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Murder Mile UK True-Crime Podcast #125: Signed in Blood (The Deadly Dilemma of Amarjit Chohan) - Part Two

31/3/2021

BEST TRUE-CRIME PODCAST at British Podcast Awards, The Telegraph's Top Five True-Crime Podcasts, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50 and iTunes Top 25. Subscribe via iTunes, Spotify, Acast, Stitcher and all podcast platforms.

35 Sutton Road in Hesston where the Chohan family home once stood (this is a new build, as the bungalow which once stood on this site was demolished in 2004

Welcome to the Murder Mile UK True-Crime Podcast and audio guided walk of London's most infamous and often forgotten murder cases, set within and beyond the West End.

A weekly true-crime podcast - EVERY THURSDAY
300+ infamous, untold or often forgotten true murders
Based on Soho's FIVE STAR rated Murder Mile Walks
Researched from original and first-hand sources
Authentic sounds recorded from the location itself

To accompany your audio guided walk, what follows is a series of photos, videos and maps, so that no matter where you are listening to this podcast, you'll feel like you're actually there.

EPISODE ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-FIVE:
Today’s episode is the concluding part about the kidnapping of Amarjit Chohan, the modest millionaire who was drugged and tortured to sign-away his fortune, but having resisted for the sake of his family’s future, his kidnappers knew there was only one way to break him.

Date: Wednesday 15th or Thursday 16th February 2003
Location: 35 Sutton Road, Heston, TW5 (building demolished in 2004)
Victims: 5 (Amarjit Chohan, Nancy Chohan, Ravinder Chohan, Devinder Chohan and Charanjit Kaur Pan)
Culprits: Kenneth Regen alias Avery, William "Bill" Horncy, Peter Douglas Rees

CLICK HERE to download the Murder Mile podcast via iTunes and to receive the latest episodes, click "subscribe". You can listen to it by clicking PLAY on the embedded media player below.

THE LOCATION
As many photos of the case are copyright protected by greedy news organisations, to view them, take a peek at my entirely legal social media accounts - Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.

The location of 35 Sutton Road in Heston, where Amarjit Chohan previously lived and nancy and her children were last seen alive is marked with a mustard yellow cross. To use the map, click it. If you want to see the other murder maps, access them by clicking here.

Here's a little video of 35 Sutton Road in Heston where home of the Chohan family once stood. It was demolished in 2004, so this isn't the original building.

This is just a link to YouTube, so don't worry, it won't eat up your data.

I've also posted some photos to aid your knowledge of the case. These photos were taken by myself (copyright Murder Mile) or granted under Government License 3.0, where applicable.

Silence by Cult With No Name (Intro and interstitials)
Winsome Lose Some by Cult With No Name (credits
Resolution by Wayne Jones
Under Cover by Wayne Jones
Crystalline by Amulets
Argonne by Zachariah Hickman
Wolfmother by LooPop
Horror House by Aaron Kenny
How Far we’ve Come by Cooper Cannell
Waiting by Peter Rudenko
Elegy by Wayne Jones
Requiem by Esther Ambrami

UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE:

SCRIPT: Welcome to Murder Mile; a true-crime podcast and audio guided walk featuring many of London’s untold, unsolved and long-forgotten murders, all set within and beyond the West End.

(Torture sounds) Today’s episode is the concluding part about the kidnapping of Amarjit Chohan, the modest millionaire who was drugged and tortured to sign-away his fortune, but having resisted for the sake of his family’s future, his kidnappers knew there was only one way to break him.

(Distort to end) Murder Mile is researched using authentic sources. It contains moments of satire, shock and grisly details. And as a dramatization of the real events, it may also feature loud and realistic sounds, so that no matter where you listen to this podcast, you’ll feel like you’re actually there.

(Voicemail) “Hello Nancy. Don’t panic. I’m okay. I’ll be back tomorrow”

(Muffled) “Sign it!”. My name is Michael, I am your tour-guide and this is Murder Mile.

(Fights to breathe) Episode 125: Signed in Blood (The Deadly Dilemma of Amarjit Chohan) – Part Two.

(Torn tape) Still gagged, as several hairs from his moustache were ripped-out by the roots as the brown parcel tape was torn from his nose, although Amarjit could almost breathe again, he couldn’t scream.

With black eyes, purple skin and slick red streaks running down the puffy lumps of his once pleasant face, the shattered man slumped in the floral armchair; his feet bound and his mouth muffled, as the rest of the reel of tape dangled at the back of his plastic smothered head. All this pain, all this fear, he knew it could all be over in the stroke of a pen, but so would his family’s futures.

Repeatedly, Amarjit had refused to sign a single blank sheet, he knew he was dead whether he signed them or not, but he also knew one other thing... without a signature, his kidnappers had nothing.

It is said that a humble man is often born out of humble beginnings...

...but this was not the case with Kenneth Regen.

Since he was a boy, Kenneth Roy Regan had despised his working-class life. Burdened by big dreams, little patience and a basic education, his teenage years were spent in the little village of South Newton, where he lived with his father Roy; a HGV-driver in a cramped two-roomed bungalow at 3 Forge Close. He trained as a trucker and learned how to lay drives, only loving money, he hated hard work.

Kenneth wanted it all; fast living, loose women, sports cars and fancy suits. Not being a man of style, he lacked the looks and charisma to succeed and his knowledge of business was non-existent. He was a fantasist who pictured himself as a wealthy playboy and a criminal mastermind - but being prone to bragging and bullshit, and fuelled by a fiery temper - he wanted everything right here and right now.

Peter Rees, his co-kidnapper later described him as a "devious, violent and manipulative liar”, a man without a single shred of empathy for anyone but himself. But he had confidence and persistence.

Nicknamed Captain Cash, alongside his pal William Horncy, they netted £1.75 million in fake passports having recruited the homeless at £50-a-go. Having muscled in on a legitimate insurance firm, he used this to launder money. Flooding the streets with Class A drugs, they once smuggled 15 tonnes in a hand-built submarine. And in April 1997, Michael Schallamach, a Southampton businessman vanished without trace, but in an eerie similarity to the recorded message – “Hello Nancy...” - Michael’s wife Yvonne would receive a letter claiming her husband had ran away to Nigeria. And although Hampshire Police hadn’t enough evidence to convict him, the last person to see Michael alive was Kenneth Regen.

By the mid-to-late 1990’s, Kenneth was living the crass flashy life he had dreamed of; with slick shiny suits, chunky gold chains and swigging Cristal; he drove a Mercedes, he partied in Monte Carlo, and he showered beautiful women with expensive gifts, as a way to excuse his lack of manners and looks.

He had it all... and then, he lost the lot.

In June 1998, as Police swooped on his lock-up in North London, Kenneth fled, ran over a policewoman and - having crashed his car - in the boot they found bundles of cash and 30 kilos of heroin. His criminal career was over, and charged with assault, laundering, fraud, forgery and drug-smuggling, the 46-year-old was sentenced to 27-years in prison, meaning – with luck – he would be out in 2027, aged 73.

Only Kenneth didn’t plan on serving time, so turning Queen’s Evidence, Kenneth became a super-grass for the National Criminal Investigation Squad, a snitch who ratted-out everyone he ever knew to save himself; whether a drug dealer, a smuggler, a gangster, or even his own partner William Horncy. His information fed into four major Police investigations - Operation Bromley, Hoy, Extend and Parisienne – his evidence smashed-up a £2billion cocaine smuggling ring, fifteen wanted criminals were locked up for decades, and in return, his 27-year sentence was reduced to eight... but he served only three.

In June 2002, 51-year-old Kenneth Regen, having changed his name to Kenneth Avery, left prison with nothing but the shirt on his back, the lint in his pockets and a contract on his head. He knew he was a ‘dead man walking’, so with his life being short, he needed to live his life to the full, like he used to.

His problem was money, everything had been confiscated; his cars, his homes and his ill-gotten gains. The flashy Merc was swapped for a crappy old Peugeot. The tailored suits became jeans and jumpers. High-tea at Harvey Nichols was replaced with chip-butties in front of the telly-box with his elderly dad Roy (a good man who eked-out his pension as a cleaner at Salisbury train station). And now, as he did as a little kid, he was kipping in his dad’s bungalow at 3 Forge Close. It felt like he had achieved nothing.

Owing to the strict conditions of his parole, as a HGV driver, he earned a modest living hauling freight for different businesses. One of which was a successful fruit and veg import firm called CIBA Freight...

...that is how, by chance, Kenneth Avery met Amarjit Chohan.

The two men had many similarities, again by chance; they were almost the same age, weight and size; they both wore casual clothes, both drove tatty little runabouts and both lived in modest bungalows, and although Amarjit’s was a permanent part of his humble nature, Kenneth’s was only a temporary issue. In Kenneth’s eyes, he would be rich again, as everything Amarjit had was his for the taking.

Kenneth hated hard work, he wanted to get rich quick, this wasn’t a problem having muscled his way into businesses before, and although he had the confidence, but what he lacked was respectability. In 1997, he had befriended Belinda Brewin – an elegant and successful PR exec’ with a solid reputation and some serious celebrity clout – she was everything he never was; smart, honest and trusted.

Having brushed-off his advances before, she kept Kenneth at an arm’s length, but having recently been dumped by her partner and lumped with the fees to her daughter’s private school and the mortgage to a 50-acre estate in Devon, she had a very exclusive lifestyle to live, but now, no means to afford it.

As a friend and (he hoped) a lover, Kenneth offered to help Belinda out with a job. It seemed legit. Only she would be unwittingly drawn into a deadly deal, posing as the ‘respectable front’ for his scams.

Kenneth had scams galore. Whilst still on probation, he was scouting for farms to turn into cannabis factories, he was planning to smuggle two-and-a-half tonnes of cocaine in via the seaport of Fishguard, and in January 2003, a £3 million deal to build a McDonalds franchise in Hatton Cross had collapsed. He had planned to bail-out the second the money came in, so was furious at having potentially lost millions which he considered ‘his’... but it did give him a greater insight into Amarjit and his business.

Hitting upon a new plan from an old scam, he would lure Amarjit somewhere remote; kidnap him, drug him and beat him; force him to sign-over his wealth, his life and his business by signing several sheets of blank paper, and once that was done, kill him, dump him and claim that he’d fled the country. The plan was simple and effective, as Amarjit had many secrets and the signatures would all be his.

Unable to do this alone, he recruited William Horncy, his old-pal whose information to the Police had sent him to prison for three years, but now as equally broke, Bill had been lured in by the lie that £2 million was sitting in an offshore account, to be shared by the two men once their parole was lifted. As well as Peter Rees, a 38-year-old burglar with a crap moustache, a bad mullet and an okay accent when it came to posing as a Dutch buyer - even though Peter neither liked nor trusted Kenneth Regen.

Within a few days, the kidnapping was arranged; a white Transit van was rented, a safe house was secured at a small bungalow (having sent his elderly dad on a short holiday), a vile of GHB was ordered and - while fitting a mezzanine floor at CIBA Freight - they swiped a few rolls of brown parcel tape, several pens, some envelopes and a stack of blank paper headed with the company logo. A few calls were made, a plausible deal was agreed, a time and a place were arranged, and having driven his blue Ford Escort to a secluded lane near Stonehenge, by the morning of Thursday 13th February 2003...

...Amarjit Chohan had vanished. (Tape/breathing/message – “Hello Nancy. Don’t panic. I’m okay...”)

(Torn tape) It should have been a simple plan; kidnap, torture, murder and dump, but Amarjit’s refusal to sign the papers wasn’t the only problem. (Mobile) Missing for two days – with his phone dead and Kenneth ignoring his - Nancy knew that something seriously wrong, she just didn’t know what, but she feared the worst. Being anxious and frantic, if Nancy called the Police, Kenneth risked arrest...

...but then, maybe he had misjudged her? Maybe she wasn’t an insignificant little detail who was causing a fuss? And maybe this living liability was his best and only chance at getting Amarjit to sign?

Exactly how and when it happened is unknown.

Late on Saturday 15th February, a rented white Transit van pulled up at 35 Sutton Road in Heston, as with Peter guarding Amarjit, Kenneth and Bill entered the Chohan family bungalow. Their mood was calm and what was said is uncertain, but there were no screams, no shouts and no signs of a struggle.

With her laundry part-finished, a door key in the lock, her holy book left behind and having not packed a single item vital to travel with a three-year-old toddler and an eight-week-old baby, to the uninitiated it looked as if Nancy, Charanjit, Ravinder and Devinder had left home of their own accord. If they were drugged, nobody saw them carried? If they walked, nobody saw them leave? And with the transit van steadily driven 76 miles from Heston to Forge Close, again, nobody heard or saw anything suspicious.

Having reversed up to the side-wall, if the family had voluntarily entered the bungalow - possibly under the promise of seeing Amarjit - not one neighbour heard the sound of eight people inside its wafer-thin walls; not an angry kidnapper, a terrified hostage, two petrified women or two wailing babies? A sight which undoubtably would have made any one of them scream, cry or flee... but it didn’t.

And yet, something had made Amarjit sign, as several blank sheets of CIBA Freight paper were adorned with his signature? With the stroke of a pen, everything was taken. But why? Why give up everything?

Everyone has their breaking point. Maybe his loved ones were paraded before him? Maybe his family were threatened, his wife tortured, or his babies beaten? Either way, autopsies would later confirm that everyone member of the Chohan family was strangled, whether in the van, in the house, or in the sitting-room, as (being bound and gagged) Amarjit was forced to watch as, one-by-one, a remorseless sadist massacred his whole family before his eyes? In fact, the only proof we have that they were even there was a small spot of blood found on the side-wall, which belonged to eight-week-old Devinder.

With his life destroyed, having served his purpose, Amarjit knew that his death was imminent...

...but before he died, in a stroke of genius, he would sign his name one more time.

On Monday 17th February, Kenneth Regen entered CIBA Freight. In his hand, he held two sheets of paper; a Power of Attorney giving him full control over the business, and a typed letter from Amarjit. It read “Greed has got the better of me. I've got myself in serious trouble. People are after me. I have to escape", stating that his legal deal in the narcotic Khat had embroiled him with a deadly drugs cartel.

Initially the staff were shocked, but given how chaotically he had run his business, with a new buyer mooted, the signatures a match and the papers legit, CIBA Freight carried on under new management, with Belinda Brewin installed as its Managing Director and more importantly as Kenneth’s ‘respectable front’. Only its new owner didn’t waste any time admiring his million-pound empire...

...as in his eyes, a few insignificant little details needed to be erased.

It began as a casual aside when Belinda said she was having a drainage issue at Great Colefield House, her 50-acre estate in the village of Stoodleigh, 90 miles south of Stonehenge. Without her knowledge, Kenneth had begun fixing the problem, but in truth this little gift had a more sinister side.

That’s the beauty of this part of the Devon countryside, there’s nothing but acres of fields and farms. It’s never a strange sight to see a JCB digging a ditch six-feet-deep, fourteen-long and four-wide in this neck of the woods. Nor three men unloading a van of five heavy lumps wrapped in plastic, a ferocious fire whose acrid smoke blots out the sky as an unwanted heap burns in the deep red soil of the trench, nor is it even odd to see - whatever the farmer has done - hidden under 48 tonnes of rubble and soil.

So unfazed was Kenneth, when a friendly local got chatting to him, Kenneth quipped “Yeah, I've done a lot of driveways for Pakistanis”. Grinning, as underneath his feet, lay the bodies of the Chohan family.

Within days, the safe house at Forge Close was stripped; every item of furniture was destroyed, every wall was repainted, every carpet was replaced and (in place of the armchair) was a three-piece suite.

Outside in the cul-de-sac, having been backed-up to the side-wall, the vehicles were pressure-washed, inside and out, and - with the blue Ford Escort scrapped - the van was returned to the hire company.

And with that, Amarjit and the Chohan family had vanished for good.

