Nominated BEST TRUE-CRIME PODCAST at The British Podcast Awards, 4th Best True Crime Podcast by The Week, 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.
Welcome to the Murder Mile UK True-Crime Podcast and audio guided walk of London's most infamous and often forgotten murder cases, all set within and beyond the West End.
EPISODE TWO HUNDRED AND FORTY-FOUR:
On the evening of Wednesday 11th November 1987, two orthodox Sikhs (Rajinder Singh Batth and Mangit Singh Sunder) sat in the sports hall of Dormers Wells High School in Southall, listening to the sermons of (some say) ‘self-proclaimed’ Guru Darshan Das. It would become one of Britain rare school shootings, and yet, unlike Dunblane, it has almost been forgotten.
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 is marked with a lime green symbol of a bin at the top left of the markers near the word 'Greenford'. To use the map, click it. If you want to see the other maps, click here.
SOURCES: This case was researched using some of the sources below.
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE: Welcome to Murder Mile. Today, I’m standing on Allenby Road in Southall, UB1; one mile west of the last sighting of Alice Gross, two miles north of the Chohan family murders, four roads south-east of where unidentified body parts were found in the canal, and a short walk from the old Grey Woman - coming soon to Murder Mile. Set on a busy residential street, Dormers Wells High School is an all-inclusive secondary and sixth form. It’s a quiet street, but - as with all kids - once the ‘little darlings’ get sugared up, they dash about like Tasmanian Devils with a serious case of the bum-grapes and squeal like Spinal Tap’s roadie has set the volume on all their voices to 11. It’s such a horrific din, the collective cacophony can make cats wince, bats weeps, and those of us with Tinnitus actually wish the awful humming in our ears would increase. But what there isn’t is a memorial to the massacre and the bloodshed which occurred on Wednesday 11th of November 1987, when murder came to this quiet little street. Rebuilt in 2011, a £30 million regeneration project has replaced the old High School with a thoroughly modern one, and although the sounds of squealing and screaming still remain, what it erased was the tragic memory of one of Britain’s only school shootings - a mass murder which was barely reported and is almost forgotten. My name is Michael, I am your tour guide, and this is Murder Mile. Episode 247: The Dormers Wells Massacre. What follows is based on the declassified court records. Gun control. Before 1900, almost every British citizen could carry a gun. Thankfully, seeing sense, in 1903, the first permit and age-restriction limited the sale of weapons to children and some teenagers. By 1919, a mandatory firearms certificate was introduced meaning you had to have a legitimate reason to own a gun. In 1936, short-barrelled shotguns and fully automatic weapons were outlawed. And by 1946, the police no longer deemed ‘self-defence’ a valid excuse to own one, and yet it wasn’t until 1953, that carrying a firearm, outside of supervised and permitted areas, was made illegal. None of these controls happened by mistake, as the laws which made Britain a more civilised and safer country were all exacerbated by a series of gut-wrenching tragedies perpetuated by gun owners. On 13th March 1996, in Dunblane, a small town outside of Stirling in Scotland, 43-year-old former Scout leader Thomas Hamilton entered Dunblane Primary School armed with four handguns. Angry at being blacklisted having committed sex-crimes against minors, he opened fire, wounding 15, and murdering in cold blood, teacher Gwen Mayor and 16 of her young pupils who were all aged between 5 and 6. It remains the deadliest mass shooting in UK history, and so appalled were the people, that Parliament banned the ownership of handguns, all semi-automatics and required a mandatory registration for shotgun owners. Since 1997, 27 years ago, there hasn’t been a school shooting in the United Kingdom. Roughly 30 gun-deaths a year occur in Britain, and yet in comparison, America which has very little gun control, if any at all, it averages a whopping 19500 gun-deaths every year - that’s 53-a-day. At a cost it’s impossible to calculate, the Dunblane massacre made Britain safer, as among those who care (not about their guns, but about their children), every life is precious and should be protected. But it wasn’t a single mass-shooting which led to this change in our law… …as a few years earlier, a little-known massacre occurred at Dormers Wells High School. The target, some say, was a Guru. On 7th December 1953 in Batala, the eighth largest city in the Punjab, Mahraz Darshan Das Ji was born as the second child of three siblings. For some followers of the Sikh faith, Darshan Das was seen as a Guru, but with its more orthodox followers only regarding first ten leaders of Sikhism as the true Gurus, for others, Das was little more than a fake sage in what was a politically volatile time for Sikhs. Hailed by his followers as a spiritual master, it was said that “his birth was prophesied in Bhai Bala’s Janam Sakhi”, the biographies the founder of Sikhism, “which states that the light of Guru Nanak Dev Ji will reappear in the town of Batala and will be born into a ‘Jatt-Brahmin’ family” – which he was. With his life story chronicled by his worshippers, it is said that “at the time of his birth, a snake dropped onto his bed and immediately vanished. That brought his parents attention to seven locks in his hair which resembled the seven-headed great snake, which (as Hindus) was considered a great blessing”. As word spread about the boy and his unusual locks of hair, “Yogis, Peers and Faqirs would stop and see the young Mahraz sitting outside of the doorway… to bow and pay their respects to him”. For many Sikhs, Das was not an ordinary child, as when he visited a nearby eye-hospital, his chroniclers state “he would comfort patients with his polite words… anything he said to them would come true”. In 1966, when Das was 13 years old, while feeding the family’s buffalos with a bale of hay too heavy to lift, “a figure in a white robe with a long white beard asked him if he needed any help. The man asked him to pay attention to the work he was born to do and told him that this weight which he was struggling to lift was nothing compared to ‘the weight of the world’ he was destined to lift upon his shoulders”. Das didn’t think much of it, but this was supposedly his first encounter with the divine. In his teenage years, it was said “at night when walking down the street people around would notice a light radiating from him, almost as if he was carrying a lamp. If someone was sick in their home, he would enter the doorway and the sick person would immediately feel better. At the time Mahraz Ji did not know why this was happening but others were starting to notice his presence as being special”. In 1970, aged 17, it is said that Das received a second spiritual message, stating that “if he wanted to be true… that his true vocation was the ‘service of mankind’”, and having returned to his aunt’s home, so intense was this experience, that he remained unconscious for three days, and - later said by an priest to have been ‘touched by a divine grace’ - after 40 days of fasting, he knew what he had to do. Giving his first sermon on 15th August 1971, this became known as ‘The Day of Enlightenment’ among his worshipers, as over the coming years, as his “unique healing powers” grew, so did his followers. Aged 19, one of his miracles was performed in Batala, when a buffalo (vital to the prosperity of the village) fell into a well of snakes. Unable to get out, Das blessed it, “the well very quickly became full of water, the buffalo was spotted shortly afterwards unhurt and happily grazing in the nearby fields”. For many Sikhs, his divinity was proven when on 16th of February 1980 the Punjab was swathed in the darkness of a solar eclipse, which many believe brings about everything from bad omens to blindness. Reassuring his faithful that no ill would befall them, it didn’t, and Das announced the founding of a new faith, ‘Das Dharam’ which means ‘Service to Humanity’ and laid down its rules and practices. To his followers, Darshan Das was a holy man, who was benevolent and peaceful… …but to the more orthodox Sikhs, he was a fake and a heretic. Das first came to England on the 23rd of December 1979, one year before he founded Das Dharam, and in 1982, having established his first religious centre in Handsworth, Birmingham, he split his time between visiting his followers and giving sermons in school halls right across the United Kingdom. Seen by Orthodox Sikhs as self-styled Guru who was disliked by the fundamentalists for his moderate views, Das was a controversial figure during an increased time of infighting and divide in the Sikh faith. As with many of the world’s biggest issues, it began in the 1930s, when the governance of India was handed back to those it rightfully belonged to, after we have ravaged its resources, looted its treasures and left it in chaos. With each religious group vying for political and financial supremacy, a ‘Khalistan’ was proposed, which split the Sikh faith between those who wanted an ethno‐religious sovereign state for Sikhs in the Punjab, and those who wanted to remain as part of an independent and unified India. Many wars were fought, many lives were lost, and innumerable rivers of blood and tears were spilt. 1984, three years before Das’ murder, was a particularly turbulent year for Sikhs, as from 1st to 10th of June 1984, Operation Blue Star sought to remove militants and separatists from the holiest Sikh site, The Golden Temple. Seen as a barbaric tragedy which left 554 Sikh militants and civilians dead with 83 dead and 236 wounded among the government forces - a figure which is still hotly disputed – it marked the start of a bloody insurgency in the Punjab and radicalised further its more militant Sikhs. Das was pro-India, anti-violence and (some say) a ‘self-proclaimed Guru’, so according to his followers “some religious factions saw his teachings as a corruption of their own faith”, and therefore, he often received death threats. Having condemned the violence by Sikhs fighting for an independent state, in speeches, he defiantly stated “I hold my views as a human right which I will continue to fight for”. With his life frequently in danger, in 1986, a man armed with a sword stormed a prayer meeting with the intent to kill Darshan Das. That day, his killer failed. But it is said that Das had foretold of his own death, as just moments before he was murdered, his chroniclers state “someone in the congregation asked ‘what is death?’ and he replied ‘wait two minutes and you will see it with your own eyes’.” Das’ life was dangling by a thread, as the threats came thick and fast… …but the coverage he received in the press only angered the fundamentalist Sikhs further. In the Sunday Mirror dated 7th September 1986, it states “John Kensit says he has been miraculously cured and has cancelled his heart operation after meeting the Guru. John said ‘Darshan Das touched my hands, recited a prayer and told me to repeat it each night’. Although a heart specialist later commented in the article “I think it would be wrong to put too much credence on an Indian holy man”. The mystical Indian Guru with the healing powers had come to Britain, and although some believed it, some didn’t and some were scared of it, there were others who were angered by his ‘fake miracles’. In the Sunday Mercury dated 15th of November 1987, four days after his death, it read “an unnamed businessman claimed ‘he lost his family, his parents and sisters who had fallen under the influence of Darshan Das. He said the self-proclaimed guru preyed on the fears of women…he alleged that Mrs Das sold bottles of water for £11 claiming they had healing powers, and demanded cash donations for his sect, instead of traditional Sikh gifts such as salt, sugar and flour’”. Later stating “he came to Britain because there was money here, he is not interested in traditional gifts, only cash. I also have a video of him laughing at the people he claimed to be healing’”. Although, when asked, Chief Inspector Keith Newell of West Midland Police said “we have never had any complaints about activities at the temple”. As a precaution, Das’ home in Handsworth was protected by alarms, locks and CCTV… …only his killers wouldn’t kill him at his bed in Birmingham, but in a school in Southall. Rajinder Singh Batth was a 37-year-old orthodox Sikh who believed in violence to achieve a ‘Khalistan’. Born in the Punjab in 1950, having come to England in 1972 and later losing his job at a plastics factory in Feltham one year before, being unemployed, by 1987, he was living on Burns Avenue in Southall, a few streets south of the Dormers Wells High School, where every Wednesday, Darshan Das preached. The plan was Batth’s idea, stating “he used to read the prayers out of our Guru Granth Sahib”, the Sikh scriptures, “calling himself a guru and being a Singh, I couldn’t bear this because after the ten gurus there’s no other guru except for Guru Granth Sahib. He was spoiling our culture. We don’t want fake sages. Any person can read the prayers from the Guru Granth Sahib, but he can’t call himself a Guru”. To get close to his target and to assess the site of this soon-to-be assassination, Batth attended several of Das’ Wednesday evening prayer meetings at the Dormers Wells High School across the four months prior. As a local Sikh, he blended in, and it gave him ample opportunity to assess the room, its exits, its timing, and to get up-close to his intended target. But with the congregation ranging from 150 and 300 worshippers, he knew he needed an accomplice with the same political beliefs as him. His name was Mangit Singh Sunder, a 25-year-old factory worker from Sandwell, who Batth knew well, being both members of fundamentalist groups within the International Sikh Youth Federation. Batth’s intention was sketchy at best, as to the Police, he confessed that he intended to murder Das, stating “we thought if he called himself a Guru again, we’d shoot him. I have been to these sessions many times thinking that he would stop but did not, that is why I shot him”. Later changing this to “I thought I would hit him in the legs”, which went against all the evidence. But at his trial, he changed his story again, stating “we planned to use the guns to force the audience to listen to our words”. And yet, what is without doubt was that – in premeditation - he had purchased guns. On an undetermined date in August 1987, although he’d been unemployed for a year and wasn’t on any benefits, either on a street in Southall or outside of a Sikh temple in Handsworth – as different sources give different accounts – “I met a black man”, Batth said, and for £250 (£880 today) he bought single barrelled Soviet-made sawn-off shotgun, a .22 calibre handgun and a .38 Smith & Wesson. Batth & Sunder were ready to kill… …but did Batth save money for this, or was he funded by someone else? Wednesday 11th of November 1987 was a typically British day, as a cold wet drizzle howled among a biting wind. That day, from noon onwards, Batth & Sunder drove the second-hand car, said to be a Datsun, which they’d purchased as a getaway car and drove around Southall with the guns in the boot. Driving to an isolated spot, Batth & Sunder loaded the guns, which they split among them; Sunder had the sawn-off shotgun and the pistol (said to be a Luger), and Batth had the .38 Smith & Wesson, which may seem unfair, but with the pistol holding just six bullets and the shotgun with only two, Batth’s .38 revolver was loaded with 6 bullets, and in his jacket pocket he’d stashed 8 spares, if he needed them. At a tree, Batth test-fired his revolver, and with Sunder strapping the shotgun and pistol to his chest, and Batth hiding the pistol in his waist-strap, they parked-up on Allenby Road at 9pm, and headed in. Dressed in a black and brown turban, a shirt, trousers and a grey jumper, Batth and his gun-toting ally entered the sports hall and blended in among the throng of worshippers, who all sat upon the floor. As part of the planned format, with the evening being one of three mandatory prayer times for Sikhs, from a slightly elevated dais, Das sat and recounted songs, prayers and hymns from the holy scripture, spoken in Punjabi, and for education purposes a tape recorder captured this sermon on a cassette. At roughly 9:30pm, with the prayer meeting coming to an end, some of the congregation said “Batth looked ill-at-ease” having shifted uncomfortably as Das came amidst the congregation talking to the people, answering their questions, and Batth said “making them bow to his feet”, as if he was a Guru. “He kept talking for quite a while, we kept listening”, Batth said. But it was as Das spoke the words “we imagine in Punjabi”, that Sunder suddenly shouted “you dog” and pulled out his sawn-off shotgun. From those two words to the final shot, the Dormers Wells Massacre lasted just 16 seconds. Having stood up, both men filed down the sides of the silenced congregation. Unsure what was going on, it happened so fast that the crowd were still seated when Sunder blasted the shotgun at Das from just six feet away. And although the two men were almost within touching distance, Sunder missed. Whether though nerves, fear or bad marksmanship, as the crowd panicked and the terrified masses fled towards the nearest exits, as Sunder cocked the shotgun’s hammer, a group of Das’ most faithful dived on the shooter, flooring him before he could get a last shot off and disarming him of the shotgun. Seeing the uprising and fearing for his life, Batth held his pistol in the air, as if the warn the crowd, but still they surged. And as Sunder struggled, having pulled out the pistol, he fired in panic, shooting 45-year-old Joga Singh of Southall, who as a writer of Psalms had just seconds earlier had punched him. Seeing Sunder struggle, as the crowd cornered, floored and beat him with chairs, as the crowd surged towards him, Batth also fired in panic, shooting 41-year-old telecoms engineer Satwant Singh Panesar in the chest, and 53-year-old shopkeeper Dharan Singh Bimbrah in the leg, with both being unarmed. Batth later claimed (in a cowardly self-serving way) “I didn’t want to kill him”, meaning Das, “but when the people jumped onto my friend, I lifted up my pistol into the air, pointing it at the ceiling, hoping it would stop them doing what they were doing, a maniac grabbed my arm, pulled it down and it went off by mistake” – which the recording, eye-witness testimony and even his own confession disproved. Later stating in court, “when I fired at Das and was stepping back, my foot slipped and it was then that they caught me. Shots got fired then because my finger was on the trigger”, although witnesses state “Batth jumped on stage, pulled the .38 from his waistband and from a few feet away, shot at Das”. With this single shot entering his skull at the back of his ear, the bullet penetrated his head, and having ricocheted off the petrous bone - being the hardest bone in the skull - its deathly sharp fragments shot down into his chest, penetrated his vital organs like his lungs, heart, and filled the cavity with blood. With Batth floored by Das’ unarmed worshippers, as he tried to flee, he was floored, beaten with a microphone stand, stamped on and he says stabbed, “then I lost consciousness”, and although he would claim “they tried to kill me”, an examination determined his cuts and bruises were superficial. In total, 12 shots were fired, 8 of them missed, and the entire massacre ended after 38 seconds. Police and ambulances from nearby Southall Police station and Ealing Hospital were on site in minutes, the scared congregation were ushered to safety, and although chaotic, a crime scene was established. Inspector Geoffrey Brydon and Detective Inspector Paul Secombe obtained testimony from more than 150 witnesses, the guns were retrieved, fingerprints were found, and both shooters were questioned. Of the four men shot, with the bullet in Bimbrah’s leg, he made a good recovery and was released from hospital nine days later. Joga Singh, the psalms writer who always accompanied Das was shot in the stomach and died five hours later during surgery. Panesar, the British Telecoms engineer remained critical for two weeks, and although he was transferred to Charing Cross hospital to be put on a kidney machine, he died, leaving behind a widow, a 9-year-old son and twin daughters, aged just 5. And although was rushed to nearby Ealing Hospital, which was just one and a half miles away, being unconscious and barely breathing owing to a bullet wound to the head and massive internal bleeding, 33-year-old Darshan Das – the prophesized Guru of ‘Das Dharam’ - was declared dead on arrival. (End) As expected, some sects of Sikhism condemned the murders as despicable, and although the Punjab Times reported that the International Sikh Youth Federation (who Sunder & Batth were both members of) “had praised the efforts of the murderers”, they later “denied any connection with the incident”. Arrested and charged with three counts of murder and one of attempted murder, Sunder was said to be co-operative, while Batth claimed he didn’t speak English, which he did, he repeatedly lied in his statements, and although declared fit to be interviewed, he routinely complained he had a headache. Given the risk of retaliation that these murders had unleashed, Batth & Sunder were transported in an armoured van to the Old Bailey, where their 14-day trial began on Monday 20th of February 1989. With Mangit Sunder pleading guilty to the murder of Darshan Das and the manslaughter (reduced to the lesser charge of the malicious wounding) of Satwant Panesar, on the 9th of March 1989, he was sentenced to life in prison with a minimum of 20 years, plus 8 years to be served concurrently. And although, the trial almost collapsed - as at an after-dinner speech, the judge, Sir James Miskin QC made a racially charged references to black people being ‘nig nogs’ and of the Dormers Wells killers being ‘murderous Sikhs’ which he denied and was later blamed on early on-set Alzheimer’s - Rajinder Batth was sentenced to life with a minimum of 30 years, plus 10 years to be served concurrently. Having served their sentences at HMP Frankland, Sunder was released in late 2010, and in December 2021, Batth returned to India where (for the murders) he was honoured at the Akal Takht temple in the Punjab. As of today, Batth lives as a freeman, and the schism amongst the Sikhs still rages on. The Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast has been researched using the original declassified police investigation files, court records, press reports and as many authentic sources as possible, which are freely available in the public domain, including eye-witness testimony, confessions, autopsy reports, first-hand accounts and independent investigation, where possible. But these documents are only as accurate as those recounting them and recording them, and are always incomplete or full of opinion rather than fact, therefore mistakes and misrepresentations can be made. As stated at the beginning of each episode (and as is clear by the way it is presented) Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast is a 'dramatisation' of the events and not a documentary, therefore a certain amount of dramatic licence, selective characterisation and story-telling (within logical reason and based on extensive research) has been taken to create a fuller picture. It is not a full and complete representation of the case, the people or the investigation, and therefore should not be taken as such. It is also often (for the sake of clarity, speed and the drama) presented from a single person's perspective, usually (but not exclusively) the victim's, and therefore it will contain a certain level of bias and opinion to get across this single perspective, which may not be the overall opinion of those involved or associated. Murder Mile is just one possible retelling of each case. Murder Mile does not set out to cause any harm or distress to those involved, and those who listen to the podcast or read the transcripts provided should be aware that by accessing anything created by Murder Mile (or any source related to any each) that they may discover some details about a person, an incident or the police investigation itself, that they were unaware of.
