 Seven time nominated BEST BRITISH TRUE-CRIME PODCAST at the True Crime Awards, Independent Podcast Award and The British Podcast Awards, and voted 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation Top 20 True-Crime Podcasts, also seen on BBC Radio, Sky News, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week.  Margaret McGowan & Bridget O'Hara EPISODE THREE HUNDRED AND FIFTY:
This is Part D of D of Undressing Jack the Stripper, an eight part series made in conjunction with the True Crime Enthusiast podcast. From the late 1950s to the mid-1960s, the bodies of eight sex-workers (Elizabeth Figg, Gwynneth Rees, Hannah Tailford, Irene Lockwood, Helen Barthelemy, Mary Fleming, Margaret McGowan and Bridget O’Hara) were found dumped in or near the River Thames in West London. Panic spread that a sadistic serial killer was on the loose who targeted young petite brunettes; stripped and strangled them, dumped each body within weeks and streets of each other. Yet with not a single witness to his crimes, even though several suspects have since been named, with no convictions, it’s a series of killing which remains a mystery to this day. After the success of their ten-part series, Psychopath: Two Side of Patrick MacKay, Mike at Murder Mile and Paul at the True Crime Enthusiast join forces once again to bring you an eight-part crossover series about one of Britain’s most infamous unsolved serial killing – Jack the Stripper. This episode is about Helen Barthelemy & Mary Fleming.
SOURCES: a selection sourced from various archives:
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: (River sounds) By February 1965, 8 sex-workers were dead; Elizabeth Figg, Gwynneth Rees, Hannah Tailford, Irene Lockwood, Helen Barthelemy, Mary Fleming, Margaret McGowan and Bridget O’Hara. The first four were unlikely to be linked, the last four were unquestionably by the same serial killer. This was the real ‘Jack the Stripper’, as each killing was a carbon copy of the other; all were strangled, stripped post-mortem, stored for days or weeks, only to be found dumped with no rape or necrophilia, obvious robbery or clear motive, and all were covered in an unique dusty rainbow of paint particles. The Police asserted that this killer was experienced, calm and controlled, a sadist with a powerful urge to kill, but the wisdom to leave no clues, the cunning to never be seen, and the patience to make these women vanish, only to then dump the bodies in plain sight and taunt his pursuers with his ingenuity. But whoever dumped the bodies was panicked; being seen several times, driving like a maniac, almost crashing his car, hastily tossing their cadavers into any alley or dead-end, and leaving some tyre marks. Was this ‘Jack the Stripper’ a Jekyll and Hyde type character who killed with impunity, but was gripped with guilt when he sobered up? Or were these last four murders by two different men; a ruthless and violent gangster who killed any of his girls who displeased him (having crossed him in a blackmail scam, worked for a rival pimp, spoke to the Police, gave a name or a face, or attempted to flee), and was the panicked clumsy buffoon who disposed of each body, merely an underling taking orders from his boss? Created in collaboration with True Crime Enthusiast, across this joint eight-part series, Paul & I will rip apart 60 years worth of the myths, lies, misinformation and conspiracies of one of London’s greatest unsolved serial killings to make you rethink what you know or have been told about Jack the Stripper. My name is Michael, I am your tour guide, and this is Murder Mile. Episode 350: Undressing Jack the Stripper – Part D of D. In a statement dated the 28th of April 1964, Commander George Hatherill appealed to London’s sex-workers “this is urgently directed to all those women whose means of livelihood places them in danger of meeting the same fate”. He wanted to speak to any women who had been “forced to strip under threat of violence or a knife”, had been attacked, or met a client “obsessed with teeth”. It was riddled with misinformation, linking Barthelemy’s murder to the previous three - Rees, Tailford and Lockwood - stating “Police fear that if information isn’t forthcoming, yet another prostitute may be found dead”… …and those were the truest words they ever wrote. Margaret McGowan was a 21-year-old Glaswegian who was a 5 foot 1, 7 stone brunette, described as “a small bird-like women with a pale face”, she was small but strong, jolly yet morose. On probation aged 11 for theft, her tough adolescence was spent in borstal, prison and pregnant, she had solicited for sex since her mid-to-late-teens, and 19 months before her murder was hospitalised for depression. In August 1964, two months before, as an unmarried mother of three children, living in a squalid single room at 16a Southerton Road in Hammersmith with Paul ‘Pepe’ Quinn (a known thief and burglar), they survived on her sex work, as he called her “a good hustler who worked rain or snow”, and even though he was violent towards her, she apparently boasted to her friends, “nobody’s going to kill me”. But had she already met ‘Jack the Stripper’? Margaret McGowan alias Francis Brown told her friend Vera Lynch that weeks before, a man in a grey van picked her up, flashed a Police badge with the CID insignia, and told her how the killer had “pulled the coat down over the shoulders, locking the arms, and screwed what they were wearing around their neck and strangled them”. In fear, Margaret said she fled, didn’t report it to the Police and didn’t give Vera a description of the supposed CID man, but saw a jumble of clothes in the back of his van. Was this a cruel copper taunting the sex-workers, a hint at the Stripper’s persona, or a lie by her friend in an era when the press paid good money for a sensational story? Either way, a myth was forming. And that’s a big part of the problem. In an era when tabloid newspapers were at their most powerful; everybody had a story to tell (for a price) or a theory (if you cherry-picked enough facts), basic details were tenuously linked, scandal reigned supreme, detectives were distracted, investigations derailed, and lost behind a wall of filth, each victim was blamed for their death owing to the lives that they led. It was a story which had everything; sex, drugs, scandal and death, and once it was known that – two of the eight Hammersmith Nudes - Margaret McGowan & Hannah Tailford had testified in the trial of Stephen Ward - and one of biggest scandals of the 1960s, the Profumo Affair, which almost toppled the British government – a wealth of infeasible suspects were conjured out of thin air by the Press, and although every witness was interviewed, the Police found nothing to link anyone to their deaths… …but by then, it had become hard to extract the fact from the fiction. The last sighting of Margaret McGowan was on Friday the 23rd of October 1964 in the Warwick Castle pub at 225 Portobello Road, where it is said “she drank 19 whiskeys” with her friend, Beryl ‘Blondie’ Mahood. She wore a green two-piece-suit with a dark fur collar, a blue and white petticoat, black suede shoes, blue gloves, and (it’s uncertain how this is known) a blue bra with black and pink knickers. After closing time, Margaret & Beryl were waved at by two men in two cars at the corner of Portobello Road and Westbourne Park Road, and in the quiet of Hayden’s Place, they negotiated some ‘business’; they’d travel in convoy, go to Chiswick Green for sex and they’d drop the girls off later at the Jazz Club. Heading toward Shepherd’s Bush Green, Beryl travelled with the taller of the two men in a newish car she didn’t know the make of. The man was 30 to 35 years old, 5 foot 10, medium build, with a long defined face and full lips who was well-spoken with a London accent. Margaret’s man drove a darkish grey Ford Zephyr or Zodiac, was also 30 to 35 years old, but 5 foot 8, stocky, muscular, with a rougher London accent, a square brutish face, a broad nose, a thin mouth, and a large set of protruding ears. They were meant to travel together, but they split at Shepherd’s Bush. The man reassured Beryl, “it’s okay, I’ll see him back at the flat”, and having had sex with her client on Young Street in Kensington, he dropped her off, as agreed, at the Jazz Club… but Margaret McGowan was never seen alive again. But was Margaret’s client ‘Jack the Stripper’? He was the age, height and body type of the man they were hunting, he was her last known client, he was experienced with sex-workers, he was calm and controlled, and knew the backstreets of London well, but he wasn’t driving a Hillman Husky type van, but a Ford Zodiac or Zephyr - a very different car. And by this point, with two confirmed kills to his name (Helen Barthelemy & Mary Fleming), and no-one having seen his face; why would he pick up his next victim as she stood with her pal, chatting to them alongside his friend, who Beryl said was ‘quiet’, and then, he murdered Margaret McGowan? Was this ‘Jack the Stripper’, or just a regular client? Could he not control his urges, or had be become too cocky? Was he a Jekyll & Hyde, who was calm before each killing and panicked during the disposal? Or did Margaret meet someone after him, a punter, a stranger, her pimp, or one from a rival gang? Did this killer work in pairs, and was he the controlling boss, and the other, his panicked underling? Identikits of their faces were released to the press, but the men were never named or came forward. Margaret MacGowan’s body wouldn’t be found for 33 days… …but unlike before, no-one saw her body being dumped, yet it was equally as hasty and panicked. On Wednesday the 25th of November 1964 at 1:30pm, assistant civil defence worker Dennis Sutton crossed the car park at the rear of Kensington Central Library on Horton Street in Kensington. As he went to enter his workplace, an underground Civil Defence building used during the Cold War, on top of a pile of leaves and dead branches, he spotted a metal bin lid which had been