Nominated BEST TRUE-CRIME PODCAST at The British Podcast Awards, 4th Best True Crime Podcast by The Week, The Telegraph's Top Five True-Crime Podcasts, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50 and iTunes Top 25.
Newbury House on the Hallfield Estate, Bayswater, where Lillian LIndemann was murdered
Welcome to the Murder Mile UK True-Crime Podcast and audio guided walk of London's most infamous and often forgotten murder cases, all set within and beyond the West End.
EPISODE TWO HUNDRED AND TWELVE:
On Friday 7th of September 1973, just seven weeks after and one and a half miles east of the attack on Alice Parker, in Flat 6 of Newbury House, 74-year-old Lillian Lindemann known as Lily was awaiting the arrival of her loved one’s. Being a stiflingly hot day she left the front-door to her first-floor flat open. Passing by, being short on money and supposedly high on “a bunch of mescaline” taken that morning, 28-year-old David Harrison, a wanted burglar who preyed on old ladies was looking for an easy target. But unlike Alice who had survived her attack, Lily would meet her death.
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THE LOCATION
As many photos of the case are copyright protected by greedy news organisations, to view them, take a peek at my entirely legal social media accounts - Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.
The location is marked with a purple exclamation mark (!) near the words 'Paddington'. To use the map, click it. If you want to see the other murder maps, click here.
SOURCES: This case was researched using some of the sources below.
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE: Welcome to Murder Mile. Today I’m standing outside of Newbury House on the Hallfield Estate in Bayswater, W2; two streets east of the flaming deathbed of Maria Dos Santos, three streets east of the test-run to the Charlotte Street robbery, and a few streets north of the porter killed for just £2 - coming soon to Murder Mile. Like Kingsnorth House where Alice Parker lived, the Hallfield Estate was constructed in the early 1950s as part of the post-war housing boom. Consisting of several ten-storey blocks of flats, having recently received a Grade 2 listing owing to its modernist architecture, you can soon expect its council tenants to be turfed out for what will be dubbed “safety concerns”, only for each flat to be flogged off to self-entitled arseholes looking for a city bolthole while their second home in Oxford is being renovated. On Friday 7th of September 1973, just seven weeks after the attack on Alice Parker, in Flat 6 of Newbury House, 74-year-old Lillian Lindemann known as Lily was awaiting the arrival of her loved one’s. Being a stiflingly hot day owing to a brief heatwave, the front-door to her first-floor flat was wide open. Passing by, being short on money and supposedly high on “a bunch of mescaline” taken that morning, 28-year-old David Harrison, a wanted burglar who preyed on old ladies was looking for an easy target. But unlike Alice who had survived her attack, Lily would meet her death. My name is Michael, I am your tour guide, and this is Murder Mile. Episode 212: The Old Lady Killer – Part Two. It didn’t take long for the £72 that David had stolen from Alice to be squandered. After a few nights in a cheapy B&B - where he slept on soft sheets, bathed in hot water, and dined on greasy fry-ups – with his stash of Phensadyl, methedrine and LSD having been gobbled up by his voracious need to get high, although his depression medication was free, the drugs he wanted so badly were as a result of theft. On the night of Thursday 30th of August 1973, David broke into a commercial premises at 56 Beethoven Street, W10, near Queen’s Park tube. As a plastics and moulding firm ran by Ronald Graham, a well-built engineer with arms like thighs and fists like sledgehammers – being a hungry, drugged coward who wouldn’t dare tackle a man - he entered when the lock-up was shut and stole three chequebooks. Using the chequebooks to buy goods which he would then sell to buy drugs, given his rancid smell and his shambolic look, the ruse didn’t always work which was why his next purchase was paid for by cash. Sometime in August 1973, roughly one month before the murder, David entered Cookes at 159 Praed Street in Paddington. Later telling the court that he bought it for protection – having supposedly been beaten up by Irish thugs, and with the papers still reeling from a homeless man’s murder in Bletchley, allegedly inspired by the 1971 film A Clockwork Orange – for 45p, David purchased a six-inch knife. In a short spree in which he would state “I didn’t intend to use it, it was just to scare them” - suggesting that there were other old ladies who had been almost terrorised to death – his weapon had escalated from a bit of wood found in the street, to a lethally sharp knife which would take a life. That life… …belonged to Lily Lindemann. As with Alice Parker, little is known about the life of Lilly Lindemann. Born on the 11th of April 1899 in the parish of St George in the Field in East London, Lilly was one of three daughters and five brothers to German immigrant William Lindemann and his Whitechapel-born wife, Caroline. Raised as a family of ten in a small terrace house at 29 Burslem Street in Stepney, their father worked hard as a cab driver, as their mother ensured this growing brood were fed and loved. Being typical of many working-class families, life was a struggle, but they all earned their way; as by 1911, Harry was a warehouseman, Albert a barman, John a music hall artiste, Minnie (known as Annie) being a baby’s bib maker and Edward as an officer boy, with Ernest, Alexandra and Lily still at school. By 1939, as an unmarried childless woman, 40-year-old Lily was living with her recently widowed sister Alexandra known as Emmie, Emmie’s 2-year-old daughter Barbara, and Lily’s sister Annie at 84 Milner Road in Brighton. As an all-female household, they all worked hard to keep the coffers coming in. They were loyal, loving and the way these sisters supported one another was typical of this family. In the late 1950s, with the construction of the Hallfield estate, Lily & Annie moved into a two-bedroomed first-floor flat at 6 Newbury House, with a fully fitted kitchen, a bathroom and neighbours on all sides. It was the perfect place for two elderly spinster sisters living in a big bustling metropolis like London. Like two little dots, Lily & Annie were often seen tottering the streets of Bayswater, shopping in hand, stopping for tea and cake in the local cafes and sitting side by side like they were joined at the hip. Together, they were each other’s company and protection, having lived together for 73 years. But with Annie having died aged 80, just the Christmas prior, Lily was left alone in a large empty flat. 1973 was a difficult year for Lily, as with no-one to talk to, every moment of her new life alone felt empty and dull, as a hollow void pervaded her life and all about her flat were memories of her sister. As kindly neighbours, they all rallied round, and as this family did, her niece (Pamela) and her husband Bob did what they knew was best for her – to give her support, but ensure she kept her independence. By the summer of 1973, Lily was doing well, and although grief still tugged at her heart, with her loving family visiting her every month without fail, it made her loneliness more bearable. By the September, with the council deciding to convert the flats to gas-heating, she needed to move out for a few days. Being an old-fashioned girl, Lily didn’t have a home phone, so with Pamela sending her a handwritten letter (accompanied with a stamped addressed envelope so Lily could reply), Lily was excited to spend a few days in Chalfont St Giles with Pamela & Bob, and in their car, they would come and pick her up. The day they chose to arrive was Friday 7th of September 1973… …it began as a day of excitement and promise, and it ended with her death. Since the attack on Alice Parker seven weeks earlier, the Police had struggled to find the culprit. Being decades before computerised databases, although David had a criminal record for burglary, theft and drugs offences, with no history of assaulting elderly ladies, he hadn’t appeared on the Police’s radar. And although Alice had provided a solid description of her assailant – as a homeless man – David was still wearing those same clothes, but being invisible to the community, he walked like he didn’t exist. Without an ounce of remorse for the attack and every penny of Alice’s life savings squandered on his hopeless addiction, as the last dregs of the drugs wheedled out of his system, David began to shake. Being broke and a coward, unable to do what he often did without drugs, he would later claim in court “that morning, I took a bunch of mescaline”. Being off-his-face, his fear of committing such a heinous crime like robbing an old vulnerable lady would vanish, but with the chance of a good trip or a bad trip being as random as a roulette ball landing on red or black, he always risked incurring ‘the horrors’. As a ‘good trip’, he would breeze through this mindless assault on an old frail lady like it was a lovely walk in the park; but as ‘bad trip’, ‘the horrors’ would heighten not only his senses, but also his fears. With three stolen chequebooks in his bag but few shops willing to cash them, having fled from the Police-swamped area around Alice Parker’s flat, he moved one and a half miles east to Bayswater. Friday 7th September 1973 was a classic British summer. In the grip of a mini-heatwave, it had been hot for the last few days, and as always; for the first day we had loved it, by the second we were grumbling, and by the third day – with the infrastructure having buckled under the intensity of the 30-degree heat – we couldn’t wait for the rains to return. Set in the sweltering heat amidst the vast glass and steel structures of the Hallfield Estate, with very few trees or cool grass patches among these blocks of flats, even the concrete was hot to the touch. At 4:30pm, being excited for a few days away with her loved one’s, Lily opened her door to the blue skies of Bayswater and headed right to Flat 5. In the months since Annie’s death, Edith had been the closest thing to a sister Lilly had, so wearing a short floral dress – being too frail to reach and usurped by her slightly arthritic hands – she asked Edith to zip her up at the back, as she couldn’t do it herself. Expecting Bob & Pamela to arrive soon, with the evening still roasting from a roaring hot day, she keep her front door open for the next few minutes, while she headed into her bedroom to finish packing. And although she wouldn’t know it, that was the last time that anyone but her murderer saw her alive. As far as we know, David didn’t know her, he had never been to her flat, and - just like Alice – it was a coincidence that she was another lone and vulnerable old lady who had fatefully left her door open. David would confess: “I walked up to Bayswater, and I see this door open in the flats. It was about 5 o’clock I think”. With no gates or fences, this communal space was designed to not feel oppressive, so access to each block was as easy as entering a shop. On the right-hand side of Newbury House, he rose the concrete stairwell to the first floor, with the first flat he came to being Lily’s. “I walked up into the flats when I saw the door open, there was a chair in the doorway and I had to move it”, which he did. Being a modern block, the door was strong, it was fitted with a Yale lock, a chain, a spyhole, and a bell, but with the door left open to allow a cool breeze to drift in, these security features were of no use. The hallway offered little in terms of things for steal to David, just a few hats, some coats, a cabinet of crockery, an iron and an old wind-up clock. Being old fashioned, Lily didn’t have a telephone, and she certainly didn’t have a television, neither did she wear fancy clothes, and – except for a cheap watch, a plastic bracelet, and two gold rings which had once belonged to her sister – she didn’t own much. And yet, the most valuable thing David would take… …would be her life. Hearing a noise in her hallway, although barely five-foot-tall and as frail as a cream cracker, being feisty and independent, Lilly came out of her bedroom, screaming ‘who are you, what do you want?’