Nominated BEST BRITISH TRUE-CRIME PODCAST, 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation Channel's Top 20 True-Crime Podcasts, also seen on BBC Radio, Sky News, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week.

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TRANSCRIPT OF EPISODE: Cannibalism (munching) “could you eat a whole human being? (munching) With the help of a doctor, a scientist and a chef, I set out to see if it’s possible. Cannibalism: part eight – the brain”. (burp)

Brain, the favourite food of a zombie, but rarely a cannibal. But are they too afraid?

In 1978, Robert Maudsley murdered two prisoners on his wing, the second being William Roberts who he stabbed in the head with a handmade shiv, smashed his skull against a wall, and although broken, according to the pathologist’s report “the brain remained intact”. But when less-reliable tabloids got hold of the story, the knife became a spoon and Robert Maudsley was branded as “the brain eater”.

But why is this act so terrifying and morally wrong? Because, if the skin is our identity, the brain is our personality and our soul, it’s the very essence of who we are, as without it, we’re just a sack of meat.

Weighing roughly 3lbs (or 1 and a 1/3 kilos) and being the size of both fists combined, the brain is split into three parts; the hindbrain which controls the body's vital functions, the midbrain which acts as a relay for senses, movement and pain, and the forebrain interprets sensory input and decision-making.

Protected by the skull, cerebrospinal fluid, and encased in a tough outer layer called the dura mater, the brain’s 100 billion neurons pass data at speeds of 250mph, it uses 20% of our oxygen and blood, it feels no pain, and – while we’re awake – it generates enough electricity to power a small light bulb.

Every animal has a brain, with the exception of jellyfish, sea sponges, clams and most football pundits.

Symbolically, the brain plays a key role in love and war. The Fore, an indigenous tribe of Papua New Guinea are said to eat the hearts and brains of their dead to honour them, and although unproven, the dictatorial President of Equatorial Guinea is said to eat the flesh, testicles and brains of his enemy.

Likewise, with many serial killers, brain eating is symbolic of unrequited love, control and domination. In 1989, Daniel Rakowitz murdered his roommate Monika Beerle claiming he loved her. Dismembering her in a bath, he boiled her remains, and having liquified her brain into a creamy soup, he said “I tasted it, and I liked it”, only to – supposedly – feed it to the homeless in New York’s Tompkins Square Park.

So, is the brain a suitable meal for any cannibal? Yes, of course.

Even Palaeolithic cannibals knew the value of a human brain, as comprising of 10% membrane, 30% water and proteins, but 60% fat, and although the fattest part of the human body, Dr Jim Stoppani, a Yale certified nutritionist said “the brain would provide slow-burning energy as it's high in fat and glucose”.

Comprising of roughly 2700 calories, enough to keep a cannibal alive for a day, with it weighing 1300 grams and being more than the recommended daily intake of 100 grams of cholesterol, a cannibal could safely eat a brain over 13 days, but – as a one-off meal – it wouldn’t be problem if they wolfed it down.

Journalist Carl Hoffman who witnessed The Asmat tribe of New Guinea said “they shook the brains out onto the leaf of a palm, scraped inside the skull with a knife to get every last bite, then mixed the mass with sago, wrapped the leaf up, and roasted it on the fire”. Although when TV host Reza Aslan ate brain with The Aghori tribe, he said “the brains tasted of charcoal… as they were burnt to a crisp”.

Which is a shame as being described as “soft, fatty and a bit waxy” with a texture like “a rich scrambled egg cooked in lamb’s fat”, composed mostly of fatty tissue, “it has a very mild, almost sweet flavor and a soft texture akin to heavily whipped cream” and it’s rich in vitamin B12 and omega-3 fatty acids.

Like sheep brains, human brain tissue is pale yellow, it has a slightly spongy feel but being “neither rubbery nor tough” it can be easily cut with a knife. In Slovakia, pig’s brains are mixed with ground meat, eggs and pickles. In Asia, lamb brain is pan-fried with salt and ginger. In the Middle East, it’s soaked in milk. Or, as Peter Bryan said having fried it, “I ate his brain with butter. It was nice”.

And although full of calories and nutrients as the survivors of the Andes plane crash can testify, brain tissue can be deadly. From 1957 to 1960, 1000 members of the 20,000 strong Fore tribe of New Guinea died of Kuru, a rare and incurable disorder caused by eating infected human brain tissue, resulting in tremors, slurred speech, memory loss (not unlike mad cow disease and dementia) and finally death.

Brain eating seems acceptable if it’s committed by indigenous tribes with long-held beliefs, but in the West, it’s still seen as shocking, and for good reason. In 2009, Otty Sanchez of Texas, who had a history of mental illness was hearing voices following the birth of her son. Triggering a postpartum psychosis, she murdered her three-week old son at “the devil’s orders”, eating parts of his brain, nose and toes.

Like many of these ancient tribes, it was said, by eating his brain, she wanted him to live-on inside her.

Join me tomorrow for possibly the least palatable part of a human body – the hair.

Nominated BEST BRITISH TRUE-CRIME PODCAST, 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation Channel's Top 20 True-Crime Podcasts, also seen on BBC Radio, Sky News, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week.

TRANSCRIPT OF EPISODE: Cannibalism (munching) “could you eat a whole human being? (more munching) With the help of a doctor, a scientist and a chef, I set out to see if it’s possible. Cannibalism: part seven – skin”. (burp)

The only thing that serial killers and cannibals think that human skin good for is making a suit.

Infamously, Ed Gein sewed a suit made of women’s skin, including leggings made of leg flesh, a corset with breasts, a belt made of nipples and masks flayed from female faces, so he could literally "become his mother and crawl into her skin"; as well as lamp shades, a bongo, bowls made of skulls, nine vulvae in a shoe box, lips as a window shade drawstring and a female nipple doorbell, to name but a few.

And although suspected of being a cannibal, as he had gutted a body like a deer and a heart was said to have been “found in a pan on the stove”; he only confessed to grave-robbing, no tooth marks were found on any bones or flesh, and the heart was actually in a plastic bag, by the pot, and not in the pot.

Problem is that by itself when the fat and meat is stripped away, skin is not great as a treat to eat.
Covering 2 to 3 square meters and weighing between 3 ½ and 10 kilos, skin is the largest organ in the human body. Comprising of the epidermis, dermis and hypodermis, a square inch is made up of 19 million skin cells and contains 300 sweat glands, 20 blood vessels and 1000 nerve endings. Although just 2mm at its thickest and as thin as 0.07mm, skin produces melanin, brings oxygen and nutrients to your cells, removes waste, regulates your heat, and protects you against UV light and pollution.

It renews itself every 28 days – which makes a very fresh part of the body shedding 30,000 skin cells a minute – but the outer layer is made up of between 10 to 30 thin layers of dead skin cells. Delicious.

So, if Steve were to have his skin flayed off – but no fat, because our cannibal is dieting – those 7 kilos (or 15 ½ lbs) of skin could provide roughly 13,000 calories, enough for about 5 days, being full of carbs, proteins, fats and vitamin c.  But as cannibals in the palaeolithic era discovered, “skin was a last resort”, especially human, as without the meat and the fat, skin is merely an effective seal for preserving it.

That said, with 167,000 people dying each day, if we put our morals aside, with an average of 22 square feet of skin each, our daily death toll could provide 3.65 million square feet of skin a day, and needing 45 square feet to make a leather jacket, daily we could clothe the world in 81,600 Fonzy-style jackets.

But would that ever happen? No.

Visually, skin is the most personal part of a human body, it makes us unique without needing to move or make a sound. It is significant in many religions (as with the symbolic eating of the body of Christ), the flaying of skin is used as war trophies (like in 1571, when Marcantonio Bragadin, General of the Venetian resistance was flayed, his skin stuffed with straw and paraded along the streets riding an ox), and even for proven cannibals – like the Korowai of Indonesia’s Papua – although no longer practiced, they still encourage tales of flaying and the eating of human flesh to keep any Westerners away.

As for serial killers, the heart and the brain is a symbolic meal, but the skin is more of a souvenir.
Armin Miewes said he was motived to become a cannibal as he always wanted a brother and this way "someone could be part of me", although it’s uncertain if that was true. And in 2000, having stabbed her boyfriend 37 times, Katherine Knight flayed his skin, hung it on a meat hook, and as his decapitated head cooked in a pot, she laid table settings for his kids, with plates of his flesh served with vegetables and gravy. As a victim of a violent and abusive relationship, if that’s not purely symbolic, what is?

Without the fat and meat, skin isn’t a meal, but a protective layer, a symbolic gesture, or a souvenir.

So, maybe in this case, cannibals have got it right?

Karl Denke, the Cannibal of Münsterberg, who supposedly sold human flesh at the market, not only had jars of flesh curing in salt, two tubs of meat pickling in brine, skinned bones and pots of bubbling fat for eating and selling, but he also sewed himself some gentleman’s apparel; with shoelaces wound from skin and hair, and belts flayed from the chest (avoiding the nipples) and occasionally the pubis.

And maybe that’s why, when we eat animals, we choose not to anthropomorphise them. A cannibal wants to see another human as a meal not a best mate, as (like us chomping on a piggy) we don’t want to be reminded of who or what they were, as a bacon sandwich is yummy, but not if it’s smiled at you.

Imagine tucking into Steve’s lightly tanned flesh, and you’re reminded of his last holiday in the Algarve, his appendix scar, a tattoo of his kid’s names, the cigarette stain on his lips, and his battle with eczema. Even if you’re starving to death, would you still be hungry enough to eat his scabs? I thought not.

Join me tomorrow to examine a zombie’s favourite part of the human body – the brain.

Nominated BEST BRITISH TRUE-CRIME PODCAST, 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation Channel's Top 20 True-Crime Podcasts, also seen on BBC Radio, Sky News, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week.

TRANSCRIPT OF EPISODE: Cannibalism (munching) “could you eat a whole human being? (more munching) With the help of a doctor, a scientist and a chef, I set out to see if it’s possible. Cannibalism: part six – fat”. (burp)

For many serial killer and cannibals, fat is nothing more than a mess and there’s a good reason why.

2016, Stefano Brizzi was murdered by Gordon Semple. To dispose of the body, he severed the limbs and filled the bath with hot water, sodium hydroxide and a variation of hydrofluoric acid. Investigating, the police spotted globules of fat in the bath, and - alerted by the ‘stench of death’ – they found “pools of human fat in the oven”. That’s because fat is one of the hardest parts of the human body to destroy.

When John George Haigh tried to dissolve the body of Olive Durand Deacon in sulphuric acid, he had no idea that although it boils at 638 degrees Fahrenheit (or 337c), it would still leave 28 pounds of fat.

Fat cells are seemingly fragile, as they liquify at 130f, but it can’t be completely destroyed until 1900f, which is why a crematorium furnace burns as high as 2300f, as fat isn’t a liquid, but it also isn’t a solid.

