Murder Mile UK True-Crime Podcast - #303: Dirty Money (Li Hua Cao & Robert Ekaireb, Hampstead, NW3)25/6/2025 
Triple nominated at the True Crime Awards and nominated Best British True-Crime Podcast at the British Podcast Awards, also hailed as 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation Channel's Top 20 True-Crime Podcasts, also seen on BBC Radio, Sky News, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week.
Welcome to the Murder Mile UK True-Crime Podcast and audio guided walk of London's most infamous and often forgotten murder cases, all set within and beyond London's West End.
EPISODE THREE HUNDRED AND THREE:
Back in 2006, Flat 9 of the Pavilion Court on the Mount Vernon Estate was the plush matrimonial home of Mr & Mrs Ekaireb. For Li Hua & Robert, their whirlwind romance meant they married just seven months after they had met and with a baby on the way, it should have been the perfect start But having wedded a jealous and controlling monster, Li became a hostage in her own life, she lived in fear, she lost everything, and just two and a half weeks after her wedding, he brutally murdered her. This is a story about money, and how it never leads to happiness.
THE LOCATION:
The location is marked with a purple 'P' below the words 'hampstead Heath'. To use the map, click it. If you want to see the other maps, click here.
SOURCES: a selection sourced from various archives:
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: How do you prove a murder without a body? Find out on Murder Mile. (Intro music) This is Frognal Rise in Hampstead, NW3; four streets west of the murderous mother-in-law Styllou Christofi, two streets south of the home of Pathologist Sir Bernard Spilsbury, and one street north of the bungling burglar who broke the bank and then he broke his neck - coming soon to Murder Mile. Off Hampstead Heath in one of the poshest parts of London sits the Mount Vernon Estate comprising of three mansion blocks of opulent apartments with many flats costing upwards of £2 million. Owned mostly by corporations, it’s the kind of place a shady Russian oligarch might live if believing he’s an English gentlemen; by calling his Egyptian butler Jeeves, drinking tea with his pinkie finger held high, saying ‘one does’ instead of I, eating posh chip butties, and having filthy dreams about The Queen. With high gates, security guards and CCTV, here money can buy you privacy, but not always safety. Back in 2006, Flat 9 of the Pavilion Court on the Mount Vernon Estate was the plush matrimonial home of Mr & Mrs Ekaireb. For Li Hua & Robert, their whirlwind romance meant they married just seven months after they had met, and with a baby on the way, it should have been the perfect start. But having married a jealous and controlling monster, Li became a hostage in her own home, she lived in abject fear, and just two and a half weeks after her wedding, she lost everything… including her life. My name is Michael, I am your tour guide, and this is Murder Mile. Episode 303: Dirty Money. To tell Li’s story, we need to travel 5000 miles east to Dalian; a Chinese coastal city famed as one of the busiest shipping ports in East Asia. It’s wreathed in modern architecture being a financial centre, and with a wealth of sandy beaches and seafood markets, it’s a hot spot for tourists and ex-pats. Born in 1979, Li Hua Cao (Lay Wah Tsow) – which translates as ‘Pear Blossom’, but aptly also means ‘pretty and talented’ – was one of four children with one brother and two sisters in a loyal and loving working-class family with an incredible bond, which – regardless of distance – kept them together. As a traditional Chinese girl, for Li, her family was everything, their happiness and prosperity was her goal, but - with her parents divorced and having to live with an aunt - by her 20s, she wanted to better herself, but with her options limited in Dalian, Li and her brother (Li Bin) looked towards the West. Many mistook Li as simply ‘small’ and ‘pretty’ being just 4 foot 11 and roughly 80lbs, but dubbed a ‘fire dragon’, although warm and loving, Li was also strong, smart and independent. So in 2002, aged 21, keen to learn English, Li and her brother travelled to Cork and Dublin in the Republic of Ireland. As a student, she worked as a waitress, but with her tips and wages biting her tight budget, she began working as a lap dancer. Some tabloids have made this sound seedy, but being protected from gropes and drunks by bouncers, she earned a month’s wage in a night for doing little more than ‘hot yoga’. In November 2005 at an unnamed Dublin strip club, a client paid Li £270 for a 5-minute lap dance, he was the man who would marry her, but just 11 months from this moment, he would also murder her. Born in Hendon, West London in the autumn of 1974, Robert David Ekaireb was raised in privilege; his pampered childhood was spent in the affluent suburbs of Hampstead and Finchley, he went to all the best fee-paying grammar schools, and he never had to worry about anything as his father was minted. Rex Solomon Ekaireb was an accountant, who in the 1980s set up a company at 45 Hatton Garden in London’s jewellery quarter. By 1986, purchased by a larger company, R&R Wholesale Jewellery became one of the largest sellers of wedding rings to the high-street retailer, Argos, making Rex very wealthy, and as he invested his fortune into properties, his Influence and power only got greater. By the time Robert left school in 1990, unlike his brother who became a successful banker at Goldman Sachs, he joined the family business. Like his father, he was shrewd, and although, in 1998, aged just 24, Robert set-up his own company (Cuzzie Properties) from that same office in Hatton Gardens, later described as “a wealthy jeweller and property developer owning a £65 million empire”, it all spawned from his father’s hard work – a familiar trope, as when things got dicey, he always ran back to daddy. Having met over a lap dance, paid for – let’s not forget - by Robert, he and Li quickly became an item. To many, they seemed like an odd couple; a tiny Chinese lady barely the size of a child, and a 6 foot 2 inch 18 stone Iraqi-Jewish hulk whose face rarely cracked a smile and whose eyes scanned in suspicion. In court, his defence counsel painted an unfair picture of Li as “a gold-digger” who saw this far-from-handsome multi-millionaire as her “cash-cow”. In truth, she was a dutiful Chinese daughter who put her family before herself, and as detectives later stated “her whole life was to support them. But what I find saddest is, despite that, I think she wanted to be a good wife for him, and she would have been”. Li wanted it to work, but because of who Robert was, the relationship was doomed to failure. Everything you need to know about Robert can be gleaned from the way he lived his life. He never lived further than a few miles away from his father, and the two of them owned many of the same properties. As a strict Jew, he only ate kosher and never worked, drove or used electricity on the Shabbat. And diagnosed with obsessive compulsive disorder; he constantly scribbled in notebooks getting through as many as 50 biros a day, many of the clothes in his walk-in wardrobe were still sealed in their original packaging, and unable to touch dirty laundry, he had several suitcases hidden away from earlier trips to Paris, Venice, Prague and EuroDisney, that remained unopened and unwashed. Maybe as a sign of his childish ways and his obsession with himself - or some might say it was low-self-esteem – he had a £3 million teddy bear collection, a fleet of prestige sports cars and a Bentley, a bedside phone shaped like Mickey Mouse with its number plate being his own name, and he owed an golden iPod which was engraved in diamonds with the words: “I am Robert Ekaireb, the one and only”. But mostly, we know the kind of man he was through his past relationships with women. In 2000, five years before he met Li, Robert was madly love with Martina Kamenistiakova of Slovakia. Little is known about their life together, except that he showered her with expensive gifts, he set her up in Flat 3 of Gainsborough House on the Mount Vernon Estate (a lavish three-bedroomed apartment with a gold-plated toilet and gold-leaf carpet embroidered with the Versace logo), but - having had enough of his obsessive, manipulative and controlling ways - when Martina left him, he locked the doors for six years and never returned, leaving the flat like a time capsule, or a shrine to his lost lover. Everything in his life he had to own and control, even the women he claimed to love. Detectives would later state, “Robert saw Li as a pretty Chinese doll who he could do what he liked with and no one would care”. But as a fiercely independent fire dragon, “he more than met his match”. The first few months of their romance was as ordinary as any other, as this odd couple from different worlds learned what made each other tick. As he was devoutly Jewish, she only ate kosher food and lived a solitary life on the Shabbat. He wouldn’t let her cook, but she assumed this was a cultural thing. She was sympathetic to his obsessive behaviours, and although he showered his lover with gifts and paid for everything, she thought it odd that she had no money of her own, and he didn’t let her work. In July 2006, just seven months after they had met, even though her family had urged Li to ‘slow down, they travelled to China and married. He already controlled her finances, now he controlled her life. During the trip, Li’s sister witnessed an argument between the couple which resulted in bruises to her arms and scratches to his chest. The Police were called, and although he should have been charged with assault, it was dropped when he agreed to make monthly payments to her parents. Everything Li was doing was for them, and yet for Robert, he always knew he could buy his way out of trouble. Returning from China, in the first week of August, Robert moved his blushing bride into Flat 9, a second floor, one-bedroomed apartment in Pavilion Court on the Mount Vernon Estate in Hampstead, just a few doors down from the sealed ‘time capsule’ that he once shared with his ex-lover, Martina. As an exclusive gated community for the wealthy, Li was shielded from the evils of the world. Inside, it must have seemed like she had everything that money could buy; from the latest fashions to fancy gadgets, to a large pristine apartment full of designer furniture, marble floors, again a gold-plated loo, and a £45,000 cream carpet in one of the six flats on the estate that he co-owned with his father. But what she lacked in her life was happiness, and freedom. One of the porters said, “Robert came across as a very nice chap but he had a nasty temper”, as having made a minor mistake, he recalled “the phone was red hot… he was absolutely fuming with rage”. Robert’s temper was volatile, his moods swung from apathetic to fiery in seconds as he was terrified that Li would return to her old life, with the irony being that they met when he paid her for a dance. He was so paranoid that he constantly checked her phone and forbade her from ever having friends. He controlled her money, her life, her existence, he treated her like an object, and now – conceived in the second week of June before they married in China – she was 3 months pregnant with his baby. It was no mystery to anyone that Li wanted to escape his control. She had barely known him a year, and yet, she had tried to leave him six times, with the first just one week after they had moved in. On the 15th of August, just nine weeks before her murder, Li fled the flat. In her broken English, she sent him a text saying: “you are not love me. Enjoy your life, you are big bad man". Replying in seconds, Robert pleaded with her “Li, I am crying my eyes out, I am going to kill myself. Without you there is no life. You are carrying my baby, please tell me where you are. I am dying". But she responded "no chance for you. You are sick. You can't find me anymore. We are finished. I don't love you no more". That day, he flooded her phone with dozens of calls and messages – on one occasion, he had sent 64 in a row – begging "Li, please, I am not bad. I will do anything, please give me one more chance. I know I am wrong. I love you more than anything in the world" - anything, not anyone. And having reported her missing to the Police, although she was scared of him, she agreed to come back if he changed. He picked her up, drove her to Flat 9, and promised he’d move the Earth to make her happy… …two weeks later, he assaulted her. On the 28th of August, just seven weeks before her murder, having dined at an exclusive restaurant in the West End, they were in the midst of a blazing row as Robert drove them home in his Bentley. He said it was