone had done this, and they would pay.

Everyone in his eyes was a suspect; whether a friend, a neighbour, a customer or a stranger. Although many knew he was struggling, he said too many unpleasant things and lost some of his closest pals. He accused random men of being responsible, many of whom wouldn’t and couldn’t have done it. He would scour the newspapers looking for any cases or suspects who were (even fleetingly) similar. And having begun to drink heavily, several pubs he was barred from and he often returned home bruised.

He couldn’t let go, he wouldn’t let go, for Jane’s sake, as someone had to be blamed for her murder, even though it was never proven to be a murder, and the only person who thought it was, was William.

With no suspects, as often happens, when the locals gossiped, William listened. One name which kept cropping up was ‘Odd Fred’; a sinister weirdo and a dirty vagrant who was blamed for everything just because he didn’t fit in; he was homeless, disfigured, he limped, he never blinked, and if he did speak, he left unnaturally long gaps after every other word. He had been blamed for every theft or assault since the dawn of time; whether stolen washing, a dead cat, or off milk, but never proven to be guilty.

The Police refused to arrest ‘Odd Fred’ with no evidence except William’s suspicions, so having plucked up enough courage to confront this former war-veteran who was struggling himself, after too many pints, William (a usually placid man with no ill will against anyone) landed his fist in ‘Odd Fred’s face. 

Arrested on the charge of assault, it was only then that William realised how far he had sunk, a good and moral man having descended to the gutter as an angry paranoid drunk with a criminal conviction.

That should have been his wake up call, but months later, he was still gripped by grief’s seven stages…

…and next was depression.

Over these months and years, the tall, strong, bushy bearded and barrel chested man with a big heart was gone. He spoke rarely and smiled never, as he was ashamed at his failure; as a father (whose own children, now in their teens, had become distant), as a husband (unable to provide, as he should, for his wife), and as a businessman (as lacking drive, Eliza, as the backbone and the glue, stopped the total collapse of this family which risked them all being sent to the workhouse, where they would be split).

In the late 1880s, a decade after Jane’s death, William, now in late 40s or early 50s, had ploughed on with the vagaries of a working class life guided by Eliza who never left his side. Like an automaton, he worked, he washed, he lived and existed, but becoming ever sicker and weaker, shedding weight and with his skin hanging off his bones like the soggy woollen sweater which sagged from Jane’s corpse, it was clear that his body was going through the motions, but his mind was elsewhere, and far away.

One bitter winter’s evening, with William & Eliza now greying and wrinkled, their children long having since left, as Eliza made dinner, William wheeled their hand cart into their cellar, and a while later, that’s where she found him, slumped on the floor by a box of mouldy potatoes; in one hand, a rope, in the other, Jane’s mitten, in his eyes a bursting levy of tears, and even though his failed attempt was a travesty against his God, his morals and would have made Eliza a widow, with an unbearable pain in his heart, he cried out “everything is broken”. All he wanted to do was die, but for wife, he couldn’t.

From the late 1880s to the mid-1890s, William was a frequent visitor, voluntary, at the local asylums. They gave him a chance to breathe, to speak and be listened to, but it was Eliza who repaired his heart.

Nearing the end of the century, with an aged (and equally grief stricken) Queen Victoria in her final years, this couple who had been married for thirty-plus years learned to live again, love again, and to grieve together. They rebuilt their stall, a smaller version, just a few yards from where their whole life had collapsed, every day as they passed the wall where Jane was last seen, they would both plant a little kiss, and on the anniversary of her disappearance, they’d lay a flower and say a player, together.

The man he once was would never return, but the man he was now was okay for Eliza. Neither could repair the pain they would feel, but together, they learned to live again. Occasionally he smiled a little, and once he even laughed, well almost. But it was no longer about his personal pain, it was their pain and their sorrow, so together they cried and commiserated, but for the rest of their days, they lived.

As familiar faces in this part of town, as they approached their sixties, William & Eliza Smith would be seen together, walking the same streets, seeing the same people, and holding each other’s hand. It was sweet, but perhaps still traumatised by Jane’s disappearance, were they too afraid to let go?

It had been a tragedy which had broken them, but slowly, they were on the mend…

…only their tragedy was far from over.

In 1903, William Jnr, a bearded, barrel-chested doppelganger of the man his dad once was, was struck by an omnibus as he crossed the street, and he died of his injuries several days later. He never spoke of his sister, or how he had blamed himself for her disappearance, and being described as ‘distracted’, his death was ruled as an ‘accident’, but local gossips wondered if it was a suicide, or a coincidence.

Eliza Jnr, hadn’t found a career as her brother had, instead she found solace in drunk, drugs, and some said prostitution. Where she ended up is uncertain, as having fallen in with a bad crowd, once in every blue moon William & Eliza thought they recognised a ragged and huddled mass begging for change on the street, but as they approached her, she fled into the night, never seen or heard from again. (End)

By the winter of 1913, now in their mid-to-late 60s, William & Eliza were seeing out their final days in a basement room in a cheap but unrecorded lodging house on New Compton Street, the air thick with the caustic whiff of tanneries, and their sleep often sullied by the nightly thrum of hard machinery.

As a small, basic room, they had a horsehair bed, two armchairs, a washstand, a log fire for warmth, and on the mantlepiece were reminders of their children, at least four or possibly five who had died.  

On maybe the 8th or 9th of December 1913, William & Eliza were sat in front of a fire in their armchairs, side-by-side, their hands touching as always. For long hours they sat, as with William’s body ravaged by chronic arthritis, he was too weak to totter to their bed and struggled to breathe when he lay down, and with Eliza unsteady on her feet, and just getting over the flu, the two spent their nights there.

Their life had been an unbearable tragedy which had tested every ounce of their love and strength, and yet, one more punishment was yet to come for this couple who deserved to die a dignified death.

Their last moment came as William slept. With Eliza still coughing, but not wanting to wake him, it was said, as she got up to fetch a jug of water, her legs buckled, she stumbled, she fell, she hit her head on the mantlepiece, and knocked out cold, she fell into the fire, and began to burn; everything was alight, her nightdress, her hair, her skin, and without her to help him up, all William could do was sit and see.

Later alerted to the smoke, also the smell, when the door was broken down and the fire extinguished, both William & Eliza were found dead. Eliza was barely recognisable, a half-burned and blackened shadow of the strong woman she once was, it unlikely she knew she was on fire as he skull was been broken by the impact. As for William, somehow he had found the strength to get up, unaided, he had fallen to his feet, and having crawled across the cold floor to reach the woman he loved, he knew he couldn’t save her, but he knew where he had to be, by her side - it was said he died holding her 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.

Five time nominated BEST BRITISH TRUE-CRIME PODCAST at the True Crime Awards, Independent Podcast Award and The British Podcast Awards, and voted 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation Top 20 True-Crime Podcasts, also seen on BBC Radio, Sky News, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week.

EP336: STRANGE LAST DAYS: Wednesday 10th of April 1940 at 10.15am, Alfred Scott, a surveyor for Bates & Co, an estate agents in Kilburn entered 21 Brondesbury Villas, to check that the premises was empty. Inside, he found that the first floor flat had been ransacked, two bags (a Gladstone and an attache case) had been searched for a specific item, and the tenant, 60-year-old Karoline Jones had been murdered. But what were they looking for?
 

• Location: first floor, 21 Brondesbury Villas, Kilburn, London, NW6, UK 
• Date: Wednesday 10th of April 1940 at 10.15am (body found)
• Victims: Karoline Getta Jones
• Culprit: ? 
  

SOURCES: a selection sourced from various archives: 

• National Archives -  MEPO 3/1744
  
• Marylebone and Paddington Mercury Sat, Apr 20, 1940
• The Daily Telegraph Thu, Apr 11, 1940
• The Citizen Tue, Apr 16, 1940
• Marylebone and Paddington Mercury Sat, Jun 15, 1940
• Birmingham Gazette Tue, Apr 16, 1940
  
• Marylebone and Paddington Mercury Sat, May 18, 1940
• Sunday Dispatch Sun, Apr 14, 1940
• Evening News (London) - Monday 15 April 1940
• Kensington Post - Saturday 18 May 1940
• Weekly Dispatch (London) - Sunday 14 April 1940
• Kensington Post - Saturday 20 April 1940
• Marylebone Mercury - Saturday 18 May 1940

MUSIC:

• Man in a Bag by Cult With No Name

UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT:

Did the killer of Karoline Jones leave a clue to their identity by her body? Find out on Murder Mile.

Today, I’m standing on Brondesbury Villas in Kilburn, NW6; three roads south of Jemma Mitchell and the grisly suitcase of death, four roads north-west of Michael Dowdall the sadistic little drummer boy, four streets west of the ill-fated first assassination of the so-called professional terrorist ‘Carlos the Jackal’, and two street east of the fat dog who ate all the diamonds - coming soon to Murder Mile.

Just off the busy Kilburn High Road sits 21 Brondesbury Villas, a white flat-fronted semi-detached late Victorian townhouse on a quiet residential street dotted with an occasional tree, but no signs of life.

Unlike the other houses, its door isn’t bedecked with pretentious doric columns, but all built identical, every floor is slightly off; as with a set of steps taking you up to the ground floor, the bottom floor isn’t below the earth but half-way up, giving its occupants a brief hint of light once a day, a stunning view of dog plops on the pavement, but mostly the right to call their grotty basement flat ‘lower ground’ rather than the dungeon, the hell hole, the damp bit, the closet, or where dad stashed his jazz mags.

Back in 1940, this house was subdivided into four flats; a couple in the basement, a family above them, a lodger on the top floor, and in the first floor maisonette, a woman whose life (as a refugee, a widow,  a mother, a loner, a recently released prisoner and a career criminal) was as mysterious as her death. 

Little is known about the motive for her murder, but with her last days alive well-recorded and a crime scene littered with evidence, the question we must ask is ‘did her killer leave a clue to his identity’?