But isn’t just an unsightly blight on our bodies we grumble about daily, as fat, known as adipose tissue absorbs vitamins, moves and stores energy, and regulates our metabolism and hormones. It keeps us warm, it protects our vital organs, and it is critical for our survival. We have three kinds of fat; white is our body fat, brown which burns energy (a byproduct of when as mammals we hibernated), and the superficial fascia, which if removed, would fulfil Ed Gein’s dream of owning a one-piece skin suit.

Fat is a valuable source of energy when eaten especially during times of survival and hardship. In 1934, during the fallout of the Great Depression, Alonzo Robinson broke into the Cleveland home of Aurelius Turner and his pregnant wife. Mutilating both bodies with an axe, when arrested, police found a packet of human hair, and a bag of human flesh which had been salted and cured to ensure it lasted.

So, if we strip Steve, our average UK male of his fat, with a body mass made up of 23% fat, he’s carrying 19.3 kilos (42.5lbs), the equivalent of 20 litres of water, a professional drum kit, or a newly born bison.

Back in the palaeolithic era, our ancestors ate flesh especially the fat for nutrition and warmth, as just 1 gram of fat provides 9 calories. So, with the NHS suggesting we eat no more than 100grams a day, it would take 193 days to digest all of Steve’s fat, from his jowls, his love handles and his muffin top.

In the 1800s, Stefan von Kotze, a travel writer supposedly attended a cannibal feast at the Bismarck Archipelago in New Ireland. Having paid a fee, and in doing so funding the murder of a young girl who became the main course, with her flesh roasted on a fire spit, he said "it tasted like foie gras pâté" – described as “like a meat-flavored butter, a silky, melt-in-your-mouth texture and a very subtle taste”.

At the meal, it was said, they ate her crackling. As like with pigs, different pieces of fat can be made into scratchings (fried once so they’re crunchy) or crackling (twice fried at a higher heat so they’re soft). So rather than destroy the fat, wouldn’t a more civilized cannibal make themselves a tasty snack?

But not everyone is a gourmet. In 2007, a dinner party was hosted by Marco Evaristti, a pretentious artist famed for painting an iceberg red, draping the peak of Mont Blanc with fabric, and putting 10 goldfish in 10 blenders to see which gallery patrons would liquify these live fish. Yes, he’s an arsehole, and predictably, to cause a stir, at the meal he served meatballs made from his own liposuctioned fat.

Unlike meat, fat isn’t a meal, it’s a contributor to the flesh’s flavour, so unless a cannibal wants to spend 480 days eating meat, and 193 days eating fat, it may be best to make saleable goods out of it.

Human fat has long been prized for its medicinal use as across the 15th to the 18th centuries, executioners were known to supplement their income by selling “fat, flesh and bone" to apothecaries, as a remedy for broken bones, sprains and arthritis, with crushed up skull used to treat epilepsy.

Plastic surgeon Dr R Berkowitz said of liposuction clinics, that although fat is currently used in research, it can’t be repurposed, “it’s picked up in a red bag marked ‘medical waste hazard’ and incinerated. It isn’t used to make soap or candles as suggested in Fight Club” - at least not today, as far as we know.

1940, Leonarda Cianciulli, an Italian serial killer murdered three women, she said “I threw the pieces into a pot, added seven kilos of caustic soda, stirred it until it dissolved into a thick dark mush and emptied into a tank… when it had melted, I added a bottle of cologne and after a long time on the boil I was able to make some most acceptable creamy soap. I gave bars to neighbours and acquaintances”, and no-one could tell the difference. But it wasn’t the only consumable she made from a woman’s fat.

Fat is useful and nutritious, few people eat it because of the gristle, and the fact that eating too much red meat and fat can cause excessive flatulence and bad breath. So, unless a cannibal wants to be farting until 2026, maybe they should set up a pork scratching shop, or a little stall selling soap.

Join me tomorrow to examine the largest organ in the human body – the skin.

Nominated BEST BRITISH TRUE-CRIME PODCAST, 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation Channel's Top 20 True-Crime Podcasts, also seen on BBC Radio, Sky News, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week.

TRANSCRIPT OF EPISODE: Cannibalism (munching) “could you eat a whole human being? (more munching) With the help of a doctor, a scientist and a chef, I set out to see if it’s possible. Cannibalism: part five – bones”. (burp)

For most serial killers, the human skeleton is either something to defile or to turn into a souvenir, but for the most unimaginative who only eat the finest cuts of meat, they could be missing a real treat.

Although a cannibal, Jeffrey Dahmer wasted a huge amount of time rinsing the bones, stripping the protein-rich meat, soaking them in bleach and painting these trophies like a twisted toddler at a sadistic playgroup. Every other bone, he smashed with a hammer and disposed of. But never ate them.

But survival experts know how nutritious and tasty bones can be. In 1820, whaling-ship The Essex was sunk by a sperm whale in the Pacific. Drifting for 90 days, of the 17-man crew, only 5 survived, having placed their dead compatriot’s leg bones to their lips and sucking out the life-giving marrowbone.

Admit it, bones, they’re not exactly a staple of our everyday diet, or the choicest part we’d hunger for.

Being 14% of our body mass, and made of protein, collagen, calcium and phosphorus, a skeleton gives our body its shape, a framework for the muscle structure, and it protects our most delicate of organs. Minerals make the bones strong, collagen gives it flexibility, and every atom is replaced every 10 years.

Its hard outer shell is called the periosteum, underneath are vessels for the blood and the lymphatics which carry its nourishment; and the muscles, ligaments and tendons attach to the periosteum. Of the 206 bones in the human skeleton, 126 are appendicular bones (such as arms, legs and hips), 80 are axial bones (the skull, vertebrae and ribs), and the only exposed part of the skeleton is the teeth.

Many anthropologists believe that during the palaeolithic era, tool-making hominids ate bone marrow as it’s a rich source of protein comprising fats, acids, as well as red and white blood cells and platelets.

Cooked properly – at no lower than 140 degrees Fahrenheit for 8 to 10 hours, depending on its weight and density – “it has a slightly sweet, savory full-bodied flavor”. Served in high-end restaurants, a cow femur (the thigh) is boiled, roasted, sliced and the jelly-like marrow is served on toast with sea salt.

We have no qualms about consuming animal bones, and yet, with the world population exploding and 167,000 people dying each day, its only fear, the law but (mostly) religion which stops us consuming a valuable and untapped source of 2 million kilos of highly nourishing human bone marrow every day.

Based on the study of palaeolithic cannibals, our average UK male has 11.7 kilos or 25.7lbs of bone, the equivalent of two bowling balls, two gallons of paint, or four house bricks – which sounds delicious - but providing 28,700 calories, Steve’s juicy marrowbone could keep a cannibal alive for 11 ½ days.

In 1991, Omaima Aree Nelson murdered, castrated, skinned and cannibalized her abusive husband, Bill. Having cooked his head, ate his flesh, and deep fried his hands in boiling oil, it was said she flayed his torso and roasted his ribs which she served with a barbecue sauce - only to later deny this. Whether this was true, a lie, or an alibi for an insanity plea is unknown, but with the intercostal muscles on a human’s ribs being relatively thin compared to pigs and cows, it’s unlikely she enjoyed much meat.

Bones are a tasty nutritious treat, but it comes with several dangers a cannibal may not be aware of.

Any bone needs to be crushed as the oesophagus can’t swallow anything larger than an inch, the width of a 2p coin. As bones tend to shatter, a punctured stomach wall can lead to peritonitis and sepsis. Even a bone of that size would take a week to pass through your intestinal tract, longer than fat. And any bone cooked lower than 145°F has a higher risk of dangerous bacteria like E. coli and Salmonella.

And – more importantly – with roughly a kilo of calcium in the human skeleton (necessary to build and maintain our bones), given that exceeding a daily intake of 2 ½ grams of calcium a day could result in vomiting, kidney failure, confusion and (ironically) brittle bones, it would take 400 days to safely eat Steve’s entire skeleton.

So, serial killers, don’t bin, abuse or decorate the bones, simply scoop out the marrowbone and have a posh meal, then ground up the outer shell for fertiliser as we do with most animal bones. Or, as they did during the Paris famine of 1590, which resulted in almost 50,000 deaths, with the starving populus lacking basic foods like bread – having eaten every horse, cat and dog in the city - they robbed the graves of the recently deceased, stripped their meat, sucked out the marrow, and ground down their empty bones for flour.

The bread it made was said to be “vile” and “abominable”, but this act of cannibalism was so shocking, it ended the Paris siege. But could you eat a loaf made of your much loved auntie? If so, what else would you be willing to eat?

Join me tomorrow to examine the juiciest part of the human body – the fat.

Nominated BEST BRITISH TRUE-CRIME PODCAST, 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation Channel's Top 20 True-Crime Podcasts, also seen on BBC Radio, Sky News, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week.

TRANSCRIPT OF EPISODE: Cannibalism (munching) “could you eat a whole human being? (more munching) With the help of a doctor, a scientist and a chef, I set out to see if it’s possible. Cannibalism: part four – muscle”. (burp)

For many cannibals, the human thigh or buttock is their go-to meat. But what does it taste like?

The truth is, even those who may have eaten human flesh haven’t tasted it. David Harker supposedly cooked it with pasta, a tomato ragu and cheese. The Garanhuns of Brazil seasoned the flesh of two women and a teenager with salt and cumin. And although Jeffrey Dahmer said that thighs “tasted like filet mignon” – being delicately beefy, juicy and sweet – like a scumbag, he said he ate it with ketchup.

Muscle is made up of thousands of elastic fibres bundled tightly together. Made of blocks of proteins called myofibrils, of more than 600 muscles in our bodies, cardiac muscles are in your heart, smooth muscles enable your organs to function, and skeletal muscles expand and contract to produce motion. Without them, you’d be as floppy and useless as a politician being asked to answer an honest question.

The largest muscle is the gluteus maximus or buttocks which aids your posture, the smallest connects to your eardrum to your inner ear, the strongest is the masseter providing 200lbs of force for your jaw so we can tear apart tough meat, the most efficient is the heart which pumps 2500 gallons of blood a day, and the busiest are your eye muscles which make microscopic adjustments 10000 times an hour.

Being 40% of his body mass, although Steve our average UK male looks a little wimpy, his 33.6 kilos or 74lbs of muscle is the same as carrying three car tyres, an adult Dalmatian or a queen-sized mattress.

That’s a lot of muscle. But given that most meat-eaters consume 80kgs (12st 7lbs) of red meat a year, Armin Meiwes scoffed 20 kilos (44 lbs) of his victim, and competitive eater Molly Schuyler gorged 10.2 kilos (22.5lbs) of steak in a single sitting, it is doable, but unadvisable, unless you have shares in Anusol.

But if a cannibal abides by the NHS dietary guidelines of 70g of red meat a day, if his 33.6 kilos of meat is made into 294 quarter pounders or 167.3 300g sausages (excluding his ‘littlest sausage’), the entire muscle mass of our average UK male would take 480 days to safely digest, and nutritionally, it’s good.

Archaeologist James Cole of the University of Brighton released a study on human cannibalism in the palaeolithic era (the years prior to 10,000 BC) and determined the calorific value of each body part. So, if a serial killer stripped and ate just Steve’s skeletal muscles (no organs, no fat and no tendons), providing 43,500 calories, at 2500 calories a day, that could keep a cannibal alive for almost 17 ½ days.

