Murder Mile UK True-Crime Podcast - #313: A Date with Death (Mehmet Koray Alpergin & Gozde Dalbudak)27/8/2025 
Triple nominated at the True Crime Awards and nominated Best British True-Crime Podcast at the British Podcast Awards, also hailed as 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation Channel's Top 20 True-Crime Podcasts, also seen on BBC Radio, Sky News, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week.
Stadium Lounge @Googlemaps2025 Sept2024
EPISODE THREE HUNDRED AND THIRTEEN: On Thursday the 13th of October 2022 at 8:30pm, an attractive Turkish-Cypriot couple (Koray & Gozde) left the Amazonico restaurant at 10 Berkley Square in Mayfair. Keen to impress his date, Koray treated Gozde to an easy evening of fine dining, fun chat and fancy cocktails. Being her first trip to London, it began with three days of sightseeing across this wonderful capital city, and she hoped, some romance. Yet a few hours later it would end in a kidnapping, torture and murder. But how did it all go wrong?
THE LOCATION:
I've stopped adding the pin to the map, as MapHub are now demanding £8 a month, and I'll be damned if I'm forking out hard earned cash for something probably one person looks at a month.
SOURCES: a selection sourced from various archives:
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: How did a romantic date end in a brutal gangland murder? Find out on Murder Mile. Today, I’m standing on Berkeley Square in Mayfair, W1; one street south of Jeanne Western’s flat, one street east of the killing of Roberto Troyan, two streets west of Annie Sutton and the stalker within, and a few doors down from the spree-killer who forgot to pack a map - coming soon to Murder Mile. At 10 Berkeley Square – you know, just down from the Ferrari showroom and Damien Hurst’s gallery – is Amazonico, a luxurious Latin American restaurant where mere plebs like us can dine like a king in an artificial jungle for a price which will definitely make your top lip sweat. And with a range of caviars, wagyu and yellowtail, you too can look truly out of your depth as you mop up a microscopic speck of meat in a dribble of sauce, and ask the waiter “yup, tastes fine mate, but where’s the rest my dinner?” On Thursday the 13th of October 2022, as Britain neared the end of Liz Truss’ disastrous 45 days as our Moron in Chief, an attractive Turkish-Cypriot couple (Koray & Gozde) dined at this restaurant. Keen to impress his date, Koray treated Gozde to an easy evening of fine dining, fun chat and fancy cocktails. Being her first trip to London, it began with three days of sightseeing across this wonderful capital city, and she hoped, some romance. Yet a few hours later it would end in a kidnapping, torture and murder. But how did it all go wrong? My name is Michael, I am your tour guide, and this is Murder Mile. Episode 313: A Date with Death. It was dark. Everything was dark, as across Gozde’s face, a blindfold blocked out every hint of light, so when she came to, she didn’t know if it was day or night. Hours before, her make-up was pristine, but now, it ran in black rivers down her cheeks as hours of tears had left it smeared. She was scared, but what she felt most was pain as her nose was swollen, maybe broken, as blood dripped down her chin. Briefly, she couldn’t remember where she was and couldn’t see, but even through the blood and snot, with an overpowering smell of shit and piss, she knew she was sat on a toilet, but it wasn’t hers or any place she knew, as besides the persistent drip which leaked from a rusty pipe and echoed as it splashed onto the concrete floor, she could also smell a stench of rotting meat, something foul and decaying. Gozde couldn’t reach out to feel what was around her, as her hands were bound to her tied ankles leaving her bent in an painful position which made her legs cramp. But as she stretched out her legs, her boots quickly clipped the sides of what was likely to be the tiled walls of a cramped toilet cubical. Hours before - with her blonde hair freshly coiffured, wearing black boots, black leather trousers, a cream top and a cream trench coat, all stylish and expensive – she had dressed for a dream date in a high-end restaurant with a handsome man she liked but barely knew, and it had ended in a nightmare. She was the victim of a kidnapping by maybe 10 or 15 men whose language she didn’t speak, and from a nearby room, she could hear them beating and torturing someone like hyaenas attacking their prey. She was petrified, but was she next? 33-year-old Gozde Dalbudak was born and raised in the Turkish capital city of Istanbul. Like many born on the cusp of the 1990s, she was raised in a modern era and sought out dreams far beyond the limited imaginations of many parents, being part of the Instagram generation. As a stunning slim blonde who dressed to impress, her life revolved around meeting nice people, and being single, maybe a boyfriend. In June 2022, as the world slowly opened up post-Covid, her friend Nilay Toprak, a Turkish social media influencer and actress who owned her own beauty salon was hosting a party and introduced Gozde to a family friend she had known for eight years; his name was Koray and rightly she liked him instantly. Mehmet Koray Alpergin was born in February 1979 in Nicosia, the capital city of Cyprus. Raised humbly in the post-coup era which left the country split into two, with his parents he moved to Britain seeking a better life, and succeeded as his father ran a successful restaurant in Stoke Newington, East London. Like his father, Koray was hardworking and business-minded. Granted British citizenship in 2001, aged 22, he worked for a decade as a bus driver to ensure that he provided for his wife, Eleonora and their son and daughter, and even when the marriage fell apart, he remained a loyal and loving family man. Like Gozde, he didn’t want to work a thankless job for wages, he wanted to live the dream, and as a tall handsome man with a smooth voice and a warm personality, in his spare-time, he worked as a DJ at LTR, a pirate radio station which broadcast to north London’s Turkish Cypriots; he was popular, successful and being savvy, he later owned it, renaming it as Bizim FM, the Turkish word for ‘ours’. And although ‘pirate radio’ might suggest it was operating illegally, as many did, in 2010, Koray got a suspended sentence under the Wireless & Telegraphy Act as its transmitter was on top of a tower block and risked scrambling air traffic control, but having reshaped the business, today Bizim FM is the only fully licensed Turkish radio station broadcasting 24/7 outside of Turkey and Northern Cyprus. Koray was a well-liked and popular figure in the UK’s Turkish community. As a DJ, he mentored many singers and songwriters giving them their first taste of fame and success. And nobody had a bad word to say about him; "Koray was very loyal, someone that you could rely on”, “he was funny, he loved to laugh”, “he was always kind and a true gentleman”, and dedicating large chunks of his life to raising funds for children’s cancer charities, he was widely regarded as a pillar in the Turkish community. Although maybe not a well-known name to those outside of his circles, Koray was a celebrity; he lived the high life, he wore stylish clothes, he drove a £35000 Audi, he dined in fancy restaurants, and on his Instagram feed he was photographed with rappers like P Diddy, Stefflon Don and the chef Salt Bae. In June 2022, while DJing a club set in Turkey, Koray met Gozde and the two hit it off. As a single man looking for love and finding a stunning single woman who liked him, they began as more than friends, and wanting to see if this long-distance love could last or be bettered, Koray invited Gozde to London. On Monday 10th of October, Gozde arrived at Heathrow to spend five days with Koray; he showed her the sights, they dined at fancy restaurants, she met his friend Mehmet who ran Mem & Laz, a brasserie in Islington, and even though they didn’t know each other well, he was affectionate, kind and gentle. It seemed like a bright and shining future was blooming for them both… …only a dark cloud was looming and death would blindfold her eyes. Having taken a 3-month break in Turkey, some of Koray’s friends said “he wasn’t himself”, and having returned to London in the weeks before Gozde’s visit, his gym buddy Parveen recalled “he’s always been a happy-go-lucky guy… but I could tell he was very stressed. He said there was a lot on his mind”. In his stylish flat on the salubrious Ebony Crescent in Enfield, although he excluded success, hidden in a drawer was later found several county court judgements owing to outstanding debts, he hadn’t paid his council tax, and he’d received a solicitor’s letter as his Audi sportscar was about to be repossessed. But this wasn’t his biggest issue, as when Parveen prodded him, “he said he’d said the wrong thing to the wrong person… but he never told me anything more. He always kept me out of harm’s way”. On Saturday the 24th of September 2022, two weeks before Gozde’s visit, Koray heard an odd rattling coming from his car. Parveen joked “are you sure your car hasn’t been bugged?”, he went quiet, and was paranoid about a white van he had seen several time before parked-up within sight of his flat. As Joseph Heller wrote in Catch 22 “just because you’re paranoid, doesn’t mean they aren’t after you”. And they were after him, as just one day before, a tracker had been fitted to the underside of his car; they watched where he went, who he saw and waited for a moment to strike. Why? His father believed they were jealous of his lifestyle and wanted to extort £150,000 from him, which he didn’t have. But the evidence “bore all the hallmarks of being linked to organised crime, possibly drug-related”. Crispin Aylett KC for the prosecution stated “It is unclear how he came to the attention of an Organised Crime Group… they believed he had something of value, money or drugs”. It was also rumoured that Koray was involved in a drug deal for the Hackney Bombers, which infuriated their Tottenham rivals. The crime-ridden borough of Hackney is dominated by two rival OCGs who sell narcotics across Britain through young and impressionable men and boys who mistakenly believe they’ll get rich living the gangster life but are trapped by threats and debts meaning death to themselves and their families. The Tottenham Turks and the Hackney Bombacilars had amassed 100s of millions of pounds via drugs trafficking, gun-running and money laundering (through so-called legitimate businesses like minicabs, barbers shops, kebab shops and American candy stores), but just mere morsels go to the grunts as the lion’s share goes to the unseen invisible bosses who live the high-life abroad and take very little risk. Given orders through a faceless chain of terrified middle-men, by the time these brainless underlings hear what it is that the boss has ordered them to do; they have no clue why they’re doing it or who to, they only know their little part in this evil game, as until they rise up the ranks, they’re disposable. The men who perpetrated this horrifying attack were mere bit players in the Tottenham Turks. They were; Tejean Kennedy, 33 of Cricklewood; Ali Kavak, 26 of Tottenham; Samuel Owusu-Opoku, 36 of Wood Green, Steffan Gordon, 35 of Northolt; Yigit Hurman, 19 of Muswell Hill, Ali Yildirim and Cem Orman who both fled to Turkey, and they mostly had minor offences which was why they were used to do the dirty work; Isay Stoyanov was a 44-year-old Bulgarian decorator and father-of-three with drink driving and possession of cannabis offences; Kyrie Mitchell-Peart, 32, a father-of-five who had convictions for burglary, possession and driving offences, as well as 18-year-old Dylan Weatherley who had two convictions for possession of an offensive weapon and having been runner in this county lines gang since his mid-teens, he had one conviction for possession of Class A drugs and an intent to supply. As with many boys, he frequently went missing from his home, his mother was concerned, and even though he’d returned back in January 2022, that October as his orders came down, he vanished again. In the early hours of Tuesday 11th of October 2022, the day after Gozde’s arrival, a second tracker was fitted on the underside of Koray’s Audi to replace the first, as they needed to know his whereabouts as the attack drew nearer. Yet even at that close hour, these underlings had no clue what was coming. Dylan Weatherley, Isay Stoyanov & Kyrie Mitchell-Peart only became involved that day, Thursday 13th of October 2022, with many recruited at lunchtime having met at a Turkish café at 79 Pretoria Road, not far from the newly-refurbish Tottenham Hotspur stadium. With so little time or information, given their orders from on high, they hastily pieced together a ‘sort of plan’ and everyone had a job to do. Dylan's job was to remove the car’s tracker after the attack. And that was it. No-one knew why they were doing this, except they’d been told do, and as far as we know, none of them had met the target. That day, after a tour of London’s sights, at 6:30pm, Koray & Gozde dined at Amazonico in Mayfair, the Latin American restaurant on Berkeley Square. Gozde called her mother to tell it was all going well, and after a glass of champagne, at 9:30pm they drove in the night, unaware they were being tracked. As the Audi drove 10 miles north, Ali Kavak's VW Polo tailed them up Camden, Kilburn and Barnet. They texted their progress to the boys in the white Fiat Doblo van parked near Koray’s flat, and they had Junior Kettle in a Ford Focus, in case Steffan Gordon who had the knife needed a fast getaway. At 11:20pm, as seen on the CCTV and the Ring doorbell’s of this desirable street, the Audi pulled onto Ebony Crescent and parked up on the