My name is Michael, I am your tour guide, and this is Murder Mile.

Episode 336: Strange Last Days.

The date was Wednesday 10th of April 1940, seven months after the start of World War Two and five months before the dreaded Blitz bombings which decimated the city causing two mass evacuations. As the Nazi hoards crept ever closer to our borders, with trepidation, life in the city moved on for now.

The time was 10.15am, when Alfred Scott, a surveyor for Bates & Co, an estate agents in Kilburn, rang the bell to the communal door at 21 Brondesbury Villas, but no-one was in, as everyone was at work.

On behalf of the landlord, three flats had been rented out; James & Saskia Gouldsborough lived in the basement, his father Henry, mother Jane and sister Jane Jnr on the ground, and with a maisonette on the first and second, the attic had been sublet to Dutch national John van Geersdaele, but he had moved out a month prior, and with 60-year-old German widow Karoline Jones believed to have left with £20 rent owing, about £1500 today, as was her habit, Alfred was here to check that she had gone.

Unlocking the communal door, he rose up the stairs, and on the first floor, he unlocked the maisonette door. There were four keys; one which John van Geersdaele had returned to the estate agent when he left, the spare key which Alfred was using, and two still held by Karoline and her son, Frederick.

Upon entry, nothing aroused his suspicion, as all except for the fan-light above the door, every window was fastened, but there was clear evidence that she hadn’t been there for a while, but she hadn’t left.

The flat had four rooms; a lavatory which was empty, a kitchenette which had a slice of stale bread on the side and a stack of dirty dishes as the mains water had been off for a month, and two bedrooms.

The front bedroom was empty; the bedsheets were messy but it hadn’t been slept in for months; in the wardrobe was a man’s Fedora hat, an ash walking stick and a broken tennis racket, later confirmed to belong to Frederick, Karoline’s son whose room this was, and on the dressing table, a wireless radio, a penknife and a set of keys which fitted the maisonette’s Yale lock, as previously owned by Frederick.

At that point, Alfred, the surveyor for Bates & Co had just one thought on his mind, how to evict them, as with no hint of foul play, yes the flat was messy, but what did he expect from a tenant like Karoline?

It was then, with a shiver down his spine, that he stopped just shy of her bedroom door.

It was open. Having inspected the premises before, he knew it was never open, as being a cautious and paranoid woman given her past, a key had been inserted into the padlock from the outside, but before it was turned, the door had been forced, the wood had splintered and the padlock scattered.

As an ex-copper and coroner’s officer, Alfred knew to touch nothing, so he let his eyes scan the room before he ventured further. With the room made dark as the windows were covered in blackout paper, he could see that the drawers of the dressing table were open and empty, but around it, women’s clothes were scattered; a blue and white jumper, a blue nightdress and three cotton handkerchiefs.

When the room was searched, not a note or coin was found, but given how broke Karoline said she was, it was uncertain how much she had. As for her jewellery - two 18 carat gold wedding bands, one with a diamond and one with a ruby, a gold watch, a four-pearl brooch and a gold slave bangle – all were missing but as she was living off benefits and sleeping in hostels, it’s uncertain if she’d sold them.

Further in, it was clear that a certain someone who had broken in was looking for something specific.

Perched on an armchair, her brown attaché case containing her bills, letters and court summons had been searched, but not finding what they sought, they had grabbed her black Gladstone bag. With it locked, they frantically cut away the clasps using a small penknife and desperate to find that one thing, they scattered its contents across the floor, sweeping everything aside which wasn’t that one thing.

Inside was toiletries, calling cards, her diary (mostly lists of lodging houses, estate agents and rooms to let), and scraps of paper on which she had scrawled the names and addresses of those she had met, but they had left behind items of significant value; her passport, a national war savings certificate, her ration books and three savings books for the Post Office, Abbey Road Building Society and Lloyds Bank.

Whatever they were looking for, it’s unlikely they found it, as Karoline had paid the ultimate price.

The first thing that hit Alfred was the smell, a sulphurous stench of a body in active decay. Flies buzzed as the skin slipped and maggots squirmed among the soft dark flesh, as with the body having bloated and then ruptured, it leaked a vile dribble of foul fluids out of each orifice, off the bed and on the floor.

And although her putrefied corpse was too horrific to look at, her death was cruel and unnatural.

She was lying on her back, diagonally across the bed, her legs hanging limply over the side. Except for her flowerpot hat which lay by the door, her black leather shoes which had fallen off in the attack, and her gas mask case and string shopping bag which was still attached to her wrist having just come in, she was dressed in the clothes she was wearing 21 days before, yet her only injury was a bloody nose.

With no defensive wounds and no sign of a struggle, to restrain her, her assailant had ripped up her table cloth into strips, her wrists and ankles had been bound to the iron frame of the bed, her mouth had been gagged with a red woollen scarf, and with her unconscious having been punched in the face, her overcoat and her skirt had been raised up to the height of her hips leaving her underwear exposed.

But why?

Examined at Kilburn mortuary, the Home Office pathologist Sir Bernard Spilsbury confirmed that she had no other injuries, that her cause of death was suffocation caused by the pillow found by her head, that this was a wilful murder, and although it looked as if she had been raped or molested, she hadn’t.

So, who had murdered Karoline Jones, and why?

Karoline Getta Jones was born Karoline Ledermann on the 4th of March 1880 in Kleinwallstadt, a small town in Bavaria, Germany. Little is known of her early life; except she first married aged 20 in 1900 to an unnamed German Jew, in 1908 they had a son called Frederick, separating in 1909, she bigamously married again but was widowed by 1918, and then marrying Corporal John Howell Jones of the Royal Army Ordnance Corps in 1920, by 1930, the same year she became a British Citizen, she was widowed.

Her life could have been worse, as being a German Jew, by 1933 when the Nazi’s had come to power, she was living freely in London far from the horrors of the holocaust, but her life wouldn’t be without hardship, hence she was infamously known to be gruff, foul-mouthed, unpleasant, and a habitual liar.

Across her final decade, she amassed five criminal convictions which sum up her life’s sad decline.

In 1935, at Clerkenwell, with her flat being raided by the Police, she was fined £20 for running a brothel in Bloomsbury, and was described as “quarrelsome and disgusting”. By 1937, having been evicted by her landlady for living in a squalid filthy lodging in Stoke Newington, she was convicted twice in Soho and Marylebone for stealing a brooch, a tin of fruit and a box of face powder, and clearly struggling.

By 1938, living in King’s Cross, she fled her lodging leaving £6 in back rent, which she often did, and it led to the landlord sending in the bailiffs to track her down to issue a county court writ against her. Three months later, she was sentenced to six months in prison for assault, a familiar trait for Karoline.

With no friends and very little family as she persistently rubbed others up the wrong way, she lived by her wits on the bread line of poverty, and with very little to call her own, wherever she went, she hid her most precious items in specially sewn pockets she had stitched into her knickers and stockings.

With her son, Frederick married but a Jew who was stuck in Nazi Germany, soaking her crumpled and worn clothes with a river of tears, she told anyone who would listen that she had £2600 (£168,000 today) to smuggle him out of the country, yet as a refugee, he arrived thanks to a charity in September.

On the 10th of October 1938, at Bates & Co, the estate agents on Kilburn High Road, she rented a two-roomed maisonette at 21 Brondesbury Villas for herself and her son. It was cheap, squalid, as always she repeatedly reneged on her rent leaving a litany of excuses, and she was not liked by the tenants.

In the basement, James & Saskia Gouldsborough said she was rude, abusive, stole their milk, letters and deliberately banged the doors at night keeping the children awake. Henry & Jane on the ground floor told Police that Karoline regularly fought with her son, he was seen with a black eye, she punched her sister and broke her brother-in-law’s nose as the two stayed with her before these refugees fled to Palestine. And John van Geersdaele, her lodger left, as he suspected that her flat was now a brothel.

On the 14th of October 1939 at Marlborough Street Police Court, Karoline was sentenced to six months hard labour for stealing a hat from Selfridges department store on Oxford Street. Serving her time at HMP Holloway before being transferred to HMP Aylesbury, she was disliked by prisoners and officers alike; she was described as filthy, surly and obnoxious, she was repeatedly beaten up by fellow inmates and continually bragged about how she had a beautiful home in Kilburn, and was wealthy with £2600.

And that’s what made her murder impossible to solve, as she lied, and she wasn’t liked. So, who had murdered her; a friend, a relative, a potential rapist, a spectre from her past, or a complete stranger?

The strange last days of Karoline Jones began on Friday 15th of March 1940, 15 days before her death.

11 days before, she had spent her 60th birthday in prison, and by the time she was released, there was no-one there to greet her as her son had left having enlisted in the Auxiliary Military Pioneer Corps.

That day, Karoline caught a train from Aylesbury to Baker Street, and unwilling or unable to return to her flat at Brondesbury Villas, she met an adjutant of the Salvation Army and she asked to be housed in a homeless hostel. She went home, she packed her bags, but for whatever reason, she never arrived.

She did the same over the next two weeks; she pleaded for a free bed at the Salvation Army hostel, but failed to show up, she instead she paid 22 shillings (£40) to kip for a week at the YMCA; she claimed to be destitute and seeking a hand-out from the British Legion appearing “distressed, hysterical” and some said mentally “unbalanced”, but was she afraid of the streets, her flat, or someone she knew?

With her lodger and son having moved out, she couldn’t afford her flat, not that it stopped her before.

From her ripped open Gladstone bag, scattered across the floor beside her body, Police found business cards and scraps of paper bearing the names and addresses of places she had applied for jobs to; The School of Cookery in Maida Vale, Kosie-Knitwear in Soho and the Women's Voluntary Services for Civil Defence, and pleading that she was a refugee (which she wasn’t), a widow (which she was, thrice over) and homeless (which technically she wasn’t), many employers pitied her, and gave her a hot meal.

