Murder Mile UK True-Crime Podcast - #345: Tormented (Hanaa & Aziza Bennis, Acton, London, W3)22/4/2026 
Seven time nominated BEST BRITISH TRUE-CRIME PODCAST at the True Crime Awards, Independent Podcast Award and The British Podcast Awards, and voted 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation Top 20 True-Crime Podcasts, also seen on BBC Radio, Sky News, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week.
EPISODE THREE HUNDRED AND FORTY-FIVE: Monday the 15th of August 2022 at 3pm, Flat 72 on the first floor of Clariat Court was the home of Aziza Bennis, a 58-year-old school dinner lady and a mother-of-two, where she had raised her daughters as a single parent. To their neighbours, she was liked, as were her family. But on the afternoon of Monday the 15th of August 2022, she was frenziedly attacked and stabbed to death by her eldest daughter, Hanaa. But why?
Was she deranged, traumatised or defending herself, and what was the truth?
SOURCES: a selection sourced from various archives:
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: What makes a monster; society, trauma, addiction, or a mother? Find out on Murder Mile. Today, I’m standing on Boddington Gardens in Acton, W3; four streets west of the lockdown killing by mother-of-one Olga Freeman, five streets east of the second attack by the sadistic paedophile known as The Beast, a short walk from the penultimate failed shooting in the killing spree of The Grey Man, and two streets south of the mad bad lad with the bloody bungee cord - coming soon to Murder Mile. This is Clariat Court in Boddington Gardens. Built in 2005, it is described as ‘a modern, multi-occupancy complex’ (whatever that means), being built of brown-brick with white UPVC doors, windows and fake timbers as if it was once an old sawmill or barn. As is typical of London flats, with land at a premium, the developer clearly paid a pittance for a corner of a cul-de-sac right next to a hectic main trainline, the Central Line tube, Acton Town station, a busy road and a transport depot, which is great for getting into the city, but not… (train horn)… if you don’t like… (train goes by)… hang on, it’ll go in a second… (train passing)… a little longer… (another train)… a little longer… (another train)… trains. (train horn) Back in 2022, Flat 72 on the first floor of Clariat Court was the home of Aziza Bennis, a 58-year-old school dinner lady and a mother-of-two, where she had raised her daughters as a single parent. To their neighbours, she was liked, as were her family. But on the afternoon of Monday the 15th of August 2022, she was frenziedly attacked and stabbed to death by her eldest daughter, Hanaa. But why? Was she deranged, traumatised or defending herself, and what was the truth? My name is Michael, I am your tour guide, and this is Murder Mile. Episode 345: Tormented. It’s impossible to explain who a person truly is. We don’t truly know the people around us, we only know the side they show us as we’re all pretending to be someone we’re not; whether smarter, stronger, younger or taller, we accentuate our attributes, diminish our weaknesses, embellish our successes, sweep our failings under the carpet, and once a person is deceased, those who claim they knew the victim burst forth with meaningless platitudes like “they were so kind, lovely, caring” (delete as appropriate), whereas the culprit, they can’t wait to shit on them, bragging “I knew they were bad”, but did nothing to intervene as “it wasn’t my place to”… …so, the only people who truly knew Aziza & Hanaa we’re themselves, and one of them is now dead. Born Aziza Rizq in the Moroccan city of Casablanca, little was reported about Aziza Bennis’s life before she came to the UK, and - like many ordinary people living their everyday lives - nothing was written about her until the day of her death, and this was exacerbated further as she spoke little of her past. Records suggest (but these may not be accurate) that she married an English-born man called Jones in June 1989 in the East London borough of Tower Hamlets, and from this seemingly happy union, two children were born; Hanaa in 2001 and her younger sister in 2003. But as often happens, with so many marriages put under strain, Aziza and her husband separated, and Hanaa lost contact with her dad. Previously, this family-of-three had lived in Southall, West London, but needing a bigger flat, in 2005, they moved into Flat 72 on the first floor of Clariat Court in Acton, as one of the first residents to move into this newly-built estate. It was small but suitable for their needs, the girls were educated locally, Aziza worked for several years as a well-liked dinner lady at Ark Acton Academy just over the train tracks, and although a single parent living on a minimum wage, Aziza did her best to raise them alone. London is an odd place. It’s rammed full of 9 million people, across 32 boroughs, over about 610 square miles, so you’d think that everyone would know everyone with a wealth of friends and neighbours. But they don’t. By-and-large, it’s a lonely place with no real sense of community, as being so tightly packed, you can’t get too cosey with your neighbours for fear of saying or doing something wrong. So, although many of Aziza’s neighbours spoke to the press about this family, their comments were vague. One said of Aziza, “she was caring… I just don't have anything bad to say about either of them… I just knew her as a neighbour and she was a really nice lady. She was really friendly”, someone on Reddit said “she was a such a calm lady”, with one resident stating “I got on with her. She was very friendly. I think she rented out the flat for Air B&B. She used to go back and forth to North Africa. Just last week she offered me a cab… I don't know about the relationships between the mother and the daughter". But such is life. We only know our neighbours on a surface level, with our knowledge of them mostly based around a set of fleeting interactions, with a smile, a wave and a pleasant chat about the weather once in a blue moon, but nothing too deep. So, to everyone else, they seemed like an ordinary family… …but what happened behind the locked door of their flat was much, much darker. Homelife was toxic. To the world outside, Aziza was a kind and caring woman and a good mother who was liked in the community, but to her daughter Hanaa, she was the devil herself. At the trial at The Old Bailey, Prosecutor Edward Brown KC stated, Hanaa’s “disruptive, rebellious behaviour… was the result of the abuse by her mother”, caused by her alcoholism and violence towards her own children. Where their anger stemmed from is uncertain, perhaps exacerbated by her husband’s abandonment? All children at some point resent their parents, with psychiatrists stating “it commonly surfaces during adolescence, when independence is sought, and in adulthood, when past traumas or unmet needs are re-evaluated”, being triggered by marriage, divorce, separation, grief and neglect. “Resentment is often a coping mechanism for hurt, serving as a protective barrier against further emotional injury”. But being a mother and a daughter, Aziza and Hanaa’s relationship was loaded with high expectations, emotional closeness and the blurred boundaries of a complex connection – which for many parents and their offspring (who were once their babies), many may swing from best friends to bitter enemies – theirs was exacerbated as Aziza had told Hanaa that her estranged father was dead, when he wasn’t. He was alive and well, but knowing his loss would tear at her soul, Aziza used it as to hurt her daughter. Psychiatrists state “when a mother becomes the abuser, the mother-daughter relationship shifts from a nurturing bond to one defined by fear, control and emotional danger, resulting in profound, long-term psychological harm to the daughter… characterized by coercion, manipulation and a destruction of that vital family trust, which can” – and, in this case, it did - “lead to Hanna developing chronic anxiety, depression and low self-esteem… as the foundational sense of safety is broken” when a parent turns from a child’s protector to their aggressor and tormentor. That is the ultimate betrayal. So, why did Aziza physically, mentally and emotionally abuse Hanaa? Was it due to her drinking, her own depression, did she blame her daughter for ruining her marriage, was it spawned by Hanaa’s rebellious behaviour or had Hanaa’s actions turned this supposed ‘good mother’ to drink and abuse? Hanaa was 21-years-old when she violently stabbed her mother to death… …it could be said, given the abuse she endured, that it’s amazing she didn’t break sooner. Psychiatric reports supported Hanaa’s claims of abuse, backed-up by her sister, “alongside extensive social services records which described Aziza as ‘frequently violent, unpredictable and unstable’”. Jeremy Dein KC for the defence said "(Hanaa) had grave difficulty in grappling with this lifelong abuse from her mother which resulted in her losing her control... the reality is that Miss Bennis's mother had ruined her life", and with her childhood being described as both ‘horrific’ and ‘hell’, Aziza subjected her daughter at an early age to threats with a knife, curses using black magic and killing her hamster, as well as rubbing chilli powder into her lips, and severely beating her with a sandal or a belt-buckle. Her upbringing was so brutal at the hands of her drunken, abusive mother, that on the 5th of December 2014, the newspapers reported; “Have you seen Hanaa Bennis? Police are appealing for help to find the 13-year-old who went missing yesterday… (she) was last seen at 5:30pm close to the Morrisons supermarket on King Street, Acton. Hanaa is described as 5ft 5ins, with long brown hair, brown eyes, when last seen she was wearing her school uniform comprising of a navy blazer, white shirt, grey tie, black trousers and shoes. And also wearing a black 'Superdry' raincoat with a pink logo on the back”. Found days later, Hanaa was placed on the Child Protection Register, as her home and mother weren’t seen as safe for this vulnerable young girl. Only instead of being protected, she was bounced from care homes to bedsits with bouts of homelessness. So bad was her home life, that 13-year-old Hanaa would rather live on the streets surrounded by druggies and paedos, than go home to her own mother. Throughout her formative years, it was said that “Hanaa’s behaviour was erratic” and she “refused to cooperate with professionals”, instead descending into a dark spiral of depression, drink and drugs. Posted on a Reddit thread after the murder, several school friends expressed their views about Hanaa, Aziza and the killing, which ‘may’ give an insight into the horrors inflicted by Aziza behind their closed door, or the ‘rebellious behaviour’ which may have led Aziza to be drunk and abusive to her daughter. But as with every opinion, these cannot be taken as fact, so must always be taken with a pinch of salt. One commenter wrote “went to secondary school with her, hung out with her a few times, she was lovely, but always had issues going on at home. this is sad”. Another wrote “she got excluded in year 9 or 10 and I think the issues started in year 9”, around the time she ran away from home. Some said she was violent and abusive, “she was Islamophobic and said she was gonna strip my friends hijab off… she also hit me once (in my face) completely unwarranted… she’s always been unhinged”, with another stating “she used to always get into fights and trouble, but had people protect her”. One even claimed “she was always a controversial character… I heard she was posting CP (child porn) of herself on Snapchat in a French class, but I personally didn’t see it because I didn’t have snap, she’s definitely a strange girl, lol”, with someone else commenting that she was seen “fingering herself” in class. It’s impossible to gauge how much of what was said was gossip and how much was true, we’ll never know, but with six convictions to Hanaa’s name by the age of 21, including assault, drugs, possession of a knife, and in 2021 (one year before) being sentenced to a community order for assaulting an emergency worker, an order she was still under when she murdered her mother, her life was chaotic… …but she had been trying to better herself. For a decade, she had lacked a stable homelife, love, warmth, happiness and a future worth living for. She had no father figure and her mother was her worst enemy. In 2019, aged 18, while studying at South Acton College, Hanaa got pregnant. And although it slightly curtailed her education - which she would later return to at the Open University in 2021 - it gave her focus, a goal in life, someone to live for, and – vitally - a reason to find a council flat with her boyfriend over in Ealing, away from her mother. Everyone needs breathing space and stability, this was hers, and becoming a mother herself, it gave her a chance to learn from her past mistakes, her mother’s failings, and make a good life for her child. Or it should have been. Diagnosed with complex PTSD, in February 2022, six months before, Hanaa had suffered a ‘meltdown’ due to “unresolved issues from her past”, which it was said, “was a significant contributor to the killing”. Again, only Hanaa & Aziza know what really happened, as one of their neighbours stated “the daughter wasn't a bad person. She is certainly not a bad person. It is just horrible. There are no winners in this”. It was said, that the killing was sparked by an argument over the custody of Hanaa' 3 year old child, as in an ironic twist, Aziza did not feel that Hanaa was a ‘fit mother’. It was never explained why, but on a Reddit thread for UKDrill, Hanaa is discussed, but many of these comments were later deleted. Using the slang ‘waps’ which means ’guns’, one of the commenters (who we know knew Hanaa, owing to the camera footage which was later uploaded in this thread) said of her “absolute phyco ting used to hold waps for gang members”, which they also refer to as ‘GM’s, but his statement can’t be verified. Another said, “these gm turned her satanic giving her stardog when she’s probaly from a good home”, which she wasn’t (far from it, but that’s who gangs attract), and with Stardogs (or Stardawgs) being a highly potent strain of hybrid cannabis known for its uplifting high, paranoid lows and aroma of diesel, he wrote “last time I smoked a stardog, I stabbed up my mum n dad. Normal behaviour after a joint”. And of course, when you combine stardogs with alcohol, depression meds, anxiety, depression, and a history of physical and mental abuse resulting in PTSD, Hanaa was far from stable on the day itself. Again, this can’t be verified, but one stated “worst thing is these gms are jeeting these satanic mental health jbags”, with ‘jeeting’ meaning to have sex with, and ‘jbag’ stating she was a ‘jizzbag’, just a hole for the boys to ejaculate in, as gangs target and cultivate vulnerable young girls using a need for drugs, and a want of love to assuage their loneliness and need for a family (of any description). “Seems like these were her only friends, imagine gm been your only friends, she probaly (sic) chills with, gives them head for some weed, listens to their stabbing music in their cars… she really got influenced, and her mum didn’t like her smelling of weed coming home and smoking weed in her room, it all adds up”. If this was true, it wasn’t a safe place to raise a child, or a haven for Hanaa to get herself mentally well. She was running away, escaping from the horrors of her past and the stresses of daily life by engaging in drugs, drink and a steady decline to the base of the barrel with the deadbeat dregs of life’s bottom. But worse still, she hated her mother (and rightly so), yet in a vicious circle of abuse, the daughter had becomes a mother, but not seeing the pain and neglect she was creating for her own child, if she could not see the damage she was doing – perhaps just as her own mother couldn’t – there no hope at all. Life was hard for Hanaa, and about to get even harder, as in March 2020, when Covid swept the Earth, one and a half years of lockdowns and restrictions made her even the most basic of chores tougher… …especially, when as she didn’t have a stable family unit to help her weather the storm. It’s impossible to say, in a balanced and unbiased way, who was to blame for the killing of Aziza Bennis; was it Hanaa’s rebellious streak and her reliance on drink and drugs to cope, or after years of cruelty and abuse by the one person she should have trusted – her own mother – did Hanaa finally snap? As is often said, the day of the murder started out as normal as any other, but for Hanaa & Aziza, their normal involved shouting, screaming and violence, as they were incapable of seeing each other’s side. It was Monday the 15th of August 2022, the weather was hot and clammy, the people of West London were fizzing with pent-up frustration