because he hated her smoking while she was pregnant, she said he was jealous of her past. Driving up the High Road, their shouts and screams were heard by passersby, suddenly the car served, Li dashed out, and when the Police arrived, she was found cowering inside of East Finchley Food & Wine, an off licence at 334 High Road; she was distressed, with cuts and grazes her to arms and head. Robert was arrested for Li’s assault and possessing a flick-knife, but being persuaded to withdraw the charges by Robert’s father, Rex, having again promised to change, she gave a statement which read “my husband… has never been violent towards me”. And yet, the next time he was, he would kill her. Over the following weeks, becoming increasingly paranoid; he accused her of cheating on him (even though he was sleeping around), in August he hired a private detective to follow her, and by the fateful month of October, he had booked a polygraph machine as he didn’t believe that the baby was his. He controlled every aspect of her life, and then – as a mere formality – on the 4th of October, he had them marry in a simple ceremony at Barnet Registry Office, trapping her forever under English Law. She married him again, but she wanted out, feeling strangled by his suffocation. She told her friends and family she was leaving for good. She withdrew £1800 from a Lloyds bank account she had recently opened in secret. She told a trusted ally, Yin Tuen, she’d even work as an escort girl rather than live with him. And on the 19th of September, just four weeks prior, she scheduled to terminate the baby. She never went ahead with the abortion, as – maybe - deep down, she hoped there was a chance. But oddly that same month, in a conversation protected by doctor/patient confidentiality, he admitted “I feel unsafe by my own anger”, and although he claimed “of course, I would never do this”, he also confessed “I’ve had thoughts about stabbing Li to death”. Robert said it was just a paranoid fantasy… …but soon, it would become a horrific reality. Little is known about that happened on Monday 23rd of October 2006. That evening, Li was alone in Flat 9, her bored whistle echoed the cold cavernous walls, as with Robert out and her family 5000 miles away, she stroked the swollen bump of her pregnant belly, her baby four months from birth, yet it’s uncertain if – that night – she had already packed her bags to leave. There were no witnesses to what happened, yet the evidence told the truth. Li’s last known sighting was never recorded, but from the flat, four times that day, Li had telephoned her brother in Denmark with the final call at 8pm precisely, in which she said that she was unhappy. At 10:53pm, she called Robert’s mobile, the reason for the call is unknown, and at 11:07pm, Robert’s key fob to the car park on the Mount Vernon Estate was activated. CCTV captured his Bentley arriving, and he was witnessed by the security guard in the lodge who noted it in the estate’s logbook. At roughly 11:10pm, Robert entered Flat 9 on the second floor. And that is all we know. He told the court, “she left me, packed her bags… said her family needed her” and never saw her again, as this terrified lady whose life he had dominated in full for almost a year, he - supposedly - let her walk free. Besides, there was no CCTV of Li leaving, nor did she pass a porter or security guard with her bags. Yet, he was a man with a fiery temper who controlled everything, and she was about to leave him? He carried a flick-knife, once he’d beaten her, and he had confessed “I thought of stabbing her to death”. An unnamed witness in the block said they heard “a woman screaming”, but did nothing, as money can buy you privacy, it also ensures apathy as they didn’t alert the estate’s security, or call the Police. How he killed her remains unknown, but we know it happened between 11:12pm and 11:43pm, as at 11:44pm, Robert did something he always did when things got dicey, he went running back to daddy. He claimed he called his father as he was upset because Li had left him. And yet, just passed midnight, this man who struggled with OCD and had suitcases of used clothes as he couldn’t touch old laundry, suddenly had an overwhelming urge to remove a heavy roll of cream coloured bedroom carpet from a flat he had lived in for just nine weeks, and - seen on camera and by security - he loaded it into the boot of his car, and having driven 5 miles south in his father’s car, at about 1:40am, he arrived in Soho. At 1:08am, supposedly distraught that Li had left him, Robert phoned the manager of Club Tantra, a celebrity nightclub at 62 Kingly Street, just off Carnaby Street. That was the last call ever made from the phone in the flat, and Robert never returned there, ever again. He claimed, he went clubbing to “drown his sorrows”. We know he drove his father’s car, as it was given a parking ticket on nearby Beak Street. But his real reason for being there wasn’t to let off steam, but to dispose of Li’s body. Club Tantra was ran by a member of the Adams family, the infamous Clerkenwell Crime Syndicate who – it is alleged – ran extortion rackets, armed robberies, and were responsible for up to 25 murders, “with one former member having confessed to dismembering and dumping at least four bodies”. The prosecution stated, Robert used his ‘alleged underworld connections’ to have her body disposed of, and although it sounds far-fetched, in April 2015, Robert’s father, Rex was charged with converting criminal property to launder cash for Michael Adams, the brother of Terry, the syndicate’s godfather. After this, Robert went to live with his parents, and stated he never returned to Flat 9, even though between 9:45pm on the 8th of November and 12:04am on the 9th, his key fob was repeatedly used. Across the next eight weeks, the flat was professionally cleaned possibly by the gang’s own experts in forensics, as not a single bloodstain was found; they bleached every surface, painted every wall, shined the marble floor until it was spotless, and the £45000 carpet was replaced with an exact copy. Robert claimed “I had it professionally cleaned as a condition of the letting”, and that, just weeks after they’d moved in, both he and Li had planned to move to another flat he owned at nearby Heathview Court. On the 21st of December 2006, the flat was rented out, and some unlucky tenant moved in. Days after the murder, Robert was said to be in a “zombified state”, as seen by Richard Bailey, a porter at the Mount Vernon Estate, he said as they pulled up “I went to speak to Robert and his father. Robert just sat staring straight ahead, he didn’t say a word”. And even though Li had vanished supposedly taking his baby with her, he didn’t call the Police, he made no attempt to find her, he didn’t call or text her phone, and seven days later, he tried to rekindle his relationship with his old flame, Martina. But a person can’t simply disappear, especially a woman who was five months pregnant. Ken Rowan, another porter said “I suddenly stopped seeing her and never saw her again”. On the 17th of November Li missed her six month pregnancy scan, and (using her mobile) Robert lied to the midwife as to why. With the family growing concerned, as much as he manipulated Li’s life when she was alive, he did the same in death, as Robert tried to leave a false trail that she was still living, but wanted to be left alone. He told her family, “she left me… she’s ran away with someone”. He texted Li’s friend as if he was his wife writing ‘This is a message from Li Hua. Does Tina [Hong Yu] still live with you?'. And in very poor Mandarin, he called Li’s sister to tell her “Li has given birth to a baby girl”, yet four months premature. By Sunday 18th of February 2007, having neither seen nor physically spoken to Li except for a few texts in bad English, having failed to wish her family a Happy Chinese New Year, they reported her missing. As part of the inquiry, Robert gave four voluntary interviews; he stated she left him in mid-November, she had walked out on him five times prior, he said he didn’t know where she had gone but suspected she had returned to Ireland, and with no evidence of wrongdoing, with Li “being a free spirit… used to travelling and had many short-term relationships”, the investigation was “no longer actively pursued”. Li’s parents couldn’t tell her elderly grandparents that she was missing or possibly dead for fear it would kill them, so instead believing she had simply run away, “we have to put up with them slagging her off, saying ‘what a bad daughter she is’”… when the truth was much darker and sinister. Li’s body was never found. Whether the gang had dismembered her body, dissolved it in acid, burned it, or buried it on the 560 acres of wasteland with old warehouses, a disused canal, tunnels and sewers in Stratford - which two weeks before the murder, it was announced that McAlpine won the contract to build the 2012 Olympic Stadium – with construction not starting until the 22nd of May 2008, detectives believed but couldn’t prove that this is where she was dumped, as the gang’s lawyers blocked any attempt to question them. Detective Inspector Andy Manning stated “we will never know how Li died or what happened to her body…”, but her family never gave up hope, nor quit the pressure to seek the truth. In 2009, the case was referred to the Homicide and Serious Crime Command, but owing to the passage of time so much evidence was gone; the flat was clean, a witness had died, the logbooks were binned, the CCTV was routinely erased after 14 days, and although extensive ‘proof of life’ enquires were made in Ireland, China, Japan and Europe, nothing suggested that Li or her baby were alive after that date. Getting on with his life having got away with murder, by 2012, Robert had a 2-year-old daughter and another baby on the way with a new long-term partner. But you don’t need a body to prove a murder… …you just need to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that a murder has been committed. For years, Police has built a ‘brick by brick’ case of circumstantial evidence to prove his guilt, including the flat, its clean-up, the calls, the arguments, the assault, and that – since the 23rd of October 2006 at 8pm – no-one had spoken to her, and her bank accounts, emails, phones and passport remained untouched. It was impossible not to leave a trace of yourself in a digital world for whole seven years. Then at a storage unit rented by Robert and his father, Rex, Police found Li’s wedding ring, and on the 7th of June 2012, he was arrested and charged as he tried to fly to Prague on a one-way ticket. (Out) The ten-week trial began at the Old Bailey before Judge Nicholas Cooke QC in October 2013. 39-year-old Robert pleaded ‘not guilty’, but owing to the weight of ‘circumstantial evidence’, even without her body found, on the 19th of December 2013, he was found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum of 22 years, this being a higher tariff as he refused to say where her body was buried. Judge Cooke described him as a “callous, manipulative and selfish hypocrite… your disposal of the body is a very serious aggravating feature”, and having maintained his innocence, “the bereaved will have suffered agonies of false hope… this was a murder of a pregnant wife, so in that sense you have ended two lives. This is a case of extreme domestic violence in a bullying and controlling relationship”. The Chief Prosecutor said: “after seven years of deception and denial, Robert Ekaireb has now been brought to justice for the murder of Li Hua Cao. Ekaireb wove a web of lies in order to deflect suspicion away from him…. I hope that this conviction today can provide some small comfort to Li’s family”. But bullish to the last, Robert lodged an appeal on the 29th of October 2015; claiming his lead counsel was incompetent and rendering his conviction unsafe, that he suffered with depression and OCD, and that he had recently been diagnosed with Asperger, which impacted his questioning by the detectives. In the years since Li vanished, he never expressed any loss at the wife and baby he wouldn’t see again, or about her family who could never bury her, or fully grieve her passing. On the 16th of December 2015, his appeal was rejected, and as of today, Robert Ekaireb remains in prison until at least 2035… …and it was all because of dirty money. 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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Triple nominated at the True Crime Awards and nominated Best British True-Crime Podcast at the British Podcast Awards, also hailed as 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation Channel's Top 20 True-Crime Podcasts, also seen on BBC Radio, Sky News, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week.