Only Kenneth Regen had overlooked a small (and he thought) insignificant little detail irrelevant to his plan. The first little problem was Nancy, but next was her brother, Onkar. (Phone ringing continuously)

As a close-knit family, distance meant nothing, so although Onkar Verma lived in New Zealand, without fail, he and his sister would talk every day. Six days had now passed with the phone going unanswered, Amarjit was missing and the family were silent. He knew something was seriously wrong, he just didn’t know what, so having reported them missing, he flew the eleven and a half thousand miles to London.

With a spare key, Onkar entered the bungalow at 35 Sutton Road. The door was locked and the lights were out, but as a busy family home of a mum, a dad and a gran, with a three-year-old boy and an eight-week-old baby, that day, the house was unnervingly silent. For the Police, there was signs of a break-in, a theft or a struggle - this wasn’t a criminal act, this was a family who had left at short notice.

But for Onkar, it was the small details which made his stomach churn with fear.

In her haste, unusually Nancy hadn’t packed anything for the children; no clothes, no food, no bottles and no nappies. With the laundry in the washer and a key still in the backdoor, this hinted at a family crisis, but three items left behind stuck out as strange; Ravinder’s favourite toy (a little Thomas the Tank Engine), Charanjit’s cherished holy book and her return ticket to India, which was now overdue.

Investigating further, having found their mobile phones dead and their bank accounts untouched, the Police contacted CIBA Freight and the strange disappearance of Amarjit Chohan began to unravel.

It seemed a plausible story; a chaotic businessman with a company which imports a semi-legal narcotic gets on the wrong side of a drugs cartel. Signed by his own hand, a Power of Attorney and a type letter had proven it. To any outsider, Amarjit looked suspicious-as-hell and Kenneth as clean-as-a-whistle, but there was still an unanswered question... if Amarjit has fled, what had happened to his family?

Undaunted, Kenneth concocted a new plan from an old scam. With Amarjit’s blue Ford Escort crushed, he hopped a ferry at Southampton, drove his crappy Peugeot 206 to the French port of Dieppe and posted a typed letter on headed paper, which was signed by Amarjit. Postmarked 20th March from this ‘gateway to Europe’, it arrived at CIBA Freight three days later, clearly stating that Amarjit had “had enough of England” and (having possibly driven by car) that he was “taking my family back to India”.

Only something didn’t ring true...

As with the phone message, Amarjit left voicemails for his staff in English and his wife in Punjabi, but when it came to letters, he always wrote them by hand. Kenneth didn’t know this, only those who truly knew Amarjit would, so with no money or passports, as much as the letter implied that the family were in France and heading to India, the likelihood was that they were still somewhere in England.

Headed-up by DCI Dave Little of Scotland Yard’s Serious Crime Command, on the several occasions he interviewed Kenneth Regen, this convicted drug-smuggler, forger and snitch came across as arrogant, selfish and remorseless. When questioned, he had no answers as to why “if an Asian gang had extorted Amarjit, where’s the threats against you?”, “why are there no ferry tickets in the name of Chohan?”, “why haven’t my detectives found the family in the Punjab?”, “why did his blue Ford Escort crash on 21st February and who were the two male occupants who gave false names?”, and more bafflingly, “why did Amarjit leave his multi-million-pound business to you, a man he had met just months ago?”

Everytime they spoke; his story would change... and then, it changed again.

Kenneth claimed, “Okay, Anil hasn’t fled, his family are in South Wales. I’m meant to be giving him some fake passports on the Easter Monday, by the Bronze Pig statue at the back of Newport market”.

The DCI knew this was a ploy, as the location was a deliberate choice which openly mocked the Police, so as a surveillance team watched the meet which wouldn’t happen, the investigation continued.

Identifying his known accomplices – William Horncy and Peter Rees – phone masts had pin-pointed their precise movements in Southhall, South Newton and Stoodleigh at around the time that the family had vanished, receipts for purchases were found and traffic cameras identified the white Transit van.

Rightly suspicious, Belinda Brewin, CIBA Freight’s newly-appointed Managing Director approached the Police and openly expressed her worries; very little made sense, but stranger still was that, on the day that Kenneth become a new boss with a £4.5 million empire to run, he was on her farm digging ditches.

Belinda would be able to point the Police to the exact location of the trench...

...only Kenneth was one step ahead of her.

On Saturday 19th April, Regen, Horncy and Rees returned to Belinda’s farm. Buried for eight weeks, a digger unearthed the rotting remains of the family; with so little respect that the digger’s tooth ripped deep wound in Amarjit’s head and as the killers gazed upon the bodies all trussed up in plastic sheets, it was joked that they “looked like Christmas Crackers”, before being slung in the back of the van.

On Sunday 20th, having hired a speedboat, they launched from Poole and hurtling roughly 30 miles off the Dorset coast, they dumped the bodies in the English Channel and out into the Atlantic Sea beyond.

So, by the Monday, as Regan and Horncy returned to the bronze pig statue and a surveillance team watched on, with the unabashed cockiness of two pathetic little kids, they scratched their heads with exaggerated expressions, performing a pantomime, as if wondering why Amarjit hadn’t shown up?

With no bodies, no blood, no sightings and no hard evidence, the Police had very little to go on...

...only for Kenneth and his murderous cohorts, the tides were about to turn.

In the early hours of 22nd April 2003, making use of the calm waters, David Chapman and his son Carl were canoeing off Bournemouth Pier, a popular tourist attraction with miles of sandy beaches, but as they weaved between the dark concrete piles of the cast iron pier, they spotted a body in the water.

As an unidentified Asian man in his late 40’s, based on the decomposition, he had been dead for ten weeks but he hadn’t drowned, in fact he had only entered the sea a few days before. And although they were unable to obtain a fingerprint as his skin had degloved, undeniably his death was unlawful.

With high levels of GHB in his system, his wrists and ankles bound, and a gag made from brown parcel tape and a red scarf still wrapped around his head, being dotted with small flecks of gravel and an odd reddish soil, the evidence suggested he had been buried on land before being dumped in the sea.

One week later, with his DNA proving an exact match, their worst fears were realised; Amarjit Chohan had been murdered, and yet, the Police were no closer to finding out who had done it, and why?

But again then, it’s amazing the damage that a person can do with the single stroke of a pen? (End)

Having witnessed his family massacred and knowing his death was imminent, with the same pen he had used to sign his life away, Amarjit had scrawled a few clues on a scrap of paper, such as; his details, the events and the names of his killers. That should have been enough to convict all three, but Amarjit went one better. He didn’t use any old paper, or even a sheet of his own. Instead, seeing it sat on the side-table, he used a much more incriminating letter, sent from Cheltenham & Gloucester Bank, on the 12th February 2003, to 3 Forge Close and addressed to Kenneth Regan. And having signed it with his own signature, he folded it up into an unrecognisable lump and hid in in his own black sock.

The evidence was overwhelming; a spot of Devinder’s blood at the safe house, burned fragments of family’s clothes in the red-soiled ditch, and although the vehicles were pressure-washed, the powerful hose had merely pushed every hint of their blood and hair into the recesses of the transit van.

On 15th July, within sight of Bournemouth Pier, a fishing trawler reeled in Nancy’s decomposed body; she had been strangled and her skull was smashed-in with a hammer. But as the thick rope nets were hoisted aloft to bring her body onboard, something fell back into the sea. It was never proven, but based on what the fishermen said, it was believed to have been either one or both of her children.

On 7th September, the remains of Charanjit Kaur Pan were found, washed-up on the Isle of Wight. And although searched for, three-year-old Ravinder and eight-week-old Devinder were never found.

On 8th November 2004, the trial began at The Old Bailey, at which all three pleaded ‘not guilty’. Lasting eight-months and with the investigation costing £10million, a jury of eight men and four women deliberated for 61 hours before reaching a unanimous verdict. Guilty. Convicted of murder, Peter Douglas Rees was sentenced to a minimum of 23 years and both William Horncy and Kenneth Regan were later sentenced to a whole life tariff. With no prospect of parole, they will never be released.

OUTRO: Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for listening to Murder Mile.

That was the final part of Signed in Blood. As always, if you’d like a less-stressful half hour, where my mouth flaps for a bit, words come out and cake goes in, join me after the break. But before that, here’s a brief promo for a true-crime podcast which may be the almond in your breakfast croissant.

A big thank you to my new Patreon supporters, some of whom have received exclusive goodies, such as badges, stickers and key-rings, as well as Patron-only podcasts such as Walk With Me and Deadly Thoughts. Oooh. They are Elizabeth Biancucci (Bee-an-koochi), Michelle de Oude, Jo Whittingham and Hannah Hardwick. I thank you all. Plus a thank you to everyone who listens to Murder Mile, shares it with their friends, and leaves a lovely review online. I really do read them all. And as promised, a little hi or a g’day to Lou Farley in Australia.

Murder Mile was researched, written and performed by myself, with the main musical themes written and performed by Erik Stein & Jon Boux of Cult With No Name.

Thank you for listening and sleep well.

*** LEGAL DISCLAIMER
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.
*** LEGAL DISCLAIMER

Michael J Buchanan-Dunne is a writer, crime historian, podcaster and tour-guide who runs Murder Mile Walks, a guided tour of Soho’s most notorious murder cases, hailed as “one of the top ten curious, quirky, unusual and different things to do in London”, nominated "one of the best true-crime podcasts at the British Podcast Awards", one of The Telegraph's top five true-crime podcasts and featuring 12 murderers, including 3 serial killers, across 15 locations, totaling 50 deaths, over just a one mile walk.

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Murder Mile UK True-Crime Podcast #124: Signed in Blood (The Deadly Dilemma of Amarjit Chohan) – Part One

24/3/2021

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Unit 7-8, Market Trading Estate, formerly known as CIBA Freight which was co-owned by Amarjit Chohan and was the last place he was seen alive

Welcome to the Murder Mile UK True-Crime Podcast and audio guided walk of London's most infamous and often forgotten murder cases, set within and beyond the West End.

A weekly true-crime podcast - EVERY THURSDAY
300+ infamous, untold or often forgotten true murders
Based on Soho's FIVE STAR rated Murder Mile Walks
Researched from original and first-hand sources
Authentic sounds recorded from the location itself

To accompany your audio guided walk, what follows is a series of photos, videos and maps, so that no matter where you are listening to this podcast, you'll feel like you're actually there.

EPISODE ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-FOUR:
This is part one of a two-part episode. Today’s episode is about Amarjit Chohan; a loving father, a devoted husband and a loyal businessman. Being successful both at home and at work, although he lived for business, he loved his family above all. But when a deal went bad, Amarjit would be forced into a deadly dilemma.

Date: Thursday 13th February 2003
Location: CIBA Freight, Units 7-8, Market Trading Estate, Southall, TW5
Victims: 5 (Amarjit Singh Chohan, Nancy Chohan, Ravinder Chohan, Devinder Chohan and Charanjit Kaur Pan)
Culprits: 1 (Kenneth Regan/Avery, William “Bill” Horncy and Peter Douglas Rees)

CLICK HERE to download the Murder Mile podcast via iTunes and to receive the latest episodes, click "subscribe". You can listen to it by clicking PLAY on the embedded media player below.

The location of CIBA Freight Services UK in Southall, the business owned by Amarjit Chohan and where he was last seen alive is marked with a lime green cross. To use the map, click it. If you want to see the other murder maps, access them by clicking here.

This is a little video of Units 7-8 at the Market Trading Estate in Southall, formerly CIBA Freight which was co-owned by Amarjit Chohan and was the last place he was seen alive.

This video is a link to YouTube so it won't eat up your phone data.

I've also posted some photos to aid your knowledge of the case. These photos were taken by myself (copyright Murder Mile) or granted under Government License 3.0, where applicable.

Man in a Bag by Cult With No Name (credits / interstitisals)
Winsome Lose Some by Cult With No Name (end credits)
Requiem by Esther Ambrami
When the Ash Settles by The Westerlies
How Far We’ve Come by Cooper Cannell
True by NCTRNM
Argonne by Zachariah Hickman
Crystalline by Amulets
Wolf Mother by LooPop
Alone With My Thoughts by Esther Ambrami

UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE:

SCRIPT: Welcome to Murder Mile; a true-crime podcast and audio guided walk featuring many of London’s untold, unsolved and long-forgotten murders, all set within and beyond the West End.

Today’s episode is about Amarjit Chohan; a loving father, a devoted husband and a very successful entrepreneur, who he lived for business but loved his family above all. But when a lucrative deal went bad, Amarjit would be forced into a deadly dilemma.

Murder Mile is researched using authentic sources. It contains moments of satire, shock and grisly details. And as a dramatization of the real events, it may also feature loud and realistic sounds, so that no matter where you listen to this podcast, you’ll feel like you’re actually there.

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

Episode 124: Signed in Blood (The Deadly Dilemma of Amarjit Chohan) – Part One

Today I’m standing on the Market Trading Estate in Southall, TW5; one mile west of the suicide of child-rapist Arnis Zalkalns, three miles south of the deadly drugs trial at Northwick Park Hospital, and just two miles north-west of the family home of Amarjit Chohan – coming very soon to Murder Mile.

Situated off the busy M4 motorway and under hectic Heathrow flightpath, the Market Trading Estate is an industrial complex full of cash n carry’s, car washes and warehouses. Laid in a T-shaped cul-de-sac, it’s flanked by fifteen brown-brick and grey-steel warehouses, with roller-shuttered stockrooms on the ground, office space above and outside a hive of forklifts stacking pallets of goods into trucks.

The only difference between this and any other trading estate is that – being a place where many fruit-and-veg empires bloom, and the Mango Mogul, Kumquat Queen and Prince of the Quinces reigns supreme – past the mangled mopeds and dodgy Datsuns often sits a boss’s Bentley. Shiny-bright and bird-poo free, many have personalised plates like ‘K1W1’ (with 1’s instead of I’s), ‘MANG0’ (only with a zero), ‘CHERR135’ (ending 135) and - for those who deals are less fruitful, if you’ll pardon the pun – ‘BANANAS’ (which features no letters what-so-ever, just an 8, three 3’s, a 5 and some badly bent 7’s).

These are business-to-business distributors, where deals in dates are done by the tonne and tamarinds are shipped by the truckload. They do sell bananas, but should you wish to buy a bunch, expect to be pitied and patted on the head, laughed-at and lampooned, or advised to “shop elsewhere” and that “you are frivolous squanderer of time” whose “father is unknown” – or some such variation there-of.

Back in 2003, Units 7-8 were occupied by CIBA Freight, a specialist importer of Kenyan and Ugandan foods which was co-owned by Amarjit Singh; a man who exuded entrepreneurial spirit but remained humble, kind and polite. Through hard-work, he had built a great life for himself and his family, but when a business deal went sour, his skills in negotiation would make the difference life and death.

As it was here, on Thursday 13th February 2003, that Amarjit Chohan left for a business meeting. He was never seen ever again... and yet, his last days alive would be the toughest of his life. (Interstitial)

It is said that a humble man is often born out of humble beginnings.

Amarjit Singh Chohan was born in the Punjab of India on the 5th March 1957. With imperialist British rule having ceased, its once-bounteous lands all raped and plundered, and India now independent but also part of the Commonwealth, once Britain was gone, the aftershocks of our tyranny would remain with the people of India and Pakistani for decades (and almost certainly centuries) to come. A nation was fractured, as religions split and pitted Hindus against Muslims against Christians against Sikhs.

Amarjit was raised amid a turbulent time of terrorism, civil war and famine. And although today, India is one of the fastest growing nations, with bribery and corruption endemic (having adopted many-a-bad practices from its former Colonial masters) the economy was paralysed as disease ran rampant.

But as a Sikh, even in his own homeland, Amarjit was not safe. Following the annexation of Sikhism in 1973 and the assassination of Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi by her own Sikh bodyguards, this escalated an already-fervent hostility against Sikhs, as well as igniting persecution, riots and slaughter. It was never said why Amarjit left India, but his safety was certainly a serious enough reason to flee.