after almost a year and a half of Covid restrictions, and with the cost of living having gone up, rent up, food up, everything but wages, something was about to break. That day, thankfully, Hanaa had left her child at nursery, so it wouldn’t experience the horror which would unfold between her mother and her grandmother, as Hanaa travelled from Ealing to Acton. With Aziza not working as a dinner lady as schools were on summer break, being both heavy drinkers, toxicology reports show that Aziza had consumed alcohol that day, as did Hanaa, with skunk cannabis. As was usual, even before they had set their eyes on each other and felt their angers rising, their fury and resentment had been bubbling like a boiling pot of caustic acid, spitting and scolding, as the two exchanged barbed insults and venom-filled scorn via texts. Hanaa wrote to her mother “You made me hate my life. U genuinely make me not want to live”, Aziza replied to her daughter “Get a life Hanaa”, and although she needed her mother’s help for child-care, Hanaa replied “Burn in hell you sour bitch”. At around 3pm, with the day reaching its hottest as the tarmac baked, as Hanaa had buzzed the entry system, but Aziza had refused to let her in, outside the building and in front of their neighbours, with no sense of shame, the two women screamed like furious banshees, hurling a lifetime’s worth of spite. The ear-splitting shrill of their screams were enough for the neighbours to call the Police… …but at that point, as there was no danger to life, they would arrive too late. And as this heated row moved away from prying eyes, what happened behind that locked door became much, much darker. They were both drunk, both angry, both volatile, both full of hate, and according to Hanaa “my mother attacked me with a knife... and had a glass as a weapon". A bloodied knife was found at the scene, as was a broken glass, Hanaa had a deep cut to her left eye and a puncture wound to her right thigh. Hanaa told Police, she screamed at her mother “you're going to kill me", as that’s what Hanaa believed and why wouldn’t she, as Aziza had attacked her before. Neighbours recalled hearing objects being thrown and smashed as their violence escalated, but none of them knew this would end in murder. Bleeding from her face, Hanaa was heard screaming “you’re a f***ing bitch… you stabbed me”, and as Jeremy Dein KC for the defence said “there was an explosion of violence by (Hanaa)… a release of her frustration and the trauma at what she had been subjected to throughout her life” by her mother. Grabbing the knife, Hanaa stabbed her back. Aziza was heard begging “stop hurting me”, and although, as she claimed, it may have started out as self-defence, with years or decades of anger unleashed and her pent-up hatred spewing forth at this women, her abuser and tormentor who should have been her protector, once Hanaa had started stabbing her, she couldn’t stop, until her energy was spent. Judge Lickley said “the ferocity of the attack proves your intent to kill”, as taking control of her life and her abuser, Hanaa stabbed Aziza more than 30 times, eviscerating her innards till they were shredded, as Hanaa was heard screaming “I’m sorry, I’m sorry”, as she stabbed, and stabbed, and stabbed. In the same Reddit post, a video was uploaded of the aftermath of the attack, as instead of calling an ambulance as her mother lay dying, using yubo, she video-called one of the so-called GM’s who recorded. In it, Hanaa is frantic and emotional, with many deep wounds to her face and a large kitchen knife in her hand, the camera is blurry as she moves it, but in the background, her mother lies bloody. (Upload the audio): (0:00) What happened? What happened? (0:03) Oh, fam, please. (0:08) Who? Who? Who? (0:12) Who, fam? Who tried to kill you? (0:14) My mum, my aunt's mum. (0:17) Where's your mum? Where's your mum? (0:18) I can see them over there. (0:20) Do you want to see them? (0:25) Where's your mum? Where's your mum? (0:26) Where's your mum? (0:30) Where's your mum? Where's your mum? (0:32) I don't know. (0:37) Where's your mum? Where's your mum? (0:38) She's dead. (0:40) Dead? Huh? (0:43) She's here. (0:44) She tried to stab me here (0:46) and in my leg and in my chest. (0:48) She's dead. (0:49) She's dead”. The Police arrived at 3:47pm, but it was too late. Forcing their way into the flat, Police and paramedics entered a scene of chaos; with blood spattered up the walls and floor, a bloody knife on the coffee table, shattered glass fragments, and in floods of tears Hanaa confessed “I’ve killed her, I’m sorry. She tried to stab me in my leg and thigh”, with her abuser, Aziza having been stabbed multiple times in the head, face and arms, having suffered a fatal wound to the right thigh, an air ambulance was scrambled, but she was pronounced dead at the scene. Maybe unable or unwilling to accept what she’d done, Hanaa told the Police “I saw my mum murdered in front of me. My mum is dead”, as if she hadn’t done it, and when taken to Ealing Hospital for her own injuries to be attended to, when she was arrested, Hanaa became violent, perhaps out of habit? As mentioned before, when the murder of this “lovely, kind, mother-of-two and dinner lady” was reported, she was heralded like she was a saint, with the principal of Ark Acton Academy (as was his job) stating “it is devastating news, and our thoughts are with Aziza's family at this difficult time… we will offer support to staff and students and hope to find a fitting way to remember Aziza”, with no-one really knowing the horrors which went on in that flat over the 17 years this mother and daughter had lived there. As for Hanna being the culprit, she was demonised, with few knowing she was a victim. Everybody said their piece, as if they knew the truth, and then they moved on. (End) The investigation was headed up by Detective Chief Inspector Jim Shirley of the Met's Specialist Crime Command, and with a knife, blood, DNA, a video message and a confession by the perpetrator herself, it wasn’t a question of whodunnit, by why? Was it owing to drink, revenge, hatred, or self-defence? Tried at the Old Bailey, before Judge Mark Lucraft KC, in a two-week trial which began in early January 2023, Hanaa denied murder, but pleaded guilty to manslaughter by diminished responsibility. The crux of the evidence focussed on the abuse that Hanaa and her sister had suffered at the hands of their mother, backed-up by social services records and psychiatric reports, going back years. It was made clear that “both doctors agree there are a number of features to consider but the overriding one is complex PTSD as a result of childhood trauma”, as well as the impact as drink and drugs. Judge Lucraft KC acknowledged Hanaa’s feelings of “shame and guilt”, and a letter she had written to the judge expressing her “fierce determination to rehabilitate”, but “I reject the submission you did not intend to kill your mother… the ferocity of the attack proves your intention to kill”. Found guilty of manslaughter on Thursday 18th of January 2023, Hanna Bennis was sentenced to nine years with a further five on extended licence after release. Summing up, Judge Lucraft said “you and your sister had a very troubled relationship with your mother from a young age. Physical and verbal abuse were features of your upbringing…” and although her PTSD was “a significant contributor to the killing… you made a very poor choice to visit your mother that day. You knew there was a significant history between you and your mother. You knew your mother’s personality. You had been drinking”. Hanna appealed her conviction in April 2025, with her barristers asking for her sentence to be reduced, asking that her mental state was not given full consideration. With the sentence ruled by Lady Chief Justice Baroness Carr as “not manifestly excessive", Hanna is unlikely to be released until 2031. 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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Seven time nominated BEST BRITISH TRUE-CRIME PODCAST at the True Crime Awards, Independent Podcast Award and The British Podcast Awards, and voted 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation Top 20 True-Crime Podcasts, also seen on BBC Radio, Sky News, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week.
Hildas Murrell's home at 'Ravenscroft'
EPISODE THREE HUNDRED AND FORTY-FOUR: On Wednesday 21st of March 1984, 79-year-old Hilda Murrell of Shropshire was attacked in her own home by an unseen assailant. Double killer, David McKenzie had already been convicted of the murders of 76-year-old widow Barbara Pinder in 1984 in Battersea and 86-year-old widow Henrietta Osbourne in Chelsea, which had similar hallmarks. McKenzie had confessed to HIlda's murder and several others. But was he a serial killer?
SOURCES: a selection sourced from various archives:
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: 30th of March 1990, The Old Bailey, Judge Kenneth Richardson QC summed up: “David McKenzie, you have been found guilty of two of the most appalling killings I can recall. You are a frighteningly dangerous man and my duty is to protect the public. You will remain in Rampton until such time that it’s absolutely clear to those responsible for your care that you are no longer a danger to the public”. Found guilty of five counts of raping a 14-year-old girl, endangering the lives of two elderly women by setting fire to their beds as they slept, and the manslaughter by diminished responsibility of 76-year-old Barbara Pinder and 86-year-old Henrietta Osbourne, this burglar, sadistic rapist and self-confessed paedophile with a violent hatred of women was placed on a hospital order for an indeterminate term. As evidence, his confession was solid, his recall was vivid, and even though some details he had added or embellished such as laying the blame on an accomplice (who was never charged), having confessed “I want to tell you about the old lady”, even though Robin Grey QC who defended this notorious blabbermouth stated “there was not one shred of evidence besides the confession to link him to the old lady killings”, according to detectives “he revealed details that only the killer could have known”. When interviewed by Police, being wracked with guilt which ate at his soul, Scottish-born and London-bred David McKenzie - who was diagnosed as a paranoid psychopathic schizophrenic - confessed to further crimes, and although his vocabulary was limited having only a basic education, blessed (or haunted) by a very retentive memory - with no emotion, just a cold hard delivery - he recalled the details of ten or twelve unsolved murders he had committed, like he was reading a set of instructions. He confessed to the murders of 27-year-old Keith Church in Hertfordshire, 79-year-old Hilda Murrell in Shropshire, 11-year-old Susan Maxwell on the Scottish border, 18-year-old Carol Lannen in Dundee, 5-year-old Caroline Hogg in Edinburgh, and with two stabbings of victims who had survived – like 60-year-old Eileen McCarthy, who was randomly stabbed in the face in an unprovoked attack in Pimlico – his confessions were checked against the evidence in the hope of bringing their killers to justice. But was David McKenzie, the convicted double-murderer, one of Britain’s most sadistic serial killers? One specific case was unnervingly similar to the killings of Barbara Pinder and Henrietta Osbourne. Hilda Murrell was born on the 3rd of February 1906 at All Stretton in Shrewsbury. Shropshire born and bred, she was one of two daughters to Owen & Lily. Being middle-class, she was Cambridge educated, and like her father, she became a successful rose-grower which suited her nature being a woman of peace, and although unmarried and independently wealthy, she didn’t dress like she had any money. Described as ‘highly intelligent, independent and defiantly individual’, 78-year-old Hilda was a die-hard supporter of CND (The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament), a political group advocating for the unilateral worldwide abolition of nuclear weapons. If there was a march, she was on it. If there was a protest, she was in it, whether at Greenham Common or Hyde Park, US or Soviet embassies, breaking into military bases, nuclear power stations or missile sites. But her big bugbear was ‘Sizewell B’, a nuclear power station in Suffolk. Three month before she was murdered, Hilda was due to present a paper at the public inquiry into ‘Sizewell B’, which obviously led to a wealth of conspiracy theories. One year before Henrietta’s murder and nearly seven months before Barbara’s, just before noon on Wednesday 21st of March 1984, Hilda left Abbey Foregate in Shrewsbury having done some shopping, gone to the bank and purchased some tickets to a charity draw, and said by friends who saw her to be in a good mood, in her battered white Renault 5, Hilda returned to her pleasant three-bedroomed detached house called ‘Ravenscroft’ at 52 Sutton Road, where for many years she had lived alone. As she always did, she put away some shopping, and dressed practically – in a brown woollen coat, two jumpers, a woollen skirt, moccasin type boots, a wide brimmed hat and spectacles – and as she always did, she went up to her bedroom to take off her outdoor clothes, and that is when he struck. As before, Police were uncertain whether (as with Henrietta) she’d disturbed a burglar who had gained entry via an already open door, or (as with Barbara), he’d followed her in when she had unlocked it. The rooms were ransacked, her purse was open and the cash was taken, but not her chequebook, and although it was claimed her report into ‘Sizewell B’ was stolen, the Police would state this was untrue. It was also said that the wires to her telephone were cut, some say professionally, but some say not. But again, the theft didn’t seem to be the attacker’s primary motive. During this 45 minute attack, in her bedroom, she was beaten and violently assaulted, rendered semi-conscious as she fought for her life against a cruel, psychotic sadist who had easily overpowered her. With a cotton ironing board cover, he tied her hands to the upstairs bannisters, locked the doors and drew the curtains. With her screams impossible to hear, having partially stripped her and exposing her abdomen and chest, he sexually assaulted this elderly lady, and masturbated over her, ejaculating on her body, mopping up his filthy seed with some tissues, and then, he helped himself to a car of beer. But his attack was far from finished. With a knife taken from her kitchen, he untied her, and either unconscious or semi-conscious, her dragged to her car, and with her slumped in the passenger’s seat, at speed, he drove six miles from her home, far from anyone she knew and any place she felt safe. Between 12:45pm and 1:10pm, the white Renault 5 speeded and swerved up a back route to Newport; up Monkmoor Road, Telford Way, Heathgates island, Sundorne Road and to Haughmond Hill. As she slowly came to, Hilda saw that she was nowhere, speeding down an unrecognisable isolated lane with fields for as far as she could see, and sat next to a man with a knife in his hand, and very bad intentions. With no houses, farms or people nearby, she was alone, but she knew to survive, she had to fight back. As it drove along Hunkington Lane, she grabbed the steering wheel, and forced it into a ditch. With it having stalled, he tried to get it moving again, but it wouldn’t, and even though he tried to put a book under a wheel to attempt to give it grip, while he was distracted, she pocketed the car key, and fled. 78-year-old Hilda ran as fast as she could in her light moccasin boots, fleeing down the lane from this man who meant to do her harm, but being younger, stronger and faster, he soon caught up to her. And with a foul rage brewing and his attack far from finished, it was in a cornfield that he savaged her. No-one heard her cries, no-one came to her aid and no-one saw her die, except the sadist himself. A man in a grey-suit was seen running nearby, but no-one thought anything of it. At 3:30pm, Mr Scott, a local man was walking near the Moat where her body lay, barely alive, but being in a hollow and her brown clothes blending into the cornfield, he saw nothing. Later that afternoon, with her paralysed but still breathing, a police patrol spotted Hilda’s car, but not her, and radioed it in as a traffic accident. With licence plate, LNT 917W, identified as Hilda’s, they called at her home, which was locked-up with the curtains drawn, and by the next day, with her having failed to return home, Police gained entry. Inside, post was on the floor, milk on the doorstep, and although the lights were on, no-one was home. With no signs of forced entry, they only suspected a burglary when they saw that the rooms had been ransacked. But it was as they ascended the stairs, that they saw something more sinister had occurred. No blood, but a sexual assault had occurred in the bedroom, she was restrained using an ironing board cover on the stairs, the landing phone was severed and sperm-soaked tissues lay upon the floor… …and for three days, Hilda was remained missing. On Saturday the 24th of March 1984 at 10:25am, a gamekeeper’s wife from Hunkington was walking by the Moat, 500 yards from the road where the car had ploughed into a ditch, when she found Hilda. 