Muscle contains as much as 70% of the body’s nutrients, being full of proteins, fats and amino acids.

But as many killers eat human meat seasoned or drenched in sauce, can we ever know what it tastes like? The most honest account was from the survivors of crashed flight UAF 571. Starving in sub-zero temperatures at 11,800ft, having cut matchstick sized pieces of thigh off the dead and sundried it to make it palatable, they said “it doesn’t taste of much, it’s like eating rice”. But being so malnourished and so emaciated that some men lost 45 kilos (100lbs) in weight, their taste buds would be affected.

Jeffrey Dahmer, a heavy smoker, said that thigh “tasted like filet mignon”, but also “it tasted spongy, it was so tough I could hardly chew it”, so he tenderised and fried it with onions. Armin Meiwes said “it tasted like pork but a little bit more bitter, stronger”. Issei Sagawa said it was “tender and soft like raw tuna”, and the customers of Vladimir Nikolayev alias 'Vladimir the Cannibal' who ate assorted meat he’d sold at a market as kangaroo, said it tasted “odd and a little bitter”. Of course, that depends on what cut of meat they ate, as a bicep and a thigh would taste different to a hand or a foot muscle.

In 1998, TV chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall ate placenta and stated “it tastes like pork, a little more bitter ". Karl Denke, the Cannibal of Münsterberg pickled his victim’s flesh in jars and successfully sold it as 'pork'. And in war zones, the smell of burning flesh is often reported as being similar to bacon.

Which makes sense, as according to the Texas A&M University's Department of Animal Science, human muscle has a similar concentration of myoglobin to sheep and pigs than cows. In 2006, skirting the law of cannibalism, journalist Gregg Foot had a nail-sized piece of thigh biopsied, chemically analysed, and concocting a piece of meat made from that composition, his version of his own flesh was said to be more like pork and lamb with a beefy smell, stating as he ate it, “it's good, it's really beefy, a bit lamby”.

Although, it can’t have been that good, as having scoffed 20 kilos of his victim’s flesh as well as his chewy little penis, while in prison, Armin Meiwes the German cannibal has since become a vegetarian.

But, of course, this was an obvious choice, as surely every cannibal would eat the meat. But what about other bits? Join me tomorrow to discuss the crunchiest part of the human body – the bones.

Nominated BEST BRITISH TRUE-CRIME PODCAST, 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation Channel's Top 20 True-Crime Podcasts, also seen on BBC Radio, Sky News, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week.

TRANSCRIPT OF EPISODE: Cannibalism (munching) “could you eat a whole human being? (munching) with the help of a doctor, a scientist and a chef, I set out to see if it’s possible. Cannibalism: part three – body mass”. (burp)

Can a cannibal know how long it would take to eat a human, if they don’t know their size or weight? I think not, especially as everyone’s limbs, torso, organs and even their muscle-to-fat ratio is different.

In 2015, Tamara Samsonova, the Granny Ripper of Russia was convicted of murder and suspected of cannibalism. Killing her friend in a row over dirty crockery, she drugged 79-year-old Valentina Ulanova, dismembered her body, and - said to have a fondness for lungs - she gouged them out by reaching into the body cavity, pulling them out through the dismembered neck, and then, allegedly, ate them.

She was caught because (even if you don’t plan to eat it) disposing of a body is hard work, as we’re all built different. For example, lungs, at birth they weight 40g and as an adult they weigh a kilo, but as her victim’s were heavy smokers, they would have been a smaller size and tasted of tar – oh yummy.

People are wonderfully diverse; Robert Wadlow, the tallest person was 8ft 11in and weighed 439lbs, making him 3 foot taller and twice as heavy as Mike Tyson when he was heavyweight champion. The shortest was Chandra Dangi, who at 1ft 7in and 31lbs was the length of a newborn baby but the weight of three. Jon Minnoch was the heaviest at 1400lb, the same as a 1960s Mini or a 1980s Toyota Carolla with the doors cut off. And the lightest was Lucia Zárate, at 4.7lbs or four footlong Subway sandwiches.  

And yes, a cannibal is unlikely to pick a person of such extreme proportions, but Issei Sagawa (the Kobe Cannibal) did try to eat Renée Hartevelt who was taller than an average woman at 5 ft 10 in, and yet, he was only a titchy 4 ft 9 in.

So, to work out if we could eat a whole human, we’ll need a willing victim. Let’s call him Steve. “Hello, I’m Steve”. It’s okay, he’s not real. “Oh, am I not?”. No, you’re entirely fictional… for tax purposes.

According to the Office of National Statistics, Steve is the average UK male; 5ft 9in (178cms) tall, 84kgs (13 stone 3lbs) in weight, with size 9 shoes, a size 16 collar, a 43-inch chest, a 37-inch waist, a BMI of 25, and like 67% of the UK male population, he’s overweight or sporting a pot belly. Legend.

Our victim isn’t a woman, as there’s no way I’d risk tackling the tricky issues of a lady’s weight, but if you think this is sexist, imagine that Steve is someone you hate, a boss, an ex-boyfriend, someone you’d love to squeeze out of your bum, look into the bowl and say “that’s what I think of you”, or a perhaps you’d consider nibbling on a similarly sized celebrity, like Jared Leto, Johnny Depp or Tom Hardy. Oh, so now you’re drooling. (slurp)

Albert Fish claimed he ate Grace Budd’s “entire body in nine days”, which was lie as her skull and parts of her skeleton were found buried with six years of decomposition having destroyed the rest. But even an ex-Army butcher like Dennis Nilsen had difficulty disposing of an average UK male without resorting to cannibalism, as the fat, skin and several small bones had clogged up his drain and led to his arrest.

According to the Royal College of Pathologists, the average UK male consists of 33.6 kilos of muscle, 11.7 kilos of bone, 9 pints of blood, 21 square feet of skin and 3 stone 7lbs of fat, with an 3lb brain, a 310g heart, two kidneys of 266g, a 1 ½ kilo liver, a 1 kilo set of lungs, a 170g spleen, 7 ½ lbs of intestines, and if that doesn’t make you hungry, why not wash it down with 5 million hair follicles… for starters?

Maybe your thinking, “ah, you know what, eating a human being isn’t for me”? Well, in addition to the 21,000 litres of saliva it is said you swallow in your lifetime, with us each shedding 500 million skin cells a day, if by some miracle you don’t swallow anyone else’s skin cells, simply by drinking tap water, the Environmental Protection Agency estimates that – excluding urine - we each consume 109.5 grams of faecal matter a year, which isn’t our own  – that’s roughly a third of a sausage. Oooh tasty.

Even the German cannibal, Armin Meiwes, after his failed attempt to chow down on a chewy penis, struggled to eat the remains of his victim, 43-year-old Bernd-Jürgen Brandes. As across the following ten months, having stored body parts in his freezer, he claimed to have consumed up to 20 kilos (44 lbs) of the flesh - roughly two thirds of his victim’s muscle mass - having cooked parts of Brandes’ flesh with olive oil, garlic, pepper and nutmeg, and eaten him at a table with sprouts, potatoes and a bottle of South African red. And yet, most of Brandes’ bones, skin and innards were buried in the garden.

Issei Sagawa had a different issue, as he said he stopped eating Renne when she began to decompose, and he was arrested trying to dump her remains in a Paris lake. Dahmer admitted he had scattered the smashed bones in the woodlands behind the home. And although this was never proven Fritz Haarmann, the Vampire of Hanover was said to have sold it in the black market as pork or horse meat, which was boneless, diced, ground up and said to have “an odd flavour and texture”.

For a cannibal to digest an entire body is difficult, but as many serial killers have almost proven, it can be done, given the right tools, knowledge, skill, and an average sized UK male called Steve. “Hello”.

Over the next four weeks, we’ll explore each body part, how long it would take to digest, how many calories are in them, as well as which cannibal ate or binned it, and we’ll even throw in some recipe tips.

Join me tomorrow to examine the body part most cannibals go for first – the muscles.

Nominated BEST BRITISH TRUE-CRIME PODCAST, 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation Channel's Top 20 True-Crime Podcasts, also seen on BBC Radio, Sky News, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week.

TRANSCRIPT OF EPISODE: Cannibalism (munching) “could you eat a whole human being? (more munching) with the help of a doctor, a scientist and a chef, I set out to see if it’s possible. Cannibalism: part two – disposal”. (burp)

So many serial killers have tried and failed to dispose of a body.

In 1949, John George Haigh disposed of his sixth victim in a 40-gallon vat of sulphuric acid. With her body boiling at 337 degrees Celsius, within 48 hours he had dissolved almost all of Olive Durand-Deacon, except for a foot, 18 small bones, three gallstones and 28 pounds (or two stone) of body fat.

He failed, as it takes an acid stronger than sulphuric to dissolve a body. If he were to try it today in the UK, he’d be stumped as it’s illegal to buy anything stronger than a 15% solution without an EPP licence.

And yet, the human body has its own vat of acid capable of disposing of human remains.

The stomach is a work of biological wonder. At 12 inches long, 6 inches wide, 160 grams in weight and encased in just a 5mm wall of muscle and mucosa, it secretes 1 ½ litres of gastric juice a day; made of Lipase and Pepsin, two enzymes which break down fats and proteins, and a lethal mix of hydrochloric acid, potassium chloride and sodium chloride. It’s so powerful, stomach acid can dissolve meat, bone, fat and sinew, it can destroy all but three types of bacteria, and it can permanently erase tattoos, birth marks and scars. Although, oddly, it can’t digest the skin of peas – which is why when you vomit, they come out whole.

With a PH level of 1.5, it can dissolve most metals like zinc, magnesium and copper (I know this as I once swallowed 48p), it can digest a bag of iron nails, and some crazy loons have tested it by eating 5000 light bulbs, 18 bicycles, and a Cessna airplane made of 2 ½ tonnes of metal, wood and rubber. Basically, your stomach is so powerful, if you wanted to, you could eat Robocop and poop him out.

Albert Fish claimed he ate Grace Budd’s whole body in nine days, and although he was prone to lying to torment his victim’s families, is that possible? If you can eat a plane, surely you can eat a human?

In 1897, Adolph Luetgert, The Sausage King of Chicago tried to dispose of his wife Louisa in a makeshift stomach by dissolving her body in a vat of boiling lye and burned her fizzing remains in an oven. But again, it failed, as several bones remained, as well as a rib, part of her skull, and a quantity of body fat.

The strength of the stomach isn’t down to just acids and enzymes, but heat, movement and digestion.

Evolved over 300,000 years, the stomach of modern Homo Sapiens has adapted to our changing diets as nomads, grazers and apex predators. The stomach may look like a single bag, but it has five sections; the Cardia which stops food going back up the oesophagus, the Fundus which collects the digestive gases, the Corpus where food is mixed with gastric acid, the Antrum which holds the partially digested food before sending it to the small intestine, and the Pylorus which controls the stomach’s evacuation.