In the early 1980s, being barely thirty, Amarjit moved to the UK. Like many immigrants, there is very little evidence about his early life in England, but being educated and skilled, he survived by hard work.

With a thick mop of jet-black hair on his chubby round face, accentuated by arched eyebrows and a thick broad moustache, Amarjit was the epitome of pleasant - a man who was good inside and out. And although he had an insatiable drive to thrive and a desire to never be poor, he was always humble.

A bad businessman often ‘wears his wealth’ - dressed in a shiny-suits so slick when they ‘switch in the smarm’ they ooze right out of it, with wrists jangling in chunky ‘gold’ chains (cast from tin which turns green as they sweat) and with Bluetooth earpieces forever flashing from their lugholes (even though they haven’t done a hard day’s work since the dole office opened) - but this was not Amarjit.

Amarjit was a down-to-earth man who dressed casually in trousers, a shirt and a jumper. His business style was easy but savvy. He was never Mr Chohan, always Anil or Neil. Everyone who worked for him, liked him. And being a Sikh, he didn’t drink, do drugs or gamble, but he did get his thrills from business.

Even at his most affluent, he lived in a modest little bungalow not far from his warehouse and he drove a five-year old blue Ford Escort, an economical little runabout with enough seats for his family.

His life was not totally blameless. When his first marriage failed, being unable to divorce owing to his faith and affairs frowned-upon, he would live bigamously but continued to support his wife and family. In 1996, with a reckless streak and habit for cutting corners, having been sentenced to three years in prison for tax evasion, he was released after eighteen months and swore to always do better.

In August 2000 - having found his rock - 47-year-old Amarjit married 25-year-old Nancy, and although half his age, within three years, together they would build a business empire and a happy loving family.

Amarjit had come from nothing, but through hard graft and raw grit, he became a success; a respected businessman, a loving husband, a doting father and very humble millionaire. His life was good...

...but by February 2003, everything would be taken from him, in the stroke of a pen. (Interstitial)

On 9th August 2000, with his wife Nancy as co-director, Amarjit opened CIBA Freight Services UK at a double-wide warehouse on the Market Trading Estate. Being close to Heathrow Airport and the Asian and African communities of Hounslow, it was the perfect location to import fruits, such as bananas, passion fruit, jackfruit and mangoes, but also papaya, pawpaw, mongogo, devil’s claw and even khat – a mildly hallucinogenic narcotic, banned in Europe and the USA but legal in the UK, which predates coffee and tobacco but is a common and popular stimulant among the Somali community. With his business booming, within three years, CIBA Freight had an annual turnover of £4.5million per year.

That same year, following the birth of their first son Ravinder, Amarjit & Nancy moved into a bungalow at 35 Sutton Road in Heston; a very modest single-floored, four-roomed house in a lower middle-class suburb. It was practical and simply decorated but with no extravagances. And unlike many homes in the area, there were no tacky stone tigers standing guard, no fake Doric columns beside the door, and no super-shiny over-waxed Beamer or Merc’ glistening on the drive, just a cheap blue Ford Escort.

This didn’t look like the home of a millionaire with a thriving import firm, a bulging bank account and (as landlord) a portfolio of five properties worth £2.5million. But then again, that was the whole point. The family lived simply and safely; they had everything they needed but they were never without.

In December 2002, being a full-time mum to a boisterous three-year-old, Nancy gave birth to a second son, a little cheeky-faced angel called Devinder. To Amarjit – whose own parents and siblings seem to have been oddly absent in his life - his new family was everything, and at the centre of it all was Nancy.

As a Punjabi Sikh, even though her blood-family lived on opposite sides of the world, with her mother (Charanjit Kaur Pan) in India and her brother (Onker Verma) in New Zealand, distance meant nothing. In late January 2003 - as Nancy was unable to fly home to India, as having applied for British Citizenship her passport was held by the Home Office - Charanjit flew four-thousand miles to be by her daughter’s side, and every day without fail - sometimes two-or-three times-a-day - Nancy phoned her brother, as he and his family were due to arrive on the 18th February, to see his nephew and support his sister.

Encased in a protective family bubble, although Amarjit was a slightly nervous man who kept his cards close to his chest, he knew he could rest easy knowing his family were safe. So, with extra mouths to feed and two sons who he hoped – one day - would inherit his empire, Amarjit was looking to expand.

Always pushing to do better, as a savvy businessman and a shrewd negotiator, Amarjit had a keen ear for a golden opportunity and always on the look-out for a good deal, his eyes were always open.

In 2002, one such deal came up, and that is how he met a businessman called Kenneth Avery.
Introduced to Amarjit by Michael Parr, one of his partners who co-owned CIBA Freight, as a trained HGV driver Kenneth Avery had begun working for Amarjit and the two men had become friendly.

Being four years his senior, a lot of similarities could be seen between Amarjit and Kenneth; both were roughly the same age, both were a little chubby, both came from modest working-class roots and as two men who always dreamed big, they both had a burning desire to take risks and reap the rewards.

Looking less like a hard-nosed trader and more-akin to a second-hand car-dealer, Kenneth was a pale, fat and jowly man, with fair-hair on top and grey clumps along the sides, and being dressed in casual jeans and an old rugby-top, his modest look matched Amarjit’s. And hardly a spring-chicken himself, being in his early fifties, he was clearly keen to learn from his new pal, and still hungry to succeed.

In January 2003, Kenneth had a money-making deal he knew that Amarjit would love. Aided by an old friend, Belinda Brewin – an elegant and successful PR exec’ with a solid reputation and some serious celebrity clout – Kenneth proposed a £3 million deal to build a McDonald’s franchise at Hatton Cross, a key-location between Heathrow Airport, Fleet Motorway Services and the Great South-West Road.

Sadly, the deal collapsed, owing to planning permission. But Amarjit wasn’t unnerved. Not every deal was a success, but seeing that (like himself) Kenneth Avery was not averse to cutting a few corners – unlike so many other supposed businessmen - Amarjit could see that Kenneth wasn’t full of hot-air.

Being a gruff impatient man, Kenneth was bitterly disappointed having potentially lost millions...

...but undaunted by the deal, he knew that – very soon - his pay-day would come.

The morning of Thursday 13th February 2003 was as regular as any other. As devout Sikhs, the Chohan family awoke a few hours before dawn, and they bathed and prayed before sitting down to breakfast. Their bungalow was busier than usual, as Charanjit (Nancy’s mother) wasn’t due to leave for two more weeks, but – as a softly-spoken 51-year-old teacher who was never without her holy book, the Guru Granth Sahib – she was a calming influence on a modest home with a new baby and an excitable boy.

At roughly 8am, dressed casually in a navy-blue jumper, black trousers, socks and shoes, Amarjit kissed his wife and kids, popped on a coat as it was cold and hopped into his blue Ford Escort. It was a dull cloudy day, and with the traffic on Heston Road being busy, it took twenty minutes to drive to Southall.

At 8:30am, he parked-up in his regular spot, outside of CIBA Freight. A forklift was unloading a truck in the loading-bay, as fruit and veg needs a fast and careful turnaround to ensure its freshness. Amarjit entered the first-floor mezzanine which overlooked the warehouse; he greeted his staff, checked his post and casually told his co-partner Michael Parr “I'm off to do a deal”, but gave very few details.

This was not unusual as Amarjit was often secretive, a risk-taker who (some said) ran his company chaotically, but no-one ever queried this as the business was booming and _above all - he was the boss. Always seeking new ventures, he would often disappear for hours and even days on end, but he could always be contacted on his mobile; replying in English to his staff and in Punjabi to his wife.

Nothing else was said about the meeting, except that Kenneth had secured a “possible buyer for the company”, the meeting was “now” and the buyer was “Dutch”. Only that wasn’t Amarjit’s only secret, as although he was wealthy on paper, being in serious financial trouble (for whatever reason) and had syphoned off £50,000 from the business to his own account, using three company cheques.

At roughly 9am, Amarjit left CIBA Freight, but from that point onwards, the details get rather vague.

With a licence-plate of S840 LJH, a network of traffic cameras would later track his blue Ford Escort travelling 76 miles, at a steady pace, across the next 1 hour and 20 minutes. He exited the Hayes Road at Bull’s Bridge, travelled south along The Parkway, south-west on the M4 and M3, joined the A303 at North Waltham in Wiltshire, but being a rural area, the cameras lost him somewhere near Stonehenge.

The exact time and place of Amarjit’s meeting with the Dutch buyer is unknown; as he didn’t own a diary, he didn’t tell his staff, and although he and Nancy had texted on-route, their messages (written in Punjabi) were loving but nothing special, just the standard reminders between husband and wife.

As for what we do know, the details may seem odd, but either Amarjit was unfazed or desperate.

It is unknown why he agreed to meet a stranger somewhere as secluded as a lane near Stonehenge - the infamous Neolithic monument of two vertical rings of 25-tonne stones – but having travelled from Holland, the ‘Dutch buyer’ may have been sightseeing? Perhaps the buyer had relatives or was staying in a hotel nearby? Or maybe this was just a recognisable place to meet before moving on? All we do know is that - wherever they met - it was isolated and remote, as no-one witnessed Amarjit or his car.

At an unknown time, possibly in-or-around 10:30 or 11am, a white transit van pulled up. Again, this may seem suspicious, as why should a potential buyer of a multi-million-pound business empire arrive at a meeting in a locally-rented van with the hire company’s name and number down the side? But then again, maybe as an importer, the Dutch buyer had made a few purchases to take back to Holland? And besides, Amarjit’s modest little motor was hardly the stylish wheels of a wealthy tycoon?

Stranger meetings have happened, but for every odd detail, Amarjit must have seen a logical reason...

...except the deal didn’t exist, the buyer wasn’t Dutch and this wasn’t a meeting, it was an ambush.

(Fuzziness) Drugged with a rag soaked in Gamma-Hydroxybutyric, the date-rape drug known as GHB, as a devout Sikh who religion didn’t permit him to drink, do drugs or stimulants like coffee or tobacco, the effect on Amarjit was instant, as his body was rendered silent and motionless by the intoxicant.

With his face, hands and feet tied with brown parcel tape, Amarjit was slung in the back of the van by two men, maybe three; with one definitely driving, another in the back and maybe one following in his Ford Escort. Maybe they were masked, or maybe they weren’t? Maybe they were armed, or maybe not? Maybe he knew them, or possibly not? He didn’t know, but he knew none of them were Dutch.

Driven cautiously, the white van and blue Ford crawled 6.2 miles south along the isolated field-flanked roads from Stonehenge, down the quiet A360 to South Newton; a quaint little village surrounded by a few sparse farms, thousands of acres of crops and a single solitary pub - an odd choice for a hideout.

Both vehicles then entered Forge Close, a small L-shaped cul-de-sac with two cottages on either side, allotments behind and at the end stood a small terraced bungalow made of brown bricks and white sills with a neat little lawn - the kind of place an elderly widower might retire to live out his final days.

With barely enough space, the van reversed along the side wall of the bungalow to the left and parking close to the side gate, in broad daylight, the doped tied hostage was dragged inside by the three men.

As a kidnapper’s safe house, 3 Forge Close looked harmless, being a small assisted living space with a bedroom, a kitchenette and a sitting-room with a telly, an armchair, slippers to one side and on a side table, a few photos, some bills and a copy of the Racing Post. Like Amarjit’s own home, it was humble, but he didn’t know its owner - Roy Regen, an elderly widower who had lived there for forty years and supplemented his pension by working as a cleaner at Salisbury train station – and he never would.

...but he did know Roy’s son.

Of the three kidnappers, Amarjit didn’t recognise William Horncy known as ‘Bill’; a small sickly-looking 52-year-old with a receding hairline and a vacant stare. He thought he knew Peter Douglas Rees, a 38-year-old with a crap moustache and a bad mullet, having previously adopted a Dutch accent on the phone and laid the mezzanine floor at CIBA Freight, just a few weeks before. But the main man Amarjit definitely recognised was his friend and potential business partner – Kenneth Avery.

Only Avery wasn’t Avery. His real name was Kenneth Roy Regen. He was a bad man with a bad name and a very bad temper, who had earned his fearsome reputation and ill-gotten fortune as a forger, a conman, a drug-smuggler and (as Hampshire Police believed but could never prove) a very violent and sadistic killer. But having lost the lot – over the last two years he had learned everything he needed to know about Amarjit’s life, work and finances - he wanted it all and he wouldn’t stop until he got it.

Still drugged, with one of Amarjit’s wrists secured to the floral armchair, before him on a small coffee table lay a pen and a stack of blank sheets of headed paper emblazoned with the logo of CIBA Freight. Pointing, Kenneth barked “Sign them”, but with his mouth muffled by parcel tape, Amarjit refused.

“No” was not a word that Kenneth liked to hear, so without warning, Amarjit was violently beaten, as a fast volley of fists pummelled his head and face. With the curtains closed, the kidnapper’s assault had some privacy, but with allotments behind and the bungalow’s walls wafer-thin, he had to be quiet.

“Sign them” Kenneth growled as his hostage bled, but with his director’s signature on a stack of blank sheets of CIBA Freight paper, Amarjit knew that Kenneth could do anything to his business. Everything he had worked for would be gone, but this wasn’t about his present, it was about his family’s future.

Amarjit knew how to negotiate with businessmen, but this was different, and as much as he struggled and refused - “Sign them!” - over the next few hours and into the next day, the beatings continued.

Kenneth knew how to break him – with drugs, beatings and threats – only without a signature, he knew he’d have nothing. But being both a psychopath and a sociopath, Kenneth Regen had overlooked a small (and he thought) insignificant little detail which was irrelevant to his plan – Amarjit’s wife.

(Phone ringing) Several times she had texted, but got no reply. Calling his mobile, it went to voicemail. And with day becoming night becoming day, hearing no news, a frantic Nancy called Michael Parr, his partner at CIBA Freight. Rightfully panicked and anxious, unable to reassure her that “he’s probably fine, you know Anil”, he called the one man he knew Amarjit had said he was with... Kenneth Regen.

The plan had changed. “Say it!”. He still needed his signature but first he needed his voice. “Say it!” If this failed, the Police could be called and arrests would be made. “Say it!” So, armed with his own phone, Kenneth sped back from Wiltshire to Southall, and to the little bungalow of Nancy Chohan.

In the sitting-room, as Charanjit tried to get the two screaming boys to sleep, Kenneth reassured Nancy that everything was fine; Amarjit was good, the deal with the Dutch went well, very well in fact, so he had popped over to the Holland to seal the deal, but his phone was playing up. Nancy didn’t believe a word of this, so Kenneth pulled out his phone and proved it. The message was unmistakably Amarjit - (Voicemail) “Hello Nancy. Don’t panic. I’m okay. I’ll be back tomorrow” – he sounded well and chirpy.

As Nancy burst into tears, less through worry and more through exhaustion and relief, with his victim’s wife now pacified, Kenneth drove back to Wilshire... and once again, it was back to business. “Sign it!”

For two days, Amarjit was beaten, drugged and starved. Weakened by exhaustion and with GHB making him euphoric, even at his most vulnerable, he continued to resist. “Sign it!”

But sometimes, the simplest of torture methods can be the most brutal.

With his ankles and wrists tied to the armchair and a red scarf gagging his voice, the brown parcel tape was wound tightly around the front and back of his head. Only, the thick plastic film didn’t just cover his chin, his lips and his cheeks, it covered his eyes and formed a seal right across his nose too. Unable to pull it off or inhale a single breath, this brown plastic mask rapidly bulged and dented, pulsing in sharp hot bursts as he struggled for air, as the rest of the tape’s reel dangling at the back of his head.

Each time he passed-out, Kenneth awoke him, and did it again, and again, and again. As in Kenneth’s mind, this business empire wasn’t Amarjit’s, it was his... and the signature was only paperwork. (End)

For Nancy, the recorded message had brought her a little comfort, as that night, she was able to sleep, even if it was just for a bit. But as she began to calm down and to rationalise the events of the day, there were a few details which only the wife of Amarjit Chohan would know didn’t make any sense.