Welcome to the Murder Mile UK True-Crime Podcast and audio guided walk of London's most infamous and often forgotten murder cases, all set within and beyond London's West End.
EPISODE THREE HUNDRED AND TWO:
This is Part Five of Five of Schizophrenic: The Real/Fake Peter Bryan. Peter Bryan is regarded as one of Britain's most infamous serial-killers and cannibals with almost every article and documentary about him slavering over the grisly details of his murders, and especially his cannibalism. But how much of this story is the truth, an exaggeration or a lie? Who created these myths, why do we still believe them, and what evidence is there of cannibalism? Told in full for the very first time, this is Schizophrenic: The Real/Fake Peter Bryan.
SOURCES: a selection sourced from the news archives:
This series is primarily based off the Inquest papers into the care and treatment of Peter Bryan (September 2009).
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: Wednesday 14th of April 2004, HMP Belmarsh. Slamming, banging, shouting, screaming, that isn’t the sound of what Peter says goes on inside his head, this is his new reality. For 7 weeks, 23 hours-a-day, he’s been couped up in a tiny 6 foot by 8 foot cell, staring at four grey walls, a locked steel door, and his barred window giving him a sickly view of an A-road, a business park and Woolwich Crown Court. Wearing a prison-issue blue t-shirt, grey jogging bottoms and black plimsols, his eyes are cracked and red from a severe lack of sleep, as – although he’s revelled in the headlines comparing him to Hannibal the Cannibal, dubbing him ‘Peckish Pete’ and ‘Britain’s most dangerous man’ – inside, he’s surrounded by the epitome of pure evil, seriously deranged men who will kill and torture without motive or mercy. In here, he is nothing, a nobody, a tabloid reputation is nothing if you can’t back it up, and (as his crimes proved) Peter Bryan only picks on the weak and vulnerable; an unarmed girl, her 12-year-old brother, a disabled man and a 16-year-old child. He lies, brags and manipulates to get what he wants, and (it’s possible) he’s staged a crime scene as he’s terrified of serving his sentence in a place like this Smashing up his bed, shouting and screaming about voices goading him to kill, it could all be real, but he knows his symptoms better than anyone - definitely the guards and maybe the prison psychiatrist? But with his trial approaching, if he’s convicted of murder, he’ll serve his sentence here. (Screams). Told in full for the very first time, this is Schizophrenic: The Real/Fake Peter Bryan – Part 5, The End. Thursday 15th of April 2004, the next day, a G4S prison van enters at a second set of high-security gates at Broadmoor Psychiatric Hospital in Berkshire. Exiting the van with a slight limp, although bound and shackled in an unfamiliar place, Peter is calm as a Hindu cow, as it’s not unsimilar to Rampton Hospital. Broadmoor, as the press love quoting, has housed 100s of the most dangerous psychiatric patients in the UK, such as; Daniel Gonzales, Peter Sutcliffe, Robert Maudsley, Graham Young and Robert Napper. To some, it seem stark and foreboding, but as Peter is handed by prison guards in blues to psychiatric nurses in whites, it has a cushy comparative comfort with calm wards, big windows, single occupancy rooms, doped-up patients, CCTV, alarms, a chance of day-trips, a gym, and (if he’s been good) Ribena. As a former Victorian asylum, Broadmoor has often been criticised as “overcrowded and dangerous”. In the proceeding years of 2005 and 2007, there were 95 serious incidents (such as suicides, attempted suicides and murders), the accommodation being described as ‘substandard’ “with some patients sleeping on sofas because there aren’t enough beds”, and they struggle to find enough staff to cope. As was standard practice, upon admission, Peter’s medical file was handed over, and given his crimes, he was put into seclusion. An inquest later stated “it is uncertain whether (those files) were read and understood by the staff”, it also criticised “the pre-admission nursing report… an adequate mental state examination, a formal written risk assessment” and how often he was seen by the medical staff. Described as ‘rushed’ and ‘inadequately assessed’, with Peter said to be calm and placid, after three days he was removed from high-security isolation and placed on the medium-security Luton Ward. He was allowed to mingle unsupervised, take his own medication and was put on general observations rather than 15 minute checks given the danger he presented, as the hospital was badly short-staffed. He was said to be calm, jovial and trustworthy, a “model patient”, yet had they read his medical file in full, several quotes would have jumped out; “Peter is hard to assess… his symptoms are inconsistent… he’s a paranoid schizophrenic but his only symptom is paranoia… he masks his illness… appears utterly charming and normal… he had conned and manipulated people by telling them what they wanted to hear”. He'd got out of Rampton, John Howard, Riverside and Newham General. Broadmoor was next… …but first, he had some ‘unfinished business’. The family of Richard Loudwell would state, “Richard had complex psychiatric and medical needs, we expected that people would be kept safe from Richard and that he would be kept safe from others“. But the system would fail him, just like it had failed him (and his victims) for many years and decades. Born in July 1943 in Chatham, Kent, Richard Graham Loudwell wanted to live an normal life, he wanted to be happy, settled and free, he didn’t have big plans for the future, he just wanted to live a good life. Hints of this appear in two news articles from his local paper, The Medway News. 8th of May 1992, Richard posted an advert, it read “age 47, requires work as mechanical estimator or similar. Experience 22 years as mechanical estimator (trained as an engine fitter). Qualifications, ONC maths, mechanicals, tech drawing, clean driving licence. 20 years’ experience at Chatham Dockyard’. Another three years earlier reads ‘The Children’s Society says a big thank you to all who helped them over Christmas, with a special thanks to Richard Loudwell, who – through his own efforts – collected £1175.76”. He was an ordinary man trying to live an ordinary life, but was unsure why he had strange thoughts and feelings. For years, he had lived with his elderly mother at York Farm, a semi-remote cottage on Lower Twydall Lane in Gillingham, and although he came across as a good but slow boy who helped his mum with shopping and cleaning, from 1976 to 1980, he had indecently assaulted a girl under the age of 16. Described as “a manic-depressive bi-sexual with no control over his sexual urges”, in 1997, he received the first of five ‘informal’ spells (often as an outpatient) at the psychiatric ward at Medway Hospital, a small rural unit which lacked the funding, staffing and specialist facilities of those in the big city. In 1999, with his sexual urges rising and his mental illness spiralling, he pleaded guilty to another sexual assault, he was put on the Sex Offenders Register, sentenced to probation with the condition that he attended a sex offenders’ course, “however, he continued to act in an unstable and sexual manner”. The law was toothless, his family were helpless, and the mental health services were useless. In 2001, as a ‘voluntary patient’, he spent six months in a psychiatric hospital, but after his release, he was arrested several times by the Police across the next year. In March 2002, he was discharged from Medway Hospital due to ‘sexually inappropriate behaviour’, and being diagnosed with ‘dementia, depression’ and a sickness as yet ‘unspecified’, he became a bedbound recluse for several months. By the winter of 2002, being failed by the system and left to his own devices, on the 30th of November 2002, 59-year-old Richard Loudwell was arrested, it was alleged that he had raped a 35-year-old man in Canterbury. He wasn’t sectioned, or sent to hospital to be assessed, instead he was placed on bail. Like Peter, in the days before Nisha’s killing, he was mentally unwell and getting no help. Unlike Peter, Richard Loudwell wasn’t masking his symptoms or manipulating the system, as he wanted to get well… …but to get the help he needed, it would take a brutal murder. An inquest into Richard’s care, later concluded; “there was no attempt to understand the relationship between his mental condition and the reasons for his offending… several organisations monitoring him were said to have failed to recognise a series of warning signs”, and although Richard’s family had pleaded for help and expressed their disquiet, “the agencies did not recognise their views or opinions”. In the end, it was said, lessons were learned, changes were made, but no-one was held accountable (even a social worker as a scapegoat). It concluded “the murder wasn’t predictable or preventable". But by then, it was all for nothing. Sunday 25th of April 2004. The Luton Ward at Broadmoor. Peter Bryan had been admitted 10 days earlier and released from segregation just one week before. He was calm and trusted, he made jokes, he was mildly sarcastic and occasionally his comments were a little inappropriate, but he wasn’t violent or threatening, and was “responding well to treatment”. In the January one year prior, Richard had been admitted to Broadmoor for a crime he’d committed two years before. Like Peter, he was being mentally assessed and awaiting his trial at the Old Bailey. Joanne Fisher, a registered mental health nurse and the Luton ward’s team leader told the inquest, “Mr Loudwell was hard to work with… he was generally unco-operative", and wasn’t liked by the other patients. They ignored him, mocked him, bullied him, and described by a senior staff member as “the most unpopular patient I have ever met… it was inevitable that sooner or later he would be assaulted”. It started early into his stint at Broadmoor, with Peter and other patients he had goaded into joining in calling Richard “a nonce” – an acronym marked on prisoner’s files which stands for ‘Not On Normal Courtyard Exercise’, letting the guard know an inmate Is likely to be attacked – but it’s more commonly a slang term for a paedophile. Richard had gone against the rules to not to disclose his offence having been accused of sexually assaulting a child, and yet, without any irony, Peter was accused of the same. In the days and hours prior, Peter had softened towards Richard, the bullying had become more like banter, Richard was interacting with the others, and he was seen playing cards with the patients. The staff had no inkling that something sinister was brewing, as after three whole days in segregation and a rushed assessment, Peter was polite, calm and compliant with no clear signs of any mental disorder. It had only been nine weeks since he had brutally murdered Brian Cherry; stamping on and severing his limbs, smashing open his skull, frying a piece of his brain in butter and – supposedly –eating it. Yet, that same morning Peter had murdered him, a team of highly experienced psychiatric staff at the Topaz Ward in Newham (who had assessed 100s if not 1000s of paranoid schizophrenics) had declared he was “safe to be released”, was “no longer a danger to others”, and ”showed no signs of psychosis”. This information was in his medical notes. Interviewed after his final murder, Peter told a forensic psychiatrist “I get these urges you see. I've had these urges ever since I saw him. He's the bottom of the food chain, old and haggard. He looked like he'd had his innings. I was just waiting for my chance to get at him. I wanted to kill and eat him. I didn't have much time. If I did, I'd have tried to cook and eat him”. His word are grisly and chilling… …but is it true? All of the most sensational elements of this case are retold verbatim and unchecked, we swallow his words like he (allegedly) swallowed a piece of Brian’s brain, yet we’re as manipulated as his doctors, and by accepting it without any real evidence and denying the fact that it may be fantasy or staged, we fuel the fire in the mind’s of his potential future jurors, that he is most likely insane. Every blog, podcast, book and documentary written about Peter Bryan either has ‘cannibal’ in the title, the first line or the opening scene. It’s too sensational not to use even by