But digestion isn’t all about the stomach. It begins as you masticate the food in your mouth, making it easier to swallow. In the oesophagus, this muscular tube acts like a giant wave, pulling the food down with muscles so powerful you can swallow it standing on your head (which is why astronauts are still able to eat in zero gravity). Like a blender, the stomach churns the food with a mix of enzymes and acids at the right temperature and pH level, before its nutrients are absorbed in 28 feet of intestines.

Able to digest 1 to 1 ½ kilos of food at a time, food takes between 10 and 72 hours to pass from mouth to anus, with vegetables passing in 4 to 6 hours, red meat after a day, and fat requiring the full transit.

It’s a process Santiago Meza Lopez, the ‘Pozole Maker’ mimicked. Working for a Tijuana drug cartel, he used the stomach’s anatomy to work out how to dissolve a whole human being, and by filling a drum with 200 litres of water, adding two sacks of lye, heating it until it boiled, adding the bodies and stirring the bubbling and churning stew over eight hours, more than 300 bodies vanished forever. And like stomach, as what remained was a waste product, he burned the remaining evidence with gasoline.

So, if our stomach is so dangerous that it can dissolve a human being, why doesn’t it kill us?

Simple, each day we produce 2 pints of saliva to protect our teeth from acid, 1.5 litres of mucus to line the digestive system, and although the stomach is covered in a thick layer of mucusa, every three to four days our stomach lining is completely replaced. It’s the youngest and freshest part of our bodies.

So, given what we know about the stomach, could we digest a human? With the help of a doctor, a scientist and a chef (all unnamed for obvious reasons), we set out to find a suitable victim, someone of the right height, weight and body mass, to get the calculations right, and to work out, if you tried to eat a whole human, what parts could you eat, what bits are toxic, and how long would it take?

Join me tomorrow as I introduce you to our voluntary victim… Steve. (screams)

Nominated BEST BRITISH TRUE-CRIME PODCAST, 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation Channel's Top 20 True-Crime Podcasts, also seen on BBC Radio, Sky News, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week.

TRANSCRIPT OF EPISODE: Cannibalism (munching) “could you eat a whole human being? (more munching) with the help of a doctor, a scientist and a chef, I set out to see if it’s possible. Cannibalism: part one – the myths”. (burp)

Serial killers who claim to be cannibals are often liars, and I can prove it.

Cannibalism dates back to the palaeolithic era, when our ancestors ate their dead, and although rare, it still exists today; with the Asmat tribe of New Guinea who eat human brains for its nutrients, and the Aghori tribe of India who make sacrifices to Shiva, the Hindu God of destruction, and eat any body part that their belief sees as polluted, like a corpse’s flesh, its internal organs and even the excrement.

In modern times, extreme circumstances have forced humans to resort to cannibalism for survival. Like in 1933, when 6700 prisoners were sent to Nazino Island, a brutal gulag in the frozen Siberian tundra. Starving, within 13 weeks, 4000 were dead, with many having had their meat stripped from their bones. And more infamously, the survivors of UAF Flight 571 which crashed in the Andes and were forced to eat not only the skin, muscle and fat of the dead, but also the hearts, lungs and brains.

Cannibalism is so rare that most countries have no law against it, so if caught, you’re more likely to be convicted of murder, manslaughter, assisted suicide, assault, desecrating a grave or denying a burial.

It’s fascinating that we find cannibalism so shocking, when many of us will happily eat every part of a captive farmyard animal, which some cultures regard as filthy. As the saying goes, “the only part of a pig you can’t eat is the squeal”, and yet, we eat their intestines, eyes, skin and bladders with hot dogs made of fat, feet, blood and by-products like the vagina. Many sausages are made of its waste system like the intestines and digestive tracts, and it was recently discovered that most imitation calamari isn’t made of a derivative of squid, but pork bung, also known as pig’s rectum. Oh, how we love to eat anus. And yet, we wouldn’t eat a clean and healthy human who has lived a good life and bathed daily?

So, what about those murderers who are said to be cannibals? How many of them really were?

Robert Maudsley dubbed Hannibal the Cannibal by the tabloids was said to have dug a spoon into the brain of his victim and ate it, only this was proven untrue by a post-mortem. But all it takes is a fact to be twisted, and if enough people repeat it, it becomes truth. The same can be said of Anthony Morely who lured Damian Oldfield to his Leeds flat, stabbed him, cut off a slice of his thigh and cooked it. He was called a ‘cannibal’, even though a partially chewed piece of flesh was found in a bin bag. And as for Peter Bryan who ate a piece of Brian Cherry’s brain fried in butter, although that was proven, with him being a paranoid schizophrenic, can we really call him a cannibal, as his moral barometer was off?

Some so-called cannibals do it for attention, like David Harker who claimed he ate part of his victim’s thigh with pasta and cheese, but given that his pathetic little ambition was to be “Britain’s most notorious serial killer”, can we really trust anything he said? Some do it out of curiosity, like Armin Meiwes, who found a volunteer to sacrifice and together they tried to eat his severed penis, but having found it too chewy, they fed it to a dog. And there are others whose fridges contain potential evidence of cannibalism, like Özgür Dengiz the so-called Cannibal of Ankara, but having confessed that he only ate a few pieces of flesh, that’s like calling yourself a strict vegetarian because you once ate a tomato.

There are very few proven cannibals, as although some are insane and some are sadists, others do it to elevate their reputation, to establish a place in infamy, or to argue for an insanity plea especially in a country where the death sentence exists. Think about it. Cannibalism is almost impossible to prove as – given the speed and the efficiency of the human digestive system, although dismemberment can be proven - any evidence of consuming a dead body is destroyed by stomach acids, so all we have to go on is the killer’s word.

Albert Fish claimed he had dismembered 10-year-old Grace Budd, and in a cruel letter to her parents, he bragged “how sweet and tender her little ass was roasted in the oven. It took me 9 days to eat her entire body”. But with her remains not found for six years, her decomposition made it hard to prove.

There have been a few documented cases of criminal cannibalism.

Issei Sagawa the Kobe Cannibal, who mutilated, cannibalized and performed necrophilia on the corpse of Renée Hartevelt for sexual pleasure was declared sane. He ate her most of her breasts, face, buttocks, feet, thighs and neck, both raw or cooked, and documented his crimes with photographs.

As did Dmitry & Natalia Malyshev, the Krasnodar cannibals, chronic alcoholics who killed, ate and sold off body parts as food, filmed the process and wrote it up as recipes, with a heart fried in onions and an oven-cooked human head swathed in mandarins, with olives in the eyes and a lemon on the nose.

And with a wealth of evidence, Jeffrey Dahmer’s apartment contained the remnants of 11 bodies, with some body parts kept as souvenirs (like severed hands, two preserved penises, a mummified scalp, and seven painted skulls), with three torsos dissolving in 57-gallon drums of hydrochloric acid, and several plastic-wrapped organs in his fridge ready for consuming. Dahmer later confessed to eating “the hearts, liver, biceps and thighs” having tenderised the meat and flavoured it with condiments.

How much of this is true can never be known, as any evidence of cannibalism had gone, and we have no proof whether they ate it all, nibbled it a bit, kept it down, disposed of it, or again, fed it to a dog.

And yet, they only ever eat the body parts that any meat-eater would consider; the heart, the liver, the kidneys, and the muscle, or as we would call it, the meat. But what about everything else? The offal, the eyes, the hair, the blood, the spine, the bones, the genitals, the face, and even the anus.

We (often unwittingly) eat it when it belongs to a dismembered pig, so why not a human?

Every day for a month, I’ll release an episode exploring cannibalism and the human body, asking which parts can be eaten, how long they take to digest, what’s its taste and texture, which bits are too toxic, and how much of what a so-called cannibal claims to have eaten is the truth, a lie, or an exaggeration.

If you tried to eat a whole human being, what parts could you eat, and how long would it take?

Join me tomorrow for the best way to dispose of a human body – the stomach.

SOURCES: (some, not all)

• https://www.peta.org/blog/foods-made-animal-rectums/
  
• https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2008/oct/20/ukcrime1
• https://hundredfamilies.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/PETER_BRYAN_LON_02.04_1.pdf
• https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/how-mens-bodies-have-changed-over-time-what-they-used-to-look-like-average-a7657881.html
• https://www.nature.com/articles/srep44707
• https://www.sciencefocus.com/the-human-body/how-long-does-meat-sit-in-your-gut
• https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/04/counting-calories-of-going-cannibal-on-a-paleo-diet-human-flesh-is-just-meh/
• https://www.theguardian.com/science/the-lay-scientist/2010/sep/05/human-meat-taste-cannibal
• https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/human-flesh-looks-beef-taste-more-elusive-180949562/
• https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/bbc-presenter-greg-foot-films-himself-eating-his-own-leg_uk_56f10de9e4b0fbd4fe086d9e
• https://youtu.be/uHvg8AR81-8
• https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/370975.Patrick_Kennedy
• https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/what-people-eat-during-siege
• https://www.nature.com/articles/srep44707
• https://eatbeautiful.net/organ-update-how-to-eat-brains-eyeballs-and-lungs/
• https://www.bonappetit.com/story/hair-in-food
• https://www.onegreenplanet.org/vegan-food/animal-parts-in-food/
• https://www.oxygen.com/crime-time/Blake-Leibel-graphic-novelist-convicted-scalping-killing-girlfriend-birth
• https://www.sciencefocus.com/the-human-body/how-many-calories-are-in-blood
• https://www.livescience.com/15899-drinking-blood-safe.html
• https://boroughmarket.org.uk/market-blog/the-offal-project-the-unmentionables/
• https://www.tastingtable.com/804996/every-cut-of-pork-ranked-worst-to-best/
• https://time.com/archive/6827774/uganda-eating-the-evidence/
• http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/15/zombie-apocalypse-wine-pairings-human-flesh_n_1585591.html
• https://www.lybrate.com/topic/did-you-know-these-5-body-parts-contains-the-maximum-amount-of-bacteria/299009105c592f19974192ba35b97f8e
• https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5753159/
• https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/06/150608081753.htm
• https://globalnews.ca/news/3210193/cancer-gene-still-alive-in-body-after-death-could-be-transplanted-through-organ-donation-study/
• https://www.thebody.com/article/long-hiv-virus-survive-dead-human-body
•  https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-27801252https://www.webmd.com/diet/health-benefits-organ-meat
• https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/nov/18/how-to-cook-kidneys-recipe-delia-smith-stephen-bush-the-delia-project
• https://boroughmarket.org.uk/market-blog/the-offal-project-the-liver/
• https://eatbeautiful.net/organ-update-how-to-eat-brains-eyeballs-and-lungs/https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2011/aug/12/an-a-to-z-of-offal
• https://www.tastingtable.com/932591/how-to-tell-if-your-meat-is-spoiled/
• https://www.seriouseats.com/how-to-prepare-bung-intestines-offal
• https://www.theguardian.com/food/focus/story/0,,951917,00.htmlhttps://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2010/05/spleen-sandwiches-an-italian-tradition/39761/
• https://www.vpfporkvalley.com/en/product/pork-caul-fat/
• https://www.science.org/content/article/scienceshot-how-strong-your-stomach
• https://www.livescience.com/52046-stomach-facts-functions-diseases.html
• https://www.seriouseats.com/the-nasty-bits-tacos-de-buche-pork-stomach-recipe
• https://eatbeautiful.net/organ-update-how-to-eat-brains-eyeballs-and-lungs/
• https://yourenotfromaroundhere.com/unusual-weird-foods-around-world/
• https://cosmosmagazine.com/people/ig-nobel-2022-nose-hairs-toilet-rocks/
• https://www.tastingtable.com/804996/every-cut-of-pork-ranked-worst-to-best/
• https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/licensing-for-home-users-of-explosives-precursors/licensing-for-home-users-of-poisons-and-explosive-precursors
• https://www.wired.com/2017/03/bath-turns-dead-bodies-coffee-colored-water/
• https://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/penises-you-can-eat
• http://www.thepizzle.net/eat-a-bag-of-dicks-the-all-dick-meal/
• https://www.hammonds-uk.com/blogs/the-dirty-truth-uk-s-washing-habits-revealed/
• https://hotwatertaps.com/revealed-britains-gross-kitchen-habits/
• http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4631192.stm

Nominated BEST BRITISH TRUE-CRIME PODCAST, 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation Channel's Top 20 True-Crime Podcasts, also seen on BBC Radio, Sky News, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week.