drive; it had been a lovely day, they’d had a nice meal, and now they planned to head in and unwind with a glass of wine, maybe a kiss, as Koray turned off the engine… …it was then that the gang pounced. These eight masked men grabbed Koray, pulling him from the car, as Gozde froze in terror. He tried to run, but was caught. He fought back, but was outnumbered, leaving a bloodstained fragment of his shirt behind as he struggled. And as they frogmarched him to the van, a masked man with a knife ordered Gozde to ‘shut up and get out’, as she was kidnapped too. The vehicles fled, it took less than 30 seconds, Dylan Weatherley removed the tracker (as was his role) and when convicted, the judge stated “that was the most significant part of your role in these events”. Only everyone had a job to do, but who did what to whom will never be known. Gozde was terrified, she was bound, blindfolded and bundled onto the van’s floor beside Koray, as a man’s body weight forced her down. She didn’t know who they were, and only speaking Turkish, she didn’t understand the words they spat. As she shook and cried, Koray tried to reassure her; ‘be quiet my love’, only their kidnappers were far less compassionate, and as she was punched her twice in the face, possibly breaking her nose, that was the last thing she could recalled as everything went black. The convoy drove five miles south-east along the A111, A10 and onto White Hart Lane. With the front being a busy high street opposite Tottenham Hotspur’s stadium, between two mid-Victorian houses at 4 and 6 White Hart Lane (correction: it was off Moselle Place), they entered a small industrial area at the back of the shops, and stopped. Hidden from view, at 11:35pm, having reversed the van to the backdoor, still blindfolded and bound, they dragged them both inside, and as Koray was moved to the front room, still semi-conscious, Gozde was dragged to a dirty toilet cubical at the back of a derelict shop, the door blocked by a large freezer. Neither of them would know it, especially Gozde who had only been in the UK for four days, but this was the Stadium Lounge, known as the Ezgi Turku Bar, a small Turkish/Cypriot club at 783 High Road in Tottenham, which was undergoing a substantial renovation; the windows were covered in drapes, the flats above were unoccupied, the shops on either side were closed for the night, the stadium was empty, and in what was to be a bar, surrounded by plastic sheeting was a table, a chair and a tool bag. Gozde never saw it, but she could feel and smell that she was sitting on a rancid toilet in a strange building in an unknown part of a city. Stripped of her coat, she shivered as the night dropped to just 8 degrees. Tied up and blindfolded, even if her phone hadn’t been taken, she couldn’t call anyone. If she screamed, she had no idea what would be done to her by the 10 to 15 men she heard shouting in the next room. And she had no idea why she was there, but as every so often one of them men would feed her scraps of chicken and potatoes, it became clear that she wasn’t their intended target. Through the bare tiled walls of the toilet, she heard the sounds of Koray’s panicked voice as he pleaded in English to his captors, she also heard his cries as he was beaten and his screams as he was tortured. She could do nothing but cry, as he was subjected to a prolonged and sadistic attack by baying thugs. We will never know if he told them what they wanted to hear, if he knew it at all, if they kept beating him (not knowing when or how to stop), or if the plan from their bosses had always been to kill him. First they stripped him of his clothes, as his torture had been designed to hurt and humiliate him. Tied to a chair flanked with plastic sheets, they bound his hands in front of his chest with a red cloth, then demanded answers to their bosses questions; if he lied, they hurt him; if he half-lied, they hurt him; if the truth wasn’t what they’d been told he’d say, they hurt him; and if he said nothing, they hurt him. For hours he was punched and kicked by a volley of fists and feet in the softest parts of his body. Linear bruises to his chest showed they beat him with a baseball bat, breaking 14 of his 24 ribs. In his torture, they repeatedly strangled him with a ligature allowing him just enough air to speak. And upon his bare feet, they stabbed the soles with a sharp knife and burned them with boiling water so they degloved. It’s uncertain – whoever his torturers were – if had done this before, if they were ordered to hurt him in certain ways, or if they revelled in sadism; as not only did he have wounds to his genitals, but also tearing to his rectum, and although we don’t know what was inserted in him, a mop handle was found. A post-mortem identified 94 injuries to his body; such as cuts, bruises, black eyes, strangulation marks, a fractured eye socket, bruising and tears to his genitals and rectum, and a hard blow to his head which resulted in brain damage. Dr Swift, the Pathologist stated “there was no doubt he was tortured to death… mercifully, he could not have survived these injuries by more than a few hours, no more than six at the most”, and having died in the early hours of Friday 14th, he was of no more use to the gang. As a popular and well-liked celebrity who always answered his phone, it wasn’t long before both Koray and Gozde were reported missing… but by then, the torturers were already destroying the evidence. Isay Stoyanov’s job was to clean up the torture room, to wipe away any tools, blood, fingerprints or DNA, but – like the others - lacking experience and with a plan cobbled together at the last minute, he had no idea what he was doing; he left behind a shirt, a dustpan, a kettle, a plastic cup, a can of Red Bull, two bottles of bleach, the mop handle, the tracking device from under the Audi, drops of Koray’s blood was found on the table, Isay’s (and Gozde’s) fingerprints were found on the fridge which blocked the toilet door, and his DNA was found inside of a blue latex glove, he had used to carelessly clean up. Early on the Saturday morning, roughly 31 hours after the kidnapping, Ali Kavak was seen clearing out the back seats of his VW Polo, which detectives later found CCTV footage of him tailing Koray’s Audi. At 6:43am, a camera caught him driving to an industrial unit on the nearby Triumph Trading Estate, at 1 Tariff Road in Tottenham. Inside, they moved the body into the boot of a stolen Renault Megane, in convoy with the white Fiat Doblo they drive 10 miles north-east to Loughton, and shy of the Oakwood Hill Industrial Estate, they dumped the body in woodland, just beside the road, wrapped in a carpet. It’s no surprise that at 11.55am, just a few hours later, the body was found by a dog walker, and with him tied up and tortured, although his ID was missing, he matched Koray’s missing person’s report. As for the other evidence; Koray’s phone was carelessly dumped, the Renault Megane was burnt-out on Walthamstow Wetlands with the van in Markfield Park yet even with false plates their VI Numbers were legible, the VW Polo was cleaned but still contained forensic evidence, and the embarrassingly-named Junior Kettle set fire to Koray’s clothes in a garden in Stamford Hill, but was seen on camera. They thought they had destroyed every piece of evidence which could link them to the murder… …all that remained was the one eye-witness to the kidnapping and torture – Gozde. By 4pm on Saturday 15th of October, with her body weak and exhausted having spent 41 hours trapped in a dank and cold toilet cubical, some of the masked men returned. Moving the fridge, they opened the door. Holding a sharp knife, they cut her binds. As it was cold, they gave her a large green jacket and a beanie hat. And in the VW Polo, they drove her 10 minutes up the road to an unknown spot. Having heard Koray’s death, she was trembling and terrified as to what would happen to her. Only she was no part of the plan, just an unfortunate bystander; they didn’t want her, they didn’t need her, and having told her not to call the police, they gave her £40 for a taxi and let her go. With no phone, no knowledge of where she was and a very basic grasp of English, she knew only one person in London. Mehmet, the owner of Mem & Laz Brasserie at 8 Theberton Street in Islington didn’t recognise Koray’s date having met her just days before, as with her eyes and nose bruised and bloody, “I thought she was a beggar, she looked very rough”, until he saw the fear in her eyes, and he called the Police. Taken to Kentish Town Police Station, she gave a statement, and although she was placed into special protection, not wanting to be here any longer, she fled the country five days later and never returned. The investigation was headed up by Detective Chief Inspector Matt Webb, who described it as “one of the most complex my team has dealt with”, and although (as the only eye-witness) they couldn’t compel her to recount her story in court as she was already traumatised enough, “we cracked this case through painstaking and lengthy analysis of CCTV, phone records” and evidence left at the scene. Across the year, although Ali Yildirim & Cem Orman had fled to Turkey, all of the gang were arrested; Tejean Kennedy, Ali Kavak, Samuel Owusu-Opoku, Steffan Gordon, Yigit Hurman, Junior Kettle, Isay Stoyanov, Kyrie Mitchell-Peart and Dylan Weatherley as well as others who had aided their crimes, and although some confessed to their small part, others claimed coercion or threats on their lives. It was all redundant, as Crispin Aylett KC for the prosecution stated “we do not know who killed Koray Alpergin nor do we know who participated in the violence”, but under Joint Venture, they could all be held accountable for his murder, “even if a number of them played different roles in the plan”. (End) Two trials were held at The Old Bailey in 2023 and 2024. Passing sentence, Judge Sarah Whitehouse KC stated: ‘I’m satisfied none of you were central players in the plan, as the main players used others to do their dirty work to avoid detection”. Based on the evidence; Tejean Kennedy was sentenced 20 years, Ali Kavak to 13, Steffan Gordon to 8, Samuel Owusu-Opoku to 7, Kyrie Mitchell-Peart to 6 years and 4 months, Issay Stoyanov to 18 months, and with Dylan Weatherley convicted of a separate ‘conspiracy to murder’ charge for which he received life with a minimum term of 16 years, he received an additional five years for his part in this crime. Others like Junior Kettle walked free, as did the bosses of the Tottenham Turks, meaning that as of today, no-one has been convicted of Koray’s murder. Yet with the war still raging between the rival gangs, reprisals would happen. On the 30th of July 2023, 33-year-old Talip Guzel was shot dead in a Turkish social club on White Hart Lane, it was said “he was killed because the Tottenham Turks feared he’d spill the beans about Koray's killing if he’s arrested”. In January 2023, 27-year-old Ibrahim Gumus was shot and paralysed in a 'planned execution'. The two gunmen were Mehmet Er and Dylan Weatherley, in yet another attack he took part in because he was ordered to do, had no idea why, and did it because boys like him were totally disposable to his bosses. He ruined his life for the sake of a few thousand pounds and a little respect, but now he’s forgotten. In court, Koray’s cousin chastised his killers for trying to “escape the consequences of their heinous actions and tarnish Koray's character”, his ex-wife and children were left heartbroken and empty, his father suffered two strokes and a heart attack “at the pain of losing my son”, and since her kidnapping, Gozde has remained reclusive, stating “the ordeal has left a lasting trauma on me. I am scared of the dark… I cannot sleep alone… I often lose focus and suffer with flashbacks”. She came to London looking for love, but because of something Koray had either said or done, instead she had a date with death. The Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast has been researched using the original declassified police investigation files, court records, press reports and as many authentic sources as possible, which are freely available in the public domain, including eye-witness testimony, confessions, autopsy reports, first-hand accounts and independent investigation, where possible. But these documents are only as accurate as those recounting them and recording them, and are always incomplete or full of opinion rather than fact, therefore mistakes and misrepresentations can be made. As stated at the beginning of each episode (and as is clear by the way it is presented) Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast is a 'dramatisation' of the events and not a documentary, therefore a certain amount of dramatic licence, selective characterisation and story-telling (within logical reason and based on extensive research) has been taken to create a fuller picture. It is not a full and complete representation of the case, the people or the investigation, and therefore should not be taken as such. It is also often (for the sake of clarity, speed and the drama) presented from a single person's perspective, usually (but not exclusively) the victim's, and therefore it will contain a certain level of bias and opinion to get across this single perspective, which may not be the overall opinion of those involved or associated. Murder Mile is just one possible retelling of each case. Murder Mile does not set out to cause any harm or distress to those involved, and those who listen to the podcast or read the transcripts provided should be aware that by accessing anything created by Murder Mile (or any source related to any each) that they may discover some details about a person, an incident or the police investigation itself, that they were unaware of.