reputable outlets, yet they all claim “cannibal ate brain”, “he killed and ate man”, “he had an appetite for killing”, with some even giving him the monicker of ‘Cannibal Peter Bryan’, barely mentioning his victims, or his mental illness. Maybe he is an ‘atypical paranoid schizophrenic’, or maybe he isn’t? But through biased reporting, all we do is make it easier for him to be charged with manslaughter by diminished responsibility (which is another stab in the heart of his victim’s grieving families), rather than being charged with committing what it is – a coldblooded murder – for which he (if found guilty) he would serve his sentence in prison. But will we ever know the truth? It wasn’t a sexual assault which led to Richard’s incarceration, as like Peter, his crime was horrific. Born on the 4th of June 1920 in Chatham, Kent, Joan Isabel Pearson was one of two daughters to Fred & Minnie, alongside her older sister Winifred. Raised in a small but neat family home at 54 Salisbury Road, life was hard but simple being the daughter of a housewife and a labourer at Chatham Dockyard. Little is recorded about her life except during wartime; she was a book binders assistant, she married a sailor in 1945, and raising two daughters, her life revolved around her family, garden and the church. Widowed in her 60s and living alone, Jean Smyth as she became, kept herself busy with shopping trips, her circle of friends, daughters and grandchildren, and “as a trusting lady, she was known to strike up conversations with strangers”. Needing less space, she downsized, and as the perfect little home for this 82-year-old pensioner, she moved into a one-bedroomed flat on Wakeley Road in Rainham. As a quiet residential street lined with two-storey houses from the 1920s and 30s, for Joan, it was safe, warm, and if she needed help, upstairs was another pensioner, whose nephew was Richard Loudwell. Monday 2nd of December 2002 was a typical day for Joan, as she left mid-morning to go shopping. But for Richard, his behaviour had become "increasingly bizarre and troubled". That day, at York Farm, his mother and sister were at their wits end, as although he wandered about the garden and house naked, shouting filth and weeping copiously, he was no longer under the psychiatric care of the local hospital. Again, the law was toothless, his family were helpless, and the mental health services were useless. Sometime in the late afternoon, Joan met Richard by chance in the shopping precinct, she was ladened down with bags, he had a car and was still legally allowed to drive, and as she knew him, liked him and trusted him, being her neighbour’s nephew, he drove her back to her home. He’d always been a little unusual, but he showed no signs of a psychotic episode or a mental breakdown that afternoon. He was good, kind, childlike, and as he carried in her bags, she had no idea that he would murder her. The initial attack was fast as his aunt upstairs heard nothing, as Richard rendered Joan unconscious. With his arms or hands, he strangled her till her breath was almost exhausted. Stripping her naked, a post-mortem said “her body was covered in bite marks and cigarette burns”. And as she lay there, silent, still and semi-conscious, with his uncontrollable sexual urges raging, Richard raped the old lady. He and Peter Bryan were very different beasts, but having taken Joan to the brink of death, from her home he dialled 999, and told the police “I’m on Wakely Road, my friend, Mrs Smyth is in a bad way”. When Paramedics called at her flat, he answered her door naked. Rushing Joan to Medway Hospital, his odd behaviour caused concern and staff alerted the Police. When told she was dead, he sobbed “oh, God, no”, his tears genuine and his emotion true, but his statement was bizarre and delusional. Psychiatrists declared him ‘unfit to plead’ and diagnosed him with an “abnormality of mind and possible brain damage”. Committed on the 6th of December at Medway Magistrates Court, he was charged with manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility and transferred to Broadmoor to be assessed. In early April 2004, “of his own free will”, Richard pleaded guilty, and on the 27th of April, he was due to be sentenced to either a life term in a prison or a ‘hospital order’ at Broadmoor. Again, a mental health system designed to protect patients and public had failed. It was understaffed, underfunded, it lacked clarity and communication between agencies, it was hard for patients like Richard to get help they needed, and impossible for those who manipulated the system to be spotted. In the case of Joan Smyth, lessons were supposedly learned, but no-one was held accountable… …and the same mistakes were made, which led to Peter’s final murder. Richard’s family later stated “our feelings… have turned to anger and cynicism, due to the way we have been treated by the Trust, the long delay in them accepting or apologising for their collective failings... and their persistent failure to learn the lessons from their failure to keep Richard safe”. Sunday 25th of April 2004, 6pm, the dining room on the Luton Ward in Broadmoor Psychiatric Hospital; one week after Peter’s release from segregation, and two days before Richard was to be sentenced. 19 patients were eating dinner, 9 staff on duty, but due to shortages, only 1 was watching this room. In the hours prior, Richard was said to be “happy, cheering, laughing”, and as a vulnerable man who had dementia, brain damage and was described as weak and childlike, for once he wasn’t being bullied by Peter, his pals and everything seemed calm and jovial… until that one staff member was distracted. At 6:10pm, to mask the sound of the beating, of the 8 to 10 inmates who set upon Richard, many were heard singing the chirpy upbeat 1960s pop song ‘Lazy Sunday’ by Small Faces. Staff only became aware when they heard two loud bangs coming from the dining room. Racing in, Richard was found on the floor, unconscious, his face covered in blood, and the cord of Peter’s jogging bottoms around his neck. Peter Bryan told the ward leader, “I got him from behind, I put a ligature around his neck so that he wouldn't make a noise, and I smashed his head", banging it hard, repeatedly on the table and then the floor, stating “I had been thinking about it for a few days”, then casually adding “I wanted to eat him". When restrained, Peter told staff “if you hadn’t have stopped me, I would have eaten him”, a similar quote he said after the murder of Brian Cherry, which was untrue, as he had let Nicola walk free. Again, he bragged, “I felt excited when I attacked him. I wanted to shag him when he was alive, and also when he was dead. I wanted to cook him but there was no time, nor was there access to cooking equipment. I briefly considered eating him raw”, even though the staff were there in seconds. He even named his next victim, another patient at Broadmoor, stating “I want to kill eight people… I want to be known as a serial killer”, later telling doctors, “I’ll be released again, even though I’ve killed three”. As always, he blamed it on the voices in his head, Caribbean voodoo, a “thrill to kill”, and that he ate flesh to “get power from their souls”. Assessed again prior to his trial, psychiatrist Dr Martin Lock gave the eager tabloids a serving plate of tasty morsels to endlessly repeat, like; “Peter Bryan is the most dangerous man I have ever assessed”, that he told the doctor “You look like a brainy chap and you are quite slim. I think I could take you”, as well as Peter allegedly stating that Brian Cherry’s arms and legs “tasted like chicken”, even though he didn’t eat them – which – the press didn’t bother to fact check. Also recounted verbatim from the trial; “the case reveals a chilling insight into the mind of a man who has literally developed an appetite for killing. The circumstances of his offending, the inability of the experts to detect when he is at his most dangerous, and his settled desire to cannibalise his victims all combine to make him uniquely dangerous" - which was a quote from the Prosecutor, not the Defence who portrayed Peter as a man who the mental health system had failed, again and again, and again. On 5th of June 2004, after 41 days in a coma and in a persistent vegetative state, Richard Loudwell died at Frimley Park Hospital. Combined with bronchopneumonia which he was recovering from, his cause of death was listed as a hypoxic brain injury, ligature strangulation and blunt trauma to the head. And because of his death, the trial of Joan Smyth’s murder was dropped, the file marked ‘deceased’. A 13-day inquiry into the care and treatment of Peter Bryan took place in September 2009. It stated he was able to carry out two murders in two months because of "a catalogue of errors… and a systemic failure…”, but concluded “that two key professionals” hadn’t the necessary experience to care for such an “unusual and complicated patient”. Those two scapegoats being “a psychiatrist who hadn’t had responsibility for a patient who had killed, and a very inexperienced social worker”. Stating that lessons were learned, changes were being made, and apologies were expressed, the inquiry was dismissed as ‘inadequate’ by Marjorie Wallace, CEO of SANE, who stated “there has been a trend in these so-called independent inquiries”, this one ordered by the NHS themselves, “in order to avoid the culture of blame, not to make those accountable and make very general observations”. On the 15th of March 2005, 34-year-old Peter Andrew Bryan was tried at the Old Bailey before Judge Giles Forrester on two joint indictments of the murders of Brian Cherry and Richard Loudwell. Led into the dock between five guards from Broadmoor, because of threats and violent outbursts, he was heavily sedated, his eyes were fixed and wide, and he sat for hours staring, making no sounds. Prior to the trial, four psychiatrists certified him as “seriously mentally ill”, and with both side accepting his plea of ‘not guilty’ to murder, but again ‘guilty’ of manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility – as Peter had already been convicted of a serious offence - under the ‘two strikes’ rule under Section 109 of the Powers of Criminal Courts Act 2000, the judge had to impose an automatic life sentence, sending him down for a ‘whole-life tariff’, declaring “you will never see freedom”. Summing up, Judge Forrester said: "the earlier treatment at hospital did not cure your disease and there is no reason to believe a hospital order now will do what it failed to achieve back in 1994. It is clear that you can appear calm and cooperative while harbouring bizarre psychotic beliefs”, but that for the safety of prisoners and the public, “you will never be released because you are too dangerous”. The families of Nisha Sheth, Brian Cherry & Richard Loudwell praised his incarceration for life as right, with Brian’s brother-in-law stating “we’re glad he wasn’t sent down under the Mental Health Act and able to come out (of hospital) in 10 years, like last time”. But there celebrations were to be short lived. On the 31st of January 2006, at the Court of Appeals, Lord Chief Justice Phillips overturned Judge Giles Forrester’s ‘whole life tariff’, stating the judge had failed to "adequately reflect" Peter's mental illness. He said “his mental health would be kept under review” for a minimum of 15 years by psychiatrists, nurses and social workers, or until these professionals deem him “no longer a danger to the public”. (Change from prison sounds to birds singing, it’s peaceful, like it was at the start of Part One). Summer. 2025. Broadmoor. Through the triple thick glass of a barred window, 56 year old Peter savours the warm sun as it dapples across the nature reserve beyond. His wrinkly Caribbean skin is greyer like the stubble of his shaved head, and although he’s sporting in a grey tracksuit and white t-shirt, he can’t go jogging. Like clockwork, a nurse hands him his pill, an anti-psychotic; he smiles, swallows it, she notes it on her clipboard, and he thanks her with a cheeky grin and a slightly sarcastic “yummy, what’s for pudding?”. From his pocket to pulls a carton of his favourite drink, Ribena, and calmly sucks it dry, as although he is separated from the world by walls, doors and guards, he smirks as he’s been in this situation before. (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.