If her husband’s phone had stopped working, why didn’t he use Kenneth’s to call her? If Kenneth had an audio message from her husband, why didn’t he send it electronically, instead of driving 80 miles to hand-deliver it? He had told all the staff at CIBA Freight that Amarjit had flown to Holland to seal the deal, but Nancy knew that wasn’t possible, as he would never leave the country without telling her first, and with her application for British Citizenship still being considered, Amarjit’s passport was held by the Home Office - he couldn’t leave the country if he tried. And finally, that message - “Hello Nancy. Don’t panic. I’m okay. I’ll be back tomorrow” – although the voice was definitely Amarjit’s, the words were not, as with English not being her first language, they always communicated in Punjabi.

Nancy knew that something seriously wrong, she just didn’t know what.

In the sitting-room at Forge Close, exhausted from two days of beatings and torture, Amarjit remained stoic. As a shrewd businessman, even against someone as brutal and ruthless as Kenneth, he still knew how to play hardball, even when his odds looked bleak. By that point, there is no denying that Amarjit Chohan knew that he was going to die, but his death would leave him with a deadly dilemma – ‘give up his company and risk his family’s futures, or refuse to sign and risk their lives’? There was no way he would put his family in jeopardy, so the only way for Kenneth to win... was if it was signed in blood.

OUTRO: Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for listening to Murder Mile.

The final part of Signed with Blood continues next week. As always, if you like tea, cake and waffle, as well as learning a few titbits about this case, please join me after the break. But before that, here’s a brief promo for a true-crime podcast which may be your audio equivalent of what Eva is to me. Urgh!

A big thank you to my new Patreon supporters, some of whom have received exclusive goodies, such as badges, stickers and key-rings, as well as Patron-only podcasts such as Walk With Me and Deadly Thoughts. Oooh. They are Kate Wakefield, Jo Wood, Laura Workinger-Harden and Cat Stewart. I thank you all.

Murder Mile was researched, written and performed by myself, with the main musical themes written and performed by Erik Stein & Jon Boux of Cult With No Name.

Thank you for listening and sleep well.

*** LEGAL DISCLAIMER
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.
*** LEGAL DISCLAIMER

Michael J Buchanan-Dunne is a writer, crime historian, podcaster and tour-guide who runs Murder Mile Walks, a guided tour of Soho’s most notorious murder cases, hailed as “one of the top ten curious, quirky, unusual and different things to do in London”, nominated "one of the best true-crime podcasts at the British Podcast Awards", one of The Telegraph's top five true-crime podcasts and featuring 12 murderers, including 3 serial killers, across 15 locations, totaling 50 deaths, over just a one mile walk.

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Murder Mile UK True-Crime Podcast #123: The Elephant Men of Northwick Park

17/3/2021

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The main entrance at Northwick Park Hospital

Welcome to the Murder Mile UK True-Crime Podcast and audio guided walk of London's most infamous and often forgotten murder cases, set within and beyond the West End.

A weekly true-crime podcast - EVERY THURSDAY
300+ infamous, untold or often forgotten true murders
Based on Soho's FIVE STAR rated Murder Mile Walks
Researched from original and first-hand sources
Authentic sounds recorded from the location itself

To accompany your audio guided walk, what follows is a series of photos, videos and maps, so that no matter where you are listening to this podcast, you'll feel like you're actually there.

EPISODE ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-THREE:
Today’s episode is about a drug called TGN1412. Successfully tested on animals, eight healthy human test-subjects were selected for a routine trial, with all of the necessary safety measures in place. But within just a few hours of the drug being administered, six of the eight would be fighting for their lives.

Date: Monday 13th March 2006 (first day of the clinical trial)
Location: Northwick Park Hospital (second floor, private ward)
Victims: 8 (David Oakley, Mohamed ‘Nino’ Abelbady, Navneet ‘Nav’ Modi, Raste Khan, Ryan Wilson, Rob Oldfield and two unidentified volunteers)
Culprits: Unidentified

CLICK HERE to download the Murder Mile podcast via iTunes and to receive the latest episodes, click "subscribe". You can listen to it by clicking PLAY on the embedded media player below.

The location of the private ward at Northwick Park hospital, where the clinical trial of TGN1412 took place is marked with a lime green cross. To use the map, click it. If you want to see the other murder maps, access them by clicking here.

Here's a video of Northwick Park hospital where the clinical trial took place. Sadly, the exact location of the private ward was never revealed.

This is just a link to YouTube, so don't worry, it won't eat up your data.

I've also posted some photos to aid your knowledge of the case. These photos were taken by myself (copyright Murder Mile) or granted under Government License 3.0, where applicable.

SOURCES:
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/apr/22/experience-i-ran-medical-trial-that-went-wrong
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2006/apr/05/health.healthandwellbeing2
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2007/feb/17/health.lifeandhealth
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2006/mar/19/health.medicineandhealth
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2964774/
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/pharmacology-toxicology-and-pharmaceutical-science/tgn1412
https://www.pharmaceutical-journal.com/news-and-analysis/will-volunteers-still-want-to-take-part-in-research-after-the-tgn1412-trial/10002179.article
https://www.bmj.com/content/332/7543/677/rapid-responses
https://www.outsourcing-pharma.com/Article/2007/01/29/Northwick-trial-tragedy-scientists-reveal-how-cytokine-storm-started
https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/the-drug-trial-bbc-examines-what-went-wrong-in-the-infamous-elephant-men-case_uk_58ac3bd1e4b07028b703c926
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-35766627
https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=c827f92c-2bb9-4276-a160-75a415788ddc
https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn9226-uk-drug-trial-disaster-the-official-report/
https://www.pharmaceutical-journal.com/news-and-analysis/tgn1412-lessons-learnt-the-hard-way/10002847.article?firstPass=false
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4236132/Lifelong-shadow-hanging-Elephant-Man-drug-trial-men.html
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/2917810/elephant-man-drug-testing-trial-tgn1412/
https://www.nibsc.org/about_us/worldwide_impact/tgn1412.aspx
The Drug Trial That Went Wrong- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9_sX93RHOk

MUSIC:

Silence by Cult With No Name (Intro and interstitials)
Winsome Lose Some by Cult With No Name (credits)
All This Spite (comes at a price) by Cult With No Name
Sun Awakening by Futuremono
Floating Drone (with Drums) by James Longley
Crystalline by Amulets
Wolf Mother by LooPop
True by NCTRMN
The End by Coyote Hearing
Piano Piece Haunting (unreleased) by Cult With No Name

UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE:

SCRIPT: Welcome to Murder Mile; a true-crime podcast and audio guided walk featuring many of London’s untold, unsolved and long-forgotten murders, all set within and beyond the West End.

Today’s episode is about a drug called TGN1412. Successfully tested on animals, eight healthy human test-subjects were selected for a routine trial, with all of the necessary safety measures in place. But within just a few hours of the drug being administered, six of the eight would be fighting for their lives.

Murder Mile is researched using authentic sources. It contains moments of satire, shock and grisly details. And as a dramatization of the real events, it may also feature loud and realistic sounds, so that no matter where you listen to this podcast, you’ll feel like you’re actually there.

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

Episode 123: The Elephant Men of Northwick Park.

Today I’m standing in Northwick Park, HA1, the furthest north-west we’ve been so far; as we’re three miles north of Ultra Electrics where Reg Christie met Muriel Eady, six miles north-east of Alice Gross’ memorial at Lock 97, four miles north west of the last gasp of Peter Buckingham and three miles north-east of the MI6 fantasist who used love to prey on the lonely - coming soon to Murder Mile.

This is the Northwick Park hospital. Opened in 1970, Northwick & St Mark’s hospital is a foreboding glass-and-steel fronted facility, encircled by a ring-road and dotted with greenery as each box-like building is connected by a series of dark skyways. It wasn’t designed this way, as over time, it evolved.

Covering half-a-square-mile, Northwick Park hospital has a department to cover almost every medical emergency, such as maternity, neurology, paediatrics, maxiofacial, haematology and virology, as well as an Accident & Emergency and (conveniently) an Intensive Care Unit, to name but a few.

Since its inception fifty-years ago, it’s had an odd history. Simon LeBon, the lead singer of Duran Duran was a porter here; it was a location for the comedy series Green Wing, a scene for Fawlty Towers and a brutal part of the horror film - The Omen, Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet was treated here whilst fighting extradition for murder and torture, and then, it became infamous for the ‘elephant men’.

Like many hospitals, a key part of its research and funding involves clinical testing. 732,000 participants take part in clinic trials across the UK every year, with roughly 5000 of those trialled at Northwick Park.

Every medicine you’ve taken – from herpes to HRT, acne to angina and bilious to bum-itch - was tested on healthy human volunteers in a clinical trial to ensure that it’s safe. That little piece of paper inside your pack of pills – which we all toss away without reading – lists every side-effect of the drug; many are minor, some are serious, but almost every symptom was discovered in a clinical trial on volunteers first. These trials are not without risk, so the risk is minimised... but sometimes mistakes do happen.

As it was here, on Monday 13th March 2006, that TGN1412 was first tested on humans, and although the drug was designed to save lives, it left six healthy young men moments from death. (Interstitial)

One of the primary goals of medical research is the elimination of cancer.

In 1984, two biochemists - Cesar Milstein and George Köhler - were awarded the Nobel Prize having developed a technique for creating artificial monoclonal antibodies, also known as ‘mabs’; proteins which latch onto the surface of cells, initiate a chemical reaction and stop the cells from dividing.

In 2004, German pharmaceutical firm TeGenero was trialling a new mab to treat leukaemia, multiple sclerosis, arthritis and some auto-immune diseases. Its clinical designation was TGN1412. Like many cancer drugs before it, TGN1412 would latch onto the patient’s t-cells (a key part of the immune system) and kick-start the body’s own defences into a heightened state.

The sale of antibody cancer drugs by the pharmaceutical giants currently totals £13 billion a year. There are 30 mabs on the market today and many are highly effective in the fight against the disease. One positive being that mabs are less likely to be rejected by the immune system, but one negative is that it’s hard to determine how toxic the drug might be to humans... without conducting human trials.

TeGenero had successfully trialled the drug on Macaques, a monkey which is 94% genetically-identical to humans - and although sources state that Bonobos were also considered as they do share 98% of our DNA - Macaques were supposedly chosen as they were cheaper, but this cannot be verified.

With the animal testing complete, ‘Phase One’ of a three-phase trial would be carried out to determine the drug’s toxicity. In a normal trial of a cancer-drug, cancer patients would be the perfect volunteers, but as TGN1412 was designed to stimulate the cancer cells instead of stopping them dividing, the study (as many clinical trials do) needed healthy patients who didn’t have weakened immune systems.

Roughly 25% of all drugs do not make it passed phase one in a clinical trial, so accurate testing is vital, and to ensure impartiality, the drugs companies themselves hand over the testing to an independent.

Parexel is an American biopharmaceutical service providing medical testing and trials on behalf of its clients. Founded in 1982, today it has 1900 employees across 51 countries and 84 facilities, with an annual revenue of $2.3 billion a year, having developed 95% of the top selling biopharmaceuticals.

To test a variety of drugs including TGN1412, Parexel had leased a private wing on the second floor of Northwick Park hospital, just above the ICU; which came complete with two wards, ten beds and a range of monitoring equipment. All they had to supply was their own medical staff and volunteers.

It was no different to any other clinical trial; the drug was approved for human testing, the volunteers were vetted, it was administered in a clean and controlled environment by medical professionals, and in accordance with a clear set of instructions by a regulatory body. It was a just very routine trial.

Nothing should have gone wrong... but it would.

In February 2006, eight volunteers were assessed at Northwick Park. All were healthy young men (women are rarely used as experimental drugs can cause a risk to reproductive organs), all were aged between 19 and 34, they had no health conditions, they weren’t on medications and - being ethnically diverse - they included British whites, Indian Asians, British Asians, Africans, an Australian, a New Zealander and a South African. Their medical histories were checked and their bloods were screened.

For the volunteers, it was a no-brainer. All they had to do was lie in a bed for three days – eating food, watching telly and being prodded by doctors – they describe their symptoms and are given £2000. The hardest part of any clinical trial is the boredom, it’s the waiting which hurts, so many trial veterans know to bring books and music, whereas the newbies tend to play pool or learn to love Loose Women.

Everyone had good reasons for being a guinea-pig. Rob Oldfield had returned from the US where he was training to be an actor and needed to repay a loan to his mother. David Oakley, a New Zealander had done two trials before so he knew the score and needed to fund his upcoming wedding. Navneet Modi, known as ‘Nav’ had done two trials too, he had completed his MBA and needed money to pay his bills and buy himself a flight back home to India, but he was too proud to ask his father. Raste Khan was a recent graduate between jobs. Ryan Wilson was a trainee plumber saving up for driving lessons. Mohamed Abdelhady known as ‘Nino’ was an Egyptian-born bar manager in need of some cash. And there were two other volunteers, who were never identified, but their situation was the exactly same.

At the pre-trial assessment, the warning signs were there, that something wasn’t right.

The volunteers later stated “There was no medical exam, no heart-test, no listening to your breathing, you know, normal things”. “The briefing should last 30 to 45 minutes, ours was done in 10”. “A doctor - I assume he was a doctor, he seemed very young - handed us a brick of papers and said ‘Have a quick flick through this. If you've got any questions, ask me’“. “They handed us a consent form and we signed it”. “Everything seemed rushed”. But often it’s hard to tell the difference between fast and efficient.

In the briefing, the doctors reassured the volunteers that “nothing would go wrong”. As although this was the drug’s first in-human trial; they’d be given a safe dosage “scaled back 500 times”, it would be “carefully calculated to their body mass” and it would be “administered in ten-minute intervals”. As for any side-effects, “the worst you’ll get is a headache or nausea, which will be gone in a few hours".

It seemed safe, and it should have been... but a small mistake can have disastrous consequences.

On Sunday 12th March, the night before, all eight men arrived at Parexel's private ward on the second-floor of Northwick Park hospital. Split into two groups; David, Nav, Nino and Raste were in Trial Bay One, with Rob, Ryan Wilson and the two unidentified volunteers in Trial Bay Two. By that point, Rob had overcome his nervousness “I was enjoying myself, it felt like a weird adventure” and Ryan the plumber was playing pool "That night was a bit of fun, there was a hostel kind of vibe". The atmosphere was relaxed; David had his books lined-up to read, the Commonwealth Games was on the telly, and the eight men all ate the same pre-trial meal of cheese and crackers, and went to bed at around 10pm.

The trial was expected to last for three days... but it wouldn’t even last an hour.

In charge of the trial was Dr Daniel Bradford, principal investigator for Parexel – “I had been involved in more than 300 trials when I was put in charge of testing a new drug, TGN1412”. As was standard practice, this was a ‘double blind randomised trial’, meaning that six of the men would be given the drug, two would receive a harmless placebo (to act as a control), and neither the doctors, the nurses nor the volunteers would know who had been given what. The ward was medically scrubbed, the equipment was sanitised, and all of the syringes, cannulas and IV drips were fresh out of the wrapper.

But again, just like the pre-trial assessment, it all seemed a bit rushed.

At 7:30am, the volunteers were awoken. David was annoyed from the off “I like to wake up and have a shower, but there was no time for that”, as the clinical team had a schedule of ten-minute-intervals to keep to, “so I splashed my face with water, got back into bed and they wired me up with ECGs".

David Oakley was Patient 001. At 8:00am precisely – with the cannula’s needle inserted into his right arm – an automated IV pump administered the clear liquid at a precise rate. Within six minutes the syringe was empty and David had begun reading his book, as he prepared for a very dull day ahead.

At 8:10am, Nino, Patient 002 received his dose in an identical manner. But weighing 14 stone, as one of the heaviest volunteers in the group, his higher dose of 8.9ml was proportionate to his size.
At 8:20am, as Patient 003 known as ‘Nav’ was injected, David experienced the most common side-effect in any drugs-trial - “Nurse, I’m getting a headache” - along with nausea, vomiting and diarrhoea. Unable to administer a painkiller and risk ruining the results, the nurse applied a cold compress.