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Triple nominated at the True Crime Awards and nominated Best British True-Crime Podcast at the British Podcast Awards, also hailed as 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation Channel's Top 20 True-Crime Podcasts, also seen on BBC Radio, Sky News, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week.
3 Peter Street, Soho @Googlemaps2025 June 2022
EPISODE THREE HUNDRED AND TWELVE: On the morning of 18th of March 1901, having perpetuated a con to make money, the owner of Stoppani's grocer's shop at 3 Peter Street in Soho was again said to be ‘up to his old tricks’, but instead of potentially poisoning almost 10th of Soho’s residents, he unwittingly saved a frail and terrified widow from a violent and bloody death.
THE LOCATION: (note I stopped updating the map, as MapHub were demanding money)
SOURCES: a selection sourced from various archives:
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: How did a prolific Soho poisoner save a widow from her cruel death? Find out on Murder Mile. Today, I’m standing outside of 3 Peter Street in Soho, W1; Wait! Isn’t this last week’s episode? No. But it’s the same building? Yes. But there can’t be more crimes in this same place, can there? Oh yes. As this is where Jeanne Western burned to death in a gangland hit, where Jacqueline Birri was murdered because another prostitute was on holiday, where the council helped the Camden Ripper find his next victim, and where a boy’s innocent crime led to his death in Australia - coming soon to Murder Mile. As we know, 3 Peter Street is now a boutique called Supreme where rubbery man-boys who’ve never shaved blow a year’s wage on clothes too stylish to wear while skate-boarding, so instead, they stand on corners looking constipated, strut like their left leg is too short and have faces like slapped arses. Since it was built in the 1810s, across the last 210 years, 3 Peter Street has had many incarnations; it was a pawnbrokers in the 1820s, a dairy in the 1830s, a general store from the 1850s to the 1940s, and from the 1970s, it has been a brothel, a sex shop and a clip joint. But even though, it was a decent establishment for most of its time, even seemingly respectable businesses have indulged in crime. Between 1899 and 1901, the ground and first floors of 3 Peter Street was a grocer’s shop which sold general provisions (fruits, vegetables, meats, canned goods and foreign delicacies) to the public and the restaurants, and with Soho being a melting pot of nationalities, business should have been good. On the morning of 18th of March 1901, having perpetuated a con to make money, this shop’s owner was again said to be ‘up to his old tricks’, but instead of potentially poisoning almost 10th of Soho’s residents, this time, he unwittingly saved a frail and terrified widow from a violent and bloody death. My name is Michael, I am your tour guide, and this is Murder Mile. Episode 312: Frayed Nerves and Bad Guts. As Ken Scott wrote in Jack of Hearts: “Fate is a fickle bitch. Just when you believe you’ve secured the goose that lays the golden egg, she back-heels you in the bollocks”. Sometimes it helps you, sometimes it hinders you, and other times, fate will throw you a curve ball that you never realised was even there. Winter, 1897, in an unspecified graveyard somewhere in Westminster, a bitterly cold wind whipped across the frozen spoils of earth on either side of a humble wooden coffin. Beside it, as the priest’s words echoed, a sullen woman stood wearing black, a lace veil masked her tears as she sobbed softly. With no-one to hold or hug her, she stood alone, but this wasn’t because she was disliked, far from it, she just wanted to be left alone to grieve the loss of her husband of almost the last three decades, as the pallbearers lowered the coffin into an old grave that for as many years she has visited almost daily. He was known as ‘Victor Leopold’, but said to possibly be a Russian Jew fleeing the East where the pogroms had massacred their lives and loved ones, some say his real name was ‘Gustav Ladovsky’ or something similar. Little was known about them as being good but quiet people, they didn’t mingle and kept to themselves, with him being an educated man, maybe an accountant, and her a seamstress. On this large gravestone, a space had been left for his name to be etched. Below his, at the bottom near a bundle of dying flowers she had left barely a week before, lay a space where one day her name would be written - ‘Annie Leopold’, yet four names had already been etched above; all with the same surname, all of whom died tragically young, one of whom was taken by smallpox, one who had gone by influenza, one by a tragic accident, and one – as many did – who went to sleep and never woke up. She had buried them all, all four of her babies were gone, and although each time she’d her husband’s hand to hold, now she had no-one. His death was no surprise, as two years before when he’d got sick, to fund his care, they had sold their small but cosy home on the outskirts of London and moved nearer the hospital, in a cheap lodging house on Peter Street was where she had nursed him to his dying day. That day, having thanked the priest (being the only words she uttered), alone, she walked back to her lodging (said to be) at 28 Peter Street in Soho and sat in her lonely room; her two armchairs, one now empty; two teacups, one no longer needed; with photos on the mantlepiece, reminders by the ash in his pipe and his smell still clinging to the air, as – for the next days and nights as she wept, her hand stroked the empty depression in their bed where her husband used to be – but now she had nothing. Being a good husband who had always provided for her, with no known next-of-him, his Last Will and Testament had ensured that ‘Annie’ wouldn’t fall foul as many women did in that era when their main breadwinner was dead, and even though she wouldn’t be well-off, she would never starve to death. It wasn’t until the summer of 1898 that ‘Annie Leopold’ slowly emerged from her grief. Said to be a small ‘bird-like’ woman in her late 40s or early 50s who was timid and polite, everybody gave her space to recover and to begin to live again. To keep herself busy, she worked as a washer woman and she was said to be a reliable baby-sitter, but with too many memories at 28 Peter Street, around that time, she moved to another lodging either still on Peter Street or nearby Berwick Street. That spring tragedy struck one of her neighbours, a young single woman whose toddler she babysat; when a cold became the flu and then a bad bout of pneumonia took her to her grave. With no family and the child at risk of being orphaned, ‘Annie’ took on the sole role of being his carer, and instead of being raised in a cruel workhouse, the boy would flourish in the arms of this new mum who loved him. In the summer of 1898, it was said she had found her purpose again… …it was also said that, around the same time, ‘Annie’ found love. He was known as ‘Gus’, possibly short for Gustav, the same name as her dead husband. Unsurprisingly, he too was a big man with big hands and a large bellowing laugh, so it’s uncertain whether she ever truly fell madly in love with him, or whether, still grieving, she was missing a piece of her life and this facsimile filled a space. But soon he moved in, soon she was making his dinner, mending his clothes, and with his pipe in the ashtray and slippers under the bed, suddenly she felt as if she was whole again. But he wasn’t the ‘Gustav’ she once loved, but the ‘Gustav’ she now feared. Whereas her husband was softly-spoken and affectionate, this faker was coarse and vulgar. Whereas her lover was diligent and compassionate, this interloper rarely worked and when he realised she had savings, this foul labourer stopped visiting the building sites and spent his time gambling and drinking. When he was drunk, he was violent and abusive. And when he was sober, he was the same; a nasty bastard who treated her like a skivvy, barked at her like she was a dog, and kicked like she was an old bucket of shit. One day, she thought she had got rid of him for good when he slipped off a scaffolding, but having only injured his leg and back a little, he used this as an excuse to do nothing from now on. By the winter of 1898, ‘Gus’ spent most days sat in her dead husband’s armchair like a tinpot dictator on his throne, as this fat sweaty glutton gorged on yet another free meal of pork chops, French beans, roast chicken and (his favourite) fois-gras, as delivered to his lap by his slave. And when she was too slow or dared to speak back, with a walking stick made of three-feet of beech with a hard copper base always to hand, administering many hard whacks, her frail body was often thick with welts and bruises. Being so small and timid, she never spoke up, fought back or ran, as ‘Annie’ was trapped… …and there was no way to get rid of him. At least that’s what she thought. Her saviour came in the guise of Giuseppe Stoppani, a 48-year-old Italian-born shopkeeper known as Joseph. Married in 1894 to Kathleen Smith, he had one son by his first wife, ‘Leonard’ aged 12, and having lived at 28 Peter Street where they got to know ‘Annie’, their two daughters were born - ‘Amelia’ in 1896, ‘Sessie’ in 1897, and for many years their lodger had been Kathleen’s brother John. In late 1898, Joseph opened Stoppani’s, a provisions shop on the ground floor of 3 Peter Street, where they sold fruits, vegetables, fish, meats, dried and tinned goods to restaurants and the passing public. Being neither big nor brave, Joseph wasn’t the kind of man to save a widow’s life as being a down-on-his-luck grocer trying to scrape by in a rough and seedy part of town, he was mostly known for cutting corners to make an easy penny, especially as the Boar war began to bite the average wage; sometimes he fiddled the prices, sometimes he added to the weighing scales, and sometimes, well… you’ll see. This was an era when the average person didn’t have a kitchen at home, let alone a fridge; that became a status symbol for the middle-classes in the 1950s and 60s, and for the less well off from the 1970s on. So prior to that, people either ate out, bought food pre-cooked, or relied on a gas hob or log fire. For centuries, food could only be preserved in winter, or by being salted, smoked or dried. Glass jars were better but prone to shattering. So it wasn’t until 1813 when Bryan Donkin & John Hall built the first commercial canning factory in London, and by sealing the food in tin cans using pressure cookers at the right temperatures, the bacteria can remain dormant within for years without any refrigeration. It revolutionised food, but when there’s things to be sold, there was also money to be made and saved. In the 1800s, it was said that at least 70% of the food sold had been tampered with to increase profit; bread was often bulked out with ash, sand and chalk, and although the 1860 Food Adulteration Act had some powers to kerb it, many grocers still perpetuated this con, and Joseph was one of them. In November 1899, shy of the new Millenium, Thomas Claverley the Sanitary Inspector for the parish of St Thomas’s issued a warning to Joseph about the state of the cheeses on sale in his window. They weren’t just ripe, they were repugnant. Mr Claverley referred to them as “unwholesome”, as when the wax paper was untied, it revealed an oozing mess of greens and blues, which fizzed and popped. Joseph was issued a warning, a slapped wrist, but seeing nothing but profit, he chose to ignore it. That month, Joseph had a plan, a big plan, one which could see him spending as little as £1 and making a tidy profit of £30 (£4500 today). And having rented a basement at 14 Broad Street, one street up, all he needed was a workbench, a reel of tin alloy, a can-opener, a soldering iron and a strong stomach. Talking of stomachs, ‘Gustav’s gut was growing larger as this glutton gorged on the goods he got Annie to fetch him; as she worked, he slept; as she earned, he squandered; and without any irony, seeing the boy she was raising as her own as nothing but “a leech” who he claimed “belongs in a workhouse”, she could shield the boy from his walking stick whacks with her own broken body, but for how long? Annie hadn’t a bad bone in her body, but she hated this man and she wanted him dead, but his death was as distant as any dream of happier times. She couldn’t strangle him as she knew she hadn’t got the strength, any poison purchased was noted in the chemist’s register, she was too afraid to suffocate him in his sleep, and although a heart attack could take him, he’d probably die beating her to