In her possession, she had both sets of keys to the flat having refused to give them back, and with a bucket of hutzpah, even though she owed £20 back rent, on the 21st of March, 9 days before her death, she went to Bates & Co, the estate agents on Kilburn High Road and insisted they reconnect her water.

But she wasn’t exactly broke. Three days prior, at Abbey Road Building Society, she claimed that while in prison someone had withdrawn £10, 7s and 3d from her account (which couldn’t be proven), that same day she made some small withdrawals totalling about £13, and at the Unemployment Assistance Board in Park Royal, her benefits were denied as she had “too much money”; she had 1s at the Co-op, £2 at Lloyds, £19 at the Post Office, £400 in National Savings Certificates, and with shares from her three dead husbands, she was sitting on a fortune of £2833 (£202,000) - more than she had lied about.

She never wore her wealth and she never spent it, but some kind of plan was clearly brewing.

Of the many names and diary entries found at the crime scene, one was to rent a room at 54 Shirland Road in Paddington. After much back-and-forth, on 22nd of March, Karoline agreed to move in, she paid 15 shillings deposit, then said it would only be used for storage and instead she slept at the hostel.

Of the houses she looked at on Cleveland Gardens, Connaught Street, Sussex Gardens, Star Street and Princes Terrace, all had previously been brothels, all required a £2000 deposit to rent, and she even went as far as find a disreputable man to go into business with her, but that opportunity collapsed.

It’s uncertain if this 60-year-old widow - described as filthy, uncouth and foul - was working as a sex worker as her lodger claimed, but although she had remained single since she was widowed, she often received two constant visitors to 21 Brondesbury Villas; one aged 40 to 45, 5 foot 10, slim and wearing a taxi driver's cap, and another, 30-ish, 5 foot 6, stout with greasy hair. But none were ever identified.

And, as was typical of Karoline Jones, she also randomly assaulted strangers with no rhyme nor reason.

On Saturday 23rd of March 1940, one week before her death, outside of 19 Brondesbury Villas next door, she asked a furniture removals man for his card and requested a quote, but she never called him. And across the next five days, nothing is known about where she went or what she did, until this.

On Friday the 29th of March, the day before her death, she applied to be a maid at house in Kensington. Unable to stand for long or move quickly owing to a recent knee operation, she didn’t get the job, but claiming to be destitute, she made a big impression on the housekeeper who noticed her jewellery; two 18 carat gold bands with a diamond and a ruby, a gold watch, a pearl brooch and a gold bangle.

Hearing of Karoline’s plight, the housekeeper suggested that maybe she should sell her jewellery, but Karoline said she couldn’t as they were “of great sentimental value”. Descriptions of every piece was circulated to every pawnbroker and jeweller across London, but not a single item was ever found…

…which brings us to Saturday 30th of March 1940, her last day alive.

There were only two sightings of her; at 1:30pm when she left 21 Brondesbury Villas carrying her black Gladstone bag and wearing the clothes she would die in, and at 5pm, when the housekeeper from the day before spotted her looking in a window of an antique dealers in Kensington. Where she went after that, who she met, what she did, and who she returned back to her flat with remains unknown.

Alerted by Alfred Scott, the surveyor for Bates & Co, on Wednesday 10th of April 1940, officers arrived at 10:35am, and Police Surgeon Dr John Tweddle determined she had been dead for 21 days.

On the bed, her body lay with no defensive wounds or struggle, just a single punch to the face and she was suffocated using a pillow. She had been restrained by her ankles and wrists using ripped strips of tablecloth so her legs and arms were splayed, and gagged with her scarf, she was silent and immobile, as her killer had pulled her skirt up to her hips, her knickers exposed, but there was no sexual assault.

Clearly, the killer had a deep hatred for her, but what was his motive; a rape, a robbery, or a murder? 

With no witnesses to anyone entering or exiting the premises during the time of her death, detectives theorised she had either invited back someone she knew, or if she was still a sex worker, a customer. But given the fact that she had little family and almost no friends being abrasive and foul, we know it wasn’t her sister or brother-in-law as they were in Palestine, or her son as he was serving in France.

There were four sets of keys to the flat; Karoline’s which was found in the padlock, her son Frederick’s on his dressing table, two with the estate agent, one of which was used by Alfred Scott, and no others. Every current tenant and prior resident of the house was questioned and with a recurring theme that nobody liked her, none of them disliked her enough to kill her and they all had a solid alibi to prove it.

With no scuff marks, cuts or abrasions, she had willingly ascended the stairs with her killer, although what her intention was is unknown, as (desperate to move out) the flat was empty, except for a few clothes (which weren’t hers), a radio, a penknife, and some slices of stale bread. But it was as she bent over to unlock her bedroom door that they struck, splintering the door before the lock was removed.

Based on the marks, she was dragged to the bed, likely punched in the face as she screamed, but the blood found on the sheets and underneath the restraints show she had lain unconscious as her killer ransacked her room. First was the drawers, but what was in it we don’t know, as having been in prison for six months, many of her few belongings were at the hostel, or in the Gladstone bag she carried in.

The brown attaché case was only lightly searched and given up just as quick. Next was the Gladstone bag, whose contents (business cards, letters, bank books, a diary, and scraps of paper with the details of those she’d met) scattered far and wide, so was the killer searching for a something which identified them? If so, why risk being seen on the tube, in the street, or entering the house with her, when all day she was carrying the Gladstone bag. Why do it unless their motive was something more sinister?

Coming to, it’s likely that she was then bound and gagged before she struggled and screamed, giving her assailant time to search the flat. It’s likely but unprovable that they took every note or coin found, and with her jewellery being too precious to sell, it was stripped from her. And although police found two sets of fingerprints inside the flat, they both belonged to Karoline and her son, and no-one else.

It was clear that a certain someone who had broken in was looking for something specific.

But what did they want from her? Her wealth?

Unlikely, as her jewellery had more of a personal value than a monetary one. A hostel warden recalled she had £10 in cash in her purse, about £300 today. And with only £20 in her bank account, her fortune of £2833 (or £202,000) was in National Savings Certificates and shares, which could only be accessed with a will, a next of kin and a solicitor. But had they heard she had £2600 and assumed it was in cash?

If not that, what did they want from her? Sex? She was a prostitute and brothel keeper.

Detectives thought not. It had the hallmarks of a rape as she was physically assaulted, knocked cold, tied by her hands and feet to the bed, and with her coat and skirt rucked up around her hips, someone wanted to see around her genitals, but with no semen, no penetration, and her underwear having not been removed, there was only one possible thing they were looking for – something she valued most.

Karoline Jones had lived through hardship, poverty, homelessness, abandonment and grief. Across her 60-years of life, she had fled wars and persecution, and every time she moved from place to place, she always carried with her everything she held dear; her jewellery on her fingers, her business affairs in an attaché case and her daily essentials in a Gladstone bag, but the most precious thing in her whole life, she had hid in a series of specially sewn pockets she had stitched inside her knickers and stockings.

She told many about the £2600 she had, but being a filthy, foul and poorly dressed woman who lived off handouts and slept in homeless hostels, as a inveterate liar, it’s unlikely anyone believed her. But this was the thing she cherish so much that at all times she kept it close to her skin, this was her secret.

So, did she tell someone, did they find out, and if so, who were they? (End)

It wasn’t a friend or family member, it wasn’t a punter or prozzie in the sex trade, it wasn’t someone she had stiffed on a business deal or an opportunist thief who thought this frail lady was an easy mark. In fact, it was someone who had hated her since the day they met, and most likely, it wasn’t a man.

On the 14th of October 1939, having stolen a hat from Selfridges, Karoline was sentenced to six months which she served at female-only prisons, HMP Holloway and then HMP Aylesbury. Inside, Karoline was hated by prisoners and staff alike, she was rude, obnoxious, surly, and on several occasions in the yard, she was attacked by a specific prisoner who truly hated her, a 27-year-old woman (her name redacted) with a rap-sheet for drunkenness, larceny and procuring an abortion, as well as violence and assault.

Karoline was the target of her venom for months, and then it stopped, and she became Karoline’s pal.

She later denied this, but other prisoners said she was. She denied knowing where Karoline lived, but the other women said they too had been invited to stay. She denied being told about the £2600 that Karoline often blabbed about to anyone who would listen, and others said many didn’t believe it. But what of her secret, the one thing, so precious that it was stitched into secret pockets in her knickers?

She told no-one about that ever. But upon her reception at HMP Aylesbury, as was standard, she was stripped of her own clothes, given prison overalls, and her personal affects were searched and listed. Every pocket was checked for weapons and contraband, especially any covert pouches in her pants.

She had no reason to tell anyone, but one of the wardens will have known, and they all hated her.
When interviewed, the unnamed prisoner denied being in Kilburn, hating her or meeting Karoline after her release, and when she was told of her murder, detectives said “she seemed genuinely surprised”. With no evidence against her, she wasn’t charged or questioned further. But is this what happened?

The Strange Last Days of Karoline Jones remains unsolved, but of the scattered clues in her room, did her killer find the one detail which may have convicted them, and was this robbery worth her murder?

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.

Five time nominated BEST BRITISH TRUE-CRIME PODCAST at the True Crime Awards, Independent Podcast Award and The British Podcast Awards, and voted 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation Top 20 True-Crime Podcasts, also seen on BBC Radio, Sky News, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week.

EP335: PAIZAN: THE JIGSAW KILLER: On Sunday 9th of May 2021 at 11:47am, 20-year-old Agnes Akom entered a shipping container on Everett Road in Powergate Business Park with 64-year-old Neculai Paizan, a cement mixer driver she had known for 18 months. CCTV cameras caught her walking in. but she never came out. So where did her body go? This episode explores the investigation by the Police which began as a missing persons, and ended in a brutal homicide.