Welcome to the Murder Mile UK True-Crime Podcast and audio guided walk of London's most infamous and often forgotten murder cases, all set within and beyond the West End.

• A weekly true-crime podcast - EVERY THURSDAY
• 300+ infamous, untold or often forgotten true murders
• Researched from original and first-hand sources
• Authentic sounds recorded from the location itself
  

To accompany your audio guided walk, what follows is a series of photos, videos and maps, so that no matter where you are listening to this podcast, you'll feel like you're actually there.

SOURCES: This case was researched using some of the sources below.

• The Daily Telegraph Wed, 30 May 1973
  
• Evening Standard Wed, 22 Mar 1972
  
• Evening Standard Thu, 23 Mar 1972
• Manchester Evening News Wed, 22 Mar 1972
• Daily Mirror Thu, 23 Mar 1972
• Grimsby Evening Telegraph Wed, 22 Mar 1972
• The Guardian Tue, 16 Mar 1976
• The Guardian Journal Wed, 05 Apr 1972
• Daily Mirror Wed, 22 Mar 1972
• Manchester Evening News Wed, 22 Mar 1972
• Hull Daily Mail Wed, 22 Mar 1972
• Grimsby Evening Telegraph Wed, 22 Mar 1972
• The Surrey Advertiser, County Times Fri, 24 Mar 1972
• Liverpool Daily Post (Merseyside ed.) Wed, 22 Mar 1972
• The Daily Telegraph Wed, 22 Mar 1972
• Evening Post Wed, 22 Mar 1972
• Evening Standard Fri, 07 Apr 1972
• Evening Post Wed, 22 Mar 1972
• Evening Sentinel Wed, 22 Mar 1972
• Daily Post (Merseyside ed.) Wed, 05 Apr 1972
• Burton Mail Wed, 22 Mar 1972
• The Daily Telegraph Mon, 28 May 1973
• The Guardian Sat, 12 Mar 1977
• The Journal Sat, 12 Mar 1977
• The Independent - Sunday 03 August 2003

MUSIC:

• Man in a Bag by Cult With No Name (main theme)
• 
  

UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE:

Welcome to Murder Mile.

Today, I’m standing on Beak Street in Soho, W1; five doors east of the Soho Strangler’s second victim, three doors west of William Stoltzer’s penile dismemberment, opposite the last sighting of Ginger Rae in the Sun & 13 Cantons pub and the death of the one-legged deadbeat - coming soon to Murder Mile.

Just shy of Carnaby Street sits 61-63 Beak Street, a five-storey business premises which is now sitting dormant. In the 100 years this building has stood, it’s been a bar, a restaurant, a nightclub, a gallery, a newsagents, a fishmongers, a brothel, a film company, a porn distributors, and even a coffin makers.

No business lasts long here, it’s almost as if some old meat has been left behind the radiator to fester, the place is infested with rodents, or the spectre of crime and corruption hangs over it like a foul stink.

Back in 1972, this was the home of Glamour International, an exclusive West End escort agency which supplied a slew of beautiful girls for wealthy businessmen to take out to dinner… and nothing else. According to its unnamed owners, it wasn’t a brothel, it wasn’t a front, the women weren’t prostitutes, and the bosses weren’t corrupt. It was just a legitimate business unfairly targeted by hired assassins.

On Tuesday 21st of March 1972, at 7:15pm, two businessmen (Joe Wilkins and Wally Birch) were shot in the reception of Glamour International. But was that a warning, mistaken identity, or a failed hit?

My name is Michael, I am your tour guide, and this is Murder Mile.

Episode 262: Guns, Girls and Glamour.

Joe’s wife, Pearl, would state “Joe has done nothing wrong in his life. They got him because he was successful. I’m angry at everyone for doing this to Joe. The rumours about him and what he does are all wrong. People seem to think running night clubs means crime. Well, they are completely wrong“.

Joe was said to be ‘the King of Soho’. Born in 1936 in Finsbury Park, North London, Joseph Herbert John Wilkins was a softly spoken, sharply dressed, 6-foot 3-inch charmer who mirrored a scruffier 1960s Michael Caine, and – as befitting a self-made businessman – he wore shiny winkle pickers, pricey camel coats and sharp suits to compliment his black-rimmed glasses and his slightly receding hairline.

Said to be ‘a factory owner’ and ‘a fruit machine vendor’, a High Court battle in 1963 for the custody of his daughter Terry was one of the few times we got a hint of this 27-year-old entrepreneur’s power and assets, when they were read out in court; a Jaguar, a flat in Lancaster Gate and a villa in Majorca.

Across the 1960s, rivals saw this West End wunderkind as “an aspiring self-made takeover king” who had interests in several fashionable nightclubs like Eden Roc and the 800 Club in Leicester Square, and Winston’s in Mayfair, which were frequented by movie stars, rock gods and gangsters like the Krays.

Living the high life and quaffing chilled champagne, it was unsurprising when Joe got engaged to Pearl Reed, a recently divorced dancer at the Windmill and a busty blonde bikini model, who his ilk would have bragged had “a cracking set of Bristols”, and although the money flowed, with Pearl stating "it poured in like confetti and we spent it the same way", she would also admit “I got some real batterings, but I couldn't get away”, as Joe was a debonair as he was deadly, and as fiery as he was ferocious.

The mid-1960s was dangerous time as Joe warred with Kray twins. “I don't know why he fell out with them”, Pearl said, “it was the only time I saw him seriously worried… he said to me, 'I don't want you to worry, but when you get home someone will be waiting'. I let myself in and there was a man sitting with a rifle on his lap. I just tried to ignore things". And although the Krays were sentenced to life in 1969, they still semi-controlled their empires from Brixton prison and Broadmoor psychiatric hospital.

In November 1970, Joe was arrested by Scotland Yard’s major crime squad. Charged with conspiracy to rob patrons of the 800 Club, fabricating evidence, intimidating witnesses and fraudulently obtaining a justice’s licence. Joe’s empire had begun to unravel. Being released on a £25k bail pending further investigation and a criminal trial, he was disqualified from running a business, and outside of the court, Pearl collapsed in tears shouting “this is a travesty of British justice. I can’t stand it anymore”.

But was this turf war the spark which led to his shooting?

In January 1972, Glamour International opened at 61-63 Beak Street in Soho. Also known as Park Lane Escorts, a front-page advert in a London entertainment guide stated they had “100 beautiful girls at your service” for £10 for the night, of which the man paid for her meal, drinks and any entertainment. And as prostitution was illegal, the owners insisted that sex was frowned upon as this wasn’t a brothel.

Unlike in a low-rent clip-joint, this escort agency accepted American Express, Eurocard and Diners Club payments in an era when only 6% of men had a credit card. Their clients weren’t ordinary schmucks

off the street, these were high rollers like bankers, Sheikhs, Lords, MPs and film stars, they attracted the wealthy, they liked discretion, and with a penchant for sexy ladies, they feared being blackmailed.

It was uncertain who the owner was. Being banned as a company director, Joe denied it was him yet he was there almost daily, some said his business partner Wally Birch ran it but he said he didn’t, and although Peter Utal, an ex-PR agent was said to be a partner, the paperwork was suspiciously vague.

On Tuesday 21st March 1972, at about 7pm, Joe & Wally arrived at the escort agency they didn’t own to either “discuss business” or (according to Pearl) “use the premises for our wedding party”. Sat in the ground floor reception with Peter, at roughly 7:15pm, two, three or four masked men burst in.

Details are oddly sketchy, but Peter said “I don’t know who they were. They wore dark glasses, hats pulled over their faces and collars turned up. It was like something out of a Hollywood gangster movie” as a tall man and a shorter man strolled in and opened fired with .22 calibre pistols, firing three shots, two which hit Joe in the shoulder and the back, and hitting Wally in left arm and chest in a single shot.

Conversely, Pearl had just pulled up outside “wearing a fabulous silver gown and jewels worth a king's ransom”. She would state “I heard three shots ring out. Four men strolled out, stuffing guns in their pockets”, as they fled in a green Rover registration plate POH 801G, which strangely was never found.

Dashing inside, “I ran in to find Joe on the floor with bullet wounds in his chest and shoulder. I said to him 'You're all right. It's only a shoulder wound'. It must have looked like something out of a horror film, me in a long evening gown, dragging a man with gunshot wounds and leaving a trail of blood".

There were ten witnesses to the shooting, but none were ever found. Still conscious, Joe was able to drive them both to St George’s hospital in his white Rolls Royce. And although they didn’t know who shot them or why, Peter would later state “It’s nothing to do with protection or other escort agencies”.

None of them called the Police on this seemingly random case of ‘possible’ mistaken identity.
(Echo) “People seem to think running night clubs means crime. Well, they are completely wrong”.

Detective Chief Superintendent Tony Peel of West End CID headed up the investigation.

It should have been an open and shut case, when in truth, it was only a shut case. Unable to connect Joe, Wally or Peter to Glamour International, robbery or extortion couldn’t be proved. Suffering minor wounds, the police believed “the manner of the shooting indicates an attempt to terrorise rather than kill them”, which was odd as their vital organs were only narrowly missed. And although the police had no suspects and no witnesses, the one piece of evidence they took was a large file of photographs.

But was this pornography, or candid shots of their wealthy clients in comprising positions with girls?

With the case on the verge of collapse, a heavily whitewashed article featured in the Evening Standard which read; “the 38-year-old farmer spoke of his pretty blonde fiancé, who he hopes to marry next week. Joseph said, ‘I’m seeing the doctor and if he says I’m fit enough, then everything will go ahead. I’ll probably need eight mates to hold me up’”. It spoke of his love of horse-breeding, his 50-acre farm in Dorking, but conveniently swerved away from his impending trial and his status as the ‘king of Soho’.

Joe was quoted as saying “I have no intention of trying to find my attackers. I want to let the matter rest in the hands of the police and forget all about it. There is nothing I can do anyway”, and even his partner Wally Birch, still smarting from his wounds said “I’m mystified about the whole thing”.