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Nominated BEST BRITISH TRUE-CRIME PODCAST, 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation Channel's Top 20 True-Crime Podcasts, also seen on BBC Radio, Sky News, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week.
Welcome to the Murder Mile UK True-Crime Podcast and audio guided walk of London's most infamous and often forgotten murder cases, all set within and beyond the West End.
EPISODE TWO HUNDRED AND FORTY-SIX: Across October 2000, 55-year-old Brian Darby concocted a plan to rape an murder six women across West London over 24 hours, in order to become more infamous than his hero - Jack the Ripper. As a useless man with no skills, no talent and even less brains, he would fail in every way. And although this pointless little man was desperate to be hailed as a serial-killer, the best he deserves is to be known as Jack the Shitter.
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 is marked with a orange coloured symbol of a bin at the top of the markers near the word 'Shepherd's Bush'. To use the map, click it. If you want to see the other maps, click here.
SOURCES: This case was researched using some of the sources below.
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE: Welcome to Murder Mile. Today, I’m standing outside of BBC TV Centre in Wood Lane, W12; a tube stop south of the Wormwood Scrubs massacre, two streets east of where Reg Christie euthanised his dog, a short walk from Lena Cunningham’s drowning, and a dawdle from the Shepherd’s Bush sadist - coming soon to Murder Mile. Opened in 1960, Television Centre was an all-purpose self-contained television studio complete with scenery dock, editing suites, a costumiers, as well as an office where I pretended to work, a basement where I mostly snoozed, a bar where I spent a decade getting shitted, a stationery store and tape hub which I officially rinsed dry, and all the staff’s favourite person, Mani the tea lady - “thank you darling”. It’s a place infamous for making some of the world’s most iconic TV shows; like Dr Who, Blue Peter, Steptoe & Son, Fawlty Towers, Quatermass, Black Adder, Monty Python and Top of the Pops, but sadly, it’s more synonymous as a place which shielded sex pests, rapists and paedophiles, as well as – and almost nobody knows this - quite possibly Britain’s most pathetic excuse as a wannabe serial killer. In 2001, 55-year-old douchbag Brian Darby was convicted of hatching a sad little plan to slaughter six women across West London in a murder spree to rival his so-called hero, Jack the Ripper, as what this friendless little twat wanted most was fame. Urgh, so tragic. But lacking any skills, any talent, and with a statistically small penis and the brain power to match, this useless turd unleashed nothing but pain. My name is Michael, I am your tour-guide, and this is Murder Mile. Episode 246: ‘Jack the Shitter’. In the pantheon of serial-killers, you probably haven’t heard of Brian Darby, and for good reason. Born in Leicester in 1946, as another unwanted side effect of too-many amorous parents who bonked to mark the end of the Second World War, Brian Peter Darby should have gone on to live an ordinary life as an unremarkable man in the 32nd worst place to live in Britain, and in many ways, he did. Almost nothing is recorded about his upbringing; he achieved a basic education, there were no known reports of sexual abuse, and he was raised by his mother as a good God-fearing Protestant Christian who regularly attended church and supported the work of the Salvation Army. As I said, ordinary. As a young boy with dark curled hair, gerbil like eyes and an increasingly gormless face, even into his 50s, he still retained a childlike quality which endeared him to others who saw him as no threat. And although he wasn’t tall, strong or powerfully built, often coming across as a bit of a loser, it’s easy to suggest that he may have been bullied, but who isn’t? So, what drove him to want to be a serial-killer? Was it a sense of inferiority, a warped mind, abject loneliness, or did he just want to be famous? From his teens to his early twenties, he drifted between jobs, as most people do, as he tried to work out who he was, what he was about, and what to do with his life, given that he had no skills or talent. Living in Greensward, which was then a pleasant little road sprinkled with a hotch-potch of bungalows, farm buildings and ramshackle sheds in the remote and leafy village of East Goscote in Leicestershire, he was surrounded by fields, woods and even a railway society, but what it lacked was any excitement. In 1972, with a fascination for crime, a desire to be respected and keen to earn a good living as a local Bobbie, Brian attended Hendon Police College on a 13-week course and graduated as a probationary constable. Unlike the other young whippersnappers who were fresh out of school, Brian was already 26, but being baby-faced, he barely looked 16 when he began his shift as a beat officer in the city. The 1970s was a bad time to be a copper as Britain was in chaos; with mass unemployment, strikes, power cuts, race riots, a recession, skyrocketing inflation and an enforced three-day working week, crime was rife, the bins weren’t collected, and the streets stunk of shit, piss and festering nappies. In Leicestershire, Gartree Prison erupted in riots, imperial typewriters went on strike, and 24-year-old prostitute Rosina Hilliard known as Rosie was found beside a building site on Spinney Hill Road with extensive head injuries and fractures to her collar bone and spine. But later discovered to have been strangled, she is suspected of being one of the first victims of Peter Sutcliffe - the Yorkshire Ripper. As a beat copper, he may have been called in to cordon off the street or secure the scene before the detectives arrived on many horrific crimes which ravaged the county and kindled his morbid love of all things grisly, or he may have seen nothing, as his days could easily have been spent cooing cats out of trees, stopping drunks from widdling, or if he was lucky, collaring a bag snatcher or a knicker sniffer, Across his seven years as a constable, it gave him a sense of power, control and the respect that comes with a uniform and a badge, but being just a humble bobbie, with his duties being far from the thrills and spills – of kicking down doors, roughing up hoodlums, speeding a Ford Capri down a back street at 50 miles per hour and maybe being flashed a set of boobies – as seen in TV series The Sweeney… …he developed a fascination for true crime. It’s a common pastime which the uninitiated may regard as unhealthy, but it only is when the audience loses their grip on reality, forget that real lives are involved and sidelines the victim’s tragedy in place of praising the skills or pitying the past of a pathetic loser’s desperate search for fame and attention. Sadly, Brian was the latter, a dull little Herbert who mistakenly thought that he was unique or even remotely interesting, because he had a poster of a serial killer on his wall, and could reel off a pointless list of ‘who killed who using what’ simply because he’d wasted half his life sitting on his fat lazy arse watching cheaply made shite on the Telly and trawling thought a dirge of ill-informed true-crime toss. It was that which ignited his desire to be famous. As a child, he’d been enthralled by Jack the Ripper, the infamous and possibly fictional case of the East London so-called serial-killer who - when you conveniently cherry-pick the scant details - was either a genius or a maniac who being blessed by his “fans” with God-like skills, charmed every victim to her death, and through his cunning, supposedly outwitted a perfunctory Police force at every turn. Yawn. As a teenager, he’d have digested the endless tabloid diatribe about the sadist child-murderers Myra Hindley & Ian Brady, whose heinous crimes elevated these two sad and tragic tosspots to the height of celebrity, making them icons of the sixties, and (even though they murdered children), as if to twist the knife into their grieving mother’s broken hearts further, they’ve been immortalised by their “fans”. And as a bored and frustrated police constable who plodded his beat in Leicester, at every turn across the mid-to-late 1970s, he’d have seen the sycophantic wall-to-wall coverage of The Yorkshire Ripper, as this tragically pathetic little arse-candle with no skills, no talent, no charm, no personality, and with not a single redeemable feature, dominated the British headlines for years, having achieved nothing. In Peter Sutcliffe, he saw himself. In Jack the Ripper, he saw his mission. And yet, if he was Ian Brady, what he was missing was his Myra Hindley. Born in 1958 in the West Country suburb of Westbury on Trym in the city Bristol, Jeanette White was only 14 years old when 26-year-old Brian Darby met her, and some say, groomed her. As a vulnerable girl who should have been protected, across the 28 years they spent in their on-and-off relationship, by her 40s, as an alcoholic, Jeanette was “drinking 11 litres of strong cider a day”, or so she claimed. Referred to by Brian in a series of sexually explicit and deeply disturbing letters written between the two of them as ‘my Myra Hindley’, in the later years, Brian would try to groom his long-term lover or possible confidante, Jeanette, to pick out the most vulnerable of victims for ‘an orgy of lust and death’. Given his warped mind, it’s amazing that he wasn’t caught sooner, but across the seven years he spent in the Leicestershire Police Force, Constable Brian Darby was said by Superintendent Norwell to be “a reliable, straightforward and efficient officer, who would have had a good future in the force”. And he would have done, had this pathetic little loser not had a pervert weakness… …children. As a well-known but not particularly well-liked constable, in early June 1979, knowing that his gormless gerbil-eyed face was too familiar in Leicester – always committing his attacks in the neighbourhoods where he was unknown - he travelled 40 miles west to Birmingham, and a playground in Selly Park. Dressed in his civvies, Brian Darby, then aged 34, saw a five-year-old boy sitting down by the swings. Sidling up beside him, Brian chatted to the defenceless and isolated child, he spoke about his favourite toys, he pulled out a bag of sweeties from his pocket, and then, seeing that the boy’s distracted parent was smoking a ciggie, several times, he forced himself on the youngster, kissing him full on the lips. Hearing the child’s screams, the other children ran off to tell the boy’s father, and having darted across the park, diving over the roundabout and through the swings to lamp the dirty little fucker squarely in the face, although Brian fled with blood spurting from a busted nose, one street away he was arrested. On 22nd of June 1979 at Birmingham Crown Court, Brian Darby was tried for indecently assaulting a 5-year-old boy, and although he pleaded ‘not guilty’, on 17th of July he was found guilty and in a bafflingly shortsighted twist, Judge Ross described this predator’s behaviour as ‘an aberration’, stating “perhaps the best thing to happen to you, to bring you to your senses was the punch the boy’s father gave you”. A psychiatric assessment was made, but failed to prove to the authorities that he was a danger to the public, and that, owing to the stresses of a demanding job and homelife, it was brushed off as a blip. Kicked out of the police before any further embarrassment could be reported (as well as any other crimes against children he may have committed), having served a short sentence in the prison’s nonce wing, he moved in with his girlfriend Jeanette in Bristol, who’d taken back this convicted paedophile. From the summer of 1979 to the mid-1980s, being two decades before both CRB checks and the Sex Offender’s Register were introduced, once again, he drifted between a smattering of mindless manual jobs in factories and warehouses, which didn’t require him to reveal his conviction, and again, he lived an ordinary and unremarkable life as security guard, and over the decade, he married Jeanette twice. In the late 1980s, with their relationship in a fragmented state, although