. High on mescaline, David would claim “a lady came out of the bedroom. She came at me, screaming …her face was distorted and scary”, although whether this was the truth, his fear or a mescaline trip we shall never know, but with the roulette ball inside his head bouncing from black to red, he flipped. “I lashed out to stop her coming at me”. Having purchased a six-inch cook’s knife for 45p, supposedly for his own protection, “I just raised the knife and plunged it forward”, as the unused and supremely sharp blade slid two-inches deep into wrinkled pale recess of her throat, and severing her windpipe. The look of shock at being stabbed would be etched on Lily’s face forever, as her mouth fell agape and her eyes popped wide, as her small frail body began to slip, David said “I held her before she fell”. Lying in a crumpled heap in her own hallway, with the door shut but her struggling to scream, let alone breathe, although David would state “I went into the bedroom and found a bedsheet to put under her head”, he would claim “I didn’t know she was dying” as he plundered her home for cash and trinkets. “I just ransacked the place. I took a £5 note, a £1 note and two rings, that’s all”. And perfectly summed up his rationale, “that all”, just all the money she had, a reminder of her departed sister, and her life. “I didn’t stay long in the flat. I walked out through the door”, closing it behind him so that any passing neighbour couldn’t help, as – with blood running down her mouth, to her neck, and soaking the sheet underneath her head – Lily would die, all alone and frightened, knowing that no-one would find her. Alongside his needs, his escape was all he cared about. “I bought cigarettes in the supermarket before I was sick in the Odeon toilets. I then went to Hyde Park, I sat there for a while. I walked to Notting Hill Gate and caught the 52 bus. I got off before the bridge at Ladbroke Grove, and slung the knife in the canal. From there I walked down Kensal Road, out through Golborne Road, and down to the green where the Westway is. I didn’t sleep very long”. But how could he sleep given what he had done? It became clear to Lily’s friends that something was wrong early on. At 6pm, passing to buy a paper, Edith in Flat 5 saw that Lily’s door was shut. “This was odd”, she would state “as in this weather she usually had her door open, so I thought Bob had arrived”. Returning minutes later, she was expecting Lily to give her the key for the gasmen, but it looked like she was out. The sun had set at 7:53pm, so by 8:40pm when Bob & Pamela parked up, with her bedroom window shut and the kitchen window at the front slightly ajar, with the lights off, the flat was in total darkness. Knocking on the door, they got no reply. Concerned, they knocked on Edith’s door who thought that Lily had already left with them. So borrowing a set of stepladders, Bob climbed in and found her body. (heard) “Pamela, she’s lying in the hall”. Called at 8:51pm, the ambulance arrived at 9pm precisely to the report of “an old lady collapsed”, but when Ronald Hills the ambulanceman knelt down and touched her wrist - seeing that her body was cool, the flat was ransacked, and she had a wound to her throat - he alerted CID, who came promptly. At 9:56pm, Dr John Shanahan pronounced the life of 73-year-old Lillian Lindemann as extinct. To say that David had no remorse for the killing or even the attack on Lily would be an understatement. The next day “I woke up early, it was still darkish. I went to Portobello Road and had dinner in one of the cafes there. I then went to the ABC Pictures on Edgware Road. I think I saw Shaft in Africa”, as while he entertained himself, Bob was identifying Lily’s dead body on a slab at Westminster Mortuary. “I went to the National Watch Company at 55 Praed Street and sold the ring”. Thinking it was a diamond ring he tried to sell it for £23, but finding out it was only an imitation, he sold it for £8. That money wouldn’t last him the day, but as a ring which meant so much to Lily, and as the last reminder of Lily & Annie, it would have been a treasured keepsake for Pamela of both of her aunts, now dead. The next day, as 6 Newbury House was boarded-up, he would claim “I went to All Saints Church and prayed for the old lady. I started crying and I came out because I didn’t want anyone to see me”. He didn’t know if she was alive or dead, hence he expressed remorse, but – if he did - it was short-lived. As later that day, “I went to see a friend to score some acid, and I sat in the park until about 8 o’clock”, off his tits on LSD and drifting into a fantasy which didn’t involve a frail old lady being stabbed to death. And with his grief having passed, “I went to see the James Bond film”, originally titled Live and Let Die, “and then I went back to Hyde Park, and slept until 10am the next morning”, as killing can be tiring. The murder of Lily Lindemann was in all the local and some of the national papers, but David said he didn’t read them, instead “I dropped two tabs of acid, I then went to the Praed Street Classic to see Cabaret…” and loving it so much, having sold the second ring in Fulham, “I saw James Bond again”. His cycle of ‘steal, flee, get high, go broke and repeat’ was almost complete, as having squandered the £11 (roughly £170 today) he had made off both rings. “I dropped more acid, slept, ate, I can’t recall Tuesday, but I know I walked up Holland Park and tried to break into a house”. But with the owner coming home, like a coward “I made a run for it” and he drifted about looking for new things to steal. The crime-scene at 6 Newbury House was self-explanatory to Detective Sergeant Lancheet. With no signs of forced entry, no sexual assault and no evidence of a personal grudge, the culprit was most likely an opportunist thief, as all that was stolen was cash and items which were easy to sell. As before, with fingerprints found on the front door, a bedside cupboard, a white metal cigarette box and a small wardrobe – with this case being overseen by the same detective who had investigated the attack on Alice Parker - a fingerprint expert confirmed “I am in no doubt these are the fingerprints of David John Harrison”. But having gone missing from his last address, how do you find a missing man? Oddly, it was the drugs which would be his downfall, only this time, it wouldn’t be the LSD. On Wednesday 12th of September, a description of David Harrison was posted in the local papers. The next day, Robert Yearwood, a pharmacist at Fish Chemist’s at 274 Portabello Road dispensed David his supply of Tryptizole (the medication he was on for his depression) and called the Police. With Detectives scouring the streets, barely an hour later, DS Landcheet saw him walking along St Marks Road and collared him in Cambridge Gardens. On his possession, he had his driving licence, three stolen chequebooks in the name of R B Moulds from the business he had broken into in August, and - although he had sold everything he had stolen from Alice Parker and Lily Lindemann – he was still wearing the same tatty brown jacket, trouser and pullover, which had faint traces of Lily’s blood. At Paddington Green Police Station, when he realised he was to be questioned by DCI Feeney”, David said “Detective Chief Inspector? You only investigate serious things?”, the DCI replied “yes”, David said “how serious?”, the DCI said “You tell me”, and with David replying “Murder? The old lady?”, replying “yes. Would you like to tell me all about it?”, with that, David Harrison gave a full statement and was formally charged with the murder of Lillian Lindeman and the attempted murder of Alice Parker. (End) That day, detectives drove him to the shop where he bought the knife, the pawnbroker where he sold the rings, and – although never found – the stretch of the canal where he said he dumped the knife. Tried at the Old Bailey from the 11th to the 13th of February 1974, in his defence, he would plead ‘guilty’ to the lesser charges of wounding, GBH with intent and aggravated burglary. But for the more serious charges of the murder of Lily Lindeman and the attempted murder of Alice Parker, he would plead ‘not guilty’, by claiming he was in the grip of an LSD trip and was feeling the fear of ‘the horror’. It was a ploy which may have worked, only having given the Police a detailed account of his actions -although supposedly high on drugs - “he recalled the events, up to and during the murder with clarity”. Seeking to use this drug-abuser as an example “particularly to the young people with whom he has associated, that if they used violence and caused death to escape the consequences of a burglary, that the penalty would be much greater than if they had surrendered for burglary”, being found guilty of GBH, aggravated burglary and murder, Mr Justice Thesiger sentenced him to four life sentences. But with the law making all four sentences run concurrently, he was eligible for parole in 1993. Where he is now and what he is doing is unknown. Whether the drugs made him do it, or it was a ploy is unclear. And although some people may suggest that there’s no proof that a legal drug is merely a slippery slope down to the harder drugs, consider this. His decline had begun with his need to take cough syrup and vodka to stay awake, and it ended with the drug-fuelled haze of an Old Lady Killer. The Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast has been researched using the original declassified police investigation files, court records, press reports and as many authentic sources as possible, which are freely available in the public domain, including eye-witness testimony, confessions, autopsy reports, first-hand accounts and independent investigation, where possible. But these documents are only as accurate as those recounting them and recording them, and are always incomplete or full of opinion rather than fact, therefore mistakes and misrepresentations can be made. As stated at the beginning of each episode (and as is clear by the way it is presented) Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast is a 'dramatisation' of the events and not a documentary, therefore a certain amount of dramatic licence, selective characterisation and story-telling (within logical reason and based on extensive research) has been taken to create a fuller picture. It is not a full and complete representation of the case, the people or the investigation, and therefore should not be taken as such. It is also often (for the sake of clarity, speed and the drama) presented from a single person's perspective, usually (but not exclusively) the victim's, and therefore it will contain a certain level of bias and opinion to get across this single perspective, which may not be the overall opinion of those involved or associated. Murder Mile is just one possible retelling of each case. Murder Mile does not set out to cause any harm or distress to those involved, and those who listen to the podcast or read the transcripts provided should be aware that by accessing anything created by Murder Mile (or any source related to any each) that they may discover some details about a person, an incident or the police investigation itself, that they were unaware of.
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Nominated BEST TRUE-CRIME PODCAST at The British Podcast Awards, 4th Best True Crime Podcast by The Week, The Telegraph's Top Five True-Crime Podcasts, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50 and iTunes Top 25.
KIngsnorth House, W12 where Alice Parker lived
Welcome to the Murder Mile UK True-Crime Podcast and audio guided walk of London's most infamous and often forgotten murder cases, all set within and beyond the West End.
EPISODE TWO HUNDRED AND ELEVEN:
On Monday 11th June 1973 at roughly noon, as part of her routine, she was standing on the first floor walkway awaiting a visit from a librarian. Form out of nowhere, she was dragged into her own home and viciously beaten by a man with no compunction about terrorising the most frail and vulnerable. The culprit was a local homeless man called David Harrison, and although the evidence would prove that he had unleashed this terrifying attack on old vulnerable woman, in court, his defence was that he wasn’t responsible. But why?
CLICK HERE to download the Murder Mile podcast via iTunes and to receive the latest episodes, click "subscribe". You can listen to it by clicking PLAY on the embedded media player below.
THE LOCATION
As many photos of the case are copyright protected by greedy news organisations, to view them, take a peek at my entirely legal social media accounts - Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.
The location is marked with a lime green exclamation mark (!) below the words 'North Kensington'. To use the map, click it. If you want to see the other murder maps, click here.
SOURCES: This case was researched using some of the sources below.