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Welcome to the Murder Mile UK True-Crime Podcast and audio guided walk of London's most infamous and often forgotten murder cases, all set within and beyond London's West End.
EPISODE THREE HUNDRED AND ONE: This is Part Four of Five of Schizophrenic: The Real/Fake Peter Bryan. Peter Bryan is regarded as one of Britain's most infamous serial-killers and cannibals with almost every article and documentary about him slavering over the grisly details of his murders, and especially his cannibalism. But how much of this story is the truth, an exaggeration or a lie? Who created these myths, why do we still believe them, and what evidence is there of cannibalism? Told in full for the very first time, this is Schizophrenic: The Real/Fake Peter Bryan.
SOURCES: a selection sourced from the news archives:
This series is primarily based off the Inquest papers into the care and treatment of Peter Bryan (September 2009).
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: 3pm, Tuesday 10th of February 2004. Through the open door of the Riverside Hostel, Peter coughs at the choking fumes of Seven Sister’s Road; his shaved head warmed by a cap and dressed in his own leather jacket, jeans and trainers, he calmly scoffs a chocolate bar that he had bought from the shop. Around him, phones repeatedly ring and anxious voices gabble, as social workers, psychiatrists, FCPNs, RMOs, a wealth of other acronyms and the staff at Riverside work out what’s best to do. With threats on his life for the (alleged) sexual assault of 16-year-old ‘P4’, he wasn’t safe being this close to the Woodbury Down Estate, he couldn’t go back to the John Howard Centre or Rampton Hospital as - with the assault still under investigation - it wasn’t appropriate, and also, there weren’t any beds left. The police were yet to be notified, but a plan had been formed. Driver: “Taxi for Peter Bryan?”, Peter: “Yeah, that’s me”, and carrying just a small bag of clothes and toiletries, he hopped in the backseat alone, his key worker telling him “its paid for, they’ll call us when you get there”, and as he sucks on a Ribena, he heads to where it all began 34-years before, Peter: “Newham General Hospital please”. Declared “no longer a danger to the public”, within a week, Peter was due to be released for good… …but with his psychosis masked by a possible relapse, nobody saw he had murder on his mind. Told in full for the very first time, this is Schizophrenic: The Real/Fake Peter Bryan - Part 4. It’s ironic, but from the 10th to the 17th of February 2004, most of the correspondence back-and-forth was about how the life of Peter Bryan was “in danger” and he was at “risk of being hurt by others”. That day, amongst a flurry of phone calls, his social worker noted “…informed that some people went to Riverside to confront Peter… I intend getting him into hospital immediately for his safety and for a risk assessment… RMO is reluctant because there’s no clear relapse but I told him I can’t take the risk”. The plan was to admit Peter informally, as a voluntary patient on the Topaz Ward, a low-security open psychiatric unit at Newham General, but “because of an allegation (of a sexual assault of a young girl)… and because he is (held under Sections) 37 & 41 (of the Mental Health Act”) - a ‘hospital order without limit of time’ reserved for the most dangerous patients - “the Ward Manager was reluctant to take him and advised that he should go to a locked ward”. The Manager protested, but was overruled. All the relevant authorities were notified from his social worker all the way up to the Home Office, and as everyone knew this was only a temporary fix – while the death threats remained viable and the sex crime was investigated - as he showed no signs of a psychotic episode, they moved ahead with the plan to get him into low-support flat where he could live independently in the community. The Topaz Ward is a small 17-bed unit for adult males inside of the Newham Centre for Mental Health on Cherry Tree Way. Unlike at Riverside, he wasn’t free to come-and-go as he pleased, but as he was a week away from being released, it made no sense to break the rules, even if the voices told him to. His assessment listed his reason for admission as a "relapse", his diagnosis was “paranoid psychosis and/or paranoid schizophrenia”, and “he has been accused of indecently assaulting a child”. Examined by a psychiatrist, his report states “there is currently no paranoid or suicidal ideation, delusions or hallucinations, and he had been compliant with medication”. As always, “Peter was talkative, made good eye contact, his speech was clear, coherent… and there was no FTD (formal thought disorder)”. The plan (while temporarily under their care as an ‘informal patient’) was “to carry out intermittent observations, a risk assessment and a drug test”. They observed “no relapse or psychotic symptoms”, his urine test was drug-free and (as always) he was described as “a model patient… he ate, slept well, his fluid intake was normal, Peter settled onto the Ward… and there no management problems”. As the inquest would later state, “Peter was in hospital for his own safety, not because he was thought to be mentally unwell at the time”, but – as we know – as an ‘atypical’ paranoid schizophrenic, he could appear “utterly charming, normal and logical”, even if he was in the grip of a state of psychosis. Monday 16th of February 2004, one day before, Peter sent a letter to an unnamed pal at Riverside, it read “Dear PA. Hope you are fine. Well (the Manager) got her way”, implying she had wanted him out, “but I cannot stop thinking who will be next… Life is still not going to be easy, it’s like Rampton is still around my neck and slowly getting tighter, but it doesn’t matter because I cannot die… well, I still have my ACE card to play. If I am not happy with it, I can still play my best card of all. Sit and wait and see what’s around the corner. Life is full of twist and turns, it's about how you cope with them… Take care. Patchwork”. The letter wasn’t screened as he was a voluntary patient awaiting his imminent release, it had relapse signatures of fantasy and delusions, it alluded to the unfinished business he’d spoke of… …and it was posted second class, so it wouldn’t arrive until a day after the murder. Tuesday 17th of February, 10am, the Topaz Ward. In an hour-long meeting to review Peter’s condition, he was described as “calm, jovial” and “there are no concerns regarding his mental state”. All of the team agreed “he’s ready to be released”, and were currently looking for low support accommodation. With no signs of psychosis, “or obvious signs of mental disorder", he asked for permission to leave the ward temporarily, this was approved, and with paperwork signed, at 4pm, he walked out of hospital. Back in the borough of Newham where he grew up, he could have gone anywhere; to the school where he said he had “few friends, being unhappy… and a sense of shame and embarrassment needing extra reading lessons”; to the ‘special school’ where he felt isolated; to his old home of Derby Road where he was beaten by his father, abandoned by his parents and where his brother tried to kill his mother. He could have gone to visit his siblings, his old gang, a pub to get pissed, or a drug dealer to get high. If he was feeling nostalgic, he could have visited the grave of ‘P1’, the tower block where he tried to take his own life, or down to the King’s Road to his first murder, and where her parents still lived. He could have gone anywhere, but he didn’t… …yet, what happened next had many similarities to Nisha’s murder. From the hospital, with the bus pass he’d been given by his key worker, Peter hopped on the 276 bus towards Stoke Newington, sitting quietly, soaking up familiar sights and being polite when spoken to. After 30 minutes, he caught the Central Line tube from Stratford toward Leytonstone, then the W12 bus to Walthamstow Central, never causing a scene, or making anyone feel nervous or suspicious. At an unidentified hardware store near Walthamstow Market - looking like anyone else doing a bit of DIY - he purchased a claw hammer, a Stanley knife and a screwdriver. He used his own money, he was lucid and clear, and – with very little distractions, like suggesting he had smashed up a gang member’s car, or wanted the Police to arrest him for breaking several windows – he walked 18 minutes east. Dusk had fallen two hours before, it was fresh and blustery as a wind whipped down The Drive, a tree-lined residential street not far from Walthamstow Central. As a neat and peaceful street with no shops, just a few of the original semi-detached houses from the 1920s and 1930s, but mostly a wealth of two-and-three storey post-war blocks of flats, it’s a place where families are raised in relative safety. At a few minutes before 6pm, Peter walked east down The Drive, passed lines of cars, his face barely lit by the sparse street lights. He wasn’t alone, as being a peak hour for this street, around him were dog walkers, commuters heading home, mums with prams and kids playing football, but none of them were his intended target. And like at Nisha’s, it was a place too busy for any sane person to commit a heinous crime, yet the time was irrelevant, the place was chosen and his next victim was unaware. Although it was chilly, his head was sweating. Although he still limped owing to old fractures, his right ankle was also tingling. Inside of his leather jacket, three bulges were barely visible. And as he turned left into Manning House, a four-storey block of flats, he knew where to go and what he had to do. Ringing the communal door bell to Flat 1, from the left, a small thin man with bright red hair popped his head out. Seeing Peter through the faint glow of the hall light, he recognised him, “hi Pete, come in, how you doing?”, inviting him in and closing the door as Peter calmly entered, barely saying a word. Within minutes, Peter attacked, and Brian Cherry was dead. As Judge Forrester would state “Peter was at his most dangerous because he had the ability to obscure the psychotic symptoms under a veneer of near normality”, so Brian had no idea he was going to die. Brian Cherry wasn’t exactly a stranger to Peter, but then he wasn’t exactly a close friend. 43-year-old Brian was a good man; kind and decent. With a large beard, sticking out ears and dark red curly hair in a 50s style quiff, locals knew of him, but few knew his name, as he was never a bother to anyone. Often seen shuffling from his home to the shops in his slightly threadbare clothes, he was someone who didn’t cause a fuss and always tried to be liked, especially as that month had been hard. As a former psychiatric patient - who couldn’t work owing to an injury, survived on meagre disability benefits and was said to be ‘lonely’ and had ‘few friends’ – with his dad long gone, for the last 8 years he’d lived in Flat 1 of Manning House with his widowed mother, but two weeks before, she had died. Comforted by two brothers and a sister, he was still grieving when Peter came knocking; condolence cards on his sideboard, her photo by his bedside, her coat on its peg and her perfume still in the air. Two years prior, when Peter started seeing the 16-year-old girl known as ‘P4’, her friend ‘P7’ who was a resident at Riverside was also friends with Peter and girl identified as ‘P8’, who we know as Nicola. As was common with the girls Peter hung around with, Nicola was a young and vulnerable crack addict, and as desperate as she was for drugs, like Brian, she was lonely and for over a year, they were in love. At least, that’s what Brian thought. She later admitted that she took advantage of his loneliness and kind nature, and visiting him almost daily, he let her (and her pal ‘P9’) smoke drugs in his flat and he gave her £100 a week. This isn’t to blame her, as many people are trapped in their own vicious circle. That day, Brian, Nicola & ‘P9’ had been to Walthamstow Market; he had withdrawn some cash for her, at the Sainsbury’s he’d bought her three bottles of After Shock and some cigarettes, after he had gone, she’d sold the drink for £40 to fund her habit, and she said she’d pop by later to pick up the cigarettes. At 6pm, Peter arrived at Bryan’s flat, being dinner time, none of the neighbours heard a sound. At 6:30pm, Nicola called, but his phone kept ringing. At 6:45pm, she tried again, but it went to voicemail. At 7:30pm, she was driven by ‘P9’ who waited outside, and Nicola walked the path to Manning House. Just passed the bin store, she rang the bell, but there was no reply. Pushing the communal door, she found it was unlocked and knocked on the ground floor door to Peter’s flat. Again, there was no reply, but inside, as someone was heard moving around, with his front door open (having been damaged, meaning it didn’t shut properly unless it was double-locked), she entered. Nicola: “Brian? It’s me?”