missing for six weeks. Lifting it up, he saw the badly decomposed body of Margaret McGowan, crawling with maggots. As before, this was a killing by ‘Jack the Stripper’, as it matched Helen Barthelemy, Mary Fleming and Bridget O’Hara after her. For consistency, the autopsy was conducted by Dr Donald Teare; again, cause of death was asphyxiation by strangulation, she (like the others) had clawed at her neck as she died, she was attacked fast and without struggle, some teeth were missing possibly owing to decomposition as her nose, eyes and most of her face had rotted away, her jewellery had been taken possibly to limit her identification, and again, she was speckled with a fine dust containing a unique rainbow of paint. Again, she was identified by her tattoos and fingerprints, but oddly, although no rape or sexual assault (alive or dead) was proven to have taken place, a small blank piece of paper was found in her vagina. This killing was as baffling as the last two and the next one; he had hidden each body for days or weeks, unseen by anyone, and – for no clear reason – he had driven each body (in states of decomposition) at night across West London (where Police were stopping lone men in cars) and dumping them in plain sight or partially obscured in an alley, a dead end, a car park, and - next time - at the back of a factory, If he was taunting the Police with his cunning, as they implied, why didn’t he dump their bodies where it caused them the most embarrassment; near a police station, a newspaper office, a government building, the BBC, or somewhere significant, like any of the small alleys in and around Scotland Yard? If he was taunting them, why didn’t he leave a note, a clue, or a red-herring? This was his opportunity to show the detectives just how much smarter than them he is, but instead, he shat his pants and fled. So, why would he do that, and why – if the bodies were well hidden - does he move them, at all? Given the similarities between all four of the final murders, the investigation should have been simple for the detectives, but with no arrests made and few credible suspects, they had become a mockery. On the 23rd of October 1964, News of the World wrote “perhaps the biggest embarrassment for the Yard are the unsolved street-girl murders. The identify of the sex maniac who tours the vice areas looking for slightly built prostitutes is still not known. This perverted murderer who may have killed four or five times has perturbed Scotland Yard with its most baffling problem since ‘Jack the Ripper’”. How could they fail to find the killer? Was it because he was too cunning… …or by the end, they were still hunting the murderer of eight women, not four? Prostitution is a very dangerous occupation, with over 75% of sex-workers having experienced serious assault, with threats, intimidation and coercion a regular occurrence. Elizabeth Figg was likely killed by a punter, Gwynneth Rees was violently beaten by her pimp for trying to flee, and Hannah Tailford & Irene Lockwood were forced into blackmail scams, which may have led to their suicide or murder. Pimps are protected by their own gang, the police they paid off, and a code of silence among the girls who work for them knowing that if they step out of line, they will be beaten, sliced up, or murdered. These were not women, they were disposable commodities who no-one would miss if they vanished. When Beryl ‘Blondie’ Mahood heard that Margaret McGowan had been murdered, she gave the Police descriptions of both men – whose identikits were published in the newspapers – and she phoned the Evening Standard saying, “I got a good look at him… now I'm terrified he will try to kill me". That night, she said, “two men in a van tried to run me over by my flat”, a story which made the front page of the News of the World, and a week later, she said she was assaulted as she left the Jazz Club by an unseen assailant who warned her “keep your mouth shut”. But was this real, or a fabricated story for fame? Newspapers need a constant supply of stories and sources, they pay well, and don’t require proof. But this Jack the Stripper doesn’t fit the usual pattern of a serial-killer, as his killings have no motive. Each women was attacked fast, stripped but with no sexual violence, strangled but with no torture or mutilation. And his killings had no hint of any escalation. As a killer get more proficient, he experiments to sate his desires, but this one doesn’t, he does exactly what he did before, with very little deviation. The gap between the murder of Barthelemy and Fleming was 2 months and 3 weeks, from Fleming to McGowan it was 4 months and 2 weeks, and from McGowan to O’Hara was 2 months and 3 weeks. His crimes weren’t quickening as his urge drove him to kill, he was killing these women by necessity. So, maybe this wasn’t an impulse he couldn’t control, but an order. It didn’t thrill him, it was a thing he had to get done, quickly, quietly and without being seen, or leaving a clues to whoever ordered it. If this was true, these killings weren’t committed by a gangland boss, but his most trusted enforcer, a man experienced in brutality, who could kill on command and handed the disposal to someone junior? Hence there was no rape, no torture and no sadism, this didn’t excite him, this was just an execution. Is that why these last four bodies were hidden for days or weeks (to instil fear among the ranks of the sex-workers who threatened to flee, refused to blackmail a client, or had spoken to the police, press or had testified in court), and to keep them in line with the ultimate threat that “wherever you are, we will find you”, their bodies were dumped in a place they’d be found, not instantly, but in hours? Maybe these weren’t murders, but threatening messages which the Police and Press duly published. The final victim was 28-year-old Bridget Esther Moore, known as ‘Bridie’, a 5 foot 1, 9 stone brunette. As the 6th of at least 12 children in a working class family, she tried to make a simple life for herself as a ward-maid at St Kevin’s Hospital in her native Dublin, but had moved to Acton in West London with her older sister in 1954 seeking a better life, but found only pain, which she would pacify with drink. As victims of ‘Jack the Stripper’, all were know about their lives is the darkness and desperation which plagued them, the filth and the misery as reported by the press – alcoholism, drugs, domestic abuse, abandonment, unwanted pregnancies and sex-work – as by framing their lives as pathetic, we either assumed they killed themselves, deserved to die, or were pleading for a serial killer to end their misery. Bridget was last seen on the evening of Monday 11th of January 1965, by her husband, Michael O’Hara in their squalid top floor flat at 41 Agate Road in Shepherd’s Bush. Having separated owing to their drunken fights, they were trying to make a fresh start, but with only 11p to their name, Bridget who had 11 convictions for soliciting, often moonlighted with sex work to feed her family, but wanted out. At 10:30pm, she was in the bar of the Shepherd’s Bush Hotel on the corner of Shepherd’s Bush Green and Goldhawk Road, with Edward Kelly, a window cleaner, and Joseph Kelly, a spray-painter. At closing time, although Joseph wanted to have sex with her, he said she was seen leaving with a man; 5 foot 6, full face, brown hair, trilby and a three quarter length suede coat, whose name he couldn’t recall, but told the police “I heard that he tried to strangle a woman in Acton or Chiswick during a row”. Again, this sighting was reported to the Police, but being impossible to substantiate, it was uncertain if this was the truth, a misremembering, or a lie for attention, an alibi or to blame someone he disliked. She was also said to be seen by Holland Park tube station (from where Elizabeth Figg vanished), with three men; two were Welsh, one was older, and one “short, with a brutish faced and protruding ears”, a description which (maybe) coincidentally matches the Identikit released to the press weeks before. Bridget wasn’t reported missing by her husband until three weeks later on 3rd of February 1965, but even then, she wasn’t treated as a missing person, but as a prostitute who had walked out on husband. She had vanished off the face of the earth for 36 days… … but four days before she was found, someone had moved her. On Friday the 12th of February 1965 at 5:45am, on the Heron Trading Estate in Acton, West London (a large industrial estate full of factories), Thelma Schwartz, a cleaner at Zonal Film Facilities crossed the bridge at Alliance Road, and between the Central Line tube and the entrance to the estate, in one of the sheds backing onto the steep embankment at its perimeter, she heard someone rustling leaves. Spooked, she hurried to her work, and not seeing its significance, she came forward 3 months later. On Tuesday the 16th, Leonard Ernest Beauchamp, an odd job man at Surgical Equipment Suppliers was replenishing the liquid soap for the toilets, when in an 18-inch gap between a shed and the wire fence, under a hasty covering of bracken, sticks and grass, “I noticed a pair of feet” with red painted toenails. This was undeniably another killing by ‘Jack the Stripper’. She had been stripped after death, manually strangled by asphyxiation with two claw marks to her neck but no other injuries, there was no sexual violence, mutilation or struggle, post mortem she was placed on her back and (weeks later) her front, and in a more advanced state of decomposition than Margaret McGowan, her body was mummified. It was dried out, like a raw piece of meat exposed to the sun, and although all four bodies were stored somewhere warm and filthy – as all were sprinkled in the same dusty rainbow of paint – with the body only exposed to the weather for a few days and the grass beneath still fresh, someone had moved her maybe three or four days before, possibly the night when Thelma Schwartz had heard rustling leaves? So, why move the body? Maybe it was the smell, as