J 267/178 Description: Harrison, David John: charged with attempted murder. With photographs https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C11097428 David John Harrison, killed Mrs Lillie Emily Linderman(Lily Lindaman) https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C11097428
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE: Welcome to Murder Mile. Today I’m standing outside of Kingsnorth House on Silchester Road, W11; three streets south of the home of ‘Scotch Maggie’, two streets west of Reg Christie’s house of horrors, and within the looming shadow of the Grenfell Tower and the tragedies which befell it – coming one day to Murder Mile. To the side of the endless roar of The Westway flyover, Kingsnorth House is a four-storey block of flats built during the post-war housing boom. Made cheaply of concrete, it was designed to last a decade, but more than 60 years on, although tatty and worn, these council-run flats still serve their purpose. As a graffiti-covered dead end, it has a lawless feel; featuring a line of ominously locked garages, a ‘no ball games’ signs against which balls are kicked, a fly-tipped version of Mount Everest obscuring a ‘no dumping sign’ and the exposed wires of a CCTV camera having been nicked by persons unknown. By and large though, it’s a typical council estate where families should feel safe… …but on Monday 11th June 1973, in Flat 12 of Kingsnorth House, 88-year-old widow Alice Parker was attacked in her own home, by a man with no compunction to terrorise the most frail and vulnerable. My name is Michael, I am your tour guide, and this is Murder Mile. Episode 211: The Old Lady Killer – Part One. Everybody needs a mentor, someone to teach us good from bad, and to steer us from wrong to right; whether a parent, a teacher, an employer or a friend. Many of us only need a little shove from time to time, but whereas others need a steady hand to guide them straight for the rest of their lives… …and when they have it, they thrive, but when they don’t, sometimes people die. The life of David John Harrison was as fragmented as his memory, so some details may not be true. Born in Wales on 25th of June 1945, David was the youngest of two brothers to Frederick, a toolmaker and a housewife mother. Like many boys, he had a good start in life as he was healthy and fit, being blessed with no illness, diseases, or trauma. But his family life had been in turmoil before he was born. Raised in a Jewish household, with his father having fallen for a woman outside of his faith, unwilling to bless his loving union to a Christian, the Harrison’s had to go it alone, being isolated from his family. From what David could recall, although his mother was “a strict woman, but hardworking”, he said his father was kind, but owing to thrombosis of the leg cause by an injury he had sustained in the war, in 1953 when he was only eight years old, his father died, and this left David without a mentor. For some boys, such a tragic loss of a loving father could have created a cataclysmic collapse of his aims and morals. For some boys, being left at such a tender age to find his feet with a mother he would describe as “affectionate, but I was afraid of her”, may have sent him spinning into a pit of aggression? But being small and lacking in confidence, what it heightened was his sense of inadequacy, an inability to assert himself or to commit to anything… which – over the years – would grow worse and worse. Although this shattered family of a widowed mother and her two young boys suffered many bouts of hardship, giving them the best shot at life, this strict disciplinarian ensured they had a good education. Schooled locally from 1950 onwards, he wasn’t the best student, but he wasn’t the worst. His teachers said his behaviour was excellent, he was quiet and co-operative, but that he lacked drive and ambition. Said to be a boy who needed the constant encouragement and reassurance that his late father could no longer provide, he tended to fester when no-one was there to guide him. And although his attendance wasn’t great in his final year, this was down to an operation which he never spoke of. His criminal history was as minor and petty as any young men going off the rails without guidance. On the 8th of September 1960, aged 15, he was put on a one-year probation order for stealing a bicycle saddle from the black of flats where he lived. And on the 26th of April 1961, aged 16, he was convicted of shop-breaking and criminal damage in Willesden, being sentenced to an attendance centre for 12 months, where it was said “he was polite, quiet and flourished when he was being supervised”. On the surface, he wasn’t evil or vicious, he was just lost… ….and yet, a second tragedy would push him further to despair. In 1963, when David was 18, he was at his mother’s deathbed when he witnessed her die of kidney failure, after which he became even more isolated and insecure, often refusing to discuss his past. With no parents, but classified by the council as an adult, although David struggled, he was supported by his older brother Frederick, a stable influence who was married with kids and had a steady job. The brothers had a good relationship, but occasionally it was strained owing to David’s erratic ways. He never had a career, only jobs, and many he didn’t hold down for very long; being an office boy at the Boy Scout’s for four months, a store boy at Lamson Engineering on-an-off for three years, and with a few pounds earned as-and-when at local radio shops, factories and market stalls on Portobello Road. Which isn’t to say he had no ambition, as it was during his early twenties that he and some friends got into music and started a band, writing tunes by day, and performing by night. But later stating “I was unable to keep awake so late”, so guided by bad advice, he began to dabble in recreational drugs. As often happens, it started out harmlessly enough, mixing vodka and cough-syrup to give him a buzz, and as a little high that he liked – which was also legal – it quickly became a drug he would rely on. Struggling to manage the pain for the unexplained ailment which required an operation, he began to sink his syrupy-buzz with an occasional Codeine here-and-there, being a derivative of Opium. Oddly, he would never describe himself as a drug user, but this daily habit would envelope him for years. On the 5th June 1966, aged 21, at Marylebone Magistrates Court, David’s addiction led to a further conviction as whilst working as a packer at British Drug House, a pharmaceutical manufacturer, he stole 223 tablets of amphetamine. Charged with theft, he would serve twelve months’ probation. According to his probation officer, Mr G Lubowski, “David came across as very immature, a boy unable to face adult life, who required a dependant, someone to watch over him”, which he didn’t have. Therefore it’s unsurprising that being released, David’s addiction made him blind to his morals. While working as a porter at Queen Charlotte’s hospital in Hammersmith, he stole vital packs of tiny needles used to inject premature babies and several vials of methedrine (also known as methamphetamine). With his drugs no longer used to take the edge of his tiredness, they had become his way of life. As seeking to vanish into a haze of distorted truth, rather than face his reality, David also took LSD. Taking a cocktail of drugs to sate the side-effects of another - unable to work - to fund his habit, he stole. Having started sleeping rough, as much as his older brother had tried his best to get David back on the straight and narrow – by giving him a place to stay and finding him a steady job - being a junkie, he never saw the error of his ways or the victims who he hurt, all he could think of was his own needs. On the 10th of November 1970, at Witham Magistrates Court, he was placed on a three-year probation for stealing a purse from the Co-operative Bank where he worked. With no access to hard drugs, and withdrawal kicking in, the £13 he stole was to feed his habit of two bottles of cough syrup a day. Having fled Essex and returned to London, often sleeping rough under the rancid roar of The Westway, he stole to feed his habit. But being too zonked-out on drugs to tackle anyone of his size - like a coward - David would target only the weakest, the lonely and the most vulnerable, usually the elderly… …like 88-year-old widow Alice Parker. In May 1971, after his release from prison for the theft of three handbags, as a homeless drifter, David didn’t look like a fresh-faced 26-year-old, if anything he looked closer to 40. Being 5 foot 7 with a pale bony body, thinning brown hair fashioned into a long comb-over, a missing tooth and a tatty goatee beard, his eyes were red and his face was ravaged, as his body often battled waves of highs and lows. Often gripped in the sweaty palm of hallucination, the good ones took him away from his pain but the bad ones – commonly known as ‘the horrors’ – were a realistic nightmare impossible to escape from. So given how battered his brain was – as a chronic drinker, a heavy smoker and a drifter addicted to Phensadyl, methedrine and LSD – with his life a chaotic spiralling mess, in January 1972 his doctor diagnosed him with depression and anxiety. Prescribed Tryptizole (a tricyclic antidepressant), he collected it monthly from Fish Chemists on Portobello Road, and mixed the good drugs with the bad. It’s typical, that when he asked for help, even as an addict, he was prescribed more drugs. What he really needed was someone to turn his life around, as he wasn’t wholly bad or evil, he was just lost. Sleeping rough in a soggy sleeping-bag under the rat-infested Westway, a bedraggled David found the guidance he needed from a man of God, not far from where his home once was. From July 1971, Reverend Peake of the Golborne Centre in the shadow of the Trellick Tower, he gave him a warm bed, clean clothes and three-square meals-a-day, but – more importantly – he gave this lost boy a focus. In September 1972, as David was doing well and was desperate to escape his vicious circle, Reverend Peake got him a job as an assistant at a second-hand furniture store at 99 Golborne Road. Working hard, it would end up being the longest period of stability he’d had since before his dad had died. Having cleaned up his act, quit the booze, and almost weaned himself off drugs, although he was still described by his probation officer as “exceedingly brittle”, the only crime David had committed since was a minor one. As on 10th of October 1972, he was fined £5 for a breach of his probation, as being excited to start work and find a routine, he’d forgot to tell his probation officer that he’d found a job. With the supervision of a trusted mentor, David Harrison was back on the road to redemption, but owing to a small spat with his employer, on the 7th of June 1973, he lost his home, his job and fled. Without guidance, David Harrison would be lost… …and an elderly lady would needlessly die. Prior to his trial at The Old Bailey on the charges of aggravated burglary, GBH and wilful murder, his defence was that – being in a drug-induced state - he was neither aware nor liable for his actions. Examined by Dr P D Scott, a consultant psychiatrist, and Dr A Sittampalan, a medical officer, both of Brixton Prison, David was described as “rational, articulate and co-operative, he reads well and has a good vocabulary” given his malnutritian and his alcoholism. Questioned about his depressive bouts and anxiety, although he had been medicated for 1 ½ years, doctors found no evidence of depression. Likewise, having said that he suffered from blackouts, an electrocardiogram showed that his heart was normal. Having said that he was severely beaten up by three Irish men one year prior, there was no clear signs of head trauma. And although he would claim he had “taken a bunch of mescaline” on the morning of the murder, the doctors would confirm “there is no evidence to indicate that his mental faculties were impaired at the time of the offence” and he was declared sane and fit to stand trial. Dr A Sittampalan would confirm to the court “I am of the opinion that he is not mentally ill nor is he suffering from such abnormalities of the mind as to substantially impair his mental responsibility”. By June 1973, the world wasn’t in a horrible place, but there was lots to worry about. 1.6 million government workers had gone on strike over pay. Earl Jellicoe, leader of the House of Lords had resigned over a prostitute scandal. And UK Prime Minister Ted Heath had lambasted the monies flowing from Tory MP Duncan Sandys to a tax haven as “the unacceptable face of capitalism”, having created the laws which made these posh twats even richer. Basically, very little has changed today. As one of 9 million retirees in Britain, 88-year-old Alice Parker was living on a pitiful state pension, as with no savings, she would eek out every penny to buy bread, milk, eggs, tea and an occasional treat. Born Alice Mitchell in 1885, in an era before every piece of concrete or steel within her fading eyeline was even built, little is known of her life except the basics. Having married Henry Parker in 1907, together they had a son called William, and spent the bulk of their lives living in nearby Notting Hill. This area had always been her home, her life and her safety-net - the familiarity of the streets she was born in and would certainly die in - gave her comfort when life was hard, and tragedy would come. Being widowed, in 1967 Alice moved into a one-bedroomed first-floor flat at 12 Kingsnorth House. As one of this council estate’s most vulnerable, she strived to retain her independence by doing her own shopping and although she lived alone, she was visited weekly by her son, a home help and a librarian. Within her own home was where she felt safest. Being old, she was no bother to anyone. And having nothing of any value, except sentimental knickknacks of happier times, she had nothing worth stealing. As an elderly infirm widower, her only worries should have been food, warmth and company… …not fighting off a crazed drug-addict who had attacked her in her own flat. Monday 11th of June 1973 was a sunny day, it was bright but cool owing to a light drizzle. As part of her routine, Monday saw a hive of familiar visitors’ pop by to Alice’s first-floor flat; as a local gas-fitter, her son William always swung by for a tea, a biccie and chat in the evenings; her home-help had already done her rounds that morning, and – being perched on the communal concrete walkway which overlooked the car park – by noon, Alice was keeping her eye out for Margaret, the librarian. Alice loved books especially romances, and as a volunteer for the Woman’s Voluntary Service, a charity which helped our most vulnerable, she was looking forward to receiving a book by Barbara Cartland. Just before noon, David was walking down Silchester Road, passing beside the Westway flyover, “I had no money and I was sleeping rough and I hadn’t eaten in a few days. I was walking towards Latimer Road station, and I found a piece of wood, not a whole piece, a half piece, and I see a door open”. That was his statement made in court, it was vague, as if he couldn’t remember or he didn’t want to recall, but his eyesight must have been good, as from the road, it’s not easy to see through the trees. As a small white-haired lady whose bony frame was swamped by her comfortable but ill-fitting clothes, Alice was alone, outside of her flat, as David ascended the concrete stairs to the first-floor walkway. Coming from her right, she saw a thin bedraggled man who stank of cigarettes, drink and stale sweat, walking towards her with cracked eyes and a dirty face. Only he didn’t look threatening, he looked lost and he looked destitute like the world had chewed him up and spat him out. And in a quiet soft voice, when he asked her “where’s Nottingwood House?”, being just one building over, she told him. Of course, he knew where it was as he knew the area well, but what he wanted was a distraction. In court, David would claim “I had no intention of using the wood, it was just to scare her really, and at first, I asked her where some flats were. She was going to sort of walk away when I grabbed her”. Pushing this little dot of a woman inside her own flat, he barked “be quiet or I’ll kill you”, as in his right hand he brandished a sharp piece of wood like a deadly dagger. In his own words he would state “she started struggling. She scared me, you know. I just lost all sense and started hitting her. I told her to sit down and if she got up, I would hit her. She kept getting up, I didn’t hit her any more after that.” Lying slumped, like a broken ragdoll on her living room floor, she lay truly terrified as a crazed stranger with a malevolent look pummelled her face with his fists, until her pale skin went black and blue. Telling her to “shut up” and “keep quiet or I’ll kill you”, he dumped her in the armchair and told her to sit silently, as he ransacked her small sparsely furnished flat. She didn’t have much, but like many elderlies who distrust the banks, he stole all of her money; £20 from a glass cabinet in the living room, £50 from a black handbag, a lighter her son had left and £2 in small change from a jar in the kitchen. He had taken her life savings, but also her dignity and her sense of safety. Dragging her into the bedroom, “I put her in the wardrobe so she wouldn’t shout an alarm or nothing, so I could get away”, and then he fled. Having been left beaten, bleeding and dumped, inside an almost airless and dark space, no bigger than a coffin, this frightened old lady lay, too scared to move as with this terrifying addict having threatened to kill her if she screamed, there she would stay, all silent. At his trial, David Harrison would plead not guilty to murder… …only it wasn’t Alice Parker who would die. Although frail, as an 88-year-old woman who had lived through the Great Depression, two World Wars, bereavements and had given birth – fired-up by a strength which had kept her independent, physically well and mentally sharp at this great age – although a coward had locked her in, “I was in there about half an hour” Alice would tell the court, “well it seemed a long time, before I forced my way out”. Hearing Margarete Geier, the librarian arrive knocking at her locked door at 12:10pm, Margaret would state “the front door was closed as usual, I knocked, I heard knocking from inside, I looked through letterbox and I heard Alice call ‘wait a minute’”. Having kicked the wardrobe open from inside, a few moments later – although bruised and shaken - Alice opened door, and they called the Police. Taken to St Charles’ Hospital, she had a large bruise to her head and two fingers on her left hand were badly fractured, but having been kept in for observation, she was discharged three days later. (End) Arriving at the crime scene, Detective Sergeant Landcheet assessed the evidence before him. From underneath the table in the living room, a piece of wood was found. On the outside of a large, fitted wardrobe, the finger and palm marks of the suspect was lifted. And with Alice giving an excellent description of her attacker – mid-20s, average height, thin build, messy brown hair, a goatee beard his right canine tooth missing, and wearing a ‘modern’ coloured shirt, a brown-ish tie and a brown jacket” – although no-one else had seen him, the Police had a starting point for this baffling case. David was one of hundreds if not thousands of possible suspects the Police investigated, but with no prior history of violent assault or the false imprisonment of an elderly lady, he was discounted. That day, as Alice was taken to hospital, David would confess “I got the train to Westbourne Park and booked into a guest house for a few nights”, where he enjoyed a bath, clean sheets and a hot meal off the life savings he had stole from his terrified old lady, and the rest he spent on drink and drugs. Like many addicts, being unremorseful and having squandered her money on his needs, David would go in search of another vulnerable old lady to attack inside of her own flat, only this one wouldn’t live. But who really was David Harrison? Was he truly a hopeless addict devoid of any morals, a lost boy in desperate need of guidance, or was this all a ploy to save this old lady killer from a life sentence? The final part of The Old Lady Killer 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.