. The first thing which hit her was a strong smell of disinfectant, it stood out as the flat was often messy. “Brian? That you?”. Only it wasn’t. Large and foreboding like a black cloud, Peter stood in the doorway of the living room. “Pete’? What are you doing here?”, Nicola asked. Saying nothing, he glared; his chest bare and his face pockmarked with bleach burns. Worried, she asked “where’s Brian?”, spotting sweat pouring from his head, even though the heating was off. Coldly, he grunted “go away”, but seeing his right hand bloody and a 8-inch kitchen knife in his fist, asking again “where’s Brian?”, Peter bluntly replied “Brian Cherry is dead”. He went towards the front door, as if to close it behind her. Peeping inside the living room, on the red rug, she saw Brian lying on his back, his legs splayed and completely naked. He didn’t move, speak or tremble with cold or fear, as a few inches from his side lay his right arm, bloody and dismembered. Nicola was terrified, but knowing that running may mean her death, acting as if she hadn’t seen it, to this knife-wielding psychiatric patient - who had been convicted of bludgeoning Nisha to death, had just killed Brian and was only one murder away from becoming a fully fledged serial killer - she calmly said “well, I gotta go, I’ll see you later Pete’”, and she left. It was a lucky escape, very lucky indeed. Dashing to the car, she told ‘P9’, they sped to ‘P4’s flat, and there, they called the Police. Alerted at 7:41pm, at 7:45pm, two constables in a passing patrol car arrived at Manning House, to the vague report of (radio) “a white male, seriously assaulted, his arm possibly ripped off, unknown if he is deceased”, “Echo Victor Alpha on scene”. They entered the communal hall, knocked and identified themselves three times “Police, can you come to the door please”, but getting no reply, they entered. Again, they smelled bleach. Again, they also were confronted by Peter, dressed in only denims and his trainers. He was sweating profusely, his hands were empty but heavily bloodstained up to his elbows, and initially thinking he was the victim, the female officer asked “are you okay?”. Shocked to see them, Peter said nothing, he just stared for several seconds of awkward silence which felt like an eternity. “Yeah, I’m okay” he muttered, so as the male officer watched him saying “keep hands where I can see them”, Peter was said to be “calm, quiet and responsive”, as PC’s partner searched the rest of the flat. Brian’s niece Emma said: “I can’t believe anyone could do this to Brian. He would never have hurt a flea. It’s like something out of a horror film”. Even the forensic officers stated “it’s horrible in there”. The living room was small, 12 foot by 10 and sparsely filled with the basics; a gas fire, a table with a tv, one with a hi-fi, his bike and two armchairs; one for him and one which was for once for his mum. Invited in, it was likely Peter had attacked Brian as they sat chatting, as on the floor lay an overturned plate. Bludgeoned repeatedly over the head with a claw hammer, blood spattered the wall, there were two small pools where Brian slumped and fell, and the attack was so fast, he had no defensive wounds. Prior to his dismemberment, Peter had stripped him naked and his clothes weren’t found in the room, but there was no hint of sexual assault or molestation. In fact, except the obvious, he was unharmed. On the rug, scattered beside the body was the claw hammer and the Stanley knife, but the screwdriver was missing. A bloodied red-handled knife from Brian’s kitchen lay near his dismembered arm, on a side chair was a kitchen knife and behind the door was a saw, both clean, as if he’d been interrupted. Peter would state “I was comforted by the smell of blood”, as being disturbed by Nicola, he admitted “I used the Stanley knife to cut (the arm off) and some kitchen knives, but I had to stamp on it to break the bone”. An autopsy proved he jumped on the limb until the bone broke or the socket snapped. But he wasn’t done, far from it. In the centre of the room, Brian’s body lay on his left side, his left arm also dismembered and neatly placed alongside the right, as if he was deconstructing it piece by piece. The body was bent at the hips as if he was seated, yet two foot from his bottom, his disarticulated left leg lay, and with the bloody Stanley and red-handled knives nearby, his right leg was partially severed. When the officer asked “did you severe the limbs?”, Peter replied “yes”. When asked “was Brian alive when you arrived?”, he replied “yes”. When asked “did you kill Brian?”, he replied “yes”. He was calm, passive, and when arrested and handcuffed, he confessed “I did it, yeah… I don't know why I did it”. The scene was horrific, but that wasn’t the worst bit. In the same way he had bludgeoned Nisha to death by hitting her head six times with the claw hammer until her skull was broken, Brian was hit at least 24 times, so the whole of his head was smashed open. Prior to his arrest, as the female officer searched the flat, going into the kitchen, it was said that Peter smirked and said “I ate his brain with butter. It was very nice”. Peter was known to have delusions, he was known to hear voices, but unlike the voodoo he often spoke of, the evidence was plain to be seen. On the draining board by the sink was his bloodstained screwdriver. To the right of the cooker lay a knife, a fork and a plastic plate, on which was a lump of human flesh with red human hair. Nearby was an open tub of Clover butter. And in a warm frying pan was “a white substance with a yellow tinge”. A piece of his brain had been fried with butter, and DNA analysis confirmed it was a match to Brian Cherry. Judge Forrester stated “(the violence was) extreme and unpredictable, accompanied by bizarre sexual and sadistic overtones. You killed because you got a thrill and a feeling of power when you ate flesh. You gained sexual pleasure from what you were doing”. He later told a psychiatrist “I wanted his soul”. It was gory, but was it even true? Over the 11-years he was held on a ‘hospital order’ at Rampton, John Howard and Riverside, he spoke of paranoia, delusions and hallucinations; of violence, voodoo and dark forces guiding him, but never cannibalism. There was nothing in his past which hints at it; he wasn’t cruel to animals, he didn’t collect roadkill, and he even told the Police, “I wanted to carry him out bit by bit and get rid of the body”. That was at 6pm, at 7:30pm he was interrupted by Nicola, and the Police arrived just 15 minutes later. Again, his timings don’t add up. As we know, Peter was diagnosed as an ‘atypical schizophrenic’ whose symptoms were “hard to assess”, who had relapse signatures but doctors state “hadn’t relapsed” and that day he was “calm and jovial”, having previously sent a letter bragging about “an ACE card to play”. Brian was his intended target, and for at least nine years, Peter had spoken of “unfinished business, which would lead to his re-arrest”, yet in a motiveless attack, he had only known Brian for two years. Peter was taken in a police van to Barkingside Police Station. At 1:44am, while held in custody, he was given First Aid for a small cut to his right index finger, which caused him to wince in pain, stating unironically “it's where he bit me”. Assessed by the Police doctor and later a consultant forensic psychiatrist, Peter claimed “I wanted to kill and eat him. Cannibalism is natural... If I was on the street, I’d go for someone bigger”, claimed it was part of a “voodoo ritual”. He also added, “I would have done someone else, if you hadn't come along”, yet he let Nicola go free. Again, it’s all very sensational, and that’s what people love, but where’s the evidence of cannibalism? In the 15 minutes between Nicola fleeing and the Police arriving, he had to remove a leg, another arm, cut out a piece of flesh, scoop out some brain, cook it and (supposedly) eat it. When the officer went into the kitchen, he grinned as if his goal was achieved. Yet the scene itself looks painfully staged; a tub of butter, a plate and cutlery, a piece of brain in a frying pan, but no proof that he ate any of it. His word is taken at face value, but his lips weren’t tested for DNA, nor how much brain was missing. It seems like a set-up by a man who was described as “able to manipulate… to get what he wants”. He should have been sent to prison having killed Nisha for which he’d still be serving for a life sentence, but having committed an act no sane person would, and claiming ‘diminished responsibility’, he wasn’t locked-up in his cell 23 hours a day, he got to go on day trips and he served barely half his sentence. He hated prison, he feared it, and in his first weeks at Brixton, not only did he launch two unprovoked attacks on his fellow inmates, one while in his wheelchair, but he was also described as “violent, aggressive, uncontrollable”, and he was often segregated for the safety of the prisoners and staff. Assessed by a Police doctor, the report states, this so-called cannibal “does not necessitate an urgent transfer to hospital”. Assessed by a Police Psychiatrist, it states “Peter was apparently quite calm and showed no obvious signs of psychotic illness”, and required no psychiatric care, given what he’d done. Charged with murder at Waltham Forest Magistrates Court, while awaiting his trial at the Old Bailey, he was held on remand at Pentonville Prison where he was said to be “disruptive”. After three days, on the 23rd of February 2004, he was transferred to HMP Belmarsh, a Category A, a high security prison full of 100s of rapists, murderers and terrorists, so bad, it has been dubbed Britain’s Guantanamo Bay. Inside, he didn’t settle. Inside, he threatened to kill a warder and eat a prisoner’s nose. Inside, guards had to use riot shields when entering his cell as he was “incredibly violent, unpredictable… and a grave risk to others”. Whereas at Rampton, he drank Ribena. At John Howard, he went to the pub to play pool. At Riverside, he could go to the shops for tobacco. But at Belmarsh, he was vulnerable and weak. Trapped in a tiny cell, all day, maybe for the rest of his life, he was surrounded by very bad men, who weren’t doped up on medication and he risked being killed if they knew he’d sexually assaulted a child. Part five, the final part of Schizophrenic: The Real/Fake Peter Bryan 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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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 London's West End.