active decomposition is at its worst between 4 to 10 days, and permeates everything around it the longer it remains in situ. But why did he leave the body there, partially obscured in a public place? Was this his plan? Or was he planning to drive it away, but thinking he’d been caught, in panic, he fled, and by the time he came back, the body was found? But if that’s the case, why move the other three bodies in the weeks or months prior, and why wait so long to move them? Had this Jekyll & Hyde lost his nerve, or did an underling make too many mistakes? With another murdered prostitute in West London proving a major embarrassment for Scotland Yard, Detective Chief Superintendent John Du Rose, nicknamed ‘four day Johnny’ owing to his skill at solving murders was brought in to wrap this up quickly and efficiently, before this crazed killer struck again. So far, they had ruled out; every possible suspect (Fenwick Ward, Ernest Forrest, Micky Calvey, George Kitchener-Dixon, Cornelius Whitehead) and any husband, partner, client or pimp of the dead woman; any man who was “40s, short, stocky”, drove Hillman Husky, a Ford Zodiac or a Zephyr, anyone linked to any sex scandal, anyone who had been caught kerb-crawling, and any paint sprayer in West London. Over 300,000 cars were logged, over 120,000 men interviewed with 7000 alone on the Heron Trading Estate, with 100s of factories and workshops with paint sprayers checked across 24 square miles to find where the bodies were stored - in a mark of incompetence, but on his behalf, supreme arrogance – John Du Rose boasted “at the furthest end of the search area… a perfect sample of the paint came from underneath a covered transformer at the rear of a factory on the Heron Factory Estate in Acton”. Just a short walk from where Bridget’s body was found was “an electricity substation in a small gated compound with a bank of transformers”, underneath were crawl spaces, to the side a paint shop using “a lead acetate base paint with a unique rainbow of red, black and faint specks of blue”, and the consistent decomposition of bodies was achieved as the space was kept warm by the power cables. The Detectives were closer than they had ever been to catching ‘Jack the Stripper’, but with no arrests and no suspects, Du Rose claimed he tried to torment he killer to make a mistake. In the serialisation of his autobiography, ‘Murder Was My Business’, Du Rose wrote “we knew it was useless to appeal to the killer to come forward, so we began a war of nerves. News was released piecemeal to let the murderer know that he was now the centre of the greatest ever force of police officers… we allowed the press to learn of our list of suspects… and that one of three men was the man we would arrest”. But instead, the killings stopped… or did they? On the 28th of April 1965, a naked female body was found in the River Thames near Putney. The murder squad investigated, but ruled it as “unconnected to the Hammersmith Nudes”. On the 21st of February 1966, the Daily Record declared “is she victim number 7?”, as in the Thames at Wapping, a woman’s dismembered body was found, but again, it was dismissed as “not a killing by ‘Jack the Stripper’”. The murder of prostitutes has never stopped, but if these two killings were committed by him, had his method changed? Detectives initially claimed they’d forced him to stop dumping bodies in the Thames by increasing their manhunt, and so, he moved further inland to residential areas. Yet they wouldn’t claim they‘d forced him to change his tactics again, instead they simply said they had made him stop. But how do you claim a killing-spree has stopped, when the killer hasn’t been caught? Simple, you find a patsy. With psychiatrists stating “it is unlikely he was frightened away by the search’s intensity, as compulsive killers are not easily deterred”, as across 1965 when the last body was found, 1966 when the case was closed, and in 1970 when retired detective John Du Rose was publicising his autobiography, he hinted “and then, there were no more killings. In my view, the sheer weight of our investigation and the fact that we had made inquiries about him, led the killer to take his life. And yet, because he was never arrested and never stood trial, he must be considered innocent, and will therefore never be named”. With ‘Jack the Stripper’ possibly known but unnamed, again the press went into a feeding frenzy to find a local man who had died by suicide, and being dead, Du Rose’s suspect couldn’t defend himself. Like the evidence which linked all eight women to one man, the evidence against him was tenuous. 45-year-old Mungo Ireland was one of several security guards who patrolled the Heron Trading Estate, but having only worked there from the 6th to 24th October 1964, he wasn’t on site when Barthelemy, Fleming & McGowan were murdered then stored there and when O’Hara was killed he was in Dundee. He was a heavy drinker whose home-life was fractious, but there’s no proof he was violent, sadistic or visited prostitutes, no evidence he was in any of the areas when the murders occurred, he didn’t drive a Hilman Husky, a Ford Zodiac or Zephyr but a Ford Consul, he wasn’t interviewed, his garage or car wasn’t inspected, his licence plate didn’t appear on the list of kerb crawlers, the murder squad weren’t aware of him until two months after his death, Detective Superintendent Bill Balldock said Mungo Ireland “was not considered a strong suspect” in the final police report which his senior, Detective Chief Superintendent John Du Rose signed off, and the only evidence linking Mungo Ireland was this. Gripped with depression about his life, work, health and a court summons for a traffic violation, unable to cope, on the 3rd of March 1965 – three weeks after Bridget O’Hara’s body was found – he gassed himself in his car, leaving a vague suicide note which read: “I can’t stick it any longer. It may be my fault, but not all of it. I’m sorry Harry (Mungo’s brother) is a burden to you. Give my love to the kid. Farewell. Jock. PS: to save you and the police looking for me, I’ll be in the garage”. And that was it. No confession to the killings, just a vague note by a man struggling with depression, who many still blame for the killings having only been alluded to by a retired ego-fuelled detective with a book to sell. The Police files remain locked away until 2049, but with the forensic evidence said to be “destroyed or lost”, the truth about ‘Jack the Stripper’ is lost is a sea of myths, lies, misinformation and conspiracy. So, who was ‘Jack the Stripper’? Sadly, the truth will never be known. The Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast has been researched using the original declassified police investigation files, court records, press reports and as many authentic sources as possible, which are freely available in the public domain, including eye-witness testimony, confessions, autopsy reports, first-hand accounts and independent investigation, where possible. But these documents are only as accurate as those recounting them and recording them, and are always incomplete or full of opinion rather than fact, therefore mistakes and misrepresentations can be made. As stated at the beginning of each episode (and as is clear by the way it is presented) Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast is a 'dramatisation' of the events and not a documentary, therefore a certain amount of dramatic licence, selective characterisation and story-telling (within logical reason and based on extensive research) has been taken to create a fuller picture. It is not a full and complete representation of the case, the people or the investigation, and therefore should not be taken as such. It is also often (for the sake of clarity, speed and the drama) presented from a single person's perspective, usually (but not exclusively) the victim's, and therefore it will contain a certain level of bias and opinion to get across this single perspective, which may not be the overall opinion of those involved or associated. Murder Mile is just one possible retelling of each case. Murder Mile does not set out to cause any harm or distress to those involved, and those who listen to the podcast or read the transcripts provided should be aware that by accessing anything created by Murder Mile (or any source related to any each) that they may discover some details about a person, an incident or the police investigation itself, that they were unaware of.
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Seven time nominated BEST BRITISH TRUE-CRIME PODCAST at the True Crime Awards, Independent Podcast Award and The British Podcast Awards, and voted 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation Top 20 True-Crime Podcasts, also seen on BBC Radio, Sky News, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week.
Helen Barthelemy & Mary Fleming
EPISODE THREE HUNDRED AND FORTY-FIVE:
This is Part C of D of Undressing Jack the Stripper, an eight part series made in conjunction with the True Crime Enthusiast podcast. From the late 1950s to the mid-1960s, the bodies of eight sex-workers (Elizabeth Figg, Gwynneth Rees, Hannah Tailford, Irene Lockwood, Helen Barthelemy, Mary Fleming, Margaret McGowan and Bridget O’Hara) were found dumped in or near the River Thames in West London. Panic spread that a sadistic serial killer was on the loose who targeted young petite brunettes; stripped and strangled them, dumped each body within weeks and streets of each other. Yet with not a single witness to his crimes, even though several suspects have since been named, with no convictions, it’s a series of killing which remains a mystery to this day. After the success of their ten-part series, Psychopath: Two Side of Patrick MacKay, Mike at Murder Mile and Paul at the True Crime Enthusiast join forces once again to bring you an eight-part crossover series about one of Britain’s most infamous unsolved serial killing – Jack the Stripper. This episode is about Helen Barthelemy & Mary Fleming.