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EPISODE TWO HUNDRED AND TEN:
On the Christmas Eve of 1968, former Leeds footballer Dominic Kelly sought revenge on the hotel manager who had sacked him for his bad behaviour. Only being too fueled by drink, anger and arrogance, he would inflict a truly horrifying death on a woman who was entirely innocent.
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THE LOCATION
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SOURCES: This case was researched using some of the sources below. Dominic KELLY: manslaughter of Maria Candida Pereira DOS SANTOS on 25 December 1968 at Queensway, London, W2. Convicted https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C11026869
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE: Welcome to Murder Mile. Today I’m standing in Queensway, W2; two streets west of the torture of Vincent Keighery, one street south-west of the murderous night porter, a few buildings south of the stabbing US Airman Stanley Thurman, and two streets west of the mysterious taxi driver slayings - coming soon to Murder Mile. Nestled between Hyde Park and Notting Hill, Queensway is a feeble excuse for a shopping district. Set on a single street, it’s the place to be if you like buying crap and being overcharged for the privilege; whether Union Jack umbrellas which break the second it rains, tatty mugs of disgraced royals with a penchant for shit-stirring and ‘not sweating’, or novelty bags of M&Ms as there’s nothing more British. At 106 Queensway currently sits a four-storey terrace, with a Chinese restaurant called Duck & Noodle on the ground floor, above are private flats, or (as most residences in the area are) Air B&Bs, hostels or supposedly cheap hotels where tourists get royally ripped-off for essentially renting a broom closet. Back in late 1968, this was a cheap hostel where the staff of the nearby Winton Hotel slept. In a front facing room on the top floor lived 52-year-old night porter Dominic Kelly, a man who once had a promising career. And yet, unable to accept any criticism or rejection, this petty loser would subject Maria Dos Santos, a 36-year-old chambermaid to one of the most horrible deaths ever. But why? My name is Michael, I am your tour guide, and this is Murder Mile. Episode 210: The Loser. The mark of a person’s success isn’t based on the money they make or the things that they buy, but how well they deal with their failures. For many, failure is all part of growing, but for others, it can be a permanent blight on their lives, which can lead to anger, jealousy, vengeance and even death. The early life of Dominic Kelly began as the classic story of triumph over adversity. Born on the 23rd June 1917 in Sandbach, Cheshire, Dominic Kelly was the second youngest of seven to James, a chemical labourer and Ann a housewife. As a family of nine, raised in a small terrace house at 7 Stringer Avenue; times were hard, money was tight and his life was conflicted, as with his father being domineering and critical of his son’s failure, his mother often showered him with love and praise. Educated at the local secondary school, for the last 18 months, although he didn’t excel academically, as head boy for his year where he really excelled was at football. Having shot-up to an impressive six foot one inches tall making him a decent sprinter and with enough bulk to be an intimidating presence, he quickly gained a reputation as skilled if slightly flashy and hot-tempered player, who would boast about his footwork, lambast his rivals, and was prone to flare-ups when he was pulled off the pitch. Known to his pals as Dom, as a talented if arrogant player, he never felt his success was enough as he always lived in the shadow of his older brother. John Kelly known as Mick Kelly (ironically to distinguish him from the successful but unrelated scorer Jack Kelly) he played for Accrington Stanley, Leeds United, Barnsley, Bradford City and Bedford Town, amassing twelve appearances but no goals scored. Dominic Kelly actually began his career as a groundkeeper at Leeds United aged 16. Seen as a gifted player noted for his headers, he was signed to Sandbach Ramblers aged 17, and went professional being signed for Leeds, where he played four games from 1935 to 1938 as a centre half, but (like his brother) he scored no goals, and - much to his chagrin - spent the bulk of his time on the subs bench. Transferred to Newcastle United in November 1938 for the sum of £1100 (£100,000 today), he played nine games as centre-half, but with his final match being in a four-nil defeat against Coventry City, he didn’t score a single goal in his whole career at Newcastle. Always believing he was better than the team, let down by others and resenting being made to sit another game out when he was clearly ‘the talent’, his professional career wouldn’t come to an end owing to his arrogance, but owing to the war. With every football match stopped and the stadiums used for military ordinance and bunkers, in 1940, Dominic joined the Royal Signal Corp serving in the Middle East, where he said he was promoted to Corporal, but – for unknown reasons - he would later state “I voluntarily relinquished the rank”. Being football mad, even the rise of the Nazi’s couldn’t stop his ambition as amid the bullets and blood of Palestine, Dominic played in an Army team called The Wanderers, alongside such luminaries as Tom Finney of Preston, Mickey Fenton of Middlesbrough, Ted Swinburne of Newcastle, Ted Duckhouse of Birmingham City, Albert Cox of Sheffield United, Dick Bell of West Ham and John Galloway of Rangers. War aside, Dominic had increased his skills as a player as he awaited a return to peacetime… …but sustaining a career-ending knee-injury, by the time the war was finally over, being demobbed in 1946; aged thirty he was too old to play professionally and with a torn ligament, he was too infirm. With his dream of playing for England over, Dominic was crushed at the thought of what could have been. But being over six foot and physically fit, a new (if less glamourous) career would present itself. In 1947, working as a Special Constable for the Newcastle Police, he began playing cricket for Benwell and he represented Northumberland as a member of their 1948 Minor Counties Championship team. His life wasn’t as glamourous as being a professional footballer, but now he had a nice little house, he had got married, they were trying for a baby, and - in 1951 - he joined the Newcastle upon Tyne City Police, later rising to the rank of Detective Constable in the CID, where he received six commendations; five by a magistrate and one by the Chief Constable, being described as a “diligent and popular officer”. Like a phoenix, he had risen from the ashes of his smouldering football career… …only his anger and his arrogance would always get the better of him. Struggling to accept his own failures, in 1956, following a heated dispute with a senior officer, he was demoted back down to Constable, as this minor celebrity now walked the beat as an ordinary copper. No longer a worshipped footballer, no longer a local hero and no longer a rising star of the Police force, he skulked the streets as his heavy black boots scraped the pavement, and – this angry arrogant failure - looked for someone to blame for his downfall and a quick way to make money, even if it was illegal. On the 22nd November 1957 at 11pm, 40-year-old Constable Dominic Kelly entered the Addison Hotel in Byker. Although after-hours, this local PC ordered a pint as the manager totted up the night’s takings of £66 14s and 9d (roughly £2000 today). Hearing a ruckus outside, as PC Kelly suggested the manager investigate, upon re-entering the pub, the barman saw PC Kelly leave and saw that £21 was missing. Tried at Newcastle Magistrates Court on the 30th of December 1957 – giving the defence that he was anxious as his wife was expecting a baby having miscarried previously – with this being his first offence, the magistrate was lenient on him and having escaped a prison sentence, he was fined £70 plus costs. It may seem a light sentence, but now branded a criminal, he lost his job as a Police Constable, he had to move out of his force-funded house, he found it difficult to find work, and his marriage hit the skids. For a while, he worked as a debt collector and a bouncer, but the pain of having lived so well and lost so much was too hard to bear, and – as always – it was the others who were at fault for his failure. On the 1st of December 1960, in Whitley Bay, Dominic Kelly was charged with embezzlement, for which he served three months in prison, among a slew of other petty criminals who he had helped put away. Upon his release, he moved to London, initially sending back money to support his wife and children, but as the work dried up and the money stopped, in 1961, he had abandoned his family all together. With a patchy job history and a criminal record, he worked intermittently as a truck driver and a factory worker, but unable to afford a place to stay or food to eat, he often slept rough and continued to steal. On the 6th of June 1964, he served 21 days at Pentonville for stealing a crate of milk. On the 10th of December 1964 at Clerkenwell, he served two months for loitering with intent. On the 19th of January 1965 at Bow Street, he was fined £3 and 10s for stealing a wallet from his former place of work. And on 1st March 1967, again at Bow Street, he was sentenced to 14 days in prison for stealing bread rolls. The shame, the embarrassment and the failure of his demise was something that this fallen football star and commended copper could no longer cope with, having been reduced to the state of a bum. With the benefit of hindsight, his stratospheric collapse should have made him accept his mistakes, but if anything, it had only made him more bitter and less willing to accept any criticism or rejection. By 1968, although still an imposing sight, 51-year-old Dominic Kelly was far from the man he once; now sporting a pot belly, thinning brown hair, sunken dark eyes and sometimes a tatty little ‘tash. On the 1st September 1968, Luke McSweeney, the 30-year-old manager of the Winton Hotel at 35/37 Inverness Terrace in Bayswater, hired Dominic as a night porter - a lowly job on a pitiful wage. Sharing a top-floor room at 106 Queensway with Ronald Jeffrey the day porter, this should have been his route to redemption; given an honest job, a steady income, three square meals and a warm place to sleep. And yet, it was here that he would subject Maria Dos Santos to a horribly painful death. But why? Did she reject his love, impugn his masculinity, or criticise his failures? No. In fact, it was none of these… …as being new to the hotel, he barely even knew her. By 4th December 1968, Dominic had been night porter at the Winton Hotel for three months, by which time he hadn’t ingratiated himself with the staff. Most didn’t know him, didn’t want to know him, or those who did, didn’t like him; as he was rude, angry, late, and – with a sizable chip on his shoulder – he was unwilling to take orders from Luke, the hotel manager, a man almost two decades his junior. That day, “as a result of his behaviour, I dismissed Kelly and told him to take a week’s notice”, Luke would inform the Police. With his job providing him an invaluable income, meals and a warm bed, all that was required of Dominic was a little humility, only his reply was typically blunt - “you can go fuck yourself”. Having crossed the line and with his dismissal taking immediate effect, Dominic unleashed a volley of pure foulness “and threatened to splash my blood all over the walls”, Luke would state. Arrogant to the bitter end, although contractually obliged to do so, he refused to hand in his hotel ID, his uniform, the keys to his room and the next day he returned to the hotel demanding his final wage. With Luke (as the spark of his ire) not being in, in the reception of this busy hotel he threatened David the Assistant Manager that if he didn’t receive his money now, “he would smash the place up”. On both occasions, still fuming, he left without any trouble. Seen as little more than a loudmouth, and a big angry man who was nothing but piss and wind, although scared, few took his words seriously. Having returned twice more, and (as predicted) acting like a baby who cried because its nappy was soiled, but never thinking that the reason its arse is warm and squishy was because it had shat itself, by 12th December, although Luke had rightfully refused to pay him his last week’s wage, the hotel’s bosses met with Dominic and agreed to give him a half week’s wage of £6 and 15s, which he accepted. With the former night porter paid off, a minor skirmish should have been averted, only having retained his keys to the hostel, since his dismissal almost two weeks prior, Dominic had been staying in his old room at 106 Queensway, sleeping in his old bed, coming and going as he pleased. The staff and the owners all knew this, but it was deemed too much hassle to evict him and risk incurring his wrath. Thankfully, by 15th December, the matter was settled when Patrick Nolan, the new night porter moved in, and Dominic had to clear his filthy crap out. But although he left the room, he didn’t leave