death. ‘Annie’ was tip-toeing ever closer to her grave, and Joseph was nowhere to be seen… …but by the winter of 1898, his penny-pinching antics could definitely be heard. Across Old Compton Street, up Wardour Street, along Berwick Street and over Greek Street, a foul and fermented fug hung in the air, as the bottoms of several diners popped with little gasps of flatulence. In such cheap eateries, an occasional botty grumble or a back-passage bellow was not uncommon, but as each restaurant saw an increase in patrons groaning, sweating and rubbing their guts, as the street became awash with the splash of stomach bile, this area usually stunk, but this time, it stunk bad. Something was wrong, and with a flushing toilet not standard in Britain until the 1950s, many a bedpan was carried to the sewer with not a single ‘brown trout’ being released, but a shoal of stinking sprats. Again, Thomas Claverley the Sanitary Inspector was called to investigate and whereas he would usually expect to find a maybe bad stew in one café’s kitchen being the culprit, all of the affected restaurants had purchased the same tins of food from the same little grocer’s shop – Stoppani’s at 3 Peter Street. It was a con Joseph had done before, just never on this scale. On the 16th of December 1899, during the harsh winter just shy of centuries change, Joseph drove two horse-drawn carts from Soho, two and a half miles east to Eastcheap and the warehouse of Messrs Thurbers & Co, a trustworthy importer of canned goods from overseas. As often happened when his ship docked, it was to be expected that some of the tinned foods from Italy may have spoiled, and so were destined to be thrown on either the rubbish heap or sold at a discount as pig food or as manure. But with Joseph willing to pay to it take away, George Howard the manager sold him a tonne of canned foods for a sovereign, and (as was the law) he wrote on the invoice ‘unfit for human consumption”. So far, everything was legal and above board… but as the carts returned to Soho, Joseph redirected it to his recently rented cellar at 14 Broad Street, and set about pulling off his moneymaking con. Each tin was ‘blown, buckled into a ugly shape like a old boxer’s nose, as either it had been damaged in transit, the food had been incorrectly sealed or pressure-cooked at the wrong temperature, so even to the most blind of buyers, it was clear that this food was off, but to Joseph, it was still sellable. Having purchased over 1000 tins, at his workbench, he pierced each bulging lid with a single prick, this caused the foul gases of decomposing meats and vegetables to escape. Draining out the stinking liquid, he replaced this with salted water which disguised the hideous whiff and ceased the decay for a while, he then soldered the hole shut with an alloy, hammered the tin back into a reasonable shape, sanded it down where it had rusted, and sold it in his shop as ‘damaged’ stock, as everyone loves a bargain. Unfortunately, too many people loved a bargain and now the streets were stinking of shit. On the 19th of December 1899, John Pollard, another sanitary inspector went to the cellar and found 650 tins of tomatoes, peaches, apricots, peas, pineapples, pears, sardines, asparagus and condensed milk, many fizzing with putrefaction, and 3 kilos of bacon, “all mildewed and covered with maggots”. At his shop, a further 400 tins were found, as thankfully this second batch of rotten pigswill hadn’t sold as well, and for good reason, as across Soho, many were still suffering with bad guts and bilious. One of whom was Gustav. Across the New Year, he had been bedbound, as a horrific chorus of gurgling and foul winds had emanated from his rusty downpipe. For days, he had vomited. As for nights, as his skin grew paler, it looked as if Soho’s new sickness might ultimately take this glutton to his grave. So, with him unaware of this, it was said she kept on feeding him this deadly stew, and prayed for mercy. On Friday 2nd of February 1900 at Marlborough Street Police Court, Joseph Stoppani was summoned before Mr Denman for the sale of tinned foods being “unsound and unfit for human consumption”. The sanitary inspectors laid the case against him, Mr Ricketts his solicitor said “it was useless to defend against the overwhelming evidence”, Joseph claimed “I thought I could find some good food among the bad”, but with Dr James Edwards, medical officer of health for the district stating “those tinned goods might have killed a large number of people”, even though it didn’t, Joseph was rightly convicted. Mr Denman summed up “it was a shocking thing that people should indulge in such a trade, selling as food what was meant for manure and was worse than poison. I can’t imagine a more worse case”. All 1000 tins were destroyed, Joseph was ordered to pay £3 4s costs, and sentenced to 3 months hard labour. It wasn’t a big story, as that day alone, Ebenezer Durvan, a grocer on Whitcross Street was sentenced to six months for trying to sell 136 tins of decomposing salmon, and Henry Schimdt, manager of the London Hotel was fined £50 for selling liquor without a licence and had £130 worth of stock destroyed. In short, this Soho poisoner was no different to any other who had entered the court that week, and as nobody had died, the law was as weak as ever, and once again, he got just a slap on the wrist. But as Joseph went to prison, ‘Annie’ was still in her own prison. ‘Gustav’ wasn’t dead, as like everyone else, he got sicker, only to get better. With a few of the old tins left, she kept feeding him this rancid filth having disguised its stench with mustard or horseradish, but as the bloated bastard read about Joseph’s conviction, he demanded that she buy his food elsewhere. By now, having barely moved in months, with ulcers on his legs, his back covered in bedsores and even a boil upon his buttocks, Annie should have had some peace from his persistent beatings by his walking stick as he grew slower, but being immobile only made him more volatile towards her, and the boy. The more pain he felt, she more he made her feel his pain, as days turned into weeks and then months. Given his size and growing sickness, some days she hoped that his indigestion was a burst appendix, that a bout of reflux was a massive heart attack, or that one of his headaches was a terminal cancer, but fate never handed him anything which was even close to being fatal, as somehow he kept on living. You may think, why didn’t she just get a knife and slit his fat gizzard from ear-to-ear, as she watches him choke on his last gasp and die a slow painful death? In her dreams, she had probably thought of that, but as neither she nor the boy had any family, if she was convicted of murder, she’d be dangling from a noose by sunset, and with this orphan being sent to the workhouse, he’d be as good as dead. Joseph Stoppani would be in prison for three months, so maybe, maybe she would just wait? In April 1900, having served two-thirds of his sentence, Joseph was released from prison. In his absence, his wife, Kathleen had been running the grocer’s at 3 Peter Street, but with word having spread across Soho about his disgusting shop where the rusty tins on the shelves bulged and popped, business had been bad, very bad. With his name synonymous with filth, he got a new partner, Gastano Melisi, and with the shop now renamed as ‘G Melisi & Co’, it should have been a fresh start for him. But they were both up to his old tricks, only this time in places he wasn’t known as a poisoner. Having purchased for a sovereign another tonne of rotten vegetables and meats in ‘blown’ tins which were destined to be sent to the piggery, they both put profits over people’s lives, but this time, the streets didn’t ring with the parps of putrefied guts, as the manager of the Empire Buffet at the Brighton Empire had recognised the signs of pricked and resoldered tins, and he had called a sanitary inspector. On Friday the 11th of January 1901, at Brighton Police Court, Joseph Stopanni & Gastano Melisi were convicted of selling 247 tins of “utterly bad French beans” which “could have caused fatal results”, Gastano was able to pay the £30 fine, but being broke, Joseph served another three months in prison. Released at the start of March 1901, Joseph returned to his shop, a broken man, and with no money to buy goods and no customers browsing his shelves, he slowly began to spiral into a depression which had before (and would again) send him to the workhouse infirmary, where the poorest were treated. Back at Annie’s lodging, Gustav was furious, his festering leg ulcers were sore, weeping, and blaming her for his pain, she received the brunt of his violence, as when he hurt, she hurt, as the stick hit hard. Early on the morning of Monday the 18th of March 1901, having screamed all night, even though she so wanted to push him down the stairs hoping that the fall would snap his neck, leaving the boy fast asleep, she aided this wheezing lump outside, and painfully slow over to the doctor’s on Meard Street. There his ulcers were drained, cleaned, dressed, and being as good as new, they left. He should have been happy, but he wasn’t, as once again, all he did was bitch about her; complaining about her food, her mood, her dwindling savings, and the boy he never liked and insisted she “get rid of”. She knew that one day he would beat her senseless or even dead. Maybe that was today, or maybe tomorrow? It was then that she saw smoke on Peter Street, a lot of smoke, and then she heard screaming. (End) Fearing for her sleeping boy, Annie ran toward Peter Street leaving the puffing wastrel hobbling and waving his walking stick, angrily cursing “come back woman, I demand it”. If he had got her, he’d have made her regret it. But it was as he neared Peter Street, that fate took an odd turn, as with the carriage driver and his passengers looking towards the smoke, Gustav was hit hard by a 3 ¼ tonne omnibus. The evil bastard was said to be dead before Annie had even turned having heard him scream. Her lodging wasn’t on fire and her boy was fine, having slept through it all. Outside of 3 Peter Street, Joseph Stoppani stood beside his wife, all soot covered, coughing and clutching their daughters, as the fire which had started in their first floor lodgings had consumed the top floor and the grocer’s shop. That night they lost everything, except the few things Joseph was able to salvage from the flames, and although it was deemed to have been an accident, some speculated that he was up to his old tricks; that a fire was on, the embers were hot and beside it, a soldering iron and several tin cans were found. According to records, Joseph never rebuilt his grocer’s shop, he hadn’t the money or the strength. On the 30th of November 1904, three years later, for the third time in as many years, Joseph was admitted to the Westminster Union workhouse, where his notes describe him as ‘temporarily disabled’. It is uncertain if he ever knew the effect he had on ‘Annie Leopold’s life, or how much of it was even true. After that day, it was said that Annie and the boy were never seen again; she never said goodbye, she left behind a few belongings and being uncertain of her real name, we can’t be sure where she went. Some say that as the last few years had been horrific, ‘Annie’ headed home, maybe back East, but having placed one last flower on her family’s grave before she left, a space still remains for her name. 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.
Triple nominated at the True Crime Awards and nominated Best British True-Crime Podcast at the British Podcast Awards, also hailed as 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation Channel's Top 20 True-Crime Podcasts, also seen on BBC Radio, Sky News, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week.
2-3 Peter Street, Soho @Googlemaps2025 July2022
EPISODE THREE HUNDRED AND ELEVEN: On Monday the 12th of May 1975 at 2:40pm, two prostitutes on the first and second floors of 3 Peter Street were ‘entertaining’ their clients. With these small flats connected by a communal door, their punters rang the right bell for Jeanne, the left bell for ‘Sheila’ and were greeted on the stairwell by the correct prostitute’s maid. It was all very businesslike and efficient for these two professional woman.
But with a campaign of violence between rival gangs having torn apart this side of the city, as bad men did bad things for selfish reasons, two women would become the unwitting victims of ‘The Syndicate’.
THE LOCATION:
I've stopped adding the pin to the map, as MapHub are now demanding £8 a month, and I'll be damned if I'm forking out hard earned cash for something probably one person looks at a month.