• Location: shipping container, Everett Road, by Lennox Autos, Powergate Business Park, Park Royal,  London, NW10, UK 
  
• Date: Sunday 9th of May 2021 at 11:47am (last seen alive)
  
• Victims: Agnes Akom
• Culprit: Neculai Paizan 
  

SOURCES: a selection sourced from various archives: 

• https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-62289329
  
• https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-62224296
• https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-57489133
• https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-57225822
• https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-62068249
• https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-62147179
• https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/jul/19/man-found-guilty-of-of-agnes-akom-in-london
• https://hounslowherald.com/man-jailed-for-murder-of-agnes-akom-p17882-249.htm
• Met Police video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-k1QSgBiuT4
• https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/met-police-london-hungary-brent-cctv-b2130518.html
• https://www.edp24.co.uk/news/national/24319211.predator-murdered-woman-container-loses-conviction-sentence-appeal/
• https://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/lorry-driver-neculai-paizan-murder-agnes-akom-brent-b1014455.html
• https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/agnes-akom-man-charged-20-year-old-womans-murder-b936834.html
• https://www.kilburntimes.co.uk/news/crime/20678869.guilty-predator-murdered-woman-jigsaw-buried-body-neasden-woods/
• https://www.mylondon.news/news/west-london-news/agnes-akom-partner-woman-20-24587029
• https://www.harrowtimes.co.uk/news/19501246.man-denies-murder-agnes-akom-whose-remains-found-neasden/
• https://www.mylondon.news/news/north-london-news/woman-battered-death-shipping-container-29169656
• https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/agnes-akom-body-london-murder-neasden-b1866708.html

MUSIC:

• Man in a Bag by Cult With No Name

UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT:

How do you prove a murder when the body is missing, and in pieces? Find out on Murder Mile.

Today, I’m standing on North Acton Road in Park Royal, NW10; five roads west of Patrick MacKay’s birth place, four roads south of the Grey Man’s final victim, a short walk from the suitcase of Marta Ligman’s body, and three streets north of the last gasp of the big teaser - coming soon to Murder Mile.

At 63 North Acton Road is Lennox Autos, a car showroom on the Powergate Business Park. On the forecourt stands a line of gleaming cars waxed to a mirror shine, valeted so not a dust speck exists and with stickers hailing their great prices and low milage, its mostly male customers pretend they know what they’re doing by kicking the tyres, tutting at the exhaust and revving the engine and exclaiming  “that’s fine” as if they’re sampling a fine wine, when all they want to know is “will it get me laid?”.

Just to the side sits an alley, well it’s more of a dead-end, and lined with second hand cars, industrial units, piles of scrap metal, and a battered old shipping container converted into a makeshift flat which the defendant, Neculai Paizan called home. On Sunday the 9th of May 2021, just shy of noon, his friend, Agnes Akom arrived with him, she willingly walked into the shipping container, and never walked out.

It was a disappearance without a witness, a killing without a motive, and a murder initially without a body. Agnes could have vanished forever, never to be found. Yet, in what began as a missing person’s case, the investigation would unravel a spider’s web of deceit and lies until the killer was caught.

My name is Michael, I am your tour guide, and this is Murder Mile.

Episode 335: Paizan: The Jigsaw Killer.

On Wednesday 6th of July 2022 in Court 8 of the Old Bailey, 64-year-old Neculai Paizan pleaded ‘not guilty’ to murdering 20-year-old Agnes Akom, but admitted to the lesser charge of moving her body.

Before the jury and Judge Richard Marks QC, his words were translated by a Romanian interpreter.

Paizan stated that as Agnes sat on his bed: "she was doing something on her phone. I started to feel a bit unwell, my mouth was dry, and I was not feeling right. I realised that I had been poisoned, drugged. I believe it was from the iced coffee, she drank some of it and then she handed it to me and said 'you drink it, I've had enough'". Feeling ‘a wave of darkness’ sweep over him, and plagued by amnesia, he collapsed, and when he regained consciousness, he said “Agnes was pushing something into my mouth, and because of the pain, instinctively I pushed her away and two of my front teeth broke".

He would claim that Agnes had drugged him, that she had tried to kill him, that the violence he used against her was in self-defence, and that her attack on him had caused his memory loss so he couldn’t recall her death. Admitting to her unlawful burial, he stated "I realised there was no life left in her, the poor little thing. I was in such a state of panic. I didn’t know what to do ", so rather than call the Police because “they would not believe me… I tried to take her to the park, and put her in a good place”.  

Agnes was dead, Paizan said he had Amnesia, and with no-one to independently verify what happened inside of the shipping container, the only witness to Agnes Akom’s murder was the evidence itself.

But how could a murder be proven?

Agnes Akom, who her friends knew as ‘Dora’ was born in 2001 in Hungary, being raised by her mother, Agnes, who she was named after. Little was reported of her early life; her family, her education, her hopes and dreams, but with Hungary having joined the European Union in 2004, as many of her fellow countrymen and women did, in 2018 when she was just 17, she came to Britain seeking “a better life”.

It was the last time she saw her mother, as well as almost everyone she had ever loved or cared for.

Like many, she imagined that the streets of London would be paved with golden opportunities, but as she and her partner, Peter Lenart would learn, life in this new world would be a real struggle, as being teenagers themselves in one of Europe’s most expensive cities; it was hard to earn a good wage and impossible to pay for the basics, especially as they were still youngsters who together had baby son.

Facing so many hardships, even though Agnes earned a living as a coffin-maker, a valuable trade she had learned in her homeland, being barely able to stay afloat, Social Services had taken their son into foster care, and that at the time she would disappear, Peter & Agnes were half way through writing a letter to their son, so that when he was old enough to read it, he could understand that he hadn’t been abandoned. But as Peter would state, "how am I supposed to finish that letter without her?".

With many friends who tried to help her, she stayed within the safety of other Eastern Europeans; one of whom she was close to, was a man she had known for just 18 months having met in Christmas 2020.

They seemed like an odd pairing. Agnes was a 20-year-old woman with girlish ways, and typical of many ‘Gen Z’ or ‘Zoomers’, being obsessed with social media, she posted selfies of herself living a fake version of “her best life” for a wealth of strangers to ‘like’, her clothes were deliberately stylish (last seen wearing a white fake fur coat, blue ripped jeans and pink trainers), and being petite, 5 foot 5 and 8 and a ½ stone with bleached platinum blonde hair, she stood out next to 64-year-old Neculai Paizan.

Paizan was large, fat and bald, like Uncle Fester in the Addam’s Family. After decades working in the construction trade, he always dressed practically, he lived cheaply being a father-of-four, and although his crown of white hair and short white beard gave him a grandfatherly quality, he had the rough callused hands of a manual labourer, and the hard scowl of someone who may have had a dark past, yet, the only crimes he was convicted of in the UK was benefit fraud, speeding and carrying a knife.

One notably odd detail about Paizan’s life was where he lived. As a qualified cement mixer driver who was known on almost every industrial estate in West London, he earned around £30,000 a year, and owned a £700,000 former mansion flat at Campden House on Peel Street in Holland Park, a well-to-do area. But he didn’t live there, instead he rented it out, and since at least 2008, he had lived off-grid.

Back then, his ‘home’ was The Cabin, a storage facility on the Harp View Business Park, surrounded by skips, industrial units and waste disposal sights, just off the busy A406 North Circular Road and the Brent Reservoir. It’s a place where no-one would willingly live, unless they were homeless, yet he did.

13 years later, in 2021, he was living in a battered old shipping container on the Powergate Business Park next door to Lennox Autos. Surrounded by a scrap metal and second hand cars, anyone passing would assume it was a place to store tools, not a home, as made of a durable weathering steel, this gloomy grey box was just 20 foot long by 8 foot wide and 8 and a 1/2 foot high but modified to live in.

It had a small bed with dirty pink sheets, an oil-filled radiator for warmth, a gas powered hob, and a sink, but with no running water he used the tap at the showroom. It was cramped, grimy, the shelves were held up by wooden joists, bare electrics hung from the ceiling with some secured by electrical tape, and with no window, the only fresh air was provided when the padlocked steel door was opened.

So, why did Paizan invite Agnes there, and why did she willingly enter?

Their relationship was odd, and one that only they know the truth of. In court, Paizan claimed he met her having found her begging for change in a supermarket car park, but this cannot be proven. He said she regularly harassed him for money for drugs in return for sex, which Peter refuted: “Paizan said Agnes slept with 15 or 20 people a day… she did not do these things. He preyed on her vulnerabilities and knew it”, but having met 54 times over the last 12 months, photos taken by Paizan proved that she regularly danced semi-naked for him, in a relationship he said was ‘intimate’. He said he called her "princess”, “little angel” and “sparrow", and loving her “like a daughter, she also called him "grandpa".

That was their secret world which occurred in the private confines of the shipping container.

Sunday 9th of May 2021 was Agnes’ last day alive, and like many, it seemed unremarkable. At 10:40am, her partner, Peter confirmed she left their Cricklewood bedsit, she kissed him goodbye and said she was heading to her job as a coffin maker. Only she didn’t. Across this 8 minute walk, being easy to spot in her white fake fur coat, blue jeans and pink shoes, she entered Costa Coffee at 173 Cricklewood Broadway and used her bank card to order an iced latte - the one he claimed was used to poison him.

CCTV captured this at 10:48am, and as she sat by the window, she waited and messaged two men; one was Attila Molna-Feri, her boss who (the Daily Record states) was an in an "intimate relationship” with and she ordered an Uber to go to his home in Wembley. The other was Paizan, who she messaged between 10:18am and 10:52am, and with him owing her £20, she fatefully cancelled the Uber when Paizan arrived in his silver Dacia Sandero. There they sat, chatted, and at 11:30am, she left with him.