the keys. On Thursday 19th - during the weeks which Dominic could have got a new job, a wage and a place to stay, instead of blaming Luke who had dismissed him owing to his bad behaviour – being homeless, Dominic returned to the hotel to demand the rest of his money, having spent what they’d agreed to. Once again, like a moron without an ounce of brain, threatening to “smash the place up, if I don’t get four quid”, the management locked the door, called the Police, but Dominic fled before they arrived. Not being the smartest, that night as Luke McSweeney slept, a supposedly mysterious voice plagued the phone in his room by taunting: “Mr McSweeney, this is Dominic Kelly…”, before hanging up. So it wasn’t a real mystery as to who had inflicted the damage which would occur that very night. At 2:30am, in Room 102 in the basement of the Winton Hotel on Inverness Terrace, Luke was abruptly awoken by a heavy crash, as his window smashed in, sharp shards shattered across his bedspread, and a thick iron railing thudded onto the floor. Dashing up and glaring out of a sparkling hole in the glass, Luke would confirm “I saw Dominic Kelly walking north along the pavement towards Bayswater Road”. Again, blaming others for his mess, Dominic had done a bad thing… …only his vengeance against Luke, hadn’t even begun. By Christmas Eve, the night was cold, as a light smattering of snow and a cold wind whistled down the festive frivolities of Queensway. As pubs heaved with boozy merriment and cheesy carols, being a time for forgiveness, peace on earth and good will to all men… for Dominic, that didn’t apply to Luke, later confessing “I got drunk, thinking of that little homosexual bastard, who sacks people for nothing”. At 5pm, as Josephine Wilson, the 21-year-old receptionist picked up the phone; “Winton’s Hotel, how may I help you?”, her sing-song tone swiftly ceased as a gruff voice threatened “tell McSweeney, don’t sleep in your bed tonight”, which Dominic asked her to write down as a little Christmas treat to be handed to the manager, but also – as all dense dickheads do – leaving a trail of evidence for the police. His hatred was of Luke, and no-one else, so having made his threat, Josephine would state “he told me that he was going to put a petrol bomb through the manager’s window that very night. He asked me if either I or my fellow receptionist (Christine) slept anywhere near. I told him not to be stupid. I also added that the manager had changed his room since the incident (when Dominic smashed his window), but he didn’t ask me which room Luke had moved to, and I didn’t tell him. At no time during our conversation did he make any mention of the hotel’s other premises at 106 Queensway”. At 6:15pm, Luke received a call “I recognised it being Dominic Kelly. I immediately dialled Harrow Road Police Station. I then put both lines together, having heard a female voice answer ‘Harrow Road Police Station’”. Kelly said ‘who’s that?’, she replied ‘Harrow Road police station’, “he stated ‘this is Dominic Kelly’…”, and over the phone to a Police officer, he added “I’m going to burn the hotel down tonight”. WPC Jane Atkins who took the call would testify: “the man said ‘well now listen, the Winton Hotel, all hell will be let loose there. It will be like a flaming inferno. I said “are you going to give me your name?”, he replied “don’t be bloody funny. This isn’t a joke, it’s going to happen, and I’ll tell you when, between 1am and 2am, this will be a warning to McSweeney, you have got all that, have you?”, she replied “yes, thank you Sir”, he replaced the handset”, and the details were passed to the station officer. By that point, having threatened to commit arson, you would assume that Dominic would have tried to keep a low profile? But at 11:30pm, like a bad smell whiffing of stale beer, he returned to the hotel. Asked to leave, this time by two Constables who were unaware of the threat, having confronted Luke for one last time, the Police asked him to move on, and he replied “Alright, I’m going up north anyway”. As Dominic Kelly turned his back, it may have seemed like the danger had passed… …but as he walked down towards Queensway, his rage only burned hotter. Being Christmas Eve, although the hotel remained open across the silly season, some of the staff had already headed off home to see their loved ones, or down the pub for a few pints with their best pals. That evening, Patrick Nolan the new night porter finished his shift at 10pm. With Ronald the day porter away, their shared room on the top floor of 106 Queensway was all his, but he was slow to head back. Having watched a few festive films on the box in the hotel lounge, at 12:50am on Christmas morning, he headed back to the hostel, stating “the door was locked, and I used my key to enter”. The hallway was quiet and deserted, as he had expected, “and in the enclosure to the right of the foot of the stairs, there was a mattress and some bags containing paper and other rubbish. They had been there for the fortnight that I have been living there… I went to my room without seeing or hearing anyone else”. He had no idea who was in or who wasn’t, but then again, it wasn’t his concern. Dressing in a pair of cotton pyjamas, with the radiators on, the duvet up and feeling toasty warm, amidst the festive cheer which slowly died down outside, Patrick started reading a book to help him nod him off to sleep. At 1:20am, “after reading my book for five minutes, the lights went out”, as the fuse had tripped. It happened sometimes, so he didn’t see this as a concern, until he opened his door. “I got out of my bed to investigate. I saw a lot of smoke in the passageway which belched into my room. I didn’t feel a great deal of heat, but I could see nothing”. Doing the right thing, Patrick shouted “fire, fire” to alert his fellow lodgers to the smoke. It was then, “I heard a woman screaming ‘fire’, it was in reply to my shout, it came from the room next door, occupied by the Spanish girl, Maria”. With the hallway thick with dense clouds of chocking smoke, and the stairwell a slowly rising wall of impenetrable heat, “I went back into my room as I couldn’t move, and I couldn’t see”. Being on the top floor, the only way out was the deadliest way, “I shouted to her to break a window and get out” - which Patrick did in his room, smashing the locks and opening it wide, as a cold winter wind blew in. “I didn’t hear the girl again”, he would state, but maybe she couldn’t hear him, or understand him. As a bitter wind blew, “I crawled along the ledge towards 108 Queensway” - his freezing legs in a thin and slowly soaking set of cotton pyjamas shuffling along an icy ledge just one-foot wide, with thick plumes of smoke to his right and a terrifying drop of fifty feet onto the hard concrete to his left - it took all of his concentration not to fall to his death, as a resident in an adjoining building helped him climb in. Patrick was safe, but Maria was not. Whether this was later survivor’s guilt he would state “just prior to leaving the window, I think I heard the sound of a girl screaming from inside the building”, That terrifying moment would plague Patrick Nolan for the rest of his life… …but for Dominic Kelly, he hadn’t an ounce of compassion in his bones. At 1:30am, he was seen by Patricia Inder, a chambermaid at Winton’s watching the flames. Moments earlier, Gwendoline Jenkins was standing outside Whiteley’s trying to get a taxi-driver to call the fire brigade, when a man - she later positively identified in an ID Parade as Dominic Kelly – aggressively shouted at her, screaming ‘you fucking stupid silly little cow, let it burn, it will go them good’, and when she asked him ‘why don’t you go and help them’, he just shuffled away saying ‘let them burn’. At 1:36am, the crew of Edgware Road fire station were alerted, arriving within three minutes to see “a terraced shop, the floors above and the basement alight”. Unleashing six pumps to extinguish the inferno, it wasn’t until 3:40am, that it was safe to enter the blackened and badly damaged building, as a water tank had crashed through the attic floor, crushing the staircase from the top to the ground. Aided by Dr Clarke, in Room 2 on the top floor next door to Patrick’s, “on the edge of a badly charred bed in the corner of the room was an extensively burned young female body. She was unclothed, lying face down and covered with debris from the roof”. 36-year-old Maria Candida Pereira Dos Santos from Portugal had been a chambermaid at Winton’s for six months, she was quiet, well-liked and she had nothing to do with the petty spat between Dominic Kelly and the manager who sacked him. (End) With her autopsy held at Westminster mortuary by Professor Keith Simpson, with her blood saturated with 100% carbon monoxide, death was concluded as asphyxiation by smoke fumes. And with her body being too horrifically burned, the only way for her cousin to identify her was by an earring. Being the most likely and the only suspect given the trail of evidence he had left, on Wednesday 8th January 1969 at 10:10pm, Dominic Kelly was found in a grotty little room at 47 Argyle Street in King’s Cross. Taken to Harrow Road Police Station, he didn’t ask about the victims, he just laid the blame on others, stating “I suppose that McSweeney, that little poof has made an allegation about me again?”. Denying he was anywhere near the hotel or the hostel at the time of the fire, with witnesses testifying he was, and with a set of keys to the front door found in his pocket, he was charged with the unlawful killing of Maria and maliciously setting fire to a dwelling house while Maria and Patrick were inside. Tried at the Old Bailey on 9th June 1969, although he would plead “I didn’t start the fire”, Judge Mervyn Griffith-Jones would reply “the jury have come to the conclusion that you did. It is a tragedy that you, with your background, should have fallen as you so obviously have done over the last few years”. But of course, appealing his sentence, he would claim that it wasn’t his fault. Sentenced to just five years in prison for manslaughter, as they couldn’t prove he had maliciously started the fire, he was released in 1974, and he died eight years later in Croydon, aged sixty-five. It is still uncertain to this day, why he set fire to the hostel, when Luke slept at Winton’s. But then again, as a failure in life who blamed others for his faults, Dominic Kelly was an arrogant loser to the end. The Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast has been researched using the original declassified police investigation files, court records, press reports and as many authentic sources as possible, which are freely available in the public domain, including eye-witness testimony, confessions, autopsy reports, first-hand accounts and independent investigation, where possible. But these documents are only as accurate as those recounting them and recording them, and are always incomplete or full of opinion rather than fact, therefore mistakes and misrepresentations can be made. As stated at the beginning of each episode (and as is clear by the way it is presented) Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast is a 'dramatisation' of the events and not a documentary, therefore a certain amount of dramatic licence, selective characterisation and story-telling (within logical reason and based on extensive research) has been taken to create a fuller picture. It is not a full and complete representation of the case, the people or the investigation, and therefore should not be taken as such. It is also often (for the sake of clarity, speed and the drama) presented from a single person's perspective, usually (but not exclusively) the victim's, and therefore it will contain a certain level of bias and opinion to get across this single perspective, which may not be the overall opinion of those involved or associated. Murder Mile is just one possible retelling of each case. Murder Mile does not set out to cause any harm or distress to those involved, and those who listen to the podcast or read the transcripts provided should be aware that by accessing anything created by Murder Mile (or any source related to any each) that they may discover some details about a person, an incident or the police investigation itself, that they were unaware of.
Nominated BEST TRUE-CRIME PODCAST at The British Podcast Awards, 4th Best True Crime Podcast by The Week, The Telegraph's Top Five True-Crime Podcasts, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50 and iTunes Top 25.
St Ervan's Road, W10, where 'Polish Joe' lived
Welcome to the Murder Mile UK True-Crime Podcast and audio guided walk of London's most infamous and often forgotten murder cases, all set within and beyond the West End.
EPISODE TWO HUNDRED AND NINE:
This is Part Two of Two of Rags and Bones. On Thursday 13th March 1969, the body of a 52-year-old prostitute was found inside a derelict house on Kensal Road, W10. Her missing clothes lead to a very likely suspect, who claimed her death was an accident. But was this the truth, a lie or an alibi?
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THE LOCATION
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SOURCES: This case was researched using some of the sources below.