SOURCES: a selection sourced from various archives:
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: How did a veteran prostitute shame one of Soho’s most infamous gangs? Find out on Murder Mile. Today, I’m standing outside of 3 Peter Street in Soho, W1; the same building where Eliza Higgs wept after her baby was beaten to death by the babysitter, where Jacqueline Birri was murdered by a disgruntled client, where the eviction of Elizabeth Valad led her into the arms of a serial killer, and where one man poisoned hundreds in Soho, but didn’t learn his lesson - coming soon to Murder Mile. Oh yes, we’ve visited this building many times before in its grim and disturbing history. Currently it’s a designer boutique called Supreme, where kids (with legs like pipe-cleaners, faces devoid of smiles and an inability to wipe their arses without vlogging about it) queue up outside for hours in the hope of buying (what to me looks like) a bland white vest for £80, ripped jeans like a tramp’s used it to clean a barbed wire fence for £300, and some seriously ugly trainers that a rapper has exclusively puked on for a fee, only for the buyer to then instantly sell it to someone, who sells it to someone, who sells it to someone, none of whom ever wear or touch it, but frame it and film it as they tug themselves off. But the history of this building wasn’t always full of privilege and joy, but sex, greed and death. On Monday the 12th of May 1975 at 2:40pm, two prostitutes on the first and second floors of 3 Peter Street were ‘entertaining’ their clients. With these small flats connected by a communal door, their punters rang the right bell for Jeanne, the left bell for ‘Sheila’ and were greeted on the stairwell by the correct prostitute’s maid. It was all very businesslike and efficient for these two professional woman. But with a campaign of violence between rival gangs having torn apart this side of the city, as bad men did bad things for selfish reasons, two women would become the unwitting victims of ‘The Syndicate’. My name is Michael, I am your tour guide, and this is Murder Mile. Episode 311: ‘The Hooker with the Heart of Gold’ For more than a century, Peter Street has been synonymous with one thing – sex. As a small impoverished dead-end (off Wardour Street and on the corner of Berwick Street market and Walker’s Court), Peter Street has always been a place of destitution and prostitution, as when there are vulnerable victims to exploit, there will always be monsters to rule and money to be made. Back in the 1970s at the precipice of its sordid squalor, bar a pub and a school, almost every building on this three storey street of shame either had a striptease, a peep show or a mucky bookshop on the ground floor, with a gambling den in the basement, and the small flats above converted into brothels. Like the uniform of a closet pervert, men in crumpled raincoats dashed from door-to-door with sweaty brows, flushed faces, a stiff walk and a tent pole in their pants, as they either snuck out with a brown paper bag of pure filth plastered with boobs and bush on every page, or upstairs passed a sign reading ‘model’ for three minutes of bored grimacing, only to be topped off with two pumps and a squirt. It was a stinking rancid cesspool frequented by drunks, addicts and deadbeats, avoided by cops (except those on the take) and with opposing dens of depravity being ran by rival gangs; tempers flared, blood was spilled, and soon, the stench of scorched skin would fill the air as bodies burned on Peter Street. The morning of Monday 12th of May 1975 was as ordinary as any other; the streets were grimy owing to the bin men being on strike, London was still reeling from the Moorgate tube crash, Britain had its first female leader of any British political party in Margaret Thatcher, and the Vietnam war was over. At 10am on the dot, being punctual as ever, the familiar shape and sassy swagger of 63-year-old ‘Jean’ entered Peter Street; she was sweet as a pie, happy as a canary and neat as a pin, with her hair always coiffured, her nails polished and never a ladder in her stockings, as she tottered in a fur coat and heels from her modestly stylish flat at 127 Mount Street in Mayfair, where as far as we know she lived alone. Jean’s real name was Jeanne Odette Juliette Western; she was born in France on the 11th of July 1911, she had lived in Soho and Fitzrovia since at least the Second World War, and was a veteran prostitute who had worked this neighbourhood for decades, being a mother-figure to any newbie on the streets. She was quiet, polite and never made any ripples. If she passed anyone in the street, she’d say “hello dear” and ask about their loved ones, but she rarely spoke about herself, so her mystery can only be gleaned in clues; being big-hearted, she regularly gave to cancer charities and fed the homeless children, Western was her married name and although she wore a ring, her husband was never seen, and although she was the proverbial ‘Hooker with the Heart of Gold’ who was punctual and polite, for years (if not decades) she had saved every spare penny she could to finally escape this life forever. To the side of the adult bookshop at 3 Peter Street, she polished the doorbell on the right as she entered the black door and ascended the thin wooden stairs. As usual, she waved to ‘Sheila’ Lawrence, a 35-year-old sex-worker in Flat 1 on the first floor, and as Jeanne ascended to Flat 2 on the second, she was greeted with a hot cup of tea by her maid, 56-year-old Mrs Pietrina Conzimu, known as Rena. Jeanne & Rena had worked together for years. Arriving early, Rena always got the flat ready. Split into two; the back-room consisted of a seating area for the clients, a kitchen hob where she made them a warm tea, a lockbox for the day’s takings, a radio to play something soothing and erotic, nudie mags on the table (as getting him hard was half the work), and in the front room was Jeanne’s bedroom, with a double bed, fresh sheets of pinks and lace, a vase of flowers, condoms and the smell of lavender. This is the way it had been for years; it was clean, relaxing and safe, but with the building being ran by the infamous Vassallo gang (long-established pimps from the Sicilian side of Malta), by 2:40pm, both flats would be engulfed in an inferno, and these two women would be burned beyond any recognition. Death would come to Peter Street as greedy men meted-out violence and vengeance… …but there was nothing that Jeanne & Rena had done to spark it, far from it. Prostitution had changed very little in the decades Jeanne had sold sex in Soho; cash was king, names were anonymous, girls were sold like cattle and rival gangs slashed and hacked to carve up the city for themselves. By war-time (and the sadistic era of the Soho Strangler who lay four prostitutes dead in his wake), the French pimps had lost control of the sex-trade as Roger Vernon was incarcerated, ‘Red Max’ Kassell lay dead in a ditch, and Maltese/Sicilian gangs like the Messina Brothers had muscled in. The Messina’s built the foundations of the Maltese strangle-hold on the West End sex-trade and what would later be known as ‘The Syndicate’. As a Sicilian criminal family from Malta whose father made his fortune enslaving vulnerable young girls to sell their bodies in seedy brothels, by the late 1940s, the Messina Brothers (Eugenio, Carmelo, Alfredo, Salvatore & Atillio) ran 30 brothels on Queen Street, Bond Street and Stafford Street, with 200 of London's most expensive prostitutes being Messina girls. Later bragging to the press, "we Messina’s are more powerful than the British Government. We do as we like in England", this was true, as having paid off most of the Met’ Police’s senior officers, they ran amok without arrest, kidnapping women from such exotic climbs as Belgium, France and Spain, and forcing them to marry their pimps who had ‘acquired’ British passports, they could never be deported. As little more than sex hostages forced to fornicate and fellate any passing drunken punter, working 12 hour shifts they would be beaten for any insolence, made to hand over 80% of their earnings, and many girls would be attacked as warnings to others like in 1948 with the brutal murder of ‘Ginger Rae’. By the 1950s, they were at the height of their powers, but as with Red Max, their rivals were circling. The Messina’s downfall came on the 3rd of September 1950, when investigative crime-reporter for The People newspaper Duncan Webb published a front-page article with the headline ‘arrest these men’, with a full expose of the names, dates and places of their criminal empire. With Parliament demanding that the Met’s corruption be stamped out, a task force under Superintendent Guy Mahon aggressively went after the brothers, and in March 1951, the Messina’s fled the country, leaving England forever. The collapse of the Messina’s empire didn’t end the Soho sex trade, as other Maltese and Sicilian gangs simply stepped in; one was the slightly depleted Vassallo Gang, and the other was called… …‘The Syndicate’. In a classic rise and fall story almost identical to the Messina’s, The Syndicate was headed by two men; Bernie Silver, a self-confessed “working-class East Ender with a taste for fine foods and flashy clothes”, who through prostitution, pornography and racketeering rose up the ranks as one of the West End’s most infamous crime-bosses; and Frank Mifsud known as ‘Big Frank’, an 18-stone ex-copper who made a name in Soho’s criminal underworld being known for his violent temper. He was also there in the Carlisle Club in 1948 when Amabile Ricca the so-called ‘Terror of Maltese London’ was murdered. Like the Messina’s, they started out small by bullying and threatening local businesses. Starting off with a strip-club on Brewer Street, by the late 1960s, the two owned 19 of Soho’s 24 strip-clubs, and although in 1956, Silver was charged with living off immoral earnings, even though there was evidence to convict, as happened a lot, oddly the judge closed this open-and-shut case and Silver walked free. Yet it was changes in the law which made The Syndicate both rich and powerful. Under the 1959 Street Offences Act, the maximum sentence for living off immoral earnings was seven years, and with sex-workers being fined £60 (£1700 today) for soliciting on the street, ‘The Syndicate’ moved it all inside. Between 1967 to 1972, they forcibly acquired the leaseholds and freeholds of between 25 to 30 flats in Soho; running strip-clubs in the basement, sex shops and even legitimate stores on the ground floor, and brothels above, of which the prostitutes paid them £100-a-week to rent, the equivalent of £3000. Owning clubs such as the Gigi, the Casbah, the Blue Moon, the Taboo, the Folies Bergères, the Metro, the Americana and El Morocco were real money-spinners, but the real cash-cows was their brothels. Sidestepping the law by placing postcards advertised in phone boxes, punters made appointments by phone, doormen ushered away any punters they suspected of being police, and Silver & Mifsud never met the girls, front men always collected the cash, and all premises were under someone else’s name. But for the girls, life was hard. To cover the exorbitant rent, many worked in 12 hour shifts, most were assaulted for not earning enough, and although ‘The Syndicate’ at its height collected over £100,000 in rents every week (that’s £1.9 million today), the girls were never protected from punters or pimps. ‘The Syndicate’ didn’t care about the girl’s, all they cared about was their own wealth and power. In court, Prosecutor Michael Corkery stated “these men have made a rich living”. Silver himself owned a deluxe Knightsbridge flat, a twin-engine yacht, a Rolls Royce, and properties in the Channel islands. With the 1964 Obscene Publications Act which criminalised the possession of anything ‘obscene’ for profit and gain, as the notoriously corrupt CID Commander Wally Virgo was on the take, as well as most of the Met’ Police’s Obscene Publications Squad, they bribed Detective Chief Superintendent Bill Moody to grant them a licence to sell pornography which made their premises immune to Police raids. The 1960s and 70s were dangerous times for prostitutes like Jeanne Western, as frictions between rival gangs escalated, especially on Peter Street, as The Blue City at No30 was ran by ‘The Syndicate’, and directly opposite at 2-3 Peter Street, Jeanne & Sheila worked in a brothel ran by the Vassallo Gang. With the Police in ‘The Syndicate’s pocket, the Vassallo’s sex shop and brothel was often raided by the Met’, who smashed and looted everything under the guise of the law, and even though these women were merely innocent pawns in an escalating war, every time they had to just sweep