They didn’t argue or fight, they drove the 3.8 miles to Park Royal, and as Prosecutor Jacob Hallam told the jury “at 11:47am, the defendant (Neculai Paizan) and Miss Akom got out of the car, and walked around to the service yard at the side of Lennox Autos”. As seen on several CCTV cameras, she was chatting, drinking her iced latte, and as Paizan unlocked the steel door to the shipping container, “they both went in and closed the door. That was at 11.49am. This was the last sighting of Agnes Akom”.

Only they know what happened within, and one of them is dead.

Not being home by 7pm, Peter grew concerned as her phone was off, she wasn’t answering any texts or posts, and spending the next day calling her friends, her boss confirmed she hadn’t been to work.

On Tuesday 11th of May, she was reported missing, and with the CID unable to trace her, on Saturday 16th, Agnes was elevated to a ‘high-risk missing person’ under the Met's Specialist Crime Command.

Detective Chief Inspector Neil John who led the investigation stated “there does come a point when a decision needs to be made as to whether or not a murder investigation team takes primacy. Selecting missing persons where there may be a homicide is very difficult, particularly in this case, where there was no body found and no early evidence or indication of foul play”. 100s of people go missing in the UK every day, most run away for personal reasons and many are found, but very few are murdered.

An appeal was made, but it drew no confirmed sightings. As DCI John stated “we start with proof of life enquiries… social media, family, friends, bank details. In this case, there were none… we were increasingly concerned for the safety of Agnes”, as with her phone having been switched off at about noon on the day she vanished, “this was completely out of character”. But a tiny clue shined through.

The last transaction she made was at Costa Coffee at 10:48am. CCTV showed her getting onto a silver Dacia Sandero, and using ANPR and traffic cameras, they tracked it to an address it was registered at; an old battered shipping container beside Lennox Autos on the Powergate Business Park in Park Royal.

Tuesday 18th of May 2021, 9 days after her disappearance, officers arrived at the shipping container. It was a start, an introduction to Neculai Paizan, Agnes’ friend who was possibly the last person to see her alive, and with nothing suspicious in his past, the detectives were only there to question him.

They knocked on the steel door, but he wasn’t there as neither was his car. With heavy duty padlocks securing it, the Fire Brigade forcibly gained entry. Inside… was nothing; no Agnes, no Paizan, no body, no obvious blood, and none of her clothes. It was a mess, but there was no hint that she’d been here.

With this still a serious missing persons case and not a murder investigation, fortuitously for the Police, seeing the fire trucks surrounding the shipping container and believing it was on fire, Paizan arrived.

That day, yet to be a suspect, he was questioned at Wembley Police Station aided by an interpreter.

He claimed that she went with him to the container for sex, they stayed a short while, he then dropped her off at a cash machine at the ASDA in Park Royal, and he hadn’t seen or heard from her since. But as Detective Constable Mike Davidson said “he gave an account, but we knew it was untruthful”, and worse still, he kept referring to her in the past tense even though no-one had suggested she was dead.

While he was interviewed over the next three days, detectives corroborated his account with the facts.

Several CCTV cameras confirmed that on Sunday 9th of May 2021 at 11:47am, Paizan & Agnes entered the shipping container. Watching every angle of the footage, 24-hours a day across the 9 days until detectives gained entry, they confirmed that Agnes went in, but never came out. So, where was she?

His alibi in court was that she had poisoned him with an iced latte, but CCTV showed no signs of him collapsing, staggering, or looking drugged. He was asked about this discrepancy, but he had no reply.

At 12:22pm, 35 minutes later, cameras showed Paizan, and only Paizan, leaving the shipping container alone, he was holding his left arm awkwardly, on his forearm were several red marks which detectives believed to be her blood, and at the showroom’s tap, he washed his hands and his face. DCI John also recalled "there is a chilling image of him looking up at the camera. It will remain with me forever”.

When questioned further, Paizan replied “maybe she’s still alive?”, but by then, as the detectives told him “she’s not alive”, as even without a body, the evidence against him was mounting up. DCI John recalled "we took the container apart; the floors came up, the walls came out, the ceiling came down".

The inside was filthy, yet forensics confirmed that with the bed stained with bleach "vigorous attempts had been made to clean it up”, and with faint traces of blood proven to be Agnes’, with her having been attacked violently, a speck of blood was found on the spine of a Bible on one of Paizan’s shelves.

She had died here, they knew it, but how did she die, and why?

Changing his story, Paizan, who when interviewed had both forearms in plaster-of-Paris casts, claimed that having washed his face and hands and suffering an attack of amnesia, he returned to find Agnes dead, “curled up in a ball… I got scared ". In his second alibi, he would claim that either her injuries were self-inflicted, or someone had attacked her when his back was turned, unseen by any camera.

Knowing the Police wouldn’t believe this fanciful tale about a mystery man who can walk through steel walls, he didn’t call an ambulance, instead “I tried to take her to the park, put her in a good place”. And although he said he loved her “like a daughter”, his actions were proven to be selfish and callous.

At just after 3:30pm, he dragged several items from the container and reversing his car up to the door, he loaded them into his boot; her white fur coat, her blue jeans and her pink trainers, anything which could identify her, and save her loved one’s from the pain and grief of never knowing where she was.

Cameras also spotted him loading into the boot a rolled-up carpet and heavy object in a stained pillow case. So why did no-one see this as suspicious? It’s an industrial estate, he was one of hundred of men that day, wearing orange hi-viz overalls and loading bulky items into a car, and being known at every waste disposal site in West London, no-one batted at eye when he dumped them into several skips.

An hour prior, he dragged a large white builder’s merchant’s bag, likely containing her body, to an unit he had rented next door. The space was empty, only he had access to it, and on a sheet of plastic, he cut up her body into pieces using an electric jigsaw; severing both legs, arms, the torso and her head. Anywhere else it would have drawn attention, but with every unit on the estate filled with the sound of hammers and angle grinders, the dismembering of her body was passed off as something innocent.

At around 5:30pm, unmanned cameras caught Paizan dragging the bag from the unit, loading it into his car, and again nobody noticed, as why would they? And even as he dispersed every piece of proof in the killing of Agnes Akom into several skips across the city, it looked as if he was renovating a house, and as he parked his car up outside of his flat on Peel Street, nobody knew that inside lay a dead body.

Paizan had committed an unseen murder and disposed of the body in plain sight…

…but, as we know, one witness was always watching him - the cameras.

DCI John recalled “there was one part in the timeline where we had no sightings of (Paizan’s) car”, so slowly and methodically, “the suspect's car was tracked across north-west London by officers moving from road to road and watching at each junction”. It took weeks of trawling these grainy images with many blind spots, but eventually, traffic cameras spotted the car entering a familiar industrial estate.

At about 8am on Monday the 10th of May 2021, the day after the murder, Paizan’s car pulled into the Harp View Business Park, just off the A406 North Circular Road, and a few doors down from The Cabin, the old storage facility at the back of Neasden Recreational Ground, where he’d lived a decade before.

As before, he had bagged up in a black plastic bag and callously tossed Agnes’ fake white fur coat into a skip. No-one would have known it was key to a murder, as to the casual observer, it was just junk.

Next, he dumped something heavy, and although it was wrapped in a bloodstained pillow case, no-one suspected it was blood as almost everything in the skip was spattered with red paint and  creosote. And even if they had opened it up and spotted the bloodied electric jigsaw inside, as he had tried and failed to wash it, it took forensic specialists to identify the blood and hair attached the blade as Agnes’.

Police had found bloodstains in the shipping container, his car and his unit, with proof of him disposing of her clothes, lying to the police, and the jigsaw he had used to dismember her body. With so many inconsistencies in his statement, on the 24th of May 2021 at Wembley Police Station, just six days after he was questioned, Paizan was arrested on suspicion of false imprisonment and murder. Detectives could prove that Agnes had come to harm at the hands of Paizan, yet without a body, as he shifted his alibi from finding her dead to self-defence having been poisoned and attacked by a woman half his size, this gap in the evidence could mean that he may get away with the lesser charge of manslaughter.

Again, it was a faint and distant image on an unmanned camera which provided a hint of a clue.

At just after 8am, wearing his non-descript orange hi-vis overalls, Paizan was spotted exiting the Harp View Business Park and carrying a spade. At 9:13am, the same camera caught him pushing a big blue wheelie-bin in the same direction, and clearly being heavy, he struggled to lift it up a kerb. Heading right, there is nothing but a stretch of the A406, Brent Reservoir and Neasden Recreational Ground.

Teams of specialists swarmed the waste transfer site sifting 60 tonnes of rubbish, divers plumbed the depths of the reservoir, and ground penetrating radar examined every patch of grass, but nothing was found… until Monday 14th June 2021, 36 days after she had disappeared, a cadaver dog caught a scent.

At the north-eastern end of Neasden Rec’, near the jagged fence which borders the industrial estate, the severely decomposed body of Agnes Akom was found. Buried in a shallow grave and covered by logs and branches, she was lying in a foetal position, a cord round her neck, and her decapitated head wrapped in a black plastic bag. DNA proved it was her, and for DCI John, her discovery proved to be poignant: “Each day, I would drive into work along the North Circular Road thinking about where she could be… her resting place was less than 100 metres from where I was driving twice a day every day”. 

In court, Judge Richard Marks QC stated: “what truly happened there and why you did what you did is something that we can only surmise. Tragically, she never lived to tell the tale, so the court and the jury only had your account, which I am certain was demonstrably untrue and which the jury rejected”.

That morning, Agnes willingly walked into Paizan’s shipping container, a place she had been to many times before, to receive a £20 note that he owed her. The Judge continued: “for reasons only known to yourself, you launched into a vicious attack, hitting her over the head at least 20 times with an electric jigsaw”, it was a sustained attack on a vulnerable lone woman which came out of no where.