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE: Welcome to Murder Mile. Today I’m standing outside of 39 St Ervan’s Road, W10; just a few doors down from the home of Rene Hanrahan, a six-minute walk south of where ‘Scotch Maggie’s body was dumped, and one street south of the addict who slayed an old lady so he could watch a Bond film - coming soon to Murder Mile. It’s ironic, but the old Victorian terraces they demolished to make way for these modern monstrosities now go for a song. During the slum clearance, 39 St Ervan’s Road was stripped, ripped and taken to the tip of everything to make hipsters called Fenella and Farquhar Fortescue have a wet dream; like a wrought iron railings to display their collection of artisan vegan twigs, a tin bath to start a steam-punk gin-distillery, and a vintage bike so rusty it’s like a shit shoplifter stealing eighty bags of nuts n bolts. On Tuesday 11th March 1969, the day ‘Scotch Maggie’ went missing, it would be proven that she had come here to the shambolic lodging of a regular punter in this run-down three-storey terrace. With lodgers on the same floor and neighbours on several floors below, this second-floor lodging at the rear of the house was the home of a man as equally as forgotten and unloved as Maggie. Seeing her not as a piece of “pathetic human driftwood” but as a pal to get drunk with, he would confess that her death was an accident, and – as the Police had believed – he dumped her body out of sheer panic. But was that the truth, a lie, or an alibi? My name is Michael, I am your tour guide, and this is Murder Mile. Episode 209: Rags and Bones – Part Two. For Detective Inspector North and Detective Superintendent Barnett, aspects of the crime scene at 140 Kensal Road didn’t make any sense. Wearing a blue half sleeved jumper and a pair of grey casual trousers, it looked as if she had been stripped and then dressed to remain indoors. With no shoes, no socks, no bra, no knickers and no suspender belt, the victim hadn’t arrived in this abandoned house of her own accord. And with no signs of a struggle, no fresh bloodstains and the suitcase, its binds and rags it was stuffed with not originating from here, it was clear she had been moved from elsewhere. Theorising that her killer wouldn’t have travelled far as he risked being seen, and with her body stuffed in a large discrete suitcase as if he was dumping some rubbish, may have transported her by taxi. Every local taxi firm was alerted, with every driver asked to check their logbooks for any drop-offs on or near to Kensal Road between Tuesday 11th and Thursday 13th March, but all proved to be fruitless. Having alerted the Police to the victim’s identity, although Robert Hartley alias Wilfred Williams was a cruel drunken man and a former mental patient with a violent past, it didn’t mean that he didn’t love her or that he didn’t care, as his emotions at the news of her death would show the detectives. Prone to lying, Maggie’s excuse that “I’m going to draw money from the Scottish Linen Bank” was untrue, but why? And how could the police find a forgotten woman who most of the locals ignored? In the local papers, the police issued a very detailed statement hoping to jog any resident’s recollection from that night, stating “the body was carried in a suitcase and conveyed possibly by vehicle to Kensal Road. Superintendent Barnett is anxious to speak to anyone who knew her or the places she visited. Anyone who saw a person carrying a sack in the Kensal Road area is also asked to come forward”. The Police went door to door, questioning the neighbours across several blocks, and notified by Robert that several items of her clothing was missing – her shoes, her underwear and her black and green ladies coat - they searched bins, sacks and side-streets, and spoke to every rag merchant in the area. It was like trying to find a needle in a haystack… …but if you think a needle is there, then it’s worth searching. During their enquiries, officers visited AT Reads, the premises of a rag and scrap metal merchant called Arthur Read based out of 110 Golborne Road, just off St Ervan’s Road. Making money from second-hand goods, he traded with ‘totters’ – often old men wheeling squeaky handcarts about town which were loaded with sacksful of unwanted scrap like ripped clothes, old books, odd bits of metal and broken suitcases – which he’d buy off them for a fair price; with some of it okay, but most of it crap. Asked if he had any recent deliveries from his totters, Arthur recalled “I had one from a guy I only know as ‘Polish Joe’”, a small weak pensioner who picked up odd bits around Portobello Road market. “I saw him on Wednesday 12th March at 11am, carrying an old mail bag full of rags. I remember saying to him ‘you been robbing the Post Office, Joe?’”, not being fluent in English, “he said ‘me not well, me not eat’”. Walking with a pronounced stoop, he looked sick, but then he was prone to drink. “This was the first time I had seen him in months. I gave him 10s for the bag, but I haven’t opened it. I never check the rags from ‘Polish Joe’, as they always look dirty, like they’ve come from a building site”. Usually, Arthur would send the sacks of rags straight to the rag factory for sorting, but this time, being a bit behind in his work, it was still in his shop, bound and untouched, right where he had left it. Cutting the tie, inside he would find a woman’s black and green coat, a pair of green socks, a white suspender belt, a pair of white soiled knickers, and a set of false teeth, all later identified by Robert as Maggie’s. Polish Joe had Maggie’s clothes. But did he find them, steal them, or was he hiding them? Known as ‘Polish Joe’, Josef Balog was actually born in Hungary in 1905, only no-one would ever know that, as like Maggie, he was a nobody who meant nothing to no-one, “like pathetic human driftwood”. As Maggie had, Joe had fled his homeland as the Nazi’s rose to power, but unlike Robert Hartley who wore fake medals to fleece many good people of their hard-earned cash, Polish Joe was a war-hero. In 1939, he enlisted in the Polish Army fighting for the allies, serving as a private in the infantry, seeing action and surviving unscathed until he was demobbed in the late 1940s. With the Hungarian borders restored, although the monarchy had been abolished, many natives feared returning to Hungary as – being a satellite state of the Soviet Union – they feared the brutality of the Hungarian Secret Police, now under the orders of the Soviet State, especially those who were Hungarian Jews, like Josef Balog. After the war, he lived in Romania where he learned his craft as a carpenter, and in 1957, he returned to England, living in London on a £9 per week pension from the Polish Army. Barely enough to live on, as a feeble man with arthritic hands, a curved back and a liver abused by chronic drinking to curb his pain, Joe was not a well man. But if he didn’t work, he wouldn’t eat, and if he didn’t eat, he would die. Joe became a totter simply to pay his way, as when he wasn’t stood in the doorway of the Caernarvon Castle public house on Portobello Road, the squeaky wheel of his handcart made of tubular steel with a large wooden box on top could be heard from Golborne Road to St Ervan’s Road to Oxford Gardens. It had been a while since carpentry had made him any money, so although he still kept his tools and an apron made of white twill, it was his meagre money as a totter which kept his lonely life rolling on. Prone to drink and blighted by poverty, Joe had a criminal record for a few minor offences; on the 23rd August 1965 in Marylebone, he was conditionally discharged for possessing a hatchet; and three times in 1966, 1967 and 1968, he received three fines for being drunk and disorderly in a public place. It was said, that as a drunk and lonely man who found solace in sex-workers, this was how ‘Polish Joe’ met ‘Scotch Maggie’, as two outcasts from society who were forgotten by a world which did not care. In return, he loaned her money, bought her drinks and he gave her first dibs on the clothes he found. In 1966, at Joe’s former lodging at 45 Fermoy Road, just shy of Meanwhile Gardens, PC Laing charged both Joe and Maggie for being drunk and disorderly, in an argument during which Joe hit Maggie. They apologised, they remained friends, and as one of the few who truly knew her, he would call her ‘Carol’. For the last six months, Joe had been in a relationship with Mary Wood, a 59-year-old kitchen porter known as Daisy, who had lived with him in the second-floor rear lodging at 39 St Ervan’s Road. But not a fan of his foul temper, on Sunday 8th March, three days before Maggie’s death, Mary had left him. By Tuesday 11th March 1969… …Josef was lonely, sad and looking for company. That day, according to Robert Hartley, Maggie left 3 Oxford Gardens at roughly 9:30am, wearing few of the clothes she would be found dead in - blue jeans, a blue blouse, black leather shoes and a black and green coat – possibly seeking her daily quota of several bottles of wine and a punter to pay for her time, it’s likely that she headed to Portobello Road market where ‘Polish Joe’ was known to stand. As two outcasts forgotten by society – an old broken man and a poor fallen woman - ravaged by drink and lost to time, it was easy for them to vanish unseen and unheard on a busy city street, as unless they were begging, swearing and causing a nuisance, most people would never acknowledge them. They weren’t seen on Portobello Road, Acklam Road or St Ervan’s Road. It was a dull day but with bright daylight when Joe popped his key in the lock and let Maggie into his shared home, climbing the stairs past three floors in which eight couples and families lived, as they ascended to the top floor. With two lodgings split by a partition wall, the tenants of the front top-floor lodging (Cynthia & Roy Johnson and their two children) didn’t hear Joe & Maggie enter his room, but then, why would they? Joe’s room was small, a cramped little hovel occupied by a double bed and a large wooden dresser, it was the kind of room you’d expect an old totter to live in. With almost no spare space, he had stuffed piles of clothes, books and boxes of what-not into every possible slot. It was messy, but on his walks across Kensal Town and Notting Hill, he had acquired some creature comforts; like a wireless radio, a small television and a paraffin heater by the side of the bed, which he used for cooking and warmth. Thankfully, being a hoarder – whether by choice or by necessity - the landlady let him store his squeaky old handcart, his tools, his hessian sacks and anything he had hoped to sell later in the basement; with the room piled high with cracked paintings, broken electronics, books, twine and a few large suitcases. In his Police statement, Joe would admit “before she come to me, she drunk anyway. She come my house 3 o’clock. I drink one bottle of beer, one big one. She drink the wine, me drink the beer”. Being a big drinker, “she demanded more wine. I buy her two bottles of wine and a half bottle of brandy”. By this point, Maggie was intoxicated and struggling to sit upright on the edge of his bed. “I opened the wine. I told her she shouldn’t drink it, because I am going to the laundrette on Golborne Road” which he did three times a week without fail. “I left between 6 and 7pm. I went back at 7:30pm”. Entering his room, he found Maggie collapsed on the floor, unconscious but breathing: “I picked her up. She asked for some water. She didn’t want anything else”. At the scene, a glass of water was found. Initially seen across her left eye and the crack of her mouth, a splash of blood had streaked as she had slipped off the bed in a drunken stupor, DI North would later find “two small patches of dried blood (of Maggie’s group) on top of the paraffin heater” situated two feet from the head of the bed. Also confirmed by Joe “when I got home, she knock head on paraffin fire, it fall over and go out”. As determined by Dr Donald Teare the pathologist: “the haemorrhage to her brain was consistent with a heavy blow or a fall”, probably two or three. As with bruises to all four limbs, her stomach, her right buttock, and only a light scratch to the knuckle of her right little finger – with no signs of a struggle – they could have occurred in a comatose fall, being too drunk to use her arms to protect her head. Among a sea of old bruises and an explosion of red from her nose, these new bruises, the Pathologist would state “were likely to have occurred within 12 hours of death”. Which begs the question, why didn’t he call for help if she was unwell? Was he too drunk, too afraid, or – with her conscious and breathing as the booze dulled her swelling pain – did it not seem too serious as he put her to bed? It is uncertain whether she had undressed herself, if she was already naked, or if Josef dressed her in pyjama-like clothes, but the blue half sleeved jumper and the grey casual trousers she was found in were not hers and – although Robert Hartley would state that before she got into bed “she always got completely undressed” - not only were her blue jeans and blue blouse missing, so was her underwear. According to Joe, he nursed her through the night stating “Wednesday she all day sick”. A head-shaped pool of blood was found in a congealed mess about the pillow, dotted with strands of her greying hair. To keep her warm, he said he wrapped her in bedspread knitted together from several multicoloured woollen sheets, which – along with his white twill apron – was stuffed into the suitcase with her body. And as she slept and her bruised brain bleed, she slowly drifted into a coma, and then to her death. Josef would state, she died between 10 and 11pm, which mirrored the pathologist’s findings. But now Josef was stuck. Trapped in a small, cramped room with a dead woman whose head wounds even an expert couldn’t determine whether they were committed by a fist or a fall suggesting either foul play or an accident – coming from a Soviet-run country where brutality, corruption and confessions were routinely beaten out of the innocent – Joe the frail elderly totter, as the detectives would predict had panicked. Joe would state “when she die, I got very fright”. But knowing he had to do something to get her dead body as far from himself and unseen – he didn’t pop her in a taxi as the detectives had incorrectly deduced – instead he used his skills as a totter; a man with a handcart, some sacks, an old suitcase and an encyclopaedic knowledge of every derelict house for miles around, having searched every room seeking a few odds and sods to salvage and sell. If anyone had been seen wheeling a squeaky handcart along the dawn-lit streets of Kensal Town with a large wooden box on top (as inside a battered old suitcase hid the body of a dead prostitute) it would have looked odd. Only being a shambling old man, going about his job, pushing a squeaky old handcart full of unwanted crap as he did every day – Josef the totter was unseen, forgotten and invisible. Being elderly, weak and infirm, his disposal wasn’t the swiftest or the quietest. At 1am, Philomena Charles, a tenant in the front 1st floor room heard a noise “a banging door, it was shaking the house. I didn’t go upstairs to