200 yards from the body, her boots were found apart in the cornfield, with her glasses and hat further away, which showed a trail of fear as she had fled for her life, only to be chased and dragged back. Dumped in a hollow next to a tree, her body was found lying on its right hand side, her right arm bent and in front of her as if she was reaching out for help. Still wearing her semen-stained brown woollen coat and two jumpers, the stocking on her left foot was initially missing, but encircling her body were the clothes he had scattered; the stocking, her skirt and suspender belt, but her knickers were gone. With bruises to her face, she was beaten when he caught up with her. With both knees and shins cut, muddied and scuffed, it was clear she was dragged by her front or made to kneel as he assaulted her. In a nearby hedge, the knife he’d took from her kitchen was found, stained with her blood, the blade matching the defensive wounds to her hands, as – four times – she was stabbed in the abdomen, with pathologist Dr Nathanial Carey stating “a weapon had been held to her stomach, penetrating the skin in several places… which may have led to pain and distress”, as if his plan was to punish or torture her. But his cruelty was far from finished. Having been viciously stabbed multiple times through the stomach and liver, slowly she bled to death, but it wasn’t this that killed her. Being dumped into an isolated part of a remote field, from just after 1pm when she was stabbed, she was alive and lying there - silent and afraid – until the early of the next morning, when after hours of pain and confusion, being only semi-clad, she died of hypothermia. Like Barbara Pinder & Henrietta Osbourne, the murder of 78-year-old Hilda Murrell was a massacre. But was she murdered by the convicted double-killer, David McKenzie? The similarities were startling; a lone elderly lady initially attacked in her bedroom having disturbed a burglar who had broken in, ransacked the room and stolen little, if anything, only to dedicate most of this time to beating her unconscious, stabbing her frenziedly, torturing her for fun, and fleeing unseen. This was miles from Pimlico and Chelsea, but he came from Scotland and moved around the country. Of the ten or twelve killings he confessed to, Hilda’s was the one most similar to Barbara & Henrietta. Being the earliest of the three ‘old lady’ killings, his recall was sketchy, his retelling sometimes drifted from reality to fantasy, he had embellished certain details and some he had even made up – which he was known to do, and with the motives impossible to pin down as even he couldn’t say why he had killed her, when questioned by detectives, he confessed to her killing recalling the facts from memory. On the 11th of March 1990, as was mentioned to the jury in his double-murder trial, having passed the bar of proof to be tried in a court of law, the Director of Public Prosecutions accepted the case against David McKenzie in the murder of Hilda Murrell, but just like before, it was suspected that the trial might not go ahead, as being declared mentally unstable, he would be charged, but “unfit to plead”. Housed at Rampton High Security Hospital in Nottinghamshire, again he was assessed by psychiatrists to continually monitor his mental capacity, but it seemed unlikely this case would ever go to trial. Then, seven months later in October 1990, the case against David McKenzie was dropped by the DPP, as even though he had confessed, “there was insufficient evidence to bring any charges against him”. The community was shocked, outraged, a beloved woman had been brutally murdered and left to die, a psychopathic maniac had confessed to her killing, and the British Justice System had excused him. Rob Green, Hilda’s nephew, said of the case “I do no accept the McKenzie story. This man has a guilt complex and by confessing to the murder, he expiates it. I really do not believe that he is the answer”, as although Rob, a former naval intelligence officer believed she was killed because of ‘Sizewell B’… …there was some truth to his words, as McKenzie was never Hilda’s killer. In 1992, following the collapse of the trial, Labour MP Tam Dalyell raised the matter in the House of Commons and petitioned for the case to be reopened. With no suspects, now that McKenzie had been dismissed as his fingerprints didn’t match those at the scene, and according to Geoffrey Robertson QC “McKenzie could not be linked to the killing of Miss Murell”, as his blood was of a different group, and having examined to the semen-stained tissues, “her killer was infertile, but McKenzie was fertile”. According to the medical data, the killer had undergone a vasectomy, whereas McKenzie had not. West Mercia Police re-examined over 3000 statements, 500 police reports, 6000 lines of inquiry and more than 3000 exhibits, and although this re-investigation led to no new suspects, with the tissues being stored, in 2003 when technology had caught up, being sent for testing at the Birmingham DNA Testing Centre, Detective Superintendent Mick Brunger, the senior investigating officer in the cold case review, said: "It was DNA that eventually led to the breakthrough that they didn't have in 1984". In June 2003, West Mercia police arrested 37-year-old builder's labourer Andrew George of Meadow Farm Drive in Harlescott, Shrewsbury, three miles south of Hilda’s home. Back in 1984, he was living in a children’s home and was 16 year old when he attacked, sexually assaulted and murdered Hilda. When first questioned, he lied about knowing her. But in custody at Blakenhurst Prison, when asked by his girlfriend at the time, Anne Goode, how his fingerprints were found in Hilda’s home, he told her a door had been open for a couple of days at her home and he had gone in to "have a look around". He had consistently denied murdering her, he admitted to only telling a “half truth” to the Police, he confessed to using some of the conspiracy theories about Sizewell B being the reason for her murder to "save my neck when I was in prison", and even though – like McKenzie – he too tried to pin the blame on an innocent man, he could never explain how his semen got on the tissues, or Hilda’s clothes. Tried at Stafford Crown Court, Andrew George admitted to burglary and being in Hilda’s home, but he denied her kidnap and murder. In May 2005, found guilty of all charges, Justice Wakerley sentenced him to life for a minimum term of 15 years. He summed up "the last hours of poor Mrs Murrell were truly awful", and although – given the sadism and cruelty he had inflicted – the sentence was unduly lenient as the judge had to pass it on the basis that it was done while a juvenile, "if you had committed that crime recently, as an adult, I would have considered a whole life order: no release ever". Detective Chief Inspector Chris Knight said "Andrew George left Hilda Murrell to die a slow and painful death. He has lived with this knowledge for more than two decades”, exacerbating her family’s grief and pain, “and with the fear that one day justice would catch up with him. Today is that day"… …but with Andrew George convicted and categorically confirmed using fingerprints and DNA evidence to be the killer of Hilda Murrell, where does that leave us with the confessions of David McKenzie? Alongside the killings Barbara Pinder and Henrietta Osbourne, he confessed to ten or twelve murders. One which seemed at odds with the others from the beginning was the unsolved murder of 27-year-old Keith Church in July 1982, who was stabbed to death while riding his bike down Hoddesdon High Street in Hertfordshire by an aggressive man in a Red Cortina or Vauxhall Viva for no known reason. Dying on his way to hospital, Keith Church described his attacker as 5 foot 10 and stocky, a description not unique but also not dissimilar to McKenzie, but with McKenzie having no links to Hoddesdon or Hertfordshire, he was thoroughly investigated as a suspect, but there was no evidence against him. And although widely reported in the press, locally and nationally, it remains unsolved to this day. But why would McKenzie randomly attack a man… …when his chosen victims were always old women and young girls? Born in Inverness and raised in Dundee, one of the most high-profile unsolved murders that McKenzie was a suspect for was Carol Lannan, an 18 year-old sex-worker and mother-of-one from Dundee. Last seen in Exchange Street, the city's red light district, being driven away in a red Ford Cortina taxi at 8pm on the 20th of March 1979, 11 days later, her naked body was found strangled in Templeton Woods, with her handbag and clothes later found on the banks of the River Don, 85 miles away from Dundee. Over the years, this case had been linked to Bible John in Glasgow and the World’s End Murders in Edinburgh, and with 20-year-old Elizabeth McCabe found naked and strangled just a few yards away 11 months later, these two murders have frequently been linked together, but not to David McKenzie. It lacked the same level of sadism, torture and sex, they didn’t come off the back of a failed burglary, and as a coward, McKenzie never attacked in public, but always behind the locked door of a bedroom. McKenzie was a self-confessed paedophile with a conviction for the rape and buggery of a young girl in Pimlico in 1986, so it made some sense to take seriously his confession that on the 30th of July 1982, he abducted 11-year-old Susan Maxwell as she walked home in Coldstream on the Scottish borders, and on the 8th of July 1983 that he abducted 5-year-old Caroline Hogg from outside of her home in the Edinburgh suburb of Portobello. Being stripped, bound and raped, their bodies were found in ditches miles from their homes, having been driven away in a van. But we know this wasn’t David McKenzie. He never abducted girls, he always lured them in, or broke into their homes and raped them in private. These murders were entirely sexual, as (based on Barbara Pinder and Henrietta Osbourne’s murders) McKenzie had a hatred of women, which is why he tortured them and stabbed them in the neck and face. And besides, forensic evidence and a criminal trial has confirmed that these girls were murdered by the paedophile and sadistic serial killer, Robert Black, and McKenzie’s retelling was sketchy at best. As for the other murders or crimes he confessed to, they were investigated but no evidence was linked to him, and in many cases, he wasn’t even in the same city, county or country at the time of the killings. So why did he confess to them; out of cruelty, for sadistic fun, or was he compelled to? Following the collapse of the trial into the murder of Hilda Murrell, David McKenzie was charged with wasting police time, as although this blabbermouth had confessed to her murder and seemed to know many details about it – even though the DNA sample was 20 years away from proving conclusive – his confession was a mix of reality and fantasy by a known liar with the facts widely reported in the press… …and that’s where he got everything from, the newspapers, as even though he had a low IQ owing to a limited education, burdened by a very retentive memory, he could reel off all of these details at will. When asked how he felt about the fact that that he had wasted police time, as his fingerprints and blood group had proven he hadn’t murdered Hilda Murrell, McKenzie said “I feel guilty. I feel I did it”. In his defence, when asked about the murders of Carol Lannen, Elizabeth McCabe, Keith Church, Hilda Murrell, Caroline Hogg & Susan Maxwell who he had confessed to partially derailing the investigation, Robin Grey QC asked “If someone said to you that they were with you miles away at the time of the killing so you could not have done it, what would you say?”, he replied “I would still believe I did it”. So was this a game for him, did it give him a sexual thrill, or was something else plaguing his mind? On the 30th of March 1990, at The Old Bailey, found guilty of the murders of Barbara Pinder & Henrietta Osbourne, Judge Richardson QC summed up: “David McKenzie, you have been found guilty of two of the most appalling killings I can recall. You are a frighteningly dangerous man and my duty is to protect the public”, with the jury told he was due to be tried for the murder of Hilda Murrell. Justice was done. From the 7th to the 25th July 1992, McKenzie appealed his conviction at the Court of Appeal before the Lord Chief Justice Lord Taylor, Mr Justice Simon Brown and Mr Justice Roch. The defence pleaded that McKenzie was convicted “based on his confession despite false admissions to a dozen others he could not possibly have committed”, in short, “David McKenzie is not a serial killer, he is a serial confessor”. At his original trial, both the defence and the prosecution agreed that; he had an “inherent personality disorder”, that he was manipulative but also susceptible, that six psychiatrists gave differing opinions on whether he knew the difference between reality or fantasy, and that even when faced with the proof that at least eight of the murders he confessed to, he didn’t commit, he “felt guilty”, so in his mind, he was guilty. But the jury chose to reject this, and stuck with the only evidence, his confession. On the 25th of July 1992, two years after his conviction for the brutal double murders of Barbara Pinder & Henrietta Osbourne, the Judge ruled “cases depending solely or mainly on confessions have given rise to miscarriages of justice”, so with changes made to the law, David McKenzie was acquitted. (End) McKenzie remains at Rampton on a hospital order, being convicted of rape and endangering life. Assessed by one psychiatrist for his original trial, when McKenzie was given the details of an entirely fictional murder case, he confessed it to. When told it was fictional, he stated “I still feel I did it”. This was used in his defence, but dismissed by the court, already weighed down by a wealth of evidence. All of the cases he confessed to, McKenzie had read about in the newspapers, and although he had a low IQ, blessed or burdened by a retentive memory, an inability to tell reality from fantasy, and a guilt complex stemming from a disturbed childhood, even with a sketchy confession, the detectives said “he revealed details only the killer could have known”, but - being very susceptible – although some details were deliberately not reported in the press to trap the killer – like the knitting needle, the ball point pen or the chopstick used to torture Barbara & Henrietta – these confessions were taken during a week of police questioning in the absence of a solicitor when slip-ups or coercion may have occurred. When told there was no fingerprints or DNA to link him to Barbara Pinder’s murder, McKenzie said “I still feel I done it”, even though Police would later prove he was in hospital at the time of the killing. With Barbara & Henrietta’s killings most likely linked to the same maniac, as well as the attacks on the women of Pimlico & Chelsea, McKenzie’s confession and the Police’s reliance to use (and maybe) abuse it to solve a series of unsolved cases has let the real killer go free. And with both investigating officers in Barbara’s case dead and the exhibits lost or destroyed, it once again will remain unsolved. There’s no denying that David McKenzie was a deranged and dangerous man, but what’s deadlier; a law system willing to convict an innocent man using only his confession, a mentally-ill man who claims to be a serial killer even though there’s no evidence he committed any, or the fact that so many cases were derailed and their killers walked free, as the Police believed the confessions of a blabbermouth? 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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Barbara PInder's flat - Prince of Wales Mansions, 77 Prince of Wales Drive, Battersea @googlemaps2026 Sept2024
EPISODE THREE HUNDRED AND FORTY-THREE: On the Saturday the 27th of October 1984, 76-year-old widow Barbara Pinder was brutally murdered in her own flat on Prince of Wales Drive in Battersea by an unknown man with a lot of hatred for her. One year later, on Saturday 27th of October 1985, 86-year-old widow Henrietta Osbourne was also stabbed and attacked frenziedly in an attack which had similar hallmarks. It went unsolved for two years… then out of the blue, a petty burglar confessed to both murders. Evidence proved it was him, he confessed, he was convicted. But why did he confess, when he had got away with murder?