Jeanette often lived in Bristol, they also assumed the identity of a happily married couple living in Lavender Hill, North London. Being Christians, they belonged to the Enfield chapter of the Salvation Army and they regularly donned their black and red uniforms, shook collection tins in the faces of annoyed shoppers to (ironically) raise money for the most vulnerable, as an out-of-tune brass band blasted out festive carols behind them. None of the fellow worshippers knew anything about Brian’s past… …but deep down, his thoughts of a murderous killing-spree were forming. In the early 1980s, having masked his conviction for kiddie-fiddling, Brian got a job as a Fire and Safety Officer at BBC Television Centre. Cor! You’re probably thinking, I bet he did cool things like rigging the gunshot which killed Dirty Den in Eastenders, or filling the gunge tank on Noel’s House Party, right? No, Brian was one of those boring little men in hi-viz vests who stalked the long corridors of TV Centre with a clipboard, checking that the fire doors were shut, refilling buckets with sand, and reprimanding any staff members who flicked their ciggie butts in a plant pot - “erm, is that an ashtray? I think not”. But, like when he was a constable, as a security officer who will have overseen the public’s access to shows like Jim’ll Fix It and Top of the Pops, two hugely popular shows for teens and children which was presented by some of Britain’s vilest sex pests and paedophiles, the job gave him access to people. Watching the productions also gave him an insight into how TV shows are made, as seeing all the girls, boys and their mums being quizzed by researchers and ushered into the studio by assistants like willing participants who would do anything for 5-minutes of fame, he saw that this was a person they trusted. On the long boring nights spent endless walking the same dull corridors, he fantasised about stalking, raping, terrorising and slaughtering a slew of terrified women across London in a vicious spree so horrifying, it would make him as internationally infamous as his blood-soaked hero Jack the Ripper. Only, little Brian Darby’s goal was to beat his hero by killing 6 women in 24 hours. At night, he dreamed of the fame which awaited him; the book signings, the adoring fans, maybe being invited to a crappy overpriced crime convention, and the endless cheaply made documentaries which would hail him as a crafty, charming master manipulator with a genius IQ, a foot long cock, and hair which didn’t resemble pubes, all the while imagining the grisly nickname the tabloids would give him. Maybe the West London Lobotomiser, the Acton Annihilator, or the Shepherd’s Bush Slaughterer? But it wouldn’t happen, as a more apt title for this gormless twat and gerbil-eyed tosser should have been Britain’s Most Pathetic Loser, the Turd Who Stalked London or as I shall call him - Jack the Shitter. In 1998, as his girlfriend Jeanette had moved back to Bristol, in an endless stream of perverted verse to the woman he described as ‘my Myra Hindley’, in more than 150 letters over 400 plus pages, Brian wrote – probably in crayon – about his deep carnal desire to rape, kill, dismember and cannibalise his victims, as having become obsessed with necrophilia, he dreamed of raping a woman as he killed her. In his letters, Brian wrote “one day soon we must both kill a girl and we’ll be together forever… I need the body of a female to sacrifice and use her death as our birth. Any race, creed or colour, any female of any age is fair game. Once the sin of murder has been embraced, the age becomes a mere detail”, and in a hint to his sick twisted paedophilia “a little angel is as welcome in my bed as a Page 3 girl. Whether Jeanette willingly participated in his victim hunt wasn’t reported but having written “I will take whatever you bring me…” and describing the death as “erotic torture”, even though he had asked her to destroy his letters, in an odd homage, they were found in her home, bound in a leather binder. By the turn of the new millennium… …Brian had begun planning his killing spree. The hunt for victims was simple. Unlike his hero, Brian wouldn’t stalk the fog-wreathed London streets wearing a cloak, a top hat and dashing into doorways letting out an evil laugh “mwah-ha-ha-haaa”. Nope, he used Loot, one of the UK’s leading free classified ad papers, which – in an almost pre-internet world – was a great place to sell cars, clothes, unwanted crap and (as many people did) their homes. And being a physical newspaper, it had to include your name, location, a photo and a phone number. With Jeanette having found each victim, to assess their suitability, Brian called them up. “Hi, I’m Brian, I’m a researcher with the BBC. We’re doing an investigation into flat sales and finding tenants. I saw you’re selling your flat in Loot, and I wondered if I could have a few minutes of your time?”. And of course, always wanting to be helpful, each woman was happy to answer his very standard questions such as “are you married… do you live alone… and when would be a good time to come and see you?”. Questions a TV researcher would ask, and having sent Jeanette to each home to recce the property in advance, having arranged a date to meet her, Brian the wannabe serial killer began to prepare his ‘murder and rape kit’. Packed into a rucksack, he stashed an A-to-Z map, a pack of condoms, a garrotte made of curtain wire, a set of gloves, a Dictaphone to record his victim’s dying moments, and as the perfect piece of a disguise, his official BBC identity card, which only contained his name, a matching photo and the recognisable BBC logo, but with no department or job title, he could have been anyone. In total, he stalked six women… and each time, he failed. Of the two attacks we know about, on the 4th of October 2000, at the agreed time, Brian knocked on the door of the Westminster flat of Susan Oghre, a childminder and mother of two in her 40s. Having opened her door, Susan let in this softly spoken sweet-faced man who held his ID badge up to her eyes, and although he knew she possibly had a tenant as he’d seen the advert in Loot, realising that her well-built Polish lodger was sat in the sitting room, like a coward, Brian made his excuses and fled. As a truly pathetic excuse for a man, let alone a wannabe serial killer, Brian only attacked the most vulnerable of victims, women and children who were alone, as he knew he was too weak and feeble to take on a man, and having already failed five times, his sixth victim was chosen with a more care. On the 31st October 2000, Hallowe’en, the rodent faced tit slunk his way to Windemere Road in Ealing to supposedly interview an unnamed 45-year-old mother of four, who – at that time of the day – was alone in the house, with no lodgers, no siblings, all of her children at school, and her husband away. (Doorbell) “Hi, it’s Brian from the BBC, we spoke on the phone”, “oh, hi, come in. Can I get you a tea?”, “Oh, yes, that would be lovely”, and so began the standard pleasantries. For about an hour, he chatted to her about her home, her life and the house sale, recording it on his Dictaphone, and stating that “if we use you in the documentary, we’ll pay you £250”, which for anyone is always a nice little bonus. With the interview having gone well, and asking “do you mind if I look around and I take a few photos for the director”, having built up a trust with her, she had no qualms about walking him from room to room. But as they approached the kitchen, it was then, as she turned her back to him, that he struck. Wrapping the white plastic curtain wire around her neck, as she struggled, he squeezed harder, but as a woman who’d given birth four times, who knew what pain was, and (in her own words would say) “I wanted to be alive for the sake of my children”, with his grip loosening, she pleaded with him “if you don’t kill me, I’ll give you anything – money, sex, anything”. In his eyes, it was the magic words, a victim who was willing to do anything to please him, and like an idiot, he believed her and let go… …but as he turned his back on the crying woman lying at his feet, she kicked him hard, ran out into the street (as she said) “screaming like a crazy woman”, and – again, being a tragic little cesspit of piss - through her back garden, Brian fled, as Britain’s most pathetic loser had failed for a sixth time. (End) Brian Darby was suggested as a suspect in the unsolved murders of Elizabeth Chow & Lola Shekoya, crimes which media-hungry whores like Levi Bellfield routinely claim responsibility for, and although the detective who arrested Brian described him as “one of the most dangerous men ever arrested” and a “serial killer in the making”, surely it’s wrong to give this loser the glory that he so badly craved? In a short but swift investigation, just six weeks after the Ealing attack, detectives traced the calls to a phone at the BBC, as well as his fingerprints on a tea cup which had been held on the police database since his conviction for assaulting a child, and identifying Brian (who had used his real name and his real ID card), when he was arrested at work – it won’t surprise you to learn – that he was “facing disciplinary action for downloading sickening photographs from his favourite website at work”. Tried at the Old Bailey on 21st of December 2001, with Mr Justice Focke recognising that his girlfriend “was under his spell and worshipped him. You would do anything for him and were desperate not to lose him. You were also a willing an enthusiastic supporter of Darby and all his vile plans", 43-year-old Jeanette White of Bristol was sentenced to seven years in prison for conspiracy to murder. Found guilty and deemed a risk to the public, 55-year-old Brian Darby was given two life sentences for attempted murder and conspiracy to murder, with a further seven years for aggravated burglary. As of today, aged 79, if he is still alive (and let’s hope he isn’t), Brian Darby the wannabe serial-killer is stuck inside a prison cell dreaming that true crime fans are hailing him as a criminal mastermind, when in fact, he was just a twat. So instead of singing the praises of this gerbil-faced turd, rather than giving him fame, if he is to be remembered, let’s make sure it’s as Britain’s most pathetic little loser… …and a pointless little turd who shall forever be known as ‘Jack the Shitter’. The Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast has been researched using the original declassified police investigation files, court records, press reports and as many authentic sources as possible, which are freely available in the public domain, including eye-witness testimony, confessions, autopsy reports, first-hand accounts and independent investigation, where possible. But these documents are only as accurate as those recounting them and recording them, and are always incomplete or full of opinion rather than fact, therefore mistakes and misrepresentations can be made. As stated at the beginning of each episode (and as is clear by the way it is presented) Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast is a 'dramatisation' of the events and not a documentary, therefore a certain amount of dramatic licence, selective characterisation and story-telling (within logical reason and based on extensive research) has been taken to create a fuller picture. It is not a full and complete representation of the case, the people or the investigation, and therefore should not be taken as such. It is also often (for the sake of clarity, speed and the drama) presented from a single person's perspective, usually (but not exclusively) the victim's, and therefore it will contain a certain level of bias and opinion to get across this single perspective, which may not be the overall opinion of those involved or associated. Murder Mile is just one possible retelling of each case. Murder Mile does not set out to cause any harm or distress to those involved, and those who listen to the podcast or read the transcripts provided should be aware that by accessing anything created by Murder Mile (or any source related to any each) that they may discover some details about a person, an incident or the police investigation itself, that they were unaware of.