see what it was, I went to bed”. As like everyone else, she was used to Josef’s noise, bringing odd things and strange woman back at all hours of the night. Cynthia Johnson, Josef’s neighbour would state “at about 2am, I was woken by a noise of Joe leaving his room and going downstairs. Then I heard a terrible noise outside, the banging of metal and things”, as he rummaged in the basement for a large suitcase, and a red, black and yellow wire to bind it as the lock was broken. “Half an hour later, I heard him come back, go into his room, he closed the door and opened it and closed it again. There was no more noise after that, and I went to sleep”. During which time, he stuffed Maggie’s body into the suitcase, with her knees tucked up tight to her chin. At 5:30am, just as dawn was breaking, Cynthia recalled “I heard Josef’s radio going, it was turned up loud, I did not hear him in his room or on the stairs”, but just like Philomena, “outside I saw his hand cart… Josef had something heavy on it, covered with a black coat and then he went down the street…”. Being just a six-minute walk or a twelve-minute totter from 39 St Ervan’s Road to 140 Kensal Road, the witnesses both stated that he returned thirty minutes later, only the large box was empty. This sighting went unseen by almost everyone else along that journey, but with Cynthia & Philomena being black, and ‘Polish Joe’ prone to drunken racist outbursts, there was no love lost when the Police made door-to-door enquiries about a suspicious man, seen with a large suitcase or box, at roughly that time. Discovering the sack at Arthur Reed’s rag merchants just one street away, which contained some of Maggie’s clothes and a smashed set of her false teeth, the case was as good as closed. Knocking on his door, Josef let the Police in, they sealed the crime-scene and he was promptly taken in for questioning. Held at Harrow Road police station on Friday 14th March, initially, he denied everything, including knowing Maggie or being at the abandoned house, but being confronted with evidence, he confessed to the unlawful disposing of her body, but he flatly denied that her death was anything to do with him. When charged, Josef would state “I understand. I not kill her. It was the wine”. Tried on the charge of murder at the Old Bailey on the 10th of July 1969, the prosecution would state that “Josef Balog had repeatedly beaten Margaret Cameron over the head” given his prior offence for assaulting her, whereas the defence would claim that whilst insensibly drunk, she fell, hitting her head. The evidence was stacked against him: He said she had died owing to drink, but her blood contained 13 milligrams of alcohol per 100 millilitres of blood - a blood alcohol level which was too low for a woman who had supposedly drank so much. He said she had hit her head on the Paraffin heater, while he was at the laundrette, only no-one saw him there, and – with Dr Rufus, a noted neurologist stating that her brain haemorrhage “was as a result of several blows of falls” – three strikes from a fist seemed plausible, but for a woman to fall from the bed hitting her head on a paraffin heater three times, that was too much of a coincidence. There were other details which made no sense: why there was a bruise on the inside of her right thigh, why the crotch of her knickers were stained with her blood, why an undetermined semen stain was found on her suspender belt, and why – when at 10am on the Wednesday, when Maggie was still alive – in his handcart, Joe delivered a sack to Arthur Reed, which contained some of her missing clothes. In court, Detective Superintendent Barnett would attest: “Josef Balog intimates a defence that she met her death as a result of a drunken fall whilst alone in his room. Evidence to disprove this lies in the bruises found on her body being inconsistent with this story. In particular, it may be through the cunning and callous manner in which he disposed of this woman’s body which leaves no doubt she met her death as a result of a vicious and possibly prolonged beating at the hands of the accused”. Josef Balog was a good as guilty, but with no eyewitnesses to her death, no proof that he disposed of her body and no acts of aggression seen or heard prior to the wounds being inflicted – unable to prove anything - after twenty minutes of deliberation, he was acquitted of all charges, and walked free. (End) ‘Polish Joe’ the totter returned to his home that night, and he died a few years later of alcoholism. But was he innocent, or being invisible to the world, had the investigation missed a little detail in his past? In his minor criminal record, it lists four convictions: three for being drunk and disorderly and one for possessing an offensive weapon. But that’s not the full story. In 1966 he was tried at the Old Bailey for assault, GBH and ‘shooting with intent’, as reported in the Marylebone Mercury on the 3rd Sept 1966. It was said, on the morning of the 13th June 1966, Kathleen Carmody – a young Irish woman said to be of eccentric habits, heavy drinking and fraternising with men – met Josef Balog when saw her sitting on a bench outside a public house on Harrow Road and he invited her back to his room for some wine. Returning to his squalid lodging at 45 Fermoy Road, where he had once assaulted ‘Scotch Maggie’, Kathleen would state “I was sitting on the edge of his bed, two bottles of wine later, he suggested I go to bed with him”. Although homeless, she finished her wine and said she would leave. Only, being an angry little man with a short fuse and bulging pants, Josef was not the type to take no for an answer. She would state “He picked up a stool and hit me over the side of the head with it. Then tore off my shirt and trousers and took off my underclothes. I was left with nothing at all. He told me to go back to the bedroom” and as she this terrified girl prepared to flee “he pulled out an airgun and shot me in the right knee”. Bleeding from a head wound and screaming at the top of her lungs, Kathleen ran out into Harrow Road, where she was found by a female constable and was taken to Paddington Hospital. Charged at Harrow Road police station, he denied knowing Kathleen, owning an air-pistol, bringing any girl back to his room, and – when asked why his shirt was bloodied – he blamed it on a nosebleed. Tried at the Old Bailey, with no eyewitnesses, not enough hard evidence and with Kathleen changing her story and failing to turn up at court for the trial, Josef was acquitted of a crime remarkably similar to what may have happened to Maggie – a drunk, a sex-worker and a forgotten woman who he had been used-up, spat out and dumped in an abandoned house amongst a mess of unwanted rubbish. The Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast has been researched using the original declassified police investigation files, court records, press reports and as many authentic sources as possible, which are freely available in the public domain, including eye-witness testimony, confessions, autopsy reports, first-hand accounts and independent investigation, where possible. But these documents are only as accurate as those recounting them and recording them, and are always incomplete or full of opinion rather than fact, therefore mistakes and misrepresentations can be made. As stated at the beginning of each episode (and as is clear by the way it is presented) Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast is a 'dramatisation' of the events and not a documentary, therefore a certain amount of dramatic licence, selective characterisation and story-telling (within logical reason and based on extensive research) has been taken to create a fuller picture. It is not a full and complete representation of the case, the people or the investigation, and therefore should not be taken as such. It is also often (for the sake of clarity, speed and the drama) presented from a single person's perspective, usually (but not exclusively) the victim's, and therefore it will contain a certain level of bias and opinion to get across this single perspective, which may not be the overall opinion of those involved or associated. Murder Mile is just one possible retelling of each case. Murder Mile does not set out to cause any harm or distress to those involved, and those who listen to the podcast or read the transcripts provided should be aware that by accessing anything created by Murder Mile (or any source related to any each) that they may discover some details about a person, an incident or the police investigation itself, that they were unaware of.
Nominated BEST TRUE-CRIME PODCAST at The British Podcast Awards, 4th Best True Crime Podcast by The Week, The Telegraph's Top Five True-Crime Podcasts, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50 and iTunes Top 25.
Meanwhile Gardens, off the Grand Union canal
Welcome to the Murder Mile UK True-Crime Podcast and audio guided walk of London's most infamous and often forgotten murder cases, all set within and beyond the West End.
EPISODE TWO HUNDRED AND EIGHT:
On the morning of Tuesday 11th March 1969, a 52-year-old prostitute known as ‘Scotch Maggie’ went missing from her home at 3 Oxford Gardens near Notting Hill. Two days later, her semi-clad body was found inside a suitcase in an abandoned house at 140 Kensal Road. But who had killer her and why?
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THE LOCATION
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SOURCES: This case was researched using some of the sources below.
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE: Welcome to Murder Mile. Today I’m standing on Kensal Road in Westbourne Grove, W10; three streets north of unsolved killing of Emmy Werner, one road east of the drowning of Lena Cunningham, two streets west of the sad end to Minnie Barry, and a short walk from West London’s lady killer - coming soon to Murder Mile. In the shadow of Trellick Tower, on the bank of the Grand Union Canal sits Meanwhile Gardens, a thin strip of green in a grey manmade jungle; where drunks get pickled in a sea of strong Polish lagers, a line of baggy-pants skaters take turns to fail to do a simple trick, picnics are ruined as the scotch eggs get coated in choking smog as a belching trucks roar by, and gangs in grey Mothercare tracksuits strut about like mummy forgot to change their nappies – “me is done a well-bad botty plop, you get me?” As part of the 1960s slum clearance, before Trellick Tower was built, a series of canal-side terraces were scheduled to be demolished making way for Meanwhile Gardens. By 1969, 140 Kensal Road was just another mid-Victorian three-storey terrace with smashed windows, no door and a leaking roof. Being weeks away from its destruction, it was in the backroom of this damp derelict hole that the body of a 53-year-old prostitute known as ‘Scotch Maggie’ was found. As an outcast of civilised society, this forgotten woman had been used-up, spat out and dumped alongside a mess of abandoned rubbish. Maggie’s death was the epitome of tragic, but who had killed her, and why? My name is Michael, I am your tour guide, and this is Murder Mile. Episode 208: Rags and Bones – Part One. (Clip: Apollo 11’s “one small step for man”) 1969 was a year of great technological advancements; the world’s first network connection led to the invention of the internet, supersonic passenger jet Concord took its first test-flight and Neil Armstrong became the first man to walk on the moon. The present had become the future, and yet, with poverty so endemic, many people lived as they had in the past. Very few locals knew anything about ‘Scotch Maggie’ – whether her name, her past, or her troubles - and even less wanted to. Maggie was a drunk; a stumbling, slurring, swearing wastrel who drank to forget, sold sex to buy booze, and got sozzled into a sad stupor every day with no memory of the past. To the world, Maggie was a nobody, a low-class prostitute stuck in a vicious circle of drink, sleaze, and shame, who - even in the police file into her death - was described as “pathetic human driftwood”. She deserved better, but in the end, she would be forgotten. Her real name was Margaret Farlow Cameron. Born on the 17th January 1916 in Perthshire, Scotland, little is known about her past, as what she did say was a lie and what she was running from is unknown. To those few who listened as she rambled incoherently - with her breath a foul-smelling mix of cheap cigarettes, fortified wine and sometimes semen - she claimed to be from a prosperous Scottish family, although, at the time of her death, with her sister hospitalised and incapable, it could never be proven. With no known work record or education, Maggie’s life was empty, a hollow cycle of little routines to fulfil her basic needs, but even her closest friends and clients knew nothing of her life. If she had a family, none were seen at her council-funded funeral and her grave had no flowers nor a headstone. Throughout her 53-years alive, she would amount to nothing, as her life was as ephemeral as the mist. Described as “sparsely built”, Maggie was the epitome of a biological contradiction; skinny yet fleshy, with a chubby red face made rosy by a lifetime of the cheapest booze, and the emaciated body of a woman for whom food was an afterthought. With a tangled mess of reddish-brown hair, contrasted with her ghostly pale skin, the only reminder of her history was a series of old scars and new bruises which told the tragic tale of a woman who was as disposable as the dump she would be found in. Apart from her death, the only real record that Maggie ever existed was her criminal convictions. For some unknown reason, Maggie was running from something or someone, which may be why she had so many aliases. Some of which were; Margaret Cameron, Margaret Fowler, Margaret McLaren, Margaret Fowler-McLaren, Margaret Sonja Fowler-McLaren, and although she was known locally as ‘Scotch Maggie’, it was only her closest friends and most regular of clients who knew her ‘Carol’. According to her criminal record, on 8th May 1935 in Edinburgh, 19-year-old Margaret Cameron was reprimanded for the charge of theft. Two decades later, on 18th January 1954, aged 38, Margaret McLaren (maybe her married name) was fined 10 shillings at Marylebone for outraging public decency. On 9th May 1956, aged 40, Margaret Fowler-McLaren was conditionally discharged in North London for prostitution. On the 15th March 1962, aged 46, she was bound over for two years for stealing fruit. And on 21st March 1964, aged 48 in Marylebone, she was fined £5 for stealing a camera. She wasn’t a career criminal, but a damaged woman struggling to get by in an unfair world. From 1964 to 1968, Maggie lived with a trader called John Forde in a decrepit lodging in Harlesden, where her police file states “she appears to have degenerated into an alcoholic of the lowest kind”, a fact that would be backed-up by her remaining criminal convictions as well as her autopsy. As on the 2nd June 1965, 9th March 1966, 16th March 1966, 28th Dec 1967 and lastly – just 10 months before her tragic death - on 6th May 1968, she was fined and imprisoned for public acts of drunkenness. No-one will ever know the truth as to why Maggie was so sad… …or why she drank to hide