SOURCES: a selection sourced from various archives:
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UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: Why would a serial killer confess to a sadistic spate of brutal murders? Find out on Murder Mile. Today, I’m standing on Prince of Wales Drive in Battersea, SW1; three streets east of Peter Bryan’s failed suicide bid having killed Nisha Sheth, two streets south of the first of the infamous taxi driver murders, and two streets west of the lost fingers of the tortured artist - coming soon to Murder Mile. Prince of Wales Drive is a very exclusive part of town. Consisting of five-and-six storey red-and-white brick mansions blocks stretching the road’s length, these multi-million pound serviced flats have stunning views overlooking Battersea Park and the River Thames, being strictly for those with money. Accessed by a secure communal door, this isn’t the kind of place you’d find fat dole-scrounging slob watching TOWIE in his pants scoffing chips from the bag. Oh no, here you’d find a rotund investment banker watching Downton Abbey in his diamond encrusted g-string as a butler feeds him beer-battered chips made by Gordon Ramsey from a Louis Vitton bag – it’s all a very different thing, indeed. And yet, a senseless and brutal murder in one of these exclusive flats, its exact number never reported, marked a sadistic killing spree by a psychopath who was clearly disturbed and dangerous, but it also helped to unmask a suspected serial killer who couldn’t help but confess to many, many murders. He was a killer who wanted to be caught – but why? My name is Michael, I am your tour guide, and this is Murder Mile. Episode 343: The Blabbermouth – Part 1 of 2. His first victim was an elderly widow by the name of Barbara Anne Pinder. Born on the 17th of July 1908, Barbara Anne Wilson (as she once was) was raised in the comfortable and calm splendour of the seaside parish of Selsey in Sussex, a place whose name means ‘Holy Island’. With her father being the town’s rector, they lived in The Rectory with her mother and two siblings, Helen & Wilfred, and being middle-class, they were educated at private schools, and had their every want catered for by a nurse, a maid and two servants. In 1921, when her father became the rector of nearby Cuckfield, the family moved into the vicarage, and this was where Barbara met her husband. Walter Archibald Pinder was born in Bishop’s Stortford and raised with all the benefits that money can buy. In June 1929, as a couple in their early 20s, they married at Cuckfield and had a son called Simon. By 1935, they were living in the poshest parts of West London, being Kensington and Chelsea, and for many years, her sister Helen lived with them at Rectory Chambers. With Walter being an aeronautical engineer he was often busy, especially as the war loomed large, but again, having two servants and a governess, this gave Barbara the rare chance – unlike many women of that era – to pursue a career. For many years, Barbara was an aeronautical journalist and the former editor of Flight magazine, but her true passion was music. In her youth, she had been the main understudy for the principal singers for Ivor Novello, one of Britain’s most popular entertainers in the first half of the 20th century, and as a professional pianist, she was instrumental in his hit West End play Perchance to Dream which played at London’s Hippodrome from 1945 to 1948, and as a heartfelt thank you, Ivor Novello gave her the original manuscript to the show’s biggest hit ‘We’ll Gather Lilacs’ – something she always cherished. On the 20th of March 1980, Walter died, and although this loss of her husband of 41 years could have broken her, described as “a widow of great charm and distinction who seemed young for her years”, she kept herself busy as a writer and an artist, she was active in the church, and liked a good long walk. By 1984, living alone, Barbara moved into a small self-contained flat on the third floor of Prince of Wales Mansions in Battersea; it was safe and secure as many of the occupants were elderly and well-off, and even though she was a petite 76-year-old lady who was immaculately-dressed and always had neatly coiffured hair, said to be “young at heart”, she had the drive and stamina to last beyond a 100. The day before had been unremarkable, she had received no odd phone calls or visitors, she wasn’t worried, and the only difference to every resident’s day was the workmen who trudged about the flats due to a recent fire which led to a partial collapse to the roof, hence the communal door was left open. No-one knows the exact time she was attacked on the morning of Saturday the 27th of October 1984, but as an early-bird and a creature of habit, she had failed to pick up her newspaper from the shop. With no witnesses, only the evidence can paint a picture of what had happened to Barbara Pinder. It’s unlikely that she knew her attacker, as being a private person, her door was rarely open to others. With no sign of any break-in, either he knocked (possibly posing as one of the many builders on site), but with her son, Simon, noting “she was wearing her walking shoes, she always took them off when she got home” leaving them on the mat by the door, it was more likely that someone had followed her in. Behind her locked door, although she was only tiny, with every ounce of her strength, she put up a brave fight to get this stranger out of her home, as with furniture knocked and crockery smashed as he tossed her like a ragdoll, but as Detective Superintendent Kemp stated “she didn’t stand a chance”. Towering over her, her attacker was large and powerfully built, as bruises proved that with one hand he strangled her, squeezing her windpipe and fracturing the bones in her throat, as with the other, he beat her about her face and skull with a hard (undetermined) blunt object, breaking her jaw, her teeth, fracturing her cheek bone, and although she was barely conscious, his attack was far from finished. As she lay, slumped and broken on the carpet, he repeatedly kicked her in the head as if it was a ball, as if she was a sport, which caused cuts, bruises, bleeding and brain damage. But this wasn’t the end. With her own knitting needle, he stabbed her in her neck to torture her and leaving it embedded, in a psychotic level of sadism which detectives later felt was a trademark of his killings. But even that was not the end, as with a knife, believed to be a 6-inch stiletto blade, he frenziedly stabbed her 45 times in the chest with a level of ferocity, the pathologist stated “most of her vital organs were in shreds”, as he had stabbed her heart, liver and stomach, as well as severing the breast bone and several ribs. The murder of 76-year-old widow Barbara Pinder was a massacre, and yet, it had no obvious motive; a stranger attack on a wealthy woman where nothing was stolen; her handbag lay open, £30 was left untouched, as were her antiques, pieces of jewellery, and the valuable manuscript by Ivor Novello. She was viciously attack, but hadn’t been sexually assaulted, and its unlikely she knew her attacker. The next day, Sunday 28th of October, Simon, Barbara’s son rang her as he always did. Getting no reply, he drove from Avon, found her door locked, and with the police breaking it down, inside, they found her mutilated body. Recalling the horror, Simon said of the scene “he must have been a madman”. With her brutal murder reported in detail in the local (and some national) newspapers, the barbarism of her injuries sickened and shocked the community, many demanded the reintroduction of the death penalty, and lead detective DS John Kemp stated “this is one of the most savage and senseless killings I have come across”, but it would prove impossible to solve without a single witness to her murder. Fingerprints were found at the scene but they didn’t match any known felon, the Police hadn’t a single suspect, and having taken 390 statements and interviewed 75 people, they were no clearer to a name or a motive “as it seems likely that it was someone who had come here to kill, not to steal or assault”. A service took place for Barbara at Chelsea Old Church on 6th of December 1984. At the inquest almost a year later, coroner, Dr Paul Knappman asked DS Kemp “is an arrest imminent?”, but he had to admit “not in the immediate future”. Detectives warned any pensioners living alone in Battersea to take all precautions and to not let any strangers into their homes, as they were sure he would attack again… …and almost exactly a year later, he did. Little is known about her early life, even her birth name or her hometown, but 86-year-old widow Henrietta Osbourne, known as ’Peggy’ was the epitome of this particular attacker’s perfect victim. Like Barbara, she was small, but being frail, partially-blind and almost totally deaf, she was housebound, she had few visitors beyond a social worker, and spent many hours a day sitting in an armchair, beside the fire, listening to her music played too loud, and again, this meant that there were no witnesses. Again, as with Barbara, she had received no strange visitors or calls prior, she wasn’t worried and living in the Lumley Flats, part of the Ebury Estate on Passmore Street in Chelsea – a mile north of Barbara’s - inside she felt safe and secure in a tastefully decorated, modestly wealthy flat, surrounded by others. Henrietta was quiet, unassuming and private, just an old frail lady whiling away her final years alive. Again, no-one knows exactly when she was attacked on Saturday 27th of October 1985, as the last time she was seen alive was at noon on her doorstep as she collected her milk, bread and papers. With no sign of a break in, it’s likely her door was accidentally left unlocked, hence why it was chosen. We also know she didn’t let anyone in, as being deaf she never heard the doorbell, and she was already in bed. Neighbours stated they heard a bang at around 2am, but thought nothing of it. The room was lightly ransacked; with a few pound notes scattered on the floor and ornaments and furniture knocked over (possibly as the attacker fled), but burglary seemed uncertain, as roughly £1000 in cash (£4000 today) was found in the flat, untouched, and yet, a 10-inch Japanese earthenware vase from the 1920s was stolen, and even though it was rare, it was only worth £50. But the killer may not have known that? What seemed strange was that the burglary of her sitting room was brief and chaotic, yet he spent an inordinate amount of time in her bedroom, torturing Henrietta, out of sadism, hatred, or maybe both? As before, with one hand, he strangled her, as with the other, possibly using his fist, he kept battering this helpless and disabled old lady until her face was bruised, bloody and a swollen pulp. Again, with her slumped to the ground and barely conscious, he repeatedly kicked her, and even stamped on her to the point where one of the vertebrae of her spine had cracked. But he still wasn’t finished with her. As he had with Barbara using a knitting needle, in a sadistic detail deliberately left out of the press to trap her killer, into her neck he had stabbed a ball point pen, and left it embedded within. Then, to terrorise and cause her immense pain, either a thin knife or a chopstick had been rammed between her eyelid and her eyeball – perhaps to make her tell him where he money was, or maybe just for fun? For minutes, or possibly hours, she endured a prolonged excruciating agony and terror, never knowing if he would let her live. But even that wasn’t the end. On her bed, he vaginally raped this 86-year-old widow, then turned her over and anally raped her. And while she was still face down and bleeding, he repeatedly stabbed her through both lungs so she couldn’t breathe or scream, and set fire to the bed. Her murder was yet another massacre of a frail old lady by a maniac, who vanished without a trace. At 8am the next morning, a neighbour noticed smoke coming from the ventilator grille above the front door of Henrietta’s flat, the caretaker called the fire brigade, and in her bedroom, her body was found; still smouldering after several hours, the lower half of her body – her legs, anus and genitals – were destroyed by fire, taking with it much of the evidence, but with multiple stab wounds to her chest and at least two of the weapons used to torture her still in her neck and face, detectives were called in. As before, the most sensational details of the case were reported by the press, some were deliberately left out (those only the killer would know), and with this being “potentially linked” by detectives to the murder of Barbara Pinder, the tabloid papers had dubbed him ‘The Saturday Night Slaughterer’. This investigation was headed-up by Detective Chief Superintendent Bill Carnie, but as before, it looked unlikely to be solved; as the murder weapon (a 6 inch knife) was