At 8:30am, Patient 004 known as Raste was injected. By this point, David’s headache was a full-blown migraine which came in sickening waves and a pain he had never experienced before. Nino felt the same “I started to feel ill almost as soon as they had finished injecting me”, but the trial didn’t stop.

At 08:40am, as Ryan, Patient 005 was injected, the wards echoed with the slow moans and groans as one-by-one, all except two of the human guinea-pigs succumbed to the same symptoms at ten-minute intervals, and those who had just been injected, witnessed the horrors they still had instore.

At 08:50 and 9am, Patients 006 and 007 (the unidentified men) were injected. As David later said “they could have stopped and saved at least two of us, but they didn’t”, as every symptom got worse.

Rob, Patient 008 later said “the other two in the room were already suffering, it was having a massive effect on their bodies, but still the trial continued”. And by 09:10am, an hour after the first side-effect was seen, it was only then that was the trial stopped. But by that point, everyone had been injected.

Headaches had become migraines, and Nino started to hallucinate. "I felt like I had rocks in my head. Bright colours flashed before my eyes and I had a conversation with some imaginary person”.

Crippled with lumbar myalgia, the volunteers were doubled over as an intense pain gripped their lower backs, rendering every possible position as excruciating as the next - they couldn’t sit, lie or stand.

Gripped with rigors, their bodies violently shook like they had hypothermia, “it was like being dunked naked in the Antarctic”. Only - being soaked with sweat - they weren’t freezing, they were boiling, as a rapid fever rapt their blood, their immune system ran rampant and their core temperatures rose.

Patients were bucking and burning, twisting and turning, growing sicker by the second. Terrified of the torturous pain he was in and still yet to experience, Nav tried to flee, screaming “I don’t want the money any more, I just want to get out”, only to convulse and collapse in a crumpled heap.

The peaceful tranquillity of the ward was replaced by the chaos of a war-zone. Rapidly breathing with panicked screaming, nurses frantically dashed from patient-to-patient, being too few to attend to too many. With the men’s insides spewing out of every orifice, sheets were soaked in an ooze of festering fluids, as – unable to control their own bodies – hot spurts of urine soiled the beds, steaming streaks of diarrhoea spattered the walls, and - having eaten nothing since last night’s meagre meal of cheese and crackers - many of the men bought-up a litre of green bile, so much, even the nurse was shocked.

Dr Bradford later said “they tumbled like dominos; the wards were chaotic as they all went into shock”. For that first hour - feeling a little anxious, hot and unable to do anything but sit and watch - Raste and Patient 007 had heard one of the doctors’ joke “well, now we know who the controls are”. Only by then, one terrifying thought must have crossed their minds - “did I get the placebo, or am I next?”

This very routine drugs trials had turned into a waking nightmare...

...but for ‘the Elephant Men’ of Northwick Park, the nightmare had only just begun.

By 12pm, four hours after the first symptom, Raste was still lying on his bed, feeling fine except for a rightful sense of anxiety, but being left alone “I felt like a ghost”. Around every bed, plastic curtains shielded the patients, and although he couldn’t see what was happening, he could hear their screams.

At 1pm, both the placebos were sent home, as the six sickest were isolated together in the same ward.

The symptoms the men had experienced that morning – the pain, the fever, the migraines and the vomiting - were nothing in comparison to what would happen to them over the next five hours.

Becoming hypotensive, their blood pressure dropped to dangerously low levels, as Tachycardia shot their heart-rates from a sedate 60 beats-per-minute to a suicidal 100, 150 and even 200 bpm. With fevers spiking, their temperatures should have been about 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit or 37 Celsius, but many rose to 107 Fahrenheit and 42 Celsius - just a few degrees higher and they’d be as good as dead.

TGN1412 was designed to kick-start the body’s immune system to fight off infection and disease. But with no cancer cells to fight and their natural defences in overdrive, the body started attacking itself. Having developed Lymphopenia, an abnormally low level of white blood cells, and Monocytopenia, a reduced blood cell count, their blood stopped fighting infection and carrying oxygen to vital organs.

As every blood vessel in their weakened bodies became inflamed - with their red-raw sweat-soaked skin stretched taut like it was ready to rip, their purple lips bulged like botched batches of Botox and even the daintiest of little digits doubled in width - it was as if each man was being inflated from within. Inch by inch and limb by limb, the six sick men were swelling, and the swelling wouldn’t stop.

Trained to inject the drugs, monitor the symptoms and to cope with a few mild side-effects, Parexel’s medical staff administered IV fluids and painkillers to the volunteers, but they were helpless in a crisis of this scale. Tragically, both the cause and the cure were listed in the brick of paperwork that the pharmaceutical firm had supplied, but - being in the fog of a war-zone - nobody saw the solution.

The facts were indisputable, the patients were dying... but a blessing lay only two floors below.

At 1pm, five hours after the crisis began, Dr Bradford ran down two-flights of stairs to the Intensive Care Unit of Northwick Park Hospital “and grabbed the first two doctors I could find”. Not all medical trials are held in hospitals, but – luckily - this one was. And in an instant, they had access one of the finest (but most cruelly maligned) healthcare systems in the world, packed full of a wealth of highly trained clinicians from across a wide range of specialities and experiences. These were real doctors.

Even without wading through to find the solution hidden in Parexel’s paperwork, the NHS Doctors had correctly advised Dr Bradford to administer fluids, antihistamine and the steroid – hydrocortisone.

By 5pm, with the patients screams now silenced, as the steaming swollen men slumped in exhausted heaps, an odd peace had descended over the day’s chaos... but their nightmare was far from over.

Two hours later, the dominos began to fall. Ryan was first. Struggling to breath, his bloated body was dying and every organ was failing – lungs, liver, kidneys and heart – everything was crashing. Now fully under the guidance of the NHS doctors, Ryan was the first to be transferred to the ICU, and one-by-one, the others would be too, and as Rob was wheeled away, he pleaded “why am I being taken away, no-one is going to die are they?”, but rightly the still-uncertain doctors were reluctant to answer.

At 8pm, Dr Ganesh Suntharalingam, a highly experienced Consultant for Intensive Care Medicine at Northwick Park Hospital was called in, and upon seeing the elephant men - having described his new patients as “the sickest I have ever seen” – the hospital declared a ‘medical emergency’.

Flanked by specialists, wired to banks of monitors and with tubes inserted into every orifice, machines performed almost every function for the weakened patient’s bodies; ventilators helped them breathe and dialysis cleaned their bloods. The relatives were called and told to expect the worst, and someone said “it looked like one of them might die and that Dr Bradford would be charged with manslaughter”.

Just after of midnight, Dr Suntharalingam called Dr Nicki Panoskaltsis, the hospital’s Consultant Haemato-Oncologist. They both agreed, this was unprecedented, no-one should ever get that sick that quick... but it can happen. It’s called a ‘cytokine storm’; it’s where the immune system attacks itself and is an incredibly rare and almost improbable side-effect of some blood cancer drugs.

The solution was 1000 micrograms of methylprednisolone, a large dose of very strong steroids, and –ironically - daclizumab, a monoclonal antibody or ‘mab’ which - just like TGN1412 - binds to the t-cell’s receptors, but makes them inactive. The drugs would take hours, if not days, to show any signs of improvement, and with much damage already done, they didn’t know who (if anyone) would survive.

The patients loved one’s rushed to the hospital and were shocked by the sights they saw.

Rob’s mother witnessed her son “all puffy because of the steroids... the whites of the eyes were deep orange because of all the toxins" which were slowly leaking from every pore of his distended body.

Katrina, David’s wife-to-be said “his cheeks were swollen, his eyes were like slits, his face was round like a big red ball, and his stomach was huge, so large, he looked so deformed and disfigured”.

Myfanwy, Nino’s partner stated “the most shocking thing was seeing his lungs being pumped with air. He was covered in wires and tubes; his mouth was taped open and he had a tube up his nose drawing out this awful yellow gunk. When I saw him, I wanted to grab his hand, but there was nowhere to hold because it was covered in tapes and needles. His face had swollen horribly and his head had ballooned to three times its normal size, it was a weird purple and yellow colour, and his eyes were bulging”.

In a distressed state, she said “Nino had been left looking like the Elephant Man”, and although it was an innocent comment, the tabloids ran with it, and by the morning it was a front-page news. (End)

24 hours after the trial had begun, Police informed MHRA (the drug’s regulatory body) that the ward was a crime scene. They seized everything to check for evidence of tampering, neglect and sabotage.

Two days later - as their fevers dropped and the swelling subsided – having regained consciousness, four of the patients were taken off life support, but Ryan and Nino remained critical. David later said “when I first went to the toilet by himself. I nearly passed out. I'd lost 13kilos. We had no muscles. We were like 90-year-old men”. It would take weeks for their organs to repair, months for the anaemia to resolve, and for years – burdened by weakened immune systems - many were terrified of the risk of relapse, infection and even cancer, as well as being plagued with stress, anxiety and PTSD.

They would all go on to live their lives as best they could, but for one – Ryan Wilson, the 20-year-old trainee plumber who was learning to drive– having also suffered from pneumonia, septicaemia and dry gangrene, his fingertips fell off, and part of his foot and several toes had to be amputated.
The investigation concluded that the drug had been injected into the patients within six minutes, but it should taken an hour, that’s ten times faster than it had been absorbed in the animal tests. And with only ten-minutes between each patient, the staff didn’t have the time to fully monitor any side-effects.

An initial report by the MHRA, described as a ‘whitewash’, made 22 recommendations for in-human trials, but no-one was found culpable as scientists couldn’t explain why it gone so badly wrong. Unable to cover the insurance, German pharmaceutical company TeGenero went bankrupt. And in 2009, Parexel settled out of court with all six volunteers receiving an undisclosed sum. That same year, Parexel’s CEO was awarded a bonus worth $1.8m and the company made more than $100m profit.

In 2013, TGN1412, renamed TAB08 was successfully trailed in Russia. They used 0.1% of the antibody that was used in Northwick Park trail and it was infused into the bloodstream forty times slower.

OUTRO: Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for listening to Murder Mile.

If you like cake and tea, and to learn more about this case, please join me after the break. But before that, here’s a brief promo for a true-crime podcast which may be the very cherry on your Bakewell tart. Mmm.

A big thank you to my new Patreon supporters, many of whom are enjoying the new exclusive podcast series called Walk With Me, and sssshhhh, secret, for a select group of Patron, a second secret podcast called Deadly Thoughts. They are: Michael Anderson, Lay-nee, Kirsty Hewitt, Linda Bond and Beth Steele, I thank you for your support, I hope you enjoyed your goodies. And a special thank you to Ngaio (neye-o), an anonymous friend and Cecilie Østergaard for your kind words and donations via the Supporter link in the shownotes. That’s very much appreciated.

Murder Mile was researched, written and performed by myself, with the main musical themes written and performed by Erik Stein & Jon Boux of Cult With No Name.

Thank you for listening and sleep well.

*** LEGAL DISCLAIMER
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.
*** LEGAL DISCLAIMER

Michael J Buchanan-Dunne is a writer, crime historian, podcaster and tour-guide who runs Murder Mile Walks, a guided tour of Soho’s most notorious murder cases, hailed as “one of the top ten curious, quirky, unusual and different things to do in London”, nominated "one of the best true-crime podcasts at the British Podcast Awards", one of The Telegraph's top five true-crime podcasts and featuring 12 murderers, including 3 serial killers, across 15 locations, totaling 50 deaths, over just a one mile walk.

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Murder Mile UK True-Crime Podcast #122: The Disposal of Harry Hartley (Charles Mills & Emma Hartley)

10/3/2021

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Welcome to the Murder Mile UK True-Crime Podcast and audio guided walk of London's most infamous and often forgotten murder cases, set within and beyond the West End.

A weekly true-crime podcast - EVERY THURSDAY
300+ infamous, untold or often forgotten true murders
Based on Soho's FIVE STAR rated Murder Mile Walks
Researched from original and first-hand sources
Authentic sounds recorded from the location itself

To accompany your audio guided walk, what follows is a series of photos, videos and maps, so that no matter where you are listening to this podcast, you'll feel like you're actually there.

Left is 23 Denmark Street as it looks today.

EPISODE ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-TWO:
Today’s episode is about Charles Mills & Emma Hartley; a young fresh-faced couple at the end of the Victorian era, who - like so many innocents - were forced into an early adulthood. And being inexperienced in the complexities of life, when a baby boy was born, a rash decision was made to save their love, which destroyed an entire family.

Date: Sunday 18th February 1900
Location: 23 Denmark Street, St Giles, WC2
Victims: 1 (Harry Hartley)
Culprits: 1 (Charles Mills)

CLICK HERE to download the Murder Mile podcast via iTunes and to receive the latest episodes, click "subscribe". You can listen to it by clicking PLAY on the embedded media player below.

The location of 23 Denmark Street, WC2 where Emma Hartley lived and Harry Hartley was last seen alive is marked with a rum & raison cross. To use the map, click it. If you want to see the other murder maps, access them by clicking here.

This is a little video of 23 Denmark Street as it looks today, it's very much a relatively new building but I've placed an example of what it would have looked like below.

This video is a link to YouTube so it won't eat up your phone data.

I've also posted some photos to aid your knowledge of the case. These photos were taken by myself (copyright Murder Mile) or granted under Government License 3.0, where applicable.

The original building which once stood at 23 Denmark Street was demolished as part of the slum clearances of the early 1900's. So on the left is 23 Denmark Street as it looks today, and on the right is an example of an identical building in St Giles, a few hundred feet away.

SOURCES:
This episode is primarily based on the court records from the Old Bailey trial of Charles Mills, as well as various news sources and parish records.
https://www.oldbaileyonline.org/browse.jsp?id=t19000402-274-offence-1&div=t19000402-274&terms=Soho#highlight

MUSIC:
Man in a Bag by Cult With No Name (credits / interstitisals)
Winsome Lose Some by Cult With No Name (end credits)
Creepy Instrumental (unreleased) by Cult With No Name
The Day I Met Her by Esther Ambrami
Collapsing All Around by Amulets
Through and Through by Amulets
To Have To In Least Water by Patches
Wistful Harp by Andrew Huang
Times Up by LooPop

UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE:

Ep122 – The Disposal of Harry Hartley
SCRIPT: Welcome to Murder Mile; a true-crime podcast and audio guided walk featuring many of London’s untold, unsolved and long-forgotten murders, all set within and beyond the West End.

Today’s episode is about Charles Mills & Emma Hartley, a young fresh-faced couple forced into an early adulthood. Inexperienced in life and dogged by its stresses, when their baby was born, both were ecstatic... only for Charles, his love abruptly stopped when his future was haunted by his past.

Murder Mile is researched using the original police files. It contains moments of satire, shock and grisly details. And as a dramatization of the real events, it may also feature loud and realistic sounds, so that no matter where you listen to this podcast, you’ll feel like you’re actually there.

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

Episode 122: The Disposal of Harry Hartley.

Today I’m standing on the familiar footings of Denmark Street, WC2; one street north of the brutal stabbing by satanic child-killer Edward Crowley, one street east of the suicide of boxer Freddie Mills, six doors west of Dennis Nilsen’s job centre, we’re at the back of the Denmark Place Fire, and a short-hop from the tube stop where a blood-soaked spree-killer was caught - coming soon to Murder Mile.
Denmark Street is an adult’s playground. At three hundred feet long, stretching from St Giles church to Charing Cross Road, these thirty assorted three-storey buildings are home to every big-kid’s dream; with coffee bars, vinyl stores and guitar shops. If you’re a real child, this place is boring, as – once mummy’s away doing all the important stuff – daddy drags you to “his street”, where this bloated baldie relives his youth; by gelling-up to his last remaining hair, letting his beer-gut bulge-out of a faded leather jacket and flipping an arthritic V-sign to ‘the pigs’ (when they’re not looking), as his fingers fumble a painful rendition of the Sex Pistol’s God Save The Queen. One such guitar shop stands at 23 Denmark Street, but more than a century ago, it was a family home.