SOURCES: a selection sourced from various archives:
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: (River sounds) Elizabeth Figg, Gwynneth Rees, Hannah Tailford & Irene Lockwood, four women whose deaths barely half a mile apart were tenuously linked for the sake of sensationalist news, even though two were drownings, one was a possible botched abortion, and one was likely an unrelated murder. The same happened from August 1935 to May 1936 in Soho when four sex-workers, all young petite brunettes were strangled but not sexually assaulted on neighbouring streets, and although not a shred of evidence connected them, a wealth of myths, lies and conspiracies linked all to an unnamed killer. The press love creating waves, and often, the investigation gets caught in its wake. Like from January 1980 to August 1983, when in districts near to the where Jack the Stripper struck, a slayer attacked six gay men; all stabbed and battered, with some posed or set alight by (it was believed) a lone assailant. All six were murdered, yet this wasn’t the work of a serial killer, this was a coincidence, as the evidence later showed that one was slain by a burglar, one by a lovesick vagrant, and while the other six would remain unsolved, their killers were either rent boys or sadists who had taken their sex games too far. There was no Jack the Stripper, he did not exist… at least until April 1964, when he murdered his first possible victim, 22-year-old brunette Helen Barthelemy, and three more would follow (Mary Fleming, Margaret McGowan and Bridget O’Hara); all whose bodies were stripped, strangled and dumped. This was a serial killer. These were his victims. And he was Jack the Stripper. But who was he? Created in collaboration with True Crime Enthusiast, across this joint eight-part series, Paul & I will rip apart 60 years worth of the myths, lies, misinformation and conspiracies of one of London’s greatest unsolved serial killings, to make you rethink what you know or have been told about Jack the Stripper. My name is Michael, I am your tour guide, and this is Murder Mile. Episode 349: Undressing Jack the Stripper – Part C of D. Two weeks before the inquest into Irene Lockwood’s death ruled it as a ‘drowning’, and three days before Kenneth Archibald - the sad and desperate self-proclaimed attention-seeker who confessed to her murder, but got many of the details right as he got wrong - Helen Barthelemy’s body was found. On the 25th of April 1964, as her autopsy was underway, a special police squad was established to ask “did one man kill all five of these women?”, even though they admitted “they may not be connected”. Patrols were stepped up, perverts were questioned, the licence plates of kerb-crawlers were marked, police woman were disguised as prostitutes to snare the stripper, and the press went into overdrive. Jack the Stripper was the distraction that society needed from the horrors of the era, but the evidence was tenuous. You may think that maybe the murder of Helen Barthelemy (and it was a murder) is the piece of the puzzle which links Figg, Rees, Tailford and Lockwood? But it doesn’t. It’s as different to the first four as it was similar to the last three, but with the police (specifically one senior detective whose rewriting of history is the reason this investigation may never be solved) they would arrogantly state “by putting pressure on the killer, we forced him to change tactics”, and make careless mistakes. But it’s likely they hadn’t. If this was the same calm and controlled killer, who for five years had murdered four sex-workers in the same area, but killed them in different ways to make them look like they were unconnected, and yet miraculously left no witnesses, fingerprints or sightings? Why was this killing, his fifth, so shoddy? In an early attempt at profiling, the police psychiatrist said “he was likely mature, and not impulsive”. By this point, with four supposed ‘unsolved killings’ under his belt, Jack the Stripper should have been smart, cool and knowledgeable of stalking, killing and disposal. But what Helen Barthelemy’s murder shows is an inexperienced man in panic. So maybe this wasn’t his fifth killing… maybe it was his first? Helen Catherine Barthelemy was born on the 9th of June 1941 in Ormiston, East Lothian in Scotland. Again, like the others, her early life was riddled with abuse, abandonment, teenage pregnancy, a failed marriage, a child given up for adoption, an attempt at a normality, and a descent into life’s dark heart. In 1956, aged 15, Helen who was nicknamed ‘Teddy’ moved to Blackpool, a seaside town on the north-west coast of England, working as a housemaid for Mr & Mrs Helen & Alex Paul, owners of a café and boarding house on Chapel Street, just off the famous Golden Mile. They loved her like she was family, and her life was simple and good, but seeking excitement, she became a circus performer, a striptease artiste, and since the age of 16, she had worked as a prostitute in Blackpool, Liverpool and Rochdale. A detail that links Helen Barthelemy, Hannah Tailford & Irene Lockwood, although not uncommon was she was the bait (but not the instigator) of a scam possibly concocted by her pimps against her clients. Meeting 22-year-old Friend Taylor of Oldham at the shooting gallery on Blackpool pleasure beach, she lured him to the Dunes at Squires Gate, kissed and cuddled him, removed his jacket as if sex was due, and while he was distracted, three men kicked and slashed him with blades, leaving him blooded and needing 18 stitches. Helen never gave up her associate’s names, so found guilty of aggravated robbery, she was sentenced at Liverpool Assizes to four years in prison, but served less than one on appeal. In August 1963, before Gwynneth Rees’ body was unearthed in a rubbish tip, she had moved to West London seeking “a fresh start”, but surrounded by pimps and drug dealers, she returned to sex-work Helen Barthelemy was popular as a prostitute, being a young petite brunette. It was said that Jack the Stripper had a type, and that all eight victims matched that, which they didn’t, but these last four did; Helen Barthelemy, Mary Fleming, Margaret McGowan & Bridget O’Hara were all 5 foot 1 to 2, all were slim with boyish frames, and were brunettes whose hair was in a short fashionable neck-length bob. But this could be a coincidence? Just as, of the last four, all were heavy drinkers and at least two used Purple Hearts, three of the last four were regulars at the Jazz Club in Westbourne Park Road, all of the last four solicited in Bayswater, Queensway & Notting Hill, and – with strangulation and stripping being a trope of ‘Jack the Stripper’ – it was also said of the last four, he had smashed out some of the teeth. The killer of these final four women - Barthelemy, Fleming, McGowan & O’Hara – unquestionably had sadistic tendencies. These women were stripped, not by a river, not by a propellor, but by a man. They were also strangled, not by their clothes being ripped off by a passing boat, but by a sexual maniac. But their missing teeth requires a caveat. British oral hygiene was famously bad in the 1960s. Since the 1920s, to avoid infections, costly operations or grinning with a set of manky stumps, many people had some or all of their teeth extracted as a 21st birthday treat and replaced with a full set of falsies. The first four women, all had missing teeth; Elizabeth Figg lost one owing to a car accident a few weeks before which still required dentistry; Gwynneth Rees’ was possibly due to her decomposition; Hannah Tailford & Irene Lockwood’s were probably caused by the violence of the river or ships; and although it was suspected that the killer may have deliberately knocked out the teeth of the final four; Helen Barthelemy’s missing four may have been due to a car crash three weeks earlier; Margaret McGowan’s three missing teeth were unexplained, and Mary Fleming & Bridget O’Hara both wore dental plates which were never found. And although one detective suggested the plates may have been removed for oral sex, we can’t rule them being knocked out, extracted, loose or smashed as they were dumped. The last independent sighting of Helen Barthelemy was on Tuesday 21st of April 1964 at 8:30pm, she was seen by one of the tenants, Purgy Dennis, in her shared house at 34 Talbot Road in Wilsden. In a grey skirt, a tweed overcoat, black jacket and sweater with matching calf-length boots, it was said she had a meal at Wragg’s café where the owner said “she seemed to be worried and depressed”, and on Wednesday the 22nd at 2am, at the Jazz Club on 207 Westbourne Park Road, in a strange move, she gave her handbag to Peter Aboro, one of the club’s co-owners for safe keeping, but never came back. Helen wasn’t her usual cheerful self that day, but we know she didn’t take her own life. Detective Chief Superintendent John Du Rose, who headed the dying days of the Stripper’s hunt, told the Sunday Mirror in May 1970: “we knew it was useless to appeal to the killer to come forward, so we began a war of nerves”, increasing patrols, surveillance and laying traps. He claimed this was the reason why the killings by the River Thames stopped, and then began again, a few miles further north. But if Jack the Stripper had successfully murdered two women and made them look like drownings; to evade the police, wouldn’t he simply move to a different part of the river at Kew or Wapping, which was full of dark and derelict warehouses and wharfs, rather than drive the body to a residential street? If these following sightings are of Jack the Stripper, it doesn’t show a calm, controlled serial-killer… …but an inexperienced first-time murderer in a state of panic. At 5:50am on Friday 24th of April 1964, two days after Helen left her bag at the Jazz Club, Alfred Harrow had a near collision with a small grey van, possibly a Hillman Husky, at the junction of Boston Manor Road and Swyncombe Avenue in Brentford, 3.7 miles north east of Duke’s Meadows. He didn’t see the licence plate or the driver as he sped away, but this was 40 yards from where her body was found. 