The pathologist said “she had no defensive wounds, and having caught her unaware, she was rendered incapable of even raising her arms in an attempt to defend herself”, as he bludgeoned her, again and again. But why? Nothing caught on any camera gave a hint at the brutal violence he would unleash?

Agnes was the girl he said he loved “like a daughter”, and he was the man she called “Grandpa”, but when he finally stopped lying about her poisoning him with a drugged latte, he admitted “she said don't touch me, she didn't feel like it, she wasn't in a mood, she told me to leave her alone", and as a man who had preyed on her vulnerabilities to abuse her, her rejection would lead him to murder her.

It was an odd sexual relationship for no clear reason, except he says, she pestered him for money.

But there was no remorse in this man, no regret for the life he had ended for entirely selfish reasons. As DCI John recalled “the level of violence Paizan used in his attack on Agnes is truly horrific. What she suffered inside the container does not bear thinking about… and his attempts to hide his crime show a calculated effort to ensure that not only was Agnes never found, but that he would not be caught”.

Especially as, in the days after the murder, Paizan had visited Neasden Rec’ five times. (End)

On the 19th of July 2022, in Court 8 of the Old Bailey, the jury retired to deliberate. Having admitted to moving the body but denying murdering her, Paizan rejected his initial alibis, and “in an attempt to paint Agnes in a bad light" he falsely claimed that she was a sex worker, which prosecutor Jake Hallam QC said was a pack of lies. Having deliberated the evidence, the jury returned after just one hour.

Found guilty of all charges, 64-year-old Neculai Paizan was given a life sentence with a minimum term of 22 years, and given his age and alleged ill-health, it’s unlikely he will ever see freedom ever again.

Outside court, DCI Neil John said “what we know about Agnes tells us that whilst she was vulnerable, he has clearly lied about her background and personal situation in an attempt to sway the jury”. In her own statement, Agnes’ mother said “he dragged her through the mud in life, and her name through the mud after her death… he presented himself as a victim… but he is the one who is a liar”. And with her partner, Peter traumatised, stating “she was my love, the mother of my son, partner, and best friend, and took her away from me in the worst way possible”, there is one more victim in this tragedy.

Her baby son, who - while currently in foster care – will one day learn about how his mother died.

After Paizan’s arrest, Agnes was cremated and her ashes were flown back to Hungary. Not that Paizan  cared. After his conviction, he appealed; he stated that the sentence was excessive, that the judge had failed to consider his age and health, that Agnes’ prior convictions were not taken into account, and he even complained that one of the jurors smelled of cannabis. But with it clear he was a liar, as it was proven that he didn’t need a Romanian interpreter, and this was just a tactic to delay the investigation, his appeal was rejected. Paizan remains behind bars, and so far, he’s been beaten up three times.

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.

Five time nominated BEST BRITISH TRUE-CRIME PODCAST at the True Crime Awards, Independent Podcast Award and The British Podcast Awards, and voted 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation Top 20 True-Crime Podcasts, also seen on BBC Radio, Sky News, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week.

EPISODE THREE HUNDRED AND THIRTY-FOUR: 

This is Part Two of Two of ‘The Beast of Belvedere’ by Murder Mile UK True Crime.

From April 1983 to July 1984, a series of sadistic sex attacks were perpetrated on women and young girls on trains or near train stations on three routes from Central London to the South-East of England and Kent, they were the Bexleyheath Line, the North Kent Line and the Dartford Loop.
This prolific serial rapist never disguised his face, he attacked in broad daylight, and he stuck to the areas he knew so well. But who was he?

• Locations: The Dartford Loop began at Charing Cross, Waterloo East or London Bridge, and called at Hither Green, Lee, Mottingham, New Eltham, Sidcup, Albany Park, Bexley and Crayford. The Bexleyheath Line called at Lewisham, Blackheath, Kidbrooke, Eltham, Falconwood, Welling, Bexleyheath and Barnehurst. The North Kent at Lewisham, Blackheath, Charlton, Woolwich, Arsenal, Abbey Wood, Belvedere, Erith and Slade Green. As well as Birch Walk in Erith, Dartford station, Bursted Wood, Lesnes Abbey Woods, etc
• Date: April 1983 to July 1984
• Victims: unnamed
• Culprit: ? 
  

SOURCES: a selection sourced from various archives: 

• Evening Standard Mon, Jan 14, 1985
  
• The Daily Telegraph Tue, Jan 15, 1985
• Sunday Mirror Sun, Jan 20, 1985
• Evening Standard Wed, Jan 16, 1985
• Sunday Mirror Sun, Dec 01, 1985
• Sunday Mirror Sun, May 10, 1987
• The Daily Telegraph Mon, May 04, 1987
• Evening Standard Thu, Oct 26, 1989
• Daily Mirror Tue, Jan 15, 1985
• The Daily Telegraph Tue, Jan 22, 1985
• Daily Record Tue, Jan 15, 1985
• Daily Post: The Paper for Wales Tue, Jan 15, 1985
• Birmingham Evening Mail Tue, Jan 15, 1985
• The Northern Echo (3 AM ed.) Tue, Jan 15, 1985
• Western Daily Press Tue, Jan 15, 1985
• Manchester Evening News Mon, Jan 14, 1985
• Evening Post Mon, Jan 14, 1985
• The Journal Tue, Jan 15, 1985
• Eastern Daily Press Tue, Jan 15, 1985
• The Guardian Tue, Jan 15, 1985
• Liverpool Echo Mon, Jan 14, 1985
• Daily Express - Tuesday 15 January 1985
• Daily Mirror - Tuesday 15 January 1985
• Shropshire Star - Tuesday 15 January 1985
• Liverpool Echo Thu, Nov 17, 1983
• Belfast News-Letter - Friday 18 November 1983
• Daily Mirror - Thursday 17 November 1983
• Daily Express - Tuesday 29 November 1983
• Manchester Evening News - Thursday 17 November 1983
• Sunday Mirror Sun, Oct 16, 1983
• Daily Express - Saturday 11 August 1984
• The People - Sunday 16 October 1983
• Huddersfield Daily Examiner - Thursday 08 December 1983
• Evening Standard Fri, Nov 18, 1983
• Evening Standard Thu, Dec 08, 1983
• Daily Mirror Fri, Sep 02, 1983
• Liverpool Daily Post - Wednesday 15 August 1984
• Coventry Evening Telegraph - Tuesday 14 August 1984
• Evening Standard Fri, Sep 09, 1983
• Daily Express - Friday 09 September 1983
• Sunday Express - Sunday 16 October 1983
• Evening Standard Mon, Nov 07, 1983
• Evening Standard Fri, Nov 25, 1983
• Evening Standard Mon, Oct 17, 1983
• Daily Mirror - Thursday 17 November 1983
• The Daily Telegraph Tue, Nov 08, 1983
• The Daily Telegraph Tue, Jan 03, 1984
• Evening Standard Tue, Aug 14, 1984
• Lancashire Telegraph Sat, Oct 15, 1983
• Lincolnshire Echo Sat, Oct 15, 1983
• Reading Evening Post Sat, Oct 15, 1983
• Huddersfield Daily Examiner Sat, Oct 15, 1983
• The Sunday People Sun, Oct 16, 1983
• Sunday Mirror - Sunday 16 October 1983
• Reading Evening Post - Thursday 08 December 1983
• Huddersfield Daily Examiner - Thursday 08 December 1983
• The Observer Sun, Oct 23, 1983
• Huddersfield Daily Examiner Thu, Dec 08, 1983
• Daily Post (3 a.m. ed.) Sat, Aug 27, 1983
• The Daily Telegraph Sat, Aug 27, 1983
• The Daily Telegraph Wed, Aug 31, 1983
• Evening Standard Fri, Aug 26, 1983
• Evening Standard Tue, Jul 24, 1984
• Evening Standard Thu, Sep 01, 1983
• Western Daily Press Wed, Aug 31, 1983
• Sunday Mercury Sun, Aug 12, 1984
• The Daily Telegraph Mon, Aug 13, 1984
• Daily Post (3 a.m. ed.) Wed, Aug 15, 1984
• The Daily Telegraph Wed, Aug 15, 1984
• Grimsby Evening Telegraph Sat, Aug 11, 1984
• The Eastern Evening News Sat, Aug 11, 1984
• Sunday Sun Sun, Aug 12, 1984
• Manchester Evening News Tue, Aug 14, 1984

MUSIC:

• Man in a Bag by Cult With No Name
  

UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT:

The Police were closing in, but how was ‘The Beast of Belvedere’ caught? Find out on Murder Mile.

Situated to the side of Bursted Woods, just shy of Barnehurst station and overlooking a roundabout at the junctions of Erith Road and Barnehurst Road sat a tiny flat perched above a car showroom. It was not the kind of place anyone would choose to live, as there was no bed, sofa, telly, or personal items, just a kettle, a cup, an overflowing ash tray, a bin full of empty takeaways and an electric heater.

With the bare bulb off, the room was ominously dark so no-one could see the occupant sat at a desk by a window, silent and still, their binoculars spying as streams of women and young girls walked by unaware. Into a log book, the following was written: “Friday 10th of August 1984, 2pm, second shift”.

For months, 21-year-old WPC Julie Edwards had been on observation duty; a dull job split into 8-hours, as one of a team of officers keeping surveillance on 18 locations where ‘The Beast of Belvedere’ had struck, including Abbey Wood, Mottingham, Lee, Hither Green, Birch Walk and Falconwood. For many long hours; she would patiently sit and wait and watch, biding her time until a certain someone caught her eye, and oddly, being 2 miles south-east of Lesnes Abbey Woods, this was not unlike his hideout.

It had been a year since PC Clifford Thomas had stood on a thick brush of holly leaves, heard a metal clink and moving aside a sheet of corrugated iron, unearthed a 15 foot by 3 foot tunnel full of rapist’s apparel. Being situated between the Bexleyheath and North Kent lines, in the dead centre of the four square miles where he hunted his prey, detectives were buoyed at having found his lair, and soon him.