missing, no-one was seen entering or leaving her flat, a set of fingerprints were found but never connected to a known felon, and even as a nationwide murder hunt was launched and the case garnered mainstream coverage, DCS Carnie stated “we are taking it very seriously the possibility that they could all be connected”… …as in the intervening weeks, four other women were attacked on neighbouring streets. Several elderly women on the Lillington Gardens estate had been beaten, stabbed and robbed, with random outbreaks of arson at several homes of lone women across the previous year. On the Sunday before Henrietta’s killing, an unnamed female pensioner was attacked on her doorstep by a stockily-built man in his 30s, who asked to be let in to “watch her television”. She escaped with just bruises. Yet, on Tuesday 30th of July 1985, on Warwick Way in Pimlico, Eileen McCarthy, a 60 year old cleaner was approached by a man – aged 35 to 40, 5 foot 10, straight black hair, stocky build, round face, wearing a white sleeveless denim jacket, a light blue shirt and a dark coat – at 5:45pm near the junction of Belgrave Road, with no premeditation and having never seen him before, in a swift and frenzied attack, he stabbed three times in the face. Not slashing, not cutting, but stabbing her with such ferocity, detectives described it as “plunging the knife in, and literally ripping it apart, until it broke the back of her skull”. She screamed, he fled, and taken to hospital, she slowly made a good recovery. At Westminster Coroner’s Court, Dr Paul Knapman declared that Henrietta’s murder was “particularly macabre… no motive is apparent and it is most disturbing that no one has been caught or convicted of this crime. It would have been far preferable if it had not had an inquest, but a murder trial instead”. And as the case stalled, the killings of Henrietta Osbourne and Barbara Pinder remained unsolved... …until a killer who wanted to be caught, confessed. But why? One year after Henrietta’s murder, on 30th of June 1986, Police in Pimlico arrested a man who’d broken into the flats of two elderly neighbours on nearby Page Street, and for no reason, set fire to their beds. 32-year-old David McKenzie had lived in London for years, but was born in 1954 in the Scottish city of Inverness, and raised in Dundee. Described as stocky and powerfully built, McKenzie’s education was limited, as being diagnosed aged 6 with a non-specific personality disorder, since 1976, he had been asking doctors “I want to be somewhere not in the community… in prison or a hospital”, as with no control over his actions, he told one psychiatrist about his sexual deviancy and his hatred of women. In his teens and twenties, he had worked in hotels and as a hospital porter, but unemployed at the time of his arrest, he was known as a prolific (if unskilled and unremarkable) burglar. For the last few years, McKenzie had lived at Dukes House, a council run tenement block on Vincent Road in Pimlico in the shadow of Big Ben and at the back of the houses where he had set fire to two old lady’s beds. He wasn’t a suspect in either killing, as being mentally unwell, his arrest resulted in him being put on a ‘hospital order’ (so instead of serving prison time, he’d be held at a psychiatric hospital) as he was deemed ‘a danger to the public’, as on 26th of June 1986 (three months before Henrietta’s killing), in his flat, this a self confessed paedophile indecently assaulted, raped and buggered a 14-year-old girl. Charged with rape, when later questioned about the fires, on the 16th of August 1986, McKenzie spent hours saying nothing, not even replying ‘no comment’ to the detectives questions, as the balding, 17 stone hulk sat there, staring. But it was as he was asked (possibly jokingly) “do you have anything else to say in your defence?”, that overpowered with the weight of guilt, he made a startling confession. He said “I want to tell you about the old lady”, and unaided, this blabbermouth confessed to Barbara Pinder’s murder and according to detectives “he revealed details only the killer could have known”. On the 29th of August 1986, David McKenzie was charged at Horseferry Road Magistrates Court, and while held on remand, again to the detectives he said “I want to tell you about the other old lady”. He confessed to the killing of Henrietta Osbourne, and on the 14th of November 1986, he was charged. A killer was caught, two murders were solved, the elderly women in Battersea and Pimlico were safe from a monster, and even though he never said why he did it, it concluded because he felt ashamed. In his interviews with the detectives, finally talking, the blabbermouth was open and frank about his heinous crimes, which he recounted unemotionally as if he was reading a set of instructions, yet his head hung low in shame and his eyes were etched in guilt. When asked, he couldn’t give any motive, and although his recollection was accurate and proved he was there, he had some glaring errors in his memory, but maybe this was caused by drink or drugs, fear or shame, or his limited mental capacity. But the paedophile, sadist and double-killer David McKenzie wouldn’t immediately go on trial, as being sent to Broadmoor Psychiatric Prison to be assessed, as a psychopathic paranoid schizophrenic, he wasn’t deemed mentally fit to plead for three years. His confession was worth its weight in gold, but as six psychiatrists gave differing opinions on whether he actually knew the difference between reality or fantasy, fact or fiction, as in his mind, all of the details blurred into one, even in his own retelling. While confessing to killing Henrietta, McKenzie said “I’ve spoken to my brother, Danny, and he asked me if I did it alone, I said ‘no’”. He then named his accomplice - a fellow burglar, a friend and an old flatmate – who was later arrested, but released without charge, as there was no evidence against him. In his statement, McKenzie said “I intended to steal, I never meant her any harm”, but as she opened the door to him, so he claimed “I pushed her back, put my hand over her face, at this time I had a knife in my hand”, and with his supposed accomplice “we argued about what to do with her… it was him, he took the knife out of my hand and hit the old lady with it. We started looking about the flat… then we both raped her”, although that evidence was all destroyed by fire. But was McKenzie a psychopath who only cared about himself and was hoping to reduce his charge by blaming his friend, or a fantasist who couldn’t tell the truth from a dream, and the facts about his heinous crimes were lost in his mind? On 12th of January 1990, the trial for both arson attacks, the 14-year-old’s rape and the murders of Barbara Pinder & Henrietta Osbourne began at the Old Bailey, before Judge Kenneth Richardson QC. With Robin Grey QC as his defence, McKenzie pleaded ‘guilty’ to arson and five counts of unlawful sex with a child, but ‘not guilty’ to both murders. Given his mental state, much of the evidence was based around whether he calculatedly killed both women, or whether he was not mentally responsible. In his opening statement, John Bevan QC said “the facts you are about to hear are, without exception, unpleasant and abhorrent. It’s a most distressing case. It is essential that you put emotion entirely to one side and steel yourself to consider the evidence coldly and dispassionately. There is no doubt that he is a strange person. Sometimes what he says may not be true. He has his own motives for making things up and telling lies. As the prosecution, we accept he has a personality disorder. He is suggestible, and imagines things to be true when they are not. That does not prevent him from being a murderer”. Whereas his defence counsel stated “there was not one shred of evidence besides the confession to link him to the killings”, but McKenzie himself was never in court, except to give his evidence, stating “I find it upsetting to be here. It makes me feel guilty”, so he stayed inside his cell at Brixton Prison. Hearing the evidence, a jury of seven women and five men found him ‘not guilty’ of the murders of Barbara Pinder and Henrietta Osbourne, but ‘guilty’ of manslaughter by diminished responsibility. Summing up, Judge Kenneth Richardson QC described McKenzie as “one of Britain’s most dangerous killers… you have been found guilty of two of the most appalling killings I can recall. I am quite certain you are a frighteningly dangerous man”. Sentenced on the 30th of March 1990, Judge Richardson said “You will remain at Rampton High Security Hospital until such time that it’s absolutely clear to those responsible for your care and release that you are no longer a danger to the public”. Held under Sections 37 and 41 of the Mental Health Act 1983, David McKenzie remains there today after 36 years. (False end) But those weren’t the only crimes he confessed to. Having told detectives about the two ‘old ladies’ he had murdered – being born and bred in Scotland, struggling with psychopathic schizophrenia, being a sadist, an arsonist, a rapist and a paedophile with a hatred of women – as he had with Barbara & Henrietta, before the detectives, once again, the blabbermouth began to speak. In a scattergun retelling, like his fractured memory was grasping at fragments of clues lost in the foggy mists of his mind, he confessed to a wealth of other unsolved murders, retelling them in full detail. He had murdered a 27-year-old man in Hertfordshire, a 79-year-old woman in Shropshire, an 11-year-old girl on Scottish border, a five year old girl in Edinburgh, and with two stabbings of victims who – like 60-year-old Eileen McCarthy, the cleaner who was randomly stabbed in the face in an unprovoked attack in Pimlico – had survived, a senior detective stated “he may, some day, give us the information we want to close the files on these dreadful events which have haunted so many people for so long”. Guilt can be a strange thing, as with two brutal unsolved murders, what began with a silent man sitting passively in an interrogation room, guilty of rape and arson but saying nothing, led detectives to a self-confessed serial killer and a series of unsolved murders across the UK, totalling ten or even twelve. Part two of two of The Blabbermouth concludes next week. The Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast has been researched using the original declassified police investigation files, court records, press reports and as many authentic sources as possible, which are freely available in the public domain, including eye-witness testimony, confessions, autopsy reports, first-hand accounts and independent investigation, where possible. But these documents are only as accurate as those recounting them and recording them, and are always incomplete or full of opinion rather than fact, therefore mistakes and misrepresentations can be made. As stated at the beginning of each episode (and as is clear by the way it is presented) Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast is a 'dramatisation' of the events and not a documentary, therefore a certain amount of dramatic licence, selective characterisation and story-telling (within logical reason and based on extensive research) has been taken to create a fuller picture. It is not a full and complete representation of the case, the people or the investigation, and therefore should not be taken as such. It is also often (for the sake of clarity, speed and the drama) presented from a single person's perspective, usually (but not exclusively) the victim's, and therefore it will contain a certain level of bias and opinion to get across this single perspective, which may not be the overall opinion of those involved or associated. Murder Mile is just one possible retelling of each case. Murder Mile does not set out to cause any harm or distress to those involved, and those who listen to the podcast or read the transcripts provided should be aware that by accessing anything created by Murder Mile (or any source related to any each) that they may discover some details about a person, an incident or the police investigation itself, that they were unaware of.
Seven time nominated BEST BRITISH TRUE-CRIME PODCAST at the True Crime Awards, Independent Podcast Award and The British Podcast Awards, and voted 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation Top 20 True-Crime Podcasts, also seen on BBC Radio, Sky News, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week.
Woodchester Square, London, W2
EPISODE THREE HUNDRED AND FORTY-SIX: On Monday the 24th of September 2018, an unnamed couple parked-up outside of Princethorpe House in Woodchester Square in Paddington, W2. The man was kidnapped, driven across London, and then in an unspecified bathroom on Fulham Palace Road, he was tortured using acid. But how did acid become the weapon of choice for many London gangs? Find out on Murder Mile.