90 minutes later, at 7:15am, in a small alley hidden at the rear of 199 Boston Manor Road, 42-year-old Clark May (whose house this was) found her body as he went to dump some waste and fire ash. She was stripped, strangled and dumped face down in an alley just 20 yards off a brightly lit road. Again, the autopsy was conducted by Dr Donald Teare. A dark ring made by the elastic of her knickers and bra showed she had been stripped hours after her death, for at least eight hours post-mortem she was lain on her back as this is where the body fluids had pooled, and that she had died 20 to 48 hours before. Cause of death was manual and ligature strangulation, possibly by a scarf or a stocking. With a swelling to her left cheekbone and the bridge of her nose, it was possibly but not provable that she was punched, had struggled, and was beaten into submission, which may be why four of her teeth were missing with a piece lodged in her throat, or this could have happened when she was dumped. Again, anal, oral and vaginal swabs proved negative for semen, and there were no marks of any sexual violence, but maybe that was the reason for his rage, and his panic when he realised she was dead? Only he didn’t dispose of her body instantly, instead – maybe terrified at what he had done, needing the help of someone experienced, or perhaps to fulfil his nefarious sexual needs – he stored her body somewhere warm and dirty, as she was covered in a very fine layer of coal dust and paint particles. Like a fledgling killer, he made several blunders which could have led to his capture; like driving with a dead body in his car in areas where kerb-crawlers were stopped by the police, dumping the body hastily off a busy well-lit residential street without attempting to hide or disguise it, leaving a set of tyre marks, and almost crashing his car - mistakes he’d make again in his next killing of Mary Fleming. The Daily Mirror reported “police believe that the murderer was disturbed before he could dump her body in the river… and was forced to drive around with the body until he found a suitable dumping spot”, suggesting it was the same man and that the police’s tactics had worked. Yet if he was searching for a dark, discrete place to dump her body, Swyncombe Avenue is just a third of a mile from the River Brent, and nearer Chiswick, just 1.2 miles away is Brentford Dock which runs into the River Thames. On the 2nd of November 1964, at Ealing Coroner’s Court, the death of Helen Barthelemy, the supposed fifth victim of Jack the Stripper but maybe his first, was ruled as murder by person or person unknown. But who was the man who had murdered Helen Barthelemy? Police Psychiatrists stated he was male, mid-20s to mid-40s, white (as killers tend to hunt in their own ethnic group), that he was right-handed (owing to the “strangulation marks”), likely being short and stocky he needed small slim women he could overpower, he owned a car or had access to a work’s vehicle, he was a lower to middle-class professional, had previous experience with sex-workers, was married but had the freedom to disappear at night, he was shy, outwardly quiet and unthreatening. Oddly, the psychiatrists felt that he may have committed earlier assaults on sex-workers which went unreported, known as 'behavioural try-outs', but that he hadn’t killed before, until his rage exploded. Detective Chief Superintendent John Du Rose said of Jack the Stripper, “he is in his 40s, a critical period in the sexual age of a man”, as this is when men experience a ‘midlife U-turn’; triggered by aging, life’s pressures, physical decline and impending mortality, also called Andropause or the male menopause. Of the two ‘unofficial’ murders of Figg & Rees, he said “they were inadvertent tragedies”, he didn’t intend to kill Elizabeth, and having experienced a “deep remorse”, this caused him to wait 53 months, by when “his intense sexual drive overcame his remorse… and obtaining satisfaction became utterly frenzied and at the moment of his orgasm, the girls died”. And although rape could never be proven, consensual sex was likely, whether wearing a condom or not, and their strangulation was post-coital. John Du Rose stated “all the victims” – all eight, from Figg to O’Hara - “had died of asphyxiation, except Tailford. All had slight marks on the neck apparently made by the fingernails of the murderer or victims. Some had fatal injuries and the displacement of their teeth which could have been caused by the pressure of the killer’s hands… their faces were forced into his lap while in an utter frenzy… and all died quickly, just as positively as they all suffered from venereal disease”. All of which was wrong. But many of the so-called facts about this investigation came from the autobiography of John Du Rose, ‘Murder Was My Business’ which was serialised in the Sunday Mirror in 1970, when he had retired, and many conflict with the basic evidence and the theories of the other detectives and pathologists. The first four deaths are unlikely to be by the same man, with three not ruled as murders, but the last four are. Barthelemy, Fleming, McGowan and O’Hara all died by strangulation and asphyxiation, all were stripped hours or days after death, all were dumped on land (far from the Thames), all but one was partially obscured but not hidden, all four bodies were stored between 3 and 36 days before being hastily dumped, and at their inquest, all four of them were listed as “murdered by persons unknown”. The sixth, which is possibly the second killing by Jack the Stripper was Mary Fleming. Born on the 16th of September 1933 to Mary & Richard Berry in Clydebank, a shipping port outside of the Scottish city of Glasgow, the early life of Mary Theresa Cuthbertson Berry was (just like the others) the kind which hardened her to the stresses and dangers she would experience; and although she had married, had a job, a homelife, a son and a chance normality, in 1954, she fled, leaving everything. By 1955, having moved from Barrow-in-Furnace to Newcastle to Dalston, an impoverished part of East London, her second son was given up for adoption possibly owing to her convictions for prostitution (one while five months pregnant with her third child) and theft (of clothes, and coins from gas meters). Living under her married name of Mary Fleming, as well as her alias Mary Turner, her life was chaotic. Fuelled by cigarettes, alcohol and ‘Purple Hearts’, Mary was a tough, hard, no-nonsense Glaswegian, who although scrawny and doll-like, was handy with her fists and carried a 10-inch knife having been attacked many times before, with her punters coming off worse. These women were not delicate little wallflowers, but savvy street-wise women well-attuned to the violence of drunken and abusive men. On the evening of Friday 10th of July 1964, she left her children (a two-year-old and an 8-month old) with the babysitter, and left her squalid single-room at 44 Lancaster Road in Notting Hill. Accompanied by her friend, Elizabeth Hayward, many sex-worker walked in pairs now that ‘Jack the Stripper’ was stalking the streets of Queensway with an eye for young petite brunettes looking to do some business. Just after pub closing time, at the Wimpy on Portabello Road, Mary’s friend, Harry Greenwood said “Mary was looking very smart” – being dressed in a greeny-grey blouse, jacket and skirt, with a black and green tartan handbag and white plastic slingbacks – “she seemed sober” which was unusual and “noisy” which was not. Mary & Elizabeth parted ways at midnight. At 1:30am, in Porchester Gardens, she tried to borrow some condoms off Maria Newman but she had none, they commented to two other sex-workers about how “business is poor tonight”, and agreed to meet later at the Jazz Club. Her last confirmed sighting was at 2:45am, on the junction of Bayswater Road and Leinster Terrace by prostitute Pamela De’ak and PC Andrew Ferguson, who both knew her. She was talking to a man in a red VW Beetle, who had flashed his lights at her, but seeing the policeman nearby, Mary moved off. After that, she vanished… until her body was found three days later. The first possibly sighting of the Stripper, may have occurred when a small grey van, possibly a Hillman Husky narrowly missed crashing into Alfred Harrow’s car by Swyncombe Avenue, just hours and yards before Helen Barthelemy’s body was found. A second may have happened with Mary Fleming’s. On Tuesday 14th of July 1964 at exactly 2:20am, workmen were decorating the ABC Restaurant on the corner of Chiswick High Road and Acton Lane, when William Kirwan recalled “I saw a vehicle drive up the service road and reverse for about eight or ten feet”, it was a grey estate type van, a Hillman Husky or something similar. They saw a man, “25 to 35, 5 foot 10, medium build, clean shaven in a suit”, switch off his lights, “walking around, looking to see if the coast was clear”, then opened the rear door. To wind him up, William shouted, ‘who dat out dere?’”, and then fell about laughing as the man sped away, but only realised what they may have seen, when it was reported in the newspapers days later. But was this the killer, a burglar, a fly-tipper, or just an amorous couple seeking somewhere quiet? Again, if this was Jack the Stripper, who detectives claim had murdered up-to six women by this point; why was he so panicked, why did he pick the back of a busy high street to dump the body, if she was killed near Chiswick (as this suggests) why didn’t he drive 1 mile south to the Church Street Slipway where detectives assumed that the bodies of Hannah Tailford & Irene Lockwood had been launched into the Thames, or any of the 100s of docks, wharfs or slipways along this river, only to then drive 1.4 miles north to Berrymede Road and hastily dump the body of Mary Fleming in a residential dead end. Again, if this was Jack the Stripper, who detectives claim was deliberately taunting then with his skill by evading their capture and leaving dead bodies across the city, why does he make so many mistakes? He could have dumped her body anywhere from Gunnersbury Park to Wormwood Scrubs to Kew, and with London riddled with woods, drains, factories, derelict buildings, rubbish tips, rivers and a canal 2 miles north, why did he drive down a residential cul-de-sac, driving so badly, it woke the residents? At an unspecified time between 2 and 2:30am, several residents were awoken by a revving engine, as a car was driven in reverse and at speed. George Heard at no 52 thought it was another car who hadn’t realised it was a dead end, Dora Samworth at no47 said “I saw it come up on the pavement outside of my house, but then I went back to bed. I did hear a car door slam a little later”, and as it pulled off and throttled away down Acton Lane at night, a police car actually saw it speeding away, but did nothing. Thinking her body was a tailor’s dummy, George Heard found Mary Fleming at just after 5am, hastily dumped over a man hole cover outside of the garage forecourt of Owen Jones at 48 Berrymede Road. As before, the autopsy was conducted by Dr Donald Teare, and unmistakably, she had been murdered by the same killer as Helen Barthelemy. Both were stripped naked post-mortem, both had struggled and died by strangulation, both were stunned by a powerful blow over the heart, hadn’t been raped but paid sex couldn’t be ruled out, and was laid on her back for some of the three days she was missing. Likely, he picked her up somewhere local, drove her somewhere dark and discrete, had consensual sex with her for money, then in a pique of rage, attacked her, strangled her, and – for reasons only he knew – he stripped her, didn’t defile her as no evidence of necrophilia was found, and having hid her in a warm and dirty place, in a panic, he dumped her in a dead end where he could have been