(Echo): “Joe has done nothing wrong in his life. They got him because he was successful“.

With this double attempted murder put to bed, and the police no longer digging into their shady pasts and any dodgy dealings with escort agencies, within a week, Glamour International was shut down.

But just as quickly, four new ones popped up…

…none of which Joe was said to own.

According to the Daily Telegraph, “Peter Utal said he sold Glamour International to Pearl Wilkins, but last night she denied this”. Pearl said ‘this is quite untrue. Peter sold the premises lease to Wally’”, which Wally denied, “’but there was no escort business to buy because Peter took all the girls and he destroyed the records of the clients before he left’”, which any honest businessman would do.

From his flat in Berkley Mews, Peter (Joe’s business partner) set up two new agencies, Mayfair Escorts and Berkley Escorts, which Directory Inquiries had no record of, and adverts in Where To Go magazine stated “Berkley Escorts speak your language, beautifully… discretion is our moto”, as his agency “hired foreign girls as British clients like something different”. Only, when quizzed about how he ships them in, he’d claim “we don’t co-operate with any other agencies abroad, or in this country. I don’t see the point of sending girls to London from Germany for escort work, because it makes no sense financially”.

(Echo): “The rumours about Joe and what he does are all wrong”.

Nothing made any sense about this case, it had more dead ends than deceased rat’s hairdo and more liars than 50 politicians playing Guess Who. Who tried to kill Joe & Wally will never be solved…

…but what follows could be the possible reasons why? (Cliffhanger)

Later that year, Joe married Pearl and their reception featured a who’s who of clubland faces, including Detective Chief Inspector Joseph Blakeney; a disgraced CID officer who’d visited Joe at his farm, his clubs and “at his request, in prison”. He admitted his friendship with Joe and claimed “Wilkins helped Police in investigations which could have led to the biggest seizure of cocaine in Britain”, but didn’t.

On the 1st of March 1973, at the Old Bailey, Judge Cussen QC heard the case against Joe Wilkins, his solicitor Michael Ostwind, and another disgraced officer Detective Sergeant Ronald Dalziel. Charged with conspiracy to rob patrons of the 800 Club and plotting to influence witnesses in a criminal trial, all three were acquitted as the judge saw “insufficient evidence to support these allegations”. Which – of course – Pearl hailed as a great victory for them and the infallible British justice system.

In September 1972, six months after the shooting, 32-year-old Pearl, a former dancer and model with no business experience set up two new agencies - Eve International and La Femme in Mayfair, which also went by the names of International Glamour Services and Eve for Glamour Escorts, but were not said to be linked to Glamour International, as with Joe banned as a director, he owned none of them.

As owner, Pearl spoke of the agency’s legitimacy, saying “most of the girls have day jobs, receptionists, secretaries, one girl is reading for The Bar. The client pays £12.50 plus VAT, we pay the girl £4, and the girls like to do the work because they meet nice people, and they get a free dinner from the client”.

As for sex, Pearl said “I run my business 100% straight. My girls are not allowed to entertain in flats or hotel rooms, and if we find out that any have been doing this, we get rid of them immediately. We ask the girls if they have any convictions for prostitution or likewise, and we don’t take them if they do”.

For a year, both agencies raked in the cash, until May 1973, when West German businessman Hans Ulrich-Alhoff was tried in a Munich court accused of living off the immoral earnings of prostitution. At his trial, he admitted “I co-operated with a London based escort agency… Glamour International”, and in an Anglo German agreement “20 to 30 German girls were regularly flown to London and visa-versa”.

When asked, Pearl said “I am astonished and very annoyed by these reports… they are completely untrue. I started my agency last September and it has no connection with any other escort agencies”. In the trial, when Peter Utal was named, he claimed “I don’t know anything about any tie-up between Glamour International, and any Germans. This must have happened after I sold the business last year”.

Only the trial wasn’t just about sex, it was also about money and blackmail.

The Hamburg newspaper Bila am Sonntag reported “Pearl dismissed two German girls last February after complaints from clients”. Pearl said “these two girls”, named Julia and Heide, “may have been planted by a rival agency to blackmail a client… they were both terribly glamourous”. The paper also claimed “Pearl took over an agency named International Glamour Services which had employed a Mrs Nora Levy, one of the call girls involved in a scandal”, although Pearl would deny knowing a Mrs Levy.

Neither Pearl nor Joe (as on paper the agencies weren’t his) gave evidence at the Munich trial, but in an odd similarity to the shooting at Glamour International, police removed a large file of photographs.

Hans Ulrich-Alhoff, who they all denied knowing, was accused of taking pornographic photographs of children, as well as “hostesses in compromising positions with clients” – perhaps for blackmail?

By the early 1970s, British politics was still rocking from the Profumo Affair, in which, John Profumo, the Secretary of State for War was involved in a sex scandal with 19-year-old model, Christine Keeler.

On 9th of May 1973, at around the time of Munich trial, Lord Lambton, the former 6th Earl of Durham and current Defence under Secretary for the RAF in Edward Heath’s government agreed to meet an escort girl for sex in her second floor flat at Marlborough Mansions, in St John’s Wood, W9. Her name…

…was Nora Levy. Born in poverty and convent-educated, Hanora Mary Russell of Limerick learned to make a living beyond anything she could have dreamed with her dark good looks, and by her 20s, she drove a Mercedes, holidayed in the Seychelles and earned the equivalent of £24k a week, from clients including a Greek shipping magnate, the Shah of Iran, a former Lord Mayor of London, oil tycoon Jean Paul Getty (who she said “asked me to wear a white robe and lay in an open coffin for an hour”) and a whole host of rich and powerful men, who many worried could be blackmailed by foreign agents.

That night, as arranged through an escort agency, Lord Lambton had a kinky sex session with Nora and a second call girl called Kim Pinder, while they all smoked marijuana. It was a little dalliance he partook of to quell his stresses, only he had no idea that perched behind a peephole was a photographer taking photos, 8mm film, as well as a microphone hidden in a teddy bear’s nose which recorded the audio.

The Sunday People and News of the World denied supplying photographic equipment, and with it felt that the whole affair was a national security risk, two weeks later, Lord Lambton resigned, and having had her assets confiscated and receiving death threats, Nora fled to Canada with her husband Colin…

… unaware that it was him who had taken the photos, ruined her life and sold them to the tabloids. She died of pancreatic cancer in 2007 in a Toronto hospice. But was this planned by the escort agency?

(Echo): “People seem to think running night clubs means crime. Well, they are completely wrong“.

But even though Joe kept his name off the books, he couldn’t keep his face out of the newspapers.

On the 26th of September 1974, on a flight between Heathrow and Frankfurt airport, four men named Michael O’Neill, Norman Smith, the self-appointed ‘king of Soho’ Joe Wilkins and his business partner Wally Birch hoodwinked an international currency smuggler called Ernest Wolfgang Brauch.

The plan was to sneak £44000 passed security, bribe officials and stash it in a suitcase, but when Ernest arrived in Frankfurt, another switch had been made and the case was empty, except for some old dirty clothes. When Ernest called to complain, Joe said “well, I’ve done my part. Something must have gone wrong at your end”, denying he had swindled him, only barely a few weeks later, “the unnamed wife of one of the accused to open two bank accounts at Selfridge’s with £6000 in used bank notes”.

On the 15th of May 1976, at the Old Bailey, as the culmination of several trials against Joe Wilkins, Detective Chief Superintendent East opposed the application for his bail, saying “there is evidence that Wilkins was the prime mover in the control of high-class prostitutes” from two escort agencies that he owned, which were named Eve International of Brook Street and La Femme of James Street.

When questioned in court, he denied this, and Pearl (who was said to be the owner) claimed “I acted more as a receptionist, I hadn’t worked for an agency before and I hadn’t been a hostess or an escort myself”. At the trial, her counsel, Jean Southwell QC asked “it has been suggested that you, with others in the dock, knew it was a front for prostitution?”, at which Pearl replied “no, that is not true”.

Convicted on 30th of March 1976 of “living off prostitution and running the agencies while bankrupt”, having spent two years on remand awaiting trial, a month later, Joe Wilkins was released from prison.

A year later, appealing his sentence for “operating a vice racket through several West End agencies”, his conviction was overturned, as a police report “which linked him with gangsters and organised crime, seedy clubland deals and the corruption of women” (some of whom hadn’t been prostitutes before they became escorts for his businesses) had prejudiced the jury’s opinion. Joe Wilkins wasn’t innocent, and he wasn’t acquitted, but he was released on a minor technicality of the law.

By the mid-80s, as a stereotypical crook, Joe Wilkins fled to the Costa-del-Sol, alias the Costa-del-Crime owing to the mass of ex-pats with dubious underworld connections. In 1985, arrested in connection with a £500,000 fraud, 49-year-old Joseph Herbert John Wilkins was formerly identified by two scars to his shoulder and back, having been shot in 1972 at the Soho offices of Glamour International. (End)

“Joe has done nothing wrong in his life. They got him because he was successful. I’m angry ay everyone for doing this to Joe. The rumours about him and what he does are all wrong. People seem to think running night clubs means crime. Well, they are completely wrong“. But having divorced him, Pearl’s opinion of her ex-husband entirely changed. She went on to live a normal life and later remarried…

…unlike Joe. Ever the criminal, in August 1987, he was jailed for 10 years having been the ringleader in a plot to smuggle £1.5million worth of Moroccan hashish in via a fishing boat called Danny Boy. In 1992, having been bafflingly placed in the category C low-security prison HMP Highpoint, he escaped, and fled back to Spain. And although wanted, one year later, Scotland Yard used him to entrap drug and money smugglers, and again in 2004 in a £25million sting operation which the judge branded as "a state-created crime". But with the evidence described as "massively illegal", the case collapsed.

As of today, if he’s still alive, Joe Wilkins would be 88 years old.

No-one was arrested for his attempted murder at Glamour International in 1972. But as a criminal who had pissed a lot of people off – whether club owners, gangsters, smugglers, or high-profile clients he had blackmailed – although it was believed to be part of a turf war, the case remains unsolved.

As a controversial figure, some elements in the criminal underworld “suspect him of being an MI6 and police informant”, which has some merit, and others attribute him to having “grassed up the M25 road-rage killer, Kenneth Noye” and had a role in the 1989 shooting of three IRA members in Gibraltar.

In 2000, questions were asked in Parliament about why he hadn’t been extradited from Spain, but each time, “the Home Office has consistently refused to comment”. Which begs the question, who are his friends, who are his enemies, what does he know, and what secrets will be take to his grave?

The Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast has been researched using the original declassified police investigation files, court records, press reports and as many authentic sources as possible, which are freely available in the public domain, including eye-witness testimony, confessions, autopsy reports, first-hand accounts and independent investigation, where possible. But these documents are only as accurate as those recounting them and recording them, and are always incomplete or full of opinion rather than fact, therefore mistakes and misrepresentations can be made. As stated at the beginning of each episode (and as is clear by the way it is presented) Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast is a 'dramatisation' of the events and not a documentary, therefore a certain amount of dramatic licence, selective characterisation and story-telling (within logical reason and based on extensive research) has been taken to create a fuller picture. It is not a full and complete representation of the case, the people or the investigation, and therefore should not be taken as such. It is also often (for the sake of clarity, speed and the drama) presented from a single person's perspective, usually (but not exclusively) the victim's, and therefore it will contain a certain level of bias and opinion to get across this single perspective, which may not be the overall opinion of those involved or associated. Murder Mile is just one possible retelling of each case. Murder Mile does not set out to cause any harm or distress to those involved, and those who listen to the podcast or read the transcripts provided should be aware that by accessing anything created by Murder Mile (or any source related to any each) that they may discover some details about a person, an incident or the police investigation itself, that they were unaware of.

Nominated BEST BRITISH TRUE-CRIME PODCAST, 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation Channel's Top 20 True-Crime Podcasts, also seen on BBC Radio, Sky News, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week.

Welcome to the Murder Mile UK True-Crime Podcast and audio guided walk of London's most infamous and often forgotten murder cases, all set within and beyond the West End.

SOURCES: This case was researched using some of the sources below.

• https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C1257977
  
• https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C1353087
• HO 144/21587, HO 144/21586, DPP 2/900, MEPO 3/2194.
• The Guardian – 26 Feb 1942,
• Evening Standard – 18 Nov 1941
• The Guardian - 21 Oct 1941
• Shields Daily News - Monday 23 February 1942
  
• Belfast Telegraph - Monday 20 October 1941
• West London Observer - Friday 24 October 1941
• Dundee Evening Telegraph - Monday 20 October 1941
• West London Observer - Friday 27 February 1942
• Shields Daily News - Tuesday 04 November 1941
• Lancashire Evening Post - Monday 20 October 1941
• Dundee Evening Telegraph - Tuesday 04 November 1941
• Evening Standard – 28th October 1941
• Lincolnshire Echo - Saturday 18 October 1941
• Evening Standard – 18th October 1941
• The Birmingham Mail – 18th October 1941
• Evening Telegraph Mon, 20 Oct 1941
• Evening Despatch Mon, 20 Oct 1941
• The Kensington News and West London Times Fri, 20 Mar 1942
• Scunthorpe Evening Telegraph Mon, 20 Oct 1941
• Grimsby Evening Telegraph Mon, 20 Oct 1941
• Liverpool Echo Mon, 20 Oct 1941
• Evening Express Mon, 20 Oct 1941
• The Kensington News and West London Times Fri, 24 Oct 1941
• The Kensington News and West London Times Fri, 14 Nov 1941
• Liverpool Echo Tue, 04 Nov 1941
• Liverpool Echo Thu, 29 Jan 1942
• Evening Express Tue, 04 Nov 1941
• Birmingham Evening Mail Wed, 28 Jan 1942
• Leicester Mercury Tue, 11 Nov 1941
• Evening Despatch Tue, 04 Nov 1941
• The Daily Telegraph Wed, 05 Nov 1941
• Evening Despatch Thu, 29 Jan 1942
• Evening Telegraph Thu, 29 Jan 1942
• The Kensington News and West London Times Fri, 28 Nov 1941
• Evening Despatch Mon, 23 Feb 1942
• The Daily Telegraph Tue, 21 Oct 1941

MUSIC:

• Man in a Bag by Cult With No Name (main theme)
  

UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE:

Welcome to Murder Mile.

Today, I’m standing on Elsham Road in Shepherd’s Bush, W14; three streets north of the Labour Party lothario, four streets east of the Devil’s Child’s home, a tube stop south of The Beast’s last killing, and three streets west of the boy with the bongos who went bang - coming soon to Murder Mile.

Set on a quiet tree-lined street beside Holland Park, Elsham Road features a wealth of early Victorian five-storey terraces in sandstone brick. It’s a pretentiously middle-class street where no-one goes on “holidays”, they “winter”; everybody has a cleaner as they’re too busy to put their own bins out, and instead of going to their doctor, they “rebalance their Shakras” by shoving a crystal up their jacksies.

It’s a street with a falseness to it, as its people try desperately hard to be who they wish they were.
On the 14th of October 1941, the ground floor and basement flats at 71 Elsham Road were owned by Theodora Greenhill, a widowed mother of considerable means who was looking to sell up and move on. That day, a convicted burglar and a homeless thief arrived on this street looking for a flat to rob, and even though he was a man who certainly didn’t belong there, she let him in, and he took her life.

But why did he kill her?

My name is Michael, I am your tour guide, and this is Murder Mile.

Episode 261: Dr Trevor’s Greed.

To say that Theodora Greenhill was an impressive woman would be an understatement.

Born on the 2nd of December 1875 in Anglesey, North Wales, Theodora Jessie Weblyn was raised in an era when women were barely educated, were denied a career, had less legal rights than cattle, and life dictated that their sole purpose was to cook, clean, procreate and tend to their husband’s needs.

Regardless of how far from a supposedly civilised city she was raised - where the metropolitan elite were supposedly 30 years ahead of the rest of the country - she couldn’t vote, smoke in public, enter a pub alone, or wear trousers; like many women she couldn’t have a bank account, she was denied a career, and even the home she lived in was her husband’s property – as a woman was only a belonging.

Upon her death, the press described her solely as “a widow of an Army Officer”…

…but seen as a trailblazer, Theodora was so much more.

As the second youngest of four daughters to Jessie & Walter Weblyn, maybe it was a desperate need to stand out from her siblings which gave her such an independent spirit, but Theodora was different.

Not content to marry simply because it was expected of her, guided by her father’s love of sport (being the co-owner of the Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News), she became passionately involved with horse racing, carriage pursuit, and later – as technology changed everyone’s lives – motor sport.

In the late 1890s, Theodora moved from Anglesey to London. Situated at The Ranelagh Club in Barnes, South London, the Ladies' Automobile Club ran a series of driving competitions in which small petrol-driven horseless carriages competed in races and time-trials, in an era when automobiles were seen as a fad, safety wasn’t considered. and the first Model T Ford was almost a decade from being built.

At the Ranelagh Automobile Gymkhana, held in July 1900, the first ladies’ race was held. Consisting of a single lap of barely a mile long around the 130-acre site at Barn Elms, 25-year-old Theodora Weblyn won the race in a 6hp Daimler ‘Parisian’, having reached thrilling speeds of 23.7 miles per hour. That may seem slow to us, but back then, people still believed that driving faster than 30mph was fatal.

Theodora was a pioneer in racing, and in her life, she was equally as independent and free-spirited.

On the 9th of January 1902, she married Rupert Tattersall, and by Spring 1904, their daughter Katherine was born. But with the marriage lasting only seven years owing to his adultery, in 1907, a court granted her a divorce, an allowance and the costs paid of her home at 10 Westbourne Mansions, Kensington.

Now with two children, Virginia aged 3 and Katherine aged 6, although a census describes her as the ‘head of the house’ and ‘a woman of private means’, having fallen in love with Major Hubert Greenhill of the Dorset Regiment, in the spring of 1913, they married and later had another daughter, Sylvia.

As a strong confident woman with no sense of fear, she gifted her daughters with her drive and passion so each went on to live rich and fulfilling lives. In March 1926, following the death of her husband, she made the decision not to remarry, and having inherited his Army pension, a widow’s allowance and with their house now legally under her name, this is where she would live for the rest of her life.

By 1939, 71 Elsham Road was the perfect place for a 63-year-old widow and her youngest unmarried daughter Sylvia. Set on a quiet middle-class street far from the bustling crowds, the two shared this maisonette with a kitchen, bathroom and living room in the basement, and the bedrooms above. And with the three upper floors occupied by three single women - Mrs Bishop, Miss Melly and Miss Pick – the communal front door was often left unlocked, as they never had any trouble with strangers.

Theodora wasn’t a shrinking violet who needed a man in her life, she wasn’t lonely, she wasn’t in need of love, and she wasn’t a pushover. She was an impressive self-reliant woman of means who was about to make a big change in her life, by moving away from her home, her street and her city.

The first evacuation of London occurred following the outbreak of the second world war in September 1939. Millions fled the city, but having lived though the Zepplin bombs of the first world war, several pandemics, an adulterous husband, being widowed and giving birth three times, even after 8 months and 5 days of unrelenting blitz bombing, Theodora saw it as her duty to stand firm to Hitler’s onslaught.

But with her eldest daughters having left, and imploring their mother and youngest sibling to flee to the safety of the country, seeing it as no time for stubbornness as the Luftwaffe had continued their bombing spree of unprecedented slaughter, Theodora began packing up her belongings and - with a shortage of homes as large parts of the city were reduced to rubble - she sought out a lodger.

Sladden & Stewart were the estate agents tasked with finding a well-mannered middle-class man or woman to rent out Theodora’s flat. The lodger, preferably a man with a rank or a title, but certainly someone with a noble profession was preferred. That day, the estate agents found her a doctor…

…and yet, the man who would murder her was nothing short of a career criminal.

Harold Dorian Trevor was a 61-year-old convict who had dedicated his life to theft and lies. As a vague man with an unspecified past, little is known about his life and few records exist to corroborate the litany of dishonesties which passed his lips. In truth, he never had a job, his education was slim, most of his life was spent in prison, and with no profession, what he achieved was nothing to brag about.

Where he grew up was uncertain, as although he had connections to London, the North of England and even the Welsh coastal town of Llandudno, a fake middle-class accent disguised any hints of truth.

His attire gave away few clues, as although his tall gaunt frame alluded to his working-class roots, he dressed like a gentleman of money, wearing a fawn overcoat with a fine silk scarf, walking with a neat cane, a monocle upon his right eye and perched upon his thinning grey hair often sat a top hat.

He came across as respectable, but the facts were far from the truth.

Harold was small-time thief, pointless and petty, he wasn’t the kind of thug who would batter a bloke over his head for the sake of a bag of coins or burst into a bank with a sawn-off shotgun. He wasn’t a yob, he was a cowardly pilferer who snuck into houses when the owners were out, and used his charm to distract an old lady so he could swipe her purse from the side and then be gone before they noticed.

His first offence was on 13th of May 1896, when 15-year-old Harold Atkins (as he called himself) was bound over for stealing a purse. After that, often within weeks or days of being paroled, he’d steal bags, hats, gloves and purses (anything which wasn’t nailed down) and always under different aliases.

On the 21st of October 1899, he served his first conviction of 18 months at Pentonville Prison, followed by 18 and a ½ years in prison across the next twenty years. Released from a 5-year stint in 1918, by the December, he had married 31-year-old Cicely Taylor. But did marriage make him a better man?

No. Unwilling to work and having got a taste for the finer things in life, by this point, he had lived the life of an imposter for so long, it was suggested that he had forgotten who the real Harold Dorian was.

As a man who had come from nothing, he would become something through lies and deception. With his preferred targets being mature middle-class ladies, he would ingratiate them with his manners and charm, he would profess to be an architect or a surgeon, and – as a rank or title in that era forgave all kinds of crimes – he used many respectable aliases like Sir Charles Warren, Lord Herbert and Dr Trevor.