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Welcome to the Murder Mile UK True-Crime Podcast and audio guided walk of London's most infamous and often forgotten murder cases, all set within and beyond the West End.
EPISODE TWO HUNDRED AND FORTY-FIVE:
On 18th of May 1942, 33-year-old part-time prostitute Jean Stafford welcomed a regular client into her room at 3 Bedford Place in Bloomsbury. Being shy and hating her job, she was hoping that a wealthy bachelor would sweep her off her. But later found dead, the detectives initially mistook her death for natural causes. But was it an accident, a suicide, or a murder?
THE LOCATION
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The location is marked with a blue symbol of a bin at the top right of the markers near the word 'Russell Square'. To use the map, click it. If you want to see the other maps, click here.
SOURCES: This case was researched using some of the sources below.
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE: Welcome to Murder Mile. Today, I’m standing on Bedford Place in Bloomsbury, WC1; one street east of Vera Crawford’s killing, one street south of where The Unfortunate Mr Johnson’s killer took a snooze, the same street as the arrest of Zakaria Bulhan, and a few houses from the feet which stunk - coming soon to Murder Mile. Built in 1805, Bedford Place consists of two rows of Georgian townhouses with white stucco walls and black iron railings on the ground floor, with brown brick and white sills on the three floors above. It’s easy to get confused, as with every house identical, the neighbour’s lives must resemble a bawdy sex farce, as several randy salesmen kiss their frumpy wives, dart next door to doink a saucy strumpet silly, only to realise he’s either boffed his wife, the vicar, a dog, or a tub of Avocado & Humus Sashimi. On the night of Monday 18th of May 1942, 33-year-old part-time prostitute Jean Stafford was waiting in her ground floor room at 3 Bedford Place for a man, someone she trusted. As a good woman in a bad situation, she hoped that this potential husband would end her struggle and take away her misery. And although this expectant guest arrived, that night he erased her pain by ending her life. But why? My name is Michael, I am your tour guide, and this is Murder Mile. Episode 245: Good Girl Gone. The death of Jean Stafford makes no sense when you look at her life. Her real name was Agnes Martin. Born on the 3rd of August 1909 in the village of Deepcar, a few miles north of Sheffield, although she adopted several monikers, she never lost her strong Yorkshire accent. Raised in a working-class family of coal miners and quarrymen, Agnes (who preferred to be called Jean after actress Jean Harlow) was the only stepsibling in this family of 12, so felt that she never belonged. Little is known of her upbringing but growing to be a small but sturdy girl with pale skin, blue eyes and apple blossom cheeks, her shyness endeared her to others, her quietness meant she was rarely in any trouble, and her sweetness attracted her to older men, who she liked, as she sought a father figure. As the runt of the litter, after the death of her mother when she was just 15, Jean left the family home. For 8 years, as a young solitary girl, we know nothing about her life, except her work as a cook and a housemaid in Barnsley and Harrogate, but in 1932, when aged just 23, her life had changed forever. Having moved 70 miles east to Hull, Agnes Martin had become Jean Smith, a common name it was all-too easy to confuse with others and for good reason, as being a single woman earning a dishonest crust in a city she wasn’t known in, living a life of ‘easy virtue’, she was twice cautioned for soliciting. As a sweet-faced girl with a kindly manner, she didn’t have any convictions for prostitution, she didn’t have any charges of drunkenness as she rarely drank, she had never been to prison as she didn’t steal or cheat her clients - in fact, they often came back as she was good and honest - and although a solidly built girl who many said “could easily handle herself”, she never got into fights and was rarely attacked. As a quiet, polite and pretty girl who had been selling sex for quite some time, she often went under the police radar, as being seen as no-bother-to-anyone, it was clear she was just struggling to get by. Later that year, having dyed her hair platinum blonde and dressed in a faux leopard-skin coat, Jean met 49-year-old retired sportswriter James Stafford known as ‘Jim’, a quiet unassuming sugar daddy who many described as “foolishly generous” with his £3000 inheritance (£250,000 today), who would lavish the lady he loved to posh meals, nights out and fancy clothes, treating her as a ‘kept woman’. On 7th February 1933, under the alias Jean Smith, Agnes Martin technically became Jean Stafford, the wife of a salesman, and they happily lived in the Spring Bank district of Hull… for a while at least… as although James would state “she had no sense of the value of money”, he had a gambling addiction. He later said “my wife was a strong woman… attractive, pleasant, exceedingly generous, and able to look after herself”, so having got herself a job as a housemaid at the Angell Arms pub in Brixton, South London, with no bad blood between them, the last time Jim saw her was on Valentine’s Day of 1938… …four and half years later, he identified her body on a cold slab of marble at Holborn Mortuary. It’s typical, that the next years of Jean’s life were spent working hard, being liked, causing no trouble and chasing an impossible dream of finding another man to ensure that she never needed to work. Olive Elder, landlady of the Angell Arms described Jean as “a quiet girl, very clean and hardworking, but a tremendous liar. She told me she was a widow” which she wasn’t, “a native of Hull” which belied her strong Sheffield accent, and whether this was the truth or a family lie, “she was a distant relative of John Campbell Boot”, 2nd Baron of Nottingham and the millionaire owner of Boots the Chemist. Apart from that, she was a good worker, always polite, and after a year, she left to seek a better wage. By the outbreak of the Second World War, with the city in chaos, Jean earned a tiny wage as “a tidy housemaid and a crafty cook” in several pubs across the West End, and although given a bed to sleep in, with the Argyll and the Cooper Arms both bombed, almost everything she owned was destroyed. As a single woman separated from her husband, with few close friends (being so private) and only a few sparse letters between herself, her father and her stepsiblings, life was hard. Jobs were scares, food was rationed, and with so many potential husbands called up to fight, the pickings were slim. For a while, she had been seeing William Fitzgerald, an Irish ex-dirt track rider who had lost a leg in an accident, and although they were sweet on each other, on 9th of October 1940, he was found dead lying face down in a Bloomsbury bomb crater, in what the coroner said was ‘death by misadventure’. And yet, as a strong and resilient woman, he never gave up. On Saturday 18th of October 1941, carrying the few items she owned, Jean called at 3 Bedford Place having seen a ‘Room to Let’ sign. Greeted by Joseph Lamb, a 40-year-old warehouseman who lived in the basement, his evidence proved invaluable, and although police stated “he knows more about her than anyone, but he denies being intimate with her”, it wasn’t exactly a revelation, as Joseph was gay. Having agreed to pay 30 shillings a week for a ground-floor backroom and a shared kitchenette and a bathroom with the other twelve tenants, Joseph told the Police, “she introduced a tall man, saying ‘this is my friend, he’s helping me to pay the rent’”. She never said his name, but he was described as “late 40s to 50s, dark hair, deep set eyes, swarthy and broad, with a Jewish nose and a deep voice”. For Jean, life at 3 Bedford Place was good. Owned by Mrs Horn-Heap who she rarely saw, it was managed by Edith O’Connell the housekeeper, with Joseph keeping an eye on things in the evenings and every Sunday when Edith wasn’t there. As a private person who spent most of her time alone in her room, Jean regularly received men friends, occasionally some post, and a few times a week, on the communal telephone in the hallway, a call. With the ground floor split into three rooms, Jean’s had barely enough space for a single bed, a sofa, a dressing table, a gas fire, a lamp, and with so few clothes in the wardrobe, the tenants often saw her wearing just a thin frock, or according to Joseph “I’ve seen her in her bed, sitting up, she was bare”. As a quiet girl who often sat alone knitting in front of the fire, although she only spoke in passing to the other tenants (who were always polite), she got on best with Joseph, “as hardly a day went by without her popping her head into my room” he would say, and to help each other out, as a good cook, she often made his meals which she left in the cupboard for when he returned home from work. But not every tenant in the house was as pleasant. Joseph said “Jean told me that she’d asked Mr Pollard”, an ex-Army Captain who lived in the adjoining room “to set a mouse trap” as she was terrified of the mice which scuttled from the kitchen. “Having done so, he had tried to fondle her”, as being an alcoholic who had lost his career and his family having been convicted of buggery, George Pollard was a sex pest, but there was no proof he had killed her. In the ensuing investigation, the Police examined the lives of a wealth of suspects, especially as by the Christmas of 1941, with the Tall Man having left her following a tiff, Jean had returned to selling sex. Joseph said “I didn’t know she was a prostitute”, as she kept her life private, rarely drank, shuttled her clients between the door and her room in silence and she tried to keep the sex as quiet as possible... …but detectives were able to track down several of her clients. In keeping with her good-natured way, her sex-work wasn’t sleezy and cheap, but innocent and sweet, as almost all her clients described the same warm and reliable routine she undertook with her punters. Private Ronald Ward of the Royal Montreal Regiment said “on 18th of January 1942 at 10pm, outside of the Lyon’s Corner House in Piccadilly”, where she regularly solicited, “she asked if I’d like to go home with her, I asked how much, she said £1 and 10s, and I said okay”. At roughly £100 today, she charged more than most, but being sweet, she reassured the timid ones, she cheated no-one and knowing that many men simply missed their girlfriends, instead of just sex, she gave these boys what they needed. Having walked back to 3 Bedford Place, Jean asked Ronald to be as quiet as possible as they entered the hall, and having unlocked the door to her small room, instead of undressing, she made him a meal. With it being wartime, everyone was struggling, so as part of her good nature, they sat in front of the gas fire getting warm, eating toast and jam, supping a nice cup of tea, and having a good old natter. It was part of who she was, and if she could convince him to stay over for a little bit extra, all the better. “She stripped off all of her clothes but her stockings, although she seemed very shy”, Ronald said, “we had sex twice” albeit