trapped. This was not an experienced serial-killer taunting the police with his skill and cunning, this was more likely a sex-pest who couldn’t control his urges or anger, and panicked when he realised he’d killed. Alongside the inquest into Helen Barthelemy’s death at Ealing Coroner’s Court on the 2nd of November 1964, the jury passed the same verdict, that Mary Fleming was “murdered by persons unknown”. But how do we know that these murders aren’t just a coincidence? On both of their bodies a fine dust was found, “a mix of coal dust and paint with a lead acetate base” and examined under a microscope, they contained “a unique rainbow of red and black paint with faint specks of blue”, and although the bodies were hidden, maybe through a crack in a wall or floorboard, the airborne particles had landed, having been used to spray metal objects in a workshop or a factory. This was the first conclusive proof that these two murders were connected, that this Jack the Stripper had hidden both women in the same place for three to four days before dumping their bodies in panic. Police focussed their search on every boatyard, garage, warehouse, factory, lock up and shed, 100s of premises in the six square miles from Brentford to Acton, with their dust analysed by microscope. That day, with the newspapers buzzing with talk of a serial-killer in our midst, his infamous monicker was first used; “another London nude murder, Jack The Stripper has struck again”; and with these two murders being identical to the next two, there was no need to cherry-pick the facts to suit a theory. The Liverpool Echo wrote, “one theory detectives are working on is that they were committed by the same man”, and it most likely was, but Scotland Yard erred on the side of caution noting “although there is no evidence as yet to indicate that all the deaths were caused by one man, it is a possibility”. The last two murders (Helen Barthelemy & Mary Fleming) were proven, the next two (Bridget O’Hara & Margaret McGowan) were identical, and that’s how it should have remained with the first four (Elizabeth Figg, Gwynneth Rees, Hannah Tailford & Irene Lockwood) unconnected to these four, given that that they were believed to be a bungled abortion, two drownings and an unrelated murder. But as some detectives, specifically a senior detective, tried to make amends for his mistakes in other cases and to live up to his reputation for solving them fast hence the nickname of ‘four day Johnny’, the Police kept derailing this investigation into this ‘Jack the Stripper’ who killed just ‘four’ women… …until suddenly, the murders stopped. Undressing Jack the Stripper concludes next week with Part D, the final part of my series, with Parts 1 to 3 of Undressing Jack the Stripper by Paul at the True Crime Enthusiast podcast out now. 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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Hannah Tailford & Irene Lockwood
EPISODE THREE HUNDRED AND FORTY-EIGHT:
This is Part B of D of Undressing Jack the Stripper, an eight part series made in conjunction with the True Crime Enthusiast podcast. From the late 1950s to the mid-1960s, the bodies of eight sex-workers (Elizabeth Figg, Gwynneth Rees, Hannah Tailford, Irene Lockwood, Helen Barthelemy, Mary Fleming, Margaret McGowan and Bridget O’Hara) were found dumped in or near the River Thames in West London. Panic spread that a sadistic serial killer was on the loose who targeted young petite brunettes; stripped and strangled them, dumped each body within weeks and streets of each other. Yet with not a single witness to his crimes, even though several suspects have since been named, with no convictions, it’s a series of killing which remains a mystery to this day. After the success of their ten-part series, Psychopath: Two Side of Patrick MacKay, Mike at Murder Mile and Paul at the True Crime Enthusiast join forces once again to bring you an eight-part crossover series about one of Britain’s most infamous unsolved serial killing – Jack the Stripper. This episode is about Hannah Tailford & Irene Lockwood.
SOURCES: a selection sourced from various archives:
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: (River sounds) Everybody loves a good villain, and by the 1960s, Jack the Stripper was synonymous as a sadistic serial-killer of sex-workers in West London. His first two, Elizabeth Figg and Gwynneth Rees would be listed as ‘unofficial’, as with Figg most likely murdered by a client, and Rees’s impossible to determine owing to her decomposition - but thought by police to have died by a botched abortion - like every killing listed as ‘unofficial’ or ‘official’, they only come to the surface when it suits a theory. They died four and a half years part, they didn’t know each other, they didn’t solicit in the same area, their injuries were inconsistent, their individual suspects were ruled out and unconnected, Figg was dumped against tree, Rees was buried in a rubbish tip, one was found after 5 hours, one after 40 days, and only one of these two victims of Jack the Stripper was naked - which is odd if that’s his trademark. All that connected them was they were sex-workers who died half a mile apart. With the press wholly disinterested, the detectives didn’t think these two murders were linked, but you can’t quell a rumour. Yet all that changed with Hannah Tailford and Irene Lockwood, the first two ‘official’ killings by Jack the Stripper; as both women were found naked, possibly strangled and drugged, and dumped in the same stretch of the River Thames, two months and a few 100 yards apart. But were they murdered? Created in collaboration with True Crime Enthusiast, across this joint eight-part series, Paul & I will rip apart 60 years worth of the myths, lies, misinformation and conspiracies of one of London’s greatest unsolved serial killings, to make you rethink what you know or have been told about Jack the Stripper. My name is Michael, I am your tour guide, and this is Murder Mile. Episode 348: Undressing Jack the Stripper – Part B of D. So, why did Jack the Stripper become fact, when the evidence was so flaky? Three reasons; we all love a good story, we hadn’t had a gripping series of killings since John Reginald Christie in 1953, and (with the assassination of John F Kennedy, the Cuban missile crisis, the Cold War, the threat of global nuclear annihilation and the Profumo affair) we needed a distraction from the horrors of the world. But ‘Jack the Stripper’ didn’t begin in 1960s West London. In 1922, in the impoverished dwellings of Moorgate, 9 miles east of Chiswick, a sinister pervert got his thrills by luring children as young as five into dark passages and convincing them to get naked. He never touched or assaulted them, he just wanted them to strip. 25-year-old James Drew was convicted of 26 cases and sentenced to 21 months. So, why have you never heard of this ‘Jack the Stripper’? Because it was reported accurately, without sensationalism, and nobody died. So, what about the other 1960s ‘Jack the Stripper’ in California; the masked bandit who terrorised the nightspots of San Diego, robbing the bars, and forcing any attractive redheads to undress. Auburn haired barmaid Geraldine Stoner so took his fancy that three times in four weeks he robbed Tommy’s bar, with the police noting “I imagine she’s getting a little tired of it”. He was a robber, a rapist, he was real and he was mystery, and yet, even though this ‘Jack the Stripper’ could conclusively be linked to his crimes, and was named before the West London stripper had moved onto his second ‘unofficial’ victim, as the story didn’t ignite the tabloid headlines, it was forgotten. So, what made the murders of Hannah Tailford and Irene Lockwood official ‘Jack the Stripper’ killings? Born on the 19th of August 1933 in Ponteland, Northumberland in the North-East of England, Hannah, known as ‘Terry’ was the youngest daughter of William & Anne Tailford, and like all eight of the women who would be known as the Hammersmith Nudes, her upbringing was abusive, troubled and lonely. In 1948, aged 15, as a troublemaker and a tearaway, convicted of stealing clothes for her boyfriend, she was sent to borstal in South Shields, again in South Norwood in London and Addiscombe in Surrey, two of which she absconded from. And although she tried to make an honest living as a waitress and a machinist, still in her teens, she was offered a job as a cleaner by an ex-army officer, but again, being used and abused by men, he made her wear a French maid’s outfit, while performing lurid sex acts. Unsurprisingly, being broke, unloved and depressed, Hannah had five convictions for theft and three for prostitution; she solicited in Bayswater, Queensway and Notting Hill; and according to Detective Chief Inspector Ben Devonald who headed the inquiry into her death, “she was prone to discard her clothing”, which could be why she was naked, although DCI Devonald never hid his dislike of Hannah. By the early 1960s, Hannah had mostly progressed from being a streetwalker who picks up clients in cars on the kerbs, to attending sex parties in fashionable Eaton Square hosted by a foreign diplomat. She appeared in pornographic films, possibly involving S&M and strangulation, and in her Victoria flat, Police found cameras, lighting equipment and a diary, which Detective Chief Superintendent John Du Rose (who later headed-up the hunt for the stripper) said “she’d evidently been taking compromising pictures of her clients with the idea of getting extra money from them” – similar to Irene Lockwood. And although, several of the Hammersmith Nudes had address books which were never found, in an era prior to the internet, mobile phones and for many even home phones, this was not uncommon. In 1956, aged 23, Hannah met Allan Lynch, known as ‘Jock’. They never married, they moved between bedsits, they argued, accrued debts, and although they had a daughter together named Linda, of the three other children she’d given birth to, two were formally adopted and in 1959, one she sold for £20 via an advert in the newspaper to a couple in Staffordshire – which sums up the tragedy of her life. By the time of her death, she was three months pregnant. Hannah Tailford was said to be the first ‘official’ murder by Jack the Stripper, but to accept her death as a serial-killing means to discredit a wealth of eye-witness testimony from very credible sources. In the last two weeks of her life, Hannah was seen four times near Charing Cross by Arnold & Elizabeth Downton who knew her and were friendly with her, they said, “two days before she was found, she said she was fed up. She said she had been roaming about all day long and felt like committing suicide”. She was depressed, moody, unpredictable and addicted to Drinamyl - a barbiturate known as ‘Purple Hearts’ used to treat anxiety, but it was withdrawn from use in 1978 as it frequently caused psychosis. Nine days before her body was found, on Friday 24th of January 1964, Allan Lynch last saw her alive at their home on Thurlby Road in West Norwood. Hannah cooked dinner, and before she left at 9:30pm, Allan said she turned to their two-year-old daughter, and said “how would you like a new mummy?”