In 1919, having gravitated to stealing more expensive items, he served 5 years for jewellery theft. In 1925, he served a further 5 years for cheque fraud. And in 1936, found guilty of 30 cases of larceny and deception at the Old Bailey, Harold Dorian Trevor was sent to HMP Parkhurst for another 5 years.

From 1899 to 1936, in the 37 years he had been a criminal, he had spent 35 of these behind bars. He wasn’t great at what he did, but described as a “gentleman thief”, he didn’t appear in the newspapers as the items he stole were often insured, and he was far too cowardly to perpetrate an act of violence.

Under the palatable middle-class alias of Dr Trevor, being once again broke, Harold would wheedle his way into the home of Theodora Greenhill under the ruse that he was looking for a flat to rent…

…but as his first ever act of violence, why would he kill her? (Cliffhanger)

On 3rd of October 1941, 61-year-old Harold Dorian was released after five years in Parkhurst Prison.

With the world reduced to rubble, it wasn’t only the city which was broken and frail - so was Harold. As age had weakened his strength, prison food had slowed his pace and the bluff of crap chats with cons had almost eviscerated his charm, although he was still a man who coveted the finer things in life, his wife had disowned him, his friends were gone, and every citizen was very wary of strangers.

As part of his parole, having hopped off the boat from the Isle of Wight, and made his way by train to London, he registered with his parole officer, and spent several nights at the City Temperance Hostel.

Poverty was a dirty word to Harold Dorian, and with dinner comprising of a watery stew and being forced to sleep on scratchy sheets in a cramped room which slept twenty assorted drunks and hobos, three days later, a well-spoken man booked into Flemmings Hotels in Half Moon Street in Piccadilly.

He ordered a fine meal, he slept on soft sheets, he had his clothes cleaned, and he left without paying. The next day, at the St Martin’s Hotel on Upper St Martin’s Lane, a ‘Mr Trevor’ did the same. It was an old con he had trotted out many times before, but his parole officer was keen to make him go clean.

Living off a handout of 10 shillings, on Tuesday 7th of October, six days before the murder, he was told to report to the Labour Exchange to find himself a job. But what job could he do? He was a 61-year-old greedy ex-con who hadn’t done an honest day’s work in his adult life. So, unable to go straight…

…he did what he knew.

With the war and rationing in full force, even though millions had been evacuated from the city and lived in fear of their deaths, Harold would never shed a tear for these lone frightened ladies, as even as their neighbours’ homes were blasted apart around them, he only thought of what he could steal.

On Thursday 9th of October at 11:30am, Mr H D Trevor called at the estate office of Harrods, and said to be “looking for a flat for myself and my daughter”, an appointment was made with the owner.

Arriving at 8 Sloane Street in Knightsbridge, as the impressive residence of wealthy widow Mrs Bertha Haydock; he rang the doorbell, he politely greeted this lone woman with a reassuringly soft voice, as was good manners he handed her his visiting card which listed him as ‘Dr Trevor’, and as they chatted, this seemingly respectable man browsed the rooms as his eyes wandered over the items he’d steal.

At around 12pm, he asked “may I bother you for a glass of water?”, and with her having headed to the kitchen to fulfil his request, telling her “I’m just going to see if my daughter had arrived”, he left.
Five minutes later, as he hadn’t returned, she went in search of him. It was only then she realised that her handbag was missing; inside of which was her purse, a cheque book and a diamond ring. That was his technique; a little charm, a deposit, an honest distraction, an excuse, a snatch and a hasty retreat.

By Monday 13th of October, he’d spent every penny he’d stolen from Bertha, so using the same ruse, at 2pm, ‘Dr Trevor’ arrived at Sladden & Stewart estate agents and was given four addresses within walking distance, 42 Holland Road, 6 Norland Square, 9 St James Gardens and 71A Elsham Road.

With each home owned by a lone widow, their guest would be greeted, during a chat he’d ask for a glass of water, having agreed to move in, they’d write him a receipt for the few guineas as a deposit, and having made his excuse, they’d later discover a few items missing after a visit by ‘Dr Trevor’.

He would steal what he felt these wealthy widows could easily replace…

…and yet, none of them were ever threatened or hurt.

Tuesday 14th of October 1941 was typical of most days, as a little light drizzle tempered the fires after a night of bombardment. In the ground and basement flat at 71 Elsham Road, 65-year-old Theodora Greenhill was packing up for her move, lugging heavy boxes with ease, all while immaculately dressed.

With her daughter Sylvia and the ladies in the flats above out, Theodora was alone when the doorbell rang. Theodora “Dr Trevor?”, Harold “Indeed Madam, here is my card”, Theodora “please do come in”, as by appointment, at 11am sharp, she let in the top-hatted and monocled guest into her home.

To her, he seemed polite, frail and harmless. His middle-class accent was slightly affected by a regional twang, but having both been partially raised in North Wales, so was hers. And although his attire made him stand out, his calm mannerisms and his uncomplicated ways made him easily forgettable.

It didn’t bother her as she showed this stranger about her flat, and it didn’t seem odd as his eyes spied her possessions on display, as alone she walked him from room-to-room. He was as unthreatening as melting ice, and she was a forthright ex-racing driving who – if she had to - could easily put up a fight.

Harold claimed “I agreed to rent it at 3 ½ guineas a week. She excused herself and went down to the basement to write a receipt”. Having left him alone for a few minutes in the drawing room, within swiping distance of his sticky fingers lay a pair of gold rimmed lorgnettes, a cheque book, a handbag, and some treasury notes. “I wanted to steal them, but didn’t”, he said, then his memory went blank.

“For a reason I can’t fathom”, he’d claim, “I took an empty wine bottle from the hall” and snuck down to the basement. Facing the wall, Theodora was standing at her bureau, as with a fountain pen in her hand, she wrote him a receipt, which read “received from Dr H D Trevor, the sum of...” (glass smash).

The glass bottle smashed into 27 pieces, which knocked her out cold, but with no skull fractures or brain damage, she was bleeding, but still alive and breathing. He had never hurt a woman before, until now. But why? Was this desperation, or greed? Harold would claim “I suddenly found myself seated in the downstairs kitchen”, and yet, in his state of supposed delirium, he ransacked her bureau, found her cash box, took the 3 ½ guineas he had given her as a deposit and then went searching for more.

Over the next two hours, as Theodora lay motionless, as if this was his last heist, he took a large trunk she had begun packing, and loaded it with whatever goodies his greedy little mitts could grab. Such as two fur coats, several silk dresses and slips, a metal clock, a bottle of bay rum, two rings, two handbags, five brooches, a portmanteau case, seven handkerchiefs and a sponge, totalling £100 (£5900 today).

He was methodical as he took anything of any value, but it was then that something would spook him.

(Phone) At 12:33pm, Sylvia called to see how the appointment with Dr Trevor went, only her mother didn’t pick up. At 2pm, Katherine called, as returning from New York that day, she planned to drop by later, only likewise, the phone went unanswered. And with Sylvia calling at 2:10pm as Katherine was concerned, sometime during these hours, with a woollen stocking, Harold chocked the life out of her.

He’d claim he couldn’t remember strangling her, just as he couldn’t recall putting a handkerchief over her face to stop her glaring eyes from staring, as they remained as fixed and open as her gaping mouth.

In a swift second decision, the thief had become a murderer for the sake of a few items which wouldn’t last him the month. But arrogance can be a powerful fuel to the fires of greed, so as her body lay limp, he hailed a taxi, got two labourers to help him carry the trunk, and headed to King’s Cross station.

Katherine arrived at 2:30pm, just minutes after this killer had fled…

…and as she entered the flat, she screamed, finding her mother dead.

Being as emotionally cold as the corpse he had left behind; Harold didn’t once think about his actions. By the station, he pawned off her wedding ring for £2 and 5s, and fled to Birmingham, where he stayed at the Midland Hotel; sleeping on silk sheets, gorging on five course meals, and ordering room service.

Dressed in a new suit, a bowtie and a trilby hat, he sold off the rest at an antiques dealer in Mosely, as well as a portmanteau case etched with Theodora’s initials, and under several aliases, he stayed at the Royal Hotel in Sutton Coldfield, the Carmell Hotel in Colwyn Bay, and the Rothbury Hotel in the Welsh town of Llandudno, a place he seemed to have fond memories of from his distant childhood.

Arriving at 3:10pm, the investigation was headed up by Chief Inspector William Salisbury.

The murder of Theodora Greenhill would be as swift as any crime he had solved before. With a trunk of possessions missing, the motive was robbery. With no defensive wounds, the attack was swift, silent and unprovoked. And although the name he’d used was an alias, his identity wasn’t exactly a mystery.

On the desk, although bafflingly he’d spent four hours ransacking the flat, he’d left behind the receipt she was writing, which read “received from Dr H D Trevor”. Upon the same desk was his visiting card in the name of Dr H D Trevor, which was one of several aliases he had used during his prior convictions.

When questioned, the taxi driver, the estate agents and the labourers who helped him with the trunk, all described him as “early 60s, 6-foot tall, slim build, grey short hair with a scar over the left eye”, and on 15 shattered fragments of the wine bottle which he had used to stun Theodora, they had found fingerprints for a 61-year-old burglar, thief, conman and now murderer called Harold Dorian Trevor.

With his details issued to the press and police, four days later, he was spotted in Llandudno.

PC Thomas had only been a reserve policeman for two weeks. He was so new to the job he didn’t even have a uniform. But recognising the suspect from a news article he’d read that day, he apprehended him at a phone kiosk in Queen Street, and the so-called ‘Dr Trevor’ was charged with murder. (End)

Tried at the Old Bailey, Harold Dorian pleaded ‘not guilty’ to murder. Across the two-day trial, being a born liar, he would claim that he was never there, he would vehemently deny strangling her, he would claim total memory loss, he would state he had been certified insane aged 13, he would ask for the case to be dismissed owing to malpractice by his lawyers, and he even accused the police of getting him drunk on the train to London and demanding that his confession be inadmissible as evidence.

For his baffling defence, he gave a list of witnesses who could prove his alibi, none of whom could be found, and although he presented as mentally unstable, Dr Grierson, Senior Medical Officer of Brixton Prison gave evidence that although his behaviour was erratic, “he was sane and fit to stand trial”.

On the 29th January 1942, having been sentenced to death, ever the egotist, he professed to the court “I sincerely hope that each one of you gentlemen of the jury will remember these words. These words are…. that I only hope that you, each one of you, as you will someday stand before a higher tribunal, you will receive a greater measure of mercy than has never been meted out to me in this world. I am not afraid of anyone, or of what anyone can do. My life up to the age of 62 has been all winter”.

Held at Wandsworth Prison, with his appeal rejected, he sent numerous letters to the Home Secretary complaining about his unfair treatment, his bed and his cell, ending his petition with “I have not touched my food for 24 hours, and have barely snatched 8 hours sleep in nearly five weeks”. Never once expressing any remorse for his crimes, any compassion for his victims or an apology to her family.

At 9am, on 11th of March 1942 at Wandsworth Prison, Harold Dorian Trevor was executed by hanging.

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.