EPISODE THREE HUNDRED:
This is Part Three of Five of Schizophrenic: The Real/Fake Peter Bryan. Peter Bryan is regarded as one of Britain's most infamous serial-killers and cannibals with almost every article and documentary about him slavering over the grisly details of his murders, and especially his cannibalism. But how much of this story is the truth, an exaggeration or a lie? Who created these myths, why do we still believe them, and what evidence is there of cannibalism? Told in full for the very first time, this is Schizophrenic: The Real/Fake Peter Bryan.
SOURCES: a selection sourced from the news archives:
This series is primarily based off the Inquest papers into the care and treatment of Peter Bryan (September 2009).
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: 12:30pm, 12th of February 2002. Through the open window of the John Howard Centre, 32-year-old Peter inhales the cool air, his gold tooth and dreadlocks standing out against a grey tracksuit and white t-shirt. Like clockwork, a nurse hands him his pill, he swallows it, she notes it, he jokes “yummy” as always, and having had his breakfast and a shower, with his six month trial successful, freedom awaits. Two guards and a nurse escort him to the van - not a prison van, not in handcuffs and certainly not in any restraints – where he sits quietly on the backseat supping his favourite drink, a carton of Ribena. 9 years since he brutally attacked Nisha Sheth with a hammer without any provocation, motive and since then very little remorse, a panel of experts and two scapegoats had noted his vast improvement and had deemed this self-proclaimed “psychopath in the making” as “no longer a danger to others”. Having been released from the high-security Rampton Hospital, to the medium-security John Howard Centre, by the hour, he would be sitting on a bed, watching telly and drinking tea at the Riverside Hostel. Assessed and monitored, he would have to remain a resident until another panel deemed him fit to live on his own, but as long as didn’t break the rules, he was free to come and go as he pleased. Peter Bryan, the convicted murderer could now mingle among the community who would be unaware of his crimes as a violent killer, who doctors couldn’t determine if he was managed by his medication, whose diagnosis of schizophrenia couldn’t be determined as his symptoms were “hard to assess”, and who - within two years of this day - would brutally murder two others, while under psychiatric care. Told in full for the very first time, this is Schizophrenic: The Real/Fake Peter Bryan - Part 3. (TV report) 17th of December 1992, Christopher Clunis entered Finsbury Park station and – in an unprovoked attack on a stranger - stabbed Jonathan Zito in his face, eyelid and brain. Clunis was a paranoid schizophrenic, living in a local hostel, who was being treated at Jamaica's Bellevue Hospital, but when he moved to London in 1986, although he had been seen by 43 psychiatrists over 4 years, none of them had accurate copies of his medical records, and no agency was responsibility for his care. On the 28th of June 1993 at the Old Bailey, Clunis admitted manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility and was detained on a ‘hospital order without limitation of time’ at Rampton Hospital. An inquest would state “we do not single-out just one person, service or agency for blame… in our view the problem was cumulative; it was one failure or missed opportunity after another”. (Static) The similarities with between this and Peter’s case was startling… …and it had happened just three months before Nisha’s murder. At 1pm, the van pulled up at Riverside, a 24-hour supervised forensic hostel at 337 Seven Sisters Road in North London, a care home for adults with mental health needs, with the aim, to monitor and assess each resident in a less-clinical setting, and to prepare them to live independently and safely in society. Every resident has their own psychiatrist and social worker, and the staff were trained to spot changes in their mood or behaviour, as many experience freedom for the first time in months or years. Peter had been there on trial visits before, and he was “neat, polite, listened intently and obeyed the rules”. His first day was simple. His medication and his medical files were handed to the staff, his property was noted, his bank book was put in the safe, and he was assigned a key worker. He went to the shops with a resident and a staff member to buy tobacco, he cooked his dinner, he played pool, he watched TV, he asked for his head to be shaved bald, he had his pills at 10pm and he went to bed at 12.40am. There were no issues. The next day, Peter agreed he would attend Worland Day Centre to meet others and learn new skills, he would attend meetings with VITAL Drug Agency, follow-ups with his FCPN (Forensic Community Psychiatric Nurse), his drug counsellor at Addaction, his Social Worker (Roland), and – as ‘skunk’ was a trigger for his psychosis – he agreed to have his urine regularly tested for drugs. He would be kept busy and occupied by the staff, but part of his therapy was how he would manage his paranoia, hallucinations and delusions safely and appropriately. So, given a bus pass, access to money and his own door key, he could come-and-go as he pleased (as long as the staff knew the place, the people and the timings), and settling in, he got a job for 15 hours a week as a cleaner in Earls Court. Riverside was the right place to get Peter on the road to recovery; he was happy, calm and cooperative, and became good pals with residents like Nikodemus & Squash, with his nickname being Patchwork. Peter was a resident at Riverside for two years, it was a slow careful process, but then it had to be. The first letter he sent was to his Occupational Therapist at the John Howard Centre, he wrote: “Hello. Hope you are fine… as I am fine and in good health and fine spirits… the staff are very kind and helpful… the Manager keeps telling me to keep away from DRUGS and No Drinking Alcohol on the premises, but I don't think you need to worry, I am impowered and know to Say No… Take care as I will try very hard to get out of Riverside and will also be trying to keep the good behaviour up. Your sincerely, Peter”. Staff were trained to spot his ‘relapse signatures’, signs his medication or treatment wasn’t working, needed improving, or he wasn’t complying with the rules. His three key ‘relapse signatures’ were:
Majorie Wallace, CEO of mental health charity Sane stated “a patient like Peter can mask their illness, they can appear utterly charming, normal and logical”, even prior to a psychotic episode, due to the fluctuating nature of schizophrenia, which is exacerbated by medication, stressors and other factors. A later inquest determined that “Peter had an unusual type of illness, which allowed him to appear to act normal, despite being unwell”, a finding it stressed was “identified with the benefit of hindsight”… …hindsight, being a euphemism for ‘two more brutal murders’. Over the months, the signs were subtle but noted, it happened to many (if not every) resident as they adjust to the freedom, and as in Peter’s case, he’d comment “I feel like I’m already institutionalised”. He struggled to sleep and was sometimes argumentative, which was common, but he wasn’t violent. He pushed the boundaries by claiming money for soft drinks he never bought, but nothing major. He started bathing less, smelling bad and wearing the same clothes, yet everyone had their low moments. And he often complained that the staff were watching him too closely, but surely, that was their job? As had been noted at Rampton and John Howard, he was prone to manipulating others. At Riverside, he falsely claimed he’d been attacked on the street so he could find out which resident was a ‘grass’, and he wrote many letters to the company’s Chief Executive making formal complaints about the staff. In 2003, his second year at Riverside, on occasions he threatened staff and residents, he was found to “smell of alcohol”, there were suspicions he was using cannabis, he was hanging out with some youths from the nearby Woodberry Down estate, and when preparing his evening meal, “Peter became very annoyed when a kitchen knife was taken away from him”, even he said “red mist came over me”. To the uninitiated, they may think ‘the warning signs were there’, but one incident such as this didn’t mean he would be sent back to John Howard or Rampton, as it was all about learning and improving. For the rest of his life, his illness would be process of adjustments to his treatment and medication, as - when and if he was deemed fit to be released - he would need those coping strategies in place when their was no one there to watch him. Something he didn’t have before when he murdered Nisha… … which could have stopped him from killing. (TV report) 4th of April 2004, ‘Phillip’ Theophilou attacked Simon Breed, a married father of two on his drive in Wood Green. Stabbed six times in an unprovoked attack, he died in his wife’s arms. One year before, Theophilou had caused £1000s of damage to his house and car with a meat cleaver, and diagnosed as a schizophrenic, had been released from St Ann’s hospital 8 months earlier, and although no issues were reported, staff were unaware he had stopped taking his antipsychotic medication. Tried at the Old Bailey, he pleaded ‘guilty’ to manslaughter due to diminished responsibility, and was sent to Broadmoor on a ‘hospital order without limitation of time’. In an inquest, the Mental Health Trust responsible for his care admitted “I would have expected him to be under a care coordinator, either a doctor, nurse or social worker”, but after his release, he wasn’t. The system had fallen short “and there was an overreliance on care in the community because of a lack of hospital beds”. (Static). Again, the similarities with between this and Peter’s case was startling… …and it would happen just two months after Peter’s next murder. Peter wanted out of Riverside, not just for freedom, but because he was lonely and looking for love. As far back as April 2002, just two months into his stay, Peter had tried to being a ‘lady friend’ back to his room after hours, but as this broke the rules, he accepted this and they sat in the lounge watching television. He tried this repeatedly, and became annoyed that he had to seek permission from staff as in his words “I am a male with physical needs and would like to develop relationships with women”. Residents are encouraged to mix in the community but ‘bad company’ is not acceptable. And although, “by his own admission, Peter is a sexually frustrated virgin”, the staff were unaware that “the women he was attracted to were either crack users, sex workers or they were of an extremely young age”. At the Inquest, the anonymous girl Peter saw as ‘his girlfriend’ was referred to only as ‘P4’. She lived on the Woodberry Down estate, immediately opposite Riverside Hostel, and she was the daughter of another woman he had met, known only as ‘P6’. But by then, Peter was 33-year-old, P4 was only 16. As with his medication, his social life had to be a careful balance of freedoms and restrictions, so when ‘P4’ knocked on the hostel’s door for him, the staff explained to Peter “this is not a suitable place for young children”, he was reminded “it is an offence to associate with girls under 16”, especially given his past, and he explained “I am not a paedophile and I am responsible enough for my own actions”. This was a red flag, but he said “I did not and would not put anyone in danger”. In November 2003, tested at random, one of his urine samples was positive for amphetamines. Peter denied doing drugs, he challenged it, it was agreed it could have been a false-positive caused by his antipsychotic mediation (which happens), and he asked to be retested, but those results are unknown. From the start, he’d assured the staff “I’m giving it my best shot”, as his only chance of living a normal life began here and if he made a serious mistake, he risked losing it all and being sent back to Rampton. In late 2003, the ‘Historical, Clinical and Risk Management-20’, a checklist of risk factors known as HCR 20 had been used by his Forensic CPN, and Peter had “a score of 14 out of a possible 20 for past risk”. Often his room was messy, he was unkempt and his ‘relapse signatures’ were more pronounced, but psychiatrists noted there was "a continued improvement in his mental state", and a plan was being put together to move him out of the low-security Riverside Hostel and into his own low-support flat. The 2009 inquest, 6 years later, concluded: “there was no particular failure by any individual… Peter Bryan, who had an ‘atypical’ mental disorder… did not display the expected signs of schizophrenia and appeared to behave normally even when seriously mentally unwell. Other than a couple of minor incidents during his early years at Rampton, he had not displayed any signs of aggressive behaviour since he killed Nisha Sheth". Yet same report admits that at Rampton, John Howard and Riverside, “he was as able to dupe staff into believing he was responding to treatment”, and was "a model patient". (TV report) 2nd of September 2004, John Barrett stabbed Denis Finnegan to death in an unprovoked attack as he cycled through Richmond Park. Two years earlier, Barrett, a paranoid schizophrenic, had stabbed three people in the outpatients department of St George's Hospital, all of whom survived. Deemed to have ‘diminished responsibility’, Barrett became a restricted patient held on a ‘hospital order without limit of time’ at Springfield. But said to be “responding well”, a psychiatrist granted him an hour's leave, he left the hospital, bought some knives and headed to Richmond Park”. (Static) Again, the similarities with between this and Peter’s case was startling… …and it would happen just three months after his third and final murder. Every time another innocent person was murdered by a paranoid schizophrenic who had been failed by the system, an inquest would claim that faults had been found and that lessons had been learned. But are they ever learned? In 1979, Winston Williams, whose schizophrenia was exacerbated by drugs was sent to Broadmoor for two attempted murders. Deemed safe to be released, in 1999, he stabbed Kate Kasmi 77 times, and an inquest blamed “miscommunication by agencies”. In 1996, Lin & Megan Russell were murdered by Michael Stone, a heroin addict with a severe personality disorder, yet an inquest denied that anyone was at fault. Jason Cann murdered health care assistant Mamage Chattun at Springfield Hospital, yet the Trust was only fined for safety failures. And as recently as 2024, in Nottingham, Valdo Calocane, a paranoid schizophrenic fatally stabbed three people, due to “serious failings in his psychiatric care”. This is just a sample, and although only 6% of UK murders are committed by paranoid schizophrenics, one is one too many, and it’s one which could have been preventable, like the murder of Nisha Sheth. In the days prior, it was uncertain if Peter had potentially relapsed. On Wednesday 4th of February 2004, night staff at Riverside observed Peter “talking to himself”. On Thursday 5th, he was seen returning at 10:40pm “smelling of alcohol”, which he denied. Then on Friday the 6th at 2:30pm, ‘P6’ the mother of Peter’s supposed 16-year-old girlfriend identified only as ‘P4’, knocked at the hostel, accompanied by two ‘street crime wardens’ and alleged he had assaulted her. At 4pm, upon his return, Peter was informed, he was shocked, and stated “I went to the flat to watch DVDs, and that while I was there, my phone went missing, it might have fallen out of my pocket” and while he was in the bathroom, ‘P4’ “had ‘come on’ to me”. He said he felt-up her breasts and genitals, she asked him to leave, he refused, so she had pulled a knife on him. After that, he stated, he had left. Her family were afraid to get the police involved because the girl had protected herself with a knife. That was his version of the incident, which had stark similarities to his fantasy of the attack on Nisha, in which he claimed she asked “make me, rape me”, but the truth by eye-witnesses was very different. Thursday the 5th of February at 9pm, five hours after dusk, the night was cold with a light drizzle. As is typical of life on the Woodbury Down estate – a series of five storey blocks of flats owned by the council for the borough’s neediest – with nothing to do and nowhere to go, the kids were bored. With few able to afford even a basic Nokia 3310 to play games like ‘Snake II or ‘Space Impact’, or a CD player with a tragically tinny speaker, so many resorted to graffiti, vandalism, starting a fight or a fire in a bin. ‘P4’ was hanging outside of her block with an unnamed female when Peter and two males approached; Peter: “where’s your dad?”, ‘P4’: “Dunno?”, Peter: “Can I come up to yours, I got a new DVD”, possibly Kill Bill Volume 1 or a dodgy pirate copy of SWAT “I wanna see if it works”. She knew him and agreed. A while later, one of Peter’s friends left, saying “I felt uncomfortable being in her bedroom without her mum or dad in the house”, leaving Peter, his pal, hers and ‘P4’. For no reason, like he (as a 34-year-old man) was a teenage boy, he started coughing in her face, as he knew it would annoy her. Out of nowhere, he grabbed her wrists, threw her on the bed, pinned her arms with his knees so she couldn’t move and slapped her face. She said “I couldn’t breathe… I got one hand free”, but he started biting her, and slapping her, until she realised her fake nails had broken and her toenail was bleeding. Wriggling free from this large powerful man, she went into the bathroom to wash it, and he followed her in, cupping his hand under the water and throwing it in in her face, as if this was all a game, unable to sense her anger or see her tears. She slapped him and barged passed shouting "get out of my way", but it was then that he followed her into the kitchen, and (according to ‘P4’) he sexually assaulted her. This was a 16-year-old child, trapped in a room with a 34-year-old man, the same age as her father. The report stated “he walked up behind her, put his left hand over mouth so she couldn’t scream and put his right hand down her trousers”, passed the elasticated waistband of her tracksuit bottoms. She said she felt “really scared”, terrified as he loomed over her, but before his hand reached her knickers, she grabbed a knife, he knocked it out of her hand, so she punched and kicked him with all her might. Running into the bedroom, as he kept coming towards her, she threw whatever she could at him, a pot of face cream, some pieces of wood, and when one of them broke, she kept hitting him, screaming for him to “get out of my house”, as ‘P4’ pushed Peter towards the flat’s front door and out of her life. But before he left, he warned her “you better mind yourself. You don't know what I'm capable of". That was it. In comparison to what he had done before, it may seem like a little incident, but it had been 11 years since he had been incarcerated at Rampton, John Howard and Riverside, and that was his first real act of violence since Nisha’s murder. Across that decade, he had been monitored and assessed, medicated and educated to the point where he was declared “no longer a danger to the public” and fit to release. Throughout 2003 and early 2004, although they were often subtle, he had serious relapse signatures (such as drink, theft, anger, delusions, rambling, inappropriate and sexually aggressive behaviour) as well as two of the triggers he had promised to stay away from – illicit drugs and keeping bad company. It was like a warning from the past, and a precursor of dangers to come. Escalating this incident to the appropriate people, his Forensic CPN noted that as Peter “denied that anything untoward had happened”, and it was being discussed by his RMO and MAPPA (the Multi-Agency Public Protection Arrangement) so that they could investigate the incident in more detail. That night, Peter seemed down - knowing that if the allegation was proven to be true, he risked being recalled to Rampton and losing his freedom – so he stayed in his room, took his pills and went to bed. He wasn’t angry or upset, he was well behaved and admitted he was “scared by the recent events”. The next night, he told his FCPN that when he was leaving the hostel at 10pm, a car flashed its lights, and inside were sat several men. An unnamed resident confirmed one of the men was him, that he’d been forced into a car, ordered to point Peter out, and the men’s plan was to enter Riverside using his key, bundle Peter into the boot, drive him away, and “kill him”. The resident, said to be “reliable” was scared, and he asked to be moved from Riverside because he feared for his life, having told the staff. With possible death threats swirling around, and the safety of the staff and residents of Riverside at risk, the manager notified Stoke Newington police station, and a plan was formed on what to do next. The safest option were to put Peter in a police cell, or return him to high-security Rampton Hospital, but with the sexual assault allegation still being investigated, none of those were appropriate. As his mental health was clearly deteriorating, he was admitted to the Topaz Ward, a low security psychiatric unit at Newham General Hospital for a psychiatric assessment, but also for his own personal safety. One week later, he would brutally murder, and cannibalise his second victim. Part four of Schizophrenic: The Real/Fake Peter Bryan 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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