Kids today are as equally privileged, with many unable to unglue their eye-sockets from a screen, grunt a simple ‘thank you’ as food is shovelled-in, or lift a single finger until their late teens or early twenties.

In 1900, at the last year of Queen Victoria’s reign, life for children was hard. Seen as lucky if you were given a basic education, the impoverished majority worked six-day-weeks by the age of 14, with many earning a pittance for piece-work from the second they could stand. Married-off early, many children had children when they were still only children themselves, and - with no savings or pension - infirmity and old-age would leave many singletons and spinsters with one retirement option - the workhouse.

As just a young lad himself, Charles Mills had grown-up fast. With very little family, all he wanted was to live a good life and to be loved, and in Emma Hartley he found hope. But with so much stress placed upon such narrow shoulders, it’s impossible to know whether he got scared, snapped, or was haunted by something in his past and possibly his blood.

As it was here, on Sunday 18th February 1900, outside of 23 Denmark Street, that something inside of Charles Mills would force him to make a very rash decision, that he would regret forever. (Interstitial)

The young short life of Charles Henry Miles began in poverty and ended in tragedy.

Born in 1881 in the parish of St Giles, Charles was the eldest of three sons to Charles Henry Mills Snr, a labourer, and Alice Harriet Cotter, a washer woman. Raised within the squalid stench of The Rookery, his home was this dank feted slum skulking in the shadow of the Horseshoe Brewery, where seventy years earlier a deadly tidal wave of Porter had drowned eight desperate souls - some still in their beds.

As a small pale couple, Charles’ parents worked hard to earn little, but (with no sick-pay, holidays and their only respite reserved for Sunday mass) struggling under the relentless back-breaking grind of manual labour – like so many of the poorest in this festering metropolis – they drank to dull their pain. Soon enough, a habit became a crutch, a crutch became an addiction, and swigging-back great glugs of ‘street gin’ (a backyard brew of food scraps, turpentine and urine), slowly their insides began to rot.

As an average urchin, Charles didn’t have a childhood; he had no toys, love nor joy. With tatty clothes and barely a square meal to sustain him each day, he resembled the saddest of ghosts; with pale skin, sallow cheeks and a bony torso. And being only an impish five-feet three-inches tall, as an even more pitiful sight, the cracked marble-like eyes of this nervous and delicate boy peeped out through the bent-wire frames of his bottle-bottom spectacles, under the jagged cutting of his pudding bowl fringe.

As barely functioning drunks, with two more boys to feed and unable to pay for their lodgings, father was often an inmate at the debtor’s prison, as mother raised her three sons in the local workhouse.

Cruelly described as a ‘simple lad’, although painfully quiet and often found sat my himself, he worked hard and had learned to read and write; a wise move having seen how the stresses of life had broken his father, and knowing his future didn’t lay on a building site, he didn’t want to end up the same way.

Raised fast, as a boy, he ran errands to support his sozzled parents (for whom drink was now their sole dependant) and to feed and clothe his younger brothers. His childhood was a long-forgotten memory, as this faint slip-of-a-lad was forced to be a man and – barely into his teens - the family’s breadwinner.

In 1895, aged 14, Charles worked full-time as an errand boy at Woodfall & Kinder, a printers at 76 Long Acre in Covent Garden. Keen to work long days – as much to earn as to escape his homelife – he rose to the less-junior position of ‘tinker's labourer’, a printer’s aide who ran copy to the clients for approval before it hit the press. He worked hard, he was no bother and he was never late, rude or abusive.

After three years of employment and making a modest 8 shillings-a-week, he was learning, earning and had a bright future ahead. With his parents insensible, incapable of work and full-time residents of the St George’s workhouse, 17-year-old Charles funded a bed for him and his brothers at a lodging on Great Queen Street. And although he was prone to bouts of giddiness and headaches – perhaps owing to the printer’s toxic inks or the deafening clank of the press - he powered through the tiredness and the pain in the hope of leading a better life, and - having seen its affect – he never turned to drink.

With his life being tough, dirty and relentless, this lack of joy may have got the better of him...
...but then, he met Emma.

Just like Charles, Emma Hartley was a local girl, who was born and raised in the fringes of The Rookery. Prior to the turn of the 1900’s, Denmark Street was not a place of music - as being full of back-to-back rows of stables, workshops and slum-houses – it echoed to the squeal of the slit throats of pigs, reeked of flayed flesh at the tannery, and any hope of sunlight was choked by the belching chimney stacks.

As a lodging for 26 tenants with two families and three lodgers on one floor, the front first-floor room at 23 Denmark Street was home to the Hartley family. Similar in many ways to the Mills family, aged 16, as the youngest of three sisters; Emma was sparsely educated, had worked since infancy, and as a seamstress she was a solid earner for the family... but their faith (not drink) had kept them strong.

As a working-class girl at the dusk of the Victorian era, her life offered few options, and knowing she would never escape her class, her status or her poverty, she was always looking for love. One day - maybe as he sat quietly reading, his oversized eyes magnified by thick lenses under a clumsily snipped fringe still crusted with the crumbs of an old suet pudding - she found and fell in love with Charles.

How and where they met was never recorded, but together they seemed like a perfect match.

Being a little dot of a girl, Emma was as undersized and scrawny as her tiny lover. With a tangled mess of bright red hair, pale skin and a set of apple-blossom cheeks which sat on top of a skinny white body, she resembled the last match in a smoker’s matchbox – like a tatty white stick with a fiery red top.

Looking younger than their tender years but with their edges burred by a lifetime of long hours, they made a cute couple; sweet and adorable. As each other’s first-love, from the February of 1898, this inexperienced twosome was often seen in-and-around Soho, kissing and holding hands. Young love had blossomed, the relentless grind of life seemed bearable, and their future together looked certain.

By the winter of 1898 – with Charles earning an okay wage, finally sleeping in his own bed and being hopelessly in love with Emma – his turbulent little life seemed to have turned a corner. Only fate had other plans and - just as his future was looking good - his past came back to haunt him. (Interstitial)

November 1898 was bitterly cold. In his box-like lodging on Great Queen Street, breath had frozen the insides of his windows, but Charles was toasty-warm. As snuggled in his beloved’s arms, with their pale skin stuck together like pancakes, being young and amorous... well, the rest you can imagine.

William Hartley had wanted so much more for his daughter (as any father would), as with her chosen beau being the son of two drunks banged-up in the poor-house, he feared for Emma. Charles was a bad choice, he didn’t like him and he let it be known, only Emma refused to see it. Being so blinded by their love for one-another, they put their physical needs before their faith, and shamefully they sinned.

Being only a slight girl, her skills as a seamstress did well to hide her bump for the first six months, but by May 1899, being twice her width about the midriff, there was no hiding the impending baby. For Charles & Emma, the start of a family should have been a joyous moment... only it wasn’t.

Angry at this horny sprat whose carnal lusts (he felt) had sullied his innocent little girl, William Hartley screamed at Charles, struck him squarely on the chin and banished him from ever seeing his daughter or entering their home again, until he “did the decent thing and married her”. For Charles, although earning a pittance and struggling to save, that had been the whole plan; a wedding, a wife and a child, all living the kind of life he had always wanted, but never had; stable, happy and (most of all) sober.

Only one thing would forever haunt the happiness of his future... and that was the sadness of his past.

In July 1899, one month before the baby’s birth, when the stresses of an impending baby had fractured these two babes barely out of childhood themselves, both of Charles’ parents died in the workhouse. After a hard life dulled by hard drinking, his father had died as a broken bloated alcoholic. Bequeathed nothing but his father’s debts, struggling to cope and still supporting his younger brothers who were barely earning enough to survive, this additional burden wasn’t what plagued him the most.

His mother had been sick for a very long time, some said ‘since birth’. Exacerbated by drink, Alice’s epilepsy was untreatable. Committed twice to an asylum, she was always discharged looking weary, beaten and lice-ridden, but she never got any better. Seeing visions and hearing voices, in later life, she would rant and rave like a demented loon, until whatever her illness she truly had, crippled her.

One year earlier, still only a boy himself, he’d had to commit his aunt Eliza to the ‘Bedlam’ Asylum, where she later died. She too suffered those same symptoms, which doctors believed were hereditary.

Whether it was the stress of life or the fear of his future, around that time, Charles began to change.

Seeing a drastic shift in this young lad’s circumstances and wanting to do best by both of them - with his work record always exemplary - his employer at the printworks promoted Charles to a less-junior role and increased his wages from a modest eight-shillings-a-week to a less miserly fourteen.
Only, Charles wasn’t Charles any more. Rarely taking a day off sick, he was now prone to giddiness and often said that his head “felt like it was burning”. Gone was the thoughtful lad whose owl-like eyes silently read books, now he was replaced by a skipping loon who bunked-off work. As a timid boy, he got cheeky, coarse and (for no reasons) started to fight. And with his moods becoming blacker, in the presence of his shocked colleagues, this sweet little lad threatened to “drown himself in the Thames”.
No-one could figure out what had happened to Charles Mills...
...but clearly, something had happened.
That same month – as he grieved by an unmarked grave within the walls of the workhouse, where his parents lived, died and their bones had been buried – with William Hartley having disowned his own daughter, Charles rented his heavily pregnant girlfriend a one-roomed lodging at 13 Arthur Street. Being unwed and too broke to marry (as her father still insisted), he did his best, but it wasn’t enough.

On 19th August 1899 - unable to afford medical help at the hospital - little Harry Hartley was born in the squalid filth of the St Giles workhouse; an unholy hell-hole where the desperate were punished for being poor, and where (just thirty-years earlier) a baby called Charlie Chirgwin had frozen to death.

Being the spit of both parents, baby Harry was a pale undersized dot; with a round doughy belly, stick-thin limbs and a shocking wisp of red hair, like a large question mark perched on his head. And just like Charles, Harry was a quiet boy, who often sat in silence, thinking and quizzically blinking.

As a proud father, Charles purchased his baby boy the best clothes he could buy; a blue frock, black socks, a white petticoat and a little white shawl. To support them, he gave Emma a weekly allowance of three-shillings a week. It wasn’t much but it was as much as he could afford given his tiny wage and dad’s debts. And with this little lamb having adopted a cough, a sniffle and (sometimes) a shiver - with a simple cold in that era being as a deadly killer – he paid his pennies for a doctor. As was common for the poor - with their symptoms rarely taken seriously and with this ‘medical professional’ being little more than a quack - a mild liniment was prescribed, but the baby’s ailments lingered on.

Plagued by worry; overthinking every flinch, twitch or drool as any new parent would, and maybe seeing or hearing things which probably weren’t even there, Charles was worried that his son – who was born of his blood - having been blessed with life, but burdened by a family curse.

As just a child himself and with no-one to turn to, Charles was a mess, physically and mentally. But as the stresses mounted - having already become someone different - he grew colder and more distant.

One month after the baby’s birth, with Charles unable to afford a second lodging, for the sake of the baby, Emma made peace with her parents and returned home to 23 Denmark Street. Blamed for bringing a bastard into the world, Charles saw them less, until he became little more than a stranger.

By the Christmas of 1899, his support of the child had dropped from three shillings-a-week, to two, to one, and then none. Struggling to pay his own rent, he had moved between lodgings, being booted out when he got behind or was thrown-out for bad behaviour. Working intermittently, this quiet lad had begun mumbling to himself, was spotted running panicked across the printworks like he was being chased by a wild beast, and feeling ‘giddy’ and ‘hot’, the less he worked, the less he earned.

By this point, busy with motherhood, Emma too had gone cold on Charles. For the sake of the baby, they kept it cordial and often he would furnish his family with whatever pennies he could afford. But for both, deep down, there was still a faint hope of rekindling the love they once had.

January 1900 saw a new year, a new century and a renewed promise of change and prosperity..
.
...but for this struggling little family, it would bring only misery and death.

As was a habit, every Sunday afternoon, Charles, Emma and baby Harry visited her sister Harriet and husband Charles at their home on the Prince’s Road in Lambeth, South London. Given a hearty meal by a warm fire, although hardly prosperous themselves, the Meredith’s weren’t a picture of wedded bliss, but of contentment, as together – through thick and thin - they always pulled through.

On Sunday 4th January, as they all sat down to tea and cake, Charles was far from his usual self. Looking tired and short-fused, from the second he had arrived he was desperate to leave with an insistence that Emma, the baby and himself go “for a walk by the Thames”. Rightly, Emma said no, so he sat in silence, his only sound being the muted mumbling of his thin lips as vigorously he rubbed his eyes. To all concerned, he was still grieving his parents - only he felt that a part of them was still with him.

On Sunday 4th February - in the same room, at the same time, to the same people – Charles made the same request “let’s go for walk”, which again Emma declined. Hearing a cough and seeing a single spot of mottled phlegm dot his child’s cheek, he insisted he take the baby with him, but Emma said no, so he left alone. The winter wind was bitingly cold, the stone streets were icy-sheets and (so viscous was the darkest season) even the turbulent river Thames had succumbed to the cold and frozen in patches. And as his perturbed mind raced as he paced, all he could think of was his boy, his blood and his legacy.

On Sunday 11th February, exactly one week before the unthinkable – as had happened many Sundays prior – a walk was mooted and rebuked, so an unusually restless Charles sulked as the family sat. His language had grown more foul of late, having recently mocked Emma’s auburn hair by calling her a “bleeding carroty cow”, but he was never abusive or violent toward her. It was then that he began to light up a pipe; a habit he knew she disliked, especially as twice he had burned his mouth and once – while leaning over the crib - a red-hot ball of tobacco had singed her baby’s head. As any good mother would, she knocked the unlit pipe from his lips. But picking it back up, he did something he had never done before - he threatened her, hissing "mind you and the baby don’t go over the Embankment tonight". And although a brief moment of tension, he apologised and they both left on good terms.

Across the following week, he waited outside of her home on Denmark Street - always outside, never in, as her father had forbidden it – and being unusually tearful and trembling, Emma couldn’t tell what was wrong with Charles, as he refused to discuss it. All he wanted was to see her and the baby.

On Saturday 17th February. one night before - after a calm, rational and almost loving conversation - Charles did something he had never done before – and with the baby in her arms - he punched Emma in the face. He never said why he did it, and he never would... but something had made him snap.

Sunday 18th February 1900 was a day written in the past which was destined to change their futures.

With the bitter icy winds having not ceased since Christmas, as the cobble-stoned streets were deathly and any trickle of water was frozen solid, as was habit, taking a horse-drawn omnibus, Emma and the baby headed to her sisters. Only this time without Charles. Emma: “Our usual time to meet on Sundays was about 3:20, but he didn’t go with me that day as my brother-in-law had said no on account of my black eye. I didn’t tell him that, I thought it would upset him, so I said the baby wasn’t very well”.

For once, the baby was fine and his cough was gone... but Charles knew none of this.

At 7:30pm, Charles stood against a lamppost outside of 23 Denmark Street, as the fizzing electric arc-lamp bathed his sallow face in a dull yellowy glow. Too afraid to knock, he waited, and as Eliza Grinham - a schoolgirl who lived on the same floor – did her chores, he repeatedly asked her the same question, “where’s Emma?” like he was stuck in a loop, and always he got the same reply - “I don’t know”.

Having missed her at 3:20pm, being worried for the next four hours and having waited for three hours more, as Emma and his baby boy hopped off the omnibus at 10:45pm, his haggard lips lifted a little as he saw them both approaching. He was tired, she was tired and the baby had drifted off to dreamland.