quietly, “and then we went to sleep”. At 7am, she woke him with a cuppa, asked him to leave before her landlady arrived, and having enjoyed her company, he gave her his details. He was ruled out as a suspect, as on the day of the murder, he was at stationed at Petworth in Hampshire. Another client was 42-year-old Coleman Fellerman, who first met her in October 1941, and like many he became a friend. “I agreed to go back with Jean. She was in no hurry, in fact, had she not solicited me, I shouldn’t have thought she was a prostitute”, he said. And as she often did, she made him food, they chatted, had sex, and with him being in catering, she asked if he could get her a job as a cook. Two weeks later, he interviewed her for a job in Gosport, and although he said “let me know how you get on”, he never heard from her again. At the time of her death, he was at his lodgings in Morden. A third client - Gunner Alexander Campbell of the Canadian Artillery - regularly wrote her letters as he loved that she mothered him. First meeting on 7th March 1942, he bought her gifts and paid to stay across most of the weekends in March and April having telephoned before. He last saw her alive on 8th of May 1942, but 10 days later when she was murdered, he was stationed at Sittingbourne in Kent. And a fourth client, whose ration card was found in her room having given it to her as a gift “as I saw she had hardly any food in her cupboard” was Private Ornulf Hop, a Norwegian ski instructor, whose movements on the night of the murder were accounted for by several witnesses at the Savoy Hotel. All four were ruled out, which is not to say she only ever had four clients… …or that of the few people she spoke to that none of them were innocent. Weekly, Jean bought condoms from a vendor in Piccadilly Circus called Sydney Bloom. Six years earlier, he was quizzed by the police over the murder of Soho prostitute, Josephine Martin alias French Fifi. And although, an infamous RAF Cadet picked up women at the Lyon’s Corner House in February 1942, by that May, found guilty of murder, Gordon Frederick Cummins was already awaiting his execution. None of these men, her friends or any of her family were suspected of being her murderer… …but the police had narrowed it down to just three; the Tall Man, her Caller and ‘Johnny’. Breaking up with the Tall Man in Christmas 1941, being “roughly 50, with deep set eyes, swarthy skin and a deep voice”, he would have been easy to spot, only after that date, he was never seen again. ‘Johnny’ whose real name she never divulged was described as “a dapper-looking cove” in his mid-30s, 5 foot 5 inches tall, with fair hair and a slight paunch. And having met him six times prior, Edith the housekeeper stated “he was always polite with a nice disposition”, as just like every other suspect, he didn’t threaten Jean, as she always chose her clients carefully and didn’t associate with bad men. By the end of April 1942, having split up with ‘Johnny’ for reasons unknown, Jean was struggling. Being close to broke, she sold her few possessions – a faux-Leopard skin coat and two handbags - at Jimmy’s hairdressers on Charlotte Street, as well as the last of her best dresses leaving her room almost empty. And with her usually large appetite stymied by a recurrent headache and an earache, she wasn’t well. In fact, since the 24th of April up until the day of her death, she spent much of her time in bed. Monday 18th of May 1942 was her last day alive. Waking late, as far as we know she sat knitting for a few hours, she saw no-one (which wasn’t unusual) and with the few coins she had left, she shopped for bread and milk. At 4:30pm, while out, Edith took a phone call for her, which went; “is Miss Stafford there?”, “no, she’s out”, “will she back by six?”, “I guess”, “can you let her know I’m in the Royal Flying Corps now, I’m a nephew of her father’s brother”, and assuming that Jean knew who he was, as he didn’t give it, she didn’t take his name or number. Edith said, it was a local call (as the ring was long), it wasn’t from a phone box as she didn’t hear the coins fall, and although she would confirm “it was something like Johnny’s voice, but it was definitely not his”, being neither a deep, light nor with an accent, she didn’t think she had spoken to him before. Every nephew of her father and husband were accounted for, every absentee from the local RAF bases were questioned and ruled out, but with the caller using the term ‘Royal Flying Corps’ - an archaic term for the Royal Air Force - the police felt that either this was a red herring, or Edith had misheard. Either way, Jean read the message, and later, its charred remnants were found in the bin. The rest of that evening was as routine as any other. At 6pm, Joseph returned from work, he waved as he passed her room and said she was her usual self. In the kitchen cupboard, she had prepared a meal of roast lamb, cauliflower, carrots and potato mash, and although he returned the plate at 7pm, she’d barely eaten half of hers, having been sick for weeks. Sat in a blue and white flower-patterned dress, she said she was going out, but was waiting a call first, so to pass the time, they chatted as they always did, and with them both smelling a faint whiff of gas in her room, with Joseph unable to detect the leak, they queried if that was the cause for her sickness. At 7pm, Kitty Jones (a ground-floor tenant) saw her, stating she was wearing all the jewellery she had, being a metal ring with the stone missing and a cheap wristwatch, which were later found on her body. By 7:15pm, Joseph left to meet his friend, Mr Clermont at the Fitzroy Tavern in Fitzrovia and the York Minster in Soho, being two bars frequented by gay men. And at 9pm, Kitty heard Jean welcome a man into her room, who she didn’t see but said “they were on friendly terms”, then Kitty left until 10pm. That left, Aircraftmen Marc LeBlanc & George Hudon on the first floor listening to the radio, and on the ground floor, George Pollard was asleep, and with the partition walls so thin that the tenants could hear each other breathe, from 9pm to 10pm when her murder occurred, none of them heard a thing. The next morning, at 9am sharp, Edith the housekeeper greeted Joseph on the doorstep as he sorted out the post, and called out to Jean “love, you’ve got a letter”, which (being a late sleeper) she ignored. But by 11:40am, with her door still ajar, and Jean having not moved an inch, seeing the blankets pulled up to her nose which exposed her toes, as Joseph went to shake her awake, he felt that she was cold. Jean was dead. The room was as she had left it the night before; being neat, orderly and clean, with the drawers shut, the gas fire off, a lamp’s shade on the floor (suggesting she had been knitting), the back window open to let a light breeze in, and her knickers and stockings neatly folded on the armchair beside her bed. And with a cup of tea, half drank, and no other crockery, it looked like she’d died alone in her sleep. Told of her headache, her earache, and seeing a single spot of blood on the inside of her left ear with a corresponding stain on the pillow, Divisional Surgeon Dr Gregg assumed it was natural but ordered an autopsy to determine the cause of her death, whether a fever, or (as was common) gas poisoning. It was a scene the Police had witnessed before, an unexplained death with no sign of a burglary, no hint of a struggle, and although cyanosis had left her pale skin a slightly swollen mix of blue and red hues, beyond the decomposition, there were no cuts nor bruises, and no-one had heard her scream. But that night, although no meal was cooked nor cup of tea brewed, she’d had a client. Naked except for a pink suspender belt and black lace and silk bra, she had neatly folded the belt up to remove her knickers, the right cup had been pulled down exposing her breast, and with a recently used condom (minus any semen) found under the bedside rug, it was clear that sex had taken place. What didn’t make sense was her dress, as this blue and white flower-patterned frock was the only one she had left, and yet, unlike her underwear, it was found behind her head, scrunched up and creased. It was a scene as ordinary as any the detectives had investigated before, and yet, amongst its absence of evidence lay something strange, as on the bedside dressing table, in a dark ominous lump was a clump of pubic hair - a brown handful of curly strands, ripped out at the roots, which wasn’t Jean’s. In the room, an unidentified set of fingerprints was found, but when examined, none of them matched any of her four known clients - Ronald Ward, Alexander Campbell, Coleman Fellerman or Drnulf Hop - or any of her friends, family or the tenants at 3 Bedford Place, and neither did the clump of pubes. Described as “a generous, good-natured girl, fond of life and without any enemies”, it made no sense for anyone to hate her so much that they would kill her. She has no money, few clothes, no jewellery of any value, and anything she did have she’d either sold or shared with her clients. As a quiet women, she had rivals, no stalkers, no issues with her family, and her ex-lovers weren’t bad men with a grudge. She was careful about her clients, she stuck to a regular routine, she rarely went out, she didn’t cheat the men she solicited or dated, and she always treated them well, which is why they always liked her. No-one had any reason to murder her… and yet, they did. (End) Examined at Holborn Mortuary, an autopsy determined she had been rendered unconscious by a fist which had fractured the left of her jaw. Although strong and fiery (if needed), Jean was strangled with her own dress, and unable to fight back, it only took a small amount of pressure to end her life. On 19th of June 1942, four weeks after her death, the St Pancras Coroner Bentley Purchase concluded that Jean Stafford was ‘murdered by person or person’s unknown’, and the case was closed. Neither the Tall Man, the Caller, or ‘Johnny’ were found, and no-one was arrested on suspicion of her murder. It remains unsolved to this day… …and yet, on the 30th of May 1953, a decade after the murder, a 51-year-old man walked into a Police station at Elizabeth Bay in Sydney, Australia. His name was Joseph Lamb, a former tenant at 3 Bedford Place who Police stated “knows more about her than anyone, but he denies being intimate with her”. Interviewed, he said “I believed I was under suspicion for some time, I suffered a nervous breakdown and eventually came to Australia”, where his name was not known. And although, he’d initially denied knowing what this private woman did as a job, he’d later admit “she was a ‘high-class’ prostitute”. That day, Joseph identified a man from a photograph published in the newspaper who he said “was seen with Jean on subsequent occasions”. This was a man who regularly used prostitutes, a man who had strange sexual perversions like keeping the pubic hairs of his victims, and having murdered before, this West London serial-killer had committed at least eight murders of women from 1943 to 1953, who he had rendered unconscious with a punch, some gas, strangled and raped, but didn’t mutilate. The man he identified as the regular client of Jean Stafford… was John Reginald Christie. 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.