The scene was secured, the evidence bagged and whisked off to the forensics lab, which took weeks.

Only their jubilance would soon turn to despair as when the detectives examined the contents further,  the basic items he had left behind; like the candle, the brush, the mug, the tea bags, the jar of sugar and the bag of food, proved to be too generic to trace to a shop or purchase, and like the mattress covered in polythene, no fingerprints were found as they had been wiped away by the weather.

As for the spare clothes, lab tests showed no incriminating stains like blood or semen, and couldn’t be linked to any known rapists. The blouse, stockings and knickers were examined, but their prior owners were never identified, and perhaps purchased for cross-dressing or stolen for a thrill, they couldn’t be attributed to any reported victims. The empty beer cans and cigarette butts proved equally as fruitless. And believing that this was a “military style hideout”, detectives spent weeks seeking out sex offenders with military backgrounds, but two teenagers later admitted they’d dug the tunnel being Army cadets who were practicing building a den, and stated they had stopped using it a year before it was found.

With his hideout blown, the rapist never returned, and it was buried to stop any copy-cat attacks.

Detectives could never determine if this was the hideout of ‘The Beast of Belvedere’, or one of several sex attackers who were preying on lone women and girls in this area. But as a predator who didn’t sit and wait, as this one had, but changed his times, places and methods, this was unlikely to be him.

But why?

He last attacked on Friday the 14th of October 1983, having failed to rape a 14-year-old schoolgirl in Bursted Woods. By this point, he was seven attacks into his 15-month spree beginning in April 1983 with a 16-year-old girl at Falconwood station, and they were increasing in frequency and ferocity.

Every victim told the same story; he followed them to somewhere isolated (an alley, a station, a train), he struck from behind, muffled their mouth with his left hand, put a knife to their neck with his right, he threatened to kill them if they didn’t do exactly what as he said, and if they struggled or screamed, he battered them with his fists, a bottle or a block of wood, rendering senseless or semi-conscious.  

He was always calm, quiet, softly spoken, he said very little, and wore no disguise.

As for his description being “25 to 30, 5 foot 11 tall, slim with brown fair hair and brown eyes, and was unshaven”, it was so generic, it matched thousands of men across London and Kent, and also said to be “a scruffy manual labourer, with a stale smell who had a local accent”, with his clothes being cheap and commonplace, and having no visible scars or tattoos, there was nothing unique to identify him.

His victims were aged 14 to 34, and said to be small but different, he didn’t target one type of woman, but regarded them all as “whores” who he blamed for something which had ripped at his very being.

He knew the train lines, the timetables and every isolated spot to commit his attacks, and yet, he never strayed beyond the areas that as a local man he knew so well, likely having been born and raised here. And unlike one rapist who build a hideout to sit and wait, he attacked randomly on instinct and whim.

Examining each attack which occurred roughly every two weeks to a month, based on the fact that he never struck in the early mornings or very late at night, mostly on weekdays, and often between the hours of midday and mid-afternoon, Police surmised that he was either intermittently employed, that he worked a shift pattern, and very rarely attacking on the weekends, he was likely to be a family man.

As rape isn’t about sex, but power and control, detectives knew that – as is common with many rapists – he suffered with erectile dysfunction, hence he groped and fondled his victims to get himself hard, and ejaculating early, not at all and secreting no sperm, his failed manhood may have fuelled his rage.

There were five more women in this spree who would be left traumatised by ‘The Beast of Belvedere’. But what detectives had surmised about him didn’t narrow down the search to anyone they knew…

…and being so anonymous, it would take a miracle to find him.

The Beast’s name was Allan Pearey.

Born on the 25th of March 1949, mere streets from Barnehurst station on the Bexleyheath Line, Pearey was the second of five children to Joseph, a fair-haired, grey-eyed man who came from the northern city of Durham, and having fallen in love during the Second World War with Gwendoline Phillips, a local girl from Welling, one next stop from Falconwood, they married in 1945 and a family followed.

This area was his home, his everything, and almost every street of it he knew like the back of his hand, as these four square miles is where he would live and work for the whole of life, but also ruined lived.

Said to be “not bright”, but good at manual trades and woodwork, Pearey scraped by with a basic pass aged 15, having been educated at Picardy School on Erith Road in Belvedere, not far from the police station where less than two decades later, a team of detectives launched a manhunt in search of him.

Little is known about his early life, as the only traumatic moment seems to have been the death of his father in March 1974 and his mother remarrying in 1979, but as by this point he was 25, employed, married and had moved out, it didn’t impact him or his siblings, as it may have done if he was a boy.

Predictably, he matched the description of ‘The Beast of Belvedere’ fairly well, being 5 foot 10, slim, with brown fair hair, grey-brown eyes, and - like his father - he had a gap between his front two teeth. But no-one, whether friends or family, pointed the finger at him shouting “he’s the rapist”, as although detectives assumed (based on his attacks) that he was confident and direct, in truth, with no violence, abuse, theft or perversions reported in his past, he was a nobody who blended into the shadows.

DS Hawkins who headed up the manhunt remarked when he was caught, “there is nothing particularly unusual about him at all. He’s a boring type, perhaps a little strange and pathetic in his own way”, and as his own wife, Linda, would later state “he was a very moody type, but was a real loner basically”.

Living an unremarkable life, aged 15, Pearey’s first job was as a trainee machinist at Parkway Timbers in Belvedere, where he lasted for a year, and was described him as “satisfactory”, but nothing special.

By 1965, seeking a job with career prospects, Pearey began working for British Rail as a baggage porter at Dartford station; a large local terminus covering the Dartford Loop, Bexleyheath and the North Kent Line, and working shifts by loading luggage on and off trains for 100s if not 1000s of lone women, part of his job was to know every train, every carriage, every station, and every detail about the timetable.

After three years at Dartford, where he shuttled suitcases between Charing Cross, London Bridge and Waterloo East, as well as many of the network’s satellite stations, although quiet, he had impressed his bosses, and clearly being passionate about his job, in 1968, he was promoted to trainee signalman.

He had found his place in life, and although a little sullen, he would have succeeded…

…only he couldn’t control his basest of dark urges.

On an unspecified date in October 1968, a 16 year old girl boarded a train at Charing Cross. It was mid-afternoon, on a weekday, and she was heading to her home in Deptford. When a guard’s whistle blew at London Bridge and the train pulled away, 19-year-old Allan hopped into the closed compartment, where she sat alone and vulnerable in this ‘rape trap’. Muffling her mouth of any screams, nicking her neck with a knife, threatening to kill her and exposing his genitals, the violence he used against her was so severe, she had to be hospitalised, and when arrested, he was charged with attempted murder.

In November 1969, Allan Pearey was tried at the Old Bailey for a violent and sadistic crime for which he should have been sentenced to ten years, but as his first offence and having a good work record, it was reduced to the lesser charge of ‘attempting to render a woman incapable with intent’. He served his punishment in a little over a year in a borstal for young offenders, and was out by the turn of 1970.

He was free, but jobless, having been sacked by British Rail, and as far as we know…

…he didn’t attack any other women until the 16-year-old at Falconwood, when his spree began.

It’s hard to pin down why this violent rapist suddenly stopped after his first known attack, but he did, and this is most likely why the detectives struggled to identify him as ‘The Beast of Belvedere’. For 15 years, he was a reformed character, a husband, a father and a working man who committed no crimes.

In 1968, he met Linda Gillett, she recalled “I knew Allan through friends. He was going out with a friend of mine. When he went to prison I started to write to him and when he got out we went out together… I knew it was for an attack on a girl, but I believed it was for taking a handbag”, so seeing him for the kind man he was, in July 1970, they married at St Paul’s church in Erith, half a mile from Birch Walk.

Living in several council houses in Erith, they were said to be “happily married for 11 years”. Together, they raised four children, and as Linda said “he was a good husband really. He worked hard, loved the children, wasn’t a drinker or anything bad, and he never hit me or the children”. He was ordinary, dull and unremarkable, but isn’t that what a wife and her children would want from a husband and father?

She recalled “our sex life was normal, healthy”, and with Pearey said to have no sadism or perversions, was this why his dark urges remained hidden for 15 years, because he had found love, and a sex life?

After the birth of their last child, being happy, but knowing that any more children on his modest wage could cause splinters in their warm matrimonial bed, they agreed that Allan would have a vasectomy…

…but this, he says changed him, and caused ‘The Beast’ to awaken.

In 1978, while 30-year-old Pearey was working as a milkman, he met 15-year-old Sharon Wenham. Linda recalled “Allan denied it, but things were not going well between us… when I came back home one afternoon, I found them in bed together. That was the end of it”. They divorced in 1981, Linda remarried, had another child, and she remained friendly with Allan for the sake of their four children.

In January 1982, Sharon and Allan married and being young, she wanted children. In late 1982, Pearey had an operation to reverse his vasectomy, but (as he said) “it was a failure, and I felt that I too was a failure… I could see that deep inside this really hurt her… I felt I was no longer a man. After this we argued more and the arguments got worse”, and as the psychiatrist who assessed him stated “it was the angry reaction of feeling less than a man that launched his catalogue of crimes against women”.

This may also explain his erectile dysfunction, and why he left no sperm at the crime scenes.

The first known attack in his 15-month spree was on Saturday 23rd of April 1983 at Falconwood station. His victim, a 16-year-old girl - “what’s your age?”, “are you a virgin?”, ”no, you’re not, you’re a whore”.

He attacked mostly by day and on weekdays when his new wife was busy. He stuck to areas he knew, and may have struck while looking for work. No-one on the network recognised him even as posters of his photofit were plastered on the walls in September 1983, as he’d been sacked from British Rail 15 years before, and since then, he’d become a reformed character, married, boring and unassuming.

…but a month after he attacked a 14-year-old in Bursted Woods, he struck again.