Outside her door, in a hushed silence, Charles asked “Can I hold him?” It was late, too late, so Emma said “no, he’s sleeping”. Her black-eye was still swollen and its pain was still fresh, but hearing his pleas “please... just for a minute, that’s all” – seeing his eyes all cracked and red with a teetering rim of tears hovering on his lower lids and sensing the sadness within him - being just a boy himself who had lost his own parents (not months but maybe) years ago, she nodded, sighing “okay, just for a bit”.

The last seven months had been tough on both of them, and (maybe) having realised his mistakes, the boy she still loved might actually do right, with a husband for her and a father for their son.

Slowly, as she handed the baby over, tightly holding this tiny tot in his fatherly arms, Charles leaned forward, his lips perched close as he softly kissed the little wisp of red hair on his son’s sleeping head...

...only this was not a “good night” kiss to his baby boy, but a “goodbye”.

With no warning, gripping the snoozing bundle to his chest, Charles fled. Dashing past St Giles church - with the skinny waif-like Emma wailing behind him – chasing him as best she could, somewhere near the dizzying confusion of Seven Dials, she lost them. Howling all the way home, everyone she called searched the streets, his lodging and his workplace, but Charles had vanished and her baby was gone.
For more than mile, Charles ran until his bones shook. With his head red-hot, a giddiness guiding his legs and a voice reassuring him that what he was doing was right - as the squealing baby’s head bobbed in his arms – he dashed down Endell Street, Compton Street, St Martin’s Lane and Villiers Street, until his feet hit the icy expanse of the Embankment, and the shallow snowy walls of the River Thames.

No-one saw him do it, but undeniably he had. Without a second thought, having hurled the tiny bundle towards a sleeting horizon, as it fell, and its little body smacked hard on the frozen river, for a moment it lay there - helpless and alone – until slowly, the ice broke. Weighed down by a little blue frock, white petticoat and woollen shawl, as the tiny pale baby sank deeper, abruptly its screams ceased. (End)

At 11:20pm, just minutes later, 19-year-old Charles handed himself in at the Bow Street Police Station to a stunned constable and inspector. Admitting his guilt, he assisted the Police but was unable to give any reason why he had disposed of his son, so based on his confession, he was charged with murder.

Briefly examined by a Police doctor, no evidence of epilepsy or mental illness was found, and a second equally-disdainful doctor dismissed his grief as a motive, stating to the court “I have heard that he had trouble after losing his father and mother - a weak mind would very likely be upset by that sort of thing”. So, based on the analysis of two ‘medical experts’, he was declared sane and fit to stand trial.

On Wednesday 21st February, three days later, Harry Hartley was found by a river boatman, four miles downstream. Having died by drowning, laid naked on a cold marble slab at the Rotherhithe mortuary, Emma had to identify her baby boy. And although the last thing she could recall was the warmth of his breath as he slept, devoid of life, the only colour on his frozen body was a little wisp of red hair.

Charles Henry Mills was tried at the Old Bailey on 2nd April 1900. Giving no evidence, he pleaded his innocence, and although he was found guilty, the jury overruled the doctors and declared him insane at the time of the murder. He was ordered to be detained at Her Majesty’s Pleasure and having been committed to the infamous Bedlam Asylum - where his aunt had previously died - his fate is known.

OUTRO: Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for listening to Murder Mile.

If you would like to learn more about the details about this case, as well as a few details which didn’t make it into the final show, please join me for a tea, cake and waffle after the break. But before that, here’s a brief promo for a true-crime podcast which may fly the flag up your flagpole.

A big thank you to my new Patreon supporters, who are: Caroline Fearne, Lucie Graham-Cumming, Allan Airth, Derek Morrison, Heather Smith, Jason Abercrombie and Victoria Redhead. I thank you all. A special thank you to Ray Mitchell for the very kind donation and Christina Marta for the birthday gift-card, I am feeling very spoiled. And thank you to all those lucky people who have upgraded their Patreon account to the new Handsome Hamlet tier, and are listening to my new weekly podcast – Walk With Me. Ooh. Special.

Murder Mile was researched, written and performed by myself, with the main musical themes written and performed by Erik Stein & Jon Boux of Cult With No Name.

Thank you for listening and sleep well.

*** LEGAL DISCLAIMER
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.
*** LEGAL DISCLAIMER

Michael J Buchanan-Dunne is a writer, crime historian, podcaster and tour-guide who runs Murder Mile Walks, a guided tour of Soho’s most notorious murder cases, hailed as “one of the top ten curious, quirky, unusual and different things to do in London”, nominated "one of the best true-crime podcasts at the British Podcast Awards", one of The Telegraph's top five true-crime podcasts and featuring 12 murderers, including 3 serial killers, across 15 locations, totaling 50 deaths, over just a one mile walk.

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Murder Mile UK True-Crime Podcast #121: The Yellow Ribbons of Hanwell - Part Two (Arnis Zalkalns)

3/3/2021

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42 Castlebar Road, the former home of Arnis Zalkalns/Daksa

Welcome to the Murder Mile UK True-Crime Podcast and audio guided walk of London's most infamous and often forgotten murder cases, set within and beyond the West End.

A weekly true-crime podcast - EVERY THURSDAY
300+ infamous, untold or often forgotten true murders
Based on Soho's FIVE STAR rated Murder Mile Walks
Researched from original and first-hand sources
Authentic sounds recorded from the location itself

To accompany your audio guided walk, what follows is a series of photos, videos and maps, so that no matter where you are listening to this podcast, you'll feel like you're actually there.

Alice’s Youth Music Memorial Fund

Alice's Youth Music Memorial Fund is supporting the National Foundation for Youth Music in memory of Alice who had a passion for music. It aims to provide a sustainable legacy of music-making for disadvantaged children in Alice's memory.

If you want to help please do make your donation here.

EPISODE ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-ONE:
Today’s episode is about the hunt for the murderer of Alice Gross. With rape as a motive but no clear link to any suspect, the attack seemed almost random. And although their encounter was entirely by chance, a cruel twist of fate may have decided her death just three years before she was even born. This is Part Two of Two of The Yellow Ribbons of Hanwell.

Date: Thursday 4th September 2014 (last time Arnis was seen alive)
Location: 42 Castlebar Road, Ealing, W5 (former home of Arnis Zalkalns)
Victims: 1 (Alice Poppy Madeline Gross)
Culprits: 1 (Arnis Zalkalns/Daksa)

CLICK HERE to download the Murder Mile podcast via iTunes and to receive the latest episodes, click "subscribe". You can listen to it by clicking PLAY on the embedded media player below.

The location of 42 Castlebar Road, the former home of Arbnnis Zalkalns is marked with a red cross. To use the map, click it. If you want to see the other murder maps, access them by clicking here.

Here's a few videos to go with this series; 42 Castlebar Road where Arnis Zalkalns/Daksa lived at the time of the murder, the short-cut between Lock 97 and the River Brent where the attack took place, and near the location at Boston Marnor Park where Arnis Zalkalns killed himself.

I've also posted some photos to aid your knowledge of the case. These photos were taken by myself (copyright Murder Mile) or granted under Government License 3.0, where applicable.

Locations involved in this case: (from top left to bottom right) the entrance to Lock 97 (from south of the canal), the entrance to the shortcut to the River Brent (where Alice was snatched), the short-cut (where the rape and murder took place). the location where her body was found, the footbridge at Brentford Lock, a densely wooded section of the area (it gets worse than this), the exit/extrance to the short-cut at Hanwell Bridge, Hanwell Bridge via Uxbridge Road, The Corner Shop and on the far right: the memorial to Alice at the location her body was found and Arnis Zalkaln's flat at 42 Castlebar Road.

SOURCES:As there is no police file or court documents currently available, this series has been written and researched using a variety of sources, as well as my own research and investigations. Including (but not exclusively):

Alice's Music- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWYbzRNASic
Alice's Solo - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmVa0tL01Bg
UK Documentary - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLXuAL6LPKg
CCTV at Brentford Lock - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SlPfVgJgrN8
CCTV at Corner Shop - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMg0UhdJrWE
CCTV by Uxbridge Road / Hanwell Bridge - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcCv4E6-558
INTERVIEW WITH PARENTS: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLkoUdnHiK0

NEWS SOURCES:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-29258630
https://alice-poppymadeleine-gross.muchloved.com/Fundraising
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/jul/04/alice-gross-inquest-finds-schoolgirl-was-unlawfully-killed
https://www.wandsworthsw18.com/#!pages/shared:common:eaalice021
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/jul/11/revealed-alice-gross-argued-against-banning-foreign-criminals-before-her
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/oct/14/alice-gross-inquest-must-scrutinise-suspected-killer-arnis-zalkalns-uk
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/jun/27/mother-murdered-girl-alice-gross-lost-faith-uks-ability-protect-citizens
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/oct/01/body-found-river-alice-gross-police
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jan/27/alice-gross-murder-arnis-zalkalns
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/oct/01/alice-gross-police-find-body-river-brent
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/sep/29/alice-gross-police-dredge-london-canal-missing-schoolgirl
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/oct/05/alice-gross-murder-forensic-tests-arnis-zalkalns
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/sep/16/alice-gross-police-missing-latvian
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/sep/24/alice-gross-evidence-latvian-police-arrest-warrant
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/sep/04/fears-grow-missing-teenager-alice-gross
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-29252462
https://www.theweek.co.uk/60472/alice-gross-why-did-police-not-know-about-killer-s-past
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/sep/18/alice-gross-police-arnis-zalkalns-murder-conviction-suspect
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/oct/13/arnis-zalkalns-inquest-opened-london-alice-gross
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/sep/22/alice-gross-police-suspect-arnis-zalkalns
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-29438682
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-30997004
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2928026/Latvian-killer-Arnis-Zalkalns-charged-murder-schoolgirl-Alice-Gross-police-say.html
https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Gross-2016-0488.pdf
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-29340052
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-29328591
https://www.thesun.co.uk/archives/news/330905/suspect-in-missing-alice-case-is-wife-killer/
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2761606/Once-tasted-blood-I-feared-strike-An-extraordinary-interview-grieving-mother-wife-Latvian-fugitive-battered-death.html

MUSIC:

Silence by Cult With No Name (Intro and interstitials)
Winsome Lose Some by Cult With No Name (credits)
Original composition by Alice Gross - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmVa0tL01Bg
Requiem 8 by Esther Ambrami
To Have To In Least Water by Patches
How Far We’ve Come by Cooper Cannell
Anton by Dan Boden
Cooper Avenue by The Westerlies
Argonne by Zacharia Hickman
Those Things Are More Fun With Others by Patches

UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE:

SCRIPT: Welcome to Murder Mile; a true-crime podcast and audio guided walk featuring many of London’s untold, unsolved and long-forgotten murders, all set within and beyond the West End.

Today’s episode is about the hunt for the murderer of Alice Gross. With rape as a motive but no clear link to any suspect, the attack seemed almost random. And although their encounter was entirely by chance, a cruel twist of fate may have decided her death just three years before she was even born.

Murder Mile is researched using authentic sources. It contains moments of satire, shock and grisly details. And as a dramatization of the real events, it may also feature loud and realistic sounds, so that no matter where you listen to this podcast, you’ll feel like you’re actually there.

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

Episode 121: The Yellow Ribbons of Hanwell – Part Two.

Today I’m standing on Castlebar Road in Ealing, W5; four miles west of the flat shared by the killers of Vincent Patrick Keighrey, three miles north-west of the Chiswick cat ladies, one street north-west of the newsagents where the sadistic Polish child-rapist Andrzej Kunowski lured his penultimate victim, and one and a half miles south-east of the bloodbath at Gurnell Grove - coming soon to Murder Mile.

Ealing is one of the borough’s seven towns including Acton, Greenford, Perivale, Northolt, Southall and (on its westerly border) is Hanwell. As a settlement since the iron age, Ealing comes from the Saxon word ‘Gilligas’ which fittingly means ’place of the people’, being a nice place to live and work.

Skirting north of Ealing Broadway sits Castlebar, a B-road heading to Hanwell. As a residential street shoe-horned full of townhouses, terraces, flats and care homes, it’s the kind of place where everyone is pleasant to one-another. In passing, they may nod, wave or utter a cheery “how do you do?” Only to dart inside, pry open the curtains and lambast their partner, as after a decade of niceties, the worst crime of all would be the shame of asking their neighbour - “I’m sorry, but what is your name?”

Half way up the hill, opposite a little V-shaped patch of grass called Tortoise Green sits 42 Castlebar Road; a three-storey semi-detached light-brown house with large white windows, a black iron fence and - like so many over-priced London houses – it was subdivided into several rented flats.

Today, it’s a lovely home which (I’m assured) houses some thoroughly pleasant persons. But just seven years ago, the basement flat was rented out to a builder with a baby, a bride-to-be and a bicycle. And although hard-working, none of the residents knew about his deadly past or his sadistic obsession.

As far as we know, its tenant never knew Alice, she never knew him and although (as he cycled home from work) the murder of a young girl might not have been on his mind, in a chance encounter, there may have been something oddly familiar about Alice which stirred his emotions and drove him to kill.

As it was here, on Thursday 4th September 2014, exactly one week after her disappearance, that 41-year-old Arnis Zalkalns vanished, leaving behind his family and taking one more life. (Interstitial)

Missing for four days, Rosalind made an appeal to her daughter: "We'd like to say to Alice that we miss her, we love her and that she's not in any trouble, all we want to know that she's safe".

Being a grounded girl, Alice’s only vices were walks, pets and music. She avoided conflict, strangers and unsafe settings, and she didn’t keep secrets, as having opened her heart to her family about her battle with depression and anorexia, their love and support kept her strong. She had never run away, but every option had to be considered... even the unthinkable. And although her family and the people of Hanwell never lost hope - as the streets were radiated by blooms of bright yellow ribbons in a vigil to ‘find Alice’ – but as time eroded, the likelihood of finding her alive grew more distant.

If someone had taken her, the question was ‘who’ and ‘why’?

On day five, having found her black backpack and trainers hidden amongst a dense thicket on a remote river towpath, although it remained a missing person’s case (until the evidence suggested otherwise) it was escalated to Detective Superintendent Carl Mehta of the Met’ Police’s Serious Crime Command.

Conducting one of London’s largest searches, hundreds of dogs and officers scoured ten square miles of dense impenetrable woodland –overgrown, unmapped and riddled with dank nooks and recesses - from Three Bridges to Brentford Lock, the River Brent to the Hanwell Flight, covering every conceivable spot from Trumper’s Way to Gallow’s Bridge and Boston Manor Park, as divers waded through three-and-a-half miles of unnavigable rivers, ponds and bogs, relying mostly on touch amidst its silty depths.

Over the coming weeks, a jigsaw of CCTV footage would painstakingly rebuild a timeline of Alice’s last known movements as well as any eye-witnesses. And yet, it would yield few clues to her whereabouts, as – at the crucial moment between 4:23pm and 4:42pm - her digital history had a dead zone.

It seemed impossible. How could a young girl with a very identifiable look, outfit and walk vanish from a moderately busy towpath on a summer’s day in broad daylight, and yet nobody saw a thing?

Released on Thursday 4th September, CCTV footage showed the small, skinny but confidently strutting Alice crossing Brentford Lock at 2.23pm, 3:45pm and finally power-walking under the Trumper’s Way Bridge at 4:23pm, as five cyclists passed her, just minutes before she vanished. Three came forward and were ruled out, but two did not, possibly having not recognised themselves in the grainy footage.

It proved, she wasn’t followed, distracted or fazed, she stopped once, she spoke to no-one, she made no other calls or texts, her speed and direction remained consistent and she showed no signs of fear.

As a senior detective, from day one, DSI Carl Mehta had been investigating this as a potential homicide, looking for any anomalies and possible suspects. On Saturday 6th September at 5pm, a 25-year-old Ealing man was arrested but later bailed. And on Sunday 7th, after a tip-off, a 51-year-old local was arrested after “a shovel, ropes and sacks” were found in his car-boot, but he was released uncharged.

Alice hadn’t vanished of her own volition, that much was clear, so somebody had to know something...

...but even before these arrests were made, DSI Mehta had a second line of inquiry and a suspect.