up and carry on. Prostitutes were frequently victims of assaults by rivals gangs, and with so many of their colleagues being murdered by pimps and punters alike – whether Dutch Leah, French Marie, French Fifi, Ginger Rae, Evelyn Oatley, Margaret Lowe, Doris Jouanette, Rosa O’Neill, and Jacqueline Birri at 3 Peter Street in 1961 shortly Jeanne moved in, they received no protection from either the Police or their pimps… …especially as this raging war escalated. The 1960s and 70s saw a spate of petrol-bombings at strip-clubs and brothels in Soho as rival gangs vied for control, three of which in 1966 and 67 were committed by Anthony Cauchi & Tony Galea, but as the gang-leaders always keep their hands clean, it was said to have been arranged by Frank Mifsud; one which occurred at The Gigi Club at 62 Frith Street, as we’ve covered in ‘The Five Shilling Striptease’. Convicted of manslaughter in 1969, Maltese ‘front man’ John Borg (of the Vassallo Gang) was said to have been offered £4000 to ‘take the rap’ for an unnamed ‘vice king’, but instead, he vanished with £20000 of the gangster’s money, and in 1978, he was found burned to death in a bedsit in Shoreditch. And during their rise to power, in 1956, a protection racketeer called Tommy ‘Scarface’ Smithson, who was attempting to take control of the sex-trade in Soho, was gunned down at ‘Blondie Bate’s’ boarding house in Maida Vale having been shot in the arm and the neck by a Maltese gunman called Philip Ellul. Convicted of murder alongside Victor Spampinato, Ellul escaped the death penalty, he served 11 years in prison, and by 1974, being found sleeping rough on a park bench in San Francisco, although he had agreed to give evidence against the man who organised the hit – Frank Mifsud – reneging as he feared for his life, this was another piece in the puzzle which saw the downfall and collapse of ‘The Syndicate’. In 1969 and 1973, with an expose by The Times and News of the World newspapers unravelling their criminal network, Silver & Mifsud rapidly started destroying their files and selling off their properties, the crime group broke-up and - before their clubs could be raided by the Met’s new anti-corruption ‘gangbuster’ Detective Chief Superintendent Albert Wickstead - being tipped-off by corrupt officers at Scotland Yard, Mifsud fled to Switzerland, Silver to France, but falsely believing that the case was being shutdown by his bent coppers, Silver returned to England was arrested on the 30th of December 1973. DCS Wickstead and his team raided every club and brothel ran by ‘The Syndicate’, and with a detailed ledger found at the home of Silver’s associate Jimmy Humphreys which listed all of their pay-offs to the Police, Detective Chief Superintendent Bill Moody was sentenced to 12 years in prison, and the 1967-77 corruption trials led to 13 detectives being convicted and sentenced to a total of 90 years. From the 20th of September 1974 for the next four months, ‘The Syndicate’s ringleaders Bernie Silver and Frank Mifsud (extradited from Switzerland) were tried at the Old Bailey before Justice Geoffrey Lane. Along with their ‘front men’; Anthony Mangton, Romeo Saliba, Frank Melito, Emmanuel Bartolo, Victor Micaleff, Lawrence Agious, Nazarene Galea, Frederick Brett, Vincent Stevens and Joseph Mifsud (Frank’s brother), all pleaded ‘not guilty’ to conspiring to live wholly or partly off the immoral earnings of prostitutes; with Micaleff, Misfud and Brett also accused of the kidnap, bribery and assault of one of the Crown’s witnesses, Frank Dyer, who was merely a bit-player in 'The Syndicate’s network. On the 24th of September 1974, with Silver & Mifsud being practically invisible as they kept their names off all paperwork and did most of their dealings through middlemen, desperate to prove they were the ringleaders, the Crown called their key witness; Francis Vassallo, a “self-confessed ponce” and so-called nightclub owner who had worked at the Blue Moon Club “making membership cards” for ‘The Syndicate’ which were used in evidence, he even stated, he had a conversation with Victor Micaleff, who openly bragged about their business, their methods, and the strip-clubs and brothels they ran. Found ‘guilty’ on the 20th of December 1974, their paltry sentences led some to suspect that the jury had been paid-off; Melito, Micaleff & Mifsud (Frank’s brother) got just two years, Romeo Saliba agreed to return to Malta so he walked free, Micallef & Brett were found ‘not guilty’ of kidnapping, Bartolo & Mangton got 5 years plus a £10-15k fine, and although the ringleaders of this multi-million pound gang which left hundreds of women beaten, broken and even dead, Bernie Silver was sentenced to 6 years with a £30k fine, and Frank Mifsud to just five years. Upon appeal, they were both acquitted. It was a pitiful example of the law only serving the rich and the powerful. ‘The Syndicate’ was dead... …but what had this got to do with Jeanne Western? Nothing, nothing at all. It was never said whether the order came down from the top, as bosses like Silver & Mifsud never got their hands dirty, but the target was the Crown’s key witness who had fingered them, Francis Vassallo. From his cell in Wormwood Scrubs prison, it was said, Victor Micaleff (front-man for the now-defunct ‘Syndicate’) arranged for his cousin, Joseph Frendo, a minicab driver from Stepney to put a hit on this rat. To give himself an alibi, he’d ensure he was visiting Victor in prison at the time that the incendiary bomb exploded, and having allegedly hired two Maltese men - John Everett (his alias) and Alfred Tabone (a bookmaker’s boy) - to plant it, he would miles away when Francis Vassallo died by inferno. The problem was, having blabbed to the Police (some say to erase his own crimes as a pimp who lived off his wife’s sex work), Vassallo feared for his life and knowing that – soon – he’d be as good as dead with a hole in his head and his bullet-riddled body found rotting in a boggy ditch, he had fled to Malta. Francis Vassallo was gone, but they didn’t need to kill him to kill him. As a ‘message’ of the fate which awaited him when they found him, they just needed to kill the one person he loved - his wife Margaret. The afternoon of Monday 12th of May 1975 was clammy, and although Peter Street stunk of jizz, fag ash and rotting litter as the bin men were on strike, it was so warm, they had to open a few windows. At roughly 2:40pm, half an hour before the school closed (and like clockwork, the sex-workers shut their curtains so the kiddies couldn’t see the sweaty slap-and-tickle within), the mucky bookshop at 3 Peter Street had a spattering of perverts perusing the plethora of porn, and in the two flats above, the brothel was busy as usual. On the first floor, ‘Sheila’ Lawrence was ‘finishing off’ a nervous young man, as on the second, Jeanne Western had a regular, 45-year-old Pias Schemebri of Stoke Newington. Jeanne had many regulars, as being a veteran of the sex-trade, she was efficient without being pushy, she was polite and quiet which made her an unlikely target of a drunken attack, and to quell any nerves of an anxious punter, she would often whistle a little ditty or hug them to her motherly bosom. As usual, Rena, her maid was in the backroom making a lukewarm cup of tea as the next client sat in an armchair waiting, and the radio played something soothing and erotic, as in Jeanne’s pink and lace bedroom, Jeanne was pumped by Pias for £3, as the air hung with the smell of sperm and lavender. But although ‘love-making’ emanated from the window, death was coming to Peter Street. Outside the black front-door stood the bomber and his look-out, said to be Everett & Tabone, clutching a crude incendiary bomb made of a glass bottle of petrol, a shotgun shell and a simple blasting fuse. They pressed the bell to ‘Flat 2’ – Jeanne’s flat, as always Rena answered “hello?”, “I’m here for business” (being code for sex), Rena buzzed him in, and she waited by the open second floor door. Yet he never came. The explosion sounded like a sharp pop, nothing more, as the flames erupted on the bend of the stairs between the ground and first floor, and with the front door and the window of Jeanne’s flat left open, a wind tunnel of fire whipped-up the stairs like the red hot tip of a dragon’s tongue; scorching the tinder dry walls of the stairs, and bursting through both rooms of Jeanne’s flat. Only Jeanne wasn’t their target, and neither was Rena. The bombers had made a simple mistake. They had rang the bell for ‘Flat 2’, Jeanne’s flat, whereas one floor below in ‘Flat 1’ was ‘Sheila Lawrence’, a Maltese woman whose husband had recently fled England and her real name was Margaret Vassallo. ‘Sheila’ recalled “I was trapped half-way up the stairs screaming, surrounded by flames. Suddenly, a man called Budgie grabbed my arm” and dragged her from the inferno, as the fire enveloped the building, smoked poured from every window, and the blaze on the second-floor licked the roof tiles. Six people coughed and sputtered in the street; three from the bookshop, as well as Budgie, ‘Sheila’ and ‘Sheila’s maid, but three were missing, their pained screams emanating from the top flat. Through a hot dense cloud of black smoke, the naked frame of Jeanne’s client, Pias Schemebri was precariously balanced on the sill, flames around him, and seeing no way out, he jumped from the highest window. Hitting the road hard after a 25 foot fall, he broke his back, and although in pain, at least he was alive. Inside, Jeanne struggled toward the window; with every breath she inhaled fire, every bead of sweat boiled, every hair singed, her skin was peeling and blistered, and her lingerie had melted into her skin. Crawling over the broken glass of the shattered window, blinded, Jeanne jumped for her life, and with the fall breaking her ribs, wrists, face, puncturing a lung and several other injuries it was impossible to determine, although alive, her body lay splayed in the middle of Peter Street still smoking and burning. Her maid, Rena wasn’t so lucky. Being trapped in the back-room, unable to get to a door or window, although alive but unrecognisable, she was later found unconscious cowering beside the dressing table. Both women were rushed to Roehampton hospital, a specialist in burns, but they died of their injuries. In her statement, ‘Sheila’ Lawrence ironically stated “I hope to God I’m not next… a few weeks ago in Berwick Street there was a similar fire at the house of some friends of mine, another in Romilly Street” and this was the third. And although the press speculated that a “maniac was on the loose”, Detective Chief Superintendent Albert Wickstead, the gangbuster who had broken up ‘The Syndicate’ knew just what this was – so by Saturday, Joseph Frendo & Alfred Tabone had been charged with murder. (End) But as I’ve already said, the law only serves the rich and the powerful. Silver & Mifsud denied involvement, Everett was never found, Micaleff had a cast-iron alibi, and with not enough evidence against Tabone, he was freed. Joseph Frendo was tried at the Old Bailey on the lesser charges of ‘conspiracy to cause an explosion and to endanger life’, and although found guilty, he was acquitted on appeal, and the deaths of Jeanne Western and Rena Conzimu remains ‘unsolved’. Likewise, on the 8th of July 1975, when the collapse of ‘The Syndicate’ led to both Silver & Mifsud being convicted of their part in the 1956 murder of Tommy ‘Scarface’ Smithson, Mifsud was acquitted, and although Silver was sentenced to life for conspiracy to murder, again he was cleared on appeal. The gang who had brought so much misery to Soho had filled their pockets full of cash, made many lawyers and detectives very wealthy, and they lived long happy lives having served no time for their crimes. Even today, people still worship these gangsters as if their grubby little actions are worthy of praise, but even in death, the woman they had killed would bring shame on the petty deeds of ‘The Syndicate’. Said to be a kindly mother-figure, when Jeanne’s will was read, being frugal, she had amassed £32,000 for her retirement (almost half a million pounds today). But with no children and a husband to inherit it, she bequeathed her entire fortune to the three charities (which it was said helped her husband in his dying days); Cancer Research, Imperial Cancer Research Fund and the Institute of Cancer Research – as even in her death, she continued to help others, whereas ‘The Syndicate’ only helped themselves. A spokesman for the Imperial Cancer Research Fund said “we are extremely grateful for this money, no matter where it comes from”, as Jeanne truly was the proverbial ‘hooker with the heart of gold’. 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.