Wednesday the 16th of November 1983, back at Falconwood station on the Bexleyheath Line, just after 7pm, a 17 year old receptionist exited the Charing Cross train. It was cold, damp and windy. She later gave an interview to the Daily Express in which she used the pseudonym ‘Carol X’. These are her words.

“I went to the mini cab office, and was told I’d have to wait. I thought ‘blow it, I’ll have to walk’. I thrust my hands deeper into my sheepskin coat. There were people about, but most of the faces I travel with had gone on ahead”, and exiting the station, she crossed over the bridge at Rochester Way where ‘The Beast’ had raped a 16-year-old girl just 7 months before, and into the darkness of Falconwood Field.

It was short, flat, sparse and she knew it well, but so did Pearey. “I was halfway across when I heard footsteps behind me. There’s a pen knife I usually carry, and I remember thinking ‘I wish I had it on me now’”, only its tiny blade would be useless against a prolific sex attacker who’d honed his method.

“I was being grabbed round the neck and there was a knife at my throat. A man said ‘shut your mouth or I’ll cut your throat’… it drew blood. I said ‘I’ve got money. Leave me alone and you can take it’. He said ‘I don’t want your money’ and dragged me by the arm to the side of the field”. Lights were on in the houses surrounding them, but being too dark to be seen, too far to be heard, and if she screamed, she knew she’d be dead, “he made me lie down. I begged him not to hurt me”, and then he raped her.

‘Carol X’ recalled “he ordered me to stay where I was and took my money anyway” as he fled in a half run, half walk, but the second he was out of sight, “I went to the nearest house for help”. Alan Angus, a 57-year-old engineer heard her frantic knocking at his house of Welling Way, “she was crying and distraught, and very frightened. We brought her in, we gave her a glass of sherry and tried to calm her down”, and although all she wanted to do was go home and get herself ‘clean’, she did the right thing.

‘Carol X’ said “when the Police arrived… I talked for about half an hour. I kept saying ‘what am I going to tell my mum and dad?’. Nothing like this had never happened to me before. I think I would have gone to pieces if I hadn’t been treated so kindly by the police. Now I am angry more than frightened”.

His description was broadcast across the Police radio: “white, late 20s, 5 foot 11, clean shaven, scruffy, slim, brown-ish hair, wearing dark trousers or jeans, gap toothed, smells strongly of stale cigarettes”, and although with him attacking now at a rate of two a month which meant another was imminent, DS Colin Hawkins stated that thanks to ‘Carol X’ “the prospects of finding him have never been better”.

A joint operation based at Belvedere Police station was set-up between the British Transport Police and the Met’ Police, expanding the search to cover the 33 square miles from Dartford to Charing Cross. Extra officers were drafted in, patrols were stepped up, and surveillance operations were established…

…but prolific rapists don’t just stop, so as predicted, two weeks later, he attacked again.

Wednesday 7th of December 1983 at 8pm, back near Bursted Woods just shy of Barnehurst station, a 25-year-old receptionist ran to the bus stop near the roundabout, but her bus had already pulled away.

Even though it was beginning to snow, having decided to walk the few stops to Bexley, she passed the car showroom, and sticking to the path, even with the Erith Road being well-lit and busy, she heard the footsteps of a man coming up behind her; she then felt a hand, a blade, and heard a threat to kill.

She knew exactly who he was and what he wanted, as coming face-to-face with a late 20s to early 30s man, tall, lean, long nose, scruffy hair, faded jeans, a bomber jacket, a tooth grin and stinking of ciggies, if she screamed, she’d be stabbed by ‘The Beast of Belvedere’, and if she didn’t, then something worse.

Frozen in fear, she did as he said. And although cars and pedestrians passed nearby, nobody stopped to help her, as with his hand draped around her shoulders and the two of them slowly walking side by side, they looked like a couple in a loving embrace, as he led her off the path, and into Bursted Woods.

For four minutes, he walked her further from the lights, deeper into the woods, her knowing that with every step, her fate was growing closer and her chance of escape becoming more distant, and when he got her to an isolated spot where no-one would be able to see or hear her, there he raped her.

He had raped or sexually assaulted at least 9 women, possibly 11, but Police suspected as many as 17.

The story hit the papers by the morning, television by the evening, and with anger rising, the day after, a group of protesters waved placards outside of Belvedere Police station, demanding that they catch him, rather than waiting for him to attack again. This was the moment it became a national story…

…and then suddenly, he stopped.

‘The Beast’ went silent, still, as even with his crimes escalating in frequency and violence, abruptly, there was nothing. Not a rape or assault committed in the following months matched his description.

Detectives wondered, ‘had he quit’, ‘was he in prison’, or had the media coverage ‘scared him away’?’

It’s something we will never know. Maybe he had found work, perhaps he was arguing less with Sharon about having babies, or possibly he was just laying low? But could a rapist really stop his dark urges?

No, as seven months later, he struck again.

Monday the 23rd of July 1984, a 17-year-old girl left Bexley College, she boarded the 12:02pm train at Bexleyheath travelling to Charing Cross for a job interview. Sat alone in a six-seat closed compartment, at Welling station, Allan Pearey boarded as the train pulled away, and he attacked almost instantly; a hand, a knife, a threat, “shut up or I’ll kill you”, he violently wrenched off her clothes, and raped her.

Just two minutes later, when the train arrived at Falconwood, he fled, but with it being daytime, he was seen by not just his victim, but the station master and the ticket attendant. And although she was bloodied and traumatised, having pulled the emergency cord, the train was stopped, the Police were called, the crime scene was sealed off and detectives one knew thing for certain; ‘The Beast’ was back.

Surveillance was stepped up.

Across the network, teams of officers worked 24-hours a day for weeks, in 8 hour shifts, at 18 covert locations where he’d attacked before, like Falconwood, Welling, Birch Walk, Dartford, and with a 25-year-old receptionist being attacked in Bursted Woods after she had missed her bus last December, on Friday 10th of August 1984, WPC Julie Edwards was sat at a window, with binoculars and a notepad.

The hours were long, dull, but vital, and soon her persistence would pay off, when she spotted a man with a ‘startling resemblance’ to him, loitering at the same bus stop on Erith Road. Alerted, two plain-clothed officers arrived in an unmarked car as Pearey boarded the bus, they tailed him, and getting off just a mile away, he headed to Birch Walk, a place with ominous significance for his victims…

…and now, being arrested, for ‘The Beast of Belvedere’.

Over five days, he was questioned at Belvedere Police station by DS Colin Hawkins. 33-year-old Allan Pearey confessed to six rapes, two assaults the Police knew of and two which hadn’t been reported.  On Tuesday 14th of August, he was committed to trial at Bexley Magistrates Court, during which “he trembled and cried during the 10-minute hearing”, and given his violence, his bail was denied.

Rapists are quite often loners, but DS Hawkins was excepting a monster when he met Pearey, a callous and cruel maniac given the sadism and cruelty he had inflicted. But instead “there is nothing unusual about the man at all. He appears a boring type, perhaps a little strange and pathetic in his own way”.

He was so unremarkable, even his friends and family didn’t believe it was him, as he was so unlikely.

During his questioning, Pearey wept: “I’ve caused great suffering to my victims. I hope that my capture will ease their minds in time and I hope they will be able to forget what I done to them and forgive me a little”. But even with detectives able to prove six rapes and two assaults, he was investigated for a string of attacks on the Dartford Loop, North Kent and Bexleyheath Lines since the late 1960s.

One case his method matched was the murder of German tourist Heidi Mnilk onboard the Charing Cross to West Wickham train on Sunday 8th of July 1973, as later confessed to by Patrick MacKay, who later denied it. But with the suspect seen by the two boys being 5 inches shorter, 15 years older and with an “Arabic appearance”, this wasn’t ‘The Beast of Belvedere’, but another prolific rapist. (End)

Held at Wormwood Scrubs prison, Pearey sent letters to his ex-wife Linda, blaming his sex attacks on others, stating “the kids were pulling away from me after our divorce. Then Sharon wanted children… this hurt me very much and we went to have the reversal operation done… but it failed… I really thought she had rejected me, it was the final blow. I could no longer think straight… I felt like a freak, everyone was laughing. I finally cracked and I couldn’t remember what I was doing. I had to hate”.

Which of course was a lie. He blamed his string of rapes and sexual assaults from 1983 to 1984 on his wife’s rejection and his failed vasectomy in 1982, but he was first charged with the ‘attempted murder’ of a 16-year-old girl, having violently beaten and failed to rape her on a train back in October 1968.

He told a psychiatrist: “deep inside I knew I had a very bad problem, but I was too scared and confused to seek help. I am glad I have been caught because now I can receive the help I so desperately need”.

Declared sane, on Monday the 14th of January 1985, he was tried by Judge Popplewell at the Old Bailey.

It lasted just 54 minutes, but unlike his first trial back in 1969, when he was given a pitiful sentence of one year at a borstal, admitting his guilt to all charges, on Monday 14th of January 1985, Allan Pearey was given six life sentences to run concurrently, with two years for each sexual assault. Summing up, the Judge stated “you terrified and humiliated these victims. I think you are a too dangerous a man be left at large. The public have to be protected from men like you, so I propose the maximum sentence”. 

His solicitor said, he was so remorseful, that he wanted to donate his kidneys to someone “gravely ill”. Linda, his ex-wife, got on with her life. But Sharon, having heard all the evidence and charges claimed “I write to him every day. I’ll stand by him until the end”. Two days after his conviction, Pearey pleaded to the Home Office for permission for him and his wife to have a child by artificial insemination. Sharon said “I don’t care what other people think, I know Allan as a kind, loving man. If it’s possible for him to give me a baby that would be wonderful”, of which Linda retorted, “his own children are going through enough at the moment. Surely there’s no need to put another child through this agony”…

…as well as his victims who may never have children of their own.

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.