On average, 55000 people go missing in London every year, with roughly thirty-three missing persons reported in the borough of Ealing every week, and that week was no different. Excluding Alice, to the DSI, this list was a typical mix of the borough’s most vulnerable – whether children, the elderly or the mentally distressed – many of whom would return safe and well. But one person’s details stood out.

On Friday 5th September, a 41-year-old Latvian was reported missing by his girlfriend; his passport and bank accounts lay untouched, both his UK and Latvian phones were dead, CCTV had lost him one day earlier and – as a new dad with a good job and a baby daughter - he had no reason to vanish. Last seen cycling away from his basement flat at 42 Castlebar Road, his disappearance had eery similarities to Alice. Only he wasn’t the victim, but the prime suspect and his name was Arnis Zalkalns. (Interstitial)

Arnis Zalkalns was born in 1973 in the Latvian capital of Riga, under his real name - Arnis Daksa.
Little is known about his early years except for a few scant details and although his family would later state “he was a good man, who wouldn’t hurt anyone, especially a child”, his past would refute this.
Physically, he was unremarkable, being neither hideous, handsome nor bland. As an average-looking man of five-foot ten-inches tall, slightly stocky and thirteen stone in weight, he mirrored many other welders in the dockyard; he was practical, good with his hands and had the skills to construct his own tools. With a jutting chin, piercing grey eyes and a brown ponytail, he was semi-successful in his pursuit of petite young girls, and although moderately charming, his overriding character trait was aggression.

In the spring of 1994, at a Riga nightclub, Arnis met 19-year-old seamstress Rudite Zalkalns. With soft brown hair, pale-skin and a pixyish nose, there was something prepubescent about her elfin features and a doll-like figure, as if – being a little naïve – her mind and body kept remained as a ‘little girl’. And easily enchanted, she ignored her mother’s warnings, she fell madly in love and quickly fell pregnant.

By December 1994, hiding her bulging belly under a pink maternity dress, Arnis & Rudite married, with their daughter (Elvira) born two months later... but life was far from bliss, as Arnis was cruel, abusive and controlling. With the cause uncertain – whether Rudite had dented his ego having begun a lesbian fling or stumbled on his alleged links to the Latvian mafia - the violence she suffered was irrefutable.

In 1996, having handmade a low-calibre handgun – with his masculinity impugned - he shot her in the stomach. Surviving with a crushed bullet lodged in her spine, being too terrified to call the Police and with Arnis refusing to pay for a surgeon to remove it, she was stitched back up and there it remained.

By March 1997, with his temper tightly-wound as his wife dared to go-out without him or his say-so, feeling paranoid and spurned, he callously prepared her death. Under the ruse of a gift, he lured Rudite to a remote woodland on the outskirts of Riga where his weapons lay in wait. Wielding a foot-long cosh he had fashioned from scaffolding pole, he frenziedly bludgeoned the tiny girl to unconsciousness and brandishing a handmade blade, he stabbed in the heart. Stripped naked, tied into a foetal position and stuffed into a black bin-bag, Arnis dumped her body in pre-dug three-foot grave. Discarding her clothes and trainers, he disguised the crime-scene, so that (even to the experts) it looked untouched.

His planning was detailed and his execution was faultless, but his failure was his obsession. Rudite was dead and gone, but unable to sleep and being haunted by her face, all he could think about was Rudite. Reporting her missing, detectives found her diary in which she detailed the violence and her despair, and as the Police’s prime suspect, on 9th July 1997, just four months later, he confessed to her murder.

So well-concealed was his wife’s body that Arnis himself had to guide the search-teams to her grave.

Assessed as mentally-stable, he pleaded guilty to murder and on 18th June 1998, he was sentenced to twelve years in Riga Central Prison, on appeal this was reduced to eight, but he served only seven.

Released on probation in 2005 - leaving Elvira without a father or mother - he moved to Liepaja, began a new life with a lady called Liga Rubezneice, they had two children, and keen to bury his criminal past and (maybe unable to let go), he changed his name from Daksa to Zalkalns - his dead wife’s surname.

In 2007, Arnis Zalkalns (a welder with no convictions) boarded a coach to London, having never been placed on Interpol’s watchlist of violent offenders. Moving to the West Ealing suburb of Boston Manor, he worked on a building site in Isleworth, cycling his red Trex mountain bike along the Grand Union canal and starting a relationship with his new girlfriend Katerina Laiblove, they would later move into the basement flat at 42 Castlebar Road in Ealing, and together they had a daughter called Linda.

He had a new life in a new world with a new family... only his old demons were never put to rest.
In 2009 - triggered by either lust, rage or obsession – Arnis Zalkalns was arrested for the sexual-assault of a 14-year-old schoolgirl in Boston Manor Park; a densely overgrown woodland, by the towpath on the Hanwell Flight, just one-a-half miles south of Lock 97. And although fully-investigated, the terrified girl decided to not to proceed and the charges against him were dropped.

For DSI Carl Mehta, Arnis Zalkalns was his prime suspect. With a history of violence and sexual assault against young petite girls, his description and mountain bike matched the footage from Trumper’s Bridge, he was currently missing, and his DNA matched a sample found on Alice’s backpack and trainer.

On Tuesday 16th September, DSI Mehta took the unusual step of announcing Zalkaln’s as a ‘person of interest’ stating “we simply want to speak to him, as he may have information that can help our search for Alice”. The next day, Police released the CCTV footage showing Alice crossing the short black-and-white footbridge at Brentford Gauging Lock at 3:45pm on the day she disappeared. At 4pm, just fifteen minutes later, that same footage showed Arnis crossing the footbridge and cycling north up the canal.

So, why did Arnis attack Alice? He didn’t know her, he had never met her, and (based on the evidence) it wasn’t a pre-meditated murder. If anything, their contact would be as fleeting as any other stranger they would pass on the towpath that day - or any other day - with Arnis as one of many anonymous cyclists who were heading home from work, and Alice as just another jogger keeping fit.

So, what happened?

Thursday 28th August 2014 was as unremarkable as any other day that summer. Being twenty-three degrees, sunny but not hot, and calm with a light breeze – it was the perfect weather for a long walk.

At 12:50pm, with a matching outfit, a confident stride and a swinging ponytail, (“bye mum, love you”) Alice left home on a spontaneous walk via an improvised route decided by her mood and energy.

Her speed was consistent as she passed the following locations. 1.02pm Hanwell Station, 1:13pm Hanwell Bridge, 1.15pm Uxbridge Road and 1.26pm she entered Windmill Lane and the Hanwell Flight. She passed Lock 97, the Syphon, Trumper’s Way Bridge, Elthorne Park, Osterley Lock, the M4 flyover and Boston Manor Park; she crossed over at Gallow’s Bridge, passed Transport Avenue, Great West Road, and at 2.23pm she entered Brentford Gauging Lock, where at 3pm she texted her dad.

At no point during her walk south did Arnis see her, as from 9am that morning, he was on a building site in Isleworth, three and a half miles of her home and one mile west of Brentford Lock. He worked hard, he took a short break, his mood was good and he left work at his usual time, having completed his shift. At 3:35pm, wearing a blueish short-sleeved shirt, cream chinos and black trainers, he cycled east along London Road on his red Trex mountain bike with his black rucksack on his back, as per usual.

Given how meticulously he had planned and executed the murder of his wife – with a pre-dig grave, a handmade cosh, a sharpened knife, cable ties and a roll of black bin-bags, as well as how methodically he had hidden her body and disguised the crime-scene so it looked untouched – we know his attack on Alice wasn’t pre-meditated prior to this moment, as none of the tools he would need were on his person or at the scene.

At 3:45pm, Alice headed north across the black-and-white footbridge at Brentford Lock. At 4pm, taking his usual route home, Arnis cycled passed that same spot, heading up the canal, in the same direction as Alice – as many joggers, dog-walkers and at least four other cyclists would at roughly the same time.
With her walking speed gauged at three-miles-per-hour and his cycling speed at about eight, based on the timings between CCTV cameras, they would have passed one-another on the narrow towpath near to Boston Manor Park - the site of his alleged sexual-assault on a 14-year-old schoolgirl.

At 4:26pm, a camera captured Alice being overtaken by the last of five cyclists at Trumper’s Bridge. Her speed was steady and she showed no sense of fear, so - if Arnis had confronted her near Gallow’s Bridge - feeling afraid, she could have left the canal on this road heading to Hanwell... but she didn’t.

Having cycled to Lock 97, Arnis stopped, parked up his bike and - just to the left of Lock Cottage, down a secluded and overgrown short-cut running along the River Brent - he lit-up a Lucky Strike menthol and as he lay in wait for eight minutes as Alice approached, he smoked it down to the filter.

So why Alice? A girl he never knew, had never met and hadn’t a single reason to love or hate, who was just one of hundreds (if not thousands) of girls he had cycled-by, every day, on that stretch of canal.

Why Alice? Well that we can never know for certain, but there is one immutable and undeniable truth.

Alice was a tiny girl, with the wise head of grown-up, but the small skinny body of a child. Being pixyish and petite, with elfin-features and a doll-like frame - although she was unquestionably easy-prey for a five-foot-ten thirteen-stone man - her look bore an uncanny similarity to that of his dead wife.

Seventeen years after Rudite’s murder, still haunted by the face of his long-dead lover, the motive of Arnis Zalkalns might have been decided in a fleeting glance – from behind, and on a bike – as in a cruel ironic twist, the tragic fate of Alice Gross was (maybe) set-in-motion three years before she was born?

The attack was swift and brazen. It had to be. Being a bright summer’s day, he snatched Alice off the public footpath, silencing her lips with his grubby hand, as he dragged the terrified teen to the bushes, and all the while, through-out her ordeal, lines of unwitting people would pass-by just a few feet away.

For Arnis, the risk of being discovered was extremely high, but there hidden amidst the dense thicket, he raped this little girl, until his eighty-three-kilo bulk crushed the last breath of air from her tiny lungs.

Evidence suggests that sex was his motive, not murder, but with Alice’s limp and lifeless body slumped beside him, his new motive was her disposal. As he had with his dead-wife, he needed to hide her, so no-one would find her... ever. Only with no plan, no tools and no pre-dug grave, he risked arrest.

At 5:49pm, seventy-five minutes later, and at about the same time that Alice should have returned home, a camera on Uxbridge Road caught Arnis emerging from the towpath at Hanwell Bridge. In his bag was stashed her dead iPhone, possibly some of her clothes, and having dumped her backpack along the overgrown short-cut, we know that he had entered the river as the legs of his cream Chinos were rolled-up to his knees. He headed east into Hanwell and cycled 1.9 miles to his flat at 42 Castlebar Road, to his girlfriend and baby daughter. But his stay would only be brief, as Alice wasn’t buried.

At 7:30pm, he left his home. In his rucksack was a shovel, a torch, spare clothes and a roll of black bin-bags. Where he found the four house-bricks and the broken bicycle wheel is unknown, but this kind of innocent detritus could easily be found at the canal having been dumped by any lazy fly-tipper.

At 7:36pm, he entered The Corner Shop at 24 The Avenue in West Ealing and purchased two cans of strong lager. The shopkeeper said “he smelled bad” and “looked out-of-it, like he was on drugs”. At 7:46pm, the Hanwell Bridge camera caught him returning to the scene where he stayed until 8:49pm.

Wading chest-deep into this isolated and unnavigable bend in the River Brent, he dug a shallow trench in the dark riverbed and - having wrapped her small porcelain body in black bin-bags - behind a tree, down a slope and buried deep in three-feet of silty water, he disguised this unrecognisable black lump amongst the mud and weighed her down with bricks, sections of tree-trunk and a twenty-kilo log.

So meticulously had he hidden the body of Alice Gross, she wouldn’t be found for thirty-three days.

The next day, on Friday 29th August, that same camera captured him at 6:48am and 9:02pm returning to the scene, possibly to check on the body as he cycled to-and-from work, along that same towpath.

With her black backpack and blue trainers found just five days later, that day his internet search history was dominated by one name - ‘Alice Gross’. He knew he would be a suspect and he knew he would be caught. But (unlike with his dead wife) he would never confess, or see a single day in prison. (END)

On Thursday 4th September at 12:40am, one week after her disappearance, 41-year-old Arnis Zalkalns left his flat at Castlebar Road, and having packed a rucksack with ropes and tools, he vanished.

Announced as ‘person of interest’, a forensic search found additional evidence including the bin-bags, his bike, his clothes and the cracked case to Alice’s iPhone at his home. As well as hours of CCTV footage, the cigarette butt found at the crime scene and Zalkaln’s DNA was recovered on her backpack, her canvas trainer and – protected by the waterproof binbags – his DNA remained on her skin.

Police were confident of a conviction, all they had to do was find him. The problem was he knew how to hide himself and a body, having done it twice before. But after thirty-one days of being missing, Arnis Zalkalns was finally found.

On Saturday 4th October at 2pm, in a remote and densely-wooded thicket in Boston Manor Park, barely a mile south of Lock 97, the badly decomposed body of Arnis Zalkalns was found hanging from a tree. So well disguised was his body and the scene, that a previous search by Police specialists had failed to find it, and with no evidence of third-party involvement, his cause of death was hanging by suicide.

The culprit was found, the case was closed and an inquest was held, but having taken his own life, Arnis Zalkalns would never be convicted and the family of Alice Gross would never get justice.
On 23rd October, the people of Hanwell stood in silence as a black hearse crawled across Broadway, along long lines of rolling tears and bowed heads, as the little lost girl was returned home. Illuminated by yellow ribbons, candles and flowers, as the procession was lead to Hanwell Cemetery, in the back lay a small yellow coffin, decorated with paintings and designs of everything that Alice loved; art, music, poetry, her family, her pets and a flower-strewn meadow, to reflect her love of nature.

But Alice’s name was not to become synonymous with grief, but joy. In her brief life, her love of music would become her legacy, a legacy which lasts to this day and will continue to inspire a new generation of children and teenagers to – battle through their personal problems, just as Alice had - and embrace the things that they love. In her memory, Alice's Youth Music Memorial Fund was established, raising donations and seeking to provide a sustainable legacy of music-making for disadvantaged children. As well as the Alice Gross Song Writing Award which inspires a new generation of young song writers.

Alice will live on in our hearts, with the yellow ribbons of Hanwell once again seen a symbol of hope.

OUTRO: Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for listening to Murder Mile.

That was the concluding part of the Yellow Ribbons of Hanwell. If you’d like to learn a little more about this case, join me for a cup of tea after the break and to make a donation to Alice's Youth Music Memorial Fund, there is a link in the show-notes. But before that, here’s a brief promo for a true-crime podcast which may be right up your street.

A big thank you to my new Patreon supporters, many of whom joined us a good few weeks ago, so I apologise for the delay. They are: Sally Worsley, Jonathan McLean, Shawna Ewasiuk (Ewayzee-uk), Elizabeth Whitley, George Hall, Guido Puddi, Kim Skwara, Chris Niro, Shirley Jones, Michelle Wilde-Nguyen, Megan Morris and Tee Bylo. With the Patreon competition winners from ages ago being Michael Hanrahan (who won a Murder Mile mug of goodies) and Karen Hillier and Kara Langford (who won a Murder Mile key ring),

Murder Mile was researched, written and performed by myself, with the main musical themes written and performed by Erik Stein & Jon Boux of Cult With No Name.

Thank you for listening and sleep well.

*** LEGAL DISCLAIMER
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.
*** LEGAL DISCLAIMER

Michael J Buchanan-Dunne is a writer, crime historian, podcaster and tour-guide who runs Murder Mile Walks, a guided tour of Soho’s most notorious murder cases, hailed as “one of the top ten curious, quirky, unusual and different things to do in London”, nominated "one of the best true-crime podcasts at the British Podcast Awards", one of The Telegraph's top five true-crime podcasts and featuring 12 murderers, including 3 serial killers, across 15 locations, totaling 50 deaths, over just a one mile walk.

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