Triple nominated at the True Crime Awards and nominated Best British True-Crime Podcast at the British Podcast Awards, also hailed as 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation Channel's Top 20 True-Crime Podcasts, also seen on BBC Radio, Sky News, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week.
12 Sterling Gardens, New Cross @Googlemaps2025 April2023
EPISODE THREE HUNDRED AND TEN: In the summer of 2008, two brilliant French scholars - Gabriel Ferez & Laurent Bonomo – were studying at this facility on a three-month placement as part of their degree in biochemistry. As students who excelled, here they met likeminded scientists on their journey to become the best they could be, but with this city being so expensive, they also came across two of the worst examples of London’s scum.
THE LOCATION:
The location is marked with a yellow 'P' south of the words 'Peckham'. To use the map, click it. If you want to see the other maps, click here.
SOURCES: a selection sourced from various archives:
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: Two students tortured because their killer couldn’t recall four digits. Find out why on Murder Mile. Today, I’m standing outside of the South Kensington campus of Imperial College London, SW7; two streets east of the shattered memory of Gunther Podola, three streets south of the stolen womanhood of Alvada Kooken, and a short walk from the bad bingo caller’s banger - coming soon to Murder Mile. On Exhibition Road just shy of Hyde Park sits the Natural Sciences Faculty of Imperial College London, a learned establishment for the smartest of brainboxes who dedicate their time to clever things; like reading BIG books with LONG words and usually NO photos. Unlike most students who blow three years of study slumped in a heap, humping a scrubber, chugging a keg, mooning their butt crack to all residents this side of Harrods, and spattering every pavement with 8 litres of cider-stinking chunder. But learning about each other’s culture is a big part of university life. In the summer of 2008, two brilliant French scholars - Gabriel Ferez & Laurent Bonomo – were studying at this facility on a three-month placement as part of their degree in biochemistry. As students who excelled, here they met likeminded scientists on their journey to become the best they could be, but with this city being so expensive, they also came across two of the worst examples of London’s scum. My name is Michael, I am your tour guide, and this is Murder Mile. Episode 310: Tortured for Digits. Gabriel Alain Daniel Ferez was destined to be one of life’s winners. Born in 1985, in the leafy French village of Prouzel in Picardy, northern France, Gabriel was the eldest of three to Francoise & Olivier, and together he was raised in a quaint little farmhouse surrounded by vineyards beside the River Selle. They weren’t wealthy, they lived simply, they had issues as all families do, and even though his parents had divorced, they maintained a stable life for their children’s sake and raised them well; filling their heads with life skills and ethical goodness, their hearts with positivity and hope, and their morals with the difference between right and wrong, as good parents raise good children, but bad parents don’t. As a child whose father was a nurse, Gabriel couldn’t help but become fascinated by science, and even before his teens at the Louis Thuillier secondary school in Amiens, he shone at chemistry, physics and maths, and during his summer holidays, he volunteered as a technician at Amiens hospital to educate himself further. He read avidly and travelled widely, taking part in an exchange programme in Mexico. His father described him as “the most intelligent, affectionate, wonderful son anyone could want”, his sister said he was “an exceptional boy who would do anything for anyone”, and an ex-girlfriend stated he was “my love, my treasure and my best friend” - he was liked by everyone and for good reason. In 2006, Gabriel won a place to study biochemistry at Polytech Clermont-Ferrand, one of France's most prestigious scientific institutions, and it was here that he met his new best friend, Laurent Bonomo. Likewise, raised right by his parents in Velaux, a provincial village in the Cote de’Azur, Laurent Bonomo was described as a "fantastic, fun-loving, exuberant guy". Said to be “sociable, kind and funny”, it’s no surprise that he was elected student president, that he excelled at science, and by 2008, he was in his third year of a master's degree in biochemistry and both he and Gabriel were described as “two model students with such unblemished records and glittering futures”. They were popular, well liked, and as the director of the university stated “they were the ones you knew would go on to do great things". But for Laurent, it wasn’t all about his degree, as ten months earlier, he had fallen in love with Marie Bertez, a student at the University in Valenciennes, and as his father said “'he changed after meeting Marie. He became more responsible and was ready to settle down”, and being so madly in love, with plans to marry when his studies was over, in April 2008, Marie & Laurent entered a 'civil partnership'. She called him her beloved 'Lolo'… but their lives would change forever, when he moved to London. At the start of May 2008, Gabriel & Laurent flew to the UK to live and take part in a 3-month exchange programme at Imperial College London. Studying at the Natural Sciences Faculty beside the Science Museum and the Natural History Museum, they were here to research protein chains within DNA, but it wasn’t all about work. Quickly, they became part of the university's union and clubs, as a polymath Laurent rarely lost in any chess championships, and they were described as “mature and sensible”. It was a fantastic opportunity for two bright students, but coming from rural French villages to a major metropolitan city would have seemed daunting, especially in London. Built not by plan but by a history of plagues and corruption, blitz bombings and disasters, London is a city where the safest street often runs parallel to a gangland cesspool, and millionaire’s mansion may be next door to a dingy crack-den. If you don’t know London; you won’t know where to go, how to walk about, and when to run like hell, and like many newcomers needing a place to stay to this city, they moved to where they could afford. Together they shared a small flat in South Norwood, far out of London near Croydon, but as Laurent wanted a little bit of privacy for when his fiancé Marie came to visit, he moved to New Cross. South London has seen spikes and spirals of wealth and poverty across its varied and violent history, but with New Cross embracing a recent renovation, it had become a hub for creatives and the aspirational, but it is still surrounded by pockets of poverty riddled with despair and deprivation, in places like Deptford. Gabriel’s grandmother recalled calling him, he loved travelling and had spent a year in the chaotic and often dangerous city of Mexico “but nothing prepared him for London”. That year, 17 people had been stabbed to death in London, mostly by morons with no brain cells, just big knives and bad attitudes. A columnist for the French website Le Figaro's wrote “I've lived in London for 10 years and there are many places known for robbery, violence and murder where I don't go. The embassies and consulates won't tell you that, so you have to find it out for yourself”, and with knife crime rising and an influx of chemically dubious drugs for those too afraid to face the reality of life, some streets were no-go zones. Thankfully, Laurent found a nice flat in New Cross in a quiet cul-de-sac occupied by students and young professionals. It was a ground-floor flat at 12 Sterling Gardens in Admiral Court; built in the 1990s, it was clean and affordable, and although a resident later said “you hear of trouble around here, gangs and things, but if you keep your head down you will be alright”, that’s exactly what these boys did. Gabriel’s grandmother said “he was finding life tough in London… he was lonely, and Gabriel & Laurent were looking forward to getting back to France”. They had both been in London for just six weeks… …but they would never return home alive. Daniel Sonnex (nicknamed ‘Dano’, ‘DD’ and even ‘Mad Dog’ by the morons who praised his bad deeds) was a pointless waste of space who never had a chance to succeed being raised by such bad parents. By 2008, his dad, Bernard Snr had amassed 26 convictions and had been in prison six times for robbery, burglary, theft, firearms and drug offences, with 47 charges for the protection rackets he ran in pubs and bars. Bernard and the Sonnex family were said to be infamous, but you rarely see old and wealthy criminal, as mostly, they end up broke as a bigger bad-ass takes over their scams and relegates them to petty pinching or an early grave, which is why they lived in a crappy house on Etta Street in Deptford. According to Daniel Sonnex, his dad drank heavily and was erratically violent, "he‘d kick us all out onto the street in his rages… people were always coming round asking for money and trying to get him", they were known to Social Services and Police regularly raided the house looking for drugs and guns. It’s no surprise that – aged 10 – Sonnex was excluded from primary school, and although he was meant to be educated at a tuition centre a few hours a day, he spent his childhood drinking, smoking cannabis and in his early teens, he became a thief, a burglar and had a £100-a-day addiction to heroin and crack. His bad parents had made him into this monster, which is not to excuse him for his brutal and sadistic crimes, as even those from worse backgrounds have flourished, as all it takes is brains and courage. As for his siblings, Sonnex’s sister, Louise, a mum of two received a five-year sentence for GBH having broken her dad’s girlfriend’s arm with a golf club, and a conviction for glassing a woman threatening ‘I'll open her up like a can of beans’ when she accused her brother Bernard of rape. By 2008, Bernard Jnr, his brother had served ten prison terms for 34 offences including robbery, aggravated burglary and witness intimidation, and once shoved a gun into the mouth of a DJ for not playing Bob Marley. So again, it’s no surprise that Daniel Sonnex wasted his life, and became a useless thug and drug addict. In 2003, aged 17, he was sentenced to eight years at Portland Young Offender's Institute for wounding with intent, resisting arrest, attempted robbery, wounding and four charges of violent robbery. He served five years, of which he spent long periods confined in segregation owing to his bad attitude and violence to prisoners and staff, he was transferred several times between Reading, Aylesbury and Feltham, and when he attended an anger management class, he later stated “it only made me angry”. He was just a kid who had spent the first part of his adulthood in prison, and although he was already being seen as a danger to society… it was a catalogue of failures which kept this killer on the streets. In May 2004, one year into his sentence, a prison doctor assessed him and stated “he admits that his reactions could kill”, suggesting he knew that he had no control over his anger and aggression. His file stated “he is a very troubled young man” with a history of violent crime and 40 incidents during his first year in prison for drugs, fighting and arson, but none of this data was shared with anyone else. In July 2007, having gone through a drug withdrawal programme, he was calmer and less paranoid, but although he was considered ‘high risk’, on the 8th of February 2008, he was wrongly categorised as ‘medium risk’, and this serious mistake wasn’t spotted as the printer in the probation office broke. Released early from prison, this ‘medium risk’ felon wasn’t supervised by the Police as he should have been, but was handed to Susanne Blaine, a newly qualified probation officer with only a few months experience and three times the workload, with 127 criminals to monitor at the same time. In her own words, “I couldn’t cope” and lacking the support she needed, more mistakes let this criminal walk free. On the 10th of February 2008, Sonnex and an accomplice tied up a pregnant woman and her boyfriend, put pillowcases over their heads, threatened them with a hammer, a saw and a knife, and demanded money. But with the couple too terrified to bring charges (likely having been threatened by his family), Daniel Sonnex wasn’t recalled to prison, his parole wasn’t reviewed, and he received a verbal warning. On the 23rd of April 2008, while on parole, Sonnex was arrested for stealing a handbag from a pub, but instead of being instantly recalled to prison, he was placed on bail and with the Police failing to inform his probation officer of this for five days, on the 28th of April, he was finally sent back to HMP Belmarsh. And then, on the 16th of May at Greenwich Magistrates Court, a mix-up (and the government’s need to ‘ease prison overcrowding’) meant he was granted ‘unconditional bail’ and walked free. Two weeks later, on the 1st of June, an arrest warrant was issued but the Police failed to execute it for 16 days… …a failure which directly led to the brutal torture and murder of Gabriel Ferez & Laurent Bonomo. It began as innocently as any other petty crime, as this wasn’t an act of hatred but opportunism, when on Monday 23rd of June 2008 at roughly 6am, while Laurent was taking a shower in his ground floor flat at 12 Sterling Gardens, a burglar entered via an open window and stole his laptop. It wasn’t worth much, he thought little of it, and although the Police dusted for fingerprints, it was never recovered. By Sunday 29th, with the theft at the back of his mind, Gabriel & Laurent went to Wimbledon to watch the tennis, but being the middle Sunday of the championships, there was no matches being played. With the sun warm and the air cool, they walked along the Thames chatting about life and science, Laurent was excited as his girlfriend Marie was staying the next day, and having caught the District Line to Cannon Street and a train to New Cross, at 9pm they grabbed a McDonald’s and headed home. That night, in the flat, the two sat playing games on the PlayStation, and by midnight, with Laurent on a pull-out bed and Gabriel beside him on the futon, feeling tired, they both headed off to sleep. It was a night as ordinary as any other, but elsewhere in the city, very bad people were doing very bad things. 