Nominated BEST TRUE-CRIME PODCAST at The British Podcast Awards, 4th Best True Crime Podcast by The Week, 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.
Welcome to the Murder Mile UK True-Crime Podcast and audio guided walk of London's most infamous and often forgotten murder cases, all set within and beyond the West End.
EPISODE TWO HUNDRED AND FORTY-FOUR:
On Thursday 25th of October 1934, at the Westminster Institute on Fulham Road, Jim Harvey smashed in the skull of his friend George Hamblin, nine times with a hammer. But what drove a lonely man to murder his only friend? of hot tempers flared by alcohol?
The location is marked with a orange coloured symbol of a bin just above the River Thames near the word 'Cheslea'. To use the map, click it. If you want to see the other maps, click here.
SOURCES: This case was researched using some of the sources below.
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE: Welcome to Murder Mile. Today, I’m standing on Fulham Road in Chelsea, SW10; a few streets south of the beating of Gunther Podola, a short walk west of the jealousy of Jane Andrews, barely a quick trip from the bubbling drum of John George Haigh, and a little trot east of the lies of Ronald True - coming soon to Murder Mile. At 369 Fulham Road, on the site of the St George’s workhouse stands Chelsea & Westminster hospital, a small but vital facility with a world-renowned burns unit, a children’s hospital, and if you’re a man who (on a Friday night) slipped on a cucumber while making a salad in the nude, they’ll sort that too. In 1876, before the NHS was founded, as a middle ground between the workhouse and the infirmary, the Westminster Institute was built to provide beds, meals and free health care for 1300 sick and impoverished men who had no homes, no work and no families, in return for an honest day’s work. Like a prison, the inmates did what they could to relieve the boredom by sneaking in contraband, by pinching treats from the mess hall, by blagging an extra cup of tea when the warders weren’t watching, and – through George Hamblin, the Institute’s secret bookie – you could bet on a horse for a penny. As just a little bit of fun for regulars who liked a flutter, at best he made a small profit off the £4 a day he placed on the day’s races, and although he barely made enough for a fun night out with a lady, that little stash of coins would prove so tempting for a fellow inmate, that they’d kill him for it. But why? My name is Michael, I am your tour guide, and this is Murder Mile. Episode 244: No Fixed Abode. George Hamblin was typical of the institute’s long-term inmates… …he wasn’t there because of a crime he had committed, but because life had been unkind to him. Allen George Hamblin was born in 1886 in Lambeth, South London. Having never married or had kids, and with him and his only next-of kin, his brother, having not spoken in a decade, little is known about his life, except that he was a driver, until he was hospitalised owing to heart issues and chronic asthma. Beginning as a day inmate in 1921, growing ever sicker and paler as bronchitis ravaged his battered lungs, by 1934, George had become one of Westminster Institute’s longest serving residents. As a small thin man who a stiff breeze could easily blow over, on the outside he was a nobody, but on the inside, 49-year-old George had the privileged position of being valet to the labour superintendent. With light duties, he cleaned his boss’s room, served his meals and ironed his uniform in return for a less strenuous day – befitting a man of his frailty – as he walked the dark echoey halls with stoop. Being a familiar face and a trusted lag who could get an inmate what he wanted for a price, wherever George went – from the mess hall in B Block, his bunk in Bed 3 of B63, his boss’s room in B78, or the storeroom in B77 which everyone nicknamed the ‘dug out’ – his slow and steady shuffle was heard, accompanied by his raspy wheezing cough, which he soothed with another rollie from his daily ration. This was his life, simple and inoffensive, as this ailing and tragically forgotten man would make his days a little better by placing small bets for his pals, trading goods for simple pleasures, and by October 1934, the highlight of his week was finding a French 25 Centime coin which he kept in his wallet. His friend was a recent inmate called George Harvey, who everyone called Jim. Born in Wandsworth In 1908, 27-year-old George Frederick Harvey was an ex-chef of no fixed abode. At least, that is what he would tell the police, only little of it was true. Born in Balham, his real name was Charles Malcolm Lake Schonberg, one of six siblings to Thomas (of German heritage) and Florence (of French) who were raised – in post-World War One Britain - on a respectable middle-class street. As a stockily built man who would grow to a strapping six-foot two, Jim’s health was cursed from the day he was born being burdened by sickness, disability and chronic alcoholism in the family. As a baby, he was plagued with infantile convulsions and having left home when he was just 8, he rarely returned. Sparsely educated, aged 17 he joined the Merchant Navy as a cook, but having contracted malaria, in 1926, aged 19, this large imposing brute was discharged from service on account of his breathlessness. Being unmarried, homeless and jobless, after two and a half years in prison for stealing a few coins, a watch and a set of earrings (as a present for a lady), in 1932, aged 25, the large lumbering form of Jim entered the infirmary to be treated for asthma which left him unable to do the simplest of tasks, and also plagued by a bad heart, this wheezing hulk couldn’t run a few steps without sweating or fainting. Like George, the Westminster Institution had become his home… …but as much as he would hate it, there were ways to make it more bearable. Life inside was all about little victories. Unlike a workhouse, as the beds were for men too sick to be booted out but not sick enough to stay at the infirmary, the Institute wasn’t a bad place. You couldn’t leave without permission, but if you did, they wouldn’t alert the police to watch the ports, as (knowing that the men had nothing else) most returned, only to be punished by just having their privileges cut. Inside, you wore the uniform on an inmate (a blue striped shirt and trousers), but if you were granted a day pass to go outside to earn a day’s money or to visit your family, you got your own clothes back. Which is why Harry Pocock the superintendent knew about these little scams, but didn’t nothing about them. If the inmates were selling drugs, hard liquor or blades, he’d clamp down on those harshly, but he’d turn a blind eye to these innocent little trades for a few pennies which made the men feel normal. Jim’s racket was selling cups of tea, as with every inmate rationed to just three cups of rather weak dribble which had once been waved near a leaf, for 1p, he could slip you a hot mug of a nice strong brew. Not alcohol, not mentholated spirit, just tea, which as we know is the fuel which powers Britain. George’s racket was horseracing, and his routine was always the same. Before breakfast, George went around Block B with the newspaper informing the inmates of the races, the odds were calculated using a ‘ready reckoner’ book which he kept in his jacket, each inmate was handed a betting slip, at 4:30pm George’s messenger William Richardson popped out to purchase an evening paper with the race’s results, and with the bell for B Block ringing at 5pm sharp, every winner was told of their score over the meal in the mess hall, with all winnings collected from the ‘dug out’. Everyone knew about the ‘dug out’. Room B77 was little more than a storeroom, where (as Harry Pocock’s valet) George would wash his plates, iron his uniform, and - given a key - it was the perfect place to stash the cash, which he received from the inmates in pennies, tuppences, occasionally a sixpence, and most recently a postal order. It wasn’t much of a room, barely 13 by 8 feet, with a chair, three low tables, an electric light, a bed (for if George got sleepy) and the sideboard decorated with all manner of mucky pictures of sexy ladies and with this being the 1930s – if you were really lucky – you may get to perv over… an ankle. Phwoar! As pals, one of the few inmates who George let into this room was Jim… …but just as his real name was Charles, his real motive wasn’t to chat. It began, it is assumed, a few days before when Jim sent a letter to a girl he was fond of, Clara Barnes. He wrote “Dear Miss Barnes. I shall like to see you Saturday. If you are round the Regal ‘Marble Arch’ at about 8 o’clock, we could get in a show or something. You will know me, tall fellow, saw you on Monday while back. Hope all OK. See you soon. Frederick”, even though everyone knew him as Jim. George’s lady friend, a widow called Mrs Eva Clark, later informed the police “he said a big fellow was blackmailing him… some time afterwards he received a ragged piece of paper on which was written ‘yes, 13, yes’”. She didn’t know what it meant, and George never told her who the ‘big fellow’ was… …but I think it’s safe to guess. Thursday 25th of October 1934 was as routine as any other day. At 5am to 7am, Jim served 40 cups of strong tea making himself about £90 today, as before breakfast, George chatted to the betters about the races. But at 9am, as a key piece of premeditation, Jim asked the Assistant Master for permission to leave at 5pm. Being an unusual request as none of the inmates were allowed night jobs, this was denied, meaning he couldn’t obtain a leave slip or his own clothes. During the day, William the messenger collected the inmate’s coins, totalling £4 and 3s on 137 bets as noted in the ready reckoner, as well as a postal order from Walter Blanchette for a horse called Argyl. At 4:30pm, knocking on the locked door of the ‘dug out’, William handed the evening paper to George, who was slumped over a table calculating the winnings, as Jim towered beside the inside of the door. As usual, William stayed for a minute, the door was locked behind him, and he saw nothing suspicious. At 5pm, the dinner bell rang, and the inmates dashed to the mess hall leaving B Block empty. Nobody heard anything, not a shout, a cry nor a scream… …but having done the unthinkable, Jim needed to flee. His escape wasn’t really a masterplan, but with the Institution’s security so lax, at 5:15pm, the hulking bulk easily made his way out. Having already swiped a day slip from an unattended desk, he changed into this own clothes with his bloodied shirt hidden under his grey suit, he handed in his uniform, and although he was very agitated and sweating profusely, he tottered out, before anyone quizzed him. Also at 5:15pm, William the messenger knocked on the door of the ’dug out’, but as George was prone to taking a nap after dinner, getting no reply, he wasn’t that worried. And even though a night count discovered that both George Hamblin and Jim Harvey were missing from their beds, the police weren’t alerted, and no search party was sent for, as (like on most nights) as many as six men had gone AWOL… …only one hadn’t left and the other would never return. At a little after 5:30pm, a taxi pulled up outside of 2 Colville Houses in Bayswater, the home of Miss Clara Barnes, a local prostitute, who Jim was sweet on. Perspiring like the Niagara Falls of sweat, she