her past and to erase her memories. By 1968, Maggie was seen as little more than the ‘town drunk’ and a ‘local pump’, a rambling mess who slugged back several bottles a day of King Head wine, before stumbling out into Westbourne Park - unwashed and unkept - to pull any punter who would pay her a pittance, as a slew of vile men defiled her semi-conscious or comatose body as she lay passed out on the bed, a sofa, the floor or the gutter. For Maggie, this was what her life had been reduced to. She wasn’t a human but a whore, she wasn’t a person but a pisshead, and she wasn’t a woman but merely a hole for a drunken man’s mess. In September 1968, possibly as a current or former-punter, Maggie met 69-year-old Robert Hartley, a retired seaman, and by the Christmas the two had moved in together into a small single-roomed lodging on the second floor of 3 Oxford Gardens in Notting Hill, just beside Portobello Road market. Having interviewed Robert Hartley, being the last man known to have seen her alive, the police would state “he would make a reasonable witness, but as with many in this case he’s of low intelligence and prone to drink”. As with Maggie, having been defined as a “very low class of prostitute”, with him as her boyfriend, they had cast-aside a few basic but fundamental facts which would have made him less of a witness and more of a suspect; that he was cruel, violent, insane, and – more importantly - a liar. Born in Salford in Greater Manchester in August 1900, although Robert Hartley went by several aliases – like Thomas Harris, Harry Brown and Harry Williams – throughout the investigation he had deceived the detectives, as Robert Hartley was also an alias, as his real name was Wilfred Ronald Williams. In truth, Robert had never been a seaman, he had never set sail, and the medals he proudly wore had been purchased for a pennies in a pawn shop, so passers-by would give hand-outs to this brave soul. His criminal record was extensive, and these were only the crimes he was convicted of. In 1918, 19 and 20, in Salford, Wigan and Bolton, he would serve six weeks, two months and one year for six counts of theft. In 1921, he served three months for ‘unlawfully wearing military medals’ for the purposes of deception, and although he now had a family, he was unable to change his ways. In 1923, 24 and 25, he served a total of seven months in prison for the ‘neglect of his family’ and for ‘cruelty to his children’. Bookending the abuse of his wife and babies, he would serve five months for twice picking-up prostitutes in Salford, and a further fifteen months for stealing lead piping and lino. By 1939, with the outbreak of the Second World War, Robert had abandoned his children and married Jeanie his second wife, only to serve five months hard labour in 1940 for three counts of theft. It was a time when good people sacrificed their lives to protect their country - only he didn’t, as he couldn’t. On the 21st January 1941, having been ‘certified of unsound mind’, Robert was committed to Knowle Mental Hospital in Winchester, with an unspecified psychopathic disorder, later being removed to Prestwick Mental Hospital on 4th June 1942, where he remained an asylum inmate for four years. Discharged on 21st April 1945, the next twenty-four years consisted of petty theft and drunkenness. Robert Hartley was a cruel violent drunk, and even though his lies would ultimately be outed, he was never considered a suspect, and the Police took his statement to being as near to being a fact. But why? Maybe being burdened by a lack of hard evidence, they went with the best facts they had? Maybe being an abuser, they felt that a woman like Maggie deserved no less of a man? Or with Maggie being “pathetic human driftwood”, maybe the effort of a thorough investigation wasn’t worth their time? The last known movements of the woman known as ‘Scotch Maggie’ were certified as true and signed for in the shaky hand of a barely literate man, on 9th April 1969, a full month after her body was found. Probed by the police for details to flesh-out their unanswered questions, Robert stated: “the night before, I slept with her. She always got completely undressed before getting in and wore a nightdress”. By all accounts, she was no more drunk than usual, they hadn’t fought, and she had slept soundly. On the morning of Tuesday 11th March 1969, the day of her death, according to Robert “I got up first at 7:30am and made a pot of tea”, although there would be no witnesses to any part of what followed. “She got up about 8:30am”, he would state, giving herself a brief ‘top n tail’ in the sink and popping in her dentures consisting of several interspersed false teeth on an old and cracked vulcanised plate. “I watched her get dressed”, later confirming the jewellery she wore; a yellow metal bracelet, a green plastic ring, a pink bangle and a black plastic ring, but – oddly - none of the clothes she would later be found dead in, not a blue half sleeved jumper and a pair of grey casual trousers; but blue jeans, a blue blouse and a pair of black leather shoes, none of which would ever be found. And although, her green and black ladies coat (last seen hanging on their bedroom door) was missing; her underwear would be stripped from her body; a pair of green socks, a suspender belt and a white pair of knickers. He would state, “at that time, there were no injuries or bruises on her face, arms or body”. Two days later though, when her body was found, her face would be a barely recognisable bloody swollen mess. “I left my flat at about 9:15am to get some cigarettes. She was getting ready to go out, saying she was going to draw money from the Scottish Linen Bank in the West End”. The problem was there was no such bank. There was a British Linen Bank, but she didn’t have a bank account and she kept no savings. That would be the last time that Wilfred Williams alias Robert Hartley saw Maggie Cameron alive. At 9:45am, returning (unseen by any neighbour and unrecorded by the tobacconist) to their second-floor room at 3 Oxford Gardens, he would confirm “she had left, and I haven’t seen her since”. Where she went was unknown, who she saw was a mystery, as being a staggering drunk too incapable of conversation and a drifter who many people only acknowledged when they wanted her removed from their premises, nobody cared where she went as long as it was as far away from them as possible. Anyone can vanish if no-one is watching out for them. With few close friends – an alcoholic called Jack, a totter with a handcart called Polish Joe and a few sex workers who were only known by aliases - the only people she regularly spoke with were the sort of unnamed unsavoury man who used her for sex. Living just off Portobello Road market, it’s likely she went there first, but no one recalled seeing her. And there… …she vanished. A few days later, Robert Hartley would report her missing. He would state “she tended to disappear, but not for more than a few hours, or a day or two”. And yet it was only when he saw an article in the paper about a dead body being found that he contacted the Police, and identified it as Maggie. On Thursday 13th March 1969, half a mile north of their home, lay a long line of mid-Victorian three-storey terraces scheduled for demotion near a site called Hazelwood Grove. With the backs of these brick shells facing the bank of the Paddington Arm of the Grand Union canal, the fronts faced the road. Devoid of people, except for the demolition team, no-one had any reason to be here. Resembling the ghosts of an old forgotten street or a smashed smile in a broken mouth, Kensal Road was an eyesore, with roofs caved in, broken pipes, spewing sewers, windows smashed and doors gone. Inside lay the detritus of past lives, as outside unscrupulous fly-tippers dumped a bag, a box, a trunk or a wardrobe. At 8am, Ralph Spreadbury, a plasterer from Dagenham started his shift near this row of eight derelict houses, having been employed there for the last four months, most of which had been uneventful. At 12:30pm, he had a sandwich for lunch and went for a little walk, “one of my hobbies is collecting old books. A few days ago I had noticed that there were some old books in a box on the pavement outside a house opposite the building site. The house was derelict… and the door was wide open”. Having been dumped, it was his if he wanted it. “I had a look through the box. There were two or three books, but they were soaking wet…”, as over the last few days, the rain had lashed down, making the bank at the back a soggy mess. “I looked in the window by the door and saw a lot more books scattered around the floor… I had a look, but they were all soaking wet as the water had gone through the roof”. He could have explored higher up the house, with two floors above, but with a few walls missing, too many bricks crumbling, a river of rainwater pouring in, and the wooden staircase as rotten as an old manky mouth, it was unsafe to enter this building, let alone to tread on the bare broken floorboards. But then again, Ralph liked old books, and these were free. “I went to the back room where there was a sofa”, it was old, used, battered and dumped. Around it lay a sea of unwanted objects; papers, books, clothes and old tat that no-one would be willing to buy. “At one end of the sofa was a brown suitcase”, not big, just three feet long by eighteen inches wide. “The case was not locked. It was very damp and it looked quite old”. With his lunch over, and most of the books too water-damaged to read in this hovel strewn with rats, pigeons and flies, he could have quit his hunt, but curiosity got the better of him. “I then opened the case on its hinges to see if there were any books in it” and the contents would burden his brain with nightmares for the rest of his life. Being heavy, he left it flat on the floor and lifted the flap. The suitcase looked like it was packed with assorted rags, until he saw - protruding through like one of the undead had failed to crawl out of a grave - a left hand, all wrinkled and pale, with a black plastic ring on its left ring-finger. “I saw what I thought was a large doll in the case”, only this doll was lifelike, with a plumpish round face, a skinny bony body, and its reddish/brown hair bursting out of the side. This woman, being five-foot-five in height, had been folded up like an unsightly hanky. Bent double, with both knees forced up to her face, her arms twisted back and her feet buckled under her bottom, someone had forced her into this impossibly tight space, with barely an inch to spare on either side. With rigor mortis leaving a dark hue to the left of her trunk, there was no denying she was dead. And with her face smashed, as if her nose had been repeatedly beaten as concealed blood had splattered from several hard explosions across her nostrils and her eyes, foul play had definitely taken place. Ralph would later testify “I lifted the cloth to see if it was a man or a woman, but I felt so sick that I let go… and I walked out of the house. I went back to the site and saw the Foreman (Stan)”. Having returned to the scene, and seeing the body within, Stan called the Police who arrived promptly. At 12:55pm, PC Rogers arrived and secured the scene, at 1:30pm, Dr John Shanahan pronounced her life as extinct, and at 1:15pm, Detective Inspector Kenneth North and Detective Superintendent James Barnett headed up the investigation, into an – as yet – unknown woman found dead in a suitcase. Aside from her identity, two questions would plague them… …how did she get there, and why did she die? As a crime scene, it didn’t make sense as to why she was there, as although derelict buildings were used by prostitutes and punters for brief sexual trysts, she wasn’t dressed to go out. With no shoes or socks, she wore a blue half sleeved jumper and a pair of grey casual trousers. Only all of her underwear had been removed; she had no knickers, no bra and (as although worn in that era) no suspender belt. Although on the surface, her discovery was shocking, it seemed to be an entirely motiveless crime, as who would rob a semi-clothed woman when all she seemed to own was jewellery of the cheapest kind, and if this was a personal grudge, where was the passionate violence or the sadistic wounds. Her cause of death was determined to be a brain haemorrhage caused by “repeated blows to the head and face”. And yet, with no signs of struggle at the crime scene, as she hadn’t been raped, strangled, violated, bludgeoned or abused, the pathologist - Dr Donald Teare – was unable to precisely determine how or if she had been attacked, “as the haemorrhage is consistent with a heavy blow or a heavy fall”. Around the body, items had been stuffed – possibly – to pad out the suitcase so it didn’t look like it contained a dead body, including a dirty white cloth, an apron made of thick cotton twill, and a unique bedspread knitted together from several multicoloured woollen sheets. It had been bound with a red, black and yellow wire, and along with the suitcase, none of these had originated from this house. Dead for at least 24 hours, with no fresh bloodstains found, it seemed odd that someone would waste so much time stuffing a body into a suitcase, only to dump it in a derelict house whose backyard faced an empty towpath on a dark unlit section of the Grand Union canal, where bodies often wash-up. The detectives would speculate that someone had crammed her into the suitcase in a state of panic and that – having been attacked elsewhere – she had been transported to this spot from somewhere else, as although the house was soaking wet, her feet were bare, and her body was bone dry. (End) An autopsy held at Westminster Mortuary would confirm that no sexual assault had taken place, the victim hadn’t been bound, muffled, gagged, dragged or restrained, and with no skin cells under her fingernails, she hadn’t clawed at her attacker in her last moments alive. In fact, she hadn’t struggled. With her dental plate missing, her eyelids and forehead bruised, and extensive bruising to the left side of the skull but the bones entirely intact – although three ounces of haemorrhage to right of the brain was found - “the injuries to the eyes and mouth were consistent with fist blows or falls, at least two”. With a little blood in her airway, she had lived for a short while having been rendered unconscious, making bruises “which occurred within 12 hours of her death”, and although all four limbs were freshly bruised - except for one knuckle on her right little finger – there were no scratches and no scrapes. Why anyone would murder Maggie was baffling, being a harmless part-time prostitute who drowned her sorrows in cheap wine and who was no bother to anyone, being as unloved as she was forgotten. But someone had. Someone had – deliberately – taken the time to undress her, to fold her body, and stuff her corpse into an old unwanted suitcase, hide her amongst rags, and – risking being seen – carry her to where this “pathetic human driftwood” would be dumped like rubbish in an abandoned house. The concluding part of Rags & Bones continues 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. |
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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