34-year-old Nigel Edward Farmer was described as “a wannabe bad boy. He wanted people to respect him and thought that he had to be feared, but he was in way too deep”. Booted out of his own home by his girlfriend, the mother of his two children, Farmer was crashing on Sonnex’s sofa at their Etta Street home in Deptford, and it was said “he was intimidated by the Sonnex’s, he was their bitch". 12 years his senior, Farmer had one conviction, a three-year sentence in 1997 for a knifepoint robbery having also developed a £100-a-day cocaine and heroin habit, which totalled £36,500 a year. On the 25th of May, one month before the double murders, Farmer checked into Oxleas, a psychiatric unit in Woolwich having slashed his wrists. Four days later he discharged himself, and was “still feeling low”. On the night of Sunday the 29th of June, Sonnex & Farmer had been drinking heavily, addling their tiny minds with a cocktail of cannabis, cocaine and ecstasy, and having been robbed of the coke they had tried to sell, they burgled several houses in Sittingbourne, but blew the money they stole on drugs. It’s baffling that they didn’t get caught, as with neither man wearing black but dressed to go boozing – with Sonnex in a two-piece jeans-jacket and a flat-cap like a poor man’s Guy Ritchie, and Farmer like the loser of a Bez from the Happy Monday’s look-a-like competition – they stuck out like sore thumbs. But as burglars do when they’re desperate, broke and willing to steal anything for a hit, they returned to the scene of an old crime knowing that the items they’d already nicked would have been replaced. At around 5am, roughly around dawn, Sonnex & Farmer sauntered into Admiral Court in New Cross. It was quiet, empty, and with the window of the living room to Flat 12 of Sterling Gardens slightly ajar as the night was warm, as Sonnex claimed he kept watch, Farmer (as his patsy) was ordered inside. Gabriel & Laurent were fast asleep when Farmer crept in; he didn’t know them, he’d never met them, he didn’t give a crap about their achievements or that one was to be married soon, all he cared about was swiping the new laptop, getting out unseen (as burglars are cowards), and selling it to buy drugs. The problem was that Farmer was utterly useless as a burglar. Within seconds, he’d knocked a glass off a windowsill causing Gabriel & Laurent to wake with a start. Later blabbing to the Police, Sonnex claimed “I heard him shout 'D! D! Come in. I need a hand'”, and as he climbed inside, “I saw one guy”, Gabriel sitting on a futon “talking in French very, very loudly", as Farmer held Laurent in a headlock, “his hand around his neck, pushing his head on the pillow of the bed, aggressively saying, 'stay down, stay down'… I grabbed the other one, but wasn't fighting back". All of this Sonnex claimed to recuse himself of the most heinous of crimes, which Farmer flatly refuted. Again, although associates stated that Farmer “lived in fear of Daniel Sonnex”, Sonnex told the court “(Farmer) tied up (Laurent) and ordered me to bind the other one’s feet and ankles” with a pair of his girlfriend’s stockings which had been left behind, and a set of towels wrapped around their heads so the students couldn’t see, couldn’t shout and could only speak when the burglars needed them to. Gabriel & Laurent were smart, they knew not to excite or anger these jittery and aggressive addicts, as being two slim-framed bookworms who were bound and blindfolded on a bed in their underpants, they didn’t stand a chance if they fought back. Besides, all the burglars wanted was money and goods which could be replaced, so as Farmer ransacked the flat, Sonnex recalled in his defence, “one spoke a little English, said something about his girlfriend, I know that for sure. I said 'just keep thinking about your girlfriend’", as soon enough the burglars would be gone, and the whole incident would be over. Being students, there wasn’t much to steal; the laptop hadn’t been replaced, so Farmer swiped their mobile phones which were Motorola RAZR V3’s worth £74 each if new (but £20 stolen), two Sony PSP handheld game consoles worth £130 if new (but £50 stolen), a little cash and Laurent’s bank card. Again, both men were smart, so when Sonnex claimed that Farmer asked for the PIN number, Laurent was “very compliant” and gave him those four meaningless digits, as only able to withdraw £200 a day, it would be stupid to lie, especially as they knew the burglars wouldn’t leave when they got it. And that’s what they did. With Farmer holding the two students hostage with a kitchen knife to their throats, Sonnex walked to the ATM at the Western Union on nearby Deptford High Street. So proud was Farmer of his pathetic little heist that he phoned Bernard, Daniel Sonnex’s brother to brag, and was heard shouting at one of the terrified students “shut your fucking mouth or I'll cut your hand off'”. This is where an education would have been useful, but having left school aged 11, learned nothing from his dad but theft, spent most of his childhood on drugs and almost all of his adulthood in prison, when Sonnex popped the cash card into the ATM, he only had to remember four simple numbers… …but he couldn’t. He hadn’t written them down, he didn’t think to phone Farmer, and instead, getting angry at the ATM, he took a guess at the PIN, but it was wrong. He took another punt at the digits, but again, he cocked that up. And as this brainless junkie jabbed at the keypad, hoping that he’d miraculously solve this 1 in a 1000 chance of getting the code right, instead he messed it up, and the ATM swallowed the card. With it stuck inside the belly of this alarmed system, he left, with nothing, not even his dignity. It was his fault, all of it, but as a paranoid addict from a criminal family who understood nothing but violence, he couldn’t see his own failure, as to him there were only two people to blame for his lack of brains. It was said that Sonnex returned to the flat at about 8am… and that’s when the torture began. Detective Superintendent Mick Duthie said “it was speculated that owing to the level of violence that the killer or killers were on crack cocaine”. Described as ‘an orgy of bloodletting’, “they were treated like animals… it was carnage, there was blood up the walls and the ceiling”, as they were tortured for any items of value, but they had given all they had; two phones, two games consoles and a cash card. With a pitiful haul of just £140, which would barely buy these addicts half-a-day’s drugs each… …Sonnex’s fury was unleashed. Over two hours, both students had 243 wounds inflicted upon them; with the knife driven into Gabriel’s bound and helpless body 47 times, as the blade penetrated his head, neck, back and chest with such force that his skull was skewered as the knife severed his brain. And with Farmer stating of Laurent “he wouldn’t die”, being stabbed with a sadistic sustained ferocity, the same knife had savaged his brain and body 196 times, 100 of which happened after he was dead. At about 10am, five hours after they had begun, with next-to-nothing in their pockets, the flat and the bodies were soaked in petrol, set alight, and as smoke and flames licked out of the window, two bangs were heard, so loud, that they startled the neighbours, and the fire brigade made a grisly discovery. And as if this catalogue of failure which let this killer walk free hadn’t done enough damage, ironically, at 2pm that day, the Police finally actioned the warrant to recall Sonnex to prison, but when they got to his parent’s house in Deptford where he’d been sighted, he and Farmer escaped over the back wall. Codenamed Operation Dockery, it seemed like a targeted hit but there was no obvious motive for the students to be tortured, the stolen items were searched for but never found, and although detectives said “it was clearly a frenzied horrible attack… it did not appear to be the work of professionals”. Sonnex & Farmer were as useless as burglars as they were as killers, as having set fire to the flat while they were both still inside, that first explosion occurred when a portable gas heater caught light, and as Farmer fled the scene with his hands scorched and his face badly burned, two neighbours saw him. On the 6th of July 2008, with an e-Fit and his description released; “a white male, 30 to 40, slim, white trainers, blue jeans, dark top with the ‘Junfan’ on it” like a piss-poor Bez impersonator, the next day, he handed himself in at Lewisham Police Station… or at least he tried to, as being the final insult in this catalogue of failures, he had to wait to be seen, as the receptionist thought he was joking. (End) Luckily, Farmer waited in line, confessed to a detective, and on 12th of July being charged with arson, aggravated burglary and both murders, with no honour among thieves. he gave-up the name of Daniel Sonnex. Tracked to his grandmother’s house in Peckham, Sonnex was caught climbing out of a skylight. Tried at the Old Bailey on the 24th of April 2009, although Sonnex admitted to one count of burglary, they denied all other charges including murder, and to save themselves, they blamed each other. Deliberating on the 29th of May, a majority verdict found them guilty of all charges. On the 4th of June, sentenced to life, Nigel Farmer was told he must serve a minimum of 35 years, meaning he won’t be eligible for parole until 2044, and (as the most sadistic of the pair), Daniel Sonnex must serve 40 years. But given his bad attitude, it’s likely he’ll never be released, unless the authorities foul it all up, again. In court, most of the jurors cried as Gabriel & Laurent’s parents read their victim impact statements, Laurent’s fiancé, Marie, had to leave the court when she saw Sonnex, stating her only emotion was that she wanted to kill him: “It was pure hatred. He is not human. He's a savage, a monster”. And yet, as Sonnex was led away to spend the rest of his life in prison, he winked to his father, whistling as he swaggered away, not appreciating that it was his dad’s piss poor parenting which made him that way. As predicted, it’s highly likely that Daniel Sonnex will never be released, as on the 19th of June 2010 at HMP Long Lartin, having supposedly converted to Islam, he attacked Richard Stringfellow, a prison guard with a vegetable knife having held him hostage. Said to be foaming at the mouth, Sonnex is now held at Broadmoor psychiatric hospital having built a glider out of a mattress, a fridge and coat hangers to make his escape as he feared that French & British agents wanted to assassinate him, as he claimed that Gabriel & Laurent’s murder was a government cover-up, as the students “were about to expose the bird flu virus". Sonnex had since been diagnosed with a low IQ and a ‘severe personality disorder’. The Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast has been researched using the original declassified police investigation files, court records, press reports and as many authentic sources as possible, which are freely available in the public domain, including eye-witness testimony, confessions, autopsy reports, first-hand accounts and independent investigation, where possible. But these documents are only as accurate as those recounting them and recording them, and are always incomplete or full of opinion rather than fact, therefore mistakes and misrepresentations can be made. As stated at the beginning of each episode (and as is clear by the way it is presented) Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast is a 'dramatisation' of the events and not a documentary, therefore a certain amount of dramatic licence, selective characterisation and story-telling (within logical reason and based on extensive research) has been taken to create a fuller picture. It is not a full and complete representation of the case, the people or the investigation, and therefore should not be taken as such. It is also often (for the sake of clarity, speed and the drama) presented from a single person's perspective, usually (but not exclusively) the victim's, and therefore it will contain a certain level of bias and opinion to get across this single perspective, which may not be the overall opinion of those involved or associated. Murder Mile is just one possible retelling of each case. Murder Mile does not set out to cause any harm or distress to those involved, and those who listen to the podcast or read the transcripts provided should be aware that by accessing anything created by Murder Mile (or any source related to any each) that they may discover some details about a person, an incident or the police investigation itself, that they were unaware of. |
AuthorMichael J Buchanan-Dunne is a crime writer, podcaster of Murder Mile UK True Crime and creator of true-crime TV series. 
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