was shocked to see him, not because his face was as red as a baboon’s backside, but because he wasn’t due for two more days. But with his bad heart and his chronic asthma explaining his look, he confessed “I was running a betting book, and I lost a lot of money”, which more than explained his frayed nerves. Clara was why he stole the money, to spend a night with the girl he loved, having met her just once. Only the romantic date he had dreamed of would be ruined by the horror of what he had done. That night, before anyone in the Institution was even aware that he was missing, at 7pm, Clara & Jim hopped a taxi to the Blue Hall Cinema on Edgware Road. Described as nervous, exiting the cab, he was a twitchy as an addict going through withdrawal, as every voice, bark or siren he heard spooked him. Paying two shillings for seats in the empty Upper Circle, although they both wanted to see Manhattan Melodrama (the last movie that wanted criminal John Dillinger saw before being gunned down by the police), within minutes of being seated, Jim nervously stammered “sorry, I’ve gotta go to the toilet”. According to Clara, he was away for ten minutes, too long for a plop and a piddle, which he blamed needing to find a pub for a pint (which didn’t ring true to her as the cinema bar was stocked). But the real reason was he was away for so long was he was in the grip of a panic and he had evidence to bin. Jim knew that it wouldn’t take a detective to find George’s body, to blame Jim for the death, to realise the money was missing, and to see that the murder weapon was still on the table, where he’d left it. Having stashed the bloodied shirt, he knocked up a ceiling panel in the cinema’s bathroom and hid the ready reckoners and tobacco pouch, and although he wanted to go into hiding, the purpose of the crime was to go on a date with Clara. So having ditched the film, they went to a pub where he sunk a few double whiskeys with a Guinness chaser, and although Clara wanted to have fun, Jim couldn’t. That night, they didn’t have sex, as with his nerves shot, he couldn’t manage it. Sitting upright in bed, smoking and muttering, although Jim put on two shirts as he was shivering, he couldn’t stop shaking. Holding George’s wallet, it contained all that was left from the heist, four shillings and six pence which he gave to Clara, leaving him with a postal order, a 25 Centime coin and the key to the ‘dug out’. And that was it. It should have been a wild night of thrills… …but with a man lying dead, it was all for nothing. At 5am, the usual 40 men who paid a penny for a strong cup of tea were awoken to nothing from Jim. At 7am, no-one heard that familiar shuffle as George went from bed to bed with the paper taking bets. At 7:15am, with both men missing, Frederick Thomas the Labour Master grabbed the spare key to the ‘dug out’, where it was known that George often kipped, and unlocked the door. The light was still on, although it was bright enough to see, “when I entered, I slipped”, as all around his feet was blood. The room was small, but so violent were the blows that blood spattered four feet off the floor, up the walls, parts of the ceiling, and even speckling the mucky nudes in a red dripping goo. With the door locked, the police knew the killer had let themselves out, and yet, only a few men were ever let in. Arriving on site and seeing the position of the body and the concentration of the spatter, Home Office Pathologist Sir Bernard Spilsbury deduced that the attack had occurred as George was slumped over a low table, tallying the betting slips which were scattered across the floor, using his ready reckoner which was missing, as was the pot of winnings which usually totalled £4 to £5 in assorted coins. Many items had vanished, like his tobacco pouch, his wallet and the door key, and with his killer having rifled his pockets with bloodstained hands as the sticky insides were sticking out, there was no denying that this was a robbery. But was it also a personal attack, as the level of violence would suggest? George was not a well man, a small frail weakling who wheezed when he breathed and as Sir Bernard would state “the first blow as enough to render him senseless”, but this attack was brutal and frenzied. On the table, the weapon sat, sopping wet and unnervingly sticky. It was hard to tell what it was having been wrapped in a hessian sack and tied with tape (so when his victim’s juices rode up the handle with every blow, the killer’s hand didn’t slip), but having snapped in two owing to the force used, at two feet long and two kilos heavy, George had been killed with a lump hammer, used for breaking rocks. The autopsy confirmed “he was struck while over the table and held there while the other blows were delivered”. He was hit nine times with a hammer across the back of his head. The first rendered him semi-conscious, the next three smashed his skull wide open, the rest of the blows were overkill, and according to Sir Bernard “on the wall was a soft pinkish mess which proved to be a piece of brain”. Only the violence inflicted upon George wasn’t the most tragic part of his death, as Sir Bernard stated “his body temperature showed he hadn’t died until at least 10pm and with evidence of movement”, although his skull had been smashed in, unable to stand, speak or even scream, George lay on the cold hard floor behind a locked door, slowly dying, paralysed, bleeding and terrified, for at least five hours. Based on when William the messenger had delivered the evening newspaper to George and when he had found the door to B77 locked, the detectives determined that the murder occurred during a 25-minute window of 4:50pm to 5:15pm. Having locked the Institute down with no-one allowed to leave, of the six inmates who had gone AWOL, one was dead, four had returned but only one was missing. George’s pal, Jim Harvey who was last seen, sweating and agitated as he fled the Institute at 5:15pm. That day, on Friday 26th of October, knowing that he read the lunchtime paper, the Standard published the following story on the front page. It read: “Murder in a London Hospital… George Hamblin was last seen about five o’clock last night… when discovered… Police questioned the patients and staff, and Scotland Yard were informed that one of the inmates was not on the premises… a widespread search was begun for his man”, and what followed was a description of the hulking bulk of Jim Harvey. That same day, with a cleaner finding his bloodstained shirt behind the toilet of the Blue Hall Cinema in Edgware Road, Police also discovered George’s ready reckoner books and his tobacco pouch. And with the evidence mounting up, even more than usual, Jim was beginning to tremble and to sweat. Lying in bed, smoking heavily and with the newspaper shaking in his nervous hands, Jim said to Clara “I want to tell you the truth. I am not a bookie. I am the man they want for the workhouse murder”, at which, even though he was the one with the chronic heart problems, it was Clara who fainted. Having convinced him that it was the right thing to do, 7 hours after George’s body was discovered, Jim walked into Paddington Green Police Station and gave himself up. But upon his arrest, when asked “do you have anything thing to say?”, he replied “do what you like, I know nothing about it”. (End) The evidence against him was compelling. In his pockets, police found George’s wallet, a postal order for to that day’s horse races and the door key to the ‘dug out’. His fingerprints were found on the hammer, and George’s blood group (being A when his was O) was found on his shirt (which he’d hidden) and his trousers (which he’d handed in), which were all stitched with the laundry mark B132, a number unique amongst the 1300 inmates to him, and no-one else. Making no confession, he refused to give an account for his whereabouts when George was killed, he didn’t deny that he wasn’t in the ‘dug out’, but with the money spent, the blackmail note missing and it unexplained as to what ‘yes, 13, yes’ actually meant, bar a robbery, the murder was motiveless. Even at his committal, when charged that he did “feloniously and wilfully with malice aforethought kill and murder George Hamblin with a hammer”, Jim simply replied “it is all a mystery to me, sir”. Declared fit to stand trial, on Monday 21st January 1935, in a five-day trial at the Old Bailey, asked “did you inflict these nine blows with a hammer which killed George Hamblin?”, he replied “I did not”, and although he professed his innocence, after just one hour, the jury found him guilty of wilful murder. On the 11th of March 1935, at Pentonville Prison, George Frederick Harvey known as Jim was executed by hanging. No family or friends had come to visit him, and with the only witnesses being the prison staff, his solicitor and the hangman Robert Baxter, he died as he lived, all alone. Jim Harvey took the real motive for the murder to his grave, and yet, one detail remained a mystery. Why did he hide the fact that his real name was Charles Malcolm Lake Schonberg? As even at his trial, he was referred to as George. Well, in some of the last words he ever spoke, he stated that although he hadn’t seen her in years, “my mother is gravely ill and I don’t want to upset her”. He already had one death on his conscience, and with that shame enough to kill her, he just couldn’t bare another. The Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast has been researched using the original declassified police investigation files, court records, press reports and as many authentic sources as possible, which are freely available in the public domain, including eye-witness testimony, confessions, autopsy reports, first-hand accounts and independent investigation, where possible. But these documents are only as accurate as those recounting them and recording them, and are always incomplete or full of opinion rather than fact, therefore mistakes and misrepresentations can be made. As stated at the beginning of each episode (and as is clear by the way it is presented) Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast is a 'dramatisation' of the events and not a documentary, therefore a certain amount of dramatic licence, selective characterisation and story-telling (within logical reason and based on extensive research) has been taken to create a fuller picture. It is not a full and complete representation of the case, the people or the investigation, and therefore should not be taken as such. It is also often (for the sake of clarity, speed and the drama) presented from a single person's perspective, usually (but not exclusively) the victim's, and therefore it will contain a certain level of bias and opinion to get across this single perspective, which may not be the overall opinion of those involved or associated. Murder Mile is just one possible retelling of each case. Murder Mile does not set out to cause any harm or distress to those involved, and those who listen to the podcast or read the transcripts provided should be aware that by accessing anything created by Murder Mile (or any source related to any each) that they may discover some details about a person, an incident or the police investigation itself, that they were unaware of. |
AuthorMichael J Buchanan-Dunne is a crime writer, podcaster of Murder Mile UK True Crime and creator of true-crime TV series. Archives
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