. It was odd, as she adored Linda, but he put it down to as an unusual blip in her spiralling mood. That night, he put Linda to bed, and with Hannah not back by morning, being annoyed, he was heard to say “the cow’s left me with the kid”, he searched for her in pubs and clubs, he spoke to Thomas Trice, a 69-year-old who had paid to take nude photos of Hannah who told him she was planning to marry someone called Don or Dennis, and in a pique of anger, Allan gave away all of her clothes and personal belongings, he then spent the next three days blind drunk, but she wasn’t dead, she was only missing. Over those nine days, several credible witnesses saw her; between Saturday 24th and Thursday 30th she was seen at several coffee stalls she regularly frequented in Pimlico, Charing Cross and Victoria, on Friday 31st Arnold & Elizabeth gave her five shillings and bought her a meal as she “looked miserable and had been crying”, and just after midnight on Saturday 1st February, 36 hours before her body was found, Frederick Townsend, a window cleaner saw her drinking coffee at a Charing Cross coffee stall and said “she was high as a kite”, and although being just 5 foot 2 and slim framed, this should have made her an easy target, Frederick said, “I’ve seen her in a temper, and she can really handle herself”. With it being bitterly cold, Hannah wore a dark blue coat, a flame red blouse, a black cardigan and skirt, black court shoes, a light blue pixie hat, a black leather handbag, and wore a watch and a plain wedding band. Reports state that a coat matching hers was found by Waterloo Bridge, with another wrapped around a police boat’s propellor, and although no suicide note was found, this is not unusual. On Sunday the 2nd of February 1964 around 1:15pm, two brothers, George & Douglas Capon who were competitive rowers at the London Corinthian Sailing Club, half a mile east of Duke’s Meadows, were bailing out a rescue launch on the foreshore near Hammersmith Bridge for the day’s sailing. The water was icy cold, it was high tide, and among the driftwood, detritus and even an old Christmas tree which had become trapped underneath the old pontoon, “we could see all of the body, except the head”. The autopsy was conducted by Dr Donald Teare at Hammersmith Mortuary. Cause of death, owing to river water in her lungs suggested that she had died by drowning, but with barbiturates in her system, it was uncertain to what extent she was alive when she entered the water. With no signs of assault or defensive wounds except an unspecified bruise to her lower jaw, although swabs found semen in her vagina and mouth, there was no evidence that she had been raped. Her body was naked, except for her stockings which crumpled around her ankles, but there were no marks to denote that she was stripped post-mortem, as blood often pools around the elasticated areas. And with no ring or watch marks, it’s likely they were removed hours before her death - suggesting suicide. Dr Teare stated “it is rare for someone planning to commit suicide to eat a large meal beforehand”, but with witnesses confirming her depression and drug abuse, a deranged mental state was possible. But equally, there were details which made less sense; several of her teeth were missing, she had a faint mark to her neck possibly by a ligature, a one and a half inch wound to the back of her right calf, and (most bafflingly of all) her own knickers were found stuffed in her mouth. But was this a murder? It was unclear. This could have been a suicide, it could have been an accident while on drugs, she may have died of natural causes having sex with a client who panicked and dumped her body, or as the ever insensitive DCI Ben Devonald who headed-up the investigation told the inquest, “Miss Tailford was a sexual pervert known to have attended orgies”, so perhaps she had died during sadomasochistic sex, hence a lack of rape, the knickers in her mouth and her body dumped while she was barely alive. All nearby houses, clubs and houseboats were searched, a foreign diplomat who ran kinky parties was questioned, but with no witnesses to her death or her last hours alive, the case came to a logical end. On the 24th of April 1964 at Hammersmith Coroner’s Court, the first ‘official’ victim of Jack the Stripper was listed as ‘drowned’, and with insufficient evidence for a murder, it was ruled as an ‘open verdict’. Unlike Elizabeth Figg & Gwynneth Rees, there were no suspects to hint at ‘foul play’; no known pimps or punters, and although the actions of Allan Lynch, her partner, were strange having given away her clothes before she was dead, he volunteered a statement, was questioned, and ruled out as a suspect. Yet one simple action, initiated by him, may have been the catalyst for many of the murder myths. On Tuesday the 4th of February, two days after her body was found, during his questioning at Lavender Hill police station, Allan (who was distraught) denied knowing she was a sex-worker (which makes sense, as just by admitting that, could result in him being charged with living off immoral earnings), but he told detectives about her blue leather diary, a freebie given away by Jack Swift the bookmakers, in which she kept the details of many male clients whose “professional careers she could have ruined”. There was no proof that she blackmailed anyone, no evidence that someone wanted her dead, there was only a possibility that she’d taken her life, but as that July and August 1963, half a year before her death, she was a witness in a high-profile court case alongside one of the later Hammersmith Nudes, this ignited the press’s interest who sought to lay the blame for her murder, when it was anything but. So, how does this unexplained death link to the second ‘official’ victim, Irene Lockwood? It’s already been established that the killer wasn’t after a young petite brunette, as half of the eight were in their early 20s and the rest were 30 or thereabouts. Tailford was a brunette, but Lockwood was dyed auburn, and although seven of the eight were 5 foot to 5 foot 3, some wore heels, others wore flats, and having picked them up in his car, it’s unlikely he got out a ruler and measured them. Like Gwenneth Rees; Hannah Tailford and Irene Lockwood were pregnant at the time of their deaths, and although death by illegal abortion was mooted, they were the last of the eight who were pregnant. There were several tenuous reasons why it was assumed (but not proven) that the deaths of Tailford and Lockwood were linked, and therefore were murders. Both were sex-workers who died two months and a few 100 yards apart, both were found naked, in the Thames with possible ligature marks. But what’s baffling is, of the eight so-called Hammersmith Nudes, these are the only two whose bodies were found in the River Thames, and yet, both of them were ‘open verdicts’ and listed as ‘drownings’. So, if it wasn’t a murder, how were these women stripped and strangled? Would a suicidal woman undress in the depths of a freezing winter and jump into an icy river? Yes, if she was high on drugs, chronically depressed and wanted to make sure that she died quickly. But one report did say that a coat similar to Hannah’s had wrapped around a police boat’s propellor, and she had a one and a half inch wound to the back of her right calf, “possibly caused by a boat’s propellor”. The River Thames looks calm and peaceful, but it’s not, it’s powerful and violent, with a tidal ranges of 25 feet, currents which reach speeds of 14 miles per hour, and with the dark silty waters beneath being thick with drift wood, sunken ships, old bridges, builder’s rubble and underwater obstacles from centuries of being a major port, the bodies which are pulled from the river rarely come out unscathed. Even bodies fished out of calmer waters like the Grand Union Canal at Westbourne Park, four miles north of the River Thames have perplexed the most experienced pathologist. In July 1942, the body of 43-year-old Lena Cunningham was found floating by the Wedlake Street footbridge; she was stripped naked, had ligature marks to her neck, odd bruises to her face and body, and thick cuts up her chest. Home Office Pathologist Sir Bernard Spilsbury, the father of forensic science ruled her death as a ‘wilful murder’, stating she had been stabbed, stripped and dumped in the canal. But a second post-mortem proved something very different; as a homeless drunk who slept in a bush, she had choked on her own vomit, fell into the canal and drowned, and across the day’s her body was submerged, the propellors of passing boats ripped the clothes from her body causing cuts to her legs and chest, ligatures to her neck, and the water’s turbulence resulting in punch-like bruises to her face - like Tailford & Lockwood. Both were heavy drinkers and users of ‘Purple Hearts’. None of the women were proven to have been sexually assaulted, even though, bafflingly the police suggested that bruises to their faces may have been caused by forced oral sex. And although it doesn’t explain why Hannah Tailford had her knickers stuffed in her mouth, Dr Donald Teare had seen it in a suicide before, “to muffle her own screams”. But hey, this is Jack the Stripper right? The cunning serial-killing genius. Maybe this was all part of his devious plan; to pay off the witnesses, to blame a slew of suspects, to never leave a fingerprint, to be seen by no-one, and to fool 100s of experienced detectives and pathologists over 7 years into believing that his first four murders looked like a failed sex attack, a botched abortion and two drownings… …or maybe, the press and the public had a lot more to do with this myth, than a lone stripper? Born on the 29th of September 1938 in Walkeringham, Nottinghamshire, Irene Charlotte Lockwood was the illegitimate child of Minnie Lockwood, and like so many women who turned to sex-work, her past was littered with stints in the care system, prison, abuse, assault, drugs, fear, and rarely any love. She moved to London in 1958 and lived in West Ealing, she had five convictions for soliciting, two for insulting behaviour, one for indecent behaviour, and frequented Kings Cross, Camden and Bayswater. Her life was unremarkable, until two details piqued the press’s interest, hinting at something sinister. Out of the flat at 16 Denbigh Road that Irene shared with her friend Maureen Gallagher, their pimps ‘Simon’ & ‘Ray’ forced them to work long hours satisfying unwashed clients, to feature in pornographic films, to earn a fraction of the money they earned, to pay an extortionate rent, to always be in debt to them, to pickpocket their punters, and – making both women a target – blackmailing their clients. As