SOURCES: a selection sourced from various archives:
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UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: How did acid become the weapon of choice for many London gangs? Find out on Murder Mile. Today, I’m standing on Woodchester Square in Paddington, W2; two streets west of the decapitated head of the alleged Algerian lover, two streets north of the second killing by London’s forgotten gay slayer, 100 yards from where Marta Ligman’s body was found in a suitcase floating in the canal, and the same square as the son who killed his parents to protect his dogs - coming soon to Murder Mile. Completed in 1962 as part of the post-war regeneration of London’s decimated housing, Woodchester Square prominently features two 21-story, 200 foot tall, residential tower blocks between the Grand Union Canal at Little Venice and the A404 Westway, a very busy carriageway. Covered in silver panels, concrete and glass, on the architects page it was probably hailed as ‘a vision of the future’, but now with tacky shell-suits hanging off the balconies, rusty satellite dishes only able to pick up Sputnik, and a line of 1990s hot-hatches blasting out drum n bass, it looks like ‘a blurry hangover from the past’. Comprising of 127 flats, it is home for hundreds of people, but for one couple in particular, it was the scene of a terrifying experience, which left them mentally scarred and one, physically injured for life. In 2018, Woodchester Square was one of far too many public places in London where criminal gangs used acid as a weapon, leaving their intended victims either disfigured, disabled and dead. And even though it seems like a modern affectation in their arsenal of hate, it has a long and troubling history. But why is it used, how did we make it easier for those who abuse it, and what can be done to stop it? My name is Michael, I am your tour guide, and this is Murder Mile. Episode 346: Vitriol – The London Acid Attacks. On Monday the 24th of September 2018, while Britain was seething about Putin owing to the Novichok poisoning in Salisbury, bickering over Theresa May’s failed ‘Chequer’s plan’ over Brexit, and sweating having endured the ‘hottest summer on record’ (now since beaten), it was a long hot night in this side of the city, and all that could be heard was the rush of traffic and the hum of basic air-conditioning. That evening, a couple (unnamed for safety reasons) had gone out for dinner, they’d had a pleasant night, and being a few months pregnant, they were eagerly awaiting the arrival of their child. Driving home, all they had on their minds was the essentials of their new life; cots, cribs, nappies and rattles. At exactly 9pm, they pulled up in their parking spot in the concrete car park outside of Princethorpe House in Woodchester Square, where the pregnant woman lived. Like all homes, she felt safe as they got out of the car and her boyfriend began to walk her to her flat, as he had done many times before… …but safety is only an illusion. We don’t know why they were targeted - as fearing reprisals on themselves, their family and friends, the couple never gave a statement to the Police and never identified any of the suspects – but it wasn’t believed to be personal or business, just profit, as they drove a nice car and wore expensive jewellery. From a parked van, the doors slid open, and a gang of five men wearing balaclavas burst out. Muffling the mouths of this terrified couple with their gloved-hands, as both were dragged kicking and trying to scream into the van, the pregnant woman broke free and managed to flee, but with her boyfriend being the main target of their pointless little heist, roaring swiftly away, within seconds, he was gone… …but taken by who, where to, and why? Whether the plan had gone awry having only kidnapped one of them is uncertain, but with him bound and blindfolded in the back of the van, being beaten black and blue, he was driven across West London for more than four hours; never knowing where he was, where he was going, or if he would even live to see his baby born, and although this must have absolutely terrified him, the worst was yet to come. The gang were five pointless, petty thieves who had made a life for themselves by bringing misery to many, and although, they gave a wealth of excuses about why they’d turned to crime, such as austerity or abandonment (hardships which millions navigate without being leeches on the backside of society), this wasn’t a crime to feed their family, but their drug habits, fragile egos and dreams of a thug life. They were 36-year-old Aston Rochester of Chaplin Road in Harrow, his 31-year-old brother Denzil, 23-year-old Jamal Gordon-Harris of Dart Street in Kilburn, 27-year-old Rennell Rutty of Creighton Close in White City, and 40-year-old Bradley Evans of Fulham Palace Road - five friends with criminal records. Back in 2007, when he was tried at Southwark Crown Court, Denzil Rochester was described by the Harrow Times, his local paper as part of “a gang of drug-addicted robbers”, off-their-faces on cocaine. With 15 others, in a four-month spree in which they targeted five branches of Ladbrokes betting shops a day anywhere from Yorkshire to Devon, they would swarm around a Cash Quest gambling machine, split the cover on the terminal and fool it into printing vouchers which could be exchanged for cash. In total, they stole £55,000, and if even one of them had bothered to get a GSCE in maths, they’d have worked out that the haul divided by 16 only adds up to £3500 each, and with the job having taken 120 days, that earns them £30 a day, not including the cost of fuel, food and hotels. Their time would have been better spent sitting on their arses, watching telly, earning £15 a day in unemployment benefits. But with the average cocaine addict spending £120 a day, their frazzled brains didn’t think that way. All 16 were arrested, with Denzil Rochester jailed for a year, and the others; Mark Riley, Stephen Koya, Christopher Melim, Ashley Hutchinson, Shane McCleod, Lee Johnston, David Carey and Sean Murphy, serving anywhere up-to 12 months in prison, a community order or put on a drug treatment program. But did this stop them from committing further crimes? No, as the law is ineffective and slow to react. They all had prior convictions, being petty criminals who plagued the streets for their own selfish gain – like in 2014, when Rennell Rutty was stopped by police and four wraps of crack cocaine fell from his trouser leg, when searched six more fell out, and like a crap Santa, while in custody, several more fell from his body like his arse was a drug dispenser – and although he was convicted of intent to supply Class A drugs such as crack and heroin, sentenced to two years in prison, even though PC Nick Lee said “I am pleased that a drug dealer has been taken off the streets of Brent”, did it stop him for good? No, as too often the law is merely a minor obstacle for criminals for a brief period of time. The same is said of the weapons they use; sometimes it’s guns, sometimes it’s knives, and sometimes it’s acid. Three years before the kidnapping at Woodchester Square, a similar attack occurred which had all the hallmarks of the other; kidnap, extortion and violence, but as the culprits were never caught, it can’t be determined if this heinous crime was committed by the same gang, or some of the same members. In early April 2015, 20-year-old Economics student Motaz Zaid was involved in a minor collision while driving his car, and instead of exchanging insurance details, the other driver threatened him with violence if he didn’t pay him £400, which he did – this was little more than a ‘crash for cash’ scam. A week later, on the 10th of April, while out with his friend at 12:40am at St Marks Close, West London, his friend was stabbed, and being dragged to a silver Mercedes C220 Estate, Motaz was blindfolded, bound and driven around the city for hours to disorientate him. Pulling up at Beverley Way in Kingston, they tortured him for money; they beat him, they pulled his ears with pliers, they made him swallow ammonia, and they sprayed his face with acid. Minutes later, a passing police patrol saw the car with the boot open, they gave chase and lost to target vehicle, but Motaz was found and taken to hospital. Motaz was placed in intensive care, given police protection, and was in a coma owing to his pain and infected skin. His father Azz said ”We don't know if his vision is affected. Doctors say it is very serious. He woke up today but he cannot speak, his throat is very damaged. He can only point. My heart is broken when I see my son like that. I can't believe anyone could do that to another human being". Only these weren’t humans who attacked Motaz… …but animals, and sadly, they were never caught. This has become a phenomenon, “as the UK has one of the highest rates of acid attacks per capita in the world” according to Acid Survivors Trust International, with recorded attacks increasing nearly three-fold from 228 in 2012 to 601 in 2016, with 2017 being the worst ever year so far for acid attacks. “Unlike in other countries, where 80 per cent of acid attacks are against women, in the UK most victims are men”, ASTI says. Gang disputes are said to be behind the rise, with half of all UK attacks in London. Dr Simon Harding of Middlesex University said “acid was once a weapon of last resort, but may now be the first”, with many gang members swapping guns and knives for acid as it’s hard to monitor. Back in 2018, gun owners were required to have thorough background, criminal and medical checks, a 5-year licence, a "good reason" to own a gun (such as sport or farming), with handguns largely banned. Knives require the owner to have a valid ID and a registered address for legal online purchases, but in 2018, there were no ID checks or age restrictions on the sale of acid; a child could buy sulphuric acid, as long as it wasn’t stronger than a 15% solution, which could still disfigure, disable and kill. We made these weapons simple and easy for gangs and any wannabe killer to buy, they have a devastating impact on the victims, but (unlike other weapon) had no ramifications for someone caught carrying it. Anyone illegally possessing of a knife in the UK may receive an unlimited fine, a training order for youths, or up to four years in prison. Illegally possessing a gun carries a mandatory five-year minimum sentence with a maximum of seven. Whereas acid had no specific legislation on its sale, or its impact. The same year as the kidnap in Woodchester Square, three months before on the 13th of July 2018, a devasting spree of acid attacks across East London was committed not by a dangerous criminal gang… …but by one boy. 17-year-old Derryck John was the passenger on a moped which trawled Stratford, Hackney, Shoreditch and Upper Clapton (an East London street given the dubious monicker of the ‘Murder Mile’), and in a 90-minute spree, they stole two mopeds and attempted to take another four, using acid as a weapon. At 9:30pm, at the junction of Penny Brookes Street and De Coubertin Street in Stratford, he threw acid in the face of a 69-year-old moped rider, and after a terrifying foot chase, she managed to get away. At 10:25pm, on the corner of Queensbridge Road and Hackney Road, 32-year-old Jabed Hussain, an Uber food delivery driver had acid, possibly ammonia, thrown through the open visor of his helmet. His bike was stolen, he suffered severe facial burns and breathing problems after he was attacked, and unable to return to work and provide for his family, Jabed said he became “a totally different man". And even though Jabed was left writhing in pain, the acid attackers didn’t stop their spree. 24 minutes later at 10:49pm, a 44-year-old was sprayed with acid on St Paul's Road in Islington, but nothing was stolen. At 11:05pm on Shoreditch High Street, a 52-year-old man was splashed, but they failed to steal his bike. At 11:18pm on Cazenove Road in Upper Clapton, 24-year-old Bruno Goncalves was sprayed, and at 11:37pm, on Chatsworth Road in Lower Clapton, a 33-year-old man was attacked. All were injured, physically and mentally, with one of the victims was left with "life-changing injuries". Giving evidence, Bruno Goncalves said he was stopped at a red light in Upper Clapton Road. He didn’t see it happen, but felt it splash as Derryck John sprayed acid in his face and eyes from an Evian bottle. Like cowards, they fled when he fought back, and although an ambulance was called, he was treated at a specialist hospital, but with his eye having turned black as 70% of the cells had been burnt, being left in excruciating pain, even though his sight returned, he couldn’t afford the £150 it cost every fortnight in painkillers and medication to heal him, so he had to give up his job as a food delivery rider. Oddly, even though Derryck John had no compassion for any of his victims, as he went to buy £5 worth of fuel at the Texaco petrol station on Mare Street in Hackney, he obeyed the law which said you mustn’t wear a helmet inside of a petrol station, and the CCTV caught an image of his face and clothes. Tried at Wood Green Crown Court in January 2018, found guilty of six counts of throwing a corrosive liquid with intent to “disable, burn, maim, disfigure or cause grievous bodily harm”, with two counts of robbery and four counts of attempted robbery, Judge Noel Lucas said “if you had been an adult, you would have received a sentence of 22 years”. Instead, he was jailed for 10 and a half, with three in a young offenders institute “and half your sentence in custody, then you will be released on licence”. It’s likely he is out already, and his unidentified associate who drove the bike remains at large. But it’s not just career criminals who use acid as an easy and readily-available weapon. As examples across just 2017: on the 1st of April, Arthur Collins threw acid at 20 people in a nightclub called Mangle E8. Leaving many with permeant scars, he claimed it was the date rape drug, GHB (as if that’s any better), and although he professes his innocence, he was sentenced to 20 years in prison. On the 27th of July, Katie Leong scarred her boyfriend, 31-year-old Daniel Rotariu for life and left him blind, as having rejected her sexual advances, while he slept, she poured acid into his face and eyes. She was convicted of his attempted murder and was sentenced to 17 years in prison for the attack. Legislation is always slow to catch up. If some people get hurt, there’s a chance that the issue will be raised in parliament, but it may only become law when enough people die and society demands it. In September 2015, 29-year-old Dutch engineer Mark van Dongen was left blinded and paralysed from the neck down as well as losing his left leg, eye and an ear, when his ex-lover Berlinah Wallace hurled concentrated sulphuric acid in his face as he slept in Bristol. Having begged doctors to end his life, on the 2nd of January 2017, having chosen to die at a euthanasia clinic in Belgium, in a landmark case, his attacker was found guilty of throwing a corrosive substance with intent, and sentenced to 12 years. But still the law which legislates against the sale and use of acid as a weapon… … isn’t a modern issue we’re facing for the first time, but a very old one. Vitriol, it’s a word we all understand, meaning ‘bitter criticism or malice’, but it’s origins stem back to the archaic word for sulphuric acid, first produced on an industrial scale in England in the 1740s. For centuries, Vitriol was used as a common bleach and cleaning agent, but being so easy to obtain, during the labour disputes of the industrial revolution in the 1820s and 30s, acid was increasingly common as a weapon used by workers against their managers, with The Glasgow Herald in 1834 describing the crime as "throwing vitriol" and becoming so common that it was "a stain on the national character". This came off the back of another case, when in February that year, a man called Hugh Kennedy was hung for “throwing vitriol wilfully and maliciously” on the face of a fellow servant as he slept. The man awoke in agony with “one of his eyes being literally burned out!” The people demanded change, and said “no punishment could be too severe… we would have their arms cut off by the shoulders, and send them to roam as outcasts from society, without the power of throwing vitriol again”, and even though some laws were changed, it was ineffective and would remain so for almost another 200 years. Still today, the term vitriolage means to throw acid or a corrosive substance into the face of another person to disfigure, maim or kill, and yet, even in 2018, the laws around it were equally as archaic. So, what has this got to do with the kidnap on the couple at Woodchester Square? On the night of Monday the 