was suggested by Detective Chief Superintendent John Du Rose (who later headed up the hunt for Jack the Stripper), just like Hannah Tailford, Irene Lockwood “had evidently been taking compromising pictures of her clients with the idea of getting extra money”, but neither of the women ran the scams. Just as Gwynneth Rees lived in fear of her pimps, Irene was forced to do degrading things, as her life was expendable and nothing more. If she didn’t do as they ordered, she was beaten. If she argued, she was disfigured, making her money-making power worthless. And if she tried to flee the controlling restraints of her violent pimp, she would be disposed of – there was no love lost for a dead prostitute. This is where the press got interested in the case, and started connecting the invisible dots. A close friend of Irene Lockwood was 22-year-old redheaded sex-worker Vicky Pender, who on the 19th of March 1963, one year before Irene vanished, she was brutally murdered in her flat on Adolphus Road in Finsbury Park; she was found on her bed, semi-clad and strangled, with severe head wounds. Vicky, real name Veronica Walsh, was forced to blackmail married men using sexually compromising photographs, and for this, she (and not her pimps) was murdered by her client - Colin Welt Fisher, who was given a life sentence for her murder in December 1963, four months before Irene’s death. After his conviction, Irene & Maureen were in fear for their lives; over the Easter weekend of 1964, they fled their bedsit, that Sunday (29th March) Maureen slit her wrists in the ladies toilet at Bayswater tube station, and with her friend alive and hospitalised, Irene kept a low profile, but had to earn money so sold sex in a place she less frequently solicited, Chiswick… on the banks of the River Thames, half a mile and a few streets west from the bodies of Elizabeth Figg, Gwynneth Rees and Hannah Tailford. Last seen on Tuesday 7th of April 1964 at 8pm at Windmill pub on Chiswick High Road, her body was found the next day during low-tide, beached upon the mudflats of the Thames at Corney Reach, 300 yards south of Hannah Tailford’s body, and half a mile north of Elizabeth Figg and Gwynneth Rees. The autopsy by Home Office Pathologist, Dr Donald Teare stated; she was naked, but with no marks where the blood had pooled, her clothes were removed before death or shortly afterwards. And with no hint of violence, assault was ruled out. With water in her lungs, it was clear that she had drowned. Like Hannah Tailford, with a 6 to 8 inch wound to her right breast, this was caused by a propellor blade, which may have been why she was naked and had a faint ligature mark around her neck. And although semen was found in her vagina and mouth, so with no cuts or bruises, her rape seemed unlikely. Identified by her fingerprints and her tattoos, on the 8th of May 1964, an inquest at Ealing Coroner’s Court decreed her cause of death was ‘drowning’, with Detective Inspector Frank Ridge stating of this fourth murder by the serial killer Jack the Stripper, “there was absolutely no suspicion of foul play”. With nothing to link any of the victims, no primary suspects arrested, and the Press stating “victim no4 may be a suicide”, this was a closed case whose tortured myth was destined to be forgotten… …or it should have been, until a beehive of bullshit was kicked open by a sad and desperate man. 57 year old, Kenneth Archibald was a partially deaf caretaker at the Holland Park Tennis Club, who (to supplement his disability pension) was paid by Joe Cannon to let a illegal afterhours drinking den open at the club, which Irene Lockwood was said to frequent, as his business card was found in her flat. On the 27th of April 1964, three weeks after Irene’s body was found, having been charged with stealing hearing aids, Kenny got drunk, and at Notting Hill Police Station, he confessed to her murder, using the details of her last moments which had been recounted in the press. The newspapers were in fever pitch as “the Stripper killer has been caught”, but proven to be a “pathological liar”, he was acquitted. Archibald said outside of the Old Bailey, “it was silly to let my imagination run riot”, and Joe Cannon said “everybody knew that the miserable bastard was as innocent as a new born babe”. But then again, it’s not uncommon for anyone to twist these simple facts for the sake of fame, money or attention. For centuries, people have believed in rippers and strippers regardless of the evidence… …but 62 years before Jack the Stripper and 9 years after Jack the Ripper, a similar series of suspicious deaths on the River Thames, took place over a few weeks at Woolwich, Rotherhithe and Bermondsey. On Thursday 17th of June 1897, the Evening News wrote “seventeen bodies found in the River Thames in three weeks… the largest number known to have been found in that period”. One was described as “late 20s, 5 foot 4, a small and delicate brunette” who was “perfectly naked, except for a bangle… her left jaw was broken… injuries may have been caused by a propellor… and it is not a rare thing to discover bodies from which the clothing has been stripped by the action of the tide, or ships”. With no proof of robbery, rape or murder, and suicide a possibility, the coroner listed her as “drowned”. Another small brunette was found nearby at Mark Brown’s Wharf in Tower Bridge; her body was less decomposed, fully clothed and had all of her rings on her fingers. And by Temple Pier, the rotten body of a small brunette was found – not dissimilar to Hannah Tailford – trapped under a pontoon with the driftwood. She was naked except for her boots and (like Elizabeth Figg) her cause of death was unclear. One of the victims, a short brunette in their early 20s was a man; his nose was smashed, his ears, eyes, and several limbs were missing, he was naked, and the inquest ruled his death as ‘drowning’. But did the people and the press believe that a sadistic serial killer was on the loose? No. Why? The evidence. The same happened on the 29th of April 1921, when in Weybridge, a naked female was found with her hands missing. Then 10 miles away in Twickenham, that day, a female nude was found in the River Crane, her skull smashed. Were they connected? No. As nothing linked them but the date and nudity. On the 30th of September 1903, on London’s Embankment, the body of a female brunette was found naked except for her stockings and shoes, but with her throat cut, her demise was ruled as a murder. All of these deaths have been forgotten, all were listed accurately as suicides, accidents or murders, no lazy journalists or bored detectives attempted to link their tenuous details in the hope of making a name for themselves, as in the years following Jack the Ripper, the public were savvy to the press’ lies. Yet, Jack the Stripper was different, he was a myth, a lie and a conspiracy theory, but also a convenient distraction from the horrors of the 60s; strikes, wars, assassinations and risk of nuclear Armageddon. The first two killing were ‘unofficial’, the second two were listed as ‘drownings’, and with no suspects or evidence of a serial killer, Jack the Stripper only existed in the minds of the people and the press… …but all that was about to change. Undressing Jack the Stripper continues next week with Part C, the third part of my series, with the first and second parts of Paul’s series at the True Crime Enthusiast podcast out now. The Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast has been researched using the original declassified police investigation files, court records, press reports and as many authentic sources as possible, which are freely available in the public domain, including eye-witness testimony, confessions, autopsy reports, first-hand accounts and independent investigation, where possible. But these documents are only as accurate as those recounting them and recording them, and are always incomplete or full of opinion rather than fact, therefore mistakes and misrepresentations can be made. As stated at the beginning of each episode (and as is clear by the way it is presented) Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast is a 'dramatisation' of the events and not a documentary, therefore a certain amount of dramatic licence, selective characterisation and story-telling (within logical reason and based on extensive research) has been taken to create a fuller picture. It is not a full and complete representation of the case, the people or the investigation, and therefore should not be taken as such. It is also often (for the sake of clarity, speed and the drama) presented from a single person's perspective, usually (but not exclusively) the victim's, and therefore it will contain a certain level of bias and opinion to get across this single perspective, which may not be the overall opinion of those involved or associated. Murder Mile is just one possible retelling of each case. Murder Mile does not set out to cause any harm or distress to those involved, and those who listen to the podcast or read the transcripts provided should be aware that by accessing anything created by Murder Mile (or any source related to any each) that they may discover some details about a person, an incident or the police investigation itself, that they were unaware of.
Seven time nominated BEST BRITISH TRUE-CRIME PODCAST at the True Crime Awards, Independent Podcast Award and The British Podcast Awards, and voted 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation Top 20 True-Crime Podcasts, also seen on BBC Radio, Sky News, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week.
Elizabeth Figg & Gwynneth Rees
EPISODE THREE HUNDRED AND FORTY-SEVEN:
This is Part A of D of Undressing Jack the Stripper, an eight part series made in conjunction with the True Crime Enthusiast podcast. From the late 1950s to the mid-1960s, the bodies of eight sex-workers (Elizabeth Figg, Gwynneth Rees, Hannah Tailford, Irene Lockwood, Helen Barthelemy, Mary Fleming, Margaret McGowan and Bridget O’Hara) were found dumped in or near the River Thames in West London. Panic spread that a sadistic serial killer was on the loose who targeted young petite brunettes; stripped and strangled them, dumped each body within weeks and streets of each other. Yet with not a single witness to his crimes, even though several suspects have since been named, with no convictions, it’s a series of killing which remains a mystery to this day. After the success of their ten-part series, Psychopath: Two Side of Patrick MacKay, Mike at Murder Mile and Paul at the True Crime Enthusiast join forces once again to bring you an eight-part crossover series about one of Britain’s most infamous unsolved serial killing – Jack the Stripper. This episode is about Elizabeth Figg & Gwynneth Rees.
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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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