24th of September 2018, at exactly 9pm, a nameless couple (their bellies full of food and a baby) pulled up in their usual spot in the concrete car park outside of the 21-storey tower block at Princethorpe House. They got out, he locked up and pocketed the key, and being easily 30 feet from the communal doors of the flats, they felt safe, but then again, safety is only an illusion. From a parked van, four of the gang of five wearing balaclavas grabbed the couple, she kicked off and fled, and with the man dragged into the back, in a plume of dusty gravel, the van was gone in seconds. Bound, blindfolded and terrified, the man was kept pinned down by Aston Rochester, Jamal Gordon-Harris, Rennell Rutty and Bradley Evans, as Denzil Rochester drove the van across the city for the next four hours; the man never knowing if he’d live or die, breathe his last, or be buried whole or in pieces. At some point, somewhere, he was bundled into the rear footwell of a car where again, he was beaten, the van was set alight, and the car was driven by Evans to his home in Fulham Palace Road by 1:15am. Whether they knew him or not was irrelevant, as this wasn’t about hatred or revenge, all what they wanted was his money. They may not even have known how much he was worth, or whether they simply assumed he was minted because he drove a flash car, wore designer clothes and flashy jewellery, but inside this unidentified flat on Fulham Palace Road, they would make him beg for them to stop. Across the next 12 hours, with his wrists and ankles bound and his mouth gagged with tape, they took it in turns to beat and strangle him to the point of death, and then, having dragged him to the bath, they poured acid upon the bare exposed flesh of his naked body, it fizzing as it ate through the layers. Acid is a horrible weapon; when poured on exposed skin, initially the skin fights off the acid by causing a numbness, but that is only temporary, as being so caustic, acids like sulphuric can penetrate all the layers of the skin causing second and third-degree burns. With skin being 64% water, when acid hits it, a strong exothermic reaction occurs generating heat and thermal burns causing the skin to redden, blister, peel and with the acid causing coagulation necrosis (also known as tissue death) resulting in a dark brown or greeny-black scab, this masks the depth of the underlying damage caused by the acid. But acid burns aren’t just cosmetic resulting in permanent scarring, they can also cause tissue damage, muscle loss, restricted movement, ulcers, chronic inflammation, a high risk of infection, organ failure, paralysis, blindness and irreversible damage to other senses as well as coma and death owing to shock. Gangs use it as a weapon, as not only is it cheap to buy and unregulated (unlike guns and knives), but it causes excruciating pain, distress and terror across a very long and lingering torture. It leaves scars, which are a reminder for the victim and a warning to others. And although the man was hideously burned by the acid, he either couldn’t or wouldn’t give up his money, so the gang took it s step further. On a burner phone, they called his mother and demanded money. He was in pain, he was screaming, he told her that he feared for his life, and although she transferred £6000, roughly £1200 each to his five hapless captors, having demanded a second payment but with no more money to send, they had his mother leave his gold Rolex watch on the tyre of his car still parked where the attack took place. Evans drove to Woodchester Square, Gordon-Harris grabbed the watch and they sped away. As agreed they dumped the man (with his skin blistered and bubbling) on the roadside, and spotted by a passerby he was taken to hospital, where his condition was listed as critical, but lived, his outcome is unknown. The gang thought they had planned the perfect heist, but criminals gangs aren’t the smartest. They abducted a rich man who wasn’t rich, for an amount of money which for each of them added up to less than the minimum monthly wage. Having threatened them, neither the man nor his girlfriend gave a statement for fear of reprisals, and although the robbers wore balaclavas and burned out the car and the van destroying any fingerprints and DNA, meaning the acid-strewn flat and bathtub at Fulham Palace Road couldn’t be found. But… as Jamal Gordon-Harris collected the Rolex from the car’s tyre, it was captured on CCTV, as was his face, and the car, and the car’s driver being Evans, and even though the licence plate was false, identifying those two led to their other known associates. (End) Jamal Gordon-Harris & Rennell Rutty were arrested after grabbing the Rolex, Denzil & Aston Rochester were arrested at home that same day, with Bradley Evans arrested weeks later on the 31st of October. Following a six-week trial at Harrow Crown Court, with evidence provided by the Met Police’s Modern Slavery and Kidnap Unit, all five of the gang denied the charge of conspiracy to kidnap, but on Friday the 12th of July 2019, they were all found guilty. Aston Rochester to 11 years and 3 months, his brother Denzil and Rennell Rutty to 9 years and 9 months, Jamal Gordon-Harris to 10 years and 3 months, and Bradley Evans to 10 years and 9 months. With it costing £53,000 a year to prison them, it will cost the UK tax-payer £2.75 million excluding legal fees, and all because these idiots stole £6000 and a watch. In 2017, one year before, Home Secretary Amber Rudd told the Tory Party Conference: “acid attacks are revolting. You have all seen the pictures of victims that never fully recover. Endless surgeries. Lives ruined. We are going to stop people carrying acid in public if they don’t have a good reason”. With the introduction of the Offensive Weapons Act 2019, this made it “illegal to carry a corrosive substance in a public place in the UK without good reason or lawful authority”. This law brought acid in line with the possession of knives in a public place and anyone caught “could be imprisoned for up to 4 years”. An age restriction of 18 has been set on all corrosive products, police have powers to stop and search anyone suspected of unlawfully carrying acid without a good reason (such a being a plumber), and sulphuric acid at a concentration above 15% requires a Home Office licence. And the use of acid as a weapon can lead to severe charges, such as GBH with intent, which can result in a life sentence. Initially, the Offensive Weapons Act 2019 saw a 70% decrease of acid attacks in the UK from 2019 to 2021, which may partially have been down to the pandemic, but 2022 showed a 70% increase in cases with a further increase of 75% in 2023. As it was 200 years ago, the laws around “throwing vitriol” are as archaic and ineffective as before, the use of corrosive substances isn’t as regulated as it needs to be, so acid remains the weapon of choice of many London gangs. And it will be until the law changes. 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. 
Seven time nominated BEST BRITISH TRUE-CRIME PODCAST at the True Crime Awards, Independent Podcast Award and The British Podcast Awards, and voted 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation Top 20 True-Crime Podcasts, also seen on BBC Radio, Sky News, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week.
The Marriott at 134 George Street in Marylebone / Paddington @Googlemaps Sept2022
EPISODE THREE HUNDRED AND FORTY-TWO: On Sunday 28th of March 2004 at 8.20pm, Police were called to either Room 701 or 703 at The Marriott Hotel at 134 George Street near Marble Arch, London, W1. Concerned for the guest, he was found naked, in the bath, in what looked like it could have been an accident or a suicide. It had all the hallmarks of a professional hit by experienced assassins of the Russian Mafia who were hired to whack-out a rival for the sake of money, revenge or respect. Yet it ended with a cataclysmic cock-up which showed these hitmen to be truly incompetent.
SOURCES: a selection sourced from various archives:
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: What’s the stupidest mistake that professional assassins could make? Find out on Murder Mile. Today, I’m standing outside of The Marriott Hotel at 134 George Street, Marble Arch, W1; a few doors down from the senseless killing of artist Harry Michaelson, two streets north of the failed assassination of the ex-Iraqi Prime Minister Abd ar-Razzaq Said al-Naif, two streets south of The Blackout Ripper’s first official killing, and a short walk from the green-fingered maniac - coming soon to Murder Mile. Situated on the corner of George Street and Forset Street, a discrete side-street at the back of Edgware Road, The Marriott is a 4-star 13-floored hotel, as used by businessmen, tourists and a wealth of utter numpties who are in town to blow their dole money at the casinos. All dressed in a shiny gold suits (courtesy of Primark), they toss their £5 chips onto the table like it’s a cool million, evil eye their pie-eyed opponent (a bin man called Clive) like he’s an evil agent of Spectre, and hug two octogenarians honeys called Enid and Nora like they’re Bond Girls (obviously, not the most beautiful Bond girl, sigh). So, it makes no sense that the victim, an inveterate gambler who lived and died here, booked himself into this venue, being one of several large hotels in the area which didn’t have a casino – but he did. This was a cruel murder which initially baffled the police. It had all the hallmarks of a professional hit by experienced assassins who were hired to whack-out a rival for the sake of money, revenge or respect. Yet it ended with a cataclysmic cock-up which showed these hitmen to be truly incompetent. My name is Michael, I am your tour guide, and this is Murder Mile. Episode 342: The S-Hitmen. The day was Sunday, the date was the 28th of March 2004 and the time was 8.20pm. The newspapers were slim, as the main stories were Hurricane Catarina hitting Brazil and resulting in no casualties, the Hamas leader declaring war on the USA again, and the death of actor Peter Ustinov at the age of 82. Having been contacted by their colleagues at Kent Police, a patrol had arrived at The Marriott to do a ‘welfare check’ on one of the guests, unaware of what they would find. Staff had knocked on his door, but they got no reply. The room’s phone was rang, but again, nothing. And to preserve any forensics should a crime have been committed, the door to either Room 701 or 703 (depending on which source reported this story) was only opened by the manager with a pass key in the presence of the Police. There were no signs of a break-in, and the hotel’s key-card system confirmed he had entered his room earlier that morning at 9:54am, and that was the last time the key-card used, and he was seen alive. Inside, the room was a standard double, spacious and comfortable; the light and TV had been left on, the red and yellow sheets on the King sized bed were crumpled as if they had recently been slept in, but the duvet was empty and the suitcase was open and partially unpacked. The room was messy, which could have implied there had been a struggle, or as all hoteliers know, some customers are pigs. Across the pillow was patches of blood, as if the occupant had a severe nosebleed, and struggling to stem the flow, he had stumbled to the bathroom, stepping in his spilled fluids, and that was where he was found; naked, in the bath, up to his neck in a slightly pinkish water, stone cold and decidedly dead. 98,000 people die each year in hotel rooms across the world, with many 200 room hotels experiencing one or two deaths annually whether by sickness, accident, suicide, poisoning and very occasionally a murder, and although drowning due to an embolism was mooted, with this deemed ‘suspicious’ as his cause of death was uncertain, the room was forensically examined and an autopsy was ordered. The unidentified victim, a male in his mid 40s of Eastern European or Middle Eastern origin, bald with short greying hair, had been dead at the time his body was found for just over 12 hours. With blood and bath water in his airway, it was obvious he was alive when he bled, but close to dying by the time he had got into the bath, which made no sense at all, as how did he get there and how did he undress? The hot water of the bath had caused his skin to swell and redden, which had masked a series of faint bruises; some looked as if he had been grabbed, dragged, and others like he had been beaten by fists. With his blood and saliva found on the pillow’s underside, it was clear that he had been smothered, and manually strangled by possibly one or two people, and although by putting him in a hot bath, that had eradicated many of the forensic clues, four partial lines of ripped out hairs at the wrists and ankles and faint traces of adhesive suggested that he had bound with duct tape, removed after his death. The Pathologist concluded “he had not died by natural causes”, and with no witnesses to the killing or clue to his killers, Police determined this was a ‘professional hit’, most likely a mafia or gangland killing. And what baffled them further was the victim’s identity; as he had checked in using a Greek passport, he had an Israeli passport under the name of Yermia Yunataev and a Russian one under Simion Turkov. His identity was so confusing, his death was registered by the Westminster coroner twice under both names, but with his blood matching a profile on the DNA Database, his true ID was later confirmed. This was Simion Turkov. Born on the 17th of March 1958 in Russia, Simion Turkov known as Simon was raised in Cold War era Moscow, right through to the beginning of the collapse of Communism in the late 1980s and the slow dissolving of Soviet State in 1991 when democracy mistakenly seemed to have change Russia for good. Little is known about his early life, being raised by his father Ram and his mother Zinayda, we know he was university educated and had a smart business brain, but as one of 750,000 Russian Jews who fled the USSR as it collapsed, in 1989, he emigrated to Tel Aviv in Israel, set his parents up in a well-appointed flat in an industrial city 8 miles north-east of Tel Aviv, and descended back into criminality. On the surface, Turkov came across as charming, sociable, quick witted and flashy, a businessman who loved to gamble. But underneath, he was a prominent member of the émigré Russian mafia in Israel, who an intelligence source stated “he was very much a big player”. And yet he also lived a double life. Prior to fleeing Russia, in the mid to late 1980s, “Turkov had ambitions to break into London through his mafia contacts”, and keen to keep himself low-profile, he adopted the unassuming identity of a hardworking man. In the mid-1980s, he met Maureen McShane. In June 1987, they had daughter called Danielle, in April 1989 they married, and in February 1991, a second daughter called Mishka. With two loving children, a softly-spoken wife, a three-bedroomed semi detached stone-clad house at 15 Palmerston Road (a quiet residential street in Upton), driving an unremarkable Vauxhall Cavalier and earning a living as a doorman at the Victoria Sporting Club casino in Bournemouth, he seemed like any other émigré who’d come to England to make a better life for himself, living legally and honestly… …but although Poole, a pleasant coastal town in Dorset is famous for its stunning scenery across the English Channel, it is a port town equally as famous for its long history of piracy and smuggling. Turkov was a man with big plans who lived beyond his means, and having lost his job as a doorman at the casino, in 1991 at Bournemouth Crown Court, he was given a 12 months suspended sentence for two years for falsely obtaining over £18,000 worth of credit from Barclay’s, Club 24 and Allied Trust. Some he spent on a BMW, a TV and jewellery, but most was to pay off his ever escalating gambling debts. The Judge, Jeremy Gibbons said “gambling was his Achilles’ heel”, but so was money and crime. On the 14th of May 1996, having boarded the ferry at Cherbourg, Turkov and his friend, Brian Lawence, a market trader from Cosham, arrived at Poole ferry terminal having smuggled in the petrol tank of a Luxemburg registered Ford Scorpio, 26 kilos of cannabis resin worth £75,000 (or £154,000 today). At the same time, his friend, Alan Mohsen and a French colleague were driving a similar saloon and were stopped at the French/Spanish border with 31.5 kilos of resin – totalling £200,000 (£410,000 today). They were caught at a spot-check by a keen-eyed customs official who said “two men in a large saloon is very suspicious and saloon petrol tanks are popular with smugglers”. All four men were arrested and tried at Bournemouth Crown Court, but as would become his habit, on the 19th of February 1997, the last day of his trial, when his co-smugglers were sentenced to six years in prison, Turkov fled the court, and phoned his solicitor to say “I’m abroad. I’m not coming back. I can’t face a prison sentence”. Convicted in absentia, he fled to Tel-Aviv using a fake Israeli passport in the name of Yermia Yunataev, and abandoned his wife and children. But as a selfish greedy thief, Israel was where the money was. In the years leading up to the ‘second intifada’, the Israeli/Palestinian conflict beginning in September 2000, Israel had become a hot spot of organised crime, as with country ripped apart from car bombs, civil unrest and war, “the Israeli police had lost control of the country's organised criminals, who are making millions from gambling, prostitution and drugs”. Ex-Israeli police chief, Asaf Heretz, claimed $2.5bn in "dirty money" had had flooded into Israel, as where there’s war, there’s profit to be made. Turkov set up a fake Israeli company called BMD Ltd, which vaguely claimed to “import and export products and merchandise”, which wasn’t a lie just as it wasn’t strictly the truth, as according to the Evening Standard “he exported cocaine and heroin to Europe and Britain” and young women for sex. According to an informer, “(Turkov) brought in prostitutes from all over the world”, mostly from Eastern Russia and the Ukraine. He smuggled them in, gave them fake papers to “prove” their Jewish ancestry, he paid his suppliers £35,000 for each girl, and controlled four brothels with around 40 girls. Turkov was a greedy thief who only cared about himself… and although he was already married with two children, he bigamously married Denise Makdona, set her up in the flat he had arranged for his parents through his ill-gotten gains of drugs and sexual slavery, and made her the other Mrs Turkov. But time would soon run out for this cowardly narcissist. In 2001, as if he hadn’t brought enough misery to the world, Turkov tried smuggling 100,000 ecstasy tablets into Israel from Egypt, but cocking up, the cargo was seized, Turkov was sentenced to eight years at Tzalmon, the largest prison in Israel, and with the shipment owned by the Russian mafia having been destroyed, Turkov would be in debt to them until it was paid back with money or his life. He would be dead if he returned to Russia, tortured if he returned to Israel, and although a wanted man in Britain for drugs smuggling, in 2003, two years into his sentence, being allowed a home visit, this time abandoning his second wife, Denise, using his fake Greek passport, he fled back to England. According to an unnamed Israeli intelligence source: “London is seen as being safe (for criminals)… it is one of the organised crime centres of the world; Russian mafia, Albanian, Greek Cypriot, Columbian, and Israeli, who with the Russians are among the nastiest of the lot. In my view, Turkov had hoped to base himself in London and to restart his criminal career, well away from his old cronies in Tel Aviv”. One week after his birthday, on the St Partrick’s Day of 2004, using his fake Greek passport, Simion Turkov booked into The Marriott Hotel at 134 George Street in Marylebone, W1. He was meant to be keeping a low profile, but as a “big player on the London casino scene… he was very well known”. And again, as a selfish greedy pariah and a bloodsucking leech who sucked all the goodness and joy out of life’s heart – having abandoned his wife, his children, his parents and his bigamous wife – like a cartoon gangster, he lived with his Russian mistress in the hotels of Belgravia, he planned to bring his vile brothels to London, and he laid as low as he could as the Russian mafia wanted his head. Every day, he looked over his shoulder, expecting but never knowing if someone had been sent to kill him. But oddly, it wasn’t the gangsters, the pimps or the drug dealers who ordered his death… …but a rival gambler from Belgium called ‘Misha’, who he owed £200,000. As with all professional hitmen, almost nothing is known about them, as - unlike Turkov, the attention seeking champagne-swilling playboy gambler - their job is to stay off the radar and remain anonymous. The first was 31-year-old Andrei Melnikov, who looked more like a surfer than an assassin, and only appeared in the press twice in his early years; in 1993, when as an English teacher, he chaperoned a group of Russian school children on a 40-day placement in New Jersey, and in 1995, when as a hotdog vendor in Moscow, he spoke to the press about his disinterest in voting at the upcoming ‘free’ election. As for the second, 53-year-old Michael Antoneli, a businessman from Antwerp in Belgium, nothing is known about his life or his crimes, but both men were suspected (not proven) of being Russian mafia. On Saturday 27th of March 2004, a few hours before the killing, using fake but perfect passports, the hired assassins, Melnikov & Antoneli entered Britain via the ferry port at Dover, just before midnight. Their entry would go unnoticed by customs, they would deliberately break no laws (such as speeding) so as to not arouse any attention, and having murdered Turkov as agreed, they would head back to Calais in less than 24 hours, and using a non-descript day return ticket, they would vanish into Europe. They would be fast, efficient and low-key, they would meet him, and already knowing him, they would greet him as a friend, and under the guise of a business meeting, they’d kill him, making it look natural. That was their mantra; get in, get the job done, get out and be long gone before the body was found. In a phone box outside of The Marriott hotel, Melnikov called Turkov's mobile. Moments layer, Turkov arrived in a taxi, and according to the driver, he looked “anxious and agitated”. The CCTV captured the men meeting, and (to make him feel comfortable but maybe also for the cameras) they embraced him warmly like a friend, and the three of them went into The Pickled Hen, the hotel’s bar, where they sat drinking coffee and whiskey, reminiscing about old times, and generally having a very pleasant chat. As the night headed into the wee small hours of Sunday of 28th of March 2004, the three men headed to The Gloucester, a Grosvenor Casino inside the Millennium Hotel on Harrington Gardens in South Kensington, and being seen on CCTV walking together along Gloucester Road at 3:45am, this aroused no suspicion, as London can be a 24-hour city if you know where to look, and for many tourists, it is. Melnikov & Antoneli made Turkov feel comfortable, they got him drunk and they made sure he had a good night as a false sense of security, as if a hit hadn’t been placed on his head. They drank, but never to excess. They chatted but were never loud. They dressed down, and were never flashy. And only placing small bets, they were polite but forgettable to the casino staff, having blended into the crowd. At 9:05am, Turkov travelled back to The Marriott alone, the black ComCab arrived at 9.05am, and as he sat alone in the hotel lobby drinking coffee, at 9:50am, he took the lift to his room on the 7th floor… …and moments later, with no witnesses hearing a sound, Simion Turkov was murdered. With no damage to the door and with so many guests checking out at that hour, as no-one saw his assassins enter his room, either they had knocked and been invited in, or they’d acquired a spare key. Detective Chief Inspector Julian Worker who headed up the investigation, initially said "It was a very professional job and will be difficult to solve". In a public appeal, he stated "We are trying to piece together his last movements… (and) to trace the man seen walking with him along Gloucester Road in the early hours of Sunday morning. I am seeking a black Comcab driver who dropped Mr Turkov at the hotel at 9.05am. If you're a cab driver and were working in the area, do you recognise the two men? Did you pick them up? Even in the early hours of a Sunday, this is a busy part of London and I'm confident there are people who can help", as so far, they had done everything to remain anonymous. To solve the case, the detectives worked with local, national and international police forces, whether in Dorset, France or Israel, and although the killing of Simion Turkov had been ruthlessly planned to perfection, what aided the investigation most was a few simples mistakes by these half-witted hitmen. Inside of the room, Turkov was gagged, so nobody heard him scream. Having pinned him to the bed, with his ankles and wrists bound with duct tape, he couldn’t fight back, flee or knock anything over to alert the neighbours. And with the TV turned up to a moderate level, nothing seemed suspicious. As punishment for reneging on the £200,000 debt he owed ‘Misha’ in Belgium, he was beaten about the body in parts where the bruises wouldn’t be as obvious, and possibly tortured to give up the site of his money, but whether he did or whether he had any left is unknown, and for that, he was killed. One of his assassins held the pillow over his face so he couldn’t breathe. To ensure he would die, the other strangled him with his hand, pressing their thumb into his windpipe so as to not leave an obvious bruise of four fingers and a thumb. And with him bleeding and barely breathing, they stripped him of his blood-stained jeans, Versace belt and jacket, dragged his limp and lifeless body to the bath as he bled, and being barely conscious and unable to hold his head up straight, into the hot water, he sunk. Anyone who would have found him – lying there, maybe with a glass of whiskey, cocaine in his night-bag, bleeding from the nose and with no clear bruises – would assume that he’d overdosed and died. It was a textbook hit, which gave the assassins enough time to flee, as with it initially seen as suspicious but likely a suicide, the Police wouldn’t be looking for a killer. But several questions were unanswered by the crime scene; if he was unconscious, how did he get from the bed to the bath; why was his blood and saliva on the underside of the pillow; why did he have adhesive tape glue on his wrists and ankles; and – more bafflingly, given then fact that it looked as if he had a nose bleed and had drowned in the bath – why did he remove the hotel’s stationery from the room, how did he get in using the room key and where was it now, and how did he undress before entering the bath, and where were his clothes? Dead men don’t go to laundrettes… they also don’t dispose of their own rubbish. But these were small mistakes, innocent little slip-ups, which no-one would notice for hours, and by which time, with the unseen anonymous assassins already heading back to the Dover ferry port to catch their pre-arranged return trip back to Calais, and then into Europe, there they would vanish. Their escape was perfect. They left The Marriott at different times via separate exits, no later than an hour after the murder. Meeting at a pre-determined spot, far from any cameras, they drove away in a Mercedes they had rented for the day, and at a legal speed, they drove towards the ferry terminus. It was precision personified… and then, they made a massive cock-up. At the Tollgate service station near Gillingham in Kent, a small but serviceable petrol station on the A2 at Gravesend Road, Michael Runter was busy washing his car, when a Mercedes pulled up beside him, and in broad daylight, two men talking in Russian (which for many is odd enough) opened the car boot, and with one wearing bright yellow Marigold gloves on his hands (as if he had just been washing his dishes), he pulled out a yellow carrier bag, dumped it into the wheelie bin, and then they drove away. Hmm, either he was a germophobe with some rubbish to dispose of, or this was something sinister? Uncertain, Michael peeped inside the bin and spotting some bloodstained towels, he called the Police. Underneath the towels (used to clean-up the crime scene), forensics found a real treasure-trove of evidence, such as; Simion Turkov’s bloody clothes, a receipt for the hotel bar where they had shared a drink, a set of complimentary stationery, and – bafflingly of all – the key-card to the murder scene. As planned, the hitmen drove to Dover, hopped the ferry to Calais, and again, going their separate ways - with Antoneli heading to Antwerp and Melnikov to Tel-Aviv – they believed they had vanished… …but at 8:20pm, that evening, officers arrived at The Marriot, concerned for Simion Turkov. DCI Worker initially stated "It was a very professional job and will be difficult to solve", but with access to the room, the key-card and the hotel’s CCTV, even though they had no idea who the victim was, with CCTV of the assassins dumping their rubbish, they worked backwards to link them to the hotel, forwards to find out where they had fled to, and soon enough, the assassins were identified. (End) In co-ordination with Interpol, Europol and the Israeli Police, Melnikov & Antoneli thought they were safe in their countries under the Mafia’s protection for a job well done, but while the investigation was hotting up and evidence was being procured, they were both kept under surveillance. On the 13th of April 2004, barely two weeks after the murder, in a co-ordinated swoop, both men were arrested; Antoneli at his work place in Antwerp, Melnikov on a street in Tel-Aviv, and being held on international arrest warrants until they could be extradited to Britain, they were later questioned by British Police. Charged with attempting to pervert the course of justice, false imprisonment, conspiracy to murder and murder, 53-year-old Michael Antoneli & 31-year-old Andrei Melnikov were tried at the Old Bailey. Richard Whittam for the prosecution stated to Judge Richard Hone QC, “this is an extraordinary trial. It is only before you because of the vigilance of a member of the public who witnessed the disposal of evidence which allowed police to detect Mr Turkov far earlier than they would have done”. And even though Melnikov & Antoneli denied murder, both being found guilty, on the 25th of July 2005, they were both sentenced to life terms, for a minimum of 20-years, and to be deported upon release. As far as we know, the Russian Mafia never successfully launched a hit on Simion Turkov’s life, and it is said, that the £200,000 he owed belonged to Michael Antoneli, although this cannot be verified. As of today, Andrei Melnikov remains in a British prison, although he is eligible for parole. But having served 17 years of his 20 year sentence, on the 9th of February 2021 at HMP Long Lartin, a maximum security prison, Michael Antoneli (who was then 69) contracted Covid-19 and he died six days later. Had they been better as hired hitmen, it’s likely that Melnikov & Antoneli may have evaded capture, but having made such a colossal cock-up, it’s only fitting that they are known as ‘the s-Hitmen’. The Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast has been researched using the original declassified police investigation files, court records, press reports and as many authentic sources as possible, which are freely available in the public domain, including eye-witness testimony, confessions, autopsy reports, first-hand accounts and independent investigation, where possible. But these documents are only as accurate as those recounting them and recording them, and are always incomplete or full of opinion rather than fact, therefore mistakes and misrepresentations can be made. As stated at the beginning of each episode (and as is clear by the way it is presented) Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast is a 'dramatisation' of the events and not a documentary, therefore a certain amount of dramatic licence, selective characterisation and story-telling (within logical reason and based on extensive research) has been taken to create a fuller picture. It is not a full and complete representation of the case, the people or the investigation, and therefore should not be taken as such. It is also often (for the sake of clarity, speed and the drama) presented from a single person's perspective, usually (but not exclusively) the victim's, and therefore it will contain a certain level of bias and opinion to get across this single perspective, which may not be the overall opinion of those involved or associated. Murder Mile is just one possible retelling of each case. Murder Mile does not set out to cause any harm or distress to those involved, and those who listen to the podcast or read the transcripts provided should be aware that by accessing anything created by Murder Mile (or any source related to any each) that they may discover some details about a person, an incident or the police investigation itself, that they were unaware of. |
AuthorMichael J Buchanan-Dunne is a crime writer, podcaster of Murder Mile UK True Crime and creator of true-crime TV series. 
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